BC Cook
GENIE grew up on a small island, population less than 2,500. Her village consisted mainly of 30 family members so her outlook on the world was very small. Although everyone looked like her she knew the world was full of people who looked, spoke, and thought differently. She wanted to take a look around.
The opportunity arose to attend the University of Guam and she jumped at the chance. It was to be her ticket off the island. She could learn more, meet more people and maybe get a job on the mainland U.S.
Partly because she was at the age when her sexual feelings are strongest and partly because she was very attractive, Genie met a lot of guys. It was easy for her, they all wanted to be with her. But she was most attracted to the guy that didn’t seem to want her, or wanted her from a distance and was not confident enough to make his move. Girls are often like that. They want the one they cannot have, the forbidden fruit. Perhaps Genie liked the chase, or maybe she couldn’t stand the thought of a guy not desiring her.
Matt was, in Genie’s word, gorgeous. How could a guy that good looking be so shy? Or did his shyness make him even more attractive? It was nice that he didn’t strut around egotistically like other good looking guys. Genie made moves to get closer to Matt.
He seemed to be everything she was looking for in a relationship. He cared for her but didn’t smother her and he was more experienced than she was in a lot of ways: romantically, academically, even recreationally. While she wanted to taste the world, he seemed to chew on it like a piece of gum. He could be her ticket to the wider world. She could learn so much from him.
Of course, all of this was exactly what Matt wanted her to think. Yes, he was more experienced than she was. Matt was a trafficker. He supplied the sex slavery trade with fresh meat, and a university campus was the perfect place to reel in young, attractive, naïve girls. Middle Eastern harems are full of such girls. African brothels teem with them. Chinese whorehouses are crawling with them.
She never caught on to the way he always agreed with her. She loved Italian food, so did Matt. Her favorite movie was “Fried Green Tomatoes,” so was his. It was “amazing” how much they agreed on things, she told a friend from her home island. If she said he was too good to be true, no one remembers.
One night after a movie, dinner and a little making out in his car (he has his own car!) she felt dizzy. She passed out and woke up in a shipping container. She screamed for help but no one heard. The traffickers carefully insulated the crate to make it soundproof. For five days she ate the rice they left for her, breathed the stale air in the crate, and relieved herself in a five-gallon bucket. She knew other girls shared her container, but they were separated by insulated plywood walls, enough to groan through but not enough to make out words.
She emerged on a dock at night in a country she did not know, surrounded by scary and unfamiliar faces. The language was unfamiliar, the people were dark, yet had some Asian features. Could she be in Singapore? Rangoon? Lahore? It didn’t matter. Genie would now serve as a sex slave to dozens of men in a host of countries until she caught some disease and died or got too old to be sexually desirable. Then she would be killed and her body dumped out at sea.
Her family back in the village thought she graduated from the university and got a job on the mainland. They wondered why she never called anymore.
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for over 30 years. He is a director and historian at Sealark Exploration.
