Advertisement, by Rajah Dodger © 2018 (Final draft; I need one last grammar pass)
I needed to find a date for my fraternity brother.
No, it's nothing like that. College was a long time ago, but George and I were pledge brothers, and we kept in occasional touch over the years. The last time I'd seen or heard from him was at the chapter's 25th anniversary gathering some time back. Naturally my eyebrows were raised when I saw his name on an incoming email.
"Hey Dave! Long time, huh? Look, I've got this thing for the company - it's a networking mixer, but they really like to see couples. I know how you're the magnet for the ladies, so... could you see your way to rounding up someone to make me look civilized for an evening?"
Who was he working for, some 1950s company? The ad agency from Mad Men? Grrr... but a brother is a brother. Now, where was I going to find him a date, or arm candy, or whatever you call a woman in that kind of situation?
It was funny about George calling me a chick magnet in college. What he never knew is that I met all those women in non-fraternity activities - the campus newspaper, the committee for academic freedom, muscular dystrophy fundraising. It just turned out that the really smart, energetic and active women were also steaming hot! So, when there was a play or a concert I wanted to see, I generally had someone I could ask who made my fraternity brothers drool.
I figured they liked me for my mind. What can I say, I was young and foolish then. Now I'm old and foolish, and there aren't any hot coeds around me.
Anyway, I emailed George back for more details. He said he wanted a woman by his side so that it would be clear his conversations with women were strictly business. In today's environment, that made sense. I asked him about his current hobbies and interests, so I'd know that he and whoever I found could converse about something. What with cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and mingling, he'd need someone compatible for two hours. That seemed a reasonable length of time.
I recalled George as being interested in basketball, breasts, beer, and betting - and not necessarily in that order. In his response he said he follows football and golf, reads books by James Patterson, listens to jazz groups, and seeks out the occasional French restaurant. It was a good thing that I asked!
Now that I was committed, where was I going to get George a date? I sure wasn't going to tell him that I hadn't been out with a woman in ten years. Eight hours of code and data jockeying, chasing after late client payments, driving to one of the good takeout places for dinner, two hours of side job, two hours of online poker and two hours in the online roleplay world didn't leave me with much time for random socializing.
I went to the local newspaper - whoops, no personals at all on their web site. Let's see - Backpage? Shut down by the FBI. Now what? Oh yeah, Craigslist. Hooray, they're still in business! But they don't offer personals now either, thanks to some new government law, so what section am I going to put the advertisement into?
Maybe Jobs. Gigs - that's for short-term jobs. Sounds reasonable. Domestic - no, labor - no, event... yes, event. Grumble, grumble, grumble, place, time, pay, contact method... Okay, let's see what I've got.
"Social Associate for Business", location west side, zip code - got it. "Female accompanist needed for a gender-balanced company event. Dressy casual but not formal. Weekday evening, finished before 10pm. Single occurrence only." Enter my email address, show only the Craigslist email relay on the ad for safety, no contacts from recruiters, no contacts from other users to offer me anything. Show the pay as one hundred eighty dollars for a two-hour event, travel negotiable.
All right. Pay the lady, Patsy.
In three days I got eleven responses - two of them obviously unsuitable and one criticizing my choice of the word "accompanist". English teachers... they're everywhere. I winnowed the rest down to four likely candidates and scheduled each of them for a personal meeting at my office. I didn't invite them to my home - I'm not stupid.
I was pleasantly surprised. All four of them would have looked suitable on the arm of a CEO but had the down-to-earth quality of a bowling team member. They were all good-looking, but not dangerously sexy. None of them gave off any kind of "****** vibe" to me. With each one I asked about what she did with her time, her interests, and why she thought the ad was worth answering. I also gave a general description of George and the networking mixer, emphasizing that this was a one-and-done kind of arrangement.
In the end I chose Dorothy, a tall brunette who was a former Mary Kay partner but now ran a party planning service. There was something about her that relaxed me - an extra bit of centered self-assurance that the other three didn't have, or maybe the way her outfit flattered her without forcing my eyes to one place or another. I gave her a picture of George and we arranged for her to meet him at the mixer, then agreed that if asked she would claim to have met me through one of my online gaming groups. I gave her half up front and she gave me her Paypal information for the rest when I heard back from George.
See how helpful I am! I did my good deed. George sent me a nice email afterward, saying how impressed he was with my friend. I sent the balance to Dorothy's Paypal account. And that was that.
But it wasn't.
