They don’t think they could be hooking up with a murderer. He could have mental health issues. He could want to disfigure you. Those are the kinds of things girls don’t think about, up front. Most of these girls think, That won’t happen to me. But this kind of stuff happens to regular women; so chances are even higher that this is going to happen to a prostitute. Right now, human trafficking and prostitution in our country is bringing in as much money as drugs. But careful—don’t think it’s just about money. What folks don’t know, having a pimp or not is never just about money. Real hos who talk about getting the money? It’s never just the money. The players change, but the game is still the same. It’s about slipping in at all the wrong places. Getting into dangerous situations and getting out of them. That’s exciting. That’s what you want. But you want something else, too. When you grow up—molested, abused, avoided, traumatized, and left out—you want somebody to love you. And you gone find it, some kind of way. I’m an old bitch. I looked for nurturing. I wanted to belong to somebody who’ll say, “You mine. I love you, bitch.” I didn’t care if they called me “bitch.” “Bitch, I love you. I do this shit cause I care.”
“Okay, but let me get my eyeball off the floor.”
So it’s never just the money. It’s about the search for someone who can love you. He wanted to be yours, and you want to be his.
It’s so crazy. A pimp. A prostitute. You’re trying to find where you belong, and you’re trying to just find the right pimp for you.
There were the pimps who mentally and emotionally controlled you. They were the most dangerous ones. They were more dangerous than the gorilla pimps. At least you want to get away from the gorilla pimps. But those pimps with all that swag get in your head and play games with your mind and control you completely, and you don’t want to get away from them. You are in love with the control, and some days you have an epiphany, but you can’t even get down with your epiphany because he has that much control over you emotionally and mentally. You can’t go nowhere. And cause he got you—you don’t want to be with your kids, with your grandmomma; you don’t want to visit nobody in your family. If it’s not a part of his rules, you don’t want it. You’ll choose him over everybody else. And you have no control over what you choosing. That’s why I believe that Stockholm syndrome is really deep inside of all of us. And I mean prostitutes, women, anybody who finds themselves in love and can’t let go.
I’ve heard some hos say, “If he asked me to take a pistol and go out there and shoot somebody, I would do that for my daddy.” I’ve heard women say, “I’d die for him,” and they were serious when they said that. And some have died—for that man. How do you mess with something so deep? People want to look at you and ask you, “Why didn’t you just leave?” Because, check this out: Just like some white lady wouldn’t leave her half-a-million-dollar home and her Mercedes and her spa and her good life, well, listen, that pimp was my half-a-million-dollar home and my spa and my good life. That was it for me. You dig? These ladies were no different from me, they were just from a different culture. Her ass got whooped in her own mansion, and that white lady still put up with all kinds of abuse and violence. Domestic exploitation is happening to this fancy woman and she still acts like a big girl and puts makeup over it. She smiled at the cocktail parties and told everybody what a great man he was, and her family didn’t even know because she wore that smile all the time.
Now, I’m gone ask that lady: Why didn’t you leave, why didn’t you drive away? Cause you had a car. I didn’t have one. You could have driven away. People are always so willing to handle unexplainable situations. Any person with a brain understood this life I led wasn’t a choice. People don’t choose this type of life. When I said to men that I liked it, they should have known I was lying so I wouldn’t feel bad about me. Because I had to tell myself every day when I woke up that this is what I wanted to do and I’m okay with it cause I’m the coldest one and I’m that bitch; I was born to do this. I started saying the same thing that he was telling me. I say it to myself so I can stay in the loop without committing suicide. Cause I would have killed myself if I had of really realized.
Some girls figured it out.
I knew a girl; her name was Cookie. Cookie was sweet, she had been in the game for a while, and one time somebody had put something in her drink. She drifted off. And a bunch of men had a bunch of ways with her. You know what I’m saying. That kind of stuff could happen to you sometime. You had to make sure your friends were looking out. Hos be out on the track, talking shit, just out there showing out, but we were looking out for each other, too. Anyway, after that, Cookie wasn’t right no more. Ms. Cookie didn’t show up one day; we were like, “Where Ms. Cookie?” We like, “Oh, shit.” So we go into the building we had been using to turn our tricks, and we start looking for Cookie, and sure enough she had strung herself up. We got in there just in time, and we took her down. We saved her. But later, she wound up succeeding.
