Me and a guitarist are going to do a cover of this very soon! But I watched the video and it totally reminded me of ME and my addicition to retail sales, valet, restaurant, bar, bellhop guys. not to mention Bic Runga is one of the only decent Asian pop music artists with true musical talent…
When I was a kid growing up with 2 older sisters, I wasn’t allowed to sing along to the radio songs that we listened to commuting home with our parents from San Francisco. “Jeff-”was my nickname,”DON’T SING.” or “Jeff, No singing.” and it was a deep supression for me as I found solitude in singing from an early age. I remember wanting to be a singer from perhaps age 8, trying to lip synch with popular songs, watching Solid Gold and Soul Train. But for some reason, my sisters hated my singing. I have never been allowed to sing more than a chorus around them, less I ruin the song so I’ve had to just sneak a few well tuned verses which satisfy the exhale of a held breath around a ridiculous sibling rivalry that still exists. In my adult years, I’ve “made” my sisters come watch me sing, so they have been aware for sometime now that it’s a serious part of my art. When I was 12 my dad bought me a karaoke machine. That was the best gift ever. Growing up in a town full of Filipinos I was raised informally by a group of karaoke gorillas who always had show and talent shows with their newest Multi sound tracks of the latest pop songs on minus one casette with the horribly translated English lyrics. Somehow, I managed to sing throughout my child years. I started performing at talent shows at age 12, and did perhaps 2 or 3 more solos in high school. I took classes and audtioned here and there but never really focused entirely on it until after undergrad. My first job as a topless dancer was meant to be prep for my future career on stage. I started taking voice and music lessons and performing with band workshops at Blue Bear in SF. While I was a little Brit pop mod girl I always wanted to sing for ethereal pop bands and would write some emo lyrics but it never went anywhere..I didn’t even perform or want to perform very much at that time of my life, but I was still singing with people and their guitars in dormroom parties.
Everytime I feel like someone is reluctant to let me on their stage, someone makes a face because i have raised my hand enthusiastic to fill an open mic slot, every time someone makes a questionable gesture of approval or disrespect and Listen, I’m just trying to tell you something: YOU SUCK- vibe it reminds me of my sisters and how my singing has not been entirely validated.
I can honestly say presently that I am PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE. I am trying to sing at least twice a week on stage in LA with a live band. I have achieved that much this week. I have to just keep up my live improvisational skills and my musianship will come around! I haven’t had the ability to practice with a piano player because they charge $40/hr, so these days I am just going up with a chart that I’ve not recently rehearsed with any musicians or heard and usually it is the first time I am performing it, and it is in a venue filled with at least 20-50 people. It is NERVE WRACKING for me. There are some great singers at all of the open mic places I’ve been going to. But I may have exhausted my little map of them all because, remember I tried to dine and ditch at one of them, so I think I’m not too welcome there anymore and last night…..
I was so crushed out on this Jazz Club manager. mexican alt boy with tatoos and a nice stocky body. A motorcyle rider perhaps. I don’t know. Someone who visibily looked like they exercise is such a plus after being bound to somone who doesn’t. He never conversed with me or gave me a chance, but he DID give me his phone number and he DID talk to me briefly once. he then decided, I guess that he wasn’t interested.
His touch and flirtations were completely intoxicating. I was so enjoying feeling that way about someone again. It would have been nice if I could fulfilled at least SOME of my fantasy. I had made it SUCH a big deal all over Facebook and another website made it a Q&A on the blog for this film called The Line! Should I wait for a while if I really really like someone and not FUCK them right away? was the question. I swore up and down that me and this manager guy would be dating soon or at least go on A DATE. but it never happened.
the night I asked him for his number, he was touching my shoulder and my back everytime he interacted with me as my server. Calling me honey and sweetie. my favorite endearments. He was extremely sexy to me. A new Mexican to replace my old one, except one with a cool job…My God, I craved it. Everytime he touched me I wanted to just devour him right there in the restaurant. Which is why when he gave me his number I thought for sure we’d be fucking in only a matter of days. But nothing like that happened. He gave me his number on accident I suppose. I used to do that. I would give someone my number and then give them the run around rejection instead of rejecting them right off. I don’t think I ever did that after high school tho! I guess sometimes, perhaps you aren’t sure. Or one slight thing can ruin a first impression and you turn around the other way RUNNING. I’ve done that once. I idealized this guy to the point where when I met him finally he was reality was sooo disapointing I was embarassed I even pursued it. I couldn’t explain it to him. It was strange.
His name was Angel and I was indeed hoping he would be that, but he like the other Mexican guy from Radio Shack that I bought my phone from were both unattainable for some reason. Radioshack said he had a girlfriend. I saw him today. He is still so cute. The problem with pouncing on all these local retail boys is that if you live in town, you still have to run across them again after they reject you. I didn’t feel so rejected by him though. He’s nice to me. All you can do is hit on someone and see if they hit back. And if not, then no harm usually. I did really really like Angel though. I was so into the heat of the way he touched my back and kind of whispered in my ear…”Do you have another card? this one’s been rejected, honey.” LOL>>>
I said,”Are you in a relationship? Can I get your number?” NO ambiguity there, right? I’m not trying to promote myself as an artist, since he was the booking person at the Jazz Club I was singing at…I dreamed of marrying him and owning a club with him. Hilarious.
I sang and he barely paid attention. I talked to him on the phone and he really seemed not as interested as he was when he was talking to me the night I asked for his number. That was only a week ago. Just the excitement of that pursuit kept me going high on just that: a touch of my back and a kiss on my cheek. Talks of going out on Sunday..I CAN’T WAIT TO FUCK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU. I drooled.
I’m not sure what happened.
I decided I would go back to the Jazz Club and practice another jazz standard with D’s band. I’m not sure if she resented me because I was not finnancially able to tip her band that I used to sing with or what. She, like so many other smiling church goin Black women I meet in LA smiled and pretended to like me, but inside her thoughts were different. She was in charge of the open mic list, the upcoming showcases which featured a singer who sang 6 songs with the band and some publicity. The key would be for each singer to bring at least 10 people. This was the name of the game in LA. You MUST have a following of at least 10. I am still working on 3. I am friendly and meeting lots of people going out alone to these places. This is how I felt brave enough to ask Angel for his phone number. When I see someone I like, I usually go after them and just ask them out. It’s straight forward and cut to the chase. Male or female. I’m in your face and seeing if there is ANY chance…usually.
I guess she never liked my voice or me or something. I had asked her for a showcase slot and she smiled and said,”We can talk about that.” I’d seen her offer a January showcase to another male singer who I’d befriended last week. he was decent but nothing spectacular. He was supportive and was one of the many people that I’ve met just waiting for a chance on stage with others doing the same thing as me. it’s been pretty neat to have this comraderie, but sometimes it’s hard to see what is real and what is fake. people in LA will say to your face one thing but really think another constantly. Everyone in the room got a chance to sing 2 songs that night, including the seemingly homeless guy with an on pitch but not too pleasant voice. There were 2 of those singers. perfect knowlege of musicality and tone but no style and not an intersting voice.
Me, I am PASSION. i am tipsy from my glass of wine and the marijuana cookie half I’ve just digested. i feel rejected from the club owner as he makes it very clear to me that he is not interested in me. But he does his job, and serves me a meal. And again this week, as he serves me, he is flirtatious and touchy and I am lustful all over again. Does he touch all his customers like that? Is he just an amazing flirt? Am I just lonely, horny and frustrated by a service employee USING his flirtation to hustle me? It’s my turn to sing. “I Got you under my skin…I got you deep in the heart of me..” so true. All these songs were so romantic and I was soo romanticizing an affair and beyond with this man. “I said to myself this affair never should go so well. But why should I try to resist when darling I know so well, cuz i got you, under my skin…”
It wasn’t perfect. But it wasn’t horrible. People were encouraging as they usually are at these things. He didn’t pay much attention. Too bad. I love serenading my lovers. i think it is the most romantic thing. In my previous art life I was an asianprincess karaoke cowgirl on a rockng horse and I would serenade people to Patsy Cline tunes and croon them to love me while they sat on my horse Dakota. Although I have busted the cowgirl routine in 2009 at Whoreapalooza and other events, it’s not the main thing I’ve been working on perfecting. Jazz and soul singer performing has been much of my focus. Trying to work with musicians and sing without rehearsal and memorize all lyrics and chord changes. It’s been so so hard to have the guts to do it. But i’ve done it. I’ve forced myself to be brave. Sometimes, it’s taken some Henessey, but most of the times I am ready to be in front of the crowd of people confident as if I’ve sung it a thousand times.
After I do it, I feel great. I’m buzzed and I walk down the street singing and make it to my car slowly so the Hennessey can settle into a workable sobriety.. A cop rolls by me as I am singing Tyrone into the deserted 1am Santa Monica Boulevard. I look like a bordello girl with my corset and 7″ Rick James boots. I see him do a U turn and he rolls by me slowly. “I’m a singer.” I say, sort of proud that I could even volunteer that type of story and that it wasn’t a story.”Just came from singing at this club down there..” I said before he asked anything. Friendly. I’m going to go with friendly.
“I had to come back around and check out your shoes,” the cop said. He was kind of handsome. I was kind of drunk.
“yes, do you like them?” I said smiling trying to avoid any further questioning or anything unfriendly. How funny. Do I look like a streetwalker, officer Trick?
Singing to me is a deep breath exercise, a deep release and healing movement that connects my heart and my soul. At it’s best it hits 5 out of 7 of your chakras and can take you to a place as high and intense as an orgasm. At it’s minimum for me, it’s a pleasant way to distract myself while dealing with all the complexities of life. It’s a form of self pleasure. Musical masturbation. It connects my brain through my writings and helps me meditate into a state of introspection, bliss, happiness and other emotion. It has been my therapy and healing tool through trauma and my best friend’s death. It’s why Tori Amos and Sarah McLaughlan’s music and I have such a deep relationship… Hearing a singer hit a sweet run or sweet note is the best thing for those studying their instruments by watching live music. I’ve been trying to just up the anty and throw myself out there full time in this. I am not making as much money as I was in the past so it’s been very very difficult. 2 drink minimums can be challenging. Having the prestage first time song performance jitters and needed a $10 drink is sometimes a challenge as well. TWICE I’ve missed my chance on stage because I was in the car or the bathroom practicing my songs. you don’t even get a chance to really practice before you go on. you have to stay on deck, and in the restaurant or bar waiting for the moment when the MC gives you the mic and the band and you better rock out. Last Tuesday i sang Erykah Badu’s Tyrone for the first time ever with a band. I’m not sure if the guy who runs it likes me or not. He alwasy greets me and then runs away. I have to chase after him to confirm my time on stage. He is flirtatious with all the singers who go on his stage. But even though I know that you aren’t supposed to fuck with the musicians, because they are always trouble, singers ALWAYS do and it gets them into trouble. But I guess all you can do is live it, try it, fuck it. and then recover and keep singing your songs..
the closing song was supposed to be me. There had already been a host of amazing jazz musicians that had come and gone. Some of the singers were great and others were so so. One great Asian man Marvin Gaye who was sooo soulful and jazzy scattastic. I was truly impressed with how Gaye he was!
I sang “My Funny Valentine”. I sang it out because I had so much anxiety and emotion over the little lust infatuation affair of my Angel that I belted it out. After I was done, D the organizer sang it right after me in the same key as if to show me, THIS is how you sing that song. She never gave me a showcase slot. I talked to the really good jazz pianist who was friends with the Asian Marvin Gaye. All of them said to me, keep practicing. Listen to more Ella Fitzgerald. I guess it must have been horrible. But not that bad. Surely better than the acoustic guitar bad Blue brothers duo or the homeless guy?
I have been practicing acoustic songs with a Turkish guitarist. He is always reminding me of my tone and pitch problems. This is why consistent rehearsal with musicians is so essential. Musicians don’t want to work with you unless you are good and have your shit together. I have auditioned for a few pro cover bands and they have so far not been impressed with me. Some of the singers who have come before me though have been super duper American Idol impressive so it is a bit discouraging for me to even think I have a chance for the same role..
