July 24, 2024 • 33 mins
Tabytha Gonzalez is a trans woman who worked on The Stroll in the 90s, a historic area of NYC known for sex work. She recounts the freedom that sex work gave her — and the costs that came with it.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
There was this one guy, so to call him the
Magic Man. He almost got me. I did the deed
and then I was like, give me the money, and
it was like folded up papers and stuff. And I
got back in the car before he could. I was like,
give me my money, and I'm priving. He's trying to
push me off of him, and I grabbed the money
(00:29):
and I sit up and I fixed somebody and like,
let me out of this fucking car, and he lets
me out, and I run down the block and said,
I got the magic Man. I got the Magic Man.
I remember telling everybody that this was a dangerous place
to you, but it was home for us. We knew
that there were girls who would get beat up hurt
(00:50):
in the cars. We knew that, but we found ourselves
there every day just so we could be ourselves because
the society and the world hated us.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
(01:23):
In this episode, we'll meet Tabitha Gonzalez, a transgender woman
who in the nineties worked on the Stroll, a historic
area in New York known for queer sex work. We'll
learn how she, like many other transgender women, relied on
sex work as a means of survival. From My Heart Podcast,
(01:44):
I'm Jordan Gonsolvus, and this is what we loved. Growing
(02:17):
up deeply Catholic, I was taught to believe that sex
work was immoral. I didn't realize that for so many
queer people, it's a job to pay the bills. For
many trans women who have difficulty getting conventional work, they
don't have the luxury of thinking about morality like I did.
(02:40):
Nearly twenty percent of all transgender Americans have done sex
work at some point. In New York, queer sex work
has been thriving since the eighteen hundreds in Lower Manhattan.
My next guest, Tabitha Gonzalez, would find sex work there too,
but in nineteen ninety three, at the age of nineteen.
(03:02):
But before that, she grew up in New Jersey in
the early eighties, and like so many other queer kids,
she was bullied relentlessly, but she felt safe in the
embrace of her grandmother's home. So when did you know
(03:28):
that you were trans?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I knew I was a girl ver early, Like I knew.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
There wasn't a clear moment. You just always kind of knew.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, I just knew. It was like epiphany. Guess what,
I'm a girl. It's just like I knew, like I
knew that's what I needed to be, Like it just
didn't feel right me being anything else.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
And so where did you grow up?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Well, I grew up in Grafton Avenue projects in New Jersey.
So growing up in house. My mom and pops were
addicts at that time I was born and Dick did.
So I grew up in the home with my grandmother.
She literally took all my mom's kids, like I would say,
seven of us, and she raised us. My home with
(04:17):
my grandmother was one of the most affirming spaces, very spiritual. Family.
We went to church. I was like an a choir.
I love God, I loved the music, I love the ministry.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So tell me a little bit about life at your
grandma's house.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
You know it's Saturday and Sunday. You know, you were
kind of barred from the kitchen. You were either like
soaking the greens or you know, seasoning the meat. And
Sunday dinner was always the best at Grandma's house. The
whole family, the neighborhood would come and eat everything.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
What kind of food was it, Oh, you name it.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We made it like collared greens, mac and cheese, corn bread,
barbecue ribs. And I had an allergy to fish, so
she would have to make chicken for me. And there
were specific gender roles in the family, especially on Sundays,
but I never knew I was different because she never
let me feel I was different. So when the girls
(05:12):
were in the kitchen, I'm in the kitchen. But being
in that kitchen it felt like the right place to
be for me because I would be around the energy
that I needed to be around. And I found solad
being around the woman. That's why I heard all the gossip.
That's why I met Sugar Mama, who I idolized. She
(05:36):
was dating one of my uncles. She was so pretty
and all the guys used to talk to her, and
I was like, God, I want to be her. And
I remember to this day she had like these jeans
on with white go Go bus ash brown hair. She
always kept it done nice, nice shape, hazel eyes. She
was so pretty and like little freckles, and everyone loved
(05:59):
her love to of course, you know, jealousy whatever from
other girls, and you would see them outside arguing. But
Sugar Mamas was one of the ladies who used to
come in and get like the plate, you know, for
her mother and stuff, and we would wrap it up
in loomin the foid and I was always happy Sugar Mama,
I got you and I would help her. And these
(06:19):
were the people that kind of was like the images
of me. Like I grew up around a bunch of women.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Your role models were women women at all times. So
when did you first feel like something was a little
bit different about you than maybe the other kids?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So I guess I never really knew until I left
the home, and that probably didn't start until high school
when the bullying started, you know, because I was always me.
I wasn't effeminate, but I knew that I didn't like
girls like I just knew that I didn't like girls,
and I didn't think anything was different, didn't think there
(07:00):
was anything wrong with me until I started to leave
the house and go to school. And I have bullied.
I used to bully me a lot just for being queer.
And I was dating this girl named Katrina who was
a lesbian to keep up appearing right right, So I
was yeah in high school, I was sharp earlier on.
(07:20):
And then when she got busted with her lover, I
had to pretend like I was like this traumatized boys.
I knew, yeah, I knew, she we knew she knew.
It was like we told each other I like boys,
she said she liked girls, and we knew that we were. Yeah,
we were in it together. So when she got caught
with her partner, I had to pretend like I was
(07:43):
so devastated in school, and you know that didn't fly over. Well.
They was like gotty, like we know already looking at
it now. Like I was like so naive, I didn't
know who I thought I was fooling by doing that.
But they used to take my money until I just
really started to get tired of it. And it was
specifically one day when we were coming from grocery shopping
(08:07):
and they had put batteries inside the snow and they
used to throw it. Oh yeah, and it waits past
my grandmother's face and I was so angry and I
was like, how you know going off?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, it just missed her by a niche and you
know you could have heard her. She's an elderly woman.
