The Passion Agency

by Rebecca Lee

  Phong married a man who let her move in her mother. He was white and worked in the ship channel loading and unloading cargo. He drank a lot. He beat her and often.

  She never had a problem getting a new manicure and pedicure job. She was beautiful, but she was nearly forty now.

  This tall white guy would come in every so often. He asked her out on many dates. (She never wore a wedding ring to work.) His name was Chris and he used to play for the Lakers. Or so he said.

  They went out and by the second date, they were sleeping together. It beat getting beaten. That’s how she looked at it.

  He bragged to his buddies how even though she was ten years older than him, she looked like a supermodel.

  Chapter 12--Sex Power

  Brea thought very little of Chris as October turned to November. Yes, she had a new way of seeing life after she read her mom’s journal. Yes, she was maturing now that she was out working not one but two jobs. Yes, she now felt like her future could be brighter if she helped her mom find that same bright future.

  It was all different and to her it was exciting.

  She was was at heart a person who enjoyed going against the grain. If she were to get married she was sure it would be a very low key affair. Her reasoning, she explained to Lacey in a pot induced haze one sunny day, is that she would be keeping other people in mind by not overdoing the self-celebration.

  “Let’s face it, people have big weddings and graduation parties and all that, for the attention and free gifts,” she said pointedly. “That’s the heart of what motivates them. It’s the dirty little secret of it all. No one calls bullshit because they want to reserve the right to show off themselves with their own wedding party. They want to make sure they can get in on the free gifts with her own party. They will always say they do it because they want to share their happiness with all these people. Frame it however you want. Ass holes. I can’t stand phony people.”

  Lacey was the perfect pot buddy and she was evolving into an actual friend to Brea. She took pleasure in Brea’s rebellious thinking as well as her edge. She liked how Brea questioned things.

  “You are really twisted Brea,” Lacey said after listening to her wedding rant.

  “Always remember young Jedi,” Brea said with a sly grin. “There are two motivations for why people do things. The reason they say they are doing it and then the actual reasons.”

  So it went with Brea’s job at the University. Money was Brea’s actual reason for carrying on with the adjunct professor at Loyola who she was hired to grade papers and do research for. She was getting an extra $100 a week and it was most likely because Professor Thad Bronsky loved the way she felt when he was putting his penis in her.

  He didn't talk about how the extra money was coming out of the general research budget for his work on genetic links to suicidal tendencies. It definitely wasn’t discussed that he was married to a local socialite who was also a member of the school’s Board of Regents.

  He would have to dance around the paperwork when it came time to explain the money. If he had to reach into his pocket to make it all come together right, he would.

  It was worth it. He hadn’t tapped trim this good in a couple years. Since the last time he carried on with a grad student (She had to have two different abortions). But he was fifty now and his energy, appearance, and therefore his appeal, were all fading fast.

  He read the vibes Brea was giving the first few days she was working in his office. He held eye contact a little too long and spoke without speaking and told her he wanted her. Without the aid of a word. She would take it all in and mention off-handed in the next interaction that she was looking for more work because the pay wasn’t quite like how she wanted it.

  She jumped on his computer one night after he left. It was after he told her she was brilliant “not to mention lovely”.

  Her experience being seduced willingly by Chris was serving her well. She didn’t think Bronsky was bad looking and she had a thing for brainy guys. She knew it was on.

  He left his laptop computer on and not by accident. It was set to a porn site with the naughty student doing her professor in the classroom. Complete with tartan plaid skirt and high heels. White shirt buttoned tight around the midsection. The whole deal.

  Brea knew they’d be working after hours tomorrow and decided “What the Hell?”.

  She hoped it would mean a raise and maybe an end to starting up her vibrator every night. She was really wanting a man. It surprised her. But she figured that as long as she didn’t walk around acting weak and boy crazy, it wouldn’t betray who she was. It was her preferred pose: the indifferent girl who was too mature and intelligent to fall in love.

  The next evening as night fell on the campus, Brea snuck quietly down to the bathroom on the floor where Bronsky and other department faculty kept an office. She threw on an outfit almost identical to the one in the smut movie on Bronsky’s computer. She put on a long coat that she wore just today and walked back to the office, closing and locking the door behind her.

