Category: Advice

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Work Harder, Not Smarter

I recently spent some time away recovering from my wintertime bout of burnout. Amid the long drives to and from and a decent amount of reading, relaxing, and yahtzee playing, I discovered the rejuvenating, relaxing power of plain manual labor.

I didn’t realize how emotionally taxing this industry is. Yes, my friends and colleagues had been stressing the difficulty of emotional labor and I was on board in principle, but I thought myself uniquely suited to it, a bottomless reservoir of emotional energy and presence supporting myself and my clients. When it finally ran out I was absolutely baffled. The slogan I poked at a few weeks ago suddenly made the kind of sense that settles into your gut and finally feels true.

But more on that next week.

I want to first of all brag a little and second share something I’m probably behind the curve on realizing.

I know a few women who show a certain learned helplessness around so-called manly things. Tools and cars and plumbing intimidate them to the point of aversion; they wont even try to troubleshoot an issue before laying at their man’s feet. Between critical reasoning, youtube, and user manuals, I can’t imagine not tackling any problem from properly filling in my eyelashes to replacing broken plumbing.

So I did!! Over the course of several days I helped refurbish, replace, and upgrade four or five half-day projects at the family property out in Eastern Washington. Nothing major, but I learned to install pex tubing, weeded rich, dark flowerbeds, roamed purposefully through the aisles of the local Home Depot, cleaned out a decade’s accumulated debris, and sat back after hours of hard, relatively mindless work feeling like I had just kicked some serious ass.

Why am I even talking about this? First because it’s cool and reinforces my own view of myself as a multifaceted, capable individual. Because for once the physical work wasn’t for anyone but myself, done for no other reason than to get it one. Because this is the first time I’ve felt such a strong contrast between emotional labor and manual labor. Because when working on a project like replacing an appliance, there is a clear end and benefit and you can show it off to others. Because there’s a sense of closure that is immensely satisfying. Because you can clear your mind and listen to the radio while you’re working which you absolutely cannot do in sex work. At least I can’t.

It was a huge relief to zone out and pull plants instead of focusing my attention on a client who needs my presence for all of our time together. I do love my work, but I’ve learned I need to make physical work a deliberate part of my emotional self care moving forward. I’ve signed up for sailing classes, will be researching chair building techniques and locations, and will be taking more half days to get out and complete small projects.

As I said above, I’m amazed and a bit ashamed it’s taken me so long to not only learn the value of a simple job done well but to recognize the effort and energy involved in sex work and value that as well. I’m headed out again this Sunday to get more stuff done! I hope to catch you before I go but if not, Rose can set up a get together after I get back Wednesday.

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Girl Behaving Badly

Ideas sometimes take a scratch before they precipitate and so it was with this one: What would a sex worker’s Union look like?

I got a glimpse of it earlier this week.

I was made aware that there were formal complaints from providers about me. Namely, my tendency to wag my jaw and take my clients past our session deadline. I’ve gotten much better over the last few years but better than awful still isn’t good. When I first started, in my naïve enthusiasm, my clients routinely received two to three hours for the price of one. After I switched to massage and got a place I took that down but still struggled to stick to the clock. Eventually I took the easy way out and just gave up trying to stay on time. I imagined I wasn’t doing anything wrong if I just sat around talking, it was my problem and no one else’s.

Unfortunately, it’s become other people’s problem and instead of risking confrontation, the grieved parties wisely designated someone I’m reasonably close to as their representative. She took me to task, and not gently, either. She outlined exactly what the problem was, how it was effecting people, and what would be done if it didn’t change.

It took me a full day to cool off and several more to work through my feelings. My idea of myself as a supportive community member and consummate professional was shattered; I felt angry, ashamed, sad, defensive, all peppered with a certain amount of self recrimination. I felt like a child who had just been disciplined by her mother for something I should have had figured out years ago and I determined to change immediately. Over the last few days I’ve written, thought, and talked about it almost nonstop and I am now excited moving forward.

So this is what a sex worker’s Union looks like: Several folks getting together and formally complaining to the ‘union rep’ and that rep acting as skilled and passionate intermediary to protect the community from physical, emotional, and financial harm. Not too bad, huh?

I fell into burnout recently, as many of you already know, and took time off. Reflecting on my recent disciplinary action and the reasons I had given myself for my burnout several things suddenly clicked. I’d been far busier than I thought! Fifteen minutes doesn’t feel like a big deal at the time but a weeks worth of ‘just 15 minutes’ is a LOT of time. Talking with a meditation teacher helped me realize just how valuable 15 minutes can be. How valuable one minute can be. By failing to protect my time, I also failed to protect my joy and enthusiasm for my work and for myself. And so I burned out.

I’d like to make a formal apology to the conscientious clients who foresaw this and have protected my time for me; that burden will be much easier moving forward. I’d like to apologize to my colleagues who have experienced bad behavior inspired by my own. I’d like to apologize to my friends who have been advising me of my errors for several years now and have been brushed off. And I’d like to apologize to those who have gotten used to free overtime for setting a precedent that caused discomfort and bad feelings with other providers. Moving forward I pledge to hold our time together sacred; to protect you, myself, and my community as best I can.

To my beloveds who’ve gotten used to long, luxurious get togethers: Good news! We can still have them! But we’ll have to arrange them that way beforehand and stick to the plan. Social time doesn’t have to be limited to only one half hour and doesn’t have to happen inside. A nice long snuggle session is a lovely compromise.

