Tolerance
Interlude — Updates
As the music came to a close, Sydney snatched the $20 out of the man’s hand with her mouth, her big tits so thoroughly mesmerizing him he didn’t even notice it. She tucked it into her g-string with the rest of her huge wad of cash; once again, it was getting to the point where she had so many bills tucked in there that it bulged out her g-string to the point where it may as well not have been on except to keep the all the dough in place. She’d had to be extra attentive to her bikini line.
She made her way off-stage to the sounds of her loyal fans demanding an encore. Again. Ever since that crazy night a couple weeks ago when that guy had come in and auctioned her body and dignity, she’d been completely swamped with admirers. They were a mix of lonely losers, neglected husbands and boyfriends, and of course a good many flat-out perverts keen for a slice of the action that had netted her so much press. “College Co-Ed Really WILL Do Anything For Cash,” one headline had read. She hadn’t even known pervs and creepers had their own media before this.
Of course, publicity was a double-edged sword for someone in her line of work. Having some loyal clientele you could count on for a steady stream of tips was handy; having a bunch of pictures of you floating around on the internet posing with clients’ smudgy signatures and grubby hands all over you, however... that made things more interesting than Sydney liked.
She’d lost count now of how many letters and messages she’d gotten. A classic hottie, she had always used her social media fairly casually, happy to let guys get a few pics of some cleavage, a bikini shot at the beach, a selfie when she was dolled up for a night at a club. It was easy popularity, and she’d always liked being popular. She’d had fourteen-hundred-some followers before that debacle; fast forward two weeks and she had twelve thousand, as lonely wankers all over the country were keen to jack off to the unintended publicity shots.
Sydney brought up the app on her phone. Make that just over thirteen thousand.
She slipped one of the bouncers a hundred bucks to escort her out to her car and the two set out. (They’d been doing it for $20, but after some sumbag hid behind her car and tried to jump her Saturday and dealt a good hard bite to Blake as he fended the guy off, they’d demanded more.)
She considered what might have happened if Blake hadn’t been there, and figured $100 was a small price to pay.
Of course, even with the money flowing in heavier than ever, there had been more expenses that came with it. A home security system (after some fucker had shared her home address with the internet), bars for the windows, a new paint job for her car after someone spray-painted “WHORE” on both sides. She suspected it was one of the girls she worked with, who were livid with jealousy at how much attention (and money) she was getting. Cries were being raised to pool tips; Sydney had had to blow the manager to keep him from enacting the policy. From the looks she’d gotten leaving his office, she was pretty sure the other girls understood the arrangement, and it was a matter of time before she’d be competing with the desperate ones, willing to more than suck a little dick for their share of Sydney’s tips.
Happily, tonight there was no one lurking, and no further damage to her ride. (She’d also had the tires popped with a knife two days ago. Maybe another dancer; maybe Blake.) If only there had been some way to put a stop to that auction! Still, she knew there hadn’t been. Her alternatives were to be sold like a piece of meat, or... well, nothing. Like she was going to be a total cunt in front of God and everyone by refusing him. She didn’t even like that prick, even if he’d been a good lay.
Some things, she just had to tolerate.
Sydney locked the doors on her car, looked in the back seat to make sure no one was hiding again, and set out for home.
Fall break had been a long time coming for Dr. Missy Restrepo, after the most trying two weeks of her professional life. The total loss of her students’ respect, the dressing-down from the dean of her department over her wardrobe and the subsequent meeting in which he told her there’d been accusations she’d had inappropriate relations with a student... She’d denied it—after all, it would have been radically more inappropriate to refuse DJ Swanson his request. Still, they were investigating the matter, and she suspected it was a matter of time before she was called in again, this time to be fired.
She’d been looking forward to fall break as a chance to get away from campus, not have to parade around in those disgustingly slutty outfits she was now required to wear. Better still, her fiance Mark had come to visit from where he was doing his own adjunct professorship six hundred miles away. He’d gotten in that afternoon and they’d gone out to dinner at their favorite restaurant. She asked a lot of questions, too ashamed to talk about her own life.
Back home, however, he’d carried her directly into the bedroom, and even though she’d been careful to keep the lights out in the bedroom, Mark had seen the new tattoo.
“What the fuck is this?” he asked as he turned on the light on the night stand, perplexed by the intricate cursive scrawled across her lower back like a billboard.
