It took about two weeks for me to accept my identity as a sex worker. When I first interviewed and even when I arrived on my first day, I considered it like any serious job. In my mind, I emphasized the professional in professional dominatrix.

The first time I started to accept the role of sex worker may have been the first time a client asked for “manual release.” The domina I was observing reluctantly obliged. She arranged an agreement to receive an adequate gratuity for the “extra service.” She had crinkled her nose and pursed her lips as if she were smelling the foulest manure while she rubbed that wrinkly dick with her tiny gloved hands.

No denial after that. I was a sex worker in the sex industry. Many prospective dominas starting out fantasize about the Emma Peel-esque catsuit with the Catwoman whip and smoking hot footwear. I know I looked forward to grinding my patent leather boots into the face of a servile man. Female power… with style.

What more can a woman raised on She-Ra, Xena, and Buffy hope for in a job?

Can you hear that? It’s the sound of a naïve girl-power fantasy shattering. Like all fantasies, reality is far more complex, especially in the case of professional domme work. The power issue: most of that is true but not in a simple mistress/slave dynamic. From the time you lace up your corset to the time you walk out of the session, you are in power. Some lessons I learned to maintain that:

1. No matter what role you take, as the domme or sub in the session, you are always in control. You talk to every client as you would with a play partner in your personal life in the process of negotiation. Tell them your limits (e.g., I only take light to medium corporal punishment, I keep my underwear on, I wear gloves at all times, etc.). If he doesn’t choose you, you’re better off.

2. Above all, keep your mouth, hands, and feet free whenever you can. If you have to be restrained/bound as a submissive, try to tie your own ropes so that you can set up a fail-safe escape knot. Safe words are only going to help you so much. You need to be able to walk out. Your manager can’t save you if she doesn’t know you’re in trouble. Horror story: a client once forcibly rubbed his dick back and forth in a girl’s tied hands.

3. If the client tries things that you didn’t discuss beforehand, call him on it. Depending on what kind of relationship you have, you either negotiate or flat out refuse. Anything that offends you is good reason to walk out.

4. Don’t get conned with new clients. My manager Lucy is the best of the bunch because she gives a thorough briefing before she sends you in. Some managers might send you in blind and leave you with the responsibility of finding out what you need to know. Screw that. Reconnaissance is key. Otherwise, clients will get free extra time, stiff you, give you less tip on extra services like nudity, or like this week’s Featured Client, dry hump you for an hour.

5. Speaking of reconnaissance, be a filter not a sponge for what your fellow dommes say. We are all trying to get paid and though we all ask to hear about individual meets, these bitches won’t share all the good information. I overheard Lucy tell me a client liked secretary scenarios so I was the only one in a button down and skirt for a sub session (others did the clichéd schoolgirl outfit). If I have the upper-hand, I’m keeping it.

What can we learn from all this? Let’s take this week’s session with Dry Humper Dave (named Dick in my tweets). He wrote down (!) the specifics of the session on paper, which included leg scissoring, pinning down, trampling on his back with my feet and non-competitive wrestling. Fine. Suffice it to say, the only wrestling I did was to leg scissor his neck to the mat after he was attempting to dry hump me with my legs up. I tried to distract and intimidate him by talking about the femme fatale Bond girl who killed men with her lethal thighs while trying to demonstrate (yeah, I’m sadistic).

The final straw (or first straw since he began with this) was that his idea of face-sitting was me grinding my pussy and ass on his mouth. Hey, I’m not against face-sitting, especially with my two layers of underwear. My primary limit in session is that if it feels like sex, I’m not doing it. If I want oral sex with clothes on, I’ll get someone outside of the dungeon.

What I did was agree to bring in Giada on his request to show me how it’s done. Oh, if he could’ve seen me snicker. Long story short, I got her to rub her pussy and ass in his face, bury his mouth in her ass like he was bobbing for apples, and get humped with her legs open and every which way for 15 minutes. She got a twenty dollar tip and I got my fee plus tip for doing none of that. You got served, G. I don’t care now whether she gossips about me and gives me the cold shoulder. I’ll always have the image of her underneath grunting Dry Humper Dave with her fake giggles and facial expression hiding disgust.

