EPISODE TRANSCRIPT FOR EP20: The Skipping Rock - Part 1
(AI / AUTO GENERATED)

Rex Hohlbein 0:00

This podcast contains potentially sensitive topics and strong language, listener discretion is advised.

Casey 0:12

When I came back from the school, I wasn't a normal kid. I was weird. When I came back, I just felt like I did all over again when I was a child. But this time, it was even more deeply rooted. I've just felt so alone. Again, no one that could understand what I had experienced. I didn't even understand what I had experienced. So I didn't know how to articulate it or communicate it to anyone. So I just held on to it thinking that everything that happened at the school was, like, normal behavior. I was conditioned to be this crazy cult child.

Rex Hohlbein 0:56

I'm Rex Holbein and welcome to you know me now a podcast conversation that strives to amplify the unheard voices in our community. In these episodes, I want to remind all of our listeners, that the folks who share here, do so with a great deal of vulnerability, and courage. They share a common hope that by giving all of us a window into their world, they're opening an increased level of awareness, understanding, and perhaps most importantly, a connection within our own community. While it is not always apparent in the moment, our life choices, all of them the big complicated ones, down to the little daily decisions, create the direction and opportunities of our life our future. For better or worse. When someone is successful, we often admire them for their smarts for having made all the right choices. And conversely, when people are struggling, we pass judgment thinking they should have made better choices. But is it really that simple, to credit failure to bad choices being made? What if everyone is trying to make the best choice possible at every opportunity, and that the issue is not simply one of bad choices, but rather a lack of available good options? If a 16 year old living homeless, tells you he dropped out of high school and chose to run away from home to live on the streets, it would be easy to think well, that's a bad choice. And if a year later he is arrested for drug use. Our view is confirmed that bad choices are to blame. However, what if more information was available? What if this young man ran away from home initially because his father had been sexually abusing him since he was 10 years old? What if he was now self medicating with drugs? To cope with the trauma? Would we see his choices differently? To know if this young man is making good or bad choices, we need to first know what the available options were when his choices were made. In this episode, we hear from Casey, a woman who will explore with us this idea of choice, what it means to fit in and find a way in life when choices limited or removed altogether. When all you have in front of you are bad options.

