Melissa Petro was an art teacher at PS 70 in The Bronx when she wrote an essay for The Huffington Post that began thusly: “People — not just prostitutes — have sex for many reasons. Sometimes, for some of us, one reason is money.” The article was about her history as a Craigslist sex worker, and she was removed from the classroom soon after.
Now, Petro has been talking up her forthcoming memoirs at open-mic nights, the New York Daily News writes. In a video of her speaking at the Bowery Poetry Club, Petro said the book will be about “my experiences in the sex industry starting when I was 19 years old and living as a student abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico.”
The article that prompted her reassignment at the school — she now works in an administrative capacity — focused on her domestic liaisons. She explained that she provided “sexual services” to men she met on Craigslist from October 2006 until January 2007. She also offered a plea for the classified ad site to keep its adult services section that it had recently started to censor.
In an excerpt from the memoir, she describes a sexual encounter with a woman co-worker named Salma. She had named herself after Salma Hayek, Petro explained.
“She let me touch and kiss her breasts,” she read. “One night she invited me closer and we danced together. She kissed me, she touched me in ways that a woman had never touched me before.”
It is unknown whether or not Petro has secured a publisher.
