Editor’s Note: Mentions in passing of capitalism, military and state violence, violence against sex workers
Sexual connection is a portal, death is a portal, and birth is a portal. As sex workers we are Anubis and Osiris, Persephone and Hades, Pan and Inanna. Health and healing were never meant to be separated from any aspect of our humanity, most of all not our sexuality and sensuality.
So when I ask one of my clients how his body is feeling at the beginning of our sensual massage session, if he has any aches or pains, he snickers and says he’s fine, he’s not here for that. As if to say; how silly of me to ask, as if I’m pretending. As if pushing on his tight muscles is the pretend part and stroking his swollen cock is the real. And I want to slap him and tell him how dare you forget the wholeness of yourself and this and everything?
How dare you narrow your sensual bandwidth to a pin point, a needle, the one swollen throbbing pulse of many on your whole physical and energetic body? How dare you be such a coward to keep your eyes so squinted that you can only recognize one aspect of me and the many gifts, tools and skills I bring to the table?
But I just say, ok Dave, get on the table, face down to start.
And this is the cosmic spectacle, the mystical rub.
I’m a jester and a minx. I’m an ancient god making fields fertile, I’m burning down forests, I’m flooding the town to remind us of the bliss of a midday back float.
I’m just a wild dream Dave had one time in his late twenties that he barely remembers now. But he does as he’s told and so he gets what he came for.
Sexual connection is a portal, death is a portal, and birth is a portal.
My heart is a temple and the cosmic joke is that they think it’s my pussy. Because of the world we live in, the walls of the spectacle close in to narrow their pleasure bandwidth. They will close in on all of us if we’re not vigilant. So I hold them there, my clients; in my oscillating wet heart where they soak up the moisture and the soft breeze, where they can rest for a few moments before its back out to the emails, the niceties, the dad-jokes, the business meetings, the surgeries, the physical labor, and the mental strain.
We were all born and we will all die and in between we are deeply blessed if we can grow and learn and transform and share pleasure. How lucky we are, if between the coming and going portals we can access safe, loving, joyful spaces to expand and contract in deep pleasure.
I can’t help thinking about how we do this in sex work and also in so many other areas of life as human beings. We want binaries, we want definitives, either/or’s instead of both/and’s. Certainty is control and it gives us comfort. Uncertainty is vulnerable, it’s a surrender to what is, to the ever-present contradictions of reality, of our lived experience and the simple constructions that were created as mechanisms of control, which can barely grasp the expansive fluctuating flux of real life.
An example: when heartbroken, hurt and suffering, the easy thing to do—a way to bypass the hurt—is to create a villain where your lover used to be. The logic goes: if it hurts this much they must have done it on purpose, or at least be responsible! How could I be responsible, I don’t want to hurt like this!
Back to sex work. We need it in a little box, but it defies gravity. Not only does it overflow out of any box it’s placed in, the goo of what we do as whores/healers floats upward. It gets on the ceiling, it stains the corners of the wall, it seeps into the carpet, it changes form and floods the air in the room with a euphoric laughing gas. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, you need to get back out there and book again. Not only is sex work real work, sex work is soul work, is imprinted in our DNA, is the intimacy, healing and boundaried connection and care we all deserve. It lives outside of the institutions that are suffocating our humanity, our creativity and capacity for true connection and so it remains true and real and primal.
So yes, come on over to get your rocks off. And if you’re brave enough you can acknowledge or just silently stand at the precipice of where the veil between worlds hangs, and be reverent, because every single body is a church. God is in everything. These bodies of ours were made to connect, these bodies were made to soothe each other. The more time we can spend remembering this, the more our capacity for forgiveness, listening, and love will grow. In this world of exploitation and fear, we all need soothing. We all need to remember that we are divine and precious and our capacity for pleasure, ecstasy, and bliss is a portal. Approach the doorway. Set down your bags (your certainties, your attachment to binaries and this or that-ness).
Our hearts become closed when we disconnect from the ultimate reality of a constantly shifting ground. Our hearts become closed when we opt for theoretical understanding, binaries, and categories over complexity and the way we can be renewed and rebirthed in every connection, with every gentle intentional touch, with every orgasm (little death), in every moment.
Our hearts become closed when we disconnect from the ultimate reality of a constantly shifting ground.
My response to living in a society that devalues me for my work is remembering. Remembering that what I am involved in is so valuable and important. Remembering that I am a channel. A channel of divine energy and of all of my sex-healing ancestors who walked this earth, working their magic before me. Remembering that I am being of service when I am working, in connection with those who lay down their bodies, drop their guards and their defenses, and surrender to the experience. My body is a portal and so is yours. We all choose how to show up, how to use our bodies in our lives and work. And of course, many of our choices are severely limited by the boot of capitalism that’s on every one of our necks. We are lucky and blessed if we find enjoyment and resonance. I wish that for everyone, that everyone could spend their days doing work/being of service in a way that feels important and aligned to their very being and grounded in a tradition they feel proud of.
The society we live in is backwards. Magical freaks who provide transformative sexual services to consenting adults and are able to be paid for it are criminalized and stigmatized while politicians are applauded for murdering whole families across the globe. Military members are applauded for stepping up to serve as terrorist arms of the violent state, while sex workers are assaulted, harassed, denigrated, and killed and shoulders are shrugged. The victim is blamed for choosing the disgusting job of offering pleasure, touch, companionship, a cozy nook, a heightened experience of consensual pleasure outside of the soul-sucking, violent grind.
We are not going anywhere. We are going everywhere. We are preachers and prophets spreading the gospels of our bodies. We are teachers whose pedagogy is the soft and sharp reality of flesh, muscle, and desire. We are the shade of an old tree and we are also the tree, when we come together in solidarity we are the mysterious magic of root systems sending important information back and forth.
We are not going anywhere. We are everywhere.
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