Why Are All Things Labeled "Adult" Bad For You?

Back in Youngstown, Ohio we have about three or four "Adult" novelty stores, a couple of strip clubs and plenty of liquor stores, or places that sold alcohol.

Funny thing about the world "adult".  When I was a kid, I always wanted to grow up fast and become an adult, because becoming an adult seemed to mean that I could have more freedom to get or do anything that I wanted to get or do.  Yet the only time you ever see the word "adult" mentioned it's usually associated around bad or negative things that you really don't want adults to do.

You had to be an adult to buy cigarettes.  You had to be an adult or have the permission of an adult to buy certain video games, records or attend certain movies.  You had to be an adult to purchase or watch or attend "adult entertainment".  Lastly, but certainly not the end of the irony, you could legally be an adult at 18 to die for your country, but you still had to be 21 years old to buy alcohol.

So I went back home to Youngstown, OH, expecting to stay under the radar as I tried to pull back together some of the pieces of my shattered family.  But instead of being under the radar, as soon as I walked into town I was placed on a virtual movie theater marquee.  When I left town, I was nothing but trouble.  When I came back, I was still nothing but trouble.  This time I was the type of trouble that some people were glad to see...sort of like fireworks, or a train wreck, or a combination of both.  It all just depended on what you wanted others to know about your personal views were on adult entertainment, as opposed to your own public perception.

Yep, that's right, those magazine photos I did, and the one video I had made with Julian - had made their way clear across country.  They were hot sellers in my hometown adult entertainment stores once I had become recognized.  As I walked through the town, the various looks that I received were very distinct.  Most of the local men from teens into their 40's smiled at me and said hello.  The women in that same age group either hissed at me, nervously smiled and walked away as quick as possible or they looked at me with such empathy. It was as if I had just survived a terminal illness.  All I wanted was just to be treated as a person.  I was a girl who had lost her way twice, both at home and while away from home.  Now I was coming back to my roots to try to repair some of the damage.

There was the also the occasional young white dudes in town, walking around starting cheesy conversations with me and then asking stupid questions like "Hi baby!  I saw 'dem pictures of you in those white, lacy panties.  You was looking good.  How many dudes did you fuck in Youngstown?"  My answer, "I fucked every guy here...except you.  And from the looks of you - don't hold your breath."  Then there was the "Are all black guys really that big, or was it camera angles?"  My answer, "Why don't you go fuck a few of 'em and find out for yourself?"

The older men in town who recognized me would jump to hold open doors for me.  Some of them were old enough to be my father.  The faster they moved to hold open a door, the more it told me that they saw pictures of me naked.  They apparently thought smiling, winking and holding a door open for me was going to increase their odds to get into my panties.  But they were wrong.  They were so, so wrong.

That's the reality of the glamorous life.  It isn't really all that glamorous.  I realized that all of us are guilty of projecting our weakness outward towards others - wishing or hoping that something or someone better will save us or guide us through our weakness.  Movie - Star.  Rock - Star.  Porn - Star.  Those are just words used to describe a commodity in a business, like sugar, corn or wheat.  The only true stars that exist are the ones up in the night sky.  And even those aren't what you think they are.  By the time we see the light from the stars out in the distance, they've already flickered a million years ago and look much differently today.

The mix of me being received and treated as either a pariah or a local girl who became a celebrity Porn Star, also played itself out within my own family.  My older sister and brother spoke to me over the phone, but really didn't want me to visit them at their homes and interact with their kids.  My younger brother and sister were still living with my mother and father and wanted to see me.  When I tried to stop by the trailer and meet them, my father met me at the door holding a shotgun over his shoulder.  He never pointed it at me.  He just held it next to him to make his point.  Funny,  he told me that I was an embarrassment to him.  I asked him if that the now 9 year old boy he had living in a trailer on the other side of town, or the dozen or so women he cheated with on our mother was an embarrassment to him.  All he could say to me was, "The Lord forgives and your mother forgave me.  But God don't like good white people having sex with those fucking black monkeys."    Funny thing, how some people are religious in one breath, and just as ignorant, backwards in the very next breath.  Even if it was my own father.