My stint at that Jazz club is over for now, I think. Perhaps I will go back there in 6 months when I have 10 friends who come to shows and I can sing the jazz standard the way it is supposed to be sung. maybe then my Angel will grace me with his Halo juice and not get on his cell phone in front of me and show that he is making plans so don’t try to stalk him by staying late after the club closes. but in thinking about her and his unspoken messages, and that they worked together; I felt it best to not return for a while, if not again.
I AM A SOUL SINGER. I sing from my soul. The words that come out are the way that I can process some of my experience, my pain, my love and loss. I NEED to sing, like I NEED to dance and write. It is an essential element of my art that I’ve been seriously studying between running non profits and getting Masters Degrees for the last 10 years. But the latter said, I’ve ALWAYS put other things BEFORE it. And I’ve always pushed to have the spare time and MONEY required to pay rehearsal musicians or to buy software to make a band in a box or to pay vocal coaches to teach you new things. I think I am starting to experience the tip of the grind in LA and I am trying to stay motivated and not be too discouraged by all of their fake bullshit or snubbing me out. What if people DON’T like you at all? What is you are horribly off key and people flinch when you sing? What if you forget the words? It’s all part of the club. I sang the back up vocals for Single Ladies with the band and an amazing lead vocalist last Tuesday. That was so much fun. I hope I did it justice. I jumped up to the guitarist microphone and took it from him. He obviously wasn’t going to sing the background vocals to Single Ladies being a dude and all. After the Funny Valentine fiasco (which was at a different club), I wondered whether this singer thought I was out of line, or I was ruining this amazing singer’s song. I tried to grab the mic and do it again on a different song, but the organizer of that night grabbed it back from me. AFter the Funny Valentine fiasco, I remember him grabbing the mic from me more clearly. Was he trying to tell me I suck? Don’t sing? I did have a lot of fun both nights. I LOVE to sing. But you have to do better than that if you are going to make it as a singer in LA. Having fun is for karaoke bars. This is about skilled music making.
Singing has always been therapeutic. It’s been my way to survive pain. It comes naturally to me to sing the blues of old country western crooners or the neo soul licks of Erykah, Ledisi, Aretha. to sing it out. how else to ignore someone that you have a crush on in a crowded bar that he manages? I saw it ending before it began, but I hoped at least I would get some good sex out of it first!
Like a Hollywood movie, this episode seems to have a sequel which takes place the very next day!
I went through my now sold iphone’s phonebook to look for names of old regulars that I could do a desperate begging to and see if that would work to get more business, even though that has never worked in the past. Although, it does work with the one regular law firm benefactor that is keeping me afloat barely but regularly..we’ve become good friends and I am completely honest about everything except the sex! He’s easy. He is not a vulture, he is like a savior for me right now. But, his 2 appointments are not enough to pay for too much in the month so the trolling through the old phonebook still has to happen. There was one old regular drug user fuckhead that I dropped because he was becoming more trouble than he was worth. He would always text me incessantly while he was coked out about 100 stupid questions that I would try to answer because putting up with him was a good injection of cash, and he was always so high he was impotent so we would explore different ways to sexually please him. Mostly by sticking most of my gloved hand into his ass which because he was high as a kite most of the time was like 102 degrees in there! This is something I never hear people who fist people talk about..it’s like a frigging oven inside the human body, it becomes too hot for the hand and you actually need to pull out so that you can cool it. Or at least I do. But I had fun. I like anal domination.
As a favor to him, I decided to screw his friend for a mere $150. A fraction of what I would get from my regular Ass Slave, Kenny. Big mistake. His friend was immediately too buck wild for me to control and it just became too much of an ordeal as soon as it started. he was the one who tried to stick in my ass instead of my pussy, on accident, like 3 times. I get the feeling most escorts like their sex easy. It’s the porn stars today that need to be super fuck machines. Escorting is barely about being a fuck machine. Sex is like 35% of it actually. I like my escort sex as a receiver to be EASY and QUICK. (when you see a lot of people it’s usually about preserving your body. A wear and tear issue). Unless I like the guy and am having lots of fun. Or there’s a girl involved, then there’s no clock! Mostly, I am a big fan of the 35 minute hour. I know I am not in this work because I like sex. I am in this work because I am regaining power from times I was assaulted, one night standed, sexually harassed or otherwise disempowered. And I believe all sex workers have this in them too, because 1 out 3 of us have been sexually assaulted by 21 but most of us more. I am here because I like to be in control sexually, and to experiment while the ball is in my court, when my experimental time is compensated. I LIKE TO LIVE, IF ONLY TEMPORARILY IN A WORLD WHERE FEMALE SEXUAL POWER IS NOT ONLY POSSIBLE, BUT COMPENSATED. WHERE WOMEN FUCK LIKE [MEN]..out the door without a second thought of the name of the person.. I am also here because I like making money off this work (even if I’m not lately..). Because I want to feel the power I knew that I had and make him pay for it. I like to fuck but only when I like you or when I am sexually deprived (like now!), but I wasn’t really having very real sex with clients during the 2 years that I was the busiest AND had a live in boyfriend. Client sex was always quick and easy. Boom. Shower. thank you. Door. Personal sex is totally different. I’m actually submissive and more passive. I’m tired of working. I like to lay back. I like to GET fucked. And if you can’t FUCK THE SHIT OUT OF ME when I need you to, then I am totally and completely bored with you, because I’ve no patience for another pathetic penis in my week. (I sleep with more men than women, not by choice but we’ll use that organ..)
Lately, however, since being single and getting kicked off of internet dating sites that I was getting laid on for selling webcam services to ugly dudes I’ve had to make my client sex my sex life. I make them work me and they are the luckiest clients I’ve ever had because i am really insatiable for once because….It’s all I get for days.
But this fool was a girls worst nightmare. Coked out AND potent! Oh no! They have a saying that the less money you get, the harder you have to get fucked, and often it is true. After borderline violating me he would call my phone offering money and trying to see me again, but I never wanted to see him after that for any money. I jumped out of bed when I could make a good exit, locked the door and jumped into the shower. I could hear him grumbling and complaning. Drug users are either unable to ever cum or unable to get erect. Of COURSE you prefer the latter, because for some reason they pay better and are easier. All you have to do is digest their mindless questions and repetetive chatter. This vulture accepted that I was leaving and it wasn’t uncomfortable or dangerous which is why he was confused. He was talking about “If you got a boyfriend or if you’re under 18..hey I ain’t mad at you.” That was another line that this vulture just drew. This guy was over 30 fucking 17 year olds. I have ALWAYS detested that. When I was 15 my 25 year old boss tried to sleep with me and date me when I was just trying to be his friendly co-worker, I thought. He didn’t get me, but he tried really hard to court me at 15 like I was such a hot item.
The vulture would call and try to dangle promises of money for me, i would still not give in. Because my caller ID had been cancelled, screening calls was harder. Every time I would be confronted with him, circling over my head, the offer, the juggling of power..I imagined how he would prey on those underage girls who may have run away for the night because they get into a fight with their parents and he swoops down gives them drugs and alcohol and fucks the shit out of them. Roman Polanski in a Latino tweaker.
My finnancial desperation makes me vulnerable to all kinds of pimps and vultures…Good thing I still know how to defend myself even when I am at rock bottom. I would rather be flat broke and home alone on a Saturday night than in a fucked up situation. And pimps hate me when I am unhappy with them and the work. I am not profitable, so they fire me. I got kicked out of Bella’s brothel after one week. I get fired from office jobs for not engaging in Starbucks banter AND I get fired from massage parlors and stripclubs. I am not a conformist, even as a sex worker. I am certainly not a harem pony gawking over one guy with three others. This has hurt my money I’m sure, but the ONLY way I have profted is when I was totally in control, if not disproportianately so, with their consent of course. And years of this has healed me. I walk down the streets of LA without a bra (cuz I hate them and my boobs are small) and without fear of men. If they look at me, I look at them back and then they usually look away or say hi. I might wear a look that says ” Yes, you know what I’m about..I know you have a dick and to me it doesn’t mean shit,so, what?” even in glasses and sweatpants. Working girls make eye contact back usually. Matching the gaze. “Go Ahead. Ask me what my name is.” The superwhore eye contact is an amazing language. Try it when you drive by the boulevard at night. If you were wondering if she is a working girl, you will be able to tell if she makes eye contact with you as you drive by. Works everywhere you go. It fascinates the shit out of me…
So I call Analboy kenny and he pretends he doesn’t know me. “Wrong number,”he says when I call. Later that night I’m getting a series of crank calls, but I don’t answer my landline anymore because that is the main number that most of the creditors call on.
My tutoring client is a Korean graduate student ane she cancelled on me, so once again I had no money coming in, gas light still on. A weed client calls! (I’m not a big pot dealer (so don’t come after me!), someone fronted me some of his stuff and it kind of acts like my social security check..It is not even the type of marijuana that medicates me (need indicas only), so I just sell it off. This weed client is a tweaker. He thinks that I don’t know but I have been around 3 years of drug users and late nite escorting so I am well versed in the signs and behaviors. He is a nice tweaker, if there is such a thing, a student. He buys my mediocre weed and it helps me have that $20 in my pocket every week but I usually try to hang out for the obligatory 20 minutes talking politics, philosophy, whatever. He’s too broke to buy sex so this will have to do for him. and me.
kenny calls back and pretends to be friendly. He says that he’s moved 40 minutes north of LA and that he had a bunch of coke and his friend was there..He is talking the way a DUDE talks when he is in front of his BUDDIES. “I’ll just give you a buck fifty to hang out with my friend.” he says,”You did it before right?” he laughs. “You don’t have to do much, just hang out and party..”he says. This is usually what we would do anyway. kenny was easy, but Vulture was not. You would think, as an escort that I have to put up with this kind of crap all the time, but really the specific type of banter that goes on before men date or gang rape or the language that is common in rape culture scenarios is NOT something that I call normal or really tolerate for long in my sex work. Many many of the men and groups of men that I fucked with were reasonable, humble and not vultures, even in groups. There was a lot of crap to put up with, no doubt but fear and anxiety were not common or normal. This is why I did it for so long. To find this out. To dance with rape culture, unconscious exposure therapy to try to make sense of the world that I feel was given to me.
All of what the guys that talk like this is just a FANTASY to them as well. I once tried to have sex with 2 guys at once, the way they do in the porn movies because after seeing a double penetration so many times, you are actually conditioned to think that you want to try it! And while I say i’m not in this work for the sex, the benefits of being a sex worker who is enticed with way more than usual combinations of sexual situations than the average suburban bachelorette party girl has its advantages. So I did a DP for about 2 minutes before guy#2 gets flaccid and taps out. “Uh, you guys go ahead, I’m gonna go chill in the other room..” he says and since my ULTIMATE goal is to make money over pleasure or experimentation I let him go. There goes my porno gang bang fantasy.
The reality for MOST MEN is that they cannot do what porn stars do. This is the reality for many women too. I will be the first to admit to you, unless you are an escort client that I cannot legally talk explicit details of sex with, that I do not give PORN STAR EXPERIENCES (listed as PSE on review boards, even nastier than GFE). I don’t go ass to mouth, I don’t do anal for dayz, I don’t do uprotected, I won’t eat your ass without a dental dam and I don’t like to blow bubbles with your semen..Sorry. After watching all the porn that I do, I don’t really have a desire to be a porn star. It seems more demanding than I am willing to be. But for them it seems so easy and natural, so that’s why they do it and I don’t! when I wanted to go into porn, when I was 23, in Jenna Jameson’s day, it was easier physically, glamorous even.
Being a superwhore is more a state of mind versus how freaky the sex you are having or how much money you are making…but don’t get me wrong, the MONEY IS ESSENTIAL. This is why I am having so many problems with vultures and pimps. If I was already making money they would have no power. Annie Pannie was a sex worker I also recently mentored, 62 years young, powered by crystal meth and a superwhore always, even though she only made $10-20 per date. She was insane but a true inspiration in small doses.
