CALICO LANE

New York women are well-heeled.  I mean literally.  Not all of them, not even most of them — but an astonishing number trip around these streets in stilettos. I want to know: where do they go in these things?

I think it was in Super Size Me that I first heard the statistic that New Yorkers walk 4 to 5 miles a day.  Google fails me here, but it sounds right. I’ve never lived closer than .3 miles to a subway.  Often I’ll go home-subway-home twice in a day.  Add to that subway-work-subway, and probably subway-dinner-firstbar-secondbar -subway, and I have a solid four miles without running an errand or taking a stroll.

I don’t realize how much I walk at this point, but I have learned to tell visitors to bring comfortable shoes and a waterbottle, because I will walk them like dogs and they will protest like … tourists.

Before I moved to New York, I didn’t understand cobblers.  I owned shoes for years and they never wore out.  Now that I’ve lived here for five years, I take my shoes to the cobbler like my business friends take suits to the drycleaner.  I’ve had all my heels re-capped — multiple times.  I’ve had my boots resoled.

Before New York I didn’t understand how a pair of shoes could break.  I’ve had heels crack and straps snap.  I’ve lost heel caps (which is like nothing so much as a horse throwing a shoe) and found myself limping on the metal shaft (step KLINK! step KLINK!) to the nearest shoe stand.  I’ve destroyed more pairs of flip-flops, sandals and cheap flats than I can count.

We all have that friend who always wears high heels.  Or at least, I think we do: now that I think about it, I have those friends I only see in high heels.  What is their secret?  Do they slip out of their flats a block before the restaurant? (I do.)  Do they take cabs everywhere? (I don’t!) Do they have feet that magically don’t get blisters and pains, or super-expensive heels that somehow don’t hurt?

I understand wearing heels for a special occasion.  Sometimes there are outfits and times that really call for it, and on those times I take a couple of Aleve and hail a cab.  Martinis are my favorite drink for nights in high heels; not trying to be posh, just efficient.  I reach the point of no pain after one, blissful indifference after two, and the point of graceful exit (if I’m lucky) soon after.

Right now I live .6 miles from the train.  It’s become a litmus test for footwear.  I have to ask myself every time I leave the house: are these two mile shoes?  I’ve tried with all my most modest heels, but I have to conclude, if it has a heel, they’re not.

Usually I cope by stashing a pair of flats in my bag, but I just destroyed my last two pairs.  And now it’s getting to be boot weather.  This is especially vexing since I see no way to tuck over-the-knee Fryes into my purse.

My purse is falling apart too, probably from carrying around too many sex toys shoes.

This isn’t meant to be an argument for heel-wearing, which has little to recommend it except vanity.  It’s just … how.  How do you girls do it?  Inquiring minds (and sore feet) want to know.

“I love you, even though you’re a whore.  But can I ever tell anyone about it?”

Maybe that’s why I tell everyone.

I started making latex clothing out of stubbornness.  Surprise, right?  I didn’t like its expensive, impractical and finicky reputation.  In particular I took offense to the notion that it could only be made by skilled craftspeople working in top-secret European laboratories.

My second dress.  The less said about the first, the better.

Like most craft projects, it took more money and time than I expected.  Also cursing, tears, blisters, and the demise of several acrylic fingernails.  But I feel pretty good about making latex now.  I’ve had a handful of custom-made garments I could never have afforded otherwise, and hours of fun.  You may, of course, define fun differently than I do.

My second dress. The fit is better and I have attempted a buckled halter strap (which you can’t see under my hair).  The pink latex from my failed first dress reappears as “stitched” applique at top and hem.

I acknowledge that latex looks best when made by skilled craftspeople. But most of us aren’t skilled enough to know the difference!  If you’ve graduated kindergarten, you can make latex clothing.

Please don’t sue me, Sanrio!

If you want to start making latex clothing yourself, here’s how to do it:

Buy your supplies at any craft store or order online.

• Rubber cement and thinner. I use Bestine, but Elmer’s brand works as well.
• A self-healing cutting mat.
• An Olfa or similar quality rotary cutter. DRITZ WILL NOT HANDLE LATEX. Ask my nascent carpal tunnel how I know.  (Check out this OLFA kit on Overstock!)
• Silver Sharpies for marking

You probably already have these items:

• Paper towels or lint-free rags.
• A tiny dish or Tupperware for your glue.
• Paintbrush, or credit cards or business cards cut into lengthwise strips (very satisfying!)
• Something to roll your seams.  You can buy a brayer, but I made many dresses without one (see also: nascent carpal tunnel).  Good substitutes are pill bottles, water bottles, or tennis balls: anything round, hard and small that you can use to roll over your seams.
• Plastic to cover your seams.  You can buy cling wrap, but I prefer to use plastic grocery bags cut into strips.  They’re free and it keeps the plastic bag population manageable.

Start with Making Latex Clothing, a blog run by the fabulous Latex Kitty.  She has tutorials on every skill you’ll need to construct clothing, including zippers, ruffles and gathers, applique and edging.  I won’t duplicate them here.

If you’re in North America, order latex sheeting from either MJTrends (cheaper, but not as nice) or Kink Engineering (slightly more expensive, but much nicer, and a beautiful selection of colors).  Spend your money here.  You will screw up several garments, so don’t set yourself up for heartbreak by starting with one yard.   Start with two or three yards of black .45mm.  If you like colors, pick two or three and order one yard of each.

Every time I make a latex order, I try to include one new color.  I make a new garment from it (or try at least) and if I fail it simply becomes a new color in my applique arsenal.

When your stuff arrives, START SLOWLY.  Making Latex Clothing has great beginner projects, like a tank top or fingerless gloves.  I don’t recommend panties as a first project because hips (and butts and bellies) are squishy.