Missy, on her hands and knees, looked back at him. “It’s nothing—just keep going, OK?”
He shook his head and pulled out of her with a wet plop. “Is this real?”
She sighed, having hoped she might somehow keep him from noticing, but on some level, glad she didn’t have to keep hiding it from him. “It’s real.”
“You always said you hated tattoos—I remember trying to convince you we should get matching ones, those little opposite half hearts, just on our ankles, and you acted like I was asking you to give me your ear, van Gogh style.” He dropped to his side, facing away from her, clearly wounded.
“No, I still hate tattoos—I just did it because of this twerpy little student of mine.” She put a hand on his shoulder consolingly, but he shrugged it off.
“You got it for one of your students?! You don’t even like these kids, Missy! You complain about them all the time!”
“It’s not like that—he just took me by the hand and dragged me into the parlor and told them what he wanted. There was nothing I could do!”
He rolled to face her, incredulous at how feeble her excuse sounded. “Nothing you could do? How about saying no! ‘No, I don’t want this horrible tat taking up half my lower back!’”
“No!” she cried. “I just... he’s a special case. I couldn’t say no—it’s just one of those things you have to deal with as a professor.”
“What?” he said, taking to his feet in anger. “I’m in the same business as you, and that’s definitely NOT something I have to deal with! Does this kid have dirt on you somehow? Is he part of this ethics inquiry thing you were so afraid to talk about?”
She hesitated, then nodded. How could she make him understand? She didn’t like being DJ’s plaything, of course, but what was the alternative? Letting everyone think she was completely prejudiced against him? It was unthinkable. “Yes,” she said softly. “He’s a big part of it.”
“Keep talking,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Well, he came into class a couple weeks ago and... well, I guess he thought he’d gotten an unfair grade on a paper, and I guess I could have been more open-minded about his ideas, considering... and anyway, he got upset and decided to punish me by stripping me naked and fucking me from behind on my podium in front of the whole class, and then he took me for the tattoo, and then he made me change my wardrobe and dress like a big slut around campus, and I guess someone complained to the dean about it...”
He just stared, livid and horrified and disgusted. This was insane. “This little bastard... RAPED you in front of your class! And nobody stepped in to help? You didn’t go to the police?”
She responded in a small voice. “It wasn’t rape—I actually, um, begged him to. After he spanked me a little.” She blushed somehow even deeper.
“He... you...” He just stared, horrified that he could have ever imagined him spending the rest of his life with such a complete and utter slut.
“Please don’t be mad. I didn’t want this to happen. He was just upset, and I didn’t want to be intolerant,” she pleaded.
“We’re done,” he said. He threw his engagement ring at her and stormed out.
The following Monday at school was the most difficult of Taylor Strehan’s young life. She was used to being eyed and ogled, the center of male lust and female envy, but today, for the first time she could remember, she’d dressed specifically to avoid attention. Baggy jeans borrowed from her chubby sister (ugh, size 6), a comfy hoodie she usually only wore for bon fires or other outdoor fall occasions.
If anything, the conspicuous shift in her wardrobe only made things worse.
Word was all over school of what had happened in the locker room during the game, and at the party after. One didn’t get to be as popular as Taylor Strehan without making one’s share of enemies, though, and the girls she’d stepped on to ascend were only too happy to share all the details they knew, and others, not just details but photographic evidence. Whispers and giggles followed in her wake. She only caught snippets here and there.
“...heard she had an orgy with...”
“...totally lezzed out with Kylee and Evelyn and...”
“...was bare-ass naked at that party...”
“...no, she had on a leash, lead around like a...”
And so on. She put in her headphones to block it out. Some of the cat calls still intruded on her consciousness, though.
By the time first period was over, someone had written “bitch in heat” on her locker and drawn a picture of what was clearly her, taking a dump on a lawn at the end of a rope in a stick-figure’s hand. She reported it to the nearest teacher; from the look on the elderly journalism teacher’s face, she had already heard the rumors that precipitated the vandalism, and gave Taylor a commensurately disapproving frown.
