by Janet Mock
“We’re moving,” Mom announced one Saturday morning, giving each of us one big blue storage bin to pack our things in. “Anything that you don’t need now, we’ll box up and leave at Cori’s.”
Plainly, Mom wasn’t earning enough to renew our lease in Salt Lake. She couldn’t commit to the monthly rent, knowing full well that Rick’s share would be spent on drugs. With the help of a longtime friend whose pity led him to give Mom his beat-up Volvo wagon, we took temporary residence at a motel near the airport. Our room at the Pacific Marina Inn had two twin beds—one for Jeff and me, the other for Mom and Rick—and a cot where Chad slept without complaint. Mom and Rick scrounged up money every week to cover the room. Chad and Jeff initially found the motel exciting, splashing around in the pool and running to Byron’s, a favorite local diner, for a bite when they got antsy. It was an adventure, something new and thrilling and fleeting.
The motel was filled with transient sounds, from the clacks of well-worn heels signaling the comings and goings of sex workers, to the planes distantly buzzing at the airport, to the jingling of the charms on Mom’s purse as she returned home late at night with Rick tweaking at her side. I thought our living situation, like these sounds, would be temporary. I knew that they wouldn’t be able to sustain this chaos for much longer, yet I didn’t see a solution in sight. There was nothing I could do to lift my brothers out of this place, and loyally, I felt my place was beside my mother, whom I didn’t want to leave with Rick.
I remember the fear that woke me the night Mom returned to the room at three A.M. with her hand wrapped in a bandage after getting stabbed by Rick. Apparently, Rick, coming down from a high, had confronted a driver who cut him off on Nimitz Highway, the road leading to the motel. When the guy approached the Volvo at a stoplight, Rick reached for his Swiss army knife and jumped out of the car. Mom followed Rick, trying to calm him down. As Rick aimed the knife at the guy, Mom reached for the blade.
“She thinks she’s Wonder Woman,” Rick told us, shaking his head, obviously amused.
“Fucking asshole was about to stab the guy,” Mom said, thinking it made sense to grab a knife to save her man from getting arrested.
They were beyond dysfunctional. I watched them cuddle closely in the twin bed, Rick kissing her forehead as she rested her head on his bare chest. I had no frame of reference for this kind of love; my mother’s dangerous attraction puzzled me.
Rick was blatantly not good for Mom from the start of their courtship at Farrington High School, where they met in her junior year. Mom liked his sweet, brooding nature. She felt he was misunderstood, and she became his first ally. Mom had been looking for an escape from the verbally abusive and volatile environment Papa created at home, and Rick became that escape for her. Mom welcomed Cori in November 1976, just six months before graduation. Rick was soon sentenced to juvenile detention and then prison, the setting of most of his adulthood. Mom recently told me that she married Rick while he was in jail after Cheraine was born in 1979. I couldn’t conceal the shock on my face. It was difficult imagining my mother, with two babies at her side, marrying Rick in a men’s prison.
Decades later, my mother led herself back to this man, with whom she created another desperate situation, with three children sleeping in a motel room on the cusp of homelessness. When their evening antics could no longer fund the room, we packed our blue storage bins in the Volvo and crashed at Rick’s friend’s home in Kalihi. His name was Nicky, and he stole, pawned, and smoked with Rick. I slept on the couch in Nicky’s living room (on nights when I didn’t crash at Wendi’s), while my brothers slept on a bunk bed in the backyard toolshed.
I was unable to express my heartbreak over the dismal state of our family. I didn’t have the words to describe the layers of despair I was experiencing. I can’t speak for my brothers, but I do know that while I worried about them, I couldn’t bear the responsibility of their fears. The load I was carrying was too burdensome. I separated from them, from Mom, from the entire situation, because I needed to care for myself. The money my mother had promised me to cover my weekly shots was inconsistent. Worrying about and funding my transition was not her priority, and as a result I improvised, going every other week to Dr. R.’s or skipping treatments altogether.
