I was actually a FREE INDEPENDENT URBAN OIRAN not an urban geisha!!

For the years from the time that I started this blog, I branded myself for many years as the “Urban Geisha,” an “Educated Whore Revolutionary.”  I knew even then, that I was nothing near a “real geisha” but I was fascinated with the idea that part of the geishas art, aside from enticing men was to learn instruments, dances and traditional arts, including the art of conversation.  I prided myself at being the Urban artist of conversation because in honest reflection, I was never really that great at sexual acts during my escort years. Unless of course, I was attracted to the client or sometimes a client would surprise me with his abilities which didn’t match my usual “type.” This is what I liked about prostitution. It allowed me to experience people I wouldn’t usually allow in and, they had a 50/50 chance of doing me right despite the attraction factor.  The majority of time, I was really being the “2pac of prostitution (activist/musician)” character and many of my clients were urban homies, non violent criminals, drug users and other exiles of society, like I was. We would do a bunch of lines until the sunrise and I would entertain them with my art of conversation while making money. Sex was maybe 25% of the SEX work that I did.  Drug users were my favorites because of the fact that sex wasn’t so much a big part of it but keeping their lonely heart company while playing a facade was. And this was my definition of urban geisha. The other part that made me adopt the geisha moniker was because I was of Japanese heritage and I had the PASS TO CLAIM rights to my ancestry in America that the political activist community fights so hard to own and protect according to whichever heritage you can say you are part of. I HAD THIS PASS AND KIMONO CLAD KATIE PERRY DIDN’T as far as I was concerned.  But, I was no different than any other displaced descendant of a home country than the Black African American who tries to remember Africa by wearing an emblem around his neck and changing his name to something more African. The reasons we do this in racist America are evident but often our efforts fall short of accuracy.   I actually wasn’t any different than a disrespectfully appropriating Katy Perry who was just taking something she thought was exotic (and geisha are indeed RARE and Mysterious, even to Japanese today) and beautiful and creating a show around it for your pop culture entertainment and for you to be attracted to.  But when white American people do it on stage though…!!

An apprentice Maiko giving the EVIL SIDE EYE at a performance in a Kyoto tourist show copyright MPassion 2016

Now that I’ve spent some time in Japan, in actual observance and research of the true Japan and its culture I can see that many foreigners wear kimonos and the Japanese people are renting them to them for profit, but also to SHARE their culture correctly. Most Japanese would probabaly be happy and proud that Katy Perry  were wearing kimono on a big U.S award show, except maybe for the fact that she is mixing a Chinese brocade neckline and high cut waist of a cheongsam with a Japanese kimono in her outfit. Hey, shes mixing BOTH OF MY ETHNICITIES! I should steal that dress from her! Did Katy wear white face and try to imitate a geisha, or is that what the media called it (because all kimono clad women are geisha apparently)? She was actually just a white foreigner appropriating Asian fashions and aesthetic, something that can be super controversial and oversimplified on both sides of racist America.  Tourists rent kimono 100s if not 500 times on a good busy day throughout Japan as part of their sightseeing activities. Most of the kimono clad tourists in Japan these days are not even white folks, they are Chinese from China or Taiwan, but the point being that Japanese are happy to share and teach their kimono NOT their geisha customs.  There are dressers in tourist shops who help foreigners put kimono on and they style all the accessories so the foreigner doesn’t fuck it up. It’s not a cheap Halloween costume by any means, and its usually very authentic.  It is meant to be completely respectful sharing for tourists of Japan, as well as a profitable business to be in.

GEISHA ARE NOT PROSTITUTES and this was the biggest mistake I and other foreigners (mostly men who wish they were) make. They might get together with one wealthy client who becomes her sponsor/partner but mostly they are true entertainers, who are definitely erotic objects of desire but whose austerity around sexual partners makes her that much MORE attractive to seekers.  An Urban geisha might be similar to a true burlesque entertainer who could climb a 50 foot pole and do gymnastics tricks to entertain in a g string and feather costume but who also never really had sex with those they entertain. Certainly that was NOT what I was trying to do. i was turning TRICKS. Having quick and dirty sex for profit and I saw my HUSTLING (business street and survival savvy) also as part of MY ART.  The other part of my art came into play through writing my blog, speaking my activist truth, performing songs from the Whore Revolution.  THAT WAS ALL MY GEISHA-NESS, as I saw it then.  I only recently learned about the OIRAN, the kimono white faced entertainers that resembled the geisha in many ways except they were FLASHIER and THEY HAD SEX! Now THAT was more MARIKO PASSION for certainly. To my pleasant surprise, the Oiran traditional shoes were 8” platforms that required a male assistant to walk, which I would often recruit a random “escort” to help me not eat shit in heels on concrete. I regularly performed in 6” platforms in those days and I even had some “taka geta” (tall wooden slippers) of my own that I just threw away before I came to Japan but had owned since I was in my 20s before I even knew about Oiran (unconscious cultural memory!).  In Japan, there are regular parades celebrating the Oiran Dochu and Edo period costumes without shame around the association with prostitution because many of the Oiran and Geisha at the time were sold by poverty stricken parents who had no choice for survival. The sad truth behind these parades is that they do not reference the truth of the women who lived these lives of sexual slavery, yes I really called it that.

Real Oiran of Edo…not ideal working conditions

Movie set at Toei Kyoto studio park copyright Mpassion2016

Yoshiwara Dori Pleasure District

The Oiran lived in a gated area, and they were not allowed to leave except to view cherry blossoms once a year. The photos that I’ve seen show them behind wooden bars over the windows. Many of them died of venereal diseases and were wrapped in straw and dumped in unmarked graves at the Buddhist temple Jokan Ji. Jokanji temple has the spirits of 25,000 Edo era sex workers buried there. i have plans to visit and report on it in a future blog.  The Japanese government is known for the war crime of making Korean women into sex slaves for the Japanese soldiers, but what is also not said alongside the comfort women stories is that Karayuki San were the Japanese women who were indentured sex workers that were sent to other countries to service Japanese soldiers and other races of men overseas. I believe that karayuki san were also used for a short time to serve U.S military soldiers during their occupation in government sanctioned brothels as well. Many feminists in Korea and the U.S demanded the Japanese government apologize to the Korean comfort women, which occurred just in January of this year, 2016 but really, the Japanese should have to apologize and give reparations to the Karyukisans as well, but that would probably never happen as it was hard enough to get the apology and reparations to the Korean women. The government did actually put an end to the pleasure quarters of the Edo era, probably much in the same way that the sexual woodblock Ukiyoe prints became outlawed and banned so did the Oiran houses.  The mizu shobai, or sex industry of course never died in Japan, it just changed form.
But there is ALWAYS  MUCH BEAUTY in the darkness, darkness and light, yin and yang, just like in African slavery there were rich cultural traditions that survived and remained as a result of the struggle, oppression and captivity.  If you are not allowed to leave an area and can’t choose the amount or safety of your clients or you will be punished with death or a beat down, you are or were a sexual slave.

I owned shoes like these in my 20s!! Quickie Insta Oiran Portrait at Toiei Kyoto Park 2016

I did an Oiran portrait at a Kyoto amusement park and I was excited and am excited still about looking into getting involved in participating in the parades in April 2017 but in reading more about the truth of the lives of the women and girls I wanted to ALSO be sure not to gloss over the facts, the way the Japanese government and many people who are fans of Oiran Dochu do so often. Having lived the beautiful struggle of a FREE and INDEPENDENT URBAN OIRAN for years, you can see just by scrolling through my escort entries that my life was no parade, but it wasnt slavery, and I suffered and struggled through some of it but there was much JOY, TRIUMPHS, LESSONS AND PLEASURE TOO. Music, art, activism and community WERE the things that I loved in sex work, FUCK THE SEX.  Perhaps this was also the attitude of the Oiran and they poured their PASSION and life force into their arts in spite of it all.

What used to be the Yoshiwara Dori of the Edo Era is now Soaplands (kinda like massage parlors but soapier and mostly only for Japanese clients not foreigners). the women are free sex workers NOT and I say this too, NOT SEX SLAVES. They freely come and go to work, have families, test themselves and have safe sex so they don’t have the same UNHAPPY ENDING as the OIRAN of Edo did.

