Don’t Call Me by My Real Name
别用我的真名称呼我

Clients love to ask sex workers, “What’s your real name?” It’s a power move. “I know you contain multitudes” is what they mean, “and I have the right to see.” They paid, after all.
客户喜欢问性工作者，“你的真名是什么？” 这是一种权力展示。“我知道你蕴含着多重身份”，他们的意思是，“我有权看到。” 毕竟他们付了钱。

The clients who asked this question of me were usually the type who had tricked themselves into believing that we had a personal relationship — a romantic one, or a sexual one they wouldn’t have to pay for had we met under different circumstances.
向我提出这个问题的客户通常是那种自欺欺人地认为我们之间存在某种个人关系的人——浪漫的，或是性关系，如果我们在不同情况下相遇，他们本不需要为此付费。

When clients pried, I liked turning the question back on them.
当客户追问时，我喜欢把问题抛回给他们。

“John is my real name!” he might say, laughing at the idea that he, unlike me, would have anything to hide.
“约翰就是我的真名！”他可能会笑着说，嘲笑他认为自己与我不同，没有什么需要隐瞒的。

“John is my real name too,” I might say with a wink.
“约翰也是我的真名，”我可能会眨眼说道。

For the better part of a decade, I was Mistress Natalie, a professional dominatrix. A teasing sense of humor was an asset on the job.
在近十年的时间里，我是娜塔莎夫人，一位专业的女主人。工作中，一种挑逗的幽默感是一项资产。

I didn’t always act coy in that situation. Occasionally a client would ask for my real name, and I would answer honestly, telling them that my friends call me Chris. It was a powerless move. “I contain multitudes” is what I meant, “and don’t want you to think this is all I am.”
我并非总是表现得那么羞涩。偶尔会有客户问我的真名，我会诚实地回答，告诉他们我的朋友叫我克里斯。这是一种无力的举动。“我包含着多种面貌”，我的意思是，“不希望你认为这就是我的全部。”

I told myself that these clients were different — young, like me, or graduate students, like me, or queer women, like me. I needed to believe they could see the me beneath the corsets, fake eyelashes and thigh-high boots.
我告诉自己，这些客户是不同的——年轻，像我一样，或是研究生，像我一样，或是酷儿女性，像我一样。我需要相信他们能看到我隐藏在紧身胸衣、假睫毛和高筒靴之下的真实自我。

This was always a bad reason to tell a client my real name. There was rarely a good reason. A fake name is a boundary, and some clients have no problem pushing a sex worker’s boundaries.
这始终是一个告诉客户我真实姓名的糟糕理由。很少有好的理由。一个假名就是一道界限，而有些客户对推开性工作者的界限毫无顾虑。

I still receive emails from a female client who began pursuing me obsessively after she learned my first name.
我仍然收到一位女客户的电子邮件，自从她得知我的名字后，就开始对我进行痴迷的追求。

“Dear Chris: I’m going to build a house someday, and I hope you’ll live in it with me.”
“亲爱的克里斯：有一天我会建一座房子，我希望你能和我一起住在里面。”

“Dear Chris: You’re the love of my life.”
“亲爱的克里斯：你是我生命中的挚爱。”

“Dear Mistress Natalie: When I first came to you, I was nervous and you made me feel comfortable. As I’ve had time to reflect, I realize that I overstepped my boundaries with you.”
“亲爱的娜塔莉夫人：当我第一次来找您时，我很紧张，而您让我感到舒适。随着时间的推移，我意识到我对您越界了。”

I try to ignore these messages, but it’s hard. I’m afraid of her. My girlfriend was afraid of her, too. The client sent gifts from my Amazon Wish List, which piled up on our doorstep while I was away.
我试图忽略这些信息，但很难。我害怕她。我的女朋友也害怕她。客户从我的亚马逊心愿单上寄来了礼物，我在外面时它们堆在了门口。

“Don’t worry, baby,” I said to my girlfriend. “She doesn’t know my last name. She doesn’t know how to find us.” But I didn’t know for sure.
“别担心，宝贝，”我对女朋友说。“她不知道我的姓氏。她不知道怎么找到我们。”但我并不确定。

After that girlfriend and I broke up, I was alone in my fear, which came as a relief.
在那之后，我和女朋友分手了，我独自面对恐惧，这反而是一种解脱。