I was ashamed to define our situation. Speaking about our experiences with poverty and homelessness would have made it too real for me. I was living it, surviving it, and had no strength to spare to define it. It was also difficult to acknowledge the stark reality of my mother’s diminishing appearance. She was scarily thin. The bags under her eyes grew darker. Her complexion was rough with blemishes, belonging to a woman a decade older than her forty years. And her teeth were ravaged by her pipe smoking. She no longer smiled. None of us had anything to smile about.
Any confidence I had about my mother being sober, or at least reasonable, was shredded. She was strung out, desperate, pathetic. It took her a decade to admit her drug use. She told me she smoked meth with Rick because she wanted to be around him, to fit into his druggie world, to numb herself from the dark truth she was living. “For me, it was an escape from reality,” she explained. “I knew the relationship was not healthy, but drugs allowed me to not care or feel the pain.”
The woman I had dreamed about as a child, the woman with the perfume, long, dark hair, and shelves of books, did not exist. Mom was no longer my dream girl. I had to become that dream.
My vulnerability, resentment, and desperation to survive were the backdrop of my first nights at Merchant Street in downtown Honolulu. The first thing I remember about Merchant’s, as we called it, is a red tube-top dress. A woman, standing at six feet in flat sandals, had the hem of her spandex dress resting above her hips as she squatted on the steps of the Alexander & Baldwin Building. Her new vagina was exposed in the dark as boys in a white Lexus screamed, “I like sample!”
She stood up, pulled her dress down to the middle of her lengthy thighs, and descended the steps. She was gorgeous and knew it, the kind of woman who could find her reflection in the dark. Approaching the car, she leaned into the window, dropped her top, and unzipped the passenger’s pants. With his penis in her hand, she yelled in a forcefully deep voice, “Honey, nothing here is free!” The girls who were watching, including Wendi and me, hooted as the car sped away.
Shayna towered over Merchant Street. Statuesque, slender, with ehu blond beachy hair that mirrored the waves at Waimea Bay and a body just as curvy, she profited from her beauty. She was one of a dozen girls who made coins on the block, hustling nightly in downtown Honolulu, the historical stroll for the trans women of Hawaii. Dating back to the 1960s, when the legendary Glades Show Lounge touted in lights on its billboard “Where Boys Will Be Girls,” downtown Honolulu’s red-light district has been an attraction for seamen and soldiers, tourists and admirers, looking for a woman with something extra.
“Look at you, Mary!” Shayna shouted to Wendi, who kissed her and introduced me. “Sickening, yeah?”
Shayna was examining me from my toes (I had on strappy black heels from Slipper Warehouse’s clearance sale) and my hips (blue capris stuffed with my homemade pads) to my face and chest (covered in my favorite leopard-print halter). That was where she paused. “Girl, you already got your chi-chis done?” Shayna asked.
“They’re hormone breasts,” Wendi said like a hype man at a hip-hop show, punctuating all the things that were sure to make Shayna gag.
“I like see,” Shayna said, reaching her hand into my bra. There were no personal boundaries when it came to the women on Merchant’s. “Maaarry, they’re big. So fleshy,” she said, scanning my figure. “And that’s all your body?”
“Yes, girl,” Wendi said, smacking her padded hips, which caused a deep, dull sound.
“Girl, whatchu got in there?” Shayna asked her. “Sofa cushions?”
We all laughed. No one could ignore a good read.
“It’s soooo slow tonight,” Shayna said with a pouty face. Talking about the traffic on Merch
ant’s was small talk, like discussing the weather. “All these young kanes like have for free, but I gotta make coins.”
“Those guys were really cute, though,” I said.
“It’s always the cute kanes who no like pay, girl!” Shayna said, rolling her eyes. “My freebie days are over.”
