by John O'Brien
The always depressing experience of leaving a bar creates a sense of loss in him that gives his mind a little jolt. He should immediately proceed with the evening; it is getting late. His watch is accelerating as it nears two, and why not? he thinks. It always takes a long rest from two to six. There is time for only one stop at a bar near his home, but first he will stock up at the store. He has just enough cash left. The trip to the ATM, cleaning up the broken glass at home, that sort of stuff can wait for the wee hours, when he has nothing better to do.
Walking to his car he feels odd. Things could start crumbling fast now. He stands on the ledge, about to lose control of his handle on the world: alcohol. He’s ready for this, ready to sit back and watch. Time is now the biggest irritation in his life. Las Vegas looms in the back of his head. Free from closing hours, lots of liquor always everywhere, it is inevitable that he will end up there. All he has to do is remember not to gamble drunk, which means not to gamble at all, and he can make his money last long enough to comfortably wrap things up and have fun doing it. Part of him is afraid to go, aware that this crystal-clear thinking is bound to elude him in Never Enough City. In any case he must go to the bank soon, during real hours, and withdraw most of his cash, leaving a token amount that he can pull out anytime from an ATM in Vegas, or wherever. He should have all his cash at hand; who knows what could happen? The bottom line is, now more than ever, always have access to a drink. Always have access to a drink.
At the store he can’t bring himself to buy a half-gallon of cheap generic vodka. Remembering that there is still some at home, he settles for a fifth of Polish Vodka instead. Why fuck up at this late date? Purity of execution will only add to the artistic aspects of the whole wretched mess. So with the finality of this resolution keeping his chin up, he waits impatiently in the twelve items or less line. It’s okay, he thinks, I have less than twelve items.
To him a daily benchmark is his final seat at the last bar of the night. It is his regular stop near his home. He doesn’t like the place much and wouldn’t normally go there, but the location is too good, too convenient. Suited well to the public safety, this place oozes its smoke laden atmosphere of tough fuck biker talk and dirty women out onto a sidewalk that travels less than two blocks to Ben’s front door. This allows him to drink lethal quantities with no worry of dropping off at the wheel, for there have been occasions when even he knew that he couldn’t possibly operate a motor vehicle with any degree of intelligence, much less safety. So if he should wake in the morning and find himself with neither his automobile nor the recollection of where it might be, he has only to stumble down the street and around a corner, and there it will stand, secure where he must have left it the previous evening, more or less in a parking space.
He sits at the filthy bar, amidst the leather vested fat guys, the worn and weary pool tables, the smelly sluts who are much harder and drunker than he’ll ever be, the puke-piss-spit-blood encrusted carpeting, the brain-damaged human carcasses who have held their heads below their shoulders for longer than he’s been alive, the slimy sidewalk penny-loafers who wanna be his pal, and the rest of the supporting cast with heads vacuous and pant seats full. He sits with his glasses and bottles in front of him. He sits as the last remnants of today and all that came before it slip into the void of blackout. He sits at the filthy bar and silently witnesses the change of watch from his will to his independently operating motor skills. His heart provides the musical accompaniment as the drinks are finished and he walks his crooked line home, as he clutches his bag of vodka and makes the distance to his door, as he puts his parcel on the floor carefully—even his body knows how important it is—and stumbles to his bed, where he turns off. His heart is beating him to sleep; there is no more required of him for now.
It is a different day, and Ben sits in a different bar. It is early afternoon and he has successfully made the trip into Beverly Hills for lunch: a bullshot and six raw oysters, continuous vodka for dessert. Now properly fortified, he is ready for a second visit to his bank, also in Beverly Hills.
He tried earlier, and it didn’t go so well. He giggles over his kamikaze, under his breath, “My visit to the bank didn’t go so well this morning.” He had felt okay after his morning drinks and decided to take advantage of his consciousness and withdraw the rest of his cash from the bank. This sort of big business deal is not his favorite thing to do these days, and the bank is ripe for construction as enemy turf by his often paranoid, alcohol-en riched imagination. In an attempt to get the nastiness over with—actually just the simple process of cashing a check since he did not intend to close the account—he decided to stop at the bank before starting his afternoon drinking in Beverly Hills. He had filled out and signed the check beforehand, four thousand and six hundred dollars—4.6K, his life expectancy—but forgotten that he would be asked to sign the back of the check in the teller’s presence. Upon hearing the words Would you sign the back for me please, sir, the small tremor in his wrist immediately doubled its seismic output. Just being partially sober in a bank was already enough to produce serious sweating, but to have to sign a check under the gaze of a teller was unthinkable.
