Sex Work Read online

“Uh, yeah.”

  “You make love with women?”

  “I’ve done that.”

  “You like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You come?”

  “Yes.”

  “Use a dildo?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “Tongue.”

  “Like this?” he asked, grabbing me at the waist and going for my crotch.

  “No, no.” I pushed him away. I didn’t want him to touch me. “No, here, I’ll do you. Let me suck that delicious cock for you,” my embarrassment finally dropped in favor of saving myself something worse than his dismal, probing questions.

  He had a little, curved doggie cock and small, tight balls. I pushed him back onto the table and licked his erection. “Umm, what a luscious prick,” I said, circling the head with my tongue.

  “Suck it, baby, suck that big mother. Oh yeah, you must have sucked a lot of cock to have learned to suck a man’s cock like that. Go on, baby. Lick that dick.”

  I pulled my head up and began masturbating him with my hand.

  “You must have sucked a lot of cock to get so good. You suck a lot of cock?”

  “Yeah, I’ve sucked some,” I said, without much enthusiasm. “Look, why don’t you jerk yourself off a little and then I’ll suck you at the end,” I proposed. He agreed, asking me to lie on the mattress so he could stand over me. His big belly obstructed any view of his face. I sucked him off at the end and he kissed me afterwards like we’d arranged and I spit the stuff back into his mouth.

  I hadn’t liked the guy, but he seemed like an easy hundred and twenty. I smoked a cigarette while he finished dressing. He was an accountant, he said. His wife had died in a “tragic accident” six years ago. That’s why he came here, he said.

  Candy said that he came back later in the day and she’d agreed to do him. He’d wanted to come in her mouth and had insulted her when she wouldn’t let him. “I could have fourteen year old girls in Mexico do it for five dollars,” he’d said. Susie was mad at me, saying he’d given Candy trouble because of me. “It’s disgusting to take it in your mouth,” she’d complained to me. “It spoils them if you let them do things like that and it’s no good for the rest of us. Ugh, how can you let them spew that stuff into your mouth. .you’ll get sick.”

  “I didn’t swallow it,” I answered, apologetically.

  I wondered later on if it was true about his wife. It happened a lot lately, not knowing if people were telling the truth. Like Lili’s description of Kim; was it true she had worked in Korea? She seemed very professional, as if she were experienced, but she had been nice to me and I didn’t want to think she was a liar.

  First one of Kim’s regulars came in. Susie got picked after that. Kim came back and showed us an opal and gold ring the man had given her. “I wonder how much it cost,” I said. “He’s so nice to me, a real gentleman,” Kim said, proudly smoothing down an imaginary wrinkle on her skirt. I wished that some man would give me jewelry.

  It was my turn next. Kim went to the door and let him in for me.

  “He look nice,” she told me. “He go take a shower. You go in room in five, ten minutes.”

  I went to the bathroom to get ready. When I came back the television was on. I lit a cigarette and watched an ad for a bath tile cleanser and then one for laundry soap. Lili had cradled herself crosswise into the green overstuffed chair, and was thumbing through the latest copy of Vogue. Holiday was folding sheets. For a moment, I thought of us as housewives. And this man taking a shower, I fantasized, is my husband. I’ll go into our bedroom to wait for him, and he’ll come in with a towel around his waist, still wet from the shower, and he’ll lift me up in his arms and kiss me.

  * * *

  I got another one later in the day. He was about sixty-five, and a regular customer, so I knew he’d want sex and that he wasn’t a cop. Most of the women liked the older men because they paid better and were easier, quicker and less demanding. But I was repelled by the pale flabbiness of his body, and when he started feeling me during the massage I pushed his hand away.

  “How much for a hand job?” he asked.

  “Sixty,” I said, figuring I might get out of it by being expensive.

  “Okay,” he said, and reached for his pants. He pulled his wallet out and squinted over the bills, trying to read their denominations in the dim light. His fumbling aroused a rush of contempt and disgust in me.

