Cat

     I sipped my latte and felt a gravitational pull from the kid as if he were a star in a neighboring galaxy, scattering light through the dark matter of his punishment—both of us held captive in time’s prison; both of us vibrating with scorn.           

     My lover and I were fighting too. My scrambled eggs remained untouched. “I don’t have much time,” I insisted. Tears dropped into my latte. My cycles were erratic lately: Twenty-eight days to sixteen, then back to twenty-eight. 

     “But I’m not ready,” he said.

     We met at forty, already selfish and driven. We talked about having a family, but what I’m actually doing has nothing to do with strollers or binkies. I do something resembling teaching writing to teenagers (which looks like board games, chocolate and bribery some days). I edit a literary journal and write like a motherfucker. I love showing my students which “there” is correct. I love helping them circle intransitive verbs, prepositional phrases and adjectives. I love reading stacks of poetry from an extra quiet boy who skips class but shows up to mine to journal. My students are young enough to see how words can transform their lives—the way they’ve transformed my life. I want to pass that tool on, but time is speeding up and the possibility of starting a family is drifting away from me.

Transmissions LA

     For many years, I’ve felt like I’ve missed the boat. The fantasy looks like this: I’m waving from the island, sporting a plastic lei, with a fist full of dreams scribbled on post-it notes while onlookers wave from the dream yacht, sipping cocktails and enjoying their soaring success. It’ s feeling—not fact. But it’s convincing.

Gene stared at his bacon, and then frowned at my shaking hand.

“Let’s go,” I said, surprised by an impulse to sprint. The timeout kid was released from his mother with a swat on his arm. I wanted to slap her face, and then steal her boy.

“I’m not finished.” Gene spooned the remainder of his waffle into his mouth.

   Today is also Mother’s day and I’ll never stop missing her.  I’m scared that the mom boat is one that I’ll never board and I’m running out of time.  Maybe it’s best that I not board that boat at all.  I want to bend time and wrap it around me, not chase it down and choke it.

     I was an anxious, worried kid who pulled my hair out from the root and bit my nails to bloody stumps. Later, I became a cheek biter, a lip chewer and a face picker. Prone to escapism, space always appealed to me. I sought the fastest way out of my skin which was gross sugar until later, when I found nose drugs. As a kid in the eighties, I made up corny dance routines to Blondie songs and waved my arms around like the girls I worshipped on “Fame.” I pranced after my haggard working mother around the house while she was getting ready for work. “Mom, watch this!” I danced for her, commanding attention. I jiggled and jumped and whipped my hair around wildly. My fists shot up in the air. “Look!” She watched with bored amusement as I spazzed-out and giggled to the rhythm. I grinned in the glow of her gaze—happy and frenzied.  I was destined for laps across America, aching to be seen. I poured everything into it, danced for decades and used my body to race time. “Don’t ever feel like you have to have kids,” Mom told me. But I do.

Fuck Me

In these rooms under yellow florescent lights and shitty coffee, I’m all lit up sober. I sit still in a metal chair that digs into my ass and stabs my shoulder blades. I’m content in this filthy Alano club where I watch the clock.

     Next to me, a pudgy woman knits orange yarn; her gold needles do ballet with her fingers.  Next to her are felons, winos, hookers, waitresses, electricians, writers, attorneys and nannies. We’re jittery, haunted and sad, picking away at our skins until we’re human again. The familiar smell of ashtrays and B.O. coats me in a familiar stench. I tuck my hands under my thighs to prevent from peeling my hangnails. A guy with a nose job stands erect at a podium. He talks about shooting millions of dollars worth of dope when he was a musician and even while he was rich and famous—ended up homeless and alone. On the outsides, we have nothing in common: He’s seventy with kids, ex-wives and cookie crumbs on the corners of his mouth. While he speaks, he seems timeless and worry-free. The minutes drag towards night, pulling me along.

     There is no boat.

     I don’t crave powders or pills anymore, but I still fight the tendency to flee, escape into another galaxy. I recall the taste of striped straws and white powders, the tick-tick of blade against mirror and the rush of yes. Similar to the numb excitement of being passed around a trailer park in Lancaster by Gulf War Vets, stripping long after I’d quit stripping. The scratchy edges of damp dollars stuffed into my garter. I was animated with sexual power, fuming with it. Empowered and degraded simultaneously. A sad clown wrapped in tacks. We have this in common.

    I’ve quit lots of things: crystal meth and alcohol, white sugar and flour, men, cocaine, meat, coffee and carbs. I’ve left lovers when I had another tucked in my back pocket. Left my car in a tow yard because it had too many tickets. I tossed my Lucite shoes and a bag full of shimmery pink skins into garbage can outside a bar in the Mission with obstinate determination. I always returned to stripping whenever I was broke, mangy and hungry.  The stage was the place I accessorized my pretty ache, made it shine for you. I wanted to start over.

“Let’s not try then. Let’s just see what happens,” he said. We left the restaurant.  

Laura by Romy Suskin

 I thought quitting stripping would be huge: Cymbals would crash the smoke machine would hiss as I crawled on the marble stage to L7 and The Black Keys. Glasses would shatter, balloons pop, spilling rainbow confetti onto my sweaty torso. I’d have one last high roller night, several G’s squirreled away in the bank. Or I’d just get fired and told I’m too old. That’s not what happened.  After a mediocre Wednesday night with three hundred, fifty bucks in my purse, I carried my plastic pink stripper bag on my shoulder and walked away from Bourbon Street through mist and garbage. I dodged frat boys and club barkers. I peeled off my false lashes and through them on the ground. I waved down my favorite Armenian cab driver, Manny. He called me “Laura’s Friend” and knew my address by heart. The next night, my lower back ached. My neck was permanently fucked from too many upside-down pole tricks. I didn’t go to work the next night. Or the night after that. Time was a firm hand that nudged me gently towards the exit, pulling me home, where I met you, at forty, right on time.

I have been dating a beautiful, intelligent sex worker for few months. By sex worker I mean a woman who does Pro Domme sessions and gives handjobs sometimes.  She’s also been a stripper for years. She mentioned that she had wanted to land an internship or job within her field but recently decided that she wanted the time flexibility of sex work while she’s in school. She’s been paid for other kinds of sex and scenarios with men in the past—sometimes as her main job. She’s pretty forthcoming about what she does with her clients.

 Sex work seems to not be a big deal for her. She complains about work like anybody else does. 

