Living World / Sex & Reproduction

Apostolopoulos teamed up with the Turkish-born Sönmez, whose own doctoral work explored the social psychology of travel. Over the past five years, the two have become intellectual migrants themselves, studying mobile populations on three continents. They’ve looked at how sexual networks of semi-nomadic Ethiopians disseminate HIV in a country where famine and poverty have already weakened people’s immune systems. They’ve examined how sexually transmitted diseases spread among an estimated two million U.S. college students who travel to beach resorts during spring break. They’re now gearing up to study Eastern European women (and some men) who migrate throughout the more affluent European Union, engaging in what Apostolopoulos calls survival sex.

In 2001, while teaching at Arizona State University, Apostolopoulos and Sönmez turned their attentions to the 3.6 million long-haul truckers crisscrossing North America. For their preliminary fieldwork, they zeroed in on two truck stops. One was a hulking complex rising from a barren patch of desert 50 miles south of Phoenix. Across the road, prostitutes came and went from two budget motels with peeling paint and weedy entranceways. The other, smaller and more urban, sat on a forlorn stretch of dust-covered road pocked by squat houses and occasional palm trees on Phoenix’s south side. There, women in short skirts solicited drivers, and homeless men slept in cardboard boxes at the side of a convenience store.

For a while, the researchers and their students observed quietly, eating french fries, conversing casually, and watching the hustle and bustle of the truck stops. “When you spend a lot of time, you kind of blend into the wallpaper,” Sönmez says. Over time, they began to parse out different populations. There were “polishers,” who earn $50 to $100 for shining the chrome on a truck. (Drivers are very proud of their rigs.) And “lumpers,” who load and unload freight. Truck-stop waitresses, who sometimes have sex with drivers. Drug dealers. Prostitutes. Pimps. “Then we began to realize that they’re not existing in a vacuum,” Sönmez says. “Rather, they are constantly interacting among themselves. A sex worker may also run drugs. A polisher may do pimping. A polisher may also provide sexual services in certain circumstances, if his economic situation is desperate enough.”

By the time they finished their initial research, Apostolopoulos and Sönmez had mapped out 20 different populations that interact with truckers. “No one had ever described or even spoken about these networks before,” Apostolopoulos says. What’s more, the truck stops were not closed systems: A driver could carry infection from one way station to another, then home to his family. With only an initial study under their belts, though, the researchers couldn’t even start to quantify the potential consequences.

Apostolopoulos and Sönmez moved to Emory in 2002. By then, they had secured $1.1 million from NIH to expand the study. They chose two truck stops in Atlanta, along with a gritty urban corridor where drivers congregate. All are located in depressed semi-industrial areas where government housing mingles with liquor stores and adult video stores, and where prostitutes loiter near phone booths waiting for customers’ calls. At one site, a windowless gray nightclub—its parking lot perfumed by roasting meat from a nearby barbecue shack—features exotic dancers who sometimes sell sexual services on the side. At another, a patch of tall deciduous trees known as the jungle provides cover for covert sexual coupling.

Since September 2002, the Emory team has conducted extensive interviews—not just with truckers but with the entire network—to make sense of the social and sexual landscape. They have also tested drivers, prostitutes, and other truck-stop denizens for HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia to see if the risky behavior in these sexual networks actually spreads disease.

So far, what they’ve uncovered is a syndemic that includes not only sexually transmitted infection but also drug abuse, violence, psychological distress, and depression. Some of the factors are relatively obvious: When truckers are away from home for 26 days a month, they get lonely and anxious and seek out sexual companionship. Other factors are buried more deeply in the social fabric. As the drivers came to trust the Emory researchers, some confessed that their dispatchers provide them with amphetamines to help them stick to their superhuman delivery deadlines. Amphetamines increase sexual arousal and lower inhibitions, so users were more willing to have unprotected sex. Truck-stop prostitutes, desperate for cash, often permitted the behavior. “What do you do when someone refuses to use a condom?” one researcher asked a sex worker. “Well, I make sure I use baby wipes,” she replied.

THE TRUCK STOPS HERE

Over the course of a day, a truck driver can interact with others in many ways, from conversations over the CB radio to face-to-face encounters in the X-rated video store. Some of these exchanges help spread disease along the nation’s highway system.

REST AREAS

Wooded areas and bathrooms provide cover for furtive encounters between drivers and male “truck chasers.”

TRUCK PLAZAS

Some drivers just use the showers and gas pumps. Others seek prostitutes

and drug dealers.

TRUCKING COMPANIES

Some dispatchers provide amphetamines to their drivers, lowering inhibitions against risky activity.

BARS, STRIP CLUBS, BROTHELS, AND ADULT BOOK STORES

An informal “500-mile rule” gives truckers license to seek anonymous gratification when far from home.

CB RADIOS

Prostitutes use them to line up dates with drivers. “Tour guides” use them to advertise cross-border visits to Mexican brothels.

HOME SETTINGS

Wives and girlfriends don’t always know of the truckers’ mobile adventures, making them vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases.