Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (39 page)

And today, as a grown up, I know better than
to start using drugs. I know I would like the way they'd make me
feel. I know I would want to do them again and again to forget
about my feelings and worries for a little while. And that's why
I'm not even going to try them. I don't want to know how good they
could make me feel, because I know I wouldn't be able to stop.

I read a study in which psychologists
interviewed about 250 prostitutes in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago
and a few other major cities. They found that almost all of these
girls had been sexually abused in their childhood. And almost all
of them suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In fact,
their level of PTSD was worse than that found among Vietnam
veterans. Crazy, huh?

The study found that most of these girls had
been trough very traumatic events in their lives and suffered
severe emotional distress, so they ended up using drugs to
self-medicate. They tried to make themselves feel better, and drugs
made them feel better for a little while. I guess I was doing the
same thing when I had sex with a bunch of girls after my divorce
from Donna and after losing Alice. For a few minutes, while I had
sex, I wasn't thinking about how unhappy I was. Just like Patty,
when she kept raping me every day, while she was staying with me in
Florida after Rocky's death.

Anyway, once the girls got addicted to
drugs, they resorted to prostitution as the only means to make
enough money to support their habit. The study showed that in
almost every case, drug use lead to prostitution.

But occasionaly it was the other way around.
Some girls thought prostitution would be a great way to make some
quick cash. But once they started having sex for money, they
realized that it's not easy at all, to have strangers touch you and
use you. Walking into a room with a complete stranger, and being
naked and totally vulnerable is a very traumatic experience. The
study found that prostitution itself causes PTSD as well, because
it's very scary to walk into a room and not know if the next guy is
going to rape you, kill you, arrest you or just treat you like
shit.

Drugs lead to prostitution, and prostitution
leads to drugs. Those two go hand in hand. It's a vicious cycle,
that's almost impossible to escape once you get caught up in
it.

After meeting Alice and her friends, and
then meeting a bunch of girls in Florida, and their friends, I have
seen prostitution from the girls' point of view. And I have learned
that no matter what girls write in their Backpage escort ads about
how much they enjoy what they do, the truth is, they hate what they
do. It makes them miserable. It makes them feel like garbage. And
they can only do it if they get high before they walk into a room
with the next guy.

And that's why today I'm against
prostitution. Not because I'm trying to tell girls what they can or
cannot do with their bodies, but because I know how much the girls
who do it suffer.

Anyway, let's get back to Veronica:

When she snuggled up next to me and started
sucking her thumb, I knew what that meant. She was regressing back
to the last time in her life when she felt safe and carefree. I had
seen it before. Alice used to like drawing in coloring books for
little kids. So did Haley. Alice's friend Kat was obsessed with
Hello Kitty childrens' toys. Every girl I knew who had been
sexually abused as a young child, held on to childlike traits, from
a time before she was abused, because it reminded her of a more
innocent time in her life. Even my ex-wife Donna liked to watch
children's TV shows, because she didn't like the grown up world she
lived in.

While holding Veronica in my arms that night
at the Budget Inn, I just wanted to hug her tight and protect her
from the world. I just wanted to hold her forever. I fell in love
with her that night. She seemed so sad, so lonely, so vulnerable
and fragile. I felt like we were kindred spirits. I felt like we
had met for a reason, and I was exactly what she needed in her
life, and she was exactly what I needed in mine. But I didn't tell
her any of that. I figured she'd think I'm crazy. I figured I was
just one more guy among many other guys she had sex with.

The next night I saw her again. She said she
was really dope sick, and she asked me if I could give her a ride
to go get some drugs. I really didn't want to, but I was in love
with her, so I said yes anyway. People do really stupid things when
they're in love. She asked me to take her to a little blue house on
Broadway.

She told me to park the car in the driveway
and turn the headlights off. It was dark, but I could see a bunch
of thuggish niggers hanging out in front of the house. She walked
over to two of them and they began to argue. Something wasn't
right.

Meanwhile another one walked up to my car
and knocked on the driver side window. I rolled it down. Don't ask
me why. He leaned into the car and asked: "You party?" That's thug
speak for "Do you take drugs?" I said no. I shoulda said yes. That
probably woulda made me look less like a cop or a snitch or
whatever this nigger thought I was. "Lemme see your driver's
license," he demanded.

"Hell no," I said.

"Gimme your license," he insisted.

"No fucking way," I said. Man, this shit was
not cool. I wanted to get the hell out of here. I could tell that
something bad was about to happen.

He looked to where Veronica was arguing with
those 2 other niggers and yelled over to her: "Yo bitch, who dis
nigga in da car?"

Suddenly she quickly walked back to my car,
while those two niggers were following her. They were lifting the
fronts of their shirts up and I could see that they had guns tucked
into their belts.

Veronica was scared. Not a good sign. She
wasn't even all the way in the car yet, when she yelled at me: "Go!
Go! GO! GOOO! This is not a game! GOOOO!!!"

I backed the car out of the driveway as
quickly as I could. I almost hit a passing car in the street.
"Watch OUT!" Veronica screamed. "Oh my God, we gotta get outta
here!"

My heart was pounding. This whole thing
scared the shit out of me. Those two niggers with guns were almost
at the car now.

I was about to floor the gas pedal and speed
away, when Veronica yelled: "We gotta pick her up! We can't leave
her here!" She was pointing at a girl with black hair who was
standing in the driveway of the neighboring house.

"I can't stop right next door! They're gonna
get us!" I yelled back. I wasn't sure who or why they were gonna
get us, but I knew I didn't want to be gotten. They didn't look
like happy campers.

