By Makenna Dreher
Spring 2019 Kaplan Award Winner
Shoreline, WA: I had completely lost it. I had veered off on a side street on my way home from work to chuck my half-eaten Jersey Mike’s sandwich out my car window while “Mary Did You Know” blasted from a CD. I was so obsessed with throwing my decrepit sandwich out the window that I didn’t even try to turn the song off or turn the volume down. All I cared about was taking the slimy lettuce and onions out from under my pants and in the crevices of my car. I was frustrated and mad because I had waited in line for 30 minutes at a Jersey Mike’s after working a 10-hour shift that went late, forcing me to skip lunch and dinner. I had never been more excited for a Jersey Mike’s sandwich in my entire life. As I got in the car after buying it, the sandwich kept falling apart as I drove because my hands kept slipping with all the oil the employee doused on my sandwich. All I wanted was to be home and I was tired and worn out and didn’t want to be in Seattle after I had spent the summer in Thailand working with people in the sex trade. I had broke and it took me a few months to realize why I had lost control that night.
Asok, Bangkok, Thailand: The darkness seemed to slither at my feet. Red and black. Puddles reflected the neon lights and outlines of naked women. We combed in and out bumping into people in the massive mall heading towards the flashing, colorful lights and loud music. I was with a group of women on our first night of outreach at the bars in Thailand following our Thai host, Thom, as she introduced us to the red light district and to the first month of what we would experience in Thailand. It was a Wednesday night and we had just taken a tall bus to the BTS, or subway, that took us to the downtown area and were getting close to Soi Cowboy, the largest red light district in Bangkok. People love malls in Thailand. I was surprised at how close the red light district was to the huge malls. On the BTS, at eyelevel, all you could see were advertisements of pale Thai people in expensive clothing or a new skin-lightening cream that definitely had bleach in it. But when you looked down, you could see the reason why we were there. Nestled under the bright signs were the “go-go” bars where tourists and locals went to purchase humans for a few hours or to explore. To a naked eye, it looked like a dingier and tinier Las Vegas strip. But to us, it was the darkest place on earth.
With blank faces, we inched along like ants in the dirty streets of Asok after leaving the mall. There were loud streets that looked like a party, and others where the sex being sold was quieter. Massage parlors and things aimed at locals. One street used to be the “Soi Cowboy” a few years ago but was now just a dimly lit street, Thom said. Sometimes I would be right behind Thom and her white umbrella and other times I would make my way towards the back of the group, lost in my own emptiness. I felt sick the whole time. It felt like hours, although I have no idea how long the walk was. The sheer amount of people involved was a slap in the face. I had read the books and watched the documentaries about sex trafficking and nothing could prepare me for that night. It was supposed to be a prayer walk, but I had no prayers. All I kept thinking was, why?
My sandals kept missing oily puddles on the side streets. Sex, sex, sex. Side vendors with small tents were selling porn DVDs, vibrators, condoms, lingerie. Basically pop-up “Lovers” stores, but dirtier. I remember being behind a family with two small children and just being in shock at why the kids were out so late and what they must think. I saw a chubby boy trying to sell food from a small cart steps from a bumping bar. I saw homeless women underneath the BTS walking bridges. I saw a woman with a small child doing the “wai” Thai greeting sign to each person’s ankles passing by. I was a mix of disgust, confusion, hate, sadness, sickness, hopelessness. The first night of outreach has become a blur, but I remember a few things. Entering Soi Cowboy, there was a pizza cart and it reminded me of New York. I remember seeing a mozzarella pizza and thinking how gross that would taste right now.
Cowboy 2: The first bar we walked in. Without us, Thom would not be allowed in. As a Thai woman alone, the bar owners would assume she was a freelancer trying to recruit girls out of the bar and wouldn’t have let her inside. So when Thom entered a bar with five white American women, it was seen as just friends hanging out rather than her trying to recruit. So we entered the stuffy Cowboy 2 and slid past the purple velvet curtain.
The bar managers took us straight to a booth in the back. Probably because we didn’t look like the most “partygoing” crowd. Thom was wearing a long skirt and a cross necklace. I had long athletic pants and sandals on, similar to the other women in the group. Not the high-paying crew they hoped for, but they gave us a booth anyway. The booths were facing the center of the bar, which was a raised stage with poles bordering the stage that felt like bars in a prison. The women on the stage bounced up and down stiffly in their high heels. To get up to the stage, women had to shimmy their way up strategically by placing the gap of their shoes on a rung to hoist themselves up. I was impressed at the skill of getting up on stage and saddened that the bar owners couldn’t have made it easier on them in their six-inch heels and just made steps.
