I was prostituted in more than 40 clubs in Spain: this is how I started a new life

It's been nine years since I left that world behind. I often bump into men that paid me for my body.

AMELIA TIGANUS  9 JUL 2016 

Between the ages of 18 to 23 I was prostituted in over 40 nightclubs all across Spain. But what makes a prostitute?

I was born in Galati in Romania into a traditional, middle-class family. I was the oldest of two sisters. I never lacked food, shelter and education. In those days my aspirations were to work and start a family, but at the age of 13 everything was ruined when they raped me. I knew that I would never be a 'good' woman again, and they blamed me for what happened: "What was she even doing there dressed like that, all on her own?” they said.

The rapes continued and, as I was nothing more than a whore, my "no" was worthless. If it had been worthless before, now it was worth less than nothing. I learned that it was worse to resist and better to keep quiet and not answer back. One day I thought: “That's just the way things are, and it's already done now anyway. And that's how I want it to be". I empowered myself through sex and that made everything easier to deal with, psychologically. From that moment on my attackers and I started to act like colleagues.

When I was 17 and a half I would have sex with any man that crossed my path. The model that we 'bad women' were shown and had to follow, and that still exists in Romania, was of the prostitute empowered by money and possessions. So when a man offered to introduce me to a pimp who could help get me to Spain to work as a prostitute, I accepted. After looking me up and down, the pimp decided to "give me a chance" and paid the man 300 euros. He sold me.

I stayed in an apartment for six months until I turned 18. Refusing sex with the men that passed through that apartment meant we weren't good enough whores to be worth the opportunity to leave the country, so we had sex with them all.

As soon as I turned 18 they got me a passport and I travelled to Spain. We arrived at a town called Guardamar del Segura in Alicante, where they were renting an apartment. Every afternoon a taxi would take us to a small roadside club 6 km away, and bring us back at daybreak. My first night was horrific. I had slept with a lot of men before, but this was different. We had two minutes to compete between us and win over a client. We each tried to be the best puta of them all to gain privileges and recognition.

I cried a lot on that first night. The clients didn't care much; at times I thought they were even enjoying it. My pimp reminded me that as soon as I started to earn money, I would have to pay off the contracted debt, starting with 50% of my earnings. That wasn't fair.

One day he got a call to warn him that the police were planning a raid that night, so he had to give us back our passports to avoid raising suspicion. In the taxi my heart started to thump as I thought: "you have to escape! When will you ever have your passport in your hand again?" I asked three clients for help and one of them agreed to take me to Torrevieja...to another club in Alicante. There, I kept on crying. I watched myself fall apart, without the will, reason or strength to bear it all.

Everything changed one day when I called a friend in Romania, who told me he wanted to come to Spain to work, have a good life and start a family. That gave me lots of encouragement. I told him I was going to rent an apartment, pay for his ticket and save up some money so we could live a decent life while we both looked for work. Every step took me closer and closer to my dream of freedom. I rented an apartment near Burgos, I made the house look nice, did the shopping and prepared the food. It looked like a home! I was very, very happy because I'd made it. Without another thought I threw away all the clothes that I wore as a prostitute.

He came to Spain, became my boyfriend and everything was perfect. Until I realised that I couldn’t get any work, money was running out, and he was making no effort to look for a job. My dream was coming to an end. My lover boy (as these types of pimps are known) used to say that it wasn’t fair, that he also suffered a lot, but there was nothing for it: I had to go back to the clubs. "At least you have that opportunity to earn money" he said.

So that's how I returned to the clubs, in despair. My mind, body and soul were in pain, but there was no other option. I started to get used to suffering and violence. I stopped thinking so that I could not feel.

Thousands of men go to these clubs to drink and exchange for money for sex. Most of them are married or in a relationship. Although they are of all ages, the young people tend to go in groups to celebrate something. They are not good clients; they demand hard sex like in the porn movies, but for a low price.

Then there are the men between 35 and 55 years old who usually go alone, or with a couple of others. They can be divided into two categories: firstly, the ones that want to show their manliness and their sexual potency in front of the other guys. They get worried and need to believe that paying to fuck a stranger is an act of humanity, so they can go home in peace. I learned to how to put on an act, to lie and say whatever they wanted to hear. Because what they all had in common, every last one of them, was that they didn't want to see the person behind the puta.

Then there were the solitary weirdos who usually paid a lot of money to leave the club and go to their house or hotel. They are the men that hate women, and the only place where they can go to channel their hatred is the world of prostitution. I tried my best to avoid them but more than once, with the money as the only motivation, I agreed to go with them. On those occasions I was very scared and I saw my own death before me. At least two girls didn't come back from one of these visits. Sometimes I think about them and wonder what happened to them. What if they had been murdered, and nobody found them or their killers? A woman's life is not worth as much as a man’s, but a prostitute’s life is worth even less. We are just 'anyone' and 'no one', so it doesn't matter.

One day, tired of everything and seeing that my loverboy wasn't going to keep his promise, I told him I was leaving prostitution for good. He pressured me for two weeks to change my mind, but when that didn’t work he came to the club, dumped two big black rubbish bags full of my clothes and things, and he left.

Later I saw an opportunity and I took it. I asked a young client to take me to his house for a few days to rest and look for a job, and he accepted. It was good for him because he got free sex. After two days I found an advert in the paper for a waitressing job. I called, went to the interview and started the next day. I was very scared. Everything seemed strange. The daylight, the people, the voices, the laughter. I had to readapt to normal life after five years of living under the red-light. Things went very badly with the man who took me in, and he ended up with a restraining order for stalking and threatening me with death. However, I realised that being a victim of your partner in a couple is even worse than being a victim of a sex buyer. After that I began to change into a new person.

It’s been nine years since I left the world of prostitution, and I was very lucky to find a job, in a town very close to the last club where I worked. My emotional wounds are very deep, but little by little I have made progress and begun to heal. Feminism has a lot to do with it – and especially my soulmate Graciela Atencio, director of Feminicidio.net ,an organisation I have participated in. When I understood that what had happened to me was more than just a personal story, but the story of women, I was finally free of all the shame, blame and stigma that weighed me down, and I could start to recover.

Now I see the clients from the outside, as they go about their everyday lives. I often bump into men who paid to have my body back then. But the other women only see men, friends, brothers, neighbours, sons...they never see sex buyers; they create a hidden reality. They feel very safe and legitimised in what they do; happy to enjoy their privileges and the women at their disposal. Private and public women.

Two years after leaving prostitution, I met the man who would become my husband, and with him I learned how to have an equal, respectful and non-violent relationship. Today I consider myself to be recovered, although sometimes I have nightmares and have to sleep with the light on, because waking up in the dark gives me panic attacks and anxiety – I don’t know where I am. In the darkness I don't know if I'm being raped, or in that roadside club, facing death, when you know your only escape is to keep quiet.

Translation by Ben Riddick

Original article in Spanish:
 http://verne.elpais.com/verne/2016/06/29/articulo/1467190903_598354.html