I’m packing to go to the desert to work at Desert Showgirls. It’s not the best decision I’ve ever made, but far from the worst. A couple of years ago, I worked there on a desperate Sunday night. I had 3 bucks to my name and none of my clients were calling. I was dating Marc Maron at the time and made a splash on the Internet with my fledgling freelance sensual massage business. My friend Skipper, who got me into the hand job biz, was hell bent on not seeing clients in her apartment that weekend so I needed to make due. I was in love with Marc Maron and he was acting distant and skittish and I thought that if I reigned in the sensual massage racket, he’d calm down. Like when I was ten and I thought if only I lie really still and don’t breathe, my raging step dad will stop screaming and my mom will stop whimpering.As a kid I thought that kind of magic was possible but as an adult I came to believe I was not that powerful. Not even close. No matter how nice I was, an alcoholic was going to drink. A cheater’s

Student at a School Where I teach Photojournalism

going to cheat.

Marc was ignoring me again. It didn’t’ matter what I did.

Seated Laura

So, I clutched my three dollars and drove to the desert with half a tank in awful Memorial Day weekend traffic— sad as a canker sore. The club was quiet with hardly any men but there were lots of girls: younger, skinnier versions of me making money and all I could think about was Marc and then calls starting rolling in but I couldn’t meet my regular clients because I was dancing at fucking Desert Showgirls. I stuck it out until the club closed after 2a.m. and drove home, nodding asleep on my steering wheel in the black empty night, broken and lonely but a tad less broke.

I am rebuilding. In this rebuilding, my life is about writing, teaching and being in an open, loving committed relationship. I teach creative writing to kids after school and am involved in a program for at risk teenage girls: Write Girl. I am a TA for a wonderful, talented poet and am grateful for knowing so many supportive, brilliant writers here in Los Angeles. They/You have been cheering for me all along. But, all of my gigs put together don’t pay the bills. My taxes aren’t going to pay themselves. I keep getting in trouble: tickets, bills, student loans: all of my negligence piling up and stinking. And like my friend said, when money is worrisome, it becomes all about the money.

The Roof at a School Where I Teach

And I can’t save or destroy my relationship by dancing—I am not that powerful. What I can do is be who I am: Get to work and trust that in this rebuilding, a foundation will one day be solid.

L by Romy Suskin

Now for some better news: I have a piece coming out in “Salon” soon about being a fat stripper and my legs costing me jobs. I have an essay about breaking up with Marc Maron and giving a guy a handjob when I was sad. It will be appearing in David Henry Sterry’s new anthology “Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks.” David is the nicest guy and has been surprisingly accessible and helpful. He sold “Chicken” for six figures back in 2000 and knows the industry so well it hurts. Have you read the statistics? Yes. They are brutal. So what. He told me that he believes the universe (or whatever) has been so good to him so he wants to give back in case the universe decides to punish him for not helping me. He’s been wonderful and I am touched by his helpfulness.

There are some links and things I want to share with you before I leave for work.

First, there’s Chris Kraus (who I am obsessed with) talking about the radical feminine “I” and her take on the Marie Calloway incident.

http://www.sleek-mag.com/special-features/2012/11/art-world-confessional/

It’s not clear to me whether or not she is championing Marie Calloway or the “blah blah blah Tao Lin trend” but nonetheless, she has a good point about the confessional sexually-actualized female writer disclosing male sexuality and that not being “allowed” in our contemporary literary or pop culture canon. Although a play date with a much older dude and a double facial all over the Internet is nothing new or interesting, Kraus muses about the curse of American women writers having to also be likable and that is what blew me away and is something that has been annoying the shit out of me for years: that super palatable, apologetic tone.

http://therumpus.net/2012/11/i-am-sorry-women/

Speaking of brave women with unpopular views and semi-apologetic voices who are also somewhat fierce, check out Mary Miller’s essay “I Am Sorry Women” on The Rumpus this week. She harshly blames herself for her troubling relationships with other women. This vexed friends of mine but I thought it was achy and great.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/20/daily-routines-writers/

Finally, I loved this collection of quotes about the daily routines of writers I admire from Joan Didion to Jack Kerouac. Why not?:

And to be relentlessly productive, in case you are also searching for a teaching job and wondering why it’s so tricky, here is the advice no one likes to hear, but listen closely anyway to Rob Jenkins because he throws it down in his article “The Advice Nobody Likes” in “The Chronicle.”

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Advice-Nobody-Likes/126454/

Every Halloween, the ghost of my 11 year-old self haunts me. She’s in the candy isle at Rite Aid gorging on fun-size Twix bars. She’s wrapping candy corn lights around her neck. She’s trying on a vampire costume grinning through plastic fangs with a scraggly black wig in her eyes. She’s concerned about extra roll on her belly as she ties a gypsy scarf around her hips. Back when Halloween was an orgy of candy and boys, Ichabod Crane and “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” it was also the time in my life when I realized I was pudgy. To my horror, being fat and undesirable scared me much more than zombies and witches and fretting over a silly Halloween costume exacerbated that terror.

Art at Pat Brown High School Where I Teach Photography Sometimes

I was eleven years old. What happened was, Mom loved the idea of my green M&M costume. Her name, Marilyn was shortened to “M” and that’s what her boyfriend called her. M&M’s were our favorite candy. We had gone shopping together for the fabric and glued the white letter M’s on the green felt with care. My costume idea was great for other reasons too. We sixth graders shared an inside joke: the green M&M’s were horny. Dressing as one would mean I was a sex-starved, flirty, love slave, ready to be kissed by boys. I was going to dazzle and delight my friends. My popularity would soar. I was crazy about Halloween.

