I knew we were not going to get along the moment I read "Hemingway still sucks" in her acknowledgments.
It begins with her adolescent realization that working minimum wage jobs suck and that she could still be a feminist and be a sex worker. So she wanders into a sexy place and fills out an application. I found it really amazing that she never even knew what she was applying for. I could understand that she being a punky feminist living in grunge Seattle had never shaved or owned anything overtly sexy like thongs, but her acting surprised that she would have to do these things if she wanted to work in this sexy place--what would she be doing--was amazing. I thought the language was a bit overwrought and chatty, much like the bowels of livejournal tends to be.
I read a bunch of reviews on Amazon and found them all suspect and like they were clapping for someone in the special Olympics. Why do you think she is intelligent? Is it because she was capable of post-modern thought while simultaneously being a sex worker? I wouldn't really classify her as intelligent, but wouldn't go so far as to say she was stupid either. However, saying her writing about sex work is interesting is about as obvious as global warming. Duh. It's about SEX. Of course it's interesting. Could someone ever write about sex work and be boring? Let's stop clapping. Thanks.
But then, despite of myself, I actually started to really like this book. She so accurately describes the stench of sex worker institutions--thick with perfume, stench, cum and disinfectant, thick with thickness. If you have never been to one, this is as accurate as its going to get. Imagine people doing their dirtiest of functions in a place that never opens the windows and must saturate every surface, even the air, with chemicals to mask the smell and risk. Once I went out after a session and my friend frowned at me and said, You smell like the dungeon.
She nails the smell, she nails the waterlogged magazines constant in dressing rooms, she nails the napping--some of my fondest memories of working in a dungeon are taking naps on the bondage bed. I never really thought about how similar lives of other sex workers were to the ones of me and women in my dungeon. Until recently, I've never even been exposed to sex workers other than Dommes.
Are we all so similar? We do feast when money rolls in, and sell our things when money's tight. We're in a constant state of overly made-up and teetering off the edge of sanity. I never felt the same sense of competitiveness as she did with her co-workers nor have I felt like my stuff was going to get stolen, and I agree with her that most women choose to do sex work for obvious and good reasons, however, in a certain sense you have to be a little nuts to be in this business at all. Even if you are not before you start, you're going to be a little nutty doing this work. Yes, there are truly amazing people you meet, but at the same time you are constantly exposed to depravity, sadness, and fragility. What really struck me is that management seems to be more fucked up than the women actually doing the sex work--they admonish her for posting her own ads, they are upset when she protects her health, they are happy when the girls fight. Bad management is a consistent problem throughout the labor market, but it is beyond me why managers of sex workers, one of the most lucrative businesses with little overheard would deliberately hurt their profit makers. I wonder, are there any memoirs by those who ran sex worker institutions? Beyond "Madams" that is.
She's remarkably perceptive regarding what her clients want and how best to extract the most money from them. I'm glad she touched on how so many men seem to either not care about being in another man's filth or cum, or might actually enjoy it as she describes how they would lick the glass at her peep show obviously fraught with cum. She begins unshaven in Seattle and ends up stealing from a client in New Orleans. I enjoyed her ten year journey in the sex industry--I recommend reading this book both for the client and the sex worker.
I liked her "point system" when she's assessing her worth next to another stripper; being white gets more points, having lots of tattoos loses points, etc. But what I loved most of all, was her correct assessment, that in the end, being beautiful in this industry doesn't make you the most money, being the smart girl does. :)
2 comments:
I loved the book's wittiness, and its unflinching look at the negative sides of the business, but I was turned off by her hatred of all her male clients, her denigration of their desires. Maybe it's just b/c I'm an escort and only have to deal with them one on one, instead of dealing with the ugly male pack mentality as a stripper does. I also found her contempt for women who worked differently than she did--went full service--distasteful. We should be about solidarity, not divisiveness. But all in all, it was incredibly well written, and I'm drawn to reread it from time to time.
Btw, I'm Gillian/Caty, and I was featured on My First Professional Sex just like you were, which is how I found your blog.
PS. Here's an interview with Sarah Katherine Lewis on Pop Matters, where she's interviewed by one of my favorite sex work writers and internet friends, Nicole Solomon:
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/72755-an-interview-with-sarah-katherine-lewis/
I agree, she did seem to hate men as a whole, but I think you are right that one's attitude becomes negative when seeing a constant stream of clients rather than individuals. I know for me, that making the transition from dungeon to independence positively affected my attitude in this way. We should be about solidarity--and that should extend to solidarity of services in a sex worker group atmosphere. What was troubling to her and me as well, was not so much that the other girls did extras, but that they didn't charge for them, nay, they didn't even think of charging extra for extra work. She didn't seek to change the practices of her co-workers nor did the management. She mentions her disgust that a new girl was peeing in her booth but nothing was done about it; when she tries to talk to her another girl at the first massage parlour about safer sex, she denies she's doing anything that would put her at risk, on the contrary she IS practicing safe sex because she takes pride in being a healer and if "Lily" has a bad attitude, it is her that will be more likely to contract something. Sarah finally realizes and mentions several times at the end of the book that the woman who do extras have nothing else to offer, they are not attractive nor clever enough to beguile their client in non-sexual ways.
Thanks for commenting. I'm glad that My First Professional Sex is already working to bring more sex workers together. :)
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