Finding Empowerment through Sex Work as a Korean Adoptee with Kayla Tange - Ep 170 - Unraveling Adoption

Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Welcome to this episode of Unraveling Adoption, an intentional space to
delve into adoption's complexities together. I'm Beth Syverson.
I'm an adoptive mom of an intuitive and bright 20-year-old son,
Joey, who is trying to figure out adulthood. I'm
walking beside him while working on my own personal growth and healing. This
podcast helps anyone impacted by adoption, and the general

(00:24):
public will understand adoption's complexities better after listening too.
And if you're a seeker who's wanting to move forward in your life, contact me
to work with you as a coach. Now, listeners, we
don't usually talk about sex on this podcast directly, but today's episode
is going to be about sexuality and sex work. So this episode
might not be safe for work or for younger ears, but

(00:45):
bookmark it for later because you'll want to listen to it when it's safe to do so.
Today's guest is Kayla Tange, a Korean adoptee raised by
Japanese-American parents. Working for much of her adult life
under her stage name Coco Ono, she has been an exotic
dancer, performance artist, and sex worker. I was
first introduced to her through her short film called Dear Mother, which

(01:07):
is a video letter to her birth mother she had yet to meet. Toward
the end of the film, Kayla narrates the following line, and
now I go out each night onto makeshift stages and I
feel the love of strangers. I dance, I smile, I
make art, I feel love. And
even though not all adoptees obviously will pursue a career as a

(01:27):
sex worker, I bet this impetus to find love and
empowerment is common for many adoptees. I'm
very grateful that Kayla is here to help us all understand adoption's complexities
better. And welcome to Unraveling Adoption. Thank you for being here. Thanks
for having me, Beth. Well, I wonder, first, I always have adoptees that
come on the show. Just tell us, you know, your adoption story. What happened to

(01:52):
I was six months old. I was born in Seoul, South Korea.
in 1982, and I went to an orphanage prior
to being adopted at six months old to
a Japanese-American family in California. So
Oh, in Central California. Okay. Yeah. And now you're

(02:19):
Very good. And I know from the film I
watched your beautiful film, Dear Mother, and there's video
of you as a little performer. Have you always found performance
Thanks for watching the film. I did
dance as a kid and yeah,

(02:40):
I always enjoyed it. I didn't think it was going to be such
Yeah, I bet that
job description wasn't one of the ones they had at career day in
No, and I never really knew what I wanted to do when I grew
up. You know, I thought, Oh, you know, I like research.

(03:00):
And I don't know, maybe I'll be a lawyer or something like
I knew I wasn't great at science. So I didn't
think that I would be a doctor. So I just had no
How did you get into a career as a sex worker, as a dancer and
The age of 39, I was diagnosed with ADHD and autism.

(03:25):
And I didn't realize how this might have contributed to
the trajectory of my life. the
lack of decision making, or I made a lot
of decisions that I don't necessarily regret, but
I don't think I really had a plan. And I think that's totally okay.
So that's ADHD. They're just kind of impulsivity?

(03:49):
Yeah, I was interested in a lot of things. I went to school
and I studied special effects makeup. And I
did that for a few years. And then I went
back to community college. And I just tried so many things like
photography. And I did eventually think
about maybe becoming an occupational therapist because my

(04:11):
mother was disabled growing up. And I
thought that maybe that's something I wanted to do. I
was really horrible at staying in school. I probably
dropped out of, I don't know, four or five different community colleges.
It was a really hard struggle
for me to finish school and to figure out what I wanted to

(04:32):
do. Like a lot of early 20-something
year olds, I worked a lot of retail and service jobs. It
was long hours because I worked several different jobs.
It wasn't that much money. Sure. And so I always wanted
to dance since I was in high school. It

(04:53):
was just something I thought about, but I didn't think would ever be a reality
because I was really shy. Like dance is it? Oh, I like I
Okay. Is that still the proper term to call it a stripper or exotic dancer?
So from high school, you kind of had your eye on that. That'd be fun to
Yeah, I thought it would be fun or maybe

(05:16):
a dominatrix or something. I really
liked dressing up and I really liked performing with
my friends, but I was pretty shy to do
it in front of strangers. OK, so yeah,
after being in L.A. for four years, I was
working at a clothing shop with a friend of mine and, you

