When Theft of Services Equals Rape and When Reframing is Better than Blaming and Going Aileen Wuornos on a Motherfucker

Amidst the #metoo incidents of Hollywood sexual violence I am working as a Love goddess in Seattle, doing my best to fundraise some lost income and property that got stolen out of a car in Los Angeles because I was negligent. It’s my third time to work as a Tantra practitioner in Seattle, every time I have come, it’s been a great, profitable and life changing experience. And again it did not fail me. I was fortunate enough to see more clients in two weeks than I had the opportunity to see in Japan all year since, in Japan, I don’t get to have the same type of business model as I used to when I worked in the U.S so it is always a great opportunity to brush up my skills and work on lots of new seekers bodies. I’ve been working as a professional goddess for over four years now, evolved and inclusive of the seventeen years of total work history in the field of sexuality. 7 of these years I was an escort and a self proclaimed whore revolutionary sex worker activist. In the seven years that I worked, fought, spoke for and rallied with fellow sex workers I became immersed in the ideology and framework of the movement and it became the passion that woke me up in the morning and fueled me through the sometimes grueling and dangerous profession that I called my job. I have since then been extremely happy to have moved beyond all of it without entirely closing the door to how it formed me as the LOVE WORKER that writes this blog now. I tell my seekers that call my phone that Tantra is not just a catchphrase i put in my ad, and i that love is not just a euphemism for fuck or happy ending, i actually genuinely, spiritually, fully engage in LOVE MAKING and sharing with clients which usually does not include intercourse or any of the standard acronyms of prostitution that many men on Backpage might be familiar with (GFE, BBBJ, etc).  And amazing people pay me great money for it as well.  But, because of my vast history, i’m aware of what they might be referring to and can lovingly redirect them to a referral who would better serve their needs.

In order to book an appointment, I require a small deposit to show me that the seeker is serious. This time, upon suggestion from another sex worker, i try to use G**gleWallet to accept my deposit. I usually require just $50 which goes towards the session and I didn’t think twice when the client wanted to send $250 instead of $50. I get an email from G**gle that says,”$250 is being deposited into your bank account.” which means to me as a business owner that I can feel safe to facilitate a paid session.

I saw him the next morning and collected the balance in cash and proceeded to create my 2 hour of magic and love. There was nothing suspicious or ingenuine about this client, we had a beautiful session, I tapped into his God energy and everything ended in a beautiful way.

Sometime in the next day, I am checking my bank balance and realizing that the money hasn’t hit and then I call the company to check and see if there is a delay for some reason. Ggle tells me that the sender can actually cancel the payment even after the email that they sent me has been sent. They tell me that this service is not a safe way to collect money from strangers off the internet and that it should only be used for friends and family (as if friends and family never rip people off).

7 years of being a vengeful, righteous whore revolutionary rose up from the fire of my root to the top of my consciousness and i remembered all the times as a sex worker that i had been ripped off and shorted by escort clients. I was mostly surprised that i was being confronted with these feelings when the way that i had constructed my life, the decisions i made, the clients that i chose and who chose me, the work that i did, the vibration was supposed to be all different now. But, I had gotten ripped off in a similar way from a Tantra coaching client in May whom i had coached for several hours too long for no promised pay received. My live work roommate in Seattle had just talked to me about a time when she was working in New York City and a similar thing had happened and she had “felt raped’ and couldn’t work the rest of her tour because she just felt extremely depressed and violated. I had just read a blog by Lily Fury explaining why she had recently created a devastating fundraising fraud upon the sex worker community all in an attempt to get a bad client blacklisted for what she felt was rape and not theft of services. “he was a client who had shortchanged me (that is, had raped me) when I was desperate after just getting out of jail.” Sex workers and women in general have righteous anger and history about rape and sexual violence not being named for what it is and not being punished equally or justly, so it seems in retaliation to the systems that have failed and ignored them, many of them seem to have started using the words theft of services and rape interchangeably. Since leaving the sex worker rights movement about two years ago to focus on spiritual sexual self growth and other community frameworks, the thing that has stood out to me most, the thing that I was also guilty of was that self determined sex workers HATE being called victims, unless it is them doing the victim name calling on their own situations. (To be cont)

Japanese Men-Stop Giving Me a Bad Impression part 2 (THE HIRO FACTOR)

I came to Tokyo with an open heart and an open mind.  But in the 3 months that I’ve been here Japanese men have given me some pretty bad impressions.

Im on okcupid and Tinder in Tokyo…i’m not interested in you if you have been in Japan for over a year (and there are MANY GAIJIN WHO ARE LIKE THIS) and can’t speak any Japanese. But I also can’t communicate fully with anyone who can’t speak any English at all because I only have a 50% literacy.  I can get through most any situation and simple conversation but dating requires depth of language which I dont have yet.  And then there’s the Japanese man (HIRO) factor that I seem to be dealing with which has colored my dating experience.  Overall it seems to me, the people I’m attracted to are not attracted to me and everyone else is humping my leg, seriously offending or just plain ignoring me.  And so I wait patiently because I’m never in NEED of too much anymore after spending almost all of the last year in CONSCIOUS ABSTINENCE…I’d rather have GREAT SEX or nothing at all.  On okc I spot someone who is Japanese and cute but also speaks English.  He has some “I seem like a nice fun friendly guy” pictures with dogs and nature in them. Im looking to learn Japanese culture and language through dating so I message him about his kickboxing photos. I have been wanting to punch and kick workout with someone for YEARS but you wouldn’t believe how many rejections I get trying to organize a park sparring workout.  It seems that no one wants to take it outside of the training center.  This was even the case in LA, so when I see his photos holding pads for someone I am quick to message and ask if we can get together and spar sometime. The first thing he asks me is “Are you a man or a lady? Sorry to be rude.”  This is the 2nd time a Japanese male has asked me that, the first was from my current house manager before meeting to show me the room, who is also an asshole but in a different way. I thought the name Mariko was a female indicator (ko is almost always for girls names) but apparently it isn’t for these guys. i am amused when men recognize the masculine in me because I think of that as a compliment because its not visible.  It means energy speaks. i identify as genderqueer sometimes to the right crowd because as a Tantra practitioner it’s common to answer:: I am both as it is believed we are, but beyond that, I do drag king at times and I acknowledge my repressed male side. I’m not transgender.  No desire to change anything. i am as I am and that is both male and female energy within a dominant femme form.  

His next messages QUICKLY progress to CAN WE HAVE TANTRIC SEX? Are you a sex expert? What position are we going to FUCK IN? And this is in response to my totally non sexual casual messages about kickboxing and coming to Japan and other non sexual friendly things that you commonly ask on internet dating messages..