** ** **
I continued to get responses to that original ad, and I sent each of them a brief note explaining that it had been a one-time deal. One of them sent a really cute letter, and I thought what the hell, and called her in for an interview. She was cute as a button in person, too, blonde, freckled, trim but curvy, and very easy on the eyes. She came in like a professional, though; she even brought her resume in hard copy and also on a flash drive for my convenience. I copied it over to my computer and gave her the same interview I'd given the others, then broke the news that the original event had passed but I thought it possible another one might come up. Hey, it could happen, and this time maybe I'd be the one needing a companion!
About a month after George's company event he emailed me again. A couple of the people he'd approached at the mixer turned into lucrative new clients for his company, so his boss was thrilled with him. And the woman I paired him with introduced him to a friend of hers, and those two really hit it off together. The way George talked, you'd think I'd single handedly turned his whole life around!
Well, I was happy for George. Strangely, he kept sending me emails. For a guy I hadn't spoken with more than a handful of times since college, you'd think we had been best buddies. Mostly he talked about Barbara - the friend of his mixer date - and the kind of things they did together. He also sent these odd couple-selfies of the two of them. The focus on his camera was a little off, so I had to squint sometimes, and the sound was peculiar - there was an annoying electrical hum that I couldn't mask out.
Actually, the videos quickly went from cute-couple to heavy petting. Obviously, George had become totally besotted with Barbara. I could have asked him to quit sending them, but that would have been rude. Besides, there was something weirdly sweet about the two of them oversharing their makeout sessions, and the way she cooed "Good Boy" into his ear when he was obviously excited. Some nights I even skipped my online game sessions to peer at George and Barbara's latest video and just shake my head in equal parts astonishment and envy. Well, maybe a bit more on the envy side.
Eventually the frequency of George's emails dropped off, and I went back to my usual evening schedule of poker and online roleplay. I was in the middle of a tricky negotiation one night, trying to get into the bar where a high stakes deal was supposed to go down. I'd successfully bribed one guard and hypnotized the other, and was showing my briefcase at the banker's cage, when my phone rang. It was George, and in the short time it took for me to shift my attention to the phone and figure out who was calling, I got the following update on my computer:
"The Glorious Amarna, Hell-Bitch owner of the Frangible Overlook, confiscates and spurns your inadequate offer, deeming you not worth even the effort of sending her staff to kill you. Instead, her Amazon guards strip you of all valuables and hurl your naked body out into the slimy horse-fouled gutter to serve as entertainment for the street *****s!" The status bar at the bottom of my screen flared a vivid pulsing red as it informed me of the loss of all my gold, 25 percent of my life force, and just to add insult to injury, 50 percent of my virility. The street *****s spat in my general direction and went elsewhere.
Thanks, George. Five weeks of hard-earned in-game currency and style points down the drain. I got a bit short with him on the phone, and he apologized and said he'd email me instead.
By the time I got George's next email, I'd forgiven him for the phone call. Mostly. He offered to stand me dinner and drinks the next Friday night, and promised to make up for whatever I'd lost the night he phoned me. How can you stay mad at a guy who just wants to be your friend? I told him yes, and then took a second look at his email. He'd somehow crossed it with something else he'd been reading, and there was an oddly-constructed website link at the very tail end of the message.
I checked it out, of course. You can't expect a computer nerd to ignore that sort of thing.
Well, well, well. The link was a free-access key into an adult roleplay site I'd never seen before. I wondered if George had actually tried it - it didn't seem his kind of thing, especially when I logged in and checked it out. There were some weirdly perverse and creative people on this site! I spent all night defining a character with enough edge and style to get me noticed, fooled around half-seriously with a three-breasted elf, and tried with no luck to get invited into some rooms that made my chesty elf partner seem like a fifties housewife.
I was a wreck the next day, but it had been a pleasant change from my usual routine. In fact, I spent the next two nights skipping sleep and working my way into the party rooms and inside many of the female (if not always fully human) occupants. The action in there was so intense, I could practically smell the residue on me when I finally logged off and cleaned up. It was a good thing I'd have the weekend to catch up on my sleep. But first, there was that thank-you promise from George to redeem.
He picked me up at home Friday after work, and took me to one of those Hooters-style restaurants - Double Peaks, Grand Canyon, I don't recall the exact name. The place was a madhouse inside - the conference finals were on, and every table and bar seat was packed. So was the top of our waitress, of course, but I managed to read the menu first anyway. I ordered a buffalo burger with one of their special craft beers, and George had a double order of wings with habanero sauce. I told him he'd be regretting that by the morning, but he just laughed.
