All the time he was beating me G was also cursing me out. My whole body was in pain, but I could still feel G’s pain, too. I had humiliated him. Violated him in the worst kind of way. Everybody knew how particular he was over his pussy, and my fucking Gino had just put the word out on the wire that the great Granite McKay couldn’t hold it down in the sheets.

At first I screamed and begged him not to hit me, but I soon realized that G didn’t even hear me and I would do better trying to duck and roll and use my energy to run from one side of the small room to the other.

Sweat was coming off both of us in that hot-assed basement, but G looked like he was enjoying his workout. After a while I started screaming again. How much longer did he think I could take this? My stomach, my back, my ribs… I just knew he had ruptured something in me and I would die from internal bleeding.

I was scooting backward on the floor screaming and trying to dodge his kicking feet when G crouched, then jumped straight up into the air. And then life started moving in slow motion. It took forever for G to land, but when he did he came down hard on both feet. Surely this shit was happening to some other chick, I thought as the bottom of G’s two-thousand-dollar shoes descended on me, but when I felt all that hard leather come crashing down into my face, I damn sure knew it was me.

I came awake sputtering, hot liquid splashing in my face.

G was pissing on me.

All over my face and right into my half-opened mouth. When I opened my eyes and closed my lips, his pee stung my eyes and ran down into my ears. I couldn’t have been knocked out long, probably only a few seconds, but staring up at that big niggah holding his dick and aiming his flow down at me, I wished like hell I could go back unconscious.

“This is all you worth, you rotten-ass bitch!” G stood over me until he squeezed out his last drop, and then he tucked his dick away and zipped up his pants.

I thought he was gonna start beating me again, but we both turned around when the door opened upstairs and somebody came running down.

It was Moonie. He gave me a pity look when he saw me laying on the floor, my face and hair soaked in G’s piss, but then his mask came down and he turned to stone again as G laughed and dapped him out.

“Private party tonight,” G said as I whimpered on the floor. “The best pussy in the house is up for sale and I want all my niggahs to get some.” He rotated his onyx ring on his finger and then nodded toward me. “Have Kadijah put her nasty ass in some water, then make sure she’s out there when the girls go onstage.”

They left me down in that stanking little basement for almost twelve hours, and by the time they came back I was dying to get upstairs and breathe some real air. My whole body was throbbing, but I didn’t protest when Ace and Pluto grabbed my arms and dragged me up the steps. Upstairs, the show was getting heated up. I limped down the halls of the Spot being manhandled by Ace and Pluto, embarrassed as hell, my eyes on the floor. Mouths were opening and closing left and right, and I could hear the steady buzz… G done fucked Juicy up, and now he’s putting her ass out to work the rooms!

As we turned a corner, Monique stepped out in front of me styling and profiling. Every inch of her shit was tight and she had this big-ass smile on her face like she’d just been crowned queen of the Spot. I was ashamed to be caught out there looking all dirty and fucked up and smelling like piss, but I stared at her like my hair was did and my clothes were fly.

She looked me up and down. “Damn, Juicy. Your shit is way raggedy! All this time you been perpetrating like you all that, when you really just another low-profile ho. So you don’t fuck behind nobody, huh? Well, before it’s all over you’ll be fuckin behind me and every other ho up in this Spot.”

“Fuck you, you three-titty bitch!”

Monique just laughed and shook her long silky weave. “Just who you’ll be fuckin is anybody’s guess, and while your stank pussy is getting scuffed and plunged, G’s gonna be suckin all three of these titties!”

I doubted that cause G didn’t suck no titties, but I didn’t bother to tell her. I was too embarrassed at being seen hemmed up like a criminal. Most of the staff looked at me like, Be strong, Juicy. This ain’t nothing but a thing. But for the most part all I saw was pity. Pity and fear, like they, too, were scared of what G had planned for me.

Deep down I was shitting bricks, but I told myself that as long as Moonie was right and Jimmy was safe, that was all that mattered. I had to force myself not to think about Gino cause that could break me all the way down. Seeing him beaten and pistol-whipped like that had hurt me to my heart, and the look in his eyes when they dragged him up those basement steps was gonna haunt me until the day I died. I prayed they would have mercy on him for being G’s blood, but I also remembered G’s cousin from all those years ago, the one who G had fucked up so bad he still limped around Harlem begging for change with his one-eyeball self.

They took me into the massage room and told Ursula to get out so Kadijah could get me ready. An hour later I’d taken a shower and washed my hair, and Kadijah had taken me into the dressing room and put a bunch of makeup on my face and body to cover the bruises, and then tossed me an outfit that screamed hoochie mama/club stripper/two-dollar ho.

It looked like every nigger in Harlem was in the house that night. G made me get onstage and fuck the poles and do a slow funky striptease, too. I didn’t even try to play with him by acting out. I moved my ass like a natural ho and did all the freaky shit I’d seen Monique, Punanee, and Honey Dew do night after night after night.

I guess I was good, too. Money was flying up on the stage, and every time I turned around and let them see my ass, brothers clapped and hooted and dug in their pockets for some more. I cried inside the whole time and tried to block out all the noise. I pretended I was dancing for Gino, that it was him urging me to lick my titties, ride that pole, and spread open my ass cheeks. Picturing Gino’s long black dick was the only way I got through the segment, and by the time it was over I felt lower than ever before in life.

But G wasn’t done with me yet. When I got off the stage, he put my ass up on the block. Monique was happy to swish her ass over and be the bitch to bring me the bone.

“Juicy girl, them motherfuckers LOVE you! You gonna have the cleaning crew working overtime washing sheets tonight!”

“What?”

Pluto and Greco were each clocking one side of me as I stumbled back into the dressing room. I was G’s prisoner and everybody knew it.

“You didn’t know? Girl, your fine ass got twelve chips already and a crew of cash niggas lined up waiting for you! I think it was that ass thing you did that got ’em all hot. Whatever it was, thank you, girlfriend, cause you giving all the other hoes a break up in here tonight!”

I was in a daze. As many times as I had been in those fuck rooms gossiping and helping change cummed-up sheets, I’d never thought I’d have to one day stoop down to sexing strangers and flat-backing to save my life.

“Here.” Monique slipped me something she took out of a tiny piece of foil. “After about ten of them dirty-dick, stank-breath niggahs, you’ll need this to help get you through the next ten.”

Ironically, Pluto threw me in fuck-room number nine, then stepped inside and closed the door. “You on the clock now, bitch, and I’m customer number one. I want mine first, before all them other niggahs stank that punanee up.”

“You ain’t fucking me, Pluto,” I told him. “Your fat ass ain’t hardly fucking me.”

He slammed me back on the bed, then sat his buffalo ass on my chest.

“No shit, stupid. I don’t wanna fuck you no way. But you are gonna suck my dick.”