Hoe-Tale
I met Terrence in the summer of 2016. We should have followed the rules of hookup culture. No. Strings. Attached. Night fell and it was time for me to treat my reoccurring nightmares with sex, as the prescribed medication it was pretending to be for me.
Mesmerized, the first time I looked into his green eyes…We stood before each other in a filthy Palace Inn Motel in a questionable part of north Houston: Somewhere off 1960 and 45–Greenspoint, or “Guns-point,” as some like to call it, about to sin. I had strayed too far from the suburban safety of The Woodlands. Courtesy of the infamous, Jackd. Jackd is an app that I and many others like me, visit frequently in search of a quick fix. It’s a virtual black hole full of half-naked bodies and damaged goods Admittedly, it is not the most effective way to find love…if that’s your thing. It used to be mine back in my Rick days. When I was with Rick, I was but another hopeless romantic looking for love that conveniently led with sex on the first date. On our first date, he took me to see the remake of Alice in Wonderland and told me that he wanted to make movies like that one day.
He was so passionate about it, it made him excited. I believed in his dream and we were in the bathroom stalls after that, making very bad decisions with our phone cameras. Spoiler, we were not making anything remotely respectable as Alice and Wonderland. And that was pretty much our relationship. Sex, lies, and videotapes. When it got old, I guess he looked for a new co-star. I’ve come to expect that sort of inconsistency after that. In a world riddled with hookup culture and no-fucks-given attitudes, romance is pretty much a thing of the past.
Terrence and I never had a first date. We did not get to spend the night before, anxiety-burdened and pondering over how good or tragic things could go. We did not get to romanticize about a happy ending in which a beautiful relationship blossomed, and about how we would spend our days traveling and sipping fine wine while someone serenaded us in an Italian accent on a gondola ride through the romantic waters of Florence Italy. We were as far away from Italy as you could get.
An open gravesite of dead roaches and ants resided in damn near every corner of the room. It reeked of cigarettes and stale cheeseburgers and the AC blew hot air. As much as I love to deny my stuck-up tendencies, at that moment, I was well aware that random sex in a cheap motel was beneath me. None of it mattered because Terrence stood before me with his black square-cut tank looking like it was painted on. I loved the way it hugged his chest and complemented his golden skin as it radiated under the dim lights. With one of those strong jawlines you only see in magazines, he formed a sly smile.
This was the sort of distraction I needed to keep my dark cloud at bay. It was dense with unexplained night terrors, obsessive thoughts, and the occasional shakes when driving in the rain. It made me want to lock myself in my closet and never come out of the house. Sex was my outlet for when my cloud was becoming too dense. I had to have him. Granted, I would have him. Soon. He sported a diamond-encrusted watch, which nearly blinded me when the light hit it just right. His golden Cartier Love bracelet could have been a sign of wealth or a front. I had no way of knowing. Although he seemed so together, something about him whispered scum bag in my ear. It was likely because he was the one to blame for having brought me to that grungy ass hotel. His place? Not on the table. My place? Not on the table.
He reached out to pull my slim figure towards him. His gold rings and a tasteful gold chain pressed up against my bare chest. A brief chill amongst my waist made me jolt, but only a little. I licked my lips as I admired how the outline of his pecs seem to thrust forward through all of the fibers in his shirt, daring me to touch. What drew me to him was the way his masculine gaze was peppered with a taste of unapologetic sexuality and maybe a hint of narcissism. I wasn’t sure, but he seemed like the kind of guy who would fuck you good, and leave you hanging high and dry with a wet ass and fucked up credit. I took one look at him and wanted to taste him.
“So, wassup witcha, playa?” He said, his voice deep and naturally sensual. “I don’t have a lot of time.” He slid his shirt up the muscled ridges in his stomach, to reveal a large sculpted chest, with a tattoo of a maleficent viper. The way it slithered up and down his torso, had my eyes scanning down just how far the snake would lure me… Maybe it was the size of his arms and the sensuality in his voice, but something about his aura suggested he was a man’s man. Maybe even… Charming? Dangerously so. To this day, I cannot take that away from him.
“I dunno, you tell me,” I said, trying to be nonchalant like I wasn’t itching to be with him in every way possible. I nearly choked on my own words from trying so hard. He was the fairest of feats I had ever laid in bed with, and that by no means, was an easy crown to dawn (if you’re catching what I’m throwing). I was prepared for this to be the experience of a lifetime. As he laid on top of me and encircled his tongue behind my ear, below the lobe, and down the side of my neck, he paused to look into my eyes.
