The further removed I get from my stint as a sex worker, the more I am able to reflect back on it as a positive experience that taught me hard truths about life and made me the wise 28-year-old I am today.
When the wounds are fresh and society is hellbent on trying to shame you for monetizing your sexuality, it’s easy to lose sight of just how enlightening the sometimes adverse experience of sex work can be. But with a bit of distance and a more mature perspective, it’s quite possible to turn lemons into lemonade.
How Sex Work Made Me Emotionally Detached from Sex
One of the unforeseen consequences of sex work was that it made me view sex and men in a transactional manner. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy sex but I used my sexuality as a weapon for getting things I wanted in relationships – be it emotional labor or material things. It was like access to my pussy and the affection that went along with it was something for me to gift or withhold depending on what behavior I wanted to elicit from my partner.
Too distracted with his work to be present during dinner? No sex tonight. Trying to get him to take me away for the weekend? Butter him up with a blowjob and massage. Generally annoyed and want to hit him where it hurts? Casually allude to the luxurious lifestyle my ex-daddy spoiled me with and mention how skillful he was at eating pussy.
I also had a tendency to reduce many of the men I slept with down to sex objects – which in hindsight was definitely a reaction to having sugar daddies do the same to me. I had a roster of men who satisfied my various needs and typically the hot, sex objects were twenty-something broke artist types whom I would lead to believe I was super into so that they would shower me with love and worship me as a muse, only for me to break their hearts by ghosting them and shacking up with a 30 something who had a more stable career and the ability to pamper me as the princess I thought I deserved to be treated as.
Having been exposed to so many sex-addicted degenerate daddies, I had come to operate under the assumption that all men were dogs and that the ultimate power move was having backup options on backup options so that I would never end up the forlorn girlfriend whose boyfriend cheats on her (seemingly) out of the blue.
I always had to be one step ahead. It was all a game, and after seeing my non-sugar female peers continually get burned by the men in their life, I took pride in my fuckboy-with-a-vagina persona. But the root from which this persona had blossomed was fear and this inhibited me from being truly vulnerable with men and connecting with them on a deeper level.
I knew which attributes of my personality to play up or down depending on a man’s individual tastes. From how I dressed to how sexually open I presented myself, my multiple-personality syndrome stemmed from an innate desire to be the perfect girl to the half dozen lovers I had at any given time.
While I’m lowkey impressed by my ability to shapeshift – a skill I 100% picked up playing characters during my sex work career – I struggled to express as my authentic self and therefore found myself feeling empty. No matter how men I could make fall in love with me, it was never enough. Because they weren’t in love with me, they were in love with the manic pixie version of me I had carefully crafted. Not only did I allow them to project all their fantasies onto me, I encouraged it.
This emptiness haunted me. I had spent the majority of my life trying to quench the unquenchable spiritual void within me through food, drugs, and sex. By the time I hit 25, I was utterly exhausted. The fuel of external vices which had kept me afloat all my life was running out. Desperate for a solution, I moved to an ashram to get my introspection on – developing a spiritual practice along the way.
Soaking in the Wisdom of Eastern Spirituality
Religious folk often talked about being “saved,” and to a degree, my spiritual awakening was just that. I don’t identify strongly with one particular religion or spiritual school, but I do take inspiration from Tantra, Wicca, and Buddhism. One of the tenants of Buddhism I’ve really started living by is, “The root of suffering is attachment.”
When I first heard this quote, I was like, “Damn this is a pretty bleak outlook on life. Isn’t attachment to loved ones and experiences what makes life worth living? If we lose that, what’s the point?” But having gotten a more in-depth understanding of this philosophy at a silent Buddhist meditation retreat, I started to come around. You see, all human suffering comes from two things: craving and aversion.
We crave things – drugs, love, money – because we are attached to how those things make us feel. But nothing in this life is permanent. Your cocaine dealer could get arrested; your boyfriend might dump you; and you could invest your life savings into a new business only to go bankrupt when the recession hits.
When we are on top of the world, we do everything in our power to stay on top. But this is a fruitless effort because what goes up always comes down. We would be better served staying present and grateful for the bounties and blessings we have when we have them; while accepting that they will one day disappear. How can we truly appreciate the good when it’s always good anyways?
“The bad” aka things we try to avoid – our bodies slowing down as we age, getting our hearts broken, losing our savings – give us the perspective we need to truly enjoy the positive things in life. When we learn to actually savor the process of overcoming a challenge – rather than becoming fixated on the end goal – our suffering is lifted. Pressure makes diamonds and when we can fully internalize this way of thinking, the things we once avoided will transform into opportunities we take on with fervor.
Transforming Trauma Into Personal Growth
To bring all this back to my own healing journey, I am now able to see my transactional phase as a stepping stone to non-attachment. Whereas transactionality is dehumanizing, emotionless, and energy-draining, non-attachment empowers its believers to experience the full range of human emotions because it encourages vulnerability and gratitude.
When we are aware of the fleetingness of life, we are able to love more fully and take risks we wouldn’t otherwise. We also become more capable of letting go of the bullshit. For instance, you might once have been driven crazy by the loudness with which your partner chews his food, but now, instead of getting sulky about it, you take a deep breath and think, “What a joy to spend time with this magical human.”
Since starting to love without attachment, I find myself having the most incredible experiences with friends and lovers alike. I used to get sad when a romantic relationship or friendship ended – playing the happy memories we shared together over and over again in my head when I was feeling down – but now I have the ability to let go.
Obviously, I’m not a robot – nostalgic moments are bound to bring a tear or two to my eyes every once in a while. I allow myself to feel it and then convert that few seconds of sadness into gratitude for having gotten to have the experience in the first place and for the lessons said experience taught me.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: sex work gives us superpowers. Had I not gone through my jaded phase of non-spiritual attachment to men, it would have been a lot harder to integrate my newfound Buddhist approach of non-attatchment into my life. Society will try and convince us that we are broken.
For a longtime I subscribed to this victim-centric narrative, but now I know better. Sex workers are layered gods and goddesses with knowledge and perspective that runs far deeper than that of the average joe. In the words of Buddha, “She who knows life flows, feels no wear or tear, needs no mending or repair.”
Jules
Based in Brooklyn, Jules has dedicated her twenties towards harnessing her pussy power, exploring the muse, whore, and wild woman archetypes along the way. When not blogging, you can find her sweating the toxins out in a hot yoga class or sipping a matcha latte at a pretentious coffee shop, whilst she scribbles away in her journal.