I just left him standing there holding his shotgun.  Thankfully, I had enough money to pay for a room at the downtown motel that my mother worked at.  I was also able to meet her and talk to her as well as my younger brother and sister.  It was tough at first, but then it got easier over the course of several days.  My siblings just wanted to know if I was okay.  They were still struggling but doing better.  But our mother, well she was a different story.  All she did was cry and tell me how sorry she was for not being there for me.  She wanted me to go to church and become Born Again and to get past all of the sins that I had brought onto my life.  She knew from word of mouth about my life in California.  But God bless her soul, she never blamed me for a split second.  She only blamed herself for my own faults.

Then she started negotiating with me to go to the church and see our preacher and surrendered myself to God.  I only promised that I would go to a Sunday service incognito.  I figured that at least if I went, I would somehow get some blessing from at least going.  Perhaps put another check in my favor with God for all the mistakes that I had made.

In the four days leading up to the Sunday service, I kept contemplating the sins I had did in my life. Then the Friday afternoon before, a thought came over me.  I didn't know if God had left me, or I had left God - or if either way mattered anymore.  All I know is that when I drove around town in my rent-a-wreck VW Beatle, I saw my first true love Michael, dressed in his jeans and flannel shirt, getting ready to get into his car, to go to his job at the General Motors plant.  He was already married and had two kids.  As happy as he looked from a distance, he also looked just as unhappy because what he was doing that day, he had to look forward to living that same life for another 40 years.  Marry young, have some kids and work at the plant for forever.  Maybe pick up some odd jobs as a handyman to make extra cash.    I just knew that no matter how hard I tried, Youngstown wasn't going to be the life for me.

So with the help of a little hair dye, I changed over my blond tresses to a less than conspicuous dark brown brunette and tied it all up in a simple ponytail.  I purchased some faded blue jeans, sunglasses, boots and sweatshirt.  I was going for the real, country girl, Midwest look. When I initially walked into the 10am service, no one knew that it was me.  There was about 100 people or so at the service.  I kept my mouth shut mostly, outside of a simple good morning.  I could see some of the people trying to place where they might have seen me before - after all, everybody in Youngstown either knows you, or knows somebody who knows you.  But some of them just couldn't place me.  I could see the bewilderment in the faces of the nosy ones and gossipers.

I looked around the church and could see how many faces that I knew sitting down.  I grew up with many of the younger ones.  However, the adults seemed a million years older as their tough working life started showing it's toll.  I could also see my mother and father sitting in the pews with his son from the other woman.  My baby brother and sister were sitting behind them looking as disinterested as they possibly could.

After the service I stayed as far back as I could and waited my turn to talk to our preacher.  Pasteur Wright knew who I was when I approached him even with my disguise.  He had baptized me when I was a baby.  I guess in a way he had seen me naked too.  I was the last one in line and he kept our conversation light until the last family exited the church.

"You have traveled a long, long way from home and back little, sweet Riley.  You have survived some awful conditions at home with your family, you ran away and have come back to where it all started.  I am glad to see you take a step or two back to a more solid and positive path towards the good things that God has in store for you.  Know that I still love you and God still loves you unconditionally."

His words immediately cut into my heart and I began to cry.  All I could do was just hug him and cry.  It took a few minutes before I could calm myself down and string together a sentence that had any meaningful sense to it.  I managed to tell him all the mistakes that I had made.  Every time I finished a portion of my life, he just kept reminding me that although members of my family were pained by my deeds, that it was really the pain of their own helplessness that bothered them to most.  They were still in Youngstown and could do little to change the damage that our father had caused.  It was now up to us individually or collectively to rise above the damage and make a better life for ourselves.  The good and decent life that God had intended for all of us.  Not the wreckage that our father had brought on to us in his own weakness.

All he asked was that I try to repair my relationship with my siblings and mother and that over time my father may get past his lack of understanding God's words through the Bible.  He only asked me to do one thing as I kept going forward with my life.  He asked that I keep a Bible next to me and just try to read a portion of it everyday.  Even a paragraph at a time.  He made me promise to do that even if I never stepped foot into church again.

