The Sleazes

 I should have known it was going to be a terrible idea to come on this cruise alone.

It’s my Dad’s birthday and everyone decided a cruise was the best idea due to it’s accessibility and the fact they were throwing cruise packages away like they were Christmas hams in a raffle. I’m the only one in the whole extended family here that’s not coupled up. The one and only distinct advantage being that I had a cabin all to myself, but it’s become a boring daily routine to wonder where everyone is and to ‘accidentally’ be left off land excursion activity lists because someone decided they want some romantic time without a third wheel (me). I should’ve hunted Tinder for some poor fool to bring with me just for something/someone to do. 

Another day, 3pm, and I’m at the bar entertaining myself. It’s become routine now - everyone is in their rooms fucking or napping or arguing or whatever it is that couples do these days. At this point in time, I’ve largely forgotten. A sun-pink gentleman in a short sleeved button up shirt shuffles over to me, he’s misread the vacant look on my face as vacancy, and encroaches my space, filling it with the smell of Jack n Coke and horny desperation. I’m far too good looking to be drinking alone, he informs me, without me asking. Perhaps I’d like some company, his wife is far too busy gas-bagging with her mate to care what he’s up to, he snarls. A ‘no thank you’ is laughed off, and he asks the bemused bartender to fetch me another of what I’m having. Ok, I preferred my newly-divorced day-drunk pit of despair to this, but thanks.

I look over his shoulder, to work out which his wife was, which he notices. I ask, are you trying to pick up for the both of you? Nah, he says, she’s not interested in sex anymore! Huh! Don’t ever get married! He says to me, the recently divorced singleton on a cheap cruise with her parents… He nods towards the brunette, and it’s immediately obvious to me that she’s far too hot for him. Shame, I say. He shuffles a little closer, too close, and leers at me. Take a hike, I say meaningfully - the sleaze dripped from him like lard from a pork chop. Fucking snob, who do ya think y’are! And he waves at the bartender as if to cancel his generous order. Away he trots, and I wink at the bartender who puts down my Prosecco and promises to charge it to his room. Good lad.

But I’m still noticing Sleaze’s wife. She’s older, sure. Maybe mid - late 40s. And her hair is a little too curly to be entirely natural and her leopard print sarong suits her far too well for her to be wearing it ironically. She looks at home on this cruise, with it’s loud carpet and gaudy chandeliers that cast unfathomably poor light. But she has these cheek bones, not highlighted or contoured with makeup, just elegantly carving her face. Her hair is thick with a hint of auburn, flowing down her back, mostly covering a fading butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. She’s striking really, I forgive her shouty outfit and wrong hue of lipstick when I watch her face dance as she loses herself in animated conversation with her friend. Looks nice to have company. Her friend leaves and I see Sleaze’s wife quickly glance around the bar for her missing husband, sinking relaxed into the couch when she notices him gone. Should I?

I take my Prosecco and approach the couch, can I join? Sure! She has a friendly inviting smile, a certain kind of purity to it. I wonder, am I this bitch? Sure, today I am. Your husband was just hitting on me at the bar, are you swingers? (Knowing of course that they aren’t). Shocked, she rebuts a little too quickly, definitely not! Her husband is just trouble you know, but he’s all talk. Her shock isn’t hurt, I think she’s more taken aback by my candidness. It’s a shame I say, because truly, you’re beautiful. There’s a blush, and she doesn’t know what to say. I ask more questions, have they tried swinging before? Did they know swinging happened a lot on cruises? Is she bicurious?

Look, I’m a bottle in and I’m not really proud of my behaviour, but she isn’t shying away from me. She tells me that her husband has strayed, or at least tried to, but you know, that’s just how he is. They have a nice life together and maybe it’s easier this way. I tell her she doesn’t need to tolerate his poor behaviour, she’s beautiful, she can have anyone. She laughs amusingly, that her husband thought he could have a shot with a beautiful young woman like me. So, I say, you think I’m beautiful?

Next thing you know I’m leading her by the hand out of the bar. I notice the bartender watching us, he’s going to have questions for me tomorrow. We pass Mr Sleaze in the hall near the exit to the pool, and his jaw drops. No words come out. I catch a glimpse of her face, giving a cheeky shrug to him but she never lets go of my hand. She’s almost skipping. I unlock my room, thank god I have a room to myself, and I give her a flirty push inside and shut the door.

