What is(was) your professional/stage/working name?
Gillian. I’m a Russian Jew, but with my freckles, fair skin, round face and blue eyes, I look Irish, so it fits–and it misdirects clients. I didn’t make it up, it was part of a sort of unofficial matriarchal tradition among my group of friends, that one of the people who trains you to become an escort gives you your work name. So Nina/Brooke gave me this one. She thought it sounded “classy.”
I don’t think so, but I always get a kick out of the fact that I’m named after that bar in Boston they named Cheers after. Since then, I’ve gotten to name some great girls I’ve trained things like “Wendy” (for her punk rock idols),” Iris” (it sounded like her real name, and it was the name of a German ex she had who was a police officer who busted sex workers in Germany, so it was a revenge name, really), and “Belle” (to emphasize her European chic–she’s Russian and model thin.)
How old are you now?
Almost 28
At what age did you engage in your first professional sexual experience?
When I was 20. Alternatively, there was an experience I had that could fit the definition that was more ambiguous that happened when I was 19. I was living as a kept girl with my rich boyfriend, taking classes at Bard, not knowing quite what to do with myself, especially during the summers when we went back to Massachusetts.
When I saw ads for nude modeling, I leapt at them–the idea of having money I earned myself, even only $60 a session, was so appealing. Hamid was a Syrian born engineer with a beautiful loft who wasn’t being honest with himself about what he was doing. Sure, he drew the women that came to him, but he also took certain sexual liberties that he didn’t want to admit he paid for–and he thought because he paid so little that he’d weed out “the whores”, only have people who truly *wanted* him let him jack off while we modeled and occasionally let him fuck us.
He was a truly cosmopolitan person–his loft was beautiful, adorned with expensive, original art, festooned with books. He introduced me to edamame–squeezing the little green pods with my mouth to watch the pearly green protein rich soy beans pop out.I also had sex with a woman for money for the first time in Hamid’s apartment–she was a shy, beautiful geek dyke, and it turned me on more than anything I’d ever done up to that point. She had these thick glasses she never took off, and she whispered hungrily in my ear the whole time. I didn’t care that he was watching.
And though my boyfriend and brother were disgusted by the fact that I let him jack off while he drew me and once let him fuck me, I knew I didn’t feel bad about it at all. The only part I felt bad about was being underpaid. But I didn’t need my own money at the time. I knew I’d come back to this, and that soon I’d know how to do it right.
Describe your first professional sexual experience, including what happened, how you felt, what you were thinking, how you felt afterward.
But my real first professional sexual experience came in the summer I turned 21, slightly before my birthday. I’d read Whores and Other Feminists, I’d read The Sex Work anthology, and I’d always been a sex positive feminist. I was theoretically prepared. But it was almost on a whim that I looked through the adult employment ads in the back of the alternative weekly that day.
I’d dropped out of Bryn Mawr, I’d made my way to Western Mass because I wanted to be part of the activist movements there—besides, all my friends were there. My girlfriend had moved in with me until she moved into her dorm for her first year at Hampshire. We had two runaway teens living with us, too, one waiting for college, the other one merely waiting for something better than what she had at home. We were running out of the money we’d brought with us. We’d been looking for the usual hipster retail jobs at record stores and cafes and video rentals, but we’d started looking too late.
Kate got some hours at a book store, but I suddenly thought—did I really come here in order to get a forty hour a week retail job, so that I’d be too tired to do any of the activism I’d been drawn to? “I need to find the Adult Entertainment ads around here. I’m thin enough, much thinner than I was the last time I did this. What more could they want besides a 24″ waist and a 36C bust on a 20 year old?” I wrote in my livejournal. (I didn’t know then that beauty standards in the adult industry weren’t as fixed as many might have thought). Hence, the back pages of the Advocate. And one of the ads said they were hiring.
Brooke/Nina came over shortly afterwards—she’d been looking at a house near the area. We were all so nervous–this was to be my madam! She was big and voluptuous and gorgeous and looking for a slender girl to do the calls in which men only wanted someone more petite. We were so scared Brooke wouldn’t like us but she said we “immediately clicked” on the phone and when she came over my house she got to liking me and “having a good feeling” about my value as an addition to her business.
