SA sex workers call for new laws to make it clear they’re not criminals

“GRACE Bellavue had only slept with two boys in her whole life the day she walked into an Adelaide brothel, aged 17, and had sex with 13 men in one night.

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 ghosts in the room.

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.

All citizens deserve protection at work

“I AM a small business owner in Adelaide and I ensure the safety of myself, my staff and my clients.

My business, which provides sexual services to adult consumers, is criminalised.

While not fitting the mould of a young sex worker who has been formed by the stereotypical precursors to this line of work (sex, drugs and poverty), I have worked within the existing legislation affecting OH&S, WorkCover and discrimination based upon my professional choices.

I have done my utmost to ensure safety for both myself and my clientele, but in the event my state fails me with my right to due protection, I have developed my own policies, procedures and courses of action to preserve the right to health within the workplace.

Within a criminalised environment I have no legal rights as a worker to take recourse against violent action. I have been assaulted at work. It happened later, rather than earlier, and was entirely unexpected. I had to face being criminalised for my work while also being a victim of crime.”

JOBS TO BE JEALOUS OF

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: “Social media has given sex workers a real opportunity to be heard”

“In Woody Allen’s short story “The Whore of Mensa”, a call girl service dispatches pretty blondes to clients’ hotel rooms. Except there’s no sex: the girls are all literature majors, getting paid to sell intellectual stimulation to men who fancy a hurried tête-à-tête on anything from Proust to Chomsky.

Outlandish as Allen’s fantasy is, it’s apparent that while sex sells, the package deal of sex and brains sells even better.

Grace Bellavue is the closest thing Australia has to a celebrity sex worker. The 25-year-old Adelaide escort is a sapiosexual’s wet dream: a brainy ex-digital marketer who’s as likely to tweet saucy details of life as a sex worker as she is her opinion on marriage equality.”

MODERN LOVE – Twitter, my PA and life as a sex worker

“SHE starts the week just like any other high-flying businesswoman.

First thing Monday morning she checks her emails and calls her PA to make sense of her diary which is always overflowing. She then decides which clients are worth hopping on a plane for, and which ones she can deal with from her own city.

She dresses. Like any woman trying to cut it in a world dominated by men, she’s got to look just right, not overdressed but not understated either. Her makeup takes the longest time.

Too much or too little can make all the difference.
Little things matter in her line of work. Her name is Grace Bellavue and she is a sex worker.”

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• Identities on Twitter (jadekpeters.wordpress.com)

How to spice up your love life with sex industry secrets

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be better in bed. Spicing up your sex life doesn’t have to involve re-creating a scene from 50 Shades of Grey — in fact, good sex is a bit like eating. Everyone does it, it can be either exciting or pedestrian and to have a great meal you’re going to need to learn how to cook (or find yourself a chef).

If you want to learn how to cook it’s time you met Grace Bellavue, an Australian escort passionate about her industry. She’s here to teach you how to find out what your guy wants (and how to give it to him).”

All Men Are Liars TV

I was part of a TV pilot with Sam de Brito & cast. Fun shoot discussing male/female dynamics over a variety of topics.

Sex work and love.

The two have a complicated relationship in this industry. On a working front – I sell sex. I often sell the illusion of love embedded within a suspended window of time. I can sell intimacy, I can sell my body, I can banter my mind but I cannot sell my soul or emotions.

Ironically in my three iterations or journeys at varying points of my life through this industry I have learnt only the third time around the more I remove my emotions from my work – the more this industry drains and depletes me.

Objectification, guises, fantasies, lies, transactions, illusions pervade every facet of this work. For some it a magical coat they can enshroud themselves as a form of protection against the stigma, the clientele, the work, the privacy intrusion, the acts and the intensity of a job that pits you against the forefront of humanity in an incredibly physical way.

For some it also a barrier that allows them a relationship outside of the industry. Where our society traditionally views your body as the primary exclusive gift to another in a relationship the very act of devaluing it in a sale to anyone who may desire it within a community is a travesty of what constitutes a relationship.

For the partner on the other side, it can be a harrowing personal journey. Very few entering into a relationship with a sex worker have any understanding of how the industry operates nor how a human can safely, humanely and healthily engage in a large amount of sexual transactions with another without tarnishing nor compromising the sanctity of the romantic bond between two people.

