When Tilly Lawless moved to the big city to start university, she found herself living off state benefits which barely covered her cost of living.
After racking her brain to find ways of earning more cash to make ends meet, Tilly decided to do some research into escorting.
From there, Tilly decided to try out a new career - and she's never looked back. Over the last nine years, Tilly has worked as a private escort, in massage parlours and in brothels.
Tilly, who is gay, told news.com.au she never had much trouble settling into sex work, because sleeping with men was "easy" for her.
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Describing how men can climax more easily than women, the Sydney-based worker added having sex with a man was a "piece of cake."
Although she's now a veteran of the sex industry and can manage clients much better than when she was younger, Tilly admits she's suffered from classic millennial "burnout."
She added the job has made her "far more celibate" in her private life, and she only seeks out sex with a proper emotional connection, rather than endless dating or casual sex.
Although she is often getting down and dirty at work, she says "most of the sex isn't good sex" but admits sometimes it can be "fun."
Tilly says her work has never interfered with her personal relationships - mainly because the women she has dated don't feel threatened by the men she has sex with for work.
She claims the only time she butted heads with a partner over her work was when the partner was also working in the sex industry.
"If we were working the same shift and I was getting picked by more guys, she would pick a fight with me because she was upset that I was getting picked more than her,” she said.
While working in the industry, Tilly has used her social media accounts to try and bust myths about sex work and remove the stigma.
She has also released a novel, Nothing But My Body, which is also about a sex worker. But while some aspects of the novel draw upon her own experiences, Tilly is keen to stress the book is a novel rather than a memoir.
She said: "I wanted the actual topics that the character is interrogating to be romantic love, and mental health, and queer community, and what it means to create a family and friendship and all that kind of stuff. I didn’t actually want sex work to be the problem topic."
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She added the "important" theme of friendship in the LGBT+ community runs through the book, which she argues is key for queer people who have turned to friends for support when their families haven't accepted them.
Tilly said: “I think that friendship is one of the things that are long-lasting and we need to nurture, rather than a relationship with one person that you exclude everyone else from.”
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