I don’t know if I’d be as attracted to her in another situation. I wanted to have what he had, I wanted him to know. Am I proud of this? I don’t know, I know that in this moment I don’t care. I unwrap her sarong with haste and take my time tracing my fingers along her collarbone and the side of her striking face, while I try to figure out the inner workings of her over-complicated hot pink swimsuit. I’ve never been with a woman before, she says, and I assure her that that’s about to change. Her swimsuit now sits bunched on her hips, baring her exquisite chest, nipples like icicles and the unmistakable tiger stripes of motherhood on her belly. She’s a deer in headlights as I pull my dress unceremoniously over my head, quickly snap off my bikini and push her onto the bed. She’s much, much too hot for Mr Pork Chop.

..

For a second time, she quivers, cumming and pushing my head further into her untrimmed pussy, howling like an injured animal. There’s just no way my cabin neighbours don’t hear. I can’t tell if it annoys me or strokes my ego, or both. I’m drunk and uncertain if I’m horny or if I’ve just been craving a good time. This is certainly the kind of good time I wasn’t inclined to have with the lad behind the bar or any of the sleazes I met while nursing my lonely bubbles. Mrs Sleaze has discovered female breasts today and won’t leave mine alone, it’s cute really. When I tire of it I flip her over, fuck her with my fingers the way she likes it, and lick her chlorine tasting ass. She moans and writhes, and I hold her in place with my other arm so she doesn’t injure me with all that bucking about. I feel powerful in this moment, exposing her to the pleasures of women, pleasuring her in ways her husband doesn’t, and enjoying a little revenge. I love making her cum, we go at it for a couple of hours. She tries really hard to make me cum, but either the mojitos I watched her down or just inexperience make her a little clumsy. And that’s okay, I enjoy pulling her up by the hair to sit her on my face again, looking up to see those icicle nipples shiver and shake as her world shifts on it’s axis, possibly forever.

Knocks never come, though I expected them. He knows where we are, he watched us skip down the hall and disappear through my door, but he never comes. His wife does though, many times. Hah. Eventually we lie there, tongue-tied and spent and there’s nothing for us to say but goodbye. I kiss her open-mouthed as I open the door, to her husband sat on the floor against the wall, red-eyed, to greet her. Not my problem I think, and I shut the door before a word is said. That was an excellent way to pass the afternoon I think, turn on the TV and drift into a short doze before I go to meet the family for another buffet dinner.

..

It’s 3pm again, my favourite family members are romantically swimming with turtles while I order another Prosecco from the bartender, fast becoming my closest friend in this gaudy outdated ship that smells of stale Chanel No 5 and yesterday’s vomit. I look across the bar and spot the Sleazes, canoodling on the couch. Maybe I am an asshole, a drunk depressed asshole, but I think I might have unintentionally saved their marriage. Pity about my own I think, and gesture to the bartender - another bottle please. They catch my gaze and raise their glasses to me, so I raise my nearly empty bubbles in their direction and nod. Good for them. Charge this to their room, I say, I earned it.

PETRA FOX

Twitter: @foxandthefeline

Instagram: @foxandthefeline

Web: petrafox.com.au

Do you love your job?

 We lie there in the afterglow of the fuckfest that just ensued, and we start to talk about other things.

It’s often my favourite part of a booking, our guards are down and the conversation usually evolves past the niceties and the ‘what are you doing at the weekend’s. We talk a little about my blog, she knows writing, and she appreciates my blog and confesses it is part of why she booked me. It’s nice to receive the feedback, a little market research if you will. So I know she’s coming from a good place when she suddenly asks me, ‘so do you love your job?’.

It strikes me as an interesting way to phrase the question. Few people want to know if I love my job, the question is usually centred around if I like my clients or if I ever have bad experiences - questions that make me squirm (I’ll never understand why people ask me to relive potential trauma for their amusement). We are lying in the sweaty remnants of a threesome that was fun and a perfect ménage à trois by any standard. In this moment I’m thinking, ‘fuck yeah I love my job’. I can feel the question has come from a place of care and curiosity, so I take a moment to really think about it.

