Facebook Message to Marius 7/31/12
This is a message I sent to my friend on facebook. He suggested I publish it here. I thought about editing it up and rewriting it into an actual post, but fuck it. I’m pretentious enough to perblog, so I’m pretentious enough to post my personal “letters.”
Thats odd, you just disappearded.
I hope it wasn’t the whores thing. I mean, I’m not like moralizing. I just don’t hold that profession in very high regard, and I’ve never been much of one for buying pussy. I don’t think there’s any empirical evidence that would convince me it’s entirely wrong or whatever, it’s just not my thing. Because, like I said I feel prostitution is kind of sad.
Mostly because I knew many people who were sex workers. This one girl, she was like fourteen and doing it. She had a pimp, “her Man” as she referred to him as, and he’d arrainge work for her. Like middle aged businessmen who liked to fuck little girls, those kinds. She was a runaway out in Seattle, but she got picked up and put out on the track by her pimp before we got to bring her into the fold with the squatter punks.
Well, one night we’re all out drinking beer by the old Orion squat near the Greyhound station and hanging out with this one cabbie we knew. Dude was cool potatos. Older Muslim dude. Used to give us free rides in his cab anywhere if he was headed that way on a fare, or sometimes if he was just having a slow night. Sometimes I’d hang out with him just because he’d take me when he’d go pick up strippers, and I got to go in the club all official like and be like “Please inform Jasmine her cab has arrived.” But dude really looked out for all of us as much as he could. He always gave us food and lent us money and shit, and he even kept an old nylon string guitar in his cab that he’d let us play. Story was that his son had gotten strung out and overdosed on Heroin way back when, so he got religion and felt he was doing Allahs work by looking out for us. Seriously one of the best people I’ve ever known, this guy was.
Well this night we’re there and he’s got this girl with him. He gives us the lowdown, tells us she needs to get away from this dude who’s been pimping her but she refuses to go to any teen shelters or anything cause they’ll send her back home to Idaho. He asks us to take care of her cause she has no place to sleep or anything.
So, you know, situations like that arise and you just have somebodys back-you give them whatever they need cause thats what everybody did for you when you hit the streets. So she rolled with us that night, drinking and carrying on and talking till the wee hours of the morning. That night we all stayed at the Motorsports Garage, a loft in a broken into auto garage-the same garage where they used to throw shows sometimes. I think I mentioned missing out on a Dwarves/Mudhoney/Nirvana show they had there once, but there were others too.
Anyways, we had beer and some food and we’re hanging out-there’s like five of us and this girl. I’m sharing my beer and some dumpstered burritos with her and we’re all just bullshitting the night away. The evening wears on and everybody starts to get ready to crash. She’s sitting next to me, so I lay down to sleep and she lays down next to me. She was wearing some ridiculous outfit-like a mini skirt and some flimsy top. It was summer, but it gets a little chilly out there at night. So I gave her my leather to cover her.
I go to sleep, pass out. Wake up and she’s up against me trying to put her arms around me. I’m like, “Uh, naw, you don’t have to do that. Really, just sleep.” She says, “But this is what I do for all of them.” Tears welled up in my eyes dude. I shit you not. I was fucked up about this. I said, “But you don’t have to do it for me. Go to sleep. It’s alright.”
I don’t know what ever happened to that girl. We lost track of her and she disappeared like so many others. I’d like to think I made a difference. Like that I was at least some motherfucker who wasn’t out to drill her pussy because I’d done something nice for her. At least I wasn’t that guy. Maybe that made a difference in her life if only for that one small bit of time. Maybe not. Most certainly it didn’t make a whole lot of difference since if she even lived to see twenty she was undoubtedly so scarred and traumatized that me being a decent person back then probably never even occured to her.
But it occurs to me, she occurs to me. And thats one of the big reasons I think the sex trade is so fucking sad.
That was really beautiful, Marius was right. You sound like Holden Caulfield? (Catcher in the Rye) lovely.
Thank you Alexa. Nobody ever told me I sounded like any real author before, so I’m flattered. I like Caulfeild’s story “Franny and Zooey” a lot. I think because it didn’t have a happy ending if I recall. “Catcher in the Rye” I read too and thought it was pretty good though I can’t remember much of it.
Sheeesh, of all the writers who’s style I consciously rip off you have to say I sound like a guy I haven’t thought of in years. I give up. Now I’m just going to post cat pictures.
Awww Actually Holden is the lead character, I do believe it was JD Salinger that wrote it and you didn’t rip off anything it just had that same raw feeling.
Oh, yeah, Salinger. Yeah, that’s what I meant. Mixed up the character with the author. I have trouble with that, it happens all the time with the Chinaski/Bukowski thing too. Well, nobody’s ever told me I sounded like a charachter in a book before, so I’m stoked about that.
You should be stoked, I meant it as a compliment. I think Holden’s was the voice spoke to all of us. I must of read that book 20 times.
I only read it once, and it was during a stretch where I read a few of his books back to back. It was while I was in prison, I read a lot of books there. Like I said, I really liked Franny and Zooey a lot. I think that one was my favorite. The guy who killed John Lennon kind of ruined Catcher in the Rye for me, cause I had read somewhere that that was his favorite book and he had a copy of it on him when he shot Lennon. I read it kind of over analytically, I guess. I mean, looking for something in it that could possibly inspire such a horrible act. Of all the people in the world to shoot, all the really rotten motherfuckers out there, and he has to shoot John Lennon. I was a little kid when it happened, but I still remember understanding the word tragic to a whole new depth.
I don’t remember barely anything from Catcher in the Rye now, except I think it was about a kid who sloughs off his everyday life and goes adventuring in New York. I think that’s what it’s about. I have it in my collection of Kindle books, so I’ll have to read it again for sure.
Reminds me of the David Lachapelle quote “Prostitutes go to heaven. It’s their clients that go to hell”.
Really beautifully written, emotional piece.
Thank you very much Vicky. Good quote, so true.
I knew you were a decent guy when I first read your blog. You had nothing back then but was still able to give. I’m sure she’d remember that night. Let’s hope she made it.
Thank you John. Yeah, I hope they all made it, her and everybody back then. Unfortunately, the people I did keep in touch with or heard about over the years…most of them died or went to prison or wound up under the yoke of along term opiate addiction. A few made it, not many but a few. I don’t know if the girl I wrote about did. I’d like to think so, but the odds are she didn’t. There were many like her really, still are I’m sure, and it’s just something that doesn’t come up in “polite conversation” among most people. People just don’t even want to think about that when they’re watching some spectacularized depiction of prostitution on television or in the movies. I mean, there’s television shows that make whoring out to be some kind of legitimate career choice for independent and business savy women (and men), but it’s really just the saddest fucking profession there is.
I hope she remembers you. Maybe you did help change her life.
I don’t know. I just did what seemed right. I don’t know if it made an iota of difference in her life over the long term, but sometimes all you can do for someone who is in a world of shit is just not add to it.
But you don’t know that you didn’t. Sometimes it is the little things that change someones world.
That is a good philosophy “Don’t add to someone else’s shit”.