Naked Men

by Alicia Giménez-Bartlett

  “And afterward?”

  “Nothing, man, nice to have met you and ciao. At most get a drink with them just for PR purposes, but after that we collect our money and vamoose: best of luck and keep selling bras by the bushel.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, teach? What don’t you know?”

  “All those women out for a good time . . . they’re going to be a real pain, try to feel us up, act all innocent.”

  “So what? You’ve been doing this a while now—you know how to put them off gracefully.”

  “I really don’t feel like it.”

  “Stop screwing around, Javier, this is work, not a wedding invitation. Are you going to say no to three hundred fifty smackers because you don’t feel like it? You think you’re the king of mambo or something? Plus, if you don’t come, you’ll screw it up for me too. Who am I going to find for tomorrow if you don’t agree?”

  “Don’t get upset.”

  “What do you mean, don’t get upset? This is how I make a living, man, so tell me: are you in or are you out?”

  “Well, that’s just it, Iván, maybe soon I won’t be in at all.”

  “Feel like telling me what you’re babbling about?”

  “Irene got me a job interview with a friend of hers who owns a company.”

  “Aha! And what sort of job is it, if I may ask?”

  “Recordkeeping—organizing, digitizing, and storing all the papers.”

  “And do you have the job already?”

  “For now I have to do an interview, but it’s very possible they’ll give it to me. Irene recommended me.”

  “Right.”

  The hell with her recommendation! The chick doesn’t even tell him she sold her popsicle stand and now she’s finding a job for him. In the meantime, she goes and sleeps with me. I don’t get it, man, not a goddamn thing. If I were in the teacher’s shoes, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

  “You hadn’t told me any of this.”

  “I just found out. It was a surprise to me too.”

  “Well, it’s a drag you’re going to dump all this.”

  “If you’re my friend, you should be happy for me. I always intended to leave, Iván, from the very beginning. I can’t get used to it—it’s not for me. Every time I strip naked in the club, it’s traumatic, every damn time. Not to mention everything else! It’s humiliating to sleep with women for money. Understand? It’s humiliating—it’s tearing me up.”

  Listening, Iván has grown somber. He seems not angry but incredibly sad. My words have wounded him, it’s clear. We’re back to the same old thing. I’m telling him, “You don’t give a crap about anything, but I’m better than you.” I hasten to speak again:

  “Anyway, count me in for the gig tomorrow. It may be the last one, but I’ll be there.”

  “All right, thanks a lot. I hope you won’t leave us in the lurch at the club. I was the one who brought you in, and I don’t want any problems with the owner.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give plenty of notice. I’ll do things right.”

  He says good night in a very quiet voice and leaves without adding anything else.

  * * *

  I passed out last night. I guess the combination of coke and booze knocked me out. This morning I woke up with dark circles under my eyes—it looked like I had holes in my face. One of these days my assistant is going to find me lying on the floor without a pulse. The thought doesn’t frighten me much. A doctor will come, maybe the police, or a magistrate. People will think I committed suicide: “Things started going wrong for the poor woman all at once. Her company failed, her husband left her . . . and most likely she hadn’t gotten over her father’s death either. Her mother died when she was a little girl . . . Lives like that always come to a bad end.” That sort of nonsense, and probably more besides. Those kinds of comments are annoying, but since I’ll be dead if anyone makes them, it won’t matter.

  Javier calls. He wants to see me and get some advice before the job interview. Standard sorts of things: what to wear, how to act . . . Poor guy! He’s like a monkey that never learned to swing from branch to branch, but is eager to learn how the other monkeys travel through the trees so he can be just like them. He wants to be just another monkey.

  I meet up with him and give him a couple of pointers on how to do a job interview, nothing he couldn’t read in the Sunday supplement. He thinks they’re marvelous anyway. Then, since he’s not one for artifice, he asks if his potential employer is really a good friend of mine and if I’ve recommended him enthusiastically. I say yes to both questions. With the pragmatics out of the way, he assures me that if he gets this job, everything is going to change. His life will turn around, and, strangely enough, apparently so will mine. We’ll enter a higher plane of tranquillity and normality. He speaks in a soothing, paternalistic tone. It’s clear he sees my life as a disaster from which he intends to rescue me. Men have come into this world to rescue women, to implant a bit of rationality in our poor weak heads, which are so full of romantic garbage. My situation must seem particularly complicated—it’s no mean feat to rescue me from myself—but he’s put all his hope in the transformation that will take place. Luckily, he doesn’t mention those aspects of my personality that will need to be eliminated. I’m grateful for that small courtesy. Even so, I picture the general setup he’s proposing. We live together. He gets home from work and sprawls out on the sofa in my living room. He tells me all about his exciting work day organizing invoices and memos. We eat the dinner my assistant’s prepared and go to bed because we have to be up early the next day. Maybe we’ll watch a TV program? Read for a while? It sounds like a great new life.

  What fun! After gray years of integrity and submissiveness, I’ve finally taken a few steps over to the dark side. And when I hire a male prostitute, an honest-to-God prostitute, he wants to rescue me and deliver me right back to the straight and narrow. Praise the Lord! I’m headed for paradise, whether I like it or not.

