RC pal Xeni Jardin was kind enough to link to Letters from Johns and Letters from Working Girls on Boing Boing. In the comments, a reader posted a link to a project in which the artist had turned sex worker stories into comic strips. That artist is Peter S. Conrad, a Northern California based writer and artist whose work has appeared in True Porn and will appear in I Saw You: Missed Connection Comics. I dropped Conrad an email about the project. He wrote back and sent the comic I've posted here. I asked him if I could ask him a few questions, and he said yes. What follows is a short interview and the rest of "Going Back." You can click on each panel for a bigger image. Thank you to Peter for allowing me to reproduce his work here.
Reverse Cowgirl: How did you come up with the idea of turning sex worker stories into comic strips?
Peter S. Conrad: I learned that a very close friend had worked briefly as an exotic dancer. Her family doesn't know, but she told me a few stories. I thought there might be other people out there with something to say.
RC: How did you get the stories from the sex workers?
PSC: It turns out there are online forums where people compare local clubs, customers, laws, etc. as well as exchanging wardrobe and makeup tips and so on. I posted a couple of times on the site explaining my idea for the project, and received responses right away. The community is pretty tighly knit, at least online, so people referred each other to me too. I have not met any of these women in person. I'm not against meeting them, but I think it's not necessary--and it might be easier to tell a story to someone you haven't met, anyway.
RC: How did you create the artwork for the stories?
PSC: As much as possible, I don't want to be in the way of the story. I print out the words typed by the person who told the story and use a pencil to make marks where I think page divisions will go. Sometimes I have to make a lot of cuts, or sometimes I replace a bunch of words with a picture that gets the idea across, so I know I am having an effect on the story, but I use as much as I can verbatim. My goal is to be invisible, because it's not really my story to tell.
RC: What did you learn about sex, sex workers, and/or sex work?
PSC: That it's a job. There are people who hate the work and are tremendously unhappy; there are people who don't hate the work and are not tremendously unhappy. There is a community. There is a lot of diversity among sex workers, in terms of how they ended up in sex work, who they are, personality, everything. It's a mistake to try to categorize sex workers too broadly.
RC: Do you have any plans to publish the series as a book?
PSC: I think it would make a good book. I am considering inviting other artists to illustrate stories so that it won't all be in my voice.
