接客業の極みThe Apex of Being in Service

I learned this phrase recently when I took up a red umbrella and marched with Japan’s sex worker rights organization SWASH I was a sex worker and global activist for sex worker rights for almost ten years and I founded a sex worker rights organization in Los Angeles and ran it for a couple years before burning out. I continued to do sex work and escorting for about 4 years after stepping down from the org and in 2013, I was mentored by another Tantric/Sacred Sex Life Coach named Destin Gerek . He actually was one of the first people to introduce me to the concept of “divine service” as he saw that I was in a bad place and I was ready to transition to something better so he pro bono mentored me into my current form as a Tantra goddess. He would sign his emails to me “In Service” instead of anything else, and I actually remember guffawing at his closing salutation thinking that he was full of shit. Little did I know that the service that he did for me would alter my entire existence in so many ways more than just one. The path of Tantra was not just a job change, it was a career methodology shift, it was an energetic and spiritual shift. Tantra would become my way of living and being as it continues to be so in my 6th year of divine service as a Tantrika.
I am not ashamed or shy about associating with sex work or sex worker rights, for over ten years I served the movement and gave a ton of my time and income to activist activities. However, since Tantra became my current path, I focus on using words, ideology and energy towards and within that which acknowleges healing, high vibrations and the god/goddess (divine) energy within. Change the words you use to describe your universe, and voila, your universe also changes. We only have so many hours in the day and energy is not only valuable it is EVERYTHING. I choose to not fight for rights on a daily basis, but serve instead by teaching gratitude, acceptance and understanding. I choose to teach practical tools for healing and relating with others over anything else. We can make small shifts and it can change EVERYTHING.

The main reasons why I don’t really identify as a sex worker anymore: 

1. Tantra and Tantric life coaching, the work that I do is less about physical sex than it is about sexual energy and intimacy. If you are looking to have intercourse or happy endings, I am not the person that is going to interest you.
2. Sex Work is Work is one of the main mantras of the sex worker rights movement which I shouted while marching with the team the other day, but in my current profession it is not my mantra. Tantra is, as I said before so much more than work or job. I have a professional business as a Tantric life coach, so there is money exchanged for services but I would not say that the services are as much sexual as they are holistic.

Is Tantra illegal?

Priestess Tracy Elise was recently released out of an Arizona prison for serving hard time for fighting for her right to run a Tantra temple. She fought her case hard and long and lost. When I am in America, I fully understand that Tantra is seen as prostitution, and so I still stay close to what goes on in sex worker rights in the U.S because I do work there whenever I go. Most people don’t really know what Tantra is and definitely associate it with things that are closer to sex work, including critics from within Tantra circles and outside of it. In Japan, everything except penis and vagina insertion is considered legal in Japan, as long as your visa allows it. Especially in Japan, my focus is intimacy that is outside of what is currently offered in the mizu shobai (sex industry) around me. I call in clients who are not as attracted to that vibe and are looking for something more intimate, affectionate, intellectual and most of all genuine. And most importantly, I call in clients who are seeking me and the love and service that I have to give because they seek the same love and service for themselves, my work is peaceful, it heals me simultaneously as I heal others. It is the apex of living in service.

sayonara sale

There is a TV show in Japan called “はじめておつかい” where toddlers are sent on errands like “buy cake” or “buy a fish for dinner” or “get your nails and hair done” at the Beauty Parlor in their neighborhoods ALONE (or seemingly alone, of course,there is a crew of 10 or so staff watching for the welfare at all times off camera).