You can draft your patterns from scratch if you know how, using your measurements and latex stretch factors, or start with an existing pattern and modify it.  I think the biggest factor in stepping up your latex clothing game is fitting and patternmaking.  I was very bad at it when I started.  I am now somewhat less terrible.

I’ll leave you with some tips I learned the hard way:

• Don’t wash your latex sheeting until the garment is completed.
• Let your seams dry fully before you handle them.  Walk away.  Read a book if you have to.  This will solve most of your pesky curling problems.
• Cover long, unwieldy seams with strips of plastic after they dry.  Peel back the plastic as you join them.  This will keep them from sticking to each other, you, your surface, pet hair, dust, the walls …
• Cover your Tupperware so your glue doesn’t thicken while you work.
• Keep your hands and surface clean, especially if you’re working with light colors or transparents.
• When seaming a transparent to a solid, make sure the transparent is on the inside of the garment.
• Only polish your latex with silicone when you’re sure you’re done working on it. It will be harder to glue things to it.

Happy shinymaking!

Last week at a fetish party, the Doctor tossed me at Miss Millay.  ”What can I do?” she asked.  I looked at her with big googly eyes and said, “Whatever you want.”

I think a metal rod was involved, and nipple biting, and I remember licking the dirt off the soles of her shoes.  She was wearing black pumps.  Patent, six-inch stiletto heel, covered platform.

[Photos by Ian Reid.] At the time I didn’t realize they were being taken.  That was how small my world was.  Shoe sized.

Afterward the Doctor and I went home and had sex.  I don’t remember it all (there were hours, and I was very sleepy) but I do remember him deciding to practice tracheal intubation at, like, 8am.  It would have been more endearing had it not been my trachea.

The aftermath was colorful.

I think I am good with my Dermablend but this was beyond my power to cover up.  Let’s not even start on the open scratches and the scabs on my nipples.  Did I mention she bit them?

Normally I would spend the week in a funk.  I’d stress about money because I wouldn’t be working.  I’d feel guilty and sexually compulsive, irresponsible and stupid.

Of course, after years of being out and proud the only stupid thing here is my hypocrisy.  If I don’t accept that I’m going to play, every time I do is a “lapse of judgment” and it will make me feel awful and ruin all my plans.  When I am having “lapses” month after month I’m not fucking up, I’m just IN DENIAL UP TO MY EYEBALLS.  Sure, this takes pigheadedness and a special hubris, but I am up to the task.

I can only imagine what I will get done when I can plan for the life I actually lead and divert that willpower to something useful.

I have been trying to be kinder to myself and plan for my “lapses”, so while I wasn’t thrilled to be out of work last week, I also wasn’t upset.  Progress! I’m getting close to picking a web designer, I saw the ever awesome Strap-on Jo, I made some new latex, and I even had a kick-ass photoshoot.   If all goes well I should be back on cam by Wednesday!

I am the last to get on a lot of bandwagons.  Recently, webcamming. (I will blog about this.)  Also, I am going to Burning Man this year.  So far this has involved going to dance parties with electronic music, wearing glitter, and making things with hot glue.  Not so different from usual.

I see Burning Man as an opportunity to adopt more nerdy habits.

Me: Will you still talk to me if I ride a unicycle?

Boy: I’m not sure.

Me: What if I ride it in a tiny little bikini?

Boy: I can’t guarantee it.

Unfortunately the Burning Man community seems to be about art, not just LSD and furry legwarmers.  After years of tiresome “erotica” vs. “porn” debates the word makes me break out in hives.

I am reminded of the conversation I had with a Burner dominatrix friend:

Her: I think of sessioning as a type of performance art.

Me: Ha! I don’t do art.

Her: Really. Then what do you call what you do?

Me: Work.

I’d like to signal boost for a couple of events, one here and one in Boston.

In NYC this Sunday is a “Know Your Rights” labor meeting for exotic dancers.  From the Brunch and Bitch website:

At our next meeting, Sienna Baskin from the Urban Justice Center’s Sex Workers Project will be presenting a Know Your Rights training for dancers. Join us for brunch and bring your questions about labor rights, taxes, prostitution laws, and other legal issues.

Sunday May 1, 2011

2 – 4pm

The LGBT Community Center

208 West 13^th Street, between 7^th and 8^th Ave, New York, NY

This meeting is open to current and former dancers who have worked in strip clubs, peepshows, and bachelor parties. Free refreshments, Metrocards, and onsite childcare will be provided.

And in Boston tomorrow night, an event inspired by San Francisco’s very successful Poly Speed Dating: Poly Speed Dating comes to Boston!  If you are interested in supporting the event but are not currently looking for new partners, they are still (as of this morning) looking for volunteers to help run the event, so drop them a line.

I would like to clear up a few misconceptions about Manhattan strip clubs.

I know there are as many types of strip clubs as the day is long, but the popular image of an American strip club seems to consist of three things:

1) The girls pick their own music.

2) Customers tip with ones on stage while the girls are dancing.

3) There is a pole, and the girls dance on it.

Based on these expectations, customers get very confused when they come to NYC strip clubs and then they ask me why my strip club is wrong.  This gets tiresome.  It’s still a strip club — it’s just DIFFERENT.

1) is nominally true in Manhattan.  You can suggest your favorite genres to the DJ, but usually you’ve gotta tip him more for specific songs, and when the club is packed it’s no use trying.  Picking your music is Manhattan is just not a thing like it is in, say, Portland.  MOVING ON.

b) is rarely true in Manhattan.  You can’t sit stageside because there’s usually no tip rail and no seats!  Sometimes an intrepid customer will get up from his table, wind through the chairs and approach the stage, ones in hand, but the girls — considering ones an insult — may leave them on the stage.  I have even seen girls kick them back off.  To me this seems like spitting in the face of the money gods, but whatever — they seem to do juuuuust fine for themselves.

c) Neither Penthouse, nor Rick’s, nor Scores have poles on the stage. FOR REAL. There are strippers without poles! Let me say it again, because it doesn’t seem to stick: Strippers. Without. Poles.  If this still troubles you, I advise you to take a deep breath.  I’m gonna help you work through this.  Wave over a nearby stripper, hand her a $20, look at her breasts, and focus on the tingly feeling in the only pole in the room that ought to really matter to you.

