The Education of a Very Young Madam (3 page)

It wasn't until later that I learned exactly what he meant. It had cost him $100,000 to adopt me and have me brought here from Korea. He had been skeptical about the whole idea from the beginning, but my mom's heart had been set on it. I have a feeling that he thought there were better things he could have done with his money, like taking a long vacation to Africa, which is what he and wife number three did with my college fund after it became obvious that I wasn't going to college.

I didn't talk to my father much after that. He isn't the type of person I would have chosen for a father anyway, if only a person could choose such things. He's rich, but not like the rich people I've met since leaving home. He has money because he comes from a rich family, not because he's earned it. He has never really worked, despite the fact that he went to an Ivy League school and had every advantage. Instead, he lives off the yearly allowance he gets from his own parents. How can you respect someone like that, someone who has never done anything for himself? I just knew I never wanted to be like him.

He used to keep an office in our house, which became the source of many jokes when I realized what an office was really supposed to be for. For him it wasn't a place where he did actual business, just somewhere he would disappear to, to read the paper, play the stock market, or simply hide out from his family whenever he felt like it. No one was allowed to bother him when he was in his office, and if we did, there was hell to pay.

Given that I never thought much of my father, I can't say I miss him. It wasn't my fault he decided to pay all that money for me and then got scammed. If someone steals your money, it's your own fault for not protecting yourself. That's what I've come to learn. His regrets are his own. When he told me that story of my adoption, all I could think was, At least I didn't come cheap. In fact, I wish they'd made him pay a whole lot more for me.

CHAPTER 3

Runaway

The first time I ran away from home, I was thirteen years old. Mom and I had been on our own for a while then. Not long after the divorce, she came into my room one morning and said, "It's time for a fresh start!" Soon after, we left Connecticut and moved into a sweet little house beside a river in a small town in Maine near the coast. The house wasn't as grand as our place in Connecticut, but we still had a nice piece of property and plenty of wealthy neighbors, so there is no reason to feel bad for us.

Connecticut had been bad enough, but in Maine, I was the only Asian kid in school. There was one black kid too, a boy who was a couple ofyears older than me, but that was it. Everyone else was white as far as the eye could see. When I first got to my new school, a bunch of kids made fun of me for looking different. It quickly became clear to me that the black kid and I were either going to be the most popular or the most unpopular kids around. There was no way to blend in, so we had to be one or the other.

Fortunately, I was able to make some friends and I got good grades. In sixth grade, my two best girlfriends and I all had a crush on the same boy, John, who was the school hunk. That year he asked me out at the school dance, and I gained instant popularity. Of course, once I got the popularity I wanted, I didn't need him anymore. (John was actually kind of boring, so I dumped him a month later.) I think I was born with the fear-of-boredom gene. I knew instinctively that small-town life wasn't for me. I was drawn to adventure at a very young age. One of my early heroes was Al Capone.

Mom had a hard time adjusting to life on her own almost from the start. I could tell that she didn't like being alone, and I know I was a handful. She had always been a bit New Agey, but she started to really get into things like psychic healing and channeling one's inner child. She tried to get me into these things too. She wanted me to talk about my memories of Korea and my dreams. At one point she even tried to help me track down my
"uhn-nee,"
my big sister who had taken care ofme when I lived in Korea, but we never found her. The whole "making peace with your past" thing just wasn't for me anyway.

I think all that stuff was Mom's attempt to feel better about her life, but it didn't really work. She just got more and more depressed. One day she came to me and said she was checking herself into a private psychiatric hospital and I would be staying for a while with our neighbor, who was this woman I barely knew. It wasn't the neighbor's fault, and she probably meant well, but she and I didn't get along right from the start. I resented being stuck with her, and I acted out as often as I could. I started ditching school, just cutting a class or two at first, then whole days at a time. One day I wanted to go to a Def Leppard concert and the neighbor wouldn't let me go, but I just went anyway.

After the concert I returned to the neighbor's house. She was furious with me, but since she wasn't my mother, I didn't really care. I realized then that no one could stop me from doing what I wanted to do, at least not for long. Sometimes when I'd sneak out, someone would catch me, but other times, no one did. I learned that, if I just kept trying, eventually I'd get my way. One day I left the neighbor lady's house again without telling her and went to stay with a friend and her grandmother in Old Orchard Beach, which was a town on the coast, quite a ways from where we lived. That time I stayed away for a while.

Old Orchard Beach was a cheesy and slightly sleazy vacation town, not unlike Atlantic City only much smaller and sleepier. At one of the shops on the boardwalk, I met a boy from Argentina who was working there for the summer and fell for him on first sight. I wanted to spend all my time with him, so I ditched my friend and her grandmother to stay with him. When he told me he was leaving town soon, I asked him to take me with him, but he said no, probably because I insisted on staying a virgin. I was admittedly boy crazy back then, but my parents had instilled strong values in me (before the family fell apart, that is). I still considered myself a good girl, so I stuck to kissing and hand-holding. In my mind, running away didn't count as bad behavior because Mom had left me with someone who I couldn't stand and who couldn't stand me, so I didn't think I had a choice. After my crush left town, I didn't feel like going back to either my friend's or the neighbor lady's house. Stuck and with nowhere to go, I ended up sleeping on the beach with some other runaways.

I may have only been in junior high school (if I had been going to school, that is; eighth grade would end up being the highest grade I would complete), but I learned quickly that I could make it on my own. I found out that I could stay in abandoned houses or at the YWCA, where I met a bunch of kids who were following the Grateful Dead from town to town. The Dead was big back then, especially where I lived, and especially with the kinds of kids who ran away to go to concerts and stayed in YWCAs. I didn't really like the band's music, but I soon discovered that Deadheads always had acid. I also discovered that I could support myself by buying it in bulk from them and selling it to kids at the beach.

