Sweeter Than Honey (5 page)

W
hat started out six months ago as a brilliant get-rich-quick scheme unexpectedly transitioned into the worst decision of my life! An epiphany, a paradigm shift—I didn’t care what one called it, I wanted to quit! Who in the hell did I fuck last night? That bothered me all day because obviously he knew me.

What in the world was I thinking?

Voluntarily putting my pussy on auction to the highest bidder left me feeling slimier than a green snail crawling on its belly.

Preparing for another night of prostitution in the glitzy and oh-so-seemingly glamorous city of Las Vegas, I sat in front of my designated vanity—surrounded by lights and cameras—incapacitated by depression. Fear weighed so heavily on my neck and shoulders that my head practically hung in my lap. I wanted to lift my eyelids but I couldn’t. What if I gazed into the mirror of my soul? What would I see? Who would I see? Definitely not the sweet, innocent little girl I…I paused, then exhaled.

The men I had sex with, like the one last night, never saw my inner beauty. All they wanted was “Action!” And as long as I was the center of attention, I allowed those men to do whatever they wanted, including making me feel worthless.

Take one! Take two! Cut! Action! Sunny, that’s my girl, one more time, from the top. Move your ass. Let’s go! Action, baby, action! You’re a keeper, doll.

Yeah, but for how long?

Willingly I played the leading role, the fool, some may say, but they don’t know me! I’m a good girl. Maybe too good.

Slowly I swiveled my vanity chair one hundred eighty degrees. I lifted my head, but I couldn’t dare face the mirror ’cause I knew he was there. Not physically. Not visibly on my shoulder with a red pitchfork. His presence was mental. Ready and waiting to intimidate me once more. So instead of finding the courage to face my fears and quit what I never should’ve started, I listened to his haunting voice resounding in my ear.

Imagining how Valentino set his prices, the auctioneer inside my head shouted, “Can I get ten…ten…can I get fifteen for this fine specimen of a woman?…Fifteen to the gentleman in the corner…twenty up front…can I get twenty-five for a night of unforgettable pleasure?…Twenty-five to the man right here…can I get thirty if she gets real dirty?…Thirty to the distinguished man in the blue tailor-made suit…can I get thirty-five?…Thirty going once, going twice, sold, to the gentleman in the blue tailor-made suit for thirty thousand dollars!”

The john’s filthy-rich salty spit licked onto my grimy skin burning my self-esteem into green mush forcing me to crawl back into my shell. Forget him. Tonight this wasn’t about him or them. It was about me.

Pivoting in my chair, I stared at the black-tinted windows surrounding the dressing room. I couldn’t see a thing. No one could see in. None of us could see out. I was tired of this shit, knowing something was wrong when Lace hadn’t shown up at the casino to meet us or at Valentino’s mansion to do her job. I knew she couldn’t be trusted. No one in this type of business can be trusted.

I whispered, “I hate myself.” Refusing to do another inspection, I said to the group, “Y’all get dressed.”

Why did I think I knew it all? Right now, I could’ve been at home in my room watching my favorite TV show,
Project Runway
, fixing my favorite cereal, Cocoa Puffs, waiting for the milk to turn chocolatey while chatting on the phone with Sapphire, or relaxing rereading my favorite book,
So You Call Yourself a Man
, by Carl Weber.

Why didn’t I listen to my mother and stay home like my twin sister until I graduated from college? No, I had to open my big mouth. “Mom, you’re too old to understand my generation. Things are different for us. We don’t go to church three times a week. I got this. I can make it on my own…besides, I’m grown. Mom, please stop telling me what to do.”

Dangling my red leather strapless diamond-heel stiletto on my French-pedicured toe, I laughed inside to keep from crying. Nodding, I thought,
You had to be a smart ass, didn’t cha?
I’m entitled to make mistakes, aren’t I? Right now all I want is to call my mommy and say, “I’m sorry.” Oh my God, what if my dad answers the phone instead?

Retrieving my hot-pink cell phone from underneath the gold thong I was wearing, I watched them get ready, including my best friends, Onyx and Starlet. Everyone was oblivious of my “I can’t do this anymore” attitude. Eleven drop-dead-gorgeous females scurried around the dressing room fussing over which high-priced outfits to wear.

I don’t wanna be wifee anymore. Where’s Lace? Where’s my madam?

