Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

by Janet Mock

  “I’ve never done this,” I whispered to Shayna, removing myself from the car window.

  “Girl, I’ve seen you go with the young kanes, romancing them for free,” she said. “It’s the same thing, except this time you’re getting something out of it. You gotta be smart, girl.”

  “What does he want?” I asked.

  “A hand job,” she said. “Charge him forty-five dollars. He’s got kala.”

  It didn’t take much debate to convince me to open the door and enter into premature adulthood, because somewhere within I knew I had been groomed to do it. I had been isolated as a child, raised by absent parents, sexually abused, trained to pleasure men over myself, led to feel a sense of detachment from my body, and haunted by a reality of economic powerlessness. I sometimes wonder in reflection how my life would’ve turned out if there had been a woman out there that night who told me I didn’t have to do this, that the money wasn’t worth it, that there were other ways to get the money I needed, that not all girls did this. In all honestly, I see my sixteen-year-old self rolling her eyes and jumping in the car because she knew it was inevitable.

  Max’s house sat in the shadows of Diamond Head, just a few houses away from The Real World: Hawaii residence. His bedroom was toward the back, large, dark and cold. He flicked a switch, which cast a dim light around his king-size bed and highlighted the crow’s-feet that didn’t go away after he rested his smile. He was at least fifty. Though I told him I was eighteen, I knew he knew I was not, and that was why I was there.

  Max signaled for me to take a seat on his bed as he freshened up in his adjacent bathroom. I could hear the water splashing in the sink, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I sat on his bed and looked around his room, which had framed surf photographs and a long and short board mounted on the wall. His nightstand had a picture of a young, kinda hot blond guy who I later learned was his college-age son.

  Max returned wearing white boxer briefs, his bare chest covered in blond hair and freckles. He was muscular, in shape from early mornings spent surfing the neighboring beaches of Waikiki. He knelt in front of me and rubbed my legs, which hung from the foot of his bed, exposed in a short denim skirt. His touch felt forced, like the banter between him and Shayna on Merchant’s. Usually, when I was getting it on with guys, I was attracted to them. That sense of desire was one-way with Max, who pulled down my skirt and panties and lifted me to the head of his bed. I pulled the bag of condoms from my purse, prompting Max to shake his head.

  “Just a hand job,” he said as he reached for a bottle of baby powder, which he handed to me. I had never jerked someone off with powder, but he was paying, so I didn’t really study it. Resting on my knees, wearing nothing but my black push-up bra, I poured half a handful of baby powder into my palm. I rubbed them together and stroked him slowly, alternating my hands. Clumps of powder settled on my palms. As he was climaxing, Max announced in a demanding voice, “Flex your arms. Make a big strong muscle for me, baby.”

  Random, I thought as I balled up my left fist and flexed my bicep. Max screamed, “Oh, baby,” ejaculated, and whimpered. It took about eight minutes. When I was dressed and he was cleaned up, he handed me two twenties, a five-dollar bill, and a handful of Claritin.

  “It’s for your sniffles,” he said, touching my cheek. “You must have allergies.”

  With a diagnosis and enough money to pay for a month of hormones, I felt unstoppable when Max dropped me back to Wendi on the streets. I told her how he wanted me to flex and how grimy it had felt with the baby powder rubbing against his raw flesh.

  “Girl, haole men are always so freaky,” she said. “Did he want to touch your laka?”

  “No, he just wanted me to keep flexing,” I said.

  “Yes, show him that She-Ra, girl!”

  That night I had discovered that my body was worth money, and as long as I had a body, I would never be poor. I felt with Max’s money I could do more, be more, and so I craved more. Freebies with cute boys would no longer fly, not after getting paid to do much less. Sex was no longer something to do for fun; it was something to trade for the things I needed.

  Max became my first and only regular for a long while. I saw him about twice a month for the same old chalky hand job. A whiff of baby powder still transports me back to Max’s bedroom, those random nights and late afternoons when I got my hands dirty for his pleasure and my profit. I learned to use my beauty as currency to get the things I needed. I no longer had to rely on Mom for the medicine. I became my sole provider of my hormones, my clothes, my makeup, and my hair appointments.