“Carrie” Halloween 2011

Then, Mom cut holes in the bottom of my green felt M &M costume for my legs but they didn’t fit. “Your legs are too chunky,” she said sternly. Alerted to my fat thighs, I was convinced everyone would laugh at me, point at my legs in white tights like thick redwoods and sneer, “You are what you eat.” Then they would poke my chartreuse belly. My kissing scheme was shot to hell. I can’t pinpoint exactly when Halloween and M&M’s became my mortal enemies, but I do remember how the days grew shorter and the nights colder and how my weird body issues killed Halloween.
The kids in the sixth grade did not tease me for being a fat green M&M. They dressed as hobos and bank robbers. They carved jack-o-lanterns and played truth-or-dare. They were deeply entrenched in Tweenland, enjoying first kisses and spin-the-bottle. My friends rode the puberty wave into stubble and boobs but I was traumatized by it. My self-esteem plummeted and I began to starve myself. My body had exploded in places I wasn’t ready for it. By ten my waist and hips expanded into freakish proportions. My 32A chest was sore and tender as it swelled to a 34B in one year. It hurt to run track. My face broke out into painful pimple clusters and I caked makeup on my face until my skin was orange and clownish. I felt a fistful of new, scary urges but wasn’t prepared for any of them, so I stuck my finger down my throat instead.

Little Girl

By my Doctor’s standards, I wasn’t fat. I was growing and it’s normal for women to gain weight during puberty. Still, in an effort to control my body’s agenda to become a young woman, I struggled with anorexia and bulimia for many years. My weight fluctuated and my body issues thrived. I went to group therapy with other teenage girls who suffered from anorexia and bulimia. I stopped participating in Halloween altogether. I didn’t want to be me, but I didn’t feel flamboyant enough to parade around as someone else either.

Esalen 2011

The expectation of girls to dress sexy for Halloween is partially to blame. Last week, while browsing dozens of costume stores looking for a Ravenna, the Evil Queen costume, I noticed that cheap, skimpy outfits filled the shelves and those outfits had nothing do with the pageantry of Halloween. Invention and imagination had vanished in a poisonous cloud of commercial pre-packaged, slutty getups. The costumes offered in the girls’ section were generic, sexed up and cheesy: vampires and monsters and ghosts (why would you want to be a sexy ghost?) and lots of naughty nurse outfits built for twigs. Our cultural obsession with selling sex, though not limited to Halloween had consumed it. I continued my search for The Evil Queen outfit but what I found instead was that All Hollow’s Eve had become hollow and plastic.
Determined to reanimate the corpse of Halloween joy, I had to exorcise the body issues from my past and mourn the ghost of my 11 year-old body. I walked away from the Halloween isle and opened my closet, brushed aside my fat girl skeletons and found an old silky robe with marabou feathers, which I would use to begin building my costume.

Getting Ready by Romy Suskin

I looked to the past in order to start fresh. After all, Halloween wasn’t always this commercial. It is a holiday with roots firmly planted in the erotic and mysterious spirit world. What I have always loved about Halloween is that it is a day where child-like magic fills our adult lives and the boundaries between the human world and the spirit world collide. I enjoy the knocks on doors and the legions of visitors in costume: little girls in princess dresses holding star-wands and tiny snow whites with puffy sleeves.
A couple of years ago, on Halloween, I decided to dress up as Marie Antoinette and rented an elaborate Victorian costume. I fashioned a bloody neck wound out of latex and held a cake on a tray. I was going to celebrate Halloween at a friend’s home and spend the entire night handing out candy to kids in the neighborhood. In costume, I felt glorious and provocative, like the queen I hoped to portray. My wig was high, white and dripped with pearls. I wasn’t thinking about how my body looked. I was thinking about serving kids.

Tiny Dracula

While securing my wig, my doorbell rang. In my doorway stood a little 5-year old boy— a Bela Lugosi vision in a long, black cape. He wore a pressed, white tuxedo shirt with a classic bow tie clipped at his neck. He smiled through viscous vampire fangs and pressed white makeup. His slicked back hair would have made Bram Stoker proud. His dad called out from the sidewalk “Say trick-or-treat!” The boy said it like a quiet hiss. He was a remnant of the Halloween that I cherished: neither plastic nor disposable. The boy happily offered his empty sac to me. I poured an entire bag of Snickers bars inside and said “You are the best Dracula I have ever seen.” We were both uncomfortable in our costumes, but we both felt great. I followed the miniature Dracula down my steps. Halloween was waiting for me.

I just watched Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner jump out of a balloon from 128,000 feet in order to break the sound barrier. He flew at sub-sonic speed at 700 mph for five minutes and all I kept thinking was Land on Your Feet. My boyfriend who is also Austrian and also 43, called out “Come here. You’ve got to see this!” I’d been glued to my computer for the last three days and was happy for the interruption. I correct English Comp papers and I’m not going to lie. I am worried that text speak is replacing sentences and then I worry that our memories are being erased by computer monitors because kids are learning how to scan instead of learning to absorb and recall information. And I’m worried that I’ve concerned you. After my last blog post, I have been touched by your emails and encouragement. I want to give back. Here is me committing to you: I am not going to keep my good news from you. The fact is I have a book for grabs and want to see it in your hands. I will ask for your help when I know what help looks like. Thank you for extending your hand. For now, I’m taking the baton from one of my favorite sharers of good news: writer, Shannon Barber. Do you know her?:http://shannonsdreams.wordpress.com/

The Golden Couple: Vienna

My memoir “SPENT” is hanging out on a couple of desktops at the moment. I’m awaiting a contract to secure one of my stories in David Henry Sterry’s forthcoming anthology: John’s, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks: Professionals and Clients Writing about Each Other. Outrageous title. He’s pretty amazing and has been kind and helpful to me. My fiction will soon be out in The Heroin Chronicles Edited by Jerry Stahl. I have an essay coming out in Word Riot’s 10th Anniversary Anthology about getting drugged on a paid date. I have an essay “Here Comes the Girl” soon to appear on The Rumpus about temptation, crossing over and rising from the ashes. You may be wondering when I am going to write about fertility, wrinkles, soap operas or wearing seven-inch heels after 40. I believe in free falling in snazzy shoes.

