The musical influence and power of Michael Jackson..RIP

I realize you can’t call yourself a soul singer and NOT be influenced by Michael Jackson, The Jackson 5 and Smokey Robinson as he did his memorial at his funeral today at the Staples Center 2 miles away from my house still honking his own horn about being the original songwriter of I’ll be There, at his funeral.  I’ve never been an Usher fan until today boy, he really did a great job on his song “Gone Too Soon.”  The other young boy from the UK was quite touching, it was definitely a tear jerker today as I watched it on my slow buffering LIVE downloaded stream from my laptop.  (Because I don’t want  to watch TV and live with a guy who watches it constantly anyway so I haven’t converted to DTV and I don’t want a cable bill.  It’s better to wait until after and look for the uploads on youtube.  Start playing the video while you read the rest of this for the full effect…

There is a lot that the family is doing to make sure that he has a glorified ending.  It was quite touching and successful.  I don’t go to many funerals.  In fact, I haven’t been to one since my best friend died almost 8 years ago.  But I think today I took about 3 hours or more to just think about Michael, death and his influence.  He like Michael Jackson was a very talented artist, who died unexpectedly of heart failure in his sleep in his grandmother’s house at the age of 26.  We were just laughing and doing a photoshoot in the Hollywood Hills, where I was coincidentally, dressed like the late Marilyn Monroe, his all time favorite icon.

funerals and deaths of mega stars actually have a public mourning process,and I forgot that.  I wasn’t a fan of Tupac or Biggie during their deaths even..I never appreciated Pac until I realized his activism, which was clearly made a legacy by his mother who was a Black Panther..It was the movie that she produced that practically changed my life, and my art.  But Michael Jackson was bigger and richer than anyone.  He was part of a time of the indulgent and global fan crazed 80s.  I watched Madonna’s tribute to him while she was still rockin out in concert.  she must be sad.  they were on top of the world together at the same time once..

I didn’t really think I was a fan of Michael Jackson as an adult but as an adult singer, I realize that the soulful intonations that I am trying to practice are from that original 70’s Motown Smokey Robinson tradition..These are the influences of the ones that influence me: Mariah, Alicia, En Vogue, D’Angelo (whose voice flows over my body like a tongue..!)

I was feeling really hopeless and shitty before I tuned into the Michael Jackson tribute boy.  I am having trouble getting my drivers license renewed and my insurance CANCELLED ME!  but I will get it all figured out.  Blanket DOES resemble Michael. He’s totally cute.  Seems he was at least heterosexual enough to reproduce!  Obama should have said something.  It really is a big year for the visibility of half Black Americans.  (I’m talking about his kids!  His kids!)

At the funeral of my best friend, I had a chance for closure and forgiveness with his brother who had sexually assaulted me one summer that I slept over their house in burbank.  I was terrified of seeing him again, but I was welcomed to the grievance process of the family as an important person in my friends life and my side of the story was heard and through that death I was able to reach a pivotal moment in my healing.  Hugged his brother.  Had a short conversation with him, but one that included forgiveness and also felt the ever presence of my friend as he had truly been there for me to make that moment happen in his death.  He just couldn’t do it in his life.

I do hope that if there was any sexual abuse by Michael Jackson that occured at all, that through this final moment of MJ’s life that they are able to forgive him and see him for the greater part of what he was trying to do with his life.  As a survivor who has healed from too many incidents and has a life of post traumatic stress I am a bit biased when famous people are accused of abuse or assault because of the power that they have.  And as a sex worker who has seen the illusion that money and power have over some I never put it past those to hurt or abuse.  I thnk that the line is very easy to cross.  More people have STDs than they would like to admit, more people have been raped than they want to admit as well as more people have perhaps done something in their life that has violated another perosn and they have absolutely NO IDEA that they did it because of their own baggage UNTIL something like a court case or a jail sentence causes them to understand.  And sometimes even after, they still don’t understand.  I am a bit suspicious of the McCaully Culklin’s friendship with him was during that time and he pretty much disappeared from Hollywood too.  For all I know he is one of my next crack head clients talking about how he was ritually abused at Neverland and that was the end of his career and the beginning of his crack habit…i’m just saying..what happened to him?

It was a pretty epic funeral.  Fit for the King of Pop.  A Gold casket and star studded eulogy (including MLK Jr’s daughter and Al Sharpton) and the whole entire center of Los Angeles clearning a path for a motorcade.  Like when Obama took the office of President and I partied in the streets of San Francisco in universal American joy, never have I witnessed the death and mourn the loss of a mega star like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe or Michael Jackson…

It looked like it was going to be a great show.  Unifying the world theme.  We are the world..  We are the children.  And a special appearance by the Britain’s Got Talent child star ending with a duet.  And Al Shartpton preaching that “It was Michael” that brought Black and white together, and “it was Michael” that got Obama into office was a little bit hilarious but I got into it as it progressed.

