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I got my first real job when I was in kindergarten. By second grade I had two part-time jobs on top of the whole school thing, so three in total. The latter job was just helping my brother with his paper route. It allowed us to buy our candy rather than steal it. Before the paper route, we had a little system worked out for our five finger discounts. Honestly, it came easy for innocent enough looking white children who were mostly left to our own devices. My brother would distract the person working with weird questions and random comments, while I went to the candy section and shoved all the things we wanted under my jacket. Sometimes I grabbed little toys like matchbox cars and Barbie clothes. It all depended on the fit of my jacket and how well my brother was amusing the employee at our local Snyder Drug Store. For the paper route, we biked together around Roseville hauling those heavily weighed down, white canvas cross body bags filled with newspapers. We tossed papers at houses as the bags got lighter and lighter until we were done. If the weather was bad enough my mom would drive us, and we’d just toss the papers out the windows. My brother took the majority of the money, give me a little cash and we’d head to the gas station to pay for sugar in all of its delicious forms.

My first job was not so simple. I was a child model and actor in the Twin Cities back in the 80s. I was basically the Target poster child among many other things. I was on the back of a cereal box, on billboards, on TV, in the Sunday papers and on a local talk show. I did not ever ask to do this, and I don’t remember having any conversations with anyone in my family before it started. It was planned for me and just started out of the blue after leaving Albert Lea, MN. I went from living near corn fields and my grandparents to living by a highway in Roseville near my aunt, uncle and cousin. We had just moved to the Coventry, an affordable housing apartment complex for mostly single parents, immigrants, and senior citizens. It was a new city, a new home, a job and starting Kindergarten, all happening simultaneously all of the sudden and without any explanation. I just went along with whatever, I was easy, cute and funny so I just kept booking jobs for years. Eventually, I was doing this about once or twice a week all throughout my childhood. These jobs meant missing a lot of school for me, but the money kept my family financially afloat. It also paid for my mom to go to school to become a court reporter.

My aunt, who we called Toto, picked me up and drove me to these jobs and auditions. She did the same for my cousin and my brother. She was the ultimate stage mom, and she fit that stereotype to a T. You may know the temperament, loud and controlling especially around us kids. She knew how to act around the adults on set to appear warm and kind, but I never got the feeling she liked me. My mom was working evenings at UPS answering the phones while going to school during the day. She was rarely around until late, so my aunt had a big hand in raising me. The two of them had a tumultuous relationship, and I often felt like I was put in the middle of their conflicts. I was often treated more as a therapist and mediator than a kid. Car rides with my aunt were frequent and so insane at times that I learned to disassociate. I wiped most of my memory of those car rides clean, except for just the knowing part and lingering feeling of it all. My mom cane home exhausted and unhappy most days. I was who she took her frustration out on.

These things didn’t stop me from being a kid whenever I could be one though. When I wasn’t busy juggling home work, actual work, and quieting the nagging guilt of my mother’s expectations by keeping up with household chores, I was outside somewhere within a 3 miles radius of home exploring. I had lots of time to myself, without any adult supervision. That time was the most peaceful and free of my childhood. I would grab my bike and wander around, head to Lake Josephine with a snack, dig in the dirt and sand, climb trees, visit friends and sometimes boldly invite myself inside for dinner. Some of my close friends were immigrants. I got to eat things like homemade Ethiopian food with warm injera that I watched being made from scratch, We would eat only with our hands while sitting on the floor together. It was completely different. I ate Taiwanese noodles, dumplings and soups with utensils I had never seen. I was fortunate to experience these bits and pieces of various cultures at a young age. I was also nearly kidnapped multiple times due to all the time I spent biking around on my own. I look back and sometimes feel lucky to still be alive.

