Confessions of a Transsexual Porn Star Deluxe Edition

By Meghan Chavalier

Confessions Of A Transsexual Porn Star: Deluxe Edition © 2007-2012 Meghan Chavalier. All rights reserved.

Contents

Dedication Prologue The Beginning My Teenage Wonder Years Texas to Albuqueerque Keep On Moving New Whoreleans Images Hollyweird The Devil Made Me Do It Celebrities are Over-rated A Whole New Me I Fell In Love and then had a Nervous Breakdown The Simple Life Courage: Moving Forward (New 2012) Fun Facts Meghan Chavalier’s Contact Information (Social Media)

Bonus Material with Deluxe Edition: Meghan Chavalier’s new book, “Your True Self: An Informative Guide for Transitioning Transgender Women”

This book is dedicated to all of my transgender sisters and brothers. We are a family like no other. We are never helpless or hopeless as long as we have each other. Fight the good fight.

To my Family, you are the rock that my foundation sits upon.

To my Mother, the strongest woman I have ever met in my entire life. You are always an inspiration.

To my Grandmother, I miss you every day I exist. The very thought that you are no longer here makes my heart break.

To Eric, for the trust, support and friendship, no longer a soul mate but always my mate.

To Vicci Laine, your friendship means the world to me

To ALL of the people who I have met in my life that changed it, there are so many it would be hard to put them all in one small space. Thank you.

To all of the girls from New Orleans, who were a huge part of my life and changed it in so many ways. I want you to know that you’re always in my thoughts and my prayers. You all meant something special to me in one way or another. Though some of you are gone I want you to know that I have not forgotten you and never will.

I would also like to dedicate this book to all of my fans, or as I refer to them, my friends. Your support of my career has meant the world to me in my life

“2012”- My original autobiography was published in 2007. I always wanted to add so much more to the original book which is why I’m releasing the Deluxe Edition. I wanted to include more photographs, and bonus chapters as well as bonus material in the book. I wrote my book so it would seem that I was sitting right across the table from you telling you my life story. When my autobiography was first released I received so many letters asking why there wasn’t more information about transitioning as a transgender woman. It’s all in the Deluxe Edition. I am including my newly released book “Your True Self: An Informative Guide for Transitioning Transgender Women” as a bonus read after you finish my autobiography. I hope you enjoy the Deluxe Edition of my autobiography. Thank you so much for continuing to join me on my journey and supporting my work.” Meghan Chavalier

Prologue Before I even sat down at my computer to write this book I thought to myself who the hell would want to read a book by a transsexual adult film star? I‟m not sure I would. I never wanted to write this book, but I knew that I had to. I‟ve spent my whole life sitting back watching the world go by me, and I finally realized that for a major portion of my life, I‟ve been a huge part of the world but never quite realized it. I also needed to let go of some of the inner demons that have been suppressing me for so long. I‟m one of those people that never seem to let things go. I bottle all of my emotions inside until I just want to burst at the seams. I guess I never thought my life was that interesting, but when I actually sat down with friends and family I realized that I‟ve been through so much in my 43 years on this earth. I have lived the war we know as life, and have come out of the fires, not unscathed, not unscarred, but still alive and kicking. It‟s really difficult to open your whole world up and let everyone inside, but I felt compelled to write this book for that exact reason. I think I‟ve finally realized that by telling my story I could help other transgendered people. My best friends made me realize that it was important for me to let it all go.

I just want you to know that I have always lived my life with no regrets. I don't regret anything that I've done to survive in this world. I did what I had to do. I won't apologize for anything I'll write in this book. I know that my book may anger and hurt people in my life, but it‟s my true story, the story of my life. I don't see the point of writing an autobiography if you're not going to share all of the dirty details.

I have always lived my life openly and honestly, and I hope that by reading my book you will come to know exactly who I am, what I‟ve been through and where I‟m going.

So, here it is ladies and gentlemen, this is my world, and I want to welcome you to it. Love it, or hate it, it was my reality. I lived it and now I want to share it with you.

The Beginning

“Congratulations, it‟s a boy!” I was born Keith James, March 22, 1969 in Bessemer Michigan. I think it‟s really amazing that parents have these huge dreams for their children. My mother probably envisioned me becoming a doctor, getting married, having children and settling down in the Midwest. I wonder sometimes, had she known what the ultimate outcome of my life would be, would she have thought twice about having me. I mean if you were able to know exactly what would become of your children, and you knew that your child would be born male, then transition to female would you still want that child? I used to think I was adopted when I was a small child because I always felt like I didn‟t fit in. I used to love playing with my mom‟s make-up and clothes. I never felt like I was a boy, I always felt like I was a girl and I never understood why I couldn‟t be a girl. I don‟t want to jump ahead of myself here though, so I‟m going to take it down a few notches and start from the only beginning that I know. I need to say this first, before I go any further. There‟s a movie called “Nuts.” It stars Barbra Streisand. In the movie she utters the most memorable line I will ever hear, “I don‟t believe in childhood.” A line could never ring more true. I remember the first house I lived in vividly. It wasn‟t a large house, and it wasn‟t in a big city. Pence, Wisconsin would be the city I would know for the first twelve years of my life. James is my father, Yvonne is my mother. I have a brother and two sisters, Darren, Shannon, and Megan. (Ah, yet another twist in the story but we‟ll get to that later.) My father was a tall, dark, good looking guy who had a penchant for the bottle. He ran a tight ship, a lot tighter than I knew really. My mother is really the most amazing woman on the planet. I always remember looking at her thinking that she was the most beautiful woman on the planet. She is a dark haired, tall, porcelain skinned beauty. Yes, I love my mother. My father is another story. For the first few years all I really remember is a normal childhood. I guess when you‟re young you really don‟t think that your family life is anything but normal. We did all the things families would do. We ate dinner together, we went to Church, we went on family vacations. Sometimes things aren‟t always what they seem. I remember my mother telling me once that you should always keep family business behind closed doors. I would learn later why. My father was a miner. My mother worked at the Holiday Inn for the longest time. She would eventually leave that job for a banking career. My parents seemed to love each other but I would learn that sometimes love can be based on nothing more than fear. Fear of someone hurting you or your children. My brother Darren, and my sister Shannon and I were very close growing up although I believe that there were definitely some jealousies amongst us. My father always showed favoritism towards Shannon but I think that just goes along with the whole daddy‟s little girl syndrome. We spent quite a bit of time at my grandmothers growing up in Wisconsin. My grandmother is a fascinating woman. She was only schooled until eighth grade because her family was very poor and when her parents told her that she had to wear boys hand me down shoes to school she quit rather than face the embarrassment of going back with those shoes. It‟s actually a heart wrenching story but if you knew what a strong woman my grandmother is you‟d completely understand why she did it. I was always very close to my grandmother because she always seemed to be ahead of her time. My family always seemed what most would deem normal to me and now that I‟m older I realize we define the term dysfunctional. My mother would argue with me about that statement, but a good argument is healthy don‟t you think? We were definitely a middle class family having two working parents. After we moved out of the smaller house in Pence, my parents built a new house. It was actually quite beautiful with three bedrooms. It was only one block from the town Church so we were able to attend on Saturdays quite easily. Pence was a very close-knit community and everybody knew everybody which was both a good thing and a bad thing. I had friends growing up. My best friend when I was younger was Robyn. Actually she was the first person I ever got drunk with. I think I was nine years old and she was ten. Growing up in Wisconsin you just start doing everything at a younger age. Drinking and smoking were almost a hobby. There wasn‟t much to do in Pence except go to our local gym which they opened at night sometimes so the kids could play basketball. We had one store owned by Mrs. Smee. She was a really nice elderly lady who treated all the locals as if they were her own children. When I was a child candy was one of my main food groups so having that local store was a good thing. We didn‟t have our own school so we had to be bused to Iron Belt, Wisconsin to attend grade school. When you left grade school after the fourth grade you would then be bused to Montreal, Wisconsin where you would attend fifth and sixth grade and after that be bused to Hurley, Wisconsin to attend high school. It seems kind of crazy but it worked for us in the seventies and eighties. I was a pretty dorky kid. My mom loved to dress all of us up in these crazy red, white and blue clothes all of the time. It was the seventies I think everyone took the whole 1976 thing way too far back then. I look back at pictures of myself now and just laugh and cringe at the same time. I‟m glad the seventies only come back every five years or so because I think the clothing was truly awful. I hope that I have laid the ground work for the little place I was raised in. I guess I could only delay the inevitable about what really happened behind closed doors in my happy little town and in my unhappy little home. My father was always a volatile man. He ruled his home with an iron fist literally. He was a very strict person and a very selfish person. The world revolved around him and that was just the way it was. I think my grandmother Pearl gave up on him at an early age. He was very temperamental and very angry. I‟m not sure if his hatred of women started with my grandmother or not but it definitely carried over into his everyday life with my mother. I can honestly say I was never close with my father. I don‟t think he ever wanted me to be. In fact he used to tell my mother a lot that I was nothing more than a sissy. I mean sure he tried to get me to do things I never wanted to do like hunt and fish. I just always felt more female and closer to the women in my family than the men and ultimately that‟s how I was treated by most of the males in my family. I think the first time I realized what kind of person my father was, was when my mother had her gall bladder removed and she had just come home from the hospital in pain and trying to heal. We were all at the table off the kitchen and my mother was obviously in pain. My father and her started to argue about something he pretended she had done in his own mind and he told all of us to go outside. He locked the door behind us. The next thing we heard was a thud on the floor and then a bunch of screaming. “No! No! Please don‟t!” was all we could hear my mother screaming. My father was beating her senseless, only days after her surgery. After the screams had subsided and all of us were standing in the garage wondering what happened he opened the door and we went inside the house where my mother was laying on the floor crying. We were crying too. This is how the next years of my life would be spent in this house. I think it was at this moment that I knew that our family wasn‟t normal and the amount of pain we all would suffer would never subside even into adulthood. I hate my father. I can say that without any regrets or feeling. I have tried most of my life to forgive him for his ways but I can‟t and I never will. I tell my brother and sisters all the time if he were to die tomorrow the world would be a better place. I know that may seem harsh to many of you but I can‟t bring myself to forgive or forget and I don‟t think I will ever find myself in a place where I might. My grandmother called me once on the phone and told me that my father‟s name was in the local newspaper and she proceeded to say, “Too bad it wasn‟t the obituaries.” That might seem harsh but that should let you know how much angst this man caused so many people in their lives and still does to this day. I don‟t want to get too far ahead of myself again so I want to continue where I left off. For the first ten years of our lives it was just my brother Darren, my sister Shannon and I. We were crazy kids. The winters were harsh and I remember we always used to go outside after a good snow and build snow fortresses. We were always superheroes. My brother was always Superman, my sister always wanted to be someone out of the ordinary, and I was always Wonder Woman. I think this would have clued someone in at this point but I think it was a different time and a different place. If it were today I think my parents would have known about me right away. I remember at Christmas time my sister would always get dolls that I wanted so I would always unwrap her dolls before Christmas and cut their hair off. I was very angry that I wasn‟t getting the dolls because I really wanted them. I was also very obsessed with the Supremes. I wanted to be Diana Ross so badly. I used to put my mom‟s wig on and do shows for her. I was quite the little entertainer and I think she thought it was cute. She never realized how far I would take my show on the road in the future. I think I always wanted to be an entertainer. I just didn‟t know what I wanted to be. I loved singing and dancing and writing. My sister Shannon and I always sang together. We loved the Captain and Tenille. We always used to sing a song called “Muskrat Love.” I remember one year my mother was going to put us in this contest at the Holiday Inn where she worked at the time. We never did do it though. I always felt like a girl as a child and it didn‟t always go over well in the house. I think that your parents know but they just don‟t want to admit that something could be wrong and this was the 1970‟s and things were really different back then. Growing up in an abusive home can be very difficult. I know it was really hard for my mother taking the all of the beatings she did from my father but it really affects the children too. I don‟t think that women understand how much damage is being done to their children when these things happen. It makes you anxious, depressed, and can change you mentally. I always felt guilty about everything and it was strange. I was in a motorcycle accident the summer before I started second grade. I was riding on the back of the motorcycle with my aunt who was driving. We were driving down a dirt road and she hit a sand pit and it sent her flying over the handle bars and sent the motorcycle into the air. It came down and landed on my neck. I did manage to get up after it happened but my arm was just hanging there. I was crying and walking away. She tried to calm me down and eventually we made it back to the house where we were staying at that my dad had taken us to for the weekend. When I got back my dad basically told me to buck up and take it like a man. He didn‟t even bother to take me to the hospital. I had just been in a motorcycle accident and he wouldn‟t even take me to the hospital. I went that whole night in pain and just cried. He kept telling me to be quiet and just take it it‟d be fine. When we got home I got in the house and when my mom realized something was really wrong she got very angry and got me in the car and took me to the doctor. Well, the doctor took some x-rays and told my mom that I had shattered my right collarbone. She was so mad. The doctor told her that if the motorcycle would have landed just an inch closer my neck would have been broken. So, I ended up wearing an arm sling for six weeks. This was the kind of person my father was. He didn‟t offer me any kind of sympathy or even apologize to me for not taking me to the hospital. I was set to start second grade and had to write with my left hand. I felt like the accident was my fault and my dad never made me feel like it wasn‟t. My mom was always making excuses for his behavior, she said that she knew he was sorry for not apologizing to me but I knew better even at that young age. I also had a lot of problems with swollen glands when I was a kid and they couldn‟t figure out what was wrong with me. I had to go once a week to get blood tests and to this day they don‟t know why it happened. I hated getting those blood tests done once a week. My mom used to have to bribe me to even get me to go. Grade school was difficult for me because I could never concentrate on anything I was doing because of the way things were going at home. I think that my brother and sister didn‟t have as much of a hard time with it as I did. They were really my dad‟s children. They were always close to him and still are to this day which I could never figure out. It has always been a big problem between us three. In grade school I always loved to put on shows. Grease the movie was really popular back then and I remember when it came out, I wanted to be Olivia Newton- John so badly. So in school I would put on the play of Grease at recess and always tell them I was going to be Sandy. The boys always laughed at me but my cousin Bonnie never did she was really my best friend. My cousin Bonnie and I were born a week apart and had always been close. My mom told me once that we tried to run away together when we were kids on our tricycles. Everybody thought that we were in love the way we acted, but honestly we were just two kids who were best friends. The grade school I went to only housed kindergarten through fourth grade. Once you got through fourth grade you went to the school in Montreal, Wisconsin. Our grade school was in Iron Belt, Wisconsin. One day my teacher asked me to run something upstairs to another teacher in the school. I ran up the steps and when I got to the top I got scared because I had looked over the edge and realized how high up I was. This was the first time I knew I was afraid of heights. I actually crawled down the steps from the top floor terrified the whole way. My home life was in shambles. My mom had discovered that she was pregnant with my younger sister. My dad told her that he wanted her to get an abortion. My mom didn‟t want to and she went through with the birth. I think my dad held that against her for the remainder of their marriage. My dad was just so vile and just so angry and mean. He wasn‟t nice to us, he wasn‟t nice to my mom, he wasn‟t nice to anybody. He used to run with this guy named Skippy who we all hated. Whenever my dad was hanging out with Skippy we knew he‟d get drunk and we knew what would happen when he drank. My dad decided that he wanted my brother and me to move down into the basement because he wanted the girls to have their own rooms upstairs so he built us a room in the basement which was right underneath their bedroom. I hated living downstairs in the basement. It was cold and smelled musty. I also didn‟t like the fact it was below their bedroom because I was able to hear everything. My brother started having problems where he was wetting the bed. When we went to sleep at night my dad always locked us in the basement so we wouldn‟t be able to get upstairs to use the bathroom. My brother always had to go to the bathroom and instead of using the toilet he had to pee in a drain by the laundry room. My dad realized that he was wetting his bed one day and beat the shit out of my brother. Every time my brother peed in the bed my dad beat him harder the next time. It was so sad because my brother couldn‟t help himself. He couldn‟t hold it. I just want you to know as you read this that this part of my life is so difficult for me to discuss because I try not to talk about it at all. I have never come to terms with the way I grew up and not sure I ever will. I am just as hurt and angry about everything today and even though I‟m older now I can‟t imagine I‟ll ever forget those nights. My dad had been out drinking one night and it was getting late so my mom told us to go to bed that he‟d be home sometime. I was always scared that something was going to happen. My brother and I went to bed but I don‟t think we actually went to sleep. We laid there for a couple of hours just waiting. Eventually we heard the front door open and my dad come in. My mom came down the hallway and I heard them start to argue. I was getting so nervous. I heard my dad yell something and then I heard a loud crash on the floor. My brother and I jumped out of bed and ran to the top of steps but we were locked in. We started to pound on the door and screamed for mom to open it. Then we heard my mom screaming so my brother and I went through the basement door. It was the middle of winter so we had to run through the snow to come back to the front of the house. We ran inside and ran down to my parent‟s bedroom. My dad was punching my mom and had her held down on the bed. She was screaming for him to stop hitting her and we were screaming for him to stop. My sister Shannon came running in the room and we were all crying and screaming. My mom was begging him to stop hitting her, but he just kept punching her. Then he pushed her onto the floor and grabbed the mattress off of the bed and threw it on top of her and started jumping up and down it. We could hear her screaming underneath and we were yelling, “Don‟t kill our mom! Stop you‟re killing her!” Eventually he stopped and came over to us and put his arms around all of us. We were all crying when she crawled out from under the mattress. She was moaning and crying and her lip was bleeding. Her eye was also swollen. He stood there and said, “You see this? You see how much these kids love me?” I just stood there crying and went over to my mom and hugged her. All of us walked away from him. My mom stood up and told us all that we should go back to bed. We didn‟t want to leave her. She said it would be okay. My dad yelled at us and told us to go back to bed. We just stood there and eventually realized that it was over and it was safe to go back to our beds. I never slept that night because I was so afraid of what he would do. The next day my dad had left for work and I went into my mom‟s bedroom. She was sitting in the mirror looking at herself. She had tears running down her face. I went up to her and she just smiled at me and said, “It hurts.” I knew it hurt and I felt her pain. We were all in pain. All of us were starting to act out. My sister really had a bad temper and I think that was because of everything that was happening in my house. My mom was walking around like the living dead. I just tried to stay away from everybody choosing to lose myself in television. I would watch the families on television and wonder why ours wasn‟t like that. I wished my father dead. One night while everyone was sleeping in the house I snuck upstairs and went into the kitchen and pulled a knife out of the drawer. I snuck down the hallway and went into my parent‟s bedroom. I was about eight years old. I don‟t know what I was thinking I was going to do but in my head I just wanted him dead, to go away. I think I thought I was going to stab him or something and he would die and this would all be over. I think this goes through the minds of many children when this happens on a daily basis. You just don‟t know what‟s right or wrong. It‟s like you beat the ones you‟re supposed to love. Nothing makes sense. I stood in their room in the dark for a long time and listened to them sleep. I never did anything but I felt like I could have at the time. I just wanted to save my mom from him. Like I said, I was eight years old. Some time had passed and my brother was still wetting the bed and getting his beatings from my father. One day my brother and I were outside throwing the football back and forth and I threw the ball at him really hard. The ball hit him in the stomach and he fell down to the ground. I felt really bad because he was crying and I didn‟t know why but he said it hurt really badly. We went back in the house and he said he had to go to bathroom and when he did blood started to come out. He started to freak out. We called our mom at work and she rushed home and took him to the doctor. Well, we found out later that he was suffering from a kidney disease and if I wouldn‟t have hit him with that football he could‟ve died. He still only has one functioning kidney to this day. My mom was so upset over this happening to my brother. My dad never apologized for all of those beatings he gave him either. The doctor told my mom that my brother would have to be admitted to the Marshfield Hospital which was about 4 hours south of where we lived and he would be there for a while but that she would have to bring the rest of us down to get tested to make sure we didn‟t have the same disease he did. When we got to the hospital my brother was admitted and my sister Shannon and I were taken in for tests. Well, my sister went through hers first and I was so afraid of the doctors that I ran away and hid in the hospital so they couldn‟t find me. I didn‟t want them to do anything to me I was too scared. After they found me they only made me urinate in a cup, and luckily that was enough for them. My sister and I were fine but my brother would spend months in the hospital before he would be allowed to come back home. The house had quieted down somewhat while my brother was in the hospital. My dad wasn‟t being as violent as he usually was. He was still an asshole, don‟t get me wrong, that‟ll never change, but the beatings had stopped for now. We spent a lot of time with babysitters while my brother was away and that was actually kind of fun for us because our babysitters were always crazy. We were finally getting to laugh once in awhile. My brother eventually came home from the hospital but he had to take all kinds of medications. He stopped wetting the bed though which was a good thing. Now that the whole family was home things went back to the way they were, which was not a good thing. I remember we used to go to Church when I was a kid and I always used to pray to God to make my dad stop hitting my mom. I never stopped believing that it would stop eventually though. My dad always tried to get me to play sports and do whatever he could but honestly I sucked at all sports. I wasn‟t even good enough at baseball to get on the farmer‟s league which is the group of kids that aren‟t good enough to play little league. That should tell you something about my sports skills. When I was in fifth grade I started having problems in school. My grades were dropping and nobody knew why. Eventually they gave me an eye exam and realized that my vision was bad. Note to any parent reading this book, get your kids regular eye exams because that might be all it is. As I was growing older I found school to be an outlet for me because I got to get away from my house and away from the insanity of my childhood. I was a bright student and after I got those glasses I was getting good grades. I used to take the bus from school to my grandmother‟s house a lot after school. I really love my grandmother and she really disliked my father so we were a perfect combination. I used to tell my grandmother everything that happened in my house because I trusted her. She used to tell me stories about my dad and one day she told me a story that I never knew before. She told me that my mom told her that when my grandmother Pearl who was his mother was on her deathbed in the hospital she told my mom that she better leave him or her life would be a living hell. I guess she was right. My grandmother was always a smoker so when she would leave her house to go shopping I would sneak her cigarettes. I started lightly smoking when I was in fifth grade. I remember once my cousin Bonnie and I were smoking a cigarette in her house and we saw her and my grandfather coming down the road in their car. We sprayed the house up and down and when she came in all she said was that it smelled good, but we knew that she knew we were smoking. My grandmother was funny. She knew everything, but she knew nothing all in the same breath. In other words she knew but never said anything. When I would have to go back home to my house I was always depressed and sad because when I was away from there I actually felt like a kid. I didn‟t have to worry. I used to ride my bike to my grandmothers a lot too when I felt like things were just getting to be too much for me. It was a five mile bike ride from our house to my grandmothers in Upson. I loved it though I was able to get out so much aggression on that bike. One time I was down at my grandmothers with my family and I was over by the Upson School and I found a poster of a naked lady. The boys had been using it for target practice with their bows and arrows because it had holes in it, the joys of growing up in a hunting and fishing community. I took the poster home to my grandmother‟s house and asked my mom to look at what I found. She got very upset with me and took the picture and threw it in the woodstove. She told me never to look at stuff like that again. I was curious though, it was the first time I had seen a naked woman and I wanted to be her. I think somewhere my mom may have realized it, I don‟t know. My Aunt Debbie was married and lived on farm with her three kids and I guess they thought I was old enough to go out and baby sit my cousins for her. I liked going out to the farm because it was fun to run around and see all the animals and just have fun in general. One night at my Aunt Debbie‟s I realized that things were not as happy as they seemed. Her and her husband fought just as much as my parents did. It was like going from one hellhole to another. I tried not to visit there too much after that because I couldn‟t deal with the pressure coming from all sides. Fifth grade was the first time I was ever called a faggot. I didn‟t even know what a faggot was. I remember I was in school one day and all of the boys started calling me a sissy and a faggot. They didn‟t understand why I liked hanging out with all of the girls and not them. I started to cry and went to principal‟s office and told them what they were saying. He told me that I shouldn‟t hang out with all the girls and he could understand why they were calling me a sissy. What?!? I went home crying that day and went into the closet in my bedroom and just sat there. When my dad got home I asked him what a faggot was. He asked me why I asked him that and I told him what the principal said to me. This would be the only time I ever liked my dad in my whole life. He went to the school the next day and told the principal that if he ever called his kid a sissy again he would beat the hell out of him. Well, I thought that moment was golden. Here‟s the flipside. After we got home and he had done that, my dad told me to stop acting like a sissy and start acting like a man and people wouldn‟t say those things to me. What a wonderful guy. His feelings were hurt because someone had called me a sissy and he was embarrassed. What an asshole! I was going into sixth grade and things were starting to change. I was starting to change physically because I was getting older. The boys in my class teased me all the time now. I got called sissy and faggot more times on the average day than anyone I think. It hurt me, but I just took it all in. Between home and school, life was pretty miserable for me. Kids really can be cruel and it really does stay with you. I found an outlet at home though, I started to drink. I started off with light stuff like beer but by the middle of my sixth grade year I was drinking peppermint schnapps. I guess it was the only thing I could do to numb the pain. One day I decided to bring some schnapps to school with me so I could drink it out of my thermos on lunch hour. Well, the boys in the class were teasing me and I told them to stop. They asked me what I would do if they stopped and I told them I‟d get them drunk. Well, they did and I did. I got them all drunk. I also got myself into a heap of trouble at school because one of the kids had told. I still remember sitting in the principal‟s office waiting for my dad to come to school. He already had a prickly relationship with my principal so this was going to be interesting. When he showed up, he was really pissed off and the principal told him that I could be expelled. He told him not to do it, he would take care of me at home and that was all that was said. My dad kicked my ass that night, and I guess I deserved it but I didn‟t care. I really didn‟t feel anything anymore I was numb to the world. I did stop drinking after that though but I still snuck cigarettes once in a while. One night my dad caught me smoking and made me eat a cigar. I guess to show me how disgusting cigarettes were or something. I didn‟t care I ate the whole thing and smiled when I was done. I did throw up afterwards and wouldn‟t pick up another cigarette again until I was 13 years old. Sixth grade was almost over and things at home were still the same. One night changed it all though. My mom had gone out with my dad and we were left at home by ourselves. We were all in bed by the time we heard the car pull up in the driveway. I heard someone come in but it ended up being my dad. I heard him go into the closet in his bedroom and then come out of the room and get on the phone. The next thing I heard was, “When that whore comes home I‟m going to kill her. I‟ve got a gun and I‟m going to shoot her.” I started to get really scared. I got out of the bed and snuck my head around the corner to see what he was doing. I saw him standing there with a shotgun. He was actually going to kill my mother. He turned around and I jumped back and he came down the hallway and came into my room. I was sitting there and he came up to me and told me that he was going to shoot my mother. I started to cry and begged him not too. I think fate stepped in because the next thing I know I heard a loud noise outside and I ran to the window. I was going to run outside and warn my mom not to come inside the house. Luckily it was a tow truck and I saw a car behind it. It was my mom. She had been in a car accident. She was okay because she walked in the house but she was really banged up. My dad had since put the gun away and must have forgotten everything that was happening. He actually never did anything that night, but things were coming to a head in this household and fast. About two weeks went by and school was over. My mom and dad got into a fight that night. My mom called my Aunt Debbie and asked her to come over to the house because she was going to leave. My dad was really angry and when my aunt showed up he was absolutely furious. She came into the house and my dad was sitting at the table. He told her that my mom wasn‟t going anywhere and she said that this would be the last time that he hit her sister. He got up and got in her face but she didn‟t back down. Well, my mom came out of the bedroom and my dad threw her down on the floor and started kicking her. My aunt got in the middle and eventually they made it down to one of the bedrooms. My dad grabbed Debbie and hit her and threw her into the wall. He then turned around and started beating on my mom some more. The whole house was going crazy at this point. All of us were screaming and crying and yelling. My dad wouldn‟t stop. I thought that he‟d probably kill us all. My aunt told my mom that they had to get out of there. My mom ran into the bedroom with us kids and I grabbed her and said, “This is our chance mom. Let‟s just go. Please let‟s just go. I can‟t take this anymore.” She looked in my face and I think she realized for the first time what this was doing to her children. She told us all to grab some things that we were leaving. My aunt had managed to get out to the car at this point and was waiting in the driveway. Nobody called the police. When we came out of the room my dad was in the kitchen. My mom told him we were leaving and he told us to go that she‟d be back. We all left the house and got in the car and never looked back. We were all crying. We never did go back to that house. That house of horrors. It was over. We drove to Upson and went to my grandmother‟s house. It was a weird time folks, my Aunt Debbie had just left her husband so it was my mom and us four kids, and my aunt and her three kids and my grandmother and grandfather all in a three bedroom house. I‟m not sure to this day what my grandparents thought of the situation because they never really talked much about family things. I knew they were happy that my mom was away from my dad, but not my aunt. They really liked her husband, I guess they never got to see him in action the way I did. We stayed at my grandparents for a couple of weeks and then my mom and my aunt found two condos in Hurley, Wisconsin. It was now my mom and Shannon, Megan and me. My brother decided that he wanted to live with my dad. My dad had some weird control over my brother. It was sad really. We did have to deal with my father and his crazy ass the first couple of weeks we lived in the condo. He would show up in the middle of the night and just sit outside. I thought he was going to kill my mom so I would sleep in her bed every night. I guess I thought I could protect her from him. It was scary because I‟d wake my mom up all the time, every time I heard a noise. You never get over that. I still wake up when I hear any noise at night. My mom had hired us a crazy babysitter for the summer. I didn‟t really need a babysitter but my mom needed someone to take care of Shannon and Megan, she was still a baby. I will never forget our babysitter Debbie K. She was so crazy. She was this gorgeous blond lady with really big breasts and she liked to party. My mom had to go out of town a lot because she had started taking classes to go into the banking industry. I remember one night that Debbie threw a huge party at our condo and it was so much fun. I got drunk and I smoked cigarettes all night and Debbie didn‟t care one bit. My mom really liked her and had no idea what was going on when she wasn‟t around. I had a great summer that year. My mom had also hired another babysitter when Debbie couldn‟t do it anymore and her name was Donna Reed. She was one of the nicest, coolest, people I would ever meet in my whole life. Unfortunately, she died in a car accident a couple of years later. I still think about her to this day though, she meant a lot to me. She always treated me like a normal person and I think it‟s because she was always an outsider herself. Summer was coming to an end and I was going to be starting seventh grade. I was really nervous about going to school because I had to attend Hurley High School now and I was afraid of the older kids. I thought it‟d be a lot worse now that I was going to be in school with a bunch of people, and it was. My mom dropped me off the first day of school and I she could tell I was nervous. I told her that I didn‟t want to go in and she said I had to do it sometime. I looked at her and she smiled. I hadn‟t seen my mom smile in so long. I smiled back and got out of the car. Before I go onto the next chapter of my life I wanted to share this letter with you that I wrote to my father. I haven‟t spoken to him since I was 18 years old and don‟t intend on speaking to him again in my life. I‟ve never sent it to him, so this is my own way of sending it.

Dear Dad, I wanted to write this letter to let you know what you did to me You have shown me that I couldn‟t trust anyone in life You‟ve shown me that no matter what I do in life I‟ll always be afraid Every time I hear a noise when I‟m asleep at night I wake up and think it‟s you I still sleep with the nightlights on You are always in my head I wish you would leave I don‟t know why you hit my mother and made her cry I don‟t know why you killed the family dream Who hurt you? Who made you cry? Did anyone ever make you cry? Did anyone ever hit you? Did it make you feel good to feel your hand on my mother‟s face or on your children‟s skin? Every time you hit my mother I felt it. I felt it deep in the core of my soul. I can never forget. I will never forget. You don‟t deserve that. You don‟t deserve forgiveness. I don‟t know you I don‟t want to know you I won‟t be free until you‟re gone These are my memories and you gave them to me. I can never forgive you And I never will Goodbye

