by Jeff Gelb
The man’s face remained expressionless. He stood approximately five-foot-nine and sported a slender build, so average in appearance that he could blend into any gathering. He brushed an eyebrow with a forefinger, his diamond-studded signet ring glittering beneath the glow of a chandelier. “I apologize for having been so blunt,” he said, “but it’s really not as harsh as it may sound. I admit that I’m eccentric, and few people understand my sexual needs, but some of us get off on different things, that’s all.” He cleared his throat, then repeated the offer: “I’d like to pay you to have sex with someone you’ve never met.”
Now sally was more angry than before. She had heard him correctly after all, and how dare he insinuate that she might demean herself in such a way! She had been reluctant to attend the singles mixer for fear of being approached by egotistical jerks like him, had even dressed in loosely fitting clothes to conceal her full figure, and now she deeply regretted having come. She didn’t know anyone here, and she was ready to go home. Her heart really hadn’t been into meeting anyone tonight anyway.
But before she could give him a piece of her mind, the man continued. “Please understand that I’m not soliciting you to have sex with me,” he said. “You can feel free to choose your own partner. I only want to watch. But your partner has to be a stranger. Someone you’ve never met before.”
Sally wanted to turn and walk away. The nerve of this man! But she had to hear more, to learn what kind of pervert stood before her. Maybe she could lure him into a trap and call the cops. But was his proposal actually illegal? She couldn’t recall if any porn stars had ever been charged with prostitution, and wasn’t this a similar arrangement, a man and woman being paid by a third party to have sex? Sally silently shook her head, recalling her own run-ins with the law as a teenager. The thought of cooperating with the police, even after years of law-abiding behavior, was still unsettling.
“I see that I’ve offended you,” the man whispered, his expression still unchanged. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I should speak with someone else.” He paused and gazed into her eyes, then added, “But five thousand dollars is a lot of money to be paid for something you would probably like to do anyway.”
Five thousand dollars! And she wouldn’t technically be a hooker, would she? At least maybe not in the legal sense of the word—she didn’t know for sure. If times weren’t so rough, she would turn up her nose and walk away. She would summon a security guard to throw this rich creep out on his perverted ass. But John Jr. needed a whole closetful of new clothes; in fact, the toe-holes of his tennis shoes had already been a source of embarrassment to Sally, who hadn’t seen a child-support check in months. She was already late with the rent, and the landlord was beginning to get nasty. Five thousand dollars would go a long way toward getting her back on her feet financially, and she wouldn’t even have to risk a larceny rap. She had kicked that particular vice years ago, but was it really wise to venture into something so vile and disgusting now that her life had virtually started over?
“I assume that since you haven’t slapped me or walked away that you’re considering my offer,” he interrupted her thoughts.
Sally opened her mouth but found it difficult to speak. What would be the consequences if she said yes? But of course it would only be this once. No one else would ever know. And she could be cautions, and protect herself in case this depraved stranger had something else up his sleeve. After all, if the Burt Reynolds look-alike at the bar had approached her tonight, she might well have slept with him anyway. The only difference under this arrangement was that she would have an audience.
“Suppose I said yes,” she finally said, the words coming slowly, and forced. “Where and when would this take place? And where would I find my partner?”
The man lit a cigarette without offering her one. Despite the fact that Sally didn’t smoke, she was offended, but not surprised, that he could be so inconsiderate. “Go to any man in the room and ask him to step outside. I’ll make the arrangements and we’ll leave immediately. We’ll check into any motel you wish.” He exhaled a plume of smoke away from her, then continued. “It’s really quite simple, though I’m embarrassed to admit such a timid fetish. Still, we have to do whatever we can to find pleasure in this cruel world.”
Sally was disappointed in herself for contemplating the offer. But she had done a couple of one-night stands before and had survived with both her conscience and dignity intact. Hell, she’d even spent a night in jail, many years ago when her mother had refused to post bail. And hadn’t she only moments earlier fantasized what it would be like to curl up in bed with the man at the bar who had given he the eye? It had been months since she’d last made love. Sally’s lips trembled and she probed further. “Is that all there is? Just quick sex and it’s over?”
He cleared his throat again. “Nothing more than the fact that you’ll both be blindfolded.” He dropped his cigarette butt and thoughtlessly ground it into the linoleum floor. “That’s part of the reason I get off on this. The two of you will have sex without ever having actually seen each other’s bodies. I’ll know something about each of you that neither of you will know.”
It was kinky, but despite the warnings of her conscience, worth further consideration. “What if the one I choose won’t go along with it?” she asked.
The man almost laughed this time. “How many men in this room would turn down a chance to make love to such an attractive woman?” He reached out to touch a flipped-up curl of shiny brown hair at her shoulder. Sally cringed but tried not to show her displeasure. “Believe me, they rarely refuse such an opportunity, and I usually don’t even offer them money,” he continued. “But if your first choice won’t go along with us, we’ll simply go to someone else. It won’t take long, I assure you.”
Five thousand dollars would pay a lot of bills. “But he has to wear a condom,” she said nervously. “I won’t consider it without that.” She couldn’t believe what she was saying! Would she actually go through with this?
