- [Mark] All right, Pamela. - Mm-hmm. - [Mark] Pamela, where'd you grow up? Where are you from originally? - [Pamela] Newton, Texas. - [Mark] Newton, Texas. And tell me about your childhood. You had both parents growing up? - [Pamela] No, my dad, he
was a, he worked off shore and my mother was very
young when she had me. - [Mark] So who raised you? - My aunt. - [Mark] Your aunt. - Mm-hmm. My dad's sister. - [Mark] Your mom was how
old, when she had you? - 15. - [Mark] So your mom was in
your life, but she was just- - Yes. - [Mark] She had helped with the- She was very young. - [Mark] Your relatives helped out? - Mm-hmm. Well, my dad took me from her. - [Mark] Oh so you... - She really didn't have a choice. - [Mark] Oh, I see. How was your childhood? - Sad. I had a sad childhood. I always wanted to be with my mom. She was never there. - [Mark] What kind of stuff
went on in your childhood? - Molestation. I got beat a lot for no reason. - [Mark] Sexual abuse was from who? - My uncle. - [Mark] Your uncle. - Yeah. - And my aunt, she didn't spare the ride, put it that way. - [Mark] And you left home at what age? - Well, 14, but I got kidnapped. I say kidnapped, I don't know. Maybe, maybe I, maybe I
really wanted to leave, but- - [Mark] By who? - I didn't you know. By a pimp. - [Mark] In Texas? - Mm-hmm. - [Mark] Where was he from? - He was from Memphis, Tennessee. - [Mark] And how did that happen? - Me and my sister, we went to a club, and while I went with my sister to a club and I met this guy and I don't know, I think he put something in my drink. So, I passed out and woke up in Arizona. And... - [Mark] And what happened in Arizona? - [Pamela] We got pulled
over by the police because we had a canned marijuana seeds and they let us go. Unfortunately, they let me go. And we went to Riverside, California to score some on pills, Preludes, VI 62s and I ran away from him. - [Mark] So a young
girl living on her own. - [Pamela] Mm-hmm. Well his bottom bitch was 40. She was an older black lady, and we had a lookout at the Holiday Inn on University, in Riverside. And after that we split the money and I went one way and she went another. - [Mark] And what did you do then? You worked with another
pimp or on your own, or? - [Pamela] I met this
guy at a bowling alley and he introduced me to this little white girl named Valerie, she's still my friend today. And her dad, he took in foster kids and so I lived with him
and I was doing like freelance modeling at
Harris Gardens in Riverside and- - [Mark] Freelance modeling. When was that? - Well on the weekends when
photographers, you know they come in and they'd take pictures we have contests and I was a minor, so. - [Mark] And you're clothed or naked or? - Yeah, naked. - [Mark] You're naked? - Mm-hmm. And in bathing suits. - [Mark] These are just guys with cameras that like to take pictures of
pretty girls naked, basically. And they pay for that? - Yeah. - [Mark] This goes out in
like a strip club or a- - No, it's called Harris Gardens, it's in Riverside. And it's like a jungle. When you go inside, you think
you're in a jungle somewhere, it's not, you'd never know it was there. It's like tucked away, hidden away. - [Mark] So you got back
into prostitution after that? - Yes. - [Mark] You recall
your very first customer as a 15 year old prostitute? - I was in Galveston, Texas. And yeah, I recall. It was an older white
man, probably about 60. We weren't allowed to
date black men back then. So, yeah, he was an older white man. - [Mark] Did you work with
another pimp after that? - Ah, yes. - [Mark] After leaving the
first one, you met another one? - Yeah, I used to run around with Michael Conception and Venzo Al, Snake from Long Beach. He's in Pretty Notorious Pimp. He passed away a few years ago. - [Mark] Ever been married? - Yes. Mm-hmm, twice. My first husband was a
pimp and I married him. - [Mark] Oh, you married your pimp? - Mm-hmm. My mother made him marry me and he passed away, the police killed him in 1987 or '88. No, '87. I was with him from '85 to '87. - [Mark] You have children? - Yes. - [Mark] Did you raise them? - No. No. - [Mark] Who raised your kids? - A friend of the family
raised my oldest son and my husband, he was very
abusive mentally and physically and I didn't want him to
be abused by my husband, so I let him stay with my,
a friend of the family. And when I went back to pick him up, she hid him for me and I never got him back. - [Mark] So you don't have
