All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [162]
And then the most amazing thing happened. I did not judge him.
I suddenly realized that I was in a truck stop cavorting with men who paid for sex, absolutely loving them. I was amazed and grateful for my growth. When I began this work years ago, I was sick and shattered by brothels alone. The idea of facing a man who went to a brothel was impossible; I thought I’d implode because of his shameful behavior. Now I had journeyed from wanting to kill (oh, I mean that seriously) the clients with my undiluted rage to standing among thousands of them and chatting comfortably, momentarily blessed by knowing the difference between their souls and their behavior, sensing the God seed in each man. I felt the same open-mindedness, acceptance, compassion, love, and concern for them that I did for the women they exploited. It was a total and complete miracle. It was not that I had joined the oppressor or that I suffered from a kind of Stockholm syndrome, whereby one is converted to the kidnapper’s point of view; it was that I had dealt with my own shame and now I could stand with others in theirs with an open heart. In no way did I excuse their behavior, but something about regarding them as the sick and suffering had freed me of the extremity of my own emotions that had previously rendered me useless to them.
Truckers in India are themselves exploited at every turn, much like prostituted women. Indians generally believe they are responsible for HIV and ostracize them. One man with whom I spoke longed to marry, but each time a woman’s family discovered his occupation, they withdrew her availability to marry him. The police harass them with fraudulent infractions: Your cargo is taxed, give me so many rupees, your truck is overloaded, give me rupees, there is a temporary fee for using this road, give me rupees, your papers are not correct, give me rupees. Of course, the police harass prostitutes, too, so for a few hours I thought, Aha! I’ve found the bad guys in this scenario: It’s the police! Then, of course, someone told me how the police were not paid a living wage, either, and their standard of living was also horrible. This person said it so well: “Poverty and corruption go hand in hand.” So yet again, compassion extended to another group of people I moments ago had blamed, and once again it was confirmed that poverty is the worst form of violence. Poverty reduction solutions are what each of these groups, without exception, need. My dad taught me a long time ago that shit trickles down; in India it goes sideways.
Well, if you really want to jockey for title of most marginalized group in India, men who have sex with men would be hard to beat. I sat with a group of men who cruised the area to service the truckers. Yasin and I had talked about this aspect of paid sex; it’s an option for most truckers, who are quite indiscriminate. The attitude is “any port in a storm.” I had also heard that some had sex with other male truckers in the sadly misguided belief that HIV couldn’t be spread by sex with other men.
About fifteen of us sat in a small yellow room in a shabby building block in Cotton Green, which was a drop-in center for men who have sex with men. It was decorated with tattered curtains and empowerment decals, where the prostituted men gathered to discuss their challenges, their solutions. Some wore eyeliner, one sported a glittery top, all of them were sassy and chatty. I visited with a bewitching, kind, and utterly unique transsexual named Kausur/Mamuia. Kausur was her male persona, which she used in her capacity as a peer educator for truckers who had sex with men, and Mamuia was her female identity, which was where she felt most at home. She was gorgeous, carefully attired, made-up, dainty, delicate, and very sure of herself. As a teen boy, she felt inside she was a girl and began to live her truth regardless of the cost. Her mother had accepted her (and lives with her), her siblings had not. She shared