Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients

by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Learn about the real lives of sex workers by exploring the sex industry from the inside!Explore the insightful--and oftentimes intense--accounts of sex workers who look squarely into the eyes of their clients, the sex industry, and society as a whole. Tricks and Treats delivers private stories about homo- and heterosexual encounters that sex workers usually confide only in each other. Not another “why I became a prostitute” book, it provocatively turns the tables on the buyers of sex, giving you a window into sex workers’lives. Tricks and Treats gives you straightforward accounts by sex workers to help you understand the pleasures, attractions, and truths of this profession. Tricks and Treats tantalizes with its powerful collection of tales from a diverse group of male, female, and transgendered sex workers. Their commercial, cultural, emotional, sexual, (il)legal, and even spiritual relationships with their clients are discussed in intimate detail. You will explore accounts from streetworkers, escorts, strippers, porn actors, masseurs, dominatrixes, phone sex operators, an adult-video store clerk, an outreach worker, a sex educator, and even a sperm donor.Tricks and Treats will ignite your imagination and answer questions few people dare to ask. You'll learn firsthand, of: how male, female, and transgendered hustlers turn tricks--in their own words--from sado-masochism and watersports to stripping, scat, foreplay, and fisting how sex workers face their own mortality when confronted with the AIDS virus a porn star's compassion and understanding for her fans a sex worker's coming-to-terms with his/her transgendered identity a male escort's attempts at dating a young man's experience of finding a family and home when living at a brothel a woman's story of spending thirty years as a prostitute the experiences of hooking on the streets and in clubs, cafes, and homes These engaging and shocking testimonials will entertain you and offer a unique understanding of the sex industry. Revealing and intriguing, these poignant talks will certainly not disappoint your imagination. Tricks and Treats is a testament to the lives of sex workers, a manifestation of their spirit, and gives them a chance to turn the tables on their clients, exposing their erotic tastes, turn-ons, and fantasies.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Sex Work, Autobiography, Sexuality, LGBT

196 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2000

About the author

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the award-winning author of The Freezer Door, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of Oprah Magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books of 2020, and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book, she’s the author of three novels and three nonfiction titles, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies, most recently Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis. Sycamore lives in Seattle, and her new book, Touching the Art, will be released on November 7, 2023.

Reviews

[Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of stories circles a variety of sex work, describing the industry from several different perspectives and demographics. Some of the stories left me giggling, some landed on soft spots and drew tears, and some opened my eyes to aspects of sex work that I had never considered. The contributors thoughtfully described their experiences, not writing for anyone other than their fellow sex workers. The result gels into an eye opening collage of a profession as old and as diverse as humanity.

[Alex Somewhere · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sincerely worthwhile read. Lots of media about sex workers prefers to demean or eroticize their professions, where this book sets them on center stage to describe their own experiences as they would to friends. It's humanizing to people who are often dehumanized and there's great value in that.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mostly entertaining collection of essays written by sex workers about some of their experiences. The best ones are emotional and raw, several are shocking and lurid (just what I wanted), and some are on the forgettable side, but overall, I enjoyed this collection. 3.5

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humans are fascinating and bonkers. This book is amazing.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Let me pause ... to tell you that I love anal sex. I love getting heavy fucked by a beautiful stranger or held and made love to by the man of my dreams. And I will never forget the first time I fucked someone, a good two years after I started having sex. What an all-consuming feeling of passion and power, to have a man beneath me, submitting, releasing himself as the ecstasy cojoins and envelops us completely. This was not such an experience. There were no writhing bodies, no orgiastic moans or heated bites and kisses. No fingers and toes grabbing and curling in the overwhelming pleasure of pleasure. In the silence of our suite, all I could hear was the squish-squish of my dick as it dunked repeatedly into John's soggy asshole. I could feel nothing. There was no pleasure, no pain. I thought I could get off in any circumstance, a little pressure on my cock and off I go. No. All I could visualize was the tail end of John's intestines, rashed and shitty, wrapped around my sheathed dick as he lay lifelessly beneath me."

So writes one contributor regarding his first hook-up with a john (named John), he's been stringing along in order to get a trip to London.

Great book. Lots of diversity - women, men, trannies (though mostly male hustlers are featured). Even an essay by a sperm donor describing himself as a sex worker, and the effects of sperm donation on his sex life. Good writing, interesting stories.

[lola · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know, guys. This book was really uneven. Some of the essays in this book are pretty pornographic. First reaction is like "This vivid, not particularly well-written sex scene ruins the larger merits of this essay" and then second reaction is like "That's just what the PATRIARCHY!!! wants you to think!! It wants you to denegrate that which is titillating or pornographic by separating it from what is considered 'valid academic thought!'" and then I realized many of the pornier essays are just not what I wanted out of a book like this.

That being said, I was thrilled to see the majority of the writers in this book are male/queer/TG sex workers, which bucks the overall trend of treating prostitution like it's a female-only profession.

[Elan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really refreshing and entertaining collection of stories by a variety of folks currently or formerly working in the sex industry. One of my favorite stories in the collection is Bernstein Sycamore's...

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A revealing inside look at the sex industry. It gives you a perspective you'd never think you may consider. Some pieces are fascinating, others are more thought-provoking. Definitely recommended if you feel comfortable with some taboo topics!