Down the Rabbit Hole

(Author's note: All characters involved in sexual situations are 18+. The first two parts of this story can be found in "Welcome to Shitsville" and "How to Lose Everything in 10 Days," chapters 1 & 2 respectively of "'Melinda' by Night.")

My life came to a grinding halt in March of 2020 because of COVID-19.

So did New York City and much of the rest of the world, of course. Your life might have come to a halt too, and if it did I'm really sorry about that.

But an awful lot of people managed to carry on with the business of their lives. My now ex-boyfriend Matt was working from home and presumably getting laid on a regular basis with his "instant soulmate." My mom's law firm had her working from home. Even my dad's job in restaurant supplies didn't go away, he just had a rough go of it for a while.

I was terrified for the first two weeks of lock-down after Matt and I broke up because I was certain I must have caught COVID-19 from him banging that rando he met and "fell in love" with on St. Patrick's Day, but thank God nothing happened. I heard at one point later that Matt had contracted COVID himself, but then I heard it wasn't true after all.

I spent the first two months of lock-down on my phone almost constantly, battling tens of thousands of other people to get through to the New York State Department of Labor so I could validate my unemployment benefits claims and start receiving actual benefits. My checking account quickly ran out of cash, and even once I eventually got through and started receiving the weekly payments, they wouldn't cover my rent.

I hated doing it, but I had to ask my mother for help. She took over paying my rent directly, and we transferred my credit card to her name. We decided that she would make the minimum payment on the card every month and any further payments necessary to keep the balance below the card's spending limit. I would continue to use the card for essentials, but now she would receive the statements and help me decide what was essential.

Mom claimed that it wasn't a problem for her to shoulder the additional financial burden, especially because she wasn't commuting into the city for the time being, but her savings on that weren't coming anywhere near my rent payment. She even insisted that these weren't loans, that she was helping me because she could, that she just wanted me to have as fresh a start as possible when I got back on my feet. But I knew exactly how much she was spending to keep me afloat, and I was determined to keep track.

Thankfully, the federal boost on unemployment benefits meant that the total actually did cover my rent, although just barely. And if worse came to worst, there was now an eviction moratorium in place, so if neither Mom nor I nor both of us together could cover my rent for a while, at least I wouldn't end up on the street -- yet. For the time being, it would just mean more debt.

In the meantime, half a million other people had lost their jobs in New York City alone. I couldn't very well waitress from home, and I wasn't trained or qualified for much else. Some women started finding their way to OnlyFans, an online membership platform for selling sexy photos and videos, but I knew that wasn't for me. Forget that doing it "right" would require an investment in equipment; strangers drooling over images of my body parts behind anonymous usernames also felt awfully cold and impersonal to me. I had no problem with it in principle for any women who chose to do it, and I still don't. I hope they're all making tons of money and enjoying their work. But I also didn't think a short and moderately chubby girl like me was likely to do well against much hotter competition.

Even if none of those obstacles deterred me, my family had a strict rule against putting images of our faces online, on social media or otherwise. A cousin of mine had gone through a hellish, years-long stalking nightmare that only ended when the creep landed in jail for an unrelated crime. Putting our faces and our lives out there simply wasn't worth the risk, not on Facebook, not on OnlyFans, not anywhere.

There didn't seem to be any other good options for work-from-home jobs that other people weren't better qualified for, and I couldn't afford to risk my health and my life by working on-site anywhere -- assuming I could get a job anywhere in the first place.

So I basically did nothing for months.

I kept in touch with family and friends via Zooms. I baked banana bread. I binged "Tiger King" and a lot of the other shows everyone was binging, though I tried to keep my paid streaming subscriptions to a minimum by piggybacking on other people's accounts. I watched movies Mom and my sister recommended, and I listened to 70s and 80s music Dad sent me. I cried at viral videos. I made some effort to keep my curvy shape from getting too much curvier by doing a little yoga. I wandered up to the roof to see the sun a few days a week to try to keep my sleep cycle normal, and I was pretty sure I was the only tenant who knew the lock on the door to the roof was busted, but I wore a mask every time anyway. But for the most part, I was confined to my few hundred square feet, and it gradually felt like the walls were closing in on me.