  She was amazed she wasn’t nervous. It all seemed completely natural.

  The Professor’s door was slightly opened.

  Brea walked in and smiled with her books under her arm and her coat bunted up to the top.

  “I thought you were working late tonight?” he asked.

  Brea undid her coat revealing her lithe body in a schoolgirl uniform. The skirt was so high, it barely reached below her swollen vulva. She reached back with her foot and kicked his office inner door shut.

  Her milky white skin shined and he could see her pussy with dark peach fuzz on it when she lifted her leg.

  “Professor, I need to talk about my grades,” she said with a pouty voice that made Bronsky go erect instantaneously. “But I think I dropped something under your desk.”

  He leaned back and put his hands behind his head.

  “Be my guest,” he said assuredly.

  She unzipped him and took his girth into her mouth and began bobbing up and down. Each time taking him deeper into the throat.

  About to burst, he crawled under the desk and went face first into her private area.

  It was pure unbridled lust for hours. Back and forth, every which way. Neither seemed to want it to end. He felt twenty five again and she felt like she had the power she missed with Chris.

  In exchange, seed money for her mom was soon to follow.

  Chapter 13--Help Me

  “God you are such a little slut Brea,” Lacey said sarcastically. “The professor and the intern. That’s porn city there.”

  Donna’s only child could be a little serious, but not necessarily about herself. She simply smiled in the face of Lacey’s ribbing.

  “I know right?” was all she could say. “The sex is really good too. If I do the naughty student, his cock is hard as a rock. Bam. It’s out and I am handling it like a champ.”

  Brea didn’t exactly know what she was feeling. Just like with Chris, she was playing it to the max to her close friends. Acting like it was all fun. But inside she could feel herself getting attached. If Chris was a remote possibility to meet her long-term needs, a married professor with tenure and a prominent wife was even less likely yet.

  She lived very much in a fantasy world inside her head, which was a difficult thing to understand given how grounded, sensible, and even cynical she could be.

  But her seriousness and appearance of control was mostly an act. She was searching no different than Donna was searching. They just happened to come to forks in their life’s roads at the same time.

  Deep down, Brea wanted a man but she didn’t have the ability to let herself be loved by someone she actually could have. It was a classic case of emotional self-sabotage.

  The sex with Bronsky was a matter of addiction to the feelings of power. But like her mom, she was always searching for new ways to test the limits.

  About two weeks into their relationship, she showed up to one of his classes dressed in the same ov
ercoat she wore the first night they were together. It wasn’t in any big lecture hall either. There were maybe twenty students in a standard sized classroom. Most of them knew she was Bronsky's teaching assistant.

  She was so wispy and nerdy looking that she didn't give off the impression she might be a sex toy for the professor.

  One person she didn’t fly under the radar with was a student in Bronsky’s three hundred level genetics class. His name was Prentice. The only black person in any of Bronsky’s classes at all levels.

  Prentice wasn’t likely to do better than a C, but when it came to observing people and noticing oddities, he was all A’s.

  On Brea’s most recent visit to the class, he took a picture with his camera phone. He was able to capture a good enough shot and a quick investigation in the department revealed a name.

  Prentice Tanell wondered what was up. He’d seen TA’s in classes before but none this young looking and none making such an obvious effort to not be noticed.

  One day on the last class before finals, he left a note on Brea’s desk as he scurried out of class.

  It read: “I think you are really cute. Text me” He included phone number. Brea had barely noticed him, but she figured it might be fun.

  She texted him back that night a simple hello apparently not knowing the damage you could do to yourself sharing your phone number with a total stranger.

  ….

  Donna went home from her near liaison with Malcolm Bradley and did just as she planned. She cracked one of those Coors Lights. It was simultaneous to that that she turned on her old computer. She could barely wait for it to boot up.

  Beauty Lies and Rachel Evans had spoken to her from the radio and it impacted her on that true emotional level.

  In essence, as Donna aged, she saw her worth diminish socially. She saw the next generation of girls who were younger and who wore the right clothes a certain way. Donna was jealous she couldn’t be what she always was.

  Any message that could give Donna hope for a whole new way for people to look at what is beautiful had her attention.

