Anika's Blog

I’m going to start posting a photo every week, just to fill in any narcissism that my blog may be lacking. Some of them will be familiar to those of you who’ve been following my site for a while, some will be new.

This is one of the pictures that was in my gallery when I first launched my site, six and a half years ago. I went through all the photos I had of myself and picked out the ones I thought might be ok for an escort site. I didn’t know whether I should include this one. I wasn’t exactly sure what people were looking for when they chose an escort, but I thought it might have something to do with being polished and sophisticated. The photo is very nice, but would clients really want to know what I looked like without make up? I put it up anyway, and soon learned that there’s a big market for people who are happy being themselves. This was one of my most popular pictures, but when I streamlined my gallery I thought I should leave out my older photos. I don’t look much different now (except my hair’s a lot longer), but seven years is rather out of date.

This was taken in September 2003, just after I turned 20, just before I started stripping, and just as I was leaving the brain weevils of my late teens behind and working out that I was a good person to be. I went to Manchester to visit my new boyfriend, brought along my new camera, and this is one of the pictures he took.

© Anika Mae 2003

(I go to most of my bookings without make up now, so I come out looking as fresh as when I went in.)

(Sorry I stalled a little on these. I’m answering my backlog in order; three more questions at the moment. Feel free to keep asking if you have more questions.)

I’ve worked as an escort for about six and a half years now, and during one of those years I was back at university trying to complete my biology degree. I’d previously withdrawn from the course for two years because it wasn’t going well and wasn’t doing me any good. I returned with a better mental state but worse study habits, so I gave up completely and thought maybe one day I’d grow up enough to do it properly. I’m not good at motivating myself and have never really had ambitions, especially career ambitions. I chose a subject I enjoyed, but I just didn’t put in the necessary time and effort.

So, I’m still quite aimless, which sometimes makes me uncomfortable. I do think escorting is a brilliant job, and since it hasn’t started to wear on me yet I think I’ll be happy doing it for quite a long time. To be honest it’s difficult to think of moving on to something else unless I actually have to, since I don’t think any other job would be as much fun or allow me as much freedom as I have now.

Ask me anything

Wow that was a lot of posts on Wednesday. It’s Thursday morning now but I’ve set this to publish on Friday because you’re probably sick of me right now.

I’ve been getting beetroot in my veg boxes for the last few weeks. For all my childhood I thought beetroot was horrible because of those plastic-wrapped pickled slices, but that’s not how it has to be! Unpickled beetroot is sweet with a bit of an earthy flavour, and is lovely raw or cooked with little or no extra flavouring needed. My favourite ways of eating it are roasted with a little salt, or grated raw with apple. The salad option is easier (at least now that I have a food processor). I had fennel too, so that went in as well.

I wanted some potato wedges, because why wouldn’t you? And then there needs to be something proteiny. I noticed the ripe avocados in the fruit bowl, which are a source of lovely fats rather than protein, but they made me think of the edemame that I had in the freezer.

Edemame is (are?) green soya beans. In Japan they eat them straight out of the pods as a snack, and you can usually have a bowl like that in Japanese restaurants. You can also buy them frozen with or without pods from East Asian food shops, and Birdseye produces shelled ones (labelled “soya beans”), which you might be able to find with the frozen veg in supermarkets. They have a mild flavour that’s best with a little salt, and I really like them with a bit of onion.

This is what I made, based on the quantities I had. It came out as 3-4 portions. Could have done with a bit more of the green one.

Potato Wedges

Wash 1kg potatoes and chop into wedges of approximately even thickness. Put them in a bowl, preferably with extra space for mixing. Add enough vegetable oil to coat, then generous quantities of dried mixed herbs, garlic powder and onion powder, and be a bit less generous with some salt and pepper. Mix it all up, spread over a baking tray or roasting tin, and put in the oven on a high temperature for um, half an hour?

Beetroot salad

1 medium and one small beetroot, washed, peeled, topped and tailed
1 bulb fennel, slightly old-looking outer leaf removed
1 lovely Royal Gala apple. Should have been two, but I ate the other one
A splash of lemon juice (probably wouldn’t have needed it if I still had the other apple)
A few twists of salt
A wee bit of cayenne pepper (chilli powder would be fine too)
Raw sunflower and pumpkin seeds (optional)

Grate all the grateable things. Mix together with seasonings. Add seeds if you like.

Avocado and edemame salad

Halve, stone and peel two ripe avocados. For each half, cut in half again down the length, then slice across to get medium-sized bits. Put the bits in a bowl with some shelled edemame that’s been boiled for a few minutes and salted. (I think I used about 1.5 cups. I would have used more, but I didn’t have much of the bag of shelled ones left so I topped up with some that were still in pods, but I didn’t want to use a lot of those because they’re nice as a snack straight out of the pod.) Add a little finely chopped onion (I used about half a shallot, I think spring onion would have been good if I’d had some). Dress with a bit of lime juice, mix it all up and add some more salt if you like.

