by Janet Mock
“I don’t think too much about how I do it all, because I have no choice but to do it all,” I said through mascara-stained black tears, resembling Lauren Conrad on The Hills. “I think it’s hard being any of us, and the only thing that makes it a bit easier is being okay with who you are. Some days are easier than others, but every day I am really happy to be me, and I think that helps a lot.”
That May, with my family, Wendi, and Alison cheering me on, I accepted the sixteen-thousand-dollar scholarship. I received a lei and an award certificate as the applause of three hundred of my classmates and their families and friends roared in front of me. In my white cap and gown, I took in the sea of white and maroon filling our school’s amphitheater, feeling victorious and humbled and affirmed in a holistic way. These people believed in me, which made me believe in me even more. I felt nothing could stop me. We celebrated over Chinese food that weekend with Papa and Grandma Pearl and my aunts and uncles, whom Mom had reconnected with after her breakup with Rick. I received cards of congratulation and leis and school-supply money. I landed on the front page of the life section of our daily newspaper, which cited me as Janet Mock, not Janet Mock the transgender girl. I was Janet Mock, “the UH-bound daughter of Elizabeth Mock of Honolulu.”
• • •
College began that fall in the wake of much mourning. On my way to my first day of school, I heard on the radio that the singer Aaliyah had died in a plane crash in the Bahamas after a video shoot. She was only twenty-two, four years older than I was. I had known her through her music since she was fifteen. Having never known anyone close who had died, I cried those first few nights of my freshman semester to the songs of her self-titled final album, released just a month before her death.
Two weeks later, Mom shouted from the living room at six A.M., telling us to get up. I joined my family in front of the TV, where we watched the footage of the World Trade Center on fire. We sat mere miles from Pearl Harbor, where sixty years earlier it was blazing by foreign attack. The world felt chaotic, the future uncertain, and the first thoughts in my head were selfish ones: I do not want to die before I get a chance to be truly myself. There were vigils at school, a march, and blood drives. Everyone wore American flag pins and ribbons on their cars. Hawaii felt so far away, so detached from the mainland, from New York, that the attack’s impact felt as if it had happened to some foreign country. That sense of mass loss, though, made me think about my own death, about how my youth didn’t guarantee that I’d be here forever, and in the limited time I had left, I wanted to be fully me.
A flame of determination and urgency rose up, rivaling my internal angst and desperation about my body. I could not look at the mirror without panties on, and when I lay in bed, I was always tucked. There was never a free moment when I allowed my genitals to just be beyond the shower or in some man’s hand or bed for money. Even then, I cringed. What woman lets a man touch her like that? I thought. Not the kind of woman I saw myself as. That cycle of desire, the desire to be touched and loved and appreciated for exactly who I was and the messages that I sent myself about who I was and how I looked, sent me into a tailspin.
I never resorted to physically hurting myself, which seems to be a common thread among trans youth grappling with issues of identity, body, and the angst of being teenagers. I’ve heard stories from people who were so disgusted by their body, with the dissonance, incongruence, and conflict it presented to their sense of self, that they mutilated the parts that they wished they could be rid of. It seemed like it was the only way out.
I was willing to make any compromises to get my surgery, and those nighttime thoughts birthed a plan that would get me to my goal by the end of the year. I made the decision to engage in the sex trade full-time on Merchant Street to save the money I needed to fly to Thailand by the end of the year. It was a plan for my own survival. It was my decision, one of the only viable choices for me to get what I needed. Many people believe trans women choose to engage in the sex trade rather than get a real job. That belief is misguided because sex work is work, and it’s often the only work available to marginalized women. Though we act as individuals, we can’t remove ourselves from the framework of society. Systemic oppression creates circumstances that push many women to choose sex work as a means of survival, and I was one of those women, choosing survival.
Pulling out the napkin Kahlúa gave me with her surgeon’s name, I found his website, which detailed that he had performed more than a thousand genital reconstruction surgeries and had studied under Thailand’s most acclaimed surgeon. His portrait was amiably confident. He stood in a black suit with his arms over his chest, flaunting a welcoming smile. I wrote him a detailed e-mail about my journey: I had been living as a girl for the past four years, three on hormone therapy. I told him I was interested in undergoing surgery in December, three months from now. He wrote back a day later, requesting that we consult over the phone and to ready myself with a letter from my physician.
During our phone call, Dr. C. said that he remembered Kahlúa and would be delighted to help me. He detailed the procedure, the recovery process, and my stay in Bangkok. He said he could schedule me during my winter break from school. I was certain he was the surgeon for me: He was kind and patient; I could examine real-life examples of his work; and he was well versed with any operating room complications. I e-mailed him that weekend to set my surgery date for December 20, 2001, wiring seven hundred dollars from my checking account: a 10 percent deposit for the surgery and seven-day recovery.
Days later, I was surrounded by screaming girls at the Neal Blaisdell Center. It was September 21, just ninety days until my trip to Thailand. The most beautiful woman, my real-life dream girl in white sequined shorts and a cutout top, took the stage. Brown-skinned beauties flanked her, one a redhead, the other brunette. All my focus was on the girl in the center. It was Beyoncé, the woman I had looked up to since I was fifteen. As part of the TRL tour, Destiny’s Child, complete with Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, held firm to their concert despite uncertain times. Rappers Eve and Nelly were supposed to join them on the tour, but they canceled in the wake of September 11.
