HOPES OF A TEENAGE CALLGIRL

Drugs and sex are a lethal combination. Sex for money to buy drugs is what
drives teenage sex workers like Mei Ling to the streets. Niluksi Koswanage
talks to her about her life and hopes.

HE was 55 and she was 16 when they went on their first date more than two
years ago. He took her out to dinner and asked her about her life and
aspirations.

"I told him how I hated my family," she recalls. "And he said, 'Okay, let's
go back to my place and I'll just have sex with you. I'll give you RM250 if
you just let me have sex with you'."

Mei Ling (not her real name), now 18, is a small-sized long-haired girl
with huge brown eyes, clear skin and a few freckles on her upturned nose.
She looks about 15 and her face flits from cute to beautiful when she smiles.

As she talks about her life as a sex worker, she nervously taps the fork on
her plate of noodles.

She said yes to the man because she needed money for heroin. "We went to
this cheap hotel in Chow Kit and he just wanted to look at me naked and
touch me, kiss me and say dirty things to me but I stopped it at that."

The man kept on pressurising her for sex, and the next time she saw him,
Mei Ling went all the way.

"I just blanked out and let him do what he wanted. It was disgusting, but I
kept saying to myself, 'I can go get some drugs right after this'."

Since then, she has continued to see the man once a week. He has taken her
to Langkawi, tried to get her off drugs, protected her and managed her career.

When Mei Ling sees a new client, she calls her benefactor immediately
before and after. Though he has expanded her business by introducing her to
new clients, he has never taken a cut of her earnings.

Throughout the three-hour lunch, Mei Ling referred to the 55-year-old as
tai kor. She says he is the only man she enjoys sex with now.

"He is the only one who helps me when I need it," she says simply.

Theirs is not the Pretty Woman scenario of rescue and living happily ever
after--tai kor is married, with children. But he has looked out for Mei
Ling more than any other adult.

Mei Ling is the product of a one-night stand somewhere in Johor Baru. She
lived with her father in JB until she was 12.

"My mother did not want me until I was old enough to take care of myself.
She is only 39 and I gather that she thinks her youth was stolen in having
me so young."

Mei Ling's father was an alcoholic. Her stepbrother, who is five years
older, sexually abused her from the time she was six until she moved to her
mother's home in Kuala Lumpur.

"He would force me to touch him in intimate places. He completely
controlled my whole young life," she says.

She then escaped to her mother's flat. Her mother was too busy working as a
hostess in karaoke clubs.

"Nobody was telling me to do my homework. My mother was out all the time
and I went to school whenever I felt like it.

"I was left to myself so I made friends with this group of young drug
addicts who stayed near my mother's flat. I was then introduced to heroin."

She lost her virginity when she was 15 to three of the men who, she says,
"took advantage of me after I became messed up to think clearly."

After that, she stopped going to school.

"There was no point. The story of me losing my virginity spread in school.
I was sent to the school counsellor for my 'problems' and all she said was
that I was a 'fast' girl who would be expelled if I did not mend my ways,"
she sighs.

"She never even asked me once how I felt or what I was going through. So I
left."

After leaving school, Mei Ling got a job at a hair salon. ("Mother was glad
I was finally contributing towards household expenses.")

There she met Crystal (not her real name), aged 17. The girls found a
shared love for heroin and Ecstasy pills. They began frequenting nightclubs.

Mei Ling needed more money for her habit. Crystal suggested prostitution
and introduced her to tai kor, a former trick of hers. Once she began
seeing tai kor, she started budgeting her hair salon money and prostitution
money for drugs.

Asked whether she ever got caught for turning tricks or drugs, Mei Ling
laughed nervously.

"Not yet, but my friend Crystal has. She has been in and out of welfare
homes. She tells me they are very strict and she always falls asleep during
counselling sessions."

"They (the welfare workers) tell Crystal that prostitution is bad. But it
is my job, I am giving a service to these men. How else can I get money to
buy food and nice clothes?"

Mei Ling finds the welfare people very intimidating.

"Maybe not all are like that, but when you hear the stories they sound like
people you do not want to go to for help ... like the police."

Mei Ling reckons some men want sex without emotional strings sometimes.
Women and some men can make good money easing this below-the-belt loneliness.

"Once I made RM450 off this old man who could not get it up. Easy money.

"But then it is not all about money. I have heard about AIDS and how it can
spoil our lives and our income," she adds.

Mei Ling feels that the welfare Department could do better for teenage sex
workers by providing housing, medical care and a place for them to learn
new skills while they turn tricks.

This, according to Mei Ling, will give teenage sex workers an opportunity
to make a choice on staying or leaving the streets.

"Look at Crystal, they forcibly put her in a home to change her life and
everytime she comes out she is the same old Crystal at Ipoh Road."

It is evident that the Welfare Department has to rethink its tactics of
getting young girls off the streets permanently.

"They (Welfare Department) need to win over our trust and understand why
some of us have become prostitutes. They should ask us if we want to be
taken off the streets. They cannot just grab and take us away to some
unknown place."

Jail does not cut it for Mei Ling. "It makes things worse and you feel so
awful. We just need proper help from people who will not see you as dirt."

Mei Ling predicts that she will be a prostitute for five or 10 more years.
She is not sure how she will know when it is time to retire.

"It will take something significant, like meeting a guy who will take care
of me ... or falling in love."