***Brief Intro from the author. As I was getting ready for NaNoWriMo, I had 2 ideas that I had been bandying about for NaNoWriMo. Then, out of the blue I had an idea to write a P.I. story, about a secret society and other such shenanigans. I wanted to write something that set the tone for the main character, so I wrote up a Journal entry, where in she tells the conclusion to one of her own cases in her own words. It’s the perfect way to introduce the character along with her verbiage, attitude and quirks. I ended up after drafting this, outlining the whole story and this became the basis for my NaNoWriMo this year (which I successfully completed, I might add). So here it is, the birth of Gwendolyn Parker, Private Investigator extraordinaire! Enjoy!***
Gwendolyn Parker – Journal Entry, September 13, 8:09 AM
Holy hell! What a night. Just when you think that the human scum of the earth can’t slink any lower, well… well, then you have a night like tonight. I know that being a private investigator is not intended to be a glamorous or even an exceptionally well respected profession, it pays like hot buttered ass most of the time, and heaven knows that as a P.I. you don’t end up following the most honorable people on the planet, but this prick that I was tailing tonight had set the bar to somewhere just above the floor but yet fairly below my ankles. What a piece of human trash. All faith in humanity that I may have had has officially been lost.
Flashback to 3 AM this morning: it was a beautifully chilly night for a stakeout here in dreary ol’ New Haven, Connecticut. The stars and the moon, unencumbered by the clouds, shone a bright and enchanting light on the parking lot where I had set up my surveillance. I had the windows rolled down in my jet black Mini Cooper, lights out style with my Nikon SLR at the ready and a crucial jam by the Specials playing softly in the background. I had been hired by a Mrs. Crabtree to tail her old man, Jake Crabtree – a banker with a knack for spending their money on hidden expenses. He had a pattern that was easy enough to track, after his direct deposit went in he took $200 out via the old automated teller machine and then disappeared for a couple hours every other Friday. Smart money was on either drugs, gambling or prostitutes, and the smart money was almost always right. A hefty chunk of my cases were of the “surveillance of a loved one who was likely cheating and/or grossly deceiving their partner in some petty way” variety, it was unfortunate, but true. I also did background checks, insurance investigations, and civil cases here and there as well, but recently it had woefully been infidelity cases as far as the eye could see. Hell, I’ve even been known to work with the cops every now and then, but that was on exceptionally rare occasions as the local precinct hated P.I.s, especially me, but I’ve gone over this in this stupid journal… so many times. Too many times to count. Needless to say, I’m the precinct’s last resort.
So there I was, a few minutes after 3 in the morning, and things were looking good. Jakey-boy had ordered up trollop number next and they had settled in to this crummy little no-tell motel at the outskirts of town where I found myself camped in my car, waiting to snap a few photos and collect a check. Jake Crabtree was not the most handsome of men, certainly not ugly or repulsive, just not traditionally handsome. He was a tall fellow, easily 6′ 1″ or better, with an average build and thinning blonde hair, slicked back in a bootleg mafioso-like style, that was kept perhaps a smidgeon longer than it should have been. What he lacked in looks, he made up for in pizzazz, as he was dressed in a finely tailored suit, an expensive silk tie and drove a meticulously well maintained Lexus LX which was a gorgeous shade of Nightfall Mica (I had to google that shit, but apparently that’s a legitimate color that cars can be painted in). As for the street walker, she was a pretty little thing, and I do mean little. She looked to be about 5′ 2″ and maybe weighed 98 pounds soaking wet. She was very thin, not quite gaunt or unhealthy, but she was definitely on the precipice of unhealthiness. There were likely a smattering of drug abuse and other such lifestyle issues at play, which was unfortunate, as she was an uncommonly sweet looking lady. She had a handful of tattoos that were visible from her tank top and short shorts. They were visually appealing as they were mostly flowers and colorful designs of animals and whatnot. If my door decided to swing that way, I could see picking someone like her up at a bar, but alas… my door only swung open for men as of late and a only relatively small pool of them at that. Far too few humans, men or women, are worth the time anymore, but I digress…
Now, when I say that this motel was crummy, I mean it was shit nasty to the nth degree. We’re talking multicolored walls that were that way because of a lack of routine maintenance and general hygiene, and not by some twisted sort of artistic design. This was not wallpaper, this was the filth of humanity at its most disgusting. We’re talking about sheets that had visible signs of other discharges that had either not been thoroughly cleaned beforehand or were so plentifully left and in such volume in each and every room that they just wouldn’t, or possibly in fact couldn’t, be washed out anymore. Bottom line, the cure for cancer was probably growing underneath the toilets here, and you should never actually enter any of these rooms with anything less than a full blown hazmat suit on. Regardless of my opinions of the cleanliness or wholesomeness of the motel, I had a great vantage point from my Mini Coop, the lighting was good, and I had found the perfect angle to snap a few pics through an opening in the curtains. I had already documented his activities since leaving the office. I had GPS synchronized the photos of him with the girl going into motel room, and now all I needed was a few steamy pics of them consummating this unholy alliance, because the spouse always wants to see the hardcore proof. You know, because Mr. Crabtree entering a room that has been rented exclusively by the hour with a women, you know someone who has been confirmed to be a lady that is not his spouse, would apparently not be proof enough – Mrs. Crabtree’s words, not mine. This case was gonna be money in the bank! Easy peasy lemon squeezy… or at least it was supposed to be. I could hear the tell tale audible cues that indicated that bacon was in fact being made, but I couldn’t find any trace of it from the viewfinder on my camera. Somehow, they were either not on the bed, or only on the only portion of the bed that I couldn’t see from where I was.
