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Announcer: The following film is about sex work,
and contains depictions of sex, sexual assault,
and substance use.
Please take care.
My name is Andrea Werhun.
I'm a writer and performer, and I'm...
also a sex worker.
In books, movies,
and every syndicated crime drama imaginable,
sex workers are typically portrayed as victims
or villains.
Shame and stigma can silence us.
It's high time we told our own damn stories.
Here's mine.
In my early 20s,
I worked as an escort.
Clients hired me to a play a role,
and I love to perform.
It wasn't always glamourous.
Can I jizz on your titties, baby?
That costs extra, baby.
And I wasn't always the professional you see here.
Here it comes, baby.
Here it comes!
Andrea: Once upon a time,
Iwas a university student with a dream.
A dream of making more than minimum wage.
I quickly realized the power of a little unzipping.
I went to university to study English literature.
That was my major, and I minored in religion.
The first time I went to a strip club,
what I saw was a kind of sexy church.
I saw these poled priestesses on the stage,
being worshipped by this doting male congregation
who are, you know, being given the opportunity
to go to confession for like, $20 a song.
And so I thought, "I want to do that."
And I did eventually become a stripper.
More on that later.
I had a friend in one of the classes I was taking in school
tell me that I should consider escorting instead.
One night, I noticed that all the stories I'd penned
for my creative writing class
involved the exchange of sex for money.
It became clear...
Ethereal voice: Whoredom is your destiny...
Whoredom is...
...your destiny!
Andrea: And how does one become a sex worker?
Well, let me show you.
Under the cover of darkness,
I stalked the streets like a cat in heat,
fondling for society's sexy underbelly.
Woman: Password?
Come in.
Cloaked in the darkness of night and little else,
I penetrated a secret set of sinful sluts.
Just kidding.
I looked up escort agencies,
picked the best-looking website,
and sent them an email.
And they contacted me immediately for an interview,
which opened with...
Woman: You got the job.
Oh.
Great.
The agency owners were a suburban couple
- named Trina and Craig. - Here's how it works.
We'll do your advertising for you.
I'll pick you up, drop you off.
You collect the money and text me that it's all good.
I'll start the clock, you do the deed,
and I'll wait outside and let you know when the hour is up.
- Any questions? - Yeah.
Do you provide the condoms?
No.
Okay. Um...
How often should I get an STI test?
Like, every month?
Every month would probably be too much.
And how likely is it that I would get an STI?
Uh, not likely.
That would be very rare.
Andrea: You know, some people get away from sex work
without ever having had an STI.
Me, I had chlamydia, I got gonorrhea,
and then I did a seven-day, you know, round of antibiotics
and they were gone.
And that's because I got tested regularly.
Also, I was wondering, is this legal?
Yes and no.
But the cops have bigger to fry.
And we've never had a run-in with law enforcement.
You're fine.
The fact that she's saying she's been able to run
a successful escorting agency doesn't change the fact
that criminalization impacts us as workers
in a way that it doesn't impact her
as someone who is not sucking cock for money.
How dangerous is this job?
We've been in this business a long time.
You're totally safe, nothing's gonna happen to you.
She is not going to be transparent about the risks
that I face, and the vulnerable situations
she is about to put me in
because she doesn't want to scare me away.
So, what do you want to be called? You need a fake name.
I'd thought about this a lot.
I was taking a romantic poetry class at the time,
and I had fallen head over heels in love
with William Blake.
In Visions of the Daughters of Albion,
a virgin goddess named Oothoon walks in woe
when her eye is caught by a marygold.
"I see thee now a flower,
"now a nymph.
"I dare not pluck thee from thy dewy bed."
Pluck thou my flower, Oothoon the mild.
Another flower shall spring.
Because the soul of sweet delight
can never pass away.
Andrea: That virginity is forever.
Marygold!
Nah.
How about Mary Ann?
You kinda look like Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island.
Sure.
Mary Ann.
The Virgin Mary, and her mother, Saint Anne.
Two generations of maternal divinity
to protect me on this whorish path.
I remember signing an agreement,
but I'm not sure what it said.
Trina and Craig couldn't get me on the schedule fast enough.
Trina: His name is Sanjay. He's nice.
He's more nervous than you are. Trust me.
Come in, come in.
Hi.
Jacket?
Oh. Thanks. Um...
- I'll be right back. - Sure.
- Hey. - Hi.
So, how long have you been doing this?
Not very long.
Um, this is actually my first appointment.
You're my first client.
Really?
Wow...
That's great. That's great.
He was being kind, he was being respectful,
and we were pleasuring each other.
And I thought, "If this is what it is...
"...that's kinda fun!"
Sanjay leaves me in the room with half an hour left.
Please lock up the room whenever you are done.
Goodnight, Mary Ann.
Goodnight?
Okay, I've just, like, hit the jackpot here.
I get to like, relax in a room by myself
after this momentous occasion
where I feel like I had just lost my whore virginity.
Was it really me?
A new friend, companion, and partner in crime
smiled back at me.
And her name was Mary Ann.
Toronto Sirens.
Man on phone: Well, hi there, - Trina. - It's Chuck from Texas.
You have a gal for me this evening?
Trina: Have I got the girl for you! She's new.
Her name is Mary Ann, and it's her first night.
You're gonna love her.
Yee-haw!
Andrea: Who is next?
So, Mary Ann, do you like Mozart?
Yeah.
Good, good.
Do you like butt play?
Um...
I don't know.
How about rimming?
Uh... I...
I don't know.
Client: Come on. Lick my ass.
Please?
I should have charged him extra for that.
By the time I reached my final client,
I was feeling like a triumphant sexual queen.
Max and I were sucked into a flurry of mutual interests.
Poetry, religion, politics.
When he asked the dreaded--
What's your story?
Oh, I'm just a travelling painter,
passing through.
Wow. I thought maybe you were in university.
No...
No.
You have a really intellectual vibe.
I've read a lot of books.
Come here.
We had some time left, so I read him some tarot cards.
