Chapter 1. Hell in a Bucket
"I'm so fucked. He owed me fifteen grand!" I was sitting with my good friend Al at our Wednesday table in the corner window of Fink's Fine Foods on a foggy San Francisco morning. I sat with my back to the window, slumped down in the seat with a hoodie down over my eyes, oblivious to the street action we so often snarkily commented on. "I need ten thousand like tomorrow. I'm two months behind on rent, my credit cards are maxed out, and I have a box of graham crackers and a jar of peanut butter in the fridge."
"That's a lot. Wouldn't your parents would loan you that?"
"Probably. I can't ask them."
"Won't."
"I've cost them so much money. They're retired. My Dad was a bus driver. I just can't." Al knows my entire history: overlooked middle child, hormonal avalanche in middle school, precocious, then promiscuous in high school, majored in partying at community college. It took an arrest and two whacks at rehab to learn how to tolerate myself. I got sober, started running, dropped twenty pounds, finished college, got a career. I didn't want to ask anyone for the money.
"Maybe I should sell my body," I said sourly.
"Do you mean that?"
"Maybe. Beats a second job cleaning offices overnight."
Al gave me a very strange look. "I know men who'd pay to sleep with you."
"Sure you do."
"I do," he said, "for sure."
"Seriously? Real guys you know right now?"
"Yes. At least two."
"Who would pay $10K to sleep with me?"
"You'd need a few guys, and a few days. I could," he said, in a tone that implied he didn't quite believe what he was saying, "organize it for you."
There had been a time when the only thing that felt good was sex. And vodka. Strip poker at the parties, blowjob contests in the living room, pairing off in dark corners, the night Katie pulled a ten-man train. At least I had my guys one at a time. "OK. Theoretically, if I did it, what would it take to make that much?"
"Well," Al said, "I'm just improvising here, but maybe a long weekend with four guys? $2500 each for a few days of unlimited access?"
"And you have two already?"
"Three."
"Didn't you just say two?" He looked steadily at me. I got it.
"You," I said. "You would pay to fuck me."
I met Al when he sat down next to me in my first class on my first day as a reentering sophomore at UC Davis. He was the first guy in ages who didn't hit on me within the first five minutes. We both were older, me out of rehab and on probation, going to meetings, working as a sales clerk at Macy's; him out of the Army after a tour in Afghanistan. His parents, both only children themselves, had died in a car accident the year before, when he was over there. They told him in the field, gave him two weeks bereavement leave, then discharged him before he came back. He lost his parents and his buddies all at once. We both needed a friend more than a lover.
"Yes," he said. "Yes I would."
"Could that destroy our friendship?"
"I'd think the oppositeβyou trust me, I could watch out for you. Get you water. Guard your consent."
"Why do I have to fuck you for the money?"
Al pulled a check out of his wallet, made it out for $2500, signed it, and pushed it in my direction. "You don't. But if you fuck anyone . . ."
I stared at the check sat on the table. "When I was drinking, and angry," I said, "and fucking everyone I met, I thought about becoming an escort. Tested it out. I got money from guys I would have slept with anyway. I was talking with an escort service when I got arrested." In rehab I couldn't wear the miniskirts and skimpy tops that used to be my uniform. Turns out I had a lot of sex because of those clothes, as if the sex proved I had right to wear them. "Now it's come back again, all these years later."
"A weekend isn't a career. You are a woman men desire."
Like most women I saw myself as a misshapen amalgam of flaws, but it was true that men liked the way it all came together.
"You'd really pay to fuck me?"
"Yes." He pointed to the check. "I'd also loan you this money and not fuck you."
"Why haven't you ever tried to fuck me before?"
"When we met you were still on hiatus. It was more fun to have a real relationship with you than it was to try and get into your pants."
Four guys. Three days. I have had one boyfriend and two briefer dalliances in the five years since I completed probation. Sex didn't drive my self-esteem anymore. "There was a night once, that summer after senior year, before everyone went off to college and adulthood, when I slept with my boyfriend and his best friend. It happened really naturally and I really liked it. They each came like three times and I lost count for myself. My rehab therapist assumed I had been coerced, but I felt worshipped."
"Worship," Al said, "would be doable."
I remembered, and my cheeks burned. "I'm not saying yes, but it would have to be out of town, someplace luxurious. I get my own bedroom and bathroom. I get my fee, and all expenses. Nice dinners. And a generous tip." I was aware that my grammar had suddenly gone from conditional to declarative. My body was tingling; half-shaped memories of cocks and chests and tongues flashed. I haven't had wild-ass sex for a long time.
"A tip is fine. So what would actually happen?"
"I could probably get each of you off twice a day for three days." After all, I'd gone on all weekend more than once with various boyfriends.
I saw him do the math. "Nope," Al said, "that's over $400 each time. It's gotta come down to around 200, 250."
I did that math. "Forty-five times over three daysβI don't think I could have done that at even my sluttiest. "
"So five days?"
"Too long. I'd get bored. And mean. So I need to provide additional services. How about this? For an extra 200 you can watch me fuck someone else."
"Just sit there?" he said. "Fifty."
"You pay more than that to see a play. A hundred."
"Deal." He wrote it down. "What else?"
"For 500 I'll masturbate for you."
"No," he said. "I can just have you do that during one of my six times with you over the weekend."
"You misunderstand. I'll do a strip and masturbation performance for all of you."
"With lap dancing?"
"Never done that before. I'm not the greatest dancer."
"I'm sure," he said dryly, "you can figure it out. Use a dildo with that?"
"Really? Okay."
"Okay," he said, making a note. "Can I pick the dildo?"
"Don't push your luck, buster."
"I'd pay you extra for a threesome," Al said.
"You give me an extra 500 and I'll do a threesome."
"200."
"200 per guy, and it counts as one encounter for each guy."
"200 per guy," he said, "up to all four of us a once."
"Really? You'd gangbang me?"
"Yes," he said. "Yes I would."
"I'll do that once, for an extra 1000 flat fee. Just don't beat up on me too badly."
"I'm glad," he said, "you're an athlete."
"Yes, well, we know how to suffer."
"Please, Jess. If this actually happens? No suffering, okay? Okay?"
"Okay, Al." Overcoming suffering is part of the pleasure, but it wasn't time to tell him that.