I slinked quietly out of my car, camera in tow, and tip-toed gingerly to the window to see if I could finagle a better position to snap my payday (I know, I know… I shouldn’t be so giddy about getting paid off of someone else’s life falling apart, but times are tough for me and I really need this dough bad). I found my perfect perch for the photo shoot, and it was unfortunately perfect in that I could see everything… EVERYTHING, as it worked its way in and out and around and about! So much gross that I felt that I would need to squeegee my brain when I got back. I’ve never been into porn or voyeurism, because if it isn’t happening to me then what’s the point? Stimulation should be through one’s imagination or mutually shared in the physical act, not falsely stimulated by the watching of other people screw for money. But I digress again, again…
As I found this perfect spot, I stepped onto a small patch of loose rocks and lost my footing. Falling squarely on my ass, and as loudly as humanly fucking possible I might add. The scene hectically flew into bedlam as I had inadvertently mashed the flash button on my camera and then somehow began snapping a massive barrage of photos of the night sky, the flash lighting up the entire space around me at every last stop of the shudder – which felt like a million times after it was all said and done. I heard Mr. Crabtree holler, “What the hell,” disgruntled from having to get up from his passionate groaning. He tossed his side piece aside and looked out the window. I tried to silently roll myself up flush against the wall just below the window out of sight, but to no avail… he saw me as if I was the Statue of Liberty trying to hide in the middle of the freeway during rush hour traffic.
Next thing I knew, that stark raving naked lunatic swung the door to his motel room wide open and snarled, “Come here you little piece of shit!” I scrambled to my feet, and started snapping pictures of him and the naked lady as quickly as I could, it wasn’t optimal but it would have to do. In a panicked hurry to get the pics and run like the Roadrunner (beep, beep), I tripped myself up and fell down on my ass hard yet again, again. He had in his right hand a big ol’ tube of lube and he sloshed a plentiful helping onto his left hand, and with the accuracy of a Cy Young award winning pitcher threw that glob of sticky slick lubricant precisely onto my face. It splattered in an amazingly fully covering way across my face, over my eyes, into my hair, all over my lips, somehow in my ears and even somehow down my shirt and onto my cleavage. This was apparently the kind of lubricant that made you feel “sensations,” because it slapped me with an immense hotness at first, and then went oddly cool shortly thereafter. I was blinded, eyes totally burning, disoriented, totally grossed out, and completely unprepared for that hulking mountain of a nudely erect man to tackle me down to the ground. Once he had me pinned he tried to keep me down, but his hands were so slick that he essentially ended up putting that nasty lube just about any and everywhere he could get his hands on me. It was the equivalent of an exceptionally gross TSA inspection, and I was fighting him off as best as I could, still trying to catch my bearings after that puddle of yuck had landed on my face. I wouldn’t go so far as to call his attacks groping, because my wardrobe did not allow access to the parts of me that would interest the part of him that seemingly controlled him (and was rubbing itself all over me… thank God I had clothing as a barrier), but it was definitely awkward as fuck and certainly something that would make sleeping difficult for a while. Besides, he wasn’t trying to be sexual, he was trying to get me to talk, as he kept repeatedly asking things in between slaps, like “Who in the hell are you? Why in the fuck are you here?”
