Mary was born in 1970, in Turrialba, Costa Rica. She was the sixth of eight siblings, the daughter of a domestic servant and a gardener who fathered five of the eight children and never took care of his own offspring, much less the ones sired by others. The family lived modestly off the mother’s salary, since the father seldom provided financial help. “Sometimes he’d give my mother a little money, but other times he wouldn’t give her a penny,” says Mary. The mother came back from work at 6 p.m.; during the day, the father took care of them, or else they were left on their own. “Since I was the oldest girl, I had to take care of my brothers and sisters. I was really their true mother,” she says sadly.
Early on, Mary remembers that her father would sit her down on his lap and rub her private parts with “something hard”. At the time, she had no idea what was going on. The only thing that made her nervous was the father’s rapid breathing and what she now describes as a “demented and vigilant look”, though she is not sure how she perceived it then. “It was like the panting of a cornered animal,” she now says.
Several friends to whom she later told the story expressed shock at the father’s behavior and wondered why she had not sought help. “Now I realize that my father used me sexually since I was little. But I can’t say that I saw it that way then. I remember that I felt pleasure, and that I liked it when he touched me. I was so lonely, without a mother [in the house], that I enjoyed his attention and care. For me, going into his bedroom with him and sitting down on the bed was a privilege. None of my brothers could do it. They say our memories are influenced by the way we interpret them in the present. If we now believe that abuse is bad, then we’ll assume that the experience was uglier than it possibly was.” Without realizing it, Mary agrees with modern theories regarding the psychiatric tendency to interpret all such activity as traumatic, even when there is no evidence in that regard.118
However, Mary recalls that things changed radically when she was 12.
Sitting on my father’s lap and feeling his member had become part of our relationship. He had told me not to tell my mother or my brothers because what we did was „private’ and the others would feel envious. Sometimes he’d give me money to buy chocolate bars and he would warn me, „If you talk, you’ll have to share the chocolate with everyone.” I couldn’t bear the thought of splitting my favorite little chocolate bar into eight pieces. That’s why I never told anyone. However, one afternoon he sat me down on the bed and I noticed that he had a jar of Vaseline, which we used to rub sore muscles. This time my father took off my clothes and said to me, „We’re going to play another game that you haven’t played before.’ I can’t remember what I thought or said. I know I didn’t run away. The only things I remember were my screams and the awful pain that I felt. I know he covered my mouth so no one could hear me.
This sexual relationship continued for three years. But she never felt pain again. “When my father penetrated me, I did not feel anything, neither pleasure, nor pain, nor disgust or anything. I’d feel like I had left the bed, the room, the house, because I couldn’t feel my body. „You finished?’ I’d ask, and if he said yes I’d get dressed and go clean the house as if nothing had happened.”
Mary’s father continued the abuse twice a week, “always Mondays and Fridays without fail,” she says. “Those days make me sick. When it’s Sunday or Thursday evening, I begin to feel a pain in my stomach.” At that time, however, Mary claims she was a ghost that would enter and leave her body, without being anywhere in particular. “I have a great ability to cut myself and not feel anything. I wouldn’t even notice I’d hurt myself if it weren’t for the blood,” she says proudly.
When Mary was 15 she met Carlos, her first love. “He was everything to me, and I was madly in love with him. I never told him anything about what went on at home. I don’t think he ever suspected anything. He never noticed that I didn’t feel much during sex. „Did you enjoy it, my love?’ he’d ask after coming. „It was wonderful!’ I’d say. „You finished?’ He wasn’t upset, either, when he noticed I wasn’t a virgin. He only asked who had got „the gift’. „An evil lecher who took advantage of me,’ I told him.”
We went out for a year. I remember that I’d have sex with him on Saturdays and with my dad on Sundays. He [my dad] started suspecting something. “You’re opening up too much,” he said. “You better be careful. If I find out that you’re sleeping with Carlos I’ll kill you.” When I became pregnant I didn’t even know which of the two was the father; they both blamed each other. Carlos said I wasn’t a virgin when I gave myself to him; my father said he suspected the child was Carlos’s. I wept bitterly and thought it would be better if I died with the fetus inside me. My mother refused to talk to me for a year.
