I had just worked a week in a hot ass kitchen in Lancelin and I didn't make anywhere near what she made in a night, so I decided to go and apply for a job too. The following weekend in Oct 2012 I started my escort career at the same place.
I am a New York City-based dominatrix and cultural activist. I started doing BDSM professionally in 2016 after finding a dungeon on craigslist (those were the days) and then mostly did online work for a year or two while I finished college before transitioning to full-time in-person BDSM.
I had always been curious about this sex work – I was lucky to, for whatever reason, keep out a lot of the negative messaging people around me growing up received about their sexuality.
What’s it like starting out now, when ads have shifted from the back pages of the local paper to almost exclusively online? When everyone talks about being ‘on brand’ and a social media presence is essential?
"Finding community helped me to not only work through a lot of shame that I held around being a sex worker, but also to develop the skills and tools needed to engage with kink and in-person sex work in a safer and healthier way."