Mandy Morbid by Romy Suskin

I am pretty ok with it but she is planning to intensify some of the work she’s doing.  I want to be supportive but there’s a part of me that knows I will pull back from her when she intensifies things.  As we get closer, it’s tapping into some issues for me.  Even though, it impacts me indirectly, I still worry about things like: How will her work affect our sex life?  If we become more serious, how do I tell people what she does?  Is there a reflection on me that I date a sex worker?  I wonder about the energy she gives others and if that means less for me.

 I also wonder about exactly what happens for her in sessions, even though she seems fine after sessions. It’s also scary to me that a few months ago, she said she didn’t want to have sex for money and now she’s changing her mind. I’ve heard it’s hard to stop doing sex work.  I wonder if it’ll be tough for her to pursue the work she wants to do in her field. That she’ll lose sight of what she’s working towards—and if she’ll ever want to have a normal job. 

 The other day she mentioned she was getting more money than usual from a client and I assumed that meant in exchange for something. Since then, I’ve been lingering on her hands, mouth, ass, cunt and wondering a little what happens. I don’t ask too many questions but told her I was open to hearing more and would understand if she didn’t want to fuck after a session.  I don’t feel jealous or anything, its just on my mind more. I also wonder during sex if it’s real or if she’s performing? Does she do the same thing for men? Could any guy with enough money fuck her? How do I feel about that?

Zoey Holloway by Romy Suskin

She told me she’s in love with me and I think she’s hoping for a long-term relationship.  I haven’t said it back even though I really like her and I feel great with her. I know I’m trying to protect myself and I also worry that once I am attached, I’m afraid she’s going to tell me that she wants to have a fling with someone else. I feel emotionally guarded with her.  I think that has less to do with sex work and more because I’m afraid of getting hurt.  I haven’t really let myself be open to anyone since my last breakup.  I feel like I’m falling in love too but there’s a part of me that that just won’t let myself surrender to it.  I’m writing you to get some advice. Do I move forward or stop before we both get hurt?

Thanks, Proceeding with Caution in Austin

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers

within yourself that you have built against it.” -Rumi

Dear Austin,

While reading your letter, I was happy that I identified with both of you very strongly. Like your love interest, I have done the same work had periods where I considered doing more or less in order to conserve time to pursue my chosen career with mixed results.  Newsflash: Sex work is very time-consuming and draining—like any nine-five. There are also countless unpaid hours used to advertise and screen clients, prepare and recover from sessions. Although the skill set used is terribly useful in any career (a book could be written here on the skills required to do sex work) it can’t be listed on a resume or CV so when I dove into the workforce, I started at ground zero in a limping economy and with protracted gaps in my resume. No one is impressed with the letters after my name or my fancy undergrad experience. In case your girl reads this, I recommend getting a kick ass volunteer job and an internship while she still has the gusto to do both sex work and school. Those look good on a resume.

Like you, I have guarded myself against being hurt in tricky little ways and big obvious ways. In relationships, I removed myself piece by piece until my feelings cooled off and finally, my lover left because I froze. I’ve been frightened too. Internally, I constructed a maximum-security blockade to prevent love from penetrating. My own sadness only made my barriers fiercer. I’ve turned away many good men. Scared off others. Only now am I beginning to melt.  Check it out: everyone has been hurt. We are all naked and melting because in each other’s presence, we want to feel.

Like your girl, I was super okay after jobs. I even asked people close to me if I acted weird or cold. I wanted to know if the work made me numb or anxious. The report was that I seemed perfectly normal. Sex work just wasn’t that big of a deal. Or it didn’t appear to be on the surface. It was an easy numb place to hide and make money for a long time.

Falling in love is a big deal, especially for women who have a lot of access to free floating desire at all times. Falling in love is the difference between performing a role with a client and being emotionally present with a lover. It’s terribly inconvenient when you discover your heart is a tender pink fish when you thought it was a stone. I’m not suggesting you feel flattered. I’m saying this is fucking major.The rope of love is being thrown to you. Grab it and swing.

O by Romy Suskin

Be brave and hold each other with tenderness.  Don’t take on the shame and stigma from her job. Be a stand for her. Trust that she’s making a sound decision for her life unless she says otherwise. Give her the dignity of her own experience. Don’t participate in the shame. You don’t have to. Tell people the truth. This is the truth: “What does your GF do?”

    “She’s in the adult entertainment industry.” I recently read an essay (The Sun: “Faithful over a Few Things” by Tarn Wilson) about a woman who visits a ninety-two year old woman every week. But the essay was really about how women have cared for each other over time forever. It inspired me to think about the ways women care for one another and how we can be more courageous and less self-serving.

    Look, I’m getting all touchy-feely. Did I mention I am melting? What I want to ask you is this: Who cut out your tongue?

You say your girl is forthcoming. Ask her things. Ask her about what she’s doing in sessions and ask for what you need or want to feel safe and good? Get tested together (Women’s Center in your area:http://www.austinwomenshealth.com/). Ask about the acts she’s doing and what they mean to you. Think about why some acts bother you and others don’t. She sounds game, smart, fun, honest and into you. Why not ask her what her experience is with clients and if she feels like she’s performing with you? Give yourself the dignity of your own experience. Be sad. Be turned on. Be scared. Be inquisitive. Be supportive.

Don’t walk on eggshells. Powerful sexy women loathe that. Your questions, concerns and fears are all valid. Sex work also provides great fodder for fantasies that could be explored with her.

Bring all of this to her. Bring  yourself to her. Talk to the woman.

Grab the rope.

Xoxoxo

Antonia

     My room was robin egg blue, nearly turquoise, a relentlessly cheerful sky in a wet grey city. I painted my fake fireplace lemon-meringue-pie-topping yellow (sugar, egg whites and Vanilla colored). My impulse was to brighten the dark cave room with touches of muted sunflower light. Later, yellow became the intrusive warning sign of cancer and misery. The astonished yellow blaze of death. Every cracked yoke for the next three years reminded me of my mother’s neighbor with the chickens—the one who noticed her turn yellow. I found the brutish yellow of rebirth. Sometimes sadness has the last word.

Appolo by Romy Suskin

My one small window had a view of a concrete nook—the space between my house and the apartment building next door. On the weekends, the neighbors screamed at each other in one high shrill pitch. I wondered how they could breathe while screaming like that: a screeching yellow cry for a last hit of crack. Even with earplugs, I heard their chainsaw voices. They gave me recurring sound dreams. A furious thwack, thwack—the beating of wings.