Nearly a decade ago, in a hotel room in a southern city, I met a client who was another graduate student. His name really was John, and John’s Ph.D. would be in computer science. Mine would be in the humanities. This explains why he had money to hire a dominatrix and I had so little that I needed to play one on the side.
大约十年前，在南方一座城市的酒店房间里，我遇到了一位客户，他也是一名研究生。他的名字真的叫约翰，而约翰的博士学位将是计算机科学。我的则是人文学科。这解释了为什么他有闲钱雇用一位施虐女王，而我却如此拮据，以至于需要兼职扮演这一角色。

When John walked into my room, I thought he was cute. When he told me all he wanted to do was kiss my leather boots, I thought, “Easy money.” When he told me he had a girlfriend, I wondered why he couldn’t kiss her boots for free. (Our culture really does a number on men who are interested in sexual submission.)
当约翰走进我的房间时，我觉得他很可爱。当他告诉我他只想亲吻我的皮靴时，我想，“轻松赚钱。” 当他告诉我他有女朋友时，我纳闷为什么他不能免费亲吻她的靴子。（我们的文化确实对那些对性服从感兴趣的男性影响深远。）

“What’s your real name?” John asked after the session.
“你的真名是什么？” 约翰在会话结束后问道。

I didn’t give him the name my friends call me, Chris, but the name my parents gave me, Christina. I told him I was a Ph.D. student like him, studying English. I contain multitudes!
我没有给他朋友们称呼我的名字，克里斯，而是给了我父母给我的名字，克里斯蒂娜。我告诉他我和他一样是英语专业的博士生。我蕴含着多重身份！

With a little research, he was then able to find my last name.
通过一点调查，他随后就能找到我的姓氏。

When I was back home, he texted: “So, Doctor, what happens if I start developing feelings for you and want to see you on a different level?”
当我回到家时，他发短信说：“那么，博士，如果我开始对你产生感情，并想在不同层面上见你，会发生什么？”

I ignored him.

A week later, using my full name, he made it known that he had read my academic articles, something I couldn’t even convince my then girlfriend to do.
一周后，他使用我的全名，表明他已经阅读了我的学术文章，这是我甚至无法说服当时的女朋友去做的事情。

My cheeks burned as I read the text, knowing it was my own ego that had lured me into dangerous territory. I told John to call me “Mistress Natalie” but didn’t block his number.
读到这条短信时，我的脸颊发烫，知道是我自己的虚荣心将我引入了危险的境地。我告诉约翰叫我“娜塔莉夫人”，但没有屏蔽他的号码。

That Christmas, he texted to say that he was in Orange County visiting his parents. When I saw his number flash on my phone, I remembered that he knew my real name and didn’t answer. He left angry voice mails, ranting about how I had stoked his obsession and left him hanging.
那年圣诞节，他发短信说他正在橙县探望父母。当我看到他的号码在我手机上闪烁时，我想起他知道我的真名，没有接听。他留下了愤怒的语音留言，抱怨我如何激起了他的痴迷，又让他悬而未决。

“Christina,” he pleaded, “don’t ruin my Christmas.”
“克里斯蒂娜，”他恳求道，“不要毁了我的圣诞节。”

I had been working for a few years by the time I met the woman who still sends me the inappropriate emails, but I could have counted the number of female clients I had seen on one hand. I was fine with that. Female clients were more complicated. I had a harder time separating professional from personal. I had a harder time saying “no” when they asked for my real name.
当我遇到那个至今仍给我发不恰当邮件的女人时，我已经工作了几年，但我见过的女性客户屈指可数。我对此并不介意。女性客户更为复杂。我更难将专业与个人分开。当她们询问我的真实姓名时，我更难说“不”。

In B.D.S.M. practice, “after care” is important, so I offered hugs to every client at the end of a session. It seemed like the least I could do. With that woman, I let the hugs linger. She could count on four, five cycles of breath before I would pull away. She would take more if I let her.
在 B.D.S.M 实践中，“事后关怀”非常重要，因此我在每次会话结束时都会给每位客户一个拥抱。这似乎是我能做的最起码的事。对于那个女人，我让拥抱持续得更久。她可以数到四五次呼吸循环，我才拉开距离。如果我允许，她会停留更久。

After our sessions, she would text me to say that the hug was her favorite part.
我们的会话结束后，她会发短信告诉我，拥抱是她最喜欢的部分。

The last time I saw her, she had shown up to meet me in a hotel lobby — shoeless and strung out, with no money for the session she had booked — in a city where the police were rumored to be doing prostitution stings in high-end hotels.
上次见她时，她出现在酒店大堂与我见面——赤脚且神情恍惚，没有钱支付她预订的会面，而这座城市的传闻中，警方正在高档酒店进行针对卖淫的突击行动。

