The Potential of Zeroes

by Eric Mattys

  Max continues, “If I love the ugly chick, I’m probably going to hurt her. All I’m saying is that if I’m with her crooked face and some hot chick sees me with the crooked-face lady, then the hot chick might very well think I have a thing for crooked-faced chicks. In which case, if I were to go and strike up a conversation with the hot chick, she might develop a complex and think it’s actually her face that’s crooked.”

  “Hmmmm. Now you’re just underestimating the intelligence of women.”

  Max shrugs. “Maybe I’m just crazy. You don’t think about the way your association appears to other people?”

  Terese shakes her head. “Not if I’m claiming to love someone.”

  “Well, that’s why I didn’t claim to love her, because I don’t think she’s beautiful.”

  Mew rolls his eyes. “You started by saying you want to love everyone.”

  “I said I wanted to. I didn’t say that I did.”

  Mew nods his head and says, “You’re kind of an asshole right now. Everybody’s ugly some of the time. If you can’t love somebody when they’re ugly, it’s not really love.”

  Max stops walking and lets Mew and Terese walk ahead of him. “Mew.” Mew and Terese turnaround. Max glares at Mew. “I am never ugly.”

  Mew throws his arms in the air in a grandiose gesture. “You have a stump for an arm! I’m arguably your best friend, and even I think it’s hideous.”

  With supreme confidence, Max continues walking, “It’s an imperfection, Bartholomew. There’s beauty in imperfection.”

  Terese sucks her back teeth. “Who’s the Hallmark writer now?”

  Max sighs and nods, deflated. “Valid. That was pretty Hallmarky. But what if there’s nothing beautiful about her on the inside either? What if her looks personify her evil and deranged soul?”

  “It doesn’t even matter,” says Terese. “She’s still a human, a set of self-conscious atoms, and it’s primitive to cast someone into a second-rate group based on their appearance.”

  “Fuck, I guess I’m primitive then because I can’t tell everybody I love them all at once. I must be casting some of them into a second-rate group. Should I just deny that I do that? Is it better for me to lie and say I love ugly people?”

  “It’s not about lying. It’s about giving people a chance to show the part of themselves that is beautiful.” Terese puts up a finger before Max can speak. “What if I had said, ‘Naw. That Max dude only has one arm. I can’t handle hanging out with that freak because the dudes I want to sleep with have two arms, and they might develop a complex if I hang out with him. I can’t handle that kind of pressure’?”

  Max sighs overdramatically. “I’ll never win.”

  Terese shakes her head. “That’s right, white dude with a steady income and roof over his head.”

  24

  Smoothness

  Gustave Tyner, the man who favors green silk pajamas and once killed a man, clenches his jaw tight. His eyes widen. His knuckles become whitish-red rock formations crystallized solid around the steering wheel of his 2007 Land Rover. A white particulate known to increase heart rate and provide a sense of euphoria dangles from his nose hairs. He sniffs hard again. He throws his vehicle out of reverse and lets the wheels squeal as he exits his gated parking lot. He checks himself in the rearview mirror, sliding through traffic while he sniffs and wipes his nose. Turning right on Speer to get downtown, he drives fast, but completely under control. It feels good to be flawless, the most flawless driver in the history of driving. No maybes. No maybes. Only flawlessness.

  Music matters when driving fast. He gulps as he swerves to miss a minivan. His favorite CD mix of music labeled “FUCKING FLASH” plays through the stereo. Method Man’s self-titled song off the Enter the Wu-Tang album growls and encourages Gustave’s weave through traffic. He runs a red light with his head still nodding to the heavy piano beat. He arrives at his destination: Shotgun Willy’s. He checks his appearance one more time in his rear-view mirror. Fuck mirrors. They’re pointless when you look this good.

  To know what no one else knows feels outstanding. He walks through the door, nods to the bouncer. His nod is up and back; the bouncer’s nod is downward, a nod of prostration. Feels amazing to be superior, to be the alpha. Withdrawing five twenties from a roll in his front right pocket, he smiles at the cash attendant. She returns five stacks of ones wrapped with rubber bands. Gustave snatches up the stacks and enters the strip club.

