by J. C. Allen
“Yeah. Sure. I guess. Is that what you want to hear, Roost? That I accept your little gifts?”
He shrugged back, looking more than a little surprised at my attitude and response. On a different day…
Ah, who the fuck am I kidding, I always had a shit attitude. Roost didn’t get enough praise for having to deal with my sorry attitude.
“Better’n thinking I was wasting my money.”
“You are wasting your money. I just don’t let it go to waste. There’s a difference.”
“How ya figure?” he demanded.
I raised an eyebrow at him. He’d get it.
“You never bought anything for yourself that you knew you didn’t really need?”
Matty opened his mouth to argue, thought better of it, then shut it again. He knew when I’d come close to the end of my patience, even by his standards.
A moment later he opened it again and said, “Least I know I got some enjoyment out of whatever it was.”
I rolled my eyes. He also knew when he didn’t give a shit about pushing past my patience, largely because he could handle it better than anyone.
“Well, I get about as much enjoyment from your ‘dates’ as I do from a band-aid. I get one, use it, regret it the instant I peel it off of me, and then forget about it until the next time I get one.”
That wasn’t quite true, and it was a bit obscene, but it made the point.
“That’s disgusting,” Roost sneered.
“Says the guy who once lectured me on the finer points of eating ass during a drunken rant,” I fired back.
“I did? Shiiiiiit.”
He furrowed his brows, confused, and then shook his head.
“Must’ve been a tequila night,” he mumbled. “That shit does not agree with me.”
I almost broke and smiled. Almost.
“And I don’t agree with prostitutes,” I said as soon as the words slipped his mouth. “So let’s just skip this whole tired song-and-dance and just leave me to my—”
“Derek Knight,” Matty said, throwing my name at me like a weapon.
It made contact like one. The muscles of my back ached as I tensed and once more stopped in my effort to retreat. I didn’t know what this was, but this was no longer a song-and-dance. This was more like a sit-down-and-listen.
I turned to face my old friend, second-in-command, and the closest thing I had left to a parent. I crossed my arms, but that just signaled I was not going to use them to grab anything else, not that I was trying to block him out.
“If I thought all ya needed to bounce back from this shit-show ya’ve been callin’ yer life was a whore I’d’ve buried ya in price-tagged pussy months ago!” he lectured, closing the distance between us. “But Maggie wasn’t no whore, an’ it’s time ya got back to—”
Rage filled my eyes. The fire that burned in me would have ignited the heat outside the store. The entire place, having heard the one name I never allowed uttered, dropped silent, as if about to witness a murder.
They might fuckin very well.
“Shut the fuck up, Daniel,” I said, my voice low, even, and laced with an acid edge that seemed to cut the very air between us.
The sting of the words meant little, though, as my eyes narrowed on him. He flinched and backed up. He had fucked up and he knew it, but it was too late. I was going to make a goddamn example of my only “family” so that all of my “friends” would get the picture really quick. I didn’t care if her name came to my mind every six seconds. No one was going to make it every second.
“Derek, all’s I’m tryin’ t’say is—”
“I don’t want to FUCKING HEAR IT!” I roared, quieting any lingering work before my voice returned to that acidic, sharp tone. “I want you… to get your ass back to work unloading these crates. I want you to keep these men working on doing the same. I want you to go about business as usual, and I want you to throw all of those into the fucking river.”
I swallowed a growl that, despite the effort, still managed to make itself heard and took a step towards him. I even had to tell myself to slow down, but there was zero chance of that happening. Not with what he had said.
Not with the scar that he had torn back open.
“And I want you to promise me you’ll never say her name again. In fact, I want you to promise me you’ll never have this conversation again. The subjects of… Maggie… of prostitutes, or my life—past or current—are officially off limits. Got it?”
Matty sighed and looked away. I didn’t lose my temper often, most especially with Matty, but of all the things he could have said…
And with the way this morning had gone…
“The boys and I will finish up around here,” he said, slowly shaking his head. My rage somewhat subsided, but it didn’t dissipate. “But ya can’t expect me to turn a blind eye to yer wellbeing, Derek. I made a promise to yer daddy that I’d look out for ya, an’, with all due respect, he was my boss first.”
“That’s nice, Matty,” I said, already starting to walk away. “You make that same promise to the old man about Dustin?”
I felt myself wince around my late brother’s name and was thankful Matty could only see my back. I also winced at the caustic nature of my words—it wasn’t fair to Matty that he got the brunt of my attitude right now.
But then again, how was it fair that my father, brother, and lover were all six feet under while I had to suffer the tragedy of life up here?
“I don’t think whores would’ve helped him when he was getting his throat cut by the Falcons.”
I couldn’t help myself. I fucking hated it. I hated that I couldn’t bite my tongue. Matty deserved better. Dustin’s name deserved better.
I… I didn’t deserve better, but I should have given better to those who deserved it.
“That ain’t fair,” Matty said.
It wasn’t.
But I wasn’t in a mood to rationally discuss fairness and life. I needed to get away from our base for the night. I needed some space.
