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"The Arrival\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Check-in at the Doubletree in Houston is extra special on NBA All-Star weekend. First there is the loud parade of women, fresh from their flights into George H. W. Bush airport, some wearing supersize Velcro rollers in their hair, many in the Official Groupie Travel Outfit (hot pink sweat suit, silver high heels, knockoff Louis Vuitton bag). There are the fights at the front desk\u2014\"no, we ain't payin' no $400 a night; no, that ain't what you said on the telephone!\"\u2014between large pissed-off women and the cowering staff bearing nametags, chocolate-chip cookies, and a list of special additions to the in-room dining menu (buffalo wings and jalape\u00F1o poppers). On All-Star weekend, guests of the Doubletree are asked to sign a \"no-party policy\" form (\"If we learn that a party is in progress\u2026we will reserve the right\u2026to IMMEDIATELY evict the occupants\"). At the lobby bar, an enormous sign has been erected: welcome nba all-star fans. A few feet beside it, a plaque: firearms are prohibited on these premises.\n\n It will be here, in the lovely Doubletree Hotel, that the working girls will set up camp for the next three days. By working girls, we don't mean hookers, though these will infiltrate the Doubletree as well. (It gets a little tricky, because the working girls and the \"working girls\" tend to dress alike. The standard outfit this weekend: a Band-Aid\u2014sized denim miniskirt studded with rhinestones slung low enough to flash ass-cleavage, knee-high shiny white boots, a silver belt that appears to be made of hubcaps, a midriff-baring top that shows off belly tattoos, and enough fake bling and chains to tow a Hummer.) We mean working girls\u2014the hundreds, thousands, who in their real lives have actual jobs, dreary thankless jobs, but in their fantasy lives get to be NBA groupies. All-Star weekend is their mecca. They save all year for this. They put in for their vacation time early. They spring for hair extensions and new boots.\n\n And with a little bit of luck, they might even get to blow a basketball player.\n\n They tumble out in carloads, talkin' shit and demanding respect. One particular group\u2014four ladies from New York\u2014stands out instantly. Because they are already having a blast. They have no time for fights with desk clerks; they gotta get their case of Goose up to their room. \"I can't believe we're actually here!\" says the ringleader, a New York City cop named Renee. \"I'm pinching myself.\" Though, with any luck, she'll get someone else to do that for her.\n\n The Hierarchy\n\n There are groupies, and then there are Groupies. The first divide is those who will admit it\u2014and those who won't.\n\n As a general rule, the girls who are actually scoring\u2014with real basketball players\u2014(a) don't identify themselves as Groupies (if you've blown a player, you have somehow been elevated, at least in your mind, to a much higher status) and (b) don't give interviews. Talking about it is the quickest way to cut off your supply. Or worse, to lower yourself in the Groupie Hierarchy.\n\n \"The worst are the Gutter Groupies,\" says Brenda Thomas. She is a tall, thin woman of a decent age (48) who is all legs and poise and attitude. We meet several weeks before All-Star weekend over a too precious breakfast at Philadelphia's Lacroix restaurant at the Rittenhouse Hotel to talk about blow jobs and basketball players. Brenda is the reigning Groupie expert, thanks in part to a juicy novel she wrote, Threesome: Where Seduction, Power Basketball Collide, which she whipped off after spending five years as the personal assistant to Stephon Marbury. Marbury, as well as his wife, was none too thrilled with Thomas's literary debut, in which a vast assortment of (allegedly fictional) women spend a great deal of time on their knees, in service to the NBA.\n\n Brenda herself never did a player, but her years of up-close-and-personal interaction have left her with wisdom to burn. This is how she breaks down the Hierarchy:\n\n The Gutter Groupies. These are the women who will wait outside the arena gates after a game and do anything, sometimes right there in the parking lot. If a player is feeling particularly chivalrous, he might let one service him in his Bentley. Gutter Groupies don't spring for airfare and hotel rooms for NBA All-Star weekend. They won't go that far to give a free blow job.