One night, I sat alone in my apartment with a heavy heart, surrounded by piles of books about courtesans, priestesses, and goddesses. For months the universe had been sending me messages about the need to explore the mystery and magic found in the realms of beauty and pleasure. I was being drawn again and again back to images and attributes of the goddess Aphrodite, seeing her symbols everywhere, drawing the Empress card repeatedly from my tarot decks. I knew the path I was being pointed towards was both a spiritual and physical journey, and while I wasn’t ready to work as a prostitute, I knew it was something I wanted to do and that it would mean more to me than simply being paid for sex. I needed to learn about the sacredness in beauty and pleasure.

I felt frustrated and confused. I was being called to serve but what did I have to offer? The aspects of life ruled by Venus (beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, luxury, delight) were my weaknesses, not my strengths… I didn’t feel beautiful, or happy, or charming. I was intellectual, good with stories and symbols. The physical world was tough for me. I struggled with feeling closed off and disassociated from my life and I had a hard time giving or receiving love. Yet, I felt desire to be all those things Aphrodite and Venus represented. I felt hungry for it – to feel loved, to feel beautiful, to be sensual and experience life as pleasure, instead of pain.

Tearfully, I gave up trying to find the answer in my texts and finally started talking out-loud to the goddess of love and beauty. I lit a small stick of incense that smelled like roses and closed my eyes.

“I don’t know what I have to offer or how I can serve you, but show me, ask of me and I’ll try my best.”

It wasn’t the most eloquent prayer I’d ever spoken to the divine, but it was a genuine offering of my heart. I dedicated myself to her service.

I’ve changed a lot since that night. My world now revolves around that decision to serve love and beauty, to cultivate and spread it. I kept my promise by trying to find out what the real the meaning of beauty was. I learned that beauty was the quality of something that gave pleasure, which has helped me release limiting beliefs about what is beautiful. I cultivate a sensual environment for myself through colour, texture, and music. I garden and work with plants. I dance every day and hula hoop as ways to enjoy my body and play. I’ve worked hard to heal my relationship with food, by cooking for myself and my roommates, trying different diets and being involved in community groups like The Good Food Club. I express the love I feel for those around me and let myself feel loved in return. I try to make decisions from a place of love instead of fear. When it crosses my mind, I take a moments during my day to simply experience a sense of gratitude.

That promise I made opened my heart and mind to transforming my life into one full of love, pleasure, and beauty. It helped me shift my focus and energy from my perceived lack and build new strengths. All it took was desire and effort.

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The last few weeks, I’ve been experiencing many barriers to creating the type of work situation that I want.

The first barrier is the idea of long-term companionship is a hard sell in Winnipeg. I’ve been told time and time again that what I want to do won’t work here and so far, it’s been pretty accurate. For those that were interested, a combination of price and my condition about their partners were often deal breakers. I decided that I needed to take a step back and re-evaluate how I was going to do things if I wanted to work in this environment.

Setting the bar so high has been almost as immobilizing as fear was. What I want is possible, but I needed to adjust the challenge to something more achievable so that I could continue to move forward and build my strength.

Another large barrier I felt was my lack of experience in the industry. There are a lot of skills that I needed and a combination of learning how to screen, set price, market research, advertising and all the other little things that goes into this work in and out of the bedroom was starting to get a little overwhelming. I’d sailed in on a glorious feeling of strength and optimism, pushing hard against the walls that the way I’d lived my life up until now had built and the universe pushed back just as hard.

And I was restless. I wanted to work and I found that there was a strong drive in me to explore sexuality and the reasons why someone sees a companion or a sex worker. A recent conversation on the Qadishtu mailing list posed some very interesting questions about the role of the seeker and facilitator in their spiritual-based work and someone said that the reason visitors see them is for one of three reasons: celebration, exploration, and healing. Those words stuck with me while I questioned what my next move would be.

