I’m fortunate to be an artist at the National Young Writers Festival held in Newcastle from the 2nd-5th October 2014. In between my events, including Confession Booth, Fucking While Feminist panel and readings on What’s love got to do with it? I’ll also be atennding a myriad of events and possibly taking the sly booking for select gentlemen. For bookings, email gracebellavue@gmail.com.
See you all there!
So I was inspired by this post – ’50 Things they never tell you about being a chef’ and figured I’d do something similar.
Sex work is an amazing journey and one I’ve been on for almost nine years. It can be rough, brutal, inspiring, easy, transformative, heart-breaking and simultaneously empowering and disempowering in the same breath. I’ve worked in agencies and gained my own personal agency as a woman and sex worker. I’ve worked in brothels and also run my own business where I am in complete control over my branding, marketing and clientele.
I get emails frequently from women and men curious about entering the sex industry and often wonder whether they can hack it in the long term mentally, emotionally and physically. Being on the forefront of humanity and entering and being entered by other people on a primal level can take it’s toll. It also has its downsides as anything does. You can’t have the champagne and the hotel suites without a few hiccups or practicalities along the way.
20 Things You’ll Never Hear About Being a Professional Sex Worker
Still want to be a sex worker?
Fresh out of school, she had landed the job just hours before, after an interview in which she’d naively turned up in a business suit and presented her resume, along with a fake ID. Clocking on for her first shift with her hair and make-up done, and wearing an outfit she’d bought especially for the occasion, the wide-eyed teen hoped to emulate the glamorous characters in her mum’s erotic novels, or the adult films she secretly loved watching. She tried to act sexy, alluring, confident: every man’s fantasy. In fact, she was terrified. “I had this black Supre dress on, because I thought I had to wear something ‘skanky’, something ‘hookery’,” she laughs, taking a drag on her cigarette as she recalls the memory.
“I had these black velvet pumps on that I’d gotten from Betts and Betts at Marion. I think I was wearing the one decent bra I had at the time — you know the one sexy bra you had when you were a teenager? Some black lace thing. I must have just looked like fresh meat.” Nine years later, sitting in a trendy North Adelaide pub in a fitted black dress and jacket with her long, dark hair twisted into a tight bun, the 26-year-old looks like any other office worker on her lunch break.”
The lovely lady in question allowed me to publish this on her behalf.
The Transsexual Stereotype
I do kind of feel like I’m fitting some kind of “true transsexual” stereotype by getting SRS and getting it so soon. And it’s true that I am getting it to “be a real woman”. And I feel guilty about this. I am a real woman and I feel guilty that I would say otherwise and compromise my identity and by extension other trans female identities.
I always thought SRS would be the last thing I got. That I would be a more modern transsexual woman, sporting a girlcock underneath the femme business suit and subverting genital biological essentialism. But nope. I am just reaffirming it.
Penile Privileges
As I have discovered this year, having a penis and looking like a girl (and there is a reason I say girl here and not woman), can be an incredible money-making asset. Transsexual porn is widely known and hence men have grown to increasingly sexualize us but at the same time our occurence in nature is minute. This means the supply and demand curve is in our favor. As a transsexual sex worker there is a lot of money to be made.
My only regret is that I didn’t make more money. Instead I divided my time between my girlfriend and work and put up with diminishing returns by not touring. If the relationship had a happy ending then this might have been ok. Instead I have the history of 6mths of an unhappy relationship AND dysphoria, when I could have just had the dysphoria by itself and for a lesser period of time due to the lucrative income skyrocketing me to surgery. I would have been miserable, but I was miserable anyway.
Another bonus of having a penis is that it makes for tactile sensations whilst penetrating. It’s ideal for penetrative sex with another woman. I’m also very forutnate in that I am in the minority of trans women who have lower than detectable levels of testosterone, yet can get it up on command.
Unfortunately, PIV sex with another woman triggers me. It still feels good but it feels bad. I also get very jealous (I would rather switch roles!) and penile stimulation doesn’t feel anywhere as near as good to compensate; it’s as if my penis has been injected with local aneasthetic.