A 50 year old rocker woman just TRIED to pimp or madam me. She showed me the garage to the apartment complex. “You can park in the maintanence spots, they’re always empty.” she said. “There’s my red corvette.” she said pointing out a 2005 or later model red corvette. “It’s like my 5th one..” I was viewing her 2 bedroom incall. It was dirty like the last space I shared with the borderline disorder masseuse that I hated. I am not the cleanest person at all but these bitches are always filthier than me. Dirty toilet. Never dusted. One cheap unfluffy towel. “I make sooo much money on Fridays. I love it. If my friends want me to go out, I tell them, ‘it better be worth $2000!’ and I listen to her tell me how her main advertising sources are Craigslist and Cityvibe. I have worked Craigslist through an agnecy for almost 3 years and I know what people are paying and the type of clientele that she sees. You cannot make $2000 being straight up and not doing the hustle that we were doing. Collectively, my old agency was everywhere at once. We were doing incall and outcall in every suburb of LA county with drivers to drive us. That’s the only way you COULD do it and never with just one body in one place. No one person makes that much, just being incall for $200 a pop without tipping. That’s 10 guys in 12 hours! Not even brothels try to promise that, although they would wish it upon you. You could make half that at best running around all night, and in this economy it’s even doubtful they’re making 1/3. No one is making $2000 on one Friday nite off of Craigslist and Cityvibe. but I let her talk her talk. I would have to see it to believe it and she was the one asking me to work for her, so if she had the clientele she said she did I would give it a try. The next day we were supposed to meet at around 5 pm turned to 7:30 turned to 10pm. When she finally picks up the phone she says,”Oh hey sweetie..Do you have a credit card with $5 on it so we can place an ad?” WTF?? “No.” I said,”Sorry.” I hear a voice in the background like a woman is at her place, probably another prospect. “Well, do you have a friend who does?”she says,”It’s only $5.” I am so glad I am home cooking a meal instead of over there at that ratbag’s apartment. “I’ll call you back.” I say hanging up Ms.Red Corvette that probably wasn’t even hers. Jesus. If you are trying to pimp me, you have to have MORE than me, not LESS. Why would I give someone a part of my income if they didn’t have their shit together TIGHT. My old agency had the pimp game tight with CUNT BOOKER BITCHES who would even make money being the voice of “me” demanding $100 cancellation fees from dudes that called a different picture off of Craigslist. And sometimes these guys would hand me $100! (Of which cunt booker would take half) and that was the kind of typical agency hustle that would happen. If it weren’t her, then you would have some goon driver to back you up. I never did it that way, I preferred to endure all the verbal and possible physical confrontations myself. Exposure therapy. or something else I haven’t processed yet.
I tell Kenny I am going to deliver something first and I’ll call back to get the address. It took about 30 minutes for the anxiety attack to come on…I imagined attempting to have to tell Vulture no and how irritating and potentially dangerous that could be. I imagined just getting fucked up and putting myself in a risky sexual situation because my life was so depressing and perhaps I might go home with some money…Drugs would be nice..Money would be nice.. but vulture, he would never be nice. And vulture + kenny would not be nice. They would be irritating and annoying, and I would be high on drugs, far away from my house.
I facebooked my process. Insatiable pull to do something risky. self destructive. I wanted to go there and make money and come out ahead. I did not want to let those fools get to me. But I was having a PTSD attack and starting to feel sick to my stomach. I was smoking bong hits to calm my nerves. I finally got the nerve to get up and get to my delivery. I resolved that I was not going to see kenny and vulture. While almost to my delivery spot, a car came out of nowhere and I almost hit it 10 minutes away from my destination. This is how I know it is what I call a PTSD attack..it becomes unsafe for me to drive because I start to dissassociate, to leave my body. I usually come back pretty quick, but its better if I’m not driving. It’s scary. Your body is trying to protect itself but it doesn’t do a good job of it when it’s in this mode.
I get to tweakerkids house..”Hey,” he says and I’m glad to see him.
He hops in my car and he pays me.
“You got any other drugs?” I ask.
“Yeah, [thought you'd never ask] You wanna come in?” he says.
He’s chillin with a Latino 20 something, smokin a little meth and watching music videos, nothing too crazy…
I need to decompress my thoughts with someone, anyone. Facebook helped a bit but I could tell I needed more…The idea of the proposition of going to see Vulture and kenny actually sent me into a post traumatic anxiety attack and I didn’t even go over there! It was the prospect of having to face someone that had violated you again. I’ve done it before and i don’t like it, although in my case it was at a funeral and it worked out well but still clearly my body did not like it judging from how much I was freaking out.
I wanted to do drugs to escape these feelings. I knew that he would have something. Not my drug of choice but something. I was seeking safety. this concept is straight out of a clinical book I am reading to heal myself. We call it “medicating” even though it is drinking, smoking weed or something else because it is how we have coped.
I hit the glass pipe and watched the white meth smoke make a long cloud…bigger than the exhale of marijuana smoke. I did that about 7 or 8 times and told them about my definition of anal violation and why I was even tripping. 2 other guys listening to my story and not hurting me. My weed client and I were used to having intellectual conversations about various things and that’s why he liked me but I’m sure his best friend was shocked by me. “I’m an escort, right,”I say,”and I’m having this dilemma…” i know it’s not a normal intro to someone but I’m far from normal most of the time. I stayed for another hour, the drugs were weak. I wasn’t getting that high. I suppose I was supposed to stay all nite and all morning. “We can go out and get some more.” he said but i didn’t want to. “I didn’t know you do this..”he said smiling..
“I don’t.” I said. “Tonight is just crazy. I need something, that’s all.”
I drove away from there, straight to the gas station to make my needle go from E to F with glee, and realized I wasn’t tweaked at all. In hour later I was in bed. I thought I set my cell phone alarm but apparently I didn’t press the DONE button. I woke up late and with an $80 ticket on my car. the 2nd one in a week. My therapist tried to blame it on me smoking meth, but smoking meth with them was my harm reduction. It was the best thing I did for myself in comparison to going to try to fuck with the original proposition of seeing if indeed they wanted me to come over there to just “hang out.” I texted him before I went to bed “I CAN’T FUCK WITH YOUR FRIEND.” I didn’t even know if it was a real proposition either, because Kenny didn’t even call again after I went to sleep. and usually he would call back a million times but he didn’t. It made me think in the morning that it was all a hoax. They were going to lead me 40 minutes into a fake address for nothing.
Everyone is so freaked out by crystal meth. Having hung out with queen of long term use, Candy, the one I was an unofficial social worker for, I should be freaked out by it too. Having overdosed in the desert and landed in the emergency tent with a rehydration needle in my neck, you would think I’d be freaked out by it too.. But it doesn’t call me to do it. I do it so very rarely just to triumph over that time I did it in the desert ten years ago. In total I’ve done it less times than you are probably thinking right now. The side effects are so major and long term compared to the high though. For the next two days my throat was soo insatiably dry. But I didn’t even get high, which what was annoying. I went to sleep! My anxiety was gone, and perhaps that was the high. Like Ridlin for the ADHD kid. I talked and these boys listened and maybe that was the high I needed. I had no fear and no regret and that was the best thing that I could have done with the way I was feeling. In some people’ (like my exboyfriend)’s minds I hit the evil crystal pipe and I was on my way to hell. To me, I sought safety in it and in these other strange dudes who I was more sure were not trying to hurt me. And I sat there smoking and educating them for a minute and then I went home calm. I sit here blogging it trying to explain, but hopefully someone out there reads this and has been through something similar. It’s called Seeking Safety. It’s a book I’m reading about PTSD and drug use, but I’m adapting it to marijuana use which I don’t actually see as drug use… I smoke weed everyday and I don’t see it as a drug. Other drugs I might sell or do with clients when they come around, but I don’t usually seek them. They fall in my lap. This particular night, however, I sought them to block my path to self destruction. It was a substitution reckless for another reckless act, but since i didn’t really get high, it was not that destructive. I fantasize about being on the border of creating a new sickness, an addiction which countless drug addicts have done to make sense of all in life that is so troubling and so traumatic but not physically visible. So they create diseases and absesses so the world can see them suffering, or at least if not the world, they themselves can see it. I am not there. or even close. yet.
i may likely indulge in recreational/casual and impulsive drug use (like this) well into my late 50s or beyond as long as it is around me. Meth is just another drug, not more powerful than the others but one I stay away from because of the harsh side effects to my singing muscle (so drastically even after one use) and my real dreams. i remember Candy used to call me and he voice wasn’t understandable, the meth smoke had mangled her vocal chords for the week and maybe longer, the words fading in and out with so much strain. Listening to Whitney Houston’s voice after cocaine is such a shocker. She was the greatest love of all! A gold medal Olympic level vocal athlete..and on this tune “i didn’t know my strenghth” she sounds like older Patti LaBelle. or Taylor Dayne. Worse.
Sex work does not always have to be risky, deceptful or include drugs. But for me to usually profit, it had to include one, the other or both. Right now, I am not advertising, work is slow so risks are cut down, I’m not on Craigslist cuz they blocked me, I’m not on the corner… or crusing bars in downtown hotels even. I cut out bad regulars like Kenny (again) but mostly I quit my traumatic and risky agency job. Independent escorting doesn’t pay the bills for me, unfortunately I only really made most of my money being the “bait and switch” closer who stayed up and drove 3 nights a week til 6am.
I should be rewarded for reducing risk, but instead I am paying the price of retiring from a lifestyle that I struggled to hold on to as long as I could..making money was constantly traumatic like this…that’s why I quit. this is why I am broke. If I could work for a real madam or pimp who booked Elliot Spitzer types of clients then I’d be happier. But there are also risks there. now you’re in Federal outlaw territory where speaking out will land you tied to a roof with a noose around your neck and suicide note in your handwriting that you didn’t write. (DC Madam, Brandy Britton) But I like pure risk free non dangerous clients that compensate well too. And I feel like I deserve them but don’t know how to get them. And of course everyone knows what I am doing wrong but me and how I could or should be making more money like them. Instead I’ve been a hustler on the agency circuit, craigslist hustler, internet whore…Any big money I ever made always included one of us fucked up on drugs or alcohol. And it usually wasn’t me. And I don’t feel bad for it at all because if it wasn’t me collecting their money during their blackouts, it would some other bitch.
#2 HOE COMMANDMENT
If you are in it to win it, you MUST remain MORE sober than them. If you stay slightly in more control than them, you will usually profit triple. Do drugs to socialize and gain trust but not to get fucked up. If you sell it, don’t carry it on you, cut it down and tax it triple. (Buying from me is like buying a beer at a football game. You willingly and repeatedly consent to any inflation.)
Everyone has PTSD. The world is so traumatic. We seek to replay these traumatic sequences and do something about them, to regain control. And I like a superwhore trying to save myself and the world, could have it no other way which is why I never felt like sex work is always a choice. I was like one of the superheroes who found out about their super power when animal hairs started growing on their back..and my fate also has been very similar…stripping started to set me free, and real sex for money set me more free. Smoking meth and going to sleep is not the usual prescription for harm reduction, but I have to say, I am very glad that I resisted all I did and came out ahead without even fighting.
Settling into my office chair, medicating and trying to make sense of the anxiety and apathy I feel this afternoon. I cashed a check from one of my few regular rent paying benefactors and turned in a partial payment to my property manager. I’ve been paying the late fee and paying 60% of my rent on time for the last 4 months. Sometimes it takes me up to 2 weeks to make $300. Somedays I go for 7-8 days without income. Last month, I paid the rent with the money the guy who crashed into my car gave me and a $175 focus group. And it wasn’t in full or on time. Yesterday I think I threw in my minds towel. I hate not being able to afford to eat a small pizza and drink wine at a restaurant that I am trying to clammour onto the stage list to sing a song with the combo that has been hired for that night’s jazz open mic. I go to venue after venue trying to get on stage this way, and it is never guaranteed.
I got caught trying to ditch the pizza and wine bill last night. I played it off like I was going outside to take a phone call but the waitress caught on and ran after me. “Are you going to settle your tab?” she said. “Oh, my bad.” I said reaching into my pocket for the last $20 bill I would have for who knows how long. I felt inclined to steal from the owner who was heavily flirting with me and had comped me a house cock-tail while I waited for my turn. It was what I needed and more. I would love to just be holed up in some room somewhere with some dude doing lines and getting wasted instead of try to figure out whether I would ditch my restaurant tab so I could fill my gas tank and get home from the Valley.
