I’m operating on one hour of sleep.  Between nightsweats, waves of overwhelming nausea, and having my face painfully stuffed with snot, it was pretty tough to actually get some rest last night.  So.

In a typical effort to feel like I have control over a situation that is actually completely out of my hands, I have researched the side effects of smoking endlessly to figure out how long this is supposed to last and what the typical experience is for someone who was smoking about as much as I did on a regular basis.

Apparently, I could be this sick for another week, or another month.  Another.  Month.

This morning I was genuinely worried I was going to vomit in bed.  That’s how bad the nausea is. 

The minute, and I mean truly, the minute, that I start feeling like I can breathe enough to do more than putter around the house, I’m getting my ass to the gym.

 Endorphins.  I need them.  

• Time Smoke-Free: 2 days, 4 hours, 19 minutes and 12 seconds
• Cigarettes NOT smoked: 22
• Lifetime Saved:  4 hours
• Money Saved: $6.50 

9:26 am  •  16 May 2013  •  4 notes  •  View comments

watching the Farrah Abraham sex tape.  For work.  

No, really, this is writing related.

Notes so far:

Farrah seems SO YOUNG and it makes me kind of uncomfortable.

James Deen has a great cock.  I know, I know, we all know.

Blah blah blah, I need more beer to make this more interesting.

She seems to actually be sincere for a good chunk of it, which is actually hot.  This is in passing moments and not consistent throughout the film.

Um, I want James Deen to stick his face in my cunt.  (Is that creepy to say?  It might be creepy.  Am I creepy?  I’m watching a porn and this is the point of porn, so it can’t be creepy.  Can it?)

CUM IN YOUR EYES IS PAINFUL.  POOR YOUNG LADY.

That is all.

FEEL FREE TO ASK QUESTIONS

12:02 am  •  11 May 2013  •  4 notes  •  View comments

four and a half months until my 25th birthday:

i’m being paid to write.

i’m in the midst of an existential crisis.

i’m still slinging tits for cash.

it seems like there’s a leveling up somewhere in here but things, just frankly, have only changed superficially.  

last night, i wept in an ethiopian restaurant while wearing mom-shorts.  most of my friends are much older than i am and i can tell that my “quarter life crisis” (vom) is being met with more pity than sympathy.  

i don’t know, y’all.  twenty five.  what do you do when you’ve lived a quarter of a century?  

i can’t plan for the future, so i’ll plan for this morning and i guess that means that i will quit smoking (again) and throw open the windows and make iced tea and water the patio garden.

11:16 am  •  21 April 2013  •  2 notes  •  View comments

Newly recognized defense mechanism: When feeling awkward, ask other people uncomfortable questions so you are not the MOST uncomfortable person in the room.

I’ve been doing this for years and only recognized it TODAY WHY DID NONE OF YOU PEOPLE TELL ME OMG

7:28 pm  •  17 April 2013  •  1 note  •  View comments

Lately, I have felt like I’m floating.  I haven’t been working toward anything, in combination with some major sex worker self-loathing (HELLO, JERKBRAIN) and dissatisfaction overall.

I worked a little in New York after Catalyst Con East, and then ended up canceling a major session last minute when I was approaching an honest-to-god panic attack.  

I needed the session.  I needed the money.  I was so on the verge of having a meltdown, though (which I bled all over Twitter and got a ton of support from the fucking amazing sex worker community I’m connected with), that I canceled.  

I had been battling with my social anxiety all weekend at CCon, and had shoved it aside (or stifled it with a few glasses of wine).  Social obligations take a huge toll on my psyche; if I miss things because I need to be alone, I feel guilty and sad that I missed out.  If I go, I suffer for it later.  I feel this acutely in places like CCon, where there are so many admirable, intelligent people that I love chatting with.

I didn’t take the time to recover from CCon, immediately traveling by bus from DC to NY (in the snow! which I wasn’t prepared for!), and then having a long shopping/lunch date with a client the next day.  By the time that next session was coming up, I couldn’t hang.  My throat felt like it was closing up, and I woke up my partner from a nap because I was crying and hyperventilating.  Cool.

I present well, so I don’t think I read as anxious as I usually feel.  As I’ve gotten older, my anxiety has increasingly gotten worse, too.  This isn’t doing me any favors with sex work, which requires mental and social engagement.  

I don’t hate my job (most of the time?), but the balance of needing money versus my own psychological well-being isn’t always being honored right now.  I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to sustain this.  

Sidenote:  It feels weird to admit that; are people in my own community going to hate me because I am not confident that I want to be here?  Does that make me a big fat liar in some way?  Am I doing something wrong here?

