Capitalism, Popular Culture, Sex Worker Rights

Pimp My ______

Pimping is the new rage. From what I gather it seems to be shorthand for “I’m going to make this thing ridiculously fancy.” Like cars, computers, and from a link I saw even my own email account. Of course, what pimping really means is running a stable of underprivilleged women doing sex work. I’ve yet to meet a high class well paid sex worker who’s felt that they had the freedom to choose sex work, working under a pimp. I have met a lot of minority women, street involved youth, and child sex workers having a pimp.

I don’t think people really understand what a pimp does. I’m not even going to pretend I know everything a pimp does, but I did get a brief description of working for a pimp from an old roommate. People think it’s just a woman going up to some guy, saying she’ll work for him, and then quitting whenever she feels like it. You can offer to work for a pimp, but if you want to quit you have to save up enough money to buy yourself out, and on the low end of buying yourself out it costs $3000.00. I know they take you shopping for sex worker clothes, and I was at a bus stop when a pimp dropped off his two sex workers who seemed to be doing their first night. I think there might be some protection involved, but not much. Abuse definitely happens between a pimp and a sex worker.

I’ve never seen these blinged out pimps either. A friend saw one with a gold mercedes, but generally they seem to just be average low lifes fuelling drug addictions. I’m sure there’s exceptions like everything.

I guess what I’m wondering is why we’re so set on glorifying the capitalist exploitation of women and comparing it to consumer excess and fancy hub caps. We don’t have shows called things like “Sex Worker My Ride” or links saying “Turn your email account into a sex worker!” I don’t normally say sex workers are exploited by the way, because I don’t really believe that, but working for a pimp is exploitative.

And besides all of that, “pimp” is just a dumb word. It’s bookended by p’s and has an i and an m in between, what a silly silly word.

Parenting, Queer

Queer Parenting

I guess I’m at the age where my biological clock starts ticking. So far I’ve gotten away with pretending not to hear it. Shows like Nanny 911 and being around squalling babies on public transport turn me off from the idea just enough to breathe a sigh of relief. But then it kind of comes back.

Truthfully, I already have been a parent. My sister is severely developmentally delayed (I don’t know why they use the delayed word, my sister’s never going to catch up okay?) and my mum was a single parent. So there were lots of times I had to look after my sister. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to raise a tiny kid, I know how much work is really involved.

But I still do like the idea of parenting.

And then there’s this firm belief I have that more queer teenagers need a safe home if they get kicked out or have to run away or whatever. I don’t want to start a whole shelter, but I’m thinking it would be nice to parent a queer teenager, or two, or three. I mean, god, I lived through that, I’m sure I’d make a great parent for someone in that situation. I’d even home school them if they were having a hard time at school with bullies or whatever.

So now I’m looking around at how to become a long term foster parent. It’s kind of an interesting process. They’re especially looking for people willing to parent teenagers, and Aboriginal families. I’d rather devote my parenting skills to someone who could otherwise fall through the cracks.

Anyway, it’s piqued my curiousity.

Parenting, Queer

Lesbians And Gay Men Fucking: The Queer Community Secret

Well, an open secret really. Other queers know but we don’t tell straight people because it’s too confusing for them. It drives bisexuals crazy because they think we’re closeted bi’s. I’m sure that’s true some of the time. But I also think it’s just a common past time between opposite sex homos. Being butch I’ve had a bunch of cute gay boys have crushes on me over the years and try to get it on. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we just flirt. If you want to have sex with gay men, become a lesbian. I’m serious. It’s never going to be so serious that someone falls in love with someone who can’t reciprocate, but it’s still going to be a lot of fun. Sometimes ongoing relationships develop that baffle everyone. Sometimes we do it just because we’re both into leather and there isn’t anyone handy at the moment, or a hot Daddy Boy thing springs up. Sometimes we do it because we feel like having a heterosexual experiment. And sometimes it happens just because our genders are somehow complimentary in a very queer way.

Plus homos are much more inventive about sex. It’s not all about sticking it in, there’s different stuff going on. Gay men are just infinitely sexier than straight men, look at how many straight women fall for their gay friends. And lesbians make pretty good opposite sex partners for gay men because we know how to work having a dick and aren’t going to try and “change him”. I have a friend I used to romp with a little bit, never all the way but he made several suggestive come on lines about being butt fucked by me and he let me watch him piss. Ironically whenever femmes would try to get down and dirty with him he would get shocked and run away. I think he just had a hard on for butch women.

