Bad Luck at Lucky's, or Caught between the Rapists and the Police In 1978 I began to work at Lucky's massage parlor. I knew there was some danger, but I suppressed my fear so that I could survive. Measuring danger is a complicated science. As a woman, I live in constant fear of rape. If I were really careful, I'd never leave my house. You gotta take risks. I'll fuck for money if I want, I told myself. My co-workers and the management assured me that arrest could be avoided and violence was very rare. Women taught me how to screen customers when it was my turn to open the door. Trust your gut feeling, they told me, then went on to describe factors ranging from wardrobe and facial expression to race. As a novice, I was confused. Women claimed to get by with a sixth sense. The idea that women were advising me to weed out cops and rapists based on a subtle intuition was shocking in itself. I resented the notion. I never felt safe. Some of the women were skilled in self-defense-like Kim, who could chew up and spit glass, I heard-but I wasn't good at that. The management should have hired a security guard. There was enough money around, though not the huge sums people suppose. Women earned upwards of a hundred a day. The management kept seventeen of the twenty-dollar massage fee which added up to nearly a thousand a day. Security guards might eat up a sizable chunk, but perhaps the women could chip in. I asked the boss. Connie insisted that posting a guard was just not done in this city, as it would not be in keeping with the 'low profile' that prostitution businesses are forced to keep. As a prostitute, I had no recourse for challenging her. She was a gentle woman with a laissez-faire approach to business. The other workers were not at all inspired about instituting any kind of change. It's hard to explain, but the whole situation is kind of paralyzing. I had been working eight months when I opened the door for the wrong person. It was 10:30 a.m. I guess 1 was off my guard. I should have known better. It was my fault. He was clearly disqualified, according to the criteria espoused. He pushed his way in and another man followed. One put a knife to my throat and they raped me. For around twenty minutes I was afraid of being tortured or killed. Susie was there with me. "Who do you think you are, bothering girls like this. You leave! Go now! Leave us alone!," she shrieked. They didn't rape her. I don't understand why people always assume that when a prostitute talks about being raped, she' s describing a situation in which she has sex and then she doesn't get paid. The threat of murder and torture was the traumatic element of this rape. Later that week I learned from some of the other women that these men had been doing the same thing to women at other parlors in town. No one passed the information around, I guess, from a feeling of hopelessness, from some idea that ideally we should all be able to protect ourselves by using our intuition. Of course, I didn't call the police after I was raped. Connie begged me not to, as it might focus attention on our parlor, which could result in my co-workers getting busted, the parlor getting closed down, and my friends being forced out on the street.. We don't protect ourselves against rape because we almost seem to believe that we should expect to be raped, robbed, or beaten because prostitution is inherently dangerous. We don't protect ourselves because we are prohibited and inhibited. We can't share information about dangerous tricks. We are discouraged from any kind of organizing or self-protection by laws that prohibit 'communicating for the purposes' or collective organizing (charged as pimping). It' s hard to protect yourself from the rapists while you're busy protecting yourself from the police.
(This poem is dedicated to the safety and well-being of the women who work at Hong Kong, Aiko's, Yoko's, and Lilac Saigon in San Francisco's Tenderloin.) If there's one thing I know, it's that I definitely don't wanna go back to work in the Tenderloin. I don't wanna cook chicken in the sauna and rice in the electric pressure cooker and eat on the floor anymore, even I don't care how much money you say you make. |
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