A Street Girl Named Desire: A Novel (15 page)

“Where you think you goin?” she asked. Desire tried to keep her cool, wanting Tony to believe that she could do whatever she pleased.

“Uh … I'm taking Desire out to dinner,” Tony offered.

“Not in that,” Hattie Mae said. “Now, you go back in there and put some real clothes on. Otherwise, we can all sit at that table in there and eat what I done fixed.”

“Grandma, you seen this outfit before,” Desire lied. Her eyes pleaded with Hattie Mae to not embarrass her in front of the most popular guy in school. Tiah sat uncomfortably on the edge of the couch, near Tony. Hattie Mae noticed how handsome the young man was. He
was
dressed nicely, and Hattie Mae had respected the fact that he had called her “ma'am.” She decided to let Desire get away with something—this time.

“We'll be back before ten,” Desire said, grabbing Tony's hand and leading him toward the door. Before they left, however, she dropped his hand and walked over to give Hattie Mae a huge kiss. “If you're asleep when I get back, I'll come wake you up.”

“Okay, baby,” Hattie Mae said. After Desire and Tony left, she and Tiah headed to the kitchen to eat.

It turned out Tony was taking Desire not to some fancy restaurant for dinner, as his outfit suggested, but to the apartment of one of his older friends, who had graduated and now sold drugs. The apartment was near 131st and Lenox, and the inside hallways
of the building were littered with cigar ash, cigarette butts, and paint that had chipped off the walls. They could smell weed reeking through the hallways on their entire walk up to the third floor. As soon as they entered the apartment, they were in the kitchen, where a pregnant girl sat at a table with a huge pile of weed in the center. Desire had never seen so much weed in her life. The pile had to have been at least two feet high. The pregnant girl quickly snatched up small portions of the pile and stuffed them into little plastic baggies of various sizes. She took one look at Desire and rolled her eyes. All the other guys were trying to control their stares, since it was obvious that Desire was Tony's date. Rap music blasted from the stereo, so no one was able to talk. Tony slapped hands with the few guys standing up in the room. One of them was already passing a blunt, and Tony and Desire were next in the rotation. Desire had not smoked weed in years, ever since she had decided to turn her life around, but she decided to loosen up a little bit tonight. She was certain that this was just a pit stop to get her a little high before Tony took her to dinner. She had a couple pulls of the blunt to relax.

After the blunt was finished, Tony led Desire down a long hallway into a small living room, where another group of guys sat around smoking blunts and playing Nintendo. They looked up long enough to undress Desire with their eyes. One of the guys even stopped playing so he could mutter, “Damn …” Everyone in the room simply exchanged head nods. Desire sat down uncomfortably next to Tony, wondering just how long they were going to be here. Above the music and video games, she could hear the apartment door opening and closing as customers
stopped by. Tony sat blunted out on the sofa, enthralled in the other guys' video game and ignoring Desire completely.

“You trying to get in?” one dude asked Tony when it became clear he had lost a game.

“Naw,” Tony answered. “Well, I'm not trying to get in
this
game, if you know what I mean.”

The guys in the room chuckled as if Desire weren't even there. She just smiled uncomfortably as Tony grabbed her hand. Then he began rubbing the skin that was exposed through the holes in her outfit. His hands did feel good against her skin.

Suddenly, he said, “Let's go in the back.”

Desire agreed. She did not like the crowd that was in the apartment. It reminded her too much of cats she had run with in the Midtown Pickpocket Exchange. She was past all that now.

Tony led her down another hallway in the L-shaped apartment. There was a tiny room in the back with a twin-sized bed. The room was lit by a red light. Posters of singers from
Fresh
magazine dotted the walls. Desire noticed the bed looked like it had been slept in and made up hastily. Within seconds, Tony was grinding a very hard penis against her and grabbing her ass.

“Wait a minute, Tony,” Desire said as she fought his tongue, which was rolling around in her mouth. “I thought we was going to dinner?”