So I was very upset.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
By the time Tabitha was in high school, she was
still presenting as cisgendered and still being bullied, but she
felt safe while she was doing one thing, dancing, so
she decided to join a dance crew in her community.
Tell me about dancing now, Because you were into dancing,
(08:49):
you liked dancing. I did.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I was a hip hop urban dancer and I loved it.
Like I joined this crew called the Bugle Boy Posse,
but I was a buggulad. I always say that they
just didn't know. And that's when house parties was the thing,
all right, and you can go to house parties and
you can dance. And we had our teams and we
would travel and battle other teams. It was so fucking cool,
(09:14):
you know. We used to practice and put the music on.
We were freestyle dancers, and that was the way I
can express myself. Because dance had no type of energy.
You can switch it at any given point. You could
be feminine or masculine, but you can express yourself and
I felt the safest when I was dancing.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Tabitha's dance crew was becoming more serious. They wanted to
take their competition skills to the big leagues. The Christopher
Street peers a place in New York City where young
artistic kids could have dance battles and for young quer
kids of color have a safe space to hang out.
It was also where Tabitha discovered voguing, club culture and drugs.
(09:55):
She began experimenting with mescaline, a psychedelic drug that's similar
to LSD. At this point, she was still presenting as
a boy, but she was about to meet someone who
would change everything for her. Tell me now about the
first time you saw a trans woman and what that
was like, or the one that impacted you the most.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Well, her name was Letitia.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Oh wow, so Letitia. I remember I was already in
the ballroom scene and we had went to the cloud
and everyone had these glow sticks on, and she had
them wrapped around her arms, so she was voting, and
I was so measurized. I don't know whether I was
measurized or whether I was on the trip because that
(10:40):
back then you can take mescaline. So I popped the
mesculine and I was like, this shit is not good.
I don't feel it. And it hit me and I
immediately zeroed in on her. She was voguing her asshole.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
What song was it? Oh?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
God, Titia was voguing to work this pussy bye pussy Pauline.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
You do have to whisper it?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Oh and yeah, And it was like work thisssy and
she was like work, work, work, work, and she was
hitting all these beats and I was just like what
the fuck? But I needed to be near her, like
I needed to watch her perform, and I was still
kind of masculine presenting, you know, and like the crowd
opened and she had like had everybody watching her until
(11:25):
she was always over the top, like breaks down to
her ankles with glitter, like she was just like the
girl with Bengals and biker shows with Doc Martin, Boote
Thor Knockers, and she was just like this whole fucking goddess,
like an African goddess on top of the mountain. Everyone
(11:46):
was watching her and she was seducing them with her dance,
and you felt that I was pulled in right away
when I saw her, so I can make the connection
to what she must have felt in her head, you know,
because maybe that was her escape.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
You know, how did that make you feel when you
saw her?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I just thought she was this beautiful woman that was
dancing right because I didn't know trance. I wasn't dressed
up then, I wasn't transitioning then, I was still presenting male.
So I found out when we caught the train home
and we all left the club, and she was looking
at her back and she had these pills. They were yellow,
and then, you know me back then, I was like
(12:25):
doing mesculines. I was like, oh, you got a mess glass.
I was like, how much of those? She was like, oh, no,
this is candy. You can't have any of this candy.
I remember that. I was like, what kind of candy
is it? And she was like, this is not the
candy you want unless you want titties, baby.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And I was like, what she was talking about? Hormones? Yeah,
when we come back, Tabitha decides to transition and then
finds the stroll. It's nineteen eighty nine. Tabitha had just
(13:11):
met Letitia and learned that she was a trans woman.
She didn't know what trans meant, but she did know
that she wanted to be just like Letitia, beautiful and confident,
seductive and powerful. At this point, Tabitha had also discovered
the ballroom scene, an underground queer culture where black and
(13:32):
LATINX queens from around the city would compete in categories
like dance, drag, beauty, and fashion against each other for
trophies and cash. One day, Tabitha decided she wanted to
compete in the balls, so she chose the drag category,
and she knew exactly who she was going to impersonate.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
I remember sitting there and we had to pick the
category he was going to walk. Immediately, I was like,
I'm going to walk as Letitia, and everybody's looking at
me because I was probably weighing ninety eight pounds, soaking wet,
with two bricks in my pocket. And the Tisha had
like body like she had big hibs, big but big
(14:15):
breast like she was like the hour glass shape. So
they laughing and she was like, don't worry, I got you.
She was like, I got you. And I remember her
taking me to her house in Jersey City, like right
before the ball and she had like put all these
pillow cakes and she was stuffing me and you know,
and we put the water in the conners because the
condos are more durable than the balloons. So he was
(14:38):
like boobs yeah, ass boobs wow, And like I bore
her braceless and I said, okay, I'm gonna do this.
This is good. I'm gonna show the world.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
How did you feel in all of that?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Got a beautiful I felt like me I won grand
prize that day.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Like wow. After experiencing the liberation of dressing and drag,
Tabitha started presenting as a woman more and more. But
she knew if she went back home to her grandmother's
she'd have to go as her grandson, so she stayed
in New York. But New York was expensive. She needed
(15:19):
money to survive, and there were very few conventional work
opportunities for trans women at the time, so she confided
in a fellow transistor, who introduced her to the Stroll.
