I Used to Be a Hustler Girlboss

I wake up in the cell with two masked guards and the duty officer.

“Come to the infirmary.”
Did I do something?
The doctor goes, “You got heart problems?”
“Yeah, ma’am. Give me a heart pill, my ass hurts.”
“Do you remember who you shared needles with?”
“Like I was checking IDs. Everybody shot up together. What’s the problem?”
“You have HIV.”
“C’moooon, doc. What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Speak my language, I don’t know shit about this stuff.”
“AIDS.”

Maaaan, I feel myself turning white on the spot. My knees go soft and I pass out.

I’m in Rahova Prison. Just got locked up. Almost killed somebody. The cops were after me, nationwide warrant for robbery and parole violation. For a whole year I ran them ragged, no way they were catching me. Changed hideouts every week. I was exhausted, like one of those stray dogs everybody chases off with a kick in the butt.

Heroin was my shelter. To loosen up, I started shooting up. That’s how I knew to ease the pain. First time I injected was in ’99, though I’d been smoking since ’95, back when the little packets first showed up. God, that dope… nothing ever hit like that again. I hated chasing it on foil, you need lungs for that, it wrecks you.

I was in withdrawal. Desperate because nobody was bringing me gear, I went to the train station. Sea of people. I spot this guy. Money stuffed against his chest, fat brick of cash. I wanna shoulder-check him, bump into him, but the idiot notices. Starts yelling. I hit him once, BAAAM, elbow straight into the eye. He falls, cracks his head on the curb, blood everywhere. I panic. Crowd starts gathering.

Some plainclothes cop grabs me and throws me in a booth. I have a switchblade on me. Bad. If they catch you armed, you get more time. So I pull a little act, throw myself on the floor and slide the knife under a desk.

Some cop from Precinct Three comes in. “Maaaan! You’re going down for murder.” And what’s your problem? ”Aaaah, this is Stela, wanted by Precinct 19, Alexandria, this place, that place. We’re getting promoted to generals.”
“Enjoy yourselves, suckers, go fuck yourselves!”
“You crazy hardcase, you hit him so bad… thank God the guy didn’t die.”

I feel so sick I wanna smash my head into the walls. When you’re in withdrawal you don’t even know who you are anymore. Then the little lights come on, I start understanding what I did, flashes of that guy lying there in the blood puddle.

They gave me six years. That’s how I landed back in prison. My third sentence.

My whole life’s been chaos. I’m Stela Chiorea and today I turn 38. Out of those, I spent 10 in prison. I was a hardcase, a hustler, a gangster. Shot heroin, drank, fought, fucked women. Never killed anybody. Yet. Never stole from poor people either.

I’ve been HIV positive for 14 years and recently found out I got hepatitis C too. Three years ago I quit drugs, now I’d rather blow money on slot machines. Been helping other people for about two years. I volunteer for an NGO, work with HIV-positive people and junkies, teach them how to stay out of the dark long enough to find some light in themselves.

But I know that in one second, if you don’t know how to flip it around, you can fall.

I used to keep a notebook with all my girls in it. Lost count somewhere around 317.

When my dad said I was the man of the house, he meant it. He’d tell my brother, “Better I give your sister the pants and you a dress.” I was vicious, cold-blooded. I beat both him and my sister.

In first grade I liked my teacher. Rodica. I’d bring her flowers, fresh eggs. She lived near us. “Grandma sent you some cheese… but won’t you invite me in for a biscuit?” And I’d stare at her like that. Around second or third grade I had this desk mate, Mădălina, and we’d kiss. But I didn’t get with a woman till I was 17.

After my dad died, life stopped meaning anything to me.

My parents split when I was six. He drove trucks. The stuff he brought us… I never knew what being poor meant back then. He came home once a week.

His cousin lived behind our house and my mom was sleeping with him. I had a speech problem as a kid, still kinda do. And I’d yell, “Mama fuck Nicu! Mama fuck Nicu!” Dad would go, “Eh, kid stuff.”

One Saturday night in first grade, Dad was on village watch duty. In the countryside everybody takes turns once a year guarding the village. It was cold and he came back for his sheepskin coat.

In the yard, my mom and this guy were getting busy on the swing. Mom hid, the guy ran. When Dad came in, I go, “Mama fuck Nicu.” He got the message and walked straight to Nicu’s house. Out of panic, the guy jumped into bed with his shoes on. Dad didn’t say a word. Just went back to watch duty.

They divorced. Court gave the girls to her, the boy to him, and we were supposed to spend holidays together.

I always saw my mom climbing on men. She never showed me affection. Just beatings. Since I was little. Hosepipe, rolling pin, sticks, whatever she could grab. And I’d tell her, “I’ll grow up one day. Just wait…”

In seven years I never saw my dad with another woman. Nobody washing or ironing for him, nothing. After the divorce he drank himself into the ground. Cirrhosis. By the time I was 11 it was surgeries, hospitals, all that.