  My experience with sex work is not that of the trafficked young girl or the fierce sex-positive woman who proudly chooses sex work as her occupation. My experience mirrors that of the vulnerable girl with few resources who was groomed from childhood, who was told that this was the only way, who wasn’t comfortable enough in her body to truly gain any kind of pleasure from it, who rented pieces of herself: mouth, ass, hands, breasts, penis. I knew, even at sixteen, that I did what I had to because no one was going to do it for me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Near the end of my sophomore year, Rick was arrested. Mom was by his side in Nicky’s shack as police officers cuffed him. I expected her to fight for him, to stand by his side as he sought bail and release, but she surprised me with her lack of engagement. She actually seemed relieved when she learned that his drug-fueled antics garnered him a two-year prison sentence. In that time, Mom slowly picked up the pieces.

  We sought temporary shelter with Cori, now a mom of three, having welcomed her third daughter, Alexis, who resembled Snow White, with pale skin, big dark eyes, and jet-black hair. Unfortunately, Cori, the big sister who’d spent her life raising babies, struggled as a single mother in her mid-twenties, following a similar path as Mom, full of babies and unworthy men. In retrospect, it’s easy to see the pattern, and that recognition has helped my family to heal and forgive.

  At the time, I was unforgiving to my mother despite her improvements after Rick’s arrest. I looked at her with a seething skepticism as she climbed her way out of the hole she had dug us into. After a year of unemployment and six months without a home, Mom landed a job with the Department of Transportation, which enabled her to rent a two-bedroom apartment at Richard Lane, a blue apartment building just a block away from Cori’s. She was providing us with a long-forgotten stability. This didn’t impress me, because she had already failed me. Mom had lost my trust, just like my father had the day he put that pipe to his mouth. The only difference was that I never dreamed of my father. I had no expectations of him, and maybe it was unfair, because the ones I had of her were unattainable. She couldn’t live up to the image I had created.

  I side-eyed her as she attended all of Chad’s basketball and football games and shuttled my brothers to the mall on payday to buy or trade new games for their PlayStation. When she wasn’t preoccupied with work or the boys, she was at church or in prayer groups with her friends, usually other mothers who designated certain nights to pray for their children.

  As my mother filled the void Rick had left with God and parental attentiveness, I was on the bus, shuttling between our apartment in Kalihi to Salt Lake. Moanalua became a daily annoyance, with the administration’s vocal intolerance about my dress becoming unbearable. By the end of the school year, I was called out of class or lunch to Vice Principal Johnson’s office at least a dozen times because my legs dangled out of skirts.

  “You know our rules,” Johnson would say, smirking as she wrote another red slip instructing me to go home and change, causing me to skip whole days of school. My mother soon noticed my string of absences and, surprisingly, sparked a conversation about why I was always home before her. I explained that the way I dressed was “distracting” and making people “uncomfortable,” according to Johnson. My mother wasn’t confrontational, and I know a part of her felt it was her fault for not advocating for me at Moanalua. I couldn’t explain to her that I was beginni
ng to believe that maybe, just maybe, I deserved that treatment because I was different. I realize now that I was internalizing the administration and some of my peers’ phobias, which would take years for me to undo.

  My string of absences didn’t affect my grades, but avoiding school was not a solution. With Mom’s help, I finished the school year and transferred to Farrington, a five-minute walk from our apartment, joining Wendi and my brother. It was my mother, through her involvement with the athletic department, who helped ease some of the growing pains at my new school by asking the registrar’s office to note my gender and name on the records. My mother’s vocal advocacy for me, paired with the administration’s openness, helped me skirt many of the awkward, uncomfortable moments I had faced during my two years at Moanalua.

  Awkwardness still ensued as I reintroduced myself to classmates, many of whom had known me from middle school. “Nice rack,” shouted William Phillips, the quarterback of the football team, whom I had let copy my pop quizzes in eighth-grade social studies. I rolled my eyes as his friends giggled at my growing bustline.

