Uncle Gino was a visionary and entrepreneur of the highest magnitude. He knew there was money in booze, drugs, and pussy because the family had made hundreds of millions from those things for decades, almost since the day my grandfather Luigi started the business in his teens.
Gino also knew the purer the product, the more the family could charge for it. When a drinking buddy once jokingly asked him why he couldn’t buy virgin pussy like he could everything else, a lightbulb went off in Gino’s head and The Virgin Auction began, first in a downtown warehouse with a handful of girls and a few of his buddies as bidders.
Now it was held at a private estate the family owned in Jersey with dozens of girls at a time and lots of bidders with deep pockets and cocks made hard by youth or little blue pills.
Rumor had it that Uncle Gino outbid the famous mobster John Gotti for the virginity of a beautiful, young Russian girl named Ursula Petrova, who ended up as his second wife and Tony’s mom. My grandmother Lillian never knew that her oldest son bought his bride at an auction, not that she would have paid it much mind. Things were different in my grandmother’s day. She often said Papa Luigi bought her from her father for six jugs of red wine and a cow that barely gave milk.
The estate where the auction was held was an hour from the city and the auction would begin precisely at midnight on Friday night. Tony picked me up at my apartment in a Town Car at seven and immediately handed me a tall glass of scotch to nurse on the ride over. We sat in the back while Jimmy Fist sat in the front with the driver. I was glad the fat fuck wasn’t sitting with us in the back. I didn’t feel like dealing with him.
“So how does this work exactly,” I asked, settling back in the plush leather seat with the drink resting on my knee. I kept my hand tight around the glass to keep it steady. I won’t lie, I was a little nervous. I had never been to an auction to bid on virgin pussy before. I wasn’t sure if I was going to bid on anything because I found the whole concept of bidding on human flesh more than a bit off-putting. Still, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the entire process and the possibility that I might not end the night alone.
“Works just like a normal auction,” Tony said with a shrug as he sipped his drink with a bored look on his face. “There is a mixer beforehand where you can meet the girls and check out the merchandise. We dress them in these little see-through nighties so you see what you’re bidding on before the auction starts. There’s no touching, just eyeballing and conversation.”
“And how do the bidders know for sure that the girls are virgins?”
“Because we have a doctor check them out and issue a certificate of authenticity.”
I snorted bourbon out of my nose. It burned like a son of a bitch. I pinched my nose together and gawked at him. “You can’t be serious.”
He grinned. “Serious as a heart attack. Guys aren’t gonna pay half a million dollars for a virgin pussy without proof.”
“Christ,” I sighed with the glass at my lips. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
“You’ll thank me on Monday,” he said. “Hope you brought your checkbook.”
I gave him a serious look. “You really think I’m going to bid on some random girl’s virginity?”
“Yes, I do, cuz,” he said with a smile. He held up his glass to toast me. “Just you wait till you see what I’ve got lined up for you. Nothing below a ten. The best USDA grade-A primo pussy money can buy, just for you.”
“Have you done it?” I asked. “Bought a girl’s cherry?”
“Several times,” he said, nodding with a piece of ice in his mouth. “And each time it has been a motherfucking spiritual experience. You’d think a virgin would be all timid and afraid. Bullshit! Once your cock pops that cherry it’s like a fucking dam bursting and bitches turn into animals, man. Leave scratches and bite marks all over your body. She’ll want you to fuck her in the ass and teach her how to suck your cock and have you eat that pussy until she screams. Trust me, you are gonna love this shit.”
“If you say so,” I said with a wry smile. I had no idea if he was bullshitting or not. I’d never been with a virgin, so I had no idea what to expect. Knowing Tony, he could be just feeding me a line of shit. For all I knew the girl could be terrified of me and scream the entire time. Her virginity was for sale, but there was no guarantee that either party would enjoy consummating the deal.
Tony glanced over at me with a sly curl to his lips. “I gotta warn you, though. Virgin pussy is highly addictive. More addictive than crack, even. Some of the guys who’ll be there tonight are repeat customers and they’ll be willing to spend their last million to feed their virgin pussy habit. So be prepared to dig deep into those pockets of yours.”
The subject turned to football, then to cars, then to a dozen other things that young, rich guys like us talk about spending our money on. The one thing Tony and I never talked about was the family business. I operated on the fringes of the family business while he was neck deep into it. I knew my grandfather Luigi and uncle Gino were grooming Tony to take over the family someday. My father didn’t like the fact that I was being passed over, but it was just fine with me. I had told him and my grandfather many times that I had no interest in how they made their living. My grandfather threatened to cut me off and my father threatened to disown me, but when they realized that I was not like them and I was going to do my own thing whether they liked it or not, they relented and wished me well.
Besides, Tony was next in line behind me and before the other cousins. Tony ate, lived, breathed, and shat the family business. He was the logical choice to take over the family when his dad passed the mantle on. I just hoped that Tony would grow up before that day to realize that he didn’t have to use violence and intimidation to get what he wanted. Although, sometimes I thought he enjoyed the violence, so long as he had Jimmy Fist and other family thugs enforcing his will.
* * *
A short time later we drove through the massive iron gates where two large men wearing dark suits with holsters bulging from beneath their arms were checking the cars before letting them through. They saw Jimmy in the front seat and waved us through.
It had been years since I’d been to the estate, but little had changed. I glanced out the window at the perfectly-manicured grounds illuminated by the full moon and the large mano
r house ahead that was lit up like a Christmas tree. The house was over a hundred years old, built from large cut limestone and Italian marble. I couldn’t recall the square footage, but knew that there were twenty bedrooms and at least that many bathrooms, along with a gourmet kitchen, a dining hall with seating for several dozen diners, a massive ballroom, a banquet hall, and various studies, cubbies, nooks, and crannies that Tony and I used to explore when we were kids. It was once our grandparents’ estate. Now, they lived with Uncle Gino and Aunt Ursula and the house was just used for functions pertaining to private family business and The Virgin Auction. From the outside, it looked more like a stately mansion in the south of France than the country estate of an American crime family.
The car dropped us at the front door. I stepped out and stood on the stone driveway for a moment adjusting the cuffs of my Armani suit and straightening the open collar of my shirt. Tony climbed out of the car with a fresh drink in hand and waved for me to follow him inside.
We walked across the broad front porch and into an open foyer with marble floors and a grand staircase. Soft classical music was playing from hidden speakers. There was a man dressed in a butler’s uniform just inside the door. He handed each of us what looked like a colorful brochure and gestured toward the large doorway to his right that led into the ballroom.
“What’s this?” I asked, opening the brochure to find that it contained professionally-done headshots of the twelve girls on auction that night, as well as a brief biography of each. “A brochure? Really?”
“We can also send the information to an app on your phone if you prefer,” Tony said with a smile. “Come on, put that fucking thing away and let’s go peruse the inventory.”
I tucked the brochure into the inside pocket of my jacket and followed him into the ballroom. There were several dozen men milling around the room, all wearing expensive suits and thick Rolex watches and wedding rings, making the rounds to meet each of the twelve girls who would be on the auction block in just a few hours. I held my position just inside the door and let my eyes take it all in. The women were all beautiful and practically nude, wearing just the see-through nighties and stiletto heels. Actually, see-through was not an accurate description. The nighties were basically transparent, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.