The quake had been the last straw. I could not sleep, thinking of the brick apartment complexes on my block that had been condemned by the city building inspectors. Each day as I passed the red-tagged buildings I could see the bricks out of kilter and the drywall of the rooms inside exposed by gaping cracks. The domed roof of an Armenian bakery was fully exposed to the sky. I felt as naked and vulnerable as the warped structures around me.
One evening in June I had ended up at the downtown Greyhound terminal. I had two hundred dollars in cash in my wallet and a small duffel bag with shirts, underwear, and socks. I fumbled with a fifty-dollar bill, the price of a round-trip fare, then folded it neatly into my imitation alligator billfold and stuffed it into my back trouser pocket. It caught on a seam so I pushed it further down. I would walk a few blocks in the cool evening air before making the long bus ride home. It was really a dirty street, I decided, after side-stepping a mound of damp slop. A drink might lift my spirits. I harbored the hope that the right mix of alcohol would realign the complex code of my brain and heart and ease the burden of my uneventful life.
Catty-corner, I spied a neon bar sign with a flaming green palm tree suspended over a blinking red island. I started to walk toward it. The Oasis was one of the last businesses not yet boarded up on a block slated for demolition by the city redevelopment agency. At the swinging double doors I almost collided with the two cops coming out. Once inside, I took a moment to adjust my eyes to the murkiness. Jukebox rap raced with the familiar pulsing of my heart. On the torn red vinyl stools sat mostly Black males, of varying ages, and a few Spanish-speaking men. The black-and-white tile floor was heavily worn, revealing an older orange floor beneath, the color of Tiger Balm ointment. A hand-lettered sign above the jukebox stated:No men in costumes or cut-offs above the knees. No prostitution. No selling of drugs. We have the right to refuse service to anyone.
Signed: The Management.
Before surveying the bar I laid down my duffel on the counter and ordered a brandy and water. The Christian Brothers tasted sour and watery at the same time. I gulped it down quickly. I was the only Asian. The Blacks seemed to be enjoying themselves, bantering and laughing. Despite the sign, I noticed two men of indeterminate ethnicity with white powder covering their beardless skin, dressed in unisex green polyester hot pants and blouses. Their narrow hips and muscular calves gave their sex away. There were no women.
A young Black man to my left started to speak to me. He insisted
that I reminded him of Bruce Lee, the martial arts star.
“Yes, he died at thirty-three and so did I,” I told the Black. He chuckled and slowly sipped his rum and Coke, watching me intently from beneath his short-cropped curls. Perhaps he had some Indian blood in him, I thought, glancing at the oblique angle of his eyes. I thought better than to ask and instead ordered another rum and Coke for him.
“Bruce man, thanks for the drink. You don’t look Korean or Jap to me. Your eyes are bigger. You’re a Chinaman I bet.”
“Close. I am Chinese.”
“ ’Scuse me, my man. ‘Chinaman’ is like a honkie calling me a nigger, ain’t it?”
“Depends. Forget it. Whatever name I am, I am for tonight.”
“So watcha up to, Bruce?”
“I was planning to go to San Francisco to visit some relatives. But they can wait. The city will be there unless there’s an earthquake to morrow.”
I had planned to go to San Francisco to visit my mother’s sister, an aging spinster who lived in Chinatown. But I vacillated, better to save the money and buy a new pair of shoes. My aunt, whom I had not seen for ten years, had raised me while my parents worked. It was she who had fed me canned applesauce over hot rice, slapped me on the hands, forced my tiny fingers around the hard ceramic Chinese soup spoon. She turned angry if I spilled the contents of the spoon. At a later age, pressed into the Chinese Christian language school in Chinatown, I learned to handle a skinny bamboo brush quite decently. My aunt would lift the transparent writing paper and examine each character, stroke by stroke, and tell me what was right or wrong about it. Where she obtained the knowledge she never told me, but one time she read my palms and said that I was destined to become famous with my hands.
