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Less than a week after a prostitute was shot
near Papatoetoe's notorious pick-up spot, girls like 'Ashleigh' are still at
work as if nothing unusual has happened. Picture / Greg Bowker |
The mean streets of
Hunters Corner
09.04.05
by Carroll du Chateau
10PM Thursday
Opposite Hunters Plaza on the stretch of Great South Rd that meets
Hoteo Ave, four leggy girls sit on a bench, waiting. Every few minutes an old, dented car, slows then, seeing the camera, speeds up
again.
The girls begin to posture. One, her midriff bare, small breasts
threatening to escape a lace-up leather bodice, arches her back, fans out her
hair in the streetlight, then lifts a bottle of bourbon to her lips.
"It's a guy," says Freda, one of the Maori wardens who
patrol this area. "Most of them are."
Six nights ago a girl was shot in the head here in an outbreak of
the territorial battles that simmer day and night. Cop cars patrol, hidden
cameras roll for faraway control rooms. And in their twilight world of half
truths, lies and uncertain gender, fuelled by booze, drugs and cash, the
prostitutes don't seem to care.
"Baby", a mother of three, was one of the few genuine
women working this stretch. Maybe she was undercutting agreed prices, which
dropped after the legalisation of prostitution in 2003. Possibly she had upset
someone's pimp. Undoubtedly she was no physical match for the transvestites who
outnumber straight women here tonight by around 10 to one. But she was lucky,
released from hospital with the slug still lodged in place. She is expected to
make a full recovery.
While one of her companions gets in a dusty Holden, Ashleigh
drifts over and introduces herself.
"Has anything changed?" she muses, adjusting the shiny
wide white belt round her narrow hips. Her voice is light, lilting and coy.
"No, a couple of girls are away, but life goes on, y'know?"
"And where do you take your clients?
"Back to a hotel, or we just do it in the car."
For Ashleigh, what she earns on the street is just "fun
money". She charges the going rate: "$80 for oral; $120 for sex; $60
for hand relief". Her real life, so she says, centres round her studies in
"advancement in hospitality" at Wananga Aotearoa.
But what about the danger?
"With every job there's a risk, the trick is minimising
them."
How do you manage that?
She looks bemused. "You'll have to ask Mama about that."
Down Hoteo Ave Mama Tere Strickland's and her team "minimise
risks" for girls like Ashleigh. Her organisation, Te Aronga hou Anaienei,
is part of the Mangere East Family Service Centre, her
helpers are skilled volunteer Maori wardens who work with the 95 per cent Maori
and Pacific Island prostitutes.
Mama is late. She sweeps in at around 11.30, black top sparkling,
hair long and wiry, her face distinctly masculine, despite the earrings, makeup
and pencilled eyebrows.
"So what do you want to know darling?" she says.
"Why so many transsexuals?"
"Because the only way they can be accepted as women is on the
streets."
And why do the men want them?
"If something is very fun and has another piece added to it
it might be what turns them on."
Mama Tere is outraged when I ask how transsexuals can offer
"full sex".
"How do you do it - missionary style?"she
flashes, before explaining the transgender "girls" sometimes
"make a pouch".
Mama says legalisation of prostitution has been a disaster.
"Numbers have quadrupled since that bill. When you pass legislation that
says it's okay [to be a prostitute] it just opens the floodgates. It makes it
hard on us, the samaritans of the night."
The girls aren't looking after one another any more. They're
fighting among themselves, carrying knives meant for clients who might
"turn them up". Clients play "mind games",
bargain for a better deal such as not wearing a condom or threatening to go
where 13 and 14-year-olds will hop into a car for $20.
"Girls are in a very different situation [from boys]. It's
very unsafe for them," explains Mama Tere. "A transsexual has a lot
of strength. Some girls out here are not so strong. You worry about them going
out with clients."
Mama Tere says the increase in transsexuals is the result of
sexual abuse at home. They'd rather be arrested than taken home. "Home is
where they lost their innocence."
1.30AM
The bus rolls past
Manurewa's nine bars, while wardens hand out condoms to clusters of girls. A
straight girl, wearing sunglasses, goes off with a guy in a car. "Miss
Lingerie" totters above me in strappy red sandals, saying she made $1300
(she charges $150 for full sex) from seven clients last night. Most come after
3am when the clubs close. "I have my regular clients," she says in
that strange, super-feminine drawl of the transsexual. "Yesterday three
were on their way to work. It was daylight when I finished."
2AM
Back at Hunters Corner pretty Anya is freshening her makeup after
banking $550. The only white transvestite on this patch, her unlikely life
includes a hairdressing job and four prison terms. "The last one really
scared me".
A gorgeous girl in leather leaps out of a white Toyota for a box
of condoms. The eyes of her young white client rake nervously until she
returns, then he heads off in a u-turn.
The only other guys we see are brown, often wasted, shifty-eyed. "Do you know a girl was shot here this
week?" snarls one.
The girls just keep adjusting their lip liner.
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