Duncan's Diary

by Christopher C. Payne

  Being from Illinois, I was and would always be a Cubs fan, but had navigated toward the Giants having lived out here for so many years. I couldn’t believe the great teams the Cubs were fielding in recent years, and how they always managed to somehow choke once they reached the playoffs. How could a team year after year fold like a wet paper towel every time the stakes increased and the pressure mounted? It was becoming too painful to watch.

  There were about 15 other people in the bar. My guess was half regulars and half in for an afternoon drink session for whatever reason.

  There was nobody in the place that I would be interested in getting to know any further, so I simply hung out for a couple of hours, had a few beers, and watched the end of the game and the meaningless commentary afterward. There are some sportscasters that are worthwhile to listen to, but most of them are hacks that either couldn’t make it in the sport or were publicity-mongering fools who would speculate on any aspect of the game to try and make a name for themselves.

  I, finally, closed out my tab and paid with cash. Someone might follow me or recognize me or trace me back here, so I didn’t want any hard evidence. I was careful not to make a scene or spend too much time talking with anyone. I just sat in silence watching the game and sipping my beer. I remember one of my friends (back when I was married) actually said to me when the split occurred how it was too hard on him to remain my friend, so we no longer associated. Can you believe an asshole I had known for several years of my life and shared some of the most memorable moments actually said to me during my divorce that it was too difficult on him?

  He had mentioned one time during our friendship, while I was still married, the reason he never felt close enough to me was my personality. It was the type where I could never go to a bar by myself and comfortably sit and have a beer, talking to nobody that I had previously known. His criterion for friendship was a little warped, since he was an alcoholic, but what an odd way to judge your friends. I should have known then that he was a ball-less hack that was too pathetic to waste my time on, but I continued to associate with him for whatever reason until the demise of my personal union.

  I left the bar, sauntered into the closest strip club, and was immediately greeted by several of the working women. They all wanted to vie for my attention, and most importantly, my wallet. I told them that I was taking my time and wanted to cruise through the joint to weigh my choices before proceeding with anything further. San Francisco has an odd foray of strip clubs with most of them having private back rooms that you can utilize for your personal dances. Most of these rooms have some type of closure, be it a curtain or something soft that allows the girls to give you as much of their services as you are willing to pay for.

  The first time that I ventured in one, I was a little taken aback as the girl reached into my pants, fondling me as we had just entered the room, asking me if I wanted her to pleasure me in an oral fashion. Coming from Chicago, where you are not allowed to even touch the women in the middle of a lap dance and are required to keep your hands to your sides, it was a drastic change in environment. There were several very attractive women there for an afternoon, so I figured the nighttime workers had already entered, and they were preparing for the arrival of their prey.

  It is all about the money with these women. From the second they look at you and saunter over in their seductive clothing, their only goal is to suck as many dollars (and I don’t mean dollar bills) from you as they possibly can. My guess is that a gorgeous woman in an average weekend can easily pull a couple thousand down in tips alone. I wonder if they even make a paycheck from dancing. It would have to be paltry wages, as their true payment comes from the naïve guy who pushes money out before he even negotiates the services.

  I have seen my brother-in-law enter one of these rooms the second that we had arrived one evening with a small group of guys as we celebrated my birthday. We all remember that moment—it is a standing joke that we tell and will tell for several years to come. Fifteen minutes later he exited the curtained enclosure, raised both of his hands, and yelled, “I am done.” He, then, left the strip club. He and one of the other guys spent the rest of the evening drinking beer as I and a couple of friends did the more generic women-watching from the chairs spread around the stage. The joke was most likely on us, as I am sure we spent more money than he did and left far less satisfied.

  I sat down at a table and scanned the group looking for somebody that might fit my taste. I settled on a tiny brunette that had small, perky breasts and was wearing a purplish-colored piece of silk lingerie. I had to fight off a few girls before she caught me eyeing her and shook her way over to my table. Her ass moved in 10 inches each direction with every step that she took. How do some women shake their ass that way as they walk? Is it a class that some of them take? Did others miss that day, so they are unaware of the proper form to move in that sultry, slinky movement?

  She sat down and introduced herself as Cherry, which, of course, I was sure was her real name. I shook her hand and said that I was Dirk Digler, and it was very nice to meet her. She didn’t even smile at the reference, my guess being that she was at most 19 to 20 and probably had no idea who Dirk even was. She asked me if I were up for a private dance, and I honestly told her that I would be, but she would have to put some time in here at the table getting to know me. Since there were few other men in the place she was most likely not going to be losing any money.

  I could see her calculating in her mind if it was worthwhile, and she then asked me how much I was willing to pay to keep her company at the table. She could then judge her desire based on the dollar figure. Everything is about money, isn’t it? I had no intention of paying this girl any money, but instead was planning on shoving my four-inch knife through her Adam’s apple, watching the blood squirt out as she held her throat, unable to talk right after I released my sexual explosion all over her gorgeous brown hair.

