Jules was an old acquaintance of mine who ran an escort service. It was quite the jump from being a kitchen manager, which is what he was last time I had seen him. But oddly enough, it didn’t seem out of character. He showed me his operation while we caught up.

“Is what you’re doing legal?” I asked.

“Prostitution is the exchange of sex for money,” Jules explained. “We don’t talk about sex for money.” On the other hand, he assured, customers knew exactly what they were getting for their money.

I nodded my head slowly and listened as he continued. “What about these guys who sign up for Great Expectations?” Jules asked rhetorically. “They pay all that money to get a date. If they end up getting laid, is that prostitution?”

“They’re looking for love,” I replied. “Paying the membership fee doesn’t guarantee sex.”

My old acquaintance smiled at me, but still looked as if he couldn’t believe the quixotic shit oozing from my lips. “What’s love got to do with it?” he asked. “When was the last time you stuck around with a girl who wasn’t giving you sex?”

All I could do was nod like a moron. I had no reply. Jules didn’t miss a beat of his pitch: “Sure, you could go out to a bar or a nightclub–maybe even go to church–meet a girl, take her out to dinner, movies and whatever else and still not have a good time. Or you could book a date with one of my girls and have a good time, guaranteed.”

One of the girls chimed into the conversation: “You’re really paying me to leave at the end of the hour.” It was Janine, a college girl using her body to pay tuition. “I won’t give you any drama. I’ll never put you in the doghouse. Unless that’s what gets you off.”

Love by the hour for a flat fee. It seemed like a straightforward proposition–a clean transaction. It was much less convoluted than the traditional transaction of love for equity and a steady paycheck. Although my Catholic upbringing wanted to condemn the practice, I just couldn’t argue with Jules’ logic.

Tags: escort service · love · prostitution · relationships · sex

When Little Johnny got grounded, one of his punishments was the suspension of all internet privileges. He could endure exile in his room. But the confiscation of his computer with wireless internet? That was the last straw. The kid had to make his move.

Little Johnny loaded up his paintball guns and found a couple of pocket knives. He placed his weapons on top of his desk, cursing under his breath while he paced around his room. After some consideration, Little Johnny decided that the paintball guns weren’t very menacing–especially in his little 13-year-old hands. He picked up one of his knives and went downstairs to confront his mother.

Johnny’s mother was accustomed to the temper tantrums. She was hopeful that the nine different psych meds the shrink prescribed for Little John would keep him under control. But the pills and eight years of head-shrinking therapy failed the little boy. When her son walked down the stairs yelling, screaming, crying and holding a knife to his own throat, she called the police. Little Johnny, knowing the cops were coming, decided to run away.

Two cops caught up with Johnny a couple of blocks away. He backed into a neighbor’s driveway with the knife to his throat. “Get the fuck away from me or I’ll cut myself!” he demanded.

Two more uniformed patrolmen showed up. One of them retrieved a large shotgun from the trunk of his police car. The distinctive sound of a shotgun being racked momentarily eclipsed the sounds of Johnny’s sobbing and the crackling of police radios. “Tell that guy to put down the shotgun!” Johnny demanded.

“Put down the knife, kid!” ordered one of the patrolmen.

“Tell that dude to put down the shotgun and I’ll consider it,” replied the boy, parroting a line he had heard in a movie.

The cop with the shotgun took position next to a tree and declared, “Beanbag ready!”

Little Johnny, not realizing that the shotgun being aimed at him was loaded with non-lethal ammunition, considered what it would be like to have a hole punched through his tiny little torso. He cringed at the thought of the sidewalk being decorated with his innards.

The little boy knew the jig was up. Unlike his mother, these cops weren’t going to play the game by his rules. He was not in control, and he really didn’t want to die. Little Johnny dropped the knife and put his hands in the air.

Tags: mental illness · police · suicide

Pipsqueak was a little runt with a big ego. He was as unremarkable drunk as he was sober–just another nobody who thought he was a somebody. At 1:45 am he was just another drunk nobody getting eighty-sixed from a grimy little nightclub in a grimy part of town.

About 20 minutes later, Pipsqueak and two of his buddies came back to the club to use the john. Someone must have forgotten to lock the front door, giving the little runt and the other two idiots all the invitation they needed to come back.