I respond to his questions about Tantra with the standard authentic goddess responses…eloquence and science about the energy exchange and what I do and how I teach it.  But HIRO, (ill call them all HIRO from now on, as a mockery of the English word HERO) is UNABLE TO digest my answers and keeps responding with his vulgarities.

.. After the last message that asked what position we were going to FUCK IN, i responded with “Charming Approach.  Hope that works for you. Good Luck.” and then he responds. “Well, I’m just keeping it real.” And then I shake my head and say,”Yes you are. Our realities are different.” I’d stopped trying to speak Japanese as soon as things turned disgusting because I can only express my boundaries and true feelings well in English.  Soon, ill be able to tell a HIRO off and lash him with 2 tongues of a samurai warrior but for now, only English. 

But that’s alright because I LOVE the way you LIE

Rihanna has become one of my heroes of late. Eminem has always represented all the guys I’ve ever dated, so it’s fucking brilliant that they decided to do this video together. He’s a great artist. Amazing lyricist. A known abuser and now recovered drug addict. Always the image of a great and loving father. A crazy alter ego that has violent and misogynistic thoughts on every album. On this song Eminem forces Rihanna to sing the role of her victimhood in a way that soon may become more of a verb more than her own name. The archetype of a triumphant and Glamorous Survivor. “Tougher than a lion.. no pain is forever, Yep you know this.” The one we all want to be once the bruises (if there are physical bruises) heal. “She Rihannaed through that situation..” I just heard one of my ex boyfriends’ names being used as a verb by way of another boyfriend I am attempting to ex out…”I Jimmyed that relationship so I could stay at her house another week.” he said. (which means he freeloaded rent and board off of a girl he was dating in exchange for mediocre relationship moments). Ah, the oh so familiar financial abuser that too many “independent women” seem to pair up with. I think Ne-Yo wrote that song for those guys, rather than as a fucking compliment to any women. It was dedicated to all the free loading men that Beyonce and Destiny’s Child in Pay My Bills talk about..

I’m not sure why the boyfriends that I started to get after 22 became tumultuous. (GREEK CHORUS: Because you became a sex worker, LOL! LOL!)  I’m not sure why after being single for 9 years did I fall in love with someone who was so similar in both beautiful and fucked up ways as this other first love of mine who was a closet heroin user who i spent 10 months with in the Mission District of San Francisco trying to heal, love and mentor when I was 23. Different illnesses and issues, different people, same manic cycle, similar beautful lies… I hear myself in Rihanna’s voice as she talks so lovingly about Chris Brown and his future. She wants him to just “grow up and learn from this experience.” She still loves him. Love doesn’t go away right away. she says and I know this so well. An abuser is often the adult victim of child abuse or assault and the other partner often feels sorry for that little boy inside the man that lashes out at her while she tries to mother him. Repeating the cycle of the abuse between the childs parents and the tension between the abused mother and son.

I wasn’t beat up and left in a car before I was supposed to attend the Grammy’s but I’ve been deeply entrenched in other forms of relationship violence almost all of the relationships that I’ve had for the last 10 years. I would throw ‘benign’ objects (like a bag of fast food, a large soda; separate occasions) at one of my ex boyfriends to get his attention and wipe the stupid blank look off his face when I told him to get a job and pay some rent, for instance.  I’ve had another someone I was in love with threaten by text message to do a drive by on my house and set my kar on fire…I told him if he was going to do that he should be the one to pull the trigger [so I could look in his eyes while I died for “love.”] but I knew it wasn’t a serious threat, it was a twisted thought from a very lost person.

I never thought he would do it, but the fact that I have, like Rihanna heard what it sounds like when this person that you think that you are in love with tells you that they are going to kill you [if you stop loving them].

*   *  *   *  *  *   *   *   *  *

I was the one who demanded that Jimmy and I go to counseling together but soon realized that because I was the one instigated physical violence, I was therefore the ‘abuser’ and they wouldn’t see us together as a couple while ‘physical abuse’ was occurring in the relationship. So I quickly learned to control my physical reactions and started to use my voice and just scream my frustrations at him, which did not come out as words but aimed to be a vocal assault of some sort to get him to stop his behavior and see that I was becoming enraged. One time I remember gesturing punches towards his face that were controlled enough to not touch his face but show that I wanted to physically assault him because I was so angry. Things got better over time. We learned how to work better with each other. But I was unhappy for 8 months having this roomate that I didn’t want and couldn’t seem to get rid of before I finally called the cops on him. One day, he decided to get something and he wouldn’t stop calling and knocking on the front door when he arrived uninvited. I was trying to create a new space boundary since he had finally left my house. He had finally packed up his stuff to move out after pleading with him for months to leave. but he was back on a day that we weren’t scheduled to hang out and I didn’t feel like letting him in or answering his phone calls. I have 3 phones and a front door and he was blowing up all of them. In a panic I called 911 and they arrived after almost 40 minutes and 2 calls. I didn’t really feel that he would hurt me, but I had just been pushed to the point of police intervention by this guy after months of warning him that I would do exactly what I ended up doing.  I asked his parents for help with the situation and they shook their heads and told me to call the cops and that I allowed this to continue and they couldn’t help him because he was an adult.

I firmly believed that if someone is knocking on your front door and they won’t go away that you have a right to call the police to ask them to go away. “Are you still in a relationship with this guy?” officer 1 asked.
“yes.” I said, “but he is not supposed to be here right now. I want him to leave and he won’t.”  I had told him that we would stay together in a relationship but he would agree to move out, and I believed that we really were going to be able to do this.
“We don’t police people’s relationships ma’am.” officer 2 said. “someone has to go to jail nowadays, people’s lives are changed because of these calls.” It was a hard call because it wasn’t exactly a DV related 911 call, but it was. I don’t remember how I finished my conversation with them to close the door, but I remember seeing him in the back of the car in cuffs while they searched his car and crying at the sight of what I had just done. I was on the phone with my therapist while looking out the window. That was the last time I saw him. He didn’t return to my house, nor did he return a suitcase and laptop that I had basically let him use during the duration of our relationship just to add insult to injury. He was pissed I called the cops on him so he decided to keep $600 worth of my stuff.

