The Successor

"Fired?"

"Yea, fuckin' fired! Fired for stealing clients."

"We didn't steal no fuckin' clients!" I couldn't believe M was serious.

"Well, regardless, you're too fuckin' pussy-whipped to work with and I can't trust that dot-headed bitch once I let you go so you're both fucking fired. You know how much money you are costing me? You want that bitch, you can have her but, remember, she signed a contract so if you don't want me to sue your ass or do worse, you'll have to buy her out!"

"That's bullshit, dude!"

"What's bullshit is your addiction to her pussy, fucking up my program."

I wasn't addicted to her pussy, I thought. I was addicted to ALL pussy and to all sex for that matter. Shows how much he knew. Actually, I had no clue what the fuck he was on about but I did know that I was scared of him. I knew his contract with her was bogus but I wanted to pay him regardless. He had a power over me at the time. He knew too much of my personal and private life and I was afraid he would throw it in my face or use the information against me. It wasn't really anything I could get into trouble for, it was just shit I would only speak of to good friends. M also determined the mood and the mood was danger and fear, ringing and repeating in my head like a 5 alarm fire exponentiated with a nervous feeling of dark voodoo that lingered and thickened in the air with each minute that passed since he threw his black ball of bullshit on me. I wanted it to go away. I wanted him to go away.

The thought of killing M had crossed my mind, not out of anger or spite or pride but out of reasons, if you want to call them, of sheer survival. But, I felt even if I had made that decision that it would not have worked. I feel M would have smelled me out and my attempt would have been in vain. The feeling was analogous to the frustrating dream that many of us have where you try to punch or hurt an enemy but the punches you throw move annoyingly slower than you want them to and the harder you try to strike, the heavier your hands become. Maybe it's just me but, regardless, I have this dream all the time--a similar feeling to the dream I also have where I attempt to run away from something, the boogieman or what not, but keep falling or getting stuck to the ground--dreams symbolic of a weakened confidence, I think. My low self-esteem is what got me to M's reality in the first place and I simply couldn't imagine myself winning against him...he was my teacher and as retarded as it was, up to this point, he was the only real male mentor I had ever had besides the electronic pixels on a TV screen denoting my favorite celebrities or rock stars. There were others but they didn't stay around long enough for anything solid to develop and stabilize.

Playing off of her foreign ignorance, I managed to convince Ruby that the contract she signed with M was a legitimate concern and that she needed to come up with the money to buy it out. M asked us for $3000 and we gave it to him. My fear and choice to give my will over to a being of a loveless nature had cost Ruby $3000 not to mention all the money I had given M over the last few years for Scientology courses and counseling, the Total Freedom Rundown, the card computing machine (fuckin' thing!), and various other bullshit fines and scams that filled M's pockets. Not counting the cost of Ruby's "contract," I had given M close to 9 or 10,000 dollars cash over the last few or so years! That may not be much to some, but for my lower to middle class status, it was a fortune.

After I had finally accepted the fact that M was not my friend--was never my friend, the reality of being had, of being a fool, had swarmed all over me. Disappointment and rage were festering in my innards as waves of cognition had flooded my brain. M used my need to be understood, my need to be acknowledged, my need for teachings, my need for a father, my need for love...in the name of greed and power he used these against me, leaving me only the lessons and blueprints to construct thicker scars and callouses. I remember having this realization sitting in our apartment, slumped over with my head in my hands on the day we were moving out and away from M's domain. Surprisingly, Ruby came to me with warmth and complete understanding...well, maybe with an uncovering of a hidden agenda on the side but nevertheless...

"It was a learning lesson for you. He is older and more street than you. He is dirtier. Your spirit wasn't ready yet to battle him on that level, not yet. Anyway, fuck him and his money. Since he blamed us for stealing his clients, we might as well start our own service and keep everything! We'll be rich!"

Fuckin' ay, I thought. Was this bitch just pretending to be gullible the whole time?! I think she wanted us to break off from him from the get go! I saw greedy, little twinkles in her eyes and I loved her for it. We fucked for hours in our near-barren apartment. As I came, the words screamed silently in my brain but loud nonetheless, "Fuck you, you rotten, hairy bastard fuck! Fuck you!!" The next morning, we packed the remainder of our shit and headed to our new abode in North Hollywood off of Lankersheim and Hesby st.

"How about, 'Hollywood Escorts' or 'The Girls of Hollywood Hills'."

"Naw. Sounds too much like fat ass M's name. Think of something else, Ruby. Something simple and cool so we can get down to the L.A. X-press to place the ad before it closes."

