We're delighted that you've joined us for our sex worker interview series 'A Tryst With...' We're speaking with San Fransisco Escort Theli, about freestyling, affirmation, and craniosacral therapy!
So you’re an escort and bodyworker, how did you find your way here, and what has that been like for you?
I saw my first clients in London as I entered my twenties, free-styling and doing occasional phone work. I had moved back to my birth place for a degree in fashion marketing and PR and found myself living in Angel, an area in central London, working in a Victorian pub turned cocktail bar that I lived above.
The work kind of found me, in a moment of financial scarcity, perfectly positioned. It felt natural to shift bar clients into full service clients, many of them local blue collar types or businessmen flying into town week after week from overseas.
I spent hours, over many evenings, sometimes over months, slowly clocking their desires and building a relationship of trust. Eventually, at just the right moment I’d walk them up to my room through the swinging door; on my break or after a shift; meet them at their near-by hotel, etc.
I tried to go full civ when I moved back to the States some years later and that lasted until the pandemic. Facing a lot of sitting at home, increasing disability, and less access to my bodywork/herbalism clients, I did what a lot of us did and went into the OnlyFans universe, albeit halfheartedly. I loved being IRL.
I started dipping my toe back into full-service work and now it’s one of my steady bettys. The work feels all at once completely different and exactly the same, as I find myself years into medical transition, attempting to weave my other practices into sessions with clients, as often as possible.
Is there something you didn't expect going into the industry?
I’ve been consistently surprised by how affirming it is of exactly who I am in any given moment, how much infrastructure is provided to receive reflections, validations of my sexuality, gender, and ever-shifting disability/access needs.
To date there hasn’t been a time when the work hasn’t met me where I was at; there’s always a market niche enough for me, always a way to approach the work to meet the needs of my body.
That’s not an experience I can recall having elsewhere.
Has it been difficult to find trans sex working community online or IRL?
Luckily it hasn’t, perhaps community that felt close based on niche market placement, but that’s always dependent on time and moving through life together. Even when I wasn’t working, sex workers have always been my closest friends, lovers, family.
I’ve been blessed to have sex workers in my life raising me and loving me since I was really young. My first crush’s mom did phone work and her home was a wildly important safe space for my seven-year-old being.
I’m ever grateful for the invention of the internet, and in some ways to the pandemic for the ways it’s woven us together and created more and more opportunities to love each other from myriad distances.
Why do you think it is important for sex work to be decriminalized, not just legalized? How would it change the way you are able to work?
I don’t know if I have anything to say about decrim that hasn’t been said, especially by my peers, friends, mentors. I hold deeply the value that all of my work be as uncoupled from the overculture/fascist systems/the state as possible. I need to be able to make choices about who I am, how I move through space, what my offerings are; as an escort, a craniosacral therapist, a clinical herbalist, reproductive justice oriented care provider; to decide what is best for me and my clients in the moment. That consideration is informed by intuition, best practices, and in-the-moment decision making.
Prohibition and legalization offer terrifying barriers to accessing clients and plentiful work in ways that are safe and allow for our autonomy as providers.
I do a lot of freestyling on the apps, it’s a space I have a lot of muscle memory in but it’s also strenuous and potentially very dangerous because there’s no way to screen. With access to decrim, there would be more opportunities to find clients through other pathways, to have more safe in call spaces, to have more culture within my niche market of transsexual sex workers around safety and security when navigating work in this way.
Do you find that there is a type of client who seeks you out, who you really enjoy seeing?
I often see clients who are exploring their sexuality/gender, often very privately. It’s not something they feel comfortable to share with their lovers, partners, friends. I feel grateful to be with them on that journey, it’s an honour and it’s hot.
My aesthetic I think, lends itself well to a comfortable psychic middle ground, a portal to the void. I love to affirm the desires they have to express those unknown/unspoken parts of themselves.
I adore it when we have time to connect in deep conversations, in between the ways we’re playing with each other. I’ve met some of the most incredible people through this work and I’m so honoured to hold their stories.
How do you integrate your bodywork, craniosacral therapy and herbalism into your sex work?
All practices focus on the confluence of the ecstatic and transmutation of grief, creating flow for those sacred portals.
In and out of sex work sessions, my craniosacral/bodywork practice allows for the surreal landscapes of dreams to come through and I often integrate my training in jaw and pelvic visceral manipulation. When woven into sessions with sex work clients, it’s with those intentions in mind—extending the erotic into places we may not be able to find otherwise.
Sessions I have with clients where they’re open to weaving any or all of this in are my favourite. I love being able to go really deep together, in a safer container. It’s all definitely informed by my Scorpio sun.
As a trans provider, what has it been like navigating sex work before and after your transition?
I felt out of my depth for a while, working with a really different market, writing my ads, and taking photos in a new way. A lot of it was happening alongside my own journey of transition, finding myself moving through space and being desired by all these cis gay men who wouldn’t have before. Entering into a new phase of my life as a full-fledged faggot.
Ultimately, it’s been incredibly affirming. The most welcome surprise of this work is that it’s always met me where I was at, and allowed me to be and explore who I am, as I hold erotic space for my clients to explore alongside.
Has your work impacted your relationship with your gender and or your presentation?
Absolutely. Initially I carried a lot of trepidation about how I would return to FSSW after beginning my transition. Finding more community over time with escorts who inhabit similar worlds with their gender has helped assuage those fears.
I definitely feel like sex work has offered me space to lean into being a androgynous freak, on a spectrum that extends in all directions. I get to be a super slutty transsexual jock, a femme boy fantasy, a rave punk lover boy, a Dyonisian mystic feeding you grapes draped in velvet, it’s all in here.
What are your favourite kinds of sessions?
I love a session where I get feedback that I’ve offered my clients space to express themselves, to feel seen, to perhaps edge closer to their own exploration of their gender/sexuality. When everything flows and we both walk away smiling.
What’s the proudest moment of your career?
I’ve been so grateful to be a mentor to younger trans workers, especially other trans masc providers. This year has offered me opportunities to support them in ways that were more commonplace when I was still working in girl drag. I didn’t have much community support in the earliest days of my career and so it feels so beautiful to offer that now.
What’s your favorite way to relax and recharge after a long week?
I take a really really long ritual bath. Let myself sleep in until I wake up naturally. Take the morning slowly, reading esoterica and drinking coffee in the sunshine on my porch, and then some yoga.
If it’s really warm I love to head to the coast to this precious nude beach with a natural hot spring. There are so many sea creatures to commune with and it helps me recenter after encountering soooo much energy throughout the work week.
Do you have a favourite book by a trans author?
Wow hard question… Right now I’ve been learning hard into The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, rereading Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom and keeping Stone Butch Blues under my pillow.
My favourite work outfit is: an old school jock strap with matching chest harness and some Pleasers.
In the future, I plan to: take a very long vacation to Thailand in the spring to see some dear friends, take some good work photos, get a long needed reset for my body, and deliver a pet bunny.
The secret to getting to know me is: ask me about the Kabbalah, tell me about your dreams and I’ll tell you how they’re real places you’re traveling to, be willing to go deep.
For me, the best part of sex is: finding what’s most pleasurable for whomever I’m playing with and following that pathway as long as they’ll take it with me, with a deep willingness and devotion and presence.
If you want to buy me a drink, you could order a: dirty Shirley or a glass of dry Lambrusco.
Want to meet San Fransisco Escort Theli in person?
Head over to their profile! 👇👇👇
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