Stripper Lessons

by John O'Brien

  Not a thought, but quicker, as say a flash is, his hand, make it the first three fingers of his right, turn upward and stroke once the side and underside of her left breast, three o’clock to fivethirtynine. It isn’t enough.

  She’s cool enough that she doesn’t pull away but merely puts some inner defense mechanism back on alert, where it should be kept anyhow when dancing this close to a customer. Carroll evidently had one credit and used it up. They both sense this immediately, and he will not lift those fingers again.

  His face reddens. The words come hard but come they must. “I . . . I’m sorry. I . . . I wasn’t thinking. I—”

  “Forget it,” she cuts him off with. “Just. . . . We can’t do that.” She’s patient but strained, like talking to someone else’s child with that someone else in the room. She’s also a little sorry that he did it, and she wants to believe that it was just a glitch, wants to believe that she never lets anybody do that, no matter who they are or how much bread they’re flashing. A glitch.

  Though it is still early in this, their third song, he feels things slipping and wants her to know that everything’s all right. “I want two more songs after this,” he blurts out optimistically, hoping that this assurance will somehow make things all better. “If it’s okay with you. I promise I won’t do that again. I want to stay here as long as I can. I’m sorry. I promise I won’t do that again.” He nods his head rapidly: see, it’s all better now.

  “All right,” she says, because she has to, and because she hopes they’ll recover so that he can leave tonight feeling good. “That’ll be five total, and I’m afraid that that’s the most we can do in one stretch.”

  “It’s the most I can afford,” he says frankly.

  That helps her some, but not enough. It’s gone, and it confounds her to be so very at the whim of a learned response that probably doesn’t apply here at all. That touch, that stupid little forward motion performed so innocently, sent him hurling back to the moon. Wonder if he’ll spot it someday, figure it out or find it in a dream? If so he’ll be better off than she. They walk through two and a half songs, she making perfunctory conversation and showing him her ass more than anything else, even pulling aside her panties and daring herself to push up close to his face, he doing his best to be agreeably responsive, to fool both of them into thinking that these latter dances are every bit as fine as the first ones were. Stevie mourns the lost communication. She enjoyed it as much as he did. But she knows you can’t make that stuff happen. You can only be there while it happens on its own. There’s no real control. You can pull aside your panties, but there’s no real control. She can’t help him. She can’t help her. She’s not God.

  Sunday monday

  Nothing’s worse than having a chore to do on Sunday, and after what happened last night, him blowing it with Stevie, he especially doesn’t want to even get out of bed, much less drive all the way down to San Pedro to go to his cousin Adam’s wedding. Think about the hours of anxiety you poured into this day during the weeks since receiving the invitation, and how it all just vanished when Stevie danced into your life. All that anxiety and worry about going to this wedding, all for nothing. Seems like by forgetting it for a few days he made it all go to waste, the anxiety, like it never happened or doesn’t mean anything, and now he’s gotta go to this wedding without having enough time to fret over it. Sounds silly, but he can’t help feeling cheated. This is cousin Adam whom he hasn’t seen in what seems like (and probably is) years, cousin Adam who is some nth cousin on his father’s side and who wouldn’t have even invited Carroll but for the fact that he’s the only living relative in Los Angeles, and more to the point, he’s a warm body to help occupy Adam’s plenty-of-elbow-room side of the boat—they’re getting married on a boat—so it’ll balance with the bride’s could-you-squeeze-in-a-little-tighter side. We really need you, Adam wrote in pen on the bottom of the invitation. A boat. Probably shouldn’t go, just stay here in bed and let them all sink, listing to port.

  He killed himself last night. That’s what he did when he touched Stevie’s breast. He killed himself, and now he’s just a soulless corpse, a walking bag of bones. Why not go and sit on the boat? Dead is dead, what does he care where he does it? All that’s left now is to wait the forty or so years it will take for his body to catch up to his spirit. Then everyone else will know he’s dead. For now it’s just him. And Stevie. Just he and Stevie know he’s dead. He rolls out of bed and uses the toilet.

