Regent

I used to be terrible for clutter and keeping things I didn't need. Not hoarder levels by any means, but boxes and boxes of things in storage that I hadn't looked at for years, piles of books, clothes that still fit but I hadn't worn in ages (but I might!), stacks of stuff I might use or reference some day... Then several years ago I was in a position where I needed to move cities, and I didn't want to spend a pile of money doing multiple trips or renting a moving truck, so I decided I needed to aggressively pare down. It was haaaaard. I really had to work to change my mindset before I could be successful at it. I used to have hundreds of books. I got rid of almost all of them, only keeping ones that I really loved and knew I would re-read. Everything else, I reminded myself, was replaceable or could be picked up at the library. I gave myself permission to get rid of things like birthday cards and photographs. I kept one shoebox to hang on to really sentimental items, like cards from my grandparents who are no longer here, a few small childhood items, and photo negatives. If it didn't fit neatly in that box I'd have to really work hard to justify keeping it. With most other stuff - clothes, decor, kitchen stuff, etc, I tried to ask myself: - Do I really love this? Will I actually miss it if it's gone? - Can I replace it easily? - Can I replace it with something better? - Is the cost or effort of moving it more than the cost/effort of getting rid of it and replacing it? - Would this bring someone else more joy than it brings me? I found the honest answers to these questions resulted in me getting rid of most things that weren't small, valuable and useful. A few other things that were really helpful for me: Practice. Getting rid of stuff and then realizing that I didn't regret it or miss it helped a lot. The fear that I would get rid of something and then want it later was a big barrier initially. Making money. I didn't want to put a lot of effort into selling many small, inexpensive things, but where I could get a decent chunk of money in one shot for something, it was often well worth it. Having $100 instead of this thing I wasn't actually that into felt great. Giving things away. I hate throwing things in the garbage. It feels so wasteful and I feel guilty about the environment and so on, and so contemplating throwing something in the trash was a much bigger emotional decision than giving it to someone who would make use of it. Thrift stores are great but they only take certain types of things. Discovering things like Freecycle, Artsjunktion and other ways to divert things from the landfill made everything a lot easier - places like this are often good for getting rid of stuff that's almost garbage (old greeting cards, the dregs of a bucket of paint, a broke light fixture, broken dishes, clothing with holes etc.) Having people take things away. One of the wonderful things about Freecycle and selling items in the classifieds is that people come to your home and deal with the heavy lifting. You don't have to move stuff yourself - it just goes away, and sometimes people leave money behind. Either way, it's less work than dropping stuff off at the thrift store or landfill (or even hauling it out back to the dumpster.) If you're really not sure, deal with it later. If you're finding it really hard to make a decision, stick that thing in a box and move on to something else. It was really easy to get caught up agonizing over something, which was bad for productivity. Giving myself permission to deal with certain items later and move on to other stuff that was easier to get rid of kept me moving in the right direction and making progress. Sometimes I could revisit those items later that day, sometimes I needed to keep them for a year or a month before I could feel okay deciding to be rid of them. Once you've decluttered and pared down, stay on top of it. Do it on a regular basis and be selective about what you buy and bring into your home. If it's not useful and/or beautiful; if you don't love it or really need it, don't let it cross your threshold. Good luck!

I have a lot of foot fetish clients. I really enjoy it. I find foot massages intensely pleasurable, and licking and sucking also feels very nice. The power dynamics can also be lots of psychological fun too.

I agree this is a broader social problem, certainly not limited to clients. However, I find that the client-service provider dynamic makes addressing it complicated in unique ways. The power dynamics of relying on clients to make a living, plus the intimacy of our interactions weights my choices. Actions I might take in my personal life or in a different kind of professional setting have different consequences for me here. I may tolerate things I wouldn't in another setting. The expectations placed on me by clients are different from expectations from friends or other professional associates. My safety considerations are different. This issue absolutely arrises in all areas of life, but encountering it in our industry creates some unique challenges and considerations, and so I wanted to talk about it in that specific context. @Phaedrus, I think you're very right, that people are often unwilling to self identify as a racist or homophobe. They understand in an abstract way that these are undesirable things, and so to avoid cognitive dissonance with their self perception as a good or moral person, they don't integrate the idea of being a racist with their self identity. However, I think when someone seeks to make excuses for their behaviour, in the form of, "I'm not a racist, but..." or "I have gay friends...", implicit in that is recognizing that they're aware that their behaviour or choice of words is likely to hurt or offend someone. Even if they don't see themselves as racist, they know very well that the words coming out of their mouth are. Things are getting better and shifting slowly. There's more awareness and more dialogue in mainstream culture about these kinds of things. But it's a slow process - even if we all know that overt -isms are bad, there are so many harmful ideas and stereotypes that we're taught all our lives and that are so easy to accept without questioning. I just wish and hope that everyone would make an effort to be more kind, more compassionate, to recognize our shared humanity and to also recognize that we have diverse experiences and not everyone has been afforded the same opportunities.

