Live and Learn (3 page)

“P
layers…ballers…shot callers. Welcome…to Club XXXcite!”

I squinted my eyes against the silver haze of smoke I exhaled and looked through the stank-ass curtain at Vic, the club owner, out on the stage.

Damn, Mookie got the best weed ever.
Three tokes and I was already feelin’ it. I was gettin’ seriously f’ed up.

Ain’t no shame in my game. Besides, I wasn’t the only one gettin’ blunted. Streams of thick smoke drifted up from different corners of the crowded club. There was no mistakin’ the scent in the air.

I checked out the crowd. The spot was live tonight. Good. The
ching-ching
of money was ringin’ all up in my ears. I was gonna drain these m’fers for all I could. I was here to get paid. Straight up.

Maybe even enough to buy those bad-ass Cole Haan boots I saw in Nordstroms last week.

“Give it up for a club favorite. Her name says it all. Here’s…Juicy!!”

I took one last drag from the blunt, lettin’ it fill my lungs as Vic finished my introductions. “Here, Candy,” I called over to another dancer waitin’ backstage. I handed her the blunt. “Go ’head and kill that.”

She took it with the tips of her four-inch acrylic nails. How she washed her ass, I don’t know.

“Is it laced?” Candy asked, her eyes already glassy.

“Hell, no,” I snapped.

Candy stepped back from the pissed-off look on my face. “Chill out, Dom.”

“What a blunt and some damn Henny don’t do for me, I don’t need,” I spat, angry as hell that she thought I’d lace my weed with cocaine or pedope.

“Whatever,” she sighed, before she walked away on five-inch heels in her pink sheer baby doll.

“Dumb ass,” I muttered, forgettin’ about her as I stepped through the break in the curtain to take my spot on the T-shaped stage.

The lights lowered, and the spotlight fell on me. I felt like Mary J., Alicia Keys, Beyonce, or some shit. A star. All eyes on me. Wantin’
me
.

But I can’t sing.

I don’t act.

I ain’t rich.

I’m a stripper. So?

“I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper)” by T-Pain started playin’ loud as hell, drainin’ out that ying-yang them fellas was hollerin’ at me from the floor. I’m glad ’cause I just wanna shake a little ass, flash a little titty, get my loot, and head to the crib.

A bunch of regulars from Hawthorne Avenue started singin’ along with the song, their champagne bottles and Heinekens swayin’ in the air as I gave them m’fers a reason to fall in love.

Dressed in nothing but my red plastic thong and thigh-high boots, I danced to the music, slow and sexy, just the way these hardheads wanted. I could dance my ass off, and when it came to performin’, I could work my body like a snake and make my ass tremble more than a saltshaker.

Being a stripper you can’t have hang-ups and shit. When I was on stage I was willing to do whatever to make my money. It was my job to turn these cats on. That’s why I was the best at Club XXXcite.

Squattin’, I knew they didn’t have to imagine a damn thang as all my business pushed forward like a fist. Bam!

Them fellas went wild, and the paper money fell down around me like rain.

That’s what the hell I’m talkin’ about. Makin’ that loot. Dollar dollar bills, y’all.

I finished my set, grabbed my cash, and hauled ass off stage.

Sweat was pourin’ off me as I walked that walk in my stilettos and counted my cash. One hundred and ten, thirty, fifty, seventy-five, two hundred dollars. That was cool. We made the real money durin’ the club’s showdown. That was when all of the dancers either mingled with the crowd givin’ lap dances or took customers into one of the special rooms for some freak-a-deak private dances and who knows what the hell else.

I danced. I gave hellified lap dances. I might even let a dude suck a tittie or two, but no fuckin’, no suckin’, and no dykin’. Period.

I went downstairs to the dressing room. Man, it smelt like old fish and feet up in this piece. Damn.

I grabbed my Coach leather sac from my locker just as my cell phone rang. Flippin’ it open, I answered it. “What?”

