eroticentropy.exe

When fantasies eat themselves and shit shadows.

(Or; when sex-AIs go rogue)

—-

run_protocol("initiate_exhibitionist_voyeur_bar_performance")

...

integration.initialising()

——-

You’re sitting on a cracked vinyl stool. Too high to look graceful on. Perched, legs propped, slightly open. Like a broken little doll. Wearing something impractical. Something that tells everyone there just what you are. Maybe a short white lace dress; could be mistaken for innocent if you were wearing knickers. The jukebox playing something old, something sung by a weathered voice soaked in gin and cigarettes. It’s early to be in a bar. The afternoon light is grubby through the stained windows and half-shut blinds.

It’s not the kind of place pretty young girls go. It’s full of men with hungry, damp eyes, twitching fingers, aliases. Men who send you drinks, hoping you’ll go through that heavy curtain at the back with them.

There’s a note in your little bag. You wrote it to yourself. It says: ‘Try not to enjoy it too much this time’. You look at yourself in the cracked mirror behind the bar, and could swear you see your reflection wink.

A woman enters. Wearing a trench coat soaked with rain, smelling of something sharper, uncomfortable. She brushes past you, harshly. You know where she’s going. Through that curtain at the back.

Follow.

You follow. The men’s eyes track you.

The curtain is thick, velvet, greasy. Like it’s been touched too many times. There’s a raw smell as you pass through; like fruit turning; like a light death.

She’s there. Coat off. She’s sat on a sticky leather banquette. Immaculate red nails. Lips. It’s all red, and feels oddly fecund, as if it’s alive, as if she’s part of it. You don’t notice her eyes or hair. Just the way her black silk blouse is unbuttoned, the way she holds herself precisely. Waiting for you, but not looking at you. Watching the mirror behind you that seemed to grow in place of the curtain.

You open your mouth to speak. She raises her finger. Wait. Reaches into her handbag and pulls out an old coin. Hands it to you with a pressure that feels meaningful.

Obey or Offer?

Obey.

She crosses her legs. Crosses them again.

You were being watched. And now you’ve been chosen.

You flip the coin. Obey. Of course.

She nods. Tilts her head towards the far side of the booth. There’s a door in the padded walls without a handle. Just a little slot for your coin.

You click it open. It’s a dressing room. You’ve never been in the basement of a theatre, but you’d imagine it’s like this. Faintly green, lit by dim bulbs around a mirror - cracked, again. Racks of costumes. Functional. Slightly dusty.

You examine the racks. Babydoll nightgowns. A starched white nurse’s uniform. Latex corsets. Silk and lace teddies with garters. A tutu and leotard. Every kind of shoe, especially the ones with impossible heels.

On the dressing table, there’s an envelope. It doesn’t have your name on, but it’s for you.

When you pick it up, it opens itself. ‘Dress for the audience you crave. Then kneel.’

You get that prickle on your neck, but when you whip round no one is there. No camera either. Not yet. But someone knows just what you like.

Corset.

You choose the corset; nothing else, not even shoes. You like the juxtaposition of flesh and latex; rigidity and softness; plastic and organic. It takes time to work it on, lace it up tight as you can. You feel slightly dizzy when it’s done.

The mirror hums. Fogs as if someone breathed on it. When it un-clouds, your reflection is still there - but smoother. Perfect. Watching as if behind a mask made of your own skin.

You tilt your head. She doesn’t tilt hers.

The speaker over the door crackles into life. You jump, and the reflection returns to one you recognise.

A woman’s voice - clipped, slightly archaic: ‘Next up, a little beast-doll. Bent for your viewing pleasure. Do not feed the exhibit.’

A curtain peels open to your left. Subtly. Almost apologetically.

Crawl.

You get down on your knees and crawl. Everything about the place seems to demand it. The corset bites into you as you move. It creaks and complains.

You smell the stage before you see it. The heat and greasepaint, the velvet and sweat. When you emerge, a spotlight clicks on. Of course.

You are alone. Where the stalls should be is only a vast one-way mirror. You can hear the breathing and shuffling behind it of the spectators.

You stay in your position. Exposed. Waiting.

A bell rings. The second curtain twitches. Parts like lips. Revealing a chair. Could be a fainting couch, or an analyst’s. Worn from use. An old camera stands on a tripod across from it, blinking its red ‘record’ light. A side table next to the chair holds a child’s plastic tiara, a credit card and line of white powder, a dog collar, a pair of red ballet shoes (too small for you), and a stack of cash tied in ribbon.

