From: "Kathleen J. Kramer" 
Newsgroups: alt.personals,alt.fan.dirty-whores
Subject: Rock Bottom
Date: Tue,  7 Mar 1995 15:49:14 -0500
Organization: Sponsored account, H&SS Dean's Office, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Message-ID: 

crack whore:
One Girl's Rise to the Bottom

After telling her assailants that her money was in her shoe, she was held down while they gouged her feet trying to get it. She laughs from deep in her throat, takes a long hit off her cigarette and says, ~Ha. My money was in my pocket.~

Katy, in the most brutal terms, is a crack whore. Money means crack and crack means everything; however, she didn~t begin prostituting herself because of her addiction. She can thank her AA sponsor, responsible for helping her to stay sober, for her new profession.

In trouble since the age of 12, she attended meetings to try and get her life together. Katy~s sponsor taught her how to whore, beginning with him. She did, however, start doing crack shortly thereafter.

When she talks, she plays with the long blond pony tail she wears like Suzanne Summers. She rarely makes eye contact but smiles almost constantly, even as she talks about being brutally raped by a trick last week. Her smile swells until it narrows her eyes as she admits crying afterwards because she was afraid to tell her boyfriend that she had no money.

She is a terrifying mass of contradictions. She is intelligent, if intelligence is defined as the ability to adapt to one~s environment. ~I don~t get burned twice. I~ve survived down there longer than anyone my age.~ But after recounting some experiences, she stops, looks at me and asks, ~What the hell am I doing down there?~ like she~s never thought about it before.

She talks about the sense of power she feels in getting a police officer to pay her for sex but also describes her utter powerlessness against the addiction that keeps her ~working.~ And love? It means her boyfriend isn~t smoking crack with anyone else.

Jerome is a married, 39 year-old man she met at a party. She can~t remember what she liked about him, but she loved him and ~wanted to rule him.~ Their dates centered around getting and doing crack and going to ~the roach-motel,~ a pay-per-hour hotel in the Hill.

He spent $ 3,000 their first weekend together. When he ran out of money, Katy was forced to take down the pants in the family. She can~t leave him because she says, ~I got him to leave his wife and kids and feel obligated to him.~

She didn~t get addicted to crack until the second time she did it but hasn~t been able to stop using for more than a few days except when institutionalized: ~I~m in so deep, I dream about hitting that pipe. When I get high, there~s no sometimes for me.~ But staying high on crack costs more than a dollar a minute. ~Once you do that first hit,~ she says, ~all you can think about is doing more.~

She can~t care about the danger she~s in: ~I don~t worry about getting hurt, I expect it...while that trick was raping me he said: ~You want me to take you outta here? I~ll take you outta here.~~ She quits smiling, lights another cigarette from the butt of the first one and continues: ~I was never really scared before, I mean how can someone like me be scared? Some dude tried to sell me some wax [counterfeit crack] and when I told him about it, he pulled out a gun. I looked at it and just stood there thinking, go ahead, fucking kill me, but you ain~t getting my money.

~I think I need some fear. Yesterday some dude put a gun to my head and asked me for my money. I said no, and he just hit me on the back of the head with it. I guess I~m not too scared cause they don~t want to kill a white girl. You kill another nigger, you get maybe three years; you kill a white, you get [a] life [sentence].~

Born and raised in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, Katy isn~t the type ~~of woman society imagines a crack whore to be. She was an ~A~ student at a Catholic school but says she failed English in high school because she used too many big words. The teacher didn't believe she was doing her own work.

Her mother is a teacher with a Master~s Degree in Counseling, but her father drinks. They were married after her mother, a nun at the time, got pregnant to her father who was in seminary school.

Katy, the youngest of three daughters, says she was always too much: too big, too loud, too strong, too funny, too smart and too needy for her environment. She~s been in psychiatric hospitals, shelters, rehabs and jail since she was eleven years old, starting the year after she came home~~e from being forced to live out of state with her grandmother to lose weight. She had to lose two pounds a week in order to call home.

But part of her game is to use her self-destructiveness as revenge upon her family. Katy smiles insidiously while telling me how she had informed her mother that she was turning tricks after Jerome was forbidden to come to Christmas dinner.

One night Katy was sent to her room after ~hogging all the attention~ at her sister~s party, so she poured some Draino into her Mello Yellow soda and drank it. When the paramedics arrived, they were appalled at her mother~s anger and lack of concern~~ considering that her daughter had just tried to kill herself.

In a recent phone interview, her mother talked about Katy: ~I tell her that she~s going to end up dead, but she never listens. Everything I try to do is just a con. I~ve done everything. I can~t think about it anymore.~ She had Katy arrested for stealing her car and got a court order prohibiting Katy from her home.

