413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

individuals in their social networks who were smoking crack, and it became almost a normative behavior
in their social circles. When asked who introduced her to crack, an individual from Dallas responded:
“Myself. I was so, I was curious, cause everybody’s talking about how good the drug was. Because I already
smoked marijuana. Everybody’s telling me how good it make them feel, so I went and got my own stuff
and started getting high on my own” (M1).
Others were introduced to the drug by lovers, acquaintances, and family members. This was the case for a
46-year-old from Washington, DC who had been dating a drug dealer before she became quite involved in
sex work:
He [the lover] said if you love me, you’ll try it, so I did. So he got me hooked on it. He too
was hooked on it. Then he got arrested and I had a habit and I didn’t know what to do. So
I started dating drug dealers, which got dangerous because they wanted to pimp you out.
I didn’t want to do the pimping. (L6)
For many, drug use preceded sex work, and sex work was used to finance drug addictions. A sex worker
from Washington, DC noted that her brother encouraged her to begin trading sex and sex work served as
a natural outgrowth of her drug use. She described how she came to trade sex,
I got involved because I got into drugs at an early age—mainly just weed, PCP. [Drug use]
is in my family. My brother always said, don’t give your cookies away for free. Guys in the
neighborhood would ask for sex, and I’d ask for money. At first, I started working my
neighborhood. Guys would get my number and call me. Gradually I went out to the stroll.
At first, I was doing it [sex work] for drugs and cash. (L8)
Sex work served as a quick and reliable source of income—and sometimes a last resort—for individuals
who used crack and other substances. A 43-year-old from Dallas turned to sex work out of desperation
after she started using crack: “Somebody took me to south Dallas and introduced me to crack. And soon
after that I didn’t have no money so he showed me how to prostitute … And [by] then I had run out of
money after I had sold my car, my jewelry, everything I had. So I started prostituting” (M4).
For other respondents, crack use grew out of their sex work. Some, like a 43-year-old from Washington,
DC, were not substance dependent when they first started to trade sex; this individual explained, “Three
to four years into my sex work, I got into marijuana and drinking, which led to crack cocaine” (L5).
Crack began to play a central role in dates—a reality that will be explored more extensively below—as
clients tried to cajole sex workers into using crack. As one sex worker explained,
Crack had come out in the 1990s. Clients wanted to introduce me to crack. Because I
[had] my own place, [I would tell them,] you’ll have to pay a fee because you want to have
sex; you’re going to have to buy the crack as a gift, a token. I would start smoking crack …
with them. Clients started giving me money, turned me on to [crack]. (L1)
Many turned to crack and other drugs as a coping mechanism for the psychological and physical difficulty
of the work. As one individual from Denver who began working in the 1990s explained:
When I started [sex work], I was clean. When I first started, my friend said, here, take a
line of coke, because it helps you get through it … ‘Cause I didn’t really like doing it, being
touched by strange men I didn’t know. I was making like $800 a day, I started doing
things I shouldn’t have, ‘cause I was so high all the time. (J9)
Crack and other drugs were used to help sex workers stay awake during late night, continuous dates with
johns:
Interviewer: And what got you into drugs Is there like something specific
Respondent: Trying to stay awake. Stress, trying to mostly, well mostly when I started it
was stress and trying to stay awake. And then it ended up … cover[ing] my feelings
because when I felt bad about something, when I get that guilty conscience, if I got high, I
didn’t care. It kind of helped me ease my pain. I should tell you, it ended up causing me
more pain.
228