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I’m an ace. Who knew? I’d never even heard the expression before, but I suppose everything has a nickname these days. To put it more bluntly: I am asexual. It took me more than half my life to come to terms with the fact that I have no interest in having sex. I thought I was a freak of nature, a one-off, completely alone in the world. Now, I find there’s an entire community of people with a similar bent. But I have yet to share that secret—that “ace” up my sleeve—with the rest of the world.

I Didn’t Expect to Be Asexual

As a kindergartner, I was all about boys. Well, one boy in particular. Robby stole my peanut butter sandwich the first day and stole my heart. He had thick, auburn hair, glistening green eyes, dimples and a cocky smile. What’s not to love? I had a crush on Robby for six years. You might even say I was a stalker, following him around the hallways like a puppy dog, turning up at his Little League games to cheer him on, even becoming a junior ambassador for UNICEF so I could go to his house and ask for donations. His older sister answered the door and revealed that Robby liked me in “that” way. I walked off five dollars richer and a whole lot happier. But by the time we received our diplomas, my passion for Robby was still unrequited—and what’s worse, he moved thousands of miles away. I never saw Robby again.Frankly, it was a relief entering middle school. There was a much wider pool of boys to set my sights on and, hopefully, one of them would actually return my affection. But a funny thing happened on my way to seventh grade: I lost interest in the opposite sex. In fact, I lost interest in sex, period. You’d think with the onset of puberty, my hormones would be raging. They were definitely raging for everyone else around me. Students were hooking up and breaking up on a never-ending merry-go-round, only I was on the outside, watching the carousel turn for all but me. Sure, I felt left out and longed to brag that I had a boyfriend like the rest of my classmates. I’d see them roaming the hallways holding hands and kissing in discreet nooks and thought, “Why not me?” But the thing is, I never wondered what it would feel like entwining my fingers with a guy’s or having his lips on mine. My first kiss came at the age of 16 on a summer teen tour. It happened in Israel, when we visited an army base and fraternized with the soldiers. For a reason I couldn’t fathom, the most handsome guy picked me out of all the girls in my group and started seriously flirting with me. His name was Jacob, and he was stunning. Dark hair, hazel eyes and a confident smile. It was as if my grade-school crush, Robby, had grown up and moved to the Holy Land. Jacob and I spent the evening chatting, and he walked me back to my hotel, a perfect gentleman. I was content to leave it there, having come away with bragging rights for landing the best-looking soldier in the entire regiment. But Jacob had other ideas. He took me in his arms and gave me a kiss. A big kiss. With tongue and all. Tongue? No one told me there’d be tongue. Was this something I was supposed to enjoy, the key to turning on my lackluster libido? If it was, I was in big trouble. All I could think of as Jacob did oral calisthenics inside my mouth was, “It’s getting really late, and we have to be up and out of the hotel by 7 a.m. tomorrow. Maybe I should pack tonight, so I can have an extra half hour to sleep in the morning.” Hardly the stuff of romance novels. I made a few excuses to Jacob about being on a strict curfew and headed to my room. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep that night as questions about my sexual disinterest ping-ponged in my brain. I returned home from that teen tour with an awareness of different cultures, and with a secret. I wanted to talk to somebody, anybody, about my situation, but fear of being ostracized kept me achingly quiet. I retreated to the confines of my room, where I read every book I could get my hands on about sex. And there were a lot of them. The Joy of Sex, Great Sex, Sex and the Single Girl, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. But for all the promises of telling me everything I wanted to know about sex, there wasn’t a single word about someone who had zero interest in sex.

No amount of stimulation or fantasizing could awaken my clitoris.

For a Moment, I Thought I Was Gay

By the time I graduated high school, I had never been on a date, much less gone to prom, and was voted by my classmates as “least likely to lose her virginity.” And damn it if I didn’t prove them right. College came and went, and I had entered the workforce with my hymen intact. Many a man offered to be my first, and while it was tempting to be like everyone else, I just didn’t have the drive. Even masturbation held no interest. I tried but felt absolutely nothing. No amount of stimulation or fantasizing could awaken my clitoris. Sleeping Beauty held nothing on me.Then the whispers started. “She’s never with a guy. She has to be gay.” I wondered: Was I gay? Did my head turn when an attractive woman walked down the street? Did I picture myself kissing any of my female friends, having their tongues in my mouth or between my legs? Umm…no. Definitely no. But, still, the rumors persisted. A part of me wished those rumors were true. At least then I wouldn’t feel like such a freak.

Finally, I could come out of the closet and proclaim my identity.

Finally Discovering My Asexual Identity

I thought about the letters LGBT: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. None of those applied to me. I had no community I could turn to, no pretty rainbow flag I could proudly fly. But then, LGBT took on another letter. “Q” for queer. OK, that’s better, but it still didn’t represent me. A year or two later, I saw “I” and “P” tacked on. “I” for intersex and “P” for pansexual. Nope. I was still an outcast. At this point, I gave up hoping there’d ever be a letter for me. Until one day, I happened upon a gay pride parade on the news. And, suddenly, they were talking about LGBTQIPA. Wait a minute. “A”? What did “A” stand for? Could it be…? I did a quick Google search, and there it was: “A” for asexual. I had a letter! And what’s more, there was a flag. A pretty black, gray, white and purple one! Finally, I could come out of the closet and proclaim my identity. I was about to put down $32.50 for my flag on Etsy when I saw there was a whole subsection of asexual flags. Dark green stripes, followed by light green, white, gray and black stripes for aromantics (someone who does not experience romantic attraction to anyone). Dark purple stripes, gray, light purple, grey, and dark purple stripes for gray-asexuals (people who sometimes experience attraction but have a low sex drive). Other variations included grey-romantics (people who can enjoy and desire sex but under limited circumstances). It went on and on. Seven more flags for seven more types of asexuals. Demisexual and demiromantic (experiences sexual/romantic attraction only after a bond is formed). Reciprosexual and recipromantic (does not experience sexual/romantic attraction for another person until they know that person is attracted to them). Akoisexual and akoiromantic (may experience sexual/romantic attraction but it fades if the attraction is reciprocated). And, finally, aceflux and aroflux (fluctuates between asexual and sexual or aromantic and romantic). Whew! I went from no representation to too much! Where did I fit on the spectrum?After a great deal of soul searching, I decided not to overanalyze it. I was asexual, or “ace” for short, and that was good enough for me. Over the course of my investigation, I learned that asexuality is a sexual orientation, just like bi, gay, lesbian and pan. I learned that love doesn’t equal sex. There are many happy relationships that don’t include sex. I still haven’t pulled that ace from my sleeve with friends and family. Old phobias die hard. But maybe if someone I know reads this, they may recognize me. And that’s a start.

It might be more interesting, more convenient even, if my entry into the world of OnlyFans and online sex work had a long and complicated backstory, but really it all started when the world began shutting down as COVID-19 quickly made its way around the world last spring. I had moved to New York only a month earlier, and suddenly I was unemployed and panicking as I tried to figure out how I’d keep myself afloat without a job. So, when my best friend started talking to me about her own recent foray into online sex work via OnlyFans, I made an account and began posting content—with only a minimum of hesitation. Of course, I had my anxieties about doing sex work so publicly, but not for the reasons you may imagine.

I Was a Natural Fit for OnlyFans

I’d already done some in-person sex work a year prior when I saw my first client, a former wrestler in his 60s who wanted to talk to me about organic farming and Burning Man. It was nerve-racking when I first showed up to our “date,” and even more nerve-racking when I had sex with him, but there was an undeniable excitement that I felt as well. It felt almost too easy, but after our first session, I never saw him again and decided to put a pause on sex work. As a performer, my online brand had always been linked to my openness regarding my sex life and sexuality. For years I’ve tweeted about my sex life in explicit detail, posted thirst traps on my Instagram with captions about my life that have let my followers know some of the most intimate things about me, and I’ve worked to keep my online persona that of an open book. When I began doing OnlyFans it just made sense that I would be open about this new part of my life online. What worried me was whether there was a market for me on OnlyFans. I had friends who were on it long before I started my own account, but none of them were trans. They were conventionally hot cis girls and cis gay guys, and beyond that, they were making hardcore porn with scene partners, something that I couldn’t do when I started my account during the beginning of lockdown. I knew from experience that trans women with penises often raked in money as sex workers, both in-person and online, but would anyone be interested in a trans woman with a vagina?Still, I decided to forge ahead, inspired by the success of my own friends and convinced that even if it would be difficult at first, I’d still find some way to break through on my own—with or without making hardcore porn, with or without being a cis person and with or without any experience making online pornographic content. Would anyone subscribe to my account? In my own misguided and insecure mind, I figured people would much rather see a cis girl make the same content on her OnlyFans, rather than spending the money on me. I would soon be proven wrong.

I would soon be proven wrong.

Starting My Amateur Porn Career Was Challenging—at First

The first few months of making content and promoting it on social media felt frustrating and, at times, embarrassing. I thought that I would have absolutely no issue with promoting my OnlyFans on Twitter because, like I said, my brand has always been linked to my lack of inhibitions, specifically related to my sexuality. But the stigma that comes with doing any kind of sex work quickly crept into my psyche. Suddenly I found myself feeling anxious about sending that tweet telling people to subscribe to the account. I had moments of anxiety regarding the very real fear of my content possibly being leaked on the internet, and my family and friends seeing videos of me masturbating on camera, doing stripteases in my bedroom and replacing scene partners with sex toys. On top of that, I was only averaging between 20 and 40 subscribers a month, while some of my friends were getting hundreds. I felt like I was doing something wrong, and at times I wanted to just throw in the towel. But that simply wasn’t an option. I needed to make money. I knew that if I just stuck with it, it would eventually grow into something worthwhile. (At least I hoped it would.) The shift kind of happened overnight. I woke up one day and decided that I wasn’t going to give in to the stigma that people put on sex workers, the one that tells us that we should hide in the dark while we do our job. Over time, I have found that the more open I am, and the more that I lean into the micro-identity of being a sex worker, the better I am at my job. And that leaves me feeling empowered. The more confident I got with marketing myself on social media, the more I was able to attract subscribers and make money.I’ve been on OnlyFans for a little over a year, and now I have over a hundred loyal subscribers. Like any job, there are days where I don’t feel like showing up, but there are even more days where I’m excited to log on, post my content and chat with the people who are also logging on to interact with me.

Helping people experience a release during this pandemic by putting my body online has been nothing short of magical.

I Get More Than Money From Being on OnlyFans

I love my body, and I love being a sexual person, so being able to share both of those parts of myself with people who are literally paying me to access that side of me makes me feel excited and celebrated. I love knowing that there are people I don’t know who are getting pleasure out of watching my content. And an even more gratifying part of the whole experience is that many of my subscribers were following me on Twitter long before I started OnlyFans. They’re there to see my naked body, but also because they loved my personality enough to want to see the rest of me. It’s almost humorous to say that sex work can feel wholesome, but my experience on OnlyFans really has felt that way. Helping people experience euphoria and a release during this pandemic by putting my body online has been nothing short of magical. The hardest part of being on OnlyFans hasn’t been trying to grow my account, it’s been the process of deciding how open I want to be about my life as a sex worker, walking the fine line of claiming my power without taking up space as someone who has layers of privilege that keep me more protected than a survival, street-based sex worker or a sex worker of color. I’ve had to accept that openly being a sex worker puts me in the line of fire of peoples’ judgments and stigmas, but as a transsexual woman I’m no stranger to that, and I’ve been able to use that as a way to lean into my life as a sex worker. At times it has felt scary being so open about the life I live and how I choose to make money, but since coming out to my family as a sex worker and feeling the love and warmth they approached me with after telling them, I’ve found it easier to do it unapologetically. After telling my grandmother during breakfast that I’m a sex worker, and her very casually validating my choice as an adult to make my money however I want, something radically shifted for me. I felt for the first time since starting sex work like I could actually take a breath. I got on OnlyFans during the height of the pandemic as a way to keep myself afloat after losing my job. It was initially just a way to survive, but the ship has long since sailed. The world is opening back up, and as my friends go back to the jobs they had before the pandemic began, I’ve been asking myself what I want my life to look like in this new normal. I know that I don’t want to live the way I used to, working an exploitative service industry job where I was treated poorly by customers, taken advantage of by my managers and run ragged trying to keep up in an industry that chews you up and spits you out.OnlyFans hasn’t just been a way to make money. It’s been a vehicle for me to reclaim my sexuality, a way for me to really and truly love my body and an opportunity for me to see what it’s like to run my own life and to make money on my own terms. I don’t see myself leaving OnlyFans anytime soon. In fact, I see myself doubling down on my commitment to this lifestyle where I feel empowered, safe and in charge of every aspect of my life.

On my first solo adventure to the United States, I met an American boy on the Los Angeles pier. Many hours later, when a drink had turned to several, we were on a lifeguard station in the middle of the night and ready to fulfill my ultimate California fantasy. That’s when I learned my American dream boy was saving himself for marriage. We kept in touch after I flew back to Europe and I learned he’d also quit watching pornography. Thus came my epiphany: If a beautiful, red-blooded man could renounce porn, why the hell couldn’t I?

If a beautiful, red-blooded man could renounce porn, why the hell couldn’t I?

I Pretended to Like Being Hairless

I had used porn since my late teens in an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’” gesture. Truth be told, I felt frustrated by how unrealistic it all was——the human form included. The women’s genitals were bare and smooth, not even a landing strip in sight, and as a result, I shaved religiously. Razor burn nor the agony of itchy regrowth were enough to stop me. No fresh razors around? No problem, a rusty one would do.In my teens, when my mother caught me in the nude, laughing at how I looked like a plucked chicken down there, I insisted I liked this. No, it wasn’t uncomfortable. I was afraid of being rejected at my most vulnerable.A decade later, I now understand that pornstars are hairless in order to give as clear a shot as possible of a penis thrusting in and out of a vagina. But at the time, I just thought hair equaled dirty. I asked my university boyfriend, who I loved with all my heart, whether he preferred bare or hairy girls. I’ll be honest: I expected him to say, “Whatever makes you most comfortable.” What he actually said was an unequivocal “shaven.”

