How I Ended Up For Sale: Part I

For a while I've been wanting to write about when I was... selling sex? Getting trafficked? It just hasn't seemed like the right time yet.

But I've found that waiting for the right time can take forever. I've been waiting- and working, and wondering- when things in my life are finally going to be “all right.” The truth is, I don't think I can safely say I've made it. I still have financial problems, still struggle with relationships and making good decisions despite my emotions. All I can say, is my life is better than it was four years ago, and if I can use that blessing to help someone else, then I should. So even if I still am not 100% comfortable describing myself as a victim, especially when I compare myself with girls who've had it so much worse, and even if I'm not quite a success story, I think too soon is better than too late.

In this post, I will begin to tell how I found myself in “the game,” and catch up with the present little by little.

Summer, 2009, Las Vegas: I pulled into my parking lot and scraped myself off the leather seats of the beater with no AC. A few men stared from the folding chairs where they were already drinking beer and listening to mariachi blast from a pickup truck, though it was barely after noon. I ignored them. I went into my apartment where the roaches ignored me. I ignored the red eviction notice sitting on my counter as best I could.

I was eighteen and had just left a city the color of newsprint to start over here, where the lights were, where the money was. But I didn't yet know how to get any of it. I knew that there was someone who did. We'd met on MySpace, and from his picture I guessed he was in his late thirties. Messages had turned to phone calls, and once he'd even rolled up in a red Cadillac with the all white interior and spoken to me through the window. I could feel the chill of his AC, his eyes. They were such a light hazel, they were every color at once and almost no color at all.

I called him and told him I was short on my rent. He said I had perfect timing, he was taking his girl to do a few days of Dominatrix work in L.A.- no sex, he assured me- and if I wanted I could come with them. I told him I'd think about it and call him right back.

So that's what I did. I got in the shower and thought it through. I wasn't stupid; I knew crossing state lines in strange Cadillacs was a pretty foolproof way to disappear. But seeing L.A. for the first time would be exciting, and I was gonna need to make that money somehow. When I was eighteen, I didn't trust myself. I knew deep down what the right choice was, I just needed someone else to tell me or I wouldn't believe it.

There was someone else I'd met on MySpace (in addition to the pimp and, weirdly enough, my next door neighbor), a hot guy only a few years older than me. Let's say his name was Ken. I called him. The phone rang and rang and I was worried he wouldn't pick up. But he did.

I described the situation and asked what he thought I should do.

“I'm at my play-sister's house babysitting my nephew,” he said. “You should come chill.”

I did, and before I left that evening- before I stopped in Burger King and had an older man ask where I got my tattoo, only to hear me say Cleveland and inform me he was originally from the same neighborhood where I'd hung out with my youth offender crush- Ken kissed me on the mouth He said he thought we should be together.

When I asked why, he said, “because you make me happy.”

I'd never been much into relationships. Even at seventeen, when I was obsessed with the youth offender, I was still regularly having sex with a few other guys. It made me feel independent. But now, what I wanted was to feel protected. I wanted to hear someone say “I got you.”

I got the sense the older guy in Burger King was a pimp pretty early into our conversation. “I have a boyfriend,” I said. Sure enough, though he kept talking shit, his vibe changed. He no longer seemed like a shark circling a swimmer with open wounds.

My boyfriend of a couple hours had known I was a stripper since we first exchanged messages, right after I told him I liked his background picture of Obama, right after he told me he was a pre-med bio major in college. He said he didn't care and I thought, how lucky am I, to have somebody who accepts me? Over the next few days, I went to work at the club where I really didn't know what the hell was going on yet. Somehow I made the money. Then I made some time for Ken. He bought me food at his favorite Chinese restaurant and waited with me in a line longer than hell's when I had to get my new driver's license. He came over to spend the night.

“Did you bring me a present?” I asked, joking.

“I did.”

It was a t-shirt with Barack Obama's face. I was gone.

A few weeks later, we were in the shower together. He asked me to go to 7-Eleven and get him some sour gummy worms. It was 3 in the morning but I was in that bitch with wet hair, paying for his snack. When I brought it home, he seemed pleased.