Chapter 10: Playing the Game

I always grew up a tomboy.

And if I’m being honest, I knew I had a thing for women long before I understood what that meant. Maybe people would call it curiosity. Maybe it was just another phase in my life that I needed to experience to understand myself better.

Either way, it was real.

One night while working, I met a girl. We would text each other whenever we stepped outside to work so we could stand together.

Now, that might not sound like a big deal, but there were rules in the game.

Girls weren’t really your friends.

Most conversations between working girls were actually recruitment. Many of them were trying to pull you toward their pimp. And another rule was that you were the attraction. Standing next to another woman could take attention away from you unless both of you belonged to the same pimp.

But I was a renegade.

I moved differently.

I moved like I had folks, even though I didn’t.

By then, I had started selling weed to some of the pimps and girls. Most of them knew me. They respected me. I stayed in my own lane and handled my business.

The girl and I grew closer.

One day she ended up getting beaten by her folks, and I felt bad for her. So I took her in.

I saw things differently because I was a woman myself.

I didn’t just see her as another girl working the blade. I saw her as a friend.

She was older than me and had been in the game longer. She taught me a lot about dealing with clients, making money, and protecting myself. More than anything, she had hustle.

Real hustle.

Eventually we became a team.

We traveled everywhere together on Greyhound buses, chasing money and opportunities wherever they took us.

One night we were working Sepulveda Boulevard.

At the end of the night, she handed me all of her money.

I remember looking at her confused.

Then it hit me.

The same game I had spent years learning… I was now seeing from the other side.

It was already in me.

The leadership.

The hustle.

The ability to organize and move.

But even then, I still worked myself because every dollar counted.

Part of me still wanted a man in my life. I would flirt from time to time, but I never gave anyone the opportunity to run an interview on me.

I respected pimps.

I understood the game.

But it wasn’t my cup of tea.

I loved money too much to hand it over.

I worked too hard for it.

With me, it was like flipping a light switch. At eighteen years old, I knew how to go from being a working girl to becoming a madam.

But life has a funny way of attracting bullshit.

One lesson I heard over and over was:

“You gotta separate to elevate.”

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what that meant.

Soon enough, I would.

Leaving Los Angeles and returning to Oakland was probably one of the worst decisions I could have made.

But I missed my child.

I missed my city.

And now that we had become a team, I wanted to build something back home.

The first thing we did was buy a car.

Just like that, we had transportation and the ability to run our own ads for incalls and outcalls.

For a moment, everything seemed to be falling into place.

Then reality hit.

The car turned out to be a lemon.

As I thought about who could help us, I remembered a man from Vallejo named O.G. who worked on cars. I gave him a call and asked if he could take a look at it.

He showed up with his nephew.

At the time, it seemed like nothing.

Just another repair job.

Just another day.

What I didn’t know was that his nephew would eventually take the girl from me behind my back.

One day she was there.

Just like that the next day she was gone.

Game is game ! ! !

No argument.

No warning.

No explanation.

She didn’t steal anything.

She didn’t take any money.

She simply left.

And just like that, I was standing there with nothing but a car, unanswered questions, and a one-way ticket back to square one.

Another lesson learned.

In this game, loyalty can disappear overnight.

And sometimes the people you build with are only meant to stay long enough to teach you what separation really means.