Take me with you: critical encounters with sex work literature

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Content TAKE ME WITH YOU: CRITICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH SEX WORK LITERATURE By Vanessa Carlisle A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree  Doctor of Philosophy (LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING) August 2017 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Critical Encounters With Sex Work Literature Introduction: On Social Justice, Cacophony, and Coming Out…………….4 Chapter One Part A: Stripper Memory: In Defense of Emblematic Narrative……………………37 Chapter One Part B: Patpong’s Ping Pong Show…………………………………………………..52 Chapter Two: Toward a Radical Theory of Sex………………………………………….....62 Chapter Three: Sex and Race Work in James Forman’s “Circular Lounge”……………….92 Conclusion………………………………………………………………......118 II. Take Me with You………………………………………………………….130 Bibliography………………………………………………………………..462 3 CRITICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH SEX WORK LITERATURE 4 INTRODUCTION On Social Justice, Cacophony, and Coming Out Me: So, you’re writing a book about your sex work experience? Sex Worker Friend: Yes, but I’ve just realized the major conflict is about telling people I am a sex worker, not about anything that happened at work. Me: That might not sell so well. During a guest lecture on “Marx and Prostitution” at the University of California, Riverside, I asked a class of forty undergraduates to identify the components of the stigma sex workers face in mainstream American society today. They came up with the following list: Lazy, slutty, no self-respect, poor, drug addict, can’t love anyone, can’t be a good mother/parent, liar, molested as a child, abused, damaged, stupid. They made this list knowing that I was a sex worker, up front in the classroom, completing a PhD at USC, a published writer, and, because I know it does matter, I’d dressed up in some of my professional clothes. After my lecture, in which I broke down the origins of that stigma in Freud and Marx’s analysis of prostitution and prostitutes through Gayle Rubin, a student felt moved to raise her hand and comment. 5 “When our professor introduced you [as a sex worker] I thought she had gone insane. But now I’m grateful because I have a new perspective.” Of course, I was glad to know that I had intervened in some small way to undermine the student’s expectations of me, to open a field of inquiry for her that began the process of dismantling what she had presumed to know about sex work as a site of knowledge production. Still, she felt comfortable sharing that she thought her professor had “gone insane” for inviting someone of the sex working class to speak. It feels good to undermine a damaging stereotype, but it feels bad to be reminded of how much traction that stereotype holds, in the same breath. What Freud wrote about prostitutes is considered by the lucid Stephen Marcus, author of the intro to Three Essays on Sexuality, to be “a puzzle” (li). Not only did Freud claim all prostitutes both have and exploit others’ polymorphous sexuality, “that is, infantile disposition,” but that there are an “immense number of women who are prostitutes or who must be supposed to have an aptitude for prostitution without becoming engaged in it” (57). Marcus footnotes, “One doesn’t know where to look for a handle to these remarks,” and decides to claim that Freud must therefore be both right and wrong at the same time, “since he is always both” (li). What Marx wrote about prostitutes has been called “confusing” by theorists both for and against a global communist revolution. Forrest Wickham did a nice job summing it up on Slate: Marx “described sex work as being ‘only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the laborer,’ and viewed the abolition of prostitution as a necessary part of ending capitalism. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx called prostitution the ‘complement’ of the bourgeois family, and predicted that both institutions would one day vanish (“Socialist Whore”). The problem isn’t solely that 19 th century men who wrote about prostitution didn’t 6 talk to prostitutes about was happening in their lives, although that is obviously a problem. What matters here is that prostitution as a concept, social event, political reality, and interpersonal exchange functions as a “prism,” to use the image from Gail Pheterson. It is “an ultimate projection object from the outside,” and yet also “can be a privileged site of observation and analysis from within” (7). The word I’ll be using throughout this project for this effect is: cacophony. One major problem of discussing sex work in the U.S. context is that most scholarship treats it as an issue for a single discipline in isolation, and only recently have sex worker voices been part of the work. Women’s/Gender/Feminist studies, performance theory, labor ethnography, or criminal law, each claim some piece of the sex work experience as fodder for their theorizing. Gender issues for feminists, queers, affect theorists, psychologists. Performance issues for free speech litigation, zoning regulations, and addressing cultural taboos. Labor issues for scholarship on worker’s rights, and to justify the interest of the social scientists. Criminology for nearly everything having to do with prostitution, and now, trafficking. There is currently a sex-worker centered strain of feminist sociology demonstrated in the work of Elizabeth Bernstein, Kate Read, Jo Doezema, Laura Augustín, and others. While prostitution is the central concept, the body of the sex worker is the contact point for all disciplines. The body of the sex worker is the contact point for histories of racialized repression, gender oppression, economic stratification, colonial projects, and the carceral regime, all at once. A recent interrogation of representations of prostitution in literature was not an easy find in book form. I found a few oddities: Khalid Kishtainy’s 1982 study The Prostitute in Progressive Literature, Horn and Pringle’s 1984 anthology The Image of the Prostitute in Modern Literature, and a self-published work titled Prostitutes in Literature that was a nicely formatted 7 list of prostitute characters. I, like Shannon Bell, the Canadian sex work scholar responsible for some popular texts in the 1990s such as Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body, consider sex work literature to be a genre of interdisciplinarity and intertextuality, “combining the disciplines of political theory, feminist theory, philosophy, comparative politics, literary theory, the politics of new social movements, and aspects of public policy” (3). Despite the silos of academic disciplines, here I consider texts dealing with sex work to be in constant conversation with each other, regardless of the author’s position as outsider or insider to the sex trades. Thus, “sex work literature” as I conceive it here is a content-based genre. Literatures by sex workers run the gamut from social science scholarship to cultural critique to dating advice columns to pleasure tips to memoir to political organizing tracts and on and on. For those discussions: blogs, online magazines, and micro-distribution zines were vibrant and helpful to my work. Although it abounds with delicious contradictions and hybridity, the growing body of written work by sex workers has not yet, to my knowledge, been treated to much attention by literary theory or any other academic discipline. It is unruly, anti-genre, and overwhelming, and at the same time, it is such a small, identity-based genre of writing. Judith Walkowitz, sex work academe’s preeminent historian of prostitution in Victorian England and elsewhere, recently published “The Politics of Prostitution and Sexual Labor,” an article updating readers on current trends in prostitution research. She discusses the rift among anti-prostitution feminists and sex worker rights’ movements, the (re)turn to Marxist and materialist frameworks to explain survival sex work, and what she sees as a new turn toward seeing prostitute behavior as more complex than was previously imagined. Per Walkowitz, historical research has tended to “present prostitutes as devoid of psychological complexity, not to speak of fantasy, narcissism and desire. But perhaps these poor citizens 8 possessed more interiority than historians allow and were more responsive to dynamic currents of culture and politics than mere survivalism” (192). Walkowitz blames a “paucity” of historical sources that document the inner lives of sex workers, but does not address how or why this paucity existed, or how it has changed in the digital age. One claim I can make with certainty: academics write so many apologetic, paternalistic, and sensational things about sex work. They especially love to open their books with statements like “Prostitution has long been a problem which has provoked and disturbed Americans,” the first lines of Winick and Kinsie’s The Lively Commerce: Prostitution in the United States. Some other favorites: About a sociologist: “She helps the reader really see, most likely for the first time, the grim, violent, drug-addicted and degrading world of women trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, despair, and street-level prostitution” from the Foreword to Exposing the Pretty Woman Myth: A Qualitative Investigation of Street-Level Prostituted Women by Rochelle L. Dalla. From the Introduction to Honey, Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay, and on the Streets by Leon E. Pettiway: “While we may be horrified by acts that offend both our individual and collective senses of humanness, we must not fail to recognize the intrinsic value of each person whether serial killer, child molester, or sex worker.” In her study of transnational migrant sex workers in Kuala Lumpur, Christine B. Chin writes, “Unpalatable as it may be, given the global imperative to combat human and sex trafficking, some migrant women do view the exchange of sexual services for money as a life enhancement strategy” (21). Why must “some migrant women’s view” of transactional sex be so deeply affecting to us, so powerfully disruptive, that Chin grammatically preempts our assumed resistance to it by labeling it “unpalatable”? 9 I read with paranoia any “ally” who pleads with the straight world: the sex workers should be valued as human beings despite their depravity! While a perfectly fine job for liberal humanism and its main mode of engagement, tolerance, the recognition of someone’s humanity despite your hatred of them, does nothing to undermine the material effects of stigma: the stranglehold stays on, while the music playing in the background changes. Even very recently, when studies of sex workers proliferate in sociology, particularly under the rubric of Participatory Action Research, Michele Tracy Berger and Kathleen Guidroz write: “While we realize that intrepid researchers often embark on a diversity of qualitative projects that leave them feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable in the field, few research experiences exist where the researchers are likely to feel as unsupported and even scorned as they are when researching the sex industry.” (“Researching Sexuality” from Negotiating Sex Work 12) Many sex workers understand themselves as helpers, healers, friends to their clients. Many sex workers understand themselves as giving service to a demanding and entitled population of moneyed men. When sex workers discuss the harm they have caused in the world, they usually think about how they have hurt themselves, or let themselves be hurt. When people ask me if I feel guilty for all the marriages I’ve polluted, I usually remind them that sex work helps to construct the institution of marriage, that sex workers are foundational for the healthy functioning of many marriages, and that sex work does not require lying and cheating: clients do that on their own. Some clients are addicted to the cycle of secrecy and getting caught—therapists see it as a component of sex addiction, I and my friends call it a “guilt fetish.” A major purpose of sex work, of course, is desire and pleasure. Pleasure can be a surprise, an unpredictable event that feels completely natural. It is also a skill set, a practice, a nuanced 10 realm of human interaction that relies on everything we’ve got: all the senses, not only the haptic, the intellect, the emotions, consciousness itself. However we experience or talk about it, pleasure must be acknowledged as a powerful motivator, and this is perhaps the extent of my overlap with Freud. Many sex working writers have claimed that it is our association with pleasure, ultimately, that makes us outsiders in American social life, because they see dominant American cultural values emerging from temptation-phobic Christians and a workaholic middle class who fear and devalue pleasure as a distraction from what has been marked as “good.” But it also seems possible that it is our association with the commercialization of pleasures, not the fact that we cultivate pleasure itself, that keeps us stigmatized. We live in an unimaginable place, where the “hostile worlds” of commerce and sexuality coexist every day. Everyone must agree that there’s something difficult and dirty here before we get into it. But must the something be the life and body of the sex worker? Here, I turn the flashlight around. What if we assumed that sex workers, if they were left alone to make money in peace, would be about as fine and okay as any other worker under the current global capitalist regime. What if we assumed that the location of what’s wrong with prostitution was not in the worker’s body: but in the stigma, the pressures of poverty, the dominant-culturally-supported mass hatred of people, especially women, in charge of their own sexuality, the racism, the trans-misogyny, the history of sexual abuse and exploitation of black and Native women in slavery and after, the stereotyping, the conflation of sex work with current forms of slavery/trafficking, the criminalization, the effects of compulsory heterosexuality, and so on. Let’s say all that requires some light shed on it. Walkowitz is right that complexity is routinely denied to the sex working subject. To be respected as credible sources on our own experience, sex workers must be perfect victims or 11 “unlikely” candidates for sex work in the first place. We must be perfectly proud, psychologically well-adjusted and happy to validate sex work as another form of labor, aka happy hookers, or, we must denounce the sex industries in total as parasitic and a gendered form of labor-extraction that no one in their right mind would consent to do. We must remember exactly who, and how many, and for how much, or our reflections on ourselves and our lives are suspect. We must never have felt coerced by a client or manager or pimp or agency, or, we must side with the anti-sex work (aka “abolitionist”) feminists who know better than we do that every transactional sexual interaction is de facto exploitative of our very personhood. If we claim we choose the work instead of feel forced into it, we must justify working for under-the-table money, sometimes to people who have never experienced food insecurity. We must admit to being addicted to drugs or money, when most of us aren’t addicted to either. There is no such thing as “easy money” in sex work nowadays, if there ever was, and recent studies show that we often make about the monthly take-home pay of a person working minimum wage. We must defend ourselves, no matter what, in most conversations about what we do, because there is always some new angle of attack to deal with. And “we” aren’t even a “we,” really, because of class, race, gender, and other stratifications in the industry. But more on that later. Because of the stranglehold of criminalization and its social consequences, there is no room in American public discourse for a worker who makes free choices at one time and is subject to force, fraud, or coercion at another time. If we are raped, we risk being told it is impossible to rape us. If we claim to be exploited by capitalism, we are told we could have a more respectable way of living it. The way sex workers experience and express agency is influenced by the assumptions of the audience we interact with, and it is not uncommon for someone who doesn’t have any experience with erotic labor to tokenize, pity, inappropriately 12 voice their turn on, and/or become righteously concerned or disgusted by our stories. People feel strong feelings about sex work, and expect sex workers who come out of the closet to engage their feelings. We are supposed to understand and sympathize with people who are uncomfortable with us. No wonder so many of us isolate, or, stay closeted, only talking to other sex workers about the great gigs that went wrong, the guys that smell, the better lube, the screening procedures, and the stuff we did when we were underage. People outside the sex industry are quick to assume they know what it is and how it works from a government report plus the movies. Fiction writers are no exception. That is why I begin by coming out of the closet. To write myself into the academy, to write my community into literature. I stand with anyone who believes that getting registered, “rescued,” and “rehabilitated” by the carceral state is not a path to freedom. I seek to offer a critical method for reading sex work in media and sex worker characters in literature that is informed by critical race studies, queer theory, multiple feminisms, and undoes the grip of sex worker stigma, fear of whores, and especially fear of what the whores have to say. So many sex worker-writers do one or two good books and then disappear. I intend to stick, to stick around, and to keep touching the sticky topics. I will use insider language: hooker, whore. I will use outsider/public language, too: sex worker, stripper, rent boy. The words I use will go out of fashion, likely before this document is catalogued at the USC Library. I hope to consistently give evidence of the cacophony we live in by pulling in both language that has been used against us, and language we use to reclaim our identities and bodies from the forces of stigma and criminalization. While working on the prospectus for this dissertation, I received an email from a close friend of mine at the Tribal Law and Policy Institute in Los Angeles with the subject line “Do Not Open Until You Are Emotionally Ready.” I opened it. I was not emotionally ready. 13 I learned that epistemologically, I am fighting a battle for categorical recognition under a government that mandates I do not exist. Specifically, my friend had sent me a document that is publically available on the internet. The Department of Justice issued a new Author Guidelines and Editorial Style Guide in 2011, which has not been revised. The document includes norms for punctuation, capitalization, spelling, acronyms, and so on. It also includes a page of “Preferred Terms and Usage,” which delimits the language acceptable to the DOJ in everything from emails to research papers to policy to grants. Sandwiched between a section on how to write out numbers and correct punctuation, this list of Preferred Terms does some seriously heavy lifting in the project of government control of public discourse and censorship of minority voices. Among preferred terms such as “crime laboratories, not crime labs” and “corrections officer, not prison guard” the list includes the following entry: “prostituted women, not sex worker or prostitute” (DOJ Guidelines). In other words, those hoping to write policy that deals with sex work must use terminology that relegates all sex labor, performed by all people, to the passive and gendered construction: “prostituted women,” and are instructed not to use the terms sex worker or prostitute. Nearly everyone I have spoken to about this fact laughs first. Perhaps because their common sense tells them “prostituted women” simply cannot account for all the people performing sex acts, offering sexual service, however they think about it, for pay. But institutional erasure is no joke. It is hurtful, destabilizing, and has long-term consequences. It is also, of course, a predictable function of the state, a thread that runs throughout any registry process. While erasure inheres to all taxonomies, it serves specific violent functions in a carceral regime like the U.S. A few instances that come to mind when I 14 consider how institutional erasure is violent: The enforcement of a gender binary on government IDs. The pencil genocide of Native Americans in Virginia. The miscategorization of race/ethnicity in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as Black, Hispanic, White and Other (Native/indigenous/American Indian, and all people of Asian or Middle Eastern descent fall under “Other”). Trump’s new term, written into anti-immigrant Executive Orders: “Removable Aliens.” I come out now as a sex worker to deflect anti-sex work feminism’s claims that I cannot be cognizant of my actions, that I must have been coerced, and therefore, that I must be saved from or punished for my own degraded, immoral choices—I do not identify as a “prostituted woman.” I come out because I and every other person who has performed sexual service for trade exceed the currently enforced binary of criminal or victim, however much we may need those labels to construct our personal narratives. I come out because I intend to discuss sex, gender, sexuality, racialization, criminalization, incarceration, activism, and sexual transaction as both an academic and a person with lived experience, and I know that my credibility as an “insider” will be in question until I speak the truth of my own life. As I trace sex work through theory, literature, public discourse, and my own story, gesturing toward something I’m bold enough to call “radical sex praxis,” I come out to call in my community. Also, I would truly hate to be outed by someone else. What might it mean for me to come out as a sex worker in academia in 2017? I’m certainly not the first to approach questions of sex workers in literature from the strange dual inside- outside perspective, but we have not yet been, as a rule, nearly as celebrated as those who write about sex work from the purely sociological, psychological, criminological, historical, or fictional perspectives. Why is it so difficult for the insider-outsiders to do our work? I don’t think the problem is that sex workers inherently do worse scholarship. 15 First: we carry the psychic weight of stigma. Being out as a sex worker in the academy is about as difficult for me as being out as queer in a room full of Christians. I sweat like a whore in church when I am aware of myself as a whore on campus. Why? Sometimes, in a desperate attempt to escape it, I tell myself maybe it’s just paranoia—slut shame is everywhere, it’s not personal. Unfortunately however, misogyny, slut shaming, rape culture, and the patriarchal control of femininity and femaleness, while pervasive and affecting, do not adequately describe the challenges of encountering prejudice against sex work and sex workers. Words I have overheard on campus at USC: “I liked her but then I found out she’s kind of a ho.” “He’s a total man-whore.” “He didn’t call me because he thinks I’m a whore.” “You’re gonna be such a corporate whore next year.” “I mean, it’s not like there’s crack-whores on our street or anything.” “You look like a hooker.” It goes on. Gail Pheterson writes that “the division of women into the honorable and the dishonorable is perhaps the most insidious political function of the whore stigma: not only does it effectively isolate prostitutes from other women and effectively isolate other women from ‘the only street fighters we’ve got’ but it also renders a whole range of liberties incompatible with female legitimacy” (11). I read in this a call to action for all. While sex work literature may still be a small field of cacophonous voices, the urgency to address whore stigma can and should be felt by everyone. College is supposedly the antithesis to the “unskilled” labor of the sex trades. Of course this is ridiculous, but it is still a cultural belief that holds sway on nearly everyone, including 16 the sex worker friends I have been discussing my work with. In addition to offering me basic training in critical thinking, writing, and research, my trajectory through increasingly difficult and respected academic programs illustrates my capacity to perform my own class ascensionist hopes and dreams. My trajectory through the sex trades illustrates something much more complex, and, as I’ve obviously had other choices for work, my sex work has been frequently misunderstood as a self-destructive attachment to class descension. I believe whorephobia gets stronger in people who have shaped their waking lives into packages of goal-oriented neoliberal competitive achievement. And this goes for those who consider themselves politically left-leaning, especially. So strong is the fear of whores that we are completely unwelcome in many activist/organizing groups. A poignant and recent example: For one year, from January 2016 to February of 2017, I co-hosted and co-produced a radio show on Los Angeles’ Pacifica Network affiliate station, KPFK, 90.7FM. The show was called Sex, Please! and featured conversations led by self- identified queer sex workers. Each week, we discussed a different topic, interviewed guests, took calls, and generally made space for conversations on air that we weren’t hearing elsewhere. We called the show a place for “sex, gender, culture and politics” and featured conversations with people ranging from: queer writer/thinkers Jack Halberstam and Julia Serrano to a retail employee at the Museum of Sex in NYC to the director of the Los Angeles Independent Shakespeare Company to other sex workers to friends with Herpes Simplex II who were willing to share experiences on air. It was a bawdy show, an educational show, and a show that routinely inspired callers to thank us, and thank us profusely, for talking about sex and gender so frankly. After a power grab at the KPFK Local Station Board, Sex, Please! was cancelled quickly and unceremoniously, without our being notified by anyone at our station or the Pacifica 17 network. I got a text message from someone who had seen KPFK cancel a block of shows via Twitter. After various meetings and calls to the Local Station Board and the National Pacifica Board, we found out that one of the major reasons for the cancellation of our show was fear of retaliation from funding sources due to Sex, Please! taking a clear stance against the law enforcement agenda regarding anti-trafficking campaigns. In other words, the only independent, listener-funded radio station in Los Angeles, with a long history of anti- government and anti-police programming, canceled their only show about sexuality (in the history of the station, we were the first and last) because hookers were calling out the cops on air. KPFK had aired a block of shows during the FCC’s “Safe Harbor” hours meant to address adult issues with adult language—Sex, Please! aired before The 420 Files, a show about cannabis culture, and a funk music show called The G Spot, and we shared airspace with Reality is Real, a show about hip hop and radical politics, all of which were canceled. In addition to the anti-trafficking counter-narrative offered on Sex, Please!, we also helped people learn methods to connect better emotionally during sex, discussed the history of sexual regulation with lawyers on air, answered questions about safe sex that did work to reduce stigma and shame, informed voters of porn performers’ stance on California’s Prop 60, discussed representations of transgender people in media with transgender people, educated audiences on the HIV regulations that criminalized an HIV positive status until last year. We did many hours of unpaid labor to bring conversations about masturbation, teen sex education, sex work, group sex, sex and the law, sexual pleasure, and sexual health to a mass audience, for free. We were canceled because we advocated a sex worker-centered approach to the regulation of sex work, which acknowledges the history of law enforcement’s exploitation of workers and demands that all consensual sex among adults be decriminalized. (Also, we were canceled because we had replaced a guy named Roy of Hollywood who had 18 been on the air all night at KPFK since the 1970s, and talking about how great the 1970s were ever since. He has been restored to his six hours of airtime at night, while the shows created, produced, and directed by queers, sex workers, and people of color have all been cancelled.) While no one at the radio station ever hurled direct insults at myself or anyone on the Sex, Please! team, (they did, however, call us names on social media and through a mass mailing), the station’s fearful, self-protective response to the content of our show was a sharp reminder that sex work, and especially sex workers’ critique of the U.S. current carceral regime, scares even independent-media-minded leftists enough that they will distance themselves from our struggles, and our insights, before they have taken a negative consequence from association with us. The station’s anticipated conflict with some arm of state power—the LAPD, the City Council, the CDCR, the FCC, and Homeland Security are all contenders when it comes to anti-trafficking or explicit sex—was a more powerful motivator than the actual, real time solidarity, support and transformative work happening through Sex, Please! These kinds of “smart” and “realistic” decisions to protect respectability are made every day of course. Stigma is “sticky,” in the words of Sarah Ahmed. That is why I intend to stay sticky, too. We’re moving to a podcast format during the summer of 2017. Among other factors, I was inspired to create a life of public self-outing by a documentary clip of Harvey Milk saying, “come out, come out, whoever you are,” to a room full of San Francisco voters (The Times of Harvey Milk). He was gleeful, gorgeous, vibrant, self-assured. It seemed clear that to be out of the closet as a nonmonogamous, queer/pansexual person and a sex worker would immediately translate into a better life: I’d build deeper community, find relief from stress and anxiety, and offer my own personal momentum to a liberatory movement. The peer support and community that is possible in American sex-worker rights activism 19 provides a basis for strength when being out of the closet wears one down. Unsurprisingly, the problems of racism, classism, and cis-gender privilege that plague white feminism also appear in U.S.-based sex worker activism, but more on that later. I have found deeper community; also, I write, have challenging conversations, give workshops and talks, organize with nonprofits and grassroots groups, research the history of and try to stay informed about current queer/sex worker/trans* resistance movements, and so on. What I have not found is relief from the stress and anxiety of anticipating confrontations with people who want to shame or hurt me, or, freedom from the constant barrage of images and cultural tropes that reinforce and legitimize the stigma against sex workers. I can’t open my Twitter feed without seeing a trailer for a movie like Rough Night, in which a group of bachelorettes “accidentally” kill a male sex worker. That film is supposed to be a comedy. Materially, I am vulnerable to job discrimination and contact with law enforcement. I’ve already lost a teaching job because a parent found out I was stripping at a topless bar. The head of the school asked me if I could quit stripping, because the writing class I was teaching was so popular. I told him no. The class I was teaching happened twice a week and paid me $200 a month, and stripping was paying my rent. In fact, I told the boss, I can only teach these classes because I have a flexible, high-paying, part-time other job. But nevermind. If one parent is scared my stripper-ness will infect the children, by all means, let’s capitulate to the fear of sleazy sex. I belong somewhere else anyway. The problem? Finding a “somewhere else” once you have gotten that scarlet letter. Job and housing discrimination are some of the highest priorities for sex worker rights’ groups internationally. In the U.S., sex worker-centered nonprofits are still very focused on providing basic survival services such as triage health care and reentry after incarceration. I have been careful as a graduate student; out on the page, closeted with my students. As I describe it, it 20 seems insane. But then again, insanity is the effect of a closet. “Sex worker” as an identity label is a wild card. When I use it, I should be ready to follow up, to encounter unexpected responses, and to creatively engage irritatingly familiar ones. “Sex worker” is a term chosen by people in the sex industry to describe ourselves. It has international recognition as a term associated with a movement for decent working conditions, an end to destructive criminalization and stigma for consenting adults making private transactions, enhanced self-determination for marginalized populations, the end of patriarchal control of all bodies, and self-celebration for stigmatized people on the sexual margins. Internationally, sex workers often organize and agitate to change the culture and laws that affect them, rather than sticking to a reform model based in charity, rescue, or inclusion into mainstream society. The United States is one of the most dangerous and conservative places to be a sex worker—in India, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, and so many other countries, sex workers have organized much more effectively for recognition of their own rights and they are more deeply linked up with other liberatory struggles. According to Norma Jean Almodovar, founder of the sex worker rights group Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE) and current webmaster for the site Police, Prostitution, and Politics (dot com), there is no history of prostitution in this country separable from the history of exploitative relations with law enforcement. That is one reason I will discuss incarceration, criminalization, and law—the criminalization and/or “rescue” of sex workers has direct material effect on a few million people, including the families and children of sex workers. It also contributes directly to the ways in which sites like the academy become fraught with political tensions and epistemological battles over the meanings of: feminism, self- determination, choice, agency, community, decency, respectability, freedom, the state. Even “prostitute” holds possibilities for gender variance and diverse experience. 21 “Prostituted women,” as the only acceptable terminology for people working in the criminalized area of the US sex trade, delimits a tiny margin of possibility to think in. We sex workers who operate independently, who may or may not identify as women, who believe in our collective power, and who feel more oppressed by law enforcement and the state’s narratives than we do by the sexual economy or our clients, are not allowed to write ourselves into policy. We are not meant to exist, and we are considered a very inconvenient minority, so inconvenient that we have been effectively erased from the dialogic field at the governmental level. It is this type of large-scale gaslighting that requires us to respond with a new, radical theory of sex, or, what I’m calling “radical sex praxis,” one that allows for the complexity currently denied sex workers in media. A radical theory of sex, says Gayle Rubin, “must identify, describe, explain, and denounce erotic injustice and sexual oppression. Such a theory needs refined conceptual tools which can grasp the subject and hold it in view. It must build rich descriptions of sexuality as it exists in society and history. It requires a convincing critical language that can convey the barbarity of sexual persecution” (“Thinking Sex” 149). I argue that a radical theory of sex in the American context must also be able to address the racism that inheres to sexual essentialism and sexual subcultures, the traditions of criminal/victim dichotomies differentially enforced by law against gendered and racialized bodies, and the ways in which sexual alterity has functioned to galvanize individual and group resistance to oppression. Given the history of racist law and policy, the history of laws regulating and criminalizing any sexual practice that doesn’t lead to procreation within heteronormative monogamous marriage, and the last thirty-odd years of mass incarceration, I consider this conversation not only topical, but truly urgent. In the following pages, I hope to demonstrate what this radical theory of sex might look like in literature, and how it can function to change the way we read and understand sexual 22 transaction on the page. Ferguson writes of Aberrations in Black: Towards A Queer of Color Critique: “this book tries to present another story—one in which the people that presumably evince the dysfunctions of capitalism are revised as sites that possibly critique state, capital, and social science” (ix). Queer of color critique asserts that “racist practice articulates itself generally as gender and sexual regulation,” and “gender and sexual differences variegate racial formations” (3). Queer of color analysis “has to debunk the idea that race, class, gender, and sexuality are discrete formations, apparently insulated from one another” (4). Here I argue for a radical theory of sex, or perhaps more accurately, a radical sex praxis, which requires just such an analysis to function in tension with current flows of sexual commerce. Hegemony must be thought against, and this takes collective effort, collective will, and eventually, collective action. In the seven years I have been working on this project, public discourse has changed profoundly. The media and the internet is full of more and more sex worker stories, more visibility, more discussion, and more confusion. The struggle to describe what a sex worker is or means grows louder and stranger by the day. This confusion has taken gender oppression as its focal issue. I will, in the following pages, offer a method for a more critical, intersectional approach to the cacophonous representation of sex workers in literature and media. My method takes gender oppression as a foundational, but not exclusive factor in the deployment of the whore stigma. The compartmentalized discussions about race, class, migration and queerness in academic work on the sex industries belies the omnipresence and cocreation of those factors. Sex workers know, understand, and use the meanings that stick to our bodies when we are coded as sexual objects for sale. Sex worker can refer to: a person who has (any kind of) sex with clients, a web cam 23 performer, a stripper, a phone sex operator, a fetish model, a professional dominant or submissive, a sugar baby, a porn performer, an erotic masseuse. Many, if not most sex workers, do more than one form of sex work. I have done at least seven. Many do the labor but resist being called a “sex worker” or have never thought to identify as one. I am a sex worker: it’s something I can’t unsay. It can become a totalizing identity concept. In Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World’s Oldest Profession, Tyler Goddard Smith writes that the people he profiles “probably did (or will do) some other interesting things with their lives. But in the end, we’re going to remember these naturals for how they played on the field of prostitution” (9). It is something sex workers who aren’t activists often complain about: I can’t come out of the closet because once I do, it’s all anyone will ever think about me again. What if I’m “just” a stripper, do I have to call myself a sex worker? Then everyone will think I’m a whore. When I mention sex work as part of my life, people who are not sex workers feel compelled to respond, in a way they do not to most other jobs. (Really? I’ve never met one of you before!) Other sex workers in the academy often feel free to come out to me, quietly, to the side of the room. Me too, they’ll say. I’m in it too. I did that too. Or, I’m one too. Would it be this way if we weren’t criminals? Would it be this way if we lived in a sex positive culture? Impossible to know, but I can imagine a change. A generation ago, it would have been nearly impossible for me to be out of the closet as queer the way I am now, without being harassed by police for my queerness, without feeling scared to leave the house unless I was dressed up right, without social groups or spaces that were safe for me to be myself in. Part of the whore stigma involves our being presumed to be used and abused. Those considered “damaged” may perhaps be allowed to speak on their own experience, but it is another thing altogether to consider them authorities on even their own subculture. Social 24 science disciplines have names for ascribing this authority to marginalized subjects: trauma- informed, participatory action research study, lateral interviewing. Still, when thinking about the ways in which victims of violence, sex workers, queers, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated and other marginalized bodies are treated by academic disciplines, and especially the law, I feel a near impenetrable anxiety. I think of all the intake forms I’ve tried to fill out, in which my relationship status, sexual orientation, family/partnering style, and physical/medical issues start taking up the marginal space never meant for client’s writing. I am still checking boxes someone else designed, and that makes me cognizant of so many other forms of inclusion/exclusion. I started stripping at nineteen because I needed more money to live on than nannying five mornings a week could provide, and then, I quit stripping the same year because I was publishing a nonfiction book co-written with my sister and the publisher threatened to take our book off the shelves if I didn’t. After graduating, after I’d worked three jobs for a few years and saved a little, I borrowed again to attend a private MFA program at Emerson College. I taught pole dancing, I stripped, I modeled, I did burlesque, a lot of it for fun, most of it for pay, and I came out of the closet as a stripper in my entrance essay to this PhD program. Yet being partially out of the closet hasn’t helped me fix my sense of nonbelonging in the academy. I haven’t been groomed and I refuse most grooming. I have witnessed the tools wielded by academics: they are sharp and tend to be attracted to shiny objects, and as a sex worker, that is what I am. For years, I read Dworkin and McKinnon and Irigary and Wittig and Cixous and heard professors of mine speak about the degradation and humiliation women suffer in the sex industries, using sexual labor as the symbolic stand-in for all that is wrong with the patriarchy. I knew there was another way to feel, another way to live, another way to work, 25 another way to have a vagina. I knew there was a form of sexual commerce that isn’t constantly attached to our collective injuries, but I didn’t know how to speak of it. I have felt disempowered from asserting any kind of theoretical position of my own, from within a closet. Now I can say: I read like a hooker and see hookers in a lot of what I read. I have decided to organize some of these observations. My method has been inter-or perhaps anti- disciplinary. I was gratified to find the following, in the preface to the seminal 1956 text Sex Variant Women in Literature by Alfred Kinsey’s contemporary Jeannette H. Foster: The author has called attention to lesbian tendencies wherever she has found them. She has made no attempt to estimate what proportion of imaginative writing may be the work of lesbians. She has not confined herself to literary classics but has accepted the fact that human beings reveal themselves in whatever they read and write. Sexual variance shows itself in so many different ways that all types of imaginative writings have to be studied if we are to understand human motivations and behavior. (v) Like Foster on the hunt for lesbian Easter eggs on all floors of the library, I’m reading, watching, and listening always for signs of other sex workers. I read psychology, sociology, sexology, history, culture criticism, porn, blogs, fiction, policies, memoirs, dissertations, news reports, literary theory, poetry, encyclopedias, legal scholarship, critical race theory, queer theory, affect theory, communist tracts, moralistic propaganda, and most of my everyday conversations with an eye out for the effects of stigma or openings for solidarity. In the introduction to Uses of Literature, Rita Felski writes that “there is no compelling reason why the practice of theory requires us to go behind the backs of ordinary persons in order to expose their beliefs as deluded or delinquent” (13). Felski hopes to avoid the self- congratulatory “vanguardist sensibility” that congeals in theory, and so do I, albeit through a 26 critical take on what passes for “ordinary” when it comes to sex workers appearing in media and literature. Because there is a compelling reason to go behind the backs of “ordinary persons” if their beliefs can be understood as deluded or delinquent, such as the widespread, statistically demonstrable belief that women are worth less as human beings when they are promiscuous, and especially if they accept payment for sexual service. A critical encounter with sex work on the page requires awareness of the ways in which violence against prostitutes has been not only acceptable, but acceptably titillating. I approach sex work literature often with paranoia, but it’s because the world is actually kind of out to get us. Still, I share with Felski a desire to do something other than a taxonomic exercise with the texts that move me. It is in this way that I am in accord with her use of phenomenology. She writes: We quantify and qualify, hesitate and complicate, surround texts with dense thickets of historical description and empirical detail, distancing them as firmly as possible from our own threateningly inchoate, or theoretically incorrect, desires and investments. In this sense phenomenology offers a worthy complement and ally, rather than an opponent, to such acts of embedding. If historical analysis takes place in the third person, phenomenology ties such analysis back to the first person, clarifying how and why particular texts matter to us…The act of reading enacts an ethics and a politics in its own right, rather than being a displacement of something more essential that is taking place elsewhwere. (19-20) The language used by non-sex workers to describe sex work, sex workers, and the spaces sex workers occupy rarely gets deployed without the third person distance required by 27 respectability politics. When sex workers do write of themselves in print media, or make films about their own lives, we usually write to an audience of imagined non-sex workers, and so we engage in a game of constant reinscription of the workings of stigma as we attempt to explain, reveal, and demystify. But what if demystification of sex-work-as-work, the demystification of gender and power and economic pressure, the demystification of the unconscious erotic attachments to taboos like racial scripts, wasn’t our job? What if helping non-sex workers hate us less wasn’t the main goal of the literature produced by and about sex workers? What if our stories were perfectly fine to stand as nearly illegible to anyone but our own? What if we weren’t forced to use the melodramatic mode, the rhetoric of trafficking, if we intend to make ourselves visible? What if our consistent exceeding the categories of criminal and victim served to destroy the powerful hold those categories still have? The question of who should discuss what text and how emerges from a desire to counter the traditions of white male supremacy in the academy. The study of marginalized voices obviously cannot be done exclusively by representatives of dominant/hegemonic cultures: that is the error of colonial anthropology, the “dead white men” cannons of literary criticism, and so on. However, the analysis and study of marginalized voices should also not be done exclusively by the already-marginalized: that is the same unfair burden of educating others that is always placed on us/them. Simultaneous forces apply to my work: my responsibility to speak/write in the academy as an Other, and my responsibility to step aside/open up space/amplify the voices of those who aren’t in the privileged position I currently am in. I find and navigate my positionality dialectically and contextually. When dealing with academics, I often identify with a large “we” of sex workers, but, I need to be clear that I do not claim the experience of other workers, for example those who operate in more dangerous contexts like outdoor, street-based sex work. 28 I am responding in part to Chandra Mohanty’s original call in “Under Western Eyes” for Western feminists to self-critically evaluate their participation in a colonizing epistemological project. Sixteen years after making that call, Mohanty wrote in “Under Western Eyes Revisited” that “in the United States, women’s movements have become increasingly conservative, and much radical antiracist feminist activism occurs outside the rubric of such movements” (500). This statement should be a signal to current participants in feminist struggles that the dominant paradigmatic assumptions of what is a feminist act, what is a feminist text, and what is an acceptable credential for any one person to claim themselves a “feminist” have not been adequately influenced by the voices of women of color and of the Global South, or Two-Thirds World. In addition, I submit that Western feminist paradigms have also not been adequately influenced by those involved in less visible struggles against compulsory heteronormativity and the policing of sexuality—those who identify as LGBTQIA, sex workers, nonmonogamous/poly family groups, and so on. Rod Ferguson writes in the preface to Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique: “My inspection is informed by a single assumption—that epistemology is an economy of information privileged and information excluded, and that subject formations arise out of this economy. I also know that canonical and national formations rarely disclose what they have rejected” (ix). If the “canonical and national formations” we engage daily—and here I take Ferguson to mean everything from parking enforcement, amazon.com, university administration, faculty, syllabi, architecture, the supermax prison, advertising copy, international publishers, the Superbowl, mom’s groups, bar menus with cheeky names referencing popular TV shows on them—if the gatekeepers to social life do not disclose who they have relegated to social 29 death, then resistance to their taxonomies requires careful attention to meaningful silences, inappropriate questions, and impure subjects who fall through the cracks in the systems. As many who document social movements and revolutionary histories will remind us, replacing one repressive paradigm with a new seemingly less-oppressive one (think “anti- trafficking”) does not equal liberation for all. Consider that the educational turn to “multiculturalism” in American pedagogy didn’t cure the illnesses of white privilege it sought to address. Instead, it instated a new regime of tokenism-through-diversity and tolerance, in which racial and ethnic minority groups must conform to already-acceptable forms of social life to receive the material rewards of cultural capital, and whether they do or don’t conform, they are still very likely to find themselves affected by criminalization and social stigma. The cultural weight of those very important feminist movement gains from the 1970s such as the Pill, Equal Opportunity laws, rights to lines of credit, and so on, have allowed for a creeping cultural arrogance on the left. It is a quiet form of American exceptionalism, but it has far-reaching consequences: arrogance is the belief that the women’s movements of the United States were always and always will be the best ones, against which other, foreign women’s movements may be fairly and impartially compared. Our mainstream cultural claim to gender-equality-success has been thrown into chaos via the rise of Trump, especially through the embarrassingly large numbers of Trump votes from white women, who forgave him his pussy-grabbing somehow. However, the threads of American feminist self- congratulation and of rampant gender-based protectionism remain. Once a nation-state or other governing formation claims to enact a project for the benefit of its own women, the divisions of race, class, immigration status, gender identity, and so on among “women” are erased and therefore rendered mute in conversations about what is best or beneficial, what is the answer to “what women want.” Laws governing sex work are 30 currently marketed as victim-centered policy that help women. The disproportionate enforcement of these protectionist laws against women of color and particularly transgender women of color in the United States should no longer appear a sad consequence of a legacy of racism or gender violence which is assumed to be ending. On the contrary, real inequality among living, embodied women should appear as an actively constitutive element of the maintenance of feminism’s official success narrative at home. What has happened on a global scale in the clashing of “women’s interests” via ideological and material battles over sex work, arranged marriages, clitoridectomies, and more, is that “progress” has begun to circle back upon itself in disturbing displays of moral policing, surveillance, and what Foucault would call social control through capillary power. Carceral feminism allows for there to be “bad women” who deserve to be locked up if they don’t consent to being treated as victims. Sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein puts it this way in Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex: Both the state policing of the street-level sex trade and the normalization of the sex business reveal a shared set of underlying economic and cultural interests: the excision of class and racial Others from gentrifying inner cities, the facilitation of the postindustrial service sector and the creation of clean and shiny urban spaces in which middle-class men can safely indulge in recreational commercial sexual consumption. (141) Protectionist legislation, armed with forceful women’s health-centered rhetoric, delineates the boundaries between acceptable behaviors for deserving women and unacceptable behaviors occurring amongst undesirable women. This legislation appears at multiple levels, such as the U.S-based, global anti-trafficking movement, which enforces 31 compulsory adherence to the State Departments terms of “rescue;” France’s Islamaphobic ban on the veil; Louisiana’s state requirement that sex workers who provided anal sex must submit their information to a sex offender registry (Finally defeated, after 750 women had complied, in 2015). I agree with Mohanty that a thoughtful and organized resistance to top-down prescriptive sexual and gender politics is more likely to be found outside reformist feminism’s colonized dialogic arena. And yet, neither she nor I advocate the total abandonment of feminism per se, as a foundation from which to derive academic questions, given the masculinist, hierarchical organization of the universities, the dominance of patriarchal systems of competition, reward, and punishment in social and professional life, and in general, the underrepresentation of women and queers in the halls of American institutions. My question then becomes: what kind of feminism would need to be embedded in a new radical theory of sex? The first answer is: not a cisgender, heterosexual white feminism. Audre Lorde addressed this in the “Uses of Anger,” the Combahee River Collective addressed it, and Malini Johar Schueller wrote in 2005 that “for some time now, it seems to have been understood among feminist theorists, particularly white feminist theorists, that questions of race and colonialism are being suitably addressed within gender studies and that everyone is aware of the problems of approaching the questions of gender and sexuality from a seemingly unraced perspective” (63). And yet, the struggle continues. What Mohanty notices when she states that much “radical antiracist feminist work” is happening outside the “rubric” of Western feminism is that there are modes of liberatory political life that seek a critical engagement with intersectionality at all times, that demand full attentive consciousness to real-time contradictions in sex-gender-race-class-age-culture identities and values. The freedom to make autonomous choices, an ideal espoused as a foundational feminist project, becomes deeply tied to unacknowledged privilege when one 32 woman assumes that no other women could possibly choose to clean toilets, wear a hijab, perform sex acts for money, leave her family behind in the Philippines for ten years, and so on, if she had the “freedom” to choose something else, a freedom ostensibly possessed by the liberated women of the One-Third World. Assuming that all people similarly desire even the same freedom to make choices is questionable (ask someone involved in BDSM who pays for the joy of cleaning a Mistress’s toilet, or a child charged with deciding which divorced parent they want to live with), but even if it were foundationally true that increased access to choice is one of the great gains of global feminist movements, a hierarchy of options underpins that increased access. Some choices are better than others because of their social value as “empowering,” “conscious,” “intelligent,” and the like. The moral values of the white feminist subject may not prescribe that any particular woman go get a job, but they do require that all American women have a narrative about their possible vocational options now that working outside the home has been “achieved.” This discursive move completely disavows the legacy of black women’s violently coerced domestic and sexual labor under American slavery. It erases the legalized employment discrimination a disproportionate number of women of color with felony records experience currently. It reinforces the ways in which racialization creates whiteness and white femininity as normal. Consider the following situation from Ray and Qayum’s Cultures of Servitude: Modernity, Domesticity, and Class in India: For the poor woman or the low-caste woman who was obliged to work outside the home, the street was unavoidable; thus, she was inevitably classed with “women of the street,” or prostitutes. The assumption of sexual misconduct on the part of domestic servants and other women workers stemmed, therefore, 33 from crossing the line between the home and the street, Iajja and shamelessness, respectability and promiscuity. (54) Ray and Qayum outline a material reality that cannot be addressed adequately by the premise that the option of working outside the home is a boon to all women. They describe the contradictory forces of social shame and economic necessity that might have influenced domestic workers to occupy the streets of Kolkata in ambivalence. And, they remind more privileged readers of the uncomfortable fact that people in poverty don’t exclusively receive, but also enact, moral repugnance for others, in this case, (and in so many), for prostitutes. However, the authors also run the risk of infantilizing low-caste domestic workers of the past as pitiable victims caught in forces too powerful to resist, in the rush to discover appropriate perpetrators and victims among the complexities of deeply rooted structural constraints. Rhacel Parreñas, Laura Augustín, Kamala Kempadoo, Jo Doezema, and others have written ethnographic accounts of groups of women sex workers living under Western eyes, and they have crafted theoretical interventions that upset the category of “victim,” ironically finding themselves accused of being apologists for sexist regimes. While it is clear they write to complicate (the opposite of infantilize) their subjects, to respond to the problem outlined earlier by Walkowitz, their findings become controversial because they do not offer evidence of an already-legible western feminist project. If women of the One-Third world were more often able to see our privilege as constituted by the repressions and marginalizations of the Two-Thirds World more self-critically, then perhaps new pedagogical models, construction of texts, and attempts at political organizing across common differences might emerge for us as the activities of a feminist practice itself, and the policing of feminism’s purity in the behavior of women “out there” would give way to the co-creation of real alternative life worlds wherever the struggles against local tyrannies are already occurring. We at least could do less 34 harm, an argument I approach in the current project through the personal essay “Pat Pong’s Ping Pong Show.” If historians and sociologists know that commercial sex has multiple meanings, and critical race theorists know that sexual bodies in the US are always already racialized, and queer theorists know that sexual marginalization is one of the state’s greatest weapons in the maintenance of gender systems and hetero-patriarchy, then doesn’t it makes sense that the sex work context is a convergence site, a perfect storm, a living library for information on oppression? What may not be as obvious is how the sex worker’s body, the transaction itself, or the rhetoric surrounding them also become sites for resistance. The importance of identity politics to this project is complex: I approach identity categories with deep respect for the wisdom of personal experiences and yet also an activated suspicion. I agree with Wendy Brown’s argument in States of Injury that neoliberal policy has aided capitalism’s absorption of identity categories into marketable items that reinforce hierarchies of difference. Instead of fostering deeper communication and supporting the practice of envisioning what we want for our lives collectively, identity politics of the present day often lead to what activists like to call “competing in the Oppression Olympics.” Yet, the continued, massive tolerance of state-ordered and individual violence against sex workers, as a criminalized class, speaks to a deep need for the type of scholarship I perform here. As Kathy Cohen writes in “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” “strategies built upon the possibility of incorporation and assimilation are exposed as simply expanding and making accessible the status quo for more privileged members of marginal groups, while the most vulnerable in our communities continue to be stigmatized and oppressed” (443). By discussing my own life, I risk levying an inappropriately universalizing complaint about “the” dehumanizing stigma all sex workers experience, a rhetorical habit of white sex worker rights’ 35 activists and memoirists (Phipps 83). What I hope to do instead is offer my own experience as an act of vulnerability, a way to gesture toward a more productive unknowing, the unraveling of what has seemed obvious to outsiders about sex-for-trade, and the people who perform it, without collapsing other people into new taxonomies, new erasures. What follows are explorations of sex work literature that ask questions about the role of stigma in the creation of sex work on the page, and open up possibilities for sex work in literature to evince transformative processes. The registers are myriad, the zones of demarcation zoom in and out. My questions about oppression and stigma center the role of racism and criminalization, as much and perhaps more than gender oppression. It’s a lot. In Chapter One A and Chapter One B, I investigate the ways in which stories from the strip club resist incorporation into dominant forms of reliable narration, through criticism and personal essay. In Chapter Two, I return to the possibility of a radical theory of sex through the knowledges that emerge from racialized sex work sites (and I argue that they’re all racialized). In Chapter Three, I document my experience of discovering a piece of sex work literature in the archive of Civil Rights activist and organizer James Forman, and then perform a close read on the published story and some of the edits Forman made to it. Through this work, I hope to contribute to a field of feisty, critical, queer, intersectional, political scholarship that takes “subversive” sexualities and shadow economies as important sites for the development of new knowledge and practice (praxis). I’d like to aid in the proliferation of texts that directly challenge the workings of the American imperial- carceral project, and I understand doing this from my own position as a white woman is necessarily an impure act, no matter how queer or sex work-y I am. I am not a pure resistance subject—I benefit from my whiteness as a sex worker, I engage the academy daily as a white femme woman, I have been allowed the time and space to think the following thoughts, and 36 therefore I have participated in the same exploitative, racist, misogynist economy I seek to reveal and critique. In other words, I accept that I am here, and now, making both courageous moves and big mistakes. This tension is the foundation of a radical sex praxis, a radical theory of sex, a way of reading and thinking sexuality that resists blanket moralistic prescriptive answers in favor of situated, negotiated forms of consent. The following pages discuss sex work literature in ways designed to offer both something hopeful and helpful to people already engaged in sites of struggle, and something deeply threatening to those who are invested in the preservation of the current, murderous status quo. 37 CHAPTER ONE PART A Stripper Memory: In Defense of Emblematic Narrative In the mid-1990s, when Courtney Love confessed to Rolling Stone that she was a stripper before she became a rock star, such a thing still made news. By 2006, Diablo Cody’s book Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper was published, then rereleased immediately upon Cody’s Oscar win for the Juno screenplay in 2007. By 2010, NBC aired Martha Stewart swinging on a stripper pole. Today, pole dancing for fitness is normal and strip clubs feature in popular music and other media so often they are uncountable. For all its symbolic presence in our media as flashes of skin, stripping is still in early stages of representation in legal and sociological studies of labor practice. Adult clubs employ over 350,000 people who interact with over a million customers per day nationwide. There are less than 200,000 practicing dentists in the United States, yet, unlike dentists, adult club entertainers have no place in the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ many publications. In the social sciences, the study of legal and illegal sexual practice tends to delimit boundaries of inquiry, and so academic writing on American prostitution appears in journals like Crime and Delinquency, while academic writing on the emotional production and consumption of “exotic dance” appears in Body and Society (Jolin, Egan). However, in the first- person narratives of strippers, the boundary between legal and illegal scenarios is not the same as the difference between desirable or undesirable experiences, sanctioned and unsanctioned club practice, normal or abnormal in a day’s work; what is legal and illegal informs but does not directly determine any given dancer’s perception of what is happening on the job. A customer’s hand crossing one half-inch of bikini fabric may be inconsequential to 38 one dancer, another could get fired, another could get arrested by an undercover cop, another could feel assaulted, another could get a $50 tip, or, one could encounter some cacophonous combination of any of these plus more consequences. The destabilizing sensation of risk and potentiality that occurs in every new interaction with a customer/client resists representation in statistics and is not often sought in ethnographer’s interviews. So, what happens when a dancer does try to tell “her” story? Lucky Lap Dance Part 1: A lucky lap dance happens with a totally inoffensive, maybe even attractive guy who sits very still even when you make it a little to easy to touch you. Actually, there are two kinds of lucky lap dance. The second kind happens with a sexy woman who enjoys herself. That is truly, truly rare, because it requires a matchup of TWO unicorns: the self-accepting bi-pan- flexisexual stripper who allows herself to feel turned on by women of multiple gender expressions and knows how to compartmentalize her own desire response such that she still feels in control of the situation while getting titillated, because while giving a lap dance, you either have, or have surrendered control, which is why it is such good preparation for professional submissive or Dominant work; and, for the second unicorn, the female customer, you must have a self-accepting bi- or pansexual women who is in enthusiastic collaboration with your performance of being a stripper, and, does not seem delusional about how much she can know about you based only on your presumed shared gendered/sexual experience. Like, she knows she doesn’t know you and she’s so excited that you’re here, doing what you’re doing, and there’s no insecurity about whether you are going to steal attention from her from men in general or one guy in particular, who may or may not be sitting in the lap dance booth with her. Sometimes he buys the dance for her and gives you a kind of bro-elbow to the boob, 39 while saying, “Give her a good one, she’s nervous but she wants it SO bad,” and you get a leap of adrenaline and a short of turn on direct to your clit like a lighting strike POW! Fuckyeah you say and take her by the hand and look at her face and decide immediately whether this is going to be a B-level or A-level kind of unicorn match-up. Because you never know, she could be the hottest moment of your LIFE if you play your cards right. Yes, it turns some of us on, the power. Yes, it turns some of us on, the money. No, not everyone. Some women truly hate the whole thing and get drunk or high or usually both to make it happen, or, they act as if they are doing so, to emotionally insulate themselves from the utter intolerability of it all. And I mean this, there are many women in strip clubs who HATE getting fucked up on the job and try not to, which means you must resort to trickery. Because you are not allowed to be a sober stripper without enduring constant harassment and/or alienation from groups of (mostly male) people who will call you many, many stupid names and present you with many, many stupid excuses for why you should give up your rigid principles (it’s because it feels bad to get wasted too many days a week, asshole, and it’s how you molest me, duh) just tonight, just this one special night. We create your special night, actually, as our job. Which means let us make the party on our own terms, thanks, and we can guarantee we’ll all have a real good time. I call upon Ueno Chizuko, a feminist critic writing from Japan, for the foundational claim that information gathered from first-person narratives is the least reliable kind, according to a positivist standard of truth. She writes extensively on the issue of Japan’s suppression of testimony from the WWII comfort women. In “The Politics of Memory: Nation, Individual, and Self,” Ueno describes positivism as relying on three assumptions: 40 1) Historical facts are identical in the eyes of all viewers; 2) facts must be supported by testimony, documents or material evidence; and 3) there is a hierarchy to these three, in which testimony has the least value. (134) Ueno’s hierarchy certainly functions in the world of American book publishing, in which we can track a pervasive bias against a narrative style or cluster of rhetorical techniques, which I will group together under the term “emblematic”. An emblematic narrative defies current American English genre conventions, which are enforced by the trade publishing industry and have been since the 1970s, by internally refusing classification as either fiction or nonfiction. Emblematic narrative seeks to offer symbolic scenes that gesture to complex recurrent or ritualized occurrence. Emblematic narratives gesture at repetition with a difference. They describe what could have happened, the type of thing that happens, what often happened, and what would happen, as opposed to the directly biographical-historical, temporally finite trope of “what happened.” If, per Ueno’s hierarchy of evidence, autobiography or memoir will be devalued unless it attempts to achieve verisimilitude through completeness, accuracy, or verifiability, then an emblematic narrative either fails at, or decisively resists, the requirements of respectable evidence of what is real. And yet, it is for many of us the most accurate way to convey our sex working memories. Concretely, an emblematic narrative may use the subjunctive and conditional as much or more than the indicative verb mood, as it initiates readers to a world of experiential learning, context-specific habits, and social codes. In traditional autobiography and memoir, the unified subject speaks about specific events or periods in his or her own past, with an eye for both historical and emotional accuracy. In contrast, an emblematic narrative works within an open temporality, describes ongoing events or linked chains of events, may be offered from a communal subjectivity or “we,” and often arises from occluding conditions such as 41 metaphysical experience, drug-induced perception, coercion, lust, and so on. Emblematic narrative incorporates both verifiable facts with imaginative interpretations of unverifiable memory or beliefs. Despite the explosion of representations of sex workers, and especially strippers, in mainstream media, the number of English language, first-person, book-length published narratives by sex workers is few. The number of those by people who identify primarily as strippers is even fewer. Diablo Cody’s Candy Girl: Memoir of an Unlikely Stripper was a commercial success at least in part because of the distance Cody kept from the identity of the stripper. Cody calls stripping “puddle-shallow” and “symbolically molecular,” while also claiming that she was “permanently altered” by her time “living among the strippers in their moist, humid habitat” (211). What is especially damaging here, at least to the goal of understanding more about the work as experienced by workers, is that Cody claims herself to be a special case among the sea of attention-seeking, low-class imbeciles, while simultaneously claiming to speak from an “insider” position. And of course, insofar as she did perform the job of a stripper, she’s not wrong about her own identity claims or positioning. I set this text apart to highlight how “insiders” can replicate dominant systems of value in their attempts to either legitimize their individual subcultural experience, or more generously, in attempts to be more approachable as they educate others. Cody used emblematic narratives to set scenes, but she identified more with the wives and girlfriends outside the club, or even the clients, and so she never spoke from a position of solidarity, a felt sense of “we,” with other workers, nor did she expect her experience to be emblematic of what the work itself was “like” in the broad sense, because she was a researcher, not a subject. Emblematic narratives of the strip club can be simultaneously stigmatizing and liberating, sexy and violent, magical and mundane, and they can resist incorporation into 42 dominant discursive norms because of their recursive and cumulative structure and their always-already problematized transactional-sexual content. Studies of 17 th -century emblems have made claims that emblematic thinking is different from traditional narrative thinking. Emblems recall a host of other images and texts, and are so deeply allusive, take time to decipher, and often use analogy and allegory, and thus force a reader to search for meaning. It is not my intention to map a Renaissance trope directly onto a modern text—instead I hope to link my current discussion of the “emblematic narrative” emerging from first-person accounts of strip club work to the tradition of sixteenth and seventeenth century emblems in a more abstract and thematic way. My reclaiming and operationalizing of the term “emblematic narrative” indicates the way current first-person accounts from the erotic industries rely on an interplay between the visual and the textual, ask readers to do a great deal of interpretive work, and often do not follow conventional narrative temporality or offer unified narrative subject positioning, and most importantly, by their attempt to speak the unspeakable: the constant interconnectedness of otherwise “hostile worlds” of sex and commerce. Lucky Lap Dance Part 2: A lucky lap dance happens to a song you love dancing to, that you know well and can anticipate, so that when you feel like blowing his mind with a special hip dip or shimmy shake or even a boob smother, you can do it at the right climactic moment in the music to maximize his experience. You can never know from a first-time encounter whether a man is turned on or not, contrary to popular belief about the obviousness of erections, because people express turn on in an infinite number of ways. Some people are so demonstrative you wonder if they’re faking it kind of to make you feel better about yourself? Which is silly, or maybe it 43 turns them on to hear themselves be turned on, and they like to be listened to. Some sit perfectly still with their eyes closed, silently, and it seems like they aren’t even there, and when it is over, they open their eyes and say things like, “That was the best thing to happen to me in ten years.” A lucky lap dance happens when he’s cute or even really attractive and he says as soon as he sits down: “I just talked to your manager about a champagne room. You are by far the most beautiful woman I’ve seen here, not to say anything about the other girls because they’re great, I mean, I think there’s some extremely pretty girls here. I just. You. I wanted to get three minutes alone with you before we go into that room with the other guys and the girls they chose. You don’t have to dance if you don’t want to.” A lucky lap dance happens when you know your dance has done the thing, captured, captivated, MADE the people look at you because people just don’t move like that, normally. Their bodies don’t do what yours did, and then, you seemed to like it, and my God that’s what they’re looking for, someone who is happy to be here, even if they’re faking it, they’re doing such a good job they should be rewarded with a good time. And money. They are not at all concerned with the basic exorbitant mark- ups on the liquor, they tell you to order whatever you want, and on the list of examples of things you may want, are the most expensive liquors, the largest bottle of sparkling water, “if that’s your thing,” and food, whatever’s best here. No pressure to drink or not drink. Please eat. Have a seat. Dance when you feel like it. In short, T.I.’s song “Whatever You Like,” which was one of my favorite songs to strip to, because it subliminally suggested to the customers in the club that they should treat me in this way, exactly. (Yes, I think T.I. Helped me make money. So do at least two other strippers I know, who were working during the period that “Whatever You Like” was popular in strip clubs, which is as soon as a pop song is released, for many months after it has gone out of fashion.) 44 Strip club DJs are powerful. When you get a good one, dancing is easy, and it is a joy, and a good DJ is like a pair of perfect pajamas. You don’t think about him too much, but you know he’s out there, benevolently having your back and playing your songs and making sure you know if something’s about to pop with management or if there’s drama or money on the floor. He doesn’t try to come in to the dressing room. He’s called your name, you’ve danced well, strong, and hot, roundly scooping your hips into shapes that suggest incredible sensations for a penis, were it to be inside you. Maybe you’ve felt cheeky and done some real shaking of your ass and flirting from the stage. Eyebrows and stuff. Or maybe you’ve been internally focused, serious, slow, and doing some self-hypnosis with your breathing. A lucky lap dance happens when a customer has seen you do this, whatever your performance was, and he just fell for you on the spot in a way that does not feel familiar to him. He is vulnerable, but not uncomfortable with it. It’s a gift, it’s a joy, to be surprised in this way. Either he’s slightly sociopathic and feels no guilt about his wife/girlfriend, or, she’s in the booth being a unicorn of love and desire there with you (THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE RAREST OF ALL LUCKS), or, he has one of those reasonable “she knows I’m here and is cool with it” type feminist girlfriends, or some other story. If she’s not there, the luckiest lap dance simply proceeds without her entering the category of “Problems.” Most lap dances have some problems. Some are self-generated: I drank too much and now I have to pee so bad, I was in the middle of a text fight and I didn’t get to have the last word before getting interrupted by my stage show, I’m tired and don’t feel like it, and so on. Some are other- generated: he tries to touch your asshole during the lap dance. He starts masturbating and it bothers you. He says something stupid. These things are not rare, but they are also usually easily corrected with one slap of the hand and brief “That’s a no-no. On the second one, I’m gone.” 45 When Michael Hardt discusses affective labor, he describes the labor as “immaterial, even if it is corporeal and affective, in the sense that its products are intangible: a feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, passion,” and acknowledges that “affective labor is better understood by beginning from feminist analyses of ‘women’s work’” (96). Hardt delimits a social hierarchy of immaterial labor that drives the service sector, with affective labor, which “involves the production and manipulation of affects and requires (virtual or actual) human contact and proximity” at the bottom (98). Seeing strippers (and all other sex workers) as affective laborers in an overdetermined yet still precisely gendered body is one key to shifting the cultural prejudice against her testimony, her stories of her own experience. It at least pulls her into the realm of “biopower,” which as Hardt uses it, is the site for potential revolution. If we can take for granted (as Hardt does) that “the labor of biopolitical production is strongly configured as gendered labor,” then the first-person narratives of those gendered laborers should call attention to the also-gendered intellectual traditions of scientific veracity, historical accuracy, and positivist proof (98). In other words, a narrative emerging from a woman doing the least respectable of all women’s work is at risk of sounding unreal or untrue. The emblematic narrative may indeed be inaccurate via “scientific” or “common sense” ways of understanding accuracy, however, it arises from the memory of an affective laborer; we must imagine it as well as listen carefully. From a sex worker, an emblematic narrative carries a communicative gesture toward moments between sexualized bodies in a commercial transaction. This gesture must be considered on its own terms, and within its own contexts of gendered, sexualized, racialized, classed, capitalist, state-surveilled, physically precarious space. 46 The traditional mode of journalistic reportage employed by writers like Diablo Cody lends her to be read as an expert token of an imagined stripper-culture. One major problem is that this imaginary culture is presented as unmarked by race—Cody is white and nearly all her interactions are with other white people. Without also demonstrating a good-faith struggle to represent the emotional and political complexity of the work as it has been expressed by other workers, writers like Cody elucidate about as well as any other colonizing presence. Rather than think through how her race and class privilege is foundational to her disdain of the “low- class” women she describes, Cody overwrites the other dancers, bringing forth their stories and voices only when she finds something to make fun of in them. Luckily, we don't have to rely on writers like Cody for thinking through the complexities of strip club work. The essays, blogs, zines, and other work by dancers and other sex workers who are attempting to reveal their experience through the “woulds” and “sometimes” and “oftens” that function emblematically are key to any investigation of the work. Recent work by Jacq the Stripper, who has a blog, book, zine, and swag shop at jacqthestripper.com, is one example of this style of collective voice emerging. While Jacq’s work reflects her own experiences as a blonde, white, thin stripper, she often profiles women who reflect other identity categories and narratives and features writing by women of color on her blog. She actively amplifies the voices of black trans* activists and posts on social media about racism in the club. Jacq describes her new book Striptastic! (forthcoming March 2017) as “a celebration of dope-ass cunts who like money.” She has filled a blog with artwork and writing related to stripping that positions the strippers as powerful critical minds, astute observers, self-aware and self-loving, engaging with the exhausting and relentless demands of sexism and capitalism. Rather than disavow the identity as Diablo Cody did by casting herself as an 47 “unlikely” stripper, Jacq simply is “Jacq the Stripper.” Importantly, she is not the only stripper she cares about. Striptastic! emerged from an informal survey Jacq conducted with over 300 dancers from “around the world.” It catalogues many common annoyances, some oddities, and some triumphs. There are a series of posts on her website by other “off duty strippers” about their lives and experiences. In a series of drawings she calls “Inquisitive Strippers,” Jacq plays with the common questions and comments strippers field about their job by reversing the roles. One of my favorites plays with the trope of sex worker-as- therapist, reminding us that even when they are in a transactional scene, clients often do not want to compensate women for affective labor. 48 If one asks what kinds of experiences and knowledges might call for an emblem, rather than other forms of representation, a few examples arise from the sex industries: experiences that are too emotionally or politically complex to detail easily, experiences that attempt to grapple with taboo cultural constructs, and especially experiences of those that are recurring or ritualized. In other words, as a dancer attempts to tell his/her/their story, she must first contend with the sheer volume of information one evening at work includes, prioritizing certain moments over others and trying to decide what is important for outsiders to know about her or her milieu, and then she often must tell the story in such a way as to protect identity: her own, her customers’, her club’s, which might mean changing details a reader would find crucial to “understanding.” In a narrative about a customer who “would arrive sometime after six PM, order a coffee, and talk about his mother, every Wednesday for a year,” the reader is asked to imagine not just one event in which a person does these things, but a series of similar events, which are all slightly different but recognizably of a category, and then interpret an emotional state produced by these events as they are experienced over time. Maybe the first three months of drinking coffee with this customer were endearing, but by the sixth month he became a burden. Maybe he would talk about his sister, whom he regarded as a mother. How important is the coffee? Could indicate that the client was a recovering alcoholic, or, it may a signal that his other actions were not attributable to an excusable, temporary state of drunkenness. Some writers explicate their emblems, but most don’t. Lucky Lap Dance Part 3: 49 A lucky lap dance becomes a long champagne room encounter. The customer prepays until one hour before closing. You will be paid the maximum amount of money for your time left, minus one hour, which is perfect, because it means you get to check out, get dressed, and go home early with more than your minimum aspirational earning for the night. Because you never know, sometimes you end the night owing the club. A lucky lap dance turns into a champagne room that at least pays your rent in one night. There is truly nothing more pleasurable in a strip club: to be free of the fear of sexual harassment, free to eat or drink as one pleases, free to speak one’s mind, free to dance or not dance, free to enjoy a feeling of attraction to a stranger, free to tell stories, be they true, exaggerated, or fabricated, because it is understood that you are giving a performance and access to your Self after/outside of work is a privilege. And your DJ, the best one, is playing along in a perfect train of rhythms that help you listen to the people right in front of you very, very intently. Because you are in physical contact with at least one person continuously for all the hours that you are in a champagne room, unless you are dancing (fun), going to the bathroom (the safest way to check in with your body and/or the phone, sometimes also another dancer), or running some kind of weird errand invented by a dancer who has a greater plan for subverting the clock than you did. And a lucky lap dance is when you realize you don’t even have an active desire to be out of the champagne room, but if you’re in there with another dancer and she does, then definitely she should get a break, so you go with her happily, and happily return. And no one has a problem with the fact that you “took” five of “their” minutes to go do something together. Yes, this is when a lot of people do their drugs. Coke breaks, toke breaks, cig breaks, all allow for brief moments of worker-bonding. More experienced dancers sometimes offer advice to less experienced. If the less experienced don’t take it gracefully, more experienced dancers have the option of withdrawing in dignity and leaving the upstart to her 50 own thing, or, fighting for dominance. My preference is the former, of course, because I love women so much, and I like to see them work out growth and disagreement and reconciliation on their own terms, in their own time. I always see the competitive-stripper style as a nonfunctional choice in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but, I don’t think anyone has studied it enough for us to know if they are making more money than the rest of us, or if strippers who stick together increase our collective earnings through cooperation. While books like Cody’s attempt to demystify the world of strip clubs, Jacq the Stripper’s work does less to bridge the gap, a gap always there between sex workers and people who want answers to their questions about what it’s like to live like that. Jacq’s work reads more like a love letter to other strippers. She states “for all the effort we put in to entertaining others, it’s time we amuse ourselves” (jacqthestripper.com). The nature of the emblematic narrative is to capture an affective reality that is not fundamentally speakable in culturally accepted formats. When writing for other dancers, the emblem can become a locus of shared experience, and thus a deeply powerful contact point amidst so many other differences. What might be a way for people who still fancy themselves “outside the sex industry” to read these emblematic narratives more effectively? Or, what is the appropriate question to ask of an emblematic narrative, if not: “true or untrue?” The Renaissance emblem books deliberately employed “indirection and subtle elusiveness—a depth inviting scholarly commentary” and yet, they were popularly circulated (Bath and Russell 10). They attempted to address what was understood to be fundamentally unknowable (in most cases, divinity) through the interplay of allusion and careful pairing of elements. So, the question to ask of an emblematic narrative from a dancer is something along the lines of: “How can I interact with 51 this text in a way that undermines my desire to keep myself separate from the stripper- Other?” To enter the dizzying noise lying just under the surface of the emblematic narrative is to acknowledge polyvalent affective experiences in a suspension from scientific positivist notions of the Real. Or, it is to recognize in a more expansive way the long-held literary belief that a text need not be accurate to be true. 52 CHAPTER ONE PART B Patpong's Ping-Pong Show My best girlfriend and I arrived in Bangkok after weeks of backpacking in a rural area of central Thailand. We had not encountered other tourists for many days. Our sunburns had turned brown and peeled off. Our guts had been scoured by bacteria and then socialized medicine—we spent a total of four dollars for a doctor’s visit and a prescription. We were eating only Thai food, with the customary fork and spoon method we picked up after embarrassing ourselves asking for chopsticks. We had stopped washing our hair. We rubbed coconut oil on ourselves in the morning and a tiger-balm-like potion on our mosquito bites at night. In Bangkok, we scoffed at the other backpackers on Khao San Road who seemed so much less, well, dirty than us. Thailand’s capital is host not only to the industrial origin of the modern silk trade, the Giant Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, and the precarious Floating Market, but to a few of the most famous red-light districts in the world. Patpong isn’t the largest or most populated of the city’s sex-business neighborhoods, but it is home to the most stalwart old bars, go-go clubs, and infamous Ping-Pong (normal slang: pussy) shows. When we went there in 2003, Patpong was something like Hollywood, California: crustier, less flashy, and strangely smaller than it seemed in imagination, and yet, it drew a crowd every night. Some writers predict that tourists will eventually abandon Patpong completely and move on to the cleaner and classier erotic entertainment venues. But I don’t think so. The gravitational pull of a Ping-Pong ball is inexplicably strong. 