  I stated that if she were willing to talk to me for a while, and then perform whatever act I wanted in the back room, I would take up no more than two hours of her time. I was willing to pay her $500 for this service. I could see her eyes light up a little. There were many women here tonight, and odds were low that she might be able to make that much for the entire night. If I gave her that in one sitting, she could most likely double her intake for the day as the place got more crowded into the later hours of the evening. She agreed, and we started the small-talk portion of getting acquainted.

  I shouldn’t spend the time boring you with the details of the interaction, as she stumbled over her facts throughout the conversation. I am unsure of what was true and what “Cherry” simply made up for her regular patrons. She started getting antsy and had now asked me if I were ready to go to the back room. She stated that she would only feel comfortable proceeding with our deal if I were willing to give her some of the money up front.

  “Let’s get the party started,” I said, getting to the meat of our transaction so to say. I followed her back, again admiring her ass as it flowed from the left side of the room all the way to the right side of the room, as she walked slowly in front of me. She couldn’t have been more than 5’2” in her five-inch heels, and she probably weighed no more than 90 pounds. But she had a perfect full ass that cried out to be cupped with both hands. She would be termed a spinner, which is a term so often used in the porn section on the Internet.

  As I entered the room I had to pay $100 just to reserve it for the 30 required minutes. After handing over the deposit and then giving her the payment she demanded (she would not start without full payment, and I would not give her full payment so we finally negotiated on half up front), she removed her lingerie. Standing completely naked in front of me, she unzipped my pants.

  Negotiating time with a stripper/prostitute is an interesting process. I can stay in the room as long as I like. Once she has induced me to climax, her job is done. She will most likely leave, telling me that she is finished, but that I am welcome to remain until my time
has expired. They have one goal in mind—to complete the process then move on to the next guy so they can rack up the payments that they are whoring themselves out for to begin with.

  She moved with gazelle-like speed placing the condom on me as she worked her magic hoping for a quick few minutes to force me into submission with her seductive ways. As she was going through her routine, I looked around the room. The curtain was well shut and covered both sides of the door all the way across. It would be easy for anyone to open, but there was no way that it was possible to view the inside without moving some portion. I looked carefully for any lights in the walls or ceiling, and saw nothing, so I assumed there were no cameras.

  You have to be very careful nowadays as there are several of these places that have installed video monitoring equipment to ensure none of the girls get hurt. This was an older building, and it was not the most upscale, so it seemed to operate in the old-fashioned way with a gumba sitting outside that would kill me if anything got out of hand. I was leaning back on a black leather couch and was thankful that it was not sticky from past experiences. There was a half-full trashcan with paper towels and condoms strewn about it in one corner from either today or recent customers who had attended the party before me.

  It was dark enough in the room, and the music was blaring through a black speaker hanging from the ceiling in one corner. It reminded me of those drive-in speakers that used to hang on your window back in the ‘80’s when they were so popular. What a great concept that died out before its time! How could you not love the drive-in movies, and why did that business model not work? Some failed concepts baffled me. She was working up a sweat now, and I could see she was losing patience, but, unfortunately for her, I still had a few minutes to go.

  I started telling her how great it felt, making the noises of ecstasy so she understood her job was close to completion. These girls sure didn’t like physical exertion, which seems stupid to even say. It was all about easy money to them. I, then, started to feel the stir of excitement and grabbed her hair with my left hand to help her movements keep the correct pace in the process. With my right hand I had reached into my jacket pocket and flipped open the knife blade exposing the metal from its encasement.

  I was close, and just as I exploded, I drove the blade home in her back. It connected with her spine, forcing me to plunge it in with all my strength, angling the blade down in order to inject it fully into her spine. As I did so, I held myself inside her with my left hand keeping her mouth fully occupied as I completed the task that I had come for. I removed the blade and drove it home several more times as she grew limp in my arms. She finally slipped to the ground, as I was unable to hold her up any longer.

  This was not completely as planned, but very fulfilling. It was exquisite to climax at the point of death with some young beautiful girl. I contemplated how much money I had saved for how many guys that she would not swindle that night and for all the nights in the future. She would have continued this occupation until one day she woke up and realized she couldn’t make money doing this with her haggard old body anymore. She would by then be on several forms of drugs and probably overdose. How long would this process take? Maybe she had five years – possible eight or 10 because she started out so beautiful.

  I left the condom on, so I wouldn’t leave my evidence in the room. I pulled up my pants, checked to ensure that I had my wallet, took back the money that I had given her and exited. I walked out the front door, making sure that I did not make contact with anyone on the way out, and admired how I had managed to spill not a single drop of blood on any of my clothes or even my shoes. I was still pretty stupid in this process, but I seemed to be going undetected and unnoticed in all circumstances to date.

  I sat in the coffee house across the street for about 30 minutes and watched as floods of strippers, customers and large bulky men ran from the front of the building like ants that have just realized their home is being flooded. Once the police arrived, I left the coffee house and made my way to my car that was parked in a self-service lot about 10 blocks away.

