Chapter 7 Hawaii, from The Life of A Jewish Stripper
He must have known and felt that he was losing me because he started talking about Hawaii and how beautiful it was and again how cool it would be to raise a family there. And once again when he really wanted something, he found a way to do it. He found a way to save money for plane tickets to Hawaii and made plans where we would stay. One thing I knew by now in my life well was moving and once again I let him put fantasies in my head. Beautiful dreams that were never realized.
The excitement of just going to Hawaii was buzzing in my head. “Everything could be different there” I told myself. San Francisco though beautiful was often cold, damp and rainy. We stepped off the plane in Hawaii and the heat immediately warmed me. They put a Lei around my neck and the smell of beautiful orchids and other flowers enveloped me. The hotel he found for us had bar a with a pool table and I was now a decent pool player because he loved to play, and I learned to play. Just about every bar in San Francisco and Hawaii had a pool table. And the hotel also had small roof top pool with some lounge chairs.
We were technically in Waikiki but just minutes from Honolulu. Oahu was more than beautiful; it was truly enchanting. Everything was so perfectly manicured. Just feeling the sun on my face gave me hope. I was mesmerized by my stupid hopes and dreams and the scenery of Hawaii made it that easier to dream of a happy ending.
I still suspected he was at the least bisexual. For some reason, walking in Waikiki he always made sure to point out women who were actually transgender or transsexuals and the fact they were all prostitutes and he seemed fascinated with them, and loved imitating gay men. “What is the big deal I thought?” To me, you are who are, it wasn’t my job to judge, I’d seen plenty of them in San Francisco.
I thought some of the girls I worked with before were gorgeous or perfect. Trust me when I tell you, the girls back East or even California had nothing on the Hawaiian girls, they were all perfect in my eyes in one way or another at first glance. Perfect tans, perfect asses, perfect hair, perfect make-up, and perfect tits (even the fake ones). Even a girl who was a swimmer and wasn’t that pretty, had an amazing body. I don’t think the men even looked at her face. It was like a collection of dolls; these girls were immaculate.
My insecurities were already being manipulated on a daily basis and I felt like I landed in the middle of models in Hawaii, California too. I had no idea that someone could think that my body was perfect. I had a thick ass, thick thighs, thick hips even at size six or size four. Once, during a day shift, a man came to the stage to tip me, I was dancing in my hiking boots instead of the regular stripper heels, he said “My aren’t you a healthy child!”. I heard that word often, healthy. I suppose as in I didn’t look like I was starving myself like some of the girls.
The club I went to work at was owned by a Korean woman, she was the mother hen. By now I had lots of different outfits and I got that deep dark tan quickly with my Mediterranean, olive skin and I didn’t realize how muscular my body was now. It was a nice club, lots of booths and big stages and plenty of room for walking back and forth to the guys sitting at the stage. The best time to make your money was when there were Navy guys coming off the ships, horny as hell.
Or when there were big groups of Japanese or Chinese men with their Lois Vuitton or Fendi “men’s” bags, lol (had to insert the lol) full of cash. One night, I was told by the owner or a bouncer to go to a separate room in the back of the club with a few other girls. There was a circle of chairs, and it was just an old dingy room. The men were sitting there with their cash and the girls were dancing in front of them. Then, I noticed some of the girls were bending over and allowing the men to finger them. I said I wasn’t feeling well and left the room as quickly as humanly possible. In retrospect, I did feel sick.
I recalled the bar tender at the club in San Francisco, she said “You don’t want to go to Hawaii”. She knew exactly what my ex was and how he was treating me. She meant the drugs; everyone was on meth or coke or worse.
At night, coming home from the club there were girls on every corner with cell phones and their pimps either walking around or driving around. I may as well had been a whore. My ex always came to the club at the end of the night to get “his” money so he could get his drugs. Then often if I got off work at two in the morning, he wanted to go hang out at a regular club until they closed at four in the morning, probably to either get some drugs or may be even deal them who knows. He mentioned once he used to deal coke when he lived in San Francisco with his Turkish girlfriend. He showed me how he used to hide an eight-ball up the sleeve of his jacket.
Don’t get me wrong, there were some good times in Hawaii, may be the first month or two. He took me to all the touristy places. We went to the North shore and watched the surfers. The waves were sometimes ten or more feet high and in winter they got over fourteen feet and that’s when they had surfing competitions. We went and did the touristy stuff. We climbed to the top of Diamond Head. It was an amazing view. We even rented a car one day and drove all around the island, he showed me Chinaman’s Hat and we drove through the pineapple fields, and we drove through a rainbow like it was an arch. I was truly happy in that moment.
