MILCAH HALILI and APRIL FLORES
My Love,
It was the first day we were together when you carved your initials into my back. I had planned for the carving, but not your initials. Not at first. We were scheduled to shoot an experimental adult movie for a smutty art film festival, and we were prepared for you to cut me. But that day, you marked me forever.
With that carving, we reclaimed the meaning of sexualized violence like queer people took back the word “queer.” We wore it like a badge. An emblem of our love, proof that we fell in love under the moonlight.
Well, at least that’s what you said, that we fell in love under the moonlight. But when I told you it was actually the streetlight you laughed. I was grateful that your sense of humor matched mine.
We didn’t predict how beautiful the natural light would be in the studio apartment that we filmed our scene in. Just like the happy coincidence of that natural light, our love was unexpected. We didn’t have three-point lighting, but we lit up the whole room.
Sexualized violence was a part of my birth, as a baby and as an adult. When I was conceived, it was the honeymoon period, when everything was still sweet. Before my father’s hands ever pinned down my mother’s wrists. Fools rushing into the darkness their children would carry until death. Like a ritual, my mother and father would start yelling, and they would hide in the bedroom. The door was usually ajar and, like clockwork, I would peer into the daily scene of my parents fighting. I always knew how the fight would end, with my mother crying, staring at the ceiling, while my father held her down and forced his lips on her neck. Every fight I watched felt like a little death.
The first time a femme fisted me, I was conceived again. She was a sex worker, a practitioner in the San Francisco BDSM scene. It was the first time I had ever been broken open.
Being fisted for the first time felt so familiar, similar to how I felt in my church as a little kid. I loved Sabbath school. I’d listen to the parables my teachers would tell us, and try to make sense of the lessons in each teaching. My mind would spin for hours, trying to decipher the meanings of each parable’s metaphors. I loved our choir too. The sounds of a community harmonizing to praise blessings and make sweet music.
Initially, the melody of my moans as I felt the pleasure of a fist pounding my insides was foreign to me. I never knew this life could hold so much physical and mental ecstasy, especially since most of my life was struggle and misery. I felt powerful and vulnerable, and it was so gratifying to make my dominant happy.
When you fist me, I get lost in the waves of the sensations of your curved fingers hitting my cervix. One of my favorite moments in the first scene we filmed was when the entrance of my pussy grabbed your wrist. You punched your hand further as I sucked you deeper into me. When you fist me, all my memories of pain float into oblivion.
Queer hos, women who take shit from no one, and men who are gentle and sweet, they raised me into the man I am today. Men who could have taught my father about consent, and women who could have taught my mother to fight back. Our sex worker community is everything my parents lack.
Our BDSM community taught me the meaning of pain as baptism and serenity. Before kink, my only relationship with pain was negative. It was something I needed to disassociate from, just like the little kid who would watch their father sexually assault their mother. Although I chose to watch my parents fight—perhaps because it was better to know what was happening than to imagine worse outcomes—I never consented to the hurt I felt from that trauma. When dominants hurt me, I’m asking for it, and the control I have in those moments mixed with the adrenaline I feel from each hit transforms itself. It feels so good to know that my body can manifest what’s supposed to hurt into a feeling worth desiring.
The kink community is the personification of the mother I wished I’d had. One who could have kicked my father’s ass. A family that could have loved me unconditionally.
You, my love, you are my family. You’re my community. You’ve shaped me into the person I am today. When I feel the keloid on my back and the raised lines that make up your initials, I’m reminded of how you’ve taken me and how you will always be a part of me.
I’m so proud of you, how you’ve grown as a person and how you’re redefining the way you want to take up space in sex work moving forward. As we navigate the sex work industry together in new ways, you as an entrepreneur, and I as a web developer, I’m positive that we can help the generations of sex workers who come after us.
Like the hos who came before me, I aspire to be a role model for those whose mothers and fathers may not ever understand sex workers or why we do what we do. Our love and what we create out of our love will outlive our lifetimes, glitters of hope on the horizon. You and I, we’ll be immortalized through our art.
Love,
Milcah
My Love,
When you and I met, I was buried deep in the grief that followed the death of Carlos Batts, my first husband, partner, collaborator, lover, everything. I was trying to exist and build a new life without my best friend. The one who I had made plans with. The one who I had built dreams and made art with. I struggle to remember who I was back then, when pain was so fresh and every part of my life was suddenly foreign. The new me felt like a stranger. I have learned that pain has left my memory with many holes in it. You and I both laugh about this, because sometimes our memories fail us as a coping mechanism.
When we met, I was spending all my time distracting myself, forcing myself to be social when I really wanted to shrivel up and disappear. I was drinking to numb my loneliness and pain. I was drinking because being brave and strong was exhausting. I was drinking to give me strength to perform happiness and maintain the friendships I had cultivated with Carlos. Straight vodka burned my lips and throat as it fooled me into believing that I was doing what I wanted to be doing. I was always on the go, trying to outpace my grief, but just like my shadow, grief was always there, attached to me, encompassing me in the dark.