Jimbo, one of the club’s honchos, confronted Pipsqueak. I don’t remember what he said exactly but the gist of it was, What the fuck are you doing here?

Pipsqueak’s reply was a drunken slur. Jimbo retorted by wrapping his fingers around Pipsqueak’s neck. Pipsqueak’s two buddies ran away in fear.

As Pipsqueak’s cronies ran past me and out the front door, Jimbo pushed Pipsqueak into the restroom and shoved him face first into the floor directly between two urinals–the filthiest spot in the club at the end of any busy night. It was slick with piss, vomit and other biohazards.

After shoving Pipsqueak’s mug into the nasty mess between the pissers, Jimbo stood up and put a foot on his back. “I’m gonna piss on you,” Jimbo announced as he unzipped his fly. Pipsqueak looked up at Jimbo in terror.

A bunch of employees peeked into the boy’s room to see what the commotion was all about. They looked on in disbelief. There was a giggle or two from the audience. Jimbo looked around and decided against urinating on Pipsqueak. Instead, he grabbed Pipsqueak by the back of his collar, pulled him up to his feet and pushed him to the exit. A couple of girls clapped and cheered as Jimbo shoved Pipsqueak through the front door.

Pipsqueak rejoined his cronies, who were halfway down the block with the rest of their dipshit crew. They all asked the same question: “What happened?”

Pride prevented Pipsqueak from answering the question. Instead, he fumed silently for a few moments, paced back and force, then punched the plate glass window of a storefront behind him.

As his fist punched through the glass, several spear-shaped shards fell from the top of the window pane, cutting Pipsqueak in a variety of different places. One of the glass shards cut the brachial artery of his right arm. Pipsqueak started gushing out blood. He tried putting his hand on top of the wound, but he couldn’t stop the bleeding. He felt weak and collapsed.

The puddle of blood surrounding him grew increasingly larger and started trickling downhill. Pipsqueak’s friends stood and watched in amazement, hypnotized by the growing crimson pool and unsure of what to do next. There was only one person in Pipsqueak’s group of morons with the presence of mind to dial 9-1-1 on her cellular phone.

I was unaware that any of this idiocy had taken place down the street from the club. But as I left the building and walked by, I saw firemen hosing down the sidewalk with water. The concrete was soaked with Pipsqueak’s blood. It was just another biohazard; another chapter of bodily secretions added to the urban cesspool of sad stories, only to be washed away.

Tags: blood · nightclub · urine

Well, I’ve got this site’s look about where I want it. It’s been a while since I’ve designed anything (over a year since the last time I’ve played around with Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML and CSS), and as a result, it’s taken me a lot longer than usual for me to put something together.

Anyway, I just wanted to say, thanks for all the kind words. I’ll try to post something new soon. I’ve been hammered at work, so it’s been tough for me to muster up the energy to scratch out something interesting enough to post.

Stay tuned!

Tags: web design · wordpress

It was two o’clock–time to kick out all the drunks, clean the place up and get the hell out of dodge. It was a task I took on in a most expeditious manner at the end of every shift. The faster we could get every customer out the door and lock it up, the faster we could get underway.

On this particular night, the only thing hindering me from my goal of leaving the club was some drunk broad sniffing around the outer perimeter of the dance floor. “Can I help you find something?” I asked.

“Ohmygod,” she slurred. “I can’t find my friggin’ keys. How the hell am I gonna get home?”

Keys are one of the most commonly misplaced things inside of a nightclub, next to sobriety and sensibility. But unlike sobriety and sensibility, keys have a way of turning up sooner or later for the drunk in question. In the case of the broad standing in front of me, losing her keys was probably a good thing. She was a head-on collision waiting to happen. “Don’t you have a friend you can crash with tonight? I can call you later if my crew finds a set of keys.”

“My baby,” she blurted as she struggled to maintain her balance. “He’s in my apartment all alone.”

I held back my shock and revulsion. It was none of my business, but I asked anyway: “How old is your boy?”

“He’s almost 18 months old. And he’s gonna freak out if he wakes up and I’m not there!”

I looked at the drunk broad standing in front of me and thanked the man upstairs that my mother wasn’t some boozed-out bimbo who checked in her sobriety and sensibility at the front door of a gin joint like mine.

Before heading out the door, the crew and I had a drink together. One for that abandoned baby, and one more for the road.

Tags: drunk · nightclub · parenting