To use a tennis analogy, I played all four corners in an attempt to interview clients. I hit up escort friends of mine with long-terms regulars, old clients who were articulate and thoughtful and guys I’d never met who had contacted me with sex work-related questions. I figured the client viewpoint—the missing piece, would be easy to obtain. After all, I’d had many a deep and intimate conversation with clients about sex workers and the negative way that clients were viewed in our culture. They openly shared their feelings about paying for it—what it meant culturally and what it felt like in the context of their lives. Men who thought of themselves as powerful came to me stripped of their routine status and its burdensome accessories. They wanted to tell their secrets. They’d crawled up my stairs in marabou slippers and a pink spandex thong, glided around my pole in the living room. They wanted to share their innermost desires and act them out. But, when I sent along my questions, I was met with silence.
I guess I was supposed to disappear in a puff of stripper-smoke. I guess they were put off by my confrontational, searing inquiries. It was one thing to tell me stories about their cancer-stricken wives and college-bound daughters while I listened in a fishnet bra by the paid hour. It was another to type their story in print. I was told my questions were too “hard.” The irony is not lost on me. I’d nearly given up when Max finally responded. He agreed to do the interview if it were 100% anonymous. I thought of the NY broker wearing my dress in my living room, red-faced and trembling with terror at the thought of giving up control. I remembered telling him “Stand up.” I held his damp chin in my gloved hand and said to him, “You’re safe here.” This was one of those moments. Max’s gentle courage was by turns surprising and tender as he flipped from sex worker to client. I was inspired by his vulnerability. I hope you are too.
***
The Rumpus: Growing up, what messages did you receive from your family about sex workers?
Max: Even though my home town is known for vices of various kinds, I can’t say I was ever aware of sex work going on in the 70’s, other than seeing strip clubs from the outside. I certainly never saw any prostitutes, or if I did, I didn’t know that’s what they were doing. My father was a sailor and spent long periods of time stationed overseas, and in recent years I’ve learned that he used to have relationships with women when he was stationed there, some of which involved financial arrangements. Some day I hope to get up the nerve to ask him more about it.
Rumpus: What impression did you have of strippers? What impression did you have about John’s? What about the messages you received about sex workers from your peers, neighborhood and your culture?
Max: There was a famous club in the red light district where I grew up which was owned by an old burlesque performer, and you could see old black and white pictures of her on the marquee outside. I guess I didn’t really find it sexy at all, the elaborate costumes, the big hair, the exaggerated physiques and mannerisms. Mind you, I was a teenage boy and it was the 70’s and so my tastes reflected my age and the era…I was hotter for Tatum O’Neal than some buxom older woman with a big hairdo.
Rumpus: I was more of a Kristy McNichol fan: her mole, her butch-y baseball shirts and her effortless toughness slayed me in Little Darlings.
Max: OH MY GOD KRISTY MCNICHOL! And Jodie Foster and Linda Blair.
Rumpus: What were your early sexual experiences? Did porn have a starring role? What were your first experiences like with sex workers?
Max: My dad started letting me read porno mags when I was 12. Mostly stuff like Hustler. That’s when my inner sex life took off. In the 70’s and early 80’s, video porn wasn’t really available. Phone sex lines hadn’t been invented yet, so magazines were the primary wank- material. My early sex life was pretty typical for a teenage boy, involving tons of masturbation and trying to (and eventually succeeding in) sleeping with lots and lots of women.
My first experience with sex work, I was the one who got paid. I was working summers when I was 19 and 20 at a sign-makers shop. It was a family-owned business, and the most senior employee was a very overweight, very effeminate guy named Ralph who was known for trying to instigate inappropriate relationships with all the young guys in the shop, most of whom just laughed at him. Ralph was my direct supervisor, and one summer he wrote me a pretty pornographic letter about all the things he wanted to do to me. It was the early 80’s, I was very young, I wasn’t a homophobe but gay sex seemed pretty icky to me, and my first reaction was anger. To my shame, I reported him to the owner.
And then the following summer, I wanted some money to buy something (some really cool mod boots that I would never be able to afford on my own) and I thought I could use his lust against him. He came to work way earlier than everybody else, so I showed up early too and told him I could do some of those things for money. I suggested that we swap blowjobs for $70, and he thought that was crazy expensive. I told him to “Take it or leave it.” I thought that by making him blow me that it somehow made me less gay, because I wasn’t only servicing him. I was getting something out of it. So I sucked him off, tried to mostly use my hand instead of my mouth, didn’t let him come in my mouth, tried to do as little as possible, and then we ran out of time before I could get him to reciprocate.
Rumpus: With any other job, it would be “working an extra shift” the doing more in order to buy shoes or pay for a vacation, but you’re also talking about another aspect of sex work: The part where one crosses lines drawn in the sand. At several points, I had disdain for certain acts, but when I felt trapped or needed rent or wanted those shoes, I crossed those self-imposed boundaries. The result was unexpected: It made me feel a stubborn and unspoken alliance with women I’d previously judged. But it also felt like a relapse of sorts.
Max: Yeah, you go into this with a list of things you’ll never do. Lines you’ll never cross. You’ll never get a blowjob without a condom (until you find out how uncommon covered blowjobs are, and well, that’s an easy temptation to give in to.) You’ll never see a girl who’s being coerced by a pimp, and then you find out that, well, you’ve been doing it, and now what? Try harder to screen people? You’ll never see a girl who’s got a bad drug habit, but then you run into one, and now what? That list of things you’d never do becomes the list of things you’ve done.
Rumpus: I found that the acts get easier to do, never harder. It gets harder to stop doing them. Like when dancing in New Orleans, it was never “necessary” or expected to do hand jobs in the clubs where I stripped. During that same time, in LA, I worked at a hand job parlor.
Max: That’s very true. But it’s true about sex acts in general, not just pay-for-play ones.
Rumpus: You’re leading me into deep waters where there was something thrilling and frightening about sleeping with someone I swore I wouldn’t ever fuck. Then, while working, there was something freeing and incredibly lonesome about being desired by someone who wasn’t invested in me at all.
Max: There were years I spent in an unsatisfying marriage that I felt crushingly lonely. My self-esteem took a lot of blows and the way I dealt with it was I drank too much, gained weight, and I pretty much felt like I was an enormous sweaty unlovable loser who was doomed to a life of no compassionate skin contact. I watched a ton of porn. My sex life and my love life were Porn and Astroglide. At that time, I’d never been to a strip club. I didn’t know how they worked. I didn’t know that sex went on in clubs; I thought it was kind of like going to a restaurant where you were allowed to look at the food but not eat it. And I was too hungry for that kind of torment.
I tried meeting women on the Internet, but fat, drunk and married does not exactly make for a compelling personals ad. And then one day, about ten years ago, I ran across a personals posting that was clearly an ad from an escort. And I was like, “Escorts? On the Internet? You can do that?” I searched around a lot, researching, eventually finding the web discussion forums where escorts and customers interact, where escorts advertise, where customers post reviews of women and warnings about rip-offs or dangerous situations, and after about a year of getting my nerve up, I made an appointment with a woman named Amy. The session (I hate the word “session.” It sounds so clinical, but I don’t know what else you call them, they’re not “dates”) was weird. She smoked, which I didn’t like. She was really sweet, very friendly and she knew it was my first time. And it’s hard to judge from pictures on an Internet ad, but she wasn’t the type of woman I would date. We didn’t have a lot in common to talk about, music or books or movies or whatever. It was like Patton Oswalt on a date with Suzanne Somers or something. At some point, there’s not really a whole lot to say, so you’re not left with anything but the sex. And the sex was not great.