Mary’s son, Jose Eduardo, was identical to Carlos; no one doubted that it was his son. However, Carlos never gave her “even a nickel for milk”. Like her mother, Mary had to look for work as a domestic servant and take care of her child and her seven siblings. She felt a kinship with Cinderella, since she too could not attend a party or buy herself a pretty dress. “The money I made wasn’t even enough to buy myself a pair of panties. Everything went to my son, so he wouldn’t lack for anything. Nobody helped me.”
Eventually, things changed. Mary had a dream that made her decide to improve her life. She wrote an embellished version of her dream in her diary, which she allowed us to read.
Once upon a time there lived a beautiful girl whose name was Mary Cinderella. She had lived for a long time with her mother, who did not take care of her, and with her father, who was a horny toad. She also had seven brothers and sisters and a son who had been fathered by an elf. Mary Cinderella had to do the housework and never got a penny for it. Part of the reason was that her mother suspected that the toad would go into her bedroom. One day an extra special event was announced in the village. The owner of the bar would host a dance, and all eligible single women were invited. There they would meet the Man Who Was A Bachelor, who would pick his lucky bride from among them all. Late at night, two weeks before the dance, when everyone was running around frantically [in preparation], Mary Cinderella sat down sad and disconsolate by the window of her cold and empty bedroom, dreaming of a better life.
Suddenly, her Fairy Godmother appeared. Her hair was gray, her eyes sparkled with intelligence, and her cleavage was visible. She said, “Good evening, dear, I’m your Fairy Godmother.” Mary Cinderella felt frightened but intrigued by this coquettish and assertive fairy. She had never imagined that her Fairy Godmother would be so jolly, or that she smoked Marlboros. “You’ve come a long way, babe,” thought Mary. “What can I do to get out of this poor and boring life?” asked Mary Cinderella. “I’m fed up with men, sex, and poverty.”
“Become a whore,” said the Fairy Godmother. “Why do it for free?”
“But I don’t have money to buy clothes? Who would pay for such a badly dressed woman?”
“Well, get that son of a bitch father of yours to pay for the weekly screws and make yourself a good dress,” said the Fairy Godmother. Before Mary Cinderella could say goodbye, the Fairy Godmother vanished.
Mary followed the dream’s advice. She started asking her father for money every Monday and Friday. “If you want to carry on with your little game, Pa, you better loosen your purse-strings or I’ll tell my mom,” she said. Once she had saved enough, she bought herself a pretty Lycra dress that hugged her “beautiful body” (her words). Maria went to the dance in the bar.
When she went in [her journal continues], the owner [of the bar] was transfixed by Mary Cinderella’s beauty, and he rushed her to the dance floor. He realized that she was the woman of his dreams and the best candidate for a lover. However, the owner was not amused to learn that the maiden was not easy to convince. “I will love you all my life,” he promised. “Oh, honey! I’m fed up with eternal love,” Mary Cinderella answered. “What I want is an orgasm and for you to pay me for yours.”
In reality, says Mary, her “prince charming” was a trucker who taught her to charge for sex and save money to improve her standard of living. The young woman realized that the sex trade was a better business proposition working as a Cinderella.
“I can’t explain to you how I felt when I made three thousand colones, after that dance in the local bar, and after sleeping with the owner,” she says. It was the first time she felt sexual pleasure.
The guy really knew how to please a woman. He gave me oral sex, which I’d never had before, and that was the first time I had an orgasm. But, the real pleasure was getting the three thousand-colon bills. Ever since I became a whore, I’ve learned how important money is, how to save it and how to invest in my business. Before, I had to have sex for free. Now, the guys have to pay.
