Out of Order

April 11, 1990: A potpourri of men’s faces tends to fade into one in a prostitute's mind.

I want those words on my tomb stone. I'm not ashamed that I sell my body for money. It's a job. Nothing more. Perform a service get paid, that's all there is to it.

I've come a long way. There's a lot to tell, so I will try to make this quick.

Age five, my dad leaves me and my mom. I don't really remember him so it never bothered me all that much. My mother never talked about him to me. It was like he never existed.

Age nine, I attended a strict catholic school. I had the uniform and everything. My still unmarried mothers used to French braid my hair every morning. That's when she actually cared. I walked five blocks to get to my school, "It's Good exercise, Holly." My mother used to say. So one day when my class was supposed to go on a field trip to the zoo, I left my permission slip at home. Even then I was forgetful. "Stay with Father Henry." My nun said. At first, everything was fine Father Henry stayed in the classroom with me and we just talked. He brought up that his sister is having a baby, and then asked me if I knew how babies were made. I answered no and asked him how they were made. He said that he couldn’t really tell me, no, he had to show me. Innocent and young I just let him lead me into his office and lock the door. He molested me and when he was done he told me that if I didn’t tell anyone he would give me a quarter for the gum ball machine. He took my virginity and in return gave me twenty five cents.

Age thirteen, my mother marries a man named Donald. I don’t know much about him, other than he liked to drink...a lot. Donald was a nasty drunk. He never took it out on my mother though; no he liked to take his anger out on me. Cigarette burns, black eyes, deep cuts. It's not like I could fight back. A rail thin teenage girl vs. a built, hundred and eighty pound forty year old man who's 5'9...there's no competition. I usually covered the marks he left on me with concealer. After a while he got bored of just beating me up. Now he was more into raping me. It happened at least three times a week. One night was more memorable then the others. My mother happened to walk in on him doing this to me. I screamed out to her for help. Donald smacked me against the face and i started crying. My mother simply ignored this and closed the door, like nothing had happened. The next day I asked her if she was going to leave Donald. She said that she was ashamed of me and never to ask her that again.

Age fifteen, I get pregnant. Donald never used condoms, big surprise there. My mother said that if I got an abortion I might as well move out. I wasn’t going to have a baby that Donald could abuse. That would be like me indirectly abusing my own child. No, that was not happening. I got the abortion and moved out.

Age seventeen, I blow guys for thirty dollars a pop. It wasn’t much but it was enough to get me food and shelter. This evolved into blow jobs, hand jobs, rim jobs. I started raising my prices and I dyed my naturally mousy brown hair platinum blond. Turned my small A cups to double D's. Then got some rhinoplasty. I saw Donald again when I was at a grocery store near my old house. He took one look at me and said I was an ugly whore and I looked disgusting.

This brings us to now. I am an eighteen year old prostitute. I’m fucked up. Emotionally, physically, mentally. Whatever. You can’t change what’s already happened. All of the faces just fade into one.

January 8, 1992: I stared hopelessly into my mug of peppermint tea, sipping once every five minutes. Waiting. Waiting for him. Waiting for the string of brass bells attached to the glass door to jangle like they did the first time he had come in here. Waiting for him to come and sit at my booth and order for both us. Waiting for the waitress to ask her usual "Is all this food for you?" Waiting for my usual response of my shaking my head and grabbing his hand. Just, waiting.

I hadn't seen him in days. He would almost always be there when I least expected it. Now, he was gone. No goodbye, no note. I asked around and people said they had no idea. I was so distracted by it that I had forgotten to actually go out and do my job. Today and yesterday and the day before. I really didn't have to worry about paying rent. I just had to sleep with my land lord every now and again.

So that just left a lot of time for waiting. And moping, crying when no one was around. Not eating. With the money I had in my pocket right now I could either buy five more cups of tea or a hamburger. I'm going with the tea. He was the one keeping me going. Take him away and you take away my will to live. God, even to me that sounds like pure bullshit.

June 27, 1990: The first week of our relationship, I would see him everyday at my door. We would sit at the concrete steps of my apartment. I told him about my life, never mentioning my actual profession. He listened, mostly keeping to himself. Not that I minded.

Some bitch with an out of date track suit walking by gave us a disgusted look. I assumed it was because I was white and he was Hispanic. So I flipped her off when her back was turned. "You would think people would get used to fact that interracial couples exist in this day and age.' I said absent mindlessly. Not realizing that I had called us a couple until the words were already out of my mouth. If it did make him uncomfortable, he didn't mention it.