A week or two ago Alexa put forward an idea for a Code of Ethics for sex workers. I was fascinated and inspired by this as well. Through the preliminary discussions, I met a woman named Sydnee, who also happened to be from Winnipeg. As there was only a handful of us, it seemed pretty coincidental that there were two of us from Winnipeg there! Of course, I don’t really believe in coincidences. She mentioned that she ran a review board and I visited and signed up. Sydnee and I got into a discussion through her board about the fact that I was new to the industry and she asked if I’d like to join her worker’s co-op. I was fascinated and we set up a time to talk about it. I arrived that day for one and didn’t leave until well into the evening, having quite a wonderful time getting to know Sydnee. I knew well before I left that I wanted to work with her, but she encouraged me to take time to think about it.

There were lots of things I had to consider while working with Winnipeg’s Finest. First of all, it would be straight-up escorting and not the long-term situations I’d been courting so far. I had been thinking of a way to get more experience and it seemed natural to get it from working. Sydnee’s role in the co-op included handling advertising, screening, and marketing – all things I was being overwhelmed by and could learn at a slower pace through working with her, while working in a safe environment. She also has lots of experience in many services that I wanted to learn and felt I could learn from her.

The biggest con for me would be the fact that I would, without a doubt, be getting clients who were married or involved with monogamous partners. I turned this one over in my head for a while. I hadn’t thought this would be such a strange condition, but I was learning that it was a big one. In my gut, I knew I wanted to work with Sydnee and I knew I couldn’t make that condition while working with her.

I took the night to think about it. I felt strangely guilt-free about the idea and wondered if that made me a hypocrite. I had just recently spent a lot of time defending my position on not seeing married clients both online and off, based on this post and a few days later, I seemed ready to change that position.

I was experiencing the reality of the industry as it is versus what I would like to see and experience. The two visions were very different and as much as I believed in what I wanted to do, as an active co-creator of my life I had very small muscles that were being pushed very hard.

In the end, I decided that what I needed most right now was to work and build my strength to create the situation I wanted. I’ve always been a perfectionist and have often used the pattern of not acting until everything was perfect as a way of putting off action. I didn’t want that. I wanted to enjoy the experience of learning, to move forward, and achieve my goals. And here I had a safe environment to work in, with an experienced groups of providers who also shared many of my ideas about the industry.

I told Sydnee I would be happy to work with her and made a promise to myself that I would continue to challenge myself and respect the level that I was at, while aspiring for my highest ideal.

Tomorrow is my first day.

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Courtesans
Originally uploaded by The Wandering Angel

When I realized I wanted to be a companion, I spent a lot of time figuring out what kind of situation I wanted to create for myself. There are many different types of sex workers and no two companions seemed to do things the same way, or even use the same words to describe their service. I’m still new to this, but I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far.

I like the term “companion” because I find it to be very accurate to the type of service I’m providing. When I’m acting in a companionship role, I strive to bring into the space an open heart, a compassionate ear, and a world view that nurtures my patrons. My task is to provide company and a relaxed space for my patrons to experience sensual pleasure, feel nourishment, and be reminded of the beauty in the world. There’s an element of spirituality to it, simply because sensuality and spirituality aren’t very separate in my life. Companion is also a far less loaded term than the other words used to describe paying someone for their time and company. Few escorts operate the way I do so I hesitated to call myself that and courtesan seemed like it belonged in an era that no longer exists.

The best way to decide what kind of companion I wanted to be was to work from my strengths. I knew instinctively that I had been acting in this capacity to lovers and even casual acquaintances for years and that I was drawn to exploring it as a profession to honour my instincts and help isolate it from my day-to-day interactions. Leaving it unchecked often had me following those instincts in inappropriate situations where I felt drained and confused. I had a strong pull to nurture the skills, but with no limits I was doing a disservice to both myself and who I was spending time with.

I started off by exploring the courtesan mentoring posts on Gillette’s blog. These posts were a wonderful resource for me and really shaped how I view this work. Gillette’s integrity and strength gave me a great example to work from and I still refer back to these posts today. One of my favourites was an entry called “Escorts and Johns: Mentoring” which encouraged me to ask myself some pretty thorough questions about what I was drawn to do and why I wanted to do it. That work has been invaluable to me, helping me make sure that I keep aligned to my vision.