Today, by email, by dad informs me that my Uncle Bob, died of cancer at around the age of 80.  He was closer to me and my family when we were kids, but as teenagers and adults he was a distant figure at the Family dinner reunion.  LOTS OF PEOPLE DYING LATELY? Or is it just me…I don’t know if you have EVER pictured your funeral and what you want it to be like, but most of us know that it isn’t going to be like the one we saw today.  One can only imagine a funeral of epic proportions..

In the last 2 years I have had thoughts of hopelessness and suicide in brief incriments, nothing serious but still salient and notable enough to blog about, It’s usually of me shooting myself in the face….(Hmmm. A cry for help? you Decide.)   pretty much because of feeling underappreciated and unloved by family members, the sex worker community, my deadend relationship…sometimes it does take a death to make us realize greatness which is the cause of a lot of drug overdoses and suicides in the world, I imagine.  I have imagined my funeral…I got a mailer the other day that used the words “recession” and “green economy” in the same mailer…(some marketing guy was paid top dollar to find the trending keywords on twitter for this cremation service boy!) I do want to be cremated though, I wonder how they knew..

I smoke weed to manage depression and hopelessness and try to lay off the idea that opiates or alcohol could ever take problems away.  One night, I did a half a pill of a prescription opiate once and was sick and dizzy for 12 hours after that, just a tiny half bit more could KILL you, unless you have naloxone…MJ was one of the wealthiest drug users around.  who could tell him no?  or, hey Michael I think you really are doing too much…His rent was 100,000 a month!  He was a king!  And when did Lou Ferrigno (The original Hulk?) become so flaming gay (and weird?) with his lisp?

Too many pills.. Anna Nicole and Marilyn died the same way.  And the guy from Batman too.  But boy you score when you get a source of 80mL of oxycotin..they sell for $50-80 per little pill on the street!  Apparently because of the Jackson scandal, doctors are tightening up on their prescriptions. (for a little while to this blows over..)  Naloxone will reverse an opiate overdose but won’t work on other overdoses that aren’t opiate.  I believe that MJ was using Diprovan, which is like a strong Methadone..I had a methadone client.  He was a DJ who believed that he could DJ in a rotating hamster wheel like contraption upside down.  Above a crowd.  I was drinking mimosas with him and laughing at him while taking his money… He gave me a methadone pill and I took HALF of it.  The mix of alcohol and methadone made me feel sick to my stomach ALL DAMN DAY.  Even driving in a car made me nauseous.  In fact, I even threw up in the bathroom of my next client, running the sink to camofaluge an embarassing moment.  The moral of the story is that prescription pills are touchy.  You can’t just have the “down the hatch” balls out attitude with them that you do when you drink alcohol for instance.  MJ used to sit in his bed watching Donald Duck cartoons wishing that he could get some sleep.  Half of his body was hot and half of his body was cold, he told his nurse, but he did not want to go the hospital.  He was already dying before he died.

His life and death kind of reminds me of the movie Gia…which I just saw recently in a lot of ways..bisexual AIDS crisis classic! OMG.  A beautiful tragedy…Michael Jackson wrote a song for Ryan White!  It’s because of the Ryan Act that  an HIV/AIDS movement even exists! I was probably Ryan White’s same age actually..it was interesting to see he was part of that Gia era of history.  The 80’s!  drugs, sex and STDS!  And Black and White Unified?  Really Al? In the Reagan era?  I mean, I was only 8 but still..Just like Reagan when he died, his memorial was carefully crafted and he was rememberd for none of the horrific genocide or drug and arms sales, but his acting! and his philathropy!

I know you’ve been missing my heart felt..

sacrificial lamb crying in the night blogging…I left it for the short documentary video that I produced with my partner which talked about the joys of public health care, STDs and our relationship.  It was in Sadie Lune’s curatorial creation for the 12th annual San Francisco Queer Arts Festival How timely of a campaign when it all seems to be on Obama’s mind as well.  funny how we are all connected (by Facebook).  I’ve been really trying to get on top of this online marketing bandwagon.  I’ve gotten savvy to Facebook, twitter (in 3 different personas) and it’s added an even deeper incision into the mainline of internet addiction that I have had for the last ten years.   I did a background singing gig for this neo soul singer on the 4th of July to boot.  I’m not sure if it is internet or computer addiction.  It started when I started doing paid freelance photography and graphic design jobs in San Francisco.  I became accustomed to a life of either sitting for 12 hours at a time in front of a computer screen or drinking 2 cans of Dr.Pepper and doing 7 hours of hustling and lap dancing for $500.  My life is somewhat still similar except that instead of the monotonous “Hi, do you want to dance?” I have to do the fun grueling early morning/late night drag through the “game” world.

I get woken up at 6:30am by my agency.  This is the only agency I work for now.  They are a national VIP level bait and switch, which is different from the local Craigslist bait and switch work that I was doing before…I wanted the bullshit and drama to be fewer and far between, I guess.  With this agency, I’ve gotten Malibu suites and mimosa clients who have left me thousands of dollars without spending time with me..through an agency placed Craigslist ad, I found a 3 month long sugar daddy..