 It’s actually really adorable and hilarious, and one of my favorite Japanese shows. It usually has a classic scene of them dropping a fish in the street and bursting into frustrated tears of anguish and desire to give the fuck up. I OFTEN feel like that 3 or 4 year old on this impossible mission when I have to do these seemingly impossible, logistical, legal adulting tasks in Japanese that is way too hard for me.  Trying to negotiate the ending of a lease in Japanese on their terms armed with my intermediate knowledge of the written and spoken word is difficult to say the least. Leaving the property manager fully flustered in the same exact way I was when I first moved in the place, except when I moved in two years ago, my Japanese was much worse. Today, for the first time in my adult life of paying bills, my electricity turned off because I didn’t pay the bill.  And this is the weekend that I am packing and moving, its the dead middle of Tokyo winter, 35 degrees outside and the heater won’t work because it runs on electricity. Nor is there hot water, refrigeration or a stove. Nice work Mariko. Last month, you were spending money like you would should and could always have that much in your account (manifest it! Believe it! LIve it!), traveling and seeing family, friends, and making amazing art and rejuvenating your long lost soul purpose as an artist, for once not letting money be the fucking barrier that it usually is.  How dare you. The highlight of the night, if not the week was eating cannabis and deciding to destress in one of the best thing Japanese cities and towns have going: the bathhouse. Especially the one a few train stops down from me is really a luxurious treat that I forget to indulge in because it is a few stops and a not so short bike ride from my house. The tubs at this bathhouse have one that is outdoors with frosted high fencing right near the train tracks so it feels like the train flies right passed you bathing but it’s a good 25 meters away from you. I stepped on the scale and I’m exactly the same weight as I’ve been for the entire too chubby for Japan year even though my clinic doctor whom I am obligated to chat with every month because I need chronic asthma medication.  “You’re gaining weight, i see you all the time, so i can tell.” he said. “Do you exercise?” ugh. This guy. The same doctor who told me that I might get AIDS from getting my tattoos in the next breath recommended me for English lessons to his wife, and she actually booked a lesson that same night, so i can’t be too mad. I know he means well, he’s in his sixties or seventies and i’m sure means well, so i don’t fault him for it. I’ve developed an ability for not taking what Japanese people say about me too seriously. I’m on the verge of another big change here. Moving out of the solo apartment adventure that I got being the Tantra coach to a very strange and difficult client who miraculously gave me more money than any client had given me in many years. It was one of many many miracles that occured for me as I began my journey in Japan.  It was a great set up to a very difficult cultural acclamation. It wasn’t just that I was a not fully fluent foreign born Japanese immigrant, but Backpage fully closed with the owner going to prison and clientele fell like the sky according to Henny Penny so I had to work full time in a regular job for the first time also in many many years.  Luckily, like last month, there were a few more well paid seekers over the years.

thegoddess is dead in Japan

When I say thegoddess is dead in Japan, I don’t mean that Japanese are not spiritual people.  Many of them are, many of them aren’t, just like many countries.  There is definitely a pervasive form of spirituality that Japan has in its landscape that Christian influenced countries do not have.  When I say thegoddess is dead, I mean the idea of a divine form embodying a human one, is non existent.  Women have no pull and no power here.  The mother cannot ask for recognition for bearing and raising kids anymore than the salary man can ask for recognition for supporting the family.  This is what you are supposed to do.  Don’t you dare ask for credit for what you are supposed to do.  If a woman dressed unique, sexy or something beautiful, not a single man will turn his head.  They will look from the reflection of the glass  in their phones or out of the corner of their eyes, but they will never say a thing. Silence is a cultural norm here, even when 6 people standing on a train almost fall on top of each other.  (This really happened the other day and me out of 6 was the only person who uttered any sounds)  One of my friends called Japanese men “soft” but I think “soft” sounds fluffy and nice and cute, like a cloud.  The majority of Japanese men that I see are spineless and oblivious, like earthworms.  Earthworms are not shy they’re spineless.  and they don’t like light either.  Shy is not the word for them.  So suspend me to the ceiling and spin me around a few times, parade me like rotisserie flesh for the horny eyes of the men in the room.  They are looking now but I don’t care.  All I wanted was for someone to buy me a drink, hold open a door, offer to carry a bag, compliment my outfit or my smile…

YOU be the radiant light and those that can see it will be attracted to it!!  It doesn’t work here in Japan.   Don’t give me your fucking bumper sticker quotes that apply to your life in a non Asian or non Muslim or some other country without similar restrictions.  Save your privilege for your Instagram quotes.   

