There is no question in my mind that prostitution should be legalized,

and I say this not just because that happens to be my occupation, but because my own experience has shown me that I and others like me are preventing sex crimes on the streets. Let me give you just one example of many.

I have one regular customer — twice a week — who pays me to let him enact a rape. It’s the only way he can get it on. Usually the scene goes like this. I am dressed in very sedate clothes, in the way he thinks a librarian looks, tweed skirt, white blouse, slip and “sensible” shoes. My hair is done up in a bun and I wear glasses. I am sitting in my room, reading a book when he knocks and when I answer the door, he pretends to be a salesman who I let in. Once inside the door, he pulls out a gun (actually a plastic model) and forces me back into the center of the room near the bed. I plead with him not to kill me and tell him that he can take anything he wants, just not to hurt me.

The more I beg, the more he gets excited, and, in a low voice he tells me to shut up. Then he snatches off my glasses and tells me to let down my hair. I start to sob but slowly, very slowly take out the bobby pins which are holding my hair up.

Finally, my hair, which is actually very long, falls down over my face and shoulders while I continue to beg him not to hurt me. “Now, take off your blouse,” he says, his voice getting louder. When I refuse, he shoves the gun in my face, and I slowly — still crying — unbutton the blouse and take it off. Then the skirt and the slip, each time protesting and each time having him threaten me with his gun.

By this time all I have on is a bra and a garter belt, stockings and shoes. No panties, and he always says, “Ha, I always knew your type played with yourselves in secret.” But my only response is to cry and try to hide my body. Then he pushes me back on the bed, and with the gun pointed at the back of my head, he takes off the bra hooks and turns me over. As the bra falls off, I can see that he has a full erection bulging in his pants.

As I slowly take off my clothes, he unzips his fly. I scream, but as my mouth is open, he grabs my head and forces his penis in my mouth and at the same time keeps the gun pointed at my temple. I begin to suck him off, but after a few seconds, he pushes me back on the bed and climbs on. I try to fight him off me, rolling him off, closing my legs, pushing at his face, crying. Gradually, though, he overpowers me, pins my arms down, and forces his way inside. As he begins to move in and out, my expressions of fear and horror change to increasing joy and by the time he comes — never very long — I am pretending to have an orgasm, pressing him closer, thrashing around the bed, moaning.

After several times of doing this scene, he told me that he was terrified that he would really rape someone and that doing this with a prostitute was the only way he could reduce the compulsion. I was the only one, he said, that he found could act the part to his own satisfaction.

Since then we’ve varied the routine. Sometimes I come to the door as a housewife in a peignoir, sometimes as a little girl. Once he even forced me off the street with a knife. That time I was really scared and that was the only time I really did have an orgasm since he never let the knife go the whole time.

And I’m not the only hooker who has johns like this. Several of my friends go through different acts, but all simulate a rape in one way or another. If we weren’t around, these guys would just be out there really raping people and maybe even killing someone.