Bisch

Dust Cover

Jenny Burke is a prostitute. A year into her four-year contract with Erlik Khan, her Afghan pimp, she is sick of a lot of things, “top girl” being #1. When he rescued her from abduction and slavery to a Baltimore City Police Captain, the lighting romance turned into promises of big money escort work in NYC. In bitter agreement, determined to get paid for what the cops had taken, in partnership with the neck-tattooed muscle-guy from WAR INC., Jenny figured she could stomach screwing the system that had screwed her until age 25.

But, by the tender age of 22, she had a belly full. She had not imagined life with Erlik would become a drudgery of bad sex and banal threats in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Then finally, he broke one of the only three promises he had made to her. It was time to run.

Jenny Burke is a composite of two call girls that the author dated in 2009, and a retired prostitute he spoke to in a Highlandtown, Baltimore bar one Saturday morning in 1994, combined with a woman on the run, who took his seat on the Pennsylvanian Train at Altoona, in 2025.

Inspirational Quote

“Imagine being banged eight hours a day by men you don’t even know!”

-A Lady Discussing Portland, Oregon Sex Slave Pens

Dedication

For Bonnie

Actuality Basis for Bisch

This savage novel is based on 21 actual encounters with sex slavers, and the subjects of their trade, had by the author from 2009 thru 2025, and is guaranteed to offend.

1.) 1994, a coworker, a would-be pimp, tricked Jennie, an overnight bakery clerk, into meeting him for drinks at O’Conner’s Pub in Highlandtown, at Ponca and Eastern. She had been chatting me up for sex by the dairy case, as her boyfriend was locked up for a long stint. I declined, as Alan overheard. He invited her for 7:00 AM drinks, noting that he still worked as an escort, mostly as a dancing partner for older women. She felt funny about it and asked me if I would show up. Sure enough, Alan handed her off to three other guys at the bar for drug money, one of whom was Ral, a brute who hated women. I showed up and bought her a drink. They threatened me and left, noting the foot-long knife under my duster. She thanked me and decided to buy a sex toy until her man got out from prison. During this period, numerous women, out on the street as waif’s or hookers: Route 40 and Northpoint, Ponca and Eastern, Eastern and 54th and at the Inner Harbor, asked me at bus stops for my protection, and I declined. I had become that “scary white guy,” that the brothers did not mess with unless in great numbers. Women were typically abused by three or less men and had good meat-sheltering instincts.

2.) One woman asked for my help at night, at Lombard and Highland at the bus stop, as she took a bus that I could tell, in her battered eyes, was to nowhere—just running away. I felt so bad I got the idea of looking for her on my night off and writing a book titled In Her Faint Shadow. Knowing hat she was probably never to be seen again, I simply thought that if I took random buses to nowhere off of the #23 Line, and put my mind in a weak place when writing about it, that I might be able to develop an ability to write female characters from their perspective. For I had decided to turn my hand to fiction one day and was beginning to write violence articles. Both my wife and my girlfriend thought it was a terrible idea. Whenever they agreed on something, I took that course.

3.) 1996, Carol, whose husband beat her, punching her in the skull, approached me at a bar where we had breakfast. She knew I was a boxer and asked me to examine her head. I found knuckle lumps on her head, under her hair. She wanted a man, who did not beat women, to have sex with her, as a kind of emotional erasure or the rapes and beatings. We became friends. She told me about being imprisoned and raped as a young girl. She hated cops for the fact that they had abducted and imprisoned one of her friends for sex, and was keen on the fact that I hated cops too.

4.) 2005, Uncle Nasty, who would die on November 5 2010, took over his brother’s affairs after his brother was murdered by the Baltimore City cops who were his rivals in the heroin business. Nasty stopped the dope trade and fought back by trying to get junkies off of the cop heroin. That cop owned the bar I ate at with Kelley. Nasty has a few chapters in Your Trojan Whorse and assured me that cops imprisoned drug-using women for gang rape and also, that smart chicks, would work as whores for pimp cops.

5.) 2008, A state police officer demanded access to the store I managed after hours. He claimed he was simply going to take steaks and such, but seemed keen on getting in while I had a cashier, a young lady, counting out in the office. I could see his thirst. I did not let him in, so he threatened me with beatings and arrests.

6.) 2009, I dated Bonnie and Carol, the former had been a call girl who did “out-call,” and was driven to the addresses of clients, the driver, a night club bouncer, waiting outside. Carol had been a higher order of “in-call” girl who found one rich client and milked him. She, ironically, tried to keep me in the same way he had her. Our breakup is described at the end of When You’re Food.

7.) 2009, three beat cops and three homicide detectives, from outside our district, threatened Duz, my co-manager, and I. They were tied in with the bar owner across the street, who used to send crackheads over with a shopping list, including steak, to steal. He would count our security detail, and send one extra looter. The next day, while he charged me for coffee at 11:00 AM, uniformed pigz ate free steak…

Soon after this episode, I quit that management job and devoted my full time energy to writing, as I returned to my former life of taking Baltimore Area buses to and from discount grocery stores to work part time. I began to see life from the bottom again. Yet still, as I will detail, I stubbornly refused to ever help a strange woman in peril, many of whom crossed my lone path in these nighttime transits. These will be detailed in Reluctant Genesis, with episodes 8 thru 21 of this writer’s anti-heroic awakening.