Still, there’s something thrilling to going from feeling utterly alone and unlovable to realizing that all these women with all these pictures in all these ads, you can be with any one of them, at least for one hour, and pretend. And all you need is money. It’s not a replacement for love— it pales in comparison to a real loving relationship with somebody who you are sexually compatible with, but it sure as fuck beats being alone and feeling untouchable.
Rumpus: What do you think Amy’s experience of you was in that moment? Or any of the women you hired?
Max: The positive experiences (and the vast majority were positive), I want to think that they enjoyed my company. That maybe I was more fun than the typical customer. I want to think this. Maybe sometimes it was true. Maybe sometimes they were just good at convincing me it was true.
Rumpus: Tell me about your most positive and negative experiences you had with hiring women for sex acts/entertainment/ lap dances.
Max: The most positive experiences were always ones where there was a real emotional connection, where the sex part of the relationship took a back seat to just talking.
I remember one night going to a strip club. It was late on a Friday night, and I hate Fridays in clubs. It’s always really crowded and loud, everybody’s drunk, there are frat boys and bachelor parties, the girls are all making tons of money and you can’t really talk to anybody. But I was bored, and lonely, so I went, and this dancer that I had not seen in a year or two recognized me across the room and ran up and practically jumped in my lap. We were both sober by this point in our lives, and we just talked. For four hours. She was sick of the business— didn’t feel like working, I didn’t really want a lap dance anyway, and we just sat and talked until the club closed at 4am (about marriage and boyfriends and school and careers and music and life). It was just nice. Especially when you’re a socially awkward guy who has trouble talking to people and meeting people, you don’t drink any more so your old social life is dead, being able to sit and have an intense conversation with a really pretty girl all night is a precious thing. And there was really no other way I could see that ever happening. I couldn’t talk that way with my wife any more. I didn’t have any friends. I couldn’t meet a “civilian” girl somewhere, because I was married and unavailable. This was what I had, this was a rare moment, and I took it.
Rumpus: That reminds me of good nights I’ve had in clubs on Bourbon Street. During the Occupy movement, I remember sitting at a table with a group of guys discussing politics and education—just having a brilliant conversation for hours and enjoying that I was sober and sane and speaking to smart, engaging guys from various states with letters after their names. They paid me for some dances but it was secondary to the fun discourse at the table.
Max: The negative experiences were usually when I found myself in a situation where I felt I was doing something wrong, dangerous or exploitative. I think my situation is not uncommon, and I think most of us do not want to hurt anybody. Not wanting to participate in anything that’s harmful, that’s wrong, that’s cruel. But like a lot of other industries, both black-market ones like drugs or gambling and legit industries like food processing or farming, there are abuses. And so you go into it navigating through the abuses.
You’re in this for a connection. Physical—but also emotional. And a shadow of the dark side of sex work kind of hovers around in the background.
It’s like with drug use. You just smoke pot once in a while, and then one day you find yourself buying a little more weight, from a guy who’s got a gun in his car, and you realize there is this whole other big scary reality behind the little bit that you can see.
Rumpus: Yeah, both can be hiding places and places of refuge. I often met professional gamblers and people who led subversive lives who preferred the company of sex workers because it was familiar and safe for them. And there is danger lurking due to the fact we aren’t protected by law enforcement but criminalized and scorned. I often found myself with people where something could easily go array.
Max: And so the bad experiences were ones where I saw someone based on an ad and some email conversations, and then when I met her, she clearly had a drug problem. Or there was evidence she was being “managed” (pimp). I had met one woman a couple of times at her apartment, she was funny and we got along well, and then I saw her a year later and she had a black eye and was pleading for an extra $40, offering things like sex without a condom for a little extra money. And it’s a difficult situation to know how to handle. You can’t just take your money and walk out, because if there really is a pimp you think he’s either going to meet you at your car to extract the cash, or he’s going to take it out on her in ways that make you sick to imagine. And so you maybe go through with it, get it over-with, leave the money and go and never come back.
Rumpus: What is the thing you are most ashamed of? Afraid to tell me?
Max: I think the thing I am most ashamed of is that I’ve been to Asian massage parlors. These are places with women who are very recent immigrants from China and Southeast Asia, and for a fixed door fee you can get a massage, and for a fixed “tip” you can have sex. On the one hand, it’s convenient; it’s cheaper than a typical escort and you don’t have to make an appointment in advance or have your references screened by the woman. You just show up. On the other hand, the sex is often not that great.
And call me naive, but what I discovered after a couple of trips to these places is that many of these women are victims of sex trafficking. They’re imported into the country under the ruse of getting a good American job, and then their handlers make them work off their exorbitant “travel fees” in the sex spas before they are cut loose. And even after they work off their debt, often they just return to the sex industry, because they lack skills, they lack a verifiable work history, they don’t speak very good English, and the sex work is what they know and it becomes, in a way, easy money.
Thing is, they are not glassy-eyed robot slaves sobbing under their oppressor like you see in movies about this kind of thing. They’re funny, they’re charming, they’re nice to you. And they’re very much in control as far as the sex goes: they set fierce limits about what is and is not allowed, and are usually much stricter about condom use for every act than regular escorts.
Rumpus: But it’s not consensual. It’s coercion. It’s sex slavery.
Max: And I felt very remorseful when I learned this.
And then I did it again.
I want to tell you about one of one of the best escort relationships I had which was also the most heart wrenching. It was with a woman who I clicked with right away. What I mean is: Our interests, our sense of humor, our musical tastes. We became friends. But she was a recently sober addict and was still having some trouble getting her life back together. Some things happened that resulted in her getting a 24-hour eviction notice from her landlord, and we texted about it that night, and then…I stepped back a little. I was afraid I was getting into something over my head. I sometimes have a problem with compulsively wanting to save broken people, and this compulsion gets me into trouble, and I recognized I was starting to do it again. A few hours after we texted, she killed herself.
She was a secret. Nobody knew that I knew her. I didn’t know her family or friends. I didn’t know if they knew what she did. My family and friends and girlfriend certainly didn’t know she existed. So I had to grieve for a dead friend secretly and I had to question in private, without anybody to talk to, whether I had failed her as a friend in her hour of need. It was around the time that all those dead sex workers were turning up in New York and the police had not really been investigating, because they’re just hookers, they’re just disposable women, who cares, right? And I wondered if I was doing the same to her in a way.
I looked up her address in the local police department’s crime website, just to see the police report. “Deceased person” is all there was. I found her obituary online and sent a contribution to her funeral fund, through PayPal, and a few days later I saw somebody from her hometown finding my blog by Googling my name, so I guess they wondered whom the fuck I was. She was very beautiful and very sweet and I’m still sad.
Rumpus: Do you think that any of the women you hired felt degraded or exploited? Did you? Do you think the women you hired considered themselves feminists? Do you think they considered themselves victims?
Max: Other than the women in the massage parlors I visited, I honestly don’t believe that most of the women doing this felt degraded. The ones that were escorts who didn’t have pimps, didn’t have drug problems, and weren’t trafficked, I honestly believe that they chose their profession about as much as any of us choose our profession. I don’t think they feel any more exploited than all of us workers feel exploited. We all have to work to live, and most of us would rather be doing something else.
