As some of you will know, Braveheart passed away on September 4 2015. He was a good friend of mine, a great writer and a genuinely nice guy. The world is a colder place without him.
It was Braveheart's intention to repost all of his stories here, but he only got to do the first five before we was taken from us. I have all his stories archived on catfightfemmes and after talking with FEMMEFIGHT and getting his ok, I'm going to repost the stories here at regular intervals. It's what Braveheart would have wanted.
Enjoy his work and admire his talent...I know I do.
Scrib
Welcome to Sandbridge – Sue Ann and Consuela
The Cougar and the Jaguar
A Sandbridge Saga Tale 6
Intro
“Best celebrity catfighter I know? Melanie Griffith. Hands down, end of story. Melanie-by God-Griffith. Can punch like a dude and isn’t afraid to throw down. Yeah. I’ve seen her go a couple of times myself when I’d been out with Don and her. Ones involving celebrities? No, not many actually, but Drake – he’s seen a bunch of them. He told me about that time in ’76, backstage at the Roxy when Stevie Nicks and Linda Ronstadt … oh, excuse me, Mr. Mayor, I think my 10:30 is here. Say hello to the Police Chief for me. I’ll talk to you later … and yeah, I’ll vote for ya’.”
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. That someone is me, Nick Sebastian. I’m a writer for mega-producer Drake Coburn, and he’s sent me to the unlikely Mecca of Catfighting, suburban Sandbridge, to research this phenomenon with which we’re both fascinated. Now, after last week’s insanity at the Country Club, everyone in town, from the janitor who cleans the hallway to the Mayor of Sandbridge, seems to be catfight crazy. Since we apparently have become the poster children for this sort of thing around here, “Catfights ‘R Us” so to speak, my assistant Marcia Monfort and I have been very busy listening to people over the last week – including one of the two losers of the epic inter-family brawl.
She’s my 10:30 appointment.
Welcome to Sandbridge …
Nick Sebastian, June 1987
1
The Southern Belle
Mrs. Sue Ann West sure didn’t look like a loser to me.
The southern import was wearing a tight blue little dress that barely contained a pair of rather unnatural 36Cs. She was a vivacious 44 year-old with an appetite for a hot story and hot men – usually ones with money. Maybe 5’6” and 115 or so with a nice ass and a still attractive face, Sue Ann wore her frosted blond hair a little shorter than she did when I last saw her – not surprising since she’d lost a bit of it to one Mrs. Barbara McCall at last week’s now notorious “Clash at the Club”, as the quite public catfight was now being called.
The senior editor for the local newspaper, the Sandbridge Examiner, had entertained the party guests, brawling with Barbara, the wife of the Second National Bank’s CEO, over the latter’s husband. All the while, their daughters were beating the snot out of each other in a fist fight on the golf course nearby. Mrs. West and her daughter were both soundly thrashed, busted up and stripped naked by the two McCalls. I missed that whole fucking thing – maybe the only time in my 41 years I’ve regretted not being a member of a country club.
Sue Ann still was wearing the vivacious, seductive smile she had when I first met her downstairs in her office. She gave me a peck in the cheek and I noticed a little more make-up this time and the hint of a black eye. Marcia had assured me that shiners, scratches and bites need quite a bit of it. I motioned for her to have a seat, then asked Marci over the intercom to join us. “Hope you don’t mind. I’m breaking in the new girl.” No objection.
Marcia Monfort was accompanied by her usual toothy grin. I introduced her to Mrs. West, who gushed over what a young beauty the 5’2” 18 year-old was. Marcia’s mother was the rather infamous Carly Monfort, a town catfight legend, and with her dark brown curls, beach tan and impressive rack, Marci was a younger version of her Mom in more ways than just her appearance. She already had a wealth of catfighting experience – including a beatdown at the hands of Sue Ann’s own then 20 year-old daughter.
“I’m so glad to meet you, Marcia! Heather’s told me a lot about you!” Sue Ann had a sexy Georgia drawl and a dirty laugh that guys found irresistible.
“I’m imagine she has, Mrs. West. After we beat the crap out of each other last summer, I’m sure most of what she had to say wasn’t all that pleasant, either.”
“Please call me Sue Ann. On the contrary, my Heather was very impressed with you. A lot of respect. Baby girl is a gracious winner. Losing on the other hand … well your friend Lil’ Miss McCall did a number on her last week from head to toe. She’s okay now, but she was really a mess for a while. I was too.”
“Babs really beat the Dixie charm out of me that night. She pulled hair out from both ends. Slapped me silly and I reckon I bleed easy. Hungry bitch even used her teeth! Look at this, Marcia …” She pulled off a heel and put a bare foot in Marcia’s lap, making sure I took a good, long gander at a long sexy leg and that nice foot. This gal’s good. She sure knows I’m there.
“Ow, Mrs. W … Sue Ann! Nice feet and all, but those toes still look sore. She bite ‘em?” Marci grinned at me and winked. Shit. A tag team all of a sudden.
“Girl, she didn’t just bite – the jealous ol’ bat gave me a real oral pedicure. My sole too. See? I suppose I don’t have to tell you how much that hurts. I swear, that Yankee bitch must have filed her teeth before the fight.” With a great show, Sue Ann pulled her foot up and crossed her legs, not bothering to re-shoe. “Hope you don’t mind bare feet, Nick. Still hurts a little to keep these piggies covered.”
Hoo-boy. This is going to be one long interview.
I wiped the sweat from my brow and had Sue Ann tell us more details about the big event, as well as some of Heather’s story and some conversations they’d had. Her recollections of her reaction to meeting me were … informative to say the least. I included some of this in my last report (Country Club Chaos). Then we got down to what I really wanted to discuss … the story of Sue Ann’s first Sandbridge catfight.
That’s when her fucking pager went off. I hate it when that happens.
