When I park my Ford Explorer in front of the River Room in Baton Rouge, I really don’t have any particular expectations and little hope about my night in this city. So far my plan is to get cheap food, a couple of beers in a bar and sleep in the car cause I’m completely broke at the time and cannot even afford a shabby motel.
The little hope I have as to the future of the evening is confirmed when I land at the Draft House (now the ‘Bengal Tap Room’). The bar is empty, offers a so-called international choice of beers, a dirty pool table, and a corner reserved for live music, completely empty, nothing that hold me here for long.
After a few beers and driven by the hunger, I end up in a fancy Japanese restaurant. The place looks cool but it also looks expensive and I don’t picture myself eating alone at one of their tables. I can see two girls who are sharing cocktails and sushi at the bar though. I should probably go and seat next to them, order sushis, sake, and try and chat with them. Cannot hurt…
A few minutes later I’m chatting with them, talking about life in Louisiana, about my travels, bla bla bla.. The girls are cool and we decide to spend the rest of the evening together.
After dinner, we go and enjoy some cocktails at the River Room (yep, just right in front of where I have parked the SUV). With the help of alcohol, I gradually realize that these two girls seem to be very interested in me, and not only in my stories. When I say with the help of alcohol, I speak for them. The more we drink, the more I can feel them letting go… the way they look at me, the way they laugh when I say something just a little bit funny, the way they play with their hair… some signs don’t lie. You might think, “Cool man, go ahead, turn them on for a threesome and go home with those two chicks!”
But to be honest, I’m not really attracted to any of them, not even enough to consider it ok and lower my usual standards just because it’s a threesome. Not even the fact that I have nowhere to sleep, nor the fact that I had originally planned to have a quick dinner and an early night’s sleep to hit the road early the next day, motivate me to go home with them. Thing is, now that I have warmed up with a few drinks, I wanna keep pushing and see what the Baton Rouge night holds. The devil in me taking over.
Baton Rouge is not full of cool bars though, to say the least, and we finally get to this place (not sure if it was a bar or a restaurant), where about sixty people are dressed up and celebrate Halloween early (we are on 29th October 2015). Unfortunately, we are quickly told that the bar is about to close and I’m starting to reconsider my options.
But as we are heading towards the exit, I catch Kelly’s* eyes. Kelly appears to me like a glimmer of hope, like a rose among brambles, like a lighthouse on a stormy night. I find her very attractive. Rather tall, she wears a multicolor unicorn hat that brings out her big blue eyes and covers her long blond hair. Her face is beautiful, her smile devastating. She wears a black outfit that reveals her long and beautiful legs. I can only see her now. We make eye contact, I smile at her, she smiles back, and my evening perspectives change radically. I feel like I am discovering a whole new world full of hope and better days! I approach her without the slightest hesitation. Kelly is responding, easy-going and we’re having a nice and funny first chat. Just the two of us. Until she introduces me to someone approaching… “This is my husband Tommy*!”. Fuck! A husband… Wasn’t really expecting this.
Tommy has an incredible look, he’s wearing holed jeans, a brilliant and multicolors disco shirt, black sunglasses, a blonde wig, and enormous leopard-skin shoes with huge transparent heels that are filled with water and plastic flowers.
I’m quite disappointed by this encounter I’m not gonna lie, but on the positive side, I can perceive their craziness through the few exchanges we have. They clearly differ from the rest of the crowd. And I like that. I’ve always been attracted and fascinated by unusual personalities and a touch of madness. I definitely perceive them as the trouble makers in town and I feel like I should stick with them cause crazy shits could happen.
So when the lights of the bar light up, as a way to say “Everybody fuck off!”, and Kelly invites me to follow her and Tommy in another bar, along with my two girl friends (cannot remember their names), I obviously say yes!
The two girls don’t seem to be super motivated though, and they make it clear it’s not a good idea to follow THIS couple, who they seem to consider bad people, into THIS bar, that they judge shitty, and they suggest I can join them and have a drink at their apartment instead. But I insist and they eventually decide to follow me in the bar. I have to admit this place is pretty bad (I think it’s a wine bar called Blend now but must have been a different name and vibe at the time). It’s full of hicks and the music is awful. Yeah, but here you go, Kelly is here and I feel like I should stay around a bit longer. I mean, I don’t know but there is definitely something happening here. Kelly is staying with me the whole time, she’s pretty responsive to all the bullshit I say to her, Tommy doesn’t seem to care much, they’re not wearing wedding rings, and I haven’t seen them kissing once. Curiosity, and the devil on my left shoulder, push me to wait and see what happens.
So when the two girls tell me they’re going home but I can join them later and spend the night with them, I thank them for the invitation and take their number, more than happy to consider this option as my plan B. Sorry girls but Kelly gets the upper hand here.
