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Lyrica
I guess it makes sense that my mother would leave my sister a different message, a message that said come, come now, because my mother knows that I can’t really do that. I mean I could do that, but taking the plane would destroy me. It’s also possible that my grandmother isn’t about to die -- a year or two ago, one of the times when my grandmother fell, my mother thought she was about to die, but then she got better.
I’m thinking about what it would mean if I wasn’t able to say goodbye in person. How much would that hurt? Would it be better or worse than the pain of taking a plane, taking a plane and maybe canceling all my other plans for travel in the next month: the film screening in Seattle, LA to visit my sister, Santa Fe to see if I want to move there.
If my grandmother is dying, I could go to Baltimore after Santa Fe, I could take the train to Chicago and then from Chicago to Baltimore. That probably makes the most sense, except my sister thinks my grandmother might die now, I guess one of the doctors says she might only have a few weeks. She needed an operation that she didn’t want, but she agreed to it because they said otherwise she would die, but now there’s fluid in her lungs and they wanted to do a second operation but she’s refused it.
Maybe she wants to die. I know she said before that she didn’t want any more operations, that more pain wasn’t worth it. She’s 93 or maybe even older, sometimes it seems like she moves her age back a bit, but definitely she’s at least 93. She’s outlived her husband and her only son, all of her brothers and even their wives. The one thing she wants to do is to spend more time in the studio so she can make more art; if she survives, she might not be able to do that anymore. That might mean that she doesn’t want to survive.
Rose meant a lot to me as a kid, she was the only person around me that built her life around art: I thought it was everything to her, and maybe that meant it to could be everything to me. It wasn’t everything to her; when I decided to leave college, she told me that if she could do it all over again she would have finished. She might have even said: instead of becoming an artist. I felt like she was renouncing her whole life in order to get me to change my mind: status and respectability were more important to her than my autonomy or dreaming. Later, I felt betrayed in many other ways too -- she wanted me to take out my earrings when I was around her; she didn’t like the way people looked at me, which meant that I should change; she wanted me to make up with my father. Now, when we talk on the phone, mostly she wants to tell me that everything I’m doing is wrong.
Still, all of this can’t erase the place she still inhabits in my heart, that place where a glimpse at the light shining behind shadow can make me hopeful, at least for a moment, what was it that I was looking at earlier? Oh, those pale green leaves against the peach building: if my grandmother and I were closer, I would call her all the time and say listen, you won’t believe this color combination. And she wouldn’t tell me that I must not want to get better, otherwise I would try Lyrica.
Quote: Mistress Matisse on the old fallback of Bad Childhood Experiences
- Mistress Matisse, in Were Kinky People Abused as Children?, on thestranger.com
The New Trojan Condoms
Sex News Update: Shooting Outside Strip Club
From the New York Times:
Officers Won’t Face Federal Charges in Sean Bell Killing
“Citing insufficient evidence, federal authorities said Tuesday that they would not bring a civil rights case against the New York City police officers involved in the killing of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old black man who was shot by the police outside a strip club in Queens on his wedding day.
The decision by the Justice Department came after prosecutors and federal agents reviewed the case, in which five police officers fired 50 shots into the Nissan Altima that Mr. Bell was driving. The car struck a detective in the leg and hit a police van just before the officers began firing their weapons.
(snip)
Detectives Isnora, Oliver and Cooper were acquitted by a Queens judge in April 2008 of criminal charges. The two other officers who opened fire were not charged criminally.”
(snip)
Ms. Paultre Bell said she hoped to get the attention of the White House. “There is a history of black men being killed by police officers, and something needs to be done,” she said. “We’re hoping to eventually meet with President Obama, and that he’ll do something, because this is a national problem.””
—
I don’t see the White House getting involved in this one. More likely this story will just fade away. I originally blogged about this incident here.
swopusa: Man accused of killing sex workers faces third murder charge in Vancouver: http://bit.ly/dpS4U3
swopusa: Gay porn star Dustin Michaels dies after cops Taser him as video cameras roll http://bit.ly/avAv8l
March 18th BDSM lineup (with Julie Powell, Madison Young and more!)
