In the 90′s, I rented a room in San Francisco on Waller Street in a grey chipped Victorian. It was once a quaint single family home but we stuffed it with piercers, drag queens and latex tailors. My room was the smallest and it was right in the middle of the endless narrow hallway. Dusty hardwood floors. White walls. The roommates did me a favor by allowing me to move in there. I’d been crashing on a friend’s couch for three months; my wrists were stitched up and healed from the suicide attempt when I tried to kick meth cold turkey. I had a job in a vintage clothing store on the Haight. From my room I heard my roommates come home late at night. They’d laugh in the kitchen while I was sleeping and cook popcorn and soup, then leave pots of gelatinous black bean soup with the spoon still in it. In the freezer was Vodka. I was the only one in that house who didn’t drink.

The living room had a big chunky old TV where we rented Mahogany and Pulp Fiction and sat on a big green scratchy couch. The kitchen dumped out into a covered patio where a roommate made an elaborate pattern making area for her clothing line.

I tacked black and white pictures on the wall of my 10 x12 feet room: Quinn in drag with a lip piercing and black feather boa with a tan arm floating in the air. The best part of that dinky, dark room was the single window with a view of a drainpipe.  The pipe always had water that dripped until it rained, then that drip became a fierce waterfall. I slept on a borrowed futon mattress on my blonde hard wood floor in the middle of the room. I recall being sick in that room: bronchitis and strep throat.  The flu.The drainpipe must have soothed me, because it’s the thing I can still see clearly. 

Girls I had crushes on who are now boys with different names brought me Miso soup.  One made me dinner on my birthday and she put a tin wind up monkey toy on my plate.  Her grandmother had just died. 

My girlfriend, M built me a loft so I could stop sleeping on the floor and one of my three or four rotating roommates from Chicago lent me a nice Queen mattress.

After I got home from my gig at the clothing store, I slipped on a pile of confetti. M had printed out a thousand little strips of paper that read, “Fuck Me.” On my bedroom door was a scolding note from one of my roommates. I needed to clean that up. 

My small broom closet never shut all the way. It was stuffed with torn vintage lace slips and platform boots. My furniture was hauled in from the street, which happened once a month. Put out was like winning the Lotto. I’d ask my friend with a truck to drive around so I could drag in a desk, lamp or a chair and test it out. When I was done with the initial trial period, I’d haul the rejected chair back out onto the street or keep it and paint it silver. The first thing I found was a mirror so I poured glue in loop letters and spelled “Lies” on it and covered it with silver glitter. Later the words read “Whore.” I had tall white candles and wrote on them with sharpies quotes from Rebecca Brown, Mary Gaitskill and Sapphire. I wrote in paper journals with wet black ink. I was asked to join a writing group by a girl who made black velvet paintings of her pussy and wrote poetry about cocks jumping in her hands and boys wearing skirts. We met on Tuesday nights after hours inside The Bearded Lady Café. Kathy Acker was a mesmerizing teacher. I read “Story of the Eye” and “Edie.” Kurt Cobain died. I saw Courtney Love perform. In my room I listened to L-7. I underlined lines in books and scribbled notes in a green journal. 

Zoey Praying: Romy Suskin

 I had little spiky blonde hair and no money. I wrote the landlord a letter begging for another week to make my rent. I  often sold my clothes at the store where I worked so I could buy a burrito at “Amigos” next door. If I had left over, I’d march into clothing by the pound on my day off and pick up a jean jacket and sell that for coffee money. I accidently cut open my left index finger while unpacking a box of used shoes. I got stitched up at UC Medical Center. I was about to get fired. I’d already been written up for being tardy. I began moonlighting at the Lusty Lady. I’d ride MUNI to Duboce and walk home. Stuff a backpack with lingerie I’d found at Clothing by the Pound, borrow my roommates bike and ride it to North Beach. I pedaled fast through pockets of fog, my bandaged finger pounding and sped through the lime green tunnel past cars. I rode fast until the cold wasn’t cold and the tunnel dumped me onto Kearney Street.