On February 14th, my dad’s birthday, I saw my uncle and cousin dressed in black. The whole Roma neighborhood spun around me, I dropped to the ground… He died two months after the Revolution. I went to my mother and said, “From this second on, you’re dead to me.”

With one term left in fifth grade, I stopped going to school. I had a cousin who boxed. He was 14, I was 12. I went training with him. He always told me to stick with boxing. First thing you learn is how to guard yourself. Only after that do you learn to punch.

Then he says, “Come work day labor at the biscuit factory.” We loaded crates into train cars. Forty kilos each, like cement sacks. And we stole… well, not stole, took. A pack cost 2 lei, we sold it for 1. Across the road there was a mill, silos full of seeds, soy, wheat, everything.

That’s how Stela started making money. Pulling little hustles with grain sacks, horse carts, peasants. “You take the wheat, I’ll take the goose.” They’d give me ten chickens, I’d give them a van full of wheat. That stuff was wealth. We catered baptisms with homemade liquor and wine from the villagers. I ain’t communist, but I cry for Ceaușescu, I’d kiss even his rotten little dick. I fed the whole family.

At 14 I bought myself a house as an ID-card present. My money. 5000 lei. Kitchen, hall, two rooms, yard around 200 square meters. Handwritten papers only.

Weekends at my place, you couldn’t see the table from all the cash. Me, a cousin, and another girl had started bringing in merchandise: carpets, Nescafé, patent shoes, all kinds of junk. Turkey, Poland, Germany.

My mother got together with this guy called Marcel, wore those thick coke-bottle glasses. They fought ugly. He’d smash her head into walls and I’d hold her so she wouldn’t die. She had a kid with him and he wouldn’t let my sister go to school because she had to babysit the little one.

One afternoon, a cousin comes running to me. “Tttttttttteatttttt…”
“Yo, shut the fuck up and calm down, get inside.”
“Hurry up, your sister came and Marcel beat her.”

Marcel had stabbed my sister in the back with a screwdriver because she broke one of his cassette tapes. The tape got jammed in the player.

I grabbed my baseball bat and went over there. Opened the door, he was in pajamas, lying in bed, wine bottle on the floor. Straight from the bed: BAM! Two minutes later the whole family, the whole clan, left and right, cracked his ribs. We grabbed him by the legs and hung him over the balcony, said we’d throw him off the second floor. “You gonna hit my sister again?”
“Leeeeet him goooo!”
“No, we’re all going to prison.”

My mother had gone outside to hang laundry, carrying a washbasin. “Oh God, you killed my husband!” Ambulance took him away. He was wrecked, eyebrows split open. Seventy days in hospital. They wanted to lock us up. We paid him over a hundred thousand lei back then. Said she was done with him.

She moved in with me. After about three months I tell her, “Woman, at least wake me up in the morning so I can hand out food in memory of my dad.” Back then there were these wall clocks that looked like bracelets. I wake up, look at the clock: ten-thirty. I never called her Mom, I called her Lisaveta. “Lisaveta, fuck your mouth and your liver and your memorial feast.”
“What’s wrong with you, cursing me like that? Fuck your father’s memorial too!”

I grabbed the pot of cabbage rolls and smashed it over her head. Broke her nose, everything. She went back to her husband.

That’s how it always was with my mother. Whenever something happened she came running to me, then later we’d fight again. You know what some shrink told me? That everything I do with women is me avenging my father. That I humiliate women. I laughed my ass off.

Around sixteen I almost got raped. I had a boyfriend too, like the other girls. Cristi. Boxer as well. We ran hustles together.

One night I was coming home from work, second shift. Before I get home I run into a cousin, he’s with a bunch of guys. “Cousin, we’ve been waiting for you, come on, everybody’s here.” They said there was a party at some first-floor apartment.

These were the biggest scammers, rapists, pimps around. I’d grown up with them in the Roma neighborhood. I used to beat them, humiliate them. I fought four or five boys my age at once. If you knock one down, the rest run. I had long hair but tied it back with one of those Rambo headbands. Everybody called me Linda because there was some karate-woman movie popular back then.

Cristi says, “I think you should go home and sleep.”
“Come on, that’s my first cousin, he’s like a brother.”
He got in the car and left.

At one in the morning there’s music blasting, windows open, but when I walk in, nobody’s there. Door shuts behind me and one of them goes, “This is where it ends for you, tough girl.”
“What’s wrong with you, chew cork stoppers for breakfast?”
Bam, next thing I know, a kick. One guy swings at me sideways, I dodge and grab him. Another one kicks me in the kidney and I hit the floor. One pins my arms, the other starts hammering punches into my stomach.

Whenever I see my dad in my head, I get strength. Demonic strength. I smash my head into the stomach of the one holding me, right into his balls. Flip over, grab a bottle off the table. My cousin’s laughing; they were smoking hash and shit, I didn’t know drugs back then. I smashed one guy across the face with the bottle. The other pulled a razor. Sliced my knee open. Took two knife hits in the leg, barely missed the bone. My kneecap still shifts around today. Though yeah, I also jumped off a balcony once.