The restaurant owner was also a vocalist. It was like he knew what I was about, pulled his chair up next to me and asked me what I did…I always accept propositions, especially from potential tricks. And if they sing and own restaurants but are still sleazy then I automatically try to work them. Heterosexual and in your 40s, flirting with me is like stoking my hustlers fire and begging me to ask you for money. I used to be sooo good at ditching the bill when I was younger. Not that I’ve done it a lot. Especially not in the ten years that I’ve been doing sex work, it seems like money has never been so scarce. I was embarassed a bit that I got caught, but the residual feelings just turned into anxiety which woke me up at 6am…How bad are things in your life when you have to steal food? But I’m stealing access to the social network which makes me feel and be normal instead of the gold digging thief that I just proved myself to be. But I was hungry, there was a 2 drink minimum and I needed the wine to calm my nerves before going up there. And driving home with your fuel lite on means that you need gas like you need food. But you could do nothing and stay home. and not sing. and not drink and not try. that’s what fake sister would say. Or real sister perhaps. The I love you card idea did NOT go over well. It was a disaster. My sister who lent me money is only really capable of that. She does not want to dialogue with me in any sort of emotional way, became attached to her significant other at age 17 and has been able to be more involved in that family and now her own instead of ours for almost 20 years. I asked her to say one positve thing about me. She said,”Nena (her daughter) says you make nice presents and she lets us play games on her phone..” I was talking about how she always made me feel like a pathetic loser earlier. I said,”I know that the kids love me, but can YOU?” and if it wasn’t one or two word answers as her response, she said,”Stop texting me. I’m watching D (her son’s) game.” No reciprocation. No support. Yes, she gave me $500. But that’s the kind of loving supportive environment I was raised in. That’s the relationship I have with money and love and survival and why I have become the urban geisha. All of the most famous ass kicking trailblazers in entertainment have the need to find LOVE from an audience or a greater entity than their family. Michael Jackson said “I just wanted to be loved.” in his tapes. Jenna Jameson. Madonna. All of them had dysfunctional emotionally blind parents who never acknowleged their gifts so they had to go above and beyond them to prove to themselves and the world that they were worth loving…
When I was losing my virginity with my first boyfriend, my mom let him stay at my house almost every night. So did his mom I guess, come to think of it. My sister’s boyfriend’s were also always at home with us and my mom was at work always late at night trying to raise the family. For that I give her the credit she is due, but her lack of interest in what her daughters were doing with their romantic and sexual lives during a crucial period in their development has also had a huge impact on who I am. My mom is bad with setting boundaries, she never told our boyfriends to go home. It’s no wonder I have a codependent boyfriend addiction today. Some people think that because a mother or father did “their job” by birthing and raising you that they deserve unconditional love forever. But I’m a big one on reciprocal love. I love those that love back. This is why I have Scarlot Harlot, my whore mother. She talks about emotions and has mentored me out of the darkness, lent me money and far more than my real mother would ever dream of.
When I got my Master’s Degree from Graduate School, only my dad was present. No one really cared or gave me credit for getting another degree or being a teacher. It did not matter to them whether I was a teacher or a prostitute, so it’s not like I did it to rebel. I got into the sex industry as stipper because my mother kicked me and my sister out of her house because we got tattoos. My tattoo was of a magic wand and barbed wire to commemorate the pain of her rejecting me after I told her I had been sexually assaulted. The family preferred me to be a teacher, I guess, but they didn’t really care either way. Losing my apartment here and moving home to my sisters house to live with my mom would be the equivalent of emotional death to me. I’d rather explore other options, like stab myself with an HIV+ heroin needle. When I am out of pot and in the throes of depression, I have those thoughts. My therapist says that they aren’t real plans but after having a pimp come to my house and try to hustle my soul, I think that no one really knows how thin the line is between sanity and insanity, between living and dying. I work in the AIDS grocery handout program as part of my punishment for my prostitution conviction and I get to see all the people in LA dying and living with AIDS. They stand in line weekly to get their “neccessities of life.” Meat, milk, cheese, toilet paper, shampoo even. It is more generous than the food stamp program that non AIDS residents get for sure. I concur with them how great it is to have these necessities. Being broke too I am so grateful when I can finally get money to get MY neccessities of life after going without for days.
I am in PURE survival mode and getting away with it without getting caught was pretty much the name of the game as an agency escort, of which I spent my last 3 years in LA doing. I’ve pulled twenty dollar bills out of the pockets of assholes that claim they don’t have money to tip me, and even though I was the wrong girl, I felt DETERMINED to get mine. (think of the M.I.A song “take your money”). I had gotten dressed and showed up goddamit. These guys OWED ME something for my time. And if I could get it, I would try. Some of them begged me to hit them. I put my foot in the door of his condo and he put his fingers on my middriff and pushed me back. “Yes, I am putting my hands on you…what are you going to do about it?” I fancy he says…
FUCK THIS DRUG ADDICT UP. He’d make a good punching bag. Do it.
I am officially sick of always being broke. This has to be the longest streak I’ve gone without caving in and going back to the agency PIMP or going back to the not solving anything with my pathetic codependent boyfriend (living off the avails without working=pimp) or even worse with a real Black PIMP from the LBC. And every other day I am getting hit hard by the parking ticket police and/or by overdraft fees. Taxing me. STATE PIMPS. Banking pimps. City of LA pimps. There is NO way to do community service in LA to work off your parking tickets. If you can’t pay the $80 ticket, it doubles in 21 days and then caps off at $120. I pay them so much more than I make and they are so good at keeping simultaneously poor and dependent on what they have. (A bank account and the right to park and drive in the city).
I have a parking ticket DISORDER however. I have no idea what is wrong with me. I wish I could cure it. I wish I could get a parking space by my house, that MIGHT solve the problem. I was just sitting at my desk finally daring to look at how much I’ve accumulated in just ten months of driving and parking with anxiety, depression, frantic panic attacks (usually caused by getting tickets)..I currently owe the city $1100. It is insane. I could have gotten my wisdom teeth which are impacted and aching on my jaw everyday extracted. If you are too poor to pay th original fee, you will be taxed TRIPLE. And eventually when you get 5 tripled tickets that you can’t pay then they drive around with a metal boot for your car, so you are forced to pay the tickets to get the boot off. Your choice? Not drive or leave LA. If the bank decides to fuck up your account by holding onto one charge just long enough so that your account overdraws in their favor, they will gladly hit you up with 5 overdraft fees in a row. Too broke to pay your bills? PIMPS LOVE THIS. THEY ARE VULTURES. Preying on the weary and the hungry. Brainwashers and Liars.
Golddigging for sugar daddies on the internet will attract real pimps. You can find them in the adult gigs section of Craigslist looking for their bottom (#1) bitch..”Be in charge of the other girls.” Pimps come in all colors and are usually MALE, when i refer to them. Having a healthy distrust of Black male “clients” in the sex industry is generally a good idea especially if they are talking about spending money on you. Real Black clients with money don’t front like that because of the pimp reputation that is already laid down. Silent rules like DON’T do dates in your own hood, or going into bad neighborhoods. There is no anti-racism in your protective plan. Just stereotypes and plain reality of your chances of survival. I once took a bachelor party gig in the hood. I wasn’t the dancer, I was the “security” LOL. The dumb bitch I booked to dance did such a shitty job for all 12 of these Black guys, she nearly got us killed, but instead they stole back the money they paid us and none of us got paid. But no one does Bachelor parties in the hood for a reason…the stereotypes are usually true. This dancer was Black and she was too scared or lame to dance for them…that’s when you know you’re in trouble. MOST Black sex workers don’t like Black dates. If it isn’t because they know that there are a lot of Black pimps and they are already loyal to one, it’s because Black men have the rep of not tipping and being really really demanding for $1.
Legally, anyone who profits off of the avails of prostitution could be charged with pimping. In that case, I was technically a pimp. Therefore, every business a prostitute frequents could be her pimp. Female management, madams are pimps if they EXPLOIT, LIE, BRAINWASH, IMPLANT FEAR, PHYSICALLY OR SEXUALLY ABUSE/ASSAULT, MANIPULATE WITH DRUGS OR OTHER DEPENDENCY, and INDULE IN HEARTLESS CAPITALISM UNDER THE FACADE OF SOMETHING MORE BENIGN (“democracy” or “eradicating terrorism” “protection” or “home”) or even NOBLE.
Stripclub Managers, their goon security, their entourage of VIP bitches, their illegal stage fees are all part of the biggest LEGAL non Black pimp game in the U.S. Holding girls in the dressing room while management beats up a customer is PIMPIN. Telling a stripper to come up to his office so she can work off her stage fee is PIMPIN. Stage fees period are pimp shit. Making a stage fee so high that a stripper HAS to fuck in order to pay it. Lying Sack of shit mafia lawyers. And it happens in every club across the U.S..PIMPIN SOOOOO EZ..
Not all sex industry managers have to pimp. But some always do because they can. Like those posters you see of home loans in Bank of America and Wells Fargo Banks. “We’re Here for You.” they say. “We’re more than just your bank..”they say. Yeah. I say. You’re my fucking PIMP. You are a brainwasher and liar and you are TAKING MORE MONEY than I’m making in overdraft fees. You are hindering my survival yet I am dependent on you. And if you are the bank backed by the Federal Reserve and the Presidents word then pimpin IS EZ and it is done on the backs of those that can afford it the least. And then there are the pimpable. the vulnerable. the addicted. protective armour and boundaries were beaten or raped out of them, made weaker by addictions…the hopeless codependents looking for someone to lead their way even if it means taking all they make in exchange for housing and paying a little attention to them, enticing the carrot of love in front of them…
Pimpin can also be a deadbeat boyfriend who makes a girl work in prosititution before his lazy incompetent rock star with a habit or aspiring mafioso plan can make some money to pay the rent or bills. A manager who directly profits off of booking his girlfriend. My exboyfriend may not have really like that I was a sex worker, but he lived off the avails, and at times was employed as my driver, my errand boy who would make a little money every time I made money, so he could not complain about anything.
Now the aforementioned Black pimp both IS and is not an urban myth. As I’ve mentioned not all pimps wear hats and gold teeth (but some DO! FOR REAL!). Some are even female. Bella of Bella’s brothel and her daughter were exploitative pimps. They loved to make the street workers NEED the brothel. The same thing is happening with the current legalization movement in Nevada. The brothel owners create a hysterical public outcry against “illegal prostitutes” so the the only viable option would be working in the “safer” and “cleaner” brothels. All brothel owners ARE pimps. Most of them men, one woman. Dennis Hoff is a pimp. Bella’s daughter showed me pictures of a bruised beat up worker who had gotten beat up by her trick once she dared tried to go “independent.” Hue Heffner and his girls next door? This fool is pimpin so EZ that he and his girls are socially acceptable to most middle American bachelorette party girls watching in envy as Kendra gets married to some football player..
So recently I talked to a Black pimp from the LBC who lured me in as a trick with money that he wanted to spend on me. As soon as I call back the number the person who picks up hangs up. This happens twice. I give up. Then he calls back the next day and leaves a message, talking about his phone was messed up. After the second time I decided to tell his sorry ass off on his voicemail because I was already at the end of my rope with internet time wasters as it is. He tried to pimp me on the phone by trying to make me feel sorry for him, saying his wife died in a car accident and he hadn’t had sex with anyone for a year since she died! He was trying to get into my soul,”What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?” he said and even as I spill my guts to you on this blog, I didn’t tell him shit. “Why are you so mean?” he said steady trying to move forward on me. I was entertaining his dialogue as an enlightened hoe I guess, trying to lure HIM while he was trying to lure me into his spell, hoping that there would some money at the end of the rainbow. At that time my internet connection was shut off so I couldn’t look up his name or phone number and see if anything came up. The next morning he says he wants to come over and because I am desperate and need money, I agree. Then at the last minute he changes his donation to drugs. He has morphine and vicodin and now he is a medical student at UCLA he says. Oh, then when you come over can I see your student ID? Of course he had none of this. When he comes over in his Black Mercedes Benz with the tinted windows and the child seat in the back he shows me the bottle. I kind of knew they were vicodin but he told me they were oxycotins which have a street value of $80 a pill. I didn’t have the internet so i couldn’t look up the code on the pill..He was here already and I needed money or product, because I currently had nothing.
