RIPPED (OFF)

DEADLY DARTING DIANA

​ my father was done talking, my mind was in a complete mess. Nothing prepared me for the shock ​ I had when I found out that my mother was the famous Lady Diana of Vavula – the glamorous and flamboyant woman trailed by a cocktail of soured affections and dissolved marriages contracted with a few highly placed individuals with enormous reputations from across the continents of the world.

“Blessed munificently with rare body features that gave her such looks that spitefully betrayed her numbers; Diana looked classy although 45 - Intimidatingly beautiful. She stood 5'3meters tall - a height considered quite tall for her age and for her Mexican descent: Long blond hair that unfurled to contact the bump contour behind her hourglass body.

With a wide forehead, prominent cheekbones, lush eyelashes, and glassy gray eyes that had a ring of gold circling her pupils. A perfect nose that formed from a narrow nasal bridge - a semblance of a European; but puffed at its tip with the restraining wideness of an African at the nostrils, Diana was sculptured to perfection.

Faultless set of enchanting teeth safely gatekept away by a pair of squishy lips: the number one weapon in her deadly arsenal, only bared and, in the most riveting fashion whenever there was a big catch lurking,” my father started, piecing together an image that clearly described me in every physical sense.

His words transported me back to his words many years ago, the first and only time before this day that he mentioned my mother.

“Just like your mother, you are beautiful,” he said, and just like that day, his lips were again drawn slightly apart in a small grin; and again, his voice dropped an octave lower, departing from the warmth that was perpetually subsumed in his voice as he described her. It was easy to see how much she meant to him.

“Thick blameless thighs, hairless straight fleshy legs aptly weaponized for the singular purpose of bringing affluent men off their feet and forcing them onto bended knees - an adapted function the legs have earned enormous credits for in many decades, yielding a couple of nuptial experiments which left her in a pool of wealth,” he submitted in a croak. He cleared his voice and ran on.

“With all of this beauty coated in supple bright brown skin, Diana was lethal, incursively equipped with brain-bursting salacious skills and well-tailored alluring behaviors which she lured and engulfed her wealthy prey with.

Moreover, she was a seasoned smooth talker, witted in developing simple matters of little weight into a tapestry of meaningful social, political, or business conversations. I loved her silly for this above all her qualities. She was sophisticated and dangerous with the tongue and not any less as with her waist.”

I was not aware of a part of my father that could be this honest to the point of being almost vulgar. But I guess he was saying it all the way they were; just like I’d have loved him to.

“An intelligent and balanced polyglot who spoke Spanish, German, and Mandarin with the exact mesmerizing fluency that she commanded the English and French languages,” he paused and swallowed hard, shaking his head in obvious reminiscence. Something in me was beginning to love all that I had heard of the same person I have hated for abandoning me.

“Leveraging her abundant natural endowment and linguistic advantages, Diana was not the type to turn down. No surprises when she sauntered through the doors into the echelons of power and became a familiar face in the privileged toppers circle of Caritas City where we would meet, again.”

Although he was trying to make holistic inroads into the meat of the story I had died many years to hear, my father was moving at the pace of the snail and the result was that I was cracking under intense curiosity.

“Meanwhile, the feud between us has dragged on since we parted ways while you were tender, and even though Diana has successfully ensnared a few big names and walked away with a fortune, she has however remained disgruntled because, unlike with her other deals before and after me, she couldn't siphon as much wealth as she had mapped out.”

He adjusted, cracked his knuckles and a couple of crunchy sounds followed. “She was my sweetheart, playful, mischievous, and intelligent, I dare to mention again; always hobnobbing and giggling heartily over hwn mischief. She made it easy for me to fall deeply in love with her.”

“…exactly!” I screamed under my breath. That was a truth I already saw long before he said it in words.

“I loved every bit of her and recklessly loaded her bountifully with expensive gifts,” he reinforced aggressively, making pieces of bones shoot out and disappear from his jaw as ground his teeth pain.