It was easy to decide that I didn’t want to work out of an agency. I knew I wanted to do more than one-on-one companionship and that answering to an agency would take away my freedom to chose who I saw and set my own schedule. I’ve also always known I wanted to work for myself, whatever field I was working in, so I never really seriously considered working for an agency.

I wanted to develop a connection with my clients, as my skills as a companion were more effective over time as I got to know someone’s individual personality and learn what they enjoyed. I want clients to feel pampered and to know they are with someone who genuinely enjoys their company. I find it hard to really get to know someone through email, dislike talking on the phone, but also wanted to only enter into agreements with individuals that I had an attraction to. To that end, every client has introductory meetings with me so that we can learn if we have chemistry before entering into a business arrangement. I also schedule sessions as a flexible block of time (one to four hours) for one rate so clients can relax and choose the length of their visit. Once I have the space for it, I’ll be able to invite clients to a sacred space so they’ll have the option of going out for social activities or having a private space to stay in.

Something that marks me as different from most sex workers is that I made the decision not to see anyone who was in a relationship and couldn’t tell their partner about seeing me. This has been a deal breaker for many potential clients and is an uncommon trait in a sex worker, but it was a condition I felt I needed to make.

First of all, I’ve been trying to invite more truth, love, and power into my life this year, inspired by Steve Pavlina’s book. By entering into a situation where I knew someone was being lied to didn’t feel congruent with what I was trying to build. Especially when I feel that it is normal and healthy for people to seek out the company of companions.

On the more practical side, I’m a social person and I’m getting more involved with local arts, social events, food activism, and community projects. The knowledge that I’m a companion is naturally going to get around. I would never publish details of a client or our encounter without their permission, but living in the age of the internet has taught me nothing that happens in public space is ever truly a secret and I don’t plan on staying locked up in bed with my clients twenty-four seven (as tempting as that thought can be xoxo).

As I gain more experience, I’m sure I’ll refine my methods to best serve myself and my clients. Like any new venture, there will be a certain amount of experimentation before I hit my stride and find out what really works.

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Cherry Blossom
Originally uploaded by conner395

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
- Anais Nin

When I first decided I wanted to be a companion, I approached it like I approach every new task – with massive amounts of research. I read a mountain of books and visited countless escort websites and blogs on the internet. I searched the websites like I would search had I been looking for a companion myself. I soon learned that while each website had the basics of physical statistics and promises of a romantic fantasy with a charming and beautiful woman, what stood out me were the websites that gave me more than just a carbon copy of a generic fantasy. I was drawn to the women and men who had a unique spark, cultivated it and expressed it through their web presence.

Two in particular (Gillette and Livvy) really shaped how I approached the profession. Both were informative and made me ask some really hard questions about myself and why I wanted to do this. I realized that while I was attractive and good company, with a compassionate heart, what would be the most value to my clients was my view of the world and ability to see the beauty in it. One of my most important tasks as a companion would be to nourish beauty. As my purpose grew in depth over the following year, I began to understand that my work would extend beyond one-on-one companionship to helping others begin to see and nourish their own beauty.

Heavily inspired by one of Livvy’s first posts about becoming a courtesan, I created a curriculum of education to help me refine my natural talents and identify my weaknesses. It was patterned after the esoteric elements as a nod to the esoteric teachings that continue to be so much a part of my understanding of the world. I named the work “The Elements of Enchantment”.

The first section was named “Flora”. Flora is considered a fifth, harmonizing element in esoteric literature. While the fifth element is more commonly called “spirit” or “aether”, I’m very fond of flowers and “flora” appeals to me because of the sense of earthly life that the abstract nature of “aether” doesn’t hold for me. When I think of my heart, I think of it as a deep sunset pink flower opening, giving of itself and receiving from the earth. Flora calls to mind many things that I want to cultivate within myself. Gentleness, harmony with nature, a simple joy in being exactly what I am. Flora invokes the the cycles of life and growth that we must all move through and the strength it takes to blossom and be what you are in the world.

