Sera Miles

It has taken me almost a week to write this post. My apologies.

I’ve sat in front of this screen and not been able to bring myself to write out just a summary of our event in ABQ, for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

But a news story ran last night, on one of ABQ’s main channels, about the West Mesa serial killer. The story profiled the mother of who police believe to be the last victim. DNA identification has not come back from the University of North Texas. So, this mother is waiting, wondering. The news story was fairly benign–empty of nasty, underhanded comments about sex work.

But the comments–out of the 17 comments I just read via the on-line story, only 2-3 did not claim that because the bodies of the women buried in the West Mesa belonged to prostitutes and/or drug addicts, they deserved to die and be thrown into a vacant lot like trash, because they were trash.

I thought about commenting. But do I want to engage with these commentors who clearly lack the ability to understand that all human life is valuable? No, I decided. I’d best put my energy right here, and tell the story of Albuquerque’s Red Umbrella Day.

Over 40 people gathered, including a handful of sex workers (in fact, I believe there were only six of us), New Mexico FetLifers, families of the women murdered and buried on the West Mesa, medical students from UNM, staff of New Mexico AIDS Services, and allies.

We gathered and lit candles for the twelve victims (eleven women, one 4-month-old fetus) of the West Mesa serial killer. We read the list of names, provided by the Sex Workers Outreach Project. Attendees lit candles for others lost this year, including Deborah Jeanne Palfrey, the DC Madam, and Terry Benally, a transgendered ABQ youth who was murdered in 2009. We cried. One of our speakers reiterated throughout the night, “It’s all of us, or none of us.” Our guest speaker reminded us that sexual outlaws have always been together–the dykes and the leatherfolk and the queers and the sex workers and the transgendered. We, sexual outlaws, know to trust each other. We can’t very well trust most of those who patronize us, write about us, construct news stories about us, or pretend to be us under the guise of “character” or “creative license.” We are far more ordinary, you see, than those who would take/possess/claim our voices want to understand.

At the end of the night, I asked everyone to keep telling our stories. Tell the stories of the eleven women murdered and buried in a vacant Albuquerque lot. Tell the story of Albuquerque’s Red Umbrella Day. Tell stories that remind those who would ignore a grieving mother because her daughter may have been a prostitute that all human life is valuable.

When I came home from Red Umbrella Day, I crept upstairs to my daughter’s room. She will be two in January. I peeked in on her sleeping body–she lay on her tummy, in Hello Kitty pajamas, her blanket crunched up beside her. I put the blanket that  my great aunt knit 30 years ago for my brother over my daughter’s little body. She sighed.

Every person was somebody’s baby. Every slain sex worker was a daughter or son, sister or brother, friend, lover, mother or father. It is astounding, yet not surprising, that sex workers must remind those who would ignore us of this.