My mom has never liked crowds of any kind. She never reveled in big parties, and during our once-a-year trip to the mall for Christmas shopping, after about an hour in that hellscape of packed tight human bodies, she’d throw her hands in the air and proclaim, “That’s it! I’m done. I gotta get the fuck outta here.”
So, when it came to getting new clothes, our family’s motto was “To the Sears catalog!” This, obviously, was before the birth of Amazon.
I remember a particularly badass pair of faux snakeskin pants I ordered one year that made me feel rad and like I could finally think of myself as a put-together woman. I’d pair those bad boys with my black leather jacket and ironic Big Bird shirt, and there was no stopping the suave awesomeness that was exuding off me.
My deep dive into porn slinging was before all of this, though. Who knows, maybe it was these first escapades into self-employment that gave me the confidence to proudly wear ill-fitting snakeskin pants and become the very cool person you’ve all come to hesitantly love.
The Sears catalog does, however, hold a direct connection to how I began my softcore porn swindling business.
As Mom and I flipped from page to page in the thick magazine, I desperately tried not to give myself a papercut on the shiny thin pages. Mom took an extra few seconds while passing by the Ladies Underwear section, looking at the sale items, but it was my brother Dustin who caught my eye when I noticed how spellbound he was by this section.
Huh, a good ten pages of ladies modeling underwear.
“This gives me an idea!” My little brain stump said.
And that, my friends, is how the entrepreneur gene is made.
You may as well start calling me Bezos now.
I began hatching a plan as I brushed my teeth that evening, looking forward to how much money I could potentially make selling the Ladies Underwear section to the boys at school who hadn’t yet found their dad’s porn stash.
Of course, this business would never work these days, considering I Googled “Fisty Cuffs” the other day and got a plethora of images of fists up to the cuffs (down to the cuffs?) in random people’s assholes.
This is why it is important to know how to spell, kids. Stay in school.
I honestly don’t know why I think children are reading this — and I desperately hope they are not — but I figured I should cover all my bases just in case.
Creeping out to the kitchen in the dead of night was easy. Mom and Dad were always early to go to bed, plus their room was on the other side of the house. Finding the specific photos was more challenging because the Sears catalog is enormous!
After flipping madly for several minutes, I located my soon-to-be money maker, then I made the ace move of attempting to rip out all 10 pages of the lingerie section right then and there — the dead quiet of the night and echoic nature of the large open kitchen did not bode well for my plan.
Clambering up the school bus stairs the next morning I wore an evil grin. I had a whole school week ahead of me and a backpack full of slightly torn pages of half-naked people. I had decided it was rather unfeminist of me only to sell the women's underwear models, so I found the men’s section and tore those hunks out as well.
To this day, I fully stand for objectifying ripped abs and rock-hard butts only if we are doing so equally among the sexes.
I’ve been a trailblazer my entire life.
My first lesson in self-employment was that distribution is difficult. Like, really difficult. Once the word got out that there were half-nakey adults in my back pocket, everyone wanted a piece. I was selling my goods for 25 cents a page, and the demand was weighing me down.
I enlisted a few friends to help. That’s when I learned my second lesson in business. You can’t trust anyone but yourself. Those assholes were giving out freebies to cute boys!
Gah, did I have to do everything around here?
It turned out I did. No employee will ever be as invested in your business as much as you are — business lesson #3.
LRB’s business lesson #4? Word of mouth is king.
This is a truth that I’ve learned repeatedly ever since my first delve into the world of self-employment, and I don’t think that it will ever get old. If you have a good product, with fair prices and reliable service, people will talk, and that talk spreads.
The schoolyard was aflutter with whispers about Lindsay and her backpack of baddies. I had set up shop in an obscure corner of the jungle gym, hidden away from disciplinary eyes. I laid my merch on the pebbled ground and allowed the clients to choose their goods.
And I would like to say that I had just as many girls as boys purchasing my naked pages, which proves that all kids are pretty curious when it comes down to it — get out of here with your boys will be boys bullshit.
Then, lesson number 5 hit me without warning, and it hit me hard.
Crime Doesn’t Pay.
As I looked up at the gangly red-headed boy currently rifling through my stack of naughty knickers, I saw something much direr. Three teachers, arms crossed, standing directly beyond the outskirts of the jungle gym. They were not impressed with my budding entrepreneurship skills.
The 20+ pages I had doled out to various children during morning recess were confiscated and, I assume, locked away in some permanent file with a sticky note on the front saying, “This bitch is going to be trouble for us in her later years.”
To be honest, I can’t remember the severity of the punishment I got, so honestly, it couldn’t have been that bad, right? What I do remember is that they never took the money I had already earned away from me.
I spent that money on a Slurpee. It was the best damn Slurpee I’ve ever tasted.
So, I guess the real moral of this story is; I need to change that last business lesson too, Crime Does Pay — but only if your prosecutors are too dumb to realize there was a monetary exchange.
Remember, kids, work smarter, not harder.