Casey 3:37

I grew up in Monroe, Washington. So a small lake farm town it wasn't developed back then. A lot of open space and land, trails and mud and lakes that we would go exploring and bring home tadpoles. And that was that was great growing up just having the freedom to roam around. My mom was able to buy a house and so we moved into an old farmhouse in an area that was beginning to be developed. It was a big solid farmhouse. We had lots of animals. I always had just these really big dreams and creative ideas that I would implement. And one time I started finding these stray kittens and I brought them all home. And I made flyers with crayons and I called it a kitten circus. So I dressed them up and went door to door to my neighbors to show them these little kittens. But I found in my mind, I thought it was the best idea ever. I grew up only child, single parent, just my mom. My dad had a history of drug abuse and and alcoholism, I don't know, specifically what he was in jail for, because they never really told me the details. But I do remember my mom saying that my dad and my uncle was they were robbing houses. So I, as a young child, I don't have many memories of my dad, the memories that do come to mind vividly. Were being at my grandmother's house and a phone call coming through. And it was my dad calling from the prison. I don't think they wanted me to know that my dad was in prison because my grandma immediately grabbed the phone and went to the other room. My mom, she had me when she was a bit older, she had me when she was 38. She was a high school teacher. She taught high school for kind of the kids that couldn't really make it in other classes. She taught kind of the the rough, the rough crowd, I think my mom always struggled with depression, anxiety, just some severe mental health issues. And she would numb that out with alcohol. And so even as a young child, I remember my mom drinking a lot. When my mom would get too drunk, and couldn't take care of me, her friends would come over and they would, you know, grab her alcohol, her bottles of wine and walk me into the backyard and show me how to pour it out and how to dispose of it. It's so sad because it was just such a kid. And I didn't understand the severity of it. So my mom said that when she met my father, that she was really lonely. She was in the bathtub one night drinking her wine. And she was praying to God and said, Bring me someone to love. And she met my dad the next weekend at a bar, and they had a one night stand. And then he left her. You know, like a couple months later, she found out she was pregnant with me. So she interpreted that is I was the one that God brought her to love. As a young child, I felt that like a responsibility for my mom's emotional health. I think that she put a lot of pressure on me to kind of play that role of emotional support, kind of like the role that a husband would play. And so I never really felt like I could be a child. I felt like I had to do everything right, I couldn't make mistakes, I had to walk on eggshells, and not do anything that would upset my mom, or irritate her, or get in the way. And so I found myself really in a lot of anxiety, just trying to do things perfectly. In elementary school, on every report card, they said I was a social butterfly. I think that school was my place to interact with people and be free and not have to worry about my mom breathing on my neck or around the corner about to yell at me or discipline me. And so I acted out a lot. I didn't see it as acting out. I think that I just needed attention. I would get in trouble here and there, but not because I was doing anything devious. But just because I don't know maybe a class clown, you could say I never really felt like I fit in. We didn't have a lot of money. So I didn't get the new clothes and the name brands. My grandma would take me school clothes shopping, here and there. So that helped. But I never really felt like I fit in seen everyone else with you know, both mom and dad or brothers and sisters. And I just felt very alone. In middle school. I think a lot of the kids had a lot more independence, and I started to meet more people. There was a group of punk rock kids or skater kids and that's what I was attracted to kind of the kids that were just being wild because I was wild and I needed that adventure. I started running away, sneaking out at night, egging houses, defacing the school property. And one day a group of girls that I was hanging out with they were older than me, they brought a bottle of vodka to the school in a water bottle. And I remember, we just sat on the steps at the school and drank vodka out of a water bottle. I finally felt like I fit in, like I connected with people. And they accepted me. And we had something in common. So I found that when I hung out with the bad kids, and you know, I don't want to say bad kids just, you know, more troubled, little more wild. We had something that we, it was ours. And that was mischief. That's where we were exploring this life of mischief together. So it just felt like connection. One time, I think I was 11 years old, maybe 12 years old. My friend and I snuck out one night, because we wanted to go, just run around. And her older brother said we could come hang out with him and his friends. And they were 1617 years old. So they had a car. And we snuck out and we were partying and driving around in cars. And my mom and her mom noticed that we were gone. And so they freaked out. And they called the police and the police in Monroe shut down the main highway and blocked it off, and started pulling over every car. And they pulled our car over and they had photos of us and they were looking for us. We were in the backseat. They shine their flashlights on us and I turn to my friend, I said, Should we run? She said no, I think we're already caught. They handcuffed us and took us to the Monroe prison and put us each in separate cells. So 11 years old, I spent my first night in jail. I think my mom told them scare the crap out of her. I want to make sure she never does this again. I was more mad at my mom, like how could you do that? The group of people that I was finally connecting with finally fitting in with finally feeling a sense of self with my mom was trying to separate that. And so it created more division between in more tension between my mom and I, and tightened the bond with the kids I was running around with about this time, I was struggling a bit more in school. I cared but I didn't have the support I needed to do well. So if I wasn't doing well, why put the effort in? So I started skipping classes to go hang out or do whatever we wanted to do. I think that some of my teachers, I think they felt bad for me. There were times when my mom would come to the school drunk, and just embarrass the crap out of me. I think they knew. And they just felt bad. I don't think they knew what to do, though. I think it was probably the first time they'd experienced something like that, in that small town.