Mary thinks the relationship with her father helped her in the business. “I have to be honest with you. For me, the fact that I could leave my body or not feel anything when I was having sex has been good for [practicing] prostitution.” According to Mary, it is easier to work as a prostitute when one is detached and can “think of other things”. Mary is convinced that a prostitute’s greatest skill is “being able to switch off from what she’s doing, and feel pleasure if she wants to.” The years with her father “were a training course for this profession,” she says.
Mary does not consider herself a sexual object, or a victim of men. “That’s the kind of shit that rich feminists who don’t know anything about the poor will say,” she says. “I’m in charge of my body and I sell it…. I don’t hand over it for free like many women, in exchange for nothing. I’m better off than the miserable wife who gets a cock shoved up her every night, even if she doesn’t want it, and next day she has to be a servant to her husband.”
The relationship between abuse and prostitution is more complex than would appear at first sight. As we noted earlier, there is a connection between not using condoms and having suffered punishment or abuse in childhood. Mary’s story suggests that abused girls find ways of “switching off” an unpleasant event while it is happening, which would make it easier to practice prostitution.
The least challenging explanation would be that women who have been abused in childhood mistreat themselves as adults by practicing prostitution (which some consider a form of abuse) or by not using condoms. However, several of the prostitutes in the survey denied having been victims of childhood abuse, and said they did not feel disconnected from their bodies or display post-traumatic stress or other symptoms associated with trauma.
Most adults who were abused as children clearly do not practice prostitution or unsafe sex. Many prostitutes feel that their job is not abusive, and that is not really all that different from giving people manicures or a stress-relieving massage. The problem, they say, is the Christian aversion to sex, which considers prostitution not only the oldest profession but also the lowest.
However, the purpose of this work is not to explore why some women choose prostitution, but rather to explain the mutual attraction between truckers and prostitutes. Although the answer would appear simple -that the men want sex and the women want money -the reality is more complex.
In theory, truckers are macho men who would not wish to hire prostitutes, because they feel that their virility is reason enough to make women want them as lovers. In fact, truckers do feel ashamed of hiring prostitutes, and try not to do it publicly. Many of them are young and attractive, and claim that they are pursued by hundreds of women. If these tales are true, they would hardly need to spend money on prostitutes.
We know that truckers wish to have sexual adventures on their trips, and part of the attraction of their job is the ease with which they can meet women. So, why do they prefer prostitutes?
Alberto, a 34 year-old from Honduras, says he likes prostitutes because “there’s always a lot to talk about with them. They’re swallows, just like us [truckers]; here today, and gone tomorrow.” The vagabond lifestyle they share makes the exchange of information a worthwhile endeavor. “How are things in Nicaragua?” Alberto will ask a sex worker he meets on the road. “You’d better buy bottled water because there isn’t any at the border,” she replies. This type of information, says Alberto, is very useful to him. “Prostitutes are experts in fields like the weather and the political and economic situation. It’s a pleasure to hear their stories when they’ve been to, say, the United States. You learn a lot about how to get by in a foreign country.”
Mario points out that prostitutes are very knowledgeable about other cultures and are
always ready to provide good advice. “Remember that Nicaraguans are very violent,” one will say. “Don’t get into any fights over women,” Pepe says they often tell him where he can buy this or that in another country. “Take lots of toilet paper to Chinandega,” a prostitute will tell him. “If you don’t, you’ll have to wipe your ass with a banana leaf.”
Truckers like the profit-making opportunities that prostitutes provide, and not exactly as pimps. When Jose is on the road, he looks for sex workers who have just come from the towns he intends to visit and asks them what shortages there are in retail items. “Take flea powder,” a prostitute will say. “There’s an epidemic further on. The hotels are desperate about being invaded with these bugs.” Jose buys liters of pesticide and makes a tidy sum along the way. “I give 3% to the woman who gives me a good (business) tip,” he says. Julio pays attention to sex workers’ tips about devaluation of the local currencies. “Paquita goes out with a banker,” he says. “He told her there were no dollars in the bank. So I got hold of some dollars, and I made a lot of money off that deal.”
