(Notes from the cutting room floor)
I’m taking a break from editing to share something about the protagonist in my latest novel-in-progress, Needle’s Edge. She’s a woman – yes, but not just. She’s a prostitute. She’s an addict. And she’s three people.
There’s Sarah, her given name. The name reserved for friends, family, and those rare few who know her without conditions. It’s the name she hears in moments of tenderness, or shame, or memory.
Then there’s Stacey, the escort, the stripper, the performer. This is the name on her ads. The one whispered in hotel rooms and shouted in clubs. Stacey is curated. Sexual. Selective. She knows what sells and how to sell it.
And then there’s Pink, the street persona. The user. Pink is who shows up when Sarah needs to score. She trades in slang and silence. She wears a different skin. A different currency.
Three names. One woman. No seams showing – if she can help it.
In her world, compartmentalisation is survival. If a dealer connects the dots and knows she’s an escort, she’s vulnerable. If a client finds out she’s using, her value drops. Appearances are everything. Rates depend on it. Reputation is a balancing act on a razor’s edge. And so each name carries its own set of rules, risks, and rituals.
But here’s the deeper cut: Who’s the “real” Sarah?
Is Stacey fake? Is Pink less than? Is Sarah just the base layer beneath the makeup and muscle memory?
They’re all her. None of them. Some of each. Identity is slippery.
The left hemisphere of the brain craves coherence. It wants simplicity, categories, reduction. But the truth is, identity is a heuristic. A convenient fiction. And Sarah, more than most, knows this. Where most people perform one role and pretend it’s a self, she splits hers openly. She curates them. Manages them. Leverages them.
And yet, the cost is high.
Stacey and Pink are exhausting. High maintenance. High risk. But being Sarah isn’t a comfort either. It’s just what’s left when the others are stripped away. She doesn’t retreat into Sarah so much as collapse into her.
In that way, Sarah isn’t a self – she’s a default.
The irony? For all this agency, for all her awareness, she’s still trapped in identities designed for consumption. For transaction. For escape. Whether it’s sex, drugs, or memory, she’s always negotiating something.
Three names.
Three roles.
Still no way out.
Ridley Park 