Night, Mistress: Sex Work and the Design of Time on the Clock of Capitalism

Nighttime is a site of invisibilized labor enacted by cleaning people, nurses, truck drivers, etc. Although associating sex work with the Night could be read as a dated cliche, it is not necessarily an innacurate one either, as Yin Q acknowledges in this text, in which they reflect on the various perceptions of time experience by sex workers and their clients. While the latter might experience a sort of suspension of time, sex workers’ time is both the capitalist one and its voracious demand for productivity, but also (particularly at night) a time of precariousness and vulnerability facing both structural and individual predations. Please note that some passages of this text are hard to read in the description of such a violence.

It’s 9am, the first session of my work day. I’ve selected a leather hood that encases the entire head with the provision of two miniscule nose holes. I slide the soft skin over the client’s head, pulling the laces tight. The fetish swallows his face, and I seal the outer layer of leather with a zipper that is then locked at the collar. I inhale deeply – the scents of tannins, burning candles, saliva, and sweat penetrate my nostrils – then exhale a sigh of aesthetic satisfaction. Dyed nero d’inferno, and crafted with padding over the ears to deplete sound, my leather hood offers night.

The client moans, leaning into a density that offers darkness, anonymity, and instant objectification. His body is bound to a bondage chair, sitting straight and symmetrical, as if he’s in an office seat, attending an important meeting. The hood detaches the client’s physiognomy from his body, his humanity from flesh, and control from craving. He’s free to float in fantasy, in a utero of my design.

Mistress of the Night is a cliche, but one that is valuable to acknowledge here, as sex work and night relate in ways that are not offensive to me. Mistress, a title I wore for close to thirty years as a professional dominatrix, is the more irritating word, as it is situated in a double binary of gender. Relegated to the female gender, as well as pitted in the two historically possible categories of the sexualized female: either a wife/mother or the Mistress/whore. Whore, I’ll take, as the global movement of sex worker rights has reappropriated the word for ourselves. The term “sex worker,” (coined by activist Carol Leigh) insists that erotic services be recognized within the labor rights framework. It’s a useful and necessary declaration for the movement towards decriminalization of sex work and the writing of policies to protect the most marginalized workers.