Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (28 page)

Anyway, back to my deep dark vortex of
depression, after I moved to Florida without Alice. I didn't eat
for eight days in a row. And it didn't even bother me. My
depression was so intense, it was even stronger than extreme
hunger.

And I had nobody. No support network. No
close friends who could come over and pat me on the back while I
whine about how much I miss Alice. For several weeks, I was a shut
in. I didn't want to go outside, because there was nothing out
there that interested me. The only two people I talked to on the
phone every day were Alice's friend Becky, and Linda the con artist
turned hooker. Both were 1200 miles away, in New York. Both of them
listened to me whine on the phone for hours every day. That
couldn't have been easy. But they called me back every day to
comfort me. (And to get their foot in the door.)

After a few weeks, I told myself it couldn't
go on like this. If I ever wanted to be happy again, I needed to go
out there and meet some new people. Make some friends in
Florida.

But I had no ambition to go out on a blind
date with some stranger and try to force myself to make small talk.
I didn't have the strength to be witty, charming or amusing. And
who would want to go out on a date with a sullen, bitter, dull,
totally depressed sad sack? Nobody.

It was a vicious cycle. I didn't want to go
out and meet someone new, because I was depressed. And as long as I
didn't meet someone new, I was going to continue to be
depressed.

Finally I had an idea. It seemed like the
perfect solution at the time. I was going to approach this like any
other problem I had tackled in the past, and take the path of least
resistance. I was going to take the easiest shortcut to reach my
goal. At this point, my goal was simply to get laid. (Shut up.
Don't judge me.)

I figured that having sex would make me
forget about how miserable I felt. At least for a little while. And
who knows, maybe I'd meet a nice girl, have sex with her a bunch of
times, and we'd actually get to know each other, like each other,
and we'd end up in a real long term relationship.

In hindsight, that was obviously the dumbest
plan ever. But at the time it seemed like a valid approach to
ending my depression. (Obviously my cognitive abilities were a
little impaired at the time.) So I was going to try to meet a girl
that's wife-material by posting an online ad looking for a hoe.
What could possibly go wrong?

HUSSY

"Don't trust a hoe, never trust a hoe..."

3OH!3

I posted an online ad, looking for a girl
who might be interested in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Rrright to the good stuff! She'd get what she really wants, and I'd
get what I was looking for, without the tedious hassle of getting
to know each other on awkward dates first.

Several girls responded to my ad. Hussy was
one of them. Of course her name wasn't really Hussy. But it's my
book, so I'm going to call her whatever I want.

Hussy was a short, petite 27-year-old with
blonde hair. She wasn't exactly the most beautiful girl in the
world, but she wasn't all that bad looking either. She had been in
a bad car accident as a teenager, and she was self-conscious about
the big, noticeable scars on her pale forehead. About a year or two
later, after we had gotten so close we had planned on moving in
together, she revealed that she had lost all her teeth in the
accident as well and was wearing dentures. She said only 3 people
had ever seen her without her false teeth in: her mother, her baby
daddy, and me. Apparently I really did have a way of making girls
feel comfortable around me.

Anyway, let's start at the beginning: I had
finally mustered enough energy to hire a handyman to renovate my
condo. When Hussy came over for the first time, my place looked
like a war zone.

We went straight into the bedroom, sat on
the bed and talked for a few minutes. She told me she was taking
care of 4 small children all by herself and needed to make money.
Then we had sex. She had no boobs at all, except for dark nipples
that poked out of her flat chest like two large peas. After seeing
Hussy's nonexistent boobs, I realized how spoiled I had been with
my ex-wife Donna's boobs. She had really nice 36 Ds, and during all
our years of marriage, I had just taken them for granted.

Hussy was very shy and soft-spoken. We felt
comfortable around each other and we started hanging out every day.
At first she only stayed for a few minutes of chatting and then
sex. But after a few days she stayed longer, and we often ended up
having sex a second time, after taking a break for about an hour
and talking, or getting something to eat at Bice, my favorite
restaurant at the Coconut Point Mall.

Hussy opened up to me about her sad life and
told me that her father had raped her for years when she was just a
little girl. Then she ended up in several abusive relationships
with guys who beat her regularly. It was a familiar story that I
had heard many times before by now, and would hear many more times
from other girls I met after Hussy. It was pretty obvious that it's
really true: people who grow up in abusive households often end up
in abusive relationships.

She told me she was trying to get away from
her abusive ex, Dick, so she had recently moved back in with her
parents. But she was afraid her father might rape her baby
daughter, just like he had raped Hussy when she was younger. I
found out later that pretty much every word out of her mouth was a
lie, so I'm not sure if her father ever even really raped her.

I found out two years later that Hussy
really hadn't moved in with her parents, and never really left her
ex Dick, but that she and Dick had moved in with Dick's sister
Nicole for a few weeks, until I offered Hussy to stay at one of my
rental houses for free, because I felt so bad for her after all the
sob stories she had told me about her life.

At one point she claimed the tires on her
truck were so bald, it was dangerous to drive around in it.
Especially with her kids in the truck. I ended up giving her $400
for new tires.

When she moved into my rental house, a
duplex in Lehigh Acres, she needed new furniture, and told me one
of her friends was about to sell everything in their apartment for
only $400, because they were moving up north. Supposedly she had to
act fast, or the furniture was going to be sold to someone else. So
I gave her another $400.

Hussy had a restraining order against Dick,
and wanted to lift it, but one of the requirements was that she had
to take domestic abuse counseling classes first. Those classes
teach battered women how to recognize early warning signs of
dangerous situations and things like that.

