Working Sex (18 page)

He scowled at my cunt and asked if I’d washed, and I quickly said yes. For a frightening moment I thought it was all over, but he probably needed the money as much as I did, so though he looked suspicious, he kept going. I lay on my back on Harold’s couch with my cunt pointed at the camera. Jesse spread my lips apart, and then licked my uninfected clit for a close up shot. I started moaning loudly for an overhead mike. I was supposed to moan and groan loudly, but the dialogue wasn’t taped.

For the cock-sucking, I ran to the bathroom and redid
the purple lipstick I was convinced made the outfit. I wrapped my lips around Jesse’s dick and sucked showily. I sucked him up and down slowly to look sensuous, turned my face up in ecstasy while my mouth was crammed full of cock, and jiggled my tits around.

Finally Jesse got to do what he did best, fuck. I’d never been fucked by anybody who could keep ram-rod hard for any length of time, and on command, and was still a little amazed. He’d told me my cunt was tight when he fucked me at my apartment, but after hours of nonstop pounding I wondered if he’d damaged my resale value a little. He didn’t say anything about my tightness during the filming.

I was so used to working hard at minimum-wage jobs, I wanted to do my best to work hard at being in a video loop porn movie. Jesse had said one of the stars he’d worked with would say things like “Fuck my dirty pussy, oh yes, fuck it” to turn him on during filming.

I waited until he was on top and slamming me, moaned loudly, looked ecstatic with my face pointing at the camera, and then exclaimed, “Fuck my dirty bad pussy!” rather loudly. Harold stopped filming, Jesse looked exasperated, and Harold said he could just go ahead and dub it out. Jesse started fucking me again, in a couple of different positions, and I was wet enough to make it easy for him to do me upside down, doggystyle, spread eagle, and riding him in rapid succession.

There was some kind of bizarre charm to this guy. Vietnam Vet, Peevish Porn Star, Preppy Hustler, and Command Cocksman all made for the weirdest package I’d ever met. I was thrilled to get my $200 from Harold, and when he asked me if I knew of any little girls who could just romp around naked, innocently, in his apartment, no harm done, I suppressed a flinch. I got his number and hastily promised to call if any nine-year-olds came to mind.

A surly Jesse took me back to San Francisco on the train. He didn’t seem to like me anymore, and I worried for a minute, but knew better than to take it personally. I felt queasy when I thought about Harold and the little girls. Still, I had discovered a horrible and wonderful truth about myself. I was shallow enough to have sex in front of a pervert with a video camera, and not really care.

Feeling like a commodity was kind of fun, and two hundred bucks bought me a lot of food, and at least enough books to keep up in school. I had a hunch that Jesse was just a relatively harmless creep. I never thought he was going to kidnap me, or do me any physical harm. He was too mediocre to be psychotic.

The best thing I got from working at cheap singles clubs, and in porn, is that I know that sometimes people really do have to hustle, and may not choose to spend the rest of their lives sobbing about it. Best of all, thanks to
being a permanent part of the cum-soaked backrooms of twenty-four-hour sex shops that still flourish in this land of the Mega Church, I have a fail-safe method of staying away from anything that could really be mentally damaging. I can never hang out with squares. Thank god for smut.

A
lexandre, Camille, Abel, Sacha, Simon, Raoul, Jean-Pierre, Francois, Mathieu, Angelo, Kwan, Mohamed, Alain, Miguel, Gabriel, Rafael, Eduardo, Kori, Benoit, Thomas, Said, Gilles, Maurice, Albert, Réjean, Cédric, Carmine, Sylvain, Philippe, Carlos . . .

And of course I shouldn’t forget Johhhhnnn!

How easy it is to stereotype millions of men when they are all referred to as Johhhhhhn! Might as well call them Dick.

Sexist hypocrites cheating on their wives . . . horny brutes willing to buy women’s bodies . . . ugly bogeymen in trench coats objectifying women. . . .

In my book: A bunch of mostly nice guys whose invisibility is perhaps the political missing link to the obtainment of prostitutes’ rights.

