Bartered Orgasms with Agonies of Faith (Part Two.)
About 4,200 words. No gratuitous sex and all characters are fictional with no intended similarity to persons living or dead. All characters are adult or at least 18 years old in paragraphs elucidating sex. It is an attempt to consider the implications of whoring in momentous historic episodes of social, political and economic upheaval. Protected by national and international conventions as an original work product.)
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Maybe it was nothing more than a whore's unfathomable anxiety. Angst always intensified the misgivings that taunted Janet Conroy's nervous system as she began a tightly orchestrated weekend of methodical whoring.
But, on the other hand, it might be something else, more like a presentiment. The strained, at times acrimonious, dialogue with her husband during the drive to the hotel had uncharacteristically unnerved her.
"White" whores were no novelty in the upper reaches of Jo'burg's fractured societies. But, as her husband, James, had assessed contemptuously 15 minutes earlier, Janet's God given erotic power transcended mere saleable sexual merchandise.
Janet Conroy had alighted from her Mercedes in the loading zone of the upscale residential hotel; and, to the extent her four-inch stiletto heels permitted, she trotted to the entry. She paused and smiled dutifully as she handed the liveried doorman $20 before passing through the glass doors that were prized as museum pieces. The doors' massive polished brass frames and cut glass spoke of artistry of another day.
Momentarily, she glanced at her daughter who was waving from the rear window of the Mercedes as it inched away from the curb. Deepening shadows of nightfall obscured her husband's grim countenance as he concentrated on the traffic.
Little did she know that she was watching the departure of her husband and baby daughter for the last time. Life in Johannesburg, too often a nerve stripping ordeal, soon would become a nightmare of social pathologies. Social pathologists would bargain with the devil for the autopsy rights.
Involuntarily, she shuddered as she watched her husband pull the Mercedes back into the traffic of Parkhurst's Fourth Street, one of Johannesburg's fabled party night venues.
Standing in the residential hotel's marbled foyer, her eyes swept appreciatively around a reception room replete with massive oak paneling, cut-glass chandeliers and gilt edged trim. Any pleasure taken from viewing the setting, however, was deceptive; for the opulence and grandeur no longer reflected a politically and socially integrated culture.
At the moment, no one in South Africa professed the "magic" required to define anything beyond crude caricatures. Of course, there were social scientists who ventured into the social quagmire, postured for two weeks and then wrote a "definitive account" of the "frightening conundrum."
Once the observing social psychologist added the historic ingredient known academically as "Apartheid," all consideration tensed. Frightening implications seized the moment and all fell silent except the muck rakers.
Janet could see the girl in the "Gifts Etcetera Boutique" staring at her. She was accustomed to the awed gaze of young women.
Even the young brunette with genetically defiant blue eyes, who enjoyed the official label of "colored," knew about Janet. As the recherche whore, the practitioner of womb wizardry who bedazzled all who watched, Janet had become a paradox of a subculture celebrity. She was too conflicted by resentment and fear to enjoy her spontaneous and unsolicited fandom.
Janet casually knew this young woman as an office temp, one of the many college aged women who worked part time in the offices of the civic center. She always twitched her ass invitingly while maintaining the artful façade of a respectable maiden with the promise of compromise.
After watching the pretentious flirts flit and flaunt, Janet and Doctor Zo, the University of Chicago social scientist who headed her agency as an independent contractor, had begun to call them "Red Thong Girls." Their inspiration stemmed from the girl's collectively wearing red thongs and flashing their asses indiscriminately.
"Young pussy everywhere like a toxic elixir but not a drop to drink," Doctor Zo had mused one afternoon as he had observed the "thong maidens'" tactic of bending from the waste, hiking their microminis and revealing their red thongs, in effect flashing their naked asses.
"Pretend panties!" Janet had added as they compared notes.
"Red Thong Girls" had invaded the hallways of all agencies. But they seemed to target Doctor Aarabbi Harper Zo's Agency for Economic Strategies. Academics of all ages and descriptions from around the globe, predominantly men, visited the agency daily. Most were economists or fiscal experts.
Trim and miniskirted with smooth skin of creamed coffee color, the girl's snapping hot eyes betrayed her intense desire to be Janet. She was a wannabe whore, a scrubbed young "respectable" emerging triumphantly from adolescence cloaked in the subversive illusions of malign grandeur.