Thank you to my friends who support me, my clients who patronize me, and my Union Rep who Certainly has my respect.

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Sex work is work

I love the slogan ‘Sex work is work’ because it helps reform the conversation from the morality of sexual activity to the labor issues of exploitation and abuse. I think it’s beautiful that it acknowledges the effort that goes into erotic and emotional labor. In this post, however, I’m going to point out the slogan’s biggest weakness.

I don’t really agree that sex work is just like any other service industry. There are enough parallels that, practically speaking, labor rules governing other intimate service industries (massage, mental health, etc) work well here and so on a policy level I think we should frame our arguments from there. Emotionally speaking, it is different.

Pretty much anyone can, with minimal training and little emotional fallout, stock shelves, operate a Zamboni, clean a house, or serve food. Most people in general find service Industries tolerable or at least not morally repugnant. Even if they can’t see themselves behind a check stand, they have no strong moral opposition to someone else doing it. Unfortunately, sex has such strong moral stigma that sex work carries double that.

But not with everyone. Sex workers have a wide range of feelings toward their ‘work sex’ from seeing themselves as a conduit for God’s love to seeing their clients as worth nothing more than the cash they leave behind.
One colleague, talking about seeing a male provider for personal pleasure, put it like this: “With work sex, it’s 90% me, 10% them sweating and grunting. With civvie sex, it’s still 70% me, 30% them expecting me to be grateful for their attention. With a male provider, I get to do exactly what I want and put out exactly as much effort as I want. I don’t have to worry about them ripping off the condom or whether they come or not, it’s all me.”

Another colleague will cancel appointments if she’s not in the mood so she rarely sees full service clients unless she’s genuinely interested in sex. Yet even her ease to orgasm and sexual interest doesn’t satisfy her the way sex with non-clients does. There’s a selfless and perform active aspect to it that makes it distinctly different.

Yet another provider I know is a lesbian and only has sex with men for cash, never for fun. We fall everywhere in between on our feelings toward ‘work sex’ but we all know there’s a difference and we all share one critical attitude: we all consent to sex we wouldn’t normally have in exchange for a financial incentive.

For me, when I was escorting, it didn’t feel different than my ‘regular’ sex because I was banging people who sucked at it. This was before I learned about my body and what it was capable of. If I were to take up FS work again, I’m not sure I’d be able to just show up for whomever and settle for ‘work sex’. Three years ago, I was happily done when he was done. Now, he’s not done until I’m done, and that’s not how sex work works.

So even within my own self, I have complicated feelings around sex. My colleagues all have their own feelings around sex. Our friends, families, and strangers on the internet have their own feelings about sex and until we can acknowledge that feelings are the root of most policy disagreements, we can at least be more thoughtful in our discussions of it.

This is why I have to question the simplicity of the slogan “sex work is work”. I don’t question the truth of it; anyone who has been an erotic services provider whether it’s a porn performer, escort, cam girl, whatever knows that work sex is work, even when it’s awesome. The exclusion of emotional issues around sex gives the slogan a weak point. No one wants to think of the sex they’re having with their partners as work; they don’t want to complicate an already complicated issue and that’s smart.

So how can we strengthen the slogan? Focus on the strength of it: that labor issues are universal; exploitation and abuse is not limited to sex work and this industry can be regulated like many other intimate service industries. So maybe “Sexual service is a service” or “Erotic laborers need labor rights”? Something that acknowledges the difference between the sex you have at home and erotic labor however it’s rendered and focuses on the need for non-criminal regulations to prevent or mitigate abuses instead of painting the entire industry as some combination of morally wrong and inherently exploitative.

Because until you’ve been a provider and had work sex, you can’t know the difference and that’s ok. You just need to listen to those of us who have when we ask for what we need.

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Setting rates is HARD

When I first started full service escorting, I charged 300USD for one hour and 200USD for each additional hour. I chose these numbers after looking at dozens of other websites to see what the going rate was and after reading a bunch of Maggie’s advice columns. I required a half hour of social time, for free, in public in order to reassure myself and sometimes these half hours turned into several. It was a hobby, I felt like I was making huge wads of cash (when normally I only made 10.25 an hour), and my clients seemed satisfied.

When I switched to massage and had no training, I felt self-conscious about my perceived lack of experience and charged 160USD for my first few hour long appointments. This was when Adelle was allowing me use of her incall and helped me gain experience. She was the one who strongly encouraged me to raise my rates and eventually find my own place.

When I moved into my first solo incall it was inexpensive, small, a little dank, and at 180USD I slowly grew my client base and savings account. After a pair of singularly unpleasant client interactions I reinstated my social time requirement. Instead of offering this time pro bono as I had before, I charged a nominal (for this industry) 50USD for it.

That was the first time I felt actually uncomfortable about my rates. I felt guilty that I charged for something I required. To me, 50 bucks was a lot and I didn’t like to feel as though I were taking advantage of my clients’ desire to meet me. I didn’t want them to feel as though I was bilking them prior to a get together and I certainly didn’t want them to feel like they couldn’t come see me because of this one-time deal. But my friends encouraged me so I did it.