Max was smart and courteous.
Had I just met my ideal client?
I made $700,
and that was life-changing for me.
To go from minimum wage,
where I worked at a cafe
and I might get $700 on two paycheques,
Here I'd made it in one night and had a ball.
My new job was exciting,
but the prospect of telling my friends and family was not.
So I kept my whoring a secret.
Max had been my ideal client when I met him.
The next time I saw Max,
I was selling tickets to a psychology conference
when he showed up in line, and I almost had a heart attack.
I was so freaked.
I revealed that I was not, in fact,
a travelling painter passing through.
And was, of course, a university student.
And that more than that,
what I really wanted to be was a writer.
You could come over, you know, just to write.
You mean, you'd pay me?
Yeah. Why not?
Let's do a two-hour writing session.
Okay.
I thought, "Could my life get any better?"
So I show up to this paid writing session,
and as soon as I get there and we're sitting in his apartment,
he starts asking me questions.
What was your childhood like?
What happened to you to lead you down this path?
Are your parents still together?
Were you abused?
Mary Ann, I deal with people in your field every day.
They either come from a broken home,
or they have a long history of sexual trauma.
You claim you have neither, which...
I find hard to believe.
You just don't fit the mould of someone
who does this kind of work.
Shall we go to the bedroom?
I thought I was here to write.
Come on.
He was trying to enter me.
You know, he was trying to open doors
for which he had no key.
He was trying to barge into me
and I did not like it at all.
Max.
I'm not comfortable.
Max: That was great.
Do you want to go home now?
Yeah.
Andrea: I just felt like such a naive baby whore,
to have believed a client
when he said that he wanted a paid writing session.
I would not go into it
without being prepared to have sex.
You don't get any training for this stuff.
I mean, you kinda have to walk through the fire
to learn these lessons.
Bottom line, you can't trust clients.
Personally, I don't think there is anything more important
than community.
You know, especially for an industry
that's as isolated as ours.
When sex workers get together and we talk shop, magic happens.
Even if we are experiencing our work in isolation,
we can hear each other and totally understand each other.
My name is SJ Raphael.
I have done everything from escorting to stripping,
cam work, street work.
I was mailing my underwear to weird men overseas
for a really long time, until it didn't become lucrative anymore.
You name it, I've done it.
Andrea: SJ, they are one of my most cherished friends.
We met through advocacy work.
I'm Vixen, I am a former escort.
I've now transitioned into being
a nude online cam girl.
Vixen is a good friend of mine, and we met at an orgy.
My name is Kitoko, and I am a former escort and pro sub,
or professional submissive.
Oh, and a current artist.
Kitoko is an incredibly gifted artist and collaborator.
We made a short film together.
I'm Robin. I've been a stripper for five years now,
and I am also a formally trained
animator and illustrator.
Robin is an amazing performer.
We worked at the same strip club.
Being white, cisgendered, and conventionally feminine
has definitely benefited me in this industry.
How have these factors impacted my friends?
Certainly there is that archetype
of what a "whore" should look like,
what a sex worker should look like.
The lingerie, the hair, the makeup, the clothes,
the this, the that. As a gender diverse person,
I present far more femme than I feel
because I make more money doing it.
It's easier for me to get clients,
it's easier for me to have the long blonde hair,
like, put on the dress, like, do the thing,
and then make, you know, the money that I am charging.
The way that I look, the way that I carry myself,
isn't quite a reflection of who I am internally.
But money talks, and I very much curate to the male gaze.
I applied to a a bunch of different agencies
multiple times, like, up to, like 20 times for some of them.
They told me not to expect to be as successful as any of
the, like, white women there or the Asian women there.
They see Black women as like, kind of like, alien.
Like, they're just like, "Who would ever desire you?"
Or like, "We don't know to get people to, like, come book you."
As someone who is mixed race and spent a lot of their time
being told that I am barely Black to begin with,
to walk into a strip club and face this, sort of,
1970s style racism where I am told verbatim
that I am too fat and too Black to work in an establishment
blew me away.
Walking into a change room and seeing that sign on the wall
that just said "No braids, no buns, no Afros."
And the only thing more offensive than that sign
is the fact that it wasn't actually a rule for everyone,
- it was a rule for Black women. - Yeah,
I have never had trouble making money in a club
no matter what my hair looks like.
Customers love the hair, they love the beads,
they love the dreads, they love the locs.
It's managers.
Andrea: We'll get into strip club managers later.
And now, back to escorting.
Western-style narration: And so, Mary Ann kept on whoring.
Lucky lads across the Greater Toronto Area
met the cutest little gal they'd ever seen.
And boy...
...Could that cowgirl ride!
Soon, I had regulars
who booked me regularly.
Mmm. Mary Ann. That's very good.
Mr. McAllister was an English teacher
and a writer in his spare time.
I really like it when you do that.
We always had quick sex off the top.
All the character development leads to the inevitable...
Followed by talking about our shared love
of crafting stories. Occasionally, he blurted--
I'm a lonely man, Mary Ann.
A lonely...
...lonely man.
Which, over time, became...
I feel like you're my girlfriend, Mary Ann.
I am like your girlfriend.
I prefer new clients to regulars.
People kind of like, fall in love
or think they're falling in love and then suddenly,
they are like, "What about this money?
"Can we, like, throw it away?"
And it's like, that's not the point of this.
Yes, a regular is great until they get possessive.
But they always do! I'm sorry, it always ends like that, right.
Yeah.
Don't be so good at your job, then!
Well...
I definitely broke the number one rule.
I ended up dating my very first client.
And, uh, we're not-- we're not together,
so, probably made the wrong choice there.
It's such an intimate thing.
It's such an intimate booking.
It would be crazy to think that people don't get attached.
That people feel a deep emotional connection.
Personally, I like regulars.
My preference is to have long-term relationships
with my clientele.
For me, it comes down to whether
a clientrespects your boundaries.
We've established that clients can lie to our faces.
But how do they behave beyond the appointment?
