The road to Ithica(GENESIS)

Warnings: Adult! Don't read this if you're underage and/or easily offended. It deals with matters that aren't pretty. Frank language and discussion of unpleasant topics. That will go for the entire series. Graphic sexual descriptions so if you are not over 18 don’t read it.



Notes: This particular chapter deals with the physical aftermath of rape, and drug use. The title is from Neil Young’s song ‘Needle and the Damage done’. Lyrics are from the song ‘Heroin’ by Lou Reed.



Special Notes: Thanks to my beta, Ace.



II

(NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE)







It’s been raining for days, and the streets are dead. No one is bold enough to get wet for a fuck, so I took the opportunity to visit the library. It’s warmer than my place, and I love the smell of books. I have found a spot that no one comes to, and I have the whole place to myself.



I’ve always loved reading, and it wouldn’t be a lie if I said that I have read most of the books in the library. The library is my sanctuary; I come here every chance I get. The others laugh at me, but here, I’m warm and safe. They say the same things for the mall but it’s just not the same.



I have a love for the classics - London, Wolf, Hemingway, I love them. I can identify with Hemingway’s heroes. I like the fact that Hemingway actually went to those places, and in some way, he lived everything he writes in his books. Maybe he didn’t fight a wasted fight like the old man in his book The Old Man and the Sea, but he knew about pain and wasted time. I guess he wasted his time well when he was drinking Moheto in the sun.



I also have a love for the writers that my parents liked. I have an old copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and I must have read it more than twenty times. I really can understand why my parents chose to live the way we lived. My father’s family had money. A lot of it. I know that when I turn thirty-five, I will inherit 3.4 million dollars, assuming I live that long.



I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I could use some money now. My brother, that ass, came to the trial, and I’ve never seen him since. In two years, he will take his share, and I’ll be still selling my body to whatever assholes that have the money to buy me. He didn’t even suggest taking me with him. Fuck, man, he brought me a candy bar like I was in kindergarten or something. Bet his wife made him do it. I can picture that. ‘Take something for your baby sister and come back with the money, sweetheart.’



“Is this seat taken?” I raise my head and I see a girl talking to me. But not any girl. She’s Vicky Floyd from my old school back in Tamales.



“No,” I answer and drift into the book again.



“It’s Sara, isn’t it?” she asks me while sitting down.



“I’m trying to read,” I say, and thankfully, I see her standing up. Okay, everything will be cool.



“What for? You know what they say about apples, right? You’ll end up like that murderer mom of yours.” With that, she leaves.



I’m trying not to cry in front of her, and I do a fine job. That is until I lose her from my sight. I try to concentrate on my book, but I fail. This is the good part when the old man is safe in his bed, and the boy, Manolin, is taking care of him. But it’s bullshit! The old man didn’t beat anything but himself; he was a first class moron if he thought that he would ever change his fate.



I stand up, and in a daze, I walk out of the library. I forgot to put the book back on the shelf, but my mind doesn’t control my body. The rain hasn’t stopped, and I walk in the rain, feeling nothing. Numb, I am numb. All I can do is walk, and that’s what I do. I walk, the rain hits me from every direction, and I still don’t feel anything.



It’s past midnight when I open the door of the hole that I call ‘home’. Something smells nice in the air. Rebecca must have cooked chicken. The acidic smell of lemon is still in the air. Other times I’d be the first to jump in the kitchen since I love chicken, but now I go to my room and lay in my bed.



“Slim, is that you?” I hear Rebecca’s voice, but I don’t answer. The room is spinning like crazy, and I want to throw up. I don’t think that I’ll manage to go all the way to the bathroom, so I stay where I am. Suddenly, I feel really weak and all I want to do is sleep. I close my eyes and swallow hard. I’ll never be like my parents. They both have a fair share in everything that’s happened to me.



“Hey, Sara? Are you okay, girl? I made chicken, your favorite,” Rebecca says and she pats my door. She knows that chicken is my favorite; she knows! A fucking junkie knows that I like chicken, and my own brother doesn’t know that I don’t eat strawberries. I’ll have to tell him to stick his strawberry candy bar up his ass. Next time, next time that I see him.



“Oh my god, Sara!” I feel a cool hand on my forehead, and I open my eyes to see a very worried Rebecca looking at me. “You’re burning up.”



“I’m cold,” I say, and a new wave of dizziness forces me to close my eyes again.



“Let’s get you out of these clothes. God, girl, you look like you went for a swim with your clothes on.”



With her help, I get out of my wet clothes and into warm ones. My bed is a mess, so she’s giving me hers for the night. My chest is burning, but after a bowl of chicken soup, I fall asleep. I wake up two times during the night; the first time to empty my stomach from the soup, and the second to make sure that my stomach is still empty.



It was in the morning that I realized that maybe this wasn’t just a simple cold. I have had this cold that’s been torturing me for weeks; one week I was okay, the next week I was in bed. I should have known that it was something more serious than that. Maybe I knew it and didn’t want to pay attention. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do anything about it.



It started softly; I almost didn’t realize it in the beginning. Like a white noise when you are sleeping; you know, too soft to actually wake you, but at the same time, you know that something isn’t right. I was wheezing, and almost at the same time, I started coughing hard.



“Lucy, go get a doctor,” Rebecca said after an hour or so when it was obvious that I needed medical attention.



