Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Joi To The World


Sept. 28, 2004

Today marks the end of an era.

I knew her as Joi. Her real name was Harriet but Joi was her working name and I called her Joi to the World. Now, that came from a disgruntled ex-lover trying to bring her down in front of me. And knowing her, I'm sure he had an axe to grind but he should have known it would take more than that to tarnish her in my eyes.

I met her in the Oklahoma City city jail. She was twenty-seven, or so she said, but even then there was at least a hundred years of rough road under her wheels.

She came in late at night and the slamming of iron on iron woke me up. I was there for an overnight stay, the first of many, and would get my release the next morning. I was twenty-one and nowhere near as worldly as I acted. She was full of contraband Seconal she'd swallowed when they busted her and wobbling around the cell cursing in tongues. She bounced off every wall in the joint before she found a bunk and I thought she'd never shut up and go to sleep. Jails are noisy places. You learn to ignore a lot of the crap that goes on around you there. But there was no ignoring her.

I'd been in the life for a while by then and thought I'd seen it all. But I'd never seen anything like that.

The first thing she ever told me about herself was : ' I bitch.' No explanation, no apology. Just a simple two-word personality summary. I could take it or leave it. You have to hang around and find out what a person who tells you something like that will do next. It's a rule.

We were friends for thirty-five years. And she was true to her word.

Joi was just that. A Joy. If you could get past the bitching and the drugs and the everlasting bullshit she dragged around with her everywhere she went.

She taught me the ropes, ran off any number of would-be pimps and made me laugh.

When I overdosed on Tuinal in seventy three she was the one who pushed and pulled me into the emergency room and flagged down an orderly. The protocol for overdoses in those days was to leave them where you found them. Some kinder souls might drop you off on the hospital grounds but there wasn't an abundance of kindness among junkies. Being seen in the company of an overdose, especially if you were an already well-known police character and a user yourself, was an automatic trip to jail. Nobody cared about anybody that much.

But not Joi. She swept/staggered into the ER with half of me over her shoulder the other half dragging the ground like a moth-eaten, better-days-seen mink stole, shouting obscenities and playing me off as a flu victim. She raised so much hell they treated me, just to get rid of her probably, and nobody ever got around to filing a police report. She never told me what or who she did to get the special treatment but I woke up in a soft hospital bed instead of a jail bunk. Of course the first thing I saw and heard when I came around was Joi, hovering about three inches from my face, already well into the drug safety rant she'd been practicing since I'd keeled over two days earlier. I remember very clearly the first words out of my mouth when I was met with that unpleasant sight,

"Oh, Lord! Take me now!" She hit me in the knee with a bed pan.

True story.

There are a million other true stories about Joi and maybe what I'm doing here is writing them down because they're worth telling.

We survived those wilder years she and I. We got older and squarer, or as square as one gets when one has seen too much, and we were separated by time and distance. We drifted apart like old friends often do. I got married and divorced, traveled halfway cross country and learned how not to be self-destructive. She was hit by a car in seventy-nine and suffered the rest of her life. They killed Joi that day. But it took twenty years for her to die.

I wasn't there and I should have been. Should have taken care of her like she always took care of me. But it was almost ten years later when I found out. And she let me hear about it. Did she ever. Her body was busted up but her attitude was intact.

I caught up to her again three years ago, just in time as it turned out. We visited back and forth, flying in for a week between Houston and Ohio, bed-sitting, turning off the phone and cutting up old times, every six months or so, until today.

This morning she died. In fucking Massilion, Ohio of all the unlikely places. I always figured Joi to wind up on a beach in Waikiki.

At least we had these last few years. When they bury her they will also bury the last vestige of the wild thing I used to be. A person I wouldn't recognize now if I passed her on the street. My past is officially interred. All that's left is this old woman who thought Joi hung the moon and never properly thanked her for showing a dumb kid how to stay alive on the mean streets.

The Angel of Death will have his hands full tonight.

You don't find friends like Joi everyday and I'm going to miss her like crazy.

I always thought I'd be the first to go.

And don't worry J, honey. I'm gonna write the stories. I promise.

Joi to the World.