It all occured when i was brand new to Facebook last year. The open ended “What’s on your mind?” was too much of an open space for me to not pour out what was happening from my desktop to reality. I Facebooked it while it was happening without caring about other people’s triggers or discomfort. “If you call the cops on your man, does that mean the relationship is over?” and someone’s response was,” no because when he gets out its gonna be the best sex you ever had and then some!” it made me laugh. you somehow have to find light with these things, and there’s no one better than the victims themselves to make a joke out of a serious matter. I’m just going to call the abusers the victims too because even punching the drywall beside someone’s face is a sign of your victimhood. It is abusive. It is a sign that you are unable to control your anger. You are a victim of your rage and your demons. Your lust when you end up having that make up sex. Your weaknesses when you go back to them. But I have learned so much with every fight that I have endured, and I can truly say that I can fight stronger and better and not allow myself to retaliate and stoop to the level that would lead us into that raging bullfight that is in the video which ends up in unprotected drunk sex spawning a devil unplanned retarded baby. At some point you learn not to take it there, and for some people, they NEVER LEARN. “If he EVER lays a hand on me,” the high school girl feminist proclaims,”I’M LEAVING.” But may she learn that it is never that clean and easy and more often than not, they DON’T hit you with their hands to cause the most abuse.

Eminem’s recent video truly reveals the complexity of relationship violence from what seems like a young addicts perspective. It is a paradigm I am too familiar with having fallen in love with people with addictions OR who might as well be drug addicts because they act that way anyway without drugs. Yes, we still live in a sexist patriarchal world but the reality of domestic violence has changed since the Battered wife image of the 80’s and 90s that Barbara Walters is still polishing the framework for. Eminem’s video and lyrics reveal that complexity. He has a phone number on his hand that she sees. She gets so raging mad that she SPITS in his face while he holds her down. I realize mostly that in these situation that there is ALWAYS a back and forth. He says something. She says something worse. He does something to spite her. She does something manipulative and vindictive to spite him. Sleeps with a co-worker or best friend. Texting a working girl in front of your girlfriend because you know that they will call back or text to get you into the fight that you secretly ask for.  This is how Rihanna and Chris started brawling.  Over another woman’s text message.   Psychological WARFARE. Another woman’s voice, even if she is no real threat but a created threat by a manipulative and demented lover.  This is how the 21 year olds girlfriend found out about me and I about her.  I called his phone and she answered.  this is how she got my phone number to harass me.  Dirty, grimy immature antics made only from the insane minds of people so enraptured in the madness of their own NON LOVE that they can’t stop to think about what they are actually doing.  Some of them, who were born and raised in abuse need to be told better.

“You DON’T say those things to someone that you JUST SAID that you LOVE.”

“SPEAK TO ME LIKE SOMEONE YOU LOVE.” (I just saw a book with this title on this topic at the bookstore)

and this really IS  a new concept to them.  One that they can learn if you can teach them fast enough (and they are willing to learn).

I don’t let lovers or friends make a joke out of me as a regular habit.  Hard love and cruel jokes= humiliation to me.  I grew up as the youngest child and black sheep and am still treated like a 2nd class citizen in some ways by some of my family so I will not tolerate a relationship where I feel like someone’s little sister.  A little humor is healthy, but constant and subtle degradation through mockery, passive agressive comments, passive aggressive jealousy,  is NOT healthy for your lovers, partners or children, it adds up and spills over like a symbollic cup of violence disguised as a slow poison like the syrup of sweet Coca Cola.

I love the scene in the Eminem video where the two are sitting in the aftermath of their own destruction bonding on the light energy of their broken and dysfunctional love. I’ve felt that glowing energy between myself and the most beautiful and worst liars that I have ever loved. I believed that our love was the only true thing about the mess we were in. “Love is blind.” Rihanna says.”FUCK LOVE. Look at your situation from the 3rd person and see it for what it really is.” Great advice. Now applying it to your own life is the harder part. Only someone whose experienced a violent love like hers could even understand that love energy can exist and glow even in the ugliest and most brutal relationships sometimes. Everyone else is probably so judgmental. The abusers that I have known (physical, verbal, finnancial, chemical) have all had a magical romantic gift, charming and endearing a promise of a perfect love that lasts for a few days, a few sweet emails, until BOOM. explosion. and it always repeats.  The 21 year old that I had blogged about before that was cheating on his girlfriend to have an affair with me was an abuser.  I could sense it.  I was part of his abuse, I was the other woman, and at first I was laughing about it.  She was psycho and irritating and perhaps I have gained such a hard skin about insults via text message because I ignored so many of hers.  This 21 year olds cock WAS magical and magnetic though.  I do remember the magnetic power I had to turn away from with all my might.  This is coming from someone who is totally not dick centered, not entirely attracted to genitalia but I knew a good thing when I felt it.  It was quite possibly the best dick I’ve could remember having, but I BROKE LOOSE FROM IT without much damage!

EVERYONE has a QUICK solution to it and an opinion. No one understands but those that are in it that it is a longer process than we would often like it to be, but “just getting up and leaving” is sometimes just not a reality for most of us. Rihanna said she went back 8 or 9 times.  The abused and hurt child desperately needs to have the abuser apologize and caress their wounds and tell them that they did not mean to do the things that they did.

What are your boundaries and how long will YOU let someone go before you pull out the stops on your relationship?

Has anyone ever stolen money from you? Spit in your face? Punched a wall beside your head? Crashed or smashed your car? Used a traumatic part of your past as a verbal assault during a fight? threaten to call your probation officer with lies about you? “joked” about cutting off your dick if you cheat?

Snoop Dogg has a song about the manipulation that goes on with the new DV laws called, “First one gets to the phone, the other one’s going to jail..” The urban reality of relationship violence, hip hop, people of color and probation officers is sung about in a humorous way..A LOT of the Black and Brown community is on probation or in jail or prison so this form of institutionalized racism helps to use domestic violence to further tear families and relationships apart.  Or does it help to protect the victims by giving them ammunition to shoot back at their abusers?

Eminem’s video reveals well the cycle of violence told through the push and pull and the back and forth of the whole thing. I know for some reason that I am a red hot magnet for men and women with major trauma issues because I have my own and that often leads to the kind of relationships where people have to work out through acting out until they understand how to communicate in all the ways that they lacked as a child. I am better now because I’ve burned in those bedrooms. I think I know how to walk away. I just wonder why no matter how far I walk I seem to keep encountering these classic romantic turned abusive characters that are out of these pop stars music videos. Is it because I am so fucked up and labeled a wreck myself that I just can’t stay away from them, or could it be that relationship violence is more common that those of us that are so judgmental would like to admit. Are YOU guilty?

Why don’t you just work without an agency?

I’m not that good with advice.  Because you don’t  know..you just don’t know.

I wish I could be a successful independent escort without agency bullshit and make 100% of my profits.  but i can’t.  Wouldn’t I just love to do phone and webcam work without depending on Niteflirt to get traffic to my listing?  Of course.  I just need as much money for advertising as niteflirt or cityvibe or eros or any of the agencies that i work for spend, which could be up to $1000 A WEEK.  Who woudn’t love to meet all the clients that I meet as an agency escort without having to deal with the bullshit.  Wouldn’t you love to be part of an elite $4000/hr Emperor’s VIP or young Heidi Fleiss type of agency if you were part of one?  I would.  But the stakes are higher as we’ve seen with Deborah Jean Palfrey’s agency scandal.

