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

by Audacia Ray

I could give up a few M&Ms for getting paid for S&M.

At my left side, my panties are crumpled and thrown on the grass. My right hand clutches a ten dollar bill. I am looking up at the white man with his pale worm of a dick in his hand. Earlier in the day, I left my house, late

My foster mother was a drunk and she had a habit of waking me up for the evening screaming and beating.

eventually came to a crossroads. One path led to school, and the other path led to who knows where. I chose the path to who knows where.

noted that he ignored all the routes that would take him southbound to Hempstead.

Their pee-wees didn’t compare to the big white dick in front of me.

Suddenly he ejaculated all over my pussy before he could enter me.

For weeks I freaked about being pregnant because I kept oozing fluid. Later that year in Health class, I learned about vaginal secretions

and I calmed down.

My stomach was upset from all of the bad food. I never got to run away. Some guy’s semen was all over the lower half of my body and now I was going home and it was late.

started when I was thirty, and it was my own decision. I’ve never been pimped or forced.

By forty, I had acquired the power of compassion.

take care of men as a nurse would, yet in ways that a nurse wouldn’t ever, get paid six times more than the nurse would, and then leave them all stress-free and happy.

I’m frightened, with a dread the guy probably feels just as much. It’s the terror of getting arrested. Both of us have to get past it. It’s like pulling the bitter

“How about a hug?” I always tell a new guy.

but the new ones respond more intensely. They show me their gut-clenching fear of arrest with a needy embrace like a mourner’s.

don’t think a paid hunter could.

This one persisted like a hound dog. The

His tone was like slathered-on syrup, with no trace of caution or shyness. He was wooing me, way too much wooing me,

I found the place horrendously trashed. It looked as though the guy had been partying for a week without any daily maids’ cleanings. The trash bucket brimmed over with beer cans. There were rumpled clothes strewn all over, and ashtrays piled high with butts.

As soon as I saw that mess, I should have turned around and taken right off. It was actually a third red flag.

but it would be a while before my regulars would make any new appointments. They were worried that I was being followed by the cops, or that maybe my cell phone was tapped.

The madams and pimps are the people who get tapped and stalked and have stuff confiscated. They’re the felons in the biz.

Watching this made me completely forget that he sat too far away, and that the hug couldn’t happen while he sat so encumbered.

still couldn’t get up and go hug him, because the open weed bag remained there, still precariously balanced by his knees. Far be it from me to risk jostling somebody’s stash.

Clients were seldom that straightforward at first.

so this guy, with his upfront bluntness, was being a little bit different, a banner so small I didn’t see it unfurled. It took off in my sky, just a dot, like a blazing red flare too far up, and I missed

knew right then and there, that if I ever pulled into a motel again to meet with a new client and saw disemboweled beds near his door,

wouldn’t make any difference how much I needed the money; I’d get out of there right away.

There were six or eight cops in this room. I will never understand why so many. Perhaps this arrest was instruction f...

They had fished for a shark and had landed something else, and they didn’t quite know what to make of it.

Oh, how I wanted to explain that, that in truth I’m every cop’s ally; my job is peacekeeping, like theirs … but of course I just sat there in silence, because every word was being recorded on that bleeping thing in the corner.

“Yeah, we arrest you to protect you! A lot of bad dudes are out there.”

Now that there were others I could look at and hear, his lower-class traits were outstanding. Later,

this show-off was a setup artist pro who’d been borrowed from a ...

Do you really all believe all this shit about protection? I need protection from YOU! Do you really want to protect me? Then why aren’t you employed as my bodyguards? After that, whenever I got with a client,

As the regulars started returning, I knew that not all of them would. Some had been frightened enough by my busting to never call me again. No problem. Not a big deal. Those whom I’d lost were all getting replaced.

began to understand that I was being a healer, and that healers take care of the masses.

I’m like having a stripper who consummates the tease.

But most of all, I improve their self-worth.

make men feel worth...

most of them, no matter how young or how old, need to feel worthy in bed.

have never felt so appreciated, so rewarded just for being myself, and sometimes the money doesn’t feel like a fee. Sometimes it feels like a gift. I hide, in that warm cozy place, from the law.

get naked, you give me cash. Boom. Done.

Ironically, when I was actually new, I didn’t know I could use my amateur status to my advantage.

Perhaps the most important difference between now and then, despite evidence to the contrary in the form of shaky dance moves, is that I am no longer a newbie. I am now a veteran stripper.

The “interview” consisted of the manager asking me what I wanted my stage name to be. I started that night.

guess my body refused to accept the limits of my mind.

You can learn the skill set to be a successful dancer over a relatively short period of time, but learning to live with the stigma takes longer.

Still, I made a pact with myself that I would tell whoever asked what I did for a living that I was an exotic dancer. I would not be ashamed.