Shortly afterwards, I’m sitting on the terrace of a night restaurant (sort of), chatting with Kelly, when a redneck interrupts us to tell us about his life and a whole lot of uninteresting things, until Kelly clearly tells him to fuck off, which the lad didn’t like.
That’s when Tommy, who was standing not far from us, steps in and tells him to stop bothering us and get out of the way, to which the hick responds with a huge right hook to the jaw. Boom! That was a big one, trust me!
Chad takes the right hook, backs up a step or two, and I can see his facial expression change with a mixture of hate and control. I see two options in his eyes, either he slaughter the other guy by crushing his face on the sidewalk, or he doesn’t even react. Black or white situation here. No room for grey. Things escalate quickly with the other people around and it’s a big mess. Much too many people involved and I have no clue who is with who! During the ‘brawl’ I can hear Kelly telling another woman that Tommy cannot fight because he’s on parole and he risks going back to prison if he makes a mistake. Pretty important information for the rest of the story…
Once calm is restored, after only a few minutes, I see Kelly and Tommy reappear, whom I thought had disappeared, and Kelly offers me to follow them to continue partying with them, after having apologized for the incident. This couple intrigues me immensely! I like their ‘rock-n-roll’ and ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude. So I decide, again, to accept their offer, and I jump in their car without even asking where we’re heading next.
It’s a long story I know, but the serious stuff starts now, trust me!
After at least 15 minutes of driving, some of which was spent on the highway, I realize we are now completely out of town and are entering the bayou (slow-moving creek or swampy section of a river or a lake, typical of the Louisiana landscape).
Picture from Nicole Herrero (https://unsplash.com/photos/GIVNfPMfcjU)
As we are chatting about this and that, Kelly suddenly turns to me, staring at me with a frosty gaze that I hadn’t seen before, and goes:
“You know what’s gonna happen now? We’re gonna have fun and play with you, then we’re gonna kill you, and we’ll throw your body in the bayou.”
Needless to say, there was a moment of silence. A moment during which I replayed the evening in my head, the ease with which Kelly had let me approach and seduce her, the fight, Tommy’s parole, the two of them looking completely out of their mind… What a fucking moron! How can I get myself into such situations?!
But I’m in their car, in the middle of nowhere and I have to figure out how to deal with this situation. Panicking is definitely the worst thing I can do.
And Kelly continues…
“Seriously, are you looking for problems? You get into a car with us without knowing who we are, in a city and a country you don’t even know. You’re playing with fire here”.
I decide to consider it a bad joke and play the humor card by trying to turn the situation around and I go:
“Or maybe you are the reckless ones here. YOU take me in your car without knowing who I am! Who knows, maybe I’m a serial killer roaming the roads of the USA, and you two are my next targets.”
But in reality I am on my guard. I check if the back doors have been locked and I start to wonder how the hell I’m going to get out of here. Especially as Tommy responds to my joke by muttering that if I want to go after his wife, it will be over his dead body!
Kelly finally moves on to another topic of conversation, totally normal this time, and we pull up in front of what I imagine is their house. Kelly and Tommy definitely make me go through all sorts of emotions, laughing, questioning, fearing, doubting…
I have to say I’m a bit hesitant to get out of the car and enter the house with them. Should I leave instead? I’m pretty much in the middle of nowhere though. I could walk forever and who knows what I could come across.. I’m pretty sure there are alligators everywhere in this fucking bayou! So I decide to enter the house and be on my guard.
I admit I wasn’t expecting such a house. It is spacious, high-ceilinged, four large Roman columns are in the middle of the entrance hall that gives on an open living room/open kitchen, and other areas of the house and corridors. The decoration is, in my opinion, in very bad taste though. I go to the toilet real quick and get my phone to check a map and see where I am exactly. Battery is dead. Fuck it.
We sit in the living room and Tommy pulls out a magnum of Grey Goose. The vibe gets lighter, more relax, and Kelly and Tommy no longer seem threatening at all. But while we are talking, I keep observing them carefully and wonder what the hell I am doing here. I mean, when I jumped into their car, I assumed we would go to another bar or party, but never thought they would be taking me to their place, alone. So what are the options? I can think of two. Either they have brought me here to spice up their sex life. Or they are truly crazy, I have to take Kelly’s threat seriously, and they intend to turn their living room/kitchen into a butcher shop. I need to know for sure and I try a few things to make it easy for them to reveal why they have taken me to their place. After all, the sexual option would have the merit of excluding the murder one, which would definitely be a relief. In vain. Perhaps my allusions are too subtle, not direct enough. But I don’t want to be too direct and let Tommy know that I would like to fuck his wife. Who knows how he would react? In any case, my hints remain unanswered.
Until that one drink too many turned things around.
Kelly pours herself a large glass of vodka red bull and drinks it down. Bim! Within seconds she has swallowed a large full glass as if it were a shot.
