Tag: pre-prostitution reform act

  • What a Way to Make a Living

    What a Way to Make a Living

    Hylas and the Nymphs is a 1896 oil painting by John William Waterhouse. So I’m well and truly back into sex work, although with later hours than I have ever worked due to other things I am doing in my life – so I am truly a “lady of the night”. This has brought with…

  • Ways to do sex work – part two (touring)

    Ways to do sex work – part two (touring)

    Beautiful Kaikoura on the east coast of the South Island, view from the beach during a brief train stop Touring sex workers are a not-so-modern phenomenon but since the Prostitution Reform Act (2003) in New Zealand we are able to tour and sell our services in a much more organised manner. I personally love to…

  • Advertising and “bait and switch”

    Advertising and “bait and switch”

    With improvements in technology and the Prostitution Reform Act and ladies becoming independent and doing their own marketing, the sex industry has come so far.  You can more or less expect to get what you see in the photographs with independent escorts, although some complain of dishonest or overly-flattering photos or photos which were taken…

  • Sex and Skin Hunger

    Sex and Skin Hunger

    Image: J W Waterhouse The Awakening of Adonis (detail) Here is a guest post by a client talking about how sex workers have helped the issue of ‘skin hunger’ for him personally, following a discussion we had during our booking, which he has mentioned below.  I invited him to contribute to my blog after this discussion…

  • Valentine’s day topic: Sex workers and the L word

    Valentine’s day topic: Sex workers and the L word

    A mention of Amber O’Hara from a brief round up of websites of sex workers by a kind client I have met sex workers who have fallen in love with their clients and “ended up” together, so I guess the answer to the question, Do sex workers and clients fall in love? is yes.  Love can…

  • Buying Sex – creative licence and a Canadian doco

    Buying Sex – creative licence and a Canadian doco

    This blog post may not be of interest to many readers because it is about a film that not many will get to see and it is not really a film that’s even worth seeking out.  But it’s about buying sex, which involves clients of sex workers so I thought I would give my take…

  • 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…

  • Safe Sex (Play) for Clients

    Safe Sex (Play) for Clients

    (life as art) This long post was originally written for a sex industry association with the brief How Not to Pick the Wrong Sex Worker and the tagline “warning signs for clients”. It has been adapted for my blog Is there a wrong type of service provider or only a wrong type of service provider…

  • Safe Sex (Work) for Sex Workers

    Safe Sex (Work) for Sex Workers

    I have to say we’re pretty darned lucky in countries like New Zealand where sex work is 100% legal because it means that if anyone tries to harm us, the cops are on our side. Absolutely fabulous situation, it means exactly that because there is the threat, of the long arm of the law who…

  • 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…

  • Where to from here?

    Where to from here?

    Amber O’Hara not ready to turn her back on sex work … yetIt’s hard to believe that it’s almost a year since I embarked again on the sex work journey with certain financial goals in mind. My very first blog post, my personal yet public record of the events related to becoming a sex worker,…

  • Who’s that talking about you?

    Who’s that talking about you?

    Sharon O’Neill (right) who wrote the song Maxine with the actress who played her in the Australian version of the music video (which this image is taken from.) A few days after my Christmas day blog post about whether or not a sex worker should tell her family she is a sex worker, I had a long…

  • 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…

  • Places I have worked part 2

    Places I have worked part 2

    London.  London was a very strange town to find work in.  Luckily I wasn’t desperate for money but I thought it would be interesting to check out the sex work scene, mainly so I could say I had done it. Even though it was equally as illegal to be a sex worker as it was…

  • Places I have worked part 1

    Places I have worked part 1

    This is the first part in a series of reminiscences about places I have worked.  I mentioned earlier that I had worked as a sex worker one summer as a teenager, back then when it was still illegal. The Penthouse was the first place I worked in when I entered the sex industry in Australia.…

  • Places I have worked – how did I get into sex work?

    Places I have worked – how did I get into sex work?

    Image: Wellington Harbour, where I entered into the sex industry as a ship girl  Most people who get into sex work get into it initially for one reason and one reason only – they need money fast.  Sometimes lingering under or just above the surface though, is an interest in or fascination with the sex…

  • The money, honey part 1

    The money, honey part 1

      It’s not that hard to go legit as a hooker, so I thought I would share a few things that I have found in case any other working girls who read my blog are interested. The first thing is to remember that we are actually in a pretty fortunate position here in New Zealand,…

  • Et tu, Google+?

    Et tu, Google+?

    Amber O’Hara’s now banned Google Plus profile Gosh, it’s as if sex workers don’t have enough to juggle with, without now being overly-censored by the stuffy and the righteous on this vast wasteland of free porn, otherwise known as the Internet.  Oh well, Google+, (who are still hoping to become the new Facebook,) which I…

  • To the men who respond to my newspaper advertisements

    To the men who respond to my newspaper advertisements

    my little advert Please don’t think that because I’m advertising in the Press or your free community newspapers, alongside the traditionally lower-priced but sometimes fictional Asian agency ladies, that I am also prepared to offer my services for lesser amounts than I advertise elsewhere. If the truth be told, I would love to see you,…

  • Then and Now

    Then and Now

    Back in the day, before the Prostitution Reform Act happened here in New Zealand, I was a sex worker for a time, and I have to say, things really have changed, and not just legally. Life was different then, in that soliciting was illegal.  From what my fellow sex workers and I understood, this meant…

  • RIP Lou Reed and thank you for my personal sex work anthem

    RIP Lou Reed and thank you for my personal sex work anthem

    Image: Lou Reed album cover of Transformer, with Goodnight Ladies As a baby hooker back in the day, I listened to Lou Reed every night while I had sex with my clients. It was my first summer as a sex worker, and a fellow private school girl who was saving up for an expensive piece…