Dear client, I am excited to see you and spend time together. I am excited to get to know you a bit. I want to know you well enough to get into your head and give you an amazing, hot session. I appreciate it when you let me in a little and share some things about yourself and who you are. What I don't appreciate is when you drop a bunch of casual bigotry on me in the midst of socializing and getting to know each other. I don't expect you to have the exact same values as me. For our brief time together that's not important. What I do expect from you is a modicum of consideration, social awareness and self filtering. Just enough so that if you have opinions on black or brown people, or "the gays", or poor people, or any other group that you don't belong to, you have the sense to keep those opinions to yourself for an hour. I expect you to realize that these opinions might be offensive to others and that sharing them is jarring and rude. I expect you to realize that you don't actually know me, and that I or my loved ones might be part of those groups that you think so poorly of. I want to have fun with you when we're together. I don't want to get into an argument about racism or sexism or homophobia or anything. I certainly don't want to have to choose between ending our session early or getting intimate with someone who has just made me very uncomfortable. I'm sure you're a complex and multifaceted person and there are many wonderful, fascinating, enjoyable, positive things you could share about yourself. Stick to those, as I do when I talk about me, so that we can both enjoy each others' company. Thanks, Your service provider

I think it's really important to think of risk as existing on a spectrum, because really, every time we have contact with another human being, there is some risk of some infection. So rather than think of things as a risky or not risky binary, it makes more sense to look at things as more or less risky, recognizing that all things entail risk. Even if you use condoms, dental dams and gloves and avoid kissing entirely, there are still infections that can be transmitted through skin to skin contact, such as herpes, HPV, syphilis, chanceroid, molluscum, etc, plus infections that aren't considered STIs, like MRSA. Every action and choice we make in life has associated risks and benefits. Ideally, we can have enough accurate information to know the risks, and assess what the benefits are to each of us, so that whatever choice we make, it's an informed one where the benefits outweigh the risks for that particular individual.

cristycurves, perhaps you misread. In the article you linked it says gonorrhea is not spread through saliva: DATY and DFK are legitimately less risky than BBBJ when it comes to gonorrhea (though still risky for some other STIs.)

I only do email for initial contact, and it seems to be working fine. For the type of service I provide, having a client's introduction and details about their desires in a format I can review before our session is important. I also rarely do same day bookings, dislike talking on the phone and am rarely in a position to answer a phone call discreetly. To make life simpler, I have a contact form on my website. If you can view my site, you can contact me by email - you don't even have to login into your email. And even if a client doesn't have an email address, they have the option of sending me an email and having me call or text them back.

I think cup sizes are incredibly misleading, or at least generally misunderstood. A lot of women (certainly many that I know) are (or were) wearing the wrong bra size, and their cup size is actually much bigger than what they think it is. I have a very small ribcage, and so in a properly sized bra my cup size is an E, which sounds really large, but really, really isn't. I doubt most people would guess I'm bigger than a B. On my website I have a note about this, but on some advertising sites that include measurements, I've had to put down a much smaller cup size than I actually wear, in order to avoid getting put in the Busty category by default. :P I am not busty, not by any stretch of the imagination, and I'd hate for someone to come see me assuming I have a body type that I don't. And the 32C = 34B equivalency kinda, sorta works, but not really. Numbers, letters an descriptions are all well and good, but at the end of the day, nothing beats a photo for accurate visualization :)

If you want to be right on the mark with a gift, you can also ask her what she'd like. A gift doesn't need to be a total surprise to be thoughtful and appreciated. The best gifts are ones that are an excellent fit for the person receiving it. And thoughtful generosity is never lame.

This isn't actually true. If you're HIV+ it can take 10 years for AIDS to develop, but the window period for HIV testing is much, much shorter than that. With modern HIV testing, EIA gen 4 which includes p24 antigen and antibody testing, or NAT which tests for HIV RNA, the window period is 14 days. Gen 3 EIA testing, which only tests for antibodies (this includes point of care/rapid tests that give you your results in 5 minutes) has a window period of 34 days for 95% of people, and 3 months for the rest. The window period might be as long as 6 months for an antibody test if you are immunocompromised or if you've been on pre- or post-exposure prophyaxis, but these are unusual circumstances. Being aware of window periods is important but you definitely do not need to worry about HIV infection being undetectable by tests for years. http://www.catie.ca/en/hiv-canada/5 http://smartsexresource.com/health-providers/blog/201308/understanding-window-periods-hiv-tests

I've had some people (non-SPs) look at my hourly rate with jealousy, the underlying assumption being that it's basically the same as a regular job with an employer, and I'm making my hourly rate x 40 hours a week x 52 weeks a year. I wish! But even if the market was big enough and I had the energy and emotional capacity to do so, it still doesn't take into account admin and marketing time, expenses for space and equipment, no paid sick days or vacation time, and the fact that no one is paying me for the time it takes to get ready for a session and then clean up afterwards. This is the most fun I've ever had running a business, but it's definitely a business with many layers and lots of investment.

