not my friend...

A few days ago in Sacramento we had the brilliant idea of setting up a dramatization to go along with some of the interviews we've done. Interview after interview kept telling us stories of girls who ran away from their abusive homes only to be drawn into the world of prostitution by various "boyfriends" who promised to protect them.

Since it's not the best idea to get footage of the real women who work the streets (there's a lot of debate about whether filming them is further exploiting their situation or not) we decided to reenact certain scenes but in the actual locations where this stuff happens. Of course, that meant that we had to go to the sketchiest part of town at night and shoot the scenes as fast as possible so we wouldn't draw attention.

Our friend Anna agreed to be the runaway girl-turned-prostitute. We set up the first scene in a semi-abandoned strip mall with a Russian pizza place, a Vietnamese and Korean restaurant and a liquor store. The liquor store was a hub of activity at 10 o'clock at night. Cars and vans were constantly pulling up, two men pushing a baby stroller stopped by. It was a perfect sketchy place for our first scene... almost a little too sketchy.

In our first scene Anna was the runaway, aimlessly wandering the street, cold and bewildered. The empty streets were safer than home. No one was yelling at her here. No one was beating her or molesting her. But the lifeless calm of the street was only a mild comfort. She knew she was vulnerable but what could she do? She had no other place to go.

In the second scene Anna had already been swept up into the abuse-filled world of being pimped out on the street by her boyfriend. She was numb to the abuse. She didn't care any more. Life was all about survival, it was all about getting enough money to make her pimp happy and getting the drugs that helped her forget her life.

To get the footage that we needed for the second scene, we had Anna walked down the "stroll" in Sacramento dressed only a tiny bit revealing. We were all there with our cameras and Malissa was taking photos.

Unbelievably, before our very eyes, a white car spotted Anna and slowed down turning on his blinker in the middle of the block. We all muttered our disbelief. "Can you believe this guy!? He's picking her up right in front of us! Oh no he doesn't.... not my friend."

After slowing for a few long seconds the car swerved a little and turned off his blinker, speeding up quickly and turning the next corner. He reappeared after a few minutes and continued his drive down the stroll.

Later that night I thought about what had happened. The force of my reaction to the event surprised me. It's not the first time I had seen something like this happen... but it was the first time we had purposely set up this sort of realistic scene and used a friend as the prostitute.

When the car was about to pull over everything in me had yelled "NOT MY FRIEND." Don't you dare touch my friend. Don't you dare think she's a prostitute. But how many women had I seen working the streets? Too many to count. And how many times did I take it personally that men were walking or driving by scouting the merchandise and shopping for just the right product?

It always makes me angry to some degree when I see guys picking up prostitutes, but it was never as personal before. My indignation and anger flared in a uniquely furious way when it was my friend....

These ladies on the street... all of them are someone's friend. All of them are someone's daughter, mother or aunt. All of them deserve someone crying out "NOT MY MOM! NOT MY DAUGHTER!"

But the cold air is silent and the runaway girl-turned-prostitute walks the lonely streets under the dark cover of obscurity in the world that, if it could, would wish her existence away.