Professional B.D.S.M. exists in a gray area of the law: It’s not prostitution, the acceptance of money for sex, but only because sex is hard to define. I didn’t think cops running a sting operation were likely to delve into the ambiguities, and I didn’t need an erratic client getting me arrested. I had just defended my dissertation and was about to enter the academic job market. So I gave her cash to get her car out of the hotel parking lot where she had slept and vowed to never see her again.
专业的 B.D.S.M 存在于法律的灰色地带：它不是卖淫，即接受金钱换取性行为，只是因为性难以定义。我不认为进行钓鱼执法的警察会深入探究这些模糊之处，我也不需要一个不稳定的客户让我被捕。我刚刚完成了论文答辩，即将进入学术就业市场。所以我给了她钱让她把车从她过夜的酒店停车场开走，并发誓再也不会见她。

At the time, I belonged to a sex worker self-defense collective. We spent hours each week drilling strategies to deflect touch. We practiced maneuvers meant to forcibly remove hands from the small of our backs, to break grips on our wrists. We talked about boundaries and how to set them.
那时，我属于一个性工作者自卫集体。我们每周花数小时练习策略以避免被触碰。我们练习动作，旨在强行将手从我们的背部移开，打破对我们手腕的抓握。我们讨论界限以及如何设定它们。

It took the collective an hour to persuade me to stop engaging with this woman. After that morning in the hotel lobby, she had threatened to hurt herself if I didn’t see her again, but I had sworn that I wouldn’t.
集体花了一个小时才说服我停止与这个女人接触。那天早上在酒店大堂，她威胁说如果我不再见她，她就会伤害自己，但我已经发誓不会再见她。

“I can no longer have contact with you,” I wrote as my support system looked on. “I wish you the best, but you have persisted in contacting me against my wishes.”
“我不能再与你联系了，”我写道，我的支持系统在一旁看着。“我祝你一切顺利，但你一直违背我的意愿联系我。”

I made a friend press “send.” I turned off my phone for 12 hours, afraid of her response. All I could think was: She knows my real name.
我让一个朋友按下了“发送”。我关掉了手机 12 小时，害怕她的回应。我唯一能想到的是：她知道我的真实姓名。

Either way, I still hold my breath when I open my old work inbox, bracing myself for love declarations or worse — that she could find out where I live, show up at my door and ask for another chance at a love she never had.
无论如何，当我打开旧的工作邮箱时，我仍然屏住呼吸，准备好迎接爱的宣言或更糟的情况——她可能会找到我住的地方，出现在我家门口，要求再给她一次从未有过的爱的机会。

Fear is a weapon wielded by those who want to keep others silent, and the stigma against sex work makes it easy to scare or blackmail us. So finally, a few years ago, I came out as a sex worker. My name is no longer a secret to anyone. I didn’t come out because I am fearless. I came out because I am sometimes still afraid, and I know I’m not alone.
恐惧是那些想要让别人沉默的人使用的武器，而对性工作的污名化使得他们很容易恐吓或敲诈我们。所以最终，几年前，我公开了自己的性工作者身份。我的名字不再对任何人保密。我公开不是因为我无所畏惧。我公开是因为我有时仍然害怕，而且我知道我不是唯一一个。

In general, though, I was rarely afraid of my clients, the fumbling fathers who showed me iPhone photographs of their children and dogs, the sweet-if-clueless guys who asked for my advice on their dating profiles. Even John — the Ph.D. student who used my real name — called a year later when he was again home for the holidays to apologize. “I’m a fool when it comes to feelings,” he wrote. “That’s why I acted the way I did.”
总的来说，我很少害怕我的客户，那些笨拙的父亲向我展示他们孩子的 iPhone 照片和狗，那些甜蜜但有些无知的家伙向我征求他们约会资料的建议。即使是约翰——那个使用我真名的博士生——也在一年后回家过节时打电话来道歉。“我在感情方面是个傻瓜，”他写道。“这就是我那样做的原因。”

He said he was in therapy, and I agreed to see him again. He sounded sorry, I needed the money, and it was Christmas, after all.
他说他在接受治疗，我同意再次见他。他听起来很抱歉，我需要钱，毕竟这是圣诞节。

Chris Belcher, an assistant professor of writing at the University of Southern California, is the author of the memoir, “Pretty Baby.”
克里斯·贝尔彻，南加州大学写作助理教授，是回忆录《漂亮宝贝》的作者。

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