53 In Bangkok, a tuk-tuk is a three-wheeled, motorized taxi with a driver in front and a small, covered bench in back, like a motorcycle with a box to ride in; a wat is a temple, which is why Wat Pho should not redundantly be called “Wat Pho Temple;” and it is usually acceptable to negotiate prices, once you are confident about your calculations in baht, the parti-colored national currency. A Ping-Pong show is…more difficult to define, although it is often held up as a defining moment for tourists. Nota bene: I did not run out of the club in Patpong determined to shed light on the horrible lives of trafficked women. I did not leave Bangkok thanking my dear sweet Jesus for saving me from the embarrassment of having to show my face a second time to the same tuk- tuk driver who dropped me off on the corner near Patpong post-Ping-Pong debacle. Other white American female tourists did these things, and their blogs are easy to find. During the winter of 2003, I was a full-time administrative assistant at a veteran’s hospital and a part-time stripper. I was not yet an activist for sex workers’ rights, I didn’t know about globalization debates or ongoing U.S. colonial projects, and I was still closeted about my growing attraction to women. I worked in a cozy, topless dive north of Los Angeles that catered to construction guys and Hell’s Angels. Three nights a week, I drank Coors Light, talked about action movies and fantasy-lesbian sex, played around on stage, and smoothed down a few small wads of singles. I was getting sexually harassed at my day job and becoming increasingly impatient with sanctimonious friends who wanted to argue that I couldn’t strip and be a feminist. Finally, when my well-respected doctor-boss told me he liked my “slutty” skirt, I decided to quit the day job. I’d been saving for a Big Trip, and it was time to blow the wad on a few weeks' vacation with my close-as-sister BFF, Melissa. Afterward, my plan was to strip full- time until I decided what next to do with my life. 54 We were twenty-four, and neither of us had left the country. So, at first, Melissa and I tried to organize a traditional middle-class romp to Europe. Immediately, we were overwhelmed by the details, the pomposity, and the cost, and our vacation planning made us irritable. I called an emergency meeting. We sat in my mother’s kitchen with a big map of the world. We agreed that Europe was not what we wanted. We came up with three shared priorities: warm beach, good food, and elephants. A sympathetic coworker at the VA hospital suggested we check out Thailand. Because Melissa was still taking college classes, we walked into the student travel office one Thursday and booked tickets easily and cheaply to places we had never heard of— Koh Samui, Kanchanaburi, Sanghlaburi. We hugged, she ran to class, and I walked out of the office with the paperwork in my hand, trying to believe in it. The sky was that magic Los Angeles dusk pink. The air smelled like rock dust and sprinklers. I called my dad. “We’re going to Thailand!” I shouted. He couldn’t believe it either. “We’re going to ride elephants!” I said. “You can afford that?” he asked. I told him I’d have the entire trip, including a food budget, paid for before we left town. “Well thank God for the strip club,” he said. Indeed. In a move that seems at best tactless or, more accurately, Orientalist, The Lonely Planet cautions its audience that Bangkok is “a tragicomic confluence of human desires and aspirations best viewed through a detached smile.” On the bus from the airport to our hotel, 55 Melissa and I passed a commercial zone where the sidewalks were stacked with various appliances. Here were washing machines, house fans, refrigerators, and more, in lime green, violet, periwinkle, canary yellow, crimson. It had never occurred to me that beige and white were boring colors for household machines, but instantly, I was sick of them, imagining the rainbow I could live in. Bangkok is a serious supercity, a stunning collage that includes enormous bustling downtown crowds, near-psychedelic vistas of colored lights and signage, cacophonous blocks of touts selling the tools and toys of urban living, and powerful smells. After checking into our hotel, Melissa and I went to eat in a nearby café in the backpacker-friendly district of Khao San Road. We were joined at a large, low table by a small group of young Australian women, who were on holiday together after one them had graduated from nursing school. We drank, we chatted, we got onto the subject of Patpong’s nightlife. “Guys always come home from holiday talking about the Ping-Pong shows,” one of the women said. She was freckled and cheerful. “The what?” I said. “You haven’t heard of the pussy shows?” The three girls made scandalized giggle sounds. Melissa raised her eyebrows at me. No, I hadn’t heard of the pussy shows. “Girls do all kinds of crazy things with their, you know,” she gestured at her crotch, “in these sex shows in Patpong.” Nods from the others. I turned to Melissa. I had to see this. “Of course we do,” she said. “But aren’t those kinds of clubs for guys only? Can we even get into the club without a man?” 56 “We’re tourists,” I said. “They’ve got to have seen some women coming here willing to drop cash.” Ultimately, I figured, our level of access would be determined by our willingness to spend a good chunk of baht. We rallied the Australian girls and by the time we hailed the tuk-tuks, we were a slightly tipsy party of five in machine-washable traveling clothes, overpriced summer scarves, and unflattering walking sandals, on a mission to see a real, live Ping-Pong show. Patpong is a tri-layered neighborhood. In the middle of the street, people walk at an intentional pace, crowd permitting. On the edges of this flow is the second layer: the night market. To navigate Patpong in this layer, one moves very slowly through fluorescent tents spilling out with sunglasses, blinking electronics, Diesel knock-offs, and piles of naughty T- shirts in thin plastic sleeves. Every few booths, an opening onto a walkway offers a chance to enter the third layer of Patpong: the night clubs. The touts outside the clubs held laminated cards with lists printed on them. They seemed wholly unsurprised at our group of five women shopping for a place to stop and watch. “Pussy show!” they shouted, waving their cards. “For free! Pay for drinks only!” One tout got his card in my hands. No illustrations. No prices. Just a list of potential events. PUSSY PLAY PING-PONG PUSSY PEEL BANANA PUSSY SHOOT DART PUSSY WRITE WITH PEN PUSSY BLOW OUT CANDLE PUSSY SMOKE CIGARETTE 57 PUSSY OPEN BOTTLE And more. I looked at him. Dark hair, big smile, white button-down shirt. I asked how much we would pay for drinks. I don’t remember his answer. I only remember thinking it was advisable to move on. “Don’t believe this bullshit about not paying for the show,” I told the girls as we walked. “We are all going to tip like crazy.” The Australian girls agreed. Melissa patted me on the arm. We walked on. The lists and the touts were similar, with small variations in grammar or household object the pussy would manipulate. We entered the third or fourth club, after Melissa negotiated a price for all five of us to sit and have two rounds of beers. “We are here for Ping-Pong,” I told our tout, just in case we were getting ushered inside for multiple opening acts we couldn’t afford. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said as he led us past the doorman. We went directly upstairs. The place smelled eerily like my job: old carpet, liquor, ammonia. We sat at a four-top, clustered so that we could view the empty stage. The room was a theater-in-the-round, with booths all along the back (and highest) row, plus two more tiers of tables descending toward the stage at the center. Directly across from us, a door opened into a curtained hallway. Cocktail servers, hostesses, touts, and performers all moved quickly through it and around each other. Our table was bolted to the floor of the second step up, which made it possible for us to see nearly the whole room. We were one of five seated tables, and the only women, as far as I could tell in the dimness. Slow electronic music thumped through us. A small staircase accessed the eight-foot-square stage along the side nearest to us. A brass railing, resembling a 58 stripper pole on its side, ran around the stage at breast level. The room was so dark we couldn’t see the faces of the people across from us very well, but the stage was lit with an elaborate and constantly shifting range of colors. A barefoot woman in a black bra and black hot pants climbed the steps to the center of her stage. She unhooked her bra without a hint of tease and hung it over the brass railing. Her breasts were very small. My brain stuttered over competing thoughts: she struck me as “too old” because of how she hunched when she moved, and simultaneously she seemed “too young” because of how she was shaped. Both too old and too young for whatever she was about to do, even though I didn’t know what that was, or why I should have any say in it. Her black hair reached her waist. She danced around the stage, swaying into the beat, with her knees bent. I was so accustomed to the way dancers looked in six- and seven-inch heels, I couldn’t stop staring at her bare feet. She took a white hand-towel from a male gopher, lay it on the stage, pulled down her black shorts, hung them on the railing, and squatted over the towel. She started by flexing her lower abdomen and sending a pulsing wave of muscle contraction up to her ribs. She watched her belly muscles tighten in quick waves from her pubic bone to her breasts for a few seconds. Then she lay back on the towel with her knees wide open and her feet planted. I glanced at Melissa. Her eyes were wide, and she was smiling, stupefied. At work, I often saw other dancers in this performer’s same reclined posture, but my experience was with topless dancers who always had a one-inch strip of fabric neatly hiding their hairless genitals. This time, I was looking at a vagina. The gopher reached in from his position on the side of the stage, lit a candle a foot away from the performer, and poof! A burst of air from that vagina extinguished the flame. 59 What noise did we make? Did we gasp? Did we jump? I remember the startle, but not how we showed it. We must have clapped eventually. The performer blew out another three candles in quick succession. She rose, danced a little more, then descended the stairs and slipped behind the hallway curtain. We ordered our second round. The next performer’s dancing style was a little less refined, a little more comedic, but no less hypnotic. The gopher held up an empty basket in one hand, and in the other, a basket full of Ping-Pong balls. It was happening! Like the first, our Ping-Pong show performer squatted, rippled, and then reclined. One by one, she inserted five white Ping-Pong balls into her vagina. Then, she shot them into the empty basket, held aloft by the gopher at five different points on her perimeter. She did not miss. This same performer also inserted a beer bottle into her vagina and opened it. Our whole table flinched at the sound. I scanned the performer’s face for signs of pain. None. I looked for signs of boredom or fear. She was concentrating, serious, but with the same kind of spirit a school kid has practicing multiplication tables. She opened two more bottles, and we applauded vigorously. The next performer lit a cigarette with her mouth, then puffed at it with her vagina. Another inserted an egg in her vagina, and then slammed her pelvis against the stage so hard she seemed in danger of fracturing her pubic bone. She stood up, removed the egg, showed it to us, then put the egg back inside, raised a knee, and the egg cracked. It fell perfectly onto the plate, held under her by the gopher. Yolk intact. “Holy shit,” Melissa breathed. “I really thought it was hard boiled.” During these performances two club hostesses came to sit with us. They wore bikinis and heels and glittering lashes, my own uniform. They played with our hair and giggled when we spoke, as if we were male customers, I thought. Melissa and I tipped them as much as we 60 could once we realized our Australian cohort was not responding well to the scene. They asked if we were ready to go after the egg show. I said no. Sex tourism in Southeast Asia is characterized in the mainstream media by a racialized fantasy: a white Western man of means finds a dark-skinned Other to buy for a bargain. However, the common belief that all sex workers from poorer countries are trafficked is refuted by multiple organizations doing the difficult work of collecting stories and data from sex workers themselves. Nearly 80 percent of the customers in the Southeast Asian sex trade are locals, not tourists. Sometimes, both trafficking and legitimate, lucrative self-employment are happening, for different workers at the same club. In other words, one simply cannot know, while watching a show in Patpong, if this particular performer is a kidnapping victim, an independent sex worker, a mother with three other jobs, an immigrant paying back her travel loan, a college student, or…? Unless she has a reason for telling you. While we were negotiating our exit, the male gopher distributed five balloons to customers seated in the club. I got one. It was a large, oval shape, yellow, and said I Love You in looping script. The performer on stage, who wore the shortest hair we’d seen so far, in a shoulder- length pageboy, gestured with her hands that I should lift the balloon up high. I did. She lay back on her towel, balanced on one elbow, and held a foot-long piece of PVC pipe, maybe two inches in diameter, to the opening of her vagina. Holding herself steady at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground, she pulled something sharp and silver from a bowl on the stage, inserted it in the other end of the pipe, aimed it toward the audience, and undulated. POW! “Ohmygod!” “Ohmygod.” 61 “Oh my GOD. That woman just shot a dart out of her vagina.” “NO FUCKING WAY.” POW-POW-POW-POW! Every balloon exploded, the music got much louder, and I was frozen for a moment. The performer stood, made an elegant bow, held her arm out for us to applaud the gopher, and a DJ’s announcement voice boomed over the room while the cast made their exit. “I’m keeping this,” I said to Melissa. I folded the little piece of balloon into my wallet. One of the other girls screeched, “But it touched her twat!” No, it hadn’t, I explained, fishing a dart from under the table. I told them she held the pipe to her vagina, but these darts never touched it, therefore neither did the balloon. The dart seemed to be made from foil, very light, a small cone rolled together and Scotch-taped on the side. “Besides,” I said. “Who cares if it had? I’m not planning to eat it.” “Yeah, don’t be afraid of a little pussy air,” Melissa added. We agreed to leave as a group. The Australian women accused Melissa and me of contributing to the exploitation of women. We did not keep in touch with them after arriving back at our hotel. Recently Melissa and I talked about whether we would return to Patpong, if given the chance to see Bangkok together a second time. I still resist the notion that offering a working woman my spending money and a few minutes without risk of unwanted touch is tantamount to oppression. Respectful customers are a boon, and the lack of them is not going to cure the world of its misogyny. In other words, of course we would. 62 CHAPTER TWO Toward a Radical Theory of Sex “Only occasional topics have attached themselves to as many historical questions and issues as prostitutes.” (Gilfoyle “Prostitution in History” 141) In season four of Shonda Rhimes’ hit show Scandal, Cyrus, the president’s chief of staff, pays a man named Michael for sex. Cyrus struggles for words about what Michael is or does, and it is Michael who says, “I think the politically correct term you are looking for is sex worker.” When news of their relationship is leaked in the form of sexy pictures, the solution is for Cyrus and Michael to “go public” with plans to get married. In a gender twist on the Pretty Woman plot, Michael can earn legitimacy through conformity with state-approved romantic relationship structure, even if the gay marriage he and Cyrus intend to enter has only recently been sanctioned by that state. Michael is tall, he’s white, he’s sexy, he’s definitely over thirty, and he picks up on Cyrus in a very fancy bar without any mediation from the internet or another third party. This episode presents an irony in three stages: “in real life,” the Department of Justice asserts Michael’s nonexistence through mandating that the only legitimate categorical term for sex workers be “prostituted women”; next, the show’s characters call “sex worker” a “politically correct” term; then, the structure of the show asserts Michael’s fraught existence through writing him into a melodrama that highlights his position as victim of a slut-shaming culture; but, the fact of his representation as an independent, non- trafficked person performing sex for pay, endures. And of course there is another layer I can’t 63 currently peel, which is how the rent boys of Washington DC felt about Michael as a representation. Those who are willing to call themselves sex workers tend to be people who have at least begin to think politically about being part of an oppressed class and are interested in having their voices heard. But the term does not appeal to all people who have engaged in the trade of sexual performance for money or other goods, for many reasons, and it is not my intention to conscript people into it. Studies in English that analyze texts “about” a prostitute character, such as the famous Nana or Fanny Hill, are usually forced to acknowledge English literature’s longstanding ambivalence regarding prostitution and prostitutes. Some writers attempt to recuperate a prostitute character’s “agency” or show her differences and similarities with non-prostitute women. Even fewer, the studies of men. Because a prostitute often occupies the most abject position in a text, when she does appear, the differences among prostitute characters themselves are easy to elide. However, the elision of those differences is more than an aesthetic effect: current policy, public debate, and activism about sex workers’ rights is plagued by the use of essentialisms and claims to universal experience, which has resulted in the privileging of certain concerns and the localizing of political power among white women activists (Phipps 99). A cultural history of queer, trans*, poor, immigrant, lesbian, Black, Latin@, Native, older and younger, disabled, or houseless sex workers, to begin a list that can go on for pages, has not, to my knowledge, been widely published or translated, although historians of prostitution claim the field to be growing rapidly (Gilfoyle “Prostitutes in the Archives” 515). Working against hegemony in an empire requires something the Marxist tradition has termed “praxis”—the embodiment of theory in action. In Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical 64 Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime, Dylan Rodriguez coins the term “radical prison praxis” to discuss the “far-ranging political-discursive work embodied by imprisoned radical intellectuals,” and he defines the imprisoned radical intellectual as a person reflecting on the conditions of free/unfree from within the carceral state. For Rodriguez, and for me, it is important to begin any discussion of a criminalized population with recognition that the “central and vexing question of liberation” is always at hand when attempting to collaborate with the unfree (33). In other words, while I will discuss sex work in ways that move in and through and around the risks and consequences of criminalization, it is an expression of my privilege to do so from a state of freedom. My discussion is always framed in some way by the consequences of criminalization. Rodriguez calls on political prisoner Jalil Muntaqim to remind us that “the political and economic impetus behind this historical formation has generated a popular ethos of repression that renders criminalized populations and incarcerated people the collective objects of a normalized state violence” (18-19). That I am included in an umbrella category of people who are collectively an object of state violence may be very real for me, every day, but it does not erase the fact of my privilege within that category. I reiterate this point here because I have read and heard volumes from white women sex workers who truly believe that the differences among sex workers’ experiences are nominal and unimportant to The Cause of Sex Worker Rights. But it is very possible that white women workers’ concerns are not only not the same, but occasionally in direct tension, with the concerns of nonwhite sex workers of all genders. Sex workers in general become isolated due to the material consequences of social stigma/fear of being “outed,” criminal/victim legal frameworks that allow for violent policing of both the criminals and the victims in large scale “rescue” campaigns, and crucially, a misogynist and trans-misogynist, racist hierarchy of human life that plays out in nearly all 65 registers of media from academia to YouTube, and often gets passively replicated in American sex worker activism—just to name a few of the major forces. That Scandal’s character Michael called himself a “sex worker” and also said that term is “politically correct” indicates yet another way in which the discursive field we’ve entered here is cacophonous at best—how did he learn the term? And how does he understand it to apply to himself and other workers? Again, it is dangerous to invoke even one category of “sex worker” when discussing the effects of oppression. I am informed by Sarah Ahmed, who writes that “the differentiation between forms of pain and suffering in stories that are told, and between those that are told and those that are not, is a crucial mechanism for the distribution of power” in the Cultural Politics of Emotion (32). Ahmed also reminds me: “given that subjects have an unequal relation to entitlement, then more privileged subjects will have a greater recourse to narratives of injury” (33). I am allowed to tell stories, I am allowed my own story of injury, and I am allowed space to critically engage the discursive field of sex work, while many other sex workers, and people performing sexual labor under coercion, are not. Unless I aim to illuminate only the experience of one white, indoor, documented, woman-identified, vagina-owning worker, I must choose to write of something unknown to me, impossible for me to experience, which is the lived reality of oppression/resistance/survival in another body, one that activates other narratives of identity in the social world. I cannot do this without running the risk of overwriting, colonizing, and appropriating the narratives of workers who are not me, so I first acknowledge and then attempt to minimize that risk. The incredible complexity and pernicious force of racial and ethnic scripts in the history of sex work cannot be summarized adequately here, and I don’t claim expertise on the intersecting histories of Black, Latin@, Asian, Native American, multi-racial, and so many 66 other workers in the U.S. context. For this project, I do rely on a growing body of sociological work on sex work and migration that deals with racial prejudice, one English-language text about sex worker rights activism in Africa, and a shelf of sex work researcher and sex worker- edited anthologies that take up the issue of racism in the industries through the stories of workers. I am grateful for the work of Emi Koyama (Eminism.org), Tara Burns (“People in Alaska’s Sex Trade: Their Lived Experiences and Policy Recommendations”), Jo Doezema (Global Sex Workers), and many others who are writing and collecting stories from communities I’m not embedded in. This project takes a closer look at a few examples of how nonwhite sex workers appear in the pages of sex work literature as complex actors in a discursive cacophony, and it takes up white sex workers too. The purpose is to see what happens when we reimagine sex work and sex workers as constantly racialized. It is this imagining that undermines the analogy- impulse toward racial and sexual regulation and allows for sex work and workers to exceed the criminal/victim binary. I choose to write about both white and nonwhite sex workers and the racialization of erotic bodies from a self-critical and anti-racist framework that seeks to at best eradicate and at least reduce the effects of white supremacy/white fragility. I read sex work literature with no ability or desire to “save” people who aren’t asking for it, or even to recuperate characters on the page. My aim is to shift the conversations about oppression as I can, away from using race-as-analogy or additive to gender, toward understanding race as a constitutive piece of commercial sexuality. I rely on Robin DiAngelo’s work on white fragility and how it is structured and maintained to make the claim that because whiteness dominates the published field of sex work literature, white fragility has contributed to the construction of the field. DiAngelo 67 writes that “White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves” (57). These defensive moves serve to reinstate a sense of racial equilibrium for white people, and can happen in an instant or over many years. DiAngelo describes how the seemingly contradictory discourses of universalism and individualism work to deny white privilege and the significance of race, allowing whites to see themselves as simply human, “objective and nonracialized” (60). That the field of sex worker literature, both insider and outsider, has been dominated by white people is no small thing. One consequence of this has been years of well-meaning white writers, many of them LGBTQ-identified, hoping to build solidarity with non-white communities through analogizing racial and sexual oppression. In a major cornerstone of queer theory, the essay “Thinking Sex,” Gayle Rubin invokes legalized racial segregation for the claim that “the law buttresses structures of power, codes of behavior, and forms of prejudice. At their worst, sex law and sex regulation are simply sexual apartheid” (163). Rubin later claims that our “system of sex law is similar to legalized racism,” and about the unprecedented economic growth of gay communities, she writes: “like blacks who fled the South for the metropolitan North, homosexuals may have merely traded rural problems for urban ones” (167). When not used as analogy, race often gets “added” into a discussion of gender oppression via sex work—thus it becomes an extra layer of discussion, rather than a foundational piece of criticism. Many white sex worker activist writers acknowledge race in their work but are ill-equipped to do much more than note how much worse things seem for black women, and black trans* women in particular. When sex work scholars in the U.S. context do discuss race, they tend to stick with a few basic questions about how race “impacts” the generalizations of their findings. Some spend their studies documenting a sort of 68 taxonomy of racial fetishes, starting with Asian female sexual submission and moving through the shades like a menu at a brothel—an important educational move for people outside the industries who insist that colorblindness has won because we’ve progressed as a society, but, not a satisfying critical engagement. Only a few approach questions about sex work with the differential impact of racialization on commodified bodies as a foundational assumption. In a 2005 article evaluating Gayle Rubin’s and Donna Haraway’s use of racial analogy for gender/sexuality theorizing, Malini Johar Schueller critiques Rubin’s “Thinking Sex” by arguing that “as in much feminist/gender theorizing today, race is incorporated in the essay through analogy and thus naturalized into an appendage of a more important discourse of sexuality” (68). Schueller further argues that: Racial analogy in white feminist/gender/sexuality studies functions as a colonial fetish that enables the (white) theorist to displace the potentially disruptive contradictions of racial difference onto a safer and more palatable notion of similarity, thus offering theory that can be easily assimilated within the politics of liberal multiculturalism (72) Rubin stops short of analyzing how racism itself is constitutive of the sex laws, how racism is foundational to our understanding of the body as commodity. Racial segregation and sexual regulation are threaded together, not separate strands of an abstract theme of oppression. In Aberrations in Black, Rod Ferguson writes that “racialization has helped to articulate heteropatriarchy as universal” (6). If the commodification of bodies is the central theme of a conversation that includes sex work, then the differential values placed on racialized bodies and how people respond to those values should be interrogated as carefully by white writers as it is by writers like Sharon 69 Patricia Holland, Siobhan Brooks, and Mireille Miller-Young, all of whom have taken up the question Holland asks in The Erotic Life of Racism: “Can work on desire be antiracist work?” (3). Brooks’ book, Unequal Desires: Race and Erotic Capital in the Stripping Industry, looks at the ways in which stripping is not just sex work, but race work as well. Mireille Miller-Young’s A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography, argues that “black women’s images in hardcore porn show that the titillation of pornography is inseparable from the racial stories it tells” (9). The titillation of all sex work is inseparable from the racial stories it tells. White sex workers with predominantly white clients are not required to confront how they are allowed to feel an “absence” of race in their exchange, which DiAngelo would name a function of white privilege. I will be unable to form a coherent reconciliation of the fact that “sex radicals see a problem—and a source of potential oppression—in anyone’s conviction that their own sexual patterns and desires are right while someone else’s are wrong,” and the fact of racist fantasy as a major engine of the sex industry (Queen in Nagle 131). This is part of expanding Rubin’s radical theory of sex—first, we must be able to allow for the conflicts of interest and internal contradictions of the sex trades to stand without rushing to resolve them through claims to sex workers’ universal injury (victims) or universal agency (criminals); second, we must be able to regard this field of contradictions as a rich source of cultural critique. In Ho’s, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys, David Henry Sterry’s anthology of sex worker’s writing, a writer named “mochaluv” submitted a short rant called “Being a Ho Sucks.” Sterry sympathizes with mochaluv over the disillusionment she felt working with white sex worker rights activists. Sterry says “they have a certain blank-eyed, evangelical, zealot naiveté which can drive you crazy. I’ve seen it myself. They want to make sex work into 70 a political statement, use it as a shocking model for female empowerment” (167). Mochaluv writes to Sterry: The next time I hear some rich white bitch tell me how great being a ho is, I’m gonna smack ‘em upside they righteous head…This one chick she was from Berkeley she kept telling me what an honor it is for me to be a sexual healer, how it’s important for me to tell everyone how proud I am to be a prostitute, how empowering it is to be a sex worker. Sex worker, I said, I ain’t no sex worker, I’m a ho! You try getting fucked ten times a day by these nastyass motherfuckers, and you get your ass raped by the police, and the tricks, and the freaks, and then you gotta get high just to even do the shit…You try goin’ out in a little tiny pussy skirt when it’s ten motherfucker degrees, and you can’t come back till you got two G’s. You tell me how empowering that shit is! (169) Mochaluv’s rant gives voice to an experience of sex work that would be most easily taken up by the anti-trafficking movement as evidence of harm, social evil, degradation of women. The activists she met could not incorporate mochaluv into their empowerment project, although mochaluv embodies both resilience and self-reliance. Their call to “come out, come out, wherever you are” annoys Mochaluv, in part, because the closet is not her main concern. The (fragile) “rich white bitch” agenda overwrote mochaluv’s concerns, told her how she should feel about her own sex work, and presumed commonality where there was difference. Mochaluv’s conformity with their “empowerment” project would require a disavowal of her own experience. Mochaluv’s experience might be enthusiastically tokenized by white activists insofar as she was amenable to calling sex work legitimate work—but if what she wanted was an exit strategy, or a conversation about how differently she 71 experienced sex work from the white women who wanted her face on their campaign, she would have had to look elsewhere. Empowerment is a claim some activists and sex worker writers make, ostensibly to counteract the forces of stigma, to thumb their nose at anti-sex work feminists like Andrea Dworkin, and to differentiate between consensual sex work and trafficking. Mochaluv’s experience is evidence of a broader trend—the claim to empowerment through sex work, in the U.S. context, issues most often from cisgender white female sex worker rights’ activists. Some activists attribute the difficulty of the U.S. sex workers’ rights movements so far to a “whore-archy,” a hierarchy of class in which those who do certain forms of labor (like stripping or professional domination) think of themselves as superior in moral value to those who do other forms (like street-based sex work or professional submission). That the whore- archy is also built on racial stratification is rarely discussed in organizing meetings. And people who aren’t sure they want to come out of the closet, or who are trying to stop working in the sex industries, often find themselves feeling unwelcome in sex worker rights’ groups, regardless of whether those groups have begun to deal with racism and white privilege internally, or not. When discussing the effects of changing policy, we will someday be faced with the question of how to regulate desire markets via racial discrimination. Can a strip club be required to hire a certain percentage of nonwhite dancers? In Legalizing Prostitution, Ronald Weitzer sees researchers of sex work falling into either “empowerment” or “oppression” camps, with romanticized arguments and flimsy statistics coming from either side. In recent feminist sex worker-centered sociological work, I have seen a new, hopeful trend. Researchers who consult directly with sex workers are concentrating on “thick description,” which has begun to ameliorate the “paucity” of 72 information about sex worker’s inner lives described recently by Judith Walkowitz, and serves to change the terms of the conversation. There are ways to think through the situated and complex workings of agency and power without resorting to simplifications about oppression or empowerment in the sex trades. These new ways to think emerge from the stories told by sex workers about their own lives, choices, and beliefs. Mireille Miller-Young’s interview with 1980s porn star Jeannie Pepper reveals that by “precisely staging her sexuality so as to acknowledge and evoke the taboo desire for it, she shows that racial fetishism can actually be taken up by its objects and used differently” (10). Jeannie Pepper is aware that black women are always “already assumed to be whores” and therefore she “uses this insistent myth in her own work” (10). Miller-Young calls this “illicit eroticism,” “a framework to understand the ways in which black women put hypersexuality to use” in the pornography industry. Siobhan Brooks discusses a similar process occurring in predominantly black strip clubs. While acknowledging the structural constraints of racism and racial-sexual scripts, Siobhan and Miller-Young document creative and functional ways that black sex workers have engaged with the sex industries. By assuming the eroticism associated with race, Siobhan and Miller-Young’s subjects respond to the hypersexualization of black women not by covering up to protect themselves, but by performing racial scripts about black women in ways that they feel they have more control of, ways that get them paid. In Cosmopolitan Sex Workers, Christine B. Chin describes how migrant sex workers in the global city of Kuala Lumpur are responding to the pressures of neoliberal capitalism through creative acts of what she terms “cosmopolitanism.” While working both within and outside the law as individual constraints might indicate, the female transnational migrant sex worker is figured in Chin’s work, with some detailed exceptions, as an adaptive but deeply 73 self-aware agent/character, who makes something happen with the cards she was dealt and doesn’t regret exiting the realm of parochial social acceptability for a chance to improve her (and her family’s) chances at raising their standard of living, see the world, learn about people, and so on. Chin claims that this ability to negotiate morally complex problems is absolutely necessary for survival as “migrant women are vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a very fluid, trend-based environment,” and she describes their methods of responding to that environment (178). In the debates for sex work policy, Chin represents “the sex worker perspective” as calling for “delinking migration prostitution from sex trafficking” and “decriminalizing prostitution while combatting sex trafficking and forced prostitution” (20). The key to this recommendation, unfortunately, is a subjective experience of free choice already foreclosed for sex workers by anti-prostitution state policy in Malaysia and so many other countries. Chin continues, “The irony here is that if and when women take responsibility to better or improve their lives via transnational migration for sex work, they bear the wrath of moral indignation and legal sanctions by receiving states, societies, and even their own families” (22). Me: Have you ever identified with the phrase "sell your body?" Like when women say "I could never sell my body" do you feel like "that's not what I do" or do you feel like, "yeah, well, I can?" Sex Worker Friend: No. I have not identified with that phrase. I think this is for a couple of reasons: 1) There has always been such an intensely psychological component to the “product” I sell. 74 It's like, sommeliers don't say, "I sell wine." They have to make you love the wine, want the wine, imagine you can taste things in the wine that may or may not really be there. But, if you said to a sommelier, "Oh, so you sell wine," they're not gonna be like, "no." 2) I get to keep my body. And that's not how sales work. When you sell a product, the other party gets to keep it and "carry it away" to do whatever they want with it. I always have my body, even during, but especially after the exchange Me: How/why are you more conscious of having your body “especially after the exchange?” SWer Friend: After using my body to pleasure someone else, then I'm especially conscious of how "mine" it is. I'm especially conscious of my oneness with my body because it's good to give it some extra care then. I don't think this is inherently different from other forms of physical labor. I was just reading about a San Francisco activist who made his living submitting to UCSF research. He was selling his body, right? Me: Selling access to a body for a bounded period of time is labor. Sexual trauma extends beyond the bounds of time, as in PTSD and memories stored in the body and so on, and so when people imagine all prostitution is rape, they see "selling your body" to be a permanent, totalizing thing. Then there’s the fact that you’re white, and you are assumed to be in more possession of your own body in the first place than nonwhite women. SWer Friend: The stigma lives on its own outside the realm of interpersonal logic. Criminalization mandates that sex workers not be allowed to sell their own sexual labor. How might this mandate affect different bodies in different ways? Rent boys (male sex workers) are, in general, far more protected from the effects of criminalization, despite the recent raids at RentBoy.com. They are not presumed to be coerced—gender norms regarding 75 male desire, male self-possession, and opportunities for other jobs support their safety, while sex worker rights’ groups often disinvite the rent boys for the same reasons. That male sex workers are an unstudied population is a fact widely repeated by the growing number of ethnographers of sex work. They encounter stigma against sex work differently, they encounter homophobia and body-shaming and ableism and racism differently than cis-women and trans* women in the industry. Let’s add another facet to the prism. Criminalization creates multiple communities of injury, but criminalization is not the only method governments and law enforcement agencies use to deal with their sex industries. There are two other major models: legalization and decriminalization. Debates about policy rage in the sex work literature, despite, or perhaps because of, widespread confusion about the effects of all three methods. Add in “end demand” or “john shaming” legislation, which are policies that seek to criminalize clients and not workers, or “stop the traffickers” legislation, policies that criminalize third parties but not workers, and the landscape keeps changing. Many, if not most people outside the sex industries, and many inside them too, need explanation for the difference between legalization and decriminalization. In bare form, decriminalization simply removes the criminal penalty from the acts of buying or selling sex. Legalization removes criminal penalty and introduces opportunity for increased regulation: taxation, health codes, workplace safety, etc. Decriminalization requires law enforcement to deprioritize activities like street sweeps for prostitutes, stings of online service providers, and surveillance of transgendered people who walk in “high crime” urban areas (known among trans* activists as the crime of “walking while trans”). Currently, these operations are highly praised for large arrest numbers and/or effectiveness at curbing crime. As Melinda Chateauvert writes, “When public pressure to do something about crime mounts, police sweep 76 up street-based workers. Neighborhood residents take false comfort in the belief that empty sidewalks discourage crime” (3). Street sweeps are well-funded through federal anti- trafficking monies in major cities like Los Angeles and New York, where Homeland Security has been involved in major prostitution sting operations. Gale Rubin didn’t differentiate between legalization and decriminalization in 1984’s “Thinking Sex:” The underlying criminality of sex-oriented business keeps it marginal, underdeveloped, and distorted. Sex businesses can only operate in legal loopholes. This tends to keep investment down and to divert commercial activity towards the goal of staying out of jail rather than delivery of goods and services. It also renders sex workers more vulnerable to exploitation and bad working conditions. If sex commerce were legal, sex workers would be more able to organize and agitate for higher pay, better conditions, greater control, and less stigma (158). The phrase “if sex commerce were legal” has the right impulse but doesn’t deliver the goods. By using the word “legal” here, Rubin opens up the question of whether sex commerce should be legalized, and therefore regulated by the state like other intimate, body invasive service: doctoring/nursing, childcare, dentistry, etc. or whether sex commerce should be decriminalized, which refers to the removal of criminal penalty for the act of accepting money for sexual service. Legalization makes sex work a regulate-able industry, such as it is in the Netherlands. Legalization does tend to carry the difficult underside of a continued illegal sex trade where migrant workers, underage workers, workers with HIV, and more who cannot keep up with bureaucratic requirements, still work in dangerous conditions and under exploitative management. However, in texts about prostitution written prior to the 1990s, the differences among decriminalization and legalization models had not yet been studied or 77 described. We now have enough sites of decriminalization and legalization globally to begin seeing real comparisons of rates of violence, working conditions, and other outcomes for sex workers. In the United States, the decriminalization possibilities are completely overwritten by rescue rhetoric that infantilizes sex workers and demonizes those who live with them or profit from their labor. This doesn’t stop sex worker rights groups from advocating for decriminalization, but it does mean that we sound insane to most Americans. In December of 2016, the state of California voted on SB1322, and despite immediate misrepresentation in the press, a win for decriminalization did occur as people under the age of eighteen will no longer be arrested for prostitution. Even the decriminalization of minors engaging in sex work, a move which diverts many young people from arrest to service providers (that’s a good thing) has been reported as “California Democrats legalize child prostitution” in alarmist and misleading reporting (Washington Examiner). If sex work were fully decriminalized, other activities associated with sex work, especially other violent criminal acts like rape, would still be subject to law enforcement intervention. The upshot is that people could not be targeted by police simply for appearing to be engaged in the exchange of sex for something of value. Due to a national stance that precludes harm reduction or service provision outside of the criminal justice system, Americans are far behind the world in the implementation of practical changes that would save sex worker lives. Internationally, the tide has turned toward agitation for decriminalization and hybrid models of decrim-plus-regulation, in a large-scale movement led by sex workers. Recently, Amnesty International published multiple position papers favoring decriminalization, despite Amnesty USA’s anti-trafficking rescue-rhetoric and dissent. The Los Angeles Chapter of the ACLU has co-authored an amicus brief describing the need for decriminalization and filed it 78 with the court. In every major study of the sex industry that includes majority worker voices, decriminalization is the first step toward greater safety, solvency, and health outcomes for sex workers. Nonprofit and grassroots organizations such as Women With a Vision in New Orleans, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, and The Transgender Intersex Justice Project, have all worked tirelessly to turn the anti-trafficking tide. Although I’m part of a movement for decriminalization, and that movement uses the disparate racial impact of prostitution laws on people of color as a rationale, I believe that it would, by itself, be a reform that wouldn’t affect the conditions of the most vulnerable sex workers in major U.S. cities. Decriminalization is better than increased regulation from already-violent state formations, and it would be a huge win for many sex workers, that is undeniable. But the unintended consequences for the most marginalized bodies may be severe. My concern arises from some of the rhetorical-political moves decriminalization advocacy is capable of making. Many who advocate for decriminalization, including Alison Bass, the author of Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law, maintain a belief in the workings of the policing and carceral system. In other words, when Bass writes “a hybrid approach that decriminalizes and regulates sex work would free law enforcement to go after real criminals, such as rapists, violent predators, and men who traffic in vulnerable children” she reinforces some unexamined notions of what criminality is, who is a criminal, and how those people should be handled by the state (xiv). It is of course a boon, from my perspective, that Bass does not consider sex workers themselves “real criminals” and/or necessarily victims, but that is not because I want the category of “real criminal” to stand. That the term “criminal” refers to a racialized system in the U.S., in which black and brown bodies are disproportionately locked up, is not part of Bass’s analysis, and that omission is common one. 79 The current turn in the U.S. from criminalization to “victim-centered” legislation has its benefits for some workers. More services will and do get offered to people who want to exit the sex trades. Less children are incarcerated for the crime of prostitution (a regular occurrence into the 1990s). But the “victim-centered” policy does mostly emerge from a new anti-trafficking movement, and that movement places itself in direct opposition to sex worker rights’ groups who do not seek to eradicate the sex trades altogether. Carol Vance’s work reminds us that the question of rights or rescue for sex workers is at least a hundred years old. Vance summarizes anarchist Emma Goldman’s 1910 essay by calling “The Traffic in Women” an “energetic and irate essay” which “argues that late- nineteenth-century crusades against ‘white slavery’ and the ‘traffic in women’ (prostitution) were misguided sideshows, which diverted attention from and action against the underlying causes of women’s oppression: marriage, the family, and political economy” (136). Racism was not named as one of the underlying causes of women’s oppression—perhaps for Vance, as for Goldman, it can be included in notions of the “political economy”—however, Emma Goldman’s essay “The Traffic in Women” is one of the few pieces of writing by a radical activist prior to the 1990s that does work to see prostitution-reform movements as ways to control women, not free them. Vance writes that “the internal contradictions and incoherence of the antitrafficking campaign make it a capacious home for reactionary and progressive impulses and groups alike” (137). Anti-trafficking campaigns do create strange political bedfellows. Carceral feminism emerges as a strong thread among women’s groups formed around viewing all prostitution as injury to all women. Thus, many anti-prostitution groups form alliances with law enforcement, assuming that catching the bad guys and saving the sweet baby girls of this world should be left up to the police. The ugly irony is in law enforcement’s history of 80 corruption, racial prejudice, and collusion with the exploitative conditions of the sex industries. Norma Jean Almodovar, co-founder of the prostitute-rights group Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE) and now the director of International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture, and Education, culls data from FBI reports to compile fact sheets regarding law enforcement, sex work, rape, violent crimes, and drug offenses. Every few years she publishes a large bound volume called “Operation Do the Math,” which is “part of our educational outreach series to the local, national, and international communities relating to current and proposed legislation which impacts the lives and health of sex workers and our families” (“Do The Math” front cover). The tables are thick with numbers and the margins are tight with Almodovar’s writing—interpretations and opinions and connections drawn among the many numbers. Almodovar asks questions like, “why does every state claim to be a ‘trafficking hub?’” and “why are sex workers taken into police custody the same ways when they are ‘arrested’ and ‘rescued’?” and “why are there so many arrests for prostitution and so few for reported rapes?” In the rush to solve the “social problem” of prostitution, what is really at stake? Is it the wellbeing of young girls and women, as the anti-trafficking groups and marketing campaigns claim? Vance argues that what is at stake is “normative heterosexuality and its sexual arrangements” (136). In other words, for Vance, the result of a fragile “good” heterosexuality is violence against queers, sex workers, kinky people and other deviants. Importantly for my current project: another result of the mystified belief in the hostility of the worlds of “good” heterosexuality and economic exchange is widespread erasure of the ways in which those worlds have coexisted as part and parcel of colonial processes, postcolonial life, slavery, its aftermath, and the current carceral regime. Vance reports that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the U.S. 81 operated according to policy that stipulated “the actual conditions of sexual exchange were irrelevant: voluntary or coerced selling of sexual services was equally criminal. Early international conventions are explicit that the consent of the prostitute is to be disregarded” (137). The nineteenth century is now: if we’re all “prostituted women,” and we’re going to be incarcerated whether we’re arrested or rescued, then the consent of the sex worker is, still, to be disregarded. That racialization affects a person’s experience of consent cannot be ignored. In Brown Sugar, Miller-Young’s introduction to the concept of black women in pornography as spectacle begins with the claim that: To understand black women’s representations and labors in modern commercial pornography we must begin with the understanding that their sale on the auction block was an explicitly sexual, even pornographic process of exhibition, performance, and psychosocial trauma. The representations found in pornography today have their roots in the meanings created about black women’s bodies during slavery, and later, post-emancipation in the United States and colonialism in Africa. Contemporary spectacles of black female sexuality in porn emerge not only from these earlier knowledges and visual regimes; they are embedded in a political economy of sexualized labor that also has its genesis in slavery. (31) In the strip clubs where Siobhan Brooks conducted her study for Unequal Desire, she found that “men can cross racial boundaries to consume desire, and White men act out their sexism more in Black spaces, while maintaining the appearance of being respectable in White clubs” (42). The dancers Brooks spoke with confirmed for her that the hypersexualization of black women resulted in their bodies being touched more often without consent. They were 82 expected to perform more sexual service for less money, and they were more likely to encounter customers who asked them directly to play out racial-sexual stereotypes. Of course, antiblackness isn’t the only racial script to operate in the discursive realm of sex work. Mona Salim’s “Stripping While Brown,” originally published in the sex worker-led $pread magazine and anthologized in 2015 after the magazine folded, details her experience of doing “race work” in the strip club as a South Asian woman. A roundtable discussion of racism in the sex industry published in Jill Nagle’s Whores and Other Feminists gave sex workers of color a space to voice their stories of racial violence with clients and cops, and racial aggression/white fragility from white sex workers. Siouxsie Q’s popular podcast The Whorecast regularly features interviews with sex workers who discuss their experiences of doing “race work.” The dialogue, the praxis, the work, are all happening, despite the constant challenges to intercommunal communication. Outside sex worker rights’ activist spaces, the dialogue is ever-more muddled with colorblind anti-trafficking rhetoric, panic about childhood sexuality, and all those strands of feminism that eventually seem to contradict each other on the issue of sexual choice. Recently, a news story emerged that illustrated many of the ways in which sex work and sex workers routinely exceed the taxonomies imposed by the state, the academy, and the media culture. The case of Celeste Guap, aka Jasmine Abuslin, a sex worker from Richmond, California, is one ongoing example of the way transactional sex forces a sort of cacophony in public discourse. I call Guap a sex worker, although she has gone somewhat back and forth on whether she wants to use the term. Most reporters don’t comment on whether Celeste Guap was given a choice for her own title in the stories about her. The volume of confusion in the press illustrates a crucial problem in the discourse about sex work: no one knew what to call her, but they were sure they had to call her something, and they weren’t willing to simply 83 call her whatever she was currently calling herself. I also use her sex worker name, Celeste Guap, because it is the name she uses for her public Facebook page and the name she used most recently in the press. A brief overview of Guap’s story: Oakland police officer Brendan O’Brien committed suicide in September 2015, about a year after his wife was shot to death in their home. At the time, the wife’s death was ruled a suicide, although right before O’Brien killed himself, the investigation had been reopened. O’Brien’s story was that the argument “preceding her death was over her suspicions of his infidelity with a mystery individual” (SJ Mercury). He had left the house to calm down and get cigarettes, and when he returned, she had shot herself. About a year later, O’Brien was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound with a suicide letter next to him. In the letter, O’Brien discussed his relationship with Celeste Guap, and implicated three other officers in a “sex scandal” or “trafficking ring,” depending on who is doing the reporting. Celeste Guap, under threat of arrest, came forward with nearly thirty officers’ names and made it clear that she had been in contact them as a sex worker, some of them before she turned eighteen. Sex trade before legal adulthood is currently called “child trafficking,” as antitrafficking campaigns tell us there is “no such thing as a child prostitute.” Guap’s original interviews offer a slightly different picture, in which the cops were “cute at first,” and she felt she was engaged in a fair trade with them. Until they came to arrest her. Then, Guap named thirty cops with whom she had had contact, and seven other police departments, including Richmond and San Francisco, got embroiled. It wasn’t even that secret: cops had added her on Facebook, sent her text messages from their own phones, and made dates with her. They’d offer her food or a place to sleep, sometimes information about upcoming stings so she could avoid getting caught up, and one of them advised her to “get a 84 new manager” when she said she needed money, although she was what sociologists would call “an independent” at the time. The Oakland PD went through three chiefs in a week. Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf held frail-sounding press conferences. The Richmond PD quietly, and illegally, sent Guap to a rehab facility in Florida. She fought with a worker there when she was informed that she was not allowed to leave. She got arrested, was held in jail, and was removed from custody by civil rights lawyer Pamela Price who spoke openly about “witness tampering” and said “we have no idea why she was sent here, so, it’s been nice, Florida, but we need to go home now” (Press conference). Price called Guap/Abuslin a victim of child trafficking, not an addict, and demanded justice for her client’s exploitation at the hands of police. Guap’s case offers multiple sites of confusion for those outside the sex trades: what to do when the people who are entrusted with fighting trafficking are the traffickers? What to do when a young person engages in sex work and refuses to be cast as a trafficking victim? Who can sell their sexual service, and who is always presumed to be coerced? In the news media, Celeste Guap has been called an “underage prostitute,” a “teenage prostitute,” a “child trafficking victim,” a “teenage sex worker,” a “teen hooker,” an “underage sex worker,” an “exploited teen,” and a “woman at the center of a sex scandal.” This cacophonous cluster of labels indicates not only the criminal/victim binary ambivalence that marks current stories of sex workers, but reveals the cultural prejudice against sex workers naming their own experiences. While none of the news outlets reporting on the story emphasized Guap’s identity as Nicaraguan, her public posts on Facebook and individual communications are often in Spanish, and when “haters” post on her page, they usually use racial epithets to insult her. How were the journalists to report on her racial/ethnic identity without reinforcing the 85 hypersexualization of her brown body? It was difficult for journalists to discuss Guap’s incredible act of defiance: to go to the media with her story and implicate dozens of police officers in a form of corruption that undermines the core of the anti-trafficking movement, and it has been impossible for them to discuss that act and her exploitation by older men with power, in the same paragraph. Yet, both those realities coexist in her story. I am reminded of Pheterson’s Prostitution Prism, and the claim that “when the oppressed manifest their suffering or resistance, they are defined as deviants in need of psychological rehabilitation” (24). When Celeste Guap first hired civil rights attorney Pamela Price to represent her and get her home from the Florida rehab center the Richmond PD had sent her to, the campaign to heighten awareness of human trafficking received a serious bump. The hashtag #nosuchthing, referring to underage sex workers, got some righteous circulation on Twitter. In the press conference Price called, she declared “Celeste Guap is dead! This young woman’s name is Jasmine Abuslin and she wants to be a veterinarian” (Press Conference). After this press conference, newspapers again responded with cacophony, publishing varying combinations of Guap/Abuslin’s legal name, her sex work alias, and statements acknowledging that it is abnormal to publish the legal name of a person who was a victim of a sex crime as a minor. Some published all three—ensuring that Guap, who, again, still prefers to use her alias, would not receive the protections other victims might, and also would not receive the small amount of respect for her own testimony other adults might. Was she named because she has been hypersexualized as a brown woman and already presumed to have a criminal sexuality, or, was she named because Price required it as part of recasting her as a victim? Guap, like Jeannie Pepper in Miller-Young’s study, lives at the crux of hypersexualization and erasure. Is it possible to see in Guap’s behavior a similar gesture to Jeannie Pepper’s “illicit eroticism?” According to Guap’s public Facebook status (“I fired her!”), and in some way confirmed 86 by Price’s official statement issued online, Guap has now fired Pamela Price, in part over a disagreement about Guap’s public role as a victim. Price’s narrative required Guap’s disavowal of the choices she made as a sex worker (both before and after she turned 18), and the use of her legal name. In her statement to the press affirming that she was no longer representing Guap, Price wrote that “her redemption as a lost child has been my mission,” but Guap was not looking for redemption. She was not looking to get rehabilitated. Like many sex workers who avoid the term and the movement, she was looking to get paid and be left alone, and when the police threatened to upset the balance they’d been maintaining with her, she responded with a resounding negation of their power to keep her silent. She had no faith in the institution of policing to recover, corrupt as it had always been with her. They had a deal, and the cops broke it, so she did too. Price co-founded the Coalition to Restore Public Trust, a short-lived watchdog group that hoped to expose police corruption and replace the bad apples—a reformist project that has more in common with carceral feminism and anti-trafficking movements than sex workers’ rights. Again, Celeste Guap is not a sex workers’ rights activist per se—she refused the call to become a face for any organizations, does not go on speaking tours. However, in line with the more radical arms of the U.S. movement and many international movements, Guap navigates the threat of incarceration via a very personal, real-time refusal to be silenced— by the police, by anti-trafficking rhetoric, and by her own lawyer, which is something that sets her apart from many other people caught up in the consequences of criminalization in the U.S. Rather than fold when she high cost of dissent was made plain, Guap hired other lawyers who are less interested in creating her as a victim in a public spectacle, and at the time of this writing, she is suing the city of Oakland for $66 million. Carol Vance writes: 87 Virtually unchanged from its nineteenth-century versions, the modern melodrama of trafficking performs various reductions that erode the innovations of international law: trafficking again means prostitution (forced or voluntary); the trafficked person is a woman or female minor; the danger and injury are sexual; and the nature of the crime is an offense against society and morality (for evangelical activists) or against women’s equality (for antiprostitution feminists)…Classic melodrama’s anticipation of and satisfaction with rescue as the plot’s denouement is most compatible with the state’s rescue of women through criminal law and state power (138). Guap’s story appears cacophonous because of her refusal to conform to the simplicity of the melodrama. What does not feature in the melodramatic story of the “state’s rescue of women” are the many people, disproportionately women of color and transgendered women, who are still presumed criminals, hypersexualized and dangerous, even within the trafficking framework. While some queer theorists advance notions of anti-reproductivity, death drive, and failure as markers of a queer rejection of the demands of heteropatriarchy, sex worker writers and activists often petition for inclusion in mainstream culture by emphasizing that we are hard working, life-affirming, deserving people. In Sex Workers Unite!: A History of the Movement from Stonewall to SlutWalk, Chateauvert writes that “LGBT and queer history should include sex workers because many sex-worker activists are queer and some queer activists support themselves through sex work” (10). Within sex worker rights activism, there are strong currents toward a bid for inclusion in the mainstream: visions of safe, clean working environments and sheriff’s cards. However, there are also strong currents toward disruption of the respectability politic scene, a celebration of the strength it takes to stay surreptitious, 88 love of the love that happens in our off-stage queer, undocumented, and alternatively sexual spaces. There are wonderful examples this in the works of Miss Major, Tina Horn, Jiz Lee, Siouxsie Q, and others. Sex workers might fight for recognition that “Sex Work is Work,” but also? Many sex workers wish one didn’t have to work so damn much anyway. Still, at nearly every sex worker rights march or gathering internationally, the asks are strangely simple: we want recognition that sex workers are human beings and that we are performing labor. It’s as if sex worker activists across the world have been able to agree: let’s just get these ones done first. Sex worker rights are HUMAN RIGHTS. How shall we fight to be recognized as human if “the human” is a category already polluted by centuries of legal racism? Sex worker RIGHTS are human RIGHTS. How shall we fight for our rights if the concept of rights requires a state to enforce them, and we are always already considered unfit for civil society and inclusion in the state? Sex WORKER rights are human rights. How shall we fight for recognition of our work under patriarchal heterosexist forms of capitalist governance if our work is not only affective, the least respected/compensated of all labor, but also anti-productive and coded as a threat to men, “good” women, and families? In Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism, Amber Jamilla Musser writes that “by placing flesh and difference at the center of knowledge production and circulation, [this book] opens alternate modes of understanding circuits of power” (30). I join Musser in the effort to “produce a new mode of thinking sexuality” that requires us to examine sex panics and other critiques of sexual behaviors through questions that deliberately interlock racial/ethnic and 89 gender scripts, and especially through what she terms “a critical deployment of empathy” (25). This critical deployment of empathy “is a space where difference can become apparent while still registering the structures of sensation that undergird the text. Empathetic reading, therefore, allows us to grapple with the position of the other while maintaining a sense of the impersonal flows that bind things together” (25). Although not treated extensively here, the ways in which some feminists’ critiques of S&M cultures and practice circulate in Musser’s work are overlapping with (often the same) feminists’ critiques of sex work as a perpetuation of the logics of colonialism, domination, and patriarchy. Musser works to rethink and in some ways recuperate black female subjectivity and sexual agency from presumed annihilation under the rubric of masochism—all while deeply engaging multiple critiques of masochistic desires and practice. What undergirds her analysis, and what she shares with Gayle Rubin, is the presumption that ascribing false consciousness to people engaged in sites of taboo sexual behavior is a move we should avoid. Musser differs from Rubin in that she also is reading S&M and other “deviant” sex as not inherently politically resistant. In other words, she neither valorizes S&M as a way to subvert the grip of heteropatriarchy, nor does she indict it as a path to the continued subjugation of women. By reading masochism as a site for the conjoining questions of sexuality, agency, and subjectivity, Musser uses sensation and experience as the methods of inquiry. By encouraging us to “think of the erotic as a polyphony of voices,” Musser both enters Audre Lorde’s terrain in “Uses of the Erotic” and expands it, asking that readers work to “produce an erotic multiplicity that could enliven not only black female bodies but others” (181). A radical theory of sex, a new way to think sex, a radical sex praxis, all of these are clunky ways to describe this enlivening, this multiplicity, this polyvocality. They seek to acknowledge the legacies of non-consent embedded in the history of colonialism, slavery, and carceral 90 control; and, they seek to open up spaces for a figure like Celeste Guap to be exactly who she is, without conforming to a state-sanctioned melodrama, in whatever ways she deems fit. Two catchphrases from the sex industries fit well here. From pornography: anything for anyone! S&M: don’t yuck someone else’s yum. Rather than police desire, pornography, S&M, and other forms of consensual sex work often take for granted the erotic pull of racism, violence, and rape, and through “illicit eroticism,” seek to deploy their potential for erotic affect/effect, through fantasy play, performed with consent, for a fee. Gayle Rubin meets Rod Ferguson for coffee and this is what happens. Gayle Rubin goes in for a handshake and Rod Ferguson goes in for a hug and kisses on the cheeks. They both try to accommodate the other, and it is awkward and very sweet. What do you think about prostitution today, Rod asks. I wish people could do it in peace, Gayle responds, or not do it at all if they don’t feel like it. Rod nods. Gayle wonders if she’s missed something important about race, in her comment. Judith Walkowitz and Gayle Rubin find themselves in a small circle at a party. They don’t talk about gender or sexuality or sex work or queerness in theory. They do discuss the pleasure of wearing a leather jacket, and list their favorite frozen appetizers from Trader Joe’s. Decriminalization is an important piece of the social justice project for sex workers, but without also dedicated work to eliminate racism, misogyny, homophobia and anti-queer 91 movements, xenophobia, Islamophobia, ageism, and so on, decriminalization will, like most reforms, benefit the least marginalized of the entire oppressed class, and do little to nothing to make life safer or better for everyone else who had it worse to begin with. Dylan Rodriguez calls for a reordering of our understanding of the political body under the current carceral regime, which will give us “a broader political understanding of the abject categorization of ‘commonly’ imprisoned people. Overwhelmingly poor, black, and brown, ‘common prisoners’ remain broadly unrecognized by the activist public, rendered nameless and nonspecified, while generally presumed to be outside staid and elitist conceptions of the ‘political.’ (176). There is direct overlap in the incarcerated and sex working population, and I invoke Rodriguez’s notion of “commonly” imprisoned people being left out of “political prisoner” activism and advocacy to illuminate how a similar process occurs within sex worker rights groups. Policy reforms, literature and media production, and academic knowledge production about sex work are still generally not emerging from a broad-based practice of listening to the people selling sexual service and amplifying their voices, unless they have conformed to a predefined role in the prostitution melodrama. I return to Rubin’s call for a “radical theory of sex,” but I look for one that exceeds her theory of sexual alterity under a WASP-y cultural regime, to include the legacy of racism that runs through all transactional relationships in the United States, the legacy of class divisions under global capitalism that plague social movements organized from below, and the importance of overlapping and unexpected forms of solidarity among differently marginalized people. 92 CHAPTER THREE Sex and Race Work in James Forman’s “Circular Lounge” Guiding Questions: In “Venus in Two Acts,” Saidiya Hartman asks, “How can narrative embody life in words and at the same time respect what we cannot know?” In The Erotic Life of Racism, Sharon Patricia Holland asks “Can work on ‘desire’ be anti- racist work? Can antiracist work think ‘desire’? What would happen if we opened up the erotic to a scene of racist hailing?” (3). Entering the Archives I was introduced to the work of James Forman through political organizing, not through my academic studies. One of the groups I worked with on preserving an archive of letters from political prisoners distributed a copy of Forman’s article titled “20 Enemy Forces” for us to discuss. “20 Enemy Forces” was originally published in 1971, by the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. It is a list of twenty problems revolutionary organizations face, such as “lack of administration,” “elitism,” “male chauvinism,” and “liberalism.” I had never heard of Forman before, but came to greater curiosity and respect the more I encountered his work. As one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Forman worked for years to end segregation and achieve voter registration and access to polls for Black voters in the South. He was a prolific writer and theorist, respected by his activists and organizers in the Black Panther Party and other 93 revolutionary organizations, and was therefore targeted by the FBI during the height of the COINTELPRO program in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I went to visit the James Forman Collection at the Queens College Civil Rights Archive for the first time in the summer of 2014, to learn more about his organizing work and the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. At the time, I was working on a paper about currently- incarcerated Black revolutionary writers for a seminar with Prof. Jack Halberstam and Prof. Josh Kun. James Forman had, through a series of FOIA requests, acquired thousands of pages of COINTELPRO files, documenting movement-disturbing practices against himself and many others that eventually were deemed illegal. I read page after page of internal FBI memos detailing the ways in which the federal government had conspired to “plant seeds of dissension whenever possible” among the Black Panther Party, CORE, SNCC, and other organizations. I began to see parallels in the massive media propaganda campaigns waged against activists forty years ago and now. I also found that Forman was a sort of movement documentarian—he kept a diary for most of his adult life, collected clippings, saved leaflets and program notes, and had been working on a fiction manuscript in the 1950s, prior to his first civil rights movement job covering the desegregation of Little Rock schools for the Chicago Defender. At the time, I did not expect my writing on sex work topics to overlap much with Forman’s communism, Black internationalism, or post-colonial/revolutionary theory, and I thought of my paper on the incarcerated Black Power writers of today as quite separate from my writing and thinking about queer theory, sex work, and sex work literature. When I say I thought of them as “separate,” I mean to say that I hadn’t yet found adequate linkages in the histories of American leftist groups in the sexuality/gender arenas and Black liberation or anti-racism areas. 94 Politically, I’m consistently looking for those places where seemingly uncoordinated social justice projects touch. Where the effects of being pitted against each other are felt. Where the “divide and conquer” state strategies have resulted in muddled political agendas among people who work every day for similar goals of liberation, self-determination, freedom from oppression. According to Bloom and Martin’s Black Against Empire: A History of the Black Panther Party, the BPP became the first major national black organization to embrace gay rights with a formal party position issued by Huey P. Newton (306). Simultaneously, Black Panther Party women fought “ingrained gender and sexual values and language,” as the Party worked to build alliances with women’s and gay liberation organizations (306). In the US context, women’s liberation struggles have had varying levels of inclusivity extended to sex workers. This means that any BPP chapter working with any women’s rights group may have been working with women who identified as lesbians, sex workers, queers, trans women etc., or, they may have been working with a group that actively excluded sex workers, trans women, or queers. These organizational histories have yet to be written. Ultimately, the main point for us presently is that “Black power,” “Black liberation,” and “sex worker rights” or even “sexual liberation” don’t often appear in the same histories of liberation struggles, despite being concurrent and arguably co-constitutive movements. There are scenes in Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues in which the main character, a young white butch lesbian and later transgender man, goes to a bar on the East Side of Buffalo with a black friend (who is dating a sex worker) and gets into a confrontation with prejudiced cops, then is exhorted by her friend to read Malcolm X. Another notable exception to the claim that Black liberations struggles and struggles for sexual freedom don’t often coexist on the page: once, both appeared on the cover of Penthouse magazine. Forman kept a copy in his personal papers, now at Queens College in New York. In April of 1980 Penthouse ran two cover 95 pieces: “I Was a Spy for the F.B.I,” a profile of a COINTELPRO informant called Othello who sabotaged the Watts Writers Workshop, the Black Panther Party, and other groups; and “Free the Sex Slaves: Legalize Prostitution,” a pro-sex worker rights position paper on sex worker stigma with policy recommendations for ending our national hypocrisy about sex work and eliminating the dangers of criminalization. This coexistence, of sex worker issues and Black revolutionary nationalism, on the cover of a pornographic magazine is so striking, I swear I bought a copy of Penthouse for thirteen dollars on eBay because I knew I would enjoy the articles. LGBTQ and sex worker rights groups have uneasy association, forged through shared experiences of class oppression and closeting, however, the bid for respectability and inclusion inherent to the mainstream gay and lesbian movement precludes deeper solidarity with trans, bisexual, genderqueer, polyamorous, sex working people via the machinations of Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle.” Rubin describes a “domino theory of sexual peril” that works to strictly delimit “a very small portion of human sexual capacity as sanctifiable, safe, healthy, mature, legal, or politically correct” (151). That monogamous gay and lesbian coupling has got a foot in the Charmed Circle now does very little to change the system of inclusion/marginalization still affecting so many communities of sex/gender alterity. Some argue it’s a slow game, one thing at a time, gay marriage this year, trans bathroom rights 96 next year. Some argue that where privilege is still granted to some and not others via a late capitalist, racist/colonial, corporatist, carceral regime, the response from anyone about to take what’s handed to them should be: It’s all of us or none. Forman argued for the latter and fought tirelessly at project after project, some deeply local, some internationalist, some about voting, others about upending governmental structures. A thread throughout his work was an interest in how black and white people can forge intimate bonds in the midst of the pressures of a racist society. Again, in a Venn diagram of activist groups from the 1960s to now, the circles of queer and sex worker resistance (written as white) and the circle of anti-racist revolutionist (written as Black) have important overlap. Groups such as San Francisco’s Vanguard, profiled in Christina Hanhardt’s Safe Space, are a testament to those edges of interaction. According to Hanhardt, in the early 1970s, It was the everyday lives of sexual and gender nonconformers who continued to exchange sex for money or who pursued illicit pleasures that posed the most direct challenges to the rationality of representative liberal politics—those who were often outside of and even abrasive to formal organization. One group that tried to produce contexts for the organic ideas and cultural expressions of those who lived on the dominant culture’s most sharp-edged margins was named Vanguard. Vanguard organized young people of the Tenderloin’s streets—in particular those identified as hustlers and hair fairies, who exchanged sex for money and/or adopted unconventional gender roles, and the group emphasized the problems of police violence, exploitation, and discrimination as core issues…Vanguard’s members declared their explicit solidarity with the burgeoning radical sexual subculture and Black Power movement.” (73-74) 97 One issue Hanhardt addresses is the way in which the Vanguard used the “like race” “model for understanding marginalized identity and social movements,” in other words, the analogy of racial and sexual oppression found in Rubin and much other gender/queer theory. As discussed previously, while making this analogy was perhaps once an attempt at solidarity, the analogy served to erase queers of color, nonwhite sex workers, and mixed-race couplings from the potential field of activist actors, while simultaneously foregrounding gender/sexual oppression as the most important political issue to address. What is even more difficult to document than activist histories are the ways in which people who do not identify as activists work to resist and undo the restrictions of oppressive regimes in their everyday lives. Oral history projects, memoirs, and fiction may be the genres in which we are most likely to find stories of the everyday forms of resistance that social justice movements both imagine in broad scale and require to even be thinkable. Because James Forman took notes on his life, there were numerous entries in his diaries of conversations and interactions he had with people who affected his political thinking without being themselves political thinkers per se. One example is an entry in his diary dated 9/12/1979 (line breaks from the original): “Nurse at Hospital Valium is sodium pentathol. With valium in your system someone or a person around you is able to manipulate you and to get you to answer questions without you being aware that you 98 are answering questions” The next entry reads: “Never ignore the small details.” (Forman Collection Queens College) It was among these notes on everyday life, notes on conversations, scribblings of ideas, that I found the typewritten pages of James Forman’s standalone novel chapter titled “Circular Lounge,” a short story about racism and sexuality told through the narrative of a sex work encounter. The story stopped me in my tracks. Suddenly, the incarcerated writers I was studying in 2014, a civil rights hero from the 1960s, and years of sex worker rights’ struggles were coexisting on the page. The sex workers’ movement is invisible in the story; the struggle for racial equality is not. The prostitutes in the story, however, are presented in ways that directly address many of the problems of representation I’ve found in years of reading books about sex work. In other words, Forman wrote sex workers like sex workers tend to write sex workers, and this was a revelation to me, as I’d previously expected that my critical thinking about sex work literature would “naturally” discover basic differences among texts written by insiders and outsiders, and I’d been mostly right. What follows is a close reading of the short story. More than a close reading, though, it is a brief trip through the intellectual and activist legacies that have made it possible for me to think about transactional sexuality and the struggle for racial equality in the American context at the same time. A brief note on language: I use “black” or “Black,” Forman uses “Negro.” I use “sex worker” and “prostitute” interchangeably here in a bounded, strategic way. Forman uses “prostitute” exclusively. Our differences in language should reflect our eras of writing. I 99 believe we are in alignment with our intention to use the most current language to describe identities via social constructions. I aim to explicate some ways in which the “Circular Lounge” and its prostitute character stands up to the scrutiny of a stigma-sensitive sex worker’s critique. More importantly, I intend to use that critique as a method to further our understanding of racism’s erotic life. I experience the “Circular Lounge” as an example of a radical theory of sex in practice, demonstrated through fiction, written by a non-sex working Black revolutionist. I think that’s kind of a big deal. Because it means that I am saying, from my “insider” position as a sex working academic, that I can admire and identify with a sex worker character written by an industry outsider who never claimed to be an ally, and in fact could have aligned himself easily with anti-sex work politics—I am indicating through this explication that intercommunal solidarity does seem possible. Without shibboleths. Without purity tests. Without moralism or melodrama. By highlighting this possibility, I hope to draw out more. Entering the Circular Lounge “Circular Lounge” is part of a novel Forman wrote in 1958 but never published, called The Thin White Line. In 1994, Open Hand Publishing released High Tide of Black Resistance: and other political & literary writings, a motley anthology of a few of Forman’s greatest-hit essays and as-yet unpublished excerpts from The Thin White Line. “Circular Lounge” appears fifth out of twelve chapters in High Tide, directly in the middle of the fiction chapters. The essays include Forman’s coverage of the Little Rock, Arkansas school desegregation, speeches to the United Nations regarding colonization, and notes from his incarceration during SNCC’s voting registration actions in Mississippi. The very first essay in High Tide is a reprint of “Trouble in Los Angeles,” an essay from Forman’s most famous work, The Making of Black Revolutionaries. 100 It strikes me now as a sort of uncomfortable coincidence that the first essay in the book where the “Circular Lounge” appeared was an autobiographical account of Forman’s being targeted by racist cops from the Los Angeles Police Department, when Forman was a USC student. He moved back home for some time off and treatment after the LAPD held him for days with no food or phone calls and beat him repeatedly, accusing him of a robbery that had happened near the campus while he was studying in Doheny library. Traumatized by the abuse he received by the LAPD, he attended USC for less than one year. I learned of our collegiate connection in the Queens College Archive, as I was seeking more information and background on “Circular Lounge.” In his preface to the first excerpt from the novel, Forman wrote that he intended for the novel to “have an impact upon the lives of white people, in particular, and to inspire black and white people to further fight against segregation and discrimination” (17). Eventually, at the Library of Congress in 2016, I was able to read the entirety of the novel manuscript, and I pored over the few drafts he kept of “Circular Lounge.” Forman wrote short introductions to each of the chapters in High Tide. As a preface to the “Circular Lounge” in the 1994 publication, Forman wrote: In “Circular Lounge,” named for an interracial bar and gathering place for prostitutes, pimps, and customers in Chicago, Illinois, in the late fifties, there is an attempt to describe various aspects of the lives of some people who have been affected by the sexual separation of people from different races. I consciously visited the Circular Lounge in order to meet people there and to write about their lives. (“Circular Lounge” 53) 101 The premise of “Circular Lounge” is not one I have seen before or since: the main character of the chapter, Emmanuel, is a black man who has decided that “tonight’s the night” for him to pay a white prostitute to have sex with him in a way that he hopes will cure him of his internalized race shame. He has been deliberating on this decision. He has a kind and respectful interaction with his wife, meets a few of the novel’s other main characters on their way in to the Circular Lounge, picks a white woman named Joy, and pays her twelve dollars for a standard PIV (Penis In Vagina) sexual encounter. During the sex scene, Forman writes “this was not just a whore with whom a man goes to bed and has an orgasm. It was his whole life and this was a little form of social protest but it gave him comfort” (“Circular Lounge” 61). While Forman calls Emmanuel’s sex with Joy a form of “protest,” he frames Emmanuel’s political awareness through Paul and Ted, two young Black men, the main point- of-view characters of the novel, who are enrolled in college and engaged in social justice activism. Earlier in the story, Ted asks Paul how he’d like to die and Paul answers: “fighting for the Black cause” (54). In contrast to the revolutionary rhetoric Paul and Ted use with ease, Emmanuel speaks only in personal terms. He does “read the Defender five times a week, trying to keep up with the Negro news” (55). (Forman wrote for the Defender.) Emmanuel wants to deal with his feelings about race by himself, for himself. While he is aware that his internalized shame is due to external factors, he is on a private mission to eradicate it from himself via an experimental sexual act, which is set up as a form of protest alongside more traditional forms in the novel. This is a way in which Forman exits the discourse of revolutionary nationalism, with its emphasis on collective organizing and resistance through mass demonstration/protest, and enters another discourse, one in which individual bodies become the sites for revolutionary change. 102 Literature involving sex work does often sympathize heavily with client characters while marginalizing, vilifying, pitying, killing, or otherwise making criminals and victims of sex worker characters. It is not the fact that Emmanuel is the point-of-view character that makes the “Circular Lounge” seem so strange, it is that the story features prostitution as its central plot animator without any melodrama attaching to the prostitute. Forman’s approach makes racism the central social problem, not prostitution, and because of this, Emmanuel’s desire to conquer a white woman (and therefore himself) seems almost unerotic, or only incidentally erotic. In fact, the sex is summed up in just a few lines, one of them being “after a while, the woman became another woman, and he had his orgasm” (61). But let’s not skip ahead to the main event. Forman’s story follows Emmanuel from his own home, into Chicago’s public bus system, then on foot, into the Circular Lounge. The Circular Lounge is unlike anywhere he’s been before. First, he’s not witnessed the negotiations of pimps, prostitutes, and clients in an organized way. Second, “this was his first experience in an interracial social situation. Never had he seen such a panorama of color as existed in the Circular Lounge” (57). Emmanuel is awkward, can feel himself a “square.” The first sex worker he sees is Joy, who is on her way out with another client. He sits at the bar and orders a beer. He is clumsy with the first sex worker he speaks with, asking slightly offensive questions about reducing her prices. This woman is named Alice, she is “an attractive Negro woman about twenty-six” (56). In a narrative move that elsewhere might strike me as jarring, Forman allows us a brief glimpse into Alice’s past and her current mind state. We learn in narrative exposition that she has a son, that she put her husband out, and that she turned to prostitution to support her family, “always biting her lips when she opened her legs, not from physical pain but mental dissatisfaction” (56). This is the most information on a sex worker’s 103 inner world readers will get during the course of the story, although the sex worker Emmanuel eventually does pay for sex answers many of his questions about the work. The effect of Forman’s filling in Alice’s inner world, arguably a narrative intrusion, is that the second of two black female characters in the story is given the richest backstory of any minor character. She is written into the story with a history of overcoming odds and providing for her family, and, less than tragedy or direct abusive coercion, her relationship to sex work is one of “mental dissatisfaction.” (The first black female character is Emmanuel’s wife.) Where some of the other sex workers in the bar seem more content to play songs on the juke box and enjoy themselves, Forman chose to write Alice in some way removed from their carefree culture. From a creative writing/craft perspective, going into Alice’s POV for one paragraph seems odd, and I could hear a workshop saying “this takes me out of the story.” But Alice’s presence on the page reminds readers that each worker has their own story of arriving at the Circular Lounge, and that each of these stories are in turn a cluster of personal choices, social realities, political realities, and so on. Emmanuel talks with Alice, but he isn’t there to sleep with a black woman. She moves on. When Ted sits with him, Emmanuel explains his goal—to sleep with a white woman, and “relieve his complex” (59). Ted is supportive, and despite Emmanuel mistaking him for a pimp, he helps Emmanuel come to the decision to pursue a date with Joy. Emmanuel finds Joy in the lounge, sits with her, lights her cigarette, and then Forman describes the dreamiest, easiest sex work negotiation as “a few comments on the cold weather outside, the small number of people in the lounge, a discussion of the price, and all was ready” (58). I mean, sometimes it goes like that. The negotiations sex workers perform are highly variable by context—some places, like brothels or strip clubs, usually offer workers much less flexibility in setting their own prices than either street-based work or independent full service 104 work (aka escorting). Emmanuel had tried to negotiate the price down but the girls had a standard: twelve total, ten to the girl, two for the room. There were probably other cuts on that ten—a tip out to the bartender, for instance, would be standard practice in many bar/brothels. It seems like a lot to him, and he says so, but no one takes offense. He also tells Joy immediately upon entering the rented room with her that he was there “trying to get rid of some of those feelings, inferior feelings Negroes get around whites,” and that he had never slept with a white woman before. Joy tells him “Sit down, honey. I know some Negroes who think they are superior. But I understand.” She tells him to sit on the bed with her. Then Joy asks him “are you one of those who wants to talk out his twelve dollars?” (59). This question made me smile in recognition. Sex worker as listener, confessional, therapist—it’s real enough that even if Forman had presumed it without an interview, it felt to me that he got something right there. When Emmanuel tells Joy that he is married, she invokes a collective wisdom of fellow sex workers to say “we can always tell those who are shy and nice” (59). She considers his being married with children a point in his favor, a mark of respectability, along with the fact that he is “clean.” This moment of acknowledgment between Emmanuel and Joy, of the existence of Emmanuel’s wife and family, is rife with implications and ripe for feminist problematizing. But in the story itself, the moral consequences of Emmanuel’s choice to have sex with someone who is not his wife are considered prior to his appearance on the page, and we are not privy to those thoughts. In other words, the fact of extramarital sex is simply not under ethical debate in this story. Forman does exit the limited third person point of view to check in on other characters a few times, such as Alice, and Emmanuel’s wife is one of them. When Emmanuel gets in bed with Joy, his wife is across town, “watching the late show” (59). 