contact with your kids? - Yeah. - On Facebook and Instagram. - [Mark] Oh, you do? - Mm-hmm. - [Mark] When was the last
time you saw them face to face? - I've never seen my son. Well, I seen him when he was 10 months old and my middle son I seen
him when he was 10 days old. And my little girl, she was 10 months old. The last time I... No, she was 16 because she
came out here to the see me. - [Mark] Is it hard
for you to be separated from your children? - Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I miss them. - [Mark] What was the
best point in your life? - The best part of my life? - [Mark] Yeah. - Or point in my life? - [Mark] When were you the happiest? When I was married. Yeah. When I was married to my husband, I was happy until I went to prison for a hit and run injury. So that like took me away for a few years. - [Mark] Were drugs or alcohol
a part of your life ever? - Yes. I was a heroin addict. Heroin is the only thing
that really like numbed me you know, physically,
mentally, emotionally. - [Mark] Yeah. Do you still use today? - I chip heroin. - [Mark] And you still
work as a prostitute, too? - Yes. When I have to. - [Mark] Where do you work now? At Figueroa? - Figueroa, right here on town. And I've been all over the place. San Francisco, Capp Street, out in the Valley, Sepulveda. - [Mark] Sunset? - But I remember when
Figueroa wasn't even a track, Broadway in Central was
the track back then. Yeah. - [Mark] What do you think
is it about that lifestyle that makes it so difficult
to break away from? - The money. - [Mark] Easy, fast money? - Mm-hmm. - It's easy money. - [Mark] Do you think there's
anything in your childhood the way you were treated, the sexual abuse or anything like that- - I was molested by my uncle, so- - [Mark] Yeah. They kind of let you, makes... It makes this easier, right? It makes this kind of work easier? - Yeah. Yeah, I was used to it, so. - [Mark] It kind of opens
the door for it from there. - Yeah. And my, one of my wife's
in-laws got killed before my husband did and, my first husband and she was 4'11", she was a pretty little black girl and she got killed and I found her in the middle of the street dead and it like blew my mind, so when I did heroin, it numbed me, I didn't have to feel the pain. - [Mark] Yeah. - You know. - [Mark] Your childhood gets fixed, your (indistinct),
everything gets fixed by- - I felt like I was back in mother's womb. - [Mark] Yeah, I've heard that many times. How'd your friend die? - They ran over her, mm-hmm. When we went back to pick her up, she was just laying in the
middle of the street, dead with their head busted open and like every ounce of blood
drained out of her body. It was horrible. - [Mark] You've had bad experiences, too? - Yeah. - [Mark] What kind of stuff have you seen? - I've had to jump out of cars, going 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour. A couple of times I've been
beat with clothes hangers, all kinds of abuse. - [Mark] I'm sure you've seen all kinds of strange requests from
your clients as well, right? - Mm-hmm. Yeah. - [Mark] What are some of the weird ones? - Well, this one guy in San
Francisco had a crush fetish and he weighed about
500 pounds, maybe more. And he just wanted me to step
on a muffin and, you know smash it in the sidewalk like this - [Mark] Step on what? - A muffin. He had a crush fetish - [Mark] Step on a muffin
that you would eat? - Yeah. - [Mark] And he got off on that? - Mm-hmm. - [Mark] (laughs) - He gave me $800 to do that. - Crush- - [Mark] You're not even touching him, you're just stepping on food. - Mm-hmm. - [Mark] Okay. Interesting world. And how old are you now? - 55. - [Mark] 55, pretty great. - Mm-hmm. Yeah, 55. - [Mark] How long do you
see yourself doing this? - Well, I've been, I haven't been doing... The past five years, I've been, I was in a relationship and it was like the
first normal relationship I've really ever been in. And I wasn't doing it, then, you know. I was just with my boyfriend. But now I'm back downtown here and hopefully I get my housing this week, so I won't have to be out
of here that much longer. - [Mark] Oh, so you're
living on the street? - Mm-hmm. Again. - [Mark] How long have
you been on the street? - Since I was a kid. Yeah, since I was 14, 15. - [Mark] Is that why you
got married at some point? - Yeah, but my husband,
