Gas Girls at Theatre Passe Muraille

I went to see a great play last week at Theatre Passe Muraille, it’s called Gas Girls, written by Donna-Michelle St Bernard. The story follows two gas girls, Lola (played by Nawa Nicole Simon) and Gigi (plaed by Dienye Waboso), who sell sex for gas, or as Gigi says “love for gas, gas for cash, cash for living, living for love.” They work at a truckstop on a Zimbabwean highway. I loved the depth and emotion of the characters, especially scenes of the older and experienced Gigi mentoring the very young Lola into the ways of selling sex. The relationships between the two workers, and also with Chickn, the man they work for and sell gas to (played by Jamie Robinson), were real and difficult, complex with love and desperation. These relationships were the most powerful part of the play, although I also loved the work of actor Peter Bailey, who played two different clients/johns, Mr. Man and Henry. I usually like any work about sex workers that shows clients as multi-dimensional people who are more than just sexual predators or perverts.

One of my favourite scenes was when Gigi negotiates full service with a client and then goes off to use the toilet, and young Lola comes by and undersells the man the same service because of her youth and ignorance about the work. It’s a real-life moment of how and why sex workers need unions, need ways of working together to demand a base wage/rate from clients, and also to normalize safer sex practices. When Gigi discovers that Lola has gotten only half the gas for the same service, her anger spills over as frustration at the difficulty of teaching a very young girl how to sell sex. Lola is really just a child, playing with pleasure, friendship, and companionship. As Lola is played by an adult actor, I didn’t even realize how young the character is supposed to be until a scene when she gets her period for the first time. I have to say that the heartbreak of this situation for me isn’t that Lola is being forced to sell sex at such a young age, but really that she has to work so much and so young, instead of having time for play and exploration. The scenes where Gigi and Lola dance together and play clapping games drive this home, as these are the moments when you see both women enjoying a break from the drudgery and pain of poverty. I think it’s a tricky thing to explore sex for the first time while at the same time standing your ground around payment for that play. It demands a maturity that is learned, of course, but not usually without some heartbreak and violence and shame. (I want to think more on this, especially about how youth can come to sexual maturity and experimentation in safe and consensual ways that might even include getting paid for it. Obviously the issue of juvenile sex workers is a touchy and divisive one.)

Another powerful moment is when Gigi and Chicken are reaching for solace and intimacy from each other in hard times, but Chicken rejects Gigi sexually because of his suspicion that she is “sick” and damaged goods. The moment is truly heartbreaking as Gigi hurts so bad from the stigma of HIV for sex workers. Gigi is wanting something different than what she lives, of course; but Chickn, her only ticket out, is not exactly living high off her labour like your stereotypical pimp. Chickn could so easily have been portrayed as unfalteringly cruel, but instead he is likewise struggling against poverty and circumstance.

Nothing is simple in this play, and there is nothing like portraying the small intracacies of human relationships to show the humanity of sex workers and their “pimps”/managers.

All this said, the play itself was amazing but the program notes didn’t show the same depth. In fact, they really bugged me because of their patronizing tone. Exhibit A:

“We have all whored ourselves, our art, our skills to the highest bidder at some point in time. We may even have thought we were at rock-bottom. But that’s still no comparison to the lives of the gas girls.” from Outwards From a Still Centre, Isaac Thomas, a short piece in the program

I am so irked by the assumption in this phrase that whoring is “selling out.” Selling sex isn’t rock-bottom for many sex workers. In fact, often it is an easier and better-paying option than working in toxic factories, or the humiliations in being a clerk or cashier, or back breaking agricultural labour. Of course there are labour risks and health risks in sex work, but the real pain and difficulty comes from the stigma that prevents you from telling your family what you do, or the violence you face because by virtue of being a sex worker you are assumed to have forfeited your right to safety and respect just because of the work you do. The criminalization of sex work is what really messes with our lives, not the “selling out” to capitalism. This “selling out” language is easy shorthand which assumes that sex work is a betrayal and is a last-ditch choice. Guess what? Whoring isn’t the worst thing you can stoop to. For many, it is a choice, sometimes among many bad options (hello capitalism), but it is still a choice about what sex workers choose to do with their bodies. Please take your pity elsewhere.

No, we haven’t all whored ourselves. I don’t think selling our art or skills to the highest bidder is an appropriate metaphor. I don’t think these transactions really compare with the stigma and assumptions that accompany actual whoring. Working for McDonald’s, selling your song to Telus, selling coffee to yuppies, cleaning rooms in a hotel, or picking fruit, etc, etc, are NOT whoring yourself. They are instances of exploited labour, yes. There is a similarity. But all these types of work are easily “heroized” by the left and by worker movements as instances of worker tenacity, worker skills, or at the very least, as opportunities for small resistances against the beast of capitalism. Aren’t sex workers entitled to a place in the pantheon of hard-working labourers? This is sometimes hinted at in that old phrase “the world’s oldest profession.” But it never materializes in honour, respect, and decriminalization of the skills that sex workers have, or in any worker movement taking an interest in the liberation of whores as defined by sex workers. So until you do your homework by listening to actual sex workers, everyone, stop making the “whoring ourselves” metaphor. The similarities don’t exist where and how you think they do.

All my ranting being said, I do think we do have places of comparison with the lives of the gas girls. This is what makes their stories important to us, because we should be able to see and articulate where our liberation and theirs are tied together. This does not mean having them in some untouchable category of pity. The gas girls are struggling to survive and find happiness, and this play shows that they have love for each other, a means of survival however precarious, music, song, and life life life. When we can imagine the gas girls in Zizbabwe, or those ”on Sherbourne, in Vancouver, Chennai or Bratislava” (as the program notes) as our sisters, mothers, friends, and maybe even as ourselves – and find opportunities to hear their stories and support their struggles for justice, we will find our instances of solidarity and common humanity. I just wish that the program notes might have suggested that there were gas girls in the audience of Passe Muraille, too.

Posted: November 17th, 2009 under Reviews.