"And if you have any questions about some passage that you read, feel free to call me - or ask a local priest or Reverend in whatever town you land in.  Keep your heart to yourself for a while.  You will find your answers in the Scriptures.  Trust me.  Too many important men in your life have broken your heart, starting with your father.  Even though your friend Julian is still living that other life of sin, he did know enough that you didn't belong there.  That tells me that he cared a lot about you and of the light of goodness that's still inside him.  His sending you back home might have saved your life from who knows whatever more you could have fallen into.  Who knows, maybe one day you can save him as well?  But you have to make yourself stronger than before you can do that."

I just couldn't believe Reverend Wright's words.  I had anticipated a very negative conversation of confession with him.  Instead what I got was an extremely humanitarian conversation whereby he was in complete understanding of me, had complete acceptance of me and was nonjudgmental.  It was unbelievable.  When I left the church, there were still a handful female gossipers hanging out so that they could get a good look at me while I was walking out so that they could confirm their suspicions.

As I approached my car, I could hear one of the women yell out "Whore!"  I turned away from my car and quietly walked over to them.  "Thanks for calling me a whore, Mrs. Finnemore.  It's nice to know that a nice church going woman like you would call me that no more than 20 feet outside the church door."

"It's a free country Riley.  You should be shame for what you done to your poor mother and then have the nerve to come around here.  Hasn't she suffered enough?"

"Yes she has.  But with gossips like you hanging around and dragging up all my bad deeds up in front of her face, I don't see how you're making any of this easier on her or me?"

"Well, you're the one who came to the church."
"I came to talk to Rev. Wright after the service.  I did not come to make a scene or embarrass anyone.  Now can I go peacefully without being called anymore names?  Can I?"

The three women just nodded their heads and walked away.  I looked back at the church doors and could see Rev. Wright peeking through.  He opened the door when they were gone and gave me a big smile.

"That's the way Riley.  That's the way to be the adult in the conversation.  Psalm 37 verses 1 - 4. You'll be okay."

It was at that moment that I realized that the only time the word "adult" really meant any good, was when you showed restraint and wisdom, rather than excess and stupidity.

The Glamorous Life...

"The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode but the true beauty of a woman is reflected in her soul."  Audrey Hepburn

I never had a problem with my body.  I know it's not perfect, but it is sexy.  I know how to dress and how to undress in front of a man to turn him on.  I know I'm one of the lucky women for being comfortable with their bodies.  Not all women are.  We get caught up in what we look like and what we think society says that we should look like.  It's hard to say if we women are born into this system, which seems created by men, or if we simply willingly perpetuate it.  Whatever the case...it's out there...like some big Catch 22 of life.  We work so hard for so long to perfect our looks...looks that fade away as we finally begin to understand that our beauty inside needs to be greater than our beauty inside.

I learned how to make love to a man really well.  How to drive a man crazy in bed if I wanted to, and if he deserved it.  It was love that I had a problem with.  I never learned to love myself.  I kept looking for love and approval from others...in particular men.  I failed in learning how to be happy and how not to look for a man to make me happy.  I just simply was at a point where I depended on using my body - to use men - to make myself feel better.  I thought I was grown up and mature.  I didn't understand that I was turning my body into a commodity that was being used by the very men who I thought I was using.  This reflected itself in the romantic relationships that I found myself in.

So I did several "Girl Next Door" type nude photo shoots.  I dressed up and stripped down like a high school cheerleader, office secretary and a nurse.  I was all of 19 going on 30 and didn't even know it, or care.  Then one day while I was working an odd day shift at the strip club, word had got around that I did some magazine pictures.  This was frowned upon.  You could only do such if you were a big name.  I was a little name.  The manager of the club, who had already treated me pretty much like dirt was ready to toss me out of the club.  The day he told me not to come back for two weeks until I got my shit together was also the same day I met Julian Jackson.

