First Chapter of Harlots and Heroines.
Harlots and Heroines
Chapter 1
I have a tragic and yet not so tragic tale to tell of my life. My name is Samantha and I came from an extraordinarily rich and connected family who had my future planned out for me. I was to marry into their circle of opulence so that I could continue with the lifestyle that I had become accustomed to.
As a young girl I lived in Maine, beautiful Maine, in a house situated on the water. The massive house sat back from the water beyond a manicured lawn which moved upwards towards the house. We had a dock and a boathouse and a small water-house with a balcony that overhung the water. I never wanted for anything, just as my parents had never wanted for anything. For almost as long as I could remember, my father had a discrete lover on the side which we all knew about, even mother, but his mistress never entered our conversations. My mother accepted the situation and never complained as she also had a lover on the side which she managed to keep secret, even though everyone including my father was also aware of this fact.
My life and my parent’s lives, were mainly concerned with wealth and position in society, and so, as I was their daughter, I believed that was how the world worked. One could be faithful to a person and yet have lovers on the side. I was not ignorant of the fact that society kept up with the pretexts of what was required in polite society, but I never believed that more than a few of the many human beings on earth took that at all seriously.
Our family used to entertain in grandiose ways and often both Mother’s lover and Father’s lover would be invited to our functions and even then, there seemed to be no animosities given or received. Looking back, I can now see that we were capable of living this life because of our financial situation and that for many other human beings, this type of promiscuity could not be attained by them even if they wished it.
Mother had always said to me that I should remain virtuous until I was married, but I had heard tales of my mother who was said to have had a myriad of lovers before she wed my father. Once again, I was my mother’s daughter and so I lost my virginity to Tommy Johnston at the age of fourteen. Tommy would just be the start of my attempt to keep up with mother’s reputation which became part of my character just as it had become part of my mothers.
My mother always spoke to me of the benefits of keeping my virginity, but always stuffed my handbag with condoms which showed that she thought that I would be just as she was, and would not listen to her motherly advice.
As I said, my parents had a loose plan for my future, and they wished for me to marry John Jenkinson of the rich and connected Jenkinson family. One may think that an arranged marriage would be abhorrent to me, but I knew John Jenkinson and he was sought after by all the young women, and for him to lay beside me in bed for the rest of my life did not seem unpleasant to me at all.
I knew that John was from my society and that he would have mistresses and not restrict me in finding lovers of my own. John was rich; drove only the best cars; was a star footballer; had a physique to die for, and which supported a handsome face with a smile that could loosen the elastic in many a girl’s knickers. John, I realized was just like me who I knew could be faithful to me and yet have a string of other lovers while not being jealous that I would also have lovers.
One day when mother’s plan for me to remain virtuous was obviously moot, she advised me never to give myself to John and hold my conquest as an enticement for our marriage. I did exactly that and flirted with John but always remained aloof. This of course made me a challenge for him, and so he desperately wanted to bed me. Of course, that did not stop him from bedding a truckload of eager women who threw themselves at him, or for me, from bedding a selection of attractive men.
John was an American Jew, as his father was Jewish, and his mother’s people were initially from Finland while my father’s people were from German aristocracy. Mother’s family were from extraordinarily rich American Jews which gave me a big advantage over the other girls, and I would certainly take every advantage that I could make use of.