CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
2003 - PayPals
December is always a busy time in the sex trade. During that four-week period, some girls make the equivalent of what they make during the four-month stretch of late Spring to early Fall. Even a lazy bitch will make triple what she normally clocks in a week. And Donya and Marisol, with their boutique dungeon, fin domme game and sideline in sugaring, were upper echelon. Top tier. I wasn’t really used to anything in the sex game that could be considered upper echelon or top tier, nor did it really make that much of an impact on me, but that upper echelon money top tier money was very, very welcomed.
By this point, I felt comfortable enough to check in with Donya to see what the plans were for the holidays. Not, like, “You going to your family in Jersey for Christmas Eve?” but, “Hey, are we gonna be closed any time between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day?” Donya told me we’d be open straight through the holidays, closed for December twenty-sixth, then back open through January second. “And then Marisol and I will take the third to finish up paperwork and get the place deep-cleaned. After that, we’ll be closed until around the third week of January,” she said.
Wow, these girls were handling sex work like grown-ups! Imagine if they’d been interested in nuclear physics or cancer research?
I, of course, had no family obligations- at this time I was no contact with my sister (although I was pretty sure she’d figured out that I had a fairly active LiveJournal account and was trying to keep tabs on me that way, even though all the good shit was friends locked[1]) and I only spoke to my parents if I absolutely had to. My brother and I were more or less cool- I’d gone out to Westchester once since my release, to say hi and to spend time with my nephews, who I adore.
But keeping it real, my brother and I weren’t speaking on the regular. I was acting as an isolationist.
Marisol, Donya and I got through the holiday crush of lonely singles, men who couldn’t stand the thought of spending time with their wives and kids, rowdy office parties (yes, seriously) and, inevitably, a soul sucking parade of douchey Wall Street bros, end-of-year bonuses burning holes in their over-stuffed bank accounts. After the last client departed, Donya would always take the time to spend at least an hour tending to her and Marisol’s joint PayPal account, divvying up the money between them and making sure I was paid out quickly. They’d made my setting up a PayPal account a condition of employment, which was fine by me, because I always received a ton of cash in tips. At that point in my life, digital banking still felt like some Blade Runner shit and my junkie years had me firmly convinced that cash in hand was the best kind of money.
Nevertheless, I was trying to adapt. Future Eula was drawing ever more close.
[1] A LiveJournal “friends lock” was a privacy setting that made posts visible only to selected friends — common for personal or sensitive content in the early 2000s blogosphere.
