Posted on by Amanda Brooks

married clients

Something has slowly dawned on me since I’ve been out of the US. It seems a lot of married clients suffer the delusion that I’ve never encountered a married client before. Let’s get rid of these delusions immediately.

Married clients make up the majority of any sex worker’s business. If it weren’t for marriage, the entire industry would collapse in a week — worldwide. With the exception of small towns full of men and few women, married men make up 90% or more of my clientele. I’m a big, big fan of marriage. I think everyone should do it.

However…

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

processing pain, karmic debt and coming out

Yeah, it’s been a while. I’m still getting caught up with emails and life.

Obviously, my life has been in upheaval for the past couple months. I’ve been barely holding myself together since October and moving at the end of April pretty much capped it.

The relationship is over. That pain has been dealt with. The pain I’m still dealing with is what happened to me and how/why I let it happen. Though I can’t really speak publicly about it, I’ve been threatened with various actions if I reveal too much. This blog has been censored since Day 1 and is still being censored. It’s a concern, but not a vital one for me to address at this moment.

Which leads to my karmic debt. So many people, including a lot I’ve never met, have offered support and help in various ways. And it has helped. There is no magic wand to make things better, but being alone makes things much worse.

You’ve let me know I am not alone.

There isn’t enough I can possibly do to repay the kindness shown or the tolerance for my recent flakiness.

The more unfortunate side effect is that my personal energy is at an ebb and I have little energy to give to those who also need it. Several other friends have had crises too. But then, that’s what a support network is for. My small sisterhood of sex workers have been wonderful. There is so much love the outside world never sees and completely fails to understand.

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

un-retirement

This isn’t really the post I’d been re-writing in my head over the past few months. And it has nothing to do with the recent scandals.

Things haven’t been going well in the relationship for a while. Some of you know that, some don’t. There really is no good way to write this, so I’m just writing and posting, no editing for weeks (which I usually do).

My retirement will come to an end soon. It’s harder to say in public than I thought. It really is. I still am not ready to articulate everything I want to publicly share for anyone else who might be going through the same thing. I have anxieties and fears I did not have the first time around. I have a plan, as always. That’s not the problem. But I can’t plan against my own concerns.

I doubt the tone of this blog will change much. I’m not going to turn this into a typical escort blog where I dissect my clients in public. That’s not me. It’s not going to happen. If I do discuss work, it will be in my usual oblique way.

This has been brewing since October. And it became clear in early February that the relationship was irreparable. It’s sad and painful. More than I had thought it would be. I’m feeling bitter and that’s a first — possibly in my entire life.

A few months ago, when discussing this with a sex worker friend, she told me that everyone who retires for a relationship eventually comes back. I don’t see this as a statement on the people involved so much as a statement of murky waters of relationships and expectations in this society.

I tried to be something I am not. And what I am is not what he wants.

She told me I would have to deal with the pain on my own, and she is right. She also told me that she (and others) would catch me when I stepped through the door. There’s a mythic-journey aspect to changing one’s life (again) and a doorway is the right metaphor. It’s now open and all I have to do is step through.

See you on the other side.

please note

This post was removed with days of posting. I’ve re-posted it as of 7/2/08 because I would rather have my blog uncensored, even if it means I misstep every now and then. Plus, I’d like to think I’m the captain of my own ship again.