Many years after my first blowjob-for-money experience, I went through a bi-curious phase and I guess I have to say now that I’m really a bisexual who leans hetero. Speaking only for myself, if my only two choices were becoming a warehouse picker for Amazon for $10 an hour, or sucking dicks ten times a day for $50 bucks a pop, I’d buy me some kneepads. Somebody can point to, say, a fellatio porn scene where the guy is rough on the girl and calls her names, and say that it’s inherently degrading, and my argument would be that it’s only inherently degrading if the girl doesn’t want to do it. I mean, I’ve had it done to me. I thought it was a blast. And I didn’t even get paid.
I really don’t know whether they considered themselves feminists. Do people even talk that way, outside of literary and political forums? We didn’t talk about it, specifically, although I imagine many of them did, and some of them didn’t, for the same reasons that non-sex workers do or do not.
Rumpus: What did you get out of your experiences with sex workers? How did you feel afterwards?
Max: Seeing women for money, made me a little less sad. It was a brief respite from loneliness, from my skin being hungry for human touch the way a drowning person is starving for oxygen.
Rumpus: Beautifully said. You basically summarized the book I’ve been writing for three years.
Max: Afterwards, it was a really nice feeling. Sometimes there was guilt. Sometimes there was fear of disease, especially if I slipped and did something that was not 100% safe. I got a sore throat, or a zit in a weird place, and there was a voice in the back of my mind saying, “See? You’re a diseased sex maniac and now you’re getting what you deserve.”
After I got sober and lost weight and got some of my self-esteem back, the attraction of these relationships was the implicit agreement about non-commitment. I was unavailable for a long-term relationship. When I got involved with a non-professional, feelings would develop, things would go too far, and eventually somebody, usually both of us, would get hurt.
The money changing hands is a way of saying, “This money symbolizes our agreement that this is temporary, a fantasy, it’s just pretend, and at the end of the hour we go our separate ways. Now c’mere and let’s pretend!”
There’s a saying, which I think is kind of crass-sounding, that “You aren’t paying for the sex, you’re paying for her to go away afterwards.” But it’s true in a way, and the agreement goes both ways. By paying, you are agreeing that the hour is all you get, is all you are entitled to. In some ways, this is preferable to one-nighters and hookups and short-term affairs, when even if there is agreement to not get attached, inevitably somebody might anyways, and then there may be resentments and long-lasting emotional consequences to deal with.
Rumpus: If you think sex work is humiliating, how is sex work more humiliating than, say, working at Wal-Mart?
Max: I don’t think sex work is humiliating in and of itself, I think society makes it humiliating. You want humiliating? Try cleaning vomit-filled toilets in a frat bar on a Friday night. Try mopping floors for a person who spent more on their car than you will earn all year. Try being lectured in public by a man ten years younger than you because you poured his wine wrong.
Next time you’re in a fast food drive-thru at 2am on the way home from some bar, look through the window at the people in the kitchen, see how they are spending their Friday nights for minimum wage, and think about humiliation. Read about chicken-processing plants, Amazon warehouses. There are a million humiliating ways to make a living in this capitalist world we live in. At least escorting takes place in private.
Rumpus: Why do you think people react so strongly against sex work?
Max: It’s a combination of things.
First is the conflating of the worst abuses of sex work with all of sex work. A drug addicted single mom being pimped and beaten and coerced to walk the streets is a horrific and inhumane thing, but it’s the extreme end of the scale. It’s not inherent to sex work that it be done that way, any more than it’s inherent to casual drug use that drug cartels have to leave dozens of beheaded bodies by the side of the road every week. Otherwise everybody who laughed about smoking up on 4/20 has an awful lot of blood on their hands.
Also, people react very strongly against sex— or at least against sex done in a way that they disapprove of. People are going to say that sex work was created by the patriarchy, to serve the patriarchy, that it commodities women, treats them as objects to be bought and sold. I don’t agree. To believe that, you have to believe that all of these women lack agency, lack any will at all. That’s not been my experience. I’ve never “bought” a woman, any more than I’ve “bought” a guy to mow my lawn or “bought” a barista to make coffee.
Rumpus: Why do you think our culture is so invested in seeing sex workers as broken and hopeless? Why do you think our culture condemns men who hire women for entertainment?
Max: Well, I mean, half the culture condemns all of us for even having any sex at all outside a marriage between a man and a woman. It’s easier, when confronted with behaviors or social issues that you don’t approve of, to extend your opinion about the act to a judgment about the person. Sex workers are broken women the way drug addicts lack willpower, the poor don’t have a work ethic, the homeless are bipolar drunks, women who want birth control and abortions are sluts, students studying the liberal arts are spoiled hipster narcissists, and men who hire sex workers or go to strip clubs are losers who can’t get a date or misogynists with a straight white male sense of entitlement.
Rumpus: What in our past provokes us to feel shame about sex, to recoil from these conversations and to be honest with ourselves about what type of intimacy we seek?
Max: I go through life with an intense fear of being judged, found wanting, rejected, and left to die alone. Not just about sex work, or sex, but about everything. I know I’m not alone in this. And so when society condemns a thing, it’s natural to want to keep it a secret, or to seek out communities of like-minded people so you can feel normal. It’s why drunks hang with other drunks, and why recovering alcoholics hang with other recovering alcoholics. Nobody wants to feel like an outcast.
One thing I’ve noticed is that there is growing acceptance in some areas, like The Rumpus, like in the Bay Area, for sex workers. There seems to be solidarity and a reclaiming of this identity, to try to turn it into something noble and strong and creative— to drag it out of the shadows. There is less of an effort to do so with the customers. The Johns. Whatever advances for acceptance are gained by sex workers, I feel like the customers will always be seen as losers. Despite the fact that there are probably more sex worker customers than there are sex workers, we live in more of a closet than they do.
50 responses
Its great when a customer agrees to answer any questions but the questions all focused on the dominate culture’s negative views. When I hear questions posed from this extreme perspective by reporters, I think this person is only interested in ratings but when I hear these types of questions posed by a former worker, I always think to myself that this is a person who still struggles with coming to terms with the fact that they worked as a ‘sex worker’ by asking questions they taunt themselves with.
And I’m confused by the use of the sex worker term because the asker was a dancer but talks about performing prostitution in the clubs and the answerer talked about acts of prostitution with Escorts. I know that most dancers in San Francisco are performing acts of prostitution in the clubs but I’m sure they’re not aware their performing prostitution and I’m not sure the general public understands either but the way you talk about it (or not), it assumed. So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m confused by the conflation of the perceived legal and illegal acts and the relationship between interviewer and customer interviewee.
And as a side note, I believe there is lots of opportunity for clients to play an important role in current debates, public education/policy and would love to have conversations about that with anyone who’s interested.
Maxine: Look up the definition of prostitution in the states of California and Louisiana. Some states enforce those laws and some don’t. That said, these interview questions were extracted from multiple places: discussions I’ve had with customers, Stephen Elliott’s Daily Rumpus emails in which he articulated the connective thread between the stigma our culture imposes on sex workers (and clients) and our own deep seated ideas about sex. It’s always personal. It’s always political. My astute, generous subject and I have both had experiences both in and out of strip clubs. So we were speaking about both legal and illegal acts. Should we call the police?
This article is an act of incredible bravery on all sides, and so incredibly important. Thank you, Antonia, for being persistent and making this happen. It’s the type of thing that changes the lives of tons of sex workers and Johns who may still stay in the shadows, but who now feel less alone.
