A few weeks ago I received an email from a friend with whom I went to school. A mutual acquaintance had sent him a note in distress-- his sister was a prostitute. Although never close, the two siblings kept in regular enough contact that he was completely blind-sided by his sister's admission. Sure, there were always question marks surrounding her life, like how a young woman with no real marketable skills managed to afford a downtown Condo and a never ending stream of name-brand clothes.
And although he knew his sister didn't have the best of childhoods (children of divorce, they shared only a father and were several years apart in age), there definitely wasn't any instances of childhood abuse or horrible trauma that one stereotypically associates with a young women choosing to enter the world's oldest profession. Attractive and still young, “KK” works as a 'high-end escort', meaning she has the luxury of picking and choosing her clientele charging three to four hundred dollars an hour.
Along with a photo of his friend's sister, a link to her personal twitter feed was attached. Reading her day to day life, I quickly became engrossed. From the completely banal “it's so dark and cold in the condo, forgot to switch names on heating bill..” to the provocative “OMG, who steals people's underwear?”
While perusing her thousands of Tweets I couldn't help but feel a tinge of guilt. Of course Twitter is a public forum meant for public consumption, but this was her personal Twitter feed. She clearly never intended anyone to read her personal thoughts while also knowing her secret profession. But it was the voyeurism that made the reading so exciting. Knowing she was hiding her profession from her friends, Tweets like “Met a guy at the bar last night... could be the one?” take on a triple meaning.
So it was with a tinge of excitement, curiosity, and outright fear when I read one of her Tweets last week proclaiming she was at the very same trendy King Street East restaurant that I was in. I quickly scanned the room looking for her. With the restaurant's dark lighting and cramped seating, it was hard to make consistent eye contact with the person sitting next to you let alone scan the room hoping to recognize a virtual stranger with whom you've only seen grainy, shadowy photos of. After a good fifteen minutes I was finally able to locate her, sitting in a booth with a group of same aged friends, drinking shot after shot of $200.00 bottle service. With their business casual attire, it wasn't hard to imagine that her friends were probably lawyers, executives or other miscellaneous professionals. But more likely than not, I knew more about her than any of them could ever know.
Despite it being nearly midnight, she regularly checked her cellphone for incoming texts. Were they from clients? She excused herself halfway through the night and promptly left, waving goodbye to her friends, her phone still up to her ear. Girl's got to make a living.
That's surreal!