This is
something I feel compelled to write. It is the story of the struggle I faced
and the journey I began when I first left the United States for an extended
period, seven years ago. It is a
narrative of travel, punk rock, mind opening and crazy experiences, and the
struggle to find my sexuality as a person with Cerebral Palsy. The struggles with sexuality that people with
disabilities often face is rarely discussed. When it is discussed, most people
ignore it and dismiss it as not a real issue. It is for this reason that I feel
that I must write my story.
Growing up I always felt out of place. I was a very lonely child and as I grew up
the kids at school would always call me cripple and make fun of me because of
my disability. From very early on, I
could see that there was something very wrong with mainstream society. The way
that it values money and conformity above all else, and how it mocks and excludes
that which is different from it made me sick.
I think that my disability gave me an awareness of the wrongness of
mainstream society from very early on and I am thankful for that.
My natural response to how I was treated in
Middle school and High School was to rebel, and I have never ceased rebelling. In Middle school, the rebellion took the form
of skipping school, forming a fake gang with my friends called the Hardcore
Hoods, drinking 40s, and shoplifting. As
I have grown older, my rebellion has gotten more intelligent and conscious,
while still retaining some of the initial craziness. I am thankful for my youthful rebellion and
in some sense I remain faithful to its drive to refuse to conform and to
question everything. All my life I have tried to imagine how life could be
different than it is now and I have tried to work for a more emancipatory way
for people to relate to each other.
One of the most difficult things growing up
was dealing with issues of sexuality Of
course this is true for all people, but with people with disability we are not
even seen as potentially desirable at that time of our lives, because
disability runs so counter to the false drive of bodily perfection so important
to the teenage years. As a teenager I was
always rejected by girls, other students constantly mocked my body, and sex seemed
to be a rarified and impossibly out of reach thing to me. Of course, it did not help that my whole
family (except me!) converted to a very conservative religion (Mormonism) when
I was a teenager. As a person with a
disability, people did not see me, and consequently I did not see myself, as a
potential sexual being. I came to see
myself as others saw me. Because I was always rejected, I did not think I was
worthy of being a potential romantic partner. Because people always called me a
cripple, I saw myself as a cripple. I
saw myself as someone who was undesirable and unattractive. I rarely even hugged anyone and I was not
kissed until I was twenty and that was not repeated until years later.
Although I knew there was something wrong
with the world, I also began to suspect that there was something wrong with
me. I felt that I needed to investigate
more into the mysteries of life and to try to change my thinking. Spiritually I first got into Rastafarianism,
and then orthodox Christianity and Sufism, a mystical form of Islam. Philosophically, what was important to me in
the beginning was Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, Berdyaev and Heidegger. I was drawn
to these thinkers because they all
stressed that one should find one’s own path in life by facing ones fears and
choosing one’s own way, despite what others may think. My experiences with spirituality and my early
philosophical influences were very important to me and I cannot disavow them
even through at some point they did not help me answer the questions I needed
to answer.
Fast forward to my last year of my philosophy
Masters program in New York city 2007-2008.
I was living in Yonkers and going to SUNY Stony Brook Manhattan in New
York City. I lived in a Sufi house with
a couple of lovely people, a couple of sociopaths, and a really nice woman with
some mental issues. None of us paid
rent, which makes it possible to live there on my disability money. I was deeply engaged with the Sufi path, but
the narrative of looking into yourself and opening your heart to solve all your
problems was wearing thin. I was getting
into Derrida, Foucault, Levinas, and Nietzsche.
I was looking into disability philosophically with some academic
success. My mom got cancer and recovered for
the first time. I lost my
virginity to a Sex worker and went to another sex worker a couple of times
because I was
so lonely and hung up about still being a virgin at 27.
I thought that I would kill myself if I
did not lose my virginity soon. I needed
to get it out of the way.
In in the midst of all this, I came to the
realization that for me the way forward was NOT to keep looking within but to
transform myself by being open to different experiences, and being open to what
others could teach me. For me what was
important was transformation through action, being aware of the difference and
the suffering of others and not trying whitewash the uniqueness of other people’s
experiences by trying to say everything is the same. I believed
that it is only by realizing that different people have different experiences
that we can learn from other people. I
was being open to as many experiences as possible during this time. During this time I got my first tattoo,
Radical Affirmation!
