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.