2012 YEAR OF THE DRAGON: time to breath some FIRE

Today marks the 3rd month that I have stopped inhaling marijuana

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  I am starting off the year in Los Angeles reflecting on the differences between this year and last year.  Last year I started out with a big wad of sugar daddy cash on my person because Christmas in the Bay Area had blessed me with an amazingingly generous client that allowed me to get my solo theatre show “Modern Day Asian Sex Slavery” off the ground and have a cabaret with a full jazz band and sexy sex worker burlesque performers…Those are the two big accomplishments of 2011 that I wrote in my list of things that I was proud of having accomplished that year.

The OTHER big one is more recent and carries a different weight for me.  3 months ago I attempted to go on a weed cleanse because I was sick with a cold and had stopped vaporizing for a few days because when I am sick, I don’t really feel like being high because my head is already light, so I took advantage of the 3 day streak I had already started and tried to push myself to continue it for as long as I could.  I vowed that I would go easy on myself if it was a decision to medicate or have a major mental breakdown, I would medicate.  I believe in 3 months I may have vaporized about 3 times only.  but I EAT edibles on the weekends to get high and have fun dancing and enjoying my life as opposed to using weed to just get through each day.

Previously for me, marijuana was the anti-depressant that I felt was the very thread of my survival.  It was painful for me to think of not having it in my system and there were many many times when I would be driving to the dispensaries in LA with tears in my eyes.  I’d sit down with my grinder and vaporizer tube and count backwards 5-4-3-2-1 and then after 2 inhales I would be relieved of my pain, my tears would dry and I would feel better.  Medicated.  Positive thoughts again.  In July of 2011 it was getting really bad for me, the weed was not really working that well.  I was ready to get on psych meds, the intake staff person told me he had an art gallery so I sent him some of my artwork (which is sexually charged) from my phone giving him my number as well and he started pursuing me in hopes of trying to PIMP me.  (he told me he had experience in that game and then ended with a “I’m kidding” when he noticed I reacted negatively). No lie.  My path is full of vultures, I constantly have to breath fire in their face and make them back down.  Thank God for the ability Sprint has to block numbers from calling and texting you.  During the time he was trying to contact me a lot, he had just gotten fired from that place and just got out of  jail for a getting in a fight he casually told me in our 1-2 ever conversations which always ended with a “sweetie” at the end of them.  Remember, pimps can live anywhere, be of any race, age or gender but most noticeably seek you out when you are at your most vulnerable with offers of help and resources.

That center did a half assed intake and never called me again even though they charged me $20.  I wanted my money back!  Apparently, although they didn’t inform me in any way, I guess I wasn’t insane enough to need their help.  I was disenchanted to say the least.  I decided I would try St.Johns Wort and it worked a miracle on me.  A true saint indeed.  As an uninsured American, herbal remedies are the KEY to my survival.  I use St.Johns Wort (SJW) in combination with Passionflower (for anxiety) to ease my pains and it helps me get through each day without marijuana.  I wanted to prepare my body for the baby that I wanted to have in the next 5 years and although I do know mothers who have used weed to term and bore healthy babies I thought it would be better if I cut down.  I NEVER thought I was going to be able to.  My weed use as decreased by 75% with the help of my other herbs and I haven’t had a medical card since August which means I haven’t been able to enter any medical marijuana clubs since then either.  My vaporizer is shelved, my bongs are dusty, my grinders are put away.  I am a marijuana supporter and sympathizer forever but I’m no longer a stoner.  There are no actual weed flowers in the house!  That, to me is amazing.  For me to go 5 straight days without medicating with weed is no less than a miracle.  Its been 3 months and I am still amazed every day.  In previous years when I’d done cleansing experiments, I’d used passionflower to be clean during the day, but then I’d eat an edible every night.  I’d try to make rules saying I would only smoke when the sun was down, but I’d be anxiously awaiting the sunset.  But I wasn’t using SJW yet.   St.Johns Wort helps with mood elevation and depression.  It helps me balance my brain chemistry.  I have been resistant to daily anything in my past.  You couldn’t get me to take vitamins, supplements, birth control pills daily nothing.  I’d forget, I’d skip, I’d stop.  But I take my herbs with my coffee every single day now just like I used to sit there all day in front of my home office computer with my vape tube in my mouth every hour because IT WORKS. and it works well. Some herbal remedies don’t always work on me.  People swear by 5HTP but I tried that and it didn’t do the trick like what I have now.   For me personally, I wanted to go back to a time when marijuana was recreational over the time when weed was something i would fear being without for too long.

Sometimes I still have anxiety and hard times but I’m able to push through them without weed now.  I am stronger.  I made myself stronger and I am proud of myself.  I’m not sober, I’m not clean, I’m just a new version of the same old me.  To not have the kind of depression problems that I have been plagued with for years is such a relief.  If you have never been there, you probably don’t know how dark the darkness feels even in the light.  I would be at the beach trying to lift my mood but I’d still feel hopeless, negative, worried about the future, hearing voices of defeat and the worst lonliness, even when I was trying to fix my situation by try to go out and dance (alone and go home alone w/o conversing with another person), watch a movie (alone) or go eat (alone) or to martial arts or yoga classes.  I would make a log of the time when I’d just sit in the car in the parking lot and feel that there wasn’t anyone in LA who was lonlier than me at that moment.  It is still an ongoing battle for me.   but I am happy to have this under more control.  I just got high yesterday, because, hey it was FRIDAY!!  i started to have inspirations about ideas for new paintings and decided to start painting again.  I was going off on idea after ideas and facebooking manically with joy.  That’s what weed does to me.  The ideas are real.  The ideas are still good.  Its just that now that is not me everyday, the amount of ideas that I spew out are more manageable and realizable.  If I was feeling like that on a daily basis, I noticed I would get frustrated at how I knew I was never going to follow through on these ideas because it would be impossible to manage them all well.  Idea diarrhea got annoying at meetings as well.  I’d be like hating my own interruptions and blurting outs. Fuck I shouldn’t have said that.  o well i just said it.  i wanted to be in total control of my thoughts and actions again.  Before I met my first majorly unhealthy partner at 22 I smoked occasionally and didn’t even own a bong of my own!  But after we broke up was the beginning of my new found lifestyle which I was totally content with and loved.  I will never renounce it.  I’m just happy that I am able to overcome certain difficulties in different ways and the major suffering has eased.  And I don’t rule out that I may go back to those ways, but probably not.  I went from bong to vaporizer for almost 2 years, then SJI/Passionflower and edibles on the weekends.  Weed/drug use is kind of like sex work for me.  I’m not concerned about knowing when it will end, I can’t know that.  I will stop doing what I am doing now when I am no longer doing it.  Period.  I STILL have no regrets about ending friendships to people like Kristina Wong (who tried to shame me into quitting) or my ex roommates at the Basswerks (who ran an intervention on me as a condition to staying in the) house I lived at in LA who made me feel like shit for needing to medicate with marijuana.

I’ve been trying to cut down for years but I couldn’t.  I would not compromise my survival because I knew what I needed to be well.  If I don’t have my herbs I will also start freaking out in the same way I did when I was out of weed because I can feel when I am not medicated.  I am now just medicating with something else.  I am also super relieved that I did not have to get on any expensive and long term destructive pharmaceutical anti-depressants.  I love herbal remedies as well because it fits my budget.  If you are trying to ween yourself off of any substance: TRY PASSIONFLOWER.  It takes the edge and craving off of life and it works.  I swear by it.  I swear by both these herbs just like I used to swear my life on my indica weed.  I was in San Francisco for December 17th “International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers” and Robyn Few, the founder of SWOP was there.  She gathered a circle of known potheads to share in her homegrown joints as usual and I did not partake!  It was the first time in the history of my sex worker activism that I didn’t smoke weed with Robyn Few when she offered.  Robyn’s love and her shameless weed smoking was the reasons that I joined the sex worker rights movement in the first place.  I had finally found my family I thought.  A bunch of loving prostitute stoner women hanging out in a room?  Wut? I’m IN!!!  It was a beautiful thing.  Robyn is still battling cancer with 2 joints in her hand, and I am still battling my demons too but we are both STILL ALIVE and kicking and smiling and looking hot.  SURVIVORS.  I asked her if she would ever stop smoking weed and she replied defiantly,”NEVER.”

