Dad married early, and they had just one kid, which was me. Trouble was, Mom died having me. Dad got a girl, late teens old, to baby-sit and help to take care of me. Then he got the sitter 'in trouble,' (i.e., pregnant) and had to marry her about a year later. She lost that child late in the pregnancy, which left just me. So I called her "Mimi" from my earliest memory. There must have been some trouble; I just didn't know exactly what, 'cause Dad and "Mimi" split when I was in middle school. It was a pretty good marriage, they both said, they just drifted apart. Actually they both had some affairs. Dad told me about Mimi's affairs, but I never heard about her side of the story.
Anyway, the court assigned me to Dad, as he had all of the family money. I suppose I should have suspected something with that arrangement, but I was just a kid, what did I know. Mimi left town, and dropped out of sight, except for birthday and Christmas cards, I thought. I stayed in L. A. with Dad.
Dad took care of me, but continued his affairs, each a little shorter than the one before, until he was down to one-night stands with hookers. Some of the grunting sex he did was getting kinky, and I knew there were drugs in the house. After the divorce, he seemed to get out of control more often. There was booze and worse. He had plenty of money, so I didn't worry too much, until I came home just after my high school graduation night, and found him dead in the living room, dick hanging out and recently crusted, with a needle still in his arm. The coroner said it was a goofball, heroin and cocaine mixed, and really pure stuff. Plus a long-untreated case of clap, serious heart disease and advanced AIDS. I got tested and passed OK, but I never suspected things had gone that far.
Dad's attorney was a brick, right then, and helped me obtain emancipation, declaring me to be an adult at just past 18. There were a couple of term life-insurance policies, in addition to his investments, which netted me about a million as seed money. So I passed up college, and took crash courses in investing at the public library, a couple of brokerages and night school courses. I got a discount broker and started a supervised investing program, setting up things into groups of ultra-conservative investment for income and moderate-risk investment for growth. I made money finishing up the dot.com boom, and kept it in a cash position through the bust. He helped me sell the house, so I could move into an apartment, and set up a short-term trust to keep my money safe until I reached 21. Not too scruffy for a 20 year old guy.
This didn't leave much time for a social life, but the girls in high school were the usual, giggly airheads; or gold-diggers; or quiet and studious; or nascent social liberals and radicals. I wasn't in college, so college girls wouldn't give me the time of day, too. I couldn't meet girls in bars, either, being underage. Buy it from hookers, or go down to Tijuana? No thanks. So I made do with Freddy Feel-Good and his Funky Little Five Piece Band.
I had to inventory the house and its contents, for the estate sale. I decided to keep very little, on my attorney's advice. Business papers, tax records, stuff like that. Some of Mimi's old stuff, from a box in the back of the garage. And the contents of dad's safe. He'd never given out the combination, or told me how to get in, but I just applied a little psychology, searched his office, and found it written on the back of the fake picture of the life-size nude he had in his home office. Ten minutes, tops, to get it open.
That's when I discovered the pile of letters from "Mimi." He'd kept all of them from me. I couldn't bear to read them all. I also discovered that, for several years, his support checks—which I was publicly made aware of, mailing each one per month—were made out to a fake address. The money had gone for coke and junk. Even the letters I'd written had gone to the same fake address. She hadn't heard from either of us for a long time. Her coolly worded cards to me for Christmas and birthdays were fakes, handwritten and signed by a hired someone else.
[I can't say anything good about hard drugs. Pot and pills are OK, if you take care of yourself, use sparingly and stay focused on the good things in life. But the big drugs suck. They take over your life, and focus you down to the next few fixes, and to a totally self-centered view of everything, completely justified only to the user. 'Nuff said! ]
I checked out her real address. She'd wound up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and working a little dead-end job, when the support checks petered out. Nowhere near enough money to hire an attorney to get back payments made.
Sort of perversely, though, I leafed through the folder Dad had compiled on her, over the years. Oh, my, did she have some fun with Dad. There were even photos (Polaroid's) of some 'suggestive' poses. Probably tame by current standards (where girlfriends and wives pose waving American flags clenched tightly in their pussies) but kind of raw even for the 60's. I found myself with a boner before I realized that this was my "Mimi," fer God's sake. It took some time to fight it down. She was a topless looker, with straight black hair and eyes, and ... whoa, guy, get that turgid meat back down.
Dad had listed all her affairs, by name of lover and by acts committed. He'd even audiotaped some sessions, with a hidden microphone, onto cassette tape. Trembling a little, I played a couple. Jesus H. Christ could that girl squeal! There was one section where I didn't hear anything except for grunts, heavy breathing, Mimi's gasps of, "yes, yes, yes," and the liquid squelch and suck sounds of hot, sloppy-wet sex ... which grew more pronounced as the tape went on, and on, and on, until she loudly, explicitly and graphically came, over and over. Think about an articulate porn queen on speed. I thought I could hear the spunk of her lover, squirting out her body, with each spasming thrust. Aw, shit, now I had another ultra-rigid erection to get rid of. Cold water and frantic jacking off just barely got me back to normal.
When the financial stuff was done, I found myself comfortably invested, with a nice income, but no friends or commitments. Nearly everyone from school had gone off to college, got a job away from town, or disappeared in one way or another. The couple of 'friends' that were left hit me up every chance they had for handouts or backing this or that flimsy scheme. When I wouldn't come across and then dropped them, they complained to anyone who'd listen, slandered my name and reputation, and swore revenge.
Talking things over with my attorney (the brick), I somehow found myself on the road to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a car with most of my stuff in the back. No apartment, no ties.
I figured it out while stopping at a motel in El Paso. My "brick" attorney was lover number 2 (the suck/squelcher), and he'd been helping Mimi out with a check now and then. Married, with a jealous wife and three kids, he was worried about his past. I called him back, told him what I found, and let him hear the sound of a crosscut shredder, as I trashed every scrap of information about him in the files I found, including the audio tape (smashed, cut up; and burned). Then I asked him if he'd keep representing me, and where I was, and where headed, and would he please let Mimi know I was coming.
When I pulled into the gravel driveway, off a side street in Albuquerque, I was shocked to see the little apartment, a converted attic over a converted garage, back down a driveway past an old frame house close to the University campus. A cheap place, a starving-student joint. I arrived in the late afternoon.