As prostitutes we too often focus on the few bad tricks: the abusive ones who sneak through our screening process, the jerks who set up appointments and never show up, the clumsy twits who squeeze our tits too hard, the ones with cheesy dicks and the foul drunks and the ones who purposely take more time than they paid for to cum. . . . Those make for vivid stories at dinner parties and at performanceart events.

Everyone has heard of clients attacking, raping, murdering prostitutes. The horror stories abound. We’re told that the relationships of clients to prostitutes are inherently violent and that they should remained outlawed. Sadly, that mainstream, dominant cultural/political discourse on prostitution is the only representation of the clients of prostitutes that is permitted. In such a context, the voice of the prostitute who dares to object to the false paradigm is the easiest to snuff.

I believe that all men are potentially dangerous and violent, especially within the context of intimate, heterosexual relationships. While a great number of men kill their wives or girlfriends, only a few kill prostitutes. I have had my share of bad tricks. Their violence wasn’t born from their ″Iclientness″—what an erroneous concept anyway. Their violence
had to do with a set of much more complex factors: coke, crack, heroin, guilt, fear, shame . . . and mostly, it had to do with a cultural, political, legal context created by social workers, police officers, anti-sex work feminists, journalists, and social justice activists—a context within which the work of prostitutes is devalued and seen as a social evil that needs to be eliminated by any means necessary.

This brand of “feminism” has only had an impact on my sweetest clients, making them feel guilty. And it’s made me have to spend extra time playing political therapist, having to reassure them that no, they are not hurting my sense of self . . . that if I feel exploited at $150 an hour, I need a serious reality check and that yes, they should continue seeing me ‘cause otherwise I’ll be stuck with only stinky assholes to sleep with as clients.

I don’t know if it is because they stand in such extreme contrast to the way they are portrayed by anti-sex work feminists or some other factor, but there is something in my clients, in their tenderness and gestures towards me, that I find deeply moving.

It’s in their voices when they finally get a hold of me on the phone. . . . It’s in their smiles when they open the door and invite me in. . . . It’s in the sparkles of light I see in their eyes when I say: “First I collect my money and then I tickle your nipples.” It’s in the way they tense their bodies
and hold their breath when I very gently put my lips on those neglected areolas and start sucking on them. . . . It’s in their shivering skin when I slowly work my way up to kiss their tight necks. . . . When I start rubbing my body against theirs, it’s in these few seconds when it feels like we’re suspended in time and they hold on and hold on and hold on as long as they can before finally allowing themselves to release decades of repressed desires. . . . It’s in their nervously shaking, moist hands trying to caress me with the intentions of the best lovers. Then it’s in their goose bumps and gluttony and giggling and growling and glowing and glory. . . . It is also in less poetic moments when they say things like: “Those are beautiful tits!” while caressing my implants, which actually feel about as delicate as a pair of bowling balls. For the most part, it is in their courage to see me, a transsexual woman, again and again, because yes, in this culture, it takes courage for a man to get so close, so intimate with an individual whom a large percentage of the population considers a freak.

My clients constantly remind me that reclaiming prostitution as a fundamental and legitimate service brings responsibilities. I recently met Claudio, a very attractive, fit, thirty-eight-year-old Italian man, one who had a lovely penis—the kind I like—with enough foreskin to wrap all of next year’s holiday season presents. Things were going quite well, we were both enjoying each other but he somehow
seemed uncomfortable with his body. At one point he even interrupted our session to take a little break. He wanted to hold me in his arms and caress my hair, but while doing so, I noticed him examining his penis and looking quite perplexed. Just as I thought
Oh no, not another one who wants to know if I find it big enough
, he asked in the most innocent, childlike voice: “Am I circumcised? Because I really don’t know.”

Whether I am working with a six-hundred-pound disabled man who can’t reach his penis to masturbate or an intersex guy whose genitals are nothing like the ones you’re used to dealing with or simply the average Joe Blow who wants to start under the blankets cause he’s too shy, the men I meet force me to be sensitive to a certain reality: I am not dealing with objects here but with complex and vulnerable individuals who can be stricken by as many body-image problems, self-concept issues, and fears of sexual inadequacy as anyone else.

