Joey Cloudy online

Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey) 

The Sins of our Father: A Pimp Named Starfish* 

“I’m a nigga’, you’s a nigga’ 

he’s a nigga’ she’s a nigga’, 

wouldn’t you like to be a nigga’ too.” 

-NWA 

The ivory Armani suited albino negro exhaled a plume of blue grey smoke of his Cohiba as spoke solemnly; “The embargo of the West kept us in economic chains for half a century, the one-eyed behemoth Dead Eye Polly said recounting their beleaguered island illustrious history to the men and women who already knew it as well as he. With a single pale blue eye the albino took a moment to survey the room as if he were a commanding officer inspecting his troops to be sure everyone was in the uniform of the day, before he continued addressing military brass, the church official and the black tied government dignitaries in their formal wear. 

“Just like our beleaguered brothers in Haiti long oppressed by the French he spit the name of the nation as if it were the vilest of curses uttered how dare the long-pigs have the audacity to charge their former slave reparations for rising up with Jean-Jacques Dessalines against their oppressors defeating them in war then kicking white dogs out. 

The rest of the democracy loving West played along with this capitalistic farce of justice. This man, this Emperor Jones, delivered to us a tool for economic empowerment. Now, seven years later, when the world looks to the western horizon, it is the lights of Havana that dominate the night sky, visible even from space. 

Polly smiled as he exhaled twin plumes of Cohiba smoke through his nostrils as if he were a great white dragon. “When I first met this young engineer seven years ago, although he was still a boy just 16 years old, he came to me like a man, to make sure that I, in my grief for the loss of my son Caesar, would not do something rash, believing Naomi was responsible for my sons death. This boy—no, this young man Isaiah Jones-altered his ship’s course and sailed to Havana, prepared to kill me, to kill us all, even if it meant he himself would perish in the attempt, if necessary. This he was willing to do to protect Naomi from my wrath. The big man wiped his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief as he sighed. 

I knew my son Caesar’s nature. I loved the boy, but the truth is, despite my best efforts to pass on to him the lessons my father passed on to me, he learned nothing. He possessed the intellect of a common street thug; he had no head for business, he was a dullard and a bully who believed one ruled by brute force alone. I sent him with Naomi in hopes that he would learn from her example how to use his head. Unfortunately, because he was an insolent fucking moron, he did not follow her instructions and brought a gun with him against her orders. If he were half the man his little brother Antonio is, I would have had a worthy heir to all I have spent a lifetime building after my father’s death. Alas, that is not to be.” 

“But let us not dwell on past failures. This young man here delivered my little ninja Naomi back to me, all patched up from the shootout. I must confess I was never so happy to see a woman as I was the day he walked into the docks’ warehouse with her by his side. There had been no word of her for over a week. I thought I was seeing a ghost; it was a miracle; I was certain she was dead, her body washed out to sea. But the cheek of this one—I loved him immediately. He was charming, polite, and ready for war, and I remember thinking, ‘This is a boy who will make his father proud.’ “Isaiah Jones, with the rest of the guests at the table, listened as the gangster who called him friend spoke. 

The Sins of our Father: A Pimp Named Starfish pt 2 of 2 

“I’m gone be a nigga 4 life.” 

-NWA 

He paid his workers well and unionized them, which made them qualify for everything from free healthcare to college to retirement benefits. After the second year, he realized he was missing out on revenue because a certain percentage of prospective customers were prone to seasickness, especially on windy days. His solution was simple: he repeated the concept like a franchise, this time on land in a renovated 8-story early-20th-century building, the illustrious Hotel Nacional de Cuba that had also once been a casino. 

He called a meeting with his father and his lieutenants to get permission to go forward with the new plan; he needed Dead Eye Polly’s blessing to reopen the casino. He dazzled the old gangsters with his pitch that included a video presentation complete with CGI models of the project after the renovation. 

The new bordello, designed with each floor over his discotheque and casino, he would name Caligula’s, featuring a different cultural theme. The plan was approved, and they opened the new venue a year later. Antonio was only 16 when he moved to Cuba along with all of his lovey dovey lovelies, they were all the age of consent in Norway as well as Cuba. 

