Men, Women & Children (15 page)

Don said, “Your price, you mean?”

Angelique said, “Well, again, I don’t have a price. We’re going on a date. I don’t date cops, though. Are you a cop?”

Don said, “No.”

Angelique said, “Okay. Well, like I said, once we meet, we can talk about what you want to do on our date and what I want to do on our date and I’m sure we can work something out. So, how’s ten o’clock tonight for you?”

Don said, “That’s fine.”

Angelique said, “And where would you like to meet?”

Don said, “I got a room at the Cornhusker.”

Angelique said, “Okay. Do you want to meet in the bar at ten, then?”

Don said, “Actually, could I just meet you in the room? I don’t really want to risk having someone I know see me with you. No offense.”

Angelique said, “None taken. I’m very discreet, but I do usually like to meet my dates in a public setting before the date starts for safety reasons.”

Don said, “Oh. Well, how long would that meeting take?”

Angelique said, “Just a few minutes. And I reserve the right to cancel or end the date at any time. You should know that.”

Don said, “Okay, so meet up in the bar at the Cornhusker at ten.”

Angelique said, “It’s a date.”

Don said, “Okay,” and hung up. His hands were sweating. The gravity of the fact that he had just successfully solicited his first prostitute began to sink in. Where he had thought there might be guilt or second thoughts, there was only a giddy joy, something akin to what he’d felt in high school when he would sneak out of his bedroom window, ride his bicycle across his sleeping neighborhood, climb into his girlfriend’s window, have sex with her, sneak back out, ride his bicycle back across his neighborhood, sneak back into his own home, back into his own bed, and fall asleep without his parents ever knowing he was gone. It was happiness.

A
fter leaving her home in the early afternoon, Rachel Truby went to the airport Ramada Inn and checked herself into a room. Having no idea about Secretluvur’s appearance or demeanor, and having some doubts about her ability to have an affair at all, she had yet to make up her mind about how far she was willing to allow things to progress with this stranger. No matter what the night’s outcome would be, Rachel was happy to have a night sleeping in a bed without her husband next to her, no matter if she was alone or sleeping with another man. She took a shower and stretched her legs out in the hotel sheets. She set the alarm on the nightstand to go off at six-thirty, giving her an hour and a half to get ready before meeting Secretluvur in the hotel lounge. She hadn’t taken a nap in the middle of the day in a long time. Sleep came easy for her as she closed her eyes, looking forward to waking up without her husband in the room.

T
im Mooney logged on to his Myspace account, saw that Brandy was logged into her Freyja account, and sent her an instant message that read, “My dad has plans tonight. He won’t be able to take us to a movie. I can meet you somewhere, though. I have a bike.” Brandy responded with an instant message that read, “If your dad’s going to be gone, I could just come to your house and we could watch a movie there. I’ll just have to tell my mom that I’m riding my bike to a friend’s house or something.” Tim thought of the prospect of Brandy in his house without his father there. He wrote an instant message that read, “Sounds good. I think my dad is leaving at about 7 o’clock. Want to come over at 7:30?” Brandy replied with an instant message that read, “See you then.”

Tim emerged from his room to find his father sitting on the couch watching a rerun of
Everybody Loves Raymond
. He thought for a moment about telling his father that he was going to have Brandy over. He assumed his father wouldn’t mind, but on the off chance that he would, Tim decided to keep the information to himself. He said, “So, you ready for your big date?”

Kent said, “Yeah, I think so. Did you work yours out?”

Tim said, “Yeah. Her mom’s going to take us to see a movie.”

Kent said, “What are you seeing?”

Tim was thrown momentarily. He said, “Uh . . . don’t know yet. We’re just going to see what’s showing when we get there.”

Kent said, “Well, have fun. And I don’t know what time I’m coming back, so if I’m not here when you get back, don’t worry. I got that new college football package—feel free to watch it when you get home. Huskers are on tonight.”

Tim said, “Thanks. I’ll probably just play
WoW
when I get home.”

Kent had hoped that Tim’s interest in the sports page the day before had signified some new interest on his son’s part in becoming that athlete he used to be, moving back toward the person he used to be. His response diminished those hopes. Kent said, “Well, maybe when you take a break you can check out some football.”

Tim said, “Maybe.”

D
anny Vance and Brooke Benton decided they didn’t want to see a movie after all. Instead, Danny had his mother drop them off at the mall for a few hours. They were content to meander through the place talking. Brooke had mentioned that spending time together, just being in each other’s company, was all she wanted. She actually preferred it to seeing a movie. She felt as though the forced silence required at a movie was a waste of time she’d rather spend talking to Danny.

Brooke made a few attempts to hold Danny’s hand as they walked, but he would not clutch her hand in return. Ever since the night she had performed fellatio on Danny, Brooke had noticed that something was strange between them. She assumed that Danny’s abnormal reaction to her affection was due to the fact that they hadn’t so much as kissed each other on the cheek since their last encounter. She further assumed that he was disappointed in her for not having repeated her performance in the week or so that had passed. The opposite was true.

Although Danny was beginning to experience normal sexual urges, they were still new to him, and he certainly didn’t feel that he was ready for what he and Brooke had done. He had tried to put the event out of his mind, feeling anxiety every time he thought about it. It marked a progression in their physical relationship that seemed likely to be marching toward a conclusion involving sex relatively soon. This was far beyond what Danny was comfortable with, but—feeling a certain amount of pressure to appear normal—he had already decided that if Brooke were to initiate sexual intercourse with him, he would not stop her.

They passed Dippin’ Dots and bought a cup to share. They sat down on a bench and ate. Brooke said, “We never really talked about what we did. You know?”

Danny said, “Yeah.”

Brooke said, “Should we?”

Danny said, “I don’t know.”

