An Interview with Sera Miles of PEP

Sera Miles is CEO of People Exchanging Power (PEP), a phone sex service that specializes in kink, fetish, and BDSM, where the women answering the phone are using real pictures of themselves — whom you see is who you call!

What else has she done? So much! Sera has also spoken at human sexuality courses and conventions, and has taught workshops all across the United States. She co-founded New Mexico’s Sex Workers Outreach Project chapter, organized Albuquerque’s events for the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers (aka Red Umbrella Day), has spoken at the March for Trans Rights in Albuquerque, and spearheaded the #periodpositive project.

Sera and I spoke over Zoom one afternoon, and I really appreciated Sera’s candidness and honesty — I can truly say that Sera is an inspiration to me both personally and professionally, and the genuine passion behind her work shows in everything she does.

Zoë Ligon: In your own words, who are you? What are you passionate about? What are you up to?

Sera Miles: In addition to what can be gleaned from my long bio or short bio — the identifiers that are super important to me are: queer, Iranian-American, CEO, that I own PEP and that I’ve been a sex worker for 20 years.

Other identifiers that are important to me are being a D type (the dominant side of the D/s slash) being on the asexual spectrum, being a poet, being someone who writes, edits, and creates and teaches, and shares knowledge. I’m super passionate about anti-racism work, especially in terms of anti-Blackness. As a non-Black person of color, that’s a place where I try to be loud and I feel a responsibility to be loud.

A lot of my life is about creating safer spaces, whether it’s just me and the client, or me teaching a class, or me being in an environment like this. I want somebody to be able to read what we talk about today, and feel a little safer about themselves, their identity, and the sanctity of their desires.

ZL: That’s beautiful, and I definitely see how you incorporate all those things into your work. PEP is one of those many hats you wear. How and when did PEP begin?

SM: PEP began in 1986 through its original founder and former owner as a series of support groups. The former owner started PEP here in New Mexico. She traveled around the country for about two years, founding BDSM fetish support groups in other cities.

Just for a little BDSM history, there’s Society of Janus, and then the Eulenspiegel Society (TES) in the 70s — and of note, Pat Bond, the founder of TES died yesterday. Big loss for our community. The former owner and the creator of PEP gleaned so much from attending TES meetings, and it helped her come up with the name People Exchanging Power. If there had been no TES, there would have been no PEP — and also would have been no NMFL, which is the organization I ran for about six years, doing kink activism and education.

It’s a momentous day to talk about this. I got to meet Pat Bond in 2012. He was so gracious. So many people who were pioneers in the BDSM, fetish leather world, were so kind, open, and gracious. They really wanted things to be inclusive, and for people to feel like they could have an outlet and feel safe in themselves. Doing this kind of work, the former owner realized that a lot of people needed to talk. In 1988, she started charging for conversation. She started charging people to call her and talk about questions like: Why am I gay? Why am I in this dead-end marriage? Why do I like feet?

By 1990, the business was officially incorporated. I came to work at PEP in 2002 as a phone girl. I was 26 years old and was a grad student. I had done sex work for about a year in Baltimore and New York. This was, for me, a way to not have to take out loans during grad school. I had a teaching assistantship and it barely paid anything. Doing sex work through PEP allowed me to have a much nicer overall lifestyle than a lot of the people I was going to graduate school with. By the time I finished graduate school, I applied for a couple of teaching jobs, creative writing, English Lit, that kind of stuff. I was looking at how much you were going to get paid, where you had to live, and what you had to do and I was like, I am not doing this.

I stayed doing sex work, to be able to do my writing, to be able to do other things that I cared about, and to have a life with more freedom. I took ownership of PEP on December 8, 2015. I’ve owned PEP now for a little over five years. We are stronger than we have been in a very long time.

ZL: It sounds like a really ideal passing of the torch, having been somebody who worked there for so many years beforehand. PEP as an organization is older than I am!

And thinking about our elders, we’ve lost a lot of people in the last year. It’s so difficult — these people are such major players in our lives and in our community. It’s devastating to lose the people who paved the way for us to do what we do.