Managing to wipe a majority of the lube off of my eyes and onto my jacket, I wriggled my way out from under him. He gave chase and tackled me down again, now on top of me from behind. No longer able to apply any more lube on to my personal personage (perhaps he had fully spent that load: buh-dum-tish! Also ew to the fucking max), he had resorted to pulling my hair and calling me a litany of horribly un-lady like names, including my least favorite: the dreaded “C” word. I would have been offended, but frankly there were worse things in play than some poorly chosen words being thrown my direction. That’s when things went from poop to crap as he slapped the camera out of my hand and on to the concrete sidewalk next to us. He then grabbed the camera and repeatedly bashed it into the aforementioned concrete until it was an unrecognizable mess of photographic machinery, and at the same time he had rendered it wholly inoperable. There went $1500 down the lubed up shitter. It was the saddest thing ever watching my beautiful Nikon getting smashed to bits, but it gave me another golden opportunity to slip out from underneath the naked lunatic that had been dominating this pathetically one-sided confrontation.
I hopped onto my feet, quickly took my jacket off and used it to wipe as much of that lubricated shit off of my face as possible. Then I tossed my jacket onto his face and lunged fist first into his jaw. I threw another bone into his cranium and yet a third as he finally got the jacket off of his swollen mug. He was frazzled and fighting to keep his footing… this was my grand chance to finish this nitwit off for good and that’s when things went from crap to shit – a naked, glitter made upped prostitute clotheslined me and sent me right back to ground. My lungs withdrew all of the air that they had and I gasped like an asthmatic on death’s door. She really clocked me hard, and was way stronger than she initially appeared to be. Dirt, sweat, lube, blood and glitter flew everywhere as I caught my breath and went into full blown catfight mode with this dizzy bitch. Just as things were just about to go my way with little miss glitter fairy fluff, Mr. Crabtree found his second wind and jumped back into the fray.
And there I was, glitter and lube all over my everything – even in places it should have never been able to reach, in the middle of a motel parking lot, getting ready to try and beat down 2 extremely naked and exceptionally angry folks. My evidence was toast, shattered to pieces all over the sidewalk. Frankly, under any ordinary circumstance I would have just walked away from this, but this was far from ordinary, and I was way too pissed off to let this go. The lady escort was on the ropes, so I gave her a solid haymaker that sent her down to the concrete and then reversed around a punch back into Jakey-boy’s sourpuss. He took the hit well and countered by throwing a fist into my gut and then kicking my left leg out from under me. The leg kick was a dirty move, not only because it knocked me off my feet again, but because I had broken that leg about a little less than a year back, and it had never felt fully recovered since. Now, it hurt like all hell, and I was absolutely done with this shit, so I hopped up and hit this asshole with my patented one-two maneuver. One perfectly placed blow to the cock and/or groinal region, and a follow up blow to the nose as they doubled over in pain. Brief aside – if you have never punched a man in the erect penis before, it is a surreal experience, one that you will never forget. I would normally feel bad about resorting to a low blow like this, except for the fact that this man was a complete and utter piece of shit that had been rubbing that exact same cock all of my body just moments beforehand. Speaking of which, why was this man still throbbing hard? Must have been the little blue pill – it works wonders, I guess. However, the cock punch that then turned into an uppercut to the nasal cavity went BOOM! And just like that the battle was over. Jake was down, and so was little miss glitter fairy fluff, and that’s when things went from shit to diarrhea: the cops had showed up, and in fact had gotten there just in time to only see the part where I beat both of their naked asses down to the ground. Because of course that’s all they saw.
Clearly, I got cuffed and sent downtown. Jake and the trollop got dressed and brought in as well. The cops laid into me with a hundred questions, all of which I answered truthfully, but they weren’t buying it. I think when I told them that I was P.I., they went out of their way to make sure that it took quite a bit longer for me, both in processing and in the interrogation. They made me produce a proof of license to be a practicing Private Investigator, as well as throwing me in the lock up for what felt like forever. It was alright, I suppose. It gave me time to work somethings out in my mind. To meditate in a manner that allowed me to enhance my calm. Also, I met this gal named Gina, and she was one of them free spirit types in for drug possession. Another pretty little thing, I suppose a lot of attractive ladies with low self esteem turned to prostitution for drug money, or perhaps just to make ends meet. It’s not really my place to judge. I have nothing against the selling of sexual activities per se, I just likely wouldn’t be caught dead engaging and/or paying for it. She offered to eat my pussy for $30 dollars right there in the cage. I have to admit, the offer caught me way off guard, and was oddly flattering considering the I visual state that I was in at that moment. I politely declined, and she started chatting up the next person in hopes of scoring some kind of monetary arrangement. It seemed so brazen to watch her work the lock up, but then again as a starving worker myself, I understood the necessity of needing to get paid.
