The libidinal underworld to which I belonged was as foreign to Charlie as gay bars or food banks. Still, he was my first foray into what you’d call sex work. He would claim he gave me money as a favor, but at the end of the day, he gave me money for sex. People saw us in restaurants and thought he was my father. We had sex and then he paid me, or sometimes he paid me and then we had sex. It was like waitressing but supercharged. And sometimes it was fun. Sometimes I felt like I was hacking the system, using my just-OK body to plunder the rich and help the meek to inherit. I made the mangy dreams of mild men come true. I wrote off manicures as business expenses, I sometimes grossed more than Charlie’s hourly wage. I got paid to listen, to be told I was pretty, to wear sparkly things and dance to songs that I loved. Sometimes all of this really was true and my life was a bildungsroman.