I've been contacted countless times by people who want to be sex workers, and I've advised many of them against it.  Why?  Because plenty of these emailers are terrified of being discovered.  If you're already experiencing great concern over potential outings and shame, this is not a job for you to be considering.  One would think this goes without saying- but it apparently doesn't, judging by the number of times I've encountered such people.

Emailers want to let me know that they are turned on by exhibitionism, consider themselves quite sex-positive, love performing, and eager for my advice.  They also often let me know that they'd potentially be disowned by their families and "real friends", kicked out of school, lose custody of their children, and/or be fired from their conservative job if anyone found out.  They want to how to not get "caught".

I tell such potential sex workers: imagine the person you'd least want knowing about it.  They'll probably be the ones who find your alter ego first.

My bad outing story?  Over dinner, some loser my mother was dating yelled at my grandmother that I "suck dick for money", jumping to his feet and pompously refusing to spend another minute at the same table as a whore.  So, picture your own elderly grandmother, with an enraged asshole screaming at her that you suck dick for money.  Can you handle that?  (The irony about this situation, however, is that every time in my life that dick-sucking has transpired and money has changed hands, I have never once been the one being paid to suck a dick.  But I didn't want to try and explain that to an upset woman in her late 80s.)

So, here it is, short and concise, for all my would-be sex worker readers:

The first rule of sex work is: you will be caught being a sex worker.
The second rule of sex work is: YOU WILL BE CAUGHT BEING A SEX WORKER.

Accept those rules before you start quizzing myself or others about how to get started in the business.  Sex work can offer great things to those of us with big hearts, abundant sexual energy, creativity, and business-savvy, but those freedoms and rewards do come at a certain price.

My trip to New York City was a whirlwind of amazing, and I've barely had time to wash my clothes and read my email before I'm back to the airport tomorrow- although, this time, for a family visit.

I knew I was going to visit New York this fall to shoot for Cocksexual.com, and the universe was especially kind in putting together a great week of pervert events so I could have fun in the evenings, too.  Alongside a full dance card of taking pictures of cocks, there was also a sex-positive drinkup, the Sex Worker Literati reading series, the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar release party, and Audacia Ray's second screening of her Pay As You Go collection of shorts.  (Thank you to the organizers of these events!)

I was able to shoot 8 new models for the site, from cute boner-filled posing to an amazing double-penetration scene.  (This was my first time shooting a DP, and I found it challenging to know what to focus on when there's so much hotness happening all at once.  I love meeting new challenges!)  The cheapie light kit has been great to work with- it packs down small enough that I can fit everything in a large backpack.  In spite of some hurdles like missed trains, lost models, and the A and C subways not operating, everything still ended up working out, and 23 gigs of great porn was shot.

I feel as though I was dragged quickly through a massive scrumptious buffet, and barely had a chance to stick my fork in but a few trays of food as I passed.  I met and caught up with many great sexual intellectuals, but it was all so short.  Ten minutes of conversation here, a late-night dinner there, a quick hug and "nice to see you!" shouted in a crowded bar in the middle, and I have found myself back at home, wondering what happened to me.  As a bit of a recluse, that level of constant social interactions dazzles me, and I wonder if that's actually just what every week is like for normal people- the ones who don't work at home, in fleece pants, cat on their lap, with podcasts to keep them apprised of the outside world.

I've officially declared February 1st to be the launch date of Cocksexual.com, so that's when you'll get to see all the great stuff I've been doing.

As always, I am seeking models, but right now, I am most interested in finding cisgender (non-trans) men to work with in the Bay Area or Seattle.  If you are a cisguy, partnered to one, or know one who might be interested in being pegged on camera, check out my casting page.

A parting shot:

"Straight people are encouraged by culture and society to believe that their sexual impulses are the norm, and therefore when their affairs of the heart and loins go wrong (as they certainly will), when they are flummoxed, distraught and defeated by love, they are forced to believe that it must be their fault. We gay people at least have the advantage of being brought up to expect the world of love to be imponderably and unmanageably difficult, for we are perverted freaks and sick aberrations of nature. They - poor normal lambs - naturally find it harder to understand why, in Lysander's words, 'the course of true love never did run smooth'."

- Stephen Fry, in a beautifully-written letter to himself, Dearest absurd child, on guardian.co.uk

Years ago, I was eating with a friend and a few of his enlightened lefty activist buddies.

I was aware that a number of his self-righteous feminist pals had a problem with what I do, so I generally stayed away from them, choosing to socialize with my friend one-on-one, when we'd make vegan cookies and watch scifi.  (An associate of his once tried to pick a fight with me inside an upscale restaurant, loudly accusing me in public that I "think it's a good thing to rape children".)

On this particular awkward occasion, I don't recall a certain woman at our table saying anything to me during the meal, nor had she and I ever met before.  I ordered something small, like an appetizer or a milkshake.  When the bill came, I tipped the waitress something like 50% of the cost of what I ate.

The previously-quiet woman gave me the stink eye and snottily said, "You know, for the kind of money you make, you really should be tipping more.  These woman actually have to work for their money."

Remind me that part again about how the left is sexually liberated at right-wingers are my enemy?  I prefer my old-school Republican father who supports my right to sell sexuality over these "enlightened" feminist asses any day of the week.

"Work traditionally provided by women is always made natural and invisible. Everything from knowing how to care for kids and tend a garden to how to hypnotize with fabric and liquid eyeliner is seen as normal, easy and natural for us women — not hard-earned and precious."

- Juliet November, in Cunt at Rest: On Being A (mostly) Celibate Whore, on bornwhore.wordpress.com

One of the most commonly asked questions of sex workers is, "But do your parents know?!", generally spoken in a mock-concerned, barely-containing-their-excitement voice, ready to hear about my inner turmoil of how I want nothing more than to be able to make my parents proud of me, yet am burdened with the shame of being a fallen woman.