After making a few exceptions to my rule and regretting it, my guilt disappeared. I realized that, for me, the social, emotional, and mental connection we establish in those few minutes is not only important for me but creates a much more intimate and fulfilling experience for my client. I have had a few prospective clients refuse to pay for my social time which tells me that my requirement is screening out folks incompatible with my needs.

For my birthday the year after I graduated from Massage school, I bumped my rates pretty significantly. I decided to do it because it was my birthday, I had completed an educational and professional milestone, and looking around at my colleagues, I felt comfortable settling into a higher tier. Having done duos and received bodywork from several other providers, I felt as their equal and chose to change my rates accordingly.

I settled for a year or two there, with my one bedroom apartment well placed and well priced, my squishy comfort zone wrapped around me, happily complacent with a steady clientele and major goals just over the horizon.

Last October a lot changed. I returned from Europe, moved into a smaller yet more expensive space, stayed crazy busy and since then I’ve lost weight, revamped my wardrobe, and my emotional relationship with my offerings has changed. More recently, I had a new photo shoot done, I’m building a new, safer, more sleek website, I’m expanding the ways and places in which we can meet, and beginning to see the outlines of my next goals solidify in the hazy future.

And so we come to my current wrestling match: my thoughts and feelings about my finances. Generally good, don’t get me wrong, but complicated.

You see, I care a great deal about my clients. I recognize that this is, for many, both a luxury and a need. I know some ladies who have charged the same for years and others who charge as much as they think they can get away with and both have an emotionally stable relationship with those rates. I have clients from all over the socio-economic range. For those of you who couldn’t care less what you spend on me, awesome, thank you for tipping. For those of you who save, agonize, budget, or simply consider rates before meeting me, please know that it is not easy for me to set my rates, particularly as they creep higher. It is the reason I added snuggle sessions to my repertoire: to give you a break without taking a hit to my emotional stability and energy levels.

Because emotional stability and energy levels are the base on which my rates sit. In order to be fully present with you and in order to focus on you for hour(s) at a time I have to have enough off time and down time, not just for boring stuff like cleaning and writing, but for emotionally restorative things like receiving bodywork of my own and sharing time and society with supportive friends. As my sense of self grows, so does my sense of what I could ask for.

Providers set rates all over the map for all sort of reasons and I’ve had tons of conversations with my colleagues about why their rates are where they are and how they feel about them. We have to handle a ton of weird stuff and, more than physically, we need to maintain our emotional presence. This post, as written, was about three times as long as the edited version ended up because my colleagues are all over the map in every way and I kept trying to categorize us. Smart, simple; young, old; hot, not; big, small; magnetic, cold; expensive, bargain; every color, every economic background, every idea, every personality, every religion, every sexuality, everything. All magnificent, all desirable, not a single one of them agree on what to charge and why. If I tried to parse out all the reasons they set their rates where they did I’d be writing all day! In the end, it’s all about how we feel.

I’ve tried in this post to give you an insight into how deeply I’m invested in my rates as one aspect of my personal, successful sole proprietorship. In attempting to write it I’ve realized I can’t. The question comes up on provider/client boards all the freaking time and I always want to say something but the things I have to say about it take way too much space. I thought I could address it here but I’ve discovered that I can’t.

So I’ll leave you with this: We are complicated humans with big complex feelings. If you’re not ready or willing to pay what I ask, that’s ok. I’m not mad, I understand many, if not your, reasons why. I get it. I’m definitely on the higher end for bodywork and I’m not done climbing. I feel like I’m worth it for dozens of reasons but this is SUCH a personal industry that while I may be worth it for many, I may not be worth it for you. For you who do come see me, please know that I don’t take it lightly and I very much appreciate my beloveds who have shown me not only respect in honoring all my requests but appreciation for my work.

After all these words only two matter: Thank you.

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Everyday Activism

At the panel a few weeks ago the same question came up in several different forms. One person asked

“What would you say to my intelligent, feminist, female friend when she says all prostitution should be outlawed due to the harms of trafficking and underage workers?”

Another asked

“How do I respond when someone posts and anti-sex work text or link on Facebook without dragging myself into a huge discussion?”

And at the private provider’s social one person asked

“What can I do if I can’t come out as a sex worker to destroy the stereotypes?”

The base of the questions is “What can I do every single day (sometimes as a well-intentioned, middle class person) that doesn’t jeopardize my social, financial, and physical safety?”

Here is what I do.

I am out to my closest friends and some semi-close friends who I knew wouldn’t react too poorly. I am not out at all to my family. To everyone in between, I am out as a sex workers rights activist. I support the Sex Worker’s rights movement, I work as a sex positive massage therapist to sex workers, and I do my small daily part to educate people when it comes up. I do that by admitting that I’m an ally and through my ally-ship I have met actual, real, honest-to-God sex workers and found them to be at the least normal, more often interesting and powerful women. I can talk about SASS and what I learned, the literature out there, the effects of decriminalization in other places, and I’m doing it not from a place of ‘you’re wrong, stranger’ but from a place of ‘dude check this out! I had no idea but sex workers actually care about themselves!’ I find that, as long as it’s not someone with strong moral beliefs, a different perspective from a trusted source (you, their friend) can begin to change the conversation.