Why don’t you just go “indy?”

I tried to be an independent escort investing thousands of advertising dollars in the yellow pages, internet websites, weeklies etc.  I tried to be an escort agency myself (and only had the worst most undesirable women apply to work with me) and because I love all sex workers it was hard to be so shallow and even racist in order to make money.  I’d rather have others do that for me and me be the more innocent pawn so I can use the “I’m just doin’ my job” defense.

I am NOT the girl in the picture.  I am not the girl you talked to on the phone.  I can play dumb lots of times, because I truly am kind of dumb to the details.  It’s going to be at least $200 more than you thought you were paying and it might make you mad but i can’t care for you.  It’s YOUR LOSS or MINE.  and living on $20 in my wallet for who knows how long.  One indy client at $300 an HOUR a week, means you are living on $300 a week.  Not cute if you have rent and car payment and need to eat.  Another thing that makes it easier for me to sleep at night, is that if it isn’t me taking your money, it’s gonna be the bitch behind me and I’d rather it be me of course.  And, like I said, I’m nice, smart and I have sex.  Not as bad as it could be for the average agency trick.

To make the phone ring off the hook, you used to be able to use Craigslist but since CL has become the favorite of police stings and sex worker predators or you need to spend at least $500/month on various advertising sources (which also isn’t police sting and predator free either)..

and then there’s the hobbyist reviews boards which i DESPISE.  and coincidentally, they despise me too as made evident in a recent blog post that I wrote on one of these stupid white collar internet locker rooms.  (What’s on your menu?  Do you kiss?  Anal sex?  Can I review our sexcapades on the boards with everyone?  Can I eat “dinner at the Y” meaning Can I go down on you?) I HATE most hobbyists.  Their very essence is the core of my irritation with patriarchy and privilege.  It takes ALL the power I love about sex work.  I’m not a whore because i love sex and really want to submit to these motherfuckers.  Most of the guys I am fucking, I wouldn’t be fucking if they weren’t paying.  So trying to be nice, fake, shallow and dumb to uber male privileged dudes who I hate in order to drum up more business and ‘good reviews’  has never been my forte.  I am a sex worker because i am trying to reclaim power in a sexist and patriarchal world and maybe you think from the post below that I am totally CRAZY.  But I understand it.  I have never fought back against men like I have as an agency escort.  My recent relationship has also been a vicious verbal fighting one with power struggles as well…I know, you would look and listen to my relationship and say “I can do better.” but i’m single now and before that guy I was single for 9 years.  Being alone can be better but finding a good relationship is not always the easiest advice to follow.  It’s not something you can control all the time, even though you might want to .  Although, I am a MAGNET for low achiever, fixer uppers, men and women with addictions, jail and prison records..I shouldn’t be a prison teacher because I’d end up engaged to one of the inmates in a week.  Co-dependents can be the most romantic people, I swear!

What I hate most is that I can’t use my own photo and make a lot of money.  I have to use an agency photo that the horny client calls first and then show up and negotiate my way into the door and negotiate another two bills out of his wallet or credit card before we get into his bed.  For some reason when I post an internet escort ad on most of the major known websites, my phone doesn’t ring off the hook.  I don’t make enough to survive without working agencies.  It’s too bad, actually.  I wished my indy work could sustain me.  I would be fine JUST doing webcam and phone sex and occasional escort dates.   It’s not like I enjoy driving around from 8pm-6am.  Sometimes I put in 120 miles a shift.  I am my own driver.  It saves me money.  I dated a guy who I started dating by pulling out of a nightclub for a one night stand.  He had a small knife around his neck, that looked like a necklace medallion.  I think I could stand to invest in one of those.  When you actually have sex in agency work, I believe that you are a little safer.  I figure typical agency girls roll with drivers because none of them will even do a hand job for $500.  They make it seem like I crazy for doing half of what we say someone will do! I work for 2 agencies at the moment.  One is high end low volume and the other is my regular agency gig that I work at 3-4 times a week, that I tried to quit in April after keying up some guy’s car.  I steal clients from the agency by getting independent repeat clientele.  The 2 agencies I work at don’t care and don’t expect it, especially not the cash and dash agency but I have worked for some that instill fear in the workers and say that they have fake clients who check up to see if you are stealing clients from them by giving them your personal phone numbers.

Lots of agency work works out pretty well until someone traumatizes me.  Because I’ve been out of it for 8 months, going back has been kind of exhilirating.  I know that I can’t do it for too long though. I have learned my threshold for this work is pretty low.  It works well if you do it 3 months on and then off, if you can afford it.  I am prepping my resume with an internship so I can hopefully get some paid media work in the field I would LIKE to be working in, not one that I am settling in just to barely get by.  I don’t want to work full time in social justice non profit outreach work.  I want to be a singer, an entertainer, an artist FIRST.  then an activist.

But I know that it is only a matter of time, perhaps a week or a month until some blow up happens.  Mastering how to de escalate verbally without being hurt except by words and shouting.  I am great at that, but I have proven that I don’t take people’s shit on my knees with my mouth open.

Sometimes though, it feels like  I am asking for a dude to hit me, so I can press charges.  I fucking dare you to hit me.  I actually did this (dare you to slap me) in the 7th grade and a boy slapped me.  It was the first time (and maybe only?) time a guy has slapped me.  I didn’t press charges on the boy.  We were both in 7th grade.  but I was pretty moded.  I didn’t think he was going to hit me but he did.  It wasn’t too serious but memorable for sure.  Fighting is martial arts even when you’ve never really studied it.  If your opponent is angrier than you are you can easily deflect this energy by remaining rational and neutral.  (but still heading for the exit with your money in hand hopefully as fast as possible). Aikido combined with exit strategy..

I never wanted to carry a gun because I don’t like guns.  Having a gun on you will only get you in more trouble.  If you never draw a gun on someone, you won’t have to have the experience of having a gun drawn on you.  One of my other ex boyfriends was a gun toting weed farmer who was arrested for pulling a gun on someone on the freeway in a road rage incident.  Stupid gun behavior.  I’ve managed to not have any physically violent incidents.  The work is traumatizing on a regular basis, but it is also cathartic when you stand up to someone.