My Teenage Wonder Years

Starting seventh grade was really weird. I was at that awkward phase where you‟re turning from child into teenager. My hormones were starting to rage. I really liked boys a lot. I had no interest in girls except to be friends with them. Being in the high school was totally different because there were so many guys. I felt uncomfortable many days because I would try not to look at them because I just felt like they‟d know. I was really not the best looking kid in the world and I‟ll be the first to admit it. My arms were too long for my body which I wouldn‟t grow into for years. I think we‟re all a little weird looking when we go through the teenage years. I didn‟t really have any friends in seventh and eighth grade, my cousin Bonnie was in school with me and we were friends but beyond that I didn‟t talk to many people. I was the most uncomfortable in gym class because I was so sports challenged, but I got good grades and I studied hard. I also found a new passion which was reading. I knew I loved to write but I could really get lost in books. I spent a lot of time in the library those two years and became good friends with the librarian Miss. Sims. What can I say about Miss. Sims? Well, she was definitely eccentric. She was a little kooky. She was a lot like me I think that‟s why I liked her. The funny thing is that she was working there when my mom was in high school. She‟s still alive today, retired but still has it together. Life at the condos was kind of fun because we were able to have a pool pass to the Holiday Inn which was next to the condos for free. We didn‟t have a lot of money because we were living on my mom‟s income alone and my dad wasn‟t paying child support. Money was definitely tight, but my mom always made sure that we had a hot meal on the table every night. We didn‟t always get new clothes but we did the best we could. I didn‟t care about anything as long as we didn‟t have to go back to my dad‟s. My brother was still living with him and we still had to spend time with him once in a while. One day we went over to visit and my brother had painted his bedroom black with a big middle finger on the wall and had written, “Fuck off!” on the wall. I asked him if he was doing okay and he said he was but you could tell that he wasn‟t happy. He wasn‟t eating right and I knew it must‟ve been hell living at the house. I felt really bad for him but he didn‟t want to move. I think my dad really messed him up bad. We were still living in the condo when I was in seventh grade but my mom had finally started to date again and started dating a guy named Gary. He was almost ten years younger than my mom but he seemed to be a really nice guy. Eventually they decided to move in together and we moved to a house in Cary, Wisconsin. The house we moved into was nice and Gary and my mom got along really well. One night he had us all sit down at the table and he asked us if he could marry my mom. We all just sat there. He said that we would put papers in a hat and we could write our answers down on a piece of paper to give our answer. I wrote no. I didn‟t want my mom to get married because to me when two people were married it meant that he could beat my mom up and I didn‟t want to go through that again. When they pulled the papers out they asked who wrote no. I told them it was me. Gary asked me why I wrote no, and I told him why. He told me that he would never hit my mom. I made him promise he would never hit my mom, and he never has to this day and they‟ve been married almost 25 years. We lived at the house in Cary for a while and lived across the street from this other family who was really nice. I hung out at their house all the time. I really liked their son Jimmy. Actually, I had a crush on him at the time. He used to give me rides to school all the time which was really cool of him. He was really a good friend of mine and we hung out occasionally even when I went to high school. There was an emotional moment for me and my mom once and I want to share it with you. There was this bar that was across the street from our house and they used to have video games and would let the kids come in and play them whenever they wanted to. It was a different time and people weren‟t as anal then as they are today. I really wanted to go down to the bar and play a video game and my mom told me that we didn‟t have any money to go. I started to cry and told her that I never got to do anything. I could tell she was really upset that she had to tell me that because she started crying too. Well, my mom went into her bedroom and she came out with a one dollar bill. She handed it to me and told me that she was sorry that we didn‟t have money to do things, but hopefully that one dollar would make me happy for a while. That meant so much to me. I felt so bad about throwing such a fit, but when you don‟t have money and you want to do things it can be really disheartening. My mom was really a superhero to me and she used to call me her angel. I really was an angel at that point in my life. I always did anything I could to help my mom out because she had really been through a lot with my dad. I want to jump off the subject for one moment to tell you something about my mom. After all of us kids had graduated and left home she was on the board for Domestic Violence Against Women. She had taken a bad situation and turned it into a positive. She really is an amazing woman and everyone should have a mom like mine. Okay, back to Cary. The only bad situation we ever had in Cary was when a tornado had ripped through the town. That was a scary night. It was the first time that we had ever had a tornado that I remembered but Gary was there and he made us all feel safe. I knew then that this was the guy that my mom should marry. If that‟d been my dad who knows what would have happened. He wouldn‟t have cared what happened to us I‟m sure. My mom and Gary decided that we were going to move and we found a small two level house in Montreal, Wisconsin right on the main highway. It was an older ski house but it was nice. I was going into the ninth grade now and heading into high school. I was also 14 years old and changing daily. Ninth grade was the year I actually discovered masturbation. I was in gym class and I was in the locker room after class and everybody was taking showers. Well, one of the guys was talking about how he had been doing things to himself and made this stroking motion on his penis. I didn‟t know what the hell he was doing. My parents and I never talked about the birds and bees I was pretty much on my own. I went home that day and I was in the shower. I started to touch myself and eventually, well you know what happens. Every time I got close to having an orgasm I would stop because I was so scared. The feelings were so intense that I wasn‟t sure I could ever complete the whole job, but eventually I did and I fell to my knees. I had never felt anything so incredible in my whole life. I definitely didn‟t believe in the rule about masturbating thirteen times and going blind because if it was true I‟d have a Seeing Eye dog today. I was starting to change and the hormones were raging out of control. I turned 15 and made a whole new group of friends at school that were older than me. We were all the social outcasts in one way or another. Nancy was a really good friend of mine and so was her friend Shawn. We started hanging out together all the time. I had made a friend in grade school and her name was Nina. We were all inseparable really. Nancy and Shawn said that they had these friends in Ironwood, Michigan which is right across the border from Hurley, Wisconsin and asked Nina and me if we wanted to come to Nancy‟s grandmother‟s house and have a party. Nina and I said yes and I told my mom I was going to go and hang out with them. She asked me how I was getting there and I said I‟d just ride my bike. It‟s like a five or six mile ride and it wasn‟t very warm outside but I really wanted to go. This was the first time anybody ever invited me to anything. When we got there we all just hung out and then the guys showed up and they had alcohol. I hadn‟t really drunk since sixth grade but I sure learned how to do it again that night. I got so drunk it was ridiculous. I don‟t even remember much about that night except riding my bike back home to Montreal and singing and swerving while I drove. When I got home it was almost two o‟clock in the morning and my mom and Gary were furious with me. My mom knew I was drunk, but I didn‟t care. I had so much fun and the drinking just added to it. They sent me to bed and told me they‟d talk to me about it in the morning. Well, the next day they told me I was grounded and I just blew it off. I didn‟t care I was slowly turning from that little angel into quite the little devil and I only got worse. I did my two weeks of penance and then I was back to my normal routine. School was a major pain in the ass because I was always getting teased and called a faggot and pushed into lockers it was just annoying really. I just don‟t know why people are the way they are. I mean I didn‟t even know what sex was how could I be a faggot when I hadn‟t even touched anyone of the same sex sexually? I was in the lower hall one day in school and had to go to bathroom. I tried not to go into the bathrooms as much as possible because I was always afraid of getting beat up. The bell had just rung so I figured everyone would be in class so I just told myself I‟d make up an excuse why I was late. I went into the bathroom and used the bathroom and was standing at the sink washing my hands when one of the guys in the grade above me came in. I tried not to look at him because he was one of the guys that was always picking on me. His name was Kevin and he was an asshole. Well, I went to walk out and he stepped in front of me. He said, “I know you you‟re that faggot Keith.” I tried to walk past him and he pushed me. He said, “What‟s the matter faggot don‟t you know how to fight?” I just said, “Leave me alone.” He pushed me again and I fell into the bathroom stall door. He kicked me really hard in the balls and I fell to the floor and he kept kicking me in the balls. It hurt so badly, and then he heard someone coming and took off out of the bathroom. I just laid there and cried. When I got home that day from school I was shocked when I pulled my underwear off. My whole penis was black and blue and my balls were swollen. My brother who was two years ahead of me had since moved back into the house with us came in the bedroom and saw me looking at my junk. He looked really shocked and asked me what happened and I told him. The next day he beat the shit out of Kevin and told him if he ever touched me again he‟d kill him. My brother always looked out for me in school after that. I was having a tough time in school with all of the taunting and I started to drink pretty heavily. The first time I ever smoked weed was in ninth grade behind the shop teacher‟s pickup truck in the parking lot. I found it really easy to lose myself when I was high or drunk. Things at home were getting more difficult. I was having problems with my mom and Gary. I always felt like they were on my case about everything. My brother and Gary didn‟t get along at all. The girls were getting along fine with them but they were younger. I was becoming a little demon child. I would sneak out of the house and go get drunk with my friends and not care what my parents had to say. One evening Gary had been drinking and decided he was going to start some bullshit with me. I got really angry and told him to go fuck himself. He definitely had way too much to drink and chased me up the stairs. When I got to the top I turned around and he was right behind me. I didn‟t really think about what I was doing and I kicked him in the chest, and when I did this he went tumbling down the steps, and landed at the bottom. He wasn‟t moving. My mom ran over to him and screamed, “Oh my God I think he‟s dead!” I started to walk down the steps in shock because I honestly thought I‟d killed him. I didn‟t mean to do it I just got caught in the heat of the moment. Luckily all that had happened was that when he hit the bottom of the steps he‟d hit his head and knocked himself unconscious for a minute or two. I will say this much though, he never really put his hands on me again after that day. I was so filled with anger and rage at this time in my life and so not in control of my emotions. I‟m sure it had a lot to do with the drinking and my raging hormones and the fact that I was a girl trapped in a boy‟s body, but it was still no excuse for the way I was acting. My mom and Gary said that we were going to be moving again because they‟d bought a house a few blocks down from the one we lived in now. It was a really nice place and they actually told me they‟d build me a room in the basement so I could have my privacy. I really think they did it to keep me away from everyone else personally but at least the thought was nice. My brother had moved out because he had graduated and moved to Milwaukee to work for my uncle. I was going into tenth grade now and would soon be sixteen years old. When we moved into the new house it was really cool because it was big and in a really nice part of Montreal. Where we were in Montreal was where all the middle class families with some money live so I felt like the richest kid in the world. We still didn‟t have a lot of money but I sure felt like we were going places. My depression started to kick in about this age. I felt really hopeless. I was drinking too much, my grades were dropping, and I really just wanted to leave home and break out on my own. I had been taking French in high school and I really liked it. My teacher told me that the school‟s trip for the French Club was going to be a trip to New York City. I wanted to go so badly. I went home and asked my mom if I could go and she told me no because we couldn‟t afford it. I was so heartbroken because I really wanted to go. Well, I think after she told me no I was feeling very depressed and I was in my room in the basement that night and decided that I couldn‟t control my emotions anymore so I wrote a note to my parents and told them everything in it. I told them I didn‟t know what was wrong with me. I told them I thought I was a girl. I told them I liked boys. I just told them everything and then I set it on my dresser. I took the belt off my bathrobe and went over to the pole that was in my room in the closet and I tied the belt to the top of the pole and then tied the other end around my neck. I was going to kill myself. I just wanted to be dead at that moment. I dropped forward with the belt around my neck and I could feel the blood coming into my face as it tightened around my neck. I was slowly losing consciousness. I got really scared at this moment and stood back up and took the belt off my neck and just fell on the floor and cried. I couldn‟t do it, I couldn‟t end my life! The next morning I could see the marks around my neck so I put on a turtleneck and went to the breakfast table. My mom told me that she and Gary had talked and they would borrow the money from my grandparents so I could go to New York City. I just sat there in shock, only three hours before I was trying to hang myself in the basement and now I was going to New York City. I think God was trying to tell me something and I was definitely listening. The trip to New York City was amazing. I was turning 16 and I was going to New York City. The flight to New York really scared me. I had never been on an airplane before and I‟d never been anywhere really except to Milwaukee to visit my cousins for vacation. When we got to New York I was so amazed at how beautiful and how big it was. Our group toured the whole city. But, the one thing that I saw that impressed me the most was when I saw two guys walking down the street holding hands and then they stopped and kissed each other. I just sat and stared at them. Everybody else in the group was laughing and pointing but to me it was life changing. It was the first time I‟d ever seen two guys kiss each other in public. It looked normal to me. That night at the hotel we managed to get our hands on some alcohol and got really drunk and also got ourselves into a whole lot of trouble. We almost got sent home but the teachers that were with us let it go. I realize now that they had no choice but to let it go because they would‟ve gotten into more trouble than we did for not watching us closely enough. We went to a couple Broadway shows while we were there and I was inspired by them. I wanted to start acting. I wanted to be an actor. That trip to New York City changed me forever. I don‟t think if I wouldn‟t have gone I would‟ve never realized how different the world was outside of our little town in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin. I think I was supposed to see what I did in New York City I firmly believe that someone up there wanted me to know that I didn‟t have to die, that things would be the way they should be for me in the end. I had faith that that someday would come. When I got home I got a job working at Whitecap Mountains which is a ski resort in the kitchen. It was a job I would work at every year until I graduated from high school. I loved working out at the ski hill because I got to meet so many different people. It was one of the best jobs I ever had and it also helped me earn my own money. My parents were still being as strict as ever with me. They were always harder on me than the other kids in my family. I hated them for it then, but I respect them for it now. You don‟t always understand why your parents do the things they do, but it all makes sense when you get older. I finally got my driver‟s license when I was 16 years old. It took me two tries to get it because I wasn‟t the best driver in the world. I remember when Gary was trying to teach me how to drive he would get so frustrated because I just didn‟t get it. I thought that I was going to be able to drive everywhere and do whatever I wanted to do when I got my driver‟s license but my parents never let me use the car at all. I started hanging out more with my friend Shawn who lived down the road from our house. She was one of my best friends. Shawn had a baby when she was 15 years old so she was home all the time. She was only a year older than me. We had a lot of fun together. We used to sit and sing, and drink, and smoke and just have a good time. My mom didn‟t want me hanging out with her but I was always so independent and told her, “I don‟t pick your friends, and you certainly won‟t choose mine.” We also hung out a lot with two brothers that I had been friends with since I was a kid, David and Richard. I had the hots for both of those guys. David was a stud and Richard was just the opposite, out of shape but hot. I think I was in love with both of them at the same time. We all started spending a lot of time at my friend Nina‟s house in Hurley which my mom really didn‟t like. Nina came from a really poor family, but she was one of my best friends and we always got along great. After I had turned 16 I just started partying more and more. I was definitely turning into a teenage alcoholic. We would skip school just to go out and get drunk and occasionally we would be drunk while we were in school. One time I was so drunk in school I could barely keep my head up all day. The way I dealt with my sexuality issues was to get drunk, and get drunk I did. One thing that happened when I was 16 years old was that I discovered Madonna. She had just come out and I was enamored with her. I wanted to be her. She was so incredible. She really was my idol and I still love her to this day. I started plastering my walls with pictures of Madonna. I think my mom thought I was in love with her, but I wasn‟t. I wanted to be just like her. I tried to be just like her. I dyed my hair blond, which was unheard of in the city I grew up in for a guy to dye their hair, but I didn‟t care. I started dressing as sexy as I could. I just wanted to be Madonna so badly. I thank God she showed up on the scene because I think it was a great thing for our community at the time. She loved gay people and wasn‟t afraid to say it. She made a lot of us feel a lot more comfortable in our skin. Needless to say when I went to school with the blond hair, I got fagged to death but I didn‟t care anymore. I was on a mission. My grades were definitely dropping in school but I managed to pull myself through the tenth grade and onto the eleventh. That summer was wild. I was out of control. I think my parents had come to the point that they didn‟t know what to do with me anymore. They kept threatening to send me away to reform school but I didn‟t care I just kept going. I had found a group of friends that were misfits just like me and I was having a good time. I started running away from home quite often. I don‟t know what I was looking for really. My mom always found me and brought me back home, sometimes calling the police to find me but I always went back home. When I started the eleventh grade I was a mess. That Halloween though something changed because we all decided to go out and I decided to go out as a female. It was the first time I had ever dressed up and went out. I went to Nina‟s house and I wore her mom‟s clothes and her mom‟s shoes. I actually didn‟t look too bad. We went out and I remember that all of these guys were hitting on me. My friends were introducing me as a new girl who had just moved to town. My friend Holly‟s boyfriend was actually hitting on me and tried to kiss me once. It was a turning point for me. I never wanted to get out of those clothes I felt like I could easily be a girl if it was this easy. When I got home that night I just lay in bed and fantasized about that night. I felt like a girl and now I knew I could look like one too. After that night, whenever I was home alone I would go in the bathroom and put my mom‟s make-up on and then put her clothes on and just walk around the house. I never got caught dressing up but I was definitely starting to act more feminine. I was at Nina‟s house one night and I met this girl named Ari. She was a heavy set girl with really big breasts and she just kept hitting on me. I guess I wanted people to stop calling me a faggot so I started making out with her. Everyone looked really shocked when I did that. Ari and I went upstairs and it was the first time that I ever received oral sex from anyone in my life. All I remember is that I didn‟t like it, and it didn‟t feel right. I didn‟t have an orgasm but Ari fell in love with me. We dated off and on for a couple of months before I told her that I didn‟t want to see her anymore. I just didn‟t think it was fair to lead anybody on because I wanted to be a girl and I wanted to be getting kissed by the boys. After I broke up with her, she turned into the school slut which was sad. I felt like I had something to do with that for a long time, because just like her, I was looking for love. In my eleventh grade year I finally grew into my body. I went from being 5‟6” to 5‟11”. I think when I got taller it made it a lot easier for me because people didn‟t say things to me as often as they would. Although one night Nina and I were driving along the local cruise route and this car came up behind ours. It was an old friend of mine, who had since turned on me and his buddies. His name was Chris and I couldn‟t stand him, he and his friends were always really mean to me. They would call me a faggot all the time and push me in the hallways at school. Well, Chris had installed this intercom type deal on his car where he was able to say things and it could be heard outside of his car very loudly. They followed us from Ironwood all the way to Hurley screaming, “Keith is a faggot. He loves to suck dick!” They did this for about twenty minutes. Nina and I decided that enough was enough and we went to the police station and told them what was happening. The police sent somebody out and they pulled him over and literally ripped the thing out of his car and told him that if they caught him doing anything like that again he was going to go to jail. Chris and his friends weren‟t any nicer to me in school, but they stopped pushing me in the hallways. I had taken a stand against these people and things would never be the same again in my book. In school I stopped putting up with the bullshit, anytime anyone called me a faggot I would just turn around and say, “So what? What if I am?” Well, what could they say to that? Not much. I was really getting into acting and was in the drama club. I put on quite a few plays in the school and also joined the competitions for acting. I always did really well at this and I remember once I did a play and the whole audience stood up and clapped. After the play one of the kid‟s moms came up to me and said, “You‟re going to be in Hollywood someday and I‟m going to be able to tell you I knew you when.” Little did she know I would end up in Hollywood but in a totally different field of entertainment. Things were still not going well at home, because even though I was doing positive things, I was still drinking and smoking and having a “gay” old time. My parents would search my room every day and literally turn it upside down, because they thought I was on drugs. I wasn‟t at the time so I always thought it was funny. I would come home from school and just clean up my room. After my eleventh grade year was over I was so happy because I knew I only had one more to go and I would turn 18 before that year was over. I kept telling my mom that I was going to move out when I turned 18 and quit school. I think that had her stressed for about a year. My senior year in high school was the best year of my life. I breezed right through it. I was still drinking and getting in trouble at school, one time I even got suspended for three days but I knew this was it, once it was done I was out of Hurley and off to live a different life. Richard and I started hanging out a lot more that year and I was really falling for him. I think he felt the same way about me at the time but we never acted on it at the time. We would go skinny dipping in the Potato River which was in Upson where my grandparents lived and he did too. We just really liked each other and in school if anyone said anything to me he would get in their face. He protected me like a boyfriend would. I never dated another girl because I wanted to be one. I hung out with all of my girlfriends. The only guy friends I had were David and Richard. Other than that it was just me and the all girl gang. We had our own little family and it was an outlet for me. I just went through the motions my last year in school and when I turned 18 my mom came to me and told me that if I would finish high school she would help pay for me to go to college. I told her I would finish school but I wasn‟t going to go to college. I wanted to go out and see the world. When graduation came it was a bit of a sad day for me because my parents never threw me a graduation party. Every kid in my family had a graduation party except me. That hurt me for a long time. I really felt they didn‟t care about me and things like that just hurt me deep inside. That summer was an interesting one because I actually stayed living at home. Nina had moved to New Mexico and the only ones left for me there were Shawn, David and Richard. Nancy and I had stopped being friends because her mother thought I was a bad influence on their daughter. I guess all parents think their kids are perfect. I hung out with Shawn all the time and that summer we partied and had a good time. I had no idea what the hell I was going to do with my life. My parents were pressuring me to get a job but I didn‟t want to be there. Finally I agreed to go to the local community college and they paid for it. I hated college because I was back in school with the same kids I went to high school with. Also, my parents were letting me use the car to get there and eventually they told me that I couldn‟t use the car anymore so how in the hell was I supposed to get to the college? It was like 20 miles from my house. I had no choice but to drop out. I spent about three months after that wandering around in a great depression. I thought I was never going to get out of that place. All I was doing was drinking and hanging out with friends. I hoped this wouldn‟t be it for me. I decided to join the Air Force to get out of Hurley. It felt like the only option I would have. My family was excited that I decided to join the military. Me, not so much. The night before I left for the Air Force my friends threw me a going away party. I was there with Richard, David, Shawn, and a couple of other people. Richard and I were drunk and ended up talking in the bedroom. While we were in there I looked at him and told him that I thought I was gay. He didn‟t look surprised. I went on to tell him that I had been in love with him for a couple of years. He told me that he loved me too and then it happened, he leaned over and we started kissing. I was so excited. I felt his hand slide between my legs. I was overly excited now. We were really getting into it. Just then, the door flew open and it was my friend Dawn. She just looked at us kissing. She turned around shut the door and walked out. I was freaked out because I knew my secret had finally been discovered. Richard told me to come over to his apartment and not worry about it. It was going to be okay. I was so excited folks and honestly at that point I didn‟t care what any of them thought. When I walked out of the bedroom everybody was looking at me, and I just looked at them and said I‟m going over to Richards. It was the last time I talked to any of those people again. Richard had already left and his apartment was two blocks away from Dawns. I ran so fast up those blocks it was insane. I got to his place ran up the stairs and he was sitting in the living room. He was smoking a cigarette and just looking at me. I walked over to him and knelt down in front of him and he leaned down and we started making out. He told me to go into the bedroom and take my clothes off and he‟d be there in a minute. I was so nervous. This was going to be the first time I had sex with a man, with anyone for that matter. I had severe butterflies in my stomach. I took my clothes off and a few minutes later he came in and took his clothes off too. He climbed on top of me and we started making out. It felt so natural to me to feel this man on top of me. I touched him, he touched me and we kissed. Then I got on all fours and he entered my from behind. It hurt really badly at first but after a few moments I felt so good. It felt so right. I really loved him and I guess that helped. We went on like this for a couple of hours and then just laid there and talked. I told him I didn‟t want to leave for the Air Force, that I wanted to stay there and be with him and he wanted me to, but we both knew I had no choice but to go. When I left that night I was still drunk but I felt so different. I got into a cab and I remember the cab driver saying I looked like I had a great time that night. I told him, “I had the time of my life.” Things would never be the same again and now I was leaving for the Air Force.

Texas to Albuqueerque

What was I thinking? The Air Force? I had just gone from having my first sexual encounter with a man one night, to leaving for the Air Force the next day. It was a strange day the day I left. I was waiting at the bus station in Ironwood, Michigan with my mom, my step dad and my grandparents. I hugged them goodbye, and honestly this was one of the first times I remember my mother hugging me and actually telling me that she loved me. I cried for about the first thirty minutes I was on the bus but had to get strong. I had no choice I was about to become part of the United States Military no matter how farfetched it seemed at the time. I arrived in San Antonio in the early morning by bus. I don‟t think I was in store for what was about to happen. I think military recruiters are great storytellers, is that a nice way to call them liars? When I signed up I was promised so many things, none of which were true of course. If I knew then, what I know now, I never would have done it. But, it did get me out of Hurley, Wisconsin and that was my main goal. I think I knew when I signed up, that I wanted to go in, and get out as fast as possible. I never intended on staying in the military. First of all, I was at this point, a gay man, and you know how the military loves their gays. They don‟t love them at all. This was 1988, a much different time than today. My first night was a major wake up call. I thought I was leaving my parents and getting away from being told what to do and finally be able to run my own life. That was not going to happen and for the next 6 months I was owned. I wasn‟t a human anymore, I was a robot. The first day I was there was the “buzz cut” and vaccination day. I remember I was sitting in the barber‟s chair and he said, “Time to let go of your hair Goldilocks.” I almost cried as he buzzed away all of my hair. That was that. I was officially bald, not a very good look for me. After the life changing haircut we were all lined up and taken into a room where someone stood with a thing that looked like a gun, but it was the thing they used to give you your vaccinations. Pop! Pop! Pop! I had three shots in less than 5 seconds. Some people jumped when the needles hit their arms which caused them to get cut. Basically they were told to shut up and deal with it. I knew I was definitely in trouble at this point. When we got back to our barracks someone came in and asked if any of us had ever played any musical instruments. I told them I played the drums. They told me I would be going to the drum and bugle corps section of basic training. I thought this would be a lot easier but it wasn‟t. Basically it meant that I would be doing twice the work, and banging on a drum all day. The only interesting thing about the drum and bugle corps was that it was men and women. We were separated in the barracks but we would spend our days together training, and playing our instruments. On the subject of instruments, let me inform you now, that you will not be playing with your own instrument at any time during basic training. They put salt peter in your food which makes it really difficult to get any form of an erection. The military was the first time I ever had to shave my face. I was never a hairy person but in the military they make you shave. I actually had to be taught how to use a razor because I didn‟t know how. The first couple of weeks I was in were very difficult and the technical instructors gave me a very hard time. I think down deep they knew I was gay. They were always yelling at me and singling me out of the group. I remember one time at least six technical instructors grouped around me in a circle and stood there yelling at me while everyone else looked on. I just stood there and took it. There really was no breaking me mentally. I knew it was a game and if they wanted me to play it with them I would. I wasn‟t afraid of them, because I knew it was just a job to them. I‟m pretty sure they would‟ve loved to beat me down physically and mentally but I‟m like a rock. I‟m tough, I always have been. You can‟t grow up the way I did and not be. We were only able to write letters to our family the first couple of weeks we were there. I was pretty lonely. It was really my first time away from home, but I knew I had to get through it. The physical training was tough but in a way it was really good for me. I learned through the art of conditioning that the body is a pretty amazing thing. I was in the best shape I had ever been in, in my life. I wasn‟t able to smoke or drink so my mind was clear. I honestly never thought I‟d make it through basic training but I did. The day I graduated was one of the happiest of my life honestly. Of course nobody from my family showed up. So much for the family ties that bind all of us right? I was excited at the prospect of getting out and going onto schooling in Michigan is where I thought I would be going but low and behold when they posted the schools each of us would be attending I ended up in San Antonio, so not only was I not going to Michigan I would now be stuck at the same place I went through basic training. I got on a bus after graduation and went about a mile to where I would be attending school. At this point I also found out I would be placed in Security Police Training. I had no interest in this field whatsoever and was quite angry about it. I knew at this point I would have to do everything in my power to ensure they would discharge me. I went the first couple of weeks through training learning how to shoot machine guns, and M-16‟s and shoot off grenade launchers. This was incredible to me. My whole life I shied away from any type of firearm. I‟m afraid of them honestly. By the second week of training I started to complain about stomach problems and was sent to the medical building. After a week or more of this, they eventually pulled me out of training and I was moved from my dorm to another dorm which housed others like me who were basically trying to get out of the military any way they could. I was rooming with a strange guy who kept to himself most of the day. I did manage to meet someone named Larry Motley. He was gorgeous and honestly he was really into me. I‟ll tell you how I know this. One day he came to the room when nobody else was around and just jumped on top of me and starting to grind on top of me eventually grabbing my crotch. I think he knew I was gay but wasn‟t sure he was. It never went any further than that but he ended up being one of my closest friends. The days went by pretty slowly. My only job at this point was sitting at a desk all night long and greeting people as they came into the main building. This went on for a couple of months until finally one day I was called in and they asked me if I wanted to stay in the military or leave. I told them I wanted to leave. They asked me where I wanted to go. I knew that I didn‟t want to go back to Hurley, Wisconsin because I knew my family would be embarrassed that I never continued on in the military so I told them I wanted to go to Albuquerque, New Mexico where one of my best friends from high school Nina lived. They basically gave me my walking papers and the next thing I knew I was on an airplane going to a state I‟d never been too and starting a whole new life. I wish I had a lot more interesting tales to tell you about my experiences in the Air Force but honestly I don‟t. It was a random six months of my life that were basically spent plotting and planning on how to get out of the military and move on with my life. The military isn‟t for everyone and it definitely wasn‟t for me. As my airplane was flying over Albuquerque I was very nervous. I didn‟t know what to expect honestly. I hadn‟t seen Nina in a year or more and I wasn‟t even sure if she would want me to live with her. She lived with her sister Carol whom I had never met. I met Nina in the airport and we hugged and honestly it was so nice to just wrap my arms around someone that I knew loved me no matter what. As we were driving through Albuquerque I just felt so comfortable like I was finally at home. It just felt like the place I needed to be. I‟ve always believed that God leads you down paths in life and if you choose to take them when they open up to you your whole life can change. My whole life was about to change that was for sure. We got back to Nina‟s apartment which was very nice. It was more of a condo than an apartment. I didn‟t get to meet her sister Carol until she got home from work that night and I honestly liked her in our first meeting. I spent most of my days looking for a job. Nina worked at a pizza shop and I‟m still not sure to this day why she never offered me a job. I guess she didn‟t want to mix friendship and business. Her sister worked downtown so I only saw her in the evenings. On days when I was feeling very lazy is when the trouble started. I decided to pick up a local rag paper and it was there that I found listings for 900 ads for local gay men in your area. I started to call the 900 numbers and eventually I would find my first real sexual experience in my life. I‟m not saying the first one wasn‟t great, because it was, but my first with an experienced gay man was quite different. I was so naïve back then. I guess being 19 years old and living away from home made me go crazy for a while. I think that happens to everyone when they first leave home honestly. The first guy that answered the ad was Rob. He was a very nice guy, tall and good looking. He took me to his apartment and we hung out and seemed to talk forever. I was enamored with him at first. He treated me like I was a real person, like being gay wasn‟t some horrible thing. I think that‟s why I gave into his sexual advances quickly. What can I say I was a horny teenager and this guy wanted to do me, what could I say besides yes? The way he touched me was amazing. He kept saying he was the train conductor which was weird to me because I didn‟t understand any gay lingo at this point in my life. I know now, that meant he was a top because I was most definitely the caboose that day. I think the strange thing about everything that was happening in my life at this point was that Nina had no idea what I was doing in the daytime when she and her sister were at work. Here they were working to pay all the bills and I was running off with random gay strangers and having sex all day. I started letting some of the guys come over to the apartment for afternoon adventures of the naked kind. I guess everything came to light when the first phone bill came after I had moved in. It was six hundred dollars. Can you imagine how shocked Carol was when she got the phone bill? I had to come clean at this point and tell Carol that I was gay and not to tell Nina and I promised her that I would pay her back all of the money when I finally got a job. I think that she didn‟t like me too much after that day but she never did tell Nina which I respect her for to this day. I really tried to get a job but wasn‟t as interested as I should‟ve been because I was more interested in finding anonymous men to have sex with. I think I should‟ve lost my virginity years before because I was certainly making up for lost time. If I was a woman most people would‟ve called me a slut but because I was still technically a male back then it was just accepted. Double standards are still alive and well. One day Nina told me that her brother Christopher was coming to town to visit. I was actually very excited because I‟d had a crush on him since I was about fifteen years old. I‟m not sure if he knew, but somewhere down deep I think he did. Nina and Carol were at work when he arrived and he said that he was going to go take a shower and I really wanted to just jump in there with him but I always stayed calm in the eye of the sexual storm for some reason. I remember he was asking me how my brother was doing, how things were going, and all I was thinking was, “Please jump me!” Well, he did get out of the shower naked and it was the first time I got to see him in all of his gloriousness. He was a perfect specimen. Too bad he wasn‟t gay but at least it gave me a fantasy that I could carry with me, well, to this day actually. He didn‟t visit long, but while he did visit I found out that my friend Lea that I had made while in the Air Force had moved to Albuquerque. She was my best friend in the Air Force and knowing she was moving to the city made me very happy. Christopher ended up going out with Lea while he was in the city but what really helped was Lea and I reconnected and would soon forge a friendship that would last for a very long time. Lea knew I was gay and didn‟t care less. She was the coolest girl I had ever met in my whole life. I loved her like a sister. Soon after reconnecting with Lea, I was introduced to one of Carol‟s very good friends Richard. He was definitely a piece of work and would be the first person to introduce me to the drug cocaine. He was a dealer and a user which isn‟t the greatest combination but considering he was the first person that ever got me high on coke I kind of took a liking to him. I‟m not sure of his sexuality to this day, but I know he liked the boys and the girls and sometimes the boys who wanted to be the girls. I never had sex with him but we did spend a lot of quality time together snorting lines. Next to fall into place in this strange little family we were making was a girl named Janet who worked with Nina. Janet was living with a man the first time I met her, but I soon discovered that she was a lesbian in hiding. One night I decided it was time to officially come out to someone and for some reason Janet just seemed so open to conversation. We took a long drive in her car and soon we were talking about a lot of different things. I remember we were at a light on Gibson Boulevard in Albuquerque and I just said, “Look I‟m gay.” She looked at me and said, “Well, so am I.” We just sat there and laughed and somehow bonded in our gayness. I still hadn‟t told Nina I was gay yet but knew I had to. It‟s hard to tell your best friend you‟re gay even though you know they love you. I waited about another week before I told Nina and she said she always knew and it didn‟t matter to her. Carol and Nina decided they were going to move out of their apartment and move into a new house with Richard and Janet and luckily they invited me to move with them even though I was still jobless at this point and partying every night, but, we were all partying together every night and it just seemed the next feasible thing to do. I was given the smallest room in the house, for non-rent paying housemates I guess. It was all going pretty well at first, but it went downhill fast. Nina ended up sleeping with Richard one night when we got drunk, and it caused problems with Carol because she had been in love with Richard for years. The funny thing is that Richard was also sleeping with Janet on occasion and was also sleeping with a guy on the side. I know this sounds like a soap opera but it goes on and on and on. Eventually it would come to light that Richard had tested positive for HIV. This was shocking of course to everybody in the group because he was sleeping, well, basically with everyone. One night we all decided to go to the balloon fiesta which is huge in Albuquerque and the party was always held at the Holiday Inn Pyramid. Richard, Janet and I decided to go together since we were the big cokeheads in the house at this point. I remember we were driving down to the Holiday Inn and doing lines of coke off the dashboard of Janet‟s car and we got to a red light and didn‟t quite stop ending up in the center of the four way. Just our luck, there was a police car on one corner and they pulled us over. We blew the cocaine off the dashboard and amazingly didn‟t even get a ticket. Lea met us at the Holiday Inn and her and I just bonded immediately that night even through my coke haze. Lea and I decided that I should spend the night at her house and just party and talk all night, and party we did. Lea and I realized that we should live together it just seemed the best thing to do and I was definitely not getting on very well at the house because I still owed Carol money and I wasn‟t paying rent and everybody besides Nina was treating me pretty badly. The news of this didn‟t go over very well at the house because they all acted like I should stay until I got everything settled up. Well, I was young and ready to party and honestly I didn‟t care what any of them had to say. Richard invited me over to the house one evening to “talk to me.” It was just him and I and he told me he would drop me off at the local coffee shop hangout after we were done talking. When I got there Richard filled a pipe full of marijuana and got me so high I felt like I was paralyzed. I think Richard honestly felt betrayed because he liked being in control and when I said I was leaving he felt like he was losing control. After our little meeting which basically amounted to nothing he dropped me off at the coffee shop. When I got there Carol and Nina were waiting and they introduced me to their friend Peter. Peter was gay and very good looking. We hit it off right away. He asked me if I wanted to hang out after and I said of course because I was attracted to him. We drove around for a while and then he took me back to his apartment. We did end up getting naked that evening but we never ended up doing anything sexual. We lay in his bed and masturbated and that was it. I thought he wasn‟t attracted to me so I just let it go. The next day we went back to my apartment and we were sitting at the kitchen table talking. Peter told me that he had full blown AIDS. I was really shocked at first and then quite thankful that I never did anything with him sexually. I really didn‟t know anything about AIDS as it was the late 80‟s and not many people knew too much. I asked him if it was okay to drink out of the same cups as him, or kiss him hello and goodbye and he told me it was. I picked up his coffee spoon and stirred my coffee and then drank. Then I reached over and drank out of his coffee cup and at that moment we were bonded as friends. There‟s a trust with people who are battling the illness and I had earned his trust and he mine. Peter introduced to me to many new things in the gay community. He showed me where the local cruising routes for gay men were and introduced me to quite a few of his friends including an older gentleman by the name of John. John was a businessman who definitely loved younger gay men. He loved to entertain them at his beautiful home in the rich section of Albuquerque. John took a liking to me the first time I met him. He looked like Johnny Carson in the face and I told him this on more than one occasion. John, Peter and I hung out a lot. John was good to me and when I look back now I guess that all the times John did nice things for me he always expected something in return. John would buy me groceries, and give me money and on occasion I would let him do things to me sexually. Tit for tat I guess. My world was opening up and I was becoming a gay man and finally finding acceptance among friends. Things were good. Life at the apartment was going to be much different now. Lea and I got along so well. We were really like brother and sister. We confided in each other about everything. We definitely knew how to get our party on. Our big thing was strip poker. We would invite our random men of the evening over all the time to play strip poker. We worked in the daytime and partied all night long. Music played a big part in both of our lives. Lea was a really good piano player, and I sang so we were always making music. We had a few problems when we first moved in together because Richard wouldn‟t leave us alone. I think it really hurt him that I left the house and wanted nothing more to do with them. Down deep he was a very sensitive guy but just felt like he could never show it. Lea confided in me one night that she had slept with Richard and we scheduled an HIV test and luckily she came back negative. Nina also took the test and came back negative. I think Carol was happy at that point that Richard was never interested in her sexually. One night we invited Lea‟s friends Tammy and Dennis over for a party. Well, Tammy ended up getting very drunk and passed out on the floor. Lea passed out also but Dennis and I were still awake. Dennis and I ended up sleeping together that night. We were both drunk and things just happened. I think it‟s obvious that even in 1988 men were living their lives on the down low. I continued to live as a gay man the whole time I lived in New Mexico because honestly I never knew how to become the woman I wanted to be. If I would‟ve known how to become the woman I wanted to be it would‟ve happened a lot sooner. Lea ended up having a boyfriend named Adam and I worked with him. I didn‟t really care for him too much and I don‟t really think he cared for me too much. I think I was jealous of their relationship because I really wanted my best friend all to myself. They broke up eventually which worked out for the best for both of us. Nina and I had grown apart a bit over these couple of months because it just seemed her and I didn‟t have as much in common as Lea and I did. The night they broke up Lea and I really hit the bottle and got very drunk. We decided we were hungry and headed over to Burger King to get something to eat. While we were waiting in line at the drive-thru (I know drinking and driving not a smart thing to do but we were young and stupid) there was another car in front of us with three men in it. It seemed like we were waiting forever in line to get up to order our food. We were very drunk and soon we started yelling out of the window for the guys to hurry up and order their food already. I think they were very drunk also. One of the guys yelled out the window and called Lea a slut and told her to shut up. Well, Lea and I got very pissed and Lea got out of the truck and then the three guys got out of their truck. I had no choice but to get out and back my best friend up in the situation. Some words were thrown back and forth and eventually one of the guys ended up punching me in the face and my glasses went flying. The next thing I know all three of the guys are punching and kicking me and calling me a faggot. But, every time they knocked me down I kept getting back up. I never gave up even though they were kicking my ass. My lip was bleeding but I still kept getting back up. Eventually they got back in their car and took off. But, I think this would almost become a metaphor for how I would be in my life. I would take the punches, I might fall down, but I‟d always get back up, brush myself off and move on in life. I was really partying a lot and eventually ended up quitting my job. I told Lea that I needed to go somewhere and try to get my life back on track so I ended up signing up for the Job Corps. I had heard it was a wonderful organization which could teach you great working skills. I signed up and left New Mexico for Morganfield, Kentucky in January of 1989. I would only stay in the Job Corps for two months but those two months were a living hell. When I first arrived at the school in Morganfield I was horrified. The buildings were run down and I don‟t think they spent much time making sure they were very well insulated. The ratio of the school was 2100 African Americans to 100 Caucasians. I had no problem with this. I‟m a firm believer that everyone is the same no matter what color you are but in Kentucky things were a lot different then. I remember one night a bunch of guys and I decided to leave the school and venture into the woods to see what was happening outside of the gates of the school. I now know why they had gates around the whole school because we were chased by what I now believe was the KKK. They were running after us and at one point they were chasing me calling me a “nigger lover.” I couldn‟t believe that in 1989 this was still going on. Racism is so ugly, and the KKK is so stupid. If they‟re so proud of who they are, maybe they should take their sheets off and show us who they really are. They never did catch us and if they would‟ve I wonder if they would‟ve killed us. I never ventured outside of the gates of the school again until I left. Because of the poorly insulated buildings I got really sick. So sick in fact that I ended up in the hospital. While I was in the hospital riots broke out on the Job Corps campus and I remember one night waking up and there were a bunch of students burning things outside of the hospital. I knew at this moment I had to get out of this place before something really dreadful happened. There was only one problem. In Kentucky you had to be 21 years of age or get your parents‟ permission to leave before they‟d let you leave. I told my mother everything that was happening and she refused to send a letter to get me out of there. I‟m not sure why she did this to this day, but I have forgiven her. So I had a master plan. I would get my mom to write me a letter then I would replace the letter she sent me with one I had written asking that they let me leave. It took a few days for the letter to come from my mom, as soon as I got it, I replaced it and within a matter of two days I was on an airplane back to Albuquerque and back to Lea‟s apartment. I will say this about my experience in Kentucky. I cleaned up my act and got it together. I didn‟t quit drinking but I just didn‟t drink near as much. As soon as I got back to Albuquerque I got a job working at Total Gas Station on Central Avenue. It was really the best feeling in the world to finally be making money. Even though I was a cashier at a gas station I took great pride in the work I was doing and I was meeting some of the strangest characters I had ever met in my life. I remember meeting two hookers that worked the avenue Toni and Linda. They were older and overweight and I was really surprised they were street hookers when I met them. They just didn‟t seem the type but then again what is the hooker type? Toni used to be in the Army and ended up on hard times and eventually it lead to her becoming a hooker. She was really a nice person and I felt bad for her. Her pimp used to beat her up all the time. I would try to comfort her when she would come in the station for cigarettes or snacks. One day she told me that she wanted to get out of the business, but didn‟t know how to get away from her pimp so I told her that if she really wanted to get away from him I would do anything I could to help her. She told me that if I could pick her up and take her to the bus station to get her out of the city that‟s all she needed. She told me it would take a couple of days for her to be able to stash enough money away for a bus ticket. As soon as she had the money, I used Lea‟s truck and drove her to the bus station and never saw her again. I miss her really. She was a great person who just ended up going down the wrong path. I hope that she‟s safe and happy to this day. Soon after Toni had gone, I met a girl named Sharon. She was this gorgeous blond girl and also a hooker. She didn‟t work the streets though. Sharon actually drove around in her car at night and picked guys up at street lights when they stopped their cars. She called it whores on wheels. That‟s funny right? We actually ended up being really good friends and even went out and partied together. I was at home after a long night at work and I got a phone call. It was Sharon, and she had been arrested and asked me if I would come bail her out. I considered her a friend and had no problem bailing her out of jail. She didn‟t stop what she was doing, but it was pretty cool to me that she trusted me enough to call me to come help her. It actually made me feel good. Another chance meeting would bring another into the fold of our little group we were slowly building and his name was Aaron. Aaron came into the station one night and I was impressed with him immediately. He had hair that went up like a mushroom cloud and he was dressed all in black. Yes, it was the start of the huge sensation that would be known as the ravers. Ravers were goths who really enjoyed dressing up and definitely enjoyed doing a lot of drugs. I loved him right out of the gate. Not a sexual love, a love that could only be described as wanting to be just like him. Aaron and I became fast friends and I soon introduced him to Lea who also really loved him. Aaron used to do a lot of acid and used to tell me the most hilarious stories about how he would go to Church when he was tripping. I had never done acid and it would be quite some time before I would actually try it but we‟ll get to that later. Aaron decided to change his name to Damien, just like that little evil kid from the movie. How cool was he? He had decided to be exactly who and what he wanted to be no matter what anybody thought. Damien, as he was now called, started taking me to local rave clubs. I really felt free when I went to these clubs. It was a community of cast aways and I felt like I fit right in. I started to dress like Damien and even dyed my hair green at one point. I introduced John to Damien and soon the group would be complete. I was really enjoying my life at this point. Lea and I were both working and I was finally able to buy my own food and clothes. That was a wonderful feeling. While working at the station one night a young gay man who was very good looking came in and his name was Craig. He and I were like two peas in a pod. We were both young, blond, cute, obsessed with Madonna and extremely flamboyant. It was a friendship in the making. We decided to make a coffee date to meet Peter and soon the three of us would become the Three Gay Musketeers. We were inseparable. We did everything together. We cruised gay hangouts together, we shopped together, did lunch together. We were the best of friends. One night while I was working Craig came in and we decided to call the local radio station and announce that we wanted to go on the air as “The Born Again Blonds.” Believe it or not they told us to call in every night during the weekend at 3 A.M. and give updates on what was happening on Central Avenue. It was hilarious. We would call in and say blonds were better than anybody else and then other people started calling in and eventually it was the hit of the summer. But as summer came to a close, so did our little night time radio adventure. Craig was definitely stuck up but I loved him anyway. He was cute and I really never wanted anything more from him than friendship. He was really smart also. He spoke fluent French which really impressed me. I was off work and woke up one morning and was really sick. I felt like I was hung over and couldn‟t understand why. I called Lea at work and asked her what I should do. She thought I had the flu. It didn‟t feel like the flu to me though I was having a lot of pain. I was standing in the living room of the apartment and I passed out. I woke up and decided it was time to call someone, anyone. I called Peter and he rushed over to the apartment and took me to the emergency room. Luckily the hospital was only a few blocks away from the apartment. When we got there I was really feeling sick. I was in a lot of pain and after an examination they told me that if they didn‟t get me into emergency surgery my appendix was going to burst. I told them I didn‟t want to have surgery because I didn‟t want any scars on my body. How vain was that? The doctor told me either I have the surgery or I died. I guess in that situation you have no choice right? I was young and vain for no apparent reason really. The surgery went well and after five days in the hospital I was released back into the wild. Wild I was I was back to partying the night I got out of the hospital. One night while I was working “He” came into my life. His name was Dwyatt. He was a gorgeous black man. I never actually pictured myself dating a black guy. I‟m not sure why. I guess that I never thought about it, and I guess a black man had never shown interest in me. He was really persuasive. He wanted me to go on a date with him and after about a week I finally agreed to it. Dwyatt was one of the most interesting guys I had ever met. He managed a local restaurant that Lea and I always went to in the mornings for pancakes and I had never even seen him there. He asked if he could come over to the apartment on my day off and hang out. I told Lea I had met someone, and she just told me to be careful and not get hurt. I think she felt the same way about me dating as I felt about her dating. We were the Will and Grace of our time. Dwyatt came over on my next day off and we were lying on the bed talking and eventually we ended up kissing and eventually one thing lead to another and we were laying there naked. I was really nervous because I personally had never seen a black man‟s penis. I told him why I was so nervous and he told me that it‟s no different than a white mans. I begged to differ because I never saw anything that large on a man before. We got past that moment and had many more like it and soon we were a couple. Yes, I finally found my first real relationship and the guy was actually in love with me. I think after feeling so unloved for so many years of my life, I felt like a real person. Dwyatt approached me one day after we had been dating for a couple of months and asked me if I would consider moving with him to Phoenix, Arizona. I really didn‟t want to go but I was in love with him. I talked to Lea, Craig and Peter about what I should do and they told me that they really didn‟t like him nor did they trust him. I took what they said to heart but I was still willing to take a chance and move with him. In a matter of a couple of weeks I packed up my things got in a car with Dwyatt and we left. He already had an apartment set up for us when we got there. I was scared. I felt like I had just got my life together and now I was willing to throw it all away for love but I guess that‟s what people do sometimes. The first couple of weeks we were there were fine. Dwyatt had a job working at a Circle K and I pretty much just took care of the apartment and my cat. One night Dwyatt asked if I wanted to go out. I was only 20 years old so I wasn‟t sure how I was even going to get into a nightclub but he got me in. While we were there I guess I must‟ve drunk too much and ended up kissing another guy. Dwyatt had two friends that had gone out with us and they came back to the apartment with us. When we got home, I went to get undressed and go to bed. The next thing I know Dwyatt comes up behind me and throws me onto the bed and starts hitting me in the face. He then wrapped his hands around my neck and started to choke me, telling me that I cheated on him and I honestly thought he was going to kill me. His friends heard the commotion but didn‟t do anything to help, in fact, they left. Dwyatt finally let me go and went into the living room. I was lying in the bed crying and thinking what have I done? Why did I agree to move with him? I went out into the living room and just looked at him. We lived a few short steps away from a local gas station and I told him I was going to go get something to drink. I assured him that I wasn‟t angry I just needed something to drink. He let me and as I walked down the sidewalk I started to cry. I grew up with a father who hit my mom on a regular basis and here I was being hit myself. I went into the gas station and got a soda and on the way out I stopped at a pay phone and called the police and told them what happened. The police said they would send someone to the apartment. I waited until the police showed up and then went back to the apartment. Dwyatt was shocked when I walked in with the two police officers. I told him, “This will be the last time you ever put your hands on me again.” One police officer took Dwyatt outside while the other stayed inside with me. The police officer told me that even though I was in a gay relationship Dwyatt still had no right to put his hands on me. I told him I didn‟t want Dwyatt arrested I just wanted him to leave me alone and not do it again. They asked me if I wanted to press charges and I told them no and in that time they just let it go and gave him a warning. When they left Dwyatt apologized to me and kept asking me why I would call the police on him and I told him that I wasn‟t going to let a man hit me the way my father had hit my mother. Something was strange though, he seemed very worried about the police coming to the house, more worried than the average person would. I would find out later why this was. We ended up staying in the apartment until the end of the month and then Dwyatt told me that one of his friends was going to let us live with him for free. I thought this was very weird because it was someone I had never met. I found it even weirder when we moved into one of the nicest houses I‟ve ever seen with this older gentlemen who owned a very well known orange juice company. Well, it all started to click together when I found out the man had a deep love for young black men. Obviously Dwyatt had something going with this guy and I was just along for the ride. I started working at a Circle K once we moved and I remember one night the same police officer who came to the house that night stopped in. He recognized me and asked me how I was doing. I told him fine. He told me that I needed to be careful with Dwyatt that he knew he was trouble. I didn‟t think anything of it, just general concern. Dwyatt wasn‟t really acting too much like a boyfriend anymore and one night I told him that I wanted to go back to Albuquerque for a visit. He got me the plane ticket and I flew back to Albuquerque and back into the safety of my friends. Lea picked me up at the airport and took me back to the apartment. I told her I was going to call Dwyatt and tell him it was over, which I did. He was really pissed off but I didn‟t care I told him to bring me my things. I told Lea I was going to go stay at John‟s house where Craig had recently moved in until Dwyatt showed up with my things. I ended up getting very drunk that night, crying a lot and eventually healing myself the way I always had, I went out and found a guy to have sex with. Dwyatt showed up the next day with my things and told me that he‟d be staying with friends in Albuquerque. He begged me to come back to him but I told him absolutely not. I got a phone call at John‟s a couple of days later and it was Dwyatt he told me he was in jail. I was shocked and asked him why. He wouldn‟t tell me. I called the police department and asked them why he was there. I told them I was a family member to get the information. They told me he was there for fraud and forgery. I guess sometimes you can‟t put your finger on something until it comes to light. Dwyatt asked me to move with him because he was running from his crimes. He would do two years in the state penitentiary because of it. I almost felt a sense of relief when he was out of my life. This wouldn‟t be the last time we would be together. I think sometimes stupidity can overrule love. After Dwyatt was shipped off to prison it seemed that a lot had changed in my life. It didn‟t stop my drinking and partying ways too much but a lot had changed. In March I turned 21 years old. John, Craig and Peter took me out to a restaurant for my birthday and I got very drunk. Actually, I got so drunk that I was dancing on the tables in the restaurant and eventually we were asked to leave. Peter and I decided to continue the party. I remember I woke up next to the toilet in his grandmother‟s house the next day and asked Peter to give me a ride to John‟s house. I asked John if he would get me a bus ticket to go back to Wisconsin. He did. It didn‟t take long, but I would be leaving and moving onto a new adventure in my life. I never thought I‟d ever want to go back to Wisconsin but things happen and that‟s where my life would take another interesting turn of events. John dropped me off at the bus station and Peter, Craig and Damien were there to send me off. I cried a lot when I got on that bus. I also got on that bus with a lot of white crosses which were little speed pills they used to sell at truck stops. I was moving into a new life, but if I was going, I was going high.

