How I was mistaken for a prostitute

The key to looking like you belong in places you don’t belong in, is simply an air of confidence. I learned this in high school when I decided I wanted to ditch class and practice piano (I’m such a rebel, I know); no teacher would ever stop me if I simply went where I wanted with an air of authority and an attitude of I’m-doing-more-important-things-than-you-and-you’re-wasting-my-prescious-time. I’ve since found out trying to look natural as 22 year old white, female, government worker in the more than sketchy part of town, is a little more tricky and doesn’t always turn out the way you would expect.

The first time I visited one of the more infamous motels in south Provo was with my coworker Tim. Tim was tall and looked like he could easily beat up anyone who looked at him funny. Luckily for everyone who ever looked at him funny, he chose to diffuse situations with humor and always seemed to have the upper hand in emotional contests. We were working on a case together because I was only 2 months into the job, and he had a grandiose way of showing newbies how to succeed by doing almost literally no work. I think he liked mentoring me because I'm an overachiever and he thought it was funny. 

The motels in south Provo are by no means the sketchiest places I’ve ever been. In big city terms, they’re probably on the upper level of sketchy. Most of the people who frequent them are addicts, the homeless, the mentally ill, or some combination of the three. The rooms reek of shady deals and the buildings have a general uncleanliness about them that comes from years of nefarious usage and from not being cleaned properly. Me and Tim went to visit a couple of clients who lived there who's cases he was going to pass on to me. They were an older man in his 70’s (who I’ll call Bob) and his 16 year old autistic son who found themselves homeless after a long string of events that Bob effectively blamed on the government.  Because ‘the government’ doesn’t exactly have one singular person to blame, the ranting and raving landed on me because I was his caseworker. That’s kind of how it works when you’re a social worker. This family has given me plenty of stories on their own so I won’t talk much about them here. Suffice it to say, visiting them always made me want to curse the inequality in the world and simultaneously curse Bob because of the lies that came out of his mouth.

I visited Bob frequently, to make sure his kid was taken care of. Tim would go with me most of the time but I quickly grew confident enough to go to the motel by myself because I’m Liz and I tend to put myself into needlessly dangerous situations. It really was no big deal going there alone because I acted like I belonged there. No one ever questioned me or even looked my way. Most of the time people were too busy getting into violent arguments in the alleyways between buildings, dealing drugs, or sleeping off the previous nights’ supply to even realize there were other people in the world. The tenants were only really organized by the fact that they were all lost and happened to gather in the same place. Addiction does that to people. Plus I deeply and strongly believe most people are not trying to take advantage of you; they’re just trying to survive like everyone else. So I just did my job and left.

It was as I was leaving one evening, that the two women approached me. One had long, mousy brown hair fashioned into dreads. She was smoking a joint and stared me down coolly, one hand resting in the pocket of her cargo shorts. Her bare arms were covered in tattoos, and she seemed to favor skulls and pinup girls. The other was a platinum blonde dressed in what appeared to well worn lingerie that clung to her skeletal frame. She was talking to the woman in dreads in earnest, reaching for the joint and upon grabbing it, sucked it like it was her last breathe of oxygen. Her face was done up so her makeup sunk into the premature lines of her face; they belonged to a 50 year old but I was sure she was only 30 something.  I ignored them, stopped to answer a text, and then turned to unlock my car. It was then that I felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun around, knees bent in anticipation of having to fight.

“Whoah there sista’, calm yur joint.” It was the woman in dreads. I glared at her confidently, sizing her up. I wasn’t nervous. If she went for me, Blondie was close enough and frail enough that I could effectively get her into a choke hold and have some leverage over Dreads… “Look hun, we was just lookin for a ride down to the gas station. We been here all night an’ Barbie here is sick of her man who is stayin here. Why don’t you be a doll and give us a ride.”

It wasn’t really a question, it was more of a demand. The small, terrified part of me could see the headlines: ‘Social Worker trying to save the homeless, brutally slaughtered in parking lot’.  The rational part of me sized up the situation: The two women did not look like much of a threat. Blondie was most likely an addict and looked like she could break in half. Dreads had the feel of an abuse victim mostly by how aggressively she presented herself and the way she had asked to get a ride; all I would have to do there is get her to open up and not hurt Blondie who she was obviously protecting. My gut told me I could easily gain the upper hand if needed but I probably wouldn’t need to. Why not do a nice thing for them? The gas station they wanted to go to was only a mile down the road.

“Ok sure” I said with a smile and pushed her hand away from my car to assume dominance while commenting on how it sucks to be ride-less when one needed to get away. They agreed. Dreads sat up front with me and Blondie sucked the joint in the back seat. As we drove away, I asked them about their lives. They were wanderers. Blondie was bisexual and was on and off with Dreads. Blondie’s boyfriend was really her meth supplier who Dreads had gone to beat up that night but he was too drunk and high to make it satisfying. Dreads obviously had beef with this guy and wanted revenge. They were evicted from their shared apartment months ago and were just waiting for the colder months to scrape together some money for a place. People often stayed at the motel for free. Dreads was a sexual abuse victim and became addicted to heroine really young but she proudly reported she was clean from most drugs for 3 weeks. I softly injected some community resources into the conversation as if I had been in their position and been to these places as a client, not a caseworker. They were already aware of everything I had to offer. Eventually the conversation came back to me.

“So what are you doing living at that motel huh? You seem too clean to live there” Dreads looked me up and down. I did look too clean.

“Oh I don’t live there, I was there for a client” I said.

“Where? 8b? That’s where you came out of! You were with that batshit crazy man?”

