My mind drifted in and out of present tense, past tense, and, of course, a great deal worry about the future. Let’s recap, my burgeoning career as a writer is pretty much stalled out on the side of the road, stuck at a road block, crashed out like a 1989 Mac Plus, and sucking. I had a politically connected pimp following me around, but not so much like a puppy dog, that wanted to do me ill. Meanwhile, I’m trying to land a very cherry, very rare job at the Trib as an investigative journalist. But in order to get the cherry journo job, I had to try to spy on the dangerous pimp. So I had to pretend I liked the pimp. And I wasn’t doing a good job keeping things from getting too crazy.
Plus my relationship with my soon-to-be-I-hope fiance was kind dissolving into a messy open relationship. For all I knew he would want me to go to work for the pimp–for the kink of it!
Plus I had a Chicago civic/business leader who, I’ve been told, has declared himself my mortal enemy, bent on stopping me from becoming what I want to become. So, instead, I was making a living for the moment handing out pamphlets dressed as a sexy cheerleader outside Wrigley Field (who does that!?). And of course, pretending to be a professional journalist. The money was like zero, so here I am in my costume Fake it until you make it, they say.
So I decided to forget about my ridiculous life and focus my attention on the beautiful, interesting man who was trying so hard to attract my attention.
He was talking, and I have to admit I wasn’t really listening. I was off in my own head thinking about .. oh, all that other unimportant stuff I just explained. He was really good looking, muscular, handsome in a way that Patrick, my fiance to be, was not. Patrick was very cute. This guy was handsome … and … sexy. He was very sexy. Like Charlie Sheen before all the drugs and crazy.
I found myself nodding. I didn’t know this guy’s name, and I had just agreed to be his date for the baseball game in his corporate suite. “I got to let my boyfriend know what I’m doing,” I said and then waved to my boss, who was waving at me from the corner of Clark and Addison. I think she was trying to let me know she was out of flyers, but I wasn’t feeling concerned about that. She was going to be shotgun for me at this game, and that’s what I was concerned about. I needed a wing girl.
I picked up my phone and got ready to text Smallville, my wanna-be pimp. I suddenly felt incensed. There was no way that I was just let Smallville come over to my home and start to intimidate me. I didn’t know if I was a match for him, but I decided I was going to find out.
“I won’t be home tonight, and my boyfriend, Andrew, won’t know why you stopped by. Do you want me to interview at spa later this week?”
I was a little embarrassed because I didn’t have an outfit to change into, and at this point, and I didn’t feel good about running home, even though it was a short distance from Wrigley Field. I didn’t want to have Jimmy catch me at home when he stopped by. No matter what, I needed to put him on ice until I could figure how to play him. Chicago’s most notorious and connected pimp is not a man that I should trifle with. So far, I didn’t have any ideas on how to turn him into an informant or story in the Trib … without getting myself killed.
Unfortunately, I had the feeling that Jimmy had a lot of ideas about what he could do to … or with … me.
No way I could let him catch me at home without an idea of how I could play him, so I decided that I’d just have to go the game in my cheerleading costume and work t-shirt. Whatever, my bosses would praise me dedication in getting the info out about their sports site.
“Interview?” he texted back. “Shit, I gotta see you tonight. I’ll send somebody to u to pick u up. U home!?”
I shot a text back immediately: “The guy I’m with right now feels exactly the same way. Gotta see me 2nite. And he asked 1st. Sorry. How about Wed. at 2 p.m. We’ll see. ;-)”
“Your boyfriend probably don’t know what you’re up 2!! ;-p”
“Think again. We’re open. He knows all! Good boyfriend.”
“Interesting,” he texted, followed a few minutes later by “Tomorrow at 5.
“K” I agreed. “I’ll check my calendar tomorrow and let you know if that works. Pencil for 5 tomorrow.”
A few minutes later came his final reply: “In pencil in case I happen to pick you up a bit early! I don’t like to wait! See you soon. S.” I knew what he meant; I could show up at 5 tomorrow, or I could blow him off at 5 tomorrow, but we’d be meeting sometime. He’d make sure of that. I’d show up, or he’d pick me up. It suddenly occurred to me that as Chicago’s top pimp, he could have a couple police officers working for him. Maybe that bouncer at the door … doormen are often off-duty cops. I was suddenly afraid of going to the cops, or even getting approached by a police officer. What if they grab me and deliver me to Jimmy Smallville.
