Bad-Old Days, Vol. 3

ESCORTED TO HELL

My ex-wife and I separated a number of times before finally calling it a day. These times apart lasted months--or even years. During one such separation the following occurred.
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I was drinking whiskey and snorting cocaine by myself. The whiskey and cocaine, I was fine with them. But the "by myself" part bugged me.

(An aside: cocaine causes bad ideas, really really bad ideas to seem like good ideas. No, not just good ideas, but GREAT ideas. Great ideas than can and often do get you robbed, maimed, humiliated, or even killed.)

So there I am, pouring teaglasses full of Wild Turkey, inhaling fat lines, when I had a GREAT idea. Why be alone? Female company was but a phone call away, this being the great country it is. Let's see...where's the phonebook? Hmm, here it is, "E" for escort services.

There were several listed. I chose one based on the name alone, a name I can no longer remember but at the time I thought sounded "legitimate." They asked me what sort of "escort" I was looking for: tall, short, brunette, blonde, redhead, etc. I said (and ladies, please take note)--a short brunette, please.

I hung up the phone, pleased with myself. Why hadn't I thought of this before?

Thirty minutes later the knock came. Nothing else came that night, but there she was on my doorstep. A sickly, concentration-camp-skinny redhead, pale as a baby's newborn butt, with a smattering of infected zits. Just what I asked for. Why did they even bother with the "what do you want" routine? For all I knew, SHE was the one I had spoken to on the phone. And now, here she stood, in MY living room. Good Christ, she knows where I live! The "great" idea became only a good" idea at this point.

She immediately asked for the 75$ fee, up front. I paid her and she tucked the money in her worn cigarette case.

It took no time at all to realize that no fucking--hell, no erections--were in the offing this evening. So I brought out the whiskey and cocaine, offered her all she could handle, and settled in for an evening of scintillating conversation with my very own crack whore.

I'd never had a crack whore of my own, and I wondered what sort of things crack whores talked about.

"Do you wanna fuck"

Uh, yeah. But later.

SNOOOOOOOORT. "That's pretty good coke."

Yeah, it's OK.

"Want me to suck you off?"

Maybe in a bit.

SNOOOOOOOORT. "Good coke. We can fuck, you know."

(ad nauseum, ad infinitum, etc.)

Eventually the cocaine supply ran low, and I thought maybe running out would be my cue to wrap up the evening. By now it's about 3:00 AM. But she surprised me.

"I know where we can get some more cocaine."

So there I am, with a fugly crack whore in my home threatening to blow me, running low on bourbon, down to dust with the coke, and the words that slipped from my lips were "Sure. Let's go."

We fall into my car, my car with the expired inspection sticker, with her navigating. I had no idea where we were headed, but 45 minutes later we still weren't there. I'd forgotten to ask what state the cocaine was in.

We finally pull into a decaying ma-and-pa type motel parking lot. I follow her to a room, and she pulls out a room key. She has a key? What's up with....

She swings the door open without knocking. There's a young, derelict looking Mexican dude in the room. They hug each other, she kisses him and introduces me to her boyfriend, who doesn't seem the least bit taken aback by my presence.

Dear God. What have I gotten myself tangled up in?

(to be continued)

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"The basis of optimism is sheer terror."

-------Oscar Wilde