I want to hear you tell me to “just love myself” as much as I want to hear some blissed out foolio tourist high on Enjoy Japan talk about his recent trip to Tokyo (Japan is sooo clean and organized!  I love it!)  randomly messaging me as some form of flirtation.  The only beings that are attracted to my light are moths.  Drunken moths are one step higher than earthworms as at least they take action even if it kills them.  After I was taken down from the suspension, I went to the bathroom.  I was met there by 2 Japanese men.  I decided to see what the 3 men at the bar could possibly do for me, so I asked one of the guys to get the German man who was speaking to me at the bar.  I hadn’t had sex with 3 guys before, and usually at random times my experimental daring gets the best of me, and since i was just suspended from the ceiling I was high on endorphins and adventure.  I am usually interested in exploring that I have never had before once, just for the sake of it.  It is the new thrill that I like, the sex just comes with it sometimes.  I called the German guy down to the sex room, not because I wanted anything more than a new experience in life.  And definitely after about 20 minutes of my vagina being sucked by an octopus and pussy smashed with inflatable toy hammers at an arcade silently by three guys,  I went back upstairs with a What the hell was that shit? feeling.  It was like blowing three mannequins in a department store elevator (sounds exciting?  Its actually not).  Shaking my head at the huuuuge gap of reality between the porn I masturbate to and the reality I have experienced.   After the two Japanese men ejaculated they disappeared without saying a word, leaving me and the German guy alone to speak in English.  Sex with him was terrible as well.  He wasn’t even aware his dick wasn’t inside of me most of the time and he was moaning to appease my need for “some sound” but I could tell it was fake because he was missing his target completely and oblivious to it.   It was not even my imagination, I really felt nothing from all three of them.  The whole event was one of the worst sexual experiences I’ve ever had inclusive of all of the prostitution I have ever done to date and that, is some seriously, bad sex.  I could never have bad sex as a sex worker as long as I got paid and it wasn’t an assault, because my job was to make money, orgasms were icing on the cake.  This recent night was the equivalent to donating my body to being poked by preteen virgins in a sex lab for free so i felt really unamused after it was over.  Disgusted with the Japanese guys who went quickly up to the bar without even a word and who did not even acknowledge me again at all after that.  I forced myself in their faces, “That was rude.” i said.  “No, no, that was our Ometenashi” the one guy that I actually was attracted to out of the 3 said to me.  Ometanashi my ass.  I said shaking my head.  ( You call that Japanese hospitality, do you?  I call it rude and fucking ridiculous).   This is the symbolic meaning of being tied and suspended in Kinbaku for me.  A performance piece is being written with my life experiences, right alongside this blog.  Butoh is another thing I got to experience living in Japan, like Kinbaku rope play, and the uneventful sexual experiment that followed, I had to come to Japan to have access.

The German guy stayed with me and talked with me, bought me a drink, walked me to the train station in the morning and was aching to continue our “adventure” but it was no longer an adventure but a sex tragedy of epic proportions that I’d soon forget quicker if he wasn’t actually trying to walk me to the train station and attempt to stay in touch.  But wasn’t this the chivalry you said you wanted goddess? He tried to hold my hand and I pulled it away.  You can’t move from terrible sex to holding hands in one hour.  I was not interested in dating him.  Take him on as long term coaching client, yes.  Date him, no.   If he reads this and his ego can handle it, then he’ll consider some serious sexual awareness lessons.  My boyfriends and lovers need to be of a certain sexual standard that my clients often are not.   I can be compassionate in the professional container.  Empathy and recovery from unbelievably terrible sex only comes after love and relationship are established and it can’t happen the other way around, even for a Tantrika because I am MOSTLY human.   thegoddess light was needed to love me, myself and I only and deeply to recover from that clown show (and yes, I DO LOVE MYSELF very very much, Thank you bumper stickers for the reminder).   I had gone in, in, inward and was not feeling namaste or like seeing the god in anyone but myself.  At that point, 5:30am Shinjuku train station cold and hungry, waiting for the first train of the day,  I just wanted to be in my bed alone.   I am thankful that the German guy wasn’t Japanese because then I can’t blame the whole incident entirely on Japanese dicks.  Regardless, it still gets chalked up as an interesting sex experience I could only have in Japan.  And still gets counted as the worst sex I’ve had in 41 years.  

Why don’t you just go back to America?