Julian was a good looking, muscular, 6'1 black man from New York.  He played football and ran track in high school, but came out to LA to pursue a career in acting.  He attended UCLA for all of two semesters before flunking out, and according to him, finally found himself.  He landed a couple of bit parts in two successful movies, but no one in Hollywood would give him a shot in a real movie.  That was until he got involved in the porn business to help pay off his mounting bills.  The minute he whipped out his 10 1/2 inch penis on video, he became the perfect stereotype for an industry constantly looking for a black Adonis in the sexual taboo or niche market...formally known as: Interracial sex.

Two years after he graduated high school in NY, Julian was here in LA recruiting me at my own strip club.  He told me that he really loved me, and he did.  He thought that we could do well working together making movies together.  That I could take a path where I could do some films with him and I wouldn't have to have sex with a lot of different men.  Of course I rejected him.  Of all the lovers I had had in my life, none of them were that well endowed.  I certainly didn't want my first time having sex with a black man involving my organs getting moved around for a taboo video.  So I rejected Julian's offers for about two months.  That was when I got fired by my boss for doing the magazine photos without his permission.  He didn't want his customers getting bored by a girl they had already seen in a two dollar magazine or an online subscription.

So, I made my first video with Julian.  He had several up and coming (no pun intended) porn actors.  Everyone in the movie had to get tested.  I was no different.  Julian was great.  He basically got the actors, a couple producers and a hot shot director to invest in a bunch of new faces.  I came onto the set later as a fresh, new face who was going to settle down his character, a hot shot boxer who was climbing to the top of the ranks in his career.  The movie was called "Knockout" and it was a knockout on the market.  It was made for very little money and became a hit, with Julian getting acting and producing credits to his name.  It actually generated several millions of dollars and was nominated for a handful of AVN awards, the adult film's industry's equivalent of the Academy Awards.  Everyone involved with the film became instant stars in the industry.

I got to have sex with a black man for the first time with a big dick and it was all on video.  I didn't need to do much acting in that shoot.  I wanted Julian.  In another life he could have been a fashion model, but this was the life that he had chosen.  Even crazier, he wanted me to be with him as much as I wanted to be with him.  Julian was different, not just because of his size, but also because of his charm.  His charming demeanor and his ability to get people to do things was even bigger than his dick.  He was clearly headed for stardom.

All I remember most about that film shoot, and the next five months that Julian and I dated, was that I always had shaky legs the morning after sex with him, my organs always felt like they got moved around...and we managed to smoke great pot or snort some great coke on occasion.  I lived in a kind of insulated life.  All the people around me were in some form of the Adult Entertainment industry.  Some people in the business drove nice cars and lived in expensive houses.  That was mostly the people on the top of the food chain.  Just like in Hollywood, the vast majority of low level porn actors lived from paycheck to pay check and in many instances from one drug high to another.  Such was the case when you try to drown out your memories of how you earned that money to pay for the drugs you purchased.

That wasn't going to be me.  I was with Julian and he was being offered nice money for his tool of the trade.  With Julian, I was definitely in the porn "IN" crowd.  I had made only one film with him and I was getting the chauffeured Mercedes Benz and Jaguar treatment everywhere I went with him.  It was a glamorous life even if people were only recognizing me for taking all of Julian's penis inside me.  It was one scene, it took one hour to shoot and there was no acting necessary.  Now I was getting phone calls from other producers and directors to star in their films taking on as many black dicks as they could line up.  Then there was more calls from producers and directors to have me co-star with the biggest white dicks that they could find.  Julian and I rejected every offer.  We were going to be strictly do films with each other.  I gave him the liberty to go with other actresses, but I didn't want any part with any other man, but Julian - black, white or green.

Now don't get me wrong, I did like seeing the contrast between my body and Julian's together.  Not for nothing, but the brother had a gorgeous body.  He had pecs, traps, back and a muscular ass with dimples.  But I simply wasn't interested in sticking every black cock these slimeballs could find to stick inside my body.  It just wasn't happening.

