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

by Audacia Ray

arrived on the pitch-dark sidewalk and there were two cops there, but no ambulance.

Then they left me standing on the curb in the middle of the night—not even bothering to ask if I wanted help getting to the hospital or what.

After Jace was done throwing up the charcoal sludge and whimpering about not having wanted to live and giving me a cold stare and threatening to kill me, he drifted off into peaceful sleep, but not before asking for a hug.

he thanked me several times, for having saved his life. But I knew him now, for where he was, that dark place … and the threat he had made was still coursing through my body.

I cried when he left, though part of me was relieved this chapter was over.

knew he would stay gone because we had sort of served our purpose in each other’s life.

“Katy has a cyst. I’m operating on it.” I had been working out of Nina and Katy’s apartment near Penn Station for a few months, the day I walked in on them about to do home surgery.

Heavy red curtains with gold tassels lined the wall they shared with the hallway and concealed sound proofing material.

Body Rubs with Four Hands Instead of Two!

the only white two-girl massage teams offering incall services in Manhattan, which meant that we were in competition with each other in a different way than the competition between us and women of different races and in different boroughs.

fantasies color the lenses of how men see sex workers,

laughed about some of the clients that it turned out we had in common, Nina contacted me directly, leaving Gracie out of the email loop.

When it was cold, I carried warming packs in the pockets of my coat so I didn’t show up with cold

hands, and I asked to use the microwave to warm my massage oil for a few seconds before starting.

I had a friend who would help me by being my safety calls:

right before a session,

while standing in front of...

I called her with the name of the client and the address we were at, and then I told her what time I would be fini...

Nina and Katy were polished professionals who had developed their own set of strategies for dealing with the sex industry, and they were extremely resourceful.

Once the shine started to come off, they were ready for the next adventure.

They lived the saying “home is where the heart is,” and they made their home with each other.

Their brand of resilience meant that they learned as much as they could so they could be ...

hand job for a tooth cleaning.

Sex work doesn’t come with a health plan.

“Right, so he’ll pay for sex but he won’t do a little illegal surgery on the side?” “Oh, the irony is not lost on us!”

smoking a generous joint, with a crooked line of stitches

I do not appreciate the consistent reference to sex workers as them, some othered group who could not possibly be in this room, among us.

wonder to myself when work and pleasure became mutually exclusive, when work stopped being real work simply because the worker enjoyed it.

Despite the consistency and familiarity of my couple of regulars, I eagerly look forward to meeting new clients. It’s exciting.

I am already turned on.

We look at each other and I feel seen. I don’t feel like I am any-woman. I don’t feel like his fantasy. I feel like me.

feel like myself, this woman who he met on the internet who he paid to

have sex with. I feel there is no pretense here at all. There is an honesty to it that makes ...

tuned into my own experience of sex work. My own, no one else’s.

It is both work and pleasure, both sex and work.

On any given day you could see him hanging outside lounging, trying to hustle guys into his apartment.

Every day was showtime; the performance started once my doorbell rang.

Communication and reading their body language was the key, as well as improvising.

Often times, when receiving blow jobs, I was hoping they wouldn’t bite it off;

Managing day-to-day business operations and making sure things went smoothly was key, but that was also the boring part. Booking photo shoots, dealing with customers, purchasing the right wardrobe, keeping my body in shape as well as making sure my skin was on point, placing advertisements, keeping a budget, paying attention to income versus expenses, and constantly multitasking.

thought about what type of services I would like to receive and decided I would always try and treat the client the way I would want to be treated.

much of the job was like holding a baby’s

hand to take them to the dentist, or to the doctor’s office for them to get their first shot, oh and hone...

The more I worked with these grown men, the more I realized it did not matter how ruff and tuff they were, it didn’t matter what their business credentials w...

so many of them were still those scared little boys who were secretl...

little boys who were secretly afraid...

had to be sensitive and take their feelings into consideration. After all, they were payin...

Most of all I realized just how much men are like women; men want to be treated nice...

I was supposed to be selling joy, but he was able to pick up on my mood and realize that I wasn’t going to be too pleasant that day.

They are miserable because they signed a contract and don’t like what the terms are now. They want out, but it’s too expensive to exit the business arrangement of marriage so they turn to guess who?