Discreetly, using my camera phone, I snapped a few pictures of the girls getting dressed. I sent Sapphire a quick text:
My place at 6 a.m.
Then I took pictures of the room and a few of myself sitting in front the bright mirror. This was my finale.

“I got myself into this mess. Surely I’m slick enough to get out.” Quietly I reprimanded myself.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid
.

Not so long ago someone cared about more than my wicked tongue, my beautiful spirit, and my exotic looks. I’d heard them say, “Is she black? Is she white? Man, with an ass like that she’s gotta be Brazilian.” Who honestly cared? My high school sweetheart, that’s who. But his menial busboy income, ordinary looks, down-to-earth western drawl, and laid-back personality weren’t enough for a girl like me who was told every single day, “Wow! You’re gorgeous.”

I wanted more out of life than a thirty-dollar date—more money, more clothes, more fun, and more drugs. Actually, I needed more and more XTC to get me through the night, nights of not so pleasant pleasantry. Tossing my head back, I swallowed two small pills.

Lost and confused, I hopelessly stood on an invisible auction block. No one made me stay, yet I couldn’t take the necessary two steps down to walk away and leave this lifestyle forever.

What was I afraid of? Better question, who?

Hiding the metallic phone between my palms, I felt the mental shackles weighing heavily on my spirit. Incarcerated, held prisoner in my mind, all because Lace introduced me via a conference call to a man who’d told me he could show me how to make a quick dollar, quote unquote, some real money, utilizing the best asset God gave me: pussy, one of the few commodities I could simultaneously sell and maintain possession of my entire life.

Objectively I agreed but subjectively Sapphire was right. Why was I selling my pussy to make money for a man? A man I didn’t know, hadn’t seen, didn’t love, and recently hated with such passion that vomit percolated in my throat like hot lava. During my initial telephone interview, that man, Valentino James, and that woman, Lace, whom I’d grown to like, failed to highlight my intellect, my loving spirit, or my independence. From my first day of work, they did all the thinking for me, including Lace telling me last night that I had to get out of the business. I felt Lace really cared about me. Maybe the talk we had at the casino bar was her discreet way of telling me she was quitting and leaving me in charge.

If I was supposedly, as they claimed, invaluable, then why was everything a secret? Valentino, a modern day Charlie from that throwback TV show
Charlie’s Angels,
was a mystery man to all of his girls. Lace said I was her personal pick—girl number twelve. I was the last of her girls hired along with Onyx and Starlet, so she supposedly had some special affinity for me, for us. Like being in a gang, rumor had it, once hired, none of Valentino’s girls could quit. Not alive. Maybe Lace was setting me up to get arrested or something. Naw, she wouldn’t do that to me.

Glancing around the five-hundred-square-foot dressing room at my counterparts preparing for their fuck festival, I wondered, what made us do this? Top models who never quite made it to the top. Maybe it was the amazing layout of the space. A huge room bursting with the latest designer everything, perfect for an aspiring model’s go-see: Tiffany’s jewelry, clothes, shoes, Juicy Couture purses, underwear, wigs…everything a woman needed to wear in order to make a man look good right before stroking his ego, then sucking his dick. What hurt most was, we weren’t permitted to keep any of this stuff. Especially not the semen-stained underwear that could be used as evidence against Valentino and Lace.

“You okay?” Starlet asked, sitting in her makeup chair next to mine.

Turning on my CD player, I said, “I can’t do this anymore, Star.” With trembling hands clinging to each armrest, I continued. “I’m tired of sleeping with strange men every night, letting them have their way with me. This is destroying my body and my self-esteem. Yours too. You know you don’t like having these chauvinistic wealthy pigs waddle all in your pussy, especially the old farts, fucking us with everything except their dick. I want out. We started together. Let’s quit together. Come with me, Star. And let’s take O with us too.”

Gasping, Starlet inhaled, then whispered, “Are you crazy? Is that a cell phone? You’re gonna get all of us strip-searched if Valentino finds out. And Valentino’s arranged strip searches are worse than getting fucked by a trick with a twelve-inch dick.”

My eyes followed Starlet’s stunning amber and gray ones around the room until Starlet looked toward the floor, then continued, “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say no dumb stuff like quitting, Sunny.” Gently, Starlet held my hands. “Listen, all we have to do is get these guys off for a few hours and we’re done. I’ll help you get through the night. I’ll even do your tricks for you if you want me to. Just finish getting ready, okay?”