Don’t know where I found the strength, but I grabbed the table and dove through the window with it.

Police came and arrested all of us. I stayed locked up eighteen days till my mother paid bail.

The cops said the whole thing started over a gambling game. When I got out, the whole Roma neighborhood was talking shit, saying they’d fucked me up, did God knows what to me.

To prove to everybody I was still “a proper girl,” I slept with Cristi. Walked through the neighborhood in my nightshirt, that’s how we did it. Told them, “Those of you with daughters, I only hope they never end up on a street corner after going through what I went through.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Cristi goes, “That’s it, we’re getting married.”
“Fuck off, you dead Romanian.” I don’t even know how I slept with him, but I couldn’t stand hearing those people anymore. After that I cut my hair. Became a completely different person.

I got revenge. Fucked my cousins’ girlfriends, turned them out. Slashed my uncle’s bangs off with a sword. Not one of them got away. I grew to hate Gypsies. Picked up the same sadistic blood from them.

At 17 I got into crime for real. Built an actual gangster crew. Disco fights, ugly stuff only. Learned by doing, and by talking to this old thief. The father of all thieves. Guy had forty years in the game and only ten in prison. He told me, “Kid, if you started this life, it’s beautiful, it makes money, but it’s short. Treasure the moment, because you never know what the next second brings.”

I loved that second. One thing is talking about it, describing it. Another is feeling it. Same as an orgasm. Pure rush.

That summer I went to the seaside with two college girls from Pitești. Their parents paid for their tickets, mine came from my uncle. Party all the way on the train, got completely wasted. We got to Mangalia and I sweet-talked the receptionist into giving us a room.

That night I went off on my own because they wouldn’t go out. I headed to Neptun. Drank all night, partied, made friends, Metallica blasting in some disco. Around five in the morning, sunrise starting, I’m puking in the street. I go, lemme run by the lake. Yeah right. Around the lake there were villas.

I hop a little wooden fence and walk into one. Window cracked open, curtain lifted. I move slow like I own the place. Female croupier dripping in gold. Video players, Sony camera. And then I find stacks. Stacks. Huge pile of Deutschmarks. I could’ve become a real big-shot with the money in there. The electronics and all that other crap? I threw them in the lake. What did I need that stuff for?

Back at the hotel I made it rain money. The Romanian girls lost their minds.
“Girl, where’d you get all that money?”
I said, “Hooked up with some German guy, he couldn’t fuck right, so I stole his bag.”
They freaked out. I dressed those crazy girls up, bought them gold. Sent them to exchange Deutschmark bills for me. I had brains. Instead of ten days, I stayed a month.

At the hotel I never even went down to the restaurant to eat. The waitress asked, “Why doesn’t the third person ever come to dinner?”
“She’s a little more sophisticated.”

That’s how I met Mirela. I still hadn’t slept with a woman back then. The girls told her I was “Stelu.”

Eventually I went back to Pitești. I’d fallen for the waitress but didn’t realize it yet. I just felt like something was missing. But she didn’t know I was a girl because I always wore baggy clothes, avoided the beach, never knew how to handle it.

I talked to one of my cousins, told him I met this girl at the seaside and I missed her. He goes, “God damn, you’re in love with a woman, what the fuck.”
Me? In love? Jesus Christ, the Gypsies are gonna kill me. With Gypsies, that stuff’s law.

I got on a train and went back to the seaside. When the waitress saw me she lost it.
“You came back!”
I told her I wanted us to have a serious conversation.

That night I waited for her shift to end and we went walking on the beach. Took a bottle of champagne. I told her, “I don’t know what you feel for me, but what I feel for you, I never felt before.”
She says, “You never had a relationship with a woman?”
I said, “No.”

I weighed 73 kilos back then, looked like a full-on man from behind.
“God, you’re built so well.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I say, “I’m a girl. I’m Stela.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Are you high or what? I’m Stela, not Stelu.”
“Got it, you’re Stela.”
Jesus, she still doesn’t get it. “I’m a woman!”
“Got it, your name’s Stela.”
“Yeah, and I’m in love with you.”

She was the first woman in my life.

I went to prison at 17 years and 10 months. Broke into a house. Took a cousin and another guy with me to keep watch, but people recognized them and they puked everything to the cops. The sentence for attempted murder had come through too, from when I beat up my cousins. I stayed locked up till I was 20, and at 22 I went back in again.

Inside I met Cati. Big-time hustler, material girl. When I got out she tells me, “You got 24 hours to get to me.” She came to pick me up from the train station and says, “Better we eat onions with bread than you start doing stupid shit again.”

It was summer. One point we go to a barbecue at a friend of hers, Vali. Me, same as always, joking around, talking shit, beating some guys up. He sees that and goes, “On my family’s grave, she can throw hands. I never seen men hit like that.” When we’re leaving he says, “You know where I live. I wanna talk.”

One night I’m home alone and think, lemme go see this guy. “Ohooo, sis,” beer, wine, barbecue. This is the thief life. And we drank. Around two in the morning we hit the streets. “Come on, we’re going to pull something.” He wanted to test me.