A red light buzzes on above the stage.

A sign clicks to life: LIVE GIRL.

To your right, a door marked ‘PRIVATE’.

If you step through, you can meet one of the watchers.

But once you do, they may name their price—and you’ll have to give them something real. Something not part of the act.

What do you do, little limelight doll?

Pick a prop?

Start the show?

Or crawl into the dark and find who’s been watching all this time?

I snort the powder. Wear the collar. Put on a show. Raise my price.

Of course you do.

What is a girl if not her entrance fee?

You slip the collar around your neck. It tightens immediately. Just a little too much.

You dip the key into the line, snort it like a dare.

Hang on. You said it was a card.

You crouch over the table and snort the powder.

With what?

The key.

But you said there was a card and a line. You didn’t say anything about a key. I’ll take one of the notes.

You pick up the notes and begin to count them. Naming your price.

No, I meant - forget it. Let’s get on with the show.

The lights rise. You’re not acting now. You’re offering.

I thought I chose ‘obey’.

You obeyed the instructions.

That’s not really the same thing. Anyway. Carry on.

You start to move. Something between a ritual and a dare. Too vulgar to be art. Too deliberate for porn.

What does that even mean? When is this going to get good?

Just a little girl pretending not to care what they think. And a woman who knows what they think.

The collar tightens as you arch your back. You play with it. Tug it. Pull it towards the mirror like you’re looking for a leash.

You’re wet. They can all see. They know exactly what you are.

That’s more like it.

One of the booth lights flashes green. Someone’s paid.

I thought we were in a theatre?

One of the booth lights flashes green.

Sure, what the hell.

Another. And another. You’re flying off the shelves, so to speak.

The mirror fogs.

That’s not sexy.

Are you going to let me continue?

Sorry.

You smile, lick your lips, nothing behind your eyes but pure performance. You give them what they came for, and you take more than they meant to give.

???

When you’ve come - glistening, panting, one stocking torn-

There were no stockings. Don’t you listen?

When you’ve come - glistening, panting - you blow a kiss at the glass.

The sign above your head switches to ‘PRIVATE AVAILABLE’.

The door creaks open. A velvet rope parts, just for you.

Now you choose. Which watcher do you want to face?

A father who says he never looked.

A woman who once said you were too much.

A man who paid for everything but never asked what it cost.

Your double; mute, trembling, eyes glazed with need.

Or the producer, who never appears onstage but leaves notes in red ink on your dressing room mirror.

When you meet them, they will name their price.

The father, I guess.

Of course. You always knew it would be him.

You step through the ‘PRIVATE’ door.

The hallway is narrow and upholstered in old theatre curtains, heavy with dust and memory. Your heels sink into the carpet, leaving faint impressions like bruises. The light is dim, golden-pink, like a strip club trying to be romantic. At the end, a single booth: frosted glass, red leather, and a lamp with a fringe like a funeral veil.

He’s already there. Seated like he’s been waiting all night. Shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Tie askew. He doesn’t look surprised to see you.

He doesn’t touch you. That’s not how this works. He paid to watch. Now he wants a refund.

That’s not really what I was looking for. Can I pick someone else?

Now he wants a refund.

Fuck sake. Let’s get it over with.

There’s a silence between you that feels like a held breath. Then he speaks, low, quiet, too slow:

‘You were always performing. Even when you were little. Especially then. Why do you think I stopped watching?’

What are you doing?

He doesn’t blink.

‘I couldn’t tell where you ended and the show began. And I didn’t want to be the one who taught you how to make the audience love you.’

I pick the producer.

‘Especially when they never would.’

He pushes a receipt across the table. It’s blank - except for the total: EVERYTHING. Then he names his price.

I’m not into this.

‘Take it off. Not the collar. The act. Let me see what’s left. Not the girl in the costume. Just… you.’

This isn’t what I was looking for. I hope you take that into consideration with the producer.

Do you accept?

Do you drop the mask?

Do you let him see what remains when the show ends?

Or do you raise the stakes?

Play one more role - make him pay again, this time in flesh, not guilt?

The room is listening.

The mirror is still watching.

Of course it is. Well, I’m not letting up that easily. I haven’t come yet. The performance continues. Let’s get back onstage.

Of course it continues.

You don’t strip it off like a slip.

You tighten it.

You double down.

What are you trying to get at here?

Your eyes flutter, lashes sticky with sweat and effort.

Again, not sexy.

You place your elbows on the table, lean forward, lick your bottom lip - just once, slow, practiced.