Sex worker review boards are the domain of hobbyists,
that is, men whose hobby is paying for sex
and writing about it,
employing a variety of colourful acronyms
to degrade sex workers for fun.
So, of course I searched my name.
Client: Mary Ann has a great sex body,
very soft, but firm, if that makes sense.
Client 2: Mary Ann resembled Mary Tyler Moore,
but with slightly bigger boobs.
Client 3: Mary Ann's legs were not memorable
as they are fairly short.
Andrea: It's hard to describe the feeling of reading someone
write about you
and what it's like to have sex with you.
This was, like, a genre of erotica
that was written by men for men.
A user named Don Juan posted my first review on the board,
which was entitled "Wow."
Handsome Don Juan: I had noticed Mary Ann ever since her photos
went up on the Sirens site. My first impression was "Wow."
I would estimate her figure at five foot five,
120 pounds, 34D-24-35.
We started with LFK.
I was gently massaging her breasts when she said...
You intrigue me.
Why, baby?
Most guys want to take a look before they feel.
Andrea: I remember things a little differently.
Don Juan told me he was a plastic surgeon from Florida.
I went to school with Barack Obama, baby.
What do you think of that?
My duty was to act impressed, not to sniff out facts.
I suspected the plastic surgeon thing to be true
because Don Juan had a technical fascination
with my breasts.
I don't believe it, baby.
These are too good to be real.
Then we progressed to DFK.
My tongue in her mouth...
Handsome Don Juan: Her tongue in mine...
Our tongues meeting outside of our mouths.
- Hungrily. - Passionately.
It did get her wet.
Real Don Juan: Then she took me into her mouth.
I propped myself up...
Handsome Don Juan: On some pillows to get a better look.
She told me that she wanted to taste me.
Okay, I definitely did not say that, okay?
I didn't say any of this!
Cut, cut, cut, cut.
All right, darling, you're doing great, you're doing fabulous.
However, that's not the line. The line is...
"I want to taste you,
"I want to taste you."
You know, pretend you're eating a, uh, portobello mushroom,
you know, and it's in your mouth, and you can taste it,
and it's swirling around in there.
And then you just enjoy it all. All right, you got it?
Good. Great. Action!
I want to taste you.
Yes!
Handsome Don Juan: We finished with a mind-blowing...
Real Don Juan: CIM?
No. COF? Hmm.
I'm not sure which.
And I really didn't care.
Handsome Don Juan: Whatever it was that Mary Ann did,
oh, baby.
Oh-ho-ho. It was fabulous.
Everything that he says that the did and that he said
just didn't happen.
What do you guys think about reviews?
I don't get to review them.
I needed one review and that launched me.
Mm-hmm.
It can really make or break your career.
The dark side of reviews is that they are definitely
a form of coercion. Clients will take the threat of a bad review
and use it to push your boundaries.
There's, like, so much pressure,
and you feel like you have to consent to everything, and...
It feels like being a product in an Amazon review.
- It's definitely violating. - Yeah.
Andrea: Reviews taught me that sex work is more
than just what happens behind closed doors.
There was something fun about performing this role for people.
And then going back into my regular life.
Mary Ann was me, but obviously heightened
and more curious and more adventurous.
It was sexy, it was sexy
to have this little juicy secret.
My secret life was fun until...
Hey, baby!
Yeah, baby! You lookin' good to me.
Oh, yeah!
Stupid ugly bitch.
Until shame crept in.
There's two sides to a secret.
It can be incredibly emotionally taxing
to hide from people,
especially the people you love.
We all have this internalized whorephobia within us.
This is a prejudice that is, you know, 2,000 years old.
This is nothing new. We are all born out of
this whorephobic muck. And I have it too.
The shame that I felt wasn't in the act.
It was the shame of others, and it was inside me,
and I could hear its voice, and it was awful.
You think you're so great, huh?
Making all that easy money.
Shame believes that sex workers are lazy.
And disgusting.
What is the difference between a Corvette and a dead hooker?
Shame likes dead hooker jokes.
I don't have a Corvette in my garage!
You're nothing
but a dirty, stinky...
Shame tries to make me hate myself.
Trash whore!
Shame makes you lonely. Like, it really does.
And it's also, like, shame goes hand in hand with fear, too.
That's the thing. It's like, I don't disclose,
or I didn't use to disclose because I don't know
what's gonna happen to me if I do.
During the pandemic, I had to stop full-service sex work
and so I was thinking about creating an OnlyFans,
but I was like, super stressed out because
if I have nudes on the internet,
could that make it impossible for me to, like,
adopt a child, or just pivot and like, teach?
I feel like it's not so much that sex work itself
oppresses me, but like, the stigma that follows it,
um, is like, always a threat.
I have never been very good at hiding.
But I understand that there are risks,
and so I continued to hide,
and it took a great toll on me.
Especially when it came to...
My mom.
You probably never expected we'd be here.
Um, well,
I wouldn't say it's beyond my imagination.
You were always a free spirit.
And I respect that.
I learned from the best.
No, you're more free,
more free than I ever was,
but I'm free in a different way.
Ooh. In what way?
No. This is about you.
It's not about me.
- We were always very close. - Mm-hmm.
- At least I always felt. - Oh, definitely.
Andrea: Yeah. Like, I felt
like I could always be myself around you.
We could always joke around about stuff.
Right. I don't think
there was ever anything we didn't talk about.
That's right, and so,
when it came to doing sex work,
that was the first time in my life
that I really felt like I was keeping a secret from you,
and that was really, really hard for me to do.
My mom is a beautiful angel,
and she's also a very religious person.
She's a Catholic.
There were always pictures
of the Virgin Mary around in my childhood.
I like to joke that she venerates a virgin mother
so she got a whore daughter.
No parent is like,
"I want my kid to become a sex worker!"
It's, like, kind of a nightmare scenario for a parent, right?
I would say you were pretty devastated.
Mm-hmm. Well, I was happy for you
that you were not carrying that burden anymore.
