Chapter 9

 

 

Tail Gunner.

Funny.

His full name is Dieter Gunnar Swernbernin. Originally from Germany, moved to the United States when he was a kid.

Went by Gunnar. Then in college, when he proved to be the consummate ladies' man, the fraternity brothers started calling him “Tail Gunner.”

He was called Tail Gunner because he knew how to score tail. “Scoring” being the word for obtaining sexual favors, and “tail” being the word for that part of the female anatomy some men find quite irresistible. He could connect with a member of the opposite sex in an efficient and lucrative manner. There was no stopping his ability to line up women with which to have sex.

His technique was powerful and subtle. To most folk, he was being humble, but his smooth, subtle ways cut through the coldest ice queen.

Women could not resist him, but, then again, he never turned down opportunities, and that in itself secured his future of guile, subterfuge and seduction.

The man had no morals.

“It’s sweet poontang,” he’d like to say. He was now an American, no longer a citizen of Germany. He was so ensconced in the deep pile carpet of life in these United States, he reeked of the Yankee way of living.

Tail Gunner.

Blond, tall and lean, built like a male model. The kind of man who is so obviously handsome that he knows it. The cock, so to speak, of the walk.

Linda knew she was going to dislike the fellow the minute she heard the scuttlebutt about the new liquor distributor.

Calling Linda picky about her men is like calling a Mob boss picky about whom he trusts in his Mafia organization.

She’d had pretty good luck with men, mostly because she’d been smart enough to stay away from the worst of them. Men were bad news, pretty much always.

But, right away, ol’ Tail Gunner started to put the make on Linda.

With his charming smile, witty banter and sparkling eyes, Tail Gunner was what the ladies called a dreamboat, a lothario by any other name. With his smooth talk and slick manner, he could charm the pants off of any woman. A man like that is dangerous to every woman.

“She’s every inch a woman and every bit a man,” Tail Gunner once told a friend about a woman he was dating.

Sincerity and honesty weren’t his high points. Conniving, cunning creature he was, for all intents and purposes, he stalked women like a big game hunter. He was always looking for the next big catch, the next great trophy.

He had many notches on his belt, for the women he’d conquered. Find ’em, feed ’em, fuck ’em and forget ’em, the four Fs, that was his mantra.

He loved talking about “getting poontang,” as he called the triumph of the sexual act.

“Women,” he’d say, sarcastically, “can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em.” Tail Gunner was, in his mean spirited way, paraphrasing the more appropriate, “Women: Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.”

To any woman with an ounce of self-esteem, being with such a man would be an embarrassment. Yet, women flocked to him. Well, not every woman.

“I haven’t met a woman I couldn’t satisfy,” the cocksure Tail Gunner would announce. “They all fall for me, sooner or later, and it’s usually sooner.”

As a liquor distributor and lounge lizard, he knew all too well the power of alcohol to ply a woman.

Tail Gunner was sitting in his liquor delivery truck, reminiscing about a woman he’d put the make on several years ago. He’d recently received a call from her, and enjoyed some game playing with her over the phone. He teased her about how he missed her, and how much he enjoyed having sex with her.

Ultimately, though, he had no intention of ever having sex with her again. He wasn’t interested in working that hard. So he ignored her, not returning her telephone calls and messages.

When he finally talked to her, one sleepy night, he was curt and dismissive of her. He called her a whiner.

“I could tear your eyes out,” she told him. There’s nothing like a woman scorned. “You made it bad, you really hurt me,” she told him in no uncertain terms.

He was cold.

“I like it when you hate me,” he said, “it makes me feel good.”

She was shocked.

“What do you want with me?” she asked, plaintively, with a voice both sour and submissive.

“I want to tell you how much it means to me when you tell me you hate me,” Tail Gunner said. “I love it when women hate me.”

“You are one sick puppy,” she told the abusive man.

“Oh, yeah, I know.”

Then, without warning, she hung up the phone.

Silence.

Tail Gunner was nonplussed. He went over to the refrigerator and got a cold drink, sat back down in his large recliner and continued watching the detective movie on TV.

Tail Gunner’s attitude towards women didn’t improve after he was involved in a solid grift. He got mesmerized by a woman he was convinced not only could he bed, but get the best of in a shady transaction.

He’d met a woman at a tony bar who had something to offer. Not sex, not right away. But something that glittered and shined, something valuable.

Or at least that’s what she seemed to have.

Making a stop at one of the local watering holes, a few blocks from the Club Festival, Tail Gunner was servicing a client with his particular brand of hooch. After dealing with the bar manager at the Chaise Lounge, he was having an imported beer at the bar when a woman sidled next to him.