“Yeah that’s the one”

“Damn girl, I’m surprised he even needs a girl but I guess every man does. I hope he pays well for your sake. I sucked a guy that old and I’ll never do it again for too many reasons. That’s when I was really into meth. Stuff makes me crazy. You ever tried it?” I shook my head. She cackled and turned around to talk to Blondie who was staring out the back window in a daze. I was slightly in shock. I suppose I shouldn’t have said ‘client’ since I didn’t want to reveal I was a social worker for the government. So what else could ‘client’ mean if I was just like them? Dreads literally thought I was a prostitute. Me. A prostitute. I deliberated clearing up the confusion but we arrived at the gas station and the two women got out of my car quickly. Dreads stuck her head back in the window and told me to take care and advised me to get a real job because “sucking balls for money is hell”. I nodded, waved and drove off quickly.

Needless to say I didn’t tell my mother about this situation. Or anyone really. Sorry mom. I’m not dead though! Yay! And I don’t think I’ll ever give strangers from the motel rides again. And I think I’ll park down the street... I’m not sure what else I learned from the situation except that I suppose in the right light and with the right attitude, anyone can really be anything. I’m just really glad I’m not a prostitute in real life. Because sucking balls for money really does sound like hell. 

How I found laughter in a government bathroom

Precarious. That was my position. Precariously squatting on the edge of the toilet bowl. The toes of my scuffed up pumps placed on each side of the seat. They were sliding ever so slowly toward the water beneath me and I was not coordinated enough to reposition myself without completely falling off so tensed my thigh muscles to hold on. I silently hoped I had grabbed my bag off the floor before she saw it and realized she was not alone in here. She came in so quickly; I hadn’t had time to prepare myself. My phone, which I had been playing bejeweled on until moments ago, was stuffed unceremoniously down my bra.

The only sounds were her relieving herself (for what felt like eternity) and the shuffle of her sketchers against the mint tile. I gritted my teeth and tried to stay balanced on my porcelain perch, desperate not to make a sound. One slip and she would know I wasn’t in a meeting like I had said: I was in the bathroom for the sole purpose of avoiding her. When your career is to keep children away from their mother because she’s been deemed “unsafe” by the law, the space between you becomes insurmountable. And the distance between our stalls seemed much to short.

I heard her readjust her clothing and head to sink. I breathed a solitary sigh of relief…. Too soon. With an almighty splash, my foot slipped into the sea of germs beneath me and I screamed as I wacked my head on the wall.

“Fuck”, I gasped, my leg still positioned in the toilet bowl. The water had splashed all over my jeans and I was barely holding onto the shiny, metal support bar on the wall.

“You ok in there?” she asked in a bemused tone.

I tried to disguise my voice, “Uh… yeah…. Just, just dropped something in the… yeah”. Yeah. I just dropped my pride and any hope secrecy. No big deal.

“Ok” she said and quickly vacated, leaving the awkwardness air to mingle with my shame. I noticed she didn’t wash her hands. Of course she didn’t wash her hands. Then I realized my foot was still in the toilet and I gagged at my self-righteousness. I quickly got up, trailing water behind me, and scrubbed my leg with paper towels.  Fuck fuck fuck. My language is the least of a hundred things my job has slowly but deliberately eroded. My job. The familiar train of thought charged through my brain.  Of course this would happen to me. I’m cursed. I thought this was what I was supposed to do. I hate this job. I hate everything about everything…

The train halted abruptly, its whistle resounding in my brain: What am I doing with my life?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried since I’ve worked for DCFS. I can’t tell you how many difficult decisions I’ve made, how many times I’ve been called a bitch, how much responsibility I have to carry on my young, naïve shoulders, or the many difficult positions my clients have bent my psyche into. It’s like being told to have sex with someone you don’t know and don’t necessarily want to be with: devastating to the emotions and hugely, irrevocably intimate. Somehow in the act of trying to repair peoples’ lives from the outside, the vast empty on the inside grows to insidious proportions. It’s terribly difficult to fight how that empty sucks everything away and simultaneously connects me to the people I've come to love and truly hate. And here I was sitting on the bathroom floor in a government building covered in toilet water, because my love for a client and inability to accept her failure drove me to literally hide in the bathroom. Gee whiz.

It just hurts. Life just hurts. I bent my knees to my chest and buried my nose in between my thighs. There are pieces of me that still hold onto hope that there’s more to this life than what I see. Those pieces that have loved unconditionally. Those pieces that helped a few people succeed in the child welfare system. The pieces that can laugh with my friends even when the whole world tastes bitter and incomplete. The wholesome pieces that truly love life. But I often feel exactly how I am: in a mess I’ve created from avoiding my problems, very unsure how to proceed, and seriously debating crawling back into the stall I just came out of. I’m 22 years old and I’m somehow supposed to make decisions about other peoples’ lives. I’m supposed to try and help them surmount insurmountable problems. I’m somehow supposed to be able to deal with the hurt and sad and empty and pain and anger and brokenness and responsibility and failed promises and cruelty of circumstances and the injustice of the system and the vulnerability of humankind. And somehow I’m supposed to want to keep living….

It was there on the bathroom floor I began to laugh. It started with a smile as I looked at my damp jeans, evolved into a chuckle as I imagined myself balancing on the toilet and my client’s total confusion, and solidified into true laughter as I considered how childish the situation was and how comedic the outcome was. Precarious. That was my position. Precariously wavering on the division of devastation and comedy. Child abuse isn’t funny but people are.... even in situations that make most cringe. Wanna hear a story how a client offered me pizza in a bathroom that she got from her pimp? Or how two twenty something caseworkers tried to parent a foster kid on a four hour drive? Or how one of my coworker's clients likes to try to bribe government workers? Or about the accidental texts we get from clients who are high? Or how some parents like to name their kids after different STI's?

 

Maybe that’s the ultimate choice for me: choosing whether to laugh or whether to cry. Because, dang, if falling into a toilet isn’t funny, I don’t know what is.