Such an interesting concept shouldn’t get lost in a perceived confusion. The piece above is bound by Max’s gentle courage, and it sort of turns the table. Johns have a long history of interviewing their sex workers, whether they get answers or not. Having the perspective up ended elaborated so much just by having happened. Well done, pal!
Wow, Antonia. Amazing.
Wow, This was incredibly written and very brave on both side! Coming from an extreme sheltered person, I have heard story’s about this but never knew if it was true. Thanks!
Antonia, this is stunning. Your series has always been remarkable to me for the way you give voice to people who are so often seen, idealized, and theorized, but not necessarily heard. In this case, the voice of Max is just one in the huge and mostly veiled story of Johns. And there simply can be no discussion of sex work without that side of the story. The fact that you’ve emphasized the personal over the policies/politics is fantastic, and authentic. In the end, people make their personal choices for intimate, personal reasons. I really want to honor both of you for putting yourselves out there and exploring this topic. It’s a wonderful, illuminating conversation.
antonia,
what a brave and powerful piece this is. thank you for your terrific questions, your persistence, your beautiful mind and heart. i’m so honored to know you and i want to honor you for helping shine the bright lights into the dark corners. ALLL the good stuff can be found there. xo
I second everything that Julie said. Antonia’s work is about nothing other than honesty, humanity and the ties that bind us to each other. I’ve never read a piece she’s written that didn’t move me. She has a gift of getting to the essential meaning of a person’s life, and she has the words to convey that meaning directly to our hearts.
Great interview, however I find the conflation of Asian sex worker equals trafficking victim/sex slave to be incredibly disturbing…. The evidence that most Asian women working in the US is flimsy at best and seems to be just one more racist trope to divide sex workers and to support the anti migration policies of the US under their new guise of combatting trafficking…
Antonia, you have done the great and tender work of letting this man open up in really bold and surprising ways. I agree with Julie, you are doing a vital thing in giving voices to people who are so often written and theorized and fantasized about. We need more writers, hell, we need more people, with your inquisitiveness and compassion.
I know this is a simplistic, naive reply, but I am a conservative midwestern mom who just does not understand all the seemingly irrational indignation. Professional athletes sell their bodies for money, super models do as well…and who cares what kind of sex anyone likes? Are we judged because we like beans more than carrots? Prostitution by consenting adults is a trade for goods whether it be regular, heterosexual sex, blow jobs, chats wearing diapers, or a kick in the ass accompanied by a whip. Unless you are my lover, what you do in the bedroom you do not do to me. It should not concern me. And if you have a marketable body and happen to give great head, why shouldn’t you be able to sell that talent? And if you are in a committed relationship, but you decide sex is no longer a part of it, is the partner automatically supposed to agree to the new arrangement? Keep up the chatter about the industry….someday, maybe it will finally click with all those who judge with no experience whatsoever.
While I appreciate the intention here and the honesty of both interviewer and interviewee, I have to say that I am feeling a little disappointed that the issue of sex trafficking was sidestepped when it arose instead of really delving deeper into it. I felt that the inherent problems complicating prostitution (which are perhaps some of the answers to the question “Why do people react strongly against sex work?”) were glossed over and avoided real scrutiny with language like “you go into it navigating through the abuses”. This was particularly noticeable in Max, but also by the interviewer, who maybe was afraid to press the point further than the gentle reminder that sex trafficking is slavery when he mentioned how darn chipper those women in the Asian massage parlors were and seemed to rationalize that they weren’t really as sad as the media makes them out to be. I wanted that to be challenged more, because these are precisely the things that make sex work such a complicated, morally messy subject, and here you have a subject who admits that even when he knew they were a product of trafficking, he went back. Here you have a John who has experienced both positive sex work as well as the really abusive sex work. However, having this amazing opportunity to really look hard at the whole issue from multiple perspectives is not helpful if there is an agenda, if there is this underlying discomfort in *really* addressing the abuses, which I felt there was here. I do need to say I appreciate that one motion to reiterate that human trafficking is not acceptable, but it was basically dropped in the face of a “yeah, there are ‘abuses’, but that’s just like in any industry” attitude. The underlying questions “Why do people have such an issue with sex work? Why is it so stigmatized?” ultimately mean nothing when you are afraid to deal with the less convenient answers to those questions. It seems like the goal is to show that Johns are lonely people who need love and physical contact, and that people are just uptight in judging them. But I missed the other side of the argument. The wives, for example, who are being deceived and lied to and exposed to potential STDs without their knowledge. Saying his wife was frigid, in my mind, does not excuse infidelity when fidelity is what a couple mutually agreed on (it’s another thing when it is an open marriage, but he indicated that his wife and family did not know). If he wanted to sleep with other women (paid or unpaid) he should have either tried to negotiate that with his wife, or have gotten a divorce. Women being exploited or abused don’t just include minors, pimped sex workers, or trafficked sex slaves. There are partners who are being lied to and betrayed. And I don’t see any attempt to address the mucky issue of sexism and issues like single mothers with no education and no chance at getting living-wage jobs to feed their children who see an industry which will pay them enough to support their families as the only solution. I think we’d all like prostitution to be made up solely of women who enjoyed the work and felt empowered and saw it as a choice they made freely, but that is sadly not the real-world. Ultimately, I don’t have a problem with consensual sex for pay between two adult *free agents* who haven’t got any commitments of monogamy to others. But ultimately, I was disappointed that this interviewer or interviewee didn’t dare to get more honest and nitty gritty about the problems to talk about how the reputation of sex work could truly be changed. I felt like both would rather believe that people are just prudish, judgmental, and unevolved and disprove those fuddy-duddies with empowered, intellectual stances, which is really dismissive and simplistic in such a morally complex arena that also encompasses poverty and misogyny. I see a few people here applaud The Rumpus for being sex-work-positive. Yes, but that’s easy when we are all a bunch of educated, middle class hipsters. Sex work is not just performers indicating their consent and enjoyment after a shoot for kink.com, unfortunately. I think we sometimes delude ourselves and have a rose-tinted view of porn and prostitution and avoid dealing with the pretty depressing and hideous side of it. Why don’t we actually talk about that critically?
P.S. @Andrew- They specifically mentioned Asian massage parlors, not all Asian sex workers. I am sorry to burst your bubble, but a huge number of those Asian massage parlors that have sex workers are harboring victims of sex trafficking, many of them minors. If you ask them, of course they aren’t going to tell you they are working off their “debts”. They are under threat of extreme measures, threatened with their families back at home being hurt if they talk or go to the authorities. It’s only when they are rescued during raids that they are finally safe to talk. Pretending, like the John in the interview, that they are totally consenting and happy to be there because they appear to be fine, is willfully ignoring the evidence to avoid morally difficult questions.
Thank you so much, Antonia, for opening up this rarely heard dialogue, and a thank you to Max for his profound honesty and willingness to answer challenging questions. Like all your work, this conversation was so much richer and deeper than the stereotypes and assumptions about sex workers and johns, and I wish everyone could read it.
It is a hard and brave thing to speak about our most private and personal desires and experiences… even more so when the subject is one that is so stigmatized. What Antonia and Max did here was open a door that most would like to see remained closed. I know previous comments have criticized this piece for not going deeper into the issue of sex trafficking, but this article was a first step – not a thesis. These issues are broad and deep and complex. It was a HUGE step to come this far and to have Max even go on record. This sort of work on Antonia’s part, to bring this subject into the light and bare the truth of it, should be encouraged and rewarded. Like Cindy, I’m a midwestern mom who is pretty conservative, but I see pieces like this as so essential in our human dialogue.