“Shit. It’s the boss. He wants to see me downstairs right now. Probably about that bullshit police corruption story. Either that or he wants to chew me out for getting slapped stupid and peeled off down to my birthday suit by the Boston Brawler in public. Rain check, Nick. I’ll be back Monday to tell you all about my first knock-down, drag-out fight. It was a doozy. Here’s a teaser – Marcia, it was with your former principal! Nice to meet you sweetheart – I’d love to meet your Mom. I’m sure we’d be great friends. And as for you, big boy …”
I was still choking back a laugh over those two man-eating alpha-females becoming “great friends” and wasn’t prepared for the kiss she gave me right on the lips. I was lucky I remembered to turn off my recorder. Mr. Woody was another matter entirely. She then gave Marcia’s forearm a little squeeze, flashed her a wink, waved me good-bye and sauntered off, shaking her hot little ass. Marci just had to fucking laugh.
“Young lady, if you even dream of telling your mother, you’d better wake up and apologize!”
“Hey! I can’t help it … I actually like her! We work well together. I’m sure she and Mom would become friends – after they kick the shit out of each other. After all, we all have something in common … ‘big boy’!”
“No offense, girl Friday, but …” I give her a one-fingered salute.
2
Old Habits On and Off the Golf Course
I suppose it hit us both at about the same time. Marci got off first.
“Did she say my former principal?”
“I think so, but when she kissed me, I forgot the last 30 seconds of my life. How many female principals have you had?”
“One? Oh my God! Sue Ann West had a catfight with Dr. Santana? The Puerto Rican Ice Machine! No … fuckin’ … way!”
“Maybe yes … fuckin’ … way.” Christ, I was beginning to talk like Marcia. Gotta stop hanging around teenagers. “Story has it that Consuela Santana was quite animated at the Clash last week. Police Chief Santana had to hold his wife back. She wanted a big piece of Mrs. West for some reason.”
“Who told you that, Mr. Nick?”
“Police Chief Santana. That’s what they call in Sue Ann’s world, a ‘reliable source’. I talked to him two days ago. I guess he had the time of his life otherwise. Made twenty bucks and everything. I’m playing golf with Connie and Roberto as their guest at the Country Club tomorrow. Get to check out the site of the new Sandbridge legend in style, the lay of the land and all that shit. I guess ol’ disreputable Nick is coming up in the world, huh? It might turn out to be a good time for me to ask the good Principal Ice Machine, PhD a couple of questions and check out Mrs. West’s story. Something smells funny about this whole thing.”
“Yeah. Like what did she mean when she said something about the “the stupid police scandal? You told me that it was Sue Ann’s editorial that publicized it!”
She got me with that one. In my efforts to control Woody, I must have missed it. You might be slipping, Nick. Then I remember the tape recorder. Exactly when did I stop that thing? I didn’t have to rewind far before there it was. “Probably about that bullshit police corruption story.” Well I’ll be damned. Hiring Marci was even a smarter move than signing my divorce papers.
“You amaze me sometimes, girl.”
“That’s why they call me ‘Miss Hollywood’ now … I think.”
Now why would someone who’d broken the story of the year here turn around and call it “bullshit”? Maybe because it is? I remember it broke right after I came to Sandbridge. “Marci, I want you to go to the library and check out every copy of the Examiner for the last week of April. Copy every article you can about the scandal, especially Sue Ann’s editorial. Then bring them back. I don’t care how long it takes … I’ll wait for you. Meanwhile, I have a few old contacts and I’ll be discreetly calling around. I say ‘discreetly’ because some of these guys don’t like publicity, if you know what I mean. I’ll need all my ducks in a row before I stink up the course with the Santanas tomorrow. I’ll bet the subject will come up with them out there. It most certainly will with Mrs. West on Monday, courtesy of me, and you can bet your ass on that.
I had been a newspaper reporter and a private investigator in previous lives. Old habits die hard. “Good job and great attention to detail, Miss Marcia Renee!”
“Thank you, sir!” She beams, salutes and departs on her mission. Did I say I’m glad I hired her?
How many guys do you know carry a cassette deck as their fourteenth club in their golf bag? Then again, how many Hollywood screenwriters who are also catfight investigators do you know? I guess both of them would be me. I love golf and I love my job. I think I’m pretty good at one … not so good at the other. When people ask me my handicap, I say “putting”. When I get into a trap, my handle is “Nicholas of Arabia” because I’m in the sand for about four years. But today my trusty tape recorder, unlike my 3-wood, didn’t let me down.
Roberto Santana is a handsome 50 something Mexican-American who like me, is better at his job than he is at golf. His job is as Sandbridge Chief of Police. His wife Consuela is 46 with striking features and a light brown complexion. My guess is Connie is about 5’4”, 114 or so and around 34B-24-36 with salt and pepper curly hair in a short Afro. She’s in shape and a better golfer than either of her sorry-ass partners today.
When I asked them what was it like for a Chicano and a Puerto Rican as a married couple, the Chief replied, “Well, sometimes we’re like Pipino Cuevas and Wilfredo Benitez and we go twelve rounds, but we’re as happy today as we were twenty four years ago.” It showed. I couldn’t imagine this lady ever getting into a catfight with the predatory Sue Ann West over her devoted husband. Mrs. Hot Legs dare come onto this tough cop like she did to me yesterday and he’d just laugh at her. It had to have been over something else.
I walked up the 18th fairway with Consuela toward the spot where Jillie McCall had kicked out Heather West last week. Roberto was hiking the woods, trying in vain to find his golf ball – an experience with which I was way too familiar on this day. Now seemed as appropriate a time as any to bring up the subject of Sue Ann West. I immediately saw the fire in those brown eyes. I mentioned that the blonde had hinted at some sort of physical altercation with her and that Sue Ann was going to tell me all about it on Monday.
“It wasn’t a ‘physical altercation’, Nick. It was a bloody, biting and clawing catfight! We nearly killed each other. Like hell she’ll tell you anything, that pila suelta despreciable de mierda (miserable loose pile of shit)! Not without me telling my side first!”
