She was 17, dating some punk of the same age. The punk had a short rap sheet of petty crimes and criminal acts of idiocy. Typical adolescent bad boy attraction. Rebellion against an inattentive father. Her story: they argued. He punched her three times in the face and kicked her in the gut. She ran away and got in another guy’s car.

The other guy was a 21-year-old “friend.” A chump who always saved the damsel in distress, but never got rewarded for his efforts. A sap with a tear-stained shoulder and a box of never used, never will be used condoms. Captain Save-A-Ho.

Captain Save-A-Ho drove Jail Bait off into the horizon. On the other side of the horizon was my club. They came seeking sanctuary. Save-A-Ho was a regular. I’d never seen Jail Bait around. I inspected her face and her midsection, which was exposed thanks to a skimpy tube top. No bruises. No swelling. No footprint on her gut. Not a fucking scratch. I pulled Save-A-Ho to the side: “I can’t have this jail bait in my joint. Take her to her parents.”

Save-A-Ho tried to explain to me why it would be better to stash the broad in my club. I half listened, watched the broad text messaging non-stop. She took a phone call. Jail Bait covered her mouth while speaking, kept her voice low. I heard: “Is he with her right now?” followed by, “Fucking bastard.”

Moments later, Jail Bait got off the phone, then demurely asked Save-A-Ho, “Can you drive me to the police station?” She wanted to make a report of domestic battery. Put a case on the punk.

They thanked, waved, drove away. I chuckled.

Poor Save-A-Ho. The sap was blind, unable to connect the dots: Jail Bait and Punk were on the outs. Punk found himself a new broad. Jail Bait got jealous, confronted Punk. An argument ensued. Jail Bait stormed away. Later, upon hearing that Punk was with the new chick, Jail Bait decided that revenge would be a false police report.

Facts undigested by Save-A-Ho: the hole in his back window and the lack of injuries on Jail Bait indicated that Punk, while guilty of vandalism, was innocent of battery. Save-A-Ho was an unwitting accessory to Jail Bait’s connivance. He wasn’t a hero. He was a tool.

Tags: domestic violence · nightclub · relationships

Jack’s rap sheet was a resume of stupidity: a few petty thefts, several residential burglaries, and the occasional trespass. Highlighting his stupidity was a conviction for punching a cop while being arrested for jerking off in public. Why little Jill married a bona fide shitbird was a mystery to most, but the reason was blatantly obvious to me–she wanted to be the one dame to tame a wild bad boy.

Three years and two babies seemed to mellow Jack. But family life didn’t tame his inner punk. Jack grew resentful of the two needy children and the damage they did to Jill’s figure. He unleashed his frustrations by slapping Jill around. A black eye, several contusions and a laceration later, Jill divorced Jack.

Soon enough, Jack went back to committing petty crimes. Participated in the weekly bar brawl. Lived the life of your typical, run-of-the-mill punk.

A year passed. Jack started making veiled threats, sent cryptic messages. Told Jill in a roundabout way that he was going to kidnap the kids and take them to a non-extradition country. One night, Jack circled Jill’s place in his car, drunk dialing from various pay phones.

Jill told me her tale at the bar. Not your typical Saturday night conversation, but not unexpected for a nightclub promoter. I was a shrink at times, listening to and advising my dysfunctional club kids. I sipped my scotch, listened to the broad, recalled what she looked like before she married Jack, back when she was one of my regulars. She asked me for advice. “You oughta get a retraining order,” I told her. “He sounds like a real creep.”

“You don’t know him,” Jill replied, defensively. “He’s a good father to the boys. He’s just going through some hard times right now.”

Jill didn’t want advice. She only wanted her delusion validated. As she walked out of the club, I knew that she’d be another item on Jack’s resume of stupidity. Only time would tell whether the line would read, “Domestic Battery,” “Kidnap” or “Murder.”

Tags: divorce · domestic violence · marriage · nightclub · relationships

Mary’s studio apartment. Quarter to three. Diagonal shadows from venetian blinds pinned us to her bed. She lay next to me. Tense. Frigid. She was expecting something. Or someone.

A silhouette of a man broke the striped pattern covering us. Someone outside. I asked, “Expecting company?” She slowly, silently, shook her head. A lie.

Knuckles tapped glass. Brief silence. The shadow knocked again, impatient. It was the other guy. No, I was the other guy. Did Mary double book? No time for dumb questions. I got dressed, chamber checked my gun, made sure there was one in the pipe.

Mary got up, opened the door slightly. There was shouting from outside the door. A lover’s quarrel in Vietnamese. No subtitles. I was unable to get the gist. The punk barged in, broke the door chain.

No way to sneak out. I stood my ground. I kept my pistol in hand, inside my jacket pocket. Put my finger on the trigger. No other way to play this.

The punk looked at me, shouted at Mary. She yelled back. There was a .44 Magnum tucked away in the punk’s rear waistband. His heater was bigger than him. The punk cocked his arm back, slapped Mary’s face.

“I hate to interrupt,” I interjected, keeping my voice even. “Your lover’s quarrel doesn’t concern me.” I leveled my piece at the punk. I had the drop on him. He had no idea.

Slowly, the fool reached for his rear waistband. I carefully took out the slack in my gun’s trigger. The punk put his hands back down. “I don’t want any trouble with you, either,” he said. He spit on Mary’s face, stormed out.

Mary looked over at me in disbelief. “Aren’t you gonna do something?”

“Why would I play the sap for you, kid? Waste a bullet and go to jail? Why?” I took my finger off the trigger, took the heater out of my pocket, holstered up. “You set it up so the two of us guys would end up over here about the same time. You wanted us to fight each other over you–maybe shoot each other. But you ain’t worth fighting over. You ain’t worth going to jail for. And you ain’t worth dying for.”

I took some cash out of my wallet, put it on Mary’s nightstand. “Here’s some dough,” I told her. “Go find yourself a shrink and lose my number.” She sat in a corner of her room, sobbing.

It was a little after three. I walked out of Mary’s apartment, put a cigarette in my mouth. Stopped for a moment to light up, but never looked back.

Tags: domestic violence · relationships

Lola was a porn star turned single mom. Baby’s daddy was a three-strike loser who took up residence at San Quentin before Lola gave birth. For the sake of the child, she gave up porn, crossed two state lines and landed a gig as a stripper at a topless club just up the highway from my gin joint.

She ended up dating one of her regulars, a guy by the name of Freddie. Freddie was your average Joe with a nine to five, stock options and benefits. He wasn’t a high roller, but was making decent money. The guy had a little house, a couple of cars and a good nest egg.

Freddie knew getting into the game that Lola liked to party, and party hard. He burned up all his money financing her expensive habits. When the money well went dry, he sold the house and one of the cars to keep the party going. And when that money was gone and the party was over, Lola walked out on him.

A broken-hearted Freddie went to Lola’s club and tried to talk her out of leaving him. She responded to his pleading by smashing a can of soda on his face and breaking his nose. Freddie walked away into the night, leaving a trail of tears and blood.

Since Lola and Freddie were regulars at my place, rumors of their violent breakup didn’t take long to get to me. Freddie walked in by himself a few nights later and confirmed the news. I asked him how he was holding up and tried not to stare at the uneven makeup covering up the bruises on his face. Freddie assured me he was fine.

After several rounds, Freddie muttered, “No money, no honey.” Tears welled up in his eyes, then streamed down his face, leaving tracks in his makeup and revealing purple skin. I poured him another drink and told him it was on me.

Tags: blood · domestic violence · nightclub · porn star · relationships · stripper

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