15
Having the six of us here livened things up a bit, not that they needed to be livened up all that much. But this was kind of spring break. This specific resort did not do spring break, but Key West most certainly did.
Someone talked us all into going out for drinks one evening. Now, there is a bar at the resort. Kelley calls it the Boring Bar because the first night she took Sarah there, Sarah fell asleep on her in the middle of drinking, listening to the live music.
We decided that we could use a bit more, well, life.
And, since we are overly well supplied with Princess Collection, Byron made sure that Kelley and Sarah had their fair share, as he, Byron, wants us to look like we belong in the luxury branded stores.
And I can see that he does pay me substantially to wear what I would actually wear anyway.
Look, I am a lot of things, and for work, I wear a lot of clothes, but remember, I did not grow up wearing girly girl stuff, and don’t talk to me about the sexy.
Off work, I like to dress like a princess when I can.
And why not? It is about the classiest look that there is.
So, the six of us wore slacks or casual, longer dresses, with nice blouses that catch the eye. Hair and makeup, it is funny when I do Kelley’s as she is the real girl and I am the make believe girl, but she is useless at her own makeup. Former tomboy, I assume, is in security.
What we did not dress for was to attract attention, to be hot, nor to advertise for sex.
The three of us are professional models; we know how to do that perfectly, and not one of us came close.
And we grabbed an SUV from the resort, provided for guests, and drove into the town itself.
We had been told which of the bars were wild and college, and which were a bit older and more classy. We thought that we had chosen one of the safer ones. But once we got in, it was a mess. We managed a table with six chairs and thought, what the hell, one drink.
And even before the drinks had arrived, the frat boys were onto us.
And this one boy, no real man, acted as he did; this one boy would not take no for an answer.
So to shut him up, I decided on one fast dance, and then we were leaving.
The dance ended and transitioned instantly into a slow dance.
A trap dance, I have heard them called in Europe.
The boy gets you dancing fast, then he instantly grabs you for the slow hold me too tight follow up.
I tried to resist; I said no; he decided to kiss me, and Kelley went off.
Not that Carmine was that far behind her, but Kelley, and then Sarah, who waded right in also, were professionally trained. And they did some serious damage in a few seconds.
As in 911 damage. And that meant 911 sent the police, also, and we were held for questioning.
Fuck. Damnit to hell, fuck.
About twenty minutes later, the police arrived, and we were taken to the club office, so we were not in sight.
And we were, of course, questioned. There were witnesses, so that helped a lot, including one of the bouncers who was on his way to rescue me when Kelley arrived.
She, of course, is licensed and was carrying.
But she had not pulled her weapon. Still, there was a question as to why the immediate response.
I had to explain that I was a top model, and I had to have security, and that I had been attacked.
I explained what had happened and how we all came together, that I had danced with the boy to defuse a bad situation.
And it was trapped into the slow dance that I did not want, but could not get out of, and how he had forced a kiss and grabbed my boob and ass.
And of course, they wanted ID. I gave them the girl Shannon, and then they wanted to bring in immigration or someone, as I did not have a visa; well, I don’t need a visa, but I would if I were here on a British passport.
So I had to give them my American ID, and it said Shannon, male. And this cop is holding two IDs, one saying legally female, and the other saying legally male.
And the state is Florida. You hear that? Florida. Not California or New York, but Florida.
And I was taken in and held.
Byron was in New York; he and my father were in Key West before dawn. They were not happy campers. Byron got the British Consulate involved, and I was released. I was sexually assaulted, but I was the one who changed.
We all drove back to the resort and got breakfast. Sitting out back around the pool was a very pissed off father and my employer, who was paying me millions and did not need this level of publicity. The Key West police dropped the charges, so I was OK this time.
And with all of us sitting there, my father said, “OK, I am changing your legal name and sex as soon as I return to Pennsylvania. We cannot take this chance again.”
“Dad, I know, I fucked up…”
“No, Shannon, you did not fuck up. You are twenty one; you are allowed to go into a bar or club and buy a drink. You were sexually assaulted with witnesses. And then you were charged with holding a false ID as a woman when you were a male. Fortunately, they did not try to search you, or in Florida,
you would most likely be charged and end up in jail. Fortunately, the British Consulate is local, as in Miami, and was known to the police captain. And they vouched that your story was true and the ID legitimate.”
“And this is not Byron’s mistake; it is all of us who are overseeing your mistake. We should have known that this would and could happen. We allowed you to travel in the Middle East without the correct identification, also. Just imagine if this had happened in the UAE?”
“No, I do not care what you want. If you are going to continue to model, I am changing your ID. If you stop, then I will change it back, OK?”
I couldn’t argue.
Dad and Byron stayed with us until our time in Florida was over. They did not bother us; they were working on whatever Dad and Byron decided needed to be done for whomever.
Dad’s firm was taking on an increasing load of the modeling industry in the last few months.
The concept that models needed the same level of attention to detail as a quarterback did, well, that was a revelation.
Dad had never worked in fashion before he became involved with myself.
Byron knew a lot of European models who could not get visas to work in the US, and many of those models were friends of his.
Byron has a thing for models, and it is not sexual; it is more like little sisters. And he did what he could to protect us.
Hey, I have a pair of 911s, Byron has his models, and we all need hobbies.
Dad obviously had one also; her name is Shannon.
Look, I have always been close to both of my parents.
But growing up? Dad was a younger, if not young, lawyer, and had not made a full partner in the firm.