I have mace in my bag and I used to have  a stun gun but that disappeared a while ago…

Some of my fellow sex worker activist escorts that I’ve organized with in this movement are privileged enough to not have to take clients past 10pm and to not take clients who do drugs.  I have never done sex work that way.  I guess I’m just not that kind of working girl.  I did get a sugar daddy from agency work, and I am thankful to be doing this blog on a beautiful new MacBook Pro that I got as a gift from him.  I float from roach motel to 5 star suite between clients of various class levels both independently and with my agencies, but it’s just that the review board hobbyist scene doesn’t match my personality and I guess I like to play these party boys like slot machines, perhaps that’s what it is that I am addicted to.  I like to be the dominant collector of their consensual submission.   I have effectively found a home to a specific type of sex work that I have learned how to navigate quite well, how to exercise boundaries, practice plenty of sex worker self care systems.  One of my non profit harm reduction friends worked as a driver at an escort agency and is now an independent filmmaker, a recovered junkie and MARRIED to an escort he used to drive with the agency.  They are making a film about it.  Brad Pitt was once an agency driver.  My life is fucking crazy.  I can be in the underworld and blend into the straight world, and occaisionally flirt with the VIP world all in one week’s time.  I guess that’s why I do.  This chapter of my life clearly is not done.  I want to prepare a different career path while I do agency work just like i did with SWOP-LA.  I was the director of a non profit who went to meetings and training and I was prepping myself to be a full fledged legitimated HIV prevention funded non profit at one point but pulled out to save my soul.  My heart is not in that work.  I am an artist first and foremost.  I must now take my time, money and energy and not codependently work on the problems of other sex workers before I work on the problems of my own life.  I moved down to LA to get involved in the media capitol of the world.  I must now use agency work to do THAT.  My priority before was to use my money to decriminalize prostitution or further sex worker rights in LA.  I am trying to be a singer, a video and film producer, a personality.  I want to to turn this blog into a book and more…I wish there were more options than agency work, and there will always be people who say they don’t feel sorry for you, I have other choices, but I just don’t see them.  Or the opportunities were simply NOT presented to me, because if you think that I don’t try for to find them, you are wrong.  I am an overachiever and workaholic.  Believe me, I try.  Or the way I see the world is simply going to be different than others.  I tried it and I didn’t like it now I must do something else.  Transitions take money.  I create my privilege with this form of sex work.  I have to bust my ass it seems just to be on the bottom edge of being middle class.  and if i let go, like I did when I quit the agency how quickly I fall to stuggling broke ass class.  Hungry and hopeless in no time.  EVERYONE SAYS I HAVE CHOICES, and I guess I’ve already made them, but I never really saw them as choices, because I didn’t create the options, I just made the best of what was presented to me.  I hate the word CHOICES actually.  Hate it.  TEaching high school was not my lifetime pinnacle folks.  There are so many people who actually believe that and chastize me for CHOOSING sex work and sex worker activism over continuing to teach.  I taught high school to round out my activism that was pretty entrenched in sex worker issues.  To me, I became a qualified social justice activist through my experience as a teacher and upon getting my Masters of Ed.     To me the issue was crucial and dire and the sex worker movement needed me to return , and just like any other war needs soldiers, but now I am ready to work on my own battle more directly and thus the meltdown will hopefully have settled by now and I will now meld into a beautiful Phoenix Rising statue from the metal kiln..

A Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers 2009

Reflecting After A Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

2009 seemed like it was filled with trauma and violence of non physical proportions.  Lots of drama with the escort agency job and the boyfriend.  I quit both in July and stepped down from directing the non profit I founded for sex workers in LA.  My relationship to my own surprise, officially ended when the cops at my door were asking me the question,”Are you still in a relationship with this guy?” I was the one who called 911 to get him to to stop knocking on my front door incessantly when he wasn’t supposed to be there that day.  I was trying to exercise my space boundaries and my right to not pick up the phone when my boyfriend calls when I didn’t want to talk to him.  If someone doesn’t pick up the phone and you just come over, then you are unwanted.  Go away.

I even Facebooked it almost at the same time as it was happening: If you call the cops on your partner, does that mean the relationship is over?? I didn’t know the answer then, but it answered itself by surprise and slowly over weeks to come.  One day, all of my phones were ringing and there was an incessant knocking (banging? It felt like banging, but I don’t remember..) on the door.  I felt like my boundaries were literally being attacked in my own home and either I am just a post traumatic stress disorderly who is triggered to calling 911 too easy or I felt like I needed help with a situation that had gone too many months out of control.  No one was willing to step in and help, not my friends, not his parents…I just wanted this man out of my house and I didn’t know how else to do it.

We haven’t seen each other since.  But, if I hadn’t called the cops, he’d still be living with me.  I’d be blogging about wanting to break up  and he’d be in the bedroom, watching Southpark.  I had asked him to move out and it took 4 months.  I asked to give me space and he was banging on my front door calling all my phones trying to “give me something/hang out another day.”  I called the cops on him, and they cuffed him in the back of their car.  It was sad and frightening.  I would have more regret had the xboy not subsequently been such an ass between then and now to make me not feel sorry for what extreme measures I needed to take with someone who was so blinded by his own definition of  “love” that he simply could and would not respect my boundaries.  We’ve talked a few times since and every time he’s disrespected and offended me each time more. He still has some of my stuff that he holds onto like the hope of us getting back together but our conversations make it very easy to never talk to or allow myself to be sucked into a place I felt stuck in for over a year.   He owes me money for back rent and he has a cheap PC laptop of mine, but instead of continuing to let him take cheap shots at me so that we could be drawn into the same pattern of fighting and fighting, I said, “Keep it.  Fuck you and your mother (he loves his mother lots).” I proceeded to cut him out by letting go of the stuff, the last thing he had to hold me. Although I didn’t really want him to keep my stuff which I couldn’t really afford to replace but would have to, I needed to be the one once again to be the bigger person and let go first.  It’s just stuff.  I don’t want to love or hate this man anymore.  I don’t want to fight about the same things.  I don’t want to raise a baby man.  I need an adult in my life who will support me, emotionally, financially and spiritually and he was not it.

As an agency girl, I work side by side with escorts who hustle hard, EXPECT you to tip high and DON’T believe in having sex for money in most cases.  Sometimes, if you are lucky and tipping well, a hand job or a blow job may be in order.  The average agency girls can be a ruthless hustlers, shameless liars, rip off bitches, good at running in heels, and usually roll with drivers who are thugs and ex parolees ready to mace a fool for wanting his money back.  It makes a decent amount of cash most times and some of the time, it really isn’t that bad and it can be quite exciting, fun and lucrative.  Sometimes, guys play along with our game and don’t complain.  Other guys would call those guys suckers, but they get the best end of the deal, if they just pay the toll.  But then there are the guys who pay the extra tip money and still get ripped off because their girl doesn’t do nothing for her money. It’s a damn shame that most agency girls have no appreciation for the art of sex work.