(05:37):
know, we would dance in the mirrors and Finally, I think
we just got fed up with our low pay and,
you know, our manager and all that stuff. So we said, you
know, we're just going to go audition. And we got the job. And

(05:59):
And then hours, hours, and
I was able to make my own schedule. And I, I then
after that, just auditioned at other clubs. And so
I was constantly kind of working at a couple different clubs
at any given time. And it was pretty great. Yeah.
Because at that time, you could just kind of come in and work and

(06:20):
you pay, you know, your fees and go home.
I'm thinking for somebody with ADHD, although you didn't know that you had
ADHD at the time, but that job is really kind of perfect. It's
It was the most perfect job. I thought, I
can't believe I didn't do this sooner. A lot
of novelty. It was like goal oriented. You

(06:43):
are working for yourself, essentially. I mean, obviously I've
worked at other clubs where there's a schedule. But a
lot of the clubs didn't have a schedule. And at the time, you know,
this was 2005, there was still a lot of money to
be made in the clubs. So yeah, you
go in, you think, okay, this is my goal for the day. And

(07:04):
it's cash. So you know how much you're making. And
then also just the movement aspect. So you're
just constantly moving and walking around and Yeah,
that just really kept me entertained. Oh, sure. And
you're constantly meeting new people. And I think, for me,
I really enjoy connecting with people. So

(07:26):
it became kind of like a game like, okay, how can
And that was really cool. And the goal was to relate. So
they keep coming back. Was it kind of for monetary gain? It
Well, yeah, I mean, when I first started, obviously

(07:47):
to connect and then sell a lap dance. Sure. And
then, yeah, I think to connect
with people on a deeper level, to have like long term customers,
that was really beneficial as someone who's in
a contractor. Yeah. Yeah. And I think for
me, especially when I started to transition into

(08:09):
doing performance art, a lot of customers that I met at
these various clubs ended up coming to a lot of these early shows
that I was doing. And so I just felt really
supported. I bet. In ways that I hadn't before at
other jobs. I bet. Not that it's all great all
the time. I'm sure it's not. Yeah, yeah. There's also a

(08:30):
lot of not the greatest working conditions and there
is a lot of other forms of harassment that
you deal with. Sure, I bet. You know, I don't want to
paint it as the most perfect job in the world, but it
I can see how it met your needs as a 20 something. And yeah, I
can see how it checked a bunch of boxes for you. Looking back,

(08:54):
can you see a thread between your adoption
trauma and this kind of need to connect with
people? Is there a link there or am I
I mean, I can't speak for all adopted people, but
for me, and I didn't even make these connections at
the time because I think, you know, I was so young and I

(09:18):
moved to LA and I wanted to do
something creative, but I didn't know what. And I loved
connecting with people on a deeper level. And
yeah, I think after maybe like
a decade, decade and a half of working as
a sex worker, I did start thinking about these connections, you

(09:38):
know, especially Luca Fisher, my co-producer on
Dear Mother approached me to do a documentary, a
short documentary about the subject. And that's
really when I started to think about these connections of
like, why do I feel so at home in this place, you
know, where I'm able to connect with these people, I'm

(10:00):
able to share something about myself and my creative
journey. And it's like, yeah,
feeling I guess feeling seen in this space,
this unconventional workplace that, yeah, there
was something really magical about that for me.
Well, the whole point of that job as a stripper is to be seen, right?

(10:25):
And to connect it to adoption, though, and to not
feel seen, I think. To then
go from feeling really seen, filled some sort
of void in me. Yeah, I can't speak for everybody, but
Sure, certainly. That's fascinating. And when we talked a couple
of weeks ago, it was surprising to me that dancing

(10:49):
and sex work empowers you. And
it makes you feel in control, which I understand, but it would
not have been my initial thought. I've kind of my stereotype is that,
oh, these poor women, you know, oh, they're being coerced or
this is their last resort or whatever. But from hearing you,
this was definitely your choice, although

(11:10):
you suffered some harassment and some injustices, but in general, that
you feel empowered when you're doing this work. Can you help flesh that out
Yeah, and like I said, I can't speak for everybody. I don't
think it's the best job for some people and
that a lot of people have had a lot of negative experiences. That's

(11:30):
not to say I've never had negative experiences. I definitely
have, but I do feel that having the
agency to make money off my own body, no
one else, that really shifted something
in me. It was shocking. to feel that way.