  Five stages inside the club support five different women all wearing a thong and a bra or less. He heads straight for the bar and orders a redbull and vodka to maintain a favorable combination of chemicals in his system.

  A woman at the center stage bends so far over that her elbows touch the ground and the crest of her tailbone arches, becoming the pinnacle of her body. She rests the top of her head on her forearms to balance the swaying of her hips. She makes a pouting face visible under the towering triangle structure created by her spread legs. She must be bored. What might remedy her boredom? There’s a kind of perfection in the smoothness of her motion. The way she keeps her pelvis in motion at all times as she moves, there’s no wasted motion. The nearly indistinguishable moment her hips change direction is like the indistinguishable shift from blue to orange to pink of a summer sunset. Perhaps in the height of sexual ecstasy, there might be no distinguishing the driving inward motions from the pulling outward motions of synchronized hip thrusts speeding fast and faster with no end. Her precision is a marvel--enveloping, entrancing, enticing--until the man next to Gustave speaks.

  “She got a nice pooper, huh.”

  Gustave clenches his jaw and turns his head slightly to see the man with a mustache so thick it might hinder mastication. His glasses magnify his iris and pupil so much his eyes appear ant-like while his skin looks like a balloon composed of uncooked bacon, ever-expanding and greasy. This waste of flesh must be here because he has no other sexual alternatives. Gustave imagines removing all the tiny cocktail straws from the shot glass at the end of the bar and, in a swift motion, driving each straw through the man’s neck at different angles so as to make him a fountain of pyrotechnic hemorrhaging. Gustave picks up his drink and walks to the stage without acknowledging the mustachioed malignancy.

  Pulling up a seat in front of the stage, Gustave puts a one-dollar bill behind each of his ears. She’s blonde with her hair up in pigtails. She crawls from one patron to the next by extending one leg and letting the side of her hip dip and touch the floor of the stage. Gustave looks the stripper in the eye knowing it makes her think twice: once for the money and once more for herself. He knew this made him better than anyone else in the strip club, more appealing and sought-after by strippers, because he met more than their monetary needs; he met their eyes. The other men in the club are either jaded and disillusioned with faces that do not change or overzealous and insatiable like teenaged boys—but always they gaze at the ends instead of the means. Gustave knows his acute skill is unlike anyone else’s. He looks a woman in the eyes and makes her see what he sees, and it attracts the strippers. No doubt of it. The blonde probes his scalp with her fingers and runs them down the back of his shirt. “What’s your name?” he asks her.

  “Saturalia.” She lets her face just touch his and whispers in his ear, “You’re cute.”

  What an unclear word, “cute.” Do strippers fuck cute guys or is her little brother also cute? He feigns concession so as to let her see what she wants. This is the golden rule regarding strippers and people in general: let them see what they want to see.

  25

  Back from Iraq

  Three months earlier, Gustave visited the same strip club with his brother, Corbin, and his brother’s friend, O’Brien, right after they returned from Iraq.

  Corbin leaned back in his chair in a slouch position and said to his brother, “Gus, you’re crazy if you actually believe strippers want you for an
ything more than your money.”

  Gustave locked eyes with a dapple redhead. “You cannot argue with results, little brother.”

  Corbin shakes his head. “It’s a business. You have the cash. I’d think you’d know—” A tall brunette grabbed Corbin, shoved his head in between her breasts, and shimmied. The stripper laughed and looked over at Zeke O’Brien who gave her the okay sign with his fingers while nodding and laughing.

  Gustave slapped Zeke on the shoulder. “I like this guy. Look, I am just glad both of you made it back in one piece. Any post-traumatic stress?” None of the men moved their eyes away from the strippers as they spoke.

  Corbin said, “My stomach’s been bothering me a little bit. And, of course, I’ve had my share of dreams. Loud noises make me want to kill, but I think that’s normal.”

  Gustave asked, “Are we actually making a difference over there or is it all just destruction in the name of keeping oil supplies flowing?”

  Zeke shrugs. “That’s a question way above my pay grade.”