Ironically, when I made that first film, there was another newcomer on the set.  Another blonde chick, 19 years old, who came from South Dakota.  I'll just call her Cheryl.  Cheryl was as naive as they came.  She came from a town that only had five black families in the entire county.  But, she really wanted to become a porn-star and she wasn't going to let anyone, or anything stand in her way.  Cheryl jumped at the parts that I kept turning down.

As the days turned into weeks and, then weeks into months I could feel Julian and I drifting apart.  I became more disillusioned with him working with different women and us having nothing resembling a normal life.  I retaliated by signing up for a film that was going to have me involved in a three-some at a prison.  At least that's what I had signed up for.  However, as the movie was being filmed, the director and producer tried to surprise me with a 10 on 1 gang bang scene.  I was in cocaine induced haze most of that week - but nothing sobered me up faster than realizing that the director and producer were trying to pull a fast one on me.  I pretended I needed to go to powder myself up and check to see if I was having my period.  With that I sent Julian an emergency text, with my location and held myself up in the bathroom for the 30 minutes it took for him to arrive.  It was the second and last time that he would rescue me from myself.

When Julian arrived, the director and his scumbag assistant stopped knocking on the bathroom door.  He said to them whatever had to be said, and I was off the hook.  I came out, got dressed and got into his car.  He came with his car and another car filled with a bunch of his friends.  His friends, most of whom I had never seen before, looked like a casting call for a bunch of rough looking, LA gang bangers.  He knew that to get me off that set and out of possible retribution, he was going to need muscles, money and a female replacement so that the film shoot could go on.  He brought all three and walked me out.  Then he told me something that hurt me at the time, but ended up saving my life.

"Riley, you need to go home."
"Isn't that where you're taking me?  Back to our place?"
"No Riley, you need to go back home, home.  You need to get out of this business all together.  You're all fucked up.  You're always getting high."
"If you want me to go Julian, why won't you leave this shit with me?"
"Riley, this world here was never for you.  You came here because you fell into a pothole.  I came here because I wanted to make money and fuck as many girls as I could.  I was made for this place.  I'm doing what I set out to do.  Are you?"

Julian checked me into rehab for five weeks.  I did the full time there.  When I came out, I knew that I had to leave for somewhere other than where I was.  I had managed to save $40,000 in my bank account from all those tips I got stripping and my first two asshole boyfriends.  It was enough money to get me back home and try to re-establish myself in some kind of life, at least for a little while.  The day I packed my things up from Julian's house, I seemed to run into everyone that I had met the past several years.  Everyone wished me well, as I was leaving Julian's castle.

Just as my cab pulled up to take me to the airport, Cheryl had pulled up in her car and ran over to me to say good bye to me.

"Hi Riley!  I'm so glad to see you before you left.  Guess what I did yesterday?"
"I don't know, what, Cheryl?"
"I just did my first interracial gang bang and bukkake video!  Now I'm really going to get all sorts of video offers!  I'll make 300 videos faster than Vanessa Del Rio!"

I just looked at Cheryl with a forced smile and said, "Good luck."

From there, I was on my way from California back to Ohio.  I was hoping to leave all of the adult entertainment business behind me.  I came to Cali a wiseassed, know it all, wholesome kid.  Now I left a jaded, slightly hardened, and more humble young woman.  What I didn't know was what was going to be in front of me when I returned home.

We Are More Than Just Body Parts

I know that there are studies today that say that women are constantly being objectified by men.  We are looked at and are identified by our body parts rather than us as a whole person.  On the other hand, men view other men by the sum of all their parts, and not by necessarily by their hair, chests, behinds, eyes or penis bulge in their pants.  But, not for women.  We are viewed by men for just that - our hair, eyes, breast size.

For example, when a pretty woman enters and leaves a room - regardless of her intelligence or ability to do a particular job, men will more than likely comment among other men about her face, behind or breast size.  That goes even for women in the room.  They too will make critical remarks about that woman's hair, nails, choice of clothes or even her shoes.  Neither the men or women will criticize a handsome man who enters the room in the same way as that woman.  We may just cut to the chase and just call him an asshole, or incompetent, no matter how nicely he dressed.  Once again, we address him as a total being first, before we cut into him about his body parts.