BDSM NIGHT
March 18, 2010, 8 pm - 10 pm
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET, NYC
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey or F/V to 2nd Avenue, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Between Forsyth & Eldridge. Look for the hot pink awning that says "XIE HE Health Club."
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://www.inthefleshreadingseries.com
Get kinky with memoir writers, BDSM educators, erotica authors, a porn star, and more at In The Flesh. Featuring Melissa Febos (author of dominatrix memoir Whip Smart), blogger Selina Fire (Pleasure Salon), rope bondage expert Monk (Twistedmonk.com), Julie Powell (author of Cleaving and Julie and Julia), erotica writer Xan West (contributor, Best SM Erotica 3), Mollena Williams (author, "BDSM and Playing with Race" in Best Sex Writing 2010, BDSM educator Lolita Wolf (LeatherYenta.com) and feminist porn star Madison Young (MadisonBound.com). Hosted and curated by Rachel Kramer Bussel (Best Sex Writing 2010, Bottoms Up, Spanked, Yes, Sir, Yes, Ma’am). Prize giveaways sponsored by Kink Academy (shirt, journal, purse, aftercare blanket, memberships and more) and Eden Fantasys (suede flogger and faux fur bondage cuffs). Authors' books will be available for sale by Mobile Libris. Free cupcakes by Baked by Melissa along with chips, candy and other snacks will be served.
In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the country's best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. The series was named Best Reading Series by New York Press in 2009. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Since its debut in October 2005, In the Flesh has featured such authors as Laura Antoniou, Mo Beasley, Susie Bright, Lily Burana, Jessica Cutler, Mike Daisey, Stephen Elliott, Valerie Frankel, Polly Frost, Gael Greene, Andy Horwitz, Debra Hyde, Maxim Jakubowski, Emily Scarlet Kramer of CAKE, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Edith Layton, Logan Levkoff, Suzanne Portnoy, Sofia Quintero, M.J. Rose, Lauren Sanders, Danyel Smith, Grant Stoddard, Cecilia Tan, Carol Taylor, Dana Vachon, Veronica Vera, Susan Wright, Zane and many others. The series has gotten press attention from the New York Times’s UrbanEye, Escape (Hong Kong), Flavorpill, The L Magazine, New York Magazine, New York Post, New York Observer, Philadelphia City Paper, Time Out New York, Flavorwire, Gawker, Gothamist, Jezebel.com, Nerve.com, Tasting Table and Wonkette, and has been praised by Dr. Ruth.
Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author, editor, blogger and reading series host. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a former sex columnist for The Village Voice. She’s edited over 30 anthologies, including the kink-themed Spanked, Bottoms Up, Yes, Sir, Yes, Ma'am, He's on Top, She's on Top, Rubber Sex as well as Peep Show, The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories, Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, Tasting Him, Tasting Her, and the non-fiction Best Sex Writing series. Her books won 3 2009 Independent Publisher Awards. Her writing been published in publications such as Clean Sheets, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, Fresh Yarn, Huffington Post, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Tango, The Village Voice, and Time Out New York, and in over 100 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006. Rachel conducts nationwide readings and erotic writing workshops. She has hosted In The Flesh since October 2005.
www.rachelkramerbussel.com
photo by Anya Garrett
Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart, (St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books). Her writing has been featured in The Southeast Review, Redivider, The Rambler, Storyscape Journal, Bitch Magazine, and Smut Magazine, among others. She co-curates and hosts the Mixer Reading and Music Series at Cake Shop, and teaches at SUNY Purchase College and The Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. More information about her work and projects can be found at melissafebos.com.
Selina Fire is a native New Yorker whose passion is sex. She blogs about her sexual adventures at selinafire.com. She co-hosts New York City's Pleasure Salon, a monthly gathering of sex-positive activists. Her 2007 column, "On The Edge," in Penthouse Forum, was banned in Canada because officials found it too obscene. She is currently working with artist Madame Cindy on a very dirty comic book.