You know, you had been set free.
So, I can deal with that.
I can deal with truth.
That's not a problem,
but I do remember not sleeping for about three nights.
You did call me in the middle
- of the night-- - Mm-hmm.
you know, during those first three nights,
and you were concerned about my safety.
Right, and your soul.
And my soul.
En route to our respective appointments with a co-whore,
I mentioned my most regular client, Walter Wack.
He's the worst.
Oh, my God. I know.
He's so rough with me.
Yeah. He does this thing where he, like, crunches me up,
and it really hurts my hips.
Yeah, well, he fists me,
and he's rough.
Okay. He's definitely never fisted me.
And he calls me a dirty, stinky cum bucket trash whore.
You name it. Weird guy.
Okay. He's only ever called me nice things.
Well, I guess he likes you.
Violet.
Andrea: I was one of many escorts who saw Walter.
Sarah.
Addison.
Rebecca.
Uh, Andrea.
I mean Mary Ann!
Going to Walter Wack's place was, like, Groundhog Day,
because it was always the same.
His door would be ajar.
He'd yell from the shower, "Come on in!"
There'd be a boom box on the floor
playing the same music.
I always entered on the same song.
I would undress and wait for him to emerge.
We'd have the same sex every time.
One evening, he did something unusual.
He booked me twice in one night,
bookending five appointments total,
and by that fifth appointment,
I was pretty sore.
Walter was doing his usual plow,
crunching up my hips.
I was in pain,
trying to be a trooper,
get to the end,
but finally, I felt like it was necessary
to say something to him.
And I was kind of scared to say something to him,
because... it meant going off script.
But I said,
"Walter, you're my fifth appointment of the night,
and it kind of hurts."
And he said...
"That just makes me want to fuck you harder."
And so he did.
Ten minutes of torture left.
He called me every horrible name he'd called Sarah,
but I was afraid to leave.
You never have to see him again.
Andrea: Walter was blacklisted...
for me, not for the other girls.
If someone has had a client blacklisted,
then there should be transparency
so that everyone at the agency can choose
whether they want to see that person or not.
These guys, they're repeat offenders.
They eventually do the same thing to every single one of us,
and it's not fair that we don't get to decide
if that happens to us or not.
We're not trying to even punish the predator.
We just want to not see them.
We don't want to have to be prey. Yeah. Like--
But if, you know, sex work were decriminalized,
we'd actually maybe be able to build a relationship
with law enforcement if that's what we wanted to do.
Or at the very least, labour, you know, sort of rights--
- Labour. - You know, which involves
workplace safety, and this is a workplace safety issue.
Andrea: Exchanges like this one were rare.
I worked at the same agency as Andrea,
and we never met.
And a part of me thinks it's by design.
We were two opinionated girls.
The conversation would have never stayed surface level.
Having us have too much knowledge
is never a good thing in terms of an agency perspective.
Like, knowledge is power,
and they don't want us to have that kind of power.
Being an escort,
you don't only see people physically naked.
It's emotionally naked.
To find out how much hate and negativity
people carry within themselves,
it affects your soul.
Andrea: We're supposed to keep your secrets,
and that includes the secret
of how you truly behave, you know.
And that's why we experience so much violence from people,
because there's this assumption
that we're not going to tell anyone.
We don't have anyone to turn to.
There's no one to protect us.
My mom was concerned about my safety,
and she was right to be concerned.
On the day that I graduated university,
- we went out to lunch. - Mm-hmm.
We sat down at the table,
and the first thing that you said was,
"When you going to quit that job of yours?"
Right.
And I'm like... ..."Okay.
By my next birthday,"
which was a year from then,
and you said...
"I'd like to have that in writing."
Yeah.
Andrea: And so I signed a contract with my mother.
"I, Andrea Werhun,
"vow to stop hooking on my 24th birthday.
You have it in writing."
I had one year of whoring left.
With these appointments,
these hour-long appointments
with people you've never met before,
it's like I'm a comet
entering the stratosphere of somebody else's world,
and then I get to see them naked.
And then I get to have sex with them,
and I get to make them come.
And I, like, hit the Earth,
and I'm gone. And that's it.
You get to the core of a person,
and then you're gone.
There's just, like, something really fascinating
about how close you can get to a person
in such a short period of time
and the level of intimacy that you can feel
with someone you've never met before
and then just be gone.
You know, you have sex with a few hundred clients,
and you start to notice a few patterns.
So I think I could teach a class on sex work.
No matter what you call them--
clients, johns, tricks--
the men who pay for sex have a bevy of reasons
for procuring the services of a professional.
Take your travelling businessman, for instance,
tired and in need of a relaxing,
no-strings-attached fu--
However, many of our clients
are very much attached.
Shocking, I know.
Here's a line I often heard.
I'm just paying you for a service.
It's not like we're having
a passionate affair or anything.
Then why not tell your wife?
Having a wife is too good a deal
to screw up with a truth bomb like,
"When I tell you I'm staying late at the office,
"I'm really doing lines of coke
with an escort in a motel room off the highway."
Perhaps I seem like some kind
of husband-humping femme fatale,
the heartless, scheming villain
of the story,
but my madam would always say...
I think we save marriages.
It's safer for men to see an escort
than have an affair with the secretary at the office.
It's a lot less mess.
But--
Enough about them.
How about our clients with disabilities?
My client Paul was a favourite of mine.
His legs may have been paralyzed,
but my word,
that tongue was limber.
And of course,
the lazy bachelor,
sometimes too lazy.
Do you watch hockey?
Sort of.
I see you're a big fan.
Oh, yeah, ever since I was a kid.
How old are you?
- Why don't you guess? - Twenty-seven?
I'm older.
Andrea: A whiff of his dick
conveyed notes of cheese and black mold.
Why didn't I ask Gus to hit the showers?
Why did I let his curdled cheese string into my mouth?
Man: We've got Mary Ann in the head zone.
She appears to be struggling, Bob.
She sure is, Tim.
And the blow job
comes to an end.
