motherly love pt 2

I remember the first time I found her old modeling photos. I was in total awe and shock that my mother, the raving, emotionally unstable, crazy bitch I grew up with actually used to look like this.

I made her hang up the photos on the wall, all of them. She was worried about looking vain to people that might come in the house, but I was insistent. I wanted to burn these images in the back of my mind forever. This was how I always wanted to remember my mother even though I never knew her like this.

Sometimes I feel like she’s the perfect example of how beautiful, talented women get ruined by the patriarchy. She was this beautiful flower that everyone seemed to try as hard as they could to crush. Now, she crushes herself and the saddest part about it, is how she tried so desperately hard to pass it on to me.

~

We’re sitting in her living room and she keeps pestering me about what I’ve been doing for the past five years. How am I working? What am I doing to get by? I find out that her biker boyfriend had told her I was dancing, which was rather ironic since he tried to proposition me to have sex with him for $900 when I was 17  ( I was tempted, but I didn’t have the guts).

I take a chance and for once am completely honest with her. I decide to put my sex worker politics before my personal shit/agendas, “think global act local”, “the personal is political”.

I tell her that I was in porn, I tell her about dancing, I tell her about web-camming and phone sex, my blog and escorting. By the end she’s in tears. This was not the reaction I was looking for. Somehow I was hoping I could show her how to be empowered or something. I wanted to tell her about the sacred prostitutes and sex magick and power.

I ask her why she’s crying,

“I’m worried.”

“About what?”

“HIV, AIDS, herpes, hepatitis!” She blurts out in between sobs. I roll my eyes, she thinks just like everyone else. I explain to her about the STD testing in porn and how its the industry standard to be tested every thirty days and how that in escorting I use the safest of safe sex practices with clients until I get to know them better.

“You can give a blowjob with a condom?” She asks incredulously. I just nod my head. How strange, a daughter teaching sex ed to her mother.

“But what about safety? How do you know these guys?” I tell her about screening practices and provider references, how I ask for photos and how I never do anything that I’m not %100 comfortable doing.

She couldn’t believe that I advertise on the internet, she thought most women still walked the streets, like she did when she decided to try it out when she was in her 20′s. She was busted the first night and the cops made a deal with her, she wouldn’t get in trouble if they could use her as a decoy. She agreed and that night they told her to walk up and down the streets, they would be waiting in their cars. They never told her what she was a decoy for or why or what to expect. So she stands there for a while, then she decides to walk to the corner and back. When she turns around she sees a man in a trench coat coming at her with a knife. She runs to the officers car, frantic and scared while they jump out and arrest the guy. This is how law enforcement keeps sex workers safe, by using them as decoys for murderous men, how nice.

~

This is becoming a tangled issue, the more I write about it the more it seems to get complex. These are practice posts, unfinished and scattered ideas. In other words there will probably be a part three. Keep reading if you want, but if the content is getting too heavy, just skip anything titled motherly love.

Be Sociable, Share!

•