Molly Sinn - Ohio, U.S.

Molly’s couch and workspace

“I kind of realised this might be more serious than we all originally thought and this might not be a minor thing.” So says Molly Sinn about her decision to postpone her tour on Bella’s Ranch in Nevada, the brothel in which she works. Molly has asthma, and so when she was due to fly out in mid-March, the once-whispering, now increasing mentions of Covid-19 were enough to keep her at home.

“I knew if that were to happen in Nevada, I would be stuck in the brothel with no way to make money and no way to return home until my return flight, so I made the decision to stay home and spend some time with my family.”

Isolating with her husband and two children in Ohio, Molly says that her usual ups and downs have been exacerbated by the claustrophobia. The other day she woke up in a foul mood and was snippy with her husband. The neighbour was in the driveway talking loudly on his phone and she lost her temper at him, and so stormily drove to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through to try and unwind. They gave her a cold coffee, which was, in her words, the sprinkles on the whole day.

Her telling of the story is much more colourful, and she apologises for “swearing like a sailor” and hopes I’m not offended. I’m not. She’s funny, talkative and to-the-point. She says it is this dryness in humour that she worries doesn’t come across well online. When a customer comes in, she has the opportunity to read their body language and they can read hers, and her snarkiness comes across as intended – a good-natured, if sharp, banter. She relies on people being comfortable with this.

Now, running an OnlyFans account from her bedroom, she doesn’t know if people “get her”. Clients pay a subscription to receive content, and she streams videos to her clients from her bedroom. She laughs that she is often left masturbating, wondering what they want. She thought there’d be feedback, banter, some sort of demand. Instead, radio-silence.

“I know a lot of girls that have an immense skill at getting that profit through long distance or online.” But she doesn’t count herself as one of them. I had come across Molly in a Reddit Ask Me Anything, one of her forays into increasing her presence in the online world. The format is a largely unmoderated questions and answers session where inquires range from the genuinely curious to thinly veiled insults. This, she explains, is part of her transition as an advocate for sex work:

“A lot of the time, [the media] talk about sex workers, but never to them. I’ve been trying for months to get some girls to agree to do it, and that AMA was kind of my way of like, ‘Alright I can’t get anyone to do it but I can at least open a conversation between the general public about what it is, how I feel about it, and how I deal with it’”.

Planning a YouTube channel and other interviews, Molly says she has been called brave for weathering the derision that often comes with talking about her work, and the Reddit thread proved her point to a tee. Most comments that were targeted at her seemed to roll off, with her explaining “You can’t insult me worse than I’ve insulted myself and I own that. We’re more critical of ourselves than anyone else could be.” When her husband came in the crosshairs however, she quickly shut offenders down – recounting it, her voice resembles a growl that clearly conveys ‘You don’t fuck with my family’.

One insult levelled at her in the guise of curiosity asked if it made her angry that “prettier girls” made more money than she could by using the Twitch streaming platform.

“No, I celebrate that, I wish I could figure it out. I’m a millennial, so half of my childhood had little-to-no technology. I feel very old trying to figure out how these things work. Trying to figure out the platforms, to figure out why it is or why people pay to watch a video of me masturbating online when you could pay to just have sex with me directly, so I have a hard time making that content because I feel like I’m ripping people off. I feel like a fraud. I wish I could figure it out and be better.”

Compared to some of her colleagues however, she counts herself fortunate. She tells of two girls that are stuck in the brothel in which she works. One of the women was on her first tour, an incredibly bad-start to her career as a courtesan.

“A lot of the girls work so often so that they don’t have to work for as many years in order to get to their goals. A lot of them don’t take money out of their income to get permanent residence but just cycle between the houses, because we live there when we’re off the clock. I know quite a few girls who cycle between and don’t have an apartment or a home, and to my knowledge, those are the girls that are living in the brothel houses [now], not just in [Bella’s].”

She is warm towards Bella, the owner of the brothel, for allowing her two colleagues to stay rent-free for the duration. While there was no income compensation available, they had somewhere to live for the time being. Not everyone she mentions is in such a position however:

“I’ve seen a lot of sex workers that are on the illegal side.  Some girls don’t have a choice but to continue to book clients and parties to get through this time. Unfortunately, there’s always going to be people that have shit to say - I don’t think the girls giving them shit about booking are doing it from a bad place, but are genuinely concerned about how it will impact things moving forward or even their own personal safety.”

The lack of a projected timeline feeds into this issue. While she advocates for a return to normal, she doesn’t know whether this should take one month or twelve. Once ‘normal’ returns, neither does she know if this will see a slow climb from dead-zero, or a sudden influx of customers who have been pent up inside.

“I think all of the anxiety comes from not knowing of the future. It’s a perfect time to be anxious. I  can’t file for unemployment because I don’t qualify with a legal job.” At a societal level, she’s very aware of this pressure.

“I think it’s a bit of a split in America where there are extreme introverts like me, or those extreme extroverts that thrive in human interaction, so it’s pretty split in how people are handling it. Some are doing really well and some really badly. There was some flak over it, but it’s a real thing to address, in that unfortunately in not being able to work, we are going to see rising rates of depression and possibly suicide. It’s in our human nature to want to do things, and contribute something, and we’re in a time where the only way to help is to not. And it’s very contradictory to what human nature is, and I worry about that. I hope we can figure out a way to have lifelines for people that are hitting that point.”

This interest in society, in psychology and in the broader picture is brought home in her life, talking about her own mental health. Diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, her moods are characterised by manic highs followed by drops in mood.

“I’m having a lot more rapid cycling. I will start off manic and have three hours through my afternoon where I’m depressed and then hitting manic again. Cycling three or four times a day through mania and depression…I do well away from people, and even I’m struggling with it. It’s a hard time.”

She laughs, saying she avoids wrecking her marriage through these hurdles by taking up hobbies such as baking and gardening (“That is how you stay the most attractive in a relationship, you just keep baking and don’t eat it.”) as well as going through her stockpile of books. Beneath the joviality, there is a serious concern however, both at a societal level, and for her own family.

Still, she seems determined to soldier on. A fervent reader, she mentions one text she had read examining presidents with varying mental disorders. The book suggested that these leaders often thrived in times of conflict, as a result of having weathered personal chaos and crises so often in their own lives. Clearly resonating, Molly says things have been mild so far, for which she is grateful “It’s been little bloops instead of mountains or valleys. I can definitely see where there’s potential for bigger issues though” She lights up again, taking solace from the turmoils of Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Jefferson: “I try to see the bright side of everything and take it for what it is” She pauses before laughing “and whatever you can’t affect, fuck it.”

Molly is a long-time fan of The Smiths, and has been listening to their melancholic music throughout lockdown.

Sam Cox