Chapter 9

Mimi’s turn:

Okay, I’m premeditating mayhem here. Mizz Donna told me to get over myself. I had to tell Tommy. I felt like I owed him at least that much. I was almost surprised when he picked me up. I could really understand if he’d washed his hands of me for more than one reason.

It’s Tommy, though, and he’s a decent guy. Really decent.

He accepted my apology, took me to dinner where he was a charming as all get-out, and then offered to take me home.

I counter-offered to watch a movie at HIS place. I’ve been there before and he hasn’t attacked me. It’s a nice apartment, kind of small, but well taken care of. That’s important to know. What a guy does when he lives by himself says a lot.

I know he’s got some movies we can watch, and I’m not being TOO conniving when I pick Jurassic World because it’s a fun movie and it’s kind of mindless entertainment. It’s also got a girl with a hairdo that I like. My hair’s, well, it’s convenient. Just sort of grew this way after that last haircut a couple of months ago. I pull it away from my face, the back’s just past my collar. I can live with it, but I have questions.

We get the movie started and both end up lying on the sofa, me in front, Tommy scooped up behind me. Close. I like this.

We’ve been this intimate before. I’ve even cuddled into his lap a time or two, but...

It’s all very confusing. You’d think that somebody who spent the last three months living off money from sex would have a better handle on how it all works, both for herself and for guys.

You’d be wrong.

I know what to do with a dick. You put a rubber on it and stick it into a warm wet opening. Never took anything special to get a guy excited. The guy who did it to me the first time, a high school friend, well, I WAS kind of dreamy about him. Thought he was dreamy about ME. Turns out that I was just a notch on his, well, whatever he was keeping score on. A few kisses, a few gropes, next thing I know my jeans are off and my panties are pushed aside and he’s inside me and humping for maybe thirty seconds.

I was just beginning to get some good feelings about the whole thing when he hissed between clenched teeth, stiffened, and it was over. A condom filled with white goo.

For a while after that, I told myself it was love, but after three more dates where the same thing happened, followed by ‘Let’s go see what the guys’re doing at the drive-in... ‘ and I started understanding that maybe it wasn’t love and maybe he was getting what he wanted, even if I wasn’t.

I wasn’t easy after that, but I was used by several more guys, each time thinking that a little attention, and maybe THIS one was different.

All this was after Dad died. Cancer. Too young. I loved my mom and dad. Dad dying tore me up. I guess it tore Mom up too, but she reacted by marrying a guy less than a year after Dad was gone. I didn’t like the guy and it became apparent that his life would be better if I wasn’t around.

School. Dad was proud of my report cards. Mom and new dude, not so much ... series of guys, then this one, he just kinda kept after me. He was out of school, had a crappy place of his own, a duplex apartment. We crashed there, he got what he wanted almost any time he wanted. Me? Oh, here’s another three minutes of my life gone. Let ‘im get it, then ... Got into drugs. Grass. Lots of grass. Occasionally some other things too, but I saw some of the veterans of that lifestyle. Mimi wouldn’t buy that.

Dropped out of school. Just couldn’t see it being worth the effort. Hank said he thought I could make me a dancer at one of those ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ like a few women he knew. Hank was making money dealing. Dude wasn’t too smart. The cops got ‘im with enough stuff to make them want to keep ‘im. I heard about it, hit the road with all the money he had in the house.

Didn’t know what to do, so a couple of towns up the road, there’s a place with a cheap motel that rents by the week. It’s walking distance to a truck stop. When money started running out...

“Girl, I gets me some money,” one of the other denizens of the motel said.

“How?”

“Dudes in them trucks, they have to stay overnight to rest. Some of ‘em needs a little relaxer to help ‘em sleep.” She eyed me. “Twenny bucks for five minutes work...”

“Uh...”

“Oh, come, girl...” Lakisha said. “I know you done a blow job.”

“I tried once...”

“You doan’ need to be a expert. Serious. Five minutes. Little white girl like you ... hundred bucks a night, easy.”

“I don’t wanna catch something...”

“I makes’em wear a rubber. Keeps Listerine in mah purse.”

“What if you get caught?”

“Cops doan’ look ... Ever’ now an’ then, I does de manager of the truck stop. Night shift guy. He tells the cops ain’t nuthin’ goin’ on...”

A week later money had been gone for a day. I skipped a meal or two, rent for the room was due ... I went with Lakisha to learn the ropes. First time we walked down the row of big trucks, there was a guy who saw us coming. Lakisha walked up to him. I followed.

