Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult by Miriam Williams Read Free Book Online

bohemians in Greenwich Village, all we had found were drug users, drug pushers, prostitutes, busy people going back and forth without glancing at anyone, and college students on their way back home. No one offered the peace and brotherhood that Daisy remembered from a few years ago. I spent the little money we had that first day buying food.
    Soon it was getting dark, and we still had no place to go. As we walked aimlessly along a street, a burly man with coarse features asked us if we were lost. He was the only friendly person we had met all day.
    “No, but we really don’t have a place to go to,” I said.
    “Well, I have a place, if you want to come with me,” he said with a sly smile. Something in his manner made me feel uneasy.
    “Both of us?” I asked, thinking that I was being prudent.
    “Sure, it’s right around the corner.” We followed him to a doorway that opened onto a dilapidated and trash-littered hallway. He led us up three flights of stairs, each landing became darker and more dismal.
    On the third floor he stopped to talk to a girl who reminded me of the grotesque groupies I had seen at big rock concerts in Philadelphia. A feeling of despair swept over me, since those heavily made-up groupies exposing their bodies had shattered my idealism of rock stars. She passed him something, and he turned and opened a door to the right.
    “Here we are,” he said, showing us the way into a room full of smoke and old dumpy chairs. There was a roll-away bed pushed up against one wall where another girl was slouched like a rag doll someone had discarded long ago. As she looked at us with mascara-laden, glazed eyes, I realized that we were not among hippies.
    “Where did you pick these fresh apples?” she murmured, coming out of her drug-induced nod.
    “Get off the bed, Mona. What are you doing all f’d up in here?” he barked at her like a dog.
    “I brought your bag. It’s over there under the chair,” she said, too spaced out to break the gaze she had fixed upon us. She seemed quite transfixed with our presence, but after a few minutes of indiscreet staring, she got up and slithered out the door like a snake who had decided we were not worth her time or energy.
    Our host sat on the bed and took a bag of white powder out from under the chair.
    “Sit down,” he said, patting the bed beside him.
    Daisy and I took the chairs that were nearest the door. He noticed our move to safety.
    “You aren’t afraid of me, are you?” he asked as he walked past us and locked the door. “I just want to be sure no one comes barging in here.”
    He looked more like a bear than anyone I’d ever seen, but a dirty one.
    Plumping himself down again on the bed, he put the bag under the mattress. Looking us over with a mischievous grin, he pulled out a joint and lit it up, passing it to us after taking a long drag. “I pretended to take some and passed it to Daisy, who I knew never took any drugs. She did the same and passed it back.
    “Hey, you girls aren’t taking any. Come on, you can’t be like that. You want Uncle Charlie to get angry?” For the first time, I began to be really afraid. I didn’t know what Uncle Charlie did when he got angry, but I did not want to find out.
    “Well, we’re just very hungry, and this gives you the munchies, you know.”
    “oh, you want some food? I’ll find out what we have. Food is not our line of merchandise, you know, but I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”
    Charlie swaggered to the hallway and summoned Mona.
    “Hey, get these girls something to eat. What do we have here anyway?”
    “What are you talking about? There ain’t no food here,” she replied.
    “Well, go the hell out on the street and find something.” Charlie came back in and was puffing away until Mona returned with some hot dogs.
    By now, Charlie was so stoned he forgot to lock the door after she left. We ate our hot dogs and kept an eye on Charlie, who was talking about the great stuff he could get for