crown of violets

Sinful Sydnee and Winnipeg’s Finest

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.