Ten Days Until Pub Day

A Love Letter to Persistence

Dear Friend,

Fourteen years ago, I read a personal essay on the Huffington Post called The Next Glass Ceiling by political commentator Krystal Ball. Before this, I’m embarrassed to say, I hadn’t read very many contemporary essays. I had no internet in my home, only a whole lot of books, including more than a handful of favorites I’d found on the street. I had no real calculated desire to become a working writer, only fantastical ambitions to one day publish a then-shaggy manuscript I’d begun while pursuing a degree in Creative Nonfiction from the New School, an institution that considered internet-writing a “lesser” art. 

It was 2010, and Krystal Ball was the Democratic Party nominee for Congress in Virginia’s 1st congressional district. Ball’s campaign had received little national attention until, one month before the election, someone leaked sexually suggestive photos of her with her then-husband from a Christmas party in 2004.

In her essay, Ball described herself as a young woman, watching Hillary Clinton's expression as she faced the country with her private life exposed for all the world to see. “I admired her so much,” Bell writes. “I thought she had this toughness and grit, style and pain, all at the same time. She must have been such a jumble of emotions inside, but she persisted.”

Ball connected Clinton’s situation to her own of being publicly shamed while vying to become the first woman under 30 to serve in Congress in our nation's history. I wasn’t in the exact same situation— or even a politician— but I could relate to them both. Fourteen days earlier I’d been removed from the classroom for authoring a first person op-ed on the same publication, The Huffington Post, in criticism of the shuttering of the “Erotic services” section of Craigslist and in defense of the rights and dignity of sex workers. In my essay, I’d used my own experience working as a call girl on Craiglist to support my claim that not all sex workers were victims of trafficking or beholden to pimps. Instead, I’d argued, the reasons people sell sex are far more complicated and nothing that can be cured by criminalization (and that such criminalization disproportionately impacts people of color and Black women in particular).

A reporter from the NY Post had put two and two together, and I ended up on the cover of the paper under the headline: “Bronx Teacher Admits I’m an Ex-Hooker.” 

In the midst of my mass media humiliation, I reported to the administrative offices at 65 Court Street Monday through Friday where I sat six hours and fifty minutes a day in a windowless cubicle at a generic desk designated as mine while a special Commission looked for a reason to fire me. Those of us who'd been reassigned were scattered inconspicuously throughout the building, indistinguishable from the DOE's actual administrative employees except for the fact that they were doing actual work, whereas we were being paid to sit in what amounted to detention. It was a punishment, a shaming, and it had it’s intended effect: I felt ashamed.

But for what?  

Like Ball, I took to the internet, arguing in follow-up essays that sexy and serious need not be mutually exclusive. My past was my past— the fact that, prior to becoming a teacher, I had worked as a stripper and call girl wasn’t something I celebrated, but I wasn’t ashamed of it either. I had hurt no one and had no one to apologize to. Of course, my employer at the time, the NY City Department of Education, disagreed; eventually, I lost my job (Ball, too, lost her election). But never mind that, I was just beginning to learn the political power of personal testimony, and how experiences from our lives could be used to support political arguments. I was learning how the “situations” we experienced were connected to a more universal experience, what Vivian Gornick might call “the story.” 

In reassignment, the godawful place where they send tenured teachers to rot, I was given a gift. Instead of stewing in my humiliation, I used my time to surf the web, where I discovered a rebellious site called Jezebel. I read Anna Holmes’ The Disposable Woman, a piece I would later teach. I read Kiese Laymon’s My Vassar College Factuly ID Makes Everything OK, another essay that made me reflect on where I was and how I’d gotten there. Kiese wrote of his shame without shame. The essay talked openly about child abuse, and made me think back to an event I had gone to in grad school where a panel of agents all agreed they weren’t interested in stories about child abuse because, as one so callously put it: “They don’t sell.” I learned what it meant to be a part of a writing community from reading Melissa Febos’ Against Our Own Best Time.  