Sometime in October, I joined Twitter knowing that I wouldn't have to use my last name or show my face, and I made a few online friends while I tried to learn how to be funny in 280 characters or less. The Presidential election came and went. My sister Dina and her girlfriend Cassie got engaged to be married, the first really wonderful news we'd all had in months. Dina even asked me to be her maid of honor, which made me cry.

The holidays came and went, with family Zooms that became increasingly depressing because I couldn't hug anybody. The attempted insurrection came and went. Inauguration loomed, and we started to hear about vaccines and roll-outs and which medical conditions might qualify people to get jabbed early.

All that time, I managed to do most of my shopping online, and I was able to do laundry in the building's basement in the middle of the night to avoid other tenants. But there were still things I needed help for, and occasionally my second cousin Terry would drop by to give me a hand. We weren't close, but geographically he was the closest family I had, and he was a good sport. He took all the precautions he was supposed to, right down to wearing a mask in my apartment almost 100% of the time.

Halfway through January, four days after his last visit to my place, Terry called me and told me he'd tested positive for COVID-19 and was quarantining at home for ten days. He insisted I shouldn't worry because we'd taken all the right precautions and his symptoms were fairly mild anyway, but somehow I knew. I just knew.

On the day Joe Biden was sworn in as President of the United States, I woke up with the worst headache of my life. I took some Tylenol, but by mid-afternoon I also had a bad cough. The ache spread to my shoulders, and I had a fever by sundown. I went to bed praying that I would magically be all better when I woke up, even as I knew it wouldn't happen. Thursday morning I felt even worse, and when I made a cup of coffee to try to calm myself down, I couldn't smell it or taste it. When I started crying, it triggered the closest thing to an asthma attack that I've ever had. I called Mom, and she could hear the fear in my voice. She took charge right away.

"You need to call an ambulance now, grab your insurance card and your ID, take your phone and your charger with you, and update me as often as possible. Hang up now. Go."

I'd been hearing sirens almost constantly for months since lock-down began, and having nightmares that one of them was meant for me. Suddenly they were all coming true. When the EMTs brought me out the front door of my building on one of those sitting gurneys, there was a crowd gathered -- twenty feet back but gathered nonetheless, to see who the latest victim was. I wanted to hide my face, but it was too late.

"Samantha!" I heard a familiar voice yell, and I turned my head to see Dev and a few of his friends, all wearing masks and running up to the ambulance as they loaded me backwards into the cabin. One of the EMTs held them back from reaching me, but Dev waved to me. "You gonna be fine, Baby girl." I didn't believe him. He was the last thing I saw before tears filled my eyes and the door closed.

I've already talked about how awful my time was in those two hospitals battling COVID-19 and trying to end my own life. Making it home from that ordeal nearly six weeks later should have been a triumphant moment, something to celebrate. But as much of a commotion as I'd made leaving in an ambulance, I arrived home unnoticed by Uber just after sunrise. Every part of that month and a half embarrassed me, and I didn't want to talk to anybody about it. To top it off, even though my senses of taste and smell were back (and basically normal, thank God), my short-term memory was now constantly failing me. I reached my 23rd birthday with about as little fanfare as I could possibly manage. Then those ridiculous middle-of-the-night attacks of extreme lust started.

I didn't reply to emails from friends except to confirm I was home and recovering, and I declined every Zoom invitation. I didn't sign back onto Twitter for months because I didn't want to learn that nobody had missed me, much less have to explain why I'd been gone. I didn't leave my apartment at all, and I didn't let anybody inside again either. Everything I needed, I ordered. If something had to remain broken until the pandemic was over, so be it. And as disgusting as the amount of debt was that I'd racked up between Mom and my credit card before COVID-19, the non-covered hospital and medical bills started arriving soon after. You don't always get to choose an in-network provider when your life is at risk, so now I was screwed.

