Dear LA Man, I’ve been thinking about your situation for few days. Some people have responded with some kind and respectful advice. I’ve pasted one at the end of this letter. We also had a phone conversation so, I am privy to some information that is not in the letter and may respond to some of that here.

On the phone we talked about trust. What I’ve learned about trust is that it’s a tender thing that takes time to build and when it’s damaged; it takes a very long time to repair it. Call me an optimist—maybe even a romantic—because I think that there is nothing that cannot be repaired with work, patience, and dedication. But that can only happen when we decide to stop lying to ourselves. The liar stops lying.

I used to be a big fat liar. Sometimes my elaborate schemes involved borrowing cars and costumes. But I grew so miserable and alone because no one really knew me. They only knew segments.  I told selective truths to my loved ones because of my low self-regard and my selfish terror of being rejected. For instance, I had this couple—they were sort of regular clients of mine. I told my stoner boyfriend I was at a “catering gig” and disappeared for hours. I wasn’t passing out chicken skewers in peanut sauce on cocktail napkins, I was doing a show in a dusty santa suit for a man in a white terrycloth towel-skirt and his ejaculatory wife, with a lavender dolphin dildo, way too many scented candles and about $400.  I had done it for years. While I was driving to the “catering gig” my boyfriend called. I told him I had to bartend a party. He said, “I’m in your house right now and I’m looking at your bar kit. Where are you really going?” I turned around and went home. So busted. What I’m getting at, LA Man, is you are not dating a big, fat liar. You are dating a beautiful, sexy, thirty-three year old liar.

That said, I relate to Zoe. I get her protective, defensive shellac. I see where she’s hiding. I smell what she’s stepping in. I understand the shame she’s deflecting from our culture about sex and the adult industry. The ugliness that inspires lying.  I’ve heard the new age rhetoric nonsense she is eating up right now to make it all okay.

Because of all that, I got worried for both of you. It made my stomach lurch like riding a roller coaster that’s traveling straight up and then it shoots down and you can feel your eyes pop and you want to barf and then you’re in a dark tunnel and want to get off; you scream but it’s not over yet. Sure, I used to love roller coasters because the lurching and hurling part became the hysterical laughter part, but the last time I rode a roller coaster, I ended up with whiplash and 800-milligram ibuprofen.  Zoe is your roller coaster.

Let’s call a spade a spade: There’s the person problem and the job issue.

Facts first: Zoe lied to you about being an escort after you had been dating for eight months. That’s a lot different than seeing someone for a few weeks. Eight months is a substantial amount of time. A baby is almost ready to burst from an expecting mama’s belly by eight months. In cat years, eight months is the equivalent to a fifteen-year old human. In lesbian years, eight months is cohabitation for five years.  In stripper years, eight months is varicose veins and a hunchback.She only came clean when you caught her, which happened because you snooped.

You need to know right now that some people lie sometimes and go on to be in healthy, honest relationships. 

Will Zoe change? Or are you really just in love with the fantasy of Zoe? Speaking of open relationships (which you say you are attempting to have with Zoe), friends of mine who are in an open relationships say the amount of work it takes to communicate openly and lovingly is huge. It takes a lot of time and patience to allow both partners room to express feelings and work through it together.  I commend them for their bravery and generosity. Those friends of mine swear by “The Ethical Slut,” because it’s a blueprint for healthy poly relationships. If you’re emotionally mature enough to attempt that scenario and everything is on the table now, what difference does it make if she’s getting money? She has other sex partners. You have concerns about her job.Understandable. I encourage you to step outside of preconceived notions of jobs and talk to her. Ask her questions. Women have varied experiences in the adult industry. Have the talk about safe sex. Get tested. Ask her how the job is affecting her emotionally, physically and what you can expect, like, how will it bleed into your relationship? Then, mind your own business and enjoy her. If you cannot do that, be her friend and tell her you can’t handle it. Get off the roller coaster. Let her be.

 As for her new job, it sounds like she’s in over her head. I’m wary of her circle of friends who recruited her into escort work and found her those clients. I’m worried that she got arrested after such a short period of time and how that will affect her future. I’m worried the fast money will eclipse her better judgment.I hope she will love herself enough to be honest about what she’s doing and get support. She sounds like an upbeat girl with lots of interests like travel, personal training and school. I hope she pursues those interests and saves her money.  

