rants and pants

A friend send me this link to a rant by an rl sex worker. I'm not going to comment on somethings, except to say that 500 USD would not get me to do what she does irl. The risks are too high. Far be it for me to call her stupid, she's making a lot more than I am.

But in one respect we are the same. Someone asked me why I keep escorting. It is simple: it is 80 to 120 USD a week, and at this point I don't have to work at it. One early week in sl, I was dancing or escorting for 70 hours. I cleared 21K between one thing and another. That's 300L an hour, or about $1.25. Last week I made about the same amount escorting. I put in less than 8 hours, or over 3K per hour on average of my time. That's 12 USD/hr. And yes I will be declaring both the income, and the expenses, on my taxes. It will about cancel out. That's money that almost happens. I would love to stop, but it is still more than legitimate people are willing to pay me much of the time for legitimate services. Say what you will about my clients, they pay here and now, and are never "well maybe you will make money from someone else some day." Even the worst of them understands my tier bill is not due someday.

The other part that struck me about the rant though was something that came up with an rl sex worker I've spoken to. Every escort has a thing that he or she is selling, and they want to do the minimum to get it. For this prostitute, and that is the correct word, she says it up front: she provides a hole to masturbate into. SL sex can be providing fodder for masturbation, but it can also be something that she does not provide what is called "the Girl Friend Experience" or GFE.

In SL, however, the GFE is exactly what escorts end up providing to regulars. It is precisely what they are missing in their lives, even if married, and precisely what they can get most effectively. They are not paying for sl sex so much as they are paying for the perfect girlfriend: someone who will not get too angry when they behave like a complete jerk, who is in the mood for whatever they are in the mood for, and who does not ask the prying questions that a girlfriend wanting fidelity will ask.

The specific turn that made me lose sympathy for her was the part where she ranted about how men asked her what got her off, and then how much of the rest of the rant was in fact a list of physical turn offs and demands. She in fact does have certain things that make her love a client, as a client, and thing that turn her off. Again, I can't call someone who is making much more than I am exactly stupid, but I can say that she lacks a finesse. Instead what I do, and what she should do, is to package up the things that make her job easier as "turn ons" and get the man to perfrom. Or she should figure out what is his big claim to sex god fame, and get him to do that. He will come faster and come back sooner.

But in the end I come back to the thing that this anonymous rl sex worker and I share: and that is that the economic priority for what the world is willing to pay a young woman for, is to be a warm orifice and target for abuse. It says something ugly about the world, and it is something that I have had confirmed in a professional context in second life rather recently. That thing is that as a society we have come to have a contempt for the law, for decency, for ourselves, and for everything that makes civilization worth having. I include myself, I've surrendered to this and pander to it, and I am sure I am racking up a karmic debt that will be ages to pay.

But here I am, and here it is, and there is nothing to change those facts. However, I must say, if I ever become that bitter, I'll stop, no matter how much I am being paid.