A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 25

This is the 9th year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: Man Hires A Prostitute Online — And His Own Wife Shows Up.

Cheating is bad. Cheating on your wife with a prostitute is really bad. But attempting to cheat on your wife with a prostitute and accidentally hiring your wife as that prostitute is really, really bad.

Like change-your-name-and-flee-the-country bad.

That’s what apparently happened to a Lexington, South Carolina man.

The 54-year-old man who is not being named for privacy reasons, had been using the same website for booking prostitutes for several months. You could argue, he’s kind of a pro.

He would hire them and meet them at neighboring motels.

One night, he attempted to do the same. He told his wife he was going out drinking with work friends.

After he checked into the motel, he got onto his computer and went to his favorite site. That’s when he saw a photo of a hot 26-year-old woman he very much would like to meet.

But he wasn’t too sure about what she actually looked like. The photo only showed the mystery woman from the neck down. So, no surprise, he liked her chest-region.

Of course, for a man hiring a prostitute, that was all the info he needed. He asked her if she was free that evening, and they agreed to meet up.

Not long after that, guests staying in the neighboring rooms called to report a disturbance.

Apparently, the man didn’t realize the chest he saw belonged to the woman he had been married to for 17 years.

Though she advertised herself as a 26-year-old prostitute, the woman who showed up at the motel that night was actually his 48-year-old wife. And she was not happy.

Both were actually equally — and understandably — angry at each other.

She for learning her husband was cheating on her. He for learning his wife was moonlighting as a prostitute.

Both, obviously, very bad.

I know, I know. It’s not only preposterous, it also seems to be nothing more than the basis of a comedy sketch. But let’s see what we can do with this as a potential setup for a feature-length movie.

Meet Beau and Sadie. They live in the Bible Belt where repressed sexuality is in this particular county’s DNA. They are parents to a pair of adolescent twins Kyle and Keely. Between working two jobs each, raising two teens champing at the bit to expand their social lives, i.e., dating, parties, booze, Mom and Dad are worn down and worn out.

Their sex life? Fizzled to once a week couplings if that, dispirited and brief encounters where both know each other’s boring routines.

Then bad news: Beau gets laid off and that gig was the primary source of income for the family. The couple gets into a huge argument about finances. Sadie storms off and ends up at a bar at the edge of town, a place she’s never been to before. Meanwhile, Beau heads over to his best friend Mac’s house, hunkering down in Mac’s bachelor man cave to consume many, many beers.

We cross cut between the two as the evening unfolds. Mac hates to see his friend so dispirited and when Beau says he feels like a failure as a man, Mac makes a confession: He used to feel the same way, but then he saw a prostitute. As in had sex with. Okay, more than once. Anyhow, it righted his ship and got his testosterone flowing again. His dating life improved. His sales at the used car lot went up. Hell, even his golf score came down.

While Beau absorbs this information through an alcohol infused haze, Sadie finds herself seated at the bar next to Layla who — as fate would have it — is a prostitute. In fact, Layla is a housewife just like Sadie, has teenage kids herself, and is just about Sadie’s age. Sadie sits there in disbelief as Layla talks about her website where she solicits and arranges ‘dates’, how being a ‘sex worker’ has been fun. She’s her own boss. And the money, literally thousands of dollars. “It’s like bein’ an Uber driver, only you do most of your work while lyin’ on your back,” Layla says.

Cutting to the chase, Beau goes online and screws up the courage to set a ‘date’ with ‘Sabrina’ who describes herself as a “horny MILF”. Beau pays for the motel room over in the next county, nervous as hell, but he has to admit, he’s excited about something for the first time in a long time.

A knock at the door. He opens it. A shapely femme in the shadows. Enters the room only to reveal — it’s Sadie!

Okay, where to go from here? Obviously, they are pissed at each other, but after the furor subsides, the duo finally talks as a couple for the first time in a long time. One thing leads to another and they play act having sex — him a customer, her a sex worker. And know what? It’s great! They thrash around like a couple of crazed weasels for hours.

Lying there gasping for breath, it occurs to them… this crazy scheme just might work. Desperate for money and titillated with excitement, Sadie and Beau agree to test the waters. Just for a week to see how they feel about it. Sadie as sex worker. Beau as pimp. It takes. And in a nifty twist, eventually Beau starts pimping himself out as a sex worker, too.

Of course, they’ve got to hide their illegal activities from friends, neighbors, their children, and… well… everybody in their home county. That’s a ticking bomb just waiting to go off. And we could probably curtail much of the sexual activity as a plot device if their action is cutting in on some real prostitutes and real pimps who threaten the couple. Or one of Sadie’s clients turns out to be a Bad Guy, dies in the midst of sexual activity, there’s a briefcase full of cash — money woes solved they think — but now the chase is on from the Bad Guys other Bad Guys.

Is this a movie? Maybe. I mean, if Night Shift could work as a feature length film, perhaps this could, too.

There you go, my twenty-fifth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Here are links for all the previous posts in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24

Each day this month, I invite you to click on RESPONSES and join me to do some further brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when you play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.