Sisters of the Road (19 page)

She was convincing, but something in me balked. “You think there’ll always be prostitution then?”

Dawn chuckled good-naturedly, pouring sugar into her tea. “Men aren’t going to change, honey. And it’s men who’re on top, like it or not. All we can do is stick together and try to get fair treatment.” She stirred her cup and sipped. The cows rose and fell. “Like those prostitutes’ unions over in France and England. That’s the way to go. They’ve got the right idea. We shouldn’t be treated like criminals. Nobody should.”

“But what about kids in prostitution?” I asked. “The girl I’m looking for is only fifteen. She didn’t make the choice as an adult, she was pushed into it.”

“If there were strong hookers’ unions we could do something about that,” said Dawn firmly, succumbing to another slice. “Set an age limit, regulate. Keep them off the streets until they were eighteen. Not that I think anybody should be on the streets if they can help it. It’s too dangerous.”

I felt as if I were arguing with a factory worker about immigrants and aliens taking away American jobs. “What do you do about the fact that men seem to want younger and younger girls all the time? And what do you do about the teenagers out there on the streets right now?”

Dawn shrugged and changed tactics. “Excuse me for asking, but are you a feminist?”

I admitted I was.

“Well, I tell you, I’ve got a real bone to pick with feminists.” Her lively expression closed up and she fixed me with an accusing stare. “They could be out there supporting us, instead of sitting home writing articles for and against pornography. I’ve seen some of those articles and I can tell you they practically make me ashamed to call myself a woman.” Dawn put down her teacup with a bang. “There’s a woman right here in Portland who calls herself a feminist—I hear she even used to be a lesbian—and she’s involved with some neighborhood organizing group. She’s given interviews to the newspapers saying people should get together to patrol their neighborhoods to keep out hookers and other undesirables. She says they should carry
walkie-talkies
, like goddamn vigilantes or something. What I want to know is why feminists think they’re so much better than we are, why they can’t see this from our point of view.”

“That’ll be the day,” said Janis, stretching her legs and flexing her biceps. “They’d rather pass laws against sexuality than admit they have anything in common with sex workers.”

I was silent. It was the old good girl/bad girl theme again. And somehow I was still stuck on the side of the good girls.

“You think about this, Pam,” said Dawn, polishing off the last of the carrot cake. “If you want to find this girl you’ve got to decide where you stand. Because she’s not going to listen to you if she thinks you’re judging her. I wouldn’t.” She stood up and the cows on the sweatshirt straightened up too. “But now I’m late. I’m visiting old Mr. Taylor at his hotel. He comes in from Hermiston once a month to have a nice time.” She stroked Janis’ wispy brown hair. “Janis, I didn’t
mean
to eat all your carrot cake. It was just too
good
!”

“You look a little shattered,” Janis said, after Dawn had gone.

“I feel like I’ve just had a shock treatment,” I admitted. “What kind of theoretical arguments can you put up against the reality of someone’s life?”

“You can’t,” said Janis, piling the dessert plates together and meticulously brushing the crumbs off the couch where Dawn had been sitting. “You have to change theory to fit reality. All the same,” she added thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t give Dawn the last word on the subject. She’s got an investment in what she does, she’s not going to let anybody feel sorry for her. And why should they? But it’s not quite as easy for her as she’d like you to believe. She’s been threatened and ripped off, beaten up more than a few times. You can talk all you want about a prostitutes’ union and women controlling it themselves. But it’s never going to be a safe profession. Because men aren’t safe.”

I followed Janis out to the kitchen. “She didn’t seem all that interested in girls on the street.”

“No, she wasn’t as helpful as I thought she’d be.” Janis ran water in the sink and washed the dishes rapidly. “But I forgot what an incredibly rigid hierarchy prostitution has. The mistresses of wealthy men look down on the hotel call girls who look down on the women who work in massage parlors. Everybody looks down on the street hookers. And no doubt about it, young prostitutes threaten Dawn. Sure,” Janis drained the sink. “She’s not getting any younger and new women who think it’s a far-out way to make a lot of money are moving in all the time. She may be saving some money, but she’s probably only got five more years. Cautious as she is, she’s got a record—who’s going to hire her? And prostitution doesn’t give you a pension or social security.”