I hope you can see your relationship with her more clearly and dive into your own twelve-step program and get support. One more thing, I spoke to a yoga instructor yesterday about a philosophy circulating in the sex worker community. Underlying the new age jargon is this idea that women are healing men by selling their bodies. Nonsense. This is a perversion of tantric texts that piqued the interest of the free love generation in the 60’s and 70’s and it’s a defensive posturing to justify the act and if prostitution were legalized and women in the industry were protected and valued, they wouldn’t be grasping at tantric texts. Some girls love sex work. They have a blessed synergy with their personality and ambition it works for them. I was blue collar about sex work. For me, it was more akin to being a circus monkey and therapist to being a priestess, which is to say, I enjoyed it until I felt stuck. I hope she doesn’t get stuck.

Good luck,

Antonia

*In response to the man dating an escort.  The keyword he used was ‘smart’.  If he thinks she is smart then he should trust that she is smart to stay safe.  If she is earning that kind of money then her clients are not off the streets and far less likely to be unhealthy.  When I was a ‘high class call girl’ (my husband does NOT know), it was the sexiest time of my life, I knew my power, my body was in tune with it’s erotic power and I was a sexual and emotional therapist to many men.  It is not a shameful profession however I was in a relationship at the time and it took it’s toll.  He wasn’t really able to handle it but was passive aggressive because he was spending all the money.  My two regrets; continuing through a bad breakup while my emotions were weak and his words caused me shame and not following my madam’s advice to save the money I earned.It’s a time of my life that I miss and wish I had experienced it as a single woman.  My husband does not know that I was a professional, not because I think he would leave but because I think it would stigmatize our sex life.  And he has a VERY good sex life, there’s something to be said for marrying a professional whether you know it or not.  He is also very clear that if he feels the need to go somewhere else for sex that I want him to go to a ‘high class call girl’.  They are there for a reason.

Dear Antonia, I’m a desperate man in need of help. I hope some of your readers can offer advice on my situation as well. I’m a man in a twelve-step program, with a good job and I have been dating someone I really like. In fact, I’m afraid I’m falling for her but our trust has been recently fractured.  When I started dating Zoe eight months ago, she was working the front desk at a hotel. She was laid off from that job.  Since then I thought she hadn’t been working, just going to school, taking classes and whatnot.  She always seemed to have an abundance of cash though and she even offered to help me renovate my house.  I wondered about stuff like that and her being able to afford expensive tickets for us to see shows and plan trips and stuff.

Allenina by Romy Suskin

Through a series of events three weeks ago, I basically found out that she’s been working as a high-end escort.  I found out because she got arrested and disappeared for a few days. In fact, I found out not by her telling me, but through a friend in law enforcement. I called around when she didn’t show up for a date. When I confronted her, she said she had a D.U.I and a warrant and that’s why she disappeared for a week. I told her that I knew why she was in jail. She came clean with me and admitted she’s says been doing sex work since February.  She told me about a “circle of friends” who talked her into being a high-end escort for some old gentlemen who are safe and rich and lonely. She believes that she is helping people and that society is wrong for condemning her for using her body the way she wishes to. She says she’s “safe” (meaning she uses condoms and doesn’t exchange bodily fluids) and has completely normalized her situation and her “circle of friends” and the clients. She thinks those people have her interests at heart. She also said that she has made 100K since February and buys me expensive gifts. While it’s nice to be on the receiving end of such extravagance, it makes me uncomfortable because I feel like she is trying to buy my acceptance, and I cannot help but think about where that money came from.

JT by Romy Suskin

Anyway, I really like her. She’s sweet, fun, generous and smart and from all indications (what she tells me, how she acts, the time we spend together) she’s really into me too. Obviously, now there are trust issues. We also have an open relationship, but from what I understand, relationships whether they are open or not are based on trust. She says she is willing to talk with me about everything and we have set up a time to do this, but I need advise on how to proceed. I want to know how sex work affects relationships with significant others? How it affects the person doing it and a ton of other stuff.

Generally speaking, it would be great to just get some perspective from someone who’s been there, albeit from the other side of things. I am concerned about my emotional well being, my sobriety, my health, and my self-esteem. Am I wasting my time on a shady lady? I really like her. She’s beautiful and 33. Do we have a future?

