Making space for real friends by chucking the dead wood

Nobody deserves a free ride in the world of relationships

There is no such thing as a longevity prize. Family doesn’t get a ‘bye’ because they are family. Everyone needs to earn every friendship, every ounce of love. Like my coffee cup says,

“Family are the friends you choose.”

One of the blessings of coming out has been reconnecting with friends, colleagues, family people I have loved or maybe only had distant contact with, even forgotten, and now had a chance to bring back into my life.

Almost every single one of them has given me a “hell yeah” and no matter how wild or weird or different, they have been able to centre on me, not on me as a trans woman, or whatever else they choose to think of me.

More delicious still is that I have met so many wonderful new people.  People that live in ways similar to me, similar to the way I have always lived.  I don’t know why I am this way, but just because I haven’t seen or spoken to someone in a year doesn’t mean I love them any less.  I love my friends.  And when I see them again we slot right back in just like it was yesterday.

That is a skill or type that also feels familiar to the Sex Worker.  The need to remember details, conversations, likes.  Intimacy on the one hand speaks of familiarity, even if that is the wrong or a “bad” word.  Indeed, familiar connotes ‘taking for granted’ or at least not paying as much attention to.

I love the world of companions, and while on the one hand, it is beautiful and desirable to develop a deeper and deeper relationship with one, it is also not a goal.  We are rarefied versions of ourselves in the pro-client sphere.  This is obvious to every provider, but I am not sure how many clients think about themselves in this regard, or think about the freedom it can entail.

And it is hard to imagine how begging to be whipped or pegged can be aspirational, but it can, depending on the context.  I don’t aspire to be someone’s baby.  But I do aspire to express and to feel an innocent loving energy.  And being submissive, being so submissive I can’t speak, being so inside and present in my body that all I want to do is curl up into the palm of her hand is the most beautiful feeling I have ever known.

Doing things for her, taking care of her, doting on her, are all alternative ways of accessing the feeling.  It may seem absurd for a trans woman who is also a misandrist to speak about what it means to be a man, but this is my truth.  Men are wired to protect and serve.  Let me say that differently.  The Divine Masculine is an energy source that is designed to protect and serve, to hold and cherish.  It is not a big leap to say “submit”, or “surrender to”.

I have always been too afraid to do this in the vanilla world, though in reality it is what fed a most beautiful marriage for 25 years.  I can only say that I am sorry that my soon-to-be-ex has decided that this form of love can only come from a male-bodied individual.  That her own shame is the centre of the story, not mine.

When I come out to someone, or speak to someone, and they say, “as long as you’re happy” I know the red flags need to come up.  They say this because they know they can’t say what they really think.

More and more people, and the watershed is post-US-election, when the bigots and haters voted in a felon and sex offender, thereby making it all right to wear their hate on their shirtsleeves.  And I’m not even in the US.  Britain is no better, and based on my personal experience as the only place I have ever been assaulted, twice now, is by far the worst place I have been to be trans on the planet.  

Of course, I must face the idea that 2/3rds of the world is now off-limits to me.  This evening two older Caribbean men laughed at me to one another.  But I could tell they had also been checking me out.  I get misgendered in England more than anywhere.  If the person is from the Indian sub-continent, it is almost 100% likely that they will misgender me.  But ironically, in my nascent practice as a dominatrix, who are the most common clients?  Indian and Pakistani men.  I will need a primer on why they are so eager to experience life at the hands of a trans dominatrix.

My willingness to cast people out of my life for being jerks is also helping.  I am not carrying friendship dead weight.  I am not willing to do the work for someone who has issues with people like me.  They need to do the work and just be supportive.  While it sucks to call time on friendships, especially deep and long ones, it is far better to let go.  Nobody gets a pass—not even family.  Learning that lesson as a child has stead me well as an adult.

In esoteric circles we talk about raising our vibration.  Well, surrounding ourselves with the right people does this too.

A lovely companion who teaches me much even if she is not a formal mentor said to me the other day, “no more theory, just do.”  She feels that I am more than prepared for the big leagues as a sex worker, ready to work, ready to stop wanting to learn formally, in the sense that this is an obstacle to just doing.  She is so right.  And so, I am knuckling down to clear away the last few obstacles to being in business for myself.

Finishing my website, making sure all my socials are set up, that it is easy to book me, pay me, send gifts to me—new priorities, no longer sources of procrastination.  I have a collection of gorgeous photos now, everything I need.

I have decided to charge what I used to charge in my vanilla world, not least because what I do draws on that experience in the corporate milieu, but also pulls on so much training and life experience from spiritual reals, health and wellness, and of course, kink and sexuality.  The absurdity of the notion that sex work isn’t work was theoretically obvious to me when I first thought about it, but now, on a practical and real level, I see how much I have to bring of me to a session with a client, and this is provoking the most extraordinary growth.

Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows that at my most delicate, fragile, submissive self, is a little girl, or a baby boy, or both.  In my BDSM dominatrix practice, this version of me is very present, especially in the quiet moments.  I find that even when my clients ask me to do the most “extraordinary things”…humiliation, teasing, impact play, it is this delicate and soft version of me who is there to hold them when the emotional floodgates open, and they do.

Maybe it isn’t surprising, but I am working with trans people of both persuasions.  I am also working with men of all shapes and sizes, but am finding certain “types” are drawn to me.  Feisty ones.  Younger.  More corporate.  Eager to be taken down, but desperate to be held by mommy once it happens.  And women, but women want something so different.

I am so at the foot of the ladder, but women are finding their way to me as a means to cope with the way the world sees women.  And through the way we play, they find an ability to regain agency in my arms.  I may be superficially a domme to them, and I do hold space in a complete way, but I am with them as a slave.  And they almost always know it, that I will respond in a flash at the slightest indication that they need something different.

I made the choice to be face out in part because I wish to be totally committed to this path.  I loved my former career.  But I also don’t want to go back to it.  I loved the money, but I don’t know if I can have it anymore.  And anyway, this is so much freer, and freeing.  By being face out I have burned the bridges behind me.   I have also said to my colleagues, I am in this with every ounce of me, with all the seriousness that you have.  This is my choice.

And little by little, it is settling in that this could be a future, my future.  And I am figuring out what my Practice will be…in a grand sense.  Yes, of course, I will do all the fun and games, but I seek more.  I seek a deeper relationship with clients.  I want to work with people who are prepared to change their lives on a profound level.