They dragged us both down to the Dungeon, kicking and fighting the whole way.
Moonie tossed me onto a nasty mattress, while Pluto, Ace, and two other big niggas pinned Gino down on the ground. The Dungeon looked just like it sounded. Dingy and dark. We were in a small, bare room and the mattress I was laying against was the only furniture in sight.
G came down the stairs and I started shaking like a mother. As usual he looked pressed out in expensive everything, and even his cologne smelled like money.
Jimmy is safe, I reassured myself. Moonie said Jimmy was safe, and that was all that mattered.
G stood there staring at his son. He didn’t even bother to look at me, which was cool because I was scared of what I’d see in his eyes.
“Gino, Gino, Gino. You always were your mother’s son.”
Gino cursed at Pluto and tried to ram his shoulder in his gut.
“Know why I didn’t give you my name? You ever wonder about that? How you came to be Gino instead of Granite II?”
“Do I look like I give a fuck?”
G laughed. “I knew you wasn’t shit the minute you jumped out of that bitch’s ass! I knew you wasn’t gonna be man enough, hard enough to handle my name. Damn.” G shook his head. “You almost inherited an empire. A ready-made cash cow that I built with my own two hands, and you let a stink piece of pussy get you bent.”
G moved closer to Gino, who was straining to break free of all the rough hands that held him back. I saw his muscles jumping through his shirt and all I could do was hold my breath and pray.
“Salida the slut,” G continued. “You just like that dirty bitch. I should have been a better magician though. Instead of wasting my paper on that white-boy college I shoulda made your punk ass disappear right along with hers.”
Wasn’t no holding Gino back. He broke free of all them niggas and jumped on G, knocking him backward and down to the ground. For a moment, they were scrapping, the young against the old, the father against the son. And then Gino was muscled down again, niggas five deep dove on top of him and pinned him once more, then pulled out their guns and started denting his head.
G got up, wiping his lip. Both of them were strong and built, but Gino had drawn first blood, and I was proud of my man for that.
“Take him back to the apartment and guard him for the next two days,” G said. “Don’t give this niggah a bite of my food or a drop of my water neither. If he gotta piss, let him do it in his pants. Let him shit in them, too. I want four of y’all on him. Twenty-four/seven. Fuck him up good if he gives you any flack. Forty-eight hours from now I want you to take this motherfucker down to Kennedy and put his ass on the first thing smoking out west.”
Ace looked up from the fighting heap and asked, “What if he don’t wanna go? What if this nigga won’t get on the plane?”
G didn’t even hesitate as they dragged his only son fighting and bleeding up the basement steps.
“Then kill him.”
G was gonna kill me, too. I could see it in his eyes.
He told everybody to get the fuck upstairs and they jetted with a quickness. As soon as they were gone G went crazy, slapping me, punching me, and bending my arms back until my shoulder bones popped. That motherfucker kicked my ass. Plain and simple, that’s what he did.
All the time he was beating me G was also cursing me out. My whole body was in pain, but I could still feel G’s pain, too. I had humiliated him. Violated him in the worst kind of way. Everybody knew how particular he was over his pussy, and my fucking Gino had just put the word out on the wire that the great Granite McKay couldn’t hold it down in the sheets.
At first I screamed and begged him not to hit me, but I soon realized that G didn’t even hear me and I would do better trying to duck and roll and use my energy to run from one side of the small room to the other.
Sweat was coming off both of us in that hot-assed basement, but G looked like he was enjoying his workout. After a while I started screaming again. How much longer did he think I could take this? My stomach, my back, my ribs… I just knew he had ruptured something in me and I would die from internal bleeding.
I was scooting backward on the floor screaming and trying to dodge his kicking feet when G crouched, then jumped straight up into the air. And then life started moving in slow motion. It took forever for G to land, but when he did he came down hard on both feet. Surely this shit was happening to some other chick, I thought as the bottom of G’s two-thousand-dollar shoes descended on me, but when I felt all that hard leather come crashing down into my face, I damn sure knew it was me.
I came awake sputtering, hot liquid splashing in my face.
G was pissing on me.
