We’re all guilty of alcohol abuse.

I tend toward baby wipes, since isopropyl dries my skin, but no matter. Anytime a session ends, we start to wash: the rooms of course, but ourselves, too.

Don’t get that sin on you, I like to joke. It stains, you know.

Sometimes I silently watch a client scrubbing his hands, with the fervor of a man who has seen Hell and found it sticky. Out, damn spot! But he’s no Lady Macbeth, and I’m no accomplice in a murder, except the much less criminal la petite mort.

While this can be amusing, after a while the suspicion wears on me. I keep a clean house, goddamnit, and by principle more than need. If I cleaned any more, it would just start to worry people.

It makes me sad because I don’t think they’re really scared of germs or unhealthy perversion. It’s just how they learn to articulate their fear of wrong. Of sex. Of people.

We’re not uniquely guilty as clients or sex workers; it’s just that sex work is my microcosm to study. I see it all the time in the safety-paranoid BDSM culture, and health-paranoid polyamory circles. Welcome, you’re a convention-flaunting pervert! Now follow all these rules and you might be OK.

I can’t find a logical basis for all the deep-rooted fears, which is why I attach a heavy word like “sin”. I’m not a religious woman. Sin isn’t real to me, any more than I think the wrongness of sex is real. And no one I know will say to my face that they believe sex is wrong and sinful.

But people must believe, even if they do not themselves realize it, there is something inherently sinful about sex. How else can I explain all their fears? I think some of them share it with their lovers not because it’s joyful and intimate, but because they need to confide their most mortifying weakness. (Or they can’t — and some of those people, they come to me.)

Sex is fraught, we are told, with physical and emotional danger. Only indulgence and prayer can save. Buy yourself all the right things, study your safety manuals, and you might just be forgiven for…

Well. You know.

At my current job I’m in the midst of this morass. Fat people! Old people! Wrinkly people! Incompetent paying doms, new young pros. Submissive men begging for cocks, real or fake, to be forcibly rammed into any available orifice. Minimal negotiation, strangers, dark rooms, shared toys. Hurry. Greed. Money.

And what’s gone wrong? Absolutely fuckin’ nothing.

Not even to young, wilting-violet, innocent me.

I have seen a lot of different bodies and genitalia, men of all ages and races and weights. And yet I think one of the biggest lies is that we feel naturally repulsed by “ugliness”. I can’t help thinking that this must be an invented concept. For at least a week out of the month I’m an angry, misanthropic bitch and yet I don’t believe this. Can there be a more incontrovertible truth?

Other people need to be ugly so that we can be beautiful. Or they need to be ugly so that we can condemn them for harder flaws to criticize: our own uncomfortable desires, perhaps, indulged so basely. Whoever decided that people you’re not personally attracted to are ugly naked? Even if you find them so, does it matter so much?

Of course we put condoms on shared toys. Of course, we scrupulously sanitize them. As insertables go, they are safer than the biological counterpart. In my opinion, disgust is just a symptom of a bad attitude. Nothing about dildos, or nipple clamps, or any of our tools is innately filthy — unless their use is.

And speaking of filth, nothing is quite so awkward a subject as sodomy. My clients are terrified of mess. I give a lot of enemas. And while I am kind of into the administration — so insidious, all those noises of discomfort — I insist on being absent for the end product. To this point, I never understood why someone would choose to spend ten minutes of an expensive hour sitting on the shitter.

Even with such preparations, not everyone can lay back and enjoy. When my best efforts only produce a chorus of “Wait a second, let me wipe up, oh my god” I begin to lose interest. Not really a sexy response, you know? If you are more concerned about shit than I am, something’s wrong. Consider again that you’re the one who initiated the assfucking, and that I’m taking care of the cleanup, and see if you can’t reevaluate your priorities.

Kiddies, I am going to tell you a big secret: you do not have to have an enema before you have anal sex. You certainly can if it will make you more comfortable, but it is in no way mandatory. Here is what you really need: lube, condoms, and towels. A goodnatured resignation to the fact that humans are not closed systems. That is all.

I explain to my overapologetic clients that I get too fucked in the ass, and consider it no hardship for the men. It’s fun to watch their eyes bug out.

There are other offensive fluids, too. A little pee never hurt anyone, right? I’ve been known to spit on men, too, although it’s not my favorite thing. I much prefer spitting in his palm or on his cock before making him masturbate. It can be a messy, sordid, squelchy business, and if anything that’s what I love about it.

Afterwards there’s always a man who turns to me and says, You’re clean, right? Not that you’d tell me if you weren’t.

I’m freshly showered, I want to sass back. Disease-free, even, if he was so bold as to actually ask. Because of my porn(-making) habit, rather than despite it, I get tested more than any sane person should have to. But the time to decide if health status matters is beforehand — and if you indulge in something warm and wet, to decide that it does not. I do not encourage you to take anything on faith.

If I’m tainted in your eyes, no protestations will remove the stain. You knew the risks, and you chose it anyway. What you want is absolution.

I am not in the business of absolution.

Posted in anal sex, pro domination, sex work, shame, watersports