Have you ever wondered what happiness actually is? Pleasure? Hope? Love? Varying combinations of all these things?
If someone gave you absolute power - do you think you could find absolute happiness? Maybe you think you could. Unlimited money? Any woman or man you desire at the drop of a hat willing to do anything you ask?
As I sit here right now, surrounded by the most beautiful women you could imagine, all of them willing to do anything I ask, more money in my bank account than I could spend in a thousand lifetimes, anything I want to eat or drink just a command away, I feel pretty sure that none of these things have much to do with happiness.
There is only one true happiness and it is chemical. I reach across the bed and grab the tube of gel on the table next to me. All eyes in the room are suddenly focused intensely on me. I unscrew the cap, squeeze the tube onto my chest and tell two of the women nearest me to massage it into every part of my naked body. As they start to massage the gel into my skin I close my eyes and lie back on the bed. There is only one true happiness and it is chemical.
***
I wasn't always this way, it is important that people realise that. When I'm dead and gone, I hope people don't judge me by the terror and chaos that I leave behind. Read this story and understand how things came to be. We are all just playing the parts that we have been cast for in life, villain or hero, it doesn't matter - you just play the part you were given.
I was born into a happy and wealthy family in an affluent suburb of Charleston, South Carolina. My mom doted on me, and my dad worked hard and grew very wealthy.
I was never clear about the source of my father's wealth. There were rumours but my father would always laugh them off if I dared to ask him about them. He travelled all over the world for business, and seemed to own a lot of companies offshore but that is all I really knew.
It hadn't always been that way. When my parents first met they were flat broke and lived together in a tiny apartment in a shitty neighbourhood. My dad start out grafting on building sites as a labourer. He didn't earn much but he worked every waking hour for years until he had enough money to start his own small construction company.
I won't bore you with the details (like he has bored me with the details a thousand times over the years) but his company grew rapidly to become one of South Carolina's leading construction companies.
He was very proud of his success, his story as a self made man - living, breathing proof of the American dream.
But it was his dream, not my mothers. She watched him drive the company forward with a hidden sadness. She talked fondly to me of the days when they struggled to make ends meet and had to cuddle up on the sofa to keep warm at night, always keen to reminisce about the early days of their marriage.
My mother was an introvert. Not shy, just reserved in her own calm way, but always seeking peace and solitude rather than noise and other people. She was very beautiful in a traditional kind of way, tall with high cheekbones and pale skin, all framed by gorgeous curls of long, auburn hair. Her long, thin body moved with such elegance and grace that it sometimes appeared as if she floated like a ghost.
We had a good relationship, my mother and I. During my early teenage years, we would spend most weekends reading together by the pool during the day and then watching a film together on the sofa in the evening. We existed together mostly in a comfortable, loving silence, occasionally punctuated by some small sign of love and affection from her.
My mother always took such care of her appearance. She was permanently on some kind of diet and aiming to achieve some weight goal or other. At weekends, she would retire to her room in the late afternoon for a few hours and then come down the stairs looking like a dazzling queen. She took such care to make sure her make up, jewellery, outfit were perfect and then she presented herself like a visiting monarch.
I never really gave it much thought until I was older and I realised that she was desperately hoping my father would return home and see her looking so glamorous. But he never did, he was out all day every day and most evenings. Sometimes he would stagger though the door in the early hours of the morning, but most nights he wouldn't come home at all. We never discussed it and it must have been a constant source of distress for my mother.
But everything has its time, and there isn't much time in a hormone driven teenager's life for weekends alone with his mother. She tried to hold on to me, to persuade me - even guilt me - into spending time with her, but my mind was elsewhere.
My mother was many things but she was certainly not an authority figure, I don't know if I ever heard her raise her voice my whole life. So with my father out all the time enjoying life, and my mother hidden away, I had a freedom that most kids could only dream of.
I took full advantage and my life became a whirlwind of parties, drugs and fun. Like a caged animal which gets released, I felt a hedonistic hunger to experience the world and all its pleasures to the max.
My father, who seemed to exist in a world of endless parties, fundraising events and 'business entertainment', relished and encouraged my new found party boy lifestyle. He got my friends and I on the guest list for all the most exclusive parties, secured entry into the VIP areas of the most popular clubs downtown, and his name alone could get us into anywhere we wanted to get.
