Yeah, I thought. Why should I care what anyone thinks? So I sold myself again only this time for $150.
Vanessa taught me things my mother never taught me. For starters, she taught me about feminine hygiene. After a client complained about me and I was utterly humiliated, Vanessa threw a sponge at me and taught me how to properly wash and groom myself. She was the most brazen and unashamed woman I’d ever met. Not only did she teach me about cleanliness but she taught me how to manipulate men in a variety of ways. I learned things like how to put a condom on a man without him ever knowing it. I learned how to fake an orgasm for men who wanted to be heroes.
“Oh yeah, baby I’m gonna cum.”
Yeah, right.
I learned how to barter sex for clothes, jewelry and furniture. Vanessa and I would regularly visit jewelry shops on Ventura Boulevard and make “deals” with the owners. I was never without rings on my fingers.
I also learned how to talk clients into giving me more money. Vanessa taught me how to stall sex acts and redirect men to talk about their fantasies until their hour was up and then they had to pay me more in order to have the actual sex. I used to brag endlessly that I could clean any man’s wallet out. And I was merciless. I wanted every last nickel and penny from those selfish needy pigs that required a prostitute for an hour. How pathetic.
What is more pathetic is that I got pregnant twice during the first fourteen months I was a prostitute. Though I was taught to be careful and use condoms, unfortunately I learned the hard way that condoms can and will break or leak. In fact, men oftentimes tried to break condoms on purpose. That’s how piggish they were. I learned a lot of hard lessons that first year of prostitution. I learned that losing a baby was extremely physically and emotionally painful. I was only eight weeks pregnant when I lost my first baby. I blamed myself and swore I would never do prostitution again. So I left Vanessa’s house and hitchhiked my way to downtown Los Angeles, where I found a job as a “taxi dancer” in a Hostess Club. Taxi dancing is really just a form of prostitution with clothes on but of course I didn’t know that. I thought there were men in this world who actually wanted to dance!
I sat on that couch every night at 8 o’clock waiting for some strange man to punch my time card so I could get paid. Lined up on a red sofa with other young blondes and brunettes, I felt like a piece of candy in a candy store.
“Pick me”, I thought as I smiled at each man as he walked through the door. I saw skinny ones, fat ones, and mostly old ones walk through that door each night.
One night an Asian man picked me and led me to a spot on the darkly lit dance floor where nobody else was around. He slipped a hundred-dollar bill into my hand and started rubbing himself against my thigh. I didn’t want him to ejaculate on my dress like the last guy had done so I suggested we go to a booth for more privacy. I learned real fast that men wanted hand jobs, not dances.
When we got to the booth I tried to stall him in order to get out of doing a sexual favor. He ended up liking me and offered me two hundred more dollars to have dinner with him. Of course I said yes and fell in love with his money right away. He told me his name was Tagi something Chang. It was all Chinese to me.
I went to dinner with Tagi the next night and we started dating professionally. I offered him a pretty face and companionship and he gave me money and gifts in exchange. It was the perfect love affair. I didn’t even have to have sex with him at first. It turned out the guy was more interested in his gambling addiction and loved to take me to the Bicycle club where I learned how to play Texas Hold ‘em while he played Pai Gow, a Chinese gambling game.
Whenever Tagi hit it big and was in a good mood he spent hundreds of dollars on me but when he had a bad night, he would do things like yell at me in the parking lot and threaten to kill people. I discovered he had a cocaine addiction on top of his drinking and gambling habits. As much as I wanted to dump him, I preferred to deal with a rich Chinese man with a temper rather than a bunch of slimy men who wanted to rub themselves on me every night at the Hostess Club. It never dawned on me to quit the sex industry completely because where could I go for help? All I knew how to do every single day was survive.
