Read an Excerpt
Broken Dignity
By Michael J. Lando
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Michael J. Lando
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-2485-8
Chapter One
Desperate Women
All employers must provide work and workplaces that are safe and healthful. In other words, as an employer, you must follow state laws governing job safety and health. Failure to do so can result in a threat to the life or health of workers and substantial monetary penalties.
—The California Occupational Safety and Health Act
Cristal Caprice was having a hard time ignoring what was happening to her best friend, Solae, in the other room. Between Solae's high-pitched screams and the pungent odors that hinted at diseased sex, she was starting to get nauseous. It didn't help that the men in the other room were calling Solae every sort of demeaning name imaginable to a woman. Cristal wanted out. She wanted out of that room, out of the business, and out of that life so badly that thinking about it gave her a migraine. It wasn't the first time that Cristal Caprice had felt that way; the urge to quit consumed her several times a year ever since she had entered the industry.
This time, however, she was sure of it. Cristal Caprice was no longer willing to live her life that way.
It was a decision she always feared would come too late—after her looks were gone or after some horrible, untreatable sickness forced her to quit. Although neither had come true, Cristal felt the potential for those scenarios escalating.
She had reached a point in her life when nothing seemed to matter anymore, and she looked out the large bay windows that extended over a hilltop and imagined the unthinkable. It was a two hundred-foot drop to the start of the gated roadway to a home that sat on the tip of a small mountain. Cristal imagined climbing out onto the window ledge and free-falling to the pavement, ending all the years of guilt, shame, and disappointment that had built up inside her. Her death would be painless, because the impact would kill her in an instant, leaving her body no time to register the pain.
She considered the possibility that she might survive the fall and live out the rest of her existence as a vegetable in a urine-soaked hospital bed. She decided to pass on jumping.
From her vantage point at the kitchen table, Cristal could make out the front half of a black S-Class Mercedes idling in the driveway below. The trees that extended out from the cliff's edge just underneath the window concealed the back end of the car. Looking down at that car reminded her of why she couldn't quit or kill herself—the man in the car was far more dangerous than any fall from a cliff. The cliff would be merciful and kill her right away; the man in the car had no mercy. He would take pleasure in making sure Cristal suffered if she ever tried to leave him, so she couldn't just quit.
If that weren't enough, Cristal was terrified by the thought of living life among normal people. Over the years, she had heard countless horror stories of girls who had left the business and tried to live normal lives. They all tried to blend in at some office job, thinking that the degree they had earned in college would wash away their past sins. For most of them, it was only a matter of time before someone found out what they really had been, and usually that was by a pervert in the company mailroom who gossiped to a coworker who would, in turn, tell someone else who had the authority to fire the girl.
That was the reality for women like her.
Women in her line of work were averse to the realization that their college degrees were about as useful as resumes written on toilet tissue when it came to getting a job after the lives they lived. They typically ended up on the streets, strung out on drugs or dying in somebody's rat-infested housing project.
Nope. Not me, Cristal thought. One way or another, she had to figure out something. There was no way she could ever go back to this life again ... not after that day.
The sickening sound of gagging and convulsing had replaced Solae's screams. Cristal sat at the kitchen table, rubbing and scratching the palms of her hands, trying to ignore the situation by telling herself that it was all just part of the business.
The different boxes of cereal on top of there frigerator across from her became a convenient distraction. Judging by the alphabet magnets on the refrigerator door and the variety of cereal brands—Fruit Loops, Captain Crunch, Fruity Pebbles, and a few others—it was clear that children lived there.
The leasing agency had mentioned that the house itself was something of a modern marvel. Built back in the late 1980s, it had been erected on a hilltop with support beams designed to withstand a 7.0 earthquake on the Richter scale. The sweeping view of San Fernando Valley made it seem worthwhile. That was assuming that the hilltop itself didn't collapse, but people in California had a history of making stupid real estate purchases. In a state known for landslides, forest fires, and earthquakes, building a home on a cliff's edge somehow seemed perfectly reasonable to Californians.
The interior of the home had a modern décor, accentuated with bi-level marble flooring that led to an oval-shaped living room where the filming was taking place. A spiral staircase with illuminated rails completed the back end of the living room, and colorfully recessed lighting gave each room in the home its own unique glow. The home was far too elegant for this kind of work and much too gaudy to live in.
Cristal wondered if the owners of the place even knew what kind of people they'd allowed into their home. The truth was that, like most people in the area, the owners didn't want to know. It was typical for the wealthy to lease their homes out to companies such as these ... so long as no one else in the neighborhood knew what was going on.