What do you love to write about? Is it erotica or educational non-fiction?

SM: My background is writing poetry, and I’ve written a lot of fiction. I’ve never really written essays and non-fiction. That’s something I keep wanting to do and then I scratch stuff out and I just write poems. I didn’t write for about nine years. I finished graduate school, I was working, I got married, I had a baby. My daughter was diagnosed with cancer right after she turned two years old, she had leukemia. We went through over two years of chemo. She’s great now, she’s 13, she’s amazing. Her dad and I divorced, and there was so much upheaval in my life. Surviving day-to-day was all I could do.

A few years ago, I was like, I haven’t written in so long. I miss it. It took a long time to get back on the horse. I want to credit the woman who wrote Sex with Shakespeare, Jillian Keenan. She had posted something on Twitter, like over two years ago, and she was like: What do you think about a challenge? Like, walk two miles daily, write 500 words. I was really down for that. That got me back on the horse. Kudos to Jillian Keenan, because I would not be producing any poetry now if it weren’t for her.

ZL: How did phone sex play a role during that time, or was it not something you were doing?

SM: I’ve done phone sex continuously, for 19 of the almost 20 years that I’ve done sex work. Even at times where I wasn’t really working, there might be a client or two I would take. Phone sex is awesome in that it uses all of my skills. I have a degree in theater, a master’s in creative writing, and I get to perform, get to tell stories, and I get to use my rich vocabulary.

I think I tried to blame it for a little bit, saying I wasn’t writing because I’m using all my creative energy. That was bullshit, I wasn’t writing because I became afraid to tell the truth. There had been so much harm and trauma in my life as an adult, from my daughter’s illness to trouble in the marriage and some things that happened afterward. I was terrified to be truthful. Once I worked through that there was a wealth of creative energy to give to my clients, to give to my own work, to give to the world.

We all hit a bottom point. If we are people who are attuned to giving, and not paying attention to reciprocity, we hit that bottom. The minute you think you’ve hit that bottom, you find out there’s a little more inside you. It’s just kind of this bottomless well. Yeah, water gets low, but there’s always a little more. I’m finding that creative work is like this when I deal with the actual hindrances to doing it.

ZL: I 100% can identify with what you’re saying. Especially in the age of everything being documented and recorded on the internet, it can feel safer to just keep things to yourself. When we feel the strength to speak again, it’s wonderful.

You’ve been doing phone sex before, during, and after this huge online renaissance. Obviously, the internet’s been around for decades and decades, but popular creator-driven platforms like OnlyFans are only like five years old. How has sex work changed for you throughout the years?

SM: In 2002, when I started in the industry, there were lots of other companies similar to PEP, but the women didn’t all use their real pictures, or maybe they weren’t BDSM/fetish-focused, but we had competitors. NiteFlirt was very new, Keen.com had phone sex at the time, and they were the new people around. Other little phone sex companies, boutique ones like PEP, were trying to be competitive, but most of them folded. Part of why PEP survived is that it held to what it is about; we’re relatable, we use our authentic pictures, we are knowledgeable about these specific areas, and we have codes of conduct. At PEP, you’ve got this customer guarantee that we are going to do our best to fulfill your needs. If I can’t do it, I’m going to see if one of my colleagues can.

In terms of practical stuff, when I started doing phone sex I had to get a second landline installed in my studio apartment. I didn’t have caller ID, because that cost extra. We had very strict rules about returning client calls because people didn’t have private cell phones. We still have those strict rules at PEP because we try to err on the side of caution.

Now, most people have cell phones, and they text you. There’s so much ease of communication that did not exist up until the last five or six years. That makes the job easier in a lot of ways. It can be a hindrance, in that people will blow up your phone, they’ll send you 10,000 text messages, but now, too, we can block people.

Some of the Ladies have done this for a long time, like me. When new people come into the industry and they don’t have a lot of sex work or phone sex experience, we’re like, you have no idea how it used to be! We have all these tools at our disposal now to control who can contact us, how and when, and it’s so great.