I’d always wanted a red kitchen but was told red would ignite fights. I painted the kitchen anyway. Chose a feisty bright red and put up gingham curtains to match. In my red kitchen, I collected vintage mugs and overpriced 70’s dishes from Valencia Street shops. My kitchen was a place of whistling kettles and negotiation—my first paid date. I also cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for a dozen of my friends. One September, my dad called at 6.a.m. and told me to get out of the city and hide somewhere quiet. His breaths were short and his voice stern. I didn’t go anywhere. I sat on the floor and watched the twin towers collapse from my dark wooden floor.

A by Romy Suskin

I get so excited when I receive Rumpus Letters in the mail. I rip them open like a love letter from a secret admirer. Do you subscribe to Rumpus Letters in the Mail? The latest one was from Sari Botton. I love her patient prose and raw honesty. In her letter, she wrote that she doesn’t like children or pets. Sari Botton and I have discussed the risks inherent in writing memoir. When writing memoir or even autobiographical fiction, someone always gets hurt. Ask Justin Torres. 

I’ve heard it’s best to write in a way that protects people in your life. That they may recognize themselves but it’s not good if their friends recognize them (Stephen Elliott’s Daily Rumpus, entry 4/19/12).

            This isn’t always possible. For instance, I wrote an essay about sex work. The essay described a place where I worked. In point of fact, I gave handjobs for cash.  The place, the job and the women—all heavily coded and insular. In my essay, I defined our sex worker lingo and the job. It wouldn’t have mattered if I wrote that my boss was a Hoopa Indian who bred Greyhounds in Malibu or a man who owned most of Walnut Creek because every single woman who has worked there knows what/whom I referred to.

            Another example: When my mother turned yellow, her friend noticed. The town where my mother died has a population of less than 30,000 people. If I wrote that a Latina woman who lived on a dairy farm noticed my mom’s yellow skin, every single one of my mom’s friends would know whom I meant. Some things cannot be veiled. Janet Malcolm in her book, “The Journalist and the Murderer” wrote about the role of the writer in a frank way. She claims “The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced state of moral anarchy” (Malcolm, 143). It’s not my job to recreate my subjects (I can’t), but to tell an emotional truth. It’s scary to piss people off, but it happens. I have the hate mail to prove it.

      I intended to write about financial terror. Tell you about a day last week when I stood in my kitchen on the reddish orange floor and lamented my college degrees and my subsequent three digits of debt. I yelled that I’m a loser and a financial hazard to my boyfriend—who is neither of those things.  

                           They are no so far apart: Financial terror and writing terror.

     My undergrad experience? It was so goddamn pristine. Pillars and fountains and grass fields in the middle of Oakland; fancy buildings from the 1800’s with wooden floors that creaked when I walked to classes.  The lady ghosts at Mills were rumored to float on the lawns holding chastity belts that they refused to wear. Our rocker brand of feminism challenged the laced and gloved, high-tea setting. I shaved my head and eyebrows. I pierced my face. It was Courtney Love feminism— angry miniskirts and femme clans. We wore fishnets and quoted Bell Hooks. Got pre-law degrees.

Antonia and Heather by Jamie Griffiths

In my Folsom Street apartment, I finished my Women’s Studies degree. When I did, my mom brought a green pot of African Lilies as a gift. I kept them alive for eight years. In my light blue room, I believed my fancy education would mean something. My degrees would make it easier to land a job with bennies.

“I’m startled awake from my yellow-fog denial with the sun in my eyes. Full of wonder. I have a memoir. It ends in a handjob parlor—my happy ending.”

            “You’d be correct in guessing I’m not nineteen,” I sassed, sipping a Diet Coke.

Ellenina by Romy Suskin

            “I just turned thirty-three, and am fast approaching my sexual prime. You should invest now while you still have a chance.” I slapped my ass to punctuate. I could really do with about five hundred bucks tonight. I had to send my rent in the mail to my landlords and it took a week.

            How old are you?  The age stigma didn’t apply to guys—a thing that made me want to pour my Diet Coke on his lap, instead of grinding on it.  His cigar smoke surrounded us when I moved far enough to see his face.

He could’ve been anywhere between forty and fifty-five. Southern men age faster than California men. They eat fried catfish and pralines, skip gym memberships and go fishing. They smoke non-stop, adding lines to their fat faces. It isn’t fair—I Iook at a biscuit and my thighs expand. I smell a cupcake and it adds an inch to my middle. Next time around, I want to be a tall, skinny man with the metabolism of a whippet. My mom, the expert baker taught me how to worship sugar.  I begged to lick her cookie dough bowls the minute I could talk. I couldn’t shovel sugar into my mouth fast enough. She nibbled Recess Peanut Butter cups every day of her slender life.

            When her body shriveled from the first cancer, I took refuge on the treadmill. It was the place my five miles of rage could soar without anyone pressing charges. Instead of punching strangers in the face, I ran from cancer. I wondered what the cowboy was running from. 

            “How many kids you got?” he asked me, looking at his beer.

            “None.” I shook my head. Inside Visions, time was swamp-slow and decrepit. But, I played like I was relaxed and just hanging out while mentally strategizing the best moment to bring up business.

            This wasn’t that time.

            I’d wait until he hit Bud Light number two. Zoey was on stage. A skinny blonde, pretty thing in pigtails, knee socks and white skirt. She danced to Bonnie Rait. We could play whatever music we wanted at Visions so I stripped to everything from Skinny Puppy to Ike Turner, unlike the clubs on Bourbon Street that insisted on upbeat top forty bullshit: Kings of Leon and Lady fucking Gaga. At Visions, we got to be edgy.  The cowboy gulped his next beer.

            “You eat Zapps potato chips?” he asked me.

            “Why? Do I smell like onion dip?” He chuckled. One of his arms sweeped around my hip.

            “I guess it’s your lucky night,” he said. It certainly was my lucky night. Considering the quality of conversation and the fact that I didn’t have a shotgun within reach. It was a lucky night for both of us.

            “I think they have those chips in the vending machine. You want some?”

I glanced across the room, next to the poker slots, where two men chain smoked. The vending machine was swathed in yellowish-green light. 

            “No need. You’re looking at the creator of Zapps potato chips.” He puffed up his chest like a rooster.