I liked to think that he was fond of the fact that I called us a couple so early in our relationship. But who knows what went threw that boys mind. He was never a man of many words.

When he had first disappeared with out saying anything to me, I tried not to obsess over it. I did not want to be one of those girls that breaks down every time there boyfriend isn't by their side. Overtime, he turned me into one of those girls. I hated that.

People had always had a way of changing me without much effort. Like when I was a big-nosed, flat chested brunette in high school one of my burn out friends named Mark killed what was left of my self confidence. We were stoned, fooling around when all of a sudden he stopped and said 'You know the only reason I ever hung out with you was to get into your pants.'

I shouldn't of let what I already knew bother me, but it did. That comment picked at me for the next month. Echoing in my head. I told his girlfriend that he had cheated on her as revenge. Big mistake, there. Instead of going after her lieing boyfriend like I thought she would, she ended up socking me in the face. I forgot the point to this story. But I do remember waking up in the nurses office with Mark standing over me saying "Well, that's karma."

March 23, 1989: I've taken too many dissociatives. Popping twenty four Dramamines a day when I was a freshman. I would hear voices and see things that weren't there. Thinking I could put my hand threw walls and make things levitate. I would have vivid nightmares, wake up and run around my house looking for the bizarre things I had dreamt about. Polar bears with fairy wings and man eating bookshelves.

Experimenting with hallucinogen's was fun, at times. Occasionally I would have a really nice trip. Never doing anything too addictive. But dissociatives were just easier to get a hold of. Your not going to find weed, shrooms, and acid in your mother's medicine cabinet. Nyquil and Dramamine however, they were almost always there. Mainly because I always kept them stocked up but no one ever noticed. Oh, their just over the counter drugs. Their supposed to be there.

I never touched Donald's liquor. Maybe if I wanted to get strangled and severely beaten. Hell, something has to get me away from this misery of a life they call reality. Overdosing never really crossed my mind. If it does I just liked to think of it as a plus. Trip out and then just leave your body. Leave your abusive family. Leave the school where you had given up trying since the second grade. Leave it all behind.

March 25, 1989: Fuck me. I've really done it now. I've taken three packs of Dramamine. Three times twelve, however much that is. I can't do math. I haven't done this since high school but reminiscing made me want to try it again.

Now my vision's so blurry it feels as though I can only see TV static. It's been like this for six hours. I'm going to die. I can feel it. They say life flashes before your eyes, well I am seeing someones life but it isn't my own. No, this person's life is charmed. This person rides dragons until sunset. Eats handmade peanut brittle by the pound. Their best friend is the queen of England and she let's them borrow her jewels.

I'm in a dream state. No one can wake me. Not that anyone would try. My mind is going too slow, my thoughts too fast. I twitch uncontrollably. I can taste death.

July 15, 1990: I can sleep with everyone but my own boyfriend...I mean we've kissed. Nothing horizontal. Every time I think we might go farther than first base, he ditches. That makes me want him so much more. Something about him leaving me hanging. Fucking tease.
I am falling for a guy I barely know. He doesn't tell me about his childhood or where he's from. Has this whole mystique that he doesn't wanna blow or something. I would think he isn't interested but I truly believe he is. Amazing, I haven't believed in man kind for the longest time. But I guess this isn't man kind. It's more like man period.

September 20, 1990: I see him on the streets and call out his name. No reply. I smell him on my bedsheets and sometimes I catch him sneaking into my room late at night. He cuddles next to me while I pretend to be asleep. The next morning he's gone.

He should have his own disappearing act. Whenever I need him most he's not there. I have no way to contact him. He has no phone, no address. I used to think he was homeless but now I know he just doesn't want to tell me where he lives. Yet I still believe. Denial.

January 31, 1992: It's that time of the month again. No, I'm not talking about my fucking menstruation. Time to pay rent. And by pay rent I mean give my land lord a blow job and then let him do whatever he wants with me for the next hour and a half.

By the end he looked me up and down and said: "God, Holly you need to put on some weight. You look like cracked out white trash." I replied with "Good to know, Jason. Really, that's exactly what I needed right now." He shrugged and flipped on the TV. I showed myself out.

February 3, 1992: I went to my dealer, Rob, today. Got a dime bag. Why the sudden urge to get baked? First of all, it's way more fun than I remember. Second of all, I haven't seen you know who in weeks. Not once. I feel so needy thinking about him constantly. I had to have a break.