It’s definitely an interesting and curious phenomenon. Currently I have two huge crushes on some gay friends of mine, both of whom flame out in this totally adorable way. I know one of them I’m going to be getting down with, which should be entertaining. If I had a kid I would want one of them to be the sperm donor and have a father role if he wanted it.

On a side note I hate it when lesbians are unscrupulous towards their sperm donors. I’ve seen dykes either date a boy and dump him as soon as she’s knocked up (Sperm hunters I call them). I’ve also seen dykes have kids and cut out the donor from engaging in parenting even when the man’s all excited about being a dad, especially if he’s gay. That’s just mean and cruel. I think the cutest queer families are when a lesbian and a gay couple jointly care for a child. It’s sometimes funny to see a little girl or boy toddling around with four, five, or even six parents. The whole thing about children of same sex couples being deprived of having both a male and a female role model is rubbish.

Sex

Next to “Funbags” . . .

“Maidenhead” is the other female anatomy terminology I loathe, it is totally like, Shakespearian virgin porn. I can’t believe something as ridiculous as a hymen is so valued in our society. IT’S JUST A PIECE OF SKIN! And tons of girls lose it on their lonesome, it’s not always going to be there just because someone hasn’t had sex yet. How come there isn’t an equivalent male virgin term either? Like “Unenclosed man pole” or “soon to be sullied boy junk.”

Plus, I don’t understand the fetish for virgins. I guess it’s some kind of prowess thing, or maybe just a secretly handy way of mitigating performance anxiety by knowing you won’t be compared to anyone. You’ll always be the best lover someone ever had if you’re the ONLY lover someone ever had.

DTES, Politics, Race, Sex Worker Rights

A sense of responsibility

I have insider information on what really happened to the missing women which is now being entirely pinned on Pickton. Pickton was involved, I’m not at all implying he is innocent, far from it. I found out what really happened about four years ago, just as I was going crazy. It was so shocking that I actually wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the triggers which lead to my manic episode. I didn’t know what to do with this information, and I have a source who knows where files of documents outlining the events are held. A group of people were closely working with the one good cop on the force who was leaking information. I think they stopped because there was a serious threat of being murdered.

It’s a tricky story to break and I don’t know how to do it. If I tell you what I know I have no proof to back it up because I’m not the person holding those documents (and I don’t know where or who that person is either for safety reasons, though if I had to find them I could). I don’t live in Vancouver anymore, so I feel slightly safer from the possibility of being murdered to cover up the truth.

I think I figured out how to explain this without getting in to shit. I’m just going to tell you a story from when I lived in the Downtown Eastside.

I was walking along Hastings one day with a friend when we came across a poster carefully being preserved behind the glass of a business. I don’t remember the exact wording but the gist of it went like this.

“I am a survivor of the events going on at the Pickton Farm. I was abducted and taken to a club whose members contained Vancouver police and several high level government officals including Ujahl Dosangh. They told me they were going to do what they did to my friends and rape and kill me while filming it. This is a snuff film ring being aided and covered up by the government. I have no one I can go to to report what is going on and I am still in danger.”

Obviously she escaped, whoever she was. And obviously there are a number of people living in the Downtown Eastside who know what is going on. There are people who want to classify these atrocities as the work of one demented serial killer, when in fact from the rumours I hear it is the work of a cult committing genocide directed at Aboriginal women and children. For twenty years this has been going on before anything finally happened. Maybe they decided they had to dump Pickton as a fall guy and find another way to continue murdering aboriginal people for entertainment (and this is entertaining to these people).

For my own safety I will now do my disclaimer: I have not seen these documents but I heard this exact story three years before I came across this poster. I have nothing to do with any undercover group of people working to somehow bring this information to light, I could not tell you where or who they are because I simply don’t know. If you need me to prove it I can’t but I might be able to connect you with people who could. I am not invested in destroying the reputations of government officials or the Vancouver police force. I do not want this post to be referred to as irrefutable proof, if you must link to this post refer to it as a plausible conspiracy theory.

