Turning To Tricks

In an excerpt from Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood, Leah Vincent describes her decision to become a prostitute:

The choice I made that morning felt inevitable. Girls who left Yeshivish life always became sluts and whores. This had been taught to me all of my life. I could never turn into a healthy irreligious woman. I now saw that this was not because of some divine punishment— no. It was because the journey out of the cloistered community I had been raised in was too difficult. The distance from modest girl to free woman could not be traversed. I would never have the confidence of a woman who’d received parental love regardless of her lifestyle choices. I would never relate to men the way a woman who had safely explored her sexuality in high school or college could. I would be stranded in black space between the world I came from and the world I wanted to enter, always falling short, always hurt, always failing. I might as well give up clawing away in the direction of a future that would never be mine. I might as well embrace my brokenness. I might as well wield it like a sword. I would not fall into the prophecy of doom; I would jump into it, feet first. I would be a smashing success at being bad.

Having rejected the laws of my upbringing, I had adopted few new morals. Sex was not sacred to me. And most importantly, I was good at it. My curves grabbed men’s attention, their interest fueled my confidence, and in the act, my desperation to please left my lovers more than satisfied. I was clueless at relationships but fantastic at attracting eager men and thrilling them that first, magical time. I might as well pursue my strength, I figured. I did not pause over the dangers of prostitution. I did not worry about disease. The [pelvic inflammatory disease] had probably left my insides dead. I felt I had nothing to lose.