Another double off the wall for Nick. I asked what the Chief would say to that – she assured me he’d wanted her to see me practically from the first week I’d hit town. Her position as high school principal had made her reluctant, but things had changed. That lying, hateful editorial. “Police corruption, my ass!”
I was so excited I four-putted the 18th green. My score resembled the average temperature of an August day in Death Valley. I didn’t even care. I brought my tape recorder with us to lunch and as Roberto listened, his wife spun me a tale that had me checking both the machine and my underwear to make sure they weren’t overheating. The double turned into an inside-the-park home run as Consuela gave me not one, but two catfight accounts. Well fuck me!
Here’s number one. It’s catfightin’ time …
2
A Teaching Experience
Consuela Maria Gomez Santana, PhD was proud of her achievements academically, professionally and romantically. She had come to the promised land from Bayamon, PR as a teenager, graduated from USC with a PhD in Education Administration and had married a handsome and adoring Sandbridge police sergeant who was going places. They had a bright son of 16 who was near the top of his class at SHS. Most of all Consuela, or “Connie” as most of her Anglo friends called her, was proud of her job - the well-respected principal at Sandbridge High School.
The year was 1983. She was 42 years old with big early 80s curly black hair and a fit build. She turned men’s heads wherever she went, but she only had eyes for one. Even guys who wouldn’t have qualms about sleeping with a married woman backed off when she’d mention her husband was Detective Sergeant Roberto Santana of the SPD. She also had a reputation for efficiency and an impersonal, no-nonsense approach to her profession. She was tough but fair and her demeanor had given her the nickname the Puerto Rican Ice Machine. Roberto would laugh at that one, knowing Connie, the same spitfire he married some twenty-one years earlier, was anything but cold in the sack. His own nickname for her was La Pantera – The Jaguar.
Not everyone amongst the faculty at SHS liked her. She didn’t much care. She was their boss, and so long as they respected her, she was satisfied. There was one, however, who did neither … and the woman was in her office today.
Miss Geraldine Kay Fletcher was a Math teacher at SHS and she had been a problem for some time. The skinny, flat-chested 39 year-old was a good 5’10” with short brown hair, weighing about 118 pounds dripping wet with a 32A size bra, if she’d bother wearing one. A pair of Band-Aids would do, thought Mrs. Santana. Her face was plain as could be and her teeth were too large for that long, thin puss. Her height, build and appearance with her pale skin had earned her to student nickname, “Olive Oyl”.
Miss Fletcher had never been married … at least to a man. All the faculty knew her preferences and most of the students suspected it. It didn’t matter to Consuela that “Geri” played for the home team. It was the favors she’d grant to the kids she liked, and the harassment of those she didn’t that was one of the problems.
Another was that she was a lousy teacher. Geri was a strict disciplinarian, which wasn’t so bad, but she was hot-tempered and didn’t know her subject very well. When that subject was math, well you just couldn’t hide incompetence and bluff you way through your subject. The Board would have let her go years ago except for California’s tenure laws – a teacher would have to practically kill somebody to get fired.
She played favorites within her junior math class and one of those definitely not was young Hector Santana. Hector probably knew more about math than his teacher. That caused him to be bored and he’d play around in class, causing him to get on Mrs. Fletcher’s shit list. After an ass-chewing by his parents, he straightened up and flew right but “Olive Oyl” continued to pick on him. He wasn’t the only one. Consuela had heard enough and after school the day before Christmas vacation had called the scrawny teacher into her office for a “Come to Jesus” meeting.
As Connie “explained” things to Miss Fletcher, she could see the teacher’s face getting redder and redder. Giving an adult a chewing out didn’t come as easily to her as it did her husband, who was a professionally-trained natural at it. She was a good Christian who went to mass on Sundays and had learned to harness her hot Latin temper. Geri just glared at her in indignant rage until it was “what do you have to say for yourself” time.
“Let me tell you something, you filthy little bitch! Your son is a cocky, snot-nosed little prick! You are nothing but a skanky old piece of trash – an ass-peddling whore. A stuck-up slut shaking your saggy old tits in the face of every man in this school. I loathe you and your kind, you foul, dried up breeder-bitch!”
“How dare you speak to me that way?” Connie stood up with a look in her eyes that her husband knew well enough – the look that would make the tough guy from the barrio think “uh oh”.
Geri stood up as well, took off her glasses and towered over Connie from across the desk, even wearing sneakers and the principal in her high heels. “I’ll speak to you any way I want, you miserable cocksucker! No wonder your brat is the way he is, you brown-skinned island twat!”
“Well, let me tell *you* something, ‘Olive Oyl’! You are a titless bag of wind – a worthless, scrawny shitstain who spends more time with your ugly face in some other woman’s coño maloliente (smelly cxnt) every day than she spends learning her job!” Connie was surprised at her language, but sometimes the Bayamon in her just came out. She wanted to slap that homely face hard and she could see the feeling was mutual. “Bitch, we could fight right here but I have a better idea – let’s continue our discussion in the teacher’s lounge – I don’t want your blood and puke all over my office.”
“Fine with me, bitch. I’ll enjoy mopping the floor with you. I’ll make you shit yourself and lick me out.”
Down the hall they went, hissing insults and epithets, toward the lounge. Connie thought, “Dear Lord … I’m going to actually fight this woman! I’ve never been in a real fight since I was about twelve. I bet this scarecrow has, but probably against drunken dykes in a bar somewhere. Look at this bitch. I know I can take her.” The lounge was looked, but Connie had the key. She locked the door behind them. They pushed chairs and tables to the walls. Off came the glasses, earrings and the shoes. Geri stripped of her long skirt, socks and high-necked blouse, revealing a pair of man’s briefs. The plain, skinny woman wore no bra and looked ridiculous in her half nakedness. Consuela knew she looked fine in her white bra and panties with her bare, dance-hardened legs making a mockery of Geri’s white sticks.