            “No kidding,” I grinned wide wanting to smash his beer bottle into my thirty-nine year old forehead. “Well, Mister Zapp, let’s get better acquainted.” I pointed to the VIP lap dancing area, where I could finally extract some dough.

            “I just got married, and I love pussy,” he said. Still jutting his chest out, he followed me into the room where I straddled him and offered my boobs like M&M’s to his open mouth.

            “You should move into my trailer,” he said. I considered this proposal carefully and imagined a greasy trailer with gingham curtains lodged in marsh. For a moment, I romanticized it. Then I pictured him barging in unannounced, while I was curled up with Lorrie Moore’s “Birds of America.”

            “Does it have wifi?”

            The place I stayed in Algier’s Point not only had wifi but a chi-machine: a funny plastic machine that plugged into the wall and wiggled my ankles for a timed five minutes.  Mom would’ve loved that chi machine. It was hypnotic, relaxing and soothed my lower back. It was just hippie dippy enough to make her laugh and say, “It’s silly but it feels good.” 

            On the sticky, red vinyl couch in the VIP room at Visions, I stood up, with my pussy inches from the cowboy’s face. His loneliness collided with mine in a strange smoky swirl, like Mom’s cookie dough, it was comforting and also made me sick. 

            The cowboy was the first in a string of big southern cahunas that talked to me about their jobs and golf games, tweaked my nipples, try to stick their fingers in my pussy, and give me hundreds of dollars. Every night I danced at Visions, I cleared anywhere from three hundred to a thousand bucks.

Algier's Levee

            I convinced customers that I was accessible, because I was. If they got smitten for twenty minutes or an hour-I was happy. They set up camp in the empty hole my mom left inside me.  When they were gone, I disappeared them and took my wad of cash back home to California. Then I’d go running again, hearing Mom’s voice and sweating out the cancer.

            Once inside, the office windows had a panoramic view of “fashion fence,” the chain link fence across the street that was decorated with dirty clothing for sale 24/7. At the Polk Inn, we, residential assistants referred to the scene as “street economy” and our clients at the Polk Inn participated in it; meaning, most of them turned tricks or hustled drugs. Polk Street was their terrain.

            My job was to enforce the house rules. For instance, the clients weren’t allowed to bring their swag into the Polk Inn and we reserved the right to rifle through their backpacks and purses randomly, but I never did. After our clients were buzzed in, they usually held out their hands to show what they contained.  Usually just their phones and a small brown paper sack from the liquor store on the corner with cigarettes, candy and beer. My manager said their world was small and that they stayed within a four-block radius of the Polk Inn. But I don’t know. Some clients wandered. The clients had chores like they had keep their rooms clean and show up for their meetings with their case managers and then they could get movie passes.

            I got hired as an RA by total fluke. I met a guy who reminded me of young hippie version of Robin Williams. He was a case manager at one of the facilities for homeless youth and liked to jabber on about how he thought everyone was attracted to him—his boss, his co-workers, his clients. He introduced me to my manager, Jaime, who hired me, regardless of my impressive career in nude lap dancing.  My entry level counseling position required no actually counseling at all, but my duties ran the gamut from nurse to babysitter, DJ to watchdog, secretary to cook. Basically, a fancy, non-profit style caretaker with paid holidays and fat funding.

              We recorded the clients notable behavior in a big black plastic binder, which was hidden in a drawer upstairs in the RA office. Other than enforcing house rules, my job was to provide a safe home for a half-dozen 17-24 year-old HIV positive, mentally unstable, drug addicted clients and encourage them to dispose their hypodermic needles in bright orange sharps containers that were attached to the walls near the front office downstairs, where case managers had small locked offices with file cabinets and enormous piles of folders. Never once did I envy their job, even though that was the only way for a residential assistant to progress. So I hung around in the reception area and handed clients sack lunches with turkey sandwiches and Capri Sun juices. One chocolate chip cookie. When they were really super good— a movie pass.

            In the community room were couches that were way better than the ones in my shared Mission apartment.  The Polk Inn couches had sturdy blonde wood and fluffy new cushions, a far cry from the ratty couches I lugged home from put-out night and St. Vinny’s that were more like scratching posts with springs that tickled your tailbone when you leaned back.

            During the day, the reception area was loud. Almost deafening. Clients met with their case managers to talk and to determine if they were progressing or declining: if the drugs were working. I helped Jim with his cover letter and sucked Capri Suns. Jim was a dashing, high functioning gay man who was graduating soon from our program. He had an actual job in an office somewhere. His blazer, shoes and sunglasses combined were worth more than my apartment. The phones rang non-stop. In the late afternoon when the fog wiped away the sun and the case managers went home, we took over the Polk Inn. It became our world. I made myself at home just as the fog covered the sky like a silver screen. 

*                       *                           *                                *                            *                            *                              *                                 *

             I always look forward to my shift on Sunday afternoon, which means an early dinner and movie night. I’ll bake chicken and rice and make the brownies from a mix for dessert. My red key chain wraps around my wrist and jangles against the refrigerator and pantry. This key opens every door in the building. After I dump my purse, coat and motorcycle helmet in the RA closet, I gather pans for my delicious chicken dish. I grab butter and carrots and chop an onion, throw it all in the pans for an hour and kill the smell of stale fish sticks and antiseptic. The kitchen has sliding glass doors that open out into a patio where clients smoke on aluminum chairs in the chilly, bright sun. White plastic ashtrays filled with rainwater overflow with butts floating in the ash.

LJackson by Romy Suskin

            Armando’s short and thin, maybe 5 feet tall and Hispanic, with loose khaki Ben Davies shorts and a studded black belt.  He smears grease on his majestic black curls. He wears a silver knot chain around his neck, and it’s thick and heavy. It seems uncharacteristically butch. Phil, the other RA warned me the other day. “Armando’s a cutter,” he said. But, today, Armando slumps in a chair in the courtyard, with a black journal and set of skinny pens. He’s drawing alone. Once in a while he wipes his wily curls aside. Picks up another pen and shades.

            “Want a snack?” I ask him. He shakes his head and tears another piece of coarse white paper from his black journal and makes more designs. His face is serious and tense. He draws angels and devils in loopy magnificent detail. One has a huge menacing orchid overtaking an angel wielding a sword. I look over his shoulder while he draws.

            “This is so good,” I say.

            “I’m going to go to Academy of Art.” He stands up. Looks at his work from a more discerning angle. Sits back down.

