by iiKane
“Why’d Benny send you anyway? Who are you, his lawyer?”
“No. I’m Benny’s assistant.”
“I see.”
And he did. He downed his drink.
“Stand up.”
She looked at him, taken aback. A nervous titter escaping her lips.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, stand up,” he repeated, without emotion.
Heather finished her drink.
“Now take off your clothes.”
She didn’t protest. She just looked at Georgie, a subtle, knowing smirk playing across her lips. When she reached up and unpinned her hair and let it fall softly over her shoulders, he knew exactly why Benny had sent her.
She was a part of the deal.
She undressed, taking off everything until she stood naked, tan and succulent, the sun cutting through the room and slashing warmly across her silicon bosom and shaved pussy.
“Should I leave the shoes on?” she grinned seductively.
“No,” Georgie replied bluntly.
She stepped out of them, reluctantly. He could tell that without them she felt more vulnerable. He wanted her to.
He stood, filled his glass and approached her slowly.
“Get on your knees.”
Slowly, she lowered herself to the floor. He stood over her, eying her with a look, which she couldn’t read. It made her nervous. Georgie put the glass to her lips. She parted them just enough to drink it, and drank it all.
“Now do that to my dick,” he smirked as he pulled out his dick.
She opened her mouth and lolled out her tongue, seductively. Georgie put down the glass and held his dick to her. He rubbed the tip over her lips and cheeks then slapped her with it; that shocked, titillated and made her giggle.
“So you’re the cherry on top, huh?” he quipped. “Open wide, I’m a big boy.” She did. But instead of filling her mouth with flesh, she felt a warm, salty golden shower.
“Ahhhh!” she gagged, spitting the piss out and recoiling.
“Don’t move! Don’t fuckin’ move!” Georgie bassed, never touching her, but his commanding voice was enough to ensure total compliance. He pissed in her face, on her hair, in her mouth. Tears and piss mingled, running down her cheek, he neck and off of her enlarged nipples.
“Still want to be the cherry on top?!” he laughed menacingly. “Huh? Still want to be a part of the deal?”
All that she could do was sob, shoulders wracked.
He shook his dick in her face, wiping it on her lips, then picked up his glass and refilled it. She started to get up.
“Did I tell you to move?” he asked coldly.
“Please…”
“You will; ain’t that what you here for? Now bend over,” he commanded.
“I – I – I want to go,” she sniffled.
“Go where, huh?! Back to those fuckin’ corn fields?” he laughed. “Back to fuckin’ Nebraska, or is it Oklahoma? You think I don’t know your story, you sexy bitch? Don’t you know sexy is a dime a dozen? Now bend your sexy ass over!”
Slowly, she bent, positioning herself on her knees and elbows. Georgie walked around her slowly, dropping his pants and pumping his dick until it was semi-erect. He got behind her, resting his drink on her ass and plunging into her pussy.
She sobbed harder.
The sex was the closest thing to consensual rape since the apple dropped. He fucked her like she was a nut rag, faceless and meaningless, except for the point he was making. When he felt himself cumming, he pulled out, nutting all over her ass and back, wiping his dick off along the crack of her ass. Then he stood up, pulling up his pants. Now she was crying uncontrollably.
“Remember this, sexy bitch. Remember! Don’t you ever forget and pretend you don’t know what you are! What we all are,” he barked, standing over her.
The contempt in his voice curdled her spirit like mildew and wilted her sense of self like a dying rose. She curled up on the floor in the fetal position, broken.
Georgie looked down at her and the hate began to lift. The echo of her incessant cries shattered his coldness.
“Heather,” he sighed, “Heather…I’m sorry…I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Benny did, but you didn’t.”
She kept crying. He scooped her up and carried her to the shower. He turned the shower on and began washing her back.
“Why – why did you do that?” she sniffled.
“Shh, it’s over, Ma. Just let me clean you up.”
He ran the shower, treading her hair with his fingers, rubbing the water over her with caring caresses.
