Lesson Number One

Previously published: BUST Magazine Spring/Summer 1996 (as Scarlett Fever)

He pushes me inside a yellow cab and stuffs himself in beside me. I hear the first gunshots exploding like Chinese firecrackers in February as the door slams closed.

“Drive”, he says to the cabbie. “Relax, CeeCee. It’s over.” He dropped a bloated pink hairless hand onto my thigh. “Consulate Hotel. West 49th Street,” he says speaking to the driver, and looking at me, the question in his eyes.

I don’t say anything. How bad can it be? He’s not mean. I need a car. I need his money to get it.

“I need three n’ a quarter, Lloyd.”

“OK, Cee, three hundred and twenty-five dollars it is then.” He smiles at me, rubbing his pink hand up and down my thigh vigourously, anticipating. I catch Abu Ben Taxi Driver looking at us in the rearview mirror. Listening in. Deciding what I am. What Lloyd is. The vodka from my last drink rises back up my throat and tastes awful.

Next week I can drive into the city in the car I bought with the money from my first trick. How bad can it be?

The hotel room, the lights are out, the blinds open. The room lit only by a full moon and the street lights below. Lloyd lies naked on the bed, a great white beached whale. His skin iridescent in the moonlight, broken only by an archipelago of eczema that dots his massive body, the source of the medicinal aura that floats around him at all times. I stand at the bathroom door, my clothes at my feet, and try to imagine the feel of his skin, the texture of the rash. I leave my body. My heart and soul float across the room settling sadly into the wing chair in the corner. A voyeuristic sadistic pleasure keeps me watching as the scene unfolds. I watch myself, in awe of what I’m capable of.

I see myself in the moonlight, breasts full and plump, ass round and creamy, hips rolling seductively as I walk over to the bed. My face a blank mask of concentration and focus as I look down at him. Thinking about what? The car? The money? The task at hand?

Lloyd lies on the bed, legs spread wide, stomach rising up above everything, a four hundred and fifty-pound island of flesh lit blue-white by garish street lights, waiting for me.

He reaches out entwining his chubby fingers in my dark curly pubic hair and shoves his thumb inside of me (an audible gasp bubbles out of my mouth, escaping into the night). His thumb probes deeper, twirling around.

“Suck my cock,” his voice no longer whiny, no longer begging. He pulls his thumb out of me, pushes me towards the end of the bed, and shiny with my juice he sticks it in his mouth and suckles.

Proportion takes on a profound meaning when a man’s cock is surrounded by so many hundreds of pounds of flesh. Finding it alone a labor worthy of Hercules. Tucked inside the many folds of his massive thighs, deep inside the crevices below his bellys, I watch myself root through his flesh like a pig after truffles. Holding a belly up with my elbow, a thigh away with my hand. Finding my prey, my pound of flesh, short and hard, no bigger than his thumb or a pale breakfast sausage, I bend and take him into my mouth. Covering it with my own saliva, stroking him slowly, making him harder, squeezing and pulling, rubbing my breasts while cranes over his belly to watch, squeezing my nipples, getting us both ready. He lays there, unable to move, a giant turtle on his back, a great sea mammal washed ashore and abandoned, at my mercy. My juices are flowing. I touch myself, separate the damp hairs, the outer labia, the inner labia, open myself up and rise up, rise up, Venus rising from the foam. I close my eyes and mount him as best I can.

“Suck this,” knocking his hand away from his mouth and sticking my fingers,my whole hand, slick with my own juices, in his mouth. I ride him, leaning forward as he grabs my tits, pulling painfully at my nipples. I grip his round arms and ride him, forgetting about his rash, his size, his lack of size. I ride and pump and thrust and grind. I moan and curse and Oh baby, and yes, yes, yes as he comes inside me. I ride some more, pulling on my own nipples now, rubbing my clit up against the overflow from his big firm belly, bringing myself to climax. I stroke his immense round gut as I feel him shrinking, I contract inside and try to hold him there a bit longer. Shrinking. Shrinking. He slips out.

And I think about where I will go in the cute blue Pinto I will buy with his money.

The money, the real reason I’m here, I tell myself. Yet, even today,when I describe it, my juices flow and the tingles grow in that secret place deep inside me. His flesh repulses me, the act of selling myself does not. Having someone desire me so much he will pay me, pay what I ask, opens me up inside.

To be in charge.

To be in control.

To be paid.

He’s coming out of the bathroom, already having washed my scent off and stuffed himself back into his oversized brown polyester slacks when I realize no money’s changed hands yet. No crisp bills waiting quietly on the nightstand like in the movies.

“Lloyd, uh…are you leaving…?” My clothes were on the bathroom floor. He stood at the doorway to the bathroom, a wall of flesh between me and my clothes. The fluorescent bathroom light creating a gargantuan silhouette, his huge polyester behind the only thing reflected in the mirror.

“Yeah. Look, I gotta go see what kind of damage was done in the club tonight. Keep the room, babe. I paid for the whole night.” He struggled into the brown and grey plaid sportcoat, patted me on the head, checking his pockets as he did and heading towards the door.

“I don’t wanna stay here all night. We talked about the money Lloyd… What about the money?” Not wanting him to let him escape. I grabbed up my clothes. Pulling them on without washing him off of me. Liquid Lloyd runs down my leg.

“Look CeeCee, I don’t have the money with me…”

“What do you mean, you don’t have the money? You paid for the cab, the room…?”

I came here to get paid, to turn a trick.

“That’s about all I had on me. I have just enough to get home from here. Everything else is in the safe at the club. Do you need cab fare or are you OK?”

Cab fare you mammoth pig? I need three hundred and twenty-five dollars. I need your head on a platter. I need my fucking money.

“OK? OK? I’m not OK. What about my money. You said you’d pay me three…,” It’s not a trick if I don’t get paid. If I don’t get paid it’s just a nightmare, ” hundred and …”

“Hey,” he interrupted. His inflated Macys’ Thanksgiving Day parade ballon hand on my naked shoulder, “do you think I’m trying to cheat you?” Yes, that’s exactly what I think. “What did you want me to do, tell the guys on the stairs to wait, don’t shoot up the place till I get money outta the safe to give to my girl?”

“But I thought you had money with you…”

STUPID, STUPID STUPID. STUPID BITCH

” No, CeeCee,” he spoke softly, like you do to a child, “You stop by the club tomorrow night and we’ll straighten everything out. OK?”

I’m such a stupid bitch.

I nod silently and sit there, even quieter, watching in the mirror as he kisses me goodbye. Silent as I watched the door close after his fat shit brown polyester ass. Silently I sit as my heart and soul walks over and rejoins me, a little thinner now, a little paler. Silent as I finish dressing and head down to the subway and back home. I can panhandle whatever I need for the Long Island RailRoad.

Or maybe it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe I was too scared or too stupid to ask for the money afterwards. Maybe there was just a chubby girl having sex with a huge fat man, expecting him to keep his word. Maybe it wasn’t sensual at all. Maybe it was a dirty little room in a cheap hotel with no full moon, only the street lights and the eczema.

Stupid bitch.

Lesson Number One – get the money up front.