Before you think of me as Rosemary’s baby, I was laying under the grunting, penis pounding idiot for the other parts of the hour. I earned my keep. With his face near mine as I tried to suppress my smirk, I remembered I was a sex worker. Getting emotional, which meant allowing shame and disgust to cloud my focus, was counter-productive. If I wanted to win (get money, status, eventual independence), I needed to grit my teeth and smile. Oh, and use the power of No like it was an AK-47.

“No, I will not open my legs while you pin me down.” See!

Ma Cherie (@CherieDAmour) is in the market for a boy/girlfriend, kinky sex partner, willing slave, and sugar daddy, though not necessarily in that order. When not working as a dominatrix, Ma Cherie is cruising online dating sites, hitting up fetish parties, and regularly pleasuring herself. Unironically, her favorite song is “Kiss With A Fist.”

On Foursquare, we check in to restaurants, the 405, concerts and airplanes with such competitive zest over mayorship, it puts Tonya Harding to shame — so why wouldn’t we want to check in to clinics when we’re getting an STD check-up?

MTV, which is running a campaign to get people tested for sexually transmitted diseases, has paired up with the location-based network Foursquare to incentivize the process. Through the month of September, they are offering a super special badge to all those who check in at a clinic.

No word on whether people get badges if they turn up positive for any STD.

All right, we’re assholes and fully aware we’re not helping the cause one bit. The idea here is to help destigmatize getting tested, and while we’re lolsing about it, we here at Sex and the 405 fully support this. And if a badge isn’t enough to get you going, MTV is also having a sweepstakes that will grant one lucky badge holder the chance to go to New York with a friend to attend MTV’s 10 on Top — we’re guessing that’s not a euphemism for an orgy, but if it is, we’re sure they’re have plenty of condoms available.

Congratulations, you just unlocked the “Wow, Those Dicks At Sex and the 405 Have A Really Juvenile Sense of Humor” badge on Foursquare.

Information from the Associated Press.

“In order for monogamy to work, it has to be ‘dirty.’”

Those are the words of Rabbi Irwin Kula, author of Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life.

“If the forbidden is what is exciting, we have to work hard to bring the taboo into our most intimate relationships,” he goes on. “If transgression is so titillating, we have to learn to transgress where we’re most safe. Our relationships can be nothing less than pleasure chamber. But we need to create situations and takes risks that are out of the ordinary and push the envelope.”

Via Tinamarie Bernard.

We here at Sex and the 405 think it’s excellent that women are taking an interest in their bodies. We thought the vajacial (a “facial” to soothe the general area after a wax) was fine despite the bizarre explosion of hype and obvious misnomer (the vagina is inside. The outside is the vulva, got it?).

Then came the vajazzling craze, which involves adorning the vulva with Swarovski crystals. We watched tentatively as more and more people went nuts around the web, and tried not to break into hives when they talked about putting jewels “on the vagina.” We’re all about diamond-encrusted, platinum toys, but bedecking our vulvae in Swarovski? We thought the obsession with “vagina” decoration would die down as people experimented with the impracticality of it. We were wrong.

Now we find ourselves amidst the vattoo craze. Or twatto. Or whatever you want to call it. The spraying of images on the vulva.

Here are our thoughts: first of all, quit calling it a vagina. It’s a freaking vulva. If you’re going to obsess about your body parts, then at least have the decency to get the name right. Secondly, leave your vulva alone before it falls off. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

Ah, female ejaculation. The holy grail of sex. Not many have seen it, fewer have lived it, but there it is. Hanging over our heads as science continues to scramble to understand its cause, function — or whether it exists at all.

A recent study from the Middle East brought to our attention by Scientopia, concluded — after some really questionable science — that female ejaculation is pathological.

Things we currently know about female orgasm: swelling in genitalia, increases in blood flow to the clitoris, culminating in spasms of various muscle groups and a spike in heart rate and blood pressure. As far as female ejaculation, there are definitely women who do it, no question there. [...] Some studies have shown that the fluid which ejaculating women spurt contains fluids which are associated with prostate tissue, which some women have, and which lend credence to the idea of a separate ejaculatory ability in women. Other studies show it’s just urine, and still OTHER studies show it’s a mixture of both.

In this study, scientists were trying to ascertain whether ejaculation was related to orgasm in women. To do this, they put needle electrodes in the corpora cavernosa of 38 women. The corpus cavernosum is a sponge-like body of erectile tissue that flanks the clitoris in pairs (the plural, thus, being corpora cavernosa). Allow us to illustrate:

Balloon measures were inserted into the uterus and vagina to measure pressure.

