2009 was good to me.  It was the year I finally started blogging, the year I stopped giving a shit about trying to be a feminist (whatever that means), the year I bought a frosting gun for decorating cupcakes, the year I actively began shooting photos of other people, the year I discovered the joy of sex with hot tubs, the year I didn't get to go on a proper vacation, and notably in my personal life, the year I engaged in a lot more sex in a submissive role.

Killing off your feminist self and nurturing your submissive self? Major upgrade, I assure you.

For 2010, I'm aiming to kick the recession's ass via my great new strapon site, get back to doing pay-per-minute web cam shows more often, read more physical books instead of so many blogs and web sites, hopefully present on how to run a porn site at the Desiree Alliance conference, and, as always, find more awesome people that give me a girl-boner. It's already been off to a good start with an epic voyage to Antarctica (a post on that coming soon), so I need to work hard to keep raising my own bar and being the militant awesome-ist I pledged to be last year.

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.

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.)

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.

In the last few months, I've been thinking a lot about how, at 25, I ought to think a bit more about long-term financial planning.  I already accomplished buying my first condo, which is a great investment, but I'd like to get better at money in general.  Part of it is getting older, and part of it is that the recession has carved a good chunk out of my normal sales.  (One's porno subscriptions tend to be first on the chopping block if you're looking to save money.  Condom, lube, and toy sales, though- doing just fine!)  I'd been thinking about taking my savings and investing in a mainstream-ish business venture.  I met with a guy at my bank to ask about some options, which was terribly dull, and anything not very risky would make me a grand total of enough to buy a decent bottle of wine once a year.

There's also one more porn site I've been wanting to start for a while, and after a lot of thought about what to do with my money, I've decided to take the plunge and go for it.  Ultimately, it's a gamble in a country with its economy in the toilet, but making pornography fulfills me better than other options.  It's a very reassuring and exciting thing to look at my career of the last 7 years and say, "Yes, this is the right path for me.  I want to keep on going further!"

The project?  A pansexual strapon site!  I don't think there's any truly great strapon web content that caters to everyone, and I want to fill that niche.  (With my cock!  Ba-dum-cha!)

Most straight strapon porn is femdom/BDSM/humilation-themed, like Men In Pain - which is hot, of course, but not everyone who likes seeing men get pegged is also into domination and pain.  There's some other hetero strapon porn out there, but it generally has that cheesy mainstream jizz biz vibe that I find decidedly unsexual.  Now, dyke-for-dyke porn, like Crash Pad stuff?  They understand hot fucking with non-biological cocks!

I want to make a site that is enjoyable by all sorts of people- whether you're straight, queer, or in-between.  Enjoyable by people like me.  I just love seeing women with their cocks, and I also love the potential for playing with typical images of masculinity and gender.

I had originally been thinking about how I wanted to find a couple of photographers to shoot photos for the site.  I admit, I'm nothing that special behind the camera, and I was thinking that farming out that part of the job would get both the best shots and save me time.  But, after more thought, I'll actually save money traveling to shoot the photos myself, and I will become a better photographer myself in the process.  (My father once asked me about some other project, in an exasperated tone, "Why do you always have to go about doing everything in the most difficult way possible?!"  Because that's just how I roll, pops.)

I'm slating my tentative launch date for February 2010.  I'll be making visits to 3 different major US cities in November and December to shoot content - DC, New York City, and San Francisco -  so if you're near one of those places and interested, check out the site's casting call page.  I will also be accepting submissions from remote models who are capable of producing high-quality images- so if you're having with a decent camera and want to show me your sexy self, I encourage you to apply as well.

Sex workers are one of the world's most spoken-on-behalf-of groups, which goes hand-in-hand with us being among the most reviled groups. So many people feel the right to speak on behalf of me and my experiences- generally the people furthest removed from my life and the least inclined to actually ask my opinion on the matter.  Without hesitation, these folks think that it's their right/duty to proclaim to the world that I am exploited and degraded by taking my clothes off for cash, and propose their own moral solution for my "problem".