I’ve Come to Appreciate My Pubic Hair

“All men watch porn,” society tells us, but none of those men seemed to be renouncing porn in protest of its beauty standards. So I figured hairlessness was what all men were into, whether they confessed it or not. There were times I really wanted to be physically intimate but, remembering I hadn’t shaved, would scuttle away to the bathroom or even hold off entirely.Fast-forward to my California comedown. I’ve been tempted to watch porn many times in the months following my trip, but the joy I feel without it always helps me resist. (I have reconnected with my imagination as well as experimenting with audio porn and just occasionally, when I really wanted that visual stimulation, browsed erotic artwork on Instagram.) Now, without anyone to compare myself to, I’ve also come to appreciate my pubic hair. I feel sad for that teenage girl who felt pressure to conform and am now in a place where I can question the merit of men who want me to look like a four-year-old child down below. Anyone who is worthy of me, surely, won’t prioritize their preferences over my pain and discomfort.

Anyone who is worthy of me, surely, won’t prioritize their preferences over my pain and discomfort.

Quitting Porn Helped Me Love and Admire Myself

I don’t begrudge women who choose to go hairless. Feeling fresher or prettier without hair won’t make you less of a feminist in my book. But, I hope women will take more time to consider the motives behind their choices.The way I regard my body has not been magically cured: I believe women still get an extremely raw deal on that front. I’m furious that I can’t read a magazine without being bombarded by size-zero models, fad diets and anti-aging creams. I’m furious about men who say, “Men age like wine while women age like milk.” I’m furious about my terror of turning 30. I’m furious that my body can’t expand, sag or wrinkle while mens’ are allowed to simply exist. The one thing I have been able to take from quitting pornography, though, is a newfound affection for my pubic hair. Without those pornified bodies to compare myself to, I can appreciate my hair—not as something unhygienic and ugly but as a symbol of femininity that should be celebrated. I now love to admire myself in the mirror and I love how soft it feels between my fingers; I pretend I’m a cute cave girl and remind myself that men were delighted to have sex long before the dawn of Bic razors. I won’t apologize for my choices and am all the sexier for it.

In recent days, the world has woken up anew to the ongoing violence between Israel and Palestine. If 2020 taught us something, it’s that unaddressed systemic issues that are continuously ignored will eventually erupt into collective consciousness. This moment is one of revelation surrounding the pain and trauma that the land and people carry across generations. Jerusalem has been in flames for some time now. A city that holds spiritual meaning to multiple faiths is a divided one, separating between the West and the East. This separation is far from equal. Palestinians live under militarized occupation with very little resources in East Jerusalem, while Israelis enjoy the luxuries of a capitalistic, well-tended city in West Jerusalem.

Suffering on all sides is incomprehensible.

I Feel a Sense of Isolation in My Community

I was born in Jerusalem and grew up with a deep love for the holiness of this land. I am Jewish and my family has been living here in Jerusalem since way before the creation of the State of Israel. The Jerusalem I know and love is a city of multi-faith connection and collaboration. But with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, this reality has become ruptured. Instead, Jewish supremacy is acclaimed and indoctrinated. On a land that has been my home for centuries, I find myself feeling a sense of isolation. The depiction of the struggle as “Arabs versus Jews” erases me and my history. I am not fully part of the Palestinian community because of the privileges I hold from my Jewish identity. Yet I am not fully part of the Jewish community, as I do not hold onto the narrative of Jewish supremacy over others. Being in this identity group, I am in perpetual grief over the violence done in the name of Judaism against Palestinians. When violence in Israel-Palestine erupts, it is simple to see it as a conflict between two peoples. Yet, the asymmetry in power challenges this framing. How can this be a conflict when one group is systematically denied basic human rights? Even though all who live here suffer when violence arises, the dynamics of oppression must be named and understood.

It’s Important to Understand the Context of Israeli Colonialism

The Israeli government has been provoking Palestinians for decades: Stealing land and evicting families from homes they’ve lived in for generations; denying their narrative and right to their history; and enabling anti-Palestinian violence with no consequence. And of course, the massacre of Gaza. When the international media starts reporting on recent events in the Holy Land, we must understand the backdrop of ongoing settler colonialism. From marches in Damascus Gate chanting “death to Arabs” to attacking protestors at Al-Aqsa, the Israeli side has initiated this latest round of violence. The forced evictions of families in Sheikh Jarrah began with Palestinians hosting peaceful iftars every night as an act of resistance. They were met with police violence. Moreover, Israeli settlers have been organizing marches across mixed cities with the goal of harming Palestinian people and businesses. There have been lynchings and acts of violence targeting civilians. Many Palestinians were scared to leave their homes and removed any identifying objects around their homes and cars because of this rising anti-Palestinian violence. This violence comes from Israeli civilians but is backed by the Israeli police, the IDF, the government and U.S. money. Even if Palestinians fight back, their fight is not a match to this level of institutional violence. Israelis have also been lynched and targeted during this time. Suffering on all sides is incomprehensible. And still, with the level of police brutality, militaristic force and state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians, the world outcry is valid.

It is only with Palestinian liberation that Jerusalem can return to herself as the multi-faith spiritual center of solidarity she is meant to be.

We Cannot Return to Normal and Enable Occupation Again

As someone who travels between both the Israeli and Palestinian communities, I see the levels of pain and trauma that this vicious cycle of violence creates for all people on this land. And still, the last couple of weeks here I have been more concerned with the safety of my Palestinian friends. Even though the experience of war is not pleasant for anyone, Israelis are largely protected and can carry on their normal lives even in the face of rockets. But who is protecting Palestinian people against the brutal and cruel militarized occupation?Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. Palestinians have a right to build a movement of resistance. In oppressor and oppressed dynamics, both identities suffer. Yet the oppressor has a layer of denial that doesn’t allow them to see the reality as it is. This denial represses their own pain and suffering as well as the reality of the oppressed. While many may want this ceasefire and a return to “normalcy,” this view does not allow for a recognition of the systemic issues that led to this moment. Normalcy is not acceptable because it enables occupation and colonization. The growing Palestinian resistance will not end with a simple “agree to disagree,” but with a demand for freedom and justice. It is only with Palestinian liberation that Jerusalem can return to herself as the multi-faith spiritual center of solidarity she is meant to be. As a Jewish person, I pray and fight for this reality to manifest.

I got a call from my homegirl. She asked if I was interested in making some extra money on the weekends. Her job was looking for a “phone girl.” I wasn’t interested. I was doing what I wanted—traveling internationally, making money, dancing all night and going to all the exclusive restaurants in Manhattan because I love to eat. What else could a young Black woman like me want? I was already living a “fuller” life than my family new to America. My homegirl agreed, but not before sharing that her boss thought “Black people were lazy and they steal.” Like the princess and the pea, I could not rest. Something inside me asked for the fight. Without thinking, I said, “You know, I think I will come in.” I went to the interview on a Saturday morning. The owner was a heavy-set woman, her teeth spaced due to rotting; her hair fine red and wild; her voice shrill, even in the lowest tones, from the packs of smokes she stored in her lungs and the deeply indulgent relationship she had with money and cocaine. I showed up with the same drip I did at my corporate workplace. The interview was simple—pick up the phone and make the caller want to buy. It was fun. I played with my voice, flirted, told stories and then determined how much I knew they would pay. At the end of the first call, the owner got on the phone and called someone and gave them the address I just took from the caller. Her $250 was now $500. Once the communication circuit was complete, she hired me. “Can you come in Saturday mornings?”

I Didn’t Realize What I Was Getting Myself Into

I worked and traveled for my corporate job and answered escort calls on the weekends. My entry to my new Saturday gig became ritual. I met the overnight phone girl each Saturday morning at a small office. She was probably in her 50s but looked older. She spoke with a fast mumble. Her hair was dyed black and greasy. Her lipstick always traveled off her lips and her scent revealed her lack of intimacy with water. I would get paper towels and alcohol then wipe down the cocaine residue that was all over the desk. Then I’d meticulously clean the speaker holes and creases of the phone that were filled with a greasy black substance, which smelled of villainous breath. As time went on, my excitement for the Saturday gig grew wildly. The personalities I encountered gave me a new interest and the petty concern about my hours from coworkers was drowned out. I would share stories over my work email with my best friend. It was my first corporate job and it never occurred to either of us that our emails were monitored. Eventually, we were called into human resources. My boss’s ice blue eyes full of tears, I was let go due to using work resources for personal circumstances. She rarely showed emotion. They wouldn’t say it. Walking out, I felt so free. I laughed. My best friend and I went to eat at our favorite restaurant. It ended up being perfect—it gave me a chance to expand my interest and more time with the other job. My best friend would visit me and I would send her away with hundreds of dollars just to be sure she was good while in-between jobs. I didn’t recognize what I was moving deeper into, and the responsibility that eventually came into awareness.

I Enjoyed It So Much I Started My Own Escort Service

With all my free time taking new lovers, I was staying out all night, covering charges on lunches and dinners and throwing yesterday’s clothes in the trash after treating department stores like a daily infinity closet. The women I worked with all had different looks, reasons why they did what they did, and shared unforgettable client stories on returning from a call. I learned a lot.The stories became relevant when we began to hear through the streets, and then in the news, that there was a Craigslist killer murdering solo, in-call sex workers. By this time, I’d left the owner, whose relationship with us shifted based on what money we brought each day. The women I worked with requested we continue together, so I opened an office and reworked the business model to fit the lifestyles we preferred. The phones would ring and I would be privy if they were law enforcement, a troublesome client or one who would pay just a bit extra to secure a hotel stay for one of the women new in town.

These murders continued and concern for the women I worked with grew.

How Experiencing Sex Worker Violence Changed My Perspective

While I did not advertise on Craigslist, the women I worked with knew the women who did. When I scheduled an in-call at a nearby midtown hotel for Jada, a Black woman, I had to describe her as “Brazilian” to close the deal, because racism echoes even into shadows of sexuality. She made enough so she could pay her car bill and cover the home where she and her grandmother lived. One evening after work, when the third-call rush began, I sent a client over to see her. She checked in but didn’t call to check out with me. I called to see if she was all right but I couldn’t get a hold of her. This was a moment that was new to me. I’ve never sent anyone a call that resulted in them not responding for any of the reasons you can imagine. I sent allies to check on the hotel room I’d arranged for her while still holding calls for other sex workers. I called everywhere, but she was just gone.Just as my imagination rolled to vastly dangerous proportions, Jada called. She was at the precinct. They took her in when they discovered a friend and sex worker had been murdered next door to her room. They did not check to see if she was alright or required anything, even while knowing her friend was murdered. They locked her up without tangible cause.

I called everywhere, but she was just gone.

Addressing Violence Against Sex Workers Requires Systemic Change

These murders continued and concern for the women I worked with grew. Law enforcement treats them without human consideration, medical practitioners have their judgments and clients remain quiet with the secrets they hold. It was that murderous jolt that gave me a primordial view of the gap sex workers bridge, holding space and release for a society of self-rejection. After months of being on edge and growing judgment for all who worked with me, the troubles continued with drugs, detectives sniffing around, and eventually my own loss of an internal compass. I made a decision to be on the side of resolving this social gap. I went cold turkey, founded a school on sexuality and began a new journey. These days, I spend my time teaching workshops, leading seminars and working one-on-one with clients to help them heal their toxic relationships with sexuality and their bodies. I conjure the universal power of orgasm and sex to unify people in a language we all speak. My time working in the escort service informs how I carry myself today, holding the sacredness of our sexuality alongside a dark, animal nature that can lead to violence and disease.

As a 14-year-old in the summer of 2001, I was the coolest kid on the planet—despite my frail, zitty six-foot-three and 135-pound frame, with thick glasses, severe seasonal allergies and hormones making everything substantially worse. I had just gone to basketball camp, where I met my first love, Polly, and we shared our first kiss next to the nacho cheese machine. After camp ended we kept in touch over AIM, made plans to spend a day together and then met up with some fellow kids from camp to see a movie. The day was nice, full of swimming and ice cream, standard pubescent pursuits. Then we headed to the movie theater to see the highly anticipated summer blockbuster, The Fast and the Furious. Now, if you are somehow unfamiliar with this cinema classic, it stars Paul Walker (rest in peace) and a young Vin Diesel as bad boys who race cars, flex, sweat and attempt to speak in a coherent manner. It’s sorta like if Mountain Dew was carbonated with toxic masculinity, committed to film.

My Camp Crush Unzipped My Pants

At the theater, we rendezvoused with our fellow vernal losers and barely got our seats due to the showing being completely sold out. No surprise there, who doesn’t want to see cool cars driven by hotties who can barely annunciate? Hell yeah. As the curtains opened and Vin Diesel showed off his big-ass arms, Polly suddenly put her hand on the crotch of my baggy skateboard shorts. This had never happened before. All of the blood in my body surged in one direction. I was absolutely beside myself with competing thoughts of excitement and all-encompassing anxiety: I’m in public, what if people see? Holy shit this is awesome. What if the kids from camp think? This is illegal, I’m going to jail. I’m going to die. What if she thinks my dick is weird? My dick is weird. I’m the fucking guy coolest guy in the world. (Next to Vin of course.)Much to my immense excitement and utter disbelief, Polly proceeded to remove my chaste penis from its billowy cage. She then leaned over the arm of the deep movie theater chair and put my penis in her mouth. What? Incredible. All of the aforementioned ecstasies and fears returned tenfold. My first blowjob! I’m going to jail! Vin looked at me through the screen and, with his thick thumb-like head and jacked arms, nodded in approval. Hell yeah! Kickflip. In the midst of all this befuddling glory, I looked to my left at a kid from camp who was staring at me. His eyes were wide open and his mouth fully ajar. Busted. I’m definitely going to jail. But Polly didn’t care—she didn’t even notice! She kept blowing while cars were racing. Kids were staring. My heart was pounding. And then I came.

I’m in public, what if people see? Holy shit this is awesome.