105 Emmanuel and Joy’s conversation about race and sex work begins with Emmanuel sussing out Joy’s perception of his “complex.” “You don’t believe I am here to get rid of my feelings of inferiority, do you.” “I don’t believe you have never slept with a white girl. But people come here for lots of reasons.” “Well, I was thinking about it for a long time. I made up my mind that tonight was the night.” “It’s funny,” she said smiling, “but I was just thinking of the white men who come here to find out how it is with the colored girls and the colored boys want to know how it is with us.” “Do the Negroes want mostly white girls and the whites mostly Negro girls?” “You can’t say that. It’s about fifty-fifty.” (60) Emmanuel and Joy don’t discuss this any further, even though it is unclear what Joy means by “fifty-fifty.” I still see it as an anti-stigma move, that Forman gives the prostitute character her own thoughts on race and sexuality, prior to Emmanuel asking her questions. Does she mean half of the white men go with white women and half go with black women? Half of the black men go with white women and the other half with black women? That seems more like 25-25-25-25 than 50-50, and it elides couplings of other races. The Circular Lounge is described as a “panorama of color,” and Puerto Ricans are specifically named in Emmanuel’s first appraisal of the bar. Joy’s answer reveals one thing specifically, which is that she doesn’t perceive the clients of the Circular Lounge to be “mostly” in interracial 106 encounters, but she sees them as about half of the business, in some form or another. An interracial encounter is normal there, part of the landscape of sexual commerce, and although Forman could have written Emmanuel and Joy a few more lines interrogating the power dynamics of those couplings, he did not. Emmanuel asks Joy if she likes her work. She likes it well enough, and especially prefers the Circular Lounge to other places she has worked because it is “a lot of fun” and she’d grown “tired of all the sailors” at her old place. She is happy with the way the Circular Lounge allows her to choose who she goes with and offers her protection, and she mentions that the girls there get along. Emmanuel asks her for things that seem normal to him, but are “extras” for Joy, like turning the light off, taking off her bra. She tells him those things are against house rules. His lack of practice shows. She’s graceful but firm. They have intercourse, and Emmanuel is “fighting the forces that produced his complex.” Internally, Forman writes that Emmanuel is “not sure whether he wanted the pleasurable sensation to last or his feelings of vindictiveness. Perhaps they were mixed” (61). Thus the plot premise of “Circular Lounge” is a black man seeking to pay a white woman for sex so he can overcome his own self-identified “inferior feelings Negroes get around whites,” with no immediate conflict among any of the participating characters (“Circular Lounge” 59). Emmanuel achieves his goal, in that he tells Ted (another male client from the bar who is also a POV character in the rest of the novel) that “now I know for myself,” and “I won’t be bothered by this problem anymore” (61). He then reflects on the dynamics of race and sexual possession of both white and black women: When we started, I thought about my people and the way they are treated, especially my people down South. And I thought to myself, “Here I am twisting and turning one of their women like I want to” …Do you know that chick was from the 107 South, and those Southern politicians are always talking about how we want their women? Makes me angry in a way. Because I know they just take our women and do what they want to them. I guess I felt some of that when I first started. Is it strange that I should feel that way? (62) Ted, the character Emmanuel addresses with this question, tells him it is “not at all” strange and the story ends with the two of them parting ways and Emmanuel walking “north on Indiana, going deeper into the heart of the Black Belt of Chicago” (62). Emmanuel finds anger in himself, understands that he has touched something forbidden by having sex with a white woman, but overall his response is a type of quiet reflection. Given that the story is in some way describing how racist anxiety about miscegenation violently shaped the social world of some people in Chicago’s underground economy, Forman’s choice to write a thoughtful, quiet client character in respectful communication with a healthy, relaxed sex worker is a rejection of the sensationalist potential prostitute characters offer fiction. Forman “consciously” visited an interracial bar/brothel to observe what happens when people who have been separated by a dominant culture find each other in an alternative space. I am reminded that the history of geographical regulation of American sexual alterity, a history that often collapsed LGBTQ and sex work into “vice,” is a localized, neighborhood history that has both broad themes (police raids, vice regulations, redlining, zoning) and very particular differences per time and place. In the legacy of projects like Samuel R. Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Christina B. Hanhardt’s Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, and Mara Keire’s For Business and Pleasure: Red-Light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States 1890-1933, I want to acknowledge that Chicago’s history of interracial bars is both a particular, localized struggle for safe spaces and part of a 108 much larger, national project of preventing miscegenation, controlling “vice,” and keeping marginalized sexual subcultures away from the rest of the (white) city. An interracial brothel- bar in nearly any major US city in the 1950s was likely to be located in a predominantly black or brown neighborhood, a consequence of the zoning of vice districts away from white neighborhoods from the 19 th century. This matters for what Fred Moten & Stefano Harney might call “the politics of the surround,” in which the workings of white privilege among racialized and criminalized bodies (white queers, fags, hookers, drug addicts, in black and brown neighborhoods or edges of reservations) requires more nuanced attention to the ways in which class, gender, and immediate local policy and practice affected human lives. In other words, Forman chose an interracial bar because he was interested in working with black/white racial tension, but that choice alone does not give a reader too much information about how race itself functioned in the space he wrote about. He gives us rather specific instructions to arrive at the bar: the main character of Emmanuel McGowan takes the 39 th Street bus going east to Cottage Grove, and then walks “directly” to the Circular Lounge. Forman locates the bar “in the basement of a hotel that once catered to the ‘best’ of Negro entertainment society,” and makes sure readers understand that the bar is meticulously kept “clean,” “freshly painted,” with “fresh air and heat” coming through (55). The Circular Lounge itself, then, is a character of historical importance, and not simply the backdrop for Forman’s psychological investigation of the effects of racism on a character who doesn’t live in the same neighborhood where he goes to buy sex. Forman has, by locating the story so carefully, given the sex work transaction that takes place a foundational specificity that is often lacking in accounts of prostitution aimed at universalizing the misery of the prostitute, universalizing the glamorous good fun of the prostitute, or otherwise reinforcing the ahistorical, deracialized simplicity of criminal/victim narratives. 109 Forman does not specify how he participated in the culture of the bar—whether he paid a prostitute to speak with him in a private space normally used for sexual service (a practice ethnographers have used and then been critiqued for), interviewed clients before or after their dates, or simply observed with a notebook and a beer. The inclusion of the word “consciously” in his description of his visits does work to distance Forman from “regular” clients at the interracial bar/brothel upon which the Circular Lounge is based. Like so many who write about sex work from a research perspective, Forman chose to call himself different from the rest, an observer, someone who wasn’t actively participating in the transactions. A “conscious” visit is one in which observation and analysis are paramount, not sexual objectification, fetishizing, or (gasp!) getting turned on. In the story, after the main character Emmanuel is finished with his sex work encounter with Joy, and “when he descended the stairs and walked out into the cold dreary night, Ted Lynch was there waiting for him, like a hungry research worker” (61). Ted is a character who runs throughout the novel The Thin White Line, and even discusses meeting Emmanuel, with his girlfriend/lover, in later unpublished pages. In the “Circular Lounge,” Ted is Emmanuel’s foil at the bar: a more knowledgeable, less inhibited, unperturbed client. He chases Emmanuel for a report-back from Emmanuel’s experience, and asks him penetrating questions, as Forman may have done to himself or another man who visited the bar. Forman enters the tangle of writing about the intersecting stigmas in an interracial sex work space as distinctly an outsider-researcher, but is successful in performing anti-racist, anti-stigma, sexually radical work from that position, in part because he is willing to ask questions about the potential positive consequences of interracial sexual transaction. In all the archive boxes I rifled through, in which James Forman’s diaries and personal reflections on his projects accompanied nearly all drafts of published works, I found 110 no notes from these “conscious” visits, no interviews, no evidence of the real-life Circular Lounge (as unsexy a name for a place of sex business as I’ve ever heard, Forman). Nothing, that is, except the product, the story itself in multiple drafts. This absence of background material has, of course, multiple possible explanations: the story was written in 1958, and Forman died in 2005. Of all his personal papers, the files on his manuscript The Thin White Line were some of the oldest still available for perusal. He may have gotten rid of many files in the nearly forty years before publication and fifty years before his death for reasons other than discomfort, reasons more mundane than his not wanting people to see his notes from visiting a brothel. In any case, “Circular Lounge” appears with very little context outside of a few revisions visible in the drafts Forman did keep. Luckily, those revisions are meaningful for the project of reading “Circular Lounge” as a piece of anti-racist social justice literature that works to declaw stigma against sex work and sex workers. Tracing Forman’s Gestures outside the Circular Lounge A member of the militaristic, revolutionary Black organization whose archive of letters I worked with asked me once “How’d you get to be so woke?” It was both a ribbing and a serious question. We were working on archiving prisoners’ letters to his organization that had accumulated over the years. I had come to believe, per Dylan Rodriguez, that everyone who was being held in captivity under the current carceral regime was de facto a “political prisoner.” Given what the prisoners had to say, hundreds and hundreds of them, from all over the country, about their conditions and treatment at the hands of courts, corrections officers, other prison staff and administration, this became a felt reality for me. I speculated for my friend: I was born the Bay Area and wasn’t raised in an all-white environment; I have experienced rape, incarceration, and class shame firsthand; I read histories of colonization, 111 post-colonial theory, and critical race studies; I had a few excellent professors, a white anti- racist activist mentor, and a black transgender activist mentor; I am a sex worker looking for ways to address the myriad effects of criminalization and stigma. My friend was looking for an answer from me that might gesture at ways to replicate the educational and radicalization processes I’d been through. Unfortunately, what I gave him was more of an “I don’t know, I’m this way because of everything up until now?” Then, I realized I was asking a similar question of Forman in my own research. What did it take for him to “get woke” on the issue of sex work? How did he come to write a realistic-sounding sex worker character in 1958? What did he read, who did he talk to? Given the ubiquity of the anti-sex worker stigma, which replicates itself all over social justice movements, what needed to happen for Forman to write the self-respecting prostitute in the “Circular Lounge?” He had worked with women’s groups, but primarily, he worked with socialist, communist, internationalist, and revolutionary Black formations. I thought I would find notes on his interviews. I thought I might find drafts of the story that showed the sex worker’s development as a character. Over the course of three trips to the east coast, reading Forman’s files in both the Queens College Civil Rights Archive and at the Library of Congress for somewhere around forty hours, I did find some interesting and wonderful traces, but after thousands of pages of reading, I still have no real “answers.” I can’t explain exactly how Forman learned to view sex work as he did, or even what his views on it may have been outside of what he allowed his fictional characters to think and say. His library of books is housed at Queens College in rollaway stacks in a basement, unorganized. I looked at every title. Forman had three books on women’s issues, and only one that mentions sex work: Emma Goldman’s “The Traffic in Women.” 112 It is fun to speculate. Perhaps Forman had some long nights with his partner Dinky Romily, and her mother Jessica Mitford, discussing sexual politics and the effects of patriarchal control of women’s bodies. Perhaps in his friendships with men who had gone to war, Forman discovered more nuanced and complex experiences with prostitution, and it changed his views on what women’s work, affective labor, sex work, and intimacy can look or feel like. Maybe he originally went to the Circular Lounge to write about how terrible the effects of prostitution are for racial equality, and saw other dynamics occurring that interested him more. My instinct now is that through practice, Forman knew a liberation struggle when he saw one, period. But that doesn’t offer a lot in the way of gleaning methods for training other readers, writers, and social justice activists to confront their own racism and whorephobia. James Forman didn’t write extensively about sexuality. He did write other scenes into the Thin White Line that commented in some way on sex work. For example, Forman wrote an unpublished scene in other part of the novel where a student tells his girlfriend his “Okinawan love story” (Forman archive at the Library of Congress). The young man was deployed during the Korean War, and fell in love with a prostitute. He visited her once a week, brought gifts to her daughter. He knows that he was a client. He is aware, as he tells his story to his current lover, that being a client and being a boyfriend are different roles. In the context of the war, he explains, one doesn’t care the same way for social norms or propriety. He tells his current lover that he deeply cared for the prostitute and her daughter, that he believed the girl to have genuine feelings of affection for him, although he never tried to stop paying for her time. He believes people need physical tenderness. He says he wishes other people would understand that “they’re people, just people.” The girlfriend is surprisingly open minded and affable toward this story. Although never published, this piece of Forman’s novel served in 113 some ways as a template for how to think sex work in the “Circular Lounge” as both a job and a fact of life under capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and so on. Forman wrote both “Circular Lounge” and the “Okinawan Love Story” as investigations into psychological questions of the effects of trauma (through racism, war, poverty) on men and their sexual lives. Women, and specifically sex workers, who are not always included in the category of “women,” are not to blame for the way men respond to their conditions, in Forman’s work. Some of the ways the manuscript functions as a piece of anti-stigma work are invisible to readers of the published book. It may be a Derridean impulse, but I would like to trace the ghosts of the story, the changes made over drafts. In a few of these changes, Forman made choices against replicating stereotypes, such as dissociating sex work from drugs and other “criminal” activity. What Forman omitted from the final version of “Circular Lounge” is meaningful because it allows me the space to imagine what it means for him to deprioritize a word, a scene, a character. One change to the manuscript of “Circular Lounge” that stands out to this sex working reader is the removal of a hot-button word from the earlier drafts. Originally, Forman had described sex between Emmanuel and Joy as his “thrusting sadistically into her womb” (Forman Papers at Library of Congress). The word “sadistically” was removed from the final published version. Although Emmanuel describes “twisting and turning one of their women like I want to,” he never expresses any desire or intent to harm Joy during their encounter (“Circular Lounge” 62). She even gives him her phone number and tells him to call her as he leaves, which of course he interprets to mean he should call her “whenever he had twelve dollars,” but whether she’s offering him an invitation to paid or unpaid time, the interaction they have stays very friendly. Forman wrote Emmanuel’s respectful interaction with Joy in such a way that it reflects his unspoken belief that Joy, as an individual white woman, is not 114 personally responsible for Emmanuel’s feelings. Although it would make sense according to his stated purpose of dealing with internalized racism, Emmanuel does not take out his rage at the racism he’s suffered on Joy’s body directly. Access to her sexual body, the power to penetrate her, and the knowledge that he has finally had sex with a white woman, is what he seeks. Were non-consensual sadism to enter, Emmanuel’s project would change from self- transformation to revenge. From the beginning of the story, Emmanuel is set to take care of something within himself, and never does he claim that he wants to get back at anyone. Forman’s removal of “sadistic” from the page is an act that redirects Emmanuel’s sexual power. Saidiya Hartman finds a “libidinal investment in violence” in documents surrounding not only the slave trade itself but specifically the times and places where black women appear in the records of “rituals of torture enshrined as law.” The libidinal investment in violence in Hartman’s work refers to the way white writers described black women during slavery. In his words to Ted, Emmanuel makes it clear that he is sensitive to this dynamic and that it factored into his “complex.” Forman could have turned the libidinal investment in violence around: a black man sadistically thrusting into the body of a white woman is an answer to, a reversal of, the white man’s violence against black women in Hartman. It is important to note that by removing “sadistically” from the story, Forman chose not to perform this revenge/reversal. The investment in racialized gender violence, in the form of revenge, is absent. A few more changes to the manuscript support the notion that Forman had a goal of depicting sex work without melodrama and addressing racialization in its erotic, interpersonal terms. In earlier drafts, Emmanuel happens upon a conversation between a pimp and a prostitute in the Lounge. They discuss another sex worker who has been struggling with an addiction to heroin. The pimp is self-aggrandizing, misogynist, and obsessed with money. The 115 sex worker he speaks with is jaded and exhausted. The themes of the scene were familiar from stereotypic tropes, representations I have seen elsewhere. They may easily have been “true” in the sense that Forman witnessed a conversation much like the one he put down on the page, however, because of the stigma against drugs, especially heroin, and the association of drug addiction and prostitution, if Forman had included this scene, the character of the Circular Lounge would have been affected. What Forman chose to do was publish a story that happened in a clean environment with characters drinking very little beer, not one that happened in a seedier environment where characters did heroin. We know it is a clean environment in part because he also mentions the labor of the janitors, who “worked very hard to keep it clean” (55). Forman took a deliberate narrative step to dissociate prostitution from drug addiction in the published version of the story as well. When Emmanuel leaves his house for the Circular Lounge, he encounters a junkie he knows well in the stairwell of his building. He considers asking about “this thing” he is about to do—which is not yet named—then he decides not to. While the narrative purpose of his holding back conversation may have been an illustration of the private nature of Emmanuel’s intentions, just a few minutes later Emmanuel is very open with Ted about what he is trying to do. His decision not to talk to the character associated with drug addiction indicates that he both associates drugs and prostitution (it occurred to him to ask about it) and doesn’t see the association as strictly necessary or causative. Whatever their original purpose, these moves Forman made serve to diminish the effects of a particularly thorny part of the stigma against sex workers, which is the widespread belief that sex work and drug addiction are by necessity co-constitutive. As previously discussed, the fact of drugs in sex work contexts is not at issue here. The fact of addiction follows the presence of addictive drugs. What is at issue when we discuss stigma are 116 assumptions like: sex work is so inherently horrible that many/most/all sex workers have to get drunk or high to do it, addicts having sex for drugs is somehow worse than addicts having sex for money, addiction is a necessary precursor for sex work, sex work is a necessary precursor to addiction, and so on. Sex work literature written by non-sex workers does not often attempt to draw out the possibility of sex work contexts in which workers are sober, using drugs or alcohol in a way that is not destructive to themselves, and/or actively dealing with addictions in healthful ways while also performing sex for pay. Forman’s omission of drugs from the Circular Lounge is one way to ensure that he can write sex, sex work, and sexuality in such a way that they can be read through a slightly less prejudiced lens. Exiting the Circular Lounge There is no such thing as a perfectly accurate or fair representation of sex work on the page. Each worker is a cluster of both unique personal traits and stereotypical features, group norms and individual oddities. Forman was never going to do a perfect job representing a sex worker, in part because that’s impossible, but he could and did do a lot to undermine the potentially dehumanizing effects of sex work stigma by turning his social justice lens toward it in a story that was otherwise about “sexual separation of races.” I write these pages about the “Circular Lounge” in part to amplify his effect, because the story is buried in an out-of-print text published over twenty years ago. I understand how the lack of circulation of the story could be an argument against giving it the kind of attention I’ve given it. Why not search for similar effects in more well-known writings? Why not spend these twenty-five pages doing a more review-style gloss of sex worker characters in contemporary literature and media? The main reason is that I hope to illuminate a method, not simply collect and aggregate data on the facts of current (mis)representations. There are general differences among 117 “insider” and “outsider” writings. Those differences are, in many ways, predictable and boring: per Walkowitz, you can expect that once “outsiders” engage sex worker voices, everything gets more complicated. It is not enough to ask “does this sex worker on the page seem realistic” or even “where did the writer get their information about sex work?”, both of which rely on identity politics in their ultimate satisfaction. Instead, the questions I ask are about the effects of representation. How does the current story reinscribe or rewrite the prejudices exerted against marginalized bodies? Who holds the keys to moral authority in the story, and how might other characters be unfairly affected by supposedly common-sense ethical beliefs? Where do I see the workings of whorephobia, racism, classism, gender oppression, etc, and where do I see the workings of resistance to those forms of social control? I know I can expect a long life of making mistakes in my attempts to read and write through the lens of social justice and liberatory politics. However, part of my affinity with Forman here is in the attempt to see all struggles for liberation as linked, even when the interests of different groups aren’t in sync. His call for white people to consider how racism affects their lives resonated with me. I was able to more deeply read other works of his, in part, because of how tenderly and carefully and with what respect and attention to detail he created his sex working characters. I see in Forman’s work an example of something radical: a consent-based practice of sexual self-transformation that does not flinch at the fact of economic exchange, but allows for bodies to find, stick, slide, and move away from each other without contributing to the violence that has otherwise kept them apart. 118 CONCLUSION Saturday, November 14, 2015 early evening. 1) Yesterday, I was watching the Golden Girls and answering emails from my dominatrix account. I booked a kink client for a one-hour outcall. I got ready, packed my bags, and got a ride from my place to his hotel from friends. I had not worked with this client alone before. We had a language barrier. But it worked out. I tried some new activities, stretched my skills a little, and enjoyed myself. Coming out of the visit, I was tired. I expected to get home, get into some sweat pants, and eat pizza my friends made from scratch. I did not expect to get out of my car, in my high-heeled pointed-toe black boots, with cash in my purse, and more than three condoms on my person, in front of a police perimeter that had formed on my block. I “knew" they weren’t there for me, but you learn to do a quick inventory of yourself, what’s on you, who you’d need to call, whenever you see cops. They had effectively parked at my place. It was weird. 2) For at least eight hours that I was aware of, the house across the street from my place was under siege. LAPD blocked off the intersections to my right and left with parked patrol cars. A helicopter flew in a continuous low circle and lit up our buildings with an incredible spotlight. We watched as helmeted, bullet-proof vested, solid-black suited soldiers broke into the house through the backyard with weapons at their hips or in outstretched fists. I live in a drafty cute old upstairs apartment held together with love and caulk, a ten-minute walk southeast of Expo and Western. The police have a consistent patrol presence here, but I have not seen SWAT-like activity like that before. I took pictures of what I could, given the horrible searchlight and the self-protective instinct I had to stay inside. But what is there to 119 DO with pictures of police breaking into a house they have most likely figured out how to legally invade? What is there to do for the rest of us, about the hours of heightened fearful feeling, the agitation produced by the lights and sounds of militarized policing? Am I supposed to get used to it? Is my getting “used to it” the only legible way to show respect to the fact that containment strategies have been deployed in the neighborhood where I am now living, for 40 years longer than I’ve lived there? I’ve been studying California’s policing and incarceration systems, working with prison abolitionist organizations. I also know what I have seen and felt, when being “processed" by the police at OccupyLA and other protests. Goddamn right I will stay up late to document the LAPD when they post up outside my bedroom, even if I don’t know what for. And so I did. Eventually I fell asleep. 3) I woke up at 5:50AM to a frantic phone call from a dear friend from out of town, who asked me to check in on one of our community in LA. The person he was concerned about, a queer sex worker, had sounded drunk, been expressing suicidal ideation, and was no longer responsive by phone. He was worried she might be in danger. I wrote down a hotel and room number, packed a bag with some snacks and comfort items, and drove up to Hollywood just after sunrise. I knocked three times. I could hear that my friend was in the room. The door opened. He called you? She said. Yes, I said. Okay, fine, she said. She let me in, and crawled back into bed. I put in some time, made sure our girl wasn’t alone for a few hours in her suffering. I sat next to her in bed and used a sewing kit from another hotel to stitch up the ears of a stuffed bunny from my own childhood. I gave it to her. She tucked it up under her chin and cried. She cannot enjoy her life. She cannot relax or let go of the trauma she has been through. In the little radical queer sex worker community I am part of, an important form of solidarity we offer each other is to hold the thread of hope when a comrade has lost it. I held her. I held the 120 thread. 4) Eventually, my friend was stable enough to move towards her own long drive home to the Bay Area. We made a plan for her self-care for the next 48 hours. She was sitting in my car saying goodbye to me when a woman who had been walking erratically along Whitley and Hollywood Boulevard lurched toward us screaming about how much she hated us, was going to kill us, and hadn’t I had such a great time with her man last night, didn’t I just love that big, black dick, didn’t I. She had a beautiful face, with lots of freckles, and light brown eyes that were not focusing. No, I said through my open window. We don’t know you. We don’t know your man. You don’t know us. She slammed my car with her fists, then came around and tried to open the passenger door. She wrenched it open, and my friend struggled with her, got it back in one hard yank, shut and locked the door. The woman splayed herself on my hood. I got out, got in front of her, put my finger in her face, and said something along the lines of “You are fucked up, you are paranoid, you are out of control, and that guy over there is calling the cops on you, so get the fuck out of here RIGHT NOW and GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!” And then I waited, ready. She started singing “Come Together” by the Beatles and backed away. When I was sure she wasn’t coming after me, I got back in my car, put my friend in her own car with the stuffed bunny in the passenger seat, said goodbye, and drove myself home. 5) At home, there was no sign of the police occupation. My pictures were too fuzzy to mean anything. So I write, to leave some trace. And I number, because this narrative felt stacked up to me in real time, felt too large to adequately process all at once, and is also eerily indicative of the times I’m living in and the place I’m writing from. Although the Economist published a cover story on the way technology is “liberating” the 121 sex business in 2014, we live in an era of increasingly militarized response to a broadly defined crime of human trafficking. The number of people in the sex industries seems to be increasing, despite the fact that the number of outdoor sex workers continues to decline in the internet age. One result of the state’s current approach to the sex trades is that it has swept up many people who may have felt safe from persecution in the past. For example: the CEO of Backpage.com was recently arrested for trafficking. Simultaneously, activists like CeCe McDonald and Monica Jones have stepped into the media to highlight the longstanding vulnerability of outdoor workers, particularly transgender women of color, with demands for decriminalization of sex work. It is a confusing time. Once you let someone know you’re a sex worker, the first thing they usually want to know is, “what does it mean, exactly?” It is an innocent question because of the confusion inherent to the term. It is not an innocent question in the sense that it asks sex workers to do one of a few things: incriminate themselves, expose themselves to further stigma, explain the complexities of the industry as they know it, or name themselves a place in the whorearchy. Sometimes I joke, “I could tell you what it means but then you’d have to pay me.” The second thing people often want to know is “what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever been asked to do?” When non- sex workers ask this, I tell them: this. Right now. Asking me to titillate you with the story of someone else’s fetish, for free? That’s kind of weird, isn’t it? Their answer is usually just that they are trying to make conversation. But what I experience is that they are uncomfortable and are trying to make sense of my physical presence. I think there is an epistemological error, an error of a false sense of knowing, and a wrongheaded categorical claim made, at every turn, about who and what a prostitute or sex worker is, and what we mean in our time and place. Because you cannot answer the questions about what sex work is without becoming very specific, local, and consulting with people who 122 do the work itself in many contexts, and are willing and able to discuss it. Instead, hundreds of years of literature, law, propaganda, art, and now social science seem to agree you must be able to call a woman a whore on sight, you must, it is imperative to know the signs! Even clients of mine have said, “I like you because you’re very incognito.” A lady on the street and all that. I can hide “it” well, whatever “it” is that distinguishes me from regular, non-prostitute women. One question for further study would be: what are the enduring components of the threat sex work poses to our structures of power, such that it receives so much anxious attention? I don’t know, friends. I really don’t. I still don’t. I know less about that now than I did seven years ago, because the more I study the history of whore stigma, the laws against transactional sex, the claims of anti-trafficking groups, the work of sex worker activism, and the stories sex workers tell, the less sensible it all becomes. Sex work itself is not inherently threatening to global capitalism, the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy that runs the U.S., the rule of binary gender, or enduring racial hierarchy, but I do still believe sex workers, especially with allies ready to show up supportively as our families, friends, and support networks, could be. Subjugated knowledges are the foundation of threat to the current regime. What the maids and janitors know. What the nannies and administrative assistants know. What the prisoners know. What the hookers know. Our secrecy is key for Power to keep on being itself. When we talk, cacophony ensues. That confusion is a productive site for the reordering of our social world. In January, 2017, the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington went through several contortions in their platform, regarding their alignment with sex workers’ rights. Originally, the Women’s March had published a platform that explicitly stated “we stand in solidarity with sex workers’ rights movements,” a pluralistic gesture toward the many sites 123 and styles of change sex workers are engaging globally. The phrase quietly disappeared from the site and was replaced by a statement of solidarity with “those exploited for labor and sex.” Sex workers and allies responded on social media. Janet Mock, author and activist, who wrote the original line of sex worker solidarity, condemned the change and worked to have the original platform reinstated. No answer ever emerged to the question of how or why the original platform was changed: did someone receive pressure from law enforcement, an anti- trafficking group, a coalition of churches, or who? But eventually, sex workers were re- included in the Women’s March, and, many sex workers’ rights groups participated in the marches, holding the movement’s signature red umbrellas and signs that read “Sex Workers Were the Original Nasty Women.” We may be, in the 21 st century, too many to ignore, too complicated to summarize. That there are many former sex workers fighting for total abolition of prostitution in anti- trafficking organizations is a complicating fact of our movement(s). Currently, I believe they are outnumbered by the thousands of sex workers internationally who are fighting for something more like a culturally-contextualized freedom to consent. Many groups demand decriminalization, but with even more self-respecting goals and language than simple relief from oppression. In To Live Freely in This World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa, Chi Adanna Mgbako writes of the “vitality of the global sex workers’ rights movement” (4). She sees a tide turning, sex worker activism spreading, and offers “powerful proof that African sex worker activists are determining their social and political fate through strategic, informed choices” (10). According to Chateauvert in Sex Workers Unite, there are vibrant movements happening globally, and rather than lead them, the U.S. is trailing behind. I find this hopeful—the forms of resistance and organizing that are succeeding in other countries can help us gain courage for our own fights here, and, the fact that we must look outside our own country for new 124 models of effective deregulation and resistance upends the white American feminist narrative claiming its own feminism being the best and only real one. Every location has its own challenges—factions of local power, ethnic/racial conflict, different histories of gender/heterosexual privilege, family legacies and public social scripts, different styles of contact with law enforcement and incarceration and on and on. What is happening in Los Angeles is not the same as what’s happening in Oakland. While not losing sight of this, we can look at broad strokes together, and the global struggle for sex workers’ rights is a struggle that indicates we need some wholly new understanding of what is a “social problem,” and new answers, too. I have worked at six institutions of higher education. I have taught composition, Gender Studies, creative writing, poetry, and comparative literature. I worked at summer camps, as a counselor and director. I worked in research administration at the West Los Angeles Veteran’s Hospital. I worked inside family homes as a nanny for children aged three to seventeen. I worked on many stages, as dancer and actor, and in front of cameras, in productions ranging from underground events to mainstream cable television. I’ve worked in food service, floral retail, and event production. I danced to “The YMCA” at a few hundred Bar/Bat Mitzvahs as a “party motivator” with a DJ crew. I checked out books for people in a library. I was a telemarketer, and sold maintenance agreements on large appliances. I worked as a lab technician and grew cell cultures. I tended bar, and I danced on the bar. I was a personal assistant. I edited manuscripts, some of which got published. I painted a cover for a book and modeled nude for the cover of another. The degradation and immorality I have witnessed in “straight” jobs is staggering. Bosses sexually harassed me in corners of shops and institutions; employees lied on paperwork that affected veterans’ medical care; parents ignored signs of their children’s distress; publishers 125 “lost” checks to artists more than once; a nursing mother was told she couldn’t pump breastmilk anywhere at work. I have survived intimate partner violence, intimate partner rape, violence from the police, violence and robbery from clients, and other forms of disrespect and threat, and I maintain that my own experience matters: I have preferred stripping, porn, pro kink/fetish, and independent, indoor sex work to every other job I’ve had, for nearly two decades now. That is two decades of constant working, usually more than one job at a time. I believe myself to be an ethical actor under structural constraint, and a civil disobedient with regards to laws intended to regulate my body. I am not horrified by a stranger’s body nor their desire to have an orgasm. I enjoy my own body. I think pleasure can help people be better versions of themselves. I think people should be able to regulate their own behavior. And I am not alone. Nearly every sex worker writer I’ve read, and all the workers I’ve spoken to, agree that negative outcomes would change drastically if we did not fear arrest, social exclusion, job and housing discrimination, or vilification/rejection from family and friends. If anecdote or ethnography isn’t enough, there are now plenty of national and state/municipal statistics supporting our claims. In decriminalized environments where sex workers organize Bad Date lists, use each other for referrals, and go out together to come home together, violence against them decreases. Currently, all those behaviors on the part of American sex workers would constitute human trafficking, of ourselves and each other. Yes, in many places we can be convicted of trafficking ourselves. When I was stripping at nineteen years old, I had a few uncomfortable conversations with my father about the consequences of my job. He warned me that I was making choices that would affect the rest of my life. I had recently begun my college years at Reed, was I really 126 willing to take on the risks of working in a strip club, in “that kind of environment?” What about the fact that it might negatively affect my career options down the road? I responded in the affirmative. I knew that, I told him, and I was willing to take all that on. I think it’s wrong for it to affect my options, I said. He asked me how it made me feel, to know that all those men were seeing me and then using images of me to get off later. I told him it made me feel glad, because I thought I was beautiful and healthy and I wanted to be dancing. I enjoyed it, so it was better for everyone if they jacked off to someone like me, rather than someone who was suffering it, hated being there, didn’t want to be dancing. As long as they’re tipping, I told him, they’re fine with me. Later I was asked, what about the wives and girlfriends? How can you let yourself be objectified and call yourself a feminist at the same time? Don’t you feel degraded by it sometimes, though? How do you feel about the fact that you’ll probably live hand-to-mouth the rest of your life? These questions assume the problems reside primarily within me, and not within: 1) A doomed, sexist, and anachronistic social control exerted by the nuclear family structure that casts some women as perpetually victims of men’s cheating and other women as responsible for that cheating; 2) A squeamishly prude, fearful, and heteronormative concept of feminism associated with middle class white women; and 3) An unquestioned assumption that sex acts I consent to are still dirty, wrong, and bad for me, which is a racialized narrative that protects the purity of white heterosexual womanhood. Look at me, now don’t. The stripper’s best sleight of hand is always in the covering, not the revealing. I am a shadow worker, a cultivator of creative desire. That is my favorite mode of resistance to tyranny. I put myself out there to start the conversation, ask the questions, but 127 of course the real questions aren’t about me at all. I hope to have given enough space to the deeper, more difficult questions of how to approach sex work in media and on the page. I have operated in multiple registers, spun through more than one field of discourse, placed siloed authors and ideas in contact on my pages. I have responded to sex work literature from the point of view of a worker, for whom all those registers, narratives, and ideas are operating in constant simultaneity, in real time. To discuss the effects of stigma, I have worked to uncover the ways in which I have suffered it and not suffered it, I have studied the writings of other sex workers, and I have placed those knowledges in a conversation with scholarly writing about sex work. By situating my investigation in my own body first, I accept full responsibility for the claims I make. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to those activists and many who would never call themselves such, who have fought not just for prostitute’s rights to be recognized as human, but asserted our right to be respected for what we know. In addition to the writers I leaned on, I spent many hours with Norma Jean Almodovar (co-founder of COYOTE, author of From Cop to Call Girl) in her formidable personal archive of sex work literature. One day, I asked her about her experiences with the constant choice to keep coming out of the closet, and she told me, “The closet was killing me. Period. I will never go back in there. You should promise that to yourself, too, when you’re ready.” I am unspeakably grateful to be safely out of my closets with those faculty and staff at USC who recognized the tightrope I’m walking and offered me a hand from their own, perhaps slightly safer positions. Special recognition needs to go to Janalynn Bliss, who put in many hours, a chunk of them off-the-clock, helping me to navigate the program and my position within it. She provided reliably sane and caring attention for my thoughts and feelings as I moved through years of life events that affected my writing. I would also like to 128 gratefully acknowledge Jack Halberstam, who offered me invaluable guidance in the early shaping of my research questions and directions through his work, his teaching, and his one- on-one advisement. My dissertation committee, in particular, have told me that if anyone can walk this line, I can, and I take that charge very seriously. Collectively, your classes and your writing have helped shape my project. Individually, you all contributed more than I can acknowledge here, but I’m going to try a bit anyway. Thoughtful, challenging comments from Dana Johnson led me to write a novel that was more true, and more true to me. Constant compassionate detachment from Percival Everett helped me to both keep my standards high for myself and also stop stressing myself so much. Nomi Stolzenberg’s enthusiasm and support for this work motivated me to write what I wanted to, not what I thought I was supposed to. In addition to her excellent questions and edits, Aimee Bender participated in an accountability project with me, five days a week for a year, while I pushed for a full novel draft. That is a gift I will never be able to repay, it was so necessary for the completion of this project, for my development as a writer, thinker, and self-directed scholar. I want to express gratitude that over the years each of you mentored me personally, too: you received me into your homes, encouraged me to find my own way through, listened to my concerns even if you’d heard them many times before, disallowed my self-doubt to win. Despite the fact I’ve probably shed tears at least once in all your offices, you may not know the extent to which I have internalized whore stigma and class shame, because I work very hard to appear self-loving and confident, and I do stay stridently aware of structural injustice and the effects of trauma. Thank you for making space for my struggle and for seeing me as a person capable of healing and thriving. You have helped me become a writer who finds joy in thinking truly difficult thoughts, creating complex worlds, and then breaking it all down to 129 the parts that matter most. My plans for balancing out my overwhelming sense of gratitude and indebtedness to your efforts are to 1) keep making my own work and 2) offer similar service to other writers, especially writers who speak from subjugated knowledges, marginalized positions, silenced life-worlds. I have been called a witch. I have been told I’m dangerous, addictive, fun, easygoing, too smart to be a stripper, classy, trashy, ungodly, the enemy of women, the enemy of men, a liability to a professional presentation, concerning, brilliant, strong, too tough for my own good, a great travel companion, full of potential, too pretty to be here. Whenever I internalize what other people think about me or sex work, I am overwhelmed. I feel I simply cannot carry the psychic weight of all that symbolism: prostitute, sex worker-student, sex worker- academic, activist, performer, nonmonogamous kinky queer, blonde-haired blue-eyed white lady, critic, artist, writer. And yet, every day it is what I do. And I am able, because while I cultivate my own resilience and strength, I am not trying to do any of it alone. 130 TAKE ME WITH YOU 131 You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world. But books taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. James Baldwin 132 Drink Blood Raw beef was my mother’s answer to weakness of any kind. Caught a cold? Lost another job? Bright red, barely-seared steak would appear on the dinner table. It was a special meal, and it meant someone needed to get stronger. “Get all the iron you can,” she would say. “Drink that sauce.” I told my friends my mother taught me to drink blood. “Hold the plate up like this,” she said, raising hers gently, “then, tip it and sip your sauce.” But it wasn’t sauce. Carl had sauce. I had blood, thin and red and living. She had to let Carl cover his steak in A1, and she had to let him cook his as long as he wanted, because he was a grown man who she loved and who loved us both very much. He got to do some things for himself in his own way, she told me. To cook steak, she’d heat up the pan, throw hers and mine in it for five seconds each side, then let Carl take over, for his own. We had been living with Carl since before I could remember. My friends knew him as my dad, which explained why he lived with us and the role he took in my daily life. But he wasn’t married the normal way to my mom. Mom and Carl told me “common law marriage” was a real thing that happened to people who had lived together long enough in California. So they were married, but different. And he was Black. He told me his black was capitol-B Black, but not everyone wanted to call themselves Black even if they looked like him, so I should always remember to respect whatever someone wanted me to know or say about who they were. My mom wasn’t captiol-B Black, she wasn’t black, she wasn’t brown, she was white. I was eight years old. A fifth-grader had told me Carl wasn’t my real dad and it scared me. He seemed as real as me or my mom. We weren’t imagining him. We couldn’t be. “Carl doesn’t drink his sauce,” I said. Carl looked up from his plate at my mother, and they shared some meaning I didn’t understand, but I knew I wasn’t in real trouble. He straightened 133 in his chair and patted the back of his hair. His hair was still dark and springy, then. He let it grow out sometimes, two inches or so, and twisted it and untwisted it in the back when he was thinking. He patted it when he thought something was funny. We had a round table, with mismatching chairs. It was a small circle just big enough for our plates, and underneath, all our feet met in the middle. My mother’s feet were always in stockings or slippers because they were tired. She would rub them together and make a sound I hated. My feet were tan on the top, lighter on the bottom. Carl’s feet were brown on top, almost as light as mine on the bottom, and he had man-problems with his toenails that made them thick and yellow. “You eat how your mother tells you to eat,” Carl said, meeting my eyes. He winked. His eyes were a brighter brown than mine, with gold threading through them. His lashes were long, dark, curled. “I had a mother who did the same for me, and we’re both lucky for that.” I imagined his mother, a rounder version of him, in a flowery housedress with a giant bottle of A1 in both hands and a lot of gray hair in a bun. “Is she my grandma?” I said. That got a snort out of Carl. He scratched his cheek. He shaved in the mornings, and by the evenings, his whiskers bothered him. “She would have loved to be your grandma, Kindee. But she’s dead now, honey. She died when I was a young boy.” I hadn’t known that. It was hard for me to imagine Carl as a boy, because he’d always been a grown-up, to me. My name is Kindred. Sometimes Carl called me Kindee-cool. “How’d she die?” I said. “Honey, just drink your sauce,” Mom said. She straightened up and rolled her shoulders, rolled her neck around. Her sandy blonde hair was parted unevenly in the middle and sat on her back, limp and thin. She wore blue eyeliner until after dinner. Her eyes were squinty all the time. She said someone in our family was a Cherokee princess, that was why. I didn’t find 134 out what kind of white people bullshit that was until years later. “It’s blood,” I said. “It’s gross.” “Stop it,” Mom said. “It’s good for you. It’s called ‘myoglobin,’ the thing that makes it red. It’s not blood.” I crossed my arms. She sighed a little. “It’s expensive, baby.” She patted my knee under the table, gave an effort of a smile to Carl, and looked back at her own cut of meat. I didn’t move to drink the blood, which I remember because “it’s expensive” usually worked on me. My mother waved her papery hand, dismissing me. “My mother died in a car accident,” Carl said. “When I was eleven.” “Who took care of you?” I asked. “My aunties did,” Carl said. “I’ll tell you more about them sometime.” Carl returned to his meal. Mom tipped her plate and slurped in a way that seemed somehow both defiant and dainty. I saw a greasy stink of blood rising from her head, issuing like poisonous smoke from her wilted hair. I rejected my spreading pool of myoglobin juice, just because I wanted to. These are the kind of stupid things I ache to take back now that Mom is dead and Carl is gone. I’m not ready to tell you about that yet. We were living in Studio City then, back when it was still a cluster of hedged-in sound stages and industrial stucco apartments, before Universal Studios landscaped the area into a theme park. Both Carl and Mom worked too hard or worried about having no job, alternatively, depending on various blame-worthy influences: the economy, racism, sexism, 135 your drinking, no-your-attitude, depression, not trying hard enough, the unfairness of the world, the rich white men who made it so, each other, themselves, the bosses, but they never blamed me, although I often expected them to, as I stayed awake listening to their adult concerns issuing so quickly from their angry, exhausted adult mouths. Our apartment complex sat behind a Mission-style archway with reddish clay roof tiles. All the outdoor stucco had been painted an absurd mint green, and it was part of a collection of six absurdly mint green units that faced inward to a thin strip of concrete and weeds. We called that area “The Yard,” and it wasn’t until Carl went to prison that I realized the sad overlap in meaning, for The Yard to be a place where people can feel briefly freer while they are being so carefully watched. I loved that apartment. It had one bedroom, so I slept in a pile of blankets on the couch, every night except Sunday. Sunday I got to sleep in the bed with Mom. The night I challenged Mom on drinking sauce, she and Carl were on the same team. I said I wouldn’t do it, and Mom said alright it’ll be another month before we eat steak then, and Carl laughed at her because she liked steak the most of the three of us, so you’re just punishing yourself, he said, and then she smacked him on the shoulder while stifling her giggle, which meant I’d won, and I didn’t have to drink it anymore. Now, my memories are a little worn and tattered, and I don’t always know what is true and what I made up. I know I wasn’t always defiant. I started keeping a journal just after that dinner, and I never stopped. The journals tell a story of my growing up, but they don’t tell the story of my mother, who started working at fourteen and didn’t stop till she was too sick to move. They don’t tell the story of Carl, who fell in love with her when she was still young and vibrant, still staying up late to argue his ideas about politics, still singing “Singing in the Rain” in the shower. My mother told me money was like sugar: it seems like the best thing in the world until 136 you have too much. Then you get sick. She told me to make sure I had enough to live on, and if I could do that, to share. But don’t ever stockpile it, baby, she said. You can’t take it with you. Carl loved it when she talked like that. Carl listened to music. I remember Miriam Makeba, Curtis Mayfield, Sly and the Family Stone, Carmen McRae, Bill Withers, and Mozart. Of Mozart, he loved the “Rondo Alla Turca” and the “Serenade for Thirteen Wind Instruments.” On Sundays, Carl would get the stereo going in the morning, and I would drag our cleaning bucket from under the sink. I divvied up some clean rags. The bucket was full of homemade concoctions: a vegetable oil and lemon juice mixture for dusting, vinegar-water for counters and glass, bleach-water for the toilet, shower, and sinks. Mom made the solutions in old hairspray bottles and mason jars and labeled them with permanent markers like they were potions for Alice to find in Wonderland. Dust with Me! Clean Counters with Me! She drew spirals and hearts and stars and smiley faces on them. When the first thrusting chords of the Rondo sparkled through the place, we would brandish our rags and dance. The game was the same every time: we cleaned and danced continuously through the Rondo, then the Serenade, until the seventh movement ended. I dusted everything from my height on down to the fraying carpet edges, which meant a lot of running the rag over books and avoiding piles of handwritten notes, mail, newspapers, and sketches from Carl’s projects. He dusted above me, running his finger in between each book on his shelves and slowly circling the TV screen where I had usually left a streak of debris. I swept. He came after me with the dustpan, then swept again himself, while I wiped down the kitchen table with vinegar water. We stopped cleaning when the seventh movement ended, even if we hadn’t finished everything. But I never got lazy about it, because he didn’t. When it was time to stop, we played Miriam Makeba’s song “Pata Pata.” Carl would sing 137 and twist around the living room while I threw myself in half-spastic shapes onto the couch. Thump! Recover, reset. Thump! At some point just before the end of the song, Carl would scoop me up mid-leap, get into a horse stance, perch me on his side, and I stood on his thigh for a thorough flourish in our end pose. Ta-daaa! My mother, the audience for at least the dancing, clapped, jingled the car keys, and all three of us would scavenge the couch and other piles of stuff for loose change. If we found a dollar or more, Mom rewarded us with a drive down to the In ’N out burger in Hollywood. Sunday nights for a while I got to drink a milkshake and spend the night in the bed with Mom after the cleaning dance. For that one night a week, Carl slept in my spot on the couch, curled against its scratchy nap, under a quilt his dead mother had made. 138 The First Reveal I didn’t know I had a “biological” father until after some older boys at school had told me I must have one, elsewhere, who wasn’t Carl. I had defended my family against what felt like a cruel accusation, told them all Carl was my dad and shut up, sometimes people don’t turn out looking like their parents. Of course I was right about that so the boys left me alone temporarily, but, I was haunted by how obvious it had seemed to them. Shortly after I told Mom and Carl about how I handled the mean boys, they sat me on the couch in that Studio City apartment for a chat. Menstruation, masturbation, smoking, sex, bullying, death of a neighbor, the reason was always given as soon as we sat down, but I knew that if it was time to “chat on the couch” something big, something serious, was coming. And usually it was something other kids didn’t get to hear about until they were older than me. I’d been a reliable source of information for my peers since I could remember. Carl and Mom nodded at each other, and Carl held her hand. “It seems like you are starting to have some questions,” Mom said. “About where you came from.” “I already know,” I said. Because we’d already talked so much about sex. “I don’t think you do,” Mom said. “Because we’ve never talked about this.” Carl said, “I hope you know I love you like my own flesh and blood.” Like. “I had you by myself,” Mom said. “I mean, I got pregnant by a man, but he wasn’t ever going to be a dad.” My mom didn’t love my biological father, she said, but he was so smart, sexy, and quick to laugh, she thought she could probably make an amazing kid with his genes, and so she didn’t take precautions to prevent it. She was ready to have a baby. They slept together a few times. During one of those times, she got pregnant. His name was Alex. “It was 139 a wonderful affair,” she said. “He was like a movie star. Gorgeous and romantic.” She showed me a card he’d written her. He wrote that he was “honored” she chose him to help her make her own family. His handwriting was unfamiliar, difficult to read, black loops exuberantly covering the inside of a glossy card with a waterfall on the front. Mom didn’t invite him to my birth, never considered him a family member or even a father, but more like a sperm donor. She fell in love with Carl when I was a baby, and he fell in love with both of us, and that’s how we were a family. It was unreal, insane, and obviously true. “So my real dad didn’t want me?” I said. I picked at the mustard yellow couch. It had turned beige in the middle from my sleeping on it. “No, honey, that’s not it. He didn’t want a baby at all,” Mom said. “He was happy to help me have you, because I wanted you so much!” She put the card on the floor. And Carl had never wanted me, he’d accepted me because I came with Mom, I thought. “You deserve to know as much as we know about where you come from,” Carl said. “You don’t even have a picture of him?” Mom shook her head. She seemed embarrassed. She’d been fine keeping pictures of him in her head all these years, never thought I might want one. I looked at the gold flecks in Carl’s eyes, his strong shoulders. My mother was so pink and wispy. My heavy brown hair didn’t come from either of them. I felt very stupid, and a precise shade of betrayal descended, a saturated gray, which deadened the room. Mom opened her arms to me, her creamy skin looking stretched over thin blue veins from elbow to wrist, and all I had to do was lean slightly toward her, indicate my willingness, which I did, and she swept in to hold me and kiss the top of my head. But something inside my ribs was hard and 140 untouchable. I felt like I might pass out. “Alex was a kind person and I’m so grateful you are mine,” she said. I hated her voice suddenly, and didn’t know what to do. She kept talking. Alex had blended back into the world, without a fuss, about a month after she was pregnant. I asked where he was from, and she didn’t know. She didn’t know where he was from and had no pictures of him. He’d just been her lover, someone willing to get her pregnant and then, goodbye and good luck. “He had other children,” she said. As if that made any of it make sense. Mom spent the next eight months “getting ready to be a parent.” Mom met Carl after Alex was gone, when I was six months old. He moved in after about a year. Carl is your father, she told me, even though he didn’t make you with me the way some of your other friends were made by the men who lived with or visited them. She knew some of my friends didn’t have fathers in their lives and she reminded me I was lucky to have Carl. I finally had words. “You lied to me!” I wrestled out of her lap, stood, and faced them both. “We never lied to you,” she said, and I searched my memory for a time when Carl had said anything about being my “real” father. “We waited to talk to you about this because it is complicated, honey, and maybe we waited too long.” “You lied,” I said. “You let me believe something that you knew was a lie.” Carl looked away, to the ground. He knew I was right. “You must have friends who aren’t perfect little replicas of their parents,” Mom said. “Why does this matter so much? Blood doesn’t make a family, love does. You’ve got two of us, and that’s lucky!” I felt so stupid for ever believing Carl was my birth father I couldn’t respond. Of course I 141 knew blood didn’t make a family. But. “Are you worried about who you’ll look like?” Mom said. That hadn’t crossed my mind until she said it. “Because you shouldn’t be. You are a beautiful girl, and you’re going to be a gorgeous young woman!” She pinched my side and I swatted at her hand, as hard as I could. “Kindred!” Her eyes were huge. “Apologize right now!” “Give her a break,” Carl said to her. I couldn’t look at him. “I love you,” he said to me. “And I’m sorry. We should have talked about this all along. You know your mom and I don’t care about what color people are, we just hope they love each other, but the world does care.” Liars, I thought. “So I’m sorry we waited. I bet you’re angry with us both now, and want to know more than we can give you about the man who helped you get born.” Mom deflated. I flared. I yelled some things, like “I’ll never trust you again,” and ran into the bathroom. Alex, who I didn’t know and never would, had helped me get born. Not Carl. My alienation reverberated from bones to skin, prickly, hot and cold. The dark hairs on my forearms, thin and straight and unlike the blonde fuzz that covered my mom’s, were suddenly strange. I sniffed my arm. I smelled like myself, but I couldn’t get used to it. I stared at my face. I was just another brown haired nine-year-old, until now. When the kids asked me “What are you?” I’d told them what my mom told me: I was “a human being.” Or, “made with love, and perfect.” Recently, they made fun of me and demanded to know my race. Then I told them I was all kinds of things: a flying rainbow! A donkey dog! A chocolate tree! I’m a pink and purple zebra! I’m a bowl of pudding! Because Carl had told me race was an invention, like unicorns. It wasn’t real. It was like Santa Claus, and people liked to believe it, but it didn’t help anyone. But the kids listened to how I talked, what shows I watched. They decided if I was in or 142 out. No one was ever surprised that I had a white mom. They were surprised I had a Black dad. Now I felt like an imposter, a crazy person, and I knew I couldn’t go back to school. My mom grew up poor in a town near Riverside. She ate iceberg lettuce, never learned how to cook with garlic, and believed what she saw on the news. I was her shadow-child, who gazed at the world with wide light brown eyes, through curtains of dark hair. She called me “striking.” She thought I was petty and hurtful for caring that Carl wasn’t my biological father. I refused to return to school. I said I needed new friends. I couldn’t face the kids. I will never know how much I influenced our next move, because we moved at least once or twice a year anyway. But this one meant a new school, and there, I told people Carl and my Mom both had adopted me. A few weeks after they told me about Alex on the couch, Mom scolded me for avoiding talking to Carl. “You are breaking his heart,” she said. “The only thing he did to you was love you better than Alex ever could have.” I knew she was right about that, and I ached to explain myself. It had nothing to do with Carl, really. On Carl’s birthday that year, I wrote a long impassioned letter declaring my familial loyalty to him and gesturing frantically at desires I couldn’t name. He wrote me note and slipped it under my door. dear Kindee-cool, Thank you for your letter. I love you and I will never stop. Never. No matter how many changes we go through together. I promise. 143 one of your dads, Carl What are you? It is a wrong way to address a human being. But I used it too. Twenty years after The Chat introducing Alex, I remember asking Carl the question. It was the last time we talked before he went missing. I remember gripping my phone and yelling into it. He had called from his favorite pay phone in downtown Los Angeles, near Pershing Square. He was broke and full of stories and sleeping outside again. I was living in Brooklyn with my girlfriend Nautica. I was on my way to work at the dungeon, a bag of personal BDSM gear over one shoulder, wearing heavy makeup for playing my Domme role, annoyed at running late. I don’t remember what Carl said to set me off. I was angry and tired of hearing his ideas, tired of worrying about him, tired of not knowing whether he was cheerful because life was ok or because he was high or manic or in love with some new “revolutionary” project. I remember the yelling, and the words. “What are you?” I said. “What are you?” he said back, and it was the first time I’d heard that shudderingly familiar question in Carl’s voice. “Didn’t I teach you anything?” I told him he’d taught me plenty, and hung up. I could have predicted it might be the last time we talked, considering how we both lived our lives, but I didn’t. No one expects a loved one to disappear, and especially not when they’re angry at them. Forgotten Lies The most terrifying kind of lie is the one you forget you’re telling. When I have a lie 144 ongoing, it is a current flowing through my communication, and if I forget it is there, my interpersonal calibration becomes inaccurate. I will feel ambient anxiety without knowing what’s wrong, if there’s some lie extant in the background. The news that I had a biological father out there in the world taught me something important: There are no lies that are not ongoing, unless they have been directly corrected by the liar. This is why honesty can, over time, reduce stress. When you have a longstanding habit of honesty with someone, you can relax when you’re with them, because you are not expending energy trying to tell them the “right” story, which is a fiction, which takes energy to produce. You can be yourself in real time with a person you are honest with. My mother had good intentions. She thought she was telling me about Alex at a good time, perhaps a little late, but it had never occurred to her that I would be traumatized by what she felt was only a slight adjustment to the story of my life. She thought I would maybe feel some relief, because I didn’t look like Carl and I was old enough to notice, and this explained why. I did not feel relief. I did lose respect for her. I did learn that keeping enormous, life-altering secrets was both possible and painful. I inherited the power of secrecy from her, and I realized that for trust to grow, the clearing up of old lies must occur. It must hurt more to hurt less, like setting a bone. Later I was disappointed to discover that most people lie about how well they know their own history of lying, and then forget when they’re lying about “small things,” and then defend their integrity and honesty in the present, no matter what. I am, right now, telling lies I have forgotten, and I now believe they are truths. I left them running like a white noise machine. Of course I might get caught, someone could yank the machine out of the wall. The shock of silence, the sudden intimacy, a revealing of a truth, and therefore a revealing of the lie: this is the only real nakedness I have ever felt or feared to feel. 145 To have a forgotten lie exposed. Secrecy is power. Pulling the plug on someone else’s lie also power. My sadism emerges when I realize I have the opportunity to yank someone else’s white noise machine out of their wall, to expose them, to show them their own state of denial or delusion. Almost never will I resist doing it. Unless the lie is about their addiction. People in the throes of addiction-lying fight the hardest. They’ll fight so hard, and so insanely, it’s almost admirable. My mother never got addicted to a drug, but, she was utterly committed to a vision of herself as a good person. And for that, she would perform incredible feats of irrationality, denial, and dishonesty. She never, ever apologized to me for lying about who my father was. I asked her for it, when she was dying, and she couldn’t do it. “I still don’t think I did anything wrong,” she said. “You were too young to understand.” 146 A Spiral Begins I was nearly finished with my sophomore year of high school when Carl got arrested the first time. He’d made an illegal U-Turn. It was a Tuesday afternoon. I got home from school and Mom was pacing with the phone pressed into her ear with both hands. It was not something I’d ever seen her do, and at first, I laughed. She shot me a look that disintegrated me. Her hair was pulled back into a long-day ponytail, tight at the base of her skull with thin blonde flyaways framing her face. She rubbed her cheeks and eyes and switched the phone to her other ear. I sat in the living room, watched her pace and make calls, and I stumbled toward piecing a story together. “Carl Baker,” she said over and over, “B-A-K-E-R.” My name: Kindred Powell. I had her last name, not his. Mother: Helen Powell. Father: “Alex,” last name unknown. Acting Father: Carl Baker, who, form the sound of things, was currently being held in a jail or a hospital, or some other institution where people didn’t like to help a common-law wife with a different last name. I felt a surge of fear and dread. Also, I was hungry. Carl would want us to eat. Mom was on hold again. “What’s going on?” I said. “Give me a few minutes baby,” she said, “I’m about to find out.” She blew past me into her bedroom and shut the door. I waited for five minutes, counted carefully on the green microwave clock. I knocked on her door, asked if she wanted dinner. She said “Yeah, make whatever you want.” I poked around the kitchen and tried to make an adult decision with our options. I could boil water, I thought. I can definitely boil water. I made a box of Mac n’ Cheese with all butter, no milk. It plopped into our bowls and shined yellow. I put the pot back on the stove 147 and covered the last lumps. I wondered if Carl would be home in time to eat it before it went sour. I yelled for her the way she used to yell for me at dinner time: “Come and get it or regret it!” “I can’t believe this is happening,” She said, emerging from the bedroom. She put the phone next to her place and lowered herself into the chair like her back hurt. Her eyebrows were locked into a very-upset shape. “What.” I sat across from her. She looked at her bowl. “Carl’s choices are catching up with him,” she said. She shook her head. “It was just a matter of time.” “Tell me what happened,” I said, as evenly as I could, “don’t tell me what to think about it before I know what happened.” She crumpled a little and complied. Carl had been delivering weed. He was driving my mom’s 1979 Toyota. He was late. His contact had been paging every two minutes. He fucked up making that U-Turn, he’d said. When he got pulled over, the cops threatened a search. He didn’t consent. The cop outside Carl’s window put his hand on his gun, told Carl he smelled marijuana smoke and that was probable cause for a search. Carl said he had a hand-rolled tobacco cigarette in a bag in his pocket, and they were welcome to pat it down to see. At that point, something bad happened. More facts: the cops made him get out of the car, patted him down, searched the car, and found the weed. Carl called them pigs. It was never clear to me if he called them pigs before or after they hit him, but they knocked him against the car hard enough to split his eye. They kicked him, to get him to the ground. They handcuffed him, booked him somewhere downtown, he called home and gave Mom some of that story outright and some in general 148 terms, and then later, when she tried to get in touch with the jail about posting his bail, they said he had been moved, but when she called the other place, they said he had never been there, and he wasn’t scheduled to come. I had arrived from school during the time when she couldn’t locate him. “So they finally stopped dicking me around and found him. He’s at a jail in downtown LA now,” she said. “And, he’s going to have to sleep there tonight.” “He’s not getting OR’ed?” She seemed surprised I knew to ask that question. I reminded her I’d had friends get picked up for alcohol, drugs, racing, fighting... “No, he’s not,” she said. I asked why, and she said she didn’t know, she was just following his instructions. He told her to bail him out in the morning. “What? Why can’t we go get him and bail him out tonight?” “It doesn’t work like the movies,” she said. “For some reason they haven’t set a bail amount for him yet, we don’t know how much we’d have to give them, and so until that changes or he’s seen a judge, we can’t do anything.” I asked how long he’d been selling weed. “He doesn’t sell it,” she said, as if “selling it” were a less respectable job than the one he had. “How long has he been driving weed around, so someone else can sell it, then?” “Years,” she said. “On and off.” She got up from the table and took her half-full bowl to the sink. “I’ll clean up later,” she said. She walked to the bedroom with the phone, but left her door open. I guessed I had sort of known this, without ever being told. Carl had people. He met them. He came back, he had money. He didn’t smoke weed in the house, but he smelled like it, and I 149 knew, finally, what it smelled like because I’d smoked at school with my friend Angie. And it had reminded me of Carl. My mom really thought I was an idiot, I realized. I wondered if she’d made Carl promise not to tell me. She made a few more calls. I took out a notebook and started drawing a vampire-sex scene for a comic I was working on. “Kindee,” she called from her room, “we need to cut out tomorrow morning and go to the jail, ok?” As if she would simply miss a little more school, too. At the time, I was resentful. I thought we “needed” to do it together because she was too weak to handle it alone, because I was stronger than she was. I didn’t want to go to school, but I didn’t want this to be a reason not to. Within a few months, I found out that she was weak that night, yes, but it was because she had started to feel sick. The frailty of her own immune system was becoming more painfully clear, but she didn’t know the cancer was establishing itself in her lymph system. She was more tired all the time, and it was getting harder to do her day-and-night job work schedule. Like at most of our places, I slept on the couch at that apartment. It was a futon that I rarely unfolded, so I could burrow in and feel held on one side. Later that night, when we’d finished our bathroom shifts and she’d broken a bowl and cursed and cried and cleaned it up and told me to wear nice clothes tomorrow, I heard her sobbing in the bedroom. I wound my quilt tight around my head. Angry with Carl, and afraid for him too. Angry with Mom. Angry at the rotting smell that wafted into that apartment on trash night, angry with the world for giving me such a shitty array of options. In the morning, Mom told me our plan was to bail Carl out and then wait for him to be released. 150 I offered to drive and she took it, another abnormality. Luis BailBonds storefront was across the street from the jail. We parked and fed a meter. “Let’s get this over with,” she sighed, and took my arm. Through the hand-painted glass front door, we entered a large open room. Inside smelled like coffee, microwave popcorn, and styrofoam take-out boxes. The office had gray carpet and white paint, some exposed pipes, and a few 1980s movie posters on the walls. There were five large banker-desks arranged in a horseshoe around the entrance, with folding chairs facing each one, for the people like us. There were workers at the desks, on the phone, shuffling files. They all wore T-shirts and jeans, except for one older guy in a white button down sitting at the desk in the middle, farthest toward the back of the room. He was the least busy, so I figured he must be the boss. I walked Mom directly to his desk and said good morning. It took him many sentences to say good morning back, while he fetched us a second “client” chair. He was Luis, and this was his place. He said things like “We represent the interests of families in need,” and somehow, I knew he knew it wasn’t true, but it wasn’t strictly a lie, either. He was in his late forties, wore a hammered gold wedding ring, and his hands were warm and dry when he shook mine. His black hair, graying at the temples, was combed into a stiff, flattering wave in the front, and he was still looking clean-shaven, although I could tell he’d have a serious shadow by two pm. He was slightly thick in the middle, the kind of man who maybe once had a killer body but gave up working on it once he got a steady job, and his white buttoned shirt had decorative stitching along the button holes, like it was from Mexico, or maybe a Melrose storefront reselling shirts somebody’s friend bought in Mexico. His English was accented and he spoke slowly and carefully to us, but then he excused himself to answer his desk phone during his own intro, and suddenly he spoke a 151 fast flowing Spanish without many consonants. “My apologies,” he said, hanging up. “How can I help you two lovely ladies today?” I pulled out a sheet of folded legal paper. Mom had taken notes when Carl finally got through on the phone, and we had his booking number, a few lawyers we’d called without getting through, and the name “Luis BailBonds.” “I don’t know how he knows about you,” Mom said to Luis, then seemed distracted by the framed poster for Beverly Hills Cop, signed by Eddie Murphy, on the wall behind him. “But if you can get Carl out,” she trailed off. “Break this down for us,” I said to Luis. “What’s the first thing we need to do to get a person out of jail?” “Yes, we really don’t have any experience,” Mom said, then more shrill, “I’ve never done anything like this!” I made eyes at the guy and shrugged just slightly. She’s upset, who knows what she’ll do? He saw it, pressed his lips, took a long inhale, and leaned forward in his chair. His desk was piled with forms, carbon copies of forms, manila folders full of forms. “Ma’am,” he addressed my mom, “we are going to get your husband out of there as fast as we can.” She sighed and seemed comforted. I wasn’t, because he had no idea what was happening, but at least Mom might now be able to function, so I stared at him, trying to memorize everything he said just in case I’d need it later. He asked where Mr. Baker was, currently. “The county jail at 450 Bauchet Street,” she answered. “Twin Towers?” he said. “I don’t know--” 152 “That facility is called Twin Towers, ma’am, is all,” he said. He was already typing. The computer screen faced him only, and I realized that the room was set up so that clients could never see any of the computer screens unless they walked behind a desk. “Here he is,” Luis said to himself, checked our scribbled notes, and then frowned. He clicked a few more things. I asked what was wrong. Nothing was wrong, just something about the arrest record, not how they usually, oh, actually it didn’t matter, here was the bail. “Three thousand dollars,” he said, and crossed his hands in front of the keyboard. “Felony resist.” “WHAT?” my mother’s voice was too loud, too high. Luis’ eyes fluttered briefly at the sound. Then he snapped into action. He pulled out his clipboards, he started talking it through. Three thousand was the bail amount. The full amount had to be paid for Carl to be released, and the full amount would be returned to the person who posted the bail when Carl showed up for his arraignment. If we didn’t have three thousand dollars on hand to spare, he said, as if we might, because some people do, but no judgement if we personally didn’t, we could pay Luis BailBonds a fraction of that amount and they would post the full bail. The bond to get Carl released, payable here and now, was ten percent of the bail, plus fees. “You will definitely see him today when you pay the three hundred-fifty right now,” Luis said. My mom kept shaking her head in denial, so I nodded at Luis when he paused. Go on, she’s just taking it in, I’m listening, go on. A felony was a more serious charge than a misdemeanor, and so it came with higher bail. If we bailed him out before his arraignment, Carl would have to go to an arraignment at a later date, where his actual charges, which may be different from what he got arrested for, would be given to him. At that arraignment, our contract with Luis BailBonds would end, as 153 the full bail would be remitted to them. Luis started talking just to Mom, “We hold your information here and you become liable for the full amount of the bail if Mr. Baker fails to appear at his arraignment.” “He will be wherever he is supposed to be,” she said. We needed three hundred-fifty dollars. No matter what, we wouldn’t get that back. After a few more versions of the same explanation, Mom said she understood, and wrote a check. She looked at me with ashamed eyes. “Well, there goes Christmas,” she said to Luis. Then to me, “Because there goes half the fucking rent.” Luis told us to go home and wait for a call, but neither of us wanted to. Mom wouldn’t go inside the jail, and she wouldn’t let me go alone. So we amassed our change, fed the meter, pulled the crackly sunshade from the trunk, opened the windows, and camped out in the car. Luis assured us he would let us know as soon as Carl was released, and that it would happen before he closed his office for the day. “It’s nicer in here,” Mom said, and put her seat back. I considered going in to Twin Towers by myself anyway. It scared me. I wasn’t eighteen. I could get Mom in trouble. I could get Carl in more trouble. I could get arrested. For what? It didn’t matter, it wasn’t worth it. I kept thinking: Any minute now. I kept reading a sign on the corner: Oil change, $19.99. The car got hot. Mom said, “Every day we do things we can’t take back.” I imagined scanning for Carl inside the jail, my legs sticking to a vinyl chair in an ugly waiting room where everyone else was also scared and stressed out, or a cop. Mom was right 154 about the car. I waited for Luis to appear at my window, drank Mom’s Diet Coke once she fell asleep, watched every person who crossed that street, experimented with ways to stretch out in my slightly gritty passenger seat. Luis let me use his office bathroom. I drew a tiny caricature of him on a paper towel with the Sharpie I always carried and left it in the cupboard under the sink for someone to find. I drew him with big grin and stacks of money in his hands, a speech bubble above his head. He was saying “I help families in need.” One of the Luis BailBond assistants brought us two cans of diet coke and two granola bars. He asked us if we wanted his “extras,” as he returned to the office from a corner store. He didn’t bend down far enough for me to make eye contact, but offered the treats through the window. He had hairless, brown forearms and visible veins puffing a bit over strong muscles. We took the gifts. I watched him walk inside. He seemed very relaxed. Maybe an hour later, which I’d spent sorting car trash from important paperwork and scraping old candy out of the glove compartment, the guy who had given us the Cokes and granola bars came outside for a smoke break. I got out of the car without waking Mom, and dared myself to bum a cigarette from him. If she saw me smoking, she would freak out, but it seemed very low stakes, considering the kind of shit Carl was in. He nodded at me when he said “Hey,” like I was another guy. He said ‘sup. His name was Anton. He leaned against the wall of Luis BailBonds. I had my back to Mom and the car, which seemed reckless. “So,” I said, suddenly wanting, horribly, to be someone important to him, “My name is Kindred.” “Kindred?” “Yep.” 155 He smiled, just slightly. “Never heard that name before. Kindred. Like family.” “You can also remember it by saying ‘Kin? I dread them!’” I said. He wasn’t amused. He loosened a cigarette and held out the pack for me to take one. I did. It was not my first smoke, but I was painfully conscious of my fingers, which seemed enormous and out of control, and he had to ask me to hold still to get the thing lit. I took a deep drag and coughed as I thanked him. He gave me a larger smile. His front two teeth were both pointing slightly askew, the right one partially covering the left. I wanted to make out with him and feel those teeth press into my top lip. “You don’t smoke,” he said. “Don’t start.” “I smoke sometimes,” I said. “That’s what I’m saying,” he said. “Don’t.” “I know, I know,” I said. I took another, slower, drag. “Thanks for helping me out.” “Rough day,” he said, nodding toward Mom asleep in the car. “Sure,” I said. I tried not to think about the gray, boxy specter of the Twin Towers, or Carl in there. “Can’t wait for it to be over.” Anton nodded. “Fuckin’ bullshit,” he said. He held his cigarette like a joint, inhaled, flicked his ashes on the ground, and looked me in the eye for the longest moment so far. His were dark brown, irises and pupils nearly the same. He squinted a little in the sun. “What would you be doing today if you weren’t here?” he said. “School? Work?” “School.” “College?” “Yeah,” I lied. It was too easy. I was sure I saw him relax a little. That’s good, my body said. He scratched his neck and smoke uncurled from behind his head. He’s so hot he’s on fire, 156 I thought, and suppressed a crazy person’s giggle. I smoked. I looked at his shoes. Timberlands. Untied and clean. His jeans were dark. “You like this job?” I asked. His T-shirt had shapes and symbols on it I didn’t recognize. He shrugged. “Naw,” he said. “Would you?” I had no idea. “No,” I said, to be in agreement with him. “Especially not if people like my mom come in all the time.” “She’s ok,” he said, “she’s waking up.” I turned back and saw Mom getting out of the car. I waved at her with my free hand, dropped my half-smoked Newport between my feet, stepped on it as I turned to Anton. “Guess I’ll go,” I said. He gestured with his own, not-quite-finished smoke. It meant, go ahead, I’m going to finish this. “Bye,” I said, and waved ridiculously at him as I aimed myself for the car. “Don’t start smoking!” he called after me. Mom pretended to have seen and heard nothing. She asked if Luis had given me any news. “No news,” I said. “I’m going to take a nap, too, ok?” I curled up in the backseat, tried to feel the meager cross breeze, and fantasized about going on a road trip with Anton somewhere wooded and lush, pulling into an abandoned rest stop, and fucking him in the driver’s seat, in the grass, in the bathroom, and when I got tired of that, we went to the beach, and fucked on a blanket, watched the sunset together while he fucked me from behind, far away from other people but not so far away that they couldn’t see us, and when I got tired of that, I imagined standing in some undefined sensual swirl of softness, filling my mouth with his neck, biting down, and not letting go, no matter what, and that was the best one, and I thought I must be 157 really fucked up, to like that so much, but it was just in my head, so. I woke up disoriented and nauseated by hunger. The light was lower. Luis and Mom stood outside the car. He handed her a card and told her good luck, call him anytime. I opened my door. “Let’s go!” she said, in a near-normal voice. “He’s getting released right now!” We walked toward the door Luis had marked on the tiny map printed on the back of his business card. We rounded the corner and Carl was already outside, scanning the street. He had two strips of stained medical tape holding his right eyebrow together. The gash was probably an inch long, directly horizontal, and swollen heavy. I was scared by how bad he looked. Mom started crying immediately. Therefore, I did not. Three large patches of blood had dried on his shirt. We got out and ran to him. He smelled like pee. He hugged us to him, all stinking and bristly, and we rushed him to the car, and I drove home, and Mom sat in the backseat and fired questions about jail, while Carl let his hand drift through the air out the window and kept his eyes on the sky. He answered with descriptions of unconscionable things that had been done to him by the arresting officers and then the jailers and then the property officer. He had either forgotten or no longer cared to lie to me about the weed. He was angry. She was angry. I was angry, but also feeling something new, something more sludgy, a slow and ugly style of fear, an intense pressure inside my chest, wrapping around my shoulders and creeping up my neck. Mom asked him if he’d resisted arrest. “No.” He said. He went colder. “I was physically compliant the whole time.” “Then how do you have felony resisting?” she asked. “What’s that for?” “Goddamnit,” he said, exhausted, “you tell me, huh? Who does the paperwork?” “Cops,” I said. “They get to keep the money they find, too.” 158 “Don’t be simple,” Mom said. “They can’t do that.” “They do it,” I said. I didn’t tell her it had happened to a guy I knew from the parties I was going to. “She’s right, they do,” Carl said. “They hit me, baby, they knew they were going to and they went right ahead and there was nothing I could have done to stop them that wouldn’t have gotten me killed.” “You don’t know that,” she said. “I do though,” he said. They stopped talking about it in front of me for the night. We got home, Carl took a shower, Mom opened three beers, handed me one with a hug, it was the first time she’d let me drink with them, and we got in their bed, because the TV was in their room, and watched some show about monkeys living in a city in Asia, with Carl in the middle and me and Mom cuddled up to his sides. Carl pet my head a little. He was the only person I still allowed to touch my hair. “Sorry you had to go through all that today,” he said into my head, and kissed my crown. “Kindee was my guardian angel,” Mom said, eyes still on the TV. “Weird, but, thanks,” I said. “Sorry you had to go through all that,” I didn’t know where to start, “stuff?” There was so much wrong. I asked him how bad his eye hurt now that he’d iced it and taken ibuprofen. He made a growling sound in his throat. “It’s talking to me,” he said, “but not screaming.” When I left them to burrow into my pile of blankets on the couch, I heard Mom let out her panic. That apartment had carpet and thick walls and usually I could only hear raised voices as tones of argument or sex noises. This was different. Mom said, “I can’t take it anymore” and “sick with worry” and “Kindred’s future,” and yelled “No!” a few times clear and loud, 159 despite Carl’s muffled responses. I lay awake straining to hear them until the sun came up and they went quiet. I wondered if they’d made a decision about something. And if they had, what it would mean. Mom, Carl, and I went to Disneyland before his trial. I didn’t know where they got the money, and I didn’t care. It felt like we were just a few steps ahead of all the bad stuff, that day. We laughed so much. Mom had her energy that day, her eyes were lit up and she and Carl were kind to each other. He brought us churros while we waited in the line for the Matterhorn. “You seriously don’t want to go on this ride?” I asked him. He looked up. “Nope,” he said. “He’s scared,” Mom said. “He thinks the tracks aren’t safe.” “Then why are we going on it?” I said. “Because I think he’s wrong,” Mom said. Carl smiled. “You risk your own lives,” he said to me. “You’re totally in charge of your own selves. I’m going to sit on that bench and watch the people.” When we came off the ride, he was chatting with a woman, who looked like she was also waiting. She was pushing a sleeping toddler in a stroller, back and forth, back and forth. “There they are,” he said, arms out. “You made it!” The woman nodded and moved off. “You flirting?” Mom said. “Of course not,” he said. They kissed. I made sounds of disgust. They squeezed me. I ate an orange creamsicle on Main Street and let Carl tell me how wrong it was that there was still a “cigar store Indian” outside the shops. 