Therefore, we women are complicit in the objectification of our own sex.  We know that men can get so caught up with a woman's looks, that we forget that sometimes we women get caught up in how a woman looks too.  We forget to look at, or comment about the total woman inside.  We women learn these bad habits at an early age.  We learn how to smile, wiggle our boobs, flash a quick wink, or bat our eyes and appear helpless and unknowing when doing so might help get us out of a jam.  Or even to get a man to do us a favor.  Being able to do that can be very empowering for some women.  We know how to turn "it" on to get what we want from men.

It is amazing when men can turn that game around on us, and get us to do things for them in complete disregard for our own health, safety and emotional sanity.  We use our sexual charm and our bodies to get men to pay money to us so that they can do whatever they want.  We then give our money to another man, the man who acts as our father or protector.  We try to please this man in every way.  This man, who is more than likely responsible for putting us in the position to prostitute ourselves in the first place.

Then we also have our addictions.  We pick up addictions of all sorts.  Love addictions, worship addictions, pain addictions, depression addictions, drug addictions and of course alcohol addictions.  The pursuit of happiness is an ideal goal in this life.  What you sacrifice to pursue that happiness doesn't come cheap.  It takes time to learn that happiness is achieved from within.  You learn that if the pursuit doesn't ruin or completely destroy your life first.

So there I was...showing off my body parts to entertain men.  I thought I was whole, complete and beautiful. Meanwhile deep down inside, I was broken into pieces...like a shattered glass...

The Road To Me Being The Next Big Thing...

It's funny how life works.  I had sex with a few guys while I was in high school, during a very vulnerable moment in my life and I was called a slut.  Then I moved onto become an exotic dancer, where men paid to see me undress in front of them and suddenly the perky C cups on my slender, athletic body made me one of the most well liked and highest paid dancer at a small stripper club in LA.  No one called me a slut then.  Nope, they called me anything but that.  More like Baby, Honey, Sugar, Sweetheart, and Shorty.

Being idolized like that by men, being wanted so badly by even complete strangers definitely gave me a sense of empowerment.  I knew they were just being that way to me, just to get into my pants.  If I got in bed with them, they would just screw me and leave me.  But leading them on and never giving them anything, other attention - I owned them.  I could make them pay me for anything I wanted and not even have sex with them.  They couldn't just use me and walk away.  But me living that life didn't last for long.  The owner of the club was my boyfriend.  9 months earlier I was the next big thing when I walked into his club.  But, two weeks into my 10th month, when a new bottle blond walked in the door with her fake DD cups - she became the next big thing at the club and I was made an outcast almost immediately.  She had my boyfriend, my job and stole my Louis Vuitton pocketbook from my ex's apartment.  Before I left town, I went back to his apartment to get her face acquainted her face with my fist and his balls with my foot.  They could have everything else, but they couldn't take my Louis Vuitton bag.

For yet another time, I was rejected by someone I really cared about.  I was still young, foolish...and heartbroken again.  So I began enjoying my drinking and marijuana all over again.  I left that club and got a temporary gig with a bigger strip club, that had a higher paying clientele.  But, I was a leftover from a smaller club, so my tips dropped down to literally pennies on the dollar.  My hours sucked.  I had to leave a nice apartment to live with a roommate, who was also a dancer, in a cheesy section of L.A.  The aunt that I had originally came to live with lied to my family back in Ohio and said that I had ran off and that she didn't know how I was doing.  But, she knew.  She just couldn't face the fact that she really didn't care.

One night, after I stripped at my new club in LA, a very sweet black man, Julian Dickerson, approached me and asked me if I was interested in doing nude pictures.  Oh he was as sweet and as kind as could be.  He was very convincing.  I wouldn't have to work as hard for tips from customers or work in a second rate exotic dancer club for the money.  I could do still and get some residuals off of Internet sales since men don't buy magazines like they used to.  He was an porn actor himself, starred in a handful of low budget porn videos.  He said that I had beautiful skin and didn't look drugged out like some of the other women who flipped from porn films to nude modeling - or vice versa - in order to pay for their drug habit.

