{Originally published on Gala Darling Icing}

So, I have this friend. She’s gorgeous, hilarious, intimidatingly intelligent… & also works as a dominatrix. Since she doesn’t really want to be “out to Google”, I can’t tell you much more about her, but I can tell you that I am really excited & delighted to present you with the following interview (which I find absolutely fascinating). Enjoy!

Tell us about what you do.
Since I was of legal age I’ve been a “part-time purveyor of erotic odd-jobbery, all sorts,” but for the past year and a half I have been what is most easily called a dominatrix.

I know that you’ve been in the sex work industry for a while now. When & why did you get into it in the first place?
Yup, a long time. I’m 22 now and I got into the sex industry around 18 through a perfect formation of the Great Upper-Middle Class White Girl Sex Worker Trifecta: Morbid curiosity, interest in sexuality, and “I can make HOW MUCH money?!” I started in doing phone sex with older men, paid through Paypal, and picked up (and dropped) odd gigs along the way.

As for when I got into it for serious, I was going to school and working at a “feminist sex boutique” and since the pay was sh*t (hey, dildo retail is still retail!) all of my coworkers had side gigs. Generally, these were doing things like toy parties on commission or working the renaissance faire (!) on the weekends. Several also did “foot parties,” which is a set up where a lot of foot fetish enthusiasts and ladies with nice feet meet in a very formal way, usually at a club or bar, to mingle with the hoped-for outcome of “mini foot sessions.” These sessions were usually just foot massage or toe-sniffing, trampling, the like. There’s no absolutely no genital contact…

{Originally published at Shamelessly Sassy}

When I was five, my mother married a monster of a man, the scariest person I had ever met. She was married to him until I was seven. It is safe to say that I spent those two years of my life scared of my own shadow, and I think I’ll spend the rest of my years recovering.

The monster spent a large portion of his time punching holes in the walls that mother tried to hold up single handedly. He also threatened daily to drive us off of a local bridge or back the car into the local lake with us inside.

(I still hate that lake.)

The monster was full of mostly empty threats, and he was eaten up with heavy doses of crazy. Even his eyes looked crazy, always opened as wide as he could possibly muster. As far as staying went, the last year and a half of the marriage, my mother stayed with him out of fear. Live with him or else he might really drive us off of a bridge or burn our house down with us inside.

With the monster, you never knew.

For those two years, I felt as if I would never get out from under his thumb. At age 6, I felt like our lives, particularly the end of them, were resting firmly in his hands. I didn’t think I would see my tenth birthday. Most likely I would be sitting at the bottom of the lake in a car with my mother and my younger brother. Feeling as if I might have died in the near future was a part of my everyday life, and it was so miserable. It was nothing that a girl of five, six, and seven should ever have to do. I knew that.

Luckily, the monster never managed to hit me. That doesn’t mean he didn’t try. I was small and fast. I excelled at running and hiding from him. The only time he came close I had warm salt water in my hand, I had just lost a tooth. So I threw it in his face. That was that…

{Originally published on uuMomma.}

Earlier in the week my neighbor said she had a wedding to go to Thursday night. I wondered, who would plan a wedding on a Thursday night? Fast forward to Thursday night when my husband and I are having a late dinner at a very nice restaurant in town, surrounded by young couples and one older couple with their 9 year old son. Doh! It’s Valentine’s Day, that’s why someone would have a wedding on a Thursday night, same reason we would have dinner at 8:30 on a Thursday (okay, wait, that’s not so unusual).

So I pictured the young couple getting married on Valentine’s Day, people I’ve never met and may never meet. Knowing this neighbor as I do, I was able to spin out a fictional representation of that wedding that was startlingly uninteresting. I pictured a pink face surrounded by white lace. I knew she must be a virgin (as this IS what the church dictates for this group) which actually could be an interesting twist to weddings today. I pictured the groom in a black tux and the pink face, white lace and ruddy red and eager-face of the groom show off strikingly against a giant red heart in the background.

So that’s the image that floated to my head as I had my Homer Simpson moment of realization that some couples do get married or engaged on Valentine’s Day. This unknown bride’s presumed virginity caused me to remember something someone once said to me about why she married a man she had known only a few months. “I wanted to have sex with him,” she said, “and back then, you got married if you wanted to do that.”

It was a naive notion, even back in the 50s, but she was a good girl and so she got married. More than 50 years later, this woman is still married to that man and they continue to have a relationship founded not on their desire to have sex (the thought of which causes me to stick my fingers in my ears and go ‘la la la la la’), but to be in love with each other enough to wait for commitment in the first place, and to stay in love through all the trials that that commitment has laid at their collective door.

