#Sex worker Olive Pearl reveals strangest request from client

Sex worker Olive Pearl, who has built a TikTok following by candidly speaking about her job, has an unconventional lifestyle. But she believes the taboo industry she’s found herself in can be a force for good in the world.

Speaking on news.com.au’s podcast “I’ve Got News For You”, Olive said the major draw for the industry at a young age was the money. She later tried teaching, but was unimpressed with the salary and returned to sex work.

She says a big part of her job is working with disabled clients, who she says shouldn’t be excluded from the topic of sex because of their disadvantages.

“I was just young and I wanted some extra cash That was honestly the reason and then I just started again because I just wanted to do something else,” she said. “I was doing teaching for a little while. And I have to say that, unfortunately, you‘re not fairly compensated for your time. But with sex work, I feel I definitely am.”

Olive said she began working with a man in Melbourne named Gavin, who has cerebral palsy and is non-verbal.

“He was really good when communicating what he was looking for,” she said.

“So he straight away said, Look, I’m in a wheelchair, would you see someone who is in a wheelchair? And I said, yes, no worries. So I went to see him at his place.

“He can communicate, obviously, via text. So if there was anything unclear, like we would just text each other, but he can also communicate with … So he‘s using his head to write the letters of the alphabet and capital letters into the air.”

Olive, who meets with Gavin almost weekly, says it’s important to break down the stigma surrounding sex with a disability.

“I personally don’t see that there’s a big difference [between sex with people who don’t have disabilities] because, at the end of the day, it is just another body it is a person like yeah, maybe a communication that’s a little bit different,” she said.

“Maybe the looks of the body are different. But then again, like everyone looks different anyway, it doesn’t matter, disability or not. And I would say maybe sometimes yes, you have to be a bit more creative.”

When asked what the weirdest thing she’s been asked to do with a client, Olive said she once encountered someone with a “balloon fetish.”

“It was it at an establishment so at a brothel and this guy walks in not once to book a girl. And he’s like, ‘Ah, I have a balloon fetish,’” she said.

“I’m like, that’s cool. No idea what it is, but open to it, open to anything. He brought in a little bag full of balloons, party balloons that you blow up in all different colors and Mickey Mouse ones shaped with little snowflakes on it.

“His excitement came from watching or he booked me and another girl and he wanted to watch us blow the balloons up to the point where they would almost burst. And that was, he was sitting at the edge of the bed watching two naked girls just blowing up balloons.

“And then when they popped, that was the thing for him. And he’s like ‘Oh, yeah, just have fun with it, throw them through the air.’ He would pop them by sitting on it and rubbing them on our boobs and just throwing them to each other.

“It was so funny with one and a half hours of literally just doing that. And that was it.”

An outdated law that has made sex work “burdensome” and “unworkable” has been overhauled in Victoria, with the state announcing in August it will decriminalize the industry.

As part of the decriminalization, sex workers will now have the same rights as other industries, with new reforms to increase safety, reduce stigma, and improve access to health and police services.

“The Victorian government’s recognition that sex work is work and that police are not suitable regulators of the sex industry is significant in its aspiration to afford the benefits of decriminalization already experienced by NSW and Northern Territory,” Australian sex workers associations Scarlett Alliance and Vixen Collective said in a joint statement.

“[It is] a signal to other jurisdictions in Australia that it is time to take an evidence and rights-based approach to sex work to support the safety, self-determination and wellbeing of sex workers and our communities.”