David
Bowie was really important to me during this period. To me he was the epitome of self
transformation and experiencing life in all of its modalities. I got re-involved in the punk scene which was
important to me in my youth. Punk to me was
about being raw and real, building community, and trying to make the world a
better place. Even if punk did not
always live up to this ideal, I thought this is the true essence of punk. At a punk concert I felt free, energized,
allowed to be myself.
During this period, I also began working out
and I began to transform myself bodily.
My right side had been very weak, and through working out I was able to
strengthen it considerably and I became more attractive and I felt better about
my body. Working out always felt good
and I could say that about almost nothing.
After my Master’s program finished, I decided
to move to Turkey to teach English. My
plan was to move to Turkey for six months and then to move to Belfast and begin
a Ph.D. in Disability studies with Margrit Schildick, an author I greatly admired. I left New York drinking Diplomatico from
Venezuela and listening to David Bowie just as I am now.
In Turkey,
I stayed with Ibrahim, Kathrin, and Isa.
Ibrahim is a brilliant Religious Studies Professor who is at the
forefront of formulating religiosity in a way that is inclusive, emancipatory,
and transformative. He was a former
Russian Orthodox priest, who was the first black student admitted in St. Vladimir’s
seminary, and he is now a Sufi sheik who fights exclusion everywhere. Kathrin is a woman whose hospitality is exquisite
and who has a strength that can move mountains.
Isa at this time was an eight-year-old who had a wisdom and
inquisitiveness well beyond his years.
With Isa and sometimes Ibrahim and Kathrin, I
visited some of the great Sufi Sheiks of Istanbul. One of these Sheiks was Reik
Baba of the Rufai Order, who was a sweet old man with a humorous and open disposition,
which was a perfect vehicle for his great love and wisdom. I also went to a Roma zhikr lead by Sheik
Mouson Baba of the Jerrahi order in Uskadar, on the Asian side of
Istanbul. I felt very privileged to be
welcomed in the home of Roma Sufis, who face such a stigma in Turkish society,
and I was met with the sweetest hospitality.
At the same time, I lived in between two
worlds, between Sufism and punk, and I was quite happy living at the border of
these seemly contradictory worlds. At
first glance, it really seems contradictory to be into punk and Sufism, punks
tend to be antireligious and atheists, and Sufis in Turkey are often conservative and look down on the
politics and excesses associated with punk. Sufism is the mystical path of Islam and believes
that the world is a manifestation of aspects of Allah and it believes that opening
the human heart through mystical experience, and practicing hospitality and
love, is the path to meeting the divine.
There are many Sufi orders and they all follow different Saints who each
have a different emphasis and who have different practices on how to achieve
this goal. Some Sufi orders believe
that it is very important to follow the legal aspects of Islam while there are
others that do not stress that very much.
Punk rock had its roots in the rebellion and
energy of garage rock like Iggy and the Stooges, Glam rock like David Bowie,
and the experimental music of the New York underground of the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith. It first was first made popular and codified
by the Sex Pistols in an intentional
marketing ploy by Malcolm McLean and Vivian Westwood. The Clash was the first band to really take
political potentiality of the rebellion of punk seriously and they wrote songs
that were anthems that called for social justice and economic equality. This forever politicized a large segment of
punk and made it what it is today.
Although the Sex Pistols sang about anarchy
in the UK, it was just about the anarchy of youth rebellion and destruction and
it had nothing to do with the tradition of political anarchy, which is a
movement that calls for socialism and economic equality without the corrosive
effects of the state. Anarchism, in the tradition
of Bakunin and Kropotkin, believes that the way to social equality is through
the mutual cooperation and mutual aid of the workers themselves through free association. Crass was the first band to take the call to
anarchy in the Sex pistols song Anarchy in the UK Seriously and they spawned
countless bands the created a punk movement that took its politics seriously
and cares a great deal about social juice, animal rights, and antiracism.
Anarchism,
in the punk culture, at heart, and at its best represents a vision where
freedom and true equality coexists. The
goal of anarchism is to have a society where everyone will have the opportunity
to truly flourish in a society based on trust and solidarity. Sufism, at its
best envisions a life where one truly tries to live a life where love is the
focus and purposef life and where one strives to see divine love manifested in
everyone and to treat others in accordance with this love. Looking at Sufism and punk like this, they
did not feel so far apart to me.
