Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (68 page)

I gave her a hug to calm her down, because
she was still crying. Then I continued: "I've read enough
interviews with drug addicted girls. You're not the only one who
hates doing it. But just like you, they all told themselves they'd
only do it for a little while, but then they get trapped in a
vicious cycle of drugs and sex, and they end up doing it day after
day. It becomes their life. Just look at Lucy. Do you really think
she enjoys living like this?"

"I'm never gonna be like Lucy," Nicole
objected. "I'm not gonna keep doing this every day!"

"Yes, you will," I replied. "You hate it so
much, you have to get high before you walk into a room with some
guy, right? And afterwards you have to get high, to forget what you
just did. And you end up spending all the money you just made, to
buy drugs. And then you gotta do another call, but you waste all
that money on drugs, too. And that will be your life from then on.
You'll need to get more and more drugs, so you'll need more and
more money, so you'll fuck more and more guys."

"NO I WON'T!" she screamed with tears in her
eyes. "STOP making me feel like SHIT!"

When we arrived at the guy's address, she
gave me a sad, teary-eyed look and said: "I'll hurry. Will you
please wait for me? I want to come home with you."

We kissed and she left. I killed some time
at a nearby CVS. Half an hour later, she texted me: "Good news! I
didn't have to have sex with him! He couldn't get hard!"

I don't know if she was telling me the
truth, or if she was just trying to make both of us feel better.
But I chose to believe it, so I wouldn't spend the rest of the
night thinking about some other guy being inside of her. It was bad
enough that I kept thinking about The Fonz fucking Lucy.

Nicole and I went home, cuddled up in bed
and made love. Lucy kept calling Nicole's phone. Obviously Lucy was
getting suspicious that there was something going on between me and
Nicole. Then she started calling my phone a bunch of times. Then
she texted Nicole: "I hope ur having fun! I can't believe ur doing
a date with Oliver! How could u do this to me?"

After I came, Nicole cleaned herself up and
called Lucy back: "You're crazy! Oliver and I didn't do anything.
He just gave me a lift to do a date with that guy in Bonita, and
then we stopped at Oliver's place to get some of my clothes and
make-up. I left them here, when I cleaned his house."

That made absolutely no sense. Why would she
bring her clothes and make-up to my house while she was
cleaning?

"I'm tired of hiding," I said. "We should
just tell her. She had sex with your boyfriend Antonio when she was
17, so it's not like you're doing anything to her that she hasn't
already done to you first. And if she really loved me, she wouldn't
fuck all these other guys. She'd be here with me. But she'd rather
fuck The Fonz at the Days Inn."

"I'm afraid to tell her," Nicole replied. "I
think she really does have feelings for you. And I know how much it
would hurt her, if we tell her. I don't want her to kill herself or
something."

We headed back to the Days Inn. Lucy texted
me that she bought me some Taco Bell, and that she wanted to
finally have that talk we had planned for a while. But when we
arrived, she met us in the parking lot. She already had the next
guy in her room, waiting to fuck her. We didn't talk. She was too
busy. She just handed me the tacos, gave me a hug, told me she
loved me and went back to her room with Nicole. I wouldn't be
surprised if they were gonna do a double. I was so miserable.

Another one of the LCJ girls had contacted
me on Facebook after she was released from jail. She had heard
about me from Veronica and Lucy, while she was in jail with them.
Her name was Sonya. She was 21. Another beautiful blonde. She
looked like a model. She kept telling me that she would like to
meet me, but I kept blowing her off. I didn't mean to be rude, but
there was just so much crazy drama going on every day.

Now I finally decided to meet her. If Lucy
and Nicole were going to keep fucking other people, I might as
well, too. I wanted to make them jealous.

Sonya was really nice. But of course she was
addicted as well. To Ds. She told me she had her addiction under
control and that she didn't need drugs all the time. She just did
it recreationally, here and there. I had heard that story so many
times before, and I knew the end result was always the same: a
massive, uncontrollable addiction, and tricking on Backpage.

I hung out with her a couple of times. We
had sex and she slept over. We went out to eat, hung out by the
pool, fed the ducks by the lake behind my condo, and she cooked for
me. At some point Cassidy stopped by. She had moved into a hotel
room with her cousin, and she just wanted to pick up the rest of
her stuff. She and Sonya knew each other from jail. They hugged and
told each other how great they looked without their red LCJ
uniforms.

When Cassidy went through her things, she
started to cry: "She stole my stuff! Why would she do that? I just
got out of jail! I have nothing!"

Cassidy and Nicole had both slept at my
house on the same night, a few days after Lucy and Jasmine had
slept here. Nicole in bed with me, and Cassidy in the guest room.
When Cassidy was hanging out with her boyfriend at the Salvation
Army, Nicole had gone through Cassidy's things, and said that she
had taken some of Nicole's clothes, and she was taking them
back.

Now Cassidy was telling me that Nicole had
stolen things from her. She was really upset about it, so I don't
think she was lying when she said a bunch of her new shirts were
missing.

I texted Nicole and told her what Cassidy
said. "I would never steal," Nicole replied. "You should know me
better than that! But I think Lucy took some of Cassidy's
stuff."

Lucy had a reputaton for robbing her
"clients." She really hated having sex with all these guys, and
whenever possible, she took their money and ran, instead of
actually letting them touch her. A lot of girls on Backpage do
that.

And she kept stealing little things from me
all the time. Never anything big. Never anything that I wouldn't
have given her anyway, if she had simply asked: a pink ceramic hair
straightener that I had bought for Veronica, a notebook, pens,
envelopes, a handcrafted Indian silk photo album, etc. So it
wouldn't surprise me, if she really did take some of Cassidy's
clothes. But I wasn't sure who took what.