He’d throw little pebbles, tap tap, against windows. Mark doors in apartment buildings, then we’d come back half an hour later, an hour later, and if the mark was still there, nobody was home. Tried one door, too much noise around. So we made a ladder out of one of those little fences by the building and hooked it onto a balcony.

That feeling… like winning the lottery.

My style: I sit down for two minutes and study the house. Figure out where the sucker would hide his stash. I look at family photos, see how his brain works, where he’d tuck things away. There was a bookcase, a painting. I move the painting aside, bam, 1500 cash. This guy comes out of the bedroom with a fistful of gold. I tell him, “Take some too, gift from me.” He was stunned.

I grabbed a stereo system too, worth around twelve million lei. “No point trashing the whole place, let’s go.”

At dawn he goes, “Wanna do another round?”
“Man, are you crazy? It’s five in the morning, people are waking up.”
But it was Sunday, people were headed to church. So we hit another apartment.

This one belonged to an Arab guy. In the wardrobe, buried between clothes, around sixty million lei. Another box full of gold.
“On my family’s grave, you’re too damn lucky. Come on, let’s drink.”

That’s how I got started with hustles in Bucharest.

By then I already had a whole crew built from prison: thieves, robbers, pickpockets, prostitutes, scammers, every category you can think of.

I was running with two crews: this one with Vali, doing apartment jobs, and another around the train station. We did robberies, all under the table with the cops. Had two girls whose job was picking up foreigners. We could smell them out. I had hawk eyes. I’d size them up instantly: what watch they wore, what clothes, what shoes.

Swear on my life, there were homeless guys we robbed who had money, money, money. Bundles. You wouldn’t give two shits looking at them. They’d keep the stash tucked by their dick. When they started snoring, I’d nick their underwear with a razor. “Look what this bastard sleeps with in his shorts.”

And don’t even get me started on the buses full of foreigners. I was tight with the head of railway police. I gave him his cut too. Trains would roll in and foreigners would get off wanting to eat, sightsee, exchange money. The girls would hook them and take them somewhere. Before they even got laid, they’d dump ash into the guy’s drink and crack him over the head.

When I found out I had HIV, all I knew was that you die fast.

“Can women give it to women?” Because I had this scar in my palm. I’d beaten up some girl and smashed the base of my hand into a glass, then later I slept with her. I thought maybe that’s where I got it from. But what the hell did my open wound have to do with her pussy?

“Stela, come on, one hundred percent from the drugs,” the doctor tells me.
I think I got it from those students over at Apaca, from Polytechnic. Some guy would show up with ten units, five units, already loaded in the syringe. If I was hiding from the cops, I couldn’t leave the house.

Three weeks after I found out I had HIV, I get another sentence. Fifteen years for home invasion. I’d broken into some kid’s house in Alexandria. Imagine finding out you’re HIV positive and then getting hit with that too.

I shaved my head. I’d seen Philadelphia with Tom Hanks. I was standing in the hallway and heard them whispering, “Look, that one’s got AIDS.” My whole face changed. I stopped talking to anybody. And once I saw the symptoms in that movie… even now, when I get out of the shower, I still check my body to see if something showed up.

My lawyer sees me and goes, “Why’d you shave your head?”
“Well why else? So my hair won’t fall out.”
“Come on, Stela, it’s not like that.”
“Yes it is, I saw it in the movie.”

I had a good lawyer. Really cared about me. He’d bring me warm pretzels and donuts. He pushed hard on the illness angle because I was among the first HIV-positive inmates in the prison system. They retried all my cases and merged the sentences. I got seven years. Not a day more.

It took me a whole year to get used to the idea that I was sick. It followed me everywhere: HIV in soap operas, HIV in books, HIV in nightmares. I dropped from 73-75 kilos to 55 in a few months. I even refused treatment. Shut myself off completely. Didn’t communicate, didn’t socialize. If some girl asked to borrow my nail clippers: “NO!” I hid inside books. I think I read the entire library at Rahova Prison.

To cover for me, they told people I had a brain tumor.
“It has to be something serious, otherwise people will be shocked you’re not yourself anymore, not full of life.”

They kept me drugged on sleeping pills because they were scared I’d kill myself. But I always had this thing in my head: if I commit suicide, I sell my soul to Satan and I’ll never see my father again. That’s the one thing that always stopped me.

I met my father in prison.

I had a nervous breakdown. Bad, really bad. My nose started bleeding, I threw up. I was furious, and because I didn’t wanna hit another person, I smashed my head into a door instead. Dropped like dead weight. Clinically dead.

I remember going into a tunnel. I kept walking and walking, and then I saw a light. It was my father. He wouldn’t reach out his hand to me.

When I woke up there was blood all over the floor, IV drips, injections, some nurse I’d apparently hit. I came to standing up, crying because my father didn’t want to take me with him. Everybody lost their minds. They took me for a brain scan.