The Stroll was a part of New York City's largely
abandoned neighborhood called the Meatpacking District. The neighborhood got its
(15:41):
name because it was literally where slaughterhouses would package meat
for the city until the nineteen seventies, but as New
York life modernized, the industry declined and left behind a
whole neighborhood, a big industrial warehouses that were cheap to
rent and perfect for gay partying. Queer people in New
(16:03):
York had claimed this as their new home. The stroll
was the part of the meatpacking district where trans women
who were sex workers would go to find their clients.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
All you heard was the clickity clack of the hills,
Like you knew the girls was out. And I used
to like just sit back and watch, like the girls
be caddy, like want to be fixing her titties, and
you know the cars are coming by. And back then
it was.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
A lot of cars. There's a lot of business. Oh well,
so why do you think you were interested in sex
work as opposed to like maybe getting a job as
because I couldn't get a job.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Because I wanted to be me. You didn't get jobs
being a transgender person. They wouldn't hire you. And by
that point I already had a taste. I already knew
I could wear women's clothes. I already knew that I
can present myself that way. I no longer had to
live alive. Like I worked jobs as a boy that
I worked at McDonald's. I did all that stuff, but
(17:01):
I just it wasn't like it didn't stick. Like I
didn't feel full, you know, I didn't feel like I
was like out in the world.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
So what was a typical night.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Like a typical night would be getting off the path train.
There's this little steps that's like near Ganzabo. I used
to go down the steps and get dressed. You open
the gate and you go down and it was like
a vestibule that you go into. So I used to
go in the vestibule through my makeup and I had
like this Juliet wig. I remember because I used to
always get that specific wig. And there was a phone
(17:34):
booth on the corner, so I used to go there
with my little compac and make sure everything was good.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
And what was the process of getting a client?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Like, you know, we all had clever ways of you know,
everyone had their own way. Most of the time. I
was do you have the time? And that's how I
met my first client. I remember I was so afraid
with my first date. He asked me did I have
the time? And I was like no, When I ain't
got the time, and the girls are all looking at
me like bitch, and I'm like what it was like, bitch,
(18:06):
that's the date. I was like, so what the fuck
that mean? They was a girl. He was asking you
if you had the time. So when he came back around,
he asked me again and I said, well, I do
if you do. And he literally lived on Christmas Street
and I remember looking over the water and so much
money on the table, so much money. It was so
(18:27):
much money.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Sex work gave Tabitha the financial freedom to live as
the woman she was. She felt autonomous over her life
for the first time. But sex work is dangerous work.
In twenty twenty three alone, almost half of all the
known trans murders globally were sex workers. In the early nineties,
(18:53):
as it is now, sex work was illegal in New York,
so there were no protections for Tabitha and other sex
workers on the stroll. Men could be kind and pay
them according to what they had negotiated, or they could
dupe them and become violent. Because of the dangers of
the job, the other girls on the stroll looked out
(19:14):
for each other, so how would you know which clients
to avoid you? It was the luck of the draw.
I don't think any of us knew because things had
different fetishes, right. Some one guy used to give me
a bunch of money to just small my feet while
he jerk off. One guy wanted you to tie him
up and slap him and take the money out his safe.
(19:36):
And there was this one guy. He used to call
him the magic Man. He used to show you the
money and it would be like folded and he would
count it out, like I got two hundred, and you
would see the two hundred. I did the deed, and
then I was like, give me the money. And I
remember they kept saying that guy would switch the money.
So I opened it and it was like one dollar
(19:58):
bill but like folded up papers and stuff. And I
got back in the car before he could draw. I
was like, give me my money, and.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
I'm arguing with him, and I'm reaching in the thing
where I saw him put the money at, and he's
trying to drive and wearing drives so he can't really
stop the car, you know what I'm saying. So he's
like driving and I'm driving. He's trying to push me
off of him, and I grabbed the money and I
sit up and I fix somebody and like let me
out of his fucking car and he lets me out
(20:25):
and I run down the block and said, I got
the magic man. I got the magic Man. I remember
telling everybody that.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
And how old were you when I would.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Say, I was like probably like nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Wow, so you were silic kid. Yeah, So how did
you protect yourself with all these anything?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I had mace, knife, a hammer, like the girls were
famous for having hammers. Yeah, how else are you going
to defend yourself? Every date is not a safety And
while there are a horrible stories, and I've had some
of them, I've been sexually assaulted, I've been raped, I've
had those stories, right, but I always felt safe amount
(21:07):
the girls when we knew, like if there was a
bad day, we would tell each other.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
So these girls were not just other girls that you
were working with. They were communities. They were sisters protecting
you as well.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Listen, whatever you needed to do to make your money,
they will help you. We all out here together, we
have to protect each other, and you know, and it
was like everyone knew you and you were safe. You know,
at least they gave the illusion of safety. We were
so defenseless, you know, but we protected each other.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
This sounds like really risky, dangerous work. What about it
was worth it to you?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
You had no choice. It was survival. That's why it's
called survival sect. And I felt like I could manage myself.
I can do what I wanted. I felt like I
could navigate myself the way I wanted to. Back then,
you can make good money, Like you can get a
client for like three four hundred dollars and it's like
(22:12):
you're in there like five ten minutes with him, And
like I used to have a lot of money, And
that was the lure of being on the stroll because
I know I can make a lot of money, Like
I had all the newest sneakers, bo Jackson's jewelry, everything,
and God, we used to have so much fun. It
(22:34):
was just like you knew. It was the excitement of
it all for me, Like I would come from this
kept close Christian life, abused at school, started to come
and learned about the village and the culture of the village.
And now I'm making money on the stroll.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Being yourself, being myself because I couldn't get a job.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
I wanted to be myself. I wanted to be me
and there's no way I would have been comfortable any
other way. This was a dangerous place to you, but
it was home for us. It's where we knew where
we could thrive. We lived in that danger. We took risks.
