blurring_the_edges_26_give_in_to_sin birdmad Dana, having experienced firsthand what you learned from Zoe and Michelle in those earlier times admits to being more than a little impressed with your talents. "Zoe and I thought of this crazy idea..." she starts Uh-oh. "I heard about your little arrangement with Platte's girlfriend and it struck me a little funny." "Really?" you ask, not sure you like where the conversation is going, "how so?" "It's the first time i've ever heard of someone committing act of prostitution to get OFF of dope or coke or anything like that." Ouch. You recognized in your own excessively catholic-guilt laden mind that you perceived it this way. It surprises you that any among these less inhibited souls would put it so bluntly. "Okay, so what were you and Zoe discussing?" "Well," she starts, "by now, with some of the people and parties that go on around here and at Jimmy K's and Tony's that my little arrangement with Greg is not totally unique." "Yeah, i kinda picked up on that." "For at least the next couple of years, i'm playing the beard for Greg so that his family doesn't cut him off before he can go into business for himself. If Greg's dad, slippery bastard in his own right, could see past all of his phony moral platitudes and knew how many of his neighbors and colleagues have kids like Greg, there wouldn't be as big a problem." "So you're saying that there's a reason that most closets on this side of town are so roomy?" "Good one...yeah, something like that, Alex." She goes on to propose that you and a couple of the other exclusively straight guys in the group who are so inclined provide her (and a handful of the other women who are providing cover marriages for rich closet-cases with inheritances to lose) with your...services, with whatever reasonable form of compensation you choose. Feeling like your previous convictions led you as far astray as anything, you keep her in suspense for a few minutes before casually agreeing to it. After all, it's not like you're holding out for love or anything, right? "I talked it over with Greg and he thought it was a brilliant idea, He said we could use our guest cottage on the back as our main point of...well, whatever you want to call it." Over the course of the next few months, between your real life, a few bits of business done for Henry and time spent with Zoe and Tricia, you are called on occasionally to perform. Early on, deciding to opt for a means to shake the tag of "whore" out of your mind and off of yourself, you opt do it for nothing. After all, under normal circumstances, you would be doing this for free or would be having to cover the usual incidental expenses required to potentially seduce a date. It never dawns on anyone at work or at home why you are consistently and uniformly tired all of the time. You don't bother to explain it because you don't think anyone would believe it if you did. To keep it away from your family, you have Zoe be the messenger for all of your service calls. Of course, with everything else going on, you are the least of anyone's worries, and for once since it all started, that feeling is actually a welcome relief. Your comings and goings are seen as nothing more than what your family perceives to be an incipient social life, making up for time lost by your parents' previous over-protectiveness. Besides, as the "man about the house" you are, even with your rather meager earnings from your straight job (albeit with the occasional boost from your not-so-straight jobs), meeting your responsibilities. As long as you manage that, you figure, you are essentially above reproach from that perspective. On those Sunday mornings when you do find yourself in church, you feel a certain cockiness well up in you that shows in your voice when you sing. When not having flashes of bitterness toward these shadows of God that are thrown about in the sermons and the rituals, you laugh inwardly at it all. It's fun to look out over the congregation and see them looking at you when you take a prominent section of one of the hymns, it makes you wonder if they have any idea what you've been up to, the kind of sin and debauchery that they pray they are never tempted into. At some points, occasionally looking at Lena Cassidy with your usual degree of subtly subdued lust, you think to yourself that they have no idea exactly what they are depriving themselves of. "Lead me not into temptation, O Lord," you say in your mind, "for I already know the way." 030427 what's it to you? who go blather from