I hope this improves your next NYC strip club experience — and mine.

Please pardon the mess in my bedroom and focus on the hair.

I originally started this blog to connect with other sex workers and share the things we’ve learned.  In the vernacular: the things that your momma didn’t teach you and your girlfriends don’t know.  Some of those “secrets” are unsexy, if useful (how to do an enema, working while you have your period) but some of it is pretty glamorous, like learning how to do your hair and makeup like the girls in the magazines.

In the strip club world there are two ways to do one’s hair: pin-straight, and flowing curls.  Both involve heat styling.   (Unless, in the words of the house mom from the Fancy Club, “you were born with the one and only perfect natural curl”.  I was not.)

One of the few surviving photos of my hair in its natural state.  (Photo by Dov, 2007.)  SHUT UP. We’ve all made fashion mistakes before.

The Angry Stripper has an awesome post on flat-ironing, so I don’t have to write it.  I have been flat-ironing my hair for so long that only a few friends and lovers realize it’s naturally curly.

Sometimes I use smoothing balm, sometimes I use mousse.  I love the silicone sprays (and they’re pretty much all the same) but I’m terrified of turning my hair into an oil slick.  The exception is this Rusk product I borrow from the house mom.  It has a superfine mist and works magic on winter frizz.  A few pumps and I can practically feel the ends of my hair slipping around like a shampoo commercial.

But curling my hair always eluded me until recently.  If you missed high school beauty class, here is how you, too, can have perfect curls:

1. Blow dry hair smooth. Even if your hair is naturally curly, like mine, you need to get your hair smooth.  Sure you’re going to curl it, but the hairs need to be straight in relation to each other.

I use a light mousse all over my hair, mostly on the roots for volume.  You can use a light leave-in conditioner or a heat protectant instead.  The idea is that the product protects your hair from the heat styling to come.  DO NOT USE TOO MUCH PRODUCT, or too heavy a product.  This is a mistake I made for years thinking it would help the curls stay.  It will only weigh your hair down and make it stiff, and the curls will fall out and lack bounce.

Similarly: not all hairspray is equal.  Don’t make loose curls with extra-super-hold hairspray.  It’s for static styles, like updos, and will tangle and weigh down your curls. Flexible hold only!

Some people swear by naked hair, especially for flat-iron curling.  This horrifies me, but who knows what protection that little spritz of silicone really gives you anyway?

2. Crank your curling iron all the way up. Don’t be scared.  If your curls don’t last — or you can only keep flat-iron curls in your hair — you need more heat.

3.  Section your hair and pin/tie it up. I do three horizontal layers, starting with the layer of hair at the nape and ending with the crown.

4. Begin to curl small sections of hair, working from one ear to the other. I keep the uncurled hair on one shoulder and toss the curls to the other, until all the hair has moved from one side to the other.  You may also see steam.  Be brave! It’s all part of the process.

The hairstylist at my first club curled the traditional way:

- Spritz section of hair with hairspray (optional)

- Clamp iron lightly on the TOP of the hair, near scalp

- Run iron lightly and smoothly down the length of the hair, as if straightening, until the ends are just about to disappear into the clip

- Tilt iron so that ends flip out toward the handle of the iron.  Clamp down and begin to roll the entire length of the hair UP the iron, toward the tip

- Wait for 10 count, carefully ease the iron out of the rolled hair, pin in place on head to cool

- When cooled: unpin curls, mist head with flexible hold hairspray, and run fingers through hair.

This is how most people tell you to do it.  It works, I guess, but I find the rolling-and-pinning to be tedious and near-impossible to do on myself.

The hairstylist at the Fancy Club did something I really liked:

- Spritz section of hair with hairspray (optional)

- Run iron down length of hair, as if straightening

THEN! The magic happened.

- About halfway down the hair, let ends fall toward the handle and begin to roll gently up the iron, maybe a couple of turns.

- Lift the clamp slightly — you know, that clicking, duck-beak motion you might do to ease the iron out of your finished curl — but instead of pulling out, slide the iron down a little with the curled hair on it. Now roll up and take up some more hair.  Slide down again juuuust until you have the ends, roll the rest of the way up, hold for a second or two and slip the iron out.

Did that make any sense?

It’s hard to say why it works better — but it does.  You’re basically holding the iron on the hair for the same amount of time.  You’re doing something the whole time, which is nice for the easily bored.  Because you begin in the middle, I feel like you are exposing the hair to the heat more evenly.  Curls I make this way last longer and look more even, instead of having limp middles and crunchy ends.  And they don’t need pinning.

Finish like above, with a little flexible hold hairspray, and run your fingers through your hair to break up the curls. Shine mist optional.

A big curling iron will get you instantly loose, bouncy waves, but it is essential that you curl hot enough, in small enough sections.  On me it likes to fall right out, leaving me neither straight nor curly, but looking vaguely in need of a good hair-brushing.  A small curling iron leaves more distinct and longer-lasting curls.  If you are worried about looking poodle-y, you can curl only the ends or lower half of your hair.

And that’s it for today! Happy curling!

Hi, Calico!