"How about 'Charm Entertainment'."

"Hmm. Not too shabby, girl. Fair enough. Let's go!" The ad was placed, ironically, but of course, right next to M's. Ruby had previously taken some awesome professional pictures and she looked Playboy quality in the ad photo. Calls flodded in immediately and we were off the to the races. Using M's techniques for screening calls and collecting cash, Ruby and I pulled in about $3000 our first week and added two other girls. Within a few months, there were seven girls, one transgender, one dominitrix, and one dude.

Besides the occasional gig of banging some pervert's wife while he watched and jerked-off, I did nothing but sit around, get fat and collect cash though I was still not completely at ease in regards to the entire situation. Our ads became increasingly bigger which I think I'm correct to assume started to attract the attention of the authorities which, also, suspiciously increased shortly after I was contacted by the infamous ex-mentor, now rival and nemesis, M. Somehow he researched and obtained my supposed unlisted, non-business, home phone number and started the conversation in his usual, false and friendly way, acting as if we had no previous controversy.

"Hey, man. What's up? I see you got your ads running. Ruby looks good in that ad, boy, that's a great fucking photo. How you been? How's business on your end?"

"You know how business is. This is good money. How about you?" I played into a small conversation just to see where he was coming from and what he was getting at. I had his number though he still made me super fucking nervous. Keep your enemies close, as they say. I was very careful with not incriminating myself with words as was M.

"You know that one bitch you got working for you, Michelle?"

"I've got two Michelles. One hot, red-headed dominitrix and one that looks like Phyllis Diller who somehow still gets a lot of call backs." M was asking me about her as a reference but I knew he was really gloating over the fact that he had taken one of my girls from me.

"The second one. Yea, she's going to work for me now. You see how I can have anything you can have? Do you see that?"

"Look, M. She already told me she was going to apply by you and I told her to go ahead because I could only use her part-time. She still works for me and I even got paid to fuck her last week while some guy paid to watch. You got anything else you want to talk about?"

I was friendly to most of the girls that worked for me. I never considered myself a pimp at all, though when I tell people or new friends that I used to run an escort service, they tend to all laugh when I tell them that I was an "agent", not a pimp. "Sure, that's what they all say, hahaha." Whatever. I was making money, the girls were making money and besides Ruby, who became lazy when she got what she considered her "riches," I never pressured the girls into doing anything. They either fucked me for money while someone else watched and paid, or just fucked me anyway because they wanted to. I never laid a hand on them and I never initiated sex, though I did sleep with every last one of them...even the gender-bender. Why not. What's good enough for Eddie Murphy is good enough for me. Anyway, back to M.

"Yea, I got more I want to talk about. If you don't want me to fuck your world up and if you don't want your soul to rot in some degraded fucking hell for 10,000 years, you need to complete a 5 thousand dollar clean-up rundown right fucking now! That is your karma!" M was reaching at this point. He was pissed that he created his own competition.

"But if I don't agree to that then it is my karma to not rot in your hell and because I respect even your free will, I completely allow you to have and own that hell because it is not rightfully mine. As you taught me, reality is based on agreement and M, my friend, I do not agree with you, therefore, we have no reality." I can't believe I fell for this losers game before. I felt more foolish than ever.

"Yea, well...agreement or not, there is a universal law that is beyond your or my opinion!" It was the first time I heard M ever stumble on his words.

"Ok. I hear you. I hear your opinion that universal law is beyond our opinions but the trouble with that statement is that it is your opinion which by that simple fact makes your opinion primary over the idea, created by you, that universal law is beyond your will...your opinion. With saying that, I disagree with that opinion. You taught me this, so why are you contradicting your own self? Or is it your karma to do so?"

We both hung up our phones after a couple quick "fuck you's." Whatever I said had hurt my head but I know it worked. I had him checkmated though not without racing my heart and nearly shitting myself. The next week was spooky as fuck. Once again, the feeling of black voodoo sorcery had filled the air. It was either self-created by my own fears or coming from the black magic rituals that I know M was practicing. He told me once that he's been successful with it in the past and that magic is simply a symbolic highly charged situation of consciously focusing on a desired opinion, to create a thought, any thought postulated, to manifest itself in proportion to the amount of energy it rides on. Though symbolic objects may help some people with acquiring and keeping this focus, no talisman is needed necessarily. M and I talked about this when we were still "friends" after I walked in on him in his apartment one day. He was wearing a black monk-like robe and holding some ornate dagger of some kind amongst an assortment of magic-related trinkets on his coffee table.

