Zoe Hansen & David Henry Sterry will be ho-ho-hosting a Bowery Club holiday blowout, riding herd over an all-star lineup of the finest ho writer/performers money can buy. Sex Worker Literati is the slutty child of the internationally acclaimed anthology Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, which surprised everyone by rocketing onto the front page of the Sunday NY Times Book Review. The anthology gave voice to PhDs and high school dropouts, soccer moms and jailbirds, $5000 a night call girls, $10 crack hos and hard-working rent boys.
In the exchange of sex for money a window opens into the soul.
Come, take a peek
BOWERY POETRY CLUB : DECEMBER 19, 9pm 308 Bowery, NYC
DAVID HENRY STERRY – Ex-teen manchild ho, ex- sitcom actor, Huffington Post muckraker, Chicken/Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys author.
ZOE HANSEN, former madame and downtown rock goddess and memoirist shares twisted tales from the wild side.
JODI SH.DOFF- How did a nice Jewish girl wind up spending a decade naked in Times Square? NY Times lauded contributor to Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys talks about first loves and how Dead Frankie got his name.
MARY RAFFAELE aka RAPHAEL aka QUEEN VIXEN is a former metal queen and used to sing for Cycle Sluts from Hell. Now she’s a fashionista, writing her memoir and chronicling the misadventures of a Midwestern girl who moved to New York to seek glamour in the lowest of places.
CHRISTINA CICCHELLI doesn’t have multiple personality disorder. She is an AVN nominee and Feminist Porn Award winner, a freelance writer, copy editor, and columnist for $pread.
MATTHEW LAWRENCE is a writer and former rentbear from Providence, Rhode Island. His blog, Mixtapes For Hookers, was originally designed for in-call escorts to time their sessions. Now he uses it mainly to complain and waste time. He will tell tales of why he wasn’t a very good escort.
KEITH CAPUTO, ex-Life Of Agony front man is a literary outlaw. He’s worked with Flea & Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Björk, David Bowie, Pixies.
MICHAEL ALAGO discovered Metallica. He’s a talent scout/producer/photographer/writer. Alago has worked with Nina Simone, Johnny Rotten, Rob Zombie & Cyndi Lauper. The creator of Rough Gods, a bound collection of his erotic male portraits. His work has been exhibited erotically in NY, Paris, Berlin, SF.
This entry was written by , posted on December 15, 2010 at 10:15 am, filed under the naked truth. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I was in my early twenties when I found her vibrator.
Home for some holiday or family function, we were in her bathroom, getting ready for whatever it was I’d come home for. I rarely came home, I was busy living a life no one in the family would have approved of if they knew, shaking my ass, and anything else that would shake in a half dozen Times Square strip joints. We never talked about where I worked. Don’t ask, don’t tell, 1977-style.
I reached my hand into the closet for a clean towel and came out holding a Hitachi Magic Wand , the Howitzer of personal massagers. It had been hidden behind all the folded towels.
I held it up and looked at her. I didn’t say a word, but my eyes clearly said, “Um, hello? What the fuck?”
“Put it back, just put it back. Some people don’t have as easy a time as you do.” That was thirty years ago.
Assumptions were made. She assumed that because I was promiscuous, that I was getting pleasure out of all that sex I was having. She assumed that because she’d wanted me to grow up free & easy, that wishing it was enough. I assumed that cheap & sleazy was the same as free & easy.
They gave me all the technical words. By first grade I could use the word vagina in a sentence, which would have been terrific in an anatomy themed spelling bee. But, saying vagina, out loud, in class, when you’re 6 years old is not paving the road to popularity with teachers. Or with the neighborhood mothers when your classmates go home and repeat what you’ve said. During dinner. Over mashed potatoes and gravy. In that nice suburban kitchen you will never, ever be invited into again to have milk and cookies after school. I learned that nice girls not only don’t say “vagina” in public, they don’t even think about vaginas in private.
Public school sex education consisted of two films shown in the gymnasium. The girls learned how to attach a menstrual napkin to a sanitary belt , and how to dispose of it discreetly, the implication being, nice girls don’t bleed. I can’t imagine what boys learned.
