Chapter 14 WHORE

At first, it was hard for Basila to blend into her new lifestyle. She would cower when approached by a man and get really pissed if he persisted. But she was a fresh wine in an old jar. The men lined up to take their turn with her, she became a commodity for the highest bidder under Mama's supervision. Mama pimped her to her rich customers, mostly business owners or serving boys from the market.

They operated from a small pub in Idu international market, it was a twenty four hours whore house. The girls wore next to nothing, exposing attractive parts of their body shamelessly. Standing about either in the pub or on the stairs leading to small cubicles upstairs, furnished with a mini bed, small table and fan, where the girls served quickies in exchange for money.

The owner of the pub owned the cubicles upstairs and the entire building. They rented the cubicles for quickies. It was a very dirty shithole with constant unpleasant stench. They sold all sorts of alcohol - beer, cheap wine, spirit and diversity of prepared meat. Even though it operated during day time, it was always dimly lit, furnished with washed out tables and bedbug infested old sofas. But the men enjoyed visiting, for fun and cheap sex.

Basila was fair and a little above average height, coupled with the fact that she was young and new, she had a better advantage over the rest of the girls. With time, she lost the reluctant attitude, began carrying herself with misplaced pride and only gave attention to men who could afford her excesses - alcohol, chicken, cigarettes and drugs - and could afford to pay her a little above the fixed price for a quickie, upstairs. She began to make money and like Mama became a business owner in the International market to everyone back at home.

She began to afford to send money to her mother who was taking care of her daughter. In less than six months, she decided to stop living in the cubicles of the whore house and took a room in a much better small pay-per-week hotel nearby. She used her one room self-contained in the hotel as home, and left for the pub every morning as work.

Most times, one or two of her customers followed her back to her room to pass the night, something she couldn't previously do, for lack of comfort. Her customers were mostly stranded men who had come to purchase goods in large quantity from the international market.

Basila began to furnish her new hotel room to her taste, as was the custom of the other girls who lived there. It had been empty except for the mattress which was kept on the floor when she rented it. She built a bed for the mattress, bought a center table, a wooden wardrobe, a large LCD television, a DVD, microwave, medium sized refrigerator, big generator, air conditioner, diversity of cooking utensils, installed a DSTV dish, decorated the room with wall papers, artificial flowers, teddies and carpet. She settled, refusing to listen to Mama.

Mama never took a room in any hotel or brotel, she preferred to sleep and work from the tiny cubicles built for quickies above the pub and return to her shack in the ghetto two days in a week, to rest. Basila began to feel classy and waved Mama aside.

But that was over twelve years ago. Now, she still lived in the hotel, but business was no longer good as it used to, she could no longer afford to pay the ten thousand per week for her room. She had gotten old in the eyes of her customers and the men were already tired of her, she had become an old wine in an old jar.

She began to owe the hotel. She couldn't run away, not without her properties. Plus the fact that she had no where else to go. Returning home to her mother and child was not an option. So she gradually became a part of the hotel, making only what could feed her daily, while trying her best not to add to the exorbitant sum she was already owing.