Jade Sharma - Problems

They all get off on the age thing.

“Twenty-five? That’s hot.”

“I hope I’m not too old for you.”

“Have you ever been with an older man?”

“No,” you answer to every single one of them, “I’ve like fantasized about it, but I’ve never actually done it, so. .”

“The truth is, I don’t really have a lot of experience with guys. Like, I’ve only had two boyfriends, but I was with them forever,” you say, acting as if you’re embarrassed.

“That’s cool,” they smirk.

There comes a moment, when you haven’t registered any obvious signs of psychosis, that you just need to decide whether to go or not. Because once you enter one of those short-stay hotels, or their apartments, you will be alone with them, and they can do anything.

You giggle in a cab. This is an adventure . He tells you to smoke a cigarette and wait five minutes and then go into the building with the black awning and tell the man behind the counter you are here to see apartment 4C. “You are here to look at an apartment you are considering renting,” he tells you. This is fun . You walk in and look around like you are considering, “Hmm, this is a nice lobby.” The man behind the counter cradles a phone between his head and shoulder. He nods and smiles. You get in the elevator. You ask the real estate agent to give you a tour. He does. The apartment is beautiful. Stainless steel everything and granite counters. Flat-screen on the wall. Comfy couches.

“Does it come furnished?” you ask.

“Yeah, it can,” he says, as he puts his hands around your waist. He says you’re pretty. You go down on him. He asks if he can come on your face. And then it’s over in two minutes. He says, “Hold on,” and hands you a tissue to clean up with. You both arrange yourselves by the mirror in the foyer. He hands you 150 bucks. You walk out together. He gives you a kiss on the check and says, “Stay out of trouble, kid.”

You meet a banker at a bar, and he takes you on a train to Queens. He has you bend over and beats your ass. It fucking stings. You say, “Thank you, Daddy.” He slaps your face. You say, “Thank you, Daddy.” He feels your pussy and calls you a slut because you’re so wet. Then he fucks you hard and it fucking hurts. It feels like his cock is banging right into your cervix. You take it for as long as you can, but it hurts too much, so you yell out the safe word, and he instantly stops. He takes a puff off his bong and then says, “You okay? Did Daddy hurt you? Come here. You like South Park ?” You watch South Park , but then you just want to get it over with. He bends you over and fucks you from behind. You are screaming. “Never been fucked like that,” he says. Then he smacks you. Then he pulls your hair, “What do you say?”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

You leave with 350 bucks. You feel weirdly relaxed, like just leaning back in the cab you could pass out.

The banker texts you in the cab, “Get home okay?”

This is the part you don’t understand. You understand the violent aggression. You understand why they pay you. But what is this thing about making sure you get home okay? Or when they throw in cab fare as you’re leaving, or when they take you to buy a warmer coat, or when they give you old sweaters or lectures about how you are actually smart, or they ask about what you want to do with your life. Almost always, if you see a guy more than once, he will broach this subject and tell you that you can’t do this forever. You tell him you know. You tell him you are in college. You tell him it’s just for spending money.

You go through five hundred bucks in two days. Even though you don’t spend it all on dope. Dope makes the money go faster. It just does, no matter how you cut it. You can have money or you can have dope, but you can’t have both.

You are proud to tell anyone who knows what you do that it’s no problem to back out if you don’t like the way a guy looks, or if he rubs you the wrong way. One guy tells you he looks like De Niro and refuses to send you a picture, and you meet him at a shitty McDonald’s on shitty Delancey Street, and he walks in looking like Joe Pesci in a coat that doesn’t fit. You don’t know how you are going to do this. You don’t want to be with a fat man. He says, “I’m not what you expected, huh?” And you both know. And then he shakes your hand and leaves.

They want you to beg to be fucked. When they allude to their aging body, you turn away. Women can get validation from each other and from men. Men can’t get it anywhere. They work constantly and watch their bodies get old, and they think, Why bother going out? I can’t get laid anyway , and so they look to meet you. And you want to tell them there is nothing wrong with them. It’s like talking to a fourteen-year-old girl. They just don’t believe you, no matter what you say.

The best one is Jimmy. He uses the phrase “incredibly boring” five times in ten minutes when talking about his education, his job, and his life. You drag out of him that he created some kind of algorithm that makes wealthy people even wealthier. He asks you if you know what a hedge fund is. You say, “Sure,” because you don’t care. He takes you to a shrink’s office he sublets to some woman. He is short. You stand face to face. He tells you to put your hands on his shoulders. He tells you to open your mouth, and he looks at your teeth. You think for a split second he is going to squeeze your throat. But he touches your hair and asks you to take off your top and pull up your skirt. He jerks off for a couple of minutes while you just stand there. Then you go down on him, and he finishes in your mouth.

Jimmy talks fast and makes jokes. He is meticulous about putting everything exactly the way it was before you leave the office.

“I need to erase all evidence we were ever here.”

“That’s exactly what murderers do.”

After shifting the ottoman back and forth, he backs up and looks around the room, and says, “Something is a little off.”

“Maybe it’s your conscience.”

He kind of grins.

He sees you once a week. He writes you e-mails about how he thinks about you on your knees. You think about being on your knees, and how he gets his cock out of his pants and boxers like he’s going to piss, and you take him in your mouth. You think of how he takes his tie and flings it over his shoulder and looks down at you. You look up at him and he closes his eyes and the camera zooms back, and there is a businessman getting a blow job in this room.

All he ever wants is for you to wear a skirt and give him a blow job. He tells you that you are his therapy. When he kisses you, he grins and takes out his Trident gum. He is boyishly handsome. He tells you he never lets anyone take his picture because he is too self-conscious.

His cock always smells like soap.

He loves clever company names and company mottos, like the porta-potty company, “Call A-Head.”

“Get it?” he asks. “Like a head is a toilet!” He claps his hands and smiles. “Love it!”

Jimmy asks you if you’ll just have a drink with him.

When you lie on the couch with your legs in his lap, he talks about the death of his sister. You listen, and he asks, “I’m not wasting your time, am I?”

On the cab ride home, you always feel high.

You meet a European guy at the restaurant of a fancy hotel and enjoy the best meal of your entire life. Octopus, both crispy and soft. Melted dark chocolate with hazelnuts on top spread on lightly salted, toasty bread. Real food is a shock to your system. You want to puke after having subsided only on yogurt for who knows how long. You feel all the carbs and sugar invade your veins like dope. You are buzzed and then so tired you can hardly keep your eyes open. You go up to the room and leave him to flirt with a black woman with short hair and big tits. You snort a bag and take a shower, trying to wake up. He comes in while you’re in the shower. You go down on him for a few minutes, and then he leaves. You stay in the shower forever. When you come out, you two fool around. He eats you out until you pretend to have an orgasm. You have a screaming and shaking routine, and you do it. Then he says he’s tired and falls asleep. The food feels heavy in your stomach, and you wish you could puke it up. You watch half an episode of Top Chef and then the rerun that comes on after it.