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7. Hooking Among ftmale addicts the most common form of hustling was prostitution, or hooking. (The word "hooking"-not to be confused with "hooked," in the sense ofaddicte~derives from the large number ofbrothels once found in the Corlear's Hook seaion ofNew lOrk; sailors called the prostitutes from that area "hookers. "') Hooking was a logical choicefor manyftmale addicts because it was easy to get into, always in demand, and, above all, produced lots ofcash-for more than most addias could earn in a legitimate calling. The relationship between addiaion and prostitution was not one-direaional, however. Just as many male addicts hustled before they began using narcotics, many women were prostitutes before they were turned on. This was largely a matter ofexposure. The hookers' world was full ofdrugs and drug users-their customers, theirpimps, theirprostitutefriends. Not only were drugs freely available , they also helped to alleviate the prostitutes' various physical and emotional problems, such as pain orfotigue or guilt. Narcotics, in a sense, made it possible for women to go on prostituting themselves. And, once they were addiaed, prostitution made itpossiblefor them to go on using narcotics. The involvement ofprostitutes with drugs antedated the classic era: late nineteenth-centurysurveys ofurban addias consistently showedthem to beamong the heaviest users ofopiates, as well as alcohol and cocaine. This is still the case. Accordingto one study, anywherefrom 40 to 85percent ofprostitutes avail themselves ofdrugs.2 Although cash payment remains the norm, there is also a class ofprostitutes called "barterers," who exchange sexual services direaly for drugs or other commodities.3 This appears to be a recent development, as it was not mentioned by the older women we interviewed. (The only exception, and apartial one at that, was aformer prostitute who swore that she had been blackmailed into 1. Eric Partridge, A Dictionary ofthe Underworld (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961 reprint ed.), 342. 2. Ira). Silverman, "Women, Crime, and Drugs,"Journal ofDrug Issues 12 (1982), 175. 3. Paul). Goldstein, Prostitution andDrugs (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1979), 45-51. 160 ADDICTS WHO SURVIVED having sex with a policeman in his patrol car.} These women often lived with men who supported their habits, but this was more in the nature ofa long-term relationship than an exchangefor a one-time sexual act. MAY Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1920, May was the youngest ofthree children in a poor black family. Her parents separated shortly after her birth, and her motherdied whenMay was onlyfiveyears old. She stayed with hergrandmother, but then hergrandmother died in 1933, leavingMay and her sister alone in the world. Me and my sister got together and decided that we would leave town. We didn't have nobody there. We were the only children-my brother had left home about three or four years earlier. He just upped one night and left. He came north. People in those days kept iceboxes on their back porches. So we went up and raided their iceboxes. We put the food in a sack. We went down into a couple of basements and got some dungarees and sneakers and things the white kids' mothers had put on the line. We put them on and walked to Monroe, Virginia-seven miles, I think it was-and caught us a freight train. We rode to Washington, D.C. On the way we met this man, a colored man. He showed us how to keep out of the way of the brakeman, and showed us how to get up on the trestles to catch the train, and everything. But by the time we got to Washington all our food was gone. So we went into a store and asked this man, we told him we were hungry. He gave us a loafa bread. That loafof bread tasted like cake. Then we walked, and we walked, and we walked, and we came to the precinct. We asked the sergeant ifwe could have a place to stay. He said, "You haven't done anything, we can't throw you in jail. I'll tell you what you do: you and your sister go to the house right down the street. There's an old black lady who lives there. You tell her that I told her to put you kids up." So we did, and she put us up. But she was poor too; they didn't have nothing. The Potomac River was right near their house, and they used to go fishing every day. I never ate so much fish...

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