Quivering, I tried to follow the rules of hookup culture: little to no eye contact, don’t ask questions, wear a condom, and most importantly, no kissing. It was all for nothing because he broke all the rules when he placed two slow kisses on my unsuspecting lips, igniting a lust so ravenous, I was compelled to kiss him back, returning the illusion of passionate love.
“Ima make you mine.” He whispered in my ear. His warm, modest, Jack Daniels-scented breath, sent welcome chills down my neck.
I knew better than to believe that bullshit. But it still turned me on. And so, he went on to ravish me like we had known each other for years. He was selling a fantasy because that’s how he preferred to get off. It was fine with me. It would have been selfish of me to have denied him the pleasure he was seeking. You can imagine my dismay when his phone started ringing. The first two times, he let it go to voicemail. But the third time, he jumped up so fast from in-between my cheeks, he had to have been light-headed for a moment.
“Everything alright?” I asked. He looked at me and shook his head as if burdened with the stress I had not the age or experience to understand. Meanwhile, I eyed in between his legs. It was starting to look more like a gummy worm the longer he stood there swiping on his phone. Whoever had been trying to reach him must have been fed up, because when he called back, I heard it go straight to voicemail. Then, there was a hollow and rapid knock at the door. “Jasmine!” He said in a harsh whisper as if we weren’t the only two people in the room. It all went by so fast, because the next thing I knew, I heard a nagging voice piercing through the walls.
“Terrence, Mothafucka! I know you’re in there! Open this damn door!” I rummaged around on that nasty ass motel floor and grabbed my belongings. I was about to high-tail it out the front door, when he grabbed me by the collar of my crisp Polo dress shirt and snatched me back so fast, my eyes danced around like a camera out of focus.
“The fuck iz you doin’!” It had been knocking on three days since I achieved more than 3 hours of sleep. I was irritable enough as it was, his pronunciation choices were disrespectful to me at that point, and none of the mess that was unfolding was helping my headache at all. I had come in an effort to force my body to sleep. Sex usually exhausted me so much that even my nightmares couldn’t wake me. I can’t say it was, R.E.M. because I always woke up the next morning, groggy and worn out as if I hadn’t slept at all. But it was sleep, nonetheless.
“Leaving! Where the hell else would I be going?” I yelled back. “Not my woman. Not my problem. I did not sign on for this shit.”
“You ain’t going out THAT door!” He insisted.
I looked around the room confused as hell. Was there a back door or something I didn’t know about? “There’s only one way out. And that’s exactly where I’m going. You’ve already been caught, so I meannnnn…What’s the point of all this extra?”
“Just hold on a sec, playa.” he pleaded. He looked so terrified and beautiful at the same time. I almost felt bad for him. If the eyes are indeed the windows into the soul, there was the most curious view of a desperate and troubled little boy in his that made me willing to toss what little morals I had to the wind out of pity. He released his grip on my collar, walked over to a duffle bag he had stashed under the bed as if he had nowhere to be, and pulled out a bottle of Jack that had maybe one good shot left in it. I guess he figured he needed it, before opening that door and dealing with what was clearly, a scorned black woman. And she had every reason to be as angry as the blood vessels popping out of her neck suggested. The moment I opened the door, all hell broke loose.
“Jasmine! Whatcha doin' here!” He yelled from the other side of that dreadful spring mattress. He was acting like a fuckin’ coward.
“I came to say goodbye! I’m going back to Chicago and I’m bringing Dwight with me!” She yelled back.
Even with her mangled auburn-colored weave draping over her petite shoulders and the straps of her tattered red mini-dress, Jasmine was still radiant. Stressed out and scorned as hell but still beautiful. Her lightly bronzed skin and her hazel eyes were captivating me from the distance. Who cheats on a woman like that? I looked beyond her to see a drizzle wet the ground and a red Impala parked under the one street light in the parking lot that worked.
“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” I heard a little boy call from the back seat of the Impala.
“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”
A little mixed-looking boy emerged from the car. He had to be around seven or eight-years-old.
“Get back in the car, Dwight!” Jasmine yelled. Terrence put his hand on his forehead as if he had a killer headache.
“That is MY boy! You can’t take him!”
“You lost that right when you blew off the custody hearing for a piece of ass and party favors!”
She pointed at me with her squinted evil eyes and rolled her neck as I was coming through the door. Then she pulled a bottle of pills from her purse and launched it at him. He ducked and the bottle hit the wall with a hollow clack and rattled like maracas. I tucked my head and zipped my lips. I was just about to take off sprinting to my car when---wham! A loud thud ricocheted off the walls and carried out the doorway.