The industry changes you. It evolves you, grows you, challenges and enlightens you. The fact you have travelled this journey frequently means that your respective partner has not travelled this same path. They cannot understand how your work ultimately is work. It is perhaps even harder to understand when your work perhaps transcends being just work and becomes a passion, a cause and a genuine source of pleasure and enjoyment.

They try. I remember when I first began, and my first true love whilst still working in the industry.

“Do you want a lift to work?” He’d never offered before. Kicking around in the lounge room he restlessly played with a childs football throwing it repetitively up in the air. Throw, catch. Throw, catch.
“You sure?” He shrugged.
“Yeah I guess. It will save you a taxi. It’s not like I don’t know where you are going.” I looked at him quizzically.
“What? It’s not like I don’t know where you work, what you do. It’s cool. I’ll drive you. I don’t have to do anything else except sit here and play Playstation anyway.”
“Thanks, I’ll grab my stuff.” He watched me intently as I ran quickly between rooms, gathering a bag, dresses, heels, lube, toys, work paraphernalia.
“What are you wearing tonight?” I hesitated.
“Why?” The ball thumped hard against one fist.
“A dress, some heels.” The ball thumped harder against the other fist.
“What dress?” I rummaged through the bag, pulling out a dress.
“This white one.”
“I thought you weren’t going to wear that to work?”
“Yeah, but it’s too short to go out in, figured I’d just wear it to work.”
“But I picked that with you. I like that dress.”
“I know, but I don’t want to waste it, I’d look like a slut wearing it out to town.”
“But that…fuck it.” The ball slammed against the wall.
“I guess if I like you in it, they will too. Wear it. Who cares?” He stood up, walked to the dining table and grabbed his car keys.
“Lets go. You’re running late.”

We sat at traffic, music loud in the speakers. He tapped incessantly at the steering wheel.
“I told you we should have left earlier, you’re going to be late. Traffic is shit.” The 6pm start was painful – peak hour traffic entering into the city only endlessly strung out the terse atmosphere in the car.
“Told you we should have left earlier.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I did.” His hand clenched around the steering wheel.
“You said I’m running late, not that we should have left earlier.”
“Well you fucked around getting your whore gear ready.” The palm of his hand massaged the horn.
“Hey, easy. You OK? I appreciate you driving me to work but not if you’re going to turn into an aggressive asshole getting me there. I need chill out time before work. Not personal bullshit.”
“What, you need to chill the fuck out before you fuck a bunch of guys? My apologies. I’ll shut the fuck up.”
“This was a bad idea.” He picked aggressively at the registration sticker. Lights changed, we moved forward into the main road that led to work.
“You’re just up here yeah?” I nodded.
“How’d you know?”
“I drove past about twenty times when you first told me. I went in. I watched them all come in and introduce themselves to me. I watched their arses, their smiles, and their suggestive tones. I watched them come onto me and I imagined you doing that. To every fucking Tom, Dick & Harry that came in. Don’t you know how we see you? How we talk about you?”
I sat silently.  We pulled into the car park.
“I’ve got to go to work babe.”
“Bet you all fucking call them babe.”
“Oh for fucks sake – How often do I have to just tell you it’s fucking work?”
His fist slammed against the window. I stared at the corrugated iron fence in front of me.
“I love you Mick, I’ve got to go.”
“Love me enough to fuck other guys?”
“You know it’s not like that.” His fists clenched around the steering wheel.
“Please don’t go.”
“I have to. It’s Saturday. We are busy. I’m on roster.”
“I mean seriously, please don’t go. We can find another way, go back to hospitality, do your web stuff.”
“It’s not like that Mick, you know that.” His voice lowered, became childish.
“Please don’t go.” I braced myself to cut the chords of his emotions.
“I can’t. This is my work. Life is not like Pretty Woman. You know that.”
He began to cry. I’d fallen for the bad boy first up. I was still only eighteen, headstrong, incredibly sexual and determined to lead my own life. I still am. He at 33 had lived a harder life longer than I’d been alive. I was his idealism; my naivety was not a weakness, but a strength.
“Love you, have a good night. I’ll see you when I get home yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought I’d never love a whore again.” He sat quietly tears drying on his face. He was too proud to acknowledge them to wipe them away.
“It’s not the whores you love, but the beautiful complexity of the women that become whores.”
“Perhaps. Just go. I want to go home. Have fun at work.”
“Can’t wait to see you again when I finish.” I meant it.
“Just get the fuck out of the car.”
I left and went to work.

