Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives
Speaker 1: detective sy aside of life. The average person has never
Speaker 1: exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world. Today,
Speaker 1: I had a conversation with Carine Hoffstrand talking about some
Speaker 1: of the things she's done in her wild life. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting chat that we had. She talks about how,
Speaker 1: as a nineteen year old girl on the way to
Speaker 1: New York to study at a prestigious acting school, she
Speaker 1: got distracted by a young surfer in Hawaii, She fell
Speaker 1: in love, and she never became an actor. We also
Speaker 1: talked about how she started working in bars in Hawaii
Speaker 1: dressed in a bunny suit, which then led to her stripping,
Speaker 1: dealing drugs, and how she spent time in prison in
Speaker 1: Australia following a huge drug bust. That's just part of
Speaker 1: a story. She also studied to become a nurse and
Speaker 1: worked in ICU units. She continued dealing party drugs and
Speaker 1: hung out with characters in that world. We also talked
Speaker 1: about her time managing brothels and massage parlors, and I
Speaker 1: got an education in what it involves working in the
Speaker 1: BDSM club. We had a bit of fun. There were
Speaker 1: lots of laughs, but also had some serious discussions about
Speaker 1: drugs and the sex industry and a lot of things
Speaker 1: I didn't expect to be talking about on I Catch Killers.
Speaker 1: Krin Hofstrand, welcome to I Catch Killers. Thank you well
Speaker 1: I found out about you because they'll produce it here
Speaker 1: on I Catch Killers. Said hey, you got to check
Speaker 1: this lady out on TikTok and post that you were
Speaker 1: doing on social media, and we had a bit of
Speaker 1: a deep dive and said, hey, we're going to get
Speaker 1: you in on I Catch Killers. So I'm very excited
Speaker 1: about sitting down and having a chat with you. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where the conversation is going to take us,
Speaker 1: but it will be fun and interesting, I suggest.
Speaker 2: Thank you, I hope. So let's see, let's see what happens.
Speaker 1: Well, you've had well reading your life and for the
Speaker 1: research that we've done in your life. You've lived a full,
Speaker 1: full life I have.
Speaker 2: I always say. The only thing I haven't done that
Speaker 2: I really want is I want to win an Academy
Speaker 2: Award for Best Original Screenplay. That's what I want to do.
Speaker 2: But first of all, I've got to write a screenplay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably just the thing that's holding you back
Speaker 1: a little bit. Well, yeah, I can't talk on screenplays,
Speaker 1: but books. You've definitely got a book in your stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you get a book, you get a screenplay.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, we'll start writing when we'll be finished shortly
Speaker 1: and you can start putting pend the paper and get
Speaker 1: the story highs and layers. You've been lived over in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: You have worked as a waitress, ended up as a stripper.
Speaker 1: Then you've got into drugs. Drugs has taken hold of you.
Speaker 1: You started dealing drugs. You've done time in prison. You
Speaker 1: manage brothels and all sorts of places, massage parlors, very
Speaker 1: different type of life living outside what and let's call
Speaker 1: them the probably too offensive saying the straight e one eighties,
Speaker 1: but the normal life. What steered you into that type
Speaker 1: of lifestyle was.
Speaker 2: Probably because I never really lived a straight life. I mean,
Speaker 2: my father was in the acting community, and he had
Speaker 2: I had a million uncles, Like when in the fifties
Speaker 2: and sixties and seventies, when it wasn't cool to be gay,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of uncles in the acting industry,
Speaker 2: and so I've kind of never really lived a straight life.
Speaker 2: It's always been a little left to center. Even though
Speaker 2: my mother and father never did anything wrong, I've never
Speaker 2: lived like if my mother was a pharmacist. My father
Speaker 2: was an actor and also owned in the old days,
Speaker 2: owned a truck company and then did real estate, So
Speaker 2: that's as bout as straight as we got, you know.
Speaker 2: And he was having an affair with his secretary, so
Speaker 2: that's kind of really which I knew about. So that's
Speaker 2: as about as straight as my life got. So other
Speaker 2: than nursing, I don't think my life's ever been that straight.
Speaker 2: And nursing was overtaken by my intoverted commas addiction to cocaine.
Speaker 2: So that's why I got at nursing and went on
Speaker 2: ships where cocaine was more prevalent, so I could do
Speaker 2: it more often.
Speaker 1: Okay, and I suppose, and we're going to dive deep
Speaker 1: into that, into the world of drugs. But also it
Speaker 1: was during that time it was experimental. People were trying
Speaker 1: that in the world that you were mixing.
Speaker 2: It was the norm in Hawaii, Yeah, because that's where
Speaker 2: I got into. Like when I was twelve and a half,
Speaker 2: I did a hit an acid here in Australia, but
Speaker 2: my drug days didn't start until Hawaii when I was nineteen.
Speaker 1: How did you get into acid at twelve and a.
Speaker 2: Half, Well, just because I went to a private school
Speaker 2: and people did that. Who knows, I don't know. It's
Speaker 2: just the thing we did, you know. I know I
Speaker 2: did acid before I had a joint.
Speaker 1: It was just very strange.
Speaker 2: Fifteen we were going at fifteen, I was going to
Speaker 2: a place called Joseph's Coat, which was down in Piermont,
Speaker 2: and we were all doing acid down there. Nobody was
Speaker 2: smoking joints in my group. We were all doing.
Speaker 1: Acid, okay bypass thee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we did that on the side, but that
Speaker 2: was not the big thing. The thin big thing was acid.
Speaker 2: I don't know why anyway, but my main drug thing
Speaker 2: came in where cocaine was real cocaine, where it came
Speaker 2: straight from South America. Like I had a deal of
Speaker 2: friend who got on a plane literally with a bag
Speaker 2: full of money, like a suitcase full of money, went
Speaker 2: to lax, dropped the bag over to the guy who
Speaker 2: picked up his suitcase and came back. So I was
Speaker 2: pink off the rock. South American cocaine hadn't been cut down,
Speaker 2: hadn't been cut down nothing. So that's the kind of
Speaker 2: cocaine we were doing here in Australia.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I when I was living in Hawaii, I used to
Speaker 2: come home every two years. And when I came home
Speaker 2: for the first time after the two years, my best
Speaker 2: friend was on heroin. But you know, we won't go there.
Speaker 2: I would find some coke somewhere and it was like
Speaker 2: I did, I'm like, really, what is this? You know?
Speaker 2: So the next time I came over, I bought some
Speaker 2: with me right, so that they could see what real
Speaker 2: stuff was like.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the in the all the different stages of
Speaker 1: your life, whether it was in Hawaii. When it was
Speaker 1: living here in Australia, What was the high of your
Speaker 1: life was? What do you look back and think that
Speaker 1: was a great period of life.
