Chapter 4

I knew that in order to survive, I had to continue to sell what drove old men crazy and kept them coming back for more. I had mastered wrapping my walls around their penises like no other woman before me and I enjoyed every minute of it. Not the sex– the power and control. Making grown men -20, 30, sometimes 40 years older than me, cry like a newborn baby was an adrenaline rush of infinite power.

I still had no place to call home. Therefore, I slept wherever I grew tired. Sometimes it would be an abandoned building, sometimes I would get one of my Johns to pay for a night at the motel, or sometimes I would sleep at Nee Nee‘s house. When I was really desperate, I slept wherever Miss LT did.

Everything I owned, I carried in my blue Jansport back pack. I stopped going to school and I taught myself better than any teacher could have.

I never complained, because all in all living on the streets was still better than with Aunt Hope. Besides, there was a part of me that enjoyed the adventure and the spontaneity of my lifestyle.

Aunt Hope contacted me one time after I left. She had put the word on the street that she had heard from my mother. That was the only way I would go looking for her. Aunt Hope was only able to tell me that Momma was doing fed time for being a mule, and that she was locked up somewhere in West Virginia.

For the fir st time since my mother had left me, I didn‘t feel the urgency or the desire to go searching for her. I felt some relief that she was still alive. However, somewhere along my travels, I had grown to despise her. I finally accepted what Aunt Hope and Smoke unfortunately wouldn‘t let me forget – she had abandoned her responsibility to me and because of that, I had already done hard core street time. Fed time was easy street. She’s doing better than me. I reasoned.

By the time I was seventeen, I was ready to find another way to survive. I got bored with the danger, trite of the strange dicks and fed up with the sorry stories that came along with the empty sex. I did everything to my Johns that their wives or women wouldn‘t, I fucked, sucked and unwillingly became an unqualified therapist.

Finally, I walked away from that hustle and went from hoeing myself for $50 a night to making $5,000 a day boosting. I graduated at the top of my class and without looking back, rose to the top -- catering to the big ballers, pimps and drug dealers. I

stole and sold everything from televisions and diamonds to fur coats. While shopping in Saks one day, I met Pam -- my right hand chick who introduced me to my first connect in the credit card game. After that, it was a wrap.