The time spent with my family was heavy. I was deemed the family scapegoat, emotionally neglected and heard all about what was wrong with me on a regular basis. I was also the youngest in my family, but I was often given the most responsibility. Dissociating was my norm, and crying meant even more ridicule. My family called me The Cloud whenever the tears came. My feelings were treated like a joke, and my aunt would even take pictures of me while I cried sometimes. I had quite a few derogatory nicknames given to me as a child from my family. Some were so rude that I’d rather not even share them, and some of them stuck with me well into adulthood. At a certain point I had to make it perfectly clear that they needed to end. I was always told I was too sensitive, taking things wrong and needed to toughen up. If something was hurtful, then it was always just a joke, and I didn’t have a sense of humor. If the dishes weren’t done when my mom got home it was the customary array of, “You’re worthless, lazy, good for nothing, selfish…” Sometimes those dirty dishes were thrown at my head, just barely missing me and shattering against the wall. My mom would make me do the rest of the dishes with her while ranting about my, aunt, brother, her weight, the heaviness of life and her general unhappiness with her lot in life. I was never asked if my homework was finished or if I needed help with my homework. In fact I was sent a message that school wasn’t really that important, as I missed so much of it for work. A few school mornings I was woken up early to my mom violently yanking me out of bed while yelling at me to clean the bathroom, because apparently I forgot. The days I remembered ahead of time to help with chores, she was appreciative and would make some sort of dinner for us from a can. We were on welfare, got the government cheese bricks and ate horribly. Some nights she came home and raged for no reason that I could understand. One afternoon she walked in the door and immediately began to tell me she was diagnosed with brain cancer, had 6 months left to live and started crying. Later she admitted it was all a lie she made up, because she was hurt that I didn’t ask about her doctor appointment. Other nights she’d walk in the house, go straight to her room and shut the door without a word. She would stay in there all night. That was easier than being yelled at or manipulated, but still not what I needed. It was never about what I needed. Forgive and forget was my mother’s mantra. I did not grow up knowing what love was.

My aunt was even more unpredictable than my mom. There was one day I missed school to film a Turkey Store commercial. After I got myself all dolled up and ready, I decided to go outside and play while I waited for my aunt to arrive. I was running around and skipping with an untied shoelace and tripped, landing face first on the sidewalk. Thankfully, my friend Feleg’s mom was outside, saw what happened and came over to help. She gently placed ice on my face as it started to swell and become red. My aunt pulled up and was furious to see my scraped up, swollen face. In her mind I possibly ruined an opportunity for earning money and getting one step closer to becoming a star, their goal, not mine. Feleg’s mom started to defend me, a hurt child, and the wrath was then turned on her instead. Toto brought me to the set to film the commercial anyway, and it was decided by all that the show must go on or lots of money would be wasted. My busted up face was covered up with enough make up so that you couldn’t even tell. I have a high tolerance for pain and wonder if it’s because of situations like this.

That was not a completely unusual circumstance back then. I remember going to photo shoots sick. One time I even threw up on the photographer Al Beaulieu. He was a regular coworker of mine, and he was also Prince’s official photographer at the time. He was actually so lovely about being puked on. I was modeling matching sweatsuit sets, while lifting weights with my faux-family of the day, when I felt the urge to let Al know I was feeling sick. I must have started to look ill enough for him to scoop me up and carry me to the nearest bathroom. That’s when I vomited all over him. He calmly cleaned us up with the utmost care and grace. I have a hunch, that in working closely with Prince, he was used to being around people who partied and got sick. So maybe it just wasn’t that big of a deal for him. He stuck out as one of the adults I enjoyed working with. He gave me posters of Prince that he shot, told me random stories about him and seemed to find me amusing. I was a second grader with a poster in my room of Prince laying in bed with his bare ass exposed.

I remember puking in my aunts car on the way home from a job, and it was a completely different scene. There was lots of yelling and hysterics. I was going to have to clean it up myself, and it later became a fight between my mom and aunt. They got into lots of fights in front of me. They would yell and scream in front of me about who deserved more of the money I made. Sometimes things like unopened cans of soda were thrown across the room at each other, and sometimes the police showed up. My aunt was later diagnosed as psychotic, at least that’s what my mom told me. My brother and I used to get dropped off at my aunt’s house, and we were put to work taking out the trash, vacuuming and scrubbing the floors on our hands and knees. I was her designated foot massager. What made matters worse was that her feet were always dry, cracked and calloused. She felt it was fair since she paid me a quarter each time I did it. However, with the small child vs. scary adult power dynamic, I really had no choice in the matter. Meanwhile my cousin, the golden child, did no chores at all, ever. She was put on a pedestal and much too beautiful and talented for such things. She also hid a lot when my aunt was shouting out orders at us kids. Who knows what things looked like for her when I wasn’t around?

