I have tried to achieve a comfort zone with this project. Ithappened in 1997, on one of those days before a staff meeting when wewere tired and cynical, feeling used by the society of writing that exists inthe college. We began to kid around about the students who wanted us topunish them, the students who wanted a quick fix, those who wanted topunish us. That is when the idea of Madam Barnett’s Writing Emporiumwas born. It started as a joke, the idea that we in the University ofMichigan-Flint Writing Center were like hookers. Perhaps it should haveended there, but with my affection for odd comparisons, and VinceLocke’s (Vince is another tutor) idea for a paper on writing center myths,the idea just wouldn’t go away.During the summer, I checked out books, social and psychologi-cal studies of prostitution, to see if the similarities were mere jokes, or ifthere was something important in the idea that tutoring and prostitutionwere partially alike. I thought the exploration would be amusing. I did notknow that I would discover things that disturbed me about myself and howtutoring has affected me.