  I jerked him off for a while and then he started to talk.

  “You really know how to please a man, don’t you?”

  I nodded assent. Talking dirty, I figured, was more than he’d paid for. It seemed the most compromising act of all, involving as it did my imagination as well as my body.

  “You like to see a man come?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  Because then I know it’s over, I thought to myself, and barely stifled a hostile laugh.

  “It’s exciting,” I said.

  “It excites you, eh, to see a man come?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’d like to put it in, you know.”

  “Would you?” Greed and disgust wrestled within me.

  “How much more would that be, to put it in?”

  What price would discourage him, I wondered. “Sixty more,” I said.

  “Okay,” he agreed, and struggled blindly with the bills again.

  I undressed and we lay down onto the mattress. I turned my head to my side to he wouldn’t try to kiss me. He pulled my legs over his shoulders and slid it in. My cunt contracted and rose up involuntarily. He stroked a few times, his pace matching my own rhythms. I felt myself involved, as if in a fantasy, of him my father, and me, sexy girl child, his good girl, bad girl, favorite.

  “It’s really good,” he said.

  “It’s really hard now,” I said, feeling crazily lewd. “You can really fuck, can’t you?”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” he moaned, and clasped his mouth onto one of my breasts.

  The fantasy was gone as quickly as it had come over me. I was left, however, with a measure of affection for his having stirred something in me. As he dressed I noticed that the softness of his body was pleasing, his shoulders were white, powdery and gracefully shaped.

  As I let him out the front door he thanked me profusely and I let him kiss me on the cheek.

  Pain, Pleasure and Poetry

  Mistress Lilith Lash

  About eleven years ago, I found myself with a young daughter to raise, and a lot of sexual frustration. To work off some of my sexual needs, without bringing them home, I began to answer ads in the underground newspapers. I was older and sexually experienced at the time, so I tended toward straight forward approaches like, “Want your pussy eaten for hours? Call...” I found this a friendly, direct way to get orgasms I needed. What an improvement on picking up unknowns from barstools who usually passed out cold upon contact with a bed and then expected me to provide breakfast for the wonderful time they assumed we’d had.

  The men and women (I never ask a tongue’s gender if it licks me the right way) I met through the ads were sober, experienced, experimental, and, like me, wanted the comes without the contracts. They were also a great deal of fun. Through several people contacted in this manner, I found out about more advanced adult toys and games.

  The first time I tied up a man, whipped him raw, and fucked him with a dildo, I learned something I had forgotten about myself. I liked it and it really turned me on. Though the first time I did it for a guy in trade for hours of expert muff diving, I soon was looking actively for slightly kinkier ads.

  About this time I realized I wouldn’t be able to become a stenotypist, as I had planned, because I hated the machine, and I discovered I’d have to start as a court reporter. I’m allergic to structured and authoritative environments and institutions.

  In addition to going to school from 8:00 to 5:00, and leading an active, promiscuous and imaginative sex life,
I was averaging about four nights a week on the open poetry stage. I was having fun, but my poems weren’t edible.

  I lucked out and discovered a B&D club that was hiring. When asked if I was a dominant or submissive, I hired on as the former, figuring it was a business in which it is better to give than receive. Besides, when I was in New York at nineteen, and broke, my girlfriend had turned me on to a guy who had paid me to tie him with his neckties and throw oranges at his balls from across the room at ten bucks a hit. Even nearsighted it was an easy and well paying gig. He was lucky I had been such a bad pitcher in high school or I probably would have liberated his life’s savings.

  Remembering that interesting experience, I decided to combine business and pleasure. I was able to come a lot at work and therefore take better care of my mother and daughter at home. I’m a dominant, not a sadist. I only hurt men who think it’s kind to be cruel; I couldn’t turn myself on with unwilling “victims.” You don’t think I get paid for real pain, do you? No matter how far out or excruciating the session is, I can tell by the erection (or lack of it) what the real response is.

