Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  George almost choked on his food: "WHAT?! Are you nuts?! You better not tell me now you're in love with Veronica again! After everything she's done to you!"

  I told him that I wasn't really back together with her, and that I was just letting her stay with me so I could use her for sex, to get my revenge.

  George gave me a disapproving look: "Don't let her change you. I understand where you're coming from, but this isn't like you. You're not the kind of guy who just uses a girl for sex. You used to have real feelings for each of the girls you dated. You may have terrible taste in women, but I can't fault you for having a kind heart and caring about someone who's damaged. Don't let Veronica take that away from you. Don't let her turn you into one of those jerks who fuck girls for sport."

  He was right. Getting hurt over and over did change me. It had made me jaded and cynical. I thanked George for his advice but told him that I needed to do this to get closure.

  "Alright. I understand. Just be careful. Don't let her hurt you again. Don't fall in love with her again," he said.

  "Don't worry," I said. "I can't stand her. I'm just revenge-fucking her. I love the fact that she's cheating on Wendy with me now."

  Veronica and I had sex at least once a day. Sometimes twice. My little buddy was the hardest-working penis in show business. Veronica's mother Rachel had told me last year that she thought Veronica was a sex addict on top of being a drug addict. I had brought that up to Veronica back then, but she didn't want to talk about it.

  But the way she was acting now seemed to confirm it. Every time she got high she wanted to fuck. She got high a lot, so she wanted to have a lot of sex.

  It was getting out of hand. Every few hours she wanted me to drive her some place or another, so she could meet up with a drug dealer and get more heroin or crack.

  I asked her where she was getting the money for the drugs, and she said people still owed her money. She had sold them some drugs earlier, and they still had to pay for it. At least that's what she said.

  Sometimes she asked me to drive her somewhere, and she'd disappear inside for a few minutes and then come back out. She'd tell me some story about what she just did in there, but I didn't believe a word.

  One day Veronica and I stopped by some drug dealer's house, and Abby was there. She met us in the driveway. Veronica and Abby hugged and talked for a few minutes. Then Veronica introduced me to Abby. I had briefly talked to her on the phone last year, while she was in jail. I had told her that Jasmine and Lucy were fucking her boyfriend Wigger. But Abby and I had never met in person until now.

  Abby was hands down the most gorgeous girl in the LCJ Drug Addict Hall of Fame. I had seen some of her mugshots on the jail website every now and then. And I had looked up her Facebook page in the past. She had some old photos on her page, from a beauty pageant. Maybe Ms. Florida or something like that.

  She wore a bikini in some of the photos. She looked incredible. The light glistened on the perfect curves of her oiled up body. She wore a ribbon in one picture. Not sure what it said, but it looked like she won the contest. No surprise. Even now, a few years into her drug addiction, and the worse for wear, she still looked amazing. And she had a very sweet, humble personality. She wasn't conceited at all.

  I thought it was strange how many beautiful girls were addicted to drugs. On a scale from 1 to 10, a lot of them were an 8, a 9, or even a 10. Other women would kill to look like them. And yet, all the beauty in the world didn't make them happy. They were miserable anyway and tried to numb their pain with drugs.

  I guess it makes sense. If you're a drug dealer and you want to use a girl as your sex slave, she's gonna earn a lot more money for you if she's pretty. So why would you turn an ugly girl into a drug addict, when a pretty one offers a much better return on your investment?

  Abby hugged me and thanked me again for telling her the truth about her ex, Wigger. Now she had a new boyfriend: Wendell. That was the drug dealer she was living with now. Veronica went inside to talk to him.

  Somehow I felt protective of Abby. Like she was my little sister. Like the whole world was taking advantage of her, and she needed someone who cared about her to look out for her.

  "I thought you wanted to be clean when you get out of jail," I said.

  She teared up a little and replied: "Yeah, I wanted to. But Wendell picked me up from jail, and now I live with him."

  Her lower lip quivered a little. Like she was trying not to cry.

  I noticed a huge abscess on the inside of her right arm, just below the fold of her elbow.

  "Damn, what is that?" I asked.

  "Nothing," she said and hid both her arms behind her back.

  I grabbed her wrists from behind her back and gently pulled her arms to the front, so I could look at them. She didn't struggle. She let me look. She had another, even bigger abscess on her left arm.

  Those were the spots where she shot up. They were big, swollen, red, infected lumps, bigger than an egg. It looked disgusting. And painful.

  "What are you doing to yourself?" I asked. I tried to sound casual, but she could hear the sadness in my voice.

  "I'm gonna get clean! I promise!" she said with tears in her eyes. Like my opinion of her mattered somehow.

  "You need to go to the ER and have that looked at." I gave Abby my phone number and told her to call me if she ever decided to get clean and needed help.

  Veronica came back out and we left.

  Then Veronica asked me to drive her to North Fort Myers. She said she wanted to see her friend Lexus who had just been released from jail a few days ago.

