Lisa Ripp Few people were interested in hearing another hood-rat junkie’s tale about a john that got too rough. “That wasn’t my story,” Lisa said. “I didn’t come up on the streets.” But she ended up there. A skinny, trick-turning addict. Lisa grew up with an alcoholic mother, introduced to chaos at an early age. But she fought it. She went to a Christian boarding school at age 13 and stayed until she was 17. She even went to Canada as a missionary. But when she came back home in her senior year, her mother was even worse. Lisa did her best to help, but she was eventually dragged down by the instability that defined those formative years. “It got so bad I just joined her. “I drank with her and then began to leave her.” Lisa started using X and acid. The summer after her senior year, she made her way to El Paso with some friends and drank. “I was fine and 18,” Lisa said. “It was alcohol. Lots of it.” Things started to look a little cleaner and brighter in 1989, when she was just 19 years old. She met a man with a great family, and they got married. They even had one daughter. He didn’t
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Lisa grew up with an alcoholic mother, introduced to chaos at an early age. But she fought it. She went to a Christian boarding school at age 13 and stayed until she was 17. drink, so she didn’t drink. She so badly wanted to be part of his family, so she totally straightened up. Lisa moved in with him on October 20, 1989. By Thanksgiving she had her first broken nose. Disillusioned and faced with the choice of an abusive husband or an out-of-control mother, Lisa was heartbroken. “I guess his fist didn’t hurt as bad as her words, so I stayed,” Lisa said. “He was just beating me all the time.” Eventually she had enough and asked for a divorce. He refused unless she gave him custody of their daughter, and he even threatened to kill
WOMAN TO WOMAN WITH JOANNE : THE MAGAZINE • Issue 33, October 2020
her. Scared, she signed custody over to his parents. Lisa said that act was the catalyst that created the hole she kept trying to fill afterwards with the drinking and drugs. She said, “She was the only bright spot in my life.” Here, the story becomes one of prostitution and relationships with offshore men on a timeline obscured by substance abuse. “I can remember it being Tuesday and then not realizing it’s like the following Thursday and not even having any idea of what had happened or where I’d been,” Lisa said. That’s because the relationships she had