With over 25 years of affiliation in various aspects of the erotic services and fetish communities – both professional & lifestyle – I’m not sure if I fully embrace the interview here. Though life experiences are very certainly important and valid, I find this content to be directed by the now popular (and profitable) point of victimization – it is trendy to be a survivor of pimping and trafficking, along with abuse within the business of sex. Yes: At times sexuality is a business, and like every business can be brutal, though there are certainly rewards. I feel that you are continuing to reap the rewards of the industry by now profiting off this new view of “slavery”. What will you profit off in a five or ten years? Toy and lube reviews? Or are you writing a book to share you story of torment with others who need to know the torrid truth? You – too – are part of continuation of fascination pushing forward the evolution of sex XXX industry machine. Do you not see that?
While I admire the honesty in this interview, I have to say that I agree with Mia’s comment above when it comes to innocent spouses. I don’t have any problems with people hiring sex workers if they are free and single and both parties are willing. But Max talks about being married and engaging in risky behavior. No one is forced to stay married. If his marriage is that bad, I’m not sure why he wouldn’t just end it.
My feelings on this subject don’t just concern sex workers, but also any infidelity. I’m pretty firm in my belief that people have the right to do anything they want – so long as that behavior does not hurt another person. No one has the right to subject an innocent and unknowing person to a possible sexually transmitted disease.
The glibness about sex trafficking was disturbing too. As long as there are men willing to pretend sex workers are happy and cheerful rather than the slaves they actually are, it is a huge problem with no solution.
This is stunning. Thank you for working so hard to open the dialog on this. I hope to see more come forth to tell their stories from all sides and hope to see some of these glossed over issues that other commenters mention addressed more deeply.
Thanks for the article. I really learned a lot. You show a lot of compassion and insight.
Good article about a complex issue. One I have been dealing with myself. I have been dating a guy for a few years who revealed to me that when he was younger (few years before he met me) while on a drunken bender with a friend he visited an Asian massage parlor. He had anal sex with the worker, it was something he always wanted to do and had never done before because prior partners had no interest.
Anal doesn’t bother me if both partners consent. But it is not something a lot of people are into; I know the reason it repulses some and is appealing to others is the dirty/humiliation angle (that is the attraction for my boyfriend, we have discussed the act before). If he had been looking for an emotional connection it would almost be better, if it was somewhere reputable with a woman who had chosen her job, but the vision of him drunkenly using a woman who may have already been degraded and humiliated, may already be a sex trafficking victim, using her for a sex act many people find degrading . . . It has been over a year since he told me about this story and whenever I think about it I still want to break up with him. I remember that he was in a bad place at the time and he was totally unaware of the sex trafficking angle. But the whole scenario completely disgusts me and it is hard to not see him as monstrous in that moment. He is extremely ashamed of it and I don’t think it’s right to dump my additional feelings on top of his shame.
I see my boyfriend and the sweet guy he is and I have to reconcile it with a person who did that. And it is hard because I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for it because whenever I start trying to put myself in his shoes I immediately start putting myself in HERS. But I desperately want to, and don’t know what to do.
just a tiny nitpick – it made me cringe to see “sleighed” instead of “slayed”.
a really important interview A-game. Nice to hear a different perspective.
It’s clear from the comments above (particularly Mia, Laurie and LDB) that this is a topic where people experience strong visceral feelings. I found Max’s transparency about his experiences with women in the sex industry brave and honest. What’s interesting is human desperation. I don’t think that being a kind, generous client in that situation makes Max a self centered, unfeeling asshole. It makes him honest and human. The disdain that some of you have for this client is, sadly, what my article exposes. You helped me do that. It’s not an article about sex trafficking, but the places we hide ourselves and the ways we connect with people sexually. I’ve never met anyone who condones sex slavery. It’s a horrendous, monstrous thing. Perhaps his interaction with them was a bright spot in their day. Have you ever talked to a woman who has been pimped out and sold? Have you ever given her money? Shelter? There is an in-depth discussion going on here:http://www.metafilter.com/116827/A-view-of-sex-work-from-the-other-side. Thank you for reading. xo
Thank you for your insightful and sweet remarks: Rayna, Jill, Julie, Chadburn, Hamilton, Heather, Nina, Andrew, Tina and more. I appreciate you taking the time to enter the discussion.
Thanks Meg! My fault. I’ve fixed the sleigh, er, slay. 🙂
Fascinating and brave essay — and great discussion in the comments. I agree that there should be less (if not no) shame surrounding human sexuality and its myriad manifestations and expressions. So that’s my boilerplate disclaimer.
But the reality is that many people feel tremendous shame around expressing their sexuality. Let me speak for myself — I feel shame around expressing my sexuality, although I feel a lot less shame now about my sexuality than I used to. I was raised in a strict (nearly fundamentalist) Mormon household. I saw my first escort on April 30, 1994 (Walpurgis Nacht!) and went on to see (at the very least) 50 or more escorts. Of those, three or four became friends — one became a very good friend. I’m in touch with none of them today, although I still have a picture of one of them. I saw my last escort on Aug 20, 2002. I’m married now, with kids.
I’m glad that I don’t see escorts anymore; it was a source of real shame for me. I felt like a freak. On the other hand, many of those escorts were responsible for helping me feel like a sexually desirable, worthy human being for the first time in my life. The fact that I paid these women to act like they found me desirable didn’t (entirely) diminish the good effects of their playacting. A great analog here is the therapist/client relationship — which I’ve found to be very beneficial despite the fact that my therapists were paid to (basically) spend time with me.
Where am I going with this? Oh yeah, shame. One of the commenters above talks about the extreme disgust she (still) feels around her boyfriend having anal sex w/ a prostitute. Why is that? I mean, I think I can guess why. My wife, for instance, became a far less sexually open-minded person as soon as she realized that I’d seen (not one, not two, and definitely more than 50) escorts in my past. Again, the rhetorical question: why is that? Because it triggers feelings of inadequacy in my wife; also, it triggers her quasi-moral sense, too, that all johns are perverts and freaks — that all perverts and freaks are bad people. But again, why should a man’s exploration of his sexuality be stigmatized and marginalized, become an object of loathing and disgust?
The fact is, I can’t imagine living my life any other way than how I lived it. Although I’m glad that I don’t compulsively visit escorts anymore, I certainly don’t regret the time I spent visitng escorts. Nor do I think that sex workers are bad or evil or horrible people. Although, most if not all of the escorts I met all claimed to be doing it only until something better came along. (Of course, the escorts may also simply have picked up on my undoubtedly not-so-subtle feelings of serious shame around what I was doing and therefore responded in kind.) But the fact is, my participation in the sex industry was also something that I was deeply ashamed about and have spent significant sums of money trying to eradicate — which to a great extent I have done (although, my private sexual fantasies still mainly center around my many, many experiences w/ escorts; and I’m attracted to my wife and we do have a healthy sex life (even if we can’t talk about sex like we used to)). But the fact is, I accept my past completely. I don’t regret it. At the same time, I’m glad I’m now living in a stable, committed relationship. I’m glad I’m more sexually responsible.
Part of the point I’m trying to make is that sex isn’t something, really, that can be dealt with rationally. It’s not a rational act. That being the case, why is society surprised when sex goes weird (for lack of a better term)? And why does that surprise turn punishing and accusatory? And yet, we shouldn’t and can’t keep non-quote-unquote-normal sexual expression underground. We need to keep talking about it. We need forums where men and women can speak frankly and freely about their sexuality — whether from the perspective of the sex worker, the spouse, the john, or the boy- or girlfriend. We also need laws protecting the defenseless — i.e., children, sex slaves, etc.