I still had no job or any hope of one. Unemployment insurance was better than expected because of the federal boost, but because of my hospitalization there were seven calendar weeks I wasn't eligible to collect at all. And all told, I now owed nearly a hundred thousand dollars.

And there was no end in sight.

*****

After hiding from everybody for a few months, I finally felt lonely enough to log back into Twitter at the beginning of summer. I can't say for sure if I'd gotten better at writing funny tweets, but I formed a number of friendships and joined a private community of remarkable women. It was a diverse, close-knit, supportive group, one I'm grateful to have found at a time I needed it.

One of these new friends was Roxanne, a woman in the southwestern United States. She had a job and a family, a life that was completely different from mine, yet we clicked right away. We found things to talk and laugh about with each other every day. I finally felt like I had someone I could be completely honest with besides my therapist. Even with my mother, or with my sister and her fiancée, there were things I felt I had to hold back or downplay so they wouldn't worry. Roxanne never judged, and I opened up.

Besides confiding in her about the pain and frustration of my extreme sex drive, and my occasional fantasy about trying to seduce a restaurant delivery guy just so I could get laid without going anywhere, I also shared my growing anxiety that I couldn't earn any money to support myself. Someone in the women's group on Twitter had even referred me to a website where people with sewing experience could get gig-based work at home, a sort of seamstress Uber -- but when I entered my ZIP code in Shitsville, the site said I was ineligible to get work from them. I honest to God had no idea when I'd ever be able to work again, or doing what -- and with the federal unemployment benefits boost gone, at this point my poor mother was basically bankrolling my entire existence.

Somewhere amid all the sex talk and job talk, I joked with Roxanne that since I was good at giving blowjobs and I enjoyed doing it, maybe I should just try to do that for a living even though I was basically homebound. It was just supposed to be funny, but since I didn't have much else to do, we started bantering about hypothetical logistics just for shits and giggles. How would I find customers? How much could I reasonably charge as a complete amateur? Would it make even a tiny dent in the massive debt I was still accumulating? How would I avoid arrest? And probably the biggest consideration in this absurd scenario we were tossing around: How would I stay safe, and not just safe from getting COVID again?

Not that it mattered -- obviously it would never actually happen, it was just entertaining to contemplate.

In the meantime I had finally started to take occasional walks around my block -- a few minutes at a time, always masked, just to feel what it was like to get back outside. Upon returning home I would look down the street a few blocks and see some of those guys hanging around on the corner, and I would think about how long it had been since I spoke with them. The last time they saw me, Dev and a few of his friends had watched me loaded into an ambulance. For all I knew, it was possible they had no idea I'd survived COVID-19 and made it home. One Saturday afternoon I decided to push myself a little and walk down to see them.

I approached cautiously, and when one of them saw me coming he gestured to the others and they stopped talking and laughing. I was nervous -- I'm not sure what I was nervous about, but my heart was pounding anyway. Then they all pulled masks out of their pockets and put them on, and I felt myself relaxing almost immediately. Dev was there that afternoon, and he strode forward to greet me, stopping short of any physical contact. "You're alive, Baby Girl!" he said with a song in his voice. I'd forgotten how tall he was, and I smiled underneath my mask.

The guys had a lot of questions, and I tried to answer them all but I quickly got tired. I was about to sit down on the nearest stoop so we could keep the conversation going, but one of the others -- a man they called Thirty -- suggested they should walk me home so I could rest. I surprised myself by asking them if they wanted to come over and hang out instead. I didn't have room in my apartment, but it was a beautiful day and we could just sit in the open air on my building's roof. Dev surprised me even more by saying yes, and off we went. I quickly stopped off in my apartment while the guys waited so I could grab a bottle of wine, some plastic cups, and a bunch of towels to sit on, and a few minutes later we were all upstairs.

I don't really remember anything we talked about that afternoon besides my health, I just remember how fantastic it was to have people around me. Soon enough the sun started to set and the guys decided it was time for them to go, and my first real in-person socializing in a year and a half came to a close. I had a warm feeling in my heart when I finally closed the door to my apartment behind me again.