I know that you don’t know me or anything, but I follow you on twitter (I’m [redacted]) and have seen, and thoroughly enjoyed, your work at Kink and Intersec.  I have a girly question, and I don’t know anyone who can give me a good answer.  I’m a 26 year old female and my boyfriend is interested in anal sex.  I am looking forward to it, except that I’m a bit self-conscious about the appearance of that area.  I really like the way that women in porn have bleached the area and make it look nice and presentable.  Basically, I’m wondering how that is done and where (at home or at a salon?)  I’m totally clueless about this stuff and internet searches have not provided any satisfying results.  I am desperately hoping that you will take the time to offer some advice.  :-)

Thank you!

I get periodic readermail like this.  Not a lot. But some.

I do not answer most of my readermail because, while I appreciate it and wish I could help, I am totally stumped. Sample Q/As would go like this:

Q: Will this strip club or that strip club hire me?

A: What did the manager have for breakfast?  Are you having a good hairday?  Does Obama like the gays this week? Fuck if I know.

Q: Should I do porn?

A: Ask your mom. Wait, that freaks you out? Maybe you shouldn’t.

Q: Why am I so guilty about my submissive desires?

A: *dissolves in sobs* Hold me!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome that you guys think I should answer questions, but it’s really for the best that I don’t. I’ve made it four years in Manhattan without any firebombings — not even a malicious break-in! Let’s keep it going.

Since I am hopeless at advice, I recorded a conversation with friend and consultant Only Imagined, who had the misfortune to be on my couch at the time.  Transcript is below the break.

Read more »

I may have mentioned that I strip.

Strippers tend to hop from club to club. We suffer from the perpetual delusion that some other club is better.  I’ve worked at five different clubs in New York and at some point have hated them all.

I have many theories about this, but foremost: I think earning potential and job satisfaction are directly related.  Here, I drew you a pretty graph:

(I doubt this is unique to strip clubs.)

On the low end, there was the dive bar in Brooklyn whose only rule about stage shows was that I could not text.  On the high end: the ritzy club where I was compelled to fake tan, wear false eyelashes, and have panic attacks before every shift.

I have a love-hate relationship with stripping.  I make so much money, but it stresses me out so much.

I don’t make friends at work because no one speaks English in the dressing room.  I have to be high-maintenance girly in a way I hate, and hate funding.  I have to be extroverted and pushy with strange men, drunk men, men in packs, men in sports jerseys — types of men I usually avoid.  (Nothing personal.)  The night shift makes me unhealthy and unhappy.  I have an imperfect relationship with alcohol.  I  have class issues with both the customers and the strippers.  Hilariously, I would be happy to have sex in the champagne room, but it will never happen, and that has been divisive.

Right now I am at a lower-end club that I picked for its day shift.  I’ve averaged $300 a shift.  It pays my expenses and lets me save, but it doesn’t feel secure because I’ve had days where I left owing money.  I guess that’s what “average” means.  I also guess what I want in a club is to feel secure.

I do find the VIP payout at this club insulting.  I can’t say it’s objectively too low — I don’t think it’s wrong to do anything for a certain price — but it’s an insultingly low percentage of what the customer pays.  Since the club makes more than twice what I do on a VIP room, they’re really interested in getting me to do it.  I’m not.

All said, though, I love my day shift.  The hours cut down on heavy drinking, large parties of men, large parties of drunk men, and large parties of drunk jersey-wearing men. I sleep well, see sunlight and feel like a normal person.  I’m happy.

But I’m not making crazy stripper money.  Just normal stripper money.  Unreliably.

And I look at other clubs with big green stripper eyes and it EATS MY SOUL.

This is the conversation I have been having with myself all week, ever since my club dicked me around with a VIP client in a spectacularly nasty way on Monday.

Good Calico: You should stay for at least a solid month.  There’s no way to know if you really make money if you don’t have sufficient data.

Bad Calico: But those other girls at the Fancy Club are MAKING MONEY. RIGHT NOW.  I could be making that money if I were at that other club.

Good Calico: You could be hiding in a corner, watching thousands of dollars slip past you into the manicured hands of an army of fierce Polish fembots.  That sort of happened at your last club.  Maybe you forgot.

Bad Calico: But this time it’ll be different!  I’ll channel my inner entitlement.  I’m channeling it right now.  I’m going to get acrylic nails and hair extensions and a Chihuahua puppy to carry in my Louis Vuitton handbag and I will be SUPERSTRIPPER and men will give me ALL THE MONEY.

[Actual purse-puppy from the dressing room of the Panic Attack Club.]

Good Calico: …

Bad Calico: I mean, once I get hired and start making all that money.

Good Calico: You are never going to want those things and you will always be way too practical to buy them.  How do you think a high-pressure club is going to be different this time?

Bad Calico: I’m embarrassed to be not making that money as we speak. It’s DEMEANING.  It’s UNFEMINIST!  HOW CAN YOU STAND IN THE WAY OF MY FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT?!!  I cannot abide another second in this crappy club.

Good Calico: Leaving this club prematurely is really rash. It makes ends meet. You don’t mind showing up to work. You can’t put a price on that.

Bad Calico: I hate that I am NOT MAKING MONEY. And that makes me STUPID. And INEFFECTUAL. Which I am not, AM I, so I obviously need to be MAKING MONEY.

Good Calico: If you dash off right now, it will be awkward.  You won’t want to come back because you hate awkwardness.  You probably won’t even wait to make a story about going on vacation, and then the club will give you a hard time, and it will be super awkward and you’ll never be able to make yourself work here again.

Bad Calico: But the other club is going to be SO AWESOME with all its MONEY that I’ll never need to work here again!  I’ll be embarrassed to have worked here in the first place.  We should get in the habit of pretending it never happened.  Like, yesterday.

Good Calico: *sigh*

So basically, I’m breaking my vow to work all of February by the end of the first week: I’m taking off to audition tonight.  For shame!  The club I want to try hired me once, but you never know.  I’m half hoping they won’t take me and I can go back to my day shift in peace.

