Jack caught up with me at the usual watering hole. It wasn’t the classiest of joints, but the drinks were stiff and it didn’t cost an arm or a leg to get juiced. As an added bonus, none of my nightclub regulars frequented the place. I could drink anonymously, without distraction. “How was your trip?” I asked.

“I could have used about three more days.” Jack handed me a bundle of hundred dollar bills. It was repayment for a loan I gave him before he left. His wife handled the household finances, and he didn’t want her questioning him about an excessive cash withdrawal from their joint account.

Part of the reason for Jack’s trip was to debauch as many women possible, no strings attached. After ten years of marriage and three kids, he lost all sexual interest in his wife. His adulterous out-of-state trip was just what the doctor ordered–a release for his pent-up sexual frustrations. “It was fun,” Jack continued. “But, well, I don’t know.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Jack was not completely satiated. Evidently, the trip wasn’t everything that it was cracked up to be. I pulled on my cigarette, expelled the smoke through my nostrils while I took another gulp of scotch. “But what?” I asked, chewing an ice cube.

“Well, it’s just that I didn’t even get the names of most of the girls.”

Quizzically, I raised an eyebrow. “Why the hell does that matter?”

“I guess it would have been nice to date some of them. You know, get to know them a little bit.”

Unbelievable. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I hate to break it to you, Jack, but you’re not making any sense,” I said. “You skipped town to get laid. Mission accomplished, multiple times. Now you want girlfriends on the side? Why? So they can call your house from time to time and say ‘Hello’ to your wife?”

Jack played that scenario out in his head. Too many guys we both knew were already there. The outcome was always the same: a divorce, after which the ex-wife takes the man to the cleaner. The moral of the story for the unhappily married man? If you want to screw around, do it discreetly. It’s cheaper to keep her.

“I know what you’re saying,” Jack told me. “But you don’t understand.”

“And I never will, because I learn from guys like you.” With a chuckle, I slapped Jack’s shoulder, finished my drink, crushed my butt in an ashtray. I paid my tab while saying my goodbyes and headed out the door. I had a date with one of my nightclub regulars, Tracy. As ditsy as she was, she was more fun to be around than an unhappily married man.

Tags: adultery · marriage · sex

It was not unusual for Sleepy to drink himself into a drunken stupor, and then pass out. He couldn’t help himself. The liquor numbed him to the fact that he would have been better off as an abortion. But the one thing that the liquor couldn’t numb was the incessant pain in his rectum.

Strange, this soreness he felt up his ass every time he woke up from passing out. And it seemed to get worse after every drunken escapade.

In time, perhaps two or three months later, Sleepy suspected that his drinking buddy Pedro was regularly ass raping him while he was unconscious. It was hard for him to believe, but he could not think of any other reason for his newfound tenderness.

One night Sleepy and Pedro were at the neighborhood watering hole, drinking cheap liquor, listening to a broken down jukebox. Sleepy passed out and woke up in his own pad with a sore, throbbing rectum.

The next night, Sleepy and Pedro were lushing it up once again. Sleepy decided to pretend he was drunk when he wasn’t. He called it a night, returned to his apartment, locked the door behind him and pretended to pass out. He kept one eye slightly open and watched as his friend Pedro stared at him through a window, salivating, attempting to enter, unable to open the locked door.

When confronted about the sneaky sodomy, Pedro denied the whole thing. Why would a married man sodomize his best borracho buddy? No, Pedro held steadfast to his alibi of reading his Bible and listening to Christian music during the time of the most recent alleged sodomy.

Although Sleepy didn’t enjoy waking up with a sore rectum, he continued to drink every night with Pedro. Sleepy couldn’t bear the thought of drinking alone. Pedro enjoyed his friendship with benefits. It was, in a sense, a symbiotic relationship.

Tags: drunk · sex · sodomy

I sat in the VIP room, smoking a cigarette, sipping my scotch, engaging in meaningless conversation with a table full of drunks. Some chick took a seat on my lap as if it was reserved just for her. “Do I know you?” I asked with a smile.

“No, but I know you,” she replied, gracefully removing the cigarette from my lips and placing it between hers. She pulled gently on the butt and slowly blew smoke into the ceiling. After introducing herself, she put the cigarette back into my mouth and thanked me with a kiss on the cheek.

About three sentences into our conversation, I heard some sort of commotion and looked up in time to see some guy running straight at me with clenched teeth and fists. He was a pint-sized package of jealous rage. “Get offa my girl!” he yelled as he charged.

One of my guys, Lou, tackled the jealous lover before he could get within 25 feet of me. Lou shoved the chump’s face into the floor and turned his body into a pretzel. “Hey boss, what do you want me to do with this shitbird?”

I pointed to the front door, indicating that the jealous lover should be thrown out the hard way. Lou scooped the punk up, used his head to knock the front door open and threw him onto the pavement outside. The dame on my lap clutched onto me and said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into my friend. I should go talk to him.” She stood and walked out the front door.

A moment later, an acquaintance of mine approached me. “The guy that just got thrown out, he was downstairs with the broad that was sitting on your lap,” he said. “She was getting cozy with some other fellow and Mr. Jealous Lover yanked her by her hair, caveman style!”