Ex Girlfriends, Humour, Popular Culture, Survivor Life

We’re all a little Kogepan some days

A girlfriend of mine turned me on to Kogepan, we used to go strolling through Sanrio based stores in Vancouver’s Chinatown so she could buy Kogepan related items. This is Kogepan:

Kogepan was supposed to be a high quality elite red bean bun but got burnt during his birth when he fell back into the oven and was forgotten in there for thirty minutes. Depressed and despondent because no one wanted to buy him, he went on a smoking and drinking binge (milk is like beer to him) until he hit bottom and went back to the bakery of his birth to prostelyze on the meaning of life.

Some of us who have been through some harsh moments in life can completely relate to the feelings of a little burnt bun, especially his struggle to understand his place in the world and deal with a society which has little care for a burnt bean bun. Anyone who has been marked by difference or a traumatic life changing event can understand the life of a Kogepan.

Here is his premiere:

Kogepan meets his drinking buddy, another Burnt Bun:

Kogepan traumatizes young pretty bread and then teaches the meaning of life. Then he gets them drunk:

There are ten Kogepan episodes in total, and probably you can find all of them on YouTube. If you’re having a rough day, watch some Kogepan!

Family, The Rez

Little Pine Christmas Dinner

My whole family trooped down to the Ramada the other day for our reservations Christmas Dinner. Someone really under estimated the number of Little Pine band members living in Saskatoon, because they had only five stressed out staff attending to the needs of over 200 people, all of whom are related to me in various ways. They kept having to bring more tables out, if you walked by the kitchen you could hear white people screaming in hysteria. So much for the vanishing race theory.

The elders were served first, so a bunch of folks in my generation lined up to make up plates for their grandparents. I was assigned to Gramma. I had no idea what she wanted, so I just took a bit of everything. I started to realize this was a really bad idea when her plate became a mound of various side dishes and room for the turkey, potatoes, and cranberry sauce turned into a small section the size of a playing card. Poor Gramma, I think it intimidated her but she spent a whole hour eating every single bite. Never under estimate a New Brunswick Scots woman.

One of the platters they were using tuned out the be a square mirror they just took off the wall.

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. That was kind of the case here. We did get a nice dinner, but we also had to listen to an hour of announcements about the progress of our Treaty Land Entitlement, the development of an urban Little Pine reserve here in Saskatoon, our financial situation with regards to our oil, gas, cattle, and casino investments. Someone stood up and told a very long story about the Little Pine baseball team and the one time in history we won a game. The highlight was when they told us we were getting a $75 Christmas bonus this year. There was practically a standing ovation.

Someone was stationed in the corner giving out treaty cards, but there was a run on them and then they ran out of Polaroid film.

People kept coming by shaking our hands and talking to my Grampa in Cree. It was always “This is so and so, his father is Grampa’s cousin,” or things like that. Everyone had some convoluted way of being related. My uncle’s on the band council so people kept talking to him about band politics or complaining to him about various things and telling him to change it.

I got to sit with my Auntie Pauline, which was nice, we told jokes. She’s Christopher’s mom, so it was nice to see her be able to just relax and laugh for a while. Everyone in the family is feeling pretty protective of her, Uncle Doug, and our cousins. People always think my dad is my Uncle Doug, I guess because they don’t often come across people who take on their mother’s last name.

My Dad is from Gordons reservation. I have never been there, but I hear they have a bigfoot in the area.

Bipolar, Health, Psychiatric Industry

Valproic Acid Toxicity, Oh Crumbs!

I called my nurse back finally about whatever she wanted to talk about. I was paranoid I was dying. I was kind of right about that. It turns out my Valproic Acid levels are terribly high and I’m heading into toxicity. Among the fun things that could happen to me are respiratory failure, coronary events, renal failure, coma, seizures, etc etc etc. Fuck me. Soooo, I’m going down to 1000mg a day instead of 1500mg. I thought this might happen because Lamictal ups Epival levels. And it also explains why I’ve felt kind of fucked recently. For one thing I’m starting to get totally nauseous and not being able to eat properly. I can’t sleep. I’m crabby as hell and I keep being mean to my mom. I feel tired and just generally run down.