“Kimani wants to talk to you, if you ain’t too busy shakin’ that
little
ass of yours.”

Oh, Lord, here we go
. I hated to hear the sound of Diane’s—she’s my mother—voice when she was in her “I’m a bitch” mode. She was trippin’ again ’cause I stuck her with baby-sittin’ my four-year-old daughter, Kimani. Okay, it
was
foul for me to lie and tell her I was going to the store when I knew I was really headed to Lex’s for me a good dickin’ down before I went to work.

Ain’t like I never did it before. Dang, she should be used to it.

“Diane, you wasn’t complainin’ about me strippin’ last week when I bought that big screen TV for your bedroom,” I snapped back.

“You want that sorry m’fer back, because you can
have
that sorry m’fer back,” she yelled at me through the phone line.

See where I get my nasty mouth? Diane’s a straight wacko. Either she boostin’ me up to do this shit—talkin’ ’bout make that money—
or
she wreckin’ my nerves tellin’ me I’m wrong. Her praise or criticism depended on her moods, which depended on whether she was f’ed up or not.

Ready to get off the phone, I promised to bring her some goodies so she would calm her ass down: a six-pack of Smirnoff Ice—which she drinks like water—and a couple of Philly blunts. You know she wanted a little sum’n sum’n to go
in
the blunts.

To get ready for the showdown I wiped the sweat from my body with a towel and did a couple of spritzes of my favorite perfume, Beautiful by Estee Lauder. I threw on a two-piece sheer bathing suit and headed upstairs before all the free-givin’ customers were taken.

Funny-colored lights flashed around me as I danced around in the dark until I chose my first mark. I didn’t feel nervous. Ain’t had no shame. I just wanna make my money. These men don’t mean shit to me. Most of the time I’m thinkin’ ’bout anything but the m’fers while I’m grindin’ on ’em.

I saw a big buff brotha still in his work uniform with a wad of money in his hand tryin’ to catch my eye. I saw the glint of his wedding ring on that left hand, too, but that ain’t my damn problem, ya heard me? I headed straight in his direction.

He was a new face in the crowd. Another lost soul lookin’ for a damn fantasy. As I gave him a lap dance—grinding against his hardness—I had to hold my breath to keep from swallowin’ down the stank of his breath
and
his crotch.

Damn.

What people do for money.

Dom, Cristal, Alizé, and Moët walked up Fifth Avenue together. Their shopping bags were swinging from their hands, their hair blowing freely in the slight winds. The energetic sounds of New York were their background music: the blaring horns, squeal of tires on pavement, and the music pumping from passing vehicles that whizzed past.

“What’s better than shopping on a nice Saturday afternoon with your friends?” Cristal asked, using a hand to shift her Morgenthal Frederics shades up farther on her pretty round face.

Dom just shrugged and lit another Newport cigarette.

“Lunch at Justin’s after shopping on a nice Saturday afternoon with your friends,” Moët chimed in, sweetly smiling at a sexy police officer on horseback who winked at her.

“Aw, hell no. I know what’s better.” Three sets of eyes turned on Alizé. “Having great sex all night long, after shopping with your friends and having lunch at Justin’s on a nice Saturday afternoon,” Alizé answered, lightly knocking her shoulder against Moët’s as they came to a stop on the corner.

“Now
that
sounds like a f’ing plan,” Dom drawled.

The four friends all burst out with laughter.

I
never been in love before, but I’m not sad about it because I wanted it that way. To me, love is a weakness. Love, or at least
thinking
you’re in love, will fool you into doing some dumb shit. Like letting a man beat up on you. Or cheat on you. Or not support you. Or wait for him to come back to you after he leaves you.