  Punctuality is a priority, even in despondency. So he gets right out of there, which is just fine because looking at himself in the mirror is not working out too well. The invitation, evidently written with the Valley-born bride’s family in mind, advises Valley-dwelling attendees to take either the 405 all the way down to the 110 or take the 101 (Ventura) to the 101 (Hollywood) to the 110 (Harbor not Pasadena). It’s the 110 that’s the key here. That will take you right into San Pedro, where you can follow the surface-street map drawn on the bottom to the big treasure map X, drawn on the map next to the legend You Found It!!! Should be no problem, even if he does have to interpolate a west side jumping-on point in this Valley–to–San Pedro sequence. He needs to stop at the K’mon-n-Mart for a gift, so he decides on the 10 to the 110. But after slamming the Vega’s hatch on a set of hastily-wrapped-in-the-parking-lot Corelle Livingware and merging onto the Santa Monica Freeway (or the 10 East), he suddenly gets so consumed with regret over not buying a friends-again? present for Stevie, like maybe that blue scarf that he couldn’t get for the wedding cause it would’ve been just for the bride, that he misses the ramp for the 110 and finds himself passing downtown Los Angeles before he realizes his mistake. Fuck! Still driving, he pulls out his Thomas Guide and tries to glom clues during quick glances from the road ahead of him. Okay, okay: how ’bout the—what is it? the 710? the Long Beach?—yeah. Take the 710. . . . No, no, take the 5 . . . the 60 . . . 5 is better. Take the 5 to the 710 to the 91 back to the 110. Better than turning around at this point. Should be no problem.

  Think about Garden Grove, one of a million places that Carroll has never been. Sometimes the only way to get to a place is to be going to a different place; then that goes wrong and there you are. Or just start in Los Angeles, pick the wrong thread, and poof, no wedding. White steel, silver glass: The Crystal Cathedral, a massive star-shaped tower he saw at wit’s end while driving aimlessly around Garden Grove. Prodigious, yet in a way that’s less soaring and more stunningly spread out: God’s nose after a long and full boxing career. Carroll and the Vega are parked there now, Adam’s wedding probably already over, somewhere far away. He’ll never know where; he’ll be lucky if he ever gets back home.

  Turns out that unless you’re clairvoyant there’s no way to be ready for the 710 connecting ramp when it suddenly appears on the 5 at fifty-five miles per hour, and it doesn’t help that everyone else speeds like hell and never mind that it’s Sunday they come up behind him like they want to drive right through him then flash their lights when he’s as far to the left as he can be. He opted then for the 605 with the unlikely notion of taking it to the 405 and backtracking to the 110, but ended up on the 22 going east not west, finally exited at random, wandered till he saw the tower. It was a place to go that you could get to by sight. Good enough for now.

  Two ninety-foot doors are parted before him. Part of the cathedral’s design, this, to let the service spill out over the parking lot and touch those who don’t wish to leave their automotive sanctuary. The doors are a link to the first days of these same services in 1955, then held not far from here at a drive-in movie theater. Innovative gospel then, and today as well; Carroll can see the television cameras inside the cathedral capturing the video Word and passing it along to the waiting world. He’s pretty sure he’s breezed past this guy once or twice on a double-digit station between dueling phone-sex ads, robe of regal blue, bib sullied with on-screen call-in super, an 800 number, like it was a link to something bigger. And maybe it is. Carroll turns his car radio to
the frequency indicated on the program he was handed as he pulled in, and the Word is given.

  Not that he wants to hear it, not these spurious words. He turns down the volume and settles his head back on the ripped vinyl headrest. Nearby a fountain plays. There’s the lightest of breezes, traffic on the street behind him. He can’t quite hear either the sermon or the splashes. The sounds compete, but to him it’s just a pleasant background hum by which he can think. About Stevie. About what guys at work would call damage control. He hates that. Everything’s gotta be jargon, a club, like those stupid old lawyer cartoons they all love on their walls. They try to be self-deprecating, but they really love themselves to death. Still, it wouldn’t be bad to be a part of some kind of club. He lifts his head and looks at the cars around him. Some are empty, some are packed with families. Most are older couples, listening raptly to the radio, maybe holding—he can’t really see—hands, trying to find a way to do all this right. Face it: if the Word comes over a car radio or a television, then car radios and TVs must be a-okay. If angels dance at strip clubs, then we’re all wearing too much clothing.