I also had a new feeling about Dev, one that was unfamiliar at first. I wanted him. He was exactly the same guy who'd come to my rescue four years earlier, and whom I'd seen on a semi-regular basis around the neighborhood ever since without thinking of him as an object of lust. But now I wanted to have sex with him, and I wasn't sure what to do about it or whether he'd consider the notion anything but ridiculous.

I told Roxanne the next day about the time I'd spent with the guys, and about my new-found appreciation for Dev. Then we went right on back to joking about a world in which I could lure guys up to my little shoebox apartment and charge them for oral sex.

I don't remember which one of us thought of it and mentioned it first, but I do remember feeling pretty stupid that I hadn't thought of it earlier: If I ever really wanted someone to keep me safe while I fellated strangers for a living, I could do a hell of a lot worse than the guys who'd already been helping to keep me safe for years.

Okay, but how would that work? Would I simply offer to pay the guys a cut of every "trick" I turned? What was a reasonable rate for me to charge, what's the going rate for a strange woman hiding from the world in her tiny apartment in Shitsville to give blowjobs? If a good blowjob took twenty minutes, could I charge $100 given that it sort of translated to $300/hour? Was it fair to offer the guys $25 of that $100 for the same twenty minutes of keeping me safe, which worked out to a not too terrible $75/hour for them, and I'd keep $75 (or $225/hour)? Would I expect the whole group to safeguard me, take turns one by one, or what? And how could I approach the guys about the idea? Hell, Roxanne pointed out, maybe the guys could even refer men they knew to me for blowjobs.

As Roxanne and I kept talking about this and asking questions, I slowly began to realize that somewhere along the way, I had stopped finding it all so funny. Instead it was starting to feel to me like it might actually be feasible, and what's more it was turning me on to think about it.

The idea of having sex with strangers wasn't anything new, I'd been doing it almost since the day I moved to New York City at the age of eighteen. Hell, my ill-fated relationship with Matt even started out as sex with a stranger. Maybe the overall picture of safe sex with strangers would look different during a pandemic, but there had to be ways of figuring that part out, too.

By Sunday evening I had masturbated to orgasm thinking about strangers paying me for blowjobs, and then another orgasm fantasizing about fucking Dev. And when I got back on Twitter, my friend Roxanne -- who was taking the transition from silly to serious completely in stride -- agreed that if I were going to approach these guys about helping me, I absolutely had to go to Dev first.

Rather than allow any time to talk myself out of it, I decided to go back to the street corner on Monday afternoon. I drank a couple of quick glasses of wine that day to steel myself for what was sure to be a bizarre conversation, then showered and headed on down. When I got there, though, Dev wasn't part of the group. Thirty was there -- along with Benz, one of the other guys who'd been with us on my roof on Saturday -- plus a couple of guys I hadn't ever met. Thirty and Benz, at least, seemed happy to see me, but I didn't feel nearly as welcome as I had two days earlier. I asked if Dev was around, and Benz said, "He's working."

I asked what he does, which I guess was probably stupid, because a few of them laughed.

"He works," said Benz with a grin.

I said thanks and wandered back home, feeling a little uncomfortable. I grabbed a towel and went up to my roof to get some sun, which was nice, but not where I'd thought my day was going. When I relayed the events of the day to Roxanne later, I said I felt more than ever like I lived in a different universe than these guys, and I wondered whether it was really a good idea to try to insert myself. The encounter had made me feel nervous and sheltered, and I wondered if I should just go it alone if I was really going to try to make money from sex. You know, trust my gut on the guys I allowed to hire me, and let the chips fall where they may.

Roxanne suggested I let it marinate a little, don't decide anything, and maybe try again when Dev was actually around. I thought that was good advice, but it turned out I didn't have to marinate for long. Dev texted me that evening:

"30 says you were askin round, you okay baby girl? You can always text me"

I replied:

"Yeah, I'm fine! Just wanted to ask your advice about something in person. It can wait."

Soon after came Dev's only other text:

"Doing biz at Cheesy tomorrow night. Find 30 on the corner and come w him, not alone, k? He got you."