Keep On Moving

When I arrived in Milwaukee my brother Darren picked me up at the bus station. I would be staying with him and his wife Diane. It was a new year 1990 and I didn‟t know anybody. The first thing I had to do when I got there was get a job. Keeping with what I knew, I got a job at a gas station which was about five miles from my brother‟s apartment and I used to walk to work every day even though the gas station was in a very dangerous neighborhood. I still felt that I wanted to become a woman that would never change but I kept my life going because I had to. I felt really out of place when I first got to Wisconsin. I had been to Milwaukee when I was kid but now I was living there and I really wasn‟t sure how much I‟d like it. I didn‟t mind living with my brother and his wife and I came out to them and told them that I was gay. My brother didn‟t understand but he never treated me badly and neither did Diane. I think Diane was a little more accepting. She was always one of the nicest people I had ever met. I worked many hours at the gas station sometimes up to 12 hours a day but I didn‟t mind. I wasn‟t drinking or doing drugs which was a really good thing. For the first time in a long time I was thinking clearly and not acting up. That wouldn‟t last too long. Trouble first came when I met my brother‟s landlord who lived right downstairs from us. I discovered that he was gay and eventually we ended up carrying on quite a sordid little affair. My brother had no idea what was going on and I never wanted him to know. I always kept my private life private. I asked my brother if I could borrow his car one night so I could go out and see what the city had to offer. I looked in the local gay guides and found the names of the some of the clubs that were downtown in Milwaukee. The first club I ever went to was called the Triangle that was owned by a crazy heavy set man at the time. I dressed very girly back then. I wore a lot of make-up for being male. When I first went into the Triangle everybody looked at me sizing me up. I was the new meat in town and I was happy to be the new meat in town. When you‟re new, nobody knows where you‟ve been, or who you‟ve been with and I had quite a long list of lovers behind me. Al, who was the owner, took me under his wing immediately and I would find out why later that evening. Al asked me if I would help him get some things from the basement and being new and wanting to meet new people I said yes of course. When we got to the basement Al started telling me how much he loved young guys and asked me if I wouldn‟t mind letting him perform oral sex on me. I didn‟t mind to tell you the truth and I let him do it. When we came back upstairs everybody in the bar was looking at me and they knew exactly what had happened. I kind of figured that everybody went through this ritual when they were new to town. Al introduced me to the bartenders, and I really took a liking to a guy named Chad. He was young and cute and he really liked me too. After the bar closed that night Chad asked me if I would stay and help him clean up the bar. I was actually kind of thrilled because I thought he was very attractive. As we were cleaning up Chad came up behind me and put his arms around me and began kissing my neck. Soon we were naked and having wild sex all over the bar. I still think it‟s funny every time I look back on it because from every moment I ever went into that bar after that night I would be thinking, I had sex on that stage, I had sex on those chairs , I had sex on that bar. I went home that night with a huge smile on my face. I had found my new scene and I was excited to throw myself into it face first. I decided the next day to call my mom and tell her that I was gay. I called her and said I needed to tell her something and when I did she hung up on me. I started crying. It was a truly horrid moment in my life. Five minutes later she called me back and told me that could never accept my being gay, but she loved me no matter what because I was her son. That was a turning point at least I knew that my mom, whom I adored was on my side, somewhat. A few days after the storm had calmed down I called my mom again and told her that I needed a car to get back and forth to work and she told me to come home and she would give me her old car because she was getting a new one. I went back home with my brother Darren and it was definitely awkward because for the first time I was seeing my family after being out of the Air Force. We just never talked about it, and we definitely never talked about my being gay. My mom did give me her car and that was a life changing moment for me. For the first time in my life, I owned a car and now I would be able to go anywhere I damn well pleased. Bring on the party was all I was thinking the whole ride back to Milwaukee. My ride back was a lot longer than it would have been because I ended up in a serious situation on the way back. I had stopped at a rest area to use the restroom and I walked into the restroom. I noticed someone‟s feet underneath the stall but I didn‟t think anything of it because it was a rest area. I was standing using the urinal when I heard some groans coming from the stall. When I finished I walked over and said, “Are you okay?” That‟s when the door flew open and the next thing I know this person smashed my skull into the cement wall. I fell to the floor and when this happened the person grabbed me by the back of the head and began smashing my head into the floor. I didn‟t know what else to do but to pretend like I had gotten knocked out or was dead. When I heard the door to the restroom close I managed to get up and go over to the mirror. There was blood gushing from my head. I got really scared and grabbed some paper towels and began pressing them onto my skull. I had to drive another 40 miles to get to my brother‟s apartment. When I got there my brother opened the door and was like, “Where the fuck were you?” He then realized that something was terribly wrong as I fell to my knees. He grabbed me and got me into his car and took me to the hospital. I don‟t remember much except the police coming in and questioning me about what happened. I really didn‟t know but I gave them all the information I could think of. I don‟t think they ever caught the guy but it was another lesson learned and I have never used a rest area to this day unless someone was with me. I still have the scar on the top of my skull and I rub it as a way of remembering what could have happened to me. After I had spent a couple of days recuperating I went back to work. I continued working at my job and kept going downtown and exploring all the clubs. It was going to be a great summer it was the summer of Madonna‟s “Vogue” and all the gay clubs were going crazy. I started hanging out at La Cage in Milwaukee and then began to frequent Club 219 which had drag shows every Sunday night. This was a great time for me because I started to see a lot of transgender girls. I finally felt like I would have an outlet now. I used to watch the shows every Sunday and dream that I could be one the girls up on the stage performing for the crowds. There was one girl in particular who worked at the club named Mimi. She was beautiful. If I could‟ve looked like anyone, I would‟ve wanted to look like her. One night at Club 219 I met someone named Paul. He was a very flamboyant gay man and we became really good friends. I stopped spending so much time at my brother‟s apartment and more time at Paul‟s apartment. Paul was a drag queen and one night his roommate dressed me up. He did my make-up and did my hair and gave me clothes to wear and I actually looked really good. Paul and I left the house and went to the Triangle first. When I walked in everybody was staring at me because it really was a gay men‟s bar. But, the guys were coming up to me and telling me how beautiful I was and when they found out it was me they were really shocked. I really did feel beautiful that night. We went to Club 219 to watch the show and we were sitting on the steps where the girls dressing room was and I remember Mimi looked down and saw me sitting there and she told me I was really pretty. That was all it took for me I felt like a true goddess at that moment. That night I also met a guy named Gino. He was a gorgeous football player type and he was really into me. We started dating and continued to date for a couple of weeks. I found out through Paul that he had been dating another trans-girl in the city for a long time but they had recently broken up. We got along very good at first until he decided to get more possessive than I wanted. I was living part time as a man and part time as a woman at this point. I told Gino that I didn‟t want to date him anymore and the guy literally went crazy. I was at my brother‟s apartment one day when I got a phone call from him and he told me that if I didn‟t see him he would kill my whole family and then kill me and then kill himself. Crazy right? Eventually I managed to get him out of my life and never saw him again. Paul had warned me about him but I guess he was the first guy who ever wanted me as a woman and that‟s why I stayed with him as long as I did. I decided to take some time away from Wisconsin and took a job with a bus tour company in Florida. The company was owned by an older gay man and it had to be the worst job I ever took in my life. I ended up living at this guy‟s house for about a month working for his company before I realized that he was a nutcase. I was working long hours and never left his house. He never tried anything sexually with me because I think he knew that I wasn‟t interested in him at all. He never really paid me either. I think that he just wanted some young guy around him. There are a lot of perverts out there and he was definitely one of them. I called my brother and asked him to buy me a bus ticket to come back and he did. When I got back to Milwaukee I got a really good job through a temp service at a large grocery chain as a pricing analyst. This was the first real job I had in the corporate world. It paid well and I worked very hard. I would work all week and then hook up with Paul downtown Milwaukee to party on the weekends. I didn‟t really date anyone exclusively, I dated everyone. I think I was starting to get a reputation of being a slut. I‟m really not sure how many men I had been with at that point but it was alot. I called Lea while I was out partying one night and she told me that she was getting married to Wayne. I was actually really upset and told her that I wouldn‟t be coming to the wedding. I know her feelings were hurt, but for some reason I still felt like she was my closest best friend I ever had. She asked me if I would be interested in taking over the apartment that we had lived in together and I told her that I would. I asked Paul if he wanted to move to Albuquerque with me and he said he did. I quit my job, we packed up my car and soon I would be off to New Mexico once more. When we got to Albuquerque Paul was pretty amazed. I‟m pretty sure he had never been out of Wisconsin and it was really cool to see someone get so excited about starting a new life. When we got to the apartment, I hugged Lea and told her I loved her and told her that I was sorry I didn‟t come to the wedding. Wayne was acting differently to me. I‟m assuming he just didn‟t like me. We all stayed up that night and partied and the next day Paul and I helped them pack up their things in Lea‟s truck and we had a very tearful goodbye. I never saw Lea cry that often and it broke my heart as well. We were best friends, but it would also be the last time I would ever see her. Paul and I started looking for jobs and I called Craig and he said that they had openings where he worked at Citibank as bill collectors. It didn‟t sound very appealing to me but it paid well. We applied and got the jobs. Things were going good. I reconnected with Damien and Peter and soon the gang was back together. Peter had met the two gorgeous lesbians while we were gone their names were Melissa and Anna. Melissa was a gorgeous brunette and Anna was a beautiful blond and they were a couple. They were also acid fiends. Melissa and Anna came over one night with Peter and they brought their acid with them. This would be the first and the last time that I ever tripped on acid. It was the worst feeling in the whole world. They took me to a club while I was tripping and all I remember thinking was I‟m never coming down, not ever. I would never do acid again. The next situation was very strange indeed and one that I won‟t forget anytime soon. Paul, Melissa, Anna and I decided to get together for drinks at their house. We were all partying and having a good time, and I can‟t tell you how it happened, but the next thing I know we were all naked and Paul was having sex with Melissa, and Anna and I were pretending to have sex. We totally weren‟t interested in it but Melissa and Paul left the room and soon we were just sitting there looking at each other. Anna got very upset and when Paul and Melissa came out of the room they started to fight. We got dressed and left. This would be the last time we ever saw the girls again. I think the oddity of the situation ruined the friendship. Damien moved out of his apartment and moved in with Paul and me. Damien and I were much closer than Paul and I. Paul began acting out a lot when we were there and we really didn‟t like him too much anymore. I decided I was bored one evening and decided to go out to a local cowboy gay bar. Yes, they have those. While I was at the club I ran into this guy. He was really gorgeous but he did seem a little jumpy too me. We had a few drinks and I asked him if he wanted to go home with me. He said yes. This is one of those times when you should think before you get into a car with someone you don‟t know. We were talking a bit while I was driving, and when I got to a red light he pulled out a knife and put it up to my throat. He told me to drive to a darkened area and I just knew the guy was going to kill me. I tried to remain calm. He told me to give him all of my money and I did. He also told me to listen to everything he said and he wouldn‟t kill me. I was terrified. I told him that he could take my car, and anything else I had just to let me go. He told me I wasn‟t going anywhere and if I said it again he would kill me. He made me drive around for almost two hours the whole time holding the knife down at my right leg. I remained calm and I think that talking quietly and listening to everything he told me to do kept me alive. After a few hours he said to pull into this run down hotel. When we pulled in he said that he had to meet some people. I assumed it was for drugs. I had a plan. When he went into the room I would jump out of the car and find help but the plan hit a glitch when a guy came out of the hotel room and stood there looking at me. I guess he was watching me for the guy. I got a chance to break free when the guy went into the room for short moment. As soon as the door closed I got out of the car quietly and ran. I ran so fast. There was a cement wall that was about six feet high at the end of the motel parking lot and I got over it. All I remember is running down the road crying. I ran into a local gas station and told them to call the police. The police told me not to go anywhere and sent a car to pick me up. We got to the hotel and the police kicked in the motel room door and dragged the guy out. They threw him on the car and handcuffed him. They asked him where my money was and he gave it to them and they gave it to me. I asked them what was going to happen to the guy. They said he would be charged but never told me for what. One of the police officers walked over to me and asked me a few questions. Then, he said, “Listen, this is a big city and if you can‟t handle you need to go back to where you came from.” That‟s exactly what I wanted to hear. Wasn‟t that thoughtful? The strange thing is after the whole thing happened I think I was so in shock that I put it out of my mind for a long time and moved on with my life. The next life event though would change me forever. I went out with Paul one night to the Albuquerque Mining Company which was the local gay bar and I met this gorgeous black guy. He was in perfect shape. He obviously worked out. He was also one of the nicest guys I had ever met, looks can be deceiving. We went out to breakfast after the bar closed with Paul and then I decided to go with him to his house. I told Paul not to worry that I‟d be fine. When we got back to his house we sat and talked for a moment and then I started to look around. I felt uncomfortable and I wasn‟t sure why. I would soon find out. He asked me if I wanted to go into the bedroom and I told him I thought it was best if I left. As I got up, he pushed me down on the couch. I was scared. He told me I wasn‟t going anywhere and grabbed me and dragged me into the bedroom. He told me to take my clothes off and lay on the bed. I told him I didn‟t want to have sex. He slapped me and pushed me down and started to pull my clothes off. He sexually assaulted me. I never thought that would happen to me, but I had been raped. After he finished, he allowed me to leave the house. I guess he figured I would never tell. Maybe he was crazy I‟m not sure to this day. I went back to the house and told Paul what happened. He told me I should call the police but I had another idea in mind so this is what I did. I went back to the guy‟s house and busted out all of the windows in the front of his house. I don‟t know why. He could‟ve killed me but I didn‟t care. I was so angry and this was the only thing I could do. He never came outside and when I was done I put the whole thing behind me. I guess after you‟re sexually assaulted by someone you think you did something to provoke the situation. I know that I didn‟t now, but then I thought I did. I never saw that guy again and I never spoke about it again. This is the first time I‟m really letting it go. My friends knew and that was it. Now you know. Don‟t feel bad for me though please. I am a strong person, and this situation made me even stronger. I would definitely not trust people the same again though. Paul, Damien and I decided that it was time to leave Albuquerque. I would leave again and head back to Wisconsin this time bringing two people with me. The relationship between Paul and I was strained for sure. He had changed quite a bit in New Mexico and I really didn‟t like him anymore. Damien didn‟t like him either. We left the apartment and I said goodbye to New Mexico once more. We were driving on the freeway when the engine on my car actually started on fire. We jumped out of the car and were stranded on the side of the road. I wasn‟t sure what we were going to do. This is when I think my guardian angel came in. A truck stopped with two guys and they told us that they were mechanics and would tow us to their house where they worked on cars. When we got there they said we would need certain things to fix the engine and luckily they had every part we needed at their house on an old car they had sitting in the front yard and they would only charge sixty dollars to do it. I don‟t care what anybody says, there is a God because what are the odds of something like that happening? Once the car was fixed we were back on our way. Damien and I were getting really annoyed with Paul the whole way back to Wisconsin. He wouldn‟t help with the driving and he wasn‟t really talking to us. We were driving through Nebraska and Damien joked that we should just drop him off. Catty queens can be so brutal. It took us almost three days to get back to Milwaukee. I could tell Damien was a little nervous about going to this new city but he was excited also. It must have been a good thing for him because when I last checked in with him he was still living in Milwaukee. Damien and I decided that we would stay with an old sex partner of mine when we got there so we could stay together. The guy was actually very weird but he had a house and we needed somewhere to live. We weren‟t really working but we were definitely partying hard. We didn‟t go out too much because we couldn‟t afford it, but the guy we were staying with kept us full of alcohol. Damien and I had a few good moments while in that house though. We had some really good sit down talks and real heart to heart moments. I told him that I really wanted to be a woman and even though he couldn‟t understand it he was supportive, at the time. Things would change soon enough though. We went out one night and afterwards I left with some guy. Damien told me to meet him at a local restaurant so we could have breakfast and hang out with some new friends he had met. When I got there I met someone who would become my friend and confidante for a couple of years Danny. He was crazy and we got along really great. He was also a local drag entertainer. We started hanging out a lot and this seemed to bother Damien because I don‟t think he really understood the feelings I was going through at this time. One night while I was out I met a guy named Mike and we started dating and eventually he asked me to move in with him. He didn‟t mind that I hung out with Danny and he actually stayed at the house quite often with me. Damien moved in with someone else and was off doing his own thing and we really weren‟t hanging out too much anymore. He had found a new group of friends and they were always together. Mike and I dated for awhile and in this time I started dressing up more and more. I really loved the fact that I finally had a sister in arms. Danny and I were inseparable. One night we got drunk and decided to give ourselves girl names. Danny became Alex and I became Meghan Crawford. I picked the name Meghan because my younger sister‟s name was Megan and I really liked it and I picked the name Crawford because I loved Joan Crawford. Danny and my friendship would eventually drive a wedge in the relationship between Mike and me and Danny and I moved in together with an older gentleman named Bob. I normally don‟t judge people but Bob was honestly one of those older, disgusting perverted men. He was always hitting on us but we didn‟t care because he let us live with him for free. One night after we had moved in I left Danny at home and went to a local bar. I knew this girl that was the bartender there. She was a heavy set girl but very pretty. I was getting pretty drunk and we were just laughing and having a good old time. She always gave me my drinks free so it was fun to hang out there. Her boyfriend came in and they talked for a minute. It was almost closing time and she asked me if I wanted to stay after she got off while she cleaned up the bar. We kept doing shots and laughing and just having fun. Her boyfriend showed up to pick her up. He was pretty sexy, a tall dude with black hair. Nice looking guy. Well, here‟s what happens next. They started making out and I was just kind of sitting there watching them. Soon enough they‟re on the floor and tearing each other‟s clothes off. They were going to have sex right in front me and I didn‟t care really, to each their own. They kept looking over at me to see if I was okay with it, and eventually he said, “Why don‟t you come down here and join in.” I told them that I really wasn‟t into women sexually and he said, “Well, if you do her, I‟ll do you.” Sold, I‟m in there. It was very awkward for me. He actually had to insert my penis into her. That‟s how much I know about women‟s anatomy. I didn‟t even know where it went people. We had sex for about an hour or so and then it was over. I didn‟t really think about it too much afterwards. She was the first woman I ever had sex with, one of only two in my lifetime. It happened it‟s over, moving on. Confess! We started hanging out at the local drag clubs and eventually we got booked together to do our first show. I was really nervous about performing in front of a crowd. I knew most of the people that hung out at the clubs, and they knew me as Keith, but now they were going to be introduced to Meghan Crawford. I remember the first night I performed vividly. I decided that I wanted to make a lasting impression on the crowd so I decided that I would do a song by Martika called “Love They Will Be Done.” I wouldn‟t just do the song though, I decided that I would have my friend Chris build a cross for me and at the end of the song I would hang on it. It sounded like a great idea at the time. Danny would also perform the song with me along with three other local drag entertainers, Tabitha, Raven and Eartha. They were very popular entertainers and had sort of taken me under their wing. I didn‟t really get along with Raven because she always felt I was chasing her boyfriend, but she decided to do the song with me anyway. The lights went down and the spotlight hit me. It took quite a few drinks for me to get on the stage that night and when the song came to a close and the curtain fell and I was hanging on the cross I heard a collective gasp from the crowd. I knew at this point that I may have crossed the line. They clapped at the end of the song but I know that they were shocked at what they had just seen. I‟m not sure they‟d ever seen a performer do something like this in their life. I mean Madonna was out at that time and she was very controversial but she was Madonna and I was a drag performer. Regardless after that night I was addicted to the crowd and performing. After that performance Tabitha, Danny, and I started hanging out together all the time. My car had broken down though and I called my mom and asked her if she could help me get another vehicle because I wanted to go back to work and she agreed to buy me a car. I went home and we picked out a 1500 dollar car and I drove back to Milwaukee ready to go to work in the daytime and do drag at night. I hooked up with a local temporary agency and they got me a job at Ambrosia chocolates in Milwaukee. It was a factory job and it was very difficult. It was really hot and very hard work but I needed a job to be able to afford the clothes to do my drag shows. Tabitha, Danny and I moved in together to her one room apartment but I was happy to have two friends that understood me completely. I worked at the chocolate factory for a couple of months and eventually asked the temporary service to place me somewhere else. They got me a job in the booking department at the Milwaukee Police Department. The story would soon take a strange twist though. A lot of young African American men were missing in Milwaukee and nobody knew what was happening to them. It would soon be discovered that Jeffrey Dahmer had killed them. It was a really scary time for everyone but what was really strange was that I worked at Ambrosia chocolates where he worked and when I got the job at the Milwaukee Police Department in the booking department I would actually have to come in contact with him every time he was brought in to go to court. He hung out a lot at Club 219 where we hung out all the time. I guess I can thank God daily that I was heavily into drag during this time because who knows what could have happened. I realize he liked African American men but who knows. Danny actually dated one the young men that got away from Jeffrey Dahmer and he told us that the night he got away he knew the guy was going to kill him for sure. I kept working at the police department but I was also spending more and more time becoming Meghan. One night while performing I decided I would use my new name that Danny and I picked out for me. I would now be Meghan Chavalier. I chose the name Chavalier after Maurice Chevelier but I changed the e‟s to a‟s to keep it different. It just seemed to have flair. I was the first person to ever sign the wall of stars at the club I performed at in Milwaukee that night. That was an exciting moment for me because I felt like I was finally being recognized for being an entertainer. I don‟t think I was very good to be truthful, but I sure could lip synch a song. For all of those entertainers in the making out there who want to do drag shows I want to offer you a small piece of advice. Don‟t just lip synch the song when you do it, actually sing the song when you‟re doing it that way you‟ll never mess up the words and you won‟t make those ridiculous facial movements that so many entertainers make. Danny and I were still partying a lot and one night we went over to his brother‟s place and were doing lines of cocaine. I think I did way too many because the next thing I knew I was laid out on the floor. I think I overdosed. Everybody sat in the hallway with me while I laid there but nobody called an ambulance. I told them not to. I was too afraid of getting in trouble. I laid there for about an hour or so and eventually my body came back around and being true to myself I got right back on the horse again. I sat down on the bed and said line them up I‟m ready to party. I think I played with my life on one too many occasions. One time Danny and I were really drunk and we actually drove into the back of a police car. It wasn‟t parked this was at a red light. The car didn‟t get dented and the police officer actually let us go. That‟s how dangerously we were living our lives at this point. Here I am working at the Milwaukee Police Department and pretty much totally out of control. I don‟t think they ever knew how out of control I was. I started having problems in my lower regions around this time and didn‟t know what was going on. I ended up having surgery of the rectal area. This would be a huge problem for me because for some reason I got it in my head that I couldn‟t use the bathroom normally anymore. After three weeks of not using the restroom, I ended up in an emergency room and I was actually impacted almost to my stomach region. Luckily they caught it in time and I can say I‟ve never had any problems since. I think I had always had problems with obsessive behavior but it wouldn‟t come to light for many years to come. I told you I am going to share everything about my life from the good, to the bad, to the gross. I want you to know everything. I had to go home and visit my family and this would be one of the last times I would ever visit. When I got home the mood wasn‟t very good. My parents were acting strangely towards me. I think they were disappointed by me but I didn‟t care. While I was home visiting my step dad actually had the nerve to tell me not to touch anything in the house because they were afraid of catching something from me. I called my mom at work and told her she better get her husband under control. She was really angry at him and he has since apologized but that has stuck with me to this day. I ran out of money when I went home and my parents wouldn‟t give me the money to get back to Milwaukee. I was so pissed off. They were making things more difficult than they had to be so I asked my aunt if I could paint her house to make the money to leave. She let me and as soon as she handed me a check for 125 dollars I told my mom I was leaving and I would never come back to Hurley, Wisconsin again. I never have returned. When I got back to Milwaukee Danny and I decided it was time for us to go but we didn‟t really know where to go. I called the pervert in Florida and asked him we could stay at his house and he said yes. We needed the money to go and I wasn‟t exactly sure where we were going to get it from. I can honestly tell you I don‟t know where we got the money from but we got really drunk and started doing coke one night and when I woke up the next day I was in my car and we were on our way to Florida. I never told the police department I was leaving and ended up on the missing persons list for a couple of days. I called them and told them I wasn‟t coming back and they actually seemed sad that I had decided to leave. They really liked me underneath all of my craziness. One thing that I didn‟t count on was Raven‟s boyfriend had come along for the ride. I guess in his mind he was in love with me, he was hot, but I‟m not a boyfriend stealer and he ended dating the pervert in Florida when we got there. Staying at the pervert‟s house didn‟t last long because he didn‟t want us around anymore so he managed to talk one of his friends into letting us live in his house which was about an hour from his. We didn‟t have any money so we did drag shows to make as much as we could. One night we did a show in Redding, Florida at a biker bar. We really didn‟t know it was a straight bar and I don‟t think that the locals knew we were transgender. We performed our songs and made some money and afterwards we went outside and realized that someone must‟ve figured it out because they had run their truck into my car leaving a big dent on the side. We never performed there again. We started hanging out with two girls Jen and Monday and started throwing big parties at the house. We weren‟t doing drugs but we were drinking a lot. We ended up hanging out with the skater guys. They were all hot. We had sex with quite a few of them. I was really drunk one night and had a breakdown. All I remember was sitting in the bedroom crying and wishing I was dead. I had battled sadness many times in my life but I think when everything just comes to a head you fall apart completely. Luckily the whole gang was able to coax me back to reality and I went on. Danny and I were having a lot of problems with money and some days we weren‟t even able to eat. Monday was helping us out a lot financially as was Jen. When we got really hungry we would go to local stores and Danny would shoplift food so we could eat that day. We decided after living there a couple of months that we had to find somewhere to go. I ended up calling Dwyatt who had since gotten out of jail. Stupid right? I told him that I had a friend he might be interested in and he told us that we could come and stay with him at his house he was staying at. We packed up the car and headed out for Albuquerque once more. The trip hit a snag when we got to Louisiana. We ran out of money and weren‟t sure we were going to have enough money to make it to New Mexico. I had no choice but to call my mom and ask her to wire me some money. She did and we were on our way once more. When we got to Albuquerque we drove to Grandys which was a restaurant on Central Avenue. I was really nervous about seeing Dwyatt again after everything that had happened. Dwyatt seemed happy to see me and seemed to like Danny a lot. We met him later at his friend‟s house which was in the mountains. It was really cold. Winter was a little harsher than normal in New Mexico and something happened next which I wasn‟t counting on. Dwyatt told me that Danny could stay with him but I had to go. I was really angry. I had nowhere to go. I was really mad at Danny for deciding to stay with him and not worry about what was going to happen to me. I left the house crying and finally decided to call Nina. I hadn‟t talked to her in a while and wasn‟t sure how she‟d feel about having me back in her life but she told me that she was now the manager of a restaurant and told me I could work for her. She told me to meet her at the restaurant and I did. When I got there I was in tears and she told me that she would give me a job, but I wouldn‟t be able to stay with her because she was living with Carol, and because of our past history Carol would never let me be at the house. So, there were no other options at this point. I told Nina I would figure out what to do but that I would be there to start working the next day. When Nina left I sat in my car and cried. I had nowhere to go and had no money to do it. I had no choice but to start living in my car. I had a lot of blankets in the backseat so I just covered up, and braved the cold. I was freezing the first night I slept in the car. I was scared and not really sure what to do. I was angry with Danny for leaving me out in the cold, literally and with my ex-boyfriend nonetheless. The next day I met Nina at the restaurant and started working that day. It would take me two weeks to get enough money together to get my life back on track. Nina made me an assistant manager which meant that I would have a key to the restaurant. So every night after closing I would lock the doors and sleep on the floor of the restaurant. This was my life and I didn‟t like it too much, but at least I had a warm place to sleep and a job. About a month passed and Nina told me that I could stay in her room at night. She said what Carol didn‟t know wouldn‟t hurt her. It was nice to be able to sleep in a bed once in a while I can tell you that much. I had heard through the grapevine that Dwyatt and Danny were having problems in their relationship. I called Dwyatt at work and asked him what was going on. He told me that he wanted to get back together with me. I told him I‟d meet him and we could discuss it. It‟s weird how much I didn‟t care what happened to Danny at that point and I think that I only got back together with Dwyatt as a form of revenge. Dwyatt told me that he would be getting a two bedroom apartment in the valley of Albuquerque and said he wanted me to move in with him. I couldn‟t say no. I asked him what he was going to tell Danny and he told me that Danny had been hanging out with a group of people on the main strip and he would tell him to go live with them. Like I said I didn‟t care what happened to Danny at that point, just the way he didn‟t care about me when I was living in my car in the middle of winter. It‟s odd when great friendships take a turn for worse. Dwyatt and I moved in together and everything seemed fine at first. We set up house and were back together as a happy, loving couple. But, things changed very quickly. Dwyatt told me he didn‟t want me to be blond anymore so he took me to dye my hair black. He also started telling me that I was fat and that I needed to lose weight. I really wasn‟t fat, but after hearing it day after day you begin to believe it. I was still working at the restaurant with Nina and she noticed I was starting to change. The only really good thing about this period is that I wasn‟t drinking at all or doing drugs. Nina didn‟t like Dwyatt and neither did anybody else I was running with at the time. He consumed me. I started to live my life only to make Dwyatt happy. Looking back now, I realize that he was getting his own form of revenge on me for leaving him when he needed me years ago. We had a great sex life, but I wasn‟t the only person he was having sex with. I was waiting for him to come home one evening and I decided that I would hide in one of the bedroom closets to see what he was up to when I wasn‟t around. I heard him come in and I kept very quiet. He got on the phone and called someone and said, “No, he‟s not here. I know I love you to baby.” I was irate. He got dressed and left and when he did I walked up to the local gas station and bought myself a twelve pack of Miller Genuine Draft and drank the whole thing. I was plastered. I knew where Danny was staying at this point and decided to try and call him. I got him on the phone and asked him to come over. I don‟t know, I guess that we both got played by Dwyatt and now we would become sisters in arms once more. Danny showed up and we sat and talked and he started telling me that he knew Dwyatt was dating this 17 year old boy on the side and also dating a girl that would come over to our house and play nice with me on the weekends. I was pissed. Danny left and I wasn‟t too sure what to believe. I confronted Dwyatt the next day and he told me I was crazy. You‟re damn right I was crazy. We weren‟t getting along well at all but for some stupid reason I was deeply in love with him. I think when someone has that much control over your daily life you tend to fall into some weird obsessive pattern. Dwyatt dropped me off one morning at work. Nina could see that I was distraught. She told me that I should leave him, that he didn‟t care about me. I felt something come over me when she said this. Something wasn‟t right. I started to call my house because I knew Dwyatt was off that day. We had an answering machine that you could call into and actually hear what was happening in the room. I heard a lot of voices in the background and a lot of noise happening. I told Nina I needed to use her truck to go down to my apartment because something was going on. She told me she would take me. By the time we got there I knew things weren‟t normal. I opened the door to my apartment and walked in. There was nothing left. Dwyatt had taken everything, and when I say everything I mean he took everything. He didn‟t even leave my toothbrush. I had no clothes, no bed and no furniture. I was back at square one. I sat on the floor and cried for about an hour straight. Nina sat there with me holding me. It was one of the worst moments of my life. I will never forget the feeling to this day. I had worked hard to get the things we had and he took it all. Did you ever have one of those days where you thought you wouldn‟t make it through it? This was definitely one of those days but I had to stand up, brush myself off and move on. There was no other way. I called Danny and he came over to the apartment. We decided that we would move in together. We renewed our friendship but we also intended to eventually get even with him. The first thing on the list of things to do was to get new furniture so we went to a local rental place and rented a living room suite. It was actually much nicer than the one Dwyatt and I had together. The next thing was to get rid of that horrid hair color that Dwyatt wanted me to get. Danny dyed my hair back to platinum blond and I felt like a new person. I asked Nina if she would be able to get Danny a job at another one of the local restaurants. She talked to the main manager and Danny got hired at the restaurant across town from where I worked. But, things were going too good. Around this time my car stopped working so we decided to get a used car. The car was a piece of junk but it got us from point A to point B and that was all that mattered. Danny and I started going out to the local rave clubs and eventually we became friends with a new group of people. They were so wild and we were so wild it was a perfect match. Nina started hanging out all the time with us too. It was officially a party zone and the zone was going to get even weirder. Danny and I started dressing up a lot. We were slowly becoming our female selves more and more but we still had no idea how to get to where we wanted to be as females. I decided that my life needed a little more kink in it so I invited everyone over for a hot party one night and that would start some of the most bizarre sexual behavior I would ever have. I started throwing orgies. Sometimes, there would be thirteen or more people at the apartment naked and having sex with each other. I never actually had sex with anyone during the orgies I just walked around like the grand madam and watched everybody else do it. Nina never came to the orgies, but she did attend the parties where there wasn‟t a lot of sexual stuff going on. We partied like crazy but still kept our heads screwed on straight as far as working and getting things done. I met a guy while we were out one night, his name was Victor. He was a fairly decent looking guy who had a great job and he really liked me and I liked guys who liked me at that time in my life. I think I was just trying to find the complete opposite of Dwyatt and I did. We had been dating for a couple of weeks when some crazy shit went down at the apartment. We were having a party and all I remember is someone screaming that someone was bleeding. I ran outside to see what was going on and I saw Danny run past me and try to jump over the small cement wall outside of our apartment. I yelled to him and he didn‟t stop. I finally grabbed him and when he turned around all I remember is a sharp pain in my stomach. The next thing I remember is a sharp pain in my left hand. When I got inside the apartment this girl Rachel started to scream. I looked down and my whole left hand was sliced open and I was bleeding through my shirt. I called Victor and he came to the apartment and rushed me over to the hospital. I never told them the truth about what happened but Victor was so angry with Danny that he told me to move in with him. I felt guilty but I knew I had to get away from Danny or things were just going to get worse. I wouldn‟t see Danny again until I went back to Wisconsin about a month later. Living with Victor was a pretty nice thing. He had a great apartment and he wasn‟t there most of the time. He was always out of town working. I guess I only stayed with him because I didn‟t have to worry too much about anything. I continued working at the restaurant with Nina and he paid most of the bills so all the money I made was for me. Victor lived a different kind of life than the one I was used to. He had wealthy friends who never really accepted me. He took me out to dinner one night to introduce me to two of his best friends who just happened to be really rich. We went to a fancy restaurant and we all sat at the table. All three of them were really acting snooty to everyone including me. I knew at that moment that I wasn‟t going to fit into that lifestyle and I would eventually have to end the relationship. Victor went out of town on business shortly after that evening and I decided to have a party to end all parties at the apartment. Nina showed up, everyone from work showed up, it was pretty crazy and very noisy. I ended up sleeping with someone else that evening and I enjoyed it. When Victor came back the management informed him what had happened when he was gone. Victor was furious with me. I didn‟t care though I told him I wasn‟t into him anymore and that I was leaving to go back to Wisconsin. He was upset because I think the guy really liked me, but what could I do? I didn‟t want to be there anymore, I‟m a free spirit and it was time to fly. I never told Nina I was going to leave. I‟ve always had a problem with telling people goodbye. I drove over to the restaurant and picked up my check and told Nina I‟d talk to her later on. She didn‟t know anything was up and I wasn‟t going to tell her. I felt so guilty about leaving her because we were the best of friends for years. I drove away from the restaurant with my friend Rachel knowing I‟d probably never see her again and I was right I haven‟t seen her since. I said my goodbyes to Victor and Rachel and I headed for Wisconsin. Rachel was a really weird girl. She definitely had a lot of mental problems but she had a car and I needed a ride home. I would be going to my sister Shannon‟s house until I could decide what my next move would be. We got into Wisconsin and Rachel dropped me off at her apartment. I couldn‟t stand Shannon‟s boyfriend Brad. He was a real piece of work. He liked to hit her and I really didn‟t like that about him. Eventually she would leave him and soon enough I reconnected with my old friend Danny. Yes, Danny and I were back together and ready to head in a different direction. The next path would take us to New Orleans, Louisiana and that ladies and gentlemen would be the place where Keith would finally die, and Meghan Chavalier would be born.

