By Jamie Wright on July 22, 2013—
“I spent the first two weeks of July in South East Asia, getting a first hand look at the sex trade, slavery, and human trafficking that plagues that part of the world. After I got back, I had coffee with a friend who said, “Dump it all out.” So I did. Every detail, every feeling, every last stinkin’ bit. I told her everything I saw and everything I did, and everything I thought, taking no care to filter, sift, or soften any part of it. Just kept blurting stuff out, like horrible stuff, while I sipped an iced latte.
A little bit after we went our separate ways, she sent me a text.
“I got in the car and wept.”
I felt kinda bad because I knew I’d burdened my friend with a heavy load. But there was something else, something kind of good about knowing she’d been upset, unsettled, disturbed – it meant I’d done something right; I’d told the story well enough that it got ahold of her and shook her spirit. I shared the experience, and it was… disruptive.
Figuring out how to tell the story here, in blog world, has been more challenging for me. There’s so much to tell, I don’t even know where to start…
Should I begin when she was 7 and her virginity was sold to a foreigner? Or when she was 12, and a family member traded her to a pimp for a small sum and the promise of more cash to come from her “work”?
Maybe I should start when she’s 16, swaying back and forth on the balls of her feet in towering heels and not much else, up lit by stage lights to make her more visible to potential clients. She’s #133 if anyone’s interested.
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| “Sleep with me, Free breakfast” |
Or should I begin at the beginning of the end? When she’s 21, used up and aged out of the “nice”, upscale clubs that line the streets with neon lights and pumping music, cast off to the dark, back alley brothels where the kinky crap happens; where johns are allowed to spank, or bite. Or worse.
There are too many stories to tell, and last week I shared space with every one of them. I breathed their air, ate their food, slid into a vinyl booth in a bar and set my beer at their feet. These stories danced naked on my table. They became flesh and took on life, and my mind kept reaching for a new word to describe them and finally it settled on… real.”
To read the rest of Jamie’s story, please click here.
HUMAN RIGHTS SOCIETY 