160 “Was Walt Disney a racist?” I asked. “Come on,” Mom said, “please can we just enjoy our day? Please?” Carl shot me a look. We’ll talk about it later. “Fine,” I said. And it was, for the three of us, that day, for a few hours, fine. But Carl and my Mom couldn’t seem to agree very well on whether we were pretending he wasn’t going to trial, or enjoying ourselves in the face of the fact that he was. 161 A Brief Summary of the Worst Year of My Life I am ready to tell you about it now. Carl’s trial was a four-day farce in which two cops lied on the stand and claimed he’d hit one of them and tried to grab his gun while resisting arrest. I watched Carl’s neck muscles tense and twitch from my seat in the courtroom audience. I’d never seen him stay quiet when something was so wrong. I took notes. I got thrown out one day for chewing gum, paced the hall, and snuck back in when the jury shuffled through the door after their lunch break. I couldn’t look away. He was found guilty on all his charges. First charge was a misdemeanor possession of marijuana, which could and should have brought a fine with time served, since he’d spent the night in jail already. But they’d smacked him with felony resisting and assault on an officer, for which he’d end up serving thirty of thirty-four months first in Lancaster, later at Corcoran. The judge had perfectly thick white hair, which stayed tight in a hairspray helmet while he talked, and he looked only at his documents or the lawyers, never directly at Carl. I had not understood that you didn’t get to say goodbye. They just shoved him out a side door and we had to wait two days to visit him because of “processing.” During the first few months, my mom and I visited him every weekend. She was scared every time, obsessively checking her pockets for contraband cash or forgotten nail clippers, and shakily re-applying thick cocoa butter lip balm in the rear-view mirror while I watched the guard towers and picked at my cuticles. I had torn-up hands until years later, when a friend I worked with at the strip club told me having ugly nails affected my income. After signing faded copies of visiting registries and getting patted down, metal detected, and questioned, Mom and I sat in the noisy visiting room, at a plastic table, and Carl and I would talk about the book we were reading together, while my mom would tap her fingers on 162 the bench by her thighs and interject news from the outside. Did he get to watch the news yesterday? Yes. So he knew about the tsunami in Japan. He did. What was the update on getting her car fixed? She’d asked his friend to come over last week but he never did. Call again, baby, just call again. He would turn to me. Kindee, how far did you get in that Angela Davis book? Did you read up to Chapter 3 like we said? I only got to Chapter 1. School’s been hard. The truly bizarre part about the whole thing was that none of us ever just started screaming. “She’s caught the darkness” was a way for Mom and Carl to describe a person who was depressed, bleak, hopeless. It was not the same as someone angry. For that they used “gone wild.” You can go wild on someone, or on your own. While there were people who were constitutionally going wild a lot, and that was considered a problem, for the most part people went wild for a brief time and then tried to resolve things. If you’d caught the darkness though, you had to actively begin to heal yourself or you were at risk of destroying yourself and ending your life. Darkness had to be encouraged to pass, or it might not. Sometimes Mom or Carl would catch the darkness for a few hours, or a day. Once she was truly on her way to death by cancer, Mom caught it for good. Before the Worst Year of My Life, Mom and Carl had methods for handling it when someone caught the darkness. I don’t know what all the things were that they did for each 163 other but if it was one of them who caught it, the other paid more attention to me and made sure I was ok. If it was someone outside our house, they made calls, brought food, checked on people. After Carl went to prison, Mom caught the darkness and I didn’t know how to take care of her by myself that well, and I didn’t want to. She sat at the table, staring at her hands, at the tabletop, at something just beyond the present moment, from the minute she got home from work until I went to sleep. I got tired of making macaroni and cheese, so I started putting salad dressing on the noodles, or peanut butter. She ate a few bites of things and thanked me but didn’t move. She made it to work in the morning, so she must have slept sometimes. Eventually, I confronted her. “Mom, you need to snap out of it. Go grocery shopping. Do some laundry. This is nuts.” She seemed confused and hurt. “What?” She also looked skinnier. And the lines around her mouth were getting deeper. “You’re like a zombie and it freaks me out.” “That’s hurtful,” she said. She arched her back, stretched, and deflated again. “I’m thinking about Carl a lot.” “Yeah, well, we’re not in prison!” I said, and leaned against the fridge. She was craning her neck to see me there. If she looked away I’d consider the whole horrible thing done and go put my headphones on. Instead she got up from her chair and came for me. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she said, and brought my stiff self into a hug. She started crying. It scared me, and I disrespected her for it. “Ok, ok,” I said, and hugged her briefly back. Then I sort of pushed her off. “Can you be normal now?” 164 “Sure,” she said. She wiped her eyes. “We’re going to visit him in two days,” I said. “He’s gonna call you in an hour.” “Yeah.” “I’m hungry,” I said. And I was sick of noodles. “Can we get pizza?” “That sounds good,” she said. She wanted to touch my face, my hair, I could feel it. She didn’t do it though. She cracked four knuckles on one hand, then the other, and then went for her purse on the counter. “We can spend $12,” she said. “Let’s go to Little Ceasar’s?” “Yes!” I pumped my fist excitedly and got a smile out of her. I turned on KROQ in the car so she could have something else to complain about besides Carl. The smell of pizza inside a Little Caesar’s was a personal world of bliss. “What can I getcha?” asked the guy at the register, with the silly hat on. “A pepperoni personal pizza for me, please,” I said. “And for your sister here?” he said to my mom. “Honey you just made my day,” she said, genuinely, and I thought: gross. “I’ll have a pepperoni one, too.” “You betcha,” he said. I went to the table while she paid. There were only two, and the other one was getting shared by a group of five people who looked a few years older than me. I counted three boys, two girls. Both of the girls were sitting on boys’ laps. I wondered about that other boy, standing there with them. I imagined him turning to me and saying I was right on time and then running out of there with him and getting in a car with those people and driving away. I sat across from them and looked at their feet. Vans. All of them. How did they afford them? I wondered. 165 I inadvertently made eye contact with the standing boy. He stared. I looked down. The boy walked three steps and was at our table. “Mija,” he said to me, “You want to come with me?” He was probably twenty. His brown eyes were dark, like mine, with heavy dark lashes that made him look sweet. His hair was black and combed back with so much gel I wanted to feel it crunch. His skin had been tanned darker on his forearms, maybe from skating, I thought. He wore long black shorts and a white T-shirt with a white tank underneath. “No, she doesn’t,” my Mom said, approaching the table, glancing back at the register, like he could help. “This white lady belong to you?” the black-haired boy said to me. No one had ever asked me that. “What the hell did you just say?” Mom said. He ignored her. He was still looking at me, waiting for an answer. His friends were watching. “I’m talking to you,” Mom said to him. “Yeah, she’s my mom,” I said. “Oh my bad, mija,” he said, and put a hand over his heart. “I thought she was like your caseworker. You have a nice evening with your moms.” His friends all got up and they left. I watched them. The girls were wearing cut off shorts that showed the bottom half inch of their asses. I stared at those asses and wanted to touch them so bad. Mom turned our boxes the same way so their tops rested off the edge of the table. I started eating. “What was his problem?” Mom said. I shrugged. “Maybe he thought I was into him,” I said. “Why would he think that? What did you do?” 166 “Nothing!” I took a huge bite but then got afraid that somehow he’d read my mind, seen the scene I’d imagined, or something else magical. So I said it again with my mouth full. “I didn’t do anything!” Mom pulled a napkin from under her box and handed it to me. I used it. I swallowed. “I just looked at him,” I said. I glanced outside. It was dark. There were cars in every spot in the tiny strip mall. The concrete was cracking out front of Little Caesar’s. “Ok, whatever,” she said. “Let’s eat.” Later that night she got sick. I knocked on the bathroom door while she was throwing up. She told me it was food poisoning but we’d eaten the same food and I was fine. She sounded horrible, in pain. She went to the doctor after two days of not being able to keep food in her. Her friend Lynn from work came to drive her into the ER. She wouldn’t let me come. So I sat at home until Lynn called and said she was coming to pick me up. That Mom needed to talk to me. She had stomach cancer. It was in a late stage. This was not food poisoning or the flu. She was dying. There were other details. I don’t remember them. Mom had been in the hospital at least a week when Carl asked me to check out a book on the history of minstrelsy and blackface to talk with him about. He told me dressing up like an Indian was the same. “In my generation,” he said, “everyone played this game called ‘cowboys and Indians,’ and the point was to kill each other.” “That’s stupid,” I said. I grabbed a plastic Halloween costume feather headdress from some blonde chick’s bobbing head at a concert and yelled drunkenly at her about sacredness and disrespect and eagles and chickens until her boyfriend beefed up next to her, at which point I threw the headdress at her and ran. Carl told me I’d done a good thing. 167 “No one learned anything,” I said. “That girl looked at me like I was a monster, her boyfriend wanted to punch me, and when I left, they just called me a crazy bitch.” “It doesn’t matter,” Carl said. “You’re not trying to convert her to being a better person, you’re trying to stop her from disrespecting Native American cultures by wearing a headdress she has no right to. And you did that. So, I call it a win.” It was during that conversation that I realized the story Mom had told me, that there was a Cherokee princess in our family tree, was probably some bullshit. Carl confirmed. “That’s something white people tell their children,” he said. “There’s all kinds of reasons why she may have believed it, but probably her mom told her that, and she never thought to question it. I’m pretty sure the Cherokee don’t now and never had princesses, baby. You probably have a Native woman somewhere in your family tree, but that story is just not true.” Another lie. Another translation. Education. Synthesizing. Understanding. Listening. Repeating. Carl suggested I read Pedagogy for the Oppressed. I read the beginning and it was too hard for me. I had caught the darkness. Loneliness. Back of the room. At school, I was a stranger. This doesn’t apply to me. This won’t help me. This isn’t for me. This wasn’t written to encourage me. The only exception was the biology textbook I read in Mr. East’s class. I looked at diagrams of cells and imagined Mom’s cancer, growing monstrous and brownish red in her stomach. Read Freire, Carl said. Write to your principal and demand better education. Carl told me that I could probably trust my instinct when I wanted to listen to someone. That my instinct not to listen was usually the one that went wrong. Not just me. Anyone. Listening is a sacred act, he said. Listening is like letting someone touch you. The ears are open to anything that comes to 168 them, you really can’t turn them off, he said. You can get polluted, poisoned, hurt, through your hearing things that harm you. It was confusing. Who to listen to? Who to trust? Who is offering me lies, and who is offering me education? Who is teaching me, who is controlling me, who is helping me, who is exploiting me? I would sit in the back of my classes and try to figure it out. Listen to your heart of hearts, Mom said. Maybe I should study biology, I thought. Go into medicine. Heal people. Listen to yourself, Carl said. But my self was often so disappointing. So cowardly. So broken. I couldn’t listen to her very well anyway. By the time I was turning eighteen, she mostly screamed. Read Angela Davis, Carl said. Read bell hooks. If you don’t want to read what they assign you in school, don’t. But read something. I read and I didn’t read. I got A’s and then C’s and then when mom got sick, F’s. I colored in pie charts, did math problems, and then didn’t. I drew people wearing combat clothing. I drew people wearing wings and furry boots. I drew people having sex in hammocks. I read a few pages of the Art of War. I read a few pages of Rules for Radicals. I read Carl’s letters. Sometimes, I wrote back. When I quit going to school after Mom died I didn’t miss it. And it didn’t seem to miss me, either. Carl went to prison nine months before my mother died, and he didn’t get out until after I’d moved to New York. He used to say any black man could go to jail just for living, but landing in prison meant you’d pissed off someone in particular. After they sent him to Corcoran, he changed. He never blamed someone for “getting themselves locked up” again. When people at school or at the parties I went to or at mom’s hospital asked me why he was locked up, I gave one of two answers. If I was mad at him, I said he got arrested for drugs but got locked up because he couldn’t shut his mouth. If I was missing him or feeling mad at the 169 system or the cops who had fucked with him, I said, “He was born Black and poor in America and doesn’t take shit.” When my mom got sick, I went to visit Carl with Lynn, who would sit just a foot or two away in the visiting room and read her book and pretend not to listen. Carl would call every morning, and I’d hear the robotic female voice of the collect-calling system announce that I was receiving his attempt, his reaching out, and most of the time I would answer and tell him that she was getting worse, but the morphine was at least making her comfortable. Sometimes we laughed over the things she said from her haze. Sometimes he talked about how the morphine probably felt to her, and I’d hear his longing, for something like relief. I didn’t tell him I was taking a steady number of Vicodin I got from a kid at school, and that I knew the thick softness he was missing. Occasionally I hung up on the California Department of Corrections, which had yet to add “And Rehabilitation” to its name, even though I knew it was Carl waiting on the line for me to accept the charges, that he would hear the click of me hanging up, and I usually lay still in bed for about an hour afterward, flattened by dread and shame and panic, until it was time to check on Mom. At Corcoran, the gladiator games were just starting to make headlines. Carl had written me a parable about a cockfight in a letter, and I hadn’t understood. When the Big Man gets bored, he looks for blood. He finds his rooster, and he puts him in a cage. He takes his rooster down the road a ways, until he sees another rooster, owned by the next Big Man. He goes in to see the next Big Man and shows him the cage. The Big Men shake hands and light up their cigars. They put their roosters in a pit and let them go. The roosters don’t know, because they have never known, that the Big Men are not their family. 170 They are confused. They think the other rooster is their enemy. They try to kill him. One of them succeeds in breaking the leg, or gouging out the eye, of the other. Maybe one of them is killed. The Big Men laugh. They may even shoot a rooster who looks hurt. They hand each other money. When they get home, and someone wants to know what happened to the rooster? Where is our rooster? They shrug. Don’t know, they say. Roosters like to fight, they say. Stupid bird must have gotten out. See, we need to cage him, they say. Otherwise he’s a danger. Big Man counts his money. Maybe I’ll do that again, he says to himself. That was a good time. Carl stayed mostly safe, somehow, by making friends, casting himself as an educator, teaching other guys to read and analyze what they saw around them. In the main visiting room, I heard guys calling him “Pops” and he’d give a tough grin and say “Boy, I’ll pop you one!” and then change his face as soon as he was looking at me again. My mom was dissolving into a hospital bed, choking, getting poked with thick IV needles, her face and arms full of tubes, and looking at me with eyes that begged for it all to stop. She must have done all the depressing paperwork while I was at school, at the beginning of the last hospital stay, or maybe she gave her power of attorney to her coworker. I was underage, and knew it was a stupid difference, between myself now and myself in four months, but, the state said it mattered, so it did. I was contorting with grief, furious with Carl for not being there with me, and discovering an impassable distance between myself and other people my age who didn’t think about death or prison every day. She called me a cunt, one night when I showed up late to visit her at the hospital, and she was yelling about my selfishness, and I laughed, out of the shock of it, the word “cunt” just 171 hanging in the air between me and woman whose cunt I’d emerged from, and I said something like “takes one to know one,” and she said “fuck you,” and I laughed again, because she was so frail and so angry it was absurd, and then she broke out and laughed too, and it made her throw up. I was drunk, and layered in poetic irony: my cunty mother there doing the vomiting while I did the cunty drinking. Every day I went straight from school to the hospital on a bus, stared at my homework while I curled uncomfortably in a pink vinyl chair, and when a nurse asked who they could call to come pick me up, I would slip out, get another bus to our apartment, pass out, miss my first class, rush to the school, and do it again. I didn’t talk to anyone about it but my friend Angie, the nurses, and Carl, who called every day. I successfully became invisible in a sea of more loudly problematic or outstanding students. I migrated to the quiet wall at the back of the campus where the smokers didn’t bother each other. I listened to Nine Inch Nails or Tupac, depending on whether I felt exhausted or feisty. I considered busting the night nurses’ cabinet door lock and getting Mom enough morphine to kill herself, because she’d asked me to more than once. I dreaded the moments when the nurses were away from the station and I might have been able to actually get my hands on something that would stop my mom’s suffering, because I hoped I would do it and I knew I wouldn’t and then I had to live with myself. I never told her I wished she would die faster, but I thought it a few times, and I hated myself, then hated what my life demanded of me, then hated her for making that life for me, for us. Mom told me she wanted me to be happy, find a man, get a job. She told me I was going to be fine, if I wanted it. “Don’t sell yourself short,” she would say. “Get your education. There’s a lot of financial 172 aid out there.” She said these things on good days. On bad days she told me she regretted so much of her life. The last thing she said to me, before she entered her coma, was that she loved me, and that she had arranged for me to stay with Lynn until I was eighteen, and “be good.” I told her loved her too. I promised her I’d be good. I held her hand, I lay in her bed with her, I cried against her papery skin and ate vending machine food for three days. The overnight nurses let me sleep there. I told her I loved her and stroked her hair and wondered what would happen to me and got scared, so scared of life without her. I was definitely not going to stay with Lynn. I wasn’t there when she died. I was out getting drunk and walking in a mall with Angie, who had insisted I take a break and go into the world. She was thin and beautiful, a redhead who read philosophy books, and had what seemed like a lot of money. She had big perfect lips I wanted to bite. I remember Angie that day, in a fluorescent mall-store filled with body products. She looked at the ingredients list on a small tub of “natural” shampoo. “Bananas,” she said, “avocado, shea butter, some stuff I can’t pronounce.” “If you can’t pronounce it, is it really ‘natural’?” I asked. “Natural just means it has a less floral perfume in it,” she said. “The natural bath products are for baby dykes like me.” I’d never heard her use that word and it sounded hard. “If you were really trying to be natural you could just use olive oil for everything,” I said. “But that would be gross!” Angie said, “Which goes against the claims of ‘natural’ that I like.” She put the shampoo back in its rightful place on an artfully designed shelf made of distressed wood. She hesitated as she removed her hand, as if she’d considered, just for a split- second, toppling the whole pyramid of 4 oz tubs with a quick wave. “Let’s go,” she said. “I just 173 hit my limit.” “I saw it,” I said. “Yeah,” she said. “It happened very quickly.” We left. She dropped me at the hospital and I was told that Mom had passed quietly and without pain. The staff had moved my mom’s body out already. But I didn’t feel like I hadn’t said goodbye. Not on that day, anyway. I felt guilty that she’d died alone and then certain that she’d waited until I left so I didn’t have to see her dead. They tried to get me to stay around because someone from Child Services needed to talk to me. I resolved to never be caught by them. I only had a few more months until I was eighteen. I snuck out of the hospital and never went back. I craved the smell of that banana shampoo inexplicably and I gave in. I ran from Child Services and returned to the mall by myself, found the body product store, opened a tub, and inhaled hard. Sweet soft bananas held steady by the buttery avocado. A quiet cinnamon. It was a perfect smell. I wanted to smell it every day. But there was simply no way I could spend thirty eight dollars on such an offensively tiny amount of that pleasure. A week later, Lynn picked up Mom’s ashes and brought them to me at Angie’s. She and Angie’s mom spoke quietly. They both sat with me when Lynn gave me a small heavy box with my mom in it. There may be small bits of solid matter in there, Lynn said. Bone fragments. Part of a tooth. “How much would you have paid for that shampoo in good conscience?” Angie asked me later that night on the phone. She sounded like she was on her bedroom floor with her feet up against a wall, twirling a phone cord, eyes drifting around the ceiling. But actually, she was driving to work, and I was on the phone in her room, while she talked on a cell phone. I didn’t have one yet, and I worried about her driving. 174 “I could have happily paid four dollars,” I said. I knew it right away. “What if it wasn’t your money?” “Like, if I had a non-transferrable $50 gift card to the shop?” “Okay, yeah,” she said. “I’d buy the tub of shampoo and a travel size with the difference.” “You make no sense at all.” “The shampoo actually smelled worse after I looked at the price.” “Of course it did,” she said. “No,” I struggled, “That’s the part that doesn’t make sense at all!” She sighed. “Nah, the price is the part that reminds you of the real bullshit. All that natural goodness you’re smelling should be available to everyone. People, including you, shouldn’t need to worry so much about money.” She paused to holler “fuck you!” at another car. “I’m saying, like,” she continued, “that shampoo’s probably made of edible, food-grade bananas. Do you know how that company treats their factory or shipping or office workers? If the lowest employee on the totem pole can’t eat good fruits and vegetables on the wage they earn boxing up your favorite smell, then the price is fucking offensive no matter what it is.” “I doubt my sense of smell is that smart,” I said. “It would be so wonderful if all our senses were linked up with our sense of right and wrong,” she said. “I want to be like that,” I said. “I probably could do it with a lot of practice.” “I think it takes a lifetime devotion to a serious meditative state,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean we bastard children of the end times shouldn’t try.” I knew what she meant, but I couldn’t help thinking: Shut up, Angie. “I’m sorry,” she said, as if reading my mind. “This is so shitty, Kindred. You got such a 175 fucked up deal in life right now. I hope you know I’m here for you, girl. I really am.” “Thanks,” I said. We hung up, and when she got off work, she took me to see Pulp Fiction at a cushy theater, and bought us KitKats and Reese’s and popcorn, and let me stare out the window silently the whole way home, and let me sleep in her bed with her. She stroked my hair and let me cry without telling me it was all going to be okay. Carl went to prison nine months before my mother died, and he was still locked up when she did. He was being punished for something that happened on the Yard, and had been rolled up to a solitary unit during the last week of her life. When I went to visit him with her ashes, which Lynn had put in a coffee can and I’d kept there, they wouldn’t let me bring them in. After Lynn dropped the ashes off they’d sat in a box on the kitchen table until Angie said, Kindred, honey, we got to do something about your Mom there. It’s not right. So we bought a can of Yuban. She threw the coffee away. I wouldn’t have done that. But I wasn’t thinking about salvaging food right then. I was used to sitting at a table with Carl, being able to hug him at the beginning and end of our hours-long conversations, but this time, I sat down for the visit in an unfamiliar gritty green cube behind plexiglass and realized that they were punishing me, too. We put our hands on the glass like we were in a movie. He looked bloated and gray. His eyes seemed heavy. He was sniffling and coughing. We cried together, trapped in the glass, and he reminded me why we always cry with our head up, Kindee. It was a call-and-response poem he’d been practicing with me since I was tiny. “We never hide to cry, you remember why?” I shook my head and played my part at first. “Tell me why we don’t hide to cry,” I said. 176 “We never hide, even to cry, because we need our head up to lead or to fight.” I was supposed to say, “If we must cry, we cry with pride.” Carl had written the poem on an index card for me in elementary school. It was a totem against the bullies. “Don’t Hide Your Cry.” But I couldn’t say it. It sounded insane. My mother was dead. Carl was as good as dead, stuck in that tomb. Lead who? Fight what? I had no sense of the pride he was asking me to feel. There was a sharp and deafening moment of silence when I refused to answer his call, didn’t give the response as it had been written for me. Instead I wrapped my arms around my head, leaned heavily down against the table, curled up to feel grief in spasms, out of his view, until I could breathe a little normally and raise my gaze to him. He held it. Instead of concerned, or contorted with his own suffering, he seemed softly proud. He didn’t console me. He didn’t ask me any questions. He asked me to write to him more often when I left. At the apartment, I sorted through my own things before I could touch hers. I left piles of clothes, papers, trash. I put other stuff in plastic bags and boxes. Angie and a few guys from school who did what she said came to help me move some of our stuff into a storage space. Mom had given me her debit card and the PIN and I got cash out to pay for it. Angie quietly packed things she thought I would need, while I robotically touched and moved and maybe dropped things I couldn’t make decisions about. I smelled Mom’s clothes when Angie wasn’t looking. I kept a sweater. I kept some of her cheap nickel-plated jewelry and a throw pillow that had always been on her bed. After Mom died I stayed all over L.A. with a few acquaintance friends, most of whom 177 were already working or going to community college, I used Angie’s as a home base, I often slept in my car, and I drank disgusting things, Southern Comfort and Coke, syrupy fruit liquors, wine coolers, whatever I could get someone to buy me cheap. I had sex with a few people who would let me spend the night and eat out of their refrigerators. I don’t remember much of those days or weeks or months now, and I’m glad. 178 Darkness Carl wrote me a letter every Monday and Wednesday. The Wednesday letters were “for shared study;” they were hand-written transcriptions of essays he admired, pages of his own ideas about politics and race and class war, book reviews, musings on television and films he had seen, and his hand-drawn art. On Mondays he would reflect on our conversations, write stories from his life, tell me things about my mom I didn’t know and sometimes didn’t believe, and occasionally, he’d let me in on how terrible things were for him inside. He complained about the slow, understaffed medical ward. He told me they had stopped giving him his blood pressure medication, and he needed me to write to the warden, which it took me two months to do. He got his medication reissued after that, and he was so grateful, and I just felt guilty. I got my mail at Angie’s. Her parents made a little pile for me on the table in the breakfast nook. Carl and I drew each other pictures. I sent him my survival clothing designs. I wanted comfortable outfits that I could hide real equipment in. I invented military-style pocket- covered pants that would hug the hip, large belted jackets that unzipped from the bottom into sleep-sacks, boots with secret sliding compartments in the soles. Carl asked me to draw specific things: what was right in front of me at school, at Angie’s, when I hung out with my friends. I complied with mostly unflattering portraits of people at school who sat to my right and left in my classes. Once, I sent him the colored diagram I had to make of photosynthesis, instead of turning it in to Mr. East’s biology class. He loved that one, and hung it in his cell next to a picture of us, the three of us. Carl and I both had a version of that picture, Polaroids taken one right after another by another inmate. Mom, Carl, and I posed in front of a hand-painted cartoon forest backdrop. We bought the Polaroids for $2.00. Mom’s hips faced forward, her torso twisted in, her arms 179 clung to Carl’s waist, and her neck craned toward the camera. Her eyes were on something else just before it. Carl’s right arm held steady around her, from shoulder to lower back. Carl’s left arm was tight around my shoulders, and my arms were pressed flat to my sides. Despite all the awkwardness, Carl and I wore identical, deeply mischievous facial expressions: our eyes settled directly in the camera, our mouths curved up to the left in a shared half-smile. He liked the picture. I liked it. Mom had thought it was a bad sign for my future. Sometimes Carl’s letters would arrive missing pages, or stuffed with a notice from the prison mail room: the “contraband” had been removed from the envelope. I complained to him, because it seemed ill-advised or stupid to complain to a corrections officer. I hated the COs. “Please stop sending me letters on Revolutionary Suicide,” I said, on one of those collect calls. “They always take out the most important parts and now I don’t know what happened to Pony.” He chuckled. “Did you get the theory though?” “Not really,” I said. “Newton’s a good writer, but I can’t tell if he wants me to kill myself for the people or not.” He laughed and said he’d try a different way. His next letter was written entirely in the spaces between the lines of an academic text from 1958 called The Dynamics of Planned Change: A Comparative Study of Principles and Techniques, authored by three presumably white male professors of social sciences at large Midwestern Universities. Kindee, 180 Greetings my loved one. I hope you are breathing clean air, drinking clean water, and sleeping well at night. It was so wonderful to see you last week! I forgot to tell you how much I liked your new hair color. Very bold. Joe says he didn’t recognize you, that’s why he didn’t wave like usual. (I say he never wears his glasses!) Well, on to our next topic. This week we are going to talk about our feelings. I know I usually write about personal issues on Sunday, but I think you’ll understand why feelings are an appropriate topic for a shared study letter. There are standards for acceptable feelings to have and for acceptable expressions of feelings you are having. The standards are enforceable through threat of punishment, expulsion from a group, or other forms of shame. In this way, people can become subject to what is called an affective regime. Your affect is your externalization of feeling. Scientists use words like “flat affect” to describe someone who doesn’t seem to feel very much. (This is different than an EFFECT, which is the consequence of an action.) Most small groups are governed by some style of affective regime, or an unconscious code of emotional conduct. An affective regime provides unspoken answers to who should feel what feeling, and when, and where, and why, and for how long, and what should be done about it, in order for group functioning to proceed smoothly. Some people live all their lives under one affective regime. Others must navigate the demands of multiple sets of standards. A dominant affective regime, which is the set of emotional-behavioral expectations that govern public life, is occasionally laid bare by a disturbance. Imagine: a loud public argument between two well-dressed, thin, beautiful white women at a shopping mall, a violent tantrum from an old person in a grocery store, a crying male politician leading a big meeting. These events are memorable because they show us what isn’t “supposed” to happen under our 181 current dominant affective regime. A dominant affective regime is also expressed in idioms, advertising copy, religious clichés and the like: it is smuggled into our beliefs as a set of repeated instructions that scaffold our everyday language and pose as common sense. When people are gathering around a shared goal of making change to their current circumstances, particularly when they must challenge, confront, or provoke a power structure (like the government, a school board, or a greedy boss), they may choose to openly discuss their designs for an alternative, internal standard for handling feelings. Often, groups organizing around social justice want to reduce the amount of violence they experience. An abstract denouncement of “destructive” feelings can be a powerful group action if it reflects each individual’s commitment to a discipline of self-reflection. When no one in a group feels entitled to act out “destructive” emotions, because they believe those emotions, even when experienced by only one individual, can harm the group’s functioning, group members will attempt to minimize the hold these “destructive” emotions have on them. Obviously, people will still have conflict with each other, even when they love one another and believe in most of the same things. But sometimes conflict is lopsided: one side wants to escalate, one side doesn’t. Or, one person starts out with more power than the other. The unilateral denouncement of individual people within a group, for having too many useless or negative or destructive feelings, is an example of the policing of affect, the direct enforcement of an affective regime. This brings us back to the beginning: groups have to have agreement within them about how people are going to do their feelings. How they are going to behave when they feel strong feelings. If the agreement doesn’t exist, or if it is broken, or if it is unfair and privileges the experience of one party over another, resentment happens. For instance, under the current 182 dominant affective regime, no one is allowed to scream at each other without fearing arrest. But men get arrested for screaming at women much more than women get arrested for screaming at men. However, women get told they are crazy when they scream, which does them enormous harm in the long run, I think. Men are told that they are just letting off steam. So you aren’t supposed to scream, no one is, but the social and political consequences for doing it are different, depending on your gender, in this case. What a group does, when one or some of its members violate the standards of acceptable affect, reveals not only the group’s propensity to fascism, but the threshold of unfamiliar, potentially traumatic experience the group is prepared to withstand, and, the importance of the group’s affective regime to its functioning. Imagine being at a high school graduation and hearing the principal say over a loudspeaker to the graduates: “None of you will ever have the kind of success we dreamed you might. Stop trying and give up.” That would be inappropriate under our current social norms, and what happens next will tell you a lot about the school, about the community of students, about the parents’ investment in their kids, and so on. Does the principle apologize in the local paper? Get fired? Does no one do anything but gossip? Do people laugh it off as a crazy joke? Here’s a real world example to think about: The Black Panthers required members to memorize and behave according to the following “8 Points of Attention”: Speak politely. Pay fairly for what you buy. Return everything you borrow. Pay for anything you damage. Do not hit or swear at people. 183 Do not damage property or crops of the poor, oppressed masses. Do not take liberties with women. If we ever have to take captives do not ill-treat them. In other words, Party members were ordered to keep their emotions under control, for the proper functioning of the Party, and, by joining the Party, members agreed to abide by a particularly restrictive affective regime. This made some members less vulnerable to provocation, as their self-discipline developed. It made others, however, more vulnerable to the poisonous tentacles of agent provocateurs, factionalism, and COINTELPRO (Did you read that article I sent you about all those covert, illegal operations of the FBI?), as they struggled to participate in serious Party activity while repressing big emotions like love, fear, jealousy, loneliness, rage. Repression is not the same as self-discipline, no matter how similar their immediate effects on behavior may be. People working to make real change have to be honest with themselves to feel real feelings, and take care of each other when strong or big feelings come. That’s why I don’t tell you not to cry, Kindee. Just cry with your head up, and know what you got to cry about, and what you don’t. Next time, I’ll write about the myth that oppression makes a people less fit to govern themselves. I’ll leave you with this idea from a social scientist in 1946: “Intergroup relations in this country will be formed to a large degree by the events on the 184 international scene and particularly by the fate of colonial peoples...Jim Crowism on the international scene will hamper tremendously progress of intergroup relations within the United States and is likely to endanger every aspect of democracy.” --Kurt Lewin Love, Carl The lines he’d written in between: Interdependence among the parts of a system is often associated with a fear that the improvement of one part can be gained only at the expense of another, and there is thus a tendency to feel threatened by any proposal for change except, perhaps, one’s own. Resistance based on threat is particularly a problem because of the psychological concomitants of a state of threat. These include constricted field of attention and a need to find some way of controlling whatever it is that threatens. The former makes it difficult for the threatened subsystem to envisage or believe in new and improved ways of operation. The need for control makes it imperative that existing sanctions be applied to punish the deviant or recalcitrant part and restore familiar patterns of control. Change, therefore, is the very thing which is most intolerable to a system or subsystem experiencing a high degree of threat. On the other hand, it must be remembered that it is not pleasant to feel threatened and that pain can become a force toward change. The system experiencing threat will try first and most urgently to return to old and secure patterns of behavior. If this course of action is blocked off, however, it may be willing to try something new. In a state of crisis any change may be viewed as an improvement. 185 When I was seventeen, I needed food. I found my listening ear, I found my drugs, and there was always free alcohol. What was hardest to get was food, because the only way to get it without getting swept into the state welfare system was money, and that was the one thing I couldn’t produce. I could talk about my problems with my friends, but none of them were hungry, or even knew what I meant when I said it. They thought I was referring to the situation in which you have a slight twinge of desire for something to eat. I couldn’t get them to understand. I was woozy and confused and tasting metal. Groups of people would all split a check and I’d have to chip in my last cash even though I conspicuously drank lemon water, and so I would let go the small wad of precious dollars, because I couldn’t bear the misperception that would happen if I refused to pay “my share” of the group bill. People would think I was rude, when really I was just poor. I stayed the most at Angie’s. I still threw up when I drank, forgot to eat, mixed alcohols, and if I was out with other people, I never said no to pills, bumps, weed, whatever. My joints ached in the morning’s sharp edges. Sometimes I sat out on the street in front of my high school late at night, drinking, and left my stolen nips in neat empty rows on the steps. I participated in research studies with a fake ID and collected vouchers and scrip and cash and gift cards for food. As disgusting as it could be, my car felt like the safest, freest place I could be besides Angie’s. I’d had a bank account with my mom’s name on it since I was ten because she tried to teach me some basics about money. I drained it in months, utterly paralyzed by all the decisions I had to make and how terrible it was to make them. I had to keep looking at her name. I couldn’t take her name off the account, because I was a minor. I occasionally called Lynn when I knew she wouldn’t be able to pick up and left messages saying I was great, staying with a good friend, no worries, handling it. When I told Angie about things like this, she would sink into herself and her face would 186 tense. Sometimes she tried to help me solve problems. “Let’s look at the classifieds for a job that accepts high school kids,” she’d say. Or, “Maybe you should go to a free support group for people like you?” Inwardly, I thought: People like me. Didn’t she understand? I was bitterly alone, there were no people like me. I said, “Ok, I’ll look into that,” and then usually didn’t. Because I couldn’t. I would often find myself staring into space, hunched over and straining my neck, and not remember what I had been thinking about, but acutely aware that my body was far too heavy and painful to move from where I’d settled. And that sensation of heaviness would ease when I was high on almost anything, especially alcohol, and I could at least try to think about feeding and hydrating myself when the pain was a little less pressing. Even Angie, who saw so much, never saw me at the worst moments. Those all happened alone. One morning I woke up in too much sun. I was sleeping in my backseat and wasn’t sure where I’d parked. I tried to sit up and was immediately ready to puke. I couldn’t get all the way out of the car before I had to. So I was going to have to clean that up later. Ugh. The painful throbbing in my head was so intense I felt like a toddler standing next to the speakers at a rock show. The light stabbed through my eyes. I felt around for sunglasses, for water. I pulled myself up and breathed through a few more waves. I felt the crying push up from behind my shoulder blades and sting my nose. Useless. Alcoholic. Your real dad didn’t love you and never tried. Piece of Shit. Your mom had a short stupid life, and so will you. And so on. I cried so deep and so long, and with no calming rest at the end. The end was 187 exhaustion, a delusional quivering hope that I might actually be dying right now, and then the realization that I wasn’t, and so I’d have to get up and move or, someone had probably already called the cops. That tiny shot of adrenaline my body could make was enough. I mopped up the backseat with a shirt, poured water on the stain and blotted with a sock. I got in the driver’s seat and saw a ticket on the dashboard. Something about it ruined my resolve. The crying started again, this time faster. It scared me. This is not my life, I thought. This is not a life. This can’t be life. I turned the car on and started driving, seeing a lopsided and loopy world through tears, half-hoping that the car would crash and I wouldn’t have to be in charge of myself for a while. I went to Angie’s, told her I was hungover, let her judge, and then fell asleep in her cool, sweet-smelling sheets. Angie’s house, even with the labyrinthian rules her parents were constantly updating, was a luxurious playground full of things I needed and things I’d forgotten how to want. The endless cold and hot water. The beds. The books. More than one kind of cracker to snack on. TV. I couldn’t believe how much the TV was a part of her family’s constant environment in the house. Angie’s parents moved through spaces like rooms and hallways without eye contact or touching each other. They would acknowledge me with nods, sometimes a “Hi Kindred,” but we didn’t have conversations, and that was exactly how I needed it to be. They had a housekeeper named Flora who talked to her sister on the phone while she did the laundry once a week. She scrubbed and dusted and vacuumed with music on. It was great stuff, swingy narcocorrido songs that sometimes inspired me to dance out to where she was at and help her. Flora and I occasionally took a shot of tequila together from the pantry, especially after cleaning the bathrooms. She threw Spanish words to me here and there, and 188 criticized me outright for not learning them, and praised me with applause and loud sound effects when I got them right. But I didn’t always see her, because she could come over and do her entire routine without me waking up. She did the ninja thing that day, while I slept off the poison, but I knew she’d been there because she had washed the small pile of clothes I’d left on the floor. When I woke up in the afternoon, I called Lynn. She agreed to come get me in the morning, to drive me out to see Carl, and said she was “relieved” to hear from me. I got back in bed and watched the home improvement reality show channel until I fell back asleep. At 4:30 AM, I cleaned up for what was about to be my last visit with Carl as a minor. Angie was curled against the wall, breathing sweetly through her mouth. I looked at her for long enough to realize that if she woke up and caught me I’d be embarrassed, then slid out of the bed, picked up my clothes (Oh thank you, Flora!), and went into the bathroom. I wore my freshly-washed large navy blue men’s sweatpants and hoodie, yanked a brush through my hair, put on some heavy black eyeliner, and brushed my teeth. Lynn picked me up at 5:00AM for the drive, and I was already outside, so no one in Angie’s house would be disturbed. I gave Lynn a few thin reassurances about how fine I was and then slept for most of the drive. I woke up thirsty, as we pulled off road toward Corcoran. It was a problem. I had no drinks in the car and wouldn’t be able to purchase one until I’d been through reception and was in the visiting room, which could take hours. Then again, it was prison. Being thirsty wasn’t that big of a deal. I got through reception surprisingly quickly. No problems with my clothes. No problems with my paperwork or my plastic baggie of singles and coins. Not that many other people 189 there. No one I recognized. When they buzzed us in, I was surprised that Carl was already there, sitting at a low table, massaging his wrist. Something in my heart cracked open and spilled out my eyes when I saw him. He looked up at me when the door opened and smiled so excitedly, like a kid getting a present. He’d shaped his hair, which seemed long, into a salt- and-pepper Afro. He was wearing a white A-frame undershirt with his clean, pressed prison blues and his shoes were gleaming white. It was a contact visit. We got to hug at the beginning. I was already blinking off my tears when his Carl smell and his bristly forearms and his “Hi Kindee” wrapped around me like a blanket. “So good to see you,” he said. Then he said it again, and it meant even more. “So, so good to see you, honey.” He and Lynn exchanged grown up hellos and she sat down at a table near us with her book. “I’m sorry it’s been so long,” I said to his chest. We let go. I wiped my eyes. We sat. His bright eyes searched mine. He asked how I was holding up. I said not too good. Two hours later, I realized we hadn’t done the vending machines and we’d talked only about me and my problems. He’d been helpful, he’d been a good dad, he’d listened to me, but of course I hadn’t told him everything. That I was not really in school anymore, that I was rarely sober, those were things I did not say. We’d talked a little bit about missing Mom, and we both got sad. “I know times are hard,” he said, and I thought, you-don’t-even-know, “But,” he said, “they are always hard for people like us, who are fighting the system that governs most 190 aspects of our daily lives.” “I’m not even fighting the system!” I said. “I’m just trying to survive.” “But that is your fight, baby,” he said, and patted my hand. “It’s the most important fight you can be in, to survive, until you are ready to take up something else.” “You always act like I’m some kind of big protestor, an activist, like you,” I said. “But I’m not. I don’t care about waving signs or staying up late talking politics at the coffee house.” He smiled. “You know there’s more to it than that.” “Sure,” I said. “But I’m not doing any of it.” “No one is asking you to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said. But I knew that they were. Even he was. I never wanted to go to Corcoran, it was so hard to get there, and so hard to get in, and so hard to deal with all the bullshit. But I did it anyway. He just didn’t make sense, talking like that from inside that place. Or maybe he did, because he could imagine that everyone on the outside was making free-will decisions all the time he couldn’t. “How’s your political education classes going?” I asked. “Slowly but surely,” he said, and smiled. “Did you read my last letter about it?” “No,” I said. It seemed useless to lie about what I’d read and what I hadn’t, even though I had an impulse to. “I just got a stack of letters you sent to Lynn’s I haven’t opened.” He nodded. “I love talking about politics with the guys in here,” he said. “No one knows what’s wrong with their own country as well as a convict.” “I’m going to the vending machines,” I said. “The usual?” “Let’s go look and see what they’ve got today,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for beans.” He came with me to the machines, picked a sandwich instead of his normal burrito, then went back to our table, because he wasn’t allowed to touch the money. After vending, I walked over to the microwave. Another visitor was using it, trying to press the greasy buttons 191 with her long nails rather than touch them with the pads of her fingers. It wasn’t working at first. She figured it out. When her food was done and she turned around, we acknowledged each other. “Kitchen’s all yours,” she said. “You go ahead and feed your man, now.” “Right,” I said. “Thanks.” I sat with Carl again. “I want you to know I’m really proud of you,” he said. I had no idea what he was talking about. “I know you don’t believe you’re doing anything important,” he said. “But you are. You come out here and you nourish me for my own struggle. Every day you make it through the pain of losing Mom, you are doing something important. You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, ok? Stay committed to yourself.” I apologized for not coming more often, looking at the grime around the legs of his chair. He hugged me again when I left, and I missed him, and I wanted to get away from that place, and I kept hearing his words in a loop on the way home with Lynn, who had read almost an entire romance novel while I was in there. Stay committed to yourself. I smoked Angie’s weed all day the next day while she was at school and resolved, again, to make some decisions. I had to get something together. I had to at least turn eighteen before I gave up, I decided. Some part of me, still inspired by and admiring Carl, wanted to see if things would change, and that was enough. 192 Another Prison Visit Just after I turned eighteen, I ran out of money for rent on the storage space. But when I went to turn in my key and say goodbye to the few small boxes of stuff and the yellow couch I thought I was losing, the night manager handed me a receipt and said my rent had been paid through another six months. I recognized my biology teacher’s signature on the receipt. Jonathan East. Mr. East was a little shorter than average. He had light brown hair that stayed a little feathered on his head because it was so fine. He was fast and precise when he moved. He wore thin wire frames and button up shirts. Some days he wore khakis, the heavy kind that absorb things. Some days he wore jeans. He always wore the same pair of buttery brown loafers. On the first day of class he stood in front of his desk with his arms loosely crossed. I looked at his fly and wondered about his penis. That day he was wearing dark mustard khakis and a blue and purple plaid shirt, light cotton, short sleeve, with the top button undone. I guessed he was thirty. “Some teachers think they should be the absolute authority in the classroom,” he said. “They think they rule a small kingdom. But I don’t like envisioning you all as subjects, and I think historically kings get power by intimidating people.” We shuffled around, not sure where this was going. “I’m not in charge of whether you go pee, or come to class, or do your homework, and it’s your choice to pass or fail this class. So let’s just say I know more about biology than you, and I’m going to try to give you some biology-related information for a few months, and you’re going to try and remember the stuff we do together. Ok?” Most people nodded and said “Ok” reflexively. I stared at him without moving, and so he noticed me. He asked my name. 193 “Kindred,” I said. “What do you want out of this class, Kindred?” he asked me. I had no idea. “Um,” I said, “I guess an ‘A’?” “How do you plan to get that ‘A’?” “I don’t know,” I said, annoyed now, “I guess I’ll study.” “Perfect,” he said. “That works for me.” He turned around and started writing on the board. He was giving us page numbers to study in the book. I looked at his butt. He did something to stay in shape. He was really looking good. His butt was round and firm but not all clenched up. He turned around. We met eyes, his skipped away quickly. “These are the pages you are responsible for studying this week. There are ten pages per day of class. The classes will be relevant to each set of ten pages, in successive order. I suggest you keep up with the reading, because you will get a lot more out of the class that way. If you like to read ahead, you are equipped with the information you need. Any questions?” We were all stunned at this. I remember it like it was a smell, or a sound. We didn’t get talked to like adult human beings capable of making our own choices that often. “Well, if you feel confused about anything, please speak up,” he said. “For today, we are going to do a short and sweet experiment together to get you used to the procedure of the lab. When you come in to work on a lab project...” I tuned him out and watched him move. I wondered if he was gay. Or a dancer. He was just so graceful. “Kindred,” he said. Fuck I’d missed the important part before my name. He was waiting for an answer to something. “Sorry, I was spaced out,” I said. “What are you asking me?” 194 He smiled. “I just told you two rules of thumb for working in the lab. Did you hear those?” “Nope,” I said. Someone stifled laughter. I looked down at my hands. I really didn’t want all this attention. “Did anyone hear them?” he asked the class. Of course Vanessa had, and her hand was up and stretched irritatingly high, with just the hint of a wave in her fingers. “Yes, what’s your name?” Mr. East asked her. “Vanessa,” she said, a tiny bit cloying. “And the two rules of thumb are: ‘your hands are dirtier than you think’ and ‘put the cap back on as soon as you can’.” She waited. “Nice,” Mr. East said. “Thanks for paying attention.” I went in and out of hearing the rest. I started looking through my book. It was gorgeous! I turned to the first of the pages we’d been assigned. And my mind exploded. Because I was learning about cells for the first time. Mr. East left me alone for the rest of the class. Later he told me it was because he actually saw me fall in love with biology on my own, and it was such a rare and beautiful thing he didn’t want to disturb me. And it was a rare and beautiful thing, for me to feel surprised like that. Interested, curious. Without fear. With no traumatic association with the thing I was looking at, because it was completely new to me, and seemingly, made just for me by people who knew what I liked. The drawings were all cartoonish, freehand, with crosshatching and squiggly shapes. The colors were a little faded because the book had been in use since its publication in 1976. I swear he winked at me that day, though. And he always maintained that he couldn’t have. Wouldn’t have. 195 He had paid for my storage space. I went to his classroom on a Friday, guessing that he wouldn’t have plans after school. I wore a black mini dress, sneakers, and a black hoodie. I’d done my liquid eyeliner thick and heavy. “Mr. East?” I leaned in the doorway. “Kindred!” Wow, he was nervous. My body electrified. He was a pretty guy. There were still a few kids in the hallways. “I just wanted to come say thank you in person,” I said. “Do you have some time to talk?” he said. “Can I get caught up on your situation?” I was supposed to be at Angie’s already. I told him I couldn’t stay just then but maybe another time. He said okay, let me take you to dinner, and then wrote his phone number down and handed it to me. “You can call me,” he said. “I know you’re really going through it. I’m so sorry to hear about your mom. Please call if you need anything at all.” Something in my heart twisted around at his kindness. I believed him. And also, I knew, I just knew somehow, that he wanted something from me, too. Maybe he just wanted me to graduate. He had asked to take me to dinner. I called later that day, and we made a date for the upcoming Sunday night. It was imperative that I did not arrive seeming inconsolably depressed. So I was not going to talk or think about my Mom for a few days. I asked Carl, during the collect phone call I took at Angie’s house, if he and I could talk about anything but Mom on Sunday. Anything but Mom. “I don’t care,” I said into Angie’s phone, and then I had to wait for that crackling recording to remind me I was talking to an inmate, “I really don’t care what we talk about this 196 week as long as it isn’t Mom.” “I feel you,” he’d said. “Read that Angela Davis book I wrote you about this week. Your school library’s got to have it. Get here by nine on Sunday, ok baby?” “Ok, ok.” Angie worried about when I planned to take the GED exam and get my high school diploma. Her parents were married, both employed, and they had let me sleep in their older son’s room, or in Angie’s room, on and off, for most of the Worst Year of My Life. I was planning to be out of the house before the next phone bill came, bloated with exorbitant charges from the prison phone company, which Angie’s parents had finally asked me to start paying down. I wondered if Carl had liked calling the same number at the times I set up with him and finding me there. I felt I had been reliable recently. On the morning of my we-will-not-discuss-Mom visit, before I had dinner with Mr. East for the first time, I poked around Angie’s parents’ stash of special wines, left them alone, stole a half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort from the pantry, since I didn’t mind it and everyone else seemed to think it was disposable, and pocketed the loose change on the counter. Because I’d turned eighteen, I could visit Carl alone now without Lynn, who used to chirp intrusively at me for the three-hour drive and triple-check her multiple purses for all the relevant “guardianship of a minor” paperwork Mom had signed. Carl didn’t know I was not graduating, because I was the only one he’d hear that from now. I drew him more designs for survival clothing, this time with gloves and hats and scarves that all had dual purposes as weapons or cookware. He drew me self portraits, scenes from the commissary, his left hand holding various small objects allowed in his cell: a pen, a tissue, an unbreakable cup, a book of stamps. Of all, my favorite drawings were the comics he made featuring a fierce and victorious female avenger. She was nameless and her skin was 197 noticeably darker than mine, but I knew she was me. He told me to keep a journal. He said it was not just for me. “When you go through something as nasty as you have,” he wrote, “you have a special perspective. Your struggle can help inspire others to higher standards for their own lives.” He said “the people” deserved something better than despair. He wrote, “sharing our pain together is anodyne, and don’t let anyone tell you to keep your grief to yourself.” I didn’t know the word anodyne. I looked it up before I wrote back. I told Carl I wanted “Anodyne Heroin” for my superhero name. I also told him that I didn’t want to try and inspire anyone. I told him inspiration was a lie people told themselves to keep living when religion or work or love had lost its meaning. At the college parties, where I knew I could get alcohol handed to me until I blacked out, people I didn’t know apologized to me for my loss before they introduced themselves. My mother had been “inspired,” I told him. She was going to write a book. She was going to start her own business. She was going to clean the kitchen, someday. I don’t even believe in inspiration, I wrote. People are too stupid and all good ideas came from crazy people and addicts. It took me nearly three hours to drive to the prison from Los Angeles. I’d bought a breakfast burrito and a coffee at a Jack in the Box, and stared into the wide orange morning in Santa Clarita while talk radio made the sounds of education and outrage. It was after 9:30AM when I turned my mom’s car off in the visitor parking lot at Corcoran that Sunday, and realized in an uncomfortable crush that I had only ten dollar bills to bring in, instead of my normal twenty, because I’d finally, in nearly a year of couch-and-bed surfing, tapped Mom’s one stupid account anyway, and that Carl was going to ask me about Angela Davis’ book during this visit and I hadn’t read any of it. I’d tried especially hard to stay drunk from the night before, the kind of drunk that doesn’t 198 fade quickly, the kind of drunk that you know people can smell on you but you don’t care. You know you’re stable enough on your feet they probably won’t say anything, and when you start sobering up, the justification for staying drunk is physically self-evident. I was the one who had begged not to talk about Mom. Sunglasses were not allowed on grounds at the prison, and the light stabbed into my head as I took mine off. Carl was lucky I was coming to see him, I told myself. Fuck the book we were going to discuss. What could we have to say to each other about Women, Race and Class? Carl called himself a Black Revolutionist. My mother was white. Midwestern blonde- style. They were a couple for sixteen years. My biological father was a one night stand named Alex, origin unknown. I looked like my mother with darker hair and skin that tanned. She had always burned in the sun. I didn’t care. Of course I cared. I didn’t care. I knew I should probably think about something or someone other than myself. I swigged SoCo hunched under my hair in the car, in full view of the guard tower. Maybe I’d hang out at a 7-11 or Burger King off the freeway and sleep somewhere new tonight. My hair was getting long. I pulled a strand from the back and measured. It definitely covered my nipples. I had more split ends than not. I kept my head down and watched the asphalt on my way to the line of visitors outside the first cage. Visiting rules prohibited any clothing that was deemed too “revealing” by individual guards’ opinions, based loosely on standards posted on the walls. The guard at the gate made binding choices about who could enter the waiting room, and they seemed arbitrary at first. But after a few visits I had realized that it was young women, my age to maybe early forties, who were routinely sent away to make themselves less beautiful or sexy. Women who came to visit in soft yoga pants were always sent away to change, even if the pants covered them all the way to their shoes. 199 When I’d been turned away the first time for wearing blue jeans, I’d discovered the women at Friends Outside, a little room set up at the edge of the parking lot with instant coffee and visiting-warden-friendly clothes to borrow. They had me throw on a pair of sweats over whatever I was wearing so my own clothes couldn’t get lost. “Too much shape on that one,” a regular Sunday-church visitor had murmured conspiratorily to me once, about another female visitor, whose large cleavage and ass curves defied even the Friends Outside’s largest women’s sweatsuits. “I ain’t going back there to put on no men’s shit,” the woman had said. “Y’all can’t do that to me. That’s just wrong.” Her body, which could not be hidden, was allowed in to visit after everyone else in the line went through. Just that time, they said. Nowadays, because I kept all my clothes in the car, I was in a much better situation going in. As I made it across the parking lot, I checked the guard’s cage and saw a broad-chested white guy, exactly the kind who made us all change. I wasn’t wearing the wrong colors, but my tight black pants were ripped at the knees and thighs and my sweatshirt wasn’t covering the shape of my eighteen-year-old ass. If he didn’t feel lenient, he’d refuse to let me in to visit until I changed. I glanced at the people who had already made it through to the waiting room, and at the few who were in line in front of me. I recognized a few usuals. It looked like Diana had brought some new pictures of the girls with her, but not the girls themselves this time. Diana wore her beige suit. She always had shining ringlets, which she shook and patted until she saw her son. If I went to change clothes before getting in line, it might be another hour before I got processed, as Sunday morning visit slots always filled up. But if I made it up to the first cage and then got sent back to change, I’d end up even farther down the food chain. I decided to risk it. 200 A guard I didn’t recognize told me to look up at him when he checked my ID. He seemed ready to question me, looked at my date of birth twice, checked the roster to make sure of something, maybe that my ID hadn’t already been used that day? I couldn’t imagine what else for, since I was such a regular customer. Framed by a thin graying comb-over, his face was rugged, pockmarked and older than I’d imagined from farther away. There was no way he was going to let me in. Guys like him wanted prisoners to see women in Victorian hoopskirts and cardboard collars, or burlap sacks, if they got the chance to see women at all. His nametag caught my eye: Seabury. I knew there were guards there making a gambling sport of torturing people out on the Yard. Carl had never given me any direct facts or instructions, but I knew I hated that olive- green shirt and the smell of Seabury’s coffee-cigarette breath, and that I wished I knew how to make him feel it without getting in myself in trouble. I was suddenly sure he was one of the dirty COs. “Who you here for?” He asked, still holding my ID. I told him Carl’s prisoner number. Then his name. “You can’t wear those pants inside the visiting room,” Seabury said. “And, unfortunately, Friends Outside isn’t open today. You’ll have to change at home and come back before 1PM to get back in line.” He tossed my ID in the space below his plastic protective window. I had to get on my toes to fish it out. Seabury was the one who would decide if Carl and I were going to see each other on that day, and so I was not going to run my mouth. Not yet. Especially on weekends, guards knew how far the regular visitors traveled. Many of us couldn’t go home and come back on the same day. I took my ID, ambled to the car, swigged the SoCo, changed into some of Mom’s dingy old pink velour track pants behind my half-open door, and got back in line. 201 This time I was behind a man in his fifties. He was short, clean-shaven, with dark salt-and- pepper hair that faded to gray along his ears. He was wearing a collared purple shirt and flapping his hands just slightly in his pants pockets. It sounded like he was muttering prayers in Spanish. I went through the process again. Seabury told me to turn around in front of him for a “visual inspection,” then he buzzed me through the first set of doors, and watched my covered ass walk through them. I handed over my ID to new officers, showed them my little plastic bag with dollar bills and pictures in it, went through the metal detector, got patted down, waited in a plastic chair, stared at the beige linoleum, and wished I’d drank more than just a swig when I went out to change my pants. Other visitors’ feet shuffled and tapped around me-dirty sneakers, sensible pumps, pantyhose encasing swollen ankles. The two kids there, girls in matching flouncy white sunday dresses and saddle shoes, played a game of running between their chairs and the guard’s desk until Purple Shirt asked them to stop and their female guardian/mother held them close to her and shushed them. Aside from the little kids, I was often the youngest. This time a girl around my age with bleached blonde hair in a big ponytail argued with the guard about changing out of her off- shoulder sweater, tank top, and hoop earrings. She’d gotten past the first check. She told the guard behind the desk that his homeboy had let her through and she wasn’t trying to get back in that line for some bullshit. “I’m sorry ma’am,” the young guard said, clearly unsure if “Miss” might have been a better move. “We have rules here that need to be followed.” “Then you better tell your boy out there,” she pointed at Seabury, “that he don’t know his own dick when it’s right there in his hand.” 202 I simultaneously admired her and feared she’d get arrested. The young guard responded to everything she said by repeating himself. She had to give up eventually. She stalked to Friends Outside, I presumed, wishing I’d caught her eye so I could warn her it was closed, but then, a half hour later, while I was pacing the side of the waiting room I hadn’t been sitting in, she reentered, seething, silent, sans earrings, wearing sweatpants, in full make up, with her rhinestone sneakers, and she sat with her arms crossed and her eyes at the floor. Seabury had lied to me? Or did she have a suitcase in her car too? I got called into the visiting room. Carl’s right cheek was puffed up and dark purplish black. He hugged me gingerly at first, then held me tight for a second once my face was on his chest. He smelled familiar, but with a whiff of something sourly antiseptic. “Glad you could make it,” he said, pulling away and turning to find his chair. “What happened?” I asked, gesturing toward him. “To my face?” “Yeah, to your face.” “Well,” he said, and glanced around the room, “I can’t talk about it here. Understand?” I didn’t, since “here” was all around us, and the only place he and I could ever talk was “here,” but it didn’t matter enough to me, to try and understand. I figured anyone could go crazy in prison. He looked like he’d been working outside; the skin on his face and forearms seemed darker. His hands were cracked and dry, his elbows were ashy, and his hair was frizzing out of the rows someone had braided for him. His grays were visible. “If you got in a fight, shouldn’t you be rolled up right now?” I said. He nodded slowly, then said, “That would be true if I’d fought on my own time.” “What’s that mean?” I said. I was sick of code. “Just tell me what’s happening.” 203 We were in the large visiting room for people who got contact visits. We were allowed ten seconds to hug at the beginning and end. We sat across a low table on metal and plastic chairs that belonged in an elementary school. The walls were blue-gray, with wan sunlight coming in one side of the room through clouded windows. Later we’d take a little walk to the vending machines along the back wall, and I’d use up my ten single dollar bills buying Carl candy and chips and soda. “You don’t look great,” he said. I thanked him, sarcastic and thick. He didn’t speak for an eternity, while I breathed through some nausea and shifted in my chair. He was watching me. “What do you want to talk about?” I said. “It’s okay to just sit here,” he said. “I could look at your ears for two hours straight.” “Shit, are you high?” I said. I heard my mother’s voice come from my mouth. He must have too. He kept focus on my eyes. “I haven’t gotten high on any real shit since I got here,” he said, “although I don’t blame you for thinking it.” All this time, I’d never asked him if he was using anything in prison. It hadn’t occurred to me that he could be, until that moment. The shift mattered--the fact of him living there, all the time, where someone hit his face and he couldn’t tell me why, and there was an economy in which he could buy and sell drugs, suddenly felt newly real. “What would you want if you could have any drug here?” I said. “I can have any drug here,” he said, glancing around again. “I guess that letter I sent with the discussion of prison economics wasn’t that exciting for you, huh?” “Not much.” 204 “But if I had to stay inside the tomb to do this fantasy drug,” he gazed somewhere up into his memories and desires, “I’d still do mushrooms before anything else.” I laughed, for real. “You’re absurd,” I said. “You should try them,” he said. “They can change your life.” “I have tried them,” I said. “I was at Venice Beach. Not impressed.” “Who’d you trip with?” “A friend from school.” “Angie?” “Nah, some kids I never see anymore.” “You need to be with people you love and admire, who can encourage you to go new places in your head,” he said. “It’s good to have a sober person around to hold the reality, too.” “I don’t have any of those people,” I said. “Cryin’ shame,” he said. Then he was infuriatingly quiet again. I knew he knew I wasn’t sober. I knew it hurt him. I knew he wouldn’t say anything about it to me, wouldn’t embarrass or expose me, wouldn’t put me at any risk I wasn’t putting myself at already. I hated him for his transparent sense of duty and loyalty. My mother, I had hated for her carelessness in having me in the first place, raising me to think I was special in some unquantifiable way that would never materialize except as a haunting unmet expectation. I couldn’t rely on her, and then she died, but I loved her. Carl had too. It was a large thing to have in common. We both knew what her skin smelled like in the morning, and we knew how much she hated work shoes, and we knew how sad she got around bedtime, and we had pictures, of us three together, in which my mother beamed at one or both of us, her reckless blonde hair constantly blowing into someone’s eyes, and her snaggle-tooth 205 sticking out in most of them, and I figured if I was going to love anyone else living, and since I already knew I could love someone I hated and someone dead, I should go ahead and try to keep loving Carl, so I loved him guiltily, loved him angrily, and went to see him in Corcoran on Sundays for a little while. A Dear Man The first time I went out to dinner with Mr. East was the first time I ate sushi. He smiled over and over again, without making me feel stupid. He taught me to use chopsticks. He ordered things that wouldn’t scare me too much: salmon, tuna, avocado roll. He ordered a large Sapporo. We talked about movies. I loved the flavor of sushi rice. I thought things were going well, although I didn’t really know what things I was dealing with. Mr. East waited until I was eighteen to ask me to dinner. I respected him for that. He paid for my storage rental, before he ever got to touch me. He was practical and kind and genuinely interested in my well-being. I thought he was ridiculous for caring about me, but he was helpful, and inoffensive, and pretty nice looking. There was just something about him that was weird. Later, I would figure out that this was the penumbra of repressed shame he had for being a foot fetishist, the poor thing. So I took it. I took the attention, and the dinner, and the fleeting, friendly touch, and the thrill, and the confusion. I took it and it gave me reason to move forward with being alive. Mr. East gave me something strange, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t want. He always told me that I didn’t owe him anything. And I believed him, and that was one reason why I was so happy to let him put my feet in his mouth, on his face, and around his cock. 206 He would set me up like a princess in the bed, leaning on a pile of pillows. He’d make sure there was a movie on or a book I felt like reading. “Are you comfortable? Do you want some water?” I would say I was fine, go ahead. He would pull my shoes off one by one, and sniff and stroke my feet gently first with socks on, then slowly peel my socks off and stroke and sniff again. The first time, I was so fascinated by how weird it was, to see a grown man ecstatically sniffing my dirty socks, I didn’t notice how much I liked it. He missed a week after we’d seen each other for three consecutive Saturdays. I felt let down and angry. It wasn’t just that I wouldn’t get a good dinner. I wanted his mouth on my toes. I called him and told him so. “Really?” he said. “Yeah, don’t make me say it again,” I said. I did not know this was called fetish, or domination. I did not know it was a very common thing. I knew it had to stay a secret, that I wasn’t prepared for it, and that it was fine by me. Much later, my girlfriend Nautica hypothesized that was why he chose me. He chose me because he could tell that I knew how to keep something important hidden and “didn’t have any personal boundaries.” She had a difficult time believing my side of the story and wanted to call Mr. East a perpetrator and dismiss the whole experience as one of sexual exploitation. But I wouldn’t back down from saying he never exploited me. It was difficult for her, to let me be a horny eighteen year old freely choosing to spend time with a teacher-lover who really only wanted to fuck my feet, and who paid for things. I knew 207 what I’d wanted, and what I’d done, and how miserable and scared I’d been outside of those moments with Mr. East. I told her he helped me, and the only person who really knows what that could mean, was me. Eventually she gave in. Nautica had started working as a domme directly through an apprenticeship with a friend of hers. She had no experience in any other sex trades. On the one hand, this made her an exquisitely powerful dominant: she never second-guessed herself or identified too much with her submissive. But, she was also sometimes quick to dismiss the complexity of choices that people in precarious positions have to face. She just avoided precarity altogether, if she could. I never stopped thinking that Mr. East was really a dear, dear man. I tried to tell my story in group therapy, tell it to Nautica, tell it on a mountain somewhere in a letter I buried. I tried to speak my truth. But memories live in parts of me that don’t speak. Layers of stories stack up under my skin. They communicate, emanate, in gesture, reflex, smell, secretions, heat. And no matter how hard I try to speak it, I cannot crush my body, that explosively colored, exquisitely textured orchestral circus, into any language. When a lover touches the inside of my thigh, thoughts and memories gush: this is sexiness, this is promise, this is interest, this is my body, this is your body, this is what it means to receive, this is the time to respond positively or negatively, this is the turning point, there is nothing else, there is no going back, this is a mistake, this is the best life has to offer, this is rape, this is love, this is your weakness, you slut, this seems safe enough, this can’t stop or I’ll die. You touch me now, you are touching a place that is part garden and part ruins. The rubble is still there. If you touch my skin slowly enough, you can feel it. 208 Dear Kindee, I admit that I am extremely angry today at this whole insane institution. The CO’s here have no respect. I received the news that we were on lockdown just an hour before you were due for our visit, with no way to contact you. I knew it would be a horrible experience for you. I also don’t know yet what the lockdown is for. This shit is arbitrary and malicious. Cages are torture enough. I’m sorry you had to go through that experience of being turned away by the sgt. I know you were able to stay calm and exit the situation without any more trouble than he’d already caused you. They are pitting people against each other in here. You would not believe your eyes. The CO’s do anything they can to cause friction among the population. Nothing has changed since the gladiator days. When someone snaps after all the abuse, they lock us all down and choose new people to systematically destroy. Next time I see you, let’s talk about the ocean for a while. I’ll tell you about the time I drove all the way out to Dockweiler Beach with one of your mom’s house dresses wrapped round the front axle! Please keep your head up for me and don’t let the games they play here bring you down too much. I will do my best to stay positive. All my love, Carl 209 Move to NYC I got a job at a call center. I listened to people talk confusedly about their problems with their purchases from SEARS and I directed them to appropriate departments. I slept with most of the people in my office, and especially enjoyed Daisy, the first girl I had more than one hookup with. I drank on the weekends, I got skilled at alphabetizing, I went to visit Carl, I had dinners and foot worship evenings with Mr. East, I finally let go the storage space and all that was in it, I studied a bit for the GED, so I could at least have a high school diploma, for my pride, for work, for something to feel not guilty about. Angie got into Pratt, an art school in Brooklyn, and was planning to go. One night, late in the summer of 1998, we were smoking weed in her backyard, and after a silence, she changed my life. “Come to New York with me,” she said. I had been preparing myself to say goodbye to her. I had been shoring up potential housing opportunities and telling people at the call center office that I would happily be someone’s live-in nanny. I was about to get my GED. “And do what?” I said. “Does it matter?” she said. “Ouch,” I said. She held the joint to her lips, sipped the air around it, and passed it to me. She shrugged. She blew a cloud over her shoulder. More smoke than it seemed like she could have inhaled. “I mean, what are you doing here that you can’t do there?” she asked. “Be depressed? Be a telemarketer? Get people to buy you drinks on the weekend?” “I can’t leave Carl,” I said. “And I’m not a telemarketer. I work in a call center.” She was quiet. It had been a clear day, and it was just a little chilly, for a summer night. I 210 wondered how long we were going to stay outside. “You need a change,” she said. She was confident. It sounded true. “You can stay in my dorm room until you get a job and a place. It’ll be fun!” She nudged my knee with hers. We both wore shorts. I felt her skin like a lightning bolt, a terrifying surge of electricity that ran directly to my clit. I recognized the feeling, but it had never felt this strong with Angie. “I do need a change,” I said. I looked at her face. She was smiling in the dark. “Pass it back,” she said. I hit the joint, exhaled, and leaned toward her. “What if I can’t make it work?” I said. “Make what work?” Her fingers grazed mine. Another electric shot. “Like what if I can’t get a job? Isn’t it expensive to live there? I don’t know,” I could hear my mother’s voice in my head. It was unbearable. My mother definitely thought I was crazy to have this conversation in the first place. Crazy to want to stay with Angie, whatever that meant. Angie stretched her arms over her head and rolled her neck. “You’ll figure something out, babe. You always do. You can do phone sex or something.” I laughed. But she was serious. She brought the joint back down, tapped the end, and sipped. “You’re a mess,” she said. “I love you, but you’re a mess. I think you could be happier, you know? I really think you could.” My body said: of course I could. (Kiss her!) My body said: no, you can’t. It was a quiet night on the cement patio. Angie’s face was backlit, haloed by the light inside, and she suddenly looked like a witch to me. And I wanted to be a part of her magic. Stupid, I thought. You’re high. 211 “Just think about it?” she said quietly. Then, “Want any more of this?” she held the joint out. “Okay, yes, I’ll think about it,” I said. I was already too high, but I took the joint from her anyway, to feel the tiny touch of her fingers. I took a last, silly drag off the dead pinch of ash and then stepped on it. Angie put her hand out and beckoned, just slightly, for me to come closer. I scooted my chair as close as I could and we sat with our forearms touching, our knees touching, side by side. Inside, I was shaking. She turned her face to me, reached up to hold my chin, and gave me three slow, deliberate, soft kisses on my cheek. If I had moved my face even two inches, I may have shown her what she needed to see, the invitation, to kiss my mouth. But I couldn’t. I was frozen, overwhelmed. I wanted it so badly and I couldn’t move. So the moment passed. We waited in the dark there together for what felt like a very long time. Angie moved to New York in August. I stayed here and there with other friends in Los Angeles through the fall. I worked six or seven days a week and sometimes studied for the GED. Every time we talked, Angie told me I should come out. And when I mentioned it to Carl, he said I should make my life count, and do what I felt was right for me. “I’ll miss you like hell,” he said at a visit one Sunday, “no doubt. But if you’re feeling like growing, and you want a new place for it, I understand that. You need to go ahead and grow.” So I took and passed my GED, I turned 19, I put everything I still owned into a duffel bag, I used my last two paychecks from the call center to buy a one-way plane ticket, and I moved to New York. Carl and I worked out a regular communication schedule until he paroled. Then it got harder to get in touch with him. When he got out, he stayed with a friend and got a job on a 212 painting crew and met with his parole officer and then when the apartment building had to be tented for bedbugs and the friend left town, Carl stayed with someone else. His PO didn’t like the new situation because the new guy with the lease was also an ex-con. Carl couch surfed for a while. He eventually went to a shelter. That was when we worked out our phone call system: if I didn’t pick up on the first call, he’d leave a message telling me when he was going to call back in the next few days so I could plan for it. If I didn’t pick up on the second call he’d wait a week and try again. It worked for us. I lived out of my duffel bag in Angie’s dorm room for her last month of her freshman year of college. I did odd jobs on craigslist, and ate meals she smuggled home from the cafeteria. I walked in Brooklyn, walked and walked. I went to the park. I bought drugs sometimes from the same guys and sometimes we laughed together. I didn’t touch Angie, but I wanted to. She had a guy she slept with, and when I was alone in her room, I masturbated with her vibrator. When the semester ended, we got a tiny apartment near campus. I had my own room for the first time. 213 Dearest Kindee, I’m thinking of you in that big city, getting on subway trains and beating the heat. I hope you are happy and healthy. I’m at the nicer shelter tonight. I’m proud of you and Angie for getting a more permanent place! I’ve been thinking about how we define “social problems” in this day and age. I’m in a minority here when I say that I think the existence of drugs is not a social problem. The existence of prostitution is not a social problem. The existence of socio-economic class, and the forms of violence that issue from the belief that there isn’t enough in the world to go around, is The Social Problem. I imagine the social scientists of the 1950s and 1960s, exuberant in their progressive ideas, believing that inclusion, representation, and a diversifying of the identities claimed by members of the power structure is/was/will be the arrival of lasting social change, and even peace. Peace through integration! If we can just get enough darker faces in the room, we can tell ourselves we’ve made it, finally, to equality. And I think a lot of Black people believed it, too. Inclusion was the goal of so much of the Civil Rights struggles. I imagine these scientists, who were 90% white men fifty years ago, telling their wives about their ideas. I wonder if any of their wives were feminists, Native American women, Black, closeted lesbians, or otherwise disposed to feel disqualified from the great white We, the “brotherhood of man,” and his assumed inherent characteristics. His logic. His rationality. His connection with God the Father. His explicable psychology, as mapped by Dr. Freud. Everybody on board for white supremacist education! Be suspicious any time someone tells you their theory about “humanity,” my baby. There is truly no such thing except that we all need to get energy in (food), put energy out (shit, 214 moving around, orgasm, sneezing), some of us make more people while we’re alive, some don’t, and ultimately, we’ll all transform (die). All the rest is stuff we make up, and it may be truly wonderful or stupid stuff, depending on your point of view. The thing about democracy is that in order to produce rational dissent, one must be considered a rational being. In other words, today all you have to do to silence the voice of a people is: make their problems individual, part of their own psychological difficulty, instead of seeing dissent or resistance as a natural response to oppressive structure. I am guilty of this myself. I know I told you and your mother more than once that you were too emotional. I apologize for this. I see it now as a sexist response to the way you were trying to communicate your resistance to what was happening to you. I know I called your Mom irrational, more than once, when she was crying about something I thought was small. I forgot all the time how much pressure she was under to work as much as she did, how hard she fought to make the life we had. I forgot that deep feelings mean something, even when I can’t understand exactly what. I thought I knew what she could do better, and that if she just listened to me, it would work out. It’s not a good way to relate to someone. Watching the men in here deal with their emotions is sometimes demoralizing. The way they express themselves furtively, in secret, breaks my heart. They give each other shoulder and neck rubs sometimes, like in prison. Everyone living needs human touch. I know you understand this. How can people say they care about “rational choice” in our explosive advertising culture? Can you make a rational choice toward disposability, disinfectant, deception, institutional inclusion, easy answers, maximum credit, weight loss, leaving big problems to those above you in a hierarchy that does not require your consent, denial of both the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans and their continued survival and struggle, addiction to distractions, 215 violent war video games that emulate real covert war operations? These are things Americans find rational. Prison, Kindred. Prison is supposedly a rational response to the problems of “crime.” I can tell you decisively that putting human beings in cages is not a rational response to any of our society’s current ills. Shelters are cages too, in case you need a reminder. And I know that most activists think that the goals of all rational actors will be, overall, humanitarian. So all we have to do is educate people about what’s “wrong” with the system and they’ll step up to fix it. But it’s not true. Many people know about what goes on prisons. They do not step up to fix it. Or, they try, but the people who want the prisons and shelters and mental hospitals to function but don’t want to know what happens there, are the ones with the resources to decide whether I eat a peanut butter sandwich or hot lasagna on any given Saturday. Let’s say one definition of rationality is: making decisions toward your own survival. Revolutionary social change agents must assume that the goals of rational actors from oppressed classes will not overlap, overall, with the goals of rational actors from ruling/employer classes. Our interests are simply not the same. This is why Marx predicted, and still people speak of, a class war. People rise up when they are threatened enough and have enough solidarity, or when they are suicidally finished playing along with totalitarian regimes, or when they believe that the struggle might be temporary. It does not feel rational to people who have any preservable privilege to risk their station for the well-being of all. But it is a rational choice, if you believe that your own survival depends on the survival of your larger human community, or even the survival of species diversity on the earth. Point of view, see? Huey P. Newton wrote that revolution is not an action, it is a process. It takes time. It takes many people, many decisions, many mistakes. 