(11:53):
And I'm particularly thinking of international adoptees and
how adoption in general really commodifies bodies.
A lot of people see adoption, especially international adoption, as literally
human trafficking. And so your body literally was sold.
So you're taking that and flipping it on its head and
say, OK, all right. All right. I'm doing it myself now. Does

(12:17):
Yeah. Yeah, and at the beginning, I don't think that I
realized that. Like I said, I don't think it was until we
started to film Dear Mother that I really started to think deeply
about how I felt about my body being this commodity
that I had control over because you

(12:39):
And I love my adoptive parents. Sure. I do. But
Right. Yeah. And a lot of people end
up with really abusive adoptive parents or... They do. Yeah,
absolutely. It can be really bad. It's not necessarily a panacea. No,
it's not. Even if your adoptive parents are great, you

(13:00):
still feel displaced. You were
There is a lot of displacement feelings and feelings of
loneliness, abandonment, like you just have
no place in the world. And so that's why I thought
it was so shocking to feel like a sense of feeling at
home navigating this world that was

(13:24):
Yeah, just taking the reins for yourself. Yeah, that's very
fascinating. I'm learning so much from listening to you and understanding a
little bit more about your story. And it helps inform me
with my son. You know, I adopted my son from Japan and he
said he feels neither Japanese nor American, like he
doesn't fit anywhere. And it's heartbreaking from this end.

(13:45):
And I'm sure it's heartbreaking from the person that it happened
Yeah, having that identity that just is kind of in
Yeah, neither here nor there, not all one or the other. And
Yeah, I've gone twice. I've gone to Japan and I

(14:05):
get asked a lot in Korea why I don't speak Korean.
I bet. I have to explain and it just
feels like a reminder that I don't
That you don't belong. Yeah, gosh, that must be tough. What was it like
What year did you make it? It came out in 2017. So it

(14:34):
And I'll put a link to it. It's available on your website. And so I'll put
a link to it there. It's a really powerful, it's only like five
minutes, but just really powerful little vignettes of
you working and also you traveling and
pictures of you when you were a kid and just kind of this bouncing back
and forth between Korea and here. And

(14:59):
I think it really contextualized a lot of things
that I had been going through and feeling. It was
probably one of the most challenging projects that
I've worked on. But at the same time, whenever I'm
showing my work or I need to explain my
practice, kind of like with a couple of

(15:22):
pieces, that's usually one of them that I
share because there's footage of me dancing
in the club. There's footage of me performing. There's
footage of me running around as a kid that was
seemingly very happy. There's footage of
my adopted family. So I think that it really

(15:44):
contains a lot of things that have been very
Yeah, it really gels it all together and helps us understand
better what you might be going through. I thought it was really
Oh, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And I think something about
having a stage, you know, you quoted one

(16:07):
of the lines in that it's just like performing for all these people,
because I think offstage, sometimes I can be maybe
more reserved. But there's something about being free
on stage to really perform a lot of these really
intense emotions. Yeah, like grief. Yeah,

(16:28):
Yeah. Well, and how many adoptees are actors or
other types of artists? It's pretty common, I think, for people to
maybe not as a career necessarily, but to explore that avenue
of release, of freedom, of freedom of expression, to
be some sort of performer, musician, that kind of thing. I
think that's really a great way to explore those kinds of emotions.

(16:49):
I want to ask, but I don't want to center your adoptive parents, but
I'm just curious because I'm a mom. I
wonder how your family treats you and
has responded to your career choice. And you don't have to answer if you
She was very encouraging of my creative side.

