Street Prostitute 36- Photographing Ronda
_________________
For a two volume ebook, a very pretty drug-addicted street prostitute allows her life to be documented by photographs and tape-recorded interviews for an entire year while she is working the streets of Atlanta. She does it for an ebook available from the usual websites. Here is Volume One on Amazon:
Street Prostitute: A Streetwalker Tells Her Story While She’s Working the Streets
If you want to read what happens her first full day in the hospital, check out Volume One. You may read it in its entirety for free by clicking on "Look Inside this book."
**************************************************************************
I get out of the car and lean against the hood. If Ronda does keep me waiting, at least I can spend the time taking in the stirrings of spring. The jonquils are already in bloom...the redbuds will be bursting forth any day...the birds are beginning to sing...
"Mar—Mar—Mar—Marcie—"
Ronda is suddenly back. A sweater draped over one arm, she is stuttering her hooker friend Marcie's name.
Very emotionally, her voice breaking, she tells me Marcie had just admitted that she did indeed have the ring that Ronda thought she had stolen from her. And then, after Ronda told her she could keep it, Marcie had started to cry...
Ronda seems so moved by this, I'm thinking. Really and truly and genuinely moved...
Suddenly she grabs my shirt—just below my neck— twists it—hard —and jerks me toward her—
"Give me some money for a pill—or I'm gonna kill you!"
"WHAT!?" I'm shocked.
She releases my shirt. Her tone had been only half kidding.
"You're full of shit," I say. "What are you talking about? You know I'm not gonna do that."
"I'm getting strung out again, George. I discovered the other day I'm getting strung out again... Please. "
"I will not!" I declare.
"Pleeeeease!"
"I told you what the deal was before. And I'm not changing."
"Don't be on principle!"
"That's not—"
"Fuck principle!" She's almost shouting.
"That's not just principle."
"Principle sucks, man!"
I back up: "What do you mean...you're... What do you mean that you're stru— You said you discovered the other day that you're strung out again."
"I am, I'm strung out again. I know I am."
"All right, explain to me what that means... That you're strung out again."
She yells her answer—
"I—WANT—A—FUCKING—PILL!"
"Okay"—my voice is normal, or fairly normal—"but that doesn't mean strung out. I thought, basically, strung out, the way you've used the term strung out...was that you had to have it so damned much and you were doing it constantly— "
Ronda interrupts: "I have been doing it constantly—that's the problem."
"Well, Melvin said you've been averaging two a day. How many have you really been averaging?"
"Five or six. He don't know what I've been doing."
"Okay. You've been doing five or six a day?"
"I'll give you this watch."
"You've been averaging five or six a day for how long?"
"I don't know! "
She clenches her teeth in frustration.
"A week?" I push. "Two weeks? A month?"
No answer from Ronda.
"Two months?"
Still no answer.
Then: "Since my coat got stolen. At least. Before then. I don't wanna talk about it. Pleeease, George, what can I do?”
"You have been averaging five or six a day for...a month? And Melvin doesn't know that. Is that correct?"
"What have I got to do?" she asks—no, demands. "Have a goddamn—" She stops.
"Is that correct?"
"Yeah." [Sounding definitive.]
"Okay. Well, this is what I've been asking you for a long time, was to tell me the truth about the pills. So you're getting strung out? "
"I am strung out."
Now I raise my voice:
"But you're not getting strung out like you have been, Ronda! Because I know how you were."
"Well, lemmee..." She gives a frustrated little sigh. "You can have everything in my house," she offers. "You can have Melvin included. You can have me. "
I just look at her.
"I'll be your personal slave for a week," she says—and laughs. "You can say, 'Ronda...'"
"You're lying. You have not been doing five or six a day for that long."
"I have," she contends. Her brow furrows... "A hundred and fifty, two hundred...about three hundred dollars a day. That's six, right? Yeah."
"So where do you shoot up?" I ask, looking her hard in the eye.
"Here. At Rick's. They don't tell anybody. [Pauses.] What can I do?"
"So... So you're strung out again..."
"What can I do?" she interrupts, repeating her question more forcefully.
"Well, what do you usually do?"
A sound of exasperation is her response.
Then suddenly I'm wondering:
Did she mean something more by her question? Something more crucial? More hopeful?
So quickly I ask: "What can you do about what?"