  Corbin frowns. “Hell if I know. I don’t speak their language. I never knew if I was needed or tolerated. God her tits are perfect.” He creased a dollar and rested it on the table in front of him. Corbin kept his eyes locked on her areolas as she rotated them and made them twirl in unison then bounced them independently. “A lotta people get really wrapped up in the meaning of all the guys that got killed, saying if we pull out now and lose Iraq, it’s like their death was for nothing. All I can say to them is that the dead guys are dead, and I don’t want to join them. If it were up to me, I’d pull’em all back. It’s a fuckin’ quagmire. Goddamn do I need to get laid.”

  A new stripper entangled herself around Gustave. “I thought about trying to use some of my influence to stop the war or get you guys back sooner…”

  Zeke looked over to Gustave. “What kind of influence are you talkin’ about?”

  Gustave squinted his eyes. “I could’ve applied some pressure, but it could’ve left me exposed.”

  Zeke asked, “You’re talkin’ about protesting?”

  Gustave raises his eyebrows. “Protesting works best when it’s soldiers doing the protesting.”

  Corbin piped up. “Yeah. Ya’know, some of those guys signed up just to fight, just to blow shit up. Can’t see them protesting. Blowin’ shit up is plenty fun and all, but when you see it’s somebody’s house and you got a mother cryin’ in the street? That just sucks... But... I’m not going to do any protesting or anything. I signed up for military service. Totally voluntary because I wasn’t makin’ shit money here, and it looked like a way to make a better life. I’m more worried about finding an alright job than I am about whether the war continues or not. If people don’t want to go to war, they don’t have to sign up.”

  A stripper pushed her thick-rimmed glasses up on her nose and said, “I’d agree with you except that we don’t get a choice about paying taxes that pay for the war.” When the brothers had no response for her, she added, “No taxation without representation.”

  Gustave worked his eye contact. “I hate taxes.”

  Corbin shrugged, “We do have state representatives, though.”

  She gazed into Corbin’s face, bit her lower lip, and shook her head. “Like they represent us.”

  Corbin shifted out of his slouched position for the first time and asked, “What’s your name?”

  She laughed, “You can call me Pre-Law. And thanks.”

  Corbin squinted. “For what?”

  She blinked twice. “For defending our fascist nation’s oil interests.”

  Corbin raised his eyebrows.

  She winked at Corbin. “Come get me if you want a lap dance.” She picked up her top and moved to a new stage.

  “If I had looked her in the eyes, she would have been mine,” said Gustave, but Corbin was already out of his seat in pursuit of Ms. Pre-Law.

  26

  Eye Contact

  What an unclear word, “cute.” Do strippers fuck cute guys or is her little brother also cute? He feigns concession so as to let her see what she wants. This is the golden rule regarding strippers and people in general: let them see what they want to see. Gustave smiles and says, “No. You are cute.”

  She says to him, “I want to take you over in the corner and molest you.”

  Gustave responds, “That is a very good idea.” It’s her idea. She wants to be closer because she sees some beautiful part of herself through his eyes. If Corbin were here, this would be more fun. It’s more real when you can reminisce with someone else. Fuck cancer. Brother will be gone soon. Should have smoked a bowl before leaving, just to forget. The doctor has done all that can be done legally. Should bring the doctor to the strip club, too. It would be cheaper. Fucking VA terminating coverage on a vet, a hero. $150,000 for an operation with a fifty-to-one chance. Fuck that. Fuck being only stripper rich. He is so stupidly healthy, too. Whole Foods robs him blind. Says he developed a granola addiction in Iraq. Yoga. Earthy motherfucker gets cancer. No cigarettes, no drugs. Hardly drinks. Gets cancer. A few months earlier, they would’ve covered it. Same marines who never leave a man behind and gave him a purple heart won’t return the favor when he’s writhing in pain trying to find that one position that won’t hurt.

  The blonde with the pigtails parades Gustave toward the leather couches. When her eyes leave his view, Gustave watches the reverberation of the ground’s impact jostle the flesh on her bare ass as they make their way to the loveseats. She throws him down into the seat and straddles him in the chair so he can’t move. He locks his eyes on hers until she rides up and puts her breasts in his face. He sees only his ability to show her what she wants through his eyes. Once eye contact breaks, she scans the dim light for her next twenty-dollar endeavor.

