Can A Sex Worker Be A Buddhist?

Since the age of nineteen, I have been in and out of the sex industry in one capacity or another in four different countries – escort; prostitute (for lack of a better word) in two German brothels; erotic masseuse and “hostess” in a French “bar américain”. This last one translates as “American bar” but I’m not sure why the French called it that, as there were never any Americans to be seen. It’s basically a place where men have to buy ridiculously overpriced bottles of champagne to have the honour of your company. In other words, it’s just a front for prostitution, except nobody ever mentions that word.

I could no doubt write countless blog posts analyzing why I decided to take such a path in life at such a tender age, but this is not the time and the place. And, quite frankly, I’m not all that interested in delving into my past. It is what it is. And I honestly don’t regret any of it. I have experienced human nature in a way that only very few other people have. True, I might not always have experienced human nature at its best, but experience is experience, and I relish it all.

I have been attending mediation classes at the local Zen center, and, although I would not be presumptuous enough to call myself a Buddhist at this early stage, I cannot help but wonder whether there is a place for a sex worker – currently I’m a part-time erotic masseuse – in Buddhism. After all, the Noble Eightfold Path clearly stipulates that Buddhists should have “Right Livelihood” i.e. that they should not engage in trades or occupations that harm other people.

I tried googling “Buddhist Sex Worker” and “Buddhist Prostitute” but didn’t find anything particularly interesting. Brad Warner apparently knows one Buddhist sex worker, but he didn’t mention whether she has an online presence.

Does sex work harm other people? Does it harm sex workers themselves? There is no simple to answer way to this. I’m no Andrea Dworkin but I’m also very far from being a gushy sex-positive feminist who believes that every consensual sexual experience a woman has is empowering. All I know is that, at this point in my life, I have very little interest in sleeping with men for money. There was a time as a really young woman when that turned me on, but it no longer does. I would be miserable if I tried that again.

On the other hand, I don’t have any issues whatsoever with being an erotic masseuse. True, there is usually a handjob involved, but, meh, so what? The dude is lying flat on his back at that point, and I’m 100% in control. Sometimes they try to sit back up, but I won’t stand for it. I gently push them back down. The massage and the handjob always go the way I want it to. I can assert with 100% confidence that I do not feel exploited or belittled in any way. I have been doing this for so long that I know exactly what I’m doing. I also screen potential clients very carefully, and this helps weed out any undesirables.

So, I’m not being emotionally or physically hurt by my involvement in the sex industry, but is it hurting me in other ways? I don’t have an extravagant lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination, but being a sex worker has encouraged me to be more materialistic perhaps. I don’t make that much money as an erotic masseuse since it’s a part-time gig for me these days, but nonetheless, it’s the kind of industry where you always can make more money, or at least fantasize that you can.  I find it very hard to make a budget and stick to it because, well, why do I have to? For example, if I have $100 left in my bank account that really needs to be spent on food, but I see a dress I want, I can tell myself “Oh, I’ll just get that dress now, and do two handjobs later to afford food”. A “normal” woman could not do this. She would just have to go without the dress. This is not a very sensible way of living, and I don’t like having such a materialistic mentality.

What about the men who are my clients? Am I harming them in some way? The men who come to see me are not sleazebags – not at all, in fact. They are just normal, hard-working, middle-class, middle-aged, (usually) white men. The vast majority of them are married, and – if I can believe what they tell me – they are just not getting very much sex at home. One could argue that I am providing a valuable service for these men; that I am helping couples stay married. I wouldn’t go that far, but, well, yes, I clearly have something to offer these men. But wouldn’t it be better for my clients to find out why their wives don’t want to fuck them, and to work on their marriage instead of coming to see me? Aren’t I stopping them from working on their relationships, and growing in them? Aren’t I helping men lie to their wives and partners?

