Galen Grace (left) and writer Jessie Sage (right) at the beginning of a tantra session Credit: CP Photo: Mars Johnson

I have heard it said, usually in a disparaging way, that no one dreams of being a sex worker when they grow up. Unlike doctors, lawyers, teachers, and veterinarians — careers that you work hard to train for — sex work is something you only do when you’ve exhausted all the other possibilities.

I would be lying if I tried to defend my decade-long career in the sex industry by saying that it is something I have always wanted to do. In truth, it wasn’t on my radar until my late 30s.

As a child, I imagined being a writer, filling my notebooks with words I’d use and ideas I’d hone. As a freshman in college, exposed to philosophy for the first time, I imagined standing in front of a classroom opening young minds in the way my professors opened mine. As a seminary student, I thought deeply about how I would live a spirit-filled life as a lay minister (imagining that ministry to look like a combination of teaching and writing). And as a birth doula, I found great joy in witnessing women transformed by childbirth into mothers.

Those were all career paths I dreamed of and pursued. Sex work, in contrast, is something that I fell into when the realities of adult life under late-stage capitalism started to bump up against my ideals in uncomfortable ways: when I got a divorce, when adjunct wages weren’t cutting it, and when being on call 24/7 for births didn’t work for a single mother of young children.

I, too, did not dream of being a sex worker, but perhaps I would have had I known then what I know now. In this work, I have learned that sexuality is so tied to who we are as human beings that there is no greater ministry than the one that is achieved through skin-to-skin contact, in the quiet intimacy between two people.

I thought about this earlier this week when I walked up two flights of stairs, to Galen Grace’s sanctuary/attic, where we ceremoniously undressed in front of each other to, in his words, “remove the psychic body armor” of the outside world, and stood in a long embrace, our bodies melting into each other as we prepared for what was to come.

For the last 10 years, Galen has been practicing a form of Non-dual Shaiva Tantra, which originated in the Kashmir Valley of India more than a thousand years ago. “I practice the ‘real’ tantra, as well as what is called the neo-tantra,” he explains in an interview. “In the West, neo-tantra is this modern Western sexual intimacy movement. It is not exactly authentic to the original tradition that is over a thousand years old from India, that is a non-dual spiritual philosophy and a system for awakening.”

As a part of his spiritual practice, Galen does a unique form of tantric massage. He calls his practice “sacred touch,” and draws on the classical teachings of Shaiva tantra. After our embrace — as he does in all his sacred touch sessions — Galen had me lay face down on a mattress. While traditional music played, he walked me through a guided meditation/massage that started at the crown of my head and moved down to my feet, paying special attention to each of the seven chakras: crown, third eye, throat, heart, solar plexus, sacral, and root. He then had me turn over on my back while he reversed the order, this time moving from foot to crown.

What is different about tantric massage than other forms is that genital stimulation is incorporated (with consent). Practitioners believe that the buildup and release of our sexual energy, within the context of the ritual, can aid us in the integration of our whole being.

As someone who has sex for a living and who has been naked on the internet for a decade, I went into the ritual fearing that I wouldn’t be able to feel vulnerable enough to have the kind of experience that I have heard others, including Galen himself, talk about having through classical tantric practices. It doesn’t phase me to discard my “psychic body armor,” and having a relative stranger touch me is all in a day’s work.

Given the many vast, beautiful, and arguably holy experiences I’ve had within the context of sex work though, I should have known that intimate touch is a powerful tool that — when used well — can shift consciousness and make you feel reborn.

Before the session, when Galen and I were talking about the seven chakras, I mentioned that my therapist often asks me to identify the places in my body where I feel my emotional pain and that my gut reaction is almost always to say my throat. Given my personal history, I have been afraid of being silenced — that my words, my truth, don’t matter.

It should not be surprising, then, that during the genital stimulation portion of the massage, while he used one hand for that and the other to move energy through my body, laying it on each of my chakras in turn, I had the most powerful release when his hand rested on my throat. The energy that is often stuck was released, and when it was, warm fluid gushed out from between my legs. (Thankfully, I mentioned beforehand that I have been known to squirt, and we were prepared with a towel!)

Two years ago today (yes, today!), Galen was giving a similar message to someone else when his aorta dissected, a medical event that could have easily killed him. She had come to him to have her heart (metaphorically) opened and when he rested his hand over her heart chakra, he felt a painful sensation in his own chest. At first, he believed that the sensation he was feeling may have been just an energetic transfer, from her body to his. After all, he did have his hand on her heart.

He breathed through the pain and finished her massage, as he was being (literally) torn apart from the inside. Once he realized that what he experienced wasn’t only an energetic transfer, he had her take him to the hospital where he had open heart surgery.

Had I not had experiences with clients of unimaginable profundity, and had I not, earlier this week, had an orgasm that began in my throat and flowed through and out of my vagina, I am not sure that this story would have made sense to me. Yet, I have had these experiences, ones that I didn’t even think to dream of when I was young and imagining what I would grow up to be.

To his doctors’ surprise, Galen has recovered from his aortic dissection and, in many ways, is stronger than he was before it happened. But this experience, like often happens with major life events, has shifted Galen’s focus. Like me, Galen had a full career before doing this sort of work. He is a writer, has an academic background in theater, has taught, and has also worked as a dramaturg. While not a traditional sex worker, incorporating sexuality into his spiritual practice, and extending that out to as many people who feel like they could benefit from it, has become a calling of sorts, one that has taken precedence over other career ambitions.

Perhaps most of us don’t dream of being sex workers or of providing spiritual/sexual services when we grow up, but maybe that is because we are not given models of what that can look like in a culture that shrouds sexuality in shame and stigma. Perhaps a force larger than ourselves just calls some of us to it. I believe this is true for Galen, and probably for myself, too.

Jessie Sage is a Pittsburgh-based sex worker, writer, and the host of the podcast When We’re Not Hustling: Sex Workers Talking About Everything But.