Ripley’s Should Call Me

Machinations

“Machinations” explores the pitfalls of setting up a doubles appointment for a client.  There’s often a multitude of emails and phone calls getting all the details in place, and locating another girl who agrees to the terms of the session and her fee.  A major pain, but the payoff is that the work is split in half and is often alotta fun.

Also, this week’s strip on Carnal Nation puts names to a few familiar characters who’ve appeared in the strip in the past.  Lucy approaches sex work from a holistic, tantric viewpoint, and like many of us, does sex work to support her various art projects.   Kaitlin is the prototypical college co-ed – young, pretty, and supplementing what her daddy doesn’t give her for various college expenses (clothes, partying, books, etc.)   In future strips, we’ll learn more about Rudy, an overweight yet in-your-face sex worker, and Barb, a sw who probably should have retired about 10 years ago, but never managed to put together either enough money to completely retire or amass any particular skill set to return to the general workforce.  Beauty fades, as do friendships, lovers and memories of a better time!  Enjoy this week’s strip

The Request

The latest from the Sunday Comics at Carnal Nation (@carnalnation on Twitter).   Enjoy!

The Continuing Saga of the Old Regular

The Oddball Client

Now What?

Here’s the latest Modern Hooker strip from Carnal Nation.

Schmust Schmissue

Definitely NOT unique to sex work, trust issues test the very fiber of our supposed sexual liberation in the context of both sex work and our relationships.    If I had testicles, I’ll rather tug on them with sharp tweezers  than deal with fucking relationship trust issues.   Right?    Here’s today’s Sunday comic.

Latest Modern Hooker Comic: “Hard Habits”

If my life depended on self-promotion, I would be six feet under.   If you’d like to get the weekly Modern Hooker comic strip delivered straight to your email box on Sundays, let me know and I’ll subscribe you personally.  Cuz I’m all about personal service delivered with a smirk.

Oh yeah, here’s the latest one in case you don’t have x-ray vision.

The Disappearing Act

Oftentimes, escorts have to go UTR, which is hooker code for “under the radar.”    Perhaps it’s getting “hot” in their particular city, meaning that law enforcement is stirring things up – maybe a raid just went down, or there’s word of impending busts.   Sometimes a client is the cause for going underground for awhile, too.  We do get people periodicially who go crazy – either some misguided love/stalking thing, or even something more dangerous that makes us fear for our safety.

I’ve done my own disappearing act this summer, but it’s had nothing to do with cops or batshit crazy clients.  While I can’t really share any details, suffice it to say, I’m FINE and I’m safe and I’m taking good care of myself.    I really needed a break, too, from everything.   I’m old enough to be able to see the value in stepping back and getting perspective on the Big Picture.  Reassess, prioritize, check in.   It’s been painful, and trust me, I’m not into suffering.   I’m too much of a hedonist.

Part of the moth-to-butterfly effect has been a reassessment of the direction of the Modern Hooker cartoons as well.  I could easily continue on in the vein of Public Service Announcements for the sex worker rights movement, and the zingy little quips and ha-ha’s.   There’s a lot of material there, trust me.   But I’m ready to start getting a little more real and start sharing some of my story on a more genuine level.  Hopefully, there’ll be some humor in there somewhere.  I’m always willing to make a fool of myself for the greater good.

In the meantime, thanks to all of you for your continued love and support and concern.   Really, folks, I’m too tough to be down for the count very long.   But I could definitely use your positive vibrations, prayers and altar offerings in the coming weeks as I trudge through the final part of this particular journey.

With Love,

MH

A Harlot’s Heritage

Philumena, a 4th century B.C. Grecian courtesan (or hetairaie as they liked to be known back then) once wrote this to one of her lovers:

Why do you bother writing long letters? I want fifty gold pieces, not letters. If you love me, pay up; if you love your money more, then don’t bother me any more. Goodbye!” (Source: Sex in History, Reay Tannahill)

I’m sure any modern day hooker can relate to that sentiment on some level, what with the clients who insist on authoring a letter campaign equivalent to Barrett and Browning – declarations of undying devotion, poetry, and the like.  However, this is not what this post is about.

One way I stay sane and grounded in this business is to be reminded that I come from a long line of women who were quite comfortable defying societal norms, religious protocols and silly, oppresive laws in favor of authentic, self-expressed sexuality.   Consider Janabai, a bhakti woman poet in the 12th century India:

Cast off all shame, and sell yourself in the marketplace;

then alone can you hope to reach the Lord.

Cymbals in hand, a veena upon my shoulder,

I go about; who dares to stop me?

The pallav of my sari falls away (A scandal!);

yet will I enter the crowded marketplace without a thought.

Jani says, My Lord, I have become a slut to reach Your home.

(Source:  Women in Praise of the Sacred, Jane Hirshfield)

Right on, Jani.  That’s my girl, out there half-naked in the streets, defiant and sexy and proud.   I have to admit I was somewhat naively impressed that the word “slut” has been around that long, but I was most touched by the sacred prostitute-type reference of using commercial sex as a path to spiritual enlightenment.

Jump up several hundred years later to Anais Nin’s story, The Queen, where she describes the very essence of a whore:

“Somehow in the whore the…womb, constantly subjected to desire, produces a phenomenon.  All the eroticism comes to the surface.  The constant living with a penis inside of one does something fascinating to a woman.  The womb seems to be exposed, to be present in every aspect of her.”

The focus of the short story is on a whore named Bijou, the Queen of Whores.  “When we first lay in bed [her skin] was cool, and then it would become warm and feverish.  Her eyes — it was impossible to describe her eyes except by saying that they were the eyes of an orgasm. What constantly happened in her eyes was something so feverish, so incendiary, so intense that at times when I looked straight at her and felt my penis rising and palpitating, I also felt as if something were palpitating in her eyes.”  When Bijou laughed, “it was the sexual laugh of a satisfied woman, teh laugh of a body enjoying itself through every pore and cell, being caressed by the whole world.”  When she walked down the street, even urchins followed in the wake of her truly sexual animalism.

Over the years, in and out of sex work, I have identified with this story strongly.  It’s like this is who I really am underneath the silks and satins from French boutiques, without the jewelry clanking on my wrists and at my neck, without a lifetime of wincing inside at dead hooker jokes and staying silent to protect those around me from my personal choices.  Once, I was a Janabai in the marketplace, but I was neither proud nor defiant.  I was just young and scared.  It took a sexless marriage and re-emergence into the full body of my sexuality for me to connect with my own Bijou.  These women are my heroines.