Anibal asks hookers where to buy clothes at good prices. “These underpants,” he says, “I bought at an auction in Paso Canoas [on the border between Costa Rica and Panama], thanks to a tip from Cecilia.” Luis buys things he needs from them, particularly presents for his family. “When the women come back from Panama, they bring very cheap imported articles, like perfume, photo cameras or boom-boxes,” he said. “I buy from them regularly because their stuff makes great presents.” Pepe buys sanitary napkins for the women in his family from one of the prostitutes. “Carmen sleeps with a [sanitary napkin] distributor in San Salvador, and gets them cheaper than from the supermarket.”
Often, sex workers are mobile drugstores. Pedro gives them a ride in his truck when he has run out of his blood-pressure pills. “In some countries you need a prescription to get them,” he says. “It’s easier to buy them on the road and avoid the red tape. The girls sell every kind of pill, legal or illegal. Some truckers need sleeping pills, and buy them off [the hookers].” “You can’t sleep?” asks Ana Lia. “I’ll prescribe these Dormican tablets for you. You’ll be out in no time.”
Some men prefer the company of prostitutes because they regard them as counselors or even therapists. When Cristian has a question about “women’s things”, he asks a sex worker. “Do you think I should have intercourse with my wife if she’s pregnant?” Cirino reckons that hookers are the best listeners when he has a quarrel with his wife. “I tell them the woman is grumpy and won’t even talk to me, and they give me advice to figure out what’s going on. „Your wife is jealous, because she knows when you travel you have sex with us.’”
Many truckers go to hookers for advice on teenage sexuality. “My kid is 13, should he be having sex?” a trucker will ask. “If he’s jerking off a lot, better take him to a brothel,” the prostitute might say. Heriberto believes hookers are the best ones to initiate children or young friends sexually. “If one of my boys says he wants sex, I’d rather take him on one of my trips and throw him to a prostitute. For Heriberto, sexual initiation is no trivial matter. “You need to be with someone who knows. When kids fuck their girlfriends, it’s a disaster, because none of them knows shit. They generally get them pregnant and ruin their lives. I’d prefer [them to go to] a sex professional.”
Prostitutes are also post-modern philosophers. Alberto says he likes them because they
have a realistic view of life. “Whores know everything is relative. They’re not convinced that the world is black and white, like my wife.” For instance, his wife thinks he should treat everyone with love, but he disagrees – and so do the hookers. “I feel hate in my heart towards some people, and my wife can’t accept that. A whore understands what I feel.” Emilio says he can talk openly with sex workers about “how bored I am when I’m in bed with my wife”, he says sadly. After all, sex workers understand what is it like “to be bored and not to be able to do anything about it.”
Sex workers are not typical women, if we understand this as women who accept a double standard and traditional religious values. Prostitutes are strong and independent women who have elected a greater freedom of movement and action. This freedom of movement is not only geographical; they can journey into men’s minds and share an erotic sexuality with them.
Carla, a sex worker from Costa Rica, tells us that she now handles her own money. “As a wife, I never knew what you could do with money, and I could never buy anything for myself because my husband would give me money drop by drop. Now, as a whore, I’ve got my own money in the bank and I don’t rely on some jerk to tell me what to do. When I get fed up with a man I just drop him forever. Not like my mother who had to put up with the drunk she lived with.”
Tomasita, from Panama, agrees. “I’m freer as a whore than as a lady. Men think they exploit me, but I’m the one who gets their money and leaves them without a penny. Before, I had to have sex with them if they took me out someplace. Now they have to take me drinking and dining, and on top of that they have to pay.” “We dress, eat, and live better than the ladies,” says Georgina, “and we have more freedom to pick our men.” Alba eats meat every day; before she was a hooker, she says, all she ate was “rice and beans.” Emperatriz shows off her clothes. “Now I have fine dresses, not the rags I wore when I was a servant.” Luisa thinks she has greater control over her sexuality. “I get my orgasm with whichever customer I want. If there’s one I don’t like, I wait until the next. I can tell him what I want and when. With my boyfriend, I had to lie there looking at the ceiling until he came.”
