by Pynk
“Okay. I guess I have no choice.”
“Good. I’ll let him know. See you in the morning.” The woman walked away.
“Okay.” Miki exited the front door, stepped out into the early nighttime, and answered her phone. “Hello.”
“Since you like to fuck so much, consider yourself fucked. Bitch.”
Miki stopped in her tracks. She tried to keep her reaction down. “Look, bitch.”
Click.
Miki noticed the doorman looking past her and then looking the other way quickly. She gave an exasperated exhale, tossed her phone into her bag, and headed toward her SUV, which was parked near the front in the end stall. Miki removed her keys from her purse at the same time she heard her phone ring again. She snatched it and read the display.
“Val. Hey, girl.”
“Hey, Miki. I was wondering. Are you free to hang out tonight? I really would like to talk to you. Some shit happened with Greg and I wanted to tell you at the meeting but you didn’t come. Greg found out about me and you and Tariq.” Before Miki could reply, Valencia said, “Wait. Hold on for one second, baby.” Miki was a few cars away from her own when she heard a click and then a voice. “Yeah. Hey, can I hit you back? I’m on the phone with Miki right now.”
A familiar male voice said, “Okay. Can you meet for a minute? Just maybe a half hour. At our regular spot?”
Valencia answered him saying, “I was gonna ask her to meet me but yes, I guess I can. I’ll call you right back.”
“Okay, sexy.”
“Bye.” And then Valencia spoke to Miki. “Hello.”
Miki’s eyes bugged. Almost in automatic mode, she aimed her keys toward her car and it beeped. She said as though begging, “Val?”
“Yeah. Oh, wait. Hold on. Let me check and make sure it hung up.”
Miki heard silence.
Valencia said, sounding like she was moving around while she spoke. “Yeah, okay. Sorry.”
From behind Miki, headlights suddenly blazed, and an immediate, horrendous sound of screeching rubber against pavement shrilled into the nighttime air. A thud, an insurmountable shove, and a crushing weight struck Miki’s frame. She was pushed up against her truck. Her fancy bag and iPhone were catapulted into the air as a monstrous force squashed her flesh, bones, and organs, crumbling her hips and legs into a flat mass. Her head jerked back, and she fought to keep her mind alive.
The three-thousand-pound vehicle rapidly shifted into reverse, allowing Miki to crumble to the ground. Her head met the concrete. Only the sound of skidding tires and the smell of hot fiery rubber lingered.
Suddenly standing over her and peering down into the recesses of her eyes, an older man with fear oozing from his face asked, “Ma’am, are you alive?”
Miki’s blood wet lids barely separated. The look on his face told her he expected her not to answer.
She was completely still, laying in the darkness.
Physically and mentally.
The only thing moving was a heavy tear that gravity sent traveling down the side of her shocked and frightened face.
The concerned and boisterous male voice said, “I saw the license plate. It read 14KGOLD. If you can hear me, help is on the way. Please don’t even begin to try to move.”
She didn’t.
She couldn’t.
She felt absolutely nothing.
26
“Sugar Walls”
Teela
Teela visited Brandi right after work the next day. Brandi had changed her plea to guilty, her bail was doubled, and she was waiting to have her trial date set. She was not leaving anytime soon.
It was a one-sided visit, and Brandi said very little to her new friend. The conversation from the other side of the glass was taken in by Brandi, who looked deep into Teela’s eyes and only listened. This time it was Teela who spoke like a robot. And this time, Brandi was indeed crying.
“I remember the sound. It was right next door to my room. I was nine.
“Daddy would wait outside of their own master bedroom upstairs, standing guard, most of the time with his arms crossed over his wide belly. He’d have a stern look on his face. And the louder the sounds got, the sooner it would be over. When it became quiet, he’d open the door and go inside, and the visitor would leave. But not before handing my dad some money in the hallway or at the front door.
“One time, while the loud fucking noise went on, Dad opened the door and watched. And he reached in his pants and pulled out his thing and yanked it.