At first I would buy acid just for myself, one tab at a time when I wanted to get high and had the money, but then one of the Deadheads told me I could get a whole sheet of one hundred hits for just eighty dollars. That worked out to just eighty cents a hit, while the going rate for a single dose was five dollars. I suddenly thought, Holy shit, I can actually make money off of this! If I could just come up with enough cash to buy a whole sheet, then I would have enough to sell to my friends, pocket a little cash, and keep a tab for myself for free.

I think I was born with natural business instincts. I've learned a lot from various players, pimps, and dealers—the businessmen of my world—along the way, but I have been able to learn from them because I think I have a head for such things. (It's mostly been learning by watching, after all, since none of those guys were particularly good teachers.) I got it into my head that I had to come up with that eighty dollars one way or another, and then the idea just came to me: I'd sell fake stuff first to raise the cash. I got some blotter paper, borrowed a pizza cutter from a friend, and made what looked like a sheet of acid. Then I sold it to kids who were already fucked up on something so they wouldn't notice the difference. It worked like a charm.

I didn't make that much money selling acid, but in those days I didn't need much either. Just some food and play money. My time on my own in Old Orchard Beach was like one big, long party. It wasn't like running away to somewhere scary (like when I ended up in New York City a few years later). I could always find kids to hang out with—rock 'n' roll boys, other runaways. We'd find abandoned buildings to meet in or just gather on the beach. Of course, it couldn't last forever. It was a great place to be in the summertime, but as soon as it started to turn cold, the party ended.

When I finally tried to go back to the neighbor lady's place, she was pissed. She locked me out and told my mom that I couldn't stay with her anymore. My mom, who was still in the psychiatric hospital, had been freaking out. Since there was no one else to take care of me, and probably no one who could handle me, she arranged for me to stay at the hospital too; it had a youth program for troubled teenagers. The counselors there diagnosed me as having a substance abuse problem, and I was given a room that I shared with another problem kid.

Even though it was technically a mental hospital, the place was more like a country club or a spa. It was surrounded by this huge wooded park, and every room had gorgeous views of the trees and grass and hills. The food was phenomenal, and there were all sorts of things to do, like swimming, board games, or even just hanging out with the other kids. Except for the fact that it was a hospital, it was probably the most normal part of my entire childhood after my parents split up.

It cost something like $600 a day, however, and my dad was footing the entire bill, which, of course, doubled when I showed up. My room was nice, and most of the staff were cool, fun twenty-somethings fresh out of college. They used to take us on trips to the beach or to the mountains. I was happy to be back with my mom, so even though I was in trouble, I was glad that things worked out that way. I loved it there and would have stayed forever or, at least, until my mom was ready to leave. If only they would have let me.

I got to see a psychiatrist while I was there, and I actually liked that too. His name was Stanley, and he used to pace back and forth while we talked. He had all sorts of nervous tics, like tugging at his long mustache. I liked that he wasn't perfect and that he didn't bother to try to hide his tics. Everything about Stanley was just obvious and out on the table, no pretense. I remember thinking he would make a good dad. There was another psychiatrist there too, a woman who dressed like a schoolteacher from
Little House on the Prairie.
Everyone could tell that Stanley had a crush on her. The other kids and I would tease him about it and he would turn bright red.

My mom and the people at the hospital may not remember it this way, but I tried my best to be good while I was there because I really wanted to stay. Stanley was a good listener, and I had fun with the other kids. I got to see my mom regularly. But somehow, even with my best intentions, things started to go wrong. One day my mom found a pack of cigarettes in my room. I was still only fourteen, so smoking was a big deal to her.

"It's not mine, Mom. It belongs to my girlfriend," I told her, which was the truth, but she didn't believe me. She made me smoke the entire pack right there in front of her. That was the first time I ever smoked, a habit I still have to this day. I can't really blame my mom for most of how my life has turned out, but I definitely put smoking on her.

That was strike one. Strike two was when I took a beer up to my room. That time it was mine, but I never intended to drink it, or not all of it anyway. I just wanted to wash my hair with it. I read in a magazine that it was good to wash your hair in beer once a month. My girlfriend and I had a few sips each and then tried it out on our hair. It seemed to work; our hair was totally clean. Afterward, I threw the empty can under my bed, where my mom later found it and confronted me. Again, I told her the truth about what happened. I may have done some bad things, but I was actually a pretty honest kid. I just wasn't the kind of kid people readily believed. I had only been at the hospital for a couple of months, and Mom already saw me as both a smoker and a drinker. Things were not looking good for me.

I probably could have gotten away with both offenses—after all, a lot of kids try cigarettes and a few sips of beer—but the last straw was really when one of the young guys on staff decided he liked me. He was one of the group who'd take us on trips, and he used to hold my hand when we went places even though I was a teenager and obviously didn't need any help crossing the street. He'd also come into my room at bedtime to kiss me good night. I kind of liked the attention and didn't really think that what we were doing was all that wrong, but when my mom and the rest of the staff found out what was happening, that was my strike three.

I was out: dismissed for having "sexual relations," if you could even call it that. My mom didn't stick up for me at all. She just agreed that it would be best if I left, quickly and quietly.

I wasn't the only one who had to leave. The counselor who liked to hold my hand was fired and told he could never work in the mental health care field again. I can definitely say that it wasn't worth it for me, but I honestly hadn't known things would turn out like that. It probably wasn't worth it for him either (all I let him do was hold my hand and tuck me in at night), but he must have known how much trouble he could get into. I still wonder why he would risk so much to get so little in return. I'll never understand why men are willing to risk so much just for a little affection.