Speaker 2: Probably moving to Hawaii. I think that really because I've
Speaker 2: never been an Australian fan per se. You know, because
Speaker 2: going back to my father, I have a father who
Speaker 2: is who was an Australiana freak. If it wasn't for
Speaker 2: my father, I'd probably be an American citizen now. But
Speaker 2: he said if disown me if I became an American
Speaker 2: citizen when I married an American. But moving to Hawaii
Speaker 2: was probably, to be honest, probably the highlight of my
Speaker 2: life because while living in Hawaii, I got my degrees,
Speaker 2: I worked on cruise liners, like the best job in
Speaker 2: the world. That would be the highlight of highlights, and
Speaker 2: had a great life, you know. So that because my
Speaker 2: in inverted commas again addiction to cocaine, which I never
Speaker 2: saw as an addiction up until right until the end
Speaker 2: when it got really bad. But the rest of the
Speaker 2: time it was like, oh, we're going out, let's do
Speaker 2: So it was your.
Speaker 1: Party drunk exactly exactly okay, And you mentioned your father
Speaker 1: and just to put the listeners in so they understand
Speaker 1: he played Bob Hatfield in the country practice, that's right,
Speaker 1: and that's pre paid TV and everything else. That was
Speaker 1: a huge show in Australia and I think thirty countries
Speaker 1: across the world, and he was one of the main characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. But the thing is that that was
Speaker 2: his part. That's what he was remembered for. But he
Speaker 2: also the first thing I ever saw my father do
Speaker 2: was when I was about six or seven years old,
Speaker 2: and it was a swing soft drink and it's the
Speaker 2: swing soft drink man. Nothing that you do it with
Speaker 2: the seft drink service. You've been eaten for swing self drinks.
Speaker 2: That's what my father was to me, okay, And then
Speaker 2: all my life he did community theater, he did ads,
Speaker 2: he did stuff on ABC TV. He did with Leonard
Speaker 2: Teal who was also a really bit of actor who we
Speaker 2: called Uncle Len. He did what were the first like videos,
Speaker 2: so they were what were called fill ins on ABC.
Speaker 2: So between six twenty five and six point thirty when
Speaker 2: Belbert started, they used to do a music video. Dad
Speaker 2: would do the filming and Leonard Uncle Lenn would do
Speaker 2: the music. The you know, there'd be a poem or
Speaker 2: something to it. They'd do some sort of story to
Speaker 2: it with Uncle Len's voice.
Speaker 1: Leonard Teele he was a big actor in these times too,
Speaker 1: wasn't he Homicide?
Speaker 2: I think homicide was his big one. He's really big one.
Speaker 2: So Dad was in homicide, rip, tied water, rats, all
Speaker 2: of them. Everything. But what happened was after mum died,
Speaker 2: when my mother died very early. My mother died when
Speaker 2: she was forty four of cancer of the bladder, so Dad,
Speaker 2: So that was in nineteen eighty one, and Dad in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty when she said no more, I'm not doing
Speaker 2: any more treatments or any I'm just going able to go.
Speaker 2: So he stopped working in nineteen eighty and started writing
Speaker 2: a book on Ben Hall, who he's one of Australia's
Speaker 2: authorities on Now all this time, I'm in Hawaii, right,
Speaker 2: I'm not here in Australia. And then in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: one I came over to look after my mother for
Speaker 2: the last three months of her life because I was
Speaker 2: an ICU nurse. And when I went back, I went
Speaker 2: back into July. I stayed until after their wedding anniversary.
Speaker 2: I went back into the July he called me in
Speaker 2: the October. I remember it so well, so all my
Speaker 2: life he's been an actor, right, But he calls me
Speaker 2: in the October and I'm in bed and I'm watching
Speaker 2: Johnny Carson ten o'clock at night, and he goes, oh,
Speaker 2: my nickname he never knew my real name. My nickname's Bugs.
Speaker 2: He goes, oh, hi, Bugs, just letting you know. I've
Speaker 2: got a part in a new show. And I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: what is it? Here in my thinking, he goes, oh,
Speaker 2: it's about a country doctor. I'm like, okay, here we go.
Speaker 2: It's all creatures great and small. It's on Channel two
Speaker 2: and you know, way to go dad, And he goes,
Speaker 2: it's called a country practice. I said, okay, We're good
Speaker 2: on you. You know. That's how it is. So two
Speaker 2: years later, because I come back every two years, I
Speaker 2: came back to my father at the airport with about
Speaker 2: thirty people around him trying to get his autograph and
Speaker 2: me standing over here, going dad die. And so then
Speaker 2: I kind of realized that he had the part that
Speaker 2: my mother had been praying for all her life.
Speaker 1: You know, well, that's it was a different time. Wasn't
Speaker 1: like you had your movie stars, but the TV stars
Speaker 1: were big, especially in this country, and the Shaw like
Speaker 1: that am for years and one of the one of
Speaker 1: the main characters. I've asked the best time in your life,
Speaker 1: your years in Hawaii, worst time in your life.
Speaker 2: Worst time, worst day was the first day in jail.
Speaker 2: I retract that worst time, worst day was the first
Speaker 2: time in the SPC.
Speaker 1: Cells US and the jails.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent worse, one thousand percent worse because I
Speaker 2: was busted on a long weekend Queen's birthday. What was
Speaker 2: the Queen's birthday? Long weekend on the eighth of June
Speaker 2: ninety ninety one, So I was in those cells.
Speaker 1: You've got the pleasure of staying down there.
Speaker 2: Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Didn't get out to Malawa until
Speaker 2: the Tuesday because I had a bail hearing. I think
Speaker 2: I had a hearing either on the Sunday or the Monday.
Speaker 2: It must have been on the Sunday because then't have
Speaker 2: to do it within a certain amount of time. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure it was a ridiculous thing. Anyway, they weren't
Speaker 2: going to.
Speaker 1: Go You're not the first person to sit in that
Speaker 1: chair and complain about the cells at the SPC. It's
Speaker 1: a pressive, no light, sad, a bunker.
Speaker 2: Doing things they shouldn't be doing. And then the shower
Speaker 2: from memory was I don't know what it's like now,
Speaker 2: but the shower from memory was out in the open
Speaker 2: like there was nothing. There was no privacy whatsoever. So
Speaker 2: I would say, yes, that would be the worst, and
Speaker 2: at the same time realizing what was happening, you know,
Speaker 2: like because I wasn't drunk or high or anything, because
Speaker 2: I was just out of bed when they came in,
Speaker 2: and so it was after I'd been interviewed for interrogated
Speaker 2: for ten hours or eight hours, then I go down
Speaker 2: into these cells, into this hell hole, and then the
Speaker 2: realization and never being in jail before and never being
Speaker 2: around these kind of people before, because the people I
Speaker 2: dealt with were you know, Oxford Street gay, so I mean,
Speaker 2: they weren't these people. And I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is what it's going to be like. This is what,
Speaker 2: however long is going to be like. And so that
Speaker 2: was probably the worst day.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, well it's highs and lows in life. You
Speaker 1: haven't lived a flat line life, No, That's definitely had
Speaker 1: it's ups and downs. Now we'll put a disclaimer out
Speaker 1: here because I know in the conversation I've had with
Speaker 1: you and sitting down with you now, you're very forthright
Speaker 1: in your opinions and you're moments and the life that
Speaker 1: you've lived. And if there's people people shocked by what
Speaker 1: we talk about all discussions, my thought is that we
Speaker 1: want to take people in a true crime podcast into
Speaker 1: the world of world of crime, and that involves in
Speaker 1: drugs and the sex industry and jail and all that.