Each individual seeks out companions for different reasons and each companion brings something different to her clients. The women I was inspired by found a way to nurture their natural talents and found patrons who were in turn nourished by their gifts. Flora represents unique qualities that I bring to my companion role. I want to celebrate my natural beauty, allow it to blossom, and share it. Luckily, I’ve always been fascinated by my personal symbols and attributes and pursued them as part of my spiritual path. I also want to share what I learn during that exploration of myself with others so they can learn new ways of nurturing themselves. By exploring what makes me happiest, I learn what I’m meant to cultivate.

I am a spiritual and sensual person. These two aspects of me, which are often considered to be separate by our society, are entwined in my nature. There’s no divide between what I experience in my daily life and what is sacred, because our very existence is sacred, the expression of life. It’s a very freeing way to live.

I find my devotion to the divine in what brings me pleasure, in what I feel and experience. By enjoying the taste of something, I’m thanking the source of it. By finding pleasure in the sound or sight of something, I am expressing my gratitude for it. I believe that the universe wants my pleasure and happiness and that it wants yours too. This is something I carry with me in my social life and companionship work. I interact with the world from this belief and encourage it in others.

We are playful creatures and without games and time to play, we become closed off to pleasure. We can’t receive nourishment if we don’t know how to relax and enjoy ourselves and games teach us not to take ourselves too seriously. Our lives are adventures for us to explore, a way of challenging ourselves to new heights, and we are meant to take pleasure from the journey. We enjoy the excitement of mystery and love to fulfill our natural curiosity when something delights us or captures our attention. I like to make space for the unknown in my life, for the spontaneous opportunities that only show themselves when you relax into what will be and let the universe bring you things you didn’t expect.

I strive for greater harmony in my life, where all aspects of my life support the others. This is always a work in progress as I get better and better at expressing myself. I try to live consciously and congruently, with reverence and respect to life. I serve my community through volunteering, sharing resources, building this website, caring for plants and animals that share my space, and sharing knowledge that has been shared with me. This sense of duty to the larger whole also expresses itself through my work with healing. To truly build community, we have to share what we’ve been given.

These things and more are the essence of what I am and what I bring to the world, because these are the lessons that the world continually brings to me. By exploring my strengths as an individual, I explore my strengths as a companion and what I can best bring to those who choose to spend time with me. As I devote myself to celebrating my strengths and nourishing myself, I am better able to serve and give of myself.

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The Magician

When I first decided to become a companion, I was staying with my friend Rae-annon. It was the middle of winter, just over a year ago. It seemed to come out of the blue but I felt such a moment of clarity. I’ve always been interested in studying women of arts and pleasure, muse, geisha, oiran, hierodule, and a thousand names more… women dedicated to enchantment and beauty. I found their names throughout history as they roamed with humanity across the globe. Each one expressed their gifts through different ways but they were all linked through an invisible golden thread in my mind. I found inspiring examples both in history and in fiction and one day stumbled across a blog that opened me to the world of escorts and courtesans in the modern internet age. Livvy’s blog led me to Gillette and I finally started respecting the pull I was feeling. Using information from them, I started building the vision of what I wanted to create. I eventually started my own wordpress blog called “Chère Juliette” for what I thought would be my working name. I thoroughly enjoyed writing there, sharing my aesthetic and what I was building for myself. I shared my love for vintage erotica and interacted with some very inspiring people.

At the time, my life was very fragmented and Juliette became no exception. I had pieces of but no one part of me seemed to support the other. I understand this fragmentation now as a consequence of being untruthful with myself. I knew what I was and what I was called to do, but I wasn’t strong to face the inner discord that made it impossible to build a firm foundation. It was also an incarnation of my receptivity, a shadow tendency to back down unless truly threatened. I moved forward at a slow pace with a sound intellectual position but without the emotional weight to back it up. I hadn’t truly invited this aspect of myself to flourish and I hadn’t learned to hold my ground and lay the rules, with myself or others. My results were understandably chaotic. Frustrated that I wasn’t getting what I wanted, I deleted the blog and took a hospitality job.