Certainly I am a miracle manifestor.  I just looked at my accounting for the year I decided to move countries to Japan.  This was the year that I crashed my car, fixed it back up and then a couple of months later the transmission died finally rendering it good for only parts and metal for $1000.  Upon receiving that $1000 I used that money to buy a ticket to Seattle, Alaska and Tokyo.  ONE WAY.  No turning back.  I didn’t have a car in Los Angeles for 6 months before I moved to Japan.  I worked on bicycle as a delivery person and ran my Tantra business.  Nothing was going to stop me after buying a plane ticket that I wasn’t going to waste.  I not only manifested miraculous money when I first arrived in the country, I was able to keep this streak going with just a few amazing well paying clients from both Japan and the U.S.  When I am adding up the numbers last night I am actually shaking my head wondering how the fuck I even got to where I am now.  One month, I had two clients paying $2000 and I lived off of that for two months inclusive of traveling all over Japan to places that I had never seen and places I can’t even afford to get to today.  Today I am working my ass off as a contract teacher for several different schools.  I spend hours on trains roundtripping from my home to far off classrooms in shopping malls and community colleges.  It feels like full time but its not.  It feels like I cannot work any harder, but to the Japanese worker, this is nothing.  Anything less than 60 hours in one office is not respectable.  I can’t pay my rent this month.  Some guy is going to knock on my door, but I probably won’t be at home because I’ll be at work.  I am currently waiting for just ONE Tantra client which is what I need to live alone in Tokyo in this small apartment that I manifested as a result of doing what I love, living in my purpose and life coaching.  When I got this apartment, I set my standards at a certain point.  No more sharehousing and shitty roommates.   I can have the lifestyle I want here.  In fact, my rent is cheaper in Tokyo than it was in rent controlled LA.   But the months since returning back to Tokyo in October have not been so good for my Tantra business.  I have found a way to post ads on craigslist that don’t get flagged.  I tried to post on the local hobbyist board but got hated on by all the providers and hobbyists there because I’m not doing what they are doing.  I am getting some emails from craigslist, which is another miracle because since CL stopped posting erotic service ads over ten years ago, it is impossible to post anything that sounds like it could be prostitution, although if you go to the casual encounters section most of the ads there are workers.  This is what backpage in America has moved into, using the personals as their sex work classifieds since bp.com’s ads also got shut down.  And I finally fucking figured out how to use bitcoin to pay for my ads and bitcoin also crashed so now backpage is no longer even accepting btc.  My miraculous 2016 turned into a 2017 year of uphill acclimating to the Japanese way, culture, language, laws and loneliness that after a while is no longer called that, it is just called normal.  Loneliness implies that you are wanting or longing for something, and at this juncture, I wish it would get better, but I am not crying out for it to get better.  I remember nights before I met my ex boyfriend in 2015 when I would be crying about being lonely and wanting a boyfriend.  And then for the next six months he came into my life and turned it upside down.  “You can do better.” I/they said.  “There are so many people who will treat you better.”  Ha, even he said it to my face in the first three months of our relationship.  Pretty much from month 2 he was already planning for our break up but holding me in his dysfunctional web just to torture me until he could find someone better.  So now, it has been three years since that time, and I am still single.  Where is that “better someone?” I wonder.  But I don’t wonder too long because I just try not to think negative thoughts and plague myself.  Instead I float into my night slumber saying the words,”I love you.  Thank you so much for coming into my life.  I’m so grateful for you.”  and I have great dreams usually.  I have been coached to do so many things to manifest the things that I have.  When things are not going your way, it is so easy to think all these sayings are just cognitive dissonance to cope with the fact that maybe you actually won’t get everything you want in life.  Tony Robbins says, you always get your standards.  Raise your standards.  I did.  I broke up with the ex.  I moved into this apartment.  These were great decisions of my life that I still don’t reget.  It took 10 months to heal from that but I learned so much about myself and what I don’t want.  But it seems like dating since then has just been an activity for temporary, somewhat satisfying companionship.  At 41, I no longer seek to “get laid,” especially as a Tantrika because having a spiritual and soulful connection is the only thing that opens my heart and legs at the same time.  It feels like the last 25 people that I have talked to or who have tried to woo me, I have not been attracted to.  There has been nothing, not even a spark, just a decision to not settle.  I don’t want to work on a relationship that I go in not liking.  Why don’t you just go back to America?  Some people have said to me.  I not only view that as quitting but its actually not practical for me.  I gave away all my belongings to move countries.  I gave up my apartment, my 11 year accumulation of super cool stuff, all my art work and equipment; my former life style.  And, if I left Japan now, I still would not be fluent in the language, nor would I really know the culture well enough because I’m limited by not speaking the language, and Japan takes just one year living in and also an entire lifetime to really understand.  I speak Japanese better than I ever have in my life.  I’ve gotten my mother to email me in Japanese, I’ve talked to my relatives that I wasn’t in contact with for 28 years.  I talk to them in Japanese.  I decided that i LOVE both America and Japan.  Because LOVE is complex, love doesn’t give you what you want, you work to sustain and understand it constantly.  It shouldn’t feel like work, it should feel like a flow.  Neither country is without its flaws and aggravating qualities.  I could learn Japanese elsewhere, but I know me, I won’t study if I don’t have to.  Living in Japan, I’m constantly motivated by my humiliation of confusion.  The societal exclusion of half passing, half speaking plagues me everyday.  I try to fit in but at the same don’t care to fit in to their stupid reindeer games, but I want to fit in well enough to have the option to play them.  I won’t leave until I do.