Shayna used to come to town from Kaneohe to hang out until she got serious about getting “her change.” She was nineteen when she began saving, and by twenty-one she had her own car, apartment, vagina, breasts, and hips filled with medical-grade silicone from a doctor in Tijuana who pumped most of the girls. She had also done mysterious things to her nose, forehead, and cheekbones that no one was able to pinpoint. I admired her work ethic, her determination to execute a plan. To me, transitioning was different for everyone, but one thing was a constant: It wasn’t about becoming some better version of yourself or a knockoff of some unattainable woman; it was about revealing who you’d always been.
“Where you guys came from?” Shayna asked.
“Oh, we was just cruising,” Wendi said. “Then we pooched a ride from my place.”
“What? You like work, Wendi? I get more clients who like laka than pussy anyway,” Shayna said, pointing out that because we hadn’t had bottom surgery we could make more money on Merchant’s.
I looked at Wendi with sharp eyes, wondering what she’d say next. She just shook her head.
“Mmmm-hmmm,” Shayna hummed skeptically.
Merchant Street was our sanctuary. Every Friday and Saturday night, swarms of girls dressed in their evening best congregated on a street named after commercial dealing and trade. Some girls came to work, others to hang. I came to Merchant’s curiously and naively, thinking that merely hanging there would have no effect on me. It was my chance to meet all the legends I had heard about from Wendi: Rebecca was the most successful self-made woman on the block, with a house of her own in Kapolei and double-bagged breast implants to match her plus-sized stature; Heather was one of the fishiest girls on the island with a Barbie body that she stealthily flaunted at a famous strip club in Waikiki; Angela was the only other Hawaiian-black girl I knew of, with long, wavy copper-toned hair, a silicone-free derriere that would make Sir Mix-a-Lot scream, and zero desire to have “the surgery,” like the majority of girls I knew.
The women owned the entire block, from Merchant and Bishop to Queen and Bethel. The streets were dimly lit by the buzzing streetlamps and anchored by the Fort Street Mall, a walkway that connected all of downtown Honolulu. The street garnered a national profile after being featured in the 2005 HBO documentary Downtown Girls: The Hookers of Honolulu, directed by Brent Owens, who narrated the film in a deep baritone that matched the film’s seedy, sensational, sleazy tone. One of the women featured explained the appeal of survival sex work simply: “It was the money and [the men] thinking that I am a woman.”
I could see the appeal of profits and the appeal of men, no matter their horny, objectifying, fetishistic intentions, validating the women we knew ourselves to be. Many women used their bodies for profit, but mine wasn’t for sale, I haughtily told myself. There was no way I could do that. It didn’t fit the image I had of myself as an honor student, a class representative, as someone who wanted to do bigger, better things. What I failed to see through my youthful lens was the complexity of these women’s roles as surviving outlaws. They came to Merchant Street and took control of their bodies—bodies that were radical in their mere existence in this misogynistic, transphobic, elitist world—because their bodies, their wits, their collective legacy of survival, were tools to care for themselves when their families, our government, and our medical establishment turned their backs.
The varied, often conflicting portraits these women presented shaped my developing composition of womanhood. When I am asked how I define womanhood, I often quote feminist author Simone de Beauvoir: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” I’ve always been struck by her use of becomes. Becoming is the action that births our womanhood, rather than the passive act of being born (an act none of us has a choice in). This short, powerful statement assured me that I have the freedom, in spite of and because of my birth, body, race, gender expectations, and economic resources, to define myself for myself and for others.
Self-definition has been a responsibility I’ve wholeheartedly taken on as mine. It’s never a duty one should outsource. Of this responsibility, writer and poet Audre Lorde said, “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” Self-definition and self-determination is about the many varied decisions that we make to compose and journey toward ourselves, about the audacity and strength to proclaim, create, and evolve into who we know ourselves to be. It’s okay if your personal definition is in a constant state of flux as you navigate the world.