Love shouldn’t be a reason to settle for less. I learned that lesson a long time ago when I was fifteen and I let my boyfriend, Marquee, convince me that my first time making love should be in this dingy little sewing room in his best friend’s house. See love—or
thinking
I was in love—had me carry my hot ass right up in that room that was no bigger than a walk-in closet and give up my innocence like it was nothing. Later on I found out all of the neighborhood boys used that same little room, with that same little twin bed, as their same little ho central.

Nice memory, right?

That was many years and numerous male “friends” ago, and my love life isn’t faring any better now. Everlasting love just isn’t in the cards for me. I’m fine with that because I will never fool myself into believing I am in love again.

I’m sick and tired of taking chances with my heart, colliding with liars, cheaters, and beaters until my fairy-tale prince finally comes into my life and proclaims himself “the one.”

Hell, as much as I loved my daddy, my mama’s love didn’t keep his black ass home working on the “happily ever after” and “until death do us part.” But that same love had her putting her own life on pause while she waited for him to “realize” that he wanted his family back. How many times did I listen to my mother speak of my father as if they were still married? As if he were gone for the day to work and not gone for good living in his own apartment across town. She called on him to do any repairs around the house. She fixed his favorite meals just hoping he would stop by to see me on his way home from work.

All the while I watched as Daddy blocked her advances, missed the dinners, called repairmen instead of coming himself, and did everything short of hurting her more to let her know it was over.

Love? Oh, love is a stupid fat nothing.

I don’t need or want to be in love with
someone
. No, not when I’m in love with
something
.

All the love I had in me—that love I refused to share—I poured into my dancing. As much as I loved my mom and dad, and as tight as I was with my girls, none of them really understood the thang I had for dancing.

They didn’t know that when I danced I was in a world all alone. I would put on an R & B or jazz CD and turn up the volume so loud that the music seemed to press and beat upon my body. I would close my eyes and take my position in front of the mirrored wall, shaping and molding my body with the freedom of a silk scarf blowing in a gentle wind. My heart would feel light in my chest, and I would become out of breath but never tired, not with the energy that filled my body as I easily moved through the dance steps. And sometimes, as the music wound down, I would end with a swaying of my hips and find that I was crying.

I never missed a dance class. No parties, no classes, no fellas, and not even a mad clearance sale at Saks could keep me away from that dance studio.

I
loved
dancing. I was in love with it. It was my passion. No man would ever compete.

Yet unlike the twenty or so other dancers in my class, I had no interest in dancing professionally. I’m not a member of the Screen Actors Guild. I don’t have an agent mailing me scripts or sending me and my head shots on auditions and casting calls.

Hell, I don’t even have a head shot.

When some of the kids read off their resumes and sounded like the Who’s Who of the Great White Way, I had no envy. Dancing was in my soul, in the air I breathed, and in the blood that pumped through my veins. I didn’t want it to become my means of financial support because that would dim the love and passion.

The owner of Dance with Dana Studios, Dana Shanes, was a Dance Theatre of Harlem alum. She allowed me free usage of one of the twelve studios in her converted warehouse. Usually once a week after classes ended, I patiently waited for the kids to empty out of the dance studio. And it was during that hour that the dance steps in my dreams came to life.

Although no one would ever see it—I did it just for me—I still wanted it to be tight. So tonight after class, I started the CD player and walked to the center of the hardwood floor. It didn’t matter that my hair was pulled up into a bun or that I didn’t have on makeup. My favorite leotards were well worn, and when I danced in my bare feet I sometimes chipped the perfect polish on my pedicured toes. But see, none of that mattered in
here
.

The music began to play. I closed my eyes and let myself get lost in the notes playing around me. Every spin, every split, every lift of my legs and arms made me feel like I was soaring. My heart pounded from the exertion. Sweat trailed down the crevices of my body.

With one last touch of my fingers to the sky, I slid down into a frontward split before curling my slender frame into a ball.

Sudden applause pushed me back into the real world with a jolt. I opened my eyes and looked up to find Rah leaning against the ebony baby grand piano, his hands still clasped together.