So what can you do when someone posts a link on Facebook? First: recognize that they are not your audience. They’ve already made up their mind and while it’s possible you can change it, it’s unlikely. Your audience is not the poster, it is their friends and yours. Engage with the poster, knowing they are providing you a platform on which you can show others alternatives to the narrative. If you’re really serious about it, keep a note on your phone with links to interesting news articles like Liz Nolan Brown’s long form TRB essay or Maggie’s number crunching post. That way you can just copy/paste with a comment.

What can you do in real life? Next time someone makes a ‘hooker joke’ don’t laugh. Next time someone says something you know to be untrue, ask them why they said that (don’t correct them, facts don’t change hearts). If you’re brave, bring up the article you just saw about how young women are turning to camming and ‘sugaring’ to pay for college and how you had no idea it was so normal/widespread. Talk about the panel you just went to and how you met some interesting sex workers fighting for their rights. Send them one of my blog posts with the naughty stories and maybe they’ll stumble on something else interesting (you can play dumb and say you found it linked somewhere and didn’t read the rest of the blog).

The opportunities don’t come up often for me but when they do for you, don’t be ashamed to be an ally. Don’t be afraid to tell people you know real sex workers in real life and they’re actually surprisingly cool. And don’t fight so hard you lose the love and trust of your true friends. First it won’t work and second you’ll lose something important. I want decriminalization (Toni mac’s TED talk is a great link to explain that) but not as much as I want everyone to move forward, together.

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Bridge City Indeed!

I drove to Portland last weekend. I was supposed to take the train but, due in part to my lack of clock-watching abilities and in part to a mud slide, I ended up driving Sunday morning instead of taking the train Friday afternoon. I had one marvelous appointment, took a girlfriend out for phenomenal Russian tapas at Kachka, and had a long and pleasant shoot with the infamous Jughead (newsletter subscribers see them first!).

Complications to the trip have sparked a rash of inspiration and it’s about damn time.

Friday, I was scheduled to leave on the 2:10 train from Seattle to Portland. I didn’t take any appointments, though I perhaps should have, and I hadn’t prepared the day before for the trip, though I definitely should have. I spent the morning taking a long bath, trying on various photo shoot outfits, and listening to an audiobook. Public transit has mostly cured me of my habitual tardiness; if you’re one minute late, you’re twenty minutes late so now I’m (usually) present and ready early. This time, however, I underestimated not only how long it would take me to walk to the station, but had it in my head that the train left at 2:20 instead of 2:10. I simply wasn’t thinking, I was existing in a state of dissatisfied laziness.

When I arrived, sweaty, at the train station to find boarding over, I was furious. At myself for an unforgivable lack of initiative and at my perception of my own lack of accomplishments lately. I hadn’t finished my blog post on time, I haven’t worked on my book in months, I attended but wasn’t useful at meetings and while in reality I have done quite a bit lately, I didn’t feel as though I had. This was the last straw. I changed my ticket to 6p and stalked away, muttering self recrimination under my breath and searching for someone with whom to pick a fight.

My partner is useless for fighting as every jabbing, pissed off text message met with kind understanding and empathy. I couldn’t hit something walking down the street; my vanity won’t let me appear anything but put together in public. I tried to vent to a friend but she wasn’t available for comment. So I mentally wrote the most scathing, ridiculous email in my history and continued my subaudible, vile litany.

Now I’m stalking up the sidewalk in tasteful heels and a backpack, seething, muttering, and deciding to run some errands. After a short stop at my studio I reemerge into the sparkling, gorgeous day and run one errand, try to run the second but the mangey, God-forsaken government office is closed!, and, anger renewed by inconvenient business hours, I settle into a coffee shop close to the train station for tea, pie, and a clacking vent session.

Then my prepayment software fails me. Square cash rejects one client’s payment and I have to scan my drivers license in order to accept another’s. I can’t find it. The rejected client cancels his appointment. I’m frantically texting and calling the woman I’m renting a work space from and then I get a call from Amtrak. The trains are all canceled until Sunday.

Fuck. Me.

This is when I start crying. Frustrated, angry, on the verge of cancelling the entire trip, everyone else trying desperately to cheer me up and offer options, and disappointed by the pie. It was really good pie but I’ve been spoiled by perfect pie so to me, I’m a girl at a table in the corner, crying over delicious tea and mediocre pie.

I almost canceled everything. I’m so close to fighting with my friends and blowing off clients that I feel I’m an emotional danger and I almost start making phone calls. But I said I would be there and so, after a few hours of writing to blow off steam (I will not be publishing that, haha) and a long, familiar bus ride home, I spent a decent chunk of time working on my new website and feeling like I’m accomplishing things.

The next morning bright and early I get ready to drive to Portland. I need to be there no later than noon so 7:30 and I’m up. Everything is ready to go in the car, I fill up the tank…. And my tire’s almost flat. And the gas station’s air pump is broken. Sigh. Whatever. I fix it and I’m on the freeway by 8:15. It rained the entire drive.

I don’t feel like a real person until 1. I’m sitting on a lovely chaise longue in a dim, quiet room, sipping coffee and eating lunch from the salad bar next door. I’ve got a client in an hour, a shower is waiting for me, and life feels normal again. After that the whole trip was a smashing success.

That said, I am hesitant to return. My friends come to Seattle, though not often, I won’t need or want another shoot for nearly a year, and trying to schedule clients in Portland is like pulling teeth. No one wants to screen, no one trusts my reputation, and no one wants to pay full rates. I feel, with the one notable exception, disrespected and under appreciated and why would I put up with that when you guys are so overwhelmingly delicious!?! I think if I can get a crew to go work a club for the night that could be fun but I’m really not excited about another trip.

