While it's a welcome change for the girl to message you first on the FireWood dating app, the message you generally don't expect is "You will go down on my friend, won't you?"
This is, come to think of it, not the message you expect from anyone, anywhere.
All the same, this is the message I get half way through my shift on a Tuesday night from Sonia, aged 29.
I'm not the kind of guy to go around sharing the strange messages I get, even if they are sexy. I think about not replying, but I'm horny, lonely with nothing to distract me from writing code for this project, so I message back thirty minutes later:
"Sounds kinky, but why your friend and not you?"
Then I think about it and add "haha" and a tongue out emoji in case this is a prank.
It takes over twenty minutes for the response, even though I check my phone multiple times in between and take a five minute break to fully appreciate Sonia's photos.
Sonia is the kind of girl who you expect to unmatch you in a few minutes of boosting your ego. Or maybe you're a stud, but for an average guy like me, she is stunning. A voluptuous brunette, with piercing blue cat-eyes. There is maybe something a little unsettling about the photos. Every one is an undershot, which makes her look imperious. And there is something arrogant in her smile, like it's to an in-joke.
Here she sits, dressed for a night out perhaps in a short black dress, made to show off tight skin and cleavage of her heaving breasts, her long smooth legs crossed delicately. One hand holds the wine glass, the other is resting on her hip, forming a fist. It looks like she's talking to a small child.
The second, she hugs another thin, beautiful blonde friend and they're both laughing while looking down at the camera, somehow cruelly. They're dressed casually, but sophisticated in light blouses and dark flannels. Is this the friend she's asking for? It's fine with me if it is.
The next photo is a strange one. It's the inside of (her?) house, sparkling and lavish. Obviously just cleaned by the three maids bowing in the darkness of the background. Why share this on a dating app? To show off her wealth, I suppose, which makes it all the more suspicious that this is a prank.
The fourth photo shows her in a two-piece too small white beach bikini, a little more tanned than the others. You can appreciate the true beauty of the figure; the smooth curve of her breasts, even as she sticks her tongue out at the camera with those same self-confident eyes, just visible behind the sunglasses.
The fifth photo, maybe the most odd, is a profile shot of her, without make-up and somehow prettier for it, wearing a silver necklace with perhaps twenty shiny metal keys. In this one not even her eyes are smiling as she stares into the camera. It is a dangerous gaze.
The profile just reads "This is your shot."
Okay, so maybe I took fifteen minutes checking the photos out.
"Because I want you to go down on my friend," her anti-climatic reply reads. "Will you do it for me?"
This has got to be a joke, I think. Or maybe she really is crazy. That might explain her interest in me. If that's the case, I can take it. I'll put up with her being all kinds of mental if I can get a date. It's been six months after all.
So I wait as long as I can, five minutes as it happens, before messaging her "if it gets me a date with you! :D But show me a picture first."
The reply comes almost immediately. "Thank you, I knew by your pictures I could trust you. Come at 7 tonight. My apartment is 17 York Street, Flat 8. Phone me when you get there. x"
Then she sends me the number. But no picture.
I muse a while, thinking how this date might go. It could be a mental girl and her ugly girl friend. It could be a bunch of teenage boys playing a prank and laughing at me when I turn up.
So I wait until I'm ready to take a break, then I phone the number.
She answers on the second ring. "Hello?" she says, confidently. Sonia has a warm, smooth voice, with just a hint of flirtatiousness in it, even though she can't know who is on the other end.
I clear my throat quickly. "Hello," I say. And then because I can't think of anything else I ask "is this Sonia?"
"Yes, it is!" she says. "Who is this?" The voice is playful as well, I decide.
"Look- my name's Matt, from - from FireWood..."
"Hello Matt," she says, her voice taking on an extra layer of coquettishness "you're ver-ry eager."
"I just... I can't quite understand your messages. You want me for a friend?"
"Oh no!" says Sonia with mock concern. "Oh no, no! I want you all to myself Matt. But I want you to go down on my friend for me. Can you do that?"
I am shaking slightly. Sonia's voice, her words, have managed to give me an erection in the work cafeteria, so I sit down at an empty table.
"Send me a picture, please," I say quietly.
"You already have a picture," Sonia says, and then the line clicks dead.
I
have
a picture? I think, as I drive uptown. What does that mean? Is it her friend then, as I hoped? Or is it someone else I know? The thought scares me.
And
who
the
hell
. Who the hell asks someone; not to 'date my friend,' not to 'kiss my friend' or even to 'fuck my friend,' but to '
go down
on my friend?' The arrogance of it is astonishing.