With the everything in place, scientists used electrovibration to stimulate the women. As Scientopia points out, there is no data detailing how they dealt with possible interference of the vibrator on electrophysical recordings, but let’s skip over that and move to their conclusions, which are the most problematic aspect of this so-called experiment.

So they applied vibration to the clitoris to induce orgasm. The women did so. None of them ejaculated or urinated.

The scientists thus concluded that female orgasm is not associated with ejaculation. Thus, female ejaculation must indicate pathology.

We kid you not.

Thirty-eight women — who may or may not have ejaculated in their lives, we don’t know — were brought to orgasm. The lack of an incident of female ejaculation in this group led researchers to conclude female ejaculation was pathological.

As Sci at Scientopia concludes:

I don’t think they WANTED to find anything. After all, in the introduction they state:

The above-mentioned studies suggest that there is controversy regarding the existence of female ejaculation. Meanwhile, if it is prove[n]–that ejaculation exists in the female, its absence would represent a pathologic condition the cause of which has to be investigated. We hypothesized that female orgasm is not associated with ejaculation.

So basically, they don’t think orgasm is associated with ejaculation in women because if it WAS, it would mean that women who couldn’t ejaculate were suffering from a PATHOLOGY. I don’t buy that logic. Just because you can ejaculate doesn’t mean that it’s horribly wrong if you don’t. We aren’t men, you know. There are a bunch of differences, most particularly including the fact that sex can be enjoyable and fulfilling in women without the presence of ejaculation (while this is not really true in most men). [...] And then when they don’t find ejaculation, they conclude that women who ejaculate must be pathological. Ok, just because we can doesn’t mean it’s wrong if we don’t, and just because we DO doesn’t mean it’s wrong either. This is a big pile of speculation that is completely unsupported by the literature.

The Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, in which this study ran, needs to seriously give more thought to its contents, that’s all we’re going to say.

Header image by Manos Simonides. Vagina illustration from Wikipedia. Information from Scientopia.

Strip clubs — good for men? VCG Holdings, an adult entertainment giant with 19 clubs in 10 states thinks so. Recently, they commissioned Empire Research to conduct a study about the impact strip clubs have on men’s health.

“Besides the obvious — beautiful women — we wanted to know what attracted men to adult clubs.” Michael Ocello, president of the VCG Holdings, told The Riverfront Times. “We always knew that our clubs made men feel good, but we didn’t expect the researchers to come back with medical findings that our clubs can also be healthy for you.”

We couldn’t find the study to analyze the sample size and methodology, and as a result, find the whole thing somewhat dubious, but let’s hear them out.

So according to the study, frequenting a strip club can lower cortisol, also known as the stress hormone. The study also suggested a boost in oxitocyn (the “love hormone”) levels and testosterone.

“As a society, 54 percent of us feel overwhelmed with work,” said Ocello. “We only have 16 hours or so of leisure time a week and more and more of that is interacting with people via Facebook or the Internet. We’re social creatures. We need human touch, human contact. They’ve done saliva tests that show that men’s testosterone increases when they’re surrounded by beautiful women. Why is that? Because there’s no fear of rejection. The women are going to talk to you. They’re going to flirt with you. That’s how it works. The question is: would you rather go to the gym and do push ups to increase testosterone, or spend her time here surrounded by beautiful women?”

If you have the cash, by all means. But take up too much of the girls’ time when you only have enough money for one or two lapdances and watch the cortisol go through the roof. You’ve been warned.

Image from HealthyStripClubs.com. Information from the River Front Times.

In a study of the country’s most stressful cities, Forbes has found Los Angeles ranks second — right after Las Vegas.

Their methodology is fairly straight-forward: compare unemployment, commute times, work hours, access to health care, overall physical health and incidence of exercise.

Las Vegas, being the capital of entertainment, is not such a fun time for residents, by virtue of how much work it takes to keep sin running in working order. Irregular work hours, work places saturated with smoke, handling of money on a regular basis, the wild spread of disease facilitated by jobs where one engages people from all over the world — yeah, we can imagine how rough it is.

But Los Angeles at number two — more stressful than New York? We know commute times are a bitch and we spend most of our lives parked on the 405. But come on. By one’s second year here, we have developed the skills to make our way without daily nosebleeds. And those of us who don’t have TVs in our SUVs to pass the time have our phones, laws or no laws. So what’s the deal?

