An Arrest I Escaped

I could have been arrested but I wasn’t because I followed the advice of the veteran working girl who spent 40 minutes with me telling me how to be careful.

I was Working As a Streetwalker

It was somewhere around 2003. When I was using the days ran together until months and a couple of years went buy without me really noticing. Truth be told, I liked the formlessness of my days after the regimented life of school and work I had lived all of my childhood and in the very beginning of my adulthood. I felt free, like I had nowhere to be, nothing to do, but the truth is I was a slave to the drug that kept me on a hamster wheel while my experience was that of freedom. I was finding tricks-taking money for sexual favors-copping dope-finding another addict with a hole in the wall–getting high–running out–freaking out–race walking back to the stroll–finding tricks…there was never any past or future, I was always at some point in this sequence as if I stood outside the normal passage of time during which change occurs. Because nothing changed. I was still young and beautiful then and thought I always would be, like every young and beautiful woman whose face and body gravity has yet to discover. I was responsible for me and my habit and I was having fun.

I Jumped Into A Guy’s Car

It was the middle of the day, and I “caught a date” as we said in under 50 seconds. I know because I liked to time how long it took for someone to screech to a halt and affirm for me that I was desirable. This guy did that for me when he pulled over and I liked him for it. But I didn’t like him enough to violate the rule the old hooker had taught me–say nothing. She probably wasn’t really old. She was dying of AIDS and I bet she just looked old but never had the chance to reach the age I am now as I write this. Anyway, I sat quietly in the passenger seat and the driver drove without a word. I looked out the window at the passenger’s side rearview mirror and I saw what I knew I would see eventually, two cars following us. The first was on our bumper the second was right on the bumper of the car immediately behind us. We all turned together, close enough to be boxcars on a train. There were a number of parking lots we girls took our dates to because they didn’t have security. My guy pulled into a lot that had security. Just so happened to be the four story parking structure serving as the residence of my dear late friend, the medic in Vietnam. It did not escape my notice that the guy did not ask where I wanted to go or if this place was ok. I mean, he was stone cold silent, and no one is ever like that. So I knew.

I Wasn’t Surprised When The Passenger’s Side Door Flew Open

Get on the ground! Now! Now!

Two plainclothes undercover officers instructing me to exit the vehicle without assistance

They didn’t put their hands on me but let me climb out of the SUV type of vehicle by myself. I was grateful for that courtesy. I did not want to join the ranks of black people who had been mistreated by police. I liked to be indignant from the comfortable distance of dealing with other people’s issues. Instantly the the driver was gone, he was just out of there so fast I barely saw him peel out. I barely got a look at him or the car, before I was left alone sitting on the parking lot ground with the two men looming over me. I never notice what people look like, to the point that it is almost like I don’t see them because I can’t remember a thing about what they look like but I remember what they said.

What are you doing jumping in and out of cars with men you don’t know? What do you think that looks like?

The question of the indignant police officer who seemed to genuinely dislike what I was doing, and me for doing it

I was inspired. I had nothing rehearsed. I was afraid every single date, and I did 3-5 a day every day, every single date I was afraid of getting arrested. Yet I never rehearsed what I would do. Probably because I had never been arrested before so I had no way to imagine how things would go. I think my inspiration was due to the fact that they attacked me in my area of strength–I was a smooth talker and a quick talker. I had the situation well in hand.

I am from the Big Island. We hitchhike all the time over there. That’s just what we do.

Yes I had lived a few months on the second most populous island in the state of Hawaii which is not very populous at all. Yes The Big Island is very rural and hitchhiking is such a way of life that people will automatically pull over when they see someone obviously out of place (like a young black woman) and cheerfully offer a ride that the walker cheerfully accepts. No, I was not hitchhiking in Honolulu.

The officers had jumped the gun. There was no way to know what I was thinking, especially since everything I chose to share was true. No talking meant no agreement to exchange a specific sex act for a specific thing of value. I was glad they weren’t the type of officers who were going to arrest anyone who fell into their trap because they could have arrested me and their story would be taken as gospel truth by everyone that matters. But I must have been right in my perception that these guys were really law and order types. They let me go. What else could honest cops do?

The High Of Undeserved Freedom

I scampered off, delighted to be near my medic friend so I could share the incredible story. I was still having fun. My dangerously warped view of reality was reinforced. I don’t know about the Law of Attraction, because they say perception is reality but my perception was not reality. I didn’t know it then because I did not need to know.

There was no better high, without drugs, than the high of getting away with something when I was totally guilty. That feeling of running away, scott free, made me even more manic inside my mind than usual. My thoughts were happily tumbling all over each other, is the best way I can describe my state of mind, and I had a physical feeling of …lightness, I guess I’d say, in my chest. I did not get off on taking the risk. It is no fun thinking I might get caught. But it was a whole hell of a lot of fun to enjoy undeserved freedom. Well, undeserved freedom was only a temporary state of being, as I would find out soon enough.