And, as much as it makes me blood boil to watch these people in action, I'm glad that, from them, I've learned to always check myself on my own occasional paternalistic urges.  I know to never presume to speak on behalf of other people or, as an outsider, assume to know their needs- including the needs of other sex workers in different branches of the industry.

It's a valuable lesson worth repeating: don't act like a paternalistic douchebag who thinks it's your job to speak or act "on behalf of" communities with whom you have little-to-no contact or experience. It seems like common sense, but I wish more people had that understanding, especially people on the left with a tendency to rush in to "help" first, and ask questions later.

This week, I've been thinking about how the many of best parts of me are things I've taken from watching horrible examples of human behavior in others and resolving to do the opposite.  There are times when we just don't have positive role models, or as many positive examples as we'd like, but that doesn't mean we can't still grow by learning from the failings of others.  Like living well, it can be the best "revenge".

The other night, I received an email from a former neighbor.  I had lived next to his family in the Seattle suburbs for two years, and I shot plenty of porn in my rental house during that time.  His email was polite, complimentary of my work and blog, and respectful of my privacy.  That's how to be a good, non-assholey human being.

Many civilians probably end up finding someone in porn whom they've known in another context.  Not all of them are as cool about it as my ex-neighbor, though.

Over the years, I've "reconnected" with a lot of people through my site.  I've had emails sent by acquaintances from my youth, former boyfriends, an old employer, people I once met at parties, etc.  (I've received an equal number of emails from people I've never known who insist they've met me, like a guy working in a German hostel who was so excited I was staying there.  I have never been to Germany!)  Honestly, most of these emails get ignored, even if they're not rude.  I just feel as though so much time has passed since I last saw the person, and that there's probably a reason we didn't stay connected in the first place, even if only because we have nothing in common.

A shining failstar came from a boy I knew in grade school.  He was a bully.

"Dear [my name], this is [his name, spelled incorrectly], god you look good if you are ever in town to [hometown] give me a call and maybe we could fuck, i am married to a bisexual chick that would love to watch me fuck your hairy twat.  I know that we were enemies in grade school but we should see each other again, preferiably in our birthday suits, I love your hairy cunt and would love to here from you at [his email address], please write me back.

Yours truely [his name, spelled correctly this time]"

Yeah, I'll get right on that. I totally got into porn so I could fuck the people who picked on me when I was a kid.

Remember, normals: someone is not all of a sudden a radically different person (or a non-person) because you just discovered they're a sex worker.  Finding out that someone is involved in the adult industry does not give you permission to act like an idiot, or assume that they would be thrilled at the chance to give you some freebies.  You'd think this would go without saying, but I've seen too many ungracious oddballs who did not come with this lesson pre-installed.

This advice also counts for meeting new people who reveal that they're sex workers.  Don't suddenly switch out from whatever smalltalk thing you had been chatting about to ask her for a demo of her cock-sucking skills, or nonchallantly ask if she was raped as a child- as though that's any of your business.

As with all things in life: be the good neighbor, not the horny bully.

After falling in love with free-spirited hookers from the gold rush era, I decided that porno was likely my path into the sex industry.  When I turned 18, I sought out companies that might hire me.

While searching online, I came across a guy-with-camera site where the amateur models were "normal people sexy", rather than "porn star sexy".  (I'm not setting up a false dichotomy between mainstream porn stars and "real people"- what I mean is the difference in beauty standards.)  I hadn't been previously aware, as most people aren't, that porn covers a broad spectrum of sexual interests and truly embodies the concept of the long tail.  Whatever you look like, someone is who is attracted to your body type, and a variety of specialty porn sites exist to cater to all interests.

I emailed a few topless photos of myself sitting at my iBook to the amateur porn guy.  This is my first rejection from pornoland, screen-capped in my archives for posterity:

I was bummed out- not because I wish I had bigger boobs and was going to cry and choose to feel insecure about myself, but because I thought I'd found my fit.

Quickly, though, I discovered that we "hairy" chicks have our very own niche!  I didn't need to shave my cooter to get a job.  With sensitive skin prone to ingrown hairs and irritation when I shaved my pits and legs as a teenager, getting that same rashy pimply look on my ladyparts never appealed to me.

