Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (32 page)

I asked her about Hussy's dead sister Amber.
Her mother told me there was no Amber. That's when I found out all
that had been a big lie. And Amber's kids obviously didn't exist
either. I asked her mother whether she went to jail, when Hussy
asked me for bail money to bond her out a few months earlier. Nope.
Her mother had never been in jail a day in her life. And that's
when I found out that when Hussy's father supposedly texted me that
Hussy was so upset about her mother being in jail, she was going to
kill herself, that was not really her father texting me, but Hussy
herself.

"In the big lie there is always a certain force of
credibility... in the primitive simplicity of their minds the
people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie,
since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but
would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would
never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and
they would not believe that others could have the impudence to
distort the truth so infamously."

Adolf Hitler

Linda still called me at least 2 or 3 times
a week. At first she kept calling to help me get over Alice. But
over time, my grief over losing Alice faded, and I was wrapped up
in my adventures with Hussy. I guess there was a silver lining in
everything I had been going through with Hussy. She helped me
forget Alice.

When Alice ran away from rehab, I was so
heartbroken, it felt like she had died. I grieved. I mourned. And
for me, my Alice really did die, when I finally realized that the
Alice in my head was not the same Alice that existed in the real
world. The Alice in my head was a sweet, beautiful girl. My dream
girl. But the Alice in the real world was a drug addicted hooker
who fucked every guy in town and sucked any dope boy's dick for a
hit. My dream girl with the sunny smile died, and all that was left
was a rancid zombie who roamed the shadows, always looking for the
next guy to fuck, the next dick to suck. I wanted nothing to do
with the real world Alice.

After a few months, my phone conversations
with Linda no longer revolved around Alice, but around the crazy
girls I had met in Florida. Especially Hussy. Linda thought it was
entertaining. To her, listening to my stories was like watching a
soap opera on TV. Tune in tomorrow, to find out what happens
next!

But Linda also had crazy stories for me.
Some of them were about her own awkward experiences as a rookie
hooker. But most of her stories revolved around her friend
Stephanie. Stephanie was a heroin addicted hooker who had moved
from New York to Atlantic City. She was homeless and prowled the
Boardwalk. Linda told me that Stephanie used to be a beautiful
girl. A tall, skinny blonde with a gorgeous face and a great body.
But now she looked like a mangy toothless crackhead. Linda even
sent me naked pictures of Stephanie, to show me how disgusting she
looked now.

Stephanie had been raped, beaten and left
for dead on the Atlantic City Boardwalk several times. You'd think
she would have hit rock bottom after those experiences. But no.
None of that made her quit. It just made her want to use even more
drugs, to forget her miserable life. As long as she could get high,
she didn't care if she was being raped in a dark alley. At this
point in her life, a lethal overdose probably would have felt like
her salvation.

Linda's stories about Stephanie really
opened my eyes about how powerful drug addiction really is. It's
easy for a sober person to say: "Just get over it and stop using
drugs." But that's like telling a starving person not to eat. No
matter how much will power you have, eventually you cave and you
stuff your face with all the food you can get your hands on. And at
that moment nothing else in the world matters.

Since those conversations with Linda, I read
a lot about addiction. One medical article stood out to me. It
explained that different parts of our brain are in charge of
different things. The midbrain is the oldest, most primitive part
of our brain. It's kinda like a cockroach. Not very bright. The
midbrain is in charge of our cravings. If we only had a midbrain,
we'd be fucking, eating and doing drugs all day long. We'd give in
to every craving, every urge without any thought about the
consequences of our actions.

Then there's the prefrontal cortex. That's
the most advanced part of our brain. It's responsible for complex
problem solving and abstract thinking. Basically it's the part of
our brain that separates us from animals. The prefrontal cortex is
where our brain considers the consequences of our actions. It's the
part of our brain that lets us predict and contemplate future
events, and how our actions will affect our future, or the lives of
other people. The prefrontal cortex is what gives us empathy. A
shark doesn't feel guilty when it eats someone. That's just what
sharks do. But a typical human will feel bad for someone else, feel
pity, guilt and remorse thanks to the prefrontal cortex.

It takes a long time for the prefrontal
cortex to fully develop. Doctors say that part of the brain is not
fully operational until you are about 25 years old. That's why
teenagers think differently than adults. A teenage brain is simply
not fully developed yet, and therefore not as good as an adult
brain at considering the consequences of your actions, or truly
comprehending how your actions affect someone else. That's why
courts treat teenage offenders with more leniency than adult
criminals.

It's also the reason why drug court is more
lenient with drug offenders, because drugs like heroin or crack
disrupt the development and function of the prefrontal cortex. The
brain of a drug addict simply does not work the same way as a sober
brain. A brain on drugs, with an impaired prefrontal cortex, is
simply not capable of considering the consequences, or feeling
empathy for your victims, in the same way as a sober brain.

To me, that right there explains why drugs
turn addicts into selfish sociopaths who will hurt anyone to get
the next high. Being mad at a drug addict for doing what drug
addicts do, is like being mad at a shark for doing what sharks do,
or being mad at a cockroach for doing what cockroaches do.

Addicts don't like when you tell them they
are all the same. Of course not. Who would? But to me, addicts are
like actresses, who all audition for the same role in a horror
movie. It doesn't matter how they got to the audition. It doesn't
matter how or where they grew up, once they get to the audition,
all the actresses act in the same way and read the same lines. They
all become the same character.