             “Can you play some music? Philip always plays music.”

            “Sure.” I find a Radiohead CD and a Jill Scott CD that another RA left behind on her shift. Pop in the Jill Scott.

            In the community room, I hear “Miss Congeniality,” playing loudly on the big flat-screened TV. It was the movie they all voted for unanimously. Allesandra, a Native American tranny and Revo, the junkie skateboarder play cards on one couch. Gina just got in and was upset over a spat with her boyfriend. She’s very pregnant. She walked straight to her room with no dinner. Donald, the autistic happy redhead shuffles by in white pajamas and slippers.

            “Can I have a snack?” is all I’ve ever heard him say. I show him cookies or an apple. He takes the cookies. Shuffles to the couch for the movie.

             A woman I don’t recognize from the security camera in the front office rings the buzzer. She’s brought what appears to be hundreds of lilies wrapped in saran wrap. Says they’re from a wedding.  Can she donate them? I don’t see why not. Armando puts down his drawings and smiles huge.

            “Lilies! My favorite! Can we decorate?” He’s exasperated with joy. We spend the next thirty minutes cutting the tops off of empty water bottles with scissors, filling them with flowers and water then placing the fragrant white lilies on every surface. We even place some in the case managers and reception office and when we do this Armando prances with jerky dance moves as if to say “Ta Da!”

            “Can I have one in my room?” He looks pleased. He knows I will allow it; that I’m a pushover. He doesn’t wait for my permission. I watch him carry the flowers to his room, which is on the second floor next to the RA office. Then I don’t see him for the rest of my shift, until I knock on his door to give him meds. When I do, he shows me two small gold-framed pictures of his mother and sister. Their faces round and hazy like from an eighties after school special, but he’s only been a resident for a few months and is twenty-two. He told me they don’t talk to him anymore because he’s a gay hooker. When he says it his eyes flash wildly— are practically flirtatious. He doesn’t smile. My entry for him reads : Armando was social, helpful and productive. He worked on his beautiful drawings and helped me decorate.

            I work four tens at the Polk Inn, but afterwards, I moonlight. After I fill out my time sheet, I ride my motorcycle a couple quick blocks up to O’Farrell Street in the wet cold night where I still strip at The Century until 4AM. I planned to quit when I started the RA gig because the clubs were so dead, and I was burnt out, but my paychecks are small and my rent too high. I’m not allowed to tell my coworkers or the clients that I strip—or to divulge any personal information, especially my handful of years in AA. It’s considered unprofessional self-disclosure. This is a harm reduction gig. 

***

            The same night of the Lilies, after my shift at the Polk Inn, I met a client on the floor at The Century who asked to meet me at a hotel for $800 the next night and I agreed. Over dinner, he drugged me with GHB and I knew something was wrong, so I drank water and shoveled food down my face as quickly as possible. No one knew where I was that night. I tucked the secret deep inside and went to work at the Polk Inn, hoping my insides didn’t leak out on my clients. I was supposed to be better than that. I was supposed to help them.

Cougar Town by Sheila Hiber

          By the time I show up for my shift at the Polk Inn, all hell broke loose. I was reprimanded for allowing Armando to get anywhere near the scissors and told to never do that again. “They could also cut themselves on the edges of those water bottles,” my manager said. He was right, but I didn’t feel remorse. I thought it was a feat to make Armando smile and dance because he’d done something beautiful and we shared a love of lilies—our favorite flower.

            Allesandra died in a knife fight on the street and Revo disappeared for a couple days. Gina was in the hospital in labor so she’d moved out of our facility and into the one that housed single mothers. I walked into the kitchen, which is the first thing I do in any new place to feel comfortable. Stood in the chill and considered my options: a carrot? It was quiet and eerie under the glaring lights. Diana, another tranny rushed out the front door with a little wave. She dabbled in crack and was known for her fits of paranoia, but I hardly ever saw her.

             I ordered Dominoes pizza in case some clients showed up for dinner. I heard loud music blaring from upstairs. It was Armando’s room, so I grabbed his meds from the office and knocked on his door.

            “Can you turn that down?” He opened his door a couple inches.

            “Why? No one’s here.”           

            “I’m trying to order us pizza.” His eyes were two black holes.

            “I’m not hungry.” I handed him his meds. He shook his head. Shut his door. I ducked into the RA office and wrote in the binder: Armando was asked to turn his music down. Refused his HIV and psyche meds.

            Downstairs, I gorged on three pieces of drippy pepperoni pizza and replayed the night with the client who drugged me. He’d offered me water while we waited for our table in the restaurant. I felt all foggy and dizzy and almost peed my pants. I crossed over the line from dancer to hooker like it was nothing and wondered if being surrounded by street economy invaded my brain cells, made it natural. I used my red key to open an empty client apartment and locked myself in the bathroom. Turned the light on. Stuck my finger down my throat. Threw up in the toilet. I hadn’t told anyone about the $800 client or the GHB. Armando was right. No one was here. Not even me. I wanted to sit in the dark and blast music too, rock back and forth in my own emptiness. Rock it away.

            Disgusted with myself, I washed my face and hands and dried them. Armando’s music played louder and louder. “God Damn it,” I mumbled. I walked down the hall and banged on his door. He didn’t open it.

            “Armando!” I kept knocking. 

            “I’m coming in, Armando.” I unlocked his door and noticed my key chain still had some puke on it. I wiped it on my jeans. The door was heavy because he’d used a bookshelf to blockade it. I pushed my whole body against it. Armando stood holding a wooden bat and his head was cut and bloody. There was blood on his hands and face, dripping down his forehead. His eyes were fierce and lacked any of the softness from the other day.  His gaze was ecstatic and free, like an angel floating in cool moonlight.

            “I’m okay,” he said.

            He dropped the bloody bat on the shiny wooden floor. Both of us froze together, still in the dark room with blood under our feet.  “I’m okay,” he said again.  My empty shame and his released rage stood together staring eye to eye. I closed the door. Backed away into the hall and called my manager. “Call 9-11,” he said.  I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Armando to go anywhere. I wanted to throw a blanket over him and pat him on the head and hand him a movie pass, but within a few moments that could’ve been thirty seconds or a half-hour, the door buzzed.

