Roxanne: From Addict to Hustler

by King Benjamin

  “Come here!” he barked. I went to the car and leaned on the door. “Get in,” he ordered. I opened the door to the Fleetwood, falling inside and soon as I was in, he grabbed my hair and wrapped it around his fist then, bam! He slapped me so hard the stinging pain occupied my every thought. Then he rammed my head into the dashboard unexpectedly.

  “What the fuck I tell you about turning down dates?” Wheels shouted.

  Bam! Again with the dashboard. “What I tell you?”

  “Okay, okay!” I begged and he finally released my hair and pulled off slowly. He drove in silence with the sound of contemporary jazz blasting through the speakers. We ended up on Lagrange Boulevard and I spotted hoes I remembered seeing walking the strip as a kid. Cherry Street didn’t have a lot of competition, but Lagrange was flooded.

  “You know how many hoes I got out here?” Wheels said.

  “No.”

  “Ninety percent of the hoes you see out here work for me,” he informed me. I didn’t believe him, but even if I did, what was the point in telling me? I wondered. “I set you up on Cherry Street because I felt like you were special, but if you want, I can make it a lot harder for you. I can put you out here with these bitches and they gon’ make you earn your keep for real. It’s a war zone out here. Is that what you want?”

  I surveyed the area and the competition. Half of them looked like they were losing the war on drugs and the other half were pretty but aging.

  “They can’t fuck with me anyway so it doesn’t matter,” I said, meaning every word of it. He just grinned as our eyes connected momentarily. After that, he didn’t seem mad at me anymore. He circled the block one time and then hit the auto locks.

  “Okay, get out,” he ordered.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Show me they can’t fuck with you.”

  I guess he thought he would teach me a lesson by sending me out with the wolves, but I welcomed the challenge. I made five hundred dollars off my first trick alone, but I had to let him piss on me. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, I mean, it didn’t get in my mouth or anything. I pulled in a total of eleven hundred dollars that night and I only had five dates. I only fucked two of the five, but I gave three head jobs. I learned that day that three was my absolute limit on head jobs, after that, I’m cooked.

  Wheels was so proud of me; he gave me Sunday off and I spent it with him. He took me to the mall and bought me a sexy new dress to wear then he took me to dinner. I had a small bruise on my forehead from when he attacked me, but my bang covered it up.

  That day I felt like his woman instead of his whore, and he even laid the pound game on me that night. Each time Wheels fucked me I grew more attached to him, never considering how my sister would feel about all of it. It was just good sex and I figured she’d understand. I wished more of my clients would be like Wheels.

  The way he used to manhandle my small frame, tossing me around and fucking me in all these crazy positions, just made me addicted to the dick. The way he put in work if I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn he was in love with me. He told me from now on he wanted me to work Lagrange on the weekends.

  He said he had been underestimating my potential and that some of the other hoes on that strip needed to step up their game or be replaced. The pressure he put on the other girls after my arrival began to cause conflict between us. They knew I was his new bottom bitch, and I was responsible for their new quota. One night, three of the girls attacked me from behind, blackening my eye and busting my lip. I only got two dates the whole night and when I told Wheels what happened, he beat the shit out of all of them.

  Once Carrie got home, things got even more hectic because most of her tricks were my tricks now; not to mention my relationship with Wheels had her heated, but she tried to pretend it didn’t at first. After she had been home less than a week, we had two fistfights two nights in a row. A week later, I got triple-teamed again and that bitch, Carrie, didn’t even help me.

  After that, I really didn’t want to do it anymore. I had barely been in the game for two whole months and it had already lost its appeal. I was the baddest bitch on the stroll, just like I knew I would be, but it was costing me severely. All the girls were jealous of me and I didn’t have one friend in any of them.

  “Fuck them bitches, I’m the only friend you need!” Wheels would always say. He told me adversity builds character and that I should fight through it. Then he’d smack me on my ass and send me back on the stroll with the wolves to make his money. With a bruised face, I couldn’t pull in the same dollars I usually did, which upset Wheels all over again.