I ‘ve quit the bread and butter of my livelihood, which was essentially like living the life of a cowgirl in a wild goose chase 3 nights a week.  I’ve tried to be strong with staying out of that work, in an effort to replace that income I’ve started to do phone sex and domination again, as well as break my webcam cherry!  this is the reason why I’ve been doing so much internet marketing you see..

Phone and webcam girl life has got a learning curve to it.  Niteflirt is the leader in “start your own” style phone sex operations, which I’m actually on, but they’ve lagged in making me an affiliate so, I highly recommend “Sugar Talk” as a better site, because if you click on the link, and sign up to be a phone operator with them I’ll get $45!  And the same can happen to you if you join!  This service also boasts a lifetime residual plan which is pretty unique for the adult industry.  Niteflirt takes 50% of your call rate and also CHARGES YOU to BID FOR PLACEMENT on their website.  It’s a bunch of crap really, but the more money you spend the higher placement you are in their roster of 1000s of women home alone…Just different ways to PIMP you.   But what can a working girl do?  Sometime in life, you just need to have a pimp of some kind.  I already knew this, so it isn’t much of a shocker to me.  Sugar talk calls their affiliate program Pimp Dollar!  But at least it’s an accurate portrayal of Pimp.  I don’t have a problem with some pimping.  Especially when I’m doing it.

I did my first webcam show, it was awkward.  My boyfriend keeps coming home to me dressed in lingerie in front of my computer holding a dildo and watching internet porn (which is not usually how I used to hang out while blogging for instance).  He’s seen me unplug my laptop, disappear into the bedroom for 10 minutes and then come right back and plug back in to continue my work.  The crazy life of a work at home professional masturbator!

Some guy wants me to sneeze while I call him and another guy totally educated me on being “chemically castrated” using Depo Provera, a chemical which when given to biological men renders them impotent and uninterested in having sex.  The court can order it for chronic public masturbators, child molestors and rapists.  This man told me he was a chronic masturbator and had been arrested 5 times, but since doing a regular shot of Depo every 3 months for the last 10 years, he’s been completely asexual but content..(aside from the fact that he needed to confess that to someone like me for money occaisionally).  It was the most fascinating conversation I had had yet, and one that would be unlikely in a live escort situation..

My most recent story was yesterday morning, waking up at 6:30am, driving 40 minutes to Orange County to this deliciously innocent and cute looking hapa (half Asian) crack smoking hustler.  But he didn’t look life a crack head OR a hustler.  His words, I look like “I just fell off of a Christmas tree.”  and he did.  I have a B-I-G weakness for both hapa people and especially 20 year old guys for some reason. Why? It’s from experience of course.  Some of the best sex in my life has been with 20 year old young men..the perfect Abercrombie model come to life in a insatiably horny and energetic fucking machine.  How perfect indeed.  In gay male sex culture, they call this guy a twinkie…

But this boy, lied to the booker about the fact that he was using credit cards, WAS USING HIS DAD’S CREDIT CARDS which were expired or voided anyway and gave me a pen which did not have the barrell to it, because he had already tore it apart so he could smoke crack with it.  He did NOT look like a crack head at all..Imagine if the boy in this picture was the baby face of this 20 year old smooth talking stud…

He knew EXACTLY what he was doing.  Some young guys have the knack for getting in the sack with hot older women from the gate and other guys with twice their experience and money still can’t get laid to save their lives.  The 20 year old was starting to see that his dad’s fake credit cards were NOT going to through, he lied to the booker and told her he was paying cash.  He was totally flirting with me and trying to get me to stay with him, on his full mattress futon bed in the converted dining room to stay with him, even though he just tried to credit card fraud me for $1000!

I JUST CAN’T SEND YOUNG MEN THAT MESSAGE!  I’m a courtesan with standards dammit!  At least give me SOMETHING!  hahaha.  Sometimes standards go out the window in this “game.” I’ve traded for a [broken] air conditioner, for quantities of weed (large and small)..This boy was trying to give me the keys to his truck (without the title) as collateral that he would be able to get my money if I stayed with him for 2 hours and then would go to get the money afterwards.  It’s 8am by this time, and here comes his Filipino dad who is about 55 coming in from rolling all nite with his friends at the Avalon in Hollywood!   I should have known when the address was TOTALLY DEAD WRONG.  The dad pops his head in and says Hi to me through a parental disdainful gaze.  I’m sure he has no idea that his son is using his credit cards with a hooker.  I grew up in a mostly Filipino suburb of the Bay Area, so most of my friends parents were Filipino immigrants, so it had such an eerie dejavu to my childhood having some Pinoy father say Oy to you while you were about to do something sexual.

