The dirty work that made me
My personal journey to writing about sex and life
BY KITTY OSMAN
I was 17 when I first realised it. No matter where I ended up, what I ended up doing, my dream in life was to always be surrounded by beauty. Particularly beautiful women -which perturbed but didn’t deter self-proclaimed “straight girl” Kitty. That’s the phrase I used in my notebook when asked to write up my career goals. That conviction, though unshakeable, did not really help me grapple with writing my personal statement for university. I was consistently led to new jobs by some “lower” mind of mine. Searching out opportunities to be near alluring ladies.
It started when I was 12, barely an adolescent. I’d found an anthology of erotic tales on the London Underground. It hadn’t been a particularly coveted volume of fiction – someone had scrawled a shopping list on the blank edges of the contents page – but to me it was everything. I hid it in my satchel and poured over its racy contents at home. Soon enough, I’d decided it was an ingenious idea to photocopy the dirty stories and sell them at £1-a-pop to other children in the playground. If my nosy librarian hadn’t found out and shut down my operation, I may have become the youngest pornography tycoon the world has ever seen.