What We Did On Our Summer Vacation: First Jobs of Notorious Sex Educators
Every sex educator I know has gotten the question “so, how did you get started doing this?” at least a hundred times. Unfortunately, our answers rarely seem to be the answers that people really want to hear. What they wish we could say is that there is a defined “career path” for sex ed folks; that we all went to college and got Bachelors degrees in Hot Sex Making, then got a Masters degree in Teaching Hot Sex Making. Alternatively, I think they’d like for all of us to have sprung, fully formed, from the heads of Kinsey, or Masters & Johnson. Unfortunately, there are very few universities that offer any degree in sex education or counseling, and often what makes us easy to relate to & learn from is the fact that we don’t use a lot of psychological or medical jargon.
So, in an effort to give readers a real feel for the kind of work that is in sex educators backgrounds, I sent an email out recently asking people what their first job was. Please…read ‘em and weep (laughing, of course)!
Audacia Ray: “I was a horse-crazy kid (and a bunch of other sex educators were/are too – that’s another story entirely!), so all I wanted to do was be near horses. I spent all of my teens working on horse farms – first mucking stalls, feeding, doing barn chores (I even learned how to drive a tractor!), then I became an exercise rider and eventually trainer and riding instructor for kids. I even spent a few summers traveling and teaching horseback riding. The year after I moved to New York, I spent the summer in Manhattan, Kansas (aka The Little Apple).”
Barbara Carrellas: While Barbara started acting at age 14, she says she wasn’t always paid – so she defaults to babysitting as the first paid job. Of course, as smart and talented as she is, she quickly graduated to stage managing…and then, took over the world.
Jacq Jones: Jacq tells me that her first job – at 3 years of age! – was as a model…and she modeled until she was 12. Her first “grown up” job was waitressing – and then she moved on to the Executive Director & Lobbyist for Common Cause in MN.
Lee Harrington: “Though I held a burger king job for about 4 months, my first “real” job at the age of 16 was as a receptionist at the Wizards of the Coast Game Center in Seattle, WA. Wizards of the Coast are best known as the makers of “Magic: the Gathering,” the collectible card game that became affectionately and hatefully referred to as “Gamer Crack.” I was lovingly bombarded with a constant stream of Conan the Barbarian soundtrack music, while I would sit in my white shirt, black vest, black trousers, boots and slicked back hair underneath a 8ft tall Minotaur head. Giant beady eyes, they stare at me. Between calls and answering sweaty gamers questions about Robotech and Vampires, I would paint Warhammer miniatures for the store.
The Game Center was open 364/5 days a year… we were open new years eve, Christmas day, it was a tad crazy. But, on special event days where I was working head reception, I would wear 6″ silver stilleto heels under the desk. I will have to say this for me and my co-workers… some of us were a kinky lot. Warhammer measuring sticks made for mean canings, and one of my back alleyway blowjob partners and I are still causing trouble in the scene together 15 years after meeting through our gamer dorkiness.”
Midori: “My first pay for work was by a Japanese literary magazine for translation of an English nursery rhyme. My mother was a contributor and, if I remember correctly, the editor must have thought it would be delightful to have the well-known scholar’s bilingual daughter do a child’s translation of a piece meant for children. I was about 7 or 8 years old. The publisher paid me the same fee as an adult contributor and gave me a copy of the magazine. I have no idea what I spent the money on, but I know I was thrilled. To this day, when the publisher’s checks arrive, I’m thrilled – although the proportional work to pay ratio has changed considerably since then.”
Princess Kali: I don’t have a print quote from her, but she did disclose to me that her first job was at a McDonalds. I’m guessing that they didn’t let her wear her tiara, those jerks.
Reid Mihalko: “…my first true, file a W9 job was working at the Brown University cafeteria -the Ratty- to help pay for books and tuition. Then I worked for the Teamsters humping freight during the graveyard shift one summer, and, eventually, I began working security and barbacking at a local Rhode Island bar where I was finally given cultural license to talk about sex with strangers.”
Richard Wagner, PhD (aka Dr. Dick): “I was a Catholic Priest. Does that count as a first job?” (He’s serious, folks!)
Shanna Katz, M.Ed.: “My first job? I had two actually. A combo of working 15-20 hours a week in a theatrical costume and make-up shop named Disguises, and teaching Hebrew at Sunday School for my temple. Odd? Yes. The Disguises job I got because I was a total theatre nerd, and love love loved anything to do with it. Being able to work with costumes, teaching people how to apply Ben Nye and Mehron, playing around with fake blood (I went home feeling like Lady MacBeth more than once), trying on outfits and wearing them to staff events? It was fabulous. Making $6/hr and occasionally working 9+ hour shifts (oh so illegal, as I was 15 at the time) wasn’t always the greatest, but being able to get a 20% discount on products I wanted was pretty awesome. I worked there for almost a year until I graduate HS at 16 and headed to college.
On the other hand, Sunday School Hebrew was a hoot. I was too agnostic to teach the religious studies part, so they stuck me teaching Hebrew to the advanced 4th graders. Now, little kids love me, but I’m not so big on children, so going here on a weekly basis to teach a langauge I couldn’t speak fluently to 8 and 9 years olds was always interesting. Good thing I’m more patient than I thought I would be…and my advanced group wound up out reading any group of 4th graders in the history of the temple, and got bumped up to the 6th grade Hebrew reading group. It was a good way for me to be involved with my Jewish heritage without actually attending temple, which I wasn’t really into at the time. Like the Disguises job, I kept it until I was 16 and headed to college.”
Sarah Sloane (me!): “My first job was at a shop called “The Fudgery”, in Richmond, VA. We made fudge on big marble top tables, and had “Showtimes”, where we sang and made bad puns and poured & turned the fudge until it was solid. I was 16, working with a bunch of art school nerds & queer folk from VCU, getting a paycheck, and learning about The Big World. It was also my first lesson in public humiliation – there’s nothing like singing, at full volume, to total strangers, songs like “It’s a grand old fudge, it’s a high-flying fudge, and we want you to try some today…it’s the emblem of the work we love, the home of the weird and the crazed”.
Posted: July 19th, 2010
at 9:45am by Sarah Sloane
Categories: Guest Essays,teaching
Comments: 4 comments
4 Responses to 'What We Did On Our Summer Vacation: First Jobs of Notorious Sex Educators'
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My first real paid job was a barn stable hand…. Cleaning stalls, running the horses, feeding, bathing, hauling hay… You name it I did it…
Deanna
19 Jul 10 at 10:04 am
My first job? Well, I suppose the very first one was when I was 8 or 9 years old and I split the perforated pages from a dot matrix printer for my accountant father. I think he paid me a quarter for every tax return I split. I used a ruler, and was fairly clumsy and slow.
Twenty years later my father laughed in raucous disbelief when I told him I was becoming a sex educator.
Sorry Dad, but I love my job!
Robin
19 Jul 10 at 12:09 pm
My first paid job was teaching skiing to kids ages 7-12 with occasional days of teaching the 4-6 year olds. I did that from ages 16-21 on the weekends and school holidays during the winter. None of my co-workers would be surprised to find out that I’m now teaching about sex, given our conversations when the kids weren’t around.
Jo
19 Jul 10 at 8:48 pm
My first job was working for the high school library doing a catalog inventory of all the books inside. I think I worked there two summers in a row.
It wasn’t until I was 17 and in college that I took my first class in Sex Education but I had the highest grade in the class!
Metis
29 Jul 10 at 1:22 pm