And so the day went, an endless barrage of stares, whispers, jeers, and taunts. At lunch, she cut right to the front of the line (ignoring Derek Wildermuth as he called out “weird seeing you way up front, Taylor—I heard you preferred it from the back” to the raucous laughs of his idiot friends). She sat at her usual table, but none of her friends joined her. She caught them pointing and laughing—deliberately, as they saw her returning eye contact. Rather than keep sitting alone, she saw a group of other girls who she was sure had been having similar days—girls she’d seen in various states of undress at Lauren’s party, along with poor dim-witted Kylee. (Evelyn was with her usual crowd of sluts; apparently for her, there was no such thing as bad publicity.)
No one at her new table spoke, but they all seemed comforted to have someone else in their shoes.
After what felt like an eternity, the end of the school day came. When she closed her locker, she saw Lauren standing there, giving her the smuggest look she’d ever seen on a bitch’s face. “What the fuck do you want?” she demanded.
“Wow, can’t a girl just want a little quality time with her dog?” Lauren replied, smirking.
Taylor hissed back at her. “Fuck you, cunt—you fucked him just as hard and twice as eager as I did.”
“Really? ’Cause that’s not what my video shows,” Lauren said in mockingly feigned confusion. “Anyway, go talk to Miss Nguyen before you head out, K?”
“Why’s that?” People nearby in the hallway watched; the tension was palpable.
“Oh, sweetie, you’d really better hear it from her,” Lauren said, her voice full of condescension. She went to put a mockingly comforting hand on Taylor’s shoulder, but she batted it out of the way and shoved Lauren aside as she stormed down to the cheerleading coach’s office. She’d hoped to at least get an angry taunt or a grunt of pain as she retreated, but Lauren just laughed.
It was a short conversation. Lauren had told the coach about a hazing incident staged by Taylor during Friday night’s game, in which Taylor had made other squad members join her in performing sex acts on Lauren’s own brother. Lauren had even shown her part of the video, though Miss Nguyen had turned it off after only a few seconds.
Taylor insisted that’s now how it had been, she’d just been putting up with DJ, that Lauren had been the one filming the whole obscenity—but it was to no avail. Miss Nguyen said she didn’t want to make a big investigation out of this if she didn’t have to and risk a media fiasco that might result in the video getting out into the public and doing untold damage to Taylor’s and the other girls’ lives. Besides, none of the other girls involved had wanted to press charges against Taylor, thank goodness. Still, as the person who was clearly in a position of power, she held Taylor responsible, and was removing her from the squad.
(As runner up, that would make Lauren the new captain.)
Trembling with impotent rage and bottomless shame, Taylor made her way out to her car. Someone had attached the front bumper to the fence with a leash.
Her scream could be heard for a mile.
Emily felt lucky she had such an understanding manager.
“Start at the beginning,” Katja said. She was a Finnish national, and her accent was usually something Emily found soothing, though now, she was too strung-out to be consoled so easily.
“Well, I know you heard about those photos that got out—DJ and I on rounds last week...?”
“Ja,” she said. She really said “yeah,” but the accent made the monosyllable sound more Finnish than English. “I remember.”
“Yeah. And I appreciate you following up on that, too, verifying what I said and not firing me.”
Katja nodded. DJ had come to her, actually, a few days after the incident. He’d come to dump a lot of his shifts and rearrange the ones he kept to be with Abby and Emily. As she’d penciled in the changes, she asked why, and he replied that they were the two most attractive women on staff. Concerned, she had tried some gentle counseling that this might not be the most productive way to attract positive attention from women, or to secure a glowing recommendation from her, but he’d told her to mind her own business. DJ had, however, answered her brief inquiries about the incident with Emily and the VanDoren girl, saying it had all been his doing.
Anyone else on staff Katja would have fired for having intercourse with a student in the lounge and then forcing his naked colleague to parade through the building with his semen on her face, but teaching tolerance was one of her core passions, the real reason she’d gotten into this field. She considered it an excellent opportunity to put her principles into practice, and had promptly excused Emily for her part in things.
The young woman continued. “So, it’s been kind of rough, I guess, since the photos leaked. Lots of people in my classes, all my friends, saw them. Lots of people calling me a slut, hitting on me even after I try to tell them no. That kind of thing. I try to explain I was just indulging a co-worker, but they never understand. Honestly, I think explaining it makes things worse.”
“Ja, that can be difficult. Those of us who know DJ understand the need to treat him with a little extra discretion, but I’m sure to others, it must seem strange.”