In short, my penis is pretty useless at it’s job of giving me pleasure, but it is a lucrative little organ.
Socially Triggered Dysphoria
I have well meaning cis friends and acquaintances who do trigger me, but by far the main source of my distress is my job.
I think I could be a cis sex worker and be content doing so. Trans sex work is just a constant assault on my identity. On busy days the money feels so good and sometimes I will even end the night smiling. But more often than not I will finish the night feeling soulless and empty. It’s not the sex. It’s what my clients say…
• “I have never been with a tranny before”
• “I have never been with a shemale before”
• “I have never been with a man before”
• “I have a girlfriend but she is a real woman”
• “So when are you getting the operation to become a woman?”
• “Yeah it’s not my first time, I saw this other tranny a few months ago and he was really good”
• Just checking but, you are a bloke right? Like, you still have a penis?
The first time it happens I am angry… By the umpteenth time it happens, I don’t feel like a woman anymore. And it is the worst feeling. Because when I don’t feel like a woman, I feel dead. An empty shell. With no purpose, no strength, no willpower, no drive, no personality. Just a husk.
I go through jobs on autopilot, but clients do pick up on the mood. The sessions are short and unsatisfying and they often put their feelings of discomfort (a direct result of my poor quality of work) down to transsexual women just not being as good as the real thing.
Sometimes I have the strength in me to fight it. But aggression isn’t conducive to work either. The only option is to repress and grit my teeth.
This needs to end. I can’t do this indefinitely. I’m worry that the soulless emptiness will dominate me forever until I die. I worry that eventually I will just accept my fate as being a “tranny” and not a woman and lose myself and my very essence of being. It’s like pre transition all over again.
How do I end this?
I could go with my original plan and get FFS etc and then get a straight job. But I won’t have a fallback plan and that pesky girl penis is still a liability. Or I could get SRS. It’s the last remaining solid bit of evidence that I’m trans. And once it is gone it doesn’t matter what I do, as long as I’m not outed (and I’m pretty sure I can bluff anyone who does suspect) my identity will be sacrosanct. I can try putting my degree to good use. Or I can continue sex work. I may have to endure being an ugly butch girl (not that they are mutually inclusive) but at least I will be a girl.
Furthermore, disclosure will no longer plague me. I can go out to gay or straight bars and flirt and dance as much as I like, comfortably knowing that I have nothing to worry about if a stray hand goes down there… As opposed to crying myself to sleep after a night out.
Perceived Biologically-derived Dysphoria
I have issues with having a penis. Sometimes it feels okay, but these occasions are rare. More often than not I find my hand gravitating between my legs and gripping my cock as if to crush it out of existence. It’s completely subconscious and has been going on ever since I can remember. In fact there are photos of me when I was 4 years old with my with one hand in my pants and another in my nose. I’m not sure what the significance of the nose-picking was but when I look at it, the feelings associated with that dick-death-grip are visceral. It’s like a hardware incompatibility. It’s just not meant to be.
I kind of wish it was. It would make my life easier.
As for vaginas, they seem incredibly appealing and I am incredibly jealous of individuals who have them. I have no justification other than the thought of one feels natural. This of course is in direct conflict with patriarchal discourse which is inherently phallocentric and sees vaginas as nothing more than fuckholes. To the patriarchy I say this: fuck you and fuck your phallus, I will gladly trade mine in for a “fuck-hole”, because no matter how disgusting it is seen, no matter how crude or inferior, to me the ugliest and worst vagina in the world is still superior to the biggest, hardest cock in existence. I’m sorry but vaginas are just better.
Grief is something I quite frequently come across in my work amongst the myriad of clients I see. For some it is a past grief, others an incredibly painful recent grief. For others it’s the sharing of a slow death of their loved one due to terminal disease.
The needs and expectations of these clients are incredibly intimate, filled with guilt and requiring a large degree of my compassion and empathy. The wine infused “quick fuck” or porn star style sex isn’t what they need.
They need my ears more than they need my arse, they need my gentleness rather than they need my passion, and they need my empathy more than they need my technical skill.
