The Passion Agency (4 page)

“What are you going to do with him?” she asked.

Donna looked dead ahead over her co-workers shoulder.
She had a customer and needed to go.

“What I said,” Donna said quickly as she got up to go
to the window. “I need some rent money. Come up with it. Stay. Go
ahead and fuck my daughter anytime you and she are in the mood.

….

“She’s gone,” Brea said laughing slightly. “Why don’t
we just finish? I know one thing: it sure would add spice to the
sex.”

Brea was posing. She was actually scared to death.
Not about her mother and the potential fallout from what just
happened. She was scared it would end with Chris. She was growing
needy and starting to actually feel like it all had a future. She
was too clueless and immature to know what kind of future.

The problem was Brea didn’t have any idea what being
together meant.

Chris sat down in a little wooden chair near the very
door Donna had just exited. Although Brea and Brea’s tight little
body was laying back on top of her bed, he wasn’t feeling anything
but shame and fear. Shame for thinking he had betrayed the trust of
someone he not only respected but loved.

For all his ability to get what he wanted from women,
Chris never felt anywhere near protected like he did with Donna.
That'another thing that made her special.

Chris sat in the chair unable to move.

“You are sure a kinky one,” he said with less
admiration and playfulness than he intended. “We’re done. For now
at least. We have to get serious about making some money. I think
Donna will do exactly what she just said.”

“Awe, you are letting me and it down,” Brea said as
she rubbed herself just above her clit. “I’ll maybe do it myself
later. You are thinking too damn much here. Mom has her rules. Big
deal. But we can still hook up.”

Brea was desperate to hear more indication that Chris
wanted to be around her. It was a tight rope. She had to be careful
not to blow up her pose of the indifferent woman with a little
girl’s experience. The woman said she didn’t care. The truth was
the little girl was really frightened of not being able to control
the situation.

Chris got up and made his way to the front room. He
was too shocked to know what to do next. His clothes were not
wadded on the floor and furniture like he left them. They were
neatly folded on the kitchen table. Donna.

Same as all the many many loads of laundry Donna had
done for Chris over the years.

There was a very real sense inside of Chris right
then as he put those clothes on that it was time to grow up and
time to look again at who was providing real value to his life. It
wasn’t the ninteen year-old pleasuring herself on her bed.

It would take more than one incident and one fleeting
moment in his mind to make the real changes that would need to be
made. But there was little doubt for Chris the seed was planted. He
had been a helpless shell of an adult for so long mostly because it
was so easy.

Despite it all, they were still together. Despite it
all. They were still a team. A very unlikely team, but a team.

As dysfunctional as it might have appeared to anyone
who knew what happened in the home of Donnatella Passion Casteel in
September 2012, their togetherness was real and it was their
greatest asset.

Chapter 5--My Baby Girl

Diary Date October 10, 2012.

“I haven’t written in a while, many months, because I
have been working a lot. I have been

worrying even more.

Last month I found out my daughter and my boyfriend
have been fucking in my house. No idea

how long that’s been going on. I guess I don’t really
much care. I was hurt but not in the way I thought I’d be.

My first thought was I didn’t want to let them off
the hook by doing nothing. But the something I decided I would do
was pretty mild. I wanted to scare them. I wanted to let them know
I could live with it. I wanted them to know there would be no more
free rides in the house. If they wanted to go at it, they needed to
get their own place.

I don’t know how much longer it would have went on
with Chris anyways. I haven’t been enjoying the sex because I could
tell he hasn’t been enjoying the sex. I know how guys can be. They
see a younger thing with a better body, less flab and wrinkles, and
they want to sleep with her. Chris hasn’t been interested in me for
months, I didn’t want to face it. Or maybe I didn’t have time?

I wasn’t putting any energy into him. Same for us as
a couple probably because it had run it’s course. It all was just
such a habit. I remember when I was growing up and had a good time
making fun of my parents and other older people. How they seemed so
boring and how they did mostly the same things all the time for
their work and their fun. No way was that going to be me!

Well life can take you where you don’t want to go
very easily. Like me. I got a job because I needed one to support
me and Brea. I could never just quit because I needed the money
from the job.

I tried to get further ahead for us, so I got three
of them. Well my whole day is planned at that point. Heck my whole
week. Heck my whole life!

Before I knew it, my life was one big boring habit
just like what I used to make fun of with my parents. I found out
the reality that it’s not their fault. It’s about starting out
playing from behind with money and never being able to catch
up.

My life ambition goes from pursuing my dream to run
my own salon for women, to just not being on the streets. Being
poor is ok, but being a bum is not. I couldn’t be a bum even if
that is what it might take. I’d have my day back. I could pursue my
dreams from the ground up with no big responsibilities hanging over
my head. Like paying for the house expenses, food for Brea and I,
making sure there is gas in the car and the right papers on it to
keep it on the road. All those things cost money and they take a
lot of my time to make the money.

I could never let Brea down. She is my baby girl. She
is blameless for everything in my eyes. I have never been a great
mother to her. It’s the truth and it hurts to admit it. It isn’t
the fact that I didn’t buy into all the stuff about how you have to
teach them right from wrong and morals.