I hoped on my chopper, took a deep breath, keyed the engine, and blazed off before I found myself saying something that would permanently scar my relationship with Matty.
4
Eve
“What is that?” the man who momentarily got to call me his asked, gesturing to a patch of black-and-white ink on my left calf. “That a monster tat or something?”
Sitting in the front seat of some beat-up Honda from the 20th century, I leaned forward, looking seductive but feeling anything but. The man in front of me had grease stains on his work shirt. He looked exactly like the type of client that would come to me frequently but would never admit it.
He was what Crystal called “Private John.” Private John led a private life of private desperation—he probably worked an anonymous job, felt anonymous on the dating scene, and felt like he had no one whom he could share his life story with. It was tragic and unsettling to hear of such a thing existing in such harsh terms, but of all the clients we got, the Private Johns were the most confident.
There were also the Cocky Johns—not so named because of their members—the Novel Johns—the first timers, the ones getting a hooker to break their virginity—and the Dick Johns, the ones who used us for power trips.
Of all of these, I guess my “favorite” was the Private John in that I gave them not just physical release but emotional and mental satisfaction. The poor guys probably had very little attention and affection—at best, they might have a wife that once loved them but now remained married solely for the sake of some kids the John never really wanted, their house a slow march to the grave.
Morbid? Maybe. But Crystal had a way of cutting through the fluff and to the core.
And besides, when I was with the Private Johns, I didn’t care about their past or why they had called me. I would think about it in darker moments, yes, but in moments like these? I just wanted to deliver the service, get some emotional satisfaction from the man, and get my cash.
�
�It’s Dracula,” I corrected half-heartedly, not interested in talking about my only tattoo.
The man had paid for a blowjob, put cash in my hand upfront to get it, and I wanted nothing more than to get the rubber on him so that I could get started on finishing him. As long as he expressed some sort of gratitude for the work done, I could work with that.
That, and the notion of talking about why I loved my Dracula tattoo in that particular moment just seemed… it was bad business. What would happen when Rock found out I’d only had one client from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. because I had done nothing but discuss art with my John.
And right now, I could tell that the John was stalling, seemingly out of a sense of nervousness and fear. He might have been a Private John, but he also had a little bit of Novel John in him, at least in that it was almost certainly his first time with a whore, if not with a woman period.
Though that might be possible too.
“Something wrong, baby?” I asked in a trained voice that was both sultry and motherly. To my ears, it was like being on stage and being aware I was acting.
To the man, it said, “I care, but I also really wanna suck this cock so dry it’ll look like a desert after. This cock, which is bigger and better than any cock I’ve seen and is surely packing nothing but future presidents and rock stars, is going to get twisted and sucked and licked until you beg for me to stop. I care enough that you’re going to have the best time of your life.”
It was a voice that Crystal had worked long and hard to teach me. It was a voice that worked quite often in transitioning from talking to sucking.
It was also a voice that never failed to make me feel dirty and cheap.
“I just… it’s just…” the man sighed, obviously nervous and uncomfortable.
Men in those circumstances often lost control of everything except their pride. Even that was a struggle to hold on to given the circumstances, but many fought to keep it.
I guess I should have not been surprised, then, when he said, “I don’t understand why you’d have a Dracula tattoo. It just seems…”
He didn’t have the balls to finish his sentence. I knew why. He found it unbecoming of a whore—a whore was just supposed to be a human acting as a sex toy, not someone with thoughts, hopes, and dreams.
Perhaps, because he now realized I was more than just a vagina, that I was a woman, he began to see me as something more than he had paid for.
You can’t get it up because the whore’s got a little ink? There’s no way you’re thinking of all the guys who’d bust your balls for paying for it, or the things your mom might say if she found out, or even how I somehow remind you of an old girlfriend or, better yet, your cousin or even maybe your sister and it’s putting a bit of a stutter in your rudder, right?
No, sir. It’s the whore’s Dracula tattoo that’s to blame for the dead worm in your shorts. I’m sure that is exactly it. I’m glad we thought this through and came to this conclusion, John.
But could I say any of that?
Hell no.
Rock had taught me the art of keeping my mouth shut except for when there was dick to be sucked.
So instead, all I said was, “Because I’m a creature of the night with an oral fixation, baby. Now why don’t you let me help you?”
His eyes went wide and I could see the bulge in his pants rising.
“Help.”
Something about that word almost always, without fail, seemed to stir a man’s cock into action, to spring it back into being, and to make him ready to fuck me like a dog in heat. In my psychological moments, I wondered if it just reminded men of bad pornos they watched, or if it was something much deeper—maybe they had some weird Oedipal complex issues in which they wanted someone to act like their mother as well as their lovers.
Gross? Sure. But what part of “meet a complete stranger, put latex on his genitals, and suck without any pretext,” was sanitary? What part of “job requirements include powder on your pussy and slutty clothes in public” was sexy and beautiful?
Not a damn bit of it.
