How I Became A S*x Worker In Tokyo

One young Black American woman's narrative about becoming a sex worker in Tokyo, Japan.

 

Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

I was thirteen..fourteen(?) when I was first propositioned for sex. It was at a suburban Michigan mall. I browsed Hot Topic alone and a Black man in an actual fur coat approached me–this time judging a book by its cover would have been the correct choice. When he heard my age, he scoffed and said he had a job for me but I was too young. The second time was a few months after this by a White man. At about seventeen as I bobbed around the dirt roads in my town another middle aged Black man yelled from his car–asking how much.

Even in “conservative” Tokyo I could not escape the humiliation of continuous public objectification by men yet I dealt with it easier than many of my friends. I blossomed as an early child far too innocent to understand what was happening to me. Suppressing my disgust, terror and fear had become second nature far before that time.