Chapter 6: Julie Pays the Bills, Part I
For nearly a year I had been living as the Gifted Grifter, and I was getting into an established routine. I would travel to Vegas or Atlantic City under an assumed name, betting horses and sports during the day, using my mindreading glasses to pick up tips from knowledgeable bettors. At night I would hit the poker rooms, using my glasses to know what everyone else at the table had in their hands when the table stakes got big; with those advantages, I could usually net 20-40K in about three days of play. I would then retire that identity for a while and assume a new one, swap out one prepaid cell phone for another, and for the next three months or so I would live off my winnings. I would travel a little, especially up to lake country, but mostly I would cruise for girls, using my glasses to custom-tailor my outward presentation so as to maximize my chances of getting them into bed. I was successfully seducing 5-10 girls a month, but almost all of them were one-night stands; that meant I slept alone two-thirds of the time, and even when I didn't, I wasn't really getting to know anyone. When I started as the GG, I was all pumped about the variety offered by having sex with many different partners. I didn't realize I would still be so lonely.
I was just back from Vegas, so it was time to change identities again. I figured that "Tom," the identity I had used when I first started living as the Gifted Grifter, had probably been dormant long enough that I could re-use it. Just to be sure, I checked Tom's MySpace page. I should explain; when I changed identities, the old one would disappear, right down to the phone number no longer being in service. But I realized I might meet some people along the way that I may wish to reconnect with later, so I had decided that I would create a separate MySpace page for every identity. If someone really wanted to contact one of my old identities, MySpace should be one place where they would look for me. They could send a friends request, and I could decide whether I wanted to be contacted or not.
I had no reason to think that anyone would want to contact "Tom"—but I was wrong. As "Tom," I had spent a few nights with a high-price call girl named Julie who worked under the name of Heather; she later texted me to tell me she had quit the business. She had moved back to her hometown of Oklahoma City last I heard; although I knew she credited me with helping her decide to leave the sex industry, really I was just a former customer to her. I had no reason to think she would want to contact me—but I discovered that in fact she had been trying to reach me for three months, with increasing urgency. She had even left me her direct cell phone number in several messages; I figured it didn't hurt to call.
The first time I called her, she was relieved that I was finally calling her, but she couldn't talk at the time. She said she would call back later that night. I told her to make note of the number I was calling from, it was my new one. I had no idea what to expect.
Finally she called me back. She filled me in that she was going to school, taking classes at the local community college. She had bought a condo with the money she had saved up as an escort in Vegas, and she was sharing it with a new boyfriend, who was also a student. Even after buying the condo she had some money left, so they had been in decent financial shape—until her boyfriend got sick. They found a lump on one of his testicles, which they removed and he had gone through additional chemotherapy. He seemed to be completely remitted, but as a student he didn't have any health insurance. She had spent all of her remaining savings on his medical bills, and they had taken out all the student loans they qualified for, but they were still $15,000 short—and the medical collectors were becoming aggressive. If she didn't pay them soon, she was going to have to sell their condo; selling quickly in a soft market, she would be lucky to get half of its market value back. She started to sob briefly when she said she had worked hard to get the life she now had; she really didn't want to start over again. She needed to find a way to make $15,000 quickly.
"I'm guessing this is the part where I come in," I said, mildly annoyed. I felt bad for her, but I was not about to become a charity for retired hookers.
She picked up my annoyance right away. "Look, I think you would have the money, but I would never just ask you to give me $15,000. If anything, I already owe you—you were so nice to me in Vegas that you gave me the courage to try to reclaim a life for myself again. I didn't call to beg...I called to propose an....arrangement...where I might be able to work to earn the money."
I had no idea where she was going with this. "What sort of arrangement did you have in mind?"
"I can't go back to Vegas. I really don't want to have sex with complete strangers anymore, let alone having to worry about how my boyfriend would react if it came out what I was doing," she said, "but I don't think of you as a stranger. I feel I can trust you; truth is, I kind of like you, and I think I would like you even more if I got to know you better."
"Well, thanks I guess," I said, still perplexed, "but what does that have to do with your needing $15,000?"
"How would you like to be my sugar daddy?" she replied, turning up the sultriness in her voice. "I can be a real, real good little girl..."
I wasn't sure I was understanding her right. "Sugar daddy? Excuse me if I'm being slow, but what exactly do you mean by that?" I asked.
"It means that you take care of me like you were my rich daddy, and I show you my appreciation by giving you some of that special sugar only I can give." she purred. "I kept a lot of my old tools of the trade from when I was working, I could dig them out again..."
"Wait, I'm confused. Are you offering me sex for money?" I asked. It sure sounded like it. "How is that different from going back to hooking?"
"One, rather than having sex with a complete stranger every night, it would be having sex with someone I know—you" she explained. "Two, I wouldn't have to go out looking for johns, so there's no risk of getting arrested. And three—what makes this a good deal for you—there's no fixed rate of exchange. You pay a prostitute a set fee, but as a sugar daddy, everything is voluntary. I've told you how much I need, but it's up to you what if anything you want to give me. And since I'm dependent on your good will for what I want, it's in my interest to make you as happy as possible so that you'll want to give me what I need." "So you'd basically be trying to earn $15,000 worth of good will from me by satisfying me as much a possible," I paraphrased.
"Whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want it, as often as you want" she purred.
Hmm. By the sound of it, this was an open invitation to a weekend of wall-to-wall fucking. And one thing I knew from my prior experiences with Julie, she was pretty damn good at giving a man EXACTLY what he liked. I couldn't deny being at least a little interested. I told her I'd think about it.