It wasn’t too long before I ended up leaving the restaurant. It was a restrictive environment with many employees feeling fearful to talk freely about themselves and especially their sexuality. After a series of disagreements with the manager, the moment to leave came after disagreement over tarot cards. I had given one of the girls I worked with a reading after our shift while we were enjoying our free meal of the day, in the restaurant. Weeks later, we were called into the back to explain. I was told that if I ever brought them back I would be without a job. Understanding a need to respect the public space, I told her I wouldn’t bring them into the restaurant again. She started asking me if I understood the nature of the cards. Confused, I responded with the history I had learned and was immediately cut off. It quickly became apparent that she viewed the cards as inherently negative and dangerous. She started telling me stories of her cousin who had been possessed by evil spirits after playing with them. I told her that the cards were important tools to me and I didn’t care to discuss it further. She withdrew, sent me away, and cornered the other girl in my absence. It was near the end of my shift and feeling very angry, I clocked out and went to get changed. A few minutes later, the other girl who had been involved came into the locker room and said that the manager had started asking her religious questions about her faith. She had wanted the girl to talk to me about what I was doing. I quit, citing an unsuitable environment as the cause. I had loosened the first strings of fear by speaking up and defending something I felt strongly about, without losing my temper or acting disrespectfully.

I spent the summer gardening, developing a connection to the earth and learning how to contribute. I became very involved with community work and continued to look for a fulfilling career. I found another piece of my passion for nourishing through the garden and food security groups. I learned how the earth feeds us and how we can feed each other. This work led me to taking a temporary administration position at a social services agency. I learned many things in this position about how we respond when we aren’t nourished and the responsibility we all have towards caring for each other. Unfortunately, I again found myself at odds with the environment and instead of taking a permanent position, I left. I didn’t have to think about what I wanted to do. I already knew.

In the end, it felt right that I took a wander off into the forest before circling back to this marker on my path. Mysteries are happen when we become receptive to the divine. My experiences over the past year have given me skills I would have never thought to seek out, but which are definitely serving me well. I wonder what I would be creating and where we would be if I hadn’t turned away. More so, now that we’re here again I wonder where we’ll go next.

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Fire Dance
Originally uploaded by The Eternity

I enjoy beauty for beauty’s sake and seek it out in the world around me. That includes cultivating the grace already inherent in me, refining my talents and skills so that I can become a clearer channel for what calls to me. We are all diamonds in the rough. By both giving to and receiving from, we co-create with the world and become the ambassadors of what we want to see in it. We learn, we teach. What we desire also desires us. The more we let those energies flow through us, the more we embody our dreams.

This year, I’ve been taking the opportunity to explore things I’ve never really made the time for. Dancing has been a passion of mine for years, though I’ve never made it a consistent part of my life. I’ve danced to give expression to sorrow, anger, joy, and I dance for celebration. To start, I’ve taken to dancing at least one a day, preferably in the morning. I pick any kind of music that catches my fancy and let go whirling, stomping, swaying, whatever I feel like. This puts me in an incredible mood with which to face the day. I love my morning practices on my own and I feel that dancing for my personal enjoyment brings out the soulfulness of it, letting me express my emotions better and better. But I’d like to devote time to improving my skill and I’m excited to start balancing that with studying with instructors who will really challenge me.

My personal style of dancing is very much like Middle Eastern dance and I’d love to take a belly dancing class. Middle Eastern style dancing is a very sensual form of dancing and the style of music and richness of the performances I’ve seen are quite alluring. Belly dancing helps you get in touch with your sensual self and provides lots of creative opportunity for putting personal pieces together. Studying will definitely improve my personal technique, as well as introduce me to new movements and music. Community centers often have classes several months long throughout the year but I’ve found a couple of teachers in the city through the internet who hold classes in their own space, so hopefully I won’t have to wait until the next cycle begins at the centers.