I was raised in the 60′s by left-wing liberal Long Island Jews (a flagrant use of an ultra-uber-redundant phrase) and so I knew all about the logistics and technicalities of sex, homosexuals and hermaphrodites. The “talk” consisted of two running jokes my father would tell.
How do you stop a Jewish woman from fucking?
Marry her!
(…from which I learned I was expected to be promiscuous.)What’s a Jewish woman’s favorite sexual position?
Doggy style, because she can’t stand to see anyone else have pleasure.
(…from which I learned that sex was solely about my pleasure.)
But we never discussed birth control, pleasure or boundaries.
Which meant we didn’t talk about it when their friend touched me.
And there was no one to tell when the gym teacher cornered me in the locker room.
Or to ask when I had sex the first time and it wasn’t really any fun at all.
Or when I had sex with the next boy and that wasn’t any fun either.
I kept the rape a secret for twenty years.
We didn’t talk about it when I had my first orgasm.
Or my first squirt, where I thought I’d peed myself.
Or my first g-spot orgasm.
We certainly never talked about my first woman, not that there’s anything wrong with that she’d have said.
Or my first anal.
Or any of that.
What would my life look like today, if I’d been able to ask question then? If there’d been answers available? I’d like to think I’d be just as open, just as evolved, but without quite as many wrong turns, missteps, nights of quiet desperation, unwanted pregnancies, panicked confusion.
No child has ever been harmed by having too much access to education.
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This entry was written by , posted on November 10, 2010 at 2:02 am, filed under the naked truth and tagged rape, Scarleteen, sex education. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Pixie from Australia writes:
Dear Dirty Girls,
I’m 23 and on the verge of becoming a fellow dirty girl. However, I’ve hit a snag and would love some advice.
I’d all but decided to start working in the sex industry. I’d researched, thought about what I was comfortable with & called several places to talk about how their business ran, how I’d fit in, the clients, etc etc. I found one I was quite excited about.
That weekend I met a guy. He was extraordinarily nice, so I put off calling and starting work. We’ve now been dating for four weeks and are getting more and more serious. I hadn’t previously thought about relationships when in the industry. I hadn’t expected it to come up.
I see it as two different things- work and real life/love. But, I doubt he would. But even if he surprised me being open minded enough, I don’t see how this kind of relationship could last. And what I’ve read of the experiences of past sex workers supports this. At least when it’s known that the girl is thusly employed, but I dislike lying.
So, I seek advice. What are your experiences having relationships whilst working? How do people deal with not being honest about their work with partners? How have relationships survived knowing? Any advice would the much appreciated!
Dear Pixie -
I’m not going to go into legal implications and stigma of sex work. It differs from country to country, and you didn’t ask, but both should be considered when you’re making your decisions. We talked about this a lot on Three Naked Ladies. We talked about whether we’d do it again, and if we’d want our daughters to work, and one column dealt exclusively with the problems strippers, in particular, find when dating.
Relationships of any kind take effort. Add sex to the equation and it gets complicated. Add sex work to the equation and we’re talking quantum physics. It’s a rare man (or woman) who’s okay with his/her partner making money naked. A man may brag about dating a stripper, but he’s not bringing her home to mom. Exceptions, like Zoe Hansen who married a rock star while still working as a madam and @stripperhusband who tweets daily about his stripper wife and her work, prove the rule. Tracy Quan’s Nancy Chan novels are a peek into the difficulty and double life it takes to balance sex work and romance.
Because I kept no secrets, the rare “civilians” I dated either wanted to save me or shame me. So, I rarely dated men outside of the business. My great romance was a hustler, a male prostitute. Even though we were both in the business and knew there was no emotional attachment behind any of our tricks– neither one of us could stand to have the other continue working. In the end, our cultural upbringing had a greater influence on our comfort level than anything else.
Your first instinct was to try the man on for size & put the possibility of work on the shelf. Seems like a romantic relationship is more important than the work to you right now. Romance is never simple and even in areas where it’s legal, prostitution is not easy. Ask yourself what you want, and what you’re expecting from any relationship, this one in particular. Now, ask yourself what you want, and what you’re expecting from the work. That should give you a clearer picture.
This entry was written by , posted on March 28, 2010 at 5:13 pm, filed under the naked truth and tagged advice. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
