Prose & Lore, Issue 3: Memoir Stories About Sex Work

by Audacia Ray

We may be pervs and freaks, but we’re not prostitutes,

verified his request. “You want everyone?” she confirmed.

They demonize us for fulfilling their desires. Men really suck sometimes.”

My stomach and heart fell out of my asshole and into the basement as I entered the living room and saw three of them for every one of us.

“This is a private residence, people can dress however they want. You have no ...” “JOY! Be QUIET!” Big Man snapped. I took a deep breath, flared my nose, and returned an “I’m sorry” look. I knew they planned to crank the screws on him and call him a pimp.

need my inhaler ... please ...” Tracey wheezed. “Nobody can touch or take anything. Everything but your purses are frozen,” Eric said. “But it’s in my purse.” “Well, you can’t have it,” the asshole cop snapped. He

And for a

few

it was just a job, protoco...

Police brutality can be mental, too. So much for innocent until proven guilty.

Then I heard myself and realized I sounded like a hardened criminal, and the cuffs had barely been on for five minutes.

Everyone was freaking out, but I know that being cuffed to the one muttering about guilt can seriously screw up your case.

I contemplated all the possible outcomes from the jail cell and decided once and for all that an F and ramen noodles are far better than this shit. I’m retiring.

we’ll fight this and clear our names.” Linda pleaded. I asked if they tried making a deal with the cops before opening.

I passed Big Man’s cell and gave him the biggest smile of support I could muster. He nodded weakly, but looked utterly defeated.

The P-word hit my gut with a thud. Call me a stripper, adult entertainer, escort, lingerie/fetish model, fantasy girl, dominatrix, professional freak even— but never, ever once to that day did I do so much as a hand-job for money.

Can’t a women profit off of a man’s nature and desires without being dismissed as a whore?

No one ever talks about the world’s oldest customer.

I had to stand in solidarity and get my two cents in.

She was a ballerina, en pointe by 11,

In Kindergarten she would sit on the carpet at story-time and lightly play with the hand of whoever was sitting beside her. She would fondle your fingers pleasantly, absentmindedly, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Nobody likes a tattletale, particularly one who is standing too close and insisting too loudly and too adamantly that the truth be acknowledged!

When I don’t get enough physical contact, my skin aches.

wish for people, anyone, to open their personal bubbles and invite me to share their touch: to shove my shoulder in a friendly gesture at lunch, to lean casually against my side, to caress me tenderly. I wish for bodies to be joyous and to not feel reviled, refused, rejected.

People, mostly customers, ask me all the time if I became a stripper because I am working through some issue or if I am broken inside in some way.

Obviously. But really, who isn’t?

What kind of asshole would deny that? I mean, the more obvious question is, “What kind o...

chose sex work so that people would pay me to touch them.

I make them feel safe. I needed to make people feel safe with me so they would let me touch them. It’s survival.

lovingly against one another’s sides, and it all looks so easy.

And it is, now.

putting forth that much confidence, leaving behind my own desperation to touch and replacing it with a granite knowledge that others desire me and would pay for the privilege of feeling...

September 19th, 2013 was the day I finally and truly felt like I was free.

I’d come to realize working sex was not

something I was, but rather, it was simply something I did for work. This may sound simplistic but, for me, it was an earth shattering and life changing epiphany. See, I had absolutely no work-ethic growing up.

Consequently, I never truly had to work for anything in my early years and I was never able to grasp the c...

We must all find something to do for a living, regardless of whether the need ...

But I was ashamed. I was ashamed of myself, my weaknesses, and my actions and I couldn't possibly see crawling back home to my parents for help.

couldn't see asking anyone for help and I didn't want to live off my parents anymore, so I tried desperately to find a way to compensate for my lost income.

I’d had experience with trading things for sex.

By the time I was 17, the man who was actually my sugar daddy was, to me, my boyfriend.

never slept with him, but I gave him my time.

sleep in his bed while he slept on the floor next to the bed, holding my hand from below until we fell asle...

He was not a client to me, simply my older boyfriend.

suffered in silence and watched as the pain and hurt I’d experienced and carried with me became a gargantuan issue which—to be blunt—not only colored my experience with sex work, but the way I viewed myself in the context of working sex and other sex workers as well.

never could find the mythical place many Happy Hookers speak of regarding working sex where everything was wine, roses, and happiness. I just … didn't fit. I felt other.

I tried telling a good friend from college about it, I tried trusting someone else. She told all of her friends and, in the end, she and eight different women approached me at different times to help them get jobs on webcam or telephone.

I couldn't let people know what I was doing;

no one cared about why I was doing it or about me needing help; no one cared about me after t...

They cared about the salacious nature of my confession; They cared about the grossest, weirdest, funniest things I’d done, seen, and heard. In the end, they were judgmental and I w...