The Secret Lives of Hyapatia Lee Read online

  I would begin writing in my journal only to find that seconds later, I had written a dozen pages or so. As I looked back at my writing, I noticed another style had begun after the first paragraph or so. Reading the words, it was obvious that another personality had taken over. Sometimes I would begin to write only to find myself in a different room of the house, or out in my car. It was terrifying.

  It was very hard to get along with the other residents. Some of the other patients were very angry and scary. One purposely let my dog out of the fenced yard to run away because he liked to see people upset. It was a house full of insanity, mine included. I slept several nights in the hall outside of John’s door, waiting for him to wake up in the morning.

  One time, I found myself throwing up in the toilet at Helios with one of the other female residents next to me. She was understandably mad at me because I had thrown up in her car. It seems we had gone drinking at a strip club and I had gotten on stage and danced! I had even accepted their offer of a job and promised to come back the next night. I didn’t remember any of this. This type of scenario happened more than once. Hyapatia had been born.

  Through hypnosis, I found out about Hyapatia, Lisa, Veronica Holds The Anger and Stacy for the first time and everyone’s stories were confirmed. I was encouraged to write in my journal even more, and so were my other personalities. Hyapatia was a strong personality. She used sex and wasn’t afraid of much at all. Stacy was the opposite, a shy, and tearful little girl. Lisa Patrick was very matter-of-fact and a tomboy.

  Veronica was angry, strong and occasionally violent. It was she who stole Johnny’s gun and went out on the streets looking for the guy who raped her. When she fired a few rounds in the air, the Indianapolis Police Department came. Luckily, they understood how distraught I was over my recent victimization and let me go with a polite but stern warning. These things come from the chaos that is created inside when things have been pushed too far towards injustice and dark absurdity.

  I was somewhere in the middle, I suppose. The journal helped me to find out what they had been up to.

  One of the guys there was the brother of one of the girls I went to high school with. Neil was a quiet, laid-back kind of person and he and I could at least talk on occasion. One night, Neil invited me into his room to talk. Most of us never told each other why we were in the situation we were. Our past was usually too private to share with others, but we started to scratch the surface with each other that night. As we talked, Neil lit up a pipe. I could tell from the smell that it was marijuana. He offered me some. Johnny had smoked pot a lot, and I tried it a few times, but I never felt any effect. This time, I decided to try it again. The conversation was painful. The situation in my life was hopeless from my point of view. I felt my life was ruined and I would be in a mental institution for the rest of my life. What was a bit of pot smoke possibly going to do to make my life worse? I didn’t even get high. I felt the whole world was against me. Then it happened. I got a buzz.

  I felt a separation from my pain. It was as if I could look down from above and watch myself going through life. I could command my body and actions from above the turbulent waves and get a better perspective once up and out of the pit of emotions. I stayed in his room for hours, smoking with him until, finally, I felt tired and wanted to sleep. It was the first time since the rape that I was able to sleep without forcing myself and taking prescription sleeping pills. It was the best sleep I had had in almost a year.

  The next day, I told John Cochran all about it. He said that, personally, he thought I would be much better off to quit all the drugs I was on and just smoke pot. In addition to the Valium I had been prescribed, there was Triavil and Elavil, for my depression, Desyril to help me sleep and Donnital Extentab for my constantly churning stomach. He said it was less damaging to the system. I had already started to twitch and shake as a side effect of the drugs. John, also part Cherokee, mentioned how the Cherokee word for marijuana is also the name of the planet the star people left when they came here to seed this planet. The plant even looks like it’s from another world as it glows under infrared light like no other.

  I really had to find a way to make money. Immediately after I was raped, I found I could no longer sit in the office without crying and looking at every man who went by, wondering if they were the one. I tried to work at a local mall, but I had the same problem. I couldn’t concentrate on work. Johnny Hamilton had a suggestion. Since I had gone to these men’s clubs with my girlfriend from Helios and auditioned for and got a job dancing about half a dozen times, why didn’t I do that?

  There was something strangely ironic about the whole thing. I was terrified to go out in public, drive, talk to strangers, look people in they eye, and yet, Hyapatia felt in control and powerful when she snuck out and onto a stage. There was the physical separation the stage provided; she was above them, “on a pedestal”. There was the lust she created in the men that for the first time she knew she could safely walk away from. Such lust in the past resulted in submitting to things against my will. Here it was different. There was a feeling of control. Time and again, she safely walked away. I safely walked away. With each time, the confidence in my right and power to walk away was strengthened. The consistency of me stirring up lust and exercising my right not to have my body touched gave me a power and control over my life I had never known and didn’t really believe existed until now.

  CJ worked short hours and made great money. I had talked to her many times and done several different shows at many different theaters with her. She was a single mother raising her daughter with no support. Everyone was her friend. She was beautiful and admired by all. Johnny was very good friends with CJ and they thought that if I started dancing at the bar with her I could make good money, be comforted by two friends while at work, and feel in control of men sexually.