I often get the sense that there is a “Ghost in the Room”. It is often a subterranean psychological presence for both of us in the booking – Deeply ingrained memories of the touch and caress of the departed or departing loved ones echo in the way we interact with each other.
I watch him awkwardly undress. At twenty-eight the fitness of youth has half turned to softness across the arms and chest. Beautiful eyes are paired with hesitant hands that shake as he removes his various articles of clothing. Half masked by the stench of bars and scotch, he mumbled an apology.
“I’m sorry, I haven’t done this in a while. Let alone with a hook-I mean prostitute. Sorry.”
“It’s all good. Would you like a hand?
As I walk over to him I see the tremor rise as his dutch courage starts to fall away. Joking with him as I remove a belt, fumble with a button, dis-engage a sock and carefully place a shoe under a chair. A jolt runs through me as I fell him slowly place a hand on my arse.
“You’re so soft.” I smile.
“It would be a bit awkward if my arse was calloused and hairy, no?”
He laughs and relaxes whilst his hand carefully starts moving across the curves of my body.
“Can I touch them?”
His eyes linger on my breasts and his palm hesitates. I nod. Sliding underneath the lingerie layers of lace and gauze he cups the underside of my breast, measuring their weight. Fingers flick across nipples.
I love watching their breathing intensify, the chest expand, pupils dilate. My hand rises to his jaw and caresses it, tracing along half grown stubble, my half parted lips circling around his ears and down his neck.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Of course you can.” He tasted half boozed tinged with the hint of cigarettes. His tongue started on my lips circulating before he bit my lip. I could taste his need in the back of my throat and my back arched as his dug his fingers in so hard I gasped.
There is an incredible sensuality that is created in those that have been deprived for so long. In his speech, movements and intentions there is an echo of the love that was there before. Your body listens, knows, responds, senses, acknowledges and understands that this is a dual layered encounter. Ultimately there is us and also her providing the bed on which we have to make a step forward.
The soup of emotion in which we swim is viscous with fear, guilt, loneliness, need and insecurity. Within him is the desire not to disrespect a living or dying partner. It’s an incredibly intimate sexual experience with a stranger.
To treat you as a service provider as any less than his wife, girlfriend or love that has passed only ultimately disrespects what went before you. To have anything less than that connection seems like a betrayal. Yet you cannot be another. You must begin to assert yourself and pick apart the threads.
We left the room and he asked if I could spend the night at his house. The silence in the taxi was followed with stumbling apologies over mess and pouring of bourbon in his townhouse. Leading me outside we began to laughing and joking as we occupied his courtyard, drink in hand, world contemplating.
“Would you like to come upstairs?” Barefooted I skipped up the stairs, pausing on the landing. I gazed the assorted instruments stranded near mixing equipment.
“You play guitar?”
“Not for a while.” He took my hand.
“Bedroom’s to the right.” The half-darkness concealed the dishevelled sheets and half empty glasses of bourbon scattered across the bedside tables.
“Sorry for the mess again.”
“All good – my room isn’t much better to be honest.”
“Lights on or off?”
“Honestly? Maybe off. I spend so much time having sex in broad daylight or high light, it almost feels naughty to have sex in the dark.”
“The idiosyncrasies of your job perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“Can I get you anything?” He hesitated.
“Come here.”
“Wait – you like showers?”
“I love showers. I could spend half my life with water cascading down my back. Only thing that makes me feel quiet I guess.”
“You are a fucking hundred million miles an hour you know that?”
“I know, but I feel calm inside If that makes any difference?”
“Eye of the storm? Sort of makes sense to us poor dumb bastards that get caught in the rain around you.” He was good at making me smile.
“Wait here.”
Spread-eagled amongst the sheets I contemplated the ceiling. What an unusual job I’d chosen for myself. Wanting, desiring to be so intimate with strangers on such a regular basis. Nothing else was as exciting, so exposing, so forming, so constantly life changing as this.
“Ready?” He came back in the room and stood in the doorway naked.
“You coming?” I slowly disentangled myself from the sheets.
“Give a girl a second.”
“Come on. I need to tell you something.” I followed him into the bathroom.