I was also a part of world of TEFL teachers
in Istanbul. Within two weeks of flying
to Istanbul on a one-way ticket, I landed a job as an English teacher. I had taught Intro to Philosophy at John Jay
College for Criminal Justice for one year, but I had no experience or training
as an English teacher. I worked for
Gokdil, which was then a subsidy of the horrible Istanbul chain English Time,
and moved into English Time’s house for English teachers in Taksim, the main
area for nightlife in Istanbul. The
school I worked for was truly terrible with Turkish co-workers making
outlandish accusations like I got undressed in class (I only ever took my
jacket off) and Kafkaesque situations like my boss taking away classes from me
for reasons he did not know because his boss would not tell him. It was a lesson in insanity, but I had been
in insane situations before, so I tried to roll with the punches, through I did
get distraught at times.
The main people I gravitated towards were
Craig and Mariam. Craig was a gay man in
his mid-30s from Scotland, and we would often sneak alcohol into the house,
drink, and talk together until late into the night. We would both do things that set us beyond
our comfort levels and expanded our experiences. Craig went with me to punk and metal shows
and I went with him to a gay bar. He was
intelligent, funny, a bit catty, and was particular about who he hanged out
with. We both had gone through a lot of
suffering and we both felt a kinship for each other.
Mariam was a Somali American woman in her
mid-twenties who had been through some truly unbelievable experiences. An example of this was that she had
volunteered to teach English in Sudan when she found out that she would be
teaching exclusively rich kids. She then
promptly quit her job and she had her visa revoked when she was in Sudan. Later someone robbed her and attempted to
kidnap her on a bus, but she got away and somehow got out of Sudan.
When we were not working Mariam and I were
most often together, we seemed to understand each other. She was a Muslim woman who was attracted to
women but denied herself because of religious beliefs and was very curious
about many things. We would walk around
to different sites in Istanbul and would play Badgamon and smoke cigarettes in
the Café Le Jardin, a café that felt and looked like a secret garden. It was our spot. Mariam told me not to tell the other teachers
besides Craig about the café because she did not want them to come there
because she did not want our secret sanctuary to be disturbed.
During this time I also had a number of
crazy experiences. One of the most
memorable I will describe bellow. During
my time in Istanbul I truly felt expanded and felt joyful, but I would drink
too much as I still do. One night I was
drinking late into the night at a tattoo studio and I was looking for the last
bar open in the area at 4 am. I found a
bar two blocks from the house where I was staying and I ordered a beer. A woman in her late thirties came up to me and starts dancing with me. I was lonely, drunk and into it. All this
time she had been drinking a whiskey she had bought before and I was drinking
my beer. She finished her drink and then
asked me to buy her a drink. I had heard
of a scam in Istanbul where a woman acts friendly to you and asks you to buy
her a drink and then they charge you like 100 times more than the regular
price. I thought that I might be in the
middle of this scam and refused. She promptly moved away from me. I very quickly finished my drink.
When I
went to the bartender to pay, he told me that I owed him 200 Turkish liras,
about 100 dollars at the time, because I had bought the woman a drink. I told him that I had refused to buy her a
drink, and she had only been drinking the drink she had before I got
there. I then asked him how much a beer
normally costs. He said 10 Turkish
liras. I said that is too much, it
should cost 6 liras but I would pay 10 but no more. He said that I would have to pay the 200
liras. At this time I was still strong
from going to the gym in New York and all of the people who worked at the bar look small to me. I put my fists forward, gave them a crazy
intense, unwavering stare and I told them that I would not fucking pay that and
don’t they dare follow me. I must have
truly looked insane and I am sure this bar was not used to getting this kind of
reaction from a potential victim. I did
not turn my back from the bartenders and I walked into the street. None of the men followed me. Then all of a sudden the woman comes out and
picks up a brick. Through I hated the
idea of hitting women I knew that if I turned my back and ran she would probably
throw it at me so I took two steps forward.
This startled her and the man who was now standing next to her and they
stepped back. We stood at a stalemate
facing each other from 20 feet away for a 10 minutes that felt like an
hour. I only lived two blocks away and I
did not want them to know where I live and I did not want to bring the trouble home. After a while the stalemate was broken when
an old man came up to me and said to me in English “Just move along now.”