This year music and art are my big goals.  I am going to Japan finally for an extended stay THIS YEAR for sure.  6 months to a year.  I’ve decided to leave South Central LA.  Sell my stuff.  go to Japan and make my own cultural journey without my mom’s help.  It is my lunar year.  The year of the dragon. This has got to be big. I will accept nothing less. I stopped going to weekly therapy at the start of 2012 and decided to direct that $25 into paying my pianist and start rehearsing with him on the regular again. time to get this music train BACK on the track with NO excuses.  Music is therapy anyway.  Singing sets me free and gives me immeasurable joy.  I need to do it like my other art forms.  Including my martial arts.  I had done my cabaret in January and then totally abandoned working on live music.  It got reprioritized, like my painting did. I come back to things.  but I don’t always know when.  I just had no desire to paint after I sold the last painting for $1600 and after David Perry died.  he was my painting partner.  my inspiration actually.  he was an awesome painter and the best friend I ever had.  I still miss him.  I make a mantel for his stuff in every house I live in and I told him I was going to paint again.  I said it to the mantel.  I told it to his face which was painted in his paintings.  Wendy Babcock is with him now.  I put her photo on his mantle.  I’m sure he’ll enjoy the company.

I’m already doing an exciting group show at the Aljira Gallery in Newark, NJ near Manhattan NYC and it feels like I’m going to start going somewhere again higher than where I am at now.  The curator is trying to get the show to travel to Boston as well.   There is another show at The Museum of Sex in the nearby NYC area at the the SAME TIME as the one that I am already in that is asking for a call for submissions.   I would simply have an art orgasm if I could actually have two major NYC shows at the same time!  Even just having the one show is amazing.  I am thinking that I am glad that I quit teaching and started focusing on my art and music again.  It is what I was meant to be.  not a teacher.  not a non profity worker.  Mariko Passion.  exactly who I am now.  I want to be singing in a club or restaurant with my pianist this year too.  But this always seems to be a goal.  It’s really nice ot have the visual art thing come back though.  trying to sell my shit in the back of bars and clubs in LA wasn’t going well.

I have decided to start painting again because I have been hit with inspiration for WHAT I would paint.  I haven’t painted for almost 10 years, I gave all my brushes and paints to my sister and quit until…perhaps now.  I’ve done  a  few small projects here and there but nothing has inspired me to start seriously painting the way I used to until yesterday when I get high I had these great ideas that I knew that I would actually follow through on.  These are NOT hallucinations.  It is just easier to produce my great creative ideas when I am not hearing voices from my family’s rejection telling me that I am a fat, can’t sing, too sensitive, wasting my life, not interesting, always broke.  When I am high I am nothing but positive almost always.  and more than that I am a creative genuis!!! At times like last night I wonder why I need to cut down in the first place.  It started with wanting to stop smoking because asthma but I still have asthma even though I don’t smoke or vaporize but its way more in control than last year.  I am always thankful and grateful when the pain is relieved.  I learned how to manage my asthma with plant medicines too.  Lobelia tinctures with water taste like shit but stop the wheezing.  Much better than paying big pharma $200 for an inhaler that lasts a month.  I learned how to use an alternative because I HAD to.  I like it that way actually and am really proud of the many many natural remedies that I have to cure asthma, yeast infections, bladder infections, depression and anxiety!  fuck yea!  I’m an amazing broke girl!  Really.  FUCK BIG PHARMA.

It’s the weekend, I’m high and practicing new songs to sing.  I’m bursting with creative flow and ideas and working on a proposal for the Museum of Sex due in 5 days.  Getting the New Jersey show was the first step.  The Museum of Sex is the 2nd.  The snow storm will follow.  I feel good.  I feel great.  Gonna have the whole world on a plate.

This show must b blessed! (All the whores haven’t burned alive at the SF Sexworkerfest2011)

I hate when i get too busy to post. In the headquarters of the San Francisco sex worker fest. Pre show work mode madness. I have had to miss out 2 cool fun festival events so far. Last night was the opening party and St. James Infirmary benefit. Tonight was the roaming Hookerfest projecting movies in various locations in SF. I got to see old friend/activists who all congregate around Scarlot Harlot..

reading and inculcating my brain of 9 pages of script lines at my favorite SF eatery Chows in the Castro (bread pudding and ginger ice cream?)

I feel like I am on some crazy scavenger hunt like reality show (Work for P Diddy?) where everything that can go wrong will go wrong and you are left to make the best of what you have to work with and very very little time to get it done. Somehow, the DVD I burned for the my theatre show, burned all alias files instead of original files so I had to get my neighbor to give my friend, who happened to be traveling to SF the morning after I arrived for a non sex worker festival reason. With my harddrives in her car, heading past Magic Mountain, one hour outside of LA…her 21 year old friend’s car…BREAKS DOWN! Because they were 21, they couldn’t rent a car so I had to scramble on craigslist to find a rideshare ride to pick up the hard drive. Someone who does regular trips up and down the coast agreed to do it for $75. This meant I would have my harddrive in my hands by evening time. It was probably going to be okay, but I still made the driver of my drives text me every 3 hours just to make sure they hadn’t crashed.

NO MORE BIG DISASTERS. I apparently survived judgment day. Too busy to put dry ice in my shoes but I thought it was a fun idea.

Overall, things during the week went smoothly. I came and did my first long theatre run of my solo show “Modern Day Asian Sex Slavery: the musical.” I felt like it was a big success. Well, let me qualify that, it was a big success to me. Not a white middle class privileged version of success. I didn’t have a line around the corner or 100s of people there. I didn’t sell out shows or make lots of money. I did work very little to bring in the 15-20 heads that showed up to pay $15-20 each night for the Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival and that was a success to me (more a success of the festival and Carol Leigh’s hard work). I saw LOTS of very important people in my life come out to support. I got a great editorial piece in the SF Weekly about it the night of the show. This was a huge success to me considering that even in sex worker savvy San Francisco, an Asian sex worker speaking directly about the perception of Asian sex work is still mostly absent in the media and mainstream communities. When Gavin Newsom orders raids on massage parlors, my Asian American SF State UC Berkeley City College sisters are actually nodding their heads in approval thinking that they are saving victims.

I had a political and artistic interpretation to communicate and I did that with a very targeted audience which was mostly empathetic to the cause. I’m positive that my show and working with me made an impact on two young interns at the CSC who happened to also be women of Asian descent, one just home from college to volunteer and learn! This definition of success is how I have always done my sex worker and artistic activism, because the mainstream definition has not always been an option for me and I have had to reshape it accordingly in order to keep having the motivation to believe that my work ALWAYS makes a difference in the lives of SOME people out there. It is how I motivate myself to continue to try. I don’t do it for the money or because it is a popular cause, that’s for sure.

This way of defining success comes from my time as a teacher with ‘at risk’ high school students. I had to find value in the short one on one, interpersonal relationships that I sometimes had with my students. There were many students that I would form a bond with and suddenly after 3 weeks or 2 months they would disappear. They may have dropped out, been shot, transferred to another school, kicked out, sent to juvenile detention, etc. Was your impact on this student successful? Yes. The social justice school of Education cohort that I was taught in would say yes. I still live in the neighborhood that I once taught in, and am now adult friends with several of my former students. To me, one of the marks of a good teacher is how much current and former students keep up with them outside of class. This is how I was mentored by the teachers models (professors) that I had. Social justice education/outreach is about interpersonal impact and often transient but significant teachable moments. White middle class education and success means getting a diploma and a “good” job.

I made this show a friendship test of sorts. This was a big artistic milestone in my life and my 35th birthday and you kind of needed to be there for this or say something about it, if we were really friends. I understand people are busy but it was a 4 day run and I at least expected a text message or Facebook message excuse. If I heard nothing, then I felt that the bond that I had with those that I had invited could not be that strong. I have been recently grappling with figuring out who my real friends and support network really were, since my asthma attack at Dinah Shore. I have been grappling with the meaning of Facebook friends and status updates, I have been arguing with the members of SWOP-LA. (which I recently cut all ties to).