But here I am I think, doled up in a fresh shirt and jacket, well groomed and shaven with freshened breath all, possibly to give head to this nutcase's friend. Of course, I tell myself, I'm not really going to do that. Not unless Sonia can do 'something' for me. It will be different when I'm there.
Uptown is very fancy. For a junior software developer for a medium-sized company like me, it's not a place I'm visiting every night out or anything. York Street is in the residential part of Uptown, and I have even less reason to be there.
When I get to York Street I realise I'm looking at some of the most expensive apartments in the city. The ones with ballroom sized windows in elegant stone buildings, ornamented inside and out. I can actually see through the street level windows chandeliers and grand pianos as well as high-backed leather futons and Indian-style tapestried carpets. I pull up on the other side of the street to number 17 and kill the engine, the lights.
If I'm being pranked here, I think, it's by some real rich-kids. Bored brats with the money to hire a seductive escort just to make the Goddamn prank call.
Even if it's all for real, what am I here for? Just to give oral to some rich ugly girl's friend then leave, a whore without payment? But remembering Sonia's voice on the phone, I stay where I am. She said "I want you." I look at her photos; the rise of that full creamy thigh, disappearing into the hem of the dress. That face...
I get out of the car and I call her, no longer thinking about what I am doing. She answers.
"You're a few minutes late, Matt."
"I'm sorry. I'm here now," I say.
Just as well. I notice they actually have a doorman, standing outside in this freezing cold street.
"Jo-Jo will let you in," she says. She clicks dead.
At the same time as Jo-Jo is fixing his cold stare on me at the top of the stairs, his pager beeps. He checks it, then looks up smiling. He beckons me. "Right this way, Sir."
I smile at him. I'm not going to hold a grudge. He opens one of the tall glass doors for me and I step into a huge, plush hall way. The stairs and walls are adorned gold, the carpet a rainforest green. I follow Jo-Jo to one of six elevators. He opens the door by swiping a key-card against a black panel.
"Level 8," he says. "The Penthouse."
Then he turns and walks away. I press 8 and the doors slide shut. Even the lift is plush, mirrored on three sides and carpeted. It flies up eight floors.
When the doors open I expect to be in a hallway. But instead they open right into Sonia's lobby. I know this because standing right there, hands on hips, is Sonia herself.
She is even more elegant and beautiful in person. Her hair in thick, full, hazelnut curls that fall around her bare white shoulders. Her black, low cut top, the white trousers scream out at once more style and less effort than what I am wearing. Only despite her beauty it feels like she hasn't sweat too much over everything. The white plims seem more for comfort than to impress, the pretty face adorned with little makeup outside the red lips.
I take all this in as I move towards her and I notice something else awkward. Something that online photos doesn't prepare you for unless you specifically ask for this information. She's about three inches taller than I am.
If this bothers Sonia, she doesn't show it. She responds to what must be my nervous smile with a full-faced beam. She shows off her bright white teeth and her eyes laugh as if I am more than she had hoped for.
"Hello, Matt!" she says, "welcome to my humble home!"
And makes the first move by hugging me there and then.
It's almost an awkward hug because I don't expect it and when she moves into me my chin crashes into her shoulder, highlighting how much smaller I am. But she maintains a tight, almost smothering grip and lets me go, still beaming.
"It's a really nice place you have here," I mumble.
It seems stupid, not a worthy compliment of the hall I am standing in. But Sonia says "thank you!" And takes me hand.
She leads me through the hall, past a few huge portraits of ladies that I don't have time to take in and rich, china and jade vases to what must be her living room and kitchen.
It is a huge room, surely the biggest in the building, with one wall a glass view into the city and French doors opening on to a giant balcony.
Sitting on the couch is not some ugly shrimp, but the thin blonde beauty I saw in the photo. She is wearing only a white cotton bath robe, her hair still wet and hanging down behind her. But it is clearly the same girl. The same aristocratic nose, delicate cheekbones. The same white, lovely legs.
"This is Veronica," say Sonia, leading me to her. She lets go of my hand and I reach it out to Veronica.
She looks down from me to my hand and then back up. She is not smiling, though her eyes dance, like Sonia. She seems for me to be waiting for me to say or do something.
"How do you do?" I ask. But Veronica does and says nothing.
I slowly drop my hand and feel myself begin to sweat.
"Would you like a drink, Matt?" Sonia asks, as if nothing untoward had happened. She is already moving behind the bar, which of course, they have.
"Yes, please," I say, sitting down on a high-backed white, pin-cushioned armchair. I am not sitting next to Veronica because she never takes her eyes off of me and it is unnerving.
I look at the floor, around, awkwardly.
"You... Are roommates?" I ask.
Veronica says nothing.