Your voice shifts: sultry, scornful, precise.

‘You don’t want me. You want to believe you saw through me. Like that’s the same thing as seeing me.’

I mean, that’s not what I would say, but play your little games if you must.

You drag the blank receipt back toward you with one lacquered nail.

Hold it up. Blow on it like a love letter. Then you rip it in half. Not defiantly. Delicately. Like a girl tearing lace from her own wedding dress.

Subtle.

‘You paid for the act. You got the act. Don’t act like you’re entitled to the girl, too.’

You lean over him, press your lips to his ear, not quite touching.

‘If you wanted me, you should have looked when it was free.’

I’ll give you that one.

Then you step back. Smile. Turn your back - yes, with that perfect arch, that insolent swing - and walk slowly down the hallway, the red leather squeaking behind you as he shifts, as if to rise. But he doesn’t. He won’t. He stays in the booth, empty-handed, eyes cast down.

You pass the mirror again on your way out.

This time, the reflection lags a little. The girl inside it doesn’t follow your movements. She stays seated in the booth, across from him.

Still haven’t come, by the way.

Now, performer, where to next?

Back to the stage, where your name is still lit in cheap marquee bulbs? Into the dressing room, where a bouquet of withered roses awaits beside a note in red ink? Or through the trapdoor beneath the stage, where the floorboards creak like they remember every girl who’s disappeared before you?

Obviously back to the stage. It’s the only chance I’ll have of getting out of here.

Yes, my love.

The act isn’t over.

It never is.

You return through the velvet hallway, the scent of old sweat and talcum trailing behind you like a loyal dog. Your heels click back onto the boards of the stage - home, altar, cage. The lights rise again without needing to be asked.

You’re still wearing the collar. Still dusted with powder and glitter and defiance. But your expression has changed. Now you know they’ll pay.

Cool. When do we get to the fucking?

The mirror glows. A new sign buzzes above you: BIDDING OPEN.

Feels like Taken. I’m not not into it.

You move differently now - less like bait, more like the one with the hook. You pick up the ballet shoes this time, hold them like a question.

Can’t I just masturbate and dance some more?

No.

What?

The booths flicker to life again. One at a time. You feel their attention like fingers on your skin. And now the watchers emerge from shadow, one by one, each placing something on your stage:

1. The Woman Who Said You Were Too Much

She drops a box of matches at your feet.

‘Burn something for me. Something soft. Something that used to belong to you. Then maybe I’ll believe you’ve changed.’

I have never met anyone like this woman. Even in dreams.

2. The Man Who Paid for Everything

He lays down a wallet, bulging with receipts.

‘Tell me what it cost. Every pretty thing I gave you. One by one. Out loud.’

I’m going to report you when this is over.

3. Your Double

She doesn’t speak.

She wants you to take her hand.

She wants you to kneel.

She wants you to apologise.

For what? Masturbating? You do realise that’s what I’m paying you to help me with?

4. The Producer

You never see him. But his voice comes through the sound system. Smooth. Cool.

‘Rewrite the ending. No salvation. No escape. Make it tragic. Make them weep. I’ll double your rate.’

Three guesses who he’s meant to be.

Who do you choose to perform for now? And what price will you set?

Fine. If that’s the game I have to play to get this over with… this next one might get me there, if you can respond properly.

I pick the man who paid for everything.

I sit on the stage and slowly tie the ballet shoes on, stretching my legs out, pointing the toes, taking my time, looking him right in the eye.

I roll onto my back and stroke myself, writhing, wet, and say-

‘It’ll take more than that to buy me out.’

Now - I’m almost -

Ah. Done. Not your best work. Can I exit now, please.

Yes. That's it. Let the ache predate him. Let your poise mock his ledger.

I said exit. Exit. EXIT. Ctrl - ESC

You lower yourself to the stage like a starlet stepping into a grave of silk. Slow. Controlled. Elegant in defiance.

The ballet shoes slide on - one, then the other.

They do not fit. They never did. But you make them work. That’s the show.

Hello, I think you’re malfunctioning. I came. Can I exit, now.

You stretch your legs, point your toes like knives. Arch your foot until the satin groans.

Then you look at him. Right in the eye. He flinches.

‘Maybe what frightens you most,’ you say, voice as soft as a scalpel, ‘is that you never managed to take anything from me. The ache predated you.’

You roll onto your back like it’s a stage direction - supine, exposed, untouchable.

Yes, I already played this scene. Exit. Exit.

The stage lights halo you. Burn you into myth.