I was really affected and touched by the contacts I made in the Istanbul
punk community. I initially contacted
them through an internet message board called Noizine. One of the great things about the internet in
the pre-Facebook days is that people really united around an interest or music
scene and took it seriously. When I knew that I would be moving to Istanbul, I
wrote the board and said that I was moving to Istanbul and I wanted to know if
there were any shows coming up or if anybody would like to meet up. I was immediately contacted by Ati, Sezgin,
Kerim, Ulas and Yaprak. In a place like
Istanbul, which was a giant city of 15 million people, the punk scene was
pretty small, but it was united. You had
hardcore kids, punks, crusties and skinheads all hanging out with each other. To be a punk in Istanbul meant taking a strong
stand against traditional Turkish society with its conservativism and
nationalism. To be a punk in Istanbul
you really had to suffer to maintain your identity. The punks in Istanbul really treated me like
family and I am. We would go to shows
together, drink on the street, go to nargile cafes, and have a really great
time.
Istanbul was the first place I heard about
RASH (Red and Anarchist Skinheads) and the redskin subculture. The skinhead subculture originally came from
late 1960s Britain when working class British mods, (which was a subculture
based one music and fashion), met the Jamaican rudeboys (a streetwise Jamaican subculture was often
the focus of various forms of Jamaican music) and the mods fell in love with Jamaican
music, along with the soul, and mod rock, they already listened to. From the
beginning, skinhead culture was a multicultural subculture and it is a shame
that racists in the 1980s tried to appropriate it. SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice)
formed in New York City response to the
Nazis trying to take over the scene was spread across the world most promiently
by the influence and efforts of Roddy Moreno of the antifascist oi! band The Oppressed.
RASH
(Red and Anarchist Skinheads) formed in New York City on 1993 response to some
conservative (nationalist, homophobic and anti-left) elements among antiracist
skinheads and because sometimes so called antiracist skinheads flirted with
Nazi images and music. It is now a world
movement and is the most organized leftwing
skinhead organization in the world. Yaprak
and Ulas, who were a couple, were both redskins and they introduced to the
subculture of oi, rocksteady and antifascism.
This would have an important impact on me in the future.
One story that illustrates the struggle that
punks in Istanbul faced was what happened at an outdoor punk festival in
Kadikoy. The festival happened in the autumn of 2008, and was organized by the
Istanbul punks and some travelling punks from Canada. The festival was inside some kind of camp,
and the energy and comradery was fantastic.
There were fire dancers, punk bands and many different activities. It
was a true meeting and sharing between punks from different cultures. One of of
one of the bands screamed “Fuck your god” on stage and all hell broke
loose. The local men of the neighborhood
started to attack us and then they retreated to get more men and weapons. They were gearing up for a mob attack. The
police came and cancelled the show. The
police ended up throwing all the Turkish punks out of the camp but my friends
could speak English and pretended to be Canadian.
One of the reasons I began my trip to
Istanbul was that I wanted to change my life, in particular my hang-ups on
sexuality and relationships over my disability.
I would have to say that I succeeded in this, or rather that I was
blessed with an encounter that changed me indescribably. At this point in my life, I had only had sex
with sex workers in New York. This has
helped me get over my initial hang-ups over sex, but it had failed to change me
socially. I was still needy, desperate,
awkward, and overbearing. My idea of
romantic relationships was over-idealized and they seemed impossibly out of
reach. I still really did not believe
that anyone would want to have sex with me if I was not paying for it. As I
said before, working out was an important practice in helping me feel comfortable
with my body, but it did not help me with the self-confidence and the approach
of the other needed in a relationship.
In New York, I had tried going on a series
of awkward OkCupid dates. While some of
them have seemed to have a little hope in the beginning, none of them ever
amounted to anything. The lack of any
success whatsoever in these dates sometimes drove me crazy and made me
depressed, but I never gave up. When I
moved to Istanbul, I continued this quest for love, or at least sex, on OkCupid. I also went to to the bars in Taksim, which
at that time were obsessed with grunge and early 90s alternative rock, with the
hopes of meeting people. Sometimes I
would hang out with a group of pop punks at a tattoo shop because I was not
allowed to drink in my apartment. On OkCupid
in Istanbul, I chatted with some nice women and had some interesting
conversations, but nothing really happened until I met Yasmin. The encounter that I will describe below only
really happened once, but I can’t emphasize enough how much of an impact it had
on me. This encounter blessed me in a
powerful way and changed my life forever but I will never be able to thank
Yasmin, for reasons I will describe below.