Oh the joys of early onset of toxicity. Lucky for me in about three days of a lower dosage I should be fine. It’s 3:00. I’m at work. I’m confused and unable to concentrate. At least I know why now. Poop. I’m in one of those weird transitional states at the moment because I’m going through a long ongoing med change, Lamictal is going to be replacing my antidepressant, I’m down to 10mg of Celexa and I’m scared of stopping it because SSRI withdrawals are physically painful and fuck you up for a week. My last Cree class is tonight but I think I have to skip it because I really do feel like shit. Not even shit, like if shit took a shit. I need to sleep. I tried to call mom to come pick me up but she wasn’t around. Sadness! I have no bus fare either.

It’s weird being a chemically altered human being. According to Donna Haraway this makes me a cyborg. I kind of like that, Cyborg Thirza. Resistence is Futile. I will adapt.

Ex Girlfriends, Survivor Life

Give Me Life, Give Me Pain, Give Me Myself Again

**** !!!! This blog contains triggers specific to sexual assault survivors, if you need a support person or safe place please find one before reading. If you need to skip this blog there is some cuter lighter fare after this post. If you know me but don’t want to know this part of me please stop reading. !!!! ****

I have over 70 Tori Amos songs on my iPod. That means every 6th song that comes up is a Tori Amos song on shuffle. Sometimes it will be a run of Tori Amos songs. I first got turned on to her in high school when Cornflake Girl came out. Maybe it came out earlier but I didn’t buy the album until high school. Whatever. I continued to buy every album that came out since then. My favorite songs currently are Little Earthquakes, I Can’t See New York, Marys of The Sea, and Original Sinsuality. I love Icicle because I had never heard a song about a little girl discovering masturbation before and it’s so adorable, it reminds me of my childhood explorations. When my younger cousin Christopher died in an industrial accident this summer I listened to 1000 Oceans on repeat for hours and cried.

For some reason I have left Me and A Gun on my iPod, even though I can’t listen to it. It’s a great song, I’m not all “Bleh, don’t tell me your rape story, art isn’t for therapy!” I’m more like “I don’t want to think about my rape story right now.” If I listen to it I just start bawling. But I keep it, because, because I’m not sure. Sometimes I just feel better knowing I can hear it if I want, that it exists, that it’s out there.

I remember being freaked out about the possibility of one day being raped. I knew statistically it had a high probability of happening, and I was scared as hell of what it would be like to carry around that kind of trauma. And yeah, it happened. It was the fifth time I ever had anything sexual happen to me and it did fuck me up, until I met a really sweet girl who helped me heal, but I’ll get to her in a bit.

I’m not going to tell you the specific details of the event. You don’t need to know the date, the number of assailants, the genders of the assailants, the number of hours it went on for, what particular acts happened, or anything else like that. In fact if you ask me for the facts I won’t give them to you, even if you’re my best friend in the world. The only person I completely explained it to was a friend who also had a fairly similar assault and we were both supporting each other in the aftermath. I told very few people, partially because a lot of acquaintances knew the assailants and I didn’t feel safe disclosing the event. I did not go to the police and file a report, because I know that as an Aboriginal woman my charges would be dropped and I’ll just have told some white guy about the worst night of my life for no reason.

I will tell you what happened after. I went back to my apartment in the early early morning, I think I walked home from downtown, or maybe I waited somewhere until the first buses started running again. I felt exhausted and dirty and I just wanted to sleep. I got into my apartment and it was like jamais vu. I didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore, this apartment belonged to someone more innocent, someone who hadn’t been through that night, someone who puttered around learning to be a grownup and only worrying about trying to find storage space in a 300sq ft apartment. I went into the bathroom and had a bath, the longest hottest bath of my life. I used a ridiculous amount of soap and I probably shampooed and conditioned about four times. And after all that I still didn’t feel clean. Any sexual assault survivor will tell you this part of the story too, it’s just this automatic response we have immediately after.

It was morning but it just felt like the second half of a really long day. I crawled into bed and curled up in a ball and went to sleep. I don’t think I cried, but I might have. The sun coming through the windows was beautiful, but it didn’t make me feel anything. I was just numb.

I was celibate for a year after wards until my next lover, who turned out to be abusive and fucked me up more about my sexuality.

I was celibate for another year after that until I met the sweet girl who I’ll now tell you about. I’d actually met her when I first moved to Vancouver and I always had my eye on her, she was a super cutie and a Vancougar celebrity. It made sense for us to be together because I was a Vancougar celebrity too, at least in our particular subculture. We had a sweet summer romance. She was the kind of femme who thought nothing of necking in broad daylight at Scotiabank cashstops. Thinking back on it now I think we also clicked because we hurt the same way. We were both stone sometimes, I was really stone in the beginning actually, but she was safe enough to get silly and sexy and slappy. We said I love you a lot, because it was true.