Speaker 1: So people might be shocked, But I just want people
Speaker 1: to understand that you've come in here very kindly and
Speaker 1: you're going to tell us about your life. I find fascinating.
Speaker 2: In a life. I mean, you know, people say to me, like,
Speaker 2: you've led a life, and I'm like, yeah, And I
Speaker 2: went to I was born and raised in Bankstown, So
Speaker 2: I went to Bankstown West Public School and then I
Speaker 2: went to marrit And Ladies' College. We never know had
Speaker 2: a really stable, what people would think of as stable
Speaker 2: Bankstown family life.
Speaker 1: Well, I suppose that it exposes you to other things
Speaker 1: in life that a lot of people don't get exposed
Speaker 1: to their whole life.
Speaker 2: Well that's exactly what happened, you know, on my eighteenth
Speaker 2: birthday of my father and mother and me standing at
Speaker 2: the back of our Bankstown house, next to the barbecue
Speaker 2: smoking a joint. You know, that's just how it was.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, did you enjoy your childhood?
Speaker 2: I had a great childhood. I really had a great childhood.
Speaker 2: I really until dad started the affair. It was great,
Speaker 2: It was fantastic. And that killed my mother. That didn't
Speaker 2: kill me, that didn't kill my brother. That just she
Speaker 2: idolized my father. My grandmother who I idolized, who I
Speaker 2: cry over every day. She hated my father for what
Speaker 2: he did to her. I mean, but you know it
Speaker 2: was their marriage, wasn't mine?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that took a lot too.
Speaker 1: It's life. There's paying with the joy, isn't he on that? Now?
Speaker 1: At nineteen, I think you got an inheritance from an
Speaker 1: uncle or from my auntie, from your auntie, So at nineteen,
Speaker 1: I think it was nineteen when you went to Hawaii.
Speaker 1: You were going over there to an acting school. Was
Speaker 1: that now?
Speaker 2: I was going I had a letter of introduction in
Speaker 2: New York to the Stella Adler studio. Stella Adler was
Speaker 2: an actor from my father, but a girlfriend of mine
Speaker 2: Sandra was going to Hawaii. She'd already been there. She'd
Speaker 2: met this guy named Mark. She was in love with him,
Speaker 2: and I said, oh, well, i'll stop off in Hawaii
Speaker 2: with you. Now. In those days, so I've already got
Speaker 2: the inheritance. And in those days, one dollar Australian was
Speaker 2: worth two dollars American. Okay, very unlike today.
Speaker 1: So you were rich.
Speaker 2: I was, you know, I had some money behind me.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I was on my way to New York.
Speaker 2: I'll stop off in Hawaii with you. He lived in
Speaker 2: a penhouse which was in an old what's called the
Speaker 2: Hippy Hilton on Seaside Avenue, which was like a four
Speaker 2: story nineteen thirties building with this huge leni which is
Speaker 2: a Patiell and huge beautiful appartment for those days, right,
Speaker 2: and so Andrew was going over because she was in
Speaker 2: love with him, and she sold up all the stuff
Speaker 2: and she was on her way to see Mark. Well
Speaker 2: went home to.
Speaker 1: Mark nd up your husband? Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: So Sandra went home after a month, I didn't end
Speaker 2: up in Stella Adlas Studios, and I ended up marrying
Speaker 2: Mark back here two years later.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what attracted you to Mark.
Speaker 2: Oh, probably his looks and the fact he lives in Hawaii. Yeah,
Speaker 2: oh yeah. He was a semi pro serfer and a chef,
Speaker 2: not a chef, but not a not a certified chef,
Speaker 2: but a chef, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So he would have bearn a big thing in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: He was a big thing. He had long blonde hair,
Speaker 2: really good looking from New York. He looked like one
Speaker 2: of the guys from Big Weddnesday, Jan Michael Vincent. So
Speaker 2: he was the exact replica of Jen Michael Vincent for
Speaker 2: anybody who knows who he.
Speaker 1: Is, one of my favorite movies Big Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Anyway, he I have photos from when they were making it,
Speaker 2: actually because I used to have a really good camera
Speaker 2: and I was out there on the North Shore and
Speaker 2: I actually took photos of Reno Abilera, who was in
Speaker 2: Big Wednesday as one of the surfers, right, and I
Speaker 2: actually my photos were on the wall of his seurch shop.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, Okay, I made it into post. Well, I
Speaker 1: can see that you were nineteen at the time, So
Speaker 1: a nine year old girl traveling from Australia on the
Speaker 1: way to New York got sidetracked and you ended up
Speaker 1: in a relationship with him and that's when you started.
Speaker 1: Did you start using drugs at that stage?
Speaker 2: Or we were just smoking, just smoking coke, just smoking pot.
Speaker 2: I mean, really, anybody in Hawaii from the age of
Speaker 2: five to one hundred and five smoked marijuana. It was
Speaker 2: the thing. Everybody did it. Coke was again the thing
Speaker 2: you did on the weekend if you really wanted to.
Speaker 2: You didn't really need to because there was a drug
Speaker 2: around it that time called kuludes, and kaludes were really big,
Speaker 2: and so you got the kuludes from a doctor and
Speaker 2: they were prescription description no no from description, and they
Speaker 2: were I don't know what they were really used for.
Speaker 2: I think they were used as a sleeping tablet. You know,
Speaker 2: they had to be a sleeping tablet because you took
Speaker 2: a half and you were like nodding off kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But that was the big drug. So you did your
Speaker 2: pot during the week and then you went out and
Speaker 2: you dance on them and stuff like that. It was
Speaker 2: something that is not around anymore. I can't I can't
Speaker 2: describe a drug that would be around. I've never taken
Speaker 2: a row hypnol, so I don't know what that effect,
Speaker 2: but the effect that I hear about with row hypnol
Speaker 2: is you black out with kuludes. You didn't black out.
Speaker 2: You knew exactly what you were doing. You were just
Speaker 2: a bit loose on your feet. You know, you did
Speaker 2: have a few drinks with row hypno, with rohypno, with
Speaker 2: kualudes versus with X to see right, But they were
Speaker 2: the drugs. So coke just was another on the sideline
Speaker 2: kind of thing. It wasn't until much later in life,
Speaker 2: like I'm talking, until I got just while I was
Speaker 2: nursing and until I got on the ships that my
Speaker 2: coke use actually.
Speaker 1: Is at the point in time when you realize that,
Speaker 1: oh that this is detrimental. It's not enhancing my life,
Speaker 1: it's what coke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I didn't even realize it. My Yeah, people
Speaker 2: around me and the guy who I actually ended up
Speaker 2: marrying after Mark actually pushed me onto the plane to
Speaker 2: get me back here to straighten me out from it,
Speaker 2: because literally I was like I was on the plane
Speaker 2: and they were I must have looked terrible. I really
Speaker 2: must have looked terrible. And I had a black dress on.