I found writers who explored the trauma caused by systemic oppressions. Writers who nudged me to think more critically and in an intersectional way. Influenced by a flood of great writing, I continued to soften to the truth of my own experience. More and more, it became apparent that my situation told a story about stigma, and trauma, including the trauma of being shamed and how shame has impacted my life, even prior to being outed by the NY Post. 

Brave writers teach me to be brave. They remind me what it means to be human. In moments of utter hopelessness, through humiliations and shame, they remind me to persist.

For coming forward about my history without pseudonym or apology, I was ridiculed in the national press, shamed by my former employer and ultimately forced to resign from a career I had loved. The message was clear: if you have a history such as mine, and an opinion on the matter that differs from the common view, keep it to yourself. Or else. When I lost my career in elementary school teaching, I dedicated myself to promoting the opposite of that message— a message that everyone, particularly people who've been historically rendered invisible, have the human right to be seen as well as heard. True social change comes about by listening without judgment or condescension to the communities we purportedly seek to help. I clawed out a career as a freelancer, penning mostly personal essays for places like Marie Claire, Salon, Daily Beast, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Jezebel, Narratively, and New Inquiry. I've been a regular contributor at Bitch Magazine and xoJane. The story of my losing my job for coming forward about my sex work past was one of Salon's top 100 most trafficked stories in 2010. That same year I was interviewed by Marie Claire and Ms. Magazine. In 2013 I appeared on MSNBC's On the Air with Chris Hayes alongside Krystal Ball to discuss the piece I wrote for NY Magazine.

At the start of my career, I focused on telling my own underheard and "hard to tell" stories. I wrote about sex, work, poverty, trauma, and writing. I broadened from the personal more into political, reported stories, but I have never forgotten nor will I under-appreciate my roots. Over the years, I received countless letters from individuals whose lives were disrupted or destroyed after they were outed or outed themselves as having worked in the sex industry: a former political aide who lost his career after being outed by his hometown newspaper as a rent boy, a dominatrix who has been denied housing due to her online footprint, a mother of a two year old who fears losing custody of her child should the baby's father choose to use her sex work past against her. I still get messages like this from time to time. Just last week I received a Facebook message from another woman who lost her job as a teacher when it was discovered she was moonlighting as a burlesque performer. 

Though not always, it is often the case that marginalized people become sex workers as a way of gaining some modicum of power, and so it’s a cruel irony that that there are no legal protections to prevent discrimination against current and former sex workers. Current and former sex workers risk losing their current housing or being refused service by landlords, real estate owners and coop boards; we risk losing custody of our children, should an ex-partner or family member use our current or former profession against us or the State deem us unfit. Sex workers may be unable to acquire other forms of work due to their current occupation— sometimes chosen out of desperation. Former sex workers risk losing the careers they’ve transitioned to, sometimes in very public and humiliating ways. 

I will never not advocate for sex workers. But at a certain point I realized that individuals with experiences in the sex trades weren’t unique— I wasn’t so unique— no matter how anomalous we were made to feel. And in fact, it was becoming a mother that hammered home the truth of this. In our culture, mothers, are presumably sanctified. Then I felt firsthand just how subjugating and demoralizing it was. That’s when I understood just what women were up against.

In ten days, my book — SHAME ON YOU: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification — enters the world. I feel unbelievably fortunate to have survived my story. I wrote this book for the younger version of me that wasn’t sure she could. I wrote this book for the current version of me that still sometimes fears she can’t. If you can relate, I wrote this book for you. If you’ve ever felt, for any reason, fundamentally different, I encourage you to pre-order a copy today. Pre-orders mean a lot to a book’s success, as do reviews and ratings on Amazon or Goodreads. If you forward this letter to someone else, I’d be so grateful.

Lastly, I’ll be celebrating my publication day with two good friends, Tiffanie Drayton and Erin Khar, at the Atlantic Avenue Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn on Tuesday, September 10 at 6:30PM. The event is free and open to all. I’ll also in conversation with Kiese Laymon at the 92nd Street Y on Thursday, September 12, at 7:30PM. This is a virtual event and you can purchase tickets here.

Thank you for being a part of my journey.

With love,

Melissa