- Is that it? - Mary Ann is now going
into the cowgirl position.
Oh! And it looks like Gus has got
some stubble going on down there.
It must be scraping the shit out of her you-know-what, Bob.
Mary Ann is determined to ride this john through the pain.
- Wow. - She is working for the money
- tonight, boys. - Mary Ann is dismounting.
- Your turn. - Bob: And it looks
like Gus is remaining in the reclined position.
He's going soft.
Mary Ann's got her hand on the stick.
He shoots!
She scores! Mary Ann has done it again,
proving why she's one of the most valuable escorts.
Yes! Yes!
And finally, there are the heartbroken newly single men
in need of a bosom to cry on.
I don't want to play games.
I just want sex.
Andrea: I heard that Jeremy had seen
every escort at the agency but me.
Excuse me. What?
Andrea: He was a typical finance guy--
You got to be kidding me!
Andrea: Drunk, volatile, loves hookers.
Is he always like that?
Jeremy: Oh, for fuck's sake!
For as long as I've known him.
Jeremy was legendary for his multi-hour appointments.
My co-whore Violet held the record--
36 hours.
When she finally had to go,
she was promptly replaced by another girl,
and now, it was my turn to get to know the legend.
What's your sign?
Scorpio.
Me too!
Andrea: We had a lot in common.
Around the five-hour mark, I asked...
So, do you have any children?
Jeremy: My kid's birthday party.
Drunk here.
Really drunk in this one.
That stupid fucking bitch!
She's ruined my life!
- Everything's gone! - Okay.
- It's ruined! - Okay.
Jeremy, you are a Scorpio, remember?
And Scorpios are ruled by Pluto.
That's the planet of transformation,
of life and death and rebirth.
If anyone could change their life,
it's you.
Though sex workers aren't officially therapists,
we try our best.
Let's do some coke.
Andrea: There's a certain suspension of reality
in the time an escort and her john share.
The time allotted is a sacred space
in which both parties feel free
to be themselves without judgment.
What do you like?
Andrea: I like sex.
Jeremy: I don't know about that.
Andrea: Oh, no!
Jeremy demanded I cuddle him all night.
Paid to sleep?
A sex worker's dream.
Man: Mary Ann.
Mary Ann, that's very good.
Andrea: When I told Mr. McAllister
I was leaving the biz,
from the high horse of a john in the arms of a whore,
he said...
You know, Mary Ann,
it'll be hard for you.
Dating, that is,
you know, having worked in this industry.
What makes you say that?
Well, a lot of people don't respect pr...
Men are too jealous.
Men don't respect...
Women like you.
I never told you this,
but I have a boyfriend.
You do?
We have been together for...
Thirteen years.
How did we meet?
Well, we met in university,
last year of university.
You came to a house party at my house.
That was the first time I met you, and yeah.
Then I kind of chased you a little bit
for a few weeks.
I knew, "Okay. This guy's a philosophy major."
"He's got to be pretty bright.
Maybe I'll just take a chance and tell him."
So I said, "I'm an escort,"
and you were like, "Cool."
Yeah.
I thought that you were an interesting person.
I did think it was cool.
It was something unique and different,
so I wasn't going to allow that
to affect my interest in you.
So mature.
Why didn't it bother you?
I see sex work as a job.
It's a job where you use your body and you use your mind,
like any other job.
People use all sorts of different body parts
to do their labour,
and we're not concerned about it unless it's sexual.
There's something about sex that--
I guess because it's so closely tied to love--
that people feel like it has to be controlled,
you have to possess your partner or own them in some sense,
and that it isn't real love unless you do
or real commitment unless you do.
Hello?
Trina on phone: Time's up.
Okay. Thanks.
♪ The light shines down the valley ♪
♪ The wind blows up the alley ♪
♪ Oh and I wish I was lying ♪
♪ In the arms of Mary ♪
♪ She took the pains of boyhood ♪
♪ And turned them into feel good ♪
♪ Oh and I wish I was lying ♪
♪ In the arms of Mary ♪
♪ Mary was the girl who taught me all I had to know ♪
♪ She put me right on the first mistake ♪
♪ Summer wasn't gone and I learned all she had to show ♪
♪ She really gave all a boy could take ♪
So long, Mary Ann.
The perennial Marygold,
plucked from its dewy bed,
must die, and so did I.
Mary Ann the whore lived, died, and was born again...
on a farm.
I had been working on a farm for a couple seasons
before you came to live with me there.
Andrea: In a way, I went to the farm
to escape my shame,
to prove to myself that I was more than just a prostitute,
but shame was with me.
Hey, saggy titties.
After my second season on the farm,
I needed to stop.
I think you enjoyed it,
but it's not your life.
It's not the life you want,
and that's fine.
- It wasn't exactly my calling. - Yeah.
On top of the physical toll it was taking,
I was not making any money.
I was broke.
Broke? You're a joke.
You're a washed-up whore with no prospects.
What are you gonna do,
put "proficient at blowjobs" on your résumé?
So I decided to become normal.
I moved back to the city
and landed an entry-level nine to five.
I worked during my lunchbreaks, evening overtime,
and still never kept up or did things quite right.
It was hell.
Commuting in rush hour to a job that I hate...
I would rather fuck a stranger.
Rosalie: When you tried a regular job,
you'd come home, and you'd be crying.
Yeah. That's no life. No.
Andrea: So I quit and got a gig as a bike courier.
There was no résumé required,
but there was snow and ice.
I was falling off my bike,
getting my tire caught in sewer grates,
car doors being jut out in front of me,
and so I wondered,
what was more dangerous,
working as a bike courier--
or as a stripper?
I think, like, work in general is exploitative.
It's hard to be empowered under capitalism
when we're all basically purchasing
our survival.
So, I'm disabled and neuro-divergent,
and sex work was a really good fit for me,
because it allowed me to build a practice
that was specific to my needs.
Sex work, for me, gave me a way
to, like, do more than survive.
It gave me a way to live.
