Broken Girl(2)
“I’m the best lay you’ve ever had and you know it, mother-f*cker,” I hollered after him.
Every muscle in my body quaked; that dirty bastard shorted me and there was nothing I could do, absolutely nothing. Who was I gonna tell? I was a twenty-year-old prostitute who f*cked guys almost twice her age for money. As long as they filled the rubber separating them from all the worthless f*cks that had come before, nobody would ever give two shits about it.
I learned a long time ago, nobody was willing to help the broken; they swept us under the asphalt of cracked streets and piss-drenched darkened alleys forever. Besides, most prostitutes were the unmentionable leftovers wired on crack or strung out on heroin. But not me, even with all the demons I fought every second of my life, I’d managed to keep off that shit. I stuck to pot and always slammed a couple of fists full of throat-burning-gut-ripping-whiskey before I punched the clock and sold my body. Damaged was one thing, even broken, but to become a prisoner of that shit other girls were shooting or snorting? No f*cking thank you, I stuck to the joint and the bottle.
Sex was my vice and it didn’t take someone with a degree plastered behind a thin sheet of glass to tell me. It was f*cked up and crazy and nobody understood it, not even the nut job psychologists could explain it. I was playing Russian roulette and every spin of the cylinder, every pull of the trigger and every time the hammer slammed against an empty chamber and a bullet didn’t pierce my skull, I had another day and another reason to numb myself. Every time I had gained that much more control of my f*cked up existence, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I took a bullet. Only a matter of time before my card was pulled and my past would catch up to me.
“Rose, we’re heading downtown, you in?” Sybil said as she poked her head into the room. Her fire-engine-red broom-bristle hair swayed across her face. Her ocher vamp-style eyes narrowed, exaggerating her thick black eyeliner and clumpy mascara. She didn’t wait for my answer before she released a smile that would turn anyone into a paying customer.
“Who’s going?” I asked, knowing the only thing we had in common at the moment was spreading our legs.
“You, me and the two new girls, Crystal and Brie. I was thinking me and you could teach them a couple of things. You know?” Sybil tapped her hand on the door, pushing it open a little wider before she lengthened out her leg wrapped in fishnet stockings.
I didn’t come into this business with bells on and a party hat strapped to my dome. The idea that I had to f*ck gross old men so I could eat and put a roof over my head had never crossed my mind, not until I was forced to. Although, I knew how to disconnect, f*ck them before they ever had a chance to f*ck me over. I was always in control and kept it business as I had administered the moment with a look, a smirk, a hum, or a whimper. It had become the way I controlled these f*cks. When my body was numb, my mind would check out; it tended to dull the sharp edge of what I had to do.
“Sure, give me a minute.”
I wedged my toes into my four-inch black stiletto heels, adjusted my thin, red spandex skirt and pulled my fingers through my lengthy black hair. I spent a little extra time to make sure the back of my hair wasn’t natty or flattened from my last lay. I freshened up my makeup, lipstick—candy apple red—black mascara.
Most guys were drawn to my eyes. I guess my eyes told them every detail I kept locked away in my mind. A hollow goodbye with a touch of something curious, and I never allowed tears to well over my eyelashes. I just couldn’t let anything affect me that way anymore. My need to feel beyond the decay of my soul wasn’t warranted and neither were tears. Call me a callous bitch, a broken woman, hell, you could even call me a slut, but don’t ever call me a victim. I was exactly what my past had created. It happens, people get hurt and nobody stops their day or waits for you to catch up. Either you found your way or you got lost in the nightmares.
“Hurry up, Rose. Brie said she’ll drive,” Sybil said before she knocked on the bedroom door. She swung her purse across her shoulder, her florally forest perfume filled my room. That was another thing totally messed up about selling sex . . . you had to douse yourself in enough perfume to erase the smell of used latex mixed with semen.
I looked around the room; pictures of my great-grandmother hung on the walls and propped on the tortured old furniture that had a past equal to mine. On the full-size bed, wedged between the nightstand filled with beer bottles and the wall, the dark-brown comforter was bunched up with the used rubber. Fuck it; I’m not touching it, not for forty bucks. I snatched my purse off the gaudy floral chair. The same chair my grandma always had sat in when she’d spit her judgments on me as a child.
“So, this is your parents’ house?” Crystal asked as the four of us collected up our coats and headed out the door.
“Yeah, they’re on their annual trip to save the world,” I murmured.
“How long are they gone?” Sybil asked.
“They go every year for two weeks; they should be home any day now,” I droned.
Even though it had been three years since I’d spoken or seen my parents, they were predictable. Every year at this time they’d take a two-week trip to some exotic place and used the excuse that they were somehow doing their part to help the world. Always keeping up the perfect fa?ade.
I pulled open the huge front door and let everyone shuffle out before me . . . I looked around and was content that they’d know it was me who left the house the exact way they had left my soul . . . dirty, used and vacant.