FicWad

Izzy

Time to go to work. I can’t live here for free and sponge off of Duff and Slash; they’ve done enough for me by giving me a roof over my head. Duff’s a little ticked off at me too because I let Nikki give Slash some smack last night. I mean he’s not mad/mad because obviously I was pretty fucked up and not making the best choices myself last night; that’s made painfully obvious every time I try and walk since I invited Tommy to fuck me last night. Duff told me though in no uncertain terms that I had better not turn Curly Sue into a junkie or let him randomly OD because the kid looks up to me and trusts me not to lead him into anything that’s going to hurt him. I wouldn’t either, not on purpose.

I like the kid; I like the size of his dick, I like the way he plays guitar, I like how he’s sweet and somewhat innocent and how this makes Duff happy. I like to watch the way and Duff light up for each other when they lay eyes on the other person. It’s sickening to watch but I’m happy for them. I just want to be happy like that again. When I walked by our building tonight I saw that the lights on in our old apartment and I knew Axl was home. I wanted to stop but I just kept going. He’d just tell me get the fuck out if I stopped. Besides; he’s probably not alone anyway; that Erin chick is probably there.

Tonight, like every night that I’m out I’m working a little alleyway about hallway between our storage unit on Gardiner and the Cathouse. Lots of the girls know me and come to me to score. They also know that sometimes I’ll trade sex for dope and that if they are that desperate I won’t hurt them. Sometimes you have nights where that seems to be the only way people want to pay you; with sex. It’s fine for the first customer but after that you’re going to be losing money and that’s not ok. It also depends on who the person is. Cute stripper? Cool. Old whore? No thanks. Underage kid? Definetly not.

As soon as I hit he shadows between the buildings she’s on me. Her name is Samantha and she’s a pretty little blonde from Kentucky. She came out here to be a model or “maybay eeven a movay stayuh.” This translates to “maybe even a movie star” but they pronounce things differently where Samantha’s from. She didn’t become a movie star obviously; she became a heroin addicted stripper but she likes to tell herself she’s just paying her dues. Yeah, and paying and paying and paying; but keep on telling yourself that honey.

“Izzy!” the girl calls out and steps towards me out of the shadows.

I turn towards her and say “What do you need Samantha?” but I keep walking as I say it. I stop when I reach a deep, double doorway completely swathed in darkness.

“Izzy, you know what I need, I need a fix, I need it really bad, I’m starting to get sick and they won’t let me work sick and I just paid the rent so I’m out of cash. Even when I get some it’s already spent. Hook me up Izzy, help me please!” she begs.

It’s sad what she does to herself and I’m not doing her any favors BY feeding her habit but I know what it’s like to be dope sick and desperate. Shit, I had just gone through the shit in Seattle. “Samantha, you know I’m not helping you by giving you this shit right?”

“Oh please Izzy, it’s not like I have any sober living fantasies right now. You going to shoot me up or what?” she snaps.

“Fine,” I reply and pull one of the ready- made syringes out of my boots. I keep them especially for the Cathouse girls so that they can shoot up and get back to work. “You know you’ve gotta pay in cash next time too right?”

“Yeah Izzy, I know, just shoot me up and then fuck me and get it over with,” she says, snapping at me again.

Ok, for some reason that statement pisses me off; probably because so much screwed up shit has been thrown at me lately regarding sex. I used to love sex; shit I still love it but it used to be almost sacred. Sex was like the one time that I knew that my soul would really and truly connect with Axl’s. The nakedness and the fact that people saw us being together sexually as wrong was enough to guarantee vulnerability but it was more than that. We used to make love for hours at a time; and it wasn’t about the orgasm. When it was time for that it came with sweeping ferocity every time.

