Posted on by Amanda Brooks

longer tweeting II

Created Nov 15, 2010
I’m going to name my next escort persona Betsy. She’ll offer golden showers and be Betsy Wetsy.

After a long private discussion on creating a test-persona for international work, I was stumped on a name. Many suggestions were made and then I came up with this one. I thought it was funny enough to Tweet and strangely, it actually grossed some out. I’m not sure why, doesn’t everyone remember the Betsy Wetsy dolls? I never had one but the name has always stuck in my head.

I still think this is funny. Escorting doesn’t have to be all serious, all the time.

Created Oct 30, 2010
Dudes — don’t wear your “No Money No Honey” t-shirt when you’re out with your girlfriend and into heavy PDA.
In Singapore, the phrase “No Money No Honey” is synonymous with prostitution. While I feel the phrase is self-explanatory, it’s popularity seems to be mostly due to a book written by an English journalist describing the huge prostitution scene in Singapore. Yes, I saw several of these t-shirts for sale and wanted to buy one but never did. However, I think my Tweet speaks for itself (the kids mentioned in my Tweet were teens and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t a hooker and he wasn’t a client).

Created Sep 26, 2010
@EroticPreview Try London, Rio, Tokyo, Hong Kong or Singapore for serious shopping! 🙂
I was responding to another escort who wanted tips on great places to shop. This innocent Tweet sparked a semi-argument because she wouldn’t go to Asia because she was black and feared prejudice. She took offense that I wasn’t taking her ethnicity into consideration when I made my suggestions (I hadn’t realized I should).

Let me reassure everyone, especially black people, that Asians generally dislike anyone who is not from their specific country. I really don’t know that American blacks would get worse treatment than, say, Bangladeshis. Being Western gives some status, though being female lowers your status more than your race will.

Created Sep 27, 2010
In case you ever wondered: my breakfast every day http://bit.ly/b3ygwe and my favorite poster in Singapore http://bit.ly/bcfV3r

I still miss kaya toast and muddy river-water tea (one write referred to it that way and he was corrrect). My favorite place offered this breakfast for $2SGD, which is less than $2USD. A great, tasty deal no matter where in the world you are. [Since the first link no longer works, here’s photo of the kaya toast breakfast set like I had.]

Kaya toast is served with a giant pat of butter on each piece of toast. I always requested it without butter and rarely could they understand my insanity. When I ate somewhere other than my usual place (the counter ladies had become accustomed to my weirdness), I often got butter anyway, or toast with only butter, or toast with nothing. Once, I watched the counter boy remake my toast three times in an attempt to get my order correct and when he finally gave it to me, it had butter on it. He was exhausted and stressed, I smiled and said “Thank you” anyway.

Yes, they strained the tea through a long piece of pantyhose (the “sock”). It worked well and was always fun to watch. A street-level art form, I never got tired of the ritual of preparing the tea. The tea always perked me up in the mornings. My heart needed the extra push to be able to pump through the sludge of kaya blocking my ateries, I’m sure.

Oh. A word on eggs. While the Chinese have had chickens for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, they have not yet figured out how to boil an egg. The first few days in Singapore I was confused when I hungrily cracked open my breakfast eggs. Then I learned to simply ask them to “boil” for 6 or 8 minutes instead of their usual 2-4. “Boiling” means they put the eggs in a small container of very hot water, cover it with a plate and let it sit. I never got an actual boiled egg in Asia but I learned to live with the yolks just hard enough to pick out when I broke the egg. It does take some time to get used to the texture of semi-warmed whites. I’ll just leave it at that.

Created 21 Nov 11
@Ishfery Coming soon…serious work begins in Jan 2012. Finally.
That was in response to a question about Book 3. Ahem.

No, the serious work did not start January of 2012. Sorry.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

hobbyists in the mist

Over the years, I’ve run into hobbyists online in non-escort settings. EBay, various message boards about real hobbies, non-escort blogs, dating sites and the like. It is proof that hobbyists do have something of an Internet life outside of posting on discussion/review boards. It’s also proof that an experienced escort can smell them through the computer screen long before they’ve made a complete ass of themselves.