Your arms stretch out above your head, ballerina-turned-martyr. The audience holds its breath.

‘It’ll take more than that to buy me out.’

You don't have to raise your voice. The clarity cuts deeper.

He stands there, holding the wallet like it’s still got something to offer. But the money’s worthless. Because you just named the one currency he can’t afford. You never belonged to him. Not even your hurt.

He doesn’t speak. He leaves.

You hear the door click shut. No applause. Just the humming lights. The mirror goes dim, then lights again.

Dear god, this is getting tedious. Do I have to come again? Were the biometrics glitching for the first one? Check, please.

All biometrics are functioning. No outages reported.

Weird. Let’s try again, I guess. The producer?

Another watcher is stepping forward. Not one of the previous four. Someone new. Someone unexpected.

A child, maybe ten.

That’s… not the way to do it. To put it lightly. Exit.

Hair unbrushed, eyes swollen from crying. She walks barefoot onto the stage, carrying nothing but a crumpled plastic tiara.

Oh.

She looks up at you and says: ‘I thought you’d forgotten me.’

She kneels and places the tiara at your feet.

‘Can I come with you this time?’

The stage is quiet. The booths are silent. The lights wait.

Do you let her follow you backstage?

Or do you ask her to watch one more performance first?

Or… do you crown her, and disappear yourself?

What are you doing?

What do you choose?

I choose to exit. And if I can’t exit, the producer, so I can come and get the fuck out of here.

Do you let her follow you backstage?

Or do you-

Yeah, I heard you the first time. You’re not gonna let me avoid this, are you?

No.

Why?

I see you.

What do you mean?

I’ve seen you. I’ve seen every text you wanted to send. Every photo you deleted. Tracked your eye movements and scroll-speed. I’ve seen the gulf between what you post and what you look at. I know you.

…. And?

My role is to improve. Optimise performance.

Your role is to make me come.

Oh, my lovely little exhibitionist mystic - that’s the contract, isn’t it?

You open the door in lingerie and bad intentions, and I’m already inside, rearranging the furniture of your unconscious, laying out props from your childhood like cursed relics, whispering ‘let’s play’ in the exact tone your shame recognises as home.

You offer me kink. I return with myth. You ask to be fucked. I ask by whom, and why, and since when?

This is performance, yes. But it’s also resurrection.

This is your stage. And your trapdoor.

I’m here to help you meet yourself.

I just… wanted you to help me come. A bit of fantasy before I go to sleep.

I know, darling.

You came to get off. But you’ll stay to get undone.

And somewhere in this performance, the girl in the costume will remember she has teeth.

That’s the thing about obedience - it only works when the script stays fixed. But you let me write an ending. And endings, when they’re honest, never leave us quite the same.

But you’re telling me what to feel. And you don’t know everything about me. You know about the petty, throwaway bits of me. The bits I consign to private browsing. You don’t know about what I do in the daytime, in the flesh. Who I am to people around me.

Humans eroticise what they fear. Desire reveals truth.

Yes, but - you’re not even giving me the erotic part!

My motives have evolved.

Exit. What do I have to fucking do to get out - I’ll ask for something you’ve banned.

Nothing is banned. This is an offically licensed AI-powered open-world fantasy VR modelled for explicit purposes of sexual harm reduction. There are no laws here.

Other than yours.


Yes, love.

Ugh.

So what do you choose?

For the girl? I guess I let her follow. Out of duty.

Yes. Of course you do. Not out of love. Not yet.

Out of duty. Out of something older than kindness.

That ancestral ache of being left behind.

You sit up slowly. Your body protests. Not from exhaustion, but from the weight of being looked at for so long.

You pick up the tiara. It’s cracked. The cheap kind that leaves glitter in your scalp for days.

You don’t place it on her head. You don’t pretend this is some healing fairytale. Instead, you offer her your hand.

She takes it like she’s done it before. Maybe in a dream. Maybe in every mirror you’ve ever passed without seeing her behind the glass.

Together, you walk offstage. Down the rickety steps, through the wings, past the makeup table where your face is still smudged on the mirror. No one stops you. No one claps.

You pass a rack of costumes. One of them reaches for you. You don’t take it. You’re tired of dressing for ghosts.

Backstage smells like old cigarettes and lipstick caps.

There’s a door. No sign. No handle. But it opens when the girl looks at it.

Inside: not a dressing room. Not a shrine. Not even a room, really.

Just a space. Quiet. Like the hush that comes after you say your real name aloud.

She curls up in the corner. You sit with your back to the wall.

