Chapter 6

Monday November 7

Chris asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about at work today. I’m guessing he has heard about my fight with Desmond. I said no, everything’s great.

Oliver arranged for Mandy and me to meet him at his office this afternoon. I’ve never seen anyone die from fright, but it looked like Mandy was about to when we confronted her.

“Oh god! No, no, no ... this can’t be happening. Please! I promise to be good. Just forget you ever met me, mmm? I’ll just leave and move to a new city.” She stood up and glanced at the meeting room door nervously.

“Mandy, please stay,” Oliver said compassionately. “We’re not judging you, and we won’t tell anyone without your permission. But we need to re-examine some of the assumptions about our case.”

Mandy sat down, crying.

“I’m actually kinda jealous,” I said. It was a pretty big exaggeration - curious would be a better word - but I hoped it would put her at ease. She looked at me with surprise but didn’t say anything.

Oliver nodded to me, wanting me to do the questioning. “How long have you been doing glory hole activities?” I asked.

“About a year,” Mandy said timidly.

“So before your date with Richard?” I asked.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, sniffling. “It was my therapist who suggested My Other Half. She said it would be good for me to engage in more traditional sorts of relationships.”

“Do you ever receive money or gifts in exchange for these blowjobs?” I asked.

“No, of course not!” Mandy denied. “I just ... like that men appreciate me, mmm?”

“Okay. So, around the time of your date with Richard, other guys did come in your mouth, right?” I asked. She nodded. “But not anywhere else? Not your vagina or your ass?” She nodded again.

“When I interviewed you, you said that you hadn’t had sex ‘of any kind’ prior to Richard,” I stated, checking my notes. “You said it had been a year since you had been ‘intimate’ with anyone.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, seemingly oblivious to the contradiction.

“But you were giving blowjobs,” I reiterated.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said again.

“I ... Do you not consider blowjobs to be a kind of sex?” I asked, perplexed.

“No,” she said innocently. I couldn’t tell if she really believed it.

Oliver chimed in by saying, “The Bill Clinton defense.” I looked at him for clarification, but he waved it off as unimportant.

I moved on. “The man we sent to see you at the gym said that you rubbed your pussy directly on his dick,” I stated. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” Mandy said meekly.

“Do you do that often?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I liked him. He was polite.”

“Had you done that to any guys in the two months before your date with Richard?” I asked.

“Maybe?”

“So there’s a chance that a guy’s pre-come might have touched your pussy - inside your lips - before your date?”

“Maybe, but not inside! Not in my vagina!”

“I don’t know where to go from here,” I said to Oliver. “If we try to sue the guy, won’t the enemy lawyers use this to discredit everything Mandy says?”

“Please don’t tell anyone! Please? Let’s just keep it between us!” Mandy begged.

Oliver spoke carefully. “I’ll have to run it by the lawyers, but Mandy, Lexi is right - if we sue with you as the plaintiff, your glory hole activities will definitely become part of the public record.” Mandy’s face filled with panic again, but Oliver held up a hand to delay.

“When this started, I talked to some people at My Other Half,” Oliver explained. “Off the record, a customer service agent confided that they’ve been getting a lot of complaints about stealthing. It is definitely happening. Maybe we can drop Mandy from the case and go forward as a class action suit, or a public health case. I think the company will cooperate if we can give them a legal excuse to turn over their records. With a little luck, that will lead us to other women that Richard has mistreated.”

Tuesday November 8

When I was heading to my desk this morning at work, Jack spoke to me. “You know, Lexi, I am really enjoying this feud you’re having with Desmond. I walked over to his desk where he and Anthony were watching a video of me, with my dress pulled up to my waist, receiving oral for the second time in my life.

The video was recorded by Ethan, a guy I fooled around with in high school. He thought he was recording us secretly, but I knew about the webcam and let it happen. The video was supposed to have been destroyed - a judge had ordered it - but the Internet always seems to find a way to soak up data. I was surprised and a little impressed that Desmond had managed to dig it up, though: last time I looked, I couldn’t find anything tying the video to me.

I’m sure Jack and Anthony expected me to freak out. I wouldn’t give Desmond the satisfaction.

“You guys might want to be careful,” I said casually. “We were seventeen when that was recorded - technically you’re watching child pornography.”

“If this is kiddie porn then put my name on the registry and call me a pedophile,” Anthony said, just as I started coming in the video. I rolled my eyes and went to my desk to actually work.

I decided to call Nishka again to see if she had any more dirt on Desmond. If I can’t find anything else, I’ll just get the asshole fired, but I’d rather not go that far.

“Niska? Hi, my name is Lexi Green,” I told her when I reached her on the phone. “We spoke last week. I lied to you - told you I worked for a drug research company. Do you remember?”

“Yeah...” she answered suspiciously.

“The truth is, I work with your ex, Desmond,” I explained, hoping she would be cool. She had seemed cool before. “He’s been being a real misogynist jerk to me. I played a recording of my phone call with you to some of his friends at work to get even with him.”

“That’s fucked up,” Nishka said. So far she was keeping calm though.

“Yeah, it is,” I admitted. “I’ve been feeling guilty - not about what I did to him, but for taking advantage of you. I figured I owed you an apology. I’m sorry.”

“What did he do, exactly?” She asked.

“He spied on my personal email - found out that I had posted nude photos of myself to the Internet,” I explained. “It was supposed to be anonymous - my face was covered and everything - but he tracked them down. Then he started saying that he’d show them to everyone unless I went out with him. And when I refused, he did.”

“Desmond did that?” Nishka asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“You want to go out for a drink?” She said, surprising me. “I think this discussion would go better with drinks.”

So then we met at a restaurant/bar. I wish I had gotten a fake ID like everyone else in college, but with just six months to go until I’m twenty-one, I guess there’s no point. She drank a whiskey sour while I had iced tea.

“So he showed your pictures to people at work...,” she said, picking up the story where we’d left off.

“Yes. And a couple guys my age were giggling morons about it, trying to tease me,” I told her. She rolled her eyes in sympathy. “And there was one woman who said that I was the reason for gender inequality or some shit.”

“Ugly?” Nishka asked.

“Not ugly - just chewed up and spit out by life,” I said. Nishka nodded.

She sighed. “Desmond is a sweet guy, but he can be...,” she began. “No - I’m not going to apologize for him any more.”

“So you’ve seen this side of him before?” I asked.