I'm running around the town, all hours of the day and night drinking hanging out with older guys, older people and running away. So my mom was like, I don't know what to do with this girl. She had her own issues her own like loneliness, depression. And she didn't know what to do. So she reached out to some family of ours that had money and asked them for help. And they suggested that she send me to a boarding school. Send me away. And so the next thing I knew, my mom had me on a plane, and we were going on a business trip is what she called it. And I had no idea but we pulled up to this just really old building in the middle of nowhere in Missouri, on the top of a mountain and she said Come on inside these people are going to just talk to you. And I was like okay, so I went in and they brought me down all these hallways and into this basement and into this room that was just lined with bunk beds. I still had no idea and they brought me into the far back of the room. And they sat me there and they talked to me and asked me questions for like two hours. And then I remember my mom walking into the room, and everyone stood up. And they said, Okay, say goodbye to your mom. And my mom was crying. And I just was like, what is happening right now? Like, say goodbye to my mom. And they gave me like, maybe 30 seconds to hug her and say goodbye. And I was crying and basically said, You're not going to see your mom again. And she left me there. And my mom had to sign over her parental rights to the school. And so they had all like legal authority over me. And it ended up being essentially it was a cult. And my mom didn't know that when she dropped me off.

Rex Hohlbein 15:51

Casey's mother unknowingly admitted her to a notorious and now defunct organization called the Mountain Park Baptist boarding academy. The school was located in Wayne County, Missouri, about 110 miles south of St. Louis, on 165 acre property near the St. Francis River. Despite the school being an operation since 1987, the surrounding community and local authorities knew very little about it. The school was run by a reverend Bobby Willis and his wife, Betty, or mama, as the students were forced to call her. Casey quickly found herself completely cut off and isolated from the outside world. They

Casey 16:37

took me into a bathroom like a community bathroom that had just stalls of showers, and they told me to undress. And they watched me undress and get in the shower, and they just started squeezing liquids into my hand, and they were like, You need to rub your whole body with this. And they just watched me shower. I remember them peering over the stall, and watching every move that I made. So they, they were watching me to make sure that I didn't do anything crazy, that I didn't try to hurt myself, or that I didn't pull anything out or try to hurt anyone else. It was just, I think it was somewhat about that about safety. And then the other part was psychological, trying to break me down, and they were really overbearing. And then they partnered me with this girl. And they said, this girl is your Orientation Guide. And you're not to be more than an arm's length away from her. You're not allowed to talk to anyone else, or look at anyone else in the school. The only person you're allowed to talk to is the staff and this girl, that's your Orientation Guide. I mean, even if I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I had to wake up this girl to walk me to the bathroom. Yeah, and we had to shower at the same time. If I was finished showering, and she wasn't done yet, I had to stand in a cold wet shower, before I even open to the curtain until she got out. Because I wasn't allowed to be anywhere, kind of in the open, where there weren't eyes on me. But we would wake up early in the morning and make our bed or we'd go brush our teeth. Part our hair on the side because if we parted it down the middle, we were sinners. They said it was being worldly, if we parted our hair down the middle. So we had a partner here on the side, we put on our dresses, they would get a ruler to measure that our dresses were two inches above our ankle, and that our shirt collar was four fingers below our collarbone couldn't be any more than that. And we would take time to practice our Scripture memory. So they gave us a list of scripture from the Bible that we had to memorize. We were really diligent in that. Because if we didn't have our verses memorized word for word and the punctuation, they wouldn't feed us. The place was ran by mama and Miss Gerhart Mama was an older woman, gray hair she was she wasn't there all the time. But when she was there, you knew that something serious was happening. From what I remember. She had a very sweet looking demeanor about her. But you knew never to get on her bad side or never to like, you just kind of wanted