216 I wonder how much you identify with what I’m saying. I believe your line of work puts you in contact with real oppression, and also, with the owner class. I think you have seen many things I have not seen. I would love to read your thoughts. I hope I have made sense here. We’ve had a relatively quiet few days here, which is why I can get these thoughts down. Have you heard of Kurt Lewin? Did I tell you about his work? Another time maybe. You should look him up, he’s a real thinker. I’m enjoying reading his old books. Whatever you do, please keep learning and growing. If all goes well, I’ll have a new job soon. I’m still grateful every day that I’m not locked down. I still get a little dizzy with excitement when I think about walking barefoot on grass, or driving on the highway with the windows open. Please write back when you can. I can pick up mail here even if I check out and go somewhere else. Thinking of getting a tent. A friend has one and he’s doing fine, and no one breathes down his neck all day and night like they do here. Then again, he’s out in the madness all the time. The other night things got rowdy and Lionel tried to arrest a park bench. I miss you. All my love, Carl 217 Falling is Rising Angie introduced me to KC, a friend of hers at Pratt who stripped a few nights a week at a club in the city, and she convinced me to audition. It wasn’t that difficult of a conversation. KC told me I was a pretty enough girl and for sure I’d get hired if I could move sexy, Angie told me how much KC made on average per shift, and I considered the inconvenience of shaving most of my body hair off. I was still doing temp work and part-time gigs to make bills. A regular thing sounded great. Angie and I had moved into a tiny two-bedroom basement apartment walking distance from Pratt, and KC spent a lot of time at our place. Sometimes she crashed with us after work so she wouldn’t be late to class in the morning. All three of us went down to the Kitty Stop, KC’s strip club, for my audition. Walking up to the door I wished Angie wouldn’t come in. I must have given her a tiny signal because she patted me on the lower back and told me she’d wait at a bar down the street. “You’re hot as fuck,” she said, very seriously. It turned me on. I felt a little bad about it. “You will get hired.” She pointed at an awning about a block away. “That’s where I’ll be. Come get me.” I thanked her. KC was smiling very sweetly and gesturing for me to follow her up to the bouncer. He was large and round, and he looked me up and down. I’d just gotten a haircut, so I had some funky layers around my face and length in the back. I’d straightened it, and put a little pomade on the ends. I was wearing mascara and black eyeliner, the same eye I did any time I was dressing up because it was the only one I knew for sure I liked. I had clear lip gloss, a modest French manicure, and was wearing jeans, boots, and a tight black T shirt without a bra. I felt good. I thought I looked like Joan Jett with a tan and an ass. The bouncer asked for my ID. 218 “Auditioning?” he said. “Yep,” I said. “Good luck,” he said. “You’ll get it, don’t worry. Have fun.” “Thanks Bear!” KC said to him. “See?” she said to me. “Easy peasy!” I wore a black thong bikini I’d borrowed from KC with a stretchy cocktail dress over top. Easy peasy, I told myself. Remember KC’s advice. Go really slow, breathe a lot, touch yourself. I was terrified entering the stage, but then the music started. The terror was washed out by wave after wave of something like rightness. I reached for the steadying pole, found it, walked around it, leaned out at arms length, and felt very quiet inside. I took everything off but the thong, and kept waiting for a moment of feeling naked that never came. I stayed on the stage for “Head Like A Hole” and “House of the Rising Sun” while the manager sat at the bar, tapped his clipboard, and occasionally wrote things on a form. It was nice to get some air on my breasts for a change. The bar was smaller than I’d imagined. The stage was eight by teen feet with a pole on one half. One little flight of stairs connected the underground dressing room with the stage. The chairs were all black metal and vinyl, some of them fraying or even ripped, with lines of white stuffing pushing out of their cracks. The neon beer signs were hung at regular intervals, along with large posters for out of date Budweiser and Heineken specials. The walls were sided in dark wood, and the bar was made of the same. The varnish seemed thick and slightly gummy. The carpet was a dark maroon. There was one blacklight that ran along the floor of the stage, underneath the tipping bar. I felt very comfortable in there. And the people were right, I did get the job. I also made eighteen dollars in tips during my audition, which seemed pretty good to me. 219 After I got dressed, I sat down with Mark the manager and half-listened to his speech about things I was allowed and disallowed to do in the club. I watched his wispy brown hair. I wondered if he’d fucked any dancers. He wasn’t terrible looking. But he wasn’t sexy. I realized he was expecting me to say something. I asked him to repeat his question. “What’s your stage name?” “Easy Peasy,” I said. “Naw,” he said, smiling. But I really liked it. “Ok,” he said. “Easy Peasy. You can always change it.” And I did, two years later, when I turned twenty-one and moved on to a higher class club that had a full bar, champagne rooms, and richer customers who were willing to spend much more at a time for a night out. Because the manager there wanted me to call myself Lily and it seemed like time for a change anyway. Mark put Easy Peasy on the schedule for three shifts the following week at the Kitty Stop and I took a slip of paper with the dates and times on it and shook his hand and thanked him. I said goodbye to KC in the dressing room. She seemed genuinely happy for me to have gotten the job. She asked to see my schedule. “Try to get in on Thursday nights,” she said. “We’ll work together! It’s a good night.” I thanked her and told her I’d wash her bikini. I walked out of the club feeling light and strong. I found the awning Angie had pointed out. I found her inside. She was sitting with her back to the bar, swiveling just an inch back and forth on her stool, while she read a newspaper. I didn’t feel the horrible need to repress sexual desire. I just felt love for her. She looked up and saw me. Her face beamed back. She shook and folded the paper. She was the only customer in the bar. 220 “I’m a stripper!” I said, and waved my hands in the air. “You win!” she said. She applauded, and the bartender turned from his task at the register and clapped, too. He brought us a round of tequila shots on the house after waving past our fake IDs. They both laughed at my name. I still liked it. “Then fucking do it,” Angie said, and shook her head a little. She dropped into seriousness. “I’m proud of you.” She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “I can’t believe you actually did it! You showed your tits and everything?” “And everything,” I said. I liked the smell of the dressing room at the Kitty Stop. It smelled like girl sweat, cheap sweet fragrance sprays, vinyl, feet, and champagne. The fluorescent lights showed every red bump, every thigh dimple, every bruise. The bruises were my special menace. I tried oil-based face foundation make up to cover my bruises. I tried powder. I tried frozen spoons, massage with arnica gel, vodka poultice, and ignoring them. I took iron pills. I slept with a pillow between my legs. But I always had a bruise, somewhere. Luckily, there were always customers for whom the dirty girl was the fantasy. KC and I should have been in direct competition because we were overall the same type-- white girls with longish straight brown hair, brown eyes--but our differences were complimentary. She had enormous breast implants and I had small natural breasts. She had a tiny flat ass and I had a large apple bottom. She looked like she slept in a tanning bed, and I looked like I stayed indoors all the time. Instead of competing, we usually worked together, snagging a pair of friends or golf buddies together and letting them fantasize about how we could be sisters. But KC hated stripping. She drank a lot. She felt ashamed of it, talked to customers about 221 how she was putting herself through art school and couldn’t wait to quit. She was cynical and funny, utterly honest about how she felt about everything. She was also unscrupulous, self destructive, and brilliantly angry about every particular piece of unwanted sexual contact she ever had in the club. During the first shift we worked together, she asked me fearful questions about what I would do if my family “found out” I was a stripper. “My mother is dead,” I said. “And my dad knows.” “Oh my God I could never tell my parents!” KC said. “Yeah, well,” I said. “Your mom’s dead?” “She died when I was seventeen.” KC lit a joint in the corner of the dressing room, sucked a little too hard on it, and had to flick it out with her long pink nails. She blew her smoke into a toilet paper roll covered with a dryer sheet. “Wow, shit,” she said, “I’m sorry.” “Thanks,” I said, knowing I was now going to have to change the subject to save the conversation, “What’s that for?” I asked, gesturing at the dryer sheet thing. “It hides the smell,” she said. I decided not to argue even though a skunk was now definitely in the room. “How long have you had your implants?” I said. “A little over a year,” she said. “I don’t know what I did without them. I know it’s weird, but I wanted them from when I was like sixteen. I got them even before I started dancing.” And then Claudia entered. She was wearing the tiniest red bikini, a bespoke piece of magic. It was like four triangular pasties on strings, one on each nipple, a miniature merkin, and a triangle acting like a crown on her buttcrack. Her breasts were enormous. Her legs were so long. Her dark brown hair was tinged with a reddish henna. Her irises were so dark 222 her eyes seemed fully black. She had dark red lipstick on. Claudia was selective about who she talked to in the dressing room, and so I knew something important had happened when she turned her attention to me. “Babygirl,” she called to me, “please let me be the first to take care of your eyebrows. You’d be upping all us bitches a notch if you’d just tame those motherfuckers.” “Really?” I’d never thought about my eyebrows before. “You surprised? C’mon girl, it is time.” So I let her pluck my eyebrows for me. Shhhhh, she kept saying, don’t be such a pussy, it gets easier as you do it more, it won’t ever be this bad again, I promise. I couldn’t help the jumping or the tearing up. I bit my lip to stop the whimper sounds. But I also loved the attention, the way she stared intently at my face without looking in my eyes, her voice, our knees touching. That cluster of feelings, a little pain and an avalanche of unfamiliar pleasures, was so much better than the way I’d been feeling before, and it was that simple. I made a choice to be always on Claudia’s side. “You look better,” she said, and told me to look in the mirror. “Wow, I can see my eyes,” I said. Her phone rang. “Hey bitch,” she said. “I’m at work, honey! I just took my break with this new fish who needed some help with her look.” Pause. “That’s right, mama, I’m like the Mother Theresa of paint up here.” No one had ever called me “fish” before. After I let Claudia pull out half my eyebrows, she taught me how to make a perfect smokey eye, how to test lipstick colors against my skin, and how to do contour makeup on my face that helped my features stand out in the dark club. I witnessed two occasions on which customers said or did disrespectful things. Claudia kicked with seven-inch lucite heels. She was the only dancer at the Kitty Stop who was 223 allowed to police her own body without repercussion from management. The rest of us had to ask a bouncer for help if something went wrong. Management was supposed to take our side, but they usually took the customers’. Claudia had her own thing going on there. I used to write Carl snippets of conversation that I thought might entertain him, as if they were scenes from a play. Sometimes I would draw pictures of us, too. (Inside Dressing Room. Claudia and Easy Peasey sit in chairs facing the long make-up mirror. KC stands a few feet from them, in the dancers’ lockers.) Claudia: Damn, I need to get myself a new fuck buddy. (KC lights a joint, blowing the smoke through a dryer sheet into her locker.) Easy: What about that Vegas guy? Claudia: He’s an asshole. Easy: So? KC: (coughing) Sometimes the assholes are the best for that. Claudia: You’re right He’s not an asshole. He can’t take direction. Easy: Oh no, he’s bad in bed? Claudia: You tell me. What’s so difficult about: If I’m getting fucked hard, call me a dirty name. If we’re making love and all the candles are lit...call me a dirty name. Easy: There’s nothing difficult about that. At all. Claudia: That’s what I’m saying, girl. I need a new fuck buddy. I’d been unconsciously not talking about it, but when Carl asked me how I was doing with work, I finally told him I was stripping. He asked if it was going okay. Yep, I said. He told me to pay close attention and take care of myself. 224 I asked him if that was it. “What else did you expect me to say?” I didn’t know. Something more paternal, maybe. More worried. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. He told me he was twelve when he had sex for the first time. “I don’t think I want to hear this story,” I said. “Oh shush,” he said. The girl was older. She thought he was more experienced. They were at a friend’s house, in the bedroom. It was the afternoon, not yet party time. “Come on,” she said to him. They were naked together. He didn’t know what she wanted him to do. “Stick it in,” she said. “I thought I already had,” he said to me. “I just felt warmth and sliding around down there, I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” I was a little grossed out, but now I wanted to know the outcome. “I was making her kind of angry,” he said. “She grabbed me and pushed me in her. I kind of froze. Then, immediately,” I could hear the smile in his voice, “it was over, and I told her that was my first time, and she slapped me.” Why? Because he had been rude. “You’ll remember this for the rest of your life,” she had said, “but I won’t. You just lost your virginity by your damn self.” “Wow,” I said, “that’s brutal, and does not have anything to do with what we’re talking about.” Then came the end of the story. Carl did not have sex again until he was eighteen. He went to a strip club that was also a brothel, with a friend. He had sex with a prostitute who was very kind and informative, gave him confidence, taught him how to use a condom. 225 “Oh my God,” I laughed. “That’s not a real thing!” “It is,” he said. “It’s as real as my life.” I thanked him for not being alarmist or shaming about stripping and got off the phone. I was glad he didn’t tell me he was disappointed in me or that he’d hoped I’d do better for myself. He reached into his own life and found a way to respect me. I realized I’d been avoiding telling him because I was ashamed that I wasn’t headed back to school, in a job that had a future, or something. But Carl didn’t mind. I’d been dancing consistently for over a year when there was some kind of coup in management at the Kitty Stop. Most of the staff were just gone one day, replaced with new faces, and the only “old” people left were all the ones I didn’t like. Changes happened that made it more difficult to enjoy working there. I went in and out of heavy drinking. One night I was drugged. At the time, I felt like the manager was being extremely vigilant and taking care of me. Later, I realized that he probably should have gotten me to the hospital, but chose instead to monitor me himself, because he didn’t want consequences. A dancer got kicked off the schedule, presumably in retaliation for her asking to see her “Independent Contractor” contract, the one she’d signed when she’d been hired. There was a big renovation that gave us a second stage, a second bar, and a second dressing room. The management arbitrarily decided which girls went into the old dressing room, and who went into the nicer, newer dressing room. Suddenly, we had an invisible class structure out on the floor with customers, ambient resentments, arbitrariness and anxiety about a conflict that seemed constantly just under the surface. KC got moved to the nicer dressing room but Claudia didn’t. Management had informed me I was to move, too, and I just ignored the instructions and stayed in the old dressing room until Claudia hadn’t shown 226 up to work for a month and I was invited into a champagne room with a girl who used the nicer dressing room and she decided we should work together a few nights this week while these guys were in town for this thing. I took the opportunity, started using the nicer room, and we made good money together. Claudia didn’t respond to my messages. We didn’t have any mutual friends. I asked other people at the club about her and got shrugs. For my twenty-first birthday, Carl sent me a necklace made of paper beads. It arrived the day before I was going to go out for my first legal drinking. Each bead was individually rolled into a tight coil, wrapped around itself, and glued. They were surprisingly solid-feeling and made a great sound when they hit a table, almost like rubber. The note read: Dear Kindee, These beads are made using an old guerrilla technique--I learned how to spin paper into these tiny rolls to get messages in and out of prison. A friend of mine started making these with scraps that blow around in the morning line at the free laundry. I designed the clasp. I hope you are celebrating your freedom today and everyday! My friend just lost his bed at the shelter because we tried to come back fifteen minutes after they closed the doors for the night. They make it hard to live here. So now we are going to go for a stroll and see what we can find. Missing seeing your face. Love, Carl There was no return address. The necklace clasp was a roughly sanded and twisted hook made from aluminum can tabs. I wore the necklace out on my birthday night. It got commented on, I’m sure of that. I was drunk before we hit the bars, though, and didn’t 227 remember most of my interactions. Angie told me the following day that I’d said “depressing” things about my dad living on the street in Los Angeles to anyone who noticed the necklace. I kept it in a box in the bathroom after that. I left the Kitty Stop for a nicer club, a few months after 9/11, and I didn’t see Claudia or KC or any of the Kitty Stop girls again. I moved to a higher-end club near Wall Street, because I’d been told I would make twice what I made at the Kitty Stop by a stripper I met at some party and because I’d heard it was easy to get a sugar daddy there. I wore the same outfit I’d worn at the Kitty Stop: black patent leather boots, black thong, black bra, long black silk robe. Sometimes I added thigh-highs, a garter belt, or a cocktail dress in lieu of the robe. People talked about the robe. I’d heard so many stories from girls who saw their customers outside. I’d gone to parties, I’d gotten paid to strip for groups of bachelors, but I’d never taken the offers for more money if I’d fuck. Finally I realized I didn’t have a good reason for it, and I got curious. And I was tired of dancing. Dating for pay seemed obvious. I just had to find the right guy. There was no fanfare after I found him. It was Angie who pointed it out: does this mean you’re a bona fide hooker now? I guess so, I said. I hadn’t thought of it that way. As long as you’re happy, she said. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been happy for more than a few moments at a time, but that was so clearly not my customers’ fault. Most of them, anyway. And I was sure I enjoyed the guy I’d chosen to pop my pro cherry with. I didn’t know how to explain it to anyone. It didn’t insult me to get money for being 228 someone’s favorite person to relax with. I liked being good at sex. Brennan treated me like a person who was on her way to something else. He was in finance, a Wall Street guy, and I never understood his work but he had to be on his laptop by 7AM every day. He told me he had followed a path that was given to him by his family. He recognized that I had not. He told me I was surprising and interesting and powerful. When he touched my legs in our first champagne room, his hands were strong, warm, and sure. I liked it. Within weeks, we were going for drinks before my shifts. He would leave me for an hour while I primped in the dressing room, then meet me in a champagne room. One night, I broke the rules, kissed him spontaneously. “What did you make here on an average night before me?” he asked later, while he was settling his bill. “It doesn’t work that way,” I said. “What?” He furrowed slightly. He scribbled a tight spiral on his receipt and handed it back to the cashier. He thanked her politely and she said it was always her pleasure. “Every night is different and sometimes you can’t explain why you make money or not,” I tried to organize a more respectable explanation, “so, you average your income by the month.” ‘So how much do you have to earn, on a night when the signs are pointing to your doing very well, for you to feel good about working?” He reached out to his right and alighted on his champagne glass. He drew it into our eyesight, and sipped it without breaking his gaze. I felt it in my clit like he’d touched me. We strolled away from the cashier and toward the door. The house lights were coming on. “A grand,” I said, which was a total lie. “Done,” he said. “What does that mean?” I asked, suddenly aware of where his hands were, the heaviness 229 of his belt, anything that might hurt me. “It means I will buy you out of your next shift, and we will see how we feel about it, yes?” I knew I would prefer to spend an evening with him alone than at the club trying to seduce new people. I said yes. He made love like a husband, holding my neck, gently propped on his pillows, pushing at a ninety-degree angle to my hips, not quite slow enough to tantalize, not quite fast enough to satisfy. I resolved to help him realize his potential. Fun matters. It motivates people. It relaxes people. It helps people treat each other well. It distracts them from pain. Sometimes, it provides openings for new solutions when a problem seems insurmountable. When I focused on the fact of Mom dying, I couldn’t have any fun. Even though she would tell me to leave the hospital and go enjoy myself, I couldn’t. Carl would tell me to leave the prison visit and enjoy myself, but I couldn’t. I didn’t understand how they could ask me to do anything enjoyable in the midst of their and my suffering. Eventually I came to understand that they wanted me to grow stronger. That they wanted me to take care of myself. That they hoped I’d make a life for myself that included happiness. Those trips to In N Out Burger on cleaning days when I was a kid? Those were an enactment of something Carl called Fun on Principle. Yes, you need to get serious and put in your work, Carl said. But that comes easily to you, baby. What you need to grow on is how to enjoy yourself. You won’t last a minute in the struggle if you don’t know how to make yourself feel better when the hurt comes from the outside. Find things you like to do and do them. If someone hurts you, get an apology and a new plan of action, or leave. Keep yourself strong and healthy. You have to make time for your kind of fun, your real fun, not someone else’s fun. 230 Tramp Stamp I made the decision to let Angie know I was attracted to her because the desire to kiss and touch and get in bed with her had become a daily problem, finally. I thought she might stop coming into my room without a shirt on, casually spooning yogurt into her pretty mouth while she talked about class. I thought she might have some compassion for my struggle to contain and manage myself. Instead, she felt betrayed. Like I had been getting some lascivious pleasure from proximity with her that I’d been secretly hoarding. No, I told her, I’ve mostly just been suffering. She didn’t understand. She called me dishonest. She wondered what my agenda was. We were in our tiny apartment. She sat curled into herself on her bed, hugging her knees. I sat on an egg crate she used as a stool. I didn’t know what to do. I had no agenda, I told her. She accused me of trying to manipulate her into “playing wife” and “playing house” and fulfilling my fucked up childhood trauma sufferer’s need for family. Which may have not been totally untrue, but it was shocking to hear from her. Her face was harder than I’d ever seen it. She told me it was scary, that I could keep that information from her for so long. She acted like she hadn’t known. Hadn’t played up, or flirted, or enjoyed my attention at all for all those years. Hadn’t used my affirmation to feel good about herself. Since high school. Hadn’t she wanted me first? I thought she’d been sort of waiting for me to come around that night on the patio. “I think you’re overreacting,” I said. “I’m not lying to you, and I never did. You were the first girl I ever felt this way about! I didn’t even know I liked girls until I wanted to kiss you when we were fourteen.” “Well, I didn’t think I was one of the girls you liked. You hid yourself from me,” she said, 231 her eyes meeting mine. I couldn’t hold her gaze. “You hid and you lied and you did it so you could stay close to me, and that’s the meanest thing. You didn’t just give me the truth and let me choose what I wanted to do. I’ve been open with you about myself, and you haven’t.” I said I thought that was what I was doing now. “God DAMN it,” she said, pressing her knuckles to her eyes. She took a breath. She was quiet. I looked at my feet. I had my toenails painted a dayglo pink that really popped under the blacklight at the club. She asked me to look at her. “I don’t think you should live here anymore,” she said, and uncoiled herself. She went into the bathroom before I knew what to say. I waited for a few minutes and then realized she might be hiding in there until I left her bedroom. So I left her bedroom and went to my room. I wasn’t sure how I got so stupid. I started packing. I made an inventory of people I might be able to stay with. I tried to understand what was happening. Was Angie going to stop being my friend? Would I ever see her again? The panic rose. My eyes and nose burned. Idiot. You never should have told her, one voice said. You never should have NOT told her, another voice said. She’s right, you lied. You started lying in LA, back when she asked you to come with her to New York. I was not ready to accept the wisdom of the second voice. I packed up angrily, hurt by Angie’s response, terrified of not having her to come home to at the end of a double shift. I wanted the late night ice cream, I wanted to be in the room with her while she made art. Another person taking themselves away from me at the moment I’d tried to get closer. I’d gotten so used to it, the sense that I was attracted to her and she wasn’t attracted to me, that it didn’t even seem like a problem. If anything, it was just my cross to bear. I told her about it because it had become kind of overwhelming lately. Like I thought about her all the time, and even when I was dating or messing around with other girls, I was thinking things 232 like “I wish Angie wanted this with me,” over and over. Maybe internally I’d just hit a wall. Wanted to grow, was the way Carl would have put it. The morning after I told her I was in love with her and she got angry, Angie left me a note in the kitchen: K- Please plan to move out within the next two weeks. I’m going to stay with Kayla most nights until you have a place. I love you. I’ll call when I’m ready to be friends again. Please take care of yourself. A I packed up what little stuff I had in that one day, called one of the bouncers from the club who had a truck, and we got everything into a storage space ten minutes away, before six PM. Lingering among Angie’s smell and tastes and stuff for two weeks was not an option. I didn’t yet know where I’d sleep that night. I figured I’d drop in to work and see if anyone invited me over after closing. My plan was to take a subway into this gentrifying neighborhood in Bushwick, get a really good tattoo from a place a dancer friend had recommended, eat some fancy food, and then never go back there, or back to the apartment I shared with Angie, again. I packed my sketchbook, a black sweater, and three hundred dollars in twenties into my bag. No one came with me. I drank an inch of whiskey from Angie’s bottle of Jim Beam, before I went, for the pain. I exited the subway at Morgan Street and followed the directions. I spotted a magical- 233 looking storefront. A winding vine was painted all around the floor-to-ceiling glass. In graceful script, the sign read: Drink Me! A Juice House. It reminded me of my Mom’s homemade cleaning solutions. I thought, I should get something healthy in me. Inside, I found large terra-cotta tile flooring and a purple couch. The barista greeted me enthusiastically and encouraged me to take my time reading the menu. He wore a black apron like they did at fine dining restaurants. It had straws sticking out of a pocket. I ordered a shot of some special juice tonic with cayenne pepper in it that promised to invigorate and replenish me. It made my eyes water before it was in my mouth. It cost seven dollars and tasted like dirt on fire. “Jesus!” I said, and slammed the paper cup down. “You didn’t tell me!” “Yeah!” said the barista, smiling under his bushy beard. “Wakes you up, right?” I was still catching my breath. I thought I might throw up. “Water,” I whispered. He got me some. I drank it. Things moved around inside me. “You got so much good stuff in there,” barista boy said. “Ginger, lemon, cayenne, that’s the part you’re freaking out about right now, tumeric, royal jelly, omegas, amino acids...” I realized he probably didn’t know what he was talking about. Fancy juice was just another way for rich people to get high and feel righteous. I suddenly, intensely wished they’d just admit it. Maybe with some honesty in advertising I could enjoy the feeling of having pounded enough capsaicin to shrivel a housecat. I looked in the refrigerated case at the prepackaged juices. “This green one is nine bucks?” I said, opening the door. He confirmed the price. I shut the door. “That’s more expensive than the bottle of Advil I’m going to use this week,” I said. “Without the added benefit of relieving pain.” “It’s worth it,” he said. 234 “Maybe for someone,” I said. “I guess ginger is better for me than whiskey. Can I get another glass of water, with some ice and straw and a lid?” “Sure,” he said, slightly deflated. He gave it to me. I left and went two doors down to a bar that had no windows. I ordered a beer, pulled out my sketchbook and started doodling for the tattoo. I wanted some eyelets and lacing on the small of my back, not too low down, so that the ends of the ties wouldn’t be below my crack. I wanted it to look like vintage corsetry. When I had a design that looked close to what I wanted, I walked into the shop and asked if anyone was free. The person running the shop that day was named Nicky, had thick plugs in their ears, which wasn’t nearly as cool back then, a short military buzz cut, Dickies held low on their hips by a thick leather belt, and art on their neck that was so detailed I couldn’t tell what it was at first. Eventually I stared hard enough to see it was a mass of seahorses. Nicky was surprised I had no other tattoos. She was a little worried I didn’t understand the “implications” of my choice of placement. She wasn’t the artist-friend my dancer-friend had sent me to, but I liked her. “People have stereotypes,” she said carefully, “about lower-back tattoos. I just want to make sure you understand what kind of ideas they might have. I mean, people have stereotypes about butches, too, and I flag the shit out of it anyway, because, you know, that’s me. But I’m just checking.” “I’m already a tramp,” I said. “I want to flag it.” She had no idea what to say to me, but obviously she was not going to turn me away since I had the dollars in my hand and was old enough. So, Nicky locked the front door, set up the table for me, and started to work on a drawing, with my sketchbook next to her. I sat on a slightly sticky vinyl couch and let my mind reach to Carl, and the drawings he 235 used to send me from Corcoran. Maybe I should get one of his pictures tattooed on me, I thought. He’d made some gorgeous and heartbreaking still life drawings of his cell when he was in solitary. I could get one on my calf. I wondered if he was ok today. I realized I should tell him I was no longer living with Angie. I didn’t want to try to get in touch and fail. But that was how the game was played, with him. I pulled out my phone, dialed the last number I’d had for him, and left a voice mail after the standard female instructional voice told me to. I told him I had to move out of Angie’s, that I was still looking for a place, and that I wanted to check in and see how he was doing. I told him to call me. I had his favorite Skid Row payphone’s number saved too, but that was for when he called me, not the other way around. He may never get my message. It was hard to keep track of when he had a phone. “What do you think of this?” Nicky said, holding up a drawing. It was perfect, and I told her so. The lacing looked alive, like it had real weight, and I wanted it on me. I had a surge of terror, when I lay on my belly on the table. “I’m scared now,” I said. “That’s ok,” she said. Then came the part where the buzzing needle entered, and the pain, the oddest and most delightful pain. Like someone massaging deep into my muscle, and cutting me too. Nicky kept asking me if I was doing okay. It struck me as unutterably sweet. “I’m great,” I said, in awe. I couldn’t remember feeling that good for a long time. It took about an hour. By the end of it, I had decided it was all for the best, me and Angie taking a break from seeing each other for a while. And I had decided to seduce Nicky. So I kept my eyes on hers during the conversation about aftercare. I invited her to get a celebratory drink with me. She looked at the clock. The shop was supposed to stay open for another hour, but she didn’t have any appointments, so she closed up. We went back to the 236 bar I’d been in earlier. We drank. We talked about tattoos, mostly she talked and I listened and stroked her knee. She was so kind, and so excited about what she did. I learned about white ink, and debates among artists about the origins of traditional designs. I asked her if she was seeing anyone, and she said no, not right now, with that strain in her voice that people get when they are recently broken up. “Take me home with you?” I said. She looked a little shocked. “Really?” “Yeah, really.” I figured we both could use some sex and some companionship, and I needed a place to sleep. I did not share the last part. I was right about us both needing the sex. Nicky was such a nice person, and I could tell by the way she fucked that she had been in a relationship for a long time with a person she’d really loved. She had a vocabulary of affection in her hands. She even cradled my neck as I came, so I could shudder as hard as I wanted to without bashing our chins together. She fucked me without hurting my tattoo. In the morning, she cleaned and inspected it. I stood naked in her shower, and she sat on the toilet so my ass was right in her face. “Looks beautiful,” she said, with a smile in her voice. I shook it a little. “God you’re sexy,” she said. And rubbed up the sides of my thighs. She asked if she could taste me. I bent over and opened up, held on to the tub, and enjoyed her. Carl and I talked on the phone that night. “Angie kicked me out,” I said. I was drinking in a bar a few blocks from work. Sitting by the window with a beer. “Angie did? What happened?” he knew she was my rock. 237 “I told her I was in love with her and she got mad,” I said. “That sounds like a Neil Diamond song,” he said. “Fuck you!” I said. “I’m sorry honey, you’re hurting, I can hear it. I shouldn’t have said that. How long have you been in love with her? Long time?” “Yeah, I guess so.” “You two are deep friends,” he said. “I know it hurts now, but I believe you’ll come around to some kind of relationship that suits you both.” “I don’t know,” I said. “She thinks I lied to her.” “Did you?” I told him I hadn’t thought about it that way. I thought I was just keeping my feelings to myself because she didn’t want to deal with them. “I guess that counts as lying,” I said. I felt suddenly very nauseated. Panicked, even. Like I needed to call her up and apologize. “I gotta go,” I said. “Ok, I’ll call you next week,” he said. “Hang in there sweet one. Maybe this is a good time to come visit me?” I could afford it right now. And he’d been staying at an apartment, housesitting. “You’re still at that place in South Central?” I asked. “I’ve got it for another two months,” he said. “It’s got a backyard, a lemon tree, and a dog. It’s nice here, honey, you should come. Come spend some time with your old man.” I told him I’d think about it. And I did, for about another two hours, before I bought a ticket. I called Angie and she didn’t pick up. I sent her a text apologizing for being dishonest with her and letting her know that I understood why she felt that way. Told her I was going to go 238 visit Carl for a while. I knew I’d come back to New York. I liked it there. I didn’t feel “done” with it. I was making money at the club, and seeing my Wall Street guy and a few other people on the side. I could find a place to stay. I always had. Angie wrote back: Thanks for the apology. Say hi to Carl for me. Let me know when you’re back. I stayed with Carl in his little one-bedroom for four days. I took meticulous care of my tramp stamp while it was healing, and felt sure that having that tattoo saved me from something dark and nihilistic that had been threatening to suck me under. I loved Nicky’s art, and craned my neck to look at it in the mirror every day before I got dressed. Carl and I talked. He was working at a non profit downtown, on Skid Row. It was a housing advocacy group, and he was happy running legal clinics and attending protests and teaching political development classes where people read Angela Davis with him. We drank together, smoked blunts, went for walks with the dog. He looked good. His hair was graying and his hands were more wrinkled than I remembered from the last time I’d seen him, but he seemed happy, in a quieter way. He didn’t have a plan for where he was going to live once that apartment-sitting gig was up. I didn’t worry about that. I told him about my feelings for Angie and he was kind. He asked me if I was ever attracted to men and I said yes, thought about Nicky, and then added, “But I really prefer women, I think.” “Do you think of yourself as gay?” Carl asked. I told him I’d never been gay enough to call myself gay. “But you’re not straight,” he said. No. 239 “So, bisexual?” “I guess so,” I said. “Sure.” I got myself a couple back-to-back shifts for when I was home and made some plans to spend a weekend with Brennan, while sitting on Carl’s temporary back porch. I told Brennan I needed a hotel room for a week because my housing situation was up in the air. He got me a room at some old executive’s hotel a short train ride from the club. I thanked him a lot for that. I told Carl about the gift. “Thank the Lord for the sex industry,” he said. We high-fived. “Your mom would hate me for saying that,” he said. “Good thing she can’t care,” I said. He gave me a look, but he didn’t say anything. “I like what I do,” I said. “Most of the time. And that’s pretty good, for a job.” “I know honey. It’s just the kind of job you can’t do forever.” “No one does their job forever.” “Ain’t that the truth.” On my last night in town, Carl asked me if I ever thought about going back to school. We drank Coronas on the porch as the LA sunset slid from orange to blue. “Sometimes,” I said, “but not often.” “I think about going back,” he said. “But no one wants a violent felon in their program.” “You don’t think you could make a good case for yourself being rehabilitated?” I said. He shook his head. “I got real strikes, Kindee. People don’t forgive assault against an 240 officer, no matter how far in your past.” Of course that was probably true. “I think I’d probably want to do biology if I went back,” I said. “Or art. Like painting and drawing.” “Why not take a class or two at a community college while you’re working?” he said. “That’s a leading question, ‘why not,’” I said. “There are lots of reasons why not.” He smiled at me. “Maybe you’d like law school,” he said. “Maybe you’d like law school,” I said. “I don’t like school, period.” “I know you say that,” he said. “But you’re diligent with things that interest you. I don’t think you ever had teachers who really encouraged you.” “Besides you, you mean,” I said. “Besides me.” I’d never told him about my foot fetish affair with Mr. East, and I didn’t then. “I had a good bio teacher in high school,” I said. “It’s why I still think about biology sometimes.” “New York State has a solid community college system, is all I’m saying. An education is something no one can ever take from you.” He’d been saying that since I could remember. He drove me to the airport in the homeowners’ Honda. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen him drive a car. “Good to see you,” I told him. “You’re my heart,” he said. When I got back to New York, I saw Nicky a few more times before she started dating someone who wanted to be serious and monogamous. That meant she had to lose my number. 241 I was, per usual, happy for her and annoyed that I didn’t get to date the new person, too. Why not all three of us? Why not? No one ever had a satisfying answer. It just wasn’t what people did. But it could be, I said. “Well, if she ever wants a threesome,” I said. “I think I’d probably let her pick the girl,” she said. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “If she wants a threesome with a guy, probably you should let her pick the guy, too.” “That’s never happening,” she said. “Take care of yourself,” she said. “Hope I see you again sometime.” “Sure,” I said. “You too.” Angie and I didn’t see each other for two months. I’d been couch surfing, looking for a stable situation, working, and trying to handle my pain. She called me late one night when I wasn’t working, told me she missed me and wanted to hang out. We were both awkward. We drank. We drank more. I woke up in her bed with her, still dressed, but with a sinking sadness. I had no idea if we’d kissed or touched each other in any new way. All those fantasies, and I wasn’t even there. “Fuuuuuuck,” Angie said, and put her hands up to her face in the morning. “Fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuuuuck.” “Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t ask her what had happened between us. I bet she didn’t remember either. And I felt so tired. She fumbled around a little and checked her phone. “Goddammit!” she said and lurched up and over to her bathroom. She started the shower. 242 “I have to be in class in 20 minutes!” My head hurt. I wanted to watch her shower, but if we hadn’t had sex, I shouldn’t, and we should talk? I couldn’t decide what to do. Angie breezed past me, ruffled the back of my hair, and the air was sweeter where she’d been. “I think I’m going to go to an AA meeting today,” I said, and I met her eyes. She was surprised. “I’m sick and tired enough, I think.” There were always fliers for AA in the dressing room at the club. It had been in the back of my mind for years. She put a neutral face on. “I think you’ll probably hate the God stuff, but you should try whatever you want.” I didn’t know what to say to her. What did she know about it? Did she think I shouldn’t go? It was confusing. I crawled back under the covers and shut my eyes. After a few more minutes of dashing around the bedroom, she left. I told myself two things. First: it is time to stop hurting yourself with wanting Angie. Second: Her opinion about AA is irrelevant to whether it can help you. It’s your pain to feel. So really, try whatever you want. But, by the time I got to the basement of the Methodist church just two stops away from my favorite pedicure place, my resolve had faltered. My self loathing had arrived. I was one of the quiet people who held tightly to myself in the back row. I was prickly and scared and burning my own guts out with shame. I wore all black without planning it. My feet were exposed because I’d gotten a pedicure that afternoon, but it was obviously too cold for sandals. I felt somehow that I was just like Carl. I felt crazily young and stupid and sad and alone. And, I thought, my mom died almost six years ago. I should be better by now. I drank bitter burnt coffee and chewed on the edges of the cup, then did it again. I tried to 243 look at everyone without making eye contact, so I could figure out who to sit next to and who not to. Then I saw there were twice as many chairs as people, and I relaxed just a tiny bit. There was something about that, like when a super sexy stripper’s eyeliner is just a bit off, and you feel like, oh, that’s right, this is just a person. This was just a room full of people, I told myself. People who have some things in common. I didn’t take a chip. I didn’t tell anyone it was my first meeting. I stayed wrapped in on myself in a corner chair. Two people tried to start conversations with me and then gently moved on after they let me know I was welcome. The only requirement was a desire to stop drinking, they said. I had a lot of desires. I supposed that was among them. The desire to be drinking right now was also one of mine. Just hearing all the words and sounds people were making was almost too much. The volumes of grief and loss, the museums of fear. One of the meeting leaders casually mentioned that his brother and father died in a car crash when he was a teenager, on the way to his story about how the program saved his life. There was a visiting speaker. That person looked like he could be teaching high school biology, like Mr. East. He said we all show up here dragging a closet. In it are shelves full of lies. Recovery requires a process of dusting all those lies off, looking at them, reckoning with them, to try and throw them out for good. What can become overwhelming is doing this while at the same time trying to enact new behaviors in the present, new ways to handle hurt at fresh rejections or obstacles. As you progress in your recovery, your closet gets lighter and lighter. When you clear out the last lie from the past, and your conscience can begin to flourish again, your closet may even feel like it has disappeared. You feel magical and free and filled with gratitude for life and like you can connect, fully connect with other people, maybe 244 for the first time. Then, something scares you, and you tell another lie. Your closet reappears. It is horrible to find yourself at this point. Many of us go into denial, seriously consider picking up, or enter our relapse at this point, he said. Here’s the irony: someone outside of you sees that you have a near-empty closet and thinks you have it easy. Someone outside of you may not understand what the big deal is, of course you relapsed or lied or covered your ass or whatever because you are an alcoholic, and you’re doomed to be that way, it’s pretty good when you’re not doing it all the time. But you are filled with shame because you remember what it felt like to be free and you hate yourself for sabotaging your own happiness. When we come together dragging our closets, we help each other overcome the shame that keeps us from cleaning them out. And then he said something about God that I had to tune out. He crossed his arms over his small potbelly and sat back. Most of the people who shared started with “I liked your image,” or “I really resonated with what you said,” a compliment directed at the meeting leader. Then, some sentences about what was bothering them. Just before or just after a timer went off, there would usually be a crack in their voice, when gratitude came. I resisted feeling aligned with the people, but I couldn’t stop identifying with them. A war for control happened inside me. I was afraid of being taken in and yet also felt, disturbingly, like I already belonged. I told myself I was ok. I was at least not suicidal. But in that room, people kept talking about feeling better, and I wanted what they had. I wondered if any of them were staying on couches, living out of duffel bags, like me. The person sitting next to me started talking and I watched her perfect hot pink acrylic 245 nails scratch at her black leggings absently while she spoke. Her parents had just come to visit. It was a terrible time at work. Her father looked old and it made her feel bad. “I’m really struggling,” she said. I sneaked a look at her face. She looked rich. I judged her. Of course you want to get drunk, I thought. Your life is parasitic. I imagined her walking by Carl on her way to some gallery show in downtown LA and feeling threatened just because he was there, being a Black man. He might be earnestly talking to someone about politics and she would be assuming his only purpose there was to harm her. What if she ran into him in the gallery? Would she recognize him from the street? Would she relax a little, think she was a better person, for being at an art show with a Black person attending? I tried to control my thoughts. I reminded myself that I didn’t know her. The people at the front started doing housekeeping and I passed the basket without adding money. “Now we have a special time to encourage newcomers to share,” said the guy who’d told the closet story. My hand was up before I thought about it. I put it down. Of course I was afraid. But he’d already seen me. “Hi, what’s your name?” he said. “Hi, I’m Kindred,” I said. I did not say, and I’m an alcoholic. “Hi, Kindred” the room said, in that special monotone. “I’m kind of in love with my best friend,” I said. I choked on it a little. “We got drunk last night and it was a bad idea. I guess I drink almost every day. I drink at work, but I work in a bar, so. I don’t know. I’m tired. My mom died. It’s hard. That’s all.” I made eye contact with the leader. My eyes welled. I looked at the ground. Someone else 246 started sharing. Her brother had died yesterday, from complications of a sudden viral infection. He confessed to her that he’d been lying to his family forever, that he was gay, that he hated himself, that he’d tried to be “good,” and he just needed someone to know. He made her swear she would never tell their parents. She was numb. Her voice was flat. “I went back to work today and didn’t tell anyone my brother is dead. He was gay, and now he’s dead, and he was never happy, and I can’t say anything.” But of course, she had said something, and it seemed to send a ripple of love and sympathy through the group. By the end of the meeting, I was hungry and chastened. It works if you work it, they said. I heard Claudia in my head: “Yes, work it girl, work it!” I sent Angie a message: I’m sorry for stuff. Let’s get coffee soon? She didn’t write back. I wanted to be finished with the part of my life where I struggled all the time. I wanted it so bad. I couldn’t figure out what to do differently, though. I didn’t know what I needed to do to get the change I wanted. So I took risks. I tried things. I let people convince me or pay for me or take me along. I had so few feelings besides a bleak despair or a quiet horror I started to develop tastes based on things that brought me relief. When something brought me real pleasure, not just relief from suffering, I was astonished and disoriented. I got taken by it. I tried to figure out how to have it more often. Later, Nautica would call this period of my life the Hall of Mirrors. You saw yourself, but you saw yourself all misshapen, she said. When the whole time, you were already perfect. 247 Self Defense When I say “I am miserable,” I know it is possible that elsewhere, other people are not. When I say “Everyone is miserable,” I have become a narcissist. It is simply never true, at any given moment, that everyone is miserable all at the same time. Someone is always having a better time than the miserable among us. When I say “I am miserable because everyone around me is miserable,” I am blaming my misery on other people, but also, I am acknowledging that I’ve chosen to surround myself with miserable people. It’s a special feeling, to be bored of your own misery and yet, still panicking most of the time because it hurts so badly. Because people can tell and they treat you differently than “normal,” like a baby duckling or a piece of shit, depending. I got a room in an apartment shared by other dancers at my club. We drank wine together and cooked spaghetti and talked shit. A guy got his finger into my asshole one night during a lap dance, and although I got away from him, I decided I should get more proactive about my safety since the management and bouncers at the clubs never had my back. I didn’t understand, prior to arrival, that the weekend self defense class I’d signed up for was going to be taught by a cop. The hundred and twenty dollars wasn’t refundable, and, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen was rummaging in her bag when I walked in the door, so, I decided to stay. The class was held in a high school gym and had ten students. Seven of them looked young. A few of the students seemed to know each other, and spoke together quietly in Chinese. They wore workout clothes, one with pandas, another with sequined hearts, and the third with cheerful acrobatic anime characters. Another young woman, also Asian, was alone, 248 dressed all in black with shit-kicking boots on, and her face was serious. Then there was me, one older African American woman with salt and pepper braids tied into a big knot on the top of her head, and the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, who introduced herself to the circle as “Nautica.” She had bright almond color eyes, like Carl’s, and little white freckles on her nose and cheeks, and she sat next to the older woman, on the other side of me. Nautica’s kinky hair was pulled back into a pouf at her crown. “I’m a black queen,” she liked to say, “but secretly I’m a mutt, and that means I’m going to outlive everyone.” I didn’t know all this yet. I just knew she was distractingly beautiful. She had bright expressions and strong arms. She walked her high, round ass through the room with a swish that people had to try not to look at. I was distracted. I had to keep telling myself I was in the class for a very, very serious reason. The teacher, Karen, looked like a butch who chose her style in 1980. She had a wedding ring and talked about her “old man,” so then I imagined she never got out of being married because had kids--she had kept her sandy brown bowl cut, she had a huge face and thick hands. She wore a maroon collared shirt and told us that she was always angry that more women didn’t know how to take care of themselves when the “bad guys got them.” The first exercise was about using our diaphragm to project our voice. We put our hands up in unison and yelled “NO!” at the front of the room. She kept telling one of the students, who was wearing a panda on her shirt, to “dig deeper” for her voice. “You got to let ‘em know!” she bellowed. “We don’t scream here, we YELL.” “No!” tried Panda shirt. “No, no no!” She still sounded like a child. I cringed a bit for her and for Karen. They were coming at this whole thing from very different perspectives. Nautica tapped me on the shoulder when it was time to partner up to practice escaping a choke hold. 249 “You wanna work together?” she said. Did I ever. “Sure,” I said. Trying to be cool. We introduced ourselves. I wanted to say something smart about her name but nothing came. “Kindred’s a unique name,” she said to me. “Where’s it from?” “My mom just thought of it, I guess,” I said. I wanted to tell her everything. Until then, I was picking up on the moves pretty quickly. Suddenly, I felt blank and clumsy. “Begin!” yelled Karen. She started wandering around, checking on the pairs. Nautica said “May I?” and when I nodded, she put her hands around my neck. “Go ahead,” she said. “Oh right,” I said, and did a sloppy version of the escape technique. She smiled. “Try again?” “Yeah, ok,” I said. I did it right the second time. “You do me now,” she said. My insides jumped. Yes, please. I put my hands around her neck. She shouted “NO!” and broke my hold. Karen looked over at us, “Nice voice!” she said to Nautica, like a coach. We practiced a few more times. Then Karen told us all to sit in a circle. Nautica sat next to me. “Let’s talk about why women get attacked,” said Karen, and she slapped her thighs. “Anyone want to guess?” I raised my hand. She pointed at me. “One reason is because we live in a culture that supports rapists and blames victims,” I said. “And another is that rape is a tactic of war.” Nautica gave me a surprised, approving look. “I don’t know about all that,” said Karen. “Women get raped because they aren’t prepared 250 to fight back.” Nautica raised her hand. “That sounds like victim-blaming to me,” she said. “Like Kindred said,” she added. “Look,” said Karen. “You came to this class to learn how to repel an attack, am I right?” We all nodded and muttered some form of assent. “Then trust me,” Karen said. “I’ve been a cop for twenty-five years. You would not believe the shit I’ve seen, ok? I’m telling you that women don’t fight back when they should, and it’s a problem.” Ok, I thought. I can agree that’s a problem. “So you don’t just come in here and yell ‘no!’ and punch a bad guy in his pads a couple of times over the weekend and then go back into your life acting exactly the same, ok?” Karen said. “You all need to practice what you learn here, but never, ever practice with someone who hasn’t done any training. This is about changing the way you carry yourselves. You need to know that you’ll defend yourself out there, not just in here. You’re learning street effective techniques, ladies. Use them carefully, but use them. Make a friend in the class and get together to practice.” After the class, I looked at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and pep talked myself into asking Nautica if she wanted to grab some food. She looked at her watch and then said yes! We went to a taco place near the gym. Over carne asada and Diet Coke, we studied for our certification quiz and tried to get to know each other. We asked each other about strike points and defensive maneuvers. We drew circles on copies of body outlines: weak places, nerve clusters. We drew tattoos and penises and breasts and eventually, the pates looked like fifteen- year-old boys had emptied libidinal buckets on them. She asked, “What do you do for money?” and I told her I was a stripper. 251 “I knew I liked you,” she said. “I’m a dominatrix. And the headmistress at my dungeon.” “I want to learn how to do that,” I said, before I’d thought about it. “The dominatrix part.” I couldn’t defend not telling her that I was also a prostitute. I clenched and said it. “I’m also, uh, a regular hooker,” I said. “Like, I see guys outside the club?” “Girl you’re brave,” she said. “And in my dungeon we say what you do is full-service sex work, vanilla work, because some of the girls don’t like words like ‘prostitute’ or ‘hooker’ used about them. You’re like a sugar baby, or girlfriend experience, or whatever?” “What is that?” She smiled. “You go on dates where you have to laugh at the jokes and wear nice clothes?” “Totally.” “Do you have a website?” “Nope. I get my guys through the club usually. See them on the side until it ends.” She whistled through her teeth. “I’m serious, I think that’s brave. It’s more emotional mess than I’m willing to handle.” “Thanks,” I said. “No one has ever said that to me.” “I’ll teach you to domme if you want,” she said. She pulled a card from her bag and gave it to me. A photo of a modern, low-light interior, paddles and floggers hanging from the wall. On the back, it said La Jouissance: New York, and there was an email address. She said she liked what I said in class, about why women get raped. She asked me if I’d ever been raped. “Not really,” I said. She laughed. “What the hell does that mean?” She didn’t apologize for laughing. “I’ve had a lot of sex I didn’t want to have, but nothing seriously violent?” I said. “I’ve had a lot of other bullshit, like guys touching, fingers in my bikini at work, um, waking up next to 252 someone after blacking out and stuff like that.” I paused. “But I’ve never called any of it ‘rape’ in my head.” “I think any sex you don’t want to have is rape,” she said, “even if you’re not willing to call it rape, I would be. And dudes sticking fingers in your body at work is straight up assault, if not also rape.” There was something comforting in hearing her say that. We both took sips of soda. A jukebox turned on, played a loud polka, and we had to raise our voices over it. “I can’t even use half of the stuff we’re doing in this class at the club,” I said. “I’d get fired and I can’t afford to get fired. I don’t know what I was thinking, really. No one teaches you how to get some dude’s fingers out of your asshole quietly, discreet-like, and still keep a lap dance going, which is what I’ve tried to do. Anyway. What about you? You got raped?” I said. She sighed. “I was raped, yeah,” she said. “In college. And I don’t believe in ‘nonviolent’ rape,” she said. “My attacker was a a person I knew who didn’t beat me up before or after. He just snuck into the bedroom where I was sleeping, passed out drunk, and I woke up to him getting my pants down, trying to push his dick in me. I was so out of it he was having sex with me before I really came to and pushed him off. No one wanted to call it rape. But I became the Take Back the Night girl on campus after that.” “Right,” I said. “What an asshole,” I said. That had happened to me too, at more than one of those parties during the Worst Year of My Life. I hadn’t called it “rape” or even “attempted rape” or even “attack” in my head before. It had seemed pretty normal, at the time. “I don’t like Karen,” I said. Nautica laughed again. “Me neither! What’s your reason?” “First, she’s a cop,” I said. “Second, she’s stupid.” 253 “You don’t like that she’s a cop?” I shrugged. “My dad went to prison when I was in high school,” I said. I did not say, he was a Marxist. I did not say, he is Black. I did not say, he is homeless now. “And basically I notice people for a living, and what I notice about cops is that they are self important, sexist, racist, and dangerous to be around.” “Aha. Well, I don’t love them either,” she said. “But my problem is I think Karen’s a repressed lesbian and that shit just makes my skin crawl. Just relax and come out, you know? This is the twenty-first century. But I appreciate you. I wish there were more white people willing to call the cops racist.” I looked my plate and started sawing a corner of meat. “Not sure how to respond to that,” I said. It felt like she was calling me a name every time she said “white.” Of course she kind of was, and that was the point. “Why, because you’re a repressed lesbian too?” she slapped me lightly on the arm. “No worries. I’ve got a cure for repression. I call it sex.” “I’m not repressed,” I said. “Perfect,” she said. “Neither am I. Should we consider this our first date?” she winked. “Yes,” I said. And my heart actually fluttered. “Yes, we should.” She had to leave, but we kissed outside the subway for a brief and amber-scented second. I blushed about it all the way home. My roommates saw it on me the instant I opened the door. “Aw shit,” one of them said. “This one is gonna be bad for business!” The next day we struggled to break free of the grip of enormous men wearing full body padding. We yelled and punched and stomped and elbowed and went out for drinks afterward 254 and burned our Rape Defense Class Completion Certificates into an ashtray in the back patio of the bar and had sex at Nautica’s place. Her apartment was draped with luscious fabric and stacked with soft pillows and perfect candle-lighting. We’d made out on her couch for a while when she pulled back and said, “I want to fuck you.” “Yes me too please and thank you,” I said. She twirled a piece of my hair and stroked my neck. “You’ve got this face,” she said. “You’re beautiful.” I thanked her. “You also look like you’ve been through a lot,” she said. I asked how she could tell. “I notice people for a living,” she said. “Like you.” I wanted her, and I didn’t want to tell her about my life yet, but I wanted her to know me, and it was strange. I wanted to know all about her, too. We had hot, slow, eye-gazing sex. Oh shit, I kept thinking, I like her so much. I like her so much. I want this woman SO BAD. It felt like every heartbeat ached, every muscle fiber I had was stretching toward her. I was so painfully alive I thought maybe I was dying. She felt so good it was terrifying. 255 Dear Kindee, Science says it’s good for us to laugh. Chemicals, brains, muscles, something. I believe, through my own experience, that people require pleasure to thrive. They don’t need it to live. Survival does not require it. But to relax into joy, to sense something exquisite, to be rendered utterly tender, pleasure must be free to enter. Self-created, self-sustaining pleasure is simultaneously privately experienced and politically relevant. Pleasures shared in a group are the organizing principle behind everything from religious observance to orgies. I don’t believe that everything happens for the best. I do believe that you can make the best of whatever happens. So why wouldn’t you? We’ve been on lockdown for four days. There is nothing in here that is enjoyable at all on the surface. The lights are painful bright and they keep them on all night. I wake up every two hours to the rapping on the doors, and I have to stand up and come to the window for count. We eat bologna with white bread & fruit cups. Sometimes peanut butter. I can’t get comfortable. It’s too cold. This institution is built to cripple a man. I swore I’d never come back, and yet, here I am. But my time is almost done. By the time you get this letter, I’ll be out. So don’t worry about me. Ten days in jail is like a political education vacation for me. It is so clear that when we react, they grow more powerful. Every time an inmate finally breaks, fights back when he’s being beaten, or speaks up at his parole hearing, etc., they retaliate immediately and viciously. I’ve seen a man be beat nearly to death by two CO’s after he spit at them. Why’d he do that, you might ask. I ask you, does it matter? Even if he’d spit 256 at them in utter hatred, does beating him nearly to death when he was unarmed and in handcuffs make any sense? That isn’t self defense, Kindred. (He spit because they called him a faggot. Now what do you think?) I’m thinking about food, and not just because they give us shit here. One way power is expressed in America: buying stuff. Thus, you feel powerful when you can feed yourself through buying individual portions of food. In America, an abundance of money does not ethically require that you then turn to feed others. This contributes to a culture of waste and unfair distribution of basic resources. Skid Row is getting gentrified, the restaurants have started to pop up. On a normal day there, I am surrounded by very young white people who feel comfortable spending amounts of money daily on food that I experience as disgustingly large. It’s wasteful. I keep thinking of Fela Kuti and wish I could listen to Expensive Shit today. Do it for me? Power expressed through purchasing food under these rules is unlike the power that emerges from growing food, which carries an obvious mandate for sharing in abundant times. When a plant fruits more than the closest people to it can consume, other people and animals and the earth can happily receive the plant’s abundance. I read about agribusiness and I’m shocked, Kindee. There are enough resources on this planet, still, for food and water to be freely available to everyone. Therefore, food and water should be free. When do you think you’ll be able to come back out to California? I hope you are enjoying your life in NY. Send me some more pictures please. You can use the office address at the Downtown Action Center I gave you last time. Give my best regards to Nautica. I hope you two are taking good care of each other. Love, 257 Carl I thought: Sex should be free, too. People don’t get mad at a server in a restaurant for the fact that food costs money. But they feel totally righteous declaring a prostitute a damaged person, an immoral person, a broken person, for charging money for sex. You can get a lot of food you don’t pay for personally. You can get a lot of sex you don’t pay for personally, too. When you pay for it, and you realize you’re paying for it because of issues that are bigger than you, it makes sense to be nice to the person offering it to you, to pay them well, and to move on as you would from a nice meal. 258 December, 2011 Nine years later There was a slideshow playing on a large LED screen embedded in the back of the seat in front of me in First Class. Hawaii pictures and facts. It’s so easy to learn new things about other places in the world when you’re rich. I’d learned about french menus and fixed my posture and was about to meet up with the most wealthy client I’d ever had. Nautica had clucked like a backstage house mom as I got ready to leave. “You’re such a fancy lady,” she said. “Shut up,” I said, but of course her approval helped with my confidence. “You can do this,” she said. “You’ve already got this done, actually.” In a sense, that was true. As a Domme I’d felt comfortable doing new things like: demand prepayment for my time. However, this client was a challenge: he was a submissive during 70% of our alone time but he also expected about once-daily full-service vanilla sex, and, a great conversationalist who could seem comfortable and happy following his lead in public. A lady on the street and all that. I already had the money, so now I did the gig. My main concern was for it to go well enough for him to want to do it again, continue the D/s relationship we’d cultivated, keep a good thing going. Getting a client was not the same as keeping a client. Nautica was a master at the long-haul pro-D/s relationship. She had regulars in four major cities. I tended to attract curious one-offs or short-term flows of money from men in states of mania. I really wanted some more stability in my game. Nautica had invited me to come sit in on a session before I started taking my own, to see 259 if Domme work appealed to me in practice as much as it appealed to me in theory. Watching her work was like getting hypnotized. “Wear something tight but not slutty,” she had said. I wore a black cocktail dress and pumps. She instructed me to arrive fifteen minutes before the session started, so she could walk me through her set up and her plan, and then she put me in the dressing room for the first twenty minutes so that she could “get him ready” for me to come in and watch the next half hour. Five minutes at the beginning for him to undress, five minutes at the end for him to get dressed again. A one-hour session is a snack, she told me once, it’s not a meal. It can be great, but mostly, it’s forgettable. You need a longer session to get someone to “go deep.” I had a chair to sit in, a perfect view, and no job other than to witness, which was a gift she was giving both me and the client. They all liked to say they were healthy and fit, but he really was. It was something Nautica liked about him, because it meant he could take longer periods in more elaborate bondage. She had him in leather wrist and ankle cuffs, perched on a spanking bench with his belly on the bench and his knees on either side. Some shiny nylon rope crisscrossed over his midsection and his cuffs were attached to metal eyes on the bench with small padlocks. He was gagged, but she’d removed his blindfold so he could see me there. I liked the look of him immediately, so peaceful, so vulnerable. “Hi honey,” I said, to him, and petted the back of his head. “What a sweet little guy.” “Isn’t he?” Nautica said. She spanked him lightly. “He’s a peach.” Then she gestured that I should have a seat. Her movements were sure and strong, like a dancer’s, or a surgeon’s. She opened drawers, pulled implements out, inspected them, decided for or against, and built herself a small arsenal next to her submissive, where he could see. She talked to him in a soft, sweet, baby voice, one 260 I’d never heard her use before, and petted and cooed at him. “I’ve already warmed him up a little bit,” she said, “but I’m going to shine his ass now.” He whimpered and wiggled a little. She had chosen a piece of gear that looked like a monstrous ping pong paddle, leather on one side with metal studs showing and fur on the other. She started slow, tapping the bottoms of his feet lightly, tapping up his calf on one side, then the other, then up his thighs, then back and forth on his inner thighs. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she said quietly, as he strained against his bonds to open up more for her. He likes it, he wants it, I kept saying to myself. He paid for it. It was a revelation to witness. I shifted in the chair and neither of them looked at me. She tapped his entire body with the paddle before focusing a few hits on his butt. One. Two, a little harder. Three! The hardest yet, and then she rubbed him with the fur side. I had expected more brutality from her, somehow. I had wanted to see her wail on someone and not give a shit if they were crying. I hadn’t yet learned that “pain sluts,” masochistic submissives who like truly intense and hard corporal punishment from their Mistress, were a specific style of client attracted to a specific style of top. This guy wanted some pain, and he could take some pain, but Nautica was a controlled, attentive, deep listener, and she never gave him more than he could take. Because he was paying her, she told me later. “You know better than anyone that I’m happy to make kind of reckless mistakes with lovers,” she said. “Because we learn things, we bond, we fix it, maybe we even find a new edge to flirt with, whatever. With a client I have to stay totally on top of what’s happening the whole time. And so should you,” she added, “especially you.” I watched her work the client up to a pretty serious spanking, and his butt turned bright red all over, with some purplish bursts in the center of each of his cheeks. “These are such 261 beautiful roses,” she cooed, rubbing him. She squeezed his flesh in handfuls, then let him go and patted him. He seemed to relax another inch or two into his bonds. Behind him, out of view, she put together her work dick, an easy-to-clean patent leather strap-on harness with a long, thin, “realistic cinnamon” colored dildo. She put a condom on. I loved that little pelvic tilt she got into, so familiar from male bodies, rolling it on, checking, ready. She stepped in from of his face and slapped him very lightly with the dick, never letting him get it in his mouth, tap, tap tapping his face and telling him she was going to fill up his slutty little holes. He whimpered desperately. She shot me a quick look that indicated I need to watch carefully. She’d arranged the bench so that the client could see her behind him in the big wall mirror if he held his neck up against the bonds. So he had the option of seeing her fuck him, but it was tiring for him to hold the position in which he could see. She put on a black nitrile glove and massaged his asshole with three pumps of thick lube. She used the gloved hand to get her dildo positioned just right, then pushed in just a tiny bit, and let him wriggle to get closer. He’d opened up very fast. I imagined he had enormous dildos he stuck in his own butt at home. She pushed in slowly, until her cock was about a third of the way in him. She started moving in and out, pumped more lube on him, pulled her glove off, put another one on without missing a beat, and told him how good he was doing. “Such a nice baby,” she said to him, and spanked him. “What do you need? Tell Mistress what you need.” “Fuck me, please, please, Mistress, thank you, fuck me,” he whispered. She did. And because of the size of her dildo, and her own perfect choreographing of herself, she got none of his fluids on her body, only made physical contact with him using her hands and her thighs, and never touched any of the soiled stuff--condom, any of it, with her 262 bare hands. I was impressed and intimidated and grateful to see it. She trained me up for a few months while I kept money coming in from the strip club and my vanilla clients, and then I got some pictures taken, posted an ad, and started taking my own submissive clients at La Jouissance. I’d been seeing Jason for a few months, which was already an accomplishment, at least for me. He was recently divorced, seeing his kids every few weeks or so, living in a spare Manhattan apartment, working like a workaholic finance guy works. And exploring his submissive side. He’d come to me through my website. He told me he googled “experienced petite brunette Domme high end incall New York” and my ad caught his eye. I got to do the first leg of the travel alone, First Class from New York to Honolulu. Then I’d meet up with Jason at the Hawaiian Airlines First Class Lounge and we’d get to Kauai together. The seat smelled cleaner than I imagined the seats smelled in Coach. The informative slideshow was too pleasant, too welcoming. I overdubbed it in my mind. How precious is this natural resource! The one we have already stolen and raped and polluted! Let us rush to save it from the encroaching decimation of modernity’s excess and return it to its historical, “true” state! Let us pretend this is the obvious and possible course of action for all ethical people to support! But let us not remind mainland Americans that Hawai’i was colonized and annexed, made a territory and then a state, through theft and deception and violence. A flight attendant approached. His teal shirt was perfectly pressed. He offered me guava juice or sparkling wine and handed me a complimentary in-flight entertainment device. Otherwise known as an iPad. In the main cabin people were getting sweaty shoving their suitcases into the overhead bins, trying not to fart in each others’ faces en route to their seats, 263 most of them quietly attempting to ignore all their discomfort because, well, they were trapped. “How can you look so sour when you’re on your way to Hawai’i?” asked the flight attendant. He was smiling, waiting for me to relax into his good-natured policing of my inexplicably negative facial expression. “Hawai’i scares me,” I said. He laughed. “Flying there, you mean?” “No, that’s not--“ “I’m Stephen, and I’ll take care of you, don’t worry,” he said, and he patted my headrest and moved on. On my complimentary First Class iPad, I read about the Mala Wharf. I looked at pictures of the 1922 structure, a stretch of concrete. The opening of the wharf was attended by dignitaries and celebrated by the papers. It was to be a company asset for the Baldwin Packers, an export outfit owned by one of the Big Five families who controlled Hawaii’s territorial economy. They wanted to ship more canned pineapple out on bigger boats. In 1922, the Mala Wharf was dressed up in the language of technology and advancement and erected to local pomp and fanfare. But only three steamships were ever able to dock there. It was built against the advice of Native people who had lived in the area for many generations longer than the white people. The Native Hawaiians were specific in their predictions: the waves would be too high and the currents too strong for ships to safely dock at the wharf. And unsurprisingly to me, they were right. In my electronic tourist magazine, the Mala Wharf was then pictured today, a series of perilous angles made by shoddy concrete now underwater, reclaimed by coral and brightly colored fish. It had finally collapsed in 1992 during Hurricane Iniki. 264 The article exuberantly proclaimed the sunken bridge a “perfect host” to a “dazzling array” of sea creatures, and a favorite spot for families on boats and beginning scuba divers. And so a ruthless, invasive corporate interest’s dangerously bad piece of hubris was deftly recast as a site for environmental education and pleasant recreation. I felt insane. I made a mental note to tell the story to Carl when I was home. He’d love it. The person in the seat next to me was coughing. A wet cough. I didn’t like it. It felt like an affront to First Class. I stole a look at him. Not as old as I’d thought. Wearing nice pants and flip flops--a clean haircut. He would make a great client. I wondered who he already belonged to. I swiped to the “Easy Listening” playlist. I recognized all the songs. I listened to “Lola” by the Kinks, able to hear all the lyrics clearly for the first time in my fanciful headphones, and felt nostalgic for any time or place that was more queer than the one I was in. Turtle necklaces. I wondered about the history of the manufacture of those tiny turtle necklaces. I looked good. I had the big dark glasses on, I’d smoothed all my hair down into a chignon bun on my neck, and my lamb leather travel jacket was just light and soft enough that I wouldn’t look silly in a tropical climate. I didn’t have any acne. My vagina was healthy and I wasn’t menstruating. I had just shaved and shea-buttered myself into a slick silky smooth version of my skin. When I arrived in the airport lounge for elite travelers, I saw that Jason had put some effort in too, which was a good start. He was wearing his clean vacation traveling clothes, not a suit from the office, which meant he’d taken time to go home before we left. If he was in a good mood after being home, the whole trip would be easier. I resolved to stay on a path to actual relaxation, as much as possible, for the next three 265 days. I knew for sure that I found it impossible to relax fully around a client. People took energy, period. I was the most myself around Nautica, and we had some friends I could be real with. But I had come to accept that I still found it impossible to relax fully unless I was alone. I approached my own psychological crap with deep, sincere, sustained effort. I’d tried biofeedback, yoga, meditation, journaling, reading, therapy, recovery groups. I felt like I’d come a long way from the traumatized child I was when I moved to New York. Jason sat across from me in the airport lounge, flipping through magazines about things I didn’t think he cared about, like cars, and I felt a little wave of affection for him, looking at the tiny curly hairs that poked out of the bottom of his shorts at his knee. “I’m going to take you to a show on Friday night,” he said, witholding eye contact until after he’d finished his sentence. “What kind of show?” I smiled, no resistance here. “A dance show, a real traditional luau!” he said, very pleased with himself. He started miming something, like he was brushing ants off a counter, and then I realized it was supposed to be hula dancing, and I could have smacked him, but instead I said, “Don’t ever pretend to hula again. Take a class or let it be.” And he went back to his magazine, a little smug, a little chastened. “I look forward to seeing what you’ve planned,” I said. With just a tiny edge of menace at the end. I was going to be one of the tourists at a fake luau, something I would never do if I wasn’t getting paid. I should have seen that one coming. I prepared myself for the inward horror of him going up on stage and pretending to hula. He would be that guy. Shake, shake, shake, the magazine got my attention. “Where’d you go?” he said. “Nowhere,” I smiled again. “I’m right here.” “I can’t wait to stretch out on one of those hotel beds,” he said, and stretched both his arms 266 up and his legs out, taking up as much space as he possibly could. “Gaaaaaaahhhhhh.” He sighed. I would have loved to stretch and growl like that, right then. I uncrossed and recrossed my legs, drank a sip of water, and clenched my jaw instead. Because femininity mattered. I gave up trying so hard and fell asleep on the plane. I got a red nap-spot on my cheek, which Jason talked about three times during dinner. He also talked about how much he loved his childhood dog, who died around the first time he ever came to Hawai’i, such an important time in his development. The food on the plane was surprisingly good. I had salmon. It tasted right, not like plastic. We drank a chardonnay and he whispered, “I promise this is the last shitty alcohol for three days!” and I whispered “Thank you,” and nibbled his ear for a full second. Because I knew it was true and I felt sincerely grateful for that. On the drive to the hotel he chatted up the driver and I enjoyed twenty minutes of silence, idle gazing out the window, tracking signs and place names, letting myself be amazed by how green and how green and how lush and green and gorgeous it was, it really was, after all this island had been though. They gave me an orchid lei at the hotel and so I smelled like cum before we’d even entered the room. Jason was already in ecstasy, talking about how nice everyone was here. I did not remind him that racist cultural appropriation and the exploitative service industry was designed to make him feel good, to offer him ways to spend his money on feeling good at great cost to others. I could feel him trying to signal sex before dinner? And I had to decide quick. I interrupted his unpacking routine with a hug and I touched his cock and balls lightly. “I want to give you some really quality attention tonight,” I said, looking in his eyes. He liked it. “So let’s change quick, get some drinks in me, eat some lovely food, and get back here early tonight. Good plan?” 267 “Good plan,” he said. I patted him and put my head on his shoulder. “You take such good care of me,” I said. “You deserve it,” he said. There was something wrong in our power balance, and I needed to fix it. As I got ready for dinner, I reminded myself that I was a Domme. A grown woman with power. I was here to do a job, a really very fun job, not to feel harassed by everything. I took deep breaths and hugged myself. It helped. We had a good dinner. He was obedient and predictable during sex. We had a hot tub on our floor. It made a difference that I was in shape and felt good in a bathing suit. It made a difference that he’d booked a massage for me for the following afternoon already. Still, by the time the massage came, I was exhausted from giving him my full attention. I called Nautica from the locker room in the hotel spa. “How’s the hottest babe in occupied paradise?” she said when she picked up. “I’m so happy to hear your voice!” I said, and suddenly felt like crying. “I’m tired,” I said, my voice wobbling. “It’s ok baby, cry away,” she said, a little softer. “It’s tough to travel with people. Especially to places where they lie about violent colonial history. Which is like anywhere a client wants to go. When’s your time off?” “I don’t really have it, except right now,” I said, “I’m getting a massage.” “That’s good,” she said. “Make sure you get two hours alone tomorrow too. Sorry, feels like something I should have reminded you about. You can just order him around a little. Say ‘leave me for two hours’ and he has to do it. I know your dynamic is a little weird but you can exert your power to stay healthy. You can take some time alone and stay strong.” “Right.” 268 “Take care of my Kindykins,” she said. “Take Jason’s money, get home safe, and learn what you can about how the rich people are doing their ugly things there.” “I will,” I said. “Thank you.” “Anytime and forever,” she said. We hung up. I texted her some hearts. On the second night, we went to the show. I got lightly drunk beforehand, half aware that it was a way to cope with what I expected to be a well-produced display of sanitized “legends” made for white tourists, performed by young people from the area. I was not surprised that the dancers were impressively skilled. Or that the costumes were fantastic. What surprised me was how much the music moved me. I clapped with everyone else and touched Jason’s inner thigh when they were choosing “contestants” for the crowd- pleaser at the end. He stayed in his seat. I made it. I felt silly and confused, but I’d made it. We went on a walk after the show, out on the beach next to the theater. We were aimless, holding hands, laughing, pointing at beautiful things for each other, “Look at that! (Gasp) Look at THAT!” A banana leaf taller than Jason. A big beautiful shell. He lingered on my eyes longer than normal. Penetrating. A question behind his gaze. “What.” I said. He shrugged. I wasn’t going to get the whole story. That was okay. “I don’t know anyone else like you,” he said. “Thank you,” I said. And that was all I said. We walked quietly for a few very long, very intense minutes. Then he pulled me gently toward him and pivoted so I was facing him and the water. He slid his forearms around my waist and folded his hands onto my mid- and lower back, suggestive but not aggressive. It was a nice, nice feeling, and I went toward him, and we kissed really passionately, the ignition lit. 269 It was one of those times when knowing your role and playing a good scene just feels so good. Because your co-player is also your audience, and that is truly fucking complicated. This was an important romantic moment of the trip and I’d nailed it. And if felt good, and we enjoyed each other. On the last night of the trip we decided to stay in and take it easy. Which meant he wanted an extended BDSM scene. I had started to feel sick. I got him to go to a beach bar for happy hour before our “night in.” Obelisks on fire. Thick deep music. The air was soft, moving, fresh, and warm. Underneath the beat, a voice whispered “I’ve got, I’ve got to keep on searching.” I knew that drinking and staying up late would tip me over into getting a full-blown cold, but this was the night, there wasn’t really another chance to perform as hard as tonight, right now. I was determined that we would have an incredible time. We sat in a large clamshell, upholstered in white suede and faux fur. Twinkle lights made perfect scallop shapes in the ceiling. I leaned in and whispered in his ear, “This place is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.” And it felt so good to say, because it was true. I ached with an encroaching fever and my throat was sore. I drank whiskey in coffee. I tried to stay apace of our conversation. I wondered if he could tell I was sick. While he was up paying the check I gave myself a pep talk and got ready to top him. In our room, I lit a few candles I’d ordered from the front desk on the sly and put on my Massive Attack Pandora radio station. I did some beautiful work on his back with his own belt. He liked a little cock-and-ball torture so I was kicking him with my going-out heels when a cough came on, and I had to go into the bathroom to stifle it. He wanted to switch after that, although neither of us mentioned me seeming sick. We had some basic, functional, hot-enough 270 doggie style sex. We did not have a mad crazy BDSM evening, but, I felt that his orgasm, which was longer and more powerful than usual, was my accomplishment. I blew my nose quietly in the bathroom and worried about how bad I felt, and then worried about breathing through my mouth or snoring. I rummaged in my toiletries for an antihistamine. A pink one! It would help me sleep, too! Sweet salvation in a plastic bubble, let me peel back your sacred foil. I took the Benadryl with a swig of tap water, fixed my hair a little, brushed my teeth, checked my vagina, blew my nose again. I had found the balance of hygeine, comfort, and beauty such that Jason wouldn’t be alerted to the things I didn’t want him to notice about me, and, I could actually get some sleep. I was prepared to sleep pretty. In the morning, he asked if I was feeling alright. I sniffled and coughed. “I think I must be allergic to leaving Hawaii,” I said lightly. He recoiled just slightly. I was right to hide it then, I thought. And so I hid it as best I could, although I slept through both flights instead of making nostalgic romantic conversation about the amazing time we’d just had. Once I was home, I was sick, the sickest I could ever remember being. My throat was so inflamed swallowing made me cry. My muscles were run through with acid, burning, scorching, poisoned. My lungs were full of something dark and alien, which I could only cough up after long, violent spasms. My brain felt swollen, foggy, and inflamed. My temples were tight knots of pain. Every time the light hit my eyes it seared me. My skin hurt. I thought I might die. I wanted to die. I thought it unfair and ridiculous that I should die this way. I got scared. I know what Freud has to say about falling in love with your caretaker, and I don’t care. He never met Nautica. She’d never been passionate enough about any single accredited 271 modality to do the administrative work necessary for licensure or certification. But she’d been studying techniques in massage, acupressure, acupuncture, homeopathy, “home” remedy, herbal remedies, constantly since she was a teenager, and had completed a holistic medicine and a massage program. Whenever I pressed her to start taking massage clients, she said no, she wasn’t interested in it. I didn’t get it. But when she felt like practicing, I was with it. She turned our bedroom into a healing center within fifteen minutes. She was burning incense in the living room, candles, and essential oils near the bed. She brought out lotions and pots of thick salve. She concentrated, reading labels, sorting, making choices. Occasionally she would ask me a question. “How long have you had the fever?” “This is the third day.” “You know how high it was?” “No.” “Shit.” “Sorry.” “You’re ok honey, nothing’s an exact science. Can you estimate for me based on how you felt?” “102.” “Are you exaggerating?” “Yes, probably, but I really feel the worst, ever.” “I know. I also know you are lucid, which is a great sign.” She was right. So I had to do what she said. And it was what I wanted anyway, to have her attention, to be the subject of her perfect problem-solving mind. Because if I was her problem, she wouldn’t let me go until she’d solved me, and solved me creatively, and solved 272 me well. She told me to take my shirt off, lay on my stomach, and give her room to work. So I did. She poured a tablespoon of minty oil into the small of my back and spread it evenly up my back, down the other side, up and down in reverse. It hurt me, in a way that seemed like a fever delusion, like she’d just scraped off a layer of skin. I sucked in some air. “Ok,” she said, and suddenly the feeling was gone. “What are you doing?” I said. I half expected the answer to be “Magic.” “Trying stuff,” she said. Which wasn’t much different. She added a little more oil. It smelled like lavender this time. She kneaded my aching muscles from my feet to my head and did some sort of lymph-draining stroking thing on my neck. She worked slowly, methodically, adagio, a walk, a blues. She occasionally shook something, a muscle, a joint, as if it had stopped listening to her, and then returned to massaging it. At one point she leaned over my vagina, kissed my mound, and said something so softly I couldn’t hear her. She held pressure points in my hand and shoulders that sent sparking electricity down my arm and into my fingers, then she rubbed the spots with the back of her hand, in circles. She massaged my ass with her elbow, and I whined. It was so good. I had points of relief to focus on, places where the pain was subsiding, for the first time in days. She put some heavy herbal-scented medicinal salve on the bottoms of my feet and slid socks on me. It gave me hope. “When you go to see a doctor, do you tell them you’re a ho?” she asked. “I thought I was supposed to say ‘sex worker,’” I said. She snorted a little. “You know what I’m asking.” 273 “I’ll tell a doctor I’ve had more than ten partners,” I said. “If I’m there for a Pap smear or an STD test.” “I just wonder about whether they could help us more,” she said. She moved to sitting next to me, pulled her nail kit from the side table, and started taking the polish off her toes. She scrubbed in short, vigorous circles with pure acetone. “That can’t be good for me,” I said, about the stink of acetone. “The last time I got a Pap smear the doctor asked me what kind of exercise I did,” she said, ignoring my complaint. “He said my pelvic floor was ‘very developed.’ And he wanted to know if I did yoga.” “Did you tell him you do yoga?” I rolled to the window and opened it, breathed what seemed like sweet, sweet air. Outside, in Brooklyn. My senses were all messed up. “Can you put the fan on when you do the acetone thing?” “Sure, sorry,” she said. “I’ll do it next time, almost done here.” “I think it’s been five years since I had a Pap smear.” “The yoga doc was okay, you should go to him if you’re due. I said he was right, I do yoga. I just wonder if he would have been looking for different things if he knew what else I do.” “Like what, though?” I asked. Outside of pegging her clients, Nautica had penetrative sex exclusively with women. She didn’t let her clients near her orifices, except to kiss the outside of her panties. She was meticulous with her sterility practices in the dungeon, and as far as she’d ever told me, she’d never used a needle to shoot up. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s kind of my point.” “I’m much dirtier than you,” I said. “In terms of pathogens. What do you think I should do besides get STD checks and PAP smears? Tell them to look for signs of premature aging in my vagina?” 