I have begun taking St.Johns Wort (SJW) for “mood stabilizing” and it has really made extremely difficult and tense situations seem lucid and manageable. I am the newest victim to big Pharma because of the asthma medication that I need seems to think charging folks $180 for a months supply is fair. (considering millions of people need it in order to breathe, insurance does not cover it, and no generic version is available). I am resistant to being dependent on any prescription medications that are not herbal. My counselor suggested that I consider taking anti-depressant pharmaceuticals and I went as far as the intake appointment and paid $15 for it. It went nowhere because I was disqualified for being a counseling client elsewhere even though the place that I currently went had no psychiatric services available. Counselors and therapists are pseudo monogamous relationships. If you cheat on your mental health professional because you simply need more support, you need to keep it on the DL. The SJW caps I take most afternoons seem to be doing the trick. In the pits of my recent depression, I felt that not even cannabis was helping. I was willing to try new things, but hoped that I could try less harmful or expensive things first and they would work. SJW is supposed to inhibit the effectiveness of your other medications, particularly the ones that use your liver somehow. I noticed that my edibles did not fuck me up the way they used to! I noticed that my alcohol tolerance was MUCH higher. Mostly I noticed that the need to burst into tears or be apathetic or be overly self critical seemed to quiet down.  The potency of the words of others and any criticism seemed to just glide past me, especially if I had already processed it to be false or unfounded.

Our minds and bodies are connected. My physical health is often determined by my mental health. My body cannot lie.

My kindergarten friend/prom date Jon did the spot light for me (he has stepped up to help with tech stuff at other musical productions of mine in high school too!) and my 9th grade boyfriend/FIRST sexual partner was there too! My sister and her partner came, my dad came out to TWO shows and lots other friends and fellow activists as well.  A non English speaking Chinese man looking for a underground gambling hall also gave his $15 donation to see my show though he probably couldn’t understand it! The new Center for Sex and Culture space was a squatted in unleased building used for Chinese born Chinese gambling circuits complete w/ a piss trough and brothel rooms! He was like a relic from the Gold Rush days offering his support for my revitalized legacy!
Eventually the show is going to portray Madam Ah Toy, the legendary Gold Rush era madam, the first Chinese/American whore revolutionary. This guy kind of reminded me that San Francisco’s Chinese immigration history, including its history in “sex trafficking and slavery” includes the historical account of Madam Ah Toy, notorious and respected Chinese prostitute that somehow managed to have white privilege in ways that even other white women and even male Chinese (coolies) did not.

epiphanies

i’m limiting my facebook time to 15 minutes everyday.
a change of pace.
it means i’ll be writing more here.

understanding, analyzing and identifying MY MANIA! (patterns of manic behavior) comes like some sort of GREAT RELIEF to my psyche. Now, I am just self diagnosing myself here but i am on the road to getting a real psychiatric evaluation, but the process for the uninsured low income folks has to be an ardous one.

The feeling I’ve had lately with this self diagnosis is comprable to the feeling I had once I realized that the chronic coughing that I had been doing for 4 months in 2010 was an ASTHMATIC COUGH not a whooping cough, a cold or a side effect of my bong smoking. The feeling I had once I had come to terms with my many instances of sexual assault/abuse before 21 and had committed to working with a counselor towards healing the past and becoming stronger to survive the inevitable imperfect future…the beginning of identifying as a survivor.

I had always known I had anxiety and depression, but had never until Jessie took over SWOP-LA did I start to see that I had these manic leadership tendencies that really stunted the growth of many of the projects that I’ve started. Manic people do amazing and brilliant things though, do not underestimate our abilities! I feel liberated in identifying a pattern, but scared that every great idea is just mania and needs to be controlled with someone silencing me. like i shouldn’t raise my hand anymore. is this what psyche medication will do?

one of the peer counselors at the domestic violence/rape crisis center I started going to after breaking up with the crazy abusive ex suggested that I have ‘borderline personality disorder,’ which wasn’t curable and could be improved with the support of group therapy.

i watched a few youtube videos on a few different personality disorders and I did not see myself as having borderline personality disorder AT ALL. Her misdiagnosis could be so potentially damaging to another client who wasn’t as analytical and fact checking as i was. This counselor just did not really understand my drug use and sex work behavior. She did not understand that the period of self destuction had everything to do with the sexual abuse that occurred from my martial arts instructor.

The borderline personality is characterized by the feeling of “walking on eggshells” around an unstable person who could snap. one day they LOVE this person/husband/girlfriend and the next day they HATE them, they broke up with them, they’re throwing their stuff out the window, etc. They are deathly afraid of being alone. This describes one of my friends really well, and explains why she keeps going back to her abusive husband with co-dependent boyfriends in between. This personality disorder is believed to be created or [un]nurtured by abuse or neglect in childhood. I may have had some of those traits when I was early early in my dating career from 16-21. the time period before sex work. the golden innocent but naive era of my life. when i cared about what men thought and said about me. The period where my happiness often revolved around liking a guy and whether he liked me back. It seemed like he had all the power over me back then and it wasn’t until I started hustling lapdances that I finally got my power back. But that’s a different epiphany….

while i was researching on youtube i started looking at manic depression/bipolar videos. Manic 1/Bipolar 1 clients I have had lots of. I have been elated to princess of the week by two extremely manic sugar daddy clients. I am typing on a MacBook Pro I was gifted, can boast of being flown to Vale, Tampa, new snowboard boots, 5 star dinners…I was Sasha Gray for a week! high class escort for a month and then a piece of forgotten shit the next! O well. I still have all the things and the memories! I never saw myself in this man. I was much healthier than him, i thought…

we are all crazy. just different levels of crazy. finding compatible pathologies and mating. pair bonding in dysfunction and semi function or living life alone. My friend might be a borderline personality but I care about her, am still her friend and want her to get out of her abusive relationships and heal. but i don’t spend too much time on trying to fix her. We don’t hang out that much but i try to support her, and in turn, she does well in trying to support me but each of us has our plates full with our own stuff.

I love the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland. When the Mad Hatter character has MANIA he starts spouting off Scotish soliloquies until Alice and his other friends make him snap out of it by calling his name so that he calms down. I remember having to do this with my late best friend David. He would paint for days and then sleep for days. He would mash his teeth and go off on literal mad tangents just like Johnny Depp portrayed but in such a lovable, non alienating way that you accepted it as part of him and wanted him to know that he was still lovable and talented, though he was mad. David wasn’t as mad as the Hatter, he would break out in spot on Chris Farley impersonations who no doubt was also manic but it was his mania that made him hilariously famous! My best friend David was equally brilliant as Johnny Depp, and most definitely bipolar. I am the one who introduced him to medicating with marijuana. His paintings transformed from dark, grey and green Francis Bacon (screaming zombie like figures stabbing themselves) type of paintings with suicidal themes to happy, funny stoner paintings, brilliant, bright colors, equally skilled but clearly riddled with so much less mental pain. Marijuana is medicine. It helped him, it helps me and so many others but sometimes, some of us need a little more. “DAVID!!” me and his girlfriend would yell…and he would stop doing the Flashdance chair scene in the restaurant because our table was ready…”What? What? Was I ‘going off’ again?” he’d say. “Yes, calm down. Restaurant. table’s ready.” we’d say laughing as we all headed to our table. When you are unmedicated and the world is nothing but dark and hopeless, how could it be bad to feel better, especially if the substance that medicates you does not destroy you at the same time.