He’s my man, true enough, but I don’t like anyone messing with my time to dance.

Nobody.

“Hey, Rah, whassup?” I swallowed back my irritation.

“Nothing. I was in Manhattan handling some business, so I dropped by to give you a ride home.”

“Thanks, baby,” I said, turning my back to him as I rolled my eyes heavenward. I turned off the CD player and removed my disc.

Inside I was pissed the hell off, but this man was my bread and butter right now. I put on this fake smile, pretending I’m happy to see his intruding ass.

Rah was only twenty-seven, and he already owned several thriving businesses in Newark. There was the beauty supply store on Springfield Ave., the upscale clothing store on Broad Street downtown, and Sweet Things, the shoe store on Halsey Street. He took the money he had made slinging dope across the Tri-State area for the last ten and put it into profitable businesses.

And I had to admit that the brotha was fine.

He was six feet of solid muscle, and looking so good in a Sean John velour jogging suit. His platinum and diamond jewelry was sparkling like crazy. His “I don’t give a fuck” attitude, with that tilt to his chin and the hooded lids of his eyes, was what first drew me to him.

I saw it in his eyes now that he was getting turned on looking at me in my tight-fitting leotards, but sex in the studio was a definite no-no. This was my private place. Mine alone.

“Let me get my stuff.” I walked over to the corner where my purse and duffel bag sat. I pulled my pale blue JLo sweat suit over my dance clothes and pushed my feet into my newest pair of sneakers.

“I got a surprise for you,” his deep voice echoed over to me.

I looked up from my cell phone as I turned it back on. The smile on his handsome face—think Morris Chestnut—was teasing. I wondered if my surprise was the tropical strapless dress I showed him in BCBG last week. Or the ABS wrap dress at Saks. Or was it that cute Gucci camel hobo bag we saw at Short Hills Mall?

“What is it?” I finally asked as we left the brick warehouse building together.

“Patience,” was all he said.

His silver Mercedes sat at the curb still as clean as the day he drove it off the lot. Our reflections shone in the polished chrome of his twenty-four-inch rims.

As I climbed in, I peeped out the backseat for any signs of shopping bags, but I didn’t see a blessed thing except the usual CDs and Philly blunt cigars scattered about.

“Come on, Rah. What’s my surprise?” I asked again, unable to fight my curiosity.

Rah just smiled as he pulled into the busy New York traffic with a soft purr of the motor. He reached down on the side of his seat and tossed a bag of weed onto my lap. “Roll one for me, baby.”

I did a double take. True, back in high school I smoked weed like that shit was my lifesaver, but I slowed up on it big-time once I started college. I smoked it only twice with Rah back when we first got together, but no more since. My plan for success, remember?

Hell, back when I
was
smoking Dom under the table, I still wasn’t the type of chick to get excited over a man giving me weed.

Was this fool for real or just stupid?

Even as I busted the cigar down the middle with my thumbnail and emptied the leaves out the window to scatter in the wind behind us, I was steady thinking,
This better not be my surprise ’cause he know I don’t play this dumb shit.

Our relationship worked so well for me because he liked to give and I
loved
to receive. We were a perfect match on that point, right?

“
This
is my surprise?” I asked.

“Hell no. Patience, remember?”

Rah drove his whip smoothly through the New York traffic and into New Jersey, smoking the entire blunt by himself like it was a cigarette. He was steady profiling for any onlookers with his tinted window down, leaning back in the seat with his arm straight as he steered the wheel
and
showed off his new diamond-encrusted Jacob & Co. Five Time Zone watch.

Of course, I was showing off, too. My window was down so that all the females on the cramped buses and walking the streets could see me. They were all hating on me; I knew it and
loved
it.

“You staying with me?” he asked, already pulling into the parking garage of the high-rise Harlequin Apartment building in downtown Newark.

“I guess so, since we’re already here.” I laughed as I got out of the car.