For 7 days after my conversation with M, I felt pains in my chest, I almost got into numerous car crashes, and the clients we had calling and whom we went to see were dangerous and weird as fuck. The first funked up call that stands out in my mind regarding this week of nefarious mojo ruined my appetite for vegetables for a long time following.

"Wow! Look at the size of this fuckin' place, dude. He must be someone famous!"

I could never remember her name for the life of me, but one of the girls I had working for the escort service, a likeable girl but not the brightest chicken in the coop, was impressed by the outside entrance way of a client's mansion that we were approaching. She thought her new gig with "Charm Entertainment" was going to open up opportunities for her to be discovered by someone famous and powerful. Well, here may be her chance, I thought. Christ.

The door opened slowly, presenting to us, a cliche' dressed butler sporting a tux with tails and everything, though his bugged out eyes and jittering drug jaw didn't quite fit the conventional role...or possibly that is the conventional role but we didn't know it. Maybe the drunk butler in the movies was just a friendly way of saying the butler was always high on crack or speed. Who knows? Everything I assumed I knew about Hollywood before my arrival has been shown to me to be wrong this far, so why not.

The butler insisted that we put on rubber gloves before proceeding any further into the "not so humble" abode. After getting paid, I questioned him a bit about our client and if the girl would be safe, being that there was a druggie drug type situation involved. He told me "who" our client was and that we had nothing to worry about. He was a movie producer, one of the big boys, in which I won't mention who--for obvious reasons. I mean, you want the scoop...you want the dirt...you want to know who's fucked up in Hollywood? Then fine. I'll tell you. Everyone!! Duh.

We then followed him down a corridor to a lush master bedroom that smelled of fecies and fish (shit and pussy)...sorry, I know that's gross but, hey man, I'm just reporting the facts. Every phallic object in the room, particularly oblong shaped vegetables, were covered with condoms, rubber gloves, and plastic wrap. Lubed-up carrots, cucumbers, and squash were scattered all over the floor and were apparently not the preferred vegetables of our soon to meet client's choice. And where was the fine ladd? Ahh, there he is! With two whores shoving a zucchini up his ass like they were churning butter. Is this where the sexual term, "tossing salad" came about? To make matters even more festive, crack-cocaine was, of course, part of their potpourri of depravity. Our "client" would tell the girls to stop the bludgeoning until he takes another hit in which after doing so he would be high enough to take an ungodly large object up his ass, in this case, an overgrown, steroid enhanced zucchini. I mean, give the guy a break. It was around Thanksgiving, after all. At least he used a vegetable that matched the season.

"Well, girlie girl...now's your chance to meet someone of prestige and importance and grant it, I know he has a foreign object up his ass but remember, it is organic...so as soon as the zucchini is out of his rectum and he sews himself back together, I'm sure he'll be WAY interested in hearing about all the undiscovered beauty and potential you have. This, of course, after he clears his head from the mind apocalypse he just created with his evening's crack smoking assault. Hmm? Why are you looking at me like that. You wanted to be a star! Go get 'em tiger!!"

After seeing her eyebrows lift and her mouth drop, I told her not to worry and that we were getting the hell out of there. At that point our client finally approached us directly and pleaded with us to stay and shove a garden salad up his ass or whatever the fuck the objects were that he had laying around in his pit.

"Sorry, dude, but crack, elbow grease, boared out manholes, and degraded vegetables are not our idea of a good time. We're leaving."

"But I paid you! You have to do what I say. You have to stay!" He said this like a little spoiled brat kid except with a pathetic dried up, spit-crusted, quivering mouth. He grabbed my arm with his clammy, KY jelly and shit-ridden hands as if to stop me from leaving. I was annoyed, disgusted, fed up and over-whelmed with weirdness and I snapped. I snapped into an automatic rage that from my memory of the incident was completely involuntary. I took his body and threw it across the room, projectiling him into a dresser, smashing it and terrifying him into tears. At that point, I picked him up from underneath his neck and held him up off the ground, his feet dangling in the air. I felt like Darth Vader holding up one of the rebel soldiers, interrogating and choking him to death at the same time. I was lucky in my blind auto-rage not to have killed the man.

"Look you slimy, arrogant, rich, selfish little prick! Don't you ever fucking touch me!! And we've earned our fucking money by just being in the room with your funky ass. We're leaving and if you try to stop us legally or otherwise I will fucking kill you. Even I have had enough bad fuckin' weirdness for the week! Now, I'd love to stay and tear you a new asshole but it seems you've already done that to yourself. Fuckin' prick!!"

