Annie Sprinkle on “Sex Worker Burn Out”

Lately, I’ve been nursing the singed nerves of that all-too-human Sex Worker Burn Out (SWBO). Instead of exacerbating the condition with a long post, I’ll just link up to Annie Sprinkle’s indispensable How-To for a “Cure”:

STEP 1 – Admit you are burnt out. This sounds easy, but it’s the hardest step. Our egos, as well as our incomes, are invested in feeling good about our work. It’s not easy to admit that you are a mess. See it as an opportunity to grow.

I hereby admit it! Dr. Sprinkle, many thanks for all your relationship-minded, Whore-healin’ work.

Update: Working Hearts, ESPU-CA

I wrote up a highly personal post, “Just Whoreable,” for Sadie Lune’s Working Hearts this week, a blog about sex workers’ non-paid relationships. But to balance out the harrowing with the joyous, I wanted to link Sadie’s Bound, Not Gagged post about the ongoing fight for decriminalization in San Francisco in the November referendum Proposition K. It’s been championed by the Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and, more recently, endorsed by the Democratic Central Committee, as well as San Francisco’s Harvey Milk Club and Lawyer’s Guild, très bon, laborers of San Francisco!

The Pink Scare, Round Two

Landing on the airstrip at La Guardia, back from Chicago’s Desiree Alliance conference, I overheard one classic and Bloombergian welcome back to New York: the NYPD staged a violent“prostitution” bust at Lou’s, also known as the Hot Lap Dance Club, a private loft club in Midtown Manhattan, and arrested another handful of New York’s sex workers.

It’s now been dubbed the Midtown “Lap-Dance ‘Bordello,” according to one of many articles circulated by the New York Post, one of Murdoch’s yellow rags that will stop at nothing to expose the Big Apple’s sex workers, from the escort “Kristen” of gubernatorial fame to the pro-dommes prosecuted under the recent Dungeon Alley busts. While I’d love to dwell on the inaccuracies of these charges – as one worker and activist at Lou’s put it to us at SWANK, “98% of what they said in those articles was trumped up media hype” – I think it’s equally important to review the past year’s busts for the record, at least those made public

(First, a side note: we can look forward to the Sex Workers Project’s report on raids, maybe they can shed light and policy advice on the matter in the fall).

The raids began this year, to my knowledge, with Scores West in late January, then hit the escort agency Emperor’s Club VIP in March along with a few others related to then-Governor Spitzer. Then came Dungeon Alley’s sordid back-and-forth in April, followed by Pacha, Marquee and Splash on “drug-related” charges in June (more on the connections between “anti-gay” and “anti-sex worker” later), while the mayoral candidate Eric Gioia’s (D-Queens) called for increased policing on Craigslist.com. Now it’s Lou’s and, always, the mounting casualties from both “street sweeps” and the stepped-up prosecution of e-stings on Eros and Craigslist.

By April, Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK) meant it when we declared the current state of affairs “The Pink Scare.”

It’s not just Pink because of the sex industry, either, with bathhouses and sex clubs that cater to us “Men who have Sex with Men” (MSM) dropping like RAID-sprayed flies. As I mentioned earlier, Pacha and Marquee, two straight clubs with occasional gay-themed events when it proves lucrative, were raided during Pride weekend in July, while the infamous Splash barely escaped closure as police piled in. The anti-gay “drug” raids of this year are comparable to the NYPD narcotics raids of 2006, when Avalon, Deep, Speed, Spirit, Splash, Steel Gym, and View Bar were all busted, on drug charges which inevitably point to alleged prostitution-related offenses.

This relates to another point some might not pick up, besides the veiled, bordering on discursive connection between the so-called immoralities of sex work of any kind and same-sex love, that people pull tricks in gay bars, too. It’s a historic connection, factoring into arrests in New York since the raid on the Ariston bathhouse in 1903. Believe it or not, not all men in the bathhouses, or among gay-identified culture in general, are gay. Some are straight-identified hustlers.

To get back to the Scare and round off the all-too-incomplete list of raids and closures, recently it’s been rumored by the Gay City News that bathhouses such as the West Side Club would be forced to shut down by the Health Department, citing drug use, inflated estimates around MRSA, prostitution, and the ol’ “vectors of disease” line.

There is some good news, however. The raids, as old a political institution in New York and as violent as those during the age of AIDS, are finally being challenged by an initiative put forward by the Commercial Sex Venues Coalition. It would revise the 1985 ban on oral, anal and vaginal sex to target solely unprotected sex, but many doubt its success.

I’m afraid the days of seedy New York nightlife are over, ushering in an age of whitewashed Chelsea Piers, industrial straight clubs, and the inevitable Disneyfication of much more than Times Square, a restructuring that gets at the very heart of what some of us have lovingly called our home in New York.

The Wisdom of… Epidemiologists?

The epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani’s recent book, The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, while choc-a-bloc full of policy and statistics, lacks the whore’s-eye view the title first led me to believe.

While The Wisdom of Whores is a well-written and eminently useful insider’s take on international HIV/AIDS policy, I fail to see the appropriateness of the title. In fact, Pisani’s Whores actively calls into question the very “Sacred Cows” of sex worker rights and HIV/AIDS activism: the rejection of compulsory testing as inhumane, the prioritization of antiretroviral treatment and, finally, activists’s full-on endorsement of peer education among high-risk groups: commercial sex workers, injecting drug users (IDUs) and men who have sex with men (MSM).

With this titular technicality out of the way, let me be clear that I’m not sure I entirely disagree with Pisani’s take on the matter. The strength of this book, in my view, is its ability to shake up the “treatment” and “prevention” debate among sex workers themselves. Perhaps it’s time the golden “Cows” of sex workers rights were recast, as Pisani suggests. Then again, perhaps not.

