PART 1: VIOLET

December 2019, Sydney

So I figure that starting to record this audio diary on the last shift of the year for me, is half way between a good idea and a bad idea because I could have used so much more actual work material in it. But it’s my last shift of the year and the first shift in ages that I’m actually going to stay the whole time. I’ve been doing trauma therapy, like prolonged exposure therapy for complex trauma, and, understandably, it kind of makes it hard to stick work out and interact with clients.

Normally I find I am able to put a mask on for like 6 hours max and then I burn out completely and have to go home at like 11. But tonight, the manager is on so I kind of have to because I don’t want to get fired. That’s the really shitty thing about parlour work and the reason I’m so over it. I hate being at someone else’s mercy, I guess. Like I’m a sex worker because I want the autonomy but feeling like I can’t just leave when I want or work the configuration I want, even as a sub-contractor, kind of bums me out.  And there is so much about that place that is frustrating and dodgy, but I’ve been there five years and I’m weirdly Stockholm syndrome attached to it. Yeah.

So I’m going to stay a whole shift tonight and tomorrow I have a private booking with one of my favourite long term clients. I’m seeing him for a couple of hours and that will be nice. He’ll bring some wine and we’ll spend a lot of time chatting. Or he’ll talk at me and I’ll make the appropriate noises and get drunk.

Then on Friday, I’m supposed to have an overnight booking with a couple. We sort of tentatively organised this booking a few weeks ago but I haven’t heard from them this week so I’m wondering if it’s going to come to fruition. I’m sort of caught half-way between wanting to do it and hoping that they don’t get on to me.

I need a couple of thousand dollars given how infrequently I’ve been working, but at the same time, it’s going to be so emotionally laborious, It’s all the way down in Caringbah and I live in Newtown so getting back here is going to be a drama. And I’m going to be really drunk and really high and I’ve been dealing with some really bad dissociation and once I get into that, and often it happens at night, it’s really hard to get out and it terrifies me and  being in a situation outside of my control makes it way worse and terrifies me even more. SO I’m hoping a few Noses will help abate that because it will keep me awake and alert and in a party mode .

Then I get to spend a few days straight with my lovely, fantastic, beautiful boyfriend before I go home. It will be like a 7-hour train trip home but it will be worth it I get to spend Christmas with my family. Then three days after Christmas, it is my new nephew’s baptism and I’ve been asked by my sister to be the god mother. So that will be a nice little break from work. Like a little reprieve where I get to be my “real self” and just put work in a box to the side.

Because I’m getting quite close to 30 and I need to get my shit together, next year will be my adult year. For the rest of this year I’m just going to party and spend money and fuck around.