Maybe next time I’ll go to Vancouver.

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John School

I don’t like it. I think the idea is stupid and condescending. I hate the thought of some government flunky ‘educating’ my beloveds into never seeing me or my friends again. I love my clients and would never want them to see me as a passive victim caught up in ‘the patriarchy’. I don’t want them arrested, I don’t want them scared, and I certainly don’t want them ‘reeducated’ into somehow seeing themselves as broken for coming to see me and my colleagues.

That being said, I did just read an interesting article. Www.gq.com/story/cure-men-who-pay-for-sex-end-prostitution. I was prepared to be outraged, as usual, by some well meaning but misguided government agent shaming clients for seeking out providers to meet their needs. The headline ‘can we cure men who pay for sex’ is disgusting, as if the safe and professional answer to a natural human urge were a disorder. I was not prepared to agree with the heart of the article.

The article’s author observed and related one of the sex buyer reeducation programs here in King County. Apparently they’re a little different than most in that they don’t stick entirely to the fear and shame campaign most ‘classes’ offer. They talk about sexual harassment, women’s safety, emotional stability, healthy relationships, different ways of loving all the people in their lives… putting their decision to seek a sex worker in the context of their emotional health. It sounded surprisingly helpful and honest, if misplaced and condescending.

Connor Habib once said that what we need in the US isn’t more sex education, it’s intimacy education. While I don’t agree in the slightest that seeking sex workers is in itself a natural byproduct of ‘toxic masculinity’ I do agree that men could use a hand learning more about women’s experience. I wish this guy teaching this class would focus his efforts on getting his intimacy education classes out into the public instead of targeting men seeking sex workers. Partly because many men who would never see a sex worker need this education as much as those who do and partly because many men who see sex workers are already getting that education… From their provider!

To any readers who have been through ‘John School’: I hope that you found something valuable but if, as is likely, all you found was shame and anger, please know that it’s wrong. Seeing a consenting adult sex worker can be incredibly healthy and healing and it certainly doesn’t mean you aren’t a respectful, ethical, sexually realized person.

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Seattle Alternative Advertising

Under continued political pressure, Backpage, a popular advertising site, has disabled their adult services section, much as Craigslist did some years ago. Maggie McNeil will be writing about it in tomorrow’s column with her trademark exhuberance and is going to publish an exhaustive list of advertising alternatives. Her readership is far broader than mine and so I will leave the exhaustive listing to her and focus this post on the most important thing: me.

Backpage has a bad reputation in Seattle. The popular (read: loud) opinion on discussion forums I read is that the providers are subpar at best and the clients are irritatingly shallow. However, having spoken to above average ladies who use it, I understand it is not only useful but with careful presentation can reach great clients. It’s an international platform that offers no-nonsense advertising for low initial cost. A lot of people used it to find clients online, thus staying safely behind closed doors. Some good friends of mine and many more acquaintances and sisters will see a sharp drop in their income surely within the month but probably sooner unless they can find alternative effective advertising venues.

And so we met.

Sol Finer, Sola Love, Savanna Sly, Maggie McNeil and representatives from CoSWAC and the Gender Justice League met with a group of around thirty providers to discuss short and long term options. There are incredibly long lists at the following places:

Saucysayswhat.tumblr.com

http://thecauldronnyc.com/backpage-alternatives/

maggiemcneill.wordpress.com

But the big question is: which ones are any good and, for those of us here in Seattle, where are all the ladies going?

The first alternative that comes to people’s minds is TNA. Some love it, some hate it, but it is an alternative, it’s hugely active, and it’s free to join. I am registered and marginally active on Eros, P411, Slixa, The Hobby Hunter, and TER. You can also follow your favorites on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook; some ladies update availability and other such fun things. My most effective tool is my newsletter, thank you those who’ve subscribed. I’m going to go down this list and talk a little bit about each option, how providers can use them, and how clients can most effectively use them.

TNAboard

Cost:

Free for a basic provider membership, 50/month for a premium membership. The difference is whether or not you can have a signature and how often you can advertise. I’m not sure whether/how much clients have to pay for membership but premium status allows you to, for example, post comments of advertisements and in the Ladies’ Lounge. It’s not necessary.

Difficulty:

Providers need to submit a picture of their face with the date and their username visible to the moderators for verification. They can voluntarily submit a photo of their photo ID with all information except the DOB and face shopped out in order to become ‘TNA verified’. The process isn’t too time consuming and there are photo blur apps available for smartphones so you don’t need a computer.

Region:

TNA covers pretty much the entire West Coast as well as a few major cities across the country. It’s most active in Washington and california.

Vibe:

TNA is well known as the wild west of message boards. There are vehement opinions and drama galore but if you generally avoid the message boards and only advertise the clients will find you.

How to:

As a provider, this board allows you to build a brand. You can chime in on any of the many topics that pop up. If you find you like the conversations and can easily jump in, no problem. If you find them too aggressive, do this: comment only on topics you find genuinely interesting, read only the first page of comments, craft a careful reply to the original point, and only pay attention to respectful replies (they happen on occasion). You’re creating a paper trail of your opinions on things like social time, lingerie, favorite activities, interests, and more importantly how you conduct yourself. Clients will post reviews unless you specifically ask them not to. It is helpful to reply to the reviews with a personal comment as soon as you can, while you still remember the interaction, to serve as a record for future providers who may see this client. I, personally, will only comment if I know the client quite well and have no reservations about recommending them. Otherwise I use reviews and vouches as a potential reference list and will try to email for more information.