Imagine my shock when I turned to see Terrence out cold on that dirty ass carpet. Jasmine did all but run my little ass down in the doorway with a bulldozer to get to him. The little boy came running to his dad’s aid in a stream of tears. It was heart-wrenching. The poor little guy probably thought his dad was about to die before his innocent little matching blueish-green eyes. Apparently, they had a protocol that usually worked for this sort of thing because the son instinctively darted toward the mini-fridge for some ice water and dumped it all over his dad’s face. Meanwhile, Jasmine continued to slap him in the face and demanded he wake up.
“Not again, you son-of-a-bitch! Don’t do this to us again!” She screamed out in rageful tears. I could see her face was blood red from the parking lot as I made my way to my car. Trying to escape. I’m no good in emergencies. I get all jittery and short of breath, to the point I would need medical attention myself. It’s the whole reason nursing school never worked out for me. There was a whole lot of screaming for help going on between the two of them. I figured there wasn’t too much I could do but call for some professional help on my way out, and maybe the Maury Show.
I’m sure had I gone over there with a pathetic attempt to perform CPR, his wife would have mauled me and left me for dead in a ditch somewhere. Or, I’d get all choked up and faint my damn self. I panicked and did the absolute worst thing one could have done during these “Stay Woke” times. Called 911. I was thinking that at the very least, they could get the medical attention he needed, but I was dead wrong!
I stuck around to watch from the safety of my car. After about 15-minutes, a police car and an ambulance pulled up to the scene. One of the officers rushed to the scene while one searched Jasmine’s car for no apparent reason.
Another one of the officers pulled the little boy away from Terrence’s side, kicking and screaming. That’s when I realized I had made matters worse. Paramedics jumped from the sides of the truck and darted toward him.
“Please! Please! Don’t take him! Don’t take my son!” The woman cried. The officer put the boy in his cruiser and after necessary but degrading groveling on her hands and knees, he allowed her to get in the backseat. The cruiser pulled off and it started pouring down rain! Terrence had finally come to and at the right time. The paramedics stepped away to give him some space. Several of them ask the stupid question:
“Are you alright, sir?” He stumbled around, trying to find his balance before finally falling to his knees, with hands of prayer raised to the heavens begging God for mercy, as he witnessed his son be driven away in the backseat of a police car.
“Is that your Impala?” one of the officers asked. He glanced over at the car and nodded his head. As his hands were held high, the men in blue cuffed his wrists. I could hear the revving engine of an old Crown Victoria, which grew fainter as it sped off into the distance, and the sounds of raindrops falling from the rooftops pounding the pavement. Suddenly, it all seemed to be happening in slow motion. What an ugly sight it was to see a 40-something-year-old man in hysterical tears.
Droplets of dirty rainwater poured relentlessly from the leaking roof and onto his face. Guilt compelled me to leave the safety of my car. I could not stand by while they took him to jail and it all has been my fault.
I sprinted from my car to the entrance of the hotel room. “Get. The Hell—Out!” He snapped at me as I was approaching the scene. I must have startled the officers because they were quick to draw their hands back to the guns tucked in their holsters upon my abrupt arrival. I stopped dead in my tracks and put both my hands in the air. The rain drenched my clothes. My heart was pounding and for the first time, I realized just how much danger I had put myself in. I shouted that I was unarmed and that I was the one who made the call.
“I’m his therapist!” I blurted out. “He needs medical attention!” I would have reached for my work badge, but I had been watching too much shit on Youtube about cops murdering people and I’m one of those people who are quick to jump to the worst-case scenario. Whether my fear was rational or not, I wanted to avoid giving them any reason to think I was a threat. I was and never will be in the mood to become another face of the Black Lives Matter movement. “Step away, sir,” one of them said. His hand was gripping his holster with force and his arched eyebrows dared me to make one wrong move.
“Check my pockets, please!” Their white faces eyed me in disbelief.
I couldn’t imagine how they could look at me and think I was a threat, but I can only imagine the amount of fear they might battle with daily, with having to enforce the law in a world where we are being taught to not trust men in blue no more than politicians.
I knew fear can make people act irrationally at times. But had I been shot, not even I, with my privileged and sheltered suburban kid lens, could justify or even begin to understand why. I was dressed in labels, as Carrie Bradshaw liked to call them. My nails were freshly manicured, and my naturally soft-spoken voice couldn’t have been any less intimidating, even while yelling. I was no threat, but they had no way of knowing. My thumbs trembled and I broke out in a cold sweat as I invited them to search me. Who knew what that would bring? A face full of concrete? Bludgeoned to death with a club? Or shot in cold blood? The news had me thinking the worst.
“Please!” I begged.
“Hey! I think I got something!” One of the officers called from behind the bed. He was holding a bottle of pills in the air. “Looks like prescription Xanax! No name on the label.”
All I could do was shake my head and drop my shoulders. We were surely going to jail.
- Manstress Diaries - Book One