Do I love my job? I think it’s a layered and complex question, more so than they realise. I’d love to just answer yes, and it be true without any ‘but’s. Moments like this? Hell, I think I have the best damn job in the world. Very few, if any jobs on the planet can offer the kind of highs I get with clients. Sure, there’s the obvious fun bits - orgasms, nudity and the physical type things that most (usually male) clients think are the most important. That’s really just the surface layer of things I love about the work. But it’s rewarding professionally in ways outside of sexual pleasure. If you’re a person who enjoys work in personal service - say nursing, caregiving, childcare, you’ll understand the kind of job satisfaction that I also feel when it comes to looking after people and taking care of their needs. They might be very different needs, but all the same, the nurturing aspect to it is there and there is very real job satisfaction in taking care of clients. A happy client makes me happy, and that’s part of why I always strive to be good at my job, it’s not so much about reputation and return business, though those things are important, it’s just that it feels good to make people feel good. That job satisfaction is highly rewarding.

But it’s more than that too. And this doesn’t apply to every booking - hobbyists who book frequently, as often as some of us order Uber Eats - this doesn’t really apply to them (and that’s fine, they’re fine clients and we all usually see quite a lot of them). It’s the clients for whom we know we are a little more than that, that really give us a sense of purpose. There’s a deep sense of ‘calling’ that happens for me when I see clients for whom our time together is special. Sometimes it’s a client who is very inexperienced in sex and wants a little guidance from someone more experienced or at least, kind enough to accept a little fumbling. Sometimes it’s a person who is exploring or affirming their sexuality. Sometimes it’s a person with a disability who hasn’t been touched in a long time. Sometimes it’s a couple indulging in their first fantasy. Sometimes it’s someone who is in a sexless marriage who feels unsexy and just wants to feel alive again. Sometimes it’s just that I’m someone’s first sex worker, or just anyone that craves and truly appreciates the intimate level of service I provide. 

These people make my job amazing. It’s knowing that I’m giving someone a little of something special. Nothing reaffirms my place in this industry more than receiving a message from someone telling me how much our time together meant to them. In times when maybe I’ve had some shitty clients, or just clients who probably forget me in a week because they shag half of Brisbane, these clients keep my fire burning. Making people deeply happy is the best feeling a person can have.

But even in those moments, it’s hard for me to outright say ‘yes, I love this job’. Because I think, it overlooks so much. I am quite afraid to let people know, hey, yeah I love this job, because I never want to gloss over some of the things we endure to exist. I don’t want people to think it’s all glamour and fucking and cash. Loving the work still has a cost. People always assume the cost is the risk of violence - which yes, obviously exists. Being a woman, I live with risk every day regardless of sex work or not. Domestic violence rates in this country are genuinely scary, and yet we don’t assume all of our friends are victims of violence, even if statistically they possibly could be. Sex work can come with risk, for the reason that we deal with men on a regular basis, not because the work is inherently violent. 

Some of the biggest prices we pay to be in this work are outside of the actual in-person parts of the job. For example, I can’t put this job on my CV. And that doesn’t sound like a big deal on the surface, but from every other career you can usually continue or further your career after 10 years in any job, except for this one. Coming back to the civilian world from sex work with a big hole in your CV is hard, when none of the skills you’ve acquired as a business person are easily accounted for or explained. You can apply for a minimum wage job and find you’re too old or overqualified or you can aim too high where they’ll screen you beyond where your lies can realistically take you. Even if you’ve studied, or had children, or travelled, that gaping hole will still limit your employability. Quite simply, putting your mouth on genitals for a business, even if legal, will not be accepted as relevant job experience and most likely will see you culled immediately, probably as the office joke for the day.

Beyond employment challenges, there’s the real world stigma of being a sex worker. From my own experiences, even under New Zealand decriminalisation, I had my bank accounts shut down after a lifetime of being a customer, because they deemed my job too ‘high risk’. All I’d wanted to do was shut down a joint bank account after my painful separation and ended up with a small office swarming with men leering at me, telling me basically that I was a hassle and they shut my accounts on the spot, when I had no other bank accounts anywhere else active. It’s almost like they didn’t want me to be legitimate in my business even though they claim that was their main concern. They didn’t decline a loan, I wasn’t asking for money, they just shut down my day-to-day banking because of my job. And legally, they could do that as businesses are allowed to make their own choices about the risk they deem customers to be, even if it’s discriminatory. Hotels and AirBNBs will also turf you out and even ban you for life for similar reasons. I lost a very close friend after her partner basically banned her from hanging out with me, I can’t get insurances, I have family members who won’t speak to me (they aren’t the ones I care about thankfully), I have to lie on rental applications, and every time I tell someone what I do, it’s a ‘coming out’, because there’s always a risk that I kill that friendship or that they have a big mouth and it kills other friendships or opportunities in my life. I’ve had significantly less blowback in my life talking about my polyamory and sexuality than I have being a sex worker. Feminist circles are divided, which means many people in otherwise progressive pockets of the world either hate me or rule me unable to speak for myself. The online world is a minefield of hate and misogyny, and that’s where I have to advertise and find clients. My daily life involves wearing blinkers, whether online where people spew hate about me or people like me, or out in the world where people sometimes creepily stare at me out of recognition.