Monk is dubbed “a unicorn” by his friends, because he is so many things that aren’t supposed to exist. Before launching his bondage rope company, this former Eagle Scout and evangelical missionary was a software cowboy, an actor/stuntman, and a filmmaker. Six years ago, Monk’s mother-in-law gave him Midori’s rope bondage book, and a ropemaker was born. Today, in addition to running the world’s largest bondage rope company, Monk enjoys a career as a sex worker, writer, activist, educator, and entertainer.
www.twistedmonk.com
Julie Powell thrust herself from obscurity (and an uninspiring temp job) to cyber-celebrityhood when, in 2002, she embarked on an ambitious yearlong cooking (and blogging) expedition through all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She detailed the experience in her critically acclaimed 2005 New York Times bestselling memoir, Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, which was adapted into a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in August 2009. Julie has made appearances on national television shows from ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’s The Early Show to The Martha Stewart Show and Food Network’s Iron Chef America, and her writing has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers including Bon Appétit, Food and Wine, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and more. She is a two-time James Beard Award winner in Journalism, was awarded an honorary degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and was the first ever winner of the Overall Lulu Blooker Prize for Books. Her highly anticipated second book, Cleaving, published in December, 2009.
Xan West is the pseudonym of an NYC BDSM/sex educator. Xan’s story “First Time Since”, won honorable mention for the 2008 National Leather Association’s John Preston Short Fiction Award. Xan appears in Best SM Erotica Volumes 2 and 3, Best Women’s Erotica 2008 and 2009, Hurts So Good, DADDIES, Biker Boys, and Leathermen.
Mollena (Mo) Williams, “Delicate, Trembling Flower of Submission”© is a NYC born and raised writer, actress, BDSM Educator and Executive Pervert. She is extremely honored, humbled and proud to serve as Ms. San Francisco Leather 2009. Active in BDSM since 1996, she speaks at Leather events across the US on many kinkcentric topics. A founding member of Crowded Fire Theater Company, she blogs on http://mollena.com. Mo is also author of the upcoming Toybag Gude: Taboo Play and of the essay "BDSM and Playing with Race" which appears in Best Sex Writing 2010.
Lolita Wolf is a native New Yorker, who discovered the BDSM scene back in the late 80's when “online” meant being on the phone sex lines. She is an activist who defends the sexual freedom for all consenting adults, spreads the word about BDSM, sex and poly, and helps the community grow and flourish. However, her primary goal is "to have fun." Her writing has appeared in On Our Backs and Prometheus magazines and The Lust Chronicles anthology and she has authored two books: Spanking and CBT in a Nutshell. Recently, she was featured in the New York Times' One in 8 Million series: http://vb.ly/255f, Her website can be found at http://www.leatheryenta.com/.
Madison Young is an international award-winning porn star, director, gallerist, and published author. She has been directing BDSM and erotic films since 2005 and has won great acclaim for her video line, Madison Young Productions, which has been awarded the 2008 Feminist Porn Award and at the 2009 Feminist Porn Awards was awarded Indie Porn Pioneer of the Year and Best Kink Film for her 2008 release Perversions of Lesbian Lust. In 2009 she was also awarded Best BDSM Movie by AEBN for Perversions of Lesbian Lust and nominated for Best BDSM Release by AVN. She has recently finished her book of memoirs, Breathe: The Sexual Evolution of Madison Young, based on her experiences in the adult industry, due out in spring of 2011. When she isn't documenting hot sex on film she is running her own non profit community art gallery in San Francisco, Femina Potens Art Gallery, which focuses on the expression of Art, Sex and Gender.
www.madisonbound.com
You will hear from the following books, which Mobile Libris will have for sale:
Behind the Bedroom Door (featuring Julie Powell's essay "Lost in Space")
Whip Smart
Best Sex Writing 2010
Two sex toy prizes will be given away courtesy of EdenFantasys, a suede flogger and bondage cuffs:
Fulfill-a-fantasy flogger from EdenFantasys
Crave wrist restraints from EdenFantasys
Prizes will be given away courtesy of Kink Academy, listed below.