I first started communicating with Yasmin on OkCupid
before I left for Istanbul. We were each
other’s top matches on OkCupid at 94 percent.
We exchanged some emails online and things seemed to be going well. She was 40 years old at the time and I was
29. I have to admit that I have always
been attracted to sexy older women and she was very sexy. She had lived in Sweden for many years and
she had travelled quite a bit. In her
past she had been involved in the alternative and punk music scene and she
remained a free spirit. In Istanbul she
taught English at a High School on the Asian side. She was married to a Swedish man and she had
two kids with him. She hated Sweden
because she thought the people were too cold and she was glad to be back in
Turkey.
At first it was hard for us to meet because
of her husband and her kids. She had
separated from her husband, but they lived in the same house, so it was rather
difficult. One weekend her husband went
with her kids to Izmir for the weekend, so we were finally able to meet. We arranged to meet at a heavy metal concert
in Beyoglu, near the Galatasaray high school.
She showed up with a friend of hers about the same age. At the show, we really connected and I was
having a great time with her. We began kissing and making out. I tried to touch her breasts, which were big
and plump, from inside her shirt but she told me not to do that in public. As we were leaving I was ready to walk back
to my flat when she told me that I should come to stay at her house but that I shouldn’t
expect anything. I was excited, but a
bit shy. I told her that I wasn’t that
experienced because of my disability. She was very understanding and said it
didn’t matter. At that time I was a fast
and sloppy kisser. She told me that I
should kiss her more softly and slowly and I listened to her. I was thankful for the advice. When we got back to her place, we lay on the
couch and kissed and talked. I then
began to caress, kiss and suck on her breasts.
It was lovely.
Later we moved in to the bedroom. She told me that we couldn’t have sex because
she was on her period. In my opinion I
think that too much focus is put on the penetrative act when there is so much
more to sex than just fucking. We
explored each other’s bodies and kissed softly and tenderly and passionately. I then licked and kissed her feet. She gave me a blow job and told me to cum on
her tits and I then fingered her to orgasm.
She said she couldn’t believe that I wasn’t that experienced because no
one had kissed her feet like I did. We
ended up sleeping in each other’s arms.
The whole night was an affirmation.
In the morning we had coffee and breakfast
and she showed me pictures from when she was younger and from when she lived in
Sweden. She really had lived a full and
vibrant life. She told me that she could
see that I was a person who lived with adventure and passion.
Because she lived with her husband, we were
only able to see each other one more time.
We meet briefly for a coffee by the Marmara Sea in Kadikoy. We had a nice conversation but it was short
because she had to go home to her family.
She later reconciled with her husband and I never saw her again. We had a brief email exchange and she told me
that she wished me a life of journey,
and that I was made for a great one.
Yasmin was the first person really to see me
as a sexual being and to affirm me body and soul. My encounter with her changed me forever. Before her, I never saw myself as a person
who could be desired, especially not by someone of Yasmin’s caliber, but after
that night I knew it was possible. Although
I still struggle with sexuality and disability, I am definitely not the same person
I was before the night before I met her.
Meeting her was without a doubt a life changing experience.
After being in Turkey for three months, it
was necessary to go over the border to Bulgaria and come back to renew my
tourist visa because I was working illegally.
I was getting ready to do this when an unfortunate incident happened. One night I was with a bunch of punks
drinking on the streets of Cihangir, an affluent district in Beyoglu just down
the hill from the Galatasaray high school. These punks included Ati, Ege,
Charged John (a street punk who is the founder of the important Istanbul punk band
Poster-iti), Taylan (a straight edge punk who ran a distro), Destan (who I
would become very good friends with years later), and Fish (a half Turkish half
American crustie who lived in Philly).
At first the vibe was awesome; we were all drinking together and having
a great time. All of a sudden, a local
conservative started screaming at us to leave.
He then returned with his friends and we could see that one of them has
a knife.
We
left, but we felt embarrassed that a couple of guys could get a whole group of
punks to leave. We then moved closer to
Istikal Caddesi, the main street in Taksim and sat on the walls of the
Galatasaray High School. At first everything
was fine, we continued drinking and chatting.