What makes me unique to the agency scene as far as I’ve observed out there, is that I actually fuck.  Funny how, what made me unique in the stripclub stripping scene was that I didn’t do anything in the private booths EXCEPT STRIP!  I was so whoraphobic as a stripper!  Now,  I am an upsell prostitute.  This is subject to change, however because I have recently been observing that it is much easier to just join the shameless/ruthless club than it is to be the hooker with the heart of gold who feels sorry for the johns who don’t get laid when they pay $500.   Some of the agency calls that I do, I look around and I am the only one actually fucking or sucking and I’m a tad bit embarassed!  Most of the time, it’s just easier for me to screw them, and screw them as fast as I can for the most money possible.

You have two choices.  You can be REALLY evil or somewhat evil, which in this game is not really seen as evil AT ALL.  OR, you can be successful as a high class independent escort just like some how to book tell you to do.  Many women work the review boards and are very successful.  There are madams with exclusive Tiger Woods type of clientele and there are agencies like the ones that I work, so many different ways to work, all of which are not accessible for all.  I used to think it was all just a matter of changing numbers on your website which would be the secret to making 6 figures in this business.  But it’s much more than that.  Just think high roller and you will meet high rollers! Some of us are pretty happy making $500 a night regularly and other people scoff at that amount.  Some escorts make $500 a week!  Everyone wants to charge $2000/nite but how many of us actually do?  I have only made steady regular profit off of agency escort work.  Late nites, longs shifts, bait and switch, upsell tipping, quickies and stacks of cash. But because it is a feast  or famine profession usually, the average middle class sex worker is never wealthy, usually not a home owner but usually RICH in time flexibility and control of a certain level of job freedom that is usually only attainable to people who make six figures… Yes, I wanted to be Eliot Spitzer’s whore but I couldn’t make myself into “that girl” even when I put my mind to it.  It’s not how much you make in a night or an hour, but how much you make in a week, a month or even a year.   Freedom to travel and take time off for your family or for your own self preservation is WEALTH.  And most wealthy people don’t even have the luxury of schedule that sex workers have.

I guess I feel sorry for the agency tricks a little, and I figure I don’t mind having sex for money, so if they tip me at least $200 over the show fee, they can usually have 20 minutes of sex with me.  This deal is not only a rarity in the agency escort world, it is generous.  I feel I am preserving the sanctity of prostitution but no one knows or appreciates this..

Most girls take the tip, hand it out to the driver (who gets 30%) and then she proceeds to do all of nothing for the guy.   I have recently been feeling like I want to be more cruel!  I give A LOT of myself to a good amount of ungrateful tricks who just as well deserve to be burned once in a while.  Why am I so nice sometimes and so mean other times? I wonder.  I have gone back to the car to fetch condoms when I already had the money and tips in my purse.  I went back to the guy who was in the house or hotel room to finish the safe sex that they paid for upfront when I could have just as easily driven off into anonymity and not looked back.

This is what I do as an agency girl a lot of the time.  So I suppose, in the end good karma equals out with the bad karma and you get a neutral year.  If I was just a do nothing girl, I wouldn’t have a bag full of safer sex supplies which would be used as incriminating evidence against me to prove that I was a prostitute.  I could simply avoid the risk by not doing it at all, just pretending and resisting every time. I did actually do that very thing for a while, before I turned out as a full service worker.  I did it sort of slowly..I think it only took a couple of weeks or months into the work, one handjob, one blowjob and then the dramatic missionary position deflowering of the non whore into the wild shameless asian jezebella that she is today!

2 girl or multiple girl shows with an agency are a nightmare almost always.  2 girls who aren’t even bisexual or sexual for that matter, usually in a roomful of horny dudes who think they can do a line up for $100 each guy, I suppose they deserve to be ripped off even if that was what the booker on the phone told them.  They paid $500 for 2 girls to show up but they didn’t have tip money to keep us there so we ended up leaving after about 5 minutes.  Our ex-con bouncer distracted them while we went down the elevator and then he was unable to extract any more money out of them of any significance to get us to do anything with any of them.  If you don’t have tips for an agency girl, she is leaving as quick as she came in.  And you don’t get your money back.  That’s right fools, my bouncer just got out of prison for voluntary manslaughter.  It seems completely counter to my feminism, as many things that I do are sometimes, but I felt safe with that guy and it felt good to have a bouncer type for once, when usually I attend my escort calls alone with a security person I hire to stay awake with me and monitor my check ins to addresses that he gets by text message.

Naturally, the agency deal makes some guys mad.

They tell me to get my clothes on and get [the fuck] out of their houses.  One guy stole my cheap Boost mobile phone in exchange for the $300 that I refused to give back.  My job is the same as the drivers job when we hire drivers.  Don’t get hurt and don’t give refunds.  It’s scary as fuck sometimes taking the heat as a female from angry testosterone charged blue balling male gorillas but most of the times I deal with it by not responding verbally and just turning by back and heading out towards the exit.  No argument.  They wouldn’t understand my position at this point anyway.

“Look, it’s just a job for me!  I just work for them!  They TAKE 66% from ME.” I try to reason with some of them.  “So in a way, we’re both in a bind.”  A somewhat overly- intellectual response for the situation, certainly not one other girls use, but true enough to work.  It does work most of the time.  They then say,”You should work for yourself.”  And then I say,”I do.  But you know, the economy is really bad.  If you want my direct number you can have it and I’ll only charge you $300 flat.”  This tactic works well for me too, and I have gotten repeat clients using this line.

One time me and this girl Britney from the agency had a show in the Valley.  There were about 5 guys in the house and they had just given us $500.  It became apparent that they didn’t have tips.  Britney told me in the bathroom that she was going to take off.  I told her to go.  I thought it would be fine if she left and I stayed because I would be able to make more money off of them because I offered sex.  This was so not the case.  AS soon as big brother found out that Britney had left he came storming out of his room in a half sleep rage, shouting curses at us and demanding all his money back.  “THAT BITCH IS NOT LEAVING THIS HOUSE UNTIL I GET THAT MONEY BACK!” He was like an angry gorilla beating his chest and tearing through the house.  I immediately put the stack of cash on the counter and headed out the front door as he chased me and verbally assaulted me the entire way.   “Is your fucking driver outside?” he demanded obviously all coked up and wanting a piece of another man since I wasn’t giving him much to fight.  Sometimes I DO man up with them and face their anger with my resistance and I ask them to STEP THE FUCK BACK.   Sometimes I talk back to them.  Sometimes I steal their money and their drugs from their counters and their pockets when they’re fucked up and passed out and treat it like a pirate treats booty.  YARRR, FUCK YOU PAY ME!!  They call me fat and pregnant and tell me I’m a bad person and I try not to let it get to me.  I smoke away the stress and anxiety when I get home from a hard nights work and my then boyfriend never understood why I just couldn’t go to sleep when I got home.  I’m not using the girls in the office enough.  I have been taking the guy’s abuse alone at times when I didn’t have to.  But it’s so very hard to think so fast all the time.  I think that I may have come up one night, then I get out to my car and there is an $44 ticket on my car for prohibited overnight parking in a completely residential area and no posted signs anywhere.