Jena, to her credit, stayed with me while Rebecca went to get some clean clothes from my room. Sometime in the middle of the night, I had soaked the bed. When Rebecca returned with clean clothes, she and Jena helped me take a bath. I was shaking hard by now, and Jena, just to make me feel better, joked that I had Parkinson’s disease. Neither Rebecca, nor I, found that funny.



“Just a joke, damn it!” Jena screamed and went to change the sheets.



When Lucy returned with the doctor, I was running a fever of 102. I couldn’t breathe well, and I was covered with sweat. The doctor, some Chinese chiropractic who I was doubtful that he knew what he was doing, put some oils on my chest and rubbed them in hard. I don’t know what the fuck that thing was, but it fucking burned me.



“Girl’s lung’s bad,” a strange voice said, and I turned my head to see who it was coming from. A Chinese man, younger than the doctor, was standing in the doorway, and he was translating what the doctor murmured. “This isn’t the first time that the girl’s lungs have left her.”



“Asthma,” I said, and this time I actually screamed when the doctor rubbed my chest with a white satin cloth.



“Lung’s bad but no more, no more,” the doctor murmured.



I wake up, not remembering when I had fallen asleep. I was still burning up, but my breathing was normal. Rebecca was sleeping next to me. My clothes were wet, and I needed to pee. I just closed my eyes and fell asleep again. The next time that I opened my eyes, Lucy was helping Becca change my clothes.



“You’re heavy,” Lucy said, and if my chest wasn’t hurting so much, I would have laughed loudly. I’m almost 5’7 and 100 pounds. Lucy is three inches shorter and three pounds heavier.



“I’m not,” I protest, and Becca sighs.



“Try to change clothes on a dead body and then come and bitch about not being heavy.” She struggles to change my underwear, and when she succeeds and I’m clean and warm, she lightly knocks the back of my head.



“No more walks in the rain, okay?” she states, and I nod. “Good. Luc, bring the soup.”



Becca looks like she hasn’t gotten a fix in quite a while now. Her eyes spark with life and her cheeks have some color on them. She’s looking good. She’s a beautiful woman when heroin doesn’t ruin her characteristics. Rebecca reminds me of my mother. They have the same earthy taste and the same love for chemical experiences. Of course, heroin was a drug that my mother barely touched. She was a flower child; she liked LSD better.



“Thanks,” I say, and I eat a few spoonfuls of the soup. “How many days I was out?”



“Ten - you had as worried, girlfriend,” Lucy says, and I can see tears in her eyes.



“The soup tastes superb,” I say, and Becca laughs hard.



“Superb, huh? God, Slim, I don’t know what to do with you,” she whispers.



I’m the youngest of the four. Becca is the oldest, if one can say that twenty-two is old. She’s been into smack for eight years now. Her father was a two timing loser, and he made Becca be a junkie and sell her body. The two timing loser died two years after, but Becca has developed a habit since then. All she knows is selling and taking. She would be a star on Wall Street.



Lucy is from the south; some village outside of some city. She told me once, and I went to the library to see if I could find it on the map. It’s easier to believe that she came from space. She could have possibly been from space if she didn’t have that awful southern accent. It’s not so bad now, but in the first days I couldn’t understand what she was talking about.



Jena, on the other hand, is the American dream reversed - rich kid who liked coke more than daddy’s money and ended up on the streets. I’m like Jena too. American dream, my ass. My parents hated everything American. They hated the policy, the Vietnam War, racism and the KKK, they even hated communism. My parents loved utopia.



Stupid fuckers!



“Got you a present,” Lucy shyly says and gives me a book.



The new Anne Rice novel: The Vampire Lestat. Wow! That should cost a lot of money. I open my mouth to say something, but I close it right away. I just love Anne Rice books. I love the way she writes and describes things. She makes me forget my life. See, I have this thing with history. I love history. I shouldn’t love history, but I spent hours as a child hearing about Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Odysseus, and everyone important enough to be put in history books. But the bad thing with history is that I actually have to study it to be able to understand it. That’s the only reason that I love math more than history. With math, or even with physics, I don’t have to study it; it comes naturally to me.



“You shouldn’t, but thank you,” I say, and she smiles.



“You bought us food more times than we can count.”



And that was Lucy’s explanation for why she bought the book. Every street kid knows how to hide his or her feelings. It’s common sense. A way of protecting ourselves. However, we easily understand the hidden meanings behind the words. When I get better I’ll ignore the fact that Becca stayed clean ten days while looking out for me, and she will ignore the fact that I’ll probably continue as before.



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I miss school. I miss school more than I expected. Today is one of the rare times that I woke before noon, and having nothing to do, I went for a walk. I remember that when I was going to school, I couldn’t wait to finish it. I hate waking up early, and my school back at Bay was half an hour away. That meant that I had to wake one hour earlier than most of my classmates.



Right now, I stare at the grey building, and I feel jealous of the kids that have the benefit of education. I would give my right arm just to be in there. I see three kids with ripped jeans having a smoke in the backyard, not fifty feet away from where I’m standing. I can tell that their jeans are ripped following the fashion and not because they don’t have a second pair to wear, like me.