I ran all this by Roxanne, and explained that Cheesy was a burger and pizza place in the next neighborhood over, not somewhere I should be walking alone at night. So I was glad Dev wanted 30 to escort me over there or something, but... "Doing biz"? Plus I thought it was a little weird that he didn't ask if I could go see him tomorrow night, he just told me to go. So many thoughts ran through my mind: Was he asking me on some sort of a date where his friend would have to walk me to meet him? Was he holding court somewhere and I was going to him like Don Corleone on his daughter's wedding day to ask for a favor? How should I dress? Who's making sure I get home? Do I bring a hostess gift? (Roxanne laughed at that last one.) And was I wrong to be amused that the other guy's name was spelled "30," not "Thirty"?

Roxanne also thought it was nice that he'd reached out, seemingly out of concern. So maybe it was the least I could do to go to him, whether I ended up asking for his help or not. As for a gift: "Everyone likes cookies," she joked. But it stuck, and I started Googling for bakeries in my area. What finally made my mind up to go was realizing this: If I didn't take every genuine opportunity to find a solution to the problem I'd been describing, well, then maybe I was just a little girl fantasizing and talking a big game when it came to sex work, not a woman trying hard to make something happen for herself.

August 3 was hot and steamy. I made the mistake of dressing for my evening "meeting" before even leaving the apartment to go buy cookies, so my preferred top -- an olive khaki tank that flattered my mediocre shape by accentuating my boobs -- was pretty gross by the time I returned home. I showered again and pulled out a loose white blouse instead, one I figured I could wear without a bra and with a couple of buttons undone for maximum effect. After all, if Dev wasn't willing to help with my little illegal endeavor, maybe he'd be open to a little friends-with-benefits action. I didn't want the night to be a total loss.

It took all my discipline and patience to wait until 9 o'clock, but that's when I went downstairs and walked down to that corner, box of cookies in my hands and heart pounding again. 30 was there with a few other guys, but rather than greet me and start walking me to meet Dev, he whistled at a car that was parked down the block. The car quickly started and pulled up to 30, and he opened the door for me. He got in the back with me, and off we went.

By car, what would likely have been a sweaty half-hour walk was a cool, comfortable five-minute drive instead. 30 helped me out of the car and walked me inside Cheesy. I was confused, nervous as hell, and still holding onto that increasingly ridiculous box of cookies for dear life, and then I saw Dev at a table in the back. He was just sitting and having a burger with someone, laughing and chatting, nothing unusual. I smiled and took a deep breath, then I exhaled.

Whatever was going to happen tonight, at least I was taking a chance.

*****

It was a Tuesday night in early August, and I was sitting in a crappy pizza and burger place in a crappy Brooklyn neighborhood with my hands clasped tightly around a box of a dozen cookies. My table-mate was a man I only knew as "30," and I was there because our mutual friend Dev had asked me to go there to talk to him. About what? Well, that was up to me -- either about my growing desire to jump his bones, or about my harebrained scheme to sell blowjobs to help pay my bills and my hope that he and his friends might be willing to keep me safe in return for a cut of what I make.

Or both, possibly. It all seemed equally stupid while I was sitting there contemplating it.

I slowly sipped the Diet Coke 30 had bought for me, and mentally chalked up another idiotic move on my part when I realized the caffeine would probably keep me from falling asleep when I got home after this. But I waited patiently, because I was still determined to walk out of there without completely throwing away my shot.

We'd probably been there a half hour before the guy sitting with Dev stood up and left. 30 brought me over, and Dev got up and wrapped me in his huge arms. "Baby girl, so good to see you," he said in my ear. We sat down, and he didn't waste any time. "Sound like you had something important you wanted to talk about?"

I had nothing to lose at this point, so I decided to tell him everything. He already knew I'd spent weeks battling and then recovering from COVID-19 and that I'd been out of work for a year and a half. But now I told him I was struggling on unemployment, I had huge hospital bills, and my mom had been helping out with rent even though she couldn't really afford to do that for long. I really wanted to be able to stop depending on her and I wanted to earn money for myself doing something I enjoy.

