25

After the incident with Armando, I was amazed that my manager gave me permission to take the clients on an outing to Muir Woods. We traveled across the Golden Gate Bridge in the company van one clear sunny day to breathe in the fresh forest air. The mood was good, the bus alive with laughter, a few clients performed party pieces—one sang a song, another recited a poem, they told jokes and even played Charades, as much as as they could while buckled in. None of these people were interested in the other me. Dances, handjobs, and tricks were not on the agenda, and the clubs were a million miles away—I was determined for us all to have a memorable day. We did.

I panicked, running around the place like a mad woman, screaming their names. I’d round up a couple of them and go look for more, come back to the bus, and the first ones would be gone again. Finally I locked them into the bus one by one, from which they shouted names out the windows and pointed me this way and that, adding to the general confusion. It took two and a half hours to round them all up.

I drove back to Larkin Street a lighter shade of green than that morning. It was quiet in the back, where they sat with their unopened sack lunches on their laps.

I was livid again, still livid, but at myself, always at myself, for not having hacked my way to an alternative existence, for not having the guts, for not having the luck. I’ll go back to school and finish my degree, I thought. That’ll be my ticket out. Has to be. Will it be my ticket out? I knew strippers with degrees. Hell, I knew one stripper with a Ph D. It will be different for me, I thought, a one-way ticket.

The problem—well, problem number one—was that I owed Mills College seven thousand, eight hundred bucks from years earlier when I’d dropped out of school to pursue my meth habit. I spend money like a wino on payday. I’m organically irresponsible and impulsive, and stripper money had a different texture. It slipped through my hands like sugar. I spent it faster than I made it. My work ethic lacked luster. I’d wait until I was flat broke to go into work because I liked the desperate pressure of hustling. The more afraid I was, the faster I hustled. Sink or Swim. I knew I couldn’t save money on my own and I needed help. I called an accountant friend, Megan.

“Can I hire you to help me save money?” I asked her.

For the next year, Megan showed up at every club I worked about 1:00 a.m. to collect a stack of dough, about three hundred bucks, that she invested into a mutual fund I didn’t have access to. Within a year, I’d saved more than enough cash to pay the Mills bill. I even went back and graduated, but the more I wanted to build a life that didn’t involve handjobs or stripping, the more alluring was the pull to do exactly that.

Mom left so many voicemails. They all said the same thing: “I’m so proud of you, that you’re finally doing something that makes a difference. Call me when you can.”