I was now completely alone with this monster. Due to the fact that half the man’s mouth was sewn closed, he wasn’t exactly a candidate for conversation. Besieged by curiosity, I decided to ask him if he was the one who sewed his mouth closed or if someone else had done it for him. The man pointed to himself. Then he began to slide up the shirtsleeve of his left arm. Baffled by the man’s action, I lit a match so that I could see what he was trying to show me. The entire surface of his arm was grotesquely scarred with what appeared to be cigarette burns. The ghastly sight left me speechless. I couldn’t believe that I was actually sitting in the booth with some scarred up freak that had just signed a credit card voucher for $3,000.
Sefra had taken off ten minutes ago and still had not returned. I decided to go hunt her down and grab myself a cup of coffee in the process. I wanted to get away from the customer even if it would only be for a moment. I told him that I would be back in a few minutes. As I stood up to leave the booth, the man began to omit a strange gurgling noise while simultaneously sliding down off the seat.
At first I thought that the man was having a seizure or that he was a psychotic of sorts. Whatever the case, I didn’t want to deal with the situation, so I went to get the waitress. From where I was standing, I could see a waitress standing across the room shining her flashlight into the wallet of another willing customer. I strolled over to where she stood and boldly interrupted her business transaction. I told her to go check on my customer because he was acting very strange. The waitress humored me and walked over to the booth where I had been sitting with the dis-figured man.
A few minutes later, she came running out into the foyer of the club screaming for the aid of one of the doormen. The doorman followed the waitress over to the booth only to discover that the man had completely collapsed. The doorman pulled the customer out of the booth and laid him down on the floor while the waitress called 9-1-1. When the paramedics arrived, they fervently tried to revive the unidentified stranger, but it was to no avail. The man had apparently died of a heart attack, and was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital. Later that evening, a man’s wedding band was found on the floor of the booth where the customer had died. Apparently, the ring had fallen from one of the deceased man’s pockets during the commotion.
About three weeks after this incident, another lunch date opportunity happened to cross my path. Vic was a tall, polished-looking man and a self-made multi-mil-lionaire. He had a lot of free time on his hands, and plenty of money to blow.
Recently divorced at the age of sixty-five, Vic was obsessed with the idea of trying to recapture the thrills of yesteryear. We crossed paths one night at the Vegas Star. Mesmerized by my appearance, Vic made the costly mistake of requesting my company after I had just gotten off the stage. A sex addict in every sense of the word, Vic’s days were filled with rendezvous with hookers and cruising adult bookstores. His evenings were spent frequenting strip clubs, where he would solicit the dancers to have sex with him. On top of being a sex addict, Vic was also a confirmed alcoholic caught up in a whirlwind of self-destruction. His drinking problem fueled his sex addiction. His sex addiction caused him to drink.
Vic was a merry-go-round with no way off. He was truly his own worst enemy.
Vic was a fast mover and propositioned me to have lunch with him about fifteen minutes after we met, but I refused his offer. I knew what kind of “lunch date” he had in mind, and that certainly wasn’t compatible with my intentions. Vic was a little disappointed that I turned down his offer, so I really didn’t anticipate seeing him again. But Vic was a glutton for punishment, and two nights later he was back at the club requesting my company. I spent a couple of hours talking to him that evening. He bought me about forty-five glasses of water at $20 a piece. As long as he was willing to keep shelling out the cash, I was willing to stay. During this time, I learned that Vic had a tremendous sense of humor. This was a quality that I considered to be of paramount importance, especially if your intentions were to take the man for an expensive ride. I especially liked the fact that he knew I was just after his money, and still managed to find humor in it. Right before he left to go home, he asked me if I would reconsider his offer for lunch. I told him that I might consider meeting him for a sexless lunch date, if he came into the club and handed me an envelope with $1,000 in it. Vic laughed at my proposition. “Someone would have to be a desperate fool to do something like that,” he commented. However the following night, Vic came into the club and handed me a crumpled up envelope filled with twenty-dollar bills that equaled the sum of $1,000.
For the next twelve months, I would meet Vic once a week at a different restaurant for lunch. I made sure that he completely understood the conditions of our lunch dates. My fee was $2,000 for two hours of my time at a restaurant that was geographically convenient for both of us. Vic was responsible for picking up the lunch tab, and there would be no sex. These lunch dates with him were always amusing and consisted of nothing more than humorous conversation and a good meal. On occasion, Vic would get extremely drunk and make a total fool out of himself in public. Our dates were cut short if this happened, but not at my expense. After our lunch dates, Vic would usually solicit the services of a prostitute for the meager fee of $300.
A year of lunch dates had gone by before Vic came to the bleak conclusion that our relationship would never be a physical one. We dissolved our business relationship, and went our separate ways. Two months later, Vic contacted me at the Vegas Star. He told me that he had met somebody at the adult bookstore that he felt might be a lucrative opportunity for Sefra and I. The man’s name was Adam, and he had supposedly planned to stop by the club to meet us in the near future.
Adam showed up at the club three days after Vic’s phone call. He was a middle-aged man who happened to be a child psychologist. Adam claimed that he had a very lucrative practice in a nearby affluent suburb. I disliked him from the beginning for several reasons. The first thing that rubbed me the wrong way was his appearance. He was definitely hard to look at even in the dark. Adam was exceptionally thin to the point of looking sickly. His face had a gaunt unsettling look about it reminiscent of a cancer victim. Sefra and I spent a couple of hours with the man talking to him at the table. Adam spent close to $500 on glasses of water for us. Sefra and I tried our best to coerce him into spending a few thousand dollars to go into the secluded area with us, but our efforts were to no avail.
The man simply wouldn’t budge. Finally, after much perseverance, the two of us managed to talk him into spending the money.
At first he offered to pay with a credit card, but then he changed his mind. Adam reached into the back pocket of his trousers and pulled out a meticulously folded wad of money held together by a shiny gold money clip. “Whom do I pay?” he asked. Sefra and I glanced at each other. The waitress was nowhere to be seen.
Sefra reached around the man’s bony shoulders and gently pulled a piece of my hair. I knew this cue all to well. Sefra wanted me to take the money. “I have a great idea,” I said to the man, “why don’t you just give us the money and we will sit here with you at the table until the club closes at 4:00 a.m.” It was currently 3:30 in the morning. The man hesitated and was obviously having second thoughts about spending the money. “What am I going to get for my money?” he asked. I felt like telling him that he would get what he deserved, but I didn’t.