to avoid being recognized altogether when it came to mama. My mama would also have these what she called powwow shots. And we, we would all go into the kind of a sanctuary church room and sit. Everyone knew that a powwow was not something you wanted to be a part of. So everyone would hang their head low. And what she would do is she would just look around the room, call people's names out and have them stand up. And then she just absolutely humiliate them and make fun of them, punish them, discipline them, she would get the paddle a couple times. In paddle girls in front of the whole room. She'd make fun of our clothes or hair, or face. On Saturdays was always workdays, we would have chores and we would clean. I remember, we would get toothbrushes and we would literally scrub the floor with the toothbrushes. One time I was on laundry duty and their punishments are very unconventional, and kind of just cruel. I got in trouble because apparently I didn't empty law, the link trap, Mama, she went and saw the lint trap, she pulled it out and emptied it into a Ziploc bag and safety pinned it to the front of my dress and said that I had to wear it like that for the next week, just as a form of a reminder. Then I messed up. One time, they told us we were going to have a rock concert got so excited because we're like, oh, we're finally going to have some fun. And so they pumped us up for this rock concert all week. They were like you guys have been so good. You're getting a reward. We were just ecstatic. And so the weekend came and it was time for the rock concert. And so we all got ready and went outside and turns out, they just wanted us to like lift and carry heavy boulders out of the driveway. That was their idea of fun was just basically taunting us and making fun of us. And getting us excited about something and then telling us that we're stupid for believing it. There were some kids that mustered up the courage to run away, or attempt to run away. Those were the kids that I was like, and you got some balls. You know, it was It takes courage. First of all, to escape without being seen. And to get in a position where, you know, you can exit the building. But then to navigate your way through whatever was out there. We weren't allowed to see the outside. You know, all we saw was the property that we were on. We didn't know where the closest town was. We didn't know the streets we didn't even know our surroundings outside of the property of the school. I remember they woke us all up in the middle of the night. They lined us all up in the hallway. And we were lined up on each side of the hallway. And just started stripping us down one by one. We were just looking at the person in front of us and they said Take off your shirt, and everyone would have to take off just their shirt and drop it in front of them. And they did that with each single article of clothing until we were standing in the hallway lined up facing each other naked. is absolutely mortifying is just so humiliating. They stripped us of all dignity. But they were looking for a knife that had gone missing in the kitchen. And so they didn't find the knife on any of us. But while we were doing that the rest of the staff were just kind of like what you would imagine in prison or when they're doing a search. They just flipped our entire everything we had our mattresses were off our bunks, our sheets were everywhere. Our clothes were all every drawer we every all of our belongings were just destroyed and in piles in the middle of the dorm. They never found the knife but what they did discover is that Laura was missing. She had taken a knife from the kitchen, hid it in one of the closets and then at some point in the night got out. I just remember thinking about her and just hoping that she was safe. And also that she would like make a successful getaway. It was about a week later, they brought Laura back. And she was so beat up. She like traveled through the woods, as a child on a mountain in Missouri. After being at the school for two weeks, I was able to make 110 minute phone call to my mom. We had to say Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. Yes, sir. No, sir. Talking to anyone. And which is an in and of itself bad, right? They're teaching us to respect our elders. But when I was on the phone with my mom, and I was saying, Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am. She would tell me Don't. Don't address me that way. I'm your mom. And I didn't know how to respond. Because I, they were listening to the calls, they record. They like listened in on all of our calls. And I knew that if I had told her, I have to or all get in trouble, I would get in trouble. So I just kept doing it. And my mom started asking, like, questions. They started limiting my phone calls with my mom, because my mom was getting suspicious.