Thank god for the ability to make loquacious people like one by asking them lots of leading questions about their lives and listening intently, with legs crossed towards them, to their answer. Coming from my leftist bi-dyke social circle, she looked more femme than anyone I’d ever met. In my grungy baby T and cargo pants, I wondered how I would fit in.
So we did a quick run through the Salvation Army to pick up an instaho outfit, and I looked in the mirror and realized I was born to be femme. (I’ve never looked back–my andro-dyke days are over.) She wanted me to do a call that night. “But I have my period,” I protested. No worries, they had just the thing for that–and they showed me the makeup sponge, and how I could put it up right next to my cervix, and wash the rest of the evidence away. She put me on the phone with her other indy escort friend, “Cindy”, who would also be helping me– a bike riding vegan.
“Have you read Michelle Tea?” That was the first thing she asked me. Right then I knew I was among my own kind, hookers or not. Then Brooke and Cindy drove me to my first call. It was to be a half hour. On the way there, I squirmed with excitement, playing Prince songs to get myself into an appropriately slutty mood. I felt beautiful after their rushed makeover, beautiful and powerful. They were behind me, and somehow I knew that I’d been lucky and gotten employed by people who would give a shit about me, so I felt safe.
I rushed out of the car, into a condo where an old man lying on a bed hastily pointed me to the money envelope. I put my all into it, but it turned out he needed nothing more than a ten minute handjob. “Thank you,” he intoned sincerely as I walked away, and it was all I could do not to scream, “NO, thank YOU!” Then all I could feel was euphoria as I galloped back to the car in my heavy heels–Patti Smith’s “Free Money” was blaring in my brain. “Oh baby/ it would mean/ so much to me/to buy you all the things you need….:” And now I could. “Free money free money free money free money free money free money…”
With Brooke’s cut, it was $125 for ten minutes, and that was the rest of Kate’s rent down, and four more calls and I’d have my own. It was like a magic trick, a miracle, making money so easily this way, through a sexuality I was always comfortable with. Sure, later I’d discover it could be real work, and real risk, but I discovered that day that it was much more comfortable for me than any legitimate market job.
From my journal my first week of working:
“Never understood gambling, or any rush that came from money, until now. (After all, money wasn’t as immediate as a pill, or the first time with someone you’ve wanted for a little while, or a good meal, or even the song you really like. It was always just this indeterminate, unsensual pile.) Now I know about the light dizziness I get racing out of some address on heels with a whole pile of twenties pasted against my thigh. Big chunks of cash for what can be no more than an hour of unstrenuous labor. A whole week of windfall. No matter how ugly and depressing and tense the time was, no matter how much playacting and pandering and tonguebiting it required, the hour is over and all that’s left is the loo. That’s what Naomi calls it and her voice gets all lustful. Serious loo. Money to ward off fear. Money to soothe it. I’m only in it for that but that’s a positive, not a negative statement. For a second, endorphins seize me, and I smile at her as I trot back into her car.”
At what age did you entertain the first (serious) thoughts of going into sex work?
19, 20, when I first did nude modeling for Hamid and I first read feminist books on sex work.
What made you decide to enter the line of work you’re in?
I am clumsy and loathe exercise–anything that causes one to break a sweat is anathema to me. I’d also be very afraid to deal with drunken men in packs. So that rules out stripping (I also don’t really have a great stripper body–mine’s more suited for escort work.)
In term of professional domme work, there’s not enough of a market in this area and though I enjoy dominance sometimes, I’m not really enthusiastic about practicing BDSM on a day to day basis. Then there’s the overhead for all the toys and the rent for the dungeon. I’m not enough of a masochist and I don’t trust strangers enough to be a submissive, and as for webcam work, PSO, etc.–not enough money and not enough potential to work independently. (I love the fact that I’m my own boss.)