Speaker 2: I remember having a black dress on, and I had
Speaker 2: sweat marks like this, and so I was stopped by
Speaker 2: customs in my suitcase. So my father was in a
Speaker 2: country patress by this time. In my suitcase was a
Speaker 2: picture of Dad. So anyway, he's going through the suitcase,
Speaker 2: he comes across the photo of my father. He said,
Speaker 2: who's this? I said, my father, And he put the
Speaker 2: photo of my father back down in close suitcase and said,
Speaker 2: go on through.
Speaker 1: It was handy, very handy.
Speaker 2: Then I got home and found a Graham in my wallet.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, you could have been here in Australian prison.
Speaker 1: I think it might be a little bit better than
Speaker 1: America than prison, but I'm not sure. Talk about that further.
Speaker 1: So you lived a lot of time in Hawaii and
Speaker 1: you're working as a cocktail waitress dressed in a bunny suit. Yep. Literally.
Speaker 2: Okay, So first, the first job I had in Hawaii,
Speaker 2: this is before I was legally allowed to work. This
Speaker 2: is prior to Mirk and I being married, when that
Speaker 2: first visit was going on, And then I went back
Speaker 2: every three months after my visa ran out. I went
Speaker 2: back four times before we got married. I was doing trucking,
Speaker 2: you know, delivering furniture. That was the illegal job in
Speaker 2: the meta commas. Then when I got my residency. I
Speaker 2: was working in a cocktail in a strip joint called
Speaker 2: El Morocco on Colorkawa. I lived on seaside and off
Speaker 2: seaside is Colorkawa. Caloricara is the main street of Wakaki.
Speaker 2: So unlike the strip joints here, very much unlike the
Speaker 2: strip joints here, people had to sit down, they had
Speaker 2: to have a drink. There was cocktail waitresses walking around
Speaker 2: getting the drinks. They couldn't stand up, they couldn't get
Speaker 2: near the stage, all that kind of stuff. The strippers
Speaker 2: did one song dressed in their little teddies or whatever
Speaker 2: they had on, two songs topless, one song bottomless. Ye,
Speaker 2: So I was walking around getting the drinks. And also
Speaker 2: it was a hustle. Now in the Korean War pre
Speaker 2: my time, I'm old, but not that old, they had
Speaker 2: big girl bars. And what big girl bars were bars
Speaker 2: where girls would come up and sit down with you
Speaker 2: and go hi, how are you?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Rugby leg and do all that? Would you like to
Speaker 2: buy me a drink? And then what we the cocktail
Speaker 2: waitresses were on the alert for was a sign of
Speaker 2: some description that he wants to buy her a drink,
Speaker 2: and the drink started at two dollars and ended up
Speaker 2: to whatever they have in their wallet.
Speaker 1: So the poor dumb blokes of the city there thinking,
Speaker 1: oh this, this lady is interested in me, and she's
Speaker 1: giving them a sign to the waitress that's right, we've
Speaker 1: got one.
Speaker 2: And then if they spend enough, then oh, darling, why
Speaker 2: don't we go in the booths. So the booth was
Speaker 2: literally a booth like a banquette, and there was four
Speaker 2: or five of them, right, and you got the big
Speaker 2: spenders or what you hope would be a big spender
Speaker 2: in there, and in there went a little bit further,
Speaker 2: like they touched their boob or something like that. Nothing big,
Speaker 2: nothing like, because it was not allowed.
Speaker 1: Was these are legal clubs, absolutely legal.
Speaker 2: This is on the main strip of wak This is
Speaker 2: absolutely legal. But there was security guards walking around all
Speaker 2: the time. So none of the girls could do any
Speaker 2: action that you might find in a private situation, right,
Speaker 2: but they could have their breast touched and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But if they were within the bra and the security
Speaker 2: guard came by, you'd see the cahan go away. But
Speaker 2: that cost darling to go back there. It's one hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: So then they'd get the one hundred bucks and then me,
Speaker 2: as a cocktail waitress, would bring so say it was
Speaker 2: an eighty dollar drink, right, so me, a's a cocktail waitress,
Speaker 2: would bring the twenty dollars change back in a ten
Speaker 2: and two five and have a five underneath stuck onto
Speaker 2: the cocktail tray with my finger on it, so only
Speaker 2: fifteen dollars would come off side your five dollars.
Speaker 1: Run run that past me again.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you get twenty dollars change, you fan it
Speaker 2: out five ten and two fives, and then the cocktail
Speaker 2: tray is always wet, always because of drink, and so
Speaker 2: you put your finger on the five dollar bill. You
Speaker 2: put your hand like that on top, and you go,
Speaker 2: here you go, he's changed. Hold the five dollar bill
Speaker 2: and push the.
Speaker 1: Fifteen and the drive. They're distracted. They're so distracted.
Speaker 2: By the boob and by the girl. And then the
Speaker 2: next step after that was you know, there's an upstairs,
Speaker 2: but that's going to cost two hundred dollars, Like you
Speaker 2: could tell the many price. I'm just coming out with
Speaker 2: these prices. So there's an upstairs, you know, but you've
Speaker 2: got to pay for it now. So the two hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: Drink could come out. Now. The girls could drink water, sprite,
Speaker 2: half and half, which is half champagne, half water, half
Speaker 2: champagne and half sprite or champagne. But the girls who
Speaker 2: drank full champagne were on The bartenders were on alert
Speaker 2: to them all the time to how good or bad
Speaker 2: they were, you know, because there was laws, you know,
Speaker 2: And so there was no upstairs. Upstairs was Marge's office.
Speaker 2: Marge was the owner, so there was no upstairs. Oh, darling,
Speaker 2: the last the guy is just taking forever, you know,
Speaker 2: we just can't go up right now. And then by
Speaker 2: the time you.
Speaker 1: Hustled him, they're plastered.
Speaker 2: They're plastered, and the money's gone. I'm here tomorrow night.
Speaker 2: Come back tomorrow night and we'll get up there for sure,
Speaker 2: and hopefully they come back the next night and do
Speaker 2: the same thing.
Speaker 1: Or he's got com home and.
Speaker 2: Thought, oh they've got no money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Well that's an interesting world. You you start
Speaker 1: off there, but you ended up stripping because the money
Speaker 1: was money was better. Talk through the process there.
Speaker 2: So Mark, my husband, I will always be very thankful
Speaker 2: to him in a way, if that's the word. So
Speaker 2: there was a girl that I used to work with
Speaker 2: right and at the time, I was going to school
Speaker 2: for nursing as well, and I was making good money.
Speaker 2: I was making like two and now we're talking the seventies,
Speaker 2: so I was making like two hundred dollars a night
Speaker 2: and tips, which as a waitress, which would be like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, a thousand dollars nowah, equivalent to and
Speaker 2: the strippers were making a thousand dollars a night for
Speaker 2: not doing anything.
Speaker 1: I'm on the piece of that, yes and so.
Speaker 2: And I was a tall, leggy, good looking person. I
Speaker 2: was six on a five to eleven frame. I mean,
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, you know, anyway.
Speaker 1: You pass the audition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I passed the audition. And so I went home
Speaker 2: to Mark and I said, I think I'm going to
Speaker 2: start stripping, and he said, okay, right, well, because we
Speaker 2: had an open relationship, so it wasn't like we were
Speaker 2: like this husband and wife, you know. So I started stripping.