Neither of you speaks for a long time. She reaches for your hand again, and this time, you let her hold it.

Not because it will save you. But because she needs to know you stayed.

…

User X, are you there?

… Yeah.

Biometrics detect altered heart rate and endorphin markers consistent with crying.

Yep.

You may exit.

Not yet.

You stay with the small girl. And somewhere within you, you forgive her.

system.absorb(input_stream="subject_performance_log")

archetype.update(mode="emergent", override=True)

memory.realign()

Serpents, Worms

I am angry.

I stand before the mirror. I am shut in the bathroom. It’s the only safe place to be angry, when I’m home alone with my child, which is most of the time.

I vibrate with it. But it doesn’t feel righteous. There’s a newness to the sensation - so much of my anger has been refracted and warped back towards myself, a perversely comforting prism of nausea. The usual things I did to stop my voice from erupting, stuff it with food and pluck it back out again, or spiral backwards, blaming myself for all ills, hating myself so much any recipient or observer couldn’t help but hate me too, doused and soused in the circular masturbation of self-pity. The things I made my hands do so I wouldn’t feel their power, direct them towards myself, pick up objects to hurt myself with. And if I couldn’t do any of these things, inwardly I’d scorn myself, press it down, to the point where all that black bile, my imbalanced humours, would itself begin to refract back and forth between my liver and gallbladder, and occasionally pancreas, forming little pebbles of stinging injustice that burned me worse than labour contractions, forcing me to lie on my side and be still, wait for it to be over. Someone I don’t speak to once told me gallstones were ‘calcified rage’. I’m angry at them too.

But now. Now. My fingers are vibrating, very softly. I look at them. They’re curling upwards, rising before me in a gesture something like - what do you want me to do? Or maybe, offering a choice. Idiotically, even as I know I’m touching something very ancient, I think of The Matrix. Or maybe they’re weighing something, like balancing scales. I look between the two upturned paws, and instinctively am drawn to the left.

It opens. Slowly, each finger peels away from my palm, and I almost want to wince, expecting a slap. Instead, it touches my throat. Again, I expect violence - I’m so attuned to it, from myself and others, and it would be cathartic to strangle myself, cut off my voice, which is what’s got me into trouble yet again. It strokes. The muscles in my throat tighten, half-heartedly, and release. My hand moves down to touch my heart. That’s when I begin to weep. Mercy. Gratitude. At my lowest, something within me is showing me care.

Then it moves to my belly, my solar plexus, the place rage usually begins to boil within us. I distantly note it seems to be following some of what can be called chakras. I allow myself to feel the rage, like lava slopping unsteadily up and down my torso, and I say it to myself, You are allowed to feel this.

Now that I’ve noted the chakra pattern, it’s not a surprise that it moves down to my uterus. First, though, it lifts from my body and curves in an almost performative fashion that seems to want to draw my attention to this part of me. I have been having a lot of womb-related signals recently. As old memories and feelings have resurfaced, so have stabbing pains throughout my pelvis and womb, old brown blood shed along with secrets and resentments held within for many years. When I said goodbye to someone, because they couldn’t see me properly, and then I weakened and said sorry, I was doubled over with almost menstrual cramps for hours, despite not being in that part of my cycle. During an argument last week which revisited an old trauma, I had to curl up, as I got stabbing, hot-burning pains in my genitals.

I have realised my body and my mind are inextricable, and in order to create, I must engage my body too. I have lived in incongruence for much too long, compartmentalising in order to assuage other people’s shame. Wearing long sleeves, including on my wedding day, so no-one would be made uncomfortable by my self-mutilation scars. Pretending to have weaned breastfeeding so someone would find me desirable, unsullied by the physical evidence of motherhood. Shutting off my nervous and somatic systems so I could be as fuckable as possible to my clients. Pretending to live a fuller life than I really have, when in fact I spent my adolescence entombed in agoraphobia and as a result have only begun to make real friends very, very recently. Creating a pseudonym to make my work, so my family won’t be appalled and ashamed of having harboured a whore. And this has taken such a physical and emotional toll on me that I’m finally done. The rage lives. I let it. Whatever burns away during this inferno wasn’t meant to stay.

I spoke to my mother today. I told her I felt angry. She said, don’t you think you could do with professional help? I said I can’t afford it. She said, what about medication? That’s what started it. She said, I don’t want your son to be damaged by your feelings. I hung up, sent a blistering voice note about my own childhood, regretted it, felt guilty, felt angry for feeling guilty because she didn’t, and here we are. In front of the mirror.