I emailed a few hairy porn sites, and ended up booking a shoot in LA with the one that paid the most in a single chunk.  (I didn't want to travel around the country for $50 here, $100 there.)

The photographer was paid by the porn company $1250 for being awkward at me, and I was paid $750 for being your typical barely-legal model in stupid outfits that middle-aged men think 18-year-olds would wear to be sexy - like cheerleader uniforms or white cotton granny panties with little flowers on them.  (Because, as we all remember about being 18, nothing mattered to us more than trying to be mistaken for being 12.)  On the day of the shoot, the photographer tried to talk me down to less than $600 so he wouldn't have to go through the hassle of sending me a tax form at the end of the year.

The photographer kept telling me that a lot of the girls he shot were just so overwhelmed by horniness that they couldn't help themselves and just had to suck his cock.  (It took all my willpower to refrain from bursting into laughter when he said this.)  He was ugly, fumbly, and so sweaty that his thinning hair got stuck to his head.  If a cheesy movie was portraying the stereotype of an icky pornographer, this dude was exactly what that character would look like.

My LA porn experience was my worst work as a model, which is too bad, because those photos will be out there forever, probably seen by more people than my own site.  I look increasingly tired as the day worse on, (we shot 20 sets in a 12-hour day), and before I was out the door, I'd decided that it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life.  (Although, I now know that plenty of porn companies are much cooler to work for, and even have the decency to feed their talent and not try to get free blowjobs from them.)  In almost every photo, I have the same distant, slightly annoyed expression on my face, but hey- they got what they paid for.

I later found out that I was paid less than I could have been for softcore/masturbation content.  The company I worked for is a major player in the online porn world, but they pay models less per photo set ($37.50) than the model would make posing for tiny punk/queer/DIY porn sites that don't turn much profit.  I'm not trying to cry about economic exploitation- it was a learning experience on my path to my real career.  But, unlike, say, working at Burger King during college, my embarrassment is still visible to the world and making money for someone over 7 years later.  (Remember kids- porn is forever.)

I'm glad things didn't work out with myself and mainstream pornoland.  I'm sure I've missed out on a lifetime of weird anecdotes, but I like being independent.  So - thank you, WebGuy and creepy LA photographer, for being my first steps on the path to running my own company where no one else keeps most of the money made selling my image.

Sex workers and sluts are catnip for those who fancy themselves amateur psychologists.  "What awful things happened to her to make her turn out like that?", they wonder, disgustedly and excitedly, scratching their heads and seeking to unravel what titillating damage has been inflicted upon the presumed victim.  Apparently, one must have been raped by their father and beaten by their partners to turn out so deeply fucked up that they would be like me and happily embrace many facets of their sexuality and body.

Well, fuck you to anyone who thinks that accusing sex workers of being rape/violence survivors is a clever zinger of a debate point.  I have seen self-proclaimed feminists do this more times than I care to count.  They paternalize up their argument a bit, but at the core is a self-satisfied, "Haha!  I bet you've been raped!  You're a victim with no power to make your own decisions, ever!  I totally win the porn debate!"

It's with this history of strangers projecting their scandalous ideas of my past upon me that I've always been hesitant to mention the bad things that have happened.  When accusations of being a rape/violence survivor get turned into a way to attack someone else's credibility and choices, (but only of that someone else is a sex worker, of course), sex workers aren't as likely to speak up about actual, non-imagined abuse.  It's giving cannon-fodder to the enemy.

Before I ever got naked on the internet, I had two partners hit me, and another choke me.  Do their violent actions, then, define me for the rest of my life?  Should "we" give abusers that power?  Must I now wear the scarlet V for "victim" around my neck so that others know to treat me delicately and make "good" decisions for me?  Am I a perfectly-packaged imaginary cliche of a helpless battered woman who "turned to porn"?

Again, fuck you to anyone who thinks so.

All things considered, I feel like I've run through the gauntlet of life thus far relatively unscathed.  But, why do some people assume, or even insist, that I must have had it worse?  Why do so many "progressive"/"feminist" outsiders have a need to believe that all sex workers have been raped and attacked?