I feel like I am going back in my own timeline and noticing all the times my mania was controlling my decision making and driving me to the point of burnout or inevitable failure. Sometimes at the last minute, I will look on the schedule of my martial arts school and find out that the next class is in 25 minutes and rush rush rush to try to make it, run in 10 minutes late, fight for an hour and then and only then do I calm down on the drive home. I inhale cannabis AFTER my workout, take a hot shower or bath and wait for the phone to ring. Sometimes I do all that rushing to class and I am too late and I end up getting angry at myself for always being late! Its like I get an emergency telegram to my brain and it RUNS with it vigorously for a couple of hours and then stops. I think I use the marijuana to calm myself down as well as to help with the depression, although at times being stoned has increased my mania, increased my good idea outbursts at meetings and increased my dominating the room or conversation with jokes or performances. People definitely think that I am funny and have good ideas, but they rarely get on board with them and now I know why! It’s almost like I need to call my own name and calm myself down when I begin to “go off” and start envisioning fire department permits so we can have Burningman style flame throwers and live amplification in West Hollywood for the next December 17th Day of Rememberance.

i have had clients with borderline personalities, in my last relationship i fell in love with an undiagnosed schizophrenic who may have had borderline as well, and have lived with a mother who went completely mad for over a year but somehow came back but not nearly quite back to normal. The videos say that the best way to be X is to be raised by X. This is true for alcoholism, abusive patterns and mental illness it seems. Most of my exes are codependents and this man that I was most recently attracted to is also a codependent but with interesting talents, a job, a car and more direction than most of them have ever been.

Escorting has a lot of head games. A borderline personality type client will say they are coming to an appointment, they are on their way, getting off of the first light, and then oops, they’re cancelling at the last minute. What makes them borderline and not just regular clients who are flaky though has to do with the story that they spin and weave you into BEFORE this manipulation. They pretend to empathize with your situation, they will haggle your rate down knowing it degrades you, and then on top of that they will cancel at the last minute. They feel that if they let you down before you let them down they have somehow survived something. Or maybe they never had the money in the first place and were just playing a game with you. I am in contact with a lot of head cases as both a sex worker and as a sex worker activist. But perhaps it’s because I am also crazy and only crazy people can tolerate crazy, but our pathologies have to match up!

The feast or famine pattern of sex work IS MANIC DEPRESSION defined. How could it not be depressing to be unable to pay your rent on time, pay bills that you normally can pay, to not be able to do destressing activities like workout in martial arts and yoga so you don’t feel so much anxiety? How could it not be elating to suddenly have money to pay doctor bills, buy needed prescriptions, pay musicians to back you up in gigs that you have coming, pay a director to get your solo theatre show off the ground and premiered to the public? I reasoned that if you were not manic before you started sex work, independent sex work and (stripclub stripping also has this pattern) will CREATE symptoms of manic depression in anyone. But maybe this is just the way it is for everyone who runs their own business. When I worked for the agency 4 days a week and took indy calls on the side it was way less manic, but crazier in a different way. (you can never win).

I get soo excited by men (and women, really) who are above and beyond because I’ve dated such low men on the totem pole. When the “ideal man with the ideal job/house/car” that I had a mad crush on called me back to talk I felt incredibly insecure about my class and my work and any future we could have. He would never accept or like a girl like me, I knew it. I can’t keep my mouth shut about my bohemian lifestyle. It emanates out of my person even when I am not speaking. I suddenly realized why I sometimes shoot low, and crawl into bed with a sancho that I nicknamed my LAME (but sweetie). I get to see him whenever he feels like making time for me, which is randomly about twice a month. He makes me feel great in limited doses until something true comes along. He reverse escorted me somehow. I use him for short term Boyfriend experiences. (BFE)s and it is good for what it is because I have zero expectations. I care about him more than he cares about me. Sometimes, I wish I could make him better or somehow up his game and fall in love with me and do those things that people do for people that they love, but he never will. But when he is there for me it’s soothing and nice. It keeps me from being undergoodsexed and lonely. He’s not capable or interested in having a relationship with me or anyone, and it’s really okay because he’s pretty inadequate as a temporary boyfriend as it is (...youd rather change your own windshield wiper blade than see his weak ass whiny reaction to your request). The relationships that he had had not been as demanding as one with me would be. We are very different. We don’t talk about art and music. He likes the Lakers, gambling (throwing money away) at casinos and watching ESPN on a big screen TV (i don’t own a TV) are fun to him. (Bleah..) We talk about wrestling entertainment and laugh and have a great time staying in bed all sunny day (with real boyfriends I would be going on hikes or to the beach) having lots of orgasmic great sex, sleeping cuddled together, showering and making out. We go to dinner and I go home fulfilled and wanting more but am always denied. I bitch at him like I’m his baby mama sometimes but neither of us have a kid together nor are we even in a relationship tho it’s the way we interact. I even tax him when he pisses me off and he pays me a little cash so I will keep seeing him. That’s what gives it that baby mama vibe that I’m sure would be the same whether or not I had a kid or not. He helped pay for my engine repair and from that night he became my favorite client and slowly won over my heart. Money, (when someone gives me the money I need in a desperate situation) is also a trigger for MY codependence. Orgasms are also another way to keep me hooked! I am really amazed and proud that I easily trained this man from being a painfully shitty lover to the first guy to give me 9 orgasms in 12 years, so in that way I literally feel like if I can coach him to success in the bedroom, why not outside the bedroom as well? My favorite line is,”If you aren’t going to put the effort in making this like a real relationship then you gotta pay me to be your whore.” and he does. otherwise Fuck the sex. and the intimacy. RIGHT?? sometimes. something about this unattractive mediocre man is so irresistible to me….sigh.

Money (not having money suddenly) is my trigger. The borderline will say come come come come come come and at the last minute push you away and say, never mind. You can see how this can INFURIATE the wrong person into a fit of rage. Sometimes I have been that wrong person and its because I felt manipulated by them dangling a carrot and having me follow it and denied at the last minute. One of my ex boyfriends did that to me once and I nearly broke up with him because the situation led me to an outburst early on in our dating. A client that was going to be the first client in a dry spell of almost 2 weeks with little or no income decided that he would cancel in my face without giving me gas money and then turn around, run in the house and slam his door in my face as I chased after him. I started to kick his gate on his front door while I rang the doorbell vigorously. I was yelling shamelessly revealing what I did and that I needed the money, i Pleaded with him to open the door…and he did. And we went from that to a multi-hour appointment and me selling him a couple LINES of coke for $50. (like buying a beer at a baseball game, I charge A LOT). I did a couple lines with him like I usually do. I had an appointment in the Valley to escape to. I sped up the 101, flipping through my ipod and switching my air from hot to cold every five seconds. When I got to the gas station at the Universal Citywalk exit, I parked and reclined my chair to relax and think.

Thoughts raced through my blood into and through my brain…

I was too jacked up to see a client now.

I stayed in the car and put my phone on silent. The prospective clients hotel was 5 minutes away, but I chose to pass on the call and try to calm myself out of the anxiousness I was feeling from just 2 lines of coke, which usually doesn’t give me a rise like that.

This was the 2nd call since my mushroom meltdown that I had had to pass on for safety reasons. I was too jacked up to drive and the anxiety that coke sometimes brings on is crazy for someone who already HAS anxiety…! I know some of you don’t get the continued desire to use. Like living queer youth, it does get better. I love the numbing effects and the ride slowly up is light but euprhoric..the down is usually not so bad, especially with the pop of xanax as a calming aid…but lately its not been fun at the top. and that’s when we know it’s time to stop.

I decided to take a drug break. TWO TIMES now I have had to pass on seeing clients because of drugs. Drugs getting in the way of my money? Not acceptable.

I did this in january. They last about a month. A month and a half. In a period of 120 days, 100 of those days I will be offered drugs to do, often for free.

Fits of rage are exhausting. By the time I dated him, I was no longer willing to fight and yell with anyone that I was in a relationship with on a regular basis. I was not afraid to be alone. Being around him was like walking on eggshells. One moment we were in love, the next he was texting me verbal assaults and calling me out of my name with death threats. I thought that HE was a borderline. BP people make good abusers or good abusive partners. Abuse to honeymooon. Rage to honeymoon. Repeat. Not me. I did 2.5 months of that shit and threw it back in the trash. (well it wasn’t that easy, but anyway..)

