On Work, Words, and Boundaries

I write from the edges of labor, identity, and power—where bodies are both commodified and sanctified, where autonomy is negotiated, and where survival is an art form. My work is a reckoning with these tensions: the performance of authority, the performance of surrender, the performance of self.

I began working in the sex industry in 2002, and I have spent over two decades studying its mechanics, myths, and realities. Sex work, like any other form of labor, exists within systems of power, economic structures, and cultural narratives that shape who is protected, who is exploited, and who is rendered invisible. I resist any simplistic framing—neither romanticizing nor pathologizing—because to do so flattens the complexity of lived experience.

I have also spent decades inside spiritual practice, first drawn to yoga as a teenager and later witnessing its transformation into a global commodity, a fractured lineage, an ideological battleground. I remain interested in the ways bodies are disciplined, exalted, and controlled under capitalism, whether through the ritualized spaces of a dungeon, a temple, or a marketplace.

On Names and Boundaries
Esme Providence Brown is a name I chose, a container for the work I put into the world. It allows me to engage with a criminalized, stigmatized profession while maintaining sovereignty over what is personal and what is public. I believe in the right to construct and protect one’s own narrative, to decide what is shared and what remains unsaid.

On the Work Ahead
I am currently writing a memoir, synthesizing years of experience into a political, cultural, and deeply personal critique of labor, sexuality, discipline, and survival. My work expands beyond memoir into critical essays, public discourse, and creative consulting, shaping the way sex workers, bodies, and economies of power are represented.

I believe in difficult conversations, radical nuance, and the refusal to be reduced to a headline. If you’re here, I hope you do too.

Let’s talk.