At the Lusty Lady,  I leaned the bike against the hallway outside the manager’s office during my shift. I clocked in for the 9AM-3AM shift. I didn’t want to be one minute late or else I’d never reach top wage ($21/hr). The bike got stolen. My room mates found out about the letter to the landlord and kicked me out. 

I got in her blue Nissan. We’d never met before. A tiny purple candle burned between us in the center console. The candle made me nervous at first, but she was so tender that nothing could possibly catch on fire. Not even her i-phone cord. The vision I had of her in my mind was a hipster punk with black hair. Black buckled boots and maybe a scarf. Her knees would be exposed. She’d have a piercing or twelve and she’d look at me between drags of cigarettes with her filmmaker eyes. The eyes of Filmmakers twinkle with the obsession of trying to capture the uncontrollable. The same way surfers love the ocean, filmmakers are in love with light.  

Milcah

The purple puddle of melted wax stayed put while the chilly San Francisco sun shot through the windshield. Milcah smiled with a full set of braces. She was even younger than I expected. We drove into SF from the airport. She only knew me by my writing. I didn’t want to disappoint her in person. That ride was the first of a hundred radically loving gestures in SF that day that would burst my heart open.  Thank you, Milcah.

Julie Grecius

While we shared chocolate mint vegan ice cream and sipped bright pink beet soup, Milcah told me about her mother and her job. I asked her why she’s made the decision to enter the sex industry (she doesn’t need the money). Why she will use her own name in her web cam videos. She’s exactly my age when I first started stripping. Twenty-two and obstinate with ripped black tights and knack for caring for the sick. She told me about asexuality we walked past stores on Haight Street. I thought about the writers we both love and how we forget our Kindles exist because we like to hold our books in our hands.  I’ll ask her when I interview her (for RSW-Rumpus) if she thinks sex work is akin to caring for the dying. I do. My years as a counselor made me a better stripper. They both required patience and empathy.

    I arrived at the Verdi Club hours early with 300 cupcakes and six pair of silky gloves that I cut and bedazzled for the Rumpus Women.

Hells Belles

A group of us set tulle party favors with aqua pencils on chairs and mini cupcakes on tables. Upstairs, in front of a big dressing room mirror, I applied mascara and patted gold and purple eye shadow on Sona and Rebekah. I dipped my fingers into Julie’s red glitter. We were giddy. We wet our temporary tattoos and peeled their skins back. “We are all Sugar.”  I hugged Isaac and complimented him on his red and white gingham shirt.  It was the most natural thing in the world- to stand around in fishnets and fret about both Sugars, the column excerpts we were going to read and drink tickets. As I hurled myself into the middle of the celebration, I felt my heart stretch beyond it’s capacity.

   Steve Almond, who’s disarming humor is as powerful as his astute commentary on politics and sex, delivered a surprisingly tender, profound introduction likening Sugar to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and pointing out Sugar’s radical empathy. The Sermon on the Mount contained the Beatitudes (from Latin Beatus: happy, fortunate or blissful) and similarly, the Sugar column has gathered a die hard following as a result of her generous insights and advice.  He spoke eloquently about her depth and his own gratitude for his beautiful wife (Erin) and the fact that Sugar had huge responsibilities before she decided to take on the Dear Sugar column. Steve Almond introduced Cheryl Strayed as Sugar #2. Applause rippled through that room. We stood up for two standing ovations and watched her bravely accept our love.  

Sugar Strayed

My desk seemed far away, a tiny place of No’s, cat sand and unpaid bills. A place where the bright spot in my week was a three-paragraph rejection from Creative Nonfiction (not sarcasm—I really got a great, wonderful rejection). This was happy, fortunate and blissful. 

At the Verdi Club that giant room became small and cozy. Both Steve and Cheryl answered questions from the audience. The first one was mine, “How can I handle rejection?”

