"Prostitution isolates you, with all its little ways that people not in it don't understand, much in the way some religions do, or drug addictions."

So writes Lisa Carver in an essay called "I Was a Teenaged Prostitute and It Was Kind of Great." Carver, who was nineteen when she took up prostitution, writes:

It's hard to explain certain things, and after a while it's easier to not talk to anyone outside much at all. I thought that as a prostitute, I would no longer be inside a dream; I'd be flung, newly sharp and capable, into life. Actually, I discover, the opposite is true. Prostitution is a complex, shared dream where everyone agrees to not wake up, for just a little longer....

I buy a ticket for France. I have to quit my job because I like it too much.

No one still "in life" will talk about it, and it seems like those who left will only talk about the bad side. But as I walk away from prostitution and drug addicts and gain back my own life and body, I know I'm losing something too. I lose nothingness.

Abandonment has always led to advanced creativity.

Via Hit and Run, which has a lot of comments, but I anticipate better comments here.