But I didn’t let him get me.  He was slick and smooth and he tried hard, but I left him shaking my head..”Call me when you have money, babe” I said.  I left thinking dirty thoughts but it was mostly because he tried to rip me off that I didn’t stay, and it was also because he was so fucking HOT (even his little scam was kind of hot, like that Tom Cruise movie where he is a teenager seduced by an escort, remind me of what that is..?) but I just left it as a fantasy.  Don’t try to credit card fraud a hard working girl!  I’ve keyed up cars and kicked people’s doors in for moves like that!  The BEST sex I EVER had with a 20 year old happened one night when I was still just an outcall stripper (who staunchily did NOT have intercourse or even handjobs) with any of her clients under any circumstances, but one guy, a roadie for a rock band had gotten me so hot and I wanted to get laid anyway and GOOD LORD What a great decision that was!!  I remember feeling all sorts of guilt over doing prostitution, even though I justified that it wasn’t prostitution it was just an outcall stripping client that turned into a consensual sex date for free.  He had only paid for the stripshow, the sex was free.  This is what we are supposed to tell the cops in a court of law..I was so uptight before I was actually doing full service.  Really.  I was.

Vegetarians Have Better Sex?

Sexy Vegetables – Top 10 Tasteless Ads – TIME

Shared via AddThis

As you may or may not know, I am a also a vegetarian. But I eat fish and shrimp in copious amounts so I guess that makes me either a “poser” or a perscatarian..I wonder what that commercial would look like? hehehe. Fishaterians do it bettter..an all girl fish fest commercial.

WHORE-A PALOOZA 2009 footage!

I am so proud of how this show came out!

Trying to Be Hopeful for my 33rd Birthday..

Since I am not on this site so I can get clients for escort work, I don’t really need to lie to you about my real age..I’m a 22 year old college student.. 129 lbs…blahblahblah

I’m turning 33 this week.  Gemini Love.  Trying to have a positive outlook on another year, where I seem remarkably in the same place as I was last year..broke as hell..looking for a door to open…I can’t believe I am revisiting a place that I thought I left so many times before…It’s disappointing to me, but I’ll try not to be so hard on myself..All 5 of my loving nieces and nephews will be in one house this weekend and I am driving up before my license expires to pay my bail and renew my drivers liense just in the nick of time and take part in the sex worker fest and hopefully be reinvigorated by the whoretastic energy that the summer events usually bring…

Someone buy me a Hello Kitty Fender Guitar!!  That’s what I really really want for my birthday so I can ROCK OUT AT WHORE-A PALOOZA!!  (A music and performance show I put together for the sex worker fest in San Francisco..at El Rio club June 2nd).

this would be my birthday present to myself...

transition…but to what?

I remember how it felt to struggle and ache when I was trying to get out of stripclub stripping..The feelings that I feel are similar.  I am trying to market EVERY skill set that I embody to try to replace agency escort work (which last ended with us keying the car of some guy for supposedly stealing some money, but anyway…) without my main agency work that I either quit or got fired from,  I sink.  This is why I never felt bad about what I did.  Being part of a lie and a hustle.  Oh well.  It suited my antogonistic nature.  But I’m done fighting.  I’m done with the drama.  I just got off the phone with some cranky tweaker bitch who is offering me her space to use, but I am not going to do it because she is crazy and she drives ME crazy!  And she does NOT see herself as the problem.  At all.  I had the same issue with the booker from the agency that I last worked at.  She was a raging nasty bitchy CUNT.  I NEVER talk about women that negatively, except when describing her and working with her.  She used all her inadequate insecure false sense of power as the booker to wield passivity out of us workers when she was yelling in our ears and making our work shifts HELL.  She is another reason why I have not begged for my job.  And they didn’t ask for me back either.  Oh well.  Craigslist is dying and that was their main staple of cheap ad space, which is why we were so busy..

The Craigslist killer could have killed me.  It’s really just a numbers game.  It’s how you make money in this business and it is why the violence, the drama and the STDs or other (unplanned pregnancies, yeast infects, UTIs) are inevitable.  Jill Scott sang to me while I was in the bath,”But ohhh this game ain’t designed for no kind of winning…” and I realize it applies to Mi Vida Loca tambien.

 I am trying to keep my head up, as Tupac would by smoking ounces of weed to his head for support through the tough times.  Most recently, I went back to the Clinical trial office where I have been part of a 3 year pap smear study.  I started this study in the same way that I continue this and other studies that use my body as a test subject for research.  Last year, I was selected for a second visit to do a coposcopy (scraping of the uterus).  It paid $150.  I thought it would add to my sex work income, but it turns out I’m told I’m supposed to abstain from sex for TWO WEEKS!!  This was the dumbest thing that I had EVER done for money, since I had committed to arriving at the nightmare brothel last year and worky by a certain date (because I was broke in LA and had to travel) and so therefore, abstaining was NOT an option.  The sex during the copo healing was wretched pain that I wrote about…worse than losing my virginity…