ZL: I’m so happy to hear that overall the internet has helped and not hindered! Clearly, there is a huge demand for sexy audio. We see all these audio porn sites popping up now, it almost reminds me of ASMR — this audio thing that gives you a physical feeling in your body. The things that make phone sex attractive have not changed at all. It’s intimacy with physical safety and potentially more anonymity.

I see the site says, “what you see, is what you get” and I don’t think many porn sites have a guarantee like that!

SM: Part of what’s important to us at PEP is showing the client that you can be a regular person. Kinky people are not some kind of fantastical idea, we’re relatable, we can put on the latex head to toe, but we take it off and have to take out the trash, just like everyone else.

We want to put them at ease and say, I’m willing to show you myself. People on other sites sometimes use fake pictures because they play multiple characters, and that’s a necessity of the kind of work they’re doing. I certainly play characters upon request, but Sera Miles is not a character. She is basically everything Sarah Azizi, my given name, my legal name, is. Always at her best.

ZL: Are there any distinct phases where you’re like, whoa, everybody’s requesting this one specific thing? Are there any distinct trends like that?

SM: A friend and colleague of mine, Mistress Twilight, feels like there’s a zeitgeist every few years. During the Trump era, she felt we were getting much more conversation around incest, fantasies, and memories, etc. I don’t think she’s wrong, but I don’t know that I pay attention to that. So much of what I do, day-in and day-out with clients does not change. It might just be what we’re paying attention to. To me it’s always about meeting the client where he’s at, figuring out if he wants to be pushed a little bit, or if he wants to kind of stay where he’s at in terms of fantasy.

One thing I have noticed is right after Trump was elected most of my blue-leaning client’s fantasies ricocheted up. They got more intense. If they were into masochism, it got more severe. I’m curious to see if I see that with red-leaning clients in the next year.

ZL: Perhaps it’s a healthy distraction of sorts, or more time spent up in your head. That’s a really interesting observation, especially with incest and fantasies surrounding that. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse from my father and I’m always wanting to talk about why stuff like that is a fantasy. I think a lot of people are afraid to talk about this very real and prominent trend.

SM: Often, when folks have those desires, they are rooted in early childhood sexual trauma or teenage sexual trauma. I’ve played people’s mothers, aunts, and horrible teachers. I’ve played those roles for clients a lot. It’s something I love to do in my work.

I was raped when I was unconscious and blacked out at 18 years old. That’s a very different experience. Something fulfilling in my work for me is when people do bring me their childhood sexual trauma, and they want to talk about it. They usually very timidly ask if I can roleplay with them, and I’m so ready. I find so often what they really want to roleplay is rescue, is kindness, is ‘I’m not trying to hurt you.’

ZL: It’s really not that different in concept from what I do with my therapist, as far as guided meditation goes. It really reminds me of getting back into the headspace of, what do you need to tell your childhood-self? A lot of us are fully blocking out our childhoods or partially don’t remember. Even just being able to envision that childhood-self really is a healing step.

I’m really glad you’re able to speak to that. I’m glad people feel comfortable coming to you with those questions about trauma. Are most of the clients you work with cis-men?

SM: Absolutely, we very occasionally will have a cis-woman call. Often, when we have a cis-woman call, she is queer, or otherwise not heteronormatively identified and living in a place where she feels like she can’t be out. Very occasionally it’s someone who wants to learn how to dominate her husband or partner or wants some reassurance about her fantasies.

Almost without fail, our clients identify as heterosexual and cis, occasionally they identify as bisexual. Sometimes it’s very exciting because we know they’re kind of ready to go a little harder because they’re already okay with establishing themselves as non-heteronormative. It’s critical to me that I meet the person where they’re at. One of the things that make what I do not therapy, even though it can be therapeutic, is there’s an orgasm attached. They’re calling to do the orgasm part of thinking about their past if that’s the direction we’re going.

ZL: When somebody calls in for the first time, is there an intake process over email or over the phone? Do some people just dive right in?

SM: We pretty much dive right in!

We do offer a $29 10-minute Consultation Call. It’s something very new that we’re doing. We didn’t really expect them to sell, but they have a little bit. The client wants 10-minutes to talk about XYZ. Then he wants to have a three-to-five-minute break. We hang up and then call back in role. That has been fun.