            In the front office, the security camera showed the black guy with the ghetto blaster was still bouncing to his beats. Behind him were six men in black.  I’d never seen them before: the SWAT team. They wrapped Armando up and took him away on a stretcher. His expression seemed to ask me why? As if it was the most natural thing in the world, to  sit in the dark and draw blood. Yes, it was.

“You’ll be okay,” I whispered to the closed door after the men place him in the ambulance. I stood in the street. No one was there at all. No one.

    The office was square and dinky with pale, peach color walls like the Avon lipsticks Mom and I used to order from catalogues in the early 80’s. The pink lipsticks I wanted had names like “Melon Crunch” and “Sugar Breeze.”  We flipped through pages together and bickered about color palettes.  You’re a Summer, she said. I wanted Winter colors: scarlet red gloss and black eyeliner. On one peach wall, twin corkboards displayed a few pictures of my precocious twelve-year old niece before she became a nanny in Chicago and had three kids. In the pictures she grinned with a full set of braces and her thick red bangs were shellacked with Aqua Net. She posed with a hand on one hip in tight black pants and a black sleeveless shirt. Her eyes exactly like my brother’s: deep chocolate syrup brown. She lived with Mom for a while and threw parties without  permission. Mom and her husband came home to her singing in the living room surrounded by amused neighbors. She had the leading role of Annie in her school play.

            On another corkboard were Mom’s post cards from Spain. She took a trip with her women’s organization friends and brought me back two small ceramic bowls with blue flowers painted on them. One broke in the move from SF to LA. The other one holds my cereal every morning. Next to the Spain pictures, were snapshots of her cats: Willow and Sam dozing in her rhubarb. In the background were the two brown horses boarded in the barn. One of them was blind. The cats sat on her lap on her end of the couch where she always read the paper with a Moore Menthol dangling from between her right fingers. Rum and coke rocks glass in the other.  I never slept in the office bedroom and I never will even though there’s a stiff double bed in there.

After the cancer came back, that room—her office—became her bedroom so she wouldn’t have to take the stairs. The bathroom was only few steps away.

            The office carpet had groove marks where the feeding tube rolled and beeped. The beep was louder than an alarm clock, but not as loud as a garbage truck backing up. The little robot feeding tube pumped neon pinkish orange fluid into my mom’s stomach through a red, angry hole in her skin that was taped shut when the tube was removed.

           Under pinkish coral blankets, her eyelashes fluttered and her hands clasped shut in front of her chest. She wore her wedding ring. She wore her watch. She wore fuzzy pink striped socks.  

             Can I have the newspaper?  I handed it to her.

            Under an extra big window was a blonde wooden desk. A clunky, outdated computer sat on top of it with a soft swiveling chair. In that chair, I typed.

            I like that sound, she said. She’d been a secretary for 35 years. 

            It was my first semester of grad school and I’d come for a visit after she’d said I’m barely here. On her computer, I translated a Finnish poem about Springtime and flute music and being in love. It was neither Springtime nor was I in love.   The instructor posted recordings of the poems being read in Finnish with certain words and their definitions: In the morning,  feelings of  new love and to wake up thick with dreams.

            Can I have a drink? Mom asked. I held a glass of ice water with a straw that was long, white and bendy so it could reach her mouth without her having to move her head much. I stretched it out and made sure it wouldn’t dribble water down her chin. That would’ve urked her. She hated messes. It dribbled. I wiped her chin with a paper towel.

            Sorry.

       Her face had more spider veins than I remembered. Her hair had grown back but it was grey and thin where it had been thick, brown and wavy. Her cloudy grey eyes were huge sad marbles. She was much smaller than I remembered. I brushed her  damp hair away from her eyes. 

             I held her hand.

             Do you want some milk? I held the blue glass to her mouth and she sipped the milk.

            I’m too hot. She pushed the melon-colored comforter aside. She threw up white curdled milk on the blankets. I grabbed more paper towels.  Warmed a washcloth in the sink. Held it to her forehead.

The fever was back. On the desk was a pile bills and files. Her living will. She kept papers in meticulous paralegal-style order, but now it was in disarray. Outside the window, in the neighbors yard up the road, white geese waddled in a pile of dirt. They honked. A plum tree was in bloom. The afternoon sun was fading. I opened the window. I stacked her papers into a neat pile. 

Blue Hat: Romy Suskin

            For my memorial, use my Cobalt blue vases, she said.  One vase had bright yellow daffodils in it.  Her neighbor brought them over earlier and cried. Told me how special my mom was. Like I didn’t know. Like I failed to recognize her specialness. I will, mom. Promise.  

LACMA Street Art Show

            Outside the rundown beige hotel, a jackhammer drilled, rattling the windows in the lobby. The building shook. “So much for sleeping,” Janine said. It was so loud we could barely hear the lady at the front desk with orange skin and turquoise pendant the size of an egg on her bosom ask us, “Are you Spice Girls?” between drags. She smoked Moore Menthols like my mom. Due to the construction, we finagled the room with a Jacuzzi and two Queen beds and orange shag carpet. We were about to make tons of cash and wanted to splurge. The hotel room walls were the same faded yellow as the outside, soot and all. There was a reading lamp on the bedside table that we covered with a hand towel for ambiance. It didn’t seem like anyone else was staying in our shitty hotel except for us. Why would they when there was Bellagio and Harrah’s? We’d move there soon.

            Before Vegas and before Valentine, we’d been stripping at a nude club in San Francisco during a time I will call “the era of expensive presents.” Willy Brown was the mayor of SF and Bill Clinton was President. In the back of the nude club were tiny rooms separated by wooden partitions, like horse stalls. Antibacterial gel could be extracted from containers that hung on the wall next to the Kleenex boxes. The private rooms were the size of a motel shower. No light. Just loud music and the muffled sound of the DJ’s announcing the next performer on stage. Legs and shoes shuffled below the curtains. In the private rooms, I could stand and turn and negotiate. Instead of doors that closed, there were flowing black curtains that came up to our calves.  The reason for the curtains? Willy Brown, Bill Clinton and the rules regarding Prostitution in strip clubs in California. Rules that our club abided by in order to avoid raids. The arrival of the curtains marked the time our stage fees arbitrarily skyrocketed along with the economy. Those curtains were the compromise. If you could see through that curtain, it wasn’t a door, not even a partition. In those semi-private rooms, we were expected to dole out $200 for 4 hours payout to the club, and leave with our tips. This was a total rip off, but during the era of expensive presents we banked anyway and bought suede ankle boots, fur coats, fake boobs and trips to Hawaii, and all of my friends in the service industry were flush. Our Hello Kitty purses were crammed with bennies. And we thought it would last forever. But the money was never enough. Our collective self-delusion kept us chasing the golden egg but that golden egg was always in San Francisco.