I really didn’t know what was going to come of the rape post.  I learned at some point to only blog things to which I expected people to respond positively.  This was a direct violation of the rule.

Many people were supportive: on Twitter, via email and in person. It got linked a little.  That was all nice.

Weirdly, I do feel better.  Can it be that easy?  I used to feel like being alone with it was eating me.  In its absence, I feel a little lighter.

The funniest response came today, proving that fetishists can co-opt absolutely anything.  I just can’t figure why me.  Is this a regular reader of my blog (and God, why?)  Did he Google for some likely phrase like “angry about rape”?  It just seems too coincidental.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the Wank Letter, here is a classic example of a fake from this week’s Savage Love column (second down).

I love Dan. Sure, we have our differences of opinion, but he is a man of great wisdom and little tolerance for bullshit.  While I lack his wit, I’m going to reply in kind to the gem that landed in my inbox today.

I’m a sexually sadistic Dom.  I don’t understand why females have a problem with rape so long as the guy didn’t have an STD.  I’d like to make an extreme revenge video for adult female survivors of sexual abuse, incest and / or rape where they get to see a real rapist and sex offender punished and raped.  I’d like to find a survivor of sexual abuse, incest and / or rape with a lot of anger towards males and an extreme revenge fantasy who would allow me to be a stand-in for the male who abused her.

I raped my sister and her playmates all the time we were growing up.  I feel a lot of self-hate, self-loathing, shame and guilt.  All I feel is a result of societal values.  Intellectually I understand rape is wrong.  But on a visceral level I don’t understand why females make such a fuss about it. I’ve been in therapy all my life.  But still can’t understand why females make such a big deal over rape.

Michael

Michael, darling.  It’s good of you to get back in touch!  We had that session where you told me about your systematic childhood sexual abuse by your sisters, your aunt, and eight neighborhood women.  They liked to quote Gloria Steinem while forcing you to clean the house nude and, inexplicably, tease you with their stockinged feet.

No? Was it was your cuckolding ex-wife who ruined your life (and warped your sexuality) and now you have to see pro-dommes to get off? It’s easy to get mixed up.  You understand.

Men with fake histories are a dime a dozen in sex work.  Making up a story I have to play along with, whether you think I believe it or not, is a cheap way to feel in control of  a vulnerable situation.  Fake fetish-genesis stories are even more common (”She knew exactly what she was doing to me while I watched her through the window …”).  Much easier to be a victim than a pervert.  It always annoyed me, but as long as I didn’t feel outright mocked, I was willing to allow people the crutch they felt they needed.

This, though, this is another level. You want to get your rocks off by provoking someone who is so angry, so broken, she’s practically forced to deliver the sexual “punishment” you crave so much. I assume this is supposed to be empowering and cathartic the way that force-feminizing a man and “treating him like a whore” is supposed to be empowering and cathartic.  In other words, it’s not.

Side note: as someone who’s spent a tremendous amount of time, effort and heartbreak trying to come to peace with her own submissive desires, I just gotta say … you are one lazy, contemptible motherfucker.  Maybe there’s a genuine desire to suffer under your misogynistic little fantasy.  Maybe there’s not.  But until you sort it out and start regarding women — your potential partners included — as equals and people, you’ll never know.

Happy trolling!

[Looking back at my drafts has reminded me how much stripping sucked for me from the very beginning.  I wrote this after my first weekend at my first club. I usually describe that weekend as the "one glorious weekend" -- where I'd never stripped before and banked like mad -- but as I recall, it wasn't that glorious.  It involved me breaking down in tears in the dressing room, blisters on my feet, and general misery.]

Is it worth it? I don’t know yet. It’s worth it if it ceases to bother me, and it’s not if it doesn’t.

It’s just… shitfuckhell. I forgot how big and scary and cold the world is.

I went back to my boyfriend’s place and I told him I was thinking of quitting pro-domming. The money was so good, I said. Crazy. Unbelievable.

I had never considered leaving pro-domming before, and it was a scary and wonderful concept. I thought about the exhilaration of a professional session: the equipment, the time, the focus, all the things money can make possible. Then I thought about taking back sex for me and me alone.  I wanted that so much I could barely breathe.

Of course, I couldn’t quit sex work, but stripping was a different prison.

Yours could be, I said to my boyfriend, the only penis I ever have to see again.

Would you like that? he asked.

Maybe, I replied. Distantly we were both aware that I would want to fuck other people, but I had burnt out on opportunity. It sounded safe. I wanted safe. Maybe for a little while.

[The next week, the economy crashed. Q.E.D.]

I arrive at work at 6pm with my makeup and one dress in my bag.  I have worked in this dress all week.  I only own two, really.  Each club has different requirements for outfits, I destroy them quickly with all the putting on and taking off, and I find them all hideously unattractive — why buy more?

Every day I bring my dress into work, steam it, and put it on with two pieces of jewelry and a matching thong.  Today the house mom decides to take umbrage with my dress.  She points out imaginary stains which, being imaginary, I fail to rectify with a stain pen.  ”Do you have something else to wear?” I don’t.  ”If you want to work, you can buy a dress,” she tells me, and points at the costume rack.  Nothing on the rack is less than $90.

If the choice is buy a dress or go home, I choose to buy it, but I’m annoyed.  Only one fits me, a Spandex tube dress that I know cost $10 in materials.   It would have cost me $45 from my costume lady in Boston.  A 200% markup on *that* is insulting.  $90 is a lot in normal people money!  I’ve never owned a pair of jeans that cost $90.  I’m pissed but I know it’s useless so I try not to think about it.

I finish my makeup and go onto the floor, where I will sit and sip soda water and wait for customers.

Only a couple of men come in.  They seem to be regulars.  The host whisks them off to VIP or to the bar, where the girls dote on them like pets.