I think if i can recognize my shortcomings I will be able to work on them better. If I recognize my pathologies I will be able to control their effects on me and others around me. I will understand why I tend to get fired at jobs so quickly and why my relationships attract codependent and helpless men. I am scared of psych meds. scared of losing my sex drive. I am scared of my asthma inhalers and the detrimental effects of steroids. Scared of the price. Scared of how to have a sober pregnancy when I depend on marijuana and asthma steroids everyday. I have no choice now in taking those as they change my daily physical state daily with or without them. My depression is certainly affected by the level of asthma sickness I have in any given day or week. I am dependent on these drugs to breath. 10 minute coughing fits and feeling like you might pass out at a party is depressing. The weed helps but it has not been strong enough lately. I am doing much much better now after having these epiphanies and finally making some money.

Money makes so many things possible and better in my life. I am working everyday to eliminate this cyclical pattern and make it less painful for me. My health is currently much better than it was in Palm Springs. I changed inhalers to a stronger one. A flurry of clients came 4 days in a row to ease the finnancial deficit. Her misdiagnosis was a blessing in disguise.

TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY.. I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO USE MY PEPPER SPRAY

didn’t have to stun gun the attacker away,

i asked for a cancellation fee and there wasn’t shit that he had to say…

Just Kidding.  My good day today had NOTHING really to do with sex work directly because I wasn’t working at all.  I spent the WHOLE DAY IN SELF CARE AND IT WAS WONDERFUL.  I am the QUEEN of self care.  I know how to love me.  Why?  Because I have lived a lifetime lacking LOVE from others.  I have mostly been single, and I am the youngest black sheep child in a pretty normal Asian American family.  (Lonely, no touching or I Love yous)  This is NOT crying victim.  This is accepting and taking pride in survival.

I had VICIOUS cramps the night before and bled through my sweat pants twice in one night.  I am trying out my new Diva Cup which is not disposable like the Instead cup and you can’t have sex on it but it is more ECO FRIENDLY because you wash it and reuse it.  When I woke up I thought there would be a dead fetus on my bed beside me it was so intense.  I had ripped open one of those camping heat warmers and placed it directly on my womb and finally I was able to sleep.  Immediately I dreamt of having a baby and I saw my potential future baby daddies, my gay male bff from elementary school and his new love of his life.  They were both holding a hand of mine while I screamed in the worst pain that I had EVER EVER EVER EXPERIENCED.  The room was filled with orange light which helped to calm me from the excruciating pain that I was feeling in my abdomen.  But somehow I was achieving sleep comforted by remnants of dreams of the love and friendship I had felt from so many people in the SF Bay over the holiday vacation.

On Christmas I had spent my quality time with my mother for the obligatory few hours that we could have in common.  She retreated to her room to read her bible, so I jumped on backpage to place escort ads on Christmas Day sort of out of shits and giggles as if anyone was going to really be worthy as a client on Christmas.  I was inPhoenix, Arizona on Thanksgiving doing the same thing and it didn’t amount to anything.  Why would Christmas be any different.  It turned out this client was going to be me hitting “paydirt” my Christmas present.  4 days ago I was barely able to leave Southern California and I had resorted to painting my entire family of 10 small canvas paintings because 10 canvas boards were on sale at Michaels for $20 and I was going to be too broke to BUY these kids who had parents that could and probably would buy them whatever toy or material thing that they wanted.  I was painting small portraits for the kids waiting for the phone to ring with my last client who would give JUST enough cash to pay for gas and a couple days in town before i’d have to go fishing again.  I’d resorted to beg/texting some regulars or white list guys who were of course also broke and couldn’t help.   Funny that my client calls ME his ‘paydirt” but er, i’m going to have to beg to differ.  If 350,000 a year is a bad year then my lifetime goal is a piece of shit in Skid Row. (human shit, you know the kind that you squint at piled near the side of a building going, that’s human shit, no toilet paper just skid marks.  real ones).

It’s funny that money really really has so much to do with my well being and sanity.  I’d like to get out of this pattern, and it really doesn’t JUST depend on money, but money really DOES GET THE BALL ROLLING and it really does CREATE A BARRIER SO YOU CANNOT TRAVEL AS FAST AS YOU’D LIKE TO.

Today I FINALLY made a Western Medicine Asthma doctor’s appointment with the money I made from my Christmas Sugar Daddy Client.  I told the receptionist I didn’t have insurance and that I was paying cash, and low and behold there was a 50% cash discount!  Amazing.  My appointment, prescriptions, treatment and all KINDS OF FREE SAMPLES including inhalers and a neti pot totalled $375 + $16 for parking so about $400.

I felt and breathed better instantly and it was like I WAS on one of those MIRACLES OF CHRIST shows where I am crippled and start walking again.  Well, it’s the prednisone shot, which I used to get when I would have eczema flare ups in college.  The problem with the prednisone is it is like COCAINE.  It reduced inflammation and makes everything that ails you better (I mean everything asthma, eczema, nasal congestion and swelling just immediately HEALS).  BUT THEN IT RETURNS and you go back to where you were but not as bad.  So the cure is sort of like a false sense of hope and it ultimately frustrated me.  I’m still only breathing in the machine at 48% the capacity of a non asthmatic after one day of treatment.  But I’m sure it will only get better.  My asthma has not been this bad in ten years.  I never really needed an inhaler.  I managed to survive throughout childhood without one.  I tried but it was wasted on me.  I found out today that they each cost $200!  The doctor gave me two one month inhalers which I’ll probably end up using for 6 months.

I forgot that DOCTORS AND TEACHERS are the ultimate philanthropists.  I am SO FUCKING BITTER.  I forgot that there are givers like me, whose life calling and destiny it is to help others feel LESS PAIN IN LIFE.  And they do this unconditionally easily if they can and at the expense of themselves sometimes if no one stops them.

I need to stop the bitterness.  Maybe all the goodness that happened today was just a constant reminder of that.

So I make my appointment for the asthma doctor with a big smile because I learn that it is only going to be around $375 which is totally affordable to me and worth it as I have been coughing for 2.5 months and am sounding really really sick to a lot people around me. I tried to quit SMOKING the bong,pipe, joints or anything that burned and cut down my cannabis use by 2/3s  for exactly that amount of time and there was very little improvement.  In fact, the asthma ATTACK part is less severe when I smoke marijuana more frequently.  the way that I cough is less severe to the lungs.  I don’t feel like I am going to suffocate at the peak of the cough and I don’t get woken up at 6am coughing until 10am, which then makes me sometimes need to sleep til 1 or 2pm.  I read that cannabis subdues a part of the brain that makes you cough like that.  This is why they say smoking weed can be good for asthmatics.

I step out into 62 degree sunny Los Angeles (after battling the cold and A COLD in San Francisco’ and Renos freezing winter) and someone had found my prescription sunglasses that I had misplaced ($350) and left them on my front stoop!  I was soo excited because I had also misplaced my regular glasses at this Christmas client’s house and we coud not find them anywhere either.  So I was out of all sources of glasses for the entire week, leaving me dependent on my contacts which I really should limit to wearing 12 hours a day for optimum health and comfort.  Yay!  I wouldn’t have to spend money replacing my favorite prescription sunglasses.  Thank you Good people of South Central LA for returning my glasses.  maybe my neighbor or the weekly gardner, who are good people essentially.

Next was my drs appointment which just went great.  I felt better after being hooked up to various machines and I inhaled steroids and they shot it in my butt cheek and the drugs did their Western medicine magic.  I knew they would I just didn’t have the money to afford it and I knew it wouldn’t be like a $60 acupuncture treatment that I hoped would solve it.  Or a $28 bottle of asthma pills at Whole Foods.

I ate a delicious vegan ‘chicken run ranch’ burger at my favorite college hangout Native Foods.  I love to eat.  Love to reward myself with food seratonin.  It was getting late and I wasn’t going to get to see my favorite mechanic who had recently saved my engine.  The check engine lite was on for some reason and it wasn’t lack of oil.  I’d been driving a lot.  From LA to Arizona to Vegas to SF to REno to LA. Phew.  I love my Sasha Gray and she loves me.  2 new used tires recently.  tomorrow we will wash her finally and take her to see why the engine light is on.