The “bar girls” in Bangkok are supposed to entertain each customer and the customers buy them drinks in return. Typically, the customers are men and the goal of the night is to have them choose you so he will take you back to his hotel and sleep with you and pay you for an agreed-upon price (that is sometimes not fulfilled). We each ordered Sprite for ourselves and for each of our conversational partners. The girl I was talking to wanted a Coke.
She had a numbered button on her string bikini. Something in the 200s, I think. And braces. She told me about her two children and how much she missed them. I tried to get her phone number so the organization could reach out to her with other options to get her out of this work, but the music was too loud and I was too overwhelmed. Looking past her, I noticed a girl much younger. The small girl was maybe 3 or 4 and the bar managers dressed in polos and khakis were having her serve a group of Indian men at a booth some beer on a tray. I couldn’t look away. What was that little girl doing here at a loud, stuffy bar in Bangkok? The little girl was then hoisted up to the table where the group of men stuffed money down her flowered dress and kissed her cheek. I almost threw up. This lifestyle is going to be so normal for this little girl. And she’s already being touched by their dirty hands.
Later that night on the BTS back home, my team of women I was with asked Thom what was up with the little girl. We all saw it and were pretty distraught. There was so much to be sick over, but that stuck out in our minds. With a straight face, which was not unusual for her, Thom told us that the little girl was a daughter of one of the women. Typically, children live with the women’s families but if that is not an option then they have no other choice but to take care of their child amidst the chaos.
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To an unknowing tourist or outsider, this “strip” club we went to was innocent enough. With rose-colored glasses, it looked like women partying in bikinis and stilettos while men looked on and partied with them. Drunk and carefree, the women are happy to go back to a man’s hotel room and get paid for sex. It’s all fun and games until you remove the glasses of ignorance and zoom in. The reality is that the women in this bar are mostly minors and a lot are here from Japan or the Northeast region of Thailand called Issan where traffickers go to promise them a stable job to support their families. The women and girls live in small bedrooms where too many of them are squeezed, their clients can get violent and abusive and there is no one to advocate for them. The harsh truth is that this isn’t enjoyable or fun for them. They put their family’s responsibilities on their back and sell their bodies for their kids, their dying aunt, their mother, their father. Some think it will be a temporary thing, but it rarely ends up that way. Once they send the money back home for their ailing brother, their grandmother gets sick or their kid needs new shoes. It is a never-ending cycle of dependence on the back of a woman. These women are some of the strongest people I know. A person makes a lot of money by doing this kind of work, although the bar owners can take 60 percent or more of the money from the drinks at the bar and the women are supposed to just entertain the people there and hopefully go home with them.
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Edmonds, WA: I make a lot of people uncomfortable when asked about my trip. People will ask, “So how was Thailand? I hear it’s beautiful!!” I reply with, “It was good, but I actually went to volunteer with local anti-sex trafficking organizations for two months so it wasn’t really a vacation.” Cringing ensues. In order to save my conversational partner and myself from the awkwardness, I will follow up with, “But the pad see ew is so good!” “Oh my gosh, yummy!” they will respond. And conversations like this continue. People, especially Americans, are uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. I got over this fear in Thailand. Conversational pauses are normal there, especially when communicating with two different languages. But back home, it’s always the same. People always have to prove themselves and be in control of a situation for a conversation to flow and seem “effortless.” For instance, after telling the person cutting my hair what I was going to do for the summer, she immediately responded with, “I volunteer for Habitat for Humanity and it really makes me feel good,” as if that was why I was going or that was the point of volunteering. It was difficult to not respond with, “Great, Jamie! But I didn’t tell you about my trip this summer to have you prove to me you’re a good person.”