It was alit with hundreds of tea candles. Across the basin, the bath, around the shower screens.
“You like?”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful. Thankyou.” He smiled.
“Come here bubble butt.”
We entered the shower cubicle. His palms pushed against my belly forcing my back against the shower screen. I shuddered as the cold of the glass pressed against my arse. My nipples hardened.
“Hey, step back OK?” His palms guided me slowly to a corner, his left hand pulling back to play with the water temperature.
“I don’t want you to burn yourself.”
I am in an industry in which I am an object. I’m a fuckable hole and something to be degraded, debated and bantered about amongst men. Yet these constant, continuous moments of consideration, care and respect between two adults is the reality in which I inhibit. Perhaps it is not men that is the problem, but the forced behaviour in groups of men which is the problem we all debate.
The water cascaded down upon us as we enacted yet another slow, sensual, timeless exploratory consideration of each other’s bodies in the warmth of the illuminated bathroom.
My hands toyed with the shower caddy as I fingered some body shop products, strawberry shower gel and a female razor. Contemplated playing with him, hands slick with products.
“I must admit, I noticed you have unusual beauty products for a male.”
“It’s hers.”
“Who is she?”
“Katie, I loved her.” He crumpled a little.
“She, is, an ex?
“She died. Some cunt of a fucking doctor gave her the wrong fucking drugs and they reacted. One minute we were in love – twenty four hours later she was dead.”
“How long ago?”
“Almost eighteen months. I haven’t been with anyone since.”
“Do you miss her?”
“So fucking much it hurts.” His back slid against the tiled wall until he was squatting in the shower. I followed him with the line of my body. Back braced I spread my legs. Identical twins physically, I laid my hand on his thigh.
“Come here.” His body found its’ way between my legs. Back against breasts, head against shoulder, both dripping wet.
“I know some pussies wrote some lyrics about crying in the rain, but I’m glad you can’t see it.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t feel it.” I pulled the wet strands of hair across his forehead. I feel so much like my mother in these situations. Touch. Caress. Console.
“Are those products still hers?”
“Yeah, I can’t get rid of them. I don’t know how to begin without her. I can’t talk about her to others because they tell me to let go. I can’t fuck anyone else because they aren’t her. Thank you – for giving me a genuine depth to something I don’t still understand.”
“I bet she was beautiful.”
“So incredibly beautiful.”
I sat like a mother for a few hours, as the raining of the shower turned into a hybrid mix of his tears and my empathy, and I just listened. I talk so much it is almost cathartic to often share so much pain with a stranger, for once I can be silent and truly learn. As a woman, it is in these moments I feel truly in tune with the generational compassion that flows with the women in my family.
He’s not the only one. There’s a multitude of clients I’ve crossed paths with in my lifetime with similar stories. Some are fucking away the grief of love from divorce or a break up. Others are supporting a partner through a terminal disease.
They are often the most guilt ridden – health issues have removed the possibility of intimacy in a relationship full of love. From a psychological perspective these males have become the bearers of responsibility both financially, mentally and emotionally within the family unit whilst other pillars are crumbling. Momentary respite is paramount and healing.
There’s an infinite shades of grey in my work. I am often left with more questions than I am answers. But within the façade of my work – these private moments are what I truly love and gain the most worth from my work.
For all the ghosts in the room that have watched me, I hope I gave no disrespect.
Session Four: The Space Between hosted by Kate Pardey and Liam Darmody
Most of our lives take place in the space between.
Grace Bellavue, Adelaide Escort
Georgia Heath, will tell us Why Barbie is a Feminist?
Rosie Jones, will share her personal story of becoming a woman
“With thousands of career paths out there, the sex industry isn’t one chosen on a whim, and it certainly isn’t suggested by careers counsellors. Of course it’s often drawn to through desperation and other reasons, but it’s easy to forget that for many it’s a career choice like any other.
Grace Bellavue was 18 when her curiosity for the sex industry got the better of her, and she decided to try it firsthand. Once she did, she never looked back, and her fascination turned serious when she made the decision to leave behind her corporate profession and launch her own escort business, which has fast become a huge success.”
Grace Bellavue 