I meant every word I said. I was shaking with adrenaline. All the weirdness and fucked up shit going on since getting into L.A. would have culminated into one single energy burst of rage. If I would've hit the man I know I would have killed him because I know I would not have been able to stop once kill-mode was turned on. The motherfucker. Shit, I get pissed off just writing about it.

The whores he hired were somewhere in hiding. They were high on crack and were scared even more than was realistic to be. I felt bad for them. The butler stood there not saying a word and me and the girl left with the money, as always. When we got into the car everything was quiet for a bit until my newbie worker girl broke the silence.

"Well.....I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore....huh."

I looked at her and the reality of the moment really hit me. She was being real. I liked her and for some reason, at that point, I finally remembered her name.

"Well, Lisa...I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore either."

A couple nights later, a second fucked up outcall almost ended in tragedy. A girl, who I recruited from the street hookin' thang, had quit her pimp (for the moment), and had started doing gigs with Charm Entertainment. I had previously talked to her on the street after she approached me in my car. I told her I ran a service and that she could make a hell of a lot more money with me than what she was making outside. I took her to a call that night, we developed somewhat of a trust between each other, and she started to work for the agency after that.

She was a toughened, fearless white girl living off the desperation of the streets since she was an early teen. Her body was thin, her breasts were small, and her face was pretty underneath her scornful disposition and bloodshot, distant eyes. Lynette was her name. I respected her seasoned durability. I liked her filth. I don't know why but it turned me on, the wildness of it and all. Maybe because it was new to my wet, dumb, white boy ass. Who knows. I think it runs deeper with me. She wouldn't give a shit what neighborhood any appointment was in. She'd go anywhere, anytime, so when she called me in a totally frightened, babbling frenzy on her cell phone from the apartment I just left after collecting the client's money and dropping her off, it made way for grave concern and kicked my brain into freak out mode. When I knocked on the apartment door, preparing myself for violence, she came bolting out passed me, almost knocking me over.

"Come on! Let's get the fuck out of hear!!"

"What happened?!"

"Just come the fuck on!"

We got in the elevator and as the door was closing, I heard multiple footsteps and multiple voices scurrying towards us. The door shut and before we got out at the first floor we hit all the buttons to all the floors so the elevator would have to stop on each of them, delaying our pursuers and sparing us some extra time to get to our car without them being able to come down right away behind us. It was a good thing because the getaway car was parked in such a position on a dead end street where we would have to double back past the exit of the building. As we did so, we saw, 8 to 10 men coming out of the building and rushing towards us. I saw at least 2 of them holding guns as we sped the fuck out of there.

"I thought there was only one fucking guy in there!"

"Fuck no! There were like 10 of them hiding in the other room and they were all fucking cops. Some of them were slamming fucking heroin too! I saw them tying themselves off and shooting it!"

"Holy shit! Why do you think they were cops?!"

"Because they were flashing their badges and ID's and putting their guns in my face saying that if I didn't "party" the way they were "partying" that they were going to kill me!" She was crying like a little girl, a little girl she once was...an infinitely long time ago.

"Holy fucking shit! Lynette, girl, I am sorry about that shit. I've never had any kind of problems like that and if I do I can usually smell them out. Fuck! Here take all the money. You deserve it." She refused the extra cash and threw her cut out the window. She didn't want the money. It was too dirty even for her. As far as the way I felt...well, guilt would be an under statement. I took her home and she never worked for me again though she called me out of the blue a short time after the incident. She told me that she was lonely and asked me to come over.

"Do you need some money or some work?"

"No. Just come over."

When I got to her shabby den, she was half-naked and fucked up on some kind of downer type substance, maybe heroin, maybe a couple of valiums, maybe morphine. I don't know. At the time my addiction was not yet hard drugs. It was sex, and she freely offered that though after rejecting the idea at first, she convinced me to take her up on her offer after threatening me with her psycho, ballistic, angry temper tantrum that she threw when I tried to leave. I couldn't take the chaotic emotional stress so, hence, we had sex...weird sex, but necessary, I think. I feel the incident the week before freaked her out and she needed to even it out with some lovin'...her version of love anyway. She was so jaded that the only way she could accomplish the feeling was to be on some heavy drugs. Pain killers and anal sex. Many would call it a fucked up situation. She called it love. So be it. Love. Fuck it. Still better than 10 drugged up cops with guns and bad ideas! I never saw her again...well, not true. I saw her on a couple of porn movie box covers peeing on some other girl in one and getting gang-banged on another, but I never saw her again in person.