  I thought about it. Although I considered myself too fat to ever be attractive in the nude, I really did need a job. I had totally given up on the idea of my ever becoming a successful actress. I even dropped out of “Barefoot In the Park” because I just couldn’t concentrate anymore, and besides, what was thepoint? One more play was not going to get me out of the casting couch if I ever went to New York again. Hyapatia kept sneaking out at night to go strip in clubs anyway. Maybe it was time I made some money off of the enjoyment men got from my body. It certainly never gave me anything but problems. Why not take off my clothes and get paid $400 a week for what men had been taking from me all my life? It was good money.

  The Red Garter Lounge in downtown Indianapolis was a small, dimly lit club next door to a fire station that, ironically, my step-father had been the architect for. A Lebanese man named John owned the club. It took me a few drinks to get up the nerve at first and to let Hyapatia take over, but Hyapatia got up on stage and took everything off but her panties. Later that night Hyapatia wrote about it in my diary. I was terrified they’d laugh at me, but they didn’t, they applauded! They actually thought I was sexy! I couldn’t believe it. I was no longer a little girl trapped helplessly at the whim of some lecherous man, I was a grown woman in their eyes and they treated me as an equal. I was on a stage above them, in control and they had to look up at me. I walked off stage covering my breasts with my folded up dress and quickly headed downstairs to the dressing room. No one grabbed me. I sat down and smiled. I got away safely, untouched, and I even made tips! I got paid for something they had been taking from me for years! All the times Don stared at me in the shower or while I was changing clothes and I got nothing but chills, not anymore. Perhaps I could go on living now, just a little bit.

  Writing this book has been a real challenge. I had to re-read all the journals I kept through the years. Even now not all of my memories have returned. Naturally, as I read my journals many memories came back to me, but there are still some that I can only read about. That is especially true of the years 1983 and 1984, when I first started making X-rated movies. It was during this time in my life that the pattern I
set when I began dancing got out of control. Hyapatia served many purposes, not the least of which was to provide a way for me to have a job. As time went on, she took over more and more.

  I was eighteen and could not sit in the bar. I had to stay in the dressing room between my sets on stage. I danced three songs in an evening gown and was paid five dollars an hour in addition to all the tips I could get.

  After a month of this I put together shows lasting twenty minutes. These shows had costumes and a theme to them. For example, CJ, whose stage name was Stormy Shea, did a Marilyn Monroe look alike show. Mine were more amateurish, but good enough to graduate me to “exotic dancer”. As an “Exotic” I did a certain number of shows per night, as opposed to dancing in rotation for seven-hour shifts. I was paid $17 per show to begin with, and quickly rose to $25.

  THE CAT

  Smelling appropriately of Tabu, the black cat with her red claws set to tear the flesh from men, slowly walked to the stage. Jewels flashing, crowd yelling, she began her ritual seduction dance designed to hypnotize the lustful onlookers into a state where they could be rendered totally helpless to the witch queen. She smiled with a sly, almost unnoticeable snarl just to keep the beasts in their place. As she danced on, time stood still and the beat of the music was her knife to cut into the souls of all those who stood frozen in the dim dungeon lost in space and dimension. Soon all were one and the cat gathered energy and life from their spirits, returning nothing but a strong memory designed to keep them in her power forever.

  by Hyapatia Lee 1980

  One of the reasons I became popular was that I was always dependable. When the exotic feature dancers who traveled on the road from one city to the next came in late and couldn’t make the Monday morning matinee, I was called. I lived close, so Icould be there and on stage within 30 minutes. I worked six nights a week and was never late or absent. Most of the other dancers were much more unreliable.

  I met a lot of girls with similar backgrounds. One of the girls I danced with, named Rocky, had been through more than I had. Her father had molested her and gotten her pregnant at the age of 13. At 14 she gave birth to a baby she was never allowed to see or hold. It was forcefully taken from her before she even knew if it was a boy or a girl. The father had told everyone she was a slut and the baby was her boyfriend’s, no one would even think of believing the daughter. After the child’s birth, she was sent to reform school where other girls raped her repeatedly. Rocky was underage, but somehow she managed to get drunk every night.

  There were several other girls in a motorcycle gang called the Sons of Silence. They had tattoos. One girl had three cherries above her breast, and “Property of Loser” was on the butt of another. They really were nice and friendly though, and invited me over to their clubhouse to play Euchre. One of them (‘Loser’s’ girlfriend) was shot dead off the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle with a shotgun blast to her head.

  Other dancers were working their way through college and would do their homework in the dressing room between shows. The girls who traveled on the road as “features” usually sewed and mended costumes in between sets. It was a nice social circle downstairs!

  Upstairs were several ladies who came in alone, left with patrons and came back a few hours later. They usually went to a near-by motel and most worked independently. We never saw pimps in the club. Two of these ladies had become friends of mine.

  One night, after work, I went home and had a terrible dream about how one of these girls had been brutally murdered. When I returned to work the following evening the place was filled with cops. They were questioning everyone about my friend and asking when everyone saw her last. I told one of the officers about the dream I had. He just looked at me dumbfounded. Evidently she had left with two men, gotten in the front seat of a white car and gone over to the local motel where they went up to the second floor, just like in my dream! I even saw the correct room number! I didn’t dream the murder, except to see a knife and know her throat was cut. I didn’t know they took money from under her wig, or that she even wore one, but what I did know was enough to make me terrified. I was so afraid that I didn’t remember my dreams for many years after that. It is interesting to note that I put my dreams out of my head, the waking ones and the sleeping ones.