New Whoreleans

Our intention was never to stay in Louisiana my mom had told me an old friend from high school had called and left her phone number for me. My friend Keri and I had been friends since fifth grade and we‟re actually still friends to this day. I called Keri and told her that we would stop and visit her on our way back to Florida. When we arrived in Louisiana it was a bit shocking. We had been stuck in Louisiana once but it was only for a matter of hours. People in this region are not rich people and they don‟t live like other people but they‟re good people and that‟s all that matters. Keri was living in a trailer in Slidell, Louisiana. She and her husband Dan had recently decided to take a break away from their marriage so we decided to stay for a few days. A few days would turn into a few years but once again I don‟t want to jump ahead of myself. One night I told Keri that my intention was to become a female. She didn‟t care. Keri was always one of the most understanding friends I ever had. We had a few drinks and we dressed up and Keri was pretty amazed. She thought Danny and I were beautiful. The next day we all went into New Orleans. It was the most beautiful city I had ever seen. It just felt comfortable to me. Danny and I decided that we would get dressed up and go out the same night. This night would change a path I never expected to go down. When we first got down to the French Quarter we walked around for a while and just took the whole city in. I guess we probably looked a little ridiculous. We were both wearing five inch spike heels and wearing the skimpiest outfits you could ever imagine. We thought we looked hot. I guess that‟s the running theme when you go out. You dress up and you think you look great, but in reality, it‟s not so great sometimes. We started asking people if there were any good clubs to go to if you were transsexuals. They told us about Le Round Up. It was the local hang out for all the transsexuals in the area. When we walked in all of the girls just stared at us. We were new. This would be a whole new breed of girls we weren‟t used to hanging out with. We sat down and ordered some drinks. Nobody really talked to us they just looked at us. Finally a gorgeous blond transsexual named Bobbi Jo came over and sat down with us and asked us where we were from. She was really nice. She was also very helpful. She told us all about what actually goes on in the bar, and we were really surprised. All of the girls were working girls. She started to call us Laverne and Shirley because we were from Wisconsin which was fine with us. She also told us she knew where we could get hormones from. This got me very excited. The next thing I know there‟s a guy standing behind me and asking me if I date. I was like, “Sure I date.” Bobbi Jo started laughing because she knew I had no idea what he was talking about. She told me that he meant, did I turn tricks, to simplify it for you, play for pay. I was a little taken aback. I didn‟t know what to say. She told me it was a great way to make money and nobody should ever have sex unless they‟re getting paid for it. I kind of blew the guy off and kept on drinking. We had a chance to meet a few more of the girls that evening and on the way out of the bar a guy came up to me. He told me he would give me sixty dollars for sex. I told him I really didn‟t do that. I asked Alex how much money we had and we only had about five dollars to our name. This was a turning point in my life and I guess if I would‟ve turned him down I may have never done it again but I didn‟t. I told Alex to go back in the bar and I‟d be back. I took the guy in my car and we drove around for awhile. He told me to pull into a parking lot which was behind a local radio station and we could get out and walk for a while. I was really nervous I had never done anything like this. We got behind the radio station and he began pulling his pants down and told me he wanted oral sex. I told him I didn‟t think it was such a great idea to be doing this out in the open the way we were. He put on a condom and I made the choice, I gave him oral sex and after I was done he gave me sixty dollars. Easy money that‟s all I was thinking. The only thing going through my mind at the time was I can‟t believe someone is paying me to do something I‟ve enjoyed doing for years for free. I got back to the club and I didn‟t see Alex anywhere. I asked Bobbi Jo where he went and she told me that he found his own date. Amazing! The first night we went out and we were already turning tricks and making money. It was a whole new lifestyle we definitely weren‟t used to. Between the both of us that night we made about 150 dollars. It was really exciting and new. On the way back to Slidell we decided that we wouldn‟t be known as Danny and Keith anymore. We would officially become Alex and Meghan from now on and we would never refer to each other by our boy names ever again. When we got back to the trailer we told Keri all about it. I think she was very shocked that I would actually do something like that but she‟s never judged me. We began going out every night for about a week and eventually started making friends with all of the girls. I met one transsexual who would change my life forever during that first week out. Her name was Kimberly. She was absolutely beautiful. She looked a lot like Kylie Minogue but with huge breasts. Kimberly took me under wing a bit and told me she would take me to her doctor to get me started on hormones. She didn‟t care for Alex too much, actually not too many people cared for Alex because when she got drunk she was really obnoxious. I only met one person that week that was really mean to me. Her name was Foxy and she couldn‟t stand me. I didn‟t care and I just ignore people when they don‟t like me. She would always call me a blond devil and a bitch whenever she saw me. I think she was trying to run me out town because she knew that being new in the city I was going to take money out of her pockets. Lucky for me she ended up doing something illegal shortly after meeting her and ended up in jail. I honestly think that if she wouldn‟t of I probably would have ended up getting stabbed by her. She was notorious for cutting girls. After a week on the run in New Orleans we went back home one morning and Dan was back at the trailer. Keri took me and Alex outside and told us that Dan didn‟t want us staying there anymore and she felt really bad but we were going to have to leave. I was very hurt, and Keri has since apologized to me, as recently as 2006. I understood though. Dan felt threatened because he thought I was going to influence Keri not to go back with him when he was ready to take her back. I never liked that guy much anyway. We weren‟t really sure what we were going to do at this point so we took some money and got a room at Motel 6 in Slidell. We figured we would just work at night to pay for our room in the daytime. I hate motels. I think that I hate motels to this day because I had to live in one for a month. It was awful. We figured out another way to make money while we stayed at the hotel. There was a rest area which was very close to the hotel and we knew that truckers loved prostitutes but we couldn‟t really hang out at the rest areas dressed as girls. So we went to the rest areas as boys. I know what you‟re thinking. Why was I going to even play with fate, didn‟t I get my skull cracked open at one of these places before? Yes, but this time I had Alex with me and I wasn‟t afraid anymore. There‟s something about becoming a prostitute that changes your way of thinking. You are all about the money, not about the fear. So here‟s how it works. You go into the bathroom stalls and just sit and wait for guys to come in. Most rest areas have small holes between stalls that you can look through to the other side to see what‟s going on in the stall next to you. You would wait for someone to sit down and if you noticed they were looking at you, you would start to masturbate. When they would say hey over the stall you would open your stall door and let them in. As soon as they came in you‟d tell them if you want to play you have to pay. The first trick I ever turned was an older trucker and he gave me a whole twenty five dollars. What a joke. I didn‟t care though that was almost a motel night stay and some food. It becomes a game of survival and I was getting very good at it. Who knows, maybe I was meant to be a working girl all along. I think a lot of women would be very surprised to know how many of their husbands and boyfriends actually pay for sex with same sex partners. I also think it would surprise a lot of women how many of them sleep with transsexuals. We stayed at the motel for about a month but eventually ran out of money because we were spending all of our money on alcohol. Luckily for me we had met a transsexual who went by the name of T.T. She was a beautiful black transsexual who performed as Donna Summer at the local showgirl bar called Papa Joes. She introduced me to this man named Gerry. He was a nice looking man who owned his own construction company and he wasn‟t looking for a whore but rather for a housewife. He took an immediate liking to me and I really liked him too. He was very mild mannered and just a good guy all around. He took me home with him that night and we hit it off. I told Alex that he had asked me if I wanted to stay with him for a while. Alex wasn‟t too happy about it and asked what she was going to do. I told her that she could stay with us if she wanted to but she didn‟t want to. She said she wanted to go back to Wisconsin that it was all getting to be a little bit too much for her. She left the next day and I moved in with Gerry. Gerry and I got along well. We slowly became one of the “couples” on the scene. Everybody started to warm up to me once I started dating Gerry because they knew I wasn‟t a working girl anymore and they didn‟t feel threatened that I was going to be taking any of their money away. We went out a lot and I made friends with all of the girls. One of my favorite girls was Angel. She was a Latin transsexual who had been working since she was 14 years old. Angel never put up with anybodies shit and I respected her for that and she was very protective of me. Kimberly and Gerry were good friends and she and I started hanging out a lot around this time. Kimberly took me to her doctor and I was on my way to becoming the woman I wanted to be. He gave me a prescription to Premarin and Provera and I would go to his office once a week for a female hormone injection. My body started to change. I started to grow breasts it was amazing. Around this time I told Gerry that I didn‟t feel comfortable with him paying all the bills and I wanted to start making my own money. I told him that I wanted to become a dominatrix on the side so that I could have my own cash. He wasn‟t thrilled about it but I told him that if I was a dominatrix I wouldn‟t have to actually have sex with my clients. He agreed and soon I placed my ads in the local sex rags. I had never been a dominatrix all I knew was that you got to smack people around and they paid you for it. Sounded like a good idea to me at the time. My first client was a cross dresser and also a Hollywood actor who I won‟t name because he has since passed on and out of respect I‟m not spilling the beans. He was pretty easy really all he ever wanted to do was get dressed up and get spanked. He came to see me twice a week which was nice. Gerry and I decided that since we were the hot couple on the scene in New Orleans that we needed a place that would represent us better so we found a great penthouse apartment in the garden district which is uptown in New Orleans. The place was fabulous. The carpeting was peach and the ceilings were really high. We decided that we would throw a fantastic housewarming party so that I could finally meet all of the girls in the community. It was a great party and all of the girls came. We had a wonderful time. It felt like I had finally made it for some reason. I had a great place, I was becoming a woman and I was in a relationship which was both mentally and financially stable. I became good friends with a transsexual named Amber. She was tall, dark, and beautiful and just an all out great person. Things were going great. I was on hormones and feeling like a girl. One day Kimberly came over to the penthouse and we sat and talked for a long time. She told me that she was HIV positive and it broke my heart. I really loved Kimberly. She was the girl who took me under her wing and helped me begin my transformation into womanhood. She also did something that I‟ll never forget. She went into my closet and realized I was still holding onto a lot of my boy clothes. She looked at me and said, “Girl, if you‟re going to be a woman, you need to get rid of all of this crap.” I wasn‟t sure I was ready but she would give me no choice because she grabbed everything I had that represented my male life and went to the balcony and threw it all over the side. She said, “There now you‟re a woman. I don‟t ever want to see you in boy‟s clothes again.” That was a life defining moment for me. I made the choice that no matter what I would never look back. I would be Meghan Chavalier until the day that I died and that made me very happy. Kimberly knew that I was a performer and she thought it would be a good idea for me to enter a pageant that was coming up. It was the Miss Gay Jefferson Parrish pageant and even though I was nervous I signed up for it. Kimberly helped me with everything. She did the hair pieces for me and even helped me pick out my number which would be shocking, Madonna‟s “Erotica.” Kimberly was a huge Madonna fan, as was I. I wasn‟t sure I could even do Madonna justice on stage but she wanted me to do it. I needed a fantastic gown and she told me that she knew a local transsexual Shane who was selling off her gowns because she was sick and needed the money. I went and met with her and ended up buying the most fantastic Bob Mackie gown. She only charged me two hundred dollars for it and I actually still have that gown to this day. I don‟t think I‟ll ever let it go it was the most incredible dress I‟ve ever owned. Shane was also a really great person and we ended up friends for the short time I knew her before she died. In fact, I gave her a necklace with a cross I had. I told her to wear it always and know that she was always in my prayers. So, the stage was set and so was I. All I needed now was some back up dancers for my routine. We went over to the West Bank and I met a couple of guys and this crazy transsexual named April. April was insane, literally, but she and I ended up becoming great friends. Amber said she would play the school teacher in my routine and the rest is history. The night of the pageant Kimberly was there, as was Gerry and my whole rooting section. Kimberly helped me get ready backstage. I ended up getting very drunk and I can tell you I don‟t even remember most of the pageant. I have a tape of it and I don‟t think I did half bad really. There were only four contestants. Me, Sweet Sensation, Terri, and another girl, her name escapes me. The first category was daywear. Everyone came out in these fabulous costumes. I had recently had a hair weave done and my costume was not so fabulous but cute. The next round was talent. Everyone‟s talent was pretty interesting. One did Whitney Houston, and one did Liza. I hit the stage in my naughty S & M inspired outfit next and I think it shocked the crowd. I actually climbed down the stage on all fours and ended up in front of the judge‟s table but the crowd absolutely loved it. I loved the evening gown competition because I don‟t remember a damn thing about it. All I know is that they only gave me like 2 minutes to get ready which was crazy. When it came to the end of the competition I won Miss Congeniality and came in first runner up. I learned the art of politics that night. The older performer who‟s been around the longest always wins the pageant. No big deal I had made my mark and people knew who I was. I also met another young transsexual named Felina. She would be someone I would take under my wing. After the pageant I started hanging out in the quarter more with April and Felina. April had her own apartment so it was fun to go over and hang out with her. One evening while we were out I met this hot Latin guy. I went back to April‟s apartment with him and we had a wild sexual fling. April kept asking me why I stayed with Gerry. She said I was too young to be tied down and that I should dump him and start hanging out and working and having fun. I think I agreed with her because I was young and just coming into my own and I really wanted to just go out and have fun and party. I went home that night and sat Gerry down and told him that I didn‟t want to be with him anymore. He started to cry. I told him I couldn‟t just sit around all day and do nothing I wanted to get out and live my life. I told him to give me a check for 150 dollars so I could find somewhere to stay and that I would leave with what I came into the relationship with which was nothing. I packed my bag and walked away from something that ultimately would‟ve probably lasted for many years but it was time to go down a different path and this one would be filled with many ups and downs. I went down to April‟s apartment and told her that I left Gerry and now I needed to figure out what I was going to do. She told me we should go look around and see what I could find that would be reasonable to live in. The only thing I could find was a rundown trailer park in East New Orleans in the middle of nowhere. It was a dump but it was also only 100 dollars a week to live there and that‟s about all I could afford at the time. I called Alex in Milwaukee and asked her if she wanted to come back and live with me. She was ready to leave Wisconsin again and she got a bus ticket and came back to New Orleans. So, now we had April, Alex and I living in the trailer. Soon, we would have Felina move in also. It just gets crazier from here folks. I was hanging out at Le Round Up one night and the local girls came in from Papa Joes. I had already met Stephanie Williams and Teryl Lynn but I also noticed their Madonna impersonator. I heard through the grapevine that Papa Joes was getting rid of her and was looking for a new girl to do Madonna. Stephanie told me that I should go over to the club and talk to Tango who was the show director about getting on with the show. I didn‟t go that night because I was still in a mode where I wanted to play with the hustler boys and turn tricks. I hooked up with a guy named Tex at the bar that evening and took him back to the trailer. We stayed together for a couple of days but that was until one of the girls told me that his old transsexual girlfriend had died under mysterious circumstances. They said that she was pushed down a flight of stairs and that most people thought it was him who did it. I asked him repeatedly if he was involved but he always said no. I didn‟t trust him anyway. I was out at a club called the Parade and someone said he was over at Le Round Up and had a whole bag of things. Well, the schmuck decided he was going to steal stuff from me and didn‟t think I‟d catch him. I headed down to the club and confronted him. He gave me back everything and I also told him that he needed to get out of the city because none of us wanted him there anymore. He did leave that evening and I never saw him again. I guess that‟s a good thing he really wasn‟t marriage material. Neither was I by any means. I will say this though, I have never been a thief and I don‟t like people who steal from other people. I have a theory, “If you can‟t buy it yourself, you don‟t need it anyway.” That same night I decided I would go over and talk to Tango about possibly getting a job performing. It was a pretty good gig. You did 17 shows a week and got paid 125 dollars plus tips you earned onstage. Tango was so flamboyant. He was a chain smoking queen who ruled the roost like a dictator from what I heard from the girls who worked for him. Tango took an immediate liking to me and told me to come in the next evening prepared with two characters to perform onstage. One of them had to be Madonna, but the other could be anyone of my choice. I went back to the trailer that night and everybody decided that I might be able to pull Olivia Newton John off as my second character. I stayed up most of the night practicing. Kimberly had loaned me her old Madonna costume to use the next night and it was very similar to the one that Madonna had worn on her Blond Ambition Tour. I was already wearing the pony tail as my signature look so that wouldn‟t be much of a stretch for me. The next evening I went in and I was very nervous. Luckily we were able to order drinks from the bar inside of the club and I had a couple to calm me down. I did Madonna first. The crowd actually went wild. The club was packed and it was a very big confidence boost for me. After Tango‟s set in the middle of the show I came back out as Olivia in my Bob Mackie gown. They absolutely hated it. I guess I chose the worst song to do by Olivia it was a ballad and probably not what drunk tourists wanted to hear. I was pretty upset after that number but Tango told me he wanted to hire me to do Madonna but I‟d have to find another character to do before the next nights show. Stephanie Williams who performed as Marilyn Monroe and Patsy Cline in the show told me to come over to her apartment that night and she would help me with my make-up and help me find a new character to perform as. Stephanie was really cool. We were the same age and she had been with the show about a year before I came in. We sat up most of the night talking about a lot of things. She told me that she worked in the show, and then tricked afterwards. This idea sounded great to me, I could perform in the show and then turn my tricks at night. It was all about the money. Stephanie helped me learn how to do my make up for stage. Up until she taught me I was using baby powder as my base. Can you imagine how awful that looked? I looked like the walking dead. We decided that I could do Annie Lennox since my face is long like Annie and I was pretty androgynous to begin with. The next night I went in and Tango told me that I would be opening the show that night with Annie Lennox. I was so nervous. I was wearing a men‟s pantsuit that I had bought at a thrift store. I got on the stage and the music started. “Sweet dreams are made of this….” and the lights came up and there I was with my hair slicked back and a large pearl choker around my neck. The crowd ate it up. They really loved my Annie Lennox and when I came out to do Madonna the crowd went crazy. I had found my niche on stage but because of my severe stage fright it would be over a year and a half before I would hit that stage sober. Let me tell you a little about Papa Joes. It was a dive. It was a little hole in the wall bar and nightclub that operated under weird pretenses. It was a transsexual strip club and a transsexual show bar. In between shows the girls would strip. They were only allowed to take their tops off because it wasn‟t a full nude club. I made friends with all of the girls and they really took a liking to me. I think after they saw the demise of mine and Gerry‟s relationship they knew that I wasn‟t some snooty queen with a rich boyfriend anymore I was one of them. The bartender Cheryl and I got along really good. She always treated me like I was one of her kids instead of one of the employees of the show. She always showed me respect, and I don‟t think she ever made me pay for a drink the whole time I worked in that club. The show consisted of a lot of local superstar performers like Teryl Lynn, Stephanie Williams, Brenda La Shott, and Terri for a short time before she passed away. Remember Terri she‟s the one who beat me in the pageant. The first couple of nights I was working there I remember one of the girls pulling out the ad I had running for a dominatrix. She kind of put it in my face and I‟m still not sure why she did it to this day. I never held it against her but I knew there would be some rivalry between all of us in the show. A girl came in from Florida one evening and her name was Joan. She got hired on the spot. She was absolutely gorgeous. She did Mariah Carey. She didn‟t look a thing like Mariah but she was so beautiful that it didn‟t really matter what she did. We became fast friends because she loved to party just as much as I did. After Terri left the show I brought Alex in and Tango asked her what she could do. Alex told her Pat Benatar. It was a good choice. There was no act in the show that did anything rock and roll. So now the show was set. We would all work together for the next year or more and trouble was around every corner. Joan and I got together one night after the show and I asked her if she wanted to come back to the trailer with me. We got back to the trailer and we were drinking and partying and then she pulled out a small bag of coke. I hadn‟t done coke in awhile and wasn‟t sure I wanted to walk down that road again. She kept coaxing me to do it with her and eventually I gave in. We got so high that night but we had a lot of fun. It was a really common thing in our community at the time for the girls to do a lot of drugs all of the time, not all did them, but a lot did. The drugs of choice are normally speed or cocaine. The next night we were at work and one of the strippers from the show came back. Her name was Tanya. She was a very petite and pretty transsexual. We were becoming friendlier as the days went on. She offered me some pills and what could I say besides yes? Oh yeah, I could‟ve said no. So now I was not only turning into a drunk, I was also becoming a pill popping coke addict full scale. Alex and I were doing really good in the show but the fights backstage between all of the girls and the fights between the girls and Tango were getting out of hand some nights. One night I remember we were doing the show and Joan was really drunk and high and after she performed her song she refused to get off the stage. We all thought it was hilarious but Tango was really pissed off. He kept telling Joan to get off the stage and she wouldn‟t so eventually Tango turned the lights off. Well, the next performer was up and Joan still wouldn‟t budge she stayed on the stage through her whole number. It was completely crazy but totally hilarious. I think that the new cast in the show and the strippers were becoming a single unit. It used to be a separate unit and when we came in, we all sort of joined together. One of the girls who worked there was Kya. She was one of my really good friends. Another one of the girls was Sylvia. Sylvia was a popular Cher impersonator in the 1980‟s. She was always helping me out. She would bring in costumes for me to wear and give me ideas about how I should be performing to make more money. We had a housemother also for a short time and her name was Gigi. Gigi was an older redheaded transsexual and she used to sit and talk to me all the time. She really liked me and I really liked her. One night she gave me a strand of her pearls which I still have to this day. She didn‟t like Alex at all, but not that many people really did except T.T. T.T. and I had a love hate relationship. Tango and T.T. had a long standing feud but Tango still rehired T.T. to come in and do Donna Summer at the club. Alex and I were spending most of our nights hanging out at Le Round Up and turning tricks to get cocaine. Eventually we would lose the trailer because we were putting all of our money up our noses. T.T. offered us a place to stay in her efficiency apartment. That was a complete nightmare. Six people living in an efficiency apartment in a bad part of the city. The first night we moved in with her there were gunshots outside of the apartment and we had to get down on the floor just in case a stray bullet hit one of the windows. Tango wasn‟t too pleased with all of the drug use going on in the shows cast. Tango, Teryl Lynn, Stephanie and Brenda never did drugs at all. They always stayed drug free. Joan, Alex and I on the other hand were doing drugs all the time. I remember it got to the point where sometimes I wouldn‟t leave the bar until the next morning because I was so messed up. I was getting my hormone shots from a local transsexual who was also absolutely gorgeous named Lisa Jackson in the bathroom at Le Round Up. April was also living at T.T.‟s with Alex and me and still trying to do anything she could to make money. Alex and I loved the boys and spent a lot of time hooking up with the hustler boys. For those of you who aren‟t in the know about hustlers, they were the boys who would have sex with older gay men for money. They were just like us girls. They worked the bars, worked the streets and did whatever they had to do to make their money for drugs or a place to stay, but mainly drugs. I had a thing for this hustler boy named Ice. He was so sexy. He had a girlfriend, like most of the boys, but we still ended up having sex on someone‟s staircase one night. Alex and I picked up these two hustler boys Patrick and Chris one night from the bar down the street from Le Round Up. I always told Patrick he was my son and I was his Momma. In our community we have drag daughters, and drag sons. Felina was my drag daughter and Patrick was my son. Chris was this hot little hustler boy who I wanted for a long time and he was just as fucked up as me when it came to drugs and alcohol. The boys lived in this run down warehouse outside of the French Quarter but close to the projects. We went to the warehouse with them and I remember being naked with Chris in one bed and Alex and Patrick were in the next bed. We were all messed up. Every time Chris decided he wanted to climb on top of me he had to hit a crack pipe in order to get an erection. I thought that was bizarre. The next morning Alex and I were walking back to the apartment and I opened my pocketbook and realized I had 5 small bags of coke in it. I told her we should go to the park and finish them off. While we were sitting in the park we saw Tango walking past and he looked at us. He just shook his head and we just sat there and laughed our asses off. But, I think Tango was embarrassed for us because we were slowly falling apart. New Year‟s Eve was coming and Tango wanted to put on a really good show. What he got was something else. By the time midnight rolled around I was so drunk that when I got onstage all I could do was stand at stare at the crowd. I stood there under the lights not even knowing what my name was. Tango came and took me off the stage and that next morning I woke up on the sidewalk outside of a club. Yes, I was spiraling down to the bottom of the pit for sure. But life was a party and I was going to party until I dropped on a daily basis. My drug use was causing a lot of problems at the apartment. Even though we were making money we were spending all of it on drugs and alcohol. We were also turning tricks just to get coke. I was sleeping with the local coke dealer just to get my drugs. I think at my high point I probably had a 300 dollar a day coke habit. I looked awful. I remember I would call my mom in the middle of the night and not even remember calling her until she reminded me. I was a complete mess. We used to actually sit at the bar and do coke. We all had one long pinky nail which made it easier to dip into the coke bags and get a bump. We would then chase the coke with water up the nose because it got you higher faster. One night while I was out I met this guy named Will. He was a six foot tall dark haired gorgeous man. He asked me if I knew some sex change he was looking for and I said no. He came into the bar after I went in and asked me if I‟d like to go out with him sometime. I was flattered but told him I wasn‟t interested. I think my exact words were you wouldn‟t want to go out with me I‟m too much of a fuck up. He left the bar and I didn‟t see him again until a few days later when he came up to me again and asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with him. I finally gave in and told him I would. He took me to some restaurant called Siam Café. I have to be honest even though the restaurant was nice I didn‟t like the food but I liked him. He was really sweet to me and treated me like a woman the whole time I was with him. After we left the restaurant we were sitting on the hood of his car and I pulled out a bag of coke and asked him if he wanted a bump. I don‟t think he knew until that moment that I was a coke addict. He told me no but he never judged me. I didn‟t see him again for a while. Alex, April and I continued to live at the apartment and work at the club. Alex was starting to get into heavier drugs than I was into and I wanted no part of it. The show at the club was starting to fall apart little by little. Everybody was arguing and fighting all the time because of the drugs and alcohol in the club. I was high all the time. One night it all came to a head in the dressing room when everybody started fighting with everybody. That night Alex and T.T. were sent packing and Joan would soon follow. Eventually the show consisted of Teryl Lynn, Stephanie, Brenda and me. We were the only ones left. We also were branching out and starting to do shows at other clubs to make money. Teryl Lynn wasn‟t around a lot because she was hitting the pageant circuit pretty heavy. She also had just gotten her breasts done and I was so jealous. I was on hormones and had small breasts but I really wanted to have big breasts like hers. Stephanie, Brenda and I held the show together pretty well. Tango did his thing, and he was a great entertainer but we worked our asses off to keep it together. Felina started working at Papa Joes which was really great for me because I loved her, she was my drag daughter. She was really worried about me though because I was so addicted to cocaine at this point that it was either try to get me to stop or watch me slowly kill myself. She offered to let me come and live with her at her apartment in Metairie. I told her no at the moment but it wouldn‟t take long for me to take her up on it. Will and I were dating off and on for a while at this point. I really liked the guy. He treated me well. There was a turning point that was about to happen in my life and I think I was ready for it. I was drunk and high at the bar one night and Gerry came in. I was almost passed out at the bar and he came up to me and put his hands on my shoulders. I turned around and he looked at me and said “You‟re pathetic. Look at you. Look at what you‟ve become.” I told him to fuck off but I still remember those words to this day. Life would never be the same. One night after work I went to a party with a bunch of the girls and I remembered walking into a bathroom and seeing a girl lying on the floor with a needle hanging out of her arm. I just sat and stared at her for the longest time. I did make a choice that night though it would be the last time I would touch alcohol again. I knew I would quit drugs also and actually only screwed up like once or twice after that night. I would finally be facing my life with a clean and clear mind. It would be tough but I was going to do it. I called Felina and told her I‟d move in with her. I told Alex and the gang that I was moving out of the apartment and moving in with Felina that I didn‟t want to live like that anymore. They were very angry with me. It‟s funny when you‟re doing drugs and drinking everybody wants to be your friend, but when you stop nobody wants to be your friend. I didn‟t care though I just wanted to get clean and sober that was my goal and I was going to succeed. The first couple of weeks were really rough on me. I took a few nights off of work and went through more than my share of withdrawals. It‟s hard when you‟ve been drunk and high for ten years to just quit cold turkey but I did. I actually quit smoking at the same time so I made it even harder on myself. Will kept coming around the apartment and bringing me food and taking care of me while I went through it. It was rough but it was nice to have someone who cared about me finally in my life and I was finally looking at life through clear eyes for a change. Felina and I were great roommates. I had moved so many times in the last couple of years it was crazy and I finally felt like I had somewhere nice to live. I finally went back to work and it was totally different I went into Tango‟s office and told him that he didn‟t need to worry about me anymore that I had cleaned up my act and that was that. Tango seemed happy for me. I‟d come a long way from the person Tango had first met to the person I was slowly becoming. Some of the girls in the club weren‟t treating me very nicely anymore because I had left the drug fold but eventually they would come around. In fact, every time Cheryl yelled at someone for using drugs in the club, I would get blamed for telling on them. I never did. I don‟t think these girls really knew what kind of person I was at all. It took a long time for me to convince them that I wasn‟t against them, I was with them I just wasn‟t living my life the same way anymore. I wanted more out of life and I didn‟t want to die young. I started dating Will exclusively and also decided to change up my act at work. I would start doing Cher, along with Annie and Madonna. My Cher was a big hit at the club luckily. I need to tell you though the first night I got on that stage not being drunk or high was so scary for me. I wasn‟t even sure I‟d be able to do it to tell you the truth. But, like a bike you get back on every time you fall down and just keep on moving and that‟s what I did. I found that I was enjoying myself much more than I did before actually. The applause seemed different, the songs seemed different. For the first time in a long time I was in control of everything I was doing. I stopped going out after the shows too. I stopped going to the bars and just dated Will. No tricking, no anything. I was pretty happy. Kimberly and I were still great friends but she was starting to get sicker. It was hard for me to watch her spiral downward with the disease. I loved her. She really was my drag mother. Will told me that his mom had a house in Bridge City, Louisiana that wasn‟t too far from New Orleans and asked me if I wanted to move in with him. I wasn‟t sure about moving in with him but I said yes. What the hell? It was a new life for me. Kimberly stayed with us in the house the first couple of weeks we lived there. She was one of my best friends. Things were going pretty good at the house but not so good at work. After years and years of performances Tango told us that the owner of the club had decided to shut down the show. I didn‟t know what I was going to do. I cried that night actually. Here I had just gotten my life back in order and now I was out of a job. Tango told me I was pretty and I should just start dancing at the club. He told me I would make a lot more money stripping than I would performing in the show. I went home that night and asked Will what he thought. Will thought is was a good idea so I went for it. Around this time, Kimberly found her own apartment and moved out, Felina decided to move into the house with us. The first night I ever stepped on that stage in a bra and panties was really scary for me but you know, Tango was right, I made a lot more money than I ever would have made performing at the club. I also learned something else. The clubs routine had changed a bit. Now that it was strictly a strip club, the back room was open for business. We were able to strip in the front, and turn tricks in the back room which used to be the show‟s dressing room. This meant there would be more money than I could ever imagine making. There were at least 15 girls dancing at the club now. We all got along pretty good but there was always the fight for money. We had to wait in a line and sometimes we‟d get customers coming to watch the strip show, and sometimes we‟d get a guy who wanted just a little bit more than that. Those were the ones we wanted because the real customers hated tipping us when their drinks were at least seven dollars apiece. One time Jody who was the most hilarious transsexual I ever met got a quarter for a tip and threw it back at the customer and told them to call someone who cares. She then got on stage, had someone hit the music and pulled her willy out and started shaking it at them. Can you imagine? We were rolling. One problem that was slowly creeping into the club was girls shooting up, not all of the girls were doing it but a lot were. There were a few odd moments in the back room one was when one of the girls who had AIDS got too high and decided to cut her arms open and started flinging her blood on everyone screaming, “I hope you all die from AIDS!” Scary right? It was still crazy and looking at it through sober eyes, even scarier. I became really good friends with a gorgeous transsexual who had just moved back from Florida. Her name was Mandy. She was so crazy and so fun to be around and Mandy and I really became the best of friends and went through so much together and honestly she is one of the best friends I‟ve ever had. We were in the club one night when a young, pretty transsexual came in. Her name was Hailey. Hailey looked a lot like Fran Drescher, thank goodness she didn‟t talk like her. Hailey got hired on the spot and we became friends. The girls in the club really didn‟t like her too much because they were jealous of how pretty she was. I was always a firm believer that it didn‟t matter what you looked like on the outside, but when it came to making money in a strip club it didn‟t hurt to be absolutely gorgeous. Life back in Bridge City with Will and Felina was fun. We stayed up late at night and just had a good time without all the craziness of drugs and alcohol. Will definitely had a strange sexual appetite and I would learn this after living with him for a while. Whenever we had sex he always wanted me to dress up as different characters, like a French maid, or a rocker girl. He always wanted to film our sex too. He said that what he really wanted to do in his life was be a film maker. Unfortunately for me he never really figured out what he wanted to be. I had begun smoking cigarettes again after a year away from them and I was only smoking cigarettes at work. I didn‟t really think much of it and never really told Will. One time I was taking a bath before work and I called Will in to tell him that I started smoking again. Within about two seconds I felt his hands reach around my neck and he started to strangle me in the bathtub. I was freaking out wondering where this sudden outburst of violence had come from. He was screaming at me and calling me a liar and a whore and a bitch. I started crying and begging for him to stop it because I couldn‟t breathe. I should‟ve known then that staying with him was going to be a bad thing but I didn‟t leave him and I wouldn‟t leave him for the next six years of my life. So now, I‟m clean and sober and I have an abusive boyfriend who I never knew was abusive. I swear, if it‟s not one thing in my life it‟s another. Will started to get much more aggressive with me over time and eventually the strangling would lead into full on punches to the stomach, hair pulling, slaps to the face. I was now in a relationship just like the one my mother had the first twelve years of my life. I had become that person that I hated so much. The ones that stay because they think they love the person. I don‟t think I loved him much after the first time. I stayed out of fear and nothing else. Felina moved out after a short time and her and I really didn‟t spend too much time together anymore. I was working at the club and dealing with my horrible home life. I decided that I would start turning tricks again to make more money. I think that became a running theme in my life. When things got really bad I turned to sex with strangers for money to appease my lost soul. We had this rule at Papa Joes when it came to clients. If you could get a customer to “buy you out” you could leave the club and go with them to their hotel and make your money. One night at work I got a guy to buy me out and I went back to his hotel with him. He seemed pretty easy going and I wasn‟t too worried about him. When we got back to his room he asked me to put on an outfit for him. I did and he asked me to sit down and he would fix me a drink. I took the drink and soon I started to feel very strange. I asked him if I could lie down on the bed and that‟s exactly what he wanted me to do. The guy had slipped me something in my drink. I‟m not sure what it was but I wasn‟t able to move at all. I kept slipping in and out of consciousness. All I really remember is he was sticking things up my ass first fingers, then toys, then other things. This went on for what seemed like two hours or more. I‟m not too sure and the next thing I remembered I was awake and groggy and lying on the bed in the clothes I came with. He was standing next to the hotel dresser when I woke up. He was smiling at me. I knew I had been assaulted by this man but there was nothing I could do about it. When you‟re in the sex business you just know that these things can happen. He handed me three hundred dollars and told me to have a nice evening. I didn‟t say anything I just took the money and left. This was the second time in my life I had been raped by a stranger and I think you just become numb to everything around you at a certain point. I never discussed it with anyone, not even my friends. This is the first time I‟ve ever spoken of that night and it will be the last. Mandy asked me at work the next night if I would be interested in moving in with her in Metairie. She said that they had really nice apartments where Jody lived with her boyfriend Dave. I talked to Will about it and he thought it was a good idea. I just wanted to be around other people besides Will because personally his erratic mood swings and behavior were much more than I could take anymore. I found out through the course of months dating him that he actually received a check from the government for being “crazy.” Great I was dating someone that was legally certifiable. Everyone was always telling me to get rid of him, but I didn‟t. I think in some small way I felt like he was the person who helped me get off the drugs and alcohol, but in the end it was really me who did all the work. Mandy, Will and I found an apartment in Metairie and it was really nice. It was in the business district and it kind of reminded me of the set up of Melrose Place. We moved in and the rest is misery. Mandy and I found out that there was a paper that you could advertise in as an escort so we decided to take a chance and place an ad in the paper. We never thought that anything could happen to us. The ad actually kept us quite busy for a while. Some days we would see upwards of eight clients a day. I would say that 99% of the men that call escort ads are married and the other 1% is engaged or single. Those numbers are shocking. I think that men who call transsexual ads don‟t look at it like they‟re cheating on their partners. I‟m not sure why but they just don‟t. I‟m sure many married women will find this shocking. They always worry about their husbands/boyfriends cheating on them with other women. Well, there‟s a whole other world out there ladies where your men are paying and sleeping with transsexuals. I‟m not sure how many men I‟ve been with in my life sexually but I‟d put the number up there at three thousand or more. I want to take a moment to discuss some of the clients I‟ve seen over the last 16 years of my life. Hold onto your hats because some of them are really strange encounters. The weirdest client I ever saw was obviously on drugs. I went to his home and he was running around in little frilly panties. I was trying not to laugh because, c‟mon now, who wouldn‟t. He told me he wanted me to treat him like a lady but first he wanted to do some crazy things. I didn‟t care I was just there for the money. Well, he sat down on the couch and he lit some incense which I thought was fine. He was naked now and his penis was hanging there. He pulled out a box and then pulled out a thin ice pick. He told me he wanted me to shove it up his penis hole. Oh my God! Can you imagine this? I wasn‟t even sure I‟d be able to do it. The frilly panties were one thing but the thought of doing this to someone was enough to make me run. I sat there for about five minutes thinking about and then he said he‟d give me another 500 dollars to do it. Well, that was all I needed to hear. I got down on my knees and grabbed the pick and up the hole it went. He actually enjoyed it. I never ran into anybody that strange again. Most of the guys I saw were just into oral sex. They wanted me to perform it on them and they wanted to perform it on me. A lot of guys were into S & M. They loved to get spanked, sometimes with very hard objects. Some like to get trampled, some like to be tied up and take it up the ass. Every guy is different. You never knew what you were going to get when you met them but you adapt to every situation because you‟re a paid escort and that‟s how the business works. I think that because most of them were married they were fearful of catching diseases which is smart. I always used condoms with my clients because I was fearful of catching anything they might have. I think that one thing people need to understand is that not everybody who runs an escort ad is disease free. Women really need to wake up and smell the coffee. There are a lot of men out there cheating on their wives with women, transsexuals and men and not all of them are clean. I don‟t want to make you nervous, but don‟t think because you‟re living a happy little life that your husband isn‟t playing around on the side. I think that men come to transsexuals because they like the idea that they can be with this beautiful woman who can get an erection just like them. I‟m not sure they‟re gay, because gay men like men and we live as women. I‟ve asked plenty of clients why they came to see me and they normally said their wife didn‟t turn them on the way we did. That‟s fine. If it wasn‟t for these men, we‟d never make any money. I always told my clients that I didn‟t care about their wives, they were their problem, and it was the truth. I wasn‟t there to fall in love with you, I was there to fulfill your sexual desires for money and that‟s what I did. Over time you build up a big circle of “regular” clients who you just build a trust with. You know what they like, and they know what you like…money. I always see these talk shows like Oprah and others that discuss men living on the down low but they always talk about men who sleep with other men. I think someone should do a show about the men who live on the down low and only date transsexuals because there are so many. On any given week you can find thousands of transsexual escort ads. Now imagine if I‟ve been with over three thousand clients add the numbers up people. There are a lot of men out there sleeping with a lot of transsexuals and most of them are married. With that being said, I want to get back to the story where I left off. Mandy and I ran our ad for about a month before we decided that we would quit our jobs at Papa Joes. There was no need for us to keep working at the club because we were pulling in so much money a week all we did was pay the rent and shop and there were no hassles. Two of our friends were hanging out at the pool one day and they yelled up to us, are you making money girls? We said yes. I don‟t think this was the best idea because there were other people around the pool that day and the word was getting around the complex that there were two whores living upstairs in the building. The phone seemed to ring off the hook daily and I was out shopping one day and came home. Mandy was dressed and told me to get ready because there had been a client that called and asked to come over. It was now August 1995. Will wasn‟t home at the time he was hanging out a lot in the French Quarter doing his own thing. Will loved to smoke weed and party at this point in our relationship and I really didn‟t want him around me much anyway. I got ready and we waited for the guy to call. When he came to the door Mandy and I asked him the usual questions. Let me see your dick to prove you‟re not a cop. He pulled it out and showed it to us. This is where things get tricky. Mandy and I took him into the bedroom and told him to take his clothes off. He took all of his clothes off and we climbed on the bed together. We realized we hadn‟t asked him for the money and he gave us the money out of his wallet. We got a condom and started to perform oral sex on the guy. After performing oral sex on him for a while he started moving to the end of the bed and said he had to do something. Just then he picked up this beeper thing and said okay, okay come on in. The next thing I know the door gets kicked in and there are like eight cops standing in the apartment. They told Mandy and me to get down on the floor and put our hands on our heads. They were screaming, “Where‟s the contraband? Where‟s the contraband?” I looked up and said, “We‟re whores.” After everything had calmed down they handcuffed both of us and took us into the living room. I couldn‟t believe it, I was getting arrested for prostitution. They tricked Mandy and me into signing forms so that they could search the apartment. They found a small bag of marijuana which was Wills. They asked if anybody else lived with us and we said just my boyfriend who wasn‟t there. They said that because his name was on the lease he would be getting charged too. So there was a long list of charges including Crime Against Nature which is one of those laws set up by a state which to my understanding is just a fancy way to say prostitution but in Louisiana it„s a felony. We also got charged with marijuana possession, which was really crazy because Mandy or I didn‟t even smoke the stuff. There were a few other charges and I don‟t remember what they were but since they never got those charges to stick I never cared. I thought the whole situation was surreal. First, this police officer comes in and lets us blow him and then they arrest us? How legal does this sound to you? Corruption is something that happens a lot in Louisiana and I‟m not afraid to say it. The police took Mandy and I to the local police station in Metairie. When we got there they had no idea that we were even male. They thought we were women until one of the officers told them that we were transsexuals. They locked us in a little glass room by ourselves. I remember one of the female officers walked over to the glass at one point and said, “What are those two females doing in there?” One of the officers told her that we were transsexuals and she said, “Oh those freaks.” This is the kind of attitude many police officers have all around this country. Freaks,nice. I saw Will‟s parents come in the front door from where we were and I couldn‟t figure out why they were there then I saw Will. They had actually called his mother and father and he came there to turn himself in. They were charging him with marijuana possession. What happened next surprised me. They were handcuffing him in the back while his parents were in the front and he said that they were hurting his wrists. One of the police officers actually hauled off and hit him in the mouth. I‟m telling you that this stuff goes on everyday in police stations around the country not just Louisiana. It‟s scary to think that they can just beat people up the way they do for no reason. I mean here he turned himself in and now he‟s getting beat on for no reason. We were in the police station for a while when they finally came in and told us that we would be going to another place. We didn‟t know what they were talking about. We figured that they would let us post bail and then get out but that wasn‟t the case. They shackled us together and took us out into the hallway where we ended up shackled to about six men. They then lead all of us into a van and shut the door. It was really hot in the van, I almost felt like I was going to pass out. They all kept looking at Mandy and me and I was really scared. I asked Mandy where they were taking us and she said probably over to the prison. Prison? What the fuck? This was the first time I ever got arrested in my life and now I‟m on my way to prison in a matter of hours? What about the trial? What about my rights? When we got to our destination Mandy was right they had taken us over to the prison. We were lead into a large room still shackled to the other people. One of the guards came over and said, “Why are these two women with these dudes?” The other guy told him that we were dudes too, and they laughed. They had to lock us away from the rest of the men at this point because of legalities I guess. They locked us in another glass room where everyone could see us and gave us some sandwiches to eat. The guy who gave us the sandwiches actually told us he could get us anything we wanted pills, etc if we ended up upstairs. See in jail, transsexuals are treated very well. Imagine if you didn‟t have a woman for many years and then they send someone that looks like a woman with breasts into the prison. It‟s like being the prom queen of cell block H. Eventually they came and got Mandy and me and told me we needed to talk with someone who was going to help us out. I think it was the public defender. Everything was going so fast it just seemed like I was outside of my own body watching something really bad happen to someone else. We sat down with this lady in a room and she told us what we were being charged with. She also told us that our bail had been set at sixty-nine thousand dollars. What?!? Sixty-nine thousands dollars for blowing a cop? You‟ve got to be kidding me. I had no idea what we were going to do now. I was freaking out. She told us if we didn‟t pay it, we would be staying for a while. Well, this was just great. How the hell were we going to get this kind of money? We were lead out of the room and back into our holding cell. We both started to cry now because it was scary especially the thought that we‟d have to stay in the prison. The guard came over to us and said, “Looks like you two ladies are going to be going upstairs.” I stood up and walked over to the glass door and said, “We‟re not going anywhere. We‟ll be out of here before you know it.” He just laughed and walked away. A couple of hours had passed and Mandy and I just sat there and finally someone came over and opened the door and said, “You two are free to go.” We had no idea what he was talking about. We asked him how we got out of there and he said that someone paid the bail. We were shocked. We didn‟t know anybody with that kind of money. We were handed our personal belongings and paperwork telling us when to be back for court. We were lead out of a door and outside of the building. When we got around the corner Will was standing there with two of our friends Andrew and Kathryn who were a couple. It was then that we found out that Kathryn had put her house up for our bail money. My God, I didn‟t even know her that well and here she had put her own house up to get us out of there. Kathryn was a school teacher so the house was the only form of collateral she had to offer. She told us the reason she did it was because when her and Andrew showed up to pick Will up from the police station after his parents left the cops went out to her car while they were waiting for him and asked her if she was a real woman. She was shocked. They then said that they could plant anything in her car they wanted to and throw her in jail if they felt like it. She said that after this happened she knew she had to get Mandy and me out of there because she was afraid something really bad could happen to us. Now that folks is one of the realest people and the most caring people I had ever met. She hardly knew us, but she believed we had been done wrong by a corrupt police department and she let her own anger at being harassed by them put her own home up to set two transsexuals free. It really says something about her as a person and as a human being. Mandy and I didn‟t waste any time once we got out of jail we actually went back to work the next night at Papa Joes. All of the girls had heard what happened and we really didn‟t talk about it too much. When you‟re in the business things happen and most of the girls had visited jail at one point or another. I was wearing wigs up to this point still in my life and the night we went back Mandy told me to ditch the wig and start using my own hair which was now past my shoulders. Years ago while performing Madonna I got a bad dye job which caused me to lose most of my hair. Word to the wise, don‟t over bleach ladies or you too could end up with no hair. The only time I would ever wear wigs again was in films. Going back to work was actually a good thing because it took my mind off the whole ordeal and even though I had just gotten arrested for being a prostitute I went right back to being a working girl. You just couldn‟t have fear when you did what I did because if you did you‟d end up broke and I wasn‟t going to go there ever again. It‟s funny because a month or so after the arrest one of the police officers who was there came up to me and said, “I feel bad and I want to apologize because what they did to you and your friend that night was wrong.” Nice huh? Will and I decided that it‟d be best to move out of the apartment we were in so we started looking for a place in the French Quarter. In between my many court appearances we managed to find a nice place on Royal Street outside of the French Quarter which was only one block away from where Stephanie Williams lived. It was a really great house. Will and my relationship was pretty stable at this point although he still had a tendency to just go off on me at any given moment. I just got used to his mood swings. The one bad thing about the whole arrest was that his parents found out that I was really a male because they printed my name in the local newspapers but they never treated me any differently than they had before. Mandy moved in with us for awhile which was a nice thing because at least I had someone to hang out with when Will was out partying which he did a lot now. Mandy and I had to go to court quite a few times and it seemed like every day someone was showing up at the door with a subpoena to go to another court appearance. Will and I hired his incompetent cousin of a lawyer to represent us in court. He was a complete idiot. At my final court appearance he told me that the D.A. was offering me a plea bargain. I thought why do I need a plea deal? Isn‟t this just prostitution? Well, in Louisiana if they can make the Crime against Nature felony stick it‟s a much larger fine. They told me that I would get a two year suspended hard labor sentence and a 1500 dollar fine if I accepted it. I was just so over at this point I signed the papers. I didn‟t care I just wanted to move on with my life. After court that day they set me up to meet with my probation officer who was a complete bitch. I realize that they‟re there to keep an eye on what you‟re doing but this lady had no compassion for the situation whatsoever. It was then I learned that I would have to register as a sex offender for the next ten years as long as I lived in Louisiana and I would have to send letters out to all of my neighbors telling them what I had been arrested for and put it in the newspaper. Can you believe that? But, I took the funny road and told Will, “Well, maybe it‟ll help drum up some business for me.” Moving to New Orleans was a good thing in the situation because in New Orleans nobody really cared about what I was arrested for and I was able to switch probation officers and get unsupervised probation. Will eventually got fined for marijuana possession and Mandy ended up taking a plea deal just like I did so we could end the whole thing. I know I definitely never wanted to go back to jail again, but it still didn‟t stop me from being a working girl. Hailey and I were becoming really good friends around this time and she ended up staying with us for a while too but soon moved to her own place around the corner from where I lived. Mandy also got herself her own apartment right across the street from where we lived so now we were all on the same block. Will was being an asshole as he usually was and was actually sleeping around with girls behind my back. I found out about one of them and actually invited her over for lemonade one day. Will was shocked when he found out that I knew. I didn‟t care though I just wanted him to know that I knew what he was up to. He kicked my ass for inviting the girl over, but it was worth it to me. Will had been hanging out with this guy named Chris who was just the most beautiful guy I had ever seen. He was tall, blond, thin and just really sexy. We started hanging out a lot. One evening while we were at the house Will and I asked Chris if he wanted to film us having sex, and he said yes. I really just wanted Chris to watch because I wanted him so badly. That was a strange situation but it would also be the first time that anyone ever filmed me doing something like this. I really enjoyed the whole idea of being on film and knowing someone was filming it besides Will. I‟m not sure Will knew what was going on when he wasn‟t around the house but I was spending a lot of time cheating on him. I really didn‟t love him anymore and I‟m still not sure to this day why I stayed with him as long as I did. I know it seems like I‟m bashing him, but he was a shitty boyfriend. He made a much better friend, than a lover, or a boyfriend. I was trying to find anything that would make me happy I think. I fought feelings of depression my whole life but it always seemed to get worse and worse. Work was the same, go to work, see my clients, make my money and normally go home although occasionally I would go out to the clubs on a manhunt. I became good friends with Kya also but she was in a relationship with her boyfriend Tom and he wasn‟t much better than Will. I think that these guys feel like they have to overcompensate their manhood because they date transsexuals. Confess! There was a transsexual who used to pump the girls with loose silicone and I heard she was coming to town for a visit again so I decided to set up with her so I could get some work done. I was still on hormones but my breasts never went beyond an A cup. All of the girls told me to just get it done and I would be much happier. Miss Kitten was actually very cool and she had created some of the prettiest faces and bodies I had ever seen in my life so I decided to let her pump me. I remember I was really nervous that night, but I did it anyway. Hailey and I went over to Sylvia‟s apartment where Miss Kitten stayed when she came into the city. I had my breasts done first. It was really scary, I was lying on this bed in an apartment surrounded by dogs and even though I loved Sylvia she wasn‟t the best housekeeper in the world. She poured the silicone into a bowl and pulled out the needles and started sticking them into my breasts. I will say this much, it hurt like hell, but when I was finished I had a full breast that wasn‟t going anywhere. Would I recommend this to up and coming transsexuals? Absolutely not, because years later it would create a lot of problems in my body. I also had my ass done. The ass didn‟t hurt as bad as the breasts. I paid her two hundred dollars and went on my merry way. I really felt like a woman after I had the silicone pumped in. How dangerous is it to do this? Well, let‟s see. You‟re getting pumped by someone who doesn‟t have a medical license and you don‟t know where the silicone came from. I‟d say it‟s not the brightest idea in the world, but in our community the girls get so desperate to look like women that it seems like a great option because it‟s cheaper than getting breast implants. Two hundred dollars or five thousand dollars? Of course most of us choose to go the cheaper route. I would never blame Miss Kitten for anything because it was my choice to get that shit pumped into my body. She was just someone who was trying to make beautiful women out of boys. I felt a lot different going back to work the next day and it was also the first time I ever took my bra off. I felt comfortable showing off all of my newly acquired body parts on stage now and it honestly helped me make more money in the club. Around this time Hailey and I were invited to a benefit show for one of our friend‟s boyfriends who had died.. That night Kimberly was set to perform on stage. It would be her last performance. I took Will‟s video camera to the show that night. I recorded everything. Every number everyone did. When Kimberly came out for her final number of the night she did Vanishing by Mariah Carey. She was starting to lose a lot of weight and her hair was thinning. I think that all of the girls welled up. If you ever listen to the words of the song you will understand why. I was at home one night and Kimberly called me and asked me if I could take her to the hospital because she wasn‟t feeling good. I told Will that I needed to go pick her up and take her. When I got to her apartment she told me that her roommates wouldn‟t take her and she felt bad that she had to call me but I told her that no matter what she needed she could call me. She looked horrible. I knew that she wasn‟t well and I knew that she wouldn‟t be with us much longer. When we got to the hospital it all seemed so real. I think that the thing people forget is that people with AIDS get sick, and people that are that sick eventually will die. The doctors did their blood work on her and I stayed with her while she laid in the hospital bed in the emergency room. When the doctors came back they told her that she had 7 T-Cells left and she was suffering from a whole range of illnesses. She started to cry. She told me that she knew it was bad but she didn‟t think it was that bad. I started to cry too. I decided that I needed to call some of the girls to come to the hospital because I wasn‟t going to be able to deal with this emotionally on my own. I really felt like Kimberly was my sister, she was a part of me. Kya came to the hospital with a couple of the other girls. There was a funny moment when Kya told Kimberly that it was okay to let go. Kimberly looked up at her and said, “You let go bitch! I‟m not going fucking anywhere!” All of us started laughing. It just really defined Kimberly. She was defiant in the face of her own death. Kimberly was admitted to the hospital and I visited her every day. She asked me to bring her cigarettes and food. You weren‟t supposed to smoke in the hospital but Kimberly said, “What‟s the difference girl, what am I going to do die from lung cancer?” Kimberly always smoked Now Menthol 100‟s which I still smoke to this day. I brought her McDonalds all the time. I was home after visiting her one day and she called me from the hospital and told me that her friends were coming to pick her up and take her back home. I started to cry because I didn‟t want her to go I wanted to spend as much time as I could with her. She did come to say goodbye to me though. It would be the last time I would ever see her again. The last time I talked to Kimberly she called me and told me that she was going on a long road trip. I asked her what she was talking about. She told me that she couldn‟t get out of bed anymore and couldn‟t walk anymore without help. I said, “Well, how are you going to go on a road trip Kimberly?” She just said, “I‟m going on a long road trip and I‟m never coming back.” About two weeks later Jody called Mandy and me and asked us to come over to her apartment in Metairie. She told us to sit down and then told us that Kimberly had died. I sat and looked out the window for a long time and had a tear running down my cheek. Jody came over to me and asked me if I was going to be alright. I told her that Kimberly was in a better place now. I had never had someone so close to me die. It would affect me for the rest of my life. I missed her, I still do. After this happened I went back home and Hailey had decided that she was going to move to Hollywood, California and ended up leaving to go check it out. She must‟ve really loved it there because she only came back one time before she moved. I was getting an itch in my ass also around this time and I wanted to leave New Orleans. It seemed like nothing was changing and I was really yearning to do something totally different with my life. I knew that if I didn‟t get out of there I would end up a stripper for the rest of my life and honestly it didn‟t really fit my mind frame anymore. I wasn‟t drinking, I wasn‟t doing drugs and I really wasn‟t interested in what I was doing. The only problem is, is that it costs a lot of money to move and I really didn‟t have it. Fate steps in. I met a rich business man from New York City at the club one evening. We sat and talked for a long time and he asked me if I would spend the weekend with him at his hotel. I figured he‟d offer me a lot of money to do this so I said yes. I did spend the weekend with him, dressing him up and having a lot of unadulterated sex for what would be a lot of money to me at the time. He rode with me in a cab to my house at the end of the weekend and handed me an envelope. I told him thank you and went into my house. Will was there and I laid down on the bed with the envelope and asked him to count the money and see how much he paid me for the weekend. Well, to our surprise Wayne had given me five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars? I had never seen that much money in my life. It was a very exciting day for both of us. In fact, we went out shopping and I bought the first television I would ever own. We held onto the rest of the money because we knew we wanted to get the hell out of New Orleans and move to Hollywood too. I want to throw something else in here. When we first moved to New Orleans from Metairie after the arrest, I contacted a doctor about getting a sex change operation and actually was going to have the surgery at one point but decided not too. I don‟t think having a sex change for most transsexuals is as important as looking and living as a woman 24/7 these days. Back then, all the girls wanted to have sex changes, nowadays it seems most of us don‟t. We‟ve evolved. Will and I decided to take a trip out to Hollywood and Hailey had come back and rode there with us. She would be staying, we wouldn‟t. I had to get permission from the probation officer before we left to even take a vacation but it was worth it to me. We were staying with a friend of mine whose name was Chance that I had met while in New Orleans. He was the doorman at our club for a short time and he was in love with me, unfortunately for me I didn‟t feel the same way about him because he would‟ve been a much better boyfriend than the one I had. Hollywood was like a dream to me. I had never seen so many people and felt like I fit in as much as I did there. I knew that I wanted to go back to live there, it just felt right to me. It‟s amazing how much a new environment can perk you up and make you feel alive again. I had spent so many years in New Orleans and traveling and partying I was really ready to do something different with my life. I didn‟t know what but there had to be something better than what I was doing now. We went out to the Queen Mary for the first time and it was just like the first time I had walked into Le Round Up. All the girls were staring at us. It was kind of fun being the new face in the city. Nobody knew where I‟d been or who I‟d been with. They didn‟t know if I was a whore or a housewife. It was great. We also went out to Peanuts, which is now Club 7969. The girls were absolutely gorgeous. I was so shocked at how real all of them looked. They were amazing. I caught Will making out with one of the girls in the show, I won‟t name her name because I really like her and I‟m not sure to this day if she knows she made out with my boyfriend. Hailey and our friend Julian stayed in Hollywood and we left and headed back to New Orleans. We really wanted to go back and live there and would finally decide that it was what we had to do. When I got back I asked my probation officer what I would have to do to be able to move and she said that if I had a job and could prove I had a job in California there would be no problem moving. I wasn‟t sure how I was going to pull this off so I reconnected with an old friend of mine whose name is Mike. I had met him many years before when he and his girlfriend used to come in and watch the shows at the club. I knew that he owned his own security company somewhere close to San Francisco. I explained to him what was going on and he said that if I did minimal work for him he would send me a paycheck and a payroll each month to send to my probation officers back in New Orleans. I went to the probation officer and told her that I would be moving to Hollywood, California but just not yet. Will and I would have to make another trip to Hollywood to try and find an apartment to live in. Hailey was already living there a couple of months and was dating another transsexual named Lonnie. Lonnie was a gorgeous Latina girl and she also did adult films. I was really enamored by her. I thought how cool, a transsexual adult film star. That might be something I‟d like to get into. I also ended up meeting the twins Vicki and Vivian when we stayed with Lonnie and Hailey in Hollywood. Everybody seemed to live in the same building. Well, the first couple of days we were there Will and I looked everywhere for an apartment and eventually ended up finding one that was only two blocks away from Hailey and Lonnie‟s on June Street in Hollywood. It was a big blue building, the gayest one on the block folks. The landlord was gay and told us that everyone who lived in the building was gay. How perfect was that? We checked out the apartment. It was a one bedroom loft. I loved it. It was small but it felt like home. He told us that we could put a deposit down and he‟d hold it for us for two weeks. So we did. We traveled back to New Orleans and everything was falling into place. While I was in Hollywood I took some pictures to put my first ever escort ad in while I was gone. Hailey and Lonnie told me it was a good idea to get my face out there while I was in the process of moving because being a new girl in town I would make a ton of money. I worked up until the day we moved to Hollywood. I remember sitting in the dressing room on my final night at Papa Joes. It was kind of sad actually. I had really built all of this history in this city and now I was going to leave it behind. One of the girls came up to me and said, “Don‟t worry girl you‟ll be back in six months.” I looked at her and said, “I won‟t be back. My time here is over and I‟m onto bigger and better things. In fact I‟m going to be a star.” She laughed. Most girls who left ended up coming back and I guess she just figured that I‟d be coming back also. I had no intention of ever going back though. To me it was either do or die. I really wanted to start achieving some of the goals I had set for myself in life. Will and I packed up and left New Orleans destined for a new life, and what a new life it would be.

