Death and Sex (Work)

Editor's note: this essay contains mentions of drug use, addiction, death and suicide.

I have altars in every room of my house. They are covered in offerings like dried flowers, dark chocolate, candles, and pictures of friends and heroes. My work altar has photos of myself and fellow workers clad in our ‘work uniform’: lingerie, leather, hair done, heels high and tits out. Bills of 1’s, 5’s, a 20 and a 100 stacked on top of each other, weighed down by a thick candle in class. Little gifts from clients and a small glass of wine I replace often round out the edges. My ancestor altar hasn’t been set up since I moved into my apartment a year and a half ago. My mother passed away just a month before I moved in. I didn’t know how to set up an altar to my families of blood and culture when she entered as a new addition to the pack.

‘How much bereavement time do you get at your org?’ my dad asked me. He isn't wrong about me working at a labor rights organization, it's just that I work there for free and always have. A five year volunteer on a campaign for strippers’ rights and safety. Dedication made possible by working full time in the sex industry for the past seven years.

My ancestor altar hasn’t been set up since I moved into my apartment a year and a half ago. My mother passed away just a month before I moved in.

‘A few days at most,’ I lied. I would need at least two weeks off work to fly to California and deal with the aftermath of my mother’s semi-sudden passing. She’d been disabled for a little over half her life, an addict of 30 years, and abusive for just as long. She’d had many close calls, so her death had never been too far from me. And still, it took me by surprise. I often joked that even at 41 years my senior, out of spite she would outlive me. Dark.

I am the youngest of three. I was raised around adults who were in deep dissociation, and learned how to take care of myself from an early age. After our mother’s passing, my brother and sister would be of little to no help, and in fact would make things harder both logistically and emotionally – like getting me locked out of the storage unit and raging at me on the phone about how to get rid of all the useless things. My mother, a therapist and social worker by trade, was able to customize the abuse she toiled to each of us. No one wanted to reconnect to that, so it was left up to me.

I left home at 15, kicked out for being queer. I moved to Seattle at 17 and for the next seven years, I would work minimum wage service jobs as the cost of living skyrocketed. I found myself at 25, in debt and throwing on a pair of stripper heels. I was gussied up and loudly cheered on by my dearest friends – who were whores, dommes, and dancers already in the trade. The sex work and queer communities intersect and overlap. I was lucky enough to be given support and information to navigate this new world and explore potential financial ‘stability’ for the first time in my life.

I found myself at 25, in debt and throwing on a pair of stripper heels. I was gussied up and loudly cheered on by my dearest friends – who were whores, dommes, and dancers already in the trade.

I didn’t cancel a single work session before I took off for California for those two weeks. The time I spent away from work was a special kind of hell. Sifting through a haunting mountain of my mother’s years of void-filling hoarding. My now ex partner accompanied me, and was in active addiction and withdrawal, compounding my stress. While trying to shut out long-buried but now-risen toxic family dynamics, I snapped. I entered ultimate performance-for-survival mode. Who are we if not performers? It’s powerful glamor magic to transform into our provider selves and do what needs to be done. To keep ourselves and our loved ones fed, clothed, housed, and for me, occasionally, eating a bougie ass meal. The mask stayed on and I still regularly updated my work social media accounts, answered emails, set up appointments. I cried and cried, yet hardly asked for help. Away from home, no altar to tend to, no candles to light, I was burning out quickly. The little help I did receive from my family and partner came at such a cost. Tension, arguments, and fallouts.

My friends and community showed up to me the best they could, the best I could let them. What do you say or do for your best friend, whose abusive mother just died? I began to understand that I didn’t know what I needed or wanted. I just needed to keep moving. I sludged through the first few months after her death but began to breathe again as I settled into my new home, by myself. My erratic but flexible schedule gave me space to process my grief and to write again. I wouldn’t have been able to have that without being a sex worker.

I wrote to my mother and to myself, acknowledging what I was lacking, what I was mourning, everything I never got and never would from her. Everything I still wasn’t getting from my family around processing this grief. My brother and I hadn’t talked since he had blown up at me, over the phone, about a week after my mother’s death. My sister and I waned in and out of communication. She had her husband, her kids, and her new job to focus on. My father, while trying his best to show support to me, had no interest in processing his ex-wife’s death. The only person willing to hold the container of the family was me. A dynamic I was quite familiar with.

My erratic but flexible schedule gave me space to process my grief and to write again. I wouldn’t have been able to have that without being a sex worker.

I was the weird, queer one. Queerness has taught me a lot about containers of experiences, relationships, dynamics etc. Sex work has helped me create better boundaries around them. This situation had put these skills to the highest test, or so I had thought.

Four months after my mother had passed, I was spending the last day of a long weekend with old friends in Portland. I had noticed a missed call from a Seattle number I didn’t recognize. A voicemail containing little other than a phone number for a Seattle detective. My stomach sank. I rang back. The Seattle officer picked up and asked if I could come in and see them in person. I was out of town and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. They said maybe I should just contact the Atlanta PD instead. My brother lived in Atlanta. I knew immediately he was dead.