Being given an orgasm by Axl is like being lit on fire, which is another reason I like to call him my Fireball. His concentration when working to make me cum for him is absolute. He looks down into my eyes and gets this determined, almost angry look on his face and it doesn’t matter how hard or soft the sex is; the look on his face was always the same; it was a look that almost dared you to try and not get off. Sometimes I’d hold back just to see his brows furrow in determination; but he’d never, ever break eye contact. The final result is usually mind -blowing and it feels like my body is exploding with heat and light. I always felt my heart exploding right along with the rest of me.

When Axl was on the receiving end of things I loved watching him. I loved the way he opened himself up to me; both his body and his heart. I loved the sounds he made when I touched him, I loved how familiar his body was to me and how I knew where to touch him to draw a moan or a sigh out of him. I loved how when he got off (and he always did) sometimes he would yell my name and pull my hair. He always told me he loved me somewhere in the middle of things. That was something I had missed over the past few months; looking down while I was inside of him or up at him while he moved in me and having him look right into my eyes, into my soul, and telling me he loved me. That stopped a few months ago. The past few months, except for that day we were in the ocean it had felt like I was sleeping with a stranger. We weren’t making love anymore; we were just fucking, at least on his end. I hadn’t stopped trying but when he stopped looking at me during sex, when he wouldn’t meet my eyes, I knew things were bad.

I’m tired of sleeping with someone who doesn’t feel anything. Funny, I had made Axl feel something last night when I fucked someone else but he didn’t feel anything when I actually slept with him. It hurt him; seeing me with Tommy hurt him and I was fucking glad. I was tired of being the one who was hurting, I wanted Axl to hurt for once and I wanted him to hurt every bit as badly as I hurt. The only downside of last night was the obvious physical discomfort; that and the fact that I had realized that it didn’t matter if I fucked someone else the hole in my heart left by Axl was still there. I hope he didn’t see that in my eyes last night when he looked up at me. He’s damn good at reading me and I didn’t want him to see that. All I wanted him to see was that I didn’t need him; that I could be with someone else just as quickly as he could and that I didn’t care if he knew it.

I realize that my mind has been wandering for quite a while when Samantha touches my arm and says “Izzy? You ok?”

I shake myself out of my haze and look down at her. What a waste of a life. She’s such a pretty, sweet, girl. That’s not going to last. Give her another year and she’ll be totally strung out and jaded. “I’ll give you the smack but not until after you fuck me; I want you to feel it.”

“What? Why?” she asks looking totally confused as to why I would want such a thing. Hell, I’m more than a little confused myself at the moment by my entire life; this is just one more thing.

“Because, it’ll either feel good and you’ll have a good time or you won’t like it and you won’t do it again and maybe you’ll remember that next time you want to shoot junk into your veins and you’ll think about quitting and getting out of here. You’re too good for this scene; you don’t belong here.”

"You’re drunk Izzy,” she accuses. “Whatever, come on.” I am drunk but so what. I push the girl up against the wall behind us and surprise her when I bring my lips down onto hers. I have no idea why I’m kissing this girl other than I want the physical contact and I want someone to enjoy having that kind of contact from me. None of this shit makes any sense, I don’t even like this girl, I don’t give a shit about her; I just want something different than what I got last night. I’m totally using her the way Tommy used me but I want it to feel better for her than it did for me; basically that makes me better than Tommy because I won’t hurt this girl? I need to stop thinking.

I can tell Samantha’s surprised that I’m kissing her and I slow it down and kiss her gently and stroke up and down her back. When I feel her start to relax I prod her lips with my tongue and she opens her mouth and lets me deepen the kiss and she starts to kiss back. I loop my arm around her waist and pull her into me and grind against her and she groans quietly. Gee, guess I’ve still got something worth wanting. She didn’t want me a few minutes ago but she’s starting to now. I move my other hand up and brush her hair back out of her face and break the kiss and she leans forward a little; obviously not wanting to stop. “Ok?” I ask her.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “I didn’t know you were a good kisser.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know sweetheart; a lot nobody knows.” I tip her chin back up towards my face and bring my lips back to hers. When I feel her totally relax in my arms and start pressing her body into mine I reach up under her skirt and pull down the tiny thong she’s wearing and she steps out of it and reaches down to open my pants. She strokes me a few times as I get my pants moved down enough to move. I pull her right leg up and wrap it around my hip and then push inside of her and she moans quietly against my neck. “Feel good?” I whisper.