My Sexual Encounter Gripped Me With Excitement and Shame

When I say came I mean I ejaculated all over myself: face, torso and baggy skateboard shorts, all covered. I had never been shot with a confetti cannon by Rip Taylor or slimed on Nickelodeon, but I could imagine it felt like that, just with less Vin Diesel and semen. Polly remained somehow unscathed by the natural disaster that just occurred and looked at me smiling. Then she sat up, gave me a kiss on the lips and returned back into her seat to enjoy the incredible film. I looked to my left again and that damn kid from camp was still leering wide-eyed and open-mouthed, except now significantly more mortified. The reality set in: I was covered in jizz, my jizz. Kids from camp were staring, and my mom had to pick me up in who-knew-how-soon? It was my first glimpse into the darkness that occurs post-orgasm. What had I done? I ran to the bathroom and doused myself in sink water so that when my mother picked us up and asked why I was wet, “I spilled my soda” made sense.

I learned to love myself and to be proud of my kinks and sexual idiosyncrasies.

The Bad Connotations With Sex Have Faded Away

This has been one of my go-to stories since its inception. It’s funny, erotic, graphic, crude and from the adolescent period in one’s life when initial sexual encounters have a high probability of going wildly awry. As the years went on and I became more experienced sexually, understanding myself and my sexual being, this funny and nasty story revealed itself to be much more. It had deeply affected me and would take years to decode. My burgeoning relationship to sex and my own sexual body was connected to a serious sense of shame, guilt and risk-taking. Because it had been my first sexual encounter, one attached to shame and guilt, it triggered a maelstrom of positive and negative connections. That peeping kid from camp? His horrified face was now synonymous with sex. In my ensuing sexual encounters, I always wondered, “Am I bad? Am I disgusting? Is this wrong?” I thought sex in general, my sex, was something I should be ashamed of—a desire that I had enjoyed, just as I had enjoyed Vin’s cinematic performance. Explosive.With the help of therapy and trusting partners, the pejorative connotations to sex and my own sexuality changed or faded away. I learned to love myself and to be proud of my kinks and sexual idiosyncrasies. Nacho cheese machines and Vin Diesel included.

I only kissed one girl in junior high. I didn’t touch lips with another until my college girlfriend, at age 23, and I spent the entirety of that nine-month relationship hiding my erection, the true picture of chastity thanks to my conservative, midwest Christian upbringing. We would make out and roll around on the couch or her bed, but otherwise, I always watched where my hands went. Oh, how many times I had prayed for God to take away my sex drive until my wedding night when He could hand me back the keys and finally experience it with His blessing. Like friends in college, I started challenging and unraveling many of my religious beliefs. But the intimidation, fear and shame around sexuality were embedded way deeper in my emotional and psychic tapestry, and would take much longer to untangle.

I’d become a wonderful kisser, as that’s where the train ended each time.

I Decided I Wanted to Lose My V-Card

My university experience was pretty straight-edged and hyper-focused academically, so it wasn’t until graduating and moving to New York City that I finally started to explore partying. I would occasionally have the drunken courage to make out with women outside of bars or parties but never pushed it further than that.Around the age of 26 or 27, I finally felt like I’d untangled enough shame around sexuality to admit that I wanted to have sex. My life from then onward mirrored much of the plot of The 40-Year-Old-Virgin. My friends to whom I’d timidly revealed my inexperience tried desperately to figure out how or with whom they could help me turn in my v-card: a friend, a sex worker, etc. I’d never intentionally touched a breast in my life, least of all fondled any other unmentionables of a woman. Like Steve Carrell’s character, I didn’t touch women because I respected them so much. Since the destination of sex was never on the table, I’d become a wonderful kisser, as that’s where the train ended each time. But my agnostic prayers to a God who I wasn’t sure existed now focused more on how I could cross this seemingly insurmountable chasm.

I Met a French Sex-Ed Teacher

Then, I met an Obama fundraiser at a Lower East Side bar. Her accent betrayed her immigration status, but I soon found out she was Parisian and getting a Ph.D. in history at Columbia. Very French and very direct. We ignored the mutual friends that had invited us to the event, talking art and politics with each other, and found ourselves at another bar, huddled close in the corner booth. I kissed her outside. She bemoaned that she had to teach class in the morning and had a long taxi ride to Harlem. I invited her to crash at my place just a few blocks away and told her I’d be a gentleman. “But I can’t be a lady,” was her pained response. She put her number in my phone and said not to be like other American boys and wait three days to text. Call me tomorrow, “S’il te plaît.” Conflicting schedules frustrated any weekend rendezvous possibilities for the following weeks, we had multiple mid-week dates with each one ending in a make-out session at a bar or on the subway platform. Always with a graduate class to take or teach in the morning. Always vocal about wanting to come home with me, regardless. Her deliberate intention filled me with the confidence I needed. I start practicing putting on a condom. Memorizing all the steps: make out, fondle, undress, go down on her, penetration, try not to come too soon, experience God.I debated back and forth whether or not to reveal my lack of sexual experience, ultimately settling on not saying anything. The night finally arrived where she’d be able to stay over. I came home from work and, I kid you not, my roommate was watching The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I met her at a street corner and, walking arm in arm toward dinner, she revealed the subject of the class she was teaching: History of Human Sexuality. Mon Dieu.

The first time I’d ever directly touched a vagina was with my tongue.

She Guided Me Through My Sexual Awakening

We ended up at a wine bar in the East Village. I ordered round after round, lubricating my intimidation and postponing the inevitable with glass after glass of pinot noir. Finally, she said, let’s go home to yours. There we opened another bottle of wine, then started making out in the living room. I started following the steps: Fondle breasts, check. Remove bra, check. Find our way to the bedroom, check. Remove panties, check. Go down on her, check.The first time I’d ever directly touched a vagina was with my tongue. Hallelujah, I’m doing it! And she didn’t know. My fear that she would think I was a virgin was completely eradicated. But after maybe 10 minutes of licking her holy of holies, she pulled me back up face to face. Looking into the windows of my soul, she asked, “Are you a virgin?” I didn’t respond. She repeated, with her beautiful French accent. I stayed silent. Then she pushed me off of her. “Shut the fuck up! No way, no way. There is no possible way in hell that a beautiful 27-year-old man like you in New York City could possibly still be a virgin!” Her libertine, Parisian upbringing could not comprehend such a thing. “You’re a virgin.” Yes. “Do you want to have sex?” Yes. “Do you want your first time to be with me?” S’il te plaît. She beamed with pleasure at my response and proceeded to be the most gracious guide through the whole process. My fears of coming within the first 20 seconds didn’t end up being an issue. I didn’t come at all. She asked at the end if she could come. “Yes, absolutely,” I said and smiled with relief.

I discovered my kink early on, when I was around seven or eight. I was at a sleepover with friends or relatives, I can’t remember which. We were going to bed, and someone decided to play a cassette of a Batman audio story, because we were seven or eight and we loved Batman. The villain of the story was Catwoman, and her evil plot was to infect Bruce Wayne with mind-controlling catnip and force him to help her steal some jewels—not knowing that he’s really Batman! I only heard the story that one time, four decades ago, but I can still remember how he escaped by cutting his hand and using the pain to focus. I also remember that Catwoman told him, “You’ll stay in this cage and like it!” By that point he was mind-controlled, so his thoughts went from, “Pain…pain…pain,” to, “Nice cage.” At that point in my life, I didn’t know what catnip was, much less intercourse. But I knew that, whatever it involved, Bruce Wayne wasn’t the only one who had magic catnip feelings. I had seen enough Adam West Batman TV to know that Catwoman (either Newmar or Kitt) was sexy, which was appealing. But the real thing that was catnip wasn’t the sexiness, really. Nor was the idea of being Bruce especially appealing. I didn’t want to be in his shoes. I wanted to watch him changed.

I spent the next decade-plus trying to find other narratives that provided me with that particular painful pleasure.

Exploring My Fetish Through Erotic Mind-Control Fiction

And so, with a certain furtive confusion, I spent the next decade-plus trying to find other narratives that provided me with that particular painful pleasure. As an adolescent, I read a ton of science fiction and fantasy, some of which, it turned out, was written by people who had a thing for mind control: Piers Anthony, John Varley and particularly Jack L. Chalker, a frankly bad writer who banged out tales of body-swapping and sex slavery with a cheerful and revealing facility. I think I first masturbated to orgasm after reading a passage in a book from his Soul Rider books, set on a planet of reality-altering magicians who put their powers to improbable uses. One of his favorites was giving women penises in their mouths, so when they kissed other women they were essentially getting oral sex. Like futa porn, but mouths.(That wasn’t necessarily the part I found most appealing, though thinking about it now, I’m retroactively impressed. I’ve read a lot of erotic mind-control fiction at this point in my life, but Chalker’s forced-feminization-with-throat-penises still stands out as one of the more bizarre fetishes I’ve seen anyone willingly commit to paper.)

Turns Out, I Wasn’t the One With a Thing for Erotic Mind Control

Eventually, I got older, and so did the internet, and eventually, I discovered the Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive, a kind of hypnotically strobing holy Mecca of kink. It wasn’t just me and Jack L. Chalker, it turned out, who had these kinds of interests. Here was Downing Street, with his tales of tight skirts, drunken orgies and ecstatic bimbofication. And there was Tabico, with her vampiric insect parasite sex apocalypses. In a kind of trance, I clicked through tales of trancing gendered subjects via swaying watches, magic computer programs, reality-altering genies and plain old narrative convenience. For a while, I even tried to supplement my income by writing some dirty stories of my own. The one about the research facility invaded by giant sex worms from outside space and time was probably the best, not least because I imagine Lovecraft himself would recoil in unnameable horror—not so much from the sexual content as from the idea that anyone would write fiction with women in it. In any case, pretending to be an erotic fiction writer was a good deal of fun, in various senses, but either my niche was too niche or I just didn’t have the right marketing formula. In any case, the cash did not flow like bodily fluids and I moved on to less sex worm-y pursuits.

What’s the Origin of My Fascination With Erotic Mind Control?

All of which may lead you to ask: What the hell is wrong with me? Is there some half-buried trauma in my childhood? Some ugly secret that has led me down this path to the sex worms and the throat penises and the unpleasant mind-rape fantasies? Do I hate women? Am I a violent person? What, in short, is my problem?I don’t think I’m particularly violent. Misogyny is endemic in our culture and I’m sure it’s in my head like it’s in anyone’s. But I don’t know that Tabico’s stories of lesbian sex with disgusting insect larvae are more harmful than your average stalker-glorifying rom-com. The line between reality and fantasy is clearer when you’re talking about sex slugs, at least. You could watch a bunch of rom-coms and start to think that after a woman rejects you, you need to keep sending her flowers and serenading her and being in her space until she finally gives in. But, barring some intra-dimensional invasion, even the creepiest would-be stalker, of whatever gender, is unlikely to infect anyone with parasitic brain worms. As far as the connection between my childhood experiences and my kink goes, no one has perfect insight into themselves, and I haven’t ever undergone extensive therapy. But as far as I can tell, there isn’t any buried incident or secret that explains why I find sex slugs appealing. Erotic mind control fascinated me before I knew that it was erotic. I doubt everyone who listened to the Catwoman book on tape went on to be obsessed with Jack L. Chalker and David Cronenberg’s Shivers. The catnip didn’t make me who I am. It spoke to something in me that was already there.

Do I hate women? Am I a violent person? What, in short, is my problem?

For Me, Reading Erotic Mind Control Stories Is Enough

My guess is that people’s sexual identities and preferences are shaped partly by their experiences, partly by biology and partly by who-knows-what. One person likes apples and someone else prefers pears—there isn’t any doctor or psychiatrist who can tell you why. Human beings are mysterious, and there doesn’t have to be any one explanation for why they are who they are. Jillian Keenan, in her book Sex With Shakespeare, talks about how she has basically always had her spanking fetish. Like many kids, she was occasionally spanked as a child, but that isn’t what gave her a fetish. Instead, her kink meant that when she was spanked, she experienced it as a sexual violation. Trauma didn’t create her kink, though her kink shaped her experience of trauma. Keenan’s fetish is a lot more intense and a lot more central to her identity than mine is. She doesn’t really get pleasure from sexual penetration at all; virtually her entire sexual identity is located elsewhere. My kink isn’t nearly so thoroughgoing. I don’t need there to be an erotic mind control element to have pleasant sexual experiences with other people. Most of the sex I’ve had has been pretty vanilla. Beyond some very light BDSM here and there, I haven’t really experimented much with erotic role-playing in the bedroom. My wife knows about my kink and has indulged me on occasion, but usually, it just doesn’t feel necessary. I want to read erotic mind control stories. I don’t actually have much desire to mind control anyone, even in play. Sex-positive boilerplate insists that you need to own your desires publicly, and explore them freely with your partners (the more the better). That’s a message that has helped a lot of people get over shame and stigma, and I’m not knocking it. But luckily (considering the sex worms) for me, my fantasies mostly feel most comfortable as fantasies. My lifelong relationship with my kink has been mostly in my head—my mind telling itself what it likes, in a cage of words that is me.

I've been told that the prostate is like the male clitoris, the most sensitive, explosive trigger to activate the male orgasm. I want to know this feeling so bad, and now that I have a partner willing to experiment with me, I can. The thing is, I'm terribly afraid of my ass. It's always been something that my shit comes out of, not something anyone's shit goes into. I can't remember ever not being afraid and ashamed of my butt. When I was little and I had a dirty diaper, I'd hide behind the couch so my parents wouldn't find me. I felt bad having this stinky backside—it was embarrassing. There was also something about the smell that I was drawn to. It was this kinky perversion. I liked the smell of my own stink, as I believe many of us do, but I was so afraid of touching or interacting with my poop. While I dug my own stench, I was also afraid of being found out that a) I smelled so bad and b) I was into it. As I got toilet trained, it was uncomfortable asking my parents to help me wipe my ass. It was humiliating to get on all fours or lift a cheek so my folks could clean me up. Then when I started going to school I just shut it off. Somehow my body knew not to poop at school. I was deathly afraid of being found out, not only that I defecated but that it smelled so bad. I think another factor was that much of my childhood was spent constipated, I never had a quick poop. This meant that if I was going to poop at school, everyone would know I was pooping cause I'd be out of class for so long—the ultimate embarrassment as a second- or fifth- or even seventh-grader.