Do you feel like sex work is something
that compliments your artistic practice?
Yeah, definitely. I don't think
that I could be an artist without sex work.
Like, I'm not a nepo baby.
I wish I was.
My artistic skills make a lot of sense in sex work.
Like, it is a performance.
It's gendered performance.
Andrea: I had deliberately worded my agreement with my mom
to refer strictly to hooking.
I left stripping out of it.
Alright. So, you work seven-hour shifts,
minimum three days a week,
three shows per night.
Lap dances are $20 per song.
Champagne room, $400 per hour per girl.
Now, whatever happens in the champagne room...
Stays in the champagne room.
There's a security guard at the entrance there
to keep an eye on the time so there's no discrepancy
with the, uh, song counts, because sometimes--
rarely here--
customers,
uh, they try and rip off the dancers.
So--
you want to start tonight?
Andrea: I texted with Maurice about my stripper name.
Sophia means wisdom.
The Holy Spirit.
The divine feminine.
I'm not the best pole dancer in the world,
so I had to learn how to work my angles.
For me, there is nothing more powerful than nudity,
eye contact, and a smile paired with a few signature moves.
Fireman!
The Twirl 'n' Squat.
The Floater!
And Hollywood.
Oh, and ATC.
That's ass to crowd!
Man: Oh, yeah.
But I wasn't always the professional you see here.
On my second shift,
I meet a guy named Bob Abrams.
He called me over to him, and he said, you know,
"Sit down and have a drink with me.
I'll make it worth your while."
So, what brings you here tonight?
Man: You are so fucking hot.
Do you know what it's like having two kids at home?
Of course you don't.
Andrea: Yeah. Oh, my.
I love you. You're fucking awesome.
Andrea: His wife at home with their newborn,
Bob Abrams smelled of a man
who had everything handed to him.
We got wasted.
Up in the VIP, I gave Bob a passionate lap dance.
Bob took his dick out.
You are so hot.
Fuck. Let's fuck.
No. No.
We finally called it a night at 15 songs.
He wanted to see me again.
Bob emailed me to arrange our next meeting.
More on that later.
Soon, I had regulars at the strip club,
and Ron was the cream of the crop.
Hello, mysterious man.
Hello, Andrea.
Andrea: Ron is one of my regulars.
He was known at the club by the other dancers
as being Sophia's guy.
We'd sit on a couch,
watch the game,
eat a burrito.
All the while,
baby, I'm being paid.
It was so good.
We'd get to the VIP.
I'd take my shoes off.
He'd give me a foot rub.
Ron: You were wearing those ridiculous heels.
- What do you call them? - Pleasers.
Ron: Pleasers. Right. And so you were complaining
about your feet being sore from wearing those all day,
so I just naturally started giving you a foot rub.
And that became, like, a regular thing,
and I took it really seriously,
because one time, I said, you know,
"Is this your first foot rub today?"
And you said, "Well, no."
So the next day, I went to YouTube
and started searching how to give foot massages.
I was like, "I'm going to give you
a really good foot massage if I can."
So... I started bringing in the creams,
you know, getting really, you know, professional about it.
You are one of the good ones. That is for sure.
What do you think is the secret
to the long-term relationship that we have here?
Ron: You're a good listener as well as having
a lot of stories to tell,
and I mean, in seven years,
I've gone through some major life events.
And there's been things that I've wanted to talk about
that I didn't feel comfortable talking about
to, you know, family or friends.
Andrea: Ron is an ideal customer in a few ways.
You know, he understands the context.
He knows he's going to see you for a set period of time
for X amount of money,
and on top of that,
he's kind. He's respectful.
Ron: Well, to me, kindness and respect are my core values,
and I don't really understand--
I mean, I've read your stories and heard stories
about clients who are not that way.
Andrea: If only all customers could be like Ron.
I actually really don't even know this guy,
- if I'm being honest. - Oh, really?
One night, I was chatting up Stavros, an artist...
So, yeah. We actually met at an ultimate Frisbee tournament.
Okay. A couple of nerds. I like that.
...and his friend Mark, a doctor.
Stavros: Pretty much.
Mark: So, Sophia...
Who touched you?
Um, what?
Who touched you?
What happened in your childhood to bring you here?
Andrea: Apparently, Mark would rather examine
my emotional wounds than my dance moves.
Um, that's an incredibly inappropriate question.
Dude.
Andrea: Asking sex workers
to divulge previous traumatic experiences,
that's called trauma porn.
The questions run the gamut.
They may seem kind of innocent,
you know, like...
Andrea and Max: What was your childhood like?
Andrea: "What happened along the way to make you this way?"
"What broke you?"
You think something's wrong with me
that I'm doing this for money,
that I am broken.
It doesn't make any sense why anyone would feel entitled
to ask us about our childhoods--
- No. None of your business. - Especially in a situation--
especially in a situation where we're being hired
- to be sexy. - Mm.
Andrea: You know, it suggests that, like,
our trauma is part of the sex appeal.
Yeah. Would you ask that of your server?
You know, would you ask that of, like, your dentist?
Like, I wouldn't do that.
I don't have to be a victim,
but now, I feel like you are victimizing me,
because you are trying to take things from me
that I didn't offer to you. You're trying
to take things from me. You're trying to take, you know,
my emotional labour. You're trying to elicit--
What, do you want me to cry? Do you want me to sit here
and cry and tell you about-- Like, that's predatory.
Andrea: One night, I was riding high
on a '70s set guaranteed to give any boomer a boner.
Fancy a dance in the VIP?
Soon as I finish this beer.
Andrea: So, what brings you here tonight?
Well, you know, cat's away.
Andrea: Our banter was solid, until...
So, um...
What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you here?
Andrea: How do I actually respond
to people who are asking me for trauma porn?
Sometimes, I deflect.
And sometimes, I answer the question.
You know, I'll look a person in the eye and say, "Rape."
Rape? Yeah.
That doesn't happen here.
Andrea: I told him my story.
Remember Bob?
