What I’m Reading
I have had a crazy couple of weeks and so I have to admit that I didn’t have time to read much of anything, save Natalie Hepburn’a recent Tryst blog post about the HBO Movie “The Menu.” If you haven’t watched the movie yet and plan to, I would skip today’s Musing and Hepburn’s post, both of which contain spoilers.
Admittedly, I am not much of a movie person. I like the serial nature of modern television shows, and while I can seriously binge on the ones I’m interested in, the length of a single movie (shorter than the average binge!) feels like a commitment that I am hard-pressed to make. I am aware that this is irrational.
This being said, I heard that a sex worker was the main character and so I thought I would give it a go—after all, it’s a movie tangentially about my people! I’m glad I did, “The Menu” was worth the time investment, despite the fact that I am not a horror fan.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, the story is about a multi-hour dining experience on a remote island that is accessible only to the wealthy—the meal is $1250 a head. It is clear very early on that Anya Taylor-Joy’s character is a paid companion who is not impressed by the decadence of the experience; this may be her client’s world, but it is not hers. When he tells her how much the dinner costs she quips, “What are we eating, a Rolex?,” but then goes on to shrug, commenting, “You’re paying for it.”
What I’m Thinking About
The class divide between her and her client and other dinner guests is palpable, a familiar feeling to many of us who do this work. It is not unusual to hear my friends and colleagues discuss the “class drag” that this job requires, and the lengths many of us have taken to “pass” in the spaces that this work affords us access to (including investing in etiquette classes and the like).
I have heard it said that while the military provides men from working-class backgrounds an education and an opportunity for upward social mobility (or at least did at one point for previous generations of men), sex work informally does the same for women with similar class backgrounds. While I don’t have enough space here to systemically unpack this, it does ring true to me. But then again, I am a sex worker from a military family.
While many of us may have high levels of education that match or surpass those of our clients, most of us had to leverage ourselves in order to get them. While there are exceptions to every rule, resourced people with family money don’t tend to turn to sex work. Indeed, sex work is a working-class customer service job, one that is often obfuscated by the high rates that it commands and the glamour that its marketing suggests.
While the representation of sex work in popular media is usually completely unrealistic (or downright harmful), this movie got so much of it right. The scene that best exemplifies this, in my estimation, is the one where the lead chef and the sex worker find themselves alone in the back room talking and he tells her that he can easily spot other service workers.
While the premise of the movie was absurdist, it did touch on many truths about the nature of sex work, and the relationship between sex workers and their clients. Some of these are uncomfortable truths, but that is because class is something that we are taught to ignore in US culture. These are things that we are not supposed to notice or talk about.
And yet, being open to the truths of our social dynamics and our world also opens up space for change and for relationships built on honesty. It seems worth getting through the discomfort of the movie (it’s gory!) and of taboo topics like class. Who knows what can be on the other side.
What I’m Excited About
I am heading up to Buffalo today for the first time in 2023! I’m excited to start traveling for work again after my brief holiday hiatus. I have some fun plans lined up, but also have a little more availability later tonight or tomorrow afternoon.
I’m also excited to be in the middle of my bathroom renovation project. Those of you who are from Pittsburgh know that the bathrooms in old houses can be wild—and by that, I mean ugly. When I bought this house almost 6 years ago I renovated the two bathrooms that were in the worst shape but hadn’t circled back to the one that I am working on now until recently.
That’s a lie, I did a few cosmetic things to update the bathroom (like tear off the wild bird-themed wallpaper) but left the lime-green bathtub and hardwood floor in place. A girl can only take on so many projects at once. You heard that correctly, a lime green bathtub and enclosure against a hardwood floor.
Like all housing projects, this one has turned out to be harder than expected. I paid the Home Depot installers to come and demolish the floor and retile it, only to have them tell me that under the hardwood are asbestos tiles and that those would need to be remediated. They left after they pulled up one plank.
Thankfully I have friends who bought an old Pittsburgh house that they have rebuilt from the ground up, gaining a lot of skills in the process! They are here doing the work for me. I’d rather give my money to friends than to a large corporation, anyway, so maybe it’s a good thing. I have been dreading this project for weeks, and they came over and pulled all the flooring up, and got started on the tiling project in a few hours.
I can’t wait to see how everything turns out, I’ll post pics when it’s done.
Availability & Booking
Catch me in Buffalo Friday – Sunday and Pittsburgh for the rest of January.
Upcoming Travel:
Buffalo, NY | Jan 20-22
Cleveland, OH | Feb 9-12
My travel calendar is kept up to date on my website.