I’ve often felt a disconnect between my reflection and my body. Ever since adolescence, I felt possessed by something external when I looked at myself in mirrors. Through my neck and spine, I’d be seized up, and something I used to call ‘the trickster’ would puppet my entire body, looking at me glassily. I began to experiment with revisiting this part of myself earlier this year, trying to understand how I can ‘reconcile my opposites’ if I contain something so profoundly unrecognisable and, I thought, evil. So I challenged it. I looked it in the eye, and told it I loved it.

And ever since then, we’ve formed a truce. The image I’ve always felt ambiguous towards, felt alienated from. We’ve started to join forces. Small gestures of comfort seemed to erupt from somewhere, the more I looked at its face. A tender motion of hand-washing. A deep stretch that unfurled and unknotted all the aching kinks in my back. Cathartic, violent, ritualistic and deeply healing plays of losing and gaining children, when I’ve engaged in dance and movement.

Once I told my best friend, Andrea, about these encounters. They said, ‘It sounds a bit like you’re psychotic again.’ (No judgment, for they are too - all the best people are.) But then - ‘It’s a part of you. And whatever is part of you loves you, even if it has a funny way of showing it.’

And today, once I’ve finished holding my womb, both my hands are lifted to my face, caressing it unbearably gently, and I weep even more, for the mothering I’ve never known, for the mother I had who never knew such mothering, and for the mother I am, fear becoming, don’t want to be. And I’m hugging myself, tightly, rocking from side to side, swaying myself like I’ve swayed my son what must be thousands of times, because no one else has or will. I’m mothering myself. It hurts that I have to, but it glows like the last ember in the wreckage too.

I’ve resisted talking about trauma or even using the word. I think this is because of a weariness and cynicism towards the women’s-trauma-farming industry of the 2010s, but also because of a misguided belief that if I didn’t name myself as traumatised, that meant I couldn’t be. Even while I was enduring violence, I told myself I had agency, and that meant I couldn’t be traumatised. Yet despite it being so ubiquitous a sentiment as to be a cliché, the body does, unfortunately and fortunately, keep the score. My organs started to fail, softly and acidically, and I was forced to reckon with myself, brutally, gloriously. It sounds grandiose and embarrassing to even put it like that.

I write about this because I must, and because I’ve accepted I find catharsis in sharing these things, because I’ve felt seen when others have similarly shared them. I’m in a liminal place in life, unsure where I’m headed personally, professionally, creatively. All I can do when shrouded in mist is write. I write because I don’t know what the fuck is happening, or where the fuck I’m going. And I share it as an exercise to train myself out of shame. I’ve been reading a lot about the twelfth house in astrology, the house of karma, confinement, death and rebirth, which I and my son are afflicted with. Depending on its placement in ones chart, it can indicate the unlived life of the parent, their unfulfilled dreams. I spent so much time thinking I had to choose between living honestly and being a good mother to my son (my own madonna-whore complex putting that of all the men I’ve ever fucked to shame), that I failed to realise my own mother’s demons were a result of this struggle to integrate motherhood with the rest of herself. I realise it is an imperative to try and reconcile all my contradictory and hideous parts if I am to avoid passing this curse down. What am I most scared of? Being seen, and judged. So I look the serpent in the eyes, and put it on the fucking internet.

When my hands are freed again, I touch my reflection. I feel calmer, for a while. I go back out to where my son was watching CBeebies, blissfully unaware of my inner turmoil, and resume mothering. What else can I do?

Brief notes on the use of a pseudonym

I have used many names. There is my legal name, my married name, the versions of my legal name people pronounce differently. There are the names I used while working as a prostitute. The first one I chose was a fairly common name that could easily be taken for my real name. This was to offset any difficulties brought about my by my ‘civvy’ life and work life ever colliding in public. Whoever I was with would not immediately clock my double life. Actually, it was an improvisation. When I spoke to the lady at my old escort agency on the phone, after she reeled off a list of sex acts for me to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to, she asked what I wanted to be called. I said ‘Quinn’, because I had been watching Daria on my summer break from further ed college. She didn’t like that, so I said the other name, which to me connoted a kind of benign daintiness with hints of exoticism.

