I left school and I moved to Marrick Street, away from, my parents who have a beautiful home in the suburbs. Growing up I had everything I needed, most of what I wanted. And I left to live in a rooming house on Merrick Street, where I’m sharing a bathroom with 15 other people, mostly drug addicted. But I can finally party and live the way I want. I met a guy and he turned me out. He’s out here still. He was really abusive, but I didn’t stay with him that long. I hung out with him a couple weeks before he told me he was a pimp. He told me I was already doing it for free. All that made sense to me. I was already doing it. I already didn’t give a shit about myself or my body. I was already having sex. I had already been molested. He brought me to another girl and he said go with her. I got in the car. We did this guy and it didn’t seem that bad and then I got out of the car with a couple dollars. I started doing this more and one day I propositioned a police officer down on Murray Ave. I got my name in the paper and my parents and everybody was devastated. They put it all in the paper. I stayed the night in jail and I remember coming out of court and seeing my mother’s face and I just knew when I got out I didn’t want to keep doing that to my family so I ended up going to Boston.

I went to Boston in the combat zone, and here I am coming from the suburbs. I’m talking about Cadillac’s and pimps in gold. The lights. The cars. Girls are wearing mint coats, and wigs and jewelry. It was something you would literally see on TV. It was like the old 42nd street area in New York City. It was the whole street. Not just street, there were many streets. The combat zone was probably a 20 square block area, maybe more than that. This would be a strip club, this would be a dirty video store, this was an arcade where girls danced. The streets were lined with this and the traffic would just be johns. The girls would lean into the windows and they would actually lift their feet; the cars were moving so slow that you could just hang in the window. We would try to pick pockets while we were like “Hey baby.” The streets were paved with this kind of stuff. To make a thousand dollars worth is nothing in those days and quick. I got with another pimp right away. He put me in a rooming house there and the owner of the rooming house was another pimp.

I wasn’t with him for a minute before I got with the guy who owned the house. He owned an autobody shop and owned real estate. He was all about business. Never got high. Was against the drugs. I had to hide getting high from him because he would’ve whipped my ass for getting high. Those are the kind of things I got my ass whipped for: getting high, doing stupid shit with money, being out of place, disrespecting, every being around another pimp, or trying to be around my wife in laws. In a lot of ways I thank god I was with a guy like this. I got my ass kicked a lot, but not for stuff that a lot of girls got to instill the fear and stuff they did as part of coercion that isolation. He used to tell me go to school during the day, work at night, because you can’t do this forever. I mean if I had to be, and I hate to say this, but if I had to be with a pimp, this was the pimp to be with.