1) A Kink Academy shirt, journal, scene starters deluxe set & one year membership to www.kinkacademy.com.
2) Bible purse and 1 year membership to Kink Academy.
3) Aftercare blanket & 1 year membership to Kink Academy.
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Take
A delicate subject, STDs, but occasionally one I can find some humor in. Take what happened to me a few months ago…
Now, I’m not monogamous, and neither are my partners. We’re all as smart and as careful as we can be, and I actually have great confidence in smart-and-careful when it comes to STDs. For my entire sexual life, using latex protection and basic safer sex practices has served me and my partners very well indeed.
But you can’t get complacent in these matters. Thus, I go get tested (for everything) rather more frequently than most people. Sometimes I’ve done it through my regular healthcare provider, but more often I use a stand-alone testing center, and I usually don’t do it under my real name. Why? Because I trust health insurance companies about as far as I could throw an overpaid Wellpoint executive. God forbid something serious should ever happen, but if it does, I want to know about it before it gets into any medical record with my name on it.
And there are plenty of ways to do that. This outfit, for example. You make the appointment online, show up, let them jab your arm, pee in a cup, and boom, you're done. In and out in twenty minutes, get your results on the phone in three days. Sure, it’s more a $15 co-pay, but you cannot put a price on peace of mind.
So last November when I was booked to shoot with Kink.com, the prospect of getting an Adult Industry Medical test did not alarm me. My first reaction was: Cool, it’ll be time for me to get tested anyway. I won’t have to pay for it this time.
But then I thought: No - this is connected to my real name. I want to know for sure I have a clean bill of health before I sign my name to anything. So as ridiculous as it sounds, I scheduled myself for a medical screen about two weeks before I was due to take the AIM test for Kink.com. What? Control issues? Me? Like I said, I just call it peace of mind.
When I booked my private appointment, I chose a different lab than the one I’d been to previously. This isn't like going to the neighborhood pub, where you want the bartender to call you by name when you walk in the door. It was in the same area, though. Medical business always clump together like bunches of grapes, and this was no exception. At the appointed day and time, I showed up at the little no-frills lab and gave my usual fake name to the two people behind the counter.
Even though intellectually I know this is a big ole whatever to these lab techs, one does wonder: what do they think of people who come in for full-battery STD testing? I’ve never had anyone say anything to me, but it’s nicer when they don’t look at you funny.
This pair seemed pleasant. One of them was a nice-looking guy, clearly gay, with a round face, chunky glasses and thick, spiky hair. The other was a woman who made me think: this is a nice girl who’s trying to look a little edgy, with magenta-red hair and some tatts, but who still seems like a rather sweet, earnest, small-town sort of girl.
After a few minutes of fumbling around in filing cabinets, they found my appointment paperwork and led me off to the blood-drawing area. I’m not afraid of needles – even when they’re going in me - and I’m pretty easy to get blood from, so that went smoothly. Then the nice red-haired girl handed me a little cup with a plastic lid, like a Tupperware container for a single shot of booze. She indicated where she’d drawn a black line on it with grease pencil.
“Now - I know this is kinda tricky, but you see this little mark? If you can fill it up right to that line, as close as you can, but please not go over it…”
I smiled and took the container. “It won’t be a problem.”
Three days later I get the call: all clear. Which is what I had expected, but it's always nice to have one’s beliefs confirmed. So, okay - bring on the official AIM test. A few days after that, I called the Kink.com office in San Francisco to get the where/when details.
“Um – you’re in Seattle? Looks like there’s a lab in, what is this, Lynnwood? Is that good?”
“Good lord, no. That’s way far away. Is there a place in Capitol Hill or First Hill anywhere?”
There was more noise of papers ruffling on the other end of the phone. “Okay, here’s one that says Capitol Hill.” I scribbled down the address, day and time on the back of an envelope, tucked it in my calendar, and thought no more about it.
