Category: Metaphysical/Thoughtful

I had the chance today to do something fun: share high English tea with a friend, talk for the first time with her about my unorthodox career, and visit the local art museum.

I don’t recommending outing your sex working friends to mutual friends without permission. However, it was nice to have the call of “tell or don’t tell” made by someone with a more intimate knowledge and better prediction potential. Friend E found out when she was talking about how she and her boyfriend handled a situation with what they thought might be an underage sex worker. In order to more heavily weight my advice and also because I’m always straining to tell all, I confessed my intimate connection to this young stranger they tried to help. So E has known for several years now. K, another book club member, is much closer friends with E than I am so when E drunkenly told my secret one night, they knew it would be met with curiosity, not condemnation. It turns out that K had, off and on, considered trying out my profession but, as with many folks looking into it, didn’t know where to start and had other fish to fry so never tried to find out. Now most of book club knows which brings interesting light to stories and characters involving the world’s oldest, and my, profession. I kinda dig it.

Anyway, E and K are interested, as am I, in expanding out cultural consumption so we like to go the the free and cheap museums around the city. Not as often as I would like, but more often than I would on my own.

The Frye art museum has an exhibit going now (and not for much longer) all about mental health, current and past treatment methods, an examination of the commercialization of self care, and some werid experimental silliness. Primal scream therapy felt fake. Which makes sense, because it was actors on a screen being actor-y. If you’ve ever know a middling actor who takes themselves very seriously, you’ll know what I mean. I felt the same way about the ecstatic dance exhibit and likely would have felt the same if the tarot reader had been there. I tend to prefer a certain amount of not-taking-yourself-too-seriously in my modern art so the whimsical and absurdist room full of short films was more to my liking. I liked the monsters and their periodic table, found the sound bath meditative and pleasant, had to send a link to the anxiety exhibit to a friend, and was disappointed that the guided meditation soundtrack was malfunctioning, but the most fun I had was the word-item association exhibit.

I’m deliberately being vague, because art is hard to share if you haven’t seen it and also because I’ve been feeling awfully capricious lately. I want you to wonder what the heck ecstatic dance is and how I saw it if it’s an art museum, not a performance platform. I want you to fill in your own ideas when I tell you which Items I associated with which words, and if any of you have a background in psychology and find this interesting, I encourage you to book an extra half hour because I would LOVE to hear what you think, ha!

The word prompts are on the left, my items are on the right.

I like having fun with culture. I like not taking things too seriously. I like chatting about my unconventional life with folks who have no idea what my world can look like. I like laughing at myself and I like surprising myself. I got a little of each this afternoon.

P.S. There is some jewelry for sale in the gift shop at the Frye. It’s frivolously priced, a vain purchase if made for oneself, but if someone wanted to help make me a very spoiled young woman…. Standing at the counter looking down, displayed on the right hand side, There are four pairs of earrings, simple gold strands with white or blue stone accents. My preference even conveniently goes from top to bottom: smaller blue, triangular white, longer blue… There’s a lovely necklace to match, but the earrings bring me more pleasure. Ha!

I can’t think of a way to write this without coming across as arrogant so I’m just going to start at the end. I am really good at what I do and while there are many replicable aspects I can advise on and share, there is one thing that makes me stand out and it’s not something you can teach. Charisma can’t be learned.

I’m using the word charisma because it’s vague enough to suit my purposes but it’s not just that. It’s not just a magnetism, it’s also enthusiasm, curiosity, confidence, and oddly enough some humility. It’s a work ethic plus emotional literacy, plasticity and an impulse for constant improvement.

Have you ever walked away from a session with a total stunner but felt oddly unsatisfied? Couldn’t figure out why? There’s a secret something that makes you feel amazing without even quite knowing why and she didn’t have it. Charisma, the Je Ne Sais Quoi that makes a 7 into a 10 with bells on.

You kind of have to know what you’re looking for before you can name it. It has taken me nearly 30 years of socializing before I finally sorted it, and even now I’m surprised sometimes. Sol is the perfect example of someone surprising me with their charm. She is unashamed and up in whatever faces she needs to be. She takes no shit, only names, and while I have not yet observed her behave in a way I would describe as classically charming, she has me charmed. The respect and admiration I have for her brain, her mouth, her work, and her constant growth know no limits. She is a powerhouse and no one I know of has left her presence unimpressed. Whatever ‘it’ is that makes someone compelling, she’s got it.

Adelle, too, but in a different way. Her charisma has led her not to outward strength or business gain but to inner growth and a core of authenticity rarely seen in this world. She surrounds herself with beautiful, interesting people and isn’t afraid to order oysters when everyone else is having fries. It doesn’t even occur to her to be self conscious in the first place.

My partner has it, the restless drive to create and produce, the interest in and ability to reflect on oneself and grow in that reflection. My mother has it, in a methodical, quiet way, and my father, in the classic ‘charm the pants off everyone you meet’ kind of way.

