Posted on by Amanda Brooks

After “after hours”

I’ve been wanting to change up this blog for years. Getting more personal online is uncomfortable. Having more privacy yet retaining the audience I’ve built is the goal. Getting paid is ideal.

I’ve looked at Patreon and discarded it so many times in the last few years. There’s Substack, which almost persuaded me. But, in the end, it’s still a digital blog, same form and format, just with a little money thrown in. There’s nothing substantially different between it and my free Tweeting, or my free-to-read posts here. I am stuck with my working-class mindset: value must be given to the paying customer. It’s an honest mindset, even if somewhat limiting.

Then a side project I was developing took shape and I realized it would suit Amanda perfectly, instead. What am I if not a writer? Do I not claim I’m an artist, too? I should write, and create with writing.

In the spirit of contrariness, which has inspired most life choices, I have gone headlong the opposite direction from current, popular wisdom.

When people throw everyone online for “transparency,” that is the time to go private. When all communication is moved online, it’s time to move off.

Instead of a TinyLetter, an Actual Letter.

This comes from my stated desire to make money from my blogging, the rediscovered need to be creative without staring at a screen all day, and the pleasure of intimacy within certain boundaries, familiar to many sex workers. I earn a steady income from my blogging, which my creditors also enjoy — with more-inspired, regular writing to a smaller, appreciative audience.

Yes, someone whose normal handwriting really does look like shorthand has taken up the dip pen, found some nibs that work, and is developing something legible (and I aspire to real beauty, with enough practice). It’s creative. It’s what I’ve been dying for for years.

This is art, and approaching it as art is the way my handwriting becomes something more. As does my writing. I compose very differently when the ink literally flows from my pen than when typing on a keyboard. Key clicks are cheaper than dirt. Ink and 100% cotton paper? Very expensive and exquisitely thoughtful. There is no waste, I make few mistakes. Strange how not having a Delete key does that. (Pay no mind to my blotchy practice sheets, you know, those times when the ink really did flow from my pen.)

There won’t be 20K-word letters, my hands can’t take it. Expect a medium-length letter, 500-1K words, maybe all the way up to 2K if I really have the spare time.

The essays I’ve planned are all things I’ve wanted to discuss for a long time, but hesitate to make them public and Googleable. Pen to paper is not that.

I plan on producing some handwritten and updated editions of existing blog posts, perhaps quotes from my books or Tweets, things that aren’t personalized, serialized or brand-new. These pieces will be more affordable than the letters, and not in such limited quantities. My hope is some of these pieces are framed, perhaps put in a scrapbook, or something of that nature. Sex workers do love their physical, personal libraries.

The blog here will be much more surface, and less personal than it has been. If you want to read what I have to say, the real thought-pieces, the substantial and personal things I sometimes share, you must purchase a letter. If you want to be my pen-pal, for real, now you can.

Not going to do the letters indefinitely. A year, perhaps two. And then I’ll probably have said everything I want to say as Amanda. The letters are as close to a memoir as I’ll ever get. I really don’t have the ego required for a full-blown autobiography.

Private pen-pals will last as long as they last. Mostly I’ll let those relationships fizzle out on their own, likely after I’ve thoroughly offended all my pals.

Letters will never be repeated, or reposted on the blog or anywhere else. They’re real-world communication. Made once, consumed only in one manner by the person who receives them, not accurately reproducible by any means. My imperfect hand means nothing will be the same twice. Low effort wabi sabi.

Letters are folded properly, sealed with wax and a custom stamp, created for my personal theme of 2021. The letter will be inside the mailing envelope. So basically, you get a plain, addressed envelope, open it to reveal another plain, protective envelope, and inside there is your letter.

I have gold and purple wax, and various colors of satin ribbon. You can even choose your basic paper types: opaque or transparent. You get to choose wax color, ribbon color, and paper-type because I’m feeling generous and want you to enjoy the way your letter is presented.

Quantities are limited; both the current topical issue and number of pen-pals I’ll allow. I expect to produce a new issue every 4-6 weeks and I’m already behind in rolling this out, the February issue will go on sale starting the 9th.

Actual purchasing information and email notification of issues for sale is on my other website1. You pay via Square, my payment processor. The options are all explained on my sales page. I suggest reading it thoroughly. All questions should be answered, and there are helpful photos, as well.