I remember my next boyfriend.

I fumbled for my keys, the long archaic iron key that unlocked the renovated church I lived in. A myriad of coloured lights streamed through the stained glass windows onto the lounge room illuminating the assorted mixture of fabrics, furniture and neglected dust. It was nine am in the morning.

My face as always felt slick with make-up. The constant layers you applied hurriedly between clients began to glue together with spit and lube and sweat. After two or three clients you’d furiously try and strip it all from your skin. There was no time to continuously reapply your face, re-dry your hair, stare for hours in the mirror trying to recognize your own sleep deprived, sex sated eyes.

I still felt dirty despite the ten showers I’d had that night. My clothes stuck to me, I smelt like the brothel. My eyes dragged against my cheekbones in weariness. Internally I still felt lubed, my muscles sore, aching whilst strange bruises were already erupting on my legs, my arse, my neck from half wearily stumbling into furniture, chairs, walls, people.

Your mind after a shift is exhausted. There is only one focus and it’s back to a bed in which you’ve reveled in all night. Talking, interacting, giving, taking. The pure human energy you give and receive often shifts you into two states – cataonic from weariness, or manic from excitement.

I took the carved wooden stairs to my room. He was waiting. Once again somehow fate had intervened and he sat upright in my bed, light streaming through my floor to ceiling hand plated windows.

The grey across his temples matched the dullness the night had turned his ice blue eyes.

“Hey.” I dropped my bag at the door.
“You still awake?” He fumbled in the bed.
“I couldn’t sleep.” I slowly started ripping off my clothes. I was tired of undressing seductively, I just wanted to be naked, and myself, in my bed, with him. He continued to stare at the strange half balcony that was a side-effect of the architectural transformation of my house from a church into two freestanding townhouses. Long and lean I stretched out my body alongside his, flinging a leg over, arm across his chest. We’d only know each other ten days.
“How many man did you fuck tonight?” My hand stopped circling his nipples.
“A few.”
“I know that, how many is a few?” My leg pulled back to my space.
“What does it matter?” I looked at him properly for the first time. His eyes were bloodshot, tired, tear crusted.
“It matters to me. I tried to sleep. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t stop imagining you fucking them, the way you fucked them, what you said, the way you bent your body, how hard they fucked you. If they disrespected you, if they didn’t care, and even if they did care, how they tried to get a part of you that was…”
“Was what?”
“Mine.”
“I’m “yours” now?” He shifted uncomfortably in the bed.
“I can’t do this Grace.”
“Can’t do what?”
“This. You working. Stop.”
“It’s not that easy James. I have no savings, you know I literally live night to night.”
“I’ll support you.”
“I couldn’t handle that.”
“Fuck why not? Wives do. Women do. Why the fuck do you want to fuck multitudes when you can be supported by someone that loves you?”
“Do you love me?”
“I’m a private school, catholic boy whose socialite mother would die if she knew I’d fallen in love with a hooker. But I love you. What do you want? My money?”
“I don’t want your money, that’s why I want to keep working.”
“I can’t handle you working.”
“I can’t handle being supported by you. I want my own money, my own independence.”
“Well earn that like every other fucking woman doing a normal job.”
“I don’t want a normal job.”
“Why?”
“I love this job.”
“Everyone else in the fucking world hates their job, who gives a shit, just do it.”
“Why do I have to hate my job just for love?”
“Stop Grace. Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Then leave.”
I left.

Sometimes whilst a romantic notion, leaving does not always mean the past is forgotten.

I cowered against the wall. My eyes stared at the navy blue patterned carpet of the hotel room. I cringed as I heard the shatter of the glass just millimeters from my head. Glass rained down upon me in a thousand shards, digging into my skin, decorating my hair, the larger fragments awkwardly posing at my side.

