Published on 12 April 2022
Lees dit artikel in het Nederlands
“Can you step out of the car please? Just to make sure you’re really here.” Slowly he appeared, one leg, two legs. And there he was, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Plain, no remarkable colors, nothing that gave anything away. He stood around the car for a moment, looked up and asked: “What’s the house number?”
I worked at number 45. That morning I had turned my key in the lock for the umpteenth time and entered the spacious hallway. It was nearly three months ago that I had responded to Richard’s ad. He rented out the room for home bookings and unlike most he didn’t overcharge. 50 euro for an entire day, paid in cash. The apartment was big. A living room, an open kitchen, a nice looking shower, and two bedrooms. One slightly bigger than the other, but both were cozy and sported a large bed, a nightstand, and romantic candles. Sometimes one or two other women would work there too, but today it was just me so I chose the room with the most daylight. My full weekend bag landed loudly on the dining table. Condoms, lube, lingerie. I quickly grabbed the most important things, my first client was arriving in twenty minutes.
And that’s how I opened the door of number 45. “Teyana? Was my booking with you?” I nodded yes. He took out his badge. “Police. We’re going to take a look around inside.” He wasn’t alone as it turned out. They were with six. All without uniform, incognito. My heart was beating in my throat and my hands were shaking. I raced to the living room. I barely had time to grab my work phone, text the next client and turn my phone off. “Don’t touch anything!”, one of them yelled.
I stood there awkwardly, leaning against the dining table, trying to cover my see-through baby doll. “Can’t you change into something else?”, another one barked at me. While I walked to one of the bedrooms I could see them looking around. In kitchen cabinets, underneath the bed, in drawers. They opened everything. I felt more and more panic. With tears in my eyes I closed the door.
When I got back into the living room the cops had seated themselves in a half circle. Six pairs of eyes stared at me. Four men, two women. One of the female cops told me to sit down. She pointed to a chair that they’d placed in the middle of the room. Well shorty, it definitely wasn’t my birthday. Then the interrogation started. Whether I lived here, how long I’d been working here, whether I was being coerced, did my family know about what I did, did other people work here, and was I aware that seeing clients at home is subject to a hefty fine? I thought back to a conversation with Richard, the landlord. “You don’t know anything about anything about anything. Always deny, don’t admit to anything, or just plain lie.” So that’s what I did. But the way I looked, stuttering, looking down, my sweating hands, told a different story. And ah yes, so did my ad which they had bothered to print and took along. Despite this I kept denying, but I sounded less and less convincing.
“You’re lying,” a cop who’d been looking at me with plain derision sneered at me. He now turned his aggression towards my private phone. I saw him sliding his finger over the screen. Fuck, I’d removed the access code just the other day! “You’re lying!” he yelled again, “I see an entire conversation with Richard here. And here on Facebook you’re making plans with someone named Marsha to work together.” He looked me dead in the eye with nothing but disgust. All the panic was getting to me and in tears I asked one of his colleagues whether he was allowed to just search my phone like that.
Actually this is not allowed at all. In fact, as long as you don’t give permission, there’s no warrant, and there’s no severe and immediate danger, the police is never allowed to enter a house. Especially not for a license check. If you do give them permission to come inside, that doesn’t mean you’re automatically also permitting them to go through your closets. And they’re not allowed to forward emails from your phone to their own email address either. Which, as it turned out, is exactly what they did with me. But pigs stick together, so of course the other cops backed up their colleague. By now their intimidation tactics were working; I said everything about everything about everything.
Hours seemed to pass by. In reality the whole thing didn’t last longer than 45 minutes. “If you hadn’t been lying to us, this would’ve been much easier.” “Why don’t you find a real job? This isn’t working out so well for you, is it? After all their accusations and humiliating questions I felt smaller than ever. Trembling I stayed glued to my chair while they packed up. No empathy, not a single kind word. They’d finished the job and would go on their merry way. “What am I supposed to do now?” I asked, tears rolling down my face. One of the cops gave me a business card of social services specialized in sex work. “You can call this number, maybe they can assist you. And of course you can always drop by the police office.” Sure, wouldn’t that be fun, a repeat experience in the lion’s den.
The door banged shut and suddenly there was nothing but silence. Eerie silence. Birds chirping in the distance were drowned out by the millions thoughts in my head. Numb, I stayed seated, staring off in the distance while the minutes passed by. The sound of the birds brought me back to reality. I jumped up, hastily searching for my clothes and getting dressed. While collecting my things I called Richard to tell him about what happened. The police raid meant the end of our ability to work in this house, too much risk of another raid.
Back at home I couldn’t think about anything else. Richard tried to persuade me to go to the police office, put in a good word for him, “hadn’t it all been my fault after all”. A friend I confided in told me not to listen to him, but I still felt panicky. She heard me stress out about the possibility of a fine, what Richard would do, whether I was now a known sex worker and how that would affect me. “Maybe you could at least try calling them?” she suggested. “Who? The pigs?” “No, those sex work specialized social services.”
I didn’t know what else to do with myself, so I called them. This time I didn’t break out in a cold sweat from the conversation. No panic. Instead, there was empathy, attention, and care from the social worker. I didn’t have to look for another job if I didn’t want to, because sex work is work, she told me. No derogatory tone, but advice about how I could do licensed sex work, for instance by working in a club or private house. She invited me to their office to talk more. “Alright,” I said, “I know which street you’re in, but what’s the house number?”
Teyana
Teyana is a woman of color, activist, part time sex worker and the best amateur spotify DJ you can find.
