"Where's the money, Danny?" I breathed in hushed, gravely tones, my lips gently grazing his ear as he sat nude and helpless in the dark wooden chair, hands bound behind his back. Danny's muscular chest heaved as his breathing quickened, adrenaline rushing through his body.
Standing above him in a black leather bra, sheer black thigh highs and a leather micro garter skirt hiding a black leather thong, I played my role well.
"I... I don't know what you're talking about," Danny whispered, a tremble shaking his voice.
Gazing up at me with glassy brown eyes, a pleading, pathetic look crossed this previously powerful man's face. Smiling, I tossed my long auburn hair behind my left shoulder and slowly scratched my index finger down his exposed thigh.
"If you don't give me the one million dollars in cash that you stole, I'm going to make sure you fuck me before I kill you. See that video camera, Danny? I'm recording everything. Your wife's last memory, forever burned into her mind, will be of her precious husband fucking me, coming inside me and not her. You know you're powerless now."
"No..." He breathed, piteously wriggling around but unable to move, constricted by the pink ropes that bound him. "No, I've never cheated on my wife. You can't do this!"
Agitation, or excitement, filled the air as I took a step closer to my pet, placing my red claws on his shoulders and lowering my face down to his.
"Is that a bet?" I inquired.
"Noooo... Don't do it. I'll give you anything you want! But I don't have your money!"
Lowering myself deliberately down onto his lap, my powerful thighs now held him in place, securing him beneath me. I placed my supple arms around his neck and softly bit his earlobe, grazing his shoulders with my glistening red nails, "This is what I want. I'm taking what's mine."
END SCENE.
If that's not art, I don't know what is. Does my getting paid negate the validity of said art? Warhol was paid. DaVinci was paid. Rose Blaze is paid.
Does my choice to sexualize myself negate the validity of said art?
This blog, a creative work, is the deciding factor when it comes to booking me, according to many clients. They tell me how connected the feel to me after reading my blog and wouldn't have booked me otherwise. Art can be both creative, cathartic and a vehicle to earn money.
Sex work can be an art form. Misogyny, devaluing of women and femme labor/femme bodies/sexuality has created the notion of the helpless, coerced woman in need of saving. When the reality is: An increasing number of people are opting out of the patriarchal norms of prescribed Puritan monogamous heteronormativity and are choosing to find some sense of freedom via SW.
In other words: "Screw working a creativity deprived corporate, micromanaged job. I'm going to become a sex worker and get paid to put on a show."
Marx Didn't Get It
Predictably, men like Karl Marx viewed "prostitutes" as powerless victims of capitalism. In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he writes of sex work as being “only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the laborer,” and believed that the elimination of prostitution was key to ending capitalism.
That's great and everything, but when non-SW's speak or write about sex work they tend to forget that we're all whores under capitalism. Fast food workers probably didn't dream about growing up to be fast food workers. The same goes for people who are employed at corporate jobs. We're all coerced into labor and SW isn't lesser because it's sexual.
Until that magical day when we no longer have to labor under "the man" to survive, we might as well have a little freedom, control and creativity while we're at it.
Who is more free: The online SW who has the freedom to make her own hours or the man who toils for 40 hours a week at an office job that he hates, feeling as thought he is lacking freedom or creativity?
My mom recently said, "I don't know why you do that (sex work). Why don't you get a real job?"
Without thinking I replied, "I'd rather sleep with a stranger than go back to hating life in an office."
She clutched her pearls and we have a strained relationship because I can't talk about my work. Proud of my beautiful photos, I once made the mistake of showing a photo to her (a PG business wear shot) and she would barely look at it due to her belief that sex is only acceptable between monogamous partners. Even my hard won photoshoots are somehow tainted. Dirty.
Religious moralism, the belief that Abrahamic religions fostered in order to control the masses and women's bodies specifically, views women who have sex as dirty and coerced by poverty or economic distress. Although this is often true, is it any worse than any coercive labor under a political power system that's increasingly designed to benefit a select few?
I'd say many of the civilian jobs I've had were more detrimental to my health and coercive than SW.
The kink sessions I have with my clients involve planning, forethought and narrative structure. BDSM requires a storyline: Who are the characters?
What do they want?
Why can't they get it?
What happens to resolve this?
That is basic storytelling. That is art.
Like and Unlike Are the Same
Is escorting, strict vanilla companionship, an art form? Like everything life, the answer to this question varies. Yes, it is and no, it isn't. According to Hermetic law, "Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled."
When I first started SW and hadn't yet healed myself, I'd say that my companionship work was not as fulfilling of an art form as it is now. It was still acting, or possibly performance art, and therefore... art. Because I didn't value myself enough during my younger years, I attracted clients who didn't value themselves. The mask I wore during appointments, eyes closed as I sealed myself in: I was, for the most part, disconnected yet still performing.
In those early days, there were a few moments with a few special men who did value themselves and me, allowing me to see the possibility of creating a more fulfilling, expressive self via SW.
Today, due partially to my blogging, social media expression and self confidence, I attract clients who don't see me as an object to provide mere sexual stimulation, although that's key. Those clients slowly began weeding themselves out as I began focusing on the art of sex work. I truly began wanting to connect in some way with my clients and refuse to see potential clients who give me the "ick": They contact me without including screening information, sent five word emails, have bad energy. As someone gifted with powers that many may not understand, I can immediately tell via the first email if I will connect with a client or not.
Yes, I'm white and therefore privileged but I can't discuss the unprivileged identities I live and lived on a client facing blog. Don't judge a book by it's pretty cover. Less privileged workers, who feel they can't turn down icky clients, may be less inclined to see their work as art and that's their prerogative.
All I can say is: We have choice. We aren't victims.
Sex Work: An Art Form and a Service
Many female performance artists were sex workers, which begs the question: Is sex work performance art? According to Tate, "Performance art involves 4 elements: time, space, the performer's body or presence in a medium and the relationship between the performer and audience." With professional companions/dommes' bodies providing the medium, our clients become the audience. There is an interplay between the two, however. This isn't a stage play in which clients are mute, watching from their seats as we put on a show. Clients are, like theater audiences, paying to be entertained.
Sex work is an art form and a service.
Even the most well known artists are restrained by the limits of capitalism. Many great artists alter their works in order to sell tickets, books, and paintings. As sex workers alter our bodies, outfits, attitudes and actions to fit the needs of our paying admirers.
Considering it looks as though our American culture is regressing to 1950, I know we still have a long way to go when it comes to sex worker's achieving equal rights and acceptance in society. These blogs are my small way of humanizing and legitimizing sex work and leaving something of value before I go.
Glory, one song to leave behind.
As always, these blogs take a heck of a long time (well, most do) to write and rewrite. Please consider checking out my Luxylist or, for Jesus's sake, book a Train Me/Fly Me to you. It's the least you can do, Danny.