 

Barney LOVE , Free LOVE, Free Sex..YES, and!

I was recently featured in a VICE mag piece about the ex Barney dinosaur who is now a Tantrika…https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/…ns-a-tantric-sex-business?utm_source=vicefbus 

As a PS comment to this article published, the things that I mainly have a problem with is not that Barney has sex with clients, but that he does it without a condom and claims that it is for authentic Tantric energy purposes,which is not true. Also, even though I say that having sex with clients is an anomaly, it DOES happen for me in sessions where I feel totally connected with the God in front of me and we are exchanging genuine loving bliss, so intercourse, or anything often happens (within my own personal boundaries, which raw sex isn’t).   I didn’t read that Joyner made a distinction between the AGAPE LOVE energy exchanged when playing Barney with children and the EROS LOVE energy when in Tantra sessions, and because he never mentioned it, either it was edited out or it wasn’t an emphasis for him.  And if it wasn’t an emphasis then this would be suspect for me because we need to make a distinction between eros/physical adult energy with lovers and children.  I work with children as an English teacher teaching phonics and I work with the inner children of adults as a Tantra teacher, the energy changes once I put my hands on my clients body.  

I spent 7 years as an escort before I moved into Tantra. The difference for me in the organic versus the transactional is that escorts often do things because “it is part of the job” or “it is expected” or “for good reviews” NOT because they feel totally in love with you or flowing in union. This is not to say that escorts don’t have fun or love the sex for sex not just for money, but since I’ve done both, I can definitely speak on the fact that it is different. I do believe that David Joyner (former Barney) is both enjoying the sex and being spiritual with his clients, and I ALSO like to have these 2 things in my sessions.

I wrote the above in a Tokyo hobbyist board and quickly an escort got her g string up her neck and wrote this:

Don’t know much about Tantra, so I won’t be comparing the two, but I honestly believe that an escort’s feelings toward her work is usually more of a personal issue and has nothing to do with her clients most of time. If you’re an escort and you always have to force yourself to have sex with your clients, then there’s a high chance that you’re doing survival sex work and should try to solve the issue as soon as possible.

I’ve met and talked to escorts who’ve taken a break or have left the industry, and they never complained about the sex factor. It was either because of stigma, being outed by “friends” or family, a new job/career, or an insecure partner.

On the contrary, one of the biggest complaints I hear from escorts is that their vanilla partners (dates, friends with benefits, boyfriends, husbands) don’t treat them like their clients do, don’t eat them out like their clients do, or don’t fuck them like their clients do.. and I know that they don’t say it to look good in front of men because they are private SW-only accounts.

This last paragraph I just had to highlight because in all my years of activism and organizing sex workers from all over the world, I had never ever heard anything even close to what this woman just wrote!  But I just responded that it definitely depends on the provider.  “Here’s a good litmus test,”I told her,”Would you have sex with your clients for free? Most of the sex workers I know would never do such a thing, and a good amount of them don’t even have sex for free EVER.”  But it could just be me, and it could just be that I know a whole other universe of sex workers.  There are many universes after all!  Her paragraph seemed so out of the ball park from most of the guys that I have met as an escort and continue to meet as a Tantrika.  They come to us for guidance, not the other way around.  But again, I was on a Tokyo hobbyist board, one that I try to advertise on occasionally but never get any business on.  I don’t do well with this sector of men, and I didn’t even when I was an escort.  The escort accused me of whorearchy (whore hierarchy) and the men on the thread didn’t seem to understand organic sex versus transactional sex.  They couldn’t get their heads around this idea because a hobbyist is someone who has seen hundreds of prostitutes and had brag worthy sex with them FOR MONEY.  The idea of doing it any other way probably seems stupid, silly and a waste of time.  

