For ADN: A look at prostitution in Anchorage from someone who lived it

The first time Amber Batts traded sex for money, she said, she was 30. She had two small children, her husband at the time was hurt at work, she said, and they needed money. She answered a newspaper ad and soon found herself at a trailer in view of the giant neon tattoo shop gun in Spenard. She knocked on the door. A man ushered her inside.

He gave her the rundown: always get the money up front; don’t do anything extra without a condom; don’t do anything that doesn’t feel safe; let somebody else know where you are. She sat on a couch and watched women come and go. Her “date” arrived, a white guy in his 50s. He wore glasses and worked an office job. He was nice, she said. Afterward she felt no emotion. She was numb.

“It was really easy. It was too easy,” she said. “I made about $300 of my own that night.”