A young prostitute works the streets of Vancouver's Skid Row - a
dark, desolate ndustrial strip that offers no protection for such
'working girls.'
Mary is tiny. Her black hair is short and spiky, her eyes
shrouded beneath a thick, black, theatrical smear of eyeliner. Her
voice is high and quiet, girlish. She could still pass as the
runaway teenager she once was.
Her drugs cost her $300 or $400 a day. To pay for them, she works
the downtown eastside hooker stroll, a bleak, dark industrial
district next to Vancouver's harbour.
"Sometimes," Mary says, "if I'm really hurting (for drugs) I do a
date for $30 or $20." Like all prostitutes, Mary tries to develop
regular customers and stick with them. "I do $20 with them
sometimes but it's just a hand job or something. It's not like sex
or something. And then when they get paid they come back and give
me a hundred bucks or two hundred bucks, right? And that's how you
keep the same guys all the time. And it's better that way.
Safer."
Until recently, Jason, who has been a crack addict for three years,
managed to pay for drugs by working at regular jobs. Now, "welfare
helps out about one day a month. And the rest of it winds up being
crime." He nods his head slowly and adds, "Shoplifting and things
like that. I'm not a violent man. I never have been." He recently
pawned a Gore-Tex jacket for a few dollars that vanished up a crack
pipe, leaving him to endure the cold drizzle in only a
sweater.
Jason, Mary and Brook are all homeless but in a sad twist, heavy
crack use eases their need for shelter and other basics. Food isn't
so important because cocaine suppresses appetite: "You get really
skinny. Plus dehydrated, and sometimes eating makes me sick," says
Jason.
Many of the women who work Skid Row's hooker
stroll ignore the dangers to support costly drug
addictions.
2.U change Vancouver to Sydney,LA,New York,London,.......They
tell u the same stories.
Do u want Vancouver changed to Toa Payah,Jurong,Woodlands,Orchard
Rd..?
