Prostitution

I didn't want to write today, I wanted to go home, but I have no home. I would write at home if I had one, but I have to go to McDonald's. As much as I love hanging there for a while, I wish there were other internet cafes or we all had Free WiFi, or of course, I had my own home, but I'm grateful. I met a couple of older friendly Men there that have been nice, but all they do is talk about women, asking women out, or how horny they are and I'm just not interested—it's off-putting. 

They are friendly, but it becomes constant their attention and it turns me off. I want to sometimes go in there and just be by myself, but once you start talking it becomes a 24/7 thing. I have such little interest now. I don't want to be rude, but I want to be left alone. I don't have a problem anymore saying that. I deferred to men throughout my marriage, men that I know now cared nothing for me at all. I was a thing, an object, nothing of any value to them. Something to be used for everything they could get out of me. It's the way it is here. I guess it always was, but growing up with it, I just accepted it as "boys will be boys," then when I was coerced into getting married, it was that's the way men are and to be a "good wife" you need to defer to your husband, he is the "Man" after all.  There is a group of this kind of Man that continues the stalking, retaliation, and covering this all up. I was told it would be relentless and it has been. Men are hunters after all, but we no longer live in those times, this is the Modern era.

Whenever you talk online about the way it is now, especially in a small community like mine, you get the ones that say "not all men," but for women considered whores, like the Jewish "Shiksa," I was viciously called recently, you're inundated with these men that go on about how this is not all Men, but for me it is. It is the powerful ones in my community and the other Men just go along. Men are very much pack creatures and will follow along with the Alpha ones, so it is all Men! If it wasn't there would be no need to Peacefully Protest or demand that things change, which they need to. 

Forcing someone to have sex is disgusting. I'm not talking about a man who knows himself, moves with confidence and hears what you're saying, and responds accordingly. I'm talking about men that don't see you as a person at all and just want to use you. Men are allowed to define themselves and then expect you to go along with what they want, your needs, concerns, and viewpoint is not a consideration. It's about their power and woman are to defer to that power in every way. You don't exist, you only exist in relation to a man. You're not allowed to define yourself.

I'm getting better at seeing this kind of communication and it saddens me I went along with it for so long in my marriage and from the men in my ex's life. It was the way men were, I was told. I accepted the way they were and was told often by all of my ex-husband's women friends that this was how it was. All were supposedly happily married and had been married much longer than me, so of course, they knew. My ex and all his friends and family felt the same way. All the men were the same. All about him, his needs, his viewpoint, what he wanted—all about them. I got a smaller and smaller space left over to attend to my needs and in the end, basically nonexistent. In the end, I found out from all these people I loved and cared about I was just a "servant," an incompetent one at that—just a whore. It's been devastating to understand it wasn't just playing dress-up in the bedroom to make sure I was pleasing to my husband. A modern woman that knows how to pleasure her husband. I remember when Cosmopolitan Magazine would write articles on it, so risque 20 years ago.

I overhear these men at the next booth talk about women in that way that it's just about sex, not about knowing them, but about getting them and I get sad and angry. Getting women to have sex is all there is or in my case men just using me. Talking about me like I overhear these men talk. It makes me ill, I just want to be home and be by myself. I thought my ex was a decent man, I had no idea he was just using me until the end to leave me with nothing. It was all set up from the start. He wasn't a man that loved me and then over the years fell out of love. A man who was greedy and wanted more of his share in the divorce. No, he was what you call a predator. A violent drug dealer that set up our marriage from the start, along with his criminal friends and what I have since learned is "dirty cops." What kind of men is that? I didn't know Men like that existed but they do and they are supported by other Men. I really believed these men were decent and I was so horribly dangerously wrong because everything turned out to be a lie.

I have been on Twitter 10yrs now my anniversary was in April. Twitter kept me going when I thought I would not make it. Being harassed by my ex, all his friends and family, my family, and the police didn't make for a stable environment to write, do my Art and Photography, or do anything related to my Graphic Design career after my entire business was stolen. If I wasn't being arrested for nonsense; their buddies calling the cops, my family or my ex's friends making threats about calling the cops, I was being evicted, my door banged down and the constant insinuations I was a "crazy prostitute," which I wasn't. One brutal judge in particular constantly sending me for psych evaluations. This judge seemed personally involved with making my life a living nightmare. Her constant rewrite of my life was shocking and traumatizing along with the other assaults that left me with panic attacks and anxiety struggling to understand what was going on with all these people. Why would they do these horrible things? I could keep my writing going by a sort of post-it note log on Twitter—writing in a sort of "Gonzo" sound bites.