"STOP THE CAR! WE CAN'T LEAVE HER HERE!"
Veronica screamed.

So I stopped in front of the next driveway.
The black-haired girl jumped in the backseat. Those two niggers
were only a few feet away from the car. They had the guns in their
hands now. What the fuck was going on here?!

Some nigger climbed into my car right behind
the girl with black hair.

Holy fucking fuck. We're dead, I
thought.

"GO! GOOO!" Veronica screamed. We took
off.

The black guy in my car apparently was not
with the guys who were chasing us. I guess he was friends with
Veronica or the other girl.

"Those guys think I'm a CI," Veronica
said.

"What's a CI?"

"A criminal informant. A snitch," she
explained.

"Why do they think that?" I asked.

"Because there's an article in the newspaper
about me being a snitch," she replied.

Oh, terrific! I had barely known this girl
for what? Two days? And she already almost got me killed. I was
totally stressed out. My heart was pounding like crazy. Veronica
and the two people on my backseat were freaked out, too. They
started smoking crack and passed the pipe around to each other. The
whole car was filling up with smoke.

"Can you at least open a window?" I
asked.

We were going to drop the black guy off
somewhere. He didn't have his own crackpipe and asked if he could
"borrow" Veronica's. She said no. He got more and more agitated. By
the time we got to where he wanted to be dropped off, I was so
stressed out, I hit a parked car while backing into the parking
spot next to it. As soon as he got out of the car, we left. So I
almost got killed and had a hit and run accident in one night.
Thanks Veronica. Nice to meet you.

We met a few more times after that, but she
was a typical drug addict, with all the typical drug addict traits.
She was totally unreliable and unpredictable. If we made plans to
get together, I never knew if she was actually going to show up.
Sometimes she did, sometimes she didn't, without any explanation or
apology.

I was still seeing Haley and Crystal as
well, because Veronica was obviously seeing other people, too.

One morning I woke up at 8 am, because
someone was knocking on my door. Nobody ever comes knocking on my
door unannounced, because I live in a gated community with security
and video surveillance. So people never just show up at my door.
But someone was forcefully knocking on my door now.

I opened the door in my underwear. It was
Veronica.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked.
"You can't just show up here like that. What if I had company? What
if I had another girl over? How the hell am I gonna explain who you
are and why you just show up here like that?"

She started to cry: "Please don't be mad at
me. I didn't know where else to go. I'm in sooo much pain. I need
help. Can I please stay with you for a while?"

Veronica couldn't even stand up straight.
She was hunched over in pain, holding on to the wall next to the
door with one hand. I let her in. "What happened? What's wrong?" I
asked. I was really worried about her. She looked terrible. He had
scabs all over her face. Crack addicts like to pick their face when
they smoke crack.

She put one of her arms around my neck and
hobbled towards my bedroom, while using me as a crutch. "It's my
leg," she said, still crying. "It's hurts sooo bad. I can't take it
anymore!"

I helped her lie down in my bed. She told me
she thought she had pulled a muscle, or torn a ligament, or maybe
broken a bone or something. She wasn't sure how it happened, or why
she was in so much pain. I ran the water in the bathtub. I figured
maybe a hot bath would help her feel better.

She needed my help to use the toilet, to get
undressed, and to get into the tub. Once she was in the hot water,
she felt a little bit better for a little while. She told me she
needed to tell me something. She had a warrant. So now this was the
second time in my life I was aiding and abetting a wanted fugitive.
Great. I was really moving on up in the world. She begged me not to
call the cops on her, and said that she would leave if I didn't
want her in my house. I felt so bad for her. She was a crying,
helpless little pile of misery.

After she got out of the tub, she was in too
much pain to put her clothes back on, so she got back into bed
naked. She asked me to look at the back of her right leg between
her butt and her knee. She asked me if it looked swollen or red.
No, it looked like her other leg. I couldn't see anything
unusual.

I gave her some Ibuprofen and some
over-the-counter sleeping pills. I thought maybe some sleep would
help her feel better. I lay down next to her, and she fell asleep
in my arms again. The next morning she was still in terrible pain.
I brought her breakfast in bed. She fell asleep again afterwards.
Later in the day she asked me to get her drugs. I told her I
wouldn't do that.

She said she couldn't take the pain without
drugs and asked me to bring her to a drug dealer's house. She spent
the night there. The next day she asked me to come pick her up
again. This went on for a couple of days. She kept leaving to get
drugs and then came back to me, because my place was now her safe
haven.

This was the time when Hussy got into a big
fight with Dick, and she thought that once she had nowhere else to
go, I would come to her rescue and move into a house in Naples with
her and her kids. But I was way too busy with Veronica, so Hussy
ended up moving to Ocala.

Veronica always asked me to pick here up at
a different place, because she bounced around from one cheap motel
to the next. One day she asked me to come get her at the Gulfview
Motel. When I got there, she was staying in a room with several
other hookers. She told me that she had changed her mind and that
she wanted to stay there, but she wanted to have sex with me before
I leave.

She couldn't even walk or move her leg
without being in terrible pain. I told her I really didn't want to
have sex with her in that condition. She said it would be ok, as
long as I was careful and didn't thrust into her too hard. I told
her I would feel horribly selfish if I would cause her pain to make
myself feel good at her expense.

She wouldn't take no for an answer, and
asked me to pull her yoga pants off, because she was in too much
pain to do it herself. So I helped her take them off. She spread
her legs for me and told me with a strained smile that I should
feel very special, because she was in too much pain to have sex
with anyone else, but she wanted to have sex with me. Just with me,
and nobody else.