I could wear the black jeans that my ‘john maestro’ gave to me, but I keep them for good jeans. I have a few clients that want me to look stylish. I guess the fact that they pay me twenty for a five-minute fuck doesn’t ruin their fantasy. Hey, if they want me to be the model that they can’t fuck, fine by me. It’s the money that counts.



“Got a smoke, friend?” One of the kids asks me.



Long, blonde hair, blue eyes, earrings in both ears. Metallica T-shirt, the one from the tour, black ripped jeans and jockey hat backwards. Deep voice, the stud of the school. He’s coming my way, and I look around to see if anyone is passing. I nod my head and pull out my pack. I have only three cigarettes left.



“You can keep it,” I say, and I throw him the pack.



“Cool, thanks,” he says and smiles, “You’re new here?”



“No, just hanging around,” I answer him, and he smiles wide.



“Hanging around outside the school yard?” he laughs.



“Yeah, I didn’t have anything better to do.”



“Want to go to Lower Haight with me?” he asks all of a sudden.



“Your friends won’t mind?”



“They aren’t my friends, they’re my following. So, what you say? It’s not like you have something better to do, anyway.”



That’s true. I’d probably hang around a little more, and then I would probably go to Castro Street to see Darren for the money that he owes me, eat something from McDonalds, and then go back to prepare for the night. It’s Friday night, and the weather is surprisingly good for this time of the year. Friday night’s the busiest night. Tenderloin will be full with people tonight.



“You don’t even know me,” I say, and he looks at me with the brightest blue eyes that I have ever seen.



“You smoke unfiltered cigs; anyone who smokes non-filter cigs has my respect,” he says, and I can’t keep my eyes away from him, “C’mon, what do you say? I’m harmless; I prefer to make love and not war. Have some blaze*.”



He whispers the last.



“I have some blaze too,” I whisper back, and he laughs. “Come on Kerouac, lead the way.”



“One minute to get my bag,” he yells and runs to the others.



“What’s your name?” I ask him when he returns.



“James, yours?” he asks, and we shake hands.



“You can call me Slim,” I say, and hopefully, he won’t say anything back.



James is seventeen and wants to be a musician. He plays lead guitar and sings in a group. They call themselves The Fantastic Five. He says that they want to change it, but they can’t find anything better. Yes, and The Fantastic Five is so much better than any other group name in town.



We talk about music. He likes hard rock and thrash metal, while I prefer dark wave and punk. We both have a love for the oldies. Both parents were at Woodstock. I don’t know if he said that just because he wants to have cool parents too, but my story is true. My parents and my brother were at Woodstock. They said that at the scene there were a bunch of people swimming naked in the lake, and if I looked closely, I would see them making the victory symbol.



“And you like The Clash better than Metallica?” he asks while taking a sip from his Cherry Cola.



For some reason, that brings to mind the song “Lola” by The Kinks. Money moves the world. The singer, I can’t remember his name now, flew all the way back to Britain just to record a word. He changed the word ‘Cherry’ with the word ‘Coca’ for commercial reasons. I’m wondering how much he got for that.



“Yeah, I don’t think that I like Metallica a lot,” I say, and he looks at me in shock.



“Not even the “Kill ‘em All” LP? Dude, that’s a classic.”



“I don’t think that an album can be a classic only two years after it’s out. Classic is, uh, the “Are You Experienced” LP by Jimi Hendrix,” I say, and he nods.



It always surprised me how easily I could start a talk with a stranger about music. Not everyone reads books; even if I have a feeling that James is a Vampire Chronicles fan. But everyone hears music, and this is Frisco. We have a music history equal to London’s, if not bigger.



“God, man. I mean, wow! Right here, right on that sign.” We are at the corner of Haight and Ashbury, or Hushbury as we like to call it. “My parents have a picture with all the members of Grateful Dead posing right at this sign.”



“Yeah?” I say, and I can’t help but feel good. “My parents have an album with all of the signatures of the group. They even have photographs with them and a few others.”



“Your parents are cool,” he says.



He was right. My parents were cool. My dad had written a few articles for the underground magazine Oracle, and he was friends with Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. For some months, they lived at the Dog House, an apartment complex part of the biggest hippie organization with the name Family Dogg. Dog House had taken its name because all of the renters had dogs.



I know more things about San Francisco from the sixties rather than the San Francisco of the eighties.



“You cut out of school often?”



“Uh, I have a tutor, you know. Taking classes at home,” I say, and I turn my head away so he doesn’t see me blush.



I haven’t seen a classroom for thirteen months now. When the state moves you around, you kind of miss things like school, safety, trust, your childhood. I lost something in every house that I stayed in, no matter whether I stayed for a day or for a year. Well, I’ve never stayed in a house for more than six months.



“Wanna go out sometime?” James asks me, and I turn my head so fast that the world spins.



“What?”



“You know, go out. Hang around, doing nothing,” he says and smiles.



“We do that now.”



“You don’t like me, huh? What, it’s the t-shirt or the hair?” he says, and I smile.



“No, man. It’s just that…things are weird right now,” I say, and he looks at me funny.



“At home?”



He asks me the only question that can block me. I can’t possibly tell him that I’m sharing an apartment with three other girls, and I definitely can’t tell him that I’m selling my body on the street. He’s going to a rich school, and his clothes smell of money. Talking about music is okay, dating, no.



“I’m not in your league.” I find an excuse.



Money is a sure bet.



