Carol Leigh, a prostitue, shares that her life is not only filled with literal cockroaches in her motel room, but metaphorically her life is filled with disgusting cockroaches. She describes the metaphor of the cockroaches to be common things that prostitutes experience in their life, like diseases and birth scares. She lives in the motel knowing there are cockroaches yet she doesn't do anything to get rid of them. Just like the cockroaches, she continues to deal with an infestation of obstacles (diseases and birth scares) that can be eliminated but she chooses to live with them and it keeps her in an unhappy situation.
I found this passage interesting because I think it can be compared to the the Unites States government. Metaphorically, I think the cockroaches are laws that keep people from freedom in the United States, and Carol Leigh is the policy maker or major political figures. The U.S has all sorts of laws that exclude people of different sexualities, races, and genders from being treated equal. The laws get in the way of living a fulfilled life. I think political figures have the power to change things around, but they do not. Like Carol Leigh, they are not squashing major issues that could create a better lifestyle.
Frederique Delacoste, Priscilla Alexander, Sex Work (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1987), page 181.
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