It’s possible that I’m having some unnecessary and irrational fear about this. Obviously, I don’t go to large social gatherings ALL THE TIME and I don’t always require so much handling for my social anxiety.  

Point is: I need to be better at prioritizing my goals, as well as be better about my own self-care.  

I’m going to publicly state some of my goals in an attempt to hold myself accountable to them, and to make them real by way of sharing them.  

Goals:

• Move to New York with my partner.
• Craft better strategies for self-care.  I need to focus on maintaining physical self-care (eating well, working out, making myself sleep properly), as well as acknowledging my needs surrounding my anxiety.  This means that hey, if I need to stay in my house and not talk to anyone for a minute, if I can manage it, I need to do it.   
• Focus on building my domme business without compromising the above things.
• Continue to build my sex worker community.  Honestly, without knowing so many sex workers…I don’t know what I would do.  I know a bunch in person and on the internet, but I would love to build those friendships beyond seeing everyone once every six months or something.   I’m sure that seems potentially counterintuitive after mentioning my own social anxiety, but what I’ve learned from when things have gone well is that it is about balance.  Seclusion is just as damaging as overexposure.  (I know we’re all a bunch of creepy recluses who live on Twitter, but I would love to have people over for tea, or to go on bike rides, or to get food with.  So hey, if you’re in the Bay, let’s do that.)
• Create an exit strategy through education.  Right now, sex work is pretty much my only real option, unless I want to work for shit wage that won’t pay my bills even if I work full time (and will guarantee my own misery).  Who knows if I will even utilize that strategy, but I want to feel like I have more options.  I want to always feel like I have options, no matter what my job/career situation is, and a step toward doing that is not being quite so fucking undereducated.  Trade school?  I don’t know.  I’m doing research and figuring out what seems like something manageable.  
• Build on sex worker advocacy and activism.  Volunteer more.  Do more for other people.  

Some of those are nebulous, but I believe I have the tools to make them all happen.  Here’s my statement of intention.  Help hold me to it, friends and universe.

7:16 pm  •  25 March 2013  •  4 notes  •  View comments

srslyquixxotica:

There was a post on one of my favorite blogs in the entire world: sex worker problems. It says “No 1 wants to date a whore even after you’ve left the industry.”

And of course, I’m following everything, watching it all unfold. Watching people who have no experience in the…

I really needed to read this after: 

• Last year, when my partner’s ex lost her mother fucking shit over my job, and was a complete asshole for no damn good reason to me
• Worrying during that whole ongoing incident of her unjustifiably self-righteous assholery, my partner would up and change his mind about his feelings for me.  About us.  We’d discussed it ad nauseum, but having someone actively interfere in my relationship and try to stick their unsightly personality into my business made me worry WHAT IF HE CHANGES HIS MIND?  What if he doesn’t want a whore anyway?  
• Feeling like every time I’m honest about my job (which I think is important for destigmatizing the work) I am dropping a huge fucking bomb and managing the fear of being isolated, treated like a freak, treated like less than
• Dealing with some motherfucking dude at a wedding I went to this past year “jokingly” trying to get me to spank him, “just once, come on, just once,” and then dealing with him being taken aback when I ask him how much money he had in his wallet
• The shame spiral that happened when I was assaulted at work, and assaulted at Folsom Street Fair.  Wanting to talk about it but feeling like I couldn’t because it must be my own fault anyway, right?  Right.  (Intellectually, I know this isn’t true, but my feelings about it remain the same.)
• Observing “feminist” friends be uncomfortable and taken aback when I tell them why I don’t like Tina Fey, or other people who promote anti-SW shit.  Their dismissiveness about my concerns, or my anger.
• Having friends who actively avoid asking about how work is going or what is going on because they are too uncomfortable to even listen to my day to day experience, or how I feel about it
• The fear in the pit of my stomach when Prop 35 passed with wild popularity
• Feeling like a loser when working in a non-profit just makes me fucking miserable, despite it being “legitimate,” and worrying that the only thing I am good at is being some fantasy creature who beats men for money
• The complete and utter shame and humiliation that set in when I realized my computer had been stolen, and obviously hacked into.  They stole my things.  They saw my pictures.  Those photos may be on the internet, but up until that moment, I had been in control of everything that was let to the public.  Now, that’s gone.
• After feeling the overwhelming sense of shame, the loss of control, the disgust that someone could objectify me through my own private stolen property.
• Experiencing the shame that sets in when I haven’t participated with SWOP or other SW activism, when I realize I haven’t done what I have wanted to do because it just takes so much energy and right now it takes so much energy to even live, to survive, and I feel guilty that I cannot be the activist I want to be, to be involved the way I want to be

This is merely a series of highlights, and I’m one privileged ass sex worker (I mean, I’m no Masters Degree upper middle class ho, but still privileged as hell).

When people pretend this stigma doesn’t exist, it invalidates all of the emotional work that goes into being a sex worker.  It’s not just dealing with clients, although sure, that is also emotional work, but dealing with everyone else you come into contact with.  It is a constant vulnerability, socially and legally, and to dismiss it is pretty fucking insulting.

The original article is focused, of course, on the context of dating, but this stigma (and the associated feelings) permeate every social interaction.  It is exhausting.  Anyone who wants to tell a sex worker that it isn’t is a fucking asshole.  Get a clue, dude.  Better yet, LISTEN TO WHAT WE ARE SAYING TO YOU RIGHT NOW.  Don’t tell us how it really is, because you don’t fucking know.  

And THANK YOU to the original poster, because all of that shit needs to be read.  Twice.  

Consider yourself an ally?  Hell, consider yourself an enemy?  READ IT.  TWICE.

(Source: srslycheezefriez)

1:49 am  •  2 March 2013  •  75 notes  •  View comments

may move to the other blog.  my creepy stalker from sacramento* (yes, daniel y, i see you), and other company frequent this space, so i don’t feel totally comfortable updating here.  

the issue of putting things out on the internet: they are forever, and your audience is EVERYONE.

*someday, i swear, i will share all the emails and comments from this exchange.  it’s reminiscent of this shit. really.

8:45 pm  •  13 February 2013  •  1 note  •  View comments

I’ve been writing about body issues, particularly related to my recent weight gain, and being a sex worker in a more anonymous space.  If you would like the link, let me know.

4:16 pm  •  12 February 2013  •  2 notes  •  View comments

friends since fifteen.

5:20 pm  •  30 January 2013  •  View comments

this is how i feel today (thanks hyperbole and a half for perfectly summarizing what depression is like).  

i am having a SAD.

so what i’m doing is:

-peeling garbanzo beans to make ethereally smooth hummus

-making aforementioned hummus

-taking a bath with bath salts and some essential oils

-painting my nails a bright red

-fixing up the shaved half of my head, which looks more like this than anything

-telling myself amanda’s adage: be nice to my friend

which means asking myself, “is that nasty thing you just thought about yourself and/or your overwhelming list of seemingly highly visible inadequacies something you’d say to a friend when they were feeling sad or defeated?  no?  then be nice to my friend [meaning myself]”

7:11 pm  •  18 January 2013  •  2 notes  •  View comments

The fifth anniversary of my father’s death is this year.  I have done a lot of processing regarding my his death fairly publicly.  Five years is not a terribly long time, but even so, I have mostly run out of  unique things to say about what it means to lose a parent (particularly what it means when the loss happens at a relatively young age).

We were very close up until I was about seventeen, but his alcoholism and other health issues caused a major rift between us in the last two years of his life.  He went from being my closest confidante to an estranged relative that I rarely spoke to.  While we worked some of those things out shortly before his death, the incident was so unexpected that we didn’t have time to make the conflict between us copacetic. Having a complex and somewhat unresolved relationship with your parent adds a particularly painful element to the grieving process.

Some of the major things his death taught me:

• Grief is far more subtle and pervasive than discussed or anticipated.  
• The absence of the person lost is never resolved; it is merely a void that you become accustomed to.  
• Being able to call someone to tell them to fuck off is just as important as being able to call them to tell them you love them.  Knowing someone is alive in the world is enough.  Death is permanent and irrevocable.  Being able to call someone and tell them how angry you are with them is meaningful. Trust me when I say that when they aren’t there to hear it, it’s worse.
• Pride is a fool’s errand.  Ask for help.  Tell people when you need them.
• On that note: Accept what people are offering you, even if it isn’t always precisely aligned with what you asked for or what you thought you wanted.  You’d be surprised at how helpful those small things are.  Take kindness when it is offered (and offer it in return when you can).

This is the short list (there is a longer one here if you’re really curious).  I stopped writing about it when it started being redundant.  I was sick of talking about it and I’m sure that my loved ones were sick of hearing about it.  How many times can you bemoan this kind of shit?  It gets old.  

So why now?  

Every year I commit to a month of teetotaling in honor of both his death and the death of my grandmother.  It is meant to be a statement of intention that the cycle can and will be broken.  It’s not merely an act of abstinence from alcohol, but the time is also spent considering of the self-destructiveness that ruined such creative, intelligent people.  The act is a small thing.  Although I do not think that I suffer from the same kind of addiction that destroyed them, I consider this yearly memorial a worthwhile effort.