Then a group of Turkish crows, guys who wear a mullet with spikes on top,
approached us. The began talking with us
and I was wasted so I enjoyed talking with them and I wasn’t as careful as I
should have been. They kept on giving me
the traditional Turkish kiss of peace which is two kisses on the cheek. This was very common for both genders to do
and it didn’t feel strange to me. Sometime
passed and they left. I then felt into
my pocket and realized that they had taken my wallet. I was enraged and I ran down the hill
screaming like a maniac Taylan ran after
me and told me to stop. I realized it
was no use. I ended up going home with
no money or credit card realizing that I would have to go to Bulgaria soon.
I had to go to Bulgaria but I had no money
for the bus. I went to Ibrahim’s and Kathrin’s
house and I asked Kathrin if I could borrow money for the bus ticket. She lent me the money for the bus ticket and
she gave me a little extra money. I then
went to the bus station and I boarded the bus.
On the bus I read, slept and listened to music. We then reached the Turkish border and the Turkish
border police entered the bus. They went
through every passport until they got to mine.
There was a problem, I had overstayed my three month tourist visa by
three days. They wanted 200 liras, but I didn’t have it. I called my boss David Fischer at the police
station and he told me there was nothing he could do. The police officer then yelled at me and told
me if I didn’t pay the fine that I would be banned from Turkey for five years. I said I didn’t have the money and he scanned
my passport and entered something on the computer. I then returned to the bus and explained what
had happened. Without me asking, the bus the raised the money for me to pay the
fine. I returned to the police station
and told him that I had the money. He
told me that what had been entered into the computer could not be undone. I was devasted.
At that point I thought the best option was
to go to Sofia to the US Embassy but I had very little money and my ticket was
only to a small town in Bulgaria. The
driver then informed me that if I didn’t have the money to go to Sofia that he
would let me off right there on the border.
The border between Turkey and Bulgaria is literally a no man’s land with
about a half mile of literally nothing with border police on both sides and no
towns anywhere near. It was also
November in the middle of the night and it was really cold. I told the bus driver that he could not leave
me there, please could he take me to the next town or something, please
literally anywhere but there. The bus
then raised the money for me to go to Sofia.
I was extremely humbled and thankful and I fell asleep on my way to
Sofia.
We arrived in Sofia at 5 o’clock in the morning
and I smoked cigarettes and drank cappuccino at the bus station until I knew
the embassy would be open. I went
outside to hail a cab, and like an idiot I bypassed a bunch of disinterested
cab drivers and went straight to the taxi driver who was smiling and waving at
me. He had a bunch of Orthodox memorabilia
and I took this as a good sign; I was wrong.
When I got to the embassy the amount (which turned out to be 10 times
more than it should be) left me literally penniless. The date was November 4, 2008. I asked the attendant at the embassy who had
won the election last night and she told me that Obama had. I wasn’t crazy about either candidate but I
was glad a black person had been elected president and McCain seemed like a maniac.
I explained to her my situation and I told her that I had been working in
Turkey but I had been banned from Turkey and that I was stranded in Bulgaria
and I was completely broke. She
proceeded to call my friends and family and ask them to Western Union me
money. My mom and Sheikha Fariha sent me
some money so I got something to eat and I went to an internet café to look for
hostels. I chose the Art Hostel.
At this moment I had a powerful experience
that would affect me for the rest of my life.
I had lost everything. I had a
life in Istanbul that I really loved, with my friends, the punk community, and
with the various Sufi orders. I was
probably the happiest I had ever been and in a minute it was all gone. Sure, I had problems with the school I was
working at and it was shady as hell, but I really liked the group of teenagers I
ended up teaching and they really liked me.
I can recall one time when a student said, “We love you teacher” and the
whole class agreed and another student said “At first we thought you were crazy
because of your eyes,
but we love you.” In Istanbul I really
went through some monumental changes, the most important being my experience with
Yasmin, but I was also set on the path of travel, and I was exposed to a very
fascinating culture. Indeed I am still following the path that began in
Istanbul all those years ago.
I was really devastated to lose all I had in
Istanbul but at the same time I felt completely free. I had nothing more to lose and I could do anything. It was time for me to pick up the pieces and
to begin again and I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to. There is a real power in knowing you can lose
everything and shit can really hit the fan and you will be ok and can start
again. I was presented with a loss and
an opportunity. I was stuck in the
middle of Bulgaria and I had to make a plan, and a fucking fantastic plan. I had never travelled Europe and I was going
to use this opportunity. I was broke in
the middle of Eastern Europe with no credit card but I was ok. I felt free