The pork factory released me around 7 AM as Mr. Crabtree had decided not to file any formal charges against me, and ultimately they were just trying to make my life abnormally miserable for an extended while. Normally, I would have called my best friend Peter to pick me up, but I was in no state to be seen be friends. Although, I’m not sure friends really sums up Peter accurately, more of a friends with benefits, which I think would be even worse. How could anybody who found me sexually attractive on a regular basis still find me sexy in my current state? There were chaotic smatterings of blood, dirt, glitter, and dried up lubricant all over my face, hair, chest, arms, hands and clothes. My hair looked as if it had been styled by a bald 90 year old man with palsy. My clothes were torn, soiled, and otherwise putrid to look at. I don’t believe that I had ever found my personal appearance to be trapped in such shit shape in all of my life. I grabbed my belongings from the desk sergeant and headed out into the city. My left leg was on fire, but I hoped a decent bit of sleep would heal that right up.
I grabbed a taxi, did the whole “it’s been a rough night” routine, and asked to be driven to the no-tell motel. I paid the driver to wait, as I went back to the scene of the Saturday night lube wrestling incident and looked for my camera. Fortunately, the cleaning standards for the outer appearance of the motel matched the standards for the rooms and my busted Nikon was still right where Mr. Crabtree had left it. It was a long shot, but I was hoping that the SD Card had not been damaged… and hot damn! It was still intact. I jumped back in to the taxi and went back to my loft.
The central air in my loft didn’t work for shit, and frankly I was in need of a bit of an effigy, and so I burned the clothes that I was wearing in the fireplace. that would heat my living space up nicely, and if I looked at the flames with enough effort, I could have sworn that I saw bits of glitter floating upwards almost like teeny tiny baby fireworks. It was the little things that mattered the most. The pain in my left leg was disconcerting, so I slammed 4 extra strength Tylenol down with a glass of water and waited for a bit for the relief to kick in (spoiler warning: it never did). I took a shower, and washed myself from head to toe, twice. Then I drew up a nice relaxing bath and lounged about in a stew of oil, honey, vanilla extract and bubbles, lots and lots of bubbles. The smoothly seductive jazz sounds of Michael Bublé filled the bathing area as I allowed the bath to put my mind and body at ease. I could have spent the rest of the day in the bath, but all good things must pass, and I had at least one more question I needed answered.
I dried off and wrapped my hair in a towel, as a limped nakedly across my loft to the computer. My left leg still felt like a big ol’ Mack truck had run over it. I probably should see a doctor, but it would have to wait. I placed the SD Card into my iMac and crossed my fingers as the computer attempted to read the contents of the memory card. The brief moments that it takes a personal PC to read a memory card can sometime feel like an eternity, especially when you have so much riding on it. Then lo and behold, a folder opened up and all of the images were there, including some very nice shots of the starry sky, but even better was one crystal clear full on shot of Mr. Crabtree and Jane Doe engaged in some hanky-panky from right before I fell down. Jakey-boy’s profile could be perfectly made out from the photo, and all was now well with the universe. The shot must have gone off as I lost my footing, and just before the flash got turned on. Talk about falling into your luck! And that was that, I had the evidence and was going to get paid. Thankfully I had not just gotten lubed, molested, glittered, beaten and thrown into jail for nothing. I can’t say that things had worked out in a great way, but a win was a win, no matter how ugly it was obtained. I emailed Mrs. Crabtree the damning evidence along with a bill, and hoped that she would remit the payment in full ASAP. I accepted online payments, even PayPal now (I know, how progressive of me), which has made bill collecting much simpler and efficient. I also noticed an email indicating that I had a missed call from an unknown number. I’ll have to check on that later today… maybe after I catch at least a little sleep. That’s if I’m feeling up to doing anything at all later.
I hobbled my busted ass into the kitchen area and grabbed a glass chalet from a hanging rack. I poured myself a nice Ironstone Old Vine Zinfandal, a sweet little red wine that helps me to unwind on those especially trying days, like today. I let my hair down and left the wet towel on the island as I left the kitchen and made my way to the fireplace. I sat there on the throw rug, nude, soaking up the heat and gleefully sipping my wine. I basked in the encouraging heat for a bit, and tried to let go of the bullshit of the day. Nearly an hour later, as I type this just before heading to bed, I fully understand why it is important to keep a document of the crazy ins and outs of my life and my profession, because the brain is fragile. It forgets, and days like today need to be remembered. Not every day is one for the books, but today most definitely was. I know I should write in this journal every night and stuff, but let’s be honest, I’ll be doing good to type in this infernal thing once a week. Who am I kidding? I’m doing good if I type in this silly thing once a month. I suppose I’ll be back the next time something exciting happens… or not, I’m fickle like that.
