Coming Out...Nationally

By Whorezine, Author: Veronica Monet

"It's not that i judge you, but i think our lifestyles are too different. That's why i haven't called or come to see you."I asked my sister what she meant by "lifestyles". "The fact that you are bisexual and a prostitute," She replied.

Just three days before i had been sitting on the Montel Williams Show, at CBS TV City in Los Angeles as a panelist- as a prostitute. Next to me was my finacee Adrian, Nina Hartley and her husband, David, and Norma Jean Almodovar and her husband Victor. Nina Hartley is a porn star, of course, and NNorma Jean is an ex-cop turned call girl. (Look for her new book entitled: "From Cop to Call Girl") There was this male stripper whose name escapes me and his girlfriend. He insisted he had nothing in common with the "other people on the panel" and would "never consider selling sex." This was after he had stripped down to his little G-string and even tighter tan buns for the audience.

It was exciting to be under the bright lights again. I had my own talk show in San Jose several years before i decided to become a prostitute. I was the associate producer and host for three years on community channel TV. I worked for free. The show then cancelled and I said no more freebies. The Montel Williams show flew me and my fiancee from Reno to LAX, greeted us at the airport with a limo, put us up in a hotel for the night and flew us back home the next day- plue paid us several hundred dollars to get in front of their cameras for about an hour.

Montel Williams was wonderful. I had myself braced for Geraldo type badgering but he was quite kind instead. The entire show seemed geared towards gaining a better understanding of those of us who work in the sex industry. There was of course a certain ammount of badgering from the audience. A plump little woman asked me if my god was Satan, so i confessed to being a pagan. A tall good looking man asked my fiancee if he was having sex with my client vicariously and then supported his idea with a quote from the Bible-or so he claimed. Having read the Bible from cover to cover by the time I was twelve, I can honestly sayI never read anything about men who have sex with female prostitutes really wanting to have sex with their male clients. His question did make me wonder if he wanted to have sex with my fiancee.

Someone from the audience asked me how i would feel if my fiancee worked in the sex industry. I said I wasn't sure since he doesn't, but my last relationship was with a woman and she was a prostitute and I didn't have a problem with that. They gasped. Then another woman wanted to know if I was afraid one of my clients might end up being someone I know or a friend of a friend, etc. I Replied that my first trick was a relative of the owners of the Sands Hotel and my second client was my female lover's husband. They all gasped again.

"I don't believe God wants you to do this." A self-rightous voice of condemnation came from yet another woman in the audience. I said, "you are assuming that my god is a man, first of all. My god is a woman and she thinks it's wonderful that i'm serving the public this way." Of course, the crowd hissed. Oh well.

All in all I felt i made a three pronged impact: bisexual pagan prostitute. I loved it! The crew working behind the scenes on the show were very kind. They couldn't say thank you enough. Our hair stylist kept saying about Nina, Norma Jean and me, " you are the nicest womyn I've ever worked with!"

Well obviously this world is pretty twisted because it comes as such a surprise to people that a prostitute or a porn star could be "nice." Evidently that doesn't even rate with my sister. She knows me. She has known me for twenty nine years, but she feels compelled to diminish our relationship because of my sexual preferance and sexual activities. Even if I am "nice."

I am grateful my fiancee doesn't share her value system. I credit him a great deal for facing an audience on national television at my side. The disrespect directed at prostitutes is also reserved for the friends and lovers of prostitutes. There seemed to be an assumption that he is "less of a man" for "letting me" be a prostitute. Adrian told the audience he doesn't try to tell me what to do- and couldn't if he tried. But there still seems to be an attitude of judging the worth of a man by "how well he controls his woman." Unbelivable.

I guess that should come as a suprise to me. The reason prostitution is illegal is that the society still thinks it should control the behavior and bodies of womyn. Sometimes i really believe that if all prostitution were performed by men- it would probably be legalized by now. But I'm no doubt ingnoring the homophobic facets to the legal system.

Well I feel good that I appeared on national TV as a whore and a bisexual and a pagan...and lived to tell about it. Maybe there is still hope for this world, after all. If not, that's OK. I'm going to kepp talking and writing anyway.

Whorezine was the brainchild of Vic St. Blaise and started at the front of the 'zine revolution in the 1990s, offering both men and women in the business fun insights and useful information from around the globe.