Femke Klaver was nearly 2 decades his senior, and while she no longer turned tricks, she worked for Starfish in the same capacity as she had with his mother before, as a manager and his second in command. Her age and experience gave her a certain gravitas, and the girls, all in their teens and 20s, were less likely to give the 6-foot-tall blonde, with no compunctions about using violence when needed, any lip. She had personally helped recruit them all, and personality figured into her calculations on hiring. 

No matter how good-looking an escort was, if she intuited that they would not get along with the rest of the group, she would advise Antonio not to hire them. He was, at heart, artistic and creative like his late mother, and she was a retired dominatrix who habitually carried a stainless-steel leather-covered riding crop while on the job. The crop was a prop, a holdover from her working days; she would rap it firmly on a tabletop to make a point or get your attention. Stern, austere with hard, angular features and deep-set steely blue eyes. 

Femke Klaver was a natural leader, a sadistic disciplinarian who took great joy in maintaining order in the organization. Before her retirement, Fräulein Klaver had spent her professional life bending powerful men to her will. Femke, like the rest of the girls who worked in his late mother’s brothel, had helped to rear Antonio. Starfish never had to raise a hand in anger if anyone disrespected him; it was Femke’s hand that struck before the insult echoed. The girls and boys in his employ as well as thier clientele quickly learned to mind their tongues in her fearsome presence. They trusted each other’s judgment; they were a good team, and he knew it. 

The idea originally came to him shortly after he arrived from Amsterdam, when he had his crew all visit the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, and each of his girls got the Disney princess makeover of their choice. They were ecstatic, all being new to America and simply enjoying their holiday in Florida. After an hour spent getting their make-up, hair, and wardrobe done, they spent the rest of the day taking in the sights in costume as Jasmine, Moana, Ariel, Leah, Mulan, and Snow-White. Antonio and his crew were all still in their teens and early 20s, but he noticed that the American dads could not stop themselves from hungrily ogling his girls and boys even while standing next to their wives and children, and that is when he got the idea for his new Disney-themed brothels. 

Each catamaran had a different theme. New Orleans Square and Adventureland were called House of the Rising Sun, and all of the crew dressed in costumes and clothing of the 1800s. 

Frontierland 

Fantasyland and Toontown. Specializing in fetishes from furries to animai, Sailor Moon was the number one requested costume for the toon lovers. Starfish kept several professional makeup artists on staff for special requests of clients. After the metal bikini, Princess Leah. Multiple breasts were the number one request of those clients. Usually, just adding 3rd prosthetic breast between the two real ones, but every once in a while, you would get some Midwestern hog farmer who requested three rows of stacked breasts. They make those guys wear two condoms. 

Tomorrowland and Star Warz: were Futa favorites. 

Main Street, U.S.A. was BDSM, and they were the most boring of all of their clients; they were the most basic. The majority of the political, military brass, and clergy were their clientele. They preferred being punished by buxom Midwestern farm girls dressed in school uniforms, plaid pleated skirts, knee-high white socks, and saddle shoes. The priest had a greater variety of taste in the looks and race of the girls or boys they preferred, but they almost all favored having their prostates aggressively stimulated by well-hung altar boys or nuns with latex strap-ons concealed beneath their billowing habits. 

Starfish only hired the best sex workers from around the globe. Many he found online and recruited using their OnlyFans pages as their resumes. And while he had hoped his proximity to the USA would bring in some of those Yankee Doodle dollars, he was shocked when the majority of his clients were not the imported construction workers and locals but US and EU international sex tourists. Owning nightclubs and casinos gave his girls and boys a place to meet and mingle with their future clientele, while his casinos helped lighten their pockets before they even got to a bedroom. He was, in his father’s eyes, a good earner and always paid on time. 

Naomi said her goodbyes to Polly and Izzy with a text message as she led the ladies from Havana to Starfish’s favorite discotheque in Santiago de Cuba, an hour’s flight away on the southern tip of the island nation. Here, away from prying eyes, is where the young albino conducted most of his business in Cuba. A city full of politicians will always keep the whorehouses busy and the capital of Cuba was no exception. Starfish kept half of his stable of workers here and the other half in Havana. Antonio preferred it here because there were more Afro-Cubans here than in Havana. 