  ****

  One day, I was out on Cherry Street and I saw my best friend, Keisha’s, blue Integra coming straight at me. I moved closer to the bus stop in an attempt to pretend I was waiting for the bus. She was one of the only people I was ashamed to catch me doing what I was doing. I knew if she saw me, I would have to hear her judgmental bullshit. She drove past me at first, but then she stopped and hit reverse after she realized it was me. She backed up to where I was standing.

  “I know… I just know you ain’t out here hoeing?”

  “What? Bitch don’t you got somewhere to be?” I snapped.

  “I heard this what your dumb ass been up to and I said not my girl, ain’t no way in hell,” she said.

  “Keisha, I’m not trying to hear all that. I’m really not trying to hear it,” I said, waving her off.

  “Get yo’ stupid ass in this car,” she ordered.

  “Hell no. For what?”

  “Since when did you need a reason? Get in the car, I wanna talk to you.”

  I didn’t wanna be mean to Keisha, even though she was being mean to me. She was the only real friend I had, so I got in the car and Keisha drove off, giving me a lecture like she was my mom.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you know you could get killed out here? You could get raped out here. Half these muthafuckas you’re running around with probably got AIDS.”

  “I always use protection,” I said truthfully.

  “What kind of protection you got for a nigga with a .357 Magnum? Huh?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that, so I just discontinued the conversation.

  “You can let me out right here,” I said.

  “Roxanne, you need to be thankful somebody cares about your stupid ass.”

  “I am thankful and stop calling me stupid.”

  It was a title I’d come to get used to later on.

  “I just can’t believe you,” Keisha said, shaking her head.

  “Look, this is my life, Keisha. I know you love me, but this is my life and you know I’m gonna do what I wanna do.”

  Keisha was getting all emotional for no reason. I could hear it all in her voice.

  “I just don’t understand what would make you do something like this. You could easily go back to school, or go get a job if you’re not gonna go back to school. Make me understand… Why?”

  “Because I don’t wanna get a job, and I don’t wanna go back to school. I wanna do what I’m doing.”

  But the truth was, I didn’t want to do it anymore. The thrill was gone, but my loyalty to Wheels wasn’t. At that point in time, all I wanted to do was make him happy, but it became harder and harder. After my run in with Keisha, I began to get arrested on a regular basis, which meant I was costing him money instead of making it.

  He became more and more abusive and I truly wanted out after that. I can’t really explain why I stuck around. He never threatened to kill me if I left or anything, but the mental brainwashing that he had done in a short time made me feel like I needed him. He took most of my money, but even still, I always had what I needed and a little more. For that reason, I felt like I owed it to him to stay down.

  My lucky break finally came one day, when Wheels was found dead in his Cadillac with two gunshots to the head. Once I was freed from his influence, I began to understand that I had been brainwashed. I promised myself that I would n
ever be pimped again. If anybody was gonna sell my pussy and make money off of it, it would be me.

  Chapter 2

  After Wheels’s death, I laid off turning tricks for a while and became a homebody. I knew everybody knew about me, so I wasn’t comfortable with my old friends anymore. Carrie continued to do her thing, but she had moved out of the house with me and Mom so I hardly ever saw her. Keisha was the only one of my friends that I talked to from time to time.

  I was grateful that she still considered me a friend. I spent my days around the house, smoking weed with my mom and her new boyfriend, Terry. One thing I had learned from the whole ordeal with Wheels was how to fuck with dudes’ heads. My mom was dating a black man, which was a first but I thought he was cute. I’d drop subtle hints and suggestive glances when my mom was gone out of the room.

