Man or Wimp?

What makes one man a MAN, another a wimp? Choice, I guess. 

Well, it was a choice with me, I decided upon a wimpy life if it meant fewer bruises and broken bones. Was I successful, not in the slightest? 

   I thought hanging about with girls would best achieve my aim and it did, and didn’t. The girls tolerated me, the boys beat me up. By the time I was fifteen years of age I was able to make my own plaster casts for the small breakages. Actually, it led me to my unconventional and unofficially recognised status as Doc Jones. I was the ‘who’ you should first consult if a session went awry. 

   I became skilled in chiropractic, osteopathy and dislocations in every joint on the human body. I could fix almost anything and was paid handsomely for my expertise, as well as for my heralded discretion.

   Politicians, judges and such-like put their trust in my stuumness. I suspect my discretion would make me almost impervious to the strictures and implementation of the so-called justice system. It was a case of never having a need to resort to using my acquaintance's services. Discretion is a commodity sought and insisted upon, even in the most extreme circumstances, such as an inconvenient death. 

I am a small man. I’m wiry and tough and have provided myself with an expertise making me only fearful of a giant of a man bearing an iron bar or being able to render me helpless at a  distance. 

Yes, I have been shot, but it was accidental, a penalty of not taking enough care whilst teaching a would-be Dominatrix ways in which to protect herself.

 I am grateful that there are some spots of the body that although can be painful to experience a bullet passing through, do not lead to serious incapacitation. I knew I wouldn’t be one that would use this woman’s services as a client, but I could, and did, train many a Dominatrix to become skilled and prized to well-heeled gentry as well as able to protect herself.

I didn’t feel any great need to marry. If I wanted to get my ‘rocks off,’ I had plenty of willing friends able to turn a trick or two for a friend in apparent need. Kids, I could do without when I witnessed the antics my ‘Domies’ had to put up with to keep them in Iphones and labelled gear. Most of them seemed like an ungrateful pack of shits and needing a Domie whip with the velvet removed. 

However, I have been known to babysit one or two of my girl’s offspring when domestic duties clashed with putting napkins on a politician or chastising a judge locked up in a cupboard or even ‘Under The Stairs’ like Harry Potter. I mentioned to one of my ‘Trannie’ friends to put me to the garotte, or preferably a bullet if I start asking for these kinds of services and it not being a joke.

But, an arch-nemesis had turned up upon my landscape to blight me and my friend’s lives; a form of unofficial officialdom.

However, I may be tough and have great connections, but I’m in a jam. I’ve been told to cooperate, or frankly, be killed. It wasn’t an idle threat. When governments of any country look to safety concerns, even the smallest and weakest of them will keep people on tap that pay little heed to the niceties of their stated aims of governance. With the big players, there is an army of these individuals who will treat the breaking of necks as a meditation technique. A pair of these unsmiling gentlemen said they needed my help, and to consider my continued ability to carry on breathing air, as my wages. I didn’t kick them out, which I’m sure I could, but listened to their proposal.

I was to be a spy. 

Now there is nothing particularly original about that. They were aware of a lot of potential protection I had and resorted to the bold strategy of indicating to me that it was either helping them or living my life in a heavily armoured tank 24/7 and not sleeping. 

I was told I could be shot, blown up, poisoned, and that's just for starters. My friends and clients might even have a drone grace them with a missile aimed from three thousand miles away. Their argument was very compelling and I folded like a Japanese fan. Or at least, I apparently folded like said wind maker.

I’m a mild-mannered man, or at least was in spite of often being surrounded by the sounds of whips and other methods of chastisement. But now, I felt an involuntary shift in my psyche, I moved to the ‘dark side.’ For the next few days, my thinking was directed to the clandestine section of government and their possible vulnerabilities.

I’m sure the Prime Minister has very little awareness of his extracurricular secretive side of government. I’m also pretty sure that he doesn’t authorise money to be passed to people he is not officially aware of in large brown envelopes. No, it will be a treasury handout under some bland heading for the distribution of funds to starving kids with ingrowing toenails or some such label.  