Sometimes I wonder, too, if I am stopping men from finding love altogether. Last week I had a visit from a surprisingly charming guy who works in the game industry. He wasn’t my type physically although he had a great body (nerdy white guys don’t do it for me usually) but I was bowled over by his intelligence and wit, and so I found him very attractive. But I couldn’t work out why somebody like him was single. He’s forty-seven, and had been married in his late twenties/early thirties, but has been single ever since. He blamed his crazy work schedule (fifteen-hour days apparently) but I can smell someone with a severe case of commitment phobia a mile away. Couldn’t it be argued that women like me allow men like him to continue living an emotionally, physically and spiritually impoverished existence? If I didn’t provide an easy sexual release, and the illusion of intimacy, they would have to get over their fear of commitment sooner rather than later.

It works both ways, too. Aren’t I stopping myself from having any kind of meaningful, loving relationship by being a sex worker? I’m not ready to date anybody right now, but what happens when I am? What man is going to want to get involved with a woman who has her hands on hundreds of other men’s penises every year?

It doesn’t really matter what the answer to any of the above questions is because, for the time being, I have no intention of giving up sex work. That might mean that I’ve “failed” at Buddhism before I even started, but, well, there you go. That’s just the way it has to be for now. Sex work allows me a degree of financial stability I could only dream of otherwise. I can save for the future; afford college courses; travel somewhere occasionally and, hell, sometimes buy myself things that make me feel beautiful and special. I will give it up at some point, but just not yet.

My Name Is Trouble

It hasn’t been a good week. You might remember that my car was towed two weeks ago after I  parked it in the wrong place outside RG‘s apartment complex (that’s what drunk, obsessive horniness does to a girl). This cost me $190. Another result of my obsession with RG was that I neglected to transfer money into my “bills” bank account that same week, so two direct debit bills overdrew my account – another $80 in overdraft fees. I therefore didn’t have enough money to pay my rent this month.

Of course, those of you who have been reading my two blogs faithfully since (when?) 2007 will know that, um, I am rather “handy” when it comes to scraping together some cash in a short space of time. For those of you who don’t know me this means that I moonlight as an erotic masseuse whenever necessary (in other words, I give handjobs to random dudes or, in some cases, regulars). Now that MM and I have broken up, “whenever necessary” pretty much means “all the fucking time” because I obviously have double the amount of bills to pay. Some women have made a career out of writing about their “sexploits” in the erotic massage/escort industry but this is not really my thing anymore although my last blog started off being about that. It’s just a job really.

Today I finally managed to get together all my rent money, which was actually pretty hard.  It is not easy for me to make money as an erotic masseuse because I refuse (absolutely refuse) to email potential clients pictures of myself, even if it’s just a shot of my naked torso. This is a curious thing given that I have shitty boundaries in all other areas of my life, but when it comes to erotic massage I’m boundaried up all the way to the hilt. I can’t stand the idea of emailing pictures of myself to some random dude who can then do with them what he will. Sometimes I think that I must have been a member of the Maasai tribe in a past life (they believe photographs steal the soul) because I am obsessed with having control of my image.  In this digital age, there are very few men out there willing to come see an erotic masseuse sight-unseen.  Although this makes it hard for me to make a living, it is also a good thing because those who do come (or, ahem, cum) are either regulars or those adventurous few souls who can tell from my ads/emails that I’m well-educated, funny, sane and über-discreet, and they appreciate these qualities in me. Very rarely do I meet an asshole. My clients are almost always well-educated, respectful, middle-class men.

However, I digress. I finally scraped together the rent money, a feat made all the harder by the fact that one of my tyres blew out on the way to work yesterday morning.  I was doing 65 (or, well, probably at least 70 since I’m nearly always late for work and end up speeding) and I had always been terrified of a tyre blowing out on the highway. It actually wasn’t all that bad. There was just a huge rumbling sound, which I attributed to a passing truck at first, but then my car lurched to one side, so I knew the tyre had blown out. Since I’m an idiot, it didn’t occur to me to put on my hazard lights, but I just got off at the next exit and turned into the first place I could where there just happened to be (hallefuckinglujah! Praise be to God!) an auto repair shop. Just as fucking well because I ain’t ever changed a tyre in my life and I sure as hell don’t intend to. One hour later, and $90 poorer, I drove off with the tyre replaced and my ego slightly inflated from the hardcore pick-up efforts of LeRon, the playa mechanic.