All in all, I think this is pretty simple to understand. I write letters, you buy them.

Click here to go to Sales Page

I’m curious how quickly some idiot manages to screw this all up.

To recap: continuing to read the thought-pieces many enjoy means buying the topical letter. Being my pen-pal means purchasing private correspondence.

I love writing with a dip pen; and making $money$. I’m a brain-damaged hooker with artsy-fartsy flair. An entertainer for 20 years, I’m offering a new form of entertainment for you. Nothing bigger than that.

By next week I expect to see hundreds of escorts offering calligraphy and handwritten letters. I know of only one who currently offers handwritten correspondence. As usual, the unoriginal herd should pay me royalties because money is flattery. Imitation is neither flattering nor money!

1This blog theme, while lovely for blogging, is limited in being able to create unique pages, and I do not wish to waste my time right now redesigning this entire thing, that’s coming later this spring. I’m working on other deadlines at the moment.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

fast girl and slow girl

Came across a hardcover of Fast Girl in the clearance bin at a non-local bookshop and had to have it. Yet another hooker book I haven’t read only now I have the space and time in which I could, so I did.

I remember when the scandal came out, wrote about it, in fact. It wasn’t until I read the book this week that I finally realized Suzy Favor was her really-real name because it sounds like a hooker name if ever there was one.

Her track career I read with deep envy as a sprinter who had the love but never the support or training to make anything of my obvious ability. But then, she also made it clear my love of running would have never survived the brutality of her training, as it barely survived hers, disappearing entirely for the latter half of her career, resurfacing only as a way to heal many years later.

That, I understand; survivor of the photography teacher whose motto was “make them cry in class”. (I never did, I saved it for the bathroom breaks or my dorm room because I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, but it certainly wasn’t for his lack of trying.)

Her wild escorting career was interesting to read, and laughable in some ways, like her insistence on staying in fancy rooms when she only did outcall. (She was impressed by a $300 Agent Provocateur set, I wondered if it came from the clearance rack. Then I realized I’m a jaded snob and wondered when this happened but that’s a whole different thing.) She never does math: the difference between the cost of her Vegas trips and what she actually made after the agency cut. Her husband does better hooker-math than she does.

Her sense of competition with the TER rankings was so incredibly misguided, even though it was her own sense of self that did the guiding. While that self was supposedly in manic mode during this time, that self was also her drive to win in running–it’s part of her nature no matter what and can’t be blamed on mania. It is what it is; she’s an Olympic-level athlete which makes her a rare person by any standard.

Her fall from grace, which I supported with extensive Googling, even reading the awful, original TheSmokingGun piece on her, had me asking only one question I’m not sure I asked myself when this broke because the scandal brought up so many other questions. The sole question to be asked about all of this is: Why? What did the asshole client and TheSmokingGun think they were doing? What was the purpose behind her outing?

Really? What was the actual reason?

TheSmirkingReporter for TheSmokingGun who talked to the naive Suzy (she should have told him to fuck off and that was it), and the hit-piece written never give any reason as to why outing an athlete and mother as a part-time escort was important news.

She wasn’t selling nuclear secrets, she wasn’t trading insider secrets or helping to rob casinos, she wasn’t even able to help her husband with their realty business without causing more problems than she solved. So why was destroying her two professional lives, and nearly destroying her entire family circle worth it? What was the goal? She was acting in a role millions of women have, and her clients were with her as partners in that role. They were married too. So why was exposing her and not them the big story? What made her a target? What significant social good was accomplished by exposing her?

I’m not hurt or changed in any measurable way by knowing about Suzy’s secret career. No one I know is hurt by her actions. I can’t remember that society was unduly influenced one way or another by her escorting.

As far as I can tell, the only thing the outing accomplished was to was hurt her and everyone associated with her. That’s it. It stopped no crime, exposed no dirty dealings, society is not any better for her exposure. It got clicks for TSG.

That’s it.

Ruin a woman and her entire life for clickbait.

Truly a worthy 21st century misogynist goal.

It’s a question so basic she doesn’t even stop to ask it in her book and I wish she had. She talks of her anger at those in her life who stifled her and yet she apparently doesn’t have enough anger at those who destroyed her and I’m including the website that bothered to give enough credence to the story to actually, physically report it.