  27

  Queen

  Terese parts ways with Max and Mew who head back toward the apartment to get ready for work. Terese sits down on a park bench next to a stone sign that reads, “Hungarian Freedom Uprising Memorial Park.” The sun’s distant warmth mingles with the immediately pressing cold air to form a pleasing fall afternoon in Denver.

  A squirrel leaps down out of a nearby tree. So much joy in its little heart. They aren’t rodent carriers of pestilence. That’s what Max would call them. They’re expressions of physics and chemistry, avoiding predators and finding food. Balanced enough to persevere, yet unbalanced enough to ensure the continued uptake of oxygen and desire for reproduction. Total balance means cellular death or the end of the species.

  The squirrel concerns itself with predators and food sources, not joy, or chemistry, or expression. Of course, the squirrel lacks the words to express any of his concerns. The squirrel runs off as soon as he sees a large woman dressed in a variegated shawl wheeling a Safeway grocery cart. Under the shawl, she wears a maroon sweater, which fits her rotund body as if custom-tailored.

  The large woman looks at Terese suspiciously, then looks up to the sky and proclaims in a robust growl, “I AM DA QUEEN of da universe! I CONTROL da ROTATION of da stars! LOVE is ALL dair is, and I might be da only one dat knows it.”

  Terese hears the large woman’s words and they make her think of a booming bell, but instead of a tone, an arrhythmic soul song sermon echoes across the half block-sized park. She should be on the radio. She may be loud and different and have a strange odor about her, part tomato juice, part whiskey, but there’s no sense in running away like the squirrel did. Terese reaches out her hand. “It’s an honor to meet… the Queen of the Universe.”

  “You ain’t gettin’ fresh wit me now, are ya?” The woman puts a hand on her hip, tilts her head downward and raises a questioning eyebrow towards Terese.

  “Wouldn’t you be honored if you met the Queen of the Universe?”

  “I AM da Queen of the Universe. Dair IS no oader.”

  “Then the King. Wouldn’t you be honored if you met
the King of the Universe?” Is it okay to be afraid of someone who is bigger, louder, crazier, and a different skin color? Is this a racist-fear thing or is it a content-of-character-fear thing? Stay calm. Everything is fine. Try to get to know her character.

  “Girl, my universe needs no king.” The Queen of the Universe sits on the bench. “What brings you to dis mystacular location a’ my universe?”

  “It’s a nice day… and… I’m following a hunch.”

  “What kin’a hunch?”

  “I just have this strange feeling I’m supposed to be here… like I might find someone to love.”

  “You can love me if you want to, girl, but da Queen of da Universe don’t usually swing dat way. If you know what I’m sayin’.”

  “I swing lots of ways, but you don’t have to worry.” It’s embarrassing being afraid like this. It’s like being a squirrel. Any loud noise, any imagined threat, anything different and you want to run away to some artificially safe haven like the suburbs. But you’re not a squirrel and your skin isn’t innocent enough to be ignorant. Terese asks, “What’s it like in your skin?”

  “Do ya mean what is it like bein’ da Queen of da Universe or do ya mean bein’ a black woman in America?”

  “Both I guess.”

  “How much time do ya have?”

  “How ever much you need.”

  The Queen of the Universe takes a deep breath. “I talk in a way dat’s different. It matches da way my skin is different. I refuse ta change myself to make oader people feel more at ease because dair’s no’ting wrong wit da way I speak. I felt people’s judgement for dis. I saw people tink less of me. Not want to be around me or work wit me because of dis difference. I learnt to lie. I practiced speaking normally, the way my white teachers taught me. I was a year away from graduating high school, and took a job at da grocery market ta help out my family. A white man was my boss and he took liberties wit me. A pinch here, a rub dair. I believed him harmless, unteel we were alone in da stock room one night. People told me men could be like that, but I couldn’t let my universe be made that way. I keeled him, and made my universe mine again.”