Among the working classes in Latin America, prostitutes are the closest to professional women in developed nations. They are among the most independent groups of women, both economically and socially. Although many other groups ostracize them, they have a much greater freedom of action than their “honorable” counterparts from the same social strata. Instead of staying home, taking care of children and doing housework, they have decided to join men in their world and share their street discourse and sense of Eros. “No, no,” says Cristina, “I couldn’t stand the idea of a boring life in my town, having to end up as a servant to men. I preferred to become a whore than end up dressing saints [as an old maid or a bored housewife].”
It is not hard, then, to understand why truckers find prostitutes so congenial; a hooker’s lifestyle is the closest to their own culture and way of life as any woman could get. Truckers and prostitutes are professional wanderers who share the exhilaration and vicissitudes of life on the road. They are kindred spirits who are attracted to each other and belong nowhere. “Whores and truckers are bromeliads, whose roots are up in the sky,” says Ana, an old and wise prostitute. “We’re pilgrims who follow our own destiny independently and can only listen to each other’s stories.”
But there is a great paradox here. Truckers are aware that prostitutes ultimately want their money. But as international travelers, prostitutes not only travel from one country to another, but also from one gender to another. In other words, have learned the secrets of Latino men’s sexuality and how to put themselves in men’s place. “Let’s not talk about love,” Irene told Pedro once. “What I want is for you to pull out that big cock of yours so I can suck it.” “That kind of language drives me wild, and no decent woman would say such a thing,” the trucker admits. Rufina knows that truckers like rough sex. She is open to any possibility, even being tied up to the steering wheel, as long as the men are willing to pay for premium services. “The more degenerate the act,” she says, “the more I charge them.”
Indeed, the women use the men as much as the men use the women.119 According to Catalina, it is not true that prostitutes fake all their orgasms and don’t get any pleasure out of commercial sex. “I’ll tell you something. When I get into Cirino’s truck, he’s so handsome and sweet that when I watch him shift gears I have one or more orgasms during the trip. Sometimes he notices that it drives me wild to watch his hairy arms harden and relax [as he shifts gears], and he will exaggerate [the gestures]. On some trips, I have three or four orgasms.”
Anita may have group sex and feel nothing with most partners, but “with Jose, who’s so handsome, I’ll give him everything. With the other three or four I can fake an orgasm just to turn them on. What they don’t know is that the last one is the real one.”
Marita enjoys hearing the sexual exploits of her favorite trucker, Alberto. “He tells me about his sexual adventures and before I know it I’ve come. He laughs sometimes when I tell him to go faster because I’m coming.” Estercita claims truckers please them in ways they themselves don’t realize. “Maybe the roll in the hay is too quick, but you get satisfaction out of what they say, and even from the potholes on the highway. I always tell them not to fall into one because I might have an orgasm, and then they do it on purpose. I feel the same way I used to feel when I was riding a bicycle and, boom, you have one.”
Perhaps these women’s occupation has helped them to compartmentalize sex, to view it more objectively, to be in two places at the same time or in none. One minute, Claudia may be talking with Alberto about the “dollarization” of the economy; the next, they will be having anal sex. Maria can hear Pepe grumbling about his wife for hours and, at a moment’s notice, perform cunnilingus on him. “They can be talking to you about the economy and next thing you know they’re licking your asshole,” says Pepe. “What other woman could be so versatile and not get all hung up about sex?” Ernesto agrees. “Whores are amazing women. You can talk to them and get some great lays. You could never do that with the missus.”
The link between truckers and prostitutes, then, is not a sign of machismo. The men do not merely want to “exploit” them as sex objects, but also to enjoy their companionship - something that has little to do with machismo.
_____________
118 Edward Dolnick, Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1998. Tana Dineen, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry Is Doing to People. Montreal, Toronto, Paris: Robert Davies Multimedia Publishing, 1996.
119 For an *inside perspective on sex workers, cf. Wendy Chapkis, Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor. New York: Routledge, 1997.