\n\n The Working Girls. The most prevalent category. Working Girls will bang a player if the opportunity arises, yes, but they won't do just anything, and they don't wait in parking lots. \"They're the ones reading In Style magazine but doing the Look for Less,\" Brenda says. They're mostly blue-collar, often from the hood, and more likely to be swept up by the \"culture of the NBA\"\u2014which is to say, hip-hop\u2014than by the actual game or the players. \"They're notch-in-the-belt party girls,\" says Brenda, \"who'd be happy with a fling with a bodyguard.\" She pauses. \"Basically, this is their hobby. Working Girls have a helluva lot more fun.\"\n\nThe Fly Girls. These are the women who are just classy enough to merit a second encounter with a player. They might even get a piece of jewelry or a ride on the team's private plane. To be a Fly Girl, you need to be toting real Louis Vuitton. \"You also have to be really gorgeous,\" says Brenda. A great many Fly Girls are often in denial, she says. \"They refuse to see themselves as groupies. They need All-Star rehab or something.\"\n\n The Upper Crust. The stratospheric category of babe (see: Eva Longoria, Vanessa Williams, et al.) who might end up engaged or married (however briefly) to a player. The Upper Crust also includes women whose daddies or daddies' lawyers can get them backstage with the players. They tend to be bony-assed white girls who may not marry the players\u2014but won't be left out on the curb, either.\n\nThe Girls in Room 506\n\n Renee, Danielle, Vellesha, and Chermaine open the door to their lair.\n\n \"You want an apple martini or a watermelon martini?\" asks Renee.\n\n \"We just gluin' our eyelashes on,\" says Danielle.\n\n They've brought all of their supplies with them, in bulging suitcases from New York\u2014all of which seem to have exploded open in room 506. There's a refreshment suitcase, filled with plastic bottles of neon-colored drink mis from Costco (named Watermelon Pucker and Apple Pucker) and Styrofoam cups to go with the case of Grey Goose (the official vodka of NBA Groupies), carefully smuggled into the hotel. One suitcase is devoted entirely to boots and shoes. Another was so laden down with gold and silver belts that the assholes at Continental tried to charge them an extra $25. (They rearranged their suitcases, right there at the counter, to avoid the overweight charge.) There are suitcases filled with hair extensions, flat irons, curling irons, eyelash glue, face scrub, foot scrub, condoms, and dental dams. There is also an enormous can of Lysol, because a girl can never be too prepared.\n\n \"We like to know that the toilets are clean,\" says Renee.\n\n Renee, the bubbly, vivacious one, used to patrol housing projects in Queens but just got promoted. Now she works with kids as a youth officer. She's also the single mother of a 9-year-old girl. Danielle\u2014the \"proud to be extra-large\" girl whose penchant for talking has earned her the nickname Diesel (\"for the diesel heavy gas,\" says Renee, \"because when she starts running she never stops\")\u2014is a New York City subway conductor. Vellesha, another extra-large woman, drives a bus. And has the don't-fuck-with-me-or-I'll-smack-your-white-ass attitude we've come to appreciate in New York City bus drivers. They call her Snacks, for obvious reasons. Then there's Chermaine, the baby of the litter at 23, pretty, slender, and terribly shy (until she puts on a bustier). She works as a 911 operator.\n\n They've been best friends and accomplices for years. Unlike many of the groupies hanging out in Houston this weekend, these girls are proud to be called Groupies. They work hard at it all year\u2014the long nights in clubs, the occasional out-of-town field trip. They have a stack of photographs to document their brushes with greatness: the girls with Mike Tyson, the girls with Nelly and Nelly's entourage, the girls with Doug E. Fresh, the old-school rapper. And so on.\n\n This is their sixth NBA All-Star weekend. (Except for Chermaine, who's a new addition to the group.) As usual, they're sharing a standard-size hotel room with two double beds (neither of which can be found at the moment, under the mountains of metallic debris), but they have a system down if one of them happens to score. It's an elaborate system. If one of them should deign to bring a man (\"or a nice thug,\" says Renee) back to the room, the others cool their heels in the hotel-lobby bar until she's finished. And if it takes all night? \"It never takes all night,\" says Danielle. \"We're from New York City. We're not here to cuddle.