The Games Continue

Anna yawned. This date was so boring. First of all he was part of the big belly class of rich men. There wasn’t anything that they had in common. At least it was lunch and not dinner so she wouldn’t have to spend much money on transport.

“You are very beautiful,” he says in his drawling voice. But with the way that he speaks it sounds like he’s saying ‘Yua vari butiful’. Anna smiles at him, hoping her lack of interest comes off as being shy. That works well in a country this conservative. This guy’s name is Charles apparently. She actually Googled him and found out that he is in a top position at one of the country’s parastatals meaning that he has lots of money that he is probably siphoning away from public funds through corruption. Manipulating money off of him won’t make her feel guilty because it’s a fact universally known that these guys in parastatals, government workers and politicians are all routinely stealing from public funds.

“So what are you doing after this?” He asks her. She gives him the best smile she can pull, which isn’t anywhere near her real smile because she’s sleepy, bored and this guy is kind of irritating. Like those entitled customers that she used to serve when she worked as a waitress.

“I have an art project at work,” she tells him. “Otherwise I would have loved to spend more time with you. I have to go buy the art supplies at this shop called MG in town. Art supplies is so expensive. There goes my hundred dollars so this month I’ll just be telling people that I’m on a diet,” Anna learned from the forum that you need to pass subtle hints that you need money that aren’t obvious. If he’s the type of man worth paying attention to he’ll offer to help. And just like that Charles takes out two hundred dollars from his wallet.

“I can’t have you going hungry. Here’s some extra for groceries and stuff. Next time we will go shopping after taking a trip,” He tells her. Anna smiles at him for real this time. That’s more money than she used to earn in two months at her old job. It means having to put up with a man that she finds kind of revolting but honestly she had to deal with revolting people all the time when waitressing. Actually the most revolting had been the owner of the restaurant’s son. He would stand at the entrance and comment on every girl that passed by. He had once seen a girl walk by wearing a short black skirt and had laughed with his friends.

“That’s the type of girl that if you have sex with her you be walking bow-legged and shit with some STD,” he had mocked. Anna had stared at him in shock. The memory was enough to motivate her to continue sugar dating. She was officially at three hundred and thirty-two dollars. On the forum she had been advised to pay the most attention to the men that give you the most. She has completely cut off Harare Daddy after finding out he was an abuser so between Clinton and Charles, the one that was providing the most with the least work was Charles so far. But that was only on a first-meeting basis. She had to see who had a pattern of providing the most.

They had been having high tea at a hotel in town called Meikles. The tea, cakes and sandwiches had been delicious. Anna had managed to sneak a few into her purse for later. She munched on one on the bus back home.

By the time that she arrived home it was quarter to three. Her mother was usually at home around four thirty. Anna began to make dinner. She had told her mother that she was working morning shift. Soon she’d have to say that she got the job that she ‘interviewed’ for when she spoke to Harare Daddy. She still had one last date to go on with the last guy that she had matched with on Tinder. This guy wanted to meet her at this place in her neighborhood called Birds@Thirty that was a bird sanctuary with a nice restaurant inside. This guy was the youngest of all the guys being in his mid-thirties. He seemed to come from a good family and had been raised on the nice tracks. He seemed to be an even better fit than Clinton at face value. But you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Her mother is in one of her mellow moods lately which means that Anna can breathe a little bit. She knows from pattern that these moods don’t last that long, a month at most and they usually end with her mother going all out ballistic on her and making her forget the good season that just happened. Hopefully she’ll have enough money to move out before that happens.

The next day, Anna manages to catch a lift to Birds@Thirty and is an hour early as usual. She get into the bathroom and begins to fix herself up. She’s wearing floral summer dress that looks good on her. She got it for two dollars at the bend-down boutique aka flea market. She knows that it looks good on her because the person that she caught a lift from went completely out of his way to stop for her and drop her off at her destination even though it was opposite to the direction that he was initially going. He asked for her number afterwards. That was another potential sugar daddy…or at the very least…a few free rides.

Anna takes her time and fixes her edges. She notices that she’ll have to get her hair done soon so that it doesn’t look old and washed-out. She sits down at a table. She’s now five minutes early. He should be here soon. A waiter comes with a menu and she tells him she’s waiting for her date. He arrives. His profile name was John. He comes in wearing Supreme from head to toe. He smiles when he sees her.

“Hey there,” he says .She rises to greet him and he kisses her on each side of her cheek. Culture. She likes that. He seems to be the type that exercises. They have a pleasant conversation. He works as an architect and spends a lot of time traveling. He’s been to London, Paris, Sydney…Anna begins to realize that he’s the type of guy that likes the sound of his own voice and grandiosity. That works well because all she has to do is sit, listen and pretend to think he’s awesome. They have lunch and when the bill comes John begins to go through who is paying for what. She looks at him in shock. He scoffs.

“You’re a modern day woman, you can go Dutch with a guy,” he says. Anna can’t believe this. The bill equals sixty dollars. That means that is thirty dollars down the drain. This was an epic fail. She only has a hundred dollar bill on her that she has in case of emergencies. She takes it out and he has the audacity to use it to pay and give the waiter a ten dollar tip! Anna decides to leave at that point and takes her change and pretends to go to the bathroom where instead she takes a five dollar taxi home. She’s down seventy dollars. What the actual hell? This was an epic fail.

Later that night when her mother is asleep John keeps on ringing her phone. Eventually Anna goes outside, where her mother can’t hear her.