I took the information and tried to prepare myself for the worst. The Atlanta officer who I reached asked if I wanted to get anyone else on the line. My father didn’t answer and neither did my sister. "Just tell me what happened." He told me my brother had taken his life earlier that day. That he was sorry and that I should get in contact with the coroner’s office for next steps. I hung up the phone and immediately began screaming and sobbing. I had never felt this kind of pain before. A despair so deep, in that moment I knew I would never be the same. I felt for my brother, and his pain, never spoken unless  in rage. It was no coincidence this happened less than half a year after our mother passed. No coincidence it happened after his ex finally put out a restraining order against him. I imagine he viewed it as the final nail in the coffin, that he would never have the family he craved – to undo the abuse and harm caused to him. We hadn’t spoken since April. This happened ten days after his birthday in July. We’d often had an ebb and flow to our communication, especially when he’d have a rage off around me calling him out on his shitty politics, but we’d always come around to each other eventually.

‘Eventually’ didn't come for me this time.

Instead, a meticulously planned suicide and vicious note came for all of us. I had to make the call, to tell my father his son had died by suicide. I had to call my sister. Repeatedly. I called them and called them until finally, I could wail the news at them and hang up.

I was the weird, queer one. Queerness has taught me a lot about containers of experiences, relationships, dynamics.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to drive home the next day so my partner and best friend came down to get me. They packed up my stuff and tucked me in the back seat while I lay there, fully catatonic for the four hours it took to get home. I had two weeks worth of appointments on the books. I emailed a couple clients letting them know I was sick and that I would love to reschedule. All of them did. I knew I would have to go back to work eventually. I ended up taking a week off. I felt like a shell of myself that my usual glamor magic couldn't shake off or cover up. I couldn’t bring myself to let any of my clients know what I was facing this year. I didn’t feel in a place to talk about what had happened.

I believe in showing up in a very specific way in my provider persona. She is caring, quirky, loves to chat about anything and everything, and importantly, she holds a container for clients to explore and express their wants and desires. Talking about death, for most people, is a real boner killer. And to be honest, the whole situation wasn’t the kind of information I wanted to share with any of my clients. I was too raw in the process, this grief was mine and not something I felt they should have access to. I needed my provider persona to help me escape from, and insulate the constant grief I was facing. I didn’t want condolences, pity, confusion, or to lose work. I wanted to pay my bills.

Providers are responsible for their own bereavement/sick day/vacation pay. Many of us don’t have the luxury of taking time off when we need to. If it weren’t for credit cards, savings, and my best friends – I wouldn’t have stayed afloat. Not when I stopped being able to show up in the regimented ways I had been able to prior. For the first time in my career I was canceling appointments at the last minute and even turning down work. More and more I was having moments where I couldn’t compartmentalize the way I was used to, to show up the way I wanted and needed to for a session. I had moments of guilt around it. I’ve always taken care of myself, just shown up and done the job.

I didn’t want condolences, pity, confusion, or to lose work. I wanted to pay my bills.

So many of us are in this industry because it’s the most flexible and generally, easily accessible work. It gives us time, for better or worse. These experiences have entirely rearranged my feelings and actions around how I show up to this job. My boundaries are even tighter. I never deny my gut around communication with a client. I am so firm around my expectations. I allow myself rest and trust that the money always comes. I try, when possible, not to work when I am feeling overwhelmed and overloaded. It helps me show up better at my next appointment and to stay present for myself. Grief continues to enforce my body and spirit’s boundaries. How I show up both in and out of work.

I’ve just passed the marks of a year since my mother and brother passing. I have moments of whiplash, replaying of the grief or maybe an expansion of it. I don’t know if it’ll ever be over, but I am trying to give myself as much grace as possible.

While it may not be easy to talk about with clients, nor access to paid time off to grieve – this job does give me agency about when, how, and who I spend my time with. For better or worse this job has supported me in this process of death and grieving. When death comes, so does ritual. Families and friends gather, holding up a container for mourning and grief to be shared. I was not so blessed when death fell upon my family. The ritual was cleaning up 30 years of hoarding, keeping her tea set and tossing  outdated encyclopedias from the 70’s. The ritual was picking up her ashes and driving them around in the trunk of her car. Selling her jewelry to pay rent. The only ritual I had with my brother was crying over our childhood photos. The most comforting one being his teenage self on all fours hovering over me like a mama bear over her cub while I was speed crawling on my Grammy’s carpet.

I felt like a shell of myself that my usual glamor magic couldn't shake off or cover up. I couldn’t bring myself to let any of my clients know what I was facing.

My family wouldn’t, won’t hold this with me. No standard ritual of funeral or tears or speeches, followed by plates of cold cuts to come sweep the grief through the house and out the door.

My work allows me continual ritual that I curate, rather than just happen to me. I light my candles and say prayers before every session – to my culture, my work, my chosen and my blood ancestors, for helping hold the container. Prayer for abundance, ease, and connection. I offer up money, a shot of rum, fire burning, and a lot of chocolate, so I am protected and my spirit is connected. In some ways, what death and this work has taught me is that connection, boundaries, and honoring of ourselves is the fuel of moving forward in this life.

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