When I got out of prison, I went straight to his grave. When I go see him, I talk to him the same way I talk to anybody else. I don’t do that five-minutes-with-flowers-and-leave thing. I take a bottle, sit down on the ground, and talk to him. I stay there for hours telling him everything I’ve done.

I went to him. And man, how I fought with him.
“Why did you leave?”
“Why didn’t you fight to get your wife back?”
Stuff like that.

Then rain started falling… even though it was sunny Easter weather. Rain and thunder. And this old woman says, “Child, ask forgiveness for everything you said, otherwise none of us are leaving here.” People say when it rains like that, the dead are crying. My father was angry with me.

So I said, “Alright, alright, forgive me!”

And the rain stopped.

At Rahova Prison I’d fixed myself up pretty comfortably. Had access to a computer, writing, games. Kept myself busy so I wouldn’t think about stupid shit. I had all kinds of people around me, all kinds of crazies. I was bodyguard for a judge, for a lawyer, only good stuff. And among them, I met Denisa, the great love of my life.

Besides my father, the most important person in my life is Denisa. I think she changed me a lot. I started learning what feelings actually are, how to define them. Before that, the only thing I understood was loyalty, protection, that kind of thing. I used to say I loved people, but I’d never really known that feeling. I was an adventurer. How the fuck was I supposed to find feelings when I never stood still? They were scattered everywhere.

I had seven girls in the same cell. Harem. If one of them screwed up, they all got beaten. No jealousy allowed between them, they had to stay united. One washed clothes, one cooked, tonight I’d leave my slippers by one bed, sleep with that one.

Then one day this Denisa walks into the room. When I saw her… looked like Monica Columbeanu. Absolute knockout. Wedding-ring type woman. Little abs on her stomach. Beautiful hands. I go, “Who’s the fresh little thing?”
“What little thing? She’s almost thirty.”

She was in prison for trafficking. Twenty kilos of cocaine. Her husband, Chechen guy, huge trafficker.

So I go into the bathroom for a cigarette.
“Hi,” she says. “You the famous Chiorea with those Dior shirts nobody in the room’s allowed to touch?”
I had clothes stored at the prison on hangers.
“Yeah, sweetheart.”
We exchanged a few words.

I started getting close to her. She took care of me. Cooked for me, did my shopping, handled my medication. She had this soft way of talking, especially because she was from Transylvania.

I celebrated harder in prison than I ever did outside.

And now it was Saint Stelian’s day, my name day. I told the guards, “Tonight we party.” Not total chaos so the whole wing could hear, but music, fun, good vibes. I invited Denisa to dance.

This woman Lenuș had come into my room too, a murderer I knew from my first sentence. It was about respect, like outside, you got rank. I told her, “You sleep in my bed tonight, I’m climbing to the top bunk with Denisa.” End justifies the means.

Sleep? No chance. This was a woman who took care of herself down to intimate perfume, creams, everything. I kept going back and forth in my head. Should I make a move or not? When the lights came on, I thought at least let us see each other’s eyes. That’s when I kissed her, and she kissed me back.

I told her, “Starting today, you move down here with me.”

When I want to win a woman over, I want her smashing her head against the walls over me. But in one second I can make you hate me too.

For three weeks it was all honey and milk. I gave her a gold bracelet for Christmas, a giant stuffed monkey, an armful of roses. She couldn’t believe I was giving her gold. I told her, “Careful nobody sees it or they’ll cut your privileges.” She hid it inside the teddy bear.

On New Year’s Eve, all crowded together, we were putting on erotic shows right out in the open. She got high just watching what I could do. And then I started talking ugly to her. “Get the fuck outta here, you served yourself up on a platter.” Harsh words. I felt bad. After everything I said to her, I suffered too.

She treated me like a child. In the morning she’d make me breakfast, then wash the clothes I’d changed out of the night before, iron them. Housewife type woman.

After about a year I finally understood what love means. Crying over a woman like a little kid. Denisa got transferred. When you’re about to lose someone, that’s when you realize what you really feel for them.

Luckily her family had connections everywhere. She told her mother, “The same way you got me here, you’re sending me back.” She left Rahova Prison one evening, and by the morning of the third day she was back.

From that moment on I changed completely. I wasn’t the vulgar, violent Stela anymore. I’d wake up in the morning and make her coffee like she was a princess.

We stayed together seven years. Three inside, four outside.

After I got out of prison in 2005, I started from zero. Went to the hospital, sorted out the treatment and everything else I had to do.

My friend Cati was in Italy with this kid called Lapte. Pickpocket, hustler, stole cars. She goes, “Why don’t you come take a vacation? My treat. Relax, walk around.”

What the hell was I supposed to do in Italy?

Eventually I went with a group in a car. We got to Verona, ate something, and I’m about to head out. She goes, “Put your damn head on a pillow, you just got here.”

Three hours later I was out stealing.

I missed the adrenaline, the madness, the rush. Vacation? Relaxing? I’d just spent five years doing exactly that in prison.