Bob shows up at the club.
It's, like, a Monday night at 6:00 PM.
We go up to the VIP, and it's early enough
that there isn't even security up there.
We're alone.
Can I take it out?
Andrea: I do my job, which is to get naked by the third song.
Let's fuck.
- No. - Oh, come on. Why not?
I don't want to.
It'd be fun.
I don't have any condoms.
But he doesn't listen.
He takes my hips,
forces me down,
and puts his raw dick inside me.
Don't do that again.
Because I don't have a good sense of my boundaries yet,
I do continue to dance for him,
and it happens two more times.
Then he stops the dances.
And I'm putting my clothes back on.
What's the matter, babe?
You look so sad.
Andrea: And I say to him,
"I'm disappointed in myself
for letting you transgress my boundaries."
And obviously, there's such a big element there
of victim blaming,
as if it's my fault,
and he replies...
Why? Do you have something?
Oh, yeah. That's disturbing,
and I'm really sorry that happened to you.
- Thanks. - Yet, you came back.
I mean, it was an isolated incident.
Most guys are fine.
So, you want to go to the VIP?
Yeah. No. Not after that story.
I am thoroughly turned off now.
So why'd you ask?
Christ. I didn't think you'd been raped.
You don't look like the type.
Andrea: The type?
What type of person looks like they've been raped?
And what type of person asks that question?
Dude.
Come on. Something must have happened.
Women don't just become strippers.
Man, I thought we were having fun.
You really want me to relive my trauma for your entertainment?
You know what?
Let's go to the VIP.
Now?
Yeah. Why not?
Look. I don't want a dance.
I want to apologize.
The only reason I asked you that question before
is because I was sexually abused as a child
and I was wondering if you were, too.
I'm sorry. I just thought
maybe you were as well
and I-- I don't know.
Andrea: Mark is a doctor.
He's not a sex worker.
There's people in every industry
who have experienced some form of abuse.
I would guess that it's pretty equal across the board.
Uh, yeah.
I hope you can forgive me,
and you don't have to dance for me.
Andrea: I don't know all the reasons
why people ask us these questions,
but I wish they wouldn't.
It didn't really occur to me what had happened was rape
until I realized I hadn't told my boyfriend about it,
which is always kind of a flag,
because it usually suggests to me
that there's some type of shame
and I'm afraid of talking about it.
I took the week off from work.
I talked to the manager
who hired me.
I think this is your fault.
There's security buttons in the booth for a reason.
If you felt uncomfortable, you should have hit the button.
You didn't, so that's on you.
Robin: Well, you go from "You can touch me here and here"
to something shoved inside you,
and it happens so quickly.
Men know that people aren't coming to the rescue
to sex workers.
Girls-- a lot of Black girls, particularly--
are told to keep their head down.
You're not supposed to have any issues,
because it's not worth your job.
The more money a man seems to spend,
the more important he tends to become versus performers.
Did I think about reporting the incident to the police?
Ms. Werhun, the alleged incident occurred at a strip club.
Now, first things first.
What kind of decent woman works at a strip club?
- The kind that needs money. - Money!
And would you say that money is a prime motivator
- in your life? - Well, I need money to eat
and pay my rent and clothe myself, so yes.
Fascinating. Now, let me get this straight.
Did you write this book?
Yes.
Your Honour, Ms. Werhun's book is called Modern Whore,
and as she's clearly stated,
she is a modern whore motivated by money.
Ms. Werhun, is it possible
that you fabricated a rape allegation
against a married family man who earns six figures
just so you'd have another story to tell, you know--
for the money?
I got an email from Bob
asking when he could come in and see me again.
Smiley face, as if nothing had happened.
I responded back,
"Do not come to the club ever again."
On those nights where something did happen to me--
- Mm-hmm. - I don't have to be afraid
for a single second that you're going to feel
like I must have done something to provoke it
or that I, you know, deserved it.
- Mm-hmm. - A lot of sex workers,
when they are open with their partners
about what they do, they get that kind of attitude.
You've never, ever, ever, ever been like that with me.
- Mm-hmm. - So, thank you.
Yeah. You're welcome.
And yeah. For a lot of people,
that reaction might be a fear reaction.
The response to trying to reduce the harm
is to coerce the person to not do sex work
or not put themselves in situations in the future
where those things are possible.
A few years later, I saw Bob at the club again.
He was with an entourage of people.
In that moment, I didn't feel like I could do anything.
I felt... frozen.
It goes without saying that the strip club
is a booze-drenched environment.
It's a bar, after all, and a pick-up line.
Hey, can I buy you a drink?
Um, yeah.
I was probably having upwards of 12 drinks a night at work,
and when I wasn't at work,
you know, I was partying, too.
I had a habit
of getting blackout drunk
and hitting my head.
For the first time in my life,
I was having seizures.
Ah!
May I have another?
Why did I keep doing this to myself?
Late one night, I was drunk and riding my bike home
with a shopping bag dangling from my handlebars.
It got caught in the front wheel.
I flew off the bike.
I had suffered a traumatic brain injury,
a pretty bad one.
I'd scraped the entire left side of my face,
and if I hadn't been wearing a helmet,
I would be dead.
Given my history of seizures,
I was eventually diagnosed with epilepsy,
and alcohol was a trigger.
Andrea, if you have another drink,
you might have a seizure and die.
You want to write another book, don't you?
I was scared shitless by that comment,
so I haven't drank ever since.
Six weeks later, I was back at the club,
no alcohol, much less confidence.
Fancy a dance in the VIP?
Yeah. Yeah. I'll pass.
Come back in 15 minutes.
Maybe I'll change my mind.
Okay.
Strippers face a lot of rejection...
in lingerie, no less.
Sober sex work is always a really interesting topic
for me to speak on,
because I have done sex work
for my entire adult life and part of my youth,
and I've done it under the sort of auspice of sobriety now.
