To celebrate our 25th Anniversary, a very XXV-rated milestone, we invited esteemed sex workers from within our community to come and regale us with their tales of comedy and tragedy. Originally, our deities shared their stories during an in-store event, but we’ve captured an abridged version of their dramatic retellings from days of yore, right here, for your pleasure.

 

Up&Ho at the Peep Show by Queenie Bon Bon

I arrive at the peep show before 9 am. My coworker and I stand in front of the heater, drinking our Up&Go, which we call ‘Up&Ho’. I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and let my dildo take a light shower under the faucet after being drenched in toy cleaner. On the side of the basin, small mounds of ash pile up under signs that stress, ‘Any girls caught smoking will be fired. No second warning’. These signs are decor and hold no weight at all. Really, they’re designed to create the illusion of a management out there, who cares about health regulations. I believe one would have to set fire to a patron, sending smoke signals to head office, to get an actual warning. The walk from the bathroom back through the cinema is like this weird, reality zone. It’s the only place without red lighting. Instead, it has that fluorescent reality lighting, and reality is the last thing anyone wants in an adult entertainment complex. Each end of the corridor has a heavy fire door. Strip lights line the ceiling like brutalisers of truth. They evoke the same yucky feeling of walking into a supermarket when you have done drugs, but you’re not even really high anymore. Well, not even good-high anymore and everyone is sort of turning into dogs. The feeling where you catch a glimpse of yourself on a reflective surface, and it's very not good.  Except here, the reflective surface is your client, and when you told them – while in the youthful glow of red lighting – that you were 24 and studying fashion, it was very believable. But, in this fluorescent hall we are all subject to reality; it is very not good. Instead, you are standing in this bright mid-zone that could be a heaps-regular urban backdrop and we could be any civilian just being heaps regular. But, everyone knows everyone is a huge pervert, and it's like maybe 5 am and smells like a cum dumpster and you both look like dogs. It’s real real. I return to the safe darkness of the cinema. The 24-hour erotica allows lovers of motion pictures to indulge at any time of day. And in it now, sits a gentleman sprawled over several seats. He is drinking a can of beer and has an open plastic Coles bag full of cheese and canned lager. He is soaking-in the high life. He is basically an advert for Christmas. What a little delight. He calls across the aisle to me, ‘Help, I need your help’. But of course, my love, this is why I am here. Then, my little Christmas nugget shouts the words, ‘golden shower’.  I step closer, and on doing so a pungent wave of urine fills my nostrils then my lung cavity. I just inhaled your liquid waste. We are basically bessies already. We stare into each other, and it is beautiful, because he knows I’m gonna give him what he wants. And I know he is gonna give me what I want, and we have found each other. And while it’s sort of early for this kind of arrangement, things are as they should be.  With a toothbrush in one hand and a dildo in the other, still half in civ wear, (tracksuit pants with a rolled up box dress), my flowing blonde wig pushed back, shattering any illusion that it was mine beyond in an ownership sense; we really are working through this together. No one is judging, and his pants seem to have fallen from a snug hip-placement to more of a knee area configuration – and it’s fine. He is perfect, he is everything I want right now and in this moment he lets me know. ‘You’re just wonderful, I like you much more than the girl yesterday.’ Well, I shan’t play into favourites, all the workers here are divine creatures, they are my comrades. But I shall accept that compliment and return it in my mind by saying, ‘I like you more than the only other movie-lover in the cinema’. I know this guy will accept second-place in this fake ranking we have going on. He’s just so happy that they’re playing some kind of college-sluts-love-cum, horny melodrama, and I am invisible to him in his moment of personal pleasures. It's just me and my guy together. He has yet to offer me any beer or cheese, but that’s ok, I shan't offer him any of the items I am holding either. We are here together. We are connecting, and in our connection, we are accepting the nature of capitalism in our relationship. For sure, there are different approaches to a pricing system and the most popular method is not static, it varies. Day girls and night girls have different systems. We soon discover that yesterday's girls had given him a golden shower at a price that I would not be matching. Maybe Sunday's girl is full of grace or many other delights. Monday’s girl is cold and looking to bank, which then made him question for a moment if he really did like me more, as previously stated. I tell him, ‘no one else is even here, so it’s me or go home with a hard-on and a dry mouth’.  The thing about no one else being there is a lie, and I feel like a poor colleague for two seconds. After all, would they do that to me? It’s hard to say. And, although I believe I am a ‘nice one’, capitalism is not a holistic structure. It's too late now, I’ve already said it, so this is what we’re working with. He says, ‘yes’ and our negotiation is complete. When you are exceedingly desperate to drink a nice lady’s wee at your local strip club, your bargaining skills become greatly diminished…

 

To hear the rest of the story, and learn all about Queenie’s upcoming performances, follow her on Instagram @nice.bon.bon and check out her merch at https://nicebonbon.bigcartel.com.