Zeus in Vienna

Medieval Torture Mask: Austria

             In Vegas, our room had heavy, rust colored curtains that we pulled shut to keep out the light out. We hit the town to get our license, which we needed to work out of state, and find jobs. The first two clubs wouldn’t hire me, but they hired Janine, a Kim Bassinger lookalike with a mermaid tattoo and muscular calves. My seven hundred-dollar-a-night confidence crumpled when I heard her arguing with the manager. I couldn’t make out the words. “We’re leaving,” she said defiantly.

            “Is it my tattoos?”

            “No.”

            “Short hair?”

            “Let’s get a diet coke.” We walked across the street to a restaurant with a bar. The sound of slots rang in my ears. I had a headache.

            “Why don’t they like me?” She looked at the fish tank in the corner. She sipped her diet coke. She looked at my shoes.

            “You’re too curvy.” What did these assholes know? I just rode my bicycle 382 miles for a fundraiser and now I was fat? My customers liked my curves back in San Francisco.  I wanted to snort a fat line of meth and drop a few, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about being fat in Vegas. Drugs and alcohol hadn’t been an option for years. I motioned to the bartender.

            “You sell cigarettes here?” I started smoking. Later, Janine and I found a tiny club on a street corner called “Wild Jays” where my fat ass was hired. It was a smoky dive with a stage the size of a picnic table. In the manager’s office, a stubby man with a Yosemite Sam moustache said, “We got some pretty girls, and some ugly ones, we got a couple spooks, but all of em makes money. You start now.” I froze. I’d never heard “spooks.” It was disconcerting. This was a far cry from gentle, radical, liberal San Francisco, where chubby strippers were considered VIP’s and the black girls absolutely ruled the school.

Miss Jackson by Romy Suskin

            In the dressing room at Wild Jay’s, the other girls were theatrical about their hatred for us. They hissed, “dirty SF girls” because we were known to touch during lap dances. The Vegas men sat at the stage under Cowboy hats and blew cigar smoke in my face. I blew smoke back at them. Janine and I worked twice as long and left with a fraction of the cash we’d been stacking in SF. By the time our trip ended, my girlfriend was already seeing someone new and a postcard arrived from our friends in Japan. It said something like, “Don’t sign any contract with Billy Valentine. Don’t come. I hope you get this in time.”

The living room had a big chunky old TV where we rented Mahogany and Pulp Fiction and sat on a big green scratchy couch. The kitchen dumped out into a covered patio where a roommate made an elaborate pattern making area for her clothing line.

I tacked black and white pictures on the wall of my 10 x12 feet room: Quinn in drag with a lip piercing and black feather boa with a tan arm floating in the air. The best part of that dinky, dark room was the single window with a view of a drainpipe.  The pipe always had water that dripped until it rained, then that drip became a fierce waterfall. I slept on a borrowed futon mattress on my blonde hard wood floor in the middle of the room. I recall being sick in that room: bronchitis and strep throat.  The flu.The drainpipe must have soothed me, because it’s the thing I can still see clearly. 

Girls I had crushes on who are now boys with different names brought me Miso soup.  One made me dinner on my birthday and she put a tin wind up monkey toy on my plate.  Her grandmother had just died. 

My girlfriend, M built me a loft so I could stop sleeping on the floor and one of my three or four rotating roommates from Chicago lent me a nice Queen mattress.

After I got home from my gig at the clothing store, I slipped on a pile of confetti. M had printed out a thousand little strips of paper that read, “Fuck Me.” On my bedroom door was a scolding note from one of my roommates. I needed to clean that up. 

My small broom closet never shut all the way. It was stuffed with torn vintage lace slips and platform boots. My furniture was hauled in from the street, which happened once a month. Put out was like winning the Lotto. I’d ask my friend with a truck to drive around so I could drag in a desk, lamp or a chair and test it out. When I was done with the initial trial period, I’d haul the rejected chair back out onto the street or keep it and paint it silver. The first thing I found was a mirror so I poured glue in loop letters and spelled “Lies” on it and covered it with silver glitter. Later the words read “Whore.” I had tall white candles and wrote on them with sharpies quotes from Rebecca Brown, Mary Gaitskill and Sapphire. I wrote in paper journals with wet black ink. I was asked to join a writing group by a girl who made black velvet paintings of her pussy and wrote poetry about cocks jumping in her hands and boys wearing skirts. We met on Tuesday nights after hours inside The Bearded Lady Café. Kathy Acker was a mesmerizing teacher. I read “Story of the Eye” and “Edie.” Kurt Cobain died. I saw Courtney Love perform. In my room I listened to L-7. I underlined lines in books and scribbled notes in a green journal. 

Zoey Praying: Romy Suskin

 I had little spiky blonde hair and no money. I wrote the landlord a letter begging for another week to make my rent. I  often sold my clothes at the store where I worked so I could buy a burrito at “Amigos” next door. If I had left over, I’d march into clothing by the pound on my day off and pick up a jean jacket and sell that for coffee money. I accidently cut open my left index finger while unpacking a box of used shoes. I got stitched up at UC Medical Center. I was about to get fired. I’d already been written up for being tardy. I began moonlighting at the Lusty Lady. I’d ride MUNI to Duboce and walk home. Stuff a backpack with lingerie I’d found at Clothing by the Pound, borrow my roommates bike and ride it to North Beach. I pedaled fast through pockets of fog, my bandaged finger pounding and sped through the lime green tunnel past cars. I rode fast until the cold wasn’t cold and the tunnel dumped me onto Kearney Street.

At the Lusty Lady,  I leaned the bike against the hallway outside the manager’s office during my shift. I clocked in for the 9AM-3AM shift. I didn’t want to be one minute late or else I’d never reach top wage ($21/hr). The bike got stolen. My room mates found out about the letter to the landlord and kicked me out. 

Milcah

The purple puddle of melted wax stayed put while the chilly San Francisco sun shot through the windshield. Milcah smiled with a full set of braces. She was even younger than I expected. We drove into SF from the airport. She only knew me by my writing. I didn’t want to disappoint her in person. That ride was the first of a hundred radically loving gestures in SF that day that would burst my heart open.  Thank you, Milcah.

