Aphrodite Phoenix's Book: NOT#ME TOO. #ME IN CHARGE.
I’m originally from Long Island and New York City. I’ve subsequently spent much of my life in the Greater Boston area. If you picture me as a product of the most innovative, provocative, and liberal of Northeast environs, then you’ve sized me up pretty well. I was born into the upper middle class, but my childhood was chaotic and tragic. By the time I reached my late teens, wealth---the only strong anchor in my otherwise traumatized world---had taken a nosedive, as well. On top of already contending with innumerable emotional woundings, this princess was forced to learn the ropes of upward mobility. At first, I didn’t have an inkling of how much poverty ruins. I made terrible financial and relationship choices that a working class soul never would. I became a divorced single mother of three with nothing and no one to aid me. My extreme naivete put me there. I had a relentless survivor drive, however, and was blessed with imagination, and Northeastern feministic balls.
Sex work came to me as power.
My writing roots
For me, writing a book was never a decision. It was natural, like learning to walk. From the time I was old enough to properly hold a pencil, I was bent over paper, composing. An inborn compulsion propelled me. My mother, before her untimely death, had been a professional writer. Her sister, my aunt, had been a
high school English teacher. My great grandfather had been a Tufts English professor. All of them had been poets. I didn’t have a choice, you see. I was born to write.
But, because of my motherhood circumstances, which had me divorced and quite poor, I was nailed down to waiting on tables and such for years and years that stole from me the time to be my true self. Eventually, sex work changed that. Making two hundred dollars an hour, now I worked a dozen hours a week. I finally had time for my children, and for the book I had to write, and the cause for sex workers’ rights.
Aphrodite's NETWORK OUTLETS
