Chapter 12
Sharon: There's No Place Like Home
Sharon stretches out in the back of the limo. It’s about a three hour drive to Greener Valley and she intends to spend most of it daydreaming about the scenario that will play out when she arrives in town. She’s wearing the dress she wore in “Naughty Nina’s Night Before Christmas,” a sparkly green number with a neckline that defies gravity and a hemline that defies decorum. The dress is accompanied by red thigh high fishnets and ruby red shoes Dorothy would wear if she grew up to become a stripper. In the film, Naughty Nina teased the hell out of Santa in that outfit. She imagines she will be doing the same to every grown man in Greener Valley. Maybe even the younger ones. She feels devilish and sinister and oh, so very good.
Sharon fell into the sex industry quite by accident. After she forced herself to settle down with Curtis, she became increasingly agitated and restless. She spent her nights with Curtis doing perfectly acceptable Greener Valley things, trying to force herself into the life she thought would eventually make her happy. But her days were spent in a completely different world. While she was sticking price tags on garage sale statues at the antique store, she was also surfing the Internet. She spent a lot of times in various chat rooms, talking to people who seemed just like her; lonely, unsure of their place in the world, eager to make new friends and perhaps add some excitement to their lives. And then “BigBob242” asked if he could call her. She knew she shouldn’t. This was not in the playbook for Perfect Greener Valley Life. This was not part of her emerging June Cleaver existence. But something inside Sharon, something that had been there since high school when she felt a thrill at making out with every player on the football team, or in college where she traded sex for grades with her professors, something sparked and lit and engulfed her in flames when the phone rang and BigBob242’s deep voice launched into sex talk without hesitation.
The end of that phone call found Sharon in the bathroom of the antique store, one hand between her legs, the other holding the phone, gasping a thank you to BigBob242, who just moments earlier had exclaimed with great pride that he emptied his load all over her face. Figuratively speaking, of course. It was Sharon’s first attempt at phone sex and it was, by all accounts, a rousing success.
She couldn’t get enough after that. She had at least twenty screen names. She scoured chat rooms, looking for guys who just wanted a quick session on the phone. She loved the power she had over these men. She loved knowing that these men were hard for her, that they would open their pants and stroke themselves after just one whispered word from her.
It wasn’t long before she moved from phone to bed, meeting strange men at shady hotels in neighboring towns or even in their own homes for quick romps. She didn’t get money for the sex; she didn’t need it or want it. She just wanted the thrill of making these men call her name while she straddled them.
Brad Perot was the 13th Internet guy she slept with and her lucky ticket. He was a fledgling porn producer looking for a star. When he hovered over Sharon’s naked body, he realized the woman he was looking for was right there in his bed. The next day Sharon found herself in a makeshift studio in Bradley’s basement, touching herself for a webcam.
Three months later, she was making feature porn films and had an Internet following who all paid a $14.95 a month to watch her do various illicit things while she talked dirty to them. Two months after that, she practically left Curtis standing at the altar. While he was crying about not making it to the chapel, she was on her way upstate where she would purchase a lovely little cottage and make an honorable living being Bradley Perot’s star.
She knows what they say about her in Greener Valley now. She knows the women spit when her name is mentioned, that the town leaders made an unenforceable proclamation about not letting her attend any Greener Valley holiday functions, that the young boys ogled pictures of her they found on Google and that every woman, spit or not, wanted to be her. She couldn’t wait to arrive in the town center, her travels timed perfectly so she would get there right in the middle of Winter Festival. She would step out of the limo, slowly peel off her fur coat to reveal her Naughty Nina outfit and blow a kiss to the stunned crowd. And then she would walk to the microphone, shove Hank out of the way and read out loud to the perfect townspeople the letter she got from Curtis detailing how he was going to kill her, as well as the letters from three young men detailing the things they wanted to do to her. If all went well, she’d oblige those boys right there in the town square.
Well, she knew that wouldn’t happen, but she could dream, couldn’t she?
She clicks the heels of her red shoes together three times and laughs. No place like home, indeed.