When I work with these girls at Dreamcatcher, I remember Cookie. I know some of these girls are just like her, and they are still knee-deep in that mindset. Dreamcatcher was formed to mentor young ladies, twelve to twenty-four, because we saw that our young girls were in crisis. We didn’t know how hard it was going to be for us to help these girls, but we’ve done a pretty good job helping the youth and women. We say twenty-four, but we don’t turn down anybody. What we basically do is outreach to start relationships with these girls. Programs do not save people; relationships help save people. If we don’t build relationships, trust, and understanding, we can’t make a difference. All of us at Dreamcatcher can say, “I just came from where you are now,” and mean it. “I’m out of it and you can be, too. This ain’t some shit I don’t know about.” I’ve already been through the ABCs, and I know, if I grab their hand and they don’t let go, I can get these girls on their feet so they can walk again. These girls don’t know they already got what it takes to get through this. If you’ve made it through human trafficking and prostitution, you are a G. There is no way these girls don’t have the ability to survive. That’s why at Dreamcatcher we get so tired of people referring to these girls as victims. That’s not a label that these girls want to wear for the rest of their lives. They need help and some basic 101 of how to start brand new. We teach them how to get on the phone and talk to somebody and get your needs met. We call social services for them and show them where to stand on line and get their driver’s license. We help them get apartments. Basic shit. We teach them how to communicate in the regular world. “How can I keep this going, Ms. Brenda?” That’s what I hear out on the streets.
These girls have so much emotional garbage inside of them, they want to know how to flush all that out. Just last week, I was trying to send this girl twenty dollars for food. These girls think they make the best decisions. They get on the phone with me and try to convince me they are so right in what they doing. “Let me go down here with no money and no job, cause I love him. I’m leaving a comfortable-ass house to support him on a whim.” I know that’s what they’re thinking. But that’s young love. That’s what we deal with. Young girls. Young, dumb, and full of cum, as they say. The first thing these girls want to tell you is: I’m grown now; I had sex. “Ms. Brenda, I can do this by myself, but I’m hungry.” Well, baby, you not doing this by yourself, if you asking me for twenty dollars. “I haven’t eaten all day, but I got it going on down here.” I don’t mind it; sometimes I even love it in a way, because I’ve been exactly where they are. I know how much trouble you can get into trying to find a home and somebody to love, too.
* * *
That’s how I found Johnny Allen, my sweet daddy pimp. I was looking for somebody to say, “I love you, bitch.”
I didn’t have to look that hard. I had run into Johnny Allen along the strip on Cicero—the couple of blocks where they had all the bars and the lounges, the places where you went after hours for sex. The places where the night people went and looked sharp. Johnny Allen caught my
eye because he looked like a straight cold businessman with an Armani suit on. He had this Don Juan look. Handsome Black man. Superfine. He was all blond—’fro, sideburns, goatee. And he smelled good, with a cold-ass cologne. He was always double-breasted up, always a mink coat. He was a fashion statement to me, and I thought, I need a brother like that; I’m sharp, too. I had graduated from ho school, and I had learned how to turn tricks with store owners, and they would give me brand-new clothes for payment, so my wardrobe is up here. I wanted to be with someone who knew I followed the rules, and that was what it was like when he met me. Johnny was one of those I’m gone wine and dine you, bitch. You wanted to be in his good graces. That’s the way it was for me. I wasn’t doing nothing but messing with them entertainers from the Garfield Organization, so his whole situation looked good. His hos were all laid out, and I thought, well, I want to try him.
Johnny had four girls. One was a famous ho; her name was Doris. She worked in Chicago on Madison and California, and she was the coldest flat-backer in that area. Nobody else was turning that many tricks. That country bitch had to suck up on a lotta wang to get five hundred dollars and some. She never got less than five. Big country yellow bitch. Tammi Terrell–looking ho. Thick ass. She worked on the worst ho stroll in Chicago. We called them cheap bitches, broke bitches, but Doris wasn’t. They said her tricks were sitting there waiting for her. She was like, “Next!”