Chapter One


It's a fact not all of us live the good life. Otherwise there would be no stories. Or at the very least what we were offered in the literary community would be a simple introduction to diabetes and little more. I don't have any saccharine-sweet anecdotes to offer here and that will send a certain segment running for the hills. That's just as it should be. Please, don't let me impede your progress.

Joi and I started out as middle-class nowhere-near-deprived girls from the Midwest. Geo-politically the only division in our lives was a state line between Oklahoma and Missouri. But it was all the same South/Southwest migration that got it's start in the 30's and continued well into the 60's. All the flat land - hard-working, hardscrabble barely-hanging-on existence of folks like us, looking for the American Dream that was so promoted, so promised in those times. They were the folks who were transplanted by their upwardly mobile children in the early 50's, after the second world war, a little further west from Tennessee and Kentucky, but not quite all the way to California, and who in that sub-urban Oklahoma soil still planted their backyard gardens of corn and okra, still clung to the old ways of the farm, the old superstitions, the old remedies, the old ideas of 'work hard and die poor'.

I could get into how the neglect and disinterest of our families (that oft-hailed but still questioned by me, 'Greatest Generation' ) drove us to marry too early in an attempt to get away, and seeing how badly that worked out put us in a position to spin off into a nether-world of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

That would probably do. It makes for good journalism and propagates the politically correct stories of The Fall and The Redemption. It is my sincere hope I don't sink into that morass here and if you catch me at it you can be sure I'm either lying, waxing sentimental or have gone soft in the head. Stop me in any instance. It's the kindest thing you could do.

Was it really all that easy to go from being nobody special to somebody of note in a very strange and unusual manner of speaking? I don't have the answers to that. Maybe that's after all what we're doing here. Getting a few long over-due answers to questions that even now, at this late date, still don't have any but the most hazy of explanations.

Mostly I had a damn good time with my life. It was free of formal education and bereft of struggle for job security and in-house politics, a fact that will make many of you less fortunate cringe and rail at the audacity of such a confession. If so my purpose here is complete and my job here is done. I don't want to argue with you or try to defend my life-style. Too many people before you have lain that worthy argument at my feet and seen it crushed asunder.

I did what I had to do, lived the way I had to live and made lemons into lemon-aid more times than a Poly-Sci graduate could even begin to understand. I don't apologize, I merely reflect.

I grew up in countrified, barely sub-urban Oklahoma City in the mid fifties. My family came to Oklahoma from Indiana in '52. A skip and a jump and a generation behind the Okies who filled John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath. I read that book when I was very young and it left a hell of an impression. Maybe not the one Steinbeck intended but it alerted me to the fact that people close to me, people very much like me could be sucked down the pipe without so much as a moments notice. For no damn good reason.

A child of eight shouldn't have been thinking such lofty thoughts, but I did. And it got inside there and stayed. It didn't burn in me like a thing that turns into a quest to make all things better for the human race because the human race meant little or nothing to me. I couldn't concentrate on anything that big.

When I turned twelve I fell prey to what would be called agoraphobia in these enlightened times. Back then it was called skipping schooI. I was scared of everything and everybody. Crowds made me cringe and cry. Consequently I failed miserably in high school because I was scared to walk into a classroom full of people that I perceived to be staring and laughing. A body gets an attitude about a thing like that after a while.

Another problem, the one I think of as my personal favorite was inattention. Today they would call me hyper-active and drug me down because I was one of those kids you want to kill. Always fucking with things, hiding under the desk at school and sometimes simply walking away, later to be found down by a creek watching crawdads. Not a cool thing for a female student to be doing, and though my male counterparts were lauded for their audacity I was simply called 'weird' and dismissed as a loser, or worse. . . un-teachable.

Mostly I was bored out of my skull. Of course that wasn't a worthy plea in those dark days. My wanderings and my up-tip of the nose to formal education were finally deemed incorrigable. And my stays in the Berry House, a holdover for juvenile delinquent types, gave me an idea of what life was going to be like for an other-directed person like me. Little girls of my stripe were always easy pickings for erotic advances from dyke matrons and trustys and made me just a little madder than what I started out to be. It also made me understand that withholding favors could get you anything you wanted, as long as you were wanted. And at fifteen, I was wanted.