And that was before telecommuting became what it is today.
When I was younger, I mean like really young, Dad had an apartment in Pittsburgh, as the drive was too difficult to make, especially in winter, when he was working twelve-to fourteen-hour days.
Mom is a college professor; she carries a full load of classes, but she tends to teach the same classes over and over, and that means there is not all that much prep work.
Mom was home every night when we got home.
In fact, most days, she dropped us off at the school we attended and picked us up afterward.
If the University was off, then so too was the private school we attended.
Many, if not most, of the students were children of the staff at Slippery Rock or Mercer.
Some were the children of the instructors at Grove City, which was basically a private school that sits between Mercer and Slippery Rock.
So Mom was there every day. And Mom, she is a horsewoman, remember?
Her one love is riding and breeding her horses.
And for the three of us? That meant a fun Mom with whom we did things virtually every day.
Mom and Dad, between the law, the University, and the horses, which when we were young was a much larger endeavor than it is now, did well financially.
Mom had help. She could not handle the farm, the house, us, work, and her horses without her.
Dad was not present because of Mom’s choice of what she wanted: to live and teach in a rural setting.
Now, this part of the state is stunningly beautiful. The farm is the place that you want to live. Everyone wants to live here.
But Dad, well, he is an ambitious lawyer type who spent his time with, I’ll be a bit crude here, jocks. Dad worked for contracted individuals and was paid the big bucks to be part of the negotiations that professional athletes make with the teams that employ them.
If they played for a Pittsburgh sports franchise?
I most likely knew them personally. And the same for Cleveland and Buffalo.
Dad, and the firm he is a senior partner in, is now, was, and remains, damn good at what they do.
And then they expanded into the arts. And Dad started representing dancers, musicians, singers, and actors; all of those professionals have contract based careers.
A change of upper management at a symphony?
Dad gets very, very busy defending the musicians from the new management who do not believe in the contracts that they inherited.
That is my dad.
That is the man who raised me.
He was not part of my life as you would imagine. Oh, he was a fantastic father and husband, but he was Dad the lawyer, not Dad the guy you did things with.
And then, well then, the internet was invented. Or rather, video conferencing was invented. And the law changed instantly.
Dad has staff in Pittsburgh, but he does not need to be there. About the time that my sisters graduated from high school, Dad started telecommuting instead of having to be in Pittsburgh.
A lot of this is that now, as senior management of the firm, he was only dealing with the serious clientele, the ones with the massive contracts and the massive problems.
This could be a trade, or aging out of skills, or a conviction that was embarrassing the team.
Something that brought the player into conflict with the needs and demands of the team.
That is Dad’s specialty, reading the ultra fine print of a contract and resolving the minute clauses that can end a career, or make leaving the playing field possible.
End of life issues for sports stars occur in the twenties and thirties.
Once my sisters took off for the University, I had two years left at home before I started at Mercer.
And Dad did everything he could to close the gulf between us.
Unfortunately, what I was interested in was horses, cars, you know, the rural lifestyle of the rich and famous.
And Dad is both of those things, to be brutally honest.
Dad was interested in ball, in sports. He spent his entire working career around athletes, or as we call them at the farm, jocks.
And that is a completely different mentality that I had grown into.
For me, life was school: the private school.
Our graduating class had forty, and we were a large one.
The student to teacher ratio was about six.
Six students to one teacher. And then, I was also taking classes at Slippery Rock.
I was not allowed to be full time, but with Mom being tenured, my classes, if I took less than twelve hours a term, were free.
And our school encouraged us to take as many classes as we wanted.
During the day, we were close enough to the University to walk from our school to the University with no problems, except in winter.
Then we were allowed to call for an Uber.
It’s a snow thingy, OK? This is rural America.
There are no shoveled sidewalks most places, and if you had to walk, you had to walk on the plowed road, and that meant you were sharing the road with college kids driving lethal weapons.
We Ubered when the weather was bad.
But Dad, for all he tried, didn’t connect with me.
Until I started modeling, and contracts became involved.
And that is when everything between us radically changed.
Do I like our current relationship? Hell yes, I like it. Do I like that I spend more time now with Dad than Mom? On that, I will not say much; that has been a transition. Mom was the one I called last fall when this all started. Now, I do not hesitate to call Dad.
Mom has classes and commitments. Dad is a high end, top of his field lawyer with a staff of Lord knows how many lawyers, paralegals, and secretaries working for him specifically.
He is the cornerstone of his field in his firm.
His equals do other types of law. If you use Dad’s firm for contract law, you are seeing someone answering to my father.
And that, in the legal world, is where the big money is.
But it is also where my father is that allows him to drop everything and rescue me from jail in Florida.
Because he no longer has to be there personally.
He directs, assigns, and oversees. And only when the multi million dollar player fucks up, then Dad is on his video conferencing and does what he needs to do.
But he can do that from Florida, the UAE, or most anywhere.
So I am his project now.
And you know, I really do like it. OK, a bit more than I imagined.
Dad and I have evolved our relationship into a father-daughter relationship, the same as he has with my sisters.
Why does this work so well? I think because, as a boy, Shannon, I was never what Dad thought young men or boys were.
But as a girl, Shannon, he can relate to me as a father to a daughter, and I look, act, and fit that role.
The fact that I have a few extra parts is not important to Dad.
What is important is that he sees me not as a failed jock but as an extremely talented, hardworking, and committed young woman.
And that is the key: he can see me as girl Shannon in ways he never could as boy Shannon.