2008
Episode
12
Glenda
Previously in "Saecula:” An elite Republican
cabal conspires to fix the
2008 presidential election, but its plans
to embezzle money from the RNC
are uncovered and lead to murder.
Democratic Senator Winnie Scott
scuttles administration strategy with a
blockbuster disclosure during
congressional hearings on the disasterous
Islamic War. The Vice President's
"A-Team" sets in motion the ultimate October
Surprise: A terrorist attack
upon the nation.
Today: Gar's Take on Women
“Hey, good looking’! Where you been? Haven‘t seen
ya for a couple ‘a weeks. You’re missin’ the season,
Gar. It’s already March.”
“Just got back from Tallahassee. Still working
the legislature on Trinity,” replied Gar. “How’s life been
treating you, Nikki?”
“Just dandy, Gar, and you?” replied the voluptuous
bartender at Boobs, Gar’s favorite strip club in St. Pete.
It was about 15 minutes drive from his RV campground,
and one of his regular winter haunts. At $7.50 for
a bottle of beer, Gar was never sure if the name
of the joint referred to the dancers or the customers.
“Sweetie, everyday I wake up and there’s not a chalk line drawn around my body is a good one,” replied Reynolds.
“Hey baby, that’s just because nobody has that
much chalk,” retorted Nikki, in her whiskey-husky,
bartender-droll voice.
After his divorce, Gar went through several short-term
affairs, always with the same results. The women
who fell in love with the carefree, grumpy, disheveled
professor, sooner or later -- usually sooner -- decided
he needed to be fixed before he completely turned,
and would set about their task of tidying, styling and
polishing. After several such experiences, each
ending with Gar unceremoniously tossing the domesticating
divas out on their butts, he concluded that women’s
pestering was an inherent genetic fault, and decided they
weren’t worth the trouble.
Now he liked to say he didn’t date; he purchased.
Gar considered all the moral proscriptions surrounding
prostitution hypocritical garbage. He believed
a lot of women were whores. Some hooked for cash, others
hooked for diamonds, status or security in the
form of marriage. Women exploited their sexuality at work,
at home, and at play to finagle, goad, entice
and hoodwink the pecker-driven men in their lives. Men were
puppy dogs. Feed them, walk them and scratch their
stomachs once in awhile, and they couldn’t do enough
for you. Once men understood their place in the
“lowerarchy,” they’d be a lot happier. Gar figured he was
going to pay either way. If he was going to be
manipulated out of his money anyway, it might as well be by
the best looking women available.
That had been five years ago, and he hadn’t looked
back. In Gar’s mind, the current trendy concept that
couples must “work” at relationships was bogus.
Even in the most compatible of relationships, couples didn’t
agree all the time, and he had no intention of
spending his remaining time on this big blue ball “working”
-- negotiating, adjudicating, compromising. Gar
enjoyed his privacy, his independence and his solitude.
When he wanted to write, he wrote. When he wanted
to sleep, he slept. When he wanted to get laid, he paid.
He had lived both ways, and single was best.
“Glenda been around?” asked Reynolds.
“Yeah, she’s in the back, doin’ a dance.”
Nikki was referring to the “VIP Lounge” that was
really nothing more than an even darker room than the bar,
sectioned off for privacy by six-foot high office
dividers. There the topless, g-stringed strippers gave customers
bump and grind lap dances for twenty-five bucks.
For the right price and the right customer, additional services
could be purchased.
Reynolds had taken advantage of several of those
services when he had met Glenda in that very room. The first
time he saw her, he fell in lust with her erotic
Mediterranean looks, disheveled hair and knock-out legs and ass.
As they talked, he became even more enchanted.
He disdained the twenty-something dancers as “Twinkies.”
They were mostly vacuous, narcissistic and coked-up,
with fake tits that looked like bocce balls stuck to their
chests. Give him a 40-year-old woman with some
brains and personality who looked like a 28-year-old any day
of the week. But even with Glenda’s incredible
looks and great body, she realized stripping was a young woman’s
job. She was taking nursing courses at Pinellas
County Community College, and looking forward to the day when
she could quit for good. Gar was happy it hadn’t
happened before they met.
Gar and Glenda had been seeing each other for three years in that strange kind of way strippers sometime develop with customers they especially enjoy. It started as a money thing, but soon developed into a weird sort of dating -- dinners, beach weekends, Caribbean trips, even a visit to Alfred one summer -- and then often not talking to each other for months. Any expectations beyond their immediate pleasure would ruin the relationship instantly. Yet, there was as true a caring for one another as if they were lifelong lovers.
The sex was the best Gar had ever experienced. Glenda was at once passionate and uninhibited, but also tender and understanding that Gar, in his 60’s, was not about to keep up with a woman at her sexual prime. When he first began paying for sex, Gar had concluded that the sex manual creed that it was a man’s job to ensure the woman was fulfilled, was nonsense. It was his money, and by God if he decided to come in one minute or 20, he sure as hell wasn’t going to worry about his “responsibility” to be a good lover. It was different with Glenda, right from the start. He wanted her to be satisfied more than his own enjoyment. It still continued. He probably did love her, as she did him, in a most strange fashion.
“Hi, baby,” Gar called out, as Glenda passed by not expecting nor noticing him.
“Oh, my god, Gar,” Glenda shrieked as she grabbed
his neck with both arms and planted one delicious kiss on his
open mouth. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you too, baby. I’ve been trying to call, but your cell has been off for a week.”
“I know, I know. Tuition, rent. I couldn’t afford a phone card just now.”
Gar was always astonished at how most of the girls
lived, even those with kids. They never had two cents to rub
together, except for costumes and drugs. As pretty
as they were, most had extremely low self-esteem, resulting
from overbearing, often sexually abusive fathers.
They would hop from one bad relationship with the same kind
of destructive personality to the next in a matter
of days. He couldn’t imagine constantly living on the edge, or
what would become of them when they turned 60
or 70, if they made it that far.
Over time, Glenda had confided in him that her history was much the same. Her father and uncle had started raping her and her sister when she was 12. At 15, she ran away and began hooking on the streets of Indianapolis. When she turned 18 and could legally strip, she headed for Miami and 17 years of coke, booze and beatings from numerous bozo boyfriends. During a drug high, her then current and last boyfriend attacked her with a knife from which she still showed the defensive scars on her arms. After a short hospital stay, she put herself in rehab and hadn’t done drugs other than occasional weed since. She moved to St. Pete, started school, one course at a time, and now danced to earn money instead of as a lifestyle. She’d have her degree in another year, and wouldn‘t miss stripping one bit.
Gar helped out occasionally with rent and tuition
payments, and would have gladly done more. Ten years ago,
Glenda would have taken him for every dime he
had. Her new-found sense of independence and self-worth
wouldn’t permit her to rely on friends such as
Gar, for anything other than companionship.
While they drank and caught up on their recent
lives, Gar never noticed the husky young man across the
horseshoe-shaped bar, who paid more attention
to him than to the semi-naked women soliciting him for lap dances.
Next in Saecula: Tom Bishop's Prive Army.
by Martin
Gresko
Interested in publishing
this manuscript?
Or to make comments,
CONTACT Martin Gresko at VGABONSUN@hotmail.com
See his biweekly
political column http://www.StPetePost.com