“We had the world at our feet and we made merry each daComfortort was a lifestyle we had both known coming from our separate lives but I was born at redefining it afraid in a way her mind would never have captured. And I did.

We did. Did the impossible; made a habit out of making distance a mere fiction. We flew on the planes from Caritas Ville to Asia just for a Matsutake and puffer fish meal, and in a few cases, we connected to Africa to source jewelry, en route home.”

He was almost beginning to bore me again. “I mean, what couldn’t a man of your social standing afford?” As though he read my mind, he delved back into the story proper.

“Then, one summer Saturday morning while I was still lying next to her, a text dropped in. It was Diana announcing by the text that she had fallen out of love with me and was asking for legal freedom from us, from all that we had

“With a mixture of excitement and a shade of regret, I write to ask for a divorce. Hopefully, I will get one without so much animosity.” I sprang to my feet but slumped back on the bed. In a moment of utter confusion, I raced my mind back to how it all started two years earlier," he said, his eyes narrowed in pains.

"It was on one of the days at the auction in the penthouse which as always, converged everyone with a deep pocket in Caritas, and Diana who was new in Vavula graced the event. She came posing as one who was in search of a pet and would settle for a clumsy choice at an eye-watering cost.

At the heart of the event, she demonstrated why she should be reserved a spot on the lofty table of the nobles of Caritas where it would later be discovered she was gunning or when she shook off competitions from all present and paid a whopping seven hundred thousand dollars for a sloth."

Although the auction was a designedfor the rich to subtly announce how affluent they were through the type of items they purchased and at what price; it was also a platform for proper business networking, baiting of the big fishes, and a place for spreading one's tentacles.

However, it was rather ridiculous that anyone would think of paying such an outrageous amount for a tiny creature that only eats, swings, and sleeps. Therefore, as expected, there was a chain of curious admirers who queued, requesting a meeting with her when the occasion was over.

Meanwhile, there was someone else who was very relevant in the same scenario, eyeing the topmost class and spraying the cash. He was Roland Wilson,” he said as he digressed, leaving me drooling.

The auction was one of the most viable machinations for making statements of how rich one had become without actual words in Caritas Ville, especially if one was a convener or the highest bidder. The other one was in singlehandedly bankrolling a political aspirant.

Pertinently, how much one spent purchasing an item and how many of such items one purchased per time were important to one's social rating, whether as a ‘Table-topper’, a ‘Middler’ or a ‘Base-runner’- a gradation instigated by the press and pundits.

Meanwhile, the Table Topper of Caritas was an exclusive class peopled by four men acknowledged by all as wealthy in every shade of the word - quiet noblemen of many means and few words; except Roland Wilson who eventually hewed out a slot in the class for himself. Wilson was randy and loved it that he was perceived as such.

The members were all men acclaimed for their requisite economic power which necessarily balanced out the equation of their social weights. For instance, St. Larry Stone of New Heaven had an automobile franchise, Bloom Memphis of Cansasville wathe the name in the oil and gas production industry, and Albert Sheriff of Vavula’s niche was agriculture and tourism.

All the regions of Caritwerewas a home for all, harboring workers: movie and sports superstars, industrialists, and employees of the government and corporate outfits; although most of its billionaire entrepreneurs were nucleated separately at Vavula.

Therefore, whenever an auction was announced, everyone who assessed himself as important in the light of the depth of his pocket was usually seen reeling out of the corners of the city, trooping in the direction of the call, enthusing a chance of a breakthrough into the next level of social-economic importance ahead of his current status.

So, auction sales were put together as soon as an upset, where a new person broke into the hallowed toppers, and was to put up a statement in an auction to display his capacity happened; or whenever a topper had a product to sell.

The latter wry now and then and the former rarely happened- just once, and it soon was seen for the fluke it was. Other times, if a topper died; and like in the first condition, this has not happened, yet.

By design, each new auction exhibition was a window for a few new entrants who had loitered within the lower rung for too long to aim a leap into, either the intermediate or from the 'people', into the base.