  He’s changed lately, become more aggressive. His renegade search for the SoLo/Bombgate file is one example, his pawing of Stevie another, less happy one. But for better or worse this is him. Think about how the more you ask for the less you get, and sometimes, like with Melissa and her dancing, the less you want something the more you ask for it. None of this applies to Stevie, of course. She walks above it all, a real angel, maybe just a person like him but with finer tuning, grown beyond his confusion. A collective moan rises from the cars around him, also over the radio and from within the cathedral. Not really a moan, just sounds like that when you’re not listening. These people are clearly impressed by whatever it is they’re hearing, and though he feels like an interloper here he still can’t bring himself to turn up the volume of his radio. Better to leave it all a hum than to risk disappointment. Better leave it alone, save the space for a surer bet. Another, stronger breeze sweeps the lot like a gift for those around him. He lifts his head again from the vinyl but in time only for the vacuum of its passage, and he feels like a kid watching Christmas gifts being opened at his parents’ friends’ house. There’s nothing here for him. He wishes he would have paid more attention to the TV broadcast of this service when he passed by it those few times. Somewhere in the upper fifties, he thinks it was. It might make him want to listen now; at least it would be interesting to see it all from both sides, like the time he went to a taping of Wheel of Fortune in Burbank. So different. These guys pulling strings that the viewer doesn’t even know about. You’re just supposed to sit there with your Swanson dinner and give it your all, a sort of suspension of disbelief. Bet that fat fuck still has Solo. Bet he knows it. Bet it’ll turn up one way or another soon. Tomorrow. Carroll will make it turn up. Wonder how he looks sitting in a booth at Indiscretions? He couldn’t really tell from a glimpse he partly caught in that far mirror. Maybe he looks like all the other guys, like those chimpanzees he saw on television yesterday. The woman in the white coat, that would be Stevie. Another groaning noise. What is it these people hear? What does he have to do to hear the same thing? What does he have to not do? Turning up the radio, though the obvious answer, still feels like the wrong idea. He checks his watch, wants to be sure to be at the club on time tonight, find an opening to talk to her. Of course she is due for a day off and might not be there tonight. A chilling thought, could wreck his already dismal day, could make him groan. What would she do on a night off? Whom would she spend time with? Carroll feels a pang in his tummy; it will not be a good night. Best to concentrate on what can be done. His car is getting too warm, so he sits upright, tries to stay alert for the next breeze. Surely one will come, in this of all places. This guy on the radio—TV, drive-in, glass towers, and all—this guy must have at least that much pull.

  Go on, he thinks, hope for the best. The thing to do now is to drive home and shower in preparation for his evening. Hell, if he can even get home in time for his evening it’ll be a miracle. Adam will never speak—write—to him again, and so what. This week at work he should be able to find time to ship the Corelle Livingware along with a note of apology, which will all be merely a gesture; the apology will be sneered at, and the dishes will be broken in transit. It’s not really anything for him to worry about anymore. Adam will get back what he invested. Still, he hopes their marriage goes well. He hopes the new couple is happy, he really does. He’ll put that in the note: I hope the new couple is happy. Maybe his sincerity will show through and make up for his absence. Maybe the trick is to want good things—not just say it, but actually teach yourself to want it. If he writes that line in the note, meaning it with all his meager might, then isn’t that better than showing up, resenting Adam the whole time for getting him lost? It’d be great if little niceties, fond wishes and genuine compliments and such, circled the universe after being launched from a mouth, a pen, or a smile, hung around all of us like a community suit of armor against bad luck and bad intentions, like the huge jar of pennies in his great-grandmother’s kitchen. It looked enormous to him. Mom gave him one to add each time they visited, always saying something about a rainy day, and sure enough, the next time he saw it it had more in it. It didn’t cost anything to speak of, nobody had to do anything much to make it, but still it grew, and he was led to believe that if called upon it would have the power to shield all of them from any disaster that might befall them. He should have got Adam a jar and a penny instead of Corelle Livingware . . . but that would be too corny. Boy, he thinks, would that be corny.