We knew that there were girls who would get beat
(23:17):
up hurt in the cars. We knew that, but we
found ourselves there every day just so we could be
ourselves because the society and the world hated us.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
One of the things that I had read about you
was that sex work was affording you the opportunity to
buy hormones. How did you buy them and how did
you take them?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
There was like a specific guy who used to sell
hormones to the girls. And you can go and get
the hormones there, or you can go down in Brooklyn
and get like a fake prescription or something. There was
so many different ways we used to get it, and
the hormones were very potent back then.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
You're getting them off the street, yeah, so you're not
sure if they're.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
They're right dosage or anything. You're just buying the moones
like people were just injecting theirselves with shit so they
can have the body that they wanted. And you know,
this is what the girls did. Like I was learning
these things from the girls out there.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Why do you think that you were willing to take
that risk to do what to take the hormones without
knowing if they were bad or if they were good.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Because I know what I wanted to be, and I
saw the other girls developing, and that's what I wanted,
illegally or not.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
When we come back, Tabitha begins dodging the cops who
are now targeting sex workers, and she takes her first
hit of crack cocaine. It's nineteen ninety four. New York
City has just a Republican Rudy Giuliani as mayor. He
(25:04):
campaigned on promises to clear away the city's crime and
improve the quality of life. One of his aggressive targets
was prostitution. This was stressful for Tabitha because sex work
was her means of surviving. She was also scared because
New York City police were actively arresting people like her
(25:26):
and placing them in men's jails. I want to now
talk about the cops and sex workers and that relationship.
Why do you think you were being targeted by the cops.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I'm in a doubt now, so of course I know why.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
There was a lot of stigma placed on sex workers.
There was a lot of stigma placed on queer people
at that time. People didn't know a much information. I
don't know what was their hate other than hating us
for who we were and we couldn't get jobs. What
else are we going to do? There was no other option?
Speaker 1 (26:02):
So what would happen when the cops showed up?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
You would run in the opposite direction and hide behind
the cars. You would duck, you would run to like
either someone's doorsteps, and you would hide downstairs. You would
run and when they left, they left, and you would
come back out.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Did you ever get arrested?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Did I ever get arrested? Of course? It was horrible.
All you see is these big lights flashing in the mirror.
Get out the car, Get out the car, and they
would lock up the sex work, but not the john.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So for the girls, your enemy was the cops.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Your enemy was the dates and the cops like that
was like my first kind of offenses was like prostitution,
sex work lord, even with the intent to prostitute. If
we're on the block, just lock them up. Yeah, That's
when I started to find out other spaces became like
this little network of sex workers, and we knew like
the underground way to get the money, and we knew
where all the spots were at edel wise, so many
(26:57):
different places that we can go and get money at.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
It sounds like a really stressful existence.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
There so many different emotions. I just know that you
had this consistent need to move.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
While sex work was able to give Tabatha a sense
of financial freedom, the mental anguish of having to force
her body into sex when she didn't want to became unbearable.
This coupled with constant arrests for the only work that
was available to her, was agonizing. She was with her
(27:37):
friend Melissa when she discovered something that could help her
numb the pain. So let's talk a bit about your addiction.
How did you first get introduced to crack cocaine?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It was at Kevin Lennon's party. He lived in a
law off. It was my first time like being in
a big apartment like that, like a DUPLEXI was like
a lord, yeah, and we were there. But how I
got introduced to the cocaine was it was on coasters
and you can just like at will, just sniff. So
I'm sniffing and everything, and everybody's coming in and we're
(28:16):
having a good time.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
This was your first time, it was my first time.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
And I was just seeing everybody do it. I was like,
you know, and you see it on TV, so I
knew what coke was like, I knew, like, this is
what they're doing, and everybody was doing it, so what
the fuck. It wasn't peer pressure and no one said
you gotta do this. I did it like I was
just always that person like and I wanted to try life.
(28:42):
I wanted to try everything. Even as I'm telling you,
I'm just like I was so fearless and I did it.
And I remember like the drip and it was like
just go like this, and I was running to the bathroom.
It was like take the tissue and put it in
water and drip it down your nose and it hit
you faster. And we were all skeetered out our and
you know, towards the like later on in the evening
(29:03):
after the music, they was like, oh my god, we
ran out and they sent my stupid ass went Melissa
to go and cop and when I came back, I
put all the drugs on the table and I remember
the crack being there. I remember Melissa took it and
put it on the limit the fo you and went
to the back. She was with some other friends and
(29:25):
I went back there. I was like, girl, while y'all
back here, the parties out there, and they would just
like I saw the pipes and I'm like, oh, And
I remember her telling me to this day. I remember
Melissa telling me, she says, from trying out to go.
I remember her telling me, if you picked this up
at it ruined your life. I'm not going to give
this to you. And she put the pipes there and
(29:49):
she's like, if you want to pick it up, put
you better have money. It would take you for everything.
And I remember doing it and they created a monster
and I ran through a little money I had saved up.
And back then it's like you felt invincible. Like doing
the drugs made me forget a lot of things, like
(30:11):
being bullied in school, you know, not being accepted in
my neighborhood, you know, being bullied in my neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
So did the drugs help you kind of numb the
pain of doing the sex work?
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Of course, I think because it went hand in hand
with the sex work. It was something that was my
go to. I wasn't so connected to what I was
doing because I was making more than Yeah, Like those
were tough times, Like all those fears were real, those
were real feelings, those were raw feelings. It was horrible,
(30:46):
and I think that's why, like I kind of like
really medicated myself because I was not happy with my life.
It's like when you're coming off the high you realize
what you did. That's when the shame and the guilt
start to set in for me. And I used to
say things like I feel spiritually bankrult, like I have
nothing else.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
If the drugs didn't numb you, what do you think
you would have felt by killing myself?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I just felt like I couldn't be me. It was
like I needed something more and I just didn't know
what that more was.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Next week on but We Loved, Part two of my
interview with Tabitha Gonzalez, where she talks about becoming a
drug dealer, becoming incarcerated, and coming back to the stroll
in a way she never imagined. But We Loved is
hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New episodes drop every Wednesday.
(31:57):
If you want to write in to tell your story,
email us at buttweloved at gmail dot com, or send
us a message on Instagram or TikTok at butt we Loved.
We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and
iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries.
(32:17):
Our producers Areshino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey
patt Our. Executive producers are Me, Maya Howard and Katrina Normal.