My Life in Pictures

The Beginning

My baby picture 1969. The day I came out and said, “Wait a second, why are they putting me in a blue blanket?”

The 70’s were so decadent

I’m not sure if I was a fat kid or if it was the snowmobile suit.

It was the 70’s I can’t explain the clothes I wore

This picture was taken in Detroit, Michigan while visiting a relative

Here’s a look you should never try at home….Unless it’s 1982

This picture has never been seen before…BY ANYONE. It is the first time I ever went out in public dressed as a female.

New Orleans (1992-1995)

On stage at Papa Joe’s on Bourbon Street

The glitter, the sequins….It was dreamy back then.

In New Orleans we used to do shows outside of Papa Joe’s to earn extra money. I wonder what that guy thought whose lap I was sitting on.

Backstage in the dressing room at Papa Joe’s

I thought I was Cher for a couple of years on stage

This was the stage I spent most of my time on in New Orleans

This was the first picture taken of me when I decided to live “full-time” I believe I was around 23 or 24 when this was taken.

Taken at the Miss Illusions Pageant in 1994.

One of my first really glamorous pictures I took. I wanted to have 8 x 10’s made because I was feeling like a superstar.

Another picture taken on the same day, I was really feeling my Madonna “Blond Ambition” at this period of my life.

On stage at Papa Joe’s doing what I did best at the time.

Everyone meets someone in their life that changes everything, for me it was Kimberly Divine. She was the first transsexual who helped me understand what it was like to be a woman. She taught me how to dress, took me to my first hormone doctor, and threw my boy clothes over the side of my balcony. She will always be an inspiration to me. She passed away many years ago, but I still owe her a debt of gratitude that could never be repaid. Rest in Peace My Dearest Friend, there will never be another like you. This is one reason I always say to younger transsexuals, “Remember those who came before you and say thank you.”

Misery and I hugging it out before the long trek across the country to Hollywood.

Hollywood, CA (1996-2001)

First pictures taken once I got to Hollywood. If you live in LA you know the big blue apartment building on June Street. I lived in that building for many years.

My second ex took this picture while roaming the mountains in California.

One of the first adult film companies I worked for was “Up In Smoke” Productions. I never knew a person could smoke so much in a one hour period until I did these movies in San Francisco. But, it can be done.

This picture was taken for the first photo shoot I did with Patrick Barnes for Transformation Magazines. I didn’t make the cover that month, but at least they finally spelled my name right by the fifth cover they’d put me on in future issues. I never could figure out why it was so hard to spell Meghan Chavalier. I’ve been doing it for years without fault.

I can’t tell you when this picture was taken in California but it had to be around 1997. I got my first breast implants in 1998 and obviously I don’t have much else but hormone breasts in this picture. Nonetheless, it’s a great shot.

Of all the magazine shoots I did in my career this one remains my favorite cover out of all of them. It wasn’t easy to squeeze into this cat suit. In fact, it took about 45 minutes and a lot of baby powder. By the time I was finally in it the only thing I could do was crawl on the floor, standing was impossible.

This was one of those “3 A.M.” photo shoots I decided to have in Hollywood. I was very spontaneous when I was younger. In fact, I used to cook full meals in the middle of the night and invite people over to eat.

This black & white picture was also taken that night. I thought they turned out great considering I was just in front of a black curtain we hung from the rafters.

I actually still have this pink outfit. This was taken on the set of a movie by a friend. I was having a cigarette break. I actually tried this outfit on not too long ago, let’s just say it looked better then.

Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes on a porn set? Here you go. This was taken during filming for Transsexual Dreamgirls 5.

When in California dress like you live in California? Actually this was taken in my kitchen by a friend at my apartment at the time in Sherman Oaks.

The second boyfriend might not have been a great partner, but he sure was a good photographer.

My Life Today (2012)

People have often asked me why there aren’t many glamour shots of me from 2001 until now. One simple reason, when you’ve spent most of your adult life in a make-up chair with a camera on you the last thing you want to do is get dressed up every day and have pictures taken of you. These days I prefer that pictures taken of me show me as I am today. I’m proud of the lines and the wrinkles; I’ve earned every one of them.

What becomes of a porn star? Well, if you’re me you move back to the Midwest and become one of the locals.

Taken at the San Antonio Zoo in Texas in April 2012. I really have a very quiet life these days.

When this picture was originally taken, and I saw it, I thought to myself, “You know this picture just says it all.” Why is that you ask? It’s the look on my face. It almost defines who I am, always thinking and looking back at the paths I’ve walked on. Plus, it shows that although I’ve been many things in my life, I’ve always just been a Midwestern girl at heart.