We do offer a $29 10-minute Consultation Call. It’s something very new that we’re doing. We didn’t really expect them to sell, but they have a little bit. The client wants 10-minutes to talk about XYZ. Then he wants to have a three-to-five-minute break. We hang up and then call back in role. That has been fun.

ZL: How long do calls tend to last?

SM: Most calls are an hour flat. We do the metrics on this every year. The next most popular is 45 minutes flat. And then we start to get into whether it’s 30 minutes or two hours, there’s a little more array.

When a client calls PEP, he calls directly. He’s not going through a system and putting his credit card in first. That’s part of how we’re allowed to talk about pretty much anything. One thing we do not do at PEP is forced intoxication. We will talk about it, but we don’t tell you to do it. If somebody says, ‘hey, I had a forced intoxication experience and I’m exhilarated or I’m traumatized’ we would talk about it, but we don’t command people to drink or do drugs. We also don’t judge them if they’re drinking or doing drugs.

We talk about pretty much anything, as long as the Lady and the client are comfortable. The gentleman calls and if it’s the first call, he might say, ‘I read your bio on the PEP site and I see that you’re into spanking. I have a schoolroom fantasy. Are you up for that today?’ PEP clients are, by and large, very polite. They know to keep it brief, give the billing info, get on the call. On a first call, there’s usually anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes of excavation before you play. But sometimes it is just, ‘here’s what I want, let’s do it, that was great, thank you so much. Call you next week.’

ZL: I’m glad to hear that people are polite for the most part.

SM: It’s a hard thing because clients have issues in their personal lives that they start playing out with us. Whether we represent wife, mom, teacher, sister, first love, the woman who cheated on you, women you loved and didn’t get. We represent something to them most of the time. Sometimes we represent counselors and they’ve got some baggage around that. We all have trauma living in this culture, living in this society, so they bring all that in. When the call has ended, let’s say he’s paid for 45 minutes, at 43 minutes we say ‘hey, we’re close to the end. Would you like to talk longer today?’

Often they say ‘no, I’ve had my orgasm. I’m done for today. I can’t I have a meeting.’ Sometimes they say ‘yes, how much would it be?’

We do have folks, who will try to call and talk for free because they can call us directly. Back in the day that was a big problem at PEP. Now, we have a lot of systems to defeat that. Talking about boundaries, when we say, ‘well, our time is up, I’m gonna hang up now.’ That is boundary setting. Often in the conversations, we’re the first people who have ever done that in a way that is safe, not judgmental, and not cruel. We don’t let them walk all over us. I don’t think very many people in this country grow up with very good boundaries. As sex workers, we have to learn them too, in order to keep ourselves safe.

ZL: While calls are private, have there been any experiences you can specifically speak to where you felt like this person walked in one way and left the call with an epiphany?

SM: Yeah, sometimes it’s hard. The person has a realization that’s very difficult to accept. They’ll end the call early. ‘I’m done, hard-on is gone. This was really heavy.’ Those are hard to let go of. I have to do some stuff to get it out of myself because it really isn’t my problem. I was the conduit to something they were going to figure out at some point. I happen to be the person they chose to go there with today.

Over time, people make better decisions in their relationships. They leave unhappy marriages. Eventually, she moves on and is happier. He goes on and is happier. It’s a weird thing to say, I am proud to be responsible for a lot of divorces. But I’m very proud to be responsible for a lot of divorces that needed to happen, where both partners were miserable. Through talking with me, they move forward.

I had a client who I really needed at the right time, and I don’t know if he knew this. I hope he reads this. He’ll recognize himself without me naming him. He needed to do a lot of heavy return to childhood stuff and deal with some physical abuse around little things he had done as a kid that now he fetishizes. At the time, my daughter was just a couple of years off chemo, things were still really tenuous. She had a lot of PTSD from the chemo. I felt like I didn’t get to have the motherhood that I should have gotten to have. Here comes this client who’s telling me, ‘I didn’t get to have a childhood.’ I was able to really meet him where he was at, and it was very fulfilling for me to get to mother someone who could play earnestly and was able to be present.

