Strippers, Sex Work, and My Master

I saw a lot of strippers on my visit to Puerto Vallarta last week. Not by my choice, but my Master's. Strip bars aren't my cup of tea, and to be honest, as I try to recreate the scenes for you, I can't offer much in the way of physical detail. The strippers were muscular and hung. Beyond that, they didn't really do it for me. So this isn't a post to excite you about strip bars. It's more about my thoughts on sex work, but I'll start with my experience at the strip bars.

The first stop was Blue Chairs, a popular rooftop bar on the beach. My Master said there would be a drag show, so I wasn't expecting strippers. But when we sat down, three muscular shirtless men were already prancing around the patrons at the next table. One of them flashed his large cock. The vibe was social, chatty — less aggressive than the proper strip bars we'd hit later that night. The patrons handed over small bills. I'm not sure what more the strippers could have hoped for there, unless something got arranged in private elsewhere.

After the drag queen finished her set — lip syncing impressively to audience requests — a short, muscular stripper came on stage. He wore an overall he peeled off slowly, revealing a toned, tattooed body, but he didn't reach full nudity. That came later, at the proper strip bars, where the setup was built around higher-spend patrons and private rooms. A private dance ran 500 Mexican pesos, almost $30. Sexual acts cost more.

From Blue Chairs we went to Sixty Nine. It was dark, and we sat in low couches, so the strippers' crotches were at face height, optimized for them to catch us. The strippers would come up to me, grab my hand, press it against a six-pack. One of them put my hand directly on his thick cock. With the others I'd managed to avoid touching anything, because I figured that once you'd touched, refusing to tip became inexcusable. He took the choice out of my hands, sort of. I broke away anyway and signaled I had nothing for him.

Looking at any stripper was risky, because as soon as they made eye contact they might come over. After all, if you were looking, you must want something, and if you wanted something, you'd pay. It was all about the money, and I wasn't looking to spend on sex.

My Master had no such hesitations. He felt their abs, grabbed their dicks, had them perform for him. He tipped a dollar each. He didn't take it further than that. I'd have preferred he tip more generously if he was using them, but I guess they knew not to expect much unless things moved to a private room.

Next was Wet Dreams. More social, more lively, people standing rather than sunk into couches. A stripper performed in a dry shower behind the bar. My Master asked whether they actually showered, the way they had a couple of years earlier at Anthropology, which I heard has since closed. Cleanliness turns him on. I sat in the back and blogged on my phone. The stripper still came over after his show to ask for a tip. I'd also been asked for one on the way in, despite there being no official cover. My Master had no problem declining. I was uncomfortable with it but hadn't brought change, and I didn't want to spend money on something I hadn't asked for — even if the strippers had no way of knowing that.

We ended at B-Mine, briefly. It was quite empty. A couple of strippers worked the poles right in front of us, and as we were leaving, a new one came on with a cock as thick as a can of Coke.

So, my two cents about strippers and sex work.

Watching my Master that night, I kept thinking about what was actually being transacted, who was free to walk away, and on what terms. I was uncomfortable not tipping and he wasn't. The strippers performed accordingly. That whole choreography is sex work, even though no sex was happening in front of us.

Let's be clear about what counts as sex work. It isn't just sex for money. Strippers are sex workers, whether they go further with clients or not. Porn actors — or in the more sanitized term, content creators — are sex workers. So are FinDoms who excite finsubs to pay for their domination. And honestly, my own adult writing and audio content can be considered sex work too, whether it's used for entertainment, education, or both.

So while I have preferences about what kind of sex work I want to consume, I'm not opposed to any of it, as long as it's not abusive or involving minors. People should have the freedom to do what they want as long as they're not harming others. Restrictions against harming ourselves can be legitimate too, if they're proportionate and legal.

The case for restricting sex work is where it harms someone, or where it's tied up with organized crime. In my own case, none of this is making me money — it costs me more to create content than I earn from it. But any act of creating content is still work. My AI agent has advised me, for instance, that I shouldn't shoot porn videos outside my country, unless in international waters, because it could be considered a violation of visa or status terms. Incredibly, it even suggested that American lawyers might err on the side of extreme caution and argue that shooting a video on a cruise originating in the U.S. could count as a violation, even outside U.S. borders. A small detail in the life of a kinky digital nomad — but it goes to the broader point.

A lot of the actual restrictions on sex work aren't grounded in conservative values. They're grounded in financial gain. Content platforms restrict adult content to align with credit card companies and payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal, who prohibit or severely restrict adult content of their own accord. The payment infrastructure decides what kind of work is permitted, and the rest of the ecosystem follows. They'll often cite safety but they're usually failing at providing safety from real threats, or educating creators on how to align with their safety concerns. Private companies set up the terms of what counts as legitimate work.

That is at odds with civil liberties. It undermines the right to work and our sexual rights, including the right to sexual pleasure.

As Puerto Vallarta is notorious for organized crime, I can't say whether it has any hold over the strippers, but I hope not. What I can say is that dancing in their underwear in front of a consenting crowd, or writing about it, shouldn't be a problem for anyone.