Organic means that it grows naturally…like a flower in a garden. Transactional means I am paid to have sex. While I do not mean to offend any escorts by my words, I do know that most of the sex workers that I ever knew and do know would not have sex with their clients for free. I charge 50,000 yen for 2 hours of Tantra instruction which includes intimacy and body work and other spiritual/sexual practices. If I am feeling moved by the client in my body, mind and spirit then I will often go with the flow of my desire which varies from client to client. I am not paid for sex, I am paid to facilitate Tantra sessions which include bathing rituals, prostate/sacred spot massage, coaching on orgasm control, body rubs and coaching on how to have a fulfilling sex life. If we are flowing in a great session, I will have intercourse with you. I will kiss you. I will fall in love with you (within the container of the session). You will feel this love deeply and genuinely. Whatever sex acts that occur above and beyond the initial session are free, mutually beneficial. This feels better to most of my clients. I have no guarantees of DFK, BBJ or any menu items, it is strictly MMV and totally genuine, more like dating sex (no menu, no guarantees, no reviews). I know, it is the opposite of how hobbyists think in general but I’m able to get clients doing my Tantra coaching on a busy phone sex website next to providers doing all the nasty taboo things in their ads that I don’t do and I do what I do as I am doing now. With love, with trust and feeling of safety many things in sex and life are possible.  I always feel incredibly vulnerable posting my real thoughts in front of sex workers these days, since leaving sex work activism and the 5 years I’ve been a goddess, I’ve been through some interactions that have made me feel less than safe amongst current sex workers that I don’t know well.  But I know humans are humans beyond all of our identities and this is what Tantra has taught me…to dare to be authentically compassionate…to dare to drop the walls that seperate us….to dare to love….love oneself enough to be honest and work in a job where you set boundaries that can change over time.  You CAN be the sexual being who is paid or not that YOU are comfortable being without compromising.  There are men and women out there who are awaiting your touch and companionship and whatever else you offer.

Being Grace Fully

I have been Grace at 22 years old.  I think it was exactly 22 years old when my sexual assault avoidance came crashing down with yet another gross violation of my verbal and non verbal cues.  My whole life changed at 22, and I started to go to trauma therapy for all that happened before this time at 22 and I would continue to progress through 15 more years of more sexual violence and deal with it other ways that you may or may not agree with it.  Nothing is black and white.  And sometimes it isn’t enthusiastic yes or hell no.  Eventually for most people who have experienced sexual violence it does get there, but it takes a few worst nights of your life before that can happen.  Sometimes we do drugs during or after, violence, payback, slutty behavior, denial, acting out, prostitution or long careers of sex work and activism as a result.  And it can ALL BE CONFUSING to us and our perpetrators and the ears of society.  Nothing in a book or workshop can help you when your body and mind decides to do something to survive.   I took years of Krav Maga self defense and I was still sexually violated by one of my instructors in class. Healing ends when life ends is what one of my mentors taught me, I know well that age makes us better at it.  Grace had the worst date of her life, I’ve had dates exactly like that at 22 AND I’ve even had dates with 22 year olds at my age now who pouted and whined because they didn’t get to orgasm and continued to persist even after my verbal and non verbal cues were communicated.  But I didn’t do anything with him at 41 like I might have at 22. It took decades of trauma and healing to become this clear and this strong through “learning the hard way.” 

What I did learn over time, in my getting better at dealing with being assaulted was how to soothe myself through my wounds, how to take better self care, how to recognize trauma symptoms and not avoid them, how to not seek violent or monetary payback or sexual cumback, and mostly how to speak out better than the last time, each time I got better. 

That krav maga instructor knows he violated me, because I filed charges with the school (not the police, fuck the police) and all his managers were called into a meeting with me and he was forced to face and apologize to me.  I didn’t want to ruin his career but I did stop taking his classes, and I learned to take back power a different way, I continued training in the same school for 2 more years never seeing him again.  And still I’m not naming him on social media here because I didn’t and still don’t think it is necessary and it bars him from actual remediation of his behavior, which might happen to Ansari.   This has clearly happened as a backlash to Grace for  “(paraphrased) trying to ruin Ansari’s career and her voice may become weaker and not stronger as a result, but I doubt it.  Life begins not ends at 22.  Hell, it doesn’t even end at 40 like I previously thought.  

The tattoo of the magic wand with barbed wire is about the beginning of my sexual trauma awakening, painful and full of drama as being 22 is.  The magic wand symbolizes my inner light and magic and the barbed wire symbolizes the protection of its beauty and shine.  Barbed Wire also because at this time around 1999, Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire was the hot movie and she the stripper protagonist was my role model who kicked ass and shot weapons in a PVC catsuit and seemingly never gave in to the desires of any of the men in the film.  Later on the arm I tattooed the goddess Kwan Yin, and the character for Agape LOVE, all of this is related to my hero’s journey and the pain that I have endured to get to peace that I feel now.