As a client, if you would like to interact on the message boards it can be fun sometimes but the easiest way to use TNA is simply to browse the ads. When you see something that catches your eye, you can use the advertiser’s profile to view their post history, reviews, profile, and contact information. There is a handy ‘to do list’ function that saves profiles to a list for easy access later. It’s useful because the search function and memory are both unreliable but do note that the provider gets a private message notifying them of your action.

 

EROS

Cost:

Starts at just over $100/month but goes up quickly when you add categories. I had some success with it several years ago but haven’t used it in quite a while. When I did use it I got two or three inquiries per week.

Difficulty:

You may have to submit a photo of your ID for age verification if the reviewer thinks you look under 25; they take no risks with underage workers. Also, be very very very careful with your wording. They will censor anything but the vaguest of euphemisms. Browse other ads to get a sense of what is allowed, be vague, leave the more explicit talk for your private website or better yet, for pillow talk after your session.

Region:

International, and you can advertise when you’re visiting as well. They take requests, too, if you can get enough people together to all ask for the same city they will add it to their listings.

Vibe:

It’s only advertising, no reviews, no discussions, but it looks very sleek and classy. I personally recognize a few dozen of my colleagues and friends; EROS has the highest concentration of former TRB advertisers here in Seattle.

How to:

Providers simply create an ad, pay via bitcoin, money order, or credit card (no prepaid cards anymore), and post. You can set it to auto-update even so you just set it and forget it. It requires no maintenance and is probably the simplest advertising venue, if expensive right up front.

Clients simply browse and follow the instructions in her ad, the end.

 

Preferred 411

Cost: free to join, it costs credits to actually advertise but I’ve never advertised on P411 before, simply maintained a profile. Logging in every week or so bumps your profile higher on the list and makes you more visible or you can stick your profile to the top by paying up to 100/month via bitcoin, credit card, cash, or money order.

Difficulty:

You have to submit three photos: one of your ID, one of you holding your ID, and one of you holding a paper with your name, the date, and your application number on it. Again, they only need your photo and DOB so blur out the rest of the information on your ID.

Region:

International

Vibe:

P411 is mostly a verification site. Members have varying levels of verification and can ‘OK’ each other. I use the OK list to choose reliable references and will email them for personal references. DO THIS! I have seen clients on P411 with multiple OKs from reputable providers, friends of mine even, for whom I would very much like to give actual references for. It also doesn’t tell you how old the OKs are and people change so it’s always a good idea to follow up.

For clients, this can be a good way to streamline the review process. The site asks for some level of verification from you, I believe you have the option to submit employment information to get verified by this third party service so you might not have to disclose that information to your providers, it depends on their personal policies. In any case, it’s one place to browse for providers in the area you’re looking for, although their information might be out of date.

 

SLIXA

Cost:

Free to have a profile but all advertisements cost credits and no one sees your profile until you have an ad. Credits are 1:1 USD and the most basic ad is 2 credits per day.

Difficulty:

Easy as pie. Fill out the profile, pay for the ad, you’re done

Region: International

Vibe:

Similar to EROS

How to:

Similar to EROS; no client/provider interaction, only advertising. It’s acutally a very slick website but I’ve heard from others that it’s slow. It’s run by a former sex worker, however, so we’d like to patronize it if possible.

 

The Hobby Hunter

Cost:

A bit less than 200/year but you can do it in smaller incrememnts. Paid for by money order.

Difficulty:

It wasn’t difficult for me in the month or so after TRB went down but it’s a small board run by one woman so the backlog seems to be slowing registration to a crawl. That being said, setting up your profile isn’t difficult and, while it’s not perfectly intuitive, once you get the hang of it it’s easy to navigate.

Region:

Primarily Portland. It’s a slow board but they have established a Seattle section and if we can gather steam it could turn into a viable option.

Vibe:

Super nice. Reviews and forums are available but everyone is terribly respectful and encouraging to each other. It reminds me of the way TRB used to be.

How to:

There’s a chat function which is kinda fun as well as the various forums. If you’re looking for a high energy place, this is not it. I can’t even think of strategies to stand out from the crowd; there is no crowd. If you’re already a member or can become one in the near future, it’s more a place to go and chill than a place to rake in clients. Clients, it’s nice place to interact with relaxed providers in a setting of cameraderie but unless you’re headed to Portland or Vncouver, very few Seattle ladies are currently advertising there.

 

The Erotic Review

Cost:

Free for providers and clients to have a basic membership, paid for premium. I’ve never paid for it so I don’t know payment options or price. Providers can see VIP details of their own reviews though they may have to spend some time working with the mods to attatch the right reviews to the right profile. Clients can get premium membership by posting a review of a new lady but not by posting a second review of the same lady.

Difficulty:

No verification needed, only you might need to contact the moderators if you’re just signing up in order to connect your reviews and profile with your account. You cannot set up your own profile, the first client to review you fills out all the details, meaning if you’d like to explore this option, choose a client you like and trust to set you situation up for you.