  Got to assume that his luck will hold and that Stevie will be there tonight. If he looks at this any other way he’ll collapse. Things will work out fine. This is a small thing, what he did with his hand, and she has a forgiving heart, he just knows she does. People in relationships go through millions of problems. He can talk her through this thing. She must know that he never meant any harm, that he simply didn’t know how to behave and got a little carried away. It was, after all, an act of love, that touch. If he can make her see that. An act of love. His hand moved with his heart, that’s all. It’s not like he hurt her, he wasn’t waiting in the parking lot with a knife. He would never ever do anything bad to her. A world of gesture, everything means something, nothing travels alone. At the airport, always more suitcases than people. He’d do anything for her. Heck, Stevie, I’d do nothing for you if that’s what you want. I can wait. I can wait and do nothing else. How about it? Waiting, that must count for something, right?

  Amidst the annoyed glances of his fellow attendees, Carroll pulls quietly out of the lot. He doesn’t want to disturb anyone, but for him these services are over. The radio crackles and gets momentarily louder as he passes through the gate, making one final plea for his attention.

  “Will Good always flourish in the absence of Evil?” the guy on the radio wants to know. “Or do we find there a spiritual vacuum, a ground to be planted, lifeless soil that we must cultivate until it is a garden of faith to be fostered? Is failing to do Wrong the same as doing Right? And ask yourself, is failing to do Right the same as doing Wrong?”

  “Well,” says Carroll aloud, alone in his car, “is it?”

  But he is on the road outside the cathedral’s grounds now, and the radio sputters away into the oblivion of dead air.

  It takes him so long to snake his way home through the self-misdirections and traffic backups that have become an integral part of his freeway experience that it’s almost ten o’clock by the time he approaches Los Angeles on the 405 and realizes that he’s coming up on the exit for Indiscretions and that, though he feels funny about wearing a suit there and looking too much like the regular regulars, it might be prudent to go straight to the club without going home to change first. So he does it, thinking at the last moment to remove his tie and having to walk back across the gravel and unlock the Vega to stash it on the passenger seat. Parking was easy, Sundays being not the busiest nigh
t to begin with and ten o’clock on Sunday being less impressive still. He pays at the door, probably just imagining the double take that the DJ/doorman gives him. The guy looks confused, like he knows he’s seen Carroll and he knows he’s seen guys in suits but he never saw them at the same time before. Well, thinks Carroll, too busy with his own problems to deal with this, so I’m suddenly something new in the world for him. Not that new though, as the bored cocktail waitress, seeing him come in from across the room, looks at the barmaid and says snidely, “Guess you’d better break open another case of that apple stuff, the Lone Ranger is back.”

  Jasmine is working her way around the stage. Her routine of systematic progression suffers right along with the business of this place, causing her to look like a billiard ball moving in straight lines between spots on opposing cushions. He has his pick of seats tonight and decides to return to the far side of the stage, where he spent most of his nights before Stevie showed up and managed to throw his world into turmoil. But before he can go two steps that new girl from last night pops up right in front of him.

  “Hi. My name is Andrea and I’m new here at Indiscretions—”

  He lifts his hand to silence her. Somehow this is really insulting, that she wouldn’t even remember him from just one night ago. “We met last night,” he says, feinting left then right in an attempt to pass her, as if he were demonstrating some lame football play.

  She shrugs and turns away murmuring an apology. He thinks he hears the words of course, and this transformation of a mistake into a lie rankles him even further. He just wants to sit down and start looking for Stevie, and if he can get there before the end of this set Jasmine will be glad to have the extra stop along the rail. He passes the cocktail waitress, standing at the bar chatting. She seems to smile at him, but when he nods in return a big tall black guy pushes past him and responds to her with a Heya there, or something like that. Carroll reddens as they slip their arms around each other and turn to the bar in animated conversation. He doesn’t believe it for a second, that those two are buddies, and he loathes how phony this place can be. Here they’re all touchy-feely, but if that guy knocked on her door at three in the morning she’d be dialing six different kinds of 911. Around the bulk of the stage and almost home to the side he wants when a man wearing work clothes and a tool belt pops out of the men’s room and whacks Carroll’s arm with the back of his hand.