Too many trips to the Berry House meant I had to be remanded to the state training school where I learned there were other, better ways of earning a living and coping with the world. I consider Tecumseh ( the Oklahoma State Training school for girls~~Reform School to you unenlightened ) as my alma mater. It taught me I had an absolute handle on the world of right and wrong. I was right and everybody else was wrong. Now this without ever robbing anybody, stealing one hubcap or turning one trick. I never~ever~ hurt another human being in my whole life. I was just afraid of crowds.

But there I was. I was once the star of my family and now I was an out-cast and a write-off. Sometimes it happens just that fast. They loved me once. Why did they not want me now? I hadn't changed. They did. Somebody came in late at night and changed the rules. I just got older and began to have opinions of my own.

And nobody can forgive you for that. Murder they can forgive. Genocide they can overlook. But becoming your own person and telling the truth? Boy Howdy. They'll crucify you for that shit!!

The people I met in Tecumseh and came to call my life-long friends had committed any number of atrocities, robbed people~~ even committed murder in a few instances~~ and they were my role models. Because they had learned the art of survival and had survived. I had to learn that. And learn that I did.

In reality I never did one single thing but leave a deficit and routine school that didn't know or understand me. But at sixteen I knew it was going to be me against the world and I had very little armor to fight against it because women were second class citizens back then and Diana Ross was still several years away.

The hypocracy of the times made me into something very unlike the family that spawned me. I love my family and my parents did the best they could, what with limited post-war educations and an overwhelming belief that all was right with the world.

It was an innocent time and I grew up there, with those old time values and a sense of right and wrong that would eventually come to the fore and save me from ultimate destruction. And this is true. You can bank on it.

What the people who write these confessionals won't tell you, and more's the pity, is that some of us were just born different. Born with an ache that couldn't be assuaged by high school or prom dates or familial love. I wish I could be more specific but I no more have the words now than I did forty years ago.

It was a 'run' wish. An absolute obsession with seeing what's over the next hill. It starts early and you never completely get over it. That's all I can tell you for sure. It probably has seeds in schizophrenia, probably maturates beneath the wanting and deprivation of seeing wealthier, less deserving people rise to the top as you struggle to just get by. Maybe I was just one of Faulkners Linkhorns. Or not. Maybe it's just God's way of saying,

"Guess what? I've got something really weird for you and the purpose of your life will be untangling and making sense of this riddle. Deal with it."

That's the way I've come to see it : As a genetic hiccup. And it has nothing to do with station or money or personality. It's the wild seed. Maybe it's a blessing, maybe a curse but when it lights on an individual it's all-consuming and sends you down a path that's unique, filled with terror and joy and replete with unrestricted exploration. There is glory there as well as shame, but it's a good road and one I'm glad I traveled.

And was God with me? You bet He was. We wouldn't be having this conversation otherwise. I've felt His firm Hand on the nape of my neck, pulling me back from the brink more times than I can count, felt His warm breath on my neck as He whispered in exasperation, "You're wearing me OUT!"

God and me are pals. But that doesn't mean I'm going to step out of character. After all, the whole thing was His idea. That said, if you are waiting for me to hang my head in these pages, ask for your forgiveness or your approval, well I hope you're not holding your breath. I just can't do that. Because to mis-represent myself now would put the stench of hypocrisy on a deed already done and make me feel like a cat trying to cover its shit in the flower bed. I can't perform that trick.

So, there's not a hint of any of that here. I want to lay it out as it happened, maybe give you a peek into what I was feeling at the time and perhaps come to some greater understanding in my own head.

That's a pretty tall order for so flimsy a thing as a word processor and ten arthritic fingers, but these are the tools I've got at hand so I'm honor-bound to do the best I can with them.

I promised Joi. And that, as they say, is that.

I'm inviting you to come along as I attempt to tell you what I've learned in this life and maybe add another dimension or two to yours. Also too, we might just have some fun. I know I did.

You are probably wondering, and rightly so, what kind of girls were we? There are as many different kinds of sportin' ladies as there are words to describe them.

We came from everywhere, out of all manner of circumstances and backgrounds. Some had lived lives so horrible it hurts me today to think about it. Some were little rich girls, playing at the game.