Me and Ma’Dea had made up with each other by then. My girls were staying with Ma’Dea, and I wasn’t really up to no good. Guys was pulling up front and blowing for me. None of these dudes come upstairs. I was like, “I’ll be right there!” Ma’Dea said, “You in all types of cars. What kinda trouble you getting yourself in?”
I had gotten a job at a store, a furniture store, with this Italian. The Italians ran a lotta of the furniture stores on the West Side. And this one guy named Joe Albert had three furniture stores somewhere in Jew Town. Jew Town (that’s what everyone called it) was still popping back then. I was walking past, and he had this Italian assistant named Frankie, fine-as-hell white boy, rode a motorcycle. And Frankie said, “Come here. Come here, let me talk to you.” So I went back with Frankie, and he said, “You want a job?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “Show up here on Monday at nine o’clock. Just tell them Frankie told them to tell you come in.” Frankie’s job was coochie finder, and the owner wanted my coochie. He had a thing for Black women. He had this cold Black bitch on the side, and her name was Pam. She was little bitty, and she was one of them sisters who looked like Robin Givens, the lady who married Mike Tyson. The bitch was cold. The only thing I had on her was age. That’s how I learned that when a bitch was about to retire, she got less interesting. But Pam was the coldest because she was educated. She wasn’t no fool. She played like Eartha Kitt; her voice was like, “I can talk to anybody.” She had a commanding voice. I liked that bitch, but she didn’t like me, and I was young enough not to care.
Every time Joe had me in the office, I was super sweet. Joe sent furniture to my grandmomma’s house—yes!—and didn’t nobody know where my bill was to this day. They put the fake paid bill and didn’t nobody ever see it again. And his friends who had the men’s clothing stores and the shoe stores were asking about me, too. I was so clear. I never tried to be indignant about what a man’s intention was when they called me over there to do what I thought they wanted me to do. Listen, I barely finished the eighth grade, ain’t nobody hiring me cause I was brilliant in that way. But in this way, I was the banana. Somebody told them to put me on the payroll, and it was totally up to me if I was gone get anything else out of it and often I did.
I tried to get everything I thought I could get. Gimme this, gimme that. I didn’t even need it. You sell men’s clothes, but let me see if I could fit that. I was taking everything I could get my hands on over to my family. I didn’t care, just gimme, gimme. I was just a little gimme girl. I was fifteen at that point. Fifteen and rough. I had just come up out of five months of hell with two psychopaths. And lived. I was flipping them brothers on the West Side, individually. I sold myself out because they were sucking my poontang, and I was the cutie pie. And every man liked to have me.
I was making so much money, I decided to leave Johnny Allen. I choose him on a Thursday and I left him on a Saturday, but as I said, he was a sugar daddy pimp. He was so sweet. First real pimp I ever had. I liked belonging to somebody. I liked giving him my money. I was with him for less than a month, but being with him made my value high. Johnny Allen was just one of those wild ol’ pimps on the West Side that made you have a little stature or caliber. You were a thoroughbred if you were with Johnny Allen. A bottom bitch, an everyday bitch, a fly-by bitch, but always a thoroughbred. And for a moment, that was all I wanted.
Chapter 7
Loving the Knockout
You want to know the real reason I left Johnny Allen? The real reason I left him is because my secret heart was still looking for a pimp who wanted to knock me out. Not knock me out in a good way. But knock me out. I used to sit on the fire escape with Gloria Brown and watch women get beat up on the sidewalk. I had grown up surrounded by abuse—from Ma’Dea, from the molesters, from the gorilla pimps. I thought I needed to be intimidated. Otherwise I wasn’t gone act right. That was the girl I was; that was the girl I was growing up to be.
When Tommy Knox came along, he felt perfect. Like a knock in the head.
