A few years back, I had a terrible breakup and was an absolute and total mess. My friends, well meaning as they were, suggested I soothe my pain by going out into the woods to meditate and get in touch with myself. Anyone who has known me for any length of time will know that I am not woo enough for that to be a good idea, especially when I’m feeling wrecked. Communing with nature is not my idea of soothing most of the time, and even if I’m on shrooms or something (which makes that communing easier) it’s probably not a good idea for me to wander by myself.

So I did what effectively works like communing with nature, Kitty-style - I ran away to Vegas.

In order to fund my escapism trip, I still had to work, so I put up an ad on Craigslist to try and scoop up a couple of sex work clients to help me buy food and gas while I was there. Slixa Las Vegas didn’t yet exist for escort ads, so I had to make do - and wow, did I get some strange clients from that ad.

There was the guy who asked me to come gamble with him at a bar at like, 4 am, and he got upset when I turned $5 into $100 and then stopped gambling. I guess I was missing the point by not continuing until I lost my gains? While I struggled to cut my losses with dating, though, I knew when to do it as it pertained to money. I left our “date” regretting nothing.

Or there was the woman who hit me up and said I should meet her at a strip club where she worked. Assuming she was a stripper, I showed up with ones to tip her. She was a cute butch who worked dispatch in the back. She thought the mistake was hilarious, and we had a nice night of making out and talking about queer culture.

There was the guy who had me pretend to be his girlfriend, with a whole scenario that involved me showing up and saying certain phrases, like he was reliving something. I enjoyed him, and understood the desire to replay a scenario and try different things until it worked out right. He was also a great cuddler, and tipped well.

My friend and host was working as a stripper at the time, and I liked to try to go see her at work. However, being a woman proved to be a difficulty- in order to get into the club, I needed male accompaniment to prove I wasn’t on the prowl for clients. I worked around this by finding men at nightclubs and offering to teach them how to be good strip club clients if they’d be my companion for the evening. I met some rad people this way, and it was kind of a fun challenge!

Working off of Craigslist was always touch and go, frankly. I think if I was out in Vegas now, I would probably use a site like Slixa to advertise, both for the quality of the clients and frankly for my safety. I’m lucky that the time I spent out there was at worst, kind of weird, and at best actually genuinely fun.