“A three-star chef or a major screenwriter?” I asked. She did not answer. That was the first and last time she had predicted the future for me. Wisely, she left the other lines on my hands unread.
I could imagine the chagrin on her face if I told her I could no longer hold down a job. I decided that she could wait.
Before I left my room this morning I had clipped down my fingernails with the nail clipper I had picked up at the drugstore. At a furious pace, I started on the pinky and worked my way to the thumb, left hand to right. My hands were small and pared down, almost to the bone. My rather flat and now fleshy face belied thin hands.
It had become a ritual, this paring of nails down to a point, so that the tender pink flesh was raw and flinched at handling salt or citrus fruit. Satisfied with the minute bleeding and inflammation that sometimes occurred when my fingernails were too short, I swathed them in imaginary bandages. In a sense, it was an effort to punish myself for the good life that my hands had failed to create in forty-four years. Paring down my nails made the tips of my fingers all the more sensitive to changes in heat, cold, acidity, salinity, and texture. Seawater almost devastated my freshly cut fingertips.
To curb my passions—that was the intent—but not to the point of numbness. On the contrary, to the point of realization and pain. My fine-boned hands, which had served thousands of restaurant customers, had not paid off as handsomely as I’d planned. Two years ago I was fired as the head maitre d’ at Flamingo West, the Chinese supper club on Sunset Strip. I had worked there for almost ten years. It was an expensive, dreary tourist trap, with Sichuan shrimp and sweet and sour spareribs that glared purplish under the ornate Chinese lamps. In its favor, however, the place possessed a sweeping view of the Hollywood Hills. The tips were good. My old coterie of friends and acquaintances, who loved sipping the Flamingo West’s giant margaritas and nibbling greasy shrimp, scattered, moved to Florida, had strokes, or just became more miserly with their affections and their cash.
During my hours off I had learned to cater even more closely with my hands. I even put an ad in the gay papers: “Experienced Asian American masseur with western hands and eastern touch. Total sensuous body massage, versatile. In and out calls.” But my amateur massages weren’t all that good. My clients preferred a younger man for the sexual services that were usually demanded with a rubdown. In recent years they were harder to please with their peculiar demands. Their tips grew meager. Some wanted their asses slapped before they could get excited; others wanted me to wear a jockstrap or a leather cock ring while giving them a massage on specific parts of the body—usually the feet, butt, or nipples. One client who tipped me well lived in a mansion in Hancock Park, an elegant enclave for “old-monied” WASPS. The neighborhood streets were lined with pepper and oak trees fronting brick and stucco buildings. I usually entered the house through the “merchants’ ” side entrance and pressed the door chime. The door opened electronically. I’d make my way to the small elegant study on the first floor that faced the garden. He would have already drawn the linen shades and dimmed the lights. Under bound gilt volumes of Pushkin, Tolstoi, London, and Mark Twain, he’d be in his pajamas drinking a vodka tonic.
“Take off your leather jacket, dear, it’s hot today,” he’d always say, whether it was summer or winter, handing me the white envelope. Without speaking, I’d pocket my fee and do what he wanted. In my white tanktop and tight Levi’s, torn at the crotch, I would tease him until he grew excited. I would walk over to his chair, take the drink out of his hand and help him finish it, leaving his hands free to fondle my body. He’d lower his head. I’d stroke the strawberry blond toupee below my belly, as he began to methodically unbutton my Levi’s with his teeth. Under my pants I wore a jock of black matte rubber with a chrom
e zipper that he’d bought me. With my free hand I would take the flat wooden paddle, almost like the one I used to scoop rice at home, and begin to slowly tap at his shoulders, until his pajama top fell to the carpet. Half-closing my eyes, I’d work my way down his body, until his skin was flushed and glistening with sweat. Another vodka would dull my senses, four was my limit. That’s all I would do, standing over him, my legs straddling his shoulders and heavy pink flesh until, with a loud moan, he would come, using a black towel to wipe himself off. I had refused, however, to wear a silken kimono outfit and formal wig that he had supplied to celebrate his sixty-third birthday—along with a braided leather whip. “M. Butterfly” was not in my repertoire, though I did use the whip on him, gently, that night.