But what about sex-slavery? It’s a horrible thing, obviously. Were any of the escorts I paid for sex-slaves? Probably. So how do I feel about that? Not good but also not debilitatingly bad (if I’m honest). That fact is, it’s hard to untangle the shame I felt around paying for sex from the shame that I feel I should have felt around exploiting someone for sexual purposes. Because when it came right down to it, when I was turned on enough, my idealism went out the window. I wanted sex and I was willing to pay for it and I didn’t care why you were taking my money but only that you took my money. I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth. And that’s why I say that sex isn’t a rational thing and we shouldn’t be surprised when people behave in less than rational ways in pursuing their thrill. And yet, and yet, sexual thrill-seeking isn’t w/o its collaterally damaged victims, either — e.g., the aforementioned children and sex workers, obviously, and the lied-to significant others, as one commenter pointed out above.
Lastly, I think that sex work should be legalized. At the very least, this one step would allow sex workers the right to unionize, gather professionally together, etc. w/o being accused of pandering.
So thank you for writing your essay, thank you to your john for being open and vulnerable, thank you commenters for keeping the conversation going. This is all a very good thing. (And obviously I’m not in the practice of talking about my own past because otherwise why would I have written such a long comment?)
:^)
Hello. I’ve enjoyed the comments here very much. I just have a few things I want to expand on.
Yes, infidelity and lying are bad. It’s not something I’m proud of. The original interview (the first draft was about twice as long as what you see here) got into details about my marriage, but Antonia suggested and I agreed that it got us off on a tangent. As you point out, infidelity is a whole issue on its own regardless of whether sex workers are involved, and there are millions of words written elsewhere about cheating, so in the interest of staying on-topic, we decided to leave it out. But I don’t think “just end it” is something that anybody could say who has actually been through a divorce, or been in the position of thinking about initiating a divorce. Divorce is traumatic and awful. Yes, cheating and seeing escorts is maybe taking the easy way. Maybe you can imagine how great is the temptation to take the easy way if you have a choice between that or the terrors of the family court system.
But if the comments about infidelity are coming from a place of you having had your heart hurt in that way yourself, I’m sorry for your pain. Really. It does suck.
As for the massage parlors, I used the words “ashamed” and “remorseful”, so I’m not sure how anybody can describe my attitude as “glib”. When I say, “And then I did it again,” I did not mean that I thought, “well, what the hell, who cares”.
Have you ever done something that society disapproved of, that was wrong, that maybe put yourself or others in danger, and then afterwards you felt regret and remorse, and then some time later you did it again?
Like, have you ever gotten behind the wheel after having a little too much to drink, and then the next day you swore you’d never do that again? I think a lot of us have. Did you then ever do it a second time, weeks or months later? Why would you, if you know better?
Have you ever had unprotected sex of any kind with a person who you weren’t fluid-bonded with? Did you feel guilt and shame the next day? Then did you ever do it again? Why, if you’ve done it once and now know better?
It’s like that. We don’t always do things for fully logical, altruistic reasons. Sexuality and emotion and loneliness are confusing, they’re complex, they can be powerful driving forces, especially when you’re going through a difficult time in your life. I don’t say these things to try to absolve myself. I still feel bad, really bad, about those times where I’ve participated, actively, maybe part-knowingly, in activities that are wrong. Whether in the world of sex work, or sex, or any other aspect of my life. And I’ve tried to make amends of various kinds. One of the reasons I agreed to do this interview was to be able to talk about this.
But one of the other reasons I agreed to do this interview was to hopefully talk about it from the customer side in a way that avoided knee-jerk black & white judgments of any of the participants. I obviously don’t think sex work is inherently immoral or exploitative, but I know, probably better than you, the ways that it can be.
See, here’s the thing. Like many other businesses, especially in the service and entertainment industries, there is a lot of illusion involved in sex work, and sometimes a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. You can never be sure if things are really what they seem. There are establishments that are identical in every respect to the Asian massage parlor except that the women are American, and in those cases (that I have directly experienced or know the people involved), the women are clearly not trafficked. They are employees free to come and go as they please. So is it, as Andrew points out, a racist assumption to believe that if they are Asian women, they must by definition be trafficked sex slaves? He is an activist for the rights of Asian and immigrant and trans sex workers, so you can’t discount what he says out of hand. On the other hand, clearly sex trafficking is happening and is documented.
But if you visited one of these establishments, there is nothing there (other than the fact that the woman you meet is an immigrant) that would indicate non-consensuality. Nothing. You’d only know if you read it somewhere else. You can’t tell anything about her story, her background, her current life or her future prospects from meeting her.
(By the way, the person who said that Asian massage parlors harbor a huge number of minors must be going to different ones than I did. I rarely saw anybody under the age of 40.)
Right now I’m sitting here in jeans that were made in Bangladesh, a shirt made in Pakistan, boxer shorts made in Mexico. I’m typing on a computer made in China. I don’t know where the coffee came from, but I’m pretty sure the bananas I had for a snack earlier were not harvested by a rich white girl with a degree from Sarah Lawrence. I don’t know anything about the lives of the people who made these things, but my gut tells me it’s probably pretty grim. What should I do about it? Stop buying? Try harder to buy only fair trade products from countries with humane working conditions? I can try, but I’m not always going to succeed. And somewhere in the world, there is an actual human, maybe a woman, who was unfairly paid and inhumanely treated and her hands sewed the very stitches that hold on the pocket where I keep my car keys.
I’m trying to describe these things as honestly as I can because it’s not something I’ve seen described many places, at least not accurately. Even much-lauded films like “The Girlfriend Experience” and “Shame” were, from my point of view, given enough Hollywood treatment that they didn’t seem very real to me.
All this being said, I understand that the conversation is going to be dominated by the issue of sex trafficking. I was the one who brought it up, and I did it in the interest of laying everything on the table, knowing how it was going to be received. But those instances were just a very small minority of my experiences. They aren’t representative of the entire escort/sex-work business. And I don’t think the abuses are inherent to the business. Do I propose solutions? No. I have some opinions, maybe. But like one commenter said, this isn’t a thesis. I’m just trying to tell my story, because it’s a story that I have not seen told very often.
I have nothing to do with the sex industry, I came here via a random Twitter link, but I just wanted to say that this is one hell of an interview.
Max: if you’re not doing so already, please take up blogging / writing. On any subject at all. This must be the most insightful, honest, intelligent discourse I’ve read in months, I’d truly love to read more from you.
Thank you Sothpad for “Sex is not a rational act” and Max for “We don’t always do things for fully logical, altruistic reasons. Sexuality and emotion and loneliness are confusing and complex..” This is exactly the type of classy discourse I hoped for here. Perhaps more men like you will participate in this discussion. Like Cheryl Strayed mentioned in our conversation here a couple years ago, we have to move the mirrors around to see clearly. Things are not always what they seem. Thank you for telling your story.
Sothpad, thanks for your comments. I did not see them before I wrote mine last night. I identify with just about everything you say.
And Rayna, I feel for you. I don’t know what it’s like to feel that way about things that your partner did before you even met him. (Sothpad, I guess this applies to your wife as well.) My girlfriend knows pretty much everything about my past. She knew a lot of it before, she knew about the Asian massage parlors, and I had to confess a few more things to her when I did this interview, but she’s OK with all of it. She thinks the fact I got paid for sex when I was younger is kind of hot.