“Jesus, D, what did you get yourself mixed up in?” I mumbled to myself.
“Oh, it’ll be fun!” said my new friend. Turns out his name is Rodney, which cracked me up for some reason.
“I don’t know, I have a funny feeling this corporate box will be like a frat house,” I joked.
“Said the woman in a cheerleading skirt,” Rod said, perfectly keeping up with my humor.
I tugged at the hem. “Tell me the truth, is that why you invited me to go to the game.”
“Of course, the Cubs could use some help out there. I’m hoping you’ll tell us all to, ‘Be excited! B-E excited!'”
He did something amazing considering my mood and worried state of mind; he made me laugh. I liked this guy. I asked if I could call him Rod instead of Rodney.
***
The corporate box was definitely not a frat house. It was just a few older gents, me, Rod and my boss lady, and she did almost too good of a job being a wing girl. She didn’t so much as take her hands off me, let alone her eyes. She made sure she peed when I peed. Rod offered to walk me to the washroom, but she waved him off. “He’s trying to get you alone,” she whispered in my ear, taking me by my arm and leading me from the corporate box.
She knew the security guards or the ballpark and so got us into a small washroom reserved for employees, and then showed me the locker room door for the Cubs. “I bet you’d like to get in there after the game,” she said.
I told her that I was perfectly happy with me date for the night. She reminded me that it was 8 p.m. “I guess I’ve had too many beers, but I think I want to go home with Rod after the game.”
As we walked back to the corporate box, Patrick called. “Jimmy Smallville is here,” he said without saying hello. “Him, a big black guy named Lenard, and two prostitutes.”
“Is either of them Julie?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said. “A black prostitute named Lexi and a bottle blond named Jazzy.”
“Those are some classy ‘ho names.”
As I spoke to Patrick, my wing girl let me know that, since I didn’t need her, she was going to take off. And she disappeared into the crowd around a hot dog stand.
“Do you need me to call McDonald, my friend with friends on the police force,” I asked. “You must be scared.”
“No,” Patrick quickly said. “He just gave me the most expensive bottle of scotch I’ve ever seen. And he’s … being really nice. I mean super nice. I kind of … I don’t know … like him.”
“He’s a PIMP! And he wants to be MY PIMP! Do you want me selling $20 blow jobs on Lake Street?” I yelled into my smart phone. Five feet away, a family of four from the suburbs, waiting in line for hot dogs, turned slowly on their heals, each one lifting the bills of their Cubs hats to get a good look at me. “That was dignified,” I mumbled to myself, and hustled back toward the corporate box.
Patrick assured me that he thought he had it under control, but we agreed that I shouldn’t come home. “If there is any danger, it’s not to me,” Patrick said. “You’d be the one in danger. This guy Lenard could literally just pick you up and leave and I don’t think I could stop him. Stay where you’re at, if you have some place to be. I’ll try to get some info on you know who?”
“Don’t be too clever,” I said. “Just be safe. Jimmy’s more … intelligent than you’d expect.” I told him what I was doing. I told him that I was going to be sleeping with a random Cubs fan, and, for some reason, I felt it was importune to point out that I’d be with “handsome Rod” whether Jimmy were at my house or not. “I’m having a lovely evening,” I said, not knowing if I wanted to hurt him, make him jeleous or turn him on.
We decided that Patrick would hang out with Jimmy as long as he didn’t find it scary, collecting and gifts Jimmy wanted to give, and he’d ask Jimmy about Julie Benz. “Maybe I can get him to talk, you know, one man bragging to another,” he said. “I’ll act all impressed at the beauty of the women he’s with, his pimping and prostitutes, and then I’ll tell him that I’d heard that he’d turned out this really fine bitch named Julie Benz, and I wanted to know how many dudes she’s fucked and how many cocks she’s sucked and …”
“I get it I get it,” I interrupted. “That’s enough. But you’re right, that might work better than if I asked him. Don’t be so fake; just be yourself. He’ll see through you.”
“You know what might work even better?” he said. “I could pretend like I wanted him to turn you out. Like I was on his side, not your side.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “That’s really crazy …. but you’re right. That might make him more willing to talk to you. Ask him for a cut of the money,” I added. “That will make him think you’re a greedy boyfriend. Tell him how broke we are.”
