One of us is a lawyer, one is an administrative assistant, many of us are mothers. I am an actress/writer/producer, one of us was an elementary school teacher (now a full-time pro), one of us has a daughter who is deaf and may be going blind, one of us was a Sunday school teacher who had herself hypnotized to believe she was beautiful and horny so she could have the confidence and inspiration she needed. She wanted to break down her inhibitions, but her plan backfired. At the end, she wound up giving it away. We laughed and teased her the next day...
When there’s not much money around, we feel tense. Some girls fight, and some of us cry. One cries because her boyfriend stole money from her again! And after he promised to stop. One cries because she hasn’t made any money all night, and the last trick she brought to her room told her he doesn’t pay for it. One woman cries because a trick she likes favors another woman. I cry because I wound up doing too much for not enough cash, because I’m just not assertive enough and I don’t know how to bargain and those two guys I did together were so demanding. When we are making enough money we feel elated and no one cries. . .
At the end of the evening we have parties “women only” in the larger rooms. We usually are giddy, some of us drunk, most of us anxious to tell our stories. We hug and tease and flatter each other. At one party we hugged and kissed in twos and threes on the beds. Last year only a few of us did coke; most of us smoke pot and drink. I perform at these parties, with my tape recorder and telephone, and my poetry. I try to amuse myself. . .
Interview with Debra
Carole
Debra worked in prostitution for nine years. She is thirty-two years old and is presently working as a paralegal.
Carole: Where did you grow up?
Debra: My mother had me in Louisiana. I never met my father. I have no desire to. He just wanted some pussy and my mother happened to be there. From what I understand he was a jackass. He was already married. My mother had me, didn’t tell her parents and then gave me up for adoption. I was gone from my mother for nine months. But when she was getting the final papers for the adoption, she said, “No.” Meanwhile she’d gotten pregnant again. She told me the reason she’d gotten pregnant a second time was that she’d gone through this birth, mine, and felt empty. Then she decided that she was going to have me, too. She went to court and to this day she cries when she talks about it. It was awful! They called her names in court.
My mother moved to Wisconsin. I lived with my grandmother, who is wonderful. I love my grandmother! But she was a product of her times and she lived in a very tight-knit German-Polish community in Milwaukee. She wanted to tell the neighbors that I was a foster child. My mother told her, “She’s my daughter and I will never renounce her again.” And she didn’t. I’ve always loved my mother for that. Except when I was doing the prostitution. She had quite a problem with it. She tends to get religious. I’m not religious. I believe that a lot of religious beliefs are man-made myths to keep people down. I believe in some superior being, but not some blonde man who walked the earth.
My mother married when she had two children — my sister and me. As far as I’m concerned, he’s my real father. I mean it’s not hard to take a dick and put it in a pussy. It doesn’t mean anything. What motherhood and fatherhood mean to me is the actual bringing up of the children and the love you give them.
We moved to Madison, where we lived until I was in the sixth grade. My mother always said that she’d have twelve children — six boys and six girls — by the time she turned forty. And she had her twelfth child five days before turning forty. She loves children.
I had a lot of responsibilities when I was a child, I think, almost too much. I remember making my first turkey dinner when I was in sixth grade. I did the babysitting for all the kids. I was a real responsible child mostly because I didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t, “Could you,” it was, “Do this.” Then we moved further out. Really in the boonies. We bought an old farmhouse with one acre. It didn’t have any heat upstairs so we had to sleep downstairs — ten of us in the same bed.
My father was an alcoholic until I was about seventeen or eighteen. A really severe alcoholic. It was real hard for him to show affection. I always thought he hated me. Then he quit drinking with AA, his whole person changed. He became a more gentle, caring and thinking man. I couldn’t believe it. I used to waitress in a bar where he used to drink. It was one of the hardest things I remember doing — serving him liquor when I knew he had a problem with it. He was spending money and we were broke. I remember being a kid and being hungry. I mean, I remember cutting up onions so that my stomach wouldn’t hurt. But my parents did the best they could. We always had some place to stay and shoes and we never starved. I think it taught me a lot.
I’ve been working outside the home since I was thirteen. I’ve done a lot of jobs. My first farm work, I picked cucumbers for eight hours a day. It’s back-breaking labor. And you didn’t get paid shit for it. We worked for Del Monte, the pickle people. The older I got, after I left home, I realized that other kids didn’t have to do so much. It kind of freaked me out. It made me realize how much I did do.
Carole: How did you get involved in prostitution?
Debra: Well, I turned my first trick a long time before I actually turned out as a prostitute. I had been in college for a while and I was working as a cocktail waitress because my parents couldn’t afford to give me any money. And there was this assemblyman. Assemblymen really made me see what politicians were about — I’m telling you! — these men were disgusting. They were gross. But they run our state. The people in Washington are probably worse, and they’re running the country! This one man, one night, seduced me. He was older, probably in his fifties, and I was eighteen. He knew that he shouldn’t have been doing that. He was married. Anyway, he gave me crabs and I never saw him again except where I worked. He had had his conquest, so that was that. But then I decided that I wanted to be an assembly page. To do that I had to be sponsored by an assemblyman. That’s when I first turned a trick. I went up to him and I said, “I want you to sponsor me.” He looked in my face and he knew better than to deny me. He was a politician and he didn’t want it to get out. I was using sex as a tool, although not consciously. I was sexually harassed as a page and left. But that’s another story.
