Chère Juliette: On Becoming a Companion

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.

Tagged as: Courage, Sex Work