Connie laughed. “Look at you, Olive! You really aren’t much of a woman, are you?”
“You’ll see how much of a woman I am, you Puerto Rican slag!” With that, Geraldine stepped up and with a whip of her long arm, slapped Dr. Santana across the face with a crack.
“Aw!” blurted Connie. She’d never been struck in the face by a woman before and it stung. She came back, stepped up and plastered Geri with one of her own, causing the beanpole to take a couple of steps back. Connie couldn’t believe how good it felt. She had long, clear-polished nails and she saw a couple of red welts on the lesbian’s face. “OHL! You slapped me!” gasped Miss Obvious, feeling her cheek and she dug her long fingers deep into Connie’s thick curls.
Connie took a wicked hair pulling from the lanky teacher. Geri kept the shorter armed older battler at arm’s length out of the range of Connie’s flashing nails, and woman-handled her around the lounge, banging into tables, chairs and the wall. The principal yowled and cursed it pain, giving up trying to get into the younger woman’s face and hair. She clenched the bony wrists and just suffered, discovering the hard way that while Geri was scrawny, she had wiry strength. All the while, Miss Fletcher was taunting and cursing her, scrabbling at her enemy’s brown legs with big bare feet and spraying spit all over her face.
Commie couldn’t believe this wretched breadstick was mopping the floor with her by the hair. The pain was killing her, but the shame was worse. She was getting her ass kicked by Olive Oyl for God’s sake! Geri flung Dr. Santana against the wall by her raggedy mop, tearing out a few strands, and as she stumbled off the wall gave her a one-two combination – left jab to the face a roundhouse right to the jaw. Connie’s head snapped back and she sat down hard trying to shake the bells out of her aching head.
“Excuse my language, Nick (she didn’t know me too well at this point), but I was all fucked up. Geraldine had pulled hair right out of my head and punched me hard. My nose was bloody and I saw stars. The perra flaca (skinny bitch) was standing over me, thumbing her nose and moving her fists around in a pantomime of a boxing stance. She was taunting me and calling me names – ethnic shit. Bitch would pay for that.”
“Get up and get your needin’s, Cha-Cha! I’m gonna beat the beans and salsa right out of you.”
Consuela didn’t get up right away. Not before cocking back her strong right leg and driving a solid size 7 right into where Miss Fletcher stinks the most. Geri’s legs had been spread apart, and she was wide open. Her Jockeys didn’t provide much protection. There was a dull thud and a second before Geri had realized she’d been cxnt-busted. Then the pain set in and set in deep. Her eyes got big, her mouth dropped open and she honked like a goose, following it up with a pathetic squeal. Hands dropped to a nasty bruised crotch and her face turned green. She decided to take a little walk, a waddle actually, not knowing exactly where she was going.
Marci has assured me that getting kicked hard between the legs hurts a woman as much as it does a guy. I don’t know how Marci would know what it’s like to get nut-busted, but I’ll take her word for it. Connie was up on her feet facing the woman’s pale bare back. With a hiss, she curled her long-nailed fingers into claws and ripped them down that long body from shoulders to waist, leaving red trails on the back and skin under Connie’s nails. The tall gal yowled in pain. Dr. Santana spun Geri around and slugged her scrawny bare stomach, Connie had never used a doubled fist on anyone before like that, and it was a bit of a girly punch, but the weak-bellied Geri just folded like an accordion, letting out a sick belch.
All bent over, groaning and mouth working like a fish out of water, she was offering her hair to the pissed off lady from Bayamon and Connie took it with both hands, returning the pain, blues and agony to the sick woman that she’d suffered earlier. Then she worked Miss Fletcher with a series of slaps – mostly across her face but she’d mix it up with whacks across her sick tummy and ones that reddened that flat chest. She cranked on Geri’s tiny tits until the bawling broad’s skinny legs gave out and sank to her knees. Up came Connie’s knee and Miss Fletcher was on her back wondering where she was.
Connie reached down to Geri’s shorts and pulled them down and off her legs. I wasn’t a pretty sight. “I wanted to see if she had a carajo y cojones. I always had wondered this.” Geraldine didn’t have them, but might have looked and smelled better down there if she had. “Pew!” said Connie as she grabbed two skinny ankles and opened her up. “Nasty old dead fish in there! Let me kick it out of you.” She stomped the woman hard in the hairy twat and Miss Fletcher rolled on the floor like a log downhill, banging into chairs.
Connie followed her around the lounge, stomping on the aching body whenever she could. Eventually she knelt over the beaten woman and slapped her long face until her palms were raw. She snorted up a big gob of spit and dropped it into the half-conscious Geri’s red eyes.
La Pantera growled, “Wear these for a while, puta!” Connie used her long nails on that face, plowing it up as the blood seeped and the tears flowed. Satisfied with her handiwork, the gasping principal crawled off the broken teacher with one last hammer blow to her useless belly. As Miss Fletcher was in a ball, bawling like a baby, Consuela toweled off with the loser’s clothing and donned her own, taking every stitch of Geri’s with her. She straightened her wild hair, dabbed at a bleeding nostril and left the lounge, to the sounds of sobs and wretched puking. In the hallway on the way back to her office, she saw the janitor approaching with his mop and pail.
“Pablo! Hay un montón de basura en el salón, por favor.” (There’s a heap of garbage in the lounge) Dr. Consuela Santana had never felt more alive. That bitch had awoken The Jaguar and Roberto would reap the benefits. Pablo had fun that night, too.
Miss Geraldine Fletcher resigned during the holiday break and did not return.
3
High Noon for Nick
It was Monday noon and all sorts of shit was about to hit the fan. I knew Sue Ann’s account of her encounter with Consuela would be a winner. After all, I already had Connie’s side of the story and it was a doozy. Catfights have been my thing my whole life and they’ve been my business for the past two months. But thought I’d left this other shit on the table after I dropped my PI license years ago. Just when I think I’m done with it … what the hell. There are friends with jobs and reputations on the line, so I do what I do. I guess I’m just a helluva guy. Or a helluva knucklehead. Maybe both.