  It was a crappy old one-story bungalow. Lexus was in her mid 20s, like Veronica. She invited us inside. She lived with a 70-year-old hunchback.

  Lexus and the Hunchback of Notre Dame were calling each other honey and babe. Obviously he really believed that she was his girlfriend. How sad. And the thought that this girl in her 20s was fucking a hunchback in his 70s to have a place to stay was pretty creepy.

  Lexus handed Veronica $60. Supposedly because she owed her some money. But I had a feeling that Veronica had picked up some drugs at Wendell's house and then sold some of it to Lexus just now.

  As much as I enjoyed revenge-fucking Veronica, it couldn't go on like this.

  The next day, when Veronica asked me to drive her to the dog racetrack in Bonita Springs, because she was supposed to meet a drug dealer in the parking lot, I told her that I wasn't gonna drive her anymore. I told her it was only a matter of time before we got pulled over and then I'd go to jail because Veronica has drugs on her in my car, and she'd make me take the fall for it.

  "No, I would never do that! If we get pulled over, I'm definitely gonna tell them the drugs are mine!" she promised.

  Yeah, right. Like Veronica was a shining beacon of integrity. I told her that I just couldn't risk it anymore.

  "Just one more time!" she insisted.

  "No, sorry. I just can't risk it. And your addiction is getting worse and worse. You gotta stop this shit."

  "ONE MORE TIME! PLEASE!" she screamed while stomping her foot on the floor like a little kid. Her face was a red, angry grimace.

  She was desperately craving a hit and needed me to drive her to her dealer. She had her own car, but her license was suspended, and she had gotten caught driving with a suspended license. If she got arrested driving without a license again, she'd go to jail.

  "No. Sorry. I can't," I said.

  I tried to sound sincere and apologetic. But deep down I loved how upset she was. I was giving her a little taste of all the pain she had caused me, when I waited for her for months, while she told me she wanted to get married and have a baby. But then she ran off as soon as she got out of jail, and acted like I didn't even exist. And those times I found her in bed with someone else. And all the other times she had cheated on me... most recently with Wendy.

  Veronica was always using people, and she didn't care who she hurt. And now I had a chance to say no when she tried to use me, and hi
t her where it hurts the most.

  She stomped her foot again and screamed at me. She was totally losing it. It felt good to see her so upset. What goes around comes around, bitch.

  Finally she realized that all the screaming in the world wasn't gonna sway me. She got in her car and drove to the dog track herself.

  I didn't hear from her for a few days. Later I found out that she was staying with this girl Melanie. A female drug dealer Veronica had met in jail. Rumor had it that she had cheated on Wendy with Melanie, when all three of them were still in jail. Now Melanie lived in a trailer park on 41, just north of Bonita Springs. Veronica pretended to be her girlfriend in exchange for free drugs.

  Wendy started calling my phone from jail. She asked me if I knew what happened to Veronica. She said she had been calling Veronica from jail every day, but Veronica hadn't answered the phone in a few days.

  I told her that Veronica said she had broken up with Wendy. And that she had been living with me, and we had sex every day, until I refused to drive her to a drug dealer. And now she was living with Melanie.

  Wendy was livid!

  Man, it felt great! If I could capture this feeling in a bottle somehow, and sell it on Ebay, I'd make a fortune.

  After a few days Veronica was stopped by the police while she was driving around with Melanie, selling drugs. They both went to jail.

  Could this get any better? It was so incredibly satisfying to see Veronica get bitch-slapped by karma. I had to call George and tell him.

  "Good! She's finally getting what she deserves," he laughed.

  Wendy and Veronica were reunited in jail and got back together. Bummer.

  When they got out, they briefly lived in the apartment over Rachel's, but we didn't talk to each other anymore. A couple of days later Veronica and Wendy were stopped by the police. Veronica got arrested for driving with a suspended license and drug possession yet again.

  She was gonna face a stiff sentence this time, but someone bailed her out and she fled the state. She and Wendy moved to Boston, into Veronica's grandparents' guest room. That pissed me off.

  Even though she had an open arrest warrant in Florida, nothing happened to her in Boston. They didn't enforce the warrant, and they didn't extradite her to Florida. On her Facebook page, she kept bragging about how smart she was and how she evaded justice.

  Mentally I crossed her off my list. She definitely wasn't The One.

  ABBY

  "I think we can all agree that sleeping around is a great way to meet people."

  Chelsea Handler

  Abby messaged me on Facebook: "It was nice to meet you in person the other day. Did you mean what you said? Could I stay with you if I get clean?"

  "Yeah, definitely," I replied.

  "I'm not ready to get clean yet. But I just need to get away from here for a little while. Do you think you could pick me up? Maybe we can hang out?"

  I picked her up at her mother's house. She looked tired. Like she hadn't slept in a few days. She said she had tried to get away from Wendell, but she always ended up going back to him to get more drugs.

  At least the two sores on her arms were bandaged. She had gone to the emergency room and they gave her antibiotics.

