Swiss holiday photos

A few shots from Patty's time here in CH.

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( larger versions and notes below the cut )

Wicked Wednesdays: when sex isn't the story, but the language

One of the questions I get asked a lot is, "But you're a lesbian, why were you working as a dominatrix?"

First of all, I do use lesbian as an identifier and a shorthand, but it's not a word I'm entirely comfortable with. I'm not only, or always even mainly, female in my identity, and I have had relationships with and continue to also be attracted to men (and, as an aside, people who do not necessarily identify or exist in the binary).

But! The fact is there are a lot of queer women in sex work, and I think what the question is really about is "how does being a sex worker affect your private, not-for-pay sex life?"

It's a sensitive subject, and not only because really, there's only so much I feel like telling you all. It's a sensitive subject, because to acknowledge it has an impact (and it does) immediately implies a lot of value judgments about the reasons people do sex work, the reason people visit sex workers, the repercussions of people doing sex work, and the sense of self and of desire and of sexuality that women innately come with (see: Obnoxious Crap Stephen Fry Has Said).

That said, I do think this is a topic that deserves examination, but I can only speak for my own incredibly particular experiences, which are not reflective of anyone else's.

The thing about me is that I'm an "intrusive thoughts" kind of person.

That means that when I see something, I can't unsee it, and sometimes it will pop into my head unbidden. My mind wanders and works aggressively to create and demonstrate patterns. Which meant that it was very hard for me to leave my work at work, and sexual activity in my private life often evoked thoughts of work activity, which while obviously sexual in content, was not sexual for me, as male submission towards myself in a female role isn't usually arousing to me.

Also, clients are not hot. Clients are clients. And no matter how much they tell you about what they want, it's very rare that you'll know what makes them tick, what makes them want, what made them say that at 8:25 on a particular Thursday evening they absolutely had to drop $180 for an hour of your time. And that lack of context? That lack of pattern? Not hot for me.

So the thinking about work stuff, during personal sexual activity? Really didn't make my personal sex life more exciting. It didn't ruin it either, it just made it less easy, and that didn't thrill me.

On the other hand, not getting off on the work is one of the reasons why a lot of people are able to do it. It's not their real, personal, private sexual selves for hire. It's a character and a set of motions. It's one reason you find a lot of queer women in sex work. But, as much as I say that, I knew lots of women at the places I worked who did get off on it, whose at work and at home sexualities were similar, and who were either able to, or didn't need to, separate work and and play.

So, yeah, in short, it's different for everyone.

So how does this relate to Dogboy & Justine?

First, when most people initially hear about the concept for the show, their reaction is "Oh, so it's about sex." But this show isn't really about sex. But it does take place in an environment that's certainly all about sexuality.

Here's the thing though: In the daylight non-sex work world most people live in, nearly everything is a metaphor or symbol or instrument for sex: what you wear, how you walk, whether you drink, what you eat, the car you drive, the lipstick ads on the bus shelters, how small your mobile phone is, how much your cute pet will make strangers talk to you, and what it says on your business cards.

But in the world of Dogboy & Justine the equation works the other way. The sex is really about the lipstick, or the car, or the job, or the pet, or the food, or the drink. Sex is the common language of whatever the story really is, instead of the other way around. And that's super-challenging to write in a world where people expect sexuality to be the story, instead of telling the story.

Sexuality, kinky sexuality, is here the language, but because sex is often SEX!!!!! for people (I'm a big fan, myself), it too easily can be mistaken for the story, both in life and on-stage. It's sort of like how Shakespearean language can obscure the plot of his plays for many people -- both because of its beauty and because of the way it can be a big challenge, especially when it's new.

Secondly, in working on the show, we need to dig through all the issues described in the first half of this post, and know who is turned on by their clients and who isn't. Who has a boyfriend who asks about the work day because that's the right thing to do vs. the one with the boyfriend who thinks it's hot vs. the one with the boyfriend who is jealous. What about the single women in the biz? Or ones that lie to their partners? Or, to go back to the beginning, the queer ones?

Just as with the vocal styles and the public/private issues of names, this is another place where no one in Dogboy & Justine is just one person. In many cases, they're more than two: at work vs. at home; before they got this job vs. after; who they are when they love their work vs. who they are when they hate it. And is the sex you want to pay for really of the same genre as the sex you prefer to get for free?

We all contain multitudes. Some of us just have more of a reason to know why.

[ Dogboy & Justine is about a lot of things other than sexuality, but it uses sex and how it sits with its characters and with the audience to tell those stories. If you enjoyed this post, please consider supporting our projection by commenting here, boosting the signal or contributing to our Kickstarter fundraising drive. 72 fabulous donors have thus far pledged $3,440 towards our workshop production, but we need to raise another $2,560 in the next 34 days to actually secure our funding to make this happen. ]