This was probably too much and Kelly starts to lose her balance. She now has a vacant look and starts to stagger, walks towards the entrance hall, collapses at the front door of the house, and bursts into tears. Shit. The situation is more than embarrassing and I’m standing there like an idiot, not knowing what to do, while Tommy tries to comfort her. At some point, Kelly looks at me with this haggard, almost frightened look on her face and starts screaming: “Aaahhhh, he’s freaking me out!”. While staring at me. What on earth is happening right now?! It really is a madhouse here! I am the one freaking her out now?! It’s the world upside down! What the fuck did I rush into?!
I don’t want things to get out of hand and I decide to keep low profile until the situation gets back to ‘normal’, if it’s a word we can still use here… So I walk away from them and hide behind a wall corner to make sure Kelly cannot see me, and even forget about me for a moment.
So they cannot see me, I cannot see them, but I can hear what they say, though they whisper. And I perfectly hear what turned out to be the most frightening sentence I ever heard…
“Don’t worry baby, I’m gonna handle this, I’m gonna kill him”
When I hear Tommy clearly say these words I get the fear of my life. I find myself simultaneously in a state of stagnation, denial and mobilization of all my resources to decide the best thing to do to save my life. My pulse is accelerating and ideas flow in my head. What is my best option? Should I try and run out? But these degenerates are blocking the main door! Should I get out through a window? Should I try the garden? I definitely want to get the fuck out of this place. But running away in the middle of the bayou in the middle of the night is certainly not a very attractive idea neither. Plus, they have a car and could probably chase me. What should I do? While all these ideas are running through my head, I gaze at a piece of furniture next to me on which is a fork. This fork then becomes my ultimate solution. I will use it to save my life, to defend myself. I grab the fork in my right hand and squeeze it with all my might. My body is in a state of alert and all my muscles are tense. It’s decided, if this son-of-a-bitch approaches me, I stick the fork in his carotid artery! I’m dead serious and ready to do it. First time in my life I really feel like I’m in a kill or be killed situation, and I really feel like I’m gonna have to murder this mother fucker to survive. I can also feel I don’t want this to happen, but I have no other choice. He approaches, he’s dead. I am absolutely determined to act.
So I stand there waiting for something to happen, like a cat watching its prey lurking in the shadows before attacking it, except that I’m the one waiting to be attacked before acting. No idea how long this moment lasts.
But after a while, and as if nothing had never happened, Kelly and Tommy go back in the living room, seemingly calmed down, seat in the sofa and keep chatting. My brain no longer understands anything, too many twists and turns here, I don’t know what to think about this situation. I feel like I’m dealing with two eccentrics who can lose it at any moment. What’s going on now? How can Tommy say such a thing and then just move on? Did he say that to calm Kelly down? That’s a pretty strong statement to make to calm someone down!
Rather than running out of the house, I decide to approach them and ask if they can call me a taxi, keeping with me the fork I have now tucked into the sleeve of my denim shirt, and blocked with the wrist snap. Tommy doesn’t seem to mind, but Kelly says I should sleep here instead. I decline the invitation and insist on the taxi but she explains me that no taxi will pick me up here at such a late hour and I have no other option but stay and sleep in their house. Comforting…
So I’m standing there, ready to get the fork out of my sleeve and use it as a weapon, knowing it’s gonna be impossible for me to sleep in this house, and wondering what’s gonna be next.
And the next twist was not long in coming!
As she lies upside down in her sofa (her head down and legs up where you usually put your head), with her face full of makeup that has run over her cheeks because of her tears, Kelly asks me an unexpected question.
“Do you want his dick?!”
She asks me, pointing at her husband.
Sorry, what now?
Surprised and embarrassed by this intrusive question, I politely decline what I understand to be this time a frank and direct sexual invitation. Clearly jaded and tired of the turn of events, Tommy try to get Kelly to go to bed and sleep, which she authoritatively refuses, saying Tommy to leave her live her life and fuck off. So Tommy disappears, gets back, disappears again, for good this time, leaving me alone with Kelly.
This seems to give Kelly ideas and she starts touching herself while looking at me. At this point in the evening, I need to take stock of myself. My brain is having a bit of trouble keeping up with what’s going on and analyzing the flow of contradictory information coming in.
So let’s sum up here.. These two lunatics invited me to their house in the middle of the night after I hit on Kelly, they humorously or indirectly threatened to kill me, Kelly offered me her husband’s cock, who he has disappeared since I declined the offer, and now Kelly is fondling herself in front of me. I need to draw a conclusion and here it is: Kelly and Tommy are completely nuts, too much so for me to keep up with, but the sexual lead seems to have clearly overtaken the killing one.
They were probably in the mood for a threesome, in which I was supposed to satisfy Tommy, and now that I refused, Tommy has left his wife to enjoy herself, after she has strongly insisted that he leaves us alone.