\"\n\n And if they go to his hotel room? \"Doesn't happen,\" says Vellesha. \"Unless we see his driver's license first and get his license-plate number. We ain't stupid.\"\n\n Renee, the cop, imposed the license-plate rule. No one goes off with just any old dude unless the other three have seen his credentials.\n\n \"Y'all ready?\" says Renee. It's 11:30, and the night is young.\n\n The girls do a quick inspection in the full-length mirror before leaving. Renee is wearing an ivory Baby Phat outfit that she spent a little too much on but got on sale. Danielle is in a size 18 gold-sequined tube top, tight-tight jeans, and a denim jacket, all trimmed in gold, with a gold bag and gold pumps. Vellesha is in a supertight strapless denim outfit with faux-fur trim, from \"the fat-girl store\" Ashley Stewart. And Chermaine, shy Chermaine, has her boobs poured into a bustier, creating a shelf that could easily hold a tray of drinks. Let the games begin.\n\n \"Wait a minute,\" says Renee. \"We need go-cups for the road.\" They refill their cups, make a quick pit stop at the ice machine, and teeter down to the lobby in five-inch heels. Moments later, with Vellesha, the bus driver, behind the wheel, we are idling at a stoplight in Houston when a police car pulls close. What happens if we get pulled over in Houston with enormous Styrofoam cups filled with Grey Goose and Apple Pucker?\n\n Maybe it's better not to ask.\n\n A half hour later, revved up and ready for action, the girls pull in to the parking garage of a Renaissance Hotel on the outskirts of Houston. They have an inside track on a Jermaine Dupri party going on in the ballroom here tonight. A crowd of tricked-out sisters are cooling their heels in the long line out front, waiting to pay the $100 it costs just to get in the door (cheap by NBA-weekend-party standards, where some clubs will charge up to $500 per person to get into the VIP room and an additional $250\u2014yes, $250\u2014to valet park). But the Girls from Room 506 go straight to the front of the line. DJ SS\u2014an enormously fat and jolly man whom they got to be friends with by working the circuit long enough\u2014has them rigged for the night. He lets them in for free. Renee strikes a pose as they walk into the ballroom. \"We did it!\" she squeals. \"We did it! We made it into the ballroom!\"\n\n The Rules, Part One\n\n Groupies who dream of breaking out of Gutterdom or Working Girl status have their work cut out for them. Here's what it takes:\n\n 1. Pony up. \"You gotta pay to play,\" says one Fly Girl I meet over drinks at Dave Buster's in Houston who does not wish to be identified. Paying to play means spending a small fortune on the appropriate accoutrements: designer clothes, shoes, bags, and hair extensions from the right salon. You want a look that says, \"I'm available, but I ain't cheap.\" Even if you are.\n\n 2. Be good-looking (but not too skinny). \"You can't cross over to Fly Girl unless you got it goin' on,\" says Brenda. \"But a lot of black men like them fat. I can't tell you how many times I've heard guys say, 'I don't want to be hittin' no bone.'\"\n\n 3. Travel in pairs. \"One girl is not a big deal now,\" Brenda says. \"But two women working them over?\" Much preferred.\n\n 4. Reserve a table at the Four Seasons, unofficial crib of the NBA. \"Dear God,\" one high-level Four Seasons employee told me, \"you can't imagine what it's like when the lobby is filled with these\u2026hooker-looking women.\" But to really have a chance at an encounter there, you can't arrive en masse. \"Spring for dinner in the main dining room,\" Brenda says. \"Be there waiting with a girlfriend who is equally fine, for when the players walk in.\" (Memo to wannabe Groupies: It's always the visiting team that's looking to get laid. The home team often has wives or children lurking around, cramping their style. Also: Players rarely use the front entrance of the hotel; to make contact, wait by the side door.)\n\n The Girls from Room 506 Say No\n\n The girls are having a ball at Jermaine Dupri's party. DJ SS invites them up onstage, slobbers kisses all over them, and proclaims they are \"like family.