After graduating from college, I took a job in the Alaskan fishing industry as a salmon processor – the person who turns whole fish into something you’d recognize in a grocery store.
"Do you also not quite understand what it is that the two of us are doing here?" "Are you going to ask me to submit a work sample that takes up a full two days of my time, then never answer any of my painfully cheery 'just following up' emails?" "I know...I know there's not a job here, now. But will there be one. Do you think. Will there be one. Someday. For me. Will…
"I try not to do anything that’s not paid anymore, because it’s really hard to justify your work when you’re doing things for free. People assume that what you do is very easy if you don’t ask for money."
It’s a sticky afternoon in June and I’m standing in a manicured field in Long Island. There’s a leash attached to my belt loop. On the other end of the leash is a blonde woman named Mandi barking out commands.
It always surprises me how little people can get away with knowing about sex workers. I had a client once who assumed I had children to support, and was scandalized when I confessed I didn’t. “You’re just one of these selfish women,” he told me, “these selfish women who want to move to a beach somewhere with a pair of massive fake tits and live off the interest.”
It's very simple, and it's this. I would pay, let's say, two-thirds the price of a movie ticket – maybe seven or eight dollars – to go to the movies and watch a solid hour and fifteen minutes of previews alone. (If you don't like previews, that's fine. You don't have to do it. I like them. This is my idea.)
The walk from the subway to the Society of Illustrators isn’t long. So when I say that my apprehension grew with every step I took along Lexington Avenue, I mean that it expanded rapidly, like the chorus of a Pixies song.
It was early autumn, and just starting to get cold in Manhattan. I wore black sweatpants, a jean jacket, a purple scarf. Soon I wouldn’t be wearing anything at all.
I love being a librarian. Every day is different, and I enjoy helping people with their plans and projects. But with the job also comes a number of questions I cannot answer, or would simply prefer not to get. While you might imagine you can ask your local librarian anything, there may be times when they simply won’t have a ready response for you. …
There's been some good and thoughtful reporting over the Rentboy arrests over the last few days. From Graeme Reid at Human Rights Watch: Rentboy.com connects male escorts to clients in the same way that Uber does for transport, or Airbnb does for accommodation. There are no middlemen, thus affording users control and autonomy over the services brokered through the website. The website connects consenting adults. None of the government statements about the raid have…
Sulagna Misra is a writer, editor and frequent Toast contributor who writes a popular pitching newsletter, Pitching Shark. Here she shares some advice for aspiring freelancers. I’ve always had a tendency to go on at length about things I can’t stop thinking about, eager to talk about things I’ve just realized or weird jokes I’ve cooked up that no one in my vicinity really gets. It was only when I started pitching and…