And I hoped he would respect my being honest about it, so I said I enjoy giving blowjobs, I'm good at giving blowjobs, and I felt like if I knew anything about how to start doing that for a living I might do all right --like how to find clients, but most importantly how to stay safe. And I said I felt like an asshole asking him this because he'd always been so nice to me, but was there any possibility he or any of his friends would be willing to look out for me when I had a client over, maybe in return for a cut of what I got paid?

I could tell Dev was surprised, but he managed to keep a fairly even expression while I was talking. When I was done, he just nodded for a minute. "Tell me, Baby girl -- what you think you can make from doing that, and what you been thinking to offer the boys for security?"

So I basically told him the same thing I'd been discussing with my friend Roxanne: $100 per blowjob, and maybe $25 of that for "security." It's not like any client was going to be at my place for more than twenty minutes, and even if it was a half hour that wasn't a bad rate.

Dev shook his head and laughed out loud.

"What?" I asked, my stomach dropping.

"Don't know what makes me sadder," Dev said. "That you think that's all you're worth, or that you think that's all we're worth."

I suddenly felt very small. I could tell my face was turning red, and I was ready to run out of Cheesy and cry all the way home.

Then Dev reached out and grabbed the box of cookies, pulled a snickerdoodle out of the box, and started eating it, all without ever taking his eyes off me. "What you want out of this, Baby girl? What you think you gonna accomplish $75 at a time?"

I leaned forward. "I just want to feel independent again, like I'm not useless and I don't need my Mommy to pay for me. I don't need fancy clothing or bottle service at clubs, I just want to be an adult making my own way."

Dev smiled. "Okay. What you willing to do to get there?"

Even after all the soda, my mouth was so dry I could barely swallow. "Are you really asking me what I think you're asking me? What I'm willing to do -- how much of myself I'm willing to put on the line? Are you really asking me that?"

Dev nodded. "I'm asking if you know your limits," he said with the authority of someone who's asked the question before, and my mind raced.

Everything this side of that wall is my business.

East Shitsville belong to me.

He. Works.

"Yes," I said. I lowered my voice since we were in public. "I don't want a man who's paying to be with me to get inside of me anywhere besides my mouth."

Dev nodded again, completely unfazed by what I'd said. There was no mistake, he had to have meant what I thought he meant. "You sure, that's it?"

"Yes," I said confidently.

"How much is your rent?" Dev asked.

I told him, and he leaned forward so that our faces were only a few inches apart.

"Baby girl, why didn't you come to me for help in the first place, 'stead of trying to figure all this on your own?"

I laughed. "Dev, I barely felt right asking you about 'security' to begin with. I honestly didn't know you were in a position to help for real."

"For real," Dev repeated in a whisper. "For real, all right. So you want my help now? You sure you want my help now?"

My heart was ready to burst out of my chest all over the box of cookies on the table, because I didn't think there was any way to mistake what he was asking me. I went to Cheesy thinking I was going to be asking a good guy I knew from the neighborhood if he and his buddies wanted a side-gig making a few bucks while I scrounged for men who wanted a blowjob from a short, kinda chubby girl, and it was obvious that I had totally underestimated who he was. He was asking me if I wanted to work for him.

I'm a little girl from the Chicago suburbs. The hardest job I'd ever had was waiting tables. I was incredibly sheltered and at this point I was scared out of my wits. Most of my instincts were screaming at me to say no, I'm sorry, I made a mistake, you're really nice to offer help but this isn't for me, it's too much, I have to figure out another way.

Instead, I asked, "Can you guarantee I'll be safe?"

Dev smiled. "Yeah."

I plowed on. "Can you guarantee my limits will be respected?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Will I be happy with how much I can make?"

"Yeah." No hesitation.

Trembling, I steeled myself. "When would I start?"

Dev leaned back into his seat, looked me up and down, and said, "You look ready right now."

My face felt hot. I forgot to breathe for a moment. And nineteen different things went through my mind. Holy shit. Holy shit. He's doing this. I'm doing this. Right now? Am I ready right now? Fuck yes right now, because if I go home and sleep on it and think about it too hard I might not go through with it, yes right now. Be cool. I'm ready right now, be cool. What can I say that's cool?