I guess my mom had signed a contract with them for a year that I would be there for a year. I think my mom had tried to get me out sooner than that. Cuz she saw how I was changing. And now I wasn't the same little girl, I was just afraid. I was so afraid and so silenced. When a year came along, I was on my phone call with my mom. And my mom said, Go pack your stuff and meet me at the door in 10 minutes. So my mom showed up and I ran out the door and we got in the car and drove away. I left the school and as 13. I mean, they brainwashed me, a child that age. You know. The thing I always knew there was something deeply wrong with that school. But as a child, no one really told me the depths of how wrong it was. So it wasn't until I got older and started exploring that time of my life that I realized what had happened.

Rex Hohlbein 27:54

Casey at age 13, was now back in Monroe, Washington. Once again, living with her mom. It was an extremely confusing time for her unable to process the experience of the past year, and still alone, struggling to fit in.

Casey 28:11

When I came back from the school. I wasn't a normal kid. I was weird. It was really weird. When I came back, I just felt like I did. All over again. When I was a child. I didn't fit in. I was a weirdo. But this time, it was even more deeply rooted. I've just felt so alone again. And like I had no one that could relate to me no one that could understand what I had experienced. Because no one was there. And I didn't know how to explain I didn't even understand what I had experienced. So I didn't know how to articulate it or communicate it to anyone. So I just held on to it thinking that everything that happened at the school was normal behavior. When I finally broke out of the being weird in my weird clothes in my weird hair and the weird way I talked because I was conditioned to be this crazy cult child. I just went so much harder and so much deeper into the street life. Like I actually went to the streets and started hanging out with even worse people. Not worse people, people that were doing worse things than what I was doing before I went to the school. There was this kid that I used to go hang out with up in Marysville. He lived on the reservation with his brother and I had a friend that was staying with me at the time and she was older than me. So we I hopped on a bus and went up to Marysville one day and she introduced me to her friend and his younger brother. And we just started drinking, drinking so heavily and doing kind of sadistic things. There was one time I had an knife. It was a big, it was a big knife. It wasn't like a pocket knife. It was it was a big knife. And I just said, can I just carve my name? In your stomach? And he was like, yeah. So then I got this weird fascination with like, cutting people up. I don't know what it was. I think that I was so young, and so messed up in the head that I didn't know what was normal and what wasn't. And I just needed some type of outlet, something that was like, maybe not not an outlet, but just something that was like what is reality right now. Like, really, at that moment in my life, I was like, I don't even know what reality is because I've been on such far extremes of both sides. That I don't know how to land in the middle.

I'm still living at home at my mom's house. But I would, I would leave, I would leave to get away and go be with my friends. I would be gone for days, stealing the bus drivers lunch just so I could eat. I was just 14 years old trying to survive. Again, my mom was just like, I don't know what to do with this girl. And she she put me in a Christian school. It was a private Christian school. Just because it was a Christian school doesn't mean that everyone there is like well behaved or comes from good families. And so I also met some, some troubled kids there and started hanging out with them. I had a book report that was due for school, on Mount St. Helens. And I hadn't started it because I had been partying the whole week. And so the night before the book report was due, I was telling my friends, I have to get this book report, and I'm going to get in trouble. And that's when they said I know something that will help you get it done. You can finish it tonight, if you want. They introduced me to math. And my book report done. But what I didn't know is that meth is heavily addictive. And I just kept doing meth. I started doing meth. And I started doing ecstasy and partying a lot. My mom pulled me out at school, the Christian School and put me in school with her because she felt she could keep a better eye on me. At the high school, I started selling meth and think all my teachers turned a blind eye. They knew my mom. And I think it was awkward for them. My mom and I were still having a lot of troubles at home. My mom was drinking. I was doing meth, it just added fuel to the fire. We got in a physical altercation at the school. And it was at that point that my mom was like, I can't do this anymore. You have to leave. And so she kicked me out of the house. There was a drug dealer and Granite Falls. That was the first place that I went because I knew that I could go there and I could stay and I stayed there for a couple of weeks. Then I would call up my friends and say can I come take a shower at your house? Can I come eat too close I can borrow because I had no clothes, no food, no money. And I just tried to get to school because it was a safe place. I didn't go to school to do work. I just went to have somewhere to be. The school did try to get involved. I remember the counselor called me into the counseling office one day, I had bruises and marks on me. And she started to ask me questions. And I knew that she was gonna get CPS involved. And I was so scared. I was scared that I was gonna get in trouble. I was scared that my mom was gonna get in trouble. And so I lied. I lied and said that everything was fine. When really, they probably could have helped me. But I didn't know. All I knew is that any adults in my life had always just been awful. No matter what you do, you're always wrong, you're always in trouble. A lot of the people that I was getting meth from or either my girlfriend's from school who were getting money from their parents, or older guys, that, you know, would just give drugs to a young girl, right? To have a cute young girl hanging out with them. Meth is dirt cheap as it is. But when you're in Granite Falls back in the late 90s. It was, we were cooking it, you know, we were making it. It was cheap. I was hanging out with the drug dealers. Yeah, I felt lost. And I was just searching, I was just searching for identity, searching for purpose, searching for community. For me, there was trauma on top of trauma, and no support, no options, no resources, and any resources or support that were available to me or offered to me. I was afraid of because I had been conditioned to be afraid. I had learned that I'm the only one that I can trust and depend on. I'm alone in the world. Like that had been the narrative. I didn't know how to have a job or do a resume, you know, like, come on, like I was in so such a severe state of trauma and survival that I couldn't even get a grasp on those things if I wanted to. I was in the right here right now. How am I going to get my next meal, and I'm gonna get it by whatever means necessary. And that's not choice.