My mother contributed to my sense of womanhood: She taught me tenacity, she taught me that I am my own person, she taught me that I had to do for myself. Admittedly, she didn’t know how to raise a girl like me, but the women on Merchant Street did, because they were me. In the presence of the mothers and sisters who walked the path before and alongside me on those streets in downtown Honolulu, I uncovered statements that guided me on my path toward womanhood: We are more than our bodies; we all have different relationships to our bodies; our bodies are ours to do what we want with. I stood in awe as these women fought for their womanhood. They taught me, from car to car and date after date, to take ownership of my life and my body.
What I initially chose to do with my body was wield it to gain the affection I craved. Standing on those streets, slightly hidden by the awnings of local businesses and lit by unmoving lamps, I wished for someone to reach out and cradle me, to tell me I was beautiful and worthy and better than the world I had come from. I wanted a man to tell me that there was no money in the world that could buy me. I wanted him to take care of me in the ways that my parents had failed to. When my wishes weren’t granted, I chased affection in the cars of cute guys. I believed that these boys looking to get their rocks off would make me worthy, someone better than who I actually was: an incomplete girl-child.
Adolescence is that passageway linking childhood and adulthood, a period in a person’s life when you’re figuring out who you are in a body taking form, and how that stacks up to the images you’ve seen and internalized. When I think of my adolescence, I think about the Britney Spears song “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” (please bear with me here). It explains a sense of discovery, in which you’re seeking definition while experimenting and changing and asserting who you are in relationship to your peers, your culture, and your and others’ expectations. It’s that chasm between your reality and your dream.
Coupled with my issues about my body and the instability of my home life, riding in cars with boys became a way to find relief. Wendi and I hung out, drank beer, and fooled around with a string of guys. We’d make out and blow them high atop Mount Tantalus, and if we were feeling a postcoital connection, we’d grab a late-night bite at Zippy’s. We’d go to Wendi’s at the end of the night on a high, giggling about what the other had done, who had the cuter guy, plotting our next adventure. I felt so adult and so powerful.
Being sexually available was how I validated myself in a world that told me daily that who I was would never be “real” or compare to the “real” thing. Being promiscuous helped me establish a sense of control over the pain and turmoil I was dealing with at home and with myself, my body, and my identity. If I couldn’t radically change our homelessness, my mother’s addictions, and my own body, then at least I could let a boy look at me with desire.
Growing up, I learned that no one would want me as I was, that sex was secret and shameful. I didn’t have the tools to refuse the advances and gaze of men. I saw how my father went from woman to woman with little regard or apology. I witnessed my mother modeling severe neediness with men, as if the only way to have worth was to have a man by your side. I learned from them
to never be alone; that I needed a man to make me worthy. My sense of self was partly shaped by how men viewed me. The craving I had in my belly to feel special and desired was insatiable. No man’s warm body would be able to assuage my appetite. That bottomless craving was a portal that made it easier for me to break the silent commitment I had made to myself the first time I judged the other girls on Merchant Street.
A silver sports car stopped in front of Shayna, who leaned her lengthy body into the passenger window. After chatting and laughing familiarly with the driver, who was shielded by the darkness of the street, Shayna turned around and signaled me over with a flick of her head. I mouthed “Me?” with a surprised look. She nodded. That walk to the silver car was one of those pivotal moments we all experience when we’re presented with an opportunity that reveals our character. The sign in Mr. Higa’s office from middle school flashed in my mind: “The decisions you make dictate the life that you will lead.”
Shayna introduced the driver as Max. He had a gentle face and blue eyes that sparkled in the glow of his dashboard. I told him my name was Skye, the street name I’d chosen because it sounded ethereal.
“Me and Max go waaaay back,” Shayna said.
“Yes, we’re old friends,” Max said with a deep chuckle. “Actually, I’m the old one,” he added with a wink.
“Nah, you still look good, babe!” Shayna said sweetly.
This friendly banter was performance. She pretended to be invested in what he had to say, and he knew the conversation was vital to getting what he wanted. I knew, hovering in Max’s window, that he wanted me, just like he had Shayna. He was Shayna’s first regular when she was my age, pooching rides from Kaneohe to town. She vouched that he was a good date and would take care of me.