“Happy Birthday,” I said, whacking him nicely on the back of his thighs and splashing the remains of my last drink over his body. Sometimes I wished that I was a blind masseur so that I could feel impartial toward all flesh.
“As I said, man, you sure do remind me of Bruce Lee. More and more. Let me get you a drink. Carlos, get this Chinese man another,” he said, drawing out the last few words.
Carlos brought over another brandy and water.
“Thanks for the drink. My turn to ask your name.”
“Brother Goode. Goode for tonight, and ba—ad tomorrow! And yours?” he asked, extending his hand.
“Hell, why not just call me Bruce. I’m beginning to like that name.”
“Bruce, just look at yourself in that mirror over there.”
I turned to the mirror and laughed. “My face is so red I probably look more like Mao. Goode, are you a native of L.A.?”
“Let’s just say I’ve been here a long, long time. But my folks are originally from Louisiana. They call us Geechies down there.”
“Geech . . . what?”
“In the ol’ days, folks used to say that the Blacks and the Indians and the Whites got down together and what all turned out was Geechies. I got some Indian blood in me. So my color is red, ’specially when I can catch some rays. But not as red as you.” He grinned. “As I was saying, I’m Brother Goode. Ask anyone around here.” He poked the guy on the bar stool next to him. “Ed, what do you say now? Am I, or am I not, Brother Goode?”
Peering at the two of us from under his white baseball cap, Ed was noncommittal. “Good as you can be. Which ain’t saying much.”
I laughed, and studied Brother Goode under the red bar light. His
face was smooth and delicate, with high cheekbones and hair that had been processed to give it a fine copper sheen. Late twenties, at most, I thought. After something, I suspected, but attracted, I continued to listen.
“You see, Bruce, I was in the Orient, in Okinawa. Naha. Stationed there in ninety. I dig Orientals. I myself had the craziest, the best Oriental chick in the whole world. Haru was her name.”
“So, you have girlfriends?”
“Yeah. Back then. But you know how fast things can change for a man. Changing every day. Anyway, some chicks are fine. Some are real bitches. Some men are fine. Some of them are bitches too.” He shrugged. “Now take yourself for instance, you’re cool. Nice skin, I bet.”
“Yeah? Not as smooth as yours, Brother.”
“Skin against skin. One picture’s worth a thousand words, that’s what you Orientals say, don’t you?” He smiled.
“It’s getting late. I got to run. I enjoyed talking with you, Brother, but the last bus going back to Hollywood leaves at 1 A.M.”
“Why leave now? It’s only eleven o’clock. You scared of this joint? Of all of us niggers here? Of another earthquake and this damn building falling on you? Brother Goode will take care of you. Don’t you worry yourself ’bout that now. You got any weed?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Look, I got me a nice little room down the street. The Alonzo Hotel. Chinaman owns it, I think.”
“I don’t know it. As I said, I hardly ever come down here. First time in this bar. I’m going by bus to San Francisco.”
“But now you’re not. C’mon. What’s a lone Chinaman gonna do this time of night anyway?”
“You win,” I laughed. “Bartender, another one for this young man and one for me. Soda back. Goode, you make sense. But who’s kidding who? I’m old enough to be your father. Bruce Lee’s father for that matter. And I . . .”
“Every man for his self, Bruce.”
“Let’s just finish our drinks and call it a night.”
We wound up having three more drinks for the road never taken. It was well past one o’clock. I rested my arm on Brother Goode’s shoulder and let myself be dragged out of the bar before the cops kicked both of us out. Goode half-carried and half-pushed me down the street to the hotel, up the stairwell, and along the dingy hallway. We reached the room and stumbled in.
