Not Without Drugs

**

We just met,
I could cry.
He's a threat,
touched my thigh.
You can bet,
he gon' try.
They want wet,
I stay dry.
Ready set,
get me high.

**

Hi there.
This is a short poem/ rap I made while cooking dinner the other night. It's a bunch of words that rhyme but it feels super powerful to me. I encourage you to read to the end, I have lots of good things to say. Your feedback on this topic would LITERALLY make my day and bring me so much joy!

Some background:

This poem speaks about several topics on several levels.

1. Harassment
2. Getting by
3. Drug use/ prostitution

Getting by

After spending several months homeless without a phone, job, or way of bringing in real cash, I began to feel desperate. I remember thinking to myself,

I will do anything for some money right now...

This got me thinking even more. Would I really do anything to get money right now?
If I did this right this second, how much would I ask in return? Is it really worth the risk?

Harassment

• My entire life, between school work and home, I have been verbally and physically harassed more times than anyone can count. In grade school a boy pulled down both my pants and underwear and proceeded TO TRY AND CUT ME WITH A BROKEN BEER BOTTLE.
• Boys in middle school would stare at my chest, and in high school during class, boys would ask "will you sit on my lap?"
• At work, (over 10 years in the food service industry as a waitress) I've experienced predatory questions from older men, like "How old are you? You can't be more than 16," when I was OBVIOUSLY over the age of 21, random pats & squeezes on the thighs, hips and buttock, and people touching my body in any way without asking, etc.

Drug Use/ Prostitution

Homeless, I remember thinking that I wouldn't do anything resembling prostitution, but after peddling art and jewelry without a permit and begging on corners and at truck stops, I eventually turned to exotic dancing. Why, you might ask, would someone who's experienced sexual harassment enter an industry where nearly anything goes? Why, you might ask, didn't she just get a 'normal' job?

This was a time when I felt I had nowhere else to go. PLEASE try getting a job, and keeping it, without a reliable cell phone, access to internet, or a place to shower regularly. I would like to know the secret! At the time, I was lucky enough (one) to have the right type of body, and (two) to meet a girl who had been dancing for over 4 years, so she coached me a little bit. That small bit of advice ended up saving my life, several times.

Dancing is the closest legal way a person can get to prostitution outside of Amsterdam and Las Vegas, it's against all rules for the customer to remove any clothing. (Anywhere else people know that prostitution is legal??) At the club I worked in, some people actually would have sex with customers to make more money... In my eyes, there's nothing wrong with finding alternative ways of making that money, no matter what local laws say. [Selling handcrafted goods is equally as illegal as selling your time and parts of your body, imo]

This topic is for another day, but my point here is that the poem stemmed from the deep rooted human emotion and need in all of us, regardless of the type of flesh suit we call a body, or the experiences we dragged it though:

When we do things we don't want to do, it deteriorates our health, and I wanted to make a poem that embodied some emotional aspects of the shady side of money making, and what it might take for someone to actually get to that point.

Ready Set
get me high.

came from me not wanting to step into the restaurant/club, wait tables/go out onto the pole, not want to make it through the shift/give a private dance... without smoking some weed first.
Service/Entertainment, no matter how legal, is exhausting and I couldn't bring myself to do it sober.

• Ages 14-18 I LOVED waiting tables, my customers were nice, everyone helped me, and I made good money, cash money, for being a teen. After this, I began hating serving because of the harassment. Coworkers stopped helping each other, management stopped caring, and envy, greed, and downright bad attitude made restaurants a place no industry worker liked to be. Here, every position in the house would drink, do drugs, or smoke weed to get through their shifts. I began smoking weed, and drinking on the job, because if co-workers didn't kill me, the customers would, and I didn't want to go out sober!

• Every. Single. Person. at the club is drunk by the end of the night. a lot of dancers rely on weed, coke, or heroin to get themselves through the night, and I don't blame them. Dancers can make more money when their customers think they're drunk(er), managers of the clubs look the other way at illegal drug use, especially when customers are buying the dancers drinks left and right (profiting the club).

Ready Set
get me high.

I saw a commercial on the TV the other day, one of those anti-drug commercials. One with blank screen, a female voice and as she was talking her words appeared on the screen. She started off by saying

I'm not a prostitute.

...went on to say, in essence, that she never thought she would become [a prostitute] until she started using, and that heroin made her cross all the lines she never thought she would, just to get her fix.

In the event of drug related prostitution on the streets, this line refers to people often using drugs before they engage in the explicit act to either numb the pain, make the experience easy to forget, or what-have-you...

Regardless of our profession/hobby, I feel like our bodies will never respond in an appropriate manner when our heart and souls aren't into the activity, so drugs become necessary to numb the pain. That's the heart of this poem.

At the end of the day, I can't find a single thing worth sacrificing for my happiness or peace of mind. I choose now to only do what brings my heart joy, even if it means sleeping on the streets. No amount of money is worth the awful feelings of "what will I have to do to get this?" Instead, I think: What will I get to do today that will bring me joy? This method has not failed me yet!!

A post will be coming soon about my current lifestyle, including why/how I don't pay rent, what I do for fun, and what brings me money.

If you made it this far into my redundant rambling, thank you for reading! I would deeply appreciate your feedback AND perspectives on this "touchy topic".

• Have you ever crossed a line or personal boundary for something you felt you needed?
• Have you ever/ How did you feel when you broke a promise to yourself?
• Have you ever thought you needed something, were unable to attain it, but made it out alive in the end?

Love yourself, love others as you love yourself, and never give up.

PEACE, PEOPLE