The other day I got $50 for a doing my annual pap.  I have one of 100s of strands of HPV, which I contracted from somewhere.  I have not been concerned with it for years because (some 1 out 5 women have one HPV strand),and my paps have been normal for the last 9 years and not shown gential wartson the outside or signs of cancer ever.    Before your 2nd visit you are not told whether your pap was normal or not, and there is a 1/3 chance that you would be a placebo that would get a copo anyway, so there’s only a 30% chance that you WON’T get the knife.  The Dr of the clinical trial claims that they found cancerous cells that the coposcopy scraped off and that there is a wart inside my uterus but that I don’t need to do anything about it, it would be difficult and expensive to burn off and it isn’t cancerous for men who may come into contact with it.  Having ANYTHING is stigmatizing even if 1/3 of the population has it, even though most people who have an active sex life often get at least SOMETHING or more in their lifetime.  My sister, who has had 3 partners has had it and gotten it taken care of.  HPV is a virus, so once you have the antibodies in your system, you will always test positive for it although, not contagious unless showing signs, and it will replicate the signs of where it came from.  A wart will turn into a wart, a cold sore to a cold sore, HIV into HIV, bacterial infection into similar infection…HIV is the life threatening one, everything else is traumatic but acceptable for most people that get it.  They even have herpes support groups and dating.  They also do that for HIV “pos” people to network and meet.  HPV is like every other person you are probably with anyway.  The more I talk about this with other people, the more I find out that everyone really does have something or they’ve had something.  

I set up all these webcam and phone sex operator accounts so that I can bring in extra revenue without putting my life on the line and staying up til 6am 3 nights a week…so I know I am not really quitting sex work.  I just would like to be able to have some of this so called “choice” that everyone talks about, and “choose” to not work at the agency I was working at or anything like it, to “choose” to not work at a brothel, and more…I more chose to accept the consequences of the lifestyle I wanted to lead and the opportunities that I would have to give to myself the opportunities that I would not have gotten if I was not a sex worker.  And maybe some feminist is reading this and scoffing at my pain, and she’s got it all figured out at her salaried job with benefits and 6 figure salary.  And maybe she has had the freedom to be herself for the last 10 years, and travel the world, and sing to crowds of activists in other countries…

I am contemplating going to art school for a year to get a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art.  $33,000.  Add it to my tab!  I already have about that amount in 2 degrees piling up that Sallie Mae is watching over for me…I’m in no rush to pay.  Love that forbearance…and so do they…but, you can’t squeeze cold beer out of a rock.  I want to get another year of computer specific video and photo editing so that I could actually PAY my student loans with more freelance clients or a job at a studio or something…I can’t even believe I didn’t fulfill that with the Masters of Education..I guess I thought I was going to stay a teacher..but going back into teaching is not really what I want to do and I am sure of it.  Just as sure that I am capable of being amazing but unable to commit to what I see as a step backwards in my career…I want to teach college…

This research doctors office is full of  WOMEN IN THIS STUDY ARE LOW INCOME or BROKE:  poor at the time or poor always.  I found the ad on Craigslist, and it is operated by Roche Pharmaceuticals which has a debatable reputation but are the makers of my favorite cure for the monthly almost psychotic episode: vallllliium….zzzz..

The $50 was much needed gas money and money to change the oil on my car which was 1000 miles overdue..  I was extremely happy to have the cash.  While I was in the waiting room, I was laughing at the fact that I have some sort of moral issue with selling my eggs to infertile couples.  I had seen this ad in college newspapers since I was 19 but for some reason it had never ever struck me to consider.  I believe that you have to be drug and marijuana free and I think that you are meant to take some medication (fertility pills??). I’m not sure, but getting $50 doesn’t seem to even compare to the $4,200 they offer to pay for some IV league genetic samples.  Broke but not broken..

Craigslist Criticism: Am I too harsh?

Check out the original article, if you have time and read the
comments.  Make your own!  I am ALWAYS NERVOUS, for some reason, even though I tell a lot on this blog about my real life, when I read what I have said and how it comes back to me…Well, by way of saying I work the way I work, I am basically telling LE that it is hard to track me and other women like me…which is why Craigs is such a thorn in their side!

Craigslist Xes out sex ads
Without the erotic services section, where will sex workers turn for
work?
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/05/14/craigslist/index.html

Tracy Clark-Flory

May. 14, 2009 |

The World Wide Web’s most infamous red light district, and its array
of virtual window girls and purposefully miZspellD cuuum onZ, is being
shuttered. After relentless pressure by a team of state attorneys
general — not to mention the recent high-profile case of the
“Craigslist Killer,” who allegedly used the site to lure a woman to
her death — the classified service is eliminating its erotic services
section across all U.S. sites within one week. Its replacement will be
an “adult” area, where ads cost $10 a pop and are strictly screened
for illegal services. Until now, the site’s been the go-to advertising
channel for agencies that promote sex workers, and independent
prostitutes, especially those in the lower tiers. The question that
has to be asked is: Where will these women find johns?

“The streets,” says Robyn Few, co-director of San Francisco’s Sex
Worker Outreach Project. “The Internet took a lot of sex workers off
the street and created the entrepreneurial age of sex work. Now, it’ll
drive them right back to where they came from.” This is a terrifying
possibility for many providers: Screening clients from behind a
computer screen is inherently safer than working the corner. It also
allows workers to negotiate the “what, when, where and how much” of
the transaction without having to rush to avoid being spotted by cops.

