CHAPTER 2
Vertigo stared at Shontay’s round ass as she slowly turned around and closed his bedroom door behind them. It was her first time in his Tribeca condo, but Shontay strutted around like her name was on the deed. Vertigo usually didn’t like women who overstepped their bounds, but her ghetto booty gave her a free pass as far as he was concerned. Vertigo had his eyes on Shontay’s butt since he’d seen her shake it in a video for PhDee three years ago. Never mind that Shontay had a baby by PhDee, and never mind that Vertigo and PhDee had a beef of Tupac and Biggie proportions, Shontay was Vertigo’s Faith Evans, his quintessential dream girl.
“Damn baby, you sexy as all get out,” Vertigo said as he took in her flawless golden complexion, silky ringlets of reddish brown curls and D-cup breasts. He knew that most of what made her beautiful wasn’t real. Her skin was coated with makeup, her long hair was a weave, and he didn’t even have to touch her tits to know that they were silicone. It was almost like a reenactment of the 80’s classic flick I’m Gonna Get You Sucka when Keenen Ivory Wayans realized that his hot chick was a fake from her wig to her fake toenails. But never mind that, he thought. I waited forever to get at this pussy; it’s on tonight!
She smiled at him and said, “I already know I’m sexy as hell. Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”
He took a step closer to her and smacked her ass. As he felt her soft, fleshy butt cheeks in his palms, he was relieved to discover that there wasn’t an ounce of silicone in her booty. “Alright then, here’s something you don’t know...I’m about to fuck you like you never been fucked before.”
He kneeled down and kissed her sultry lips. As their tongues danced, the blood rushed to Vertigo’s dick. He’d jerked off to visions of Shontay like a horny teenager, and he couldn’t wait to experience the real thing (even if she had purchased certain parts of her body).
She’d dated Wiz Khalifa before he married Amber Rose. Shontay had a reputation for being the freakiest bitch on the East Coast. Even though Vertigo had just promised to fuck Shontay like she’d never been fucked before, part of him feared that he’d nut after a few strokes.
Calm down, he repeated in his head. Vertigo was determined not to embarrass himself with a premature ejaculation disaster. After all, he had his own reputation to uphold. Vertigo was the Casanova of the hip hop game. With his dark brown skin, hazel eyes, handsome features and chiseled physique, Vertigo had the looks of a movie star and the body of an underwear model. He’d banged some of the baddest chicks on the planet.
Usually, Vertigo was in complete control around the women he dealt with, no matter how fine they happened to be, but now, he felt like a kid on prom night. As beautiful as Shontay was, Vertigo knew that wasn’t the only reason why he was so turned on. Getting her in his bed was sure to cause his dick and his ego to swell. He was minutes away from claiming the ultimate prize–PhDee’s woman! Although Shontay and PhDee had an on-again and off-again relationship, she’d always been loyal enough to her baby daddy to not cross that line by sleeping with Vertigo, his staunch rival.
Shontay pulled away from their kiss, and Vertigo was anticipating all the freaky things that were about to happen next. She stroked his muscular arms and looked up into his eyes. “Um…I need to use your bathroom.”
“It’s right there.” He pointed to his large master bathroom.
“I’ll be right back sexy,” Shontay said as she walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Vertigo lay on his California king-sized bed waiting for Shontay to emerge. He put his hands behind his head and took a deep breath. There were times when he couldn’t believe his fortunes. In light of his upbringing in the South Bronx’s Gun Hill housing projects, his success seemed surreal to him.
Many of the young brothas he grew up with didn’t live to see their eighteenth birthdays. In the ghetto, there were a lot of ways to die, gunshot wounds, asthma or just flat out depression. And those who managed to survive usually ended up behind bars. As far as Vertigo was concerned, “criminal justice” was an oxymoron.
There was nothing just or fair about a kid selling a little weed to provide for his family and getting sentenced to fifteen years, like his friend Juan. And Vertigo got really angry when his friend, Damarco, was wrongfully convicted of murder at the age of seventeen. Between the prejudiced prosecutor and the incompetent public defender, the young brotha didn’t stand a chance.
Vertigo considered it a miracle that he made it out of Gun Hill. As he looked around his huge bedroom, decorated with fancy shit from Bloomingdale's, Vertigo felt a tinge of guilt. There he was, living in a downtown condo where a British doorman who looked like Alfred from Batman always greeted him with a smile and said, “Hello, sir, is everything well with you?” Meanwhile, the tragedy of ghetto living replayed in the place he left behind.
