Being a hooker is fucking disgusting. I don’t know why I did it so long. I guess because in the scene I was part of it gave a person some clout. Yeah. That’s what it was. Clout. I wanted that clout so bad I used to pretend I was a hooker even before I was one. I remember going to this roundtable discussion in Brooklyn about being a queer sex worker when I was 22. At one point I raised my hand. “Yeah, as a sex worker,” I said. “I feel like blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.” All the queer sex workers sitting around the table nodded and went, “Yeah, totally.” At that point I never thought I would actually suck a dick for money. I was just pretending. Now anytime I hear someone start a sentence with, “Yeah, as a sex worker,” I assume they’re just pretending, too.

But hey. Strapped for cash and too depressed and self loathing to get a real job? Fuck it. You only live once, right?

One of the tricks I saw most frequently was Dave. Allegedly he was Carrie Underwood’s private jet pilot. One time he told me a story about how he crashed a speedboat into a dock on a lake somewhere. Ever since then I’ve been a bit worried for Carrie Underwood. Carrie, sweetie, if you’re reading this, get yourself a new pilot, baby. Every time I was in Nashville I would post my ad on Backpage and Dave would call within a couple of hours. He always paid for a full hour even though we both came within 10 minutes every time. Except for the time I puked on his dick. Nobody came that time. I guess maybe it’s flattering if somebody pukes on your dick, because it’s kind of like you choked them with it, meaning it must be kind of big. But Dave’s dick was much too small for that interpretation. I don’t think he was fooled. The reality is, I puked on his dick because I was like, “Fuck, this is so gross. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Over the course of my career as a hooker I probably sucked between 200 and 300 dicks. And I would always think the very same thing: “Fuck, this is so gross. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Thankfully I only puked the once, though. If it had to be anyone, I’m glad it was Dave. He left in a hurry that time, but it didn’t stop him from calling me again and again. Whenever I was in town, I knew I could count on Dave.

A lot of my friends used to steal shit from their tricks. I told myself I had too much of a moral compass to rob somebody, but the truth is I was actually just too chickenshit. I remember one time at Mardi Gras we were all on acid and this girl stole a credit card from her john. We used it to buy a bunch of liquor and cartons of cigarettes. Then my girl Pussy Baby took the card on a shopping spree in the French Quarter at 8am while everybody else passed out on the floor of the Air BNB. She came back an hour later and woke us all up. “I got presents for everyone,” she said, her arms laden with shopping bags. My present was a pair of gold socks that said BITCH on them in big black letters. I actually wore them a lot. Thanks, Pussy Baby.

The one time I did try to rob somebody it wasn’t even a john, it was just some random dude off Okcupid who irritated me. He invited me to his crib knowing full well what he was getting himself into. Then, in the middle of making out, he suddenly started crying and freaking out. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t do this. I’m not gay. I just can’t.” “Fuck, dude,” I said. “Okay, I’ll leave. But can you get me a glass of water first please?” After he left to go get the water, I grabbed his wallet off the desk and tried to sneak out of his place. But by the time I got to his bedroom door he was already back with the water somehow. I think he must have suspected I was up to no good, and raced to the kitchen to get the water at lightning speed. “Can I have my wallet back?” he said. I thought about punching him in the face and leaving. He was a lot smaller than me, and I felt at the time that he deserved it. But instead I gave him back the wallet. In retrospect I’m grateful I didn’t get away, karmically speaking, but it was extremely humiliating at the time.

Once this fat dude from Florida had me come to his hotel in downtown Chicago. I had seen him before actually, which was good. It always felt a little less sketchy that way. I walked into his room and the bed was covered in bullets. “What the fuck?” I said. “Oh,” he said. “Haha, sorry about that.” He swept all the bullets off the bed and into a backpack. Then we sucked each other off. His dick was extremely small, and he had some kind of weird growth on his inner thighs, under where his balls rested. I don’t think it was a fungus. I actually think it was something permanent, like a weird flesh thing that maybe certain really fat people develop. He told me he was in love with me and that he wanted me to bareback him. “Maybe next time,” I said, and blew my load in his face.

Then I went back to my apartment on 19th Street in Pilsen and logged into Grindr. After most tricks I would get drunk and go on Grindr to try and find someone to bring me meth. I never mixed meth with hooking. Not once. I didn’t want to ruin it! (Meth, I mean.) Plus meth made my dick shrink down to the size of a clit, and nobody was gonna pay for that. Anyway, a hot guy messaged me and we chatted back and forth for a while. He told me his top five was:

1. Tina

2. The hustle

3. Cumming

4. Fucking

5. And bitches

He said he was about to rob a jewelry store on the South Side but that he could stop by for a bit beforehand. I met him outside my apartment on the corner and we smoked a cigarette together. I smoked Camel Crushes at the time, and he smoked American Spirit menthols, which I thought was pretty fucking classy for a jewel thief. He had a little hole in his face that looked kind of like a bullet hole, but it wasn’t infected or anything. I asked what the hole was from and he said he got it in a bike accident. He showed me the console in his rental car. It had some kind of computer thing hooked up to it. I asked him what the computer was for. “I’ll tell you sometime,” he said. I asked him if he robbed a lot of jewelry stores. “All the time,” he said. We finished our smokes.

“So how about it?” he said. “You want to come with?” He opened the passenger side door. “Hop in, girl.”

This is it, I thought. My life of crime is about to begin. I’m really going to do it. I’m going to run away with this jewel thief. We’ll smoke Tina and rob bitches and ride off in the sunset like Bonnie and Clyde.

Then I thought about the half a bagel sandwich and iced coffee I had chilling in the fridge upstairs.

“Maybe hit me up another time,” I said.

He held out his hand to give me something. I glanced down. It was my lighter! Damn, that guy was smooth. I didn’t even remember having handed it to him in the first place.