Some of my clients are married men but it becomes clear when speaking with them that they love their wives, very much enjoy their companionship and, in most cases, want to spend the rest of their lives with them. It’s just that sexuality has become limiting, lifeless, or is absent from the relationship. And every so often I meet a man whose dedication to his wife I find particularly commendable.

Anthony is one of them. He started seeing me years after
his wife fell ill due to multiple sclerosis. Every time we’d get together, he would update me on her deteriorating condition and on his struggle trying to keep his family above water; working two jobs in order to afford a private nurse so that his wife wouldn’t be locked up in a hospital room for the rest of her life. Last time I saw him he said she was completely incapacitated and no longer cognizant. He told me with tears in his eyes that he saw prostitutes because the idea of seriously dating any woman while his wife was still alive was emotionally unbearable. And
that
I thought brought true meaning to the word “commitment.”

Ali is a man I have been seeing for years. He works for minimum wage at the coat check of a restaurant. He’s been fighting for over a decade with the Immigration system, spending thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to have his wife—of whom he speaks with so much love—join him here. When I found out how much he was earning an hour and about his costly ordeal with Immigration, I felt concerned, so I told him that maybe he should reconsider spending money to see me. “Don’t worry!” he insisted—rightfully offended—adding that it was all budgeted and that all his meager tips were set aside just to see me. “If I didn’t spend a few minutes of joy with someone, anyone, nice every couple of months,” he concluded abruptly, “I’d probably kill myself!”

Micheal is a man I saw only once. He called me for an
appointment and mentioned that he was sexually inexperienced, that he had been with very few women in his life, never with a transsexual, and that he felt very intimidated. It was a busy day, I was high on Jolt Cola, juggling prostitution with a million chores related to my “political” and “artistic” life, so I said in a sales-pitch tone “I’ll be right there to take good care of you.” He was a tall, handsome sixty-year-old who spoke and moved with the grace and grounded serenity of James Earl Jones. Our rendezvous unfolded perfectly so before we parted he said “Thank you!” which they always do, so I replied very mechanically “You’re welcome!” But he took my hand, held it over his heart; he gave me the sweetest
bisou
on the left cheek and said: “I mean Thank You!” I could tell there was more to this thank you than simple gratitude for activating his vas deferens, so I asked why. He told me that he had been with his wife for forty years, that she had died two years earlier, that he had never been with anyone other than her in all these years and that he thought he’d never again feel at ease being intimate with someone, until he heard my French accent on an escort service line.

These are times when I feel like revolting against this system that is ready to condemn and even jail us for caressing, kissing, and holding each other. . . . These are times when I am able to rid myself of all the fears and anxieties I have about the long-term ramifications of being a prostitute,
a social pariah. . . . These are times when I feel like it’s worth growing into an old, tired, bitter, dried-up whore. . . . These are times when I feel like there was, indeed, a higher calling for me to sacrifice my personal reputation, comfort, safety, social status, and even my freedom for a greater good.

H
ello, I hope you two are there, or working or something. Oh my god. We’ve been chasing the dog all through the neighbor’s backyard, and the canary escaped! Fred! On top of everything else. I’m up to thirteen now. Thirteen living things in my house! If anyone wants a cat, maybe? There’s Max. Or Francesca the parrot. She can say a few things. She says “Hello Kelly.” I think she escaped from someone named Kelly. . . . Oh my god, the lizard is crawling up the curtain. Bob! Get the lizard, get it down! . . . About the mop, the house is self-cleaning. Pubic hair on the floor? We’ve never had that
problem before in eighteen years. I’d like to know what you girls are doing over there. . . .

 

o
nce I left, I found it difficult to write anything in which I might place Steve, the editor who insisted I was his muse; or Tom, the young divorcé; or Barry, the dirtytalking Southern Baptist who liked to visit early in the morning; or John, the lawyer, who got closer to becoming a friend than most; or Bob, the skinny bottom who would wince at the sight of me; or David, the quiet dean of a local arts school; or the other David, the elderly rabbi; or the drummer of a famous previously punk-now-pop band who gave me all of twenty dollars never to recognize him on the street . . .