So the Plan B was Olympic Day Spa, my favorite womens only Korean soak massage ritual.  I am a bath goddesss.  Its part of the Japanese and Korean culture VERY strongly and not so much in the other ASian cutlures that I know of but still present.  (When i was in Taiwan and China, Vietnam, Thailand it was hard to find bathhouses).  I spent 2 hours soaking and splashing around.  I got a 30 minute massage which i REALLY needed because I had actually THROWN OUT MY BACK COUGHING SO HARD on New Years Eve.  I felt the vertebrae go up and down and walking all day the next day was a challenge.  Add in all the drugs I did that week and you have yourself a wrecked hot mess. When I came home New Years Day I could barely move around Allyn’s tiny apartment. This was alllll about healing that mess.  I met and have gotten along great with his new Vietnamese nail salon boyfriend and the three of us slept together them cuddling me too but allowing them their romantic space.  We were 3 pigs in a blanket, a queen bed with a mattress foam pad that felt like heaven to my back after trying to party like I was 22 at the age of 34.  When i come down from ecstasy, cuddling is such a part of the essential healing that i need and love.  I think doing lots of e with my then best friends is what was so important to being a healed adult while I lived in San Francisco becoming an activist, a survivor, a sex worker…I exchanged love and healing that I needed so badly and we became so close as a result.  I fell in LOVE with my best female friend because I thought, in the same way that escort clients think you love them, that this was real girlfriend for life potential. with Allyn and his boyfriend I am trying hard to see a family in our future because it is time for me to start thinking that way.  I have to just jump and go.  Or else I will be 40 and the chances of me doing this right are going to get slimmer.  Especially since i want to keep using cannabis while pregnant.  The 2/3 cut down experiment was part of that transition.  I’ve regressed since, but I understand that limitation of use is possible with Passionflower pills as an anxiety substitute.  I’m not going to beat myself up, i’m just going to try to think about how to bring a child into the world as a pot smoking, bisexual, polyamorous, jet setting, artist sex worker activist.

I was so happy to be exhaling in bliss my wheezing was not as present finally this time.  I tried to use the spa treatment as the ONLY medicine a month ago.  Trying to spend extra time in the hot and wet saunas as an alternative.  But if the doctor gave me as much PREDNISONE as she did it was already in a state of URGENCY that I didn’t realize.  I walked out of the doctors office with all my “free gifts” smiling and happy happy happy that I was able to breath so much better than when I came in AND that paying her the $375 check was nothing to me at the moment of my recent CASHOLA from Christmas.

I got my prescritions filled at a drugs store across from the One HOur Eyeglass place because I was going to need new glasses ASAP because I didn’t think i was going to find my lost ones.  My mom gave me a spare jacket on christmas before I left her house and I found them in the pocket of THAT JACKET!  I must have forgotten that I was wearing them, because Christmas client and I started out our date drinking champagne and I totally forgot that I had that jacket on during that night.  I don’t usually do that many over night dates in a row.  It throws off my sense of time and space completely because I am really a home baser.  In the parking lot across the street from the eye glass place I find my glasses so I just saved myself $200 and 2 hours trying to get replacement prescription glasses!!  What are the chance of finding your presrption sunglasses and glasses in the SAME DAY!!!?

AFter the spa, I asked one of my artist friends Saria Idania to meet for dinner so I could pick her brain about ideas on how to create a successfull one woman show.  I had just decided to really try to kickstart my own one woman show writing this year and by going to Saria’s show I would be pressured and inspired enough to go home and write my own in time for my February booked gig at Long Beach State.  I had no idea that she would offer to be the DIRECTOR of the show!! I was sooo happy because the process of looking for a director when I have never BEFORE HAD A DIRECTOR was a very very daunting process INDEED.  We talked for hours and hours about ideas and activities and she gave me homework and I was so excited about life and art and motivation was surging through my veins….It is the essence of being an artist, this feeling.  We already have a rehearsal schedule and a budget, and again paying her a reasonable fee for her time is now a doable prospect because of my recent client.  Hallelujiah, perhaps the decision to attend her one woman show by myself on a Friday night that I had to work later was the greatest thing that I could have done in 2010.

And now I lay me down at 4am…

There are good and great people.

that LOVE ME.

I did a gig in LA and FOUR of my friends showed up!  That’s a lot if you perform a lot.  I was ELATED.  I had just returned from SF and spent lots of time with my great friends, one of them a friend I had known SINCE KINDERGARTEN that I had never partied or done drugs with ever before.  He thought the people at the End Up were “interesting” and he is trying to get me to take him to Burningman for the FIRST TIME.  I haven’t gone in 6 years and i have gone to 5 total.   One woman a sex worker activist from Thailand that I hadn’t seen in 6 years still sexy at 50 something telling me she’s going to come to LA and be a hoe with me!  I took Scarlot Harlot, my dear whore mother to get her first pedicure!  I met and bonded with many new boyfriends and girlfriends and even one that read this blog and decided as a result that she didn’t want to have anything to do with me.  Oh well.  Some people will never see my light.  It’s ok.  My gig last night was amazing.  The venue was beautiful.  I am enterting 2011 with hope, happiness, love, light, laughter, slow but sure health…xoxoxox year of the rabbit hop on hop on

DISCLOSURE

i think this needs to be a song…for all my POS people everywhere!

DISCLOSURE..

Will it bring us closer or will it be how I lose you?

Forgive me, I still like to believe it doesn’t exist

that I can love you like everyone else

I was so scared to break it to you after we kissed

DISCLOSURE

please just hold me closer

the last person tried to use it to put me down

said if they knew they would never stick around

it damaged my being and my whole

“Keep Spreading the Love” he said.

cutting my soul.

DISCLOSURE

It’s more complicated than you think

you ask me to confess

I feel my heart sink

I walk like you, I talk like you, I dream like you, I fuck like you..I wanna fuck like you…I want to fuck you.

NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LOVE YOU

You are only damaged goods

you can pass at the party but you have a secret you should be ashamed of..

Or so they say

but anyway

guys are dogs and women lie so lets just assume so it’s no surprise

DISCLOSURE

I just want you to see me for me

not create an indentity out of whether or not I have an STD

DISCLOSURE

I hope to God you just don’t give a damn

and we can swallow each toher whole and you can love me for who I am…

Life is a choice..

or so the rhetoric goes..

I turned down a trick last night. (I call them tricks when I am purposely trying to disrespect them) I could have made part of the cash that I desperately need for the rent but I didn’t.  I didn’t even consider it even as broke as I am.  He was not an agency trick, he was an independent deal who was a friend of a drug using regular that I used to have before he cut me off.  or did I cut him off?  He was the same as they all were..manipulative, abusive, demanding, annoying annoying..annoying.  but he was one of my bread and butters and why I am suffering so much right now is to be able to have the strength to turn down all the negative aspects of sex work and preserve my remaining sense of self.  Sounds good in theory doesn’t it?  Well, that was his friend..not him.

This one who called me last night got a special deal one time and I endured it for at least 2 hours because he was a friend of my regular.  I gave him 2 hours for a dirt cheap hourly rate and he still complained.  Drug users are the most annoying because they are so fucking whiny and hard to please.  But ONLY really dangerous if they can actually fuck.  Drug users who have functional erections are the enemy of the bottom sex worker (anal/vaginal receptor) because they usually wear you RAW and will complain and complain for hours while they do it, telling you every 10 minutes that they are “about to” cum but they never do.  In fact I had to finally jump up, jump into the bathroom, lock the door and say,”that’s it, you’re DONE NOW. I’m leaving.”  When this dude woke me up in the middle of the night, I envisioned what it would be like if I saw him again. the thought made me grimace in my sleep.  Usually I wouldn’t answer the phone, but because my call forwarding is disabled cuz of my brokeness I can’t screen calls as well…He is a predator to vulnerable girls like me.  He has preyed on others before I know it..He never wants me to come over, he always talks about “swooping me up” in his car, and there is always “a buddy” involved.  He lives far away and swoops up these girls and does drugs with them and fucks them to they can’t walk the next day…thus is the difference between trading sex for drugs or money and sex WORK.   Some of us have the privilege to even call it and run it like a business and make it sex WORK.  But even us sex workers sometimes cross over to the other side very easily.. His world is the underground.  the trade.  the street.  No review boards, no hourly rates, not even always safe sex or respect of boundaries…Just drugs and sex for hours, and maybe a couple hundred dollars when you get dropped off.  For my girls in the row, it’s probably $20.  It is the devil knocking on my door, banging on my bedroom window while I am sleeping.  (thanks for reading this, writing it has helped me hold my ground.)

