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By OrientalNY New York City is both the best and worst place for an escort trying to maintain separate identities. That's what Kerry told me when we met in a cramped booth at a diner in Hell's Kitchen. With eight million people, the city offers anonymity. But it's also small enough that worlds collide in unexpected ways. Kerry has run into clients in her neighborhood grocery store, at her gym, and once, horrifyingly, at her sister's engagement party. "The city feels huge until it suddenly feels like a small town," she said, stirring sugar into her coffee with shaking hands. Kerry maintains three distinct versions of herself. There's Kerry the escort, who goes by Jade and has an entirely fabricated backstory. There's Kerry the grad student, which is actually true, working on her master's degree in public health. And there's Kerry the daughter and sister, who her family believes is funding her education through a combination of student loans and ...

Jordan makes eighteen thousand dollars in a good month, which sounds like a fortune until you understand what it costs her. She's twenty-nine, in what should be her peak earning years, and she's burning out so badly that some mornings she can't force herself out of bed. "I'm making more money than I ever dreamed of," she told me when we met at a quiet bar in the East Village, "and I'm more exhausted than I've ever been in my life." The burnout isn't just physical, though her body certainly feels it. It's the accumulated weight of performing intimacy with strangers, of being constantly "on," of smiling through situations that make her skin crawl, of compartmentalizing trauma so thoroughly that she's not sure where she's storing it all anymore. "It's like running a marathon every week," Jordan explained. "Except the marathon never ends. You finish one and immediately start another. And you can't ...