So I guess, I have to love my job. Because if I didn’t have these moments, resting my head on these (really quite lovely) boobs, with a man half asleep on my thigh, I can’t say it’d be worth it. I don’t know if I could mentally endure the prices I pay if I didn’t have great clients, and these perfect little moments. The reward of the work, the feelings of service, the joy of nudity and free-spirited loving and all that glittery happy stuff really needs to be there. I hear all the time, clients and spectators and even naïve partners saying they’re jealous of my work, and it does get to me, even if they’re right in seeing my joy for the work. Because the degree of resilience, street smarts and emotional labour that goes into living through the shit stuff and turning up with a smile on your face to these moments, is beyond what most people really are capable of, which is why being a sex worker is a talent, worthy of it’s hourly rate (and more), and no-one should expect anything less for us, than to have a fucking good time doing the job we sacrifice so much to do.

I hear myself, nearly a bottle of Moët down, starting to deep dive down this convoluted rabbit hole and I stop myself. This is their fantasy, their moment, and even from a place of care and curiosity I’m overwhelmed by the words it would take to make someone fully comprehend, post-coitally, the complicated love I have for this work. I nuzzle into her breasts a little more and bring myself back to this moment, one I want to savour, and I say, genuinely - ‘of course I do, look where I am’.

PETRA FOX

Twitter: @foxandthefeline

Instagram: @foxandthefeline

Web: petrafox.com.au

Not all Light and Love

 TW - sexual assault

It’s not exactly the kind of memory I like to hang on to, but it lingers. Sometimes it’s at the forefront of my mind when I’m beginning new networks in the industry and meeting new peers. Sometimes you just don’t know what corners of the community are for you or against you.

If you’ve read my stuff before, then you’ll know that the sex work community is a big part of my love for the industry - there was and always has been a sense of ‘being amongst my people’ that I simply haven’t felt anywhere else. We’re a bunch of odd misfits and we celebrate that. But my relationship with the sex work community is exactly that - a relationship. Sometimes our relationship is healthier than others. I have unbreakable ties to this community but the relationship has varied from synergetic and uplifting, to toxic and damaging. 

I’m thinking about this now as I’m coming off the back of reading a couple of books about online trolling, of note being Troll Hunting by Ginger Gorman, and I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the stuff I’ve endured as a sex worker in an age of intense and increasing public presence. 

The online aspect of sex work has been present for me since day one. My very first day working at the high volume ‘agency’ I started in, a decade ago, was the same day I was reviewed, so I quickly discovered the existence of review boards. It was a very rude awakening - I started sex work under the guise of it being built on a culture of discretion and yet, it appears clients could talk about every aspect of us and what they did with us. Disgust was my first reaction, then fear, and then morbid curiosity. 

The New Zealand forums work a little differently to how they do in Australia - for a start there’s a lot more escort input so ‘hobbyists’ and sex workers mingle and talk together a lot more in discussion. It gets heated, it’s not a particularly nice place a lot of the time but it’s arguably a lot nicer than the cesspits that are the known Aussie boards. So it worked out that I joined up on my very first day to read what was said about me, and curiosity drew me in plus an instinctive ‘keep the enemy close’. 

I was pretty active on the review boards then, it’s where I spun off into blogging (this by the way is not the first, second or third blog I’ve had over the years, I’ve well and truly done the sex work blog gig by now) and I built up a reputation with my words well before Twitter became important. I didn’t get along with everyone, and I suppose that included some workers - being (especially back then, I’ve definitely mellowed with age) the passionate, outspoken and at times angry feminist that I was - heated words happened from time to time. But I also made good friends, even mentors on there and I definitely acquired a lot of clients who appreciated a little spunk in their sexual endeavours. 

I was already unfortunately well aware of the dark side of the Internet, having been stalked and harassed by my abusive ex for years. I learnt quickly that the internet was something that could be exploited by people to cause harm, but up until my time in sex work I just never appreciated the size of the problem or just how venomous people could be, that you didn’t even know.