It’s what’s known in media circles as a non-story and yet somehow it became a scandal.

This is all rhetorical, I know exactly why a beautiful woman was destroyed as much as possible by men who couldn’t have her.

The other reason I’m writing this is for those sex workers who also suffer mental illness and aren’t being properly treated. Suzy and her doctors would have benefited greatly from having her undergo a Genesight test. I know I’m flogging an expensive medical test. It works, though. That’s worth every penny to those who suffer.

The test results and report, and I have the original copy, show how I process a variety of psyche mediations. It also shows I have two recessive genes that ruin how my mind processes its own chemicals, specifically serotonin. I’m genetically-predisposed to depression due to mal-processing of chemicals and the only solution is the correct medication that balances my brain’s chemical processes by creating a workaround since we don’t have the knowledge to repair such issues.

My issues are indeed all in my head and my parents are to blame. How many can say that? (Anyone who has similar genes, really.) Bad jokes aside, it was a relief I didn’t know I was seeking to discover that my issues are scientifically-provable, that I wasn’t making things up, that I wasn’t making too much of things, I wasn’t crazy, I have an actual medical issue for how I think and feel and have lived. Fortunately, it’s a treatable issue no matter how invisible it has been.

Before I was treated properly, yes, I have suffered deep despair and depression throughout my life. When my situation is horrible, I’m suicidal. When my situation is better, I’m mostly okay (but can fall into a depressive state with little provocation). Adding other problems, like PTSD, into the mix just exacerbates every single issue of these illnesses to a very large degree.

Proper medication allows me space to think clearly. My deepening burnout would have literally killed me if not for being properly medicated for the better part of the last two years. Even then, it was a near miss. I had to realize that burnout was still an issue of my mind pointing out a problem to me, something I needed to fix, and it was screaming as loud as it could to bring my attention to the problem. It took a while, but I listened and have begun fixing the problem.

At any other point in my life, almost all of which was spent free of professional psychological intervention, this would have ended very, very badly. Most likely permanently–the ending I’ve seen for myself since I was very, very young.

Reading Suzy’s account of her attempts at professional help made me wish she could have taken the test. It would have changed so much in her later life. Perhaps she has taken it now, and is being properly medicated based on her actual body chemistry. It’s a much better solution than what her doctors at the time did: prescribe for her based on semi-informed guesswork, with what she claims was disastrous results.

Her story made me realize I was luckier than I thought to have access to a professional who knows of tools like Genesight. It’s just a tool, not God, a tool that takes guessing out of the equation. Guesswork when dealing with psyche meds is a terrible way to try and treat serious problems. (Says the person who was dosing herself for three years without doctor supervision with a psyche med that just made things worse.)

I hope she, and those of her audience who need it, continue to find healing.

The last thing I want to say about this story is the story itself. When I was Googling for information on her, something I don’t remember doing when her story broke, everywhere I went I found tons of pictures of her. There were always running photos and sexy photos. She’s a beautiful woman and was a beautiful college girl. Her daughter will likely be beautiful as well.

The only video I watched was her Nike commercial, which is hilarious. I’m probably going to search for videos of her running, at her peak. Just so I can be jealous of her running form, which has to be efficiently perfect. (Mine’s not great, not terrible.)

The sexy photos, however, were always on the stories deriding her fall from grace; the most sexy photos on the leering TSG article that outed her, of course. Even the Nike commercial exploits her beauty and sex appeal.

I’m not even covering the multiple verbal beatdowns and sexual harassment she received in her life due to her natural build: large breasts on a petite frame; unusual in a high-level runner. Or her disordered eating quickly descending into bulimia because she didn’t fit an idealized body type.

One long-form story on a running website that detailed her running career had an ad for another story on the same website, ranking the country’s “sexiest female athletes”, dead-middle in this story castigating a woman for capitalizing on her sexiness.

The cognitive whiplash actually hurt.

Be a beautiful, sexy woman; don’t be too sexy, don’t personally profit off it, don’t keep it to yourself either but share it freely with everyone who wants a piece of you, but don’t share too much either because that’s also very bad. Don’t take pride in yourself or get a big head but please continue to keep yourself up and be sexy because you owe it to everyone who wants to look at your. And for God’s sake, don’t profit off of it. Especially that.