  She had tried to get clean at her mother's house, but her mother was an angry drunk, who kept picking fights. And Abby's sister Tabby was staying at her mother's house as well, ever since she got out of jail a few weeks ago. Tabby went right back to doing drugs when she got out. There was constant bickering or all-out fighting going on at her mother's house, and Abby said she didn't have anywhere peaceful to go, if she wanted to get clean.

  We got some pizza on the way home. Abby and I sat down on my couch and talked while we ate. She was soft-spoken and articulate. In a different life she could have been a teacher or a pediatrician. She had this really kind, caring, sincere and honest vibe, and I had a feeling she'd be good with kids. We talked about some of our common "friends" like Lucy, who had slept with Abby's ex, Wigger.

  "I still care about Lucy," she said. "It hurt me a lot when I heard she was sleeping with him. But I know why she did it. And I forgive her."

  She bared her soul and told me what it was like to be an addict, and some of the horrible things she had done to get drugs.

  "Honestly, I don't mind that every guy wants to have sex with me," she said. "Men need sex, and I give it to them. I've had to do worse. Sex is easy. I don't even feel anything anymore when I do it."

  She said it so sincerely and matter-of-factly, it sounded like she was describing what it's like to be a diabetic, not a prostitute.

  "Really? It doesn't bother you to do that stuff?" I asked.

  "No, I have a couple of regulars, and I think of them as my friends. Friends with benefits. I take care of their needs, and then they help me out with my needs."

  I hated when girls like her called the men who took advantage of her her "friends." But I didn't say anything. I found it difficult to believe that selling her body didn't bother her. If she didn't hate this life, then why get clean? Why was she fighting to hold back tears, when I met her in Wendell's driveway a few days ago?

  I had a feeling that telling herself that she was ok with this life was her coping mechanism. She was hiding her true feelings of pain, shame and guilt behind a facade of indifference. I think she was trying to convince herself she was ok with it, so that she felt like she was in control.

  And I had a feeling that she told me she was fine with guys wanting to fuck her, because she sensed that I was attracted to her and I would love to have sex with her, but that I didn't want to bring it up, because I didn't want to be like one of those guys who take advantage of her.

  I think she was trying to tell me that it was ok that I wanted to sleep with her, and that I didn't have to feel guilty. We could be friends with benefits, and she would take care of me, if I took care of her.

  Let's be honest: Millions of relationships are based on that premise. Maybe I should have nicknamed her Melania for this book.

  It was getting late, and she asked if she could spend the night. She didn't want to go back to Wendell or her mother's house.

  We went into the bedroom, and both of us stripped down naked without saying anything. Like we both knew exactly what was about to happen next.

  She had an amazing body. She could have been a professional model. Everything about her was just perfect. I tried to play it cool and not stare at her, but I couldn't help it.

  She got under the covers and lay down next to me. I put my right arm around her. Her head was resting on my shoulder and her hand was on my stomach.

  "This is nice," she said softly. "So peaceful. I can see why those other girls like to stay with you. You have a beautiful home. And you're a really nice guy."

  Her hand had slowly moved down. She played with my pubes for a few seconds before she touched my dick. She gently grabbed it and started to stroke it slowly.

  Imagine if the hottest girl you've ever seen climbed into your bed naked and started to play with your dick. Sounds awesome, right? Well, not if you have performance anxiety. My heart was pounding. I was so nervous. What would she think of me if I couldn't get it up? Would she tell all her friends and then they'd laugh at me? No, probably not. She didn't seem like the kind of person who laughs about you behind your back. Mother Teresa over here would probably be ridiculously sweet, understanding and compassionate.

  After a few minutes of rubbing my dick, she kissed her way down, from my mouth, down my neck, my chest, down to my dick. She took it in her mouth and sucked on it. Gently, with feeling. It was perfect, and I didn't even have to tell her how I liked it.

  If there is a heaven, I want it to be just like this.

  I should have been rock hard, but nope. She was sucking on a limp noodle. She tried her best for a few more minutes. Then she looked up at me and whispered: "Don't you like me?"

  "Are you kidding? You're amazing!" I replied with a fake chuckle. I tried to keep it light, and not let he
r know how nervous I was about not being able to get hard. This moment felt like a once in a lifetime chance. Like Wonder Woman decided to hop into my bed. And if I didn't perform like a horny Viking and completely rocked her world, I would disappoint her, and she'd never want to sleep with me again.

  "Lie down," I said. "I wanna lick your pussy."

  "Good idea!" she smiled and lay down on her back.

  I got between her legs and kissed her pussy. Even her pussy was ridiculously perfect. Pink and shaved. I licked her lips up and down and then started to suck on her clit. She got wet and moaned.

  So close and yet so far! I kept rubbing my dick, trying to get hard. Now was not the time to be timid. I wanted to thrust my big, fat, rock hard cock into her tight little pussy and fill her with my cum! I wanted to give it to her like no man had ever given it to her before!