There’s a girl working tonight who I know from my old club.  We chat and she catches me up on all the club gossip: it’s slow, they have a hundred girls on shift, there’s no money.  She isn’t doing so hot.  She has a court date at 8am tomorrow to testify as a witness to a murder.  She looks tired and she tells me she is discouraged.  Usually I have the market cornered on morose.  I feel really bad for her, but at the same time, not being the most miserable person in the strip club is perversely cheering.

At 9:30 I talk to my first customers.  I make money very slowly.

A girl at the bar decides to be friendly with me.  When I tell her that yes, I’m new, she takes it as an invitation to give me advice.  ”You’ll be back at [your old club],” she informs me.

“Yeah?” I decide to treat her like I do customers when they say offensive things to me: I smile and nod.

Maybe she picks up on it.  She backpedals.  ”Well… maybe you’ll stick it out here.  You’ll learn a lot. I had to learn when there was no money.”

Wow. My heart is filled with optimism.

By 1:30am I am starting to feel tired. I go to the bathroom and count my money in the stall.  There isn’t a lot of it.  I know I should go back on the floor, but the conversation with the girl has really thrown me.  I feel discouraged and I want to give up, call the night a financial loss and go home.  Maybe I just can’t hack it here.  I’ve been working well today — talking to everyone, in a good mood.  I was supposed to go to VIP today, damn it.  Even if I had wanted to throw in the towel now, I can’t leave.  I literally don’t have enough money for house fee, tip-outs and the $90 dress.

At 2 things start hopping.  There is a blissful period where I am being passed around a table.

At 4 the club closes.  I tip out in the dressing room, which is always a little painful, and then I count my remaining money. $300.  It’s not great, but I’m pleasantly surprised.

I am two avenues away when I realize that I paid for that $90 dress, bringing my earnings from “borderline” to “halfway decent”, and my mood turns from despondency to righteousness.

My train station is closed.  Thanks, New York, for your service cuts!  It’s still too early for trains to be running for the morning commute.  I walk the additional half-mile to the next line.  All the breakfast carts are being set up and all the men in them think I am cute and that I should stop and have coffee, but to my heartbreak, no one is serving eggs.

I wait for a hungry eternity for my train and get home with my egg sandwich at slightly after 5:30am.

I showed up to the club that night looking impeccable in my heels and corset.  Underneath, I hadn’t shaved in two weeks.  I had more fur hidden away in my comfy cotton panties than I’d sported since 2005. Never let it be said that I don’t keep it real, kids.  To say that I was not goal-oriented about getting laid would be a drastic overstatement.

Of course, the host decided to introduce me to the doctor that night.  The doctor was young and good-looking and best of all, had come with faded blue scrubs as his pajamas.

I was stupid with sleep by the time the three of us wandered down to the basement. When our host began to tie my hands, I giggled.  The doctor clicked a shackle on my ankle.  Ha, funny! I thought. They’re colluding. How cute.  Any minute now they’ll be done.

The two of them found a pair of clover clamps and settled them on my nipples. This was much less funny.  Then our host duct-taped my mouth, and I sobered up in an instant as he pinched my nose closed, cutting off my air.

“You want to fucking scream for help?” he asked. “Go right ahead. No one’s going to help you.”

It was true. How often is that ever true in Manhattan? I could barely get air through the tape.  So he covered that, too.

When his hand left my face, the doctor pinched my nose before I could draw a breath. “The best part of this is, he’s a medical professional,” said our host.  “He knows exactly how bad this is.”

“Yeah,” said the doctor nonchalantly. “It’s very dangerous.”  He pressed my head back into the table, his palm sealing my mouth and nose. “There are all sorts of risks.  You should really never cut off someone’s air.”

Our host began to read the doctor my resume, too; I suppose one must always have introductions.  But his praise embarrassed me.  He was not amused to hear me use my precious air to snort.  “Learn to take a fucking compliment, bitch!” He punched my leg with such apparent anger that I scrambled half off the bench.  He broke a clothes hanger on me. I burst into sobs, apologizing from behind my gag.

They turned me to my stomach.  From the sound and feel of it, a medical kit was being spread out on the small of my back.  I heard the crinkle and the featherweight plastic touch of a drape. Then the snick! and peeling sound of sterile packages being opened.  My shoulders were being wiped with something cold, wet, and quick to evaporate.

Our host whispered in my ear reassuringly: “Shhh. It’ll all be over soon.” They were both donning gloves.  I was pretty sure only one of them knew how to do … well, whatever this was.

“You just pinch the skin, right?” he asked.

Scratch that, I was quite sure only one of them knew how to do this.

The piercing felt fascinating.  There were little after-tugs, as if I were being sewn with thread.  Those must be sutures.  The doctor had a delicate touch, even when he was being deliberately ungentle.

He put down his needle and handled me: my jaw, my face.  His gloved fingers pried open my mouth and found a soft spot in the back of my throat. He made the low half-laugh a man makes when he gets his fingers in your cunt for the first time.  “It would be so easy…” he said.

I wanted him to.  I wished I could ask him to push his fingers into me, my mouth, down my throat until my body arched and convulsed like it did when I couldn’t breathe.  In this haze of exhaustion and arousal I felt like all the ways I knew to express desire — put it in, fuck me, fill me up — had gone sideways.

Our redoubtable host, meanwhile, had lost interest.  There was another girl upstairs. “Are you all right alone with him?” he asked me.

“Can I ask you one thing?” I said. He nodded, concern writ across his forehead.  “My right wrist.  I have a hair tie.”

He laughed in my face.  “All of that and what you want is your hair tie? You crazy fucking girl.”

It made sense to me. Definite sweat and tears, incipient blood, possible puke, and no shower?