When I started out, I wasn't sure how my father would react when he eventually found out about the porn thing, and I had no immediate plans to tell him.  He has post-it notes on his coffee table to help him figure out how to work his television remote control, so I wasn't worried that my luddite dad was going to stumble across my web site.

A year or two in, a teenaged cousin found my web site.  I'm not sure how this worked in his head, but he apparently decided that there was more satisfaction to be had in tattling on me to the family than there was in not telling the family a story that started out, "I was looking at porn, and..."

So, I got The Call from my father.

"Is this true- that you're naked on some kind of internet sites?"

He sounded a touch angry, but not ragingly so.  I considered whether I should just lie.  I could get away with lying because he had no means of disproving me.

"Yes, it's true."

There was a pause on his end.  Sure, my father always had Playboys not-so-well-hidden around the house, but the idea of men jerking off to his own daughter might be a very different issue.

(It's an interesting test of how screwed people are about sex- the way they react to the idea that I get naked for money.  In general, something I find fascinating about being a sex worker is the way so many people project all their fears, insecurities, and neuroses on me and criticize me for their own issues.  If a person tells me how degrading and disgusting my job is, it's because they view their own sexuality with revulsion.  And this goes for misogynist men as well as the liberal feminists whose eyes - and mouths - shoot jealous hate-daggers at any woman more attractive than them.)

My father posed his next question: "Are you making money doing this?"

"Yes.  People pay a subscription fee every month to see new photos."

He exhaled a massive sigh of relief into the phone. "Oh, THANK GOD, I thought you were doing it for FREE!  Never do that for free."

We both sort of awkwardly laughed about the whole thing.

Later, he let me shoot porn in his beautifully-decorated living room.  Here's a favorite photo of myself from that day, and the one I use on my business card:

(I was prompted to put this story in writing by the Coming Out post on $pread's blog.)

"Saw an 'adult gigs' ad for actresses, unrated movie, sexual contact. Interesting stuff. I wrote my inquiry- and I think I'll decline.

The premise? It's rape, of course, the only type of sex that mainstream movies care to show explicitly. The man gets caught, justice served-

-but it's still rape porn, adding titillation to women's violence in the guise of realism. Fantasy I get but this is mainstream- not fantasy

And thus do I come to understand the difference between fiction & fantasy. Fiction is made up, fantasy consciously imagined knowing limits.

Fantasies are what we imagine knowing they may happen and often probably should never happen. Fiction happens to other people, could happen.

I'm comfortable portraying sexualized rape (trans, male or female, in whatever combinations) as fantasy, but not as fiction."

- Sabrina Morgan, on her Twitter at Twitter.com/SabrinaMorgan

I was recently in the Bay Area for two noble purposes: shooting strapon porn and attending the third Arse Elektronika conference.  And, somewhere in-between, accomplishing plenty of eating, drinking, and socializing with many of my favorite nerdverts.

On the porn end of things, I got a lot done.  I shot my first five models for Cocksexual.com, including this lovely lady:

There was much cuteness to be had, as well as hot cocksucking, fucking, drag and gender play, jerking off, and a certain amazing woman who can suck her own dick.  (You'll have to wait until February 2010 to see who!)

I also had a great time at Arse Elektronika.  Here's Annalee Newitz (currently of io9.com fame) presenting her talk on the history and future of love, with potential scenarios for how we might be having relationships 300 years from now.

Thank you to all of the awesome people with whom I had a chance to re-connect or meet for the first time!  It would take me too long to list you all, but know that you're still my beautiful and unique snowflakes (of frozen sexual secretions).

One of the themes of conversation for the weekend was how We (in the most royal and vague sense) would like to live in a world where They accept our kinks, geekery, genders, and modes of sexual expression.  While I was in that frame of mind for the conference, many San Franciscans were spending their Saturday having a daytime rave.  The BART into the city was besieged by young people in their best "freak" outfits comprised of shiny/neon things from American Apparel.  They were there to have fun and play weirdo dress-up for a day, and then go back to being frat boys and Forever 21 clerks or whatever it is that normal young people do.

It was a contrast that highlighted an important social division for me.  Some of us try to de-stigmatize our communities, while others work to stigmatize themselves (in shallow, temporary ways).  It's interesting to observe which subcultures revolve around which approach.

"We spend most of our lives either seeking awareness or avoiding it, or some combination thereof. That's because there is something terrifying about absolute adherence to moral principals. A person seeking uncompromising moral consistency is uncomfortable all the time, because of threats to that consistency."

- Robert Jay Lifton, in an interview in Derrick Jensen's mostly unbearable book, Listening to the Land

Reading model applications for Cocksexual.com makes me so happy that it's something I've finally decided to do, as well as glad to be making the kind of porn that I do.

In an industry where a model applications generally just ask which holes you'll put stuff in and if you're willing to fuck a black guy, how many pornographers would even want to receive model applications with so much passion about rethinking gender or the power dynamics of penetration and cocksucking?

I'm glowing!  Sexy, smart perverts!  And they want to work with me!

I feel lucky to get such flattering and wonderful input just two days into the project.  As with when I started my menstruation site, seeing a strong interest from models really reaffirms that I've made the right choice.  It's also exciting that two of my first interested models are active sex workers' rights advocates.  I'm happy to be able to hire people like that so they can keep on being awesome and making the world better for all of us.

A friend of mine thinks I shouldn't paint too cheery a picture of what I do, since it irritates me when outsiders assume my work is easy and always tons of fun.  But during weeks like this, I can't help but be so braggy about how great everything is.

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