I’m not sure what’s been the drive, impulse or psychological mechanism involved here exactly but looking at Kelly touching herself makes me decide to join her. We kiss, caress each other, she gives me a blowjob and we start fucking in the middle of the living room/kitchen. I have to say I learned about myself that day because I’m super excited about the situation, certainly more out of a furious desire to fuck than anything else, but I don’t really seem to be taking into consideration the possibility of Tommy coming in at any moment and putting a bullet between my eyes. Even after Kelly thinks she hears a noise and quickly gets dressed, as if we shouldn’t be caught.
Sex goes on, the alcohol, accumulated tension and potential danger that keeps reigning make it impossible for me to come. It’s already early in the morning (the night has been long) when, as I’m on top of Kelly fucking her on the white leather sofa that separates the living room from the entrance hall, I see something moving to my right. I turn my head in that direction and what I see leaves me in shock. I am now facing a 11-year-old boy.
The boy is blond, with blue eyes, a bowl cut and stares at me unblinking with his head slightly tilted towards the ground. I feel like I’m staring into the eyes of a possessed child straight out of a horror movie who could jump down my throat at any moment. Obviously this is not the case and the little one eventually looks away and runs off in the direction Tommy had gone a few hours earlier. Kelly looks at me and asks me what’s going on and when I explain what I’ve just seen, she tells me it’s their son, who we’ll call Kevin here. This puts a definitive end to our sex. I knew Kelly and Tommy had a son. I definitely didn’t think he was sleeping in the house the whole time!
When Tommy gets up a few moments later, he says hello to his wife and makes himself a cup of coffee without paying any attention to me, as if I was not even there. I say hello to him but he doesn’t answer. The tension is palpable.
Looking around me, I realize the disaster we have left behind. Kelly is a squirter and she has left marks everywhere. The living room white leather sofa, the kitchen floor, all this space we’ve occupied is filled with overwhelming evidence. There’s even a little bit of blood on the sofa. In case Tommy doesn’t know what happened, there is evidence of our lovemaking everywhere! I’m now in the house with the woman I just fucked, her husband and her son who caught us. I really want to disappear.
Kelly has a professional appointment in the morning and offers to drop me off at my car which appears to me as the best idea ever! But Tommy steps in and tells her that it will waste her time, that he doesn’t want her to be late for her appointment and that he’s going to drop me off instead. Kelly acknowledges, gives Tommy a kiss and tell him to “Be cool” before she leaves.
I am now alone with the husband and son, both of whom having good reasons to hate me!
I say Tommy he doesn’t have to bother and can call me a cab instead but he declines, saying he has to drop his son at school anyway. This time I get it. He’s going to drop his son off and once we are the two of us, he will try and kick my ass! At that point, exhausted and resigned, I accept my fate. If Tommy wants to confront me, so be it. It’s fair enough. I will defend myself, obviously, but I mean, the guy kindly welcomed me into his home, I fucked his wife as soon as he turned his back, and his son caught us. If I were him, I’d want to kill the motherfucker I am.
When we eventually reach the city centre, I recognize the place and tell Tommy to drop me off here. Kevin is still in the car with us so it looks like a fight will not even happen. Tommy insists to drop me just where my car is so I point a car that is not mine. He stops in front of it, leans to his left to grab something from his car door or from under his chair, I’m not sure, and turns to me with a sharp movement… to hand me his business card.
“Call me when you get to New Orleans to confirm that you got there safely.”
I am speechless. I cannot believe what’s happening. I grab his card, tell him “Thank you for everything” (I’m cheeky I know), and get out of his car.
I’M FREE!! SAFE AND SOUND!
I can hardly believe it. Back in my car, I remain seated and immobile for a few minutes. I can feel all the pressure drop. What a night!!
But I need to get the fuck out of here, I don’t want Tommy to come back around here and find me, I just want to leave the city. So I plug my phone to charge its battery, stop at the first McDonalds or Starbucks I find to use their free Wifi and find my way to New Orleans. While I’m doing so, my phone rings. I pick up, this is Kelly. She’s telling me how much she’s excited and she wants to go back at it. Sure thing, let me call you back! Truth is, I hung up and immediately took the road to New Orleans!
I still think about how things could have turned out.
What would have happened if I had lost my temper and decided to use the fork I had seized as a weapon? Would I have actually gone so far as to kill Tommy? Would I also have decided to kill Kelly in a panic? Would have Kevin wake up? What would I have done if he had witnessed the action? Would I be rotting in a Louisiana cell today? Or dead. And how would Tommy have acted if his son wasn’t in the house with us? Did he refrain from flipping out to protect his child?
I cannot help but think that the slightest change in my reactions could have completely overturned the events and give the night a tragic end.
*Names have been changed