I broke the #1 hoe commandment:
DON’T GET PAID IN JUST DRUGS. Either get some cash or nothing. Know the street value of what you are trading. (Are you having unprotected anal for a $25 bag of speed?) Get the cash equivalent. Tricks that try to play you like this are just trying to use you and make you their dependent or sell you drugs or both. Dealers can break you off because it’s cost is nothing to them, plus they get pussy from phenes for free…but that’s NOT you, right?
I’ve run across major drug dealers and trade sex for drugs AND some cash usually. It’s a barter system. I sell it to the next crack head I see for triple. But I’m careful. Last thing I need is a drug possession and sales charge. I tax it triple and never carry it on me, that’s the only way. Women who hustle drugs are usually hustling sex too. The two games are intertwined for women. Why? Because pussy IS power. and weakness. Once, I got about an OUNCE of OG Kush from a pot dealer who was also a former owner of a revolutionary bookstore. I sure wished he would have been a regular customer, but most of the dealers that I’ve happened upon don’t return my calls or pick up once I call again. I believe they were either trying to sell me just drugs hoping I was a phene or don’t want anyone to know where or who they are. Having seen first hand the shitty deals that try to go down when people are not doing SEX WORK but are TRADING SEX FOR DRUGS ONLY is never the cash equivalent. Once you are in a place where you JUST trading, then you’ve probably got a habit and are probably hanging out with TRICKS who have NO respect for you, your safety or your boundaries. And that’s how prostitutes get so ragged and fucked up by drugs.
This pimp was no different. Everything he said was a lie, and he was a racist Black fool with an Asian fetish. But I humored him because I wanted money from him. Not ongoing sugar daddy money for I knew by now that he was a pimp, as he asked me to come live with him during our first phone conversation. LOL, When I actually think about it I don’t think the Black equivalent to sugar daddy really exists. There are ONLY Black pimps who are usually the manipulators not the manipulatees, which a sugar daddy usually is. Unless you count Russell Simmons! When he walked towards my house he kept looking behind him and he looked out the window several times while he sat on my couch. I fucked him for a bottle of vicodin. $60? not sure, because I didn’t have internet but whatever it was it was more than I had before he came over. I snorted a line and it gave me a buzz, but he hurried me to the bedroom saying he had to leave which didn’t give my body enough time to digest it.
Was this pimp a king in the bedroom like the word implies? No. He had a tiny little dick and he was done in 10 minutes like the rest of the good tricks. He saw a kiddie piano that I had had since my San Francisco days, acquired from a lover I had then. “I’ll give you $50 for this.” he said.”My son will love this.” and as I knew that he was lying, I really really hoped that perhaps he wasn’t as desperate for SOME cash as I was. “I’ll give it to you next time I see you.” he said. and for the same reason it was that I let him get as far as he did, he was out the door with it. I let it go as I figured that if I lost my apartment I would be having ridiculous giveaway yard sales of stuff I’ve acquired from old lovers but never used. And he had a 1 year old who was crying on the phone while he was talking to me and trying to get me under his spell, trying to make this pimp seem more benign, because he was a Black man who took care of his kids. I figured that the boy would enjoy it more than me and I was just letting it gather dust. He would say over and over,”You don’t have to be so mean. I’m NOT trying to hustle you.” he said looking me straight in the eyes. and I didn’t believe him, and resented him for trying to play me but in a little way I let him. But I was being mean in order to protect myself. Femme domme bitch screening a sub. I was taking on something that I knew was risky but I would try to see if I could get something out of doing it. I like to talk to real pimps sometimes just so I can confirm their insane thinking so I can write about it in songs. “Why are you so mean?” he’d say not knowing that it was men like him who made me meaner and meaner every damn day. All the Black girls in jail bragging about their pimps. The girl who would “fuck so hard for her daddy once she got out”….for the same reason I worked at a brothel and allowed myself to be pimped for a week, I enticed a pimp to my house even though I knew he was full of shit and traded sex for drugs and a baby piano. Good work Ms. Passion. It’s all for art! at least..
I can be horribly weak with those that don’t respect boundaries and can manipulate a no into a yes like it’s an art. This is how my exboyfriend stayed in my house for as long as he did. This is how a submissive got me to buy a PC laptop to do a website that he never did. Once I got internet access and realized that every single word and sentence that this man said was a big lie I knew that I lost my piano and I had just been had for a $60 bottle of pills. I thought I had scored some good dope, but all I had was crappy painkillers that sell on the street for $5 each. But that’s the game. Sometimes you lose. And sometimes you play with people that you know are playing you for one round, just to try to strengthen your game, but it ends up hurting you more usually cuz the game ain’t designed for winning. But he didn’t hurt me. I’m not a drug addict or as hopeless pimpable as some of the girls he preys on. I don’t need love from just anyone, especially not someone that I can’t control easily…not that I have to be dominant always, which as you see I’m not, but this pimp was so manipulative..I put his phone number in my phone under SLICKBACK and watched how many times since that day he’s tried to ring my phone. I’m done with him though. I fear pathological liars actually and what I did with him went against my 10 hoe commandments and I didn’t even really come up for it. The pills were weak, nothing to brag about. And this loser who said he was a former NFL football player now had a belly, was unattractive and a horrible lay. The little boy was probably bottom bitch’s kid that he “borrowed” for our phone conversation. Even if I was homeless and living in my car, I wouldn’t live with him. I won’t even let him through the phone call that I pick up. I lost the piano. I don’t even want to hear a false promise to lure myself back into any sort of contact. Pathological liar and heartless = scary. Keep my piano. I’ll get something for these pills.
Another vulture tried to get me to come over his house in exchange for some kush weed. Swoop me up and give me drugs and drop me off the next day with $100 and a sore pussy? Puuuleease. I’m not that much of a pot or coke head. I don’t even think pot can tempt you quite like crack or other drugs can like that which is why people don’t call it a drug. I’d rather steal my dinners than give in to pimps and vultures…but that doesn’t mean that they don’t peck at my body while I lay here trying not to die..
To all my female survivalists
A gold digger is a go getter bitches
U need to make yourself feel better By dissing me
This is a shout out to all my fellow mercenaries,
Girls gotta do what they need to do
by any means necessary
we need to rise up and stop depending on these dudes to get free
Start takin back our bodies
Even hos and bitches can be revolutionary
Cuz wouldn’t it be quite extraordinary
If I could finance my dreams without looking
for money to marry
But the reality
is that they want us to be
Their cheap ignorant, girls gone wild for free
while a few good ol boys get rich off of money we never see
hypocritically PIMPING our image and OUR sexuality
If there were a better way than hustlin and shakin your ass at the club til 3
Just to feed a dream and a little baby
If there were some way to keep this music dream alive
Without risking craigslist killers and answering calls til 5
Or manage to finance your college degree
Just to graduate and become an employee
And beg on the phone for your dignity
While the bank won’t cash your check
less u pay them all their overdraft fees
Obama already bailed them out but they still want to take from me??
I might be that poor frustrated bitch who walks into a bank and bombs everybody
CHORUS:
Whore revolutionary
Says my body is MY property
And If I need your protection, boo
Then I’ll make sure that you see,
that you’re just the one driving the car for me
Taking back the reins of my sexuality
There ain’t no shame in this game
Mama taught me to never give it up for free
Smokin trees and traveling the world
Mariko passion: whore revolutionary
HOOK:
you don’t need a man or money to be VIP
just follow me
to the land of the whore revolutionary
You lock me up if I dare to survive and profit
some give it away for free, but i dare to make $$ off it
The system steady recycling bodies of mostly Black Jezebellas
She’s so proud to be bottom bitch, she’s her daddy cinderella
Outstanding warrant, out on bail, can’t pay the fine then take her ass to jail
and her daddy sure do love her so very much
he’ll even tell her so through the payphone in the cell
but he’ll make her do the time
and won’t even pay her bail! (well, fuck that..)
CHORUS
Let em borrow Never buy
always negotiate for the Bigger piece of the pie
Let em rent by the hour; but never rent to own
‘less you like being treated like a little girl even though you grown
Increase the police, they try to keep us down with their laws
to the whore revolutionaries, renegades and outlawz..
Hustling and doing illegal things just to get by
but we just keep keepin on, hustlin til dawn,
keep making our money and staying high
The nice thing was that a lot of Asian woman thanked me for performing afterwards, which was nice. No one bought any books though. My dad’s review was pretty harsh, “it was, uummm, a reading of sorts, kinda rap, kinda poetry but if at your next performance of this “Ms Wong”, try to leave out holding the notes. You were nervous…With a four star rating scale, I’d give you 2 stars.” Oh well. All I can say is,”at least I have a father that I can show my sex work art (the pieces without overt sexuality) and performances” to and I am thankful for that. The poem is about a few real people at real moments that they may have interacted with me in our lives together, or perhaps they are things that I imagined or internalized or fantasized about…I am an artist AND I am sensitive. (The latter is the excuse that my sisters give me whenever I attempt to express any legitimate hurt). if you HURT me, you become part of my intellectual process to heal what you did and therefore will probably appear in my blog, my artwork, my songs…Be warned. I will change your name but you will know it’s you when you read it.
My real sister recently lent me $500 so that I would be able to stay housed. That was a huuuuuuuge gesture for her and it meant a lot to me. I am planning to write her a birthday card, which is coming up soon and try to have a conversation which attempts to convey this appreciation. And I might even throw in the word LOVE. perhaps at the end, with a comma at the end so it doesn’t seem so direct, like “I love you.” which might repel her. My fake sister was the one who actually hurt me and my real sister lent me money. My fake sister said all kinds of fucked up things to me on my Facebook and my real sister didn’t say anything. Real sister and I had a 20 minute conversation about my sex work transition and my relationship ending and THAT was a pinnancle moment for us. My family does NOT know how to communicate emotionally. We do not tell each other “I love you.” Even before my mom knew I smoked weed, she never called unless I called her first. It was not about the marijuana, the sex work, the rapes…it was just her. The way she knows how to love. My sisters and mom are similar. I grew up with all women, but it certainly wasn’t that same “femme love” feeling that you get when you are an adult in “women only spaces.” No wonder I loved it so much when I first came out as queer. For the first time, in my first Dyke march I was ENGULFED in a SEA of WOMYN who were loving each other’s feminity, survival and love of each other without shame…
There is a lot of history that my fake sister has no idea about but chose to comment on and that was one of things that was the most offensive. She said things that were MORE condescending and disdainful than my real sister who I grew up having issues with! She channelled this voice of who my real sister was before she was married with children. Real sister has improved a lot since then, and is not quite so quick to serve up biting remarks unless she is pushed to do so. Even though she gave me money to survive, she still has a lot of clear emotional and other boundaries with me and her kids. Her kids love and adore me, and her daughter tries, to her regret to imitate me. But her daughter does not learn her mannerisms from me, as I am not even around them that much to make that kind of influence. Some personality qualities are inherent and obvious when kids are kids, like me masturbating at 5. I think smoking pot is like a cerebral masturbation. My sisters try to shame me out of masturbating, and for a while that worked until I shamefully picked the habit back up at age 9. i did the same with pot smoking. Temporary abstinence and unsuccessful “relapse.” These days, my FAVORITE pasttime is masturbating while stoned. Marijuana increases the intensity of orgasms without a doubt. Self pleasure IS survival. Medicating with marijuana is about self pleasure and self healing. I’m sure people looked at Bob Marley and said,”dude you’re a loser because you smoke too much weed.” but those people are the minority. Considering the state of political affairs in Jamaica then, and now..it is no wonder why marijuana is the choice of those oppressed by governments. Blunts are part of hip hop and Tupac smoked because he was heavily involved in a risky life that no one except those around him could really understand. Unfortunately, smoking crack, sniffing gasoline straight from the pump, alcohol and tobacco are also the choice of the oppressed, so understandably it gets hard to choose your poison. If you understand and believe that the FBI and CIA have been responsible for the “suicide”, “homicide” or “death row sentencing” of people of color AND prostitution activists (RIP Deborah Jean Palfrey, Brandy Britton) , then you can understand why someone like Tupac, a second generation Black Panther who was most definitely followed and watched by the same forces that hold Mumia in death row and the same forces that are PRESENTLY PERSECUTING 8 former BPP men from San Francisco on bogus “confessions” that were attained with torture tactics WORSE than WATERBOARDING. He unapologetically smoked blunts to his head. But he was an artist and KNEW from watching his mom on crack as a kid that anything else that he chose to smoke would compromise his art.
