Shameful Secrets

My second FetishCon has come and gone. Oddly enough this last one came at a point of change as did the first. The third one is approaching rapidly, and I’m torn as to whether or not to attend.  Quite frankly, if I don’t know I have work booked, I’d rather go to Floating World and get tied up or beaten. Maybe both.

I really didn’t work much at the last Con… I came in with one shoot booked, did an impromptu shoot with a friend (and got to watch a model friend do her magic, like, woah!) and was paid $50 to make a fool of myself trying to get out of a straight jacket for someones amusement. I think I could have kept amusing for a little more $$, but a serious lack of protein left me with the shakes after that one attempt.

If this is sounding like complaint or disappointment, let me assure you, it’s not. I learned a huge amount at the Con last year, about myself, the industry and being the ‘IT’ Girl.

The popular ‘IT’ Girl has always kinda been a bee in my bonnet. Not the women themselves, but the simple concept. Whatever ‘IT’ is, it’s changeable… the ‘IT’ girl of the ’50s holds no resemblance to the ‘IT’ girl of today.

And, segueing into sex work at my time of life just brings in a whole lot more ‘IT’ into play. And for the most part, I’m not ‘IT’. Which pushes a big red button for me.

I am aware that there is plenty of work for me out there… it’s not necessarily the work I WANT, however. I thought, at first, that I might actually be able to make money doing things I enjoyed. So far, it hasn’t worked out that way. It’s a lot of work. Actual work, finding and booking shoots. Usually they are Damsel In Distress stills & video, which means I get badly tied and have to pretend struggle under hot lights in my underwear, and actually struggle to keep the poorly tied rope from falling off. Meh. I’ve had some interest from boy on girl, non fetish porn producers, however with one exception they’ve all seemed pretty shady to me. I’m not sure I want to risk my sexual health to do something I don’t truly feel driven to do.

FetishCon is full of ‘IT’ Girls. My life, my friends list, is full of ‘IT’ girls. It always has been.

After two years of frustration and feeling somehow secondary to many of the women around me, something I seem to have forgotten has reoccurred to me:

I AM an ‘IT’ girl. I always have been, and always will be. Every woman is an ‘IT’ girl. It’s an easy thing to forget, when you aren’t the media standard we see every day, but it’s true.

Being an ‘IT’ girl isn’t about popularity or acclaim. It’s truly about self worth. It’s about being comfortable in your own skin, knowing who you are and accepting that. The women I know whom I consider to be ‘IT’ girls and friends, are friends because they have a confidence I admire. A self respect that, sometimes, I don’t have.

I AM an ‘IT’ girl.

Sometimes I need to remind myself of that.

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Truthfully I don’t think about this much, for myself. I forget, however, that for some it isn’t so simple, and therefore some don’t see mine as simplicity.

Nix, nickname for Nicole, not a scene name, but what my day to day friends mostly call me.

Nix Nepenthe, ok, well there we do have a pseudonym, chosen for fetish modeling and BDSM porn (when I get to do it, lol).

Frankly, it’s not too hard to find the given name for the pseudonym, and I could care less. Mostly I keep the two separate so my mother doesn’t unwittingly stumble over graphic images of her daughter being beaten, etc.

However, having told her I was attending Fetishcon, I’m kinda out of the closet anyway. I’d tell her whatever she wanted to know… we’ve simply mutually agreed there are things she doesn’t want to know.

I learned this lesson the hard way: in the military. Naval Reserve, the fuckers.

Huge relationship backstory that I just cannot bother to go into… suffice to say I signed up for the Naval Reserve (fuckers) 8 years. I did my physical and took my tests, and got high rankings and was slated for crypto (yes, I am smart and I love puzzles) so off I went to boot camp. Some trauma occurred, partly because I was aware of what they were doing to manipulate us and partly due to dental surgery I needed at the time (KILL yourself before you let Naval dentists TOUCH you, let alone extract impacted wisdom teeth…)

Story as short as possible, they bounced my from Crypto A because I was a security risk (I’d had an abortion and not told my parents) **This is the kicker**

SO there I was, stuck in boot camp, and the only thing I could do was take a general training, and get in the top 5% of my class, giving me my pick of A schools. Well, I was second in my class (sleepwalking) and all it got me was the option to go to cook school (and I do some close to gourmet cooking on my own…) or go to my drilling point and ’strike’ for whatever.

I thought I’d get some training, learn something, get money for college… turned out it was all a frakkin lie. Crypto was NEVER an A school I could attend, despite my quals, as a reservist… they don’t waste that training. My recruiting officer failed to tell me that. Faced with ‘cafeteria cook’ and something worse I’ve blocked, I left without any ’skills’ except having survived boot camp.

Turned out to be the least of my worries: it’s virtually impossible to strike for a job as a reservist without attending an A school. And the ones I had access to after bootcamp…cook was the best.

Tried to strike for EE (electronics engineer) as I had a facility for it and it was my Dad’s first degree… guess how hard that is from a few books and a bunch of people who couldn’t care less? Guess, just for kicks.

Worst of it was that I had joined thinking I could use the GI bill to go to college. And I could have… except I couldn’t have majored in my love of acting. Another restriction the recruiter didn’t mention: the GI bill monies can only be used for something the military might find useful.

I was, sort of, lucky: I was released 3? Years early. I was accepted to a conservatory, and could not pursue my vocation and fulfill my obligation to the Navy at the time. I suppose their (the Navy’s) diagnosis of clinical depression didn’t hurt my cause any.

So, back to the abortion: no, I never told my parents. They seemed to feel that this was an indication I could be manipulated. Bull. When they asked about it I said I’d prefer to tell them myself, but if the Navy needed to do so, fine.

