Episode 8.

one afternoon I came out of my room to find a car idling on the sidewalk, blaring hip hop. I went back inside and tried to leave a different way, but there was a car outside that door, too. They rolled down the window and started shouting my name. People gathered, staring. I got in the car, and the guys took me directly to a call. There was never a formal conversation, like: “Hey, now you’re an escort, and we’re your pimps!” It was simply my new reality.One night, we hit a club with a girl, who I’ll call Mercy, I really haven’t met her before.It felt like the first outing myself and Rose had with the guys that night again, with everyone drinking and hanging out the way friends met. Afterwards, they took us to a motel room where a woman named Veronica was waiting for us. She was in her early 30s, with heavy shoes like a boy would wear and a tight, grim expression on her face. She complimented our outfits, gave us cigarettes and told us we were going to see some guys. Be cute, she told us. Be friendly. She’d be waiting nearby. She was a gatekeeper. I never saw her have sex with clients; her job was to collect the cash and keep the girls in line. She scared the hell out of me.I don’t know where our clients came from. I never posted ads online, or communicated with David and his guys about the calls. Men would just show up asking for things, like a CBJ—a covered Mouth Action, that is, with a condom. There were two beds, and I sat on one, trying not to look while Mercy had sex on the other. As soon as the men left, Madam Veronica came in and took the money.When David and the other guys came back that night, someone said Mercy had made more money, so she got to ride up front. I was jealous. I went from wanting to go home to wanting to ride shotgun. These were the games our pimps played expertly: they pitted us against each other, making us feel special one minute and ostracized the next.I started working the motels regularly. If i’d ever heard the phrase “human trafficking,” I probably pictured immigrant women locked in basements with their passports taken away. I never considered myself trafficked, but I was, and so is anyone who’s coerced or tricked into prostitution, usually through threats and violence, or debt bondage. Pretty soon, I was complicit. I wanted to be the best and earn the most for the guys. I started watching porn to pick up techniques. I was good at reading people and anticipating what they wanted. And I liked some of my clients; they’d tell me how beautiful I was, how great I was, and I fed off their praise.I really was getting too obsessed with this new lifestyle. I was more than ever ready to step up my game and all of that.

To be continued………
©Grace Dammy