It makes me want to go all amateur psychologist and ask, "What awful things happened to this person to make them fantasize so much about sexual women being assaulted and raped?"

Like many loudmouth sluts, I am contacted by people who want to get quotes from me for their school newspaper, class assignment, or an article they're hoping to have published. The following is a guide mostly for college kids, but it also applies to freelancers and writers from small publications/web sites. It's culled from my personal experiences, and I'd like to think it's useful reading for anyone interested in interviewing sex workers.

* The primary rule to remember is that you are asking me to do you a favor by being your interview subject, and you must treat my time and my expertise with respect. You get paid, get a good grade, or sell ads based on generating pageviews. In return, I get a small altruistic glow of hoping that more people will think about the politics of sex work. I'm not trying to be snobby and belabor this point, but often, the more obscure and tiny the intended audience, the more a writer has a chip on their shoulder about how I'm supposed to be grateful to them.

* (As an aside: If you're inquiring from an established media outlet with a significant following, it's different. I have something to gain from reaching large numbers of people. If more people see my blog every day than will ever see your project, it's clearly you who's the one benefitting from our exchange.)

* Be honest (with yourself) about the size and importance of your audience. Don't cop an attitude as though I should be thanking you profusely for this very special opportunity to be in your sociology term paper. On the personal side, I already am getting my opinions out there on my own terms without someone else shaping my words to suit a moral agenda, so "being able to tell my story" isn't a big motivator for me. On the business side, a blurb in your women's studies thesis is the last place on earth where I think I'll make a lot of pornography sales. I once had a guy huffily tell me I was flushing away untold amounts of money by declining to be in his college newspaper. I run specialty adult web sites with niche audiences, and if I thought that The Tinytown Junior Tech Journal was the best place to find customers, I'd already be advertising there.

* If you're coming at me breathless about having just gotten interested in the topic, I have to disabuse you of the notion that you are a unique snowflake for wanting to write about "alternative porn". Not having the money or the debt-lust to attend university myself, I can't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that colleges these days require all students to write at least one essay on "alternative porn" to obtain degrees.

* While the idea that intelligent, politically-aware people opt to sell sexual services might be news to you, it is not actually a new thing, and it's patronizing if you treat it like a fad. Think of it this way: would you interview a black person and ask, "Now that Obama is our president, what do you think of this trend where people of color say smart stuff and achieve things with their lives?" Clever people have been amongst the ranks of sex workers since the dawn of time, so please don't assume that we began existing three months ago when you first discovered Suicide Girls. The non-newness doesn't make smart sex workers any less compelling - far form it - I'm just not into being treated as an amusing novelty.

* Never, ever tell me that you'll only "let" me be interviewed by you if I tell you my real name. I've had several people do this. It's like walking up to a stranger and saying in a smarmy voice, "I'll let you give me $20, but only if you buy me an iPhone, too." It's all fail.

* Do not contact me at the last minute because you have been procrastinating and need an interview done in a day or two. I'd say a week is the minimum notice you should provide. Nothing makes an interview subject fell less special than being treated as your half-assed last-ditch effort at cranking out a quick essay.

* Do tell me the deadline for your project. It's incredibly dickish if, after I answer your questions in a week, you reply back and tell me your project was already due and you can't use my quotes any more.

* Do some basic background research and familiarize yourself with what I do. Make your questions count. Ask me things that show you've actually put more than 2 minutes of thought into the topic. Read the public pages on my web site(s) that you are interviewing me about. It's rude to expect me to fill in every single blank for you when it's obvious that you've never really looked at any of my work. For example, one of the questions I've been asked in almost every interview request about VegPorn.com is how many models the site has. Seriously- you can't go to the model page and count them yourself? Or even notice that the site repeatedly states how many models appear on it?

* Search for interviews that other people have conducted with me so you can get a feel for what I think about things. Or read my blog. You can then tailor your own questions more specifically to me so I don't feel like I got a form letter that you sent to dozens of other indie porn webmasters.

If you're a socially inept person who cannot follow these rules, you are still welcome to conduct an interview with me live on my web cam at the rate of $3 a minute. You'll get to see my tits and have an anecdote to repeat to your straight friends for years to come.

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