Down But Not Out.
My name is Clarissa. My story begins a few weeks after my 25th birthday. In fact, I'll start my story from when I was running, early in the morning, on a hot spring day because this is where my new journey started, this is the day that I first began to question myself.
I like to keep myself in shape, I have no desire to be skinny, but I don't want to be overweight either and I definitely want to be fit and healthy. I had taken up running because I could no longer afford the gym membership fee. Earlier that year, I had lost my job when my company closed down and I was struggling to get another one that paid a reasonable salary. I had worked hard to become a manager at the chain of clothes shops where I had worked since leaving school and I had become used to having money when I needed it. I lived in a nice apartment, full of lovely things. As I ran that morning, I was, again, worrying that I would have to leave my home and sell my things if I didn't find a job soon. Running each day was about the only thing keeping me sane.
Of course, it wasn't that I was on the breadline as such, but rather, I liked my lifestyle and I wasn't ready to give it up. Only 2 years ago, I had received a promotion and moved to Chicago, all of my family and friends lived back home in Florida. I had been working so hard, that I hadn't really made many friends and certainly no close ones. I felt pretty alone that morning as I ran around through the gateway to the park.
I was working up a sweat as I ran through the park, enjoying being among the trees. I had been feeling so down that morning was still working through all the negative aspects of my current situation when I was confronted by a man and woman, about my age, holding hands, walking along the path towards me. My next dark thought reminded me that it had been three years since my last proper relationship. I had left my boyfriend to focus on my work and since then, I had little more than one night stands and fuck buddies to fill the void in my life. I am bisexual, I have the entire population to chose from and yet, I am still single. I really felt like things couldn't get worse. This had been my darkest day yet, since I lost my job. I was certainly feeling sorry for myself.
I ran out of the park, and sprinted a few blocks back to my building, hoping a last surge of energy would lift my mood. I was dripping in sweat and completely out of breath as I climbed the stairs to my front door. Letting myself in, I made my way to the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of chilled water from the fridge and enjoyed a cool drink before heading to the bathroom.
Stripping my running clothes off, I turned on the shower and stepped in. I enjoyed the feeling of the cool water as I washed myself and after twenty relaxing minutes or so, I turned off the water and stepped out, grabbing a towel and wrapping myself in it. I had nowhere to be that day, just like all of them at the moment but my habits were well formed. I dried my hair and moisturised my whole body before applying a little make up. I chose some tight jeans and a red vest top, then dressed and returned to my living room, almost slumping into my sofa, I turned on the TV and hopped between shit morning chat shows for a couple of hours. Boredom washed over me like a black cloud.
I dragged myself away from the sofa to prepare some lunch in the kitchen. I toasted a bagel and made a pot of coffee before sitting at my table. I instinctively opened my laptop and began to read the new headlines, all of which were even more depressing. Closing the page, I opened my search engine and began looking for job sites, a now-daily activity that had, so far, yielded nothing. I finished lunch and returned to the sofa, taking my laptop with me. I surfed the web for a while, looking at some of my favourite websites, until a pop-up advert appeared in the centre of my screen. I jumped a little as it was unexpected. The image on the advert was a cute woman, bare-breasted, grinning at me from the screen and flashing red letters spelled out 'High Class Escorts in Your Area Now!' I raised my eyebrows and closed the advert, wondering who would ever be stupid enough to click on it.
Afternoon turned to night and another day of boredom ended. I had watched three movies on TV and finally, decided to head for bed. As I lay in bed, trying to clear my mind so that I could drift off, the image of the women in the escort advert popped into my head. I found myself wondering what it would be like to sleep with men for money? I put the thought out of my head and eventually, managed to drift off to sleep.
The following morning was bright, I awoke and began my usual routine before I headed out for my run. Running gave me time to think and recently, that had been a depressing experience, but this morning, I wasn't feeling sorry for myself, I was thinking about the escort advert again. I don't think I was really considering it seriously, more that I was interested in how much money these women made and, obviously, how many men they would have to sleep with. My mind made the leap to wonder how many of those men would be abusive or generally just gross. I couldn't shake the subject from my conciousness as I completed my run. In truth, I think I was glad to have a distraction from the boredom so I decided to conduct my own online research.
Rushing through my shower, I dragged on clean jogging pants and a top. Making myself a coffee, I sat and opened my laptop to begin my research. The first thing that I discovered were that there were thousands of escorts in Chicago, some seemed to work alone and other were part of agencies. There were also lots of small brothels dotted around if you knew where to look and hundreds of websites provided contact information, listings and even reviews of the girls. I had no idea that there was such a huge sex industry out there. I easily found out that prices ranged from $50 to $300 per hour, or sometimes even more. Most girls had a menu of services with some charging extra for all kinds of strange kinks. I realised that I had been on the computer for hours and that most of the day had flown by.
I felt tired from sitting in a chair all day and moved myself to my sofa, still armed with my laptop. I found a site that offered videos and some girls had uploaded short films of themselves and even some with their clients. I was assuming that the clients had consented to that. I was also surprised that on the surface, there were respectable, professional women, running their escort business in full view of anyone wanting to see, it didn't seem to be hidden away or that anyone was really trying to hide behind very much anonymity. I clicked on one of the videos belonging to a girl named Chantel, who's bio said that she was 27 and seemed to like, regular sex and not much else. Chantel charged $200 per hour, she was very sexy, olive skinned and had very large, enhanced breasts. I noted that they were far bigger than my 34C natural breasts.
The video began to play, I felt a little strange to be honest, while I was definitely a lover of sex, porn had not really been my thing other than the occasional drunken night with someone. The film began with a slightly overweight man, with a mask across his eyes walking in front of the camera, as he moved to the side, there was a bed in shot and Chantel was kneeling on the bed, looking back at the camera. The masked man got nearer to her and I could see that he was hard already and was pulling on a condom.