274 She made an amused sound and started putting her nail polish remover and cotton away. “You have to stop with that ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ stuff,” she said. “It’s really bad for sexual self esteem.” “Not mine,” I said. “I’m a dirty girl.” “Maybe when you were nineteen.” “Definitely when I was nineteen.” “Ok, ok,” she gave in. “I just wondered if you’d had more constructive interactions with doctors than me. Sounds like not. So, you ready for what I think you should do next for this sickness you’re in?” I was ready for a nap. But I listened to her instructions. She said I needed Vitamin D. I needed to drink twice as much water as I was now, with honey and lemon, warm or cold. I needed to wash my pillowcase. There were a lot more things. I did all the things. I felt better starting the minute she touched me, and I wanted to do my part to try and feel better, once I realized how much effort and care she was putting into my well-being. Every once in a while I’d idly poke around a Wikipedia article about whatever remedy I was doing, and usually what I found was that there were a few contested studies showing some or no effectiveness of this or that “folk medicine,” and then, a lot of very sweet family run businesses devoted to the passionate dissemination of information about the miracle of royal jelly, or lavender, or sea salt, or whatever. So, I adopted an attitude of passive faith that whatever benefits I might receive from paying regular attention to my own health, in the form of having to do something about it every hour or so, was worth it, and the methods were whatever Nautica recommended, even if she said, “Go see a doctor,” because I felt her understanding of the body was the most sophisticated, patient, nuanced, and practiced I’d 275 ever encountered. Jason sent me a box full of cheap souvenirs from the hotel. There was something very sweet and a little bit insulting about it at the same time. I was still recovering, still taking honey and lemon drinks with me to the dungeon in the afternoon, when I realized I’d started to slip in one or two of the other parts of the routine: skipped a dose of a supplement, not finished last bottle of water, things like that. I told Nautica, feeling confessional. “Oh that’s fine,” she said, which shocked me. “You must not need that extra help anymore. It’s ok to let those things go, but don’t let go of the basics. Keep your meals right. Get your rest. Drink your water. Fuck your ma’am. Yes?” “Hell yes.” We gave I love you’s. I was proud of how healthy our relationship was. 276 Enter Complexity I met Griffin for the first time at a bar in Bushwick. Nautica had canceled our date by text while I was on the train on my way to meet her. You can’t check your phone outside in New York during the winter, and Nautica knew it. She also knew I’d end up at home eventually, whether she showed up to meet me or not. Months later, during our first real fight about Griffin, I reminded Nautica that if she wasn’t such a flake, I would have been drinking with her that night instead of him, and he wouldn’t even be in our lives. That was cruel of me, of course, but it was also true. We never know what’s going to happen next. Work had been tough that day and I was looking forward to the alcohol. One of my regulars had been a no-show for a second week in a row, which usually meant the end of our relationship, the end of that reliable part of my income. I’d have to turn up my hustle: put work into my ad, get some new pictures. I hadn’t yet moved into being happy about the opportunity for an even better client to come along, although Nautica had taught me the value of that kind of thinking. I’d worked the front desk that day, which I hated doing. I did an intake interview with a new client, gave him an OK on his file, and then he’d immediately gotten an appointment with another Domme, didn’t tip me, and I was trying not to feel insecure. It happened often enough that the new client doesn’t choose the first Domme he sees, even if he likes her best. Many people have to try a lot of different Dommes to know what they really like, because of how intense the sensations are. It’s hard to know the differences among action movie directors, until you are used to the feeling of frenetic destabilization that those movies achieve. When you know the form, you can appreciate subtlety. Plus, some people are just sluts. The problem with this guy was that he booked with Queen Gina, tried to get her to do a 277 full toilet scene when they hadn’t negotiated for it, and then came out of the session saying he didn’t want to pay. Nautica usually managed beefs like that, and they were not something that happened that often. But she was off, so it was my problem. I stuck with our policy against refunds and the client called me a cunt and slammed both his hands on my desk so I took off my shoes and moved to throw him out. “Sir, it’s time for you to leave,” I said. “Like, right now,” I said. I walked around the desk so that I was effectively stepping up to him. “I’ll fucking leave whenever I want,” he said. Which was stupid, because he was trying to get out of paying at the same time that he was refusing to leave? Maybe he’s on speed, I thought. I reached to his outside shoulder. He was so angry that I put my hand on him to escort him out of the front door he flailed as if to hit me. I caught his hand and twisted it in toward his chest. He turned and dipped a bit, and I was able to move him. “Fuck!” he yelled. “Don’t struggle,” I said, and we took the four steps to the front door. I let go of him. He opened the door and went out, shaking and rubbing his hand pitifully. As I closed the door behind him, I heard him yelling. “Fucking cunt bitch goddamn it I’m calling the fucking cops you’ll be hearing from the fucking DA motherfucking violent piece of shit...” I stared at him. Finally he stormed off. Then I sat with Queen Gina and she questioned my intake skills. She was one of the founding members of the dungeon, a forty-five year old transgendered black woman who taught us all new techniques every time we needed them. She was a mentor and had every right to blame me for something going wrong, but it chafed. I wanted to tell her he’d been 278 fine, really, there was no way I could have known he would freak out. But maybe that was the problem. If he was mostly full of trans-misogyny, then I wasn’t going to see his ugliness without looking deeper for it. He wouldn’t direct it at me, a cisgendered woman. I told Queen Gina I was sorry. I told her I’d twisted his wrist to get him out, and he seemed pretty angry about that. I wanted to crawl into my bed and stay there for a few days, but I couldn’t go home. Queen Gina finally patted my leg and said, “You should be flattered I forget how green you are, baby.” She told me she forgave me. But still. I drew a border of knives on the desk calendar before it was time to go home. I wasn’t green, I’d been doing this longer than I’d done any other job. And now Nautica flaked at the last minute. Fuck it, I was getting a drink or maybe too many at a noisy, social place around people who would ignore me that night. It was one of the few things that sounded better than going directly to bed. Walking from the Morgan Ave. Station, I got to read the walls. The graffiti was sprawling and looping, curls brushing through circles and overlapping. Sometimes an image or a phrase would repeat and repeat and I’d imagine the street team, armed with stencils and spray paint and cameras and halogen lights, gleefully marking these blocks with their perfect Millennium Falcon or their nearly-unrecognizably Che Guevara sporting a Dali mustache. Then there were huge shapes, bright blue and pink, candy colors, and screeching yellow pillows, making messages you could only read from a block away. On an impossibly high outside wall near the bar, the word READ commanded everyone. The artist would never have been able to take a step back while painting it. The piece leaned very sharply to the right. The bar Nautica and I were going to meet at played too much rock. It was also cheap and 279 close to our apartment. The brick outside was painted dark green and then covered with intricate monochromatic renditions of fantasy animals’ skeletons. A sphinx, a centaur, a flying skeleton of a dragon, a two-headed dog. I took a picture of myself leaning on the wall, next to the life-size unicorn bones painted there. I even pulled my warm hat back on my forehead so she could see my eyes. Then I went in. I sent the picture to Nautica’s phone, asking if she wanted to change her mind. They allowed live dogs inside. I had to blink a lot once I was inside because they also allowed cigarettes. The Myth House. It was just a little bit too hard to say. Because that was hip, somehow. The beer list was extensive, written in chalk high up on a large blackboard bolted to the wall. It would need to be carefully accessed from a ladder if it were to be erased or changed. The beer taps stood at attention in a long row of bright colors and symbols and logos, before a thick wooden bar decoupaged with hundreds of old concert tickets. Low-watt, coiled lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling washed people in pallid tones. I looked at my forearm. Wan. The floor was concrete painted dark brown, and scattered sawdust added some kind of decorative flair to what otherwise seemed haphazardly unaesthetic. Brooklyn was so tricky that way, mixed-up, with its dive bars and its hipster bars exhibiting only tiny, nearly imperceptible differences: an asymmetrical number of mismatching glasses at an old dive versus a perfectly shelved array of three types of glasses at a hipster joint. Unintended consequence at the one, stylistic choice at the other. I tried to talk to employees and meet owners when I was confused about whether I was dealing with a stage set or a real gem. Where I was, the wood paneling wouldn’t announce itself either as cynically self aware 1970s- style procured from the “artisinal” decorator in town, or, as the original 1970s wood paneling that had been replaced piecemeal for the last thirty-odd years by the same family-owned lumber distributor, which was not far away in Greenpoint. I had to let it go. Either way, the 280 wood was nice. I saw Griffin when I scanned the room. I logged him and two other people as “cute,” and moved toward the bar. He tripped me, I fell on him, and it felt like he took something from my bag as I got up. He was deft. I blocked him with a right elbow and pocked him a bit in the chest while he said a little chorus of sorry-sorry-sorry-I’m-so-clumsy. “Hand it over,” I said, recovering, and opened my palm. “Hand what over?” he said. “Whatever you just stole out of my bag,” I faked a jab to his solar plexus. He didn’t flinch. Strange. “Jesus,” he said. “Why so violent?” “Give me my shit,” I said. He tossed a book at me. My journal. Then he tried to walk away. He was thin and jaunty, like an adolescent somehow. Sweet in his defiance. I stopped him at the bicep and pulled him down on his stool. He didn’t resist. I let him go. I asked his name. “Griffin.” “Is that a joke?” I said. He looked confused. No, it was not a joke. “You didn’t just come up with that because of the painting outside?” I said. Ah, recognition. “Other way around,” he said. “They’ve got everything but a griffin out there. Thought I’d help them out.” He tried to smile but he looked too scared. “What do you want with my journal?” Since he was so clearly full of bullshit, might as well see how he handled that question. He stared into my left eye. His eyelashes were clumped, like he’d cried recently, and his 281 nostrils were flickering. “I want to jerk off to it,” he said. My face must have registered genuine surprise. Griffin adjusted his posture, sat straight. I asked him what he was drinking, and then told him to order us two margaritas when he said beer. I wanted to do something sexual to him, but I couldn’t tell yet what it was. He seemed like he needed some punishment, to get back in balance. He was made mostly of bones but he moved lightly, like a dancer. After he got us the drinks and sat, we clinked glasses. “Okay,” I said. “Now explain yourself.” He was visibly uncomfortable. I liked it. He had straight dark hair cropped to keep a kind of mussed spikey shape on top. He touched his hair, patting and twisting, then he took a drink and wiped his mouth with the inside of his white T-shirt collar. He wore a gray hoodie over it, zipped mostly up. “I’m trying to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself,” he said. He looked like he’d just shaved. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding. It was probably a nice bar to be an alcoholic in. Lots of smiling. Lots of women. “Did I just push you off the wagon with this margarita?” “No,” he said. “I’m not an alcoholic.” “Well hi, Griffin, anyway,” I said. He seemed very serious. “But I am in recovery. I steal journals from women and use them for sexual gratification.” He deflated just slightly. “It’s kind of a new thing. I used to just be a regular klepto.” I didn’t say anything. He glanced at my face, then back down to his drink. “So,” he cleared his throat, squirming. “I’m sorry for taking your journal. I shouldn’t have done that. I go to SA meetings, and I’m really not looking forward to sharing about this.” 282 “Well,” I said, too amused to punish him just yet, “at least you know yourself. What’s ‘SA’?” “Shoplifters Anonymous,” he said. He tried to finish his drink too fast. “Hold on,” I said. He hesitated. I checked my phone. He looked away, as if to take stock of the bar in my absence. Nautica hadn’t changed her mind, and wanted me not to wake her up if I got home late. So I was free to chat up this boy. “Don’t run away in shame just ‘cause you’re a pervert and a thief,” I said. “I’m not a pervert,” he said. “Yeah, you are,” I said. “According to everyone. Lucky for you, though, so am I.” He gave me the first of many gratifying dimples. His eyes darted, involuntarily. “Why would you say that?” he asked, all tingly. I told him he didn’t deserve to know my kinks yet, but if he wanted to buy us another round I’d think about telling him a story. He bought us tequila shots and Tecate. He had a surprising wad of cash in his beat-up brown leather wallet. He moved our empty glasses over to the server’s station, placing them on the rubber where someone could whisk them into the sanitizer. Then he put the new drinks on our tiny woodblock table and raised his shot, brandishing his lime wedge in his left hand. “Are you a stripper?” I asked him. “No,” he said. “Then what’s the story with the cash and the good bar etiquette?” “I manage a floor of an apartment building. One of the dudes pays me his rent in cash. And I don’t know, I come here a lot. I watch people. I try to be helpful.” “Convenient,” I said. We drank. 283 Griffin rubbed his nose with the edge of his sweatshirt sleeve. “Not really. I don’t talk to a lot of people. And my roommate Dave’s a very inconvenient person,” he said. “I met him at a party and he told me he was going to set himself on fire.” I prodded. Griffin said Dave was despondent and hooked on the idea, strident in his will and determined to incite his friends to action against capitalism. He thought dying would make them all militant revolutionaries. This was before Occupy Wall Street, Griffin explained. “I argued with him for a few minutes before I realized that trying to talk him down from suicide was not going to work. He asked me to help him bring up some important items from the basement and buy him some beer and some gasoline.” Griffin took a slurp from his Tecate. “And you did it?” Shrug. Sure. Apparently Dave wanted his magazine collection to burn with him. A few hours later, Dave decided to live while on the phone with his long-distance lover. “So you thought, ‘perfect roommate’?” I said. “Well, no,” Griffin said. “I mean I knew he was a gamble, or something.” A few months after he moved in, Dave set a fire in his room when no one was home. I asked the obligatory question about whether he had hurt himself. “Nah,” Griffin said. “He didn’t even really hurt the building that much. And he always pays on time. That’s a big fucking deal for me. The place I manage is a shithole. Most of the people who live there are lice-ridden anarchists who think rent is evil, so they don’t pay. I mean, I’m not stereotyping anarchists. Some of them are really clean and smart and stuff.” Then he asked for my name, so I told him. “Kindred.” “Awesome!” he said. “Do most people make a joke right away about being kindred spirits with you?” 284 “Definitely white women do that,” I said. He nodded, “Yeah, that makes sense. I kinda heard it in my mom’s voice when I thought it.” Somebody tumbled into us. Griffin’s knees knocked into mine. That quick touch gave me a shot of adrenaline so strong I was surprised. The unsteady girl apologized, giggling and not sorry at all, and moved on. Griffin excused himself to pee. I checked for my journal in my bag when his back was turned. It was still there. The bar was filling with more people and noise. I texted Nautica that I’d met a cute boy and was going to stay for another drink. She didn’t respond. She was probably asleep already. She had an early morning client tomorrow. She was the only one at the dungeon who took appointments before 9:00AM. When I showed up for my noon sessions, she would have already made her money. She’d be pulling off her fake lashes in the bathroom, placing them in her pink plastic case, the one that used to hold birth control pills. I finished my Tecate. I’d planned on two drinks, and already had three. Might as well keep going, now that I’d done it. Griffin appeared through a small crowd. He held two more shots of tequila. “I see how it is,” I said, as he handed me one. “How is it?” he said, as he produced new wedges of lime from a napkin. “I see you have been trying to read my mind,” I gestured with the tequila. “You had the body language of a person who intends to keep drinking,” he said, clinking glasses with me. He put the shot back and swallowed. “What’s that body language like?” I said. “You kicked back the rest of that beer while I was at the bar, and then didn’t move. I 285 guess that’s it.” I told him he was good. He dipped his head to smile, and I reached over and scratched him behind the ear, like a puppy. He took it. He made eye contact. His eyes had a perfect searching look, a Please Take Me, the silent plea of the sexual submissive. I wanted to get my hands on him and make him squeal. The precise moment at which I was too drunk to make good decisions passed without my noting it, of course. I let Griffin read a few pages of my journal, while I held it in front of him, without my really knowing what he was seeing. Then I shut it and kept it in my bag between my knees. If he wanted to look at it, he would have to lower his eyes and look at my body. He asked me to tell him about my parents. “I already gave you a peek under my armor,” I said, tapping my bag. “I didn’t ask you to tell me all your childhood trauma,” Griffin said. “I was just curious about the people that made you.” “That made me?” I said, somehow offended. “I made me.” “Sorry,” he said, putting his hands up. I took a breath. He probably just came from old money or an intact family. I told him a brief and clinical version of my Dad Story. He nodded and blinked and asked questions that didn’t offend me. My hunch was right on--he had an intact set of rich, white birth parents. He wondered why I called Carl by his first name, if I also considered him to be my “real dad.” He wanted to know if I’d tried to find my biological father. No, I told him, He didn’t want me. What a waste of my fucking time for a conversation neither of us wants to have. “Right on,” Griffin said. “Seems like most people would feel, something? Like, compelled? To search for an absent father,” he said. 286 “I guess I’m not most people,” I said. “So Carl’s in LA now,” he said. “And where’s your mom?” “She died when I was seventeen,” I said. “Cancer.” “Oh fuck,” he said. “That must have been hell.” We talked about death. I told him it changed me, her death, but I’d stopped believing it was the only thing that defined my life. It was like LSD, I said. It made the world appear totally off-kilter and full of absurdity, and I started hating people who wasted time or lied about important stuff. Especially people with authority, like doctors. “Also, I was drunk and passively suicidal for a while,” I said, “until I moved to New York.” He asked me what I did for money. Usually I told people I was a make-up artist: it explained the odd hours, the suitcases, the cash. This time, I didn’t choose a cover story. I wanted him to know. I wanted to see if he liked imagining me in charge of my clients. I wanted to see if I’d light the freak-fire in his eyes, and get added to his collection. I wanted to see if he would treat me like a zoo animal. I wanted to watch him get turned on and then tell him no. It had been a few years since I’d gotten excited by a person with a penis who wasn’t paying me. He was wearing the kind of denim that shapes itself in thick bunches when you sit down. And I resented that if he was getting hard, I wouldn’t be able to decipher it. When I said the words “pro Domme,” his eyes lit up. “That’s exciting,” he said. “Yes, it is,” I said. “For some people.” I told him about the relationship I was in with Nautica. I started off right, blunt and clear. Letting him know my situation in a way that would allow him some time and space to decide whether he wanted to pursue me. I was making sure he knew that I was in an open partnership with a woman who would always take priority over him. I told him we were in a 287 commitment that allowed for us both to have lovers, even fall in love. We had worked through some shit over the years. “I’m telling you this because I want to fuck you sometime,” I said. “And maybe even go on a date, but I’m not really available the way single straight women are, and I don’t lie to Nautica, so you have to consent to all that unless your instinct so far is that we’re on our way to a one-night stand.” “And if it seems like a one-night stand?” “Then what do you care about my relationship status?” He laughed. “Wow.” He put his elbow on the table and his face in his hand, poised to keep listening. “You’ve got this all planned out.” I swatted at his arm, like a teenager. “Don’t make fun of my ‘It’s Complicated.’” “Tell me about Nautica,” he said, and swigged. Somehow, as I was talking about Nautica, he asked me if she was a Domme too, and I just plowed on ahead. Hell yeah she is, I told him. She taught me everything I know. I gave away stories about the dungeon that could have gotten me and her arrested. Plus I told him the name of the place and the neighborhood, which was not something we did without a vetting process, and the only way I could explain it to myself, when the realization came crushing in on me as I peed unsteadily in the tiny women’s bathroom at the bar, was that there was some good reason to trust him I’d be able to figure out later, when I wasn’t drunk. But there was no way around it: all the Dommes at the dungeon signed an agreement so that Nautica could remind them of it, and we never outed each other or gave away each others’ information like I just had. Maybe, I thought wildly, I can introduce Nautica and Griffin before too much time passes and she’ll feel inspired to trust him too and we can get excited about him together and get him to work there with us as a pro sub! That would be perfect! 288 I pulled myself together. I got back to the table. The bar seemed utterly chaotic now, so loud no one could hear but somehow everyone was still yelling. “I gotta go,” I said. “I’ll walk you out,” he said. Just at the door to the bar, we both got out our phones. “You text me first,” I said, and gave him my number. He wrote, “This is Griffin. We met at Myth House. I didn’t steal your journal.” He seemed almost too delicate to touch. I had a quick flash of getting him on a spanking bench, tying him down, and Nautica fucking his mouth with a huge black dildo while I pegged him with my strap-on. In the vision, it was my personal strap-on, not the dungeon one I used on clients. Which meant something. I hugged him. I felt it. I didn’t want to let him go and I wanted to kiss him, too. “Thanks for hanging out,” he said, as we moved back into our personal space. He opened the door. Then he turned back, pulled my hand up and kissed it. It was silly. And it turned me on. “Don’t do that again,” I said. “Okay,” he said, and seemed very happy. Then we were outside in the cold again. “Get in touch with me,” I said. “I will,” he said. “If it’s okay with you.” I rolled my eyes and scoffed a little, but his deference was right on time. I started walking. We hollered goodbye. The wind pierced my ears. I burrowed my face into my scarf and shuffled through the cold to Nautica’s building. It was an old remodeled hotel, with thin wood floors and narrow stairways. I puffed up three flights and stumbled outside the door trying to pull off my boots. I 289 scuttled through the apartment, bumped into a box of my own stuff in the hallway, stripped in the dark in the bathroom, and flopped into bed with Nautica, my stomach churning around the tequila, the adrenaline, and the burning ball of guilt. I watched a grid of mortar lines spin on the brick side of the room. Nautica sighed in her sleep and scooted her butt up against my belly and I knew I’d suffer if I didn’t make myself throw up. I went in the bathroom, knelt, prodded the back of my throat, and after a few retches, I had enough relief to spit, flush, rinse, floss, brush, swish, drink some water, dry off. Nautica liked the smell of blue Listerine because it meant someone was trying to be considerate of her. Recently it seemed we used it as a code that meant I wanted sex but didn’t want to stress her out about it if it didn’t sound good to her. If she could smell it on me, she knew where I was at. I turned off the space heater on my way back to bed, with a flutter of annoyance at how she’d left it going full blast on a cheap acrylic rug, probably for many flammable hours. When I eased into Nautica’s warmth under the layers of down, she made a sweet noise from within her dream, and reached back to pull me against her ass. She nuzzled, adjusted, and settled. I felt trapped against her soft solid body, terrified of waking her up and also, wanted to fuck her so badly I considered sleeping on the couch. It might be the only way I would sleep at all. But moving myself from that embrace into the couch was too hard. Impossible. I willed every muscle to sink into the bed, and fell asleep with Nautica’s right shoulder pressed to my mouth, her breath heating and cooling my arm. In the morning, when I poured out my story, which was a mix of confessions and apologies and pieces of wonderment at how odd and beautiful this boy had been, Nautica’s response was to cross her arms, fold her eyebrows down, concentrate on my every word, and stay nearly silent until I ran out of steam. Her hair was combed back into two buns and tiny 290 frizzing dark brown curls fringed her forehead and temples. What she called her “winter skin” was still a few shades darker than her bright brown eyes. The tiny light spots around her eyes appeared like astrological patterns. She was wearing an orange silk robe, nearly lighter than the air, with a delicate pastel floral pattern around the sleeves and at the hem. We stood in the kitchen, where we did most of our talking. It was small and rectangular and one side opened toward the hallway. If we leaned on opposite counters we could get just enough physical space to argue. My headache was brutal. “Well,” she sighed, “Sounds like you fucked up and acted stupid.” She turned to the coffeemaker and refilled her cup. I watched her familiar swoop to the fridge for the half-n- half. In one looping arc her forearm and wrist maneuvered the pour, the return, the fridge door sealing closed. I apologized again. “You wanna explain what all this guilt’s about?” she said, turning toward me with the cup poised at her mouth. Blow, sip. “Is there more to it you aren’t telling me? Because I’m pissed about you breaking confidentiality. You have never respected how hard I work to keep my identity safe. I’m also pissed at you getting drunk for no reason, but you are also not that great at being sober. I’m thinking this is exactly your style of fuckup. So. I’m angry. But, I’m not shocked. What I don’t want is to find out later that there was more to it and you were too scared to tell me.” I assured her I’d told her all the dirt. Then I said I wanted her to meet Griffin. Suddenly, she was even more angry. “You want what now?” “I want you to meet him,” I said. “I really liked him.” “I don’t have to meet all your people,” she said. “He already irritates me.” “Don’t blame him for what I did,” I said. I realized then I’d left out the part about him 291 being a compulsive thief. It didn’t seem like a good time to bring it up. She shook her head. She told me to leave her alone for a while to get ready. “You’re stressing me,” she said, “and I’ve got three sessions today. Two of them are back-to-back.” “You don’t want any eggs?” I sounded like a child. The eggs, pan, and butter were out. She didn’t answer, so I only scrambled two. I lay on the couch, spooned a few bites in, and hated myself. I turned on the TV, and hated that more, which felt a little better. Nautica emerged from the bedroom in her winter boots and black sweater-dress. Stiletto heels poking out from her black leather day-bag. Her short wig on, with the bangs combed perfectly straight across her eyebrows. It was 8:00AM and she was sharp. “You look miserable,” she said. She went into the kitchen, pulled the crackers and dried fruit from her cupboard, put them in her bag. I leaned in the doorway between her and the front door. “I feel miserable,” I said. “Self pity isn’t sexy, honey,” she said. “I wish you didn’t get introduced to Griffin through all this drama,” I said. “You sold me out last night,” she said, pointing at my face. “And instead of being grateful that I didn’t throw a fit and toss you out or something, you want me to fucking squirt myself about some boy.” I tried to interrupt but she was already saying, “No, no, fuck you!” Calm down, I said. I’d told Griffin all about her in a good way, too. She flinched and flared at every word. I couldn’t make her understand. “I didn’t even do anything with him,” I said. “How’d it feel when he touched you?” she said. I froze. 292 She saw. “See? You can’t just talk to me about it,” she said. “You’re a coward and I’m through with this conversation.” The ball of guilt metastisized. I was poisoned with it. I was a coward, that felt true. I told her I loved her again. “You want me to feel loved?” she said, voice rising, “then clean up your own damn messes!” She reached into the sink, pulled out a plate, broke it in one slam to the edge of the counter, and tossed a half toward me, not to hit, but to startle. Then she stomped to the door and yanked it closed behind her. I stood frozen in the doorway, silently defending myself. We hadn’t had a fight like that for years. Our early relationship had required a lot of emotions and conflict and even a queer-friendly therapist who had helped us learn better communication, especially around jealousy and other lovers. We had been together almost ten years, and we’d been treating each other really well for most of it. I searched desperately for a method, a tool, a totem of our love and health to bring her back to me. I decided to give her space, instead. That night, she sat at the little wood table at the edge of the kitchen and held her bag on her lap. I’d had a text conversation with Griffin from the granite bathroom at the dungeon. I’d told him we may not be able to see each other right way because Nautica was having some trouble adjusting to the idea. Our relationship had been non-monogamous from the beginning. When we started dating she was seeing two other people. One of them was a longtime lover and friend who was still in our lives, who I had my own friendship with now too. One of them wanted to get more serious than Nautica did. Nautica and I matched up so well that neither of us remembered ever talking about “getting serious”--we just did. I had dated a few other people, mostly queer women. A few I’d really loved. We both had play partners, with whom we shared bonds of 293 power exchange and BDSM interests, but no romance. Our friend circle was resilient, and when people broke up, they tended to figure out how to stay in touch and stick around. I had now introduced a reason for some old-fashioned jealousy into our lives. Nautica saw the messages I’d written to Griffin without looking for them, when she was hooking my phone up to the speakers to play music. I’d meant to talk to her about it, it seemed like it shouldn’t be such a big deal to respond to him back and forth a bit. “What’s this bullshit?” she had said, phone in hand. “You’re so suspicious,” I said. Sure, Griffin had called me “sexy” and “forceful” and it felt good, but what was so wrong with that? She looked at me with an unfamiliar hurt in her eyes. “You’re the cold one here,” she said. “You really don’t get that?” I really didn’t. She slumped a little in her seat. She still hadn’t put any music on and the silence seemed dramatic. “Then you should date him until you get it or I give up,” she said. “But don’t expect me to mingle. And don’t ever double-book us. And if I get sick of it, I reserve the right to make you choose.” “Choose between you?” It sounded absurd. She was my home. “I really hate talking with you about relationship stuff sometimes,” she said. She put her head on her arm on the table. It was a posture of defeat. She turned her head to the side, away from me, and said to the wall, “If I get sick of him, and you want to hang on, I’m not going to sacrifice myself and go through hell tolerating him to keep you happy. I will make you choose. I’m warning you now. I would not do this about a lesbian or a queer lover of yours. It is because he is just so much a boy. Clear?” “I can’t believe you’re even thinking like this,” I said. “This could be nothing. This could 294 be a stupid drunk hookup that never even happens! And so what that he’s a boy?” She stared at me. “Okay,” I said. I wanted the argument over. “You have to really agree to this,” she said. “This is a boundary.” I said I’d agree to it, but it didn’t sound right to me, given what we’d always said about our commitment to supporting each other being sexually free and independent. “Sexually free in a queer world,” she said. “Not free to bring heterosexuality into my homelife. Even if he’s kinky.” “You’re making that clear,” I said. She went into the bedroom. Later, she came into the living room, where I had returned to the couch and television. She was naked, her hair tied up in a scarf, water beading on her chest. She must have already dropped her wet towel on the floor somewhere. “I’m sorry for saying some shit I don’t mean,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t have said that I hate talking to you about anything. Especially relationship stuff. You’re still my favorite person to talk to. And it was mean to call you names. I’m sorry about that too.” I thanked her. I could tell she wasn’t quite done though. “You know it hurt me that you broke our trust so easily, right? For a boy. It scares me.” “Yeah, I get that,” I said. “I’m really sorry.” I meant it more deeply somehow, and it got in. “I need to remember that people do mad stupid stuff when they get crushes,” she said. “Especially you. Remember that baby girl you got all fucked up over? I shouldn’t be so shocked.” I didn’t risk a response. That “baby girl” was a cynical twenty-one year old Smith college lesbian I’d had a major love affair with. Nautica had supported it until I started forgetting to 295 do things I said I would do at home, coming home later than I said. I’d actually felt drugged with love for that girl, similarly to the way I sometimes felt for Nautica. But my love with Nautica was like a river. Constantly moving, and still always there. The “baby girl” had been like a firehose on Monday and a drought on Tuesday. Nautica walked to me and reached for my face. Her fingers were wrinkled from the shower. She traced a heart on my cheek. “You haven’t had one like this for a long time, have you?” she said. I shook my head. No, and we both knew that the last time I’d had a big crush on someone it wasn’t that twenty-one year old. I’d fallen for a friend of ours, and she’d stayed close with us even when our romance cooled. Our community wasn’t comprised of serial monogamists. It was a web of people who loved each other and let romance ebb and flow. There were a few couples and one trio who lived together and provided a certain kind of grounding for the other relationships. Nautica and I were one of those couples. I definitely was messing with the system by bringing Griffin into the mix. “Let’s fuck before you forget how much you like it,” Nautica said. She smiled, a little sadly. She wanted the fight over too. I followed her to the bedroom. “I never forget,” I said. I asked if she had something in mind. She told me to get my dick, and while I threw a few things around on the floor looking for my harness, she pushed the comforters aside and perched on the edge of the bed. “Get the new one,” she said, which meant I was not going to be fucking her hard. The new one was black silicone, and bigger than my last, and I wasn’t graceful with it yet. I found my stuff, ran into the bathroom, warmed my cock in the sink, fitted it into my harness, covered it in lube, and found her standing on the bed when I reentered the bedroom. She ordered me to lay on my back on the floor. I did. She looked at me from her height for a long moment. Then she stepped down 296 from the bed, knelt over me, lowered herself onto the dick, and rode me until she came. Every time I moved to touch her she slapped my hands away, but when she got close to her orgasm, she leaned down to my face and kissed me for real, which normally pushed me over the edge right away, but this time, I wrapped my arms around her and wanted to cry. She came so hard I worried about slipping out and hurting her. But she held on, and I held on, and we rocked together until she was quiet. We held still there on the floor until it hurt my back, and then we crawled into bed, and I wriggled out of the harness and let it thunk to the floor, and asked her to go to the Brooklyn Museum with me soon. “Sure,” she said. “That would be fun.” Just as I was falling asleep, she asked me what time I was going in to the dungeon tomorrow, and I remembered that I was seeing a new guy. “Need to get out of here by 2PM,” I told her. “I’m out before then,” she said. “Guess I won’t see you until I get back.” I’d forgotten she was going to Philly for a weekend of rope suspension training. “If Griffin calls you up and wants to see you this weekend,” she said, “go for it. Have fun. Stay conscious. We’ll talk when I’m home. I trust you.” She kissed my head, turned over, and was asleep in six breaths. I lay awake for at least an hour, bouncing between pained gratitude for Nautica’s grace and ferocious sex, and imagining some ways I might make Griffin beg me to keep going, please, please just don’t stop. She knew I was in something and she was going to love me through it, just like she had for the past nine years. And Griffin? He was like a puppy wearing a sign that said Take me. 297 Griffin’s Apartment There was a crusted bottle of soft scrub and a fetid sponge but no towel, in Griffin’s bathroom. The floor tiles were loose, and I moved one back and forth a half inch with my foot while I peed. He lived with so many people. There were piles of boxes and various unidentifiable shapes in the hallway. Vacuum hoses? Old plastic tubes for tennis balls? Brown packing tape peeling off big boxes that could hold the belongings of someone who has been gone for years. Matted cakes of cat hair collecting inches from the base of the wall. The remnants of a taxidermy kit from a manager Griffin said he usually tried to forget. I asked about the taxidermy box. There was a crate full of cotton, spools of light brown thread, and coils of wire in various thicknesses piled chaotically on top of it. The box had been in the apartment for almost as long as Griffin. The old manager was responsible for most of what was wrong with the space, Griffin said. He put up plywood “walls” and rented half-rooms to people who couldn’t and never did pay rent. He took the chain off of one of the toilets and left it off, so tenants would use less water. That meant there was one working toilet for all eight people who lived there. “It made some sense at the time,” Griffin said, “in his defense. Our water bill was too high and no one was home much. Most of us made a real effort to shit elsewhere.” Griffin moved the crate. “But this was Kenny’s genius move,” he said, pointing at the kit. “He thought we were wasting a great opportunity by poisoning the rats.” “Opportunity for what?” “Re-use. Profit. He ordered a beginner’s taxidermy kit, like for squirrels or something. He watched tons of YouTube videos.” “Did he ever do it?” I touched the box. It was thick with dust. 298 Griffin smiled and pointed at a series of finger-smudges on the wall just to my right. I added my smudge to the collection. “He wanted to make a series of dioramas with the rats dressed up in doll clothes and sell them to the hipster bars on the other side of Bushwick. He really thought he’d make money. And be repurposing the rats. He got the idea from an old taxidermy manual from 1908 that was on sale for a dollar at the thrift store around the corner.” Griffin pulled some masking tape from a corner of the box and peered inside. He saw what he wanted. “And?” I asked. The story reminded me, somehow, of Nautica. Maybe because she had a collection of teeth. “He sold three dioramas before he went out of style,” Griffin said as he opened the box, just enough to wedge his hand in and retrieve a worn maroon book with faded gold leaf lettering. “You have to read this,” he said. He backed down the hallway, dragging his hands on the sides of the wall, clicking and rustling his fingers on the thick paint. Rat sounds. I told him to wait. He stopped. “What were the dioramas?” One was a scene in which a mouse in a dress was laying on a divan with a tiny martini. That one was called Daisy. I entered his room. The dust bunnies were gritty. The second scene involved three rats, dressed up like the Three Stooges. The last one was Kenny’s best, Griffin said. It was Jesus the Rat on the cross, next to the Rat Buddha, and a dancing Rat Krishna. “He made Krishna’s extra arms out of a few different types of clay before he found one that looked right.” Griffin led me to his bed and pointed at the place where I was supposed to begin reading 299 in the book. PREFACE The object of this book is to enable the reader to gain complete mastery of the art of taxidermy. We do not believe in the wanton destruction of birds for ornamental purposes, nor do the laws in most states, if properly enforced, allow of such practices. We do believe, however, that at least one person in every community should possess the knowledge to enable him to correctly mount speci- mens. Millions of birds are killed yearly in the United States by accidents, such as flying against light- houses, telegraph wires, or buildings, etc. Practi- cally none of these are saved because there is no one at hand who has the requisite knowledge. If only a fraction of one per cent, of all the birds killed accidentally, and those shot by sportsmen and thrown away, could be saved and correctly prepared, it would be unnecessary to shoot thousands 300 that are now killed every year simply for museum purposes. We trust that this book may be the means of cre- ating a taxidermist or an enthusiast in every sec- tion of the country, and that each one of them will endeavor to persuade sportsmen to save most of the game they kill. You will find that there is pleasure in doing the work for yourself and profit in doing that for others. In the following pages we give you the results of our thirty-five years' experience in all branches of taxidermy. No trade secrets are held back; everything is laid bare. We have endeavored to omit nothing that would be a help to the student and to avoid the introduction of any hindrances. We have illustrated every point as fully as pos- sible, and are sure that any faithful reader and worker can in a short time do work equal to that of the best. The text, every drawing and every pho- tograph used in this book is new and made express- ly for this work. We wish to give credit to our 301 chief taxidermist, Mr. N. F. Stone, who mounted a large number of the specimens that are pictured; while a young man, he is one of the best that this country has yet produced, a natural-born taxider- mist. We shall be more than pleased if, by our work, others can be produced. Chas. K. & C. A. Reed. Worcester, Massachusetts. May, 1908. We pored over phrases that tickled. “But,” Griffin said, closing the book, “There comes a point where you cannot hide the rotten core of a building with white paint anymore.” “What is that supposed to mean?” “Kenny was so horrified by the number of rats he was catching he had to stop doing it. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t stuff them fast enough, and he had already started storing them in a separate freezer.” “Why not just stop catching them?” I said. It had something to do with exposing oneself to the innards of urban spaces. Kenny couldn’t un-see what he had seen. Rats were the living infrastructure of the city. “Kenny needs to be put to pasture,” Griffin said. “He needs fresh air and balance.” 302 “Who doesn’t?” I said. Griffin opened the door to his room and held it open for me. He pushed a few buttons on his computer keyboard, pulled up his music, and clicked through a few ideas. I heard the first lonely strums of Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind. Griffin skipped ahead to “Standing in the Doorway.” “I’m having a wild affair with this song,” he said. “It’s from Dylan’s Time Out of Mind.” I nodded. “Did you know that already?” he asked, hands on his hips. “Yes,” I said. He nodded. “That’s hot.” He sang along with Dylan, dancing slowly toward me, and traced small circles around the base of my neck, then kissed me lightly there, in between the words. Even if the flesh falls off of my face I know someone will be there to care It always means so much Even the softest touch I see nothing to be gained by any explanation There’s nothing that needs to be said You left me standing in the doorway crying Blues wrapped ‘round my head I felt hypnotized, seduced. I needed to get a handle on the situation. “What is the defining feeling you have about your childhood?” I asked him. “Generally negative,” he said. He nudged me toward the bed. I went, and pulled him with me. 303 “Get more specific,” I said. “It was apocalyptic at all times, because Jesus was COMING BACK.” “Oh no.” “My dad had a midlife crisis when I was in high school and wanted to improve on our already monstrous house. Now I think of it like it was some kind of unconscious explosion of frustration at the unattainable,” Griffin’s curved fingers brushed through his hair and landed lightly on my arm. He stroked where he’d landed and gave me goosebumps. He met my eyes. “The unattainable Jesus?” I said. “Sure, but even more so the American Dream,” he said. “Were they connected for him?” He nodded. “Perfectly connected. When I was asking about how he’d made his money, all he’d say was ‘God takes care of his children.’” “Sounds frustrating, but kind of harmless.” “This is the same guy who went to build himself a new driveway on his unaffordable new house, and got halfway through before he realized he’d calculated his projected amount of concrete using the formula for area only, and his money was gone.” “I don’t understand.” “He’d calculated incorrectly, and spent all his budget on not enough concrete.” It clicked. “Because he lacked depth?” “Because he lacked depth.” “So God didn’t take care of him.” “Jesus, no.” I told Griffin about Jason. How Jason liked to tell me “Some people work for money. 304 Other people have money that works for them.” He wasn’t trying to point out that I was the former, and he was the latter, although it was true. He was one of those rich people who had worked his way out of poverty, made some truly brilliant and many lucky moves, and ended up a boss. He believed in the American Dream, because he felt he’d lived it. He couldn’t understand how it might be unattainable to someone else, as long as they were “smart” enough. He prided himself on being a good boss. “A good boss is still a boss,” Griffin said. “What we want is not dominance but for the yoke to be released,” I said. “Do you know who said that?” He shook his head no. “Huey P. Newton,” I said. “Lady, you’re full of surprises,” he said. “You don’t even know,” I said. “You don’t even know.” He picked up my hand and intertwined our fingers. “Nice manicure,” he said. I kept my nails short and dark, the better to glove up and penetrate with. “They’re lesbian nails,” I said. He nodded thoughtfully, didn’t ask for clarification. I let him penetrate me that night. I hadn’t had vanilla sex with a man for years. It clearly made him very, very happy. I wondered what Nautica would think. It was enjoyable, but it felt somehow too intimate. Like I didn’t know him well enough for that. There were three quiet sleeping bodies in the living room in the morning as I left: two boys on two couches, and one cat. Early in our relationship, Nautica had asked me at dinner once if she was the first black 305 woman I’d ever dated. I said no. “Who? How many?” she said. “I don’t know, a few?” “Name one,” she said. “Bemé,” I said. “I don’t think I know her,” she said. “I mean, it would be weird if you did, she’s not from New York,” I said. “You didn’t know that every black woman in America knows every other black woman in America and we all get on conference calls and talk about it every time one of us fucks a white person? There’s a special line for lesbians, to bitch about our white girlfriends.” “Shit!” I said. “Is that a joke about a stereotype I am supposed to understand? I can’t tell.” She laughed and grabbed my cheeks in one hand, kissed me, and said, “You’re so cute when your naive, California-raised, multi-cultural soul shows.” Which didn’t answer my question, but made me feel good, so I was ok. “You want to hear about her?” I asked. “Yes, I do. Spare no sexy or gruesome detail.” I used to sneak in through the back of a bar out in Silver Lake on Thursday nights and sit in the corner with sketchbooks and drink for free and listen to the live shows. I was sleeping with the bartender, who was probably gay and mostly liked to cuddle and wanted me to finger his butt all the time. He was kind, though, and he’d been poor, and he never judged anything I did, and he’d pour me drinks all night if I wanted, and then take me home with him and make sure I ate a meal before I left the next day. I liked him, but we weren’t in love. I was in love with Angie and he really seemed like he needed a big Daddy to come and sweep him off his feet. I never told him I thought that, of course. 306 “Sorry, where’s the black girl in this story?” Nautica said. She had come to the stage unannounced and sang backup for the Colin L. Orchestra on one of those Thursday nights. The Colin L. Orchestra, a five-piece psychedelic rock band whose lead singer lived in Big Lebowski drag. He had thin blonde waves that grew in a scrabbly crescent from ear to ear, was bald on the top, and had a bushy strawberry blonde beard. He wore a heavy wool sweater, sunglasses, shorts, and sandals. I bet many people didn’t even notice she’d not been singing behind him before, he was so much a front man in the front. But he was sweet somehow too, in a well-meaning teenager way. Her voice made his fuller, like honey and peanut butter. She was tall. She wore black jeans and a heather gray T shirt. Her hair was combed into shiny finger waves around one side of her face, and cut short in the back. She wore Doc Martens and dark red lipstick. They sang a lilting Grateful Dead song. Then the guitars folded into a drone-like thrumming, and she started singing over it. That woman closed her eyes while she sang and I believed her. She sang from her hips, and I was taken by it, taken with her. “You dated her?” asked Nautica. “I gave her my number when the band took a break, and she called me the next day!” I said. “We dated for three months.” “So is she the one who taught you about black hair?” “Carl taught me some about black hair,” I said. “Bemé taught me a lot more, yeah. But her hair was short. I didn’t learn about weaves or braids from her.” Nautica raised her tea mug. “You learned about edges from a short haired girl,” she said. And I nodded. “Thank you for sharing,” she said. “Thank you for asking,” I said. I hadn’t thought about Bemé in a long time. 307 “Why’d you break up?” “Her career,” I said. I didn’t like how it sounded. But it was true. We stopped seeing each other because she never had enough time, she was working so hard on her singing career. I went to see her perform twice, sometimes three times a week, because it was really the only way to see her. At first that was exciting. But eventually, I wanted more from her and she booked a tour instead. But her voice! Her voice I would have bathed in, dressed in, eaten, drank, and breathed if I could have. “She hooked you good,” Nautica said. Carl taught me there was nothing inherently wrong with being “taken in” by an experience. It can feel wonderful, to be surprised by something pleasurable, to be cast into an unknown place where the music is more poignant, the tastes unimaginably delicious, the affection deeply sincere, the ideas profound, the orgasm metaphysical. Being taken in by an unexpected pleasure can break you open, make you cry, it can terrorize you, and it can always teach you something important about yourself. Carl told me to trust the feeling. I should feel grateful when I got taken by something or someone. But I must not chase it, or I would become addicted, a slave. I understood him, finally, in a new click of recognition, after talking to Nautica about Bemé. When deep, unexpected pleasure comes and takes you, you are being most yourself: for an instant, unconflicted. Filled with only Yes. Nautica and I tended to enjoy and welcome new lovers because we wanted a large, loving, queer family. Our bond was unassailable and our friends supported our intimacy, even when they were dating one of us. We had always agreed that a gift of our open relationship was that we got to enjoy it when our partner got taken by feelings for a new queer. Griffin was not in 308 our script. Yet, I was getting taken in. I wondered how we’d stay in sync. 309 Rescue A few weeks later, I woke up to a phone call from Griffin who had fallen off his bike. He sounded disoriented and sad and scared and so I went to pick him up in a Zipcar, wearing my sweatpants. We got him and his slightly busted bike back to his apartment. I advised him on proper wound care. He had no idea that soap and water was the first line of defense against infection. He wanted to spray vinegar on his arm before even washing it. No one advises that, I told him. Where’d you learn that? He couldn’t remember. He had a gash just below his elbow and another one on his pubic bone, where he’d gone over his handlebars. I told him he was lucky. “It’s not luck,” he said. “I know how to fall,” he said. “But you don’t know how not to crash,” I said. Then I saw two clients, one of them new. The new guy was actually not new at all to BDSM, and wanted to tell me all about the other Dommes he’d seen and how wonderful they were. “I’ve been at this a long time,” he said. “I’ve had so many experienced, talented Dommes do sessions with me,” he said. “I’m kind of addicted or something,” he said. “Have you ever been collared?” I asked. “What?” “Have you ever made yourself the sole property of one mistress?” “No, never.” “So you reserve your right to be a slut.” He smiled. “Yes, I’m a slut.” He was utterly annoying, gave me no feedback, and I grew to hate him a little during the session, which was too bad because if he’d been a regular client I probably would have seen 310 him for two hours every two weeks, and I needed one or two more regulars. He hadn’t shaved around his anus. He said he was paranoid about marks. I said he shouldn’t have any from what I did. I wasn’t as sure as I sounded. It was difficult to care. My regular guy was slightly withdrawn, not his normal effusive self. I sensed he was worried about something and I couldn’t tell if it had anything to do with me. At the end of the session, I instructed him to sit on the ground and I let him rub my feet. “You’re so cute when you do that,” I said. “Thank you, Mistress,” he said. “Do you have something on your mind?” I said. “You weren’t your usual self today.” “No,” he said. “Nothing important.” “Then I’m disappointed in you,” I said. “I was ready to forgive you for being boring if you had something serious going on. But if you were just distracted? That’s annoying.” He stopped rubbing, looked at me, and seemed horrified. Maybe I’d gone too far with the reprimand. Usually he liked getting a little slap on the wrist like that. “I’m sorry,” he said, tightly. Straining against his protocol. He was angry with me! I took my feet away. “Go get dressed,” I said. So, maybe, that regular was done with me, too. When I got home, Nautica was having an angry call with Kaiser Permanente. It sounded like they’d lost something important. An appointment? A lab test? I couldn’t tell. She made eye contact with me, frenetic, loving, stressed, and then went back to the call. I went into the bedroom and flopped onto the bed. Annoyed. Resentful. Bored. Take a shower, my brain said. Fuck it, another part of my brain said. 311 You have body fluids on you, my brain said. Not much, and so what, the other part of my brain said. Nautica has made it clear she prefers if you shower after work, my brain said. So I decided to do it. But I hadn’t moved yet when the phone rang. Griffin again. It was after 9PM, and we didn’t have plans to see each other again that day. I answered. He sounded very upset. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m lost and I need someone with the internet to help me.” Hang up, a part of my brain said. “What do you mean?” I said. “Where are you?” “I got on an express train by mistake,” he started. “Don’t tell me a story,” I said. “Give me an address where you are.” He was in Queens. He’d never been to Queens. He sounded disoriented again. “Did you get a concussion? Are you on something?” I said. “No, I’m just stupid!” he said. “I’m in shock from the crash, I’m foggy, I don’t know.” “That doesn’t sound good,” I said. “Please just tell me what to do next?” he said. “Ok, ok,” I said. Then, I gave him directions to the train. He called back in twenty minutes and told me that the station I’d directed him to was closed. The next station was going to be closed by the time he got there on foot. He didn’t have any money on him for a cab. He never had had credit cards so he couldn’t use any app- based car services. He was starting to panic now. Nautica was still on the phone when I left to pick up the same Zipcar, and rescue Griffin, again. He was giving me reasons and explanations for the entire drive. “It’s not important,” I said once. “It’s ok,” I said once. “Happens to the best of us,” I said 312 once. He resolved to pay me back three times what I’d had to put into renting the car. We almost ran out of gas because I’d forgotten to fill it up earlier in the day. While we were stopped at the gas station, Griffin made me a small bouquet of hard green leaves from a hedge and some gum wrappers twisted into curly shapes. “For my knight in shining armor,” he said. I took him home, again. I told him to stay there for a few hours so I could sleep. “I’m sorry I called on you so much today,” he said. “I wish I knew why everything is going wrong with my life today.” You’re trying to run it yourself, I thought. You never grew up, I thought. You’re spoiled and have no respect for how difficult it actually is to support the basic functioning of your own life because you’ve always had people doing your dirty work for you, I thought. “I wish you knew what was going wrong, too,” I said. “Want to come inside and tie me up for a while?” he said. “No,” I said. “I want to go home and take a shower.” “Ok, I’ll miss you,” he said. I gave him some kind of half-smile. I hadn’t even put the car in park. “Goodnight,” I said. “Goodnight,” he said, and I could feel him wanting some other comfort from me. “Talk tomorrow,” I said, and nodded toward his door. He got out. He shut his door. I lifted my foot from the brake before he’d really gotten out of the way. Although all the running around was annoying, ultimately it was a win for me, as an irritating and unnecessary emotional crisis process was averted in the end and Griffin got what he needed, and now he owed me one. And that was the power script we both liked best, still. When I got home Nautica was in bed. I took a shower. I slid in next to her. 313 “You ok?” she said in her sleepy voice. “I picked such a baby to fuck with,” I said. “Yeah,” she said, and sighed a little. “He’s so in love with you now, though. That part has to feel nice.” “He’s dependent.” “He’s a young, unconscious submissive and a masochist,” she said, as if that explained the whole day. “You ok?” I said. “Your phone call with bureaucracy seemed heavy earlier.” “I was trying to get some records for my mom,” she said. “It was really annoying.” “I’m sorry,” I said. Most people I knew still had moms. “Don’t be,” she said. “Not your fault.” My eyes were getting used to the dark. I searched hers. She looked so sweet, and so tired. “Let’s sleep,” I said. She jutted her chin out a little and puckered. I kissed her. “I love you,” she said, with a seriousness that surprised me. “I love you too,” I said back. “So. Fucking. Much.” We snuggled in and slept. 314 The following afternoon, I was headed to Griffin’s to check on him when my life changed again. The sky was crooning orange and some number from LA had called me seventeen times since six AM. The one voicemail from that number was garbled. The voice was masculine, but I didn’t recognize it as Carl’s. I called back during the eight minute walk from the train station to Griffin’s building. “Hello is this Kindred?” he had a voice like a radio host, like Mumia Abu Jamal’s. I confirmed. “Sorry to bother you,” he started, and I braced for a piece of horrible news from a forgotten collections agency, “but I’m a friend of your father’s. Carl Baker is your father, is that right?” “Yes, Carl is my dad,” I said, “what’s going on? I haven’t heard from him in weeks.” This guy just said he was a friend, but cops lie. “I’m Rodney,” he said. “Carl’s been tripping on the skirts,” which meant nothing to me but sounded like romantic drama, “and Riley said she needs to stay out of it so he gave me your number to call if he got picked up.” “Is he in jail?” I asked. I put a finger over my other ear and stopped walking. I leaned against a heavily painted-over brick wall, wedged in between fruit displays and the door at a corner store, and tried to concentrate. “No ma’am I don’t think so,” he said. No one called me ma’am outside the dungeon. “I checked county and the sheriff’s and he ain’t in any cell. He’s just gone, honey, like poof!” “Where’d he go? What are the Skirts?” “Oh sorry, I mean he’s been beefing with the fake-cops that patrol down town Skid Row, they wear these colored shirts, we called them the ‘shirts,’ and then that sort of turned into 315 ‘skirts,’ you know, no disrespect, it’s just what we call them.” Right. Call them something feminine to insult them, no disrespect. “But he’s not locked up?” “No ma’am,” he said. “He’s just M.I.A.” “I don’t understand. What happened to him?” Blocking my ear wasn’t helping. “I don’t know,” Rodney said. “One day he was here. Next day we all wake up before the skirts come roust us all and he’s gone, which don’t bother us, but then he didn’t come back that night, or the next one. That ain’t like him.” “So how long ago was that?” “This’ll be the third night he’s gone,” he said. “Fuck!” “He never said a word to me, but all his shit’s still here and we’re going to get moved off the block this weekend and I can’t watch his set-up no more. They’ll throw out all his albums and his books and everything, they don’t give a fuck,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about a grown man off on his own for a few days, but his phone is dead, too. And Riley said she don’t know what he’s doing, and she said she can’t help, so I’m sorry I got to call you.” “He has a phone? Like a cell phone?” “Yes, uh, yes?” Rodney seemed as confused as I was. “Who’s Riley? Who is looking for him?” “I mean, I’ve gone to some of his spots, if that’s what you’re asking. No one’s seen him for days.” He cleared his throat. I wondered what he expected me to say. “Riley. Your sister? You haven’t heard from her, I guess.” “I don’t have a sister,” I said. Silence. “Shit. Ma’am I don’t know what to say. Carl told me she’s his kid, she calls him 316 Pop, I assumed you...I’m sorry,” he said. “You must not have grown up together.” “You’re sure you have the right person?” I said, but of course he did. Carl had given the man my phone number and told him I was family, that made sense. Who. The fuck. Was Riley. “So you’re asking me what to do about his camp,” I said. “I don’t know.” “You have my number right? Do you want to just think about it for a little while and then call me back and tell me what you want to do with his stuff? I don’t want it to get thrown away, he’s my best homie down here.” “Yeah let me think a minute and call you back,” I said. He gave me his number and I repeated it until I’d typed it back into the phone. Rodney. Carl’s best homie. Riley. Who called him Pop. I thanked Rodney. We hung up. Carl and I had a system. He would call me from one of the last working payphones in downtown L.A., leave a message with the time he was going to call back if I didn’t answer, and if I still didn’t answer the second time he’d make one more appointment time, try again, and if I still didn’t answer, he would wait a few days. We’d been using the same system for years, since he was at Corcoran, when I’d been nearly impossible to get in touch with. Now, I usually answered on the first or second try. He knew my general schedule. We spoke about twice a month. I hadn’t heard from him in three weeks, I suddenly realized, with a clenching pain in my gut. During that last conversation, we’d yelled at each other. We’d fought about something stupid. We’d said terrible things. I’d put them out of my mind because we always figured it out eventually when we fought. I walked another block. The neighborhood was industrial, less people milling than in mine. Piles of plywood and weeds behind chainlink fences, un-sponsored street art. The best was an astronaut with a sandwich. His face was covered by the helmet so you could’t tell if he’d 317 realized it yet, that to eat the sandwich he’d have to stop breathing. Ground control, something’s wrong. I left a message for Nautica. “I think I have to go to LA this week,” I said. “Something’s up with my dad. I want you to come with me. I don’t think you really can, though. Let’s talk about it tonight.” She was teaching an intensive workshop at the dungeon for curious people who wanted ropes and sensation play added to their monogamous, vanilla beds. It was the most money she made at one time for three months, and she’d planned so much around it. It was impossible for her to miss this event and still make her bills. When I got to Griffin’s, there were two sweetly greasy people in the front room who opened the door with their arms around each other, giggling. They said yeah, Griffin was home, and stumbled inside. Their T-shirts were ripped in strategic places and their denim shorts frayed unevenly on their thighs. The apartment, built of plywood and a hundred years of paint, had a floor that buckled under my boots and a ceiling that flaked red dust when people walked on the floor above. Two bare light bulbs in the hallway made me squint. I opened his door, climbed his little ladder to his bed, and perched at the top. I breathed that smell of him, like fresh bread, with a tiny sour edge. He was sprawled naked in bed with my journal next to him, dead asleep. I got the book and spanked his thigh with it. He buckled awake, gasping. He reached for the sheet but let go, on second thought. “You have a problem,” I said. Waving my journal. “I know,” he said. “Well?” “I’m sorry?” 318 “Want to make me a promise about how you’re going to change your behavior?” “I promise never to do it again, to anyone,” he said. He looked terrified. We both knew he was going to break this promise, and that he would be punished, and that it would probably be our favorite fuck of the year. He may have sincerely been trying to stop stealing. He’d been earnestly doing a moral inventory, and coming with nothing, he said. His Shoplifter’s Anonymous sponsor kept telling him to dig deeper. He didn’t think learning about women was wrong. He was either a moral genius or a diabolical self-deluding arrogant dangerous boy-monster. The latter seemed so much more likely. “You know what,” I said, “I gotta go.” “Oh no! Please don’t,” he said. “I’ll get up, I’m sorry I fell asleep!” “No, really,” I said. “It’s not just that you’re a thief who lives in a shithole, I have some other stuff going on I want to think about.” I left, I started home. I couldn’t understand. Carl was missing? He was beefing with the cops? Who. The fuck. Was Riley. I tried to text Nautica some kind of update. I’m coming home now, I said. Carl’s missing. I don’t know what’s going on. 319 Decisions Nautica was in the kitchen when I got home, doing dishes in her underwear. I came in and she toweled her hands in preparation to hug me. She turned her topless beautiful body my way and opened her arms and said, Come here, baby. She held me, and we breathed together. We leg go. “Let’s talk about what you wanna do?” she said. She threw on a sweatshirt and some slippers. I changed from my outside clothes into my gray sweatpants and white T shirt. Pulled my hair up and took off some eye makeup from who knows how many days. I sat in the living room. She brought us two mugs of tea. We settled in on our sides of the couch, facing each other. I sat cross-legged, she had her knees bent up. She held her mug in both hands, blew on the tea, and sipped. She made eye contact. She loved me. It was really unreasonable of her. I felt a shot of gratitude. “Thank you for talking this out with me,” I said. “You’re stupid,” she said, with affection. “What happens to you affects me too,” she said. “So what is it, exactly.” “I don’t know,” I said. “Honestly. I got a call from a guy named Rodney who said Carl gave him my number? He said he’s missing. He also said he had another daughter named Riley, who doesn’t want to be involved. I’m fucking confused.” “Holy shit.” She waited for me to go on. “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I feel like I should already be there.” “Sure,” she said. “But what could you do if you were there?” “Look for him? Maybe I can meet this guy Rodney and see if there’s any information in 320 his stuff? I guess his property is about to get stolen or seized or something.” “You’d look for Carl? Look for him how?” “I don’t know!” I said. She took a slow breath and let it out. “I’m scared,” I said. Because I couldn’t quite apologize for having a bad attitude. “I know,” she said quietly. “I want to help you make a good decision and suffer this a little less, if I can.” “Do you have an instinct about what I should do?” “One strong one,” she said. “What is it.” “That you should call the police in LA and report him missing before you do anything else. I think they might be required by law to check hospitals and jails.” “I can’t do that. He would hate it if I did that. I would be literally setting the dogs on him. The people who have hurt him the most, looking for him.” “What if he’s in a hospital? What if he’s in a coma? What if you could know tomorrow exactly what happened and be able to start dealing with it?” “I mean,” I didn’t know how to respond to that. “Okay, but...” “But nothing. Carl taught you to hate the police, I get it.” She saw me rising to defend myself and put a hand up and went on, “You’ve got your own reasons to hate the police, fine. But this is actually one of the few things that they should be doing with their time.” I looked at my hands. Dry skin in the fold between my thumb and index finger. Dry knuckles. I needed to moisturize before the skin got hard. Then I found the reason. “If he’s about to catch a case and took off somewhere to stay safe,” I said, “and he gets caught up because I gave the cops a reason to put manpower into finding him? I won’t be able 321 to live with that,” I said. “Okay,” she said. Sipped her tea again. I sipped mine. Licorice. She was strategic with her medicinals. “Are you saying you are completely and totally against the idea of reporting him missing at all?” “No,” I said. Because I didn’t feel that way. “But if you think you might file a report sometime, then you really should do it now. If he’s already been gone over twenty-four hours!” Of course she had a point. “I just can’t do it,” I said. “I can’t let being scared turn me into someone who relies on the enemy like that. I’ve got to find another way. That’s why I feel like I should go out there.” She was shaking her head, just slightly. She gave me a sad little smile. “He really convinced you,” she said. “You always say shit like that,” I said, getting angry. I pulled my legs up into myself and held myself together. “Walking into a police station feels like asking to be traumatized,” I said. “And, it’s not just his theory. It’s revolutionary theory. It’s real history. It’s my experience. The fucking cops are there to serve-“ “The interests of the owner classes,” she interrupted. “Yeah.” “No, I get it,” she said. “I do. I think you’re rigid and ridiculous but I also love you for this kind of thing you do.” “What kind of thing.” “You will go ahead and make shit harder for yourself if you believe it’s the right thing to do.” “Going to the cops doesn’t make shit easier on me,” I said. “And it definitely won’t make 322 anything easier on Carl.” “It might,” she said. “You don’t know.” “Okay, fine,” I said. “I can’t know the future.” “It sounds like you are ready to get a flight out there,” she said. I agreed that it did. “In your vision of yourself going off to L.A.,” she said, “are you alone?” I said that I was. I’d assumed she couldn’t come because of the class she had to teach? She seemed disappointed. But she said I was right, she really couldn’t take time off right now, there were a bunch of new people at La Jouissance to train, plus she needed the money from the class. I told her I knew it wouldn’t make sense to ask her to come with me. Maybe next week if the situation didn’t resolve. “I’m suggesting a harm reduction option,” she said, “which is that you ask one of our friends who needs a break from New York to go with you?” I hadn’t thought of that, and it seemed impossible. “Like who?” She named a few people. Trina, an old friend and lover of Nautica’s. We had a great friendship but I didn’t feel comfortable asking her for this. Dane, a feisty pro-sub who worked at La Jouissance. We’d worked together and she was a great femme bottom and we’d had some good social time together. Maybe, I said. I thought of Griffin. I did not suggest him. By the end of the convo, I had agreed to put real effort toward getting someone to come with me, and we had bought me a one-way ticket leaving in two days. We booked me five nights in a cheap hotel near the intersection Rodney had told me about. I thought I should sleep on the desire to bring Griffin. I called Rodney and left him a voicemail letting him know I was coming. “Let’s hope no one moves his stuff in the next two days,” I said. I didn’t know what to say about Riley. I 323 decided to wait to think about it. It was almost intolerably warm inside the apartment when I got home from work the next day. “I’m going to get naked, then?” I said. “Are you making martinis?” Nautica was wearing flip flops, black shorts, and a white tank top. Her hair was pulled back by a series of large elastics at the nape of her neck. Her breasts strained the ribbed pattern of the shirt and her dark nipples gazed back at me. “I’m making dinner,” she said. I put my bags down, slipped out of my shoes. Then my pants. Some relief. “Are you considering asking Griffin to go with you?” she asked. “Goddammit Nautica,” it just shot out of me, “How the fuck do you read my mind like that?” She just smiled and shook her head and told me what she’d been thinking. Nautica’s sexual desire did not extend to men. She didn’t love their angular hard edges or rough hair the way I did, so it was easy for her to detach from my desire for them. She could feel that my desire for her and my desire for someone in a male body would be different, and she didn’t feel threatened sexually. But. If I took him, Griffin was going to see a part of my life she had wanted access to, and he wouldn’t be able to appreciate it the way she could, and what was most uncomfortable for her was imagining him and I spinning ourselves into an intimate little cocoon without her in a moment of crisis. She was envious of the closeness we’d build. She still didn’t approve of not calling the cops. She worried about Carl. She was also pitifully imagining herself lonely, working too much, and jealous all the time while Griffin and I had mad constant highly charged emotional sex. 324 What helped us was the fact that her body was built to feel good, and she believed in activating her own self healing processes whenever she felt hurt. So earlier that day, she went to a two-hour African dance class and meditated on how to feel deeper love. She made plans to spend the first night of my trip with an old lover of hers who liked occasional meet-for- drinks-and-sex dates. She had arranged a new configuration of stones on the witchy shelf in the apartment where she kept all her totems. She had grocery shopped at the place that was farther away but had more stuff she liked. So she was feeling better. “But I still have some concerns,” she said, “and they’re not all about my personal comfort.” She was worried that Griffin might be a liability around the people I’d be talking to on Skid Row, instead of a help to me. “Why?” I hadn’t told her he was a kleptomaniac with a fetish for women’s journals. I’d told her he was submissive and relaxing to be around. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe he stinks of rich white boy? People might get a cop vibe from him? I can’t tell why I think he’ll be a problem.” “I was thinking he’d be able to help me fit in some places,” I said. “But what about the places where he’ll make you stand out? You take him to Skid Row, he’ll say the wrong thing so many times! He’ll silence people just by being there, being white, being hip, looking like that kind of boy.” “You wouldn’t trust him? He’s really that guy?” “A weird white kid has an even more dangerous chip on his shoulder than one who fits in,” she said. Maybe, I said. Maybe. Then, an uncomfortable thought. “Do you think of me as a weird white kid?” I said. “I wasn’t,” she said. “But now that you say it, yes.” 325 I groaned and pressed my palms into my eyes. Maybe Griffin’s presence would stifle people who didn’t trust white people they didn’t already know, but I was already a white person they didn’t know. And it was always worse when we brought numbers. On the other hand, I could leave him out of those situations, and when having a white man around was useful, it could be the difference between finding Carl or not. Especially if we had to deal with police at all. It still seemed like the whole trip could be better for me if he was there. It was a capitulation of sorts, like wearing a more conservative outfit to visit an old person. I said so. “I think Griffin can be the camouflage I need sometimes, and probably, he can learn to make himself less visible when I need him to.” “Or you can leave him in the hotel,” she said. “Or I can leave him in the hotel.” “Tied to the bed.” “Now we’re talking,” I said. I pushed an arm gently between her belly and the counter, leaned into her ass and rested my face at the base of her neck. I nuzzled to the side of her hair, until I could feel her skin. “Did you put the lime in the coconut here?” I asked. I took a deep inhale of her scent and the food. “It smells like cinnamon and a night of storytelling in the desert,” I said. “That’s the curry,” she said. “It’s evoking your memories of media representations of India stereotypes and some memories of eating Indian food in New York.” She shimmied her hips to loosen my hold. She spooned me some stew. It was fantastic. She moved me away from the stove and pointed her wooden spoon at me, grinning. We sang a few lines of “Put the Lime in the Coconut” together in fake Kermit-the-Frog falsettos. Nautica. Queen of the Sea. “I’m pretty sure Griffin doesn’t know how to handle the fact that you’re a sex worker,” she 326 said. “I’m worried about that, too.” “He was so chill about it that first night,” I said. Side-eye. “It’s hot to fuck one,” she said. “It’s emasculating and terrifying to them to date one.” I assented. It was impossible to know whether people would be able to handle it, even when their initial response was positive or curious or even familiar. I set the table with Nautica’s mismatched plates, her hand-made placemats, and her thick blue wine glasses. I poured us some Syrah. It looked black against the glass, a murky world behind the bright trapped bubbles. “I’m going to call him,” I said. “Carl?” “No, I don’t have his mysterious new cell phone number, and Rodney said he hasn’t answered it anyway. I’m going to call Griffin and see if he’ll come with me tomorrow.” “Alright,” she said. She sighed a little. “Yep. Alright.” Griffin didn’t answer. Call me, I said. I texted it too. Call me. “I really, really don’t get this ‘other daughter’ thing,” I said. “Riley? I’ve never heard of this person.” Nautica shook her head. “I don’t know, baby,” she said. “I’m not really surprised to hear he might have another kid. People do it all the time.” We ate the stew on the floor in her living room. We lit candles. We talked about our clients. We talked about her tendonitis. We talked about someday building a website for the scent-fetishists. There would be special categories: stripper’s costume bag, stripper shoes, Domme’s corset, in addition to the regular dirty panties, scat, feet. We’d send them smell samples (our old shoes, girlfriend’s outdated dance wear, and so on) in poly bags and they 327 could sign up for monthly deliveries. We’d never have to haul our overused work outfits to the Goodwill again, and we’d make money giving men our body fluids. Fluids we produced while taking money from other clients, most likely. It was satisfying to think about. Wasting nothing. “You haven’t said anything about how you actually feel,” Nautica said, while we cleared dishes. “You’ve got to be twisted up inside about this. About Carl.” The pang of worry was severe, this time. “I’m avoiding it,” I said. “I’m really avoiding thinking about it until I get there. I can’t do anything.” “You can run but you can’t hide,” she said. Then she played Neil Diamond’s “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” and sang and danced around, snapping a towel at the furniture while I washed our plates in her small metal sink. “Let’s get yogurt,” she said. We walked the three blocks to the new yoghurt shop. The fluorescents were obnoxiously bright in the all-white interior. I felt I was squinting unless I was looking down at my feet. “I just don’t understand how you can still be attracted to men,” Nautica said. “I’m not attracted to men in general,” I said. I tried to focus on her face without wincing at the bright fluorescents. She rolled her eyes at me for the second time and scraped the side of her styrofoam cup with her plastic spoon. “I think there’s a big difference between having all your objects of desire be men, you know, to be looking at men, attempting to see their sexiness, which is what I used to do, and having one boy kind of break through my anti-male lover habits.” 328 “You want affirmation for liking a boy against your better judgment?” “No,” I said. I had gotten too much frozen yogurt, again. “Want any of mine?” I said, showing her the nicely carved mounds of cake batter and mango I still had left. Of course she did, and she took my cup, and she gave me an extra little affectionate rub with her hand as she did. “I guess I’m prejudiced,” she said. “But the problem is how many of them actually do just consistently suck.” I understood that. “So what do you like about Griffin again?” she asked. I talked it through. I liked that he was so excited to submit to me without even knowing that was what he was doing. I enjoyed having him as a pet, but I especially liked talking to him about sex like we were fifteen-year-old boys together on a camp-out. He listened pretty well. He lied a lot less than most people. His response to me talking about my mom dying was more relaxed than most people. He was so cute. And so weird. “All good things,” Nautica said, nodding. She piled our cups together and took them out to the trash. She was wearing sweat pants. That butt. I wanted to touch her before she sat down, but I didn’t. “Ok,” she said. “Ok, what?” She’d made some kind of decision. “Go with him to LA, but, find a way to take me with you, too.” “What?” “Find a way. I’m going to stay in New York physically, so, you’ll have to be creative.” I didn’t really know what to say except, “Ok.” With Nautica’s blessing, I could more easily take the trip. And the severity of Carl’s absence, which was so much more important than whether Nautica felt things when I put my strap-on in some cute boy’s ass, crashed over me. 329 She saw it. “Baby,” she said, and it was her gentle voice now, and her hands went on both my knees under the table--how did she do stuff like that without looking?--and her eyes were wide and deep, “I’m sorry for all this. I’m sorry I can’t come with you. I’m sorry for all the stress. I’m worried about Carl. I know it seems like I’m worried about me, but I’ll figure out how to live well and I’ll be fine no matter what. Mostly I’m worried about you.” I said thank you, even though I wanted to remind her how good I was at surviving. I moved toward leaving. We walked without talking. We entwined our fingers and squeezed hands a little here and there, and I tried to believe it, believe that she loved me as much as she seemed to and said she did, and that she was going to be there for me when I got back. I had evidence now. We chose each other, over and over again. The venders were starting to pack up their plastic sandals and vinyl purses and stacks of incense. Behind the concrete skyline the colors were lovely: dark reds and purples and pinks. When we got to our door, Nautica squeezed my hand, then let go, rummaged in her purse, and pulled out a plastic tube. “Smoke a joint for the sunset?” she said. “Yes ma’am,” I said. “I love that idea.” We lay in bed together with our feet on the windowsill, smoked the joint, and watched the sky. At some point we rolled onto our sides and I spooned her. I started to fall asleep with my arm over her, feeling her precious breath on my hand. “Thank you,” I said, and kissed the back of her shoulder. “You’re welcome,” she said quietly. The phone rang. Griffin. I wrenched myself from the comfort of Nautica’s body and told him the scenario. I left out 330 the part about Riley. I asked if he wanted to fly to LA with me tomorrow. “You don’t have to do much,” I said. “But obviously you have to be able to leave ASAP. I can pay for most of your way if you’re willing to put some hours into helping me look for my Dad. I’ll buy your ticket, I’ve already booked the motel.” He said yes on the spot. Then he asked to have two hours to think about it. Then he said yes again. We arranged for him to come over for the afternoon before our flight to pick me up, and to get to know Nautica just a little better before we went off together. I texted Jason that I was leaving town for a few days but I wanted him to book a session with me when I was home next week. I put a vacation message on my domme account so potential clients would think I was popular and happy and frolicking somewhere. Nautica and I slept for a few hours coiled together. In the morning, I stayed quiet. I thought about Carl, but my mind wouldn’t stay with him. I tried to understand that he might have another daughter. A blood related daughter, even. I packed. Nautica cleaned and made us food. I did the horrible task of calling hospitals within ten miles of Skid Row that had Emergency Rooms and asking for Carl Baker. Nothing. When Griffin got there, I stranded him with Nautica for a few minutes while I packed up my bathroom stuff. They had a moment of genuine-sounding laughter. I felt better. I hadn’t noticed that I’d been feeling so nervous about them. It seemed impossible to get my mind to focus directly on Carl. Bad sign. I threw a bottle of sleeping pills in my bag. Took two breaths. Nautica was clearing water glasses and showing off her waist-to-hip ratio. Griffin looked at me with an electric panic, the tight smile of someone desperate to understand the social rules he was supposed to play by. 331 “Don’t you want to fuck her?” I said. “Who wouldn’t?” he said, without looking at Nautica. She laughed. “Don’t be mean,” she said to me. “He’s already paralyzed.” “I’m not,” he said. He adjusted himself on the couch, almost touched his crotch, but put his hand on his pocket for a second instead. Then he looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said, “Fine. This is terrifying. Ok? Everyone happy?” “Everyone’s happy!” I said. “This is your bodyguard?” Nautica said to me. “I’m not a good bodyguard,” Griffin said, and tapped both his hip bones. “I’m slight.” “You’re clearly a boy, and that’s all that really matters,” I said. “I wish you had a man suit you could wear for places like that,” he said. I waltzed Nautica into the kitchen. We held on. She bit my bottom lip. I squeezed the sides of her thighs. We kissed hard enough to feel our teeth behind our lips. “Let me know what I can do to help,” she said. “I wish I was going.” “I figured out how to take you with me,” I said. I held up a ring I’d made out of a piece of leather I cut off her flogger. It was just a sliver, tied into a tiny knot, but it fit on my pinkie. “You’re a shit!” she said, smiling. “That’s perfect.” She hugged me. “Don’t take it off,” she said. I told her I would call. I told her I loved her. I felt that beautiful ache, the bittersweet crushing inside my ribs at the thought of not seeing her for a week, maybe longer. I tried to look forward to that precious delight at our returning to each other. And Griffin benefitted from my buoyancy, of course, because I was a ball of goodwill for hours, all filled up on Nautica’s sweetness. 332 Penetration: Self I was in a playpen. Mom and Carl were on the couch. They were wrestling, laughing, they said “yes!” a lot, and I remember they both held me on the couch afterward, and I loved how warm they were, I could smell them, these bodies I called my home, and there was no fear, no trauma, no horrifying revelation that I must kill anyone. I learned about sex as happiness and family. I masturbated with anything smooth-surfaced that I could wash off. I was told that it was a wonderful private activity to do with clean hands, and that it was important to clean up after myself, and to talk to my Mom if anything painful or unexpected ever happened. The early experimentation with toys was my own addition. I tried things inside, things outside, flat erasers, curvy candlestick, mascara tube. I did not imagine myself “sticking a (phallic) thing into a (vestibular) place.” I was getting nice feelings, I was figuring out how to maximize pleasure for myself using whatever appealed to me. I wanted to rub things on my clitoris. I put things in my mouth. I put things in my eyes. I put things in my nose. I put things in my ears. I put things in my vagina. I put things in my anus. There was always a reason to put something in my body somewhere. A penis is no more a thing than a place, and a vagina is no more a place than a thing. They are alive and in motion. But even if a penis were a thing and a vagina was a place, what is the anus? And are my eyes and ears places or things? Why did the kids believe that each girl carried around some demonic spiritual quotient of the boys she’d been with, such that she was “dirty” where the other boys had “been?” Why did they think girls couldn’t make other girls feel as good as the boys did? I didn’t ask anyone. But I knew I was different. 333 Penetration: Other The first time I wore a strap-on, I felt something I later came to call “disgraced.” I felt silly and nervous, but more than that, the deadweight, cold cock itself made me angry. I simply wished to have genitals that could respond with fleshly transmogrification to my desire. I wanted a flesh cock of my own, which could magically also return to being my vagina, and I wanted the power to use either or both, depending on the need I wanted to fill in myself or someone(s) else. It seemed wrong and embarrassing to settle for a silicone dildo in a patent leather harness, especially as the harness needed to be navigated in a well-lit room with a mirror, just to get put on correctly. The strap on made me feel sexually incompetent, which I resented. Eventually I learned to heat up the cock in the sink under hot water while I navigated the harness in low or no light, and, I got better with the buckles once I’d gotten them in the right place. I learned to feel comfortable. I learned to feel sexy and powerful. I tried different cocks in different colors. My favorite one was glittery and black with a rainbow around the flared base. Not too hard, not too soft, not too fat, not too long. If I stood up straight and put my fists on my hips I looked like a queer superhero of sex. 334 Penetration: Second Other Fucking a penis hole changes things. First: it had not ever occurred to me that the penetrating organ, that almighty dick, could be enjoyably penetrated. That some dicks crave it. That some dicks open up wide for a half-inch thick stick of chrome that slides in and out. Seeing is believing, my mother was fond of saying. Take extra-special care with cleaning your sounds, Nautica told me. Sanitize them. Use sanitary hospital-grade lubricant. Don’t let a cock-owner get an infection up there because of you. I knew I was still on the right side of loving humanity because I followed through. I always took care with my boys’ tender tiny external dick-vaginas. Griffin made me want to penetrate. He seemed like he needed it. I packed my sounds. I packed my steel-reinforced paddle, a midsize butt plug, and I packed enough rope for cuffs and a harness or a hogtie. I was going to need to get some stress relief, I told myself, and if I was going to be in LA for more than a few days, I was going to need to pick up some clients. Having my own gear with me gave me options. 