PARADISE LOST, PARADOX FOUND: OR, DON’T GET CAUGHT SLIPPING IN THE BIG HYPOCRO-EASY

       Cha Cha

       ISSUE 5.4 (2011)

I fell in love with New Orleans simply by listening to Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade” at the very impressionable age of ten. The lyrics, about a Creole sex worker, eventually inspired my “Gitchy Gitchy Ya Ya Ya” wishes and “Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi” dreams. I was further lured to this charming Old World city by talking to other girls who claimed that they made a fortune there and accrued several very sweet sugar daddies.

Four months after the devastation of Katrina, I decided to venture into the Big Easy and live out my wishes and dreams. My wishes were granted for a hot minute but my dreams quickly turned into nightmares when I crossed paths with America’s most corrupt police force, the NOPD, and an archaic law from 1805, punishing “Crimes Against Nature.” Throw in a little racism, some good ol’ boy politics, and a justice system mired in its own bureaucratic mindlessness, and my nightmares went viral.

I have to admit that I fell in love with this city at first sight. But to love New Orleans, one has to know it in the context of all its idiosyncrasies and ironic histories. The study in contrasts and paradoxes is staggering. Only in the French Quarter can you walk into a bar and see a rich best-selling author toss a few back with his drinking buddy, an indigent street-level drug dealer who has been recently released from prison. In New Orleans one can only expect the unexpected. Maybe a brief tour of Big Easy history will elucidate why New Orleans is a paradise lost and a paradox found.

The French Quarter gained infamy first as the area where enslaved Africans awaited auction in Congo Square and later as the place where slavers and the gentry housed their mixed-race mistresses and their illegitimate children—often referred to by the derogatory terms “quadroon” and “octoroon.” These terms were supposed to indicate the proportion of African blood an individual was deemed to carry under the “one drop rule,” which ensured that any person who had an ancestor of African descent, regardless of white parentage, nevertheless remained enslaved. The slave masters housed their respectable white families on one side of town, while they quartered their mixed-race enslaved families on the other. The same women who were considered only good enough to work the fields and clean their homes were also good enough to be raped to produce mixed-race concubines for their pleasure.

These same women, the products of slavemaster rape, supplied the notorious “Quadroon Balls” which served Frenchmen wanting to meet available young women, whom they often sexually exploited. Historians and writers can romanticize and sanitize this era as much as they like, but time does not wash away the ugly truth. This class of women was more or less bred by a racist society to be mistresses for members of a gentry class who were trapped in loveless arranged marriages. Even though this travesty was masked by the “respectability” of mothers who attended the balls as chaperones and negotiated the terms of how these men would support their daughters, it was still tantamount to organized exploitation. In essence, both before and after the formal abolition of slavery, Louisiana society set up structures that reduced black women to enforced sexual availability, on a spectrum from enslaved women forced to perform sexual acts as well as labor, to nominally “free” women who society’s structures relegated to positions of sexual availability, to the pseudo-legitimacy of what were called “Left Handed Marriages.”

Now the irony and hypocrisy come into play when this same society that sanctioned “left handed marriages” also deploys an arcane law imposing harsh penalties for commission of “Crimes Against Nature,” which was amended in 1982 to add a provision imposing heavier penalties against anyone who solicits anal or oral sex for a fee than a person who is charged and convicted of prostitution would receive. Adding insult to injury, since 1992, once convicted under this law, an individual is labeled a “sex offender” and subject to all the goodies that come with that label: postcards that alert your neighbors that you are a convicted sex offender and a “Sex Offender” imprint on your state driver’s license or ID. Those most overwhelmingly singled out for charges for the “offense” of soliciting a “Crime Against Nature” are African American women, including transgender women.

Perhaps the worst consequences are the difficulties resulting from having to show your ID with the “sex offender” label on it to prospective landlords and employers, and restrictions on your ability to do something as simple as drop your children off at school or obtain quality childcare for them. And what if another natural disaster is imminent and you need to go to a shelter? Guess what? You won’t be able to! That’s right. You will have to fend for yourself with the “real” sex offenders, pedophiles, and people who ostensibly have done serious harm. Getting a decent job is out of the question, so that means you will have to do whatever it takes to survive, i.e. selling sex. This usually means more arrests for solicitation and eventually, with enough “Crimes Against Nature” convictions and the wrong judge, you could face a sentence of five to twenty years in prison simply for asking the wrong person, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” The really disheartening part is that many of the victims of this law are women with children.

I got caught in this nightmare by working for an escort service. One night the owner and I went on an outcall to an uber luxury hotel on Bourbon St., which unbeknownst to us was also NOPD vice central. The undercover cop wanted Shannon1 and I to do each other while he watched. We agreed, and his buddies came out of the woodworks and arrested us. We posted bond and flew back to our respective hometowns. I had a family emergency so I paid a prominent but unscrupulous New Orleans attorney to get me a continuance for a later date. He told me I was in the clear, but warned me not to come back to the Big Easy. I thought this was strange but didn’t give it another thought.

I continued my “Escort Tours” to other cities, where I had a few run-ins with local police but always prevailed against criminal charges. Never at any time did a warrant from the NOPD rear its ugly head. This gave me the courage to return and to continue living out my “Lady Marmalade” fantasy. Hey, what can I say? I’m an eternal optimist. Besides, I had plans to start a clothing line and eventually to open up a Cajun/Caribbean fusion restaurant—and what better place to do so than in one of the major culinary capitals of the country?