"George," she answers," I will do anything..."
My hopes evaporate.
"...I swear to God I would."
"I'm not," I say, "in the business of supporting your habit. You understand? I don't like it!"
"I know... That's not..."
She stops in mid-sentence and for a minute she's quiet.
"I would do it for you," she says finally.
"And besides that," I remind her, "we had a deal. We had a deal. We had a deal."
Ronda snaps her fingers:
"Broke."
"What?"
Another quick snap of her fingers:
"Broke."
"What's broke?"
"The deal just got broke. Now. Look..."
"It did not," I counter. "Not on my side it didn't."
"It's not supporting my habit"—she softens her tone—"it's not that."
"Please," she adds in a sexy little voice.
"Ronda, we made a contract on this deal. And I work thirty or forty hours a week on it." I pause. "Look, just get...get in the car and we'll go to Popeye's and—"
"If you'll buy..."
"...you're not hurting that much!"
"If you'll buy me a pill, we'll have a four-hour interview!"
She laughs. She's obviously enjoying this new line of argument.
"You've just had your methadone..."I say again "...you're not—"
"Fuck the methadone! The man won't raise my goddamn dose— I'm tired of his bullshit. He takes it personal if I can't make it to counseling. It hurts his feelings..."
She lowers her voice: "I'd do anything; I swear to God I would. I'd kill somebody. If I had to. But I ain't got no way to kill somebody."
"You would kill somebody?"
"If I had a gun."
"If you had a gun, you would kill..."
She interrupts, speaking louder now: "No, if I had a gun, I'd take it to Rick and trade it for a pill."
"Okay, but otherwise," I continue, "if you couldn't trade it for a pill, would you kill somebody for one?"
"I'd rob somebody. [A pause.] There's gotta be something I could do."
"Well, you could turn a trick, right?"
My question is met by a long silence.
Finally I say very nicely—and hopefully, "I wish that we would just go...get something to eat...and do this interview. They've got to be done, Ronda! If this book is gonna come together."
"Uh...let's get it," Ronda says. "I promise, we'll sit...we'll sit for hours. Upon hours."
"I can see— I can see that you are...you must... You've got to be strung out again."
"We'll go to your office..."
"I really... I really could not tell it before..."
"We'll go to the office..."
"...because you haven't done this..."
"In a long time," she finishes for me.
"In a long time."
"We'll go to your office," she says again, "and we'll just sit there. Because the pill, you know, it'll hold me for...about four hours. I'll just sit there and talk, talk, talk. Four hours, I promise."
I level my eyes at her. "After all the work I've put into this book, I'd ditch it before I gave you the money for a pill right now."
"Please"—now she's sounding like a little girl—"I'll pay it back to you."
"Give it up, give it up. It's not like you're hurting... physically hurting."
"Yeah"—she places a finger on her chest. "Right here it is. Right here."
"But you just had your methadone!"
"Fuck that methadone."
There's a silence.
"How do you feel about getting strung out again? If you are."
"I—just—like—the—way—the—stuff—feels. Okay?"
She climbs up onto the hood of my car.
"If you've been doing five or six a day"—I address her up there—"that means you've been on the street a fair amount. Right?"
Quickly: "Not in front of the hotel! George, you know I get that check the first of the month—can't you go on that?"
"Ronda, I'm not available for this."
"Pleeease!" she implores. "I don't know nobody to ask. ... Don't fuck with me."
"Ronda, I'm not gonna do it. So if you need to get it, go ahead. I'm not gonna do it."
"Why?" She asks it like she truly wants to know.
"Do you want me to spell out the reasons?"
She nods that she does.
"Number one," I say calmly and seriously, "we had a deal. Which you agreed to. I'm sticking to my part of the deal. In what I will do and will not do. That's the main thing.
"Number two: I don't have that kind of money. I'm in debt myself right now. Number three: you're always able to talk folks into...getting your drugs for you."
"No, I'm not!"
"You're not able, " I say, "to talk me into it."
There's a long, frowning silence from Ronda, still perched on my hood.
"But I wish to God," I say, "that you'd...get into shape or whatever, because if you get totally strung out, the only time I'll be catching you will be a little bit on the street, and that's it."
She slides down off the hood. With great agitation, she walks to the rear of the car—then back to me...