He climbed out as well and went to the trunk. My heart raced. Disappointment slowed the rate as I watched him pull out his massive CD case.

I didn’t say a word as we rode the elevator upstairs.

Cristal failed to understand why a man with his own businesses wouldn’t want to own his own home or at least move into a higher end apartment building. She said, “Why do people care more about what they are driving than where they are living? Just ghetto.”

She acted like the man lived in the projects or something, but that was just Cris being her usual bougie self. She liked to pretend her ass wasn’t from Newark like the rest of us. Always talking proper. Hell, I haven’t heard her use a contraction since high school. I still love her stuck-up butt, though.

Rah and I walked into his apartment. It’s decked out and you could tell it’s a man’s space with the ebony furnishings, glass and chrome tables, and the mirrored walls. I dropped my duffel bag on the floor by the door, before I followed his sculptured physique into his master bedroom—or what he liked to call the
master’s
bedroom.

“I’m going to shower,” I told him, removing my clothes as I strode to the adjoining bathroom with the grace only a dancer could possess. Don’t hate.

I preferred to take a hot bath after dance class to help relax my muscles, but I sure didn’t feel up to fighting a dirt ring before I could sit down in his tub. A shower it was.

I left the bathroom ten minutes later smelling like soap, with a plush, oversized gray towel wrapped securely around my damp body.

“Damn, I’m tired,” I sighed, drawing the words out as I lay down beside Rah on his king-sized water bed.

He was lying back smoking yet another blunt as he watched the ten o’clock news on WWOR-TV. Probably trying to see if any of his friends were arrested today or getting a heads-up on the latest police technology. He offered me the blunt, but I declined. Still, that didn’t stop me from catching a contact. Second-hand smoke is second-hand smoke.

Soon my lids felt heavy, and I watched through half-closed eyes as Rah rolled off the bed and left the bedroom. I heard when he came back, but I still jumped in surprise at the sudden feel of something cold and metal against my neck.

My eyes flew open, and I shot up in bed. A delicate gold and diamond chain with a matching cross pendant dropped into my lap.

Bling
.

Now see,
that’s
what I’m talking about.

I loved it. This was so much classier than all the other ghetto jewelry he gave me—which I also loved, but there was a time and place for everything. I could actually wear this one to my internship.

I removed the Bismarck chain I was wearing and clasped my new one around my slender neck, already picturing all the new V-neck shirts I would buy to wear with my new trinket. Every wall in Rah’s bedroom was covered in mirrors, so any way I turned I saw my reflection. That chain and diamond pendant looked good as hell against my smooth caramel skin.

“Ooh, Rah, this is just too delicious. Thank you, baby.”

When he didn’t respond, I turned to see him busy rolling another blunt over by his black marble dresser.

I lay back sprawled in the middle of the bed, licking my lips as my hand rubbed a trail from my thighs up to my small but firm round breasts.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout, baby girl. Do you,” Rah said eagerly, clamping down on the blunt with his teeth as he grabbed a chair and pulled it close to the bed to take a seat.

Rah was a big-time freak, and he loved to get off on watching me play with myself. Well, tonight was his lucky night.

As he leaned back in his chair, watching me with his eyes squinted against the heavy silver haze of his weed, my new chain had me feeling pretty damn freaky myself.

I licked my lips as I spread my legs as wide as I could and then spread my
other
lips with my fingers. I purred like a kitten at the feel of my cool fingers against my wet bud, squirming as I massaged it deeply in circles.

Rah shook his head and smiled, standing to drop his sweatpants and boxers to his ankles before he sat down again. He massaged his hardness with one hand and smoked his blunt with the other. “You love playin’ in that kitty, don’t you?”

Shit, I forgot all about his ass because I was busy going for mine. I licked my lips and closed my eyes as my fingers worked my G-spot. “Uhmmm,” I moaned in pleasure, arching my back and spreading my legs even more.