“We gonna go to dinner,” Tony said. “Let's have some dessert first.”

He lifted Desire up and placed her on the bed. All of his weight crushed down upon her, making it hard for her to speak.

“Tony, I ain't say I was gonna go out with you so I could fuck you,” she said.

“I ain't sayin we gotta fuck,” Tony said. He was out of control. He was the star of the basketball team, and had the strength to prove it. He was well over six feet tall. Desire tried to push him off of her, but failed.

“Why you wanna fight me?” Tony asked. “You know you want this dick … I seen the way you been looking at me from the first day we met.”

Desire relaxed a little and let Tony's kisses overtake her body. Suddenly, she could tell that the music had been turned up on the other side of the door. She then noticed a used condom tied into a knot and thrown in a corner. It was hard for her to enjoy Tony's kisses as he made his way down to her breasts when she was wondering just how many other girls had been in this bed, and whether or not Tony had been with them. Tony continued to suck her breasts and rub his hands along her thighs. Desire was so high that she forgot about the other people in the apartment, and she let him pull her dress up so that he could wrap her legs around him.

“There you go …” Tony muttered, as he became even more excited. The tiny bed began to squeak as he pressed himself up against her with all his might, taking his hands and rubbing her between her legs. Desire was uncomfortable, but she let him keep going because it felt good.

Despite all of her experience on the street, Desire had none when it came to sex. She had never let any of the guys in the gang get near her. Other than some occasional kissing and bumping and grinding with a couple cats over the years, she was fairly inexperienced for most girls her age. Tony could sense that and it was exactly what he liked. He got tired of chasing after skuzzy
hoes and not knowing where the pussy had been. He couldn't wait to get deep inside Desire.

Desire hadn't been expecting for him to move her panties to the side and touch her exposed pussy. But that's exactly what he did. She then realized that he had somehow managed to pull his penis out of his slacks without her noticing, probably because she had been too caught up in feeling. His penis felt warm and hot against her pussy. She didn't mind him stroking it against her flesh, but she noticed that he was dangerously close to the opening of her vagina. He hadn't asked her if they could go that far, and he hadn't shown her a condom.

“Tony, I don't like this,” Desire said, struggling to remove her legs from around his back. Tony just ignored her, and pushed her legs open even wider. He used the muscles in his arms to keep Desire's legs open against her will. Before she knew it, he had ripped her panties so that he could start working his dick inside of her. He rubbed her pussy hard to spread out the wetness she had created, so that his job would be that much easier.

“Tony,” Desire pleaded, fully aware of what was about to happen. “I ain't never done this before …” she cried loudly, hoping he would stop, and the bed began to make even more noise as they struggled. Tony was grunting and groaning as he rubbed against her like she hadn't said a word. She knew that she couldn't do shit with a nigga as big as Tony, and the fact that she was already high and underneath him had her doubting her ability to fight her way out of this one. She thought about all the people on the other side of the door, who would hear her screams and possibly interpret them as cries of passion. Even worse, what if all the strangers in the apartment turned on her and took Tony's side if
she screamed rape? The pregnant girl had already given her bitchy stares. They could all jump on her rather than risk her going to the cops to rat out Tony She heard laughter on the other side of the door, and saw shadows of feet breaking up the light that trickled underneath it.

Desire was stiff and tears streamed down her face as Tony smashed his way into her without a condom. He snatched down his pants and yanked up Desire's dress as he raised her to him once he had found the entrance to her pussy. It felt like her pelvis was splitting in two. Sharp pains shot up through her stomach. Tony's dick length matched his height, and he was hell-bent on getting all of it inside Desire. He pushed and pumped until they were both nearly hanging off the bed. He was lost in his own world and cared nothing about Desire's pleasure anymore. He held her down tight on the bed and covered her mouth so she couldn't scream as he pumped into her for as hard and long as he could hold out. Desire disappeared into a dream world, imagining she was at a party, letting herself focus on the music and laughter on the other side of the door.