“Yeah, tonight, but what about tomorrow night, and the next night?” I countered.

“So what? You’re the top girl and you make two grand flippin’ tricks. Two grand a night cash and that’s more money than any of us and more than you made flippin’ burgers at In-and-Out, so what you complaining about?”

“I feel dirty, Star. Like I can’t wash ’em off me. At least I could wash off the smell of beef patties and french fries. But the semen in my mouth”—I swallowed, digging my fingernails under my chin—“the sperm trickling down my throat”—I shrieked, clawing my nails down to my collarbone, peeling away layers of radiant flesh. “When they cum inside me, I can’t get it, get them…” Fighting back tears, I blinked repeatedly, then sniffed, “Y’all go ahead without me.”

Fluttering away her tears, Starlet squeezed my hands. “Stop it, Sunny. You’re hurting yourself and me too.” Starlet’s bronzy-colored lips pressed against my forehead, then lingered for a moment. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself. I gotta finish getting ready, but whatever you do, don’t do anything stupid like break any more of Valentino’s rules. You’re in charge tonight. Do like Lace. Just chill right here until we get back.”

“Fuck Valentino!” I shouted. “I hate his fuckin’ ass!”

A wave of silence penetrated the entire room as eleven shoo-shooing females hushed in unison.

Starlet commented, “Where’s Lace when we need her?”

Yeah, where was Lace?

I whispered, “I’m tired of men and all their fucking one-sided rules! What about me? Don’t I have an opinion?! Don’t I have some say in whose dick penetrates my pussy? I hope Valentino’s balls fall off and roll across the floor like meatballs so I can crush ’em! Dirty bastard!”

One at a time the escorts resumed their conversations as I overheard girl six say, “Last hired. First fired. Sunny can’t handle the pressure. At the rate she’s going, she’ll be dead before midnight. She’s overpaid anyway. Listen to me, y’all use her as an example of what not to do.”

Girl six had justification for her jealousy when Lace had announced, “Sunny is the new wifee. If there’s a problem on the set, what Sunny says goes.”

Was this girl six’s way of showing animosity toward me? I wasn’t the one who kicked her ass, yet she respected Lace while disrespecting me. I should find another pimple on girl six’s ass and send her home for the hell of it.

Women hated on me worse than men. Women like girl six, who knew nothing about me, detested me simply because I was adorable, with light skin and blond hair. I knew I was a black woman and proud of it, but they thought that I felt I was white, I guess because I wasn’t black enough to them. Girl six was remarkably picturesque, but like other women, she masked her low self-esteem by criticizing females.

A woman’s self-induced inferiority complex could have me butt naked down on my knees sucking her man’s dick the second I entered the room. Women considered me a serious threat to their relationship like I wanted their men when it was their men who wanted me, paid to fuck me, and sexed me to the best of their agility because I represented every man’s fantasy fuck. Not to say he didn’t want his woman, but when he showed up at IP, he preferred me.

Onyx hurried over and pleaded, “Sunny, hush, girl. Stop talking crazy and get dressed so we can get the hell up outta here. In a couple of hours Star and I can go to your new spot and talk about this privately, but this is not the time or place to go dumb.” Onyx pivoted my chair, shifted her eyes toward the mirror, stared into mine, then said, “You know he’s watching us. Oh my God, what happened to your neck?”

Ignoring Onyx, I said quietly, “I can’t go.” Jabbing my middle finger in the air toward the camera, I mouthed, “Screw you, Mr. Big Shot.” I had to confront Valentino. Where in the hell did he get off living the lifestyle of the rich and infamous at our expense?

Onyx gasped as Starlet’s eyes almost popped out of the sockets.

Calmly, lowering my hand to my lap, I promised, “I won’t do anything else I shouldn’t do. But if something happens to me”—my eyes filled with salty tears that flowed into my wounds—“swear to me you won’t tell my parents the truth about what we do. I need y’all to cover for me tonight too. Star, you tell the limo driver I’m in charge tonight, and, O, you back her up confirming Lace will bring me over when she arrives.”

Onyx’s lips tightened. “If Valentino finds out about this, he’ll kill each of us. You know that, right?”

With confidence I replied, “By the time he finds out, I might kill him.”