When it wasn’t my aunt or my mom, it was my brother giving me hell. He’d do things like lock me out of the house in the middle of winter when my mom wasn’t home. He would dare me to do dangerous things, which I actually loved to do…but still. He black mailed me for years after swearing at him one time, when he probably deserved it. I was under his control for fear of what my mom might do if she ever found out. That meant we watched his shows, mostly RoboCop on repeat or WWF wrestling. He always got the front seat in the car, and we only listened to his music picks on the radio. If I dared sing along I would get the death stare and a code word to obey. It was how I knew to be quiet or else. The mind games were relentless. I was told that our dad would come by to visit him and not want to see me, and that I was a programmed robot. With my brother I learned how to fight back. It was a pattern of holding it in for long periods of time until I couldn’t help myself from exploding in rage. I remember jumping on top of him on the couch and repeatedly punching him as hard as I could. It was the last straw, and ultimately I was the one who looked bad and got in trouble. When I was in high school, he would embarrass me if boys called by telling them I was busy either pooping or waxing my mustache. He knew how to constantly poke and pick at me in the most sneaky and insidious ways.

This kind of tortuous sibling stuff is probably not all that unusual. What was worse than my brother was my mom’s alcoholic on and off again boyfriend, Tom. He sometimes lived with us. Then he would disappear for a while. When he was around he would mostly just lay on the couch, watch TV, and tell me to get him beers from the fridge while he chain smoked. That is when he wasn’t selling used cars at his part-time job. If I dared to take any attention away from him with my mom I was called “a little brat” or worse. He even gave me my first cigarette, at the age of 8, one afternoon while we were left alone together. I suppose i should be grateful he didn’t do anything worse to me. My mom and him would get into physical fights right in front of me though. This was even scarier than when she fought with my aunt. He was bigger and drunk. I once saw a telephone ripped off the wall and used as a weapon. I once found a Polaroid picture of her bruised face. She covered them with makeup otherwise. What I really couldn’t make sense of was that Tom also had a kid he rarely saw and didn’t support. I wondered how my mom could be with a man who hurt her and who also abandoned his own kid. How could Tom be any worse for us to know than knowing our own dad?

My uncle Bill, Toto’s husband, was a Russian immigrant who came to the US alone, as a child, shortly after WWII. He had a strong accent, was a body builder, wore lots of Zubaz and was a preacher for Jews for Jesus. He was, somehow, the most normal part of my little family. By normal I really just mean he was fun and would actually stick up for me sometimes. When my aunt was either body shaming me for not being thin enough in the right places or ironically forcing me to finish food when I was full, he’d step in. He was the only one in my family who did that. When I was really little he would slick my hair into an Elvis style pompadour, and we’d drive around Shoreview blasting Pink Floyd, AC/DC, ZZ Top and Van Halen with the windows rolled down. We watched The Honeymooners and The Three Stooges and played Uno with my cousin. He actually treated me like a kid. He also often said weird things to me like telling me I was destined to be a spinster. I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. Then he disappeared suddenly and started a new family.

My grandpa, Tony, was one of the good ones in my family. He was also super passive as to avoid creating any additional chaos. We didn’t need any more of that in our family. My Welsh grandma, Elaine, was possibly the craziest of them all. Tony and Elaine met during WWII, and came back to the US together after the war ended. He served as a medic and I suppose learned, from years of experience, how to keep the peace during turbulent times. Mostly he kept busy fixing up cars out in the garage away from it all. He had a small business fixing cars. They were usually lined up the block and taking over the parking lot of a little local radio right next door. He showed me how to change my oil and a spare tire once I started driving. He made the best grilled cheese sandwiches. The trick was he cooked a thick slice of tomato in them. We would snuggle up and watch national geographic wild life documentaries together. He had sweet nicknames for me. He was super chill and emotionally stable. He was the exception.