Patrick then revealed that he was recording the whole thing on his laptop computer camera. Wow, this was getting impressive. All I’d been able to do was … well I don’t wan to think about that right now, and he was getting footage of this S.O.B. I realized that Patrick wasn’t a good boyfriend … he was pretty awesome. “You da man,” I said.
“Did you expect less of me,” he joked. “I’m pretty sly at this secret agent shit.”
We decided that if things got ugly, Patrick would call or text me, and then I’d call McDonald, and McDonald would call his police contact and tell him to send the cavalry in. I called McDonald, and I told him, basically what me and Patrick were doing, running an unplanned Smallville sting, and asked him if he could send a police car by if we called him. “Yep, I’ll let him know that he may be needed right now,” he said. “And I’ll have him send a cop by at around 12 p.m. If Jimmy isn’t gone by then, the cop will get rid of him. You’re boyfriend is brave,” McDonald said. “And so are you. Jimmy is a dangerous man. I’m not sure I’d take such a risk myself.”
“Don’t tell me that,” I said. “You’re scaring me.”
“Fear is a good thing.”
***
By the time I made it back to the corporate box, I had been gone so long that I was worried that Rod would be gone, but he was still there. He had no idea at that point he was getting laid that night yet, but I really didn’t have anyway not to fuck him at that point. Like Richard Gere in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” I had no where else to go!
We ate some fine ball field grub (lobster ravioli, yum!), the Cubs got slaughtered, and then he proffered me with an invite back to his place, for a drink. While we were sipping champaign from fluted champaign glasses, on his apartment balcony overlooking the lake, he told me that “some French king designed these wine glasses to be the size of a woman’s breast.”
“That’s a strange fact. And that’s like an A or B cup, tops,” I laughed.
“Your breasts would overflow.”
“Anybody model a cup after my breasts would have to be an alcoholic.”
Rod revealed himself to be a bit of a devil, too. He went back into his apartment and returned with a “surprise.” It was a HD video camera.
“You ever make a movie,” he asked.
“I’m making one right now.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. A long story. You mean like a porno movie?”
“Porno is for other people,” he said. “Those girls are like hookers, fucking for money.”
He awoke me from my drunken stupor and I remembered I’d left my phone in the other room. I ran in and checked it. I checked for messages and texts. My heart plummeted when I saw Patrick had texted me an hour earlier. “Fuck!” I yelled. We’d taken a long walk back to his place, and then sat drinking out on his balcony. A couple hours passed before I realized I was supposed to be watching out for a message from Patrick.
I pulled up the text. “Jimmy says that he is working a girl named Julie. He’s acting like she is working for him. Weird thing is I think he’s lying. I think he’s just bragging. I think Lexi would tell me her name is Julie if Jimmy told her to. Let’s talk when you can. Things are fine. Don’t worry about me, Jimmy is harmless. I played it like I’m interested in Julie, and he’s a good pimp. He’s eager to make me a john. Just as you expected, he is trying to get me to help him turn you out. He’s trying to trade one night with Julie for me, for you being ‘his girl,’ but like I said, I think he’s full of shit about Julie. Been an interesting, somewhat scary evening. I think I have it recorded, too. Night.”
“Night,” I texted back. “I wonder if you should set up that date just to find out who Julie is.”
Patrick texted me back: “You do understand he wants me to trade you working as a whore, right? At least that’s my understanding.”
“Remember to tell him you’re broke, and you want him to cut you in,” I said boldly. “We got to help Julie, and I got to get this story.”
When I looked up, Rod was standing just inside the balcony door watching me, and he looked like a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “Sorry I suggested that,” he said, putting the camera down. “I hope you’re not pissed …”
“No it wasn’t you,” I said. “I forgot I was supposed to … set up a ride for my boyfriend. He’s working late in a bad neighborhood. He wanted me to call his company’s car service, and I forgot. Scared me for a second, but he handled it. He’s a little pissed at me for forgetting, but otherwise fine. You’re fine.”
“What did the text say?”
“You want to talk to me about my texts or do you want to make a dirty movie.”
He was taken off guard. “Uhm … make a movie.”