All over my face and right into my half-opened mouth. When I opened my eyes and closed my lips, his pee stung my eyes and ran down into my ears. I couldn’t have been knocked out long, probably only a few seconds, but staring up at that big niggah holding his dick and aiming his flow down at me, I wished like hell I could go back unconscious.
“This is all you worth, you rotten-ass bitch!” G stood over me until he squeezed out his last drop, and then he tucked his dick away and zipped up his pants.
I thought he was gonna start beating me again, but we both turned around when the door opened upstairs and somebody came running down.
It was Moonie. He gave me a pity look when he saw me laying on the floor, my face and hair soaked in G’s piss, but then his mask came down and he turned to stone again as G laughed and dapped him out.
“Private party tonight,” G said as I whimpered on the floor. “The best pussy in the house is up for sale and I want all my niggahs to get some.” He rotated his onyx ring on his finger and then nodded toward me. “Have Kadijah put her nasty ass in some water, then make sure she’s out there when the girls go onstage.”
They left me down in that stanking little basement for almost twelve hours, and by the time they came back I was dying to get upstairs and breathe some real air. My whole body was throbbing, but I didn’t protest when Ace and Pluto grabbed my arms and dragged me up the steps. Upstairs, the show was getting heated up. I limped down the halls of the Spot being manhandled by Ace and Pluto, embarrassed as hell, my eyes on the floor. Mouths were opening and closing left and right, and I could hear the steady buzz… G done fucked Juicy up, and now he’s putting her ass out to work the rooms!
As we turned a corner, Monique stepped out in front of me styling and profiling. Every inch of her shit was tight and she had this big-ass smile on her face like she’d just been crowned queen of the Spot. I was ashamed to be caught out there looking all dirty and fucked up and smelling like piss, but I stared at her like my hair was did and my clothes were fly.
She looked me up and down. “Damn, Juicy. Your shit is way raggedy! All this time you been perpetrating like you all that, when you really just another low-profile ho. So you don’t fuck behind nobody, huh? Well, before it’s all over you’ll be fuckin behind me and every other ho up in this Spot.”
“Fuck you, you three-titty bitch!”
Monique just laughed and shook her long silky weave. “Just who you’ll be fuckin is anybody’s guess, and while your stank pussy is getting scuffed and plunged, G’s gonna be suckin all three of these titties!”
I doubted that cause G didn’t suck no titties, but I didn’t bother to tell her. I was too embarrassed at being seen hemmed up like a criminal. Most of the staff looked at me like, Be strong, Juicy. This ain’t nothing but a thing. But for the most part all I saw was pity. Pity and fear, like they, too, were scared of what G had planned for me.
Deep down I was shitting bricks, but I told myself that as long as Moonie was right and Jimmy was safe, that was all that mattered. I had to force myself not to think about Gino cause that could break me all the way down. Seeing him beaten and pistol-whipped like that had hurt me to my heart, and the look in his eyes when they dragged him up those basement steps was gonna haunt me until the day I died. I prayed they would have mercy on him for being G’s blood, but I also remembered G’s cousin from all those years ago, the one who G had fucked up so bad he still limped around Harlem begging for change with his one-eyeball self.
They took me into the massage room and told Ursula to get out so Kadijah could get me ready. An hour later I’d taken a shower and washed my hair, and Kadijah had taken me into the dressing room and put a bunch of makeup on my face and body to cover the bruises, and then tossed me an outfit that screamed hoochie mama/club stripper/two-dollar ho.
It looked like every nigger in Harlem was in the house that night. G made me get onstage and fuck the poles and do a slow funky striptease, too. I didn’t even try to play with him by acting out. I moved my ass like a natural ho and did all the freaky shit I’d seen Monique, Punanee, and Honey Dew do night after night after night.
I guess I was good, too. Money was flying up on the stage, and every time I turned around and let them see my ass, brothers clapped and hooted and dug in their pockets for some more. I cried inside the whole time and tried to block out all the noise. I pretended I was dancing for Gino, that it was him urging me to lick my titties, ride that pole, and spread open my ass cheeks. Picturing Gino’s long black dick was the only way I got through the segment, and by the time it was over I felt lower than ever before in life.
