It rained on the 6. It rained on the fourteen media crews that watched her carry the bags up the steps, hair plastered to her face. All Hamilton knew was that womenβsex workersβwere disappearing and nothing was being done. If missing women are silenced women, Hamilton has made it her mission to be fully present and accounted for. Her face is hearty and galvanized with energy, the strength of her shoulders set off against plunging necklines.
When Mayor Philip Owen emerged, she picked up a red sequined stiletto to present to him, thinking she could ask for a meeting in front of rolling cameras. Owen bolted. Following this initial embarrassment, she pitched a tent on the lawn of City Hall and slept there until, a few days later, it went missing. City Hall gave her back the tent. But still no meeting. Her final stand was soon afterward, on February 3, when she walked into a council meeting having neglected to proceed through the required channels and demanded an audience.
The room emptied. But she stood at the mike for hours, anyway, waiting for a response. His mother was called in. Fifteen minutes later, when the boy poked his head around the door again, he found her in tears. It could have been worse. William Maurice in a room next to a daycare for psychiatric patients. Jimmy became the first boy in Canada to be medically sanctioned with a female identityβnot that it made any difference at school.
There, he met five co-conspirators, all about fifteen years old. One of his new friends told him about turning tricks beneath the stately Birks clock at Granville and Georgia. When Jimmy hit the hot spot, a pleasant man in his fifties rolled up and offered to pay for a blow job. They did the deed in the nearby Drake Steam Baths. He started hustling regularly: he could score forty bucks for oral or a hand job dressed as a boy, and double that if he was dressed as a girl.
Because transexual sex workers are rare, they become a coveted, precious commodity. They become, often for the first time in their lives, beloved for who they are. The manager of the White Lunch, Molly, was not such an admirer. They retreated to the Palms to plot their revenge.