Fact checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone
Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Roquel Elis. If you
loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us
(32:40):
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you next week.
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
There was this one guy, so to call him the
Magic Man. He almost got me. I did the deed
and then I was like, give me the money, and
it was like folded up papers and stuff. And I
got back in the car before he could. I was like,
give me my money, and I'm priving. He's trying to
push me off of him, and I grabbed the money
(00:29):
and I sit up and I fixed somebody and like,
let me out of this fucking car, and he lets
me out, and I run down the block and said,
I got the magic Man. I got the Magic Man.
I remember telling everybody that this was a dangerous place
to you, but it was home for us. We knew
that there were girls who would get beat up hurt
(00:50):
in the cars. We knew that, but we found ourselves
there every day just so we could be ourselves because
the society and the world hated us.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
(01:23):
In this episode, we'll meet Tabitha Gonzalez, a transgender woman
who in the nineties worked on the Stroll, a historic
area in New York known for queer sex work. We'll
learn how she, like many other transgender women, relied on
sex work as a means of survival. From My Heart Podcast,
(01:44):
I'm Jordan Gonsolvus, and this is what we loved. Growing
(02:17):
up deeply Catholic, I was taught to believe that sex
work was immoral. I didn't realize that for so many
queer people, it's a job to pay the bills. For
many trans women who have difficulty getting conventional work, they
don't have the luxury of thinking about morality like I did.
(02:40):
Nearly twenty percent of all transgender Americans have done sex
work at some point. In New York, queer sex work
has been thriving since the eighteen hundreds in Lower Manhattan.
My next guest, Tabitha Gonzalez, would find sex work there too,
but in nineteen ninety three, at the age of nineteen.
(03:02):
But before that, she grew up in New Jersey in
the early eighties, and like so many other queer kids,
she was bullied relentlessly, but she felt safe in the
embrace of her grandmother's home. So when did you know
(03:28):
that you were trans?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I knew I was a girl ver early, Like I knew.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
There wasn't a clear moment. You just always kind of knew.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, I just knew. It was like epiphany. Guess what,
I'm a girl. It's just like I knew, like I
knew that's what I needed to be, Like it just
didn't feel right me being anything else.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
And so where did you grow up?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Well, I grew up in Grafton Avenue projects in New Jersey.
So growing up in house. My mom and pops were
addicts at that time I was born and Dick did.
So I grew up in the home with my grandmother.
She literally took all my mom's kids, like I would say,
seven of us, and she raised us. My home with
(04:17):
my grandmother was one of the most affirming spaces, very spiritual. Family.
We went to church. I was like an a choir.
I love God, I loved the music, I love the ministry.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So tell me a little bit about life at your
grandma's house.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
You know it's Saturday and Sunday. You know, you were
kind of barred from the kitchen. You were either like
soaking the greens or you know, seasoning the meat. And
Sunday dinner was always the best at Grandma's house. The
whole family, the neighborhood would come and eat everything.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
What kind of food was it, Oh, you name it.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We made it like collared greens, mac and cheese, corn bread,
barbecue ribs. And I had an allergy to fish, so
she would have to make chicken for me. And there
were specific gender roles in the family, especially on Sundays,
but I never knew I was different because she never
let me feel I was different. So when the girls
(05:12):
were in the kitchen, I'm in the kitchen. But being
in that kitchen it felt like the right place to
be for me because I would be around the energy
that I needed to be around. And I found solad
being around the woman. That's why I heard all the gossip.
That's why I met Sugar Mama, who I idolized. She
(05:36):
was dating one of my uncles. She was so pretty
and all the guys used to talk to her, and
I was like, God, I want to be her. And
I remember to this day she had like these jeans
on with white go Go bus ash brown hair. She
always kept it done nice, nice shape, hazel eyes. She
was so pretty and like little freckles, and everyone loved
(05:59):
her love to of course, you know, jealousy whatever from
other girls, and you would see them outside arguing. But
Sugar Mamas was one of the ladies who used to
come in and get like the plate, you know, for
her mother and stuff, and we would wrap it up
in loomin the foid and I was always happy Sugar Mama,
I got you and I would help her. And these
(06:19):
were the people that kind of was like the images
of me. Like I grew up around a bunch of women.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Your role models were women women at all times. So
when did you first feel like something was a little
bit different about you than maybe the other kids?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So I guess I never really knew until I left
the home, and that probably didn't start until high school
when the bullying started, you know, because I was always me.
I wasn't effeminate, but I knew that I didn't like
girls like I just knew that I didn't like girls,
and I didn't think anything was different, didn't think there
(07:00):
was anything wrong with me until I started to leave
the house and go to school. And I have bullied.
I used to bully me a lot just for being queer.
And I was dating this girl named Katrina who was
a lesbian to keep up appearing right right, So I
was yeah in high school, I was sharp earlier on.
(07:20):
And then when she got busted with her lover, I
had to pretend like I was like this traumatized boys.
I knew, yeah, I knew, she we knew she knew.
It was like we told each other I like boys,
she said she liked girls, and we knew that we were. Yeah,
we were in it together. So when she got caught
with her partner, I had to pretend like I was
(07:43):
so devastated in school, and you know that didn't fly over. Well.
They was like gotty, like we know already looking at
it now. Like I was like so naive, I didn't
know who I thought I was fooling by doing that.
But they used to take my money until I just
really started to get tired of it. And it was
specifically one day when we were coming from grocery shopping
(08:07):
and they had put batteries inside the snow and they
used to throw it. Oh yeah, and it waits past
my grandmother's face and I was so angry and I
was like, how you know going off?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, it just missed her by a niche and you
know you could have heard her. She's an elderly woman.
So I was very upset.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
By the time Tabitha was in high school, she was
still presenting as cisgendered and still being bullied, but she
felt safe while she was doing one thing, dancing, so
she decided to join a dance crew in her community.