{Originally published by Susannah at Petunia Face.}

When I was born my name was Amanda. But my brother was already Andy and my parents didn’t want people to call us Andy and Mandy so the birth certificate was changed, and I was no longer Amanda.

I wonder what my life would have been like had my parents kept the name. I think my eyes would have been bigger, softer. I would have looked good in blue.

Later on I told people my name was Heidi. I wore my hair in braids and pretended the very slight hill leading up to our house on Scenic Avenue was an alp in Germany. My cat Dumb Darrell Chicken Liver Whip Whap Sick Sack was a goat. After that I was Penny from The Rescuers, then Jo from The Facts of Life which was about the time I tried speaking with a Brooklyn accent even though I had never even been. Later it was Samantha, again from Brooklyn, this time from Who’s the Boss. She had sharp eyeteeth and bitchin’ big bangs. Meanwhile I had a space in between my front teeth and frizz.

I no longer go by different names. I am Susannah and I don’t look good in blue. But at times I am a mommy, other times a mother. I am an employee, a friend, a daughter, a wife, a sister, the anonymous person in line behind you at the supermarket. I am the bitch who cut you off on the freeway. I am one name but a thousand different people when earlier, when I was young, I was many different names but one single me. Even when I spoke in an accent that was not my own. I was me no matter the name.

{Originally published on The Sister Project.}

Winter 2008—five years after we donned our white caps and gowns at Tanglewood—four out of my six best friends from high school are finding themselves in the same sleepy Berkshire town where we grew up.

In honor of this momentous homecoming, I’d like to share an essay I wrote shortly after we graduated. I haven’t touched it since then (except to change some names), and it is a strong representation of the kinds of reflections I was having about my high school experience at that time. Meet me after Bio to get high in the parking lot…

‘Picking at Scabs’

WHEN WE HEARD Brooke throwing up on Katelyn’s 18th birthday, the seven of us skipped a beat. Our spoons, heaped with chocolate sauce and ice cream, paused in midair before reluctantly arriving at our lips. Gator’s hand ticked for a split second as she sliced through creamy frosting and into birthday cake. No one said anything. We just listened. My mind wandered up the air vent to the cool blue tiled floor where I know Brooke knelt with watering eyes and a runny nose—her bony fingers brushing the back of her throat, coaxing and begging for release.

These girls are the closest things that I have to sisters. We are not fused with blood but with bruises and Band-Aids—our mutual growing pains. Our insecurities have bonded us together with can’t-live-without-you love. I watched the girls shift uncomfortably eyeing the caloric catastrophe that lay before us, sprawled across the kitchen counter. Our throats began to close around the clumps of cake and ice cream. We ate fast. We ate to get rid of it. Behind us, Justin sang Senorita through the kitchen speakers. Above us, Brooke coughed and spat. It was an eternity cruelly crammed into a split second.

{Originally published on Suburban Oblivion.}

What is it about the male ego? What is this inner drive they possess that makes them not just a normal person, but a sweat-soaked, testosterone-driven, strong as an ox, and hung like a bull, god-in-their-own-mind? And why do they turn into sniveling babies if anyone so much as hints they are anything less? And why are they so damn scared of skin care products??

I was in Target tonight when I happened to catch a glance at a new skin care line for men. I wouldn’t have even realized it was there had the words “Anti-Pale Skin Moisturizer” not jumped out at me. Anti-pale skin?? I’ve seen anti-redness creams, but never anti-pale stuff. Wtf? So I read further- “Provides gradual, natural looking color.” It took me a second to realize what I was actually looking at was sunless tanning lotion for men! Seems we have to be very careful with the wording, because I guess the male ego just could not handle using something with the words ‘tanning lotion’ in it? So now its not sunless tanning lotion, its anti-pale skin moisturizer. Riiiiiight. Anyone else find this funny? Just a little? Actually if you want a real good laugh, the directions further explain that you will see “maximum anti-pale, anti-pasty benefit within a week of twice-daily usage”. Gosh forbid ya just tell the guys they will start to see a little color on their face within a week. I checked my bottle of sunless tanning lotion, btw, and nowhere do the words “anti-pasty benefit” show up.

Naturally I had to check out this product line, and the madness continues. Men do not use things that make their skin fresh it seems, they use “Power Clean Anti-Dullness Face Wash”. (Sounds like something my husband would clean his car with.) Feeling dry? Try the “Hydrapower Invigorating Moisturizer”, or if you have combination skin, how about the “Oil Controller Anti-Oiliness Moisturizer”. And we must have our “Power Buff Anti-Ruffness Exfoliator”.

Is it just me or does all this stuff sound more like something you’d find in a garage than a medicine cabinet?

{Originally published on The Belly Project.}

***

***

59 years old, 1 pregnancy (baby given up for adoption 40 years ago)

***

22 years old, 0 pregnancies