When the day came, I started driving towards the address and thought, “Hey, wait a minute, this address looks familiar…” Yeah, you guessed it: it was the very same lab I’d been to less than two weeks before.
Damn, I thought, there must be a dozen labs like this within a mile! What are the odds? I should have gone to Lynnwood. I walked up to the doors. Well, maybe there will be different people working. I’m under a different name, so…
I went in, and there they were: Chunky-Glasses-Boy and Nice-Redhaired-Girl. Oh, this is going to be slightly awkward.
They looked up, smiled at me, and then looked puzzled, in a way that clearly expressed: “Hey, we recognize you, hi there! But wait - you were just here before. Why are you here again?”
“So, yeah, hi.” I pulled out my ID. “I, uh, was here recently, but today I’m here for an AIM test, under this name.”
They both stared at me perplexedly for a moment, then a look of comprehension flashed across the boy’s face. He crouched down and began rummaging through some folders in a plastic milk crate that was shoved far back under a desk. There were quite a few of them, I noticed.
His co-worker continued to look confused. “A NAME test?” she asked in a loud voice, looking from one of us to the other. “What’s a name test?”
He stood up and elbowed her sharply in the ribs, eliciting a small ow! “Cybernet Entertainment, right?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
Hr frowned at the file he held. “But you’re not a nineteen-year-old male.”
I laughed slightly. “No.”
More rummaging. His associate had lapsed into silence, but she still looked baffled. He eventually flushed out my (new) file, and the three of us went into the blood-draw area, where I turned away and made rather a long business of setting down my bag, taking off my jacket, and slowly tugging up my shirt sleeve, waiting until the whispers behind me stopped.
When I turned back, the boy had taken himself off, and the red-haired girl was smiling at me with an expression of apologetic friendliness. I smiled back to indicate: It’s all right, darlin’, I didn’t take no offense, and laid out my arm for the needle. We chatted lightly of minor matters, and she remarked to me all her friends were phlebotomists, too. “We kinda all hang out together.”
I know some people who’d like to crash those parties, I thought to myself, watching my blood trickle into the plastic vial. But I didn’t say anything. The girl had been clued in that I was a kinky porn star, I didn't want to overload her brain completely.
As I pulled down my sleeve, she turned to me with the familiar little cup and the same earnest expression as last time and began to recite, ““Now - I know this is kinda tricky, but you see this mark I made…” Then she stopped. “Oh, wait, you know how to do this, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” I replied, “I certainly do.”
a meditation on why Dockers are a blight upon mankind
I've a new piece on Filthy Gorgeous Things, and in it I undress men with my eyes. And then I dress them with my words. And then I undress them just because I can. And then I hold outfits up and go, "hm," thoughtfully. And let them stand around naked, fidgeting.
It's a piece on male dressing for FGT's ornament issue and it begins thusly:
I once fucked a man solely because I saw him changing from his civvies into his bartending clothes and caught a quick and dashing sight of him in his purple low-rise bikini underwear. It was 1984, and at 21, I had never seen a man in anything but either my previous boyfriends’ white Jockeys or my dad’s frighteningly ugly flappy boxers. That bartender’s provocative grape bikini undies got him laid, if only that once.
And yet even as these grape bikini manties held a magical power over my jejune erotic imagination, they also neatly represent a paradox, and that is this: It’s simply easier to be half-naked and hot as a woman than it is to be half-naked and hot as a man.
If you want to read the rest--and I strongly suggest that you do--go here and continue. Then come back here and leave a comment because I care what you think. I also like it when you follow me on Twitter because sometimes all that stands between me and total meltdown is how many followers I have.
(Photo is of Milan designer Isabel Mastache's now infamous penis pants. I found the photo here, but it's all over the Web.)
I'm quoted in Danish Elle!
Free food at In The Flesh Reading Series
Cupcakes by Baked by Melissa
photos by Anya Garrett
Photo Of The Day – B&W Thong
random escort musings
Specifically — other escorts. Not me. No, of course not me.
