Photo: By Mary Muse
Mary Muse self portrait
When Pittsburgh-area musician and performer Mary Muse was growing up, she remembers being attracted to the lounge singers she saw depicted in the media. “Marilyn Monroe is one, but I can think of so many examples,” she tells me over Zoom. “I’m bisexual, so I was attracted to them in that way. But also, they were examples of really sensual women that were connected to their performances.” As the bisexual trope goes, not only was Mary attracted to them, but there was also a part of her that wanted to be them. “It was just always this thing that I wanted to embody,” she says.
Mary did go on to become a musician (most notably, a piano player), but it took some time before she incorporated sensuality into her music — or music into her sensuality, for that matter — in a way that lined up with this vision. Indeed, it was her entre into sex work that allowed her to fuse music performance, creativity, and sexuality.
These days, Mary refers to herself as a “Muse of Many Mediums.” She is an online sex worker, musician, tarot reader, amateur porn star, and Onlyfans model. But for Mary, her career isn’t just about being a creative/creator, it is also about inspiring creativity in others, which is why she has settled on “muse” as a moniker.
Photo: By Mary Muse
Mary Muse self portrait
“A muse, for me, is someone or something that inspires other people to create,” she says. “I think that in my life, especially recently, I’ve come to recognize the power of creativity, whether that’s through my music or other artistic mediums.” While sex work is how she makes most of her money, she has found that infusing her other artistic endeavors into her sex work persona (the most obvious of which is hosting piano concerts on TikTok under her sex work persona) has opened up space for her fans to become more creative in their lives.
This journey has also been spiritual. “I’ve done a lot of inner child work and I’ve recognized that one of the biggest themes around that work has been fostering a connection to creativity again,” she says. “As kids, many of us go through experiences where the adults around us tamper down the creative fire in us.”
This is true for sexuality too, which is why it is natural for Mary to want to link creativity with sexuality. She says, “I was very much taught that sexuality and sex in general was super, super shameful. I had some experiences as a kid where I learned it was not okay to be interested in sex.” While she’s had an interest in sex for as long as she can remember, she sees sex work as the medium through which she’s been able to rehabilitate her relationship to sex. She says, “Every time that I’m able to post and feel good about my adult content is a moment for me to teach myself that it’s OK, that this work is something I can be proud of.”
This process has allowed Mary to be there for her clients when they are struggling with shame about their sexuality or blockages in their creativity. She says, “Whenever people come to me with that shame, I try to tell them that I understand how they feel. “I make sure to tell them, ‘I want to be an example for you.’” She says that her work, in large part, is exhibiting that it is OK to have an interest in sex and to feel good about it.
This emphasis has been so transformative for her that she has come to think of pleasure as a guiding principle in her life, and one that she tries to share with the people who engage in her work. She says, “I very truthfully believe that hedonism and the pursuit of pleasure is my reason for living. It doesn’t necessarily always come from sex but from everything.” She goes on, “Everything that brings pleasure and everything that brings sensation to the body, I think, is the reason we’re here. Why else would we have these physical bodies?”
There is a natural pairing, then, of the sensory pleasure she gains from music and the sexual pleasure from the more explicit sides of her work. It took her some time to do this because there was a part of her that saw her music as too personal. “It was this weird, scary thing for me because it felt, I guess, a little too close to home maybe,” she says. “Playing piano for my sex work fans felt like an exposure of who I really am.”
The first time she decided to do so on a whim turned out to be a fantastic experience for her. “Immediately after I did it I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is the version of myself that I’ve been trying to reach.’” She talks about piano as her first love, and bringing that love into her business has made her love her work more.
Though she both creates pornography and performs music under the same brand, she does not do both at the same time. “I don’t have to completely meld them together,” she says. “I like my different art forms to each stand on their own.” And even more, she loves drawing in clients who appreciate both. Her music, in this regard, feels like a form of foreplay.
Photo: By Mary Muse
Mary Muse self portrait
The work that Mary has done to incorporate her creativity into her sexuality has felt like a form of resistance. She says, “A big cornerstone of my business is art as resistance.” She goes on, “I’ve heard a lot of people talking about art in this way in the last year or so because the world is on fire — it’s really intense. And yet, it’s really important for us to lean into the parts of us that are not so serious and that feel good despite everything that is going on.”
For Mary, focusing on pleasure in this way has allowed her, and those who follow her, to replenish some of their joy in otherwise dark times. This has been Mary’s own dream come true. She ends our call by saying, “This work makes me feel like the Marilyn Monroe of my dreams.” We should all be so lucky.
If you want to hear more about Mary and her music, you can listen to her interview on Season 1, Episode 5 of my podcast When We’re Not Hustling: Sex Workers Talking About Everything But.