Is it more violent to feel as if she HAS to be a gold digger in order to meet her basic survival needs?  To have to meet clients who don’t pay you professional rates, but gold digger rates which usually requires more time, overnight stays, etc.  A girl who wants to get a bill paid usually means a cool $100-150 not the $300 an hour that you might be used to.  I have charged up to $1000-1500 for an overnighter (low end for some VIP escorts) but now taking whatever came my way, I’ve had strangers sleep in my bed for $200 and endured their company for way longer than I would have like all in the course of doing what some call ‘casual prostitution.’  Some don’t even call it anything.  It’s just a way of life.  Especially in the low income neighborhoods.  “You tell him,’If he wants the pussy, he needs to give you some MONEY.’ These are words I’ve heard the ghetto daughters tell me they learned from their mothers or aunts.  Ex-husband with benefits usually means a bill or two gets paid for mom AND the kids.

Is it more violent for me to endure the anger and resentment of men who feel like they are being ripped off and lied to once I tell them that I am an agency girl and that they have to tip me at least another $200 on top of the $2-300 they just paid in order for us to have sex.  Some guys don’t get mad.  Some of them don’t blame me.  They tip me.  And we fuck.  And everyone is happy.  Those are the shows that I live on.  Believe me, I DON’T like to be in confrontations with angry dudes who are almost always bigger and stronger than me in their homes.  (Or maybe I do?) Some get mad though.  They don’t get a refund.  My job is to not give the money back or else no one gets paid for dealing with the bullshit transaction.  Once you step in the door you feel entitled to something.  Such is the demented power dynamic that occurs in most sex work, in my experience (but also why I have done it for so long—for the love of power and the healing it brings).  I am superwhore and you can’t fuck with me.  You need to pay at least  $40 just for making me go through the trouble of knocking on your door.

I reluctantly sucked the dicks of 2 Black college boy clients that I would rather not have earlier this year, just to appease them.  I felt like I wouldn’t be able to leave safely without doing something.  I remember trying to bargain with them with the line,”Look, we all went to good schools here..”  They were treating me like a bitch and I got up and went for the bathroom to assert a sudden exit.  I wished I had left earlier.  If it were me today, I would have used the office girls to deflect them not my oral sex skills.  It’s hard to think when you are naked and trying to make a quick exit out of a gated condo.  My boyfriend remembered this incident later one time when we drive past their gated condo complex.  I felt loved somehow that he remembered how badly it affected me, that morning I stayed up smoking weed til 8am and when he mentions that we should still kick their asses, I am almost in tears because it makes me feel like he gets it…

Last nite I used the bitchy cunt appointment booker to call off a client who wasn’t going to tip and who wouldn’t let me leave with his show fee.  He was holding my Hello Kitty purse hostage. An older Indian guy with a show fee of $200.  I knew he wasn’t going to have any more money and that $200 was a fortune compared to prostitutes in India!  I broke the news early.  He tried to kiss my lips. I get up and ask the office to call the client, an emergency tactic that I have to say, I’ve never used but would like to use more after last nite.  I wasn’t really that afraid.  The exit went smoother than any other I’ve had recently.  The old man was small enough for me to knock down if I had to.  Whatever she said to him made him give back my purse kindly and let me go after he heard what she had to say to him.

The office calls the client and usually says that they are recording the conversation for the police when they just asked for prostitution services.  They know where he lives he says and that he just needs to let me leave safely and quietly without refunds or altercations.  I’ve been in a room where the booker has made the guy pay me $100 as a cancellation fee, even when I was definitely not the girl in the photo that he thought he called.  I’ve seen bookers make a guy cry!  LOL.  Everyone has their niche power position in this industry.  I could never be a booker even though technically I’m part of the same fucked up system, but really WHO ISN’T part of some fucked up system in order to survive and profit?

I quit working for this agency 9 months ago after doing it continuously for about 3 years while running my non profit during the day.  The last straw was when I thought this jack ass had taken the money he had paid me out of my purse.  I looked in the pocket it was supposed to be in my purse and I thought it had gone missing!  I told my boyfriend/driver to go back to the house and told him we were going to confront his ass and that he didn’t have a choice that he would have to have my back on this one.   He was by now aware of the theory I hold of robbing a sex worker is equivalent to rape and that I took being robbed very very seriously.  I expected my boyfriend/driver to have my back if/when I ever got raped or robbed on the job. We confronted john, fairly calmly and he denied ever taking the money, which we of course didn’t believe him.  My xboyfriend threw in a little threat from shadows and the poor john picked up some of his fireplace pokers to defend himself!  We ended up keying his car and almost threw a brick though his window.  After we drove away, I discovered the $300!  Oops…

I have been hustled by a client, one new years eve.  He said he was going to get his car out of the garage and then he went inside and locked me out!  I ended up kicking his truck door in a few times and took off when I saw a neighbor switch their light on.. that wasn’t an agency job.  I shouted crazy recordable psychotic evidence into his voicemail.  Very amateur.  I was a lit fuse!  Remember that robbing me is like raping me in theory, except that getting done over by customers occasionally is definitely an inevitable cost of doing business each year.

I needed to get out of this work.  I felt like I was ready.  (Wrong).  I felt like I wanted to have strong boundaries towards a work situation and exercise my right to choose other ways of working safer.  It wasn’t sustainable.  The violence from poverty is a different violence and in looking at the stacks of cash and weed on my desk now, when 2 weeks ago I was in the food stamp line for 3 hours waiting with the rest of LA county poor folks.

The drama and danger of this job is just like working on the streets but indoor.  (Similar to indoor and outdoor basketball?  No more similarities between street fighting and professional wrestling)  Except, no regulations, no protections, no rights.    Confrontations and quick get always are part of the job.