Anything that reeks of entitlement or bad boundaries. Guys who leap right into grovelling or submissive behaviour from the first contact. Until we negotiate a scene, I am not your mistress or your dom. I am your equal. I don't appreciate being non-consensually pulled into a dom/sub dynamic or a potential client trying to start a scene with me over email by being all subby and expecting me to respond all domly like. Save it for when I've agreed to see you and we're in the same room. Being disingenuous about why you want certain activities when we're negotiating. If you really want a certain act or activity because it turns you on, just be honest about it. Don't try and convince me that you just want to do it for my pleasure if I've already told you that I prefer something else. I'm very happy to roleplay being really into your kink and "forcing" you to do it once we're in session, but if you can't be honest and straight forward before we start playing it's off putting. Insisting on discussing the details of our session by phone, when I've made it clear I prefer email for that. I have a detailed email form on my site for a reason, and having the specifics about your kinks, experience level, clothing preferences, fantasies etc in writing is really important for me, so that I can go back and review that information before you arrive. Everyone I see wants something different and the details are usually very important to creating a hot scene. And since I book most sessions well in advance, the odds that I'm going to remember every important detail is pretty slim if we planned everything by phone.

I'm sorry you had a bad sushi experience in Winnipeg. We actually have a lot of really good sushi restaurants here, but there's so many to choose from that it can be hard to know where to go.

I love both Apothic Red and White. They're both American blended wines. I'm also very fond of Rieslings, Relax and Brie and my go tos, though Dr Loosen is also lovely, though more expensive. Martini Asti is one of the few sparking wines I like - it's sweet and tart and has notes of lychee which I love.

As a fetish companion, much of what makes a good client is the same as for any other service provider, but I do have some different criteria as well. Good clients read my website and include all the information I request in our initial contact. They know what they want and communicate clearly, so I have to do minimal clarification and we can keep our pre-session communication quick and succinct. I want a straight, to the point discussion about specific activities and vibe, since much of what I do is fulfilling very specific fantasies. Punctuality, hygiene, gracefully managing the money and being generally respectful are all important. In person, before we get started, they easily get on the same page with me as far as my in session expectations around communication, safewords and my limits. They honestly answer my questions about health conditions that might cause issues with some activities and what their limits are. In session, my best clients are responsive and communicative. Their body language and noises tell me that they're enjoying themselves. They communicate verbally about what feels good, what hurts too much, if they want more or less. They don't expect me to read their minds, and they understand that even if they're submissive, a hot scene is a collaborative effort, and they can't be a completely passive actor. They have realistic expectations for the session and understand that things may not go exactly the way they do in their fantasies, and that's no ones fault, it's just reality. They're honest about their focus and intention - if they tell me they want to do whatever I want, they're sincere about it and follow through. If they want to do something servicey because it gets them off, they're honest about it and don't pretend that it's actually about my pleasure first. And if they really are wanting to focus on my pleasure, they listen and actually do the things that I find pleasurable, not the things they assume a woman should find pleasurable. My favourite clients also are into the kinks that I want to explore or are into something totally novel that I never get to do. I have fun no matter what, with a good client, but I get giddy with delight when I get to try something new or do my favourite things. Good clients respect my time and don't linger long after our session is done. They have a reasonable idea of what they might need for aftercare and communicate that to me so I can build it into our session time (quick clean up and you're good? 20 minutes of afterglow, cuddling and coming down?) They're warm and interactive after the session and don't seem ashamed or distant (these are valid emotional responses too, particularly since we sometimes explore very taboo stuff, and it doesn't make a person a bad client at all, but it's a difficult response for me, because I want everyone I see to leave feeling amazing.)

I have a 45 minute rate for a couple of specific fetishes that don't require much warm up or aftercare. I'm not sure if anyone has ever taken me up on it. Most of the stuff I do and the kinks clients are seeking require a bit more time to get into the scene and, for safety, need to allow some time for aftercare and coming down. My minimum session for most stuff is one hour and I recommend an hour and a half. I'm more comfortable doing shorter sessions with clients whom I've seen before, because I know what they can take, how they react and what they need after the scene ends.

