Heather Lewis

Notice is brilliant at capturing the equilibrium the sex worker strives to maintain, down to the moment to moment adjustments I make, especially during a truly bad call, so I can keep my remove: How long can I keep the leering mouth breathing client happy just licking me rather than having him want me to go down on his pruney, old man smelling cock?

Notice shouldn’t scare me. The novel is, in subject, like the stories of my second life—like Law and Order: SVU and the canon of Catherine Breillat; like Lolita, Story of O, Freud, and Kathy Acker; like the Davids: Lynch and Cronenberg. Of sex and violent death.

I first read Notice in 2003, sitting at Café Pick Me Up, a couple weeks after moving back to New York. I was adrift. My family was back in San Francisco, and so was my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.