How I Came to Terms With My Secret Sex-Work Past

In the last decade I’ve built a prosperous career, met the man of my dreams, married him and lost him—all the time haunted by my brief stint selling my body for money.

Illustrations by Ivy Bradley

I’m making the rounds at a small gathering of urban literary types in a bougie brownstone in Brooklyn, New York. It’s the holiday party for the publication we all work for, some as photographers, others as editors. I’m one of the writers, and currently on my third glass of the social media guy’s homemade margarita concoction. It’s really good, possibly the best margarita I’ve ever tasted. A sudden urge to commend the social media guy on his cocktail-making skills propels me over to where he’s standing with another man in front of the television streaming a fireplace video.

As I join them mid-conversation, one guy is telling the other that when he was in college, his roommate suggested that he try sex work to make some extra cash.

“Why sex work?” the other guy asks. “Do you have a big dick?”

“I don’t know. What’s big?”

“Are you bigger than six inches? I’m sensing a wide girth.”

“I think I’m eight inches.”

“You fucking motherfucker. Okay, continue.”

“There’s not muc…