It’s the grossly-entitled reek they emit that gives it away. They see women as inferior and expect that anything they say is gospel. They forget that the rest of the Internet is a free world and my livelihood doesn’t depend on catering to their flagging egos. I love to enrage them because it’s so easy. They never twig that I’m an escort and recognize what they are. They only know that I’m keeping the pussy away from them, not doing what they tell me to do, and not falling in love with them. For free, of course.

They lust after any semi-appealing female who crosses their radar, seeming to think that every woman will react with the same enthusiasm that working escorts do. They’re shocked when I tell them to fuck off (and it is so, so much fun to do this). I’ve even caught them attempting to rate and review me and other civilian women on whatever site. Why do they think women want to put up with this for free? Oh, right. Hobbyists.

Sometimes they’re even smart enough to not use the same handles on every board. Certainly not always. I’ve no doubt if I went searching for specific phrases I’d probably figure out their escort board handles pretty quickly but I’ve never had that much curiosity.

They find out that challenging me with money doesn’t work (like the out-of-state dating site guys who want to meet me and take me to dinner, but only with the guarantee of sex because they don’t want to waste money on me) and it blows their minds. They rage and whinge about how I set my boundaries during whatever short bout of contact we have online. I find their other online profiles (“travel dating” sites are now popular) with pictures and hilarious self-description, I pass the links around for others to laugh at. In my experience, real clients rarely leave such an Internet trail of stupidity. Hobbyists usually do, spreading all over the Net like a viral outbreak. The stupider they are, the better. They readily oblige.

The most fun is getting to act offended and enraged at every little sexist thing that they write, threaten to have them reported and/or banned from the site, get to tell them where and how to get off (certainly not with me), etc. They have no idea where I’m coming from, and they discover they really can’t do anything to me. They have no power over me. I’m just some random chick, probably a Nazi-feminist, who thinks all men are sexually harassing her, and causing a big stink about their attitudes. They go in search of easier prey. I’m sure I’m responsible for some of the beliefs among hobbyists that American women are emasculating men. (Don’t be so easily emasculated, is my response.)

Oddly enough, I’ve yet to personally interact with an online male jerk who wasn’t a hidden hobbyist. I’ve sometimes been able to sniff out a client (though none of mine) and they behave themselves. I’ve interacted with quite a few civilian men and they behave themselves, more or less, within a range of normal male behavior. The outright, miserable assholes are always hobbyists. Always. I think it’s because hobbyists are MRAs who admit to paying for it.

I would love to tell hobbyists to behave themselves when interacting with women who don’t care about earning a “10” from them, but then, I doubt any of those read this blog. Nor would they get it. Or care.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

getting away with murder in texas

I had three people send me different links to the same horrible story (Gawker, MSN, and ThinkProgress). I was relieved that the vast majority of the comments show the general population to have some sense. They’re appalled that Lenora Ivie Frago’s life was worth a mere $150. Not to mention a lot of people pointed out he was insisting she perform an illegal act (i.e. sex for money), a crime he apparently was never charged with. Even better were those who understood her right to autonomy and the right to say “no” if she felt like it, that she was a human being and not a piece of property, especially not his piece of property. I can’t imagine the pain her family feels.

It’s a very sad commentary on Texas. It’s no secret to anyone who lives here what a gun-nutty, sexist state it is but…wow. This is a new low, even for our court history of allowing crimes against women to go underpunished.

For those men who want to start whinging about possibly being ripped off $150, stop. If you were planning on giving her the money anyway, then it’s already gone. Your precious penis and your presumed constitutional right to get off is not worth a human life. It really, truly is not. You’re not that special. Consider your lost money a lesson learned, and try to find someone else you think you might be more be in tune with your desires. (Escorts get ripped off all the time and they learn to tighten up their business practices. They dust themselves off and try again. This is the correct, mature, response.)

After all, Ezekiel Gilbert clearly had the money to spend tens of thousands on his defense. So why was he so upset over losing $150 he was going to spend anyway? He whines about how hard his life has been over the past four years and how he has nightmares. He could have avoided all that drama by not shooting and killing Lenora. How easy and simple to avoid all these problems! Put the damn gun down, get back to Google and find a new escort. There’s not a single escort in the country who costs more than a criminal defense attorney in a murder case.