We’re very much in love, we’ve lived and are living through some difficult events together, and we’ve both got messy shameful things in our pasts, which I guess is one reason we understand each other so well. She’s reading all of this, including everybody’s comments and all the metafilter comments as well and she’s nothing but supportive.
I do have a little experience in my past with having bad thoughts that I can’t chase out of my head. I’m not a doctor, but it might be a good idea to seek therapy for that. Both of you, I suppose. Letting thoughts and resentments fester won’t necessarily get better just by ignoring them, and when they do finally burst out it can be ugly. That kind of resentment and anger and disgust, unresolved, is largely what led to my divorce (which had nothing to do with sex work or cheating).
i loved this. i was surprised how much i identified with Max, and I’ve never worked in this industry. my favorite: “That list of things you’d never do becomes the list of things you’ve done.” thank you.
Awesome interview Antonia.
It should not be considered humiliation for janitors, fast food workers, or amazon warehouse employees. These people are earning their money honestly and working very hard and doing so by not breaking the law or directly hurting others. In order to end the stigma of humiliation of prostitution, it isn’t right to scapegoat another group. Max felt humiliation when he had sex with women who were trafficked from Asia. Yet, he still did so. That is humiliating.
On another note, he was brave to give such an honest interview.
To Max: What you feel, we all feel. Thank you for your honesty. Please know that you are not alone. I wish more people would express themselves like this.
I did not express myself well above when I said that you are humiliating. I didn’t mean it as an attack. Rather that by judging others, we are perpetuating the fear we have of being judged. I do not think you are humiliating, just that you experienced it and acknowledged it. Wanted to clarify because I did not like how it sounded when I reread it.
Max, your explanation in the comments section is exactly what I was hoping for in the actual interview. I did not mean to imply that neither you nor Antonia care about women who are trafficked. What I meant to imply was that in the interview the deeper introspection about that issue was sidestepped, I think because of the belief that Antonia states above in the comments: “It’s not an article about sex trafficking”. Well, you cannot write about prostitution and the stigmatizing thereof without discussing sex trafficking, because the reputation of the industry is very much tied to things like that (and all the other problematic issues I mentioned). Addressing the problems of sex trafficking is necessary if you want to honestly examine the subject. I think the reason some people felt you were “glib” is because those issues were quickly dropped in the interview without pressing on them. So perhaps you should have left some of the discussion of your marriage and infidelity, the impulse to return to known victims of trafficking, in there. I think if we had gotten the kind of reasoned examination of the issue that you gave here in the comments section, I really don’t think people would have reacted that way. I have to say, it seems from the comments section here more like Antonia’s defensiveness and desire to sidestep/shape the issue than yours, a desire to defend and soften the less positive sides of sex work because of a fear that people will dismiss her other very valid desire to reveal sex work in a more positive light. I can see this because even though my comments (and others) did not villainize sex workers or their clients, she chose to interpret it as “disdain” because I/we dared to question the avoidance of the less savory sides of prostitution, that are certainly there. I think it’s a willful attempt to avoid all the angles when you rationalize the issue with “Perhaps his interaction with them was a bright spot in their day”. That’s just too easy a way out and dizzying as logic. Stockholm syndrome rationalized… Mind you, I understand Antonia’s urge to protect her subject, because indeed, it is very brave to share your story. But I much prefer to hear ownership and a real contemplation of *all* the sides of an issue, as you did in your comments above, Max. Otherwise, we are getting as biased an opinion as some right-wing religious zealot who condemns sex work outright, and that’s not helpful either. They are just two extremes, but I believe that the truth can only be found by going straight into the middle and seeing things for what they are: a confusing, complicated, multifaceted muddle of positive and negative. I don’t think anyone here indicated they were condemning sex work or Johns. Yet I detect a dichotomous pattern in Antonia’s thinking, because anyone that raised questions or put pressure on certain issues was immediately dismissed as a hater who proved that sex workers and their clients were wrongly condemned: “The disdain that some of you have for this client is, sadly, what my article exposes. You helped me do that.” I never saw disdain. I saw rational questions. So I actually think the good/evil (celebration/disdain) dichotomy is one being falsely created here and is not actually being displayed so much in this readership. I think when you take up a cause and you feel emotional about a subject, it is easy to feel any criticism as a complete dismissal and condemnation, and I want to say that at least on my part, that is absolutely not the case. I have friends who are adult, consenting sex workers who like their jobs, and I support them in that, so I hardly think I could be accused of being an example of the kind of societal disdain you wanted to expose. No doubt that disdain exists out there, I just don’t think it is very evident in the Rumpus readership.
PS, Antonia: I also think LDB was actually arguing the opposite of me and Laurie, and saying she didn’t agree with exposing the “victim” elements. I think she said she was a sex worker herself. So that leaves only Laurie and my comments. I explain my view about it above. And I don’t see how Laurie could be an example of the disdain of clients of sex workers that your article aimed to expose, because she started off her comment by saying “I don’t have any problems with people hiring sex workers if they are free and single and both parties are willing.” It sounds like you are saying that if someone has an issue with infidelity and sex trafficking and doesn’t just take it all as acceptable in sex work, then they are intolerant of the whole sex industry. I don’t understand that logic.
I think Antonia and I just have a lot of things in common so we understand certain things the same way without a lot of explanation. We were practically finishing each other’s sentences during the interview some times. So when we both read the final draft, it seemed obvious the point that was being made about “going back again.” But I guess in retrospect it was not necessarily universally obvious, so glad I could clarify.
I don’t know that I would call her comments “defensive” in the way that you mean it, although yes, I think she is trying to defend me in a way. If you’ve read some of the harsher comments over on metafilter, you might sympathize (or not). They’ve really invented a whole persona for me based on things that are not in the interview at all, like I’m still actively cheating on my wife (actually I’m happily divorced), or I’m actively and unapologetically seeking out trafficked women (I’m not, it’s something I described from my past, and even back then it was not intentional, pre-meditated, or without immediate regret) or that I’m an abusive father (excuse me? Who even said I had children?).
I’m glad the Rumpus comments for the most part have been very civil, even about things where we disagree.
MIA, I think your comments are interesting because I think you have cause & effect backwards. The question in the interview was, Why is sex work stigmatized? Max gets into a bit of speculation but ends up throwing up his hands. You insist that it’s because of sex trafficking. But your explanation makes no sense to me. I never heard about sex trafficking until the 1990s. The timing was propitious. Sex work had started to become more respectable in the USA. As soon as people started coming out of the closet as sex workers and johns, as soon as public health services started becoming available for sex workers, and just before a serious movement was at risk of springing up to legalize sex work in the USA, suddenly there was a wave of concern about sex trafficking. That concern, please note, started as a grassroots movement in the Christian evangelical community. This doesn’t discount the value of the message, but it should give a hint as to the real issue at hand.
Yes, of course sex trafficking is an important issue, but I think you have it backwards. You say that concern about sex trafficking was what gives rise to repugnance against sex work. I think the repugnance against sex work gives rise to worries about sex trafficking. After all, we don’t see those same religious and police groups chasing down those who would enslave Brazilian sugar cane workers, Dominican nannies or Hatian baseball-makers. There is a lot of slavery and coercion in the world, a lot to work on. Why focus only on sexual coercion?