But I've also done it, you know,
while being an intravenous drug user,
while being, you know, someone that was a heavy drinker,
while being someone that, you know,
has done various other sorts of substances
and also hired exclusively to do
a lot of, like, pay-to-party events,
because men hate to do drugs alone.
What do you think of the stereotype
that we all use drugs to do our jobs?
I think that goes hand in hand
with a lot of different tropes
that come along with sex work.
Substance users are villains or villainized in society,
and so, of course, we are villains because we are
sex workers. So it sort of, like, ties in with that.
What are some of the pros and cons of sober sex work?
Start with the pros. My judgment is clearer.
I'm a lot less susceptible to my boundaries being pushed,
but then it's also, like...
I have to listen to their bullshit.
I can't, you know, numb the conversation.
I have to be engaged.
Another pro, I guess you remember everything,
but another con is that I remember everything, you know?
Bob returned... again.
He had started to earn a reputation at the club
for becoming belligerently drunk.
Want to give me a beer?
Andrea: You know, he's becoming a very rowdy customer.
This time, things were different,
because I was sober,
and I felt like I was finally in a position
to be able to hold him accountable.
You know, I wasn't afraid anymore,
so I went to one of my better managers, Phil,
and I told him I wanted him out.
Well, I say we make sure that he settles up,
because, uh, I don't want to get in the way of anyone's money.
Then I'll inform him that he's no longer welcome
in the club.
Andrea: I told the gals what was going on.
Do you want me to throw piss in his face?
Andrea: There's nothing like stripper support.
Is this forever?
Yes.
Fuck you, man,
and your fucking place!
Andrea: Phil was being a good manager,
and for that, I'll always be grateful.
When you don't consider a sex work workplace a real workplace,
it's going to be run by a different kind of law.
It's going to be run by a law that's outside law enforcement,
for better or worse.
I think the victim trope is prominent
because some people would prefer us that way.
Being a victim is a convenient title
when what you want to do is actually victimize us.
We can never get away from it.
The law also identifies us as victims.
It takes consent out of the matter.
It makes the assertion
that everything that we do for money is by coercion.
We're either victims
who have no ability to make choices for ourselves
or we're villains,
and the only choices we make are bad and harmful.
And all we want to do is hurt people,
particularly men.
But I don't think that sex workers are even permitted
the grace of having our work considered labour,
and I think that's wrong.
You know, there's things that I do
that keep me grounded and remind me of who I am.
A lot of that has to do with writing
and creative expression in general and performing
and being silly, being a little ham.
I'd like to be...
An artist.
I'd love to make a living with my art.
But I can't afford it, yet,
and so until that day--
I work.
So long as the laws don't protect us,
the stigma against sex workers remains.
I can see your cellulite, whore!
Alright, bud. That's it. Night's over.
What are you doing, man? I paid $10 for this beer.
- I'm not going anywhere. - You've been nursing this beer
for almost two hours, my man. Let's go.
- No. No. Come on! No! - Let's go.
Shame: I'll get you! This is not the last of me!
When it comes to my own shame in sex work,
I don't have any.
The reality is,
not only have I fucked for money,
I'm currently naked on the internet.
I have no shame.
Let's be fucking for real.
But when I fell in love
and what I did for work
was going to affect him
and how his family saw me,
that was the first time I felt shame.
There's whorephobia against the sex workers ourselves,
which, you know, brings us the closest to violence,
and then there's all this sort of, like, stigma by proxy--
- Yeah. - That the people around us
have to experience just by loving us.
Oliver: Mm-hmm. Yeah. People might have
a perfectly happy relationship with a sex worker,
and then they encounter some kind of outside stigma.
And they can't overcome it.
And they're missing out because of that.
Yeah. Yeah!
You taking the risk
and being brave and being open
has forced me to come to terms
with how I talk about it
and how open I am about it as well.
And is that a good thing?
Yeah, of course. Yeah. I think being truthful is important,
and I think being honest is important.
I'm, you know, sitting here on camera
because I hope that one day you can be face out
and not be assaulted, you know,
just because someone knows you're a sex worker
or not be stalked online or not be harassed
or, you know, banned from apartments
and banned from other types of work
and banned from, you know, social spaces,
which has definitely happened to me.
I think that that's the power
of, like, sex worker storytelling.
It's, like, reminding the public
that, like, we're actually just, like, human.
It's not like sex workers are these big, bad monsters.
Like, we're just people,
and, like, we deserve, like, very basic rights.
We need to tell our stories so that it normalizes sex work
and so that it normalizes the quest for safety in our work
and the quest for respect in our work and the quest for,
you know, basic, like, human dignity and human rights.
I would like sex workers--
at least, like, full service--
to kind of be seen like a chiropractor.
Not everybody believes in it.
But like, the people who love it love it.
That's right. That's right.
- And they swear by it. - And they swear by it.
I'm so grateful
that despite your own misgivings about my work...
You still love me.
Of course.
I just want to thank you for...
...not abandoning me.
I could never abandon you.
Would not happen.
When you were born, I remember
just looking at you all night.
I would just watch you while you were sleeping.
I think I like being looked at.
Maybe that's part of it.
I think I associate it with love and care.
Yeah.
The greatest privilege of my life is being loved by you.
- Thank you, honey. - So thank you.
Thank you. That makes my life worthwhile.
Love you, Mommy.
This is the part of the film where the sex worker
is usually punished for her deviant ways
or saved from whoring by a white knight.
Eternally, we play the role of victim or villain.
We need a new archetype.
If the femme fatale--
Is a bold, sexually powerful villainess
who destroys men to get what she wants,
the femme vitale is her positive opposite,
a person who loves themself and fights for their community.
They are loved and give love,
pleasure, joy.
When sex workers tell our own stories,
we become the heroes, not the victims,
of our own journeys.
I have a story that would remain hidden
if I let shame take over my life,
and shame is antithetical to truth.
Despite the odds,
sex workers are here.
We are alive and always will be.
One day, we will grow like wildflowers,
unruly and free.
♪ Ooh ooh ooh ♪
♪ Ah ah ah ♪
♪ Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh ♪