“You’re very pretty.”
“Thank you,” she replied, the warm water soothing her wounded self.
“Your hair is dry though; who does your hair?”
“Huh?”
“Who does your hair.”
“Just – just a salon.”
“No, no, no Ma, don’t just go to any salon; find one that fits you. Get to know them. Finding a stylist is like finding a man. They should bring out the best in you, make you feel good about yourself, you know?” he said, massaging her scalp and washing her hair.
“O - okay.”
“I’m serious Ma, because I can smell the cheap shit in your hair. Your stylist must have sold her soul to the Koreans. You’re too beautiful for that. When you bring the contract back, I’ma do your hair; get a better conditioner, show you what to look for, okay?”
Finally she smiled and Georgie rattled on like what had occurred earlier never happened.
He sat in the living room while she finished washing up. She came out with a towel wrapped around her. He was sitting there quietly, his hands tented in from of his face, tentatively.
“Ummm, I’m going to…go,” Heather announced.
Georgie could tell that she was reluctant, that she really didn’t want to leave.
“Okay.”
“Unless,” she replied, allowing her voice to trail off in innuendo.
“No, you should go…before he comes back.”
She knew exactly who he was. She began to dress. Once she took off the towel, he allowed his eyes to travel slowly over her body. For the first time in his life, he looked at a beautiful woman’s body and he felt what he had never felt before. Nothing.
When she was dressed, she turned to him and held up the bottle of conditioner that he had given her.
“Thanks, Georgie. I’ll – um – see you with the contracts.”
“No doubt. You can let yourself out.”
She did. He sat. He didn’t move. He thought. He watched the shadows on the floor getting longer… weaker…dimmer, until they disappeared and he sat silhouetted by the darkness and the glimmer of a street light outside the window.
Someone knocked.
“It’s open,” he called out, without yelling.
A short, Spanish dude walked in.
“Georgie?” he asked, with uncertainty, squinting into the darkness. He could just make out a figure seated in the armchair.
“I called you yesterday,” Georgie replied.
“Yeah, but you never asked for heroin before, too. I had to make a few calls. Why’s it so dark in here?”
“Ain’t no lights on.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“Then don’t ask no stupid questions. You got the shit?”
The guy—paranoid by trade—had never seen Georgie this…dark. He was always funny, charming, accessible. Now, it was as dark as a confessional. The room felt claustrophobic.
“Yeah, yeah, here we go.”
They exchanged money and product.
“Let yourself out.”
“Hey Georgie, be careful with that heroin. It’s China White.”
“Hector, are you a dope dealer or a doctor?”
Hector walked out. The only sound was the occasional passing car, the hum of electricity and the ticking of a clock into the future. Georgie knew he needed light, but for what he planned on doing, electric light se
emed too naked, too revealing. He needed the cloak of darkness. He cut on the TV to a random channel and used the light to dump out the cocaine and heroin on the back of Skye’s album cover, but quickly regretted it. Her eyes seemed to bore into him.
Poor Georgie, don’t let the world love you to death.
He knew what she meant now.
We are all performers, and the world is a stage. Just shoot for the moon; some settle for stars, but when potential becomes expectation, to not live up to one means to disappoint the other. First impressions become only impressions, and when you cease to impress, you cease to be. That is the death that the world loves.
He grabbed a deck of cards off the stereo speaker and began to mix and shuffle the cocaine and heroin into one substance. He noticed that both cards were kings of hearts, and he wondered how until he remembered that it was a pinochle deck; Niia had been trying to teach him the game.
Niia.
“Georgie.”
The way she said his name for the last time still haunted him. He could still hear it every time someone called him. Her voice and theirs a duet, so sickening until he wanted to change his name to a language nobody knew, nobody spoke, nobody understood. So that nobody would call him again, ever.
Fffffffff!