My daughter’s journey — there’s so much of it she will never remember, and I remember it all. We talked a lot, for six months, two years after that he sent me an email that said:

“Dear Sera, you gave me the strength to finally leave my wife and be happy … your blonde hair … grew on me as it grew and it is sexy as fuck … Publish that you are a goddess and an emotional healer. I hope to talk to you soon. Again, you’ve healed me when everything else failed to do so and as a former psychotherapist, I know what I’m talking about. You are so hot and on an emotional level, I never knew existed. You have given me hope to be a better man and better partner to some future woman. I could just go on forever about the healing you’ve provided me. I have so many new questions and I know of no one better to ask than you. I know you’ll be cool with me and so I love you for all as I can. Thank you for helping to free me.” [Reprinted with permission]

ZL: It’s funny that you bring social work up because there is a lot of overlap, as far as being a caring type of profession.

SM: The weird thing is social workers work with the law and sex workers are in danger of the law.

ZL: One big difference for sure.

As both the owner and working for your own company, how has that shift from just being on the phones to being more managerial been? How did that change your experience over the years?

SM: I started working in the PEP office in 2007, part-time, and I did that off and on with some time out when my daughter was in treatment, up until 2012. Then I actually left the company for about three months and worked somewhere else. At that time, the company nose-dived into debt and had to be restructured. The owner asked me to come back, and help get things back together, and so I did.

I basically ran the joint from November of 2012, until I took ownership, so I was already poised for it. It was a big thing to learn that I was no longer one of the Ladies. I related to them as one of the Ladies, but I was also the boss who could fire, who could say, “hey, that was not okay. I had to learn how to say that and how to be the person in charge, to be the authority, and then realize that it was going to change the dynamics I had with everyone. Most of the Ladies who work at PEP will tell you that it feels familial. It feels close-knit, we support each other, we pump each other up. In our internal conversations, there are lots of hearts, lots of, ‘amazing work.’ It’s weird to me because families usually aren’t like that. They’re not that supportive. I feel like as a country/culture we devalue colleagueship. We do not value professional relationships, especially in women-centered or not cis-male-centered environments. I try at PEP to emphasize that our professional relationships are valuable, without being dubbed “family.”

ZL: I have a couple of fun final questions before we go. On the PEP site, I see that you offer enema play. Tell me about that. Are you really giving yourself an enema while you are on the call?

SM: Yes and yes. PEP’s founder was an enema fetishist and she is still very renowned in that world. We have always had a fairly steady amount of enema callers. Maybe, 10 or 15 years ago we started offering this enema add-on where the Lady will give herself one. Since we are advertising it, we really do it. You’re not supposed to fake it.

Now, other things are more up in the air. We have a couple of Ladies who really like to advertise mutual masturbation and I know that for them it’s really important for that to be authentic. It’s not that I would turn down a conversation like that, but  — if I’m the dominant partner, which I almost always am, it’s pretty hard to masturbate to orgasm and stay in charge of the creative development of the dream state.

ZL: As we know with porn, there’s a certain amount of “movie magic” that goes into it. I’m sure there are some times where you have to, for lack of a better word, cheat it a bit.

SM: I love doing sound effects. If we are doing a call and I can tell he’s really into it I’m pretty theatrical. Of the 12 ladies at PEP, we’re going to have 13th pretty soon, we’re all so unique. On the enema thing, if say we do it, we’re really going to, that’s ethical. On other stuff, it’s client/lady dependent. Sometimes clients aren’t doing what they say they’re doing.

ZL: What’s next for you? Let’s talk about your writing, teaching, training, and what’s going on in the BDSM and leather world, especially during COVID.

SM: I talked earlier about struggling to write essays. I’m working on an essay right now about BDSM, the leather world, and cancel culture. That’s something that’s on my mind a lot. I find it so incredibly disappointing to see so many of our elders in the leather and BDSM community think that being asked not to wear a cop costume to a party is cancel culture and censorship. They don’t understand that sometimes being inclusive is not including some things.