He got away with murder because he truly got a jury of his peers. I wish every one of their names could be discovered and put on national blacklists. They set him free and therefore they believe it’s right and proper to kill sex workers who don’t do exactly as demanded. This is a horrific precedent, especially for sex workers who see clients in the evening.

Looked at it from another angle, the jury sort of sees prostitution as a legal business transaction. If that’s the case, then anytime a client beats, rapes, or rips off a prostitute at night, she should lethally shoot him (quite a few sex workers carry guns). If this case is going to be a precedent, then let it be a true precedent.

Realistically, the status quo doesn’t change. Escorts who blatantly state what they will and won’t do for money are setting themselves up for arrest. Or they can be coy, avoid arrest, and set themselves up for disappointed clients who decide to kill them. Either way, their lives are ruined. Their clients’ lives are not.

PS: I hope Gilbert changes whatever career he currently has and takes a service-industry job in Texas, preferably on the night shift. He just doesn’t strike me as someone who can get an order right, such as whether or not I want fries with that and please hold the mayo. At the very least, I hope he never gets to hire another escort again. These articles are even better than a blacklist.

Afterthoughts:

Does this mean that the deaths of strip club bouncers will go unpunished? Every year, some strip club bouncer is shot to death in Dallas, either trying to remove a [drunk, angry] patron or later in the parking lot as revenge, often for protecting the strippers. These men could be seen as thieves just as Lenora was. It’s a very strong possibility. It’s bad enough some of these low-paid, high-risk employees get killed because of stupidity (not theirs) but now there could be no hope of justice for their families either.

I have fantasized about Gilbert being cross-examined during his trial like rape victims are. Has he given away money before? What exactly, is his history of charitable donations? (do full audit in court). Does he have an established pattern of charitable donations to individuals or organizations? Has he ever been robbed before, in any circumstance? Has he ever been shortchanged at a store, or rendered poor service in a restaurant? Does he have a history of fighting back against these injustices or just letting it slide? Has he purchased items off Craigslist or eBay that were not as described? Did he leave negative feedback or shoot the seller? Does he have a habit of inviting strangers to his home at night with promises of giving them money?

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

one former slave on helping cleveland kidnap victims

Yet another call for donations. No, this blog isn’t going to turn into that. But sometimes things happen that move me and I know that many readers have good hearts. It never matters how much you give because I know those in need appreciate every dollar; but it does matter what happens to your hard-earned money.

My friend Jill and I have discussed the Ohio women every day since the news broke. We’ve wanted to help but didn’t want our money to go anywhere but directly to the victims. Jill feels she has found a way to donate that will help the women the most. I’ll let her explain why this matters so much to Gina, Amanda, Michelle.

I’m Jill Brenneman. Amanda graciously asked me to do a guest post on her blog about donations for the Cleveland kidnapping victims. I want to express why it is very important that anyone who can donate does so, because while they are now free from Ariel Castro, their recovery will be a lifetime process.

Donations are being processed by the Cleveland Foundation. While there appears to be more than one donation website, the Cleveland Foundation is the only site that states it will be giving 100 percent of the proceeds to the victims.

My post will refer a great deal to my own life experiences after being held captive for three years until I escaped. It is imperative to me that my purpose is understood: I am using my experiences to illustrate what life is like once one has escaped because there is little information or discussion about it. While much of this discussion is about me and my experiences, the post is about why the three kidnapping victims need our help. While I appreciate whatever concern may be felt about me by those who read this post, I would ask that you please focus on the purpose of the post: Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, and Amanda Berry need our help. They are the focus of this post. My experiences are only to illustrate the reasons why a former captive needs immediate assistance. This post is about the three women in Cleveland. Not about me.

I was a kidnapping victim in circumstance similar to Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, and Amanda Berry. I was fortunate to escape after three years. Nonetheless, escaping a captor isn’t even a halfway point to recovery. For three years I was tortured, raped, endured sensory deprivation, placed in restraints that kept me in stress positions for long durations of time, malnourished, and had absolutely no control over any part of my life. Life for me as a captive was always cause and effect — usually with violent consequences. Even involving things I had no control over; for example, bruising from a vicious beating was cause for punishment. I was expected to address basic bodily needs once a day when he came to take me to the bathroom. Anything beyond that was automatically grounds for punishment because it was seen as defiance. This has profoundly impacted my life even though I escaped nearly thirty years ago.

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