For 4 or 5 days after the incident, I told all the girls to kick back while things settled down. Ruby, who was recently reunited with her younger brother, Sanjay, was out of the mix and would be out even longer with her upcoming trip to India. Charm Entertainment had given her enough funds to finally visit her mother that she hadn't seen since she was taken to America by her twisted, controlling biological father. I was glad for her and I was also glad for me. Shit, man, I got full reign on the apartment and could do all the decadent sexual things I wanted to do without her bitching about them. We had a strange set of agreements, Ruby and I, as far as monogamy or lack of it was concerned. As long as I did it for money, it was accepted but if I did it for pleasure or for free, it was considered cheating. Not a bad deal but I did whatever the hell I wanted anyway, money or no money, and as soon as I dropped her off at the airport, it was on, mang!

I went straight from the airport to Sunset Boulevard where the female prostitutes worked and then to Santa Monica Boulevard where all the transvestites, transexuals, transgenders, transylvanians, transylvanian transvestites in transams with bad transmissions...where all the she-males worked. As a child growing up with way too much television as my education to the world, I had, imbedded in me, the idea of a Hollywood hooker as one that would be dressed in thigh high leather boots with 4 inch heels wearing a boa type scarf draped over some half-exposed tits or what have you, but I never expected this look to be only sported by chics with dicks. The "regular" female hustlers wore t-shirts or sweatshirts and jeans whereas the she-male "ladies" of the evening wore the old school, flamboyant hooker fashions. I think that kind of garb should be part of the jobs required apparel...in the least to satisfy my childhood fantasy of picking up a full-on, proper, street whore that my horny, little, ignorant midwest mind observed on TV. A pimp I talked to on Hollywood Blvd told me the fashion for women became bland since crack hit the streets hard in the mid-eighties. I'm not sure if or how these two things are correlated but why not. Fuckin' crack! Ruins everything.

Hence, I preferred blow jobs from those dressed in the proper, sexy, street attire as long as I couldn't see too large of an adam's apple and, if their hands were not covered by a sexy, show lounge-glittered gloves, then they at least needed to be kept femininely well-groomed with long, painted nails and what not. The fact that there was a gender bending subterfuge required, was a turn on to me. I wanted the total look of a woman along with the idea that it wasn't. No, this isn't some deep-seeded hatred for women thing--I've considered and checked that. I don't associate a like or dislike of a person with what gender they are. It's actually an appreciation of the feminine...and...well...trannys just give great head...plus it made it "wrong"...wrong enough for me to get off. What? You calling me twisted? Shit man, this is tame compared to what most of Americas tiny, little, perverted Christian minds think about while masterbating at night alone in their beds where judgement is subdued in the darkness. At least I admit it...shit, I brag about it! I don't give a fuck. My mother even reads my stories!

Many times, in fact, most of the time, believe it or not, I would not engage in any sexual activity with the she-male scene. I would hang out and socialize, sometimes for hours on end or until I got a call. I remember one night in particular where I had a great fucking time in some shitty motel, laying on a king-size bed with 5 he-shes, smokin' weed and talking about everything from the sex business, to god...infinity...aliens, to everyones childhood, to music or whatever. I remember the band, Jane's Addiction playing in the background, I believe the track was titled, "Jane Says." One of the pre-op (tits n'dick) transexuals that was on the bed next to me told me how the lead singer used to work the streets and dress up similar to them in the same neighborhood. Now, I have no clue if this is true or not and I don't want to "dis" the great Perry Ferrel of whom I'm a big fan, but I enjoyed the information, nonetheless. Janes Addiction almost became a soundtrack to the funny stories, the ultimate loneliness, and the beautiful melancholy that I learned of from my new acquaintances. It was simply bizarre and strangely sychronistic how I would hear a song by this band nearly everytime I drove past that hood. Androgyny was a major sub-theme for me in L.A. as well as elsewhere. It always seems to pop up...figuratively and literally, I suppose.

Many of the trannys were from Mexico. Actually, the majority of them were, though there were "girls" of all types. They explained to me that it was cheaper to get operated on by the unlicensed doctors in Mexico.

"Doctors in Mexico! You mean you're going to trust some half-ass butcher in Mexico to chop off your shit! I mean even if I was a woman trapped inside a man's body or however you look at it, I'd like some Harvard or Yale motherfucker to work on my shit." I was really stoned and the idea of a man, gay or not, actually choosing to lose his penis was freakin' me out.

"Firsuvall, honey, dey don' schop it off, dey slice it down an' fol' it inside so you still hab' it. You still feel it and anyways, no of us girls are cut. We wou' lose da money, honey."

"What do you mean?"