My minimum booking is half an hour, and I only provide a few select services for short bookings. I'm low volume and rarely see more than one client a day, so putting in all the effort to prep my space for less than a half hour doesn't work for me. I have one client who books a half hour and only uses about 15 minutes of our time. He's lovely and I enjoy my time with him, and he gets to satisfy his fetish and have an orgasm. Our encounter needn't be long and drawn out to be satisfying and fun.

Paypal is a really bad option for sex workers. Not only are you not allowed to use Paypal for adult services, but they have been known to shut down sex workers' accounts and freeze the funds even if the account has never been used for work related payments and purchases. For SPs looking at payment options, this might be helpful: http://missfreudianslit.tumblr.com/post/73352410012/sex-work-approved-payment-options

Groceries and flowers for myself. Having fresh flowers all over the house is the only thing getting me through this crappy spring that doesn't yet feel like spring.

Also, if you see someone as a part of yourself, how can you let them go with kindness, compassion, and respect, if they decide they need to leave the relationship? If my, I dunno, kidney decided to take off, I'd be like, "Fuck that, you're a part of me and you're not going anywhere." I don't care what plans it has, if it's a piece of me, I own it. If my partner decides to leave me, all I can do is express my sorrow and disappointment and respect their choice to leave.

I don't buy the concept of soulmates, or the notion of The One. I really dislike the idea that we're incomplete without another person, that we can't be whole on our own. I think people who are whole individuals are much more capable of having healthy relationships than people who view their partner as literally a missing part of themselves. How can you respect your partner's autonomy and agency, understand that they might someday have needs that might conflict with your own, or give them the freedom to be their own person, if you don't view them as a whole, separate person from yourself? Viewing your partner as part of you or someone you can't live without creates co-dependence, and it's not a good mindset to be coming from if your relationship becomes unhealthy or you start to grow in different directions. I think the idea of The One is also really destructive. It leads people to staying in relationships that were once amazing but no longer so, feeling like the right relationship should never need any work or effort, discarding good relationships in search of perfect, or feeling like they've settled in their current relationship and being unable to be fully present with their current partner. There is no One magical person out there that we're meant to connect with (and if there were, what are the odds that we'd actually meet them in a world of billions?) I prefer to think that there are many people in the world who are potential partners and that we have varying degrees of compatibility with anyone we might date. Meeting someone wonderful is more about luck, circumstances and putting ourselves out there than destiny. Having a good relationship has nothing to do with destiny and everything to do with choosing compatible partners, being self aware, cultivating connection, and treating each other with compassion and respect. Even relationships that don't last till someone dies can be wonderful and valuable. I dislike any conceptual framework that diminishes the validity and value of relationships that run their course and end. I'm also mildly bothered by the idea that a soulmate can only be a romantic partner. Some of the deepest, most enduring connections I have are with friends and family, and those relationships should not be diminished just because they don't include romance or sex.

I have never been asked for change. I would feel it was rude and inconsiderate if a client showed up and asked for change. I do not keep cash on site and I'm very clear on my website about arriving with the correct amount, pre-counted in an envelope. Showing up and asking for change says to me that you aren't considerate enough to follow simple directions, which is not a good way to start off a session. It would feel cheap to me because it says that the client considers their $10 more important that respecting my business practices, showing up prepared and not imposing expectations on me that we didn't agree on. I understand being poor - many times I've been at a place in life when $10 is really significant. I understand having a busy schedule or having mobility issues that might make getting change difficult. I don't ever expect to be paid more than the agreed upon amount. If a client couldn't bring the correct amount and discussed it with me ahead of time, I would feel respected and would be happy to make sure I had change on hand. It's not the $10 that's significant, and it's not even about shifting the focus to money. For me, it's all about the consideration and respect in how it's approached. (All of my fees are in increments of $20, to make things simpler.)

Lots of great advice on this thread. If you have a good, sex positive doctor then absolutely, talk to them about STI risks. Just be aware that not all doctors are sex positive and many of them are woefully misinformed about sexual health (70 years old, hasn't read a damned thing about sexual health since med school), and so your doctor might actually not be the best source of info when it comes to sexual health. I would suggest going down to Nine Circles for testing and having a chat with an STI nurse about your concerns. You an also call the Sexual Health Info Line, which is staffed by Health Educators. It's confidential and they'll answer any sexual health questions you might have. (I can't get their site to load right now, but the number can be found at ninecircles.ca) I really think there's a lot of value in talking to a sex positive health professional, in addition to doing your own reading on the internet. Because written information is usually presented in isolation, and risk are talked about in percentages or even worse, vague terms ("high"... "low"... what do those actually mean?) it can be really hard to put things in perspective and figure out how to view risks around sexual health in a reality centred way. I very often see people either dismissing risks or getting far more stressed out and fearful about them than they need to be.

I just bought a vase and some fresh cut daffodils. It's supposed to be spring and I need some springy things to distract me from this very wintery weather.

@visittheregent