However the turn of events that occurred after my return took me on a legal odyssey that not only put my fashion and culinary plans on hold, but also led me down a different path; a path of genuine advocacy and activism against a justice system gone awry. Not long after my return, I got arrested in another sting and the warrant popped up. Languishing and awaiting trial in the “Tents,” a makeshift detention facility for the Orleans Parish Prison constructed right after Hurricane Katrina, I began listening intently to the stories of other inmates.

An ugly and disturbing pattern began to emerge. The majority of those incarcerated were black and impoverished, and also unaware of their constitutional rights. Their attitudes toward the system were totally fatalistic. They believed this was their due and that nothing could be done to alleviate their situation. The prevalent attitude was “They are going to do what they want to do!”

A few freely admitted to selling drugs or stealing. The vast majority, however, were basically fodder for the gristmill because the police had to meet their “arrest quotas” to create the illusion that they are cleaning up the streets. A lot of them had been arrested either for “loitering for prostitution” (LFP) or “trespassing.” Both of these are “nuisance” laws and they leave too much discretion for overzealous and corrupt police to abuse their authority (which most do). You can end up in jail while walking to the store if you happen to have a prior arrest record of solicitation and run into a police officer with a quota to meet.

I was charged with crimes against nature, and could have faced, among other things, years of paying hundreds of dollars to annually register as a sex offender, and to mail postcards to my neighbors. However, I put up a fight and did not plead guilty to this charge, and instead ended up pleading to a misdemeanor. I believe that I avoided the felony charge in part because the particular judge to whom my case was assigned happens to hate the crimes against nature charge and apparently throws it out any time it comes up in his courtroom.

My troubles with NOLA’s unjust criminal system did not end there, however, and I soon was struggling directly against the “Loitering for Prostitution” statute, which is so often used by abusive police to target people of color. I placed an escort ad on Craigslist.com and the same undercover police officer that had arrested me two years ago, Sgt. Anthony Baker, invited me to come back to the same hotel for another rendezvous. I declined. Two weeks later, after partying in the Quarter, I was standing on the corner waiting for a cab to take me to the airport. A police cruiser drove past me and then backed up. Two police officers jumped out and handcuffed me without any explanation. When I arrived at the Royal Street police station three minutes later I asked Sgt. Baker why I had been subject to this baseless and unlawful arrest and he replied that it was “for advertising on the Internet.”

I requested that he please show me that charge and the statutes. He ignored me. I was once again being confronted with the familiar “Loitering for Prostitution” charge. My only saving grace (besides God) were two very altruistic, diligent, and noble public defenders originally from New York—Thomas Nosewicz and Grania O’Neill. Without their intervention, I might still be caught up in that system. I immediately called Tom after I got booked and he got me released without bail.

Tom’s and Grania’s strategy was to put the law itself on trial. We hoped through the trial to challenge the entire LFP statute. Two months and two continuances later, I got the good news/bad news call from Tom. The district attorney had decided to drop the LFP charge, but we did not get to challenge the constitutionality of the statute. This meant that the NOPD would continue to use the LFP as a tool to harass innocent citizens and effect bogus arrests.

The city attorney joked that if this law was struck down, they would have to step up arrests for marijuana possession to make up for the shortfall for the revenues they got from the fines levied on the LFP arrests. This sinister revelation hit me hard and everything I heard in jail and experienced firsthand led me to a disgusting conclusion: what fuels the majority of the arrests in New Orleans is tantamount to a corrupt system of extortion that targets poor black citizens and relies on constitutionally unsound laws in order to conduct illegitimate arrests. Putting impoverished New Orleans residents in the untenable position of having to either pay a fine or remain in jail sounds like a piss-poor way for the city to generate revenue. Either way, the city profits and individual citizens lose.

In between my bogus arrests I began to align myself with several citizens’ rights advocacy groups such as Critical Resistance, Women With A Vision, and Brotherhood Inc. I also got the word out to the other girls (both cisgender and trans) and told them to call Tom and Grania instead of pleading guilty to the LFP charge so that we would have another chance to challenge the law.

I also did public speaking engagements for Left Turn magazine, a very important force in the community that is working toward getting the “Crimes Against Nature” law repealed. They are not alone. Deon Haywood, founder of Women With a Vision, a great organization that assists sex workers and low-income women, is also extremely instrumental in exposing and eradicating this biased and degrading law, which punishes impoverished women, and particularly trans women, of color. She is now involved with a crack legal team of civil rights attorneys and activists imported from New York. I spoke with her recently and, though she was not able to divulge much because of the risk of jeopardizing their hard work, she did say they were making headway. How encouraging!2

I no longer live in New Orleans, but I still adore it. It has taught me a lot and made me stronger and wiser. I have also met people whom I will treasure and appreciate forever. It is not because of all I’ve been through with the police. Never that! Hey, I’m a tough nut to crack and I love a good fight—especially when it is about righting a wrong or helping those who cannot help themselves. I now live in Houston, Texas, where there are many opportunities for launching my fashion career. I have also made many new friends and I am about to make some new enemies because I am aligning myself with struggles here to stop injustices that I see impacting the transgender population (especially African American transgender people). I plan to be wherever injustice is and, in between my battles, I hope to get Saphires Sealiscious (my restaurant) and Kiss My “A” (my clothing line) off the ground. The “A” is open for interpretation: Attitude, Audacity, Ass. With me, it is all three.

CHA CHA wrote “Paradise Lost, Paradox Found,” which was published in $pread, Issue 5.4.

1. Not her actual name.

2. Editors’ Update—As a result of Women With A Vision’s efforts, a legal team including Center for Constitutional Rights, police misconduct attorney Andrea Ritchie, and the Law Clinic of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law filed a federal lawsuit in February challenging the Crimes Against Nature Law as unconstitutional.