Writing therapy

The world has offered two dichotomous representations of people who sell sex: the “happy hooker,” or the “victim,” often underage, who is coerced into the industry and forced to work by a trafficker or pimp. As a sex worker, I resembled neither of these characters. Who was I then? I wrote to find out. Beginning with a story I felt was so bad it simply could not be told—not to others, not to myself—I wrote my way out of denial and disassociation into what felt like an integrated self. The memoir pieces that I eventually began to publish helped me order my past in a way that I could live with. But there were costs. Most obviously, I lost my job as a public school teacher, the job to which I had transitioned after sex work.