I went from an award-winning Graphic Designer and a Communications Manager on her way to be a Director to a "Mentally-ill Homeless Prostitute." I had my own Freelance Business and a career spanning over 30yrs that I could work from home, perfect for the Pandemic that had yet not arrived but would soon. I sat in court just about every month watching this woman turn me into a Bipolar, drug-addicted, paranoid, suicidal, alcoholic, violent, Schizoaffective, homeless, Pedophile, Prostitute. I'm sure I probably missed a label or two, the smear campaign of throw everything and the kitchen sink comes to mind, and see what sticks. I was also told repeatedly to go to DSS or Social Services. You're disabled from a "psychotic break," and "incompetent," from years of "doing nothing in your marriage," I was told repeatedly. This went on every time I was in court regardless of the evidence, truth, or outright lie all this was. 

If this particular Judge was in a good mood, there were so many as time went on, I got a lawyer that pretended to help me but usually told me "you don't understand," when I politely told the Judge the lawyer was not helping me and I needed to have my own lawyer, she dismissed me as "not getting along," the same way my ex did and all these people were now doing. I most certainly did understand that this was a definite assault on my life, I just could not understand why courts, cops, and these "assigned" lawyers were all going along with this. Because I was being denied access to any of "our" money I could not get my own lawyer and when I tried I was told they wouldn't help me or they took my money and basically did nothing. 

We met in Jail, she was a Prostitute. Most everyone fights all the time, but there are times you seem friends—Jail can be like that. She seemed friendly, some of them wanted to fight all the time, but she was cool and when I saw her on the outside she remarked that it was awful how they all make fun of me and my wanting to get my dog. They all would get together and bark whenever I went by, of course, guards would protect the bullies. The cop that sexually assaulted me brother is a guard and friends with all these Prostitutes and most were in for dealing even though they said it was more because they were addicts rather than dealers. Most wanted to run "Trap houses" and get other women to do the actual "tricks." They could manage things rather than do the actual work—be their own boss. I could not really reconcile this because being forced into Prostitution was sounding more and more horrible and certainly not like managing your own business, which is what I had been doing. Many were self-described addicts, describing Heroin as the "ultimate drug" and Prostitution was merely a way to score more Crack. We weren't really talking about sex but an addiction, a vending machine like supply. 

"That's just the way it is," when we were talking about all my stuff being taken, "that's the way it's done," they would quip. 20yrs of personal belongings; including my business work photography art, and design, all my portfolios, and all my personal photos all also "auctioned off," and having nothing left. Getting a "pen pal," was the answer or a "Sugar Pop," someone who would buy you things. I wasn't sure what you would repay this person with, but I assume it was sex, none of which seemed something I wanted to do for what was happening to me. "You could run your own house," I was told, but trapping women into Prostitution was not my idea of a good time. I would rather help them, I said, feeling like I also needed help for this onslaught of destruction that was taking over my life. I wasn't Anti-Prostitution, but being forced on the street and being forced into Prostitution was not something I wanted to do.

Watching her now jump in and out of trucks was hard. At 57 I wasn't into seeing men all day long or jumping in and out of trucks. I could barely stand them now after all the betrayal in my life. The degrading way all the ones I knew treated me and the crack-like way they all seemed to think about sex made me physically ill. I was learning my marriage was a 20 year Rape, I was told online when I was first trying to deal with what was happening to me and was telling my story. At the time, I could not bring myself to say this. I was still holding on to something that was real in 20yrs. I could not yet fully come to accept this is all I was to my ex. I knew he was greedy, I knew he became increasingly abusive after the honeymoon stage of us dating for 6yrs, but I still hadn't fully come to know that this was set up from the start, that he never loved me, and like a Pimp or a Trafficker saw me as just merchandise—Product. 

"He used the merchandise," my ex said towards the end about my cousin. I was increasingly growing uneasy about the way he was currently describing events. Different from the way he did when we were first together. I started to see he met the Coke they sold together—my cousin stated using the Coke more and more. He was getting bolder and bolder about revealing the truth about what went on, but I was still struggling with the cryptic way he would tell me things. "He was low-class," he sneered at me towards the end. I shuddered to think what he then thought of me. I had come to see he had been lying all along, but I didn't know the extent. I would come to learn he saw me the same way, low class, but a whore, servant—someone to be continually used. White supremacy showing its ugly face across America at the time with the election of Trump. The threats from all of these people relating to him also left me reeling. I had never really been political with any of these people, but it was looking more and more like this was the secret filth that kept them all together. 