“One night Dad went ahead downstairs and slept on the couch while the man was with my mother all night. I heard them go on for a while. And this time, I was the one who just had to see. The door was left half open, and by the dim light of the tiny bedside lamp I watched him mount my mother. They were under the covers and his butt thrust was like he was on fire. She moaned and turned her head up toward the ceiling with squinted eyes. I saw them do it and I kept watching. My mother was in a pained pleasure state. It was like she wished it would stop or wished it wouldn’t. But the look on her face was a glow of passion that made my heart ache. They kept going and going, in the same position. And it took a long time before he finished his business. But I guess I still kept watching, a long time or not. I had told the members of SA before that I’d watch my parents have sex. But the truth is that I watched a strange man fuck my mother while my father slept downstairs.
“About four long years later, around the time puberty had just about beat me up, my bedroom door opened and a man in the dark walked in my room. My door then shut and the man came closer. I screamed and my dad jerked the door open, walked up to me fast, stood over me with his evil, scruffy face and his overweight body, and removed his belt. ‘You will keep your mouth shut. I’ll be right back. You do as you’re told.’ And so I did. I can still hear the sound of that belt buckle jiggling as he walked out. That man he left in my teenage room was my own uncle.
“I remember one night, my mom made noises from her room, and I made noises from my room at the same time. We moaned this particular night, together, with only a wall separating us. At one point, the louder I got the quieter she got, and I could have sworn her moans turned to whines, like she was crying for my pain. But then her groans stopped. And I heard her bedroom door open and close. I never heard her working in her room again after that. For the next five years, I guess I was the sexual breadwinner of the family.
“I can’t explain it but in an odd way, I learned to like the feeling. It felt good to have a man’s dick inside of me. It felt good to have my neck kissed. It felt good to have someone’s mouth on my vagina and their fingers inside of me. I’d have an orgasm while I cried, but I couldn’t stop it from rushing. I’d hear my door open and my heart would stop, yet I’d begin pulling down my panties by the time the stranger got into my bed. It wasn’t like I learned to hate those men so much. I just hated my dad for allowing it to happen.
“My mother sent me far away to go to school, and he died while I was in college. I missed the funeral on purpose. But still, she didn’t leave him on her own. Kinda why I could never understand her telling me to leave Austin. I went to see her the other day for the first time in years and probably won’t go back. She’s still grieving over him. See, God took my dad, otherwise they’d still be together today. By the way, he died after having a massive heart attack while he was fucking a hooker less than a mile away from our home. Some things never change.
“I suppose all of this is what taught me to be fearful. I was sold by my father. Through sex, I took back the power I didn’t have as a child. And only God can grant me the power of the healing I need so badly now.”
Brandi’s eyes were red from shedding stinging tears for her friend. She lowered the receiver for a minute and wiped her face. The tears clouded her vision, and she fought to focus her eyes and mind upon Teela. She put the receiver to her ear and simply said, “I’m so proud of you.” She sniffled like a five-year-old. “And since I’m sure he never apologized, I wan
t to apologize for what he did to you. I’m sorry, Teela.”
Teela’s nose was flushed. Her eyes were dry. She winked. “Thank you. And I’m sorry for what you’re going through.” Her voice was nasal.
Brandi nodded as a simple acceptance of Teela’s words. “Sometimes, we have to get lost to find ourselves. In time, I’ll be good as new.”
“Me too, Brandi. Me too.”
27
“Naughty Girl”
Miki
More than one year later
It was early September, the very beginning of fall, though the stubborn summer temperatures still held on tight as the late day’s heat clung in the motionless air. At The Addiction Center, the Sexaholics meeting for the evening was a special one, with a guest speaker that Rachel Cummings had invited personally.
The meeting was held in the theatre-style auditorium in the main complex of the rehab center. The comfortable, cushioned seats were jet black. The new room with a stage was added to the complex less than two months earlier.