You'd be surprised how many house-wives there were . . . well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Usually, the house-wife-punish-the-husband type didn't last long. Some hung on for a week or two and some lasted a month. It was best to avoid these gals. There was always a big dramatic breakdown in their futures and you didn't want to be working with them when they went off. Why, I've always wondered, do we have to fear Hell when some of us punish ourselves so thoroughly right here on earth?

Take away the novices, the hurt-oriented types and the fools, some of those ladies were the real thing.

Is there a special talent needed to be a hustler? Absolutely. Not just anyone can do it. Not just anyone would want to. Most women would never even consider it. But that's a good thing. If it were legal the market would be flooded and nobody wants that! There's too many amateurs floating around as it is.

To keep it together in the life a certain temperament and outlook is called for. There's a mind-set that comes honestly, if you can get your head around that, and if you don't have it you'll find it out quick enough.

I'm not talking about Xavier Hollander, who was an absolute fraud or maybe the nastiest chippie in the world, what with swapping spit with all those tricks and shit (a working girl never kisses ) and I'm not talking about all those poor drug-trapped bedraggled things on the HBO 'Women of the Night' docs.

That ain't hustling, that's giving it away. The hard way.

I'm talking about call service. A woman and her telephone against the world. It's a word-of-mouth business. (You like that, huh sweetie?) Think Barbra Streisand (if you must) in Nuts or barring that, Jane Fonda (again, if you must) in Klute , without the stalker or Donald Southerland.

But keep the haircut. I liked that haircut.

Some of us knew it in early childhood.

Oh, not that we were going to be call-girls. C'mon! But I remember as far back as five, going to a honky-tonk on somebody's hip, hearing Hank Williams on the juke box or maybe on a tinny old radio, singing Jambalaya, smelling the stale beer and sawdust and thinking as I looked at the pretty lights and the laughing people: This is for me.

Now, previously I told you about the first time I met Joi. What I didn't tell you was about our second meeting. After she got out of jail and came to work at Jerri's.

Here's how it worked in 1950-60-70's Oklahoma City.

Everything was aboveboard and handled by the vice squad. You called the vice to ask permission to 'work' OKC and you went down once a week, voluntarily, to take a bust and get your papers. That meant you went to a designated doctor, (and God bless that old croaker, wherever he is), he tested you for clap and syphilis, (and that's all you had to worry about back then) gave you a shot of antibiotic, filled in your form so you could go to court, plead guilty to VP (vagrancy by prostitution), show you were disease free and back to work you could go. HiHo! It was a fifty dollar fine and was almost as clean and quick as I just told it.

Strange? You bet. But in the five years I was on the block I never had so much as a crab. And if there was the need for an abortion (which was illegal at the time, pre-Row vs Wade), he would handle that for you in a sterile environment, make you feel like a patient instead of a criminal and follow up with after-care and compassion. It wasn't all bad. In fact, when you take it all around, we were coddled.

Several girls would get together, rent a pad close to downtown and install a phone and a secretary. There were worse jobs than being the secretary. Usually one of the gay guys we ran with or an older, but still together hooker would serve. It had to be someone who knew the streets. And the ins and outs of the aforementioned. A secretary got paid by the night and we showered that personage with gifts. A good sec was appreciated. The sec called all the hotels in town and talked to the bellmen, told them who was on tap and fielded the calls. Sometimes there were up to 200 calls a night for various girls and fronting took a certain amount of skill. If you had a good sec you could go home fat every night.

Our secretary was an ace. She was a bonafide, first water, old school (the real old school, not the one kids refer to nowadays, talking about 2001 ) sportin' gal. Her name was Jerri, she was in her late forties and she maintained she started to work before there was any pussy. She was probably right. Working the depression had to be a hard hustle. You had to know Jerri to laugh at that joke.

The clients were doctors, lawyers and professional men. Each girl kept a 'book' and shared tricks. We were successful because we never talked. Client-confessor privilege, if you will. We used condoms looong before they were required tools of the trade and most of us could be taken out to dinner, anywhere, without embarrassment. Being a consort was what it was all about.

O, yeah. Joi, right? Ok, here we go.

