Broken Girl(11)

When I met Sybil a couple years ago, she was twenty-one and just as brash and unemotional as I was. We accepted each other for all the f*cked up scars we had. She might not have had the same unhealed wounds that kept oozing from her childhood on a daily basis, but she had had her fair share of demons she fought every day.

Sybil constantly battled the wicked grip of heroin, lured into its ecstasy over five years ago. Three hits later, she was a full-fledged addict. The claws of her sickness dug deep into her flesh, keeping her until she hit rock bottom and was found overdosing on the grimy floor of the AM/PM bathroom. Black tar heroin stripped her of everything until she was nothing more than a junkie frantically chasing the next hit to function in her daily life and avoid the sickness.

Sybil had been clean for two years now. Every day that she survived staying clean become a huge victory most of us would never understand. She celebrated the basic choices in her life that anyone else wouldn’t give two f*cks about. Instead of escaping into addiction she chose to embrace life in all its f*cked up glory. She also knew how I felt about it and understood that if she ever fell back into that shit, she’d be the f*ck out of luck for a place to live.

Did I care about her? Hell yes, I’d be a heartless bitch if I didn’t. When we got into scuffles we’d always found a way to work it out. Up until this point, we never made it a big deal to apologize to each other. We didn’t have to roll that way in our friendship.

Sybil had deliberately avoided me for two days. Either she was working through something bigger than my bitchy response or she was punishing me. At least I saw her down on the strip last night. Getting a glimpse of her was better than worrying that she was face down dead in a gutter or falling back in the grips of her demons. Actually, if anyone should be getting pissed it should be me. We had a pact, an agreement; we were supposed to have each other’s backs. Check in with each other every day. She had totally shut me out. She had come home when I wasn’t there and spent the night with who the f*ck knew.

I couldn’t get all caught up in Sybil’s shit today. I had to be up and out before noon. I had a dentist appointment at 1:15. Yes, even though I sell my body I still visit the dentist. Granted, most hos can’t afford it, or for whatever reason choose consciously to write off oral checkups and yearly cleanings. But, I’d be damned if I was ever gonna end up looking like some of the older ‘bitches’ in my profession, snaggletooth smile or missing pearly whites.

I was under the gun, running a little late to my dentist appointment. The clothes I had to wear which didn’t scream hooker seemed to be stuffed in the bottom of my black wicker laundry hamper. I shuffled around the other side of my bed, pulled open my dresser drawers and look for anything comfortably normal to wear. I’d pushed longer hours, hustling to make a little more cash from the afternoon seekers and worked through my nights I usually took off. No wonder I was scraping the bottom of my drawers for an old pair of holey blue jeans and a tit hugging white scoop tee. I collected the outfit I tossed off last night with some random pairs of thongs and lacy bras and shoved the clothes into my laundry sack. I figured after my dentist appointment I’d take my clothes to the Stop and Wash. I usually went to Soap and Suds, a place that was barely a notch above the one shitty washer and non-drying dryer in my building, doing my laundry was better than coming back here to silence. Besides, there was a one-in-a-million chance that Crystal’s savior, Shane might be there and, well, why not thank him for saving her.

Splashes of Shane kept marching across my mind when I least expected it. I’d walk to a room, or be flat on my back or down on my knees making a living, thoughts of him had popped into my head. Fleeting fantasies where I had thought about him, where he had become the feisty actions I played out in perfect timing with him. If you named it; I had done it, with him, in my mind.

Maybe I was f*cked up, a little crazy, whatever, but I couldn’t seem to stop this laundry man from getting in my head. In the kitchen, stirring tea, I wondered if he drank tea. I’d watch TV; men would be saving damsels in distress and I’d visualize his thick-threaded-strong-arms pulling me against his strappingly giant body, and he’d save me from my own demise.

What in the hell was I doing?

I was like a little f*cking puppy dog willing to piss herself in excitement over the idea of this stranger looking in my direction. I haven’t even talked to the man for Christ’s sake. And yet, I found myself asking what’s he doing right now? Does he think about me? How will he react when he finds out I f*ck for money?

Physically, I existed as nothing more than an instrument that men used to get off. I could count on one hand the very few tricks that wanted to see me come, most would shoot their wad, yank off their rubber and pull up their pants without giving me more than a careless glance. Some tricks were so wrapped up in the guilt of cheating on their wives or girlfriends, they’d act as if I had held a gun to their head and made them f*ck me. Guilt was such a shitty emotion, nothing good ever came of it and it always ended up in a bad way. The trick would either cry like a baby, pleading to me that this was his first time ever cheating or paying for sex, or his hands would speak for his mouth.

Either way, I started to discover what made it bearable for me besides a joint or alcohol. It was when I saw the glimmer of recklessness in their eyes as I made them come. The shiver that trickled down my spine every time I got them to surrender to me. Sometimes, that was worth more than any amount of money they’d give me. Sometimes.