Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition by Josh Alan Friedman

Author:Josh Alan Friedman [Friedman, Josh Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health; Fitness & Dieting, Psychology & Counseling, Sexuality, History, Americas, United States, State & Local, Historical Study & Educational Resources, Essays, Medical Books, Psychology, Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Popular Culture, Pornography, Sociology, Education & Teaching, Historical Study
ISBN: 9781936239696
Amazon: B009K47UYG
Publisher: Feral House
Published: 2012-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

Pross and Pimps

After Eighth Avenue’s streetwalker monopoly was terminated by 1980, girls gravitated to a dozen crosstown thoroughfares, as if dispersed by some antitrust action. The whole city combined would never contain the volume of streetwalkers that Times Square once did. When hookers were still wearing hot pants, blond dime-store wigs, and go-go boots, missionary Arlene Carmen took to the sidewalks of Times Square: “What we call the ‘immersion process’ in the church—immersing myself in the life to find out what it was, whether there was a place the church could be of service.”

Carmen believes hookers today “have been affected by the women’s movement, there’s a greater sense of independence than eight years ago. More are renegades who live without men. The women stand out less visibly than they used to in dress, there’s less decoration of the body.”

Judson Memorial Church, Carmen’s headquarters on Washington Square, acquired a National Car Rental bus once used for airport shuttles and made it their mobile unit for hookers: “The bus is to give the women access to the square world, to help them with social services, baptize their babies, marry them, bury them. It’s a church.”

The mobile church snakes its way up Eighth Avenue in winter, offering hot coffee to cold-legged wildlife. No males whatsoever are allowed in, except the priest who drives. A sign on the door reads IF YOU’RE RUNNING, RUN RIGHT BY, IF YOU’RE WALKING, WALK RIGHT IN. Speaking in a whisper at her church administration desk, Arlene Carmen says she won’t open the bus door for girls evading cops. Middle-aged, with frizzy black hair, she is solemn, humorless, possibly a bit shell-shocked after being engaged in “the ministry of prostitutes” since 1976. Judson Church’s denomination is American Baptist/United Church of Christ. Judson’s goal is to decriminalize prostitution.

Carmen deals only with streetwalkers, bottom feeders in the hierarchy of hookers: “They prefer working outdoors because they have a choice about who to go with. When you work inside, management doesn’t permit you to say no. That’s the only freedom in that life—to move around and choose who she goes with. Some have tried and just couldn’t hack the boredom indoors.

“Most of these women are mothers,” Carmen continues. “In this city there are baby-sitters who care for the children of prostitutes twenty-four hours a day in their own apartments. The mothers pay up to $150 a week for that care, a very informal network. The women don’t know if they’re going to jail, so they can’t keep their kids with them. Children are very important in that life.”

All of Carmen’s hookers bring pictures of their babies to paste up in the van: “It was their idea to put up the board. That was the only thing they ever asked us to do. Because they can’t carry anything—any minute they could go to jail. They can’t open bank accounts for the same reason they can’t get apartments, you need references. You move to a hotel, but you can’t stay in a hotel with a child for any length of time.

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