Mr. Ansari, in a statement responding to the account, said that “by all indications” the encounter was “completely consensual.”  

When I read this, I’m not triggered, I understand.  But I have decades of incidents over both of these people possibly because of I worked as a sex worker for 15 years.  I almost don’t want to use that as a qualifier because half of the sexual violence I experienced happened outside of sex work environments, but 15 years of sex work was the way that I learned how to come to grips with the world I lived in and the bed I made for myself (radical responsibility not blame).  I started to take radical responsibility for some of the situations I put myself in.  I had to because although I tried to make death and addiction an option, the Universe just wouldn’t let me go out so easy.  My first date rape at age 17 and almost all of the violations after that, I’d bet 5 million dollars that all of these men thought what we did was TOTALLY consensual.  The drunken 17 year I was did not consent to being led to a darkened empty beach in Hawaii and laid down on the sand, but my reaction at that time was to hop on top of the dick that non consensually penetrated me and try to take back the power that was just taken from me by maybe trying to “get an orgasm” because at least I would have gotten something, anything.   So, I know too well why Grace might have sucked his dick even if she felt violated, however, I wasn’t there so maybe she didn’t do what I did, we are all projecting into both of these or any of the characters.   But, if it was then this is a behavior I know well.   It grew to be the way that I would deal with healing from sexual violence for 15 years, like an addict chasing their first high, those of us (men, women and in between) that chase power (payback, fame, money) in the world realize that it is a slippery snake if not an illusive and deceptive one that is not even real.  It makes consent look unclear because of the illusion of seduction or enjoyment that you created out of desperation, immaturity, ignorance or insecurity.  

The conversation about sexual violence, rape, assault and ALL the words in between definitely needs to include abuse of power, social justice, dating protocol, conversations and nuances, it needs to include sex work, drugs, spiritual abuse and BDSM ethics, ALL THE 50 SHADES OF GRAY need to come out of the closet and not be judged.  (to be con’t)

 