So you see why I was so surprised to find out that it’s not nearly as common as I thought? To learn that constant curiosity AND the social self awareness to not be weird about it is actually AB-normal? I grew up around it and spend most of my life with people who have it in spades.

It’s taken me a long time to write this post because every time I come to it I can’t help but feel that I’m being terribly arrogant. When I was a young girl, maybe around twelve or so, I saw myself in the mirror. Not just a collection of features, eyes, nose, mouth, etc, but as a whole. I saw my own face as if it were a stranger’s, almost like an optical illusion that suddenly pops out, and I realized I was pretty. Attractive, in a not-very-interesting way, just pale and freckled and pretty. I didn’t feel pride in that fact, it just was, like being brown haired and five foot one. I mean, I was happy about it, but it wasn’t my fault. This? This is like that. Yes, I went to college and my parents gave me a sense of responsibility as far as following through on my commitments but my writing and my work and my innate magnetism are no more the result of my own effort than the freckles on my knees or the thickness of my hair. It just is and it’s weird and cool and now that I know what it is I’ve been looking all over for it and finding it in little ways (and some big) all over the city.

Because while it’s unusual to have quite as much of it all at once as Sol and Adelle and I have, it’s in very nearly everyone, to some degree. It’s in the dramatic boiling clouds over the sound as the sun sinks through them and the stupid, broken bicycles strew about the streets, it’s in a candle flame and a good book and a sexy hour with a fun chick.

I don’t know if you all have heard of the ‘incel’ movement but it’s an interesting social cancer and I see a lot of chatter about it on reddit and twitter. As long as I have no need to interact with these incels I find them fascinating, though if I actually had to meet on win real life I would be terrified and angry by turns.

An incel is a self proclaimed ‘involuntary celibate’, a man, usually a white man, often with bad self care, and always with a chip on his shoulder over female rejection. He has been ‘forced’ to be celibate because no woman will consent to have sex with him and when he watches others having sex, reads up on sexual marketplace theories and its place in Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, he gets angry that he’s not getting laid.

The normal reaction when you try something several times and it doesn’t work out is to examine your premises and perhaps make some changes. In this case, perhaps stop expecting sex from women who aren’t sexually attracted to you. Perhaps work on that hygiene issue or your entitled attitude. For an incel, their reaction is to blame women for their ‘involuntary celibacy’. If only women weren’t sluts who won’t have sex with them then they would get laid. Some even go so far as to suggest that women be forced by the government to have sex with them in order to meet their physical need for and right to sexual satisfaction and in order to redistribute resources in the sexual marketplace.

These thoughts drift through my mind sometimes because I do encounter clients with bad hygiene, who are overweight, older, less attractive, medical issues, all the excuses incels use to justify their right to be angry at a lack of sex, and I *do* believe that they have the same right to access erotic services as anyone else. However: they have to be nice to get it and that’s what the men in this social movement* are missing.

In Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, we have, in order of importance: physiological needs such as sleep and food, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. We will sacrifice safety in order to get food or water but we *should* not sacrifice safety for love and belonging, though many of us do. Very few of us achieve self actualization, but love and belonging can be conflated with sex and safe sensual touch and in today’s world it is not uncommon. This is what people mean when they say that warm touch is a need and a human right.

So let’s talk about rights now. I listened to a podcast the other day about curb cuts and one of the things advocates said while fighting for them is that wheelchair bound or otherwise impaired individuals have the right to get around freely and safely so they need curb cuts. In the sex worker’s rights movement I hear people say that we have the right to work unimpeded and safely. Even our country’s founding documents cite inalienable, god given human rights. Unfortunately, no one has a right that he hasn’t been given by others. I have the right to make free use of my apartment because the owner *chooses to honor that right* not because he is forced by god. The owner of my building has rights to it’s use as long as others *choose to honor it*. It could be taken by imminent domain, by force, or by the big earthquake and the owner has no recourse unless others *choose to allow it*. You see where I’m going?

With food and sleep and safety, you can theoretically rely entirely on yourself if you live in a place with no other people around. As soon as you search for love and belonging, however, you must behave in a way that encourages other people to *choose to honor* your right to physiological needs being met, your safety being secure, and your belonging. In turn, you must choose to honor their rights to safety and health and here is where the ‘right to sex’ argument breaks down. Your corn nuts don’t give a shit whether you’re an asshole or not, but your lover absolutely will. If you want your needs to be met, you must in turn meet the needs of others. Sometimes what you offer is safety from a bad home life, sometimes it’s love and belonging in return, often it’s a cure for loneliness and still more often it is financial stability (yes, even in marriages). You can kill and eat a creature without its consent or grow and harvest a garden without asking permission from the plants, but if you want to live with someone and make love to someone, you either force them, which I think we can all agree doesn’t work out well, or you work with them to reach an agreement.

This ties in with the argument that payment negates consent; that it’s a type of forcing. That because I say ‘no’ to sex but then change my mind when offered compensation, I haven’t really changed my mind, I have been coerced into sex which falls under the umbrella of human trafficking.

