Ketchikan, Alaska in the mid-80’s. I followed a boy from NYC to “the zone” only to be told when we arrived that the only job I could get being a woman and my race is either a go-go dance or a prostitute. Deeply wounded, I cursed this former friend out and descended the mountain. Within an hour of knocking on every business door asking for a job and cheap lodging(and getting rejected), I came upon a large German woman married to an Hawaiian (with 3 dogs-puff, malaia, and kopaah).

She checked my arms for needle marks, checked my record (from the police dept.)for priors, then hired me to run her youth hostel, while she ran her restaurant in nearby Thorn Bay, by seaplane. Her place, located right on the waterfront beside the cannery and the Princess line cruise ship loading dock, was the only affordable lodging for the young college boys/cannery workers. It was a young woman’s paradise. One house for guys, one for girls (my house-hardly any other women visited).

I was in charge of the running the entire show, and the guys were my own personal buffed body guards. I never mixed business with pleasure, I dated no one, no matter how gorgeous, just loved hanging out with them. Unfortunately, it was true, that most of the young women I saw there were imported meat, or had 5 kids. Single young women were a rare commodity. I felt that dating would turn me into just another pinata for the male majority out there. I had a 17 yr old local boy that was obsessed and followed me everywhere. I really liked that kid. He taught me how to run across slippery logs on the cold lake. I turned 19 out there, and the guys gave me the best party. We were family.

Jim, the guy who dissed me when we first arrived, eventually had to come down from “his mountain” due to heavy rains (tent and sleeping bag wasn’t working in that weather), the only place he could afford to stay was where I worked. I had long told Kathy about this guy and what he said to me, so when he came to her door asking for help, she bluntly replied “No, I don’t take ____” He got a heavy dose of his own medicine. (2 years later I saw him in NYC and he apologized to me, said he had it coming.)

It was on the 4th of July that I had my first taste of the freshest sushi ever. Pat, Kathy’s Hawaiian husband, had Japanese relatives that came up. They prepared fresh from that sea sushi and introduced me to every young woman’s culinary rite of passage.