After the Casino party I once again foreswore alcohol and became a normal, proper girl. No more outrageous exhibitionism, and certainly no more promiscuity. My best friend Mary did the same. Instead we enjoyed our boyfriends, Mike for me, and Tony for Mary. To my surprise Mike seemed OK with this, and only gave me occasional pressure to go on display for other men, so to speak, and I was able to resist it. This is primarily due to not drinking.
I still had some issues with other boys on campus, since they had seen my exhibitionism at the Casino party, and once you see a girl in your class walking through the pretend casino topless and almost bottomless as well, I guess you do not forget it easily. So I got a lot of looks, and some rude and disrespectful comments, but they became less and less frequent with time. I also got some boys who wanted to date me, of course, envisioning no doubt a night of unbridled sex.
I was quite pleased with my life. I was surprised that Mike seemed happy too, but it was all for the better. OK, truth be told, I really did miss my former exhibitionist behavior. Indeed, I missed it a lot. While life was good, it was now fairly humdrum, too. Bit I did not want to deal with the consequences of that kind of behavior.
So I got into my schoolwork with a vengeance. I had always been a top student in high school and was in the honors bubble, and things came easily to me. In college however I had to pay more attention and to work. I was taking computer science (my major), a literature survey course, a philosophy course, a math course, and an economics class. I entered with advanced standing in math and computer science, so I was taking advanced classes in those subjects and they took a lot of work.
My specialty was studying how to defend computer systems from hackers. I really loved the subject. In the process, I became a pretty good hacker myself, and I could enter well-defended systems and not even leave a trace of my presence, unless I wanted to do so.
In some sense hacking into someone's personal computer and reading his files, intimate or not, and him never knowing I had been there, was a thrill very different and yet somehow related to the thrill of showing off forbidden parts of my body to strangers.
My college was an elite one, with a mixture of the children of rich parents, and smart but poor students. Mike's family was rich; mine was poor. For me, the difference between $100 and $200 was huge, more than 10 hours work at minimum wage. Not so for my boyfriend Mike, for example.
I am telling you all this because it is relevant to what comes next. In the late spring of my freshman year, after my 19th birthday, Mike took me once again to a nice restaurant. He applied some pressure on me to take a drink. He seemed to want me to do so more than he usually did, and I could tell something was up. So I obliged and ordered the cocktail specialty of the restaurant, which Mike assured me was delicious. It was indeed.
I was curious what was up, but did not inquire, just sat there smiling and trying to look pretty. Mike finally got around to it. He has a cousin, Philip, who is much older. Philip is 27. (Mike is 20, and I am 19, as I said.). Philip is a banker in New York City, and he has been invited to dinner at the home of his boss, a high executive of the bank.
"Well, that's nice for your cousin," I said. "He must be doing well."
"Yes, quite well. He has become fairly wealthy." Mike never said rich; he always used the word wealthy, or the terms "comfortable," or "well off." I was a country girl, and I used the word rich, and was proud to use it. I did not have the finesse to distinguish between the different types of rich. For me, rich was rich.
A long silence ensued. Finally I could not stand it anymore, and I said, "It's always nice to learn about your many and varied cousins, Mike, but is there a special reason you mention Philip to me now, for the first time?" I knew of course that there was, but what the reason was I could not imagine.
Mike was still silent, so I added, "Is he coming to visit, or something?" I was reminded of when his twin cousins Eric and Alex came, and I ended up having sex with both of them, something Mike arranged and wanted. I felt dirty afterwards, as if I had been pimped out. It had been of course strictly my decision to fuck each of them (both on the same night; the night of the Casino party, when I things got out of control), but still, I felt I had been manipulated into making that choice. Those days were over for me.
Mike finally spoke. "No, he's not coming to visit. He asked me a favor is all. But it is a big favor."
"Well, tell me about it then. Maybe I can give some helpful advice," I replied cheerfully.
"The favor involves you," Mike said in a low volume, as if he were ashamed of himself.
"Me?" I said somewhat incredulously. "How in heaven's name could I help a banker?"
"It's simple, actually. Philip works all the time and has not had any time for a social life. He has no friends outside of work, and certainly no girl friends," Mike began.
"Doesn't he have male needs? Your whole family seems to be oversexed," I replied, again remembering the twins, not to mention Mike's own large appetite for sex.
"There are working women for that. Very expensive ones," Mike replied with some hesitancy. Then he quickly added, "All the bankers use them."
"Oh," I replied. "Charming."
Then Mike broke down and spilled the beans. "Philip's boss wants him to bring his girlfriend. Philip does not think he can bring a call girl as his girl friend, but feels he must bring someone; someone who won't embarrass him. He needs someone with an education, who is a sweet woman, smart, pretty, and hopefully sexy, too."
"Sounds like a tall order if you ask me. You are asking me, right?"
"Yes," Mike replied.
"Well, I do not see why you're asking me. I have no idea how Philip can solve this problem, without doing the obvious thing: He needs to go out into the world and meet someone, and then fall for her, and she for him. Why can't he do that?"
"The dinner is in a week."
"Oh," I replied. "OK," I added, "now I am flummoxed. There is no way I can think of to help your cousin. He's in a spot where there is no escape."
"He's a banker, Joanie. Bankers find solutions. In this case his solution is fraud."
Amused, I chuckled, and then said, "Well, that does jive with my impression of bankers, all right. But what exactly do you mean by fraud?"
Mike sat up straight in his chair and looked me square in the eyes, and said, "He wants to take you as his date. He wants you to pretend to be his girlfriend."
There was a long silence. Then I got angry. "Mike how many of your cousins do you want me to fuck, anyway? Stop pimping me out!" I said, a bit too loud. Mike sank in his chair, embarrassed.
"Joanie you have this all wrong. It's not a set up. He will not come on to you but will treat you with respect, courtesy and gratitude. He gave me his word," Mike replied in his most reassuring tone.
Then he added, "You will be doing him, and hence also me, a huge favor. And you may even have fun and enjoy it. Plus you will get an all expenses paid trip to New York City, put up in a fancy hotel, and given a budget to buy fancy clothes to wear on the date. You can of course keep the clothes. Money is not an object here."
I had never been to New York City. I'm a small town girl from the countryside. Mike had taught me most of what I knew about the sophisticated life. And he was right: I did like the finer things in life. And it certainly would be exciting to go to New York City.
Then Mike almost ruined the deal when he added, "And in addition to all that, Philip says he'll give you $1,000 for your time and his gratitude for helping him out of a jam."
It was beginning to sound perilously close to prostitution, it seemed to me. Anyway that seemed to be all Philip knew about women, judging from Mike's comments. Give them enough money, and they're yours for the night.
I said, "That is a huge amount of money. He's going to want me to put out for that. No way. Forget about it. And by the way, I'm not your thousand dollar whore." I knew he called me that affectionately, to tease me. It also turned me on.
But this seemed like reality. And being a $1,000 whore in my fantasy life was a whole lot different than the prospect of being one in reality! The former was erotic for me; the latter was gross and disgusting.
"Joanie, you are taking this the wrong way. He will be completely above board. He'll be totally correct. He knows you are my girl friend and will respect that. He only needs you to act like his girlfriend, not to be his girlfriend," Mike said in a torrent or words.
"You mean the way your cousins the twins respected that I was your girl friend?" I said sarcastically.
Mike replied, "Look my love, if sex is what he wants, he can get it anytime. And he pays much more than $1,000. More like two to four thousand dollars a night with a call girl."