Interviews

Richard Rall

Can you tell us a little about your journey and what made you want to add your story to our archive?

I come from a fairly affluent background and there was a time early in my life that I didn't really understand the struggle of a lot of disadvantaged people until I, myself, hit my lowest point in life after the first economic crisis in 2008.

I hadn’t understood, until the other side of it, how badly people might need something like sex work to make up the difference and fill in the giant holes in our societal safety nets. I had never faced real financial hardship nor ever had to try to utilize the systems I foolishly believed were sufficient and working. I believed in a semi-just world where I was simply a benefactor of justice from my many years of extremely hard work and sacrifice.

I felt I was self made because I had already mostly separated from my family and underwent bankruptcy only to rebuild a successful career completely outside family influence. I thought my many 60+ hour weeks and the crazy year of night school and work combined, in which I was only in my house for 8 hours a day 4 days a week, set me apart in some way.

I was dead wrong. I was a fortunate, ignorant, and somewhat innocent fool.

Many tens of thousands of people who worked just as hard, and sacrificed just as much had nothing because of a fundamentally broken system, and it was because of simpleton “true believers” like me, that gangster capitalism continued to convert the familial love and daily life force of millions - via a dark alchemy of lies - into the wealth of the few.

Can you tell us a little about your journey and what made you want to add your story to our archive?

I am a disabled sex worker and sex work has given me back a little of the dignity and pride stolen from me by a cold and broken system…

The economic downturn coincided with my wife abandoning me and my young son for a younger man, and at the same time my long history of health problems was approaching a crescendo and it was then that my family utterly turned against me for no longer upholding their religious dogma. It was a perfect storm.

No longer capable of being the successful financial provider I had been for the first dozen years of my adult life, my skewed self-worth that was based on income, set me on a path towards isolation and suicidal ideation. It was in this period of partial hospitalization that I met my current partner who came from a culture that didn’t see a man’s value in the same way as everyone else around me.

Though my previous job had a generous severance, my funds were quickly draining and credit card debt was piling up as my long history of health problems were crashing down further every day…

…I’m sorry, but I feel embarassed, foolish, and unthankful for ever having been suicidal those many years ago so please allow me to back up a moment for a digression.

Being raised in a machine shop, I had been exposed to massive prolonged doses of neurotoxic chemicals throughout the formative years of my life. MEK and THF were not only unvented, but I was directly inhaling and absorbing it through the skin, unprotected in “solvent welding” plastic parts for the family business since well before I was even a teenager. Hundreds of other chemicals from other glues and solvents, to unregulated coolants and lubricants for metal working choked the air of the unvented family-owned factory. Living in back of this factory left me breathing fumes and toxic exotic wood dust 24 hours a day for years on end.

Needless to say, alongside scoliosis, by the time I was 16, extreme chronic fatigue syndrome and chronic pain from muscle spasms started to become a daily challenge such that by the time of my wedding at 19, a back brace and TENS unit were not nearly enough to keep me upright and sweating in agony through the pain of the wedding ceremony.

Through switching to software engineering career and a seated job, I was able to deny the existence of the extreme disability I was already suffering from and continue to be the sole provider for my new little family.

However, after complications from surgeries that attempted to correct my central and obstructive sleep apnea, my health began to decline precipitously as symptoms of the PTSD I had from my extreme fundamentalist family’s “discipline” methods began to manifest in ever more regular panic attacks and the daily pain from muscle spasms and nerve damage grew towards more and more days missed at work even at a “cushy” seated job. My near narcoleptic exhaustion was making my driving more erratic and dangerous as even small commutes were a danger of falling asleep at the wheel and resulted in many embarrassing accidental naps at the desk and in meetings. (which employers were growing impatient with)

While my noticeable and steady health decline may have been too much for my ex to handle, her departure after 13+ years was a final straw in my stress-modulated illnesses.

Sudden massive infections broke out across my body and I nearly lost a finger to one that had started without the slightest breaking of the skin.

When I met my current partner, it seemed I was nearing death from a variety of angles.

…as I was saying earlier. My finances and assets were in free fall while I assumed that years and enormous volumes of many years’ doctor’s records, MRIs, and so many other tests would entitle me to the social safety nets I believed were there. After all, my illnesses technically qualified for disability through three independent routes. Each diagnosis was, alone, supposedly sufficient according to all the disability laws.

That’s when I learned, through my lawyers, that simply being “too young” meant a judge could simply deny the help I both needed and paid for via taxes through so many years of incredibly hard work.

By the time I could only remain awake for a maximum of 6 hours of daily pain, me and my partner were literally starving while she struggled to finish her college degree. I lost 30 lbs from my normal healthy weight.

Having always been extraordinarily sexual people, however, the one thing we could do is show people online our best moments together and let them pay to see our moments of joy together even so deep in the heart of darkness.

It grew from there and, nursed back to health by the only person in the world cared if I lived or died, sex work provided a way for us to stay together. It allowed us just enough survival ability for our love to survive.

Without that love it allowed to continue, I would be dead now. Period. It kept the shotgun tempting me from the closet, out of my mouth.

Is there a person in your life who supported you in some way related to sex work that you’d like to recognize?

Yes, Anna Cherry, my favorite porn star and partner of 17 years.

When there are millions of younger men, and more attractive partners... Though every payment and bank account is in her name and we are not married and she has no legal obligation… When there were healthy rich men courting her, her loyalty to me has never wavered in all this time. When staying with me meant literal starvation and the shame of poverty, she chose me over every sparkling option that is daily thrown at the feet of a gorgeous, sexually liberated, incredibly fun, lively, positive young woman.

She chose a deeply disabled and broken man out of love. She stayed through every temptation. She rejected every easy way out.

Nearly every single night for 17 years she has physically massaged and released the many knotted muscles that would otherwise make life nearly unbearable. Her unwavering and infallible devotion has made me believe in love. …made me believe in something you could call God.

Though I’ve done my very best to help create the dramatic, glamorously scandalous, entertaining, hilarious, and fun version of the adventurous life she loves (and can look back upon as a story well lived,) I could never repay what she’s given to me. I still wake up from pain every day, and sometimes I’m still bedridden, but I am so thankful now that my life is an incredible joy I savor every moment of with her.

Often, lying on the ground unable to get up because of disc damage, pulsing twitches running through the left side of my body, looking and the ceiling through the nerve damage based blur of my left eye, I see nothing but a beautiful future because of her. I literally laugh at the absurdity of it all. I can ignore all the pain life throws my way because true love truly conquers all. The fire she stokes in my heart burns it all away to clarity about what really matters.

Though she plays the devil in cosplay etc, if ever an angel’s feet have touched this earth, she is one. She chooses to be a sex worker and she saved my life.