My private office is in an unsuspecting little place, on one side of a fairly modest hill, in an average, if rather newish residential suburb. I work until very late at night, and only recently realised that in a way, I'm somewhat like the character in Clint Eastwood's 'Play Misty' film of the late Sixties, except that I have a very limited, select audience of ultra net worth people, and send out my communications through a very narrow audio-visual channel down the internet.
Almost half of my office space is surrounded by large windows, giving me a lookout view across a shallow valley of residential developments and a couple of shopping centres, and a modern new train station. I caught a glimpse of myself with wireless headphones on my head reflected against the dark night window panes, and recalled the image of Eastwood in that movie.
If people really knew what I did, I know I'd be faced with a difficult stream of enquiries – enquiries for introductions, enquiries about money, enquiries about business. It's not that I mind any of these, just that there is no way I have the personal time to give them realistic or adequate attention.
I'm an ambassador of sex. Discreet sex. Very discreet sex. And very expensive sex.
Well actually it isn't expensive at all to the people from whom money passes to those who grant their sexual intimacy and contact for the price thereof. Not by comparison to what they are worth.
I fell into this agenda almost by accident, when an accountant friend – a female, and a good-looking red-headed one too – mentioned that business wasn't going so well and could I introduce her to some wealthy people that I knew. Well now I know wealthy people because I am wealthy people myself! My father was, his father was, and so on and so on; my father's aunts were among the richest people in the world of their day: one owned four of the fastest tea clipper ships in the world, and the other the best Kenyan coffee plantations among a global assortment of various types of plantations. My own uncle donated the original raw film stock from Shell Far East for the James Bond movie 'Thunderball' when the producers were – well at least they were at the beginning – looking for funding to make their films. So, wealthy wealthy wealthy.
And knowledgeable. Especially about life and human beings.
We're not the infamous 'Illuminati!' ...If that's what you're thinking. There's no such thing as far as I know. But, um, we could go close if you want to make a point about it...
And there's also a matter of coincidence. It happens to be the case that I was a good friend of the fellow who developed Helmut Newton's photos when he first started out in Australia. And he, also a photographer himself though not well-known like Helmut, found model material for Newton – that is to say, he found girls for Newton. Or women, if you like, because they were all 'of age' as they say. I never could get with all of it – give me certain women 'of that certain age' - because the rest are daffy as all hell as far as I'm concerned.
I say 'certain women' because not all women grow into 'the type.' Simply everyone secretly believes they have a sexual dimension of some description, and most people would you believe, are incredibly arrogant about it and think they are without question capable of being 'good in bed.' That belief is completely unfounded in reality. Most people suffer the greatest delusions about themselves, and especially about what they are capable of when it comes to sex, of all things. Or so at least, I have found.
And that is also why the ranks of the ultra high net worth individual are remarkably smaller than the common media would have you believe. Those who appear regularly in the papers and on television as wealthy entrepreneurs and mining magnates and media barons and all of this nonsense don't even come close. They are merely people who are adept at using the media to give themselves a strategic profile for some financial advantage. They have delusions when it comes down to it. Truly wealthy people stay out of the media. They are not in the media. You have never heard of them. Period.
Today there are people who own and operate what are known as '**** pools' of money, none of which are less than a trillion dollars each. And that is just the funds they dispose or deploy, into investing.
However, back to my nice lady accountant. Youngish, forty-ish, short bob-cut hair – like I say – red-gold. Pretty face, kind of 'nice' in the sense of kind-looking, mostly soft fleshy oval curved but with a hint of almost square-ish jaw, though. Little bit like a girl, little bit like a young boy. But a great mid-sized hour-glass figure. Great arse. Round. A real woman's bottom.
Why did I not doubt even for a second that there was more underlying her life than numbers on a calculator? Maybe life experience but I realise in recent years it's probably in the genes that I am able to judge these things correctly; I guess stuff about people from a natural ability to do so accurately and correctly. I think I jumped right in there right up front and asked her straight out: 'are you doing some kind of business outside of accounting business...?' And she said, 'yep' and that she 'wasn't making enough compared to the risks and the personal costs.' Either in accounting or elsewhere, as it seemed.
Oh yes, much as I hated to say it - yes I did know those bastard types of private agents who bugged telephones and that sort of thing. Unfortunately I did know them - through a secret dead-usb stick drop. Money. Paper bag. Rock. Seldom-used parkland. Computerised coded transcript of the confidential phone calls. No one knew the exact nature of the phone calls except the client. In this case, that would be me. I didn't like it but when other things appeared to call for it - and sometimes powerful other people demanded it too - in all events it was pretty much unavoidable these days.
...She was a terribly, terribly kinked woman. And did some risky meetings to get herself on – or off, if you will. Well, at least perhaps we could save her from that dangerous stuff.