“Yeah. At least one of my professors saw them; he kept looking at me through lecture, and I knew he was just seeing me naked and covered in DJ’s semen. I haven’t been able to go back. I... missed a test.”
The manager frowned. “Now Emily, you must keep up your grades. You’re a student first, and an employee second. Your work issues mustn’t be allowed to interfere with academics.”
Emily nodded. “I understand. It’s just... when my parents saw them...” She fought back tears, and slowly lost the battle as she continued. “They didn’t even contact me. I called home, just to check in, and... my mother told me she and my father had seen that their daughter was engaged in pornography, squandering her collegiate opportunities for cheap thrills. I tried to tell her how it had really been, but I couldn’t make her understand. She...” Emily choked back a sob. “She told me I was no longer her daughter. I called my father, but he won’t even answer the phone. They didn’t respond to my emails, unfriended me online...”
She was crying too hard to keep getting words out. Katja patted her shoulder softly, offering her tissues and letting her cry it out. It was some time before she could continue.
“My whole family, even my sister, won’t talk to me. My parents, they had to break their backs to pay for me to go here, and now everybody thinks I’m just abusing their trust, that I’m some kind of...” she shook her head, shifted to something she could manage to talk about.
“I don’t have anywhere to go for fall break,” she said in a whisper-quiet voice.
Katja warmly pulled the despondent young woman into a hug, and Emily returned it tightly. “You can stay here in the dorm,” she said. “You’ll be the only one here, but I won’t have you out on the streets.”
With those words, Emily first consciously realized that, when the school year ended, she was homeless.
Brittney Jenner had lost her virginity at the age of twelve at the hands of her step-father, Earl.
She’d been old enough then to know she was pretty, to have some idea that boys wanted to do things with her. Her presence often seemed to turn casual social situations into games of truth-or-dare, spin the bottle, seven minutes in heaven, or other juvenile means of getting a little experience in things sexual without getting too scary about them. Since childhood her mother, Heather, had entered young Brittney in child beauty pageants, where she’d done well—regional winner three years, and state champion when she was ten. Heather had been disappointed in her 32nd place at nationals; she’d been grounded from sweets for three months. The school psychologist who had diagnosed her with anorexia later that year had insisted Brittney stop participating in activities that valued her body above her mind as part of her treatment.
Of course, he couldn’t keep her from going into middle school or back home, so it was a fruitless sentiment.
Earl had married Heather when her daughter was eleven. He was a well-to-do lawyer in town, wealthy and connected, and the girls had needed the financial support and stability. Heather had been only fifteen when she’d had to drop out of school to give birth to Brittney, and while her parents had helped as best they could, things had always been tight. Brittney loved her mother fiercely for how much she worked and sacrificed for her. Heather would do anything for her daughter to have a better life. Even marrying Earl.
Earl offered stabilitity. He also offered a mean streak a mile wide and the alcoholism to keep it fresh at hand. Brittney had seen how he abused her mother, especially if he’d been drinking. They tried to hide it, but even Earl’s house was only so big, and noise carried. Heather always tried to protect her by lying about how bad it was, and Brittney protected her back by lying about believing it.
When Earl finally branched out into forcing himself on his young step-daughter, she just kept lying. She quickly learned that refusing him, souring the experience for him, only served to throw fuel on the fires of his rage, and it made it worse on Brittney, and also usually sent him laying into her mother, too. She could have handled the bruises and violations if they didn’t also lead the same for Heather. She wanted to tell someone, but Earl golfed with the sheriff and the county judge once a month; trying to turn him in would be suicide. Maybe literally. With nothing to be done about it, Brittney learned to do her best to keep him happy so he wouldn’t last out at her mother. As often, anyway.
No matter what that took.
She soon learned that this was just how men were built, and attractive women like herself, like Heather, just brought it out in them. Her first boyfriend to raise a hand to her was Dave, the high school’s star running back, and a steroid abuser to boot. He’d worked her over good when she accidentally caught him using, but she’d learned from Earl how to make up with him after.
Not that all the boys she dated hit her. She’d gotten very good at reading them, at preemptively staving off that sort of aggression. She could dress a certain way, smile at them just so, say the right flattering words, and they’d be happy enough with her to never raise a hand. Always wary of the possibility of being forced, she made sure to be as receptive as possible to men’s needs so there was never a chance. Then she could at least pretend everything was the way it was supposed to be.
