SugarStory. I was born just after my family arrived in Honolulu aboard our sailboat. The plan was to sail around the world. But, the lure of the islands postponed our trip. We moved from the Ala Wai Boat Harbor in Waikiki to the country life of North Shore Oahu where we bought a beach house.

I immersed myself in horses and chickens and family stuff. Life was good. But, when my family broke up, I thought this was as rough as it could get, until I ended up in the strip clubs of San Francisco. This is my true story. They call me Sugar.

They call her Sugar, but her Hawaiian name is Pua, which means blossom. She moved many times, from Hawaii to Indiana to California, living with either her mother or her father. At the age of 20, Sugar moved to San Francisco to work in the strip clubs before she realized that she was sick.

I love Sugar. She means the world to me. She is everything, an affirmation of life personified. I am Sugars current love. I love it when she smiles brighter than the sunshine, and I love it when she goes out on a limb. But most of all I love it, when she dares to live, taunting fate with those round eyes smiling in indulgence of happiness.

I can see her now with the wind in her hair thinking of the future, so bright with life unfolding, gracefully. The sun shines upon all of Waikiki. The smell of salt-water and flowers blow in off the ocean and the surf laps ashore, sounding the story of Sugar.

Childlike and incomprehensibly innocent, little Sugar was a girl without care. She used to giggle and play, running bare-bottom, buck-naked into the warm waters of the sea, with her eyes and mind always adrift in the clear blue sky. She could spend all afternoon on the beach playing in the waters and the sand, splashing water and looking for seashells, all the daylong.

Back on shore, the horses roamed an ocean-side field. There she would feed the horses, in clockwork routine, a serious job for someone knee high to a polo pony. Regardless of her age, Sugar was excellent with the horses. She treated them very well. If they were good theyd get sugar cubes, and if they were really good theyd get ripe mountain apples, which she and her Daddy used to pick from the trees in the cool mountain trails.

I dont know where to begin so I guess Ill just start. I just turned 22 and it seems as if Im always smoking cigarettes. Just waiting around to take my clothes off again. My stage name is Sugar. Actually that is the nickname that my Dad gave when I was born. He said I had a sweet disposition. I work in a strip club in San Francisco, and its not a very nice place. Its dark and seedy like most of them. I dont think there are really that many nice clubs, from what Ive seen, but its hard to imagine dirtier clubs than this one. Im pretty sure some of the girls are getting paid to do more than take their clothes off.

So I smoke a lot of cigarettes waiting to take my clothes off. I spend a lot of time and money with another hobby that I picked up along the way. This hobby makes me feel alive instead of dead and comes in little $50 plastic packets. In fact, I just bought a gram and Im gonna do it up soon. I bought it off of my boyfriend, whos conveniently the drug dealer who I wake up beside in the morning. Im happy about the drugs, but I dont think Im incredibly fond of him. He charges me full price for the drugs and Im his girlfriend. How cutthroat can you be?

This club sucks. And now this night cant turn out to be total shit money-wise, because I have to at least make my money back. They charge to work in most of the clubs here. Got to pay to play I guess. Its not easy for me. Its not just the booze and drugs that make my life a scary situation. Its everything, all rolled up into this big, crazy jumble.

The drugs, I need them, and you cant really understand unless you have no control of your mind, which leads to no control of your impulses. And impulses never consult rationality. If you can begin to understand that then you might have a littlest bit of a clue.

You dont really know what its like unless you really, really, really need it. Need it more than food, money, etc. and everything. I need, capital N-E-E-D to get high. Ill tell you about a vicious circle and brutal cycle.

I need to get high just to stay up, to take my clothes off, to make money, to get high again, on and on to the crack of dawn, to stay up, to take my clothes off, to make money.

It spins and spins and spins, round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows. I feel like I can see my body spinning around that center stage, pole over and over again with my mind trailing it with pulses of light bouncing around, in and out of my brain. Night after night after night. Stripping and partying and hanging out till dawn. My memories are fading faster than the days themselves.


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