(17:13):
My mom was born and my dad was a toddler during the
internment of Japanese Americans during World
War II. And I think that that
generation also was concerned that my
sister and I wouldn't be OK if we chose unconventional jobs.
So there was a lot of emphasis on getting a job

(17:36):
with a 401k and health insurance. Something secure. Right.
And I think that further confused me when
I was already confused as to what I wanted to do, even though I kind
of always felt like I want to do something creative. Yeah. I

(17:56):
I've tried it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And it didn't
work out. I bet. So my mom didn't live long
enough to see me through this, this
journey. But, you know, my dad, I think he was
supportive when I went to school for makeup. But
I think He was supportive, but I think he

(18:18):
was always concerned that it wouldn't be OK. And
so I think at this point in my life, it's like I've been doing this
for a long time now. I think he's like, OK, yeah, OK,
You know, I can imagine it would be tough for
any parent just because of the cultural taboos. And this

(18:38):
probably isn't their dream for their child. but you're
showing that it can be a viable career and you can feel
empowered doing it. And I know that you're working hard
in the industry to address some of the injustices in sex
work. And I think there's a lot to be proud of, but I can imagine, especially
a Japanese-American family might be like, ah.

(19:00):
I think my family, they see that I haven't
given up. Yeah. And that this is the thing in
my life is my art practice that I've
And it's really kept me alive. Yeah,
I bet. I mean, truly, you know. And I don't mean
to be morbid, but it's really kept me alive through

(19:25):
I bet. You found a unique community that probably was
able to hold you during those dark times and sustain
you and keep you going. Yeah. And it fed you in a certain way that was very
And I'm very grateful for all of my friends.
Yeah, I bet. And I'm sure you've supported people along the way, too.

(19:46):
I'm sure it's a tight knit community. Because it's hard. Yeah.
It's hard to put yourself out there. I'm sure. Especially when
a lot of my art practice is talking about my adoption
and my worth. Yeah. As a person, what
is my existence worth? And it's like putting
yourself out there as an artist and then putting yourself out there as

(20:12):
I agree. I agree. If you could talk to your 12 year
old self, what advice would you give yourself knowing
what you know now? I would probably say it's
Nice. And I think I
would also say to just

(20:34):
do what you want. Yeah. Yeah. You
know, because I think it's
hard enough to try to do things with ADHD in general. Yeah,
for sure. Doing something you don't want to do is really
Yeah, it's like pushing something uphill. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Yeah,

(20:56):
Yeah, it doesn't work. I think that
my 12 year old self had a lot of creativity and intuition
that was repressed for a long time. It
Yeah, so you would have told your 12-year-old too. Let
it go. Just be creative. Do your thing. Just keep

(21:18):
going. Just do what you want to do. Yeah. And do you have any
advice for parents, adoptive parents or regular parents
about kids that maybe choose sex work or choose, I
don't know, creative work like your makeup work? I
mean, that's not even probably what your parents had envisioned for you, right? It
was like, although you said they were supportive, but you

(21:38):
know, what if our kids are doing something that, oh man, this was
I had a lot of health problems in the last couple years and I went in
for a surgery like 2022. And my
nurse was this amazing woman. And
we got to talking because I think she saw in my records, she's

(21:59):
like, Oh, you're autistic. And she's like, my son's autistic.
Oh, she asked me that. She's like, how did you navigate through
your life? Or like, what should I do? And
I we just started talking and I just asked her what he's interested
in and what he's good at. She said he's really good
at drawing and art. And I was like,

(22:20):
well, I wished that maybe I
had more encouragement to go after things that I was
really good at. I think that would have remedied
a lot of like inner turmoil that I had about trying
to fit into another mold that just
didn't work out for me. So, I mean, I think that's the

(22:42):
advice I can give. Like it may not make sense to you as
a parent, but it's like everyone's different and
something that fascinates. your child might be
totally boring, you know, or not make any sense to you. But
it's so obvious to when you see a kid or
a teenager light up by a

(23:04):
certain topic or activity. It's like, why not explore that
I think for adoptive parents, we particularly have to be
open to whatever our kids are going to be into because it's
not going to be what we're interested in. Probably biological kids
don't always do what you think they'll do either. But with adopted kids,
we don't know. We don't know what propensities you're going to have or what skills

(23:28):
and creativity and talents you're going to have and to just encourage
humor, all of that. Yeah. It's going to be different to
honor and respect it and encourage the strengths instead
of trying to push them into what you thought things were going to be. Oh,
my goodness. That must be frustrating for everybody. Everybody involved.