As if all my financial/blown tyre worries weren’t enough, last night I received an email from MM saying, among other things, that I have Borderline Personality Disorder (I agree – distinct possibility there) and  – this was a new one from him – Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This really cut to the bone because I have read the diagnostic criteria for NPD and I definitely recognize myself in some of them. I truly am very self-absorbed. I know it, and it is shameful. I am acutely aware that all I write about in this blog is myself/my problems/my pain. However, I do not agree that I lack empathy for other people at all…..or do I? I am genuinely terrified that I have NPD because I don’t want to be such a bad person! Please tell me I’m not such a bad person!

I guess  I really should tell you now how my relationship with MM ended. I’ve been putting it off for such a long time because it was just too painful to write about. It is a long, messy, nightmarish story but, in a nutshell, I ended up calling police on him one night. Early on that night we had had yet another huge argument and, amazingly for me, I actually managed to disengage from it by locking myself in the bathroom. MM was drunk, and I knew there was no point in actually having a discussion because it would get nowhere. He then kicked the door open, and continued to rant at me which led to me mocking him mercilessly (I probably said stuff like “you’re a pathetic loser” or “this is why I don’t want to fuck you”). MM had been physical with me before (usually when I was smashing stuff or when he was trying to restrain me) but I never thought he would ever intentionally hurt me. Things were getting out of control in our relationship, and I was scared that I was going to break a bone if he pushed me into or over something, but I never thought for a second that he would ever hit my face. And he didn’t. However, as I was mocking him, his fist came flying towards my face, and he only just stopped himself in the nick of time.

After this, MM went off to the local bar (yup, the same one where RG hangs out all the time) and got absolutely fucking plastered. When he came back lots of shit went down, and I can’t say I was entirely innocent. At one point, I ripped his iPhone out of his hand because I thought he was calling another woman (turned out he was just leaving a really drunk, incoherent voicemail for his best friend) but he was hardly an angel either. He grabbed me and shoved me around, trying to get the cell phone back; aimed a kick at me; followed me around ranting at me when we were back in the house; threw my dinner in my face when I finally sat down, trying to ignore him; grabbed my cell phone out of my hand when a friend called; smashed it on the floor several times…and God knows what else. I wanted him out of house and asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t. Eventually I just ended up calling the police, which ended up with my cell phone being smashed on the floor several more times until I could finally get through to the police. Well, the police came and tried to talk to MM, but he shut himself in a room and refused to come out. He talked to them through an open window, clearly totally wasted, and eventually the police got tired of that, and asked me to let them into the house. I did, and they knocked on the door of the room MM was in, but he still wouldn’t come out. The police eventually kicked the door down and, when MM still refused to cooperate, he got tasered twice. Yes, twice.

The result of all of this is that MM now has three criminal charges against him: interfering with someone making a 911 call; assault of a family member and resisting arrest.

I don’t feel guilty that MM was tasered (this was his own doing – he could have cooperated with the police) and the fact that he was actually was a solace to me in some weird way. I don’t mean that I wanted him to get tasered (of course I didn’t!) but the fact that he got himself in a situation where he was tasered showed me that I wasn’t the only crazy one in this relationship. MM made a point of telling me that I was the crazy one all the time.

However, I do feel guilty that MM is now facing a domestic violence charge. By all rights, both of us should have assault charges. There is a many a time that MM could easily have called the police on me for assaulting him. Maybe he should have. Maybe that would have been my rock bottom, and I would have been a better person for it. I feel immense guilt that MM’s life could be ruined because of me. I feel like no man should date me – that I’m mad, bad and dangerous to know. No wonder RG decided he didn’t want to see me anymore. I have crazy seeping out of every pore.

But, guilty as I feel, I believe that MM does not accept full responsibility for his actions. Any time he was physical with me, he justified it by saying I “provoked” him. I accepted this response because I thought “Well, it’s true. I am pretty crazy. The guy was probably driven to act that way”. But he’s a grown man! Nobody can make a full-grown adult do anything! Instead of blaming me for the mistakes he made in his life, I think it would suit him better to ask himself why he continued to stay in a relationship with me because I was (no doubt about it) totally abusive.

