The Year My Girlfriend Was a Prostitute and I Was Her Pimp
My girlfriend decided to become an escort to pay the bills. When she got her first gig, I knew that she would need someone to do security and didn't hesitate to volunteer myself.
One time, she explained to me that the client was worried about her “and the dark, mysterious stranger who dropped her off and picked her up.” He wanted to save her from me, wished he could propose to her and get her out of this life. And without any sense of irony, less than half an hour later, he begged her to do bareback, complained about how expensive she was, and asked her to reduce her already incredibly low rates.
I laughed off the image of me as a pimp. She wasn’t about to disclose to him that the dark mysterious stranger was her girlfriend, nor point out that if she needed saving from anyone it would be guys like him. However, I later discovered that he wasn’t the only one who would label me with that image. What I was doing was legally considered pimping.
I knew that doing security could get me in trouble with the police, but I didn’t realize until after she’d stopped doing escort work that while prostitution is a misdemeanor, what I was doing was “promotion of prostitution,” the legal term for pimping, and it’s a felony. The law is written really broadly to cover “any conduct that institutes, aids, or facilitates an act or enterprise of prostitution.” Under that definition, even providing emotional support to a sex worker could be construed as a felony pimping by an overzealous District Attorney.
In fact, it was when she realized that I could be at risk -- and knowing the abuses I’d be likely to face as a trans woman in prison -- that she became determined to leave the profession. And almost exactly a year after she had begun escorting, she stopped. I know it was the right decision for her. But we were both resentful of the emotional blackmail the situation presented her with.
Read more at www.alternet.org
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