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Ernie Page was exhausted, scared, and unsure of what to do next. He’d been trying to get ahold of his old friend Jake Kingston from one of the few pay phones left in the city for most of the evening. He had smashed his cell phone earlier back at Rides 4 Less, where he managed to get himself cleaned up a bit before also cleaning out the two thousand bucks in cash that was in the safe.
He felt bad about stealing the cash and a car off the lot from his brother, but this was about survival now. He hadn’t even called his wife to tell her goodbye.
Ernie Page had been a survivor his entire life. He and his older brother, Ray, were the wards of the state from a very young age until adulthood. Ernie was four and Ray was six years old when their mother gave them up for adoption. Ernie barely remembers being left at the orphanage in Pittsburgh, but he knew it was because his mother didn’t want him or his brother anymore.
From that day on, the two bounced around from institution to institution, long before the days when foster families were being used on a regular basis. When Ray turned 16, he and Ernie decided that they would no longer live as wards of the state. After two days of walking and hitching rides, they made it all the way to Cleveland’s west side, which is where their new lives began.
Ray lied about his age and said he was 18, and Ernie 16, and they got jobs at the old Cleveland Press newspaper building sweeping floors. They would work third shift each night and find different places to sleep each day until they had enough money to get a room at a fleabag motel not far from their jobs.
Ray, always considered intelligent despite his lack of formal education, managed to work his way up from floor sweeper to working on the printing press. Union wages soon followed, and he and Ernie found a small apartment nearby to live. Eventually, Ernie was promoted himself to working on a delivery truck.
Things stayed that way for the next three years until Ray fell in love with one of the young secretaries in the offices of the Cleveland Press. Within a year they were married and moved into a house.
Ernie, now officially 18, was on his own for the first time in his life. He kept the apartment that he and Ray shared and continued to work on the truck. It was also at this time that Ernie started drinking on a nightly basis. Back then you could get “3-2 beer”, or beer that only had 3.2% alcohol by ratio, in Ohio at the age of 18. Ernie, no longer under his older brother’s watchful eye, began pounding at least eight to ten of those a day.
Ray, meanwhile, wasted no time starting a family with his wife, Eleanor. They welcomed their first child, a boy, during their first year of marriage. Two more boys followed over the next three years, as Ray continued to work his way up the ladder at the Cleveland Press and became a foreman.
Ernie, on the other hand, seemed to be content with the same job working on the truck he had held for years. Every single day was the same: work the predawn shift on the truck, clock out at two, head to the bar and get sloshed. It was also around this time Ernie began playing pool, albeit not very well.
Ernie loved being an uncle and dreamed of having kids of his own someday. Unfortunately, for Ernie, he was socially awkward around the opposite sex and had he not discovered a local brothel he likely would have still been a virgin when he met his future wife at the age of 22. Despite his new relationship, Ernie’s trips to local brothels did not stop. Even though he had a partner at home, it was not what he felt he needed. In fact, after the first few years of marriage, Ernie rarely touched his wife. He only wanted to visit prostitutes.
Ernie loved the control of choosing his partner, and better yet, her not having a right to refuse his advances. His desire to control women was a result of his own mother abandoning him and his older brother, and when he was with a prostitute he was in charge.
Just like any addiction, the need to satisfy it only grows over time. Even when addicts completely stop feeding their addiction, the desire to rarely leaves.
Early on, when Ernie would visit a brothel he found that most of the women he slept with were older than him, and most wanted to tell him what to do. After a few years of that, he realized that he was leaving each trip physically satisfied, but emotionally wanting more.
That all changed on one trip when he was nearing 26 years of age. Ernie visited one of his favorite brothels and encountered a young girl who couldn’t have been more than 18 years old. She was nervous and scared, and Ernie could feel the rush of adrenaline that her demeanor gave him. Unlike the older women, she was at his complete mercy. He was in charge.
He loved it.
Over the next two decades, Ernie rode a roller coaster of elation and self-loathing that accompanied each trip to a brothel. Over the past decade, police had done a much better job cracking down on the establishments that Ernie could visit. Adult magazines, movies, and later the Internet, helped, but it wasn’t enough. He needed the girl to be present to feed the beast that was inside him.
Since there were fewer places he could go to, Ernie began traveling to places that had much lighter enforcement on prostitution. Once a month he would even take his wife to parts of Canada where prostitution is legal, and actually get two rooms so he could do what he needed to as his wife played her beloved penny slots in the casino.
She never knew, and even if she did, their marriage was one of convenience. After they found out that they could not conceive a child, they decided not to adopt and just live their lives as married adults. They had even been sleeping in separate bedrooms for the past 15 years.
A few months ago, Ernie thought his luck had finally changed. A new brothel had opened up not far from where he worked and they had an excellent system in place to keep from getting caught. It was located in an old motel, and you had to complete a tedious list of activities to even get the right question to ask at the front desk. If you showed up without the proper date to ask about, then you were turned away. After a little research, Ernie soon realized that the random dates he was given were actually significant dates in Russia’s history.
Russians, scary Russians who seemed to be connected to the mob, ran the brothel. To Ernie, that made him feel strangely safe about frequenting there. The best part, for Ernie, was that the majority of the girls were young Russians.
Despite being married, the first time Ernie truly fell in love was with one of those young Russian girls from the motel brothel. Her name was Stoya, and she was gorgeous. Better yet, she learned quickly what Ernie was looking for, and she did her best to play the part. She would take on a new persona with each Wednesday visit, but each of those personalities she portrayed was that of a girl who needed to be told what to do.
She was the first girl he visited there, and the only girl, until one day she was gone.
“What do you mean Stoya isn’t here? She’s always here on Wednesdays,” an agitated Ernie asked at the time.
“Medical emergency. She will be back soon enough. Today, you pick different girl,” he was told by one of the Russians working there.
But, Ernie didn’t want a different girl. He wanted his girl. He decided to leave the motel that day without visiting one of the other options. A week went by, followed by another, and Ernie checked in at the motel every Wednesday to see if she had returned.
During the third week of Ernie’s forced celibacy, luck found him once again. He had just returned from giving a test drive when he saw her. Not only did he see her, but also she was walking into the door of one of the motel rooms across the street from Rides 4 Less.
She didn’t look the same. Her hair was up in a ponytail and she was wearing pajama pants with a t-shirt. She definitely did not have any makeup on, either.
Ernie did not care.