  My breasts were certifiably bounceable, wrapped in a blue sweater with a deep neckline that captured my classmates’ curiosity. I was in a rush to flaunt them, and the guys who took residence outside my first-period psychology class gawked at me. It amused me when they caught themselves staring and attempted to erase their lust with a quick, hurtful tease, squashing any confusion that my body presented them with.

  As I walked into class, William asked, “Eh, you get your sex change or what?”

  Luckily, our teacher, Mr. Tanaka, who had come to Farrington to coach football but ended up with a class of half-interested psychology juniors, heard him. “William, shut your mouth,” he said in a stern voice, “or you’ll find yourself benched.”

  A teacher had never stuck up for me in this way. It was teachers like Mr. Tanaka who led the way for acceptance campus-wide, ensuring that I was treated like any other girl in class. Farrington, which had a troubled, violent history due to Kalihi’s poverty and gang presence, was experimental and forward in its strategy. The school led the way with a radical, holistic approach to meeting the needs of students. Farrington had a special center for teen mothers and moms-to-be; a groundbreaking English-as-a-second-language program catered to the growing immigrant community from the Philippines, Micronesia, and Samoa; and the Teen Center, an office run by two social workers and a nurse, where students learned about sex education, took advantage of peer mediation, sought LGBTQ services, or could find a safe environment to talk. The resources at the Teen Center changed my life.

  Wendi, with whom I walked to school every day, introduced me to Alison, one of the social workers at the Teen Center. She co-facilitated a monthly support group for transgender students, called Chrysalis, with a transsexual woman in her early forties named April. With her fair skin and fluffy blond hair, April was the first everyday trans woman I had ever met. I had seen trans women only at night, on the streets or performing in pageants or clubs. April was married to a businessman and worked as an HIV/AIDS prevention outreach worker in Honolulu, where she regularly tested the girls. She always carried bags of lube and condoms in her handbag, which she gave to us at the end of Chrysalis meetings. It was April who administered my first HIV test at sixteen. She swabbed my mouth in the parking lot outside our school library and called me two weeks later with my negative test results.

  Chrysalis was a safe place where we could openly be ourselves without the commentary of the outside world. We discussed our struggles (Alex’s fear of being disowned by her Mormon parents if she came out), our successes (Wendi’s early admission to cosmetology school), and our dreams (my goal of getting a scholarship to college). We snapped our fingers at one another’s fierceness, quoted Golden Girls at the drop of a hat, and read one another when it was necessary, as with Paula’s inability to give herself a good tuck. (“Girl, did you bring your camel with you?” Wendi would tease, making us all laugh.) The most powerful feature was April’s guest speakers, who showed me that having an everyday life out in the world in the daylight was a possibility. April brought in trans women who worked as lawyers, store managers, teachers, and community outreach workers, like Hina and Ashliana, who were in their mid-twenties and giving back to girls like us through their nonprofit, Kulia Na Mamo. Chrysalis was a sanctuary of our own creation where we let our members know they were not alone. It was also where we asserted that we deserved to be here, that Farrington was our school, too.

  Farrington had a history in my family. It was where my mother met Rick, where she graduated with Cori on her hip, where Uncle Toma threw the touchdown pass that won Farrington the state title in 1990. Chad upheld our uncle’s sportsman legacy, running track, playing basketball, and catching passes as a wide receiver on the football team. It was my brother’s teammates who often gave me the hardest time. My only reservation about transferring was Chad. I felt bad that my presence disrupted the world he had carved out for himself. We didn’t discuss my transfer, and if Chad was bothered, he wouldn’t have told me. He was kind that way, more considerate than I would have been. Even though Chad accepted and respected me, I know that a part of him didn’t want me at his school. He didn’t want to hear the guys whispering about what was in my bra and my panties. But Chad, the sensitive, caring one, shared his school with me, and it became mine, too.