Destiny’s Child opened with their single “Independent Women,” from the Charlie’s Angels sound track, and closed forty-five minutes later with a cover of Bob Marley’s “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” and their megahit “Survivor,” fitting tributes to our nation’s mourning and my feelings about a future that seemed to be looking up. I had started to study my horizon, energized by the possibility of what was to come. “The dream is the truth,” Zora Neale Hurston wrote. So I would go on to “act and do things accordingly.”
Chapter Fifteen
Working on Merchant Street was a nonevent at the time. Keeping secrets in the darkness of Derek’s bedroom all those years ago had prepared me, it seemed. After I’d jumped in one man’s car, jumping in another wasn’t anything of note. The cars of strangers became my evening cubicle, my first office of sorts. Serving men and taking their money were the only requirements of the job, and I was a natural.
The bulbous gearshift of a date’s car was always in the way, no matter if it was a Lexus or a Honda. I draped my body over it or the center console in a way that flattered my exposed ass and comfortably placed my face in his crotch. Most times I jerked and sucked wearing my thong, unless he paid extra for me to be exposed. I filled every condom with a packet of lube and slipped it onto his penis. The lube made the latex softer and suppler, thus speeding up ejaculation and decreasing my time and effort. I rarely pleasured a man in the backseat because it gave the date too much freedom to touch and move around and make demands I didn’t feel like fulfilling. I preferred him confined to the snugness of the driver’s seat. Whether we were parked in a nearby lot or on a dark, tree-lined residential street, the men were all the same. Some were gross, some were not. Attractiveness was irrelevant. All I cared about was that they were respectful, clean, and had the cash in hand.
Time was money, and all t
he money we made was ours. We spent it on necessities, from rent and car payments to food, clothes, hormones, and surgeries. None of us had a pimp for protection; we didn’t need a man because we looked out for one another. It was the women on Merchant’s who taught me the lube-in-condom trick, who made sure my purse was filled with condoms, who whistled when an undercover cop was stopping for a girl, who rounded us all up when outreach workers were on the block testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
I had made rules for myself on Merchant Street, things that were absolutely off-limits: no anal, no kissing, no topping. Setting and articulating these rules gave me the illusion that I was in control of the ridiculous situation. The underground economy predated me. The Merchant Streets of the world were there long before I came into being and would be there long after I retired that December. It was an ecosystem with its own rules. As desperation sank in and my surgery date encroached, I bent many of my rules, depending on the money offered.
One rule none of us broke once we crossed over into working-girl-dom: Don’t ever do freebies or lower your prices for any date. If someone lowered her prices, she would be found out, because a date was never loyal. He would tell you, in an effort to haggle with you, who let them penetrate for sixty dollars or blow for forty or jerk off for twenty-five. Girls who dropped prices were shunned, looked down upon, called desperate.
“Oh, nay, Mary, he’s a cheap kane,” a girl would scream to you as you leaned in the car’s window. “No date him. Scram, you chaser!”
No girl would jump in that car and be able to return to the block with her head held high. We spilled the tea about good dates and bad dates, about guys who were shady or sketchy or high, about the ones who took way too long for the amount of money they offered. We also knew who was a cop who liked to date and actually paid, versus the ones who liked to date but would threaten to arrest you if you made him pay.
To avoid getting arrested by undercover cops (or maka’i) and sting operations—which usually happened at the end of the month, when the police department needed to meet quotas—we developed a code based on the experiences of the older girls on the streets. Word was that if you said gift or donation instead of price, money, or cost, you couldn’t be arrested because you hadn’t attached a dollar value to sex acts. Another safeguard was asking a date to let you touch his penis. If he willingly whipped it out, that meant he wasn’t a cop, because a cop wouldn’t cross such a line. Some girls would go as far as telling a date to lick her breasts or genitals to be completely sure he wasn’t an officer. This was all dependent on the cop’s trustworthiness. This system helped me to never get caught, unlike Wendi, who was impatient and took risks. She got popped a few times on Merchant Street. Luckily, she was a minor at the time, and her arrests were expunged from her record.
Most trans women engaged in survival sex work are not as lucky as Wendi. Poverty is the key factor that drives trans women of color into sex work. The sex industry is filled with women of color, and so are our prisons. Race, class, and gender are all factors that frame the harshness of sentences, and, more likely than not, a trans woman of color arrested on solicitation will be treated as a criminal with little regard to the systemic oppression that has led her there. Our society criminalizes underground economies like sex work, and deep moral biases and stigma make even the most liberal folk believe that these actions are a moral failure of the individual rather than the workings of a system.
When a trans woman is arrested, she is charged with an act of prostitution, a non-violent offense committed by consensual adults, and placed in a cell with men, because prisons are segregated by genitals. A trans woman in a men’s prison or jail is vulnerable to sexual assault, contracting HIV, and being without hormones and trans-inclusive health care during her incarceration. Yes, this is cruel and unusual punishment.