  For one of the first times in my life, I was making friends, and not just one or two but half a dozen! This was very uncharacteristic of the me I had come to know in the past. Hyapatia’s personality was much more out-going than my own. Some of the ladies I danced with were going to the Miss Nude America contest at a nudist camp in Roselawn, Indiana and they invited me to go with them.

  There were two nudist camps in this small town two and a half hours north of Indianapolis on I-65, and we were going to Naked City. This camp was owned by Dick D. who has spent most of his life in a wheel chair due to Muscular Dystrophy. Rumor has it that his parents bought him the camp years ago as a toy. Some of the members didn’t like the way Dick ran his place and decided to start their own, more respectable nudist camp.

  Dick liked to bring the truck drivers in and offer them his prostitutes. Of course, I had no idea about these activities. I only spent six or seven hours there for the contest and compiled this other information years later.

  The contest started at noon and there were 46 contestants. Anyone could enter. As a contestant signed in, she chose a state to represent out of the ones still available and received a balloon with that state written on it. Some of the states actually did hold their own preliminary contests. I chose Oklahoma since that was the home of the Western Band of the Cherokees and where my ancestors had been on their way to when they broke from the path and settled in Indiana.

  After I was given my balloon, I went outside with the other ladies. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there with cameras and they were takingpictures of me, too! There were photographers from men’s magazines like Cheri, Velvet, Stag and High Society. I was so flattered. With all the other beautiful girls there I didn’t think they’d waste their time on me. You can imagine my total surprise when I won the contest! I thought it was rigged and later on someone confirmed my suspicions. The club I worked for bought me the title.

  Naked City had two contests a year, Miss Nude America and Miss Nude World. Stormy Shea (Cynthia Johns) was Miss Nude World 1975, Raquel Daniel was Miss Nude World 1977, and Princess Pamelia was Miss Nude World 1979-all house girls at the Red Garter Lounge. Most title winners went on the road to tour the stripping circuit and make more money, but a “house girl” stays at the same bar all the time. It wasn’t long after I won the contest that the Red Garter became so famous for its exceptional house girls that none of the road strippers wanted to dance there.

  Most of the house girls saw the road strippers as an opportunity to buy costumes, improve their act and learn more about the road in case they ever wanted to go. I was no exception. I longed to go on the road and run as far as I could from Indianapolis where I was expecting to see that man who raped me at any time. I knew I could never go all across the country by myself, though, and there was no one I could trust who could go with me.

  A few weeks later I went to Roselawn again for the contest at the other nudist camp, the Ponderosa Sun Club. This place was far bigger and more legitimate. For one thing, the judges were pulled randomly out of the audience by calling the number on a matching ticket they were given at the gate. The Miss Nude Galaxy contest was bigger than the one I had gone to before. There were over 70 contestants and the audience was three times as big! This time dancing was part of the competition. Dancing had always been my forte. I was surprised that I won again! This was starting to make me feel good about myself.

  I was enjoying all of this success. John Cochran wasn’t so sure this business was a good thing for me. He wanted me to quit. One of the other residents at the halfway house had seen me counting my tips, a stack of one-dollar bills. She told the staff I was making a fabulous amount of money. They immediately wa
nted to raise my rent. John thought I should quit and the rest of the staff thought I should keep working and pay more money.

  John and I decided I could not put it off any longer. I had to explain to my grandmother what had happened to me in Florida, in Talbot Village where that man broke into my apartment, and what I was doing for a living. I was terrified it would kill her, or she would hate me. I asked her to come in to a session with me. She obviously knew where I was living and that I had been upset. She knew Don had been abusive in Florida and thought all my therapy was for that. It was hard to explain it to her, John was very helpful in that regard. It took several sessions to tell her the whole story, but she took it very well. She did not have a heart attack and she did not hate me.

  I moved back in with my grandmother again and continued to dance. She did not like my job, but she understood and even helped me sew my dance costumes. It was that or let me use her equipment for draperies in the basement and run the risk of me ruining everything.

  John still was not so sure this was a good job for me to be doing. He was worried it wasn’t emotionally healthy. Hyapatia was coming out more and more often, even most of the time when I wasn’t at work. He wanted to increase my dosage to control it. I needed Hyapatia to take over so I could work and I refused. I felt no pain when I was Hyapatia and I liked the money I found in my purse the next morning. I argued that I needed the money. If I’m going to get gawked at and whistled to on the street, or raped in my own home, I might as well make some money off of it. I really enjoyed being able to turn these men on and then just walk away with a few of their dollars in my hand. I began to read studies about the effects of pornography, prostitution and strip clubs on society. It seemed to me that if men had a local prostitute to turn to, they wouldn’t need to force some poor unwilling soul into sex.

  According to US News and World Report, researchers have found that most sex offenders grew up in strict homes wheresexuality was not openly discussed. The majorities of sex offenders were not molested or abused themselves as children.