She Calls It The London

She calls it the London because it's hers.
From up out of all of the aching years,
burned by memories of her arching fears.
Form up out of where her life began,
smuggled out of Pakistan,
sold to a twisted needy man,
to feed his ugly depredations,
fed to the lusts of many nations,
turned and tapered to shapes that adult lovers cannot know
a tiny vessel into which their sewage flowed.

To be that age and carry his seed inside,
to be at nine a hallowed concubine,
and then again, again at ten,
his pixie sparkly little bride.

And then escaped at twelve you see,
away from debauched fantasies,
and wandering streets like a Dickens urchin
stealing her food from shop stall merchants,
and caught one day her hand around an apple grasped.
Her wrist like bondage by his fingers clasped.

From out of this moment her expectations
where unhindered by ordinary hesitations,
but found, instead another path begun,
than left the other, older one.

Now she sits haughty, elbows like knees on the table,
a cigarette dangles, her neck is arched,
and wide dark eyes bore into me as I ask
how she now sets herself about the task
of courting men to pay for favors,
and all the debauchery in many flavors.

With an edge and air regal of one regaled,
she tells me of the city's darker tales.
Desire transformed be angry ego into rape,
while other weaker egos gape.

Of rooms of squirming bodies and shaken souls,
of masters slaves and their roles,
it leaves me reeling in the mind,
my pity eaten to a rind, and left
instead a cold wonder for this queen of night,
who treads soft footfalls beyond wrong and right,
to ease a sickness in its plight,
by catering to sweet neurotic flight.

Up and in to other lands,
taken and caressed by many hands,
to sleep upon the entire day,
it is wrong, but she knows no other way.

The smoke it plumes from her lips as she explains,
the daily agony and eternal pains.
The crooked path to self-redemption,
set forth on that darkened mountain path
was stolen by cruel intentions.

The white boa around her shoulders draped
was bought by the profits of many rapes.
But corroded away that innocence of dawn -
once taken it is forever gone -
is replaced by some strange self-possession,
which no mere physicality can exorcise.

I can see it, see it, see it in her eyes,
beyond her bluntness, and candid lies.

She calls it the London because it is hers,
and at its dark heart, her shiny mind and body
whirs.


At the heart of Second Life's direct sex industry is human need, human fantasy, and often, human carnage. Many of the people who are escorts are escorts because of dark fantasies of being abused and treated like garbage, of the people who have this fantasy, many, too many, are survivors, or victims, of childhood sexual trauma or emotional trauma. By no means all. But far far too many.

And in the community of second life, there are a small number of men who seek to exploit this. This is not only because those who do something out of need will do "anything with anyone for any amount of money," a phrase I heard from someone who is most decidedly not in this category, but whose description of the mindset is better than any phrase that I could coin, but also because it creates the expectation, the hope, of finding that diamond of sl escorting, the rl woman who wants to be treated like garbage rl. It is for her that more than a few men prowl are darker corners. The others, are merely the cost of searching for the her that they seek to own. The woman who will not only whore herself for linden virtually for them, though this is good, but the woman whose expression of these traits on Second Life is a cry to have them taken into real life. They look for the woman who will whore her real body for real money.

In my time on second life I have gotten offers to become an rl sex worker. I know escorts on second life who are rl sex workers, some trying to leave, others merely on hiatus or looking for ways of contacting additional clients through second life. It is a minority of the sisterhood, but not an inconsequential one. Similarly most of the men, even those seeking the most perverse of fantasies, are not interested in recruiting escorts for rl. More men want me to be a real life girlfriend, than be a real life call girl.

However, this rumbling undercurrent can intrude like a shock, when a conversation with a colleague turns to her experience of incest, when a client or potential client makes it clear that he isn't really interested in an sl escort, but only in the potential to take control of my rl.

The direct sex industry on second life is a fragile ecosystem. I am at pains to remind people that most of the sex that goes on in association with second life is not in the direct sex industry, but arises out of relationships. Escorting and orgy rooms are visible, because they have to be, they are not the middle range of expression of sexuality, nor the permanent one for most people. Thus it is not enough to "report" someone, because it is easy enough to slither away having been "mis read," and then to turn and reek revenge on the escort who was foolish enough to say anything.

This delicacy comes ut of the fundamental unfairness of the escorting reality. There is not enough work on second life for everyone who wants to work here. In fact, I would estimate that more than half of the active population of second life is here to learn this technology, and to build and grow with it, rather than to directly and immediately make money in second life. My own path is not abnormal: escort to get the basic capital and connections to try and spread wings and fly. Whether it works in my case I don't know. But if it does, I am not the first.

I publish this now as both a warning to those who work in the darker regions of the sl sex world, to be very careful about exposure of your rl, because the tactic is to get something which could be used to compromise your rl, and as a beginning of the exploration of how the aftershocks of rl trauma play themselves out in second life.

There are some stories, and it is time for me to tell some of them.