  A dominant has responsibility. If a man says “no lasting marks” he is put through a gradual build-up of increasingly painful procedures. But, though it may seem impossible from the intensity of stimulation engendered, there are really no welts or bruises. The red hot I induce disappears in about half an hour though a tingling reminder may still be with him when he drives to the office the next day.

  Sometimes a man will want “markings” to jog his fantasies if he travels or lives alone. These I inflict with care to last no longer than two weeks. The only exception I’ve made to this rule is piercing and placing a permanent stud in the foreskin of a loyal slave who begged for it for years.

  There are strict rules to B&D. If the “victims” want to yell stop but mean go, there is always a code word or key that really means they’ve had enough. This is usually “mercy,” or “uncle,” or even “key.” No professional top pushes the limits of a bottom much beyond this point. The word is always simple and never changed so it can be remembered under times of stress.

  To a point the bottom is in control, and the top doesn’t carry things too far for fear of losing fun bottoms to play with. But, I still say a top is top, because if someone is restrained and totally helpless one could conceivably do anything to him. That is part of the turn on — I know I really have complete power over the bottom’s body. The other part of the turn on is the trust established on the submissive’s side as he surrenders totally, knowing the dominant has the power to decide how far to take it.

  I encouraged many oral slaves in the beginning and still like to get off plenty on the job. But, of course, given these precarious times, I have to be very meticulous about sterilization. I prefer for the men I fuck to bring their own dildoes. If I use mine, I use latex rubbers and nonoxynol-9. The spankings are like specific and advanced massage. They can be deliciously built up to what seems like hard corporal punishment, if that was their purpose rather than erotic stimulation. Beginning lightly and briskly to bring the blood to the surface of the skin, which helps prevent later bruising, using furs and feathers to tease when the pain seems to outweigh the pleasure, and eventually wailing away to a crescendo that often produces spontaneous orgasm. If the pain is too great for a climax, the afterglow will bring one on quickly in response to a hand or vibrator.

  The reason pain and pleasure can be merged by an experienced hand is because both reactions come from the same place in the brain. When excited (sexually, painfully, or through fear or exertion) endorphins are released. This is a natural opiate the body provides. The trick with s/m is to apply enough pain and/or fear to bring out the endorphins without inflicting unnecessary damage. I don’t hurt men because I hate them; I hurt them because I love them. The greatest sexual turn on is a turned on partner, and imagination is endlessly entertaining.

  If you restrict your sexual life, even it will become boring. All people of whatever age need to play. With B&D you can act out pre-arranged skits, or make it up as you go along. It constantly tests your creativity and ingenuity. A hardware store will never look the same to you again. It’s better to provide amusing games and diversions that make lives worth living. A man who’s just been fucked up the ass while wearing false eyelashes and crotchless pink panties is very unlikely to rape or kill.

  Needless to say, I’m happy with my life. I get paid for writing by a variety of sources. I have written pornography, worked for a feminist publication, plotted horror stories, science fiction, speculative fantasy and mainstream. If I can imagine it (and I usually can) I can put it into words. I have given lectures to college audiences on sexual variations. I have also written, produced, directed and edited films and videos. I get paid for some creative acts and do others gratis or just for myself. I bloom constantly in my environment.

  Humphrey Bogart said sex was the most fun you can have without laughing. I think it’s even more fun when you can laugh. Creative sexuality, involving props and role playing, is a safe and cathartic means to satisfaction in the disease-plagued eighties. I like to fuck and suck as well as anyone, but I want to live a very long life. I see my regulars, a clientele built up over many years in the game. And they have become valued friends.

  Interview with Nell

  Priscilla Alexander

  Priscilla: Tell me about your work.

  Nell: I think there are class divisions in prostitution. It breaks down around race, but also class background. I am in an elite position because some friends who had worked for years on the street built up a different kind of clientele, business men. When they stopped working, they passed their clientele on to me. That’s the only reason I got into this position. When I thought about hooking before, I always thought I’d go to go-go places, massages parlors, and street walking. I thought those were the avenues open to me.

