As the year ends I am working on two new titles I am looking to have completed soon. But until then, my previous books are still doing well and speaking to who I am as a growing writer and man who's evolving. From Gigolo to Jesus was written in 2011 and it speaks to my personal testimony of change.
Here is an excerpt from the book of one of the many situations I've faced. Enjoy.
"The Motel" (From Gigolo to Jesus)
A happily married man would probably not go out and spend up to four hundred dollars to be a prostitute. He wouldn’t think to take that money out of his household. He might occasionally go to a bachelor party and shell out forty dollars because he feels that’s what he needs to do because all the other guys are doing the same thing. Now introduce crack cocaine into the equation. Take a woman who’s addicted the first time she smoked crack and is two or three months into being an addict. She now needs money constantly to supply her addiction, and she uses her body to get the funds. There’s the door opener. I saw women who would reduce themselves to such harmful and degrading levels for five or ten dollars. They would allow a man to do things that he’s only seen in porn movies, things he would never do with his girlfriend or wife. Crack encouraged behaviors that were unbelievable to even some men. I’ve seen groups of men come into the hotel with one young lady and have an orgy. Unfortunately, I was a witness to a train being run on a woman who had to be in her thirties, but because she was addicted to crack cocaine she allowed young men to take turns having their way with her. All of it seemed reasonable to me so what does that say about what was going on with me? I actually found humor in this debauchery. As the manager of the hotel, instead of putting a stop to it I’m cheering the guys on.
Here I was, in a relationship. For all intents and purposes, I should have been faithful which something I didn’t know how to be. Instead, I was like a kid in a candy store. Women were always available for sex. Walking in and out like a revolving door. On occasion, I would have to wait until business slowed down so I could step away from the front desk. Sometimes I would have ten to twenty minutes to visit one of the young ladies that frequented the motel. There were times that I would have the security guard watch the desk or just leave it unattended. I always had to gauge it by how the evening was going. My friends would come to the motel to keep me company and also partake in some of the sexual escapades that went on there. In no way am I trying to put my friends under the bus, but I did need help in getting away with a lot of the things I did. A lot of males call it a bond, where they’ll sit there basically and say nothing as they watch another friend do some things that are really filthy. Sometimes they joined in, sometimes they didn’t. I had my partners in crime. My friends and friends of friends would come by because people knew I pretty much could do what I want. They’d come by so they could use the rooms themselves. So I did what a lot of brothers do. I put friends in positions where they could work and have some fun too.
Besides the drug dealers and the prostitutes on many occasions I had to deal with a lot of violence. One night, someone set a room on fire as a joke, and I had to rush everyone out in the cold. On another occasion a car was left in the motel’s parking lot with bodies in it. Nothing scared me more, though, than the night my life almost came to an end. I was working the overnight shift on Halloween. I was reading at the front desk which was inside a booth with bulletproof glass. The booth was about fourteen by ten feet with a metal sliding security door. In the event of a fire or other emergency, I would only have to slide the security door. The booth had a bathroom with another door that led out of the booth. Also, the bathroom had a set of stairs that led to the basement. Essentially, there was really no way in from the outside unless I had it unlocked. When I first started working they told me to always keep the bathroom door and the metal security door locked so I would be completely safe. Because of my motel adventures I would leave the door unlocked and go in and out as I pleased. I owned a gun at that time, but didn’t have it with me that Halloween night. Three masked men walked through the door but since it was Halloween, I didn’t immediately think anything was wrong. They looked around at the glass booth. I didn’t let on that I was nervous, but at that point I realized I had not locked the other door to the bathroom. One of the masked men went around to the security door of the booth and shook the door. At this point I stood up from my chair, left the book sitting on the desk and remembered the door in the bathroom that led to outside of the booth was unlocked. That door led to a hallway. Instantly, I took off and I ran through the booth, through the bathroom to get the unlocked door. The three men ran around the booth in the same direction. When they reached the door one of them kicked it open. I caught it just as it flew open and pushed my shoulder on it. The three men yelled out, cursing for me to get away from the door. One of the young men yelled at me, “Big man, get away from the door or I’m going to murder you.” At first, I wasn’t going to say anything but being a New Yorker and like many New Yorkers, we don’t know how to keep our mouths closed, I decided to yell back as if my words were going to stop anything they might have had behind the door. The next thing I heard was a gunshot coming through the door. It was the first time I had ever been in close proximity to a gun being fired. I have to admit for a brief second, I was terrified, but what took over me, other than terror, was the thought that I would be murdered if I didn’t lock the door. So as I pushed my left shoulder and my left knee, they fired the one shot near my shoulder. Maybe four inches from my shoulder, in fact. The second shot came lower down near between my knees. They didn’t realize I wasn’t directly behind the door, but actually off to the side. After the second shot I was able to close the door and slide the thick black metal bolt into position. To this day I know being a big guy helped save my life because if I was a smaller guy they would have just pushed their way in and killed me.
I ran down the stairs to the basement. I called security on the two-way radio telling them to lock themselves in a room. Unfortunately, our guard was unarmed, and there wasn’t going to be much he could do. As I was warning the security guard, I heard seven more shots. I knew they were using a high-caliber weapon because the door was made of fragile metal and the bullets were tearing through it like paper. About ten to fifteen minutes later the security guard told me I could come upstairs. I saw the door was riddled with holes. I believe they thought I may have still been holding the door, so they shot high and low with all intent to kill me. One of the bullets came through the metal door and left a large hole in the floor. Another round went through the door into a lead pipe, dented the lead pipe, and ricocheted into a stone wall. Another shot went into the gooseneck of a sink which a police officer later told me was made of solid steel.
Most people in my position would have quit the job the next day and not come back. However, not only did I come again, I was still floating around the hotel as if nothing had happened because I wasn’t about to let a small thing like being shot at interrupt my business at the hotel. You hear people say all the time the Lord was with them. Some just say it because it sounds good. They got lucky at some things they did, and they like to attach the Lord’s name to it. I don’t understand it, but the Lord wrapped his hands around me for some strange reason because that night being shot at should have ended it all.
From Gigolo to Jesus by K. L. BelvinTo get a signed copy stop by www.BravinPublishing.com to order today
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