Veronica Monet grew up with a different name near Portland, Ore., in a working-class family. Her mother was a homemaker, her father a welder who never made much money. "My parents know what I do. My mother and I are very close. We talk all the time. My father disowned me. That's been painful, but he disowned my sister too, and she's not a prostitute. She's a security guard, so we figure it's his problem."

With a talent for writing, Monet put herself through Oregon State on scholarships and with a job tutoring jocks in grammar and composition. She majored in psychology and minored in business. "It's funny -- in my line of work, I use them both every day." She also became a feminist, with strong feelings about prostitution: "I viewed it as one of the many ways that male-dominated society degrades and oppresses women -- and then stigmatizes them for it." In 1982, she graduated with honors.

She moved to Silicon Valley and for six years worked secretarial jobs for computer companies. Then, incredibly bored and in search of a creative outlet, she became the volunteer producer of a public-access TV show, "Survival Skills." "Nobody watched, but it was fun, and I had this dream of getting a job in television."

At work, she met the man she eventually married, whom we'll call Adrian. He was 13 years older, a Vietnam veteran. "He was a computer technician, I was his dispatcher, and there was instant electricity between us." He was just her type physically: tall, dark and handsome with blue eyes and a full beard. "I'm a sucker for beards." He also had a huge personality. "When he walked into a room, he lit it up." Monet felt so attracted to him that it scared her. So did other things. He had two ex-wives, several kids and a few girlfriends. He was also deep into alcohol and cocaine. The drugs didn't bother her. "I was young and it was the '80s. Alcohol was everywhere, and back then we thought coke was nonaddictive."

They flirted. Then Adrian moved to Los Angeles for a year and they had no contact. When he came back, he turned the full force of his personality toward winning Monet's heart. She felt ambivalent. "We fucked a lot and fought a lot. I was very possessive and jealous and insisted he get rid of his other women." Eventually he did. "He kept calling me the love of his life. I was head over heels for him, but I wasn't convinced he was the love of mine. What did I know?"

Monet and Adrian moved in together in 1983. It was a tempestuous relationship. "Looking back, I blame it on the drugs. We were doing a great deal of coke and booze. We had violent fights." To hurt one another, they had affairs. "He'd fuck a woman he picked up at a bar, and then I had to fuck a man I met at a bar. Several times I woke up with no idea where I was, in bed with men I didn't remember fucking." Monet was going to work drunk. She had several alcohol-related fender-benders. Then she got arrested for drunken driving.

The arrest led her to an A.A. meeting, which she hated. "The people seemed like losers, and I didn't believe I was an alcoholic." She tried psychotherapy. "The therapist said, 'No one can help you until you realize you're an alcoholic.'" Monet decided to quit drinking on her own and went 30 days. Soon afterward she was injecting cocaine. "I looked at that needle in my arm and realized I had no control. On Sept. 4, 1985, I stopped drinking and doing drugs. I haven't had any since. I went to A.A. every day for years. I still go about once a week."

Once Monet sobered up, she urged Adrian to do the same, but he refused. They broke up in 1986, and she didn't see him for five years. She dated A.A. friends and invested in psychotherapy. "I worked on myself. I grew up."

She was still producing her TV program, and one day, she filmed a male strip show. "The phones lit up. People were actually watching. I learned an important lesson: Sex sells." She also started dating one of the strippers. "I loved his shows. He had a sexy body and was a great dancer. Watching him got me so hot." She didn't care that every night dozens of other women became equally aroused and stuffed bills deep into his jock. "They all wanted him. But I got to go home with him. I got turned on knowing my lover was desired by so many other women." But there were complications. He was also involved with a woman who stripped at the Mitchell Brothers' San Francisco strip club. They had a child together. Eventually, he broke up with the stripper and moved in with Monet.

The relationship was Monet's introduction to the world of sex work -- and to consumers of those services. One was a man who was hot for her. "He introduced me to a woman he knew who was a prostitute. He was interested in a threesome. She and I hit it off. I had no idea I was bisexual, but that quickly became apparent. I wound up going to bed with her instead of him."

Becoming a prostitute's lover pushed all of Monet's feminist buttons. "I felt sorry for her. She had no college education. She wasn't a feminist. She had no intellectual framework to understand how oppressed she was, how she was selling out to the enemy." But the two women had great fun together, and the relationship deepened. Monet was surprised to learn that her lover was married, the mother of three children, with a husband who worked for IBM. They were also swingers who made amateur porn videos. Monet and her stripper boyfriend entered the swing world and were welcomed with open arms -- and other limbs. "I was running with a sexually wild crowd and loving it. I was 29, and my libido was just kicking into high gear. People talk about the raging hormones of teenagers. Well, they have nothing on a woman hitting 30 who discovers her sexual self."

Monet felt that her life was finally flowering, but at work she had nothing but trouble. "My boss said I wasn't obsequious enough, that a mere secretary shouldn't be producing TV shows. Finally I resigned." A few other jobs didn't work out. In spite of herself, Monet began considering prostitution. "I kept thinking about my girlfriend. She was her own boss. Sure, she rented her body, but no one owned her. On the jobs I'd had, they wanted your soul."

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