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Feb 7, 2016

INSIDE the fragile and fraught lives of TRUCK STOP SEX WORKERS * USA

* California - The dark underbelly of truck stops

(Video by Pacific Standard - Feb 4, 2016: "Lot Lizard" is a feature documentary about truck stop sex workers in America. The film follows Jennifer, a recovering sex worker who is trying to get her life back on track; Bobby, a man struggling to come to grips with his girlfriend's livelihood; and Betty... These intimate portraits hint at a broader story about America, how it deals with its down and out, and how we are implicated as consumers) 

-- In the world of trucking, things are often not what they seem... Inside a modest home in Ontario, California, the sun is setting on what seems to be—at first glance—a typical picture of domesticity... Up until six weeks ago, Jennifer, the woman in the scene, was having sex with truck drivers for money, then using that money to shoot heroin. Jim, the trucker on the road, isn’t Jennifer’s husband. Jim is her spiritual advisor, and a chaplain at the Trucker Chapel, a converted trailer parked at the local truck stop... She pours over newspaper job advertisements, tension building in her voice. “It’s hard because there are these crappy-ass jobs for $8.00 an hour, or I could work one day a week on the [trucking] lot and make $300 easily. It’s easy to suck anything up for a few hours to make some money” ... Ask a truck stop sex worker to tell you about the most outrageous sexual feat she (most of the sex workers we met were women, though there were a handful of men) has performed, and she’ll tell you everything. Ask her if she has any siblings, and she’ll walk away from the interview. From the few stories we were able to record about family life, we learned of the extraordinary abuse and neglect many of the women experienced throughout their childhoods. Jennifer, for instance, was sexually abused by her uncle while growing up in Idaho... At the Triple T truck stop in Tucson, Arizona, a sex worker named Betty dates truckers only a few miles from the trailer where her parents live. Her father met her mother at a truck stop. He is a former trucker, and a methamphetamine addict, and Betty’s mother is a former sex worker... Truck stop sex workers are often vocal about how they reject society’s definition of their labor and its judgment of their lifestyle... 


... As unlikely as it is for two people to grow close in the world of truck stop sex work, Monica and Bobby stayed committed to one another while attempting to manage the forces (crack cocaine, sex, illness) that threatened to drive them apart... While each truck stop sex worker’s story is wholly unique, they all share a deep level of humanity. With Sunshine, there’s a familiar resistance to the ways in which society tries to shame and judge women. In Jennifer, we see a mother struggling to define herself and find salvation. Monica and Bobby’s story is, in large part, a reflection on the desire to love and be loved despite our many faults... By turning a camera of the faces of these women fighting each day for survival, the similarities that twine us together as a society can slowly make their way out from the shadows and into the light... 
(Photo: Dan Livingston - Lot Lizard) -- Ontario, CAL, USA - Pacific Standard, by Dan Livingston - FEB 5, 2016

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