he was always traveling and because we used to transport cocaine all over the United States and we would drive stolen cars to Guatemala through Mexico, upward those mountains. Very dangerous. - [Mark] I bet. - And, yeah, Enrique. His name was Enrique Bonifaz, he was my husband, my oldest son's father. - [Mark] Do you work for the pimp today or you're on your own? - No, I'm on my own. - [Mark] Are you saving money? - I'm trying to. People quit stealing from me. It's hard to hold on to anything out here. - [Mark] Is this lifestyle
that you've been living for all these years, does it get you down sometimes? - It's depressing. It can be, yeah. Yeah, it gets me down. I miss my kids. I wish I would've been a
better mother to children. I wish I would've been
able to, but I wasn't. So, but they're doing, they're okay. Yeah. My daughter's 18. She's so beautiful. She's pregnant. I can't believe I'm going
to be a grandmother. - [Mark] Do you kind of
credit the childhood you had, the parents that weren't around and the abuse that you had to take, is kind of leading you down this path? - Yeah. - [Mark] Yeah. - Yeah, my aunt that raised me, she was a minister. So I mean, I couldn't do anything. Everything was a sin or I would get beat. It didn't matter what I did, whether I lied or didn't lie, if I was bad or good, it didn't matter. And she would just... and she would make me
wear dresses to school. You know, after she (indistinct) me. - [Mark] Are you religious at all? - Yes. Yes. Yeah, I love God. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't probably wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. - [Mark] What do you think the
most misunderstood thing is for girls that worked
the street like this? And also that don't understand? - That when they, you know, have a client or sort of date, that they enjoy it or that they're getting
pleasure out of it. Guys think that because I guess
they think that they would. I don't know why they think that, but it's just business. It's not, nothing personal. - [Mark] It almost makes
you respect men less after doing this, right? - No. No, no, I have... No, I have respect for men, it's just a job. I mean, they're paying for
something that, that I'm selling. They're giving me what I want, so- - [Mark] No, you do you
respect men less because of these kinds of interactions
that you have with men? - The abuse. Yeah, it makes me not respect them. - [Mark] What was the
worst time of your life? - The worst time in my life. I don't know. I've a whole lot of worst times. I think maybe the worst
time was when the police killed my husband. They shot him five times in the back, right in front of me. They say he brandished a gun
and he didn't have a gun. It was when it was one
of those old cell phones, those car phones, yeah. - [Mark] Do you think
living this lifestyle has changed you in some way? - Not really, I've always been the same, but it's, it has- - [Mark] You've been doing
it since you were 15. it's made me more calloused, maybe. I don't show my feelings as
much as I normally would. - [Mark] I'm sure you
use your intuition a lot doing this, right? - Yeah, I have like a sixth sense, like, I always follow my gut instincts. - [Mark] You have to, right? - Yeah. Yeah. - [Mark] I'm sure you
could you consider yourself a survivor, right? - Mm-hmm. - [Mark] You have to be, right? - Mm-hmm. - [Mark] Do you ever stand back and just look at your
life and the situation that you're in and just
go, man, this is nuts? - I can't believe I'm out
here doing it all over again. You know? I didn't think I'd ever
be back out here again. - [Mark] You've been in love before? - Yeah. - [Mark] With your husbands? - No. - [Mark] No? - I wasn't in love with him. I was in... This last relationship, I had probably. The only relationship that
I've ever really like, felt like I was in love or, you know, swept off my feet or
something like that, yeah. - [Mark] And how did that one end? - I have, I don't really
know how it ended. I know I lost my cat. I miss my cat. (laughs) I miss my cat more than I do him, because he was very abusive, you know. He was very abusive. In the end, I never seen it coming. I never thought that he
would treat me like that. He treated me worse
than any pimp ever has. - [Mark] Physical abuse? - Mm-hmm. - [Mark] Did you had a
lot of relationships? - I know because I always leave. I never stick around. I mean, if somebody hits you, you know they're gonna do it again. It's just, it's gonna happen again. It's not just going to be that one time and, oh, they changed. It's you know, it's not