"You want to believe that there's one relationship in
life that's beyond betrayal. A relationship that's beyond that kind
of hurt. And there isn't."

Caleb Carr

"There are only really a few stories to tell in the
end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one of those good
stories to tell."

Sean Lennon

"People are always fascinated by infidelity because,
in the end - whether we've had direct experience or not - there's
part of you that knows there's absolutely no more piercing
betrayal. People are undone by it."

Junot Diaz

The next day, Nicole texted me late at night
and told me she wanted to sleep over again.

She knew that I was about to fly to Europe
in a few days, to spend the holidays with my parents in Gemany.

George was at my house, and we were watching
God Bless America, a dark, cynical satire about a man who is so fed
up with how fucked up life in America is, he decides to become a
serial killer. Great movie. I could relate.

I told George I would go pick up Nicole
after the movie, but he told me not to keep her waiting, and he'd
go along for the ride.

She was at the same house where she had done
some tattoos in the last few days. At least that's what she said
she did there. I asked her if it was ok, if George was going to
come along. I didn't want her to ask me to go on some sort of drug
run before we headed home. She said it was alright.

When we picked her up, George introduced
himself. Nicole was very quiet. She was dope sick. She told me she
needed to go pick up all her clothes at some shitty little motel in
North Fort Myers. On our way there, Lucy texted her. She was at the
same motel, and the owner was about to call the cops on her if she
didn't leave.

Now Lucy was hiding behind a tall white
fence at a neighboring trailer park. Nicole said Lucy was stranded,
and we would have to give her a lift. George introduced himself
again, when Lucy got into the car.

Lucy and I hadn't talked to each other in a
few days again, because the last time we saw each other, we were
supposed to have a talk to figure out what was going on between us,
but she just handed me some tacos and she and Nicole disappeared
into a hotel room where some guy was waiting to fuck them.

"Where do you want me to drop you off?" I
asked Lucy.

"I have nowhere to go," she said quietly.
She hadn't slept in days again.

Nicole and I gave each other a look. We both
knew we couldn't just leave Lucy stranded in the hood.

"You want to come to my house?" I asked.

"Yeah, I do," she replied.

Then Lucy asked Nicole: "What are you gonna
do at Oliver's house?"

"Hang out," Nicole replied.

George probably felt like he was still
watching God Bless America.

By now Lucy knew that Nicole and I were
hanging out together more often than she had previously known
about, but she still didn't know the full extent of it. But George
did.

On the way home, we had to make a few stops,
so Nicole and Lucy could get some drugs, and then do their drugs in
the restroom of a gas station. I was embarrassed. I didn't want
George to see this. I didn't want him to look down on them, or
think I'm crazy for hanging out with them. But it was probably too
late for that already. I had told him so many crazy stories over
the past year, he probably thought I was nuts.

He often laughed and said: "If I didn't know
you, I would think you made this stuff up. But I know it's true.
Your stories are just too crazy and complicated to be made up. If
you ever write a book about this stuff, nobody is going to believe
you."

George and I were waiting in the car, while
Nicole and Lucy were in a restroom. I said: "Well, at least now you
know Nicole and Lucy are real, and I didn't make them up."

He laughed. He knew how much I cared about
both of them, and that they were aunt and niece, and that this
night had just taken a bizarre turn.

"Looks like you're finally gonna have your
first threesome tonight," he joked.

We had planned to finish watching God Bless
America, but it was much later than expected when we arrived at my
condo, so George went home.

Lucy said she finally wanted to see
Beautiful Creatures. We had tried to watch the movie at least five
times by now. Most recently with Jasmine. But once she smoked
crack, Lucy could not concentrate on a movie. And she hated being
around any kind of noise or music.

Nicole knew that since we were trying not to
let Lucy know what was going on between us, of course Lucy would
sleep in bed with me, like she was used to, and Nicole would have
to sleep in the guest room. She really didn't like that idea. She
didn't want me to be alone in bed with Lucy.

While Lucy was smoking crack in the
bathroom, Nicole suggested: "Let's watch the movie in the bedroom.
That way we can all lie in bed together, and when we fall asleep
during the movie, it won't look weird that we're both sleeping in
the same bed with you."

That sounded like a good plan. I figured
Lucy could lie in the middle and she could cuddle up with me, and
Nicole could cuddle up with her.

Every time Lucy wasn't looking, Nicole gave
me a hug or a kiss and told me she loved me. We were sitting on the
bed, waiting for Lucy to get out of the bathroom. We left a gap in
the middle for her.

When she finally came into the bedroom, she
gave Nicole a weird look and said: "What are you doing in Oliver's
bed? That's my spot."

"I thought we could watch the movie in the
bedroom," Nicole said.

"No, I want to watch the movie in the living
room," Lucy replied. She was annoyed.

So we all went into the living room. We
brought a bunch of blankets and pillows. Nicole and I sat down on
the couch, but Lucy went back in the bathroom. Then she went to
smoke a cigarette on the porch. Then she went into the bathroom
again.

"This is never gonna happen," I said. "We
have tried to watch this movie five times now. She just can't sit
still long enough. She can't concentrate on anything other than
drugs for even 5 minutes.

We ended up staying up all night. Lucy told
me she hated her life and she wanted to get clean and come live
with me. I felt bad talking about this stuff in front of Nicole.
She didn't want Lucy to know anything, but at the same time she
didn't want me and Lucy to get too close again.

It was 7 am, and now Lucy didn't want to go
to sleep anymore, because she wanted to call detox at 9 am. So she
decided to cook breakfast. Nicole felt that was her place. So they
both ended up making a great breakfast together.