Naomi was prepared to have her men guard the boy’s operations when he declined, informing her that he had already met with the abbot at the resurrected Shaolin temple and arranged to pay the monastery for lending him the services of the black monks to guard his properties. The old Chinese monk agreed with the enterprising young albino that it would be good for both his businesses and the monastery to act as guards. No one wanted to fight a priest or a monk it was a type of psychological brinksmanship that Bruce Lee would have been proud of, the art of fighting without fighting, this was Antonio’s true gift the ability to accurately read people that was a big part of what made the young Pimp so successful. 

Do not confuse these escorts with the girls with the likes of Megan. These girls and boys are not yachties, they are not aspiring actors, though some were theatre kids; these are eastern European, Asian, African, and South American professional prostitutes, not social climbing dilettantes. Every day, educated young women and men all over the world, many with college degrees, look at their bank accounts, assess their work options and the course their lives are on, and make a calm, rational, economically expedient choice to become sex workers. 

While some were from impoverished villages with few options to escape a life of soul-crushing poverty. Many were cunning young men and women who simply realized that armed with only average intelligence. They knew they were young, attractive, and well-endowed. Like most pole dancers in the US and girls with Onlyfan pages, they did not have any other way to earn more than minimum wage, armed with an average IQ and a high school diploma, and youth. 

As for the rest, they were like Li Bia Chang, a Chinese woman with an accounting degree who came to earn money to take care of her family back home. She has been an escort for 13 years, making more than 10 times more money than she ever could have as a CPA, and she, as well as others like her, liked the money, and they like the sex. It’s not that complicated. 

Starfish kept the girls separated when off duty to prevent their minstrel cycles from syncing and everyone being on their periods at the same time. Although some clients liked riding the red dragon, that always cost extra. He left it up to the workers to decide when they needed time off. He had more than enough employees that he could replace any worker at a moment’s notice. There were always fresh faces looking to get extra hours and perhaps be promoted to primetime working hours. 

There were only 7 stories of life and Antonio knew them all, as soon as he got them talking about themselves, about their lives their childhood dreams, everything they had given up along the way led them to where they were now, in the bathroom of the MacDonalds in the Amsterdam train station doing lines of coke on the edge of a sink in a public toilet, while taking the albinos cock up the ass. It all led to this moment, to where you are now on your knees in a foreign land’s train station bathroom stall getting railed. The plan was to take a skip year off after graduation to figure out what to do next. Others were only traveling here to blow off steam for a holiday weekend before going back to the 9 to 5 grind. now your plans are all forgotten after you met a pimp named Starfish. 

Tonight, the young 6-foot 8-inch-tall albino negro wore a carbon silk meshed men’s maxi skirt, with black cyberpunk sleeves and a chrome buckled cross-strap daddy harness connecting the sleeves like fingerless gloves. His silver liberty spikes still frosted tangerine at the tips, the ever-present cobalt blue goggles protecting the young albinos’ pale blue eyes from the strobing lights of the discotheque. As soon as he entered the club, the girls and boys in his entourage began to beg him to play the piano. He gave a polite show of not wanting to before he headed to the stage, took a seat at the upright Mahogany Baldwin, and began to play a soul-stirring acoustic piano rendition of House of the Rising Sun. 

“There is a house in New Orleans 

They call the Rising Sun 

And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy 

Dear God, I know I was one.” 

-The Animals 

Naomi leaned over and whispered into Aeon’s ear 

“His father was raised in a whorehouse in New Orleans.” Aeon listened to the words of the song and smiled. 

“It appears that musical virtuosity is not the only thing that runs in the family.” Naomi laughed as she lay an arm across the smaller woman’s shoulders as they swayed together to the sound of the music. Aeon wasn’t sure if Naomi was hitting on her or just being friendly; she was too intoxicated to care. She knew Naomi was lying about sleeping with Izzy, and frankly, she didn’t care; she had taken a liking to the tall, dark-haired Cuban mob boss consigliere. Aeon slid her arm around their hostess’s waist as they danced, slowly swaying to the music. 