  It was just harmless flirting; I never planned on doing anything. After some months passed, I got bored just sitting around the house, so I let Keisha convince me to get a job with her at McDonalds, where her sister was the manager. It didn’t have all the excitement of the stroll, but it beat sitting at home bored all day. I was stationed on fries and I spent way more time talking than I did working. All the men that worked there wanted either me, Keisha, or both of us but because she was there, I acted more dignified than I would have. Something about that girl made me afraid to be myself no matter how hard I tried.

  I mean, all of our other friends were whores too, they just weren’t getting nearly as much money out of it as I was—even if it went in Wheels’s pocket. The point is, I never saw her ride them like that. I made enough money after working at McDonalds a few months to buy my first car; a red Tempo. I was proud of my independence and I think my mom got jealous because she didn’t have a car. She started charging me rent because I was eighteen, but I never remembered Carrie paying any rent.

  I think all my flirting with Terry began to work a little too well, because he became obsessed with me. I’d come in from work and he’d be in the living room, waiting on me with no shirt on, looking hella buffed. I knew he was waiting on me because he would always smile when I came in. Terry was light-skinned, with a goatee that was slowly turning gray. He was twenty years my senior, but I’d heard him and my mom doing it several times and it sounded just like me and Wheels fucking, which made me kinda curious.

  My mom had started working nights as a security guard and Terry didn’t have a job, so every night he’d be right there waiting on me. He’d roll up three or four joints and we’d sit there and get high as a kite, and he’d ask me a million questions. Personal shit like, how old I was when I lost my virginity, and how did it feel? How many men I’d been with?

  I couldn’t answer that one, but the conversation always seemed to get veered towards sex. Since that was my forte I would ramble on without shame, even telling him he wouldn’t be able to handle me. One night he got me drunk, which was easy because I wasn’t a big drinker back then. After he knew I was loose, he asked me if he could eat my pussy. I told him, yes, but we couldn’t have sex because he was my mom’s boyfriend.

  Turns out Terry was the best lick ‘em low lover you’d ever wanna meet. I sat on the edge of the bed while he bent down on one knee and went between my legs. He circled and lapped at my clit slowly and gently like his favorite ice crème.

  My pink lips had never felt such tender sensuality. As Wheels would say, he was very ‘headstrong.’ His cerebral game matched my own and it made my juices flow as he opened my lips and went deeper. His tongue flipped up and down at rapid speed and I began squeezing his head with my legs and mashing his face against my lips as I shuddered in ecstasy.

  By the time he laid me down I’d forgotten where I was, who he was and any other rationality. I dug his rod inside of me and wrapped my legs around him tightly. My fingernails clamped onto his back as he cupped my ass with a firm grip pounding away.

  “Oh my fucking God!” I yelled out feeling as close to heaven as I’d ever get. “Oh God! Oh God, oh God,” I continued. Then he flipped me on my side and scissored me, until I started sounding retarded. By the time he turned me on my stomach, all I could do was buck and shiver as he shot gush all inside me. He laid on top of me with his penis hanging down my back, kissing my neck like I was his now.

  The reality of it all hit me like a brick when I came down from my sex high. I had fucked my mom’s boyfriend without even using a condom. I jumped up in a panic and put him out of my room, more fearful of getting caught than anything. My regrets began to haunt me later as I jumped in the shower, trying to wash away my transgressions. Now for the life of me at that time, I honestly couldn’t fathom what I was thinking. I knew it had been a while since I’d had sex, but Jesus, my mom’s man?

  I stayed away from Terry for months after that, but my pussy despised me for it. After a while, I began to rationalize and tell myself one time and ten times were no different. I was already dead wrong. I not only liked Terry for the sex, I thought he was a cool person and when he continued to come on to me; I don’t know, I couldn’t continue to resist.

  I started sleeping with him again and not every blue moon, more like every chance we got all the way up until we got caught red-handed. We were lying in my bed, just about to start round two, when my mom popped up at home three hours early from work. We were both butt naked and no amount of explaining would have done any good.