Region:

International

Vibe:

TER is run by clients, for clients. Providers can post in the discussion forums but they’re not sorted very well so you’ll be interacting with people you may never meet. The review structure is the most contentious part. Providers who don’t offer the full range of services including unprotected oral sex, PIV sex, kissing, etc cannot be rated higher than 7/10, meaning the most mind blowing, earth shattering, life changing erotic bodyrub you’ve ever had won’t be ranked as high as a mediocre blowjob. Also, clients are rewarded for new reviews of new girls so it encourages many short interactions instead of long term relationships which goes against the grain for many.

How to:

Providers who are not yet on TER: it’s out there and it can work for you. Create your profile, share it on your website or in your email footer, and keep an eye on it. This is the only site where reviews can be your friend so you need to be proactive. Encourage one new client per month to write a review; it bumps you to the top of search results and will often generate a new client or two. If you are one who doesn’t like reviews, make it clear beforehand because they are difficult to remove.

Clients can help providers here by writing respectful, moderate reviews of ladies you know. You can write more than one review of the same lady. I suggest one new review per year since dynamics can change over the year. I also suggest emailing your provider the text of your review prior to submitting it to make sure it doesn’t upset her or reveal something she’d rather keep between you two. As far as using it yourself, the search function is reasonably useful and while the Seattle advertising section is slow, it picked up after TRB went down and may do so again in the next few weeks.

 

And as a footnote: Providers have been advised to advertise in the ‘professional services: massage’ and ‘personals’ sections of backpage. If you liked the immediacy of backpage, you can look there for familiar faces. I personally am going to move towards SLIXA for several reasons: it’s reasonably priced, the website looks good, and it’s owned by a former sex worker. I’ll be directing my fellow providers there and to the personals sections of backpage.

 

I’d write more but it’s quite late and I’m tired. Please feel free to leave comments below with your thoughts on the events and alternatives. I’m going to publish now and proofread Saturday, sorry for any mistakes.

 

One last thing: Our community rallied immediately. We are so fortunate to be in a place where crises like this bring us together instead of fracturing an already vulnerable community. I’m hoping we can ride this wave and move forward.

Posted on

Craft? Calling?

I have a friend. He’s nice, painfully intelligent, not always intuitive when it comes to human relations, and recently spent some time in Seattle. Part of the reason for coming to Seattle was to sleep with a mutual friend. She’s a safe person to experiment with and attractive in body and mind so it made sense for him to fly halfway cross the country for a shag.

You see, my friend has had a short string of sexually unsatisfying relationships and had convinced himself that he was broken. Even our safe mutual friend didn’t result in the kind of fireworks he’s been told casual sex brings. His sexual history is at best mediocre and at worst actively traumatizing.

As the resident sexpert and friend, I was consulted over tacos and beer. Through euphamisms and shy, circular innuendos he told me that he was disappointed in the sex he had had with our friend. A few drinks later we got into more detail and I realized that I knew exactly what he was talking about. More importantly, I knew why he was so confused.

 

Girls Talk
Girls Talk

We women talk about sex ALL the time. Women talk to each other about how many, how big, how long, how funny, and most of all how bad our lovers can be. In my social circles it’s rarely painful but we accumulate funny stories and share them to relieve tension and build friendships. Girls are used to non-orgasmic sex, we’re used to bad lovers and men who push too far too fast. We’re used to having sex when we’re not really in the mood. We see it in media, hear about it from our friends, and live it. Boys don’t.

My friend had been having what I call maintenance sex. Maintenance sex is sex you have when you’re not really interested in the sex but you’re interested in the sex having been done. Sometimes it’s to connect with your partner, sometimes it’s to get a reward, sometimes it’s to get him to be quiet and go to sleep so you can stay up late watching Lost Girl. The reason doesn’t matter, the reality is that it’s generally mediocre and rarely orgasmic. The problem with my friend’s maintenance sex is that the reward he was expecting was an amazingly pleasurable experience. Maintenance sex isn’t amazingly pleasurable. So he was trying to build relationships he wasn’t that interested in, gain a reward he couldn’t have, and instead of a the freedom to watch a badly written sex drama about a succubus and her impossibly attractive friends in peace, he got confusion, shame, and anger.

I told him what I thought: that he wasn’t broken, just unusual. He had been allowing his partners the choice and initiative, assuming that if she was ready, he would be. In mainstream media and in most relationships, this is true. Unfortunately for my friend, it wasn’t true for him. He is now looking forward to an arduous journey of self exploration. He will have to pay attention to how he feels when in a relationship. He will have to learn to know what HE wants instead of simply reacting to what SHE wants. We’ve been working so hard to teach this to young women that we forget: young men need to know this, too.

As the fiery, eloquent Connor Habib once said: “This country doesn’t need more sex education, it needs relationship education.”

 

And, as all humans do, I take this story and ask what it has to do with me. Well, I wonder if perhaps this was a nudge. I’ve become quite good at my craft. I bring genuine skilled bodywork together with elegant sensuality and season it with sprightly conversation to create an organic, sexy, playful, satisfying session every time. And I’m getting bored. New clients still bring a rush of excitement and I do take great pleasure in the ease of comfortable relationships but there’s only so many things I can do with my hands before I have to get really kinky. It’s possible I will explore a discipline called Sexological Bodywork. It’s a form of counseling that involves hands on sessions. Generally focused on sexual relationships with self and others, the hands on portion allows the client to experience needed touch in a safe environment from a trained professional. Combined with clothed talking sessions it can help healing from sexual trauma and growth into a healthy sexual whole.

