This blog, penned by a pseudonymous author identified as a female sex worker, is always an interesting read — but never so much as in her most recent post, "The Price." Snip:

It's not easy to write about prostitution in a totally honest way because it is painful. Painful like being fat growing up and having people yell lardass at you out car windows and strangers approaching you on the street to tell you to lose weight. Painful like being a 13-year-old girl saving her virginity for marriage and being held down and robbed of that. I am embarrassed to talk about my pain, about the times I have been hurt. Especially when the road there was tricky and circuitous and partially of my own design. It's hard for me to sift through the detritus, much easier to poke fun, to glam it up, to be some badass character. You guys don't come to this blog to be depressed and there is plenty to write about that isn't depressing. But when I get these letters, I see the danger in that approach.

I want to be very clear that I recommend this lifestyle for no one. It is easy enough to cross the line because the line is invisible. Much harder still to go back, to return to a time when you shared no piece of yourself with strange men, men you don't like, even men who don't like you. I detached myself completely from the work I was doing and felt that I was getting off scot-free with minimal psychological impact. I was having fun at first; I felt beautiful and confident and adored and I was financially secure for the first time ever. But those nights found their way underneath my skin. They just burrowed down deep under the folds of my subconscious like a rat nestled at the bottom of a shopping bag.