short story: POLYMORPHIC

 

REPUTATIONS ARE EARNED BY DEEDS.

It wasn't that she turned into a vamp on weekends. It wasn't that he was a hell raiser - the proverbial son of Satan.

She just had a reputation as a slut and an extended number of guys had benefitted from that, as had she herself. Lots of mutual joy, pleasure and happiness. Is there anything wrong in mutual joy, pleasure and happiness?

But her second life, the one that nobody talked about, the one that didn't make good headlines with the gossiping crowd, was diametrically opposite. So which was it? Was she this or was she that? Or maybe both of them - all of that? I'll leave it up to you to decide, but keep in mind that there are always two sides to every story. From a psychological point of view, it'll be interesting to see which side you choose:

Monday to Friday she's a partner in a law firm specializing in criminal and corporate law. Monday to Friday is high pressure, tight deadlines and plenty of stress. It's hair in a bun, power outfits and spending time in supreme court. It's dinner with clients but always high stakes. Business dinner - not social gatherings. Dinner sounds nice but millions of dollars and potential prison sentences on the line. Immense pressure and expectations, It's sleepless nights, often entire days on end. It was pain killers en masse and then a 180 to sleeping pills. It's life on the top...and it's bloody cold on the top. Board room meetings non-stop. Presentations, evaluations, expectations coming like rapid fire. A never-ending life in a pressure cooker. Thousands of documents, notes and pages every month. Non-stop. The wheel always turning and if you don't get out of the way, you'll be crushed to death.

The first husband didn't last long. Police reports and domestic abuse. Both directions, they said. It was black eyes and bottles broken on his head. The second one beat the first one by six months. That's when she made the choice that life is better alone.

So after a week's worth of hard and relentless work, she goes out on weekends with her girlfriends. They find a nice restaurant, have some good food and some wine. Later on, if they feel like it, maybe a bar and a few more drinks and some dancing and if the dancing is good, maybe they'll take the dancing from vertical to horizontal position, in a suitable enviroment, providing the estrogen is flowing ad libitum. Estrogen always decides whether the beaver gets pelted or not, that weekend.

So whether a slut or just a healthy sexual appetite, whether the ultimate professional or a wrecked workaholic, that's all up to you to decide. Just remember; there are always two sides to every story.

And as for him? Well, despite his good Catholic upbringing - or maybe because of it - who knows, the religious train derailed early on. It came to look more like Lac Megantic than a young teen trying to find his way through life.

It started out early when he tried to pimp his first girlfriend to his friends at the time. At 18 came the tattoos and his first "Hog". Tats that quicly covered every sq. cm on his body, only to be followed by steep lessons on various "substances". With the Hog came the lifestyle changes he deemed "required" and he learned quickly that it's more beneficial to sell than to consume the various substances. A lot of money to be made in peddling and he had a few "friends" from school he could start out with. But when those friends get pissed and revengeful with the "useless shit" he sold them, it's better to be prepared for vendetta and what better way to be prepared than to arm youself?

He enmassed an amazing array of weaponry and that didn't go unnoticed with the local gangs and then he was in. Only one problem with joining the gangs; there's an "initiation process". Baptism by fire, if you will.

His initiation process was fairly simple, according to "Weasel", the top of the pyramide: Find an animal in the wild, shoot it at point blank and hang it from a tree. Poor coyote. His first real hit was on an opposing gang member. He had the choice of the gang member himself or a real life family member of his. He figured there was more prestige in the gang member himself. That one gave him 4 years in jail, but in jail he came in "R" rated and left very well educated as an "XXX" rating in the crime world.

Once out, he actually tried to fly below the radar. He even found a nice girlfriend and had a daughter. But gangs don't really had an "opt out clause" and they quickly found him and made it clear to him that he didn't really have a choice: "Skunk" is in town, and he's gonna be dead before he drives himself over the cliffs and crashes the exploding car into the valley below, all evidence perishing in the fire.

But Skunk's and Weasel's "family" isn't dumb either. He came home one day and found the daughter dead on the living room floor, with "a little message" for him. That one broke him.

He went to the police and made a deal: All information for a reduced sentence and a "new life, new ID" in a far away corner of the country.  They had one piece of advice to him, though: "Tats don't lie. Even with a new identity, somewhere else, you are still identifiable". Then off to the "educational facility" again for two more years. When on his bunk, he was accompanied by Freud, Darwin & Dostoevsky. He used the pain of losing his daughte to power his way forward, though many were the nights where he wept for hours in the dark, reliving it all in agony. Her picture on his wall became his little impromptu altar. 

On his day of release, it was straight to "the printer" for documents, the plastic surgeon for a new face and the airport for a ride to...a place where he would likely never be found. Or hopefully? He never "found God" while inside. Or even Mohammed, for that matter. Despite they both like to hang out in prisons, it seems. He found something much more precious, valuable and imporant. He found himself. He found the guy the really, trule is...inside.

The next 20 years he spent in a small town, far away from temptation. He had a small garage where fixed and maintained any kind of engine for any kind of purpose. He took care of his community, participated actively. He fixed people's cars, bikes, boats, ATV's, ski-doo's, tractors, refrigerators, compressors, microwaves, you name it. If it was broken or something just needed tweaking - if something "wasn't right", he was the go-to guy. He became very popular and an integral part of the fabric of the community. He enjoyed the spectacular scenery surrounding the community and he liked to go hunting and fishing. Often he would come home with fresh meat that he would share with the community in general and the elderly in particular. In the winter time, he was the community snow plow. Never short on good deeds...or praise from his community.

Guys like that quickly attract the attention of single girls from the community and surroundings areas. He resisted for a long time, because the pain of losing his daughter was still buring like a fire inside him. Every day was like sticking your head and your heart into the live flames. They say time heals, but at this rate it would take a thousand years and a thousand years would be a "quick fix". He knew that inside, he was doomed to spend the rest of his life on the bonfire.

Still, she was hard to resist and she didn't give up easily. She told him flat out that she didn't care about his past that he had managed to keep a very tight lid on so far. She only cared about the future. "You can't change your past but you can charge your future" were her words, without even knowing what had been or what was to come. "Live in the now, the present. Enjoy every day you have. That's all that matters. The now. The present. Tomorrow is built on what's happening today. Tomorrow today will be history and tomorrow will be the present". He knew she was right. It was just...He was scared.

Now, they might be baby steps, and they certainly were. But if you take enough of them, you will eventually get there. Eventually! Slowly! Very slowly! But with baby steps, you lower the risk of stumbling and hurting yourself. Slowly happiness started building up. The kind of happiness that comes from within. If you are careless enough, it might even go to your head and manifest itself as a state of mind. That's the best, if not only, kind of happiness.

The following spring, on a beautiful sunny day, he was asked by an unfamiliar face if he could come with him to the lake and have a look at his boat engine; he wanted to go fishing but couldn't get the engine to work and being an iboard, it's not like he could just rip it out of the boat and bring it in, the way you do with an outboard. "I'll pay you for your trouble and share my catch with you". He agreed.

As he was down on his knees, looking down into the pit and trying to figure out what was wrong with the engine, he heard the unfamiliar face behind him: " Nice tattoo you got there...the snake around your neck. Haven't I seen that one before, somewhere"? Then he heard a gun being cocked behind him. You know...Tats don't lie.