Zane's Nervous

  “That’s not very ladylike, calling me out of my name,” she said.

  Was she trying to piss me off or something?

  “Since I’m not a lady, who gives a flying fuck?” I retorted.

  “So Jude, what made you finally come out and say hello?” She reached into her top drawer and pulled out a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She lit one up. “Was it Jonquinette talking about reaching out to her father? Your father?”

  “Henry Pierce is not my damn daddy!” I said. So much for playing it cool.

  “Hmm, you seem to harbor a lot of negative feelings toward him.”

  “My, my, you are a mastermind,” I stated contemptuously. “It took getting a degree to figure that out?”

  “Jude, I’d really like to be your friend. Would you consider that?”

  “I don’t need any fucking friends.”

  “You know, Jonquinette thinks she’s going insane. The things you’ve been doing aren’t very nice.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. I’m proud of myself.” I crossed my legs, determined not to let the heifer make me lose it.

  “Why’s that?” she asked.

  “Because I’m the shit. Jon’s lucky to have me. Without me, she would’ve had her ass kicked her entire life. Without me, she would’ve let everyone run over her, especially the Queen Bitch, Meredith.”

  “Your mother?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know why you keep referring to that hoe and bastard as my parents. I don’t have parents.” The slut just didn’t get it. “Anyway, like I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me, Jon wouldn’t have a leg to stand on without me. Don’t go throwing a pity party for her ass. You should be celebrating the fact that I exist.”

  “But the two of you can’t coexist together.”

  “And why the hell not? We’ve been coexisting all this time.”

  “Because that’s not healthy.”

  “So what are you saying?” I asked, getting pissed off all over again. The bitch had lost her mind and I told her, “If you think I’m going someplace, you need a psychiatrist your damn self.”

  She was determined to try to bond with me. The slut. “Jude, tell me about yourself.”

  I shrugged and said, “There’s nothing to tell. I put foot to ass when need be, protect Jon from people that try to fuck her over without grease, and I love to have fun from time to time.”

  “What kind of fun?” she asked.

  “I’ll be honest. I love fucking. Fucking is the only thing worth doing in this life.”

  Marcella seemed bewildered. Good, I’d finally stumped her. “Do you honestly believe that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Men are such wimps. They always fold under the pressure of the pussy. I like controlling them like the little puppy dogs that they are.”

  “That’s the word I was looking for,” she said.

  “What word?” I inquired with disdain.

  “Control. You want to control things.”

  I stood up and leaned over the desk. “Don’t get it twisted. I do control things. I’m always around. I just let Jon deal with normal day-to-day bullshit so I don’t have to. If I wanted to, I could take over for good and never, ever let Jon come back. That’s how dominant I am.”

  Marcella smiled at me. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

  “Excuse me, bitch?”

  “If you could truly take over for good, you would’ve done it years ago.”

  “You’re beginning to bore me.” I didn’t like the way the conversation was headed. She didn’t know shit about anything and to top it off, she wasn’t shit to me so I announced, “I’m leaving.”

  I had made it to the door and opened it when she jumped in front of me.

  “No, don’t leave yet.”

  I poked her in the shoulder. “If you don’t move out of my way, I will give you a beatdown you’ll never forget.”

  “Jude, we really need to continue this conversation.”

  “I’m going to count to three and then I’m swinging,” I told her. “One.”

  “Jude, please stay,” she pleaded.

  I balled my right hand into a fist. “Two.”

  “When can we talk again?” she asked.

  “Three,” I said and lifted my fist to steal her one in the face.

  She must have known that I was serious because she moved to the side and said, “Okay, okay.”

  I damn near tore off her arm as I stormed past her out of the office.

  • • •

  There was no way I was going home. I headed straight to a bar to get my drink on. When I walked into a pub, it was boring as shit and there were only a bunch of losers hanging around. I decided I needed to do something more adventurous.

  How dare that bitch doctor imply that I wasn’t in control? Huh, she was a complete idiot. Everything I had said in her office was the truth. If I really wanted to, I could make Jonquinette disappear altogether and just be Jude. But I didn’t feel like working a full-time job to pay bills and I had no work experience of my own. None whatsoever.

  A lightbulb went off in my head. If I could devise a way to make my own money, fuck Jon and her boring lifestyle.

  I left the pub, got back into the car, and headed for “the seedy part of town.” The part of town where there were liquor stores on every corner, pawn shops on every other block and most importantly, a shitload of strip clubs.

  I spotted one that seemed to have heavy traffic, even for a Monday evening. A lot of desperate-looking businessmen and blue-collar workers were flooding into the joint. The name on the awning was The Bedroom. Not very creative, I thought.

  The shitty name didn’t matter to me. I only cared about the place’s potential as a moneymaker.

  When I got to the door, some idiot tried to tell me I had to pay a ten-dollar cover charge to come in. I informed him that I was there to apply for a job. He looked me up and down and grinned. Even with the homely looking outfit Jon had selected for the day, he could still tell my body was banging.

  “Go on in,” he said, moving aside to allow me to gain entry. “When you get in, ask for the owner. His name’s Skippy.”