The doctor was not impressed by the hair tie.  “I don’t know how to work these things. You wanted it, you do it.”  I wormed forward off the bench to free up some slack on my hands, but now weights swung painfully from my clamped nipples, and my hands were tied palm to palm and I couldn’t get them far enough apart to gather up my hair.

He pushed the hair away. “Are these tears?” he asked. “Why are you crying? We’re almost done.”

“My nipples really hurt,” I whispered.

He began snipping the sutures, tugging out a needle here and there.  I felt blood flowing down my sides in warm rivulets.  He wiped my back, stripping gauze from its paper.  It was almost like he’d done this before.

He came around front and began to tug at the ropes on my hands. “I hope I can do this.  I don’t have any clue about this rope stuff.” Possibly I fell in love a little at this moment. “Oh, there it is. This isn’t as hard as I thought.”

I knelt up painfully.  My stomach was covered in a sheet of my blood.  My underwear was stained with it.

When he took the clamps off, I lost it. I rocked on my knees, trying to choke down the sobs.  I was ashamed to meet his eyes in this state.

It occurred to me that I hate – I love – to fail. No matter how game you were, or how tough you are, there comes a point when you are just another cunt who can’t take it.  There is something deeply satisfying in that kind of letting go.  You are still there.  And when I look up, he is still there.

I don’t think I’m really upset about being raped.  I was angry long before anyone touched me wrong.

The first time, and I call it that with some bemusement because I had mostly forgotten about it, was at a sex party.  I haven’t dwelled on that story because it’s embarrassing.  I could barely fabricate a better combination of “asking for it”.  When I tell it, as I rarely do, the response is always: how could you be at an orgy and not know who was fucking you? How could you be so careless and slutty and exposed?  But it happened. And it happened reasonably, as things that really happened do. It was dark, and my glasses were off, and there were eight people on the bed and one was waiting for his turn to piss on public property.

That skepticism bothers me.  Fucking grant me the decency to admit that it was wrong and I didn’t want it and he knew I didn’t want it.  I know that’s harder than believing that someone with a penis just like yours could be such an ass — or believing that it could happen to you.  Or maybe, it’s so easy that it scares you.

When I think about my two incidents I am willing to call rape, I think: do they really matter, in the scheme of things?  I’ve led a very normal life of low-level sexual transgressions, and then a bunch that I didn’t exactly invite, but anticipated, in sex work.  I’ve come to understand that it’s just what men do: not all men, just some men, but potentially any men.  And that makes me mad.

One dick one way or the other is not a huge deal to me.  I’ve had a hundred dicks in me and some of them I didn’t really want but I got paid for it and a couple of them I didn’t want but I was too young and scared to be rude so I just laid there and a couple I was too drunk to remember it all.  Sometimes I was bored; sometimes I felt like doing something dangerous; sometimes I felt like making a bad decision.  But they were all my goddamn decisions.

I’m not mad because it was me, the whore, the tramp, the irresponsible slut.  I’m mad because every other single time, it wasn’t me.  I’m mad because I wasn’t raped on the job.  I am mad because rape happens to everyone, because one in six women has been raped.  I’m mad because if I had toed the line and behaved myself maybe I never would have been raped, and then I never would have had a “valid” reason to concern myself with rape, and that makes me spitting furious.

I’m mad because rape is a boot on the face of my agency.  It’s stepping on my sexual desires with yours. Raping me is not just your greed.  It’s saying my preferences (not only not-with-you, but who and where and how, every other time) are irrelevant. That is fucking insulting.

I’m mad because I know so many women who have been sexually assaulted.  More than I used to. Which means more of them are speaking up, and I want to be one of the ones who is brave enough to speak up.  I’m mad because I’ve seen the vicious and horrible treatment they receive.  I’m mad because when they say “rape” I know what they’re going to hear: Were you drunk? Did you tell him no?  Did your friend really leave you there?  What were you wearing?  Did you take his drugs?  Couldn’t you have hailed a cab?  Why didn’t you go home earlier?  How could you not have woken up, seen him, stopped him, hit him, fought harder, noticed that he wasn’t wearing a condom?

And yeah, sure, bringing this up is unnecessary. And bringing it up is crude.  And bringing it up is going to expose me to unpleasantness.  You know what? I’m over it.

This is not a plea for help.  The people who say talking about sexual abuse is always a plea for help are probably also the people who say talking about mental illness is tacky. All I want to do is put it out there.    If dialogue about rape makes you uncomfortable, if it makes you embarrassed on my account, if it feels like I am lingering on my “victimization” — then good.  I’m doing it right.

And hey, sure, maybe I will “get help”.  In good time. I already know I have your help, and the support of amazing friends.  If you feel absolutely compelled to do something because of this post, and that’s not my intent, please find a worthy cause and donate money.  In the meantime, I know all the right answers.  I know it doesn’t matter that it was a friend because 73% of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows.  I know that it was still rape even though it wasn’t violent.  I know that it’s still OK for me to be upset even though I didn’t file a police report (although I always thought I would do better, but I think deep down, I knew I wouldn’t be any different).

It’s just … I’m angry.  And that will take time, good and bad.

I don’t cry because he stuck his dick in me.  I’m mad because of the people who would rather it go away.  And now, in my own little petty way, this is never going to go away.

I was on the couch today, nursing a prodigious hangover, when up on my Twitter feed popped a new essay from Pepper.  What could be better for nausea and a slowly spinning world than deconstruction? Am I right?!

I can’t read the third paper online because it’s published in an academic anthology called Understanding Nonmonogamies.  Bah.  Will I be killing my credibility to ‘fess up to my lack of library card?

I have greatly enjoyed Pepper’s essays on polyamory theory and organizing. One time in San Francisco I took him out for crepes to see if he was real (although I really needn’t have doubted it — dating poly people in major US cities is like playing degrees of Pepper).  So despite said hangover, and the fact that I should really be writing an essay myself, I started reading.