Adult families do not usually go into counseling and attempt to heal things that happened when they were growing up together. Those issues show up in our relationships and ourselves and sometimes we go to our own counseling. My mother spent a year in a Born Again Christian psychosis but somehow snapped out of it after being committed to a hospital for a couple of days. She refused to go to therapy afterwards and to this day. She has rejoined a different church and become active with the Lord again. I prefer making art, writing and going to low cost sliding scale therapists who allow me graciously to build a tab when times are tough. Oh, and of course, I medicate daily with marijuana. She sees me as killing myself with smoking, and I see her as killing me with her rejection. It’s all a vicious cycle…
To some people, I may be “addicted” to both “drugs” and “prostitution.” But I did a paradigm shift with my own healing about PHEW, TEN years ago I started my healing from sexual assault and childhood trauma with my first rape crisis counselor. I remember going into therapy when it was “free” as an undergraduate at Berkeley and crying my eyes out til I had a pounding headache. I remember the issues then were having head to toe eczema that I felt that I could not control. I could collect a handful of scalp pieces that I collected from scratching my oozing head sometimes. Sounds really really gross, I know. It’s was equally as horrible to me and it was my body. I believe that my eczema flare ups were a distorted way for me to find love, as my mother paid the most attention to me when I was sick with allergies or eczema. It was one of the ways I could get her to come to my bedside…I stepped onto the stripclub stage and my eczema almost disappeared completely. It’s been under control without steroid medications or frequent doctor visits for over ten years.
I believe whole heartedly in the mind/body connection. I use marijuana and other drugs to explore this because it can help to open our chakra sensitivity. (especially ecstacy) I could perhaps do it sober, with yoga, a raw vegan diet and meditation but I prefer to smoke weeeed. why? cuz it’s fun. it makes being alone interesting. I make art, write, sing and blog instead of feel lonely or bored. I hardly EVER say the sentence,”I’m bored.” and if that is the case, then I just go to sleep. I guess I can escape to sleep when I am really depressed before I complain about being bored.
I spent A LOT of time alone as a kid. Playing with myself (literally! I started masturbating at 5) , riding my bike around town alone. And before my last relationship I was single for NINE YEARS. (think about that in terms of living in a culture which heavily emphasizes monogamous pair bonding). For me to cope with that reality, I was happy to have discovered mary jane. My real medicating started after a significant relationship ended when I was about 22. Sucking on my bong while crying like a baby like it was a mother’s nipple. It helps you stop being frantic and relaxes you..just like the nipple did. I bet my mom stopped breast feeding me at 6 months. I would be very surprised if I found out that she did it for longer.
the women i date are always unattainable, like the love, the comfort from my mother is…they are always not interested, more attached to boyfriends, more fucked up with issues than me…
the men and women that are attracted to me are co-dependents. Boys that need mommies. Ironically I play that role to them even though I never really had a nurturing relationship with my own mom. Women are always said that they look for their fathers through men. perhaps that is why I always date these “Fix er uppers” that never really change, but that I have to sever ties to before they destroy me.
I smoke about an 1/8th a week, which with a medical card in medical marijuana SATURATED Los Angeles is down to $35. $140/month if I paid cash for my medicine without hustling and trading which I don’t. The amount can but probably will not increase over time, which is why they don’t see it as an addiction. Smoking more marijuana only will make you fall asleep, not get more medicated. If sleep is the goal, then it’s perfect.
When I was 21, I felt like dying because the physical and emotional pain from my skin condition was so unbearable to me. I could not imagine a life without eczema. When I was 23, coming to terms with all the times I survived sexual violence already, I could not imagine a life free of rape trauma. I had anxiety attacks in overtly heterosexual environments (like “straight” bars, or cramped elevators with only 1 man). But I healed and now, I am not well but I am better. I am able to recognize PTSD related anxiety, the signs of disassociation that occurs and THEN I meditate myself out of survival mode, if indeed it is not a real emergency. But, as Erykah Badu said it best,” this world is soo traumatic.”
I am exploring this book called “Seeking Safety” which is for those with “drug addiction and PTSD” which in clincial talk is a “co-occuring disorder.” I want to read it as soon as I get enough extra money to buy it online and see if I can adapt the information to medical marijuana patients. I have fought against a lot of medical pathologizing and am skeptical about it since “homosexuality” was a DSM-IV listed pathology until the 70s and “gender identity disorder” is a necessary part of a transgenders transition therapy. “Prostitution” is seen as a risk behavior not work and “Survival Sex” is only relegated to those who are homeless, not those who eat dim sum. So I read and take in what I like and adapt it to my own healing. Healing and retraumatization are a constant process and hopefully you get better at expediting it. Considering all of the trauma that I have survived, i have become the master at expediting my own healing because of my own self awareness of it. I got mugged once as a sex worker two years ago and I allowed myself to lay in bed all week.
Facebook is a crazy new internet medium that I have found some comfort and obvious discomfort in. I can’t stop being me. I will die being me. What’s on my mind will offend A LOT of people. One of my cousins is surely getting a new exposure to all kinds of things about me by being my ‘friend.” But he, like my father, is also a father and is also pretty non judgemental and supportive of me as a person, interested in getting to know me and certainly not interested in making me feel bad because I smoked weed or do sex work.
If you read this and are interested in the real ride outside the blog, the daily updates that are far more personal than what I tweet then add me: Mariko Pasion
I had to spell it with one S to appease Facebook for some reason. I don’t know why. It is more intimate than myspace by far. Even more intimate and revealing than this blog. I need to feel some sort of safety with the people there. If you get on my wall trying to judge me or change me you won’t be successful. I’ll block and delete you because I do not like to be hurt, even by my “friends”, family or community. And if you are really impactful I’ll write a song about you…but hopefully you will be impactful in a positive way instead.
is absolutely unacceptable..
I was sitting on the floor, trying to get SUPPORTED. This woman really doesn’t care about what I put in my stomach. I had been coming to this anger management group which has been politically retitled “Rage Resolution” because anger, they think can be not managed but resolved. This Black woman was about 10 years or so older than me, had done sex work, drugs and more but of course, because in my report back to the group that I was still broke..she erupted into her criticism on what I chose to eat for dinner that nite: a Cliff Bar and a Naked Juice. $3 drink, $2 bar=$5 total. “Yuppie” nutrition and meal replacements that are NOT available for consumption in a good HALF of Los Angeles grocery and convenience stores and most definitely not available in stores in East AND South Central LA. No one would spend $5 on a bottle of protein and a chunk of calories that looked like a piece of turd but filled you up. They would rather spend $6 on a Carl’s Jr meal with fries and a big drink. (Cuz it makes you feel FOOL!)
But it wasn’t about the implied yuppie foods it was the fact that I was even EATING at all and daring to call myself BROKE. Because if I was truly broke, I wouldn’t have food to eat at all. (You could live in Aaaafrica! or Innnndia! or Skid Row! they say, but even if you came from those places or lived there now, they would NOT care about you more or less).
I shouldn’t have $10 to pay for a group full of mostly court mandated clowns who would use the 2 hour group to put their 2 cents towards strangers on how they should think and live their lives. I was there voluntarily. In fact, including the group I have clocked in 5 hours of therapy THIS WEEK. I am soooo privileged. I am eating. I am soooo privileged. I have money to medicate with marijuana. Even if I don’t spend a lot of money on it, but rather sell it off to other friends so I can get mine for free. Even if I trade sex or companionship with lovers who grow or growers who love so I can stay medicated on my transitioning sex worker budget. Nope, that’s not good enough for THEM. Because then you are a drug addict and they can put you into a little box and throw you and your ideas out. Even if you have a medical prescription people will still say “medicate” as if it is a joke. And this is also partly a joke in the medical marijuana community because our “medicating” sometimes looks like it’s fun, but that’s only if you are looking at half of the pictures.
They wan’t you starving, bleeding, and DEAD. But as you walk in zombie form around the world, dying they look at you and don’t feel anything different. They don’t give you money, love, blankets, shelter. They won’t get a gun so you can shoot yourself. Just leave him! Just get off your medication! and then once you do and you are feeling the pain from that They will just look blankly at you as if you are not their problem. And then they go on with their miserable pathetic lives. But they’ll probably say some ignorant comment first and call your suffering melodramatic.
The same woman who had her comment about my dinner also burst into laughter after I talked about my car/rape symbolism. and she was a sex worker and a woman of color who used drugs all her life. Did that make her an ally? Hell no.
My therapist knows that I medicate with marijuana. It was one of the main interview questions that I ask them when I decide whether I can pour my guts out to them safely. Don’t try to stop me from doing sex work. Don’t try to stop me from smoking weed. Those things are immutable and inflexible until I decide that they are. I am not here to work on abstaining from any of those things…(I have already gone through a cycle of therapy trying to do that “unsuccessfully.” I am a harm reductionist, not a 12 stepper). One time the last 3 whiteboy roomates that I had at this “bohemian” warehouse tried to pull a marijuana intervention on me. To appease them, I attempted to stop smoking for 3 weeks. At the end of 3 weeks, when I broke down and told them I was going to start smoking again, one of them said,”Oh, You weren’t doing that for us. I thought you wanted to do that.” or something…I don’t even remember but I’ve been high everyday since then AND if I see those fuckfaces in this city I don’t even acknowledge their presence. If you want me to live my life without my medication, then WHAT do you propose you will provide me to replace it? Oh, right, that’s not your problem. Deep breathing and meditation? Yoga? Walking? Journal writing? Singing? Dancing? Art? Activism? Yes, yes, drug counselor..thank you. I do all those things while medicated. If I weren’t medicated, at times, I doubt I would be so profilic and functional. I’ve cut back on alcohol almost “as a drug” because it makes me black-out after too many. My first date rape at 17 was under the influence of alcohol and let’s just say that I have not really gained the trust back in how “people” will act towards “drunk girls.” (You can even go to your free internet porn channel and it’s actually a genre of porn that you can watch (rough sex with a ‘drunk and stupid’ girl), and I have to confess because the way that I was raped was nothing as sexy as that, the clips actually turns me on while it disturbs me as a whole but I’m not on a crusade to ban its distribution or existence. They also have Japanese Hentai porn which is the same as it’s always been Japanese schoolgirls getting raped and forced to LOVE it: also designed to stimulate and if you watch it long enough, the sounds alone will turn you on!). Those directors are like, hey, who said Rape was about power? We want to put the SEX back into rape! And they and their all male video crew give each other high fives, and they slap about $600 cash in the hands of their consensual victim and she is happy too. Because she was probably a survivor and needed to re-enact her shit too and that’s why she enjoys scenes like that…
There was a time that I used to only be able to hit the stage WASTED. I would down a few shots before stumbling on, and then I would wake up throwing up and miserable..crawling to my bong to ease my alcohol poisoning. But of course, if you don’t drink or smoke weed all of this might as well be in Korean. It’s why I love Amy Winehouse. She’s a beautifully talented trainwreck that everyone criticizes. I probably love pot as much as she loves alcohol. But we are raw like Billy Holiday, going through our pain and singing our pain away on and off stage. This is not JUST a music video, this is our lives…So don’t tell us NOT to get wasted because you are not the director and producer of OUR LIVES. But, sometimes the drugs and escape mechanisms can kill us too…that’s why I picked marijuana as well. Maybe I’m not as suicidal and self destructive as I think I am.