I dug out my old pipe from a shoe box underneath my bed. There was also some forgotten hash in there. I smoked that too. It took less than five minutes for all this to kick in. When it did, it hit me like a smoky train. I laid on my bed staring at the ceiling, finally thinking about getting something to eat.

Hours later, a cardboard pizza box stared at me from the floor of my bedroom. Grease stained and empty. I can't believe I ate the whole thing. I haven't eaten like that in god knows how long. I guess the weight I gained from it will be good for my currently uneven frame. If I got any skinnier I think my implants would cause me to snap at the waist.

At least then I'd be able to quit my day job. Join the circus, be apart of the freak show. "Behold the amazing halved woman!" They could put my legs on display in a glass case next to me. Or maybe get rid of my legs all together and attach a giant fish fin to my waist. "Holly, queen of mermaids! Beauty of the sea!" That'll be the day.

December 17, 1989: This is how almost all the conversations go with my customers when they see the obviously self inflicted bruises on my wrists.

"What happened there?"

"I fell down a flight of stairs."

"Well, that's not good."

I'm always surprised when they don't follow it up with "Were you walking on your wrists?" But I guess their just stupid enough to accept my bullshit answer. That or they just don't want to know what it's really from.

I've been wrist banging since I was sixteen. It's a cutting alternative. Blood freaks me out. For me, emotional and physical pain go hand in hand. When short of one, you have to pick up the slack of the other. That's the why of how I started or the how of why I started.

The first time I did it was definitely the worst. I hit my wrists so hard against my bedroom walls that I couldn't pick anything up for the next three days in a row. My feelings exploded from where I had bottled them up for so long, I couldn't numb them with drugs. I had to lash out. Lash out on myself. I hit them against that poor, plaster wall with all the strength I could muster from every muscle in my body. Slam! Slam! Slam! I would get so into it I would start panting and sweating. After a session of this my wrist bones were so brittle, you could break them by simply blowing. Like the candles on a birthday cake. Make a wish. Crack.

February 15, 1992: I take Valium. I take Valium thirty six times. I need to take as much as it takes to forget why I'm taking them. And if you think I'm doing this to get attention, you would be wrong. There is no one to get attention from. Not my neighbors, not my land lord, no one. The police aren't going to come bursting through the door to rescue me. There isn't a soul in this world who has the energy to pick up the phone and make a suicide call to the cops about the self harming prostitute living in apartment 15B.

February 17, 1992: I'm still alive. I slept through a few days and I look dead, but I'm still technically living. Like a bad guy in a cartoon that dies in every episode, but by some miracle shows up completely unharmed the next week. Fucking indestructible. What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger? Doubt it.

March 28, 1989: I am a broken record. Swallow Dramamine, fuck a stranger, repeat. Sometimes, mid-session, I begin to hallucinate. I start gasping for air and not in a "Oh, I'm enjoying this as much as you are!" kind of way. I see this monstrous face above me. Like a demon. It's evil. There aren't words to describe it. Just my brain's own torture device against itself. The random guy will be thrusting, you know, doing his thing when the face just appears. Once, I actually started seizing. I think it was an attempt to scream, but I overexerted myself. The guy, Joe? John? Joe John? Thought I was climaxing. But I wasn't. I never did. Not when they paid me. Not when I knew I was a distraction from three kids, a wife, and a presentation at Joe John's dead end cubicle job.

June 6, 1990: "'I'm here to make you stop using, to make you realize there are other things that can make you happy." Said the sophomore guidance counselor, Mr.Rado. I remember sitting in his forest green and beige interiored office. For some reason the meaningless conversation we had stayed in my mind for years after. He thought of himself as a fatherly figure to the misfit students of our high school. I thought of him as the guy wasting my time by saying stuff I could care less about.

"How do you feel when you get high?" He asked me, his caring eyes looking into my bored ones.

"I don't know." I replied.

I did know. But I couldn't really put it into words, I didn't want to. Somethings are better left unsaid. Not that I would ever tell him that.

"I'm here to help you, Holly. I understand what your going through."

No, you don't.

"I was a kid once too, I can imagine how hard life is for you right now.

No, you can't.

"But your future is bright, believe me. I will make sure you get into a good college."

No, you won't.

"I just want you to stop harming that bright brain of yours. So, please, promise me that you will never use drugs again."

"I promise, Mr.Rado. I will never do it again."

I went straight from his office to the girl's bathroom. Lighting up a joint, I blew all the smoke out the small open window. The thoughts of Mr.Rado patting me on the back and saying "I'm really proud of you." Went out the window too. Putting my mind at ease.