  “Skippy? What the hell kind of name is that?” I asked.

  “Hey, it is what it is,” the bouncer at the door replied. “As long as I get paid, I don’t care what his name is.”

  I couldn’t fault him for that one so I said, “True enough.”

  I was pleasantly surprised when I got inside and it became clearer to me why they had such a large clientele. It was a classy place, despite its outward appearance. There was a nice leather bar spanning the entire length of the club on the left and about fifty or so tables scattered around the dance floor in the center. All of the tables had plush velvet chairs and the waitresses wore cute little velvet outfits that left hardly anything to the imagination.

  I stopped one of the waitresses in her tracks. “Where can I find Skippy?”

  She pointed to a chubby black man seated at the end of the bar talking on a cell phone. He had on an outdated suit with a wrinkled shirt and his tie was crooked.

  “Shame on it all,” I said aloud. “You mean to tell me that crusty son of a bitch owns this place?”

  The waitress laughed. “Yeah, Mr. Crusty runs the show.”

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.

  She pointed to the back of the club. “Down that hall on your left.”

  I made my way to the bathroom and did some self-improvement. While I had made it past the bouncer with ease, I needed to spruce up some before I approached the owner. I unbuttoned the top three buttons of my blouse and hiked up my skirt a few inches to show more leg. I let my hair down and shook it to give it more of an untamed appearance.

  Interestingly enough, there was a basket on the counter with all kinds of makeup in it. I guess the girls wanted to make sure they always looked good so they could lan
d major tips. Lucky me. I lined my eyes, darkened my eyebrows, threw on some rouge and put on the raunchiest shade of lipstick I could find: blood red.

  I puckered up, took one last glimpse at myself in the mirror and then went back out into the club.

  Skippy was still in the same spot at the bar, but he was off the phone and had some hoochie momma all up in his grille. It seemed like they were having a heated discussion but I didn’t give a shit. I approached them and pushed her to the side.

  “Excuse me!” she said nastily.

  “You’re excused. No problem,” I replied. I pushed up on Skippy and stood between his legs while he sat on the barstool. “I need to have a word or two with Skippy.”

  The hoochie momma spewed “Bitch!” at me and then started walking away. She pointed at Skippy and said, “We’ll finish this later!”

  “My, my, my,” he said, eyeing me from head to toe. “You sure are a feisty one.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” I nodded my head toward the bartender. “Since you own this joint, how about a free drink?”

  “Normally, I don’t give out free drinks but you can have one.” He glanced at the bartender. “Sheila, give this young lady whatever she wants.”

  I told Sheila, “Hook me up with a blow job.”

  She laughed and said, “A woman who knows her stuff.”

  “A blow job?” Skippy inquired. “That’s a drink?”

  “Yeah. You mean you own this place and nobody’s ever asked for a blow job?” I rubbed my hip against his thigh seductively. “I mean, a blow job drink. Not the real kind. I’m sure there are plenty of requests for those around here.”

  He grinned at me and almost started drooling on himself. “You’ve got some height on you, girl. How tall are you?”

  “Tall enough to wrap my ankles around a man’s neck and let him pummel his dick into me all night long.”

  Skippy was about to say something when Sheila came back with my drink, which consisted of equal parts of Kahlua, Bailey’s, and vodka layered into a pony glass and topped with whipped cream.

  Skippy practically came on himself when I put my hands behind my back, placed my mouth over the top of the glass, raised it, and took it all down the hatch in one swallow. I put the glass back down on the bar, using only my mouth and asked, “Don’t you just love a woman that swallows?”

  Skippy cleared his throat. One of the strippers came up to him and before she could say a word, he told her, “Beat it!” She rolled her eyes and walked away. “This must be my lucky day but I have to ask. To what do I owe this honor?”

  “Skippy, I’ve got a straightforward proposition. I’m interested in being a stripper. At least, I might be interested.”

  “Can you dance?”

  I gave him a fierce look. “Can you get your dick hard?”

  “Hell, yeah,” he replied.

  “Then there’s your answer to a stupid-ass question.”

  He raised his hands in the air. “Hey, I had to ask. It’s obvious you have certain talents,” he commented, picking up the pony glass and staring at it. “But the men come here to see women shake that ass with some degree of expertise.”

  I looked over at the dance floor. There was some bitch performing off “Back That Thang Up” by Juvenille. “You mean like her?”

  Skippy glanced at the dancer. “Yeah, just like Kandi. She’s one of our headliners.”

  I smirked. “Well, Kandi doesn’t look the least bit sweet to me and if she’s truly one of your headliners, then you’ve been seriously missing out.”

  “You talk a lot of shit,” he said.

  “But I can back it up.”

  “Come by tomorrow and audition.”

  “Fuck that. I want to dance tonight, right now.”

  Skippy shook his head. “Naw, never that. All the dancers have to do a private audition first. I can’t just let you get up there without knowing that you can handle your own.”

  “Private audition? Is that the same thing as a trial fuck?”

  Skippy eyed me suspiciously. “You sure you’re not the poepoe?”

