I sipped vodka and orange juice for courage as I drove along the freeway toward a beach city near Los Angeles. I felt like vomiting. I felt like turning around and going home. Drinking and driving is something I would normally never, ever do, especially early on a Saturday morning.
But none of this was anything I would normally do. What I found was an eye-popping number of help wanted ads. These ads weren't looking for how fast you could type or if you knew PowerPoint, but they were also discreet about what skill set, exactly, was required.
Maybe it was the desperation and anxiety of my empty bank account, maybe it was the normalcy of the website I was using, but I wasn't as repulsed as I expected to be. The ad described a female-run agency, the potential to make a lot of cash in a short amount of time and a safe, friendly work environment. The ad encouraged hopeful applicants to forward along two recent photos via e-mail. No phone number. No contact or company name. It was nothing more than a couple of lines of poorly written ad text and a Craigslist-generated e-mail address to reply to, but it would change the course of my life for the next six weeks.
Recently, Craigslist replaced its erotic services section with a "censored" non-link and removed its "adult gigs" section completely, wiping the American version of the website clean of this dirty little problem international Craigslist pages continue to run ads for both.
It's the latest in an ongoing debate about the website, which has been accused of acting as a haven for sex traffickers and underage prostitution. Honestly, I don't know anything about that. I was carded by my employers. I was never forced to do something I didn't want. What I do know is that ads on Craigslist made it easy -- yes, too easy -- for a naive woman like me to slide into a dark and illegal lifestyle.