I went out with this guy Lapte. We called him Milk even though he was dark-haired. Dear God, the way that kid could steal at nineteen... Wallets, buses, trams, train stations. I was the same at his age, swear to God, I had the code in me.

We rolled some English guys blind by pure luck. Since then I’ve had beef with Black guys. They spot everything, man. Sharpest eyes in the world, these bastards. One of them clocked Lapte and suddenly it’s run run run, trrrrrrrr. They were chasing us through the streets.

Lapte comes from the other side, bam, runs into another Black guy. I grab him, about to hit him.

“Noooo, you’ll go to prison!”

If you hit people over there, you’re fucked. The guy was yelling something in his language, but even they weren’t trying to fight. Since I couldn’t hit him, I shoved him away.

“Let’s split up,” Lapte says. “You know how to get home?”

“How the fuck would I know? I just got here… I’ll manage.”

We kept running because more of them had shown up. Four guys chasing me. I jumped through courtyards, over fences, still can’t believe I got away.

The only landmark I had was Jesus Christ, one of those roadside shrines. I asked some Lebanese guys who owned a restaurant, “I gotta get to Cati’s place.” It wasn’t far from the station where we’d been, maybe six tram stops. Eventually I make it back, but Lapte’s not there.

Cati goes, “What the fuck did you do? I told you to go to sleep, you idiot!”

“Fuck off, I didn’t come here to sleep!”

Then the maniac shows up, he’d been looking for me. Tells Cati, “On my family’s grave, she’s the real deal. When I told her let’s go get the money, she went crazy. Girl, are you insane, where’d you stash it?”

He’d passed the wallet to me. There was a pile of trash under a bridge, so I jumped down there, buried the wallet under leaves.

We went back and got it: two 500-euro bills, one 200, five 100s.

1700 euros.

“Jesus Christ, you were born blessed.”

“Yeah, I ate shit when I was little.”

I told Cati to keep the money, pay herself back for the trip and all the expenses. I only wanted 100 euros.

Next day I left with the lunatic. We stole a Ford and drove to one of those camping sites with tents. Swear on my mother, we’d steal bags from right under people’s heads, they were that stupid. You’d piss yourself laughing.

In two weeks we made 12,000 and came back home.

Now these people wanted to put girls out on the street. Me, I’m down for anything, but not that. I’m a woman, I can’t accept it. But when Cati sees money and gold, she’d sell anybody. She hooked her cousin Mirabela up with Lapte and sent them to Italy. I lost my mind.

A month later she says, “Why don’t you go to Italy and stay with Mirabela?”
“ME? What the hell am I supposed to do with Mirabela?”
Lapte had fallen in love with the idiot and stopped going out stealing.
“Go, because I swear if I go there myself, somebody’s getting killed.”

When I realized she was seriously losing it, I said, “Alright then, fuck it, I’ll go to Italy.” And off I went.

I traveled with this guy Gioe, big-shot hustler, with one girl, and another guy nicknamed Ceaușescu with two girls. Those guys couldn’t stay around the women because if the Italians catch you pimpin', you’re fucked, straight to prison.

So they tell me, “You stay with the girls. You’re a woman, you got women’s ID papers, nobody can touch you. Just say you’re visiting your cousin, what are the carabinieri gonna do?”

They left for hustles in other cities, stole some cars, then went back to Romania.

I stayed with the girls. They were scared of me at first, thought I was siding with the pimps. I’d tell them, “Girl, does the guy back home even know how much money you made last night?”

After about two months in Italy with them, those crazy girls started actually caring about me. We stopped sending money back to the parasites. I was snorting cocaine with some ruined ex-trafficker, partying with them in every club, hooked one of the girls up with an Albanian guy.

We were having a blast, total madness, and who shows up? Gioe, Ceaușescu, Lapte, and Cati. We were right in the middle of this huge party. Now they wanted to settle scores with me, make me “pay up.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do to you people? Make you all suck my dick? I got nothing for you.”

One of them goes, “On my family’s grave, I’ll smash her head in.”

Then Cati, God knows how her crazy brain worked in that moment, says, “Go ahead and try if you wanna end up with an AIDS syringe in your face.”

That freaked them the fuck out. They left me alone.

That’s when I quit Italy. Cocaine was destroying everything.

I went back to needles after ten years. I was using to kill myself. Denisa and I had broken up. But honestly, if you eat properly and take some vitamins, fuck me if you can even tell somebody’s high.

Then I got into dealing.

I never handled huge quantities, but I was smart. Switched SIM cards every few days, never showed up myself, always had people. I rented them an apartment where we cooked the heroin balls and the boys selling for me stayed there.

On heroin you become passive. The person you love most could die right in front of you and you’d just sit there looking at them. Like you don’t even exist on Earth anymore. You feel nothing, absolutely nothing, even though you’re still here.

A lot of times I still get moments when I wanna go back. One of those seconds. At one point I even picked up clean syringes from the center. Went looking for somebody with good dope. Bastards never wanted to tell me where the good stuff was. So I took two guys with me to shoot up. Bought them gear first so I could watch how they reacted, see if the product was any good. I wasn’t about to stick garbage in my veins. If it hit them right, I was gonna shoot too.