I read all the docs Marcia had brought from the library. I got an earful from Police Chief Santana and his wife Saturday at lunch. I’d called contacts I’d made two years ago when I was researching a screenplay I was writing concerning cops and underworld characters - contacts on both sides of the fence. I had a drink or two Saturday night at The Sandbar with one of the journalists with the Examiner. As a former one myself, I know reporters love to drink. When they drink enough, they talk and this guy talked plenty. There I even consulted my catfighting mixologist pal Katie Pirelli, whose mob-connected husband is doing eight more years in the can for racketeering.
I’d come to my own conclusions about the ongoing police corruption scandal and senior editor Sue Ann West’s involvement … the same Sue Ann whose first real catfight I was about to document. Then we’d see if I was right. Fun first, then business afterwards.
As the sexy blond cougar entered my office with her usually seductive smile, I thought “Okay, Mr. Hollywood … it’s show time. Earn your pay.” I didn’t invite Marcia – I didn’t want this great kid mixed up in this mess. I’d seen my own share of lawyers and courtrooms … even a jail cell or two. But as her self-adopted daddy, I didn’t want any of that for her. I figured I’d start with the catfight. Here’s my report with a blend of material from both parties …
4
The Cougar, Her Kitten, and the Jaguar
It began with a visit to the principal’s office for a rather wild 18 year-old cheerleading senior sporting a trace of a black eye some three years ago in 1984.
Miss Heather Kaye West was one of the “cool” girls. She had been on the homecoming court, a prom organizer and the captain of the cheerleading squad. She also had a reputation as a “wild child”, one who loved the boys and left them. She also wasn’t afraid to mix it up with any girl she had a problem with. Last year, her victorious slugfest with a cheerleader from Watford HS right on the basketball court had gotten her suspended a couple of days, though it had made her a folk heroine with the other kids who were at the game from Sandbridge HS.
Heather’s two passions – boys and catfights, as well as her tendency to run her mouth, were why she was in Dr. Consuela Santana’s office this today. She had dated the principal’s son Hector two years ago. She was 16 and he was 18 then. He’d since graduated and was at USC, but his current girlfriend Rosita was still at SHS and in Heather’s class. Heather would drop gossip about the principal’s son whenever and to whomever she could. Dr. Santana just seethed over it … one of the reasons Heather kept spreading shit. The blonde babe knew her mother, newspaper junior editor Sue Ann West, and Dr. Santana loathed each other. They’d had words a couple of times when their kids were dating and at least once since at a PTA function. Consuela’s advice had been one of the reasons Hector had dropped Heather and started dating Rosita. Heather and her mother had not forgotten.
Things came to a head last Friday when the fiery Rosita had enough of Heather’s mouth and the two 18 year-olds had battled it out at lunchtime right in the school parking lot. The tough chica was thrashing the blonde by the time a couple of teachers and the assistant principal had broken it up. Even though she was the loser, Heather got the blame. She was pissed. So was Dr. Santana, no fan of either Heather or her cocky, man-eating mother. The Puerto Rican Ice Machine was beginning to overheat as she dressed down the girl. Her punishment – one week suspension. That also meant suspension from the cheer squad and missing the big rivalry football game with Brookside HS – the one the kids all looked to more than any other.
Sue Ann: Okay. Maybe Heather shouldn’t have called her a bitch. Even though we both knew she was. Connie was just pissed because it was my daughter. She hated me as much as she hated her. The little Mexican witch wasn’t even punished! And when Santana threatened to tell me what Heather had called her, she shouldn’t have said that I had called her something worse … and mentioned a certain adjective describing her color. A (expletive deleted) bitch! Nope, never called her that one. Just “bitch”. But when the old goat said …
Consuela stood from behind her desk, removed her reading glasses and replied, “You skanky little whore! You and your mother can both kiss my (expletive deleted) ass, that’s what you can do! You tell your bleach-bottle, ass-shaking old lady tramp to come here and call me that to my face! I want to see her today, right after school. Tell her to wear old clothes. She might want to bring bandages too, because I want to discuss things with her woman-to-woman rather than mother-to-administrator. I’ll be waiting for her in the gym … unless she’s the fucking bird-faced coward I think she is. I’ve been waiting to have this “discussion” with her for a long time.”
Heather looked delighted. “Yes ma’am! I’m sure Mom would just loooove to have that “discussion” with you, woman-to-bitch. She’s been wanting it ever since she met you. I just hope she lets me watch!” She practically skipped home.
Connie: I hated that West woman. It’s true – I wanted to beat her up. Worse even than I did Geraldine. I wanted to fight her and I knew she wanted to fight me. Now was the time. But I shouldn’t have let my temper get to me. I’d have to control that when we tangled. I wasn’t afraid of her. I knew I could beat the bitch, but I knew she looked and was built like a catfighter. It would hurt anyway I looked at it. I’d win. But I couldn’t lose my cool.
Sue Ann: When Heather told me what that hag had called me, and worse- what she’d called my little girl? Boy were my ears steamin’! How I loathed that Santana woman. Yes I’d fight her – I knew I could beat the bitch. She looked like she would be hell-on-wheels in a knock-down, drag-out catfight. She’d hurt me, but I’d win. I need to change. And I said, no, Heather, you can’t watch.
5
“I’m the Bitch! Don’t Hurt Me Anymore!”
Sue Ann arrived at the SHS gym at about 6:00. The door to the outside entrance, usually locked, was not. Dr. Santana would have a key of course. Even Pedro had gone home for the evening. They’d be alone.