I’m really not even sure how to describe my grandmother other than wild and crazy and all over the place. We could have the most deep, meaningful conversations, and she would also do things like grab my boobs sometimes. She would watch the Chippendales strip on The Geraldo Rivera Show with a TV tray for her ashtray and me in the room. She didn’t seem to consider at all that it was inappropriate television for a kid. With her Welsh accent and smoker’s voice, she would call me a “bloody oaf,” and tell me not to get cheeky with her. She could be hilarious sometimes then utterly cruel and scary other times. She would dangle information about my dad over me, knowing I was eager to learn about him. He was mostly a mystery to me. It could be a random Sunday morning with a cigarette in one hand and a cup of tea in the other that she’d decide to tell me a story about how my dad raped my mom. That was a casual conversation for a kid kinda thing in her mind. I was usually ashamed whenever I heard things about my dad. My grandma would often refer to my brother and me as, “the devil’s children.” Somehow it felt like I was, or we were responsible for his actions, even though I was a baby when my parents divorced. So how could I be?

When I wasn’t sent to work sick or injured I actually enjoyed the modeling job. I got to work with a lot of the same kids and adults. It was a small community of creative people. My aunt would drive us over the Mississippi River into downtown Minneapolis for auditions. Sometimes I worked inside old mansions on Summit Avenue, or on farms or in warehouses with elaborate sets. It felt like an escape and an alternate reality away from the dysfunction I was accustomed to tolerating. I got to wear cool clothes rather than my usual hand me downs. I even got to work with animals on occasion. I remember doing a photo-shoot for these tents designed to put on top of kid’s beds. I just laid in one and played with a litter of puppies for hours while they took pictures. It was better than school and way better than being home. It felt like a place where I mattered and was appreciated just for being myself, and posing and smiling. It was also hard balancing that world with the reality of my family and school life. Teachers would get mad at me for missing so much school, as if it was my choice. Kids were jealous, and I got a lot of negative attention for it. I was called a snob and told I thought I was better than everyone. In reality, I was just a shy kid who felt on the outs most places.

Once I got to be about middle school age I wasn’t really into the whole modeling thing anymore. It was all starting to feel creepy and awkward. The last job I remember doing was for a linen sale. I was essentially in my underwear with just a few towels, carefully draped around parts of my body, that I held in place. There may have been some tape involved, a trick of the trade. I remember feeling exposed and vulnerable, worrying a towel might fall in front of everyone. That’s when I finally started to speak up for myself and was done with modeling for good. I crushed my aunt’s dream of becoming rich and famous enough to buy her a mansion with a pool. She still had my cousin for that though, and My cousin was keeping that dream alive acting in plays and competing in Star Search and Miss Teen USA. I was now just the worthless, little brat learning to stand up for myself, searching for people to love and trust and beginning to cultivate a vast inner strength. I saw through it all at a very young age. It just took me a little while before I was strong enough to stop performing and just become myself.

As a teenager I began experimenting with drugs and alcohol. I started to do things like run away, which nobody ever even noticed. I distracted myself by dating all sorts of boys. My mom took me see to a therapist at my request. She couldn’t help but insert herself by sitting in on my session and chiming in when she didn’t want the truth exposed. At the end of it we were told that I was a pretty normal teenager, but she would benefit from starting therapy. She didn’t like that suggestion, so much so that she got up and left in anger. I never went back, but I was prescribed Prozac after only one session. I never ask for it, and I even stopped taking after only a few weeks. It made me feel completely awful. It’s now understood that Prozac in teenagers can worsen depression to the point of becoming suicidal. I have always instinctively known how to protect myself, maybe it was out of necessity since nobody else was doing that for me.

Things actually got worse with my mom as I got older. She had more free time since finishing school and working as a court reporter. That meant she was starting to pay attention to what I was up to at a time when, developmentally, kids want more independence. The day I told her that I found an apartment and was moving out, she stormed at me and hit me in the face. She wanted me to be a cheerleader, which I did, and it was awful. She frequently requested that I get a boob job and even offered to pay for it. Which I didn’t do, thank God! I never had any issue with my body, quite miraculously. I already fiercely independent and hardly cared about other people’s opinions of me. I rebelled in my own ways, like shaving my head as a teenager. My mother’s jaw dropped, and I got a lecture about how men like women with long hair. I was also told that I looked like a hippy when my hair was long. I couldn’t win. At the age of 17, I moved all the way to Cuernavaca, Mexico in hopes of getting away from the madness of my family. Living in Mexico as an exchange student was my idea of an escape. That, however, is another story for another time.