That event was the pinnacle of my poop trauma and solidified a deep divide between me and my asshole.

My Butt Trauma Was Tethered to Body Shame

Somewhere along that timeline, in elementary school, I went apple picking with my family. My brother and I enjoyed the hayrides and gathered as many apples as we could. We even went into the farm shop where they were selling sweet cinnamon apple donuts. I remember an awful feeling washed over me in the shop. I had to go. Really bad. I told my father who rushed me to the port-a-potty, but just as I was pulling down my pants it all came out everywhere. I completely exploded before I could get to the seat, shit-stained the walls, my legs, pants, shoes, socks. It was a war zone. I remember my parents finding a hose to wash me down and wrapping me in a cloth they had in the car, tossing most of my clothes in the trash and doing what they could to clean up my mess before we drove home. I felt the rough cloth cover my naked body, withered and cold in the back seat, overwhelmed with guilt and shame. That event was the pinnacle of my poop trauma and solidified a deep divide between me and my asshole. I didn't want to have anything to do with it from that point on. I had been betrayed. I did eventually get over my fear of shitting at school, but I could only do it in a private bathroom and would stake out which high school bathrooms were most secretive where I could take my time pooping in peace. If anyone ever knocked, or I was in a pressure situation and didn't have time to relax into it, I'd just hold it and feel uncomfortable. I know a lot of my shame around my butt was also tethered to uncomfortable feelings about my body in general. I always felt a bit big in my body, and sometimes I'd hear other kids call me chubby. I'd hide in my clothes, afraid to ever be in a situation where I'd have to take off my shirt, always sucking in my gut when I did. I never considered myself to be attractive and often found myself eating and snacking without thinking about it, ending up full most of the time. I was incredibly privileged to always have more than enough to eat, but I didn't know how to stop when I was full. I was disconnected from my body and turned to food for comfort and love.It has taken me years of therapy and embodiment practices to begin to build a relationship with my body and feel good in my skin. I've gone through a lot of changes physically and have become generally comfortable with who I am as I take care of myself in the ways that feel right for me. My ass feels like the final frontier.

It's always been something that my shit comes out of, not something anyone's shit goes into.

I Want to Experience New Sexual and Sensual Heights

A friend recently told me about his experience with a partner who did anal play and it elevated him to another planet. I was envious of his experience; I want to have that kind of sex, to know what it feels like to reach new sensual heights. I also have a partner who has offered, on multiple occasions, to put her finger in my butt, and we've gotten really, really close. I've started building a comfort level with my asshole in the bath, feeling around and seeing if I can get a finger inside when I'm clean. But a huge worry is my partner putting her finger in my butt and it coming out brown. I know I’m on the precipice of something special and am challenging myself in new ways. These days feel like everything is all about finding comfort within discomfort. Even if I don’t get to the ecstasy of anal play that I know exists, I am happy to finally be “loosening up” and discovering my whole body as a thing of majesty, beauty and constant change.

Millennials grew up online, at least that’s what it’s always felt like to me. While I don’t know if there’s any truth to the statement, all my life I’ve heard parents and grandparents say that we’re the first generation ever to have such easy and quick access to technology from a young age, to the point that it’s become second nature to us. Think about it: Most of us have had at least one computer with internet access (yes, even if it was that dreadfully slow, scary-noise-making dial-up connection) nearby since childhood. Our education—both inside and out of school—has been heavily aided by the internet. We were taught to Google something before we were taught how to properly use a dictionary or an encyclopedia, so it makes sense that, from an early age, we wanted to absorb all the knowledge available online —the good, the bad and the in-between. It should come as no surprise to anyone that a lot of our insecurities and “informal education” have come from perusing websites, social media profiles and dating apps.

For years, I hid behind the screens of my laptop and cellphone.

The Only Place I Felt Accepted Was Online

I’m a fat woman and have been on the larger side of that spectrum for most of my life. For 20-something years, I’ve come across magazine articles, online ads, comment-section trolls and bullies, and “social media doctors” with thinly veiled fat-phobia that made it their mission to let me know my body is not acceptable—that I am not worthy of success, love and lust. This of course was only confirmed by the mainstream content I consumed online at the time: gorgeous (i.e., thin) Instagram models and influencers; streaming TV series featuring typically beautiful leading women; online shopping experiences where anything over a size 1X was always either sold-out or non-existent in the store’s catalog; and even porn and it’s failure to show women above a certain size and body type enjoying sex. This went on for a long time. The more fat-phobic, non-inclusive content I consumed, the more I believed the harmful messages they were perpetuating. I was stuck in a vicious cycle and, as a result, I started hiding from the world, metaphorically and literally. My whole young adult life became a loop of driving to school and back to my apartment, never daring to go out and mingle with other people to avoid the possibility of getting painful confirmation that all my fears and insecurities were, in fact, true. For years, I hid behind the screens of my laptop and cellphone, only “meeting” people online, where I showed only the angles and sides of myself I could fully control to not be perceived as undesirable and gross. I tricked myself into believing that the only way to fulfill my emotional and sexual needs was by using the same tools and narratives that were causing the insecurities and the pain I felt.

Online, I Could Paint My Own Picture of Myself

As I got older, I became an expert in all things sexting, including taking nudes of my body from crazy angles that would make me seem a few inches smaller than I actually was. Pages like Chatroulette and Omegle became my gateway to sexual interaction, as they provided a “safe” way for me to show my body and have it be enjoyed by others live, all while controlling every aspect of the interaction. If someone said something rude, I’d simply click “skip” and never see them again. It was a horny, insecure, fat woman’s heaven to me. For a while, I was “happy” like this. After some time, though, I realized it wasn’t enough. I still craved the emotional, human connection—something masturbating in front of random strangers I’d never see again couldn’t give me—so I started looking for something else. A couple of weeks of feeling this way, plus the constant lack of pleasure I got from watching the “perfect,” beautiful women in porn be adored by their scene partners, was enough to get me off these sites. Again, I felt stuck. I missed the feeling of being lusted after and wanted, and, in a way, cared for—even if it was fake—but I knew that going back to my old habits would be detrimental to my mental health.

Camming Is Plus-Size Women’s Heaven

I’m not exactly sure how or when, but somewhere along the line, I found a webcam shows page, and my life was changed forever. For the first time ever, I saw people with different body types enjoy themselves through sex. It was everything I had been looking for: diverse bodies and people enjoying themselves while others watched in admiration. After a couple of weeks of tuning in to different performers’ shows, I decided it was time for me to try it. It looked like fun, and the way most of the performers interacted with their viewers made it seem like they had some sort of connection, which, let’s be honest, I was desperate for. I opened up an account, completed the verification process, and was quickly approved to be a performer myself. There have only been a handful of times in my life where I’ve been quite as nervous and excited as I was the day of my first show. Locked door? Check. Dimmed light? Check. Laptop charger? Check. A pretty outfit that could be easily taken off? Check. I set up bots to show my room’s rules and a pricing list and made sure everything was running as it should. Once everything was ready, checked and double-checked, and while my heart beat faster than ever before, I clicked the broadcast button and waited for the magic to happen. A few minutes after, the first couple of viewers started tuning in. Some were rude and demanding, not even bothering to say hello—those were promptly blocked—and some were kind of nice and tried to have a conversation before even mentioning the nude part of the cam show. I was nervous and didn’t exactly know what to do, or what was to be expected from a rookie performer, so it wasn’t long before I decided I’d had enough of a rush for the day. I bid farewell to my 16 or so viewers and promised I’d be back online soon. As I logged off and got ready for bed, I couldn’t contain my joy. Sixteen people had found me attractive and appealing enough to sit through an hour of me talking about my day while I got undressed. That’s 16 more than I’d ever thought possible.

What It’s Like to Be a Cam Girl

I started logging in a few times a week, slowly but surely building a small following, getting to know enough people that would later become my room’s moderators and actual friends. I became bolder, both during my shows and my “real” life. Through Chaturbate, I met people with whom I became romantically involved, something I’d never been brave enough to do. I met someone who bought me my first sex toy, my first set of fancy lingerie and who showed me how beautiful self-pleasure could be when you truly enjoyed it. Getting naked in front of strangers who later became friends was helping me understand how valuable, desirable and beautiful I was—how I’d always been those things. Now, I’m not about to say it was all roses and rainbows; there are some very dark parts to sex work (because after all, that’s what it is, sex work). According to a 2017 study by the Criminology Department of the University of Leicester, 80 percent of sex workers have been, in some form or another, victims of a crime related directly to their profession. The study also revealed that despite the high level of crimes committed against them, about 40 percent of those wouldn’t report these crimes due to fear of reprisals, being penalized, and fear of being further stigmatized and shamed. Even though I tried my best to separate my offline life from my online life, and did everything I could to create two different identities, I was not entirely safe from the dangers of my newfound hobby. There was a time when someone found photos of me at a school function, sent them to my camming email, and tried to blackmail me. Through one of my room’s moderators, I found out that one of my first shows, from before I started covering my face, had been recorded and was being sold on some sketchy website. People I knew found me online, including an ex-boyfriend who pretended to be someone else, paid for a private show, and only then revealed his identity. This experience—one of the most humiliating in my life—was the beginning of the end of my camgirl “career.”

I slowly rewrote my narrative and became a sexy, powerful, confident fat person.

I’m Not Ashamed to Say Camming Taught Me How to Be Plus-Size and Beautiful

I was naive but extremely lucky that these experiences, while traumatic and horrifying, didn’t really put me in any immediate danger and were only the result of creepy men trying to take advantage of a woman they perceived as vulnerable. Camming is not for everyone; those who decide to dive in should make sure they are doing everything they can to protect themselves from predators. Despite the negative aspects of it, looking back, I realize camming saved me. While I no longer do nude cam shows, I can’t deny the role they played in making me the woman I am today. Every moment I spent performing slowly eased the pain and loneliness I felt over my body and the way it looked. I slowly rewrote my narrative and became a sexy, powerful, confident fat person. There is a clear distinction between the before and the after versions of me: I became more confident in my daily life, more vocal on social media about the things that mattered to me and, most importantly, I opened up myself to the possibility that maybe, against what all the haters and the voices in her head had told her younger self, this fat millennial woman could one day be the protagonist of her very own love story.

The rule is that he always arrives on time. As was our custom, he entered in silence, bathed carefully and then took up his place before me on his knees. Naked. He leaned forward and I put the collar around his neck then sat back in silence. I waited. He had composed and memorized a prayer earlier in the week in anticipation of this moment. At my bidding, he began his recitation. He adores the humiliating turn-on of being exposed at the feet of his commanding mistress, his goddess, his queen. His eyes were cast down but his cock was standing at attention. I could sense his nervousness as he opened his eyes and tried to look into mine. He recited the first lines of his long devotional ode:

• My adored mistress! Magnificent and strongYou rule over your boyYou wield the rodYou reign supreme as the great matriarch…

I’ve had hundreds of lovers over the years, but never one like this. I am currently enjoying the most exciting sensual sex of my life. Because of our mutually satisfying kinks, I have been able over the years to train up this adorable man and turn him into the perfect lover that fulfills my every desire. He’s not a husband. Not a life partner. He doesn’t live with me or share my bank account. He’s not someone who walks side-by-side with me through all the trials and tribulations of life. I’ve had that already. Twice. No, this is my “boy” and, now that I am over 70, I’m having the kind of sex that I have always longed for: sensual and hot, without shame or false pretense—limitless, ecstatic, full of love and bliss.

The Difference Between a Femdom and a Dominatrix

I’m often asked to explain the difference between a femdom and a professional dominatrix. A dominatrix is a sex worker who takes money from her client in return for satisfying his sexual desire for surrender. Clients usually have a long list of demands when they arrive. They give a lot of thought to what they hope to experience during their session. The dominatrix fulfills his wishes. Some of these women are really good at their job—they can make the client believe that they really want to play with him. A good dominatrix not only pays close attention to the client’s wishes but also dresses the part. Many men get off on high-heeled boots, matching bustier and such. For her service in fulfilling his secret fantasies, she is paid a handsome fee. By contrast, a femdom is in it purely for pleasure. She dominates her submissive in the way that she chooses because it turns her on to do so. Her own desire is the source of the erotic play. She uses her subtle power of seduction on the submissive to bring him/her around to her desires. Their play is based on mutual desire, negotiated limits and carefully communicated consent that takes place before any play begins. No money changes hands.I am a femdom. I happily admit that I derive extraordinary pleasure from seducing and playing with a submissive man—especially my submissive man. After thousands of years of patriarchy, this is a timely, satisfying and luxuriously decadent erotic role reversal. It’s one that fits me to a T.

I happily admit that I derive extraordinary pleasure from seducing and playing with a submissive man.

Female Pleasure Is the Ultimate Healing Force

I’m also a sex educator, and I’ve spent 20 years teaching women how to have powerful and fulfilling orgasms.The hands-on techniques that I shared in workshops and private coaching sessions were aimed at showing women a grounded self-empowerment rooted in individual sexual pleasure. I had recognized early in my own life that my physical pleasure and emotional wellbeing could not be farmed out to a partner. As women, we need to each discover and master our individual sexual operating procedures. Finally, at home in our own pleasure palace, we have the option of welcoming a partner to join us in our sexual play.At the beginning of my professional career, I was very specifically focused on healing the feminine. I was not yet fully aware that my attention to pleasure was in reality a roadmap to empowerment. I discovered that female pleasure was the ultimate healing force that eventually restored gender balance. I was intrigued by the reality that pleasure could transform our lives, even more quickly and effectively than suffering. I had learned this from my personal journey through life in the body of a woman. I love women, but I have always adored the masculine in all its manifold expressions. I had always hoped that men would eventually catch up with the many women who, over the past 50 years, had been moving so courageously toward freedom. Whether through therapy or literature or workshops, women have done so much work. This is one of the many gifts of feminism—the changing perspective motivated women to finally get their sexual shit together. I wanted to see men get on board as well: become better lovers, better friends, better allies in women’s evolution into full personhood. But I never felt a personal calling to teach them how. In my view, women should discover how to satisfy their deepest needs and desires on their own, and then share that information with their partners. Women should teach their men what they need. In reality, truly great partner sex can only begin when a woman has made friends with her pussy. When profound pussy pleasure is integrated into everyday life, women begin to trust the creative fantasy life that hides deep within the psyche. Over time, my work expanded far beyond the basic life-enhancing ecstasy of the orgasm. I began teaching women how to bypass hetero-normative expectations in their sexual expression. I began teaching women how to initiate and creatively hold power in sexual play. I introduced participants to the pleasure of stepping up in a sexual scenario and taking command. Partner sex suddenly got an upgrade and female choreographed adventure became a real thing for real people.