I definitely have an agenda on jealousy.  My partners frequently feel it and I almost never do.  I try to be accommodating and patient when my partners are jealous, because I know it’s unpleasant; and I realize I can’t empathize with jealousy like normal people, so to be sure, I have to make extra effort on effort. I don’t always succeed.  But I expect my partners to apply the same examination to their own feelings and actions that I do to mine.  Knowing that jealousy is often irrational, to do otherwise is deeply unfair treatment of the one you love; and to enable it when the power dynamics of jealousy are so steeped in suspect gender roles and cultural scripts seems, dare I say, unfeminist.  I view it as my duty as a partner to be understanding and sympathetic about feelings of jealousy.  I get super political about NOT tolerating actions motivated by it.

I haven’t read Foucault, but I could follow along with Pepper’s explanation that “I view jealousy as a social mechanism used for relationships among people, a mechanism that allows people to exert power on each other in various ways.”  If anything, I wanted the essay to be more extensive and academic.  I wanted to see a more strict examination of what exactly is and isn’t jealousy, in terms of behaviors and experiences.  He brushes over the biological vs. culturally constructed nature of jealousy in a couple of sentences in the introduction.  Come on! This is central to my argument that it sucks!  He specifically says “mainstream United States culture”, but I wanted to see a more comprehensive look at cross-cultural constructions of jealousy, in order to unpack ours. Basically, I wanted a book. (For free! On the Internet! RIGHT NOW!)  I haven’t read the two preceding papers so maybe this stuff is covered… but one thing at a time.

He points out some interesting things about the nature of jealousy.  For example, we are loathe to admit jealousy, because then it is open to resistance (i.e. being moderated or labeled unreasonable) and that could sap its power.  So you get situations where you feel totally justified in acting on your jealous feelings, but for maximum justice, you have to claim it’s not because you’re jealous.  Oh my God!  This doesn’t seem like a behavior I can sanction in my open and honest relationships.

But the section on Jealousy and Gender was spot on.  Not so much because it had to do with gender, and that it says women get the short end of the stick, but because it is an examination of how jealousy damages.  If we all have access to jealous power, what’s the big deal, right?

In fact, this may be the first time I have been able to articulate why I get so angry when people suggest that to be sympathetic to jealousy is ALWAYS to some degree cater to it, at least for a little while, even if you feel it’s unjustified –because Jealousy Is Human and Feeling Jealous Really Sucks and That’s Just What Compassionate People Do.  It is because I care that I think catering to jealousy can be wrong.  I see a lot of jealousy as a self-perpetuating symptom and tool of larger cultural problems.

In this essay, Pepper doesn’t really go there.  He’s very careful to say that his essay should not be construed as critical of monogamy (the “culturally hegemonic system of compulsory monogamy” is fair game!) or of people who get jealous.  I do note, though, that he stops short of saying he is not critical of jealousy.

Edit: Whoaaa! Hold up!  I just skimmed the preceding piece, Jealousy and Control, and while some parts were repeated or elaborated on in the much drier web essay, this is what I was looking for. I quote (emphasis mine):

We need to look for solutions to the problem of jealousy. Polyamorous people have already undertaken the project of dealing with jealousy at a personal level.  However, there is a larger project of dealing with jealousy at a cultural level.  We need to expose its problematic nature, draw a link between jealousy and control and another link between jealousy and violence, and work against the strong legitimization of jealousy by providing a counterpoint to the constant refrain of jealous righteousness. The goal here is to reduce jealousy to the level of other emotions, not necessarily to eliminate it or pathologize it.

Um. Yes. FUCK YES. I will wave that flag!

I don’t know if it’s shorter, if it’s because I agree with it, or if it’s because I read the derivative piece first, but Jealousy and Control reads much faster.  I promise.  Go see.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have an essay on transparency to write.

So you may have noticed I play submissive to men.  Lately I am trying to own it more.

But I don’t, in any way, think men are “more dominant” than women.

I believe that if we got over our cultural baggage, we would have as many dominant women as we have dominant men.  I believe that women wouldn’t grow up quashing their inclinations as unfeminine and unattractive, molding their passions into “feminine” channels, feeling isolated and wrong, or assuming they must be butch, queer or even men.  (Not that there is anything wrong with being those things, if you want to be.)

I believe that many things are wrong with femdom and that we need compassionate, realistic archetypes for dominant women before women will want to embody them.  I believe that submissive men can and have to help us toward those archetypes by recognizing the femdom fantasy as shallow and destructive, and doing the equally necessary work of creating themselves — whatever their kink — as strong, desirable, and whole.

When we have done all this, then you can run the statistics and tell me that men are more “naturally dominant”.  Until then — in what fucking nature?

I found some pictures.  Everyone loves pictures!  Here I am recovering from Fetish Factory with normal people, sobriety and an early night.

Gallery at Driven By Boredom

I’m about to start dancing at a new club tomorrow. I’m not going to say which because I kinda like the anonymity.  Also, I’m not sure how social-media-savvy they are, and getting fired from a strip club over my blog might just be a new low.

Oh, and my roommates and I are renewing our lease. Here’s to another year in New York!

From Dear Coke Talk, who may singlehandedly redeem the advice column genre:

I’m gonna go ahead and call this situation the “whore’s fallacy.” It’s that classic false dichotomy between love or money that sex workers insist upon whining about, and it’s total bullshit.

You don’t have to choose between love or money. You can have both.

All you need is the emotional intelligence to engage in sex work safely and thoughtfully, the emotional integrity to choose a boyfriend who is strong enough handle it, and the emotional honesty to be open with him about what you do.

SING IT SISTER!

She says it here.