Asok, Bangkok, Thailand: For some reason, I can’t get the belly rolls out of my head. Going up and down Soi Cowboy, women line up in front of the bars and strip clubs trying to woo in customers. While some stand, others sit hunched over a sticky bar table waiting for their shift to be over. Unapologetic, tired, worn out, not trying to be sexy. Something about that visual sticks in my mind because it is the antithesis of the typical stereotype of a “prostitute.” Even writing that word makes me cringe. The word “prostitute” carries choice, power, freedom. There is nothing sexy or scandalous about what these women do. For instance, if a woman wants out of the bar life, she typically has to pay a steep fine with interest to the bar owner. If that is not paid off in time, which is nearly impossible to do, the bar owners have people track her down and force her to come back and continue working in the bar. People in the sex trade in Thailand are trapped and even if they enjoy the thrill of the job in the beginning, as some of the women I got to know said, the wear and tear on a body eventually leaves you lethargic and wanting a way out. So they drink to take the pain away. And they sit. Hunched over with belly rolls waiting for their time to be over.
University of Washington: Last week, I picked up the health and wellness magazine edition of the Daily at UW. I was immediately drawn to a section about how we need to empower sex workers and de-stigmatize the profession. The article talked about sex workers who have an education and are their own bosses and love the work. The article explained how empowering and “feminist” it was to be a sex worker. And hey, if that’s what you want to do, that’s great. The reason it’s not okay is because for the vast majority of people, mostly women, it is the antithesis of empowering. It’s dehumanizing and anti-women because people who are coerced or forced into the sex trade do not have the privilege and power to get out of it. It’s that easy. If someone loves being a sex worker and has a degree in something and is wealthy and is her own boss, then she can leave the sex trade just as easily as she got into it. But if you are a poor, a person of color and need the money to support your family and no one knows your name, then being in the sex trade is like being trapped and it’s not empowering at all.
Seattle, WA: Coming back from my trip, I didn’t have many words. I didn’t know how to respond to people when they asked how my summer was because the expected “it was good” answer didn’t cut it for me. I compartmentalized a lot of what we saw and did. My Facebook feed is filled with Thai language and Thai people now. All people I knew and started relationships with on my trip. The unfinished stories of the friends I made in the sex trade and the survivors hover over me. Sentences aren’t finished. I still don’t know where to turn or how to process when a memory jogs its way back into my brain or I feel something. I was unhappy in Seattle going to classes and work and going home. Not much excited me and the things my friends worried about bothered me because they were so frivolous compared to the slavery I witnessed. I was worn out and didn’t want to be here.
And I’m angry. I’m angry at all men still. The anger comes in waves and at times, I’m triggered by it but I want to hold on to that anger and passion I feel because the more passion we put into stopping the sex trade and sex trafficking, the more energy we will devote to ending it. There are people out there who think the sex trade will end one day. And there are some that think it won’t. I don’t know which person I am yet, but I do know that I can’t just sit around twiddling my thumbs.
This anger I had towards all men had boiled over onto my sandwich which I threw out of my car window while screaming and crying at God for why the hell were people still in slavery and what the hell could I do to stop it in Seattle after spending a summer face to face with the most awful and darkest humans I could have ever imagined. It was unfair that I was here in Seattle while the women I knew were in the brothels every day being raped and used and cheated. I was unsettled. And wanting something more. And so I cussed and sobbed and threw my oily sandwich out the window. Panting and crying some more, I burned the pavement doing a U-turn and went south on I-5 back to my house near campus. Because that’s all I could do in the moment. I still feel paralyzed from my anger and sometimes I need to scream. Because the injustices of the sex trade make me mad.
Chiang Mai International Airport: As we were leaving Thailand waiting at our gate, I saw two human pigs in the row in front of me at the gate. They were old and pudgy and speaking a language I couldn’t decipher. The pigs were ogling and laughing about the times they had in Thailand and one glimpse over their shoulder showed me what the laughing was all about.
On one of their phones were pictures of the women they had probably slept with on their voyage to Thailand. Women naked, in towels, at parties. Young women too. Women too young for these seasoned rats with big pinky rings flashing as they swiped through the pictures on their iPhone like they were looking at tourist attractions they visited. Their casualness and the mocking and laughter made me so hot with rage I stared them down. One noticed my flames and looked back at me. He looked me up and down, nodded his head and said, “hey, what do you want?’ in the most condescending way an insecure small man could portray. He also looked at my friend up and down, looked back at his friend and started laughing and saying crude jokes. I paused in disbelief and anger, thinking in the moment that this issue could never be solved. It’s too big. There are endless men just like these two pigs in front of me who sit there at an airport unashamed and laughing about the commercial sexual exploitation of millions of people that they are a part of causing. These men are all the same. There was nothing I could do at that airport. Feeling defeated, I went to the overpriced airport gift shop and bought some chickpeas.