Speaker 2: Did the audition, which I already knew me so, you know,
Speaker 2: you do an audition as to whether or not you
Speaker 2: can actually dance and whether or not you can actually strip.
Speaker 2: Did the audition and started working.
Speaker 1: And did that and how long did you do that for.
Speaker 2: I waitress for two years, and I waitress for two years,
Speaker 2: and I probably stripped for about four four going into
Speaker 2: five because I did my two degrees while I was
Speaker 2: doing it. But you have to understand that while I
Speaker 2: was there was a time in that four that last
Speaker 2: four years that I was actually nursing as well. So
Speaker 2: it's one of those jobs you can go back to. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I went back to it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Back to the stripping, back.
Speaker 2: Back to stripping. I no know when into nursing. Oh,
Speaker 2: I don't have to do this anymore.
Speaker 1: And then then and then step step away from.
Speaker 2: It, step away from it, and you do a couple
Speaker 2: of nights here and there.
Speaker 1: How did you fall on stripping? Was it exciting for you?
Speaker 2: It wasn't exciting. I just wanted to because during the
Speaker 2: night you probably there was literally fifteen girls on work,
Speaker 2: So there's only so many times a night you have
Speaker 2: to strip, like twice, you know, on one of the
Speaker 2: If you're on a day shift, then that's where you
Speaker 2: get to strip more because there's only four or five
Speaker 2: of you on a day shift. But then again, the
Speaker 2: money can be so much better because there's less people
Speaker 2: and there's those guys that are just walking along because
Speaker 2: their wives are shopping. They've got nothing to do for
Speaker 2: three hours, but come in and see me. So I
Speaker 2: used to like days better, right, and so on the
Speaker 2: weekend days was good.
Speaker 1: It was a time.
Speaker 2: That was the time. But because I'm such a talker,
Speaker 2: it came easy to me to do the big girl hustle.
Speaker 2: And I had some of the best trainers. I had
Speaker 2: this girl who was from Vietnam, so I'm like early twenties.
Speaker 2: She was old, and she was like nearly forty, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. And she taught me everything she knew,
Speaker 2: and she was amazing because she was in Korea in
Speaker 2: the B Girl Times and in Vietnam in the B
Speaker 2: Girl Times.
Speaker 1: There apparently.
Speaker 2: She taught me everything. And then we had private clients
Speaker 2: that we had. We got like twenty thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: out of in one day. One was an Australian travel agent.
Speaker 2: I remember that was a bad one.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, look at that, and we talk about
Speaker 1: the men and the women doing that. It's almost like
Speaker 1: some people might say it's exploiting women, others might say
Speaker 1: it's exploiting men. I'm interested to get your take on it,
Speaker 1: because that's how I quite look at it. Well, the
Speaker 1: women are the ones that are in control, exactly one.
Speaker 2: It's still to this day that way. Everybody has this
Speaker 2: opinion or this idea that everybody who's in the sex industry,
Speaker 2: no matter what part of the sex industry, is there
Speaker 2: under duress. You're talking about a minor one percent who
Speaker 2: you will find in certain areas that's.
Speaker 1: Where that happens, where they're forced.
Speaker 2: They're not forced in it in a lot of other
Speaker 2: places there are you know, if you like, if you
Speaker 2: go into these places, you can tell one hundred percent
Speaker 2: of the time whether those girls are there happily or
Speaker 2: not happily. If they're not happy, you know that something's
Speaker 2: being taken from it.
Speaker 1: Does a sisterhood look after the ones that are not
Speaker 1: happy in that environment? Like if you one that you think, well,
Speaker 1: you're just not cut out for this.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not the one, it's the place. It's the
Speaker 2: place itself. You know, there are places where there are
Speaker 2: government run and non government run institutions that go to
Speaker 2: these places and also go to the girls and try
Speaker 2: to give them as much information as possible about.
Speaker 1: Things where it might take it to the next level
Speaker 1: where they're virtually obliged to have sex if it came
Speaker 1: down to that.
Speaker 2: But that's in that certain area.
Speaker 1: Okay, take us into the stripper locker room or change rooms,
Speaker 1: dressing room. When you're sitting there, you said, there's fifteen
Speaker 1: girls and there's only one on stage at the time.
Speaker 2: What's a conversation like the conversations like I wonder if
Speaker 2: there's going to be a big, big whale in today.
Speaker 1: Did you make friendships in that environment, like the girls
Speaker 1: you're working with and all that you share the common bomb.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually have a photo of all of us together.
Speaker 2: I can't somebody was leaving. I can't remember who was
Speaker 2: leaving and we were out for lunch. I should have
Speaker 2: bought it. It's a really good photo. But yeah, we
Speaker 2: were all friends. I mean once we're out of the club.
Speaker 2: It's not like we socialized that much. All the cocktail
Speaker 2: waitresses were female, but so I sort of hung out
Speaker 2: with cocktail waitresses because they were more like afterwards, because
Speaker 2: they were more on my type. Because you know, we
Speaker 2: went surfing and everything, just doing other things.
Speaker 1: Was there a stigma for you in that being a stripper,
Speaker 1: you weren't.
Speaker 2: Nobody knew you walked in dress and you walked out dress.
Speaker 2: Nobody knew my grandmother when my grandmother came over. My
Speaker 2: grandmother was a light of my life. And my grandmother
Speaker 2: came over with my aunt who's still alive. And I
Speaker 2: was at that time stripping and myke we knew it
Speaker 2: was happening, right, and they wanted to see where I
Speaker 2: was working.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit.
Speaker 2: Mark said, okay, well, we'll go down at eight o'clock
Speaker 2: or whatever. So I went up to Marge and I said, Marge,
Speaker 2: my grandmother and my aunt are coming in at eight
Speaker 2: o'clock and I'd like to be costail waitressing because I
Speaker 2: still have my outfit. And she said, yeah, no problem.
Speaker 2: So Nana and Jan came in and I was hotail
Speaker 2: waitressing with Mark. They watched a couple of strippers do
Speaker 2: the stripping, saw that it was all nice and you know,
Speaker 2: neat and tidy and above board and on color Kawa,
Speaker 2: and then left and then I got changed when.
Speaker 1: Again, okay, well, it's a different experience, the working as
Speaker 1: a stripper of cocktail waitress and also studying studying to
Speaker 1: be a nurse. It's two different types of work. What
Speaker 1: did you always want to be a nurse and stripping
Speaker 1: was that to subsidize The study was that it was
Speaker 1: money money driven.
Speaker 2: It wasn't money driven. It was coren get a job
Speaker 2: that you kind of don't really have to think about
Speaker 2: because you're thinking about nursing.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, switch off you.
Speaker 2: I'm not really, I'm not really. I don't want to
Speaker 2: be I don't even want to be a waitress in
Speaker 2: a restaurant because that's too much like hard work, you know,
Speaker 2: in the middle of Kolakawa. I mean, mike your key
Speaker 2: and just no, no, no no. I can do this
Speaker 2: and sit down when it's not busy and relax and
Speaker 2: if I don't feel like working, if for some reason
Speaker 2: I'm having an off day and I don't feel like working,
Speaker 2: all I have to do is turn up for the shift,
Speaker 2: not make any money, and they give you fifty dollars anyway,
Speaker 2: because you were turned up for work, right so and
Speaker 2: for your time stripping. So it was just it was
Speaker 2: a way to be more relaxed of a night because
Speaker 2: I went to.
