Why don’t you just work without an agency?

I’m not that good with advice.  Because you don’t  know..you just don’t know.

I wish I could be a successful independent escort without agency bullshit and make 100% of my profits.  but i can’t.  Wouldn’t I just love to do phone and webcam work without depending on Niteflirt to get traffic to my listing?  Of course.  I just need as much money for advertising as niteflirt or cityvibe or eros or any of the agencies that i work for spend, which could be up to $1000 A WEEK.  Who woudn’t love to meet all the clients that I meet as an agency escort without having to deal with the bullshit.  Wouldn’t you love to be part of an elite $4000/hr Emperor’s VIP or young Heidi Fleiss type of agency if you were part of one?  I would.  But the stakes are higher as we’ve seen with Deborah Jean Palfrey’s agency scandal.

Why don’t you just go “indy?”

I tried to be an independent escort investing thousands of advertising dollars in the yellow pages, internet websites, weeklies etc.  I tried to be an escort agency myself (and only had the worst most undesirable women apply to work with me) and because I love all sex workers it was hard to be so shallow and even racist in order to make money.  I’d rather have others do that for me and me be the more innocent pawn so I can use the “I’m just doin’ my job” defense.

I am NOT the girl in the picture.  I am not the girl you talked to on the phone.  I can play dumb lots of times, because I truly am kind of dumb to the details.  It’s going to be at least $200 more than you thought you were paying and it might make you mad but i can’t care for you.  It’s YOUR LOSS or MINE.  and living on $20 in my wallet for who knows how long.  One indy client at $300 an HOUR a week, means you are living on $300 a week.  Not cute if you have rent and car payment and need to eat.  Another thing that makes it easier for me to sleep at night, is that if it isn’t me taking your money, it’s gonna be the bitch behind me and I’d rather it be me of course.  And, like I said, I’m nice, smart and I have sex.  Not as bad as it could be for the average agency trick.

To make the phone ring off the hook, you used to be able to use Craigslist but since CL has become the favorite of police stings and sex worker predators or you need to spend at least $500/month on various advertising sources (which also isn’t police sting and predator free either)..

and then there’s the hobbyist reviews boards which i DESPISE.  and coincidentally, they despise me too as made evident in a recent blog post that I wrote on one of these stupid white collar internet locker rooms.  (What’s on your menu?  Do you kiss?  Anal sex?  Can I review our sexcapades on the boards with everyone?  Can I eat “dinner at the Y” meaning Can I go down on you?) I HATE most hobbyists.  Their very essence is the core of my irritation with patriarchy and privilege.  It takes ALL the power I love about sex work.  I’m not a whore because i love sex and really want to submit to these motherfuckers.  Most of the guys I am fucking, I wouldn’t be fucking if they weren’t paying.  So trying to be nice, fake, shallow and dumb to uber male privileged dudes who I hate in order to drum up more business and ‘good reviews’  has never been my forte.  I am a sex worker because i am trying to reclaim power in a sexist and patriarchal world and maybe you think from the post below that I am totally CRAZY.  But I understand it.  I have never fought back against men like I have as an agency escort.  My recent relationship has also been a vicious verbal fighting one with power struggles as well…I know, you would look and listen to my relationship and say “I can do better.” but i’m single now and before that guy I was single for 9 years.  Being alone can be better but finding a good relationship is not always the easiest advice to follow.  It’s not something you can control all the time, even though you might want to .  Although, I am a MAGNET for low achiever, fixer uppers, men and women with addictions, jail and prison records..I shouldn’t be a prison teacher because I’d end up engaged to one of the inmates in a week.  Co-dependents can be the most romantic people, I swear!

What I hate most is that I can’t use my own photo and make a lot of money.  I have to use an agency photo that the horny client calls first and then show up and negotiate my way into the door and negotiate another two bills out of his wallet or credit card before we get into his bed.  For some reason when I post an internet escort ad on most of the major known websites, my phone doesn’t ring off the hook.  I don’t make enough to survive without working agencies.  It’s too bad, actually.  I wished my indy work could sustain me.  I would be fine JUST doing webcam and phone sex and occasional escort dates.   It’s not like I enjoy driving around from 8pm-6am.  Sometimes I put in 120 miles a shift.  I am my own driver.  It saves me money.  I dated a guy who I started dating by pulling out of a nightclub for a one night stand.  He had a small knife around his neck, that looked like a necklace medallion.  I think I could stand to invest in one of those.  When you actually have sex in agency work, I believe that you are a little safer.  I figure typical agency girls roll with drivers because none of them will even do a hand job for $500.  They make it seem like I crazy for doing half of what we say someone will do! I work for 2 agencies at the moment.  One is high end low volume and the other is my regular agency gig that I work at 3-4 times a week, that I tried to quit in April after keying up some guy’s car.  I steal clients from the agency by getting independent repeat clientele.  The 2 agencies I work at don’t care and don’t expect it, especially not the cash and dash agency but I have worked for some that instill fear in the workers and say that they have fake clients who check up to see if you are stealing clients from them by giving them your personal phone numbers.