Land on Your Feet.

Have I mentioned that since my Rumpus Letter in the Mail went out, I have had many amazing letters in response? Some days I come home to 3 letters with special red lined tape and temporary dragon tattoos. Other days it’s more like 7. I have a pile of them to respond to still including a woman whose father married a serial killer who worked as a caregiver. She was a super creep in pink terrycloth shorts named Barbara. One girl sent me a one-page beautifully written sad story about something horrible her father said to her in front of her siblings. It took me a while to respond to her because her letter implied she was not bothered by it, but I was very bothered by it.

The Gods and Goddesses: Vienna

Lastly, I want to fuck my boyfriend’s car. It’s that simple. This horny piece of German machinery will replace skin any second, like monitor screens are replacing infant memories. It sounds like a panther and is slick and fast. Not that I want to have sex with a panther but if that panther was a white Porsche—prrrrr. I’m going to find some matching rhinestone gloves and gun it.

Car Sex

Mom always said “Honey, there’s nothing you can’t do as long as you keep your nose to the grindstone,” but I’m not sure stripping through grad school and beyond was what she had in mind. My parents’ version of success looked like a small promotion and a lease on a Chrysler Cordoba, but my dreams were complicated and big as airships. I was born with unreasonable expectations in a culture that gurgled with MTV rock star fantasies that promised Fame and Atari. By the time I was ten, I planned to convince Elton John to adopt me, then I’d become a writer, not a teacher or nurse like the rest of my friends. Both of my working parents clobbered me with their clichés: “You’ve got to get up everyday and hit that ball hard.” I rose early, showed up for class, and swung at everything my eyeballs latched onto. I believed that higher education guaranteed upward mobility and job security, apple scented hair and expensive jeans. And if that didn’t work out, I’d form a band and make a killer video because in the 80’s, everybody was working for the weekend and the shiny yellow convertible Huey Lewis and the News cruised around in was totally doable as long as I was willing to “wake up with the roosters so I could soar with the eagles.” But the Eagles, the band and the bird, had fancy contacts in very high places. They may have been God’s chew-toy dipped in dumb luck, but success was not around the corner for me. I was told that if I worked hard at something, I’d be successful. I mean, this is America, right? It’s the moral of every single story from Chariots of Fire to Project Runway. What happens when it’s not true?

Unicorn with Rainbow

So, when I was asked to be interviewed for my school’s website I was surprised. I squirmed in a metal chair in a stuffy dark basement with a microphone floating inches above my head, while a petite woman with a black bob and stylish glasses interviewed me about my MFA in creative writing for the school’s website.
“Did you have a job while you obtained your MFA?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you what I did while I was in school,” I said. “Not on film.” The cameramen exchanged a look.
“Why not?” she asked. Her tone was curious. Playful.
“Because I was a stripper,” I said. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes, like I had exhausted her. Stripping my way through grad school while grieving my dead mother did not make for a snappy MFA sound bite and while I was supposed to beam with literary success, what I wanted to do was whisper to student hopefuls:
“Erect a yurt. Learn how to fish. Plant squash.”
“Did you do anything else for work?” she asked. Her question pissed me off. I had indeed done everything else for work from scrubbing toilets to playing the role of sexy Santa Clause at a party for surf gear. I collected side jobs like pennies. They didn’t add up to much. What happened was, my mom died from an aggressive cancer a month after I started grad school. At that time, one of my side jobs was personal assistant to a screenwriter. But, when the economy tanked she couldn’t afford to pay two mortgages and my hourly wage so I returned to the tried and true the same way non-smokers sleepwalk into liquor stores and jerk awake with a pack of cigarettes in their hand. I found the one club that would hire a thirty-seven year old pole dancer and got busy stripping nights so that during the day, I could attend lectures, write a book length manuscript and lead a conference on Kurt Vonnegut.

By Jennifer A. Grant

The truth is, I’m a far cry from an MFA poster child. I’m an under-earning, over-educated, 40-year old, ex-stripper who can’t land a teaching job. I’m a snarky Facebook update crumpled by agent rejections and deafened by the no’s in my inbox that haunt me like conflicting Christmas carols, daring my lips to bite gun metal. And, I’m not alone. We are legions of MFA holding writers who don’t really know how to do anything except avoid phone calls from student loan collectors and Tweet.
“Did obtaining your MFA change your life?” the woman asked. My MFA did change my life. It made me a terribly articulate stripper.
And so I lied on camera that day the same way I was lied to as a kid. I dangled a greasy bauble of hope for young grad students because when my mother was attached to a feeding tube after an aggressive cancer made a comeback she said “Get that MFA.” She knew I’d be the first woman in my family to do so and she knew that I hadn’t yet given myself permission to be a writer. Maybe the students watching that website video will see my few but solid publications and imagine their name in print. Maybe they will be the first in their family to get a Master’s and they will make their family proud the way my mom was even though she never saw me graduate. Maybe they will pursue writing because it’s the only thing they’ve ever wanted to do.
Post graduation, I searched for a teaching job while writing my book. The economy continued to limp, so I tucked my MFA in my g-string and headed for places of ill repute thinking “You’ve come a long way baby,” as I twirled around the pole. But I hadn’t come far enough. The rejections piled up and I hadn’t found a publisher for my book and the list of things I still needed to learn was daunting. For instance, I had to learn how to learn how to market myself, write a CV and build a platform. I had to learn how to write a mesmerizing query letter that hit all of the fine points in my book with finesse. I had to put down the books I’d worshipped in grad school and learn how to write my own story.
I had to take a long, hard look at the bleak numbers of how many writers publish well and how long it takes for most writers to make the tinniest splash. I had to dig into my DNA for the 80’s optimism that coursed through my veins that believed the near possible was still possible. I had to shirk literary rejection and not be discourage by it, the very same way I hopped from lap to lap in the clubs when I wasn’t picked first. I had to fix my gaze on a new buzzing ball of faith and swing, build my craft and let go of the results. I had to learn patience. Most important, I had to grow the writer and shrink the stripper.