Consuela was stretching on the basketball floor. She’d obviously spread gym mats used for the Phys Ed class to cover it. Sue Ann had to admit the 43 year old from Puerto Rico looked pretty good barefoot and in a cutoff gray t-shirt and black gym shorts. Those legs look fit and strong and her brown belly’s pretty tight. Mine’re better though. Her nails were long, but not too long for a catfight, and both finger and toenails were polished dark red. Lots of curly gray-streaked black hair – easy to pull. I’ll take some of that shit home tonight, old island woman.
Connie observed Sue Ann enter and size her up. She did the same – a couple of inches taller and about the same weight. A nice figure with bigger tits. Great legs, trim stomach. Not bad for 41. The import from Macon County, Georgia was wearing something similar to Connie – a cut down white t shirt and denim shorts. On her feet were high-heeled sandals which she removed and set down next to her bag. Her whorishly painted orange nails looked sharp and just the right length to rip and tear all night long. Her shoulder-length recently-permed hair was a mass of frizzy bottled-blond curls – perfect for hair pulling. I’ll take some of that mess home tonight, you pasty-faced puta rosa.
“You ready blondie?”
“Fuck yeah, baby!”
They went right into each other’s manes to the wrist and began a wild mutual hair pulling duel. It went all over the gym from wall-to-wall, on the mat and off. On their feet and rolling on the floor, on their knees and sitting. It was a neck-twisting, back-bending, screaming brawl with neither woman wanting to let go. The hatred was palpable, the desire to inflict deep pain and to exert control over the other was sublime. Blonde and black hair was beginning to litter the mat as they danced on it or rolled through it. Loose hair from each stuck to sweaty arms, faces and bodies. Both women were as determined to kick shins and calves, scrape legs with toenails and butt heads as they were to bald each other. The ladies exchanged filthy curses and they grunted with exertion, yelped in pain. This was primal catfighting at its most basic by two women not experienced in fighting but veterans of life.
They had been pulling away for nearly five minutes when each released her enemy’s torn, wild-looking mop with mutual unspoken consent. Each groaned a long “ohhhh” as a sigh of relief from the pressure and pain in her scalp. “Oh, my God. Owww,” moaned Sue Ann. “Ai, ai, ai. Madre de Dios. Shit,” gasped Connie. They brushed hair back from their faces, aching fingers feeling at throbbing scalps and examining small tufts of loose hair. They looked into each other’s teary eyes with a silent plea not to dig back in. First Sue Ann, then Connie gave a little shake of the head in mutual consent, and panting for breath, they closed again with fists clenched this time.
Sue Ann: Bitch got my respect and I got hers. We might have hated each other … and still do … but I knew she could go and she knew I could too. It was going to be a long fucking night!
They circled each other a couple of times and started winging punches. Neither woman was an experienced fist fighter, but part of experience is defense, so those small, imperfect but sharp knuckled fists were going to land plenty and they would hurt and open skin. Connie scored first with a stiff knuckle sandwich. Sue and made the Puerto Ricana stumble awkwardly from a grazing wide right to the cheekbone, following it up with a straight left to the tit. Cut a little from the punch to her eye, Connie responded to a wild right that hit nothing with a loud, slapping punch to the belly and a nice clean fist to the nose. She hooked a kick into Sue Ann’s ribs, bending the blonde sideways with a grunt, then chopped her to her knees with a left cross that caught her full in the right eye. Before the principal could lift a knee into her the way she had Geri, the southern gal socked her in the stomach, causing Connie to groan. Then the kneeling Sue Ann wrapped her arms around the older woman’s strong left leg and sank teeth into her thigh.
Connie had been winning the fist fight, but that bite turned it into something else. Connie had not been bitten in her first brawl a year ago … or in her life for that matter. God did it hurt. She screamed bloody murder as the blonde chewed on her gam like an ear of corn. Dr. Sanchez pulled the small teeth of the bird-faced woman out of her by twisting at the sweaty mop of dyed hair until Sue Ann’s already tender scalp couldn’t take it. As she checked out the bloody mouth print, Mrs. West stood up and punched her in the nose. Both noses were trickling blood from unskilled fists, but the following slap was anything but unskilled. The vicious bitchslap from Sue Ann smacked Connie full on the left cheek and it was loud.
When Marcia listened to the taped accounts of this one, she was reminded of the epic slap fight she’d had with Mrs. West’s daughter Heather. “We just took turns. I mean, not one of us was missing, man,” she’d said at the time. That’s the kind of slapping exchange in which Mrs. West and Dr. Santana engaged now. Maybe the two older, less experienced women didn’t have the strength and technique of the younger girls, but they really let each other have it, not trying to block anything or make the other miss. They just stood toe-to-toe, hanging out their bruised and swelling faces and taking it, ready to return in kind.
They must have gotten in a half dozen good licks apiece, right and left, and the sound of loud, sick smacks with a bleating “Aww!’, “Ohh!” or “Ahh!” with each one echoed throughout the gym with Sue Ann’s deeper grunts contrasting with Connie’s higher-pitched ones. Finally, a brutal right smack with more power than most, cracked into the slender blonde’s cheek and her eyes rolled back. She did the Funky Chicken out there, trying to stay on her feet. She had enough of Connie’s palms and had clearly been slapped silly, reaching for an invisible door and feeling for an equally invisible knob with her smarting right hand, looking to escape.
The gasping Puerto Ricana, grateful that another slap wasn’t coming back to rattle her cage, breathed a deep sigh of relief and peeled off her sweat soaked t-shirt that was just getting in her way. “Come back here, you!” the bare-chested woman panted. She dragged the rubber legged blonde back by the stringy mop, pulled Sue Ann’s top off as well, and clawed her from the tits down to her shorts with two handfuls of red nails. Sue Ann howled and tried to pat out the fire, allowing Connie to measure her up for another big face slap that put her on the mat.
Sue Ann: I was slapped so shitfaced I didn’t even realized I was half naked until I felt the bitch’s talons drag down my front. Oh mother fuck did that wake me up! I’m one of those fair skinned, freckle faces that welt up easy. I had to think of that cxnt every time I looked at myself in the mirror for a week. As you know, darlin’ I like to look at myself in the mirror, and it wasn’t easy each time seeing what she did to me.