To me, the impairment of the prefrontal
cortex explains why traditional rehab has such an incredibly high
failure rate. The AA 12-step program is all about talking to the
prefrontal cortex. They tell you to think about how your behavior
has hurt other people. You're supposed to think about how drugs
have ruined your life. Those are complex thoughts that happen in
the prefrontal cortex. But when you put a bag of heroin or a crack
pipe in front of an addict, the prefrontal cortex simply shuts
down. It goes on vacation. All that is left is the midbrain,
screaming for drugs: "Yeah! Let's do it! It'll feel sooo gooood!
Fuck tomorrow! Fuck the consequences! Let's get hiiigh rrright
nooow!"

You can train the prefrontal cortex all you
want, with 12-step slogans and prayers, but none of that is gonna
do you any good, if your prefrontal cortex isn't even home when
your midbrain takes over and you're about to relapse.

I picture the battle between the prefrontal
cortex and the midbrain like the cliché of the little angel and the
little devil sitting on your shoulders. The angel (the prefrontal
cortex) tells you not to do drugs: "Think about what it will do to
your life! Think about your loved ones!" Meanwhile the little devil
(the midbrain) on your other shoulder just chants: "Do it! Do it!
Do it!"

And primitive urges are usually a lot
stronger than rational thought. That's why people do things even
when they know that they shouldn't. Drug addicts know they
shouldn't take drugs. But they do it anyway.

People cheat on their spouses, even though
they know that 5 minutes of sex with someone else is not worth
ruining a lifelong relationship. But they cheat anyway, because the
midbrain is winning. The poor little angel is fighting a losing
battle.

Overweight people know they shouldn't eat 6
donuts in a row. But they do it anyway. Why? Because the little
angel, who knows all about bad cholesterol and heart disease, was
on vacation while the little devil screamed: "Do it! Do it! Do
it!"

And that, in a nutshell, is why the AA
12-step-program has such a high failure rate in my opinion.

Anyway, let's get back to Linda:

The stories she told me about her own life
often revolved around her kids. Her young son and her baby
daughter. You know, the one she wanted to abort when we met in
Pennsylvania a year earlier.

Linda told me she hated being a hooker. She
hated having complete strangers touch her, get on top of her, be
inside of her, and use her to get off. It disgusted her. The men
disgusted her. And she was disgusted with herself. "But it is what
it is. I need the money."

She told me that her baby daughter had a
deformed foot. She needed to make money as a hooker to save up for
the surgery. She said she didn't want just any random surgeon to
work on her daughter. She wanted the best surgeon she could find.
Honestly, I don't believe any of that was true. I think she smoked
crack, and that's where all her money went.

One time she emailed me that she was
stranded in New Jersey somewhere with a flat tire. She said she had
no one else to ask, and she begged me to wire her $200 to get a new
tire, so she could get home to her children. I told her that after
everything I had been through with girls lying to me about
make-believe emergencies to con me out of money, I wasn't going to
wire a dime to anyone anymore. Especially not to her.

I hacked Linda's Yahoo Mail account and saw
that she had emailed over 30 guys with that same story. And a bunch
of them really did wire her $200 to get a new tire. I never told
her that I had hacked her and knew she was conning a whole bunch of
people.

Another time she claimed that she needed
money to buy her mother a pair of fancy sunglasses for her
birthday. A whole bunch of guys thought they were the only one she
asked, and felt flattered that she would come to them, and they all
sent her the money. She made thousands of dollars with these little
scams.

Then one day I got text messages from her
phone, asking me to bail her out of jail. Supposedly the texts were
from Linda's babysitter, using Linda's phone. The texts said Linda
had been arrested for unpaid tickets, and that Linda had gotten
into a fight with one of the other inmates and was bleeding. She
needed to be bailed out right now.

Texting was too slow and tedious, so I asked
the babysitter to pick up the phone and talk to me. She said she
couldn't, because the phone supposedly had gotten wet in the sink,
and now the phone didn't work, except texting. I told her to use
her own phone to call me, instead of Linda's. She said she didn't
have her own phone with her. That's when I knew this really wasn't
any babysitter texting me on Linda's behalf, but Linda herself. The
whole jail story was just her latest scheme. I went into her Email
account again and saw that she had been sending out emails that
day, as well as the previous days. So she was obviously not really
in jail. Later I found out that a bunch of guys fell for that scam
again as well, and several of them sent her bail money.

This went on for a few months. I never sent
Linda any money, but I also never told her that I knew she was
lying about all this stuff to get money out of me and other guys.
Sometimes it's better not to tell someone you know they're
lying.

One day when Linda called me, she sounded
really upset. She started crying and told me she had just found out
her baby girl had cancer. Wow! Karma is a bitch, I thought to
myself, while trying to sound compassionate and comforting on the
phone. That's what she gets for always lying, to prey on other
people's compassion. She had used her kids in so many of her lies
and schemes, and now her baby daughter really was sick. And with
cancer! Wow. Just wow.

Over the next few weeks, Linda told everyone
she knew that her kid needed chemo therapy and expensive cancer
specialists. A bunch of guys sent her money. Thousands of dollars.
Then some of those guys even set up a charity for her baby
daughter. And they organized a charity event for her. Linda asked
me to be her date at her party. I declined. I told her I wouldn't
be able to make it to New York in time for the party, because I was
busy with some project here in Florida.

I was suspicious. Who could blame me, after
watching her scam people over and over again with her stories? I
kept asking her to tell me details about her daughter's health.
About the type of cancer she had. Which hospital she was in. How
she was feeling. Linda answered all my questions without skipping a
beat.

Every time she called me, she kept me
updated on her daughter's health. She told me about her
appointments with cancer specialists, and what the oncologists and
pediatricians told her about her daughter's condition. She told me
about the Disney movies her daughter watched in the pediatric
oncology department of the hospital. She told me about how kind the
nurses were to her daughter, and what her daughter's favorite
hospital food was.