I mean come on! I don’t think morals would have made
any difference in whether or not she decided to starting letting my
boyfriend screw her. I think maybe feeling really wanted and
important might have made a difference. She was banging for the
same reason I was banging Chris all that time. We both want to feel
wanted and loved.

I failed to give that to her. We don’t communicate
and never have much because when it didn’t look like normal mother
daughter personality type stuff like I always imagined it, I quit.
It looked like work and I totally gave up.

I did the provider and cool friend role. I let the
hole she had in her life from not having a dad around grow bigger
and get worse. I abused her by neglecting her emotional needs. I
let her not care because I didn’t care like a real mom should. I
don’t know where we go from here, but I hope she first realizes she
did wrong, but second I don’t love her any less.

I am not judging her and that we’ll get by this
discomfort. That she can do what she wants as a very young adult
and I’ll still love her.

I know this all sounds good. It feels great to write
it!!! But will I actually follow through? It is going to take time.
Life for me is already busy enough.

I just don’t know but I know things have to change. I
am 40 and my life is passing me by. The curse of me is I know what
I can be, but I don’t know how to get there. I believe it’s
possible to live my dreams. I don’t KNOW it’s possible. That’s my
problem.

I see these all these things in the world and I don’t
think they are right. For example, I hate the way these models with
all their fancy make up and photoshopping make women feel inferior.
That stuff has probably done more to make me feel inferior. That
and subsidizing a stiff like Chris more than any other factor.

It destroys my confidence when I can’t measure up. So
many of these girls are stuck chasing a phony image of what beauty
actually is. The fucking men buy in even worse. I can’t compete
with my daughter and I shouldn’t have to. But the young dominate
the old when it comes to women getting men and all that.

Romance ain’t dead. Just for women over 35 who don’t
have the man they chose when they were 25. I hate it.

There isn’t anything I can do about it either. So
many ideas I come up with to make things better. I never get to try
them out because I am beating my head against the wall collecting
water bills for Inglewood or serving people eggs and bacon at a
restaurant.

I told my daughter and Chris they would need to start
chipping in with the rent right after I surprised them going at it
in my daughter’s room. One thing I have to say as an aside is I
can’t imagine seeing anything as odd and shocking as what I saw
when I looked at the two of them naked and embarrassed on Brea’s
bed.

I feel like I can take anything on and not worry if
it is too much to bear after that. Maybe this is the real lesson.
Who knows and who cares I guess?

Tomorrow when I wake up I still have the same things
I am trying to break out of. I don’t know how to break free. If I
could live my dreams I might be way happier.

I am not unhappy now but I might be able to do more
for Brea or even Chris. I don’t like being a failure but I think
life has swallowed me up. That’s why I felt way worse than like
jealousy or hurt over Chris and Brea.”

...

Searching around her mom’s room and uncovering her
personal journal brought Brea closer to the reality of what it
meant to be an adult and far closer to her mother than she had been
at any point she could ever remember. She read the October 10 entry
a total of three times. Each time it made her sob.

She sobbed because she didn’t know how much her mom
cared. Or maybe she sobbed because she felt truly loved when she
read what her mom wrote and that was a first for her.

She sensed most how much of her mom’s life was tied
up in broken dreams and how badly she wanted to unbreak them. She
could see her mom wanted those dreams for not just herself but for
what the dreams could do for everyone else.

Brea just had no concept of life outside her little
world. She was actually frightened by how far she had to go to be
as generous in spirit as her mom.

Now she knew much much more about what made her mom
tick. Maybe things might align for them to have impact in each
other’s lives beyond any normal mother and daughter relationship.
Because they most certainly did not have normal or conventional.
That was assured when Donna climbed out from under her daughter’s
bed and saw what she saw.

Chapter 6--The Measure of Grit

Donna hustled into her car and gunned it as fast as
she could over to Carson. An obvious downside of living anywhere in
Los Angeles was you were creating all kinds of problems if you were
trying to get to things timely when you were late starting out.

She did what she could but was a solid ten minutes
late for the interview.

At the interview, she did a super job in her view of
acting like she loved the idea of being a legal assistant and
really wanted the job.

“Tell me what excites you about the law?” was one of
the questions from an old fat guy member of their three panelist
interview team. Donna thought the guy looked miserable but figured
he probably had made his money.

He introduced himself as a “partner” and sure enough
Donna noticed his name was on the door.

“I love standing up for my position and the position
of the people I work for,” she said with bubbling smile. “I think
our system is wonderful because it affords people the opportunity
to make that argument. That due process. (due process? She had been
watching coverage of a pro football player losing his job over a
bar fight he got into and heard everyone talking about it. It just
came out.) Being able to compete against other people in the
marketplace of ideas and find a way to win no matter what.”

She was lying on everything she was saying, but it
sounded convincing. The truth was she hated arguing.

But she was desperate. The babysitting job looked
like it was being curtailed because that family was cutting their
expenses in difficult times. The waitressing job didn’t pay enough
to make much of a difference. She needed this crap. She was fully
convinced of it.

“Can you explain why you were late today?” one of the
older female attorneys asked. She was some wills and estates
specialist Donna would see with a big pull-out ad in the
newspaper.

Donna was starting to get herself a splitting
headache just being here. It seemed like the same old, same old.
More begging for something she hated, just because she had no
choice. Why did life have to be so devoid of choices?