Hotel Honolulu

39 Truck Whore

In Pinky's short time in Honolulu, with her different name, many things happened very quickly. An American man in the Rat Room said he had bought her for the night. He took her to his hotel room and showed her his tattoos, but he hardly touched her. His name was Skip. He was angry when she told him how she got the bite marks on her. He helped her get away with her false passport. He said, "I want to marry you, Tina."

"Please call me Pinky," she said. She loved him, she said, but they could only get married when she was safe. She told Skip she was afraid of the Japanese man Tony.

"You've got real good people skills," Skip said.

Skip flew with her to California, where he had a motorcycle. He bought Pinky new clothes and said he wanted to introduce her to his mother, who was ninety-four and living in Pennsylvania. He began calling her Christy, the name of his dead wife. Going through Ohio, they stopped at a motel truck stop. It was raining. He said, "Stand over there," and left on his motorcycle to buy beer. At midnight he had not returned. She went to the clerk at the motel desk and said she was afraid.

"There's been an accident — a biker on the interstate. What was your friend's name?"

"Skip."

"Skip isn't a name," the clerk said. He showed her to a room and told her he would make inquiries. But the next morning, when the clerk knocked on her door, he had no news. And he said, "You can't check out until your bill is paid. Stay in there."

Pinky was crying and watching television an hour later when the clerk knocked again. She had locked the door, but he had a key. He saw her cowering against the wall. He demanded that she take her clothes off, and when she did, he went nearer. He said, "You know all about it," and slapped her head and pushed it down.

When he was finished, Pinky said, "Now can I go?"

"You owe me," the man said in a fierce voice. "You owe me."

The man took all her clothes and left her in the room naked.

Later that day he knocked again on Pinky's door. A man was with him. "This is my friend." He left the man with Pinky.

"I was in the service in the Philippines," the man said. "Where are you from?"

"Cebu City."

He knew the place.

"Help me," Pinky said.

"First you help me," the man said, and steered her to the bed, holding her arm tightly.

When he was done, he left without another word. Pinky wrapped herself in a towel and looked out the window and saw him get into a truck. The big truck swayed and bounced onto the road. Still looking at the truck, she saw the motel clerk walking toward her room with another man, and then she heard the knock, and "You know what to do."

After that man she saw three or four others, and more the next day. She was awakened in the dark with the knocking. She felt sick. One morning she went into her bathroom to vomit and saw, written on the wall with her lipstick, Truck Whore.

Each time the door opened she hoped it would be Skip and that he would take her away on his motorcycle. Sitting on the bike, holding him, deafened by the blatting of the engine noise, she had been happy. But it was never Skip. The clerk who had taken her clothes away brought her food. How much time had gone by at this motel? A week or more. Pinky was hopeful when she saw that the clerk had brought her a Filipina and an older man. Pinky wore a bath towel that was folded and tucked like a costume from Palawan. The Filipina said in Tagalog, "I am Joey and this is my husband. I am from Ilocos Norte. Where are you from?"

As though nothing had happened in the meantime, and in her mind she wanted to believe that nothing had, Pinky told her the name of her district outside Cebu City.

"My husband wants to take pictures of us."

"That's it, get acquainted," the old man said. He took his video camera out of a suitcase.

"Please help me," Pinky said. "I want to leave this place."

While they were touching, Joey whispered her own story: the old man had married her but refused to help her family, would not bring her mother to the States and would not send money. Joey was an older woman, not pretty, but she knew how to speak to the man.

"I will see you tomorrow," Joey said. "Bring your passport and papers and a warm sweater."

The next day, the motel clerk said, "You're going with him." He gave her clothes to wear, then said to the old man, "I want her back here at eight. That's my busiest time."

At the house, which was a lovely place a half hour from the motel, on a street with other, similar houses, Joey welcomed Pinky. She gave her a drink of juice and showed her the bedroom. It was beautiful. The old man had set up a camera near the bed. Pinky turned away to take her clothes off. Hearing a crash, she turned and saw that the man had fallen over and dragged his camera with him. He lay on the floor with his mouth wide open.