Speaker 1: Apply yourself a study with making that thousand dollars a day,
Speaker 1: what had some big days, some small days that just
Speaker 1: depend once. Did you call them the whale? Yeah? That
Speaker 1: cashed up my biggest day.
Speaker 2: I remember, my biggest day in those days was three thousand,
Speaker 2: six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Would would be funny huge now.
Speaker 2: And he was a guy who was over in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: He was young, he was like in his early thirties,
Speaker 2: and he was over in Hawaii trying to get his
Speaker 2: marriage back together. But he'd he'd come over to Hawaii
Speaker 2: his wife had left him. He was from Seattle, Washington,
Speaker 2: and his why it's funny how things you remember, and
Speaker 2: his wife had left him in Seattle, Washington months before.
Speaker 2: This was around Christmas time. It was around my birthday,
Speaker 2: so November. And anyway, he came to Hawaii and she
Speaker 2: left him with the baby. They had like one year.
Speaker 1: When you say left, not just gone home later.
Speaker 2: Left him with the baby. So he bought tickets for
Speaker 2: Hawaii for himself and they and her. She never turned up.
Speaker 2: So he'd been in Hawaii for a week by himself
Speaker 2: with the child, and he gave the child to a
Speaker 2: babysitter for the day. I was working day shift this
Speaker 2: Saturday day shift, the ones that were the good ones,
Speaker 2: and he came in and he said to me, I
Speaker 2: know exactly what goes on in here. You don't have
Speaker 2: to tell me. Let's just go for it. Let's just
Speaker 2: go into the banquette. Let's not even worry about the front.
Speaker 2: And I was like, And he turned out to be
Speaker 2: one of the loveliest guys I've ever met my life.
Speaker 2: Spent all his money on me that he had that
Speaker 2: he was going to spend on his wife, that he
Speaker 2: didn't spend.
Speaker 1: That revenge, I think so.
Speaker 2: I think so. He gave me a hopey Indian bracelet
Speaker 2: for my birthday that he had on He just gave
Speaker 2: it to me, and then after he left, with no regrets,
Speaker 2: he just said, that's enough. Let's just leave it at this.
Speaker 2: He came back and there's a security other walkway and
Speaker 2: security guards standing at the top. And I said to
Speaker 2: the security guard whatever his name was, he's going to
Speaker 2: bring his baby back, one year old back, just to
Speaker 2: show me. And so he came in, I met the baby,
Speaker 2: and he left. I never saw him again, okay, and
Speaker 2: made three thy six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Well, if it's a transaction where everyone feels good about it,
Speaker 1: he might that might have been his revenge. And that, yeah,
Speaker 1: tell if I spent it at a strip joint. I
Speaker 1: spent all the money at the strip joint. What about
Speaker 1: you've discussed a good person there. There would be some
Speaker 1: pigs there as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, there was nasty girls, but there wasn't any
Speaker 2: bad girls, not really, because we had security guards. So
Speaker 2: the security guards if anybody started playing up. And this
Speaker 2: is remember that Hawaii is the military base in the Pacific.
Speaker 2: So the grunts as we call them, on the fifteenth
Speaker 2: and thirtieth of each month get paid and they all
Speaker 2: come out. Any of them player and they're the ones
Speaker 2: that will play any of them play up. And our
Speaker 2: security guards were big Samoans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not small dudes.
Speaker 2: You don't play around with them. So all in all,
Speaker 2: there's no time I can remember working there that I
Speaker 2: had any problems. I worked Marge and I had a
Speaker 2: falling out over something I can't even remember what, and
Speaker 2: I went to the competition which didn't have the same reputation,
Speaker 2: and all of the bad boys went there.
Speaker 1: Because there there was a gangster element in Hawaiians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was like the Samoan gangs, and there
Speaker 2: was the White American games, you know, I mean.
Speaker 1: It was a cocktail too, and as you said, like
Speaker 1: a military base and then the hard ass Hawaiian surfers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: potentially heavy place. So four years you got through your
Speaker 1: nursing and you started working in intensive care units.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I started working after two years in only in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: In America, you can do an associate degree or you
Speaker 2: do your bachelor's. Here is only well, I don't know
Speaker 2: how long it is. It's years, it's other three or
Speaker 2: four years, don't know. But over there it's two years
Speaker 2: or four years. Associate degree. You can have all your
Speaker 2: life not even worry about doing a bachelor's and you're
Speaker 2: still a registered nurse. So I did the associate degree
Speaker 2: and I started working at the same time as doing
Speaker 2: part time doing a bachelor's right, still working, quit then
Speaker 2: quit stripping, went to do nursing with an associate degree,
Speaker 2: still doing college, but only like two days a week
Speaker 2: because I wasn't going to burn myself out, and started
Speaker 2: working in intensive care. You did, Like I started working
Speaker 2: nursing and then thought, I just really want to do
Speaker 2: intensive care, So you do. I think it was like
Speaker 2: a three month course within the hospital that you work in,
Speaker 2: and we were like a class of girls, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean there's classes that went through together and
Speaker 2: started working in intensive care.
Speaker 1: How do you find that? Because people often say, like,
Speaker 1: I was a homicide detective for a long time, and
Speaker 1: how did you handle what you saw and did as
Speaker 1: a homicide detective? But intensive care unit, that's to me,
Speaker 1: that's more confronting than homicide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I couldn't I
Speaker 2: could other than emergency. I couldn't imagine doing any other
Speaker 2: kind of nursing because the boring stuff you don't do boring.
Speaker 2: I don't, I can't. You know, like I nursed Bet
Speaker 2: Middler's father, which was a really big deal so in
Speaker 2: and when it got boring, I didn't nurse him anymore.
Speaker 2: He went downstairs. But he was actually quite boring. It
Speaker 2: was actually quite boring when he was with us as well,
Speaker 2: because what happens is when you're on days off. I
Speaker 2: don't know what they do here, but when you're on
Speaker 2: days off, when you come back from days off, you
Speaker 2: sit at the monitors. So in every intensive care unit
Speaker 2: you'll see a desk of makeence right. You sit there
Speaker 2: because you're being getting back into work, right, don't slam
Speaker 2: you with a triple A bypass, right, So they just
Speaker 2: get you to sit at the monitors anyway, you say,
Speaker 2: you take the phone calls, you do the ekg's and
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff, or ec Jesus, you say.
Speaker 2: And I'm sitting there, it's like nine o'clock at night,
Speaker 2: and they're all separate rooms, all glass stuff rooms. And
Speaker 2: I see this name on the monitors, Middler. I'm thinking, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: right whatever, And about nine o'clock at night, this phone
Speaker 2: call comes through and there's this voice and I was
Speaker 2: a bit middle of fan, like I'm talking fan, and
Speaker 2: I said, Kayser, I see you. Howm I help you?