Madame Crystal, who hailed from the upper reaches of Westminster was my very closest friend and was Susan to me, made herself available for some straight talking.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to kill them.”

Susan screamed with delight at my absurd solution.

“Oh, you had me going just for a moment. I’ve never ever seen you raise your hand in serious anger in all the time I’ve known you. Come on, what are you going to do about it?”

“I told you, kill them. Now let me put you in the picture. I have no doubt, and you should have no doubt either, that they will have no compunction in killing me and also you if they deem it necessary. Our other friends could get the chop too if they thought it would motivate me.”

When Susan realised I was deadly serious, she started to walk around the room in a degree of agitation.

“Let me go on. If I went along with their proposals, my life as a desirable way to spend my wakeful hours would be over, and I’m not going to put up with that. These bastards are not after saving the country, no, they want to be able to influence some of our clients to short-cut their processes.”

“You could go away, Archie. You must have a heap stashed away. You could go anywhere. We’ve got friends that can get you a new passport. You’d be safe. I might even join you later.”

I’d already decided that I wouldn’t run. In fact, I felt a stirring inside of me that here was a game that I could get to enjoy. 

I realised that these intimidating pricks thought I would buckle. They didn’t realise they’d messed with the wrong guy. I’d have their guts for garters. 

Of the next few weeks, I alerted the influential clients that the ‘Government Blackhats’ were after them, but I was going to do something about it. When these clients weren’t in the throes of whatever passion their belief systems dictated to them, they recognised the vulnerable position they were in. They listened attentively and receptively and assured me that they would look out for me if they could.

Most government departments were jealous and protective of their domains, and I was doubly sure that the clandestine ‘divisions’ even more so. However, my potential to be blackmailed about my friends also was an advantage to me.

Due to their positions, I got to glean information about the clandestine elements as part of their job. I drained them of this intelligence which was freely given when they realised what was at stake.

I got to know where they tended to congregate and sometimes train. I even was able to get access to one of their computers that had been left in a judge’s residence. The ‘Black Hats’ maybe psychotic in some of their behaviours, but they also made mistakes. One of the common failures is that they thought they were unknown, so didn’t apparently see me tailing many of them. They certainly didn’t fear me.

The original two men that had first arrived to ‘intimidate’ me returned with the first demand to provide them with voice and image recordings of two judges they needed to lean on. In a slightly cringing demeanour I said I would obey, but could this be the last request from them. They laughed heartily at this. Possibly, it was the most humorous thing asked of them in some time. They left in good humour after having given me a phone by which I could contact them. I followed them in their car and they didn’t appear to notice me as they were in animated conversation with each other.

I knew three locations which were favoured by them, but this time they parked outside of a pub. It was an easy matter to put inside their car a remotely controlled device that enabled me to be able to release a gas that would put them to sleep. I waited to activate it when they were on a deserted road leading to one of their training facilities. Fortunately, they didn’t crash but slowly came to a stop. This particular pair should have lain off the grog. I mean you just can’t go around seeking to get cooperation by threats. Especially without doing thorough homework on whom they are trying to bully. 

I jocularly thought to warm the Treasury Dept that the discreet funds they were issuing to ‘Those who should not be named,’ needed an unofficial eye cast upon them for a whole section that did not exist, certainly, they now did not exist for real.

They must have been a very secretive section, as you would think other colleagues should have been acquainted to some degree with their strategy, but apparently weren’t. I was able to get rid of a whole ‘non-existing’ section. The other ‘non-existing’ divisions had apparently no clue who had eliminated their inglorious colleagues in spirit.

I was soon able to inform my girls and their ‘precious’ ones could carry on beating and potty training, et cetera, without restraint.

A couple of years ago, a judge and I were telling each other long-winded ‘shaggy dog’ stories when he mentioned a particularly sleazy individual had sidled up to him and hinted that his judgeship was going to become tenuous unless he favoured a certain individual that would come up before him. Unfortunately for him, he ‘slipped’ on some concrete stairs and the judge has since been left in peace to wear a diaper and pontificate on the bench, without harassment.

I think I would have to be a serial killer who confessed his killings on television to be convicted through our court processes. Not from fear, but from the sheer gratefulness of my friends.