On the other hand, drug users who are SEXUALLY CASTRATED by drugs have been my “favorite” because they just require you to listen to their annoying high as a kite banter and play with their body in erotic non penetrative (for you that is) ways for hours on end.  And since they are high and their erection doesn’t work, they always want to be fisted or fucked in the ass with a strap on, which is actually my favorite fetish!

And they are throwing their money at me like I am a stripper in a rap video and all I have to do is listen, nod my head, order room service and ride them around like a donkey in the hotel room while we do lines (of course I’ll do some, to earn trust so I can have this venture but I haven’t been doing them for 3 days straight like he has) and drink mimosas.  Easy.  (I think this way of making money is one of my fetishes too…in phonesex we call it finnancial domination..this is the same, but subversive and over the course of hours not minutes…

Last nite this trick calls and I am reminded of how long of a “one hour” session it really was and how I have avoided his calls since the last time because he “accidentally” tried to stick his dick in my ass while we were fucking vaginally MORE THAN ONCE.  Those are the shadiest accidents by guys who can only have anal sex by these “accidental” slippages.  In my book it’s a sexual assault or at least a violation of my body boundaries which is an automatic ban from my life, personal or professional.  (I just remembered also that he revealed to me in our conversating that he fucks girls under 18 and he is 35 or something! Yuck.  I always hated guys like him with a passion for some reason, even though that type of age gap is totally acceptable in a lot of other cultures, just not Western).

I don’t have anal sex with paid clients because it’s too personal of an experience (It hurts, it hurts, then I cum!) to share with clients because I don’t like to be vulnerable to them in more ways than I am already.  I don’t even really do anal in my personal life as I’ve gotten older.   Yeah, I can do anal…for about 7 minutes, then after I orgasm the pain becomes just pain and no pleasure so you need to get your cock out of me or else I’m going to be mad.  But, it’s still something I will do with special personal lovers only.  It used to be easier, but now it just hurts.  Go figure.  I like to watch in awe on Redtube, but know I could never be a porn star.  Not in this life.

“Why do you see guys like that?” All the better than thou sex workers would ask me. “It’s sooo bad for your self-esteem.” she said.  BECAUSE BITCH, I don’t have a choice!  Guys like that pay the best.  I don’t have the luxury to only work during the day, or to only take sober clients, or clients I am attracted to..This is a capitalist and cut throat business, especially in LA.  It is a race to the bottom to be the most profitable here, (not unlike the current national healthcare system) unless of course you have the privilege of being that $1200/hr girl, who gets 1 client a week which most of us don’t.  And all those high dollar girls, I just have to wonder how much business they get..  I have never made any stack of money where drug use, hustling, cutting short, upselling, bitching out and sometimes being ruthless was NOT involved.  On a good nite, it would just be mellow and easy drug users.  Easy to please ones.  Good [not bad!] coke…

Cocaine is so unpredictable, but I can sometimes sip it like tea and still keep my head on.  And when that doesn’t work, pop a valium to get to sleep.  I am a pro functional drug user, I believe with no major addictions. (Yes, I am “addicted” to marijuana, but I believe it is a medicine).  I can hold on to some drugs for a rainy day rave and not do them for months.  Cocaine and outcalls are like amos and andy, I think..or ebony and ivory.. this only applies to workers and outlaws on the street level, of course, not in that VIP jetsetter no drug using world that I know nothing about.  Drugs and drug users have simply become part of my job.  My day (non profit) job AND my nite job.  I have no judgements, only know that I do not want to be like some people that I see throw their lives and savings away on extravagances like me..(but the me is not even a person, I am a status figure of their inflated imagination as they try to live out their Scarface fantasies).

When I was younger, I hated it.  It was a shot of depression and anxiety.  Sometimes it can be like that still, thus keeping valium handy is like having pot handy on other drugs…but most of the time it’s just like a shot of Espresso after a long nite of driving around LA county..

When the whole Eliot Spitzer thing dropped, I immediately raised my rates.  I can be that girl.  Why not?  I thought?  We’re both hos and we’re both aspiring singers who sometimes fuck important people for money…$500/hr from now on!  But uh, that didn’t work so well for business for long…And you girls who do have the privilege of making that because you have a good “manager” or are accepted in the review board elite cult system then AWESOME.  Set me up on a threesome date with one of your clients, and make us both some money then, dammit!  Quit making me feel bad..

I woke up in tears this morning and prayed to [non demonational] God because this seemed to work a couple of days ago when I left my entire purse with my only working cell phone and wallet full of useless cards and the only $20 I had to my name in the parking lot and the security guard turned it in with no losses whatsoever!

“Are my only “choices” to survive to get sexually abused and retraumatized by both my sex work and my social work?” I asked,”Are these the best ‘CHOICES’ that I have?”

I have seen first hand the effect of people who make those kinds of “choices” everyday.  Did they actually reason that getting hit by a car so that they can qualify for disability would be better than they are at the present moment?  They have actually unconsciously reasoned that getting HIV would at least get them SOMETHING which is better than the NOTHING that they thought they had at the moment…

It’s really hard to even blog about this because I know that people who are reading this will be thinking that I am saying that ALL sex work is sexual abuse, but those of you that read that have done sex work or at least are reading my entire blog and not just this entry might understand…

“You need to get a [straight] job.  We can help you with your resume when you come in.”  said the Rape Crisis Counselor on the hotline.  I HATE BAD COUNSELING more than anything in the world!  And since I’ve done lots of therapy already, I know what bad counseling sounds like!   Sometimes, though, it ends up being bad counseling because you haven’t taken 3 sessions to explain to your person your philosophy on sex worker rights.  The intake appointment for this place takes a week to get and more than once I’ve been totally aggravated by their hotline counselors as I reached out for help in LA.  My regular therapist only charges me $21 per hour, but I can’t even afford that for as much as I need it so I’ve reached out to other sources.. “You have choices..”she kept saying.  At least he is graciously letting me build up a tab and he never never says something like “you have choices” to me…

Sex worker transition is the ugliest time in life, and I’ve actually been here before so I know what those fucking job choices look like.  It looks like my ex-boyfriend with a criminal record daily sending 100s of inquiries and letters on Craigslist with no avail.  Going to interview after interview with no hiring.  I know what the fuck my choices look like and they ain’t pretty. The choices I see are death, insanity, self destruction, homelessness, dependence, trauma, drugs, jail, or become the victim of violence…those are the choices that I feel are available to me at this moment.

I did the same thing.  Bachelors Degree from a UC school.  No one would hire me.  100s of resumes sent. Selling cars, bussing tables, occasional sex work to stay afloat.   I called it survival sex then too.  I was barely surviving, living with my mom..and then I went to grad school.  and became a teacher for a little while.  But it took all of that in order for me to get my first real salaried job with benefits.  But I quit that because I was overworked and unhappy at the end of every day and couldn’t wait til the day that I would quit after getting my degree…It was very different getting out of stripclub stripping for me though.  I was entirely a different person.  I wanted to turn my back on sex work forever because I thought that that was the right thing to do.  It had to be a stage in life, not something that you would do forever.  There could be nothing else for me that I would like once I retired from stripclubs.  Then I met Scarlot Harlot and Robyn Few and the rest is history…

Back then I was so overjoyed and happy the day I graduated and made it through another system..primed and ready to return back to a life of activism and full time whoring.  That was my choice then.  I don’t regret what I have done.  I have seen the world and talked and sang about lots of issues with thousands of people…

At this point the only choice I have is to sit glued to this computer every moment of every day looking on the internet for ways to make money…It is SO SO DEPRESSING.  I almost lost my mind the day I left my purse in the basket.  I was frantically crying as i drove back to the grocery store in the middle of South Central LA and there was nothing missing.  If I lose my purse, my phone and what little I have…I feel like I would just lay down in the parking lot of the grocery store and not ever want to get up until the cops took me away..or no one.