After our jail encounter, I didn't give Joi too much more thought. People come and go, you know? She had my number and she hadn't called so I blew it off. Then, about a week later I was pulling my 1970 Dodge (a present from a grateful probate judge with 'Momma' issues) into the curb in front of the Skirvin Hotel. The Challenger was getting to be a legend in it's own right. There was only one like it in town. It was a bright yellow 383 Magnum with a scoop on the hood and a big fat black racing stripe around the rear-end. Guiseppi dubbed it 'The Yellow Peril'. I know, I know. But back then it was very cool.

Long into short I'm climbing out and down the street there's this ruckus.

One thing required of us girls as we flitted from hotel to hotel was to keep a low profile. The vice insisted on it, shall we say. That meant no getting drunk and disorderly, no tire squealing or other overt behavior. 'Low-profile' was the watch word. We were tolerated, allowed to work, even encouraged in a strange way because, we always figured, we were a pretty good source of revenue for the city. But 'showing your ass' would get you set down for an indefinite period of time. It was controlled like that. I'll go into all that later.

The ruckus looked like a pimp beat-down. Something you didn't see too often because 'pimps', in the classic sense weren't tolerated at all. And knocking some poor gal around on the street? Unheard of ! Now, I was all alone but I've got a real thing about injustice. No man has the right to put his fists on a woman unless she's shooting at him and even then, only if she's had the first shot.

Of course it was Joi. You knew that. And it wasn't a pimp-slappin' because Joi was on top. Some poor kid had tried to steal her shoulder bag and she was wailing on him. I didn't know that, so I pushed in and started wailing on the guy too. It was my first-ever street fight and we had him down for the count. Joi was pulling his hair and I'd yanked off one of my shoes, beating him in the back with the spiked heel. If he'd just been smart enough to let go of the shoulder strap of Joi's bag he could have made a clean getaway, but the dummy was too terrified and he had a death grip on it, binding himself to Joi who was sincerely trying to kill him. At the height of the festivities a four-door plain white sedan pulled up in the midst and I heard a familiar voice boom out,

"Good gawd a mighty what's going on here?" Spoken in the Okie way this all came out as one word.

It was Waggoner, just hitting the streets for the night shift. Old Waggoner was a pretty good guy for a vice cop. He was fair and took a dim view of street crime. He had us sorted out pretty quick. We all went to jail. Joi and I had to post the obligatory fifty dollar fine and an hour later we went for coffee.

The wind-up was I talked Joi into coming to work out of Jerri's. I explained how there was safety, support and organization in numbers. She fit right in, too. She was far more intelligent than the average bear and we laughed at all the same things. We partnered, room-mated and as the old song goes 'O, Lord how the money rolled in.'

Were we lover's? Naw. I know what you guys want and I'm sorry, but that wasn't what it was about. Picking a running partner is every bit as important as picking a life partner. Some of you may be able to relate to the horror of finding yourselves on a sinking ship, wondering if now is the time to jump for safety or should you just go down with it? As with a loser husband, so it is with a loser running buddy. Everybody has to be on the same page or you'll wind up on the rocks.

See, most of the girls you meet in the sporting life have at least one of three problems. They want to punish their parents, they want to punish men or they want to punish themselves.

Joi and I just wanted to make Money. Capital M, capital O, yadayadayada, Money!! We wanted to drive fast cars, wear good clothes, stay out late hunting up Jazz and Rock joints and all-night nightlife, party 'til noon of the following day, smoke good reef with sweet tender little square-boys and sleep the sleep of the just. The life was a comedy to us. We knew it wouldn't last. We knew it was just a game and we both saw the absurdity, the ridiculous hypocrisy and the beauty, yes, the beauty in even the ugliest of things.

Life is like that. You never know which corner to cover. And you never know who or what is gonna come along and hand you a ticket to ride on 'The Next Big Thing.'

The life was a comedy to us. We knew it wouldn't last. We knew it was just a game and we both saw the absurdity, the ridiculous hypocrisy and the beauty, yes, the beauty in even the ugliest of things.

Life is like that. You never know which corner to cover. And you never know who or what is gonna come along and hand you a ticket to ride on 'The Next Big Thing.'

I was looking for some information about the blonde bitch sophomore year. I found a book by her room mate during her third year after she came back from the hospital. Well the only link I could find was from an interview with the author of Strip City. The author was a woman very comfortable in her own skin. I mean she said it was still a man's world but she was aware of the power of her sex. She did not have any penis envy at all. I hope her next book with be called Politic City. If Kinky decides to run she would be a good running mate.