How does anyone expect a woman to stay sane? It’s impossible.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

the rest of my life

And then one day someone offers to set you free, and pay for your freedom. And freedom does cost money, it does cost to escape even though you didn’t know you weren’t free, not really.

And then you start living your life for the first time ever. Each day you count “Today is the first day of the rest of my life” and “The second day…” and “The third day…” and you feel each day as they are, as a newborn. Cleansing rituals are performed but almost unnecessary. Your soul knows.

And then you start discovering you have to relearn your body. That once it used to do this and be capable of that; long ago. You don’t remember how it felt anymore, only that it happened. And maybe it can happen once again. With time. And love. And freedom.

And the ransom, for that’s what it really was, is paid without blame or expectations. All you have to do is live and follow your heart. It’s you who has to tear down the walls around it, it’s you who has to figure it out. You have the time now, the freedom, it’s been bought and paid for.

And you keep counting “Today is the seventh day of the rest of my life” and erasing everything you can, tossing out so much, selling what might bring some money on the open market but that’s not you anymore and you couldn’t be happier.

And one day you realize your body is yours again, you realize it wasn’t yours for so long, a lifetime.

And the only person who touches you is someone you love, no one else. No one else. There is no sharing with others. There is only an equal exchange and no boundaries and freedom. No pain, no mauling, no fumbling, no stupidity, no anger, no resentment, no boredom. Freedom and joy and uninhibited pleasure and devil-may-care fun. Waking up every day together in the same bed, the bed that invites sleep and cuddles and the desire to never leave its comfy confines (the dangers of wonderful sheets and blankets and a body heat generator next to you). Sometimes he starts the tea, but only if he suspects you’ll actually get up.

And there are plans, of course. And things could go to ruin, of course. For once, why think of it? You are free. You can plan together, share the worries together.

And it’s not said but you know how it happened. He waited until you broke yourself, until you knew you could not go forward another inch, your soul was speared and gutted, then he made the offer. Not so you wouldn’t refuse but because you were finally ready to see clearly and see what everything was and was not.

And because he hated watching you suffer, each and every time, worse and worse.

And there has been so much clarity. The important thing is happening though, every single day of the rest of your life: you wake up free. The gratitude for your freedom, your new life, is humbling. The rest starts falling away like a molted shell, let it rot where it falls. It never contained much good to start with. The clarity is ruthless and embarrassing.

And clear vision has never changed the past, how could it? It only maps the future. The first days of the rest of your life.

Posted on by Amanda Brooks

Sex work burnout: a very long journey

Burnout. Every career has its version and sex work probably has higher rates because the work is so much more personal, because sex workers shoulder such a huge portion of the work individually. A stripper cannot outsource her work and make a living. An escort can outsource some of her administrative work, but has to make more money in order to pay for that luxury. We cannot clone our selves to go meet clients. Scaling up or out is impossible. At best, we can make and sell content for passive income, or raise our rates. We still have to do the actual work though, whether writing, photographing, interacting, and showing up.

This is a novella-length essay of my journey into and out of burnout. I’m still in the process but am through the worst and on my way out. Take what you find valuable, if anything, and I sincerely hope it helps you. This is not a “poor Amanda” essay, some of these issues have been self-caused and it has taken solid moments of clarity to realize this. Avoid my mistakes and do better.

There are many ways to organize this and I felt chronologically would be best for you. It’s not how the feelings and experiences are organized in my head, but you don’t live in my head. I’ve done my best to make the steps of the journey clear to both of us.

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

face or no face?

Vanessa D’Alessio wrote a great piece over at TitsandSass around the issue of showing your face in conjunction with your online escort work. My response got eaten by the Intertubes, I think. Instead of reposting, I decided to expand on it a little here.

This article has been at the back of my mind since I read it last week. My arc has been slightly different than hers. When I started stripping, I was fairly out and allowed myself to be photographed, topless, for one of my club’s websites (back when the Internet was indeed tubes that connected computers using gerbils and string). They never removed the picture despite repeated requests, even after I left stripping and began escorting. (It was later removed only because they redid their site.)

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