Iggy Pop Pose for Kent Geib

And when I bawled my eyes out after a top journal rejected a revised essay, I licked my wounds for the allotted forty-eight hours and then I learned to turned that stab of “no” into hope by shooting it out to a dozen journals. After pressing “send” I found a line by American author Og Mandino: “I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.”
After grad school, I headed for the dark clubs to extract stars so I could wrangle them onto the page one sixty-dollar song at a time. Stripping became my salvation; the darkness, my preference. I learned that people love to tell their secrets to a scantily clad stranger so I became that stranger in that place of telling. I met a gentleman from Alabama whose arm was bitten off at the elbow by a shark and I’ve never seen a man’s belly jiggle with a mightier laugh. Another guy I spoke to was part of the team cleaning up the Gulf Oil Spill that happened off the coast of Louisiana while I was there. He told me about dying birds in the inky marsh, the ones the media didn’t show on the news. “Is it over?” I asked him while dancing for him in a private room where we could hear the screams of tourists on Bourbon Street through an opened window.

Appolo by Romy Suskin

“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
In New Orleans, locals told me stories about lawless Katrina; the ones who lost their homes and pets after policemen in St. Bernard’s Parish shot them in a high school auditorium. I met a man who fell in love while wandering the French quarter. He met his wife in a bar and they rebuilt their lives and spirits together. I danced for young bachelors who gave me relationship advice that I’ll never forget like “Make sure he’s six out of six,” which means that the person I date needs to have all of the most important six qualities, not only one or two. I befriended a client who took me to dinner and talked non-stop about his daughter. He told me about the paintings he bought her for her twenty-first birthday. I hope that she hung the paintings in her living room and knows what a kind and generous man her father is. A guy drove from Austin, Texas to see me because he wanted to talk about his troubling divorce. Another had read my blog so he stopped into the strip club where I worked to talk about writing and to commiserate about our dead mothers. I learned that kindness and empathy can actually change the world, one lap dance at a time. And just because I work hard at something, doesn’t mean I’m going to hit a home run.
I learned that we live in a time of bigger dreams. We no longer knock door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions, but we have access to potential millions just by pushing “send” and that “send” can be life altering.
And I still don’t have a book published. I write for an online magazine but I do not earn my living writing—yet. My Interview with Mandy Morbid received nearly half a million hits. You could fill Dodger Stadium twice with that number. More than 33,000 people read my “Interview with a John” installment on The Rumpus. That’s more than the population of the small town where I grew up. I’m going to keep an optimistic eye on the ball of faith and swing smarter, darker and more deliberately because stories make me want to keep breathing. I’m going to be proud of myself for my efforts, and know that just because I haven’t succeeded by a certain age, it doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen.

Rite of Spring at Disney Hall!

“I’m not comfortable dancing topless,” the girl on the phone said. I tried to remember which girl I was speaking to while hiking up a dirt mountain near Occidental College. I hoped it was the brunette with big lips gyrating on a beach in a turquoise bikini, not the young one who sent me full frontal vag shots or the Asian girl in the YouTube clip slithering to techno music on top of a lime green Pontiac GTO—the one whose meth-drip I could taste through my monitor. I was being ambushed by naked girls because I was casting extras for a strip club scene in a movie for a low paying background role that involved standing in seven inch plastic stilettos and dancing topless for pretend customers in a faux strip club for fourteen hours. “Well, thanks for calling,” I said. It didn’t matter which girl she was. Other actress types were calling and I needed to click over so I could secure my fifteen extras by tomorrow.
“I mean, I can dance, but I’m not comfortable on a stripper pole,” she said. I heard shuffled sounds of fishing for cigarettes, pills or a handgun. I felt queasy and sensed danger, like the initial tremors of an earthquake. I wanted to tell her to run. I wanted to piss her off so she would slam the phone down. But she kept talking: “It’s just that, I hate myself when I do these hundred dollar jobs—especially the nudity ones.”
Hang the fuck up.
“There are lots of other, fully clothed, better roles out there,” I said. If I hired her, I could tell she’d be my new migraine. She’d complain about her costume showing too much of her ass. She’d whine about having to eat granola bars and warm apples from craft services while the regular crew got made-to-order omelettes. I wanted to tell her she would make it out of here alive.
But, she won’t. She was already losing her backbone. I could hear her resolve evaporating in the face of pressure: her no-matter-what’s slipping into so-whats and I was not about to shove her down that slippery slope.
Go away, I thought. The tangerine sun limped away as I climbed up to the top of the ridge, dodging gopher holes and slippery rocks. Then she told me she could dance. She offered to show me. I was at the top of the hill now, looking down.
“No, that’s okay,” I said.
She sighed the miffed sigh of a girl used to being picked. Tears fell down my cheeks and I angrily rubbed them away. I imagined flames licking the San Gabriel Mountains inches away from where I stood. My skin felt hot.
“You deserve better,” I said, and hung up on her.
The brunette and all the ones after her said they were about twenty-seven, which was the age I was when I started giving hand jobs in the strip club where I worked back in San Francisco. A week prior to giving hand jobs, I was contemptuous towards strippers who cranked the shank even though they all snickered at me for being a “clean girl” and paid their stage fees in less than ten minutes. I proudly left the club with my wad of come-free bills even though it took me a few hours to come up with the $180 stage fees. Then I realized every girl in that club was doing the rub and tug. I was the stupid one. As usual, I leaned against the wall in the audience, feeling ridiculous, like I was a plushy at a DAR convention. I led a guy into the back room, where nude dances happened in curtained off rooms that reminded me of Motel Six shower stalls with antibacterial gel containers on the wall instead of showerheads. I made one-sixty in a three-minute song.
So.
What.
Bitches.
I didn’t analyze production levels or consider geopolitical strategies. I didn’t say to myself “tonight you’re going to get with the jack off program.” I thought of myself as a pro-porn feminist who was just “working it,” but like the other girls, I was just a girl doing a service job, and that job demand more and more of me and I had no say in the matter. I could touch dick, or find another club, audition and be told:
Get Naked.
Let me see your body.
You’re on stage in two songs.
I don’t mean to suggest doling out hand jobs like Altoids is morally wrong. It’s not that I think receiving money for said service is wrong either. It’s just that as a young woman, I clearly didn’t want to have to give handjobs and in that club at that time, I kind of did have to. And if a woman on the other end of the phone gave me some maternal bullshit about “deserving better,” I would have told her to go fuck herself and found the next pole to climb, the next John to nuzzle up to.
I didn’t consider the unintended consequences of loose boundaries. But, my body knows things that I don’t know.
Bleach.
Walgreen’s Peach body spray.
Kleenex.
Black Suede Cologne.
At the club I began to float. My skin tingled and I was outside of it like I was watching a movie from above. The hours pulsed like a sore tooth. What’s wrong with you? I thought. After all, I had efficiently increased my cash flow and that meant I was valuing my time more. Valuing my time was empowering. But something else happened. My trust in myself got wobbly, and then was burned in the fire.
As Janna Malamud Smith wrote, “We cannot give ourselves over to a process and preserve ourselves from the way our choice alters us.” Sometimes the process by which I made decisions derived from a part of me that was sad. And sometimes that piece of sad had the last word, like the time my resolve burned in the fire. Of course, that’s not the whole story.
For years, I wanted to quit stripping. Not because the job sucked but because I wanted to be something more than a well-read stripper with a few college degrees and a rectus smile. I got a job in a harm-reduction facility that didn’t pay enough. I Catered. I Nannied. I Organized Closets. But to make ends meet, I resorted to what I knew how to do. It’s not specific to sex work. Bartenders and teachers all return to what they know in a pinch. So I fell back into being a stripper, a Pro Domme and got a job at a tantric massage parlor. I’ve never been resistant to working hard. One of my jobs was an HIV counselor to the porn industry and it enabled me to connect with other performers. It didn’t take long to agree to a “show.” I found that sex work was impossibly hard to let go of. My determination and confidence was chiseled to soft sand.
We like to think that work is this other thing that we do to pay bills. I wanted to believe that my job was not the real me; the real me existed outside the realm of sex work. But we also know that is malarkey. How do we undo the work that we have become? How do we untangle the identity with which we have defended and upheld, based our whole self-supporting lives? How the fuck?