The house they were using had been leased to the production company that employed Cristal, Onyx Sinema. To supplement the cost of renting a home like this, Onyx Sinema sometimes shared rental costs with lower-end production companies like Wild Onez Entertainment—the company that was filming there that day.
Blocking out the convulsing noises caused by each breath Solae managed to steal between forced swallows was impossible. The sounds were accompanied by a suctioning the resembled the sound of a plunger removing sewage from a toilet. The sound alone was enough to make Cristal shudder.
Cristal peeked cautiously into the other room to see what was happening. Solae was on her knees. Her hands repeatedly slapped the thighs of the man she was working with, as if she were trying to push away from his body for air. It looked as though Solae was fighting against her body's own spastic attempt to save itself. Cristal understood why she couldn't. If Solae had simply pushed away from the performer she was working with, that would've done the trick, but it would've ruined the shot. A mistake like that could ruin Solae's chances of ever getting more work. With money on the line, Cristal knew Solae would endure. Solae was coughing, gagging, and trembling violently. The veins in her forehead appeared to swell to a bursting point from the muscle strain. Her eyes were red and wide with terror. Her nose was running, and her lethargic movements revealed that she was getting weaker—possibly from a lack of oxygen. There was no way Solae could last much longer. Cristal knew it, so she turned away and closed her eyes, bracing for the sound that would come next.
The soupy splatter of liquid accompanied an "Ughhhhh!"
Turning around to look again, Cristal could see Solae coughing, and vomiting on the floor. Vomit and saliva splattered and saturated the entire lower half of Solae's face and her body. It mixed with her bleeding mascara until she looked like she'd been dumped in a vat of raw sewage. No matter how much Cristal wished for it to end, she knew this was only the beginning for Solae.
Reflecting back on her own experience unsettled Cristal's stomach as she watched what was happening to her friend. If Solae felt anything like she had after she had taken a job like this, then Solae was physically exhausted, mentally catatonic, and spiritually dead.
* * *
"Cut. That's perfect. That's exactly what I wanted. Stay right there while I set up another shot," a videographer called to Solae from across the room.
Solae Davine often wished she could be more like Cristal Caprice. That was a thought that harassed her whenever she looked at herself in the mirror. The contrasts between them were too numerous for that to ever happen. In the looks department, there was no comparison; Cristal Caprice was every man's fantasy, and Solae was just an ordinary, light-skinned girl from around the way. Solae figured God had been playing a practical joke when he had given her the chest of a ten-year-old boy. Cristal, on the other hand, had received more than a fair share of ta-tas. Like most girls in her line of work who were deficient in self-esteem, Solae had gone out and bought breast implants. Actually, Solae had bought a few pairs, because the first two surgeries hadn't gone as well as she had hoped. The dim-witted, back-alley surgeon who had done her first implants had thought it would be a great idea to put the implants underneath her muscle tissue. The procedure had left her bruised and in severe pain for several months while she had worked a marathon of daily sex scenes to pay for another surgery.
Then there was an additional surgery after the next one, because the second pair was too big and left her nipples hideously offset.
Solae was humiliated. If her self-appraisals weren't damaging enough, directors started requiring her to perform scenes with her top on or with her back to the camera to keep from turning viewers off. The constant ridicule within the industry and from fans in chat rooms had spurred Cristal to pay for a third implant surgery on Solae's behalf, this time with a respected Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.
The last surgery was perfect. The doctor used an implant technique that inserted an inflatable implant through the navel and up into the breast socket, which would prevent any further scarring. However, all the prior augmentations had left Solae with scar tissue underneath both breasts that required extensive makeup before every shoot. Luckily, she had a friend like Cristal, who was an exceptional makeup artist.
Solae realized that it wasn't just her body that impeded her quest for fame; it was her attitude. Over time, directors began to label her "difficult to work with." It was a stereotype that readily attached itself to black women in the sex industry, because they were all thought of as having too much attitude and as being unwilling to do as much as their white counterparts. In Solae's case, the latter was untrue. There wasn't much Solae wouldn't do for money. Her problem was her viperous temper, which had landed her in jail on more than one occasion for assaulting fellow performers who got a little too lippy with her. The stigma cost her money and countless opportunities, because stars and directors refused to work with her.