“Okay then, let’s not go out. Let’s go to beach. Waves are free and so is sun. C’mon, please. I’m so bored of them, they are plastic people. Credit card people. You, you are real. You’re not afraid to say what you think; all my friends do is suck up to me,” he says, and his voice is sad.



“I don’t know,” I say, and he shakes his head.



“Listen, tomorrow I’ll be at Ocean Beach. I’ll be there until the sun sets, so if you feel like coming…I’ll be there. Okay?”



“I’m not promising,” I say as he stands up. It’s time for him to go.



“Ocean Beach.” He stops a taxi. “Just ask for James D.”



‘Another James Dean,’ I think while I watch the taxi drive away.



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I guess that it’s not a good thing when your friends ask you how much he paid you when you tell them that you met a guy. I’m looking at them with my mouth open and with the most idiotic face I have.



“No, uh, I met a boy,” I correct my mistake, and Lucy jumps.



“Tell me everything,” she says and takes me by the hand.



It’s my first night since I got sick. Lucy takes me and leads me to the bathroom, a four foot room with a shower and a broken sink. Tonight I will dye my hair red. I wanted a change. I’m sick of my common colors. Brown and brown. Lucy starts to dye my hair, and I tell her all about James. She giggles somewhat oddly while we listen to the Rolling Stones on a secondhand tape recorder. The voice keeps going up and down, but we have music.



Lucy sings along with the song, and I’m fighting a smile. She sings all the lyrics wrong except the chorus. While she dyes my hair, I’m fixing a joint. Darren didn’t have my money, so I took the next best thing - some good Acapulco Gold: A-list marijuana straight from Mexico.



“Damn, that shit smells good,” Lucy says when I lite the joint.



I take a huge whiff, and I let the drug fog my mind. Lucy slaps my arm softly, but I don’t give her what she wants. Darren was right. This is a fine piece. Strong and it gives you an airhead in no time. After the third drag, I give her the cig. She takes an even bigger drag than mine and closes her eyes.



“Joints, boys, money. You are the golden girl, right, Sara?” she says bitterly.



I found that so funny that I burst into laughter. Lucy, on the other hand, is very serious. She has a hurt face, and I’m wondering why. My question is answered ten seconds later when she grabs me and kisses me hard. One hand holds me close to her and the other grabs my chest.



I push her away, and she bites my lip. I hit her when I taste the blood. She looks at me from where I pushed her and murmurs a weak ‘sorry’. I don’t have a chance to say anything to her because she ran out of the room crying. Jena is coming in and stops me when I try to go after Lucy. She continues from where Lucy stopped. She dyes the rest of my hair.



And now I understand why the gifts, why the angry looks every time that I checked out a guy, why the excuses when I was taking a shower and she was coming inside. I never used the bath curtain; we are all girls so I didn’t see the point. Now I wish I did. All the times that I said that I wished to have a chest like Lucy’s…damn!



“You don’t choose the person you love, Sara,” Jena says, and I nod my head.



“I didn’t know.” I take a drag from the cig.



“I don’t think that Lucy knew either,” she says, and I nod my head again. “Here.”



She gives me two pills that I swallow without thought. I don’t drink water either; I have done that way too many times. I always get ‘high’ before going looking for work. There isn’t one kid on the streets who is sober. People fuck you, and if you have an excuse, you carry on easier.



I haven’t made love in my life. I only had sex. Sometimes sex is good, but it’s mostly painful. Johns don’t care about you; it’s their need that counts. They want to be satisfied, and since they pay you, they don’t care. I try my best not to take johns that want to fuck my ass. I don’t care if he pays me the moon and the stars; I won’t go with him.



It was during my first month when I ended up in a hospital for stitches. One john enjoyed himself too much on me. He didn’t use lube, and the fact that I hadn’t done that before didn’t help. I felt like I was splitting in half; I yelled at him, but the fucking bastard got even hornier at that. I couldn’t do anything more than cry while he raped me. When he finished, he threw four fifties and left me there.



Rebecca helped me go to the hospital. I thought that the hard part was over. I was a fool. What came next was as bad as the rape. First, they stripped me down and a middle aged doctor came and examined the wound. He shook his head and ordered a nurse to bring him a bottle from somewhere. He was nice; kept talking to me and trying to be as delicate as he could be. Didn’t help.



He irrigated the area with hot water. It hurt like hell, and I remember biting my lips so I wouldn’t scream. Didn’t help either. After he cleaned the area and made sure that I didn’t have any more extensive wounds, he cauterized the area. After that, antibiotic ointment was applied to the whole area, interior and exterior, and he dressed me in a hospital gown. He gave me some antibiotics and a diet of clear liquids for seven days.



We split the second he turned his head away. I was underage and raped. Cops would be on my case with a phone call. Becca called a taxi because I was too weak to walk or take the tram. She made me soup and held me when I cried. The next day a black guy came. Arthur became my pimp, and I haven’t had any problems since then. Arthur is a nice guy, for a pimp. He doesn’t hit us when the day is slow, and he provides Becca with the H that she needs. He even took Jena to the clinic for an abortion. Held her hand and bought her flowers afterward.



The only reason why he’s so fucking good with us is because he’s gay. He lives in a wonderful house on Castro Street. I’ve been there once. It was like I was on another planet. I swear there were feathers everywhere and pink champagne in pink glass. Some queers had more make-up than I did, but they were fun. I practically cried when Arthur’s boyfriend did his Cher imitation. Sean ‘call-me-Sharon’ Pitt is a little more than two hundred pounds.



