Let me write a sentence that will stir no excitement in you.
I woke up this morning and walked to the beach.
Let me write a sentence that would cause elation for a score of women two blocks away, were they able to write the sentence.
I woke up this morning and went to the beach.
Sometime in the 1990’s a coworker and I were walking past a Chinese Restaurant where—now that I think about it—I’ve never seen anybody eat.
Clue number one?
“It a whorehouse upstairs,” said my coworker. “Oriental girls. Service the guys who work the cruise ships.”
Two.
I tucked the fact away, mildly repulsed. In those days, I had maybe 500 bucks to my name, a few cellos, some rugs and art. Nothing else—I was busy getting by.
(Hmm—defensive, Marc?)
I took a cruise, and did notice that the guys in the engine room were all Oriental, and wearing grey jumpsuits. And I see them from time to time in the grocery store, buying 40 or 50 packages of—what else?—Ramen noodle soup.
Then I started to work at Wal-Mart, which meant that I passed the building every morning at 5AM. And yes, the doors to the staircase leading to the upper floors were open. Music, on occasion, would be blaring out.
Clue number three?
Odd time for a legitimate business to be open, I’d think, and then remember.
Then Franny broke a hip. I went to hang with her in the nursing home. And met, on one of those occasions, a woman whose son had written a book.
An excellent book, in fact, on an abominable crime.
Slavery.
“Scholars estimate the total number of modern-day slaves is greater than at any point in history.”
That’s what E. Benjamin Skinner wrote.
Well, you read a fact like that and you’re pretty much compelled to find out more. So I bought two copies of the book. Read them several times. Went to look for a copy just now, and realized that I had likely thrown them out. No, not on literary or factual grounds, but because they had been consumed by others, smaller though more numerous.
Termites.
But as I remember, there are many faces and forms that slavery takes. Yes, sexual slavery is one of them. And gets most of the spotlight. But actually, wage slavery is more common.
Remember the company store? You worked at the factory, lived in tenements the factory put up, paid rent to the factory, and had to buy in the company store. A variant of the scheme still goes on.
Circle back. A rumored whorehouse, curtains drifting from the windows of the upper floor windows, and a wide, inviting 5AM staircase, leading to…?
Oh, and by the way, I’ve never seen any Oriental women in Viejo San Juan. Tourists, yes. The jumpsuit guys, yes. Where are the ladies, the “sex workers,” if they exist, getting their Ramen noodle soup?
The Internet?
So it was more than likely, I thought, piecing this picture together, that, in fact, there is a whorehouse, there are sex workers / slaves, and guys in jumpsuits are using or abusing them.
Well, I say this with no pride. Did I do what Skinner did—here’s another part of his story:
He had first flown in under enemy radar with an Evangelical group purporting to buy slaves en masse to secure their freedom. Afterwards, on his own, he hitched a ride on a U.N. Cessna to the frontlines of the north-south Sudanese civil war. There he met Muong Nyong. Like Skinner, Nyong was 27 at the time, and pondering what to do with the rest of his life. Unlike Skinner, he had spent the first part of that life in bondage.
In this, he was following family tradition—his great-great-grandfather was a Quaker as well as a fiery abolitionist.
Well, Skinner is a better guy than I am.
For those interested in excuses, I was busy, the last few years, helping my mother die, waiting for Wal-Mart to “realign” me, losing my mind, and writing a book.
Not sure that’s good enough.
Moral proximity. If there’s a slave in your neighborhood, you gotta do something. And in my neighborhood?
Another thought. Virtually every woman student of mine would tell me they planned to visit Chinatown, should they be visiting or traveling to New York.
No, not for the food.
For the handbags.
And where were those bags produced? And by whom? And under what conditions?
Ladies, you may be just a guilty as the Ramen soup guys.
Or as guilty as I. Though doesn’t it seem curious that a gay guy, an English teacher, would know something like where the Oriental guys get “serviced?”
So maybe some others are a little more guilty than I? Like the boys in blue (actually, black) with the guns in their holsters and the handcuffs and bullet-proof vests?
Aren’t open doorways and blaring music and 5AM all facts to stir curiosity in police minds?
Here’s my last thought.
A flash mob.
Everybody has an intelligent phone, everyone is on Facebook and Twitter. I won’t do it alone, but I’ll sure join a couple hundred women in the plaza and march down the sidewalk, course up the stairs, and fling doors open.
…even bring the chain cutter.
Ben—whaddya think?
