Reconnecting With My Body Through T4T Sex

Editor’s note: Detailed descriptions of boundary pushing behaviour by a client, dissociation during sex.

I ripped the chip off my shoulder, drained the self hatred leaking out of my side, and befriended my pain. The first time I collected my payout from a sex work gig I realized the gravity of my own sensuality and attractiveness. I was able to recognize that I can use my own erotic power to keep me alive. I felt like I hopped a chain link fence to a path that I could survive through. 

I remember having a client from out of town and meeting up at a random dive bar in a nicer part of LA, one I usually don’t find myself in. I walked into the bar in a tiny skirt, big platforms, chokers, and a cut up biomech shirt with black liner slashes on my face. The trick was running late so I sat at one of the sticky booths, watched older dudes play pool, and exchanged a smile with the heavily tattooed bartending femme. We both knew what it's like to be in this type of service work where you get paid to cater to men you’d never give the time of day to otherwise. 

He had booked a solo trip looking to have some kind of wild LA experience to tell his friends back home about. Men tend to be intrigued by me because of my appearance and presentation. They see it as a “crazy girl experience”. I could tell from our discussions before meeting up that he was looking to try out his fantasies and desires that he couldn’t act out in his normal day to day life working a regular job in some town in the Southwest. Before we met up he asked, “you were born female correct? Just gotta be sure”. I think men are confused and attracted to my piercings, tattoos, bi hawk, and genderfucked presentation and see me as this mirage of all the things that they never experience in their straight-laced lives. 

I was able to recognize that I can use my own erotic power to keep me alive.

The longer I am on testosterone, the more it seems people are genderfucked by what my genitals are. Sometimes I wish I could just say I wasn’t born a woman or a man; I was born to be a mutilation that cracks the ground open. When we went back to the spot, it became clear to me that the trick wanted to heavily dominate me and exert his strength on me. After getting slapped, choked, and thrown around, it turned into him asking me to do things that were definitely fantasies he wanted to enact, like sucking his dick upside down or eating his ass while slapping him. There reached a point in the session where he was exerting too much force and I had to tell him to stop. I felt like a sex doll performing tasks on command and like my body was a detached separate entity that was being used to act out fantasies for a person who saw me as nothing more than a figment of his imagination and an object to use. 

I left the session feeling exhausted but thankful for the money and that I could get back to my destination safely. I did not realize that sex work took the toll it did until I tried sleeping with someone the day after and realized how disembodied I was. I tried to enjoy and be present for having sex with someone I was attracted to, but I couldn’t get myself back into my body to fully be there for it. I felt super detached and unable to be present for the experience. I wish that the hardest lessons were not learned from not being able to show up for the people I love the most.

Sometimes I feel like an emotional masochist, addicted to my own self destruction. I lose everyone I love the most. I realized I have to create more of an internal separation between sex work and sex for pleasure. After this experience, I learned to create a internal boundary between sex work and the t4t freak sex that I have in my daily life. After a sex work gig, I try to take time for myself to return and do all the necessary safety measures (like getting tested and being present in my body) to feel like I can return clear to the other forms of sex in my life. I am learning to create a separation for the erotic energy of my own pleasure and the energy I am exerting for work.

I am learning to create a separation for the erotic energy of my own pleasure and the energy I am exerting for work.

Part of that is taking time for myself, processing the experiences, and feeling everything through. I have learnt that if I try to detach, there are things that will come back to me in moments where I don’t want them to. Sex work is also a way for me to be more present in my body and learn to use it as a mechanism where I am not escaping inside myself but being present in providing the experience that I am doing for a specific purpose. Through creating a divide, I am learning how to harness my pleasure and presence in the sexual experiences that I am choosing to do outside of work. 

I want to explore the depth of someone, feel all the inside crevices that I can reach and watch as they exhale and open more for me. Marvel at the internal anatomy of someone else's flesh. Leaving bite marks that scar. Tying someone up in my belts, chains, leashes, and rope. When someone pulls at my collar, and I tell them to go harder. I like being pleasantly surprised when someone tops and wants to dominate me and does it well. I like releasing all control and getting bound and clamped and choked. 

I fuck hard, and I love hard. I am a slut by nature but a lover at heart, and I enjoy cruising and flirting and having one night stands with someone where we stay up all night entangled in each other's bodies and then not know if we’ll ever see each other again. I choose not to fuck straight or cis people unless its for pay because I think that there is a disconnect that happens in those experiences where I do not feel that I am being fully understood or seen. When I have queer and trans sex, I find that I am able to be fully present in my pleasure and the desire to pleasure the other person. I love being of service and making sure the other person gets their needs met. I love getting called a good boy. I am learning how to be fully present in my body instead of clouded by dysphoria and dissociation. I think that having to make active separation in by brain between sex work and queer and trans sex has allowed me to enjoy the sex that I have for fun and love.

I am a slut by nature but a lover at heart...

A little known secret is that although I am into things hardcore and heavy, I am a softie at heart. I love the moments of resting my head on a lover's chest, giving a kiss on the forehead, or holding hands or tracing their skin. I love the duality of extremities and sweetness. I give someone a quick goodnight kiss after getting heavily dommed, blindfolded by two women in latex using roses, whips, and electricity. I’ve been held and had my hair touched softly after doing a performance where I stitch my hands together using a needle and thread. I want to not let the horrors of the world break me and I want to know that I can be as perverse and freaky as I please but still hold onto the emo loverboy that listens to Head in the Wall by Ethel Cain and Agony by Yung Lean on repeat. 

I want to know that I can preserve the parts of me that are only for romance, love, and pleasure, and never lose the ability to love with everything I have inside of me. I want to know I can learn from my mistakes and heartbreaks. I want to believe that all the people I have deeply loved will come back to me in some shape or form. I want sex to feel like a prayer, like our cries are the chorus preaching to a choir of our own making. I want to kneel on my hands and knees in deep devotion to the frenzy of thirst and need. I want to write sermons about the mythologies we create through touch and lust. I want to nail myself to plywood and let my blood fall on all those I worship. I see God in everyone I have ever loved and desired and everywhere. I fist the hole of God.

For more on the subject of trans sex workers, see The Importance of Trans Porn and Romance vs Fetishisation: Sex Working While Trans.

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