What totally impressed me was that she took it in stride that I still had a fairly limited sexual history. She was patient and made sure I knew what she needed or wanted. She had fun doing things to me no one else had. She liked cuddling and being sweet and adorable and sometimes she would be bouncing up and down on the bed giggling in the morning yet could still do the bossy scary persona for those particular games perverts play. She’s still the only one I did breath play with, which shows you how much I trusted her.

Anyway, one day we were lounging around in bed and I don’t remember what we were talking about but I disclosed what happened. She said “oh,” in this way, I don’t know how to explain it. It was this one little word that had so much meaning in it. And she just held me and I cried and there was so much going on in this exchange of wordless communication about it. I healed so much in that one moment. I think because I finally told someone who was intimately involved with me. It wouldn’t have been the same at all if she was a friend or other platonic individual, it had to be someone I felt safe enough to be sexual with for that moment to happen. She was the best lover to disclose to. She just handled it so perfectly.

It was really nice to spend a few years after that cathartic moment with my girlfriend to be freed of rape trauma. It didn’t bother me as much, it still made me sad to think about but it wasn’t interfering with my sexuality anymore. And then I got traumatized about it again, only in a much more intense way. I spent six weeks in a Montreal psych ward, yes we all know this, I talk about it a lot, I rage about it a lot, but people don’t know the number one reason I hated the experience, hated the hospital, hated the people who sent me there, and spent three years after wards wanting to die.

It was a mixed ward. I was really pissed about this fact, because during my time there I spent every single day in the company of a patient who kept wanting to rape me. I tried to talk to staff about this problem only to be brushed off all the time as a silly paranoid loon. He got moved to another ward and I was relieved, until I was moved to the same ward, a tiny yellow affair for people who are dangerous or wanting to snuff it. (I was the latter) I think the only way I survived was by attaching myself to tough dudes who basically protected me. I had some female friends too, but I mostly spent time around guys who were benevolent and protective of me. They kept falling in love with me, but whatever.

There was one other triggering event which totally shocked me. It was my first night there, well, the first night I wasn’t handcuffed, restrained, and in chemical restraints. I was falling asleep when suddenly two orderlies just walked into my room with a flashlight and made me take a pill which turned out to be a meltable Zyprexa (because you can’t tongue it if it melts immediately). I was appalled that they would disregard something so obviously triggering to sexual assault survivors, especially for those people who were abused as children.

And then there was the four point restraints trigger, yeah, that was fucked too.

So essentially I still carry a lot of rape trauma with me. And ironically now it’s because I was put in a place that was supposed to “heal” me. I’m pretty sure I’m healing from the “healing” now, I’m doing a lot better than the first year After The Psych Ward. It’s bizarre, people expected me to come out of there and be cheery and grateful and “fixed”, and then were confused when I walked around like an angry zombie and screamed every time someone grabbed my wrist or suddenly touched or grabbed me.

But I still remember the lover who was there for me when I disclosed, I never really got to thank her. She probably was the main reason I have a healthy happy attitude about sex again.

The last time she and I had sex we listened to a Tori Amos album, From The Choirgirl Hotel. She was a boy, and it was really great. I didn’t know it would be the last time, I doubt she did either, but it was a nice note to go out on.

Tori Amos inspires me, and probably a lot of other survivors, because she’s spoken about her experience and yet has not let it define who she is. She shows survivors that there is life after rape, that people can heal, and that they can still find/create and be beauty afterwards.

She cofounded RAINN, Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. She is also the inspiration for the survivor run site Welcome To Barbados.

Maybe you’re wondering why I’m talking about this here. I guess I’m just tired of feeling secretive about it, because that implies shame and I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself. Those other fuckers can feel ashamed. I also recently read someone accused of rape who reclassified it as a grey area misunderstanding, and as someone who was a victim of what some might try to call a “grey area misunderstanding” I can honestly tell you rape has no fucking grey area.

I was going to post a video of Me and A Gun or Little Earthquakes, but Hey Jupiter seemed to fit better.