How I Went from Being a Homeless Underage Prostitute, to a Bestselling Author in Just 25 Years

I did not set out to be homeless. Or a teenage prostitute - a "chicken" in street vernacular. But as I recount in my book Chicken: Love for Sale On the Streets of Hollywood (Canongate, 2003) that's exactly what I did. When I arrived in Hollywood to begin my college career at Immaculate Heart College, I was a naïve, adorable, clueless, trusting, sexually precocious 17 year old. My first day there, feeling utterly alone, with $27 in my pocket and no place to stay, a very nice man in a black t-shirt that said SEXY in silvery sparkly letters befriended me, and invited me to his house for a steak dinner. When I speak to kids now, I always tell them, if a nice man in a shirt that says SEXY on it invites you for a steak dinner: JUST SAY NO.