Ballet looks light and airy but demands a lot from dancers physically. It’s much more formalized and I like the challenge of it, especially beginning as an adult. Royal Dance at the Forks will be holding fall classes in beginner ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet also offers adult classes. Both are central locations and are good schools. I’ve always been a little weak on the constitution side and ballet will definitely challenge me to build strength and endurance in a completely different way than belly dancing.

Because I try to find balance in everything I do (and because I’ve been threatening forever ♥), I’m also going to finally sign up for a yoga class. My friend Rae-annon has repeatedly shown me the wonders of yoga even walking me through some workouts in the morning while I was staying with her. Besides being a wonderfully centering workout, yoga will help me improve my flexibility and energize me during the influx of demanding physical activity. It also has spiritual ties to many disciplines that speak to me. Like all the best pursuits, it inherently supports the whole vision and the type of energy I’m attracting into my life.

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♪♫ Love letters straight from your heart ♪♫
Originally uploaded by cattycamehome

Since I’ve started taking clients, I’ve literally had a couple hundred responses. A fair amount of my time is spent sorting through to see who I’m going to respond to and who I have to pass up. Make no mistake. When you are communicating with a companion, he or she *is* screening potential clients. This is a reality of doing this work. No one person is a perfect fit for every client and if they aren’t screening, I’d worry.

The first thing to note is how the ad is of the companion is composed. I’m constantly refining my ads to better express the type of arrangement I’m looking for and the first thing I look for is some indication that my ad was read. My ads are a reflection of my personality. I put a lot of care into them and am drawn to respond to inquiries that show similar tastes. When you’re inquiring about seeing a companion, take your cues from how the companion writes. Anything typed in chat speak (r u able 2 meet?), sexually explicit, or messages asking questions that are answered in my ad are an immediate pass for me.

While I don’t think you should agonize over every word, how you phrase things is an indicator of your personality. I’ve had responses that left me thinking that I’d just applied for a high-stakes business job and I wasn’t impressing the jury. Most of the inquiries I get are from businessmen who are probably used to a competitive approach to interacting with others. But it is important to remember that you chose to contact me. If you are in any way unimpressed by my picture, how I composed my ad or feel that I have to “prove” insert-desired-quality-here to you, then I’m going to do both of us a favor and pass.

My ads all include a recent picture of a good size. Asking for more pictures straight off is a very poor way to introduce yourself. This is especially valid if you are withholding when asked for a picture in return. I’ve had one potential tell me that he valued discretion and would prefer not to send one to me. I replied that while his point was understandable, this was an issue I wasn’t flexible with. Most companions have very good reasons for the screening questions they ask and asking for a picture is a perfectly understandable request. Being withholding or challenging to polite requests has quickly become a pass for me.

I’ve also received some very touching emails. Most of the time, these are the ones where the inquirer made an effort to give me some background information about who they are and why they wanted to see me. Every companion, like every other human being, is unique in what attracts him or her. My desire is to build relationships based on compatibility of spirit and mutual attraction so I look for replies that open up a bit and tell me about who this person is. Interests, passions, work are all good conversation openers. This helps me get a better idea of what they’re looking for and if we’re going to be compatible. I’m an open person and I find I have a lot more fun with people who are the same. We don’t have to circle around each other warily. We can jump right into conversation to see if there’s a spark. If there is, we’ll be so glad we didn’t waste time on fear. If there isn’t, we can move on. Talking about yourself also helps me to start developing an individual connection. Email is a text based medium so it doesn’t have the same benefits as physical presence. Besides being a companion, I’m also very social and meet a lot of new people through my studies, volunteer work, and friends. Learning unique facts about a person naturally makes that person more interesting and memorable. I pursue connections with people who stand out and interest me. I expect the same of those who are deciding whether or not to pursue a connection with me.

It’s also a good idea when you’re contacting any type of sex worker to have all of your papers in order. Get tested regularly for STIs and keep a copy of your test results handy. I make sure I get tested regularly and I expect the same. Anyone who doesn’t is very naughty and should be ashamed. We can all take responsibility for doing our part to protect ourselves and those we care about.

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