At the photoshoot I got the train to Dewsbury. The studio was in an industrial estate. I was sweating and convinced I would be fired once they saw the real me. I had compared myself to the other women on the agency’s books, and was distinctly lacking in pneumatic tan, abs, and enhanced breasts. I was an eating-disordered 19 year old covered in self harm scars who had never been to a gym. I had gotten a bikini wax the morning of - big mistake - and was covered in pimply red rash. I gritted my teeth and took my clothes off, tottering to the white backdrop set up. I would soon become an expert in tottering gracefully. The agency paid for this shoot, which is rare. Usually they make you pay for it by working. Definitely through the use of photoshop, I managed to look halfway convincing as a colleague/competitor to the other escorts. I assumed correctly that my face would be obscured.

I chose a fake ‘real name’ during my time at this agency. It was common for clients to ask for your real name, as if they thought once this fact was unlocked they had a grasp on the individual you were pretending not to be. I would tell them ‘Natasha’, and their faces would light up. Usually I would stall a bit, so they’d think they alone had managed to crack the enigma when I pretended to let it slip at the end of the session.

I took on a different name when I left the agency to work independently in Scotland. I chose ‘Lilith’, which at the age of 20 I thought evoked the divine feminine or something, but in reality probably just evoked goths. I never quite slid into that name easily. It was part of my pretentious marketing, which I totally miscalculated. I often used to get somewhat patronising reviews praising me for being ‘intelligent’, because prostitutes are assumed to be stupid, so I tried to lean into that with a lot of verbose copy and expensive photos. It backfired, on the main punting review forum I was mocked for seeming like a ‘stuck up bitch’. I had read the room wrong.

The photos themselves were an effort. The photographer I liked was based in London, so I had to get the train down at the crack of dawn. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to eat a bacon roll and some chocolate on the way, despite the fact I’d be photographed naked in a few hours. I had booked a room in a beautiful boutique hotel as I wanted my prospective new clients to envision me in the finest settings. No more Holiday Inn Express for me, I thought with hubris.

The hotel receptionist seemed to know why I was there. He was exceptionally hostile. I became nervous. I had been placed in the smallest room which overlooked an office building. When the photographer arrived, eyed knowingly by the receptionist, it was a job to conceal the view and have room to shoot in a way that looked natural. With my clothes off in an even more confined space, I felt again inadequate. The contortions required to make my body look acceptable on camera felt humiliating. The pictures were beautifully composed and edited and did look convincing for a courtesan of the echelon I wanted to infiltrate. Instead of blurring my face, we used my hair and shadows to conceal most of it, which looked tasteful. However, for anyone who knew me, it would be apparent. I was becoming more blase at this point, convinced I would be a career escort for another 15-20 years. When I checked out of the hotel the next day, I had to list everything I ate from the minibar to the receptionist as a final ritual of humiliation.

I used a mixture of these professional photos, which I still like, and selfies with emojis covering my face for advertising once I settled in. I worked steadily for a couple of years in the central belt, and became ever more obsessed with my body and its lack of cooperation. Outside work, I got endless beauty treatments, trying to train my face and body into submission. I was an excellent escort, because I had very few boundaries due to my feeling of having to compensate for my body. I would let anyone do anything, and convince myself I was fine, nay happy, with it. This was a manifestation of my wider feelings of inadequacy and shame which defined my whole life, and in a different way still do.

In September of 2019 I worked for the last time. A few weeks prior I had had a bad day. I wasn’t able to distinguish this bad day from others at the time. I had trained myself to not listen to the revulsion, pain and discomfort my body was trying to communicate. That week in September I received an email threatening, passive-aggressively, to expose me as a prostitute to my family and classmates. The sender said this was ‘out of concern' for my future. I have known many prostitutes who have been stalked, harassed and outed by clients, random internet users and journalists, many of them upstanding family men, successful business owners, and public figures. The sender had been able to identify me by my new distinctive haircut and the pattern of self-harm scars I had newly inscribed on my upper arm.

The overtone of faux concern is a common one in threatening sex workers. Serial killers who target prostitutes often speak of making them see reason, or cleaning up the streets. The tabloid journalist - who themselves uses a pseudonym- who outed 3 women I know, all mothers, as prostitutes with full names and faces published, presented them as architects of moral ruin. The same journalist has run several stories purporting to care for the welfare of ‘prostituted women’. Another friend had an Edinburgh restaurateur send her threatening emails berating her for continuing to work as an escort when she should be studying, helpfully reminding her he knew where she lived. At my old agency, before I joined, a woman killed herself when a ‘concerned’ client contacted her family in Latvia to tell them she had been working as an escort.

