I was railroaded. This was something that usually someone would just get a desk appearance, probably a fine and get out but Governor Christie wanted to make me an example…I had to serve 30 days in jail, I didn’t get a warning, I didn’t get what like most people would get—if you’re of a certain level of stature in life, you’re allowed to fix your stuff.



They put me in protective custody with [another] trans identifying person, which was safer to an extent. But being in protective custody, which is really cruel in itself, is 23 hours being locked in a cell and having to defecate in front of someone, having to bear your most private pain, your tears, with a stranger you don’t know. But at the same time it was gratifying that there was somebody there with me in that cell. Had there not been anybody, I would have come out far more damaged.



…And having it printed in the newspaper… I had to hang my head in shame, I had to hear it from my family. But beyond that it really robbed me of my very dignity. When they bring charges against you like this, it really has the potential to ruin your life and at that time it really looked that bleak for me. I didn’t think I had a comeback, I thought, this is it. I was…the coordinator of GLBT organization and a coordinator of a transgender group and somehow or another all of that was diminished by being outed in this newspaper article.



It robbed me of my very presence, who I was, who I wanted to be, who I was striving to be, regardless of my personal life and sex work. That was a small part of who I am, and they had just tarnished everything.



“So, luckily, I had this fabulous woman who was my lawyer, Melissa Sontag Broudo, from the Urban Justice Center [‘s Sex Workers Project], who actually visited me during my duration of my 30 days in jail….[She] would come visit me at Newark Correctional Facility…And one day I happened to go down to the meeting room….and I had this one raggedy envelope with me. With every piece of paper that I could find I would write down recipes…This was my way of kind of curbing the starvation, cause jail food is terrible. But also, I interacted with all kinds of violent criminals, murderers…on a level that not many people [could get to] to through my food.



When I got out, Audacia Ray was one of the very first people that I met through Melissa Sontag Broudo at Melissa’s office. And we sat down and I literally opened that same envelope that I had in jail that I had written all of these recipes down on the table, and she laughed at the process of it all.