Brooke said, “Well, in my opinion, we probably should because I don’t know if, like, I’m ready to do it again, you know?”

Danny said, “Really? That’s cool.”

Brooke said, “You’re not mad?”

He said, “Babe, it’s totally cool.”

Brooke said, “Really? You’re not just saying that?”

Danny said, “No. It’s cool.”

Brooke said, “I mean, we can still make out and everything. I just don’t know if I’m ready for, like, you know, what we did and everything. I think I just kind of wanted to do it to say that I had done it or something. I’m glad you were the first guy I ever did it with, though.”

Danny said, “Me, too.”

They ate their Dippin’ Dots, and when they finished, Brooke said, “Can we go to Verizon? My phone is shitting the bed again.” Danny kissed her on the cheek and said, “Sure, babe,” and then held her hand as they made their way to the Verizon store.

D
on Truby told his son, Chris, that he was going to get a few beers with Jim Vance, and if he ended up having too many he might end up staying the night on the Vances’ couch—something he had done from time to time, though not often. Chris found this early notification of an unlikely scenario suspicious, but he didn’t care enough about his father’s actual intentions to question him as he walked out the front door.

Chris had become interested in videos produced by and featured on a website called TheEnglishMansion.com. The English Mansion was a collective of dominatrices, sexual slaves, submissives, and various purveyors of specialized sexual fetishes in the arena of men being dominated by women who produced pornography in the areas of humiliation; forced bisexuality; male genital torture—known as cock-and-ball torture, or CBT—which most often included the testicles and penis being bound with twine or string until they turned black and blue while being forcefully slapped or kicked, and sometimes included the penis and testicles being probed with needles or electrocuted; latex play; and cuckolding, with a slight leaning toward interracial cuckolding. Chris found all of this arousing. He had replaced what he had found sexually exciting in the
Cockgobblers
series of movies—the all-controlling nature of the men who were forcibly ramming their erections into the throats of various women, sometimes even against their will, it seemed—with its exact opposite. He found something highly erotic in the full surrender of dominance. Having no control over the situation, not even enough to move—in some cases men were bound so completely in combinations of full-latex bodysuits, chains, shackles, stocks, and so on that they even required aid to breathe properly—aroused Chris in a way that no other form of pornography had.

He especially enjoyed videos of men being examined by dominatrix doctors. After his father had gone, leaving him with the whole house to himself, he masturbated with his bedroom door open while watching one such video, which featured a nude man in a leather hood with the mouth zipped shut strapped to a doctor’s table, with a milking device attached to his penis, as his doctor, dressed in a white latex bodysuit, violently inserted a dildo into his anus. And, while all of this was happening, a black man with an abnormally large penis was having anal sex with the man’s wife a few feet from the doctor’s table he was strapped to. His wife was excessively vocal about how good the black man’s penis felt, and about how much larger it was than her husband’s, and about how her husband would never be able to satisfy her sexually like this man.

Chris found the interracial cuckolding aspect of this specific video to be as arousing as any other part of it. He imagined being tied to his chair with a vibrator in his anus while Hannah was having vocal sex with Jordan Shoemaker, a black student at Goodrich Junior High. He was near the point of orgasm when he stopped, quit out of his media player, and moved from his desk chair to his bed. He continued to stroke his penis, maintaining his erection, still thinking about the video he’d been watching, when he sent Hannah a text message that read, “Wut wud u do w/my hard dick right now?” He didn’t know if she would respond in any kind of a timely fashion, but decided to prolong his masturbation session for a few minutes, giving her time to answer. She replied to his text message in under a minute with one that read, “I’d put it in my wet pussy.” Chris wished she’d said something about gagging on it, or about squeezing his testicles as hard as she could. He sent her a text message that read, “And what wud u do w/ur hands?”

Hannah replied with a text message that read, “Rub them on u.” The lack of specificity or inventiveness in her answer was not arousing to Chris. He prompted her by sending a text message that read, “What wud u do 2 me if I was tied up?”

Hannah didn’t know what to make of this text message. She wasn’t experienced enough with anything sexual to know what to do with a boy who was tied up, and thought it slightly strange that Chris would ask something of that nature. But she still considered him the best and quickest opportunity to lose her virginity. She sent a text message that read, “I’d slide ur dick n my pussy & ride u till u came.”

Although Chris would have preferred a response that included a description of how Hannah would insert something into his anus, or twist his testicles to the point of pain, or sit on his face to the point of smothering him, he was able to derive enough excitement to ejaculate from the thought of lying motionless, bound completely, as Hannah used his erection for her own pleasure.

He thought about sending Hannah a message that read “I just came,” but thought better of it. Instead, he sent one that read, “When r we hanging out?” Hannah replied with one that read, “Whenever u want to fuck me.” Having ejaculated a large amount of semen into a dirty sock, Chris’s sexual arousal was gone. He had almost no interest in having sexual intercourse with Hannah, or with any girl for that matter. He was more interested in emulating something from one of the videos he had seen at the English Mansion. He assumed it would be more than difficult to get a girl to comply with any of these acts, being as far from the norm as they were. Still, he thought, he might be able to get Hannah to comply. She had been willingly accepted his almost abusive sexual treatment of her during their last encounter. He replied with a text message that read, “Up 2 u,” accidentally getting some of his semen on his phone.

B
randy Beltmeyer came into the kitchen, where her mother was typing up a new document to present in the following week’s PATI meeting. It was an overview of websites that parents commonly mistake as predator-free, even though, according to Patricia, they were breeding grounds for danger. The list included sites like eBay, Twitter, TMZ, and ESPN. Brandy said, “Mom, I’m going to go Lauren’s to watch a movie.” Although Lauren attended Dawes Middle School, she still lived close enough to Brandy that a bicycle ride was not uncommon.