\" In the corner, a photographer has set up a makeshift studio\u2014sort of like prom night\u2014where anyone can have her picture taken for $20. Renee gathers the crew, and $140 later they have all the documentation they need. At the cash bar\u2014first you stand in line to buy a ticket for a $20 drink; then you stand in another line to get your cocktail\u2014a mutiny breaks out when word filters through the ballroom that they are out of Grey Goose. But the girls take this in stride. (\"We got plenty back in our room,\" notes Renee.)\n\n And besides, they have more important things to worry about.\n\n Like the scrawny thug who is currently all over Vellesha. It's a joke among the girls that Vellesha, the big, round bus driver, tends to attract skinny little guys. \"Vellesha's boyfriends always stop at her breasts,\" says Danielle. And tonight is no exception. This particular suitor is mesmerized by Vellesha. He wants her, and he wants her bad.\n\n \"Uhn-uhn,\" says Vellesha. She flicks him aside like a cigarette ash. \"It looked like he had snot coming down his nose.\"\n\n Meanwhile, Danielle, the subway conductor, is having her own flirtation\u2014with a man who is arguably the hottest dude in the room: a tall, buff, knee-knockingly handsome guy in a baseball cap with diamond studs in his ears. He, like Renee, is with the N.Y.C. police force. Renee has known him for years but was never interested in him (\"We fight like husband and wife\"). He is, however, very interested in Danielle. \"Because I'm FFF,\" says Danielle. \"Fat, fine, and fabulous. And some guys like that.\"\n\n \"He always tells me,\" says Renee, \" 'I never do a big girl, but Danni? I never seen a body like that before.'\"\n\n \"I think,\" says Danielle, \"that I might have to play cops and robbers later.\"\n\n At two thirty in the morning, Renee gets a lead on an after-after-hours party, and the girls head to the parking garage. There they encounter two men in an Escalade who follow them as they walk. When they get to their car, the boys park theirs, in a vertical barricade, swing open the doors, and with rap music blasting, make their best pitch for Renee and Chermaine. Lots of yelling ensues. They are arguing over which is the better hood, Brooklyn or Harlem.\n\n \"This is what you call parking-lot pimping,\" Vellesha explains.\n\n One of the boys is damn cute, I think. \"He's so ugly!\" says Renee. \"He look like the black Jiminy Cricket,\" Danielle agrees.\n\n They blow off the boys, who peel out of the parking lot, still yelling out the windows.\n\n Here's the beauty of the Girls from Room 506: They're not here to be receptacles. They have too much respect for themselves. They know they can never compete with the bony-assed blonds who might end up with, say, a Kobe Bryant and a juicy lucrative lawsuit. (That's for white girls.) Nor are they interested in being Gutter Groupies\u2014they won't do anything to anybody.\n\n In fact, they're not even here for the players!\n\n On the ride back to the hotel, I ask them if they're interested in the game this weekend. The game? They don't go to the games. Their favorite team? Who cares! It's not like they'd throw Allen Iverson out of the rack, but they're really here for the rappers. Or the rappers' assistants. Or the rappers' bodyguards. Or the rappers' bodyguards' assistants. Real thugs. Good thugs.\n\n This is the deep, dark secret of the NBA. The first sport to embrace hip-hop has essentially been hijacked by hip-hop. What keeps the girls coming back is not the sport, for Lord's sake. It's the proximity to their guys, their peeps. NBA All-Star weekend is like the Hip-Hop Summit, with a lot more cocktails.\n\n The Rules, Part Two\n\n 5. Spread the wealth. It is not unusual, says Brenda, for one woman to end up servicing half the team. \"If she's fine and she's really good, and she'll take it up the ass or whatever, then you tell your boys about her. And a lot of times, she's willing to do that.\"\n\n 6. Don't be shy. One thing that has become more common since the Kobe case, says Brenda, is the bodyguard-chaperoned encounter. Watching isn't new. But these days, for a player to have his security guy or his boys hang around to watch isn't just kinky, it's smart business.