Sex Workers Make Their Point at World AIDS conference in Vienna
Posted: July 21st, 2010 under Anti-racism, Trafficking - No Comments.
My newest article: Hank the bellybutton freak!
I’m happy to report that the latest issue of $pread Magazine is out. Buy their magazine, it’s amazing.
They published a little story I wrote about a strange request I once had from a client.
Here’s a teaser:
Hank was a regular at Midnight, the brothel where I worked in Sydney, Australia. The first time a receptionist walked into the girls’ room and announced that Hank the cop had arrived, I freaked out and grabbed a bathrobe to cover my skimpily-dressed self. A cop!! Then I remembered: police were just ordinary clients here, since sex work is decriminalized in the state of New South Wales. Hank was off-duty and came in twice a week. He would always take his time deciding, hanging around and talking to the receptionist for hours. All the girls knew him but me. Once he chose a girl, she would bustle around looking for full brief panties (affectionately known in Australia as “nana knickers”) and the pointiest heels she could find. Everyone would laugh, since everyone (except me) knew what Hank wanted. All I knew was that Hank was a bellybutton man…
Posted: July 17th, 2010 under Client Stories - No Comments.
New zine available! FANG IT: My Melbourne Sexcapade
Freshly baked, my new queer sex zine Fang It: My Melbourne Sexcapade. Contact me at lustyday@gmail.com with your address if you want one. $2 to pay for the printing, blood, sweat and tears!
The lovely Sarah Pinder has already published a review on her blog bits of string press.
Here’s an excerpt from the story “Being The Best I Can Be” to entice you:
What are you training for? a guy at this squat in Brunswick asks me. I fumble and bullshit some answer. If pressed again, maybe I’ll say I’m training for the revolution. That may be true. But mostly I’m training because I’m a submissive masochist and a hott butchy curly-haired meanie told me she already bought me a whistle. Let’s call her Coach. She knocked my shoulder gently at the spanking workshop last week as she left and said you have my number.
So effortless. I’m hooked.
Over text we make plans to meet at the track at the uni, 4pm Sunday. On the day of I keep wanting to chicken out, my stomach twisting, I’ve never played with her before nor have I ever done more than joke about having a fitness top. I have been building her up as a big meanie in my mind all week. I go over all possible excuses. None are solid. Hell. Shape up, pussy-ass. It’s time to represent. I pull on some little nylon running shorts and a pale blue cotton shirt with some sporty-looking numbers on the front. I jump on the Family Star, and pedal hard down Rathdowne, repeating to myself: I can take it. I can do it.
By the time I reach the uni it’s raining. I half-hope we’ll call it off. I start a text and blam, she appears behind me out of nowhere. Damn, she is riding her bike too, and she’s got the best green old-skool track pants and a hoodie on, its strings swinging in the wind. All dressed up! Some guy asked me when I left my house if I was a personal trainer, she tells me. We laugh. I’m loving that we are dressed up for a scene wearing sportwear. I feel so nerdy-good in this bike helmet, too.
We decide to do it indoors and I follow her up Lygon Street. We race the clouds, and I can’t hardly keep up to her because the back wheel on the Family Star is slipping on some rain. We settle into my friend’s empty bedroom, I tell her some of my likes and limits and she does the same. We’re all awkward until we discover this skipping rope hanging on the back of the door. Start with that, Coach says, sitting on the bed.
I wind the rope around each of my wrists once and jump. Sweat pours off me after only a minute and my calves are already seizing up. This might be the shortest scene ever. After a bit she says I can stop and I get right down on the floor in front of her, putting my head on her lap, playing up my heaving breath to get xxx-tra attention. She falls for it, stroking my head. What a good job you did, she says. I beam. Now push-ups…
Posted: July 12th, 2010 under Creative Resistance, Whore Love - No Comments.
Working women chase cops away!
I just love this clip of trans* sex workers in Lima, Peru chasing away the cops.
Posted: June 7th, 2010 under Anti-racism, Creative Resistance - No Comments.
Building Sexual Consent from the Ground Up: workshop in Toronto June 12
Co-conspirator Juliet November and I will be co-facilitating a workshop called Building Sexual Consent From the Ground Up on Saturday June 12, 2-4 pm as part of the Trigger Festival in Toronto. You should come! It’s free, accessible and childcare is provided all day. Rad! (More info on Trigger and the day-long workshops being offered.)
Juliet and I are doing this workshop for a couple of reasons. First because both of us have been really affected by violence within the queer community. I am sure you have too, either as a survivor as the friend of one. From times we’ve listened to our friends work through the shame and self-hatred of a drunken encounter that wasn’t entirely consensual, to not feeling like we could say No to sex with a partner indefinitely, to having nowhere to turn to get protection from a violent partner because they’d risk deportation. Don’t we love each other enough to do something about this?
Second because we believe in developing non-state community responses to this violence. We believe in taking care of each other, reducing violence and holding people who’ve caused harm accountable–without inviting in the racist, homophobic, capitalist, sexist, ableist police or social services, for example. Our foundational vision is one where queers and trans people rely on each other–not state systems of control, containment and exploitation–to develop solutions to the problem of violence, understanding that violence as part of, and intimately connected to state and international violence.
Third, we are sex workers and know that our skills and strategies around establishing consent (individually, collectively, verbally, non-verbally) are diverse and fierce. We want to share them with our community!
Building Sexual Consent from the Ground Up
Learn from skilled sex workers how to better negotiate sexual consent and make great sex happen. This no-touch workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to gain practical skills in negotiating sex and help us uncover our individual and collective strengths and styles around sexual negotiation. We will talk about how to get the love, sex and intimacy we want, resist stigmas against sex and whores and how to end partner/date violence in our communities! All are welcome!
Saturday June 12, 2010 / 2-4 PM / The Raging Spoon, 761 Queen st West (near Bathurst) / Free!
Posted: June 7th, 2010 under Creative Resistance, Violence - No Comments.