2018 Reasons I Write
I am a respectable ivy league educated x-hooker sharing her experiences as a street level sex worker in Honolulu at the turn of the 21st century.
Why?
If I can take my experiences and turn them into life lessons for others then I have transformed that post collegiate time from a waste of a mind to a benefit for the world. To be cringingly honest, my mission is to earn redemption by educating and entertaining the world with stories of the outcast told in the language of the elite.
2020 Reasons I Write
I used to be passionate about my anonymity. I was so concerned about people finding out about me. Then, last week, the beginning of August 2020, I was trying to get in the elevator with a man who has lived in the building as long as I have, over 6 years. He tried dissuading me by telling me I didn’t belong on the elevator with him, that I could take the bigger elevator and leave him in peace. Bullying is a poor choice of strategies to use with me because I can motivate off of spite. I refused to leave the elevator When we got to my floor he made a big show of pushing my bike off the elevator without my assistance, which only wedged the bike in the elevator door. He had no choice but to cooperate with me to free my bicycle so he could be on his way. I was quite through with being nice and I told him that any problem you have was with yourself, not with me, because I do not even know your name and do not misinterpret me, I am not asking for your name. What is wrong with you,” I demanded to know.
He glared at me and said, “You work the streets downtown!”
I was shocked. That was years ago. There were people in the building who said they recognized me from “Town.” There are very few black people in the state and everyone is connected to someone who knows someone they know so it is very common to be recognized. Anyway, if someone recognized me from Town it is because that person was there too! Or they were Town Adjacent–maybe someone they knew went into town to get dope for them, you know, peripheral involvement. The next thing the bully said made everything clear:
The Office [at Kalakaua Homes] tells us all about it. We know everything!
A neighbor offering even more proof that management is behind the efforts to pressure me out of this prime housing and reserve every single unit for fellow Asians.
I can get into the racial dynamic in Hawaii later. I will just say, for now, that it is different from the traditional white vs. black and one color line. There are many lines here, some of them determined by race, some of them determined by place of origin. But Hawaii is like every other place I know of–the native population is not in charge of their land, they are disproportionately incarcerated, and Hawaiians, in a unique twist, have the lowest life expectancy of any racial group in the world. But that’s now what this post is about.
The reason I write this blog, today is that people already know my past. They refuse to let it go. There is no such thing as an x-hookr and they will never let me live it down. You have heard of the thinking error confirmation bias, I presume, in which everything that proves a person’s pre-conceived notions is used as evidence, while anything that disproves their prejudice is discounted or ignored. Everything about me is going to show them I am a prostitute so I am going to live my life and not worry about altering myself based upon their judgements because there is no point. The hatred is intractable. Now, if I was born here, or if I was one of the accepted racial groups, this would not be happening, this bullying. If I had a gift for putting people at ease instead of an inability to relate to others my chances of peace would be better. But those were not the cards I was dealt. Race is only one part of the decision to pressure me out of here. The Supreme Court said that if racism plays any part in mistreatment than the mistreatment is illegal and not just people expressing their freedom of speech. I am on solid ground about the illegality of what management is doing by proxy. So, I write.
One could say that I am keeping my past alive, but in truth it is already kept alive for me. I might as well repurpose my past not as something to deny or forget but as something that is relevant as a current teaching tool or if nothing else, a present day source of entertainment. They say write what you know. If I don’t declare myself a knowledgeable expert in addiction and street life then I pretty much wasted the past 20 years and cannot use any of my experience for the good. Unacceptable, to me. So, I write.
Hawaii Street Life-a Trusted Insider Tells All 