After a while Tagi demanded sex with me so one fateful night we ended up at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. He was in his usual bad mood so I tried to get the deed done as soon as possible. When we walked into the elegant room I remember wishing I was on my honeymoon instead. But my life was filled with shattered dreams so I quickly pushed that ridiculous notion out of my head and put sexy white panties on at Tagi’s request. Nodding in approval, he put two one hundred-dollar bills in my hand and pulled me onto the bed.
During the two whole minutes we had sex, the condom kept falling off and semen leaked all over me and inside of my body. I jumped off the bed and ran to the bathroom to try and clean myself out. Tagi asked me in his rough Chinese accent, “What’s wong?”
What’s wrong? Was he kidding? Everything was wrong! I didn’t want to get pregnant again from a prostitution act and give birth to some ugly Asian baby. I turned the bath water on and worked feverishly to get any and all bodily fluids off of me. But I had an awful feeling.
Three weeks later when my breasts were swollen and I didn’t start my period, I took a pregnancy test and it came back positive. I couldn’t believe it. I was so fuming mad at myself.
Questions raced through my mind. How could I let this happen? How am I going to work pregnant? Should I have an abortion? What will my parents say? I didn’t know what to do. There was no one to turn to for help. I looked down with tears in my eyes while rubbing my barely pregnant tummy.
I knew I couldn’t kill my baby. I still had some values from what I’d learned at church. I thought about giving the baby up for adoption but then I’d be left wondering every day if the baby was in a good home. I thought about my parents raising the baby but that thought quickly vanished. So, I made the choice to keep my baby and figure out a way to support us. I couldn’t go back to prostitution again. No way. And when I told Tagi he freaked out and threatened to take my baby away. I had to come up with a plan.
It didn’t take me long to find a Mexican strip club on the corner of Flower and Figueroa. I was only 18 years old but I had already stolen an I.D. from a girl back at the taxi club when I needed one for gambling. As I walked down the street from my hotel I saw a tall brick building with a flashing neon “TOPLESS” sign on it. I didn’t speak much Spanish but the owner didn’t seem to mind. He saw a young blonde with green eyes who was 21 years of age and hired me instantly.
At first I loved working at the Mexican strip club. When the Hispanic men saw I could dance like a female Michael Jackson, those dollar bills came flying at me. Unlike most American men, Hispanic men love to be entertained by a good dancer. I did the moonwalk, the splits, grabbed my crotch, and the whole enchilada. As the song “Beat it” came to an end I jumped up on the railing, ripped off my bikini top and threw it into the crowd.
“Olé!”
The Hispanic men loved me and called me La Huera Loca, the crazy blonde girl. I made so much money in that club that it was literally falling out of my bikini bottoms! When I went to the restroom to count my “propina” (tips), I sometimes found folded dollar bills with little bags of cocaine inside. I knew it was probably bad for the baby but just a little I thought. Exhausted from dancing eight hours a night and being pregnant, I rolled up a dollar bill and snorted a couple of lines.
And then I could really dance!
I danced my drug-induced heart out and hustled those hot Hispanic men for three solid months until I became “old meat”. Once a girl has worked in a strip club for a few months it’s common for men to get bored of her and demand new meat. That’s why girls in the sex industry move around so much. That’s why porn stars change their names so often. When a girl becomes old meat, we have to come up with new tricks. It’s just part of the game.
I had an itch for Hollywood so I started looking around on Melrose Bo
ulevard and found a topless club called, “The Last Call.” But this club was different than the Mexican club. First of all, the club had a full bar so that meant “drunk stupid men.” Secondly, the club had whiter clientele so that meant more competition for me. Sure enough I walked in and there were hot blondes and stunning brunettes who were prettier and more experienced than me. Not to mention, I was three months pregnant!
The owner was a little smarter than the last guy and questioned me about my so-called driver’s license but of course I lied and he bought my story. By now I was a practiced liar. That’s the “norm” for a sex worker. That’s why we’re called “hustlers.” That’s why one of the world’s most popular adult magazines is called, “Hustler”. Need I say more?