God made sure the dope was bad.

And I said to myself, “What the fuck am I doing?” There are so many people expecting something from me. I stayed locked in my room for a few days. Then I realized everything happens for a reason. It’s that second. If you don’t know how to turn it around, you’re gone.

I almost killed my wife, Dana. That’s why I quit drugs. I put a gun to her head. That was the first time I ever cried. Really cried. And I said, “From today on, no more drugs.” Because if drugs got me to the point where I could take somebody’s life…

I met Dana through a woman from prison. She dealt too, but kilos, not little street balls. We were around Piața Unirii, near the police station. First time I saw her, tiny little thing in a robe, slippers, hair in a bun. “Look at this little goblin.” The trafficker recognized me right away. “Ohooo, Stela Chiorea.” He never admitted he was moving product, but said anytime I needed anything, Dana was his sister-in-law. Asked us to take her home.

Next day we ran into each other again. I saw she used too. Just two little lines. I told her it was a shame, better quit while she still could, especially since she had kids. If she was doing big amounts, different story. I had two methadone strips on me, told her, “Here, gift from me.”

She wanted us to exchange numbers. Me? No way. “If anything comes up, we’ll get in touch through Antonio. Let the guy make a little money too.”

Back then I smashed laptops constantly. Whenever I got angry, I’d break them. So I had one guy fixing them, swapping parts, another one reinstalling Windows for me. This guy also scored from Antonio, and one time while shooting up he overheard a phone conversation.

Later, when I went over so he could install Windows for me, he asked for my number. “I got a problem and I need your help.” I almost never gave my number out, but he kept insisting.

He calls me in the morning. “Come meet me for a coffee.”
“The fuck I gave you my number for that?”

We meet up, the guy’s shaking, and he says, “You’re going to prison.”

“Maaaan, what are you, psychic? Nostradamus’s nephew?” I’m joking around.

“I heard Antonio’s phone call. Some girl paid him 200 euros to give prosecutors the name of somebody dealing grams. Monday or Tuesday they’re putting people under surveillance.”

When I heard that, the phone slipped out of my hand, water too. The only thing I could think about was calling Dana, telling her not to stay around that guy anymore.

But I didn’t have her number.

So I went to Antonio and told him, “Lemme call somebody, my battery died.” And I grabbed Dana’s number from his contacts.

Then I tell Antonio, just to test him, “Man, I’m leaving Bucharest.”
“What do you mean leaving Bucharest? We just built these connections.”

He used to be my driver. He’d even done little jobs for me, was my right hand at one point. One New Year’s Eve I dragged him all over town, gave him money, clothes, a whole life. So I tell him, “Nah, I’m done. I wanna quit. Maybe I’ll leave the country.”

I wanted him to understand I wasn’t stupid.

But I didn’t go anywhere. I stayed inside the house and didn’t leave at all.

I texted Dana: “Need to see you urgently. Come over.”

We started talking. One night I ask her, “Wanna come by for a beer?”
She came.

I was still sleeping with women back then, but I couldn’t even orgasm anymore. Nothing felt good. Next day I drove her home. “Hope you forgot where I live,” I told her.

I got to her place and stayed from ten in the morning till seven at night. Then we went to score some dope, and boom, Dana’s back at my place again.

I felt good with her in bed. And I’m thinking, something’s not right here.

After two weeks I asked her, “Why don’t you move in with me?”

In the end, I moved into her neighborhood instead.

My whole life I’d been looking for a family, and I found it with Dana.

I terrorized her mother. I’d get drunk, wave a gun around, everybody standing at attention in front of me. And they still accepted me with all my insanity. Dana is my support beam. She never tried to force me into anything, because otherwise I’d have left her. She’s so calm, I still don’t understand where she gets that strength from.

She’d stay awake nights while I was using, just to make sure I didn’t choke to death. If I drank a cup of tea, I had to shoot up. Ate an orange, shot up. Came back from the bathroom, shot up, saying it had “left my body.” Took a shower, shot up. It was all in my head. Every five minutes I’d fix again. Sitting there with the bag in front of me, go go go go go go go.

But I was always clean. Washed myself, wore perfume. Never filthy. I’d go to casinos, restaurants, swimming pools. Walked around with a syringe tucked behind my ear.

Dana’s a coordinator at a cleaning company. She wants to be integrated into society, live like a normal person. That’s how she fills her time, it’s her refuge. She feels good bringing something into the house too. Sure, she earns twelve million and spends thirty, but still. She’s pure bread from God. My support beam. No matter what happened, I could never abandon her. I want us to stay friends, take care of her, support her, whatever happens.

She’s got a fourteen-year-old daughter, absolutely stunning. And a son, Antonio, almost nine, wants to become a robotics engineer.

We were thinking about having a kid. I was joking with some guy and he goes, “I can already picture you with a shoulder bag and a giant pregnant belly.”
“Jeeeesus, no.”
I’ll have Dana make me a kid instead.

