01-06-2015, 08:29 PM
"Once they get you, they are always going to get you," Love* told me this November at a greasy spoon in the Bronx. "The sad thing is that nobody ever stands up there and fights them."
Love is a 48-year-old black woman. She has high cheekbones, and her full lips smirk easily, especially when she hears something dumb. For several years, Love did sex work in Hunts Point, the Bronx red-light district made famous by the HBO documentary Hookers at the Point. Needing rent money, and sick of welfare's bureaucracy, Love went out one night with a friend hoping to make some cash. They took precautions: Love's friend kept an eye on her from the next block and wrote down the license-plate numbers of cars that picked her up. That night Love made $400.
Police arrested her repeatedly, but she kept working. She liked the money, and she had a daughter to support.
In 2009, however, Love was raped while working. The attack left her with post-traumatic stress disorder. With the help of social services organizations, Love quit sex work and started taking classes to become a surgical technician.
Read more here:
http://www.vice.com/read/sex-workers-and...0550-v22n1
Love is a 48-year-old black woman. She has high cheekbones, and her full lips smirk easily, especially when she hears something dumb. For several years, Love did sex work in Hunts Point, the Bronx red-light district made famous by the HBO documentary Hookers at the Point. Needing rent money, and sick of welfare's bureaucracy, Love went out one night with a friend hoping to make some cash. They took precautions: Love's friend kept an eye on her from the next block and wrote down the license-plate numbers of cars that picked her up. That night Love made $400.
Police arrested her repeatedly, but she kept working. She liked the money, and she had a daughter to support.
In 2009, however, Love was raped while working. The attack left her with post-traumatic stress disorder. With the help of social services organizations, Love quit sex work and started taking classes to become a surgical technician.
Read more here:
http://www.vice.com/read/sex-workers-and...0550-v22n1