Janet abhorred the type and usually avoided patronizing the lobby shops. She had done nothing to promote this perverse admiration. And she knew intuitively that the unpredictable recognition was not a manifestation of healthy respect.
Almost too late, Janet had realized that she would need condoms for the party that would begin in Doctor Zo's suite when the "knock-up roulette" ended in Colonel Bonny's domain several floors below. Such a seemingly unimportant lapse as failing to bring condoms for the night's second whoring venue had burgeoned into a threatening vortex of emotions.
"Damn James!" she mumbled as she inhaled and quickly exhaled in an effort to exhaust the tension. Her failure to pinch off her husband's habitual harangue in the first sentence should have warned her that tonight's air was different. It was more noxious than usual.
Never in her three years of becoming an exemplary whore had her husband persisted in his bitter resistance to the point of rupturing their tacitly agreed coexistence. As she prepared for her crucial weekend party, moreover, James had assaulted her intellectually with a strangely reinforced fervor. The abruptly festering conflict had distracted her at the time she needed to be concentrating on the critical aspects of her busy weekend.
She entered the shop and faced the smirking girl.
Only after she had asked for the prophylactics did Janet realize that three dozen lubricated condoms justifiably would raise an observer's brow.
"I know you," the girl said. "You're one of those doctors that does government studies."
"Yes?" Janet said, appraising the young woman critically.
"I've seen you around the office," Janet said curtly, attempting to hurry the transaction along.
Pushing the four boxes of condoms across the counter with one hand and grasping the money with the other, the clerk in the luxury residential hotel's "Gifts and Etcetera Shop" smirked as if in triumph. The neophyte obviously was struggling in her attempt to present herself to Janet as experienced and sophisticated beyond her years.
They both stared at the tastefully burlesqued condom boxes, the artistry of some advertising agency's copywriter. The girl smiled engagingly, an impressive effort to convey her adventurous interests to Janet.
"Do you have a question about my purchase?" Janet asked tonelessly.
As the girl put the money in the cash drawer, she shrugged and her smile became a challenging sigh. Janet was impressed with the girl's dramatic skills.
"Yes," the girl answered, lowering the volume on the small TV beside the merchandise scanner. "I am curious about your needing 48 condoms when you're about to be gangbanged in a 'knock-up roulette' party."
"I see," Janet said containing her apprehension, now appraising the clerk more carefully. "And why would your curiosity be so active where I am concerned?"
"I am always excited when someone makes a fortune in one night with her pussy," the clerk answered.
"So, you are interested in the pussy market," Janet said.
"I keep my eyes open," the girl said. "Colonel Bonny has some VIF's lined up for you tonight."
"VIF's?" Janet repeated, staring at the girl without disguising her contempt.
"Very important fuckers!" the girl whispered conspiratorially. "What will you do with the baby if the winner of the 'knock-up' doesn't take it?"
"How do you know so much about Colonel Bonny and what he's doing tonight?" Janet demanded in a low voice, cutting her words in sharp emphatic gutterals.
"I know many things," the girl chirped, her snapping black eyes attempting to effect a taunting though benign devilment.
"You are implying that you have talked to Colonel Bonny," Janet said, narrowing her eyes and tensing her lips in a thin line.
She was compelled to intimidate the "insolent little sham slut."
"I said 'hello' to him as he took your bang gangers to the restaurant awhile ago," the girl responded, glancing at the ornate clock in the lobby. "They should be coming out about now if they're going to be on time to start the grand opera of fucking."
"You could be too smart for your panties," Janet whispered menacingly.
"What makes you think I wear panties," the girl sneered. "I'm no common little tart from a Cape Town whore slum."
"You could have fooled me," Janet said.
Shrill giggles, a semitone above natural pitch, permeated the domed lobby. Janet swiveled and surveyed the lobby involuntarily in fear that the girl's crudity had drawn attention to them. Only one desk clerk looked up from his computer screen.
Locking eyes with the girl, Janet relaxed her weight on one leg and considered the situation critically. What was the girl's motive?
"Okay, out with it! You want something from me," Janet said cryptically. "Don't waste my time."
"I want you to help me," the girl said.
"You want money?" Janet asked, narrowing her eyes as a warning.
"Yes, but I don't want a hand out," the girl answered. "I want you to teach me how to fuck and help me get started making real money."
"I don't have time for amateurs," Janet said. "What makes you think you can be a whore?"