going to happen again because it will, it's
going to happen again. - [Mark] How much schooling did you get? - I went to the seventh grade. Yeah. - [Mark] What advice would
you give a young girl that's considering doing
something like this? I'm sure she's like, you know, she has to be in a situation
that kind of makes it. - Yeah, I found girls
out here like teenagers and tried to take them
under my wing, you know, and help them get off the street. But if they want to be there, that's where they're going to be in, nothing's going to stop them. But I wouldn't advise it because it becomes a habit. And then you can't get a job where you make that amount of money. - [Mark] Yeah. - So you're never going to be... - [Mark] Fast money. - Yeah. You're not always going to be
missing the money, you know. Especially is you're materialistic. - [Mark] Especially what? - Materialistic. If you're a materialistic person, yeah. I'm not, thank God. Thank God my daddy, he
didn't raise me like that. - [Mark] What's the most important lesson you've learned in your life? - That you never know a person until you've lived with
them at least a few years. You can't just be with
somebody for a few days and think that you're in love and, oh I'm going to be with this person for the rest of my life, because they change, people change. And he had HIV and... Thank God, I'm HIV free by the grace of God. But I just, I don't know, I loved him, so it didn't
matter to me, you know? - [Mark] So, what other kind
of sex work have you done? - I've done fetishes. I think, I've done just about every... anything and everything there is to do, I did it. Like, golden showers. I really don't like to hit people and I don't like being spanked, but I will. (laughs) I will be spanked I like, I mean, I will do it. You know, if the person
pays me, I'll do it. I was down in Studio City in the Valley and I got into porn and back in the '80s when, you know gang banging came out and I've always been
attracted to violence, for some reason. I'm not a violent person, but I like, I've always been around like being around people that were, and I've seen- - [Mark] Were you exposed to something as a child that maybe... - Well, my dad shot my uncle, so maybe that. And my brother shot his
best friend in the chest. - [Mark] Did you see those things happen? - Mm-hmm. Yeah. - [Mark] Oh, you did? So being exposed to violence as a child- - Yeah. - [Mark] opens the door for that? - Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think so. I take psych meds today because I still have horrific nightmares. Sometimes I wake up in like a cold sweat or sometimes I can't wake up, you know. I'll keep trying to wake myself up and I can't wake up. So, I just ride it out. I think being from the
little town that I'm from helped me in a sense that
when I came to California, I wasn't as fast as a lot of the girls who are around here. - [Mark] Not so materialistic and- - Yeah, I mean, not so materialistic. I like nature and animals
and stuff like that. I'm not really into clothes and cars and you know,
jewelry and all that. Because where I came from, South Central, you're just going to get robbed anyway. - [Mark] Yeah. - You don't want to walk down the street with a lot of jewelry on. - [Mark] Would you consider
yourself a happy person? - Yeah. I like to... I love... I'm happy. I like being happy. I like laughing. I like to smile. I like to laugh. I like to have fun. If I'm not having fun. I'm not, I don't want to go. I used to say, he ain't hoing, I ain't going. But because that's when the
three-strikes law came out. Richard Allen Davis, when he murdered Polly Class, I was in Santa Rosa when that happened. I talked to him, actually. I did a 10 day DEU in
Santa Rosa's county jail, and I got to talk to him, you know, and tell him, give him a piece of my mind. Yeah. - [Mark] What would you have changed about your childhood or
your life if you could? - Well, I don't think I could change it, but I think that if I
could, if I had a wish I would wish that I
could be a child again, my mother and my father
wouldn't have divorced and they would've raised me. Yeah, because I'm hoping that, you know my daughter will break the cycle. - [Mark] Yeah. - You know. I know she will. She will. - [Mark] All right, Pamela. Well, thank you for talking with me. Good luck with everything. - Okay, thank you. - [Mark] Thank you very much.