It was mostly awful to be Jailed for something I didn't do, but I tried to make the best of things and learn about why I was being told I was a "crazy Prostitute" and a "mentally ill drug addict." They were all Prostitutes and talked about their drug addictions. Most loved Heroin or Crack, not much Coke, no weed really, and mostly laughed at me about smoking some weed. My ex had bought it at the end to make it look like I was doing drugs. I never did anything all those years while everyone like to drink and get stoned, but with all the stress and hope we were going to retire and he wanted to buy some pot to relax I thought I would have a little. It ended up helping my anxiety and panic attacks. They had their own lingo and made fun of me often in the same way others on the outside were. Some knew my mother and had lived down to East End when we did. 

A couple were guards. One threatened to "become a Cop and shoot me," she threatened others, but no one did anything. Her mother I was told did Coke, bragged about "boosting her retirement," and was married to a retired lieutenant so I guess she got away with anything. She supposedly worked at the Jail and the School District. I was the one to write the grievance. The other lady she threatened was black and I watched her friend be mistreated, so I thought maybe that's why. I think she was the cousin or relative to the guy I went to school with. My mother had beat up his mother in an awful fight. She beat her with a paint can and then dumped it over her head. I felt some responsibility, it always bothered me. I wrote the grievance for all of us. I was horrified when she made these threats, I also told her I knew her grandmother from living down East End, but this only seemed to make her even more rageful. I gave up after a while, realizing that there was more going on as usual than I had first thought. The constant ass-busting was also going on with the insinuations I was "crazy," talking to the TV because of having talked about "Bail Reform," and the constant put-downs for wanting information about my dog and 20yrs of my personal belongings in storage that I was repeatedly threatened from the start of all this would be "auctioned off."

All would be auctioned off so I could supposedly get a Pimp and "get on the streets and make some money!" I sit here now seeing how it was all planned, still shocking to see how all these people work together so it takes a long time to think they are together, not only because they are so good at pretending they don't know each other, but because you can't imagine that people would get together and do such a horrible thing to someone, but forcing women into prostitution was exactly what they all had planned for me. Then I would have a "psychotic break" from finding out all this and they would have me committed to a supervised housing facility or assisted living place. Early on my mother bragged about them having psychologists, but she would not see me in a psych ward. She always had the same cryptic way of giving hints about hurting me, she just couldn't help herself. At the time, I just thought it was another threat because these threats were made often whenever I questioned the abuse or other ways I wasn't included in things that went on especially our finances. 

As things fell into place, old remarks, fights, and ways I was treated came back in waves of grief and sorrow as I had to come to terms with what they were all doing. Twitter was such a comfort, as I joined others struggling with this mindset of wanting to bring back slavery and start a civil war. Women such as myself reduced again to just whores to be exploited by these other superior people. I thought of all the ways I mistook my wifely duties that looking back was more servant than a wife. My mother-in-law called every day with demands. She was blind and I felt glad to be a good daughter-in-law and make sure her needs were met. I thought how hard it must be to be blind and be alone, but she never felt that way about me. I wasn't a daughter-in-law taking such loving care of her mother-n-law as a good wife does, but a servant that was beneath her and owed her my service. She felt no need to pay any of this back. Talking about money unleashed lectures at the beginning that made my concerns seem rude, they had nothing after all. I never realized it was I that had so much. Making $30,000 consistently over a 20yr marriage amounts to a staggering $600,000 but I was to see none of it or all the increase in value I worked on with our properties. I was to see none of the equity of the properties not only double but our Lakehouse that we bought for $40,000 listed now at $200,000 there is nothing on the Lake not in that range, but I wake up each morning sleeping on an abandoned porch my cousins lived in.

Men have been giving me $20, at first I thought it was nice, I was homeless, but like everything else here it's been done on purpose like all the other setups done. All the accusations that I carry a pack because it had my clothes in it from "shacking up" with men or that anything I did in the marriage was not acknowledged because I had been just a whore from the start. I carried a backpack because without a car I had to carry all my groceries and water and anything else of value. They were continually stealing my things right out of apartments I rented. They were going to make sure that I looked like I was taking money from men for sex, which was why I was being repeatedly told I was "delusional about being a professional." I was also repeatedly denied jobs over the years to make it seem that I was incompetent and usually got fired or I didn't get along. At first, my ex was always so understanding, especially at Christmas, I would be humiliated by people asking me about why I wasn't working or had lost another job. I always managed to get an even better job with more money or benefits, but as the years went by this made him even angrier. 

