I’ve been working for myself for about a month and a half now (goodbye, 9-5 life!) and I’ve been blessed to stumble across Carol Queen, a sex worker who wrote Real, Live, Nude Girl in 1995.

For my clients and folks who are interested in meeting me, these quotes help explain the connection I have to my work, and to you all.

“I came to believe that the men who were my Clients- mostly ‘yuppies and their dads,’ as I usually describe them- were paying for sex not because they couldn’t get it any other way… When a client comes to me, he brings need of a kind he often cannot articulate. His need for acceptance and nurturance is intermingled with erotic longing. At first, I was surprised to open the door to men I had never met before and find that they were already erect, but now I see this as a body-understanding on the client’s part that his desire will be accepted and affirmed. He does not feel desire for a particular person, but the sort of desire, I am certain, that ardent worshipers brought to the temples, desire to connect, to know eroticism as powerful and good.”

“It is a core sex-negative belief that one loses one’s power when in a state of intense arousal: Arousal is seen as positively dangerous. Our mothers warn us against it, televangelists tearfully apologize when they’re caught in it, the notion of ‘sex addition’ has been devised to enforce and profit from it, and ordinary people describe experiencing it with phrases like ‘I felt out of control.’ All of this is rubbish. The belief that sex weakens a person’s morality is dangerous; it is a Christian chimera, a social fiction with a hard edge of social control. This existential sucker-punch leaves us unprepared to make sensible decisions, to respect ourselves and the people we have sex with, and to assert our needs.”

“As a naughty little grown-up, I declare that pleasure is for my own good.”

– Carol Queen, Real, Live, Nude Girl (1995)

Desire, arousal, and lust are all valid parts of our human experience. I feel that men’s sexuality is demonized as inherently oppressive, and somehow at fault for things like rape and assault. In the absence of consent, unfortunately these violations do occur (I have experienced it myself). But I have found through my work that a man, exploring his sexual desires in a safe space, is a fountain of life force that is not only beautiful, but natural and good.

It saddens me to see how sex-negative and erotophobic society can be – despite the fact that sex as integral to life as food and water! I feel the specialness of being in a space with a gentleman where sexual expression is not only expected, it is guaranteed. I feel the chains of society’s bindings loosening in my own mind and in my body, and we melt together in perfect harmony.

I hope that the folks who read this feel empowered in their own sexuality, no matter how it presents itself and what forms it may take, and to know that it is a signal of one’s humanity to be a sexual creature. ❤

XOXO,
Lola