Ernestine Pastorello
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The Dignity of Work
🕑 Added 2020-04-23 18:00:02 +0000 UTCI have been alerted to the fact–rather gracelessly–that my last post makes me sound like a selfish asshole.
I am not writing this so she forgives me for my selfishness, but rather because I agree that there are things I wrote that may misrepresent the gravity of transmission and de-emphasize how hard each of us individually must try to avoid it. And y’all apparently care what I have to say. So I’d like to be as accurate as possible–about both my feelings and life experiences and about the reality of the situation we all find ourselves in, which many are still burying their heads in the sand about.
Also, how I am thinking about this question (whether or not to see clients in person) is evolving really rapidly, and writing about it is very helpful and also seems to be of interest.
As I continue to process what it would mean to stop being a hooker for an indefinite period of time (and as I continue to inform myself of the consequences of loose distancing laws–everyone needs to read this article, “The Hammer and the Dance”), I am confronting the numerous psychological constructs that exist in my mind that make the idea of not working extremely uncomfortable.
I can’t imagine I’m the only one wrestling with this, so let’s unpack. The issues at hand:
- Being poor and not being able to afford anything nonessential, let alone one’s bills, totally sucks and is terrifying and keeps you up at night.
- My parents raised me to believe that I’m a good person or not based on my capacity to be financially self-sufficient.
- America raised me to believe that my goodness as a human being depends on my earning capacity.
- Having a lot of unstructured time allows one’s inner demons and unprocessed pain to roam unchecked through one’s mind. Yikes.
- I identify as a hard worker.
- I identify as being beautiful in the eyes of others, up close and personal.
- The uncertainty of future strictures and conditions breeds a kind of squirrel-in-autumn money-hoarding phenomenon.
- “Being a hooker is the only thing I’m really good at” (c.f. inner demons, above).
Ok, there were a lot more things in there than I had even realized. Oh boy.
What it boils down to is this:
Work (particularly sex work) gives me a sense of dignity and self-worth that is only replaceable by perhaps a solid week of meditation.
Hence the struggle: What to do when the most virtuous thing to do is nothing at all.
Incidentally: I find it an interesting irony to be having this internal argument here, in Berlin. I once costumed a production of The Sound of Music in which the director decided to have some extras dressed as Hitler Youth.
Hitler Youth was a program in the World War II era that was akin to boy and girl scouts, except girls were taught that it was their duty to be good breeders (to further the Aryan race), and boys were taught absolute fidelity to the Führer and the Homeland.
These groups caught on like wildfire amongst the youngsters of the time because of dire poverty. Children were playing in the streets. They had no toys. At the meetings, they were given things to play with and a sense of purpose and importance. This was such an effective recruiting mechanism (the children became hoodlums to cause public disturbances furthering Hitler’s plan to take over Germany, and then, later, soldiers) because at this time in Germany, most of their fathers were unemployed, at a time when
having an unemployed father was equally shameful as having a father in jail.
And I can fucking identify with that.
Stay tuned, as I will doubtless continue to process this out loud.
Stay well, hug those you can, tell those you can’t that you’re thinking about them, and let’s all take care of each other. Alles für alles, as we’ve been saying here.
Fondly,
Ernestine
P.s.
Some useful updates that I realize have not been published here yet:
- I got my work visa. That’s a story. I’ll post it at some point.
- I also registered to be a prostitute, which, if you’ve been reading, you know was a whole other internal debate. Also a story, also yet to be written, but I will.
- Both of these things occurred right before the virus shut everything down. I mean literally the day before, at which point I had spent my bottom dollar on the visa fee.
- At the same moment, I was in discussions with a lovely woman who made me a very good offer to work with her agency, which would have provided (and hopefully, in the future will still provide) not only a living income, but a flourishing income, without any of the hassle, angst, and expense of running my own operation. Or it will totally suck. But I’d like the opportunity to find out.
All of this is to say, the pandemic shut down the sex work industry in Germany quite literally moments before I would have snuggled myself down into the beginning of an extraordinarily lucrative career. I write this as I debate whether to use my remaining donated funds to pay for my medication or my health care premium.