But, incidentally, there was always a person who would have felt more important than he had been duly accorded and had fancied his chances at the frontline class and would stage an upset.

Meanwhile, my father, as a privileged stakeholder within the topperanksank usually, as a mark of class and wealth expansion strategy, held auctions quite a few times a year to sell his new exotic accumulations - wine and, or animal as was usually the case.

It was also an important time to find viable connections among those who were in attendance. Incidentally, for many years that he did host auctions, a certain Roland Wilson who ardently desired a shift in ranking always topped the list of the biggest spenders the events recorded.

Impressively, he warded off competition from guests and consistently piled up ostentatious stock at sinfully high prices for a long time. He paid incredible sums even for products judged to be not-so-special until he stocked up his collection.

He eventually secured the accreditation of the opinion leaders and cracked into the topper's rank. Before his admission, it was almost customary to have Wilson top the charts of the spender at the end of every exhibition fairly easily. Twice he successfully fended off competition from some front-liners who held comfortable spots in toppers, at the car auctions.

It was at the St. Larry’s car auction that he first startled the guests when he bought a 1975 Jaguar E-type conversion at a whooping sum of one million dollars ahead of very self even as had overhit the price at six hundred thousand. He was not done yet.

“Wow,” Jimmy let out curtly before he could realize he did, ultimately causing a momentary halt. My father lent him a rewarding glance and nodded as though to say that’s right, then extended it to the other man listening raptly.

“He impressed yet again in the following week at Cansasville when he churned out one million, five hundred thousand dollars for a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 fastback, making Bloom Memphis who tabled an impressive eight hundred thousand dollars a second best bidder of the day.

Having stunned the toppers and catered home enormous credit coming from the most unlikely lowest pedestal, he knew that it was time to further impress their gaffer, and he did that so poignantly.

First, he made a glamorous appearance, landing in an awe-inspiring Sikorsky S-92 VIP Configuration helicopter in one of the auctions alongside Roy, his, son, and was rightly introduced with a lot of importance as Lord Roland Wilson.

In the run the event, he paid my father incredible amounts in a ton of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a squirrel monkey, another four hundred thousand dollars for a red river, hog, and yet another four hundred thousand dollars for a Cotton tamarin – a mere clumsy tamari,” he landed and took a pause.

Interestingly, some of these species of animals so expensively acquired usually lived idly longer than most dogs which although pets, still make meaningful contributions which include watching over these animals which sleep as much as twenty hours out of twenty-four, and their owners alike.

Moreover, the cost of their acquisition was usually only a part of the many worries of the buyers and arguably, the least of what it cost in keeping them. In other words, domesticating them was just as difficult as doling out the dough for owning them.

For instance, there would be experts on a buoyant payroll who would create the ideal habitat where they should thrive, or at least survive. Others would provide what that is. Another set simply monitored their responses to their new environments and diets, and they were different from the vets proper.

Importantly, you own all of these creatures only with the authorization of the government. Therefore, there were licenses and permits to pay for. There would be facilities and mobile equipment for those of them that might follow you outdoors; although such should not be part of the headaches of anyone who had the means to have provided all other necessities.

Interestingly, absolutely nothing was particularly special with these animals that the banks were being broken to purchase. For instance, the Red River hog is a common pig. Don’t let its striking reddish-brown coloration and the tufted stripe that runs along their spines fool you.

Worst still, the Tamarin, though rare and maybe endangered, unlike the red-river hog which although still worthless, could produce wool and hides, or tallow that can serve as candle and dung that can burn when dry, ly useless.

From the standpoint of anyone else outside the billionaire’s class, it was insanity to think of acquiring these creatures at such prices when one knew that one has to deal with certain objectionable behaviors of theirs, like screaming and throwing their feces out of the cage in the case of a squirrel monkey

“At this prevailing juncture, it was almost natural for the press and the people alike to judge Lord Roland Wilson a real deal, and the press did. They hyped him and vilified those who delayed his admission, running checks on him – me,” he said.