There was standing room only. Miki sat in her shiny new wheelchair on that stage, ready to address the group. And everyone was all ears. The theme for the evening’s meeting was Make Your Mess Your Message. Not a member was stirring. You could hear a pin drop.
“I was just a shy kid, and very, very skinny,” Miki told the dozens and dozens of people. She wore all white, with silver jewelry and silver flats. Her hair was freshly straightened, and her sheer makeup was flawless. Her eyes were wide, and her face gave off a humble glow. Her expression almost seemed pure. “But I grew out of both, as most who knew me a year ago can attest to. My younger sister, Adore, has always been thin. Built like a twelve-year-old. Her slender little self is right there standing near the wall.” People followed Miki’s gesture at her sister, who stood in the back of the room with a soft smile. Also standing in the back was Miki’s mother, with a face identical to Miki’s. “My sister got that body from my mother, who’s back there also.” She nodded to her mom. “She helps take care of my seven-year-old son, and my niece, who’s my sister’s fourteen-month-old. Yeah, my mom is just hitting sixty, and is still one hundred eighteen pounds, just like she was when she was in her twenties. But for some reason, especially when I was younger, I was handed the body of the women on my father’s side. Hippy and rumpalicious. They say I was built like a cross between JLo and Janet. I’ll admit that I used my body to my advantage. In my case, the boys never noticed me before I started to fill out. But I quickly saw their attention as my fuel. It drove me. It gave me what I didn’t have. I got noticed.
“I worked as a topless dancer, once I got some serious breasts after high school, and then I stripped for a while. That got me paid. I never went to college. I wasn’t very smart like my baby sister, but I got by. In my mind it was dumb to spend another four years in school when I didn’t end up graduating from high school until I was nineteen. I was held back twice.
“I was the fast one, not my sister, Adore. Right around the time I started developing and my attention-getting booty made its long-awaited appearance, I would sometimes sneak out of the house. I’d go to the homes of boys in my neighborhood and give them blow jobs. I’d have phone sex with girls from school while they masturbated. Girls whose voices I knew, though I couldn’t even tell you what they looked like. I just took their calls and got them off. I even had threesomes the summer before ninth grade. Needless to say, I became very popular. By the age of thirteen I lost my virginity and lost my mind. I loved sex. It was heaven on earth. I immediately craved it after the very first time. My first-time sex partner was a virgin, too, but we took each other to fuckdumcum. It was all I could think about afterwards. I came four times. He came five.
“What I knew for sure was that sex was the one thing I was really, really good at. I used it to my advantage. Call me a ho or a slut, but I admit that I got what I could from men because I believed they’d surely try to get what they wanted from me. I saw my vagina as valuable. Not my mind. But my vagina.
“No one could have ever really given me what sex did for me. And no, no one raped me when I was little. No one assaulted me. My father or uncles never tried to do freaky things with me. I will say that my father was a little distant. A little constipated as far as communicating his emotions. More so with me than with my baby sister. Or so I thought. Some will say that is the root of it all. But I say, the bottom line is, he was there. My mother made up for his inability to connect emotionally. I don’t think I ever blamed myself, like something was wrong with me. Yes, my sister and I battled for attention and wanted what the other had. Maybe I thought she had Daddy and I didn’t, but nothing earth-shattering happened until I crossed the line and pushed the limits with the ultimate sister betrayal. I slept with her now ex-husband. As I said, I just didn’t care. Some say I was a nympho. I mean like Samantha from Sex and the City, I had to have it. But, I say I was just hypersexual with one hell of a nerve. Plain and simple.
“Years ago I left my son’s father after being with him for four years, but I kept on seeing the few men I had on the side the whole time I was with him. He moved on and got married. I didn’t care. I continued to let him give me what I needed physically. He desired and pleased me. That was all that mattered.