Connie tried to pile on, but Sue Ann just rolled out of the way in time. She took a brown ankle and sank teeth into the sole of the woman’s bare foot. Consuela screeched in pain and surprise. She yanked her foot out of the blonde’s mouth and grasp, then thrust it back into Sue Ann’s mouth, cutting her upper lip. The Georgian grunted as Dr. Santana dropped her heel and sole down into her stomach and brought her knees up to protect it. Connie took some revenge by taking a slender ankle and getting a deep bite of her own into one of Sue Ann’s white feet. A wailing blonde broke the bite by bringing up her other foot and dragging her sharp orange toenails own the side of Connie’s face.
Connie squealed and released the ankle to feel at her cheek. Sue Ann sat there scrabbling and kicking Connie with both feet, aiming mostly at her sweaty tits and face. Connie responded in kind and they waged an inconclusive contest for a while, sitting up on their elbows, slapping with their feet and thrusting short, stomping kicks. They both rolled over onto all fours and stalked each other like a pair of alley cats, gasping, growling and taunting.
Their noses were weeping blood and sweat dripped from their chins and bare breasts as they slowly circled with blue and brown eyes locked. Even though this was her first real catfight, Sue Ann was enjoying herself immensely despite the pain and fatigue. She was grinning at Connie, batting at her face occasionally with a clawed hand. Connie was not enjoying it nearly as much. This was so different than her first fight – much more brutal and even with a woman her own size giving as much as Connie. Her confidence was beginning to erode a little as was her endurance, but she still was hissing and spitting, swearing at her enemy in two languages. “Bitch! Coño!”
Sue Ann was a professional at reading body language. That’s what good reporters are trained to do … and she could see just a little fear in those dark brown eyes. “What’s the matter, missy? Afraid of little ol’ me? Badass señorita scared of this skinny cracker girl?”
“I’ll kill you, white whore! Cójale (Fuck you), you bird-faced puta!”
They rose up and their bodies splatted together, still on their knees and knotting fingers into the string wet messes that were once expensive hairdos. They scraped tits and sore noses as they twisted and yanked, bending heads at awkward angles and pulling them backwards from behind. Both would occasionally release hair with one hand to pound ribs, scratch a back or a cheek, or slap some sweat off a face.
Sue Ann noticed a small cut under Connie’s left eye caused by her bony knuckles earlier, and thinking “why the hell not” licked her lips and opened it up wider and deeper with her sharp little teeth. Connie gasped in fear and cried out. She got her own teeth working, scraping up the jawline of the blonde, and desperately pulling her hair. Sue Ann sawed on the older woman’s cut until she tasted blood, then pulled Connie’s teeth away from her own face with a fistful of wet black curls. The Puerto Rican was stunned by the bloody bite, and for the first time open fear now showed in her eyes, relieving the Georgian’s aching scalp to feel at her damaged face. Sue Ann loved it. She butted Connie twice in succession, once in the forehead and once on the bleeding cheekbone. Connie’s eyes rolled back as her head was full of flashing stars. Her hands dropped to Mrs. West’s scratched flanks.
Sue Ann created a little distance and cocked her right elbow as far as she could, then sank her fist deep into the wet brown stomach of Consuela. The stricken woman bellowed like a bull as the little hard fist buried to the wrist and twisted around for a couple of seconds to compound her misery. Never in her 43 years had Consuela Santana felt anything like that in her guts. “Childbirth was close, but this was worse. And to think another woman, one about my own age and a mother, would intentionally and so casually hurt me in this way? It was awful.”
Sue Ann enjoyed every second of Connie’s misery. She was gasping for break, but still managed that dirty laugh. Her enemy was coughing, heaving for breath and crying openly, all doubled over. Sue Ann scraped nails up her light brown back then yanked her up by the hair. Still with a hand tangled in the black mess, she slapped the trapped and bleeding face hard twice, forehand and backhand. Connie’s arms were still wrapped around her churning middle leaving her face wide open for examination. The cheeks were red and there was blood streaming down her left side from the cheekbone. Her right one was scratched and sore-looking from Sue Ann’s toenails, but the cruel blonde decided that side needed a little touch-up. She inserted two delicate fingers into Connie’s wide open mouth, placed her thumbnail on her cheek, then dug in with all three digits and began scratching around, until her cheek was bloodied inside and out Connie could only groan and cry louder.
“Look at what a mess I’ve made of this dame,” thought Mrs. West. She knew she didn’t look that much better. She had a swollen, blackening eye, a bleeding nose and upper lip her cheeks were beet red and looked to be about to burst and she was covered from head to toe with bright red nail marks. But at least she still had some wind and wits left and her face wasn’t covered with blood, not like the Latina bitch. The weeping school principal was done. Now to finish her.
Sue Ann pulled the weak arms away from Connie’s belly and dug another short right in there again. She wrapped her lean, steely legs around the stricken woman and tightened her thighs around the heaving and sickened middle. “OHHH!” blurted Consuela, her eyes wide as saucers. Hours in the gym and dance class had strengthened her thighs and she tried to make them meet with Connie’s broken body in the way. Mrs. West was on her side with Dr. Santana’s head between her tits, squeezing the woman’s ribs and stomach like a python. She had one hand knotted in her mop with the other pushing on her head. Then she yanked back hard with her hair-entwined fist, straining until it ripped free, a big haunk of slick black hair loose in her fingers. “Yeah baby! Took Cha-cha’s Hair! Roots and all that shit!” Connie could only scream bloody murder with the little breath she had left.