Unfortunately for Patrick, Rod took control of the situation, and it would be hours before I’d remember to check for a text again.
***
I sat back into the couch, wrapping his large blue robe around my naked body and sipped a glass of flat champaign. I’d just taken a long, hot shower. “Let’s see it, show me the filth we just made,” I said, pointing at the television. I glanced up at a clock he had on the wall. It was ten minutes past midnight. I walked to my phone and checked for more messages.
“Go ahead and send in the cavalry. Jimmy is turning on the heat. Lexi is all over me, Jimmy is a broken record talking about “where you at?’ I can’t get him to leave,” Patrick texted at 10 p.m., two and a half hours earlier. And then at 10:40, he texted, “OK. Where are the cops? What’s going on? RU getting fucked or something!? Jimmy won’t go. I need help!” Next he wrote: “I think I fucked up. I just promised him I’d help turn you out. I don’t know why I did it. I’m in over my head over here. I’m drunk. I’m tired, and a pussy undercover journalist. Sorry. PS SEND THE COPS!!!” Finally, at 12:10, “Cop came and Jimmy left.” At 12:45 he texted: “Seriously, where are you? I’m a little worried. Jimmy seems pretty intent on U. You safe?”
“No I’m not safe,” I wrote back to him.
I looked up and saw an overhead view of Rod’s erect rod (Rod was filming by hand as I blew him) his fat shaft twitched and the white stuff came out in my mouth, dripping on my chin, followed by a second ejaculation that sprayed my face like modern art as I leaned back from the unexpected load in my mouth.
“I’m making dirty movies with my friend. I’ll show them to you tomorrow or the next time I see you. I got to lay low. I got a pimp trying hard to recruit me.”
I looked up again and saw my naked body, prone. It was a side view. Rod had placed the camera on a small tripod next to the bed. It’s strange to see yourself that way, naked and on a television screen. It looks like you, but not quite how you see yourself. It was like watching amateur porn but the star looked a lot like me. Rod came into the screen with a clear full frontal, close up on his penis, bulging veins and all. He took me by the neck and by the hips, and pulled me up, onto my knees, and slid his hard cock into my hot warm hole.
I was awoken from my self voyeurism by the vibration of my phone.
Patrick texted back immediately. “There is a convertible Cadillac parked out front. Could be nothing, but could be trouble. Stay away. Don’t come home. Have fun making movies.”
The sound of flesh rhythmically slapping together came from the television. I looked up and saw my body being fucked hard, pink testicles slapping into the pink underside of my womanhood.
“K,” I texted back.
“Rewind the movie,” I said to Rod. “Lets watch it all from the beginning.”
Rod told me he had to work the next day, and so he begged off and went to bed. I told him I needed to stay up to make a copy of the video for my boyfriend, and gave him a memorable kiss goodnight.
I wasn’t going to let Rod keep the movie either. I copied it on to two thumb drives, one I put into my purse, and the other that I would destroy before I left for good. Then I got comfortable, poured myself some half-flat, expensive champagne, and sat back into the comfortable couch and voyaged the night away. The naked blonde woman on the screen was riding Rod revers cowgirl when I think I fell asleep, and before I knew it, Rod was wearing a suit, morning light coming through his floor to ceiling windows, the 26th floor, and he was apologizing that he had to leave. My cheerleading skirt was folded nicely on the glass coffee table in front of me.
I realized that meant I would have to leave, and he read the disappointment on my face.
“Hey, don’t look so hurt,” he said. “I’m working a bit late tonight, but I do want to finish watching our movie with you. Why don’t you come back and hang out at the pool and I’ll meet you for dinner. Sound good?”
He produced a bikini that I could wear at the pool, and told me to come back at 3. I couldn’t really complain. He’d let me stay the night, but I was still a veritable stranger. He couldn’t leave me in his home alone, and I didn’t want to beg. I still had my pride.
I decided I’d just have to go home and change. I shot Patrick at text, asking about the Cadi, and he said it was gone. He was on the train going to work when I caught him.
So I put on my now dirty t-shirt, and dirty panties, and tight little high-school cheerleading skirt, and took the bikini with me. I wasn’t terribly self-conscience, but I didn’t feel like walking around Chicago, or taking a bus, in a cheerleading skirt during rush hour. That seemed kind of … strange. I had $10 on me. It would have to get me at least close to home in a taxi.