I Created a Group of Men as Boy Toys

My participants needed to practice taking control. I could demonstrate how to create a ritual, how to collar a man, how to play with humiliation and control, what to do with his butt when you get him securely tied down—but they needed to actually practice these skills. It was important for them to learn how to hold that newly acquired inner power while in the presence of strong men. To facilitate this, I pulled together an amazing men’s team. These were straight guys who loved the idea of being an anonymous objectified toy-boy, available for women’s delight. Word spread quickly within our small sex-positive community, and men began sending me their applications. Handling this overflowing supply of available men gave me a tremendous thrill. I was acting out my own decidedly feminine version of a Hollywood casting director. And for the men who applied for membership in the “team,” the work presented an amazing sexual adventure in a safe and discreet environment. The work was voluntary. They had to love and honor all women, want to serve them and be devoted to their growth and full evolution as erotic individuals. They were required to submit a photo and a short written resume of their personal sexual experience. If I found the candidate attractive and their communication seemed sexy (without being macho), I’d take things to the next level and propose an in-person interview. I kept the whole process very businesslike. I was so suited to play this controlling, top-bitch role.And this is how I eventually met my boy. There were many men who applied for the few slots that we had available, but he was definitely best in show. In the first photo that he sent, I was impressed with his physical beauty. And in the text that he wrote, he was very honest. He described his background and his professional activity and then shared that he was happily married, loved his wife but that he wanted to expand his skills and become a better lover.I made a date to meet with him, and after our first encounter, I was smitten. I decided that I would definitely not share him with anybody else. He would not join the team because I wanted to have him all for myself. He is 20 years my junior and he confessed in our first meeting that since a very young age, he had fantasized about being dominated by an older woman. I can still remember that when I heard these words, I blushed and my face grew hot. This was a match made in heaven. I’ve been joyfully dominating him now for more than a decade.

Good sex doesn’t require harmony. It needs longing. It needs tension.

I No Longer Hold a Vision of a 50-50 Relationship

The pandemic brought an end to my public appearances, workshops and rituals. The men’s team has slowly drifted apart and my professional life has quieted down considerably. But I never let go of my boy. Loving him, spanking him, fucking him and further evolving our domme/sub game has kept me joyful, creative and full of juice. Our relationship over the years has been an invitation for each of us to learn and grow further into our individual strengths. As he discovered more nuanced aspects of his masculinity, I have expanded my understanding of my authentically empowered femininity. This inner power is the root of a profound and irresistible eroticism.In a recent conversation with several of my women friends (all in their 30s and 40s), I realized that I was no longer personally interested in the 50-50 struggles of today’s feminism. Many couples today try to establish peace in their home life through evenly balancing responsibilities: childcare, household, office hours, financials and so forth. Unfortunately, eroticism is not reflected in this equation. While home life may be running smoothly, sex seems to get tossed out the window in favor of popcorn and Netflix. Good sex doesn’t require harmony. It needs longing. It needs tension. Somebody has to take the lead. Somebody has to do the seducing. Somebody has to start the game. Today’s younger women are honor-bound to remain in the struggle for equality in the boardroom and in the bedroom. I no longer hold a vision of a 50-50 relationship for myself, nor do I feel connected in any way to that struggle. I spent most of my adult life trying to find an appropriate balance in my marriages. Now, it feels boring and I don’t see it working effectively (or erotically) for anybody. In my own life, I have learned that taking the lead and seducing a worthy man to the beauty of surrender is tremendously exciting and fulfilling for all involved. As women learn to hold power, men are invited to learn the beauty of surrender. We can integrate the long-forgotten parts of the self, and it’s blissful. My calling is to model the grandeur of my unique female strength. This is what compassionate feminine power looks like. It is divinity personified. I reign as queen of my domain and I fully embrace my role as high priestess of pleasure. No longer a struggling feminist, my evolution is complete and I fully embody the matriarch. All hail the mighty queen who lives in me.

It took me until my Saturn return to figure out I was trans. I got along just fine as a gay boy for many years. Well, mostly fine. Looking back now, it’s easy to see early signs of my egghood. (“Egg” being the sometimes endearing, sometimes condescending term for a trans person who hasn’t figured out they’re trans yet.) There were lots of little examples, like raiding my mother’s closet when she wasn’t home or opting to sit with the girls in middle school once I was freed from the confines of my religious, single-sex grade school. In a diary entry from Halloween four years ago I wrote, “I feel so good in women’s clothing.” There were other entries about how thrilling it was to wear heels, how poised and powerful I felt in them. But I wasn’t trans. I just donned a slutty witch costume for one weekend a year all through my 20s. And painted my nails, and wanted long flowing shampoo commercial hair, and only felt truly safe and at home in the company of other girls growing up. And, and, and.

I had a surreal out-of-body moment.

Discovering I Was Trans Came as a Surprise

My annual Halloween cross-dressing ritual carries a deeper significance to me now. I realize what I was feeling was my first experience of gender euphoria, the heady glee of engaging in high femme antics mixed with a deep feeling of relief.If I had to point to one moment in my gender awakening—the thing that officially cracked my egg and made me admit my transness—it would be hearing a nonbinary trans femme talk about their hairline dysphoria, and the dread they felt about going bald. It wasn’t a matter of vanity, they said, it was a matter of being in the wrong body. For the previous couple of years, I’d been scrutinizing my hairline in the mirror every morning, willing my fivehead not to get any bigger. I wallowed in despair at my looming baldness. I’d kept my hair short for most of my 20s, hoping that would get me more attention from gay men. It felt like a cruel betrayal of my body, imagining I could see my hair thinning before my eyes just when I had decided to grow it out again. Hearing that enby speak, I had a surreal out-of-body moment. How they were speaking aloud my secret innermost thoughts. Me, a cis person! After that, I slowly acquired more and more trans friends. I insinuated myself in trans spaces as someone who was “questioning.” Feeling emboldened by my peers, I started going by they/them pronouns and calling myself nonbinary. I felt such a rush of relief that I didn’t have to be a man anymore. I could set aside all the expectations of masculinity that I never really lived up to. Even surrounded by cis gay men, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I felt despair that I couldn’t find comfort there, in the community I was supposed to feel at home in. I thought I was plagued by some debilitating anxiety disorder, but no. Just trans.

Lockdown Disrupted My Transition, but It Also Helped

Then the pandemic happened. I lost my job. All my acquaintanceships evaporated as the Zoom happy hours quickly lost their appeal. I left the house as little as possible. Freed from the burden of other people’s expectations, I was able to imagine how I might like to live without fear getting in the way. My curiosity and explorations eventually led me to a Zoom call with a doctor I’d never met in person, who thankfully believed me when I told him I was trans and I wanted to try hormones. Once I had the prescriptions waiting for me, I hesitated. I was terrified of trying hormones and changing my mind later. It wasn’t that I was worried about what it might do to my body, or what society would think. I was more scared of letting my trans friends down, that if I started the process of transition only to stop later, I would somehow be damaging “the Cause” and alienating myself from the community I had found. It was grandiose to think the integrity of the entire trans movement would crumble at my hypothetical future detransition. One friend told me, when I called them, spiraling, that starting hormones wasn’t like jumping off a cliff—it was more like wading into water, and I could slow down or turn around at any point if it didn’t feel right. I would still be trans even if I decided hormones weren’t for me. No one could take that from me. I told myself I was only starting hormones in an effort to keep my hairline from receding, but I have been so grateful for all the other changes. It’s like I needed plausible deniability in my own feminization. After nearly a year on testosterone blockers and synthetic estrogen, I cry more easily. I laugh more easily. My backne went away. Once the antiandrogens got my testosterone low enough, I stopped making semen and instead now produce a small amount of clear nectar when I come. Pre-transition, for many messy years, I was an extremely heavy shooter, which I always found vulgar, a distasteful hassle and one I’m relieved to be done with.The most pleasant surprise of transition is how much I’ve enjoyed growing tits. I’ll be honest, they’re not much. At my own appraisal, I’d put them at maybe a double-A cup. (The little thrill of pride I felt at being “double” anything evaporated when I learned that AA is actually a step down from a singular A cup.) I hide them in public, but won’t shut the fuck up about them with my close friends. I’ve basically made these little lumps my whole personality at this point, even though they’re too small and pointy and weird and, oh God, asymmetrical? No, wait. They’re fine. Endlessly scrutinizing my boobs and willing them to be bigger, rounder, different: a quintessential experience of early-30s teenage girlhood. I had no idea how much joy growing breasts would bring me until they started to grow, although I think it’s worth mentioning how much of a fiend for nipple play I was as a gay boy, too. It must be fate, to have my nipples waking up, growing and exponentially gaining in sensitivity in transition. They’ve always been erogenous on switches for me, so it feels like I was destined to have luscious tits. I just can’t believe how long it took me to figure that out.

I just can’t believe how long it took me to figure that out.

Quarantine Is Ending—Will My Gender Euphoria Go With It?

I’ve been able to undergo my first full year of medical transition in quarantine, only sharing the intimate details of my gender journey with my closest friends. I wouldn’t trade my itty bitty titties for anything (except maybe some bigger ones, God willing), but with the weather warming up and vaccination looming, I now face a dilemma: How do I cope with people’s reactions to the changes I’ve gone through? I’ve been able to start my transition in a bubble, and I’m dreading the moment it pops. Part of me is tempted to gaslight everyone in my life who doesn’t know I’ve started transitioning. “What? I’ve always had these. It’s so weird you don’t remember that.” As tempting as that is, I think I have no choice but to face the reality of Coming Out. Again. I feel blessed to have had this time and privacy, but I am tensing in anticipation of how frequently I’ll be misgendered. I have had massive internal shifts, but on the outside, not that much has changed. Early transition is so awkward. Being pubescent again in my early 30s feels like a cruel joke. I have no idea how to dress myself. I have constant identity crises of what kind of girl I want to be. Some days I’m a hormonal wreck and I almost miss the dead-inside stoicism I had as a boy. As much as I love being more in touch with my feelings, being brought to tears by the love between the nanny and Mister Sheffield makes me feel a little emotionally incontinent. Despite how delighted I have felt about transitioning, I rarely leave the house in full femme attire. I prefer invisibility on my little pandemic walks and trips to the store, wearing my nonbinary uniform of baggy track pants, a shapeless denim sack of a jacket and a surgical mask. I feel too fragile most days to go out into the world as a "clocky transsexual"—words I hate, but that my Reddit research of trans womanhood has seared into my brain. So mostly I hide, and my hiding makes me feel like a coward and a fraud. Feelings of fraudulence and inadequacy are essential parts of the trans experience, I’m told, so I think I’m right on track. I hope that soon I’ll be ready to take the plunge and be trans everywhere I go. I’m too old for the exhausting emotional acrobatics of leading a double life. A quarantine transition is what I needed, a chance to reach an understanding of my gender in private, safe from the scrutiny of coworkers or my family or any of the casual acquaintances I’d normally have to interact with. Even though I feel so thin-skinned and fragile, I know I’m moving in the right direction. Every step I’ve taken towards feminization has brought me joy and brought me closer to God (who is definitely trans).

As a child, I gravitated toward anything feminine and denounced anything masculine, something that drove my immigrant family up a wall. When you're a first-generation child being brought up very poor, there is much less focus on your aspirations and overall happiness, and more focus on putting food on the table and having a roof over your head. Unsurprisingly, my family's reaction to my transition was nothing short of disruptive. Being that I am Latina and the majority of my family only speak Spanish, a language ruled by gender, the misgendering I’ve experienced has been constant, and tremendously traumatic. My sexuality and my gender have always been, for lack of a better word, a burden on my biological counterparts. Specifically all those in mid-life, such as my mother, my father and my paternal uncle. When I first came out as gay, my parents had polar opposite reactions. My mother grieved as though she had lost a child. My father was a little taken aback, but more concerned with my happiness. My uncle, on the other hand, told me I was an embarrassment to our family (although to be completely real, I think he's an extremely repressed homosexual). Of course, their reactions affected my subconscious. After a series of traumatic events in my adolescence, my threshold for abusive behavior was nonexistent. Nothing really phased me, but it didn’t mean damage wasn’t being done.

We haven’t spoken since.

My Family Doesn't Know Whether to Accept Me or Reject Me

It took me four years after my transition to finally come out to my family a second time. It wasn’t until I came home for my brother's wedding that I had to face them. I was more fearful of coming out to my mother, as her first reaction was not only intense but overly dramatic. The fear she instilled in me growing up is something that haunts me every single day and remains a major topic of discussion in my therapy sessions. Because of the work I’d done to learn how to navigate these difficult conversations, I was able to not only confront my mother on her long-term emotional abuse but also to demand to be respected and seen as a woman. Acknowledging all that she had done to me, she wholeheartedly began to refer to me as her daughter. I had such a sense of relief, until months later when she and my grandmother ambushed me on FaceTime. Something about the situation seemed off. They were calling me “mijo,” and I could sense that someone else was there, off-camera. I kept asking “Who’s there?” They continued to change the subject. I was relentless until my mother finally turned the camera to my uncle, who’d been there the whole time. I burst into tears. The trust between us was hanging on by a thread. All she could say was, “We love you, we’re your family.” We haven’t spoken since. My father is also having a difficult time accepting me. After not seeing him for nearly four years, his first reaction to me was, “When were you going to tell me you were growing breasts?” My father has always been harsh with his words, but by the end of dinner, he told me I looked great, and that I really should have been born a woman. Initially, I thought this was good, but I tend to ignore red flags. It wasn’t until we began speaking more frequently that I noticed I was being seen as someone who was “sick.” I confronted my father like I had my mother, demanding to be respected and for my proper pronouns to be used. His response was again the polar opposite of my mother: “Do you want me to lie to you like everyone else?” It was a violent response to someone asking for the bare minimum.