Rex Hohlbein 37:19

Often, when house folks see or meet young people living homeless, the assumption can be made that everything would be better if they would just move back home. In hearing Casey's story, you might wonder why she did not go back to her mother, when things got so terribly bad. Casey was in fact asked about this, it was maybe the toughest question for her. And one of the few times she was unable to express herself while being recorded. She had blocked a good deal of the reasons unable to really talk about it. Yet, she wanted us to share with you a little about what it was like to be home with her mother. And why living with her was simply not an option. Casey suffered sexual abuse from various men, her mother would bring over to the house, something that began when she was just seven years old. Additionally, her mother was suicidal, attempting suicide numerous times in front of her beginning when she was just nine years old. There was psychological and physical abuse. One of the times she was attacked by her mother being dragged down the stairs by her hair. It was all too much for her. Not always, but often, kids who leave home and don't return are not moving towards something when they leave. Rather, they're moving away from something, something abusive in their environment.

Casey 38:47

All I'm concerned about is somewhere to sleep, something to eat. And, you know, if someone wants to give me math grade, like that was the best situation because not a lot of people are gonna be like, hey, yeah, you can crash at my house. But if I was hanging out with people who were getting high, I could just get high and stay high with them for as long as possible. And just take up time, right? It's just like, getting through days and nights. And so that was always the best option. I slept on a porch at a drug dealers house one time, I was running out of options. The only resource that I know that I have is my grandma. And so I called my grandma and I just told her my situation that my mom had kicked me out and I been living homeless and I needed somewhere to stay and could I go stay with her? I think it scared my grandma because when she didn't want to get in between my mom and I, because my mom's scary. She also didn't know what to do with this 15 year old kid. That's Just super messed up and high on drugs. She said, you know, your dad's out of prison, and he's doing well. He has somewhere that he's staying. Why don't you call him and see if you can go live with him. And that was probably the most courageous call that I had made up till that point. Because, you know, I didn't have relationship with my dad, all I knew is like, a man that had sex with my mom. And I was born. And so I called him. I said, Can I come stay with you? And you'd help? You said, yeah, he came in, he picked me up where I was. He brought me home with him. It was the most awkward, dynamic, because I was like, do I call you dad? Do I call you Randy? I don't know. You, you all you are is just, you're a figure. You're like a shadow figure in my life. That was, I guess, disorienting for me. But it was a place to live. So I was living with him. And he put me in a school admins. He found some meth on me being an ex drug addict and heroin addict said, this isn't gonna happen. Not at my house. And he knew how to look for the signs. He knew how to you know, he knew how to talk to me about it. That was probably the best thing that happened for me at that point. Because my dad walked me through basically a detox off of meth and ecstasy. I ended up going to school doing well working. I worked for LifeTouch portrait studio, JC Penney's. I loved it. I worked for Papa Murphy's. I worked for a catering company at a golf course. And then I would have just odd jobs around the holidays, just for extra extra income. But I would go to school, and then I work after school. And then on the weekends, I would work so I was just working nonstop. My dad was still drinking heavily, but he wasn't doing drugs. We would go camping, and we'd go do fun things like that. Getting to know my dad was really weird. I lived enough life and experienced enough life that I was like, I don't need you. Only thing I need from you is to provide me shelter and food, like I can do life on my own. It wasn't until things started to go a little bit south with my dad, that I started to struggle in school again. As much as I loved being around him and getting to know him. It can't just be my dad now, you know. And he didn't know how to discipline me. So I mean, there were some things that he did really well. And then there was some things that he was just like, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be a parent. Independent as I was, I was like, I don't need to be here. I had a boyfriend at that time, saying I can go live at my boyfriend's house and give you a break from being a parent. I went to live at my boyfriend's house, my senior year, and we started just getting in trouble and drinking and when I turned 18 His parents were just kind of like, okay, we can't adopt you. They were concerned about their son. And so I went to my school counselor and she said, you know, we can put you in a shelter. I didn't want to go into a shelter. So I just slept in my car in the parking lot of the high school and I would go to school. And so it's kind of back in the same situation that I was in before just homeless but a little bit better off this girl that I knew, said you know, hey, I'm, I've got you got a great suggestion that will help you. I was working in the evenings and on the weekends and then going to school all day. It was just really hard. And so she had told me that she had gotten a job waitressing at one of the local strip clubs. She said why don't you come with me and get a job waitressing. Like You can work until 2am. And you make great tips for it. Okay. So I showed up at the strip club, got a job right on the spot and started waitressing. The management asked me one day if I would do the waitress Contest, which is basically the waitresses get on stage dance, and then the winner gets a monetary prize. I was like, Yes, I will do that, because I need the money. And so I did it. And I won. Honestly, I think I think it was rigged. And I I don't say that because I did a bad job. Because I'm sure I didn't agree. I think the management, when they look at the waitresses, look at the most vulnerable, and make that person when the person that will be the easiest to groom into a stripper. And at that point, I absolutely was the most vulnerable to be groomed into sex work. There like you know, if you decide to start dancing, we can start you as a stripper tomorrow. And you will make three times this amount every night that you work. And I couldn't turn that down. Like I needed the money. I was still in high school. And all I wanted to do is be able to take care of myself. And there was something in me that knew that I had to graduate high school if I was going to, like, do anything with my life. That was really important to me. So I felt like it was the only thing that I was able to accomplish, that I had control over. So I started started stripping at honeys strip club in Everett. It was great. At first, it was really great. I was getting all this love and attention and praise and the management loved me and the customers loved me and I had a new set of friends in in that that world of girls who were young and stripping and showed me the ropes and taught me how to hustle and how to work the crowd. They really took me under their wing.