(23:49):
But I think even for all parents. Yeah. Just parenting in
general. I mean, I'm not a parent, so I don't know.
But I think that being a child and having
expectations that, you know, you can't meet.
I'm sure that is extremely frustrating, very much so. Well,

(24:09):
I wonder if you'd be willing to share the piece you wrote in
a book called Horrophobia. It's a compilation by a
bunch of people who work in sex work. And I
thought your chapter in that book was absolutely gorgeous and
inspiring and illuminating. And if you'd be
willing to read it in your own voice, I think that would be really special. And I'll put a

(24:32):
Yeah, of course. I was really honored that
Lizzie Borden, who put this anthology together, asked
me to be a part of this. So this
is a piece I wrote after I came back from Korea in
2011. Okay. It's called A Forest. I'm
standing, barely, slumped over the

(24:54):
jukebox, back turned to the stage, one arm perched
on the glass supporting my body. Shifting between one
foot and the other, legs like jelly, hurting
yet hovering. Back, forth, my
body a pendulum, my eyes fixated on
the Jagermeister sign. There's a sound of salt crunching

(25:16):
on the rim of glass, the shuffling of heels on hardwood floor, followed
by, thank you, thank you for your tips. Flipping
through the 99 CDs feels like an impossible chore. I
try to reach deep within myself to pick a song, any song that
will move my body enough to exercise my despair and
reel in the monetary love from strangers. I

(25:38):
choose a go-to, The Cure from 17 Seconds. It's
one of my favorite albums, different from the others in its understated
melancholic tones. 10 p.m. Some
regulars sit at the end of the bar. They tell jokes. I
laugh. Usually I have the script of most evenings down
to a science, mustering connections out of thin air

(26:01):
like clockwork. But now when I needed that magic the
most, it's not one of those times. I desperately wanted
to vanish. I'm in such a
daze that everything is on autopilot. Sometimes
dancing is like that. When it's good, it's great. It
feels familiar yet new. But tonight, I'm

(26:22):
tired of the world and the persona I've constructed to mentally survive.
How is Korea? I hear a faint voice say behind my back. Dread
creeps in. I should have had a generic response prepared for
this, but I don't. Happy
birthday to you, they sing, my second day
in Seoul. It's my birthday. I'm surrounded

(26:46):
by 17 other adoptees from who I met the day before.
We're in a restaurant that serves barbecue, but not the kind
with the girls on the table. They've ordered me some dessert
from the menu. Although strangers, we get right down to business.
How old were you when you were adopted? Were you in an orphanage or fostered?

(27:06):
Did you come with the hope of finding your birth parents? The
smell of Galby fills the air. Best friendships are
forged over food and displacement. Normally,
I'm great at switching seamlessly between my internal monologue
and my client-facing persona. But at this moment, I
feel weak. I don't want to be at work in this condition. But

(27:29):
I fear that if I don't put a schedule in, I'll be punished with fewer shifts
next week. And after three weeks in Korea, I
desperately needed the money. I spent around $6,000 on
one of the most eye-opening and disappointing trips of
my life. The happiness and sadness of some days
was nearly impossible to contain. Being back

(27:50):
in the States is painful. Painful is an understatement.
I turn around, long black hair flowing as I
paint a smirk on my face, walking, wobbling towards the
stage as I pass by a regular customer. I'm
friends with his girlfriend. She must have told him why I was away.
It was great, I say, as if

(28:12):
the person speaking from inside me were someone else. There's
24-hour shopping and the city feels so safe to walk around. A
look of disbelief crosses his face. But what exactly does
he expect? For me to lay myself bare right in the club, right
before I walk on stage to dance my abandonment away? I don't
trust anyone to hold my despair. It's too fresh, still

(28:35):
bleeding, not refined. Our hotel in
Seoul is central to everything. We even have a tiny washing
machine in our room. After unpacking, I go off
on my own to explore. The smell of street vendors making fresh
candies and fried foods on sticks fills the air. I
feel proud to be from here. The pavement is different from