Actually I recall looking at her and thinking my god you really wouldn't think she was a hooker. But I never use those kind of words directly to someone. I told her that in Europe among the special circles the phrase they used was 'expensive friends.' And then I asked her did she mean that she had been playing the game of trying to be 'an expensive friend' to a few local people. Is that what she meant; I asked her.
She was wearing a very little light spray of fragrance. Something really light and fresh citrus-y floral. Very very light though... Hardly tell she had it on at all really. But it certainly wasn't an old afterhang scent off the clothes and fabric. It was sprayed on within the last few hours at the most.
I went to the drinks table and picked up a Sauternes French wine. And gathered two glasses. And opened the small bar fridge and took out some fois gras and black truffles. I suppose that when you are like me these sorts of things are done rather casually and without too much deliberation. It was not long therefore before I had a small plate of dried toasty bread and paté with truffles, and two glasses of rich golden wine, laid onto the side table next to her. The wine was an excellent example of the appellation: and just recently headed into that 'colour of an old copper coin' phase, that tells the expert that the thing has hit its characteristic type of maturity that is so vital for a Sauternes wine to reach its exemplification. Of course, it required a touch of wine imagination, but one could almost certainly, but almost certainly - taste the apricot, honey, peaches, and with a slight nutty note somewhere, that gave the wine its personal flavour and peculiar appeal to those who loved the sweet wine.
To halt its fermentation, the wine-maker employed sulphur fumes in the barrel.
I always graded human sexual preferences along the same lines as certain famous wines: and this one, was all to do with the fire and the brimstone. Fire being in the burnished copper-gold, and the brimstone being the sulphur, of course.
"You know," I said. "The people I know, are considerably older than me – sixty, even seventy, some of them. And one or two women amongst them too. How do you feel about women as clients?" That was pretty direct now wasn't it.
"Don't know. Never done one before."
"Well but you've done yourself of course." I suggested.
She shrugged. "I guess so."
Hmn. That was pretty compliant. At least I tended to think so.
"Can I ask you," I said. "How did you know I have contacts who were so genuinely wealthy? And by the way, how wealthy do you believe they actually are, just while we're at it...?"
"Ah. Well. Accidently found out. I did part of the audit on the north city bank's foreign transfers this year. And when I saw your name against a certain figure in the accounts I asked the staff what the person with that name looked like and they basically said looks and acts like an olden-days Sherlock Holmes. Not that twerp Robert Downey though. An olden-days Sherlock. And that's pretty much you, isn't it. ...Sherlock Holmes with a depositary receipt for $260 million."
"Hmn."
"So. I guess you're clients or friends or whatever you choose to call them, assuming they're using corporate funds, must have at least several million each to themselves...
"You would think...?" She said with her tone going up in a question at the end.
"Hmn."
I took a long long sip of the beautiful sour-sweet classic French wine. And looked at her.
There were things that she would have to come to know about these people. Things I would have to tell her. Things too, that I would have to ascertain about her, whether she could really do it the way I knew they would insist. Me, I was a fit strong fifty-ish guy with an athletic background and even I would not be able to carry on the way these others could and regularly did. Well at least not with the same utter confidence and abandon. The fact was, I cared for the women I ever had sex with. Cared for how they felt, what they thought, whether they were happy about it all, cared if they ever felt sensitive. Women are not necessarily fragile but I at least did not disregard the possibility of their sensitivity to the extremes of sexual manners that were sometimes the order of the moment in certain parts of society.
Yes yes I know all about the modern university claptrap about Irigaray and all that. Foucault. Et cetera. Not real life though. ...Anyway you'll get to see a little about real life as this small episode of private reporting proceeds here. Put it this way, it's all very different when it's real. I'm deeply in it and even I've always found it although absolutely thrilling, really very scaring too sometimes, frankly.
"Listen, Sue." I said at last. "You have to be prepared for certain things you may not yet fully appreciate."
"What things. I've done a lot of things already, John."
I think she was still thinking about the millions she presumed they had and the perhaps few thousand she might 'earn.'
"No no, Sue. These people are much wealthier even than you suppose. Much wealthier. And I certainly know some of them sufficiently well enough right now to be able to tell you that at least three that I have in mind would take you up on the offer, and pay extremely well."
Oh god I hate myself. Well no, not really. I'm being sarcastic. I love it when it all comes together like this. She was such a good looking woman. What I mean is that god! I am such a good seducer and they can't see it coming.
I could see in her eyes and demeanour that she was happily interested in the prospect of quick good money. Large money. Maybe three four or even five thousand. The sex would be easy for her. She would be in control.
"Now look Sue. You will have to be discreet. Extremely. Well in fact TOTALLY discreet. All of them have families, associates...