According to Forbes it has to do with our health. Los Angeles has among the lowest scores for the well-being of its residents — 22.8% of Angelenos reported that our health was less than good. “Physical and mental health are closely intertwined,” Forbes reports. “It’s hard to keep from stressing out when one’s body is failing.”

Oh, Forbes. Your reporter has obviously not spent enough time in Los Angeles.

The fact of the matter is that everyone in Los Angeles is acutely aware that they’re dying. This is why we are so obsessive about organic food, our million diets and shakes and supplements, why we have a yoga instructor and pilates instructor and yogalates instructor, why we jog every day, have a million different doctors for a million different things and so on.

It’s not really that we have bad health, though we’d never allow our health to be surveyed — we have ensured we have a million laws against allowing the truths of our general well-being to be perused. No, no, the reason we’re so obsessed with our dying is that we’re a bunch of narcissistic assholes.

There, I said it. Our preoccupation with health is nothing more than a noble spin on self-obsession. We’re still talking about ourselves 24/7, but doing it under the guise of health and wellness, it’s harder for people to notice. It even inspires awe in others!

Really, we deal with stress fine. We don’t have more pot dispensaries than Starbucks per square mile for nothing.

Image by Te55. Information from Forbes, via Gawker.

We consume a lot of media here at Sex and the 405, including a handful of magazines, ranging from Psychology Today to Playboy. Among these, Cosmo probably gets more love than it does anywhere else, both because our editrix is taken with Helen Gurley Brown and because we accept each magazine for what it is.

Having said that, brunching earlier today looking over the two stacks of magazines atop which were Cosmo and Maxim, we developed something of a complex and we have to confess that we’re pretty annoyed. Look at these two October issues:

They’re both, pretty much, all about guys. Of course, Maxim doesn’t fill its cover with ways to make men better. It announces how to make money while doing nothing and how to use one’s phone as an espionage device. Cool! Meanwhile Cosmo can’t even talk about female genitalia properly. Va-jay-jay, really?

An article about penis enlargement would never grace the cover of Maxim. And if some kind of genital-improvement were on the market and they decided to run it on the cover and use some euphemism, it wouldn’t be something ridiculous like pe-nay-nay.

Epic hot beef injection. Grand hooded warrior. Master tool of vaginal disaster. Or, you know, cock.

We’re not sure rags are the future, but if we had one, the cover would be a shot showing action, you know, people playing the field, getting their sex on — like those killer Skyy Vodka ads from years ago. And articles would be about sex and desire and cheating and getting away with cheating and snooping and all kinds of sexpionage. And gadgets, of course, because Wired shouldn’t own the market on that. And research, too, because science is interesting and it makes for excellent conversation, whether one’s on a date or in bed or stuck in an elevator shaft.

Maybe throw in some special interest stuff, nothing too fancy, maybe a discussion of game theory in picking a movie for a date or the classic Nash equilibrium stuff. And then something really smart, like a discussion of the importance of lack as it regards erotic tension. And something about the economy, too, because that’s relevant. Forget the whole “cheap dates” and “ways to show him you care for under $100″ shit. We’re talking about a column by a investment broker-turned-stripper who talks about saving and investing and playing with money responsibly. That’s hot.

You know, stuff that doesn’t give people immediate nosebleeds.

Oh, Woman’s Day, you’ve really gone and done it this time. Their October 1, 2010 issue features an advertorial (usually put together by the rag and a company’s brand strategy team) for Summer’s Eve, a company that makes personal care products for women, which suggests that the best way to get a raise is to make sure one’s vagina is squeaky clean.

You think we’re kidding, don’t you?

They’re not totally wrong, you know. But something tells us not too many strippers read this magazine.

UPDATE: Whore Magazine has stated on Twitter that they would run this. With a few changes, we assume.

Via Jezebel.

I’m a sex blogger. That means I write about sex. Does that mean I have sex? If I write about it in a non-fiction publication, then you can safely infer that yes, I do. Does that mean I will have sex with you? No, it does not.

If you infer that I must enjoy sex because I write about it favorably, you’re correct: I do. This does not mean necessarily that I have it randomly. It just means I have good sex. In my experience, having good sex is more than being good at sex – it’s about picking suitable partners. That means that I have a very precise vetting process for potential partners.

Thus, messaging me proclaiming you want to fuck me will not result in me replying in the affirmative.