Not all the girls were drug addicts or alcoholics.  But at some point, you eventually do turn to them if not to just go out and have a good time, then at least to numb yourself to the reality that millions of people, including your friends and family may eventually see you on screen having sex.

I wasn't going to do that.  I told Julian no videos for me.  But I didn't have a problem showing my cookies off to a camera lens.  What's the big deal?  We all come out of some woman's pussy.

The Little Girl From Youngstown, Ohio

How did I get here?  Where is here?  New York City of course.  I'm a real estate agent, renting apartments on the upper east side.  I'm originally from Youngstown, Ohio, formally a steel mill town that turned into a down trodden city from it's lost industry.  Youngstown has been trying to rediscover and redefine itself and it's industry as it goes into the next century.

What most of my weekday clients don't know is that the sharply dressed, petite, 27 year old, short haired brunette showing them apartments, is a former high school soccer star, a waitress, a stripper, a porn actress, a prostitute, a drug dealer and an ex-convict.  Now I'm a real estate agent in New York and living a pretty good life.  But I'm not done.  I've cleaned my act up, I've matured and I'm ready to take conquer this town.  In another life, I'd be a double platinum album selling, white female rapper with all my personal drama.

So where do I begin?  Well, I have a lot of good beginnings in my life.  Those good beginnings were usually followed by a short lifespan and then bad endings before I learned to move on.  So perhaps I'll just start here.  During my senior year in high school I skipped town and moved to Los Angeles, California with a distant relative.  I hated home and everything my family, friends and Youngstown represented.  My father was as religious as he was a racist, an alcoholic and a philanderer.  He would sometimes disappear for weeks, leaving my mother to fend on her own to raise six kids while he constantly took odd jobs after doing a stint in the military.  My mother cleaned beds at a motel and worked weekends at a laundromat, while my oldest brother and sister worked hard to help raise us four younger siblings.

Most of the folks in Youngstown, grow up and just get jobs in Youngstown.  So they never leave the area.  Generation, after generation of people from the same town, growing up, working, living and dying in the same town.  I wanted more than that for me.  I had dreams.  Big dreams.  I played soccer, and softball.  I was well known for my blue eyes, blond ponytail and well developed body in high school.

I always spoke to my friends about going to Hollywood.  Lots of kids do that sometimes.  We dream of leaving home and going someplace to make it big and that way we could come back to our hometown and sort of flip certain people the bird.  Tell them to kiss our asses, because we made it.  We left Youngstown, went somewhere else and became something.  Most of us dreamed of going someplace, but we ended up no place at all.  I was going to be different.  I was going to get out of Youngstown.

I had my first kiss at 13 to my first love, Michael.  We didn't really try anything more until we both turned 15.  I lost my virginity to him when I turned 16 and thought that he would be mine forever.  But, Michael didn't want out of Youngstown.  Michael was just counting the days when he would graduate high school and get a job alongside his father at the General Motors plant.  I wanted more than that.  He broke up with me at the end of our junior year.  He said that we needed to spend some time away from each other.

That summer I had sex with two of his friends hoping that would make Michael come back to me.  But I was wrong.  When Michael found out, he only stayed further away from me.  That in turn made me run into the pants of three more boys.  It was a potent mixture of marijuana, alcohol, teenage hormones and rejection.  I was just trying to find something to make myself feel better inside.  To make matters even worse, my mother lost our house that my father flopped on our house mortgage, so we had to move into the Martin Mobile Home Park.  Yep, South Ave in Youngstown.  We had finally sunken to trailer park status.

A couple big family fights, including my father getting busted by my mother for fathering a five year old kid on the other side of town with another woman.  Six months into my senior year, I was already labeled one of the  town sluts.  I wanted out.  My mother had a second cousin who had moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles to work for a TV network.  My mother wanted me out the door anyway since I had began doing drugs a lot casual drugs more often and openly in front of my other siblings.

So I got my little bit of money together and off to Los Angeles I went...