We are experiencing a time where right now touch and physical contact is about as precious and rare as gold dust.
For me, touch has always been important. For me, touch, closeness, intimacy and healing are so existential that for them, I dropped out of law school and left behind a career behind a desk. I became a whore, because touch plays a role for me that is obviously greater than that of just any recreational activity. It took time for me, to become aware of this. Many people love sex, but it is enough for them to do it as a hobby, mostly as one they share with only one other person. That’s perfectly ok. But I wanted to spend more time with touch, closeness, and all the emotions that go with it. To engage with it, to know more about it, to practice it, and to professionalize it. Since I also have to earn a living, it was clear that this time must be paid. Et voilá: that’s how I became a whore.
I love sex, I love the smell of bodies, of sweat and arousal.
I like to hear and feel someone’s breath close to my ear. I like to breathe in people’s ears or whisper things to them that turn them warm or hot. I need weight on my body, I feel like it’s going to burst otherwise. My body only becomes real when it is touched, or when I can touch someone else. When people in debates about prostitution disparagingly say to me “You are privileged! You could have done something other than sex work!”, then that is only partly true. I probably would have become depressed in any other job. My brother is a musician, and certainly he could have become something else. But would he have done as well? Would he have been happy? He has a gift, and he has something to give to the world that is great. It is exactly the same for me. My gift is to give people touch and closeness and fabulous orgasms.
The fact that people value this can be seen not only in the facts that I can make a good living, pay taxes, and thus make a contribution to the common good. Giving closeness in a world lacking interpersonal touch has been a worthy mission with an important purpose long before Corona.
Many of the thank-you letters from my clients are deeply touching. And it’s not just me, many colleagues describe that one of the most wonderful aspects of our profession is the gratitude of our clients. Gratitude from people who have experienced contact, pleasure and sex that made them happy. Experiences like this can change biographies, change lives.
Now we are all at home. We need to stay 2 meters away from each other. Lucky is the person, who has a partner now: the privilege of touch is reserved for the monogamous couple. Not a good time for singles and free agents (like me). And for all those for whomfamily is not a safe place.
We have reverted to a 50’s morality of touch. I stick to all the rules, talking my ears off on the phone, going jogging, meditating, doing yoga, leaving the groceries at my mom’s door. Touching only my cat, myself and occasionally my loved one*.
All of this is kind of a nightmare for me, as it is for everyone else. Every day I think we’ll wake up from this soon, but then someone comes on the radio and tells me this is just the beginning. I am paralyzed and every day I feel like I am losing a bit of my presence of mind.
I roll on the carpet from time to time to reassure my body that it is still there, has limits.
My own body weight is not enough to convey this fact in a meaningful way. I touch myself and also masturbate, but like it had been before all this, with only mild passion. I am a sex educator and I know all the theories, that the prerequisite for good sex is being able to have fabulous solo sex. I think this is pedagogically correct, and regularly confirm this to all my coaching clients* in order to be professional. I hereby publicly admit for the first time, that this bit has never really applied to me. I want to pounce on someone, or be grabbed, I love foreign fingers instead of my own on my body, on and in my pussy, and I clearly prefer hands, cocks, and tongues to any fucking sex toy, no matter what fancy space material it’s made of, how utopian the cost, and how streamlined it is to my G-spot.
All of this is, of course, complaining at a high level.
Most certainly there is greater suffering than… being temporarily out of work. On the radio I hear advice about “home office” . Very important: Keep to the usual routines of your working day. What does that mean for me? Sitting down at my desk in a latex dress and boots and answering emails from clients who can’t book appointments? Selfsuspension in my living room? Tying up my teddy bears? Insert a dildo every now and then or do facesitting with cuddly toys? Breathing and Process-Work with my cat? My work routine is disrupted.
My body does not understand its withdrawal from adrenaline, serotonin and oxytocin. It misses the deep relaxation that comes from lying in close physical contact with someone with whom you have just dared a ride through ecstasy. My chocolate consumption evolves in proportion to the announcement of infection numbers.
It is already becoming apparent that this crisis will not be over in the near future.
