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Support Hos: Breaking Bad’s Wendy

Wendy starts her run on AMC’s Breaking Bad playing the lead in a live scared-straight PSA. Hank Schrader, the loudmouth DEA agent, pulls up to her motel’s parking lot while she’s grabbing a root beer from the vending machine. He’s got his nephew in tow, and it’s pretty clear what show he wants to see: the junkie hooker whose life is so godawful that Walt Junior will be terrified right off the gateway drugs.

Hank’s an asshole. He calls Wendy “princess.” “Don’t make me get out of this car,” he hollers out the window, in a tone that would make me and my touchy indoor pride and nervous indoor instincts bolt the other way. But Wendy’s not what you’d expect, and she’s barely what Hank’s expecting, either. She wanders over, apathetic but dutiful. She pegs him straight away as a cop, then as a cop who wants to buy pot, then as a cop who wants to buy pot and have her blow the teenager in the car with him. She’s pretty okay with all of those things, except the teenager part, and checks to see if she can instead score some weed off of him. She barely answers any of his leading questions and eventually Hank gives up and dismisses her. She saunters away, unfazed.

The problem for Hank, whose dickhead ways give voice to an anti-sex-work public, is that Wendy isn’t scary. Nothing about the whole scene is scary, except maybe her gruesome teeth. The scene illustrates the gulf between public perception of the horrors of sex work (and drug use) and the banal realities of both choices. After the conversation, when Hank turns to Walt Junior and says, “So, what do you think?” Walt Junior, bless his heart, gives voice to a kindlier, dudelier, segment of the public, and just grins: “Cool.”

The Girlfriend Experience (2016)

Christine (Riley Keogh) and Avery (Kate Lyn Sheil).
Christine (Riley Keough) and Avery (Kate Lyn Sheil).

I didn’t quite know what to expect from Starz’ new escorting drama,The Girlfriend Experience. After seeing the network’s Flesh and Bone (the story of a ballet dancer moonlighting as a stripper and being terrible at it), I had no doubt it would be very dramatic, rather too serious, and visually appealing. After all, as far as visuals go, Riley Keough as The Girlfriend Experience’s protagonist, Christine Reade, has it all—she’s white, she’s skinny, her features are pleasingly symmetrical, and her hair is reminiscent of Kate Middleton’s.

Christine Reade, the law student heroine with the hidden depths, enters our lives walking down a hotel corridor in the first shot of The Girlfriend Experience’s first episode. We see her from behind—sensible hair, sensible clothes. But the dim lights and the plush carpet she’s walking on are promising that some kind of salacious scene is imminent. Not yet though, not yet. Christine is on her way to meet her friend Avery, who has been left alone in a swanky hotel room where she’s determined to rack up the room service bill of her life.

It’s pretty obvious that Avery is going to be the one to introduce Christine to the good life of middle-aged men, money, and endless room service. (Well, not that last one, maybe, since I doubt many clients would enjoy receiving a room service bill that could cover the down payment on a new car.) Avery’s got a benefactor, a booking agent, and a taste for expensive booze. Christine, on the other hand, has drive, loose morals, and student loans. She ends up going on a double date with Avery, her sugar daddy, and a friend of his.

She is offered an envelope full of money just for being young, beautiful and willing to make tedious small talk with a balding stranger. Will she or won’t she? It’s an age old question, comparable to the moment of downfall in Shakespearean plays. In itself, taking the money is a small thing, but society’s judgment of us weighs so heavy that once you take the cash, you’re a whore, and you will remain a whore until you are dead and buried—and long after that sometimes. It’s the beginning of a chain reaction, and it hardly ever ends well—at least, not on TV.

So, in a tasteful restaurant’s bathroom (real towels!!!), Christine takes the cash and the show really shifts into gear. The booking agent, Jacqueline, is introduced. If you know one, you know them all. She’s almost a carbon copy of Secret Diary of a Call Girl’s Stephanie. She likes cash, nice restaurants, and cash, in that order. What she decidedly doesn’t like is uppity girls. Now, Christine has drive, as I mentioned. “Why should I give you thirty percent”, she asks and we want to know, too. She really shouldn’t give it to her, as it turns out. Jacqueline is sort of the Evil Queen of The Girlfriend Experience escorting world, and surprisingly unprofessional.

Top 10 Anti-Sex Work Billboards

Have you heard that SWAAY has an Epic Step campaign to create the first sex workers’ rights billboard in America? Epic Step is like the Kickstarter of billboards, so they need your donations in order to make this happen. Just look at how many anti-sex work billboards there are.

10. I feel like twitter is to blame for anything starting with “Dear,” including “Dear John” billboards in and surrounding Chicago, IL. “Dear Starbucks,” “Dear Netflix,” “Dear rain,” “Dear Man Soliciting Sex, We’re watching you in your sleep. Love, Chicago PD.”

photo by Chuck Berman via Chicago Tribune

My Sex Work Bucket List: Johanna

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Marilyn in a publicity still for “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953). This is my actual money counting face.

Before I became a hooker I was broke and kind of miserable, and while I’ve been both of those things since then as well, sex work has become a central and fulfilling part of my life. As a certified crazy person, whoring is a viable option for me where other more structured employment isn’t, and the connections it offers me with other sex workers are incredibly enriching. Even when I hate turning tricks it’s hard to imagine what a life without it would look like. All the same, one day I’m bound to move on. These are the things I’d like to squeeze in (hurr hurr)  before then.

1) Be really expensive.

I’m not snobby. I’ve done different kinds of sex work, and provided different styles of service for different amounts of money, and I feel fine about all of those. But in New Zealand, where I cut my teeth, even doing “high class” GFE-style escorting meant earning the same amount that I can earn in Australia for a basic no extras session in your average brothel. Before I quit, I’d like to be a bona-fide high-end call girl (in a country where men actually want to spend real money). I want the satisfaction of building my brand, I want the (perceived) glamour, and I want the bragging rights. I’m aware this is more than a little problematic, but I’m okay with that. Also, I really like money.

2) Maintain a genuinely lucrative sugar baby/daddy relationship Convince a man on a sugar dating site to buy me a pug.

I don’t know why I’m obsessed with (the idea of) sugar dating. I have plenty of evidence that escorting works well for me, and plenty of evidence that sugar dating is an infuriating waste of my time, but for some reason it’s the dream that just won’t die.

602 Imaginary Prostitutes Were Arrested in Alaska Three Years Ago

(Screenshot of "Alaska State Troopers, VIce Squad"—a cop wipes a arrestee's hand after she's touched an undercover officer)
(Screenshot of Alaska State Troopers, Season 2, Episode 12: “Vice Squad”—a cop wipes an arrestee’s hand after she’s touched an undercover officer)

In the FBI’s 2013 Uniform Crime Report, released in November 2014, Alaska reported 648 prostitution arrests: 1 juvenile and 647 adults. This number is up from 38 arrests in 2012 and 69 in 2011. How could prostitution arrests have jumped so much in just one year?

They didn’t. Alaska maintains a report entitled Crime In Alaska, based on the same numbers that are submitted to the FBI for the Uniform Crime Report. In Crime In Alaska 2013, released in 2014, the state reports only 46 prostitution arrests in 2013: 22 sellers and 24 buyers of sex. This number seems correct: the Anchorage Police Department reported 41 prostitution arrests, and the state made five prostitution charges in 2013. Stephen Fischer, an FBI spokesman, explained that the issue was caused by “an error for entering data.”

Just what kind of trouble can 602 imaginary prostitutes created by a typo by the FBI cause?