“Bruce, now watch yourself. Just take it easy here while I help you get those clothes off. Why are you looking at me so strange. You feelin’ okay?”
“Very tired. But I’m not drunk. I’m very okay . . . No. I’m not okay. But I just ought to be getting home.” I started to rise from the bed, then fell back.
“You’re in no shape to do anything. Not even fuck, man. You just lay back while I run down the hall for a second.” Yielding to common sense and weariness, I kicked off my shoes and closed my eyes. The door opened and shut again. I smelled the sweetish odor of marijuana. My eyes scanned the angles of his face and shoulders as he grinned and exhaled, blowing smoke at me. Inhaling, I felt my body relax. He began to stroke my chest and I stretched my fingers over the small of his back.
Morning light through the torn paper window shade turned the pinkish bedspread into flame. I stirred, turned to my side, and saw a triangular expanse of copper shoulder beside me, topped by disheveled reddish curls. Then I remembered that I was with Brother Goode. I saw that the man beside me was holding his dark flaccid cock in one hand. A small square of burnt tin foil and a match lay between us on the sheet. Maybe it wasn’t what I remembered. Coke or Ecstasy or something else that I didn’t know. I reached back toward my trouser pocket. Feeling nothing but my own flesh, I spied my pants folded neatly on the metal chair near the window.
I rose, tiptoed to the chair, and stuck my hands into the back pocket of the trousers. Anxious fingers yanked the wallet out. I quickly scanned the bills—two fifties, a couple of twenties and tens left after the drinks.
“You Koreans. All you think about is your money gettin’ ripped off. I should have figured that out before I brought you . . .”
I spun around and the wallet dropped to the floor. Brother Goode wore a contemptuous smile, hand propping up his head.
“Uh, no, I was checking to see whether I had enough change for bus fare. I’m on unemployment, ya know.”
“Don’t jive me, yellow mother fuck. . . . Here I half-dragged your flat ass home. Didn’t even mess with it and you think I took your money.”
“No, no. It’s just that I’m not a rich man.”
“Who said anything about being a rich man? You’re simple. SIMPLE.”
“You got me wrong. I’m really thankful. Uh, how about going out to get some breakfast. On me. Really, I’m sorry. In this part of town you have to be a little careful.”
“Who you sayin’ sorry to? Not to me. But you should know one thing. You ain’t no Bruce Lee. Not your face or your body.”
“I never said I was, Brother. You said it.”
“Brother? Bruce Lee? Shit, get outta here.”
“Look—you want breakfast or not?”
Brother Goode turned his head, puffed up his pillow, and retorted. “I am stayin’ right here. In my room. You get on home. But don’t look too carefully in that mirror, Pops.”
I threw on my shirt and pants, socks and shoes. I picked up my duffel and checked my wallet again, making sure it was lodged tightly in my back pocket. I made my way to the corridor. Downstairs, I nodded at the Asian manager, who threw me a look of disdain.
The bus swerves to avoid hi
tting a pickup truck loaded with plantains and oranges, jolting me out of an intense sweat-and-camphor somnolence. I wipe my forehead with my perspiring right hand and push the thinning black bangs to one side. The bus reels and groans along its predestined course.
The man with the transistor and hospital wristband and the Latina with the child get off at the same stop. The child is dressed for church in a white lace dress and matching bib, reminding me that today is the Day of Rest.
LATE BLOOMER
from WAYLAID
Ed Lin
I was about twelve years old when I knew I had to get laid soon. No more of this jerking off. That was for fags.
The idea had been put into my head by Vincent, a Benny from Brooklyn. Bennys were young whites who came down to our hotel in the summers to pollute New Jersey’s shores. They didn’t go to college and worked in factories or as secretaries. All of them were from Bay onne, Elizabeth, Newark, or New York, hence the name.
Vincent and I were sitting on the office couch playing Warlords when he turned to me and said, “You gotten laid yet?”
“Nah. Not yet.”
“Well, why not? You’re like eleven, right?”
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