Queer Whore Collective: Manic Pixie Dream Whores Pt. 2

You could, if you wanted to, choose to see Sub Rosa as a metaphor for disassociation, a beautiful fantasy world born out of ‘The Dark’, designed to distract from the ‘darker’ realities of the job, a job which many orphans from a nearby convent school seem to find themselves in. But we are spared any trauma porn associated with child sex trafficking in this book, though it is alluded to. Really it’s a story about storytelling - the stories we tell ourselves to get by, the stories we sell to the world to get by, the stories we share with each other to get by. Storytelling can be both your lifeline and your downfall, depending on whose influence shapes your narrative.

The book could also be accused of glamourising sex work (because Sub Rosa is painted as a wonderful, enviable place), just like how the MPDG can be accused of glamourising a more trite, unsubsantial form of womanhood. But sex work has to be glamourous sometimes, we need that. Sub Rosa (from Latin for ‘under the rose’, meaning secrecy) isn’t as simple as being a beautiful illusion which shatters to reveal an awful darkness. While ‘The Dark’ is full of secrets connected to the former identities of the Glories, such as their real names and how/why they ended up as working girls, the light of Sub Rosa keeps those secrets locked away. I don’t think that’s inherently bad - it represents a form of persistent hope, forged from the strength and will of these women, created by the power of their imagination and therefore, in many ways, very real.

Just as in Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, we realise there is a kind of truth in the things we make up, because they come from something true within us. Our most tender, vulnerable dreams and aspirations. Both these works bring to life a terrain built from the many chambers of the mind. They both handle the relationship between fantasy and male gratification, investigating where that leaves women, sometimes in a state of confused amnesia, trying to remember something so simple as their name, amongst all their split selves. Some girls decide to venture back through The Dark in search of their former selves, whereas some decide to remain in blissful ignorance, Sub Rosa. There is no judgment from the writer for either path - the path of fighting ‘to remember’ or the path of fighting ‘to forget’ - both are a valid escape from trauma, either finding meaning in your suffering or refuge in your comforts. I try to do a bit of both.

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Maedb Joy’s Home Sweet Hell, which was a one woman show brought to London’s Vaults festival in June, and one of the most incredible, electric performances I’ve ever seen. The writer and performer, Maedb Joy, showed us the difference between her sex worker persona (Maia) and her real self by putting her hair up in pigtails (sex worker) and then taking it out (real person). The audience came to know this transition. We watched silently as she did it slowly, not rushing the process, making us uncomfortable because we knew the paradigm was about to shift. When the hair was going up, we were in for riotous stories about the stuff men with names like bigdick67 say to cam girls online, and her hysterically disingenuous responses. When the hair was coming down, we braced ourselves for something heavier, something that could bring us to tears - client blackmail, violence.

But Maedb also showed us the similarity between erotic labour through camming (paid) and erotic labour through having boyfriends (unpaid). The boyfriends were just as bad, if not worse. It's not sex work that's dangerous, it's men. And what we were allowed in the end was the opportunity to get to know a resourceful, resilient young woman, flitting and flirting her way between various personas and identities each carefully designed to attain the missing parts of her life: family, security, money, connection. She could even laugh about it, and so did we, because it’s all such a relatable farce.

I want to end this essay by questioning whether the MPDG, when she appears in art, even needs more ‘character development’ - can we not sometimes just be content to let her show us a fantasy escapism that we enjoy and she profits from? Why do we even want her to find ‘better, more real’ love with the boring white straight guy? Why does he deserve any more of her than she's willing to show? Why do we? If a man is writing it, I'd rather they do it badly. Leave the real shit to us. And let Zooey Deschanel net a worth of $25 million because she's put a hefty price tag on ‘quirky’.

So, no ‘putting her to rest’ or killing her off, no pretending she was dead the whole time, she is just an adaptive creature making her way through this fluid landscape of power, sex and money. Let's watch her exploit her exploitation in whatever ways she can. Let's see her nuances only in so far as there being a holistic consistency to her inconsistencies, whereby she can be both the rotten apple and/or its sugar coating. Isn't there some power in that? Isn't the potency of fantasy your ability to switch it on and off? Clients suspend their disbelief at the same door where we charge for entrance, selling guided tours through a hall of mirrors.

“Because you see me as refreshingly disconnected from that stale, dependable life that you're looking to leave for a moment? They get trapped in their own hypocrisies - admiring our freedom yet resenting their inability to contain it.”

I often go on to ghost my clients, too ‘carefree’ for being good at my phone. When they have tantrums about it, I want to ask, “But isn't that why you like me?” Because you see me as refreshingly disconnected from that stale, dependable life that you're looking to leave for a moment? They get trapped in their own hypocrisies - admiring our freedom yet resenting their inability to contain it. That’s what the MPDG can do when she speaks, as herself, from both sides of her mouth. She captures the world we live in.

Words: Bella Violet Quinn | Part of Queer Whore Collective.