  She watched Rachel’s simple before and after videos of the power of surgically applied make up. One of them even featured a man who was made up to look like a woman.

  She came out beautiful.

  The idea being that none of this is real and much of it is off limits to people of average means. Also there was the idea that men don’t know natural beauty because generations of them have been raised without ever having been exposed to it. Beauty is youth, make up, cookie cutter styles, and hiding the real you behind a mask. It was all designed to manipulate.

  Donna felt there was something big and cosmic with this idea. She knew a big idea was what it would take to make money.

  She believed she could share such an idea and move people to change their minds.

  She didn’t know how to make money off it. Still.

  It was always the same problem.

  She wanted to talk to Rachel Evans.

  She sent her a private message, not knowing if it would get to her target. As Rachel pointed out at the end of her interview on the radio earlier in the night, she wasn’t available everywhere. No email. No Facebook. No personal blog site. Just this video platform which she never left comments on.

  “We need to see the truth and stop worshipping fake. Show men what is beautiful.” was the description.

  Donna took more time and care in putting this email together then she did in writing cover letters to all those prospective employers the last couple weeks.

  “Rachel,

  My name is Donna Casteel. I heard your interview tonight on local radio here in Los Angeles. I think your concepts are amazing. The beauty lie videos capture what I already knew and many many women are frustrated by. I believe you have a powerful message and that is clear by your nearly 2 million hits on Youtube.

  I’d like to talk to you about sharing your message in an even more powerful way. I think we can actually change the way people think about beauty and redefine it. It could change the worlds of so many women who are suffering and so many men who are suffering by chasing fantasy too.

  I honestly don’t know how yet, but I know I want to be part of spreading your message. Could you write me back so we could talk more?

  About me. I am 41 and lived all my life in Los Angeles. I am past my prime unless I cake on the make up and even then.

  It’s personal with me. I have a beautiful young daughter who I want to feel fully confident she can live her life free of these burdens. She doesn’t wear makeup and she shouldn’t have to be desired by great men.

  My email is Donnapassioncasteel@gmail.com.

  I can’t wait to hear from you!

  Donna.

  Chapter 14--Trickery

  Donna woke up the next morning excited about her big idea.

  It was a little like being in love except it felt more like she actually owned this fully. Love was always her ultimate ego steroid.

  Being pursued by Chris, a pro jock with a great body was intoxicating. The lesson that kept getting reinforced in her mind was that she wasn’t very good at what came next in the process.

  She still believed in love. She longed for it. The wanted the soft but firm touch of a man she was wildly in love with and attracted to.

  But life was taking her in an exciting direction. She could feel it.

  That’s why a strange text message to Donna's phone received the next morning was another blow to the momentum she was struggling to create.

  “The professor is naughty. Check your email.”

  She knew instantly it had something to do with Brea and her job over at Loyola.

  The number was not traceable.

  She grabbed her laptop and plopped down on the couch. Her email was flooded with nine messages from sources she didn’t recognize. Each with a separate attachment.

  She opened attachment on the first email. There was Brea dropping an overcoat Donna had given her in front of a bearded older man in a dress shirt and slacks, his hands casually behind his head.

  Donna didn’t want to look at the next picture because she already knew.

  The last attachment said “last night’s activities; tough day on the job.”

  “Brea!!!” She screamed and snarled in the same breath. “Out here. Now!”

  Brea came out in what seemed like a split-second compared to her normal way of moving. She stopped ¾ of the way down the hall. Her hair was in her eyes. It was Saturday and she’d smoked with Lacey late last night. Donna was interrupting a good mellow deep sleep

  She spared her mom the attitude. She felt sort of shook up but not disappointed that her mother, whom she now respected more than ever, was apparently mothering aggressively.

  “The professor you work for,” Donna said in slightly louder but much more measured tone. “Brea why?”

  “Money mom,” she said without any hint of embarrassment. “Money. He doubled my salary. It will help us.”

  “Sweetie “ Donna said. “You stop it right now. No more. I beg you. You are too young. Make your money honestly. If it means you find another job, you find another job. I want to take you with me. I want you part of it. We’ve been through a lot the last couple months. We can’t get there doing things like poor people do.”