"I mea' dat da dick is da money. We jus' get our titties done an' stuff. Straigh' guys like a woman weeth a pee-pee. Isa very poplar out here. Dick an' titties baby, hahahah!"

Dick and titties. Well, I would imagine it would have its advantages. As long as you can still piss standing up, I guess everything's alright. It was strange to me. I've associated with, talked to, and have had a fair share of gay friends, some of which one could never guess, unless told, that they were homosexual and others who were twinked out flamers. Now you would think that those of the he-she click would be very feminine and they are externally, but some of them, at least the ones I met in Hollywood, were actually very masculine and didn't give off a "homosexual" feel, not that there's anything wrong with if they did, but the transgender folk seem to have an energy unique to their own. I'm not talking about drag queens in a gay nightclub. Those types are simply dudes in dresses. I'm talkin' about straight up androgynous she-males who were born with an overdose of estrogen yet who still kept their maleness as well. It has a cool, alien, sexy feel to me, especially when it's done right. I don't know. I could be wrong. I just tapped in to it at the time.

After another of many a night of prowling in Hollywood, I woke up about 30 minutes before Ruby's plane was scheduled to land from India. "Holy shit, that's right, I have a girlfriend!" I jumped out of bed, threw on some sweats, which was just about all I owned and wore at the time, and jumped into my cheesed-out Japanese sports car to hurry up and wait in the never-ending, ungodly clusterfuck of the L.A. traffic scene. What a fucking nightmare! I was late, she was pissed, we got home, she found a pair of panties under the bed that were from one of the girls that worked for me, I told her I fucked her for business while someone watched, she didn't believe me or care, we fought more....it was a fucking nightmare and concluded with me admitting that I was a perverted asshole jerk. The next day life was back to normal.

Business was moving good again and Ruby and I, in fact, both scored big time on two separate gigs. She made $2,500 off of some coked up, Hollywood hipster dude who was on the run from the authorities for doing some fucked up, drug-related shit. Doing a mass quantity of lines and sweating profusely, he told us bits and pieces of his story as he threw Ruby a hundred dollar bill every few minutes for just dancing for him and giving him an occasional open-legged pussy flash. He wasn't really interested in sex and even wanted me to hang out in the room. He needed someone to talk to, someone to confess to, someone to give to. It was his strange way of redeeming himself for the moment. I liked him and got as much cash out of him as possible. I mean, after all, who am I to stand in the way of a man's redemption.

The second lucrative gig came about a week later. A German lady called the hotline to set her brother up with a male escort for the evening. I talked to her for a bit and learned that her brother inherited a chain of hotels in Europe and would be staying at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel that evening. She said money wasn't a problem and that her main concern, was that her brother be safe and have a good time. I was playing black jack at the time she called so I just threw out the price of 21 hundred dollars. "Oh, that's all?" She said. Fuck! I thought. I should've asked for more! Regardless, $2,100 was a good gig and I threw on whatever nice clothes I could muster up and headed to the Beverly Wilshire, straightway. On my way there, I realized that for that kind of money, the sex expectancy level could be high. So after initially meeting him and finding out that he was a fan of alcohol, my plan became obvious and easy to me. Get the flaming, German motherfucker drunk! And drunk he got.

We were picked up in a limo and taken to an upscale Beverly Hills, celebrity restaurant scene. I saw a number of recognizable "stars" and other people I felt like I knew from somewhere but who were really just people I've seen in movies or on TV. I also spotted a few previous clients of Charm Entertainment, one celebrity in particular who almost shit his pants when he saw me there. I was no longer all that impressed by the stardom thing and I, of course, respected his discretion like I would any person who called the agency though, I do have to say, some of the actors, writers, and producers who used the service had some of the freakiest, sexually twisted requests I had ever heard of in the business even to this day--scat, fantasies of being treated like a baby (diaper fetish...yeesh!), degradation and humiliation of all sorts, coughing and clearing the throat fetishes, role playing rape scenes...anything you could possibly think of, they requested. Some I would agree to accomodate, others I just couldn't or wouldn't.

The bill for the dinner and drinks came to over $700 for the two of us and our German friend was well lit. He was so bloody rich that he had no clue on what a proper tip was. He would just grab a wad of cash and give it to the chauffeur or the doorman or whoever he thought required a tip. Sometimes it would be too little and other times it would be in the hundreds. Damnit, I should've charged him more! We got to the room and the bastard was still going strong but on the brink of a pass out. He tried to touch me but I convinced him that we should have one more drink to finalize the night.

"Hey, let's have one more night cap before we get naked. Let's celebrate a beautiful night!" I coerced him as I slid out from his attempt at a drunken hug.