“Let’s dye your eyebrows too,” Jena said, and I agree.



Two hours later I watch my red hair match my red lips. I put on some more lipstick, and I make sure that my teeth are clean. Last time, I had lipstick on them. I wear my new boots, the ones that I got after the ‘three thousand dollar’ lick. I’m ready to go. I wear my favorite see-through shirt and my leather miniskirt. I think for a second if it’s okay to wear my new leather jacket. Better not.



I haven’t seen Lucy in three hours now. I want to talk with her, but Jena pushes me away. The girl is blasted. I’m high too, but she’s practically blind from the stone. I think that I saw her sniffing some heroin from Becca’s stash. I walk with her until we arrive at our spot. From there, it is every man for himself. I take a cigarette out from my jacket, and I light it.



Ramona, a beautiful Latino gypsy with warm brown eyes, comes my way holding some wine. We talk for a while. She puts down the wine, and I put out the smoke. The hashish that I got is not even half as good as Danny’s marijuana, but Ramona doesn’t complain. We spoke half in English and half in Mexican.



“Noche lenta*,” she says, and I nod.



It’s still early. Not much movement until midnight. Then all the witches and ghosts are out. I don’t believe in ghosts. But I believe in witches. I have seen a few things, and only the mere memory of them can make me wet my pants. I’ve seen things in Chile and Argentina, and even if I was too little to have a memory, I do. Not ghosts or vampires but creepy human things.



“Do you believe in God, chica?”



“Don’t know. Probably.” But she’s not satisfied with my answer.



“God saved you when you were sick; why you don’t believe in His Holiness?”



“The Chinese doc saved me. God had turned his back to me, and I don’t think that He gives a damn about me,” I say, and she shakes her head.



The Chinese chiropractic, or better, his methods, helped me. My parents didn’t want me to become a sick child, and they never let me feel this way. I never used an inhaler for my asthma either. There were times that I couldn’t breathe, but the stubborn fuckers didn’t get me to a hospital. Oils. That was their treatment. Eucalyptus oil and peppermint oil on a tissue for inhalant.



Until I turned seven, they used to bathe me with a mix of lavender, geranium, frankincense, and vegetable oil. After that, it was cypress, geranium, frankincense, and vegetable oil. I loved the oil part. My mother, but usually my father, would massage me in long sweeping movements, starting at the base of my spine with his hands on either side of my vertebrae, and then he moved in upward strokes to my shoulders, over my shoulders, and down the sides of my body.



“Give me your hand,” Ramona tells me, and even if I have my doubts, I give it to her. “You have long way. But the hand don’t lie. You will find good in your life; you will have fights, but you win. You will fight long time but at the end you be the winner.”



“No eternal love or death?” I tease her, and she smiles.



“You keep your wit for the English boys,” Ramona says, and I laugh.



We stop our talk the second that we see a car. We pose and wait. Whoever it is inside the car, a blue ’78 Ford truck, is new to the job. He turns off the car’s lights and drives away quickly. Ramona and I laugh, but when the blue Ford comes again, we go closer to the road. A guy has to pick, right?



“Hey girls,” he says, “uh, I uh…”



He’s shaking like a leaf.



“What do you want? Mexican or fast food?” I ask him, and he turns red.



“Uh, fas-,” he clears his throat, “fast food, I want fast food.”



It’s best to ask directly what the john wants, especially when the john is new to the sport. When I first came here, Becca had murmured something about fast food and French fries. I found the courage to ask her only after the accident with the hospital. She said that clients refer to us like food. If the client says that he wants Mexican food, that means that he’s looking for a Latin American girl or boy.



I say bye to Ramona and I make sure that she has the car’s license number. She waves that she has. I take a last drag of my hashish before I give it to her. I’m relaxed enough when I enter the car, and it’s not like I’ll need it now. The guy smells good. He’s not older than twenty five, but he’s already starting to lose his hair.



“Is the music okay?” he asks me, and his voice shakes.



“Yeah, Elvis is fine,” I say, and he sighs.



Virgin!



“I, uh, this is, uh, I haven’t done this before.”



“Sex or paid sex?”



“Uh, it’s that obvious? Sex, paid sex, well, both,” he says, and I smile, “I need to learn a few things. For my girlfriend,” he adds.



The guy, he turned out to be a natural.



“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” he cries.



Every time, he drove his cock inside of me. I’m excited too; I’‘m on the edge of orgasm, but he keeps losing his rhythm, and I groan every time. For a virgin, he has amazing stamina. I gave him a blowjob before we started, and he’s not looking like he’s ready to unload any time soon. He starts to move faster inside of me, and I do my best to match his movement.



“I’m gonna, I’m gonna…I’m cumming, I’m cumming, oh god!”



He screams loud enough to wake the dead. I cum too, only with less noise. He keeps moving inside of me, and I’m waiting for his aftershock to stop before I pull him out of me, when I feel his cock, hard. I look at him with surprise, and he has this shy smile on his face.



“Sorry,” he murmurs, and I hug him.



“I don’t know a woman to be sorry for that,” I say, and he starts again.