There were times when Vertigo felt like a hypocrite. After all, he made his living rapping about life “in da hood,” but he hadn’t gone to visit the housing projects where he grew up since he won his first Grammy six years ago. Vertigo told himself that there was no need to. He’d bought a nice mansion in Westchester for his mother and sister. He’d convinced himself that there was nothing and no one there for him.
But the truth was that Vertigo was afraid to go back. It wasn’t because he thought he would get shot, even though that could easily happen. He was mostly afraid because he didn’t want to have to face his friend, Malik. Vertigo and Malik grew up together and had a bond that went deeper than blood brothers. Ten years ago, they were on the basketball court playing H.O.R.S.E., and somebody in a black SUV fired gunshots in their direction.
In the chaos, Malik pushed Vertigo out of the way. A stray bullet grazed Vertigo’s shoulder. He screamed out and covered the wound that ruined his green and white Sean Jean t-shirt. As Vertigo lay on the cement, his eyes watered from the pain. Malik was lying a few feet away from him, coughing and making gurgling noises. Vertigo was devastated to see his best friend’s blood everywhere. He feared that Malik was going to die a week before their high school graduation.
Malik tried to speak, but no words came out. Vertigo held his hand and struggled to hold back his tears. It took sixteen minutes for the ambulance to arrive. The good news was that Malik survived. The bad news was that he was a quadriplegic, and whenever Vertigo hung around Malik, he was furious that his best friend had saved his life and destroyed his own in the process. Vertigo felt that he belonged in that wheelchair. There was no way that he could ever repay his debt to Malik, so it seemed easier to just avoid him.
A year later, when Vertigo signed his first record deal with Mandingo Records, a BET reporter asked him about the circumstances of the shooting. At the time, Vertigo was a nineteen-year-old kid, anxious to make a name for himself. He wanted to be like his idol 50 Cent who parlayed his near death experience to fame, fortune and respect, but Vertigo knew that telling the truth wouldn’t be as fascinating as the story of how 50 Cent was shot nine times.
Under the glare of the bright lights, with a big camera pointed in his face, Vertigo made the decision to fabricate the facts of that fateful day on the basketball court. “I took a bullet for my boy,” he said. “Unfortunately, he ended up in a wheelchair. As sad as it is, I know I could’ve died myself, but I’d do it all over again. I know my boy would’ve done the same for me.”
As soon as he uttered those words, Vertigo felt like shit. Hell, he even wished he was dead. As the days passed, he thought about scheduling another interview with the reporter to come clean, even if it cost him his career. Every time Vertigo turned on the TV, he was sure that he’d see Malik at a press conference with Al Sharpton and attorneys clad in Armani suits exposing his lies and threatening to sue him before he even got to enjoy his $500,000 advance.
But what actually happened was even worse. Kids across the country posted videos on YouTube describing Vertigo as their hero and rapping his verses. He was chosen for the cover of Vibe magazine and was inv
ited to perform on BET’s 106 & Park. Meanwhile, his single “Haterz Kill” climbed the Billboard charts, and within weeks, his debut album went gold.
With all the money he was making, Vertigo knew that the right thing to do was to share it with Malik. He sent his friend a check for $250,000 just before Christmas. A few days later, he got a letter in the mail from Malik. As Vertigo opened the envelope, he was surprised that his friend had even bothered to send a thank you note.
Despite Vertigo’s generous gift, he knew it didn’t make amends for the lie he’d told the whole world. Then again, Malik had always been a loyal friend, and it was that very loyalty that had caused Malik not to expose Vertigo in the first place. Strangely, that also upset Vertigo because he felt he didn’t deserve such a true friend. Most of the people in his world, beginning with his own mother, always had an agenda.
As he opened Malik’s letter, he found comfort in the realization that his friend was no different. He braced himself to read a few lines about forgiveness and maybe even an invitation to join Malik at his mother’s house on Christmas day to feast on her homemade dressing. Instead, Vertigo was shocked to see the quarter-million dollar check he’d written to Malik fall out of the envelope and onto the floor. The note read, “I don’t want shit from you.”
