Also I had never had intercourse for money at that point, I had never sold myself in that way, and I didn't want to be able to say that I had. Nothing would have felt more unnatural than taking money for something sexual that I'd wanted to happen. It was the first time I'd ever done anything sexual without being paid first and I knew why: this was not a job. He pulled out his wallet and asked how much he owed me. I told him that I'd changed my mind, that I would do intercourse, so he slipped on a condom and it was all over in minutes. I suddenly realised that I missed it I missed being held and touched. I hadn't seen my then boyfriend for months and hadn't had any intimacy. When we arrived there I realised that I was aroused. He was attractive, not disrespectful in his manner and he was shy, quiet, not speaking to me much on the way to the laneway I used. The first car that pulled up on my first night back on the streets was driven by a young man in his early to mid-twenties. Anyway, this did not happen I was released after a few months and it was at this point I went to live in the brothel on Leeson Street. It wouldn't have been rocket science, it could have been done and I know I would have been capable of applying myself to it.
If they'd had any real dedication to helping me change my life, they would have detained me for a couple of years and made it a condition of my future parole that I complete some form of training, be it secretarial, hairdressing, etc., and I would have been assigned a parole officer and social worker who'd have ensured I was placed with an apprenticeship or in an entry-level office position. The reason for this was clear, and I still wonder how the children's court could have been so foolish as to imagine that a few months of detention would have turned my life around when I was released back onto the streets with no viable alternative to prostitution. When I was sixteen I was released from a court order, the purpose of which had been to keep me detained for my own protection. I would know, because on two occasions those experiences happened to me. For some women, they do, and when they do, no-one is more surprised than the woman herself. That is not to say these unique and exceptional experiences do not, once in a blue moon, occur. A woman's feelings here range between mild distaste and outright disgust and only in unique or very exceptional circumstances will her experience be any different. Of course this will fly in the face of the fantasists, but the reality of prostitution usually does. The truth of the matter is that the nature of prostitution flavours the sexual act as far too distasteful and too sleazy and too bound up with degradation to allow any kind of wholesale enjoyment. The humor-for those it is lost on-was in the absurdity. 'Ah sure,' said the older woman, 'you probably enjoyed it!' The entire company, myself included, burst out laughing. They were discussing an unexpected surge in trade the previous night and the younger woman mentioned how she'd gone home exhausted after it. I remember one evening, in the clinic where I used to drink coffee and collect condoms, a particular humorous remark made to a young prostitute by one of the older women. Testimony of an erotic dancer: "Nobody-not myself, not the other women-enjoys being pawed, poked, prodded and fucked by men we wouldn't give the time of day if we met them elsewhere." Excerpted from “Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution” by Rachel Moran