And, boy, do I feel guilty about that. I know for a fact that I ruined MM’s self-esteem. I don’t know why I was so verbally abusive but I was, and I sucked all the life out of him. The terrible thing is that he still loves me. Even today, he told me how much he loves me, and that he will always love me. Perhaps I feel the same way. I have no idea. I’m not sure my poor, fucked-up brain can actually process what feelings of love are.

I feel terrible that MM has to spend $10,000 on lawyer fees, attend court dates, stupid state-mandated therapy sessions and whatnot while there I was fucking RG without a care in the world. For one whole month, I barely gave MM a second thought because I was so wrapped up in RG. What kind of person am I? Could it be true that I have no empathy whatsoever?

MM loved me/still loves me, and I gave him nothing. And when I say “nothing”, I mean truly nothing. I had the time and energy to put into running after RG (a loser, alcoholic drug dealer) but I couldn’t even give a scrap of affection to MM who was my fucking husband.  I know how much he must be hurting because I have been there myself. I have been that person – the person who was mistreated by an emotionally unavailable partner who then spends months, if not years, wondering “what’s wrong with me?!”. I can’t believe I then turned the tables and did that to another person.

I can’t believe that, after everything I’ve done/ all the pain I’ve caused him, he still loves me. He is the first man in my entire life who has ever loved me. And I treated him like a piece of shit. Threw it all away.

The Crimson Petal and the White

 I am very uninspired today, so since I’m doing the whole NaBloPoMo thing, I thought I     might as well nip over to their website and check out the prompt of the day. Today’s prompt is:

“Which character would you most like to meet?”.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about the character I would like to meet. It would be Sugar from the über-talented Michel Faber‘s novel “The Crimson Petal and the White“.  Those of you who have been reading my writing for a while should know that I am a cynical, jaded miserabilist who’s impressed and excited by very little. Oh, but this book! It’s 894 pages long, and yet I finished it in two days.

If you only ever read one book again before dying, then it has to be this one!

I’ve also read “Under the Skin” by the same author , and I’m constantly amazed by his ability to write from the point of view of a woman and by the fact that he actually does it well. He understands women so well that I would easily have imagined both of these works to be written by a woman if I hadn’t already seen a man’s name on the front cover.

Why would I so much like to meet Sugar? Well, she’s a self-educated, feisty nineteenth century London prostitute. Those of you who know about me and my past will surely understand why this alone would appeal to me.

The following passage isn’t about Sugar, and the thoughts aren’t hers; this is actually Carolyn, another London prostitute’s point of view:

“Responsibilities, responsibilities. To get enough sleep, to remember to comb her hair, to wash after every man: these are the sorts of things she must make sure she doesn’t neglect these days. Compared to the burdens she once shared with her fellow factory slaves, they aren’t too bad. As for the work, well…it’s not as dirty as the factory, nor as dangerous, nor as dull. At the cost of her immortal soul, she has earned the right to lie in on a weekday morning and get up when she damn well chooses”.

As a former sex worker myself, I can relate to the above passage wholeheartedly. Now that I am no longer an erotic masseuse, I guess that I’m now earning my living “honestly”. People would consider it a “good decision”; that I’m doing the “right thing”. The only benefit I can see to having a regular job is that I’m guaranteed a regular income – that was something I could never be sure of with sex work, especially after the economy went pear-shaped. Apart from that, though, what’s good about it? I earn less money; I’m doing a dead-end job in which I’m not really appreciated; I have less time for myself; I barely make ends meet. And, oh, don’t forget that I’m a contractor, so I’m not entitled to any benefits (that means health insurance, my European friends) or any sick or holiday pay. I could be fired at any point, and once my contract is up next February, I will have to find a new job because the company can’t legally hire a contractor for more than a year – although they can wait six months, and then hire me back for another year of benefit-less joy!

If you’ve got the stomach for it, then, hell, sex work really ain’t that bad in comparison to that. Quite frankly, I miss it.