Columns

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t (Shave Pubic Hair)

Originally published in Pittsburgh City Paper. In the early 2000s, at nine months pregnant, I went to have my eyebrows threaded. I told the esthetician that my baby was due in a week, and she asked me if I wanted to add a Brazilian wax. Tired, uncomfortable, and not in the mood, I shrugged it […]

Aging in the Sex Work Industry

Originally Published in The Pittsburgh City Paper. Sex workers are all too familiar with the question: What are you going to do when you aren’t young and hot anymore? We’re asked it by people critical of our jobs, and, in moments of doubt, we ask it of ourselves. For sex workers, this question is a […]

Trans Rights Must Be Protected

Originally published in Pittsburgh City Paper. In Allegheny County, any transgender person seeking to legally change their name and gender marker schedules a hearing with Judge Christine Ward. Once a month she conducts a closed-door court ceremony where each person gets to come forward with their family or support persons and be legally recognized for […]

What the Midterm Elections Mean to the Sex Work Industry

First published in the Pittsburgh City Paper. In light of the upcoming midterm elections, I take a step back to talk about the way in which elections impact the lives of the sex work community. Sex work is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide array of erotic services: stripping, webcam modeling, nude modeling, escorting, […]

Public Porn

Originally Published in The Pittsburgh City Paper. Last year, I held a workshop about dirty talk in phone sex work at a club in Canada. Given that it was a space designed for public enactments of sexuality, I wasn’t surprised to find my presentation competing with jumbo TV screens playing pornography. An amusing coincidence caused […]

With Pornography Ubiquitously Available for Free Online, What Keeps the Phone Sex Industry Alive?

Originally published in the Pittsburgh City Paper. Typically, when I tell folks that I am a phone sex operator, it’s met with confusion. “That still exists?” This even comes from those within the sex industry who believe that the internet, with its ubiquitous porn and live sex-camming, must have rendered the phone sex industry obsolete. […]

Body Acceptance in Unexpected Places

Column originally appeared in Pittsburgh City Paper. I stand in front of the mirror touching up red lipstick and thickening winged eyeliner before work. My thighs extend out from a high-cut, black lace bodysuit. I bemoan their thickness and cellulite. In a moment of self-doubt, I question my desirability. Why did I ever think I […]

Reflecting on Christine Blasey Ford’s All-Too-Familiar Testimony

Like many women, I found Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony all too familiar, bringing up deeply buried events I’d experienced in the past. This is why I want to step back from the specifics of the allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and the partisan political implications of his confirmation hearings, to instead focus on why so […]