There are two reasons this argument is awful, the first being that it tells potentially predatory folks that once they’ve paid me, my consent it irrelevant. It encourages people to say things like “I paid her so it wasn’t rape” or “I paid for you so you’re doing it even if you don’t want to.” This is an awful mindset and as irritating as it can be from a consumer perspective to know your service provider can revoke consent in spite of payment, it’s an important thing to reinforce.

The second reason this argument sucks is because it singles out sex as the only exploitative labor. There are a lot of things I have done that I wouldn’t have without being paid. Cleaning the girls bathrooms in college, standing at a desk seven hours a day checking in hotel guests, staring at a computer for hours trying to figure out these stupid charts… None of these tasks were ones I ‘freely consented’ to. If your reply to that is ‘but you’re inviting a stranger into your body, it’s different’ then you are both right and showing your hand. Sex is different than cleaning shower heads and I am happy doing either, depending on the circumstances. But you have just revealed that it isn’t labor or payment or even exploitation that you have a problem with, it’s sex, and unfortunately that’s something you should be taking up with your therapist, not US senators.

*I say social movement because sometimes as young men mature and educate themselves they outgrow these attitudes. I don’t think anyone should be condemned for feeing lonely and angry when they’re young and trying to find a community of support. That said, a recent terrorist attack in Canada [https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/25/17277496/incel-toronto-attack-alek-minassian] tells us that this, like many other movements backed by anger, is not innocent.

At least mine is. We don’t always see eye-to-eye and I know she wouldn’t be happy with this particular life choice I’ve made, but we talk. Real talk. And despite out opposing ideas on how exactly to reach our goal, we both have the same one: make life better.

A lot of folks don’t have moms, either ever or anymore. Still more folks have moms who make their lives, if not worse, than at least not better. So I count myself among the lucky folks who love their moms and believe that they wouldn’t be the strong, interesting people they are without them.

My mom spent some time as a survival sex worker in her teenage years. What little I know of it leads me to believe that it would very easily fall under the ‘defrauded and coerced’ elements of the human trafficking definition, aside from the fact that she was still basically a kid. That a woman with that in her past managed to turn me out is a pretty clear sign that sex work, even the involuntary and abusive kind, doesn’t render women helpless or unable to make good choices moving forward.

She’s a thoughtful woman, taking her time with decisions, though some still come out not quite right. I’m learning to emulate the things in her that I admire: calm, quiet conversation, a self deprecating sense of humor, loyalty, faith in a cause, hope for the future.

I don’t want to dig too deep into my history, or my mom’s (gotta save something for the memoir, ha!) so I’ll leave you with this: I hope there’s a mom in your life that can lend you inspiration. It doesn’t have to be your mom, god knows there are other inspiring moms in my life, but someone who has been through the unique and all encompassing trial of creating life, bearing it, raising it, and loving it even when it fucks up. Step moms, moms-in-law, grand-moms, aunt moms, adopted moms, and the mothers of your chosen family. Take a moment to remember the things that make you smile.

And also order flowers today for whichever woman you’ll catch hell from if you forget! 😉

I enjoyed ComicCon this year. I didn’t actually buy tickets and attend but I did spend Friday afternoon downtown sharing drinks and small bites with a good friend. We poured airline bottles of fireball into hot apple cider and watched costumed masses parade up and down the lobby stairs. It’s not as heavily cosplayed as SakuraCon but the variety is much wider so I actually recognized a fair number.

Alex and I mused on good couples costumes for next year: she’s much taller than me so pairs with a height difference came up like Rick and Morty, Morticia and Wednesday Adams, maybe Captain Mal and his surprise wife Saffron (I don’t have the right figure to be Inara).

We talked late into the night, maintaining our buzz with cheap white wine, sitting on the floor in her living room.

I thought of this moment a few days later when someone asked “What makes you feel like an adult?” I don’t often feel like an adult, despite doing many of the things adults are often accused of. I’ve generally got my shit together, I’m considerate and thoughtful and competent at a variety of things. But none of that makes me really feel adult-like. This conversation made me feel adult-like.

I’ve always been a talker more than a listener. Over the years I’ve identified good listeners like Betty Martin or Paz @ExquisiteOasis or Claire. People who ask questions and listen to the answers; people who make you feel important and interesting. I love the way those people make me feel and I’ve always wanted to cultivate that skill. I’ve gone out of my way for nearly two years to remind myself to stop talking and start listening.

It’s always felt forced. I’m doing it for a client who has never had a chance to mourn the end of a relationship he wasn’t supposed to have or shyly explore kinks and consent with a young man still learning. Or I’m doing it because I want to be that kind of person, not because I am.

This time, this Friday evening, I was that kind of person. I was authentically interested, listening to her without filtering it through my own experience. I didn’t notice for a while that I was even doing it and it was awesome.

Thinking of that moment and realizing that it’ll keep happening more and more as I practice, made me feel like I’d arrived. I felt, for once, like I could be the kind of person I’ve always admired. It’s only taken me almost thirty years, ha!

So when did you finally feel like you’d arrived? When did you feel like you were an adult, not just like someone pretending to be one?