My home was full of old memories, so I never went there. It was a sad apartment that was always either too hot or too cold. An unfinished mess of unpacked boxes, packed-up dreams and plans, physical reminders of my loss. I could feel the walls closing in on me. I only used my bathroom and a sliver of my bedroom. I only went into the living room to entertain my various lovers. We’d get drunk and high and then fuck on the gray sectional I held onto because of my attachment to the past. My love, I know you hated that couch because of those very reasons and were happy when I finally agreed to get rid of it. It took all of our strength, but together we lifted and carefully angled it through the front door and down the stairs. I felt your relief as I kicked the cum- and lube-stained cushions. I watched them silently bounce down the dilapidated burgundy stairs.
When we met, I was proud of the stable of men I had curated to appease my physical needs. Sex had become a way to escape from reality, my form of meditation. Whenever others would suggest meditation—always without me asking—I would swat their words away. Sex was my escape. Drinking was my escape.
I first encountered sex work like most people in my generation: watching Pretty Woman. I was about fourteen years old when my best friend Sabrina and I watched it for the first time. A few years later, I saw porn stars on late-night TV talk shows like Jerry Springer. I admired them when I was supposed to pity them. They seemed to exude sexual freedom and autonomy, even when the audience was trying to shame them.
It was the early nineties, and Madonna’s Erotica album was in heavy rotation on our family CD player. My sister and I would dance wildly in the living room and sing along to the album that defined the spring of my sixteenth year. I was still a virgin, and I felt like Madonna’s lyrics gave me a hint into the excitement, self-expression, and enjoyment that was awaiting me, once I found the right guy to lose my highly guarded virginity to.
It wasn’t long until I unlocked the mystery of why I was always fascinated by sex workers. My sister and I learned that my paternal grandmother had been a sex worker in Ecuador in the early sixties. One hot summer day in a park near my father’s place, where a group of Ecuadorians met up on the weekends to sell food and congregate, I asked my dad about his biological mother. He told me that she was a brothel sex worker, and that he found out from one of his teachers. “I followed her one day after school to see if she really went there,” he said.
Without shame, he confirmed that she did indeed work in a brothel; and in that moment I realized that I had a family connection to sex work and my fascination made sense. We called her May at her request, never calling her Abuelita as I wished I could. She had given him up when he was a baby and they were sporadically in contact throughout their lives. My grandmother was single her whole life and had a strained relationship with her only child. I came to believe that sex workers were solitary beings, but that was before I met Carlos.
When I met Carlos in the summer of 2000, I had never modeled for a professional photographer before. “He’s going to put naked pictures of you all over the internet!” my mother warned. I went to his apartment and shot with him anyway. Our romantic and artistic relationship grew, and soon we were married and constantly working on creative projects that blended art and sex. Our work moved from still images to film. I was offered a part in a scene, and found what seemed to be my calling: I loved being in front of the camera and was now exploring my sexuality with my husband by my side. My work was well received. I was happy and lucky to be able to use my body to empower other fat women to feel worthy of sex and challenge the norms of what is seen as beautiful.
“At least you experienced great love.” When someone endures a loss, people are well-meaning, but they often say some stupid shit. Many people reminded me that some never get to find their soul mate. “At least you had thirteen years with yours.” These words stung the most. How was someone else’s lack of love supposed to make me feel better about the death of mine? Despite the sting, I started to believe them.
I wanted to love again. I oscillated between believing that I was only allowed one great love and believing that I could have a deep connection with another. I’d tell my other single friends, “I hope there’s someone else out there for me.” My intuition told me that there was someone out there, living their life, and having the experiences that would eventually lead us to each other. “I’d like to believe that each day that passes us is bringing us closer to each other.”
I could feel the invisible-but-strong energetic string that tied my path to yours.
I was in a rush the first time we met, so the memory of our encounter is faded. We were both taking part in a photo shoot at Penthouse for some political thing. You were on your way out when I was on my way in.
“I’m Milcah Halili and I’ll be on your show tomorrow.” My producer had booked you for my radio show, Voluptuous Life, the very next day.
“Cool. What are you into sexually these days that you’d like to discuss tomorrow?” I asked. You told me that you were really into role-play, and I gave you my number.
When you got to the studio, you were a cheerful, engaging, and fun guest, sharing your love of role-play with me and my listeners. We bonded over both being size queens, our love of travel, and laughed together while we got the callers off. We promised to hang out when you moved to LA.
I entered the adult entertainment industry with Carlos, and I never fully considered what it might be like to be in it without him. Once I was widowed, telling prospective dates about my work was something I needed to learn. I believed that no one would fully accept me because of my sex work. I started to believe the narrative that I had been hearing my whole life: that sex workers are unlovable and the work we do can never be accepted by a loving and supportive partner. Sex workers are solitary. I would be solitary.