Aeon, Sybil, Penny, and Naomi danced with Starfish and his entourage the rest of the night at his beachside club CALIGULA, just before sunrise they all followed the scantily clad albino negro to the docks where the foreign workers lived on this side of the island, their boats formed an improvised floating Chinese shopping center. The majority of the boats were catamarans, and they were moored so closely together that you could easily step from one to another. The fenders kept the hulls separated. They laid gangplanks of narrow boards lying across the gap between each boat that connected the many ships, allowing them to travel quickly to another ship on foot. 

The 6 intoxicated newly forged friends ordered bowls of egg drop soup, steamed dumplings, and fried rice. Starfish led them to an ancient Chinese woman he only knew as Mamma San, whose food was cooked on the grill on the deck of her family’s ship. He ordered their food for them in flawless Cantonese, before heading back to the docks to eat. 

Antonio gook squatted and began to separate and clean his disposable wooden chopsticks by vigorously rubbing the two shafts together as if they were knives against the whetstone to remove any splinters. Sybil removed her Doc Marten platform baby dolls then sat full lotus directly on the wooden planks of the dock, Naomi curled her calves beneath her as she gingerly sat beside her while, Aeon spread her silk taffeta cloak out for her and Penny to sit on, as they sat on the dock resplendent in their white evening gowns, eating breakfast watching the sunrise over the Caribbean.

After breakfast, Sybil, Penny, and Aeon all gave Starfish a hug and drunkenly said their goodbyes, thanking him for his hospitality before Naomi flew them all back to Havana, where Izzy and Mau Mau were waiting ready to get back aboard the Exodus and set sail for the next stop on their itinerary Kingston, Jamaica. 

Like his father Dead Eye Polly, Antonio had a fantastic head for business and learned how to read people fast growing up in the whorehouse in Amsterdam he could tell your kink within 30 seconds of seeing you and listening to you talk. He was a charming, oddly handsome boy. His dealings with his father were strictly professional as long as Dead Eye Polly Laveau Ovejero got his percentage; there would be no problem. 

Dead Eye Polly’s network would never tell his son the truth that he was proud of his youngest son’s accomplishments. When he heard that the boy had legally changed his last name to his ‘Ovejero’ the hulking one-eyed albino negro held his Saint Obatala relic-encrusted gold crucifix as he wept overcome with emotion. 

“My mother was a tailor 

She sewed my new blue jeans 

And my father was a gamblin’ man 

Way down in New Orleans 

And the only thing a gambler needs 

Is a suitcase and a trunk 

And the only time he’s satisfied 

Is when he’s a drunk” 

-The Animals/House of the Rising Sun 

New monolithic structures were under construction all over Central and South America as the new governments, seeing the success of the AUA and surrendered control of resources, economics, and banking, using the single currency of the AUA. The power of the new nation continued to grow beyond its borders. We are the beneficiaries of that growing power. Polly’s high-pitched adenoidal voice stopped as he wiped his brow and drank wine from his goblet. 

With the rest of the guests gone, Aeon, Penny, and Sybil all sat next to either Naomi on Polly’s right or Izzy on his left. “How is the leg, son?” He asked, genuinely concerned. “I saw the news reports that you were shot during the AUA’s last Civil War. The reporter said the surgeons left the bullet in, figuring they would do more damage trying to cut it out. I still have one buried in my shoulder, the damned thing has been stuck there since before most of you young people were even born. A hillbilly cop shot me in the back in Georgia when I was a boy, still working for the Louisiana syndicates.” 

“I feel it sometimes just before it rains,” Isaiah said with a grin. 

Dead Eye Polly raised his glass to toast the young mathematician-turned-African warlord. “They say War is Hell. So let us drink to Hell because only a fool toasts War.” 

They all laughed as they raised their glasses and shouted the toast together. 

“TO HELL!” 

“Oh, mother, tell your children 

Not to do what I have done 

To spend your lives in sin and misery 

In the house of the rising sun” 

-The Animals / House of the Rising Sun 

[-about the author: 

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals; Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.]