Gone to Heaven

Tessa learnt a lesson that people could be cruel opportunists. At 27, she became homeless, and it turned the rest of her life upside down. She had been living with her parents, when in 2014, her father died. What she didn’t know was that he had refinanced the mortgage in their house and hadn’t paid in months. With his death, they became homeless.

Tessa and her mom lived there raising German Shepherds for a living, but a freak accident left their main breeder almost dead and unable to bear any more litters. It was winter, and they tried to squat in their own foreclosed property. A neighbor let them run an extension from his house for electricity, but when the first bill came in, he tried to extort money from them, threatening to call the cops if they didn’t pay him $700. And he did. She and her mom tried to sneak back in and use candles for light and a little heat along with blankets and the warmth of the dogs, but the same neighbor would report them each time he noticed them.

Next, they found more local homeless near Prices Corner Walmart as they tried to get into a shelter. Two women with two dogs made that difficult. State and local services let her down time and time again. Her disabled mother was 62 at the time, and she was offered a room, but it was under the condition that she had to be alone. Tessa told her mom to take it, but she couldn’t bear thinking of her daughter out on the streets with two dogs, so she refused.

By 2016, they were still homeless but living out of a van, which was eventually towed with all of their belongings. Between her mom’s disability checks and cash from boosting, an activity that took up much of their time, they were able to save enough to purchase a used car to use to try to find work and maybe a shelter—until the head gasket blew.

She and her mother would sometimes have to panhandle for extra cash. Her mom got more than she did because people felt bad for an old lady on the streets. But not Tessa. She was told that she could get a box of Captain Crunch or a candy bar in exchange for a blowjob maybe even some pocket change. Despite that she was homeless and grimy, they asked her why she didn’t just get a job.

Then Tessa found Backpage—the hard way. She had met a girl and her ‘boyfriend’ who told her how they made money, but she wasn’t interested. A short time later, they offered to let her shower in their motel room. She was grateful, but her ‘boyfriend’ was a pimp who insisted that she wasn’t going to leave until she repaid him. He’d do the advertising, and she’d so the work. His deal was that she owned him $60 for half of the room rate. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in about 5 years, so she told him she’d only be willing to suck cock. For that he’d give her $20. Full service would earn her $40.

She paid it off that day and slept the night. But now that she knew about Backpage, she could advertise herself. Tessa Tepes was a name she had liked since she was a child, so she went with it. And the Countessa was born.

Tessa become very successful and learned how to play the escorting game, from Delaware and into Philadelphia and New Jersey.

Eventually she started this blog, and she told more of her story here. It’s difficult for girls in a cash business to rent apartments and buy anything besides used cars. Hotels are an expensive way to have to live, and she’d always have to get two rooms, one for working and one for her mom and their dogs. She also knew that she could charge more at better hotels, but these hotels cost more, too.

As she writes on her blog, eventually she met a guy at a gas station who would sign an apartment lease for her in exchange for sex a couple times a week, but she would have to pay for her own rent. This guy was also in the business of buying cars from auction. He’d let her use his dealer license if she’d put out more than twice a week. She agreed.

I met Tessa in Winter 2017, and she shared this and many stories with me. And I wanted the people who knew her—mostly her regulars—to know more about her.

She had dreams about running a car dealership and of breeding German Shepherds, but her life was too complicated for these things to work out for her. She lived a sad, miserable life, but even until the end, she loved fantasy stories, vampires, fairies, and most of all unicorns and everything Frozen.

She died in the hospital with her mum nearby on June 18, 2020. May she finally have found peace. She believed in Heaven.