because our bodies will be at work.

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Content Note and Context: I wrote this essay after a conversation with a friend who is a writer and former sex worker. We were talking about the way anti-sex work rhetoric ignores the prevalence of sex in a variety of jobs. This is a reflection on memories of sex (or sex-adjacent happenings) I experienced at work since age 12. Some of these memories include descriptions of harm; there is also a short description of childhood sexual assault outside of a work setting. Please skip this week if that feels difficult to engage with today, or scroll ahead to the lists and links. <3 

work clothes, an office.

I remember what Sami was wearing at the party where we were hired to serve drinks and wash dishes, because everyone, it seemed, noticed what Sami was wearing that night. We were 12, me, Sami, and Kat, hired by a friend of a friend of my uncle’s who was hosting a big party in a big house that needed cheap and charming help. My two best friends and I were too young to work legally, but my uncle hired us to help with a party he had, and word got around. The three of us were working class kids, but we had opportunities like this, sometimes, through middle class extended family. 

Sami was wearing a denim dress from the Gap that she found at the thrift store. Sami had started growing small round breasts that summer and she was naturally thinner than either me or Kat, who were shorter, stouter, and had more confusing breast development. Sami also had a giggle that made her popular with the middle school boys, and also the older boys we’d meet at the ice cream shop or the mall. And also, the men at this fancy party. 

Kat and I weren’t particularly jealous, it was more that we understood the rules of the game: we simply weren’t as hot as Sami. I don’t remember what Kat and I wore that night, but we weren’t yet trying to call attention to our bodies—it hadn’t been suggested that they were worth paying attention to. I do remember shooting Kat a glance after hearing Sami’s giggle reverberate through the kitchen, surrounded by leering men in their 30s and 40s, thrilled with themselves to make this young pretty thing laugh so loud. Kat and I kind of smiled, I think. Oh, Sami! 

“Do you all take tips?” one man asked towards the end of the night, wine smell like invisible fire from his dragon mouth. He had some cash in his hands, his body angled vaguely towards the three of us in the kitchen, but eyes glued on Sami’s new cleavage.