Tag: mental health

  • Ways to do sex work – part three (being a domme)

    Ways to do sex work – part three (being a domme)

    Dominique Stern, a character created by musician Gene Simmons What a mysterious world the provision of domination and fetish services is.  It may be an area you’d consider exploring if you have an interest in certain kinks.  Sometimes it’s a service that occasionally sex workers branch out into when they are wanting to go beyond…

  • Lady on lady sex work adventures

    Lady on lady sex work adventures

    Golden Head by Golden Head, illustration by Dante Rossetti for Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Marketand Other Poems(1862) Golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons in one nest Folded in each other’s wings, They lay down in their curtained bed – Christina Rossetti in Goblin Market It’s not just men who enjoy sexy times with sex…

  • Some men (who love their wives) visit escorts

    Some men (who love their wives) visit escorts

    Sometimes couples stay together because they really love each other and want to continue the personal investment they’ve made in their past and the family unit and home. The monogamous ideas that have been passed down through the ages means that couple are obliged to only make love with each other until the end of…

  • To Network or Not to Network

    To Network or Not to Network

    It can be lonely being a sex worker yet I’ve met a few ladies who prefer to stay away from any socialising online or in real life and keep to themselves. They don’t want any dramas despite the benefits that can be had from meeting and greeting with other working girls or clients. I can…

  • Is your heart safe?

    Is your heart safe?

    La Belle Dame Sans Merci, painted by Sir Frank Francis Bernard Dicksee Can sex work involve real affection or is one or both parties just being played? I don’t consider whatever feelings I’ve ever had or that have ever been declared to me during sex work ‘true love’, whatever the fuck that is, but I…

  • Desire: The Secret

    Desire: The Secret

    The Fisherman and the Syren by Frederic Leighton (1858) Sometimes when I start writing, if I have a theme or an idea I want to think about, I search online for the single word or phrase. I did this with desire only to discover that there are many self-help books out there around spirituality, in particular…

  • Lurking and Peering and the Culture of Complaint

    Lurking and Peering and the Culture of Complaint

    The day I visited my friend and fellow sex worker, Clio, at her house*, I was wearing my (non-sex worker-like) day clothes of jeans and a plain, dark woollen top and carrying a large, black art portfolio, as I was visiting to show Clio some sketches from a creative project I started at university. As…

  • What gets women off (part one)

    What gets women off (part one)

    It’s been widely concluded that it’s harder for women to get aroused than men, and that it takes longer. That some women lose interest in sex. That some women have a lower libido overall than most men. The thing is with (straight) men, a glimpse of bosom or derrière seems to be able to do…

  • The pleasures of non-sex work

    The pleasures of non-sex work

    I often write about how much I love sex work, and one of the reasons I love it as a lifestyle is because it gives me so much time to get involved with various projects as non-Amber. Since I began sex working again, I learned a lot about publishing on Amazon kindle by guinea-pigging myself…

  • Forced conversations when you’ve been outed

    Forced conversations when you’ve been outed

    Cyber bullying comes in many forms, from the relatively mild (but still harmful) tweet-bombing, Facebook posting, harassment on online forums etc, to the most dreaded extreme for sex workers – being publicly outed and/or lied about as a sex worker on websites set up to humiliate.  When this happens, and sex workers have to deal with…

  • Sex Workers’ Supporters: Please take a bow

    Sex Workers’ Supporters: Please take a bow

    Sex work: sometimes it really is fields of daisies and buttercups.  Painting by John William Waterhouse. Frequently during discussions about sex work, the subject is raised of bitches and bitchiness among sex workers.  Perhaps images of girls pillow fighting while wearing skimpy underwear is tantilising, and often there are suggested scenarios of “professional jealousy” causing…

  • A taboo subject: sex workers from the same family

    A taboo subject: sex workers from the same family

    1978 movie Pretty Baby publicity still*  As Christmas is for family get-togethers, I occasionally ponder at this time of year, the place of sex workers within, or their relationships with, their families.  Lately I have been talking with a few sex workers who have other family members also in the industry. Even though there are…

  • Sex work, mental health and sex addiction

    Sex work, mental health and sex addiction

    From the show The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze by Max Gimblett I found it interesting when a sex worker I am acquainted with wrote that her father, on finding out she was a sex worker, enquired as to how she was going to safe guard her soul.  He could just as easily have…

  • Exit: Stage Left

    Exit: Stage Left

    There comes a time in a sex worker’s life when, despite the lovely harem of men who are her willing clients, she sometimes thinks that she has had enough of fucking for money.  It may not be a feeling that comes on suddenly, like an epiphany, instead it may be a slowly evolving feeling of…

  • Orgasms – the great anti-aging secret?

    Orgasms – the great anti-aging secret?

    Image: Jane Fonda – still hot in her advancing years – although she admits she has had plastic surgery, she is open about a happy sex life and her appreciation of porn.  Could this be the real reason she still has a rather sexy twinkle in her eye? I’ve lost count of the number of…

  • Love Within Sex Work

    Love Within Sex Work

    I found this tweet the other day and it really resonated with me.  It’s because I feel exactly the same about my clients.  I really love those dudes!  A lot of the time I give my heart and soul to my clients, and get it back in spades. Which got me thinking.  Is this professional,…

  • Why would you want to be a sex worker?

    Why would you want to be a sex worker?

    Veronica Veronese* by Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted in 1872 with Alexa Wilding as the model.  It is believed to represent “the artistic soul in the act of creation”. I’ve always liked new beginnings although of course generally they are nothing more than a mental reset. So the start of a new year is as good a…

  • Are you old enough?

    Are you old enough?

    Still from the music video of Dragon’s Are You Old Enough?   The legal age to be a sex worker in New Zealand is 18 and most sex workers will not accept clients under 18.  According to my (light) investigations, there is actually no age restriction for sex workers’ clients other than the age restriction…

  • All hookers are crazy

    All hookers are crazy

    Like many sex workers, Brigid was a goddess of contradiction. I do believe that, to a degree, due to the nature of the job, all hookers are slightly crazy.  That’s because, among the many other crazy-making issues, the one that is the most anxiety-inducing of all is that no matter how open about what we…

  • Places I have worked part 3

    Places I have worked part 3

    I’ve always hated this corny song, although this version seems tolerable.  Play it while you read my post. A brothel next to a nunnery.  Seriously, it was.  There was a convent next door to Tudor Court where nuns lived.  Once some visiting elderly nuns walked up our path accidentally while the girls were all sitting…