(28:56):
Los Angeles. I feel smooth stones between my
feet, and I want to walk forever. Jet lag
is uncanny, but in this case symbolic. The
show must go on. Despite my crumbling sense of self and
limbs weak enough to float away, my body aches
from my eyes to my ankles. My black patent leather

(29:16):
stripper heels feel like a custom pair of cement shoes, far
from the hollowed out plastic they're made of. On any other night,
my shoes are my support. They make me feel strong
and unshakable, sexy and limitless. This
is not one of those nights. On stage in
a daze, doing slow motion hair flips, spinning,

(29:39):
offering an intense gaze, followed by a coy look, then
a quick turn. I hear her voice calling
my name. The sound is deep in the dark. I
dance like a ghost, hardly registering the floor under my feet.
I managed to fool the audience into thinking I'm desirable,
confident, insatiable. In reality, my soul

(30:02):
aches, and I'm disoriented by my own thoughts. How
could I tell them how deeply lonely it felt to be
among a sea of people who look just like me? I
never met my mother, but sometimes I feel her in my bones, in
my blood. We're the same, despite the 19 years
between us in age. In her translated letters written

(30:24):
to me before I went to Korea, she hinted at being
wild, at having made choices that shamed her family. I
never set out to live my life to redeem her buried sexual freedom,
but somehow it chose me. Suddenly I stop, but
I know it's too late. Who am I anyway? I

(30:46):
almost grasped an answer before it slipped through my fingers. I
almost faced who I was, but she slipped through my fingers. My
set ends. I curl around the stage, sweeping my money
from one side to another, stopping and pausing to thank patrons, attempting
to humanize myself in the process. I collect my

(31:06):
tips from the customers with their prying eyes and mouths. I
don't think anyone can tell I'm slowly dying inside as
they stare at me, their tongue coming out of their mouths like cartoon
animals. How could I tell them that my mother had an opportunity to
meet me, but instead chose to abandon me for the
second time? In the cab back to my hotel, I

(31:28):
sob uncontrollably. She couldn't do it. It
was too emotional for her, the social worker relayed as
she steered me out of the agency's offices. This
statement plays in my head over and over. In
the seat next to me lies a bouquet of flowers and a photo album
I made of the years of my life she missed. The

(31:49):
time elapsed from receiving this news from the social worker.
to stepping in the cab must have been mere minutes, and yet my
whole life flashed before my eyes. Do I even exist?
At the jukebox, I'm setting up my second set. My boss
comes by and puts her hand on my back. Did you meet her? She
inquires. Why is she being so nice to me?

(32:12):
I don't trust her. It didn't happen. I respond
while I'm staring into the light of the jukebox. She couldn't do
it. My skin crawls. Why
this conversation? Why now? I can't
handle being in my physical and emotional body at once. The
air is stagnant and the music is so loud. The sound of distorted

(32:34):
laughter and clapping feels thick as I swallow in discomfort. How
can I tell her it feels like when I lost my virginity? It's the
second time I felt this different, enough that when I look in the
mirror, I think that others must notice as well. But
it's not the same. It's a different kind of exposure. very
real in the flesh, the kind that feels exploitative,

(32:58):
the kind that can be bought. Here I am for your
viewing pleasure, possessed by pleasure and
pain. In the dressing room, I count my money.
It was a good set. I've missed the sound of sweeping up dollars, missed
the way they felt in my hands. I've missed unfolding them
and neatly facing them the same way. The security guy

(33:19):
used to comment on this when I changed them in and out the bar. You
have respect for your money. I didn't know what he meant by that,
but it's satisfying to see them neatly folded and
easier to know if I've met my quota for the evening. Back
at the hotel in Seoul, I'm met with open arms by the 17 other
adoptees waiting for my happy reunion. I

(33:40):
have nothing. I can hardly face them. I bow out
of group lunch and dinner that day and do what feels the most healing, exploring
the city alone. For hours, I walk until my feet
blister. Being in Seoul is surreal. I see
my face in others, and yet I can't communicate with
words. When it's brought up by shop owners, I

(34:01):
mumble, I'm adopted. They throw their
arms around me and cry. My mother hid in an unwed
mother's home with me. She didn't tell my birth father that
I existed. I try to feel him in my bones, skin,
and spirit, given that he's a part of what made me,
too. I'd like to understand his side of the story.