“Why did you leave?” John asks her. “That’s so rude,”

“Not as rude as making someone pay for a lunch you invited them to and adding a ten dollar tip on top of someone else’s money. Bye John. Don’t contact me again,” she tells him and cuts off. John keeps trying to call her until she puts her phone on airplane mode.

The next morning when she takes her phone off airplane mode there are thirty messages from John. Some saying that she’s a modern day woman that can treat a man if she wants to, others apologizing for believing that she was not materialistic. To top it all off he says he’ll pay her back her money. Anna sees a notification from her e-wallet. There has been thirty-five dollars sent to her…so he sent her half the money…and half the money he tipped…this guy.

Anna begins to W******p one of her friends,Mellora, telling her of the terrible date that she went on. She sends her the picture of John. Mellora responds almost immediately.

-Don’t you know who that is?- Mellora texts her.

-A stingy motherfucker?- Anna responds.

-No! That’s the son of *****- Mellora tells her. Anna’s eyes widen. The person that Mellora mentioned is a prominent politician that is known to be cruel. Anna had once worked at an art shop years ago where the artist in residence had made a picture for one of the sons of that politician. And the son had taken the picture. When the artist has asked for their money, the son had said, “What makes you think that you are worthy of taking money from me?”

Anna wondered if it was the same son that she had done that to the artist in residence. This politician was known to be cruel and had children all over the place. His children were known to have inherited his cruelty. Anna does a G****e reverse image search on the guy and finds out that his real name is Michael Ka********. She G****es his name and finds a woman on I*******m crying for help. Apparently she had dated Micheal but he had been physically and verbally abusive so she left him. Using his dad’s political power to make the judge give him full custody of the child and deny the woman any access to the child. Anna’s eyes widened. This guy was wicked. She blocked the number and hoped that he would forget she existed. This sugar dating thing was a lot more risky than she had imagined. She needed to do more research about the men that she was agreeing to meet.

Anna examined the I*******m of Michael’s ex and found that there were still posts up of when they had been in a happy relationship. He used to take her on his private jet to travel to soccer matches around the world, he would buy her bag of Louis Vuitton and they would stay in penthouses in New York, he had even bought her the latest Mercedes Benz available during that time. This was a far cry from the stingy man that she had met today. Then when she had left him because she couldn’t take the abuse anymore (the woman posted pictures of the injuries and they were quite bad. Her eyes bruised black and her lip bleeding in many of them), he had made sure that he took everything from her. She had moved back to her parent’s house with their child and he had come and raided their house, kidnapped his child and repossessed the car that he had given her. In Zimbabwe that law stated that the mother had rights to the child but here he used made up stories that she was drug user and would sell the child for drugs. Those were exaggerated assertions, even though Anna did not know that woman she didn’t seem like she came from a well-off family where she could steal things in the family house before she would ever think about selling off her child and it looked like her parents had been helping her care for the child.

By the time that Anna had finished the entire history on the lady’s I*******m feed, she was glad that she had blocked the guy off. That guy was worse news than Harare Daddy. He sounded like a literal spawn of the devil. Most people would reason that even if the breakup was bad, they would get along with their child’s mother for the benefit of the child…but not this guy. And Anna realized that he put up a charming front to lure people in before he did his bullshit. Like during their lunch she had initially thought that he was this sweet and interesting guy, but fortunately for her the mask had fallen off quickly. That other woman was not so lucky though. She was the perfect example of when a sugar daddy cuts off the funds. It was obvious that the woman had been enamored with the money, but she had made the mistake of getting too deeply involved with him. She had a picture on her saved I*******m stories of Michael at some point giving her a huge bundle of hundred bundle bills to go shopping.She could have saved and invested that money. Maybe she would think back and wish that she had saved and invested that money.

Anna went on the forum and talked about the guy she met. She didn’t specify the country she was from or the name of the guy but a lot of the woman responded with similar stories that they knew had happened in their areas. It was quite common for a kept woman to go form hundred to not even zero but minus hundred if she was not strategic and didn’t think about the worst that the future could hold for her.

Anna’s phone started to ring and for a moment she was afraid that it would be Michael, but instead it was Clinton. He was asking if she wanted to have a LAN party at his place on Friday. That was basically a sleepover. Anna still preferred Clinton over all the other guys.

-Sure, that’s sounds fun after a not-so-fun day- Anna texts him.

- :( what happened to make my Mary’s day not so fun-

Anna had forgotten that he knew her as Mary and not Anna.

-I was robbed of seventy dollars the day before that I was planning to use on an art project so that sucks. Harare is becoming more dangerous by the year-

- :( that’s terrible. I can’t have my portrait delayed because some stupid thieves attacked my dear girl-

Anna heard a ping on her phone. He had just sent her two hundred dollars.

-Why don’t you splurge on as much art supplies as you want?- he texts her.

Anna smiles at the money she’s seeing. That definitely makes up for what that jerk Michael did.

-Aw, you shouldn’t have, I don’t want you to feel obligated to take care of my problems- Anna texts him. Hoping that he does continue to feel obligated to take care of her problems.

-I feel obligated to keep that pretty smile on your face. So pick you up Friday?- he asks her. Anna texts back ‘okay’ and can’t help smiling like a fool. She’ll have to put ketchup on a pad and pretend to be on her period in order to get out of having sex that night…but then again some girls in the forum told her that even a period doesn’t keep a man away from a coochie that he really wants. Anna isn’t that fazed though…part of her wants to take that leap.