{my memoirs} sugar daddies and whatnot...

I'm not really sure if this is "technically" a memoir, but it is my life, unedited, unreal sounding, but so very, very true. You can read part one here.

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It was after that that my life started unraveling. My mom was pretty much set off into this downward spiral. Soon, instead of taking care of me, partying became a priority. Drinking and drugs seemed to become a staple in everyday living.

I don’t think it started out that way. I remember during my kindergarten year, things were not horrible yet. At this point, I remember us living in a house with a friend of hers who had a boa constrictor. Random memory I know, but honestly I loved that thing. Where we lived, you could see my school. I remember my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Gizelbach (pronounced Gigglebox). I remember watching the solar eclipse during lunch one day. I remember learning how to ride a bike and even how that halloween I tripped because my eyeholes in my mask weren’t big enough for me to see through.

That Christmas started my desire to snoop and find out what I’m getting. Don’t get me wrong, I do love being surprised, but a huge part of me has to know. I searched the house and I found this weird little dollhouse at the top of my mom’s closet. It was the only thing I found, but I knew it was for me of course. We wound up at some random house for Christmas. I will never forget that Christmas since it was the Christmas I stopped believing in Santa. Yep, at five years old.

They shipped me upstairs to go to sleep around 11 or so on Christmas Eve. I wasn’t able to sleep. I could hear them all downstairs talking and laughing and drinking. At some point after midnight one of the fools decided to march up and down the hallway with keys stomping and pretending to be Santa. Oh, not before one of the brilliant people came into my room to warn me that Santa was seen in the neighborhood. Yeah, how awesome were they? I guess drunk people shouldn’t be allowed to play Santa. So then they get me to go downstairs and of course the dollhouse thing I had found was one of the gifts.

I think sometime after the new year was when my mom started working at Sugars, a high end strip club in Austin. I’m not really sure when it happened, but I know she was working there for a while. One reason I know she worked there is because I would wind up going there with her. I know there weren’t official “take your daughter to work days” but she would still take me up there with her. A five year old in a strip club...classy right?

The great thing thing about hanging out in strip clubs is that an early age I got to play with gold dots. Seriously, I know that sounds odd, but they were everywhere...home, the car and at my mom’s work. To me, at the time, they were just gold stickers, now they represent everything that was wrong with my childhood, or lack thereof.

I honestly don’t know if I even finished my kindergarten year at that school, heck, I don’t even know if I finished it at any school. My mom moved us to some apartment complex. I remember that complex pretty well. We lived on the second floor above this sweet little old couple that had a granddaughter who was either three or four. Here complex is where things started to go horribly, horribly wrong...

I loved running around the complex in my jelly shoes...playing with other kids all day and night...swimming in the pool without adult supervision. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some time I had adults watching me, I’m guessing my friend’s parent’s were the ones who kept out an eye on me.

I remember coming home from spending the night at a friend’s house (I’m 5 or 6 at this point) and walking up the staircase to a broken window. I’ll never forget it since I feared the worst. I knew something was wrong, something terrible had happened. I banged on the door and my mom, who had a bandaged up arm answered it. Apparently she “lost” her keys the night before and the sensible thing to do was break into our house.

I will never forget the night my mom slapped me. She had dropped me off at some guy friend’s house for me to stay at while she worked. While there we were watching TV, and for some reason I remember that there was some show on Playboy TV that was like an obstacle course game show. Random I know. But to my 5-6 year old self (who didn’t think twice about seeing half naked women, hello strippers!) I was curious. It was a fun game show. I think the guy changed it pretty quickly after it was on the tv. Looking back I have no clue how it even wound up on tv to start with, but it did. For some reason that night after my mom came and picked me up, either drunk or high or both, she apparently found out that I “liked” that show (really, how much could a 5 year old really like it) she got pissed off at me and slapped me for “embarrassing” her. This was now my life.

I won’t say that everything was horrible, in fact there were times were we did have lots of fun. Most of the fun times revolved around her “dates” who deemed it appropriate to try and win me over too. One such night I remember we were both painting our finger and toe nails before a night out. Her date showed up with some toys from Whataburger for me, they were these cute bears with random football teams on them. He took us in a limo to one of those gran prix places. It’s random that I remember that night...but this guy was also the one who took us to Colorado. Apparently he was one of my mom’s best customers, aka her “sugar daddy” and when he decided to leave his wife for my mom, she bailed. I’m telling y’all I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Some fun times I remember with my mom were going with her to Barton Creek. During that time they had a room near the bathrooms where you could sunbathe topless. I strangely have memories of having to be in that room for hours while my mom got a tan. On the way to or from Barton Creek we would stop at a Dairy Queen for ice cream. It’s amazing that as I remember this, but it perfectly illustrates my mom. One occasion we pulled in and she got two cones, one for her and one for me. I had this thing about the top of the cone, the curly-q, that was my favorite part. This day, she decided that she wanted to eat the top of the cone before handing it to me. I was livid and all she did was laugh. I know it seems trivial looking back that I got so upset, but it was just another example of her selfishness.

I have always laughed when people would talk about how great Sixth Street was. I laughed not because I didn’t believe them, but because I know, or more appropriately I knew. I can’t usually tell them how I knew it was a happening place, since I was six when I would hang out there. Yes, at the age of six my mother had me with her going from bar to bar while every man in the bar tried to pick her up. I promise that’s not an exaggeration. My mom was gorgeous back then. Before all the drugs, alcohol and her lifestyle caught up to her. I would sit at the bar while all the guys looking to score with my mom bought me Shirley Temples...I wonder if this is the subconscious reason I do not like maraschino cherries now.

I don’t remember much about my first grade year  in Austin except for riding the Frog bus to Met’s Elementary. I don’t remember much about that school, but years later I remember watching Unsolved Mysteries and they were talking about my elementary school! Apparently when they were trying to level the school all the ghosts were stopping the bulldozers and writing things on the challkboards. I remember when I watched this I freaked out thinking my soul was still in that school...my grandma laughed and explained it to me that my soul is still mine until I died, who knew?

The main reason I don’t remember much about my first grade year in Austin is because I wasn’t there long. Sometime shortly after school started is when my world imploded...


{to be continued}