A. By Romy Suskin

I dream about stripping and wake up edgy and exhausted. A girl I don’t like anymore is next to me and we are choosing music and walking and there are legs and the backs of heads. Waiting for money. Frantic to be picked. Even now, as I write this, I feel the pull of stripping tugging on my skirt like the leper kids in India with their finger nubs pulling at my t-shirt. There is a club an hour way that the girls say is “pretty good right now” and I’m thinking about my car payment. And I’m thinking about my health insurance, wondering how I’ll come up with it all.
I need money and I am scared.

Bella by K. Idora

But I remember being a young girl and choosing to strip and even if I made that decision from a sad dark place where I felt I wasn’t worth protecting, it was still a decision that made me who I am. I became public property, every man’s girl. Hurled my body at men. One day I didn’t ache anymore. That was the worst day of all, the day that my feelings were burned in the fire, impossible to excavate.
I cling to mornings where I wrap my arms around the guy I love who loves me back. I’m holding a ridiculous tiny buzzing ball of power in my hands—Me, in charge of hiring these tremendous and beautiful young women who will decide their next move. They have to decide. Some of them will burn.

*This excerpt first appeared this week on Michelle Tea and Ali Liebegott’s Radar Blog

    “Why don’t you come inside and hang out?” I’d been following the pink haired film student for several blocks outside of The Shanty, a dive bar in old town Eureka and my combat boots weren’t exactly stealth. I don’t remember what I said to her or how I got from the pink haired girl to the blonde because I was wobbly and horny from cheap red wine and the Shanty never ID’d me. The next morning, I woke up on the floor, next to a short blonde who’d passed out wearing her ornate brown cowboy boots. They poked out of the ratty quilt that covered both of us.

American Girl: Jen Grant

            “Shit,” I mumbled and found my keys. I had to find my stupid car so I could get to work, so I pulled on my black slip and a t-shirt that reeked of American Spirits and tiptoed out of the shabby Victorian. The pink-haired girl was already sitting on the porch drinking coffee from a pint glass. She didn’t look up when I waved to her. It was so early the faint sun sliced through decrepit buildings that used to be pink, magical whorehouses with secret nooks, slave quarters and balconies. They had orange and purple stained glass windows and disintegrating porches, filled with petticoat-wearing ghosts, but over the years businessmen bought them, painted them white and turned them all into law offices filled with file cabinets.

            I found my 1984 Ford Tempo parked near the Carson Mansion, a famous men’s club that only recently admitted women. On the sidewalk, a bearded homeless dude bummed change from the punk kids who hung around and dumped soap into the gazebo once a year causing a wall of bubbles to reach the sky. There were no bubbles now.

I met the orchid breeder at the coffee shop in Old Towne, which was packed with hippies and artists. It was one of my many shit jobs, which led to another shit job: artist’s model.  Some of my customers hired me to pose nude for them—for an untaxed hourly wage—in studios and warehouses nearby where they painted or sketched. I stood or sat naked and they collected money in a basket like church and gave it to me afterwards.

            A squat man with stiff posture like he’d just had a prostate exam asked me for a small coffee. “You’re fetching,” he said. His shiny black hair hung into his bulging eyes. He brushed it away.