Beetroot salad, potato wedges, edemame and avocado salad (these were the leftovers I had for lunch the next day).

So, a few you have seen it. What do you think? If the views drop off after a day or two so it’s only making money for adultwork then I’ll take it down, but if you liked it and would like to see another, I’ll probably do that and let you know on here again. To be honest I wasn’t sure if it worked after I’d seen it a couple of dozen times while I was picking the clip and trying to make the file as small as possible while still looking good. (And I had to mute it because I don’t have a license to use the music I was dancing too.)

I was thinking recently that it would be fun to do a full pole dance/striptease recording at my friend’s studio and have it as a rental movie. That would be much better value: £2.99 minimum price whatever the file size, and I’d be credited for each view. I couldn’t leave that silent though, and the minimum is 15 minutes, which is a lot of music to get permission for! I’m not sure it would be worth the effort of licensing, never mind the expense. Let me know if you like the idea though, and especially if you know a small band who might let me use one of their tracks. (I’m pretty flexible about what I dance to, but it needs to have a good beat and… feeling. It’s hard to describe.) If I could help out with one of their projects in exchange that might be nice.

Those were never part of my site; I’ve got all sorts of stuff on the server that I just put there because I wanted to share them with people at some point.

I wasn’t much of a collector, but I stumbled across a community where people shared old porn and erotica, and followed it for a while. People generally used free image hosting services and the pictures were always being taken down, so I offered ftp-access hosting space for anyone who wanted to share public domain images. One person took me up on it and requested the username 20s40s. He’s responsible for all the stuff in that directory.

I still like the images, they’re different in some ways from the sex that sells today, but I lost interest in viewing them regularly. I’ve got a few on my walls though, and if I get an incall flat of my own at some point I’ll probably have fun finding the best vintage erotica and pulp fiction covers to decorate with.

By the way, if you’re in the Brighton area and interested in old porn (or vintage cinema), make a note of Silver Wednesdays. It’s a cool little vintage film night in Brighton’s oldest theatre, and during this season it’s hosted a monthly evening of vintage porn. Next Wednesday is the last date before they break for the summer (and it’s not a porny one), but I expect there’ll be more of that when they start again later in the year.

Ask me anything

I had fun with the pink for a while, especially when I first unveiled it at a fetish club. It was quite a sceney club and there were people with all sorts of tattoos and odd piercings who liked to hang off the ceiling with meathooks in their backs, but they just couldn’t get enough of my little dye job.

I kept it up for a year and a half, faithfully bleaching it every month and dying it every week, and for a while it made me happy every time I looked in my pants. These things can’t last forever though, and eventually I decided to try the natural look again. I’m happy with that at the moment, and also with not spending an hour a month (I think that’s what it added up to) awkwardly walking/sitting around bottomless while trying not to smudge the bleach or dye.

I probably won’t go back to dying it regularly, but if nothing keeps me away from the Naked Bike Ride this year I’ll do it then, so if you’d like to see it up close, make a booking during the month (or three weeks to be sure) following the 12th of June.

As for heart-shaped, I’m afraid that was just your imagination. ;)

Ask me anything

I’ve just uploaded my first video clip to adultwork, in case anyone’s interested. It’s super-tame, but I thought the bit before I took my bra off was one of the sexier ones. I wrote a relatively long description which doesn’t seem to appear anywhere, so I’ve copied it here.

This is a clip from the same source as the “striptease 1″ album in my private gallery, but it’s better when I’m moving! There’s some gyrating, some close up boobies, a bit on the pole and a bum in your face, all in tiny bra and proper stockings and suspenders, for less than 1/20th the price of a lapdance, and no-one to get prissy if you get a hard-on! This is an experiment: because of payment policy for movie clips I don’t think it’ll be worth having them, so view this one quick before it (probably) goes away.

So yeah, AW keeps all the money from the first time it’s viewed in any one day and to be honest I don’t think that many people are going to care about me in my underwear, so I’ll probably take it down in a few days. Have a look if you’re interested, it’s only 40p.

Nope, this isn’t something that one of my readers was desperate to know, it’s one of the default questions that appears when you sign up.

Star Trek, easy. I wasn’t alive in the 70s and I didn’t grow up around any adults who were into Star Wars, so I didn’t watch any of the films until just before The Phantom Menace came out*, and I think I was cooking or something at the same time so it didn’t make much impact.

I was born too late for the original Star Trek too, but my friends were into Voyager, so that was the one I started watching. (Yes, I know.) One of my first online communities was a Star Trek mailing list, which is where I met my second boyfriend (who thought he was a vampire and an Arthurian knight), but first it led me to fanfiction, which is how I ended up reading my first lesbian erotica in the form of Voyager slash. (Janeway/Seven is the most popular, Torres/Seven is better.)