  Though my family in Hawaii grew to accept my gender over the years, the same can’t be said for my father, whom I hadn’t seen in the nearly five years we’d been with Mom. Despite his absence, he was very much present to me, especially when he called the apartment, here and there, to speak with Chad and me. I usually sat next to Chad, sharing the receiver as he asked about school, the family, and sports. When he asked for me, Chad knew to say I wasn’t there; it was the only time he ever referred to me as “he” or Charles. I hadn’t told my father that I was a girl. I was afraid to do so. He still had an intimidating presence in my life. After a year of this charade, when I was in my junior year, Dad asked for pictures. I finally sent him my yearbook photo and this letter:

  Dear Dad,

  I hope you’re well. I want to say that I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you in a while. I’ve been going through a lot of stuff, things you probably will not approve of and probably will not understand.

  Growing up, I’ve always felt different, like I was born in a body that didn’t match who I was. With the help of Mom, Chad, and our family and my friends, I’ve realized that the reason I felt different was because I have always been a girl, just in a boy’s body.

  I’m sure you’ll be angry about this and won’t approve of it. I remember when I was growing up you scolded me for liking girl things, for not playing football and basketball like Chad. I’m sorry that I’ve disappointed you in the past and maybe now, but I’m trying to make myself happy.

  I go by Janet now. I don’t expect you to approve of this and I know it’s a lot but I just wanted to be honest and stop hiding and avoiding you. I hope we can talk again, but I do understand if this is too much for you to handle.

  I love you but if you can’t accept who I am, then I can’t talk to you.

  Love,

  Janet

  After I wrote the letter, sealed the envelope, and dropped it in the mail, I wanted to take it back. I’d been too defiant because I had been avoiding all contact and conversation with my father for over a year. I had a lot to tell him, yet stubbornly told myself I didn’t need his approval or love. A piece of me had something to prove to him: that despite his years of frustration over who I was, I was a happy and healthy teenage girl and there was nothing he could do about it. I knew that the physical distance between us kept me safe. The odds of him having the money to fly to Hawaii to reprimand me and cuss me out were slim.

  A week later, I got a letter in the mail from Dad, which surprised me. In it, he complimented me and said that I “looked nice.” He said it would take him a while to get used to calling me Janet and seeing me as
a girl, but “I will try my best.” He used the latter part of his letter to address my “ultimatum”:

  Your disrespect for me is apparent. You never respected me when I think about it and you never liked me. But I’m the parent and you’re the child and it is not your job to love me the way I love you. My love for you is unconditional and no matter what you decide in your life I will love you. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, but I will always love you.

  Love,

  Dad

  When I look back on this exchange, I realize that I didn’t give Dad the chance I gave my mother, who had time and experience, seeing me take all the baby steps I took to reveal myself, from Lip Smackers and tight jeans to name changes and hormone treatments. My mother and I didn’t consult him when I started hormone therapy, I avoided him when he called, and Chad kept him in the dark. I realize now that I shocked my father into submission by giving him an ultimatum that proclaimed: Accept me as your daughter or pretend that I do not exist. When a person transitions, it doesn’t affect only the person undergoing the change but all those who love that person. I didn’t take into account the mourning that my father, my mother, my siblings, and my family would undergo as I evolved, and in my father’s case especially, I didn’t take into account his love for me as his child, a love that has given me a solid core, knowing that no matter what I go through, even if he has nothing else to give, I have his love.

  By the end of our junior year, Wendi considered Farrington a waste of her time. I can’t count the number of times she stood me up on the intersection of Gulick Avenue and King Street, the meeting spot for our morning walks. She overslept with little regard. She spent most of her time with older girls like Shayna, who schooled her in the ways of Merchant Street and got her into the straight clubs in Waikiki. For a seventeen-year-old girl, fast money, parties, and boys were an appealing alternative to algebra and English. I remember her coming to school at lunch with no makeup on, big sunglasses, jeans, and a hoodie. She was just going through the motions, showing her face so the vice principal wouldn’t call her grandmother for truancy.