It’s a morass of disappointment and resignation and defiance too. I feel like with COVID and not being able to have play parties, some folks are doing some amazing work like with speed dating on Zoom and classes and finding ways around it. Our community is so wonderfully creative. There’s going to be a shift when we can get together in person again and when we can have parties with 400 people. I’m excited to see how those conversations change and how those events change now that more and more people understand that accountability is what we are after. It’s not “cancel culture” if you go to a munch, use racial epithets, and no one talks to you — that’s accountability.

We are in a community that is largely willing to let people grow, especially in sex work. I was talking to a sex work colleague about how there’s a purity test, sometimes, in leftist cultures and any kind of radical political work. I really wonder about the roots of puritanical American, in that test of purity in what are often white radical spaces.

In sex work, we are constantly cultivating growth with other people. We are often doing these very intimate things. That kind of allowance for people to make mistakes, teach them how to be accountable and growth can happen. I don’t think that means everybody gets to come back. Not everyone gets to apologize and come back. I think it’s an exciting time to figure out how this will all work and for some people who have long held power to realize they’re not going to get to call all of the shots.

A few years ago, at a major BDSM event, a man literally stood on stage with a microphone and said he was being silenced. I don’t know how you’re being silenced when you are literally on stage with a microphone. But what you can’t do so easily now is make a racist or sexist joke without getting called on it. So, I’m writing about that and I’m very excited.

I have definitely encountered aspects of what people would maybe label cancel culture because of the work I’ve done being as a sex worker, and not being tolerant of racism.

I had people boycott an event I put on because there were these rumors that I “outed people”. So much of that was rooted in me being a sex worker, me being too radical, and being unwilling to lie to the hotel about what we were doing. I learned later it was common, in other groups, to just tell the hotel you are doing a private event. This puts everyone at risk; what if the hotel finds out about your dungeon party and tells everyone to get the fuck out? What if they bring the police? Being secretive doesn’t always keep people safe.

ZL: Right, we must hold people accountable when they are repeatedly causing harm, and are failing to listen and make a concerted effort to change. We all make mistakes, ideally, we should all look back at our past selves and reflect. Otherwise, we haven’t grown. The permanent record of the internet is a minefield that causes people to be scared to speak up, and I can see how that could actually prohibit positive change.

SM: There needs to be a balance between disallowing harm to perpetuate, and allowing people to make mistakes and grow and change. Those are two ascending arcs of energy that need to be meeting more than they are, but I believe we can get there.

ZL: I think we need that optimism. I hope we’re getting there.

Sera’s Full Bio:

Sera Miles is CEO of People Exchanging Power (PEP). Human sexuality courses at the University of New Mexico, Southwestern College, and University of Denver have welcomed her as a guest speaker; she’s presented at Texas Tech, Central New Mexico Community College, DomConLA and DomConNOLA, Beat Me in St Louis, Northwest Leather Celebration, and Behind Closed Doors in Tucson; and taught workshops for various groups and sex shops across the United States. In 2016, the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) of New Mexico invited Sera to speak about BDSM at their annual conference, and the following year, Sera served as the BDSM adviser to the New Mexico Strangulation Task Force. Sera has appeared in numerous fetish videos, some so ancient they require a VCR, and she stars in “Bonetown” and “Bonecraft,” the world’s first pornographic computer games. For six vibrant years, Sera led New Mexico FetLifers, a social networking group she founded, and which produced the conference “Evolution of the Revolution.” She co-founded New Mexico’s Sex Workers Outreach Project chapter and organized Albuquerque’s events for the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers (aka Red Umbrella Day) from 2009 to 2015. Sera, by invitation, spoke at the 2018 March for Trans Rights in Albuquerque, which was an honor that she works to be worthy of. The United Court of Sandias bestowed upon Sera the lifetime title, “Inspiration of the Sandias,” and in 2018, she co-chaired UCS’ Year of the Woman committee, where she spear-headed the #periodpositive project, collecting menstruation supplies to help under-served communities, and working to dismantle cultural shame about periods. Sera identifies as a demisexual leather D-type, in addition to the identities of activist, editor, type-A personality, sex worker, and Leo Dragon.