Elegy for a Sex Worker Activist
Haibun in Four Seasons
Summer, 2008
My first few months working in the sex industry I learn most of what I need to know using Google and good sense. I want to step up my game, get that white girl money. I learn (also from Google) about a meeting for “sex worker activists.”
I arrive at a squat sand-coloured condo complex, the Towne Inn Suites in Southfield, Michigan, where I assume the archaic spelling “towne” of the word “town” signifies to visitors this place is fancy. Or maybe in the context of our meeting Towne referred to Mary Towne Eastey and Rebecca Towne Nurse, sisters executed by their government during the Salem trials for witchcraft. The unit is packed, main and loft floors, with soccer moms and libertarians. I am the only non-white person. I remember I’ve seen a client here before but I didn’t like the space for turning a trick because it was difficult to track what potential threat lurked below, above, around the corner. Now I find myself similarly disconcerted, but there are snacks here, the curated kind found at bourgeois baby showers hosted by suburbanites. I smash a pretty spinach bauble into my mouth, I am starved, I am not yet making enough money to eat consistent.
My voice box blocked with food I respond when asked about my safe-call with a slow shrug and quick head nod back-and-forth, no, I don’t have anyone to contact if I get in trouble. I respond with a quick shrug and a slow head nod up and down, sure, I will contact Sarah D if I get in trouble. I do not ask what Sarah D would do if I got in trouble with ICE, police, rapist and I do not think about how they so often travel all three villains in one; I save her number into my burner phone.
Sun rays on sapling
will it to wither or grow
without prejudice.
I bust my ass to get that white girl money, bank stacks, move to New York. I bust my ass to volunteer with a sex worker rights organization. I am one of few non-whites, fewer visible people of colour, this time not soccer moms and libertarians but college students and progressives.
I bust my ass with another volunteer to organize a sex worker film festival. It screens to a sold-out audience. No one except the other volunteer emails me with congratulations on a successful event. Sarah J emails asking if I handed off the profits to the appropriate white girl, which is to say, any white girl. The tone of her email is the same used by an employer talking to a maid trusted alone with the good silverware; whose fault is it, really, when the valuables go missing?
I bust my ass to fix things with Sarah J and the rest. I organize a meeting where we will engage in a conflict resolution process but none of them, Sarah J nor the rest, will attend. I bust my ass to consider where busting my ass with Sarah J and the rest has got me and I cancel the meeting. I bust my ass to maintain my resolve against their drama, delete without reply fuming emails from Sarah J and the rest about cancelling the meeting that Sarah J and the rest never planned on attending.
I bust my ass to get a paid community organizing gig. I bust my ass at that gig. They pay me well, not a lot, and they never send me maid trusted alone with the good silverware toned emails.
Crisp crack of harvest
apple, thrash of reaper scythe,
indiscernible.
“I met this unicorn client.” It’s a cliché worth noting that if not for Sarah P’s referral I would dismiss him as too good to be true. A high roller, paying triple or quadruple market rate for multiple overnights with multiple girls at once, within days of each other. I was thirsty for that white girl money.
I refuse to pop the blackheads on his back. His racism works in my favour, at least, he prefers fucking the pink pussy of the other girl to mine. He demands I lick it for him. Since then I tell lovers licking pussy is a sex act I do not perform anymore. I do not explain why I do not perform it anymore and especially not the anymore. In the cab ride home from Jersey the next morning Sarah P texts casually there is a problem at the bank but he is working it out. I reply, wait, you didn’t get the money up front? I am almost too exhausted to reply, when she says there was no money up front, that means there is no money at all.
I am not angry at Sarah P just disappointed there is no money, she is incompetent in doing anything about it, and she never musters an apology. I am not angry just disappointed she is subsequently named executive director at the sex worker rights organization I helped build. I am angry not just disappointed when she kicks me out of the organization that I helped build, says they are going in a different direction, I am angry and disappointed at this white girl’s attempt to orchestrate my rape again.
I snitch to the board of directors that I believe her actions satisfy the legal definition of sex trafficking and this seems like unbecoming conduct for the incoming executive director of a sex worker rights organization. The board agrees, some of them begrudging with cronyism, she is fired and moves to the opposite coast in shame. The organization and its members splinter.
Pulsating beneath
ice tombed lake persists the tide
beating defiance.
In an airport lounge flying back to New York City from a family visit in Toronto I post on the Facebook event page that I will perform my Tale of Two Sarahs. In my seat before takeoff I hear from a friend that all two Sarahs from said Tale, Sarah P and Sarah J, are pitching a fit about my intended performance.
In the customs line on the other end of my flight I learn via the Facebook event page that I was cut from the lineup, a decision made unilaterally by the event organizer, who also claims she is indisposed with a health issue and unavailable for comment or discussion. In a fury I learn that the person deputized to deal with all related comment or discussion, one Sarah S, does not feel herself capable of fielding comment or discussion.
In a haze upon arriving back at my apartment I reach out to some fellow community organizers to ask who might supply me with a bullhorn. In sleep I formulate my plan. In the morning I convince all of my fellow readers to drop out and I recruit supporters to disrupt the performance. In the hopes that I wouldn’t have to go through with it, I contact Sarah S to tell her the show will not go on without protest.
In the afternoon the event is postponed indefinitely. In the coming weeks I realize I am done with NYC. In the coming months I move back to Toronto. In the coming years I formally incorporate my hooking business and informally retire from sex worker activism. In time I may return, in the meantime, I get that white girl money.
Naive predator
breaks egg, forgets yolk doubles
as corpse and fetus.