Mariko Passion, who calls herself an “educated whore, urban geisha,”
predicts that some sex workers will take to the streets, but she
doesn’t expect a mass exodus. “Sex workers are smart” and will turn to
alternative free online services like Backpage and Redbook — but
those don’t command even a fraction of Craigslist’s audience size, not
to mention diversity. Scores of sites offer adult services
classifieds, but posting on many of them, like Eros Guide, costs a
pretty penny. In a number of ways, Craigslist was able to lessen the
class divide found in nearly every other shadowy corner of the sex
trade.

Passion, who lives in Los Angeles, advertises her services on
Craigslist and through agencies that also advertise for her on
Craigslist. (Anything to reach a larger audience and compete for
attention.) At $85, advertising in the L.A. Weekly is prohibitively
expensive, so she’s partnered with two agencies that spam the erotic
services section with ads featuring stock images of sexy girls. When a
client calls, the agency refers them to whomever is on-call and
available — no matter whether the girl in the original photo has
drastically different measurements, hair or even skin color — and
later takes a cut of the profits. As it is, she says, “you don’t have
control over how many calls you take and they throw you into dangerous
situations.” Agencies just might become increasingly reckless as they
become more desperate for business.

Workers are rattled by this seismic shift in the landscape, but there
isn’t a consensus on whether Craigslist — or, more specifically,
founder Craig Newmark — is the good guy (for resisting for so long)
or the bad guy (for ultimately buckling). Passion sneers that the
company has simply “caved once again,” while Tracy Quan, former sex
worker-turned-Salon columnist and author of “Diary of a Jetsetting
Call Girl,” is more sympathetic. “My heart goes out to the people at
CL who are being harassed by these cynical public officials. The
Craigslist witch hunt isn’t fueled by concern for the safety of sex
workers,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The way I see it, a cynical AG is
exploiting the death of a working woman to enhance his career. It’s a
cheap, easy way to add some sex to your political CV without taking
any of the risks associated with selling erotic services.” On a
similar note, Fews says that she doesn’t blame Newmark for giving up
the fight — after all, the “Craigslist Killer” coverage has “got to
be weighing heavily” on him.

Of course, there’s the irony: The campaign against the erotic services
section was buoyed by those frightening tabloid headlines — but, if
workers are forced from the virtual to the literal street corner,
it’ll only expose them to more danger.

– Tracy Clark-Flory

Feeling Beautiful and Sexy and Unstoppable.. Feeling Ugly and Hopeless..Life Stops for No One

photo by Llednor Nadirehs 2009

The place is dirty and run down by my standards. The apartment complex is very discreet, very upscale.  Perfect for what we are doing.  These women just let it go.  They’ve been turning out massages out of here for years.  Dirty feeling sheets below. Manic or Tweaker (I think tweaker) Energy blasting in my ear drum and in my space.Well,her space really..I am unable to handle being in the presence of certain people for too long.  I am trying to share an incall with this woman…  Especially if they are using crystal meth OR act exactly the same as if they were using heavy meth.. I am dealing with things day by day and blow by blow. My Marilyn piercing got infected and my llps swelled to the size of hot dog buns.  I waited in the emergency room for 10 hours and hating my life.  I leave without being seen in frustration.  At least I got the anti-biotics.  Oh my god.  This woman had been waiting there for 12 hour..I wasn’t going to do that..Bail me out of this low income public hospital jail!  I did this amazing photoshoot with Llednor and come home excitedly surfing through my new photos to find the best and sexiest photo or photos for the year that I will use on every internet escort and phone sex site that I can..!  But of course the bf is not impressed with how my photos look and how I feel sexy again for the first time in a while..Guess my body reacts to the mptiness I feel inside and it exploded outwards…Have been on sex worker disability..but amazingly I have gotten (non paid work)  stuff done.  I am planning a Whore a palooza music and spoken word show in San Francisco.  Usually in the summer the sex worker acivism and performances I do recharge my spirit into being able to live anotehr year fighting.  My birthday is around the corner and I need $500 because there is a “failure to appear” on my driver’s license renewal for a court in the SF Bay Area that I got a speeding ticket in…So In 7 days I have to come up with the money or not have a valid license anymore. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Return to the Scene of the Crime

My my my there were more than a few gorgeous amazon fem-doms in latex military gear.   I found the infamous Mistress Alexia Jordan…and found a willing photographer who would capture this beautiful moment on my iphone and on a nicer 35mm SLR which he will email to me later…I look like a stereotypical small dick Asian guy with a Chong mustache..I call myself Sergeant Semper Fi Chong.  I got two foot slaves to rub my sore feet during my outreach shift at the convention.  It was especially fun to walk upstairs to the Starbucks where all the tourists from all over the U.S were checking in and out.  Exactly one year ago at this very hotel I was a victim of a big prostitution sting right after DomCon2008.  I am actually banned from the hotel possibly, but I guess I’m not holding a grudge.  Plus, my Chinese Marine persona had EVERYONE fooled.  I wasn’t having any Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms as I strolled through the lobbies or ate overpriced underquality food at their cafe upstairs...