Can you believe my luck? Both Sugars answered it. I’ve got a purple candle on my desk now to remind me that I’m at my best when I’m celebrating someone else’s success.

And that If I keep digging in and doing the hard work, rejections will be a fun thing to write about.

Writer

My desk has a sweet flame, a burning place of yes.

My desk overlooks an orange tree, a Redwood deck and a BBQ that’s rusting from yesterday’s rain.   I’m on a third major rewrite of my book, SPENT. It’s a completely different book than it was last year. It felt like essays before-a catalogue of events happening outside of me.  

     I’ve always felt terribly inconvenienced and skeeved out by my feelings and have been diligent about stomping them out.  That’s when freak brain takes over. Exactly on year after my mom died, I was driving to my assistant job and called a pharmacy to renew a prescription I had for Vicodin. I hate Vicodin and had it because I’d been hospitalized for Typhoid Fever (the mosquito one, not the poop one). While quarantined, they gave me a spinal tap that triggered my puking migraines.

    So I had this empty bottle of Vicodin and renewed the prescription. I planned to take the pills.  All of them. But, I felt better after I got off the phone with the pharmacy. When I showed up for work at my assistant gig. I worked for  a wonderful, kind, successful lady and I idolized her. I bought her dog vitamins and went to all of the super expensive hippie elixir stores for special healing tonics. 

by Kent Geib

                                                   “How are you?” she asked. She always asked me that. 

                                                       “I’m not going to kill myself today.”

                                                      “That’s a good start.” I filed her bills and alphabetized her books in her new office. By lunch time, I felt better. Years later, I still  have freak brain looking for a way in or a way out-whichever’s quickest.  

A scene in "Plainclothes Naked" by Kent Geib

  I loved  Melissa Febos’ Whip Smart. I  related to her story, more than any other sex worker memoir I’ve read. Not because of her Pro Domme/Ivy League combo but the way she described the grey areas of the industry so well, her addict brain and pushing her own boundaries over time, normalizing the inertia and exuberance and secrets. Hiding pieces of herself in her sessions. Knowing this and doing it anyway. Not stopping, while wanting to. 

               I loved the way she described the kind of intimacy and confusion that happened when a client became her friend. I related to the power dynamics at play with her own desires, the way she denied them at first. How she separated herself from her clients to feel superior. I related to her quitting and feeling that her identity hat been gutted when she moved away from NY, away from her client base.

             I related to her fear of living on the sidelines of life by staying in the industry and outgrowing that, and finally, the fear of being broke and average by leaving it behind. Sometimes she over-intellectualized her experience and I related to that impulse because it’s more comfy than being skinless. But there were many sections that spoke to me in a way that was honest and tender. I entered the sex industry a lesbian man-hater prepared to do battle and come out on top, but the industry was full of men who were too squishy and sad like me only they had more courage. They were honest about what they wanted. I always felt like I had to put on a show to get what I wanted.

 I hope more women write about their experiences, especially if they take issue with the stories being told and circulated.

Miss A by Romy Suskin

I’ve been speaking with other women I adore about happens when you quit. It’s almost like the women still in the industry feel betrayed. But I’ve only got what’s true for me. I’m true to that. The real betrayal is this culture that criminalizes it, demoralizes the women and hurts them.  One woman wished more than anything that she’d saved her money. She made so much money. Squandered it away. She quit because she had to (she got pregnant). I had to quit because I aged out. It’s that simple. It’s that complicated. Quitting. Starting over.

 I wrote my letter for the Rumpus’ new epistolary enterprise “Letters in the Mail.” It’s a backwards letter starting with now and ending in childhood. I wanted to write about quitting things. I wondered if people could relate to that.

I love books

Today’s wild and fresh with possibility. I’m painting on silky red gloves for Sugar’s Coming Out Party next weekend. I’m teaching students to write content for their magazine. They have to come up with a slogan about how art has added to their lives for a poster contest to win some cash. This is what I learned: making a mess with beads and a hot glue gun burns your fingers. It’s best to resort to a black sharpie and sequins.