Julie Grecius

While we shared chocolate mint vegan ice cream and sipped bright pink beet soup, Milcah told me about her mother and her job. I asked her why she’s made the decision to enter the sex industry (she doesn’t need the money). Why she will use her own name in her web cam videos. She’s exactly my age when I first started stripping. Twenty-two and obstinate with ripped black tights and knack for caring for the sick. She told me about asexuality we walked past stores on Haight Street. I thought about the writers we both love and how we forget our Kindles exist because we like to hold our books in our hands.  I’ll ask her when I interview her (for RSW-Rumpus) if she thinks sex work is akin to caring for the dying. I do. My years as a counselor made me a better stripper. They both required patience and empathy.

    I arrived at the Verdi Club hours early with 300 cupcakes and six pair of silky gloves that I cut and bedazzled for the Rumpus Women.

Hells Belles

A group of us set tulle party favors with aqua pencils on chairs and mini cupcakes on tables. Upstairs, in front of a big dressing room mirror, I applied mascara and patted gold and purple eye shadow on Sona and Rebekah. I dipped my fingers into Julie’s red glitter. We were giddy. We wet our temporary tattoos and peeled their skins back. “We are all Sugar.”  I hugged Isaac and complimented him on his red and white gingham shirt.  It was the most natural thing in the world- to stand around in fishnets and fret about both Sugars, the column excerpts we were going to read and drink tickets. As I hurled myself into the middle of the celebration, I felt my heart stretch beyond it’s capacity.

   Steve Almond, who’s disarming humor is as powerful as his astute commentary on politics and sex, delivered a surprisingly tender, profound introduction likening Sugar to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and pointing out Sugar’s radical empathy. The Sermon on the Mount contained the Beatitudes (from Latin Beatus: happy, fortunate or blissful) and similarly, the Sugar column has gathered a die hard following as a result of her generous insights and advice.  He spoke eloquently about her depth and his own gratitude for his beautiful wife (Erin) and the fact that Sugar had huge responsibilities before she decided to take on the Dear Sugar column. Steve Almond introduced Cheryl Strayed as Sugar #2. Applause rippled through that room. We stood up for two standing ovations and watched her bravely accept our love.  

Sugar Strayed

My desk seemed far away, a tiny place of No’s, cat sand and unpaid bills. A place where the bright spot in my week was a three-paragraph rejection from Creative Nonfiction (not sarcasm—I really got a great, wonderful rejection). This was happy, fortunate and blissful. 

At the Verdi Club that giant room became small and cozy. Both Steve and Cheryl answered questions from the audience. The first one was mine, “How can I handle rejection?”

Can you believe my luck? Both Sugars answered it. I’ve got a purple candle on my desk now to remind me that I’m at my best when I’m celebrating someone else’s success.

And that If I keep digging in and doing the hard work, rejections will be a fun thing to write about.

Writer

My desk has a sweet flame, a burning place of yes.

     I’ve always felt terribly inconvenienced and skeeved out by my feelings and have been diligent about stomping them out.  That’s when freak brain takes over. Exactly on year after my mom died, I was driving to my assistant job and called a pharmacy to renew a prescription I had for Vicodin. I hate Vicodin and had it because I’d been hospitalized for Typhoid Fever (the mosquito one, not the poop one). While quarantined, they gave me a spinal tap that triggered my puking migraines.

    So I had this empty bottle of Vicodin and renewed the prescription. I planned to take the pills.  All of them. But, I felt better after I got off the phone with the pharmacy. When I showed up for work at my assistant gig. I worked for  a wonderful, kind, successful lady and I idolized her. I bought her dog vitamins and went to all of the super expensive hippie elixir stores for special healing tonics. 

by Kent Geib

                                                   “How are you?” she asked. She always asked me that. 

                                                       “I’m not going to kill myself today.”

                                                      “That’s a good start.” I filed her bills and alphabetized her books in her new office. By lunch time, I felt better. Years later, I still  have freak brain looking for a way in or a way out-whichever’s quickest.  

A scene in "Plainclothes Naked" by Kent Geib

  I loved  Melissa Febos’ Whip Smart. I  related to her story, more than any other sex worker memoir I’ve read. Not because of her Pro Domme/Ivy League combo but the way she described the grey areas of the industry so well, her addict brain and pushing her own boundaries over time, normalizing the inertia and exuberance and secrets. Hiding pieces of herself in her sessions. Knowing this and doing it anyway. Not stopping, while wanting to. 

               I loved the way she described the kind of intimacy and confusion that happened when a client became her friend. I related to the power dynamics at play with her own desires, the way she denied them at first. How she separated herself from her clients to feel superior. I related to her quitting and feeling that her identity hat been gutted when she moved away from NY, away from her client base.

             I related to her fear of living on the sidelines of life by staying in the industry and outgrowing that, and finally, the fear of being broke and average by leaving it behind. Sometimes she over-intellectualized her experience and I related to that impulse because it’s more comfy than being skinless. But there were many sections that spoke to me in a way that was honest and tender. I entered the sex industry a lesbian man-hater prepared to do battle and come out on top, but the industry was full of men who were too squishy and sad like me only they had more courage. They were honest about what they wanted. I always felt like I had to put on a show to get what I wanted.

 I hope more women write about their experiences, especially if they take issue with the stories being told and circulated.

Miss A by Romy Suskin

I’ve been speaking with other women I adore about happens when you quit. It’s almost like the women still in the industry feel betrayed. But I’ve only got what’s true for me. I’m true to that. The real betrayal is this culture that criminalizes it, demoralizes the women and hurts them.  One woman wished more than anything that she’d saved her money. She made so much money. Squandered it away. She quit because she had to (she got pregnant). I had to quit because I aged out. It’s that simple. It’s that complicated. Quitting. Starting over.

 I wrote my letter for the Rumpus’ new epistolary enterprise “Letters in the Mail.” It’s a backwards letter starting with now and ending in childhood. I wanted to write about quitting things. I wondered if people could relate to that.

I love books

Today’s wild and fresh with possibility. I’m painting on silky red gloves for Sugar’s Coming Out Party next weekend. I’m teaching students to write content for their magazine. They have to come up with a slogan about how art has added to their lives for a poster contest to win some cash. This is what I learned: making a mess with beads and a hot glue gun burns your fingers. It’s best to resort to a black sharpie and sequins.