So, Angela and I became instant friends. She and I shared duties, and she was a whizz at helping orient me to the hostel. We usually visited and chatted, in the mornings, just after breakfast, before we started turning out the rooms, and then in the late afternoons, when most of the work was done. How can I best describe her in a way that can draw respect, but not pity. She had a kind of a regal presence. She was quiet, but sometimes liked to talk, and seemed to have a very impressive field of knowledge, especially of world events, and happenings in Australia. She was also on a couple of social justice committees, and just really knew her way around.
One day, I very naively asked her if she ever considered returning to sex work. Her first reply was, "How could I possibly ever dignify that with an answer!" It turns out she was deeply religious, a Christian, and to her, "prostitution", as she called it, was one of the most degrading forms of work she could ever think of. But isn't sex work just another form of work, I asked her Then she really let me have it, between the eyes.
"I get so sick and tired of listening to you well meaning progressive politically correct types. You really, none of you, seem to know your head from your ass, she said. Offering up the most intimate part of yourself for the brief enjoyment of stranger men who care only to get their money's worth from your body and then leave you alone till next time, how could you even think of calling that legitimate work? those men were pigs. Every last one of them. And here she really began to raise her voice and I began to fear a meltdown, but she seemed to quickly regain composure.
"Say you had a little girl of your own", she said. "And what if one day, when you asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, and she said, Mama, I want to be a whore. "What would you say to your little girl? Would you simply correct her and use the politically correct term sex worker...?
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