Tell me about dancing now, Because you were into dancing,
(08:49):
you liked dancing. I did.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I was a hip hop urban dancer and I loved it.
Like I joined this crew called the Bugle Boy Posse,
but I was a buggulad. I always say that they
just didn't know. And that's when house parties was the thing,
all right, and you can go to house parties and
you can dance. And we had our teams and we
would travel and battle other teams. It was so fucking cool,
(09:14):
you know. We used to practice and put the music on.
We were freestyle dancers, and that was the way I
can express myself. Because dance had no type of energy.
You can switch it at any given point. You could
be feminine or masculine, but you can express yourself and
I felt the safest when I was dancing.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Tabitha's dance crew was becoming more serious. They wanted to
take their competition skills to the big leagues. The Christopher
Street peers a place in New York City where young
artistic kids could have dance battles and for young quer
kids of color have a safe space to hang out.
It was also where Tabitha discovered voguing, club culture and drugs.
(09:55):
She began experimenting with mescaline, a psychedelic drug that's similar
to LSD. At this point, she was still presenting as
a boy, but she was about to meet someone who
would change everything for her. Tell me now about the
first time you saw a trans woman and what that
was like, or the one that impacted you the most.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Well, her name was Letitia.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Oh wow, so Letitia. I remember I was already in
the ballroom scene and we had went to the cloud
and everyone had these glow sticks on, and she had
them wrapped around her arms, so she was voting, and
I was so measurized. I don't know whether I was
measurized or whether I was on the trip because that
(10:40):
back then you can take mescaline. So I popped the
mesculine and I was like, this shit is not good.
I don't feel it. And it hit me and I
immediately zeroed in on her. She was voguing her asshole.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
What song was it? Oh?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
God, Titia was voguing to work this pussy bye pussy Pauline.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
You do have to whisper it?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Oh and yeah, And it was like work thisssy and
she was like work, work, work, work, and she was
hitting all these beats and I was just like what
the fuck? But I needed to be near her, like
I needed to watch her perform, and I was still
kind of masculine presenting, you know, and like the crowd
opened and she had like had everybody watching her until
(11:25):
she was always over the top, like breaks down to
her ankles with glitter, like she was just like the
girl with Bengals and biker shows with Doc Martin, Boote
Thor Knockers, and she was just like this whole fucking goddess,
like an African goddess on top of the mountain. Everyone
(11:46):
was watching her and she was seducing them with her dance,
and you felt that I was pulled in right away
when I saw her, so I can make the connection
to what she must have felt in her head, you know,
because maybe that was her escape.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
You know, how did that make you feel when you
saw her?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I just thought she was this beautiful woman that was
dancing right because I didn't know trance. I wasn't dressed
up then, I wasn't transitioning then, I was still presenting male.
So I found out when we caught the train home
and we all left the club, and she was looking
at her back and she had these pills. They were yellow,
and then, you know me back then, I was like
(12:25):
doing mesculines. I was like, oh, you got a mess glass.
I was like, how much of those? She was like, oh, no,
this is candy. You can't have any of this candy.
I remember that. I was like, what kind of candy
is it? And she was like, this is not the
candy you want unless you want titties, baby.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And I was like, what she was talking about? Hormones? Yeah,
when we come back, Tabitha decides to transition and then
finds the stroll. It's nineteen eighty nine. Tabitha had just
(13:11):
met Letitia and learned that she was a trans woman.
She didn't know what trans meant, but she did know
that she wanted to be just like Letitia, beautiful and confident,
seductive and powerful. At this point, Tabitha had also discovered
the ballroom scene, an underground queer culture where black and
(13:32):
LATINX queens from around the city would compete in categories
like dance, drag, beauty, and fashion against each other for
trophies and cash. One day, Tabitha decided she wanted to
compete in the balls, so she chose the drag category,
and she knew exactly who she was going to impersonate.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
I remember sitting there and we had to pick the
category he was going to walk. Immediately, I was like,
I'm going to walk as Letitia, and everybody's looking at
me because I was probably weighing ninety eight pounds, soaking wet,
with two bricks in my pocket. And the Tisha had
like body like she had big hibs, big but big
(14:15):
breast like she was like the hour glass shape. So
they laughing and she was like, don't worry, I got you.
She was like, I got you. And I remember her
taking me to her house in Jersey City, like right
before the ball and she had like put all these
pillow cakes and she was stuffing me and you know,
and we put the water in the conners because the
condos are more durable than the balloons. So he was
(14:38):
like boobs yeah, ass boobs wow, And like I bore
her braceless and I said, okay, I'm gonna do this.
This is good. I'm gonna show the world.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
How did you feel in all of that?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Got a beautiful I felt like me I won grand
prize that day.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Like wow. After experiencing the liberation of dressing and drag,
Tabitha started presenting as a woman more and more. But
she knew if she went back home to her grandmother's
she'd have to go as her grandson, so she stayed
in New York. But New York was expensive. She needed
(15:19):
money to survive, and there were very few conventional work
opportunities for trans women at the time, so she confided
in a fellow transistor, who introduced her to the Stroll.
The Stroll was a part of New York City's largely
abandoned neighborhood called the Meatpacking District. The neighborhood got its
(15:41):
name because it was literally where slaughterhouses would package meat
for the city until the nineteen seventies, but as New
York life modernized, the industry declined and left behind a
whole neighborhood, a big industrial warehouses that were cheap to
rent and perfect for gay partying. Queer people in New
(16:03):
York had claimed this as their new home. The stroll
was the part of the meatpacking district where trans women
who were sex workers would go to find their clients.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
All you heard was the clickity clack of the hills,
Like you knew the girls was out. And I used
to like just sit back and watch, like the girls
be caddy, like want to be fixing her titties, and
you know the cars are coming by. And back then
it was.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
A lot of cars. There's a lot of business. Oh well,
so why do you think you were interested in sex
work as opposed to like maybe getting a job as
because I couldn't get a job.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Because I wanted to be me. You didn't get jobs
being a transgender person. They wouldn't hire you. And by
that point I already had a taste. I already knew
I could wear women's clothes. I already knew that I
can present myself that way. I no longer had to
live alive. Like I worked jobs as a boy that
I worked at McDonald's. I did all that stuff, but
(17:01):
I just it wasn't like it didn't stick. Like I
didn't feel full, you know, I didn't feel like I
was like out in the world.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
So what was a typical night.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Like a typical night would be getting off the path train.