“Yeah, she murmurs and I kiss her again; swirling my tongue around hers as I start to move inside of her. I move slowly at first, making sure she’s relaxed and into it and that I’m hitting the right spot before I start to move faster and harder. When I pick up speed she digs her nails into my shoulders and makes a quiet, aroused sound. I pull back and look at her; making sure she’s alright but she pulls my mouth back towards hers. “Don’t stop,” she pleads.

“I won’t,” I whisper and thrust into her again. I keep one arm around her hips to hold her up and bring the other hand up and tease her clit with my fingers. Her breathing picks up and she whimpers and I feel her body start to tense up around my cock. I circle my finger over her clit harder and continue to thrust into her and her grip on me tightens. “Are you going to cum for me pretty girl?” I whisper in her ear and that seems to push her over the edge. She cries out and I quickly smother the sound with my mouth. Her body starts to spasm around my cock and I groan deeply as I feel my own climax building. I thrust a few more times and then go rigid; clutching her to me as I cum deep inside of her.

When I’m done I lower her leg back onto the ground and slide out of her, quickly fixing my pants. I pull the syringe out of my pocket and hand it to her. “Enjoy it,” I tell her. She just looks at me, looking a little bewildered; almost as if she’d forgotten why she was having sex with me in a dark alley.

“Um, thanks Izzy. That was…I guess that was the best time I’ve had trading sex for smack,” she says and laughs.

“Well, I’m glad you had a good time,” I reply. “You’d better get back to work. Me too; gotta make some money.”

“Yeah, ok, see you later,” she tells me and turns and walks back towards the Cathouse. The next couple of hours are pretty normal for a night spent as a dealer. I haven’t been out lately so my customers are anxious to re-up their supply so I sell almost every fold of smack that I’m carrying. I get a couple more offers to trade sex for dope that I turn down; the saddest one comes from a lady in her 50s who offers to suck me off for a fold of dope. I almost feel sorry enough for her to just give it to her; but I don’t.

Around 2am a couple shuffles down the alley. I can tell immediately that something’s not right. The guy has his arm tightly around the girl’s waist and the look on her face says she wants to bolt. She’s really pretty with long, dark, hair but she looks terrified. She’s young too, maybe Slash’s age; so 18 or 19. My guess is the guy is her boyfriend and he wants to pimp her to me for dope. He’s a wiry, mean looking mother fucker and his face just screams “desperate junkie.” They walk up to me and I can see that the guy has the girl’s arm twisted up behind her back. “Dude, are you holding?” the guy asks me.

“Holding what?” I sneer.

“Smack. I’ll give you a half an hour with her for three folds,” he replies.

“Two folds, and I get her alone; you stay here. That’s the deal; take it or leave it,” I growl. He starts to object but I slide the gun out of my pants.

“Fine,” he agrees. I wouldn’t normally trade dope for some girl I don’t know; I only do that with Cathouse girls but I know that if I don’t take this girl that her boyfriend’s going to pimp her to someone else and there’s something about this terrified, tiny, girl that makes me want to protect her. Part of it’s just a guy’s natural instinct to protect women but there’s something more than that; there's something in the look on her face that reminds me Slash's face when that trucker attacked him; he looked like a terrified little kid that needed help and so does this girl. I’m not going to sleep with her of course; but I’m not going to let this asshole take this girl and sell her to someone who really will fuck her and probably hurt her. The poor girl doesn’t know that though and I can feel her shaking as I take her hand and pull her away from her boyfriend.