Later I went to art school. And graduated. I had a 3.6 average. I worked house painting. I’ve had a lot of different jobs. I’ve worked in canning factories, which is horrendous work. That’s why prostitution was so nice for me. Because you got a lot of money. You didn’t take harassment. You didn’t allow it. You were in control of the situation. You know? If someone patted my bottom, I got money for it. They didn’t expect it to be part of the job. Which is very basically what I was going through with a lot of the other jobs. Being told that I should be thankful for the job. Please kiss my ass and thank me for giving you this shit job. You know? And I was getting totally fed up with it. So I started prostitution and took to it immediately.
Carole: Where did you start working?
Debra: Here in California, in the Bay Area. I moved out here in 1976. I met some people who were into prostitution and I turned out in February 1977. I liked being an artist and I was a good commercial artist. But I walked downtown San Francisco for months and nobody would give me a job. Not only would they not give me a job, they wouldn’t look at my portfolio. Because I didn’t have the work experience they wanted me to have, they wouldn’t give me a How-do-you-do. People are fairly rude in a large city.
I worked with a group of women and one man. Right away. Thank God! I learned how to protect myself and my body. Another woman stood behind me as I worked. I got tutored in how to be a prostitute. That’s the only way. I turned out on University Avenue in Berkeley.
The man never came out. A black man and a white woman on a stroll just ain’t cool. The police would have a heyday. He’d go to jail and I wouldn’t. It’s ludicrous the racism in this country. I learned about racism in the seventh grade because the
kids at school thought I was Mexican — but I didn’t really learn about it until I turned out. It’s sick. I’ve just been reading some books and I realize that a lot of times in the course of history common people, decent people, have allowed fanatics to control the way the world is run, mainly because they didn’t step in and stop it. Because they’re not fanatics. You know what I mean? I think racism is becoming more definite in this country because people who think like I do, or think like you do, aren’t saying, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m not going for it.”
Carole: Debra, what kind of violent incidents took place in your work?
Debra: Well, first of all, when I turned a trick, I did it the way I wanted to. I was in control. I was the boss. I didn’t allow tricks to touch my genitals and I fucked them in my hand. I had a certain way that I tricked and if they didn’t want to trick that way they could leave.
The only two times somebody did something to me personally were right after I turned out. It happened two weeks in a row. The first month I turned out, I had my women friends with me but I was young and naive. When you ride with a trick you’re in their territory. You have to take special precautions even if it’s three minutes or three blocks away. You have your own specific route that you take. When you get in the car, you search it — you look in the glovebox. You keep your hand on the door handle at all times. You make sure that the door opens and closes before you get in. You watch every move the trick makes. He keeps both of his hands on the steering wheel. If you tell him to take a right, and he doesn’t you’re out of the car.
The first time, I took this trick to the trick pad. It was evening time, probably 10:00 or 11:00. He was a young guy. It was really busy at the trick pad. He didn’t want to wait. I didn’t know you don’t ride back with a trick who hasn’t dated. So, I’m driving back and I’m looking out the window and the guy put a knife to my throat. He took me off for three, four hours in the hills of Albany. I tried every move I knew. I mean I cried, I pretended I liked it. I finally talked him into getting a room so that we’d spend the night together. Finally! So, we rode back to Berkeley and I jumped out of the car and I told him that he better get the fuck out of there and he drove away with his door flapping. He’d raped me numerous times.
Carole: Wasn’t it hard to get into a car again after that?
Debra: No, I knew that I’d done it wrong. It’s a dangerous business and you have to protect yourself. You know, the thing that saves a ho is her sixth sense. Her sense of people. You have to make up your mind about people within minutes. You get to be really good at that. Our rule is if someone looks at you the wrong way, and says hello how you don’t like it, no matter how much money he’s offering you, leave it alone. Follow your first mind. You can look in someone’s eyes and see compassion or humaneness or you can see meanness or violence. And it works.
It happened to me another time, though, shortly after. This guy had apparently been doing it to other women in San Francisco, but I was in the Berkeley stroll, so we hadn’t gotten the word yet. ‘Cause normally if one ho knows, she’ll let the other hos know. ‘Cause you protect each other. This white, middle-aged, respectable looking man took me off and we were driving to the same trick pad. He pulled out a gun and said, “Bitch, you make a move and I’ll blow your head off.” I broke his windshield and I broke his glasses. But he kept driving and I was raped. That was the last time, though. And I was a ho for nine years.
Carole: Did you ever report these incidents to the police?
Debra: I can’t tell you the countless times I’ve heard police say that a prostitute can’t be raped. It really upsets me. I think a lot of men believe that. It’s totally ridiculous. I’ve had friends who’ve gotten hurt. After a while you stop telling the police. Their attitude is, “Hey, that’s part of your job.” Probably a lot of women believe that, too. Though I’ve had less of that attitude from women than men — the attitude that a prostitute is putting herself out there and that she deserves what she gets, whether it’s rape or getting beaten up.
