Whenever I bring up sex work with someone, the first thing they almost inevitably say is:
"Wow - you must make SO MUCH MONEY!".
But the thing is...that I actually don't. At least, I don't think that I do, or that many sex workers do, when compared with what people expect us to make. There is some kind of ridiculous assumption that anyone in the sex industry is quite literally rolling in hundred dollar bills...for the record, I have, once, taken home my cash from a week's dancing and rolled around in it. It was epic. It was movie-worthy. It was awesome. It was once.
For the record, most industry pros I know, whether they are dancers, camgirls, porn "stars", or escorts, run the gamut from barely surviving to being nicely off. But none of them are exactly on the road to beating out Bill Gates in terms of earnings. Even at the peak of my earnings, in pre-recession London, when I was earning somewhere between five hundred and a thousand pounds a night...well, I wasn't working that many nights!! It sounds very strange to people who work 40+ hours a week, every week, but one of the things that I have always loved about the industry is that I have the ability to just work a night or two. I can live for the week on what I earned Monday night, and be done with it...or I can go on a spending spree, and then just head back in the next day and do it all over again.
And therein lies the problem.
The major, monetary issue that I have with a vanilla job is that at this point, the concept of regulated and limited earnings scares the living bejeesus out of me. I would, quite literally, rather risk my grandmother stumbling across a clip of me with a giant dildo in my ass, than deal with the idea of a cap on my earnings.Of earning the same amount every day, every week - and having someone ELSE decide how much that is going to be.
The idea that some crazy stalker creep could hunt me down and introduce me to the intricacies of restraining orders? I'll cope. The idea that I would have to actually, gulp, budget? Sends me screaming for the hills.
The great joy, the great appeal of stripping, or camming, or whatever, is not that you necessarily DO make vast amounts of money, but that you CAN. Although I may end up making a couple hundred in a day, I start every single day with the awareness that it is perfectly possible that I will make ten grand that day. Or twenty. Or a hundred.
When I was dancing, the club I was at tracked the highest earning girl on a single night, and kept it posted to "inspire" us - the highest night came in at just under $30,000. I have personally watched a girl get 10K dropped on her. I watched at the end of the night as she asked for another envelope, and another, to fit all the money into. I saw the look of absolute shock and awe on her face - she couldn't believe it. I can barely believe it, but I was there. I was at the next table when the customer casually called the manager over to ask him to pull that much. And that whole night, I just kept thinking - that could have been me.
For the record, I have finally begun to approach my earnings like a real grown up, for once. I actually DO have budgets, and savings plans. After many years, I have figured out a way to make myself work every day, even when I have already made my rent. In fact, it looks like I will soon be making myself a tidy little living - even enough to warrant the assumption that I light my cigarettes with twenties.
Although the industry can be fickle, if someone offered me a vanilla job, working the same hours, with the same flexibility, for that same average earning - just guaranteed....I would turn it down. I wouldn't think twice. Even though I know that there will be weeks where I make less. Even though I know that there could be days where I make nothing.
I would turn it down just for the chance, the possibility that one day it could be MY day. One day I could be the one stuffing envelopes with a stunned look on my face.
Have you ever bought a lottery ticket, and really, truly convinced yourself that you might just win? Got a little bit excited, a little bit twitchy? Had a little daydream about what you would do with the money, or how you would react when you found out? Don't you just love the spring it puts in your step, the butterflies in your stomach?
That is the joy of possibility. That is my every single day. That is yet another reason that taking on a vanilla job would feel like giving up on happiness, like purposely draining all the color from my world. Like seeing the rest of my financial life stretched out in front of me, flat and dull and predictable.
Like giving up on hope.
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