But G wasn’t done with me yet. When I got off the stage, he put my ass up on the block. Monique was happy to swish her ass over and be the bitch to bring me the bone.
“Juicy girl, them motherfuckers LOVE you! You gonna have the cleaning crew working overtime washing sheets tonight!”
“What?”
Pluto and Greco were each clocking one side of me as I stumbled back into the dressing room. I was G’s prisoner and everybody knew it.
“You didn’t know? Girl, your fine ass got twelve chips already and a crew of cash niggas lined up waiting for you! I think it was that ass thing you did that got ’em all hot. Whatever it was, thank you, girlfriend, cause you giving all the other hoes a break up in here tonight!”
I was in a daze. As many times as I had been in those fuck rooms gossiping and helping change cummed-up sheets, I’d never thought I’d have to one day stoop down to sexing strangers and flat-backing to save my life.
“Here.” Monique slipped me something she took out of a tiny piece of foil. “After about ten of them dirty-dick, stank-breath niggahs, you’ll need this to help get you through the next ten.”
Ironically, Pluto threw me in fuck-room number nine, then stepped inside and closed the door. “You on the clock now, bitch, and I’m customer number one. I want mine first, before all them other niggahs stank that punanee up.”
“You ain’t fucking me, Pluto,” I told him. “Your fat ass ain’t hardly fucking me.”
He slammed me back on the bed, then sat his buffalo ass on my chest.
“No shit, stupid. I don’t wanna fuck you no way. But you are gonna suck my dick.”
The funk coming off his ass was incredible. Here the niggah had on three g’s worth of gear, and his drawers and ass smelled like two weeks ago. Pluto put his fat knee in my chest and pulled out his dick, and I almost threw up at the sight of it. It was fat and uncircumcised and had a glob of slimy juice dripping from the head.
“If you put that shit anywhere near my mouth, I’ma-”
Pluto knocked the shit out of me. “Suck it, bitch,” he yelled as I tried to clear my head and catch my breath. “You gonna suck it!”
That dick was halfway down my throat before I knew it. I gagged and fought as he pumped in and out of my mouth like it was his own personal pussy. Tears were blinding me, but I heard that fat niggah laughing on top of me as he slammed his dick in my mouth up to the balls. “Yeah, bitch. Suck it! Suck it!”
I forced myself to wait until he pulled back, and the moment he went in for another slam, I bit down on that shit so hard it made my jaw ache.
The next thing I knew Pluto was screaming, fists were flying, and my mouth was filling up with blood. A bunch of somebodys bust into the room and pulled Pluto off of me, and I could hear Monique laughing in the doorway. G came in and looked down at me with ice in his eyes.
“Pluto paid for that pussy, bitch. Next customer that comes up in here better get his money’s worth.” But even G couldn’t make me suck no dick. When those niggahs saw Pluto with blood all over his pants, none of them were bad enough to stick their dicks in my face.
The first five tricks were the worst. Some of them I’d known and had dissed for years because they had tried to get with me even though they knew I was G’s. Others were straight-up strangers who were all about getting some cold sex. Only a few of them bothered with a rubber since I was considered prime fresh meat. G stayed right there in the room with me, too, and even told me what to do. “Grab his ass, Juicy. Don’t just lay there! These niggahs done paid good money for that pussy! Fuck back at ’em!”
Five turned into ten, and then into even more. By then my nipples were chewed raw, I was bleeding between my legs and scraped so sore that all I could do was lay there and moan. G looked down on me with a strange look in his eyes, and I thought about all the nights I had lain in bed next to this man while he slept. I prayed he would remember how much he used to like me and say fuck his reputation and have a little mercy on me.
“All right, now,” G said as the next customer came through the door. “Y’all bout wearing this pussy out now. Quit sending them niggahs in here one by one. Let’s get us a train rolling, keep this pussy hot. One niggah jump out, the next one jump in. Let’s move it, fellahs. Time is money.”
I turned my head toward the wall, but I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. I didn’t have no more tears left. But what I did have was a little purple pill Monique had slipped me. See there, Dicey, I thought. Maybe that three-titty bitch ain’t so bad after all. I opened my mouth and threw that pill down my grateful throat.