Miami Herald - August 7, 2005
Lydia Martin, lmartin@herald.com

It's the kind that says she's looked so hard at herself, she's not afraid what anybody else might see.

Not so long ago, she was running crazy through Harlem, pimping women, selling and smoking crack, jacking other hustlers.

"My hair was very thin. I had fever blisters around my mouth. My breasts were really small. I was beating people, robbing people. I've been in situations where I've had a gun to my chest, a pillow in between to muffle the sound."

Conscious, as she started calling herself when she finally got that way -- maybe as a reminder to stay that way -- wound up in rehab at 31. She figured it was a good place to hide. She had ripped off some neighborhood drug dealers, and word on the street was they were looking to take her out.

She didn't know that once she got to the Daytop Village rehab facility in Parksville, N.Y., she'd wind up getting in touch with buried memories about the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of several relatives and neighbors.

She didn't know that would lead to her actually getting clean, that she would learn she was HIV-positive in the process, that she'd be inspired to write a book about all of it, that the book, Getting Unstuck, Girl to Girl, You Can Be Infected (SWN Publishing, $17.95) would get to some folks in Hollywood.

Now her story is in development as a Showtime biopic, with rapper Eve attached as star and executive producer. Showtime spokeswoman Brooks Jewell confirmed the project was in the works, but said producers weren't ready to discuss it further.

"The person who you're talking to right now is not the same person who lived that life," says Conscious, who grew up in Harlem. Her real name is Merl Soden.

She moved from New York to South Beach earlier this year and is trying to make a go as a party promoter. She also makes money as a speaker, telling her story to students and other groups around the country.

"I've got so much information. Information about HIV, information about female-to-female transmission, information about recovering from drug and alcohol abuse, information about sexual abuse, information about going from being down and out to bringing yourself up."

OUT OF HIDING

But the most crucial information she has, she says, is information about the importance of sharing the stuff you think you're better off hiding.

"Sharing is what got me here. I was keeping a big secret about incest and it was keeping me sick for years. When I finally told my therapist, it gave him something to work with," says Conscious, 40.

She always remembered the day a 17-year-old relative, who was supposed to be baby-sitting, molested her. They were watching Hollywood Squares. She was 10 or 11. But it took therapy to help her remember all the other times.

"I saw dark basements and tarred rooftops, boys and men and a little girl," Conscious writes in her book about the visions that started coming from her childhood. "I saw them lure her into bedrooms with the promise of candy or toys and then terrorize her. I heard them make her swear not to tell or else they would kill her."

Until she started talking about it in rehab, she had no idea that even the abuse she did remember was tripping her up as an adult.

"I thought I was OK about that. I thought everything I was doing, with the drugs, treating women badly, walking around like a gangster, I thought that had nothing to do with the sexual abuse. But you know what, that sexual abuse is a ... . It makes you act out in all kinds of ways. You're not supposed to find out about sex that way. It breaks a child."

It wasn't just the sexual abuse that led Conscious to such a bleak life. She came up hard, the daughter of a single mom who ran around in diamonds and mink, selling drugs, living off credit card fraud, hosting drunk, drugged marathons at the house while Conscious and a little brother were there.

Conscious wound up in the care of relatives too many times, sometimes 16 people to one small house. Sometimes the rats outnumbered the people.

DECISION TIME

In 2002, when Conscious was ready to self-publish her book, her mother landed in jail. It wasn't the first time. Conscious had a little money to print the first thousand copies of Getting Unstuck -- or to bail out her mother.

"I weighed it. My book, my mom in jail, my book. My book weighed more. At that point, I was tired of her sh - -. I would have been a fool to bail my mother out and not publish my book. We wouldn't be talking right now," says Conscious, adding that she hasn't talked to her mother in several years but believes she is out of jail again and living in New York.

"All names in this book have been changed to protect the guilty," Conscious writes in the dedications page of Getting Unstuck, which she says has sold about 10,000 copies. It's available through www.amazon.com or Conscious' website, www.prettytomboys.com.

Conscious, who worked as a production assistant and music manager for Queen Latifah's short-lived talk show after she got clean, began selling the book on the streets of New York and New Jersey.

Getting Unstuck is a short and sometimes rough stream of consciousness that nonetheless makes for compelling reading. She spent about $5,000 for the first printing. One afternoon, she took some copies to a beauty shop, where a woman who worked on the movie Barbershop happened to be getting her hair done.

'She took a book and said, 'I'll call you tomorrow. I think I have somebody who might be able to help you,' " says Conscious.

OFF TO HOLLYWOOD

Conscious says the book made it to the hands of Tracey Moore-Marable, casting director and acting coach to Eve, Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, Nelly and others.

"She invited me to Hollywood," says Conscious. 'She said, 'I'm having a book signing, why don't you bring your book ... ?' Who does that? I get to this huge house, where there are people from Robert DeNiro's camp, Babyface's camp, there's people from Monster's Ball. Before I know it, I have 14 people standing around me asking me questions about my book."

Larry Kennar, the host of the party and an executive producer for The L Word, asked Conscious to leave the book in his bookcase.

'But there were a thousand books in there; he was never going to read it. So I said, 'Can I put it on your pillow? Where's your room?' I left it on his bed. He read it that night after the party and called me to say, 'I saw you taking numbers for all those people. Don't call any of them. Call me.' "

While they wait for the project to get the green light, Conscious and her life partner, Luz Soden, are trying to get a hip-hop night off the ground at a South Beach club called Maggie's Mirage, 619 Washington Ave. They attempted a similar party for lesbians only, but had a hard time tapping into the typically closeted ranks of lesbians of color.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

Today Conscious understands how sexual abuse, and her childhood, damaged her -- but she won't shrug responsibility for her own mistakes.

"I don't blame anybody but me. I made my own decisions. There are people who have [messed] up childhoods and they do very well in life."

And the same way she'll cop to her own mistakes, she won't let others off the hook for theirs.

'I think now, who the hell was I, how dare I try to sell somebody? But the truth about pimping is, you can't sell somebody who doesn't want to be sold. If you come to me in the day, when you're dead sober, and say 'What's up?' And I say 'Go in that room with him for half an hour and hit me off when you come out.' And you do it, that's what's up."

Conscious says she has been clean for eight years. Lately, she's been working out every day, cardio in the morning and weight lifting in the afternoon, to prepare for next year's Gay Games. She plans to play basketball for the Chicago team. And she plans to stay focused on staying healthy despite the HIV.

She's so strict about taking her meds, she wears two watches. One tells time, the other buzzes to remind her it's time to take the drugs. She has a T cell count of about 600 (normal is 500 to 1,600).

She has seen people die of AIDS. But she's convinced she doesn't have to be one of them.

"I could get hit by a truck first. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that sometimes I don't freak out about it. But I tell myself affirmations. I have learned how to be strong. That makes all the difference."

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