The Autobiography of a Sex Worker

by Nalini Jameela

‘prurient money-spinner’.

For Jameela, a successful autobiography was her way of establishing herself as a public person, while testifying to the oppression of sex workers in public. She could not simply withdraw the first version; she had to rewrite it.

Stereotypically, domestic rhythms, familial love and relationships are perceived to be absent from the life of the sex worker (a ‘public woman’) — her life is expected to be essentially a series of sexual adventures.

Indeed, she seeks a revaluation of sex work as a ‘professional activity’, thus bidding for a public, knowledge-based identity.

It was this experience that made me realise that to be one’s own boss, one had to work. No one had been able to bully us when Mother was working.

The moment she mentioned ‘needing women’, I understood that this had to do with using the woman the way the husband does.

As for me, I was insistent that I wouldn’t wiggle my hips and arms to catch anyone; the client had to come to me. (Of course, the other thing was that once I stood at a place five times in a row, that became a pick-up point.)

It’s women who strut around thinking of themselves as progressive who often behave the worst.

No one demands the rehabilitation of scavengers who work under the unhealthiest conditions, since that will cause the whole place to stink.

There’s sex in seeing; in touching and caressing; and then there’s deep, intense sex.

Life isn’t a narrow, one-track path; there are detours one can take, and one can also return to old, familiar paths.