My first trick

I was so new to the game, I had no idea that 14-year-olds could charge more than 19-year-olds. Seventh in a series.

By Tracy Quan

Jul 30, 2001 | My first trick was a baby-sitter's childish lark. I was 13 and Professor Andrews was a local celebrity, a neighbor, who caught my eye.

In the quiet Canadian city where I grew up, anyone who had ever lived abroad or who hung out in Toronto was considered cosmopolitan. Professor Andrews qualified on both counts. He took lots of trips to Toronto, which struck me then as glamorous.

It tickled me to know that grown women were actually falling in love with this charismatic radical chic author-professor, while I knew the real G. Frasier Andrews. And I knew they'd be horrified if they found out what he had done with me. I was having a giggle at the expense of all those grown-ups who said, "You're too young to have sex. You aren't ready for it." I sensed that there were things they would never be ready for.

While my parents knew I was on the Pill, I made sure they didn't hear about my adventure with our neighbor. My mother created -- and enforced -- a 10:30 p.m. curfew but had no idea what I got away with in the middle of the day.

It's horrible, really, when you think about it -- how cold a pubescent girl can be in the face of a pedophile's lechery. I wasn't a virgin, but I was ridiculously innocent. I had never felt full-fledged physical desire. I didn't know that mature women lusted after men's cocks, didn't know what that felt like or looked like -- which is why I didn't understand the adult admirers of G. Frasier Andrews.

So when I looked at his cock, I must have appeared more curious than appreciative. Professor Andrews was part of a summer project I had assigned myself just before the break: I was determined to start taking the Pill, to start having a Sex Life.

Sex was instinctual for Professor Andrews; I doubt that he'd ever had a Sexual Plan when he was my age. And where I was too clinical to know what passion was, he was unable to control the urges that were most dangerous to his reputation.

Sometimes I think of Professor Andrews as my first adventure in the business. But I was still living at home; I didn't need the money, and it was summertime. I understand that summer has changed, that 13-year-olds now spend those months imprisoned in summer school and self-improvement day camps. Not then! I had lots of time on my hands.

The next summer, I ran away -- to another country. Later, when I started hooking in earnest, I came to see Professor Andrews as an amateur trick. Having sex for money was, at first, a perverse little game that made me feel cocky and cool -- different from my peers. But later, money became a necessity: it was food, freedom, the ability to control my life, to stay afloat and hold my head up without admitting defeat to my parents.

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