Charlotte Shane, who just published a memoir about her years as a sex worker and her relationship to men, was nearly a teen runaway. She was desperate to move to New York City while growing up but didn’t end up here until 2015, where she immediately fell in love both with her now-husband Sam and the city itself. Shane talked to us about her early years here, which began with being tricked by a broker into renting an apartment in Tribeca and having an aesthetic breakdown in a midtown Old Navy.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I grew up in a relatively provincial small town on the eastern shore of Maryland. And in the sort of stereotypical small-town vein, when you’re someone who has big aspirations or certain curiosities — I wanted to contribute to culture and be a writer — it feels very stifling to be there. The first time I visited New York was on a class trip to see Phantom of the Opera. I was 14, and I was one of those people who the second she stepped foot in Manhattan, there were stars in her eyes like, “Oh my God, this is the place. This is the place.” And as I got older, I would find excuses to visit. I would take a Greyhound up for concerts with my best friend. I actually thought I was going to run away to New York while I was still in high school. My best friend talked me out of it by just crying a lot. But I wanted to. I was like, I don’t care if I have to live on the street.
I started going to New York regularly in my 20s, around 2007. I was living in D.C. at the time and going there for work dates. I was spending outrageous amounts of time in New York visiting constantly. But my experience of New York was pretty small and very repetitive. I would stay in a hotel in Manhattan, usually in midtown or uptown; I would go to dinner and go to a show, because that was what I was doing for work. And then I was there for work in December of 2014 when I met Sam, who is now my husband. I felt like I was using him as an excuse to move, but even if Sam and I were not going to stay together, I just knew I wanted to be in New York. Most of my friends were there too at that point.
I officially moved to New York in early 2015. All my friends told me I should just use a broker, which I had never done before. I’d only ever gone on Craigslist in other cities. I had no idea what was normal rent for New York, but I was making a lot of money back then, so I gave the broker kind of a big budget, and they were like, “You really seem like a downtown girl.” I was like, Okay, sure. They were showing me properties in the West Village and Tribeca. We were driving around once from place to place in a cab and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing with my price point — New York phenomenons like one window for a whole apartment or almost no kitchen, stuff that’s shocking when you’re coming from other cities — so I asked what the most expensive neighborhoods were to live in. The guy said, “Oh, West Village and Tribeca.” I was like, What the fuck? Why did you think I needed to live in the most expensive places?
I ended up renting a place in Tribeca, which I did love. It was in Tribeca Towers, which still exists. I was doing sex work, but not as intensely as I previously had. It was still paying very well, and I also had saved a ton of money, so I was kind of living out of my savings. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend sinking a ton of your life savings into New York rent as I did for many years, but I did. I was also freelance writing pretty regularly, but it never paid that well. I started getting more stressed about this by year four or five, but in the beginning, I was really in love and in love with New York, so it was really an intoxicating time in my life.
I do remember once early on, I was out and about and I feel like I had kind of a mental breakdown — a crisis about not living up to the aesthetic standards of New York. It was such a visceral sort of self-rejection, such a fierce return of an insecurity I hadn’t felt for a long time. And it was really crazy, but the standards in New York were just really different. The coolest-looking person in Washington, D.C., is a normal, unremarkable person in New York. And I found myself in Old Navy in midtown, which is not a place I normally shop. I was just like, I have to go in here and be in a fitting room and try to get myself together. This is how you know I was addled, because who would be walking around New York thinking, Oh, I am not cool enough to be here, I really stick out like a sore thumb, so I’m going to get some new clothes at Old Navy? It wasn’t like I was thinking, I shouldn’t be here, I should leave. I think it was a variation of, I don’t belong here yet. I should figure out how to belong.
I was still sending out the newsletter that eventually became my first book, Prostitute Laundry, which I’d begun before moving to New York, and I published the book soon after I’d arrived. Because I had self-published my book, I had started relationships with a lot of the indie bookstores in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, and that was really special and fun. I started a reading series, which was also facilitating those relationships with the bookstores and with other writers and was a good excuse to meet people who I only spoke with online. I was talking with these booksellers and currying these stacks of books all over the city and putting together the event. That, to me, felt very like the New York dream of you just carving out your spot, where I want to do some type of art and so I have to create the conditions within which to do it. And it’s something that felt very accessible. I would just email these places and say, “Can I do an event?”
WORD in Greenpoint was the first one. I don’t know that I thought it would be a regular thing, but then I just really liked it. And there were so many writers I wanted to ask. I think what turned it into a series was just that I wanted to include these other people and meet them. Sometimes I would meet people I really liked, and they really were not taken with me at all, which is their prerogative. But a lot of times, it would facilitate a friendship because there would be a natural affinity between us. And to be in person and experiencing it versus just sort of online obviously creates new intimacy. So I loved it. People would come regularly; it was really fun. And it did kind of feel like a community in total, not just the community among the readers, but the people who were coming to support it too.
I just think New York has the best people. It always felt really thrilling and special to be living here, especially in the quiet moments. In Tribeca, Sam and I would walk around a lot. Because it was so quiet, we would walk to the water all the time. It really is special to be walking around when everything is closed. Those moments when you get to see New York when it’s empty feel incredible, surreal. Sam is an artist and had a bunch of artist friends. So we would also go to random little art shows and events in Chinatown and the East Village. We would go out to eat at all these vegan places that don’t exist anymore, like Angelica Kitchen, which is really sad — it had been around for a very long time, since the ’70s or something. And there was this place near us called the Pakistani Tea House — it was so delicious and I have never gotten over it closing. I was in denial about it for a long time. We would walk up to Union Square, walk up to Washington Square Park, we’d walk to yoga, walk back. It was a ton of walking, which is not an event and it doesn’t sound that remarkable to describe to anybody. But they were very precious, treasured moments.