Vertigo went from feeling sadness to rage. He screamed out obscenities while knocking a lamp over. As the bulb shattered on the hardwood floor, he thought about how the lamp retailed for a thousand dollars. But it didn’t matter because Vertigo could easily have it replaced with an even more expensive one. The one thing he couldn’t replace was his friendship with Malik. Even now, a decade later, that situation was Vertigo’s biggest regret.
“Are you ready for me sexy?” Shontay asked seductively as she opened the bathroom door and strutted toward him. Her blouse was open allowing her cleavage to spill forward. She unzipped her jeans and stepped out of them, exposing her purple lace thong. Then, Shontay climbed into the bed and straddled him with her thighs. She slowly rubbed her crotch against his.
Vertigo’s dick was rock hard. Then, he looked up at her face and noticed traces of white powder under her nose. Although Vertigo wasn’t exactly drug-free (he smoked weed here and there), he was turned off by the fact that Shontay had snorted cocaine in his bathroom right before making love to him for the first time. “What the fuck? You gotta get high to–”
“Relax baby, I’m not a coke head or anything like that. I just like a little blow from time to time. Is there something wrong with that?” She took off her blouse and unsnapped her bra, exposing her silicone breasts.
Vertigo frowned when he noticed that one was slightly larger than the other. With all the money she gets in child support, she ought to be able to get them things fixed, he thought.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t like fake ones? Is that what it is?” She grabbed his hands and placed them on her breasts. “Trust me, you’ll learn to love these.”
Shontay’s tits felt unnaturally stiff in Vertigo’s hands.
“Don’t they feel good baby?”
He nodded yes, even though they didn’t.
She reached down to touch his limp dick. “Looks like somebody needs some motivation.” She licked her lips and unzipped his jeans. Within seconds, Shontay’s wet mouth was wrapped around his dick. As she sucked and moaned, he closed his eyes and tried to enjoy it. He grabbed her head as she bobbed up and down.
The truth was that Shontay’s appeal was fading fast. Between the feel of her fake hair in his hands, the feel of her fake tits and the sight of cocaine under her nose, Shontay was hardly sexy anymore, at least not to Vertigo. But he knew he had to bring his A-game into the sack. He wasn’t going to let Shontay leave his place running her mouth about how he couldn’t get it up.
As soon as he was hard, he grabbed a condom off of his nightstand. She touched his hand and asked, “Don’t you wanna taste me first baby?”
“Maybe next time. Why don’t you turn that sexy ass around for me?”
She hesitated for a minute. Then she slipped out of her thong and got on all fours. Vertigo slipped a Magnum over his rock-hard ten-inch dick. He checked and double-checked to make sure the condom was on properly. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let Shontay trap him with a baby or, worse yet, give him a disease.
She bounced her ass. “Come on big daddy! Give it to me already!”
“You want me to give it to you?” he teased with a smile.
“Mmmhmmm, I want your dick so bad!”
Vertigo assumed the position behind Shontay and gripped her hips as he entered her fat pussy. She hollered as he moved in and out of her. Sweat began to cover his body as she backed her ass up on him, moving in time with his rhythm. On a scale of one to ten, Shontay was an eight. She might have been a ten had it not been for the tattoo of PhDee’s name just above her ass crack. Seeing his name almost caused him to go limp.
“Damn baby, you got the biggest dick! You got the biggest dick!” She screamed as she gripped the bed sheets.
Vertigo knew he was packing, but he didn’t trust chicks that went around screaming about how he had the biggest dick, especially a chick like Shontay who had probably been with hundreds of dudes. Did he have a big dick? Absolutely. The biggest? Even with his ego, he didn’t believe that.
“Damn baby, I love how you beat my pussy up! It’s got your name on it! This pussy’s got your name on it!”
At this point, Vertigo just wanted Shontay to shut up. Her over-the-top performance was starting to piss him off. “Listen baby, I’m sorry, but I’m…I’m about to cum already…” Vertigo moaned. Then he slowed down his motion and grunted. “Damn, baby…” he said as he closed his eyes and pretended to climax. It was true that some men faked orgasms; and on that particular night, Vertigo was one of them.
He usually didn’t do it, but he didn’t see any other solution. As he slowly pulled out of Shontay, she said, “It’s okay baby. I know you were really turned on, and you couldn’t help it. I have that effect on a lot of men.” She turned around and winked, oblivious to the truth.