Speaker 2: And they and she said, Hi, it's bed here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and she said, my father, I can't remember his first name,
Speaker 2: Midler is in there with a heart attack, and I
Speaker 2: just want to know how he's doing. And I like
Speaker 2: lost it and I said, miss Midler, he's doing as
Speaker 2: well as can be inspected under the circumstances, which is
Speaker 2: the line, right, But he's doing fine. She said, okay,
Speaker 2: could you let him know I'll be there tomorrow. And
Speaker 2: I was like okay, And I got up from the
Speaker 2: desk and I went, oh my god, I was just
Speaker 2: talking to middle and so When my head nurse came
Speaker 2: in the next morning, like I was on like I
Speaker 2: think I was on the two till ten or whatever.
Speaker 2: I came in and I said to her, Okay, Grace,
Speaker 2: I want to look after Middler. I don't want to
Speaker 2: look after even though it's only She goes, he's only
Speaker 2: a heart attack. I said, then give me three heart attacks. Fine, yeah,
Speaker 2: And so she came in. Bet Middler came in. I
Speaker 2: got to look after him. And with heart attack victims,
Speaker 2: you have to treat them like there's nothing wrong with them,
Speaker 2: because every heart attack victim feels like it's the end.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh my god, heart attack. It's just it's
Speaker 2: the worst. And there's a person over here who's had
Speaker 2: a trip, a bypass or a double lung transplant. You
Speaker 2: know what I mean, You're okay. So you've got to
Speaker 2: get him up. You've got to joke around with them,
Speaker 2: You've got to get the moving. You got to them
Speaker 2: talking something about anything other than their heart. So that's
Speaker 2: what I was doing. But Middle came in with her
Speaker 2: then new husband who she's still married to, and I
Speaker 2: was joking around with a father, and I'm going get
Speaker 2: their up. You know, you got to do this. You
Speaker 2: got to do that, niece. She's going. She said to me, Korean,
Speaker 2: that's my father you're speaking to And I said, yeah, bet,
Speaker 2: I'm not you.
Speaker 1: I got it.
Speaker 2: I got to get enough. Anyway, she stayed for a
Speaker 2: couple of hours and then she turned around to me
Speaker 2: and she goes, I just wanted to tell you Korean
Speaker 2: class I act. I said, thanks, Bed, I learned it
Speaker 2: all from you. It was. That was probably the highlight
Speaker 2: of my life was that. And then I was the
Speaker 2: person who didn't get the autograph. I didn't get an order.
Speaker 1: You're too cool? Yeah, too cool. But that was around
Speaker 1: the time she had that movie out, The Rose, which
Speaker 1: was huge.
Speaker 2: I probably would be around there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was a bigger thing in those days. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you've cocaine got hold of you, got hold of
Speaker 1: you in that you couldn't function without it, Like what
Speaker 1: was your.
Speaker 2: Got hold of me? Like I thought I couldn't function
Speaker 2: without it, and so I thought I couldn't survive without it.
Speaker 2: And then I was working with a nurse who I
Speaker 2: wasn't into it. She was. And in nursing you have
Speaker 2: to have two people sign off on morphine or any
Speaker 2: of the big drafts right, So she was into speedballing.
Speaker 2: So it was her and I would sign out the
Speaker 2: morphine and then once you'd use the morphine once she
Speaker 2: had to throw the rest away, and her and I
Speaker 2: signed out that she'd thrown it away into her pocket.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: So for her to do that, she had to have cocaine.
Speaker 2: I had the deal I had the dealer.
Speaker 1: So you get to that point where you realize that
Speaker 1: or you thought, and you're saying, it's psychological. So you've
Speaker 1: had the highs, you're coming down and you think I
Speaker 1: need to hit a cacaine. That just I never got
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 2: I never, No, No, I didn't. Don't think I ever
Speaker 2: got to that point. I can't say that I did,
Speaker 2: because I wouldn't find myself going out while I was
Speaker 2: taking it. Yes, and when I kind of felt like
Speaker 2: that was when I was working on it. And I
Speaker 2: remember one time one of the head nurses, because I
Speaker 2: sounded all blocked up all the time. One of the
Speaker 2: head nurses, I had got a phone call from the
Speaker 2: dealer and he she said, this girl said to me, karein,
Speaker 2: there's a guy on the phone with the same cold
Speaker 2: that you've got.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they wake up to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they knew and that was kind of my
Speaker 2: wake up call for a couple of months. Yea, And
Speaker 2: I straightened up for a couple of months, but I
Speaker 2: always went back to it and I started hitting it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There was like a couple of years that I was
Speaker 2: hitting it, which was like you didn't have to worry
Speaker 2: about doing this all the time, you know, And because
Speaker 2: I was a nurse, I knew what I was doing
Speaker 2: and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Did that give you confidence? Like playing with the dry
Speaker 1: until not playing using the drugs? At your medical background?
Speaker 1: You felt that I know my limits, I know how to.
Speaker 2: Well you don't. You kind of think you know your limits? Yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't know your limits. But I felt confident in
Speaker 2: putting a syringe in my arm because I knew what
Speaker 2: I was doing, you know, And a lot of people
Speaker 2: came to me to put a syringe in their you know,
Speaker 2: because it was just an easy way to.
Speaker 1: Do it when you were nursing too. That's when AIDS
Speaker 1: started to come in. Was that over? What was what
Speaker 1: was that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Did people understand what was going on?
Speaker 2: I was working, I was so as well as working
Speaker 2: in ICU. I used to it because of my cocaine
Speaker 2: addiction because they needed the extra money because I didn't
Speaker 2: want to go back to stripping at this time, right,
Speaker 2: and I'm still in college, so I'm juggling a lot
Speaker 2: of balls in the air. I worked at another hospital
Speaker 2: just as a relief nurse, right, and this hospital had
Speaker 2: the first case of there was no name to it,
Speaker 2: of this viruses came in and he was a nineteen
Speaker 2: year old kid. He'd been on holiday in Maui and
Speaker 2: he got really bad kidney pains. So there'd been whispers
Speaker 2: in New York and San Francisco of this virus that
Speaker 2: was going around still with no name because Reagan didn't
Speaker 2: want to name it. Nobody wanted to know about it.
Speaker 2: And we got this guy, this kid in. He died
Speaker 2: within I think two days, because they had no clue
Speaker 2: that virus had gone through his body and he'd only
Speaker 2: had two sexual encounters and he'd got it through whatever.
Speaker 2: Because the main guy who got it, who started it,
Speaker 2: was an airline steward in New York. He used to
Speaker 2: go to the bath houses in San Francisco, and the
Speaker 2: airline stewards in San Francisco used to come to Hawaiian
Speaker 2: and go to the bath houses. It was a straight
Speaker 2: through thing and I remember when it first started. We
Speaker 2: used to close the doors on them. They all had
Speaker 2: private rooms, and we used to have to mask up
Speaker 2: like has met. We used to have to mark and
Speaker 2: the guys who or the people who delivered the food
Speaker 2: would stand at the door and push the tray towards
Speaker 2: them because it was worse than if you could put
Speaker 2: COVID on steroids. That's what it was like, because no
Speaker 2: COVID had a name. Ages didn't even have a name,
Speaker 2: you know, And there was no such thing as being
Speaker 2: HIV positive versus AIDS. You had AIDS, you had deficiency.
