How I Became a Sex Worker
TW: mention of the word r*pe, sex work, child sexuality, BDSM, kinks.
The first time I showed my genitals to other humans in exchange of goods was at age 4. I was extremely excited about discovering my body and wanted to show it to my kindergarten friends. I ask them to come with me in a corner of the room and pull my pants in front of me to give them a less than satisfying look at what they were hiding. Of course, our laughter attracted the attention of other kids that wanted to be part of the fun. I exchanged a quick look inside my pants for an exclusive use of the most popular toy of the kindergarten for the rest of the day. I think that was a pretty dope deal.
I was raised by the most amazing feminist, strong and brave woman in the world. My mother raised me mostly alone, my father was there but only occasionally to visit McDonalds or go watch a movie. My relationship with my dad has been better since I’m an adult but that’s a subject for another time. My mother taught me to respect my body and to voice my boundaries. I am privileged that she gave me a quality sex education and I know that it helped me later in life to have this conviction that my needs were to be heard and respected. Little did she know that this would also help me being a successful sex worker and businesswoman, ha-ha!
Going forward a few years, I had my puberty at a pretty young age at around 9. I made my first girlfriend at eleven and we would explore our sexuality together in innocent and not so innocent ways. I remember looking at MTV shows like Rock of Love and Tila Tequila reality shows and aspiring to be as sexy and provocative as the women I saw on TV. I didn’t see them as vulgar or stupid, I thought they were cool and confident. My girlfriend went from a very hypersexualised background and kind of initiated me to porn and that kind of stuff. Needless to say, I started to spend more time on the family computer when my mom was asleep.
During high school, I was writing erotic stories and drawing hentai-related stories. I started watching a lot of porn and I was finding myself an affinity with BDSM and fetish practices. A few months before I turned 18, I started doing cam with strangers on chat rooms. I knew it was illegal and that it wasn’t safe but I was craving to share my sexuality with others and my schoolmates weren’t at my level.
I started going alone to BDSM events at age 19. I was already on Fetlife and was loving the attention I was receiving under my pictures and posts. I knew I had found my crew: like-minded kinky perverts with whom I could explore who my sexual self was. I was still living with my mom and had to wait for her to go to congresses or have her own dates so I could spend the night at a fetish event. That’s during this time that I met with my current boyfriend. With him and his submissive, I explored my sexuality in lengths. Every day I was with him or with them. Every day I learned new ways to receive and give pleasure.
It was after I moved to my boyfriend’s apartment that I realized that I needed to make money to survive. I was a mommy’s girl and if I had worked as a camp counselor in the past, it was never a serious job or significant amounts of money. Not enough to pay food, rent or other expenses. I was in college and struggling. I decided to star camming again but this time, I was going to get paid for this. This decision made sense for me as I was a good actress, loved the attention and was very sexual. Unfortunately, the experience on camming websites was very disappointing. I was young and clients’ abuse of my naivety. I made, in two months, around 250 USD. During those two months, I would do pretty kinky and niche stuff that (I know now) was worth a lot more money. Feeling exhausted and still broke, I started to read about other kinds of sex work. I had concerns, of course. For example, I was pretty wary about agencies and didn’t want to work for a guy that would be part of the mob and be dangerous. In fact, I just didn’t want to work for a guy. Period. I was also afraid of being raped or violated.
I did my research for two months straight. I was watching documentaries, reading testimonies on reddit and reading about the laws and the dangers. I spoke a lot about it with my partner. At first he was worried but we always had an open-minded relationship to sex and he wanted me to be happy more than everything. The main advantage I saw with sex work was the freedom and the financial independence it would give me. I had (and still have!) a lot of projects that needed significant financial investments and there was no way I could succeed on a barista pay check. I needed to support myself through university and wanted to save some money for later (ha-ha, I never managed to save cash but I didn’t know I wouldn’t at this point!).
I decided to contact a few well-known Montreal’s agencies to ask my questions. I was very serious about my new career choice! My first phone call didn’t go as well as I expected. The guy was suspicious of my questions and when he heard that I was typing his answers on my keyboard, he accused me of being a cop and told me that if I was that prudent this job wasn’t for me. Big red flags, I know. It didn’t stop me from reaching out to another agency and get a much more positive answer. To give you an idea, my questions were as follows (from memory, as it’s been four years):
- What is the pay and how much do you keep?
- What kinds of measures would you take to assure my safety?
- How to you screen your clients?
- How many appointments do girls have approximately every week?
- Am I going to wait in a car with a bunch of other girls or will I be on call?
I contacted the second agency and the owner suggests that we meet for a coffee in a neutral place of my choosing. He told me to be careful and that there were mean-spirited people in this industry and that I sounded smart so he wanted to give me some advice even if I wouldn’t get to work for him. He had big daddy energy and I was enthusiastic at the idea of meeting someone from this world that seemed so mysterious and exclusive. Even after working as a camgirl, I was completely mesmerized and knew no one from the sex work industry. I ended up canceling our meeting as I got a rendezvous with the third agency owner I contacted which was a woman. The fact that she was a she made me instantly trusting and fix my main concern which was to be exploited by a pimp. In my head, a pimp could only be a man and could only be a bad thing. I would only keep one of these two assumptions as the years went by.
This third agency was kink-oriented. Which I found to be perfect as I was a very kinky person and I thought that I was pretty wild in the variety of fetishes in which I indulged. Boy, how wrong was I! I realized quickly that in the sex work world, I was pretty standard if not vanilla in the activities I would be comfortable doing. More on that in other stories. Anyway, I met the owner of this kink agency at a restaurant and we had dessert… no, for real, real dessert! It’s not a metaphor! We hit it off instantly and we decided that I would begin working the following week. I was impressed at how fast all of this was going but delighted. I had bills coming my way and was happy I could rely on this great and easy money. It’s hard to get a job while studying and going to classes. Sex work seemed like quick and big money. I was feeling comfortable with this woman agency owner and looking forward to my first client.
So entering sex work was pretty easy for me. Staying in it and succeeding in a sane manner was another story. I didn’t know how much things would happen to me in so little time. It’s been four or five years since I met my first, and one of my worst, client but it does, honestly, feel like twenty years.