I asked her why in the world she would want
to lift the restraining order, if Dick is such an abusive asshole.
She said so he could visit their baby daughter. Later I found out
that it was really because they were actually living together.

One day, when I picked her up after one of
those classes, she told me that in a weird way, getting hit made
her feel loved. That blew my mind. But after thinking about it for
a while, it started to make sense. Girls who grow up in abusive
homes see violence as a normal part of life. And they start to
believe that they deserve to be hit, if they step out of line. They
tell themselves that if their man hits them, it's because she did
something to upset him, and he'll say things like: "Look what you
made me do!"

They tell themselves that their man only
hits them, because his feelings are so strong for her, he just
can't control his anger and frustration. And somehow their brains
translate violence into love. I guess it's a coping mechanism, like
Stockholm syndrome.

I had a hard time seeing the link between
love and abuse. Then again, wasn't that exactly the same thing I
always told myself about my ex-wife Donna's outbursts? She lost her
temper all the time and threw hateful tantrums, if I didn't do
exactly what she wanted. And I told myself it was a sign of how
much she loved me, and how much she couldn't control her jealousy,
because her feelings for me were so strong. But that was really
just my way of coping with her emotional abuse.

Anyway, Hussy called me hysterically crying
one day, and said her mother had been arrested, because Hussy and
her sister Amber had gotten into big fight. Amber was a drug addict
and Hussy felt that Amber was not taking care of her two kids as
well as she should. Hussy and Amber started hitting each other.
Then their mother got in the middle of it. Someone called the cops,
and their mother ended up getting arrested for smacking Amber.

Now Hussy was frantically trying to get bond
money to bail her mom out of jail, because she had a heart
condition, and without her medication, she might have a heart
attack in jail. I ended up giving Hussy $500 to bail out her
mother. Or so I thought. A few months later I found out her mother
really didn't go to jail that night. Dick did, after hitting Hussy,
and she called the cops on him. So I had wired Hussy money to bail
out her abusive "ex" boyfriend, who really wasn't her "ex" at
all.

After Linda had conned me into paying for
several fake abortions in Pennsylvania a year or two earlier, of
course I was weary. I had my suspicion that Hussy may be lying
about her mother going to jail. Then again, what kind of a person
would lie about something like that? And Hussy was so upset at my
doubting her at a time like this, she threw the phone on the floor
in despair.

Her father picked up the phone and texted me
that Hussy was so upset about her mother going to jail, he was
afraid she might try to kill herself again. Apparently Hussy had
attempted suicide at least half a dozen times. This was not the
time for annoying questions, I thought, so I wired her the money to
get her mom out. Later I found out I really hadn't been texting
with her dad. That was really Hussy pretending to be her dad
texting me. How sick is that?

A few weeks later her dad suddenly went to
jail. Or so Hussy claimed. Once again it was a life or death
situation, and Hussy was about to kill herself unless I was going
to send her money to bail her father out. Later I found out that
whole story wasn't true either.

Then Amber died from a drug overdose. Hussy
was distraught over the loss of her beloved sister. Sure, they had
their fights. All sisters do. But deep down they loved each other.
And now Hussy was beside herself with grief. Well, then later I
found out there never was an Amber. Hussy had made her up. Amber
was a figment of Hussy's imagination. Amber's two kids didn't exist
either. But I didn't find all that out until much later.

Anyway, one day, after Hussy and I had spent
some time together again, I went to Home Depot to buy some paint
for the new crown mouldings in my condo. At the check out, I
noticed that both of my debit cards were missing from my
wallet.

I texted Hussy: "Damn! My ATM cards are
gone. Did u see them lying around anywhere? Maybe I took them out
of my wallet while paying some bills?"

Hussy replied: "I'm gonna turn around and
come right back to help u look for ur cards."

I wrote back: "Nah, it's ok. I'm just gonna
go home and look for them. If they're not there, I'll just cancel
them."

For some reason her reply made me
suspicious. Her eagerness to drive all the way back to help seemed
suspect. My instincts told me she had stolen my cards and now she
was scared and she was only going to "help" look for them, so she
could pretend to find them somewhere, while really pulling them out
of her pocket.

It reminded me of a joke Patty the drug
counselor had told me: What's the difference between a drug addict
and an alcoholic? An alcoholic will steal your wallet and then feel
so guilty, he'll get drunk. A drug addict will steal your wallet,
and then help you look for it.

On that day two other people had been at my
place. A lady who measured one of the bedrooms for a new carpet,
and the handyman who had been working on the condo for the past few
weeks. So I didn't just want to accuse Hussy of stealing my cards,
unless I was absolutely sure.

On my way home from Home Depot, the fraud
department of my bank called to confirm some unusual activity on my
personal debit card. I told them it had been stolen. They said that
within the last hour, about $1000 had been charged to it at several
different stores in the Coconut Point Mall, just down the street
from my apartment. The suspicious charges began at 5:15 pm. Hussy
had left my house at 5 pm. So obviously she had gone straight to
the mall after she left my place and went on a wild shopping spree
with my card, swiping it as a credit card, instead of a debit card,
to get around the $500 daily spending limit.

I told the bank that I think I know who took
my card, but that I wasn't 100% sure. They told me to call the
police and tell them who I suspected. The police could get a copy
of the security tapes at the stores, and have me look at them to
identify the thief.

A few minutes later the fraud department
called me again. This time they told me about suspicious activity
on my business debit card. Someone had spent almost $1000 on that
card in the past hour as well.

Then I texted Hussy: "I talked to my bank's
fraud department. They said I should call the police."