It sounds like I was quite a Trekkie**, but I was really just a young nerd who was on the internet back when it was mostly full of nerds. Pretty soon I went to university, didn’t have a TV for a while, and got out of the Star Trek habit. I got back into it a couple of years ago with the reruns on Virgin1 and it became my easy comfort telly. I was pretty sad when that went away but not at all sad enough to replace it with DVDs. I did get season one of the original series though, because I’d never managed to see it on TV and they’re classic. Still working through that one. Some of those are pretty bad.

——

*That must have been when I was 17, because I just remembered that my first boyfriend sent me an email titled “The Phantom Menace” in response to something I’d said a few hours after losing my virginity. Now that’s something I hadn’t thought about for a while. (The email, not the act.)

**And while I don’t consider myself one, I don’t mind if you do. I’m definitely not a Trekker, though.

Ask me anything

I’ve got one of those Formspring things that the kids are talking about probably bored of already. Seems like this is a good way of getting some more posts in without having to work out what would be the least dull thing to write about.

So, post your questions over here, or pop them in the box below, and the answers will appear here in my new Q&A category. Ask me some good ones please or I might have to resort to answering the dull wank-fodder that’s bound to come in.

It’s finally spring! It feels like it’s here now that I’m waking up earlier and getting some cardiovascular exercise other than shagging.

Tuesday is my usual day at Hen Heaven, and yesterday I cycled there and back for the first time this year. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea since I’d just realised I had another bloody cold, but I’d been looking forward to it and I feel fine today, so I don’t think I used up any energy that I needed for making white blood cells. It’s 27 miles total which isn’t a lot, but my bike is old and cheap, and it’s only about the fourth time I’ve ever ridden that far in a day. (I didn’t know if I’d have the energy to ride there, do some work and ride back; I got around to trying last year just before the days got too short.) I didn’t get home until after seven and then I spent most of the evening eating, but my legs feel totally fine today! So does my bum!

Last week I rode there but not back, which probably helped. I went to see Les Ballets Trockadero De Monte Carlo with Linda in the evening, so she took me and the bike back to Brighton. Linda saw them for the first time two years ago and thinks they’re about the best thing ever (though they do come behind turkeys, chickens, and possibly motorbikes), so she bought about 10 tickets when they went on sale last year and took as many volunteers as she could to see them. It was pretty impressive and quite funny, but I think I missed a lot of the humour by not being into ballet at all. I didn’t even see Black Swan.

Some of you know that I volunteer at Hen Heaven, and if you’ve been to the site you know that they need a new fence. They really do. Foxes are always a problem if you have chickens around, but last summer a tame fox appeared on the scene (it had probably been fed by some people until it wasn’t scared of humans any more), and since it wasn’t scared to approach the barn, it caught at least one bird a day. Since then they’ve all had to stay indoors, because it’s too unsafe to let them go out. We’d like to let the birds out again this summer, and Linda wants to start work soon, because things need to be cut down first and she doesn’t want to do that while the wild birds are nesting.

So, it would be lovely if some of you would go and donate. I’m offering stuff to people who do! If you want to take me up on it, please include a note with your donation that says, “To Anika”, and then anything to identify yourself. Your name (if it’s something common like John, please add an extra description), or your favourite quote, or whatever, just keep it clean! Only your message and donation amount will be passed on to me. Once you’ve donated you can send me a message to say what’s in your note, and we can go from there.

Here are your potential rewards. Ask me if you’d like a package!

£10 – one photo (of me, unless you request something else) taken especially for you. Requests fulfilled at my discretion.

£15 – a pair of knickers.

£20 – video chat on Skype. Talk about whatever you like.

£30 – a toy (I went a bit crazy at LoveHoney a few years ago and there’s several that haven’t made it into my regular box).

£60 – a social meet (e.g. lunch, dinner or drinks)

£100 – an extra hour added to a booking of at least two hours. So you donate £100, pay me £300, and get three hours playtime with me. Yes it costs you the same, but it’ll make you feel even better.

I know this is quite strange and random, but it’s worth a try.

Sorry email subscribers, it’s not fixed. [Edit - no wait, it is fixed! Welcome back.]

In unrelated news, now I know why someone called my work phone the other night wanting a hotel room. It seems some Greek guy who runs a hotel in Castle something tried to have calls forwarded to his mobile, and put in my number instead. I wonder how long before someone manages to get hold of him and tell him. (I haven’t told anyone that if they need a shag in Brighton, they’ve come to the right place.)

Edit: that hotelier’s been sort of useful! Someone just called and asked, “excuse me what kind of business is? I have the number saved in my phone but I’ve forgotten what it’s for.” I’m pretty sure he called me deliberately for a bit of saucy explanation (seriously, people do this), but when someone does that and you ask “oh were you looking for a hotel in Castle something”, they get confused and say yes, so I told him I couldn’t help him. Once I’ve stopped getting hotel calls I’m going to tell anyone with that line that I sell reusable menstrual pads on Etsy.