Carole: Did you make a lot of money?
Debra: Yes! We made beaucoup money! My attitude was that I was going to get what I wanted. For so many years I’d been abused, mainly by men. Face it, the people who ran the factories and the jobs were mostly men. I got sick of men doing that to me. I made between three and five hundred dollars a night and sometimes more. I lived better than I did in my life. It was a going joke — “Feed Debbie.” I was really little then. There had been so many times that I hadn’t eaten before so I ate like a horse. And I had furs, leathers, silks. We rented yachts for New Year’s Eve. It was great! But it was fast money and fast money goes fast. We didn’t just blow it, though, we invested it in real estate. Then the Feds took everything. But that’s a whole other story.
Leaving the Streets
Gloria Lockett
In 1978, I was working on the street in San Jose, California. The police kept on telling me and the other women I worked with how intelligent we were, and how we should not be working the street. They told us we should open a massage parlor, or run ads, or something, but that we were just too bright to work on the street.
So I got together with a few women I knew and trusted, and we decided to get an apartment together and run ads in an adult magazine. The telephone rang constantly. We had an idea that the San Jose vice were among our callers, but what we did not know was that from the first week we were under constant surveillance.
The apartment lasted three months. One day everything changed, and my life hasn’t been the same since. The vice called, pretending to be a customer. He came to the apartment with a transmitter in his belt buckle, and solicited one of the women who worked there. They arrested her, me, and four other women. There were four men in the apartment, having paid money to engage in sex with us. None of them were arrested. They only had to promise to be witnesses against us.
We were charged with four misdemeanors: 647(a), soliciting or engaging in a lewd act in a public place; 647(b), soliciting or engaging in an act of prostitution; 315, keeping a house of ill fame (i.e., a house of prostitution); and 318, prevailing upon someone to visit a place for the purpose of prostitution. We were also charged with two felonies: living off the earnings of a prostitute (i.e., pimping); and conspiracy.
I was charged with pimping because one of the women had given me money to put away for her, which is a very common practice among women who work together. She asked for it back, because it was money the vice officer had given her, and it was to be used in evidence. The police immediately told me I was under arrest for pimping. I was not at the time, nor have I ever been, a pimp.
The case stayed in court for two years, at a cost to the taxpayers of approximately one million dollars — the estimate of the prosecutor and the police officer in charge.
We were willing to plead guilty to being in a house of prostitution, but the prosecutor would not allow that. He wanted a felony conviction. Finally, we were found guilty only of being in a house of prostitution. We were put on probation, and charged a fine, but we were not sentenced to do time in jail. Needless to say, the police were very upset. They vowed to get us.
In 1983, my lover of nineteen years, a very good friend of mine, and I — the only Blacks in our group — were arrested on twenty-four counts of violating federal laws, including three counts of tax evasion, nine counts of violating the interstate travel act, ten counts of mail fraud, one count of a known felon having possession of a weapon, two counts of harboring witnesses, and two counts of racketeering. All the white people in our group were granted immunity in an effort to make them testify against us. My lover was found guilty of twelve of those counts, and is now doing twenty years in a federal prison in New York State. My friend pled guilty and got three years in a federal prison in California, and five years probation. I was fortunate enough to be acquitted.
When my lover and I got together, my children were two and three. This wonderful man is the only father my children have ever known, and now h
e is in prison thirty-five hundred miles from them.
The Continuing Saga of Scarlot Harlot V
Carol Leigh
Hank just stopped by. I’ve seen him for several years and he’s one of my favorites. We’ve never actually had a conversation, but I think he has a sense of humor because he smiles when I make jokes. Today I greeted him in my apron (saves time dressing) and I told him that I was just cleaning the house and forgot to put on my clothes. He seemed amused. We embraced at the door. I turned around and said, “Look, no panties. And I’ve been exercising.”
We discussed my muscles and flab as he fell to his knees and kissed me all over.
“Take off your clothes,” I said, and hopped like a bunny into bed.
He stroked and kissed and massaged me everywhere. I said it was good, and it was, because Hank has a warm, loving touch and no ejaculatory control. Within minutes he was up, dressed and darting out my front door. Easy come, easy go, as we used to say in the Tenderloin.
“See you soon, darling,” I called after him. I do have a fondness for this man. But he makes me a little nervous. I mean, who is he?
Silence Again
Judy Helfand
I have worked with Women Against Rape for nine years now and in all that time I have talked with only three women about my experiences as a nude model and topless dancer. I was never ashamed of myself while working — I felt proud, cocky and powerful. But today I feel ashamed and afraid to bring it up. Were not a bunch of social service minded liberals, either, but a group of women out to change the world. We talk about rape, racism, incest, classism, homophobia, pornography, fat oppression, wife beating, lesbian battery and, of course, sexism. We do not talk about our experience of prostitution — selling our sexual selves or bodies to make it in the world.
Sex Work Page 10