Meanwhile I worked up the guts to tell my parents about the upcoming arrival of their first grandchild. I thought they actually might rejoice a little and offer to help me but I was wrong. My mother’s cold response was, “Well, if anything happens to you I’m not raising that baby.” Her words crushed me. I needed my mother more than I ever did.
I hustled for four more months at the strip club until one night when the owner pulled me aside and told me it was time to go home. I guess my pink fluffy skirt wasn’t cutting it anymore. I applied for financial aid from the state of California and received barely enough to pay rent for the dumpy duplex I called home in Huntington Park. I was the only white girl who lived within a ten-mile radius in an all Hispanic neighborhood. It was much cheaper than Hollywood and anyway, I landed there by accident when I agreed to move in with a Mexican girl I met back at the Mexican bar. But I didn’t mind. I was La Huera Loca!
After I quit stripping to stay home and be a good wayward pregnant girl, I began preparing for the arrival of my new baby. A friend from the strip club who used to regularly come and visit me offered to buy me some things for the baby. When he showed up at my doorstep with several big shopping bags and a four-foot white teddy bear I was stunned. Nobody had shown me that kind of love in a long time. He also helped me put up baby themed wallpaper and bought me bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches whenever I had killer pregnancy cravings, which was about every two hours for six months. Regrettably, I gained 60 pounds thanks to those BLT sandwiches. I often wondered as I stood in front of the mirror how I would support the baby and me. Surely, I thought, my dancing days were over.
Fat, grouchy and tired of having some kid push on my guts for nine months, I went into labor on June 28, 1988. I was in labor for twenty-four hours before I finally delivered my daughter. I started out the day before at my parents’ house where I moaned and groaned like a big baby until my mother thought I might actually deliver one. She rushed me to French Hospital in downtown Los Angeles where the doctor calmly told me I was only a few centimeters dilated and to go back home. “What???” This guy was an idiot, I thought. Surely all the pain I was in meant the baby was about to pop out. But he insisted and my mother drove me all the way back to her home in Glendora where several hours later my bag of green water broke on her bed while my 12 year old little brother was sitting next to me. It grossed us both out.
We rushed back to the hospital where I writhed in pain another twelve hours until I finally heard the words, “Push!” and with every ounce of power I had inside of me, I pushed out a big beautiful eight pound and nine ounces baby girl. I pushed so hard that the blood vessels in my eyes popped and I had red eyes for two weeks. It was like someone had pulled off my face and stretched it over my body. The doctor was even amazed at my alien delivery. He had thought for sure that I would need a C-section. He warned me when I was pregnant to lay off the BLT’s but I didn’t listen.
While the doctor stitched up the huge tear in my birth canal, a nurse holding my daughter quickly bent her over to show me and then rushed her away. My daughter had barely opened her pretty brown eyes to look at me before she was gone. No one explained what was happening and I started to panic.
“What’s wrong with my daughter?” I demanded. “I want to hold her!”
“Please calm down, ma’am,” said a voice.
They rolled me away to my room where I had to wait several more hours before they let me visit her in the intensive care unit. It turned out the green water that broke was a sign that there was Meconium (baby poo) in my amniotic fluid. They further explained that my baby was experiencing breathing problems because she had inhaled some of the Meconium. My daughter also had Mongolian blue spots on the lower part of her body. When I saw them I immediately blamed myself and later confessed to the doctor that I snorted cocaine the first three months of pregnancy. But the doctor assured me that the spots weren’t due to my recreational drug use.
“Actually,” he said, “they are common in Asian babies. Is your father’s baby Asian?”
Pause.
“Yesss,” I replied in a low voice.
I rolled over to the side of the bed with gritted teeth. I really didn’t need him to remind me that she was half Asian while I was laying there bleeding and in pain. Every time I heard the word “Asian” I cringed at the thought of Tagi and how I prostituted myself with him.