“Yesterday you were telling me prostitution would be a great profession if they could just get the cops off their backs.”

“Sometimes I’m as full of bullshit as my clients.” Janis whistled to her terrier and the dog came running. “Come on,” she said to me. “Now that we’re in the mood, let’s go look for Trish.”

J
ANIS DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO WALK
, only to run. Winded almost immediately, I could barely manage to keep up with her and the wiry little terrier. The night was cold and starry with a moon like a saucer of frozen milk low on the horizon. I missed my hat and muffler.

“This is Sandy Boulevard. Union and Sandy are the main prostitution scenes, lots of motels and pick-ups. If Trish is working she’s likely to be here. Tell me what she looks like again.”

“Tallish, big breasts, skinny arms and legs. Streaked blond hair, a triangular little face. She might be wearing a white leather jacket and a black hat,” I gasped. Even by speaking I seemed to have fallen behind Janis.

There were a number of girls and women out tonight, but none fitting that description. Some were very young-looking, barely dressed up; others fitted the more conventional image of the streetwalker. They were Black, white, in pairs or alone. They walked slowly, they smoked, they got into cars. They returned.

I tried to get glimpses of the men who were driving by, the men who picked them up. Was one of them Wayne? Or Rob or Karl, keeping an eye on Trish, looking for her?

Or just workers and businessmen, out for the hunt, their faces pale and shadowy, leering under the street lights. I tried to think what it felt like to be a man looking for a hooker, what he wanted, what he needed.

He might come home from work after a bad day at the office. The boss had told him to do a report over. He wanted to quit but where would he go? House payments, car payments, doctor bills, credit stretched to the limit. Maybe his wife wasn’t home, maybe she was at a potluck with women from work, maybe she’d left him a note, “Dinner in freezer, just heat up.” He’d have a beer or a scotch, watch television, feel pissed off. At work, at his wife, at women in general, at life in general.

Maybe getting into his car to look for a girl was something he did all the time; maybe it was just this once. From frustration, from anger. From a feeling he was lonely, and getting old, and that his wife didn’t understand him.

Maybe he’d thought about it all day, maybe it was just a sudden titillating whim. It wasn’t all that risky, but maybe it was, maybe he wanted the risk. Maybe he didn’t even want sex, maybe he just wanted to look, to imagine. Maybe he wanted a feeling of power, of being in control, of being the one to say, “You! You, how much?”

“It’s kind of spooky out here, isn’t it?” said Janis. “Makes me feel like I’m at the zoo.”

“I know,” I said. I was wondering what would happen if it were the johns who were arrested, exposed, humiliated—in the courts and the newspapers. What if people shrugged and said, “Well, obviously a woman needs to—but can you imagine a
man
who actually
buys
sex? He must be sick, a real case of arrested development. He must have had something terrible happen to him when he was young.”

We were walking at a slower pace now, to my relief. We crossed and recrossed the street, looked into motel parking lots and alleys, stared down some of the drivers who slowed and honked at us.

“Creeps, perverts,” Janis muttered.

I was staring at a car driving on the other side of the street. I could see a big man, hunched in a parka, staring at each woman. He reminded me of Art. It wasn’t impossible.

“We could start asking some of the women,” suggested Janis, jogging in place to keep warm. “They’d probably recognize a new face.”

“Get lost,” the first girl we approached told us roughly. She was between fifteen and eighteen; her jeans were plastered to her legs and she was shivering in her low-cut blouse and thin nylon jacket.

Everyone told us the same thing. “Look, you’re wrecking my business,” a Black woman with a brassy helmet of hair said. “I don’t know what your game is, but nobody’s going to pick me up with you hanging around.”

One threatened us with her pimp; another was too spaced out to understand what we were talking about. She nodded agreeably to everything we said and finally murmured, “That’s a nice dog you have.”

Finally we came to a woman who seemed to listen to us. She seemed older than most of the others, thickly made-up and wearing a curly auburn wig.

“No, I haven’t seen her,” she said. “But I’ll watch out for her.”

The motherly type, the good-hearted whore. It made me feel better, but Janis suddenly stiffened. “Oh god,” she said. “You’re an undercover cop, aren’t you?”