When I was a student teacher at one of the most rough at-risk school in LA, and I would come home and cry every nite and then some nights had to be strong enough to go to class at night to complete my Masters Degree. I did it all with the help of Mary Jane…She held my hand and walked me to class and kissed me on my forehead before I went in. That’s when I was living with the aforementioned roommates…sneaking a bong hit out the window of my own room! Even though, some would easily say prostitution or sex work is the REASON I medicate, I would say that teaching high school was also a continuation with that dance with men, misogyny and male violence. I wrote my Masters Inquiry on it actually based on a teenage student who insisted on calling me “sexy” instead of my name. I was challenged in different but sometimes equally or more violent ways as a teacher, I witnessed a “race riot” or fight of about 20-30 students and about 10 riot pepper spraying school police first hand so I’m not sure sometimes, if people say that teaching is safer than sex work.
I did do a 3 week VOLUNTARY cleanse for ME once last year. I have done it recently. But, I believe I am highly functioning train wreck. marijuana allows me to medicate the pain but be highly functional. It is better than alcohol, heroin, other prescription anti-depressents, vicodin makes you itchy, valium makes you forget…(which many people in pain will float to as an option..)
Everyone wants you to leave your bad relationship but they will not be there when you are alone. They do not even attempt to suggest a replacement for what you cling to that crutch for. And sometimes, the pain, like the pain I feel from my mother rejecting me doesn’t go away for years. And once you are a survivor of trauma, the world doesn’t stop being traumatic or get any safer, so if you have PTSD from previous trauma there is A LOT that can trigger you. But most of the time the freak outs are few and far between as I have worked very steadily on my healing and nursing my fears. I usually reserved those outbursts of anger, shouting, and shoving with someone that I loved. My[ex] boyfriend. The article in Salon.com talks about the passion and intimacy that fighting really is, and why, to me Fight club is such a gay [homo-erotic] movie. When I said that in Rage Resolution, the Black man across from me flew into a rage about it! [because that would mean that he was mandated to this group because HE was gay] I find out later that the GUY that he talks about knocking out cold in a Del Taco was actually a FEMALE TRANSGENDERED woman.
Also on my list, is “do not try to convert me to your religion or ideology” which is what a number of people would like to do with people like me. But I reflected last night, that I haven’t had anyone try to convert me to any organized religion since my undergrad college days. I must give off the untouchable sinner vibe that the Mormons don’t even want to approach. I’m sure people think that “I am as bad as the mormons.” But I don’t knock door to door, people come to me usually. They come to hear me speak or ask me questions, and sometimes they violently try to convert me with their rudeness, or their “interventions of love” but that never works. The system tried to convert me, but I am still working albeit very little but I believe if your religion is America and American “Freedom” then once you read about and experience who the laws are designed to protect, and once you realize that it isn’t you then you can easier change religions.
I was talking about how the CAR was an extension of your BODY, and your LIFE which is encased inside of it as you drive it. When I had a Toyota SUV, my car was broken into 5 times. The 5th time it was completely stolen and gone for almost 2 weeks before it was recovered. That year was extremely traumatic for me. I even walked up on a transient guy going through my truck, scavenging around. I caught him in the act of this, but didn’t kick the door closed on his torso which was halfway inside the scene of the crime. We had a verbal confrontation and he ran away. He said he wasn’t the one who broke the window.
If I were a “real” man, I would have. Instead I drove to the class I was going to be teaching and shared my anger with my students. That was almost 4 years ago. That poor car was totally cursed. Three years later, after I got the car back from the impound, I slid on black ice in the Bear Valley of California, crashed into a sideroad boulder and then another truck crashed into me from behind so hard that the back glass window shattered. Have you ever been in a car that was hit by a car? It hurts. Marijuana (eating not smoking) and massage nursed me back to health again. Considering all of the car accidents I have survived (one time, I hit the center divide of a freeway at 80 mph and walked away) I guess it would seem like a sort of a slap in God’s face to say that I feel so hopeless I want to die sometimes. I know that I do not have PTSD from just sexual violence. And suprisingly I was NOT high or drunk on anything when I looked death in the face behind the wheel that one near fatal day (and I’ve been in about 5 other not as major car accidents in 16 years, is that better than the average truck driver?)
I felt raped every time I would come back to a large puddle of broken glass, my clothng and CDs strewn all over, amputated stereo wires and receiver guts spilling out of the dashboard. File a police report. Are they going to investigate and attempt to catch the perpetrator? No. They are not even going to pretend to care. I paid out of pocket everytime. Just under the $500 deductible but way over my income disposable at any given time. I suffered finnancially and felt that this act of invasion was out of my control and one of my family members shook their heads and implied me somehow at fault. It’s hard to distinguish between the car accidents, parking and speeding tickets (which are my fault BUT also the very profitable industry of policing and fining drivers as part of the state revenue that plays a huge role) and the car jack and break ins (which are not my fault and San Francisco is known for). This has been a symbol of all the many times I have been sexually violated and have not used the police to help me “catch the guy” or help me to heal.
I know, I am NOT the perfect victim. I smoke weed everyday. I eat. I don’t have enough of a drug problem for you to discount me. I am a sex worker. I have a car. I still have food to eat. I have a laptop that I got from a sugar daddy but that I could sell if I needed to pay my rent. But then if I sold my laptop, it might make me feel more hopeless, even if it helped me stay housed. It would be a sad day indeed. My computer symbolizes any hope I have for the future. And once I give that to some hustler for half of what it’s worth because I am really that desperate it will be the end. So I guess, to the critics credit, since I haven’t yet stooped that low, then perhaps I did have an option that I hadn’t yet considered. But a miserable one to wish on someone. I chose to forfeit something less tangible. I dropped my car insurance until I can get more income. I am driving illegally. I still have things. Services on the verge of being disconnected but nevertheless you have services. VOICE OF JUDGMENT AND CRITICISM: “You need to appreciate your life and all that you have. You are just an ungrateful selfish piece of shit and you need to shut your mouth everytime you think you want to share your feelings with the world. Because unless you are the perfect victim, no one cares. And even if you are, they are just pretending to care, by making comments about your life or maybe they’ll suddenly start caring during your funeral, but unless you are Robert Kennedy or michael Jackson, no one will even know that you are gone.”
I am parked in the parking lot of my PO Box. A small unconventionally dangerous to squeeze in lot with a rent a cop Korean security guy with sunglasses and a nitestick. There are a TON of parking lots like this in LA. I’ve been hit in one parking lot (her fault) and been in one other collision which was another her fault while driving this car that I currenly drive which is OWNED mostly by Chase Bank, not me. I recently got into a smash up that was my fault but because of car insurance, I was covered. They were covered. I am very very familiar with filing claims with insurance companies and how long the whole process takes. I am very aware of how insurance companies create a barrier between the rage that occurs between the two drivers that have collided. Like lawyers act as a mouthpiece for the convicted so they don’t tear out the eyes of the cop that arrested or beat them up.
We start to exchange information and I have to reveal to this guy, who I’ll call Kumar (cuz he looks like and his about the age of the Indian actor who played Kumar in Harold and Kumar stoner films) that I don’t currently have insurance. He reveals to me that he WORKS for an insurance company and that he and 3 other clowns were out on lunch. “Wow. How hilarious.” I say sarcastically.
“And what are you doing parked in a loading zone? Did you pull in AFTER I was already backing up?” he said.
“NO. I was sitting here trying to have a nice day, checking my messages when you BACKED INTO me.”
“Well look, I’ll help you out here.” he said looking at the shark bite in my left fender. “I can give you $200 cash for the damage then and then we’ll just say it’s even.”
“You mean to tell me that you work in insurance claims all day long as your day job and you’re going to estimate that damage at $200 knowing that NOTHING on a vehicle costs $200 when it’s been hit” I said. One of my mirrors is missing half of the plastic cover cuz I hit it off someone’s fence. “Replacing the driver side mirror in it’s entirity is like $250.00 from the dealer, I said, that’s why I haven’t done it. There’s no way that repair of that is going to be $200. You are totally exploiting my situation.” I said. “But, hey, there’s nothing keeping you here. You CAN just walk away and screw me if you wanted.”
“How do you know it was me who did that? Maybe you already had that damage? You’re car is pretty banged up”he said.”Like in the same accident that broke your mirror. And this is a loading zone, you aren’t supposed to be parked there!”
“But you STILL would have hit me, if I was a truck or a car. So your logic is not a good enough answer for you to not be at fault.” I argued.
“But then if you were a truck, I would have saw you.” he said not getting nearly as angry as me, mocking me..
“Look, I gotta get back to work, so you can either take it or leave it.” he said.
I was already unstable and depressed about my finnancial situation, my loss of trust in so called friends and lately because so many people have questioned my right to call myself a survivor, I have been remembering and rethinking about all of the sexual trauma that I have survived in my life throughout the week. I couldn’t believe this guy was trying to blame me! It was all so symbollic of male privilege and power that my trigger was flicked and now I was full of rage at all the rapists and men with male privilege in the world.
but I didn’t. On Facebook, I posted an article on the West Virginia rapist, “The father of five children and midget football coach did not testify. But jurors watched a taped interview in which he confessed to picking up at least 15-20 prostitutes and holding a knife to their throats or choking them while he had sex with them.” He is a handsome Polynesian looking guy who picks up street workers with baby seat in his car. He is a family man, community member, misogynist and violent rapist and even though he is in West Virginia I feel that he is living in my neighborhood too…
When I watched “Boys Don’t Cry” with my then boyfriend and he didn’t feel moved, and every time he insisted on calling a transgender person by the wrong pronoun, I felt like he could be even sleeping in my bed.
The dance of violence between men and men is one that men who grow up are very familiar with. Most men have gotten into at least one fight. most men fear violence as much as women do but express it through posturing, homophobia, rape, pre-emptive ass kickings..
But women have that desire in them too. We are raised in a violent culture, where fighting and war are the ultimate symbol of triumph, conquer and revenge: power. I always move to want to fight with men. My ex and I got into some screaming raging public fights, and I have even thrown lite objects at him and punched his chest like the powerless little girl that I am. I loved him, so I trusted him enough to have further outbursts of rage like I had never done with anyone else before…this is the secret language of Domestic Violence that they don’t teach you and that the survivors aren’t allowed to really express. But when we went to couples counseling once, and the counselor asked me if I had ever hit him and I said yes, then I became the batterer and HE was the victim and we were not allowed to receive services because we did not match their criteria. Neither he nor I were the perfect enough victim.
but i never have done more than really close posturing and running away from angry gorillas.
My last 3 years as an agency escort was about my dance with sexual violence and misogyny. I would act and re-enact scenes which begged the collaboration of the dance of violence and gang rape, male privilege and power. I was literally asking for it or the system in place set us up to have to fight our way our of some ugly negotiations. I WANTED to have the LAURA CROFT BARB WIRE ending to my next attempted rape. Whatever it was that they were going to give me was going to be given to me in a clear cut blow. I would feel their fist connect with my face. I would fall to the ground. I would be the perfect victim. Except that i was a whore and my “friend” had just stolen $300 from him. I thought for some reason, that I would be okay in a houseful of 5 guys who had just gotten ripped off. I even told her she could go! Older brother started screaming through the house like an ape banging on his chest. He came for me. “YOU ARE NOT LEAVING THIS HOUSE UNTIL YOU GIVE US THAT MONEY.” I handed my stack of cash out of my purse and headed straight for the door. He chased me out the house, yelling at me the whole time to continue his little war dance over me as I drove away..
I survived that. I drove back home from Chatsworth, shook up. Sat at my desk while the sun came up, while I watched the Latin workers start their rounds on Metro to start their work shift…smoking my post traumatic stress disorder into a soothing enough calm that I will be able to go to sleep for at least 6 hours during the day.
I have worked very long and hard hours on my recovery and wellness from sexual trauma, and for years before I identified as a prostitute I was very focused on sexual assault awareness activism as a platform for my mission to leverage male privilege once and for all! I did not plan to engage in this dance for 3 years, nor do I regret some of the amazing experiences that I did recreate. I did educate and empower men, I did provide and satisfy for them and they did tip me excessively on top of the agency fee MOST of the time, and that was why I did it for so long. I met my sugar daddy by stealing him from my agency, they don’t expect repeat business of course, and that is how the system is designed. So if I am able to appease their egos enough so they don’t chase me out of the house yelling then we have a great time and everyone is happy for a while..
