Prison Diaries # 6 - The Value Of Arithmetic
Sometimes I think it's only the crashing volume of the music in my car that keeps me from screaming when I leave jail. I stand up with my last young woman, we walk out of the room we're in and less than 4 minutes later I'm in my car on the highway, screaming along to the lyrics and driving way too fast. Some days I wish I could drive straight into a wall.
I spend my days talking to skeletons. Long, emaciated faces and arms, skin stretched so taut it's translucent. Did you know your flesh is disposable and unnecessary? It's really just window dressing - you can still walk and talk without it. Your bones will keep moving.
Ever seen pictures of anorexia survivors? Or worked with them, as I also do? They have nothing on the rivers of girls being eaten alive by crack, the sunken eyes and brittle fingers of someone whose body is literally eating itself. One month I can see a beautiful, healthy young woman and a few months later she looks like she's been in a concentration camp. She smiles and the skin stretches obscenely over her face making her look like a laughing ghoul. It wrinkles up in all the wrong places because it's not attached to any flesh underneath. The knobs of her elbows are bigger than her biceps. Her hair is falling out and her eyebrows are gone. You could draw a line around the eye sockets in her skull, they stand out so clearly.
The best part of it all is when they start to tell me about the guys who don't want to be around them any more because they do crack. They'll start the same repetitive litany about how "he's told me he doesn't want me doing crack, he doesn't even want to take my calls any more. He says he doesn't like me when I'm on crack." Enquiring minds who want to know soon discover that buddy is the same fucker who got her started on crack. And he sells crack. But he really liked her and used to chill with her until she got 'cracked out'. Still more in-depth investigative reporting inevitably determines that buddy was also pimping her out. But he 'really used to like her, he just doesn't like her since she got fucked up and cracked out'.
Rudimentary logic tells us that buddy stopped liking her and stopped giving her free 20 pieces right around the time she became so physically demo'd by crack that she wasn't worth selling anymore. It gets harder and harder to sell her, the more she looks like that. She can't dance, no one but the street tricks will pay any real money to fuck her, and she may have gotten to the point where she has picked away at her own skin because of the crack illusion that there are little bugs crawling all over your body. Not attractive. But buddy doesn't like her anymore because "he hates crackheads", not because she's no longer a profitable 16 year-old he can pimp out of some low-rent apartment or motel. Hmmm, right. So now she's on her own on the street, potentially having been exposed to Hep-C, HIV, HPV and all the other fun little abbreviations, and she thinks the guys she used to chill with don't like her anymore because she's so fucked up. The rejection of "her boys" means she's pathetic, not that they have finished squeezing whatever they can out of her and tossed her aside like the disposable bones she now is. And she never even adds it up. See, I knew it was important for girls to learn math.
A young girl tells me about That Guy, the one who "doesn't want her using crack anymore". He 'helped her out, took her off the street, put her in an apartment, and kept her in every drug but crack'. Because "he really cared and didn't like to see me all cracked out". Okay. Except buddy just happened to be pimping her - oh, sorry, I guess she was "escorting" - out of this lovely little apartment, and had a sitter with her all the time, resulting in her not seeing the light of day for over a month. But "he really wanted to help me out". Really? He wanted to help? This is another reason why it's important for young girls to learn math. By pimping her out to all the respectable businessmen on long lunches, totalling a conservative estimate of $500 bucks a day, for an average of thirty days, he made $15000 dollars on her in that one month. She never sees a dollar of the money. But when she becomes so emotionally unstable that she's difficult to keep sedating with drugs and alcohol, she again becomes unsaleable (not to mention that she's a bit of a heatscore, being so far under 18). So he sends her back out to the street for the next vulture to come bat clean-up on whatever scraps are left of her. But he still manages to prove he 'really cared about her', because when she begs for his help to get out of town he "gives" her 140 bucks of "his own money" to get a bus ticket. The generosity is staggering.
But you know what really makes me want to punch people in the face? Really makes me pull out the crowbars and tire irons in earnest? Ignorant assholes who spout shit about crack whores or trash talk girls on crack. People who pontificate about these fucked up kids and how disgusting they are, or what little sluts these girls are. They do this even while they, or their friends & family, are the ones buying the sex that drives the industry of getting these 'little ho's' hooked in the first place. I've never figured out how it is that all the "respectable folks" in society manage to avoid admitting who's buying the girls. You think it's the "welfare bum" you also hate who's paying to have sex with teenagers? Here's a clue: he can't afford to pay for sex (or not on any regular basis). But your dad can. So can your husband. Particularly if he wears a suit to work. I'd talk more about this but I'm busy with my uncontrollable urge to smash things and start fires.