Sue Ann kept squeezing with her thigh until she was sure Connie had passed out. She stripped the unconscious woman of her shorts, leaving her buck naked. Dropping into a kneeling mount, she went to work, tearing pubic hair free, scratching up Dr. Santana’s 34Bs and drilling a long middle finger as deep into her asshole as it would go, scratching her way out until the pain awoke the beaten woman with a blood-curdling scream. She shook the torn and tattered black hair and spit full in Connie’s dazed face.
“Listen to me, you cocksucking Spanish cxnt. My daughter needs to learn to respect old ladies. She deserves a one day suspension for calling you what you are. Nothing for fighting. Do you hear me? She will NOT be suspended from the cheer squad and miss the big game next week. Furthermore, you will treat her like any other student from now on and I promise she’ll stop talking shit about your pencil-dicked son. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll beat you up again and next time I’ll ruin your sex life forever with these very fingernails. Now who’s the bitch, you bloody-faced, belly-sick shitbird?”
“I am,” groaned Dr. Santana. “I’m the bitch! Don’t hurt me anymore!”
After Sue Ann had clothed, she sauntered over to her enemy who was still sobbing on the mat. She took both of Connie’s ankle and spread them. She slipped off her right shoe and said, “Do what I told you or I’ll do what I promised. Your cxnt next time. Right here, baby!” Her bare foot stomped down hard into the bare crotch with a loud smack. One more guttural cry, and a satisfied Sue Ann West, the senior of the Wild, Wild West Women, gathered up her fistful of loose black hair and left the gym having made her scrappy daughter proud.
Connie: She had really beaten me up bad. I missed nearly a week of school on sick leave. I was thrashed, humiliated and humbled. Losing my temper in front of that girl had earned me the bloody beating the bitch had given me. I’ll give her this: she kept her end of the bargain and I kept mine. I didn’t want to fight her again. Not until this spring. Then that poisonous editorial came out. The whole thing is a lie – created in the sick mind of that hateful, vindictive bitch!
Roberto: Widespread corruption? An “anonymous high-placed police official”? Payoffs, bribery and shit with wiseguys paying off senior officers here at SPD. Horse shit, Nick! This is Sandbridge, not LAPD. How many “high-placed”, senior officials do we have? Me and two Lieutenants. Those guys are like my brothers. That’s it. Sure, we get a crooked cop or two. You know what I do when I get him? I take his fucking badge, his gun, and I kick his rotten ass out the door. That’s what I do. They don’t have shit at that rag-sheet because there ain’t shit. Period. You see that low-class street whore Monday and keep that in mind.
6
It’s Who You Know
I played for Sue Ann her recorded comment about the ”bullshit” police corruption scandal. I looked her in the eye. What did I see? No longer the cocky, ass-shaking, prey-stalking cougar. It was instead the look of a competent newspaper professional crossed with a scared little girl caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
I told her about all the people I’d talked with over the weekend, from the Police Chief to guys lucky to still be out of jail. One of her own reporters. I heard about her editor-in-chief Roger Moon and his grudge against policemen that dated back to his hippy-dippy days at Cal State Berkeley back in ’68. One of those gray pony-tail guys. I had come to one conclusion.
“That one word, my dear, ’bullshit’ is what they call a Freudian Slip. The truth coming out unintentionally brought on by repression and feelings of guilt. This whole scandal was bogus from the start, wasn’t it? There were no high-placed sources, no senior police officials on the take nor any mob guys with bags of money were there?”
“No. There never were. But trust me, I didn’t make this up! Sure I fucked up by writing that editorial. I’m ambitious, okay? When the editor-in-chief brought it to me, I saw it as my opportunity. Sue Ann West hits the big time! The Times, the Daily News, they’ll all know my name! And I *wanted* it to be true – I wanted to stick it to that bitch Consuela and Roberto as well. Do you know I tried to get him in the sack once, just to get one over on his wife? He told me to go fuck myself. I’m not used to hearing that from a man. So I screwed up. I didn’t check the reports and the sources myself. I led with my emotions and my typewriter instead of my brain.”
“So when you did check all that shit after you wrote that column, you found out that it was a hoax.”
“Yes. Just killing me ever since. I couldn’t print a retraction - Mr. Moon, my boss, had been the one who gave me the story. I was convinced he’d fried up the whole mess.”
“Why didn’t you go over his head?”
“The publisher?” Sue Ann laughed disdainfully. “Sexist pig. He still thinks it was a mistake to give women the right to vote. It would be Moon’s word against mine - everybody’s favorite whore, the life of the party, the gold-digger who had been beaten up and laid out naked by her lover’s wife.”
“Good point. But you know the longer a cover up goes, the worse the consequences are for everyone. Maybe there is something I can do. Make a couple of phone calls. Meanwhile get your story down on paper, all your shit together. When I get back with you, get an appointment to see the publisher. One last thing. Why April? If this old hippy hated cops so much, why did he wait so long to create this story?”
“A speeding ticket. He got a fucking speeding ticket.”
To make a long story short, or at least not as long, here’s what happened. Sue Ann made her appointment with the publisher with an impressive presentation prepared. She had three guys with her as backup: me, Drake Coburn, and an old friend of Drake’s, Otis Chandler. That’s right, *the* Otis Chandler, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times and one of the most influential men within the newspaper industry in the 20th century, a fanatic when it came to journalistic integrity. Sue Ann did most of the talking – we were there to make sure her small-town publisher was properly star-struck, awe-struck and smothered in bullshit. Guess what role I provided?
When we were finished, Roger Moon was called in and it was five on one. Poor bastard didn’t have a fuckin’ chance. He fessed up and he was gone. Where is he now? Probably working as a beat writer for High Times or something. The new editor-in-chief printed a retraction of the whole mess the next day. Her name? Sue Ann West. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
Sue Ann got what she wanted and I guess I did, too. She was so happy that the following evening she paid me a visit at the apartment to present my “reward”.
Did I say I love my job?
The End
As a note – big Otis Chandler (1927-2006) was a real guy and was every bit the publishing icon in journalism as Nick says he is.
//Braveheart