Grind the Vote

Grind the Vote events are being held from Sin City to the Windy City, the Capital to the Big Apple.

This summer, $pread Magazine and affiliated groups are organizing the sex worker electorate into a political force to “Grind the Vote!” See: Grind the Vote for dates and venues in Chicago, Las Vegas, D.C., and New York.

Itinerant Ho

The number one perk of my job, I would say, is that I choose my own hours, but coming in at a close second is the rampant availability of sex work off highways, near airports, and a well-placed ecort ad away from resorts.

Then again, is it a vacation if you’re getting paid to put out?

It depends on the “paid” qualifying the “vacation.” A client might provide an all-expenses-paid package to Berlin or a discreet, weekly allowance on your bedroom nightstand, but there’s a world of difference between the arranged approaches and the independence of a travelling show.

Like the congés payés of French fame, my summer times have ushered in days of relaxation and holiday feeling along with financial security through sex work. Even as, being a citizen of the United States, I have to finance my vacation, health care, and education, the job I do provides some flexibility. In work and travel in summers past, for instance, I’ve worked a penthouse off the Seine or nestled my way into an aid-worker’s, and activist’s, sheets in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It’s been a charmed, hard-whorin’, life.

Plus, the on-the-go model provides the added advantage of having no permanent clients, and so a fuller and freer amount of free time to do my own thing between work and play. I prefer this approach, or none at all. In the end, however, it’s not always clear which moment is work and which strictly pleasure.

This confusion has unfortunate side-effects in store, when trips and tricks become “just work,” a label that hurts some friends and clients. Then again, it would fail to phase some others. And what about working while on vacation with sex worker-supportive romantic partners? I’m going to go with “no” on this one.

But be sure they pick up the tab.

Home-o Porn

The latest Ace in my proverbial F*%$ Deck is shaping up in pornography. I’m set to launch a fusionist “Domestic Porn” site for queer-like clientèle in which the coming pornotopia blasts that last, doddering fortress of heterosexual monogamy – the Home.

NPR: “Behind Closed Doors”

I was hosted recently by Michel Martin on “Tell Me More,” a program on National Public Radio. Juhu Thukral from the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center and Annie Lobert, the founder of Hookers for Jesus also participated. The segment is titled Behind Closed Doors: The Reality of Prostitution, a bit gimmicky, it’s true, but, hey, it’s not like they needed my opinion…

I had several problems with the interview. I had long, drawn-out series of conversations with the NPR folks about “legal” issues surrounding my use of a pseudonym, and, in the end, they decided to broadcast that I was going solely by William because I was “in fear of arrest.” The most disturbing point being that NPR failed to credit the organization I was representing, Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK). This went down as both the Sex Workers Project and Hookers for Jesus were represented in a strong way. I guess sex workers currently working in the business are too busy in the alleyways shooting up, so how could they be organized, right? I tried to make up for it by referencing SWANK quite a few times.

The next bits are mostly my fault: I compared the reproductive right of abortion in poor economic circumstances, which I called a “choice among limited choices,” to the “choice” of doing sex work. Not the happiest of comparisons.

I also wasn’t clear enough when I mentioned the move between the “getting by” model, which I said involved trading sex casually for food and shelter out of bars and clubs, to the “professional” model. Michel Martin took that to mean I was an always street working kid, which isn’t accurate, and I didn’t get edited in for correcting her as I would have liked to. I was in seriously strained economic circumstances after moving out at 15-ish, it’s true, but being a well-educated Irish kid, I didn’t have as much trouble as I could have, and the fact that it was sex work to sleep with someone for a bed, a dinner, a raise at work, or a ride to Paris didn’t enter my mind back then.

So, you win some you lose some. Overall, I don’t think it was too bad for a first-timer on radio, and I learned a lot from Annie L. and Juhu besides.

‘Pink Scare’ Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRESS RELEASE
Workers Action New York (SWANK), swank@riseup.net
Sex Workers Outreach Project – New York City (SWOP-NYC), swop.nyc@gmail.com
Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Desiree Alliance, info@DesireeAlliance.org

The Pink Scare: Ms. Palfrey and Sex Panic

New York, NY – The activists at Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), Sex Workers Outreach Project New York (SWOP-NYC), Prostitutes of New York (PONY) and the nationally-based Desiree Alliance are saddened that Deborah Jeane Palfrey, also known as the D.C. Madam, passed away on May 1st in an apparent suicide. We – prostitutes, strippers, pro-dommes, porn stars, sex experts, and allies – extend our sympathies to all of those hurt by this most recent chapter of the “Pink Scare,” in which oppressive legislation and social stigma partner to generate hysteria around what, for us, can prove to be simply a decent way to make a living.

On Getting Stiffed

In the support section of Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK) this week I brought up that awkward and embarassing fact: I’ve been stiffed by clients.

“But we had such a splendid time,” says the CEO, “how could you want to get paid for it?”

If I say x an hour, one john is bound to read it retail. And if I write it “by hour” or “per,” the client finds some excuse. Then I have the “choice” to either dispute it, collect some collateral and risk losing the paycheck, or take the payment and run. I know, I know. I’m supposed to collect upfront, but playing tax collector isn’t how all clients get hooked, folks. They are just “helping me out” (packing the cash in an envelope and stuffing their hands in their pockets like they just stole a f$#!ing cookie).

The suprising thing to hear from SWANK was that I’m not alone. It doesn’t matter how practiced you think you are, apparently, it happens. I don’t know what I’d do without other workers. Join Prostitutes Anonymous? I think not. I’m no addict. I just get paid, even if, every now and then, I happen to get shorted.