Lots of agency work works out pretty well until someone traumatizes me.  Because I’ve been out of it for 8 months, going back has been kind of exhilirating.  I know that I can’t do it for too long though. I have learned my threshold for this work is pretty low.  It works well if you do it 3 months on and then off, if you can afford it.  I am prepping my resume with an internship so I can hopefully get some paid media work in the field I would LIKE to be working in, not one that I am settling in just to barely get by.  I don’t want to work full time in social justice non profit outreach work.  I want to be a singer, an entertainer, an artist FIRST.  then an activist.

But I know that it is only a matter of time, perhaps a week or a month until some blow up happens.  Mastering how to de escalate verbally without being hurt except by words and shouting.  I am great at that, but I have proven that I don’t take people’s shit on my knees with my mouth open.

Sometimes though, it feels like  I am asking for a dude to hit me, so I can press charges.  I fucking dare you to hit me.  I actually did this (dare you to slap me) in the 7th grade and a boy slapped me.  It was the first time (and maybe only?) time a guy has slapped me.  I didn’t press charges on the boy.  We were both in 7th grade.  but I was pretty moded.  I didn’t think he was going to hit me but he did.  It wasn’t too serious but memorable for sure.  Fighting is martial arts even when you’ve never really studied it.  If your opponent is angrier than you are you can easily deflect this energy by remaining rational and neutral.  (but still heading for the exit with your money in hand hopefully as fast as possible). Aikido combined with exit strategy..

I never wanted to carry a gun because I don’t like guns.  Having a gun on you will only get you in more trouble.  If you never draw a gun on someone, you won’t have to have the experience of having a gun drawn on you.  One of my other ex boyfriends was a gun toting weed farmer who was arrested for pulling a gun on someone on the freeway in a road rage incident.  Stupid gun behavior.  I’ve managed to not have any physically violent incidents.  The work is traumatizing on a regular basis, but it is also cathartic when you stand up to someone.

I have mace in my bag and I used to have  a stun gun but that disappeared a while ago…

Some of my fellow sex worker activist escorts that I’ve organized with in this movement are privileged enough to not have to take clients past 10pm and to not take clients who do drugs.  I have never done sex work that way.  I guess I’m just not that kind of working girl.  I did get a sugar daddy from agency work, and I am thankful to be doing this blog on a beautiful new MacBook Pro that I got as a gift from him.  I float from roach motel to 5 star suite between clients of various class levels both independently and with my agencies, but it’s just that the review board hobbyist scene doesn’t match my personality and I guess I like to play these party boys like slot machines, perhaps that’s what it is that I am addicted to.  I like to be the dominant collector of their consensual submission.   I have effectively found a home to a specific type of sex work that I have learned how to navigate quite well, how to exercise boundaries, practice plenty of sex worker self care systems.  One of my non profit harm reduction friends worked as a driver at an escort agency and is now an independent filmmaker, a recovered junkie and MARRIED to an escort he used to drive with the agency.  They are making a film about it.  Brad Pitt was once an agency driver.  My life is fucking crazy.  I can be in the underworld and blend into the straight world, and occaisionally flirt with the VIP world all in one week’s time.  I guess that’s why I do.  This chapter of my life clearly is not done.  I want to prepare a different career path while I do agency work just like i did with SWOP-LA.  I was the director of a non profit who went to meetings and training and I was prepping myself to be a full fledged legitimated HIV prevention funded non profit at one point but pulled out to save my soul.  My heart is not in that work.  I am an artist first and foremost.  I must now take my time, money and energy and not codependently work on the problems of other sex workers before I work on the problems of my own life.  I moved down to LA to get involved in the media capitol of the world.  I must now use agency work to do THAT.  My priority before was to use my money to decriminalize prostitution or further sex worker rights in LA.  I am trying to be a singer, a video and film producer, a personality.  I want to to turn this blog into a book and more…I wish there were more options than agency work, and there will always be people who say they don’t feel sorry for you, I have other choices, but I just don’t see them.  Or the opportunities were simply NOT presented to me, because if you think that I don’t try for to find them, you are wrong.  I am an overachiever and workaholic.  Believe me, I try.  Or the way I see the world is simply going to be different than others.  I tried it and I didn’t like it now I must do something else.  Transitions take money.  I create my privilege with this form of sex work.  I have to bust my ass it seems just to be on the bottom edge of being middle class.  and if i let go, like I did when I quit the agency how quickly I fall to stuggling broke ass class.  Hungry and hopeless in no time.  EVERYONE SAYS I HAVE CHOICES, and I guess I’ve already made them, but I never really saw them as choices, because I didn’t create the options, I just made the best of what was presented to me.  I hate the word CHOICES actually.  Hate it.  TEaching high school was not my lifetime pinnacle folks.  There are so many people who actually believe that and chastize me for CHOOSING sex work and sex worker activism over continuing to teach.  I taught high school to round out my activism that was pretty entrenched in sex worker issues.  To me, I became a qualified social justice activist through my experience as a teacher and upon getting my Masters of Ed.     To me the issue was crucial and dire and the sex worker movement needed me to return , and just like any other war needs soldiers, but now I am ready to work on my own battle more directly and thus the meltdown will hopefully have settled by now and I will now meld into a beautiful Phoenix Rising statue from the metal kiln..