Family isn’t defined by biology, it's defined by love.

I'm Losing Some Family Members, but Finding Support From Others

I advised my father that he can no longer be a part of my life if he continued to act in such a way. To my surprise, his response to that was quick and simple: “Well, have a nice life.” Since then, I’ve only spoken to him twice. Once, he nearly died after being robbed at gunpoint. I called to see if he was OK, and all I heard back was mijo in his lower register, which I only knew to be used when he was trying to intimidate me. A second time, he called me on Valentine's Day, drunk, again met with mijo every other word. This is the same man who refers to me as “your sister” to my sister, and in the same breath will say my existence is ungodly. My father has never been a religious person but his agenda is very clear. Fortunately, I have siblings who are extremely supportive and willing to challenge the elders when it comes to my existence. My sister is my biggest advocate within this circle, referring to me as “she,” correcting people when they misgender me and questioning their judgment. My uncle tells her repeatedly, “Stop feeding his ego,” something she doesn’t take lightly. In my opinion, these are extremely radical acts to ensure that people who claim to care about me understand my reality. For many trans people, especially those of color, our families can be very difficult and often very hurtful. Language is a powerful tool that can have major implications on a person's livelihood. My parents and the mid-lifers see me as a mentally ill person, and they're not completely wrong. I am mentally ill, but it’s not at the hands of my identity—it’s the lack of love and nurturing I so desperately needed from my family. They couldn’t give me what I needed, so I ran as far away as I could to start anew. I had to cut off all I once knew to preserve myself. Family isn’t defined by biology, it's defined by love.

Every person’s entry into sex work is different, but it’s safe to say that most of us don’t experience the Hollywood version. You know, the one where the girl wakes up after a one-night stand to find a wad of cash on the bedside table. The naiveté of the solicited woman makes her more appealing to a mainstream audience—someone who stumbles into sex work is more respected than those that choose it. This is not one of those stories. This is my story. There are so many differing tales of sex work, varying in class, race, sex and determined by privilege. I cannot and will not attest to any other worker’s experience. I can only offer the conclusions I have come to from my own.

He spent hours begging me, sending me money, paying for lingerie to be delivered.

The World of Financial Submission Was Seductive and Conflicting

It all started with a guy I was seeing. We lived in different cities with busy lives and our relationship consisted mostly of texts, calls and voice notes. He would beg to be on his knees to supplicate to me. Although this was my first experience dominating a man, I quickly learned the vocabulary. It felt like a second language, another tongue lying dormant within me. I demanded he prove his worth; I refused to allow him up for air; I called him names; I commanded his tongue to clean the heel of my boot. I could imagine him on the floor for hours, his knees red and sore, his head buried between my thighs. His birthday was no different. He wanted to lick my shoes clean from the floor of the bathroom stall. He spent hours begging me, sending me money, paying for lingerie to be delivered. All while his birthday party raged on without him. I woke up, refreshed and empowered. My bank account had been topped up, my orgasm had arrived at my own hands and my inbox had one new message thanking me for last night and confirming the order from the sex shop was on its way. This was my first experience of financial submission. I was determined to make sure it wasn’t my last.Financial submission is when a submissive enjoys having their finances controlled by their dominant (mistress, domme, master, dom). It is not a regular sex worker and client transaction. A financial dominatrix will drain their sub's bank account, will demand they pay for their dinners, coffees, even holidays that the sub is not privy to attend. Some financial subs also want to be cuckolded, begging to buy the lingerie for their dominants to fuck other people in. I found this tug to a world completely engrossed in materialistic values both seductive and conflicting. In my heart of hearts, I am a socialist. But when the journey I took with this partner quickly came to an end—and as our relationship stagnated—my journey into kink and dominance had just begun. Ultimately, being introduced to the world of kink gave me the voice to demand—for myself, for my desires and for my worth—both pleasure and payment.

Monetizing my body gave me the freedom to be sexualized on my own terms.

Sex Work Is Mostly a Self-Promotion Game

It took a while for me to gain the confidence to enter the online sex world. I knew some people who had created a page on OnlyFans but, for the most part, I was on my own. I went in with the intention of getting more of what I had already discovered a taste for. I wanted simps, subs, begs and betas who would fawn over me, adoring me with their words and emptying their wallets for me. As with all roles, I felt a huge amount of imposter syndrome. By calling myself a domme, I felt as if I cowered behind the word, with no dungeon, very little experience and a wardrobe that amounted to only a few gifts from my first-ever sub. It felt like a lie. I quickly learned that sex work today is mostly a self-promotion game—you spend more time upvoting, retweeting and censoring photos for advertisement than you do flirting or sexting with subscribers. It is entirely about self-creation. It is your persona, your content and you set the rules. My favorite parts are the little things, the eager-to-compliment subscribers and the just-because tips. I have always been a bit of an exhibitionist and eager to show off my nudes to friends and crushes alike, so I get a rush just from being viewed. I found that after years of being sexualized and harassed without my consent, monetizing my body gave me the freedom to be sexualized on my own terms. My persona is in my content but not every facet of me. I could therefore detach easily from the sexual footprint I left online.

Sex Work Has Made Me Feel More Confident About Myself

I soon had my eyes opened wide to a world of online sex work, which is vastly diverse. The cellulite, the amount of body hair (or lack thereof), the differently-abled, the surgical scars, the skin tones. All the fat, trans and queer bodies that have been prejudiced for their difference can profit the very same. One person’s insecurity is another person’s preference. As much as with any online community, there are still bullies and trolls. But with every nasty comment, there is a group chat of sex workers ready to block, downvote and fight back. Armies of SWers of every shape and color stand at the ready to uplift and take down, to promote and praise each other. You may embark on this endeavor alone but there is always someone in your corner. Men will always sexualize me no matter whether I choose it or not, but sex work has given me a newfound ownership over my body. I cannot stop men from objectifying me but I can choose to profit off it. In a patriarchal capitalist society, this is the best I can strive for. Instead of unsolicited dick pics, men now pay for my humiliation or appraisal of their genitals. Instead of knowing an ex still has my nudes filed away, as a content creator, I now have the ability to seek legal action against anyone who attempts to distribute images of my naked body. Every dollar I earn is a reparation for the patriarchy, the harassment endured or the privileges my gender denied me. Every order I give and every “Yes, mistress” I hear is a win over every wolf whistle thrown at me on the street. Every man who begs to be on their knees for me makes up for every patronizing tone I have ever heard. These “simps” are my reparations for a lifetime of oppression—and as long as they have a face, I have a seat at the table.

When I was 17 years old, I worked at a Los Angeles insurance company where I punched numbers in a calculator the size of a Fourth of July watermelon. On the day before the very first Earth Day, I went to the president of the company and asked if we could celebrate. I didn’t understand, at the time, why it was OK for me to walk into anyone’s office at any time. I was pretty, I wore miniskirts and I had world-class legs. That said, no one in the building except me knew about the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Or about Earth Day. I tried to explain to him about conservation and pollution.I could have mentioned that four years attending high school across the street from Disney Studios was like playing miniature golf at Three Mile Island—there was more smog than air. When a wayward skunk got run over on the Ventura Freeway, the smell was refreshing. We all believed that we had to stop the Vietnam War, but there were precious few people on that first Earth Day who rallied for clean air or saving trees and streams. I cared, but I didn’t have any idea at the time that my blue-sky childhood would return thanks to regulations, new flight paths and amazing automotive engineering.

Nobody at My Job Cared About Earth Day

Outside, we lived in a yellow atmosphere version of Blade Runner, while inside this downtown L.A. skyscraper, it was Mad Men on steroids. The president poured himself a Scotch and got an erection somewhere between me talking about making a poster of “the earth” for the lunchroom and how trees make oxygen. He only had one question for me.“What are you going to wear?” he asked. “Everyone got a kick outta you in that Santa jacket without the pants. What are those tights called? Oh, yeah, fishnet. Sexy. Fun. Good for morale!”I went back to my desk, right next to another desk where a woman named Beth, who should have been named Lois, chain-smoked and, hourly, pulled out a bottle of gin from the bottom drawer of her desk and took a couple of shots. She was training me. Lois explained that the reason there were no women executives (something I hadn’t noticed) was the same reason there were bathrooms for men and for women. I chose to believe she was being very deep.Lois taught me how to do a job—one I would quit a couple of months later—that would one day be done exclusively by computers. She also taught me how to dodge any sticky sexual situations."Tell the rat bastard you have cramps." Men and menses—incompatible. Her take on Earth Day was simple: “Will there be free cupcakes?”

Her take on Earth Day was simple: 'Will there be free cupcakes?'

Young Mothers Urged Congress to Care About the Environment

So, what made Earth Day happen? The sheer number of environmental issues in the late 1960s and early ‘70s are historically well-documented. But the love for clean water and air, not so much. I think a lot of people who worked in the same office as I just thought the environment would get better or…it wouldn’t. But the Cuyahoga River in Ohio repeatedly caught fire due to floating debris and oil. It blazed out of control in 1969. An oil rig leaked millions of gallons of oil off the coast of Santa Barbara. The bald eagle was dying out due to DDT poisoning. Whales were hunted nearly into extinction.Senator Gaylord Nelson and environment advocate Denis Hayes (Mr. Earth Day) honored that research. Although college campuses were preoccupied with ending the war, the bulk of mail being sent to Washington, D.C., was from young moms, with one or two children, noting their frustration that nothing was being done to protect the environment for their children. These two wonderful men, with a nexus of American mothers behind them, organized and created Earth Day.In 1970, the first Earth Day was observed by 20 million Americans and is now celebrated by over 200 million people in 141 countries. The concept of taking a day to honor and protect our planet not only hit a nerve, but it stuck around and has grown to include things like Fire Drill Friday. In 1970, we loved James Bond. Now we love Greta Thunberg. Jane Fonda was huge in the ’70s, and now, Jane Fonda is still huge. Fire Drill Friday is here to stay and weekly reminders from Greta and Jane help us understand that everything, even our sun, has an expiration date. So, life is more precious, even the life of a ferocious salmon fighting its way upstream to spawn. Props to salmon.

Why did Earth Day stick around?

Earth Day Remains an Important and Progressive Tradition

Why did Earth Day stick around? The 17-year-old in me still believes that human beings care about nature, even if they don’t understand the science. Sunsets are breathtaking; wild animals are fascinating; the ocean—don’t get me started. I love the ocean. The day I got my driver’s license, I drove to Zuma Beach to watch dolphins bodysurf. Years later, the VP of Greenpeace asked me to write a film about the remarkable journey for one of their most adventurous “Save the Whales” expeditions.Back when San Francisco Mayor Joe Alioto proclaimed the very first Earth Day, Northern California partied in the streets for two days and nights. You’ve got to love California. I mean, even President Richard and First Lady Pat Nixon planted a tree on the South Lawn of the White House. And back at our generic insurance company in downtown L.A., I made a truly atrocious poster and dressed as Mother Nature in a sheer ballet tulle skirt and pink tights with flowers stapled in the right places. I didn’t make the news, but the president of the company had one classic (not classy) comment.“Pink tights aren’t as sexy as black fishnet, but the flowers over your boobs were real fun and good for morale,” he said. Sometimes it is nice to take a moment to reflect and realize that we’ve come a very, very long way.And, yes, there were free cupcakes.

My dad was born on the same farm as his father and his grandfather. After I was born in 1954, the fourth (and best) of my parents’ five children, I grew up there, too. From an early age, I took great delight in rummaging through the attic, a treasure trove of family history. Among all the findings was a tintype picture of my great-grandfather as a child on the front porch of the old brick farmhouse, which at that time was fairly new. The farm is now owned and operated by my oldest brother. It’s been in our family for around 140 years.Growing up on the farm, there were always chores to do. Ours was a dairy farm, and the cows had to be milked twice a day, at five o'clock in the morning and again at four o'clock in the afternoon. They also had to be fed twice a day, and so did the calves and the younger heifers and steers. My older brother and my two older sisters helped with the milking before I inherited the role. Most of that work was done by hand. Even after they installed a modern milk parlor with a piping system to take the milk to the tank, it still wasn’t easy work. Cows can be stubborn, ornery and not always cooperative. I think they found great delight in swishing their poopy tails across my face.There was a lot of work to be done every day, but we never really knew we were working. My town friends loved to come to visit because our chores were a new experience for them. They loved being around all the animals, driving the tractors and riding on the wagons. But my neighborhood friends are the ones I remember most fondly. In the summer there was hay to bale, load onto the wagon, unload and stack in the barn. It was hard work on a hot summer's day, but the neighborhood kids were always there to help. At the end of the day, we’d pile into the back of the pickup truck and Ma and Dad would drive all of us to the lake for a swim. There were backyard baseball games, a basketball court in the barn, and a rope swing in the barn. We made forts in the straw and carved our initials in the beech trees back in the woods. It was a good life.

There was a lot of work to be done every day, but we never really knew we were working.