Resigned to the fact that she would never achieve the same status as Cristal, Solae had taken her career to opposite extreme. If she couldn't become one of the glamour girls of adult entertainment like Cristal Caprice had, then Solae would set out to be the nastiest. The way she saw it, the only way to get noticed when standing next to a legend like Cristal Caprice was to do something a legend would never do. For years, Solae had studied Cristal's performances and found ways to amplify them. Since sultry, seductive moans were Cristal's trademark, Solae set out to be the best screamer in the business. Cristal was known for moving her body gracefully, like a salsa dancer, in her sex scenes, so Solae attacked her scenes like a bull rider: hard, fast, intense, and reckless. Unlike Cristal Caprice, Solae had had no inhibitions when it came to what she would and would not do on film—until that day. Cristal would work with no more than two men in a scene at once, and Solae would take on as many as they paid her to work with. Solae didn't care what it cost her; she wanted the fame.
* * *
Cristal could see it in his eyes: the man working with Solae enjoyed hurting her. The disgusting sack of meat working with Solae went under the stage name Gamble. His oily, combed-back hair that rested in a ponytail to his sloppy man boobs and beer belly—how a man like Gamble got a job in an industry that required you to take your clothes off was beyond comprehension. Even in porn, there were double standards.
The vindictive, narrow-eyed stare that Cristal gave Gamble lasted longer than it should have. She wasn't able to snap out of it and look away before Gamble caught her watching. In response, he flashed a crooked, stained-tooth smile at her that reminded her of the sadistic experience she had had with him years before. This time, she knew he couldn't touch her; touching Cristal Caprice in any way was strictly forbidden by the man in the Mercedes outside. She knew that wouldn't stop Gamble from fantasizing about her though.
Gamble owned Wild Onez Entertainment, a company that specialized in bondage, masochism, rape fantasy, and a variety of other vile fetishes. The video shoot was for a video series Gamble produced and performed in, proudly entitled: X-treme Ebony Humiliation. Even though Solae knew what she was in for when she signed up for the job, it did little to ease Cristal's guilt for recommending Solae for the job.
The wait in between shot arrangements felt like the wait at a dentist's office before a root canal; she wasn't looking forward to what came next, but she was anxious to get it over with. She saw Donnie, the videographer, setting up his handheld camera on the floor in front of Solae. He was a modestly buff young man with dirty blond hair.
"All right. I'm ready to roll," he said. "Let's just pick it up from where we left off."
"Good. I'm ready to tear her little ass apart." Gamble grinned at Solae and then at Cristal again. From where she was seated, Cristal could barely see around Gamble anymore, but she could see chunks of vomit still dripping onto the floor from Solae. Donnie was finished setting up.
Gamble was on the couch working himself up, and Solae was still sitting on the floor with her head hung low.
"Okay. Let's roll in three ... two ... one. Action."
The camera shot had been set up on the floor between Gamble's legs when he stood, so that it would appear to the audience as if he was standing over Solae. She was sitting on one of her legs on the floor.
"Clean it up so you can get some more of this," Gamble ordered Solae.
Nausea coiled through Cristal's abdomen when she saw her best friend wiping her own vomit off the floor while Gamble laughed at her. This was all part of the role for a sick segment of society that enjoyed seeing women treated this way.
This is all my fault, Cristal thought.
They had been best friends since they had been teenagers. They had looked after one another and gone along on each other's shoots for support since they had started doing porn. This was the first shoot that Cristal had tried to avoid, but she couldn't. The man in the car had specifically ordered Cristal to watch to teach her a lesson for betraying him.
For years, Cristal had listened to Solae beg for help in getting a job at Onyx Sinema; Onyx girls worked less and received better pay than most. Cristal told Solae that the owner of Onyx Sinema—the man in the Mercedes—might look favorably upon her for doing the job for one of his smaller, subsidiary companies. It was an unforgivable lie. Onyx Sinema would never hire an average girl like Solae, but Cristal had gotten her to believe that they would. The job only paid Solae seven hundred dollars—hardly worth the money to let Gamble shake her hand, let alone have sex with her. Still, Solae couldn't afford to pass up any work opportunities with her reputation.
Things were different for Cristal; she would never have taken this kind of work, not at her level in the business. Then again, she didn't have to. Cristal Caprice was an anomaly in the sex industry as one of the few top-tier African-American adult film stars. She wasn't quite Jenna Jameson famous—when she would be easily recognizable to mainstream America—but to adult entertainment aficionados, she was porn royalty. Cristal had warm brown skin that was soft and smooth like a new born's. Her eyes were a mesmerizing pair of amber jewels that gave her an exotically cat-like and inviting look all in the same glance. She had dark, shoulder-length hair that tapered around a narrow jawline and accentuated her pouty lips. Occasionally, her beautifully soft lips would part and reveal one of the most alluring bunny-toothed smiles ever seen.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Broken Dignity by Michael J. Lando Copyright © 2011 by Michael J. Lando. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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