By Salomé St. Maries
Featured image: Midori, InVocation, installation view. Photo by Jonna Algarin Mojica courtesy of Sex Worker Pop-Up.
I recently wrote a piece for Salty Magazine about my personal experiences as a sex worker, and when Creatrix asked to repost it, curated with fine art (as is their custom), I loved the idea.
In researching historical works that feature sex workers, we found a lot of wonderful pieces that venerate their subjects. Despite the fact that I appreciate the tone of reverence, I can’t get past the fact that nearly every historical depiction of sex workers in fine art is from the perspective of (say it with me) the male gaze.
But luckily, we live in a time where we have the opportunity to write our own stories, and to gaze lovingly at one another, seeing each other as only we can. I’m sure Toulouse Lautrec and Degas were cute and all, well-liked regulars perhaps… but they were only ever clients, and they were only ever getting part of the story.
I was reminded of the early part of 2020, when my wife and I created a Salon of Sluts. We began facilitating gatherings of Sex Workers that we called [jokingly, until it stuck] the Ladies’ Rub Club. It was one part Business Conference and one part Slumber Party, and most gatherings ended with bodywork skill-share and exchange. All of us in our skivvies, oiled up and receiving therapeutic touch from one another on the silky jewel toned bed-rolls that Heather and I had spread out on the parlor floor.
Something very magical was happening at those meetings. So many of us who do this work, do it in the shadows. Even if we’re “out” to friends and family, finding other workers with whom we can commune and really be seen may be rare and precious.
Rub Club was a totally safe space, co-created by the integrity and the discretion of all who came to the meetings. We held space for one another’s experiences, we shared safety tips and communication tune-ups, we made each other roll over laughing with work tales.
In anthropology the concept of “shared substance” is what defines kinship. It varies across cultures. For us, our shared substance was the work, and our shared experiences. With every meeting we were becoming closer, and soon, we were probably going to take over the world.
For the first time, Heather and I had planned a field trip. We would meet everyone in the West Village on a Friday night, and go all together to support our CUMrades, the artists of The Sex Workers’ Pop-Up. And before then, she and I would have our artist date, by microdosing together at a Museum.
Stoned and gleeful, Heather and I emerged from the subway tunnel that day into the bright noon light. It was Friday March 13, 2020, and as we shuffled arm in arm towards the Whitney, I remarked that it almost felt like Spring.
“This is only Fool’s Spring” she teased.
“Then I am a fool!” I called, and skipped ahead, my jacket open.
It had been a long, cold season, but we were finally starting to emerge from our winter cocoon. We had our own art show coming up, and we were so excited about the community we had started to build.
I often looked back on that night in the months that followed, and cried with gratitude at the romance, the [what now seems like] reckless abandon with which we took to the night.
After the Whitney, we met up with the Rub Club in Washington Square Park, as planned. We became a gaggle of beauties in faux-fur coats, cackling. Sharing spliffs and flasks, kissing one another on the cheek and taking up the whole sidewalk on our way to the show. We stopped for falafel, everyone taking bites of each other’s meals, and afterwards, we all tried on one another’s red lipsticks. These actions would be unthinkable now, but then we had no idea what was coming.
The show was amazing. It brought us all to tears.
We didn’t know it then, of course, but that was our last night out for what would be the entire next year. The Sex Workers’ Pop-Up was scheduled to run March 10-16, but I believe that we caught it on the last night it was open. By that Sunday, March 15, all public establishments in New York City had closed, and we were in the first phases of the lockdowns that would shape our year to come.
I don’t need to go into how deeply the pandemic affected us all, because it affected us all. In the shuffle and confusion of 2020, of course the Rub Club fell out of touch, and of course the Sex Workers’ Pop-Up didn’t receive the attention that it deserved.
So I write this now to say, thank you to the artists and curators of the Sex Workers’ Pop-Up. It moved me and my community, and it brought us together for a night of camaraderie that sustained me through the entire first year of the pandemic. Thank you for making your work, thank you for sharing your stories, thank you for your courage and your organization and your beauty. Thank you for willing to be vulnerable and visible, to create public spaces where sex workers can feel heard and seen. I am so grateful for art that is about sex work, by sex workers, and I literally can’t get enough.
Thank you to all sex workers who share your experiences. To all you workers who make art and build businesses, who are internet baddies sharing your stories in that way. Thank you to the SW meme-stresses and those who dive into critical theory and financial planning and explain it to the rest of us. I love you, I worship you, I am so grateful for you! You are mythical, you are legendary, and I want to know you!
As I have reflected on my own stories and my own experiences, I have realized that as a worker, my greatest asset has always been the friends that I made along the way. That’s how I met Heather, after all!
In those long months of isolation, I found myself yearning to create community in new ways. Since I have begun the journey of writing my stories about the industry, and have been given a platform, I would really love to feature imagery that is created by sex workers. If you want to share your art, please do not hesitate to reach out.
Let’s continue to curate spaces where we can view work that is by us, and for us. Thank you!
About the Author:
Salomé Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is an artist, a gentleman and a scholar, as well as a veteran member of the twerking class.
Photo Credits courtesy of ArtNet and the Sex Workers’ Pop-Up 2020
The Sex Workers’ Pop-Up took place in March of 2020 and featured the work of over 22 artists, including Midori, Jacq The Stripper, Kisha Bari, Daniela Pinheiro’s photographs from a Gabriela Leite DASPU show,Pluma Sumaq, and Molly Crabapple.