I really like and am really good at establishing a connection one on one face to face with clients, which makes me a very good escort. I’m also better at the act than the image of sex, if that makes any sense. I’m very good at setting boundaries firmly about my safety from STDS and pregnancy and my comfort. I don’t want to be a high end escort and spend so much of my money on the accouterments of femininity and body upkeep, and spend multiple hours with men I don’t like. All that makes being a middle class escort what best suits me.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
Two things–getting to know men I never would meet socially, getting to know them intimately, learning about the human condition in general from them in these close yet somewhat anonymous encounters. I’m a very curious person, and the possibility of getting to know people from a different gender, with different political values, from a different class background, from a different generation etc. is fascinating.
I enjoy the hour calls when I can speak to people more, though not *all* the men have anything interesting to say for themselves, and there’s nothing wrong with a quick hot half hour.
The second thing I love is my own performance–I love getting better at my job in every call, becoming sex itself embodied, learning how to know what each person wants intuitively. I turn *myself* on when I’m Gillian, I feel like I’m fucking sex itself, and I’m not ashamed to say I have an orgasm sometimes.
What do you like the least about your work?
The constant worries about police targeting. The worry that doesn’t recede until the screening process concludes in the room, and even then, what if he’s a mad man? Prostitutes are seen as disposable people, their murders are the least likely to be solved, so they’re easy prey for killers. I try to minimize the risk using call in security checks, but you can never protect yourself completely.
The stigma that makes clients think that instead of renting my services they’ve bought my soul, b/c I’m that worthless and cheap of an individual, that absurd idea which makes them demanding and rude and awful. And on a more prosaic note–working for myself, the uncertainty of the business—a dry spell can come at any time. I am never guaranteed money.
Plus the tedium of working the phones, dealing with the huge percentage of bullshit callers, being on call so much of the time if I want to make money. No-shows, people who waste my time. Getting all femme-d up for nothing, the proverbial all dressed up with nowhere to go. A lot of things that don’t change the fact that this profession has allowed me to have the time to do so much great activism and keep up so many incredible friendships.
Does your family know what you do? If so, what do they think?
They know. My mother prays for me. She thinks it’s a symptom of a mental disorder, as does my father. The one time I was arrested, my father wrote a letter to the DA calling me a heroin addicted mentally ill prostitute who should not be allowed to leave the court room, who should be sent to jail or drug treatment immediately. He wrote a pathos ridden paragraph about how every day they worry I might contract HIV (although I practice safer sex than the vast majority of the general population–I practice safer sex than *he* does.) I always wondered why he was dumb enough to send that letter to the DA–not my lawyer or the judge–why he was dumb enough to think the DA could possibly have my interests, rather than the goal of a conviction in mind.
I know my father did it because he thought it would help, but with good intentions like that, who needs malevolence? I haven’t spoken to him since. I don’t *blame* my parents–there’s a huge cultural divide there, they are Russian and come from a culture with totally different values. But sometimes I do long for a mother who would be proud of me, like the depictions I see of Carol Leigh/Scarlot Harlot’s relationship with her mom. My brother didn’t speak to me for a while after he found out. But now–he doesn’t necessarily like it, but he’s gotten used to it–approximately the way I feel about his neo-conservative politics.
How much longer do you think you’ll do what you’re doing now, and what are your plans for when you quit? If you’ve already left, what made you decide to leave and what did you decide to do for work when you left?
At least another three or five years. I’m a long way from burn out–I’m always finding new things I like about the job. I’d like to save up to finish college as painlessly as possible and then finish law school, so I can be a useful resource to the movements I’m in.
If you had to go back and tell your younger self (mid to late teens) that you’d be doing what you’re doing now (assuming you’re still working in the sex industry), what do you think your younger self would say about it?
My younger self might be upset about the seeming contradiction in terms of my feminist values, but she’d be secretly intrigued and titillated. Once I’d explained to her how sex work doesn’t have to clash with feminism, and told her about all the activism sex work has allowed me the time to do, she’d probably be proud of me.
What advice would you give someone who was looking to get into your line of sex work?
The most important thing would be to find someone to train you. You cannot teach yourself screening methods and all the other ways you need to be safe on your own. Work for someone else for a few months until you’re ready.
Gillian’s Blog: Virtues of Vice
