L.A._Narcissist

I had my third class with the ladies last night. It ended up very lovely and started out a bit of a shocker. I only had two students, John Wayne and Little Bird. When I walked in they both began to explain to me that Mama was meeting with her sponsor, Tough Chick had decided to move to another group home so that she could be closer to her kids and Blondie took off because she didn’t want to be in a home anymore. Turns out Blondie had been seeing a guy and he gave her a cell phone. The women aren’t allowed to have cell phones until they pass the nine month mark and then only for a really good reason, like they have kids. Blondie is nineteen and has no children as of yet.

Blondie didn’t like this rule and decided to take her chances out on the street again. This made me really sad. I wasn’t expecting this at all and I was so shocked. I was looking at these women so naively and not realizing how hard it is to get out of this racket when it’s the only thing you’ve ever known. Good luck Blondie. I wish you all the best. Stay safe.

I think that news really affected the rest of the evening. It was just John Wayne, Little Bird and myself in the kitchen all night. On the good side it was pretty quiet. We didn’t have to compete to talk. John Wayne likes to talk. A lot. So she spent the evening peeling potatoes, grating cheese and telling us about how she got into prostitution. We made a baby greens salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette and potato cheddar soup with the turkey stock we made last week. hmm…

How John Wayne got into The Life:

Basically she hit her teens and started to feel awkward and insecure like we all did. Her mother didn’t respond well to her hormonal daughter and began yelling at her and hitting her. This made John Wayne feel very isolated so she started hanging out with friends more. She met a guy who would become her pimp. He got her high and took her back to his crib and the women there started telling her about the life.

As she was telling this story I recalled how my parents became Jehovah’s Witnesses before I was born. In fact, I wouldn’t be here now if my parents hadn’t decided to become Jehovah’s Witnesses. My parents were getting high one night with their artist friend, Floyd. He started telling them about the religion. They would excuse themselves every so often and go into the kitchen to discuss, amongst themselves, what he was telling them. I guess they were so high it sounded great to them and so they decided to join. That’s how my parents made one of the most important decisions of their lives. They were high.

Her pimp also told her he would buy her lots of new clothes and shoes and a cell phone. A brand new life. One she didn’t know how to get on her own. This happened to her at the age of fourteen. Later her pimp got shot and killed while they were on a working vacation in Tuscon, AZ. She saw her pimp just before he got shot. She was driving away with a “date”. Her pimp was standing on the corner, drinking a grape soda. She watched him as they pulled away and she thought she saw tears in his eyes. She had a strange feeling that this was the day and he knew it. There had been some trouble with some friends of his in L.A. and he thought they had come to Tucson looking for him.

While she was having sex with her date in hotel room a couple blocks from where she had been she heard a loud POP sound. She pushed her date off of her, grabbed his money (smart girl) and ran out of the room and down the street. By the time she got to his hotel the place was swarming with cops so she decided to stay low. She and his baby mama and another girl went to the hospital where he was pronounced dead, two bullets to the head.

After John Wayne’s story we all became pretty emotional. We started talking about how Blondie is only nineteen. Little Bird began crying because she was so grateful that John Wayne is sticking around and not going back out again. I put my arm around Little Bird. She motioned for John Wayne to come over for a group hug. I suddenly started to feel very loyal to these women like if anything ever happened to them I don’t know what I would do. So I said, “If either of you goes back out on the street again, I’ll kill you.” Because that’s how I express myself when I feel vulnerable. Interestingly, they understood and laughed at me.

last week when I began reading the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It’s a book about resistance and how resistance stands in the way of getting anything done and how to beat down resistance into a bloody pulp. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it.

Anyway, I started reading it and it’s like my body was just waiting for me to pick up this book because after reading the first several chapters my body went into overdrive getting things done that I have been putting off for years!

One of the things that I have been wanting to do for years is volunteer. I have done various charity events and have donated to this and that cause but I have never taken on the commitment of showing up somewhere every week and being accountable to someone. It always scared the shit out of me because I am a perfectionist and if I can’t do something perfectly I better not even try. Also, being committed to something day in and day out always filled me with fear and dread that I would be bored, I’d have to deal with uncomfortable feelings, etc. But I have finally taken the plunge. I have finally beat resistance down to a bloody pulp.

Last week I called the Mary Magdalene Project which is a home for women trying to get off the streets and out of prostitution. I asked if I could volunteer my services as a chef and teach these women cooking classes once a week. They immediately set up a meeting for me and the Program Director. We had a great meeting. She is a lovely woman and she loved my idea. We had our meeting on Monday of this week, Nov 16th, and I taught my first class last night.

I have a class of five women so far; Blondie, Tough Chick, John Wayne, Mama and Little Bird. I have given them nicknames for this blog in order to protect their identities. They each have very dynamic personalities and are at different stages of sobriety and staying clean from prostitution.

I was really nervous about my first class. I didn’t know if they’d like it, if they would beat me up or what. At first only Little Bird was really excited about the class. She was really helpful and said how grateful she was that I was there and was really looking forward to the class. Blondie started rounding people up and then disappeared for a while. Tough Chick sat on the couch and said she wasn’t that interested in the class and Mama and John Wayne finally rolled in. Touch Chick eventually showed up because everyone else was in the kitchen. Tough Chick didn’t really want to participate so I didn’t push her. But everyone else got pretty enthusiastic. I started off by telling them about my experiences as a chef and how I started cooking and told them what we were going to make that evening: personal pizzas, grilled zucchini and a big green salad. They liked the idea of pizza and were not at all into the zucchini. I pushed on, undaunted.

I taught them the proper technique for cutting and made them chop a whole bunch of onions. We made our pizzas and grilled up the zucchini and they loved it! Even Mama who was not going to eat it at all had some, decided she liked it and had some more! I was so proud of that. We all sat down and ate and laughed. Well, we laughed because I was trying to be conversational and stumbled into delicate territory. I looked over at Tough Chick and asked what one of her tattoos meant. She said it represented what gang she had been in and I said, unwittingly, “Oh cool.” People sort of snickered and mocked me, “oh cool!” Like they were saying: that’s so cool to be in a gang? I don’t think so, naive white chick. And I sheepishly started to laugh at myself, getting that I was being an idiot and then they laughed at me. And then I laughed a little more and said, “So, great dinner.” And then they laughed harder and we all cracked up. And that’s when Tough Chick softened. It was a great moment and it really broke the ice.

After dinner some of the girls went outside to smoke and John Wayne and Little Bird and I sat in the kitchen and talked. It was the moment I had been waiting for, to feel like a family.

My proudest moment: getting them all to eat zucchini and they loved it! They smothered everything, including the pizza, in ranch dressing but they ate zucchini! Next week I’m teaching to make Balsamic Vinaigrette.

Check out my recipe for personal pizzas…