…money for her company to get her off the street or out of the cold for a while.
LET ME BE CLEAR. I’m not speaking in code. Have you ever offered what you thought was a prostitute a ride or money to get her a meal or out of the cold and NOT for sexual services.
What happened?
If you want some background, i was recently driving down the street in an ‘okish’ neighborhood, it’s very cold and a skinny woman wrapped up very well head to toe was walking down the street with her thumb out.
Now i suspect it was a prostitute, or a cop, because usually hitchhikers look distressed and are looking down the street making eye contact with drivers. This woman must have had a bionic arm cause that thumb and arm were not wavering. She was just plowing face forward arm and thumb out.
But I thought, well this sucks. Usually a woman in distress will receive aid more readily then a man but in this case, Ill bet her being a skinny woman is working against her if she genuinely wants a ride. I could ask “Hey, do you genuinely want a ride” but:
If its a hooker, she’ll probably climb in and start shaking me down
If its a cop, she’ll avoid the question and probe around and who knows maybe its a slow day and run me in for ‘speaking in code’ and argue ‘everyone knows what you stop for’…or some such shit. I don’t think it would hold up, but who needs the hassle so…sorry lady with her thumb out, I’m not stopping.
I took a prostitute out for breakfast once. Well, I say breakfast but it was about 1:30 in the afternoon. I wanted to talk her into going home to her parents in Pittsburgh. The guy she was with, Sport , didn’t seem like someone she should really be around.
Eventually I got it all sorted out, but not exactly how I expected.
An alternative scenario not mentioned in the OP is getting stopped by police who were keeping an eye on the hooker. Then when you say “Gee, officer, I was just giving her a ride” they can try not to laugh.
I’ve seen this situation play out on “Cops”. It turned out that the Good Samaritan had something else on his mind.
Hasn’t happened to me because I don’t own a car or have a license. IMO, a hooker would size you up while talking to you, determine you are not a paying customer, and pass on the ride. I have no idea what an undercover cop would do.
Why on earth would you assume she was a sex worker? “Wrapped up very well head to toe” is not a description that matches well with “person trying to solicit sex,” whether for pay or otherwise.
I have certainly seen hitchhikers – and, years ago, occasionally been one – who had their thumbs out but their backs to the wind, and therefore facing away from traffic, in bad weather. It usually means that the person has pretty much given up on getting a ride and is trying their best to walk to somewhere sheltered, but still has a little bit of hope and so will put their thumb out.
If they want shelter there’s a convience store on every corner. The blizzard hasn’t hit here yet. It’s 40 degrees. She didn’t look homeless or in distress. I just feel like if she needed a ride or to use someones phone to call an uber or cab or money for gas for a car somewhere…she’d have done better at a Quiktrip.
This also was a well travelled road not out in the country. I’d say about ten cars a minute passed her.
It was just…off. And i didn’t assume she was a sex worker. I’d vote cop sting over hooker. Her body language was, I know where I’m at, I know where Im going. I’ve got a lot of energy and Ive got my arm out.*
Granted that body language is similar to what you describe.
…I mean: I’m not seeing how one leads to the other. If on a cold day I see a “skinny woman wrapped up very well head to toe was walking down the street with her thumb out” I’m gonna assume that it’s someone that’s needing a lift.
If you suspect that something is “off” then just keep driving. Otherwise, just do whatever it is you normally do when you see someone hitch-hiking. Don’t let your imagination run away on you. You are much more likely to run into a sex worker at the neighbouring university or coffee shop than you are randomly thumbing for a lift on the side of the road wrapped up from head-to-toe on a cold day.
I regularly pick up hitchhikers, this is the third world, public transport is poor.
I recently picked up a woman who was wearing slightly less clothing than usual, and she fondled my hair, which is fairly unusual for a complete stranger.
Then she saw I was not reponsive and drank one of the beers I had on the back seat.
So yes, I am pretty sure I have picked up a prostitute once.
(She offered me money for the lift, so I guess I am a gigolo?)
I’ve probably offered a prostitute a meal and gotten her in out of the cold. I’ve worked for years at various church programs for helping out the poor, and it’s a pretty fair bet that at least a few of them have, at some point or another, made ends meet by prostitution. I couldn’t by any chance tell you which particular ones, though, since at the time I met them, they wouldn’t have been “on the job”, so to speak.
I probably did and lucked out. I was at the Asian market in downtown Cleveland and headed for my car. A woman seated on a bench asked if I was going to some area not too far away and if so could she get a ride. Off we went. It wasn’t far and she never came right out and asked anything specific. But as I drove into the parking lot of the shopping strip she indicated, she spotted a police car. She bailed while I was still moving and the cops hit their lights and came to talk to me. They asked if I had had sex with the woman and I explained what had transpired. They were satisfied and waved me off
When I got home and was removing my packages I spotted an odd thing on the floor. It was the size of a small irregular marble and was waxy. I was sure that it was crack from the descriptions I had read. I am soooooo glad they did not search my car.
I hitchhiked myself quite a bit so back in the day, was willing to pick up others to address my karmic debt.
One day I was driving on Rte. 1 in Norwalk, CT around 5PM on a weekday (ie not a time or place to expect streetwalkers) and it was raining. I saw two women hitching so offered them a ride. Once they got in my car, one of them explained she was a prostitute and asked if I was interested, which I was definitely not (for lots of reasons). I let them out a few miles down the road.
Sort of the opposite of the OP, in that I assumed they were sincerely hitchhiking - hookers on the street never occurred to me.