I wrote this several months ago, came across it again and decided to post it here. It’s me being curmudgeonly. I have less and less patience with certain aspects of my own industry. Familiarity breeding scorn? Possibly. Do I think perhaps the industry could move forward? Yes.
Ahem: I’m obviously writing this from the perspective of a female escort/male client relationship simply because it’s most typical and I’m most familiar with it.
I’m standing in front of the classroom, pointer in hand, frowning. Remedial detention is now in session. (Men can imagine me in my secretary/librarian look. Girls…probably aren’t interested in imagining me.)
stating the patently obviousI peruse new sites on a regular basis. I laugh at those who insist they aren’t high volume. In this economy, nearly everyone in the US is low-volume and exclusive! (If you consider “exclusive” synonymous with “low-volume.”)
Yeah, I know, it’s what they think passes for marketing. The obvious disconnect from reality is what tickles me. That someone who charges $2000 minimum or so for their time somehow feels the need to assure everyone they really don’t have clients lined up around the clock.
No shit.
hierarchyWhat doesn’t make me laugh are the girls who think that by being “exclusive” they are somehow “better” (i.e. more special) than those who don’t do things exactly as they do. I’m getting quite sick of the rampant pretension with online escorts. There’s a serious need for some serious bitch-slapping out there. (One can easily separate one’s self from the herd without dissing the rest of the herd.)
Just be yourself. Your clients will figure it out all on their own. Really, they will. Especially if you appeal to men with intelligence. I find they truly are capable of independent thought and drawing their own conclusions. They exist all over the world too. It’s amazing!
I bought into the hierarchy thing when I was a newbie escort. I’ve since learned better. There are very different ways of approaching this business, but it does not make one sex worker somehow better, more valuable or worthier than another.
Your real competition isn’t the girl that you think is riding your coattails or the “cheaper”, “sluttier” girls in your city — it’s you.
the low-threshold of excitementI laugh at the high-end girls who claim they do this for the “adventure” of it. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but if they really wanted adventure, they’d be doing it in a back alley for $5/pop (or advertise on BackPage and don’t screen). Not saying well-screened, wealthy men can’t be fascinating, powerful and sexual in their own right but an evening with them would not be what I consider “adventurous.” Not at this point in my life. (For the record, I’m not opposed to the money or the men. Just to calling it an “adventure.”)
This could just be my perspective. While dinner at a 4-star restaurant and sex in a 4-star hotel is a great way to make a living, creates lovely memories and can introduce you to some very wonderful men you wouldn’t normally meet — it’s not an “adventure.” Not unless you lead a very, very sheltered life.
Maybe I just have a higher threshold for my kicks. Who knows?
car dates, hotel dates, dinner dates, alley date, any dateI still think using the term “date” in regards to meeting a client sounds street. I don’t care if your minimum is $5000 for dinner. Calling it a date and charging money for it sounds street.
Maybe I’m just stuck with the image of a scantily-dressed woman in high heels leaning over a car window to inquire about “dates.” Guess I’m susceptible to media stereotypes after all.
the new-escort debut formulaWhich is: get expensive hotel-room/expensive-lingerie photos done by one particular photographer and a website done by a particular web designer. Write text that sounds like every other escort you’re emulating. After a while, it gets difficult to find the real person behind the interchangeable everything. (Not saying these service-people aren’t good at their jobs. This is about the choices escorts make.)
For starters: would someone please get escorts the hell away from black, cookie-cutter sites? When will girls realize white is a perfectly acceptable, non-oppressive, elegant color? Few escorts seem that brave. Or how about using bright, non-garish, non-clashing colors on sites? At this point, even pastels seem daring. Any color at all! Please! Human beings really do like color, you know (men are humans too).
Don’t be afraid to try different layouts/site designs. I’m sure a talented designer can come up with new solutions. Heck, popping out the same site over and over again probably gets very boring for them. Be unique and throw out a challenge. Sites that are unique (without being confusing) grab my jaded attention immediately. But then, I’m not a client — just someone who sees a lot of escort sites. (If your clients see a lot of escort sites too, you may want to think about yours.)