            “Thanks.” I handed him a white mug of burnt coffee. He gave me his business card, which read: Orchid Breeder. Painter. 
            “You should sit for me,” he said. I shoved the card in my sock. The café was packed with a line out the door. Two craggy men in plaid flannel shirts played chess and camped out. Shop owners left with their trays of lattes and muffins and the four usual punks sat at a table. “Will you turn the music up?” the one with spiky purple hair asked. I walked in the back and turned up David Byrne’s “The Catherine Wheel.” I emptied the tip jar in my apron pocket. I had to pee. In the bathroom, I noticed the blonde’s chew marks on my thighs. “Goddamn it,” I said out loud. http://youtu.be/ngVGxYLRrZ0

            “Goddamn it what?” The punk kid said when I exited the bathroom. When I ignored him, he hissed at me and shook his head. I poured coffee grounds in the trash, wiped counters and cut up blackcurrant scone samples. I popped one in my mouth. I needed to scratch together enough cash to get out of this cow town. Ten bucks in coffee tips wasn’t cutting it. I called the Orchid breeder’s number.

By Jen Grant

            “Can you model for me tomorrow for a few hours?”

            “How much?” I asked.

            “Fifteen an hour,” he said. 

I met him in a dusty attic loft in Old Town, with creaky redwood beams and orange light spilling through the windows. I was twenty. He was thirty-six with a fixed, tense expression and froggy eyes. He never blinked. He smoked cigars and painted on a canvas with a couple of skinny branches that he dipped in muddy red paint. He stared at my thighs where the blonde had left her marks. I placed a hand on the welt.

            “Mosquito?” he asked.

            “Kind of,” I said.

            “Have you ever done acid?” 

            “Nope.”

            “How is that possible? A fetching girl like you?” He opened and shut the freezer and handed me a white tiny piece of paper, which dissolved on my tongue. We spent the next several hours touching and kissing. I got lost standing up. Time became syrup I couldn’t move through. My gut was empty. And I loved it.

Gypsy by Romy Suskin

            That was how the affair started. Not with mutual attraction or interests. The married man had the yummy drugs. And he had the drug that made everything perfect. Not just acid. He bought our powdered perfect speed by the quarter baggy and fed it to me off his red kitchen counter and my soul swam. Crank was the answer to a question I didn’t know I had. It made me frantic and thin and euphoric. I snorted a line and soared skinless and weightless and looked down in a jagged disconnect. Did I mention speed made me skinny? Perfect.

            The orchid breeder was married to a woman named Kayla. What I knew about Kayla was she was delicate, pretty and blonde. And she was raped. I didn’t know what it meant to leave a wife, especially one who had been raped, but I’m sure Kayla still has a doll in my likeness with pins stuck through its eyes.

            One afternoon, the orchid breeder called. He was puffing on a cigar and then, “Do you want to come to San Francisco?” Of course I did. This hick town was tightening around my neck. The alcohol and bars and acid trips were making me late for work. I was one write up away from being fired.  So I packed some clothes and books and climbed inside his U-Haul with his two dogs and my silver spray painted bookshelves. We drove through downtown, near my dad’s law office. “Let me say goodbye,” I said.

            As a kid, Dad’s office was a cold place of wood panelling and anxious waiting. I sat on the scratchy orange couch and chewed my cuticles for hours, waiting to speak to him and cried for things I didn’t know how to ask for. I walked into the front door and saw the same orange couch and walked right past it to the front desk.  Phones rang, printers spat out papers and heels clicked on the white linoleum floor. A new secretary sat at the reception desk. This one had short sensible hair and glasses. I wondered if he had slept with her yet. “Is my dad here?”  I asked. She stiffened.

“Um. Let’s see.” She picked up a black phone and murmured something into the receiver that I couldn’t hear over the hum of the fax machine. I walked upstairs without waiting for her reply. Dad’s door was ajar. He sat at his desk polishing an antique gun. He hung up the phone when he saw me. I sat opposite him in an expensive black leather chair and picked up his bronze golf ball paperweight and held the cold metal ball in my palm. “Dad, I’m moving to San Francisco.”

            “You know, those assholes in the White House have never had a real job in their lives?”

            “Dad, I just wanted to stop by and say—”

            “There are no white people in San Francisco. Have you noticed that? They’re all Asian. Why is that? America is clogged with people who have no work ethic. No heroes. Who are their heroes?”

            “Dad. My boyfriend is outside in the—”

            “You know who my heroes are?” I glanced at the signed autograph of Rush Limbaugh on the wall behind him. “Do you remember the battle of Petersburg in 1864? Of course you don’t. I don’t expect you to, since your bleeding heart liberal professors are all destroying this country from the inside out, starting with our youth. Do you know who else did that? Hitler.” A horn honked several times outside the window.

“We’re blocking the street with our U-Haul, Dad.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault. The socialists in higher education are responsible for destroying the minds of today’s youth.”

“I’m leaving Dad.” His bottom lip began to quiver.

“General Chamberlain.” His eyes watered. “That’s my hero.”

“Goodbye, Dad.”

“Take care of my little girl,” he said to the framed picture of Jesus on his desk. But it was too late. I was no little girl and I had the itch of craving, banging my throat dry— the ache of more powdered perfect, rising in my skin like bread.

 Delightful things are happening. First, I’m going to be reading from my piece, “The Yeah” which will be in issue #13 of The Los Angeles Review, dedicated to Dana Gioia, the man who saved the NEA. The reading is Sunday, September 9th at the Ruskin Art Club. The event is from 2-4 p.m. My favorite local poet Brendan Constantine (Letters To Guns) will be the MC! so Please, please come.