"Jesus Christ! Fuck it. I've gotta go turn a date, George. I'm sorry, I can't—"
"I'm sorry too. Now when are we gonna do this interview?"
"We could've done it right now."
"All right. Are you—" I start to ask, "are you—"
Wheeling around, Ronda walks off.
I draw deeply on my cigarette. Across the street, an old woman is sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house. As I'm watching her, I hear the slamming of my car door, and turning, I see that Ronda has climbed into the car and is pulling her shirt off over her head. I look quickly away. Through the windshield, I'd caught only a brief glimpse of her small but pretty breasts. I watch the old woman sweeping until I hear the car door shut again.
Now wearing the sweater she'd brought out from Rick's, Ronda is standing by the door, her eyes on me.
"I appreciate the, uh...I appreciate that," she says. Her tone is sincere. "You know?"
"What?"
"The, um...respect you just showed by not watching. I appreciate that."
"Well," I reply, "I would appreciate it if we can—even if you get strung out—if we can continue on this book without you making—"
She interrupts: "Where are you gonna be? At your office?"
"Yeah."
"After I get my dope," she says, "I'll come see you."
"You'll what?"
"I'll get a trick to bring me over there."
For a few seconds she just stands there.
"You don't want to loan me just ten dollars if I lay something on it?"
I shake my head.
"I've got to go straight broke, right?"
"Yep."
"Okay. Fuck you."
This she had said without raising her voice. But she sounds, for the first time today, truly angry.
She starts walking away.
I say to her back: "Are you saying you're coming over there?"
She stops; she turns and faces me:
"I'll be over there. I don't know why. Because I'm mad at you. I'm real mad at you, but I'll still come over."
"Okay."
Again she starts toward Ponce de Leon, then speaks over her shoulder:
"I'm coming because we're friends. You know what I mean?"
--------
A little hopeful, I wait at my office.
She never comes.
_________________
For a two volume ebook, a very pretty drug-addicted street prostitute allows her life to be documented by photographs and tape-recorded interviews for an entire year while she is working the streets of Atlanta. She does it for an ebook available from the usual websites. Here’s is Volume One on Amazon:
Street Prostitute: A Streetwalker Tells Her Story While She’s Working the Streets
Street Prostitute 36- Photographing Ronda
_________________
For a two volume ebook, a very pretty drug-addicted street prostitute allows her life to be documented by photographs and tape-recorded interviews for an entire year while she is working the streets of Atlanta. She does it for an ebook available from the usual websites. Here is Volume One on Amazon:
Street Prostitute: A Streetwalker Tells Her Story While She’s Working the Streets
If you want to read what happens her first full day in the hospital, check out Volume One. You may read it in its entirety for free by clicking on "Look Inside this book."
**************************************************************************
I get out of the car and lean against the hood. If Ronda does keep me waiting, at least I can spend the time taking in the stirrings of spring. The jonquils are already in bloom...the redbuds will be bursting forth any day...the birds are beginning to sing...
"Mar—Mar—Mar—Marcie—"
Ronda is suddenly back. A sweater draped over one arm, she is stuttering her hooker friend Marcie's name.
Very emotionally, her voice breaking, she tells me Marcie had just admitted that she did indeed have the ring that Ronda thought she had stolen from her. And then, after Ronda told her she could keep it, Marcie had started to cry...
Ronda seems so moved by this, I'm thinking. Really and truly and genuinely moved...
Suddenly she grabs my shirt—just below my neck— twists it—hard —and jerks me toward her—
"Give me some money for a pill—or I'm gonna kill you!"
"WHAT!?" I'm shocked.
She releases my shirt. Her tone had been only half kidding.
"You're full of shit," I say. "What are you talking about? You know I'm not gonna do that."
"I'm getting strung out again, George. I discovered the other day I'm getting strung out again... Please. "
"I will not!" I declare.
"Pleeeeease!"
"I told you what the deal was before. And I'm not changing."
"Don't be on principle!"
"That's not—"
"Fuck principle!" She's almost shouting.
"That's not just principle."
"Principle sucks, man!"
I back up: "What do you mean...you're... What do you mean that you're stru— You said you discovered the other day that you're strung out again."
"I am, I'm strung out again. I know I am."
"All right, explain to me what that means... That you're strung out again."
She yells her answer—
"I—WANT—A—FUCKING—PILL!"
