Sex Worker Fail!
If failing in a career means never making any money from it, I am the world’s Numero Uno Failure Extraordinaire. I’ve been a belly dancer (and belly dance teacher), a cabaret performer, a stand-up comedian, an actor, a playwright, a theatre director, a screenwriter, an ESL teacher, a novelist, a short story writer, a teacher of creative writing, an illustrator, a fine artist, a cartoonist, a journalist, a theatre and film reviewer … All things I like doing. Some of them I still do. But I’ve never been able to make a living out of any of them. Then there are all the jobs I’ve been sacked from - silver service waitress, tea lady, kitchen hand, hotel cleaner, market researcher, barmaid, sandwich maker, dish-pig, optical dispensary sorter, video packager/sorter…(Things I don’t like doing.) My most spectacular career fail, however, is sex worker. A failed sex worker??? How can anyone fail at that, you ask? Read on …
Some years ago I thought it would be a good idea to become a bondage mistress, a dominatrix. How glamorous would that be? You didn’t have to shag with anyone, just smack their arse and boss them round a bit. Easy, or so I thought. I pictured myself strutting around in a black leather cat-suit with thigh high stiletto boots, riding crop in hand, blindfolded slave on all fours at my feet awaiting my command. I also imagined doing this in very luxurious surroundings. Sadly, it wasn’t quite like that. I went to work as an apprentice mistress at a bondage parlour in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. The establishment’s interior was what you’d call ‘tired’, ‘shabby’ if you want to be unkind. This was back in the days when everyone smoked indoors. The mistresses all smoked, the clients all smoked, everyone smoked but me. I’d not that long ago given up, and, as you’ll know if you’ve been through it yourself, I was now particularly sensitive to cigarette smoke. After the first night I woke up with a cough that quickly turned into a lung infection. Not the best start.
The next night the parlour owner, a tall blonde Nordic goddess type, needed to discipline one of the house slaves (there to carry out any chores that needed doing in return for free correction) for not washing the dishes thoroughly. I expected she’d make him bend over and would strap him (thwack!) or cane him (swish!) but no, she merely picked up a plank of untreated four-by-two timber and whacked him round the thighs with it. Elegant? Not terribly. I was in training with a young woman, a bossy girl calling herself Mistress Michelle, and another of the house slaves who taught me how to do basic knots. Some of the knots I remembered learning in primary school, reef knots, slip knots, half hitches and the like. Finally I got my own a client, a man who wanted me to tie him up, lock him in a cage and apply nipple clamps. It took him less than three minutes to escape my bondage knots. Then I apologised for hurting him with the nipple clamps. He glared at me and muttered through gritted teeth: “Don’t. Say. ‘Sorry.’” I expect he demanded his money back on his way out. I was a rubbish mistress; too soft, and I didn’t like inflicting pain. Given that pain was what clients were paying for, this was a problem. “You’re not a dominatrix; you’re a submissive,” Mistress Michelle informed me.
On my last night a young man wanted a school mistress scenario. I was thinking I’d play at being the sexy teacher in stockings and suspenders with a long black cape and fringed mortar board over a corset, but no. This guy wanted me in a bulky tweedy beige suit, clompy lace-up shoes, support stockings, oversize eighties-style tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles and the most unfashionable middle-aged pale brown wig you can imagine. I reminded myself of frumpy Miss Voller from high school, the one whose fiancé died in the war. If that wasn’t dismal enough, the client insisted on making a video of the proceedings. The least glamorous twenty minutes of my entire life was captured on VHS, and is no doubt still tucked away in a box in a garage somewhere in suburban Melbourne. My only consolation is that I'm probably unrecognisable. Bondage Mistress turned out not to be the career I dreamed of. Domination isn't my forte. Tried it once; it didn’t like me...