We did well, especially and only since the table was donated.  Usually we end up working our ass of for absolutely NO profit because tables and booths, even for non profits are usually $3-600 for the weekend.  SWOP-LA has got lots of new faces and fresh blood in it now and I am slowly slowly growing the organization in ways that I thought I would easily be able to achieve right away.  Now I see that it has taken me a year to get to the place we are in, and I am actually proud of that step.  I cannot even tell you how many people: my ex sugar daddy of late and just another man who was trying to coax me into understanding that I was really wasting my time killing myself for a non profit while I myself was barely surviving.  I am defensive of the obvious, and I am always prepared to fight back against an accusatory and cocky man who thinks he knows me.  It’s not that he needs to know me, it’s just that our perspectives, our upbringings, our goals, our mission statements are totally different, so therefore, the reasons why I am a slave to THE DEATH for my non paying job, is lately a mystery to me as well… I keep thinking that I am going to stop, but I am also addicted to its growth.  This man stormed out of the room and threw his hands up in the air in frustration because he couldn’t convince me that my non profit would soon have to die because it would no longer have money.  

I don’t run SWOP-LA for a salary, or fame or glory or any benefits of any sort.  I am acutally already hated by at least 2 organizations and labelled as difficult by god knows how many else.  Activism was feeding my soul for the last 10 years, it isn’t until only recently, that I have been feeling sooo very empty.  I guess I left teaching in 2006 thinking that being the founding director of a non profit like SWOP wouldn’t leave me in such economical and emotional turmoil because I can’t pay my bills and I don’t want to do sex work the way I am doing it anymore.  I feel like I could be on the verge of a big grant if I kept at it.  I also feel that I can’t stop.  It is the pulse that keeps me busy.  It keeps me feeling like I am doing something to help, to change, to heal…

 Yesterday, I spent the entire day doing the organizations budget from 2006-present.  I made spreadsheets!  I saw exactly how much money was spent on stuff for the first time…and I STILL have not done MY OWN TAXES (i have an extension) and I KNOW that I am starving for money, but yet, I procrastinate filing them.  Weird.

addicted to survivalism-H.U.S.T.L.E.R

I never liked this song until I realized that it was sung by an Indian female MC and it went with the great film Slumdog Millionaire!  (Gotta support one of the only South Asian singer/MCs and  the 3rd world democracy..) it sort of makes what I’m complaining about seem so trivial…but its all relative folks.  1st world oppression (gangster government and corporate entitites stealing and lying and killing its own for profit) looks like this below…Most Americans except the Eminem white kids, the triple beam lyrical dream rappers, and my full time erotic service revolutionaries don’t have to hustle from hand to mouth…

What is that keeps you on the edge of your chair as you check your online bank account, unsurprised if yesterday your checking account balance was some $142.12 for example and this morning as the screen logs you on for about 2 seconds it stops like a Russian Roulette wheel on an overdrawn balance of $121.88 because $35 overdraft fees x 7 WILL chomp an easy $150-200 like the shark did Samuel L Jackson in Deep Blue Sea(these numbers are made up, i didn’t want to do the math nor blog my real bank balance but it’s something that’s happened to me on average about 10x ($350) a year.  Multiply that by 30 million customers.

…And now you have to beg customer service at your bank for them to pleease do a courtesy reduction of at least half of them.  So they bargain with you, and take off 3 of them (which they can only do ONCE a year and after that you basically are screwed. 

Now you only owe them some $105.  And all you did was use your debit card for some shitty fucking $2 purchases, and it cost you nearly $200.  It’s the biggest predatory lending practice, and it is why the banks are so rich and why I don’t feel sorry for them hurting.   They make sooo much money off of this.  And they get people to use their cards more by giving them “points” and “rewards.”  You spend about $3000 and they’ll give you a $20 gift card to Barnes and Nobles.  And they always have these stupid stock photos of families painting their homes, getting the loans they need, smiling in convertibles.  We’re here to help you realize your dreams…After we tax you more than an agency escort with a drug habit and a pimp driver outside…

Such a great analogy, because I learn that in America, it seems the only way to get rich is to exploit the working class and the working poor with constant parking tickets and overdraft fees that pile up and double, while their paycheck to paycheck living forces the late fees to pile on top of those fees and then suddenly, well, if they happen to be sex workers, they SCORE and the bills are paid.  Phew.  Survival.  I’m not sure if it feels that way in the drug game, but in the employee working world, the term “paycheck to paycheck” is supposed to mean, just barely making the bills while feeding yourself until the next pay cycle.  Some of us on the edge live from client to client, trick to trick…waiting for that phone to ring.  Some of us live from hand to mouth to hand to mouth to cock…!  Waiting for that car to pass with someone decent.  someone that you’ve seen before.  Here comes your regular.  survival.