Taking all the money from the man's wallet, Joey said, "He is asleep.

I gave him something. Hurry, they will start looking for us when he wakes up."

Joey drove Pinky in the man's car and left it in a parking lot in a city. They walked to a bus station and bought tickets to Los Angeles. In the back of the bus, Pinky slept with her head resting against the warm woman, feeling grateful.

In Los Angeles they got jobs as cleaners in a hotel near the airport. The supervisor taught them to make beds and clean bathrooms. One morning a man entering the room Pinky was cleaning said to her, "Don't go." She knew that smell. She said softly, "I need money." The man locked the door and gave her twenty dollars, and she went to him, seeing him smile.

After that, whenever she saw a man alone in a room, she took her time cleaning or sweeping or polishing the mirror, and the man sometimes spoke to her. She said, "I need some money. Can you help me?" and almost always the man would lock the door and give her money and touch her or tell her to kneel. Forty dollars and sometimes more.

One day in one of the corridors a black woman ran toward her, and as Pinky smiled the woman slapped her face. That night, Pinky cried when she told Joey the story.

Joey said, "You deserved it. You're like her."

"I need the money. I am saving to go home."

"I am never going home," Joey said. "I am bringing my mother

here."

Pinky was more fearful after the slap in the face, though she still lingered in the rooms. She could not understand why one man she smiled at got so angry that he reported her to the manager.

"She's a little whore! She propositioned me!" the man said when Pinky was brought to the manager's office. The manager said that he would deal with her. After the man had gone the manager called her a whore, and then he touched her and said, "Take your uniform off. It doesn't belong to you anymore." Pinky did as she was told. The manager then pushed her to the floor and sat on her. When he was finished, he said, "You're fired. Get out. Take this, too." Seeing that it was her uniform, she thanked him.

She had enough money for her ticket to the Philippines. Joey said goodbye. Pinky's mother, who was still in Manila, cried when she saw her daughter. Pinky's father had died. Her mother said, "Why aren't you crying?" Pinky didn't know. She never cried anymore. She didn't tell her mother that she had been to the United States. She applied for jobs. She said, "I have worked in hotels."

She became a maid in a hotel in Manila. The job was low paying and hard work. Her mother quit: she was very sick, too weak to work. Her Aunt Mariel said, "You are twenty — find a husband." Pinky put an ad in the paper, written by Aunt Mariel.

An American man answered the ad. She said to herself, I would marry him. But the man said, "I will make a video of you for my agency. It is the new way to find a husband. Maybe a foreigner."

He showed her one of the videos. It was an interview with a Young Filipina.

"It costs two thousand, but if you have no money we can make other arrangements," the man said.

He photographed her naked on the bed. Then he said, "Put your clothes on," and he interviewed her.

She did not hear again from him. She turned twenty-one, still working at the hotel. Although Philippine hotels were dirtier than American ones and the work was harder, anything was better than being bitten by a man or trapped in a motel room and hearing a man's knock. For a year she sat and watched her mother die. Uncle Tony showed up and began visiting her at night. One of those nights, her mother died.

The week she started at Reception, with the Trainee badge, she got a letter from America — Buddy Hamstra, Hotel Honolulu notepaper. He said that he had seen her video. She had forgotten about the video. He would meet her in Manila.

Uncle Tony and Aunt Mariel went with her to Buddy's room. They slept on the floor, but she woke them at midnight, gave them some pesos, and sent them away. Buddy embraced her.

In the morning she begged Buddy to marry her.

He did, on the fourth floor of the Hotel Rizal, panting from the climb, complaining that the elevators weren't working. Aunt Mariel's friend had

made all the arrangements. It took two months for Pinky to get her United States visa.

"Look," Buddy said to me. "An angel."