Normal People Have No Respect for My Efforts to Humanize Sex Workers and that hurts!

Wow, what an Ugly Interaction with a big wig Honolulu attorney. Good thing I was prepared, but it still stung.

I don’t mind sharing this bit of my life with you, mostly because no one I know reads anything I write. It is easier to be honest when you’re not being honest with a specific someone. Anyway, I have been involved with a dispute about people treating me badly where I live. I brought the action myself because to be, again, honest, no attorney wanted to back up someone with my “background.” And this “background” always justifies people mistreating me. You might logically ask why I would keep the background in the foreground by doing this blog, and you would have a logical point. The reason I have publicly declared myself a self appointed spokesperson for people who could care less about anyone speaking for them is that I was, first and foremost, trying to find a way to take my record and make it work for me and not against me. This record is the thing that excludes me from employment and other opportunities. What if I could make money off of the stories that I know–what a coup that would be! Do you think I should pretend that I was primarily community minded, that I wanted to be an advocate for the voiceless who are voiceless because people do not care what they have to say and they have nothing to say because they are too busy pursuing their addictions anyway? Should I have pretended to have reached a place of enlightenment that has always eluded me by making myself out to be self sacrificing so much so that I would give up a fresh start in order to establish possible understanding of the outcasts? I could have lied but to what end? There is no fresh start. The internet makes public record so very public. It is not front and center if you google my name, but if you know how to access Hawaii court records, you can enter someone’s first and last name and you can find out their entire legal history in this state. Felony, misdemeanor, lawsuits, divorce–it is all right there if you go to E Court Kokua. There is no need to pay a professional for a background check if you want to access an individual’s legal history in Hawaii, minus family court confidential stuff. I was acting on the premise that “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” is a workaround your unfavorable record. If I could repackage my legal history I could get people to see things my way and reduce the stigma–I thought. I thought wrong. I believed I could make money off of my stories, I planned. My plan has yet to come to fruition. Finally, I could make people see the outcasts as people. I could not change people’s views. There was nothing but contempt during the interaction with the attorney who is a member of the establishment with a capital E, Establishment. I could tell he was tripping over himself trying not to reveal the higher minded purpose of my writing, but only because I knew what he was not saying about the intellectual side of my work. But no one else would suspect an intellectual take on street life is being downplayed by one of my detractors! I think for anyone listening to this attorney give his view of me, with the underlying message being I was treated badly because that is what I deserve, I think the most audible part of his speech was his contempt. In fact, his contempt was so strong it overpowered the particular meaning of any word, singly or in combination. I can only remember the feeling, I cannot recall what he actually said. The reality of the inescapability of my life makes me sad. I feel deflated which is a foreign feeling for someone likes me who rides on her energy much of the time. The social skills it takes to repackage my record in a way that is appealing to others, or at least not a complete deal breaker when it comes to knowing me, well those skills fall somewhere in the likablity range and I have never been high on that scale.

Will you dislike the depressing nature of this real time writing? If you knew my depressive self would you keep reading?

I never write when I am in the midst of a feeling but I am doing precisely that. I am trying to correct one of the things I believe has kept my blog from being more popular. I am trying to personalize my writing to give my readers a view into me so that they feel they know me. Me, the person who so desperately wanted to be someone that she looked for prestige outside of herself to fill that hole, but when a Harvard degree did not complete me, I gave up altogether feeling betrayed by what I perceived as a broken promise. I thought if I was successful I would feel a certain way, and stop feeling another way, and that is not what happened. Yes, the great vocabulary was there, for one thing, but belonging to a group, being on the inside–I thought that degree would earn me an invitation into people’s personal lives but it did not. I was not an outsider because I did not have a good enough resume. I was an outsider because of something I was or was not. That is why I tried drugs when they were offered to me, why I gave up on pushing forward in a career. Imagine striving for so long and hard only to end up alone at Christmas, yet again, with nothing but the pity invitation that people with families extend to loners on the holidays. That is where I was in New York City in 1996 when I met some people in a bar who wanted me to try smoking something out of a glass tube. I had never seen such a thing. But drugs–that was incredible. You had to know someone to know about drugs, you had to have connections for a way into the taboo and forbidden. I repositioned my hope to belong with the people doing the hidden forbidden. I thought I could belong there. I did not know drugs were a path to being completely alone and even more self obsessed than I already was. Not even self obsessed, but other obsessed. Obsessed with getting something outside of myself, and an obsession far more all consuming than the desire to achieve. No one would walk the path with me, but I did not know that when I tried the drug. We never experiment by ourselves. We are always presented a picture of how drugs is something special, elite even, and we see it as an opportunity to obtain something we have always wanted but had no hope of acquiring. We wanted to come in, and leave being an outsider behind. It was one of the few truly honest mistakes I have made in my life. I just did not know that all these years later I would be typing these words in a one bedroom apartment that I share with my cat, no people, no friends, no family. I did not know things would end up as they began. Except now, no one cares that I went to Harvard, if they even believe it.

I better keep the real me under wraps if I want anyone to keep reading.

I hope these depressing words are not too off putting. I just got through with the phone conference with the court so you are hearing the raw emotion. You ever hear how bored people are boring. I do know that depressed people are depressing, so I will stop now. The good news is that thousands of people around the world have found me temporarily amusing in very small doses. One must take one’s victories where they can be found. Discovering what people really think of me is a subject best left unexplored. And being real needs to give way to pretending. If I lost you my beloved readers, I would really be alone. So next post will be happy happy joy joy. If not, I will at the very least present you with some energizing outrage! Thanks for letting me share.