I spend my days talking to skeletons, and not the friendly Halloween-kind either. Funny, I didn't used to believe in haunting.
I spend my days talking to skeletons. Long, emaciated faces and arms, skin stretched so taut it's translucent. Did you know your flesh is disposable and unnecessary? It's really just window dressing - you can still walk and talk without it. Your bones will keep moving.
Ever seen pictures of anorexia survivors? Or worked with them, as I also do? They have nothing on the rivers of girls being eaten alive by crack, the sunken eyes and brittle fingers of someone whose body is literally eating itself. One month I can see a beautiful, healthy young woman and a few months later she looks like she's been in a concentration camp. She smiles and the skin stretches obscenely over her face making her look like a laughing ghoul. It wrinkles up in all the wrong places because it's not attached to any flesh underneath. The knobs of her elbows are bigger than her biceps. Her hair is falling out and her eyebrows are gone. You could draw a line around the eye sockets in her skull, they stand out so clearly.
The best part of it all is when they start to tell me about the guys who don't want to be around them any more because they do crack. They'll start the same repetitive litany about how "he's told me he doesn't want me doing crack, he doesn't even want to take my calls any more. He says he doesn't like me when I'm on crack." Enquiring minds who want to know soon discover that buddy is the same fucker who got her started on crack. And he sells crack. But he really liked her and used to chill with her until she got 'cracked out'. Still more in-depth investigative reporting inevitably determines that buddy was also pimping her out. But he 'really used to like her, he just doesn't like her since she got fucked up and cracked out'.
Rudimentary logic tells us that buddy stopped liking her and stopped giving her free 20 pieces right around the time she became so physically demo'd by crack that she wasn't worth selling anymore. It gets harder and harder to sell her, the more she looks like that. She can't dance, no one but the street tricks will pay any real money to fuck her, and she may have gotten to the point where she has picked away at her own skin because of the crack illusion that there are little bugs crawling all over your body. Not attractive. But buddy doesn't like her anymore because "he hates crackheads", not because she's no longer a profitable 16 year-old he can pimp out of some low-rent apartment or motel. Hmmm, right. So now she's on her own on the street, potentially having been exposed to Hep-C, HIV, HPV and all the other fun little abbreviations, and she thinks the guys she used to chill with don't like her anymore because she's so fucked up. The rejection of "her boys" means she's pathetic, not that they have finished squeezing whatever they can out of her and tossed her aside like the disposable bones she now is. And she never even adds it up. See, I knew it was important for girls to learn math.
A young girl tells me about That Guy, the one who "doesn't want her using crack anymore". He 'helped her out, took her off the street, put her in an apartment, and kept her in every drug but crack'. Because "he really cared and didn't like to see me all cracked out". Okay. Except buddy just happened to be pimping her - oh, sorry, I guess she was "escorting" - out of this lovely little apartment, and had a sitter with her all the time, resulting in her not seeing the light of day for over a month. But "he really wanted to help me out". Really? He wanted to help? This is another reason why it's important for young girls to learn math. By pimping her out to all the respectable businessmen on long lunches, totalling a conservative estimate of $500 bucks a day, for an average of thirty days, he made $15000 dollars on her in that one month. She never sees a dollar of the money. But when she becomes so emotionally unstable that she's difficult to keep sedating with drugs and alcohol, she again becomes unsaleable (not to mention that she's a bit of a heatscore, being so far under 18). So he sends her back out to the street for the next vulture to come bat clean-up on whatever scraps are left of her. But he still manages to prove he 'really cared about her', because when she begs for his help to get out of town he "gives" her 140 bucks of "his own money" to get a bus ticket. The generosity is staggering.
But you know what really makes me want to punch people in the face? Really makes me pull out the crowbars and tire irons in earnest? Ignorant assholes who spout shit about crack whores or trash talk girls on crack. People who pontificate about these fucked up kids and how disgusting they are, or what little sluts these girls are. They do this even while they, or their friends & family, are the ones buying the sex that drives the industry of getting these 'little ho's' hooked in the first place. I've never figured out how it is that all the "respectable folks" in society manage to avoid admitting who's buying the girls. You think it's the "welfare bum" you also hate who's paying to have sex with teenagers? Here's a clue: he can't afford to pay for sex (or not on any regular basis). But your dad can. So can your husband. Particularly if he wears a suit to work. I'd talk more about this but I'm busy with my uncontrollable urge to smash things and start fires.
I spend my days talking to skeletons, and not the friendly Halloween-kind either. Funny, I didn't used to believe in haunting.
posted by Crowbar at 11:08 p.m.
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