My intention was never to receive money for sex. In fact, it was a time in my life where my most focused intention was simply to survive from day to day without winding up in a psych ward - again. Less than a year before, the weight of my dysfunctional early adolesence (sexual abuse, eating disorders, promiscuity, etc.) became too much for my first year nursing student mind to handle and eating the medicine cabinet seemed like the only escape. Luckily, my parent's (John Wayne & Joan Crawford) had primo health insurance and 21 days in a plush suburban hospital was like what nowadays is an afternoon at the Canyon Ranch Spa.
I was nineteen years old, taking a year off of college, working full time, living on my own and supporting myself for the first time in my life. An old beneficiary, from my days of indiscriminately giving blowjobs to the public school boys, called me up out of the blue and asked for a walk down memory lane. As I vehemently refused his requests and tried to hang up, he quickly resorted to begging and bargaining.
"Come on Care...I'll give you fifty bucks to help me out this one time!" he pleaded with the same annoyance of a four-year old in the toy aisle at Target.
"No way Loser! I have a boyfriend, a therapist, and a trust fund now to replace whatever 'acting out ritual' you were once a part of" I declared.
"Pleeeaaase!" he continued. "How about $100?...okay,... $150...$200....? Seriously Carrie, I will give you two hundred cash for just this one time."
Two hundred dollars, I thought, for doing the exact same thing I had been giving away free for years. Even my devout Catholic great-grandmother was screamming from her grave for me to take the deal. This guy especially, as I remember, would truly take less than 3 minutes of my time and no more of my dignity than I had already given him.
"FINE!" I said, "Come on over, but you are not staying one minute longer than you need to because Cosmic Charlie is on his way over later." (Cosmic Charlie was my thirty year old, pot growing, Greatful Dead following, Mensa attending boyfriend whom surprisingly became one of the best things that ever happened to me.)
And so it began. A week later, Loser called and asked if I could do one of his buddies the same "favor." Word spread like an illegal insider stock trading tip and what I now consider to be "my five minutes spent in the sex trade industry at age 19" lasted another six months until what always happens in such risky endeavors happened - someone almost tried to kill me.
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