"Okay"—my voice is normal, or fairly normal—"but that doesn't mean strung out. I thought, basically, strung out, the way you've used the term strung out...was that you had to have it so damned much and you were doing it constantly— "
Ronda interrupts: "I have been doing it constantly—that's the problem."
"Well, Melvin said you've been averaging two a day. How many have you really been averaging?"
"Five or six. He don't know what I've been doing."
"Okay. You've been doing five or six a day?"
"I'll give you this watch."
"You've been averaging five or six a day for how long?"
"I don't know! "
She clenches her teeth in frustration.
"A week?" I push. "Two weeks? A month?"
No answer from Ronda.
"Two months?"
Still no answer.
Then: "Since my coat got stolen. At least. Before then. I don't wanna talk about it. Pleeease, George, what can I do?”
"You have been averaging five or six a day for...a month? And Melvin doesn't know that. Is that correct?"
"What have I got to do?" she asks—no, demands. "Have a goddamn—" She stops.
"Is that correct?"
"Yeah." [Sounding definitive.]
"Okay. Well, this is what I've been asking you for a long time, was to tell me the truth about the pills. So you're getting strung out? "
"I am strung out."
Now I raise my voice:
"But you're not getting strung out like you have been, Ronda! Because I know how you were."
"Well, lemmee..." She gives a frustrated little sigh. "You can have everything in my house," she offers. "You can have Melvin included. You can have me. "
I just look at her.
"I'll be your personal slave for a week," she says—and laughs. "You can say, 'Ronda...'"
"You're lying. You have not been doing five or six a day for that long."
"I have," she contends. Her brow furrows... "A hundred and fifty, two hundred...about three hundred dollars a day. That's six, right? Yeah."
"So where do you shoot up?" I ask, looking her hard in the eye.
"Here. At Rick's. They don't tell anybody. [Pauses.] What can I do?"
"So... So you're strung out again..."
"What can I do?" she interrupts, repeating her question more forcefully.
"Well, what do you usually do?"
A sound of exasperation is her response.
Then suddenly I'm wondering:
Did she mean something more by her question? Something more crucial? More hopeful?
So quickly I ask: "What can you do about what?"
"George," she answers," I will do anything..."
My hopes evaporate.
"...I swear to God I would."
"I'm not," I say, "in the business of supporting your habit. You understand? I don't like it!"
"I know... That's not..."
She stops in mid-sentence and for a minute she's quiet.
"I would do it for you," she says finally.
"And besides that," I remind her, "we had a deal. We had a deal. We had a deal."
Ronda snaps her fingers:
"Broke."
"What?"
Another quick snap of her fingers:
"Broke."
"What's broke?"
"The deal just got broke. Now. Look..."
"It did not," I counter. "Not on my side it didn't."
"It's not supporting my habit"—she softens her tone—"it's not that."
"Please," she adds in a sexy little voice.
"Ronda, we made a contract on this deal. And I work thirty or forty hours a week on it." I pause. "Look, just get...get in the car and we'll go to Popeye's and—"
"If you'll buy..."
"...you're not hurting that much!"
"If you'll buy me a pill, we'll have a four-hour interview!"
She laughs. She's obviously enjoying this new line of argument.
"You've just had your methadone..."I say again "...you're not—"
"Fuck the methadone! The man won't raise my goddamn dose— I'm tired of his bullshit. He takes it personal if I can't make it to counseling. It hurts his feelings..."
She lowers her voice: "I'd do anything; I swear to God I would. I'd kill somebody. If I had to. But I ain't got no way to kill somebody."
"You would kill somebody?"
"If I had a gun."
"If you had a gun, you would kill..."
She interrupts, speaking louder now: "No, if I had a gun, I'd take it to Rick and trade it for a pill."
"Okay, but otherwise," I continue, "if you couldn't trade it for a pill, would you kill somebody for one?"
"I'd rob somebody. [A pause.] There's gotta be something I could do."
"Well, you could turn a trick, right?"
My question is met by a long silence.
Finally I say very nicely—and hopefully, "I wish that we would just go...get something to eat...and do this interview. They've got to be done, Ronda! If this book is gonna come together."
"Uh...let's get it," Ronda says. "I promise, we'll sit...we'll sit for hours. Upon hours."
"I can see— I can see that you are...you must... You've got to be strung out again."