Fast forward a few years and I’m touring in Wellington. I have an honestly awful tour, an anonymous person made a fake booking and then reported me to my hotel reception for ‘dodgy activity’ and I had my room raided by staff. Believe it or not, this stuff still happens under decriminalisation - hotels are allowed to refuse us working there. But also, I was sexually assaulted by a client. Now at that time I was in a huff with the review boards and wasn’t using them, and I was alone on tour unsure who to talk to or how to deal with myself. I wrote a blog about what happened to me, I guess writing has just always been an outlet, and published it and it was put on the review board. At the time my ex husband didn’t know how to respond, and I wasn’t out yet to my family - I didn’t know who to talk to, I hoped my community would hear me and be the family for me that I needed.

It just didn’t really work out that way. People in the forums questioned why I wrote it, people doubted my story, people thought I was attention seeking and worst of all, people blamed me for what happened. I won’t get into the details of the assault, I don’t want to, it’s not necessary and it’s behind me, but the actions out of my own community shocked me. It is unsurprising that the type of people who hang around on review boards are often misogynists and some of the things that were said were grotty but nonetheless unsurprising. But some of my own peers were doubting me, blaming me, and even started trolling me about it. Now there was support, I’m grateful to a lovely friend who came to my aid and others who were involved and there was love and care there. But in the end it came to feel overshadowed, in particular by one individual - a sex worker - who thought it would be a lot of fun to spend the next year or so trolling me and making fun of my sexual assault. It involved abusive name-calling and harassment, usually timed for when I was touring, when they knew I’d be alone again and sensitive. I think I’ve struggled to deal with the fact that this was permitted by the forums, but also because the establishment they worked from who claimed to be progressive in their sex worker rights and ethics, did nothing about it. For some reason this person, who didn’t know me, thought sexual assault of a peer was a lol-worthy event and with the full support of her own fanboys, seemingly their workplace and the forum itself, proceeded to try and get as many ‘lulz’ as possible out of my trauma.

I’m a much stronger individual now than I was then, I couldn’t really give two hoots what some immature little brat wants to say about me now - but things were raw then. I was younger and without the strong support network I have today. Back then I was the one comforting my own husband about my rape, I couldn’t call my family to talk about it or talk to any of my uni friends. I was alone, and where the forums had at times provided a sense of community and a safe place for discussion, I felt really betrayed by how quickly that turned really toxic for me. 

And people say when online interactions turn sour, well, why don’t you just turn it off? But how can you turn off the only thing that gives you a sense of connection to the only people who are like you? The world is very online now - it’s how we market, stay in touch, it’s how we work and how we live. You can’t just turn it off. And it’s so much more complex when you live a life that you can’t be completely open about in ‘real life’. It takes courage and a degree of risk to talk to people outside the sex work community about our job. I’ve lost so much personally and had to keep secrets to prevent it affecting the lives of my loved ones too. Sex workers take a lot of risks to be here, and so having a community in sex work can be so important for when there’s either no-one else to talk to, or just no-one who really ‘gets it’. It isn’t so simple to turn off the only place where your job isn’t the one thing you’re judged on. 

But since that experience, while the sex work community is in so many ways my family - it is definitely a dysfunctional one and one that I have never been able to fully lean on since. The organisations that rely on community do so much good work, and I’m grateful every time I see a client knowing I can do that legally, and I feel guilty at times that I never involve myself as much as I should. But every time I dip my toes in I feel just how deep that goes and everything I risk by jumping in. I want to bring positive attention to the community for all the good it has done and all the good it will do for others, but I feel at times that I gloss over some harsher realities by trying to be all ‘light and love’ for the benefit of social media ‘mood’ and the endless war against stigma. But the truth is that I had my heart broken by my community those years ago, while people watched on or even laughed, and that’s a wound that’s scarred viciously.

I’m a harder person because of trolling, because of deeply entrenched misogyny in the sex industry, and I know more than most that it’s not limited only to men or to clients, but that it’s alive and well within the community too. I’m happy and fine today because through circumstance and determination, I’ve been able to build a support network away from the industry, so I can ugly-cry into someone’s sleeve and not worry about how that might impact my survival network. I love you, my community, I do - but like my relationship with my Mother - I love you more from a safe distance.

PETRA FOX

Twitter: @foxandthefeline

Instagram: @foxandthefeline

Web: petrafox.com.au