Excerpt from Thriving in Sex Work: Sex Work and Money, a personal finance guide for sex workers, available now, wherever paperbacks and ebooks are sold.
Author’s Foreword:
Sex Work in the Time of COVID-19
I first sat down to write Thriving in Sex Work: Sex Work and Money in mid-December 2016 with the aim of advising established sex workers on how to treat sex work as a business and achieve long-term financial stability. On March 9, 2020, I sent off the completed manuscript to my copyeditor, exhausted but exhilarated, proud of my accomplishment and excited to launch my book in a few short months.
In a few short days, I watched the world fall apart. The global economy devastated, a new era of social distancing dislocating or eliminating huge swathes of the adult industry for the foreseeable future. Despair and panic palpable in the air.
Throughout history, people have turned to erotic labor in times of crisis: we do what we must in order to survive. But we’ve never seen anything like the coronavirus pandemic before, shuttering strip clubs and quarantining clients against a backdrop of millions of newly unemployed. The epidemic forced me to reevaluate: What comfort can I offer struggling sex workers facing the prospect of no work? Or those stepping into this work for the very first time? Can this book possibly stand up to this moment? There are no simple answers to these questions, and you, Sexy Reader, will be the ultimate judge.
The process of writing Sex Work and Money was very much an exercise in looking back over my life from my relative comfort in middle age, gleaning wisdom from both my sex work successes and mistakes. The pandemic realigned my perspective, jolting me back to my newbie days, reminding me how it felt to be starting out fresh, panicked, and in deep, deep trouble.
As luck would have it, I, too, more than once, started in sex work when it seemed like the world was falling apart. I began stripping in San Francisco at 22 years old in January 1990, as the economy was teetering on the ragged edge of the Papa Bush recession and, closer to home, ten weeks after the Loma Prieta earthquake. The Bay Area was in shock, its collapsed buildings and buckled streets proof of just how suddenly death could strike any one of us.
I launched my career in full-service sex work in 1992 during the height of the AIDS crisis, when a diagnosis was a death sentence. At that time, HIV was a savage, cunning virus for which there was no cure. Daring to be sexual risked an onslaught of brutal symptoms followed by an excruciating death.
Throughout my late twenties, there were years when my wife and I sold our plasma, recycled aluminum cans for cash, and scrounged through the sofa cushions looking for coins to put gas in the car. Late in the summer of 2001, reeling from divorce and bankruptcy, I landed back in San Francisco with a plan to return to escorting to get my financial house in order. Then 9/11 hit. We were at war with a faceless enemy, someone was sending anthrax through the mail, the economy was in free fall. Signing a six-month lease on an incall apartment to move in on the first of October, I remember wondering if there was even going to be a sex industry in six months.
Of course there was. After each cataclysm, once the initial horror and disbelief passed, demand roared back fiercer than ever. Throughout history, no matter the carnage, human beings emerge from their fear-crouches horny as fuck. That urge—for pleasure, connection, arousal, renewal in the face of catastrophe—defines us as a species.
I don’t share my stories to trivialize anyone’s suffering in this current uncertainty, nor even to suggest things always work out. There is simply no way to know right now what the long-term consequences of this disease will be on human health, on the economy, on the sex industry. And of course, I can’t predict all the ways this moment might impact you personally, Sexy Reader.
My point is that more than once I’ve stepped into the erotic marketplace when there was no guarantee of survival, let alone success. I’ve known the terror of having no idea what the coming weeks and months might bring, staring down the barrel of total financial ruin, or worse. As I reread Sex Work and Money through the eyes of my scared younger self, although it wasn’t intended to be a crisis manual, I believe many chapters of this book can help those in immediate need. Its core themes—financial confidence and competence—still hold, and sound money advice is more important than ever.
If You’re In Crisis...
First, head over to my website at LolaDavina.com/covid19-crisis-resources. I keep a live list of international sex worker mutual aid funds, advice on how to transition to online sex work, online by-and-for sex worker support groups, harm reduction strategies, mental health resources, and more.
As for this book, start with the three tools section on Positivity, Body Scans, and Self-Compassion in Part One. Take them to heart; keep them by your side. The ability to self-soothe, regulate anxiety, detach from distractions and externalities, to practice gratitude, self-care, and self-love—these tools are free and can be beneficial to anyone regardless of their circumstances.
This may or may not be the best time for a deep exploration of your money demons. Feel free to jump ahead to the practical advice in Part Two, especially the chapters on Having, Banking, Earning, Budgeting, Spending, and Borrowing. Take a look at the interpersonal chapters on Giving, Sharing, and Commingling; Loaning; Advising and Consulting; and Donating. Check out the Ask a Pro offerings in the Appendix on setting up Diversification and Passive Income Streams, Internet Security, and Combatting Online Piracy, and the rest, to see if their advice is pertinent to you now. Know that the rest of this book will be here for you later when the world feels more settled, and you have the bandwidth for emotional excavation and setting long-term goals.
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Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl wrote, “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except for one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” I would change out one word of that assertion: “freedom” for “capacity.” Because we all have choices, but they aren’t the same for everyone, and they aren’t unlimited. The world dictates just how free any one of us might ever be.
But capacity is an inside job. No matter who we are, no matter our circumstances, each and every one of us can build resiliency and cultivate equanimity. Even as the world crumbles as it does from time to time, we put one foot in front of the other, just as so many sex workers who have gone before us, by doing what we can, what we must.
Lola Davina
April 9, 2020