Prostitutes List Tricks as Their Emergency Contacts

Relationships are Complex

I had preconceived notions about people engaged in off track behavior when I first entered the world of drug users. These ideas were shattered to hell by realities I could never have guessed. The process of replacing wrong, long held and immutable stereotypes with new information that differs from person to person, situation to situation. It is ready to dehumanize people we think are beneath us and part of dehumanizing people is removing their individuality. Hen e we see prostitutes as one monolithic type, their clients, or tricks, as another monolith. Inpictured hookers as indifferent people looking for the quick buck without needing or wanting to know the gut’s name. Same with tricks though they weren’t looking for the quick buck but a word that rhymes with buck. Every now and again it is absolutely true that long term contact is nothing more than intermittent and impersonal interaction. That’s not the whole story of what these men and women can mean to each other. Some regular customers can see the same woman or women for years, forming relationships so deep that the trick becomes the emergency contact or vice versa. When one if them gets arrested it us commonplace for them to use their one phone call from cell block to reach the other half of the sex worker relationship. One “hobbyist” had been “dating” women in downtown Honolulu for 30 years until the present. He mentioned to one of his girls that he might have a friend who could watch her cat when she went on vacation. “She is like you. She calls me when she gets in trouble.” The reference to “trouble was about a time the first girl accidentally forgot her money for the cab when she took the cat to the vet. The cab driver threatened to call the cops and the win an had to decide on the person she knew that would be able to cover the ever mounting fare AND who would arrive on the scene before the Honolulu police department mosied to the site of the dispute. Who else had enough money, a reliable enough vehicle and the motivation to come right now to rescue her from a situation she could have averted by taking careful inventory of her bag? The guy flew in his truck from the suburbs of Kamala to the outskirts of Waikiki. Our hero was indicating that there was another woman who had it like that with him and on the strength of past favors she might be willing to help out by catsitting for the first woman. There’s remarkably little jealousy between women when neither is trying to take ownership if the guy. When our hero found out the cat lover was driving around without a license (but in a legal car) he warned her that he might not be so willing to bail her out if she got caught. The cat lover was mildly surprised BC she had never asked him if he would bail her out should the not so unlikely event of her arrest take place. How flattering! But after thinking about it, he was the emergency contact who would both have the money and the willingness to use it for bail. Keep in mind that the first 10% of any bail over $1000 is kept by bail bondsman. Bail that is under $1000 must be paid in full but it is all returned when the defendant goes to court. It is kind of a big favor. The working girl was quite surprised it would be offered in advance. That’s the complexity of hooker and trick relationships. For some of these women the long term regulars care more about the women than anyone the women had ever known. It is nit just drugs that tie women to prostitution. The need for companionship that is easy the way things are between people who have been together a long time–that is extremely hard to give up with no replacement in sight.