In addition to a financial free fall, I wonder how my professional life will develop in the future.
The very creative and solution-oriented among us have already gotten into the technology of Zoom and other tools, offer CamSex, online education, ZoomHangouts and, in keeping with the trend of the 90s, phone sex. People are already shooting video clips and switching to selling merchandise (used knickers, stockings, what else?).
I’m not a particularly visual person during sex, nor am I into educational games in general. Although I am a joyful exhibitionist, I don’t necessarily want to be naked on the internet. You wouldn’t think so, so here comes my second outing: Talking during sex is rather difficult for me. I prefer to feel rather than to talk. Moaning and breathing and even singing and cheering is not a problem, but will anyone pay for it?
Everyone tells me: You give workshops! Why not make an online workshop!
The thought of online courses has been putting me into an acute deep sleep for over two years now, ever since I started looking into the subject. I have never understood my work as “How to get from X to Y in 7 easy steps”. To be honest, although I am very knowledgeable, I have no idea. I have led countless workshops and held people in one-on-one sessions. I don’t know about solutions, I only know about processes and how to pave the way. What I can do is accompany people when they are being touched, when they open up, when they are vulnerable. I can do ecstasy and lust – wet, open and ready, or shyly standing in the hallway. I can do improvisation, I can do the unexpected. I can listen to bodies, not tell them how to become more optimal in 5 steps. I can do closeness that is open-ended – not driven by a certain goal.
And I can bring people together. I can create a space for them to experiment. So they can touch each other. I don’t like to explain the worlds of others. I prefer to let them discover for themselves. By world, I really mean the one beyond one’s own living room and beyond two-people-relationships. But that’s exactly where online courses are usually headed. We become private. We letting Ole and Uschi know, how they can be happy at home – as a couple and alone.
How long will it take us to reclaim the achievements we reached in matters of public sex?
I’m sorry dear readers, this is my Corona Rant. I have no constructive solutions for you today.
I am sad and frustrated because I worry about what will become of our culture of touch. What is becoming of our sexual culture. Last but not least, about what will become of me and my colleagues in sex work. I have financial reserves for about 2-3 months. Some must continue to work, despite the high risk to themselves and others. The reason is economic hardship: these people are falling through all assistance programs for the self-employed, are not eligible for basic benefits, perhaps because they do not have a secure residence status or are not registered. There are customers who add to this hardship by exploiting, pushing prices. A preview of a “sex purchase ban”: If sex work is criminalized, this affects marginalized sex workers in particular.
Whores offer touch and closeness. I – maybe as part of a last hopelessly analog, hands-on generation – don’t want our sexual culture to go online. I became a whore precisely because I didn’t want to do “something with media”. I stand by this.
Keep your distance, dear readers. Keep thinking hot thoughts. Talk about them with each other. Masturbate. Watching each other is also horny, by the way. Doable even via Whatsapp Videocall. But beware: Facebook has your data!
Orgasms are good for the immune system. Fear is definitely not.
Stay well.
Your Kristina Marlen
PS: Of course: All this will pass. And I will learn. I will develop a memorable Zoom format as well, for sure. And it will be fabulous and you will all want to buy it. Because also this economic crisis will pass. My ungrounded brain is already at work. If you have wishes and ideas, how I can make you happy with my knowledge, my abilities, my profession in corona compatible ways, then please contact me:: mail@marlen.me
I am happy about that and also about any further encouragement.
Picture by fabulous Toni Karat – melting point images – Test image for the NARCISSISM Project – fittingly, I’m sitting in front of the mirror and it’s about car erotica!
The BesD – sexworkers’ association for the selling of sexual and erotic services- has put togethera website with help for sexworkersin corona times!
Hier you’ll find a regularly updated blog post on the Corona situation by Lilli Erdbeermund from the BesD Corona-Virus: What sex workers (and everyone else) should know about now!
Collegue Nicole Schulze started a Leetchi funding campaign für die street sex workers in Trier. Please donate!
In Berlin there is a Crowdfunding for all people active in the nightlife– please donate!
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