Or selling the one thing I had left. Myself.
Well, my attempts at begging never turned up much. I no longer dressed exclusively in women’s clothing, mostly because I couldn’t afford to be picky when it came to clothing. Men’s clothing. Women’s clothing. So long as it was warm and it fit, then it made no difference. I wore it just the same. Pretty soon, every item of clothing would be just as ripped and dirty as all the others, so there was hardly any difference between men and women’s clothing anyway.
Yet, despite the fact that I looked no different than any other homeless person, pedestrians still avoided me anyway. Maybe this was what Camp Green Hill had been talking about all along. Maybe there really was something inherently “wrong” about me that needed to be corrected, and the people passing by could sense that wrongness.
Whatever the reason, it meant that my cup was always pathetically empty after a day spent begging by the side of theroad. If I wanted to survive, and keep feeding my newfound drug addiction, I’d have to resort to other means.
Stealing was out of the picture. I tried only once. It wasn’t even anything serious. Just a candy bar from a convenience store. Something that probably got stolen all the time. If people who already had a home and plenty to eat could get away with stealing a candy bar and not be irrevocably condemned for it, then surely, I could do the same when it was a matter of survival. Yet, I couldn’t even bring myself to set foot inside the store. I froze on the threshold, already panicking over what I intended to do, until the store owner noticed me and chased me off.
That one brief moment was the beginning and end of my criminal career.
Which only left me one option. Selling myself for money.
In this, others in the tent city came in handy again. There were a few who had better luck with begging, so they didn’t turn tricks regularly, but they were still familiar with the trade of flesh. They showed me which corners and back alleys were the safest for picking up clients, and how to make a quick escape if a john started getting dangerous. Most importantly, they coached me on how to mentally prepare myself. They said that the first few times would be the hardest, but eventually it would get easier.
They were right.
The first few times were tough. So tough, I nearly threw myself off a bridge after the first time. Probably would have if Eli hadn’t literally pulled me back from the ledge. After that, the next few times weren’t much better, but eventually, just like the other sex workers had promised, it got easier.
What they hadn’t explained was that “getting easier” was the worst part. Now I had to live with myself knowing I was the kind of person who could sell themselves for money without batting an eye, and that hurt more than anything.
They say that opposites attract. Well, I don’t know who came up with that saying, but they certainly never consulted me. My experience was quite the opposite. The inherent “wrongness” in me that Camp Green Hill had been determined to snuff out, which had driven even my own father away, seemed to attract the most unsavory characters. No matter how hard I tried to follow the other’s guidance and keep myself safe, the worst people always managed to sniff me out. Like bloodhounds on the trail of a wounded fox, I always ended up within the teeth of trouble, eventually. It was only through sheer dumb luck, and Eli coming to my rescue a few times, that I managed to survive my years on the streets.
The worst of them was a man named Tony Smith.
He was a cop. I never found out specifically what he did on the force, or what unit he worked for, but he had enough influence that any complaint against him would disappear. The man made it a habit of harassing the homeless residents of the tent city whenever he was bored or needed to make a few quick arrests to meet quota at the end of the month.
Most people knew to avoid him, but I, as usual, was unlucky. He caught me working the corner one night, but rather than arrest me, he made me a deal. If I let him do whatever he wanted to me, then he’d supply me with the money and drugs I needed.
I knew it was a bad deal even as I accepted, but what else could I say?
The man was a brute. Servicing him would be hell, but he also had the power to make my life hell if I said no. If hell awaited me either way, then I may as well get something out of it.
The next morning, I woke up in my tent, though I didn’t remember returning. I was told that Eli had found me unconscious in an alley several streets over from where I was supposed to be. Everything hurt. I was so banged up that I could barely stand up and a sharp pain stabbed through my ribs if I breathed too deeply. But I’d survived, and Smith had even made good on his promise to pay me for the night. I hoped that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t. A few weeks later, Smith was bored and he came back. Eventually, he was a regular “customer” of mine. The only customer I couldn’t deny even if I wanted to.
It was a vicious cycle. The more often he visited me, the more drugs I needed to keep the pain at bay. The more drugs he supplied me, the more I owed him, so the more he visited me.
Over and over, like the cycle of season. Never ending.
Then came the day, shortly after Eli’s new boyfriend had managed to get him and I into an apartment as part of a special deal with a man who had built a youth center and also ran an apartment building for people needing a place to stay. I’d stayed in that apartment with Eli for only two days before the night Smith didn’t have any more oxycocet or benzos so he gave me some cocaine. Before that night, I hadn’t wanted the heavy duty drugs, but after months of his abuse, I finally gave in and tried it, wanting the pain to go away for just a little while. I mean, it was mostly free and all I had to do was submit to his lust-driven moments, right? So what if he tossed me around a bit, left a fewbruises, or shared me with others from time to time. At least I had money for food for Eli and myself.
One day, after one such rough session with the cop and a few friends, I’d apparently stumbled back to the tent city in my dazed and drugged state, forgetting completely that I actually had an apartment to go to where Eli was waiting for me.
I’d ended up crashing in a tent with another transgender prostitute, Nadine. She and I had met on one of the corners where Smith had dropped me off one night, telling me to go “meet some friends” and he’d see me in the morning.
A cop had, effectively, become my pimp.
Apparently, he owned Nadine as well, so he told her to “show me the ropes”, although I already knew way too much about prostitution. It turned out, this side of town offered a little more to clients than I’d previously engaged in, so I’d been in for a shock the first time I was chained up and beaten, strangled, and then roughly raped as part of my new life as one of Smith’s girls. The cocaine Smith provided came in handy when it came to those kinds of nights.
Eventually, I got so lost in the nightly routine of getting high and then serving Smith’s “friends”, that I forgot to care about what else was passing me by out there. I forgot to think about Eli and what he was doing. Forgot I was supposed to be living with him, safe in an apartment and looking for a real job instead of working the streets every night. One night blurred into the next, and I hardly noticed the pain anymore. The little white powder was a blessing I began to happily accept when it was handed to me.
Anyway, after a particularly rough night and the dawn of a very chilly day, Nadine and I were collecting newspapers from the trash in order to prepare the tent for winter. The newspapers added extra insulation from the cold, especially when spread over the ground. I never bothered to read what was on them, the news of the world was irrelevant to me, but that day I let my gaze skim over the front page. It spoke of events I barely understood, but one thing caught my attention. The date in the corner was very small compared to the headline, but I stared at it as if it were screaming at me.
Seeing the current date, it hit me that I couldn’t remember how long I’d been living on the streets.
Had it been a year?