He was all for it once I placed the drink in his hand. It was simple. I felt like a girl though. Like some gold-digging rich bitch. It was fucking weird but, hey, a girl's gotta make a livin'...?...I mean, a man. So my rich "husband" passed out on the bed and I sat up the rest of the night drinking wine and eating strawberrys dipped in sour cream, I believe it was, and brown sugar, a complimentary little set-up that the hotel provided in the penthouse suites.

Upon waking, my German friend had apologized to me that he was too drunk to make love. Ugh. He even used the word "love." Gross. I was a woman forsure, I thought. I told him not to worry about it and that he will be forgiven. I said thank you for the beautiful evening, got the hell out of there and went straight to the gym. I lifted some weights, looked in the mirror and, yep, I was still a man. I was naked in front of plenty of men before but this one, maybe because of its formalness, made me feel dirtier on a different level. Like I was owned for a moment. Like I was someone's paid for wife. Christ. I laughed it off, focused on the cashorama and finally made it back home. The next morning I got another call from M.

"Hey, what's up?!" Again with his tone of false affinity.

"What do you want."

"You know that fuckin' bitch who used to work for you and who now...well...did work for me?"

"Yea. Michelle with the huge pointy nose who looks like Phyllis Diller. She still works for me on occasion. Why?"

"The bitch got popped by the police on one of my calls and I sat the weekend in fuckin' jail. Vice raided my place and illegally took and kept, which they denied, over $3,000 cash! The shit is going to cost me 15 to 20,000 dollars to get out of! She signed a contract with me saying she's responsible, as a subcontractor, for her own actions and that Beverly Hills Entertainment in no way promotes or insinuates any prostitution or other illegal activity."

"Yea, I know what it says. I have the same contract."

M was speaking to me like I was a cop and as if he thought he was being recorded. He thought I was in on his bust because I didn't get busted and the girl who got him fucked over was the same girl he bragged about taking from me. Though I played no part in orchestrating his arrest, the karmic turn out was perfect. I'm not sure why he called to tell me other than out of anger and to bitch at the police through me. He was a paranoid, delusional pathetic fuck at this point. I called Michelle and confirmed the story. It was all true. It had all gone down that way. She also said, that M had previous busts that the police didn't notify him of, in order to get more busts to show a pattern. They needed to put the ducks in place, as they say.

In L.A., at the time, vice would need 2 or 3 girls to get busted while working for the escort service to show enough of a pattern to have any chance of charging the owner of the service with pimping and pandering. One girl getting arrested for prostitution would only show that the girl, herself, made the choice individually but it would not be enough to go after the entire agency. M had more than one girl get popped. His "entertainment" service was pulled out of the next weeks advertisement. After a buttload of money, M had weaseled his way out of his charges but was heavily warned and for all intents and purposes kicked out of Hollywood by sundown. A couple months later, I saw an ad in a Las Vegas adult guide and noticed it had a similiar flavor and style of design like M's old ad in the L.A. X-press. I called the line, heard his girl Kelly's voice on the greeting and knew he was back in business. Las Vegas. The Devil's playground. The land and capitol of every low-life, degenerate con-artist imaginable. M was finally home.

About a week after my last conversation with M, while he was still in trouble in L.A., an entourage of vice calls had hit our phone line. I recognized each one of them and especially after spotting the first few, their scripted approach was quite easy to identify. With a daily barrage of these obvious calls along with prank and threatening messages on my answering machine in some creeped-out voice that whispered something to the effect of, "...fuck you..." or, "...you're both going to rot in hell...," barely audible, I ascertained that M was trying to take us down with him. What a punk. Finally, fed up with avoiding the situation, Ruby and I decided to take a gig, which we knew, hook, line and sinker, as my step-dad would say, that it was a vice call, set up "conveniently" near our house, I might add. I charged them double of what I would normally charge and told Ruby that on this one, don't even take your clothes off. Don't even strip for them.

We walked to the call. It was that close to our flat. I went up to the motel room, collected the money, and Ruby entered the room. Within 10 feet of stepping away from the door, I was approached by two men in suits who had told me that I was under arrest. They hand-cuffed me, took back their money, and put me in the back of an unmarked car.

"Fine. I'm not going to resist you but what is the charge? What one law did I break?"

"Running an illegal sex service. It is called pimping and pandering and it is a very serious charge," said the awsiffer.

"It's not an illegal service. None of the girls that work for me have sex for money so, therefore, you are pre-judging a situation in which after a few moments you will realize you have judged incorrectly."

"Sir, do you understand that you have the right to remain silent, sir?"