  “You dirty little bitch!” my mom yelled as she chased me through the house, beating me with a broomstick. She cornered me in the bathroom still naked, and whacked me over the head repeatedly, calling me everything but my government name.

  I tried to block some of the blows with my forearms, but that hurt just as bad. I tried to grab the broom away from her but then she began punching me with her fist. I decided enough was enough and began fighting back by kicking my mom in her stomach. One hard swift kick sent her crashing to the ground. She lay curled up on the floor in serious pain, so I immediately ran over to her concerned and full of remorse.

  “Mom! Mom, you okay?”

  She reached up and wrapped her hands around my neck and began choking me like a mad woman. I felt myself about to pass out, but Terry came and pulled her off of me just in time.

  My mom kicked me and Terry out, but by this time I had enough money saved to get my own apartment. Terry still didn’t have a job or a place to stay, so I ended up letting him move in with me. I really regretted stealing my mom’s man, but not for the reason you’d think.

  We became a couple and I really couldn’t believe that under those circumstances, Terry was actually expecting fidelity with me. What’s even crazier is that I actually tried to be faithful to him, because he treated me so good. He’d cook for me, give me massages, run my bathwater and even suck my toes. I wasn’t used to that kind of treatment.

  When I told him we couldn’t make it on my McDonalds check alone, he went out and found a gig at a welding plant. Everything was perfect except for my relationship with my family. Carrie asked me if she could move in with me when things got real rough on the streets, but I had to say no because I knew that was a train wreck waiting to happen. I didn’t trust Carrie, but I trusted Terry even less. I’d seen his work firsthand and I wasn’t about to share my man like my mom did. Terry always kept himself well-groomed and clean.

  Every payday he’d go to the barbershop before he came home. He didn’t dress flashy or anything but he was a very attractive man, so it didn’t take much for him to catch the average girl’s eye. When he stopped going to the barbershop every payday, I questioned him about it and he said he was saving his money for something special.

  “Something special like what?” I questioned.

  “Something for you,” Terry said.

  My mind began to roam with all the possibilities. Of course an engagement ring crossed my mind and although I had developed strong feelings for Terry, marriage was out of the question. I was only nineteen years old and I wasn’t about to be tied down. I never knew when I would grow bored with
Terry.

  Working a nine to five was starting to kill my zest for life and I found myself hanging out with some of my old friends from high school, trying to recapture what we once had. It was strange now because everyone knew about me turning tricks on the hoe stroll, so they pretended to be better than me now. I hate fake bitches. Anyway, while I was hanging out, it seemed Terry was doing some hanging of his own.

  No matter what time I came home, Terry always came home later. At first, I didn’t really care, but then he started to become more and more unconcerned with his hygiene. He’d come home with a body odor and he wouldn’t even get in the shower, unless I told him he smelled. He became more introverted and when I asked him about his whereabouts, he’d smile snidely.

  “Did I ask you where you be at after work?” he’d say.

  “All I know is you been acting real strange lately.”

  When I said that, he grew combative so I left it alone.

  A week later, I drove past a raunchy motel that was known as a crack haven and I spotted Terry coming out with a crack whore. I didn’t even flip because I was the heartbreaker, not the heartbroken. When he came home that night, I calmly questioned him.

  “Sooo… you wanna tell me about the crack whore I saw you coming out the motel with?”

  He faked his shock.

  “What? You ain’t seen me coming out no damn motel with nobody.”

  “Terry… I looked right at you.”

  “Look, I ain’t been at no motel and I ain’t been with no crack whore, alright?”

  I laughed because I knew he was lying. He knew I knew he was lying.

  “All I’m saying is if you’re gonna be running around here fucking crackheads you need to start wearing a condom when you fuck me, because I’m not trying to die of AIDS.”

  He was still unswerving in his defense. “I said it wasn’t me. If you knew for sure it was me, you would’ve stopped and said, ‘What are you doing with this crack whore?’ But you didn’t, so don’t bring me that bullshit now.”