“Hey, good looking,” she said, demurely. “Watcha got cooking?”

Tail Gunner wasn’t used to women approaching him in such a friendly manner, but found her low-cut blouse and raspy voice enticing. Dressed to the nines, the young shapely blond looked like a successful businesswoman.

“Nothing, baby, what’s up with you?” he said, checking out the woman’s measurements, dazzling smile and haute couture outfit.

“Oh, passing the time before my next appointment,” she said. “I just had a sales meeting with a client around the corner.”

“Sales, huh?” he said. “Funny, that’s my line of work, too. I’m with a liquor distributing company, and this is one of my customers. My name’s Gunnar, what’s yours?”

“Andrea,” she said. “Andrea Carnegie.”

The two eyed each other like hungry animals. Tail Gunner thought this might be an easy score. His new woman friend was thinking the same thing, but not in a sexual way.

“I deal in high-end men’s accessories,” she purred. “It’s a great business, and I get to meet clients who know high-end merchandise when they see it.”

As she finished the sentence, she subtly moved the black leather briefcase she had with her closer to Tail Gunner.

“In fact,” she said, “I was showing my new clients some of my latest samples.”

Tail Gunner’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Let’s see what you got,” he requested.

With great panache, the fashionable woman pulled the briefcase up to the bar, and expertly opened the case.

Inside, set in a red velvet backdrop, were some beautiful looking items. A set of David Yurman Black Diamond cufflinks, a matching Yurman Black Diamond ring, a Gucci bracelet watch and a Stephen Webster sapphire dagger necklace.

“Sweet looking stuff,” he said, first looking at the merchandise, then at the woman. “Must be expensive.”

“Thousands of dollars worth,” she said, “and they’re not knockoffs. This is the real deal. Take a look.”

Tail Gunner removed the bracelet watch, pretending to know what he was looking at. It sure looked real.

“I’ve got a problem, though,” she said. “I’ve got to get rid of this stuff before I get back to the office, because my boss always wants me to hand out expensive samples. I know it sounds silly, but that’s how it works in our business. It’s baiting the potential client, and it works surprisingly well. But this potential new client didn’t want to touch it, he was so cheap. The bastard.”

Tail Gunner was flush with cash, from a day’s worth of collecting invoices. Bars like to pay in cash; getting rid of cash in the register was a good way to make sure cash wasn’t around if a robbery occurred.

“I know good stuff when I see it,” Tail Gunner said, trying to impress the woman with his knowledge of expensive jewelry. “How much would it cost for me to take this stuff off your hands?”

“This stuff didn’t cost me anything,” she said, “but I’m not going to give it away. $500 and it’s yours.”

Tail Gunner hesitated. The deal seemed good, and her story made some amount of sense.

“You think about it while I use the little girl’s room,” she said. As she stood up to head to the ladies’ room, she picked up the briefcase.

“Don’t you trust me?” Tail Gunner groused, with a hurt look in his eyes.

“With this stuff, I’m not taking any chances. See you in a minute.”

As she walked away, Tail Gunner watched her behind wiggle seductively.

While she was in the restroom, Tail Gunner thought about the transaction. “Portland’s a small town,” he thought to himself, and if there was any problem, he felt confident he could find her if he tried. He figured buying the men’s accessories was a good way to show the woman he prided himself in looking sharp, and that is an excellent way to get a woman into bed.

He knew he’d be taking a chance. The money he had wasn’t his, but he could juggle the account temporarily, and quickly make up for it somehow.

He also realized she could be in the bathroom taking the goods out of the briefcase. But she went in with only the briefcase and a wallet, and the outfit she was wearing was so form fitting it didn’t allow for any hiding places.

What the hell, he thought. He decided to go for it.

When the woman returned, briefcase in hand, he let her take the lead.

“Well, what do you say?” as she stood next to Tail Gunner. She handed him an embossed business card. “Andrea Carnegie, Sales Executive, Neiman Marcus,” the card said.

“Let’s do it,” Tail Gunner said. He reached into his pocket, got out his special collection wallet, and counted out $500 in 20s and 50s.

“Good deal, Gunnar,” she rasped. “Let’s get together later this week and have a drink.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ve got your card, I’ll give you a call.”

The woman handed over the briefcase, and headed to the front door. She moved slowly and deliberately, turning around at the door to give Tail Gunner a wink.

Tail Gunner sat at the bar for several minutes, daydreaming about how he was going to make his next move with his new woman friend.

He picked up the briefcase, placed it on the counter and opened it. Empty.

