He was hot. Really hot. I glanced up from the Greeves Street sidewalk, with a million things rushing through my head, and did a double take. He made eye contact and smiled at my reaction to him. Damn, I thought, that is a good looking man. I realised a split second later that he was getting out of a worker’s car. He was cocky and smiling because he’d just had sex (at about 11:30 on a Tuesday morning). The hot man that I had just checked out was a mug. The hot man didn’t seem creepy, or gross, or yuck; all of those things I think about the men who use sex workers.

Later the same day a woman walked through the door and marched straight up to where I was sitting. Uh oh, I thought. Definitely a local resident come to complain. ‘Can I have some condoms please?’ she said. Definitely not a local resident. I always get it wrong. I’m here every day and I still turn the people into characters.

The Man Who Looks Like Santa. He came to the door one day with a kind, bearded face and grandfatherly eyes. He spoke warmly and I liked him immediately. Then it became clear that he had enjoyed his time with one of the girls and wanted me to book her again. I sent him on his way with a firm tone and laughed as I relayed the story to the girl in question the next day, leaning out the car window to tell her as she sat in the favourite spot.

Stereotypical Sex Worker. She was the first sex worker I met and with her short skirts, high heels and drug habit she was exactly what I thought a prostitute would be like. But she is one of the sharpest, most articulate women I have ever come across. She’s funny, she’s in love and she has a stable home.

Scary Guy with the creepy eye. I never know where he is looking because he has one dead eye, fixed blankly on a point in the distance. He’s homeless, drug affected and he roams the street with his sidekick Silent Friend. But Scary Guy also has great manners and says please and thank you every time he asks for a coffee.

Silent Friend is reeeeeeeeally weird. To be honest I’m a bit fearful of him. He is a lurker, lingering menacingly in my line of sight, never speaking. I project all sorts of creepy characteristics onto Silent Friend, some of them probably true. But even so, last Tuesday Silent Friend brought in our bins from the street and put them away without me asking (I would never go out of my way to ask Silent Friend anything).

I get it wrong because people in this world are supposed to be definitively bad. Or sad. Or mad. Before this becomes a Dr. Seuss story, my point: stereotypes of what a sex worker, mug or homeless person looks/sounds/tastes/touches/feels like exist because sometimes they are right. Homeless people, drug addicts, mugs and sex workers can sometimes be scary and strange. But they also bring the bins in.

The photo above is of Lee’s home (the one below is of her and her daughters at the beach – and a note that these are her images not mine). She is a complicated character. Has been off the streets/drugs for about as long as that fat, happy baby has been occupying that spot on the floor. A Miracle Story. Only the miracle story has flaws, because, unsurprisingly, she is flawed. But, by and by, she is doing okay.

And I don’t know but that living room, her living room, doesn’t conjure up sex worker to me (or sorry, ex-sex-worker). Neither does her fat baby, rolling on the floor, a vision of content. Nor her son in the corner occupying a teen slouch, nor the array of family photographs.

I’m guessing if you saw that photo, saw either of those photos, you wouldn’t even know what she used to do for a profession. She sure doesn’t look like a vision of a stereotype, stepping into the sand with her baby on hip, her big girl echoing her stance (sans the cigarette of course). She looks like an entry in any album of domestic bliss, held in place by those plastic corners that go yellow with age.