So, here we are today… I have kept my ‘legit’ name and my ‘fetish/porn’ name separate because my mom likes to google things. I’d tell her any and every thing…. I just don’t want her to stumble across a hardcore BDSM vid of me accidentally.

Still: Fuck You USN!!! Despite what you think, I am unbribable.

Why?

Because I refuse to carry shameful secrets.

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“If I were a real writer..”

“If I were a real sex worker..”

Both of these have been called into question, if only nominally, in recent weeks. Truth is I once fancied a career in writing. I wrote for and later edited a publication from Exeter NH called ‘The Free Press’. To my knowledge, up until the time I came on the staff no ‘townies’ had been allowed on the paper. I was an anomaly: as far as Exeter Academy was concerned, I was a townie, but I attended a private day-school, so as far as the ‘townies’ were concerned I was a preppie. I’ve frequently felt caught between here and there throughout my life. Never more so than now, I guess….

It is certainly true that as a ’sex worker’ I’m more on the fringes than many I know. Certainly one BDSM or b/g porn doesn’t make me a sex worker in some people’s eyes. To others, the soft shoots I’ve done waggling my tits in front of a camera knowing that would sell more clips makes me a whore.

While I would never argue with the strippers, Pro Dommes and professional escorts that I’m as deeply in the sex industry as they are, I balk at being told I’m not in the industry. Add working for a BDSM producer who liaises with an agent who’s focus is porn, and even if I am not a sex worker in one’s eyes, I’m certainly in the industry…

Recently I applied for a spot in the upcoming workshop: Speak Up! Media Training for the Empowered Sex Worker and to my amazement, I was accepted. One section of the application asks for sex work experience. I was honest, gods know what I’ve done is pretty much out there for anyone to see if they care to look. So, my conclusion is back to what I felt before: within reason, the only one who can decide (for me) if I belong in the sex worker category, is myself. I respect the fact that I am, quite frankly, on the fringes, especially as some would view it. Then again, there are some who (my opinion) are/have been more deeply involved who do NOT ID as sex workers. I reserve the right to make a choice as to what, TO ME ’sex work’ means. I didn’t stumble into one BDSM ’session’ film, I’ve done a few. Forgive me for not having the body of a 24 year old pursued by kink.com, or the ego required to be a high end escort. I don’t want to play ‘I’m more of a sex worker than you.’

I want to work for a voice for sex workers who choose this work. I want to do this because I feel extremely strongly about trafficking, and I think an organized alliance of sex workers can affect, for the better, trafficking and forced sexualization here. If we force the willing sex workers underground, we force the clientele to those forced or coerced.

Granted, I’m slightly off kilter tonight with too many things running thru my head regarding if I should write on this subject, should I get to call myself a sex worker, ought I to have this opportunity? I guess I’ve come full circle back to the activism of my late teens, but in a much more focused way. Then, it was environmental PACs, now it’s work that supports my friends (and would me if I could get the work) and something that has the potential to impact the trafficking in a major way.

I have a friend who knows rather a lot about this.. in fact it’s a major focus. They warned me that this type of activism can lead to serious consequences, serious problems with organized crime… and I’m condensing about a full page of ‘reality check’ in my recount of their warning. And it’s true.

But nothing worth fighting for is ever easy. I don’t know where I’ll fall on this fight, I only know that following this path feels good to me, the way not hiding my involvement in BDSM and fetish modeling did.

I hope the Speak Up! Training will help me feel more grounded in how I present what I think and feel.

Keep ya posted…

~N

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If I were a REAL writer I’d write about the iniquity I see daily. But if I did, I wouldn’t have the liberty to portray my subjects concerns first and foremost, would I? After all, a ‘real’ writer is one who gets paid, right? Such tripe as truth would shut a paper down lickety-split. Or would that be lickety-spit?

But I’m just an independent blogger, with no name, no following and no real care for saying anything I do not hold true.

OOF! If I had delusions of grandeur… but I do not. I simply want to quell those delusions that should not exist.

This week, personally, was amazing and pivotal, and mostly, I can’t write about it for reasons I (must) decline to discuss.

This, THIS pisses me off.

It pisses me off because the only reason I cannot write about this more in depth is that our culture is such that if I say too much, I could create LEGAL problems for someone (more than one, really) who has done NOTHING against the law. I’m surrounded by women (mostly women…) who have lost their (CHOSEN) work due to ‘certain allegations’. One of them gained ( tho I seriously doubt she would phrase it so )a certain amount of (mostly negative) publicity attempting to (I believe) raise money for the defense of people she believed were wrongly accused (and I do NOT intend to suggest the accusations were true.)

Never mind that the women I personally know involved in sex work CHOOSE it (including myself …. Oh the shock, the horror!!!!!!)

Forget that by declining to allow such women personal agency they FORCE the sex industry underground and thus FOSTER trafficking, despite intentions…

Pay attention people… IT IS in YOUR back yard. IT IS up to YOU to stop it.

Not kink, not sex work by consenting adults who MAKE THAT CHOICE…..

Trafficking! Which we lose sight of here ‘cuz we get so caught up in how ‘morally twisted’ a Dominatrix (never mind her client) is, and (rightly so) pissed at how the Dommes have been treated in recent years.

I’m angry, and I do NOT know what to do.

So, I am taking an ACTIVE voice. I consider myself in the ‘lucky’ category: I haven’t any need to hide.

No one chose me for this, I’m just jumping on the band wagon that calls to me. No one ‘doinked’ me and said I was special, meant anything…. I suppose it’s not SO surprising… my first job (beyond selling pizza.)

If I were a writer anyone read…

If I………

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