I asked the taxi driver to get me as close to my address for $8. He was a complete ass about it, so I kept the extra $2 tip that I was going to give him, and stiffed him properly, and then walked for 15 minutes through the North Side, passing mothers taking their kids to school, in my cheerleading skirt. I realized that I was seriously starting to look like a degenerate.
I needed to get home, so I picked up the pace. I lived near the elevated train tracks, and I was still a little nervous that I was being watched, so I took the back alley to get home, walking along the tracks to a fire escape on the side of my building, and then climbed in through the bathroom window.
“She came in through the bathroom window!” I belted out loudly. “Protected by her silver spoon!”
I would have sung more, but I was disturbed by a knocking at the back door. I froze, stopping in the door jam of the bathroom. Who the fuck was that? I couldn’t move; my knees only buckled slightly. I stood silently in my bathroom, looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, waiting for something else to happen.
Knock, knock, knock.
Holy fuck, somebody is on my back porch. I lived above a neighborhood eye doctor, on the second floor of a corner building, and on the residential side of the building there was a staircase from the sidewalk that climbed up to my back porch, where we had lawn chairs and a small grill. Somebody was standing on that back porch, next to my grill, and probably looking through the window on my back door, which was obscured only by sheer, lacy curtains that I got from my grandmother’s house after she died two years ago. If I took one step further into the hallway, the knocker would be able to look through that windowpane and decades old Amish lace and see me in my soiled cheerleading skirt. (Last night I found out that Rod was very, very attracted to me for the dirty cheerleader look I was rocking. The skirt got … used.)
“Pound, pound, pound!” yelled the door again. My mystery guest was becoming insistent.
I heard some rustling, and then a woman’s voice, “Yep, she’s here, but she’s pretending like she ain”t.”
She wasn’t talking to me; she was tailing into a cell phone. It took a minute to place the voice–Lexi. She’d just called and told somebody–who? Smallville? Lenard? Julie Benz?–that I was home. “See you in a few minutes.”
Pound, pound, pound!
I was still frozen in place. I realized that I should look to see if it was Lexi as I feared. So I took one step through the bathroom door and into the hallway. I looked through the kitchen and saw saw Lexi in a skin tight, black latex top standing in the rear window of my home. I froze again with fear.
“Okay, D, let me in,” Lexi said, with a stern but kind voice. “We going to have us a meeting. Your man, Patrick, says you should meet with Jimmy right now.”
I was still frozen. It was too late to back up into the bathroom and out of view.
“I’m not leaving until you open this door, so just open it already,” Lexi said, again with a strong, but warm voice. “Ain’t doing nothing now but wasting both our time. Don’t be afraid. Open up!”
My feet began moving me toward the back door of my apartment.
“That’s right girl,” she said in a calm voice. “Come and let me in.”
I put my hand on the cold doorknob, and then paused again, feeling the cold metal in my right hand. I threw the bolt with my left hand and opened the door.
Lexi walked in. She was wearing a black latex dress, fishnet stockings, black gauntlets and high-heal boots. The eye doctor must have been wondering why there was such an obvious whore sitting in my rattan recliner chair all day.
“You see, now that’s nice,” she said. “I knew you would be nice about this.”
“What do you want?” I said.
She walked in and took me by the wrist, pulling my fist off the doorknob. She pushed me into a kitchen chair, and slammed the door behind herself. She threw her black leather purse on the kitchen table and got right to work, taking out a pair of handcuffs and a length of white, nylon rope from her bag.
“You a nice girl D,” she said with a wicked smile. “I’m not that nice, I guess.”
She grabbed my write wrist, and pulled it behind the kitchen chair back. “Just give me your other hand now,” she said. “Don’t put up a fight, ho.”
“But …” I tried to speak.
“Give me you fuckin’ hand, ho!”
“I …”
“Give me the hand! Then after I have your other wrist, we can talk about it.”
“I.”
“Just give it up!” she said with that same stern, but warm, voice. “You don’t want to fight me.”
I looked up at her, looking her in the eye, and saw anger in the midnight irises. Her face was inches from mine; I could smell Red Bull on her breath. “Let’s be nice. Give it up.”