Hard Work Runs in Our Family

My dad never took his farming duties lightly. It was always work before play. But he also recognized that play was important too. He became interested in flying, and when he returned home after serving in the army during WWII, he married my mother and soloed for the first time on the same day. He bought a 1940s Aeronca Champion two-seater airplane and enjoyed flying until well into his 80s, spending Sunday mornings during the summer flying around Michigan to pancake breakfasts sponsored by a group called “The Flying Farmers.” He also took up golfing and was known to declare that daylight savings time was implemented so that farmers could play golf once the afternoon milking was done.But my mother—a worrier and a planner—was the real worker of the family, and the disciplinarian. She took care of the yard, the house, the garden, cooked three meals a day and canned enough produce to get us through the winter and beyond. She kept us all under control, and that included my dad. She was in charge of assigning the chores to us kids, and she made sure we did them correctly and on time. There were no cutting corners under her watch. Hunger was never an issue at our house. All of our friends made it a point to stop by for a visit around dinnertime. When we needed milk, my mother would bring a covered pail to the barn and fill it up. We had to stir it before pouring it into a glass so the cream wouldn’t come to the top, and we never drank the last little bit because there was usually a bit of hay or who-knows-what that settled in the bottom of the glass. I have to chuckle at today's young adults when they talk about this great! new! fantastic! thing called “farm-to-table,” when I've lived it my entire life. But I do appreciate the new awareness of the “know where your food comes from” movement.Eventually, my oldest brother started helping with big decisions about the farm. He convinced my parents to buy more land to expand the farming operations. Eventually, they acquired enough to make a living crop farming, so we sold the cows to the neighbors. My dad and brother grew corn, wheat and soybeans, which demanded the purchase of more and bigger equipment. To look at today's farm machinery and compare it to what we started with is staggering. When my dad was a young man, it took all the energy a family had to maintain an 80-acre farm. With today's equipment, one person can easily manage 800.

How I Left Farming Behind—for a While

In 1989, I married and had the first of my two daughters the following year. When they were four and five years old, my husband and I bought his parents' home and 63 acres. We had absolutely no interest in farming, so we leased the tillable acreage to a neighboring farmer. I never lost my love of dirt and animals, though, so I maintained a small garden and always had an animal around—a dog or a cat, or a goat or a chicken.When the girls were old enough they joined the 4-H. Their dad’s dad was instrumental in their membership. He convinced us that they should each buy a 700-pound steer in the fall, raise it through the winter and show it at the county fair in August, where it would be judged and sold at auction. Getting steers ready for the fair was a new experience for me. We had to train them to lead with a rope and halter, stand still for grooming and clipping, and pose for the judge. (And we had to hope beyond hope that those now 1,300-pound animals wouldn't drag our 80-pound girls through the midway). This whole time, my husband had absolutely no interest in farming. And, when the girls left for college, the last of the animals were gone, too. It was a bit of a relief for me because I no longer had chores to do. I was free at last! Or so I thought.

Who needs retirement when you can wake up every morning to a rooster crowing, the morning sun shining across the open fields, a day filled with chores and the smell of 140 cows?

Once a Farm Girl, Always a Farm Girl

One Valentine's morning I was in the kitchen enjoying a cup of coffee and the peace and quiet of our country home, when my husband called for me to come outside to see my gift. To my utter surprise and amazement were two of the cutest calves you've ever seen. We raised those two, and then they had calves, and then the calves’ calves had calves. My husband took a real interest in the Angus breed, so he bought more cows to go with the cows we already had. When the neighbor’s farm came up for sale we were able to add that to our 63 acres—more pasture ground for the cows that kept coming and coming and coming. This meant more feed, which led to buying tractors and equipment, then building barns and fences. Then we had to get a bull, which meant more calves, which grow into cows, and it goes on and on and on.What does one do at the end of their working career, with retirement well within sight? Apparently, they farm.We now have 340 acres, and rent another 200 to grow all the corn and hay we need to feed 140 head of Angus cattle. But they are our pride and joy. Our farm is our playground. And that farm-to-table movement? We’re right in the thick of it. The demand for beef from sustainable farms has grown dramatically. Our cattle are raised in open fields, never crowded, are fed high-quality feed and grow at their own pace, never given growth hormones. Two years ago we opened a little store on the farm where we offer beef born and raised right here. We invite and encourage visitors, both young and old, to our farm to enjoy the fresh—well, not always fresh—country air, walk among the animals, pet a bunny or collect an egg. Watching them brings back fond memories of growing up on a working farm, when work didn't really seem like work.Who needs retirement when you can wake up every morning to a rooster crowing, the morning sun shining across the open fields, a day filled with chores and the smell of 140 cows?

I came into this world through the love-hate dynamics of two quick-witted, young Black survivors. Both of my parents were Christians, born and raised in Detroit, a city known for its automotive industry and as its place as the on-again, off-again murder capital of our nation. My mother told me she met my father soon after he had joined the Hare Krishnas, a group practicing a form of Hinduism. According to the Bhagavad Gita, Hinduism is considered the highest form of spirituality. The practice is focused on compassion, humility, kindness, love, community and selflessness—the exact opposite of what I experienced as a child. My father’s character towards my siblings and me did not reflect the teachings of the Gita. He appeared to be living a double life. I'm not sure how a Black family, living in the poorest and most violent area of Detroit connected with the Hare Krishnas and Hinduism. Everything felt awkward. The majority of its members were white people that had very little in common with us. My mother and father split up when I was one. After my parent’s separation, my mother and siblings became outcasts, and the community frowned upon unpartnered mothers. We moved in with her sister and from that point forward I saw very little of my dad. My family was one of two Black families in the community and we faced subtle forms of prejudice, but my father’s world was far removed from the principles taught by the Hare Krishnas.

My mother told me she met my father soon after he had joined the Hare Krishnas.

Following in My Father's Footsteps Was Expected

Apparently, my dad had mastered the art of wearing a spiritual mask. He had enough spiritual practice to access a level of consciousness that separated him from other street men. My mother was a young, petite Black woman from a large poor family of nine. She was naïve or full of faith (depending on your point of view) and she followed people blindly. To her surprise, soon after saying “I do” at the altar, she learned later that evening that her new husband was part of one of Detroit’s largest 1980s drug cartels. My father told her that her duty was to simply follow his instructions without question. She did just that. She later confided in me that she felt like she had signed a life contract with the devil himself. My dad was the epitome of the stereotypical drug kingpin—he had multiple children and various women, was extremely dangerous, cold-hearted, emotionally unavailable, and wielded lots of power and influence in the streets. I often asked why God would give someone like Dad access to this level of power. How is this spiritual? As I entered my teens, I uncovered my dad’s plans for me to take over his position. What kind of person would desire this lifestyle for their own child? My recollection of these memories sends chills down my back. I spent my childhood in a dark space, lost and trapped in between two worlds that were polar opposites. I spent a few years living off-grid in a small community in the sticks of West Virginia. The people I prayed to God with were the same people who showed me the meaning of racism, hate crimes, physical and sexual abuse. After a few years of living in isolation in this community, I found myself back in the inner city, in training to properly be my father’s son. I was clinically labeled unfit for society by the age of 17. I began to see the world as the problem and rebelled until the moment that I was shot and found myself dancing with death.

It Took a Near-Death Experience for Me to Wake Up

Bang! The room instantly went silent and all I could hear was the growing echo of the loudest noise I’d ever heard. Immediately after my ears went dead, I went deaf and was overtaken by the sensation of my pulsating body. It felt as if time had slowed down. I heard my mind shouting inside my head, “Damn you shot me”. Somehow, I mustered the strength to scream it out. “Damn you shot me!” as I stared into her wounded eyes. “Arjuna, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Arjuna. Why did you make me shoot you?! I’m sorry, I just shot you, Arjuna. Oh my God, I just shot you.”I felt the flow of blood when my fingers finally found the hole. Somehow, I remembered from watching E.R. to apply pressure to slow down the gushing blood. It felt like razor blades cutting through me. Everything seemed to rush into my head. It felt like my body was about to explode, like I was about to pass out. “This is it,” I kept thinking, “My mother is going to kill me.”I was fighting with all my senses to keep my mind focused on breathing. Faintly, I heard people’s voices gathering outside my door and, for an instant, my mind raced. “Damn, people are just waiting for me to die to break in and take my money, drugs and guns.” I knew I couldn’t get too caught up in what I was experiencing. I saw flashing thoughts, hallucinations in my mind. “I’m going to die in the middle of a drug house floor?” “No, dying is not an option, especially not like this.” “What would my mother think?” I felt what little strength I had left leaving me. I felt the shallowness of my breath and my eyelids wanting to give up and close.

I was fighting with all my senses to keep breathing.

What I Learned When I Almost Died

Thwack! Thwack! I felt her hand slap me across the face demanding that I “don’t die,” and to “open your eyes!” I told her I needed a moment to pray and speak with God. I experienced flashbacks of previous spiritual experiences and conversations with God and the image of my one-year old son flooded my mind. I couldn’t stop imagining what his life would be like if I died. “How can you live like this Arjuna?” I kept thinking to myself. “Spiritual people don’t live like this.”I finally surrendered to the inner silence. While suspended outside of time and space, God finally answered my plea and assured me he was giving me a second chance: a fresh beginning and a new perspective on life. Since that day, I have learned to embrace my past, to forgive myself, to trust and follow my heart instead of following in my dad's footsteps, and to be grateful for everything that I am. I can now use all of my life experiences to inspire my children and others to believe that change and healing is possible. I honor both my mother and father for all the lessons they shared in making me the person I am.

When Grandma Regina died, I stood over her grave, my belly swollen with my son Joshua, who was born the following month. Some 21 years later, in 1992, while I walked the streets of Warsaw with Josh, now a six-foot-tall college boy, Grandma Regina’s life took on a new meaning for us.Grandma Regina was one of eight siblings born and raised in Warsaw, Poland. All my life I was told by Grandma, in her broken Polish accent, that she’d lost her entire family in her native Poland in the World War II Holocaust. She escaped by coming to the United States with her son, Louis, in 1910. Long before the Nazi slaughter, there was the bloodbath initiated by the violent Russian pogroms throughout the region when Poland was part of Russia. In the 19th century, when Russia took control of Poland, things started to change for the Jews. During the devastating pogroms of 1906, Grandma was terrified for her life. The horrific massacres, violence, rape and slaughter of Jews never slowed down in spite of what government officials promised. She begged her family to leave Poland, take her advice and follow her to the U.S. When the Nazis set their sights on the country, they sought to destroy all that was there and build it up again as a colonial homeland for Germans. Regina was a stocky five-foot-one, with dark brown hair and blue eyes and an agitated personality. The Grandma I knew was short-tempered and highly sensitive to anything that could appear not to go her way or smelled of anti-Semitism.While my relationship with Regina wasn’t close, I admired her for believing in herself and doing what she knew was right for her and taking that action. Leaving everything and everyone she knew to go to a new country far away—and learning a new language—took a lot of guts. For that, I’m eternally grateful. I was always curious about her roots that were also my roots.

Leaving everything and everyone she knew to go to a new country far away—and learning a new language—took a lot of guts.

My Son Wanted to Visit His Ancestors’ Homes

Josh had also developed a keen interest in his Eastern European roots and became fascinated with Slavic languages. So we included Warsaw on the itinerary when Josh had just completed a summer language program in Russia, where I joined him. We traveled to the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and then Poland. On a lazy morning after a large breakfast, we visited the Old Town Market Place, which is one of the oldest parts of Warsaw. As we sauntered down the street, Josh stopped and dug into his backpack.“Hey mom, I have this address from Grandma Dorothy. It has these names and addresses of some relatives she thinks live in Warsaw. She said she found it in Grandma Regina’s stuff after she died.” “What? When did she give you that?”I laughed.“Josh, no one is left of her family. The Nazi’s killed everyone,” I said with authority.“Well, let’s just see if we can find it anyway,” he replied.We pulled out our city map and plotted our approach. The names on the paper were Januz and Joseph, with the same last name as Regina’s before she married. Clearly, these people had been relatives. After wandering around for an hour, we found an apartment building with the same address. When we returned to our hotel later, we asked the concierge if she could find a phone number that matched the name and address. She said the switchboard was closed at night and to come back tomorrow. When we returned, I stopped by the desk again and Josh went up to our room. The concierge called again, and this time someone answered and identified himself as Joseph.To be sure it was a relative with this name, I asked the concierge to ask the man if Regina’s name meant anything to him.Yes.Does he speak Russian?“Of course.”Could we come to see him?“No, stay at the hotel and he will come to see us.”I was shocked and excited and trying to stay realistic. This person might still not be a relative of my grandmother’s.As we had dinner before we returned to the hotel, we waited in our room for what seemed like forever, but it was only one hour when the concierge called us and said:“The man is here. He says to have your son come down with you.”

We Reconnected With Long Lost Family

I held my breath all the way down the elevator. When the doors opened to the lobby, people were milling about. I scanned the crowd, unsure who I was looking for. After the crowd thinned, my eyes fell on one person, an elderly man standing by a wall, watching people step out of the elevator. He was someone who I would have recognized anywhere. It was clear he belonged in my family. I smiled, and he just looked back at me. I approached him. “Are you Joseph?” I asked.He didn’t answer. He just stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small photograph, pointed to the picture and looked at me. The photo was taken at my cousin Louise’s wedding. I pulled Josh close to translate. “Tell him that is me,” I pointed, “and that is Dorothy, Rose, Josephine, Louis, my cousin Louise and there is Regina.” I told Josh to tell him the photo was taken at my cousin’s wedding many years earlier when Grandma was still alive. Apparently, she or someone else had mailed it to him. Joseph had his arm around Josh and said to him in Russian, “What happened to Regina? The letters stopped 20 years ago. We kept writing, but heard nothing back.” I was wondering something, too. Why had Grandma never told us she was writing to her nephews all those years? Why had she said everyone had died in the war, yet clearly, these two people had survived? The only reason I could think of was her secretive personality. She never trusted anyone! I’m wondering if she thought there was danger? But to her family? Did anyone else know about this? And, if she had trusted us, we could have enjoyed getting to know these men. And they would have been able to know us. It was obvious Grandma was writing to someone in Poland, her birthplace. What could they possibly do to her in the U.S.? And in terms of the language, Aunt Rose practically lives next door to the University of California at Los Angeles. I’ll just bet someone there reads Polish! Josh was as amazed, as I was, that this man standing in the hotel lobby was a relative, discovered across thousands of miles, and a Holocaust survivor. Joseph had asked his daughter Aleksandra, called Ola, to meet him at the hotel, since she spoke English. She was a scientist for Proctor & Gamble. Ola didn’t know about the correspondence, so it had never occurred to her to look up relatives in the United States.