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It’s easy to find everything you’re looking for if you have the right contacts. I wanted a bikini, and I got a bikini. A simple, black bikini, which I believe makes me look ridiculous, but the others say that I’m just grumpy. Low confidence, that’s my problem. I always was the ugly duckling of the story, and I can’t seem to get past that.



Going to Ocean Beach was a challenge for me. I used to come here with my dad. He taught me how to surf here. He said that if I wanted to surf then I had to surf here. I was six and he didn’t allow me to fall. If I fell, I had to swim back to the coast alone. By the third time, I was too weak to cry. But I learned how to surf.



It’s a nice day for surfing. Or better it’s a nice afternoon for surfing. I woke up a few minutes past three. The sun was up when I went to my bed. I’ve never been a morning person, but today I pushed my limits. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to come here, but unfortunately, Becca insisted. She came with me to help me choose the perfect bikini. Lost money, that’s what the bikini is for me. Lost money.



“You know James D?” I ask one guy.



“Yeah,” he says and walks away with his surfboard.



Surfers, man! I’m more careful with the next one.



“Hey, where I can find James D?” I ask, and he answers by pointing at the ocean.



Three surfers are trying to catch waves, but only one of them manages that. The others scream for him to go on. He’s a good surfer, but not James. I find James, or better, he finds me. He smiles when he sees me, and I do the same thing. He’s naked from the chest and up and has the smoothest skin I have ever seen on a guy. And trust me, I have seen a lot of guys.



“Hey, you made it,” he says, and he kisses my cheek.



“Yeah.” I don’t kiss him back, and I can feel that he’s tense. “I didn’t know if you’d be here.”



“I said that I’d be here ‘til sunset, didn’t I?”



I nod my head, and he smiles again. His blonde hair is wet from the ocean, and he smells like after-shave and ocean. Two smells that I really like. I always do a better job when the john is clean, and I can tell that James is the soap type. And not a client, thank god. It’s always worse when the johns are smaller or the same age as you. Talk about embarrassment.



“I, uh, I don’t know if I did the right thing coming here,” I say when we sit down.



“What? Why? I won’t hurt you; I swear,” he says, and I laugh.



“You already hurt me,” I say, and he doesn’t understand, “I know now for sure that I did the wrong thing with you. Listen, James, you are a wonderful guy, and I really like to hang out with you…”



“You are with someone else,” he stops me bitterly.



“No, I’m not. I would never do that to you or to whatever I’m with…” He stops me again.



“Then what? I don’t understand; I like you and you like me, or at least that was what I felt, and you are not seeing anyone. Where’s the freaking problem?”



“I spent last night fucking a guy,” I say and he gasps, “I fucked his brains out. He paid me fifty bucks for that. He was a virgin, and he had his first sexual experience with a hooker.”



“I don’t, I don’t believe you.” He’s white from the shock.



“I’m a motherfucking whore; I suck dicks for living,” I say, and I stand up, wiping the sand off of my clothes, “Find a nice girl for yourself, James, not someone like me. I might know how to fuck, but I don’t know how to love.”



And it’s true, in a way. I keep them all at arm’s length. I’m afraid that they will hurt me, and I can’t stand another hit. I thought that I could, I thought that I was tough, but I’m not. The incident with Vicky Floyd made me understand that. I can be hurt by people, and I’m not as tough as I look.



He doesn’t try to stop me when I walk away. I hadn’t planned that. I had planned to spend a nice day at the beach with a guy that didn’t use his money to make me keep him company, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what Vicky had said the other day. And it wasn’t her words about apples, it was her question.



What for?



Why should I allow myself to become involved with James when everyone I’ve met either left me or treated me like shit? What should I wait for, James? Sure, he could love me and I could love him, but he’d leave me when he found out the truth about me. I can’t possibly believe that he would choose me over a girl of his league if he knew everything about me.



So I walk out before he walks out on me. I broke his heart today, but if I learned one thing from the streets, it’s better you than me. I do not trust anyone; they will double cross me the first chance they get. I’m not complaining; I’ll do the same. It’s the only way to survive out there.



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My heart is beating like crazy in my chest, and my lungs are burning. My head hurts from the effort, but I don’t stop. I have to go as far away from there as I can. Vice cops! They burst into the club when no one expected them. Jack had said that it was a safe party. That’s the only reason why I agreed to go in the first place.



The club was full, and the music was loud. The DJ kept playing all the right songs - not the shit that you hear at MTV, but the cool stuff. I found myself dancing with the music, and surprisingly, I was having a nice time. And then the cops broke in and all hell broke loose. I was dancing with a guy with green hair, to a song from Smiths. The song never finished; the DJ stormed out like the rest of us.



I know that the vice will probably be around the club, but I can’t be for sure. If they catch me, I will not be sent to a foster home. This time it will be the borstal institution, which is worse than prison. A friend of mine did some time there; the older kids beat the hell out of the smaller kids, and I don’t even want to know what the guards did to them.



I keep running, and I feel like I’ll throw up any second now, but I don’t stop. The alley is dark, and the only light that I see is coming from the lights at every corner. I stumble, but I stand up and continue running away. I stop when my legs don’t hold me anymore. Still, I crawl behind a trash bin for cover and only then I let myself relax.