I picked my left hand up off of my lap and put it behind me. With two quick slaps of cold metal, my hands were cuffed, and I was helpless. “You’ve done that before,” I said, trying to joke with her, offering a weak, nervous smile.
For my efforts she took me by the chin, and pulled my face up to her’s. Her anger was only greater now that she had me this way. “Don’t fuck with me,” she said. “You in it now,” she said and dropped my chin.
“Fuck,” I said out loud. “Fuck!”
“Stupid,” Lexi said, chuckling bemused. She wasn’t talking to me anymore. She was talking about me. She quickly looped the rope around the the short chain between the steel cuffs and then secured it to the back of the chair, Then she took the other end of the rope, looped it around my ankles a few times, and the hoisted my feet up under the seat of the chair.
She took a short break to tug the bottom her her short black latex dress, and remove a tiny piece of lint from her chest, just below the scoop neck of the dress. She was dressed impeccably. The seam up the back of her stockings was straight and her hair looked round an perfect. “I got you now, ‘ho,” she reminded me, and then got back to work.
“Why are you doing this” I asked. But she didn’t answer. Obviously, I was a job, not a person.
She took a ball gag, and slid that into my mouth, buckling it behind my head, and finally she began lacing rope around my legs, starting from my ankles and working up to my waste. Finally, she secured my upper body to the chair, crossing white nylon rope across my chest.
She went to my refrigerator, and took a can of beer, opening it and sitting down across the kitchen table from me. She took a sip. “Jimmy will be here any minute,” she said. “He’s going to sell you on a street corner. You going to be his girl now, and you gonna work on your back. You ain’t going anywhere, so I might as well tell you. You his ‘ho now, so just get used to that,” she said standing up. She slicked the shiny latex of her dress again, and stuck her hip out, smiling down at me, her captive. I writhed slightly, pulling against the ropes. I was tightly bound. It was futile. She watched me and giggled as I tested the bindings on my ankles, and then my legs, and then criss-crossing my chest. I moaned, trying to speak, but the red ball in my mouth wouldn’t permit it. I heard the back door to my apartment open behind me, and the breeze from outside hit the back of my head, and then I heard his voice: “Nice job Lexi,” Jimmy said, from just three feet behind me. “You a good ‘ho. She’s mine now.”
***
Pound, Pound, Pound! The persistent knocking at the door stirred me from my waking nightmare.
“Open up, D!” Lexi yelled. Her voice, sent such a chill down my spine that it caused me to loose control. It was fortunate, at least, that I as only wearing already soiled panties under a short skirt, because I, at that moment, lost it. It all became too much, and with the terrifying fantasy I’d just had, it frightened me like a little girl, and I wet myself. Quickly my underpants became over saturated. The warm, yellow liquid poured down my bare legs, into my shoes and finally forming a small, yellow puddle on the bathroom floor between my running shoes.
Pound, pound, pound!
I didn’t know what to do, other than run. I took two steps backward, my shoes squeaking slightly in the piss, I stepped up on the side of the tub and then launched my body up into the small bathroom window that I had only minutes ago climbed through. My arms were trembling, and my hands were wet with my own urine, but I summoned the strength to flip out of the small window, ass over head, holding onto the sill with both hands, and then dropping to the black steel grate of the fire escape. I could hear Lexi pound on the kitchen door again, and call in to me. “D, I hear you, woman. Just let me in!”
I quickly started running down the steel staircase, stepping quickly at first, because my shoes were so wet. I wanted to be quiet, but I was breathing so heavily, and my rubber souls were squeaking with moisture, and so Lexi heard me and leaned out over the railing of the balcony and saw me coming down the stairs.
“Girl, I see you,” she said.
She headed for her stairs, and I broke into a run. I hit the pavement, jumped a fence into the ally, and then started running for the street. Lexi was faster than she looked, and made it to the mouth of the ally, just as I got there. Standing two feet in front of me, she wasn’t dressed exactly as I had fantasized. She wore red top, and her hair was in braids, but from the waste down–black latex mini skirt, fishnets, and boots–she was dressed just as I had thought.
Again I froze.
“D just wait for a minute girl,” she said, taking me by the arm. “I need to talk to you. I need to get you, okay/”
What should she do>
Stop and talk–Perhaps Lexi is there to help her.
Run!
Stand and fight! Women’s boxing has come a long way, baby!