    Another absolute miracle:  I’ve been hired to work on a movie. My job is to wrangle strippers and to create a vivacious, sensual strip club party like the nightclub scene in “Before Night Falls” but with topless dancers instead of water ballet inside Cheetah’s instead of a fancy cuban hotel.  As a wrangler for “Afternoon Delight,” I get to hire gorgeous women which means I get to look at pictures of topless ladies all day and ask them if they still have long dark hair and if they can get rhinestone acrylic nails for the club scene.  I love being part of a crew because it’s like being part of a big family with way too many kids who send emails at 3a.m. about hoodies, pasties and sequins. I get to be a family member and attend meetings about extras and dress dancers. I’m also learning about the tenderness required when hiring models and actors who need the job in LA where thousands of girls also need that job. It’s a small job and a very big job. And it’s not only every man for himself out here.  It’s a great big beautiful ball of suffering need. I’m dancing around it and diving in.   

Underwater Tea Party: J. Grant

Today is spectacularly sunny day and birds haven’t stopped chirping.  Sunny days like this remind me of hiking Runyon Canyon with J who died last February.

When I met J, she was sober, then not. Then sober, then not. Then gone. A friend dropped off several boxes of her belongings and I finally went though them.  They were taped and stuffed full of J’s pictures and clothes. I ripped them apart with scissors, searching for a certain black pair of shorts that she always wore. I don’t know exactly why those damn shorts were so important to me, but they were.  She wore them so much they split open at the ass and she had them repaired. I could tell by the stitching. And I have to tell you; I’m hanging onto the shorts. Also, I’ve been carrying my dead friend’s handbag.            

            Here is a Polaroid of the young boy who OD’d on J’s kitchen floor. He fell into a coma for a long time; long enough to make him a vegetable for the rest of his life. His family came and took him away but J went to another rehab. In the Polaroid he has thick brown hair, droopy eyes and skinny arms. He is laying down on a couch. I never met that boy but I remember staring at bloodstains smeared on J’s low cut fancy shirt and thinking that’s not lipstick.  I remember the way she sped past my desk as if to avoid my eyes in the law firm where we worked together.  

            When she was sober she was a lesbian. Those boys she fucked in detox were her gray period. Her sparkly blue eyes faded and pink lips were pale. Coma boy’s long beige trench coat hung on the back of her office door on a gold hook. Needing somewhere to shove my anger, I hated that trench coat and almost threw it in the trash along the tiny bottles of booze I found in J’s desk drawers. I opened her office before the attorneys and paralegals arrived, so I snooped around J’s desk and tossed the evidence. Back then, I thought I could help. I thought I could stop things from happening but they were already happening. There’s no stopping a gray hurricane.  I thought I was going to prevent J from getting fired, but I got myself fired instead.

Show Me Pink Series: J. Grant

Ursula:Jen Grant

            Coma boy goes in a Ziploc bag. Here is J’s pink period.  She’s puckering her mouth in a fish face to suck in her cheekbones, a mayhem model in a slimming black dress, marrying her girlfriend, Tracy. She grins with a turquoise flower with leopard print petals in her luxurious black hair and kicks up a curvy calf ending in shoes that cost more than my motorcycle—pointy witchy things that were left on the floor for the pugs to chew.  I’m getting those shoes reheeled. Here are the pugs. 

            Monday, Cheryl Strayed talked about the way she imitated writers she loved in order to learn how to write. J followed La Chapelle’s lead by favoring gooey pinks and exaggerated deadpan faces. She blew up our ugly parts pretty until our bruised faces shrieked,

“Look Closer. Again!”  On our lunch breaks at the law firm, we munched delicate chicken salads. We hurried so we could sprint through Macy’s where she tried on dresses and shoes— always more, always fast. No one shopped like J. Then we stole five more minutes to sit on a patch of sunlit grass. We talked about loneliness and breakups and art. We snickered about people in the office while slurping melted frozen yoghurt off white plastic spoons.  She was happy planning her photo shoots—a delicious reprieve from pushing papers. “Redheads having an underwater tea party,” she said.  

            “Like the greek muses,” I said.  Her pointy heels clicked on the pavement while we rushed towards the elevator where lunch ended. 

              I’m carrying J’s black Jimmy Choo bag with a square clasp and rings that shine like gold eyeballs. The black leather is rich and soft but scratched— torn and faded, as if she left it on the ground in a parking garage. The inside is powdery and scraped and loved like it held keys and change and Mac Lipstick, prescription bottles of Vicoden and sugar-free gum. She may have kept a photo of herself in her snug black wedding dress, angular cheekbones sharp and rouged to remember how fucking beautiful she was. I will keep that picture of her on that day. Maybe she stuffed the bag with love notes she wasn’t finished writing. Purple Nail Polish. Black licorice chews from the bins at Gelson’s that we passed back and forth in the office to pass the time. Needles stashed in the zipper pocket, those aching pieces of her she hid, residue of a life cut short. 

Underwater Muse: J. Grant

            I’ve never owned Jimmy Choo anything. Never thought about it much, until now. I imagine her Jimmy Choo days. Did it  feel cool like champagne on yacht in a pencil skirt and gold hoops with a red skull scarf? Was it enough? She wore accessories that made a girl tear her eyelashes out one by one. Her restless and giddy days with pugs on leashes and hikes up and down Runyon Canyon. Dusty, hot and humid days like today. Remember the time we saw the big owl?  I remember hearing it and thinking it was bigger than I expected. We talked about what it symbolized in Native American mythology: Death. But we didn’t talk about death much. Tortured by curves, we were always on diets and talked about that incessantly. 

            Here is J’s soft cotton white top, snug and transparent. It’s longer than I usually wear and it’s so her.  I pull it on and then pull out her other  t-shirts one by one. They don’t smell like her anymore. They smell like dust, like summer in Los Angeles, Runyon Canyon. I decide to dry clean her wrinkled blouses that she wore at the firm because I don’t mind the tiny bloodstain near the collar. I carry her Jimmy Choo bag and wear her beautiful tattered things so a part of J can still glimmer and click and grin. Here are her photos.