Seem harsh? Katy exhausts whoever tries to care. She has totaled three of her mother~s cars and has stolen from everyone in her family, including thousands of dollars charged on her mother~s credit cards. She~s still paying hospital bills from institutions ~Katy was in years ago.

It~s hard to understand why Katy hasn~t used the resources her family offers, resources other women in her situation will never have. Every year she ends up in a rehab or psychiatric hospital. Every time, her mother buys her socks and underwear and participates in family therapy. Katy barters the gifts for cigarettes, signs herself out and returns to the streets. She says: ~I~ve been over-therapized. I know their games. They don~t have a chance.~

Last year she was in Western Psychiatric Hospital. She said it takes three days for the craving to get really strong, and she left when it hit. She discovered that Jerome did crack with another girl when she was in the hospital, so she drank Liquid Plumber and ran out of his house, vomiting blood all over the snow. She starts laughing and says: ~Liquid Plumber tastes a lot better than Draino. It~s a lot smoother.~ She spent a few days in intensive care and within weeks, was ~~back into the ~crack game.~

In her words, ~The game involves dodging cops, staying alive and getting as much money as you can.~ She~s been forced to have sex at knife-point twice, has been tied up and is jumped every few weeks for money. She~s been arrested four times for obstructing traffic but only once for solicitation. Obstructing traffic is more of an insinu~ation that you~re a prostitute: you~re being arrested for being where they are. A solicitation charge involves an actual proposition and is seen by her as a real disgrace: ~It was one of my first times. I was stupid and asked what he was spending before I asked if he was a cop. If he is, he has to tell you.~

The state, county, federal and city law enforcement bureaus all have officers that Katy has ~tricked.~ She says: ~They go down there (to an alley in downtown Pittsburgh~~) for free sex. If you get them off, they~ll let you go. A good cop is one that pays.

~Most cops are men, you know? They know what goes on. That~s why they come around, because they know it~s there. They know they can get over . . . and I think they~re jealous of the money I make. I mean, wouldn~t you be? I think that~s why black cops won~t pay. But there are girls who can walk those streets day and night and never get touched. If you piss off a cop, it~s over, but if you~re cool, they~ll watch out for you. One state trooper I trick . . . got a speeding ticket fixed for me.~

I wondered how long she could continue before something really bad happened. In many ways, just getting the crack is much more dangerous than getting the money for it. Nothing deters her and I ~~haven~t told you all.

I~ve known her since she was born. Over the years, I~ve tried to help her, encourage her and love her. She doesn~t make it very easy. She spilled jello on my couch, spaghetti sauce on a pair of jeans I leant her, smoked all my cigarettes, burned two holes in the jeans, ate three bowls of ice cream and almost a whole box of cereal before falling asleep. I was aggravated until I saw her sleeping.

It~s hard to look at her in such a quiet and vulnerable position. Almost dead. She'll wake up to go downtown. Each time could be her last. She never thinks about it, I can~t stop. I might never see her again once she leaves. She asked me to let her move in with me ~ just ~till she could get on her feet. I wanted to say yes, but my memory resists. I can~t imagine how her family must feel.

But how can someone who~~o cares so little about herself be expected to care about others, especially after seeing how predatory even the most self-righteous can be? No one~s to blame, but everyone~s responsible.

I pick up a notebook that I had asked her to write in and read the following: ~I will not hurt you as long as you allow me to survive the only way I honestly know. I love people; they amaze me ~ the lies, the games. It~s an extreme insult to my intelligence.~ She~s still at my house.

The preceding story was written in April, '93. She didn't last long at my home after stealing off me, inviting her tricks over and being gooned on crack. And when her father was diagnosed as having cancer, her mother let her move back in.

I went with her to watch her "work" and to get some crack. Three men came up to the car. One opened my door and lifted his shirt, exposing a gun shoved in his pants. I drove away, shaking. Talk about a rush. She went right back up, after dropping me off in Oakland.

When I was sitting waiting for her as she turned tricks, wanting to see the kind of men who bought sex off of her, I was propositioned numerous times. Dirty bastards.

But then I felt really guilty, like I was using her. I was just trying to understand ~ still can't believe these young girls in huge Georgetown sweat shirts are selling their bodies, their souls for a drug that I'm glad wasn't around when I was Katy's age.

Now she's expecting the child of a trick who loves her. I've never had a boyfriend who treated me as well as he treats her, though. She had been in rehab but left and is back at her mother's, looking for an apartment.

She's not doing crack; although, she admits thinking about it. Something tells me it's not over.

okay, this has been an ongoing thing with her. but i'm going to finish the story and have it out here next week.

later

jojo

hey, i'm going to post some old academic papers. i can't believe i wrote them. crazy.