“By all means,” the man said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Sally pushed the red plastic frames of her fashionable eyeglasses up the bridge of her nose. “I don’t have much time,” she said. “I’ve got to pick up my son in a couple of hours.”
For the moment, she couldn’t find a reason to say no.
Sally waited inside the ladies’ room, pacing nervously as the man propositioned the Burt Reynolds clone in the empty hallway. She took a deep breath and eyed the rest-room door. Maybe it would be best to leave, to escape the temptation. Why venture to the wrong side of the law again? She had been so distracted by their unorthodox conversation that she hadn’t even gotten the man’s name. Of course, neither had he asked for hers, and he probably wouldn’t give her his real name anyway. The anonymity of the setup seemed a major part of it, Sally knew that her libido had been hooked. She would make love to a man whose name she didn’t know; in fact, she would perceive him only by touch and would never even see him without his clothes.
But, no—this was wrong. How could she have come this far?
Sally burst through the rest-room door, determined to pick up John Jr. at the child-care facility and cry her eyes out at home, when a familiar voice echoed form farther down the hall.
“Where are you going? We’re all set!”
She turned to see her propositioner standing beside the man of her choice, and from the look on his face, her potential partner was just as nervous as she. Sally’s face was pink with embarrassment; thank God there was no one else around to see what she had gotten herself into.
While her partner secured a room, Sally and he propositioner waited in her partner’s car in the parking lot of the Relax Inn Motel, an establishment near the freeway, where Sally believed she would be less likely to be seen by someone she knew. Clutching her purse in her lap, she tried to remain calm. Garth Brooks was wailing a country tune on the radio, while the windshield was speckled by droplets of light rain.
The s
hort drive to the motel had been tense. Sitting alone in the backseat, the man had instructed the two of them not to speak, explain that their only communication with each other must be exclusively physical. Of course, there hadn’t been much that Sally had wanted to say anyway. How does one make small talk under such strained circumstances? How’s the weather? Where are you from? What’s your favorite position?
Sally felt her chest tighten with nervousness. The man remained motionless, void of expression. She swallowed hard and glanced in his direction. “I don’t like this arrangement,” she said. “I want half the money now.”
The man shrugged, his face dimly visible in the dark backseat. “How do I know I can trust you?” he huffed. “How do I know you won’t bolt out the door and run away with my money?”
She moistened her lips and took a deep breath. “At least prove to me that you’ve got the cash.”
With a groan of aggravation, the man retrieved his wallet from a hip pocket and fanned a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills in her face. “Does this make you feel any better?” he snarled.
Sally raised her brow and looked out the windshield. Her partner was exiting the registration office now, the key to a motel room dangling from his fingertips.
“Don’t tell him about the money,” the man warned her. “All he gets is a hundred bucks for the motel room and a piece of your ass.”
Sally’s partner got into the car and cranked the engine without speaking, guiding the rain-spotted Maxima to a room at the far end of the one-level motel.
Sally exhaled and watched the windshield wipers sweep away the drizzle. Her propositioner slumped lower in the backseat.
It was rapidly becoming too late to back out.
The man sank into a chair facing the bed as Sally and her partner stood idly by. Did he have to be so close? Must he breathe down her neck while she performed for him? But she said nothing, by now almost too nervous to speak. It was as if she were caught up in a whirlwind, and though she knew that what she was about to do was wrong, there was no way to stop now. She was about to enter the downhill side of a roller coaster, and the ride would soon be over.
Reaching inside his jacket, the man pulled out a pair of black nylon blindfolds. “Put these on before you take off your clothes,” he said to both of them. “Then take as much time as you like. The longer, the better. Just do anything you feel comfortable with, until I suggest something different.”
Sally removed her eyeglasses and placed them on the nightstand. The blindfold firmly in place, she shucked her clothes and sprawled across the bed, intent on getting the act over with as quickly as possible. She felt as if she were about to be examined by a gynecologist, that what she was about to experience would be purely mechanical in nature, with no sexual content at all; her feet might as well be in stirrups. She listed for the fractioned movement of her partner’s clothes being removed and felt the bed sink as his weight was added to hers on the mattress. “Let me feel…the condom,” she muttered. “I want to know for sure that it’s on.” She could smell the lubricant but wanted assurance that the condom was actually in use.
A phantom hand guided her fingers to a semierect penis. A loosely fitted condom was, indeed, in place. Laughter erupted from the room next door. A car door slammed outside.
“No more talking,” the man said from somewhere to the side of the bed. His breath smelled of garlic and liquor.
Sally swallowed hard and tried to relax, though it was practically impossible. Her nipples were erect, but only from the cold. She stopped herself short of asking the man to turn up the heat—he had ordered her not to say anything else—and besides, she would soon feel the warmth of her partner.
A pair of masculine hands explored her body in the artificial darkness, squeezing her breasts, then massaging her thighs, the fingers eventually clearing a path through her pubic hair. But there was nothing erotic about it, at least not for Sally. She was dry and would need lubrication before intercourse. She couldn’t imagine herself actually becoming aroused. Not like the man, who was probably getting his rocks off already, masturbating at the sight of her blind seduction.
