Like a lot of people in these months of quarantine, E.B. Cotenord is having a tough time making ends meet. COVID-19 has made it too risky to pursue her profession as she normally does, so she’s working from home, putting in crazy hours and making a fraction of her former earnings.
What’s different about Cotenord is her job.
She is a full-service sex worker, otherwise known as an escort, whose services normally command $500 an hour. She stopped seeing clients shortly after Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the first stay-at-home order in March, switching her business model almost overnight to subscription video and phone sex.
“It’s a really rough transition,” said Cotenord, who lives in the north suburbs. “It’s definitely not as profitable. The grind is a lot harder. I’m putting in 70-hour weeks of taking calls and creating content to make, at the end of a 10-hour day, half of what I make in an hour doing my full-service work.”
While COVID-19 has pummeled most industries, few have been battered as thoroughly as sex-related businesses. Strip clubs have shuttered, dominatrix dungeons have closed and even street prostitution has gone quiet: Chicago police, who normally make dozens of arrests each month, have made exactly two since March 11.
“It’s just like everything else,” police spokesman Tom Ahern said. “Because of the stay-at-home order, there are fewer people out in general in public, even down to the prostitution rings throughout the city. That’s all really slowed down too.”
The sudden loss of business has left sex workers, who for the most part are ineligible for jobless benefits, scrambling to survive.
“It’s kind of like the way the pandemic has laid bare all the inequities in society, especially the economic ones,” said Kathy Rosenfeld of the advocacy group Sex Workers Outreach Project Chicago. “For sex workers whose livelihood is precarious in the best of times, it has exacerbated the (instability) of our lives.”
Income halved
Mistress Vivian Grey is a Chicago dominatrix who considers her sessions, which do not include sex, to be a form of therapy for men and women who want to live out their fantasies. She said that while some longtime clients have sent “tributes” to help get her through the pandemic, her income has been cut in half.
She does most, but not all, of her work virtually now.
“I would say I see maybe one or two people a week,” she said. “As long as I am comfortable with them and we are safe, I am OK with that for now. If I didn’t have bills to pay or rent to pay I wouldn’t see anyone but that’s how it goes, and I know a lot of other people in my situation, not just sex workers, would understand.”
Another Chicago dominatrix, Mistress Mara, has given up in-person sessions altogether out of concern that someone might carry COVID-19 without symptoms. She now focuses entirely on her online ventures, which include phone encounters, texting and video streaming.
She said that with 14 years of experience, she has established a brand that has held up in the highly competitive online scene, though she still prefers to work in person.
“To be honest, I think (online) is a fine substitute but it does not replace the real thing,” she said. “It’s kind of like NutraSweet when you’re used to honey. I much prefer human contact and the conversations. It’s very difficult to have a cerebral dialogue with someone when it’s like, ‘Gee, your time is up for that $2.99-a-minute call.’ “
The video platform of choice for many sex workers and adult performers is OnlyFans, which allows them to charge viewers a subscription. The average fee is about $10 a month, by some accounts; the company, which claims to have 450,000 content creators, did not respond to the Tribune’s request for comment.
Newbies join the scene
While experienced sex workers say the service is less lucrative than their normal gigs, some newbies have found it to be a badly needed source of income.
A Chicago cosplayer and drag performer who goes by Ask Kaylee Frye, and who prefers the they/them pronouns, occasionally sold nude or suggestive photos of themselves before the pandemic. But when they left their job as a barista because of the stay-at-home order, they started an OnlyFans channel called Twixt My Nethers.
“In less than a week I had made top 10% (of performers) and more money than I made in a month working my regular job,” they said. “So far people have been pretty respectful on the platform, and I like that I get to decide how much or how little I wanna show. It’s annoying that the site takes 20%, and that taxes will take a chunk out of it, but it’s better than having no money during quarantine.”
They have since returned to the coffee shop — they need the health insurance — but would move to the platform full time if they could earn enough.
“It’s way more fun and fulfilling creating content on my own terms than it is working any other job I’ve ever done,” they said.
But for those who depend on sex work to survive, there are few places to turn if they can’t make a living online. Few are eligible to claim unemployment or other government benefits, Rosenfeld said.
“Since sex work is a criminalized industry, there isn’t the kind of paper trail that federal agencies are looking for,” she said. “I would say it goes case by case, but in a lot of cases, people whose living has been sex work have been unable to interface with any government assistance.”
Her group tries to raise money to help people in desperate straits, but typically can give out only modest sums, such as $50 for groceries.
“I don’t know of any organization dedicated to sex workers that has resources to really make a long-term difference in people’s lives economically,” she said.
‘Can’t protect myself’
Though some businesses are starting to reopen after weeks of inactivity, Manisha Shah, a University of California at Los Angeles public policy scholar who has written about the economics of sex work, said that industry will likely trail the pack.
“I don’t think sex work will go back to its pre-pandemic state even when stay-at-home orders ease as potential clients will still feel wary of in-person meetings,” she said. “It will likely take longer, perhaps even until a vaccine, before people feel comfortable interacting in person for sex services.”
Cotenord said she still gets a few calls from clients inquiring about her availability, but with an asthmatic child at home, she dares not take a chance that could expose her to the virus.
Still, she finds virtual work to be a poor alternative to in-person services, and not just financially — “Any kind of emotional intimacy is stripped from the experience. … I’m just there as a body to be consumed for five to 10 minutes” — and is as eager as anyone for a vaccine that will end the pandemic.
“We’re in an incredibly high-risk profession,” she said. “There’s no social distancing in full-service sex work. … We’re very careful about taking care of ourselves, but while I can protect myself from chlamydia, I can’t protect myself from COVID.”