Besides, guys got tired of her soon enough anyway. She was beautiful and accommodating, but still, she didn’t usually have much to talk about with them. Brittney didn’t really have many interests guys would care about; she liked unicorns, and romance movies, and sappy poetry, and pink things. Stereotypical? Sure, but she liked it, and none of it made it harder to protect herself, so she didn’t see the harm in it.
College had been more of the same, only with more alcohol flowing around to make it all more bearable. Her mom had become a heavy drinker over the years, too; she got it now. Things were easier if you didn’t really remember things or feel them to begin with. And she hadn’t yet met a guy who found her more interesting sober than drunk.
Then she met DJ. She had really liked him at first. She’d attended his little floor meeting at the start of the school year, and he had a very reassuring vibe about him. He talked about how his job was to make sure all the people on their floor had a great experience, and he’d help any way he could. He’d talked about consent and party safety and all that, and even though she thought he was preposterously naïve about it all, it was a beautiful fantasy, his idea of a man who didn’t want her to be drunk the first time he slept with her, who would stop to ask her for permission, who would care if she said no. If only guys were really like that. She might have even said yes if he’d asked her out, but it was writ large on the tablets of fate that the DJ Swansons and the Brittney Jenners of the world weren’t meant to be.
Then, he’d come into her room one night and shown her he was like the others. He’d beaten up Brayden, pretended to be coming to her rescue but then fucked her just like Brayden had been going to. She hadn’t noticed it at first, that odd way he had about him, how people were so unwilling to contradict him, push back when he said something, refuse him.
In the past seven days, he had fucked his step-mother, step-sister, her two best friends, several other high school girls, and of course, Brittney herself. Often, he’d taken more than one at the same time. He was only interested in the girl’s pleasure when it came to feeling like more of a stud, and had no qualms about marking women as his property around other men. (Sometimes literally, with a sharpie.)
He’d committed countless crimes—theft, under-aged drinking, destruction of property, driving under the influence (for the couple hundred feet he’d made it before crashing the bus, anyway)... Sexual assault and rape, possibly, though of course no girl was willing to be such a bitch that she’d actually say no to him. Perhaps statutory rape, too, and whatever crimes might be associated with the pictures and videos he kept taking as trophies; she thought all those girls were eighteen, but wasn’t like anyone had paused to ask for ID.
The closest he’d come to facing consequences was the two police who’d come last night. Brittney had stood back and watched as he took the male cop’s gun belt, drunkenly waving his pistol around like it was a toy. He stripped the man’s partner and fondled her bare breasts, giggling as she scowled at him before he swatted her on the ass and told her to get the fuck out of his house. She was honestly a bit surprised to see them let off so easily, given what he’d done to Morgan, to Lauren, to that poor girl Taylor.
Presently, he was totally asleep in the passenger’s seat, exhausted by last night’s drunken Bacchanalia. Not that Brittney wasn’t, but he’d told her to drive, so she was driving. She made sure to keep the car at or under the speed limit on their drive back to campus. She wasn’t worried about being ticketed, of course; with DJ in the car, she knew no police officer would hassle them over something so trivial. Or anything at all. After what she’d seen this past week, she was pretty sure he could show them a dead body in the trunk and get off without so much as a warning. She had no worries about protecting him from the police.
Her goal was to protect the police from him.
He was every bit the man that Earl was, and then some. Like she had learned with her step-father, with her boyfriends in the past, Brittney smiled, batted eyelashes, meekly complied with his every request no matter how perverse. She wouldn’t have refused him anyway—some things a decent person just wouldn’t do. Still, she could occasionally keep his attention focused on her, and off of innocent by-standers.
He shifted a little in his seat, blinking sleepily. “Mmf. We there yet, babe?”
She smoothed his hair back, smiled sweetly. “Not yet. Go back to sleep.”
He closed his eyes, nodded, mumbled something incomprehensible, then tightened his grip on the hand he’d left up her shirt squeezing her bra-less breast as he drifted back off. She maintained her adoring smile until she heard the first snore.
It was odd, to feel some miniscule notion of heroism just over letting a guy feel her up, but she felt it nonetheless. Someday, she and her body might be the only one who could protect someone from him. She meant to do just that.