I have been hemming and hawing over what my first post should be for some time. I have drafts of their beginnings saved, thoughtfully unfinished, all the while still without a published post. The key line of questioning that I keep butting up with is, “What part of my self do I choose to first peel back the skin of?”, and “Who do I choose to introduce, and how?” This is a great place to mention my intimately thoughtful and careful indecision, please, it’s not complete pompous.
In the preparation to begin an honest blog, I may have had a better chance blindfolding myself and pointing an eager forefinger at the spinning globe of my many selves, before landing it down with decisive, “THERE!” Can I peel back the blindfold yet?
Or, another thought that rattled around in the questioning, was the assurance of sounding as articulate, decided, and intelligent I am. Because, I thought, and silently feel, that the message I have been receiving has been heavily laced with a trumped importance of how you present. (Feminists, Queers, and Sex Workers- you don’t know just how much you have in common!) Equipped with an understanding that there would be some kind of audience, I was more distraught with the fact of presenting an over-simplified, safely non-multidimensional, wholly rational, cool, and collected self. If this was to be the case, I better be damn sure about the ‘one’ I actually choose.
I stared blankly at my Twitter text box, the receptive cursor taunting me, as a flood of fiery emotions stirred in my gut. See, I had just opened the Pandora’s box of an external hard drive that had been used to harvest all the good of the past 5 years out of my old laptop before it died.
After a simple search for a resume and some kitschy costumed shots from my Pro years past, I found myself knee deep in pictures that were as unwelcome at this time of the night as they were in this day of my cycle. Pictures of a loved one that had died this past year, a wretched but codependent bound partner, and consequently, myself as broken and then rebuilt. There were pictures of the fierce dyke self that I had unknowingly lost, the gender fucking radical bike queer that was lost a little later, manifestos, plans of action, letters to abusers, and all of the love lost and pain I am only able to read from them now.
Turning away from the omnipotent Twitter, I ruminated. Should there be a place, online, where I don’t have to present as an easily read caricature of what I would like to be, or an oversimplification of what I am? What role does self-censorship really play? We all must do it. Present some mild censorship or persona in order to feel safer, if not more credible in our respective fields. Not only as credible and capable activists and advocates, as well-polished or diamond in the rough Pros, but as how we choose to present one side of our most desirable, coy, collected, novel, well-educated, wise, what ever selves – in order to feel safe and understood in our own contexts. Especially, in the public and individually controllable open forum blogging presents. For many of us, our images, intellects, personas, and selves have first come into being in someone else’s hands and under someone else’s control. So as a Sex Worker, Queer, Survivor, and subversive, it is easy to understand blogging as an effective, even seductive way of recapturing how we ‘read’ to ‘outside’ communities, while reauthoring what we are to ourselves and our own communities.
I ended up talking with a friend about the fumbles I had before me as an advocate, and burgeoning adult and former sex worker who now felt perpetually unprepared. “I wish there was a practice ground where I could make these mistakes”, I said. And she replied with something like, ” But there’s not, this is it, you have to do it in front of everyone, at your own expense, and that is how you learn.”
During my recently ending (?) 7 year tenure as a Sex Worker, I learned a lot about compartmentalization. Which was most often a necessary tool for personal safety and my own piece of mind, especially within an often hostile Southern map dot, and respectively suspect activist communities. As a survivor, of many lived experiences, I also learned a lot about compartmentalization. Again, it was somewhat of a primal tool utilized for survival and safety. And as a Queer, Gender Queer, one-time identified Dyke, Feminist, and unapologetic radical, I learned not only about surviving, but about relearning and breaking those walls between selves, within the multitude of innumerable identities, down.
So, will this convolute any message I try to tackle here ? (Which may take a turn for the mundane, for I must warn you, I have half a mind to host this as part food blog, part former Sex Worker reflection. Multidimensional! See, a real, live, Sex Worker! ) Maybe a lot of those articulate and brilliant bloggers who choose to explore their sex, sexuality, and Sex Work publicly, know something I don’t. Regardless, I have always been one incredibly wily and stubborn being. So if it’s a mistake to intermingle my personal struggles and all of my collective selves- including the polished and proud Pro, and the student finding their way into adulthood- then I will happily make them.
Plus, I refuse to do any kind of skillful dance to maintain an (non-paying) audience, even my few years on the pole (as a riot-grrrl, no less) taught me that. That is to say, even for the few stumbles of readers that may find me, or recruits from the sexual and sex work blogosphere, I don’t want to feel the need to let my inner Domme always do the talking, to whip out an impressive kink fact, an account of my latest dare-devil orgasm or edge-play, in order to validate myself as a Sex Worker, or to keep ‘the hook’ in. I also rebel against pressure. So, push me into a latex catsuit and 7-inch spiked platforms, no matter how well I know them, and I will put on an apron, bake you some vegan muffins in the blink of an eye, with the grace of a Southern Belle. Be prepared. It may get domestic, nerdy, and even perhaps, boring.