(34:23):
My mother felt she was doing us a favor so I could have a better life,
so he could have a better life. She put herself in
a state of loneliness I can't even imagine. I
wonder if sometimes she has a better life. Outside
between sets, I light a cigarette. The act of
inhaling calms me down. The boss doesn't

(34:43):
like it when we take smoke breaks, but at this point, I don't care
what the punishment is. I need the release. Though it
means I'm forced to make small talk with customers who are likewise outsmoking.
My face already hurts from fake smiling, but at
least the cigarette keeps me occupied. Back inside
in the lap dance booth, I could use extra cash, but I'd rather

(35:05):
be anywhere but here. My body sways and
he thinks I'm being sexy for him. I'm barely standing, leaning
on his shoulders for support. But I make it appear as
if I'm angled for closeness. Manufacturing intimacy
is a defense mechanism for me. It's become second
nature. Steve is a regular. He smells

(35:27):
like cigarettes, but so do I. I made the mistake of
adding him on my personal Facebook page. And now every
time I see him, he makes some comment that suggests he knows me. I
could tell he's high right now because he can hardly talk, but
he spits something out. I read your blog. You're
so dark. The words sputter and slide sloppily

(35:48):
from his mouth. I feel kicked while already down. I've
danced through breakups, through the deaths of family and friends, through
tears shrouded by my hair, and now through this. It's
as if the movement is some sort of conjuring, a merging
of my body and my mother's, as if I'm dancing away
her repression, her shame. I dance when I

(36:09):
don't know what else to do, a somatic response to
everything that I have no words for. No
language is needed, no explanation. I can
be in my body, and in that moment, I feel safe. I
am autonomous, haunted, consumed, reckless, and
abandoned in this space, this underground, where

(36:31):
feelings are sin and feeling is foreign. But
it's here where people pay to witness my
pain night after night. I'm running towards nothing
Hmm. Thank you. Thank
you for reading that, Kayla. There's some really big truth bombs in there. And it's

(36:56):
Yeah, it's still hard for me to read after.
It started as a blog entry. While I
was in Korea, I kept a blog every day while I was there. That

(37:17):
Well, your essay is really powerful and it helps us all understand
what you're going through, what you continue to go through and the
various pains that have affected you and
brought you to where you are today. And I'm glad you're still
doing what you love doing and that you're finding safe ways to do that
and make things as safe as possible for other people. And

(37:40):
I wish you well with your health and whatever your next steps are.
Yeah, of course. Well, if people wanted to
get a hold of you, are you open to that? And what would be the best
Yeah, I guess you can put my email and
website and Instagram in the notes with

(38:04):
Okay, so I'll put the chapter, I'll put your email, I'll put your website and
your Instagram. And what's your website, just so you can put it
on audio? It's kaylatange.com. Okay,
kaylatange.com. Yes. But
if you're driving or something, now listeners go look it up. I put everything in
the show notes for you. Just look either below or next to

(38:25):
the episode where you pushed play and you'll find all of these notes.
Yeah. Thank you for including all of that. This is really
meaningful projects that I've been a part of. So yeah.
And you're still doing performance art, right? I'm still doing performance art.
I do a lot of visual art right now. I took a break because
of my health issues, but yeah. I can't stop slowly

(38:49):
creeping back in, but little
Your creativity is unlimited. Let it go. Go,
go, go. That's great. Well, go look up Kayla. And
while you're there, go look up Unraveling Adoption at unravelingadoption.com. Find
all the resources that we have there. And thank you all for
listening. Make sure and share this episode with anyone that

(39:12):
you think might resonate with Kayla's story. And also,
it helps us greatly if you could rate and review the
podcast on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify, even
if that's not where you listen to us, it still works. So those help
us a lot and help get the episodes out to more people. Well,
thanks again for listening, everybody. Kayla and I want you

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Finding Empowerment through Sex Work as a Korean Adoptee with Kayla Tange - Ep 170

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Finding Empowerment through Sex Work as a Korean Adoptee with Kayla Tange - Ep 170