“You stay right there fucker,” I tell the asshole selling her and I keep the gun pointed at him until the terrified girl and I are around the corner. “Relax, I’m not going to fuck you,” I whisper to her as I pull her into the darkened doorway of an abandoned, empty, shithole. I push the piece of plywood that’s supposed to be nailed across the door out of the way and we go up a flight of stairs and into a room with a window facing the alley where the girl’s junkie boyfriend is sitting against a wall. What a piece of shit. He’s not even trying to figure out where we are or make sure I’m not hurting her; he's just sitting there waiting on me to be done fucking his girlfriend so he can have his drugs.

I turn around and look at the shaking, silent girl who’s slumped against the wall across the room from me; curled up and trying to make herself as small as possible. “Are you ok honey?” I ask her while keeping one eye on her boyfriend.

“I’m fine,” she says in a wobbly voice. “So you’re not going to make me do anything?”

“No, I’m not going to make you do anything,” I reply.

“Then are you going to give him the smack?” she asks. “Why are you letting me off the hook? All of the other dealers he’s traded me to take what they want Why not you? Are you going to do something else?” she whimpers, a look of horror crossing her face.

“I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m not even going to touch you I’m just going to stand here and keep an eye on him. Is he your pimp or your boyfriend?”

“He’s my boyfriend. We moved here from San Francisco and he got hooked on dope. But he lost his job a few weeks ago and he started trading me to dealers for it. If I don't do it he says he'll kill my cat and he would too. He didn’t used to be like this but as soon as we moved down here he changed and he started doing drugs and hitting me and I hate him! I shouldn’t be telling you this; you don’t know me. You still never answered my question,” she reminds me.

“I’m not going to fuck you because you don’t want it and don’t know me obviously. I’m not into that. But I know his type and he’ll just sell you to somebody who will fuck you or who will cheat him out of dope and you’re going to get hurt. At least this way you’ll be safe for the night. What’s your name?”

“Angela, Angela Nicoletti. What’s yours and why do you care if I’m safe? You don’t even know me!”

“It’s Izzy and I don’t know; you just look like you could use someone to look out for you once in a while. How old are you? You look about the same age as the lead guitarist in my band; which is way too young to know as much about the world as I’m betting you do,” I say to her quietly. She crosses the room and sits down on the floor beside me; guess she’s not afraid of me anymore.

“What do you know about what I know about the world? What’s the name of your band? What kind of music do you play?”

“You sure do have a lot of questions don’t you?” I ask her and laugh quietly.

“Sorry, I won’t ask you any more if you don’t want me to. I guess I don’t really get the chance to talk to anyone since we moved here. James won’t let me get a job because he doesn’t want me out of his sight. He says he’ll take care of me and that he doesn’t want me to be away from him for longer than I have to.”

“Yeah, ok. You seem like a smart girl; what do you think about all of that?” I ask her.

“I think it seems like a bunch of bullshit now that we’re here. I think he doesn’t really want me to have any friends or anything; no one but him. He doesn’t want me to have a job so I won’t have my own money. I think he just wants to control me. I think I let him too…” she says and her voice drops off and she rests her chin in her hands on her knees. “I just don’t know what to do now. My family was really angry because I left with him and I haven’t talked to them for a while. But they’re poor anyway, there’s not much they can do.”

“Do you want to be with him? Do you love him?” I ask her. Why the fuck am I asking her this? I don’t have these kinds of conversations with people. Maybe because of what Axl and I were going through at the moment.

“I love who he used to be. Now I’m just scared of him. What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?” she she asks me.

I chuckle. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend. I used to have a boyfriend; but I’m not good enough for him anymore; I’m just a junkie dealer. Everything wrong with our relationship was my fault according to him; never mind that he hasn’t seemed to notice that I’m alive for months. Maybe if he’d acted like I was more than a worthless piece of garbage I wouldn’t have wanted to be so fucking numb. It wasn’t all his fault though, it was both of us,” I admit and stare at the floor.

