Sex Work’s Big E-Brother

The Erotic Services category has long been policed on Craigslist.com, and not only as per the request of law enforcement. It used to be up to vigilantes to report “violations” of the Terms of Use such as e-prostitution. The newest regimen in place from Seattle to New York City, however, is being implemented by Craigslist itself.

The site now regulates postings in Erotic Services in two ways. First, Craigslist requires mandatory account creation before posting as a services provider. This would allow CL to log all your posts over a period of time under one e-mail account. The second track requires phone authentication from postees to Erotic Services. This one-two punch suggests the creation of an easy-access database for law enforcement, either to deter on-line prostitution or prepare for a major e-bust.

It wouldn’t be the first time. In the past three weeks alone, Craigslist.com stings have been carried out in nine states, in the municipalities of Knoxville, Nashville, Louisville, Laurel, Salem, Milwaukee, Jacksonville, Des Moines, Omaha, and Ogden, Utah.

How are workers responding to these restrictions? Judging from the increase in traffic on the Personals boards, most are stepping up their code in “diamonds,” posting in Personals, and moving beyond code-words as obvious as “generous.”

No matter how you look at it, the regulation of Internet hook-ups has that Bloombergian ring to it. It just means us sex workers and other philanthropists ought to give, and fuck, all the more.

Playing It “Straight”

I had never been in the workaday closet closet until I started going “gay-for-pay.” I mean, there was that time when I was 15, but I more or less “came out” the night my 28 year-old manager Esteban jacked me up against the restaurant dumpster.

Needless to say, I went from $6.15 to $7.50 an hour.

These days, though, when I tell Johns I’m “gay” they just look disappointed. Why are “straight” guys so desirable to clients, anyways?

In their own words: straight is “studly,” “hot,” “exotic,” “youthful,” and, my personal favorite, the “real deal.” So in-between the lines of the “gay-for-pay” psyche, it’s the workers who fuck pro bono who are the “fake” ones.

But the world of paid sex can’t help but complicate the “either/or.” Michael Dorais, a sociologist and social worker, writes in Rent Boys that out of 40 of the male sex workers he studied “Seventeen described themselves as homosexual, thirteen as heterosexual, and ten as more or less bisexual.” Also, the figures coming out of the male-to-male porn industry suggest a large percentage of stars are straight-identified.

So, many male sex workers seem to identify sexuality with an emotional connection rather than a physical one; that’s why labels like MSM - “men who have sex with men” - are more than a CDC statistic. Some people, clearly, are “gay-for-pay,” and a hustler can be all these things; a whore, a “man,” and more.

The facts hold up in histories of MSM, as well. George Chauncey’s Gay New York shows that before World War II (1890-1940), the New York City scene was split up between the working-class areas of Times Square, Harlem, and The Bowery. The MSM could be  one of the visible “fairies” (effeminate gays), an undercover “queer” (masculine gay), or open “trade” (heterosexuals). “Trade,” Cauncey writes, were often sailors, transient workers, and other men who would fuck or suck for money, cheap enough for us to wonder why they’d do it for as little as a penny or a dime . . . but in the 1900s no one asked “trade” why they did it. Instead, they were recognized as “men” so long as they were, well, on top of the matter.

It was only in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, as the legendary (oh, if only we had pictures of him in drag. . .) J. Edgar Hoover and the vice cops swooped down on the friends of Dorothy and other communists, that all “men who have sex with men” came to be recognized as “inverts” by the shocked and appalled middle-class (who, by the way, had been “slumming” it in drag bars for years). And the fact that MSM were, at the same time, publicized more and more as perverse didn’t help the matter. The raucous bathhouses and balls of the 1900s, 10s, and 20s began to give way to an underground scene.

Then came Stonewall, where fairies, queers, and trade begot the universal “gay,” and that was that for trade.

Since Stonewall, the scope of “manliness” has narrowed criminally, and male sex workers who sleep with men don’t fit into the frame. Even if they are “gay-for-pay,” they often aren’t recognized as such. So in the midst of all this gender trouble, what’re we to make of a hustler who plays it “straight”?

“Meet Me at the Hyphen”

Last night I pulled a trick at the Waldorf-Astoria. The “Hyphen” is a notorious hotel in Midtown, Manhattan, and the suites are supposed to go for six hundred sixty dollars and up a night, but I haven’t seen a flophouse that chintzy since Paris.