It’s like, you either HAVE to bank there, or be the banker.  Or, there’s the CHECK CASHING place with the dirty floors and the dickhead cashier in the cage who won’t let you receive your money unless you have 3 forms of government issued picture ID (which everyone carries on them, go ahead..check if you do, I’ll wait).  

I’ve taken money from clients that were barely consensual, totally fucked up on massive amounts of drugs, alcohol, ego, testosterone, manic depression; and I’ve upsold and cashed in on their impulsiveness, their self destruction and their weaknesses because in this game, if you don’t make this money, someone else will come up right behind and gladly make it.  And even selective morality like I have leads me to not be as prosperous as I could be say if I had the attitude of Wells Fargo or Bank of America all year.

Such is the life of the working on the cusp of lower middle class and broke, straddling the fence of the next day, the next client, the next rush of a good night, an easy client, a big easy tip.  Make it rain on me playa!…One of the strippers that came to a support group I led told me about how much she loved to roll around in all of the money she made on good nights.

Making money is payback to them. To all of them that told you that you were not supposed to make it.  (I know of at least 2 adult male/TG sex workers who were brutally raped as teenage prostitutes by cops).  To all those of the gender that you might be attracted to who told you that you would never be .  to all those men who fucked you and never called you the the next week.  to all those people who abused you, assaulted you, used you and made you feel like shit.  to your mom that kicked you out of the house, to your stepdad that molested you..and on and on and on.  (this is not my personal autobiography btw, its a mixture of all of us..)  This rain falls on me like redemption and I count my money with more satisfaction than you or sometimes I can even understand..I’m a survivor, I’m gonna make it, I’m not gon’ give up, I’m gon’ work harder…(Destiny’s Child)…

But this concept is simplified by the Melissa Farley and Norma Hotalings acting out our trauma.  The money is not true acceptance.  The money is a false enabler to your addiction…but I remember clearly seeing distraught and sobbing Paris crawling on her hands and knees in frustration after another bad night at the club.  Because in sex work, making no money usually means standing or sitting in the same place for 12 hours in a row or more, and enduring rejection and verbal abuse from every dumb ass cheap ass rude dirty dick fuck that thinks he is too good for you.  Or simply the phone just does not ring.  Are you charging too much?  Has there been a big sting?  you ask yourself.. And then finally, just as you are about to drive to the airport back home after having lost money travelling, wasted money on that internet travel ad, your phone rings…Are you still in xyx city?? he says..survival..should I turn the car around and head back?

It’s not a secret as to why it is that sex workers seem “addicted to the money” as some outsiders may see it.  Well, addictions are stigmatized.  Once I realized that I wasn’t addicted to sex work or addicted to smoking weed my life became worlds more free.  One person will look at our lives as perpetuating risk behaviors and some of us may look at it as merely surviving.  For many of us, sex work has been the only way that we have been able to attain some of those minimum conveniences (like a major Bank account or credit card) or an apartment without 5 roommates for instance, that most people take for granted.

I’ve been watching more reality TV than I like to admit for some reason, and the last one I saw was this Tough Love show where this frat boy handsome hetero asshole was asking one of his suitors “why she only thought about the money all the time?” and she burst into tears and talked about how she was left with nothing and a daughter to feed and that people did not understand that she has been left with nothing…”  Such is the plight of many women and some, like the contestants on GoldDiggers or I love money 2 or Tough Love thought it was too shame ful to actually sell (or rent) your body outright, so you did like the Marilyn Monroe club in “How to marry a Millionaire” date and marry rich is ok, being humiliated on reality TV, yes; being an escort, no.  I see them all as whores just like me.  As a joke, I applied to be P.Diddy’s assistant on actors access. They didn’t require you make a video and post it on you tube like the actual contest did.  I wondered if a billionaire rapper could understand that I wanna be like Biggie and go from ashy to classy!  Except instead of using just my body and sex alone, I seem to be very fascinated with the business aspect of it.  How can I be my clientele instead of just my clientele’s whore?

I love to make more money than the last time.   It’s like a high score I try to beat.  I am proud of myself when I make a big chunk of money.  It buys me time.  But lately, there is still fear.  Because there have proven to be too many times when after a “heavy rain” there has been drought and struggle and near starvation of the stomach and the soul..

I have learned in more than 10 years of working like this that it doesn’t matter how much you make in a night or a week, it’s safer to do it by the month because you could be starving and living off that one chunk for the entire month, and by the end, it’s just like gnawing off moldy crumbs from a hard piece of mousetrap cheese.

Why are you always broke?  Why can’t you ever save money? Hmmm.  I think it might have to do with a plan of some powers that be to keep us, and not just us sex workers, or people or color, something as colorblind as “everyone who has a bank account” which is class based for sure, but pretty generalized.  Parking tickets is another example.  In LA, there is no way for you to do any sort of community service for parking tickets like in San Francisco, and in 21 days your $35.00 ticket will efficiently turn into $70.00 right before your eyes as you log on 30 days later, or perhaps 60 days later, when you finally have $70 extra dollars to spare…I pay $1000s of dollars for street cleaning and yet, my streets aren’t even really clean!