Several hours later the nurse came in and asked me to sign my daughter’s birth certificate. Finally the moment I would announce to the world the beautiful name I had chosen for her. Tiffany Ann Moore, I wrote out perfectly and signed the rest until I got to the part where it said, “Father’s Name”. I stopped writing. There was no way I was going to put Tagi’s name on my daughter’s birth certificate after he threatened to take my baby away.
The nurse looked at me strangely and said, “You don’t know who your baby’s father is?” I felt like blurting out, “No, I do not know who the father is because I am dumb prostitute.”
But I held my tongue and simply replied, “No.” The nurse took the certificate and later when she gave it back to me next to Father’s Name it read, “Refused to State”. Great, I thought, now I’m an official single Mother.
After a traumatizing birth experience and coming home to an empty house, reality entered in and I understood how alone I really was. A 19 year old child raising a child, I had no idea what I was doing and no one to help me. My mother was too far away and the only friends I had were the Mexican ladies who lived next door who barely spoke any English.
“Hola, como estas?” I blurted out holding my new baby. The Mexican ladies loved my daughter Tiffany. They thought she was a little Mexican baby.
“No,” I replied. “She’s half Asian.”
“Ohhh,” they answered. If only I had been given a dollar for every time I said that and someone gave me a strange look.
After several months of struggling to be a single Mom and living off of the great state of California, it was finally time for me to go back to work. I called up my old boss at “The Last Call” and told him I had my baby and had lost over sixty pounds and he was thrilled to have me back. My old regulars were still there and showered me with gifts and money to celebrate my great return. I showed off pictures of Tiffany to customers while serving them drinks and giving them table dances. One man flipped out a twenty and asked me to squirt breast milk into his coffee. What a great idea, I thought! So I hustled breast milk squirts for a few months and made a killing since I was the only girl who could do it!
But after a while I became “old meat” again and had to move to another strip club to try and support Tiffany and me. The same vicious cycle repeated itself once again. But this time I swore to myself I would never do prostitution again.
Wait a minute, I said never again, didn’t I?
VI
Admit One
Hell’s Getaway
Chapter Six
It was a busy Friday night and the song, “Love Hurts,” was playing. A Latina girl was up on the stage dancing while I was over by the front door chatting with Mario, the cute new bouncer on duty. Suddenly, I heard a loud pop and Mario collapsed onto the ground. I threw my tray down and screamed, “Call 911!”
Within seconds people were crowde
d around Mario trying to stop the bleeding. Girls were screaming all around me.
“Shut up!” I yelled and shoved them into the dressing room. I looked in the mirror and there were streaks of blood on my top.
“Shit, what just happened?”
After a few minutes I ran back out to Mario and saw the paramedics trying to revive him. I prayed silently, “God, please save him.” Right before the gunshot Mario was telling me about the new baby his wife just had.
Another girl and I started picking up beer bottles like crazy and dumping ashtrays. I never moved so fast in my life.
Two hours later we got the news from the club manager that Mario was dead. I went home and sat in the dark while holding my bloody bikini top. Thoughts flooded my mind. I felt so bad for Mario and his family. The guy was only twenty-one years old. Then another thought crossed my mind.
It could have been me.
Suddenly an awful feeling gripped me that it was supposed to be me. Somebody out there was trying to kill me.
It could have been anyone who pulled that trigger and killed Mario. But I didn’t want to stick around and find out so I called up my old Madam, Vanessa, to try and get some “side” work while I looked for another club to dance at. I hated to go back to prostitution but Mario’s death was too close of a call for me.
Vanessa was delighted to hear my voice and have me come back to work for her. By then she had a lucrative escort agency and was running about 40 deals a day. So I bought a beeper and started pulling tricks all over Southern California making anywhere from $300 to $500 an hour, depending on what the client wanted. I drove all the way down to San Diego and back up to the San Fernando Valley. After a year of hustling men all over Southern California, I thought I was on top of my game.
Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn Page 4