"We'll go to your office..."
"I really... I really could not tell it before..."
"We'll go to the office..."
"...because you haven't done this..."
"In a long time," she finishes for me.
"In a long time."
"We'll go to your office," she says again, "and we'll just sit there. Because the pill, you know, it'll hold me for...about four hours. I'll just sit there and talk, talk, talk. Four hours, I promise."
I level my eyes at her. "After all the work I've put into this book, I'd ditch it before I gave you the money for a pill right now."
"Please"—now she's sounding like a little girl—"I'll pay it back to you."
"Give it up, give it up. It's not like you're hurting... physically hurting."
"Yeah"—she places a finger on her chest. "Right here it is. Right here."
"But you just had your methadone!"
"Fuck that methadone."
There's a silence.
"How do you feel about getting strung out again? If you are."
"I—just—like—the—way—the—stuff—feels. Okay?"
She climbs up onto the hood of my car.
"If you've been doing five or six a day"—I address her up there—"that means you've been on the street a fair amount. Right?"
Quickly: "Not in front of the hotel! George, you know I get that check the first of the month—can't you go on that?"
"Ronda, I'm not available for this."
"Pleeease!" she implores. "I don't know nobody to ask. ... Don't fuck with me."
"Ronda, I'm not gonna do it. So if you need to get it, go ahead. I'm not gonna do it."
"Why?" She asks it like she truly wants to know.
"Do you want me to spell out the reasons?"
She nods that she does.
"Number one," I say calmly and seriously, "we had a deal. Which you agreed to. I'm sticking to my part of the deal. In what I will do and will not do. That's the main thing.
"Number two: I don't have that kind of money. I'm in debt myself right now. Number three: you're always able to talk folks into...getting your drugs for you."
"No, I'm not!"
"You're not able, " I say, "to talk me into it."
There's a long, frowning silence from Ronda, still perched on my hood.
"But I wish to God," I say, "that you'd...get into shape or whatever, because if you get totally strung out, the only time I'll be catching you will be a little bit on the street, and that's it."
She slides down off the hood. With great agitation, she walks to the rear of the car—then back to me...
"Jesus Christ! Fuck it. I've gotta go turn a date, George. I'm sorry, I can't—"
"I'm sorry too. Now when are we gonna do this interview?"
"We could've done it right now."
"All right. Are you—" I start to ask, "are you—"
Wheeling around, Ronda walks off.
I draw deeply on my cigarette. Across the street, an old woman is sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house. As I'm watching her, I hear the slamming of my car door, and turning, I see that Ronda has climbed into the car and is pulling her shirt off over her head. I look quickly away. Through the windshield, I'd caught only a brief glimpse of her small but pretty breasts. I watch the old woman sweeping until I hear the car door shut again.
Now wearing the sweater she'd brought out from Rick's, Ronda is standing by the door, her eyes on me.
"I appreciate the, uh...I appreciate that," she says. Her tone is sincere. "You know?"
"What?"
"The, um...respect you just showed by not watching. I appreciate that."
"Well," I reply, "I would appreciate it if we can—even if you get strung out—if we can continue on this book without you making—"
She interrupts: "Where are you gonna be? At your office?"
"Yeah."
"After I get my dope," she says, "I'll come see you."
"You'll what?"
"I'll get a trick to bring me over there."
For a few seconds she just stands there.
"You don't want to loan me just ten dollars if I lay something on it?"
I shake my head.
"I've got to go straight broke, right?"
"Yep."
"Okay. Fuck you."
This she had said without raising her voice. But she sounds, for the first time today, truly angry.
She starts walking away.
I say to her back: "Are you saying you're coming over there?"
She stops; she turns and faces me:
"I'll be over there. I don't know why. Because I'm mad at you. I'm real mad at you, but I'll still come over."
"Okay."
Again she starts toward Ponce de Leon, then speaks over her shoulder:
"I'm coming because we're friends. You know what I mean?"
--------
A little hopeful, I wait at my office.
She never comes.
_________________
For a two volume ebook, a very pretty drug-addicted street prostitute allows her life to be documented by photographs and tape-recorded interviews for an entire year while she is working the streets of Atlanta. She does it for an ebook available from the usual websites. Here’s is Volume One on Amazon:
Street Prostitute: A Streetwalker Tells Her Story While She’s Working the Streets