  I might have lost my job yesterday, but I felt damn good today.

  Following Along

  Sudhir woke up in his own bed and again, as was becoming quite the custom, his head was pounding with the aching relentless reminder that he had drunk far too much the night before. He remembered being picked up at the restaurant by his brother and driven home where he had stayed by his side for a while. Sudhir had wakened at some point to find himself alone and had attacked the liquor cabinet again with a vengeance. This wasn’t the first time that he dove into a drinking binge before even recovering from the hangover caused by the last one.

  He fell into the bathroom, catching himself with his hands on the toilet, and threw up on the lid. He violently heaved his insides like a fountain, spraying even the tile surrounding the white porcelain receptacle. He, now, felt he knew what stepping over the edge felt like, as his memory flooded back into consciousness. His renewed disgust mounted at what this life had become. His marriage was over, he felt. They were already in a rocky area before, but the betrayal burning inside him was never going to heal.

  He would have to be careful to remain in control, he realized, as the memory of screaming at the top of his lungs in the restaurant that he could kill his wife burned in his mind. He never said he was going to kill her, only that he felt he could, but in court that would only be a matter of semantics. He knew that physically he could never hurt the mother of his children, but the rage had taken control in one of the rare instances of his life—combined with the alcohol, he had been beyond recognition.

  The next few hours were focused on bringing reality back to his fragile existence. He showered, drank coffee, showered again, and took another nap. He did all the things you would normally do to give your body what it needed to overcome the intake of too much alcohol. Once he felt whole enough, he got dressed in one of his better pair of slacks and his favorite shirt. He always liked this shirt with its subtle stripes that blended in slightly with the black fabric.

  He combed what remained of his hair, and admired himself in the mirror. He wasn’t looking too shabby. The perpetual drunkenness as of late had done him one favor. He seemed to have lost a few pounds. All that vomiting was like a self-induced bulimic diet that resulted in his pants fitting a little looser than they had in several years. He looked around the house, fighting back the tears that started forming, as he reminisced on his kids and their lives and what might have been if only things were different.

  After walking from room to room and pausing for a minute in each one, he knew that it was time to leave. He opened the garage door only to find that his car was not there, nor was it out front in the driveway. He remembered, then, that his brother had brought him home, so it must still be sitting in the parking lot of the bar he had visited yesterday. Quite a scene he had played out for the mid-day working shift, he thought. He was on full drama patrol yesterday with the open display and the non-stop crying, as he curled up into a little ball on the floor. Everyone must think he was crazy, and at this point they were probably all correct.

  He called for a taxi, as the bar was about five miles away; and the rolling hills of Pacifica didn’t lend well to walking for a hung over, out of shape, middle-aged man. He didn’t like walking, anyway. As he waited, he renewed his stroll through the house, thinking of the memories that were stored away in the walls and with each piece of furniture. They had been married for so long it was as if every corner of every wall contained a small piece of who they were as a couple. He had failed to look at himself individually in so long it seemed foreign to him to even approach the concept.

  The taxi pulled up in the driveway; and as Sudhir was shutting the door, he contemplated writing a note, but then decided against it. They would be able to locate him, of that he was sure, and what would he say, anyway? Nothing really mattered. He closed the door to his house and stepped off the front stoop heading to that taxi. He smiled as he s
aw the Indian driver behind the wheel, and again wondered what his life would have been like if he, too, would have gone that route.

  The driver navigated the hills and curves and dropped him in the parking lot of the structure that held the embarrassing event from yesterday’s activities. Sure enough, there was his car, sitting in one of the spots like it was laughing at him. He paid the driver $50 and was thanked profusely for the generosity. What did money matter, really?

  He opened his car door and sat behind the wheel for a few minutes, again fighting to control his emotions and keep the tears at bay. His eyelids felt like the Hoover Dam as they worked diligently to keep the liquid bottled up behind their thin enclosure. He felt a few sneaking through, unfortunately, and wiped his eyes with his fingers as he worked his will and self-control, purging the action once again.

  The car started fine, and he felt himself pulled in the direction of the kid’s schools. He first stopped by Matt’s and slowed along the curb, watching the kids playing behind the fenced-in field. Schools are like little fortresses today, with their fences and security guards, and in many locations, metal detectors are a way of life. In most schools, these are all protective measures against the scum of the earth that prey on kids and have no concept of what is right or wrong. In some cases, it is simply to protect the kids from themselves, as so many have now turned to violence at such a young age.

  He sat and just watched for a long time, having lost track of what time meant. It had no relevance to Sudhir anymore. He didn’t see Matt, but at the same time felt he had connected with him in some form of conversation by just being here. He would never be able to explain to Matt what was going on. A child should never hear those things about a parent until they are much older and have already lost the innocent view of the world. Every child should hold onto their belief that parents are perfect for as long as they can.