\n\n 7. Understand his needs. \"What players want is what their wives won't do for them,\" says Brenda. \"A man will always try to do things with other women that his wife won't let him do at home, you know what I'm sayin'? Your wife might not want to suck your dick till she's blue in the face. She might not want to get buck-wild naked. These guys like it any way they can get it. Anywhere they can put it. If they could put it in your ear, they would. 'Hmm, lemme just try this\u2026'\" She cracks up. \"There are women who will do these things.\"\n\n 8. Be hip to condom etiquette. In Groupie circles, the shocking thing about the Kobe episode was not that he banged a random white girl who was not his wife; it was that he wasn't using a condom. \"It was like, How stupid can you get?\" Brenda says. \"There's a gift shop, okay?\" Smart NBA players\u2014well, okay, even dumb NBA players\u2014know to use their own: There have been too many love children born of a condom that, oops, had a hole poked in it to make that \"mistake.\" \"You'd be amazed,\" says a former Fly Girl I met in Houston, \"how many women I know who actually do that. Because let's face it, if you get pregnant, your life is made.\"\n\nThe Girls from Room 506 Eat (and Eat)\n\nSaturday afternoon, the day before the game. The girls want to go to a seafood restaurant called Pappadeaux because they've heard the rappers go there. They settle into a big-ass booth and place their orders. It's a long, complicated process. Each would like \"a lobster with shrimp on the side.\" And almost every appetizer on the menu. And another round of hot-pink\u2014and-green-slushy drinks called \"the Swamp Thing.\"\n\n Greg, the pasty-faced waiter, is overwhelmed. \"I don't think this will all fit into the computer,\" he says.\n\n \"Now, the oysters,\" he asks Danielle, \"you want six or twelve?\"\n\n \"I want thirteen,\" says Danielle. \"Because on the last one, I want you. Naked on the half shell!\"\n\n The girls roar. Greg squirms.\n\n \"You'll get a bigger tip,\" says Vellesha.\n\n \"Um,\" Greg says earnestly, \"I have a dress code I have to follow.\"\n\n \"That's okay,\" says Danielle, without missing a beat. \"You can leave your little bow tie on.\"\n\n Just then, some competition enters Pappadeaux. A pack of blinged-out white girls have teetered in.\n\n \"Hmmmph,\" says Vellesha.\n\n The Girls from 506 do not approve. \"They lookin' for a meal ticket,\" Renee says.\n\n The girls take a great deal of pride in the fact that they're paying their own way, playing by their own set of rules. \"Groupie doesn't bother me,\" says Danielle. \"We classy women. We got jobs, we got our own money, we don't really need anything. This weekend I'll spend about $2,000. But when I leave here, all my bills are paid.\"\n\n \"You don't have to do nothin' for us,\" adds Vellesha. \"We gonna do it for ourselves.\"\n\n \"A lot of girls out here, honestly?\" says Danielle. \"They don't have a 401(k), they don't even have a bank account. Like, I have a friend who's out here. She doesn't have a job, she's broke, but she goes to all these events. She'll spend her last dime, but then her rent isn't paid. Her main goal is to sleep with somebody. And if the condom breaks, that's probably the best thing that'll ever happen to her.\"\n\n A rare moment of silence.\n\n Then all of a sudden, Chermaine, the quiet one, pipes up.\n\n \"I actually love basketball,\" she confesses. \"I would like to go to the game, but I'm outnumbered.\"\n\n Would anyone else like to go to the game? Or maybe meet some players?\n\n \"I mean, it'd be nice,\" says Renee. \"But we know nothing can never really go on with them.\"\n\n How come?\n\n \"We ain't stupid.\"\n\n No, they ain't.\n\n \"I wouldn't mind meeting a player,\" announces Vellesha. \"I don't wanna be driving a bus my whole life, and I would like to have a baby one day.\"\n\n \"Girl, you be dreamin',\" says Renee.\n\n \"We just here to have a good time,\" says Danielle. \"But safety first. Like, we gonna use a condom and he gonna use a dental dam, no matter what goes down. You know what else you can use as a dental dam? Saran Wrap. Like, I bring my own condoms because a lot of people don't check the expiration dates. And a lot of guys, they try to sneak up on you with the lambskin.\u2026If I'm gonna have sex, I'm not gonna use anybody else's condoms.\"\n\n The topic moves to oral sex. There are black men, says Danielle, \"who say they don't eat nothin' that can get up and walk away. But most of them do it. Well, except for the Jamaicans. And there are lots of black men who say their wives don't like it.