Hollyweird

It was almost the end of 1995 now. The first day we arrived in Hollywood I was so exhausted, driving across the country is a bitch when you‟re traveling by U-Haul. The first day we moved in we had problems with the tenants griping about us making too much noise moving into the building. We had to set them straight about how much noise you can actually make when you move into a new apartment. It was like they had never moved in their lives. Anyway, when we finally got settled it was a lot of unpacking and getting used to our new environment. The apartment was a lot smaller than the house we lived in New Orleans so we didn‟t have near as much room for our things. It was okay though because we sold our furniture before we left. So basically we had money, and we had a bed, a lot of clothes and not much else. It was a draining move but one I was definitely happy we made. The phones were turned on and my phone was already going crazy from the ad I placed before we left. I turned it off and we went to sleep. The next day we went over to Hailey and Lonnie‟s apartment and hung out for a while. They were having problems and were destined for a break up. We partied some, and yes, I did a little coke but not like before. I think it was a new city, and I just wanted to have some fun. I still didn‟t drink though. It was a little scary being in a new city but I was glad that I had some friends to hang out with. Will and I were still getting along the way we normally did, very off and on. I didn‟t love him. I‟m not sure if he knew I didn‟t love him, but honestly I didn‟t care I was just happy to be out of New Orleans. One good thing about moving to California was that my probation was over. California didn‟t have the same laws as Louisiana so I was free to do what I wanted to do without any supervision. I still had to send pay stubs back to Louisiana but that was it. Thank goodness for my friend Mike or I would‟ve been trapped for two years in that city and who knows where I would‟ve ended up. When we arrived in Hollywood, I was kind of up in the air as far as knowing what I wanted to do. I knew that I was going to run my ad to make money but I really wanted to do so much more. Hailey told me that she had met this photographer named Patrick Barnes who shot for the magazine Transformation. She asked me if I‟d be interested in meeting with him and possibly doing a shoot for him. I had never been a model before and didn‟t think I was pretty enough to do it. I knew I had the height being 5‟11” and the weight, I was always thin, but as far as my look I was never really sure about myself. We got in the Ford Contour and drove down to Tustin where Patrick lived later in the week. I thought I was just going down to meet him, I didn‟t know that when we got there he thought we were going to be shooting for the magazine. When I walked in he just looked me over. He told me he really liked the way I looked and wanted to shoot me for the magazine. He brought us into his closet of clothes and the next thing I know I‟m wearing some of the craziest S & M outfits I‟d ever seen. They were so uncomfortable. I‟ve never been a huge fan of anything that restrains me. I was really nervous when he started taking pictures of me I had no idea what I was doing. He told me he thought I was a natural. I didn‟t really have big breasts and he wanted me to wear these outfits that were breast baring. If you go back and look at my older magazine photos you‟ll see how small the boobs actually were. Although I was nervous, I got into the whole thing and started to really enjoy myself and I was getting paid for it. Not a lot, but I was getting paid to be a professional model. It was kind of exciting. After the shoot was over Patrick gave me my first real check in the adult industry I would ever receive. It was like two hundred and fifty dollars. Not a lot but it was kind of neat. I got back home to the apartment that night and told Will that I did the shoot and he seemed to be really happy for me. I think that even though Will and I didn‟t get along he was always as supportive as he could be. There was some switch in his head that just didn‟t go off at times but he tried. It was a week or so later and Patrick called me and asked me if I wanted to come down and look at the pictures. Will, Hailey and I went down and I was really amazed at how good they‟d come out. He said that they were definitely going to make the magazine. I thought it was exciting that I could actually be on the cover of a magazine. Well, I did plenty of shoots for Transformation magazine and I was never put on the cover. I always ended up on the cover of their Transformation Catalogs, and Transformed. I‟m not sure to this day why I never got the cover of the main magazine. I always thought it was because I wasn‟t pretty enough, but who knows, people like what they like and at least I was getting their other covers. The next thing Patrick asked me was if I wanted to do a movie he was working on. I wasn‟t really sure if I wanted to do movies and told him I‟d think about it. He said it wouldn‟t involve sex it would just be me and Mistress Persephone a dominatrix. I told him I‟d call him later in the week when I thought more about it, he told me not to think too long because he would give the job to someone else if I turned it down. Will and I discussed it that night and he told me as long as it didn‟t have sex in it what would it hurt? I thought about it and called Patrick and told him yes. So here we are folks, I‟d just gotten to Hollywood and I‟m already shooting for magazines and about to do my first movie and it‟s only been a month. It seemed really crazy to me. I got to the set the next day and it was kind of eerie. It was being shot in a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles. It would be the first time I‟d meet Mistress Persephone who was one of the most beautiful women I‟d ever met. She had a perfect body and the most perfect face. I loved her immediately. She was a demanding diva on the set that day and it really taught me that in order to make it in the industry you couldn‟t let people push you around. Will left the set that day because Patrick didn‟t want any boyfriends around. I totally understood why. Boyfriends get jealous even if it‟s a transsexual working with a girl. I had a horrible time that day on the set. I‟m not going to lie the first movie I ever shot was a nightmare. It was an S & M feature. Persephone was playing a vampire dominatrix and I was her transsexual slave which meant a long day of being hung up on some of the craziest gadgets I‟d ever seen. I was ball gagged, strapped, slapped, spanked. You name it, it happened that day. There came a point where Patrick was just shooting Persephone and I was strung up from the ceiling and my legs were really starting to hurt. I almost wanted to cry and finally Persephone told Patrick he needed to quit paying so much attention to her and get me out of the contraption. I never complained though. I bitched to Persephone of course in the dressing room but I never said anything to Patrick. I really wanted to punch him by the end of the day for treating me the way he did but I thought it was part of the process of filmmaking and I better just bite my tongue. The last scene of the day was really funny. It was set up like a medical room and Persephone would be playing the nurse who would be performing my sex change operation. How silly right? When it was over her and I exchanged phone numbers because she told me that if I was interested she knew a company in San Francisco that shot smoking fetish movies. I‟d never heard of such a thing, but I loved to smoke cigarettes and I loved the camera. When I got home that night my legs hurt so bad that I couldn‟t really walk straight for about three days. Time went by and soon it was 1996. Hailey had broken up with Lonnie and was dating a new guy. She seemed to be really happy, a lot happier than she was with Lonnie. The year would be very interesting. I received another call from one of Patrick‟s friends Marlayna Lacie and she asked me if I would do an interview for her magazine TV Epic. I didn‟t know why they wanted an interview with me it wasn‟t like I had done anything up to this point in the game, but I was thrilled none the less. I finally thought I‟d made it. We ended up doing the interview by phone but it still worked out great. Marlayna and her friend Gina Lance were also doing a local access show called Tvs on Tv. They asked me if I wanted to be a guest on the show. All of this seemed very surreal to me. I almost felt like I was being treated like a superstar and in reality nobody even knew who I was. I don‟t think if I would have ever been known had it not been for Patrick, Marlayna and Gina putting my name out there as much as they did. They really helped in the whole process of me getting my start in the industry. The interview took place in the same club I had gone to when I initially came to Los Angeles the Queen Mary. I had a lot of fun that day. I wore this sexy little leopard print dress and I felt really comfortable discussing things on camera. I had been approached earlier that week by someone I had met to do an actual film that has to this day not been released called TV Cowboy. I talked about that and my belly button piercing which I had recently got. It was pretty fluffy chat but I still felt like I was doing everything right to get where I wanted to be. After the interview I got a phone call from Persephone. She told me that Up In Smoke Productions had told her to call me and ask if we wanted to do a smoking fetish film together. I would be working with Persephone and they were going to pay me 1500 dollars to do the shoot. This time would be different though, in this film they wanted me to do a solo scene where I would be masturbating on film. I had to think long and hard about it before I actually agreed to do it. Will and I made the drive to San Francisco which takes about 5 hours from Los Angeles. I was nervous the whole way there, but I was also very excited because I had never been to San Francisco and I had always wanted to go. Up In Smoke put us up in a really nice hotel in San Francisco. They even let us order as much room service as we wanted and they would foot the bill which was really nice so the only thing we really ended up paying for was gasoline. The morning I got to the warehouse I was really scared. I walked in and Persephone was already there with her boyfriend at the time. She told me not to worry that the whole thing would be great. One thing that was annoying was that they had a certain look they wanted for the shoot so they had their make-up people come in to paint our faces and do our nails. The nails were so long, like 3 inches off the finger and they put so much make-up on you that you almost looked like a clown. I didn‟t care though, because I was going to be making a lot of money from the shoot and I wasn‟t going to have to really work my ad that week to pay my bills. The first scene I did was with Persephone. The premise was that we were just two girls out on the town smoking cigarettes. In the movies, every time one of your cigarettes burned out you had to light another one. You would sometimes end up smoking like 10 cigarettes in an hour. There is a market for this, believe me. Persephone and I were then supposed to touch each other and play with each other‟s breasts. It was kind of exciting but not too much of a turn on for me. I was heavy on hormones at this point and it was quite difficult to get an erection. The scene took about an hour and it went very well. I lost the nervousness about five minutes into filming. The next scene was Persephone‟s which she performed in with her boyfriend. They were kind of arguing that day so I‟m not sure how it turned out when it was finally released but Persephone is such a professional that I know it looked great. My solo scene was after hers and I was not sure what the hell to do. The director and owner John told me that I should smoke and talk to the camera and then slowly take my clothes off and eventually masturbate into a full orgasm. I‟ve always been a bit of an exhibitionist so I think it all just came naturally to me. My scene took about an hour to shoot and when it was over I felt really good about the experience. John told me that he didn‟t know if his customers were going to buy transsexual films because they weren‟t something the customers had ever wanted in the past. I got my paycheck and Will and I went and toured San Francisco. We didn‟t go to any clubs but we did get to see the whole city. It was really cool to drive over the San Francisco Bridge. I had always seen it in pictures growing up as a kid in Wisconsin but driving over it was a whole new thing for me. I loved it. We got back home to Hollywood the next day. I went shopping and spent some of the money I made. Will and I found this great furniture store on Santa Monica Boulevard and we bought a couch. I still have that couch to this day. I don‟t think I‟ll ever get rid of it. It was the first really big item I purchased when I made money making a film. It was five hundred dollars. I continued to run my ad through the month and then John called me from Up In Smoke and told me that they had put the video up for sale on their website and had received a whole bunch of orders. The video ended up selling 614 copies I believe. If you put the numbers together 614 copies at 40 bucks a pop. I guess I was worth my 1500 dollars to them. They asked me if I knew some other transsexuals who might be interested in making movies with them and I told them I would get Hailey to come down to San Francisco with me. Hailey didn‟t smoke cigarettes so we weren‟t sure how we were going to pull the shoot off. I had told John that she did smoke and I was hoping he wouldn‟t be able to figure it out. We got to the hotel and then went to the warehouse the next morning. I did my solo scene first so that Hailey could see what I was doing. I told her that there is a way to fake being a smoker, just don‟t inhale when you take a drag. When my scene was over Hailey got ready and sat down on the bed and started her scene. I think she did a good job with faking it, but John figured out that she wasn‟t a smoker. He said he could tell by the way she held her cigarette. He didn‟t care though because she was beautiful and he knew that the customers would love her. We both signed our contracts, and got our paychecks. It was a good shoot. On the way back to Hollywood we started talking about doing movies. We thought maybe that‟s what we should be doing. I think we both wanted to be famous in our own rights and if we could get work together it‟d be a lot more fun. We were best friends, the best of friends. We shared everything and we were very close. Hailey and I worked together a lot in our ad. I would go to her apartment and work and she would come to mine and work. Every time we would see a client we would give the other one twenty dollars so we always made money no matter what and a lot of times we would see clients together which can be a lot easier. The clients always got off quicker when there were two girls in the room. After that shoot John called again and said the transsexual series were selling really well and wanted me to come back with another girl. I had now done four films for the company and was about to make that six. I called one of the twins, Geneva and asked her if she would come with me. Geneva “Vicki” was someone who I had met when I first moved to Hollywood and she had a twin sister Gina “Vivian.” That‟s a very rare thing indeed in our community to have twin transsexual sisters. They were both beautiful and so fun to be around. They would eventually go on to become twin sex changes. I adore them both and think of them as my sisters. Vicki and I got along great and her and Will got along really great too so we had a lot of fun on our shoot and Vicki did smoke so it helped the day go a lot easier. We did a lot of touring around San Francisco together. After we got back to Hollywood I told Will that I wanted to take the steps to get my name and sex changed on my driver‟s license. In California you were allowed to live under a different name and if you were a transsexual all you had to do was get a doctors letter saying you were in the process of getting a sex change and living full time as a woman they would put female on your license. I went to the doctor and got the letter, I then went to the DMV to change everything over. Imagine my surprise when they told me that I couldn‟t get it changed because I had outstanding DUI‟s in a whole bunch of other states. I was in shock. I told them I had been to jail once in my life but it wasn‟t for alcohol. They told me I needed to get a lawyer and get everything taken care of before they would change anything over. I hired my uncle who told me that he contacted all of the police departments of the cities I was “arrested” in and they said that if I sent pictures of myself they would be able to tell if it was me or not. They also said I needed to get fingerprinted and send those also. This was such a pain in the ass. I did send the pictures and got the fingerprints and within a month it was all taken care of. Well, who do you think it was that was using my name every time they got arrested for DUI? Danny/Alex. I was so pissed off that Alex was doing that and they told me that whenever they caught up with him they would arrest him and he would be charged. I got the paperwork and headed back into the DMV and luckily everything went smoothly. I changed my name from Keith James to Meghan on my driver‟s license. They also changed my sex from male to female. I was really becoming the woman I wanted to be and now I had identification that proved it. The next step was to go to the social security office and change my name and my sex with them. So I was officially Meghan and considered a female with the DMV and the social security department. What a great day it was like being reborn. One decision that I had to make was a hard one. I knew that I wanted to start doing movies full time but I was having problems maintaining an erection. I had no choice but to stop doing hormones. It was tough at first but my sexual drive came back full force and that was a good thing but now I was feeling the testosterone in my body which caused Will and I to butt heads all the time. I always took care of everything and it was starting to wear me out. Will got a check but it wasn‟t even enough to cover our rent, but, one thing I realized was that I had to pay my bills no matter if he was there or not. I mean if we broke up I‟d still have to pay the bills so the matter was dropped. Hailey‟s ex Lonnie had hooked us up with a great paying job in New York City for Bizarre Films. It would be a weeklong stay in New York and no hardcore sex. It was all S & M which was fine with Will and fine with me. The only thing I hated about the whole situation was that I‟d have to fly. I hate flying. I tried to delay the trip that morning because I was so scared to get on that plane but eventually I took a couple of valium and I was on the plane with Lonnie, Hailey and Shalimar. When I got to New York I was excited because I hadn‟t been to New York since I was in high school. This time it was totally different though. I told the girls about my first trip there when I was younger and it was really surreal to be coming back as a woman. We weren‟t staying in the greatest hotel but the building where Bizarre shot their movies was really nice. They had the best set up I had ever seen. It was really amazing how many people worked there. They could take down a set and rebuild it in a matter of minutes. It was a tough shoot because we were going to be doing eight movies in the course of those days we were there. They were constantly taking pictures of us so that when we came back in the next day they‟d know how to do our makeup. The shoot was tough because we had to take a lot of ass beatings. All the films were about a mistress spanking her slaves so a lot of flogging, a lot of whips, a lot of saran wrap. It was crazy but working with the other girls was a lot of fun. We were doing this one shoot where I was playing a cop with Shalimar and Lonnie. The movie was called Shemale Swat Team 2. Someone from one of the industry magazines was there and she told me after my scene that when I busted through the door she almost thought she was seeing the ghost of porn star Savannah. I guess it was my haircut. It‟s that eight year old girl haircut that I still have to this day. It was starting to be a really busy year for me and when I was gone Will was smoking a lot of weed and hanging out with Hailey‟s boyfriend a lot. He also started going to raves in California and drugs and alcohol would soon become a huge part of his life. I wasn‟t doing drugs or drinking at all anymore so it was almost like watching me in the past. We got back from New York City and we were home for about 2 days and Hailey and I got a call that T-Girl Magazine wanted us for a shoot in Miami, Florida. We literally were home and then back on an airplane bound for Miami. I remember that flight because O. J. Simpson‟s daughter was on the same flight as us as was the lead singer of Cameo who was sitting right behind me. I remember I had taken a couple valium and I turned around and asked him if he was wearing that famous cod piece of his. Lordy, can you imagine how he looked at me? The stewardess actually had to come over and tell me to quiet down after a while because I was so loopy from the valium. On that flight to Miami I became part of the mile high club compliments of one of the male stewards on the airplane. When we got to Miami Hailey and I walked outside and almost walked back into the airport when we tried to take a breath of air. The air is so heavy in Miami I thought I was going to die. It‟s very humid. Tracy who owned the company sent her boyfriend to pick us up at the airport and we would be staying in Fort Lauderdale. We got to the hotel and it was beautiful. It was right on the ocean and just so cozy. I had lived in Florida but never ventured to south Florida. I loved Fort Lauderdale. We decided that we‟d rent a car when we got there because we wanted to go out and see everything. We went to club the first night we were there and had a really good time. I met a lot of the girls from Fort Lauderdale and let me tell you, I had never seen so much silicone look so good. The girls in south Florida are lovely. Absolutely gorgeous! The next day we had to shoot for the magazine. I had bought some sexy lingerie from Fredericks of Hollywood and a lot of hooker heels. I always felt like it was a lot harder for me to get ready than Hailey who was so naturally beautiful. The shoot took about twelve hours but it paid really well. We both got two thousand dollars for the shoot. The whole time we were there though Tracy‟s boyfriend kept hitting on me and that started to get really annoying because he really wasn‟t attractive to me and his personality was even worse. I was more attracted to Tracy than him, and I wasn‟t normally attracted to other transsexuals. Hailey and I had a couple more days after the shoot to have some fun so we decided that we would go to Miami and find some great clubs to hang out at. We went to a club on Broadway where we heard there were male strippers who really liked transsexuals. The boys were so hot. They would dance on the bars for the older gay gentlemen. I have to say this much though, the boys really didn‟t like me too much in Miami. I think it‟s because I really looked like everyone else at the time, blond with green eyes. They loved Hailey though. We ended up hooking up with one of the boy dancers and taking him back to our hotel that night. We thought about sharing him but those two only had eyes for each other. He was the cutest thing you‟d ever seen really. The next night we went to a club in Fort Lauderdale again and picked up a male stripper who we took back to the room and both played with. He was crazy. He was on so many steroids all he did was fart the whole time he was there. Not so sexy. I guess that‟s what happens when couples vacation away from their mates sometimes. While the cat‟s away the mice will play. It was getting closer to the end of the year and we were thinking about going back to New Orleans for a visit and to work at the club to make money. The Superbowl was going to be held there and we knew there‟d be a lot of tourists and a lot of cash flow happening. In January 1997 Will, Hailey, her boyfriend and I headed out to New Orleans. It was going to be fun because Mardi Gras was coming and the Green Bay Packers were in the Superbowl. We decided we‟d stay for a week or two at Kya‟s apartment. It was going to be a lot of fun and a lot of fun it was. Will and I were having a lot of relationship problems by now and I almost thought if I got too sick of him when we got there that I‟d leave and go home alone. Well, I was almost right. We went back to work at Papa Joes and everybody was happy to see us. They knew that we were doing movies and magazines now and a lot of them were happy for us and then there were the few who thought we were acting better than the rest of them. Honestly, I haven‟t changed from then to now. I always thought of the adult industry as my job and nothing more. There was this transsexual who had started stripping at the club when I was leaving to go to California named Courtney. She was gorgeous and looked exactly like Mariah Carey. We had always gotten along really well but our friendship soon turned into a big love fest for each other. One night while I was working Courtney and I were doing a table dance together for a customer and we just ended up kissing each other. We weren‟t just kissing we were really going at it. I was so turned on by her and she was so turned on by me. I really didn‟t know what happening I had never had feelings like this for another transsexual in my life. We left the club early that night and went back to her place. We ended up doing some sexual things but we spent most of the night just talking. It felt so right to me. We just seemed to get along so well, she was so full of love, where Will was not. We actually cried talking about things. It was sensitive. I missed that in my life. I was slowly falling in love with her and I think she was falling in love with me. The whole time we were in New Orleans Courtney and I were together. Will had no idea what was going on because he was going out every night and I didn‟t see him that much. The day we planned on leaving I asked Courtney to go back to Hollywood with me and Will. I brought her over to the apartment and I told Will that I wanted her to come back with us and be a part of our relationship. He was furious. He started yelling at me and Courtney. I told her to go wait in the car with Hailey and her boyfriend. I went downstairs in Kya‟s apartment and Will came down and threw me into the couch. He then grabbed me around the neck and started calling me a fucking whore and punching me. He was beating the shit out of me. Kya came running down the steps and pulled him off of me. He was crying. I think he could‟ve never prepared himself for this. I told him I hated him, and I was going back to California without him. I told him that I loved Courtney and that was that. It was strange. I looked at him and I turned around and didn‟t care what happened. I got in the car with them and said, “Let‟s go.” I left Will behind Coming home to the apartment was really weird. I left with a boyfriend and came home with a transsexual girlfriend. The first couple of days Courtney was there we saw a couple of clients together and spent a lot of time just hanging out and talking. My feelings were already starting to change for her. I think that I fell in love because I just wanted to feel love. Eventually, Courtney and I decided that we would stop dating and our friend LaWanda flew in from California to hang out with us. We had a lot of fun when LaWanda came in and this would be the last time that I would ever do drugs in my life again. We were hanging out at some rich lawyer‟s house in Beverly Hills. He was nuts. He was so addicted to crack cocaine it was ridiculous but he loved transsexuals and he gave us all the coke we wanted. We sat up at his house one night just snorting line after line and having a really good time. We all got to know each other pretty well over the course of that night. The next day LaWanda and I hung out at Universal Studios with my friend Mike. I‟m glad I got some really good pictures of LaWanda because I never saw her again after that. She ended up passing away from throat cancer some time later. LaWanda and Courtney decided that they were ready to go back to Louisiana. They didn‟t like California too much. I sat in the house for a day or two before I picked up the phone and called Will. I told him that it was over between Courtney and me and that it was time for him to come home. Will had forgiven me for what happened. He didn‟t have to but I was his bread and butter. I really had gotten him used to the lifestyle that I lived. I made a lot of money between videos and running my escort ad and he was free to buy and do anything he wanted to. Things were rocky at first but eventually things leveled out. I started to feel sick about a month after Will had come back. I wasn‟t sure what was wrong with me but I knew something wasn‟t right. I was really scared that I might have been HIV positive so I went and got my blood work done. Everything came back negative. It seemed to pass so I never really thought about it again. Miss Kitten came into the city when I started feeling better and she brought her silicone with her. I really liked Kitten. She was just one of those cool chicks that everybody loved to hang out with. I had Kitten pump me in the breasts again and in the butt again. I was growing slowly into a b cup bra now. We hung out for a couple of days and I remember Kitten wanting me to get her some speed. We stayed up most of the night because she was tweaking really hard and every time she heard a helicopter fly overhead she thought we were being raided. It was pretty funny at the time. Will was falling deeper into his partying ways again, smoking weed, taking pills, drinking too much and ultimately I‟m sure seeing other people. He wasn‟t home a lot. Kitten left and went back to Texas and it was just Will and me again. I told Will it was time for me to go back to making movies because I had taken too much time off and in our industry if you stay away too long people forget about you. Hailey and I were working really steady. She and her boyfriend had moved into the old building her and Lonnie used to live in so at least she was closer to me now. We hung out all the time and worked together all the time. A couple of months had gone by and I started to feel sick again. I thought maybe I was just feeling stressed out but then I went to sleep one night and woke up mid sleep and stood up and fell down. I crawled back up on the bed and told Will something was really wrong. He asked me what was happening and I told him that I didn‟t know. My vision was blurred and I was really dizzy. I couldn‟t stand up without falling down. Will helped me get dressed and he took me to my doctor downtown Los Angeles. The doctor took some blood work and we waited for the results. The tests came back negative again. I was really upset because I couldn‟t even drive at this point. He told me that he would have to run some more tests and he did. The first thing they diagnosed was Vertigo, which was causing my dizziness and blurred vision. The next thing they diagnosed was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The next three months of my life were a living hell. I couldn‟t do much at all. I wasn‟t able to get out of bed because I couldn‟t stand up straight without falling down. Will wasn‟t much of a help, I think eventually my illness just wore him out completely. All I did was cry all day long and I couldn‟t keep food down because of the dizziness so I ended up losing about 25 pounds. Around this time rumors were starting to swirl that I was dying from AIDS. It‟s so crappy when people just spread rumors without even asking you what‟s wrong. I had friends who would stop over and sit and talk with me but I wasn‟t the greatest company. Everybody thought I was losing my mind, and honestly I was. It‟s really difficult when you‟re dealing with something that wears down your immune system and eventually it takes its toll on you. I would call everyone in my family but they really didn‟t understand what was happening. Years later my mom would suffer from Vertigo as would my sister Megan. They never really knew what I was going through until they went through it themselves. I wasn‟t able to take pills anymore and I didn‟t want to. I really just wanted to die. I didn‟t see the point in living anymore. I was useless. I couldn‟t make money and I couldn‟t make movies what good was I? After three months of this I told Will I couldn‟t live like this anymore so one night I took the car keys and I told him, “I‟m getting in that car and I‟m driving to the grocery store and if I fall down I‟ll get back up.” He said he wanted to go with me but I told him no. I got dressed which was a task in itself and got in the car. I wasn‟t sure I‟d even be able to drive but I started the car up and drove myself to the grocery store. When I got there I was really dizzy and off balance but I managed to get myself into the store and I grabbed a cart and used it to brace myself so I could shop for food. I did it. When I got back home I walked upstairs, came in and sat on the couch and started crying. I actually managed to do something and it made me feel so good. They were definitely tears of joy. That night I fell asleep and had the most amazing dream. I dreamt that I saw the Virgin Mary and Jesus hanging on a cross. I didn‟t know why I was having this dream but I figured it was because I had lost track of my spiritual self and needed to get back on track in my spirituality. I knew that things were going to get better. It just felt so comforting. I started to do things slowly. One night I was watching Madonna on television and she was talking about yoga. I figured what did I have to lose? I might as well try it. I started out slowly at first. I would do the beginners yoga and meditate for 45 minutes a night after Will had gone to bed. Slowly over the course of about three weeks I was back to myself again. I was still a little off balance, and I still am today but I was exercising, eating, driving and getting around again. I still hadn‟t gained my weight back but over time it all came back. Yoga saved me. I still do it today when I feel “off.” So with this behind me I started contacting directors and producers again and told them that I was ready to go back to work. The first day back on a movie set was scary and I still didn‟t look so great but I was happy to be back to work. When I go back and look at that movie now, I‟m pretty horrified at how bad I looked but I knew where I was at that time in my life and to not be in that bad place anymore was all that was important. I continued to make movie after movie and really threw myself into my yoga and my movies. I also made a really good friend around this time his name was Don. He is still one of my best friends to this day. Will and I were getting along better now that I wasn‟t sick anymore and I started running my ad again too. I was making money and seeing clients and doing movies, my life was back to normal.

The Devil Made Me Do It

Hailey and I were working a lot for a lot of different companies. I was back to being me and wanted to start branching out more. Luckily I came in contact with Jane Waters. Jane was actually a guy and not a transsexual it was just the name he directed movies under. Jane asked me if I wanted to do a shoot for him for Devil‟s Films called “Transsexual Prostitutes 4.” I was thrilled and said yes. Hailey also did the movie, as did Geneva and Gena. We were becoming very well known now in the industry as was Olivia Love who is a dear friend of mine. The movie was a lot of fun to do and Jane asked me if I would help him with his next project and possibly write the script for it. I did a mock up and we did Transsexual University together which is one of my funniest movies. It was one of the first transsexual movies to actually feature a lot of comedy. I knew what I wanted to do in the industry now. I wanted to make movies that were funny and sexy and naughty. I couldn‟t take the industry too seriously because at the time it was all so new to me. I asked Jane if he knew the people that ran Devil‟s Films and he said that he would set me up with them to talk. I told him that I wanted to try to get a contract with them. It had never been done before in the industry. No transsexual had ever had an actual contract with an adult film company. Well, like most things in life, when you tell me there‟s a wall to break down I want to be the one that busts it down and walks across the rubble. I went in and met with Michael who ran Devil‟s at the time. Michael was really laid back, and quite frankly, really sexy. I told him that I‟d be interested in doing films for the company but I also wanted my own line of films and I also wanted to be under contract. I can be quite aggressive when I want something bad enough folks. We talked and he asked me if I‟d be able to get other girls to go under contract with me. I told him I could probably get Geneva, and Gina and possibly Olivia Love. We worked out a deal and I was the first transsexual to sign a contract in the adult film industry, soon to be followed by four others including Gena and Geneva. Olivia decided that she didn‟t want to be under contract because she was working for so many people she didn‟t really need to be. We ironed out the financial end of the agreement. I told Michael that the first film I would make would be a horror/adult film. He didn‟t really like the idea but he let me go with it. One thing that Michael did manage to do was get me on the cover of AVN Magazine which is the adult industries bible. I was one of the first transsexuals ever featured on the cover even if it was in a three cover pullout. That‟s an accomplishment like no other. The first movie I directed was called “Horny Little Devils,” and Michael wanted me to make this movie so that he could introduce the world to his contract girls. The movie was a big hit and to this day people tell me it‟s their favorite movie of mine. I was only doing transsexual on transsexual movies now. I told Will I wouldn‟t work with other guys because he didn‟t want me to. It didn‟t make sense considering I saw male clients all the time and that didn‟t seem to bother him but to keep the peace I just went with it. The second movie I did was called Queen. It was really funny. My younger sister Megan had moved to Los Angeles and was living with me. She came to all the sets with me and helped me get ready for my shoots. She really is my best friend. We are one in the same, and share the same name. Okay, enough with the poetry. She helped me out a lot on my first shoot. We filmed the second movie at my friend Bob‟s house in Lancaster. It was hilarious and we did it just like the movie Scream. I hired Will as the cameraman. Keep the money in the same house is all I can say. I think people think that adult films take a long time to do and honestly they really don‟t. You can film a whole movie in a day if you want to. Queen only took three days to make but it was great. It was my first chance to be a director and an actor. After we did Queen I told Michael that I thought it‟d be a good idea to film a movie in New Orleans. He thought it was a good idea too and gave me a healthy budget and a camera to go to New Orleans with. He also agreed to pay for my first breast augmentation. He thought it‟d be better for my films if I had bigger breasts and so did I. I had been having a lot of problems with pains in my chest for a long time and I assumed it was because of the silicone injections. I still don‟t know to this day what brought the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome on but I think the silicone played a roll in it. Plus, the silicone was starting to get lumpy in my breasts. We packed up the car and left for New Orleans. My best friend Mandy agreed to do the movie with her boyfriend at the time Mike. My drag daughter Felina also agreed to do the movie with her boyfriend Jason and my dearest friend Stephanie Williams did the movie too. A lot of the girls said they wanted to do the movie but they all wanted way too much money. I think that‟s another assumption about the porn industry that everybody is rich. Not the case. Unless you‟re Jenna Jameson you‟re not making a lot of money. We make enough money to live and if you‟re under contract you‟ll make enough money to buy a house and a nice car. People in porn DO NOT get paid a lot. When we got to New Orleans I met with the doctor who would be doing my boob job. The appointment was set up for three days after we got there because I had to film the movie first. We filmed the movie and everything went off without a hitch. The girls did a great job and it‟s still one of my favorite films that I directed. It ended up with the title “Transsexual Sluts in the Big Easy.” The morning of my surgery I was really nervous. Because I was still deep into doing yoga I wasn‟t filling my body up with junk anymore. I was prepared to go through the surgery without pain medication afterwards. The doctor thought I was crazy but I told him I wouldn‟t be taking any pain pills. I stopped drinking caffeine and didn‟t eat anything that was horrible for me. I still smoked, and I still do. It‟s my one crutch I still haven‟t let go of. The surgery was only supposed to take an hour but there were complications. The doctor wasn‟t prepared for what he found in my chest. They spent almost 8 hours scraping my chest walls to get all of the loose silicone out. They had to scrape into my rib cage in order to get as much out as they could. They weren‟t even sure they were going to put the implants in. When I woke up I was shivering and the nurse told me to relax that the doctor would be in to talk to me. When the doctor came in he told me what he had to do in order to get the implants in. He said he was pretty shocked at how much loose silicone there was in my chest walls and that it had moved down to the bottom of my rib cage which meant it was heading down into my major organs. If that would‟ve happened I would‟ve been in much worse shape. I CANNOT emphasize this enough to my fellow transsexuals. DO NOT let people pump this shit into your body. Save your money and get it done right. This is a dangerous thing that can kill you. It could have killed me. Will picked me up and I went back to Mandy‟s. I was in a lot of pain but I refused to take the pain medication. I was black and blue from the bottom of my stomach all the way to the top of my neck from all of the chest scraping I had to go through. During the night I started to feel really sick. I woke up and my chest was straight and smooth from my neck down to my right breast. I was having a major complication. Mandy called the doctor and he told her that he would call in a medication and I needed to take it immediately and to take me over to the hospital he‟d meet us there. He called in a liquid sedative for me and I took it and Mandy took me over to the hospital. I was really scared. When they got me into the operating room the doctor told me that I had a blood clot somewhere in my chest wall and the blood was building up into my chest. They had to keep me awake while they did the next medical procedure which was really scary. They covered my head and told me that they had to take a liposuction needle and start probing my chest wall until they hit the blood clot to drain it. They first stuck my chest with a huge needle to numb me and said that I would feel pressure in my chest while they probed. So imagine, I had just gone through 8 hours of a chest wall scraping and was black and blue and now I had this huge suctioning needle in my chest poking at me. Even though I was numb I could feel it. It was so painful. Finally after about five minutes of probing they hit the clot and it was a gusher. The canister filled up with blood and it was disgusting, but I felt so much better after it was released. I went back to Mandy‟s apartment after that and went to sleep. I was so exhausted they told me to come back in the next morning to make sure I was okay. The next day we went back in and everything was going fine. They wrapped me a little tighter in the bandages and told me to take it easy for a few days. While I was resting Mandy said she wouldn‟t mind going back to California for a while and seeing what it was all about. Will said it‟d be cool and he decided to stay in Metairie and he would be home in a week or two. He wanted to stay back and hang out with his friends and party. I didn‟t mind because he just got on my nerves anyway. After my final appointment with the doctor Mandy and I left for California. I was still in a lot of pain from my surgery and didn‟t feel like traveling but I really wanted to be back home in my own bed to get back to health. Our trip across the country didn‟t seem to take too long because once Mandy gets going she doesn‟t want to stop. We pretty much did the whole trip in about a day and when I got home all I wanted to do was rest. My sister had recently got an apartment in the same building as Will and I and she came down as soon as I got there. I introduced her to Mandy. They really never got along from the get go, but they both have really dominant personalities. I was wearing a sports bra after surgery and when I got home I finally got to see my breasts for the first time. Everything appeared to look okay at first, until you really started to look. My right breast because of the clot had pushed over into my left breast. I tried to tell myself that eventually it would get better but it never really did. It almost looked like a uni-boob. But what could I do? I just started buying bras that would separate the breasts and make them look normal. I went back to work for Devils after my chest bruises had gone away. My next movie would be Transsexual Prostitutes 8 which was nominated for an AVN Award. I just put a new twist on the old series and turned it into the best little whorehouse in California. I was proud of the work I did on that film because I put a lot of work into it. Things were starting to fall apart as far as friendships and my relationship. Hailey and I weren‟t getting along anymore because I think we were just too close as friends and working together made it even harder. We didn‟t really talk too much anymore and it didn‟t help that she had broken up with her boyfriend and moved right across the hall from me in the building. We still maintained a working relationship as far as clients went but kept to ourselves. I would only make two more movies for Devils Films before they decided that they wanted to end our working relationship. We agreed to a healthy cash settlement and parted ways. Will and I weren‟t getting along at all and were fighting all the time. It all came to a head while Mandy was visiting at the apartment one day. She had rented her own apartment in the building and was living in the apartment underneath ours. I had come to a decision in my life that I wasn‟t going to put up with Will‟s shit anymore I had had enough of him and this would be the night that it would all come crashing down on him. All the years of abuse were going to end. We had two dogs and Will and I were sitting in the living room. I went into the kitchen and asked him what he wanted to eat and he gave me some stupid answer. The dogs started to bark and Will started yelling at one of the dogs and I just got really pissed off. He got in my face in the kitchen and I told him to get the fuck out of my face. I told him he was a piece of trash and he would never yell at me the way he was again. Will pushed me down on the couch and I just hauled off and smacked him in the face. He got really mad then and started throwing stuff and it was breaking against the walls. He tried to jump on top of me but I kicked him in the balls which sent him reeling to the floor. We heard the buzzer outside and somebody had called the police. Mandy left the apartment and Will and I kept arguing. We never did let the police into the building and after about another twenty minutes of this I just said, “I can‟t do this anymore.” We sat down and he was breathing really heavy. I told him that we needed to break up. This was it really. Will and I decided to live together in the same apartment but decided that it was over. I think that in some small way he thought that if we stayed in the same place eventually I would just give in and we‟d stay together but that wasn‟t the case. I didn‟t want anything to do with him at all anymore and from that night on we were nothing more than roommates. I still paid the bills, and he still didn‟t work but I kept telling him that eventually I was going to move out and he would be on his own. I decided to go out one night to the Queen Mary by myself to take a breather. I knew a lot of people so it was a nice night out. The night I went out I met someone who would become my best friend for life. I was standing at the bar when I looked over and saw someone dressed up like Wonder Woman. I approached her and introduced myself. She already knew who I was. I told her that we were going to be best friends. She laughed. Her name was Jessica Sixx. I gave her my phone number and told her to call me and we should go out sometime. The next night I went out to Peanuts and I met a transsexual named Ana and her boyfriend Roy. They were two of the nicest people I had ever met. Ana became a really good friend of mine as did Roy. They invited me to come down and visit them in Orange County and I said yes. I called Ana and I told her I was going to come down and visit her. They lived in a pretty nice apartment. Roy was really cool and all of the transsexuals knew him. Ana had a couple of roommates including one which I immediately took a liking to named Darla. Darla was like twenty years older than me but she was so hilarious. Her other roommate was Deanna. She was a young transsexual who has since left the transgender community and gone back to living as a male but she was great. She was really funny. They had another roommate but she never left her room so I never really saw her but once or twice in all the times I stayed at their house. The first time I met Darla she was on a computer and I learned that night that she really loved computers. She was super smart. It was like my world colliding with their worlds but they were all such real people. We hung out all the time and I was spending a lot of time at their house. I had met this guy while chatting online while I was at their place and his name was Scott. He was young and hot and I was totally into him. I invited him to come over and eventually we started dating each other. I didn‟t go home very often because I didn‟t want to deal with Will but he never said much. I remember once though Scott came to pick me up and I told Will I was going for the weekend with him and he got a little pissed off but what could he do? Scott and I would go to Ana and Roy‟s place to hang out, laugh, eat, and have sex of course. We got along so good but something was always strange. He would tell me some days that he would meet me over there and then not show up for the whole weekend. I never thought much of it because I was just enjoying my new freedom. Darla and I started hanging out a lot and Ana kept warning me that I should keep my distance from Darla because she was trouble but I didn‟t listen. I think I just found her interesting and entertaining and she was helping me a lot with my website so it was all good. One night Darla called me into the room after Scott had been over and said, “Look. I‟ve been saving the messages on the yahoo messenger that Scott has been using while you were asleep and I don‟t think you‟re going to like what you see.” I started to read these messages and I was horrified. He had been talking to every transsexual on the planet it seemed and not just talking but talking about how much fun they had, and this was on nights that he was supposed to be with me. I was so pissed off. I called him up and told him that he needed to come over so that we could discuss something. He drove from Long Beach and when he showed up we went upstairs. I read him the riot act and he tried to deny everything. I told him that I would forgive him if he would never do it again and he promised he wouldn‟t. I think I was a little addicted to the guy, like I said he was hot. Ana and Roy were planning a big party at the Queen Mary and invited all of us to ride in their limo with them to the event. I had never been in a limo before so it was a whole new experience for me. The night went really well except Darla told me she saw Scott talking to some transsexuals and hugging and kissing on them. I just let it go. Darla was really looking out for me. My sister had found a boyfriend and had decided to move out of the building. I was sad that she was leaving and told her to make sure she always came to visit me. It was scary when she left because I was stuck with Will in that apartment by myself. I didn‟t really talk to Hailey much anymore so I would be alone. I spent more and more time at Ana and Roy‟s and kept dating Scott. Darla and I were together all the time. We sort of formed a new family and just did things together. When my sister moved out the building I told her that I would keep paying the rent on her apartment and use it as my new workspace, that way I wasn‟t seeing clients at the apartment where Will lived anymore. It was Thanksgiving and I invited Scott and Darla to come and eat at my sister‟s apartment. Will wasn‟t too happy at all. I told him that I would bring him a plate down but that Scott was my boyfriend now. He told me he was going to kick Scott‟s ass but I just laughed and told him to get over it. The day was really nice. We ate and laughed and had a good time. Eventually Scott and I ended up upstairs in the bed and one thing lead to another and it was the first time I would have sex with Scott without a condom and let him orgasm in me. I felt it was time to stop using condoms because we were in love. Well, one of us was anyway. I don‟t recommend not using condoms even when you think you‟re in love because who knows what can happen. Lucky for me he was as clean as a whistle and I‟ll tell you how I found out he was in a moment. It felt like everything was going right in my life. I had a new boyfriend and a new best friend Darla. Darla decided to move out of Ana‟s and stay with me up Hollywood. She was living at the apartment with Will and me. Will thought she was crazy and he really didn‟t like her, but I did and the way I looked at it, it was just as much my home as his and she was staying. I got a phone call a couple of days after that really romantic moment with Scott and a woman‟s voice on the other end said, “Hi, you don‟t know me but you might know my fiancé. His name is Scott.” I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. She went on to tell me that Scott and her were getting married and she was pregnant with his baby. Well, I was more than a little shocked. I told her that we had been dating and that he never told me about her, which he didn‟t. Around the time we were on the phone Scott actually walked into her house. Can you believe the timing? She looked at him and said, “Hey Scott, your girlfriend Meghan is on the phone.” All I heard next was him screaming and yelling at her and then some things breaking and then silence. I assumed that one of them was either dead or knocked out but she came back on the phone. She told me that she was okay and that she was putting Scott on the phone. I told him that it was over and that he should never contact me again. I was so hurt and destroyed at that moment. The first guy I start dating after Will and I broke up and he‟s got a fiancé and a baby on the way. Darla consoled me but for some reason even though I was upset I was relieved. His lies were getting out of hand as it was and I really was starting to dislike the guy. Darla and I decided to build a new website that would be all about transsexual porn stars. It was a great idea. I had my own website but starting one with multiple girls on it was a great idea. It was the late 90‟s and there wasn‟t as much out there about transsexuals as there is today. The website ended up making a lot of money and now with the websites, movies, and my client‟s money was very good. Things were going okay. Will and I were actually getting along. One night I got really sick and started vomiting. I thought I had the flu. It was Friday and I didn‟t really think too much about it. The next day I got progressively worse. Will thought it was the flu and so did Darla. By the end of the weekend I was so sick that I could barely lift my head and my head was hurting so bad that I couldn‟t even think straight. My body was hurting really bad too and I felt like I was going to die. Darla told me she thought something really serious was wrong and got me in the car and took me to the hospital. By the time we got to the hospital I was starting to have small seizures. Darla ran and got a wheelchair and wheeled me into the emergency room at Cedars Sinai. When we got inside I was throwing up on myself. The nurses came over and asked how far apart my contractions were. I was so delusional at this point but even in my state of delusion I looked up and said, “What? I‟m not pregnant.” Darla explained everything that was happening and told her I was a transsexual. They rushed me back into a room and the next thing I know there are doctors coming in and out of the room. I not only felt like I was dying, I knew I was. The doctors couldn‟t figure out what was going on. They started drawing blood and hooked me up to an I.V. with antibiotics. They also started shooting me up with morphine because I was screaming in pain and the muscle contractions were getting worse and worse. It was like this for about an hour and I was slowly slipping. Eventually they called Dr. Matt Pekerol in. He was an internal disease doctor. He looked me over and told them that they needed to do a spinal tap immediately. I was going down fast. As I lay there knowing I could die at any time a strange sense of calm overcame me and I heard a voice say in my ear, “Don‟t worry it‟s going to be okay. You‟re not going to die.” I looked around and there was nobody standing there. I don‟t care what anybody says to me, I think it was an angel or a voice from Heaven. The doctors came back in and sat me up and told me I needed to sign some forms in order for them to do the spinal tap. I was so weak that Darla helped me sign the forms. After I signed the forms they put a pillow on my lap and told me to bend over on top of it and remain very still. I did as they said. They told me that it was going to hurt, but compared to the pain I was having I don‟t think anything would‟ve hurt me that bad. They numbed the area first and then stuck the big needle into my spine. They didn‟t lie, it hurt really badly but I was so weak all I could do was lay on top of that pillow and not say a thing. After that was over they laid me back down and gave me some more morphine to take the pain away. It wasn‟t long before Dr. Pekerol came back in and told me they knew what it was. They said it was viral meningitis and that they were lucky they caught it because he thought that if it would‟ve been a couple of more hours I could have died. They started an I.V. of heavy antibiotics including Cipro. They told me they had to take me to get a CAT Scan because they had to make sure that my brain hadn‟t been damaged in any way from all the trauma. They did the scan and luckily my brain was intact. I had to be admitted to the hospital and they weren‟t sure how long I was going to be there. I was able to get my own private room because of the severity of my medical situation. It felt really awful. Darla stayed there with me as much as she could. Will never came to visit me in the hospital which I thought was really nice. I ended up being in the hospital for six days. It was really hard for me after this happened. I had problems using the restroom for the first couple of days and I couldn‟t walk very well. I had to pretty much retrain myself to walk straight and go to the bathroom again. My movements were really slow also. My vision was blurred and I got really bad headaches. They told me that I was going to have problems that may never go away because of how bad it was. I still have memory problems but I‟ve regained full use of everything else. Those six days I spent in that hospital room made me really start to look at my life differently. I think it really takes something like being at deaths door and knowing you‟re going to die to make you appreciate living. There were some difficulties while I was in the hospital with the IVS and every time they put one in they had to take it out two hours later because I was having some weird allergic reaction to the needles. I was finally released and able to go home. Darla came and picked me up. I told her that I wanted to drive and she didn‟t think it was the greatest idea, and she was right. It was like learning to ride a bike again. I couldn‟t concentrate on anything and it just wasn‟t working. I knew then that it was going to be a long road to recovery for me. I got back to the apartment that day and Will was there. I asked him why he didn‟t come to the hospital and he said he didn‟t think it was that bad. I just laughed and went upstairs and went to bed. Darla took care of me all of those days. My sister called. She never came to the hospital either but she was at a different time in her life where she was partying too much and honestly she wouldn‟t have been any use to me at the time. Ana came to visit with Deanna while I was in the hospital and when I got out. It took about two weeks before I started to feel like myself again. I really did start to feel good again, and I think I went crazy. I started telling everybody that I just wanted to live my life because you never know when you won‟t have tomorrow. I think this happens to a lot of people when they have near death experiences. It‟s like your realize you‟re not immortal and you just go insane and don‟t much care about anything anymore. I fed my new life with a lot of sexual partners. I was having so much sex with so many different men I couldn‟t even tell you how many people there were. I didn‟t start drinking or doing drugs though. I had no use for them. Sex was my new addiction and having as much of it as I could was all I wanted to do. I decided around this time that I wanted to fix my breasts so I contacted the doctor in New Orleans and told him they needed to be fixed. He only charged me six hundred dollars to fix them. Will said he wanted to go home and visit his family so he would go with me. I told Darla she would have to go back to Ana‟s and stay with her while we were gone. I liked Darla, and I totally appreciated everything she did for me, but I still have deep trust issues with people. I trust very few people in this world. I went back and got my “repair” job done. Well, it wasn‟t the greatest repair job because after the surgery my boobs looked exactly the same to me. I told the doctor I would never come back to him again but I‟d be stuck with my screwy looking boobs for at least three more years. It was now 1999 and I had really been through a lot over the last 30 years. When we got back to Hollywood we saw someone lying by a tree in front of the building. It was Darla, and she was drunk as a skunk. I yelled over to her and she came wobbling over to the car. I asked her what the hell she was doing and she just said, she fell off the wagon. Hell, I didn‟t even know Darla drank to tell you the truth. We took her upstairs and put her to sleep on the couch. I think I was starting to get a sense that Ana warned me for a reason. But, I still have this need to mother people and that was showing in this situation. I decided when I got back that I needed to do movies again. It had been a long time since I‟d done a movie because after the Devils Films fiasco a lot of companies didn‟t want to work with me. I think I was blacklisted for awhile in the industry and that was fine with me because I didn‟t want to work at the time anyway. Hailey asked me if I‟d be interested in doing a new movie she was going to do which was called Summer Girls Summer Not. I asked her what it would entail and she said it was all hardcore and all transsexual/guy action. I hadn‟t done a movie with a man up to this point and I guess it was inevitable that I would eventually do it so I said yes. I never told Will about it because he was still a livewire when it came to me with other guys. The first scene I ever did with a guy was fantastic. It felt so good to be with someone that I was attracted to in front of the camera. I felt like I was renewed. It‟s funny what almost dying will do to someone. I was ready to start working again and I told Darla that if I was going to do it I was going to do it right this time around. I would be the one in control. I would decide who I worked with and how much money I would make. I wouldn‟t let the male driven adult industry control me. I was my own product and I was going to sell my product to the world. I would be the best at what I did and be known all over the world. I wasn‟t going to take the backseat to other girls in the industry anymore. I was pretty, I was older, I was wiser and I still had one of the biggest penises this industry had ever seen. My first step would be to move out of the apartment and get a place with Darla but I didn‟t know how to go about telling Will I was leaving. Fate stepped in again. I was still using my sister‟s old apartment as my mini-whorehouse and one of the neighbors decided they were going to turn me into the police for prostitution. Well, the officers knocked on the wrong door that night and I opened it. They said, “We‟re here to talk to you about the prostitutes in the building.” I figured it out when I heard my neighbors door open and he looked out. He had called them. I told the police that I didn‟t know what they were talking about, that I was a tax paying citizen (Which I am), and that the neighbor was a drunk and he was crazy. Hey, one good shot deserves another right? They left and didn‟t come back but I knew that I now had a foot to stand on. Will was home when they came so this was going to be an easy out. I told him that I had to get out of that building because I was never going to go to jail again for prostitution. He told me that he understood. Wow. He understood? I told him I would continue to help him pay his bills and his rent until he got on his feet. It had been almost 6 years since him and I had been together and the relationship was finally coming to an end. I took almost everything out of the apartment that I bought but I‟m not a mean person people. I bought Will a computer and bought him some furniture and even gave him money. I was just happy to get out of this life. I was ready to become my own person without Will over my shoulder anymore. It was a blessed day. Confess!