"Yes, and I choose not to because I broke no law so if you want to write down or record what I am saying than go right ahead!" I was getting pissed. This was bullshit. They had nothing and they knew it.

"Well, your girl in there better not agree to anything."

"Of course she won't." Fuck, Ruby. Don't fuck up and agree to some shit, I thought to myself. One in this business is never arrested for the act of prostitution but for "agreeing" on the act of prostitution and sometimes the cops can twist words around and make a girl agree on something she wasn't going to even do. I was paranoid at this point but more calm than I thought I would be.

Ruby was naive in many ways but also smart in many others. She agreed to nothing illegal even though the police had offered her $2000 for a hand job. She also told me later that they were chopping up lines of cocaine or some substance that looked like cocaine to give off the front that they were far from being cops. She held her position, I mean, she wasn't a full escort anyway, but if someone who she knew wasn't a cop offered her 2 G's for a hand job, she'd have done it. Who wouldn't have.

Though even after proving our legitimacy, we were still taken down to the nearest precinct, again conveniently located a couple of blocks from the motel, and we were hand-cuffed together on a bench in the police station. Ruby and I made out, she grabbed my crotch, we cracked jokes, and I played with her tits while the police watched and smirked. I feel they appreciated getting at least some kind of entertainment out of the deal, they sure as hell didn't get a bust, and for the first time in my life, I witnessed the police loosen up a bit, joking with us back and smiling even! They realized I wasn't some pimp-monster turning out somebody's daughter or what have you, and they eased up on their hatred and seriousness, for the moment, at least. It was cool for what it was worth. I come across as hating all cops but that's really not it. I hate the idea of "cops," the idea that we need them in society because as long as we do, we know that we all ain't got it right yet. After about 10 minutes Ruby and I were uncuffed and I was given a ticket for $280 for running an escort service without a license. I thought this not a problem until I learned that a license would cost me over $3000 to obtain. I never paid the fine. Fuck 'em. They owed me. I was providing a service for their city, after all.

I ran the agency for a bit anyway, though this time when screening a call and red flagging it as a cop, I would simply tell the person on the other end of the line that we were presently in the process of obtaining our license and as soon as we obtained one, we would be able to send out a girl. Things just weren't the same. My nemesis, M, was gone and with him was the game and the lessons already learned. With the service losing luster and lucrativity, Ruby and I had begun to argue to the point of near violence and we began to do this on a daily basis. The weight of the last couple years had hit me all at once and I was done, man. The strange teachings needed time to digest. I wanted to go home. That feeling of claustrophobic urgency that twists in your stomach had hit me and hit me hard. I had to go. I missed familiarity. I missed my family. I called my not so holy, holy man cohort, King Ja, and he agreed to fly out from Minneapolis to help me with the move and though I would return shortly to L.A., for now, this portion of the dark path was complete. I needed a fucking breather.

M. M, I thought. Who the fuck was this guy? The thought of him still made me nervous, though I felt safe. I felt a pivot in the control which was what he was all about...control. With all the cool ideas and intelligence he had, his root personality was still based on greed and money and even more so on the addiction to his own game that replaced his lack of love--a total addict hooked on attaining power and completely capable of disattaching his emotions and justifying his actions in one way or another. I swear he had no fucking conscience. Now that the veil was taken off my eyes, I wanted to confront him head on. Killing him wasn't enough. I wanted him to learn and if he couldn't, I wanted to tear apart his soul...but this was all just a vent and anger at the fact that I thought I found a friend on a different level that I could trust to open up to. It wasn't the money he took...or that I gave. It was the false friendship that he presented that bothered me.

Before meeting M, I was hellbent on changing and transforming myself into something different, something stronger than the timid, scared boy I was in high school. I craved power over my weaknesses. I was driven, gullible, self-absorbed, brain-caged, and showed total impatience in getting out of it and, in the process, I had met the manifestation and epitome of what change and power was to my mind, and who better than the devil himself to create this change in the weak...in the desperate. M. Mephisto to me, Mario, Marcus, Mike, or Mitch to others. I understood the role he had played in my life and learn I did but...still, I was not learned enough, not strong enough to let it go. I was still as angry...hell, more angry than I was before. I was still on my dark path only instead of walking on it I was running--running to stand still.

"Mephistopheles is not your name, but I know what you're up to just the same...I will listen hard to your tuition and you will see it come to it's fruition...Devil and the deep blue sea behind me...vanish in the air you'll never find me...I will turn your face to alabaster...then you'll find your servant is your master." ---Sting

(North Hollywood, Summer 1991 to Spring 1992) . . . . . . aa

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