"Give me one more peanut butter cookie," I said, "and I'll be ready."

Dev laughed out loud. Then he called 30 back over from where he'd been sitting and sipping on his drink all this time, and whispered in his ear. 30 went off tapping on his phone while Dev and I ate cookies.

I had so much nervous energy that I struggled even to sit still. Am I really fucking doing this? just kept going over and over in my head. At one point I even made a deal with myself that if there was nothing for me tonight I would go home and actually sleep on it, and maybe give myself that chance to back out before it starts. I mean, there's no turning back on this kind of thing, right? I'm either the kind of girl who sells herself, or I'm not. I'd talked a good game for a couple of weeks, and I still wasn't sure there was any more to it than that.

Then 30 came back over and whispered in Dev's ear for a minute. Dev looked at me and said, "You're on, Baby girl."

Jesus Fucking Christ. I'm on.

"30 gonna drive you where you're going," Dev said. "He'll give you instructions on the way. He'll be there one hundred percent of the time, and after he gonna drive you to meet up with me again. You got it, Baby girl?"

I nodded, my mind trying to wrap itself around what was happening. "Do I have time to go to the ladies first?" Dev nodded, and while I was in there peeing I took a minute to send a message on Twitter to my friend Roxanne, the only other person alive who knew where I was. In the ladies for a sec -- can't talk now but I'm fine! I'm safe! Down a rabbit hole of WTF but okay! I pulled myself together, told myself I could do this, I was ready for this. I went back out and stood over my new... boss? manager? agent? pimp?

"Dev, can you also guarantee that anyone you want to send me to meet will be fully vaxxed, and that they'll be wearing masks anytime it's possible and appropriate to wear masks?"

He stood up and faced me. "Already taken care of. Nobody get to play without that these days." Then he hugged me, and said one more time, "I got you, Baby girl."

Then 30 and I left.

We got into a different car this time. 30 helped me into the back, then got behind the wheel. He looked at me in the rear-view mirror. "You'll be safest in the back seat if we get stopped for any reason," he said in answer to my unspoken question.

This is the kind of shit I never would have thought of on my own, I realized. Then 30 asked me for my phone, and I quickly understood that was for everyone's safety and privacy.

We drove east for a half hour or so, which put us well onto Long Island. On the way, 30 told me that Dev takes safety very seriously, and if I ever feel unsafe I should say something to my driver immediately. Then he told me about where he was taking me.

We were heading for the home of a married couple who were just starting to "dip their toes" in this part of the sex world. All they were sure they wanted to do their first time out was watch a girl get herself off, but they also made it clear they were hoping to keep their options open.

"What are 'options'?" I asked.

"Don't worry," 30 said. "Dev and I know your limits, and nobody will even ask you to push them, much less make you push them. I just thought you would be a great fit because it's your first time, too."

I had to admit that made a lot of sense. Then 30 gave me some advice.

"If they offer you a drink, make sure you watch it being poured for you. Take it as seriously as you would if some rando in a bar were buying it for you. We vet new clients as much as we can, but we can't be in the room." Again, that's something that probably wouldn't have occurred to me -- I would've treated the offer of a drink like I was a guest in someone's home, which I really kind of thought I was going to be.

Then 30 told me I had a new name, and I would be using it on this call and every other call in the future unless I was instructed to use a different one. My new name was Melinda. Dev had picked it out for me, and no, I wasn't allowed to pick out another one.

"Anything else?" I asked as we pulled into a driveway that led to a private gate. The gate opened for us, 30 parked at the top, and he walked me to the door.

"Yeah," said 30. "I'll be in the next room the whole time. Just be yourself, have fun, go with the flow, and try to make sure they have a good time, too."

All I did today was buy cookies!! I was screaming in my head. What the fuck am I doing here? Be myself?? But again, if you were going to pick a first assignment for me on my first night as a sex worker, it may as well be for me to masturbate. I'd sure had a shit ton of practice doing that.

30 rang the doorbell, and everything changed.