I didn’t like that I had my xboyfriend key up his car and it turned out that he didn’t deserve it.  He just thought it was funny and felt no remorse about what he did.  I felt bad of course.  I quit agency work for what I thought would be good, but it turns out that it only last 8 months before I had to come back.  My car was impounded and I needed $1500 to get it back.  I wasn’t going to do that at $10/hr.   The negatives of this life seemed to outweigh the more glaring negatives of being unable to pay basic survival expenses and watching your livelihood burn down like a house on fire trying to be controlled by a small 12oz water bottle.  Being a gold digger who can’t pay her rent and needs to ask guy “friends” to help her do that IS pathetic.  And she is usually truthful about this.  She lets these guys know the situation and they leave a small donation not because they are paying for a service, but usually because they feel like they are getting the better end of the deal and it shuts the bitch up and gives them what they want.  I realized that it was the opposite of the sex worker that I had always been.  Especially the opposite of the agency hustler.  Take no shit girl.  Steal your weed when you turn your back girl.  Kick your door in if you try to rob or rape me, kick in your car door, make your life a psychotic whore’s revenge story…

Independent escort work can be just as dangerous and bring equal shady characters who are just as ready to disrespect and fly into a rage, but the added drama of the agency girls who work with you assure situations that can only exist in the classic 2 girl agency scenario that is a regular occurance for most girls who work together.  I refuse to do 2 girl shows after that incident, except that I just did one the other night, which I knew was a recipe for disaster.  You have to assert yourself and tell these bitch ass bookers “NO.  FOUR guys and 2 girls with just 1 driver is not safe.  Especially when you know that you have to ditch because she plans to ditch and even though you might hoe, she doesn’t so you have to do what she does, unless there is a way to separate in different rooms.  And the other scenario of sex work I’ve also had a taste of has been brothel prostitution.  The customer is always right.  And your co-workers are also scandalous bitches.  Some can be nice, but none can really trusted.  Is getting Tabasco sauce poured on your laptop and then getting kicked out of the brothel for “lying about it” violence against sex workers?  Brothel life gone bad looks like a jail cell and that has to do with the systematic violence that allows brothels to operate the way that they do legally.  It works like a cult or a gang does, playing favorites and pitting the workers against each other, hoping they break each other down…

After leaving LA to go to the brothel to earn money where there wasn’t any in LA, I arrived home and found the agency that I worked with for over a year.  I left that life because the violence and risk was too much for me to handle and I was holding up my relationship and a non profit with this income and I just could not do it any longer.  Especially when other crazy sex workers are constantly being so ungrateful and bitching me out and blaming me for various things, pulling me into their violence, acting out on me..

Violence Against Sex Workers is the Green River Killer and the Canadian pig farmer but, it is the serial killers and Barb Wires within us that boil with rage like the movies Highway and Monster that fight to the death for decent human treatment and living wages (or donations).  It is the agencies, pimps, brothels and management that police and the government defer to to control us.  It is the criminalization of our very need to earn a living in a sexist world.  It is the anger I face everytime a guy yells at me for not fucking him for $60, it is the anger that tests me to kill a man when he puts his fingers on my chest and pushes me out of his door…It is the violence that is acted out on ourselves, punishing ourselves with drugs and bad relationships repeating the cycle of destruction on our selves, taking out our rage on our community members and co-workers.  There were so many conflicting feelings that filled me as I reflected this December 17^th.  But, aside from this blog, I don’t think I have ever really yet had a space to sum it all up..

Wanna Add Me as Your Friend?

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.

ANYTHING LESS THAN THE PERFECT VICTIM

is absolutely unacceptable..

“Why are you sitting there drinking Naked Juice?“she said.

“Don’t one of those cost like $4?”

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.

I should have kicked her ass.

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.

I should have kicked his ass.

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.

“Are you trying to deny that you FUCKING hit me??” I yelled and I could feel myself boiling up.  “I can’t even talk to you right now.  Just write your name and info here.” I said and sat in my car to cool down else I might try to knock this guy out in front of his stupid clown insurance friends.

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.

I wanted to kick his ass.  To knock him out in one fell swoop and jump on his 5’8, 160 lbs body and start punching him and screaming,”What the FUCK do you mean it’s not YOUR fault???” I would start hitting him and not stop…

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.

“We take shoving to be a provocation after which one is justified in committing violence. But kids shove. Brothers shove each other. We can shove each other. A shove is nothing. It is just a shove. There is no logical reason why it should lead to violence. It is perhaps technically battery. But the rules and laws around battery and assault, I would argue, are also formed around our the cultural assumptions of a fundamentally violent culture. We all know the dance. Why could not two men simply have a harmless shoving contest? It would be funny. Consider what the shove actually says. What the shove says is, I love you and I want to feel the violence of my love for you by having some contact. The shove says, I want some pain inflicted, will you please engage in some mutual infliction of pain? I need some pain. The shoving says, here, look at what I am willing to do: I am offering myself to you, to be beaten. Will you please attack me so I feel whole again? Here, look, I will shove you again. That is my request. The shove says, “I want you. I want you to beat me.” I beat up a guy and now I feel guilty (Salon) (via melissa)

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!

Keep your Mouth Shut

That was a phrase that was repeated in those lectures at the brothel. I feel that this is also true in this movement. Sex workers trashing other sex workers when they should be supporting them. Movements that are stunted from any real progress or movement because of feelings that were so wounded and re-wounded that the leaders cannot see past a contention to allow the better of the big picture to pass. I have edited my posts and assigned some friends I trust as my editors around this information. I was angry as hell and my outlet is art and writing so excuse me if it sounds or sounded like a woman with issues, as that is what I am.

Reading and digesting what kitteninfinite wrote on BoundnotGagged. I don’t even want to blog on there anymore now. But then I just went back to see what others have said. At least someone recognized her for her insensitivity. Blogs are like that. Back and forth. Negative. Positive. Feelings change in an instant. Hateration Fest. This is the medium. but you know what, I’m not really a blogger. I’m a fake blogger. I just write when I’m stressed out and spread the word when I feel pain. This is my coping mechanism and you all are invited. If someone wants to trash me and my so called privileged way of doing and feeling then I’ll use more writing to heal from that, because I will and do heal and keep fighting. To say that Legal prostitution models are the best we can do, is a crime. To simplify my blog posts and my desire to create awareness in the sex worker movement around the violations that are occurring as brothel hating is misguided and simply divisive.

I did not go in there as a researcher, or a reporter doing an expose. I was a good intentioned sex worker seeking a way to make money. I genuinely believed that it would be a good and prosperous experience for me. I think that being an ally to girls on the inside of the current system is the best way to approach this, it is an ongoing process and it just now starting to be talked about in our activist circles because of Amanda and I’s experiences. This is a good thing. I was an ally to girls in that house, they just were not and could not be to me. Wanting to do something has caused a lot of feelings in support of and critical of what I have done and I am feeling the pressure from that, but I will not keep my mouth shut.