Price of a Good Time

By Devan Ironside

Dumped after several years in a sexless relationship, a frustrated 30-year-old virgin works up the courage to see a sex worker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Devan Ironside
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224730025

Book preview

Price of a Good Time

by

Devan Ironside

Published by Devan Ironside

Copyright © 2022

No part of this story may be copied, transmitted, shared or distributed in any way without the express permission of the publisher.

This story and all the characters in it are entirely fictional. and are not intended to represent or portray any real events or people.

The models on the cover do not necessarily condone or engage in the activities depicted.

I

I awoke to the familiar sounds of the city coming to life. My eyes still blurry from sleep, I lay like a corpse under the covers, my unsettled mind a cedar canoe tossed on the turbulent seas of irksome dreams. Darkness receding, the naked branches outside my window swayed in the cold gentle wind, their withered leaves long expired, and the first rays of the autumn dawn cast a vermillion tapestry of billowing shadows on the opposite wall.

She’s gone.

Yesterday, which was Friday, I woke up thinking I had a girlfriend, maybe even a fiancee. Today, I woke up with a girl-shaped space where my heart used to be, and no idea where to go from there. As vermillion ceded to to gold, I lay sadly on my back, the inexplicable events of the previous evening playing on loop in my exhausted mind.

How could I have lost her?

I knew I should allow myself a good long cry, let all the feelings gush out of me like the effluent from an urban sewer after a hard rain, but so empty of will was I that all I could do was stare at the white stucco ceiling, blinking.

Was it something I said? Something I should have said? Did I text her often enough? Too often?

I’m just not feeling it, she’d replied when I asked why she was breaking it off.

That had been obvious for a while. Or at least it would have been if I’d let myself see what had been right in front of my eyes. But I didn’t let myself see it because allowed myself to be blinded by spectacularly bad advice of the kind a man can only get from a professional dating coach. A female professional dating coach.

I should have known my coach’s advice was suspect. No male coach would ever have encouraged me to ‘hang in there’ when a girl strung me along for two full years in a sexless relationship, telling me she ‘liked me a lot but she just wasn’t ready.’

No sex after three dates? Next! That was the title of a blog post I’d read more than a year ago when I was trying to figure out if I should keep trying to wait out her reluctance or simply move on. The sex is never worth the wait was the article’s byline and its general conclusion. I assumed it was true, but I wouldn’t know, because I never got to have sex, not with her, not with anyone.

I’d been warned not to hire a woman to do what was, I now understood, absolutely and incontrovertibly a man’s job. I wish I’d listened.

Picking up my phone from the night table, I decided to terminate my relationship with her right then, before I even got up to pee, lest I had a change of heart.

"You’re fired! I typed, my elbows resting on the mattress. You can keep the rest of your retainer."

I set the phone down and pondered what had driven me to seek her counsel in the first place.

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Glowing testimonials from now-married men and women, singing her praises from the mountaintops - or at least from her website. And social media. How could all those people be wrong? It was obvious I’d needed help and it stood to reason - or so I thought - that a woman would be better positioned to help me figure out how to attract a serious romantic partner. It had been a mistake, and I’d paid a price for it.

What happened? she replied after a few minutes.

She cut me loose.

I’m so sorry! she wrote.

I saw that she was typing.

I can only imagine how you must be feeling,