Anyway, that’s the future isn’t it? For now, I’m just happy to have helped out a friend. He’s got a long way to go before he’s settled into a happy, long term loving relationship and until then, I’ll do my best to help him, help you, and reach myself some life goals!

 

TourDeEiffel

 

Speaking of goals:

Make more money than I did this year

Never miss a post or a newsletter this year

Get halfway through my book

Go camping at least one long weekend

Become fluent in French

Lose 10 pounds

Eat better food!

And of course you know: no meat, alcohol, or coffee until my birthday!

Posted on

When You’re Expecting

We all have expectations, and we should, because otherwise why would we do anything ever? The problem is, many people have unrealistically high expectations and are disappointed when the experience falls short. So, here are two lists, one for clients and one for providers, of reasonable, realistic expectations.

As a client, you should expect your provider to:
-Be on time
-Resemble her photos (some use fake photos for privacy. That’s ok, they just need to accurately represent her.)
-Provide services as advertised*
-Provide a clean location if she offers incall
-Not up-sell unless for off-menu services
-Keep the session moving so you complete desired/available activities within the time allotted

Everything else is variable, but it is not unusual for your provider to:
-Be attractive
-Be enthusiastic
-Provide more than minimum services
-Agree to special requests when possible
-Have amenities on hand such as oral hygiene products and a variety of condoms
-Accommodate those with varying levels of ability or health

And while it’s nice when it happens, you should never expect your provider to:
-Let the session run overtime
-Offer social time off the clock
-Provide off-menu services**
-Accommodate special requests with short notice
-Be available same-day/immediately
-Engage in lengthy conversations outside of session time
-Put up with pushy or whiny behavior

As a provider, you should expect your client to:
-Be on time or, if late, still pay the full amount
-Pay the full amount without talking about it
-Leave on time
-Shower if asked
-Not pressure you for extra services

It’s not unusual for your client to:
-Be a few minutes early if time allows
-Be appreciative of your time and services
-Put the money down discretely before the session
-Initiate a trip to the restroom to freshen up/shower
-Want to pleasure you

And while it’s nice when it happens, you should never expect your client to:
-Watch the clock for you
-Leave early
-Be in perfect health
-Take you out for paid social time or shopping trips
-Tip
-Be perfectly clean all over***
-Be good at pleasuring you

Now that we’ve set our expectations in a realistic place, we can move forward. When things we reasonably expect to happen don’t happen, we have options, the least productive of which is to be angry. We can simply not see that provider or client again, we can write a review or an alert detailing the issue factually without emotion, or we can waste our emotional resources on an already unsatisfying experience. I know what I would do.

Obviously I didn’t include things like ‘you should expect your client to not rape or kill you’ and ‘you should expect your provider to not arrest or rob you’ but those seemed a bit obvious and, except for rare occasions, should not be necessary to enumerate.

So next time you find yourself walking away from a session disappointed, check your expectations before you get angry. If you feel entitled to extra time or services because you’ve been seeing a lady for ages, check your expectations.

…I say to the choir. If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of my darlings who exceeds my expectations regularly. These unrealistic expectations are a phenomenon I often see on forums and boards but rarely see in person. I hope, if you read this and I resonates with you, that you are able to understand both sides of this unusually intimate dynamic and it helps you empathize with your provider or your client when they ask for or begin to expect more than is realistic.

*This is a tricky one since we can’t explicitly advertise specific services but for massage/FBSM/erotic bodywork/body rub/etc you can reasonably expect to be touched all over, Have her attempt to give you at least one orgasm, and have shower facilities available. Skill level, mutual touch, kissing, cuddling, enthusiasm, energy level, and more are variable and require research into reviews and advertising analysis. For full service, you can reasonably expect to receive oral sex (most ladies will indicate whether they provide oral sex with or without a condom), cuddle, and experience penetrative sex. Most ladies will allow you to give them oral and will kiss you; if they do not they will usually indicate that or it will show up in her reviews. Even then, if you have Erectile dysfunction or other issues you may not be able to engage in penetrative sex. This is not your provider’s fault.

**Off menu services are exactly that: off menu. While some providers will provide them for an additional fee, many will not offer them at all. A client is welcome to ask, a single time, for off menu services and be satisfied with the answer. Asking again after being told ‘no’ is not cool. Asking multiple times, pressuring, guilting, or attempting are all grounds to end a session early and potentially blacklist the client.

***Faces, fingernails, and butts are the bare minimum. Use wet wipes instead of TP if you’re not planning on a shower. Wash your hands and rinse your mouth with mouthwash at the start and end of the session. File, don’t cut, your fingernails And scrub underneath them. Nobody likes bacterial vaginitis. If you can’t avoid stubble or have a particularly bristly beard, go easy on her skin, particularly if you’re giving her oral as that’s a very delicate, sensitive area and stubble can steal orgasms. Shaving mere hours before is not a guarantee you won’t have stubble. If she offers oral sex without a condom, rinse your penis with water (under your foreskin if you have one) and wash your balls with shampoo or soap. All the way to your anus. When in doubt, ask. Take chlorophyll tablets regularly.