Tales of a NYC Sex Worker, Part 2: Welcome to Shitsville
By: Melinda Night, Brooklyn Beck, Call Girl
Tags: New York City Subway, Brooklyn, Sex Work, Street Harassment, Waitress

Be it ever so fucked up, there’s no place like home.

The NYCTA Subway C train.

I spent the first couple of weeks I lived in Brooklyn with my head down, commuting to and from Manhattan to wait tables. But eventually I had time to explore my neighborhood a little.

Where I live is a corner of Brooklyn that Bedford-Stuyvesant residents tend to insist isn’t part of Bed-Stuy, Bushwick residents will generally deny is in Bushwick, Ocean Hill residents reject, and Brownsville residents ignore. In 2017 you could charitably have described it as “up and coming,” but even in 2021 there’s still a lot of “up” left for it to come. It’s not pretty.

And that’s okay, because the neighborhood also has a lot of character. There’s been construction and renovation of some kind or another going on since the day I moved in. I’ve met some wonderful people there who own or work in local shops and restaurants, play dominoes on sidewalk card tables while sharing the accumulated knowledge of three generations of Brooklynites, or just hang out on the corner shooting the shit. And at the very least, most people smiled and waved back when I passed by and said hi, including those loud guys on the corner.

Some of my coworkers at the restaurant were worried for me when I told them where I’d moved to live on my own. Those guys hanging out on the corner were bad news and I should cross to the other side of the street, they said. If I was heading home after dark, I should get off the subway in a safer neighborhood like Clinton Hill and take an Uber the rest of the way, they warned. But most importantly, I was a small girl, and I had to be careful around the locals. They danced around the issue enough that nobody ever said it in so many words, but the subtext was pretty clear to me: I was a small white girl, and I had to be careful around the black and brown locals.

The first time I came home from work in broad daylight, after subbing for someone’s breakfast/lunch shift, I walked past a couple of loud, active construction sites. As I approached the last one before home, I heard a wolf whistle. I ignored it and sped up a bit, then I heard a second one, followed by a shout: “Don’t walk that ass away so fast!”

It wasn’t the first time I’d been harassed at a construction site since moving to New York City, but this was my new neighborhood, and it was discouraging to think I might not be able to escape it. My train of thought was broken by the sudden appearance of two guys in front of me who must have just come around the corner. “Honey, we said we need to take a closer look at that ass!” said one of them, and I tried to walk around them as they laughed. They weren’t that big — honestly, if I’d had to describe them to police later, I would’ve said, “short, stocky white guys” — but there were two of them and they were bigger than me, and suddenly they were blocking my path.

“Just turn around and give us a quick look, that’s all we want!” the second one said, and I felt tears start to form in my eyes.

“Guys, I’m tired and I just want to go home,” I said, my voice cracking.

They were starting to laugh again when I saw a blur out of the corner of my eye, and all at once there were three more guys standing next to the curb. I started to panic, because it didn’t register at first that these were a few of the guys who I’d seen hanging out on a street corner not far from my place.

“Yo, Billy and Jack, how y’all doin’?” shouted the tallest one of them in a mock redneck twang, and I took a step back, my heart pounding. The two construction guys and I all turned to see a trio of African-American locals, smiles on all their faces, staring at them.

“None of your fuckin’ business,” the first construction guy said. “We’re just makin’ friends.”

The tall local laughed, then continued in what must have been his actual, somewhat Caribbean accent. “Sound to me like the girl decided she got enough friends. Think you should let her pass.”

“I said it’s none of your fuckin’ business,” came the answer. That’s when the tall one slowly stepped up onto the sidewalk and gradually got close to the construction guys, staring down at them.

“Everything this side of that wall is my business,” he said with controlled calm, tilting his head toward the wooden fence around the construction site. “I don’t go on your side getting in your business, you stay out of mine. Yeah?”

For a moment it seemed like the construction guys were weighing their chances against these odds. Then without a word they shook their heads and walked back around the corner. As my three rescuers turned toward me, the tall one lifting his hands to shoulder height to signal he wouldn’t come any closer if I didn’t want him to, I finally burst into tears. Abandoning his plan to keep his distance, he rushed over, got down on a knee, and gently grabbed my arms.

“Baby girl,” he said, “you gonna be fine. We got you, okay? We got you.” I looked up at him, then at his two friends, who nodded their agreement. We got you, we got you. “You live in Shitsville now, baby girl, and East Shitsville belong to me.”

I laughed through my tears at the absurdity of his welcome, but it was oddly comforting, and I fell into his arms and hugged him tightly. He hugged me back. “Call me Dev,” he said.

“Hi Dev, I’m Melinda,” I replied, sniffling.

Dev stood up and gestured for me to follow. He introduced his friends, though I wouldn’t be able to remember their names for a long time after that. They walked me the rest of the way home, and it was only as I was climbing my building’s stoop that I realized I hadn’t told them where I lived — where I’d lived for less than a month. They already knew. I turned around to see Dev smiling at me. “We got you, baby girl,” he said, and they waited until I was inside before they turned to go.

On my regular dinner shift the next night, I was ready to tell a couple of coworkers about the whole thing. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized they would just see it as proof that I lived in a dangerous place. The skin color of the assholes didn’t matter if I wasn’t safe, and it would probably sound like I’d invented Dev and his friends no matter how I told the story. So I kept my mouth shut.

Still, I knew the truth. That night when I knocked off work, I felt a little bit better about where I lived than I had the day before last. I walked the several blocks to the subway, and waited on the platform for the one of the last few C trains of the evening before the A train would take over. A few minutes later, I stepped through a set of sliding doors and grabbed a pole. The conductor’s voiceover crackled, and I smiled as I imagined her saying, “This is a Brooklyn-bound C train to Euclid Avenue, making all local stops, including East Shitsville.”

“Stand clear of the closing doors.”

Part 3 is now available here.