“That slut screwed me,” he thought, as he stared at the empty briefcase. He got up from the bar, walked as fast as allowable to the front door without attracting attention and went outside. The woman was long gone.

It was later he realized that not only did he get ripped off for the jewelry, the briefcase was faux leather.

He didn’t comprehend it until later that the woman had set the whole thing up, and had the replacement briefcase waiting in the bathroom. All she had to do was drop the real briefcase out the window and retrieve it after she left.

Tail Gunner’s experiences with women, mostly bad, began as a child.

His mother was domineering, and his sisters nagging and berating. That, combined with poor experiences in school and on the playground, left him a perfect candidate to become a womanizer.

Tail Gunner was the sum of a thousand small nuances, ten thousand different turns. He was not traumatized early in life by girls or women, but nonetheless, by the time he was a full-fledged adult, he was ready to “teach the women some lessons,” as he put it to some college buddies.

He’d come to the United States on an athletic scholarship. His English skills were actually superb, and by the time he’d graduated from college, there was little or no German accent left in his speech.

In college he groomed his ability to manipulate women. He’d learned from the hundreds of different media perspectives that women existed to be manipulated. It was a subtle indoctrination.

Again, though, why blame society? It was up to each individual to carve out their own moral or immoral, ethical or unethical existence, at least past a certain point.

With Tail Gunner, all it took was a push from parents and teachers to make him feel as if he was the king of the world.

“There’s no stopping me now!” Tail Gunner said to himself as he lay on his comfortable yet firm bed, arms back, hands behind his head, fingers interlocked. “I’m a genius!”

There’s nothing more pitiful than the sight of a man caught up in his own delusion, a self delusion.

But his self delusion added fuel to his self confidence, so to him he was in the right, he was fulfilling the American Dream of becoming top dog. He enjoyed coming out on top, that’s for sure, and anyone or anything that got in his way was merely shoved aside. He had his eyes on the prize; the prize was the next piece of ass, another notch on the belt.

Back to society’s blame for creating Tail Gunner’s attitude.

Since the main avenue in modern society to gaining knowledge of the world is the mass media, each branch of the media has a role to play.

Not much of a book reader, Tail Gunner was reliant on newspapers and magazines, radio and television, movies and stage plays for his development, past what parents and teachers bestowed upon him.

All that mass media, in every case, in modern society is supported by advertising and marketing. What America advertised was the good life, with sporty cars, luxurious abodes and the good looking woman on your arm.

Anything less, you were a loser.

Tail Gunner did not want to be a loser.

He was convinced the world was his oyster, and that he’d be a winner if he portrayed himself as a winner. He was convinced.

He tried slick pickup lines.

“Hey, babe,” he said to the semi-good looking woman at the bar.

“Hey, handsome,” she replied.

He placed the index finger of his right hand on the woman’s left thigh.

“If this is Thanksgiving,” he said to her, in a smarmy voice, moving his finger to the right thigh, “and if this is Christmas,” he continued, alternating his gaze between her legs and her eyes, “then I sure would like to spend some time with you between the holidays.”

The woman, or better put, his next intended victim, looked puzzled for a moment, trying to understand what the hell he was talking about. Then she got it.

“Asshole!” she spit out, and slapped him across the face. She got up and walked away.

“Bitch,” he said, under his breath, embarrassed and trying to hide the incident from any onlookers. Another poor attempt by a man at communicating with the opposite sex. He’d learn quickly enough that pick-up lines were meant for other men. He found out there was no reason to get so aggressive, and take unnecessary chances.

But his disrespect and disdain for women’s rights and freedoms weren’t diminished.

One of the best sources of how to act like a man, and, conversely, how to treat women, came from the pages of men’s magazines. Playboy, Hustler, Penthouse were staples to him as a young man. He liked photographs of the naked women, sure, but what he most enjoyed was the wit and wisdom to be found between the pages of the nearest girly magazine.

Those magazines were simply founts of information when it came to women. From the photographs, articles and advertisements, signposts and guides on how to be a man were tossed out like fishing lines, luring men into their net. The net? Buying products like cars, after shave lotion, clothes. It didn’t matter how you did it, but sales had to be made.

Could Tail Gunner have turned out differently? Could he have turned out to be a compassionate, caring man who appreciated womanhood on a more wholesome level? Sure. Why not? But, again, the circumstances of his life directed him in a certain way, and that wasn’t going to be good for women.

Never a man to turn down a challenge, the sporting nature within him saw conquering women as the greatest sport, the greatest challenge. It wasn’t that he hated women; he didn’t have any respect for them. They were, as the ads so brilliantly showed him, there for the dominating, there for the winner to take all.