So that explained it. Love was a twisted game for two. The game went from psychological to physical, and the smaller of the two lovers needed to enlist a third person to even out the odds. I was the biggest fish she could find in that muddy little pond–after all, I ran the joint.

The girl returned to the VIP room and pleaded with me: “Is there anything you can do to get my friend back in the club?”

I walked outside the front door. The jealous lover was scuffed up, but fairly tame. “If I let you back inside, are you gonna play nice?” I asked.

“Please,” the girl pleaded. She knew exactly what she was doing. She pushed all the right buttons. “Please let my friend back in.”

Once again, the jealous lover exploded: “Friend? So we’re just friends now? Is that how it is?” He charged at his girl and found himself face down on the pavement with Lou on his back.

“Take it easy,” Lou told the jealous lover.

After informing the broad that I couldn’t let her “friend” back inside, Lou let the chump back up and told him to take a hike. The dame walked after her man. Later that night, in some other part of the city, the jealous lover gave her a black eye and got arrested for domestic battery.

The following weekend, she was back in my muddy little pond. Her chump couldn’t make bail and was still locked up. She tried to take a seat on my lap, but I pushed her away. “Sorry, kid,” I told her. “This seat’s taken.”

Tags: domestic violence · love · nightclub · relationships

Howdy from Shanghai! There’s a lot to see and do here. Especially eat. The food is great. Although I didn’t eat at this particular joint, the image of my childhood hero Bruce Lee was guarding the place and I had to snap a photo.

I was curious as to the quality of food, but my buddy Kenny told me it was the Chinese equivalent of Panda Express. I told him I’d pass. Maybe next time I’ll give it a try.

Tags: bruce lee · china · food · shanghai

I heard some muffled shouting, cursing and a series of thuds punctuated by agonizing yelps. It came from outside–the universal sounds of violence. I turned my head to the direction of the commotion, unable to see outside the windowless room. “Just a couple of drunks fighting,” she told me nonchalantly. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

The girl sitting next to me was no stranger to violence. She was used to getting smacked around from time to time. Not that she enjoyed the occasional beating, but she accepted it as an adjunct to her livelihood. She never cried while she licked her wounds, and she certainly could care less about some two-bit drunk getting his face rearranged.

She looked at me, holding her gaze for a few seconds, sizing me up as she pulled on her cigarette and expelled a stream of smoke from the corner of mouth. She had a cold, icy stare that made her older than she was.

After she finished sizing me up she stood, took another drag from her cigarette, opened the door and said, “Get undressed. I’ll be back in a few.” She blew out another cloud of smoke, walked out the door and shut it behind her.

There wasn’t much in the room–just a worn out mattress and a small pillow. The red light bulb on the ceiling flickered and dimmed from time to time. It was all very utilitarian. There was no pretense; no veneer to disguise the fact that this was just a dirty little brothel that serviced the local population of blue-collared married men and horny college boys.

I sat at the edge of the mattress and wondered how I got suckered into joining my two compadres in their journey through such a seedy back alley in a seedy part of this strange town. There was no way I was going to disrobe for this broad.

When she returned with a handful of handy wipes, lubrication and a condom, she saw that I was still fully clothed. She frowned, mildly irritated. “I ain’t got all night, bub,” she said dryly. “We’re on the clock and I ain’t getting paid to undress you. What’s the matter, you shy or something?”

The last thing I wanted to do was to copulate with this whore. The second to the last thing I wanted to do was pick a fight with her. “It ain’t that I’m shy,” I replied. “But I’m here because one of my buddies dragged us down here. He’s been out to sea for six months and the only ass he’s seen is on the back of a bunch of hairy sailors and Marines. He ain’t been laid in a while and he’s been driving us crazy, with the way he’s been acting on account of that fact. He’s picking up the tab, and didn’t want to come here alone.

“Me, I got a nice girl waiting for me back home. I might be a dumb Marine, but I’m smart enough to know a good thing when I got it and I ain’t gonna mess it up here. Like I said, my buddy’s picking up the tab, and it would make him feel good about himself if he didn’t know that we didn’t do anything more than converse.”

The hardened eyes of the whore softened just a little. She paused after taking in my words. “It’s nice that you have love. There isn’t a whole lot of love in the world. Take care of that girl and treat her right.” She lit up another smoke and asked, “Want some coffee?” I nodded yes.

She left and returned with a small cup of joe. Her eyes had returned to stone. When I finished the cup she shooed me out of the room and down the hall, towards the brothel’s entrance.

The very round madam of the place wobbled towards us, looked at the whore and nonchalantly asked, “Was there a happy ending?” The madam might have been running a dirty business, but she wanted her customers to get what they paid for. The young girl with the old gaze nodded yes to her boss, walked me to the front door and turned around without a goodbye.

I looked back and watched her sit next to another girl on a squeaky couch in the anteroom. They sat emotionless, sitting with arms folded and legs crossed, smoking cigarettes, waiting for their next appointments. I joined my buddies outside. We walked out of the alley, howled at the moon and jumped in a cab.

Tags: drunk · love · marines · prostitution · sex