He took a hit of the mixture from the edge of the card. The coke he knew but the heroin was strange to his system and went straight to his stomach. It tasted like onions, raw but tasteless and then like a tsunami, it rose within him to great heights and surged up out of his throat in waves of vomiting that drove him to all fours. When he finally got his composure, he grabbed a bottle of gin to rinse the taste of vomit from his mouth, then spat it out on the floor before taking a healthy swig. The heroin had him mellow and the cocaine had him wired, speed balling…falling, riffing. Georgie, the king of hearts shoveling the mixture, inhaling it all.
“Goddamn!” he roared, as he heard hymns about Jesus looming overhead.
He had been subconsciously aware of the sounds of the preacher’s voice, but at first it was only background static that came with the light of the TV, like the buzz of a fly comes with the smell of a grill. But flies – like preachers – drone on and on, emboldened by the sound of their own being, building momentum or seeming to do so as our tolerance loses its mooring, and then you explode.
Georgie exploded.
“What, you trying to tell me something?!” he screamed at the ceiling. “Huh?! Don’t send nobody, talk to me! You talk to me!” Georgie ranted. “Stop hiding!!! Here I am; where are you?!” Georgie screamed, holding his arm out like Jesus on the cross.
“You’re a fuckin’ coward, whispering to muhfuckas in their sleep, squealing muhfuckas like a thief in the night! Take me! Youse a goddamn coward, you only take the good ones because you know a nigga’ll give you hell! You need some help?! Huh?! Is that it?!”
He grabbed the gin bottle and poured it over his head, baptizing himself in alcohol.
“Now take your best shot. Where’s your lightening bolt?!” he barked, then all of a sudden, his nose started to bleed.
He tasted it as it ran over his lips. He put his hand to his nose then looked at the blood on his fingertips. He laughed hysterically.
“A nosebleed?! That’s all you got? Parlor tricks?” he laughed again. “Fuck you! Send me to hell, muhfucka; I’m used to it.”
Georgie sat down to his pile, sniffing until he fell asleep…waiting.
He woke up the next morning, head banging like a slam dance, his throat raw with futility, his mind still frazzled and trapped. He had to get out. The apartment felt stuffy, the air stale and stilted. He got up and stumbled groggily out of the door.
When he reached the street, he headed for his little red Corvette. He felt his pockets for his car keys. He had left them upstairs. Mind frazzled, mind with a mind of its own. Random thoughts began to play in his head, like one of those old reel to reels that you might find in a box at someone’s yard sale.
He decided to walk, too lazy to go back. The afternoon sun was bright. People were everywhere. They recoiled from him like he was a slice of darkness left over from the night before, reeking of vomit and alcohol, expensive designer clothes worn as carelessly as a vagabond’s tattered garments.
“Fuck you staring at?” he mumbled inaudibly, self-consciously. A police cruiser drove by slowly, eying him, looking for a reason to lay him down. He stumbled on. Georgie came to a small park, the kind little kids play in and get abducted from. He sat down, the movie of his life still playing in his head.
He couldn’t stop the endless loop, reminding him over and over again. He sat with his head in his hands, his head going boom, boom, boom, his heart going bump-bump-bump, his mind began to wander…
His first memory was the taste of candy, watermelon flavored Now and Laters. His grandmother had died, Stephanie had given them to him to shut him up. The picture of his father in his mother’s room, only alive in his smile. “Get nasty with it,” dancing, laughing, growing, becoming. Out of nowhere, the bullets ripped… The pain. Denise. The pleasure. Release.
“Am I next?” Her smile. Her arms raised, embracing new beginnings…chasing the sun.
Skye blowing smoke in his face, casting her spell, still unbroken.
Niia…
Niia…
Niia…
“As happy as a little girl on Christmas Day.”
“If this world were mine…”
Just dance please; just one more time…
“Is this the person you can be or is this just the person you want to be because you can?”
Say my name…
Fifty thousand – peanuts.
Don’t forget and pretend you don’t know
Whowearewhoweallare!