  * * *

  I was pretty anxious—I thought in the end he wasn’t going to show, leaving me up shit creek without a paddle. But no, the teach is the teach, and there he was, like he’d been nailed in place, right where we’d arranged to meet. He was carrying a little briefcase that held his gladiator costume. He hadn’t failed me. The face he had on was something else—as grave as a corpse.

  I had him meet me a little early so I could do a little psychological prep on him, just in case he still wanted to bolt. I wasn’t planning to say anything against the girl or the job she’d found for him. I’ve warned him a million times already—that’s plenty. I’m not his fucking mother.

  We had a couple of beers at a bar and took turns going to the bathroom to do a line. The mood improved a little, and the teacher’s face got more and more relaxed. Good thing, too, because performing with that look on wasn’t an option. The subject of his new job didn’t come up until I asked him about it directly:

  “Hey, teach, if they give you that paper-pushing job, how much will you make?”

  “I haven’t asked yet.”

  “Oh!” I said, and I said it in a way where you could tell I thought it was dumb not to have asked. The dude’s getting ready to leave the club and the nights out, and he doesn’t even know whether he’ll make enough to keep living like this. The pompous ass. Right now, between one thing and another, he’s making some good scratch every month, and I don’t know shit about it but I’m pretty sure shuffling papers doesn’t pay much. Just a normal salary, that’s it. Of course, evil-minded guy that I am, maybe if he lives with Irene and she pays all the bills, he’s got enough already. After all, that’s what they did when he was with Sandra—she was the one supporting the two of them.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t leave the club job until I had the other one lined up for sure.”

  “Of course.”
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br />   He says “of course” so I’ll shut up, but he’s not really listening. The guy’s asking for trouble! If he leaves the club and doesn’t end up getting the job and the chick dumps him, he’ll be totally screwed. I won’t be able to do anything for him anymore, since I don’t know any other way to make a living. Smart people have no goddamn clue how things work! I feel bad for him—he’s a good guy.

  When it’s time, we head to the luxury hotel and I ask at reception for the chick who’s going to be meeting us. After a while, a posh-seeming chick with her lips pumped full of silicone appears. She scans us up and down to assess what’s on offer and gets this look on her face that suggests we’re less impressive than she was expecting. I start feeling miffed. The chick, whose name is Mila, is painted up like a goddamn door and has bleached blond hair. The first thing she says, no hello or anything, is:

  “What about your costumes?”

  “We’ve got them here.”

  “I thought you’d be wearing them already.”

  “This isn’t Carnival, you know—we dress like normal people out on the street.”

  “Well, I don’t know where you’re going to change.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of little room near the ballroom? You could have thought about this!”

  “No, look, I didn’t think you’d need a dressing room like a couple of Hollywood stars!”

  I could have smacked her right then. I move toward her, not knowing what I’m going to do, but the teacher grabs my arm and asks, “Is there a bathroom nearby?”

  “Yeah, there’s that.”

  She accompanies us down the hallway. We’re off to a bad start, and it bugs me, because of course it’s today, when the teacher didn’t want to come in the first place, that we end up with a bitch. When we’re alone in the damn bathroom, I start flipping out.

  “Goddammit, teach, let’s get out of here if you want to! This chick gets on my damn nerves! I’d like to punch her!”

  “Calm down, Iván, chill. No violence. We’ll do our performance, have a drink with the girls at the end, and leave. No drama—total zen. It’s not worth making a scene. There will be a lot of girls in the room, and not all of them are going to be like that.”

  I’m going to miss the teacher. If he leaves this job, I’ll remember him fondly. He always says what needs to be said. He calms me down. I listen to him.

  We get in our gladiator outfits and head into the ballroom, which is labeled with a golden plaque: “Hermitage.” As soon as we set foot inside, the chicks—there are a ton of them—start squealing like pigs. They’re all sitting at a long table and have finished dinner. There are glasses everywhere and empty bottles of sparkling wine. They’re probably tipsy already. The waiters swoop around and eye us mockingly. They whisper to one another. I’m pissed they’re having a laugh at our expense.

  We huddle in a corner. An older woman comes over to us, all gussied up and dressed in black—she must be the real boss, because the bitch moves aside.

  “Good evening, how are you? Welcome, I’m thrilled you’re here. I hope you give the girls a good time. They’ll serve you a drink later.”

  After her spiel, she sits back down and leaves us with the bitch, who’s still looking at us like we’re pure shit.

  “Do you need anything for your performance?”

  “Yeah, somewhere to plug in the music, and have them turn off all the lights except the ones in this corner.”

  “OK, I’ll let them know.”

  “Oh, and get rid of the waiters!”

  “That won’t be possible. The waiters have to keep serving.”

  “No way. While we’re performing, nobody moves but us.”

  “Listen, honey, who do you think you are, going around giving orders like that?”

  “Look, darling, either you do as I say or we’re out of here, and you can just go visit the chimp exhibit at the zoo if you want to see some balls.”