“Over a year ago I was sleeping with—no, I was fucking, a fellow SA member. The sex was really good. He was my cohort in crime as far as falling off the wagon. The benefit in being with him was, again, that he was someone to please me and temporarily fill my feelings of worthlessness with being unlovable. It was just another means to cope, I suppose. The thing is, I never took the time to stop and ask him if he was available. I just didn’t care that I was fucking someone else’s man.
“I was even fucking a woman. My best friend, who I never noticed had fallen in love with me. In a roundabout way, I pushed her right into the arms of my boyfriend. I didn’t notice that, either. But what the hell, I mean I did bring her into our bed.
“I also had an older sugar daddy. He handed over the cash when I needed it and I’d break him off some pussy, so we were good. He was way old enough to be my father and threw down well enough to keep my attention. He could have been on Viagra, I don’t know. Like I said, I usually didn’t take the time to ask questions. I didn’t assume his wife knew about it. After all, she was suffering from dementia, and from what he told me, their marriage was sexless. He got what he needed. What I needed was new clothes, jewelry, and the latest shoes. I was his mistress and I used him for my financial benefit.
“I’d just finished fucking him in a suite at the hotel where I worked, on the night before my boss was going to fire me for having sex in the hotel rooms during business hours. That day, I was wearing a pair of red Manolo Blahnik shoes I’d bought with some cash my sugar daddy had given me not long before, as well as a diamond bracelet he’d just put on my wrist, when his daughter, who definitely did not have dementia, sped what I’m told was the family’s black Benz CL5 straight into me at forty miles an hour as I was about to get in my car, and smashed the curves of my lower body right up against the metal of my SUV. She’d spied on her dad when he called me and waited in the parking lot of the hotel where he and I had just screwed. That was the day her mother died, right after her father left their home to be with me.
“To this day she has never been found. And he, my sugar daddy, moved a young black woman into his home about three months later. But thirty days after that, he drove off a cliff in Malibu and committed suicide, probably from the stress of his wife dying, and because he yearned for his missing daughter. He’d changed his will and left everything to his live-in lover. And so, here I am, cured of my addiction, though I’ll never walk again. But I still say, even with all the guilt of that, that day I got hit was truly the moment I hugged a new day.” She took a deep breath and gave a deep exhale.
“By the way, my girlfriend and my boyfriend are now a bona fide couple. The night of the accident, she ran to my bedside quicker than he did and even confessed her love for
me. But I pushed her away once I remembered the phone call we’d had seconds before I was hit. Her call waiting accidentally became a three-way, just like the three-way in my bed, and I overheard them make plans to meet that evening at their regular spot. Or maybe she meant for me to hear. I’ll never know. They’d been seeing each other behind my back for who knows how long. And the funny thing is, as bad as she wanted to be a mother, she got pregnant by my man the very first time we all slept together. I remember the no-condom moment well. They have a three-month-old son named after my ex. The baby is the spitting image of his biracial face.
“But see, all of that has to be okay, because it’s the same thing I was dishing out. They were freaks just like me, and when you take risks and push the limits anything can happen. It’s part of the pursuit-of-sex game we played day after day. For me, I didn’t give a damn about anyone. So turnabout is fair play, right?
“As far as my situation personally, I can never have another genital orgasm because of the extreme nerve degeneration to my body. Though some can experience that, I cannot. I will never again feel a penis inside of my vagina. I can never mount a man and bounce like the stripper I was years ago. I am a paraplegic, the result of a complete spinal cord injury, having no voluntary motor or sensory function below my waist. I have use of my arms, but I have no feeling in my legs whatsoever.
“And yes, I’m here to shock you. I’m here to plead with you. I’m here to beg you. Please don’t end up like me. The very thing I craved is the reason why God has me right here in front of you. To be a benefit to those for whom it’s not too late.
“Believe it or not, I’m comfortable in my own skin now. I thank God for that. The devil in my head that kept me lusting is gone. So in a strange way, I don’t blame the young woman who ran me down. It was a blessing in disguise. I thank God for my life, and never again will I fail to say I love you, or to tell someone that I care.