The woman groaned. “Am I that obvious? I thought my makeup was great tonight.”

“Are you here to arrest women?” I asked her.

“The men, actually. But I’m not getting many takers—too much competition from the kids. It’s a good way of keeping an eye on the scene though. If I do see her, or if she gets picked up, you want me to give you a call?”

I was about to tell her yes, about to tell her that I thought the Portland police might have already gotten the word to look for her, but Janis nudged me sharply.

“No thanks,” she said. “No need to get the police involved.”

Walking away from the cop I remonstrated, “But they’re already involved. I mean, Rosalie’s dead and Trish might be next.”

“Have you any idea what will happen if the cops pick her up for hooking?” Janis scolded me. “With her record and everything? She’s a ward of the court in Washington; they could slap her in an institution so fast she wouldn’t know what hit her and not let her out for years.”

“You mean, all this time I’ve been thinking I was helping Trish by telling the police…”

“Let them solve Rosalie’s murder,” Janis said, “but keep Trish out of it if you can. The juvenile justice system is no joke.”

We got back to Janis’ before midnight, discouraged by what we’d seen.

“It’s a different world out there,” Janis admitted, going around to all the doors and windows and making sure they were locked. “All the prostitutes I’ve dealt with before were working out of their houses or escort services. The street scene’s a hell of a lot rawer… It still doesn’t make me change my mind about decriminalization,” she hastened to assure me. “But, Jesus, what a life.”

“I know,” I said, slumping down on the couch. “It’s so confusing though. How do you find out what your feelings about it really are? How do you say, No one should have to live this life—but if you want to, I support you—how do you judge without judging, anyway without sounding like an uptight wimp?”

Janis shook her head. “Be a hooker for a day? I’m afraid that’s out for me. But what’s funny is, when you think about it, this obsession feminism has with porn right now. These enormous battles fought around images and words and who has the right to use them or not. One side yelling
violence against women
, the other side shouting
censorship.
Nobody ever seems to ask the women who pose for the pictures and make the movies what they think. That’s a lot harder to ignore when it comes to prostitution. The issue
is
the women. Which is probably why feminists don’t take it up.”

“Like they refused to take up lesbian issues until the lesbians themselves stood up and demanded to be recognized?”

“Exactly.”

She made up the sofa bed for me and we said good-night. I undressed and got under the covers, took out the diary Trish’s father had given me and began to read.

S
EPTEMBER 1. EVER SINCE
Julianne talked about her Dad I have been remembering a lot of things. Really far back things, that happened when I was little. I don’t even know how old, or if they started to happen earlier, before I was old enough to remember. Somehow I have this memory, kind of like a dream, where it’s dark in my room, with a little crack of light coming under the door. Then there isn’t any light anymore. My Dad comes in, somehow it’s too quiet and he’s too big. He hugs me, but somehow it’s not nice, it’s strange and scary. He keeps hugging me too tight and breathing too hard. It’s really dark and he tells me not to say anything.

“Another time, I’m in the bathtub and he tells my Mom he’s going to wash me. He plays a game with me under the soap bubbles and I’m laughing and screaming because he’s tickling me. Then he says he’s going to make pee-pee and not to tell Mommy. I feel like there’s something wrong, but I don’t know what.

“Whenever I think of my Dad when I’m little, it’s like there’s this feeling attached to it. A kind of scared feeling, like he’s too big and I feel smothered. It’s like when you’re having a bad dream and you want to scream, but you open your mouth and nothing comes out and you don’t know if it’s because you’re in a dream and can’t make a noise, or if it’s real and you’ve lost your voice.

“Mom and Dad got divorced when I was six. I don’t even remember anything about it. He was gone one day and Mom said he wasn’t coming back. She was really nice to me for a long time. I guess I felt sad that he was gone, but I must have been relieved too, because nobody came into my room at night.

“I must have forgotten about him and everything, because I remember when I was ten and Mom said, You’re going to Portland to visit your Dad and his wife and new baby, I was really happy. I can’t remember having any weird feelings about him. No wait, I remember I didn’t like to be alone with him. And sometimes I had bad dreams when I was at their house, like I had this feeling something was pressing down on me. But when I woke up, nothing was.