Before I met Tommy Knox, I had hooked up with the transgenders who were out west doing their thing. I was out there, too, like an outlaw. We were getting the tricks who came out from the western suburbs. I was messing around with different guys in the neighborhood just to have a place to sleep at night. I didn’t have a pimp anymore. They took me under their wings because they liked me. They thought I was funny. And young. They knew I was a runaway; they knew I didn’t have anybody to protect me. The transgenders invited me to their apartments and let me crash on their couches. We would have girlfriend parties where they taught me how to put on makeup. “Girl, let me show you how to put the princess on.” They taught how to wear lashes and how to apply blush. They moderated my wig. There’s a way you can put on a wig and make it look natural. “See, Ms. Thang? Comb that there, pin that here. That’s how you do it. Now you got it.” In the daytime we would watch soap operas and eat junk food. They let me go out and work with them, and I loved it because they kept me safe. These ladies could turn into a man at any moment. I learned that little trick from them. I got so good at it, I used to rob tricks with my voice. I would get in the car, all sweet and then, I CHANGED MY VOICE.
Those tricks freaked out, “You a man!”
“THAT’S RIGHT, SON OF A BITCH. GIVE ME MY MONEY.” I knew how intimidated they were by transgenders, and how if you mess with the ladies, they would tear your ass off. So I used my man voice. I was like, don’t make me get vicious up in here. First, I’d park him. I’d make him go drive in the alley, and I’d get him to park his door up against the garage or the wall, and these stupid-ass tricks—you should never let nobody do that. I got the only out.
Sometimes I just grabbed his keys, snatched them out the ignition, pulled my wig off, then I’d go into that voice and rob them. I’d throw the keys out the window. They went looking for the keys while I got away. You have to find your keys because you were not coming out that alley without your keys. My ladies taught me how to get over. Folks knew they couldn’t mess with me.
So when I found Tommy Knox, I was ready. I was at a bar, and Tommy Knox was with this country guy from Tennessee with a gold tooth in the front of his mouth and his shoes were way too tall. He was wearing platforms. We used to call them stacks. They were the stupidest-looking shoes I ever seen in my life, cause only short assholes used to put on stacks. You know when they step out of them, they stood down there at your belly button, but the sweet daddy he was with, Tommy Knox, was a fine Black man, especially when he had his hats on.
He was light-skinned, with l
ight brown hair, and he had a perm. He was tall and high yellow and slim. And the brother was a gangsta in his own mind. Every time somebody did something, he had some words for it. I met him at the bar, and we were talking and getting along. Next thing I knew, I was going home with Tommy Knox. He told that country dude he had come with, “I’m gone have to catch you late, cause I’m ’bout to get this baby.”
I get in his car, and we talking, and he said, “Let’s go to my place.”
“Okay.”
“I got a couple of crazy girls, but they my friends. Don’t pay any attention to what they talking about up there.”
I laughed and said, “Okay.” So I get in the house, and he had two women, Jackie and Cassandra. Cassandra’s eye was black. Something was going on with Jackie’s arm. I was looking at this scene, and no part of it was good, and what you think I did? I stayed! What the hell? Looking at those women and the state of beatdown they were in, did that not tell me anything? I’m telling the truth, I should have pulled out my running shoes and took off, but I stayed. I’m not making that up. When I think of it now, what kind of stupid-ass shit was that? Did that not tell me anything? Shouldn’t I have asked for a cab or walked to Chicago Avenue and caught the bus? No. I stayed.
He immediately sent me to work with Jackie, and Jackie was livid.
She said, “How old are you?”
I was looking at her and walking fast. “Eighteen?”
“Ooh, you lying your ass off. Your ass ain’t eighteen. How old are you?”
“I’m fifteen.” But she still looked like she was gone jack me up. “I’m fifteen, for real! I got two babies.”
“Argh! You must be one of the dumbest girls in the world.”
We went to the liquor store and got Richards Wild Irish Rose. When you drink it, it made you feel like you could fight Godzilla. She was angry, and she wanted to go and get in a fight. All through the night, she would turn to me and say, “Dumb bitch.”
Leaving Breezy Street Page 9