You may feel very close with me because of how much I share about myself, but do note that this is a one-sided relationship. My interaction is with a screen and keyboard, not with you. So while you feel you know me, I do not know you at all.

A good way to get to know me is to engage me regarding the content I post. Yes, we may talk about sex, my preferences and your own. That does not mean you should suggest we fuck. It just means we’re discussing our preferences. Please note that many people engage me in this way and the best way to differentiate yourself is by having intelligent conversation with me.

If I am interested, I will begin getting to know you, most likely in the medium that you initiated the conversation. I will not meet you just yet, simply interact with you until I am confident that you are the right choice. This may take months and you may never be aware of what’s going on as I do not want to taint the results; I want to gauge you in your natural element.

Once I decide you qualify, I will let you know. There is a difference between remaining objective and being coy. I am not coy. If I wish you to pursue me, you will be made aware of this in no unclear terms. I may still not meet with you at this point, either because I am otherwise engaged or simply do not feel like doing so. Pressuring me continuously to meet could result in disqualification for failure to accept my preferences.

When the time is right, I will suggest we meet and if at that point you are still interested, the possibility of us fucking will finally be made valid.

Now that you know the basics, allow me to provide you a cheat sheet of things I strongly dislike, in the event you decide to engage with me:

My response to compliments is brief. It goes like this: “thank you.” Excessive complimenting is perceived as sycophantic and may backfire.

Messaging me to “talk about sex” will only result in me asking whether you live in Los Angeles and care to submit a story of your conquests for me to publish on one of my blogs, then quickly forgetting your name as I browse the rest of the 1,200 e-mails saying the same thing.

Messaging me that you want to sleep with me because you want to see if you are “up to par with a professional sex blogger” will result in ire. I am a woman, not a measuring stick of your abilities.

Messaging me suggesting that the man with whom I am involved is a poor specimen is tantamount to saying that I don’t know how to select a mate, however brief our encounter. This is more a comment about my capacity than the man in whose company I find myself. It also makes you look a little pathetic. Refrain.

Abusing the direct message function on Twitter is impolite. If you do not have my e-mail address, please ask, including a brief note saying what the message regards. I don’t IM because I don’t have time. I don’t wish to turn Twitter into Gtalk. On that note, the shorter the e-mail, the better. If your e-mail is too long, I won’t read it. Get to the point.

I dislike the telephone. If you have my phone number, please refrain from calling me unless you absolutely have to do so. Do not be hurt if your call is ignored. Leave a voice mail at your own risk, as I rarely check them. I am more responsive with text messages – if I feel the message merits a response.

Messaging me to talk about “possible business prospects” will result in an eye roll so hard, it may dislodge my optic nerve. I may or may not respond asking what you mean. Responses to such a question that fail to provide me with a concrete business proposition will be ignored. If a concrete business proposition arises and I am interested, I will flesh it out over e-mail. I will not be calling or meeting to discuss before a contract is drafted. Nothing personal – business is business.

Contacting my friends in the hopes that they will assist you – especially if you hardly know them – is considered a breach of etiquette and they have my blessing to mistreat you according to how irritating they find your request. I have yet to decide who is more cruel when dealing in these situations. I suspect Jessica Janson wins with her flair for profanity, but don’t mistake Melissa Jun Rowley’s silent disapproval for complaisance. Her retribution tends to take the form of immediate social disqualification.

When approaching me at social events, please do not interrupt a conversation under progress, as this is rude to those with whom I am speaking. If you should see me out and about and I am having an intimate conversation, please consider whether it is appropriate to approach before you do so.

If someone tweets that they are with me at a location, showing up to hang out with us when no invitation has been issued to you is considered incredibly rude. So is whining that you were not invited – especially if you rarely interact with me.

If at any time I let you know I am not interested in you, failure to accept this will result in a firmer response that could escalate to aggression. Don’t make me go there. It’s not fun.

Remember, the fact that I won’t sleep with you is not a reflection of your prowess. It’s just a reflection of my preferences. Of course, if you message me publicly on Twitter demanding that I fuck you, I may hold you up to the public for a chuckle, but you can’t really blame me, can you?

Look at it objectively. I promise you will eventually see how ridiculous such behavior is.

RESPONSES FROM THE WEB

How To Get A Sex Blogger To Have Sex With You: Mina adds her two scents as a sex blogger.

What Makes Someone Cockworthy: Sylvanus offers his take as a man on what makes someone worthy of his cock.