“So you like guys?” Angela asks quietly, sounding a little crestfallen.

“I swing both ways; it’s about the person, not whether they’re a guy or a girl,” I tell her.

“How long were you guys together?” she asks.

“Nine years almost; since we were 15; I’m almost 24. What about you and that asshole out there?”

“We’ve been together about a year. I’m almost 22. How old is your guitarist? The one you thought was the same age as me? You didn’t tell me your band’s name.” She says all of this in a rush; almost like it’s spilling out of her, like she hasn’t been able to talk to someone in a long time.

“Slash is 20, 21 this summer. My band’s name is Guns n Roses. I was pretty sure this was “THE BAND” too but I don’t know now that Axl broke up with me. He’s our singer. We’re really good, the band I mean. I don’t want the band to fall apart because Axl and I fell apart but I don’t know how to deal with seeing him all the time and not being with him. I’m not sure he and I will ever be together again either; he seems like he’s really not interested anymore,” I mumble.

“You really loved him huh? You still do,” she sighs and reaches over and takes my hand and squeezes it. Her hand feels warm and soft and nice; caring or something.

“I do still love him but it doesn’t really matter; everything’s changed. I just need to move on. I’m always going to love him; he was my first everything including my first real love. But he doesn’t want that anymore so I just need to get over it. What about you Angela? Are you going to stay with that fucker out there and let him keep hurting you? How many times has he done this; sell you for dope I mean?”

“This is the third time. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I don’t have anywhere to go and sometimes I still really care about him,” she admits. "But honestly, most days I like the cat more than him!" I crack up laughing.

“I’d better take you back to him by the way, it’s been a half hour,” I sigh. Part of me was hoping she would say she’d run like hell if she had the chance.

“Yeah, you’re probably right, if we don’t come back on time he’ll be pissed. He’s fiending right now. The faster he gets the dope in his system the better; he’ll be nicer once he shoots up,” she tells me sadly. I don’t want her to go with him. I don’t know why I care but I’m afraid he’s going to hurt her.

“Are you sure? I, I’ve got the gun, I could make him leave if you want, you could come with me…” I say weakly.

“No, I should go,” she says in what sounds like a reluctant tone of voice. “But thank you. Thanks for just sitting here and talking to me and not, you know.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome. You know where to find me if you need anything, even if it’s just a conversation.” Wait, did I just say that? Why did I want to talk to her? I didn’t like talking to anyone? Something about her reminded me of Slash; I don’t mean physically obviously, maybe just the innocence and the willingness to listen. “Just be careful Angela and really, find me if you need help. If I’m not here ask at the Cathouse, everyone there knows me and knows where to find me. You should probably mess up your hair a little and wipe off your lipstick or something by the way so your boy out there thinks something happened between us. Come here,” I say holding out my hand to her.

She takes my hand and steps over to me and I reach out and tousle her long, dark brown hair. She laughs and the sound makes me smile. I don’t know what the fuck comes over me and what’s with me and kissing tonight but I can’t stop myself; I pull her close to me and kiss her for real. Not hard; not for too long, but enough to leave us both panting. “Remember where to find me?” I ask her quietly.

“Yeah, I remember. Thanks for making me feel safe, at least for a little while,” she whispers and looks at me; totally confused which is the exact same thing I feel.

“Sure,” I whisper back and we’re walking back towards the corner of the building and I feel my heart turn to ice in my chest where just a few seconds ago it was starting to feel some kind of warmth. Axl is waiting there, hiding in the shadows. Just as I see him and before we turn the corner Angela reaches out and squeezes my hand hard; and I squeeze back and feel a little better. Her boyfriend stands up as we walk around the corner and glares at us both. I hand him the two folds of smack that I have left on me and he looks us both up and down; noting Angela’s messy hair and smudged lips. He grabs her hand, mutters “Thanks,” and then pulls her off down the alley. I sigh and turn around to face the fallen angel behind me; my Fireball.