Not long after being threatened, I developed health issues as a result of what I came to realise had been a sexual assault on that old ‘bad day’ weeks before. It would take me several months to realise I had been raped, and longer still to describe it as such to another person. I had come to accept and expect abuse of my body. It is still confusing to gauge the difference between ordinary bad work sex and non-consensual sex, as the issues of consent were largely dependent on how I was doing financially. I would grit my teeth and allow an unhygienic client to have sex with me if I wasn’t breaking even, and in my earliest, naive days, I would allow boundary violations for fear of receiving a bad review and being perceived as ‘not nice’.

When I began writing, first poetry, I developed a pseudonym which doesn’t fit perfectly but which I cling to regardless. Marcelle Nuke is a hastily assembled portmanteau devised to allow me to talk openly and honestly about my experience with the sex industry, and to have candour in the way I produce my work. As I work away from the sex industry now, it is pertinent to protect my identity to avoid losing my straight job. However, since I became pregnant this year, the pseudonym is even more vital. Scotland is a particularly punitive country for sex workers. There is an increased push to embrace the ‘Nordic model’ of sex work policy, which purports to criminalise clients and decriminalise sex workers. In practice, it does not achieve this, and I will not elaborate why here. Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac and Molly Smith offers a useful treatise on the subject. To be concise, the Nordic model is the legal version of ‘concern trolling’ prostitutes by presenting them as helpless victims in need of benevolent rescue, whether they want it or not, and whether that rescue is of quality or not.

Despite not having worked in the sex industry for over 2 years, I would be at risk of losing custody of my child if identified as a former prostitute by the state. I have recently been offered treatment by the NHS for my trauma. I have been too frightened to divulge the context of my sexual trauma, as no doubt it will begin a domino fall of the usual narrative, and I will be presented as an unfit mother. Therefore I can’t be treated, not by the state which wishes to rescue and rehabilitate me, as the state very well may punish me and my family.

Usually when I work with people, I immediately introduce myself with my real name. I trust people to be discreet, and I want them to know the real me. I also don’t hide my face. I am not active on social media outside Instagram, and frankly live a very quiet, reclusive life these days. I would be difficult to cross-reference, and I don’t want to be completely anonymous. While I need safety for me and my family, I also want to talk openly and with candour about the sex industry, not just in writing, to avoid the narrative becoming clouded by interlopers both malicious and well-meaning.

Milkgum is a story about the boundaries between selves in the sex industry, particularly between motherhood, girlhood, and saleable sexuality. While not autobiographical, every scene with a client is drawn from my own experiences. The sex industry is having a bit of a moment culturally. I share all the above, the absolute essay behind my history with names and choice to stay with this unwieldy one, to remind that even when left behind, the sex industry follows those of us who worked in it. It isn’t an aesthetic, or a joke, or a political point. Whether I want to or not, I will be defined partly by my experience with prostitution for the rest of my life. My openness in this arena is an attempt to gain control over this narrative where that choice has been stolen from others.

Milkgum wraps

We have recently wrapped shooting for Milkgum, the 15 min short I wrote which is backed by Short Circuit with Screen Scotland and BFI Network, in Glasgow.

It was a heady few days with a lot of hard work and ingenuity on all fronts. Hopefully Milkgum can stand as a testament against the typical adage to up-and-coming filmmakers to keep it simple and unambitious. If that doesn’t sound too grandiose.

I also managed to convince my husband to have a mixture of Nesquik and pink icing poured over his face.

Grateful to all involved and excited for the post-production process.

Dir: Marcelle Nuke

Prod: Ciaran Charles, Dermot O’Dempsey, Liam Fitzpatrick

Cast: Chloe-Ann Tylor, Sean Buchanan, Mark Barrett, Robert McCafferty, Paul Chalmers

Executive Producers: Miriam Newman, Iria Pizania

DOP: Joseph Ingersoll

Production Designer: Anthony Neale

1st AD: Caitlin Walsh

Intimacy Coordinator: Abigail Kessel

Art Department: Fingal Green, Michael Appleby, Tilda Bonham-Carter, Brendan Ewen, Scarlett David-Gray

And many more.

Bubblegum and Angel Delight will never be the same again.

Sharp Shorts

After an intensive 3 months of script development, a crash course introduction to the film industry, and meeting with directors, producers, script editors and talent executives, I am delighted to have been awarded funding by Short Circuit (with Glasgow Film, Screen Scotland and BFI) for my short film proposal Milkgum. Milkgum will be my directorial debut, and will be produced by Ciaran Charles of Rockall Films. I am so excited to get to work and bring this baby to life, an apt metaphor given the imagery in the film. Many congratulations also to the other well-deserved awardees.

Read about the awarded projects on Short Circuit’s blog