  “The poe-poe?”

  “Yeah, the police. Five-O.”

  The idiot was starting to rub me the wrong way.

  “No, I’m not the fucking police but I fucked a couple of them once.” I couldn’t help but snicker as I remembered the time I’d been pulled over for speeding in Jon’s car. I couldn’t allow a ticket to come to the apartment if it wasn’t paid or even risk her finding out if I paid it so I did what I had to do and fucked both police officers in the back of their squad car to get off scot-free.

  “You’re a trip, girl,” Skippy said.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How old are you, Skippy?”

  “Old enough to be your damn daddy, that’s for sure.”

  “Then don’t you have enough confidence in yourself to believe you’d be able to spot a police officer if one came in here undercover?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then why are we wasting valuable time with asinine questions?”

  Skippy chuckled. “You’ve got me making all kinds of exceptions up in this bitch tonight. First the free drink and now you’ve actually got me thinking about letting you get up on the stage without an audition. I live by rules. They are my rules, but they are rules just the same.”

  I ran my fingertips over his chest. “Skippy, what’s the point of having rules if you never venture to break them?”

  “What’s your name, Sugar?”

  I hadn’t thought about a name until that point. I needed something that would land a bunch of bucks. “Just call me Mercy because that’s what men will have to beg me for when I start slaying their dicks with my pussy.”

  Skippy almost fell off the barstool when he broke out in laughter. “Okay, Mercy. You have something to wear for your big performance?”

  “No, just tell the audience the truth. That I wandered in off the street and asked for a public audition. Like I said, I’m not sure I want to be a stripper. I just want to try it out for one night and see if I’m feeling the profession and if the profession is feeling me.”

  “Name your song, girl!” Skippy said anxiously.

  Ten minutes later, I was taking the stage to Madonna’s “Secret” and the crowd was rowdy from the first second. Skippy had personally announced me and they were all excited about a freak coming in on a whim to shed it all.

  I closed my eyes and got into the tempo as it started out slowly and then picked up the pace. The song was just fast enough and just seductive enough to dance erotically to and before I knew it, men were pitching dollar bills on the stage.

  I swirled my hips and started undoing the rest of my blouse until it was completely undone. I turned my back to the audience and inched it off my shoulders until it was covering my hips. Then I swung back around and let it fall to the floor. I palmed my breasts and rubbed on my nipples through my bra. They immediately stood at attention.

  I reached behind me and unzipped the skirt. Once again, I turned my back to them and started working my hips out of the skirt as the DJ switched to my next request: “Always on Time” by Ja Rule. I really got into it then and so did they. They started chanting, “Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!”

  I worked my way over to a young brotha sitting at a table right in front of the stage. I got down on my knees and moved them back and forth together, licked my index finger and rubbed it over the crotch of my panties. I placed my fingertip on his lips and he licked it. Then he handed me a five-dollar bill.

  I spent the rest of the song making my rounds and collecting money. I even swung around the pole a time or two but didn’t try to jump on the top and slide down. I wasn’t geared up for that one and didn’t want to make a fool out of myself if I fell. I danced to two other songs after that one ended: “Super Freak” by Rick James and “Mr. Big Stuff” by Jean Knight.

  Once the next stripper, who went by the name of Pisces, took
the stage, I spent about an hour doing lap dances and yes, collecting more money. I was convinced that, if I really wanted to, I could make a good living shaking my ass in men’s faces.

  I got dressed, thanked Skippy for the experience and told him that I may or may not be back. He seemed disappointed and claimed he would make me his star if I decided to work for him.

  When I got outside, I noticed that two men were following me. They had been seated at the bar inside the club. Is this what strippers have to put up with? I thought. Motherfuckers trailing them out the damn club?

  “Hey, Mercy!” one of them called out.

  I swung around to face them. “What the hell do you all want? Why are you following me?”

  The other one, obviously as drunk as his friend, said, “We want you to make us beg for mercy.”

  At first, I rolled my eyes and then I checked them out more closely. They weren’t half-bad-looking and it had been a while since I’d fucked two men at once. Still, I wasn’t interested so I told them, “I’m not interested but I’m sure one of the other girls would be, if the situation’s right.” I was implying that they could get whatever they wanted if the money was on point, and they knew it.

  “Well, what would we have to do to make the situation right for you?” the first one asked.

  “Not a damn thing. I’m just not feeling it tonight.”

  They started whispering to each other. I walked on toward the car. “Listen,” one of them called out. It turned out to be the taller of the two. “Duke and I have always had this competitive spirit. He and I both claim we’re the best pussy connoisseur on the planet but the bullshit talk is getting old.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  “And how about you let us settle the dispute once and for all?”

  I laughed. “So you two want to eat me out and let me decide who’s better at it?”

  The shorter one nodded. “Exactly.”

  Now I was tired and drained but I had never been one to turn down a good pussy eating and if they were planning to battle, then they would both be trying to outdo even themselves.

  I stood there trying to come up with the right price. If I didn’t charge them, it would have seemed bizarre. Besides, they were undoubtedly planning to pay, and money is money.