She was only 17 when she tacked her first ad to the "Erotic Services" board on Craigslist.

Ashly Lorenzana posted a picture and wrote something "short and sweet: 'If you want to hang out ...' I didn't know if you were supposed to get creative with it." She only got creative with her age, claiming she was 18, or barely legal.

Within two hours, she had almost 100 bidders for her services. "I'm sure the 18 thing attracted most people," Lorenzana says six years later. "In my experience, it does." She returned the call of a guy with a nice voice, and asked her mother's boyfriend to give her a ride to the client's house.

He was in his mid-30s. She didn't know what to charge, Lorenzana says. "So, I just copied my mom. I asked for $100 for an hour."

And how did that hour unfold?

"He seemed to like me. He seemed pretty impressed with the entire experience," she remembers.

"He tipped me. He wanted to see me again. That made me feel good. I didn't know anyone when I moved up here."

Because her mother was 14 when she was born, Ashly Lorenzana was raised by her grandparents on the Oregon coast, only coming to live in Portland whenever Cynthia Steinhauer was between relapses in her drug dependency.

Those visits never ended well. Lorenzana's grandmother still remembers when Steinhauer decided a quick fix was more important than spending another afternoon babysitting Ashly and her younger sister.

"She put the kids on the sidewalk," says the grandmother, who asked to remain anonymous. "Called us at the beach and told us to come get them. We drove like maniacs to get up there and found them sitting out in the rain on the curb."

Steinhauer was a "train wreck," her daughter says and Cynthia's mother agrees, much more interested in meth and prostitution than she was in her two daughters.

"We made the mistake," the grandmother says, "of allowing her mother to be part of (Ashly's) life. But that's all she wanted. To be with her mom. She tried drugs for the first time because she wanted to find out what was so great that her mother would give her daughter up for it."

That's not the only legacy Steinhauer passed on. When Lorenzana dropped out of Astoria High School at 16 and went to live in Southeast Portland with Steinhauer and her boyfriend, David, she says Steinhauer was already advertising her escort services on Craigslist.

"Her boyfriend and I would take her to her calls," Lorenzana says. "I got curious about it, so I decided to go behind her back and see what I could do on my own. I was always adventurous."

That "adventure" unfolds in a 101-page memoir Lorenzana has written, titled, "Sex, Drugs and Being an Escort." It's not a pretty tale.

She was lucky, Lorenzana admits, to never end up in a room with the likes of Philip Markoff, who committed suicide while awaiting trial for the 2009 murder of masseuse Julissa Brisman in Boston. That crime, and a platoon of angry state AGs, finally forced Craigslist to drop the free Erotic Services' ads.

"I was really surprised at how normal most of the people who called me are," says Lorenzana, who maintains relationships with two dozen regular customers. "My clients are usually in their mid-40s. Sometimes married. It's almost like they just want a girlfriend for a while."

But like her mother -- with whom she often shot up with -- Lorenzana is now seriously attached to meth, spending at least $400 a week to maintain an addiction that has destroyed most of the veins in her arms. ("My arms are gone. I used them up a long time ago.")

She eventually married David, her mother's former boyfriend, 23 years her senior and still living with his parents.

And she says she's had five abortions. She still remembers what her mother told her upon hearing of one of her pregnancies: "Well, an abortion is only like $500, so go turn a couple tricks and get it done."

Lorenzana speaks -- and writes -- about all of this with brutal honesty, now that she no longer has to fudge her age.

But she will not concede to her grandmother's fear, and mine, that this is not going to end well.

She sees no reason to quit the meth, which she regards as much more effective than Prozac, Wellbutrin or Celexa to curb the depression she's known since the age of 12.

"I haven't even tried," Lorenzana says. "I like it. I don't really want to stop. Why would I stop something that makes me feel better, and feel miserable. I don't know what would be important enough to make me do that."

A partner who isn't an addict? An honest look at the life expectancy of tweakers? A child?

"I don't ever want children," Lorenzana says. "I don't have enough faith in the human race to want to continue it."

A younger sister who wants advice about following in Ashly's footsteps?

"Luckily, hopefully, she won't," Lorenzana says. "But I can't be a hypocrite. I'd be honest with her. Here's the plus side, here's the down side, here's what I would hope for you."

The plus side, Ashly. Help me with that.

"It's a quick, easy way to make money," Lorenzana says. "You're your own boss. You call the shots. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.

"The down side? Who knows what might happen. It's not a good long-term plan."

"I'm scared to death for her," Lorenzana's grandmother says. "I'm afraid she's going to get herself killed with this escorting thing. There are so many strange people out there."

But she is painfully aware that most of the damage done to Ashly was wrought by the youngest of her four daughters.

"She (Ashly) was trying to prove to her mother that she was as good as her ... or could be as bad as her," the grandmother says, "If you read her memoir, she makes it very clear that she could do everything better than her mother did."

Including sex with strangers.

"I've never thought of us in competition," Lorenzana says. "She doesn't hold a candle to me in any way."

When I ask if she takes a perverse pride in surviving on these terms, and against all odds, she doesn't disagree. She is often lonely and depressed, but she wants to believe the strength and anger that have gotten her this far will sustain her.

She has a talent for writing. She may have a future in films. Adult films. "I'm actually scheduled to start that," Lorenzana says. "They told me the trips to Los Angeles are seven-to-10 days and you go home with seven-to-ten grand. That seems more effective than what I'm doing."

I am driving her home because -- thanks to thousands of dollars in unpaid tickets and driving infractions -- her license is suspended. She seems suddenly distracted, tense, and I ask her how she's going to spend the rest of the afternoon.

Lorenzana gives me a brittle, wistful smile. "Can I be honest with you?" she says.

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