There's this little steps that's like near Ganzabo. I used
to go down the steps and get dressed. You open
the gate and you go down and it was like
a vestibule that you go into. So I used to
go in the vestibule through my makeup and I had
like this Juliet wig. I remember because I used to
always get that specific wig. And there was a phone
(17:34):
booth on the corner, so I used to go there
with my little compac and make sure everything was good.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
And what was the process of getting a client?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Like, you know, we all had clever ways of you know,
everyone had their own way. Most of the time. I
was do you have the time? And that's how I
met my first client. I remember I was so afraid
with my first date. He asked me did I have
the time? And I was like no, When I ain't
got the time, and the girls are all looking at
me like bitch, and I'm like what it was like, bitch,
(18:06):
that's the date. I was like, so what the fuck
that mean? They was a girl. He was asking you
if you had the time. So when he came back around,
he asked me again and I said, well, I do
if you do. And he literally lived on Christmas Street
and I remember looking over the water and so much
money on the table, so much money. It was so
(18:27):
much money.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Sex work gave Tabitha the financial freedom to live as
the woman she was. She felt autonomous over her life
for the first time. But sex work is dangerous work.
In twenty twenty three alone, almost half of all the
known trans murders globally were sex workers. In the early nineties,
(18:53):
as it is now, sex work was illegal in New York,
so there were no protections for Tabitha and other sex
workers on the stroll. Men could be kind and pay
them according to what they had negotiated, or they could
dupe them and become violent. Because of the dangers of
the job, the other girls on the stroll looked out
(19:14):
for each other, so how would you know which clients
to avoid you? It was the luck of the draw.
I don't think any of us knew because things had
different fetishes, right. Some one guy used to give me
a bunch of money to just small my feet while
he jerk off. One guy wanted you to tie him
up and slap him and take the money out his safe.
(19:36):
And there was this one guy. He used to call
him the magic Man. He used to show you the
money and it would be like folded and he would
count it out, like I got two hundred, and you
would see the two hundred. I did the deed, and
then I was like, give me the money. And I
remember they kept saying that guy would switch the money.
So I opened it and it was like one dollar
(19:58):
bill but like folded up papers and stuff. And I
got back in the car before he could draw. I
was like, give me my money, and.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
I'm arguing with him, and I'm reaching in the thing
where I saw him put the money at, and he's
trying to drive and wearing drives so he can't really
stop the car, you know what I'm saying. So he's
like driving and I'm driving. He's trying to push me
off of him, and I grabbed the money and I
sit up and I fix somebody and like let me
out of his fucking car and he lets me out
(20:25):
and I run down the block and said, I got
the magic man. I got the magic Man. I remember
telling everybody that.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
And how old were you when I would.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Say, I was like probably like nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Wow, so you were silic kid. Yeah, So how did
you protect yourself with all these anything?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I had mace, knife, a hammer, like the girls were
famous for having hammers. Yeah, how else are you going
to defend yourself? Every date is not a safety And
while there are a horrible stories, and I've had some
of them, I've been sexually assaulted, I've been raped, I've
had those stories, right, but I always felt safe amount
(21:07):
the girls when we knew, like if there was a
bad day, we would tell each other.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
So these girls were not just other girls that you
were working with. They were communities. They were sisters protecting
you as well.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Listen, whatever you needed to do to make your money,
they will help you. We all out here together, we
have to protect each other, and you know, and it
was like everyone knew you and you were safe. You know,
at least they gave the illusion of safety. We were
so defenseless, you know, but we protected each other.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
This sounds like really risky, dangerous work. What about it
was worth it to you?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
You had no choice. It was survival. That's why it's
called survival sect. And I felt like I could manage myself.
I can do what I wanted. I felt like I
could navigate myself the way I wanted to. Back then,
you can make good money, Like you can get a
client for like three four hundred dollars and it's like
(22:12):
you're in there like five ten minutes with him, And
like I used to have a lot of money, And
that was the lure of being on the stroll because
I know I can make a lot of money, Like
I had all the newest sneakers, bo Jackson's jewelry, everything,
and God, we used to have so much fun. It
(22:34):
was just like you knew. It was the excitement of
it all for me, Like I would come from this
kept close Christian life, abused at school, started to come
and learned about the village and the culture of the village.
And now I'm making money on the stroll.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Being yourself, being myself because I couldn't get a job.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
I wanted to be myself. I wanted to be me
and there's no way I would have been comfortable any
other way. This was a dangerous place to you, but
it was home for us. It's where we knew where
we could thrive. We lived in that danger. We took risks.