\"\n\n \"Then there's something wrong with her!\" says Vellesha. \"Mmm-mmm.\"\n\n Okay, but wait a minute. About those dental dams: Do the guys they pick up really go for that?\n\n \"Ma'am,\" says Danielle, \"one thing my mother always told me growing up\u2026\" I am waiting for a weighty, profound piece of wisdom, and in fact that is what I get. \"My mama always told me one thing: 'When a man's penis is hard, he will do anything.'\"\n\n Almost on cue, Greg the waiter arrives at the table with some breaking news.\n\n \"Dale Davis. Oh, my God,\" says Greg.\n\n The girls look at him. Who?\n\n \"Dale Davis just came in!\" gushes Greg. \"He's the third backup center for the Pistons! He just walked in.\"\n\n \"I didn't get my baked potato,\" says Vellesha.\n\n \"And last night Russell Simmons was here,\" says Greg.\n\n \"Russell Simmons was here?! Here? Right here? Oh, my God,\" says Renee.\n\n \"Russell was here?\" says Vellesha.\n\n \"Yeah,\" says Greg. \"This giant Bentley pulled up\u2014\"\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" says Renee. \"Was that Russell's Bentley?\"\n\n Actually, says Greg, it was 50 Cent's\u2014\n\n \"Oh, dear God!\" says Renee. \"50 was here?! Last night? God.\"\n\n The Rules, Part Three\n\n 9. Follow the bad boys. The players Groupies want most are not necessarily the most talented\u2014or even the best looking. They're the guys who have attitude on the court. \"Allen Iverson is the number one hottie,\" says Brenda. \"He has the cutest little lips!\" But Groupies also like guys who can fight, like Rasheed Wallace. \"He don't have to be pretty. We like a guy who's hard on the court. I never hear women oohing and aahing over Kobe, because he's a punk. He's soft.\" They like Ben Wallace \"because of the way he's built.\" Dwyane Wade? \"A cutie, but not all women are turned on by the Christian thing.\"\n\n 10. Don't think you're special. \"Mostly, the players look at these girls like, 'They crazy! They'll do anything!' When you get to the pro level, Groupies are just part of the package. It's like, 'Fuck, I can get my dick sucked whenever I want, wherever I want.'\"\n\n 11. Don't go picking out china patterns. \"Players will never marry the Fly Girl who's been with him at all the clubs and bars. She's seen too much. They don't want to come home to that.\" They're certainly not going to marry the Gutter Girls. And the white-girl thing? \"That's old-school,\" says Brenda. \"The new guys aren't going to bring some white girl home to their mama who raised them alone. It's disrespectful.\" So who do they marry? \"The girls from the neighborhood, who put up with all their shit for years and will continue to, because the end goal is to be Mrs. So-and-So. People always say, 'Why does Kobe's wife put up with it?' Where she goin'?\"\n\n The Morning After\n\n There's nothing like packing nine suitcases when you're hungover. The girls, on their last night in Houston, stayed out until dawn, but Vellesha was so wrecked she went back to the Doubletree and slept through the fire that emptied out part of the hotel. It will take them a multi-city tour of connecting flights to get home to New York City.\n\n In Renee's first week back at work, an 11-year-old will pull a gun on a 6-year-old over a Game Boy and a dollar bill in Far Rockaway, Queens, and Renee will be called to the grade school to deal with the arrest. Vellesha will deal with the same old bullshit on the bus (\"People rude, people crazy, people stink\"). Chermaine will have to deal with the usual 911 calls, like from the guy who claimed his baby was choking (but in fact was already dead, because he'd choked her to death). Danielle will deal with the standard crap on the F train (\"You really never know who's going to throw themselves on the tracks, so you have to be extra nice to people\"). All-Star weekend was more than just a fond memory.\n\n \"I didn't exactly score,\" says Danielle, \"but I don't think I ever had a better time in my life.\"\n\n I ask the girls what they plan to do next.\n\n They look at me like I'm a crazy white girl.\n\n Vegas, of course! The next All-Star game is in the City of Sin, and they're already booking their trip.\n\n LISA DePAULO is a GQ correspondent."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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