I think the wave of concern about sex trafficking is perfectly valid and important, but I also think that the size of the anti-trafficking movement is out of proportion to the real scale of the problem. I know people involved in anti-sex-trafficking efforts and I applaud them. But why is Mimi Chakarova feted at US Embassies while other activists, those who oppose labor abuses by WalMart or Apple contractors, say, are shut out completely?
Here’s my theory: Sex freaks people out. Those who are most freaked out by prostitution, porn, queerness and sexual deviance may often be battling their own desires, e.g, Ted Haggard, or be dealing with other complex feelings of inadequacy, betrayal, or disappointment, e.g. some of the comment-writers we see here.
This was such an interesting thing to read … Max talking about how all the humiliating jobs that exist in the U.S. really hit home. Just last weekend I went to Taco Bell at 2:00 a.m. and couldn’t help but notice me and all my shit-faced brethren waiting for out low-priced food. The employees dealt with super-drunk assholes (many of them dickhead college students) for what I assume is $8 an hour. Just a shitty, shitty way to spend a weekend evening.
Somehow, through that extremely sensitive and honest interview, I am even more thoroughly disgusted by sex work than I thought I could be as a ‘open-minded’ person. The rationalization that is going on here is really disturbing. I agree with MIA’s comments; so many want to try to de-stigmatize these things, which is a noble goal, but it can’t be done by using soft focus on the horrible elements.
Since this thread is still being haunted, I’m going to add some mature perspective and respect from a prostitute’s point of view.
This business of demonizing Asian Massage workers via the anti prostitution government funded media campaign to ‘raise awareness’ by anti trafficking non profits only had the effect of reinforcing racist stereo types. We can see this is true from the customer, Max’s perspective as well as many of the comments on here.
I’ve had several occasion to speak to Asian massage parlor workers in San Francisco and I will relay to you how they feel about being viewed as forced labor.
They’re appalled by the anti prostitution/anti sex trafficking groups and media who manufactured and use the trafficking frame work to depict them as hapless victims.
This false and misleading media awareness campaigns has effected their economy to the detriment and forced them to work longer hours and lower their rates in order make up for the last revenue. The customer in this interview, Max, seems to have taken this popular white people interpretation of his Asian Massage Parlor experience and doesn’t consider other factors which isn’t very balanced. It seems he and others have drunk the kool-aid as we say here in San Francisco when referring to those who have to be told how to think and feel as they run like the lemming off the cliff.
Too, this business of sex shaming men for wanting sex and or kinds of sex is really immature.
Many of the comments lack an adult respectful perspective expressing so much negative judgment about themselves and their partners obviously based on lack of information about sexuality in general. Please spend some time educating yourselves about the basics of sexuality.
A superb and much-needed article. Max says just about everything I would have said on the subject myself.
I would like to clarify something that I think some commenters misunderstood, and that neither Max nor Antonia have clarified yet. When Max said, about trafficked sex workers,
“Thing is, they are not glassy-eyed robot slaves sobbing under their oppressor like you see in movies about this kind of thing. They’re funny, they’re charming, they’re nice to you”,
I don’t think he was saying this to justify his participation in any way. What I believe he meant was that he was surprised by this. And therefore that if you as a John feel a moral obligation to avoid participating in this abuse, in this non-consensual sex (and there are no excuses for not feeling that moral obligation), then you are going to have to be more vigilant than the TV and movies would lead you to believe. You cannot be certain that someone isn’t trafficked just because they appear happy and tell you a good story about their situation. I think Max was just reporting this, because Johns need to know.
I’d also like to add that, having been able to avail myself of opportunities to become comfortable with sexual interactions by paying for them when they were very infrequently available to me through conventional avenues (because I was too shy and ashamed and performance-anxious and just generally did not have the skills for seduction and therefore could not seduce, though I am an otherwise handsome devil and well-rounded and loved person) has had a big role in making me into the man the women I like want me to be: confident, less selfish, not afraid of making emotional connections, etc. etc.
I’d like to think all those gains for me were had from women who were making a completely free choice to have a sexual encounter with me for money, but although I can’t think of an instance where I was pretty sure the woman I was with was trafficked, I know that the odds are that this not true, partly because of what Max says about it not necessarily being obvious. But in an ideal world, this would be the case.
I appreciate the interview and insite into this world. I would not shame people for participating in this industry either as a worker or as a John, so long as both parties are willing and actively choosing to participate.
Where I have a problem is when a person knows that someone is being victimized and still seeks out the experience. Max, how can you still find a situation erotic knowing that the other person is a victim? The commenter Sothpat – how can you completely lose your idealism just because you are “turned on enough”. I will never understand those who see sex and pleasure as soemthing that can be “taken” at the expense of others. How does sexuality cause someone to completely lose site of their humanity in thsi way?
as a current escort, this was a very interesting look a little deeper behind what i normally get to hear from clients – yes, i get a lot of life stories, but they are rarely so frank or well-spoken. i also agree that max should be blogging.
and laura: maybe i’ve just had some bad experiences, but both in my personal and work life i have seen multiple occasions where men were ‘turned on enough’ to ignore their normal moral code. and as a former drug addict, i can see kind of where it comes from – that orgasm (or in my case, shot) just feels so good that you’re willing to overlook the fact it really does go against your moral code. sometimes there’s remorse after, and sometimes it’s so worth it that we continue to do so, despite knowing what we’re doing is wrong. humans are designed to want as much pleasure as possible.
of course, that’s just speculation on my part.
And the old lady that lived on the edge of the bayou said, “I don’t know what’s the big deal about sex. It’s just a squirt in the dark.”
This interview was one of the main reasons I sent my piece to The Rumpus on ‘Things Women Have Said to Me in Brothels’. Thanks Max and Antonia.
Brilliant piece. I was just riveted. I’ve read very few pieces that come across as so authentically emotional from a male perspective. I look forward to seeing the other articles you’ve written.
As someone who has had sex with many sex workers, I loved the piece. The strip club scene, the street hookers and Internet call girls are all part of a continuum. While I have seen some evidence of coercion among girls I have been with, it is usually after the act or time with her. I abhor that and try to stick to my regular, who I know well and trust. Many of us have helped out women we know when they are in trouble; they become our friend and confidants. Great piece about a very complex and misunderstood subject.
Late to the conversation here, but what the hell…
I used to be a sex-worker. Not a classy Belle-du-jour escort, but a streetwalker. I chose to do it. I didn’t have a pimp, or a significant other I turned my cash over to, I kept all the money I made. I lived in a hotel at the south end of the street I walked during the day (I almost never worked nights). I did this for over 18 months.
Am I embarrassed? No. Do I lie about this particular period in my life? Again, no. While I may not be PROUD that I did this, I went into it with both eyes open, & only got out because the man who became my partner had begun as a john. Eventually I just … could not … bear to have a stranger’s hands on me.
Yes, I did find this article interesting. This particular trick sounds like he’s got his head on straight, & has a realistic attitude towards the women he hires. Thanks for publishing this!
Antonia –
I ended up here following a link from usasexguide.com.
I’m a john, have been since my divorce over four years ago. I’ve been a local lady’s ‘regular’ for the last ten months.
I’m in love, flat-out. She’s one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met, in every sense of the word, and I’m 65 years old, with a very promiscuous (non-paying) past, and currently in poor health.
She tells me she loves what she does, and she’s extremely good at it – she’s basically always looking for a few ‘regulars’, who want ‘connection.
Thank God I’m one of them – she’s been gradually weaning me away from any sense of shame, and accepting that she is who she is, and I am who I am – I feel extremely grateful that she’s in my life, and I let her know it.
Michael
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