“You. Fucking. Whore.” I curled back inside myself as I had learnt to do. Strong in self, strong in mind, strong in belief, block the outside world.
“Mick, please stop.”
“Shut the fuck up you fucking whore.” I tuned out. Knees to chest, arms around legs, head lowered. Sit. Ignore.
“You fucked him didn’t you?”
“I didn’t fuck anyone Mick.” I kept my voice lowered, even. He’d finish soon. The outbursts only got louder, more insistent. Jumping states away from our influences only meant I had to learn to take eighteen years of violence, drug abuse, lost years, frustration. Coming clean meant righting your mind again. No-one ever told me it meant watching someone you loved come undone without support whilst having no life experience to empathise. All I could do was crawl into my corner of the wall and hope that he loved me too much to directly hit me.
“You’re a fucking whore. I saw the way you looked at him.”
“Who?”
“That guy.”
“What guy?”
“The one at the bar.”
“What fucking guy?” Another glass his the wall behind me. Tiny rivulets of blood were starting to trail down my arms and legs from the shards that had embedded in my skin.
“THAT FUCKING GUY.” Patience. Wait. Sit. Eventually he’d calm down.

Finally the last glass hit the wall across from him narrowly missing the TV in the hotel room. He leant back against the wall, legs outstretched on the bed.

“Fuck, what have I done. I’m sorry. It’s just hard. I don’t know anyone and I’m on twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, two weeks on, two weeks off. The thought of you alone and bored and here in this resort. It drives me insane.”
“I’m sorry.” I picked the largest shard out of my arm, fascinated at how the blood ran thicker, stronger.
“Don’t be sorry. You created this. You got me here. You used your contacts to get me my tickets, a good, high paying job. We’re safe. I’m clean. I’m just angry and confused and alone and my only escape is you. I love you.” The balls of his thumbs trailed across my teenage eyelids, covering, stroking, comforting.
“I’m frightened of you. Frightened you’ll leave, frightened you fuck them. Frightened you’re teasing me after eighteen years of opportunities, rehab and escape.”
“I promise I won’t leave.”

I eventually left, a year later, wanting more, worth more. Thankfully I was tired of self destructing with another. Five years on, I never thought I’d leave love for work.

He fingered the long fragile stem of the Reidel.
“So you’re leaving?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are. You. Breaking. Up. With. Me.” I thought such phrases were left in high school.
“I don’t know.”
“Grace you either do or you don’t. Stop fucking playing. Stop getting drunk and telling me you want something and changing your mind when you’re sober. Make a fucking decision. What do you want?”
“I think I want to work again.”
“Basically you want to fuck a football team every night instead of be with me?”
“It’s not like that. “
“It is. Either you want to be with me or you want to work and go on this idealistic little fucking path you’ve got set in your head. What do you want?”
“It’s not that easy Matt.”
“Yes it is. What do you want? Make a decision.”
“I want to work again, I want my freedom, I miss it, I can’t help it.”
“You know I cannot stay with you if you work? I refuse to deal with it.”
“I know.”
“Then that’s it?”
“I..” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t explain how important my independence, freedom meant to me. He never understood from the beginning, I doubt he’d ever understand now.
“I want to go.”
“Have your freedom. It’s over Grace. You’ve made your decision. I hope you’ll end up happy. Fuck.” He pushed his body away from the table to stand up.
“This is it. I’m not going through this mind change bullshit with you again. Are you certain?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going.” My heart broke. It’s always harder leaving a relationship when there’s nothing wrong with it at all.

So here it is, seven months on and I’ve got everything I imagined. Thousands of men behind me, a few I loved, many I hold in deep affection.

There are women that lie eternally to avoid the above situations. I could. I could keep this a secret, live a secret life and watch my bank balance grow & fatten. Many women do.

Ultimately people stare at me and wonder if this is worth the potential sacrifice of love either now or in the future.

I’m free, to earn my own money on my own terms, my own way, with my own body with whomever I dictate.

I’m free to create artistically without boundaries or financial restrictions, free to write, free to express any part of myself in what ever language I choose.

I’m free to travel, to dictate my hours, my lifestyle, my pleasure.

Freedom always has a cost, perhaps I’m still idealistic. I still believe my freedom and love can be satisfied by one. Only time will tell.

TEDx Women Adelaide Talk – The Space Between

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