335 En Route So, I thought, this is what it feels like to get a flight to Los Angeles that leaves JFK at 11:38PM. To look out the window of that plane and watch the lights zoom away, while a baby screams and screams and screams. This is what it feels like to imagine simultaneously: Carl’s broken, bleeding body twisted and discarded in an alley, and the Christmas day in 1989 when the cat, who lived with us for only a few months before escaping into the world, pounced and then scuffled helplessly around with its head stuck in a kleenex box while Carl laughed and laughed and had to wipe his eyes. Why does it smell so horrible on airplanes? Gas, cleanser, synthetic fabrics, the accumulated dead skin and hair of a few hundred people, stuck inside the cracks of the windows, coating the bolts on the floor. Or maybe it’s only the fuel and the food. The smell of the air coming through those twisty vents made me nauseous. Made me want to punch someone. The baby seemed to have endless energy for screaming. I suddenly felt so tired I couldn’t talk. I leaned on Griffin and gave in, grateful to exit. But then I had the chase dream. A cop in a trooper hat and Nazi-style jodhpurs coming after me, a recurring nightmare. Sometimes he looked like the law and sometimes he looked like death--in a black hood that hid his face. The dream had a rhythm, like a techno concert, just a little faster than a heart wants to beat, and never stopping, even when the body is begging to quit. He was too close! And then suddenly, I didn’t know where he was and had no idea if I was running away or towards him. Sometimes I’d stop, scan around, not know what to do, and feel compelled to keep running. I’d run even harder and faster in the same direction. Just hoping and fearing and running. This time, I ran through green hills and cityscapes and video-game psychedelic landscapes. We ran faster than real legs or real cars. The cop’s face came in and out of my 336 peripheral vision like it was attached to a Slinky or a rubber band. I knew if I got caught, the consequence would be far more dire than my own simple death. Catastrophe for the world. Everyone depending on me. I couldn’t get caught. I woke up kicking out. Griffin put his hand on my arm. “You ok?” it sounded like real concern. “I get very stressed about saving the world when I’m asleep,” I said. “It’s a recurring theme.” “You have the same dream?” “Sort of,” I said. “You should keep track of it!” he said. “I mean keep track of the details that are different each time,” he sounded so confident. I told him I’d done that for two years. There were all kinds of conclusions to draw. I missed my dad; I had a savior complex; I needed to take iron pills; I was sexually frustrated; I had a death drive; I had trauma; I was drinking too much; I was a lesbian; I would prefer to paint on men for money; I needed to wear pure silver; I should retake the Enneagram; I ate too much spicy food; and so on. I had tried vitamins, therapy, meditation, alcohol, quitting alcohol, traveling, fucking more, fucking less, calling Carl more, cutting wheat out of my diet, smoking weed, swallowing Lexapro, calling Carl less, changing my hair, quitting sex work, going back to sex work, getting a tattoo. Nothing had changed. The dream was a feature of my mind, like my right arm was a feature of my body. It changed some over time, but, it was still my right arm. He leaned over and kissed my cheek, blotting out the whining of the plane just for a second. Someone had gotten the baby to sleep and was bouncing it along the aisles. Whenever the baby-carrier stopped bouncing, the baby would stir and start crying again, pitifully at 337 first, then building in rage, until sufficient bouncing had been restored. “I have a problem a lot like yours,” he whispered. “No, you don’t,” I whispered back. Griffin reached up to turn off his overhead light, I smelled him, and felt a swell of wanting. I told him, “I think you still believe that the world is calling out to be saved by a white man, maybe even you. It takes work to unlearn it. It’s insidious.” I tried to remember when Carl first started talking to me about race. How his views had changed over the years. “Meanwhile, I’ve made peace with the fact that the world can’t be and doesn’t need to be saved,” I said. “It doesn’t?” I shook my head. I shifted. Sweaty thighs. “People can take care of themselves,” I said. “And when they can’t, they can’t. I don’t know why my subconscious hasn’t accepted it.” “The anarchists living in my apartment think the world can be saved through a massive education project. Aren’t you and Nautica out there saving the world one client at a time?” “I don’t think of it that way,” I said. “We’re making ourselves a world that we like to be in. We aren’t trying to start fights with other people about how they live.” “Then what’s the difference between you guys and some libertarian family in the woods staking a claim?” “We know we already live on stolen land?” I said. “And we haven’t made friends with guns yet.” He didn’t respond immediately. Guns. They were always the sticking point. “So what about this trip?” he said. “Aren’t we on our way to try to save Carl?” “Carl is my family,” I said. “He’s not the world. Sometimes you can save someone close to you. It’s an act of love and intimacy. But you can’t do it all the time. Saving and being saved 338 are addictive ways to relate to people.” I tried to touch his deepest shame, somewhere near his liver, with my eyes. I’d already saved him a little too much. I was tired. He took a breath. Over his left shoulder, the oval window was fogging around the edges. The sky was black. I reached over him and pulled down the shade. He kissed my forearm. “I never know what you’re going to say,” he said. “Thank you. Just because I haven’t picked up a gun doesn’t mean I wouldn’t support an armed revolution led by black and brown people in this country,” I said. “That sentence doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. I nodded, of course it didn’t. “I mean wouldn’t you get killed in a revolution like that?” “You never know who’s going to get killed,” I said. “Why me?” “I mean if the revolution is led by black and brown people, wouldn’t the white people be targeted?” “White racists definitely think so,” I said. “But, no. White privilege would get targeted. Some white people, sure. I might be unlucky. But that’s not the point. The point is that everything this whole country is built on and needs to run itself, is racist. If that gets changed through nonviolence, I’m helping. If violence has to be part of it, which it seems like it probably has to, then I’m still helping.” “Right now I’m addicted to reading women’s journals,” he said, and reached for my knee. “That’s my self-education project.” He kept his hand there. “I hear guys all the time who think that women are somehow quietly oppressing them. I hate them. They don’t have a clue what women go through.” I was going to have to dial it back a notch. I took a slow breath. “It’s good that you’re trying to learn about women,” I said. “But if you choose just one self-education project at a time, and only when it’s sexually satisfying? You’re probably missing a lot.” 339 “Like what?” “I’m not going to teach you a class right now, and I’m not even really qualified for it. Read a book.” “I can at least admit I don’t have a clue what it must be like to live in your brain,” he said. “I’m barely able to handle the details of what’s right in front of me. You’re thinking about more than one person’s current needs, plus the past and the future. It’s so much.” “You steal those journals from women,” I said. “Yes.” “Then you’re coercing women, too,” I said. “You are a big part of what we go through.” “I don’t think so,” he said. He looked at his lap. “I don’t think so.” “Well, you’re wrong,” I said. “Maybe so,” he said. He looked out the window. I bit him on the earlobe. I whispered a few things I’d like to do to his sorry ass in the bathroom at the back of the plane. He sighed. His eyes rolled back in pleasure. I wanted his face in my lap. I ordered him to fold over and massage my calves for five minutes each. He whispered his thanks and did it. The people across the aisle were asleep. The airplane crew ignored us. When he was done, he lay his head still in my lap and fell asleep immediately. I tried to imagine Los Angeles. I tried to remember Carl’s face in its perfect moments of laughter, love, excitement. I twisted my leather ring around and around. I tried to imagine Nautica giving me a hug. But I was not stronger than the visions of Carl in pain. Carl dead. Carl full of tubes in a hospital, with a bracelet that called him John Doe. I couldn’t stop those pictures from coming. And who. The fuck. Was Riley. Let’s say he had another daughter. Who was her mom? Why 340 didn’t he tell me about her? How old was she? Old enough to be telling Rodney she couldn’t help with this situation. Questions that couldn’t be answered before the flight ended. I wrote a few of them down, pressing my notebook on the side of Griffins cheek a bit. I drew a picture of what was right in front of me: the tray, the seat, the knees, the head, the stuff sticking out of the pocket. Eventually I accepted that I was probably going to feel bad for a while, got a few inches more horizontal , and stared into the stitching on the seat in front of me. When I was little, I would turn Carl’s hands over and back, over and back, looking at our palms together, looking at the backs of our hands together. I knew the word for the difference in color, melanin, but I didn’t understand the point. There’s no point, honey, he told me once. No point at all. Except that we’d get bored if we looked at the same flower every day, don’t you think? Flowers don’t kill each other, I told him. The pink ones don’t gang up on the purple ones and put them in jail. I stand by my original point, then, he said. There’s no point at all. Fifteen years later, he was urging me to read Huey P. Newton, to understand Black liberation struggles in Africa and the rest of the world, and writing me about how the racial categories of the prison were enforced. We landed, deplaned, and I became desperately bored at the baggage claim. Trapped. The fluorescent track lights. The thin smell of industrial disinfectant, and the small piles of grey detritus creeping in from the corners. Griffin was absorbed in his phone. “Do you remember the first time you thought the world was really unfair?” I asked him. “No,” he said. “Do you?” 341 I didn’t. “Do you remember a time from childhood when it sunk in, though?” He smiled. He did. “Fabio’s face got busted on a roller coaster at Busch Gardens.” “Fabio the model?” “Yes. I saw it on the news. I went on the same ride endlessly right when it first opened. Before the ride operator pushed the green button that sent Fabio to get his face bashed, he undoubtedly said, ‘Sit back, relax, and enjoy the maximum airtime on the wings of Apollo’s Chariot, and enjoy your day at Busch Gardens!’” “You memorized that.” “I couldn’t help it. The cadence was intoxicating.” The baggage belt to our right started up, and I wondered if we were all going to have to shuffle over there instead. The buzzing of the lights seemed designed to make me unconsciously desire violence. I punched Griffin lightly in the chest. “Thanks,” he said. And, “You can do that harder.” I punched him again, a little harder. We both felt a tiny bit better. When Fabio got injured, Griffin was twelve years old and lived an hour from Busch Gardens. His parents took him there the week before the accident. “For your birthday?” “No, just because.” I didn’t understand that, and he couldn’t explain it. “You don’t always need a reason,” he said. “You do when you’re poor,” I said, irritated again. “Ok, ok,” he said, holding his palms up, and it seemed like I’d gotten through. “Anyway, this isn’t the kind of story I was asking for,” I said. “But it was so unfair! Fabio got hit in the face by a goose that was just flying by, minding 342 its own business, and the ride was brand new, so of course everyone blamed the ride.” “Your sympathy goes to Apollo’s Chariot? That’s when you knew life was unfair?” “It was a great ride.” “What about the goose?” “They found a dead one not far away.” Our baggage belt started up. “If the TSA stole my vibrator again I’m going to complain,” I said. “That’s happened?” “Twice. They leave me little notes that say they went through my bag, and I discover my vibrator is missing. The first time they took the whole thing--the lube, the nice velvet bag, the charger. Ugh. Assholes.” “I can’t believe that,” he said. “I didn’t either, until the second time it happened,” I said. “That time they left me the note, and left me the case and the other stuff. Just took the vibe.” The innards of the airport vomited my bag. I reached, pulled, felt a hard twinge in my neck, stumbled a little backward. He asked if I was okay. “Yes,” I said, “except this pervert I’m traveling with watches everything I do all day.” He looked at the bags on the carousel, a tiny smile at the edge of his mouth. “Sorry,” he said. Had to press the smile down with his lips. We felt another tiny bit better. Unfortunately that neck twinge did become a problem. We got a little rental car--silver and four doors and smelling like old weed smoke and plastic. I’d booked us five nights at a motel near where Rodney had told me Carl’s stuff was under threat. I’d gotten a deal, and the pictures were quaint in a Spanish-colonial way. When we arrived, we got an old-school cherry red gummy-tag key ring with our room number 343 painted in white and a menu for a Brazilian restaurant next door. The whole place was cracked and slouching, heavy with age. Griffin seemed a little scared. I ignored it. We unpacked. We listened to a jazz station. I tried to stretch out a little bit. I must have looked stressed. Griffin came over and sat on the edge of the bed and asked if he could put his hand on my leg. I nodded. He held me gently just above my knee. “Can I do anything for you? Like a foot massage or something? Do you want to talk about your dad or anything? No pressure.” “Thanks,” I said. “I don’t think I want to talk right now.” “Cool, cool,” he said. “Maybe checking in with Nautica would be good?” “Yeah,” I said. “Good idea.” “I’m gonna see if I can find a meeting nearby.” “A shoplifter’s anonymous meeting?” “Yes’m.” “Another a good idea,” I said. “You’re just full of them.” He made himself busy on his phone while I called Nautica. She picked up, in a noisy place. I got the point across that we’d made it to our motel and were going to wind down. She got some love to me. I tried to give some back. I asked her to text me her schedule for the next day so I could call her up when she was free. She gave me some hours and I wrote them down. She told me to rest and let her know my plan once I’d made one. I felt scared of doing any of the things and felt a little ashamed and childish. I told her so. She said I was on a crisis- trip, I could expect to feel scared, and that she was rooting for me, and for Carl. Griffin rubbed my feet and stopped talking when I asked him to, and I fell asleep after only a few more terrifying visions of what might have happened to Carl. 344 I Dreamed of A Short Walk in a Brooklyn Storm Thunder, lightning, heavy rain. Long bright sheets of water cutting fog under the street lights, as if rain falling on rain broke the rain into mist. I carried precious cargo under that umbrella, in that old black Jansport backpack. A cell phone, a charger, some pills in a plastic bag, a notebook, a zipper pouch with makeup essentials, a small folded envelope with six hundred dollars in it, the latest letter from Carl, some black cotton clothes, some glittery dirt and small pieces of trash. A few pens and pencils, too. I walked for two miles in that storm, wearing strappy short-heel sandals. I knew where I was going but I didn’t know how to get there. I’d been dropped off at the wrong corner by a cabbie who seemed perfectly friendly, and because I was so tired, and so distracted, and the rain was so heavy, I didn’t notice where I was, or really where I wasn’t, until he was gone. It had taken me a long time to catch a cab in the first place, standing in the downpour. It would only take me longer to get another, now that I was down so far on Nostrand Ave. I walked. I walked and walked, nearly blind, wondering if I was going to absorb ambient New York City rat poison through the thin skin of my feet, as it got washed along the uneven sidewalk. My Mom’s smiling face in bad weather. The squish-squeak of her wet pantyhose foot coming out of her heavy work shoes. The aluminum pot she gave me to hold on my head and collect rain water in, so we could have a cup of rainwater tea. The plinky sound of rain in the pot. The deep thudding of the rain on this umbrella. “Hey, pretty face there,” someone said behind me. 345 I’d finally reached the brownstone I’d been aiming for all along. “I said, hey, pretty face,” the voice said again. This time I knew it was for me. I put my hand on the gate I needed to open. It was locked. I turned around. The person was under their own umbrella. I knew it was Claudia. I could only see her bright red lips. 346 The DAC I woke up the next morning unable to turn to the right at all, which made it impossible to comfortably drive a car. Griffin navigated us to the address Rodney had given me over the phone. Out the window, my city. Where I was from. But I didn’t recognize anything. The buildings were fantastic. They had art deco details caked in years of city dirt. Enormous wrought-metal doors and inlaid stone address markers. Small piles of trash snaked down the street, crinkled paper waving just slightly, aluminum cans and bottle glass glinting. I imagined the street Nautica and I lived on, awash in rusty brown and graying black, concrete, and lumpy paint on metal. The grass was brighter here, and the blue of the sky a truer blue, with puffy clouds, like a child had painted it. The shop signs in this neighborhood were hand- painted, in primary colors and pleasing block fonts. Tents and tarps appeared. We parked in a thickly painted forest green two-story lot and I realized this was one of those times. “Ok honey,” I said. “I want you to make yourself scarce for a few hours. Keep your phone on you. There’s a lot of fun stuff in this city, you should be able to entertain yourself on foot from here.” He looked panicked for a second. “I don’t get to come with you?” “Not for this part,” I said. “I need to meet up with this Rodney guy on my own.” “Okay,” he said. “But why?” “We can talk about that later,” I said. He sighed a little. “Alright. Call me the instant you need to, ok?” I knew I wasn’t going to need to. “I’ll call you in about two hours,” I said, “and see where we’re at.” 347 He took off, up Fifth Street. I walked into the diner Rodney had named, got a menu, and sat. The sign above my table read in It’s all been done before, but you must never stop trying to cook it up fresh in a cloying cross stitch. The images were irresistible: bright yolks in a shiny blue pan, a spherical red apple shaded with pink. Each stitch had taken two pull- throughs. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings sang the long-censored version of “This Land is Your Land,” each glissando dripping, both threat of revolution and invitation to sex. The counter’s beige Formica split into fractals or seashells. I was not ready for Carl to be gone. I could have at least told him I loved him, sometime in the past month. I could have asked him if he wanted to come live with me and Nautica in New York. I could have done that for years. I had a flash of my Mom, one of the cloudy ones, where I couldn’t quite remember her face, reaching for Carl from the kitchen, telling him she wanted some sugar. “Hello?” a person I expected to be Rodney said, his voice lilting like he was answering a phone. He was at the edge of the table. He wore a red, black and grey blanket-weave poncho with a fading pot leaf screen printed on the belly. The mirror behind him blasted outside’s blue-white light, a fuzzy halo at the edges of the windows. “Rodney?” I croaked a little. I cleared my throat. “Yeah? Kindred?” He had short gray dreadlocks. Kind eyes. His cuticles were thick and splitting. “That’s me,” I said, and held out my hand, and dipped my chin a little while while holding his gaze. This demure gesture, which I had learned as a stripper, told men something about us having a connection underneath the social norm we were performing. It was unconscious, and sometimes I got embarrassed by myself when it happened outside the sex work context. His black-brown eyes stayed locked. He shook my hand, said it was good to meet me. 348 He’d been sitting at a back table waiting for me to arrive. He held a cup of water, a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and two menus. He sat across from me, a server dressed like Rosie the Riveter took our order for two coffees, and I asked how long Rodney had been waiting for me. He smiled. “Since they opened.” He showed me his book. “You ever seen this movie? The book is so much better.” I said I hadn’t, but of course the book was better. He said, “Let’s move to my table in the back so we can talk.” We moved to a table in the back corner of the place. He already had reserved it, by placing his overstuffed black backpack on the seat. He signaled to our server and she nodded. “It took me two years, but I figured out this is the best spot,” he said. I looked around. The only difference was that our corner was covered, booth-to-ceiling, with cork board. I pointed at it, and asked if that was the reason? He nodded. “The acoustics are perfect for a private conversation.” “I like the way you think,” I said. We sat, drank a pot of coffee, ate somewhere between five and seven eggs, at least eight biscuits, and between us a stack of Smucker’s strawberry and another stack of butter pads. No bacon. Our server had half-inch long purple glittering nails and smelled like sandalwood. Her black apron held enough pens for her to throw two bad ones behind the counter while she was taking our orders. Rodney’s eyes kept darting at the door, scanning out the windows, and then, he would look at me directly and my diaphragm would scoot up. It happened with people I wanted to fuck, and with generally confident people I admired. I didn’t think he was either. Things are just weird, I told myself. You’re going to react weirdly to weird things. I kept breathing. 349 Rodney’s hair formed a sea anemone of finger-length twists, his grey and black curls fuzzing at first and then taming themselves into knobby shapes. He told me a long story about his traveling by bus from North Carolina to get away from his family; his problem with them loosely fell in the “all fucked up” category. He scooped his eggs with his elbow out and I remembered how Carl did that after prison, and when I ran out of steam for chatting, Rodney saw it. “When’s the last time you talked to Carl?” he asked. “Weeks ago,” I said. Guilt. Rodney nodded. “I don’t know much about you,” he said. “So you’ve got no reason to trust me,” I said, but before I could continue, he interrupted. “Yes, I do. Carl gave me your number and said to contact you if I ever thought something may have happened to him. That’s trust.” “Whatever he’s into, I’m not sure I want to know about it. I just want to know he’s still breathing,” I said. Rodney shook his head and sipped coffee. “I know some of what your family’s been through,” he said, checked the person coming in the door, decided they weren’t a threat, and then returned his gaze to mine. “With your mom and all. I can tell you Carl’s been working hard every day and every night to serve the people out here and it ain’t like him to run out on us or his program.” I admitted to having no idea what he meant. I said I thought he wasn’t working. Did ‘his program’ mean he was sober? “He worked,” Rodney said. “He worked six days a week at the DAC. He was still sleeping out, but he was working. He wasn’t exactly sober, no. His program was about showing up for the work he was doing, feel me?” 350 He worked at the what? “The Downtown Action Center. You want to come see? It’s next door.” So I had been brought to the safe place next to the real place. I felt tricked by that, for a second. But then I realized Rodney was showing me his world one piece at a time. He stayed on one of the blocks adjacent; this was his neighborhood. This was his diner, and next door, his office. “Yes,” I said. Then, “Where do you think he is?” “I called you because I tried my ideas and he didn’t turn up,” Rodney said. “I don’t know anymore. I was hoping you’d have some insight.” “He kept a lot from me,” I said. “For instance, Riley.” “That’s a bombshell,” Rodney said, nodding. He picked up a spoon and spun it around, catching it before it toppled off his hand. “It’s not like him.” I was glad he said that. Helped me feel a tiny bit less insane. “Let’s start next door, I guess,” I said. I insisted on paying the bill when he reached into his pockets. He nodded and thanked me. He asked me what I did for a living while we slid out of our booth seats and over toward the bright outside. “What did Carl tell you?” Rodney shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “It wasn’t my business without knowing you myself.” “I’m a professional dominatrix.” “Oh yeah?” he held the diner door open for me, and I walked through. “Yeah.” “I’ve never gone to one of those, but it sounds interesting,” he said. 351 I laughed. “What?” he looked a little embarrassed. “Is that a bad thing to say?” I told him no, it was a perfect thing to say. I thanked him for not being scared or evangelical or concerned. I imagined him submitting and he seemed like he could love it. I was glad I had I’d told him. He steered me toward the metal gate at the entrance of the Downtown Action Center. “You’re grown,” he said. “And I think people who do sex work on their own choice are offering a great service to society.” I smiled at him, surprised. “You should meet the Hookers’ Army,” he said then. “They have a sex workers’ meeting twice a month. It’s not a rescue thing. They train self defense. They’re some of the most badass comrades in the city.” I didn’t have time to think of a response, except, “I’d like to.” I didn’t know if I should do anything about him intimating that I was a sex worker, because of course I was, but people weren’t supposed to assume that I considered myself a sex worker until I told them myself, I thought. I was confused by his utterly friendly aspect about the whole thing. We entered the DAC office. It was vibrant, frenetic, full of stuff. One wall was plastered with political posters and flyers for upcoming events, another wall rose into the second floor stairs with a mural of faces. I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to recognize them or if they were representations of “the people.” They were all shades, a few pinky-peach and mostly brown and dark brown, in T shirts and some in black or brown berets. Rodney clapped his hands on the black leather-clad back of a person sitting at what seemed like a front desk repurposed from a high school principle. I got ready to ask about their pronoun, since I wasn’t confident. Soft features, large breasts, whiskers. Years of dirt had embedded in the wood grain of the desk and the sheen of 352 the sealant was worn down on the panel that hid the rest of the person’s body. Just then Rodney called him “brother” and introduced me as “Carl’s girl.” The person made a noise of happy recognition, stood up, and was asking me how I was doing when Rodney interrupted him to call up the stairs, “Hey Sadie!” I held out my hand and we shook. His name was Curly. “Y’all enjoy yourselves,” Curly said, and sat. “Don’t holler at me, Rodney,” Sadie called from the top of the stairs. Her red Converse All Stars came padding down. I admired her painter’s jeans, her unbuttoned flannel shirt and black T shirt with “Rebel Against Empire” printed in silver Star Wars font. Her wild hair was flying, or floating, in a shimmering henna-red frizz around her heavily freckled face. She turned her serious eyes to me and introduced herself. I had a strong desire to know where she had come from and wondered if she had the same for me. “I’m so glad to meet you,” she said, and squeezed my triceps before she shook my hand. “Even with the circumstances we’re under.” I told her I’d just met Rodney that morning, and was here looking for Carl. She smelled like oatmeal soap and fresh coffee. She invited me and Rodney into her “cubby.” I watched her ass walk up the stairs. In my mind, Nautica and I winked at each other, and a pang of missing Nautica shot through me. She was probably teaching her workshop by now. Sadie’s cubby was not much larger than a refrigerator box, stuffed perilously high with papers and books. She shifted a stack to make room on a folding chair, and pulled another chair just outside the doorway of the room. We were as close as New Yorkers on a rush-hour train in there. “Welcome!” Sadie said. “Join the fray.” 353 “This is a busy place,” I said. “Rodney said you were flying in from New York? Where do you stay at?” Sadie asked. Rodney settled into the farthest chair so I sat in the folding chair across from her overburdened desk. She leaned against its wooden edge with her arms crossed, but genially. “Brooklyn,” I said. “Oh! Where!” I told her I lived in Bed Stuy, near the Bushwick border. She and Rodney exchanged a glance and she made a noise like a chuckle. “Oh Bushwick,” she sighed dramatically, “where you live in squalor but you eat organic.” “Exactly. Cat shit and coconut water,” I said. Sadie dropped into a cross-legged shape on the floor without disturbing any of her piles. She beckoned to Rodney to come in. He had to ditch the chair, close the door, and get on the floor too. “You can stay in your chair,” Sadie told me as I cast around for more floor space. “The main thing is getting the door closed.” I could see a little farther down her shirt. I wondered if Rodney thought she was sexy too. I wondered how old she was. I wondered where the hell those freckles came from; her skin was more olive than pink. I wondered if she liked her ears sucked. Focus, Kindred. “I don’t know where Carl is,” she said. Something in me shifted, although I’d already known it, somehow. “But what do you think?” Rodney said. “He left all his stuff out on Towne and he ain’t in any of the jails in the county? Kindred checked the hospitals nearby too. It’s just not his way.” “You checked hospitals how far out?” I said I had called from Venice up to Glendora. 354 She shook her head. “People disappear from Skid Row all the time,” she said heavily. “It’s more normal than knowing where they are, actually. They don’t always give their real names at hospitals if they’re in for an OD, you know? It’s just so tough to find someone down here.” “I thought he was working here?” I said. I wondered why she’d mentioned an OD. “Until he went missing,” Rodney said. “He was.” “He could have just said ‘fuck it’ and taken one little baggie to a motel with a new girlfriend,” Sadie said. “Or he could have taken a bus out of the city for a while. Taken a break. It’s not like a regular job. He got a little stipend from the grant we’re on right now, but he wasn’t on a regular job schedule.” I said, “Sounds like you know him pretty well,” and she flashed a sad smile at me. “You think he was getting high?” Sadie shrugged. “Not necessarily. I just know it’s a possibility. People need breaks. The pressure he was living under was constant, constant.” Rodney was shaking his head now too. “He takes care of his stuff, though. It don’t make sense. Can you get us in touch with GT?” he asked her. She thought for a second. “Sure,” she said. “I don’t think that’s a problem.” She patted my knee. It may have been motherly from her end, but it was sexy on mine. “Carl has been doing a lot of work down here to help the people organize for their rights,” she said. “We’ve been fighting a huge development project and he’s been a leader on that campaign.” I had never heard someone call him a leader out loud. “You busy tomorrow morning?” she said. “I’m leading a workshop for a school group, it’s the kind of thing Carl’s been doing, you could see what his work is, come on the Skid Row tour?” 355 “Can I bring my friend with me?” “Of course,” she said. “The more the merrier!” She hugged me goodbye. Her breasts were small, her chest was strong. I wanted to linger, but I knew better. She hugged Rodney too. “Good to see you, honey,” she said to him, and then thumped his back like a boy. We left. “An S.R.O is subsidized housing?” I asked Rodney. “That’s right,” he said. “Most of us try to get one. You get on a list while you sleep out. You check with them, maybe they gave your room away, maybe you get a room. You stay the month. You have to move at the end of twenty eight days or you get tenant’s rights. So they make you check out for three days and then maybe you get to move back in. I call it the 28- day shuffle. You sleep out again. Maybe you get your room back after a few days, or you start over, get on another list.” “I thought that was illegal,” I said. Rodney clenched his jaw. Of course it was illegal. “Lawsuit’s been won,” he said, but that hadn’t stopped the practice. “Skid Row has its own rules.” “Take me to where he stays,” I said. I felt lightheaded and wanted to sleep. But it had to be done. We walked over to Towne. Someone sitting on a milk crate yelled “Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the Life!” “Who the fuck would trust a guy who says that about himself?” Rodney said to him. It made me chuckle. “You don’t trust that guy?” I asked. “Him? That’s just Pickles, he’s okay,” Rodney said. “I don’t trust Jesus. And I don’t understand how anyone does. He was a megalomaniac.” 356 That made me actually laugh. “I trust a guy who hung out with prostitutes and didn’t hide it,” I said. “And I trust a guy who knew a party needs wine.” “Valid points,” Rodney said. “He was right about the redistribution of wealth thing, too.” “But it’s weird to claim you’re the son of God and have people believe you.” “That’s one word for it. It’s madness to have thousands of people believe you, and then for them to kill thousands of other people who don’t believe you? And then for it to continue until it’s millions of people, believing and not believing and killing each other for it. Fucking insanity.” “I used to strip at this one place in New York,” I said, “and the DJ looked like Jesus.” “I bet there were a lot of jokes.” “Sure,” I said. “But never to his face. He had a lot of power over how our shifts played out.” Rodney nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I can see how he would.” I imagined a night when the DJ ruined it all, just lost the thread, went totally off the rails, started playing “Baby Got Back” but cut it in the middle with a recording of some friend of his reading bad poetry to a house beat. I imagined him getting on the mike and saying “To hell with this ridiculous excuse for a party, you guys. Let’s talk about how this club is on land white settlers stole from the Lenape people.” Or maybe he’d start laughing maniacally and not stop for a minute straight. So much power, so many options, and yet, DJ Jesus never surprised us. Not once. We turned a corner and Rodney stopped cold. “What.” I said. “Motherfucking piece of shit pigs!” he ignored me and walked fast and hard up the block. “I fucking knew those assholes were coming, I fucking knew they were.” He was pacing. He 357 got out his phone. “What’s happening?” I couldn’t see anything different from the last two blocks we’d walked down. “This is the place,” Rodney said to me. Then “Yeah, hello?” into his phone. “Dee, man, I told you to stay with Carls mutherfucking shit! It was just a few hours motherfucker, what the fuck! Where you at? The shit is gone, asshole. The shit is gone!” He paused and I heard a loud protesting voice but couldn’t make out the words. We were just a few feet away from someone’s tent. I wondered if they were inside. 358 Erased Carl’s camp had been confiscated and dumped by the cops. No one had been there to claim it, because Dee had taken a break to go piss and get a sweet tea around the corner. When he came back, it was happening. He didn’t fight. He couldn’t without risking arrest. He had two outstanding tickets of his own. I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know what exactly had been lost, besides some dignity. And some camping equipment. And maybe some part of both mine and Rodney’s hearts, the parts that expected Carl to walk around the corner any minute now, with a cast on his arm, and a story to tell us, and a new project he’d cooked up while lying in bed at a hospital I’d already called and failed to find him in. “He’s gonna be so mad,” Rodney said, sitting on the curb next to where Carl’s stuff was supposed to be. I smelled air freshener and rotting food and athletic shoes and cooking pavement. The sun was inexplicably cheerful, enveloping, and burning. I wanted to sleep. I checked my neck, stretching. Not as bad as the morning, but still stiff. “There’s some good news, though,” Rodney said, without sounding cheerful. “Which is that I’m pretty sure Carl sent some of his stuff up to The Spot.” “The Spot.” “Our boy Michel has a camp up on the Avenue 26 overpass,” he said, and brushed his pants leg straight, tucked his laces into his boots. “Carl has some boxes up there.” “That’s good,” I said. “Shit,” Rodney said. “I should call Riley and let her know.” “You get it that I’ve never met this person?” I said. I was so tired, so tired. “I understand the words coming out your mouth,” Rodney said, and smiled. He had a brown tooth back on one side I hadn’t noticed before. “But I don’t ‘get it,’ no.” 359 “I don’t either,” I said. “Carl’s never said anything about having another daughter. Like not even wondered to me if he might have one because of that one girl that one time, you know? Nada.” Rodney nodded thoughtfully. He pulled a purple velvet bag from his backpack and started packing a bowl. “Time to chill out,” he said, to no one. Then, to me, “How old are you?” “I’m about to be thirty.” “Riley is nineteen.” “Jesus.” “So she was born when you were ten.” “So Carl cheated on my mom.” We both shuffled around a little. Stared at our hands or something. It was too insane to feel anything but bad. “They might have had an agreement,” Rodney said. “Even if they fucked other people and were okay with it,” I said. “A pregnancy, a kid, changes things. My mom’s dead, Rodney.” He nodded. He knew. He was listening. “I don’t even know if she knew, if she kept this a secret from me.” “He loved her and he loves you. Those are facts. But shit happens, too. I don’t know what to tell you. You could ask Riley what she knows.” He pulled out his phone and dialed. “I’m just saying, it’s possible he didn’t betray your mom. And I don’t think any of that old history is what matters now.” “Easy for you to say,” I spat. “My mom would have been furious.” I heard a feminine voice answer. I couldn’t understand her words. Rodney reported that Carl’s stuff was gone, most of it anyway, and that he was with “Kindred, your sister,” out on the Row. 360 There was a pause. Her voice said something short. Rodney held the phone out. “She wants to talk to you.” My stomach went sour and heavy. I thought I might pass out. It would be so nice to sleep through this part of my life, I thought, and wake up with some clarity and purpose and vision, next to Nautica, and without dread. “Hello?” The sun was really too much now. I hunched between my knees. “This is Kindred?” “Yes,” I said. I heard the fizz-click of the lighter and Rodney’s inhale. “I’m Kindred.” I compulsively thought, we’re kindred. Who the fuck am I if she’s my sister. Smelled the weed. “Nice to meet you,” she said stiffly, “although these are terrible circumstances.” She sounded grown. “I’d like to meet in person,” I said, before I’d had a chance to think about it. “As soon as we can. I think every day that passes without word from Carl is...” and I didn’t have words for what I thought there. “I know,” she said. She sighed. “I know. And I know he didn’t get a chance to talk with you about me before all this, so.” He didn’t get a chance. I wondered what that chance would have looked like. It seemed a strange thing to say. But could she have said anything that sounded sane to me? “I gotta go back to work,” she said. “But can you come meet me tomorrow afternoon? We can get a coffee.” “You’re only nineteen?” I said. “Huh?” “Sorry, yeah, that sounds good,” I said. “I’ll get your number from Rodney and be in touch tomorrow after I do this Skid Row tour-thing at the DAC.” 361 “Oh you’re doing that?” she said. “Cool, that’s probably a good thing. Anyways it’s good to meet you. I’ll talk with you tomorrow!” She hung up. I handed the phone back to Rodney. He offered me the pipe, a thick bulb of glass, a thin curl of smoke, a corner of green. I took it, I hit it, I put it out and emptied it. The lightness came quickly. I got Riley’s number and put it in my phone. I told Rodney I needed to go back to my motel and take a nap. Another memory of Mom came. Then another. I contacted Griffin, met him at the car, forced myself to stay awake enough to drive us back. I had forgotten how powerfully psychedelic California weed could be. I hadn’t had intrusive memories of my mother like that for some years. Hospital memories. Conversations en route to the prison. A wave of unanswerable questions pounded through. Did she know about Riley? Did she want another baby, ever? Did Carl keep a double life from her? The colors of the world were vibrant and clear, but inside I was a cloud. I didn’t recognize Riley’s voice. I didn’t recognize my own memories. I had trouble seeing my mom’s pre-cancer face up close in my mind. I couldn’t talk to Griffin, but he stayed close to me walking into the motel room, asking me if I wanted anything, suggesting that I eat some food. I shook my head. I got inside the door, lay across the bedspread in my clothes, and let the darkness take me. I slept through the day. I woke up after the sun went down. I could hear Griffin puttering. I went back to sleep. 362 In the morning, I got up. “You can come with me today,” I said. Griffin was excited to have something to do. “I’ve never been to a real Skid Row before,” he said. He tied his sneakers. He was wearing a T-shirt I hadn’t seen yet, that said “I Live Among You” in a font I could tell I was supposed to recognize from something in pop culture. “This isn’t just a Skid Row,” I said, “it’s the Skid Row.” I stood in front of the mirror, twisted my hair into a bun at the nape of my neck. Decided against makeup today. I just couldn’t. Crisis time, I told myself. No one is paying you, you don’t have to work at the femme stuff right now. I took a picture of my naked face and sent it to Nautica. Then I remembered she’d had a date either last night or the night before and had a pang. Missing her, jealousy, something. Focus, I told myself. Focus on getting to the DAC right now. “What does that mean it’s the Skid Row?” He was putting things in his little blue Jansport backpack. He always brought a jacket. Cute kid. “It was partly haphazard and partly designed to be a contained environment for recently released prisoners, winos, drug addicted homeless,” I said. “It’s been there since the 1930s.” I packed a jacket, too. His eyebrows went up. “No shit?” “Don’t you ever read?” I said. “Like even Wikipedia could help you a lot today.” “I told you, I’m reading journals. But I really like learning from people better than from words,” he said. He gave me some teeth in his smile. I recognized the theme of excuses I’d given to Carl before. Especially when I was feeling insecure about not reading the books he’d asked me to before our visits. Inappropriately, “The Circle of Life” started playing in my head. 363 “I’ll tell you two things that should curl your pubes,” I said. “First, they actually shortened the time on the walk signals down there in order to be able to give homeless people more jaywalking tickets, and some lawyers proved it.” I’d read that on a sign at the DNC office. “What the fuck for?” “Because when poor people don’t pay their tickets, cops can get warrants, and then clean up the streets by putting people in jail.” He shook his head. “Fucked up,” he said. “Here’s another one: just a few years ago they finally were able to prove that hospitals and jails were doing this thing they called ‘dumping’ people there, like putting them out of buses and being like, ‘go for it, make a life for yourself’ in front of a mission or an S.R.O. Hotel.” I scanned the room. We’d cleaned up ok. “I can’t believe that,” he said. “I mean, I guess I can believe it, I just, how can they get away with it, you know?” I made a cynical raspberry sound. “Because they can get away with anything they want. Because no one wants to deal with Skid Row.” “Carl wanted to?” Griffin said. “He wants to,” I said. “Yeah. Sadie and Rodney do too, I guess. Ready to go?” “I’m hungry,” he said. “We’ll stop at Jack in the Box on the way there,” I said. “You can eat a meaty breakfast burrito and pretend it’s my cock.” He scrunched his face in grossed-out amusement. “Ew. You’re amazing.” I thanked him. We listened to the news in the car. A shooting at a school, a new tax on plastic bags, a demonstration in Washington about healthcare. A new drone attack confirmed. We got the food and then parked at a lot across the street from the DNC. Because it was a 364 rental car. “This shit is too expensive,” I said. “I think we should ditch it and take the bus.” “Whatever you want,” he said. Nice boy. When we got buzzed in the front gate, a different person was sitting at the old desk. She was almost an opposite to the person Rodney had called “brother” the day before--extremely thin and expertly femme. “Can I help you?” she asked, and tapped her orange nails on the desk. “Sadie told us to come today, for a workshop?” I said. She smiled without showing her teeth and gestured to the stairs. “Go on upstairs, they’re just getting started.” We walked past the mural of all the faces, up the stairs, and found a room with four big tables pushed together. There were people in most of the chairs. I saw two seats directly across from Sadie, who was looking at a binder, standing in the front with a whiteboard behind her. She was wearing a different flannel shirt, same wild hair. She looked up and winked at me. “Folks I’d like to get started,” she said, and nodded toward the chairs in front of her. “Everybody find a seat?” We milled around and settled in. Griffin seemed a tiny bit uncomfortable. I liked it. Eyes turned to Sadie. “Let’s talk about what kinds of associations we have with homelessness,” she said, pulling the cap off a white-board marker. She turned her back and poised to write. “What stereotypes, images, or memories do you have associated with Skid Row? What kinds of things do you remember from movies? Don’t be shy. We’re just naming the things, not endorsing them.” 365 Eyes darted. People didn’t want to do it. “It stinks,” I said. “Like piss.” Someone had to break the seal. “Ok, perfect,” Sadie said, and wrote smells like human defecation on the board. “What else?” “People live in tents?” Griffin said. “Good,” Sadie said, and wrote it up. She turned halfway, looked at us, and crossed her arms. “That’s all?” One of the students raised her hand. Her red T-shirt said “Superstar” in white script. “Drugs,” she said. “What about drugs?” “Um, there’s a lot of them?” “There’s a number of pharmaceutical drugs, over-the-counter medicine, alcohol, and processed sugar in most of our houses,” Sadie said. “Is that what you mean?” I snorted a little. “Illegal drugs,” said the girl, like duh. She was certain of this one. It had been in the news recently. “There’s a big drug problem with the homeless. I mean, homeless people have drug problems.” Sadie had been nodding slowly as the girl talked. I could see her breathe in, the way I did when a client had made me angry, or, when I was in an argument with Nautica and she was interrupting me every time I talked. Sadie wrote drugs on the board. “Here at DNC, you’ll hear us using words like ‘houseless,’ ‘marginally housed,’ or ‘sleeping out,’” Sadie said. “The word ‘homeless’ tends to make people feel stigmatized, and like their whole identity is now about this one part of their life. So, I encourage you to try using other terms, while we brainstorm what associations we have with Skid Row itself,” she said. “And, there are definitely a lot of people struggling with addiction here, but there are also a lot of people in 366 active recovery. Most of the drugs consumed in this country are sold to the suburbs, it might surprise you to know. Next?” A few more ideas went up: mental illness, violence, panhandling, unemployment. “Ok! Now, how do you imagine people come to Skid Row?” Sadie asked. “What might precipitate a person coming here?” A few suggestions came forward: home foreclosure, drug addiction, getting released from prison with nowhere to go, abuse at home, and Sadie stopped writing when one of the girls at the table said: “a series of bad choices.” “I’m not going to try to debunk or debate these ideas,” Sadie said, capping her pen. “There certainly is a large percentage of Skid Row residents who ingest or trade with illegal substances, or are experiencing emotional and psychological states that cannot be managed in mainstream society, what you might call “mental illness.” What I’m going to suggest to you today is that the stereotypical narrative of how people come to live in a community like Skid Row is not the only, or even the most accurate one, and, that there are multiple forces acting to create a community like this, especially one this large, and also, I’d like to offer some of the explanations we use here for how the cycle of poverty gets maintained over time, who benefits from this situation, and how the Downtown Action Center is involved in the fight for human rights.” Sadie drew a rhombus-like shape on the board and labeled the edges: Main, 3 rd , Alameda, 7 th . She asked who of us knew about the Safer Cities Initiative. No one raised a hand. Again, she took a slow breath. This seemed hard for her today. I felt for her. I raised my hand. She nodded at me. “Can I take a guess and say it hasn’t made life safer for people who live in Skid Row?” “Good guess!” she said. 367 She walked to the table and leaned toward us. “There are around eighty thousand unhoused individuals living in Los Angeles proper. The impact of the Safer Cities Initiative on the nearly ten thousand people who stay down here on Skid Row has been profoundly negative. I’ll write some information on the board for you and we can discuss. While I do that, I’d like for you to write something too.” She handed out blank baby-blue copy paper and blue ballpoint pens. I drew a few spirals in the corners until the ink was consistent. “I want you to write down a stream-of-consciousness list of images, feelings, thoughts, as you tour your own neighborhood in your mind,” Sadie said. “You’re out on a walk from the front door of where you stay now. What do the houses or apartments look like? Are there dogs you say hello to? What colors catch your eye? Is there a lot of trash on the ground? Are the lawns all mowed the same? Are there any houseless people, camping at the overpass or sitting outside the grocery store? Describe the scene as you would for a news story, for someone who has never been there.” Griffin looked at me, with something like fear in his eyes. I mouthed, are you okay? He wrote a note on the corner of his paper. I don’t write. I wrote back: just pretend you’re keeping a journal. He gave me one dimple and shook his head. I glanced at him a few times while we all wrote. His concentration face was so endearing, chewing on the insides of his cheeks and pressing his pen too hard. I thought about a string of apartments I’d lived in with Mom and Carl. The last one, especially, and then the neighborhood I’d lived in with Angie, then the place I’d couch surfed for a few weeks, then that other place I’d stayed in with KC, and then there was the little 368 room in Bushwick I’d called “mine,” but the neighborhood I’d been in the longest, I realized, still “belonged” somehow to Nautica in my mind. It was her neighborhood, even though I lived there too, because she’d gotten there first. And maybe I’d never thought of myself as really living anywhere, I moved so often. You’ve lived with Nautica in that apartment for five years, said a reasonable voice in my head. Like an adult. I wrote some lists of things and people. I got bored. I tried to draw Sadie’s profile but she moved too much. She was setting something up on the white board. I read her facts and was quietly enraged at what the city was doing. I nudged Griffin and nodded at his paper. He handed it to me. Spotted, cracked pavement. Buildings rise low. Red rust orange. Trimmed toward the back at an angle. Sense of lacking. Meatpacking plant in two parts. Yellow cake frosting crust paint job. Always someone outside looking mad. A massive art collective house. The cops raided and arrested them. The landlord wants to turn the building into a nightclub. To the right of my building, yoga studios, a gallery of commercial lofts, a massive thrift store divided into three buildings under different names. But it’s all the same store. Train two blocks ahead. Morgan Street. The L. There is Maria Hernandez Park. A playground and jogging loop. Shady spaces to sit on a hot day. Food Not Bombs sets up there. My apartment is a dump. And yet, it is full to the brim with people. They come out of our fake walls unexpectedly, and complain to me about the piles of black mold. 369 Some grizzly old anarchists set up a zine library in the bathroom. Then they used it for toilet paper. On misty nights there is an orange glow from the streetlights that puts a rusty halo on the whole plateau. “You’re a good writer,” I whispered to him. He looked like I’d handed him two thousand dollars. “Really?!” Sadie and two of the other students glanced at us. “Everyone finished?” Sadie said. We all murmured and nodded. “Great,” she said. “Let’s get ready for our tour.” She gestured to the board. On the left, she’d written “SCI” in big letters at the top and a short list of what looked like promises from the cops about cleaning up the streets. On the other side, she’d written statistics about arrests, and people gone missing, and tickets issued for infractions like jaywalking. Griffin looked shocked. I felt a little sorry for him, and then I realized he was a grown man who needed to know things about the world he lived in. I wondered what he knew about policing in NYC. He’d probably never thought about it. Nautica and I had been stopped and frisked twice together, and once they threatened to arrest us because we both were carrying “more than three” condoms in our bags. You’re fucking with me, right? Nautica had said. You’ve got to be fucking with me. I squeezed her hand. Oh please shut up, I thought. They told her they didn’t like her attitude. One of them got in my face and said, you don’t have anything to say, pretty lady? Who you having this much sex with, honey? Is he big? I made eye contact then and kept my mouth shut. Something happened on their walkie-talkies. They let us go. I was numb. Nautica cursed 370 them for the whole walk back home. They saw us kissing, she said, fucking perverts. Fucking power-abusing assholes. Three condoms my ass. We looked it up, and it was bad news: they could have used the condoms against us in court as evidence that we intended to commit prostitution. Nautica laughed. Then she sent an email to all the Dommes at the dungeon reminding them that their rental fees covered condoms and that they could keep their personal gear and costumes in their lockers. “Let’s not let homophobic, misogynist, slut shaming attacks from the police ruin a perfectly lovely day of beating up our little men and taking their money,” she concluded. “Stay safe,” she signed it, “from pathogens and persecution.” I thought about Carl, and how much he’d taught me over the years, even without my full presence or participation. Broken Windows Theory. The criminalization of homelessness. Sundown Towns. “Ugly” laws. Sadie was trying to explain why it was so dangerous for people to to stay in such a heavily policed area, and yet, how they were trapped there because all the social services were there. “Ok, but what are people supposed to do when something bad happens to them?” The same girl who’d wanted to talk about “bad choices” asked. “Don’t they need cops down here because of, like, real crimes?” “That depends on whether you are a person who is traditionally protected by the cops, or traditionally victimized by the cops,” Sadie answered. “You, for instance, are a feminine- presenting person with white skin. You might feel safer when a cop arrives on the scene. But a lot of people don’t, because the cops have a negative history with them. Does that make sense?” “Ok,” she said. I knew what she was thinking. I raised my hand. “Isn’t there a lot of rape down here, though?” Sadie nodded. “Rape is definitely an issue for cisgender women, trans women, and also for 371 men, especially those who identify as gay or queer,” she said. “The problem is that the police don’t go after rapists, even in rich neighborhoods. Frankly it’s a low priority for them here, even when someone is brave enough to come forward and report.” She was quiet for a moment. “You understand we aren’t meeting here today to solve all the social problems associated with homelessness?” she started erasing the board. “That’s a years-long task that will require more thinking and a lot more action, especially from the people most affected by the system. I want to remind you all that solving the problems is not actually your job, even though of course it makes sense that you’d want to help. But sometimes the people who want to help come in here and try to solve problems they really don’t understand. That is the mistake made by the BID, the Business Improvement District, which has paid for all the private security around here. They’ve caused more problems, not solved them. As I see it, your job is to listen to the people most affected by Skid Row policies, the residents, and do your part to support their choices, their plans for change. Do not make the mistake of thinking your ideas about what to do next are brand new, just because they are new to you.” She let us stare at her in silence for a beat. “The DNC helps people who live down here take care of themselves, and we refer to them as ‘Skid Row residents,’ not ‘the homeless.’ Our ‘help’ isn’t the same as charity. It comes in the form of support for the residents’ organizing for their own rights. We believe in the self- determination of the people, and we proceed from the fact that we are in an ongoing, racialized class struggle over land and resources. This isn’t just about individual stories, although all the people have important stories to tell. What you all are here to do is self- educate, and hopefully, motivate yourselves to make some changes in your own lives. When you want to try out that new expensive restaurant that popped up where the old fish market used to be, we’d like you to consider learning about where you’re going, where you’re putting 372 your money. Gentrification is not good for everyone.” She smiled with some real kindness. “That’s the main message you should get from what I’m saying. Gentrification is not good for everyone, and, if you want to help, start listening to the people who don’t normally have a voice in the media. Listen when they speak up for their experience.” I nodded. I wanted to hug her. No wonder Carl got along with her so well. “Now,” she said, “Who’s ready to walk?” We left the DNC office a lumpy talkative group. We heard from Sadie that thousands of people had “gone missing” from Skid Row in the past few years. When students asked why, she said it depended who you talked to. “Everyone has an individual story,” she said. “It’s important not to forget that. People experience negative impacts in different ways. But systemically, the war on the poor has intensified in most of the major cities. San Francisco has been called the ‘meanest’ city when it comes to policing the poor. But Los Angeles has the most punitive laws and the most reliably racist enforcement of any city in the country.” We passed a pile of what looked like trash and then several tents clustered together. There was also a shopping cart full of gray, flecked blankets. Sadie pointed at the cart. “We’re seeing people’s property get destroyed all the time, even though we won a lawsuit to prevent it. So why do people go missing? Some people have one or two particularly difficult interactions with the police and they move to another area where they feel they may not be targeted. Some people get moved off their block because the city needs to come in and power wash the streets to meet a new health code, and then, when they try to move back, they get arrested because of city ordinances that weren’t getting enforced the week before. Some people walk away and don’t come back, change their name, or get temporary housing somewhere else in the city. Some people get arrested and catch another case while they are inside, and stay imprisoned. Some get sick and can’t get medical care. Some die.” 373 We walked past a building that looked strangely familiar to me. “What’s that place?” I asked Sadie. “You recognize it, right?” she smiled. “Yeah,” Griffin piped in. “I recognize it too.” The building stood three stories, with sandy decorative bricks offsetting the brown. A beautiful archway framed the front door, which desperately needed some love and more red paint. Sadie spoke to the whole group. “That’s Fire Station 23! It was a working Fire Station for many years, and it was considered one of the nicest stations in the country because of the architect’s choices for the finest materials. They used to call it the Taj Mahal of Fire Stations. You recognize it because long after it had been shut down, it was the building facade they used for the original Ghostbusters movie,” she said. “And about fifty films since then.” “This is so weird,” said one of the students. She was pulling at a piece of her hair, over and over. “I mean, that’s like a historical landmark or something, right? And it looks, like, kind of janky now.” “Sure,” said Sadie. “It’s recognized by both the Federal government and the state of California as a historical building, but the nonprofit that was administering the renovations took money from donations and film shooting fees, and pocketed them. Meanwhile, Skid Row keeps expanding around it.” She led us up another block. “Let’s stop here,” she said. We all bumbled to a halt. Sadie pointed out a few more things. An enormous LAPD building. The toy district. A few old SRO hotels. “Once you know what you’re looking for,” she said, “Skid Row becomes a place full of history, art, culture, community.” Someone, not from our group, walked behind her. “Mornin’ Miss Sadie,” he said, 374 solemnly, and nodded. She smiled at him and made way for him to pass. “Brother Martin,” she said to him, and he moved along. We all waited for her to continue. She took a breath, and told us that man had been sleeping “rough” for nearly thirty years. He swept his entire block, no matter who was staying there, twice a day. He collected cans. He ate at the Mission, and volunteered at the DAC. “He’s part of our fight against the City’s football stadium project,” she said. “He was a college professor back in his day. Theology. He preaches in the park sometimes.” “What football stadium,” I whispered to Griffin. He shrugged. “I don’t do sports stuff,” he said. “I wonder what that guy’s story is,” about Brother Martin. Sadie brought us back to the DAC and let the group go. Griffin and I hung back. “Who were those people?” I asked her. She shrugged. “A school group from the Valley,” she said. “Not a bad bunch.” We stood by the reception desk, where Curly was sitting, and she patted him on the shoulder. He leaned into her and soaked her up, like a cactus in rain. “You hooking up with Rodney today?” she said to me, while rubbing Curly’s back. “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’m going to meet Riley.” Sadie nodded. “She’s a cool kid,” she said. “I hope you two can support each other through this.” “We’ve never met,” I said. Sadie’s eyes flickered but she didn’t ask me to explain. “I didn’t know that,” she said. “You enjoy the tour?” she said to Griffin. 375 “It was great,” he said. “I mean, I learned a lot.” “Good, good.” She glanced around. I could tell she needed to go do things. She squeezed Curly’s neck. He drooped his head little with his eyes closed. “See you tomorrow maybe?” I said. She reached out to shake my hand. “Sounds good.” She asked Curly to take messages for her for an hour while she made calls upstairs. He nodded. Griffin looked at me, waiting to leave until I moved to the door. He was good at taking cues. We left, and I asked him to drive us back to the hotel. 376 Play On our second date, Nautica asked me to assign a symbolic animal to my brain. “Goldfish,” I said. She asked me why. “My brain fidgets, and swims back stupidly to traumatic memories or self-harming thoughts,” I said. “But, it’s kind of cute in there too.” “You’re my perfect bottom,” she said calmly. “Of course you are probably a brat, too, but, I want to try some real power exchange and do some kinky stuff to you. What do you think?” “I think you look so good I don’t care whose side you’re on here,” I said. She swatted at me and smiled. “I’m on both our side because we’re a team right now,” she said. It was the best I’d felt in the presence of another person that I could ever remember feeling. It was like the first full breath after a puff of Albuterol. It was like warm hands gently shaking out all my joints. It was like having a family you really really like as people. Griffin and I went back to the motel to regroup. I was tired, achey, could feel irritation all over, like wool scratching every inch of me. We got in the motel room. It smelled like socks and old cigarettes. “Can I help you feel better?” Griffin said. His face looked sweet, hopeful. “You probably can,” I said. “But you’re going to have to come up with some ideas on your own at first.” “Are you hungry?” “Not really.” He folded his jacket and put it on his suitcase. 377 “Do you want me to give you some head?” “No thanks.” I sat on the bed. What did I want. “Do you want me to leave you alone?” “No,” I said. “Pretty sure I don’t want to be alone.” What did I want. I wanted Carl to be safe and in contact with me. I wanted to do more to ensure that he had every opportunity to let me know he was alright. I wanted him to be alright. You’re taking a break now, the Nautica in my head said. Take some deep breaths and enjoy it. Get some rest and some energy for the next steps you need to take. Stay focused and let the boy help you feel good for an hour or two. I just felt like I’d gotten to LA and done nothing really to find Carl. Griffin got in the shower and started singing “California Love.” He was shaving. I knew it was for me, just in case. A little squeeze on my heart released. A muscle jumped in my neck and then relaxed. He emerged, toweling off. His floppy hair stuck in wet strands to his face. “Ok I have an idea,” I said. The unmistakable disturbance of an ice cream truck broke the quiet. “I want ice cream,” I said, as if I’d conjured the jangly song of the truck myself. “Can you catch that truck?” He threw down his razor with one hand and wiped his face with the other. He dashed past me, pulled on his shoes, rummaged for his wallet, and ran out the door. He hadn’t asked me which ice cream I wanted. I arranged myself on the bed with all the pillows and waited, so I could critique his choices and then reward him for his effort. What you wanted was some power play, said the Nautica in my head. Never forget that sometimes you just need to be in control of one tiny situation to realize it’s ok to not be in 378 control of the rest. I could not imagine Riley. I tried to draw her. I tried to draw Carl. I tried to draw a family. I couldn’t. I threw paper after paper onto the floor of the motel room. The wood paneling seemed dirtier, darker. I called Riley. She was in college and worked on campus. “I’ve got some free time later this afternoon,” she said. “Can you meet me at a coffee shop near school at like four?” Of course I could. She gave me an address and we said goodbye. I called Nautica. “Hi honey,” she said. “How’s today going?” “Remember when you had that cat who ate the crotch out of my bloody underwear and then puked them onto your bed?” I said. “Jesus, ugh, of course I do. Why the hell would you make me imagine that right now?” “Sorry,” I said. “It just came to me as the moment when I realized I loved you.” She laughed. “Really.” “Yes. I realized I was supposed to feel shame, but I didn’t. About how gross it was.” “Love as the absence of shame,” she said. “Interesting.” It sounded like she was walking somewhere. “No,” I said. “The absence of shame helped me relax into an already-growing feeling of love.” “I see,” she said. “What about you?” I said. “It didn’t work like that for me,” she said. “Like what.” “In an instant like that. Kapow. I’m a slow-and-controlled style attacher.” 379 “Ok, tell me one time you liked me before you loved me then.” I could hear her smile through the phone somehow. “When you locked yourself out of my place, the first time,” she said. I couldn’t remember that time exactly. “You locked yourself out and you called the manager and got him to let you in,” she said. “Instead of calling me at work.” “Oh yeah, I remember. I thought you got mad about that.” “I did,” she said. “But I was impressed by it, too. And that’s a winning combination.” “Impressed by what,” I asked her. “You made a set of choices that I would not have been able to predict,” she said. “That’s impressive.” “You’re such a fucking Domme,” I said. “Thank you,” she said. “For understanding that.” The door clicked and Griffin was back in the hotel room, out of breath. “I think I need to do some power stuff with Griffin now,” I said. “That’s a big reason he’s there with you,” she said. “Do it.” “I love you,” I said. “I miss you.” “Call me later and tell me about what’s happening with Carl.” “Okay.” “I love you too. The kitchen is very clean without you here.” “Sorry bout that. I’ll make some messes in there soon.” She kissed into the phone and we said goodbye. Griffin threw four packaged ice cream treats on the bed, one after another. “You made it,” I said. 380 “There’s chocolate, vanilla, raspberry,” he paused to gasp for breath, “and orange creamsicle. I didn’t know what you’d want.” I picked up the orange creamsicle. “This is my favorite,” I said. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “Atta boy,” I said. Then I patted the bed next to me. “Deal with the rest of these and then come here.” He put them in the ice drawer of the mini fridge. He lay with his head in my lap. “Don’t move,” I said. I unwrapped the treat slowly. Then I rubbed the edge of the popsicle lightly on his cheek, ran it up to his temple, held it above him, and dripped it onto the side of his face a few times. Then I bent down to lick it off. “You like that?” I whispered in his ear. “I love it when you touch me,” he said. “Any way you want to touch me.” “Then get naked,” I said. He did. “Get a wide stance and lean your belly onto the bed,” I said. He did. Thin legs covered in tiny wire hairs. That perfect little bubble butt. “Hold your hands in prayer position above your head and don’t move,” I said. He moved his arms, fidgeted his head a little until he was comfortable, and closed his eyes. I warmed him up with some rubs and pinches, cooed a little at his cuteness. I reached under his butt a bit and tickled his balls, stroked his perineum, then slapped his right cheek a little. “More?” I said. He nodded. “Say yes, please,” I instructed. 381 “Yes, please,” he said, his eyes still closed. I leaned over him, let him feel my weight, the curves of my body, and I spoke softly, directly into his ear. “You’re a thief,” I said. “And a liar. You don’t deserve to read my private thoughts, you don’t deserve to read anyone’s without asking them to share with you. You know that right? Say yes, ma’am, if you understand.” He didn’t look quite as serene. “Yes ma’am,” he said softly. “So I’m going to punish you now,” I told him. “Because you need it. Because you need to show me some respect.” “Yes ma’am. Thank you ma’am.” I worked him over for twenty minutes. I started slow, slapping his calves, the backs of his thighs, varying intensity, hitting him hardest in the fleshiest mounds of his ass. I rubbed and hit, scratched and hit, cupped and hit, took breaks to stretch and breathe and then hit. He kept his honor bondage, he said many thank you ma’ams. When I got a good one in, my whole body would flush with Yes. Eventually, I was done. I told him he was a good boy and he was free. He scooted his legs together and crawled on the bed. We met eyes. “That was awesome,” he said. He was pink and high. “You did well,” I said. “Clean up that popsicle.” He did. Then we lay still in the bed, side by side, with just our arms touching. My mind felt quiet for a few more minutes. But the world never waits for long. “What time is it?” I asked. He rummaged around. “It’s two. What’s next?” “What do you want to do?” Griffin wanted to go to see the Scientology Center in Hollywood. I told him he was free to 382 enjoy himself; I was going to get ready to meet my sister. He asked if he could kiss my corset tattoo. His feathery mouth on the small of my back warmed me, from top to toe. Ways to Say No Nautica had a suggestion box in the dressing room at La Jouissance labeled “Ways to say No.” It was a shoebox she had covered with pictures of hands and eyes from magazines. Every new Domme or sub who worked there was encouraged to write down experiences of effective negotiations or deflections that required some form of saying “no” to a client, lover, or co-worker. “Power exchange requires that all parties are free to say no, and excellent power exchange occurs among people who are skilled at it,” she would say. I liked to think I was the first baby Domme she said that to, but she did say it every time she hired someone. One day, before I had started taking clients as a Domme, I was helping her clean the space. I asked her if she ever checked inside the box. “Almost never,” she said. “Then what’s the point?” “I like for the people who work here to think about saying ‘no’ as an art,” she said. “That box is a reminder that we are always searching for more effective, elegant, precise, unhurtful ways to redirect if we need to.” “But if no one is putting suggestions in there,” I said, “then how do you know people are thinking that way?” I shook the box. It sounded like there were a few pieces of paper in it. I opened it. There were two. “I guess I haven’t cared enough to wonder about that,” she said. 383 The first small paper was completely filled with perfectly proportioned capital letters. They read: THAT IS A TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE QUESTION TO ASK ME RIGHT NOW, DON’T YOU THINK? “Good one,” Nautica said, and pulled one of her favorite floggers from the top of the lockers. “Bitches!” she said, half playful, half angry. She shook out the suede tails and smoothed them. “I’m going to have to clean and condition this one at home,” she said, sighed, and folded it into her purse. The second paper was less legible, written in a tighter script I associated with old people. It said: I was able to exit a stupid argument by saying “I won’t talk with you about that any more tonight” and then repeating it. Nautica made a whistling approval. “That’s really good,” she said. “I think this thing could be really useful,” I said. “Will you remind the Dommes to put ideas in here? I’ll collect them, write them down somewhere. Maybe I’ll make a zine.” She leaned half way in and said, “Kiss me.” I did. “You’re right,” she said. “I will remind them, and we will all benefit. Thank you.” She wasn’t making fun of me. She was sincerely thanking me for changing her mind about something. Her confidence relaxed me better than a Jacuzzi. 384 Riley Griffin dropped me off to meet Riley near the address she’d given me. The place was through some large hedges, a little house with a tiny sign that said “Coffee and Lemon Tea.” I wondered how I would recognize her, but I didn’t need to. The bottom fell off my stomach. She looked more like Carl than I expected. She was reading, with earphones in. I recognized not just her face, but the face she was making. Concentration. Turning the corners of her mouth down just like he did. Suddenly I needed to gasp for air. A cup of coffee, a cell phone, pens and highlighters out. I approached her table. She looked up when I got close, pulled the earbuds out, and stood. “Kindred?” she said, and I nodded. She smiled and opened her arms and we hugged. She smelled like like a stripper. Not quite, I told myself, she smells like plumeria body spray. She smells like nineteen years old. We sat. “You want a coffee or something?” she said. “Yeah, ok,” I said. I walked around a few mismatched tables to the front service counter, which was a taller table in front of the door to the kitchen. I was in a sorority house afternoon tea party from 1960. I ordered a Lemon Tea. A woman in a teddy-bear apron took my three dollars and told me to go ahead and sit down, they’ll bring it to me. Riley struck me as truly uncanny, again, on my second approach. I sat. “I am really surprised at how much you look like Carl,” I said. “I’m sorry if that’s not the right thing to say, I just, I don’t know. It’s really noticeable. For me.” She listened. She didn’t seem offended. “I get it,” she said. “I had the same experience.” “What do you mean?” 385 “I met Carl for the first time last year,” she said. “I saw him and I was like, holy shit, that’s me as an old man.” “He’s only like sixty!” I said, too defensively, aware that I didn’t know his actual age and this could lose me points in the brand new competition I’d just entered to see who was the best daughter, now that there were two of us. “Yeah, well, that’s an older man,” she said. I told myself I should not compete with this person. We were on the same team. The team of people who cared about what happened to Carl. “So you’ve only known him a year?” “We were writing emails and stuff for a few months before we met,” she said. “But yeah, I guess I’ve known him a little over a year.” “How often do you see each other? Do you talk?” I told her I didn’t understand why he’d kept the relationship from me. She didn’t seem nearly as perplexed by his secrecy. They talked a little more often than he and I did. They saw each other about once a month, for coffee or dinner. Riley was studying business. She was determined to get a “good” job. I wondered what that meant for her. She said she was embarrassed to learn that her biological father was homeless, but she felt better after she met him. Her mother had told her her father was dead, then thought better of the lie when Riley was about thirteen. It was shocking to hear that actually he was quite alive and lived in the same city, of course. I’d been asking her questions nonstop and I had so many more. My lemon tea arrived, and I took a few seconds to sip, breathe, look at Riley’s face. “Carl has told me a little bit about you,” she said. “But he also seems really protective of your privacy.” 386 “He told me nothing about you,” I said, “So that’s a thing to deal with. What has he told you about me?” “That you live in New York with your partner. That you work a lot, and that you like to draw.” So he’d told her I was in a relationship with a woman, but hadn’t talked to her about sex work. I guessed it made sense, as far as managing someone else’s closets could make sense. “Did you go to college?” she asked me. “I’ve taken some classes here and there,” I said. “I’m the first in my family to go,” she said. “My mom likes to talk about that a lot.” “That’s awesome,” I said. “How’s it going? Do you like it?” She lit up a bit. “I love it,” she said. “I wish I didn’t have to work, too. I’d read all day every day.” I asked her if she had any ideas about where Carl might be. She sighed. “When I met him I knew he was going to be one of those people you can’t really get attached to,” she said. “I mean, that’s what my mom said and I think she was right.” “Ok,” I said, avoiding the temptation to talk about how attached I was to him, “so you don’t feel like you have any idea where he is, I’m guessing.” “Nope, and I don’t expect to see him again, at this point.” She was so calm as she said it. “Why not?” I had acid in my throat. “It’s just been too many days,” she said. “If he wanted us to know where he was, he would have found a way by now, that’s what I think. He’s either dead or he’s completely left his life as it was, and he’s capable of doing that, right?” I supposed so, but I didn’t think he would. “He wouldn’t just leave without telling me,” I 387 said. But I couldn’t be sure. I realized she wasn’t helping me find him. She had wanted to meet me out of her own curiosity. “So he told you about me when you met for the first time?” “Yeah,” she said. “And he said he was going to try to get you out here to meet me someday, he talked like he could just buy you a plane ticket. He said it might be hard for you to understand and adjust, I guess because he got my mom pregnant when he and your mom were broken up or something?” I tried to remember being ten. A fuzzy story about Carl being out of town surfaced. I wasn’t ever going to know what happened. “I thought he might have cheated on my mom,” I said. “I guess at this point it doesn’t really matter. Here we are.” “Honestly I didn’t expect you to be white,” she said. “I don’t mean it in a bad way? But he just never mentioned it.” That made me smile. “Carl’s my dad,” I said, “but my mom was white and so was the guy she fucked to get pregnant. She met Carl after I was born.” Riley looked genuinely surprised for the first time. “I didn’t know that,” she said. “So I’m his only real daughter? I mean, like biological daughter.” Ouch. “As far as I know,” I said. “But now that you’re in the picture, I’m wondering how many other kids he may have out there.” “I don’t think he has any more,” she said. But I didn’t know why she’d think that, or how she could know. We talked about her classes. We talked a little bit about New York and how much she wanted to go there someday, wanted to work there, wanted to live there. Her mom had married an insurance adjuster, lived in the Inland Empire, made crafts and sold them on the internet. “That’s a good hustle,” I said. 388 She pulled back. “I don’t like that word,” she said. “Oh, sorry?” I said. “I mean, it sounds like it’s working out for her?” “She is doing what she loves,” Riley said. “She’s making an honest living doing something that makes her happy, and that’s what’s most important.” I wondered if Riley could get on board with sex work as a form of making an “honest” living. I didn’t think so. So I choose to stay in my closet, at least for the moment. “You can’t always love your work,” I said. “I mean, it’s tough to make a living, and we don’t all have the same options. Like you and I have had different choices to make.” “If you get your mind right,” she said, “You can do anything. I stay positive, apply myself, and see?” she gestured at her pile of study materials. “I’m going to get a good education and then a good job. The only thing standing in your way, if you want to be successful, is you.” I remembered so many conversations I’d had with Carl about this very thing. About what “work” and “labor” and “doing a job” and “success” meant under capitalism and patriarchy and racist regimes. About what a hustle is. About people who aren’t living hand-to-mouth failing to see how the need for a hustle is unjustly, differentially imposed upon the poor, the working classes, the incarcerated, the immigrants, the non-white. Suddenly here was a person I was supposed to see as my sister, a young black woman getting ready to succeed, telling me that I’d sabotaged myself somehow by my negative thinking. I wanted her to graduate from college and do well. But there was something ugly rooted in her ideas, and I had no way to address it with her. I had a flash of myself at nineteen, getting drunk and scaring people at a party by talking about my dead mom’s morphine rambles. Riley was self confident. I wanted to encourage that, without signing on to some pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps pseudo- spiritual idea about the power of positive thinking, divorced from the realities of the unjust system we were both part of. 389 I imagined the kinds of things Riley’s mom had probably said about Carl’s life choices, and I felt very alone. I’d been ashamed of him, too. I’d wanted him to get his act together: maybe keep a job for a few years, keep an apartment, keep a relationship going. I’d blamed him for his vulnerability and his risks. I didn’t want to be that simple about it, anymore. Riley asked me almost no questions. She was happy to talk about her life, her plans, her program, her ambitions. Carl did not raise this person, I kept thinking. She’s trying to have something she thinks will be a good life, but she doesn’t think like him, doesn’t agree with him about what a “good life” is, at all. And I do. And now I’m lonely and sad and...bored. We said goodbye after an hour. I told her I’d be in touch, about Carl, before I went home to New York, and that she could look me up if she ever went out there. I texted Nautica: I don’t have anything in common with her. She’s very put together and made me feel bad about myself for a minute. Nautica wrote back: Sorry sweet pea. But that does sound like normal family, ironically. No info from her on Carl? Nothing helpful, I wrote. Back to the drawing board. It’s weird to have a sister. I called Griffin and he didn’t pick up. I decided to walk for a while, think, make a plan, clear my head. I felt terrible. My heart could stop at any moment, I thought. I can’t keep going like this. But, I kept going. I walked. I got lost in a never-ending alley built for cars only. In the heat, surrounded by concrete, I did some deep breathing. A red 1980s Honda hatchback pulled up to my left and a large bearded man rolled down his window and leaned over the passenger seat to speak to me. He 390 had a sweet face and a lot of friendship bracelets on. “Hey, um, would you like some strawberries?” he said. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. He got out of the car and opened the back. He had a flat in there, and the berries were startlingly bright and shiny. “Take as much as you want,” he said. “You’re trying to get rid of these?” I said. “Yeah, otherwise they’ll get thrown away,” he said. “Right on,” I said. I took a carton. “This is enough for me right now,” I said. “But good luck.” “You have a great day,” he said. He drove to the end of the alley and turned right. I walked for another ten minutes before the sweat was intolerable. I’d made it to Hope Street, and was in sighting distance of an arts and craft supply. I stopped in the shade of a warehouse to eat some strawberries. Maybe I could get some beads. I could put them on some fishing line. I could touch each one and think of reasons to live, things I was grateful for. Maybe Riley was on to something with the part about getting your mind right. I kept thinking about her face. And her deep lack of panic. A 20s-looking sexy boy dressed in all white came around the corner of the warehouse. His skin was dark enough to hide all his tattoos--sleeves, neck, chest--until he was close. He had small, even dreadlocks to the base of his neck. “You look good,” I said. “It’s too hot out here today, you know?” he said. “I hate the sticky shit like this.” “Agreed.” I held out my basket. “Want a strawberry?” He took one. “It’s good,” he said. Then, “You stay out here?” He would have been 391 surprised if I’d said yes, I thought. So I said yes. “Where at?” he said. “Just a walk from here,” I said. “It’s nice here,” he said. He turned a little so we were side-by-side, both looking at the street. “You working right now?” he said, slightly lower, slightly faster, tossed out the side of his mouth without eye contact. Aha. “Not right now,” I said, a little sly. He started to cover the question with pleasantries, but I cut in, “I’m not offended you asked.” He relaxed back into himself. “I want to be in this whole city,” he said, sweeping his hands at the skyline. “I get that,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I did. “I’m going to go buy some plastic stuff at that craft store now.” “That’s right,” he said. “You have a beautiful day.” We said goodbye. Just after I turned away he said, “You’re sexy as a motherfucker, though.” I thanked him. “Stay cool,” I said, now a little self-conscious. “Yeah,” he said, serious. “Do you want these strawberries?” I said, turning back, stretching out, “I can’t eat them all and I need to get on with my day.” “Nah,” he said. He gestured at his outfit. “Oh right,” I said. We both had higher priorities, for the moment, than not wasting food. 392 And we left each other there, but gently. I bought some big bright plastic beads and a yard of ribbon for $2.37. But every thought I had about what I was grateful for got followed immediately by the thought: It doesn’t matter. Griffin finally called me back, I gave him an address, and while I waited for him, I called Rodney. “How’d it go with Riley?” he said. “I don’t know,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t think she’s even that worried about Carl.” “I’ve got an idea,” Rodney said. “There’s some people gonna be out tonight we might want to talk to. But you’ll have to be out on the Row with me, you cool with that?” “Sure,” I said. “Are you ok with some stuff and staying up?” he said. There was something in his voice. “Are you asking me if I party?” I said. “Call it what you want. I’m asking if you’re gonna want to stay up with me.” He probably had some speed. It seemed like a smart way to go, considering what might be waiting for us on the Row. “Yeah, I’m down,” I said. “Right on,” he said. “Meet me outside the DAC at nine.” I confirmed, said goodbye, and wondered what Griffin would do with his night. “Man, I wish I got to do some drugs,” he whined, as we headed back to the motel. “You could probably find some,” I said. “I’m not that brave,” he said. 393 “Good to know yourself,” I said. “How was your day?” “It was awesome! I went to the Scientology Center and took the personality test. I had a wonderful conversation with a woman named Valerie.” “You took the Scientology personality test?” “Yep.” “Of all the things to do in Los Angeles. Well, get ready for a flood of email.” “You doing ok?” he asked. I thought about it. Wave of nausea. “Nope,” I said, and breathed through it. “I’m really scared about stuff today.” “When you get home later,” Griffin said, “I’ll put you in the bathtub and give you a massage and I’ll get some food so you don’t have to think about it.” “It’s cute that you call our little shithole of a room ‘home,’” I said. “And I like your plan. I’m going to need all that to recover right. Can you run some errands for me, actually?” Of course he could. I gave him a list of supplements and groceries I wanted to soften my comedown. “The multivitamin, L-Tyrosine, and 5HTP are the most important,” I said. “And the blueberries. I’m really going to need those.” He called me a grandma. I reminded him that I’d spent a lot of my life in altered states. “Nowadays, if I’m gonna put my body through something, I like to take care of myself,” I said. “But I can still put a cane on your ass.” He liked that. We held hands for a few seconds. I felt calmer, better. “I’m going to text you a couple of video links I watched today,” he said. “They’re inspiring.” “Inspiring?” 394 He nodded. Something in me pulled away from that, from him. But I didn’t know why so I didn’t say anything. 395 From 4 th and Towne to The Spot I got to the DAC office at nine PM. Rodney wasn’t there yet. I watched Griffin’s videos on my phone. They were insipid, often offensive things from the Scientology website. A great way to remind me, at the very least, how much I preferred not being a straight woman. Before I had a chance to text anything to him, Rodney showed up. He nodded, hugged me, and walked me a few blocks away. He had showered, smelled like Zest and patchouli. We leaned against the concrete wall of a fish shop. The street was lined with tents, carts, crates and people. One of them was singing. One of them was walking up the block, screaming at himself. Rodney did a carefully concealed dealer handshake with someone much older than us both. Their wrinkles were age-spotted and their hands were curled with arthritis. They smelled so strongly, of urine, of something more sour too, my eyes threatened to water. “Break time,” Rodney said to them. They nodded, and started shuffling off. Rodney held up a tiny drug-bag to the light. A clouded chunk, a thin pile of dust, enough to keep us both up for the night. “You got something we can cut lines on?” he asked me. I set my pack down on the ground and started rummaging. I found something. “Obviously, this glossy black junk mail from the credit card company was made for drugs,” I said, and held it up. “Well, you are entitled to incredible savings,” he said, and took it. He was careful but nimble, someone who knows how. I let him cut the lines. He didn’t ask me anything about my habits or history. He trimmed a clean straw with his nail scissors, and I knew I could never thank him for that courtesy aloud. So I deferred the first line, which he 396 offered like a host, and he nodded, and took it, the esteemed lord of our dirty little corner. My turn. The fucking shitty burn and tears on one side. That acrid drip in the throat. The cobwebs cleared from my brain and peripheral vision and I bowed slightly to Rodney. We took turns once more, and then he checked in. “You good?” “I’m good,” I said. I wanted more, but that is the least reliable measure of whether a person should continue ingesting methamphetamine. I could feel the energy without the nasty edge. I was good. “I’m going one more,” he said. I nodded of course, whatever you want to do. He finished and repacked, folded the baggie into the black card stock and sliding into his inside jacket pocket, rearranging his backpack, tightening a strap. “I’m carrying this for the pigs,” he said. “If you want it at any time you can have it. Understand?” “Sure,” I said. “Thank you.” He smiled at me. “Relax your face.” I did, by smiling back like I meant it. He laughed once, a true and single “Ha!” and I felt ready to go. “Let’s go dancing,” Rodney said. “Let’s,” I said. “If we do nothing else with our lives, let us please begin this evening by dancing.” He rolled his eyes a little and gestured up the block, away from Skid Row. “It’s that way,” he said. “Lead on,” I said. So we walked up Towne, took a few turns, and ended up at a small black-lit bar with both a rainbow and a Mexican flag out front. The music had a thick fast bass and enough polka 397 melody to make dancing possible, but the electronic sound effects grated on Rodney. I caught him wincing and called him old as we found space at the bar. It was musty, like the mopwater from last night’s closing was still in the air. The music was absurdly loud and felt great to my thumping insides. I bought us two Tecates and looked for a pair of seats somewhere. The lights flashed and I squinted to see past the dance floor. There was a back patio. “Let’s head out there?” I said, close to Rodney’s ear. His hair tickled my face. “Lead on,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was repeating me unconsciously or to make fun of me. Luckily, I was high and I did not care at all. On the back patio, people smoked cigarettes and laughed and talked in a rolling cadence of Spanish and English. “The owners love us,” he said. “They let us meet during the day back here. It’s where we planned our last demo at the stadium negotiation meeting.” I wanted to ask who he meant by “us,” but someone hollered “Rodney!” in a sing-song voice and he turned to look. She was tall, and wearing an enormous, perfectly coiffed blonde wig styled to look like Marilyn Monroe of the Seven Year Itch. Her blue eyeshadow rose to her black brows. Ten bright red polished nails on bejeweled brown hands holding her waist. She was wearing a flowing white gown. “Honey! It’s so good to see you,” she said. She held out her hand and Rodney picked it up and kissed it. Then he turned to me. “Kindred, this is my very good friend Frida Mall,” he said. I held out my hand for a shake and bowed a little. Her eyes were so brown they looked black. She smiled wide. “Great to meet you,” I said to her. “Ooh que linda,” she said. “You got those thin shoulder bones, so nice.” “This is Carl Baker’s girl,” Rodney said, and Frida’s eyes flickered. Surprise? 