While working on Merchant’s, I didn’t have the luxury to analyze the ways of the world. Weekdays were hit-or-miss; you couldn’t predict how busy you’d be. Usually, I’d be out on the street from ten P.M. to two A.M. Weekends were more reliable, dating consistently from ten P.M. to five A.M., since the nightclubs, mostly in Waikiki, closed at four. I averaged anywhere from $600 to $1,000 a weekend, giving $60 blow jobs, $40 hand jobs, and $20 to $40 upgrades (if they wanted to see, touch, or suck my penis). Occasionally, if the guy was cute enough, anal sex was on the menu for $120, but only if I was receiving it. I never topped because my very personal definition of womanhood didn’t involve exerting myself in that way. Plus, I couldn’t guarantee an erection due to years of hormone therapy. It seemed too messy and time-consuming anyway.
Most of the guys who dated me didn’t care about an erection as much as they wanted to be pleasured by a woman who had something extra, something that made me a rare sex goddess in their eyes. Sexuality and people’s desires, preferences, and fantasies are difficult to define. But what I know for sure is many men are attracted to women, and trans women are among these women, and our bodies in all their varying states of being are desired. Yet it’s the bodies of women with penises who are made to feel that their bodies are less valuable, shameful, and should be kept secret.
As long as trans women are seen as less desirable, illegitimate, devalued women, then men will continue to frame their attraction to us as secret, shameful, and stigmatized, limiting their sexual interactions with trans women to pornography and prostitution. And if a trans woman believes that the only way she can share intimate space with a man is through secret hookups or transactions, she will be led to engage in risky sexual behaviors that make her more vulnerable to criminalization, disease, and violence; she will be led to coddle a man who takes out his frustrations about his sexuality on her with his fists; she will be led to question whether she’s worthy enough to protect herself with a condom when a man tells her he loves her; she will be led to believe that she is not worthy of being seen and must remain hidden.
For many dates, I was the first trans woman they had sex with. They were men who had spent years looking at transsexual porn or cyber-sexing with trans women through webcams but had never met a trans woman in real life. Honestly, many didn’t even see me as a person. If I hadn’t had a penis, I would not be as attractive to many of the dates I profited from. My allure and income on Merchant Street was dictated by what hung between my legs, and some of the men who became my regulars sexually evolved beyond me, preferring a girl who could top them or give them sexual experiences that aligned with their imaginings and fantasies.
It was empowering to not feel shameful about my body and sexuality, but it was under the guise of doing a job that was full of stigma. I was not proud of this work. I was grateful it existed, but that doesn’t mean I was grateful for the lustful gaze and touch of older men. They didn’t know me; they wanted to occupy me. And frankly, I was grossed out by the dates and had zero compassion for them.
Kindness and compassion are sisters but not twins. One you can buy, the other is priceless. To have compassion for these men would mean that I’d have to know them and they would have to know me, and this wasn’t part of the sexual contract.
It was a bit different with regulars. There was more kindness there, something that almost resembled respect. Regulars grew to become part of my everyday life, like a neighbor you share an elevator with from time to time: He gets off on seven, you on twelve. You smile, you press the button for him, he for you, and then you never see each other until that chance meeting when he happens to ring your elevator. You smile, he presses the button, and you say bye. You don’t know his name, he doesn’t know yours, you treat him with kindness, and you appreciate the time you spend together, but you don’t dwell on it and think, Hmmm, I wonder how he’s doing. There’s no longing, just a sense of the inevitability of the exchange.
For me to know or care for my dates would mean admitting that I accepted the cruelty of the situation. Let’s be clear: A world in which a young girl uses her body, her most intimate asset, in order to survive is unconscionab
le. But I did and still do have hope. In the small denim handbag that held my condoms, lube, baby wipes, hand sanitizer, scented lotion, and lip gloss, I carried a folded piece of paper with words from Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “I didn’t come to stay.”
When I wasn’t on Merchant’s or at home, I was on campus at the University of Hawai‘i. I adapted to college life effortlessly and thrived on the independence of my course schedule. I attended lectures on philosophy, English composition, religion, and political science during the day and spent my late afternoons completing my coursework. Wednesday through Saturday, I juggled my academic load and my evening shifts on Merchant Street, where the older girls like Rebecca and Shayna cheered me on, ensuring I had a ride home early enough to make it to my morning classes. It was understood in our sisterhood that I was making something of my life, that I was reaching heights that most girls and women like us were unable to grasp, and that my time on Merchant’s would be short-lived.
I now know that I survived the dissonance of my daytime and nighttime lives through compartmentalization. Psychologists define compartmentalization as a defense mechanism or a coping strategy, one that enables a person to deal with opposing situations simultaneously. I employed it for over three months. I saw myself as a college student by day, diligent about classes, study groups, and library hours, and a teenage sex worker at night, diligent about being professional, quick, and smart with fast money. These two worlds, in my mind at the time, had nothing to do with the other. I applied extreme focus on getting good grades in the day and making the money I needed for my surgery at night.
