The Loneliest Nights
March 26th,Daytime jobs in sex work are a rarity. When I have mine, I love it.
I can’t understand why people despise their “9 to 5″s. Maybe they hate their suits, their ties, their corporate constraints or their Dilbert-esque lives. My Monday to Friday schedule was fabulous. I could plan more than a week ahead. I could join the rest of the world in dating and drinking. I saw sunlight in the mornings and elbowed blithely through the commuter rush to get home. I never felt (on the account of my schedule, at least) like I was living an underworld life.
But schedules come and go. So the second night in a row last week found me here, on my laptop, cuddling my Pinkberry frozen yogurt like a life preserver.
Around six or seven a worknight begins in earnest, and I feel disconnected. Not lonely, precisely; there are eight of us before clients, and the after-work time bustles. But Out There I know everyone’s painting the town or snug in their living rooms, and I’m locked away from it all.
The halls fill up: girls shimmying from room to room, trailing rope and nipple clamps and covering their bare breasts. It’s a madhouse overflowing with our flung lingerie and trashy magazines. The men passing from the elevator duck their heads as if the laughter might trail them out the door.
Around ten it quiets, and I start to cruise the fridge compulsively. Nights, I eat a lot. Whether I’m hungry, bored or stressed I can never tell. It’s the smoker’s time of night — eleven, eleven-thirty. The doors don’t close right, and we all start to sink into a greyish secondhand haze.
An hour. No calls. No one to meet.
I am well acquainted with the notion of self-worth. In sex work you quickly decide that what you are worth, and what your sexual services are worth on the market, are two entirely separate concepts. The former, unalterable, innate; the latter, measurable, but yours to control or abolish. You decide if, and when, and to who, and for what price, you choose to sell.
On such a night these exactitudes give way to generalities. You are selling and no one’s buying. Value requires two symbiotic creatures: an offer, and a sale. “Without set value” is not the same as “worthless”. But on still late nights, the two snuggle together conspiratorially. They share a drink, and invite you to have one too, and by eleven or twelve things are fuzzy enough that you’ll be damned if you can tell the difference.
When evenings drag closed, I wonder. If I were only thinner, prettier, younger, more talented, would I be making money? If my hair were straight or blonde or longer, would I be getting picked? If my nails were red instead of bare, if I wore eyeshadow and lined my lips, if I shaved my legs with the regularity of a bedtime prayer, would things be good again?
Chelsea Girl has written eloquently about the enchantments, the rituals, the highs and lows of stripping. I too go through stages of disenchantment (and giddy highs of good fortune) and most of the time, they pass.
The subway runs slower past midnight. I know I won’t be able to sleep. I’m too newly peeled from my stockings, buzzed on the smoke and shadows and muffled yelps of this place I work. I’ll make a call, and catch a different train, one headed away from home.
March 27th, at 1:55 am
Must be a very lucky boy on the other end of that phone call.
Does he at least put your sense of worth back in its proper order? It’d be a true shame if he couldn’t correct that particular optical delusion.
March 27th, at 7:53 am
No one appreciates the 9-5 unless they’ve lived outside it. When I worked in the funeral industry, the ability to plan my weekend ahead was a luxury I didn’t get, along with ‘When do I get to go home?’ and ‘Do I get to sleep?’.
Once I got a 9-5, (well, really, 10-5) I nearly shit myself with excitement. Course, the money sucks during the day.
March 27th, at 9:58 am
My sense of worth is really my own problem. If someone could restore it for me, someone else could as easily kick it out, you know?
My friends and lovers are very supportive when I mope, and I am lucky to have them.
March 27th, at 10:42 am
I’m really glad you’re writing this series - it’s been a fascinating, elucidating, and in some ways, depressing. It’s also fascinating to see this posted in your “young and confused” category.
March 27th, at 4:59 pm
Very interesting post. Do you think that the biggest issue is time, or number of clients? In other words, if you got the same number of clients, but on a 9-5 shift, would you be having the same feelings (said as someone who hates waking up early and would *rather* work nights)?
March 27th, at 6:48 pm
You’re in new york?
Why did I think san fran?
Suddenly i have no use for the money i had saved and I’m a lot less excited about my conference in san fran.
March 27th, at 8:17 pm
The worst thing about my 9-5 job really is the dress code. On the days where I can get away with wearing jeans I am so much happier, it’s ridiculous.
March 27th, at 8:17 pm
Zonk,
How exactly could you have been confused on that point?
It says, right under her picture, “I’m a 22-year-old import to New York City. Currently, I do fetish modeling and work as a dominatrix. I like to write.”
March 28th, at 1:35 am
Rebecca: I routinely make the silliest of mistakes. It gives my career “character”
March 28th, at 11:09 am
I’ll tell you- any extended period of time where you’re selling and they’re not buying is boring and can be conducive to loneliness.
Luckily, I do my work during the day, so spend the spare time chatting with people or writing smut for anthologies.
Basically, there are times when your look is just perfect for a string of people, but then, they get off, and may not want/be able to afford to come back so quickly. It seems to go in waves.
April 2nd, at 1:22 pm
9-5 M-F I sit in an office.
I sit there, waiting for something to happen, bored out of my mind. I spend my days doing nothing for the most part…except sorting mail.
I really miss the days when I couldn’t plan a week ahead because I never knew when I’d be working. Perhaps, if I’d had a different job I wouldn;t be here, now.
I read your blog and I fantasize on ‘What if…’
What If I could do what you do?
Which is rediculous, given my age and my lack of… whatever it is one needs to have to be able to do to people what I love having done to me…
I sit here, watching the clock, waiting till I can leave, so exhausted from waiting that I’ll go home and go to bed.
April 2nd, at 1:27 pm
Wow… just reread that and it really sounds morbid and ‘feel sorry for me’ esque, and not at all how I intended, LOL.
April 8th, at 1:59 pm
Lovely writing. You’re a purely serendipitous discovery via Debauchette’s blog— a good find on a Tuesday afternoon.
April 15th, at 7:05 am
Would you be feeling the same way if you had a 9-5, and worked in that 9-5 for as long as you’d been working in a non 9-5?
I’ve got a 7:30-4, which is close enough to 9-5. And i’m sick of it. I’m sick of the routine. But i’m not a sex worker, i’m an electrician, so i don’t know if it carries across well.
And i’d love to say this is a good find, but it’s really not, because it’s now 11:30pm on a tuesday night. And i’ve got that 7:30 thing in the morning.