But again, we had to move. He found us an apartment hotel where we had a little studio apartment with a couch, a coffee table, a little kitchenette, and a little balcony where I could relax and smoke. The balcony looked over the market where tourists went to buy souvenirs. He got a job around the corner at a Jamaican restaurant, but just like always I never saw a dime of his earnings and he flirted with ever woman within two feet of him. By this time, I was working almost every day or night, sometimes double shifts and at the end of the night he was always there to take me home and make sure to get the money out of my hands before I got a chance to stash it.
But we had lockers in our dressing room, and I bought a lock telling him I didn’t want any of the girls stealing my stuff. We had been married a little over a year now, may be a year and four months. It was May or June of ’95 when we got to Hawaii. I was exhausted. I missed taking a bath in a tub. I didn’t want to be a tourist anymore, I wanted to settle down and get a regular job. I wanted kids, but no matter how much unprotected sex we had I didn’t get pregnant. Thank you, God.
I missed back home. I missed my mom. I even missed my dysfunctional family back at the D.C. club. Then my mom came to visit. Maybe she sensed something, I don’t know she never asked.
I don’t know how he saved enough to take my mom around the island and restaurants. She probably picked up the bill a lot when we were out.
I wanted to tell her so badly what my life was really like. I had taken off work for the week when she was visiting and when I was telling the owner of the club my mom was coming, she gave me fifty dollars and told me to buy her something nice.
I felt a sickness in my stomach when she was leaving at the airport. I wanted to beg her to take me with her, but with my foolish pride I said to myself “You’re a grown woman, clean your own mess”. I was also pissed off that she hadn’t come out to see me until we were in Hawaii telling myself how fucked up that was and may be if she had come out to San Francisco I would have left with her. My pride, as always, got the better of me.
Then a few weeks after my mom’s visit, his younger sister and her girlfriend came to see us. I don’t know how it ended up, but I was alone with his sister and she asked me if I was happy. I went completely mute. For fear that if I told her no, she would tell him, and I would get screamed at or worse. So, I said yes, and asked her why she was asking me, of course I’m happy I’m in Hawaii or something along those lines.
She told me that he had lived in Hawaii before and had got in trouble with some drug dealers.
If I didn’t expand on this earlier, he had legal problems from DUI’s and many legal problems back home. Back in San Francisco I tried to encourage him to go home but he was afraid if he had to serve any jail time, I wouldn’t wait for him, or I would meet someone else and abandon him. With all the shit that I put up with, this man didn’t trust or realize how in love I was with him. Even when I tried to reassure him that I wasn’t going anywhere he couldn’t believe me.
I always had nightmares that someone was running after me and I knew that he previously being a bail bondsman had access to guns, but now I started having nightmares that I shot him or that I pushed him off a cliff. I started to realize that one of us might end up dead soon and it wasn’t going to be me.
A few days after his sister left, he actually got balls enough to ask me himself if I was happy and I said no and that if he didn’t get some help with anger management I was going to leave. He threw me out of the house, he had the only key to the apartment. Finally, I realized that was the problem. I never said no almost my entire life to anyone. When I was a child, I didn’t know any better but now I was a grown woman. Fuck what he wanted anymore. What did I want out of life? He couldn’t even get me pregnant, probably because of all the drugs. Thank you, God, once again, I have to say here.
I walked down Waikiki crying, watching happy couples on vacation kissing and hugging. I thought to myself “I give this motherfucker anything he wants and he’s the one unhappy’’. I walked down to the beach and just sat there staring at the water trying to figure out my next step. I went to Denny’s, and I had a little money to get breakfast. I walked back to our place hoping he had calmed down by now and as usual he let me back in the house and told me how sorry he was, that he loved me. I knew he was fucking other women regularly, probably many of my coworkers.
One day for some reason we had to move apartments, but we stayed in the same building. I came home earlier than expected one day and the bed wasn’t made which was a big red flag because he was a neat freak. There was a condom under the bed, and I questioned him about it, and he turned it around on me and asked, “How do I know it’s not yours?” and accused me of doing the cheating. Our apartment building had a pool, and I went downstairs to sit by the pool. The next night I went to work, he came and picked me up drunk out of his mind, we took a taxi home and he passed out on the bed.
Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to bring up my concerns, though there was never a good time, I woke him up and said something like “I don’t like the way you’re living your life” or may be “I don’t like our life anymore”. He stood up, reached under the bed, pulled out a mag flashlight like those that cops use and proceeded to hit me with it multiple times on the head.
I passed out and when I came to he was asleep again on the bed and there was blood all over the carpet. I ran to the lobby in our building and asked the nice elderly couple that worked there to call 911. The police came and woke him up and put him in handcuffs. He looked very confused as if he had no clue why he was being arrested. In the meantime, I was taken to the hospital by ambulance, they gave me stitches, then the police asked if I wanted to go downtown and bail him out. Whereas once back home when he got arrested for a DUI and driving on a suspended license, I bailed him out, this time I was done.