In Washington State, you make your money on lap dances, not necessarily on stage, you can make tips on stage, but it's not going to pay your rent. A big part of making money in a strip club is having a mouthpiece. So knowing how to manipulate and workmen. You know how to talk them out of their money, basically like a used car salesman, right like just knows how to work the customer. make promises that I don't intend to keep lead them on feed whatever fetish or fantasy it is that they're in there for just learning the role that the individual wants you to play, and then stepping into that role. And then learning how to pivot depending on which customer it is. They taught me just like kind of the strip club etiquette. So there are politics in the strip club, with the girls that work there. And especially in regards to the guides that come in, when I look at it, or when I picture it, in my mind, it's kind of like a map. So you know, what type of people to look for, and reading people not only by how they're singing, how they're interacting with others, how they're dressed, and just watching people and observing them to kind of get an understanding and figure out their story and how to approach them or if they're even worth approaching. And so really learning how to observe and read. The other thing as far as the map would be knowing which guys in the club are there for a particular girl. And they say that because a lot of girls build up kind of a regular clientele. And so if a guy comes in that usually gets dances from will say her name is pixie A guy comes in to get dances from pixie every week, you know that you do not approach that guy until he's dance with pixie. Otherwise, you're gonna go ahead with pixie in the dressing room, unless pixie is a new girl, and you've been there longer, then you kind of dominate that situation. Because there's hierarchy, it's the girl that's been there the longest, you kind of stand subject to her, right? Like, it's okay, I'm not going to step on her turf, because I'm going to show my respect. Because that respect is do. There's certain girls that would come in, and they would be new, they may not be there as long as some of the other girls, but they gain more popularity faster. And so they move up in ranking. Or they'll click with some of the higher girls in ranking, and they're automatically on top of the totem pole. And so then the other girls have to bow down to her. And I guess that was kind of the position that I was in, I was taken under the wing of some of the higher ranking girls and automatically gained status. And so learning the politics, and then just having each other's back. If a new girl that didn't know the politics came in, and danced with one of my friends, customers, we would stand at the dressing room, at the dressing room doors, wait for her to come in the dressing room, we'd block off the dressing room doors and beat the shit out of her. So she knew never again, to step on our turf, like don't mess with our money. As soon as that guy walks into the club, that wallet is mine, that money is mine. And when I'm done, then you can take you can, you know, take the crumbs. It's all about power and manipulation. I control this situation. Confidence in dominance. I had been kicked around beat up by not only my mom, the colt, but like life, right? And the shooting hand I was dealt, and I finally was like, Okay, I'm in control. Now. I know this now, and I teach this when I when I teach about this stuff. It's a false sense of control. Because in reality, I had no clue. Like I did not know, the pit of darkness that I was stepping into, that was about to chew me up and spit me out. When I stepped into the sex industry, like I had no idea. It felt so good and powerful. And not only like, did I feel like no one could hurt me anymore. But I started to feel empowered in my self image. And I felt free to you know, dance naked on a stage and like, express myself. So this is the thing. I was so young, that anyone that showed