Survival sex

Allison didn't give out her number, either. Of course, she had her own reasons -- insane reasons. She had this rather dotty idea that giving johns her phone number would make her more of a hooker. She did actually have a roommate, a girl from her hometown in Fairfield County who knew her family. So she had to be cautious about hiding her new job. But even after her roommate moved out, Allie continued to work for Liane and to see clients through other call girls, as if direct contact with these men would somehow contaminate her. As if she could hide her job from herself, now that she was her own roommate.

"Allison's a natural!" Liane would sigh. "They all want to see her again. If only she had more common sense outside of bed!"

But Allie's guilt was a source of revenue for Liane.

"Working for Liane is easier," Allie once told me in a weak moment. "It's harder to stop when you see guys on your own."

I never could relate to Allie's sex guilt. Hooking always felt like a logical next step for me. Ever since the age of 10, I'd wanted to be a hooker -- and before that, a Playboy centerfold. Before that I wanted to be a librarian. Allison had never had any occupational fantasies as a child. Not a one. I didn't understand those kids when I was a kid -- how could they be so unexcited about the future? Allie and I would not have been friends if we had known each other as kids. When she started having sex, she was almost 17, and she didn't use anything until she had a pregnancy scare. That's so typically Allison.

Jasmine, who started hooking in her late 20s, always had her eye on the bottom line. She used her babysitting money to begin a career as a ticket scalper -- at 14 -- and squirreled away exactly 10 percent of her profit, religiously. Most of the balance was reinvested in tickets.

When she was arrested in front of Madison Square Garden for peddling Rangers tickets, she lied to the cops about her age. She wanted to be tried as an adult. That, in fact, is how she met the notorious Barry Horowitz (who last year became my attorney, too). Back then, Horowitz was an idealistic Legal Aid lawyer paying his social dues. She was incensed when he guessed her real age. He said she could use it to beat the charge. This "went against the grain," she insisted. He told her she had no concept of the future, and he was, she once told me, "so obnoxious that I had to stop talking and listen to him." Horowitz pointed out that many adults in her position would happily pretend to be 16 if they could: "So, if you wanna be an adult, you'd better start thinking like one. Beat the system."

Horowitz got Jasmine out of jail, helped her finesse the incident with her dad, and made sure that her arrest record was expunged when she turned 18. With the money she had stashed under her bed, she started a small franchise as a marijuana dealer, then moved on to bigger and better drugs when she graduated from high school.

At 25, Jasmine was a very discreet Upper East Side drug dealer, living in a nondescript elevator building with no doorman and taking an awfully long time to get her business degree: "Perpetual student's a great cover for a drug dealer. I kept switching my major." But she was getting itchy.

"I wanted to keep expanding my business," she once told me. "I didn't do any of my product, but I was addicted. To growth. If you really want to deal, it's still a man's world. A chick can only go so far. There's always gonna be some guy with a gun or worse who thinks that because you're a chick, he can hold you up or move in on you. You can't deal drugs as a single woman unless you're content with moderate growth. It's like being on the mommy track!"

Next Page: "It's all about being a chick"

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