Celebrities are Over-rated

This is going to be the shortest chapter of my story because I don‟t want to spend too much time talking about people that I think people talk about way too much already. I know that this will be considered the most scandalous part of my book but in all honesty it shouldn‟t be. It‟s a small part of my life that just happens to contain famous people. I‟m not telling my story for these people I am telling it for me. I won‟t divulge some names and will refer to them by initials only. You can figure the rest out for yourselves. Let‟s start with the first big name celebrity who ever called my escort ad. I was sitting at my apartment in Hollywood when someone named “Dave” called my ad. He asked if he could see me. I told him yes and then he asked me if I would feel comfortable meeting him outside instead of inside of my apartment. I told him no. He told me he was “known” and didn‟t feel comfortable meeting inside. I told my boyfriend to watch from the window above to make sure the guy wasn‟t crazy. Imagine my surprise when I walked outside and got into a beautiful car and found none other than E.M. in the driver‟s seat. Now this is going to sound really stupid but the first thing I said was, “Hey I just watched you in a movie the other night.” How dumb is that? All of a sudden I‟ve gone from being an escort to being his number one fan. He handed me two hundred dollars and we sat and talked for about ten minutes. We didn‟t do anything sexual we just talked about my fantasies. I think it turned him on to hear what I like to do sexually. He definitely had a foot fetish because he asked to see my bare feet. He told me they were nice. The meeting was short this time. It would be much longer the next. Two weeks later I received another call from “Dave.” This time he asked me to meet him up the road from my apartment. He told me to drive up and meet him and this time E.M. was driving a new SUV. I parked my car and got in and he handed me a thousand dollars. We drove up into the Hollywood Hills and he parked. We sat and talked for a long time. He was asking me what I thought the perfect date would be. He asked me to take off my shoes again so he could look at my feet. I told him a very sexual story about me and him on a beach having sex. I reached over and grabbed his penis. He was rock hard. I will say this much about him, he has a huge penis that leans nicely to the left. That‟s as far as it went though. I can honestly say he wasn‟t disrespectful at all to me. I wouldn‟t have even told this story but two days after I was with him was when he was caught with a transsexual. She has since passed away, and was one of the nicest girls you could have ever met. She was a working girl like most girls who walk Santa Monica Boulevard. It‟s very well known that if you want a transsexual prostitute you head to Santa Monica Boulevard. The thing that angered me was how E.M. denied everything. He acted as if it was some freaky thing that happened that he ended up with a transsexual in his car. I was so turned off by his denial knowing that I was with him two days earlier. The thing about it is this. You came into our community, and when you get caught with your pants down, you act like we‟re some kind of freakish aliens from outer space. You can deny anything you want to, but don‟t treat a whole community of people like they don‟t belong in your world. Confess! The next celebrity I met happened one night at a friend of mine‟s apartment. Her, my friend Deseree and I were running our ads together that evening which we did quite often. It was just a way of having fun while we were “working.” A guy called and said he wanted to party. My friend told him that there were three of us there and he was interested in all of us. He didn‟t take long to show up and when he did my friend asked him to show her his dick so that we could make sure he wasn‟t a cop. I wasn‟t really looking at him at this point and honestly didn‟t care who he was until I realized that is was C.S. I told my friend she didn‟t need to worry about him because he was a movie star. He came in and he was obviously drunk and high on something. I think this was around the time that he was going through all of his drug problems. C.S. is definitely a sex freak. He sent his limo driver to the Pleasure Chest to get some sex toys and the limo driver brought all of the stuff back. There were plastic vaginas, dildos, vibrators. It was like walking into an adult book store. We all got naked and C.S. started to play with all of us. He has a lot of tattoos. In fact, he has an interesting one on his back that basically says Machine. I will give it to C.S. though, he‟s hung. His penis is really big. He talked a lot about how angry he was that he never won an Oscar. He honestly believed he was the best actor on the planet. That‟s pretty much how most actors in Hollywood are though. They may seem humble when you meet them but they‟re all in love with themselves in one way or another. C.S. kept climbing on top of me and masturbating and coming on my breasts. He loved to suck toes also. I think he just likes whatever feels good and at least he knows it. There‟s no in between with this guy. After we played around for a very long time he asked if there were any guys that we knew that could come over. My friend‟s boyfriend was in the next room and she went in and got him and Deseree and I went into the bedroom. We were watching from the door way as C.S. performed oral sex on my friend‟s boyfriend. What can I say? He paid each of us two thousand dollars for a couple of hours of really crazy sex play. Remember when you‟re a working girl it‟s not about the person it‟s about the money no matter who‟s paying it. I have to admit that I respected C.S. a lot more than E.M. because at least he doesn‟t deny what he‟s into. I want to add this to all of the detractors who are out there and think that I‟m telling stories to sell my book. My book is true and I have no reason to lie. I don‟t live a lie, I couldn‟t live more honestly. I would take a lie detector test, but would they? People think that its celebrity bashing when you write things like I‟ve written in this book but the truth will always set you free. I like celebrities who are honest with you and with themselves. It‟s a weird time in this world right now, and we are suffocated with so much celebrity trash. I watch the View every day. You know why? Because I love Rosie and I love Joy. I think that even though they have money and you see them every day they speak their minds and they speak the truth. They don‟t care what other people say they just want you to hear what‟s on their mind. I love Angelina Jolie because she is the product of very rich parents and still does her own thing. She is out there telling you, the world is a mess and I want to show you just how much of a mess it is. How can you not respect that? I know that people look at porn stars like famous people and that‟s fine as long as we do something that makes you feel comfortable in your life. I am not a rich person and I live like a normal person. I get emails from people telling me that they respect me for putting myself out there the way I did no matter what anyone said about me. They respect me because I‟m honest with them. I tell people right off that I hate talking on the phone and I hate writing letters so you might never hear from me again. That‟s a lot better than saying let me send you an 8 x 10 with an autograph. At least I‟m saying, I‟m not the best friend you could have in this world, but I‟m here if you need me, once in a while. I always thought it was funny that people actually paid me to make movies. It all seems so ridiculous to me that someone paid me to get naked and have sex. I‟m just some kid who wanted to be somebody and I now realize in my life that I was always a somebody even when I wasn‟t a famous porn star. Everybody is a star to me no matter what they do. When I see a cashier at a gas station I think he or she is a star. They are seen everyday by people of all walks of life and they say please and thank you. I was a cashier once, why should I think any less of that person because they don‟t make as much money as me. That would be stupid. Nobody is better than anybody in this world, we are all humans breathing air and getting through life day by day. Maybe people in our government should wake up and realize that. Just because someone is gay, or black, or Mexican it doesn‟t make them any less of a person than you. Grow up already and quit thinking you‟re so fucking important. The next few celebrities are just random encounters. I was partying at a club one night in Beverly Hills and I went to the restroom with my friend. We were standing there talking when Jane Weilden from the Go Gos came in with a man following her. She was kissing him and laughing and then told him to get out of the bathroom. Once he left she looked at us and said, “Isn‟t he cute?” We both said yes. She then said, “Yeah, he‟s cute and every night at home I strap on a dildo and fuck him in the ass!” How funny is that? She‟s officially one of the coolest women on the planet. That‟s brutal honesty folks how can you hate her for it? Remember Puck from MTV? He was at the same club that evening and honestly he is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. He is nothing like his public persona. My friends and I always used to hang out at a club called the Queen Mary which was in the valley for many years. We ran into quite a few celebrities at the Queen Mary. It was really the only happening club in the valley. David Boreanaz and his wife were in the club one night and they are two of the coolest people you could ever meet also. They were funny and friendly and just really real. Tim Allen used to go to the club all the time and he always came in with a group of friends. He was always respectful to everyone, but didn‟t make a lot of eye contact. I guess because there are so many star fuckers out there he really wasn‟t interested in having to talk to everyone. I met RuPaul one night right after seeing a film he was in and I went up to him and told him I thought he was great. He was very nice, and you could tell that even though he had “made it” in his career he didn‟t forget where he came from and I think that‟s so important. My friend Mistress Stephanie Locke used to date L.W. when he would come to the city and they would always call me when L.W. was dressed up as “Lana.” Lana used to go out to the Queen Mary and nobody had any idea who she was in real life. I guess in Hollywood anything can happen but I just think that people need to understand that if you‟re going to worship someone, worship your family, your friends and yourself. Don‟t waste your time worshipping people whose lives are way more fucked up than yours could ever be. Just because you have money and fame doesn‟t mean you “have it all.” Don‟t be jealous just be happy with who you are and what you have. I‟ve learned after meeting many celebrities that they‟re just people like you and me who have these extreme jobs that pay more than well. I‟ll stick to the people who aren‟t on the cover of Star Magazine every week. They‟re the ones who actually hold my interest in life.

A Whole New Me

Now back to the story. Darla and I found an apartment in Van Nuys and it was really nice. It was a two bedroom and it was like a whole new beginning. The building was okay, there wasn‟t a lot of parking in the area which was going to be a problem because I was still seeing clients but I made the best of it. The first couple of days we were there were spent just unpacking. It was hard for me to get used to not having Will around even though we were broken up now. I guess you go through a period of grief when a relationship ends no matter how good or bad it was. The internet was my outlet. I now had the freedom to talk to whoever I wanted to and that was pretty fabulous. I realized that the internet was a great place to hook up with guys. I spent a lot of time trolling the internet for the men who love transsexuals and let me tell you there are a lot of them in Los Angeles. I started going out a lot more and started hanging out at the Queen Mary more. I really loved that place. The girls were really nice and I was making a lot of friends. Being single was a whole new thing for me. I had spent so many years in relationships that I was ready to get out and sow my wild oats. Darla and I were getting along great and there didn‟t seem to be any problems on the horizon. I called one of the directors of movies that I had met when I first moved to Hollywood, her name was Roxanne. Roxanne was the coolest lady in the business. I told her I was interested in doing a bunch of movies for her. Darla wanted to get into movies too and Roxanne said that she would hire her. We filmed a lot of movies at the apartment in Van Nuys and I just kept working. I was working all the time sometimes doing two or three movies a week. I was enjoying myself for the first time in a long time. I hooked back up with Jessica Sixx and we ended up going out a lot. She introduced me to her best friend Daina who was always making me laugh. We became inseparable. I think Darla got very jealous over our relationship. I‟m pretty sure that Darla was in love with me. I could never have the same feelings for her. I loved her as a friend and nothing more. We used to go to the Queen Mary and then go to this restaurant called Sittons in the valley. It was our hangout. We did that almost every night of the week. Jessica is a comedian so she set her own schedule. Daina did her own thing, worked in the daytime and then came out with us at night. We were Charlie‟s Angels. I was hitting the internet when I‟d get home at night from the club and hunting for men to have sex with. I think I was at a point in my life where I started substituting sex for love. Between clients, movies and the internet I was getting laid a lot, more than the average human being should. I had one crazy evening where I actually ended up sleeping with four guys from the internet on the same day at different times. Nuts right? One of the guys I hooked up with was named Mike. I even told him that I had sex with three other guys already that day and he didn‟t care. He told me to come over to his house. When I got to his house, I was really happy to see a tall, good looking guy who was a few years younger than me. He reminded me of the guys I grew up with in Wisconsin. We hit it off right away. We had some very passionate sex that night. I didn‟t think anymore of it really, I just figured that I was going to sleep with him and that‟d be it. The next day he called me and asked if he could come over. I was the first transsexual he‟d really ever been with. We started hanging out a lot more. I told him I didn‟t want a relationship because I‟d just got out of a long term one and he didn‟t mind. We would be sex buddies in the beginning and see if it amounted to anything more. Darla and I decided to take a trip to Wisconsin after I had met Mike to go visit my family. I hadn‟t been back to Wisconsin in almost eight years. My mom had come out to California once to visit me while I was living with Will. She didn‟t really care for California so I didn‟t want to ask her to come and visit me again. It‟s really funny, the one time she came out, my sister and I picked her up at the airport. Now remember she‟d never seen me as a female. She got off the airplane and didn‟t recognize me at first, but once she saw my sister she came over to both of us and gave us big hugs. She whispered in my ear, “I have no problem with you being a woman, but why‟d you have to get such big breasts.” That was the only thing she ever said about my transformation. I just thought that was a funny little story. Darla and I rented a car because I didn‟t own one. Will got the car because it was in his name. We left for Wisconsin on a cross country adventure. We had a lot of fun actually. When we got to Colorado we went down to the river and took a bunch of pictures with our tops off and other crazy poses. We would stop in every state because we wanted to experience the different people in each state. We really took our time traveling. I got to know Darla really well on that trip and I honestly cherished those moments of friendship. We crossed the border into Wisconsin and the first sign we saw said, “Welcome to Wisconsin Buy Fireworks and Cheese at the next exit.” Hilarious! I knew I was home. We decided to stay at my sister Shannon‟s house while we were in Wisconsin and my mom planned on driving down to see me a couple of days after I got there. Shannon lived with her friend Rachel. I really loved my sister Shannon. We were always close. My sister Megan was taking care of my apartment while I was gone. Shannon and Rachel told Darla and me they wanted to take us to a bar in Madison. It was a lot of fun. They had karaoke and drag shows. That night at the bar I was dressed really sexy and a lot of their friends from work came out to meet me. They never judged me once which was totally cool. While we were there we also gave the show director a bunch of our movies that we‟d done to give away to people. My homecoming was going swimmingly. That night something was going on though, they had a bar in the backroom. Darla was staying away from me and the gang most of the night and I had no idea what she was up to. At the end of the night I realized that Darla was drinking. Darla was definitely an alcoholic and I tried really hard to get her to stop drinking but you know how it can be if you‟ve ever lived with or have had friends that suffer from the disease. I told Darla that if she was going to keep drinking she would have to find another place to live when we got back to California. She told me I was being over dramatic, but honestly, I grew up with an alcoholic father and I wasn‟t going to go through that again with anyone. I didn‟t drink or do drugs anymore and I didn‟t want to be around people that did. Darla stayed off the bottle and the rest of the vacation went great. My mom drove down from Hurley and I had a great time with her. My mom asked me what she should call me when we were out in public and I told her K J. I still think it weirds her out when people call me ma‟am in public but hopefully one day she‟ll come around. Darla didn‟t really hang out with my mom and me and that was fine because Darla could be very vulgar in public places and I didn‟t want to make my mom uncomfortable. My mom and I went shopping and just hung out like a mother and daughter would. It was fun. When I had to say goodbye to my mom it was really tough. I cried a lot when she left to go back home and she did too. I have only seen my mom like three times in the last 15 years, but we do talk on the phone everyday and email each other constantly. We‟re as close as two people can be without actually seeing each other all the time. Darla and I stayed on a few more days and then decided it was time to go back to California and get back to work. The drive home was a long one. Have you ever traveled somewhere by car and the trip home just seemed to take like a year? Well, that‟s the feeling I had. When we got back I got back to making movies. My sister Megan was staying at the apartment now and lived there for about a month with me until she found a new apartment. I was on the internet one night and I got an instant message from someone who said that they lived in Europe and they wanted to meet me. I figured it was just some guy playing online so I never gave it a second thought. The next night I got another instant message from the guy. He said he would give me twenty five thousand dollars to come and see him in Paris. I was like, yeah whatever dude. He told me if I gave him my information he would send me a money transfer for ten thousand dollars the next morning. I was kind of broke at the time from the vacation so I did it and the next morning when I checked there was ten thousand dollars waiting for me at money gram. Now that‟s insane. Can you imagine someone you‟ve never met sending you this kind of money? I was totally excited. The next step was him sending me a first class ticket to Paris and he did. I had never been to Europe before and I had no idea who this guy even was but it didn‟t stop me from getting on a plane and going there. It was surreal. I was in Paris, France by myself and about to meet someone I had never met. I took French in high school for two years so I was able to get around pretty well with what little French I spoke. The taxi dropped me off at the hotel and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was about three blocks from the Eiffel Tower. I was just amazed at how beautiful the city was. The first night I was there I stayed in the hotel and just looked out the window at the city. It was gorgeous. That same night I was set to meet my admirer. A knock came at the door and it was him. I was really nervous about meeting him now. I opened the door and he was actually a very good looking man. He told me it was a pleasure to meet me. I thanked him for sending me the money. I told him I wasn‟t sure how to use the phones in the hotel and he told me not to worry he would go out and get me a laptop computer so I could communicate with the outside world. He told me he‟d be back in the morning to meet me. I slept really great that night now that I‟d met him I wasn‟t afraid anymore. He was a great guy, who just happened to be really rich. The next morning he came back and true to his word he brought me a brand new laptop computer. He also brought me a bunch of cash to go shopping with. I wasn‟t sure how much it was because I was only used to American dollars. It ended up being close to two thousand dollars. We did have a small sexual encounter that morning and that would actually be the last time I saw him while I was in Paris. We are still close to this day and yes, he still likes to give me nice gifts. Sometimes you can meet someone in life who really does care about you. A simple chance meeting can change your whole life. It changed mine. I went out that afternoon and saw the Eiffel Tower up close. It was so huge. I grew up seeing it in books and pictures but seeing it in person was amazing. The French people are not rude no matter what you‟ve heard. In fact, I found them quite inviting and friendly. I decided I would go to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa. I took a cab everywhere I went because I couldn‟t figure out how to use the metro to save my life. It was really confusing. When I got to the Louvre I never expected it to be so large. It‟s quite grand and really unbelievable. I saw the painting of The Last Supper. It‟s huge a lot bigger than I expected it to be in person and then I saw her, The Mona Lisa. She‟s quite the star at the Louvre. The painting is actually very small, but she draws crowds like a superstar might draw. People crowd around her and take pictures, even though they ask you not to. While I was at the Louvre I met this really nice French man who told me he would take me on a tour of the Louvre and then a tour of the city if I wanted him too. I agreed because I didn‟t really know where I was going. We had a lot of fun that day and I really wanted to have a romantic adventure while I was there. We went back to my hotel and he thought I was rich because of where I was staying. I told him it was a paid vacation. He told me a lot about France and eventually I told him a lot about me. He had no idea that I was a transsexual the whole time we were together. When I told him he was really shocked and told me that he couldn‟t go any further because he had never been with a transsexual. I respected him and didn‟t push the situation. There‟s a golden rule in my community, if they find out you‟re a transsexual and they don‟t want you, just walk away from the situation for your own safety. He did kiss me on the cheek before he left which was nice but I never saw him again the rest of the time I was there. That night one of the employees of the hotel knocked on my door. He was gorgeous. I got to talking with him and told him all about me and he was totally down for the cause. He asked me if I wanted to come to his apartment and have some fun. I told him sure and after he got off work we took a cab over to his apartment. It was a really rainy night and when we got there his place was really small. He pulled out some hash and asked me if I wanted to get high. I said no, but didn‟t mind if he did it. It‟s his body who am I to judge. I just wanted to get naked with the guy really. We had a wild night of sex. It was a lot of fun. I had never had sex with a French man before and they are very romantic lovers. I had officially gotten laid in Europe. When I got back to hotel the next morning my phone was flashing which meant I had messages. I called in downstairs and got the messages which were all from my sister Megan. She was telling me that Darla had started drinking the day I had left and was inviting people over and they were all drinking and smoking crack in my apartment. I was furious. I called home and got my sister on the phone and asked her where Darla was at. She said that Darla had backed her into a wall and was demanding that she give her money. I told her that I would call Mike and tell him to go over to the house to try to get things under control Mike went over to the house and I called him when he got there to listen to what was going on. Darla was so drunk you could barely understand anything she was saying. Mike told me that she was trying to get him to come into the bedroom with her. It was so ridiculous. I told my sister and Mike that I would try to change my flight to get back home. Unfortunately my ticket was locked in and all the flights were full so I had to spend another three days in Paris wondering what the hell was going on when I wasn‟t there. I didn‟t do too much more in Paris except worry about everything going on back in the states. When I finally got on the flight I was so exhausted over stressing out that I just fell asleep and pretty much slept until the plane landed in Los Angeles. When I got off the plane Mike was waiting for me with a single red rose and a necklace. How sweet is that? He said not too worry that Darla had stopped drinking but she was going through withdrawals at the house. When I got home I went right into her room and told her that if she didn‟t shape up she was out of my apartment and back to the street. She tried to make amends but things would never be the same between her and me again. My sister ended up finding a place a couple of days later and moved out. Mike and I were kind of dating at this point. Darla had cleaned up and things seemed to be getting back to normal. The guy from France emailed me and told me that he had wired me some more money to my bank account which ended up being twenty five thousand dollars. I forgot about the anger and got happy. The next thing I did was start looking for a car. I couldn‟t keep paying all of the car rental fees so I went out and bought a Kia Sportage. It‟s not a fancy car, in fact it‟s pretty cheap but it was the first car I ever bought with my own money and I still have that car today. I helped a lot of people out when I got that money including my sister and Will. I stopped spending so much time at home with Darla though and started hanging out with Daina and Jessica more. They just seemed to be more like me and we got along so well that it just seemed right. We never asked Darla to go out with us because they didn‟t really like Darla at all, not many people did. I also found out that the reason she didn‟t like going to the Queen Mary with us was because she had been kicked out years earlier for being drunk and causing problems in the club. Mike and I were doing pretty good, I was still seeing other guys but I was hanging out with him more than any of the other men. One night I was feeling frisky and decided I wanted to have a three way. I don‟t know why I got these thoughts in my head but I did. I called Mike and told him to come over and told him why. He didn‟t seem to be interested but I think he only came because he wanted to keep me happy. This would ultimately be the downfall of our relationship. He told me that he really couldn‟t handle the way I was living my life anymore and we stopped talking for quite a while after that night. It didn‟t play out the way I thought it would in my mind. I really should think twice before I do things sometimes. Life at the apartment was getting to be a strain. The management wasn‟t taking care of the building anymore and there was actually garbage piling up in the hallways. We called all of the necessary people to try to get them to remove it but they didn‟t care. I told Darla that maybe it‟d be a good idea to make a change and I asked her and Daina if they‟d be interested in moving to Las Vegas. I‟d never really been a fan of Las Vegas but I decided that I‟d give it a second chance. Darla, Daina and I went to Las Vegas to check it out and decided we‟d give it a try. We went house hunting and found a great place in the nosebleed district of Las Vegas. When we got back to Los Angeles I called Don and Jessica and told them that I was going to be moving and asked them if they‟d help. Jessica wasn‟t able to help because she was working but Don said that he would rent a truck and help me move out there. He seemed very sad that I was leaving. The trip to Las Vegas was nerve racking and it was the first time that I ever experienced an anxiety attack in my life. I was always so in control of everything in my life, but something about that trip just got me very anxious. When we got to the house and got settled in I seemed to calm down. The house was really nice. It had white marble floors and three bedrooms. I took the biggest bedroom in the house because Daina and Darla said I should have it. I didn‟t argue it was really nice. I put my ad online so that I wouldn‟t lose money. So now I‟m in Las Vegas and really not sure what the hell I was doing there. The second day we were there we went driving around the city to get a real feel for it. We ended up going to a flea market and there was a psychic there. I went in and sat down and she took my hand. I didn‟t really say anything to her but she said a lot to me. She told me that I had made a mistake and that I wasn‟t in the right place. She also told me that there was someone around me who was trying to tear me down. I thought she was a little crazy, but I would find out shortly she wasn‟t so far off. My friend from New Orleans Stephanie Williams lived in Las Vegas so that was nice. I really missed hanging out with her. She really is one of the better people I‟ve had in my life. We hung out a lot. Darla was being her usual self. She wasn‟t very friendly to people who wanted to be around me. She started treating Daina really badly when we first moved in. I know now that she was trying to get Daina to move out of the house so she could have me all to herself. I got a call from Los Angeles that they wanted me to come into the city and do some movies and shoot for some websites. I told Darla that we needed to go to Los Angeles. She told me she would drive there with me but she wanted to come back as soon as we got there. I had my dog Bubbles with me like I always did and on the way to Los Angeles Bubbles ended up falling in the car and hurting her back really badly. Well, when we got in I took her to the emergency animal hospital and they told me had sprained her back. I told Darla that as soon as we got to Los Angeles I‟d rent her a car so she could go back to Vegas with Bubbles and take care of her. I had called Will and told him I‟d be staying with him while I was there, I thought it was only fair considering I was still paying half of his rent. When I got to the apartment Darla couldn‟t wait to get out of there so I went and got her the car and she left with Bubbles in tow. Will and I were getting along like friends now, so there really wasn‟t any animosity between us. I think when you‟re young and dating you just tend to act stupid and we both knew we were growing up. It was a really rough week for me in Los Angeles. Daina had called me and told me as soon as Darla got back to Vegas she started drinking again. Now, I knew why she wanted to get back so bad. Daina told me that she was afraid of what was going to happen and I told her not to worry that I‟d be back in a couple of days. Mike met me while I was there and I‟m glad he did because while I was driving back from a photo shoot in Lancaster I had another panic attack. This was the second one I had. I didn‟t really know why this was happening to me but it was. He followed me back to Hollywood and I asked him to come visit me in Las Vegas. We said our goodbyes. I had to go back to Vegas and told Will I was leaving because Darla was up to her old bullshit again. When I got back to Vegas Darla was a mess as usual. Daina was totally stressed out and told me that she was going to go back to Los Angeles and visit Jessica for awhile. I told her that I knew she was leaving and I totally understood why. I told her that when things finally fell apart completely that I would make sure her stuff made it back to the city safely. Darla cleaned up again for about a month this time. We were working on the websites and making money and things were going good. I was still seeing my clients and working on the internet doing live web cam shows and staying financially stable. Darla told me that our friend Al wanted to come into the city. Al was a photographer who had been doing a lot of pictures for my website for me and I really liked him a lot. I told her we should call Roxanne and ask her to come into the city and shoot a couple of movies about Vegas. Roxanne thought it was a great idea and she came in the same time Al did. We shot the movies and had a really good time doing them. It seemed like things were going to be okay. I was really tired after shooting that night and asked Al if he wanted to sleep in bed with me or on the couch. He told me he‟d rather sleep with me. Well, one thing lead to another and Al and I had sex. Darla must‟ve heard us because when we woke up she wasn‟t there. I had no idea where she was, but I‟d soon find out. She had taken off in the middle of the night and gotten drunk. Al told me she was pretty messed up and had tried to punch him in the front yard. He told me he was going to leave and asked me if I wanted to go with him and I told him I could handle Darla. He was worried but he packed up his stuff and left. When he left Darla kept drinking and one night she came into the room when I was sleeping and tried to climb into bed with me. She started telling me that she was in love with me. I told her that I didn‟t like her that way and she needed to get out of my room. She got really mad and stormed out of the room. I just went back to sleep. When I woke up Darla was in my room at the end of the bed and she was really drunk and told me that she loved me again. I got up and told her, “Get the fuck out of my room already Darla!” Well, when I went to walk past her she grabbed me and tried to get me down on the bed with her and started to try to kiss me. I pushed her off of me and she fell on the floor. She then stood up and grabbed a mirror off the wall and threw it and it shattered everywhere. She grabbed a piece of the mirror and lunged at me with it. The crazy bitch was actually trying to kill me. I managed to get away from her after a scuffle which lead to me getting punched in the eye and a bloody lip. My glasses ended up cutting me right above my eye. I grabbed Bubbles who was barking and locked myself into the bathroom. Darla was outside the door screaming that if I didn‟t come out she was going to kill my cat. I wasn‟t sure what to do so I just sat there. I waited for a while and Darla must‟ve left the room. I knew I had to get out of there before the crazy bitch actually did kill me. Darla had passed out and I got the phone and called Stephanie and told her what happened. She told me that she would come over right away to get my things ready and grab the animals. I told her that I better go along the side of the house so Darla didn‟t hear me. I locked my bedroom door and when Stephanie showed up we grabbed as much stuff as we could and got in her car and took off. When we got to Stephanie‟s place I told her everything that happened and she told me that if I didn‟t call the police she would. I called them and they came to her apartment and I filed a report for assault. They told me that they would go over to the house and get her as long as I‟d let them in. I thought about it for a moment and then told them no because in Las Vegas if you file a report of assault, the person you claim assaulted you has 24 hours to say that you hit them back and if they do you end up in jail too. I didn‟t want to end up in jail so I told them all I wanted to do was be away from the house and they could deal with her later. I called Don and told him what happened and he said that he would fly in the next day and then I called Jessica and she said she‟d be there to help with the move too. Don told me I could stay with him until I found a new apartment. I stayed at Stephanie‟s that night and it was really nice and really quiet. It was so nice not having to deal with a psychotic drunk for a change. Don came the next day and drove back to Los Angeles with me. We decided it‟d be best for me to go back and find a place before I came back for my things. On the way back to Los Angeles I just broke down and started crying. I was so stressed out. Don told me it was all going to work out for the best. I stayed in Los Angeles for about two weeks. I found a nice apartment in Sherman Oaks. I had called Darla off and on over the two weeks. She apologized every time I called. I told her that I would be coming back and moving out. I didn‟t know if I‟d have anything left when I got there but luckily she hadn‟t broken anything of mine. Darla was still drunk when I got there believe it or not and when we came in she started asking Don to fuck her on the kitchen table. Don is a classy guy and he thought Darla was pretty disgusting. She still thought this was all fun and games but the games were over and I was moving. That night Don told me that he had tickets to go see Sarah Brightman. He said I should at least have one night of enjoyment in Las Vegas before I left and I agreed. The concert was just what I needed, although I was exhausted it was like having the voice of an angel in my ears for two hours. When we got back to the house Darla told us that she had found a place to stay and Don was more than happy to help her move her things out of the house. We got the truck packed up with her things and drove her over to her new house. It would be a perfect place for her to live after all, lots of drugs and lots of alcohol. I would only ever see Darla one more time in my life and that was to give her a final paycheck for working on my website. The friendship was over and I was happy to see it go. I had never been around someone so negative in my life. Moving out of Vegas and back to Los Angeles was so healthy for me. I loved my new apartment. It was now May 2001. When I got into my apartment I was extremely happy. Jessica was coming over and Don was coming over and we all just hung out and had a good time. I was still financially okay so I didn‟t really need to put my ad in. I decided it would be best for me to go back to work in movies again. I called Roxanne up and told her I was back and that I was ready to work. She said, “Let‟s do it!” I threw myself back into the films and things were good. I was having fun at night hanging out with Jessica going to the Queen Mary. We went out seven nights a week. We never stayed home. Jessica and I had so much fun together we really are the best of friends, she‟s like my family. One night while we were out I told Daina and Jessica that I would never get into a relationship again unless the guy was more like me. I wanted the male version of myself. I thought that‟d be impossible to find because honestly I‟m pretty kooky and very eccentric. I was at the Queen Mary with Daina and my friend Rachel and there was a guy standing across from us with a bunch of girls. He just kept looking at me. We just kept looking at them like, “What the fuck is their problem don‟t they know they‟re in a tranny bar?” Well, the reason the guy was staring at me was because he thought I had been killed in a car accident. They have these websites where they list dead porn stars and I was on the list so his shock was more that I was alive and well. I didn‟t really give him a second thought but he was really cute. Cute guys usually just wanted one thing from me and that was sex, sex and more sex. On the way out of the club that night I decided to go out the backdoor which I usually didn‟t do. I always went out the front door of the club, but something told me I should go out the back that night. When I got outside the cute guy was standing there. I came up behind him and pulled the back of his hair and said, “Hey, what‟re you doing you want to go to breakfast with me and my friends?” He looked a little shocked. I mean we didn‟t even know each other‟s names yet. We got to my car and got in and I asked him what his name was, he said it was Eric, Eric the hotness. Eric was fierce. I really felt some odd connection with this guy that I never felt before. He was really cute but it was so much more than that. He explained to me the whole dead porn star thing and I laughed. He also told me that he was in the Marine Corps. How hot is that? When we got to the restaurant I introduced him to everyone. I think he was pretty surprised at how nice all of us were to him but he just seemed to fit right in. I really liked this guy. After breakfast I asked him if he wanted to come back to my apartment and he said yes. It was funny because when we got there the first thing he saw was all of these magazine covers with me on them. He said he was a little intimidated and I told him to calm down that I wasn‟t anything like the person I created. I was just a normal chickie with a dickie. He laughed. I went into the bathroom to take my make- up off. I hate wearing make-up by the way. I only wear it when I work. When I came out of the bathroom he seemed pleasantly surprised. He told me he was afraid I was going to go into the bathroom this glamorous porn star and come out looking like Uncle Shirley. Well, that night was magic. We didn‟t just have sex it felt like we were making love to each other and I had never had sex like that in my life. It was incredible. We would just lie in bed staring at each other and smiling. I told him that I thought I might be in love with him and he told me the same thing. So yes, I am a firm believer in love at first sight because it happened to us. This was the guy I had waited for all my life.