Tony didn't even bother to walk Desire down the stairs so she could catch a gypsy cab when it was all over. He had immediately left the room and joined in the video game, leaving Desire to stare at the ceiling and contemplate the awful soreness between her legs. The insides of her thighs were badly bruised. She limped outside the back room, and Tony didn't even acknowledge her by looking up from the game. Once she arrived home, Hattie Mae was sleeping. Desire had wanted to wake her, as she had promised, but she could only go to the shower and let the water wash the horrible night away.

A
s Desire grew into womanhood, her body went through transformations that would have made any brick house envious. Baggy jeans and sweatsuits were definitely things of the past. Prom night had shown her what the power of playing up her sex could do, and she had done it from that night on. Desire replaced her old stuff with sleek and sexy hoochie-wear. The memories of having to carry a few modest items of clothing around in a cardboard suitcase faded with each and every expensive purse, bag, shoe or dress that she threw money on a store counter for. The gear that she wore included nothing but top-of-the-line outfits, with designer labels the average person couldn't even pronounce and price tags that would make anyone stutter. She wouldn't
be caught dead wearing anything the average chicken head from the neighborhood was wearing or could afford. Desire would joke, “I can't wear that cheap shit because I'm allergic to it, and I'd start breaking out in feathers.”

Though Desire and Tiah were seventeen and sixteen respectively, their bodies and mannerisms attracted and demanded attention from grown men—and even women—everywhere they went. Sinister things had started to happen behind Hattie Mae's back. The girls made sure they were in church every Sunday, up front in the pews or singing in the choir. Carvelas and Desire avoided each other as much as possible. He was heartbroken, and had made it known. Desire was too proud to apologize or beg for his friendship, and so she lost it. Chanel had faded to the back, fearing that Desire was somebody she better not piss off if she wanted to keep her man. Desire changed, and Hattie Mae took notice but kept quiet. She had thought she was breaking the transfer of Nika's genes to Desire when with her teeth she had cut the umbilical cord that connected mother and child. She'd hoped and prayed that that one act meant Desire would never have the same hungers her mother had had. But Hattie Mae didn't know that exactly what she prayed didn't happen was actually happening. Life was stable and routine for a while, on the surface, but in reality things had dramatically changed.

It took money to look good. Desire and Tiah thought they needed money even to dream. Rather than looking at the blessings they had, they instead fantasized about being rich and famous in the future: the men they could pull, the clothes they could wear, the places they could travel, the cars they could buy. It was as if the four years with Hattie Mae had meant nothing. It
had only provided them with the momentary stability they needed to catch a little breath before they started running the fast life again. This time, that meant experimenting in an area more dangerous than boosting, at least emotionally: stripping. They supported their lifestyle by working as strippers at a club in the Bronx. This is where they learned just how financially viable and lucrative the art of making love without penetration could be. They made as much as six hundred dollars a night for three hours work, while still in high school. They were amazed how much money there was to be made by simply gyrating and rubbing up on men.

Desire was an instant star from day one because she was double-jointed in both her legs and her arms. She could contort her body in any sexual position and had men busting nuts just from watching her perform. For those that were lucky enough to have enough dough to fuck with, she made it worth their while. Though Carvelas had probably been the one who deserved her virginity, Tony had taken it. But days later, he had acted as if he didn't know Desire when she bumped into him and Chanel in the lunchroom. He moved closer to Chanel as Desire approached, debating whether or not to confront him about raping her. But she was too ashamed that she had tried to steal Chanel's man, and it obviously hadn't worked. She decided then that the next time she had sex, the motherfucker would have to pay her. And that's exactly what happened with the first man she met in the strip club who wasn't satisfied by just watching her dance. And it was what happened with the next, and the one after him, until Desire could no longer remember the faces or the names. Desire was all about the paper and was a beast at what she did. She didn't discriminate.
She didn't care if the dude worked for Microsoft or McDonald's.