Thanks,

Stressed in LA

Today, I have cramps, a sore throat and a headache. My checking account is way overdrawn. In one month, the car I’ve been driving for two years returns to its rightful owner who now lives in New York. Like everyone I know—I’ve been broke as a joke many times before; clung to my last three wrinkled dollars proud and resilient.  After swigging the last of my coffee, eyes glazed spirals from writing, I hauled ass to a promising strip club on fumes. I went to work when I needed money—I always left with money. But I’ve recently joined the forces of underpaid millions with tired feet and empty pockets. I sit in traffic with all of you now with a box of electronic word games, binders full of writing prompts and a baggie of sour patch worms and hope the kids will feel like writing. If not, I hope they like sour patch worms and the mix on my I-pod.

Black Dahlia and Carrie

  Payday’s in two weeks and the money’s already owed to friends. I don’t mean to sound whiny and in need of a retired sex worker support group for those of us ill equipped to function in mainstream society, let alone manage our non-dance dollars. That’s not how I feel. Frustrated and embarrassed is how I feel. Weirdly, I dig teaching. And, I’ve fallen crazy in love with mornings. I’m no longer dancing at 4a.m. with giant grey shadows under my eyes, a Red Bull hangover, a tweaked neck, and piles of cash. I’m asleep by ten with my arms folded in front of my belly. I fall asleep knowing my hands were the last to touch my thighs.  I’m exhilarated in a new way. I’m broken in a new way.  I wake up to a Willy Nelson song, smiling into the sad blue eyes of the one who loves me back.

 Have I told you I wrote my book? I’ve been writing a memoir for over three years about the sex industry and my mother’s illness.  Juicy bits of it have appeared here as raw material which fed my book.  Why haven’t I mentioned that? Probably too much Bill Hicks. I’m organically skeeved out by self-promotion and all of its creepy avatars.

I wanted to share with you what’s up with my memoir, Spent because you are reading this.

 Last year, during Jazz fest which is the best time to visit New Orleans, I finished a messy draft of my book. I rented a fabulous bungalow in the Treme with purple doors and green shutters. A wild Tabby named Tika jumped in my windows at night and sat with me while I wrote. Lidia Yuknavitch’s “Chronology of Water” was my talisman. I underlined it until it bled black all over the pages. Her courage and pain tore something open in me. If that book spoke to me it would say, “Let her rip.”

Esalen

    Tika’s glow-y orange eyes kept me company as I wrote until sunrise. New Orleans didn’t let me sleep much. I vibrated with Jazz Fest euphoria and stayed wide awake. I wrote the last hundred pages of my book and rode a borrowed bicycle around town and drank green lemony juice from the bywater cafe. When I returned to LA, I handed my over my manuscript to a few writer friends for input.  Then I went about gutting the fucker. Top to bottom, I slaughtered my precious baby lambs. It was strange, rewriting my life. How does one revise her life? I dug for the emotional seeds that had to sprout in every chapter, every page.  But it’s strange to rewrite your life. Memory is unreliable and opportunistic. Then I found a big gun.

 I hired a ruthless, generous trimmer (editor) far enough away (Germany) to not be afraid to hurt my feelings by saying, “Lose this.”  Back and forth, back and forth we went for another eight months shifting bodies and time zones around to hit the true emotional points hard.  The question “why now?” marched through my skull like a river of ants. In my book, the chronology and structure stumped me. I dove back in and found some places where I avoided taking total responsibility. I danced around the hot burning core. I needed to stand in the fire and burn, clasp the reader’s hand and scorch both of us. 

There are still places I need to claw through.

    For instance, my book has many love stories weaved in: with women and men.  I loved my mother and lost her and needed to show more what it meant to lose her. Two women I loved needed beginnings and ends.  There is one lover that I protected too much: Adam, the intellectual Jewish comedian. There are no composite characters in my book.

What Girls Want (JG)

   The girls told me want they want. The  girls want it dirty and true.  They want to know about Adam: unprotected afternoon sex with the sun turning apricot. They want to see us in my Silverlake apartment arguing against walls the color of raspberry sorbet and blue velvet curtains, peppermint tea, claw marks on his shoulder blades. They want to see him texting while I tried to not seem annoyed while rubbing Vitamin E oil on his scaly butt crack (it was always red and chafed). They want his thick lips, the post coital hostile neurosis, the smell of patchouli. They want his tweaked nipples. And then they want to see him ditch me—  belly up floating corpse of a failed love affair, bloated and rotting.

  My editor, Kevin helped me a lot.  I needed to make all of the deaths happen at once and then, I needed to dig my way into the sunlight. Bring you with me, holding your charred hand through the soot.

And now I’m making those final revisions and tweaking a query letter so I can launch this rocket. Last year, I was alone with my rejection emails. This year, I feel like I have you.

Let’s publish this book.