Nicole Flanagan was a daughter, sister, aunt and mother of three young children. She was a friend of an acquaintance who lived close to where I used to live in the Bronx. She was also the subject of the August 20 New York Post headline, “NYC hooker found dead in barrel.” Most of the words of that article slipped immediately from my mind, but one detail stuck: the names of Ms. Flanagan’s children tattooed on her arm.
This is presumably how her body was identified after it was discovered in the New Jersey town where I visited my friends last month. When the GoFundMe for her funeral costs was retweeted, I gave what I could: $25. If Ms. Flanagan’s body had been discovered last week I would have given $100, but the same day the Post reported that “she always feared for her safety,” they also ran the headline, “OnlyFans Creators Feel Screwed Over by ‘Sexually Explicit Content’ Ban.” I’m a sex worker, too, and I’d been using the site to get through the pandemic.
