"Your daughter is my whore": A former Melbourne sex worker on the moment she chose to walk away.

This touching post comes from Jennifer Boyd, who won the ‘Memoir’ category as part of the Mamamia Writers’ Competition. 

Years ago in Melbourne’s St Kilda, there was a vacant corner property, long bereft of any love, whose front was lined by a brick wall that ran along its Inkerman Street side. And there upon its tired old surface, graffitied in large scrawl, were the words “YOUR DAUGHTER IS MY WHORE”.

The letters appeared to drip with menacing intent and I wondered about the person who had taken the time to make this declaration to all and sundry. Years later, before the wall was eventually demolished and the land utilised, somebody added their perspective to it, so that for a brief time it then read “YOUR DAUGHTER IS MY DEAD WHORE”.

And so began my foray into Melbourne’s street sex worker industry.

As I stopped to drink in this visual warning that first night, I had a sense of foreboding about just what it truly meant for me and the thousands of other females (and males) who had visited these streets to sell their wares. And every night, as time wore on, and I trundled past that wall, those damn words followed me, like the eyes on the Mona Lisa.

I find it intriguing just how much of a role instinct plays in our decision making and that when it is neglected, for whatever reasons, we look at things retrospectively and see the crossroads where our choices intersected. You can almost hear the cogs whirring in motion that set forth the events-to-be that shape our lives.

I was always told that I didn’t “look” or “sound” like a street worker. And admittedly, my middle class upbringing and private school inflections were conspicuous in a place where you really need to blend in so as not to be noticed, but stand out enough so as to catch the eye of the curb crawlers. But not too much that you’re suspected of being an undercover cop. Or viewed as too much competition to other workers.

I have read some articles of late discussing the notion of the so called “whorearchy” and the idea that many women in the industry enjoy the rigours of the job, plying the trade of their own volition, free of pimps and drugs and the violence so often associated with this industry, especially on the streets. And I do not doubt that this is true for some. But I can only reflect upon my own experiences and observations of those around me working the streets and living the life.

To most of you, such choices will seem inconceivable in their nature. And the words on that brick wall would be viewed as a concise warning as to how sex workers are viewed by much of society, how little value is placed on their livelihood and lives.

I tended to keep to myself on the streets over the years. I flirted with escort work and brothels, but I was severely heroin dependent and as such, the freedom to be as unreliable and inebriated as I was, saw me return to the bosom of the streets that I came to know and loathe.

Yet the familiarity, however repugnant and depraved, was strangely comforting. It is said that at first the Universe gives you the whispers and then it starts to shout. The Universe had long been shouting at me in attempts to rouse me from my persistent slumber and conspired with life to present me with what I took to be “signs” that my time was nigh and something had to give.

In late July, 2013, I was working on a predictably frigid Melbourne winter’s night, as was another long-time working girl named Tracey Connelly. That night Tracey, who was someone’s daughter, was rendered someone’s “dead whore”. I didn’t know Tracey personally but I knew her face and had exchanged smiles with her over the years as we trod the well-worn streets of St Kilda, on different paths and corners, but with a shared destination…the land of sleep, governed by Morpheus, the Roman god of dreams.

Tracey had been homeless for some time and she had been living with her partner in their van. She was also working out of it and it was in this place, one of the few safe havens she had, one of the few possessions she owned, that her life ended. So alone in those final moments of her life, except for the company of her killer. She faced a sexually brutal and violent death and I cannot even begin to imagine her terror knowing she was about to die this way. Or, that she was about to become another statistic representing the increasing violence against women.

Worse though, is the knowledge of how her body was to be discovered, and by whom. And how she would be viewed and mourned by those who knew her and those who didn’t.

She would not be afforded the dignity of reference without the preamble of her “lifestyle choices”. And she would most certainly shoulder the blame for her own murder.

After her death, there was actually some surprising compassion displayed within the community and the media. That was over two years ago now and Tracey’s killer still remains at large. Naturally, her story has now dropped from the headlines, but it barely registers as an update piece either. But I will never forget her story for many reasons, not least because of the role her end played in the beginnings of my new life.

I’d like to tell you that suddenly things made sense to many a working girl and that there was a mass exodus from the streets and that the hellish chapters from the lives of many were wrapped up with a neat little bow. Things just don’t happen like that. There was of course much fear and anxiety coursing through those streets, but it didn’t take long for it to somewhat dissipate. In fact, not much changed at all.

I read articles citing the fact that a streetworker hadn’t been murdered there in nine years. Drugs were more likely to kill these girls. Or, family violence. That in fact, street girls are notoriously hardened and well attuned to potential threats and how to handle them. I too might have allowed these ideas to inform my decision to keep trying my luck out on those treacherous streets… if only I hadn’t discovered that I was pregnant with my baby a month later.

With Tracey’s death clearly in my mind, I read articles detailing her history, which informed me of some uncanny coincidences in our lives that suggested, unbeknownst at the time, we had been at the same crossroads as one another more than once before.

With the “sign” that I had been searching for and a baby growing inside of me, I chose life and I got out.It wasn’t an easy or fast process by any means but I finally felt some motion, after years of inertia.

I took my own hand and rewrote my life’s trajectory. And while this story began long ago with those words on that brick wall, it was the crossroads that I shared with Tracey which allowed me to finally add a full stop to that sentence.

Jennifer Boyd – Winner of the memoir category:

I am a 40-year-old single mother to an 18-month-old boy. We are living with my parents after the years I spent spectacularly derailing my life as a heroin addict and the chaos that comes with it. I have always secretly fancied myself to be a writer and the opportunity to enter this competition, no matter the outcome, has been a tough aspiration to fulfill. But here on the cusp of the cut off time, I have just made it! No small feat in itself.