We knew that there were girls who would get beat
(23:17):
up hurt in the cars. We knew that, but we
found ourselves there every day just so we could be
ourselves because the society and the world hated us.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
One of the things that I had read about you
was that sex work was affording you the opportunity to
buy hormones. How did you buy them and how did
you take them?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
There was like a specific guy who used to sell
hormones to the girls. And you can go and get
the hormones there, or you can go down in Brooklyn
and get like a fake prescription or something. There was
so many different ways we used to get it, and
the hormones were very potent back then.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
You're getting them off the street, yeah, so you're not
sure if they're.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
They're right dosage or anything. You're just buying the moones
like people were just injecting theirselves with shit so they
can have the body that they wanted. And you know,
this is what the girls did. Like I was learning
these things from the girls out there.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Why do you think that you were willing to take
that risk to do what to take the hormones without
knowing if they were bad or if they were good.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Because I know what I wanted to be, and I
saw the other girls developing, and that's what I wanted,
illegally or not.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
When we come back, Tabitha begins dodging the cops who
are now targeting sex workers, and she takes her first
hit of crack cocaine. It's nineteen ninety four. New York
City has just a Republican Rudy Giuliani as mayor. He
(25:04):
campaigned on promises to clear away the city's crime and
improve the quality of life. One of his aggressive targets
was prostitution. This was stressful for Tabitha because sex work
was her means of surviving. She was also scared because
New York City police were actively arresting people like her
(25:26):
and placing them in men's jails. I want to now
talk about the cops and sex workers and that relationship.
Why do you think you were being targeted by the cops.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I'm in a doubt now, so of course I know why.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
There was a lot of stigma placed on sex workers.
There was a lot of stigma placed on queer people
at that time. People didn't know a much information. I
don't know what was their hate other than hating us
for who we were and we couldn't get jobs. What
else are we going to do? There was no other option?
Speaker 1 (26:02):
So what would happen when the cops showed up?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
You would run in the opposite direction and hide behind
the cars. You would duck, you would run to like
either someone's doorsteps, and you would hide downstairs. You would
run and when they left, they left, and you would
come back out.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Did you ever get arrested?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Did I ever get arrested? Of course? It was horrible.
All you see is these big lights flashing in the mirror.
Get out the car, Get out the car, and they
would lock up the sex work, but not the john.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So for the girls, your enemy was the cops.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Your enemy was the dates and the cops like that
was like my first kind of offenses was like prostitution,
sex work lord, even with the intent to prostitute. If
we're on the block, just lock them up. Yeah, That's
when I started to find out other spaces became like
this little network of sex workers, and we knew like
the underground way to get the money, and we knew
where all the spots were at edel wise, so many
(26:57):
different places that we can go and get money at.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
It sounds like a really stressful existence.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
There so many different emotions. I just know that you
had this consistent need to move.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
While sex work was able to give Tabatha a sense
of financial freedom, the mental anguish of having to force
her body into sex when she didn't want to became unbearable.
This coupled with constant arrests for the only work that
was available to her, was agonizing. She was with her
(27:37):
friend Melissa when she discovered something that could help her
numb the pain. So let's talk a bit about your addiction.
How did you first get introduced to crack cocaine?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
It was at Kevin Lennon's party. He lived in a
law off. It was my first time like being in
a big apartment like that, like a DUPLEXI was like
a lord, yeah, and we were there. But how I
got introduced to the cocaine was it was on coasters
and you can just like at will, just sniff. So
I'm sniffing and everything, and everybody's coming in and we're
(28:16):
having a good time.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
This was your first time, it was my first time.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
And I was just seeing everybody do it. I was like,
you know, and you see it on TV, so I
knew what coke was like, I knew, like, this is
what they're doing, and everybody was doing it, so what
the fuck. It wasn't peer pressure and no one said
you gotta do this. I did it like I was
just always that person like and I wanted to try life.
(28:42):
I wanted to try everything. Even as I'm telling you,
I'm just like I was so fearless and I did it.
And I remember like the drip and it was like
just go like this, and I was running to the bathroom.
It was like take the tissue and put it in
water and drip it down your nose and it hit
you faster. And we were all skeetered out our and
you know, towards the like later on in the evening
(29:03):
after the music, they was like, oh my god, we
ran out and they sent my stupid ass went Melissa
to go and cop and when I came back, I
put all the drugs on the table and I remember
the crack being there. I remember Melissa took it and
put it on the limit the fo you and went
to the back. She was with some other friends and
(29:25):
I went back there. I was like, girl, while y'all
back here, the parties out there, and they would just
like I saw the pipes and I'm like, oh, And
I remember her telling me to this day. I remember
Melissa telling me, she says, from trying out to go.
I remember her telling me, if you picked this up
at it ruined your life. I'm not going to give
this to you. And she put the pipes there and
(29:49):
she's like, if you want to pick it up, put
you better have money. It would take you for everything.
And I remember doing it and they created a monster
and I ran through a little money I had saved up.
And back then it's like you felt invincible. Like doing
the drugs made me forget a lot of things, like
(30:11):
being bullied in school, you know, not being accepted in
my neighborhood, you know, being bullied in my neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
So did the drugs help you kind of numb the
pain of doing the sex work?
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Of course, I think because it went hand in hand
with the sex work. It was something that was my
go to. I wasn't so connected to what I was
doing because I was making more than Yeah, Like those
were tough times, Like all those fears were real, those
were real feelings, those were raw feelings. It was horrible,
(30:46):
and I think that's why, like I kind of like
really medicated myself because I was not happy with my life.
It's like when you're coming off the high you realize
what you did. That's when the shame and the guilt
start to set in for me. And I used to
say things like I feel spiritually bankrult, like I have
nothing else.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
If the drugs didn't numb you, what do you think
you would have felt by killing myself?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I just felt like I couldn't be me. It was
like I needed something more and I just didn't know
what that more was.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Next week on but We Loved, Part two of my
interview with Tabitha Gonzalez, where she talks about becoming a
drug dealer, becoming incarcerated, and coming back to the stroll
in a way she never imagined. But We Loved is
hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New episodes drop every Wednesday.
(31:57):
If you want to write in to tell your story,
email us at buttweloved at gmail dot com, or send
us a message on Instagram or TikTok at butt we Loved.
We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and
iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries.
(32:17):
Our producers Areshino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey
patt Our. Executive producers are Me, Maya Howard and Katrina Normal.
Fact checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone
Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Roquel Elis. If you
loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us
(32:40):
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you next week.
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