2017: My 1st year of Japan residency comes to an end

2017 comes to an end at midnight and I am putting Kabuki Kumadori makeup on my face.  The Japanese tradition of visiting a temple at midnight with crowds of people who pray at midnight silently as the year changes from rooster to dog.  I sat in lotus in my Tokyo apartment, and rang my healing bowls, focusing inwards and honoring my own body temple.  I was preparing myself for a burlesque performance at a nightclub in Shibuya that I have been to a few times.  A place where there were going to be familiar faces and friendly people and most importantly free admission because I knew one of the DJs.  I didn’t feel like spending lots of money or pushing past obnoxious people as New Year’s Eve in all big cities around the world are guaranteed to be, especially not through Shibuya which is a Christmas shopping crowd in America every single day.  As I walked towards the club from the train someone pulled me back from my backpack straps aggressively.  I was starting to feel the acid that I took so I didn’t feel like talking English or Japanese.  I was assessing what he wanted and if I needed to be alarmed or just remain blank as I was.  “Hey, can I take a picture with you?” the young Japanese asshole asked.  I really wish I could have the same responses to tell someone off in Japanese in these same situations as I do in English, but in general in the last five years, I’ve not really been a confrontational person, and Japan has truly made me quieter and less confrontational on top of holding a walking meditative stance as a Tantrika.  Thegoddess deescalates by reflecting calm.  Dude clocks me as a foreigner because of my costume, because a Japanese person would not dare wear something like what I was wearing.  A women’s summer yukata, kimono over jeans and a sweatshirt in the winter and a male actors makeup scheme, but that was exactly my point in presentation.  I wasn’t going to try to be Japanese or fit in tonite, I was going to be 2000% Mariko Passion for the first time in a great long time in Japan.  If i was in America, they’d think I was dressed like a geisha because that’s the most popular kimono association foreigners have about Japan usually, which is why I hate being called a foreigner.   I often don a gender queer presentation when I feel like fucking with mainstream society.  I do it in Los Angeles and I do it in Tokyo.  It is a reflection of fearlessness and a return to my inner I don’t give a fuck.  In Japan, everything is about what everybody else thinks about you.  Your success in business and social circles has to do with how you carry yourself at moments when you think you aren’t being watched, at moments when you should have a right to act as you feel is natural to do, it is a Matrix that is enforced by the mainstream here, deeper and more restrictive than any American society in existence.  If you don’t feel that in Japan yet, then you are still obviously a tourist enjoying Japan.  Being a resident alien is something totally different.  The vacation is over.  You better get to where you need to go and not get lost because you need to show up ten minutes early and stay late and be happy about it.   Realness and the oppression of women and everyone who doesn’t act like a right acting 100% “normal” Japanese citizen hasn’t stripped away your enjoy-ment just yet. As a tourist, ometenashi is still being bestowed on you as a guest in the country, you aren’t being constantly treated like you are invisible or that you need to apologize for your own existence at every moment.  My sisters and I could never understand why my mother carried such a heavy burden of caring about what everyone else thought before herself, even fifty years after she had long left Japan and become an American citizen with suitable English competency and 3 Americanized kids, her Japaneseness was still deeply ingrained in her.  The culture you were born and raised in never leaves your consciousness I suppose, and that was my biggest problem in Japan.  As a hafu Japanese, I am able to blend half the time when I want to but most of the time conforming doesn’t suit me anywhere I go in the world and the artist in me wants to free myself of my shackles, which would often happen even in the so called land of the free.  I am of different subcultures and nations, gender expressions and desires rolled up into something that shouldn’t be figured out.  I asked the promoter on New Years Eve if I could jump up on the poles they had at the club and dance for people all night.  He wasn’t going to pay me but I still needed to let him know because I was dressing up and probably showing more of my body than most people in the club that night.  I still had 6 inch red stiletto stripper heels and I didn’t forget how to dance in them with shameless confidence that no born Japanese girl without tattoos and sex work experience could ever imagine in her wildest dreams and that’s why most of my fans that night were women.  I was releasing sexual frustration out on Japanese society.  To me it was unfathomable that I couldn’t date who I wanted and capture the attention of men and women in a big bad metropolitan city like Tokyo.  Was everyone just a silent salary man throwing up on the train in his man purse?  I had dated a few Japanese men as my mission to learn the language so I have gained my frustration through experience.  I’ve chatted with women and non Japanese residents on dating sites and tried to date them too without great luck.  I continue to daily remind myself that the romantic relationship I have already created for myself is on its way.  This night was about dancing my kimono off and channeling all my pent up sexual frustration trying to survive in this society, being grateful for all that I am and all that I have learned.  The release had nothing to do with getting laid.  I can get laid in Tokyo if I wanted to have a little Japanese dog humping my leg and call that sexual satisfaction which was nothing close to the Tantric unions that I was fueled from.  Kekko desu, I pass.  The way that men nanpa in Japan just doesn’t make me want to move or open, so I am often alone here.   I want to worshipped as the goddess that I am by a god, by the reflection of my own greatness, but I seem unable to find them in Japan.   But, for once, tonite at the club, I was basking in the light of my glory, honoring my body temple, giving others permission to be themselves and showing them how to do it.   Interestingly enough in the U.S, nipples and alcohol are illegal but not in Japan.  But because Japan pushes everyone’s emotions and sexuality into a small box, and everyone is effectively controlled by their ties to jobs or family, most people do not step out of line out of fear of losing one of those connections and being shunned into further invisibility than daily life can be.  Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, and though I came here with a dream and i made it come true, the reality of daily life and the matrix web wiping the smile off of my face after some time of being ignored and not seen for weeks and then months.  You are not special in Japan.  No one is special in Japan.  ONLY Japan is special, and if you can force yourself to be part of the whole, then you can access that specialness too, conditionally.  I have meditated back into alignment finally after the funeral of the eldest sibling of my mother reminded me of these family ties that bind in a way that you can never escape, in a way that you can never be independent or make mistakes, be adult or even be your own person.  It is an immense amount of pressure to hold.  If you jump in front of a train to kill yourself, your family will be sued by the Tokyo government for disrupting everyone else’s working schedule probably until they also die, and yet these kinds of suicides are the most commonplace occurrance.  It’s made me rethink staying here, but still I know that it was the law of attraction and positive vibrations and determination that got me all that I have in Japan and it will be that same determination which will bring everything else that I desire to fruition, so it is my job to radiate that my needs are already met and breathe that in as real.  I am beyond nationality and gender.  I am not a slave to the matrix, I am just dropping in.