me any kind of love or care. I felt a connection to like the management at the strip club. They were like parents to me. I genuinely felt love and care from them. Yeah, they were probably using me. But that's what I interpreted it, as you know, as long as I was making money, and paying them and bringing in customers. They treated me really well. And they took care of me. So it felt like a family. There were a couple of customers, regular customers that came in and I genuinely developed friendships with them. There was a customer that came in one night and I had danced for him a couple of times. And super non threatening, gentle old man. Super sweet and kind. And he just said, I would love to take you shopping and take you out to dinner. And if you will go home and have sex with me. I'll give you $3,000 Going on believe it was like, Are you serious? And at that point, you know, I had been so beaten and worn down by the world. And I was finally, you know, it was like, What? What left? Could What do I have left that the world can take from me? I might as well because they need to survive. He took me shopping took me on a shopping spree, and then we went out, had a really nice dinner. And then he took me to a hotel afterwards, we had sex. And he gave me the money, and I held this fat stack of cash. Like, I'd never seen that much money in my life. That was easy. Like, those really easy, like you didn't try to hurt me. He was a complete gentleman, a sweetheart the whole time. Like you showed sincere love and care for me. The way he knew how he came back, like a month later, he was like, Do you want to do that again? Like, yes. That's when I started having sex for money. prostituting. It was so easy. And I didn't know what the big deal was. Man, if I could get more customers like this, I could have a pretty sweet life. I started to meet customers at the strip club. And then I would meet them outside the club. So at this point, I had saved up enough money. I had a really nice, fancy car. I was doing the street races and I had the fanciest clothes and I was 18 years old. I finally graduated high school. I was the only kid straight out of high school that had her own house, like a $40,000 car after all the work that had been done on it. And I mean, I was like the talk of the town. I was, it was pretty cool. We drink champagne on a daily basis, and we were partying and hustling together. So yeah, 18 years old, living this just amazing life with all the things that I need to provide for myself beyond what I could ever imagine all the money in my pocket that I never thought I'd ever have. And I'm feeling really successful. Like I've

made it. On

Rex Hohlbein 57:48

the next episode of the skipping rock. We dive deeper into Casey's life and learn how things are about to take another big twist.

Casey 57:57

The club that I was working at was honeys and then next I went to a different club, a bigger club. Next I'm going to Vegas to dance then I see even deeper into the darkness and have an epiphany like, oh shit. This is what is in my future. What I saw in the dressing room and backstage in Vegas, terrified me because it was not pretty it was like face to face with the devil.

Rex Hohlbein 58:35

Part two of this episode will be available soon in your podcast feed. You know me now is produced, written and edited by Tomas Vernadsky. And me Rex Holbein. We would like to give a heartfelt thanks to Casey for taking the time to speak with us

the song you're hearing is performed by our good friend dizzy, who we recorded in the Ballard neighborhood where he still lives homeless. For more undesigned check out his video on our artist spotlight program on our website at you know me now.com Where you can also watch videos and read stories of other folks we feel you should get to know

them Additionally, you know me now has a Facebook and Instagram page that we would love to have you follow and take part in the community conversations happening there. Thanks as always for listening