WORDS AND PHOTOS by PENELOPE DARIO
I met Allie Oops (she/they) years ago through a mutual friend while she was visiting New York from the West Coast. Four years later, we met up at the Ace hotel in downtown LA to talk about the evolution of their career in the adult industry as an intimacy coordinator for both porn and mainstream media. Although I clearly remembered her disarming charm and razor-sharp wit, I had forgotten just how staggeringly tall they were: towering over me at almost 6’4”, she gave me a big hug before we made our way upstairs.
Allie’s first foray into sex work was roughly a decade ago. She was in New York and struggling to make ends meet running the East Coast Lifeline for a well-respected non-profit company specializing in suicide prevention for queer youth. Rather than getting a bartending job that would require her to deal with drunk people all night after caring for suicidal people all day, she opted for answering a Craigslist—this was a time before FOSTA/SESTA and the removal of the infamous classified section from the website.