My brother-in-law often made this his way of keeping me ashamed about it as he would bring attention to it in front of everyone after of course bragging about his latest business trip or skiing with the boss in some really nice place. He also made constant remarks about what I wore of course it always had some kind of sexual dismissal that now I understand. I never had words for the way he made me feel, but today I know most of these men engaged in a subtle constant sexual harassment. Whatever I did was suspect and it all amounted to me being, well you know—a whore. 

My mother-in-law and her sisters were treated like the Queens as were all the friends my ex had. Over the years, I see now how fun it was for them to dismiss me, put me down, make up fights, and keep this going all these years so at the end nothing would be mine. The constant subtle put-downs that I was not a career professional but something else. There were always these allusions to other things, the constant invalidation that was always somehow sexual especially because I didn't have children which was a constant sore point with everyone. I see now it wasn't about not having children it was just a way to infer because I didn't have them I was not a good woman, wife, or had a career, but a whore. This attitude used to justify telling me after 20yrs of extremely hard work that nothing was mine and I should go "walk the street," that "I did nothing!"

These aren't poor people they are people very well off, very well connected financially also knowing how to set things up with legal papers that made things seem one way but were another. I was not a homeowner with numerous properties but a whore my ex "kept" that basically did nothing. Most of the time, I sat in shock that this is how I was also being treated in courts. Judges and Lawyers I went to high school with knowing I had nothing growing up were now once again the popular clique and going to make sure I got nothing from all the years of extremely hard work I did to make sure I had a home, decent car and a way to provide for myself. Being a Prostitute never was part of that, but I had no idea how extreme all this really was—how deep it went. I also made the sacrifices of not having children knowing I had no help and could never afford to raise them in a decent way, but I could provide for myself—I worked all the time.

The writing is hard today, but the paragraphs start to accumulate and I have eaten something. I survived another day. I was robbed again. My $3,000 Mac Book Pro stolen, the last of my professional Graphic Design items left. Using a Mac Book Pro is like driving on a Cadillac, I loved it. It was a cool profession I loved. I remembered my first job and realizing I could be paid for doing my art, doing something I loved, it was a wonderful feeling. I had no idea the more success you have the more people also work as hard to destroy your success, even people that tell you all the time how much they love you. The screen was smashed by my mother in one of her rages recently, like the punch in the face and spraying me in the face with a chemical—she "hates computers," she yelled so often that I knew that it didn't matter I loved Mac's and derived my livelihood from them.

When I first bought a Mac all those years ago, a very cool G4, my ex, and my brother-in-law made it so difficult I almost didn't. I see now with everything over the years the put-downs and denial of what I wanted were all on purpose. Causing trouble at work, damaging my computer equipment, refusing to give me any money from our profit. There were so many ways the control started so subtly and ended up being deadly. 

I hadn't seen my mother in so long I thought it still a misunderstanding. I had no idea her stories about "Farm-hands" who worked the land my grandparents had also was deep down her own philosophy about people. In horror, I was starting to see what she had always thought about me all along. I was just one of those Farm-hands. Certain people are just servants, even if they are your own daughter. You can sell people you don't consider worthy of being human beings but are just merchandise. I would come to see that she was involved in the extremism that had taken over recently and never really left. White Supremacy, Extremism, Trumpism, in many ways similar. Selling, hoarding, using other human beings like you collect other things is all acceptable. My mother and my ex so much alike now. As the lies and deceptions unfold and come together to show the horror of what they really thought about me. I was just a product, a thing, someone to be sold. "You can't sell an old dog," she was ranting recently when she was once again throwing me out after not seeing her in 20yrs. I would never have asked, but I was violently put on the street and she kept showing up knowing way more than I could understand. It all starts to fall in place now. Being sold once so long ago to my ex-husband and now they are all trying to sell me once again, but today I know the depravity that exists. We're not talking about sex with consent and not violence, we're talking about children, sex abuse, and the idea humans exist as commodities. I survived the hell they put me through to get to this point, but the war continues. It's an old war, biblical in fact even in these modern times that call us to love or exploit. Today I still choose love.