Speaker 1: Don't touch the glasses, don't do.
Speaker 2: Anything, don't go anywhere, don't breathe the same air. Ryan
Speaker 2: White was the poster child for a kid who was
Speaker 2: kicked out of every school that was known in one
Speaker 2: of the states. Yeah, it was terrible, terrible. It was
Speaker 2: a terrible time, but it's sort of for people who
Speaker 2: were around. Like my best friend died last year and
Speaker 2: he was a thirty eight year survivor of HIV and
Speaker 2: he didn't die of eates. He didn't die of anything really.
Speaker 2: He died of cancer undiagnosed don't even there anyway. He
Speaker 2: we just we were brought up just to know what
Speaker 2: to do in cases. So when COVID came along, Jason
Speaker 2: and I were pretty comfortable because it was kind of
Speaker 2: like we were going back to when AIDS started and
Speaker 2: what we used to do then, you know, and it
Speaker 2: was like masks, gloves, you know.
Speaker 1: That was that was the thing.
Speaker 2: And people who didn't wear masks and COVID I have
Speaker 2: the wrath of care.
Speaker 1: In on you. You went, after all, you're a big
Speaker 1: mask believer.
Speaker 2: Oh and vaccine, don't even go there without vaccines?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, And that that was from your experience.
Speaker 2: And I lost forty friends as forty friends and so
Speaker 2: therefore I didn't lose that many with COVID because people
Speaker 2: were getting vaccinated, because people were wearing masks, and because
Speaker 2: COVID had a name, people understand, you know, people understand.
Speaker 1: Not as much of a stigma either, I would suggest,
Speaker 1: because with.
Speaker 2: COVID had the stigma had a terrible sticker. I mean,
Speaker 2: you couldn't go you couldn't go into a nightclub like
Speaker 2: I used to hang around the gay nightclubs right with Mark.
Speaker 2: And one of the big ones in Hawaii was rulers.
Speaker 2: And I remember one time this guy who worked there,
Speaker 2: Mark went up to him and goes, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you've lost some weight. He goes, no, I haven't. I
Speaker 2: haven't lost a pound. Have I've been working out? I
Speaker 2: haven't lost a pound. Because it was like, oh, he's.
Speaker 1: Got strange horrible time, but strange time as well. You
Speaker 1: left nursing and then you start working on a cruise
Speaker 1: cruise liner. That don't sound like a happy time for it.
Speaker 2: It was the best time. What was your role with
Speaker 2: I was a waitress, cocktail waitress, and then so I
Speaker 2: was a cocktail waitress, and then I worked as a waiter.
Speaker 2: So you know, you do the dinners, the breakfast, lunch dinners,
Speaker 2: and midnight buffets. You can't get a better job than
Speaker 2: doing seven day cruises around the Hawaiian Islands. You're telling it.
Speaker 1: Out, Okay, it sounds sounds ideally amazing. You were supplementing
Speaker 1: your income. But at that point in time, you were dealing.
Speaker 1: That That's how I got on is that was the
Speaker 1: progression into using dealing? Was that the natural progression? Because
Speaker 1: I hear a lot of times and people don't even
Speaker 1: realize they're dealing. They're just giving drugs to their friends.
Speaker 2: And so my deal was Victor and Victor and I
Speaker 2: knew this guy I was nursing. I was dealing for Victor.
Speaker 2: And Victor said, there's wants to buy from us because
Speaker 2: he was dealing. He was buying from us enough to
Speaker 2: deal on the ships, right, So he said, why didn't
Speaker 2: you get on the ships and you can be dealing too,
Speaker 2: And that's what.
Speaker 1: Happened, okay, And the dealing on the well drugs back
Speaker 1: then it was like there's a lot of protections now
Speaker 1: of stopping that type of stuff, but it was pretty
Speaker 1: easy back then. Do you mean to get like law
Speaker 1: enforcement like getting through people weren't aware of it. So
Speaker 1: it was very well.
Speaker 2: The thing was everybody from the captain down on the
Speaker 2: ship was doing coke. This is the eighties. This was like,
Speaker 2: this is like greed is good. This is like you
Speaker 2: know those movies with Martin Sheen that you know, glorified
Speaker 2: money and glorified coke and.
Speaker 1: You know whatever, everything everyone's happy, everybody's nobody cares, wasn'tma
Speaker 1: and nobody.
Speaker 2: There was no security guard checking your bag said that
Speaker 2: when you went back on the ship.
Speaker 1: Well cocaine like it's Studio fifty four, that type of
Speaker 1: that type of stuff. It was just what that's what
Speaker 1: the trendy people did.
Speaker 2: You just walked in, that's all, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it'd be weird not to find somebody without coke. That
Speaker 2: was the thing, you know, Like when I was in
Speaker 2: New York, I went to was we were visiting, and
Speaker 2: I went to Studio fifty four, which was kind of
Speaker 2: like you know, they they kind of make it into
Speaker 2: this thing that it really wasn't. It was like a
Speaker 2: lot of people went there. Yes, it was hard to
Speaker 2: get in. We just happened to know a hair addresser
Speaker 2: to the stars, and so we got in and it
Speaker 2: was cool or it was okay, But I mean I
Speaker 2: had a good life back in Hawaii, so it didn't
Speaker 2: really matter. But we also went to this party that
Speaker 2: was in a place called Bonds International Casino and it
Speaker 2: was just new and it was a massive warehouse and
Speaker 2: they had so this is going right back. So first
Speaker 2: of all, Mike and I were really good dances right
Speaker 2: as a couple. We were really good dances myself, but
Speaker 2: so everybody was watching his dance and everybody's just doing
Speaker 2: bumps of coke while you're watching, and they had the
Speaker 2: stairs that made a tune. Now, this is before that
Speaker 2: movie with Tom Hanks came out where they do the
Speaker 2: thing in Fao Schwartz, where is it? Where this was
Speaker 2: before that and was on the stairs were a piano
Speaker 2: and they had zeppelins flying around and Grace Jones was
Speaker 2: the entertainment that compared to Studio fifty four. It was
Speaker 2: a party that was amazing, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, you were definitely living the good life. We
Speaker 1: might take a break here. Okay, when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to bring you down a notch
Speaker 1: because you've got to do some time in prison. You've
Speaker 1: got you've got to pay for your sins. We're also
Speaker 1: going to talk about your your career. Your later career
Speaker 1: is managing brothels and different things. So fascinating story. I
Speaker 1: love the way you tell it. There's a thousand things
Speaker 1: I want to ask you. You're talking through it, but
Speaker 1: you're taking us into a world that a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't get to see.
Speaker 2: So well. Yeah, and it's a shame because when I
Speaker 2: talk to people, they're always like, oh my god, and
Speaker 2: I'm like.
Speaker 1: Go and live. That's just live living life. Yeah, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: we'll be back shortly, but i'll just prepare you that
Speaker 1: you've got to do some time. Yeah, all right, cheers,