And girls so need to learn to choose photographers who know lighting, rather than those who know how to Photoshop (or worse — those who simply have Photoshop). I understand zapping zits but giving yourself a new body shape and new (very-fake) skin? Your clients are going to see you in real light anyway. Take care of yourself instead of relying on Photoshop. Learn posing, learn how to wear flattering clothes and lingerie. And realize your clients are generally pretty happy to just see you naked. Men are much more concerned if you like them than if you have a tummy (like most women do) or if your legs aren’t swizzle sticks. (If you have cankles, you’re out of luck, sorry to say.)
Spend your money on a good photographer instead. A handful of excellent, real photos will make such a difference in your business. Photographers who have bothered to learn their craft are capable of producing great shots that don’t require weeks of “editing.” Just download after the shoot and go!
If you’re truly worried about your real-life appearance, offer a discount for legally-blind clients. Otherwise, understand every woman has a laundry list of things she would change about herself. Do what you can, choose a good photographer with real skills and go with God.
what so many fail to marketTheir personality. Because this business comes down to real-life human connections, it’s the most important tool escorts have and the one they consistently under-utilize. Read a lot of sites and every escort likes the same things, does the same things and has the same life-history (okay, not every single one but tons of them are oddly similar).
Are very similar women drawn to this business? Possibly. Another possibility is that relatively few are confident enough to really stand out. I feel very certain that there are actual, real, individual women behind each site — I just can’t tell because they all present themselves the same way.
A non-airbrushed personality is the best marketing tool ever. It goes with everything, never gains weight but does require keeping in shape. Sometimes it scares clients away — but most of the time, it intrigues. And why not? They’re looking for someone who intrigues them, someone who may match them in the way they want, someone who would really like them. That’s the point.
Even guys who are searching for quickies or just want to see how it feels to have sex with an American girl still want to know who she is. (No, I don’t know how it feels to have sex with an American girl .)
If you have a great personality but start off by hiding it underneath all the other typical crap, you’re probably missing out on some great clients.
Detention is now dismissed. Go make money.
PS: I expand on these ideas in a much more polite and helpful way in Book 2: Advertising and Marketing , in case you’re curious. This post was not written to sell the book, but yes, this is all stuff I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about. One day I’d like to focus on other aspects of life. Really truly.
PPS: The decision to post this formerly-private musing was probably inspired by Casey’s Coats for Cunts. Possibly.
swopusa: AIDS virus can hide in bone marrow. Super Yuck. http://bit.ly/d4dTfg RT @peacetara
Getting used to it
It was also here that the pain went from something that felt like a bad injury to a permanence that surrounds me. Is it possible that, in leaving, I can move in the opposite direction with the pain and exhaustion too? Who knows. Walking into the gym I’m studying the back of this woman’s hair, big fluorescent pink and green clips, and then when she turns around she says oh, I love your coat -- I love your colors, I don’t see colors like that very often, most people don’t wear enough colors -- this is dark for me.
Aside from the hair clips, she’s wearing mostly black. There’s something about her smile that feels so genuine, and her look hints at Burning Man or Bay Area realness, which is comforting in this gym of corporate striving. Actually, it makes me think of Santa Fe, maybe there will be people like this in Santa Fe, maybe that will be a good thing. I mean, I’m also certain to encounter the full spectrum of New Age mania, selfishness masquerading as spirituality, but I’m already getting used to the range in my head, like on the phone with the feldenkrais practitioner who says he’ll be out of town when I’m there, but he recommends another practitioner in Santa Fe, something about how she’s doing a training in their office and I say: in the same space? No, he says, in Santa Fe.
Wait: this doesn’t make sense in writing, but on the phone it felt like he thought I was asking something vague and mystical, like: is she on the same spiritual plane? But no, just in Santa Fe. I’m getting used to it, even if I don’t know what I’m getting used to, yet.