I went on dates with men who had different relationships to and understandings of sex work. I wanted to find some connection, any connection. I went out with a fellow performer who I had done a scene with, but immediately knew it was wrong when he couldn’t hold a conversation with me. Besides, his messy eating grossed me out. I went out with a few super hot fans who were just happy to be in my presence, eager to please me. Those connections fizzled out quickly, once the novelty wore off and their flaws became evident. I went out with fellow artists who I thought would understand my medium and support my growth. I was disappointed to realize that just because you are both artists doesn’t automatically mean you have a connection. I went on Tinder dates full of hope and possibility, but I often wondered if the people on the other side of the table secretly knew my work. Some men I saw withdrew from the pressure of dating a widow and said, “I don’t want to date you because I will always come second to Carlos.”
I believed that no one would want a sex worker. I believed that no one would want a widow. I made peace with that, and resolved to do my best at a life on my own.
When we met, you saw me because you were a sex worker too, but I wasn’t sure how long we would last. I remember an uncomfortable text exchange we had when I was visiting New York. It was cold and late, and I was making my way through the East Village drunk and high on coke. “It will be easier if we just stay casual,” I texted you, because deep down I felt unlovable.
Porn and sex work gave me so many unexpected gifts. I have made some great friends, have had a platform to empower people across the world, and I had unexpectedly become part of a strong community. Conventions and award shows feel more like family reunions. You pass each other on your way to signings, share a quick minute in the elevator catching up on projects, and lament the fast-paced days of networking while waiting for a table at the nearest restaurant. I had actually never felt the porn community as strongly as I did in the time after losing Carlos. I was surprised and comforted when they showed up and surrounded me with words, donations, and supportive energy.
We in the sex work community have shared experiences, similar struggles, and face the same stigmas. There is a level of familiarity and comfort I feel when I am around other sex workers. It’s a bond that is hard to explain. I felt this connection with you immediately.
Once you and I started hanging out more frequently, I was drawn to your mind. Your way with words attracted me like a magnet. Your outlook on the world was refreshing. I felt comfortable with you. We were communicating constantly.
Our sexual chemistry was like nothing I had experienced before. We were having sex day and night, never taking breaks for food or sleep. Once we realized this, we started scheduling time for our other basic needs. Two months into our courtship you said, “I want to go on a real actual date you. One where we’re not at a bar or in bed.”
It was a beautiful fall day and I drove you to the Natural History Museum. I was awkward while we admired the gemstone collection and shy as we casually strolled the cavernous rooms that house real dinosaur bones. In the rose garden, the fear of getting caught smoking a joint made me just as nervous as taking your hand and putting my arm around your waist. We had been fucking all the time, but these small acts of affection felt so monumental and taboo. I had learned to detach my feelings from sex. One of the dirtiest things I could do is actually share affection with another.
Our romance moved very quickly. I was scared of how willing and open and clear you were about wanting a serious committed relationship with me. I wasn’t used to anyone being so upfront about their desires. It was uncomfortable. Society told me that my status as a widow made me undesirable and that moving on wasn’t the true way to respect the memory of my lost one. I frustrated you when my words contradicted my actions. I broke your heart a little each time you could feel me being sexual with another, even if it was all the way across the country. It took me a few months to allow myself to open up to the idea that this dynamic new person was so willing and eager to be in a relationship with me.
“Omg I need to vent to you!” I texted one weekend early into our relationship when we were both working away from LA. You were always there for the venting. Healing our trauma is one way we have connected. It challenges us when we are triggered, and in those moments we go back to acting like scared children. I haven’t known another person so invested in working through their past. I was relieved that I didn’t have to explain the sex work part of my life to you. I was grateful when you listened to me vent, and that you recognized the frustration I had with the emotional labor that demanding clients require.
You have helped me acknowledge old pain and realize that it is important to try and take care of myself. You remind me that life has happiness and beauty and that there is hope, even if it’s a just a tiny glimmer inside sometimes. No one has loved me as gently as you do. From death came my rebirth. You have been a vital part of this rebirth because with you, I’ve stopped running from reality. You gave me safety to slow down and move through the uncomfortable murkiness of loss. Since meeting you, I have come out of darkness.
More than anything, our connection has been pure. Our sense of humor and inside jokes delight me every day. I am your Fat Spoon, you are my Fancy Spoon. Our temperaments are similar, and from the beginning, we shared the same goals of wanting to be married and start a family. “I want a puggy and a frenchie and two babies!” is what you’ve told me since we first met. My time with you has motivated me to grow and heal in unexpected ways. I never thought I would find joy in getting eight hours of sleep, drinking plenty of water, and saving money. Finding joy in these simple everyday acts makes me certain that I want you by my side for the rest of my time here. I’m so grateful that our days lead us to each other, and sex work was the avenue on which our paths would align.
You are my soul’s mirror. You are my best friend.
Love,
April