Gentle readers, it’s time I admit things just aren’t working out. Here are the facts: I got canned. A spectacular consulting job on my friend’s film fell through yesterday.  Also, my part-time teaching  job that made my heart happy—because I enjoyed teaching writing to kids— has “changed” because the non-profit I work for is “reorganizing.” A check for $500 for the TA’ing gig was lost in the mail ten days ago. Rejections flood my inbox.  I don’t have an agent. Publishers have not inquired within. I have a surplus of 75 cents in my checking account and I’m driving on fumes. My neck is out. My boyfriend is sick of buying the Friskies. I may be eligible for unemployment.

My soaring career in the adult industry has placed me outside the realm of “easy hire.” Not that I’m hankering for a nine to fiver, but I wouldn’t shake a stick at a parking spot and health insurance right now, so I’m applying for a job at Trader Joe’s. I’m pitching a couple articles to a magazine that pays. If they won’t have me, Jumbo’s Clown Room will. Please don’t be disappointed in me. A girl’s gotta do..

The Writer Tribe

All is not lost.

I got an email from the Michelle Tea tribe at Radar that informed me I had been chosen for the Radar Lab Fellowship in Akumal, Mexico where I would write near the ocean all day and have sit down dinners with literary super stars. 

Lit Stars at Radar

 Whose life was this? Radar! It was like being handed a fizzy lifting drink from Willy Wonka’s dance-y hand after a dry, protracted thirst.  It was too good. Was this happening?  The neglected five-year old in me figured it was a cruel joke, an accident.  Soon I would soon receive an apology “oops” email. Then I could cry in peace and blast the Alabama Shakes. But the emails I got were from Beth Pickins and Ali Liebegott asking me, “Have you bought your ticket yet?” and a list: “things you will need to bring to Akumal.”

sunrise, condo #8

 I went from loser to lucky fucker. After being rejected by several fancy fellowships, I was going to rock Radar Lab. The only rules: work quietly for several silent hours and don’t bug the turtle nests. I dug into my book and tore its guts out and found the narrative skeleton and reconstructed it. I rewrote the clunker scenes—made them rise from the dead. I wrote until my fingers numbed. I wrote for ten hours a day, grateful to honor the work and allow new ideas to develop in a place outside of anxiety, frustration rejection and scarcity.

Beach Akumal

And it was so affirming to be surrounded by freaks like me. Beautiful freaks like Nicolas Boggs who is writing a gorgeous memoir about James Baldwin and wanted to talk about scene and dialogue and exposition.  Freaks like Jennifer Blow-dryer. Her bright essays glittered with sass and refined rough trade. Freaks like Michelle Tea and Ali Liebgott who wanted to chat about characters and endings. Freaks like CA Conrad and Miguel Gutierrez who have orchestrated their lives around creating art and demanded that we rise up to meet them inside of it. Multifaceted freaks like Ariel Schrag and Clare Myers who toy with ghosts, make magic and illustrations. Freaks like Max Wolf and Ali and all of us who long to write a great book so we can write another great book, and another. Freaks who know how to write grants and fucking get grants. The Radar freaks brought it.

Stormy Akumal Sunrise

Radar granted me permission to soar, regardless of my bank account balance. And for a few days, I honestly felt like I was contributing something of value to the world by writing my stories. New beliefs replaced old ones while swimming in the warm ocean. Beliefs like:

 I could be part of something magical like living inside of one of CA Conrad’s poems and feeling empathy for a sand crab fighting for space. After a long day’s work, I could feel pure joy. I could write my ass off all day and be fulfilled.

Babies

I didn’t know so many shades of blue existed before condo #8. The turquoise, navy blue and green Caribbean stretched for galaxies. Hot computers sat on counter tops next to Mexican Peanut Butter and homemade tortillas. Headphones weighed down literary and trashy magazines. On the table were piles of notes on real paper and notebooks wrecked with words that seared and killed and kissed.

Balcony Eight

  We came from Philly, NY, Brooklyn, LA and San Francisco with two things in common: a love of prose and a current, meaningful connection to Michelle Tea and the Radar Reading Series. The thunder startled me. Hot wind raged. A sea turtle the size of a Mini Cooper slid onto shore directly beneath the balcony to welcome me at midnight. She dug her mighty oar-fins in the sand right before the storm came. I watched her make sand rain until the real rain pounded down.

CA Conrad’s Living Poem

I knew about the turtle sanctuary in Akumal but didn’t anticipate being completely obsessed with them. Our resident turtle shepherd, Juan cruised the beach beneath our balcony with his red flashlight, seeking them out. When he released the babies into the ocean, I stood by and watched in awe. Kids ran up to check out the excitement. Juan scolded them, “Get back! Don’t touch them.” He cleared the path to the ocean. Sea turtles are born with the instinct to march into ocean the second they land on sand and also with the instinct to return to their birth beach up to 25-years later to lay their eggs. I was touched by the delicacy of survival while watching them and I wondered how do they know how to get back home after so many years?—how do any of us? Like Los Angeles, hungry barracudas and angry pterodactyl birds wait for the tender turtles’ arrival only to gobble their baby fresh bits immediately. One out of 100 baby sea turtles survive long enough to give birth. I cheered the babies on.

Our Beach!

Kudamundies!

            Before lab hours, a few of us hit a 7a.m. yoga class which was a fifteen minute walk into the tiny town of Akumal with mom and pop shops and trinket huts along the road.  Kudamundies or “lonely cats” emerged from bushes. They looked  part squirrel, raccoon and opossum. They grew bold and soft by the junk food tossed by tourists.   They’re known to climb a fat American leg for a cracker if they have to. I wished I had a donut to feed them, but I only had a mug of black coffee. Kudamundies were like speed freaks after crashing from a bender, frantic and focused on the swag.

Being Born

 Needless to say, I found a collection of stray kittens to feed outside the one grocery store. The clerk on her smoke break rolled her eyes. I wanted to snag a cat carrier and bring them all home, but I had to hurry back to condo #8 for lab hours because I will never give up.

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