  The chick flushes as red as a goddamn tomato. It looks like she’s going to explode or come after me, but she holds back. What else can she do at this point, with the girls and her boss waiting for the show to start? She doesn’t say anything and leaves. She speaks to the head waiter, and they all exit the room. The lights go out. I put on the music at top volume, and the girls look over at us. The teacher’s really tense, I can tell, but I pretend not to notice. The last thing I need right now is to have to worry about him.

  We start the Roman number, which we know by heart at this point. We fight, our movements rehearsed down to the millimeter. We remove our clothes up top, down below, all over. It’s going well, the room in silence. Once we’re in our briefs, we dance around a good long while, and nobody moves a muscle. We’re going to have to strip naked. I look at the teacher.

  “Are we doing it, Javier?”

  “We’re doing it.”

  We’re doing it, Iván, we’re doing it, but I swear it’s the last time. I swear I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take any more misery and humiliation. It’s the last time.

  Ta-da! Final chord, full nudity. The girls applaud—in the end they always applaud—solemnly, like they’re at a concert with violins and bow-tied musicians. It’s freaking them out to see a guy buck naked in front of everybody like that.

  We strut our stuff a little, showing it all off, and that’s when the fun begins: shrieks, wolf howls, shouts of “Studs!,” clapping, pounding on the table, a chair crashing to the floor . . . Like it’s no big thing, we just pull our briefs back on and saunter over to the table. They calm down. We go around the table, talking to each girl: “Hi, having a good time?” and that kind of bullshit. There’s always a class clown making lewd comments: “Come here, hot stuff, I’m going to rock your world!” Standard crap, but things don’t get out of hand because their boss is right there.

  Then people start gathering into little knots. The waiters reappear. We have a drink. They put on background music. We’ve stopped being the main event. The teacher goes for his Roman cape and puts it on. I don’t—let them look as much as they want, they must be starving. I’ve left a little stack of business cards for the club by the door in case we get customers. I’d be surprised, though—they’re all factory girls, total losers. The youngest waiter tells me, “I’ll switch jobs with you.” “You wish!” I reply so he’ll keep his distance. I glance at my watch. We’ve been there more than two hours. We’ve fulfilled our contract. I go straight to the bitch with the sausage lips and tell her we’re leaving, we want our money. She lets me off the hook and hands me an envelope; my contact and I agreed they’d pay us in cash. I say, “No. Bring it to us in the bathroom. I want to count it, and I don’t want to do it here in front of everybody.”

  But she’s no longer worried we’re going to leave her hanging, so she says, “Listen, sweetie, no more demands from you. Here’s the money we agreed on. If you want, you can count it right here, and if not, you figure it out. I’m not going to carry it to you on a platter.”

  Fuming, I go ahead and count it. In front of her, in front of everybody, everybody but the teacher, who, delicate as ever, has disappeared. When I finish counting, I say, “For a little bit more, the two of us can get it on too.”

  She shakes her head in disbelief, smears on a superior little smile, and says something in English like “cash” or “trash” that I don’t understand.

  When I go into the bathroom, Javier’s practically dressed already.

  “Hey, smarty-pants, this chick said something to me like ‘prash’ or ‘trash’ . . . That’s English, right?”

  “‘Trash’ means garbage.”

  “Well, that’s sweet, huh? You want me to go back there and give her a pounding? Huh?”

  “The only thing I want is for us to get out of here, the sooner the better.”

  “Fine, it wouldn’t be worth my time anyway. Want to get a beer, or are you going straight home?�
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  “Let’s get a beer. I need to decompress.”

  We go to a hip bar nearby. It’s hopping. The teacher seems sad and kind of grumpy. I prod him to find out what the hell is going on.

  “Are you feeling sick or something?”

  “That was awful.”

  “Shit, man, it wasn’t as bad as all that! The girls were nice. The only negative was that goddamn bitch who had it in for us. She probably hasn’t had a good lay in years.”

  “I’m sick of all this, Iván, seriously. You saved my life by giving me the chance to earn an income, but I’m at a point where I’m realizing that this isn’t for me. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “That’s because you take it too seriously—if you were a little more laid back . . . ”

  “But I’m not, and it’s too late to change personalities. You get it, right? Tell me you get it.”

  “Of course I get it, man! But you can’t always choose what you want in life. Maybe you say, ‘Look, I’ve always done whatever the hell I wanted.’ But then you think about it some more, and it’s not true. Can you choose your father and mother? No, right? So you’re screwed right from the beginning. If I’d been able to choose, there’s no way mine would have been the way they were. For starters, they would have been loaded, and then all the rest of it. So screw freedom—we’re all just getting by however we can, and that’s that.”

  The teacher looks at me as if he finds what I’m saying quite bizarre. Then he starts laughing. Who the hell knows what’s so damn funny! He says, “You’re the best, Iván!”

  Well all right, yeah, I am. No idea why he’s laughing, but at least he’s laughing, damn it!

  “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s just . . . the things you say have been written down for ages and . . . the thing is, the people who wrote them took a long time to come up with them.”