00But then the realization struck Sally that her partner and the man might have switched roles. Could it be that the person running his tongue between her legs wasn’t the partner she had selected? This was all a game to the man. Maybe role-switching was the true reason for the blindfold. Perhaps her chosen partner was actually sitting in the chair watching the man explore her body.
But did it really matter at this point? For some reason, she had to know for sure, if for no other reason than sheer curiosity.
Sally nervously reached down to run her fingers through the hair of the head between her legs. Both men wore their hair approximately the same length, but her partner sported a mustache. She bent over slightly to extend her fingers farther down the cheeks of the person’s face whose tongue would normally be driving her to heights of pleasure by now. She felt a blindfold first—and there! A mustache! It was the right man after all, and for a moment she felt relieved, as if she could relax and derive at least minimal enjoyment from the experience.
But then another fear surfaced: Does the man have a camera? Would he use photographs to blackmail her out of what little money she had available to live on? Or could this have been a setup orchestrated by her ex-husband in an attempt to frame her and gain custody of her son? She held her breath to listen. There was no click of a shutter, and even a silent-operating camcorder couldn’t have been concealed inside the man’s tightly fitting clothing. Neither could he have hidden any equipment in the room in advance, because she herself had selected the motel, and her partner had secured the room. Sally listened again and heard no movement at all other than the pumping fist of her propositioner and the steady tongue-lapping between her legs. Her partner seemed to be enjoying himself, and the sound of the man whacking off confirmed that voyeurism had been his true motive after all.
Sally relaxed on the mattress. She had gone too far to punish herself with fear, and it was too late to do anything about it now. Perhaps her best alternative would be simply to clear her mind of any further suspicions and let her partner finish. She didn’t have to enjoy herself, but neither should she scare herself to death over such a foolish predicament.
Sally closed her eyes despite the blindfold, gritted her teeth, and agonized through the slow passage of time. A pool of trapped tears accumulated inside the confined space of the blindfold. Her refusal to perform oral sex on her partner met with little objection from the man, and as full intercourse commenced, she noticed the contrasting sounds of heavy breathing from both above her and to her side. She felt filthy, and she punished herself by enduring the discomfort of dry sex. It would soon be over, and she would wipe this evening from her memory faster than her weekly paycheck cleared the bank. She couldn’t wait to hold John Jr. in her arms again and put this nightmare behind her.
“Sir?” the man’s voice interrupted. “Please rise to your knees and spread her legs far apart while she lies flat on her back. Cup your hands under her ass. I’d like to watch the actual penetration.”
Her partner’s breath was heavy as he complied, stretching her legs uncomfortably far apart as the bedsprings squealed with disapproval. Still Sally refused to complain, taking her punishment boldly. The thrusts seemed to stab deeper from this position, and from the sound of her partner’s moans of passion, she knew he couldn’t last much longer.
“At the point of orgasm, please pull out, remove the condom, and ejaculate on her stomach,” the man directed.
Before Sally could object, the pace quickened. Heavy breathing seemed to descend upon her from both directions. And as her partner moaned and awkwardly withdrew, Sally resigned herself to the final act of degradation. Warm fluid splashed across her abdomen and her partner collapsed heavily on top of her, pinning her momentarily against the mattress. His moans contrasted sharply with those of the man at her side as a second surge of wetness soaked her shoulder from that
direction.
But then Sally noticed that the gust of warm liquid from her partner had not ceased. This is impossible, she knew. No one could ejaculate continuously. She struggled to free an arm to remove the blindfold, regardless of the man’s instructions, and as she wrestled against the dead weight of her partner, she turned her head to avoid his harsh gasps for air at her ear. She grabbed the elastic band of the blindfold and carefully slipped it off, an accumulation of tears spilling down her cheeks.
The room was a soft blur. Sally reached for her eyeglasses on the nightstand, then surveyed the scene. For a moment she could barely breath. Blood poured from a gaping would in her partner’s side, the lower half of her own body covered with a crimson sheen. The smell of blood mixed with semen hit her like an odorous wave of raw sewage. She pulled her legs from beneath the victim and retched, closing her eyes quickly, then opening them again to focus on the man, who was now slipping off a pair of rubber gloves as he prepared to leave.
“A word of advice,” the man cautioned with a cocky air. “When the police arrive, don’t even try to tell them what actually happened here. They’ll never believe you.” He leaned over and snatched the blindfold from her fingertips, then snapped the other one from the face of the dying man now curled into a quivering fetal position at the foot of the bed. “This poor fool checked you into the motel, and he’s the one you were seen approaching at the party while I waited in the hall. I doubt that anyone saw the three of us leave together, but even if someone did, you haven’t got a shred of evidence. You’ll just appear to be covering your own ass, like any common criminal.” He paused, obviously enjoying one last look before leaving the scene.
Her partner gagged, blood foaming from his mouth, and the man lifted his right foot over the mattress and shoved the mortally wounded man to the floor with a dull thud. Then he kneeled at the bloody carpet and watched his victim die.