We rehashed college escapades, and George filled me in about his subsequent years and how he wound up in sales. Our waitress had vanished, but George volunteered to brave the crush at the bar and get me refills on my beer. I even relaxed enough to open up about Candace, my ten years of widowhood and the bland routine of my life. After that, George told me that he knew I'd paid Dorothy to go to that company mixer with him. I was sort of annoyed that she'd broken our arrangement, but George seemed totally cool with it. Of course, he had all of those hot selfies with Barbara as a lovely side benefit. I said so, too, and he just laughed.
The beers caught up with me just then, so I excused myself to hit the men's room. When I got back, he'd already settled the bill. He looked at me and said something, but I couldn't decipher his words over the noise of the bar and TV screens. He leaned over the table next and murmured right into my ear, "______". My brain couldn't quite recognize the word, and I must have looked as blank as I felt, standing stupidly with my mouth hanging open. George just sighed and held out his hand saying "Keys." I was on a nice buzz from the craft beer, and didn't think I'd had that much to drink, but I stuck my hand in my pocket, pulled out my keyring, and put it into his open palm. We went out to the parking lot, hipchecking against the crowd along the way, and got into his car.
About ten minutes into the drive, I realized we weren't heading toward my part of town. I would have said something to George about it, but I was still enjoying the beer buzz so I just leaned back and enjoyed the ride. Besides, he was undoubtedly taking me to crash at his house. I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, George had my door open and was shaking my shoulder. "Come on, Dave, let's get you fixed up properly." Those must have been potent beers, because I was a little wobbly getting out of the car.
I looked around as he escorted me up the walk to the portico of the fancy house. This couldn't possibly be George's neighborhood. Something didn't make sense, but I couldn't put my finger on it. The big front door opened and we walked into a party in full swing - men in business casual, women in various degrees of party styles or even less. I watched a couple at the far end of the room doing the Chuck Berry dance scene from Pulp Fiction, then a stout redhead in a rainbow muumuu came over our direction and gave me a full-body welcome hug and kiss. That got my attention! I started to think the fabric of her muumuu might be the only thing between me and an exciting night, but George gave her a kiss and slapped her bottom, pushing her out into the crowd.
"Let's get you cleaned up," George rumbled in my ear, and managed to get the two of us to the stairs without quite bumping into too many people along the way. My balance was off, so it was a good thing he was holding my arm.
Once we got to the landing and down the hall to an empty room, George got serious. In no time he had me undressed and into a hot shower, scrubbing me with a scented body wash front and back, his cock brushing disturbingly against my ass. While I was still too confused and dizzy to understand what was happening, much less protest, he pushed me onto my knees and shampooed and rinsed my hair, his fingers doing a tingling massage all over my scalp.
Finally, he turned off the shower, took a thick heavy towel, and dried me vigorously all over - down my chest, under my balls, across my back, arms, legs, you name it. Then he put on a bathrobe, slipped a short kimono over me and marched me out of the room. My cock and balls swung heavily between my thighs - it was too late to point out that George had forgotten to get my boxers.
We went up the next flight of stairs into an expensively decorated home office, where the room held at least a half dozen women in various stages of dress and undress. I only noticed the one sitting behind the wide hardwood desk, though. Dorothy.
Dorothy, who I'd set up with George. Dorothy, whose friend Barbara was now George's hot girlfriend of the revealing videos. Dorothy, who revealed to George that I'd paid her to be his dinner companion. All of a sudden my head felt very clear - but much more confused.
George settled me into the chair facing the desk, and left the room along with the other women. Dorothy and I sat there, regarding each other as the silence built up uncomfortably. Finally, I straightened up and leaned forward.
"Why am I here?"
She chuckled. "Haven't you figured it out, Dave? You're a successful guy who knows how to make computers do what you tell them, you have a lot of contacts, you know well-off people... I want you in my team. You'll be a good fit with my girls."
I said the first thing that came into my mind, which was "Huh. I really didn't figure you for a ******." My brain caught up with my mouth just a little too late. Dorothy reached across the table and slapped the side of my face, just once, but WOW. The room swung, and I think my left lower molar came loose. She sounded a little disappointed when she commented, "I thought you had better manners than that."
My brain was still offline, and I adjusted the inadequate kimono while telling her, "I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights." Okay, my brain was knocked into the old movie department. Dorothy just laughed, though, and came around from the desk to bend into my face. I got a glimpse of more chest than I remembered before her eyes claimed mine and her lips pronounced "Good Boys Apologize".
I could actually hear the capital letters, and automatically said "Sorry, Dorothy."
She slid her fingers through my hair and her voice turned back to honey as her face got closer to mine. "Your friend is sweet, but you're the treat. That's why I really want you underneath my - wings. I'm going to make you a big offer, and I want you to give it serious consideration before you say yes."
Her eyes were so big. I didn't recall them being so deep.
[see continuation]
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