Takemetakemeyoucoward.Jesssusdon’tlettheworldloveyouto death.
Georgie Porgie Georgie Por…
He felt like screaming, “Stop this thing, I want to get off!” but he gritted his teeth and then heard, “Are you sick?”
He looked into the face of a little blond girl, face full of freckles. She looked like a ray of sunshine with a tooth missing.
“What?” he replied, trying to focus on externals.
“You’re sick. My daddy is a doctor. Do you need him to fix you?” she asked with the confidence of a child who believes that her father can fix anything, even the broken, stinky man in the park. It was the voice of unshakable faith.
“Sydney! I told you about talking to strangers,” her mother scolded her, pulling her away.
“But Mommy, he’s sick; we have to tell Daddy!”
It was then that Georgie notice she was carrying a small teddy bear. She held it out to him with a smile more precious, more redemptive than even God’s forgiveness and let the teddy bear fall from her hand. Georgie watched her until she disappeared from view, then went over and picked up the teddy bear.
He sat on the grass, knees up, his arms rested across them, looking at the teddy bear. He felt the breeze of a second wind blow though him and then like a sprinter finally realizing that he was in a marathon, got up, headed home…and took a shower.
“My name is Georgie and I’m an addict.”
“Hi Georgie,” the choir sang.
Georgie’s ear cringed, so not wanting to hear the clichéd response that he knew he would get. That is why it took him three days of considering before he joined the group. For three days after the experience in the park, he just stayed in his room. Going to rehab had seemed like the answer in the shower, but being in rehab didn’t seem like it was an answer at all. The whole place looked like the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest warmed over. All that was missing was the ass gowns. Everything was so sterile, so … clinical, so … dead that he wondered how one was supposed to get one’s life back in a morgue.
He could have gone to one of the expensive rehabs, one of those “celebrity retreats,” as the euphemism goes. But he didn’t want the industry to know that he had a problem, and besides, he knew there were more dru
gs in there than on the street—and more expensive too. So he just signed himself into what was available, but he was beginning to regret it.
Until he saw her.
She was sitting Indian-style in a hard plastic chair known to waiting rooms worldwide, her sandals on the floor in front of her. She had the prettiest feet that he had ever seen. Slender but tantalizing, with just enough space in between her toes that his tongue could dart in and around, and she was wearing a toe ring. He couldn’t really make out her figure because she was wearing loose fitting grey sweat pants and an oversized, red and green t-shirt with the image of a powerful Black fist on it. Her face was hidden by her dreadlocks, salon neat, long and slender and they dangled like jungle vines as she sat, head bowed, reading a book.
She must have felt him staring because she lifted her head just enough to peer through her locks at him. Her cat-eye glaze had him pinned, thinking of Brazilian rainforests, a panther glaring through the trees and vines, daring him to come into her jungle. Welcome to the jungle.
He lost his train of thought.
“Georgie,” Mrs. Stevens, the group facilitator said, calling him back from the aroma of cacao.
“Yeah…I’m a stylist. I’ve done everybody’s hair, all the stars, Skye, Sidney, are there…”
“Ain’t no stars in here,” a fat Black dude named Leroy huffed.
Georgie took his hate in stride, shrugged and said, “I don’t know, maybe we’re all stars, you know, just trying to get our shine back.”
“That’s a very good way of looking at it, Georgie.” Mrs. Stevens complimented, but Georgie was already back in the jungle.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Stevens, but excuse me. Excuse me,” he repeated, ducking low to peer through the trees.
The panther peeked.
“We’re in group and I think you’re being very rude,” Georgie remarked. She rolled her eyes and went back to the book. Georgie’s hand shot up, finger pointing like he was in kindergarten and had to go to the bathroom.
“You don’t have to raise your hand,” Mrs. Stevens reminded him.
“Oh okay, but I think that she’s being very unfair. I mean, we’re supposed to be sharing, but I feel like she’s hoarding the energy and it makes me uncomfortable.”