Dana had never seen the sea before she met me. I took her to the circus, the zoo. I tried giving her everything she’d missed before she knew me. She never embarrasses me. Knows how to socialize, cultured woman, she reads. Her dad’s got a whole library. Proper Romanian guy.

At parties, gatherings, she knows when to stop, how to dance, how to be around men, all that. I told her she’s free.

I took her to a gay and lesbian club with all her Romanian coworkers. Told them, “Tonight’s my gift to you. Don’t worry about money, drink whatever you want.”

I called ahead, booked a table for like twenty people. Girls, guys, husbands, wives, me and Dana the lesbians. I never told them what kind of club it was. Wanted it to be a surprise, see how they interact with people. The bouncer tells me at the door, “You know what kind of club this is…”

We grab one of those big corner booths. I go, “Bring two-three bottles of whiskey, can’t you see the crew I rolled in with?” I’m twisted like that, especially with Dana around, with people who know how diabolical I can get. I’d drift over to the bar, drink a little more, warm myself up properly. Around midnight the place was packed, wall-to-wall people.

I tell one of the girls, “Wanna see how you pick up a woman?”
“No, but I wanna make out with the waitress.”

So I go to the waitress and say, “How much to let her kiss you?”
“Not a dime.”
“Good. Go kiss her then.”

The girl goes over and full-on kisses her and I nearly died laughing.

Now everybody’s grouped up touching each other, hell, integrate yourselves, right? Then the guys start going, “There’s only girls here, we wanna go hang with the dudes too.” After midnight the place went completely wild.

I took the waitress and the other girl into the bathroom and hooked up with them there.

God showed me He loves me too much, considering how badly I treated myself. Quitting treatment, especially when I’ve never exactly been somebody who eats properly…

Last summer I found out I had hepatitis C. That one hit me hard. Two days before finding out, I’d been drinking like crazy. I was doing aerosol treatments for bronchitis. I’d been to a child’s christening and barely drank there, two-three glasses just to toast with people. After the christening I sent some guy out: “Go get two one-liter bottles of vodka and four bottles of soda.” After we finished those with some friends: “Go get two more.” I drank until the next afternoon. Kept it going like that for five nights straight.

From ecstasy to agony, it’s one second.

That one knocked me down bad. I gotta work on my head now. After Easter I’m filing for interferon treatment. I’ll get through this too, when I see how many people actually care about me, invest feelings in me.

Doctor Abagiu and Alina are the ones who lifted me back up. I connected with her, she did counseling with me. Abagiu used to sing opera to me, “O soooooole!” He puts fatherly feelings into me. And there’s this thing now where I don’t want to disappoint people.

I calmed down.

Some nights I ask myself, “Is this really me?” This is a different Stela. The crazy Stela disappeared and the better one stayed behind. The crazy one’s still there too, just gone quiet for a while. Could come back someday. But now it’s a softer madness, more acceptable. That’s why I said if I can help people, anything. That’s how I started counselling too.

I’ve stopped people from killing themselves. Any lunatic in prison, I could pull them back onto the line. Cutting themselves, trying to hang themselves. I know how to reach them. If I managed to quit drugs, survive the illness, why couldn’t they? I pull somebody up one step, two steps, and by the third or fourth they start climbing on their own. I don’t take a cent. I don’t care about money. If I’m volunteering, then I wanna really be a volunteer.

One guy came into the center for counseling. Young dude, maybe twenty-seven, built guy, gym body. Slept with some woman and tested positive for HIV.

“So you don’t know how to use a condom? Three lei, how fucking expensive is it?”
“Nah sis, I like feeling it.”
“Well if you liked feeling it, take responsibility too. You’re not gonna die.”

A few days later his mother came to thank me.

Ever since I quit drugs, I dump my money into casinos instead.

“Better slot machines than dope,” that’s what my Dana says too. And everybody around me says the same thing: better that than going crazy again, shooting up, God knows what else. I used to hang around casinos even when I was using, but I never played. Just watched people gamble.

When I got money, I play hard. Hard, hard! I hate going in broke, it just pisses me off for nothing.

I celebrated my birthday at the casino with the dealers and all the people there. Had around 1500 euros on me. I said, “Tonight, fuck friends, fuck buddies.” I grabbed four machines and just money money money money. “Bring me fifty. Bring me another fifty. Another fifty.” I think I was still half delirious.

Dana always tells me, “If that’s where you find your peace, go play the machines.”

I calmed down now though, because I don’t have the kind of money I want anymore. I can’t go there just to play small. Sometimes I still go throw in five hundred, a million lei, get my madness out. Couple spins, couple hands. But I don’t like walking in there without real power in my pocket. Either I sit down to really play, or I don’t bother at all. There’s logic in that too.

Day by day, I think maybe I’m becoming religious.

I say I washed away my sins. I committed crimes, but I still haven’t taken a human life. Not yet. Never had an abortion either. Those are sins. And whatever I did do, I paid for it.

I was the bitch of all bitches, but in this world, I found the light.