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trip would have assured me I was exactly the seductress I’d convinced myself I could be. But then it was all still so new.
    Growing up with farmhands around me, I’d learned to eavesdrop on conversations for information about the real world outside Glendale. I knew that big cities offered advantages to girls like me, and that all I had to do was find the right woman to teach me and take me under her wing.
     
    * * * *
     
    San Francisco
     
    I asked one of my drivers to pull over and wait while I went to the ladies’ room and, as usual, my command was obeyed. Inside by the pay phone, I saw a stand with newspapers. I looked for the alternative free distribution kind and leafed through the back pages. High rates for beautiful young girls, minimal nudity, full discretion, please call. Between the ads for massage parlours were ads that girls had posted themselves. Even if my biggest dreams didn’t pan out right away, I wouldn’t starve. I left through the back door without thanking the ride that had taken me the final seventy miles of my journey. I had made it to San Francisco. I had plenty of money tucked in my backpack and a mind full of dreams.
    I kept the newspaper with all the ads, for future reference. It was early afternoon and I was embarking on the most exciting part of my journey.
    Walking through the streets felt like magic. There was something about the momentum of the city that exuded hope and newness. The boredom of my past was over. This was the beginning of everything.
    I’d spent the past week trying on various personas for my drivers and I needed to recuperate. Enough lying. I was here to find myself and make it big. I thought I would start by walking up and down the busy streets, stepping in and out of coffee houses as I pleased. I would be whimsical about my accommodations, find the part of town that suited me and settle in.
    I started to feel as though I was in the wrong neighbourhood when men ogled me with their overly familiar stares. The looks in their eyes were anything but respectful. You wait , I told them in my head, you just wait . I could play along for now—I was a nobody, a complete stranger to this world—but it would not take long for me to become the kind of woman who commanded a whole different kind of attention. I turned on my heels and headed for the financial district.
    It was around dinnertime when I settled into the Side Bar, the first place with a name I recognised from the back pages of the newspaper. I followed a bunch of executives in suits who were talking about the day’s earnings and how they were going to grab some drinks and hang out with the Friday night girls. Inside, the place was a little grim. It was like what I had seen in old black and white movies—a smoke-filled room with stern-looking waitresses, male patrons and jazz.
    The hostess who greeted me seemed confused. I guessed this wasn’t the type of place women came to alone, so I played along.
    “I’m meeting someone. Could I get a table for two?”
    “Oh, sure.” She looked me up and down, searched for a couple of laminated menus and told me to follow her. “You wanna be able to see the dancers or not?”
    “Yes, please.”
    I was seated around the corner from the bar, at a small round table. I ordered a martini because I’d never had one and I needed to rectify that. When the bartender asked for my ID, I told him I was twenty-five and, shockingly, he believed me. I also got potato skins, my one homage to my past life.
    I couldn’t take my eyes off the girls on the stage. There were two of them doing a wild set of moves. They seemed so free. I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have so many people’s attention at the same time. They seemed to enjoy it until their kissing scene, when I saw one of their faces and she looked drab, completely emotionless, like a machine. I wondered if she had been doing it for too long, or if she had just never enjoyed it. Maybe she wanted to be kissing her