Not to change the subject, if you guys had lived back in biblical times you could have had your own temple maybe. Got dam abominations, isn’t that a lovely word. Makes me want to rock and roll all night long. I just lost a dear friend, the worst part for now is the guilt, I should have said this, I ought to have done that….

Sorry about your loss


Blande Bitch, what the professors wives called her acording to Steiner's book
A Closer Look at Ariel, by Nancy Stiener Hunter. The author of Strip City said that book was her most precious possession or sumptin.

.

dylan wiles,

I can't believe that you are not a native texian.

You spin a story just like one. Me, I'm an expatriate.

Good writing.

I think that the fractured memoir is going to be the new hot genre

I don't post much anymore cause I am the vainest person here.

Ten four Clay.

I bet she went to the litkicks writers workshop to write that cool

I was little worried about the flow, my inane comments breaking it.

Good work dylan thank you

DD.
Is blonde bitch a book I might have overlooked? Sounds like my kind of literature. I re-read William Bouroughs 'Junky' to put me in the mood for this. I hate the confessional-feel my pain genre and am going to try very hard not to let that happen here.

I think this piece could use a lot of tightening but, so what, right? I do my best work free-style. Some editor is going to rip it to shreds anyway.

Joi was my touchstone and the last of my kind. I know all about 'should'a said' regret. Trust me, your friend knows.

I love your handle.

P.S. You are no longer the vainest person here.


LR.

I've been in Texas for 25 years. Something was bound to rub off. Anyway Dan Jenkins said that up above the Red river Texas is just Baja Oklahoma.


Wish I could refer back to your comments here, my only complaint about this site and a half-hearted one at that, but I can't remember if it was you or DD who mentioned Kinky's foray into the legislature. Vote for him? I'll pick him up and carry him there

Thank you for your comments. There's more. Is this the right place to be posting all this drivel? Or is there a more suitable outlet here that I haven't found yet?

See you soon. Say 'hey' to Doreen for me.

PS Never had the pleasure of 'Lit-Kicks'. Snooped around there for a while but never really posted. They appreciate Hunter Thompson and the beat poets over there, though. Gotta love that!

bouncy read, yay for that. good stuff. intriguing, yeah. could use more scenes, more descriptions, seems ripe for that kind of thing, but i'll keep reading. i like the tough girl writing anyway.

litkicks is a tight road, heavy guardrails and safety patrol. now just a blog. v v trendsetting.

It's truly difficult for me to believe that you have only been writing for a year and a half. You write like a seasoned author. Your stories are a joy.

Sincere sympathies for the loss of your friend.

Thank you for sharing your life stories with us and yes, this is a fine place for you to post them. You also might try the Snippets board. The idea of the Snippets board was exactly this. Mini-memoirs.

LR is close to right. The memoir isn't the up-and-coming new hot genre. It IS the hot genre right now.

I have a literary agent friend. I asked her what's selling. Memoirs are top of the list. "Write your stories," she said. I asked her if memoirs by people who are not well known are selling. Her answer was YES. Like hotcakes. "If the story is interesting, it doesn't matter whether the author is well known or not. It's selling. Write your stories," she said.

If you come up with a manuscript which compiles some of these, I'll happily get you in touch with her. Like most agents, I'm sure she's interested in anything that could sell.

She doesn't want any of my poetry. lol

Nobody wants any poetry. It doesn't sell.

But boy do I have some stories to tell, also. Sounds like we are sisters in spirit. I think I lived part of your life. You may have lived part of mine. I'm not sure I have the skills to write mine like you write yours, though. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Your writing is inspiring.

Clay says I'm a born novelist. Where he gets that, I have no clue. I've rarely even written short stories. I think that assessment comes because I ramble on so much. I have a lot of words in me. I wish I could put them together as well as you do.

Once he called me Ayn Rand. I thought it was a compliment. I thanked him. He answered, "The first time I picked up a copy of 'Atlas Shrugged," I thought to myself, 'How could ANYBODY have this much to say?"



He's a funny guy.

Keep writing. I'll keep reading.

Memoir and myth are both about meaning making. Memoirists are contemporary myth-makers.

lost the URL, but she was a student of Joseph Campbell