“You, girl. I think I could do YOU.”

Ten minutes later I was twenty bucks richer. Low overhead – condoms and KY jelly, because I found out that if a blow job was a twenty, spreading my legs got me fifty.

And I never enjoyed a single time. Before there was money. When I got paid for it. Never.

I knew I could come. Ever since I was twelve, I could play a little bit and come. Guys just didn’t do what my fingers could do.

And now I’m lying on Tommy’s sofa and his arm is tossed over me holding me close and I’m glowing. It’s almost alien. Tommy’s behind me and he’s so gentle and –there’s the word – loving. We fit together. And he’s not telling me to drop my pants. He’s not rubbing up on me like a dog. He’s just there.

My head’s just a little beneath his. He sticks his NOSE in my hair and breathes deep, like he’s inhaling me.

Okay, he bought me perfume a couple of weekends ago. I liked the scent, said something about it when we walked through one of the stores at the mall. He didn’t hesitate, whipped out a credit card. I protested. He bought it.

You’re darned right I wear it. I put a couple of dabs on before I left the kids behind today.

He moved his head down just a little, nuzzling my neck. It tickled, so I shuddered. “That tickles,” I squeaked.

“Oh, okay. I’ll stop.”

“I didn’t say ‘stop’, baby,” I told him. ‘Baby’. I’m thinking ahead of reality, maybe, but okay...

“I like it,” came the voice from behind me. “Your neck is fascinating and I love the perfume.”

“You’d better. You bought it for me.”

More nuzzles. His lips found my neck and I will NOT inventory all the places that began tingling. I just won’t. No high-school make-out session ever did THIS. Nothing from any guy ever did this.

A couple like THAT and I squealed, “Stoppit! Watch the movie...”

Another one of THOSE. “Some things are better’n dinosaurs...” and he shifted back up a little.

Maybe I snuggled back into him just a little bit. Maybe. “Yeah, okay ... be good.”

Right at the beginning of the movie, the female protagonist makes her appearance in a scene that frames her face perfectly. She’s beautiful. Red hair. Frames her face perfectly, with bangs that, I dunno, just do this THING. I remember when I first saw that movie. I sort of filed it under ‘nobody really does that’.

Tommy deposited me in the middle of a whole community full of girls with bangs.

“Fringe,” Johanna says. “That’s what my mom says.” She saw my expression. “Mom’s Irish. It’s one of their terms.”

“Practical,” Tina said. “And it’s parallel development. I had mine when I met Cindy. Cindy had hers when we met Nikki. And Dana and Kim...”

So they’re a thing around here. And I see them on this character and...

“This!” I pointed out to Tommy.

“Mmm?”

“Her. I like that haircut.”

“You like that?” he asks. There was a tone in his voice. I’m paying attention. I want to KNOW how he thinks. Feels.

A little giggle and I say, “I’m not trying to be Cindy, so my hair stays brown...”

“Mmm-hmm,” he says, his lips brushing the top of my head.

“Mmm-hmmm, what? Yes? No?”

“You know you don’t have to change a thing for me. I’m back here adoring your neck.” And he kissed my neck again.

“Stoppit!” I protested weakly as I turned my head to present just a bit more neck.

He took the hint.

“So, that haircut, but my hair stays brown? You think?”

“Awfully close to Tina or Nikki,” he replied.

“You really think so?”

“I thought it was a regulation when I first started working around ‘em. Nikki says no. Says it’s practical.”

“But on me...”

He hit my neck again. “Baby doll,” he whispered. “You do what you want. Anything short of an Afro, I’m good...”

“I like being able to run a brush through it and go.”

“Points for practicality,” he said. “You pull that ‘I’m free’ look very well. I like it.”

“This is just me. I want you to see me and like what you see, not think that I’ll spend an hour and a half fixing myself up right before we go out...”

“Nope,” he replied. “This is the version I like.”

“Good. You get this version. There ain’t no other one. But you dodged the question. That haircut?”

“Do what you want.”

“Bangs,” I said. “And if we can’t stand them, it’ll grow out.”

He spun me around to face him and kissed me lightly on the lips, almost like he was going to have to ask for permission to kiss harder. “Mimi, with or without bangs.” Another kiss, almost questioning. “Mimi. Bright, brown-eyed cutie. I want Mimi.”