That was close. Jesus, that was close. No more. No more favors, not to Jack, not to Snake, not to anyone. Last time, first and last time. I knew that I shouldn’t mess with that stuff, but Jack asked me a favor, and that favor nearly put me behind bars.



I hold my breath when I hear footsteps near the spot where I’m hiding. They found me! The cops found me. I start to shake because I don’t want to go back there. I simply can’t. Then I remember that I’m still holding the stuff that Jack asked me to sell. I swallow hard. Big fucking mess.



“You can come out now,” a voice says, and a second later a shadow falls on me.



“Don’t hurt me!” I yell, and I cover my face with my hands.



When I first ran away, I played pool. I was pretty good at pool, actually. We had a pool back in Tamales, and my dad taught me how to play. I won a few times before someone smacked my face with the cue. He took my money, and I took the decision to hustle for money. I have a small mark right above my eye to remind me of that.



“Ronnie has years to hurt a lady,” the voice is soft, but I can tell from his tone that Ronnie’s mind works slowly.



“Please don’t hurt me,” I say again because I don’t know this Ronnie guy, and he could easily be a psycho or a cop, “Okay, Ronnie?”



I come out with my hands up, trying my best to look as harmless as I can. Ronnie is a big black guy with dirty clothes and a broken arm. That looks bad, and I wonder who did that to him. He has very sad brown eyes, and I feel sorry for him. People like him shouldn’t end up on the streets. People like me, we survive, but people like Ronnie only suffer.



“Ronnie is good with the ladies,” he says and smiles.



“Yeah, Ronnie is a good boy.” He laughs at that.



“See? Ronnie didn’t hurt you…” he stops when we hear the sound of a police siren.



“Ronnie, I have to go.” I give him fifty bucks. I know that it’s not a lot, but it’s all that I have now.



“I’ll tell nothing, yes Sir, Ronnie will tell nothing to the pings.” He nods his head.



I walk away, leaving Ronnie to murmur about pings and ladies. I have to call Jack. I call him from the first phone booth that I see. I explain to him what happened and that he should come and take his stuff before I throw it away. That has him running to where I am. I give him the drugs and yell at him for five or so minutes before he gives me a playful slap on the cheek and a dose of heroin.



“I don’t hit,” I say, and he smiles.



“That’s a gift for me. Others would have thrown the bags with the panic, so that’s your reward. Becca can always have it if you don’t want it.”



Jack and Becca are ex-lovers. He sells, she buys. When Becca started to fuck him for her dose, Jack took that personally. It was okay to date when Becca bought stuff from him but not when she fucked him. Jack is a good businessman, and he knows not to mess his personal life with his business.



When I go home, I hide his ‘gift’, wondering why I kept this. It’s not that I shoot or sniff that shit. I had asked Becca once to let me sniff a line, but she said that if I sniffed, then I better shoot. I did neither. I never asked Becca again, and she never urged me to try. In fact, she’s the one telling me to never touch that thing. She knows better.



I smoke my second pack for the day and drink some chocolate milk. It’s not sour, but the taste is weird. It’s been out of the fridge for two days now, but we don’t have anything better. It’s either that or cold beer, and I’m not really in the mood for beer. I drink my chocolate milk slowly, I eat few cookies, and I go to bed.



Yesterday was a good day. Every day that the cops don’t nail you, clients don’t hit you, and you find something to eat and a place to sleep is a good day.



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What could I possible say about Loren? Except that she’s stupid of course. Loren has a nice family who loves her. She drives a car that her dad bought her the day she turned sixteen, she has a gorgeous boyfriend, and she’s a student at Berkeley. I could go on, but that’s enough for me to hate her. But I don’t. She’s my best friend.



We met when I stole her ex-boyfriend’s wallet. The guy had twenty bucks and few coins, the cheap head. Loren saw me, but she didn’t say anything. She just smiled. I dropped the wallet and I left holding the twenty dollars. She found me later at the ladies’ room and gave me fifty bucks. She said that it was for the look on his face when he noticed that someone had stolen his wallet.



We hooked since then. Me, a thin and tall, fifteen year old heavy smoker and occasional drinker and hustler, and her, twenty-one years old, writer wannabe, princess from Presidio Heights. She’s living in a palace and shops antiques from Sacramento Street, dressed in the best clothes money can buy, drinking wines older than her.



What can we possibly have in common?



“Are you taking your time?” she asks me angrily.



“I’m sorry,” I say from under the steering wheel of an old, red Mustang, “you want to boost that car yourself?”



“Fuck you.”



I’m her ideal novel heroine.



“There,” I say with satisfaction when I hear the engine.



“Good job, girlfriend,” she says and jumps in the driver’s seat. As funny as it will seem, I know how to boost cars, but I don’t know how to drive them.



Loren is as addicted to adrenaline as I’m addicted to nicotine. Her father is one of the richest men in San Francisco, and her mother hosts galas at every possible opportunity, but the worst part is that her brother is an attorney. Which means that if we get caught, she’ll be out, and I’ll be watching the sun behind bars.



“You know that what we did is a felony, right?” I ask her when we are far enough to actually breathe.



“And selling your body is not? Relax girl, this car was here since forever.”



“So it’s stolen,” I yell, “Damn it, Loren! Why didn’t we take your fucking car?”



“Because my fucking car is a fucking Porsche and you don’t learn to drive in a Porsche, Sara. Admiral is a very sensitive car,” she says in her best matter of fact voice.