My friends were endlessly envious of my father but I just felt embarrassed by the never ending midlife crisis that he seemed to be living through. Having the knowledge my mother was probably waiting at home for him all dressed up, while he wasn't giving her a second thought broke my heart on a weekly basis.
It was at one of my father's parties that I met the love of my life, the enduring obsession that has haunted my every fantasy and occupied my mind from the day I first set eyes on her.
I had seen Fran at a few parties previously, and it wasn't possible to see Fran without remembering her. She was like a miniature goddess, a model of perfection compacted into a tiny, five foot tall body.
Everyone seemed to know Fran, and everyone who knew her loved her. You could always tell if she was at the same club or party because she naturally drew all eyes to her. I can't really describe it, she was never a show off and didn't ever seem to crave the attention, but when she was in a room she just became the centre of gravity.
Anyway, the first time I met Fran was during the greatest summer of my life. I was enjoying a life without any responsibility or worries that most kids can only dream off. My father was hosting a party on his new yacht/party boat just off Sullivan's Island Beach. It was technically my 19th birthday party but that was just the excuse he used. In reality it was just another one of his famous parties which attracted the great and good from the area.
My friends and I had spent the day on the beach with some girls we had met earlier in the week enjoying cocktails in the sunshine together.
I had paired up with a cute brunette called Georgia who was desperately trying to persuade me to get her and her friends an invite to my father's party boat that evening. It tells you everything you need to know about my father that before he would agree he insisted that I send him photos of the girls via WhatsApp. He agreed to three of them but not the fourth, called Emma - what a fucking asshole. I am pretty sure that somewhere in the world right now, Emma is telling her therapist about the time she was excluded from attending a boat party by an overweigh 50 year old man because he didn't think she was pretty enough. And maybe worst of all, her friends all happy to go without her.
What made the whole thing most ridiculous was that Emma was easily the sexiest of the four girls in the group. Her face has ok, pretty but with a large, wide mouth and gummy smile, but her body - wow - it was fucking amazing. Long, slim legs and a slim waist which was accentuated by the tight green dress that she wore.
She also had a great pair of breasts and seemed to be very aware of it judging by the amount of cleavage that her dress revealed. All in all, her hourglass figure was a perfect ten and my asshole dad had made a stupid mistake.
For her part, I think she had been so humiliated that she just wanted to go back to her hotel room and cry. But I managed to convince her that it was just my dad being an asshole on purpose - nothing to do with how she looked, just him on a power trip. I promised her that I would sort it out and called my father who was in a bar further down the beach getting ready for the boat party.
My father found the whole things hilarious and wanted to know what was so special about this girl. I told him he was being an asshole and so he said he would send someone over to have a look.
We sat on the beach waiting, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine and the music which was blasting out of the party boat docked at the marina a short way down the beach from us. I was singing and dancing drunkenly with a few of our group when I became aware of a quiet voice from behind me saying my name.
I turned and looked down to see a stunningly beautiful, miniature woman. When I say miniature, I mean five foot tall and less than 90lbs. She had long, dark hair which curled at the ends, huge bright green eyes, and a cute little face with full lips. She was wearing a pink swimsuit and a smile that was full of such warmth and happiness that it was impossible not to return it.
Standing behind her was a woman who could have been more different. Tall and slim with a disdainful look etched onto her face. She had long, brown hair and a classically beautiful, model-like face with high cheek bones. But all her other features were secondary to the pair of huge, almost comically big tits which, somehow managed to be both saggy yet full and firm looking at the same time.
I'm not kidding when I say they drew attention, everyone around me was staring in the same direction, at this woman with two oversized udders attached to her chest. Arrogance and confidence radiated from her as she stood waiting for her friend. The kind of arrogant confidence that only comes from women who understand the power that breasts have over men.
"It's Richard isn't it?" My eyes were drawn back to the gorgeous little brunette standing in front of me as she waited for me to answer her.
"My father sent you?" I asked uncertainly.
"No, I sent myself" she said in a soft, Midwestern accent. She held out her hand in greeting. I grasped her hand, aware that mine completely engulfed her own small hand, and we shook.
