Pimps, Junkies & Strippers….

Jesus, I need a better caliber of friends…

Busy? I bet you are, or were or will be in a few minutes. Moments to ourselves – they’re rapidly becoming endangered, the “wired, always on” atmosphere permeates everything we do in what has become not just the information age but the information age on steroids. The original information age began in the late 20th century, relatively recently – however – those beginnings seem closer to cuneiform on stone tablet then what we’re faced with today, advances & technology flying at us every day……  Time for us, time to decompress, relax, reflect are by their very rarity, crucially important. The sheer volume of information we are expected to process daily, makes it imperative we set aside some time to file what needs filing, throw out what needs throwing out and refine our mental to-do list.

Once you get through the initial sorting wave, evaluating the information, often – what comes next is our mind jumps to what needs to done, what’s next – give it a bit more time, and it will eventually exhaust itself – you’ve addressed the present, planned out or at least made a rough mental note of what needs doing in the future and what happens next  – is, you start remembering, you end up going over the past, the last few days, weeks – whatever. What interests me, is when all that brainy busy-work is over and your mental hummingbird slows down… then where do you go – what do you think about?

For me, no matter what was on my mind, when things get truly quiet, I start – I guess the word is reflect, but I’m not so sure if it’s actual reflection or something more along the lines of watching a comfortable old movie, one you’ve seen so many times you’ve lost count, yet always invariably end up watching one more time. The place I always end up…  what old movie do I watch……..  it’s back in the 70’s, when I was a Cop in Chicago. Always right back to one case in particular, it wasn’t the one that got away, not my white whale. It took months of solid police work, grinding out the details, following every seamy, distasteful lead and leaning hard on my snitches – but I cracked it and a lot of people ended up doing serious time. When all was said and done my investigation led to the arrest of well over 40 people in what ended up being an international sting with simultaneous arrests in the US, Germany, Japan, Holland, Thailand and Chad.

I won’t lie – it felt damn good to see all that scum wiped from the bathroom wall of humanity. The countless hours I spent drinking bad coffee, eating stale donuts and day old sandwiches, and peeing into an old coffee cup in the back of disgusting van that reeked of sweat and shame – well, to me… to me it was worth it. During the course of the investigation there were many firsts, it was the only time I used my service revolver in the line of duty. I was shot at, run off the road and ultimately forced into the witness protection program, moved here to Canada. Only now, nearly years later do I feel comfortable talking about it, I just got word the last remaining person I brought down – had finally died, good riddance, say hello to Hell for me.

The 70’s were a different time and anyone not from that period wouldn’t believe half the stuff I told them. So I won’t bother, I’ll give you the bullet points and let you make up your own mind –  frankly, I could care less if you believe me, the things I saw were too horrible, noone should have to live with things seen that cannot be unseen, I’ve made my peace with God and I alone will have to deal with those demons – I still have trouble with the full extent of cruelty I witnessed. It’s a small consolation that eventually I put a stop to it, it still haunts me, the souls destroyed before I was able to topple the whole twisted mess in on itself.

The Olympics were in Montreal in 1976 and Nadia Comaneci were setting them on fire for Romania – it eventually came out that most of the Eastern Block Nations including the East Germans, Chinese and Bulgarians had been taking little girls at the age of  2 or 3 and started training them, hard, and in so doing they had essentially created gymnastic machines – robots,  – children in chronological age only, incapable of making mistakes. These poor kids, having been drilled thousands upon thousands of hours with instruction and practice  – they were flawless and the programs paid off in spades with them virtually sweeping every medal there was to be won, Nadia was the first Gymnast to ever score a perfect 10 in competition. It was a triumph for both the  countries and the individual pioneers of that intensive training regime. As with all things – eventually someone, somewhere, will find a way to pervert it for personal gain.

So it was, me and my partner, Pepper, were out on our usual patrol watching over the human garbage bordering on little Spain, when from out of nowhere this little baby comes running out of an alley, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs, covered in what looked like glitter and naked except for tiny thigh high red leather boots. You’re damn right, my cop sense was sending out pings like a chinese phone book. We managed to get “Boots” into the car (she wasn’t even old enough to put a coherent sentence together, much less tell us her name) so I called her boots and it stuck. I wrapped her tiny body in my coat and she took a liking to me, wouldn’t let Pepper anywhere near here – which was odd – cause I wasn’t known on the the street for being particularly nurturing, unless you count losing your teeth to the business end of my fist nurturing…. But Boots would have none of it and clung to me like a fat man with his last danish.

I’ll spare you the grisly details and you can thank me later for not making you blow chow all over your shoes. What it was, was some major league creeps had been stockpiling babies like chord wood and with a nod to the gymnasts from the Commie countries, had the gumption to figure, that if it worked for the athletes, why not start training babies to be professional strippers. Once the babies were technically perfect and had been mercilessly drilled with countless routines and hour upon hour of dancing to bad 80’s hair metal bands, until they had it down to an eerie,  zombie-like science, only then did they “graduate” and were shipped out all over the world to keep the money flowing into the grubby hands in greasy dives, and red light districts all over the world. If you’ve been to a strip bar in the 80’s or 90’s you’ve seen the vacant stare, and witnessed, the stripper babies.

I can’t say for sure how many kids were shipped out before I was able to shut the whole thing down – but one things for sure, no more would little baby professional strippers stoke the fires of degenrate sickos all over the world. Not on my watch Sunshine……

So that’s my dark place, that’s where I go when I find myself reminiscing about opportunities lost, lives saved and the creeps I’ve put on ice. Oh and what happened to Boots? ……..  we’ve been married for 20 years. She safe now….still has a hard time when we take our kids to the playground and she gets near the monkey bars… but she’s working on it… I’ve only got one picture left from those investigations, all the evidence, everything went up in a swirling, angry column of smoke under “mysterious” circumstances – the case files, the video surveillance, the phone taps, the witness reports all gone, so don’t bother trying to verify the story…. it ‘ll just leave a bad taste in your mouth…..

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Here the "babies" wear onesies, to protect their delicate skin from pole chaffing....due to the hour upon hour they were forced to "work the pole"

Have a GREAT Day.