“You named your Porsche Admiral?” I ask her and she nods, “God, I need a smoke.”



“You smoke a lot,” she says, but that doesn’t discourage me from lighting a cigarette.



I love to smoke. It’s my way of getting away. I’m happy with a pack of unfiltered Pall Mall’s and some time for myself. That’s all I need. Cigarettes and time. Time passes too slowly on the streets, and time passes too quickly on the streets. Waiting for a client, taking a client, waiting for another client. Finding money, giving money, running away from stuff, facing other stuff. Smoking a lot is the least of my problems.



“You, uh, won’t ask me about college?” she says, and I finish my cigarette, just to light another.



“No,” I say dryly.



“Okaayy!” she says with that tone that I hate.



I don’t want to hear about college or college life. Before I had a pretty good chance to go to college, now I have nothing. It’s not that I don’t want to go back to school; I’m sure that Sylvia would find a way if I asked her. My mind isn’t working right. I can’t concentrate these days. I stopped going to the library. I couldn’t read, the words on the pages were just letters put together. No meaning, no nothing, just meaningless letters.



At some point, I caught myself looking at a huge blank space, only to realise later that it was the book that I was reading. It’s The Once and Future King, but I haven’t read a single page from it; I only turned the pages mechanically. And I felt so bad that time, I felt so bad for keeping a book that someone else might actually read, that I ran out of the library.



That was three weeks ago.



“Are you cold?” Loren asks me.



“No, why?”



“Why the long sleeves then?”



“I haven’t anything clean to wear,” I answer her, but I can feel that she’s not done with me yet.



“Oh, I see. You’re in one of your moods again,” she says, and I turn to look at her.



“What moods?”



“One minute you are ‘joy to the world’ and the other you are ‘damn you all’, girlfriend. And right now you are full of ‘damn you all’ mood,” she says and I crack my knuckles.



“I’m not moody,” I protest.



“Girl, if you were a little more moody, you’d be the ‘Moody Blues’.”



I can’t help but laugh at that. Loren must find that to be a good thing because she continues with the teasing.



“Oh my god! You have teeth, I didn’t know that you had teeth.” She looks in the driver’s mirror.



“Fuck you,” I say through laugher and scream when she hits the brake hard, “What the--?”



“Missed our exit,” she says, and I light another cigarette, “Sara, you know that I don’t tolerate smoking.”



I look at her before I throw the cigarette from the open window.



“Good, now lift your sleeves up,” she says in a tone that doesn’t take no for an answer.



I do what she asks.



“Fuck you, Sara, fuck you,” she whispers and stops the car.



I’m looking down, being too ashamed to face her. She doesn’t say anything for a while, and I’m feeling so bad that I’m starting to cry. Not sobbing or anything like that. Tears from embarrassment are running slowly down my face and burning my skin.



“How many times?” she asks, and I fight to find my voice.



“A couple of times,” I answer when I can.



“Doesn’t look like a couple of times to me.”



I don’t speak. I have nothing good to say anyway.



“I’m going to help you,” she says, and I snap.



“I DON’T WANT YOUR PITY!” I scream.



“WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT PITY YOU STUPID ASS?” she screams back.



“You will not help me,” I say with confidence after we both calm down a bit.



“Oh yeah? And why is that?” she asks.



“Cause then you’ll never finish your book.”



She looks at me with such hatred, and then she slaps me.



“You’re on your own, girlfriend,” she says with such venom that it makes me pray for her. I mean, she will die if she bites her tongue by mistake.



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I’m ready.



It’s all here.



Needle, spoon, candle, lighter, heroin.



All here, all ready.



Blood is running from where I cut myself earlier. I wanted to feel something; I wanted to feel alive. My life is like the movies, and only by feeling pain I can realise that it’s the real thing and not some director’s work. Like that movie with Jodi Foster. The something driver…it had something to do with a driver…The Taxi Driver; yeah, I remember it now.



It’s time to cook again. It’s getting worse. Becca had warned me about the pain, but I didn’t believe her. My whole body pains. My hands shake, but not when I put the heroin to the spoon, not when I cook it slowly. No, my hands for some weird reason that only the heroin god knows, have changed into precise surgeon’s hands.



Maybe I’m lucky. Maybe this is my last hit.



‘When the smack begins to flow

Then I really don’t care anymore

About all the jim-jims in this town

And everybody putting everybody else down

And all of the politicians makin’ crazy sounds

All the dead bodies piled up in mounds, yeah’



The demons in my dreams disappear when I shoot H. And I’m scared of them. I’m scared of the demons in my head. There must be something wrong with me. I’m not normal. I’m just not. I’m sick of them; I’m sick of me; I’m sick of everything. I’m sick on the inside. God help me; I’ll be better dead.



“Sara?” Becca calls me, but I don’t care.



I only care about my need and that need is getting bigger by the second. In a few seconds, I’ll be flying. I watch with awe as the needle disappears in my skin, and then I watch the colourless liquid turn slightly pink from my blood, and then I’m flying.



I’m flying, and there are no demons here.



No demons.



Just me.



And then there’s nothing.







NEXT: III (FINDING ATLANTIS)



JULY 2005



Blaze: grass, joint, marijuana.



Noche lenta*: Slow night. (or at least that is what the online dictionary said it means)