It’s a family I never knew I had.

My Son and I Now Have a Deeper Connection With Our European Jewish Roots

The four of us spent hours talking about our lives, and I shared what I knew about my grandmother. A couple of days later, Ola invited us to Joseph’s home to meet what family members were in town. As it was summer, many were on vacation. Joseph gathered his younger brother Januz, Ola’s husband and her daughter, as well as close friends, to join together and share stories. I learned that Joseph and his brother Januz are my mother’s first cousins, the sons of one of Grandma’s brothers and the only survivors in the family. Some siblings and relatives fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and died there. Again, speaking with Ola’s help, Joseph told us he survived the war by serving as a colonel in the Red Army. He was very proud of that service. As Joseph was in the army, he spoke Russian and some German and jumped between all three languages, sometimes within one sentence. Januz, who spoke a little English, told us he was 12 when the war broke out. He was taken high up into the Ural Mountains to work in a mine, which is how he survived. Today, he’s an attorney, but he’s not allowed to practice law in the city of Warsaw because he is Jewish. Ola told us that the Nazis devised ways to keep the camps as secret as they could—they crowded people into trains to write postcards to their families, sent them to work camps and told them they would see family again after the war. This way, they dispelled suspicion about the death camps. The family had some of these postcards written by cousins, aunts and uncles who died in the death camps. It was a different story for women, who learned when the soldiers were coming and that they would be killed. Instead of suffering their fate, some killed themselves before the soldiers arrived. We saw photographs of these beautiful young women—some relatives—before the war. In spite of the tragic stories, the gathering was very warm and welcoming. We sat in Joseph’s living room surrounded by nieces, nephews and brothers. Josh and I shared about our families and what we knew about Regina and her life. Josh’s connections to Polish Jewish roots were now a reality for him. It was normal for me to have a European grandmother to identify my lineage. But Joshua’s grandmother, my mother, Dorothy, was a modern woman with a career. My Grandma made matzo balls from scratch and created her own horseradish.“It was amazing to find these relatives,” Josh said. “At the moment, I felt it was a blur. But once it was clear what had happened, and how haphazard and unplanned and really unlikely it was, I think it made it really incredible.”While my mother was born in the United States, Regina from Warsaw gave me more of a connection to what happened to European Jews. Josh didn’t have that same connection, but his amazement at meeting his distant relatives, he said, brought it much closer to home for him. While finding these relatives was a gift for me, the real gift came from Josh’s appreciation of his lineage and his sense of being proud of his heritage. He and I have a new connection that we talk about and share. I’ve even been able to stay connected to Ola. In fact, when she came to New York on business and I was living in Washington, D.C., at the time, I flew up and we spent a day together. Another generation that was touched by the Holocaust. It’s a family I never knew I had.

The only scholarship to go unclaimed during my senior year of high school was the one offered by “The Daughters of the American Revolution.” I could have qualified, but the secrets of a sealed adoption denied me the opportunity to grow up knowing my remarkable ancestry. I was raised with the following understanding: I have three fathers. Yes, you read that right. Two are deceased and one is my Heavenly Father who is very much alive. My adoptive father, “Dad,” always harbored the hope that I really was his. He never wanted my siblings to argue that I “wasn’t their real sister,” so he kept my adoption secret. He died before they learned of his deception. Dad raised me with the lie that my biological father “never even wanted to hold me.” I doubt he ever realized the emotional torture such a statement would have on a 12-year-old kid. My biological father, whom I never remember meeting, died when I was six years old. As a drunk driver, he wrapped his car around a tree and left us all behind. It’s through his ancestry that I learned about my heritage as a Daughter of the American Revolution.

It makes me proud to know I hail from a family of such character.

My Family Members Have Gone to War Throughout History

He and my mother were divorced, but he enlisted into the Vietnam War when he learned my mom was pregnant with me so that she’d have a stable income to count on. They say he was never the same when he returned. He was a gunman on a helicopter. I can only imagine the horrors he saw pulling the trigger, watching our men run to the chopper while being shot from behind. I know I would never be the same. Sometimes my heart aches to ask him questions, to thank him for providing for me, for serving his country.My paternal grandfather served in World War II, in England, where he met and married my grandmother. I met her once on the phone when I met my half-sister. It seems she didn’t believe I was hers. Disappointing. This grandfather’s ancestry includes a letter written to one of his great-grandfathers, a militiaman who fought alongside General George Washington in the American Revolutionary War. The letter is in an attempt to pay him for his service. He refused to accept. It was an honor to serve his country. It makes me proud to know I hail from a family of such character. I received the gift of this inheritance from a family member at my grandfather’s funeral.My maternal grandfather also served in World War II and was a grand storyteller. He served on a mine-sweeper ship in the Pacific. I remember his description of seeing floating houses in the ocean. They thought there had been an island flooded nearby when they realized these were massive sea turtles. (The things you remember as a kid.) These stories are tokens of my history and explain a certain deep-seated pride and patriotism that I’ve felt since my childhood. The stories of sacrifice in service to an ideal greater than self inspired me to believe in a life of service to others. My grandfather was a recipient of two Purple Hearts.

I Learned About My Ancestry Too Late

I pause here to note this tidbit of information would have been nice to know at the time of my high school graduation. Here again was another scholarship opportunity I missed based on not knowing my family’s history. Without pining over missed opportunities, I simply acknowledge these details could have made the difference in my attending—instead of just being accepted to—the University of Southern California. I ended up at City College, and it took me five years to obtain a two-year degree, but I graduated with zero college debt. I made choices. I moved on. But, how much loss have I suffered because someone denied me the opportunity to learn who I am and from whom I descend? I spent the key years of my childhood running through the forests of Mississippi where I learned my “Yes, Ma’ams” and “No, Sirs.” It was a place founded on deep respect and profound Confederate pride. It was also very racially prejudiced. I knew a very poor Black family with five children who went all summer long with no shoes, and whose house had no running water. That never stopped us from playing stickball together or locking someone in the outhouse. Color-blindness to skin is a beautiful thing children have.I learned later that my Dad’s mother was a full-blooded Choctaw Indian. She never let it slip. It was a disgrace in the South at that time, so she buried her ancestry and the rich heritage that could have come to me by the spirit of adoption. Not to harp on the scholarship theme, but because I was legally adopted by a Native American, that too could have had an impact on the opportunities afforded me when considering my options for college.

In the reliquary of my mind, I polish the trinkets of my heritage with wonder and awe.

My Sealed Adoption Prevented Me From the Truth

Lastly, I confess to a mistake that I’ve regretted for years now. My maternal grandmother gifted me a set of Tree of Knowledge encyclopedias, which sat in a storage box in the garage for years. Cleaning it out after a church yard sale at our house one day, I didn’t realize that the box of encyclopedias—containing a key piece of my grandmother’s history—was part of a stack of boxes going to Goodwill. Years later, I remembered the picture my grandmother told me about: Her grandfather in Arkansas riding in a car with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. All she remembered was that he was an important man who gave all his money away to help people during the Great Depression and died penniless. Guess what I learned when I went for the encyclopedias? I’d donated them to Goodwill. I’ve been heartsick ever since.My grandmother passed away after years of dementia. I had tried to sit down with her on several occasions to learn of her history, but because she was raised with the firm idea that one shouldn’t talk about oneself, I know only her maiden name and a few scant details of stories to piece together the mystery. Who was my ancestor riding in the car with President Roosevelt?In looking for the picture on the internet, I found a man sharing my grandmother’s maiden name from Arkansas, a politician who ran for president himself, and has a picture commemorating his service in the halls of the U.S. Senate. I can’t tell you how sad it makes me to know I have a relative with a noble resume of service to this country of whom I know almost nothing and have little proof of being able to make a formal family connection.In the reliquary of my mind, I polish the trinkets of my heritage with wonder and awe. The sealed adoption put a fatherless child in a family. The secrecy orphaned me from my ancestry.

"You need to lose weight," my father said, his index finger poking the plump folds of my stomach. "Lay off the snacks and you'll get thin." I stared at the offending roll of fat that strained the buttons on my shirt and knew he was right. He was always right. Appearances were everything to my father, a shrewd businessman who expected nothing less than perfection from his employees and from his own family. Being the youngest of four kids, I often fell short of those expectations and felt the sting of his unyielding judgment. He wanted his children to have a proper education and impeccable manners, but more importantly, to respect his opinion no matter how much we may have disagreed with him. If I held my fork wrong during dinner, he would summon me to the head of the table, ask me to hold out my hands, and then he'd smack my knuckles with the handle of a steak knife. If my siblings or I broke the household rules, we were spanked across the backside with my father's leather belt, the angry welts a stark reminder of who was in charge of our lives.Added to my list of imperfections was an eye condition, known as mixed dominance, that developed while I was in elementary school. I was forced to wear an eye patch in first grade, but instead of rocking that pirate look, I shrank from people, convinced that I was some sort of freak. I didn't dare tell my parents about the sense of dread I felt each morning when I left for school. Fear was a sign of weakness in my father's eyes, and if my Achilles heel was exposed, I knew that his criticism would be relentless. I quickly learned to conceal my emotions to avoid accusations of being overly sensitive and immature.

Despite having a cruel streak, I knew my father still loved me and my siblings.

My Father’s Disapproval Hung Over Me Throughout High School

Despite having a cruel streak, I knew my father still loved me and my siblings. Even though he was not demonstrative with his feelings, he never failed to protect or provide for us. He showed affection in the way he shared his love of history, travel and classical music with us. He made sure that we spent every summer exploring museums and battlefields around the country and attending opera festivals to "broaden our horizons."To find common ground with him during my teen years, I joined the school band, orchestra and choir. Music gave us a comfortable connection for a brief time, but whatever pride he may have felt was overshadowed by my low grades in school and my expanding waistline. The specter of his disapproval hung over me like an albatross, the unshakable fear I had of failing him morphing into anxiety and depression. During my senior year of high school, I ended up in therapy after my mother spotted the angry red lines on my wrists from months of cutting. By the time I was an adult, I had realized that I could never measure up to my father's impossibly high standards and that no amount of effort on my part would change his opinion of me. I'd wasted too many years waiting for the approval that never came. He loved me, but I wasn't doing anything special with my life—unlike my siblings—that would generate a sense of pride. One sister owned her own business, the other managed the bank's trust department and my brother worked in real estate alongside my father. I was simply a mother of four who cleaned houses, sold cosmetics door-to-door and ran a babysitting business on the side. My husband also worked two jobs, but we still had difficulty making ends meet—a situation my father added to his arsenal against us for making what he considered poor financial decisions and mediocre career choices.

I Reconnected With My Father Over Our Ancestry

It wasn't until years later that he took an interest in my activities when I started researching our ancestors. He was very proud of our family tree, our roots heavily steeped in the pioneers who shaped our country. My quest to learn more about our family history began long before ancestry information was available online, which meant that my research was based on spending countless hours in the musty aisles of our small library and digging through old boxes filled with photos and letters that my family had saved. Together, we huddled over the dining room table to examine the long arms of a tree filled with ancestral names, dates and fascinating stories. My father was as giddy a child on Christmas morning when I unearthed relatives from 1490 Scotland. He grew up believing his family was of German and Irish descent and, as a history buff, he was astounded to learn through my research that our bloodline originated from Germany and Scotland, not Ireland. Sitting side by side at the table, his eyes misted over when he squeezed my hand and told me how proud he was of me for the hard work I had done. After 48 years, I had finally earned my father's respect. I was no longer just a stay-at-home mother struggling to get by; I was the daughter who shared his love of ancestry and who embraced the rich history of our family. It brought us closer in ways I never imagined—we spent many evenings and weekends sharing history books, organizing old photos, taking notes and dreaming of a trip to Scotland to visit our ancestral home. The deeper I delved into the branches of my family tree, the stronger I felt about my intellect, stamina and worth. I realized that I was capable of doing anything once I put my mind to it. The weight from years of failure had finally lifted, and for the first time ever, I felt the buoyancy of self-confidence. Not only did the research with my father strengthen our relationship, but it also brought to light facets of his personality that I had previously never understood. While growing up, I learned that he was the youngest of three boys and teased unmercifully by one of his siblings. His parents disdained any display of emotions, even after losing one of his brothers who served in the Air Force. The walls that my father had carefully constructed guarded the grieving heart of a young man forced to portray strength in the face of adversity. It made him methodical and unyielding, his mode of defense against anyone who threatened to expose the cracks in his armor.

I needed time to grieve, to process what I'd learned when I bonded with my father over history books and faded photographs.

Our Family History Bonded Us in Ways I Will Never Forget

When he was diagnosed with leukemia a year later, I never doubted him when he said he would beat the disease. He was my father, and it had been ingrained in me that he was always right. But once I felt the brittle knots of his spine after his sixth chemo treatment, I knew that cancer was winning. He softened so much in those final months, telling me the things that I had yearned to hear when I was young. He told me I was a good mother, a strong, stable woman and the daughter he had always been proudest of, even though he'd never been able to articulate those feelings into words. I lost him two weeks before Father's Day. He died with my face against his chest as I listened to the last beat of the heart that had finally opened to reveal the light hidden underneath the pain. It was years before I resumed my research on the family tree. I needed time to grieve, to process what I'd learned when I bonded with my father over history books and faded photographs. I came to accept that he was the product of his upbringing, passing down what he had been taught—that toughening children through criticism and rigid discipline was an act of love designed to strengthen their character. His form of parenting worked on my siblings, making them determined, successful people. But for me, it was crushing and turned me into an anxious, distrusting person. Therapy eventually helped me understand the dynamics of my father's upbringing in conjunction with my own, enabling me to forgive not only him but myself for years of self-loathing. During my recent ancestry research, I found a Scottish Lord of the Manor from 1440, my 15th great-grandfather. My father would be thrilled and so proud of my discovery, but no prouder than I am of myself for continuing my journey through the family tree. In many ways, it feels as if I'm traveling a quiet road back to my father, back to my home where the light burns brighter inside me.