I Fell In Love and then had a

Nervous Breakdown

Eric and I were spending as much time together as we could. He had to go on a two week float so I was going to be alone for two weeks without him. I had introduced him to Jessica and she really liked him too. While he was gone I really had time to sit back and think about what it would be like to date this guy. I wasn‟t sure how it would work with him being in the military. He really seemed to care about me though and we just clicked together so well. It was like hand in glove, the perfect fit. Eric was a little shorter than me, with dark hair and dark eyes and he looks like the male version of Angelina Jolie to me. I waited patiently for Eric to come off float and honestly I wasn‟t sure if he‟d call me or not. I had such a history with men loving me one second and then moving onto the next best thing the next, but he did call and we got together again. He told me he wasn‟t sure I would want to see him again. That‟s funny right? We started going out a lot with my friends and soon we were all just one big happy family. It was around June now and we had been dating for a month. He would stay the night at my apartment and then leave in the morning to go to the base to work all day. I‟m sure it had to be a big pain in the ass for him because he worked almost two hours away from where I lived. We formed a little club called the “fierce” club. Basically if you weren‟t fierce you couldn‟t be a member. It was Jessica, Daina, Eric and me. Everybody used to always say the word fierce around us no matter when we were at the club. It was fun. Life was going good and things seemed to be falling into place for once in my life. But, as with most things when they seem too good something always goes wrong. It was around the Fourth of July and I was at home doing yoga. I had slowly managed to get back into it over the past year to keep myself grounded. Well, I did a move I wasn‟t ready to do and ended up injuring my back really badly. In fact, I had to lie on the floor for about an hour after it happened in tears because I couldn‟t move. I knew something was really wrong. It wasn‟t like your usual sprain I definitely pulled some major muscles in my back. Luckily for me Eric was on his way from San Diego and when he got there I had to crawl to the door to buzz him into the building. I was lying on the floor and he helped me to the couch. Well, wasn‟t that just great? I had just met this guy and now I can‟t even walk. But, he stayed there with me and took care of me. My back was really injured badly and I wouldn‟t find out how badly until I went to the doctor and they did x-rays. I had torn the muscles away from my spine and knocked a bunch of vertebrae in all different places. The doctor told me it would take a good six months to heal and I would have to go through therapy to get everything back in order. Eric was there for me though. He didn‟t leave my side. He took care of me and did everything. He fed me, he helped me walk and get to the shower. The only bad thing was that my movie career was pretty much over at this point. I couldn‟t walk on heels and I definitely couldn‟t have sex the way movies required you too. This started the early stages of my depression because I wasn‟t sure how I was going to survive financially now. I had always depended on movies to make my money and now I was strictly going to be dependent on my website. It was making a lot of money at the time so I wasn‟t worried. One day Eric came back to the apartment and told me that he was required to go on a six month float. I was really sad. I didn‟t know what I was going to do without him there to help me. I knew he had to go. My back was getting better slowly because I was seeing chiropractors twice a week. In fact, I even took a chance and did one more movie. I know it sucked because I complained the whole time I was on the set but I didn‟t care I just wanted to work and prove I was still in control. So now anytime I did anything in my life, I had to go to the chiropractor immediately afterwards. It really put a dent in my lifestyle to say the least. The day Eric left was so depressing for me. It was August 2001 and he would be heading to Australia first before being out at sea for 6 months. I wouldn‟t be able to talk to him too much because he didn‟t make a lot of money in the military and they could only talk on the phones for so long on the ship. Jessica and I drove him to San Diego the night he left. I kept asking him if there was any way he could stay but he told me there wasn‟t. He had to do his job. He was a Marine first, a boyfriend second. Love can do a lot of things in life but when it comes to the military they rule the roost and I understood that completely. I had forgotten my insurance papers on my car so I wasn‟t able to actually go on base to say goodbye to Eric. We said goodbye at the gate. I kissed him and hugged him and cried a lot because I didn‟t want him to leave. I was lost without him. The first month seemed to go by really slowly but I was moving on with my life. Don was taking me to my back appointments and because I wasn‟t exercising I was gaining a lot of weight. I got to my heaviest weight being 163 lbs. I had never been that heavy in my life. I was always between 135-140 lbs. It was okay though I felt good, maybe being that thin wasn‟t such a good idea. I always slept with my television on when I went to sleep at night and one morning I woke up because my phone kept ringing. I was getting really annoyed until I heard Roxanne‟s voice on the machine saying, “Get out of your house, run and hide, they‟re blowing us up!” I thought she was just leaving a crazy message. I looked at the television and saw the World Trade Centers on the screen and they were smoking. I didn‟t put two and two together right away until I realized what was happening. It was September 11, 2001 and we had just been hit by terrorists. I was glued to the television like most Americans that day. I cried a lot. I just couldn‟t understand how people could be so evil. Don came over to the house and he stayed there with me most of the day. I was really upset. It just affected me so deeply like every person on that day. I didn‟t know where Eric was because I hadn‟t heard from him. He was in Australia at the time and was in a pub with his buddies. They saw everything we saw on television. They were all ordered back to the ship. It was then that Eric found out that his would be the first troops deployed to Afghanistan. That whole day seemed so surreal to me, I was in shock. I felt horrible for the families that had lost loved ones. It felt like a part of me had died that day too. I didn‟t feel safe anymore in my own country. I was really worried about Eric. He called me from the ship the next day and told me that I needed to be careful that they didn‟t know what could happen next. He couldn‟t tell me any details of what was happening at the time because it was all confidential. But, he did tell me he was going to Afghanistan and my heart just sunk. All I could see was death. I thought he would die. I told him I loved him and he told me that he wasn‟t sure when I‟d hear from him again. I just cried and cried I loved him so much. Now, he was going into a foreign country to defend our country. He was a hero, he was my hero. I didn‟t know what to do with myself. Everybody was so lost that first week after the bombings. There were so many candlelight vigils happening everywhere. Every time I drove past people all I could think about was my boyfriend. My friends were there for me during this time. They told me that I had to try to get my mind off of the situation because if I didn‟t I‟d drive myself crazy. So, after a couple of weeks of sitting at home, we started to go out again. The moods were always somber though because I couldn‟t get past the thoughts of Eric being in Afghanistan. I never heard from him, and I didn‟t know if he was alive or dead. I watched the news everyday just to try and catch a glimpse of him when they were showing all the soldiers on television but I never saw him. The scrolling news bar on CNN became my best friend. I tried to take my thoughts off of everything and invited people over to just visit. It helped for some moments of my day but it really didn‟t take the pain I was feeling away. I decided that I would try to do something positive so I started to exercise again to take some of the pounds off. I wasn‟t doing it the right way though. I cut my daily meal down to a steak and macaroni and cheese and then I would walk about 3 miles a day and only drink water. Eventually I started dropping pounds and feeling better. I got back into taking pictures for my website and that helped take my mind off of things too but if you look at those pictures now you can see this lost look in my eyes. It was December 2001 and Eric had been gone since August. I had heard from him once or twice by email but that was it. It was a depressing time and Christmas was coming. Jessica and Don and I hung out a lot and I was going out a lot with Jessica to the Queen Mary to try to keep my mind off of Eric. It wasn‟t working though. I seemed to fall deeper and deeper into this depression and anything I did wouldn‟t pull me out of it. One night while I was asleep I heard a scream outside of my apartment building and it really rattled me to the core. I didn‟t find out until the next day that someone had been assaulted. But, after that night my anxiety level hit an all time high. I really think the events of the past month were slowly driving me insane. Too add more too the whole situation Darla kept emailing me and telling me she was going to kill me. Then, she filed a lawsuit against me to try and get money out of me for who knows what reason. The whole thing was thrown out of court eventually. I started to feel different mentally. I felt like I was dead inside. I would go out to the Queen Mary and start picking up guys to take home and have sex with just because I wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel anything. Nothing seemed to help though. Around January I had dropped about 30 lbs and was now starting to look sickly. I had taken the whole dieting thing much too far. I was not myself anymore and Don and Jessica and everyone else were really worried that I was going off the deep end. The situation started to get worse and eventually escalated into a full nervous breakdown. The events that lead up to it are even more bizarre than the breakdown itself. I was at home in bed and I had fallen asleep for a couple of hours when I was woken up by my cats. When I opened my eyes, something in my head told me that I should kill the cats. The damn cats were so noisy who would even miss them. I sat there for a moment and told myself I shouldn‟t be thinking such crazy thoughts. I didn‟t hurt the cats. I now know that when you‟re in the midst of having a nervous breakdown you‟re not control of many things in your life. I then got up and went to the kitchen to get something to drink. On the way back I started staring at the curtains in my apartment. They just seemed to be filthy all of a sudden so I started yanking all of the curtains down in the apartment and was telling myself the whole time that they had to get clean, they had to get clean. I threw them all in a laundry basket and headed down the hallway. When I got halfway down I stopped and said, “What the hell is going on here? What am I doing?” I turned around and went back down the hallway. Luckily Eric was back on the ship by now and he called me that day. I told him something was wrong with me. I told him that something was going to happen. I managed to fall asleep that night and the next day things just seemed to get progressively worse. I stayed in the house all day talking to myself. I was losing my mind. No matter what I did nothing pulled me out of it. That night I got in my car and started driving around my neighborhood. I was out of my mind. I was stopping at 7-11‟s and asking the people that worked there if they wanted to have sex with me. It was completely bizarre behavior. When they would look at me in shock, I would laugh and walk out the door and find somewhere else to go. Then, I got into a weird space where I decided that it was only safe to drive around one block so I started to circle the block over and over again. I look back on that moment now and think how dangerous of a situation that was for me and for others. While I was driving I called Don and he told me that Eric had called him and he asked me where I was and I told him what was happening. I started crying and told him I was afraid of the stop lights, I just couldn‟t stop what I was doing. Eric called me from the ship on my cell phone and I was just babbling and making no sense. He talked me into going to Don‟s house. He talked to me the whole time because I was afraid to drive there. When I got there I told Eric I was going to kill myself. He talked me down. I finally went into Don‟s house and fell on his couch and just started crying and screaming, “I don‟t know what‟s happening to me! I need help!” Don got me in his car and we drove to Dr. Pekerol‟s office. While we were going up in the elevator I told Don I was afraid. I didn‟t want to be closed in. Once we got out of the elevator I felt so much better. When we got to his office his receptionist told us we‟d have to wait because he was with a patient. Well, sitting there waiting I started to feel like I had to get out of the building. I started getting shaky and told Don I was leaving. He said it‟d be better if we waited until the doctor came out. I didn‟t though. I ran from the office and headed down to the elevator and when it didn‟t come fast enough I ran for the stairs. I just kept running and running and eventually made it outside where I was standing in the middle of the road. Don came out and put his arm around me. I was crying and screaming and making no sense at all. Don called Dr. Pekerol and he told Don to take me over to the hospital and have them admit me. Don told him he wasn‟t going to do that. He took me and we got in his car and headed back for his house. Once in the car I was really going crazy, crying and just anxious. We were driving up the hill to go back into the valley and I started to freak out because there was traffic backed up. I told Don we had to get off the road or I was going to jump out. I kept screaming, “I‟m going to end up doing something to myself, I‟m going to die!” Finally we got back to Don‟s condo and I was so drained that Don had to carry me up the stairs to his bedroom to try to get me to sleep. I just laid on the bed staring out the window. I couldn‟t cry, I didn‟t even know who I was anymore. The next day I went downstairs and told Don that I needed to just stay at his house because I didn‟t feel like it was safe for me to be alone anymore. He took care of me for about three weeks at his house. Eric would call and try to talk to me, but I was mentally void. All I did all day was cry. I didn‟t leave Don‟s condo I became a prisoner of my own mind. I wasn‟t eating at all now because I thought people were trying to poison me. I wouldn‟t drink out of glasses because I thought people were trying to kill me. It was a downward spiral into insanity. My weight had now dropped to the point where I looked like I was dying and I didn‟t care. I didn‟t want to feel like this, I just wanted to be dead. Eric called and said that he was going to be delayed and wouldn‟t be able to come back until after Valentine‟s Day. In fact, he wouldn‟t be home until March. I was shattered. I needed him. I need him to save me from myself. Don was a real trooper. He took care of me better than any hospital could have. He would sit and talk with me, listen to me cry, and whenever he had to work he‟d call to make sure I was okay. I just laid there day after day crying and wondering what happened to the person I used to be. One thing that was pretty amazing was that I managed to keep my website intact. It was an outlet for me at the time. I was living in hell, but that website kept my mind somewhat there. Jessica came over and told me that everyone was asking where I‟d been and what happened to me and she said that she told them I was on vacation but I‟d be back soon. See that‟s how you know your friends are your friends. They protect you no matter what the cost. Eric finally came home at the beginning of March and as soon as he was off the ship he came to Don‟s house. Don opened the door and let him in. When he saw me I saw tears in his eyes. I had become a shell of my former self but he came over to me and we kissed and just held each other and cried. I know seeing me like this destroyed him but he was ready to take on the task of getting his girlfriend back. The next day Eric said that he wanted me to go back to the apartment. I told him I couldn‟t do that, I didn‟t want to leave Don‟s house. I hadn‟t left in so long, I was afraid to. Eric told me that we were going to do this and I was going to get better. I just cried I really didn‟t want to go but finally I gave in. The first steps I took outside were terrifying I‟ll never forget it. Eric had couple of weeks off so he was able to stay with me. When we got in the car I was so scared but I managed to drive and managed to get us back to my apartment. It was really scary when I got back to the apartment. It was like I was re-entering the tomb of the damned. The cats were still there and Don had been taking care of them for me. It was really dark inside and I was crying because when I left I knew what circumstances it was under. The first week was really rough. I still laid on the couch and cried but Eric laid there and held me and made me eat. He started with chicken soup and crackers and cheese. Remember for the last 4 months all I had eaten was steak and macaroni and cheese and eventually nothing. I would get sick eating at first and I was still fearful of being poisoned but I started eating. It felt really good and I was starting to feel a little bit better. I was still having anxiety attacks but I was starting to feel somewhat better. Eric stayed there with me and helped me take baths. I wouldn‟t take showers because I was afraid too. I know it sounds weird but I had built up all these weird phobias about everything. I still wouldn‟t use toothpaste because of the poison thoughts that ran through my head. Two weeks had passed and all we did was lie on the couch and watch “Charmed.” Charmed was my favorite show and that‟s all I wanted to watch so we watched tape after tape of Charmed. At the end of the two weeks Eric told me he would have to go back to work. I was scared. I told him it was okay at the time but I was so afraid of being in that apartment by myself. Eric had called his mom and they asked him if they could come out to visit because they wanted to see him. I told Eric it probably wasn‟t the best time for me to be meeting his family but I told him it‟d be okay. We found his family a hotel and they came into the city. We also told his mom and step dad that I was a sex change because we didn‟t know how to tell them that I was a pre-op transsexual. They treated me like any other person when I met them. They knew everything I was going through but they were the nicest people. His mom Arlisha, his step dad Scott and his little nephew came. We actually got out at that point and did some touristy things like going to Hollywood Boulevard and Universal Studios. That was really tough on me being out with all of the people in the city but I managed to get myself through it. It was strange going back to Hollywood Boulevard because it was the first place I‟d ever gone to when I first went to California. This time was different though. I had been through so much. They stayed for a few days and eventually they had to go back to Indiana. It was a nice visit and it was also really nice to know that Eric‟s family had accepted me. They are honestly some of the nicest and most open-minded people you could ever meet and I have much love and respect for them. Eric told me he would probably have to go back to work after they had left and I told him that I thought that if he had to leave me that I should probably find someone to take me back to Wisconsin so I could get some help. Nobody in Los Angeles could help me. He said that he would go back to work and come back every day after work to take care of me. I asked him if he could call them and ask them for some more time off and he did. When he called he found out that people in his platoon had found out about me. The military does have their ways. He was worried for his own safety at the time. They told him he couldn‟t have those two weeks off and he needed to get back to work. He sat me down and told me he had to go. I just cried and cried because I had grown so dependent on him taking care of me now. The day he was supposed to go back he was walking out the door and I was looking at him, he turned around and looked at me and started to walk out, but, he turned back around and walked back in and shut the door behind him. He told me that he wasn‟t going to leave me. Not now, not ever. At that moment he made a choice that would follow him for the next two years He said that he was going to go back with me to Wisconsin and he‟d deal with the military later. I told him that he couldn‟t do that because he‟d end up in a military prison. He said, “What‟re they going to do? I only have a month left of my call of duty. I‟m pretty much out anyway.” This whole idea was not a good one but after everything that had happened I didn‟t want him to leave and he didn‟t want to leave either. He was giving up his military career to take care of the person he loved. Some people would say what he did was wrong, and some will agree it was the right thing to do. Who knows who‟s right? Either way we would pack up the apartment over the course of the next two weeks and leave Los Angeles. I was saying goodbye to the career and life I worked so hard for, and he was saying goodbye to his military career. We both made choices, good or bad. Life would have to go on. Daina‟s boyfriend at the time Jim said that he would make the drive to Wisconsin with us. He was really ill at the time because he was going to have a bone marrow transplant soon. I didn‟t think he was healthy enough to drive with us but he did and I still respect him to this day for doing that. We hired movers and housed our things with them until we found a place of our own. The trip was pretty long but I drove almost the whole way there. It was good for me to do that because it got me used to driving again. We never thought about what Eric did again until a couple of years later but I don‟t want to jump ahead of myself again. When we got to Wisconsin Jim wasn‟t feeling well and decided to take an airplane out the next day. We would be staying with my sister Shannon. The first week we were there we looked for a place but I didn‟t have the best credit in the world so it was almost impossible for us to find a place. Things were changing though. I was back in my home state and I was starting to feel a little more mentally stable. I started eating normally again and started working on things more each day. Eric and I were in love and that love knew no boundaries. Shannon was really working hard. She really is a rock underneath it all. She didn‟t understand what I was going through mentally so she just tried to treat me like I was my normal self. I was still crying a lot but things were getting better. After about a week at her house we started to argue a lot more. I think were both private people and don‟t like to have our space invaded by anyone even if it is a family member. Shannon told me that she couldn‟t have us stay there any longer and I remember I got so angry with her that I told Eric to just get in the car and we‟d go for a drive. While on the drive Eric said that we could always go back to his families in Indiana and try to find a place there. We didn‟t really know if it was the greatest idea, but it seemed like the only choice we had at the time. We went back to Shannon‟s place and I told her we were leaving. She said she was just crabby and that we didn‟t have to leave, but I knew it was time to go. I love my sister and I totally understand wanting your privacy. We left her house and we were off to a whole new life in Indiana. It would be life changing.

The Simple Life

I remember driving into Indiana. The first city that we drove into that Eric told me about was Bloomington. I just remember seeing the exits and thinking how small the city was. We drove through Bloomington and then we were onto Bedford. Bedford was even smaller and I kept thinking, how in the world and I going to live here? This is too small, I love a big city. After we got through Bedford Eric said that where we were going was even smaller than Bedford. Smaller? How in the world could something be smaller than this place? Well there is and it‟s called Tunnelton. We were going to be staying at Eric‟s sister‟s house that she had moved out of like three weeks earlier so we were able to stay there for a week or more if we needed to. It was April 2002 and I was in a house in the middle of nowhere. I started crying because I was still coming off of my nervous breakdown and now I was in a whole new place and I didn‟t know anybody. Eric assured me that we wouldn‟t be there long but we‟d have to stay there until we got a place. We didn‟t waste much time. His mom came over the next day when we got there and we drove to Bloomington to start looking for a place. I really liked Bloomington. It was a nice city, very clean and the people were very friendly. The first house we looked at looked like a throwback to the Brady Bunch. It wasn‟t very nice and the guy wanted way too much money for it. We looked at a couple of others and didn‟t find anything we liked. We picked up a newspaper and saw an ad for a house on contract. It was a rent to own. This sounded like a good idea but we weren‟t sure what the house would look like so we asked the people if they‟d meet us out at the house so we could check it out. The house was out by Lake Monroe and it was beautiful and we loved it immediately. It was a three bedroom upper and lower with two living rooms and a huge fenced in backyard. It was exactly what we were looking for. We got along with the couple who was selling it really good too and told them that we wanted to move in immediately if they wanted to sell it to us. We came to a financial agreement and we were out of Tunnelton and living in the house in Bloomington. It was a pain in the ass at first because we would have to wait almost two weeks for them to move our things from California to the new house. It also cost almost six thousand dollars to do that. I recommend U-Haul to anyone who‟s ever thought about using a moving company. It‟s much cheaper and your stuff doesn‟t get broken as easily. I loved living in a house. It had been so many years since I lived in a house and this one was going to be ours. I loved living out where we did too. It was quiet and we didn‟t really have any neighbors. The fenced in yard helped too because we were able to do whatever we wanted to in the backyard and nobody could see us. You know things like lying out in the sun naked on your back deck? Fabulous! The only people we really saw the first few weeks we were there was Eric‟s family. It was fine though it seemed I was calming down a bit and that‟s exactly what I needed at the time. After a few months of living there people that Eric used to know started to come around to visit. Eventually we had a whole crew of friends at the house. I was still going through a lot of mood swings the first year or so we lived at the house. Sometimes, my mood swings would be unbearable for Eric. It took a strong person to put up with my bullshit. I was still dealing with depression, and anxiety but I was getting a little better. I found a doctor when we got there and the first time I saw him I explained everything that I had been through and he asked a lot of questions and I got a lot of answers. He told me that he believed that I was Bipolar and also suffered from Manic Depression. He asked me how long I had felt the way I was feeling and I told him most of my life. I don‟t think that you realize how long you‟ve actually suffered with something until you find out what it is. This definitely explained a lot of the behaviors I exhibited throughout the years of my life. It was good to know there was a name for what I had, but it would be another two years before I actually sought treatment for it. Things were going really good at the house. I had an ad back in and was surprised I was actually able to make money in Indiana. I was starting to feel like myself again. I had my moments though especially with obsessive thinking and things but I felt better. We knew eventually we‟d have to deal with Eric having left the Marines but after a while we just started living like normal people and not thinking about anything else. We were only living together for about six months by ourselves before all of the friends from the past started spending time at the house. It was fine though because it brought a little life into the house. We made some really great friends. During the time we were living there I contacted my friend in France and asked him if he would send me the money to get my breasts redone. I figured it was time to get them done because I was really sick of looking at the uni-boob. He sent me the money to do it and Eric, me and two of our friends went to Oklahoma City. I was nervous about the surgery but I needed to have it done. I ended up getting my breasts done bigger and the doctor really did a great job fixing them. He told me that he wasn‟t sure he was going to be able to do them because he found more loose silicone in my chest walls. Actually he was very surprised how much there was. I told him that I had two surgeries to remove it already so why wasn‟t it gone yet? He told me that silicone is strange and it can seep into muscles and it won‟t show up all the time when you‟re looking for it until it gets hard. Once again let me reiterate this to the transsexuals thinking about getting loose silicone injections into your chest. DO NOT DO IT! After reading my book I would hope that after knowing how many surgeries I‟ve gone through to get it scraped out, it would help you make a decision that is healthy. The first year went by without a hitch but I was getting an itch to live closer to the city so I told the owners of the house that we weren‟t going to buy it we wanted to move into the city of Bloomington instead. They weren‟t too happy about it because we were paying all of the bills on time and they really liked us, but when I‟m ready to go I‟m ready to go. We started looking for a place in Bloomington and eventually settled on a rental house that had just been built. It was gorgeous. It was a brick house, without a lot of land, but nice and near everything. The day we moved in was a nightmare because it was snowing, and raining and it‟s hard to move out in that kind of weather. We got our friends to help us. It took about 8 hours but we did U-Haul it this time. I sound like I‟m doing a commercial for U-Haul but I really believe in the whole do it yourself process. We finally got moved into the new house. When we first moved in I told Eric that I was going to write a book on an idea that he had mentioned to me one time while we were taking a bath. I said that I always wanted to write and what did I have to lose by at least trying it? He was totally behind me. I think this was a good turning point for me in life because writing was my passion it always had been. I started working on my first book and titled it The Mystical Journey: The Book of Elandor. I had every intention of releasing the book under the name Meghan Chavalier but the more and more I talked to my family about my book while I was writing it I realized that it would be something I would do that would finally make my family proud of me so I decided after it was done to find a publisher and release it under a pen name. Many people thought that it must‟ve taken me a long time to write my first book, but honestly, it only took me two weeks. I get very obsessive about things and my obsessive behavior had a great product at the end of it this time. My book wouldn‟t be released until March 2005 but the point was that I had written my book and it was in print. What a great accomplishment especially after the life I‟d lead. We had only been living in the house about three weeks when Eric and I were watching television in the living room. We both must have nodded off but were woken up by a really loud knock on the door. Eric woke up and I told him to be quiet that I wasn‟t going to answer it. They knocked again and then I heard someone in the backyard at the back patio door. The house was dark and I had turned the television off. I saw someone trying to peer into the house from the backyard and I just told Eric to stay down. The next thing that happened was the phone rang. I didn‟t answer it. We heard a car drive off and I figured it was safe. I went upstairs and listened to the message on the phone. It was the military and they were looking for Eric. Well, we knew what it was about. They had come looking for Eric and they were going to find him no matter what happened. It was a very scary thing. I still wasn‟t feeling the greatest mentally and now we had to figure out what we were going to do. We left the house and drove to meet one of our friends. When we met our friend we got in his vehicle and headed north. We only got about an hour away when we decided that maybe Eric should just get a hotel room and think it out. My friend got the room in his name so that they couldn‟t connect anything back to me. Eric stayed there for about a week and we visited him. Eventually though we had to make a choice and that choice would be for Eric to go back to San Diego and turn himself in. I was heartbroken but I told him that we couldn‟t live like this anymore. We had to get this taken care of. I called my lawyer and he called the base and asked them what he should do. They said that if he turned himself in he‟d get in a lot less trouble than if a police department picked him up. The next week was spent staying at a friend‟s cabin down by the river. I know Eric was scared and I was afraid for him but we knew this was the only option. After a week Eric‟s mom and I drove him to St. Louis and we spent the night. The next morning Eric got on a Greyhound bus bound for the base in San Diego, California. I didn‟t want to say goodbye to him, but I knew I had to. He was my guy, and he was still a hero to me. Eric‟s mom and I drove back to Indiana and I went back home. Eric‟s sister decided to stay there with me for a while when Eric was gone so I wasn‟t alone. I was so worried about what was going to happen to Eric. We were calling each other like crazy. Eric got back to San Diego and before turning himself in went to see “The Passion of the Christ.” He said watching that gave him the strength to go and do what he had to do. When Eric first got there and told them he had gone AWOL almost two years ago they locked him up on a room at the base for the night. He said he was pretty nervous about everything when that happened, but the next day they came and got him, and by the next day he was back in his uniform and back at work. He didn‟t go to jail and nothing happened at all but he would spend the next six months in Oceanside completing his contract with the Marines. I had a hard time at first when Eric was gone getting used to him not being there but I really took the time to get to know myself. I realized just how strong I was as a person. Eric started getting paid again and was helping pay the bills back home so that was nice. I was still working my ad but spending most of my time doing live web cam shows which I made a lot of money doing. I was surprised how strong I was. My grandmother once told me that you find your strength when you need it and I did. Around May I was really missing Eric. It had been two months since he had been gone so I called him and told him that I was going to come and visit him. He was surprised I was going to actually drive to California to see him, but I loved him and I needed him. I called my friend Don and asked him if he would fly out and drive with me back to California and he did. The trip was a little wearing on me because I hadn‟t really driven long distances in almost 2 years, but it was nice to actually get out and see the country again. We had a good time driving cross country and Don drove most of the way. He knew I still had some issues with anxiety and heavy traffic, but honestly it went really well. It took us three days to get to California and when we got there I felt like I was home. The weather was beautiful and things seemed good. I dropped Don off at home and drove to Oceanside. I was on the phone with Eric the whole way down there because there was a lot of traffic and I hadn‟t driven in that much traffic in a long time, but I did it and it all turned out great. Eric had rented a hotel room in Oceanside and when I first saw him I felt weird. It was like reconnecting with an old friend after you haven‟t seen them for awhile. I was really tired and told him not to even dream about having sex. I wanted to but I couldn‟t even keep my eyes open. The week that Eric and I spent together in Oceanside was so beautiful. It felt so good to be back with my boyfriend, my lover, my friend. I did manage to do one photo shoot and two films while I was there but this time they came to me. I had reached a point with the adult industry that I didn‟t care what they paid me from here on out if they wanted me they‟d have to come to me. It‟s a money game and they were certainly going to make more money on those things than I would. I called my friend Jeremy and asked him if he would fly out and drive back to Indiana with me. Jeremy is honestly one of the best friends I‟ve made in Indiana and I have the utmost respect for him. He flew out and it was his first time in California. We had a good time going out to a club in San Diego and just hanging out in general. The day that I had to leave and go back home was heartbreaking for me. It was really hard for me to have to leave Eric. It was weird because I remember when he had to leave on the ship that night and now I was leaving him behind. We knew we‟d be back together but it would just take awhile. The ride back took a long time and Jeremy and I were not even speaking by the end of it. Have you ever traveled cross country with someone? If you don‟t fight by the end of the trip something is wrong with you. Don‟t worry we were fine after a good night‟s sleep. When I got home Eric‟s sister Trish was there. She told me that she was going to start spending more time at her own house in Bedford and that was cool even though I knew I was going to miss her because we really did get along really great. The first few days back alone at the house were hard for me but I learned to adjust and over the summer I had a great time. I felt like I was getting back in the world and having a fun time doing it. I didn‟t go to bars at all, because I just don‟t. I don‟t think that‟s there‟s any reason to hang out in those places when you‟re dating someone and you don‟t drink anymore. There‟s nothing worse than being sober around a bunch of drunk people, unless you need a good laugh. I spent most of the summer working doing live web cam shows. I wasn‟t really seeing any clients because I just didn‟t feel like it. There comes a point in your life where you start to slow down in the sex industry. You start to feel like you‟ve let people invade your private life long enough. You‟ve already sold yourself so it‟s okay to take yourself off the shelf once in a while. My first book had come out that March and that was an exciting time for me although I was a little sad not having Eric there to share in the moment with me but he was excited for me nonetheless. I worked a lot through the summer. Eric was having problems getting out early after going back. They were thinking about making him go to court and he could‟ve ended up in the brig but after hearing his story they finally told him that they weren‟t going to make him go to court, they would let him go home. It‟s really hard for people in the military who lead alternative lifestyles. It‟s a constant battle with them mentally because they could be totally in love with someone of the same sex and never be able to tell anyone. Can you imagine living that way? I think that law needs to change, but it‟s just another form of discrimination against our community and it‟s condoned by a lot of people in government. Eric came home in August 2005. We had a lot of problems when he first came back because we had been away from each other for so long. On one hand, you‟re so happy that your partner is home, on the other you feel like they‟re invading this space you created for yourself while they were gone. It‟s a process that can take some time to get through. The house was also a bad reminder of everything that had happened to him and I don‟t think he ever felt comfortable living there. Every time we heard a noise at night it was like someone was going to come and take him away. We lived like that for a while before we realized that we knew it was over. He had done the right thing and because he had done the right thing he could live his life again. The first thing we did when he got back was get his new driver‟s license. It was very exciting for him because he wouldn‟t have to be afraid to show his identification anymore to people when we went places. He was a legal citizen once more. We stayed in the house for another six months before deciding to find another place to live. We just wanted to start over again somewhere new where we both felt comfortable. We were looking in the paper for houses and found an ad that said Beautiful Home: Rent to Own. We decided we‟d go out and take a look at. What‟d we have to lose really? The house was in Bedford, Indiana. Almost all of Eric‟s family lived in Bedford, even though we only really talked to his mom, step dad, grandmother, grandfather, sister and nephew. The rest of his family never really treated me liked I belonged in their family, I guess because I‟m a transsexual, but we didn‟t care. The house was on two acres of land with a huge fence around it. We wanted to be able to have a lot of animals so this place was going to be perfect for us. Luckily the woman who was in charge of renting it out was a lesbian. Perfect right? She told us that if all went right we‟d get the house. Well, the next day we did receive a call from the owner and he told us that we were going to get the house. We were so excited and we moved in about two weeks later and we‟re still in the same house today. We moved in March 2006. I turned 37 years old the day we moved into the house. I was getting older now and I was really starting to feel it. After we moved in we settled down and just got back to living. We also started to acquire a lot of animals. We currently have three dogs and five cats. I was starting to have some of the old problems coming back to haunt me again. I was going through deep depression and having anxiety problems. I thought, great here we go again. I didn‟t stand still this time though because it had gotten so bad that Eric and I almost ended our relationship. It can be really difficult for someone to live with someone who is Bipolar/Manic Depressive. I knew it wearing him out and he‟d been through enough and I told him that if he wanted to walk, he could I wouldn‟t hold it against him, but he stayed. He also stayed if I agreed I‟d finally get the help I needed. I went to the doctor and he prescribed me some medications. Well, those medications sat on my nightstand for about a week. I wasn‟t feeling any better and I told Eric that I was going to start taking them because I didn‟t want to lose him or myself again. The first day I took that first pill was so scary for me. After I took it I swore I was going to die so Eric walked around the backyard with me until I calmed down. It made me tired and a little shaky but after I had taken a nap I honestly felt better. After about two weeks I started feeling better and better. Wow! It was working I was starting to feel like a normal human being again. I had suffered for so many years with this illness, and people suffered around me because of it and all this time I could‟ve just taken those pills. I couldn‟t feel bad about that now my main goal was to get better. I did get better and I still take those pills to this day. I think that you have to get help when you need it. I waited a long time but it‟s never too late. Don‟t suffer if you don‟t have to. It can steal your spirit and nobody should live like that. I sit at home some days and just think about life and where I‟ve been and what I‟ve done and I still don‟t think I‟ve even grazed the surface of myself as a person. I know that getting older is good in one sense, because I feel so much wiser. I really feel that I‟ve learned from all of the mistakes I‟ve made in my life. I‟m lucky that I am able to live my life the way I choose to and the only person I have to answer to in this world is me. I‟m glad that I was able to become the woman that I wanted to be even though it took a long time to get there. I‟m grateful that I‟ve come to terms with my own demons and learned how to cage them when I need to. I don‟t regret anything I‟ve done in my life because I did what I had to do. It‟s a whole different world living as a transsexual. We are the third sex. I don‟t want people to think that the transsexuals you see on Jerry Springer are what we are all about because we‟re not. We are loving, compassionate human beings. Our path is paved with many obstacles and if we‟re lucky we can get through each path without getting knocked down. I will always stand up for my transgender brothers and sisters because I believe in myself as a transgender person and I want them to have the same faith in themselves as I do. I‟ve learned that no matter how excited you are you should always wear condoms when you‟re having sex with someone unless you‟ve been dating for awhile and you‟ve both been tested for HIV. It can save your life. I‟ve learned that drugs and alcohol are not the answer to your problems. If you have a problem, seek help to stop using. I was able to do it without any help, but not everybody can. One of the most important things that I learned was that I was worthy of love and worthy of having someone love me, just because I‟m a transsexual doesn‟t mean that I don‟t deserve the same things as everyone else in life. I‟ve learned that not all friendships are meant to last, and sometimes even though it hurts you have to say goodbye to friends when it‟s just not beneficial to you anymore. You have to remove the negative in life to get to the positive. I know for sure that gay people deserve the same rights as everyone else in this country, just because some rich white guys in suits in our government don‟t like gay people doesn‟t mean they can treat our community like second class citizens. We are Americans and under the rights guaranteed us in the Constitution we are equals. You have to know your rights. Would I recommend anyone walking the same path I did? No probably not. I chose a path that would take me down so many different roads and they weren‟t always the best choice but I‟ve learned so much. Every day I wake up and I look up and tell God, “Thank you for letting me have just one more day on your Earth.” I am so thankful for everything I have been through in my life and I hope that I have shown you that it‟s not an easy life but it can be a good one if you do it right. I‟m not here to judge you. That‟s between you and your God. You have to live your life to the fullest and you have to live your life the way you choose to live it. Nobody can tell you who or what you‟re supposed to be only you know the answer to that. I want to thank you for reading my book and sharing these moments with me. It has been quite an interesting ride. My mom told me once that, “Life is a roller coaster you just have to decide when to get off.” She was so right, I have decided to get off that roller coaster and finally start living again. One of my friends asked me once what I wanted them to write on my tombstone when I died and I told them, tell them to write, “She Lived.” That says it all.

Courage 2012 Moving Forward

My autobiography was published in 2007. It‟s been five years since my book came out and the response has been very positive. As you may have noticed the title to my book has changed and my life has changed in so many ways since I last put those words on paper.

In 2008 I began recording music, a dream I‟ve had since I was a young kid. I was able to meet two very important people who allowed me to create and write my own music and then put it all together for me and release it into full length CDs. I‟ve never thought I was a great singer, but I can carry a tune and write a good song so I‟ve found much joy in my life because of it. In fact, I released a 33 song CD in 2011 called “Universal Star Machine.”

The title? Honestly I was sitting in my office one evening eating Star Crunches. Have you ever eaten those? I thought I‟m going to call my new CD Universal Star Cruncher. I asked my friend what he thought about the title and he said that it was funny, but it needed something more to it, hence, Universal Star Machine came to light. It was a year long process but in the end I was overly satisfied with the end result.

My grandmother, whom I absolutely adored passed away in August of 2007. I wrote the song “15 Years” for her because it had been 15 years since I had seen her. I guess sometimes we can forget the people that love us when we‟re caught up in our own tornado, and then sometimes, it‟s too late to be there when they go. There will always be a part of me that‟s missing because she‟s gone, but I take comfort in thinking that she‟s watching over me and making sure I‟m alright.

Also in 2008 I won the first Lifetime Achievement Award from The Tranny Awards. I felt as though all of the work I had done was finally being recognized and I was very honored and humbled to receive that award. The AVN Awards have never recognized me, as a performer. It‟s fine though, I‟ve always thought standing on a stage and thanking your family for Best Anal Sex scene and crying in the process was just a little too bizarre, even for me. In July of 2008 I started my own online LGBT Human Rights Coalition called Stopping the Hate. You can visit the website at StoppingTheHate.com. I realized as I approached my 40‟s that it was time to do something positive for the community and this is what came to light. It will always be a work in progress, as we continue to fight for equality in this country, and I hope one day I will be able to headline it with, Equality Reached.

In January 2011 my relationship ended after almost 10 years. It was a difficult period in my life but I‟ve managed to get through it. My partner of ten years has since moved on but we remain friends. I wish him only the best in his life. He got married in October 2011, and I was actually the person who married him to his new wife. It was a way for me to close the chapter on that story in my life.

In March 2012 I turned 43 years old. My life has been such a whirlwind sometimes I think back and wonder if it was actually me that those things happened to. I am grateful every day for my life, even though it‟s difficult at times, I just keep my eyes open and keep walking forward.

My last living grandparent passed away in August 2011, which was very difficult. I think it has something to do with realizing that above all else in life you are not immortal. Who would want to be?

The one thing I have always done is live my life truthfully. I believe that you must live in truth in order to see the light. As I sit here putting these words onto my computer screen, I am comforted in the fact that I have lived my life openly, honestly and without fear. I think knowing you can wake up every morning and be exactly who you are, is probably the most important thing you can do for yourself. Acceptance within you is the only thing that should matter.

I have been called many things in the transgender community, a pioneer, a legend but above anything else I want people to realize that I was just a person who had a dream and a goal. I achieved most of them, but there are so many more roads I‟ve yet to travel. I look forward to the twists and turns, and one day I hope to look back and feel complete satisfaction in what my life meant.

You see, it was never about becoming famous, rich or being a star to me. I just wanted to create something that made people happy whether it was adult films, books, music or just a silly joke I told them. I simply wanted the world to know that I lived, that I existed and that I was exactly who I wanted to be without regrets. The only thing I can say to any young transgender man or woman or gay, lesbian or bisexual individual is to just be you. Rock you. Be you. Live you and above all else love you.

The LGBT Community is one of love. You will find acceptance in this community and create an extended family.

I looked in a mirror many years ago and realized who I was. I realized I was a strong person who could handle anything, no matter how good or bad. I knew that when I walked away from that mirror there was no looking back, that I was going to live my life exactly the way I wanted to live it, and I have.

I wish all of you peace, love, light and existence in your journey through life, and that you may find love, happiness, success and peace. You will find that when you accept yourself as you are and realize that no one else is like you, just embrace it. You have been given an exceptional gift called life. Make sure that you live it.

The ending of the movie “The Hours” is the best way I can sum up life. I know it seems strange that I would use a movie to reference life, but I‟ve always felt a certain kinship with movies and music.

To look life in the face,

Always... to look life in the face...

And to know it... for what it is...

At last to know it...

To love it... for what it is...

And then...

To put it away..

Always the years between us

Always the years... Always the love...

Always the hours...

Fun Facts

Meghan has done over 150 adult films.

Meghan has appeared in two calendars.

Meghan has done over 20 magazine covers.

Meghan performed in New Orleans as Cher, Madonna and Annie Lennox at Papa Joe‟s Revue in the early 90‟s doing 17 shows a week for almost 2 years.

Ever wonder where Meghan has lived? She has lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Phoenix, Arizona, Houston, Texas, Tampa, Florida, New Orleans, Louisiana, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Hollywood, California and Indiana.

Meghan was the first transsexual adult film star to sign a contract with a major adult film company in 1998.

Meghan has directed 6 movies one of those was nominated for an AVN Award.

Speaking of AVN Meghan says, “I‟ve been in this industry for over 12 years, I can‟t wait until they give me a Hall of Fame Award. Just like Pink, “I‟m not dead yet, but it would be an honor.”

Meghan wrote Transsexual University. It was a very successful movie and garnered her rave reviews for adding humor to the adult film genre.

Meghan filmed an independent film 8 years ago called TV COWBOY. The movie has never been released.

Meghan was the first Lifetime Achievement Award Winner from the Tranny Awards in 2008. She was honored for her work in adult films.

Meghan first performed under the stage name Meghan Crawford in Milwaukee, Wisconsin changing it to Chavalier soon after. Her name was inspired by Maurice Chevelier but she changed the e‟s to a‟s to be different.

Meghan worked at Whitecap Mountain Ski Resort in her teenage years in the restaurant.

Meghan owned her own restaurant for almost 2 year called the Side Street Café‟ in Bedford, Indiana.

Meghan Chavalier has released many music singles over the years and recently released a 30+ track CD called “Universal Star Machine.”

Meghan‟s first film was called TS Centerfolds. The movie was only available in limited release, and to this day has never been released domestically.

How to Contact Meghan

You can learn more about Meghan Chavalier at her official website http://www.meghanchavalier.com

Visit Meghan Chavalier‟s Official Twitter page at http://www.twitter.com/MegChavalier

Visit Meghan Chavalier‟s Official Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/JoanOfArcsGhost

Visit Meghan Chavalier‟s Official You Tube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/meghanchavalier

Stopping The Hate LGBT Human Rights Coalition http://www.stoppingthehate.com

You can email Meghan Chavalier at [email protected]

Confessions Of A Transsexual Porn Star: Deluxe Edition © 2007-2012 Meghan Chavalier. All rights reserved.