What do you like about your job? 

I like the freedom.  I like the money.  Mostly the freedom. 

Is there anything you don’t like about it? 

Well…and it’s hard, there’s a lot of pressure, to always be so happy and always be so perky because everyone just pounces on the tiniest little thing you say.  People just pounce.  You know, if I said that I was a waitress and I said, ‘Oh, you know this guy today really gave me a hard time.’ You’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, jobs suck,’ right?  But you can’t ever say anything negative because people just are all over that.  So there’s a lot of pressure to always be positive.  So having said that, yeah there’s a lot of shit I don’t like about my job.  My job fucking sucks.  It’s a job!  It’s a job and it’s a customer service job so it sucks even more.  You know, some of these people are really fucking annoying. 

And you have to like them. 

Yeah! 

Cause that’s part of your job. 

Yeah, and sometimes you’re so good at hiding how much they annoy you that they become regulars and you’re stuck with them! And you’re like, 'Oh!' 

Do you have a lot of regulars?

Yeah.  Entirely. 

Now, at this point, since you’ve been in it so long, do you have more regulars than you do new people? 

By far.  I haven’t advertised in almost two years. 

Do you find that better? 

It's much better; you don’t have to deal with somebody new.  It’s a huge pain in the ass.  And it’s an unknown quantity; you don’t know what’s going to happen.  And there’s some level of interest and excitement to that cause, hey, maybe they’ll be cool but it's just really stressful. 

Have you ever had anyone who you just couldn’t deal with and you had to go? 

I’ve never had anyone who was violent or scary, but there have been a handful of times where I thought, ‘Oh god, you ain’t paying me enough! You are too annoying and you’re just, no, I’m done.'  But that’s only happened a few times. 

How about relationships?  So, since you’ve been a sex worker, how’s that gone for you? 

(Laughs)…Well, I have been married and now divorced since being a sex worker.  So, on the one hand, not well but, on the other hand, so has everybody else.  You know, the divorce rate is 15% so plenty of non-sex workers are getting divorced too.  I do not feel, and he agrees with me, that my job was a component of our divorce.  I was a sex worker when we met. 

Did he know that? 

Yeah. 

And that was fine?  And, again, that would be a personality trait on his part? 

It was fine and obviously people always seem to think that’s weird but if it hadn’t have been fine I wouldn’t have been with this guy, so, if someone isn’t fine with it then they’re not the person for you. And it’s not just about if they’re okay with sex work it’s about their morality. Why would you be with someone who does not share your morality? So if someone isn’t fine with it, even if I were to quit sex work tomorrow, if I met someone who was not fine with it why would I want to be with that guy?  We don’t have the same moral values.  You know I’m not going to be with a Christian either, you know, why would you want to be with someone who doesn’t have the same moral beliefs that you do? So, even if I wasn’t actively working, I still wouldn’t want to be with someone who did not accept sex work.  Now, I understand it’s a little bit more difficult to accept that I’m actively working but I don’t think it’s so much for the person who where it would be about morality or about the sex is wrong.  He’s not the right person. Screw that.  I don’t believe in that crap, that’s stupid.  But for someone who would say, ‘This is not a stable lifestyle, or you know there’s inherent risk here, or I want you to have a job that I can tell my parents about,’ that’s different.  There are other disadvantages. 

Now, is time an issue?  Balancing time, did that become an issue? 

Well, it is an issue especially, there’s always that.  Because you know that if you answer the phone you can make money. So, am I really going to stay home tonight? On the 1 in 5 chance that someone will call and I will make money? Right? Well, fuck that.  No, I’m going to go out but [if you stay home] five days in a row your income just decreased.  So, it is difficult. On the one hand you have all this free time, but on the other hand you don’t really because you can’t make plans.  I have a lot of free time, but I don’t have a lot time in which I can say I can do stuff. You know what I mean?  I’ve often thought that it’s too bad that I’m not working on a graduate degree or something, you know, just because.