Las Vegas
Y
ou would think my rock-bottom as a
“high-class call girl” (read: “prostitute” which itself is just another word for “being sex-trafficked”) would’ve been the time my pimp hogtied me and threw me in the trunk of my car, telling me he was going to drive me out to the Las Vegas desert and bury my freshly-killed body. Or perhaps it should be another time when, upon learning I was planning on leaving the glamorous life of being sex-trafficked in Vegas, my pimp had me kidnapped while I was pumping gas, beaten until my nose was broken, stripped naked with all my hair chopped off, and then beaten some more with an iron fireplace poker while being spat upon. Maybe it should be one of the many times I saw one of my friends— and fellow prostitutes—die. Seven altogether. One died in a taxicab from a drug overdose; one was shot in the face point-blank in a brothel; one was strangled in a hotel room and put in a suitcase; one was stabbed to death by her client; one got killed while in jail; one died of bladder cancer; and one died from complications of AIDS. What about when I contracted Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer, and kept selling my body in order to pay my medical bills? I spent a total of three years going through intense radiation and chemotherapy, wearing wigs when I went on escort calls, vomiting violently in the bathroom af-
terwards. Surely that was the time I hit rockbottom and reconsidered my life? No. None of those. I gave myself many other opportunities to lose everything, like the period I spent addicted to cocaine, Oxycontin, Lortabs, Xanax, alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling. Or the time after that where I chased every type of spiritualism out there, from Buddhism to Wicca to vampirism. Or the period after that when I left my life as an escort, got in a relationship with a successful businessman, and began to worship at the temple of money. Obviously, no one ever starts out in the sex industry with an ambition to become a strung-out and debased shell of themselves. It happens over time, little by little, with hundreds of compromises along the way. I enabled myself to make those compromised choices by developing an alter ego of sorts. It wasn’t Annie making those decisions—it was someone I named “Fallen.”
Yes, “Fallen.”
Annie was weak and troubled; Fallen was strong and secure. Annie was wounded and fearful; Fallen was unhurt and brave. My lifestyle would’ve eaten Annie alive; Fallen just got chewed up and spit out. She was a fallen angel, and she could take it. And take it she did, for a long time. For more than a decade, in fact. Yes, there was a certain amount of surface glamour involved in the lifestyle of a high-class Vegas escort, and even more in the corporate
“Fallen left and the real Annie came back and Jesus gave me another chance.”
world that I joined afterward. But try as I might, my life as “Fallen” couldn’t fill the ever-expanding void I felt within my soul. Instead, I tried to fill it with marathon sessions spent on the floor of my walk-in closet in my million-dollar home, with only my alter ego, my drugs, my smokes, and my booze to keep me company. It seemed like light-years away from the little girl I started out as. For the first almost-decade of my life, I was simply a sweet, innocent soul who went to church every week with her family and learned all about God and Jesus in Sunday School. Until I was sexually abused at the age of eight. That changed everything. Instead of thinking of God as a loving Father, I imagined Him as having a big hammer, just waiting to smash me if I did anything wrong! So I hid my secrets and didn’t trust anyone. My family also moved around so much that I went to seven different schools during my childhood. I felt rejected much of the time but hung on to my virginity until, when I was 18, my boyfriend convinced me we would become closer and that he would “love” me more if we had sex. So I gave in… and he dumped me.
I was devastated. Angry. Hurt. And it was at that moment I decided to rebel. I listened to the message of pop culture and decided to define my self-worth by looking for love in all the wrong places, with wrong people—people with issues just like mine. I swallowed the pill that pop culture gave me so I wouldn’t be seen as a prude or weirdo. I hoped everything would be all right if I just kept a pretty smile on my face. And that’s how I got into the lifestyle. Here’s how I got out: I had so much pain, anger, shame, guilt, and regret in my life that I decided to erase it, so I overdosed on cocaine, alcohol, Xanax, pain pills, and somas in one night. And as all that hit my system, I fell to the ground, the physical pain in my chest scaring me to no end. Loud ringing in my ears; a tangible sense of isolation laying on me like a heavy blanket. This was real. This was death, approaching. And in the midst of it, I said, “Jesus, I’m sorry! Please forgive me! I can’t die like this! Please, Jesus, if You’re real, give me another chance!” You know what happened? Part of me died that day: the “Fallen” part! Fallen left and the real Annie came back and Jesus gave me another chance. It wasn’t long after that someone told me how God loved me… and I finally, at long last, believed it. My heart melted, and I took the leap of faith and dedicated my entire life to Jesus. Soon afterward, He called me to start Hookers for Jesus in Las Vegas, so I could go back and reach all the ladies I’d left behind when I left the sex industry. He’s been faithful ever since and has opened all kinds of doors for this ministry. He’s been faithful in my life, too—I’m now happily married to the love of my life, who supports me in all I do! Instead of Fallen, I’ve been resurrected! As Christians, we can be pitiful or powerful in whatever we do. We make our own choices. So if we have the power to make a difference, to change the world, then we should do something. Maybe we should do it now.
Annie 24
StripChurch.com
StripChurch.com
25