398 “Welcome baby,” she said to me. “Your dad is a good man,” she said. “And a fine one, too,” she laughed. “He’s missing,” I said. Now she was openly surprised. “No baby,” she said. “Really? Oh no no no.” She gasped and shook her head. “That man better not be wasting hisself in the gutter, girl, or I will be furiosa. I’m sorry,” she put her hand on my arm, “to speak like that.” She fanned herself. “I get mad when I worry, honey, it’s just me.” “If he’s not dead I’m ready to kill him,” I said. “He’s sober,” Rodney said, and although it seemed like a non sequitur, both Frida and I acknowledged it with nods. Then Rodney said, “You haven’t heard anything from him, Frida?” “No my love, I have not heard from Carl,” she said. “You know, I haven’t heard from any of your people for a long time. When’s the next time I get to give a speech to all the gringos in those big leather chairs? You know they tried to sue us here saying we ain’t had the right license? Then we paid and now we’re fine. They so crooked, papa,” she took a breath, “when do we tell them?” “Next week,” Rodney said. “We need you at the City Council meeting. I’ll call you ok?” Frida tugged a little on her straps and nodded. “I’ll be there honey, in my politically correct daytime drag.” She shook her shoulder a little. Rodney kissed her cheek and she made a demure smile. “You go on early tonight?” He said, looking at his watch. I drank some beer. “As a matter of fact I do, lucky for you bitches,” she said, and shot me a wink. “If you see Carl tell him he better come see me?” Then she gave Rodney an extra beat of eye contact, with her hands enfolding his, and swished away. I wished Frida was my friend too. 399 Rodney was smiling. His eyes got sweetly scrunched. He drank from his Tecate and looked around. “Wait a second,” I said. “You two?” “She’s a good friend,” he said. “Let’s dance.” “Rodney!” I was yelling but he was in front of me, the rainbow lights bouncing in his gray dreadlocks. He refused any questions by entering a state of ecstatic dancing with his eyes closed. We each moved in rhythm on the dance floor for a few minutes to the overwhelmingly loud house beats and polka brass. Rodney put his hands up over his head, clapped occasionally, and did some step-touch move, or half a country line dance. Then the sound went off, the lights went up on the floor, and the first chords of Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park” shocked my system in a wonderful new way. Frida had impeccable control of her face, and she was able to breathe at all the right times, too. She danced lightly in her heels and shook her hips fast, surprisingly fast. I leaned over to Rodney and said into his ear, “I see why we came here.” “We got a few more places to try,” he said back, “but we are going to watch her set first.” “She’s awesome,” I said. He nodded. Her face was artfully tortured, filled with exquisite anguish, while she lip-synched: MacArthur Park is melting in the dark All the sweet green icing flowing down Someone left the cake out in the rain I don’t think that I can take it ‘Cuz it took so long to make it 400 And I’ll never have that recipe again! Oh NOOOOO! Frida broke into the higher-tempo disco section of the song, pointed in the air, and tipped a guy’s cowboy hat off his head with a flick at his neck. She twirled and landed on Donna Summer’s high note. I tipped her $5 even though I had planned to use it for alcohol that night. “This song is insane,” I said in his ear. He grinned. We watched her perform for another song, and then when the next queen came out Rodney caught my eye. He nodded at the door. I picked up my pack. We left. “Strike one,” he said on the street. “What do we learn by this, though,” I said. “We learn that Frida doesn’t know where he is. Are they close? Is there a particular reason you expected her to know something and hadn’t asked her yet?” “She’s tough to get in touch with,” Rodney said. “So I knew I’d have to come down when she was working. But sometimes he’s stayed at her place, when she had one up on the other side of the freeway, in Boyle Heights.” “Were they lovers?” I said. “Were you two lovers? Were you and Carl lovers?” Rodney smiled. He pointed me toward a crosswalk. We were headed back into Skid Row. “You know we didn’t stay down here all the time, right?” Rodney said. “We both had places we stayed at here and there, sometimes together.” “That is not an answer to any of my questions.” I said. “That’s right,” he said, “Focus. I’m taking you to everyone I haven’t hit up yet. After tonight, I’m done with my theories. I don’t know what happened to him, Kindred, I really don’t. And I’m not going to tell you all his business, at least not now. So stay with me, ok?” 401 “You haven’t known him that long,” I said. “But you act like you know him better than anyone.” “I know the Carl of last week better than anyone,” he said. “Young people think you have to know someone a long time to know them well. The more you know yourself, the faster other people can know you. It’s a gift of age.” It worked on me, softened something inside. I agreed I would ask no more intrusive tangential questions. “I keep feeling like I didn’t know him,” I said. “It hurts my heart.” “Of course,” Rodney said, “that’s natural. But you did know him, you’ve loved him your whole life, and you know a piece of him none of the rest of us ever will.” He hugged me, and some tears came, and then I remembered where we were and pulled back. “I like imagining you guys being happy together sometimes,” I said. Rodney patted me on the shoulder, just lightly. “Thank you,” he said. “We were, sometimes. Happy as motherfuckers and free as men.” Then he walked out of the bar in front of me, without looking back. Outside, he lit up a cigarette. I had no idea he smoked. Maybe he was one of those people who only smoked cigarettes when he did other drugs. “I will tell you that your dad and I aren’t lovers, ok?” he said. He sucked in and blew the smoke along a breeze away from us. “Ok,” I said. “I’m bisexual,” he said, looking out into the street. “I would have. We had a talk. That man likes pussy.” “Hey that’s great, ok,” I said, hands up. “Got it. Thank you.” “I don’t know about him and Frida,” he said. “Maybe she was his special queer, you 402 know? I don’t know. I know they’ve been close in the past. That he stayed with her at her place sometimes. They talked politics a lot and laughed together. They’d read a lot of the same books. Made each other feel good in a family way. Doesn’t always mean fucking. Feel me?” I nodded. Gestured for his cigarette. Took the third and second-to last drags off it and handed it back for him to finish. “Where to?” I said. “We’re gonna walk and see who’s out,” he said. “Couple more cats who might have seen him after me.” We walked back toward the DAC office. Outside it, Rodney said, “We call this block Beverly Hills.” “It’s the nice part?” I said, looking at the trash. The barbed wire. The person a few feet away fumbling with something unrecognizable in their hand. An old shoe? Couldn’t tell. “Carl always made fun of people who bought jeans with holes in them,” I said. Rodney smiled, “Yep, me too.” “Remind me how you met?” I said. “At the DAC?” “Carl sat next to me out on the block, I was hungover as a motherfucker, and he told me he’d seen me out there without a book too often.” “Oh my god,” I laughed. We were walking south. “He gave me Alice in Wonderland,” Rodney continued, waving and someone down the street, and it was like an old friend had written me a letter reminding me of all the things I care about in this world.” “Shut up,” I said. He couldn’t be serious. But then he looked at me and I knew he was. We got to a crosswalk. The light was red, but there were not cars. I started into the street. Rodney grabbed at my back and yanked me back onto the sidewalk. I flipped around, grabbed his 403 wrist, right fist ready, and then dropped them both, just as fast. “I’m sorry,” he said. He held kept his palms up, at his sides, a gesture to show me I was safe. Then his eyes slid to the side and he nodded over there. “That’s a pig over there in his plainclothes who makes his whole life giving jaywalking tickets.” “He hangs out there giving infractions?” I said. I turned, felt my adrenaline pushing still, and saw the black Crown Vic. “Shit,” I said. “Thanks.” “People get tickets for jaywalking, sleeping on the sidewalk, then when they don’t show up to their court dates they get bench warrants.” “Why don’t people go to court?” “Some are already on probation. It’s hard to keep a calendar out here, to keep track of your nice shirt, to walk back into a building where you may have been traumatized before, and there’s always something happening right in front of you on Skid Row that is the most urgent thing, needs attention, right now. Even if you aren’t getting high.” “Then they get rounded up at night?” “Or at five or six in the morning.” The light changed. We crossed. “You do a martial art or something?” Rodney shook his wrist out in mock pain. “Carl taught me some stuff when I was a kid,” I said. “I’ve taken some self defense classes. It’s been useful more than once. That time I was just jumpy.” On the other side of the street was a liquor store. I thought maybe we should get some juice. I suggested it. Rodney said he’d stand outside and wait for me. I got us two Vitamin waters. Get some sugar in us since we probably weren’t going to eat much tonight. There were big signs all over the store advertising their ability to accept EBT, Food Stamps, WIC. No grocery stores for miles, but Skid Row was well stocked with liquor and junk food. Outside, I said “I want to know the story about Alice in Wonderland. Why you loved it so much.” 404 The sidewalk had flecks of silvery reflection and occasional black mounds of chewing gum-turned tar. It was slightly gummy under my boots. It wasn’t the regular smell of a city that wrapped us up, it was the smell of people living outside on those city blocks, sour and heavy and musky-sweet and uncomfortably familiar. “I followed a white rabbit down a hole and had wild visions too,” he said. “And I spent a lot of my life getting lost and finding my way alone.” Me too, I thought. The memory shot through me, quick and shocking: My mom in an orange button-up work shirt after she’d vomited, cleaned herself, and burned incense in the bathroom, emerging and glancing at me, looking away, saying, “I’m okay honey, I feel better now,” with a face that said she felt worse. Sick mom, finding her way alone. I realized I was staring at people. I started nodding hello to those who made eye contact. A man in shorts, nice athletic socks pulled up to his knees, and an oversized polo shirt artfully hanging just over his belt, gestured at me to break ties with Rodney and come join him. But he seemed unsurprised when I got steeley-eyed instead. We had entered the fray. It was loud. Hundreds of people were out on the street talking, greeting each other, catching up, playing games, playing drums, yelling at imagined opponents, and most were watching me as carefully as I was watching them. Rodney patted his pockets and found his cigarettes. A woman with a T-shirt wrapped around her head hailed him and he handed her one, without a conversation, and they moved on from the moment with respectful nods exchanged. I wanted to ask. I decided to stop externalizing every question. I remembered that this drug made me have laser-like focus, but I had to direct it. Carl, I told myself. Focus on finding Carl. Listen and learn. I drank some vitamin water and felt the tightness in my jaw. My heart was pounding but I felt calm. 405 “Carl and I stayed over here on Towne together,” Rodney pointed down the street to our left. It was lined with small, tidy camps. A few tents, a few forts built from large gray blankets and plastic shopping carts. An older woman in a graying sleeveless T-shirt and jeans called me baby and asked for money. She was wrapping her hair into curlers. Rodney shook his head, just slightly, still smiling, and we stopped walking. He addressed her. “Barbara, this is Carl’s daughter. She’s visiting us from New York City, believe that? Kindred, this is Barbara.” Barbara straightened her back, gave me serious eyes, and then narrowed them. Her dark brown skin was taught and shiny over her round cheeks. She didn’t stop twisting her hair. “You ain’t his,” she said. “Not by blood,” I said, “but he raised me.” “Where’s your mama?” “She died,” I said. Barbara’s dark eyes opened wider. She nodded. “Where’s Carl?” I told her I didn’t know. That I was here to try and find out. I asked if she’d heard from him. She hadn’t. “He owes me three dollars,” she said. She clipped in a curler and wiped her hands on her pants. I gave her three crumpled dollars from the side pocket of my bag. She smoothed them out, folded them, and tucked them into her bra strap, next to what looked like an old scar from a haphazard cigarette burn. “Thank you baby,” Barbara said. “What’s your name again?” “Kindred.” I held my hand out, and she shook it. 406 “You have such nice hands!” she said, suddenly, smiling wide, and I felt Rodney’s light touch on the small of my back. I thanked her, said I needed to keep on for now, but I’d see her again soon. Rodney gestured about fifty feet from where we stood to another section of the block. “Barbara’s the last on this side of the street who crosses the line here,” he pointed at the intersection. “That’s right,” she said. She put a hand on her hip and we all watched a cop car cruise through. People out on the block mostly ignored them, but there was a nearly imperceptible rigidity that took over a few of our bodies until the car had turned another corner. “I stay with the junkies on that side, but I’m still welcome on the straight side,” Barbara said. “I’m gonna take Kindred to see one of Carl’s old spots,” Rodney told her. “That’s nice,” she said. Then to me, “I hope he ain’t dead too, honey. I like him. I think he’s a good, good person.” “Me too,” I said. We moved away from Barbara, who stood where we left her, watching us. We approached the quieter end of the block. The people thinned out some, but we were headed to a cohesive camp, a series of well-organized temporary homes in a cluster on Towne. As soon as we got there Rodney was giving high-fives and hugs and I was introduced to a small crowd of men, one of them as white as me and definitely the youngest. “My man,” Rodney said to him, and they gave an extended hug. “How you been, Pops?” the guy said. “Call me Pops again and I’ll pop you one good, boy!” Rodney said, smiling. Carl said that. Rodney must have learned it from him. Ache. “Say hi to my friend Kindred, Jay.” We shook hands, and he called me “Miss Kindred.” His greasy curls seemed more 407 Hollywood than Skid Row. My mother’s voice in my head called him cute-as-a-button. Rodney relaxed a little, stretched out his back, sat on an upturned egg crate, and twisted a few of his dreds. The crate was in front of a large orange tent, with a blue tarp thrown overtop and secured by zip ties. “Get off my porch,” someone growled from inside the tent. “Fuck you, Compton,” Rodney said good-naturedly. He gestured for me to sit on the crate next to him. “You’ve got company here.” The tent rustled and I caught a waft of the unmistakeable smell of grown man mixed with some rancid shoes. The zipper came undone and a yellow-tooth smile on a wide, wrinkled brown face emerged. “Rod-man!” he smiled. “You came to check on the poor folks today?” “Captain,” Rodney said, “This is Kindred, Carl’s girl. She’s in from New York looking for him.” “Cap’n Compton,” the man said to me, with a tip of an imagined hat. “Pleased.” I bowed slightly. “The pleasure is all mine, Captain,” I said. “Carl’s girl, eh? Call me Compton,” he said. “It’s what my friends call me. Carl said you’re a lesbian?” “Sure,” I said, “we’ll go with that.” Rodney shook his head and smiled a little at his shoes. “Well goddamn! You’re the first lesbian to visit me in my kingdom here,” Compton said. “Not the first lady, not the last one neither,” he jabbed Rodney in the ribs, “but I got some questions for you!” “Alright old man,” Rodney said. “Kindred gets to ask the questions. She’s here to figure out what’s going on with Carl.” Compton and Rodney’s eyes connected and some kind of message seemed to be granted between them. “Well, then.” Compton said, and straightened up just slightly. He gestured for me to sit on 408 his other crate. I sat. “Miss Kindred looking for Carl. His place used to be right here,” he pointed to his left, where a twin mattress, blankets tucked in the corners, on a carefully stacked pile of cardboard, was shaded by a rainbow-paneled umbrella. “Now that’s my spot,” Jay said. Compton coughed, a long hacking wet cough, and spit into a small cup he pulled form his pocket. The cup went behind his feet. “Me, Rod, and Carl used to run this block like a program, feel me? No church meeting stop sit through, no contract to sign.” “Run it like what kind of a program?” I asked. Rodney explained that they’d built a community on that block, the three of them, along with some other guys, who wanted have some stability but didn’t want to keep getting their hands slapped by the Mission. “At the Mission you can’t come in late, you can’t get high, you can’t see a woman, you can’t make no money,” Compton recited. “You got do everything they say or they throw the book at you in there.” “The Bible?” I said. “Or the law books?” “Yes ma’am,” Compton said. Then he whistled softly. I shifted my weight on the crate to avoid getting red lattice dents on my thighs. Even though no one was going to see them. What Compton knew about Carl’s disappearance was sketchy. He’d spent less time with him than Rodney recently. What Compton had was narratives about Carl’s life on Towne that I’d never heard. How he organized among the people he stayed with, read books with them, shared his food, brought people in to Sadie’s office when they had a formal complaint to file with the city or the police, and how he slept in his tent just past the time when the “skirts” usually started bothering people. Compton said Carl knew how to handle them. 409 “He had the mouth. He talked like them. He told them they’d watch his morning routine or take him to jail for brushing his teeth and combing his hair in public.” He slapped a thigh. “Man, that was some shit!” Coughing, laughing, he spit in his cup, hid it again, and then patted himself for cigarettes. “He always told them to hang on until he got dressed in his tent,” Rodney said. “He never let the skirts get in his head. ‘I’m a man,’ he’d say, ‘you wait for me to answer my door before you recite the law to me.’” “So why did he move to the other block?” I said. They didn’t answer me. “He’s fucking missing,” I said. “The cops took his stuff. I’m his daughter. I have a right to know what you know.” Compton met my gaze. “Miss Kindred, I respect that you’re down here looking for your family. No one come after me when I fell out. But I ain’t sure that dragging all your daddy’s business to the light is the way to deal with the fact that he gone.” “What do you think happened to him?” “Did you ask Miss Frida Mall?” “We just saw her, she didn’t know he was gone.” “And he ain’t at Twin Towers? Still ain’t turned up in no hospital?” I shook my head. “Miss Kindred, I hate to say it but I think he’s dead.” “How.” “Don’t know. You can die a hundred ways out here. Carl never ghosted without letting someone know what his plan was.” “Goddamn it,” I said. The tears came back, all hot and pressing in my throat. 410 Rodney pulled a knotted bandana from a pocket. “You gotta cry about it, that’s right,” he said. He handed it to me. It smelled clean. I wiped my eyes and nose. Compton nodded. He and Rodney shared a cigarette with me. We didn’t talk for a minute. Wasn’t I supposed to feel it somehow, if Carl was dead? But wasn’t I supposed to feel it somehow, if he were alive, too? “Carl had beef all over this place,” Compton said. “Shit, he thought Skid Row should strap up and defend ourselves by any means necessary. He helped people get theirselves fed, but he didn’t help them the way the charities like to do it. He made them political, saw every meal as a chance to talk about injustice. Some people down here thought he was just a troublemaker, made everything harder on us when it’s already hard. He coulda been snatched by the police just as easy as stabbed by an old homie, understand?” “So some people are glad he’s gone,” I said. “Some people, yeah, because he upset the balance.” “You call this balanced?” I said, gesturing to the street. Rodney put his hand on my arm. “Carl was working against the City, Edelweiss Development, and the NFL. He was a burr in their ass. You put him and other people in danger, including yourself, if you keep pushing for info down here,” Rodney said. “Shit, I’m in danger being seen with you.” “Why?” I became aware of Jay, who could hear everything we were saying, but was busily tidying up his spot just a few feet away. “I don’t walk around with a white woman down here unless she’s doing good work in the community. You draw suspicion because no one knows you. It’s not good attention.” “Down here on the Row, things are different,” Compton said. “The rules aren’t the same as you used to up there in your houses.” “You think I should stop looking?” I said to Compton. 411 “Your daddy always had courage, Miss Kindred,” I heard him use the past tense and it cut my heart. “And according to Captain Compton, that’s one of the best things you can say about a man.” I thanked him, stood, and signaled to Rodney that it was time to move on. We got half a block before Jay caught up to us. “Miss Kindred I hate to interrupt you but I got a question?” he said. I told him, shoot. “Does the stadium plan have anything to do with the power washes they been doing down here?” Rodney nodded to Jay while I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. “It does,” Rodney said. “What’s a power wash?” I asked. “There’s no public restroom facilities here,” Rodney said. “They don’t pick up the trash, either. We try to take care of our own streets, but without facilities? People get kicked out of the McDonalds, the public library, the CVS. They have nowhere to go. People urinate and defecate on the sidewalks and in the park. The City and the BID uses the skirts, the-uh-rent- a-cops, to roust people from their camps. Then the City come in and power wash the streets, and we all gotta go or the LAPD confiscate our property and arrest us. Usually, once they’ve washed, we can set up our camps again. But recently they’ve been telling us we can’t set up on the same blocks, making us move on or threatening to arrest. The space we’ve got to set up camps in is shrinking.” “Is it because of the stadium plan?” I said. “They won’t say so,” said Rodney. “But it’s pretty clear when you look at a map, which side of the Row is getting cleaned up the fastest.” 412 Jay said he needed to head back. He thanked Rodney. “Come over to the DAC on Wednesday at 10AM,” Rodney said. “We’re going to go all together to the City Council Meeting and speak against the stadium.” Jay said he might. We said goodbye. It was nearly one AM. “We’ve got one more stop,” Rodney said. “This one we gonna have to take a bus for.” We rode an empty bus up into the hills near the 110 Freeway. We got off on a residential street and walked toward an overpass. Rodney told me I needed to follow in single file. We climbed up the side of a hill and came out on top of a tunnel, crossed over the concrete and came up on a tall black tarp hanging all the way to the ground. “Welcome to The Spot,” Rodney said. “Home of the Lost Boys of Avenue 26.” We went through an opening in the black tarp. The Spot was a surprisingly large makeshift tent with more than one layer of hanging tarp to get through. The second layer was bright blue, and clean. We were now inside, but still standing on the dirt. “This is the vestibule,” Rodney said. He held one end of the blue tarp open like a curtain and I went in ahead of him. I was inside a large round, open air room made of tarps and rugs. The whole thing seemed to be propped up by one large pole, like a circus tent. The pole had a round table mounted on it, covered in useful things. The pole entered the dirt through a hole in an enormous rug with an animal print. Maybe buffalo, maybe lions. Legs stretched out, running. I stepped onto the rug. A large couch sat to my right, with the tarp tucked in behind it. To my left was a sea of city lights and the concrete edges of the tunnel. The view was unreal, Los Angeles opening her coat, miles of sparkling shapes in my eyes. 413 “Come in! Come in!” said a voice, urgent and cheerful, from farther inside the home. I walked carefully through. Just on the other side of the rug and around a corner, Michel was cooking on a propane stove. His kitchen was lit with a propane camping lamp. He looked about sixty. His thick black hair was greased back. Grays had sprung at his temples. He had enormous hands and a bulbous, pocked nose. His body was soft and his elbows were sharp. He wore a black T shirt and long blue basketball shorts. Soccer sandals. His kitchen set up leaned on the concrete wall of the tunnel with the same vast city view to his right. “This place is gorgeous!” I said. “And no neighbors!” “We’ve got them,” he said. “Tweakers who hang out in the park on the other side of this hill. They know better than to come over this side, though.” He wiped his hands on his pants and held one out for me to shake. “I’m Michel,” he said. “It’s not Michelle, but you can say it that way if you’re too American to say anything else.” “Pleased to meet you, Michel,” I said, and we shook. “I’m Kindred. What are you making?” “Stir fry. Hungry?” I didn’t want to put him out. “I’ll try it,” I said, which sounded wrong as I said it. “Have a look around,” he said. Rodney stepped in front of me. He and Michel thumped each others backs in a loving, masculine hug. They called each other Big Man and Baby Boy, and Rodney sniffed and approved of the food. Michel smiled out at the city and then to me. “Go!” he said. “Let Rodney give you a tour.” I saw the showers, the latrine, the dishwashing system, the platforms for sleeping. I learned that Michel had been living at the Spot for a year and a half. 414 “And no cops come out here?” “They haven’t yet,” Rodney said. “You can’t see the place from the freeway, and the boys don’t bother anybody, but, we’ll see how long it lasts. Someone’s gonna want to build something here sometime.” About a pool-length from the pole-room, Rodney and I sat on another couch facing the city. Someone had rigged a tarp behind and above the couch. “This is a real nice cabana,” I said. The last cabana I’d sat in was with Jason, in Hawaii. It had cost him thousands of dollars to get that particular view of the ocean, with drinks and food that would please him. Now, I had a view of Los Angeles for free. Michel joined us, and brought three bowls of steaming tofu stir fry. It smelled hearty, like garlic and butter. “So you’re looking for Carl,” he said. He handed me a fork. I thanked him. He nodded and sat. He took a deep breath, a bite, and chewed slowly. He scanned the cityscape and then met my eyes. The sky was still bright blue, and the sun was starting to make its way down. We faced a golden light. “You know I’m sorry, girl.” “For what.” “For your worry.” “Oh, thanks.” I acknowledged that the past week had been tough. Then there was a rustle of the tarp and someone called out from inside the pole-room. “Yo! Where’s a bitch with my money!” Michel hollered back, “Watch your mouth, son! We have company!” A young person with a strut appeared. Black hoodie over black jeans. Hood came off. They had short dirty blonde hair, narrow brown eyes. A small jaw, pert mouth. Very young, or trans? Or maybe just a regular Peter Pan. “Aw my bad,” they said. “’Sup,” they said to me. 415 They stood square with hands in pants pockets. “Angel,” they said. “Kindred,” I said. “Dope,” they said. They nodded at Rodney. Rodney nodded back. “Cool well I’ll see y’alls later then,” Angel said, and went to get a bowl of Michel’s stir fry. Rodney said to Michel, “Tell her about how you got this place, man, she needs to hear that story!” Michel leaned back and stretched a bit. “Where do I start? Would you believe in my country I had a maid?” “Sure,” I said. “Things change fast.” Michel told me he’d immigrated from Colombia. “My wife got really sick,” he said. “I couldn’t keep up with all the paperwork for her and then for citizenship and then to keep my architect’s license. I lost my job. We got evicted. She went into the hospital, and she died there. I went crazy, man, I went off. I was drunk and high and, well, that was that.” “Shit,” I said. “Shit is right,” he said. “But now, I’ve got this view, I’ve got my sobriety.” He ate. I ate. Rodney was finished with his bowl. Michel said he’d been staying in an SRO hotel on the Row when someone told him there was a sweet camp spot, away from the madness, up in the hills. When he got here the people who had been staying here were packing up and getting ready to move on to Arizona. “They were old hippies, man,” Michel laughed,” they wanted to smoke weed and talk to me about who all their bird friends were around here. I mean real birds, owls and ravens and shit they’d named. But they’d made a real nice camp. They did that kitchen set up so that all the gray water drains down the mountainside. It was a good change for me to have a place I could take care of. I like it here, and there’s always some lost boys who need to live away from the Row.” 416 I asked if Carl had ever lived here. Michel said no, but he’d come to visit for a quiet night or two, cool some meals, read and write, before going back down to the city. “Rod,” Michel said, “did I tell you I got that job at the market downtown?” “Naw,” Rodney said. “Right on, brother.” “So you live in New York?” Michel said to me. I affirmed it. “Yeah? How is it out there? I always wanted to go there. See the snow.” “The snow is pretty if you catch it at the right time,” I said. I ate another bite. Michel and Rodney looked at each other, and Rodney made a gesture I didn’t quite read. Michel nodded. “I’ve got something to show you,” Michel said. He took his bowl with him, kept eating. He went into the sleeping area. “What did you just say to him?” I asked Rodney. “Nothing,” Rodney said. I gave him an angry face. He smiled. “All I said was, ‘go ahead.’” Michel came back with a mid-size cardboard box, his bowl balanced on top. It looked heavy. He set the cargo carefully at my feet and took his dinner back. “That’s some of Carl’s shit,” he said. I wanted to ask why Michel had it, of course. Rodney opened it. “Your dad is always writing,” he said. “I think he keeps his notebooks up here with Michel so they’ll stay a little safer than on the Row.” “And because he know I don’t snoop,” said Michel, to Rodney. 417 The box was full of books. Half of them were from Carl’s library, artifacts from my own childhood. My heart clenched. His copies of The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Revolutionary Suicide, The Dispossessed, and The Ugly American sat on top. In the other half of the box were notebooks, probably filled with his writing. The clenching got more painful. “You think I should read these,” I said to Rodney. “I do,” he said. “I’m sick of waiting for this motherfucker to tell us where he’s at.” “Michel?” I asked. He held his hands out, palms up. “On the one side,” he said, raising one hand, “you got a lot of intel here.” Then he switched, raising the other hand, “On the other side, you may not want to see what ain’t meant for you. There’s no guarantee it’ll help you find him, and that box is the man’s private property.” “It is,” I said. “I’m going to take it with me and think on it.” “Respect,” Michel said, and bowed his head a bit to me. We smoked a joint and watched the sunrise and talked. I finally got tired and Michel covered me with a sleeping bag. Griffin texted. What time did I think I’d be back? I told him a few more hours probably. I want to do something, he said. I’m stir crazy. Do whatever you want, I said. Thanks! He said. I woke up hot, and it was very bright. My body ached and I wanted a shower. Rodney and Michel were standing inside the Spot’s pole-room to my left, talking quietly, sounding 418 serious. I strained but I couldn’t hear them. I got up and they stopped talking. I walked to them, carrying the sleeping bag in front of me. “Just leave it on the couch,” Michel said to me. So I did. “Can we go?” I said to Rodney. “Of course,” he said. He and Michel hugged and thumped and eye-gazed again. “Your box is in the vestibule,” Michel said, and winked at me. Did he know both those words pertained to vaginas? Was that why he winked? I wasn’t sure. I thanked him for dinner and for being a good friend to Carl and he opened his arms for a hug. He reminded me of a pterodactyl, we squeezed each other, and I wondered where his former maid was today, and if she’d forgiven him, and if he and Angel were lovers. I went through the black tarp and found the box. Michel had written “TAKE ME WITH YOU” in black Sharpie across the top flap and put new tape on it for us. “I’ll get that,” Rodney said. I let him. We were quiet on the bus. I called Griffin and asked him to pick me up at the DAC office. The box was like a third person in the back of the car. I drove the five minutes to the motel. When I opened the door to our room, I was surprised by how fast Griffin had taken over. His stuff was thrown everywhere. The room smelled like a boy. “Yay!” he said, and fell onto the bed. The TV had been on while we were gone. He was watching Meryl Streep with long hair looking fearful. He came over and hugged me too hard and fast over the box I carried and then bounded backward. “I stayed home waiting for you! I didn’t really want to go out.” “You didn’t?” I said. I set the box on the floor next to my bed. 419 “No,” he said. “Are you glad I waited for you?” “Sure,” I said, “that was nice.” “Are you depressed?” he said. “You seem kind of out of it.” “I’m tired,” I said. “I’m really tired. It’s time for me to rest and take all those supplements you got me.” He sat on the bed and put his hands in his lap. “Okay,” he said. “Can I rub your feet?” I told him he could after I took a shower. He did a nice job, strong but tender, and I let him lick and kiss them a bit as a reward. “Let me sleep,” I said. He cuddled in. “Let me sleep without getting crushed,” I said. He scooted two inches away from me. I patted him. Then I knocked out. 420 Carl’s Notebook Self Discipline is Key Ask yourself questions about your habits. See if what you say you do with your time is what you actually do with your time. To do this honestly takes courage, because the answer you find will be: you lie to yourself and everyone else about what you do with your time. The real answer for you to find is: how much lying? And about what to whom most often? Day 1 6:00AM Wake up, pack up, talk to crew 7:00AM Food line, read paper 8:00AM Food line, listen to brother William 9:00AM Breakfast, talk to Rod about campaign 10:00AM Forms of revenge should be tailored to their target. For some, destruction is called for. For others, a clear and consistent withdrawal of attention is the worst-feeling thing you can do to them. Know when your friends and lovers are facing fears and help them do it. Last night I got sick of hearing the cats make fun of Marble Man. I went over and told them fuck you assholes, I’m going to play a game of his imaginary marbles with him. So I sat down, and I told him, Marble Man, I’m here to play a game with you. He grunted and told me to go ahead. I tried to remember the rules to marbles. I shot an imaginary marble at his imaginary circle. We hadn’t played five minutes before he pulled out a knife, held it six inches 421 from my face, and accused me of cheating. How do you cheat at imaginary marbles, I said. But of course that’s the wrong question. You can’t win at it either. I told him thanks for the game, don’t spread rumors about me. He put his knife away. I left him alone, and he kept playing his imaginary game. I still think it’s wrong to make fun of the man the way the cats do down there when they’re feeling mean and sick of the bullshit. But now I know for sure that Marble Man is no joke. Length of a written work is not directly related to depth or potential impact. History teaches us that millions have died on behalf of slogans. When trust is suffering or nonexistent, predict yourself, and then follow through. Make eight hundred tiny plans. Accomplish them. Proceed. A Binge is an acknowledgment that health is mostly mythology and death is real. A Binge stops short of suicide because it hopes for life after craving. Bingeing to feel good is not the same as creating a life where feeling good matters, but they can feel the same, while you’re bingeing. Every four years the wolves and the foxes argue about who’s gonna guard the henhouse. I don’t know who is gonna win the fight this time, but I do know one thing. The hens are fucked. Anastasia asked me to play the harmonica. Then she said, “If I don’t like your music, we will not have a good time fucking.” But she liked it. She took her hand off her hip and 422 clapped. 423 The Shadow of the Stadium I slept until three PM. I woke up a little crunchy, but not too bad feeling. Griffin had gone to a corner store and brought back cheap donuts and burnt coffee that tasted like heaven. “What’s your plan today?” he asked with a note of urgency. “You got something to do?” “Well,” his eyes darted. “I was hoping to go to this free workshop at the Scientology Center.” My mouth was full of cinnamon powder donut love joy and I refrained from spitting. I swallowed. We arranged for him to drop me off at the DAC and go to his thing. I told him I’d figure out my own way back on the bus or I’d do Carl-related stuff until he called me later in the evening. I had no new ideas for what to do about Carl. I had relied on Rodney and he’d shown me that there weren’t any obvious answers. Nautica called on our way to the DAC. She was furious. “I know Carl’s number one problem right now but I’m not okay out here,” she said. She had bad news. The rent was going to get doubled at La Jouissance after a remodel of the building, and we had to be out within the month, and we weren’t going to get back in until after a year, and there was no way we could afford that new lease anyway. The new owner of the building was getting ready to gut the adorable brownstone we’d been in and turn it into higher-end condos. “It’s not an option to find another space in that part of town, the rents are too damn high,” Nautica said. “Move the dungeon closer to home in Brooklyn?” I said. 424 “Who’s going to pay to store all that equipment? To move it? To get a new space ready to be a commercial dungeon? You never saw what I had to do to get La Jouissance started in the first place.” “What’s going to happen to all the equipment?” I said. “This is the part that makes me want to kill someone,” she said. Another pro Domme in the New York scene, who ran kinky play parties and coordinated all kinds of BDSM social events had offered to take over. She wanted to buy the dungeon equipment, store it or use it until the building was done, she could afford to pay much higher rent for a space nearby, she would run a new business using our stuff. “She’d let me keep the name,” Nautica said bitterly. “But all our people just got fucked out of their jobs as of next month no matter what, and I’m sorry to tell you baby but that’s you too.” “Shit!” Of course it meant me, too. “That bitch is about ready to steal my life,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she showed up in your bed tomorrow, either.” “Hey now,” I said. “We need to make some decisions,” Nautica said. “And my workshop is over and you’re still in LA.” I looked out the window at the blue sky. I definitely was still in LA. “Come out here,” I said. “What?” “Just catch a plane. We can figure it out if we’re together.” Then from somewhere deep inside me came a string of words. “Carl is gone, just gone no one knows anything, he actually disappeared and I can’t, I just can’t...” I imagined her looking at her watch, timing my tantrum, and telling me later exactly how much emotional labor she’d had to perform to 425 support me. “Sweetie,” she said. “What?” Of course I was asking too much. “I’ve been feeling like I should come out there, too. Remember I trained Lady June last week to run the place while I’m gone on trips? I think she’ll do fine. I’ll get a flight. We’ve got a few days before I have to tell this boss lady yes or no. I just got some money from that workshop, I can get there. Let’s do this one together. Ok?” “Yes please ok,” I said. “Thank you.” I did feel instantly a tiny bit calmer. “What’s happening right now, though?” she said. “I’m tired because I’m coming down, Griffin is off on some Scientology trip, a lead I was hoping for didn’t work out last night, I feel stressed about money, all the bullshit that can happen seems to happen around here, on a constant loop.” “Have you eaten food today?” “Yeah,” I said, but then I thought about it, and I hadn’t eaten anything since donuts after I woke up. “Well, definitely not enough food.” “Ok, so I’m going to guess your water intake is low, based on that,” she said. “So can we agree that your next step is to put some food and water in you?” “Yes,” I said. “Thanks,” she said. “I love you,” I said. “I know,” she said. “Why are you always Han and never Leia?” “I don’t need to answer that,” she said, with a little smile. “I’m sorry about the dungeon, honey. I’m going to miss it.” 426 “Me too. I’m so pissed. We had a good run, I guess. We’ll figure something out. I’ll try to get an offer from the bitch for us to discuss. I’ll let you know when I have a flight.” She told me she was sorry to hear that I hadn’t found any helpful information about Carl, but she also sounded unsurprised. “I want you,” I said. “I miss you.” “Are you feeling horny or romantic or both?” she said. “Romantic,” I said. “Mmmmmm,” she sounded happy about it. “Thank you.” When we hung up, Griffin stayed quiet. “Nautica is going to come out here,” I said. “Some shit just got real at home and we need to make some decisions.” He nodded. He pulled up to the DAC office. “Talk to you soon,” he said. “You don’t have anything to say?” “No.” “Fine,” I said. He probably didn’t like it that I told Nautica he was “off on a Scientology trip.” I couldn’t deal with that right now. I got out of the car and he pulled away. I knocked on her office door and Sadie said, “Come.” I suppressed a Domme joke about ordering someone to orgasm as I pushed her door farther open. She was at her desk, reading something that made her angry. She wore thin framed glasses low on her nose. She glanced up at me and pulled the glasses off her face. She rubbed her eyes and groaned. “These motherfuckers,” she said. “These goddamn motherfucking assholes.” She slammed 427 a stack of paper down. “I’m sorry Kindred, please come in.” “What’s going on?” I moved a small pile of books off an open folding chair and sat. “You know about the football stadium bid we’re fighting?” she said. I shook my head. “Carl didn’t tell you about it?” she seemed surprised. “This is one of his main projects,” she said. “Well, okay.” “Don’t worry about it if you don’t have time to fill me in,” I said. “But I’m curious.” “No, no, you should know about this, I think,” she said. “We’re having an action for it tomorrow you might want to come to. It would mean a lot to people, since it looks like Carl won’t be there and Riley doesn’t do this stuff.” I told her I’d never represented anyone before, and that if I went I’d go as myself, not as “Carl’s daughter.” “But you are his daughter,” she said. “Anyway, you still get to do exactly what you think is right.” She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes again. She looked so tired, so stressed. I wanted to rub her neck or get her drunk or something. I really wanted to get drunk, I realized. Normal for me, on the tail end of staying up all night. “You knocked on my door for something else,” Sadie said. “What’s up?” “On our tour the other day,” I said, “I wanted to ask you. What are some of the things people say to you that make you angry, like the stupid things people say about Skid Row?” “You mean their stereotypes?” “More like, well, when I was stripping for a living,” I said. No flinch on her face. “People would say stupid shit to me all the time. Like ‘I don’t want to spend a lot of money.’ That’s one of the most insulting things you can say to a stripper. Of course you don’t, no one does, right? The only people who don’t complain about it are people who aren’t scared about money. We are all mostly very scared about money. Why do you think I’m working an untaxed tips gig? 428 It makes us all feel bad. But dudes said it to me every shift.” Sadie nodded and smiled a little. “I hear that,” she said. “I hate it when people say ‘If I were homeless, I’d make sure I...’ fill in the blank. They’d make sure to use a public restroom to wash up so they didn’t stink. They’d make sure to smile at people who gave them money. They’d do all kinds of things that they imagine they’d know how or somehow have the energy or want to do. But no one knows how they personally will handle homelessness before they’re homeless. And no one thinks for one second about how paralyzing it all is once you become the Other, a sight ‘normal’ people find so threatening.” I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “I don’t tend to give out advice,” she said, and I wondered if that could possibly be true, “But I do wish I could just tell all the classes and school groups that come through here that they can at least try to make friendly eye contact and say hello and acknowledge the fact that you are two human beings, even if you aren’t going to give anything to someone who is asking. I don’t care how embarrassed you are that you have more than that person. The guilt is your own bullshit. The judgement you have over a person who’s story you don’t know is also your own bullshit.” “You are a badass, Sadie,” I said. “I really wish I could get you and my girlfriend Nautica in the same room.” A ripple of something, I wasn’t sure what, went through the conversation. Had I embarrassed her somehow? “So you know how Los Angeles doesn’t currently have an NFL team?” she asked. I hadn’t known LA didn’t have a team, but it sounded strange. “Football isn’t really my thing,” I said. “Me neither,” she said, “and I’m glad. Because the people who are desperate to get a team 429 here, the people who are in love with the NFL? Are the biggest pain in my ass right now.” “This is what Carl has been working on?” She nodded. “There’s this enormous development company,” she said. “Wait, first let me ask you--and no problem if you need me to define it, but before I go too deep here I should ask what you know about the process of gentrification?” “I’d say it’s when the wealthy move into an area and push out the poor.” “Sure, and we are sold a bunch of stories like development is good because it offers opportunities for growth, jobs, especially contract construction and retail jobs but what gentrification does is it disperses communities. It looks different in every city, and has different consequences for each neighborhood, but when communities get destabilized, it makes it harder to organize. Things start just happening around you--first some white people, probably artists or LGBTQ move in, then a year later there’s a new Metro station, two years after that, a new mall, your favorite old stores start disappearing, and people don’t have a say in the environmental changes that they are living with. Sometimes communities getting gentrified support a lot of the changes, like better street cleaning or a new grocery store. Plus, usually there’s no viable plan for the poor. They’re expected to just deal with life and move somewhere else. Skid Row is where a lot of people congregate because it’s where the services are. We’re seeing more and more people, especially since the dissolution of the state-run mental health care facilities. At the same time, people are going missing, falling out of the system, more than ever. We keep trying to get more funding for services and housing, but the city keeps voting for measures that give more funding only to the police. Then the big businesses in the area--the banks, the hotel chains, formed an association. They hired their own security, who now harass Skid Row residents more often, more hours of the day than the beat cops.” 430 I nodded. “The skirts,” I said. “The skirts,” she said, and rolled her eyes. And I felt a breath of familiarity, a whisper of home in the conversation, because she reminded me of Carl. “Carl taught me you can’t trust the cops, and then I found it out for myself when I was homeless as a teen and then also later, as a sex worker. I think giving more public money to the police is like handing your house keys to someone who has told you they think you deserve to be robbed and beaten and raped.” Sadie nodded and told me to go on. “But someone, who isn’t a cop, makes the plans to buy out the locally-owned shop and put up a parking lot. How do they think it’s a good life? How can those people keep building the malls when it’s so obvious that they’re displacing people, harming people in their own cities, and straining the support network?” “Because those people feel oppressed too,” she said. “And, structurally, in some ways they always are. The style of capitalism we live in right now makes most of the rich people feel precarious, or, like they have to protect what they have against the hoardes of people who resent them for having it. The wealthy want to never interact with the poor, except to receive services from them.” She was shaking her head, but she wasn’t calling me naive. She started counting a list on her fingers: “Spatial disintegration. The end of extended families all living near each other, taking care of each other. Colleges built without a central quad area for students to gather in. Mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline. Big chain stores putting locally-owned shops out of business. It’s not random. Gentrification is one of the many systemic responses to the insurrections of the 1960s and 1970s. It’s in line with the entire colonial process, it’s one way to streamline, to control rebellious communities. Communities which get defined by race and reputation.” “That was a nice speech,” I said. 431 She thanked me. She’d admitted she’d been working on a talk about this and was trying out ideas for a panel presentation the following week. “What do you mean by a community getting defined by ‘reputation?’” “Reputation is respectability politics. Who deserves to be included in definitions of civil society. When the major US cities were built, they had vice districts, where the higher class men would go to spend money on alcohol and prostitutes and gambling. The vice districts tended to be in poorer areas, which were also black and brown because of racist policies like redlining and legal job discrimination and disenfranchisement. Follow me?” “I think so.” The DAC landline rang. Sadie picked it up on the third ring. “Downtown Action Center,” she said, “How can I be there for you today?” She gave someone some meeting times and names of people to contact. She told them they could come by the office anytime before 5PM. She hung up. “I wonder who is supposed to be on the phones downstairs,” she said. “Anyway, we can go down the American caste-system rabbit hole another time.” She fished in her bag for a water bottle. She drank. She offered it to me. I thanked her, took a sip. “I don’t get what this has to do with LA not having a football team,” I said. I drank. “It’s nice that you put lemon wedges in here.” She smiled. “I’m getting there.” She stretched her arms over her head, brought them down. I imagined her doing it naked in bed in the morning. “So now,” she said, “the LA City Council, an enormous development company called Eidelweiss, and the NFL have gotten in bed on a deal. They want to build a stadium just east of here, in a part of downtown that already has a big sports complex. The deal would have a really serious negative impact on the residents of Skid Row, and everyone living in the near vicinity, which is currently many black and brown people in lower-income housing. We’d lose a ton of those units, the traffic and 432 environmental impacts would be horrible, and the City would continue on its project of dismantling the Skid Row services network so that they can come in and buy up this real estate. With no plan for the humans who live here.” “Jesus.” “The DAC has partnered up with a couple other small nonprofits,” she said. “We’ve got a Legal Aid team that is all fired up about this because the current EIR doesn’t measure up.” “You lost me.” She shook her head. “It’s so complicated. Sorry. An Environmental Impact Report, we call it an EIR, is this document that any new proposed development has to file with the city, and if you do a shitty one, people can appeal. So that’s what we’re doing. Even more importantly though, we are suing the State of California for passing an unconstitutional law a little while back that basically destroyed any mechanisms the people had to slow or stop the development project.” “Wait, they passed laws to make building the stadium easier for them?” “Yes.” “They can do that?” “They can do that.” I sat with that discomfort for a moment. “So what is Carl’s role in all this?” “He’s been helping us translate the jargon into the real life consequences and impacts for Skid Row residents. This is a billion dollar project that’s going to have consequences for fifty years. He has recruited people to join the campaign against the stadium and put in work, come to community meetings, help make decisions about what to do. He’s the one making sure that this isn’t just policy people talking to developers, but that residents of the area have a say in what happens to them.” 433 I was proud of him, and I said so. “Me too,” Sadie said. “Thanks for listening,” she said. “I want to come tomorrow,” I said. “To whatever the action is. I’ll bring my boy, too.” Sadie gave me the info for tomorrow’s City Council meeting. They were going to vote on the stadium project. The City Council didn’t seem conflicted about the decision. They had sports celebrities scheduled to appear at the meeting to welcome the new stadium. “They’re not going to care about our public comments,” Sadie said, “but we have to say them anyway.” She sighed again. “Carl was looking forward to this meeting,” she said, and gave me a sad smile. “He really gets a kick out of the political pageantry. He loves getting up on that mike and saying things about the constitution.” “Maybe he’ll turn up to it and we can kick his ass after the City Council leaves the room,” I said. “Maybe,” she said. I thanked her for giving me some time. She said it was her pleasure. I thought it couldn’t be true, considering how busy and stressed out she seemed, but it was titillating to hear her say the word “pleasure.” 434 On my first day out as a professional Domme, I was half encased in my oldest and strongest weave fishnets for nearly six hours, which was a mistake. Real Danskin “Cuban foot” backseam beauties with the elastic waist cut down to a thin line, so none of my flesh was getting pinched or pouchy, but I did get some serious net burn on my thighs and calves. I wore a tight black body-shaping slip I got at Ross three years earlier, an old push-up bra with pink satin discolored by age and use on the inner cups. My rough edges were uncomfortably well-hidden. Eyebrows waxed. Lip, too. Manicure and pedicure. The stronger deodorant. An extra look at the shave job on inner thighs, crack, labia. Flossing. Makeup. The only thing I didn’t do was false lashes. I didn’t like them. Nautica wore them every day, all day, no matter what she was doing. Eyelashes do make a person seem more there, somehow. I did a two-hour session with a guy who called himself John and had bad back acne. About an hour in, he told me I was more beautiful in person than on my website. He told me I hit harder than I looked like I could. He took three increasingly larger sizes of butt plug. He told me he was “all cleaned out” which was not quite true, once we got to the largest, cock-shaped, jelly-black-rubber one. Stink. There was a moment, leaning into him, when I thought, Hmm, I wonder if I’m getting any shit on my fishnets. Then, a few hours later on with Peter, I crawled on top of his chest and he did a sniffing breath that could have been hoping for a whiff of my vagina, or, an unconscious attempt to scout out some ambient shit smell... I moved my leg, I’ll never know what he thought, and it doesn’t matter because neither of us broke the scene at that moment. For Peter, I took my outside-world boots off, didn’t wear heels at all but had stocking feet, 435 and when I was leaving he asked if I ever wore shorts. Sure, I told him. I got out my calendar and asked him if he wanted to book for the next day. He immediately backpedaled. I decided not to be so pouncy next time. I never heard from either one of those first clients again. “What do I do when I break the scene?” I asked Nautica afterward. “Like when something goes wrong?” “Like what?” “Like someone farts or pukes or says the wrong thing or gets stuck?” “Well there’s only a few things to do anytime something goes wrong,” she said, “and they all start with breathing.” She told me to get my training-my first aid, my CPR, my self defense, and to get confident handling the most common problems that might happen. La Jouissance Dommes were meticulous and calculating and careful and she expected me to “step it up” like everyone else had. I didn’t know I wasn’t performing well, I said. You’re a beginner, she said. You’re doing really really well for a beginner. But you can’t help that you’re new to it. Everyone learns their own lessons in their own time. I hated that conversation, but I couldn’t argue with her, of course. And years later, I said something very similar to someone else after their first day. 436 Infuriating Apologies We were going to take it easy for the night in the motel room. Griffin looked at me with wild eyes and said, “I’m really learning about myself. I loved this workshop I went to today. Things are falling into place. I get why my life has been so hard, you know? I made it happen myself. I figured out that life is a game but I’m still playing it like it’s American football.” I didn’t know what to say. “Good for you,” I said. “I want to bring you to one,” he said. “No,” I said. “And don’t ask me again.” “Wow, can you be more rigid?” he said. “I feel like I finally don’t need to read women’s journals anymore, like I can just be authentically myself and trust that people who deserve to talk to me are going to be authentically themselves back.” “Please don’t,” I said. “I watched the videos you sent. I’m glad you feel better. I am. But I don’t buy it. Don’t try to make me go.” He slipped a hand around my waist and dragged his short nails across my skin. “I just want you to be happy,” he said, quietly, and leaned in to kiss my neck. “Get off me,” I said, and shoved him a little. “Manipulative little slut. Go fall in love with another religion.” He was completely ignoring the journal on the table. He didn’t see that it was Carl’s. He didn’t care. Something in him definitely had changed. I didn’t like it. But, he was happier. Something is so broken here, I thought. I wished it wasn’t me, but of course, it probably was. He sighed. “I’m sorry,” his hands were up, then back at his sides. “Thank you,” I said. “Can I help you here?” he said. “No,” I said. “And did you even watch their fucking video about ‘Don’t Do Anything 437 Illegal?’” I said. “I watched all of them. You take what works for you, you know? Like A.A.” “I don’t think Scientology wants you to do that,” I said. “Well, that’s how I’m doing it,” he said. “They don’t even really want you,” I said. “Unless you’re willing to give them all of Mommy’s money.” “My self respect is what they want,” he said, puffing up a little. I gave up. I pulled out way too much hair in the shower. I hadn’t lost hair like that since I moved out of Angie’s place. Griffin is going to age me, I thought. This is terrible. We broke the scene somehow. It had started to feel bad and we needed to re-negotiate. I was annoyed that I hadn’t seen it coming. When I got out of the shower, I sat on the bed in my towel and told Griffin I wanted him to go back to New York after the City Council Meeting. Like, fly home in the next few days. I told him I’d pay for his flight of course. He looked stricken. I’ve enjoyed sex and S&M with you, I said. I’ve been comforted by your presence a few times, I said. But you are now stressing me out and distracting me from the most important thing in front of me, which is Carl being gone. Second to that is the big changes Nautica and I need to make. “I’m sorry that I stopped being useful to you,” Griffin said, bitterly. “I don’t like your tone,” I said. I got out of the bed and started rooting for my underwear. “I’m sure you don’t,” he said, “I’m sure you’d prefer I just said yes, ma’am, whatever you 438 want.” I put on the shorts, patted around, found the shirt. He was rigid on his back, holding the sheet to his chest. I looked at his unhappy face. “You’ve got the lowest standards for self-awareness of anyone I’ve ever fucked for free,” I spat. “You came with me on this trip to help, I paid for you to come, you never actually helped that much, now I’m asking you to leave so I can focus on what matters to me, and you’re blaming me for your bad feelings? No. Fuck that.” He couldn’t speak. Or didn’t. “Let’s stop this for tonight,” I said. I sat on the bed. I tried to soften, and could, enough to want it to end. I said, “I’m exhausted, I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m scared, but I’m not trying to make this worse.” I got back under the covers. “Let’s just go to sleep.” “Okay,” he said in a voice that belied how not okay it was, and turned away. Fury rose again. “Seriously!? Are you lying to me right NOW about being okay?” He flopped onto his back and his fists snapped into his eye sockets. “Yes!” he said, in a fake whisper that was actually a yell. I slowed my breathing down again. “This is too dramatic,” I said. “I’m sorry!” he whined, and turned away. “That is dramatic, too,” I said. “This isn’t how I want to do things.” “Oh of course not,” he said, sarcastic, with his back to me, “you don’t want to do things that involve difficult emotions, you’ve had enough in your life, it’s all manipulation. I get it, okay? Put your armor away. I’ll be fine. Goodnight.” For three seconds I couldn’t understand how ugly he had become. Then I did. “Fuck. You.” I said. But I couldn’t move. It was his first real retaliation. Something had gone so wrong. How? I scanned and scrutinized and kept feeling baffled. How had it gone so 439 wrong? “Fuck me?!” he said. He flopped over again to face me. “You just announce I need to leave, so I get hurt and start having traumatic recall about abandonment and you’re mad at me for it, because you can’t control me now. That’s what I see. And honestly? I’m not really open to your opinion on it yet.” He turned back over. I suppressed an urge to yell “Fine!” That would have been stupid. He must not know about the long-term consequences of behavior like this yet, I thought. He’s just a kid. And, he’s probably right about me wanting control, somehow. So. I’ll focus on that. I could stop the tantrum from taking over my body too, if I wanted to. I decided to figure out if I needed to apologize to him, and discovered that I did. Goddamnit. It was the only way. “Hey Griffin,” I said gently. He didn’t answer. “I will say this again when we are looking each other in the eye,” I said, “but I’m sorry for saying ‘Fuck you’ when I got frustrated, and, I’m really sorry for the times you’ve tried to talk to me about your experience and I have not listened that carefully to you.” “Thanks,” he said. I wanted to say more so badly. Like a hot ghost was pushing its way out of me. Like, You steal my energy all the time and only sometimes give it back. I breathed instead. I told myself it was time to rest. Anything important that I needed to say could come out later, when it was less impulsive. I’d already done damage tonight. I remembered Carl and my mom sitting on the living room floor with their legs crossed and their hands in their laps, eyes closed, backs straight, unusually serene. My mom always beckoned me to join them. I never did. “You know the best time to meditate?” she would say. 440 “It’s always the same. The best time to meditate is now.” Eventually she slipped out of the practice. She didn’t have time. Carl did it every day. I knew he’d kept it up in prison. I wondered if he did it out on the Row. I counted ten deep breaths. I pulled up a guided visualization Nautica had recorded for me on my phone. She used it with clients, but it was one of my favorite things. I put my earphones in. The calmest, kindest version of her voice washed over me. Sit comfortably, and relax your mind. Try to stay focused on the images that come to you. Take deep breaths and enjoy the journey. You are walking in a dense, soft forest. The sun occasionally reaches through the foliage to warm your head and neck. The air smells clean and fresh, and soothes your nose, throat and lungs as you inhale. You are dressed in soft, comfortable, flattering clothes in deep sensual colors. Your shoes are light, and you can feel the contours of even the grass through their soles. As you walk through this lush forest, you feel the desire to sit down and rest in the shade. You sit cross-legged in front of an enormous tree. You can feel the strength of the tree against your lower, middle and upper back. You are settled into your position and a wave of relaxation, beginning at the crown of your head, flows all throughout your body. As you become more and more relaxed, you notice there are a few places in your body holding on to their tension with more force than the others. These places are tight, feel out of sync, and need adjusting. Unexpectedly, you are also struck with a dangerous realization that each of these painful places in your body are at risk for infection, and you must take immediate action to care for them. The tree you sit under is, luckily, known for its anti-microbial sap and sturdy needles. Your internal tension congeals into a few balls of sludgy black waste just under the skin of 441 your shoulders, thighs, and belly. You gather a needle for each one, dip it in sap, and pierce a tiny hole in your skin the black sludge shoots out of you and immediately dissolves in the air! You tenderly pat and probe your body for swelling and bruising, but the tiny punctures have already sealed, and your whole body feels lighter, cleaner, and fresher. The sun finds you. It brightens the colors behind your closed eyelids, warms your face and inner thighs, fucks you slowly, and you have an incredibly deep, strong orgasm. 442 What is True is Made Real Griffin came with me the next morning, still radiating hurt and anger. We took the bus. It was full. I got a little nauseated, thought about how Nautica would have told me to eat. We got off the bus a few blocks from City Hall and found a coffee shop. Griffin sulked outside while I got us both coffees and thick pieces of carrot-zucchini bread. He didn’t thank me. At the bottom of the main steps of City Hall, there was a crowd of around a hundred people milling with signs. There were many handmade signs--I imagined a group of three or four people from the DAC making them last night, mock-fighting over the last good permanent marker. I saw Frida Mall, who was in a black pantsuit and had a brunette wig on. Sadie was up front, standing in the middle of the steps, with her back to the building. Curly was there, in a DAC T-shirt, holding a sign that read “Community Benefits Agreements require Input from the Community.” Jay was there, and I had a flashing vision of tying him and Griffin together, side by side, and making them do household chores with only one right and one left hand. Rodney found us and hugged me first, then Griffin, who seemed surprised. There was one camera that looked professional, but no news vans. Sadie turned her mic on and spoke into a small PA about what our purpose was for being there. She reminded everyone that we were going to make public comments inside the meeting at the appropriate time, that we were presenting information to the Council that should affect their vote on the stadium, and that we had a follow up plan for the possibility that it didn’t. “We’re already involved in legal action against this football stadium plan,” Sadie said. “They don’t think we can pull it off, so it’s good to see so many faces here today saying that we can.” She was dressed the same as always, in a soft button down shirt and loose fitting jeans. Her wild hair moved a little in the air, like an anime character having a lot of feelings. I 443 wanted her, but it was a kind of special quiet wanting, not the urge to rub up on her immediately that I sometimes got when I was attracted to someone. I wanted something sturdier, in a long game, a slow and steady progression toward making her feel better than she ever had. With Nautica. What if we all three fell in love. I tried to focus on Sadie’s words. “I stand with my friends and comrades and coworkers from Skid Row, from the Downtown Action Center, from...” she listed a series of organizations. “This development plan has been pushed through many stages of the process in an incorrect way,” she said. “We are here to correct some errors. We are here to voice real concerns about how this project impacts the lives of people who live here. The fat cats at Eidelweiss and the NFL may be able to impress the City Council, and even some of the unions, with stories of more sports and entertainment dollars and service and construction jobs coming into the city, but we won’t be silenced by their empty promises. We demand that provision be made for replacing the affordable housing we will lose, that the environmental impact report adhere to the state regulations already in place, with no special shortcuts, and that the negative outcomes, including ones we predict and ones that are already happening to Skid Row residents be heard and fairly evaluated.” People clapped and pumped fists. Sadie probably hadn’t had a real night’s sleep for a week. Rodney was next to speak. He told a story about meeting an Edelweiss executive who was looking at buildings and talking to the cops out on Towne. “The guy didn’t know I was an activist for housing rights,” Rodney said with a chagrined smile, “and he told me he was looking forward to cleaning up downtown. I asked him where he thought the people would go, the people who were surviving on the street. He said he didn’t care, as long as they weren’t in his way. He said they weren’t his problem, that he was there for the hardworking 444 people who were paying taxes. This is how capitalism warps our understanding of the value of human life.” He gave some statistics about Skid Row residents’ employment. He told us that there were more empty homes due to bank foreclosures than there were houseless people in Los Angeles county, but there were nearly four times the number of houseless people as there were shelter beds. “Housing is a human right,” he said. “And it isn’t impossible for us all to be housed.” Eventually we made our way to the meeting. We stood in line. We went through a metal detector. We talked quietly, walking down the hallways, under the fluorescent lights. I could feel my adrenaline. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Carl on the edge of the crowd. My body jumped out of my skin for an instant. I dodged around a few people, and of course, it wasn’t him. That’s when it was real. That he wasn’t just about to show up. That he’d been missing for a long time now and no one had anything helpful to tell me. That he’d been working on something complicated and important to a lot of people, a difficult project within a longer life’s work, a life’s work with a scope that had been larger than I’d understood. It was real that he’d not solved something about how to introduce Riley to me. That he was gone now, and for the foreseeable future, and I had to accept it or I would self destruct. I wasn’t going to know if he was suffering, or if he was dead, or if he was starting over, I wasn’t going to know if he’d made choices I agreed with or not, beyond some of his ideas in his notebooks. I would have to enter a grieving process, in which I would not be able to predict the waves of fear or anger or despair. I wasn’t going to smell Carl or hug Carl or hear Carl’s voice today, and maybe never again. I knew it so well, that state of loss, that moment of enormity so painful it can’t be contained by the boundaries of my own body. The pain that turns the body into a contorted 445 twisted broken thing. I felt I had lost a vital piece of my living flesh and I couldn’t keep standing, and I’d been there before and I didn’t know if I’d make it out the first time. I told myself: You may be having a panic attack. I told myself: dying right now would be ok though, I don’t think I’d mind. I told myself: That definitely sounds like a panic attack. I told myself: I can’t see very well. I can’t see. I told myself: I am sitting down. I told myself: Breathe. I told myself: Breathe. I told myself: Head down. Breathe. I told myself: you look weird but it’s working right? Or are you going to have a heart attack? You just can’t stop eating butter and sugar, and you did all those drugs all those years, and now look what you’ve done. I told myself: Drink some water. I told myself: Keep breathing. I told myself: Get outside the building. You’re going to throw up now. And so I left the meeting, and ran into someone who was tossing a football to himself on my way out, and mumbled “sorry, excuse me,” and threw up in the decorative stones just to the left of the main entrance. Loss that feels like a piece of my guts has been scooped out. The back of my throat, constricted, the burning in my face, the crying, the way it felt like my center has been hollowed out, scraped. Squeezed. Black, orange, red in my eyes. I searched for a part of my body that didn’t hurt. I found a toe. I concentrated on the toe. I wanted to go back in time, forward in time. I wondered if it would be okay to not get up 446 again. No, it would not. A reflex of the mind. All that therapy. You know how to handle a panic attack, you do. But the desire to stop thinking, stop seeing and hearing things, stop having to respond, stop feeling the pain, was stronger than my desire to make it through, for a moment. I imagined a car accident. Hurtling toward something too large to survive, and feeling the calm of release. People die so easily. They step off a platform at just the wrong angle. They fall off a ladder. They get a clot in their heart that couldn’t have been detected. They develop cancer quietly and in secret, while having perfectly healthy habits and enacting future plans. I could just slip away. The waters would close over me, Nautica would heal. My mom will not miss me. Carl will not miss me. None of my friends will lose their own will to live, and they may even be emboldened to greater acts of creation or joy or resistance to status quo, grief can be such a catalyst. Dying might be my greatest gift to the people I love. Do not tell anyone you feel this way, a voice in my head said. They will not understand and they will want to put you in a hospital. I’m not actually suicidal, I told myself. I don’t have a plan. A fantasy about a car accident is not a plan. If I were about to buy three bottles of Tylenol, that could be considered a plan. The muscles in my shoulders, permanently contracted. The band of tension around my waist, like a belt holding my pain in. Breathing in, hello suffering. Breathing out, hello suffering, I am here. Breathing in, I’d like to die. Breathing out, I will not do it on purpose today. 447 What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you get your life together? So you’ve had some struggle, so has everyone else, and most people have worse. What’s so horrible that you want to stare into your own shit so hard and stay there? You’re a narcissist. You’re useless. You don’t care about the world, you only care about yourself, and you think your suffering is unique and precious when it isn’t. You’ve failed yourself, you’ve failed everyone you’ve ever said you loved. You don’t know how to love anyone but yourself, and you suck at that too. Don’t be that whore who proves them right about whores. Don’t be that queer who justifies parents telling their kids “You’re choosing a hard life.” Straight people who don’t know you think you brought this on yourself. Don’t let them be right. It’s true that Carl is missing, and may not be coming back. Might be dead. It’s true. You’ve lived through death before. You know people die. You know that you got to love them when you have them and that you’re going to die too. Pick your goddamn self up, get stronger, and finish this fight. Fight to live. Fight to live well. Make a decision. I knew I was in the fetal position. I knew I was looking at the ground. I knew I was worrisome, that it wasn’t good. But I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. I couldn’t feel any reason to move. I had to try to take breaths. If I didn’t think about it, my breaths were too shallow and short. My eyes stayed slightly out of focus. Breathing in. Breathing out. It isn’t fair. Security was on me. Ma’am are you alright, Ma’am do you need an ambulance, Ma’am you can’t sit here do I need to call someone for you. It isn’t fair. Another voice, a new one said: Fairness is for children. This voice wasn’t angry with me. This voice wasn’t desperate. This voice was calm. Fairness isn’t the goal, baby. Justice is the goal. 448 Justice is for adults. You are grown. Go for justice. You don’t have to do that alone. You can love and be loved and fight for justice and you won’t be alone. “I’m fine,” I said, and stood. Spirals of black nothing threatened the edges of my vision. They receded as I breathed in and out, in and out. I got my water out of my bag. Swished. Spit. You don’t have to do this alone. Griffin appeared. He completely ignored the security guard and threaded his arm through mine and said, “Ready to walk to the bus?” The guard retreated a few feet and watched. “I want to go back in there,” I said. I found some gum in my bag, unwrapped it, and put it in my mouth. I could see how badly he wanted to tell me no. “You sure about that? You look bad. I mean, I’m sorry, but--you just, you know,” he pointed at the place where I’d vomited. Oh, so he’d seen that happen. “I’m ok,” I said. “I thought I saw Carl. I panicked. I feel bad, I’m sure I look bad. It’ll pass. I want to be in there for this. Then we eat a real meal.” “I don’t get it,” Griffin said. “But whatever you want to do.” We nodded at the security guard, who was talking into his walkie-talkie, and we reentered the building. We went back into the meeting room. I looked at my shoes and let Griffin lead, let him make the eye contact, let him get me through. My shoes were clean, at least. The man with the football was leaning against the wall behind the low wooden partition that separated the Council from the people. He tossed the ball in the air and caught it idly, scanning the room. Some Council members were seated, looking down at their notes, but most of them were milling around behind their little wall. A person from the Downtown Action Center was on the mike in the people’s section, giving a comment about the provisions for housing that were missing from the stadium plan. I 449 realized that the City Council was actively discouraging anyone from making or listening to public comment. There was the suit tossing a ball, three Council members out of their seats, all of them not looking us in the eye. Sadie stood in line to make a comment, motioned for me to come next to her and I did, pulling Griffin along. She whispered, “You ok?” “I’m ok,” I said, trying to angle my breath away from her face. “You see this shit?” she said, gesturing at the guy with the football. I nodded, yes, I saw what was happening. And it made me angry. “Rude,” I said. She gave me a tiny humpf. Griffin begged with his eyes to sit down, stop being looked at. I let him go with a nod and pointed at the open seats in the back. “Thank you,” I whispered at him. He squeezed my hand and went. I stood with Sadie. I twisted my leather ring, finding the knot and sending it around, around, around. I wished Nautica was there. Sadie spoke her piece to the dissolved, distracted audience. She was clear and strong and direct. The guy with the football just kept tossing it and ignoring her on the side of the room and I thought, I would like to get him alone, take all his money, and humiliate the shit out of him. He stood there in his collared button down shirt with a an arrogant smirk, leaning over to his friend and whispering and laughing, while Sadie discussed the potential harms to Skid Row residents inherent to his plan. Who is this demonstration for? I wondered. Why are we even here? I couldn’t see what the point was, how we were going to win against the NFL with our dirty jackets and handwritten signs and unstable minds. But Sadie seemed sure of what she was doing, and I believed her, and I’d been in enough 450 BDSM situations to know that when you really want to follow someone, it’s best to do it wholeheartedly. Later that night, Sadie sent me an email with a link. She had added me to the DAC newsletter list without asking, I noticed. But I was glad to be included. The link took me to YouTube. Title: “Los Angeles City Council Approves Economic Development Project of our Generation Despite Community Concern about Unconstitutional Policy, Environmental Impacts, Housing.” I watched a minute-thirty of a cell phone video from the City Council meeting with captions from the DAC. Sadie’s well-written points were scrolling while a red arrow pointed at the football every time the guy tossed it in the air. A few slides at the end of the video gave viewers contact info for the DAC, and a list of services they provided in addition to this campaign they were on. They needed volunteers and were happy to train, and they gave “Skid Row Tours” to activists and school groups interested in supporting Skid Row Residents’ organizing campaigns for their human rights. I loved the way Football Asshole had been shamed. I loved the way the DAC kept fighting. I love it here, I thought. I love Los Angeles. I miss it. I want to come home. It was just as messy and full of madness as New York, but brighter and greener and smelled better too, somehow. I sent Sadie a text affirming the video with my hopes for its viral capacity. I told her I admired her and that she did great work. Nautica called. She was arriving in the morning. I already felt embarrassed for all the problems I was going to have to hand her when she did. But my embarrassment was nearly submerged in relief, at knowing we’d at least be together for solving the problems and walking through the grief. Nautica was such a great reason to live. 451 And she was bringing my Mom’s ashes. I wasn’t certain of why I’d asked her to, but it felt right. 452 It’s Not Over Nautica arrived at LAX wearing a new coat. She and Griffin were about to overlap by one night. I watched her stride past a struggling family with toppling luggage, not ignoring them, not offering to help them, but holding her free hand out, as if spotting the youngest’s vulnerable head and wanting to offer an alternative to his crashing into her. She returned her hand to her shoulder strap in a graceful scoop when her zone of potential interaction with the soft head ended. She stopped to scan the monitors, and I watched people notice her, get momentarily hypnotized, and then look away. She moved like water. I tried to wet my mouth and swallow and breathe. Nautica rarely purchased any clothing for herself outside of what she used for work. She was bored or functionally disappointed by most clothes. Rarely did any garment have pockets deep enough, nap soft enough, or colors pleasing enough for Nautica, and so, when she did finally favorite something, it would be engaged in long term dedicated use. She’d been wearing the same smart black wool shawl over every outfit in the fall and spring since I’d met her. The coat was definitely new. “Hi!” she said. She smelled like the airplane. I wanted to strip her and bury my face in her tummy skin, where her scent had been protected from industrial progress. “You got a new coat,” I said. She put her bag down and twirled. The plum fabric rustled behind her. She caught a corner and brought up the edge to my face. “Feel it,” she whispered, “Look at how well this is made!” “I really don’t know anything about coats,” I said. “It’s waterproof,” she said, “but breathable. Which is genius. It was a gift.” “From who?” 453 “New client,” she said. Then she stopped to stare into my eyes. “I’m so excited to see you! How are you feeling about everything today?” “Pretty heartbroken,” I said, and the tears started rising. She squeezed me, said, “Yeah, makes sense,” and picked up her bag. “Did you bring my mom?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “She’s in my carryon, which was really stressful.” “Thank you,” I said. “Really. Thank you.” She met my eyes again and I felt her there. “You’re my love,” she said. “Of course.” Nautica didn’t plan to stay long, and she wanted a car. I’d made Griffin return ours, so we got a new one, a little blue Kia that seemed more like a joke than a car. I looked at the LA Weekly in the rental office, and saw an ad for an amateur night tonight at a downtown strip club. I showed it to Nautica. “Maybe I should do this tonight,” I said. The prize was $500. “Looks good,” she said. “Maybe the boy and I will come watch you.” Griffin and Nautica drank beer together and helped me win third place, which was $200. I got invited to work the rest of the night. I decided to do it so I could pay for Griffin’s ticket and put the whole thing behind me financially. They kissed my cheeks simultaneously and I felt strong, but almost immediately after they left I had some trouble with my ankle and by the end of the night it was swollen and hurt to walk on. I’d been in heels for six hours, taking breaks to perch at the bar or even to put my feet up for a minute on a barstool until the bouncer, or the bartender, or manager, snapped or glared at me. Not allowed to be on our phones. Not allowed to recline. “Are you at work, or are you watching TV at home?” the manager said. He had thick dark 454 slicked back hair. He wore a black suit. He liked to call us all “girls,” even the ones who were ten years older than him. “I just feel so comfortable here,” I said. He snapped his fingers anyway. I moved my feet. The relief ended and the throbbing resumed. I got a cup of ice from the bar. In the dressing room, I asked for a painkiller. I got one, a Percocet, for an inflated ten dollars from a dancer I didn’t want to fight with. With the ice on, and the pill in, I fixed my makeup. I bolded my eyeliner. I painted a new layer of dark wine lip stain. My face looked stressed. I tried to relax it, to smile. I messed with my hair a little, wished I’d brought my flatiron, considered using one that was left on the counter, decided against it. But what am I really doing with my life, my eyes said. I was getting money. So I could eat. So I could pay for Griffin to go home and a place to sleep. True answers, but so unsatisfying. “There’s got to be more to life than this,” said a dancer at the mirror, to my right. “I was just thinking something like that,” I said. “You’re new, right?” she said. She was doing some low-impact primping of her perfect brown curls. I wondered if she was wearing a wig and tried to see her part. “I’m visiting from New York, so, yeah,” I said. Then wanted to fix it if it made me sound stuck up. “What’s your name?” I asked her. “Kelly,” she said. “I’m Melissa,” I said. We shook hands. “So cool that you’re from New York!” she said. “I’ve only been there once, but it was awesome.” “I’m actually from LA,” I said. “I’ve lived in Brooklyn for like ten years though.” 455 She nodded. She didn’t seem to care much about the “from” or “lived in” part, which was something I associated with Los Angeles people. We chatted. She was funny. She said surprising things. Like, “I told the girls once I thought we should pool our tips. One of them was super into it. The rest were like, not happy imagining giving their money to a collective.” “There’s a place in San Francisco where they do that, I think?” I said. She looked thoughtful. “I wonder if we could get in touch with someone there and find out how it works for them.” Suddenly I remembered something Rodney had said to me about a sex worker organization in LA. “Hey,” I said, feeling strangely vulnerable, “have you ever heard of the Hookers Army?” “Hell yeah!” she said. She smiled at me. “My friend used to go to those meetings. She loved it. That’s crazy that you know about it! It’s not, like, a huge group.” “Why’d she stop?” I said. “Wait, sorry, that’s none of my business.” Kelly shrugged. “She got married and had a kid, you know? Didn’t fit into her life any more.” “Sure,” I said. She asked me if I was part of it. I told her I’d just heard of them but I was interested. “They’re so cool,” she said. “Take me with you if you go to a meeting?” I said I would. We exchanged numbers. I was attracted to her. It was a nice feeling. Life-affirming. She had pillow lips. I hobbled back out onto the floor and got lucky. I found a guy who wanted me to lay down on him and barely move. I made three hundred dollars. Since five hundred had been my 456 goal I decided to call it a win and leave early so I could take care of my ankle. When I got back to the motel, Griffin and Nautica were watching an action movie. They seemed contented. They’d smoked some weed and talked about me, Nautica said. I wondered where they got the weed but it didn’t seem polite to ask them as they’d bonded somehow. “You never told me that much about growing up here,” Griffin said, as if we’d known each other for years and I’d been withholding. “Nautica says you lived in your car.” “Yeah, I slept in my car a lot for a few months,” I said. “G, can you rip yourself away from this movie and get me some ice?” “Of course,” he said, and took a long time to find the ice bucket. I counted out my money. Three hundred ninety after the high tip-out. Well. It was three hundred ninety I didn’t have yesterday. “You okay?” Nautica asked me as I peeled off the post-work sweatpants and stepped into the shower. “My ankle hurts and I’m tired,” I said. “But I’m okay.” I told her I’d met a dancer who knew about the Hookers Army. “That’s the sex worker self defense collective?” she said. “That’s kind of amazing.” “I know,” I said. “She was really cute, too.” “Did you get her number?” “Of course I did!” I yelled from the shower. I heard her laughing. The water was a sweet relief from the grime. I soaped my feet gently and watched small eddies of gray water flow to the drain. 457 The following day, we put Griffin on a plane back to NYC. He spent the morning at the Scientology Center. I don’t know what happened there, but he was serene and very kind when he left. Hugging him goodbye, I felt sad. Like I would miss him. But still, I knew it was best for him to go. “I’m sorry about your dad,” he said, after hugging and kissing me. “Call me when you’re back in town?” I said I would. But I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I scattered my Mom’s ashes in Malibu, twelve years after I put them in the coffee can. I wrote a letter to Carl and then burned it in a barbecue on Dockweiler Beach. I invited Riley but she said she wasn’t into “ritual stuff.” Nautica stood with me, held me, and took me to eat Thai food in the middle of the night. She fucked me carefully and slowly and with love, and I slept deeply for the first time in weeks. We spent a few more days talking with people, collecting pieces of Carl’s stuff. I was right about the potential for a mutual respect between Nautica and Sadie. I was also right that they’d have some chemistry. I enjoyed watching them look at each other. The original stadium plan was defeated, by the DAC and their coalition’s lawsuit about the Environmental Impact Report. The Times called it a “David and Goliath” story. Someone high up at Edelweiss got fired. It took another two months of tedious, constant work after that City Council meeting to get it done. The DAC and their partners had been fighting nonstop for a year, while still providing housing aid, legal clinics, organizing space, and other policy advocacy. 458 Nautica and I spent those months in New York, handling the sale of La Jouissance, spending time with friends and lovers, closing up shop and preparing to move to Downtown LA. After we had a coffee date to catch up and Griffin told me he was dating on a fetish site now, we said a gentle goodbye. Griffin wrote one very long, very thoughtful email to me in which he critiqued us both for some sloppy boundaries and poor communication. It was true and very boring and I hoped he felt better for it. Nautica and I made it back to LA in time for the DAC’s announcement that they’d settled their lawsuit. We celebrated victory over the stadium development scam by getting drunk en masse at the bar where Rodney and I had seen Frida’s show. I drunk-dialed Angie and we talked for ten minutes and I cried and I told her I’d moved back to LA and Carl was gone and she said she hoped I could find peace in my life soon and I realized she thought something was worse than it was, because I was drunk, and then I worried she was right and said she should call me when she came out to visit her parents and goodbye. Nautica and Sadie made out on the dance floor and we took her home and stayed up laughing and dancing and occasionally letting out enormous, guttural groans. The kind that come when something difficult is finished. We wanted to have sex that night but I told them both I’d be too sad if it was just a fun drunk one-off because of what a strong fantasy I had about the three of us. So we waited until the morning, and then we had the threesome that changed everything. A new stadium plan emerged. An NFL team came to the City. Sadie, Nautica and I toasted fighting on the right side together, even when the wrong side had an unlimited war 459 chest. I volunteered at the DAC and Rodney spent regular nights on our couch. I stripped at a nice club while we got our shit together. Nautica and I built a client list for La Jouissance LA, rented a warehouse space in the arts district, and eventually she hooked up with some local artists to start a small business selling sex toys made of recycled glass. We found and joined the Hookers Army. In the last few weeks of my mother’s life a doctor, a guy who had generally avoided eye contact with me, brought two students in to her room. He had a suddenly friendly bedside manner and called her by her name, as if he’d always known it. He told his students I was her guard dog. I barked at them. When he left with his minions, Mom told me that she liked it, how fiercely protective of her I was. I thought, what if she’d been ugly? Rude? Unable to speak English? Or alone? She’d be dead. And I was paralyzed with a terrifying sense of the unjust arbitrariness of life and death in a hospital. I left her mustard colored room, walked a mile or so to the nearest liquor store, and waited until a guy in an ironed white T-shirt bought me a six-pack of Pabst and told me to be careful. I was not careful, not for years. Carl dreamed of class wars, each according to his ability, functional and dynamic societies of free people. But, he lived with us. And later, he lived outside. He tried to build a relationship with a biological daughter he didn’t know very well. He was full of contradictions. Contradictions and wildness. He taught me things that played in my head like old songs. You must not back down from a righteous fight, even though it means you will probably fight someone, something, somewhere, every day. Your wildness will keep you soft in the right places, and allow the collective power of your loving and being loved to heal you when you lose. When you are 460 betrayed, your wildness will cry out for trust. When you are locked up, your wildness will search for a way out. When you are lonely, you can rely on your wildness to attract love. My mother told me to “be myself,” but more often she told me to “get real” and to “be realistic.” She didn’t want to say “you can be anything you want” because she knew it wasn’t true, she knew we were too poor for it to be true, and so she tried to teach me to want less. Her response to what was true and necessary about life was to suffer it, tolerate it, compromise with it. She thought “healthy” meant: not being addicted, graduating from high school, seeming cheerful, getting a nice boyfriend, and making legal money at a job I could tell people about. She never said Carl should have put down his restless dreams of revolution once he found love, once we made a family. But she did not feel her own wildness in “The Movement,” she never understood his explanations of his evolving political ideas, she never read the books he asked her to, and he couldn’t respect her for that, eventually. In a fight one night he told her that she was and would remain passively racist, that being in love with one black man was not the cure, and that she had lied about her passion for making social change. I don’t remember what she said, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t understand what the hell he meant. Somehow, they made up from that fight. Or at least, they moved on. What was her duty? She thought it was to raise me, in an apartment she found and leased when she was employed, with food she paid for herself, even though we qualified for government assistance, even though our manager was a slum lord, even though keeping up with the rent destroyed her body and rendered her mind numb, complacent, fatigued. She worked all the time. Always two or three jobs, so many hours on her feet serving food and cleaning up after people. She never would have sacrificed any of those one-bedroom places for the unrespectable, inappropriate freedom of transience like Rodney had, or for financial 461 stability with a husband she didn’t love like Angie’s mom, and I won’t ever know exactly why. Maybe the apartment we lived in was her proof that she was providing me with a safe place to grow up and become an independent, modern, successful woman, and giving that up was impossible for her. She loved me, which I couldn’t feel, because she worried for me, punished me, lied to me, and never made peace with my wildness. She would have hated that I had any kind of sex for money. I was furious with her even in her illness, and of course I felt guilty for it. I blamed Carl for her unhappiness too. But now I know she was hurt long before either of us, because she was trying always to be good without ever revising her definition of what “good” meant to her. I wish I could talk to her about these things. I’d set up a table with some macaroni and cheese, a bottle of four-dollar Chardonnay, and one of those apple-cinnamon candles she always bought at the 99-cent store. I miss even her heavy sighs and dismissive eye-rolls. I miss the horrible sound of her panty-hose feet rubbing against the floor as she tried to warm them up under the table. 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