Usually I take on this month of sobriety closer to his death date, but this year I’m doing it a few months early.  I’m looking forward to resetting myself and taking the time to focus on some of my goals, both for this year and for the long term.  My commitment to doing better by him, by not letting the same cycle eat me up, is renewed every time I do this.  

Turning pain into strength is a muscle, and I plan to keep it strong.

12:53 am  •  2 January 2013  •  4 notes  •  View comments

stop posting photos of myself that suggest that i am adorable, and instead post photos of how i actually look.

CLUES: CHUBBY, DISGRUNTLED, USUALLY WITH WILD HAIR AND AN ANGRY DISPOSITION.

2:56 am  •  1 January 2013  •  1 note  •  View comments

overall, the good things that happened this year far overshadow the bad.  

growing pains are, as always, tough on the soul; they are rarely handled gracefully and i am so self-conscious of their existence.  i am hoping that ultimately they will contribute to further cultivated self-awareness and self-actualization.  

december has been the hardest stretch of this year.  major health issues that put me in the hospital are something i am dreading addressing in the new year.  can’t i just be healthy and normal forever?  i’m not even close to being old and my body is pulling some grade A bull shit.  

despite this depressing addition to my life, the next year holds so much excitement! the gingerbeard and i are heading on a major trip later this year, and i cannot tell you how giddy i am about it.  

this is the year i leave oakland after five years.  this is the year i turn twenty five.   in march, it will be the fifth anniversary of my father’s death.  five five five.

 i foresee more self-inflicted growing pains in my near future.  i’m ready.

i hope your new year celebration is filled with love and laughter and is spent exactly how you wish.  i hope all your adventures provide you with the things you need.  

happy new year!

1:32 pm  •  31 December 2012  •  2 notes  •  View comments

relationships are framed as absolutes: true love, be it romantic, platonic, or familial, means that you absolutely cannot live without the object of your affection.

i feel so disconnected when it occurs to me that there is not a soul i could not live without.  it doesn’t mean i don’t love them.  it doesn’t mean i wouldn’t be sad to lose them.  it doesn’t mean that i don’t value them and what they bring to my lives.  i don’t find any one person’s existence is absolutely imperative to my emotional well-being or otherwise survival.  

i’m never sure if that means something is wrong with me or not.  sometimes i feel like i’m missing out on this Bigger Picture Bigger Than You Big Deal Thing that you know, i just don’t get.  anyone who i engage with regularly is someone i choose to engage with.  

there’s no one i couldn’t live without, but lots of people that i would prefer to keep around.  if any of them died, it would be sad, and i would be sad, but life would go on.  i’d love hella more amazing people that i would prefer to keep around and there would be time still for wine drinking and coffee making and hugging and laughing and having hard conversations on rainy days in cafes and cars.

it’s not very traditionally romantic, but i find it more personally meaningful.  it’s not that we were meant to be, but that we found each other important enough to keep making it happen.  my family, friends, and lovers aren’t a given.  they didn’t just show up one day and now i’m stuck with them.  

my lack of romanticism makes me wonder if i’ve missed something.  

11:09 am  •  4 November 2012  •  View comments

this past weekend was the san francisco folsom street fair, a major high holy day for sexual deviants (and the tourists who live vicariously through the exhibitionists who participate in this margarita-laden bacchanal).  i didn’t get nearly enough photos of the fair itself, nor of all the lovely people i was with; i was too busy playing!  

for those of you who haven’t heard of folsom: it is the self proclaimed “world’s largest leather event,” meaning that it is essentially one big kinky clusterfuck in the SOMA district of san francisco.  it draws enough of a crowd (400,000 folks!) that it is supposedly california’s third largest outdoor spectator event!  

folsom is one of those events that is so uniquely san francisco.  where else could you get away with this? 

as a kinky person in the sex industry, folsom is better than christmas.  it is an opportunity to feel completely unabashed about what you like, who you are, and what you are in entirety.  it is one big fabulous party where pretty much anything goes (as long as you ask nicely!).  

enjoy some photos.  ms. karin sin was kind enough to lend me some of her latex to borrow, and i’m totally hooked.  so…belated birthday/early holiday gifts, anyone?  

i know i am incredibly overdue in updating about catalyst con (seriously, i have several drafts half-written, and i promise there are things coming), but i have been practically drowning with the stress from apartment searching, working pretty much non-stop (other than shooting with lydia hudgens, folsom, and dinner with my mom), and packing everything in my house.  

there’s more to come once i feel like i can breathe again.

3:54 pm  •  27 September 2012  •  11 notes  •  View comments