When people pretend to care or understand it urks me. I ran from Candy the elderly Skid Row sex worker that I mentored to save my sanity. I am too unstable to deal so closely with someone else that is more unstable and self destructive than me. When people say “You aren’t suffering, if you were REALLY suffering you would be like THIS, or THIS or live HERE or look like THIS. And Candy was all of those things and more. And also she wasn’t. She was more capable than most people thought. She had an apartment and disability income. Streetwork was her “side job.” She used drugs to escape the pain and sex work to recreate and seek safety through the validation that sex work provides sometimes. I don’t think it was about the money. When I walked side by side with her, I would notice that people either cared for her or they looked at her with disdain and wanted her out of their business. She was the worker that the rapist in West Virginia would prey on. She looks “expendible” because her face and body show signs of drug abuse and self destruction, so therefore it would be fine to just off her. We would be doing her a favor..I came to know why she used drugs to escape and I felt scared of her. I felt like she was a reflection of who I could be if I changed from marijuana to crystal meth like her. And if I started to escape with meth for 30 years like her…but without blaming her, I blame others first. And I think of her when people say I don’t have it so bad because I know her and people don’t rush to help her either, and that was how she came to me, and because she was too engulfed in her pain and her addiction, I couldn’t hang on..Or else soon, we’d be sitting on the sidewalk scantily clad and fucked up, smoking crack out of the same lightbulb and spitting insults at passerbys in the park…
I got the other driver to pay $340 cash on the spot. I didn’t lose my drivers license. I didn’t fight him. I didn’t go to jail with an assault charge. I came out ahead. Unfortunately, the money has to go towards the rent instead of the repair of the car or even the acquisition of insurance but I am usually stressing about rent at this time of the month. Frantic and desperately waiting for the next call to come through. If I had dealt with it any other way, I would not have gotten paid. I had thought that money and emotional confrontations with strange men only happened in sex work, but apparently it happens in other situations too. I am thinking a lot about survival lately. People are confused with me because I am confused with me. I have survived a lot. But not as much as HER or HIM OR HER OR HER!!!!!! Everyone wants to play trauma Olympics or Oppression olympics because they are so wounded…but believe me my pain is as valid in my world as their is in their world. I pulled over after I pulled out of the parking lot and freaked out in tears. It was very difficult to keep my cool in that situation even though I felt like he was instigating me to lose it, even though he was completely oblivious. He was never admitting fault Even after he paid me, he was saying some “Next time you should…” sentence and I told him to stop talking and go back into his car. “Even as your paying me, you are not admitting fault.”I said,”that alone can make me want to kill you!” I’m sure they thought I was crazy.
I am working on touring and doing some events specifically around sex work and sexual violence. My story is very common for a lot of workers and I find that it is so challenging to not want to talk about the glaring negatives in our profession while we push towards decriminalization. I also find it interesting that I have never painted my work as all happy hooker or all victim of rape and serial murder but that both are simultanously true. This blog is part of the way that I survive the violence that I am asked to hold and not speak about. People do NOT want to hear about your pain. And if your pain is not as bad as their pain, then they will be sure to let you know and cause you more pain.
My self esteem is very low and I am having trouble believing that anything matters or that I will live to see any major changes in how sex workers are treated, or how many sexual assaults occur.
I am also interested in the emotional finnancial connection that many women and sex workers have around money and men. Most people have a very intimate relationship with money and ideology but many women who gained economic empowerment and perhaps surviving violence (from home or relationships) because they were able to not only survive against the odds, but also acquire above their projected or expected means can feel like they are going to DIE when it is SLOW.
I am in this book with 2 other sex workers..It’s exciting to have something to tour with and it was fortunate that Susan invited me to be a part of this proejct without me actually submitting. And now I am peddling it wherever I perform as part of my SURVIVAL INCOME. And would you believe that if I dare use that word like that people are all up in my Facebook!
I’m trying to stay hopeful everyday
I’m wondering what the point of communicating at all is, if everyone is always misunderstanding me and each other constantly.
If I am supposed to not be bothered by words and what other people think about me, then what is the point of interacting with other humans in the first place?
So many people just say shit JUST to say something. Even as the words are leaving their mouths they don’t care about what they say. They just want to talk talk talk about everyone else to make themselves feel better.
If people really do not want to know “What’s on your mind?” or “How Are you?” because if you tell them how you hurt, how you feel, how you struggle…they do not care.
And if you’ve made them uncomfortable by your TMI (too much information) then it is your problem.
If you overreact, it’s your fault.
M.I.A is being honored as both an artist and activist. That’s amazing news to me. She is the only Asian woman in the mainstream pop world of substance that has broken any ground with major political views. Okay, Tila Tequila really helped us with bisexual visibility and bisexual “reality” but this shit is bigger, deeper and stronger than anything ELSE on MTV these days.
I have a new roommate. She recently turned 18 and ran away to my house. 4 years ago she was in my 9th grade classroom and since I have remained in touch with those kids who have remained in touch with me, P and I were able to support each other in this time of mutual crisis. She just left a 1 BR apartment shared with 2 families and 3 or 4 kids under 13. Being in a living room all to herself is probably a luxury. She has 2 jobs (that actually PAY the rent) and a high school diploma which is already worlds ahead of what my ex-boyfriend came into the equation with. I have kept in touch with her peripherally through text message updates and perhaps annual outings. She and I had a connection since she was a 9th grader because within a week of meeting me, she told me she was bisexual and that she wanted to be a stripper. I NEVER told her that I was a sex worker, or that I had spent 3 years as a stripper and never revealed to her or any of my students that I had done sex work. I gave her a book.
Lily Burana’s “Strip City” 
because it was comprehensive rights based, realistic and entertaining, and, my dad had given it to me, so it seemed appropriate. Knowledge is power for everyone, especially those that have the intention of getting into the sex industry at a young age. She never did become a teen prostitute, or an unwed mother or chola gangstress. She was always a leader, a cheerleader, a model undocumented student citizen who would probably never on her own be able to afford college as long as she would have to pay International student tuition for her college educaiton and have no access to Federal Student Aid…
We are not romantically involved in any way. In fact, it’s been quite interesting for me all this week. In the same week that I had re-entered the high school classroom, this time as an unpaid volunteer and tutored a few students she called me wanting to move out of her house. Since I am on the verge of not paying my rent next month, it could NOT have come at a better time. It would be refreshing to live here and have the other person PAY RENT for once. Really Refreshing.
Mommy Fiercest, Nina Hartley and me! 3 generations of sex worker leadership (okay, me and Mommy are only 5 years apart, but I think I aged like 20 years running SWOP-LA
In the week of my big meltdown, another Phoenix rose from the ashes that was SWOP-LA. She goes by Mommy Fiercest and I met her doing outreach in Mexico City at the AIDS International madness conference. I don’t remember of course, because that conference would bring EASILY 100 individuals to your booth EACH DAY. She joined SWOP-LA and has slowly been participating in various events with me as I drove myself to burn out..The handover was simple and beautiful. Like a president changing office. Ha. Almost. But it’s really been quite smooth and i am so relieved to hand over the keys. It will be a true measure of my success if she takes it makes it bigger than I did. Or if we get some grant money to pay people to make it bigger and more present than I ever could self funding it with my prostitution.
I am back to unplugging the laptop and webcamming with callers in private in my room. P shows no interest in sex work and in the last 4 years that I have known her has tamed down quite a bit as far as her outward sexuality as she has gotten older. You would think that that would be the first place that the average undocumented female worker would go. But I guess that’s my warped perception. So how do you change over from being a open whore in your face artist back to a reserved responsible adult role model trying to educate a young person. You don’t. Why? Because she is 18 now and she’s not my student, she’s my roomate!
We have a very pure relationship actually. I tried to be very compartmentalized while I was a teacher. I was very serious about my work. I ran a Gay-Straight Alliance in a South Central and it went over fine for the most part, no fear. I never would imagine being attracted to my students nor did I talk to them in detail about my personal life. That was the golden boundary for most teachers to stay sane: your personal life, especially sex life is to be ignored as if it did not exist. You don’t need to go there with them. period. Just smile and say you are a virgin. and leave it at that. In fact, when I was teaching, I politically chose to identify as GAY and be the GAY TEACHER because I wanted to appear somewhat off limits, and “asexual” to most students, especially the young men I was trying to teach about sexism, homophobia and misogyny. I didn’t even like the word BISEXUAL because it had the word SEXUAL in it every time you uttered it, and that, suprisingly is NOT my main objective every moment with everybody, despite the whore that I know that I am. When teaching high school, I felt and perhaps still feel that the more ASEXUAL you are the MORE POWER YOU HAVE. Not like creepy or like the asexual chemistry teacher who was too unattractive and unkempt even to hire a provider type of way, but asexual in a secret file but still there way, like with most politicians, but not as hypocritical. Because unlike with adult men, SEXUALITY is NOT a bargaining chip that wins you access or privileges. With your young male students, its the other way around and I wasn’t interested in abusing my power with anyone in ways that it had been abused with me. With young male students, the power dynamic of sexual advantage is very much there for them already with the girls that they are actually or just talking about “deflowering” or making babies with. As a female adult in their lives, I had the thankful advantage of being exempt from that realm of teen sex drama, because I had already gone through it once, thank you.
I brought a student in to the office for repeatedly calling me “sexy” instead of my name and used his harassment, and other student’s essays about homophobia and date rape as the basis of my Master’s inquiry paper. In some strange way, escorting has just been this ongoing and continuous exploration of male privilege and where the seeds of that first begin to grow. It is something that I have probably been exploring my whole healing life…
So living with P these days, being an all out urban geisha and web cam mistress during the day in my home office, it’s been interesting. I have to learn to recompartmentalize again. I am fortunate that I have found amazing women to help me in my struggle, to answer the call to lead without having to be nagged or pushed to do so. I am old enough to be her parent, who would have had her when I was 17 and was now struggling to support us with my dying sex work jobs. But instead she is helping me. In ways that my partner could not even do after 2 years. Crazy isn’t it? And this happens to me because I am that overcaring mentor and open door give you my cell phone number type of teacher sometimes. It paid off this time.
A university singing/speaking gig was cancelled in new york. That would have given me a $1000 to pay rent AND travel and visit friends I haven’t seen, have some paid art R&R inspiration alone time…but NO. CANCELLED. So I started to work on generating new material to send all the other campuses that I haven’t even started to talk to yet. I got that gig from this blog, I think. I haven’t even really begun any publicity on myself as a touring artist. I guess running SWOP and being in the relationship for the last 2 years were more than enough for me to deal with. But I guess I had to do all that. I’ve been thinking so much about my life process lately…
I have been finding hope and value working in the adult school classroom because students are motivated, diligent, QUIET, and there is no lesson planning. You are proctoring, mentoring, managing and motivating. That’s the job. Lots of correcting and filing. It’s everything that being a day school teacher is minus the hard parts. It even pays more. So I’ve been excited to report to my therapist taht things are looking up. I even showed up on time for the first time in 5 weeks today.
photo by Llednor Nadirehs 2009
Last nights client said when he saw me last night, “You looked mean”. He said. “Tough”.
“I didn’t want to [get a lap]dance with you cuz I thought u were gonna beat me up!”he laughed, naked in his bed with me on top of him. We were erotic, drugged up, relaxing,releasing..but not fucking. Exactly what I wanted to do for the last few hundred dollars I needed to meet my crucial goal to keep my house and pay for my car payment right around the corner of that deadline..
I couldn’t do anything but talk and spill my gutts to him as he asked questions and revealed his predictions about me. and I ate it up. i think it was because I felt like no one really gave a shit about what was really going on with me. CERTAINLY NEVER ANY CLIENT I HAVE EVER HAD IN 12 YEARS IN THIS INDUSTRY. Or maybe because it is so rare when I WILL ALLOW A CLIENT TO TELL ME WHAT I AM FEELING. Because they usually don’t know. Or they say they care and they really don’t. Or, like my ex-boyfriend, they can’t at this point in their development, understand.![[ Hot and Nasty Phone Sex at TalkSugar.com! ]](http://images.talksugar.com/promos/talksugar_6.gif)