With most Johns, it was here that I played the role of excited and giddy lover. I might coo and might look in awe as the John pulled his pants off, revealing a cock that never impressed me. Crystal had taught me this was the moment that needed to be sugarcoated the most, because a man who couldn’t get hard was an angry customer. Right or wrong, the end result was we were responsible for our customer’s erections, and if the John couldn’t get it up, and the “bad review” made its way around…
The power our facial expressions, our words, and our actions had over men’s egos was something I wished I’d known so much earlier. I would have had much more control over my first time and my first college boyfriend. It wasn’t some dominance, some fetish I wanted—I just wouldn’t have gotten pushed around as much as I did. I didn’t date assholes per se, but guys seemingly had a sixth sense for when they could take advantage of girls and did so without shame.
Now that I knew that, though, the terrible irony was if I ever did try that game, the customer would say something and I’d have a bullet in my body. Maybe once in a while a customer would request that I act controlling and dominating, but that was different. I wanted organic control, not control just sloppily handed over to me.
Well, with most Johns, I would have done this. But by now, I had picked up on the fact that it was his first time with a prostitute, meaning I could more or less get away with anything so long as an orgasm came at the end of our time. And that was pathetically easy to make happen.
Us gals may not have always came, but for men, it just took some trial and error to figure out what most got them off—oral, stroking, sex, anal, some other weird ass kinky shit. A woman who couldn’t get a stranger to come was a woman who didn’t need to be a prostitute.
Need to be. What the fuck has my world come to that I’m thinking like that?
He was still only half-hard, his mind not quite there even with a half-assed “oooh,” but I went ahead and slipped the condom on him anyways. He wouldn’t know any better, and I wanted to get this over with. I never envisioned “Effective at putting on a condom” as something I could list on my resume.
From there, as Crystal liked to say, I “licked the lollipop” treating the glans like a Tootsie Roll. Like much of what I thought of the job, I found it a bit ridiculous, but it got the job started.
“Oh my fucking God.”
I think that’s what the man said, but in that moment, I didn’t really care. I hope he wasn’t expecting me to talk right now, because my job was not to use my mouth for speaking.
Soon, he reached enough stiffness that I could focus on the task at hand. I stifled a gag as I breathed through the nose, the better to avoid having to taste or inhale latex, and settled into a mindless, easy rhythm that just asked “when” not “if” for a man to orgasm.
I knew that moments like this likely meant something to the men. Even the seasoned patrons who’d done this a million times were there to achieve something, no matter how brief and insubstantial that achievement was. Whether they’d go on to remember the event or not, it meant something to them. I suppose I should have taken some meaning out of that, but by this point…
When I’d first started, I worried that each time would mean something to me, as well, and that every encounter would somehow feel either like an assault or, worse yet, like the start of something. I never really believed I’d fall for one of the men paying for my services—“Johns” as I came to know them—but I’d been to college, I’d had my crazy moments, and, yeah, the few casual blowjobs I’d given in those few dorm rooms had, in some way or another, felt like maybe they were the start of something more. My fresh mind at the time felt like such a thing could happen, albeit in the reverse direction, as a hooker.
In those moments, drunk or high from whatever party I’d been attending and working my sloppy routine, I’d catch myself wondering if the guy I was going down on would call me the next day, if maybe this lewd
encounter might be the catalyst to something greater. I might have been naive, but it wasn’t too farfetched to believe a random blowjob might, in some weird way, blossom into something more. Women thrived on feelings in the mind, men thrived on feelings in the dick—if it was naive, it wasn’t high up on the scale of naivity.
And it was exactly that juvenile, college-born romanticism that had me so nervous about the job I was being forced to do. I worried that the job would trigger dark emotions in me, turn me suicidal, or break me in some fashion. Maybe it would someday. I sadly could not say that it was out of the question.
But for today? Being a prostitute felt more like being a line operator at some sort of damp, sweaty factory, perhaps a UPS fulfillment center or some mass arena. I could have just as easily been pulling a lever or snapping together pieces on an assembly line.
Up, down, twist, repeat.
Up, down, twist, repeat.
Quota’s not being filled? Crank up the speed on this, baby! Show the boys down in scheduling what we can really do! Now, double-time:
Up, down, twist, repeat!
Up, down, twist, repeat!
Don’t forget your hardhats! There’s dangers out there on the work floor!
If not for the cock in my mouth, I would have sighed. I once had ambitions on joining a major finance firm.
And now I was likely sucking the dicks of some of the men I would have wound up working with. None of them would have ever known, but that didn’t matter a damn bit.
Because I knew.
The only “good” part about the monotony of this job was that I could lose myself to the repetitive movements and the worst thing that’d happen is I didn’t realize they’d finished until they started squirming and grunting like idiots. Worst thing to come from that is the guy thinks I genuinely enjoyed “helping” them and they either pay extra or make sure to come back.
So, in other words, the “worst” case scenario still meant I profited. I had very little reason to pretend to remain present in the moment. No guy had ever called me out for it, and I had never even gotten the vibe that a guy had ever wanted to call me out for it.