The Waldorf does, however, carry a spectacular array of delicacies: miniature condiments. And they’ll let you in without an I.D. before 11PM! So, if you’re quick about it, you can dumpster room service and pad your bag with scented toiletries and miniature bottles of Hellman’s. It’s true, I may never eat it, but isn’t it the cutest?

Most Valuable Whore(s) - “Support Staff”

I adopted Okra the Cat last autumn. She’d been incarcerated for soliciting out of a parking garage off Kings Highway, Brooklyn.

That was November 9th.

Since then, Okra has become something of a personal assistant, supporting a healthy workaday life I never thought possible. There isn’t a day that goes by without Okra cleaning her vagina with her own tongue or schooling me in the various methods of seduction. There is, in fact, no better teacher than one who can lick her paw clean of her own shit.

The “support staff” in sex work is there to set up, take care of, and all-around support the sex act, whether it’s erotic dancing or taking a criscoed fist. I come home from a long day strangling and what do I find? There lies Okra, my Rock, nestling in a jockstrap and nodding off to sleep. Whatever lousy John might have thrown my back out, Okra brings me back.

And so, for longstanding cuteness and devotion to the cause I dedicate this month’s Most Valuable Whore (MVW) Award to the “Support Staff;” to the often unrecognized work of bartenders, pro-domme managers, webmistresses, and the camerapersons behind the scenes.

Getting [It] Up for Work

In the past, when I worked a nine-to-five, I made sure to treat myself before punching in at work. Whether it was a refrigerated bar of chocolate, someone’s discarded caffè latte, or a prolonged piss-and-stroke, I found a variety of ways to lighten my load. I had to lighten it, of course, because the Maryland minimum wage was $6.15 per hour. So it took a lot of motivation to get up and out the door for work.

These days, as my minimum has increased, I can get up and out of bed. But I have had occasional problems getting up my dick.

I’ve come up with all sorts of strategies to combat this development. Before such-and-such a client applies the prison strap, for instance, I might close my eyes and hum, think of my 8.5″ boyfriend plugging me with his fuckstick, or air conduct Mozart’s final, epitaphic “Introitus.”

Needless to say, Mozart doesn’t always do the trick.

In an “industry” in which workers churn out the money shots like Model-Ts on Ford’s assembly line, it’s understandably tough to “get it up.” There are, however, a number of familiar suggestions.

The now-archived resource HOOK has the following advice for male-bodied sex workers who have a case of the loosies:

“If staying hard is a challenge with a client, you can squeeze the base of your penis or gently massage the testicles or prostate gland to produce an erection. To fake it, try squeezing the base of your penis or using a cock ring.”

There is something missing from the advice, however, the importance of feeling comfortable in your own skin! Just being comfortable, with your body, your partner, and your role, does wonders at times when a cock ring isn’t going to cut the snuff. And little treats before a meet-up – in my case, piss and chocolate - go a long way in making the day an easier one to work.

The nature of the work relationship, of course, demands the same attitude from the client . . . but that’s another story.

“If you see something, say something”

The two-timing, greenish, cloth backpack I haul into the city fell apart on me again. This time, however, as the zipper split open and the contents of the bag spread out onto the cement floor, what was inside turned out to be stranger than my standard fare.

There was a sex toy in my produce.

It all started on my way home from Manhattan. I had just finished vegetable shopping and was eager to get back to Brooklyn and make a trial run of something I’d learned in Go Fuck Yourself, A Mini-Zine devoted to D.I.Y. Sex Toys and Gender-Bending Devices, a pamphlet that, by the way, has a fabulous section on produce.

In any case, there I am in the middle of the platform as things tumble out of my ho-bag, one compromising item after another. At first I scramble around the station in an attempt to catch the runaway zucchinis, then, of course, the carrot bundle slips out of its vegetable strap. To round out the scene, a heap of collard greens cushion the fall of the unfortunately decisive and yet oh-so agreeably pliant object, the eight inch silicone dildo.

And don’t forget the crowd. If you’re having trouble picturing the atmosphere of it all, remind yourself of the Sesame Street sing-along “One of These Things (Is Not Like The Others).” That’s the one where the audience of screaming children picks out an object that doesn’t fit. This time around, however, the object has a flared base and, as they are turning away the eyes of their kids, the parents glare at me like I’ve said one dirty, dirty word.