[COLOR=red]This is Part 3 in a three-part series of conversations with Vancouver-based sex worker and advocate Susan Davis, whose 25-year career led to an extraordinary philosophy about life, sex and the human condition. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.[/COLOR]

by Peter Berton

YNOT – In the previous two installments of this series, Vancouver-based sex worker and rights activist Susan Davis has provided an honest, inside perspective on an escort’s life. In this concluding segment, she talks about inherent dangers, staying healthy … and a client who sought sexual release by doing a maxi-pad commercial for her.

YNOT.com: Sex work often is demonized as dangerous. What are the real dangers, and how do you protect yourself?
Susan Davis: There are many dangers. Throughout the ages, members of the sex-worker community have developed ways whereby we can protect our safety. If people are interested in detailed security protocols, they may be found at TradeSecretsGuide.Blogspot.com. That site provides a detailed sex industry occupational health and safety guide developed by the BC Coalition of Experiential Communities, a sex worker rights group I belong to.

Mostly, however, a worker must rely on his or her instinct. We have to follow our guts. If something feels dangerous, it probably is. This instinct becomes quite accurate over time, and I enjoy having it.

There also are practical ways to protect yourself, like confirming an address, name and phone number of a potential client using the 411 directory or having a security person on-site while you are working. That way, you are not alone should something go wrong.

Independent escorts support each other through a community-developed process known as “safe call,” where an indy escort can share information about a client they are going to meet. The program also advises a “call-back” security check, which is a habit under which workers make periodic calls to another indy worker throughout their appointments.

What about staying healthy? Does the risk of catching something from your clients — who may not be as careful as you are, being “amateurs” — keep you awake at night? Or do you have ways to manage this risk?
I do not worry about it. I use condoms and never engage in risky activities such as “bareback blowjobs” (i.e., without a condom). I am an old-school escort and “turned out” (became an escort) during the mid-1980s, when the HIV scare was at its height. Consequently, as a rule I never engage in any fluid transfer of any kind. If you wash right afterwards and use a condom, that’s all it takes.

Are sex workers getting a bad rap when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases?
I have never had an STD in my 25 years of work — not even a cold sore.

The idea that sex workers are the vector for disease is the result of a 100-year campaign to eliminate sex workers from society. Some “doctors” even believed sex workers had “manifested syphilis” (created the disease) as a result of our immoral behavior. This campaign of speeches, posters and radio spots went on for decades.

My favorite poster features a World War II cartoon drawing of Hitler, a sex worker and the Emperor of Japan, all arm-in-arm, and the sex worker is “the worst of the three.” It’s the same rhetoric as the “all sex workers were sexually abused by their parents” assertions made by the abolitionists of today.

What is the cost of this stigma?
This stigma against sex workers as dirty or diseased has allowed people to kill us and let us die with complacency. The rationale? “They are dirty whores. We need to clean up society. They get what they deserve.”

We as a society must ask ourselves whether we care about sex workers. If we do, we must stop trying to “eliminate” the sex industry, especially using such blatantly discriminatory and hateful practices as defamation of our culture. It’s killing us.

My mom suggested people should try replacing the word “sex worker” with “Jew” in the rhetoric put forth by those who wish to eliminate my community. People would be up in arms if these things were said about any other distinct group or culture. Why not when it’s said about sex workers?

Are all of our parents really pedophile rapists who pimp their children? Are we all really victims in need of rescue without the ability or intelligence to understand what’s best for us? Are we really unable to form consent because of our lower breeding and bad upbringing?

I know more about safe sex than any “bar star” or non-sex-working person. I would suggest people are more at risk of catching something from a random bar pick up than they are from a sex worker.

Don’t buy into the hate.

How do you deal with jerks — people who won’t pay or treat you badly and then expect you to shut up because, after all, you’re only a “prostitute?”
My clients pay upfront. That is the tradition. If a client is too unruly or is intoxicated, I give their money back and ask them to leave.

It is better to rise above and not fight. If they will not accept that and become violent, I lock myself in the bathroom and call 911.

Out in public, if someone recognizes me and becomes violent because of my political work — it happens — I call for security and have them removed. I only go to places where people know me, so there is never any question about who was right or who should have to leave. I am always protected.

Also, my roommate is a 300-pound, rugby-playing, former professional fighter — an oil rig rough-necking, saddle bronc-riding, cauliflower-eared butcher. Once I call for the butcher, the argument is over. Whether I’m at home, working or out socializing, no one messes with me after meeting him.

A word about clients: How should they behave when making initial contact and conducting business?
Respect, respect, respect. Respect my boundaries, respect my home, respect me.

How do you cope with clients falling in love with you?
Very delicately. I have seen, in the past, workers in this situation murdered. A man coping with loss or extreme stress — losing business; losing family in divorce — is highly volatile and is seeking our company for a reason.

When suffering from separation anxiety, they have a tendency to develop an emotional attachment to the person supporting them through it and can have unrealistic expectations of the outcomes. When faced with the truth of unreciprocated love — especially if the truth comes in a harsh or abrupt way — they can become violent.

This is a normal reaction for people in these kinds of situations. I am by no means trying to justify this violence, but as professionals we must treat these men with respect and dignity.

So how do you handle it?
I generally start by missing their phone calls — I will answer sometimes but not all the time. Then I move up to not being available to see them every time they want to. Instead, I will be busy with meetings or something else. This begins to establish boundaries. Over the course of a few months — it is imperative to take the time and be patient — I will slowly wean them off and sever the relationship.

Many still phone me from time to time to check that I am doing well, especially after a media appearance. I always treat them as friends and talk with them a while, asking if they are happy and about their lives.

However, if they escalate and breach my boundaries — appearing outside my door, appearing in my gym or the grocery store where I shop — then I will tell them directly and warn them I will contact police. If they persist, then I do involve police. It should be noted that in 25 years that has only happened two times.

Let’s end on a lighter note: What are the funniest or most unusual situations you have had to deal with?
In the sex industry, funny and unusual are relative. Nothing shocks me anymore.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple, like the man who wanted to be a puppy humping my leg: “Bad puppy!” Or “the Major,” a man who fought against Rommel in North Africa in the Second World War and used to pull his fake leg off before jumping into bed with me.

Or the man who liked to see me in a bikini sitting on an air mattress. It was the sound the mattress made against my skin that he liked. Or the man who dressed like a schoolgirl and performed a “Stayfree Maxi Pads” commercial for me.

No two clients are alike. No two fantasies, no two penises, no two vaginas. We are all gloriously unusual. We should celebrate our diversity, not criminalize it.