  I identify more with women on the streets, because we share the same background.

  When people talk about hookers and whores, they don’t mind the women who are on call, you know, the women who have clientele, it’s the women on the streets they nab on. They’re the ones who get so much shit. When they attack them, they’re attacking me. I grew up in projects, and when people start talking about black people and women on the streets, it gets into a whole lot of racism, and sexism, shit they don’t understand. It makes me angry. That’s why I defend all whores and all women on the streets.

  Some women make a point of saying, “Well, there’s a difference between me and hookers on the street, there’s a difference between hookers.” There’s the upper class, you know, there’s ladies. I’ve heard really classist statements coming from women I worked with. They felt they were better than other hookers.

  Priscilla: Have you always worked through referrals?

  Nell: Yeah, I worked with a woman who called me.

  Priscilla: Did she work too or was she just a go-between?

  Nell: She worked. We worked together as a group. If she had a guy who wanted more than one woman, she would just call me up and say, “Show up.” It was easy, convenient, security was good.

  Priscilla: So you always worked with other women?

  Nell: Yeah. The only time I was ever alone was when I traveled. It’s interesting that even women who work on the streets usually work in groups. They go to a hotel, then they come back, and they check in with each other. If one doesn’t come back, they know. They watch out for each other.

  The women I worked with were all lesbians. It made the circumstances very supportive. The rest of the lesbian community offered little support. There are tons of lesbians who don’t like heterosexual women, or women who are involved with men, and they can’t stand prostitutes. They don’t ever identify lesbians as being prostitutes, the two are like extremes to them. There’s never any meeting.

  Priscilla: Little do they know.

  Nell: How little they know is true. Once, at a party, a lesbian I knew took me apart and told me, “Do
n’t talk about it.” “Talk about what?” “About hooking.” I mean, could you walk up to somebody and say, “Please, don’t come out of the closet.” It’s the same kind of thing.

  Priscilla: Maybe she wanted to protect you.

  Nell: Protect me from what? There is nothing wrong with it. What is there to protect? I had long discussions with P about Women Against Violence, before marching on Broadway, about what that says to women who are working inside, how it alienates the women inside, how they get heckled if they support the marchers. I knew she never talked to any of the women in these places. It’s typical, though; in all movements the people “to be saved” rarely have a voice, or get to be leaders.

  I know my value, you see, I know my worth. When you’re making money for yourself, there’s an immediate value on you, you’re selling yourself, your personality, your charms, your appearance, your ability to persuade, your ability to sell. It takes skill, definite skill, and a lot of strength. I’ve come to appreciate those qualities in myself.

  I figured out that by the time I was twenty, I had gone to bed with a hundred guys and never gotten paid for one of those tricks, right? Not one. I could have made a fortune when I was young, getting screwed by all those assholes. Now I think differently. It’s not because I get taken out to dinner or treated nicely that I’m going home with someone and go to bed with her. I don’t sell myself short for anybody, under any circumstance. I know my value, and I know my worth. I know what I can do with my body — it’s not for free and it’s not for pay. So it has been good for me to get that sense of possession, of worth about my body, being able to use it for something, knowing what I can do with it.

  I’ve talked to a guy who considers himself somewhat of a whore, but not in a professional way, he just goes to bed with people, you know, like that, meets guys in alleyways, meets guys in the bathroom, meets guys everywhere. One time he was really short of money and I said, “Well, go turn some tricks. God, you turn tricks every day, every day you come home and tell me about all these tricks you picked up, go turn a trick for money.” He couldn’t do it. He could not do it. I mean, I walked him downtown, on the streets. I said, “I’ll be around the corner, I’ll wait for you, you know, I’ll be right by you.” He came back to me and he goes, “There’s no choice. I can’t pick the trick and it just turns me off, I can’t do it.” “But you do it all the time, you’re not selective anyway, I can’t believe this.” He could not break that barrier of actually doing it for money, you know, of saying, “I sold myself.”