Excerpt from Giving Body

by Mothh

Congratulations to our dear Gentle Mothh whose hard work has taken form in the publication of Giving Body. We were so delighted to be in New York at the same and that we got the chance to hug and laugh at the NY Artbook Fair in Queens. Here’s a sneak peak at some of the text from this beautiful work of art ~ On sale here.

[a modified excerpt from my new book, Giving Body out now via Eureka! Press]

Over a year had passed since my unceremonious last shift stripping. In that time, I followed love to Kingston, NY, where, in the slowed and quiet pace of a smaller town, I came face to face with the heartache and grief I’d outrun since I left home at 16. Softened by love and the penetrating forces of the natural world, from the Hudson’s tidal rhythms to the forests’ seasonal melodies, to the landscapes’ undulating colors in bloom and decay and the scent of their transformation, my emotions, which were once shaped and regulated by the city’s artifice and urban conveniences, became undimmed and unregulated. In that softening, I unraveled.

Not knowing what to make of myself–or of anything in this condition–I languished, grasping at motivation and curiosity, trying to remember what it was like to have them, trying to remember what I liked. For years, I’d moved seamlessly between periods of art work and sex work. Both provided meaningful labor, were outlets for artistic expression, grounds for personal growth, and gave me a livelihood. Now I found myself in a sort of sanctuary but without either…with many aspects of a life I could never have dreamed of, but without a sense of self or purpose. I couldn’t imagine how I’d make a career and survive here.

I couldn’t fathom working a vanilla job and dreaded the conversations about the gap in my professional resume. It started to feel like a return to stripping was my next step. There were certain aspects of the club I yearned for, especially the financial mobility that came with the work, but I first had to contend with a mighty combination of fear and pride before I could summon ‘The Dancer.’ I’d always been a sex worker by choice and convenience, but re-entering at this moment— when life had taken me so far from that world geographically and psychologically, at my age, and in a relationship that I was afraid to lose– required negotiations and logistics. This time, erotic labor didn’t feel casual.

I still knew it was something I needed to do for myself.

So I did. I re-auditioned - an absurd and humiliating process that involves performing a strip tease in a part of the restaurant with no customers while a manager hides in a dark corner out of sight nodding to the house mom “yes” or “no” about hiring you. Yet the moment I walked down the basement stairs and into the cacophony of smells ranging from dollar store body lotions to hair spray on heat tools to luxury perfumes (a combination that should be minted as “strip club” for its own distinct scent), my body relaxed, assured that I was exactly where I needed to be.

I learned as I went that the purpose of my return was not only the obvious, to have a job again, but also to retrieve aspects of myself that I’d cultivated through sex work and left behind. The club took me in while I put the pieces together and came back to life.

Inside a windowless Atlanta strip club, when I first started dancing all those years ago, like so many before me have declared in song: I fell in love with strippers. [More importantly,] I fell in love with who I am as one myself. As a sex worker, I grew into a version of myself I was proud of: free and feral, ugly, angry, sexy, kind, a liar, a saint, a goddess, a queen, a monster, a slut, a genius, a hustler, shameless, unbothered, glamorous, tough.

Although I developed these qualities, in the same way that I did not “become” queer, I did not “become” someone with the sensibilities and values that allowed me to perform erotic labor well. “Sex-worker” feels more like an identity than any other job I’ve had. I’m wired to proceed through life as if bodily autonomy was my birth right and I’m fiercely connected to those who have decided the same for themselves in spite of laws and a dominant culture that attempts to regulate and control.

Those cultural forces do affect me and my mental wellbeing. Moral projections can be burdensome, and the incessant threat of both civilian and police violence when belonging to a criminalized class that society deems disposable, can wear on one’s nervous system.

Though at the time of writing this my path has veered back into a vanilla world, I remain held by a community of sex workers who remind me of who I am. Our victories and losses are shared, and the work I am now doing visibly, like a tree reaching out of the earth, is held up by a legacy of ancestors and a network of living professionals operating underground, because of the private and personal nature of the work, but also because invisibility is often what’s required for protection from state violence. Professional sex workers form a vital root system that supports humanity and goes unseen, deep within the earth.

My new book is photographic and written documentation of the beauty I cherish within these roots. The title Giving Body is about our human bodies and relationships to each other and the natural world. It is about using our bodies in service of harmony. Our lived experience is through the physical body, so ignoring it means ignoring our experience of life. Attention to the body allows us to locate ourselves within the present moment.

At this point in my life, my art is in service to the communities I belong to - my neighbors, sex workers, LGBTQIA +, and descendants of diasporas tending to fractured roots. I’m motivated to work in this space because I believe in the power of storytelling to foster connection and understanding. This book, and my work in general, is a humble effort to make us more visible to each other as human beings, and to continue holding a vision of a country and a world that is free from state-sanctioned violence and the horrors of the carceral system while speaking honestly about the realities of the present moment and the need for full decriminalization.

Photo from Gentle Gentle