Like Barabbas (Chapter 1)

By Chris Bruton

Copyright ©2025

It wasn't like you think.  He wasn't bald or fat or disfigured.  He was middle-aged, it's true, but the years had given him a somewhat distinguished look.  Some people compared him to Richard Gere.

            He was married and had a family.  He had a good job at the IRS.  He had never been in trouble with the law, other than a few traffic tickets, and though not considered a "people person" he mostly got along with his neighbors.  But he liked women.  And the older he got, the more he liked them.

            His name was Warren Holt.

            He would watch professional football games and the cheerleaders made an inordinate impression on him.  He would see the bra and panty ads in the paper and get an implacable hard-on.  He began to secretly look at pornography. He would pop in a video when his wife and kids were gone, or watch it online.  But porn, though initially exciting, grew repetitious over time. They were only images, after all.

            His first experience happened by accident.  He had learned to dive and convinced his wife to let him go on a diving trip to Mexico, alone.  They could have gotten one of their mothers to stay with the kids, but his wife had no interest in sports or the outdoors.  She would be bored, he told her, waiting around for him while he dived.

            He got a seven-day package to Cozumel.  The diving was good, but they always returned to port by early afternoon, which made for plenty of down time.  Warren became restless hanging out by the resort pool, with the nightly mariachi bands and tourists guzzling tequila.  He always felt uncomfortable around tourists in foreign places; it made the experience seem less “real.”  One evening he took the ferry into nearby Playa del Carmen.  He had a meal and hired a taxi.  He spoke passable Spanish but didn't know how to say strip club, so he told the driver he wanted a place "with women.”

            At the club, an elderly waiter in a threadbare tux ushered him to a table near the stage.  He ordered a beer and was served a tubful of Coronas in ice.  The place was run down and he saw no other tourists.  It was a different scene from in the US.  The Mexicans didn’t tip and the dancers made no effort to actually dance, but only traipsed up and down the stage in pedestrian fashion, looking bored.  After he had drunk a couple beers a buxom woman with dyed blond hair sat beside him.   Talking in Spanish she held his arm and pressed herself against him.  The waiter came by to remove his empties and nodded encouragingly, as though to commend his good taste.  Warren wasn’t attracted to the woman, but somehow found himself following her up a rickety staircase.  It led to a dim corridor lined with cubbyholes covered by coarse curtains resembling burlap.  The woman stopped by one of these spaces and gestured for him to enter.  He came to his senses finally and backed away.

            He wasn’t done for the night, though.  He could sleep in in the morning; it wasn’t a good idea to dive after a lot of drinking anyway.  Getting into a waiting taxi outside, he asked the driver to take him to another club.

            “Here no many good clubs,” the driver said in English.  “No like in my city.  I from Monterrey.  Is too many beautiful clubs there.”

            “Oh.”

            “You no want relax?"

            “Sorry?”

            “You no want fucking?"

            Taken aback, Warren reflected on the proposal.  He had a little buzz on, and he wasn’t sleepy.  He thought of the resort back in Cozumel, the yelping and cackles of the college students long into the night.

“You know a good place?” he said.

            They parked at a nondescript, corner building not far from the tourist district and the driver accompanied him inside.  It must have housed a seamstress shop by day; even now a young woman worked at a sewing machine while another labored with needle and thread over a piece of cloth.  The driver and a young man who seemed to be in charge conferred for several moments in rapid Spanish.  Then the man and the seamstresses withdrew to an inner room and after a few moments, Warren was told to enter.

            Five young women stood before him in various postures.  They were ordinary-looking; that is to say, they lacked the attitude and attire of what he thought typical of prostitutes.  Some smiled, some appeared restless, one did not look at him at all.  Warren understood that he had to choose.  The problem was none of them genuinely attracted him.  He looked from one to the next, his awkwardness making him grin, and overriding all was a silly reluctance to avoid offense.  The minutes dragged on, the women fidgeting and muttering uncomfortably until the driver said, “I think we go another place, no?”

            The next one had a different setup.  The women were waiting on sofas in a reception area, wearing heels and slinky outfits.  He quickly chose a squat brown woman wearing a revealing satin blue dress who smiled at him shyly.  Once he picked her, though, her smile vanished.

He paid four hundred pesos—about forty dollars—and the woman received a key tied to a bit of wood etched with a number.  She led him to a brightly-lit, clinic-like room equipped with a padded table.  Warren hopped on the table and she gestured for him to undress.  He stripped to his briefs while the woman gathered towels and packets of condoms.  She was in her early twenties, with skin the color of cane syrup and a broad, somewhat inscrutable face.  She had no waist at all, it was as straight as a board.  Warren watched her as she prepared for her task with downcast eyes.  Her inexpressiveness, what psychologists call lack of affect, somehow excited him.

Standing next to him, the woman began to massage his dick inside the underwear.  Warren thought this an odd preliminary but did not complain.  He was in a foreign country.  He reached for her breast, and she pushed his hand away without comment.

“What’s wrong?”

“No se puede.”

“I will pay more.  Más pesos.”

“Cuánto?”

He took out his wallet and showed her two hundreds.

“ Está bien,” she said, reaching for them.

He made her get on the table and began kissing her.  She would not let him take off her dress so he pulled down the top part.  Her nipples had little black hairs around them.  He sucked them until the bitter juice came.  All the time she struggled and tried to push him away.  He was hard now and told her to put on the condom.  She lay back, took off her panties and lifted up her dress.  She had shaved and her pussy wasn’t that nice.  He entered her gingerly.  She winced but made no sound.  He kissed her neck, her cheek, her tightly clenched lips, and began to thrust.  He had her get on all fours and fucked her from behind, the abbreviated dress flapping from her mid-section.  He did not like condoms, it made it difficult for him to come.  But that didn’t bother him now.  An unknown vigor, an unbridled hunger had taken possession of him.  Was it all the years of uninspired marital sex?  The thrill of the new?  This stolid brown woman with the torso of a barrel had taken him to another side, a different dimension.  And now he draped himself over her.  He wanted to make sure he had heard.  He lay his cheek next to her shut eyes.  Oy, she squeaked as he drove himself into her.  Oy, oy, in quick, involuntary grunts.  He forgot where he was.  He forgot the squalor of the room, his squeamishness, the indignity of the encounter.  There was just this, this thrusting and the answering guttural yelps.   

About Chris Bruton:

Chris Bruton is a writer and Spanish translator.  His first novel Like Barabbas will be appearing soon.