“You couldn’t just cash it like that?” he asked with his best flirtatious smile and sweat lining his neck.
“I’m sorry sir. Is there a problem?” said the teller.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, nowhere else to go.
“Well,” he started, his voice cracking, “to tell you the truth, I’m a little shaky right now.” Just a little, he thought. “I had a rough night and I guess I need a little hair-of-the-dog.” Hair-of-the-pack, he wanted to say. “Why don’t I just come back after lunch when I’m feeling better. We can take care of it then.” He picked up his check, in itself an accomplishment, and left.
The poor girl smiled through her confusion, wondering if even this customer could possibly be right. Certainly he was not all right. How could she know that there was disarray and devilment wreaking havoc with his very biology. To her he was a customer of the bank whom she recognized, but who refused to sign his own check. She thought it over, and since her cash drawer had not been opened at all during the encounter, she shrugged it off.
While listening to the lunch waitresses shout their orders to the overworked bartender, he spots his moment. Time for the bank. The bank once and for all, last and forever, is about to be revisited. He gulps the balance of his drink and calls to the bartender that he’ll be back in a few minutes. He has never walked on a tab and this is standard operating procedure for him. He and his ego say smugly to each other, They know me here.
He is cruising on that golden highway of maintenance. The increasingly elusive mixture of blood and alcohol that makes him feel and act normally happy. This is the time of his grand hallucination. Things are fine. Who knows what could happen tomorrow? He’s getting away with a lot of fun. What it really is, is a taste of his first good drunk. It’s a small refresher course in the wonders of alcohol. Start again at zero, add one, and go! You have x minutes of fuel remaining. Enjoy your flight, and stop by our Abyss Cafe for a bite when you get sick of Club Average. It’s the last turn before the terminal.
“I’m back. I’ve got my check. I’m ready to sign, baby,” he says with a wink to the same unfortunate teller. He flips the check over and signs it with an elaborate gesture. “Steady as a fucking rock. Wanna have dinner with me?”
She counts out his cash and glares at him as she hands it over. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, sir,” she says coldly. “Do you need a validation?”
That sounds pretty good to him, but even if she meant it, she wouldn’t know where to begin. At this point he’s not so sure that he would either. He puts his money in his pocket, thanks her and leaves.
He goes back to the bar to fortify. The abundance of cash in his pocket is flirting with him, and he knows that he will have to blow at least some of it, despite his painful awareness of how crucial it is to his future that he be sensible and save it for drinking. H
e’s not sure if, given the circumstances, this particular future would be considered long term or short term, but regardless of its categorization, it, like all other futures, must be attended to. He peels two hundreds away from his fortune and puts them in his pocket with his other petty cash. The remaining forty-four are shoehorned into his wallet which kinks and bulges in protest, never having expected to bear such a burden.
The habit of keeping cash in his left front pocket grew out of an emergency that occurred some months back. He had awakened well into withdrawals and was very shaky. Having nothing in the house he hurried to the liquor store only to find it inexplicably closed. With his shaking accelerating he was already unable to drive anywhere, so he made for the bar down the street from his apartment. By the time he reached it and ordered, his hands were in such turmoil that he could not extract a bill from his wallet. The disapproving bartender, an older man who thought that Ben was too young to be in this condition, eventually agreed to go into the wallet and get the money. Four drinks and forty minutes later Ben was recovering, but the whole incident had been so embarrassing, not to mention too very close for comfort, that since that morning he has always kept at least twenty dollars in his front pocket. In this way, no matter what his condition, he can always manage to shove his left hand into his pocket, clutch the money, and drop it on the bar or counter. The whole setup made so much sense that he got in the habit of keeping all his cash there. Not only does it prevent a pickpocket from separating a drunk and his money, but it keeps him that much closer to his liquor, a circumstance that is always the subject of his best interest.
Swirling down the hoary bourbon and feeling good enough to hold it in his mouth for a moment and appreciate the taste, to savor the bouquet as it rises and fills his throat and sinuses after he swallows, to know the hearty burn as it hits the stomach and begins with a punch its assault on the body, his mind drifts to the little bank teller. Perhaps not remarkable physically, she is the most recent female contact of record, and is certainly… serviceable. But is she desirable? Is she irresistible? Maybe if she drank bourbon with him it would help his opinion of her. Maybe if she drank bourbon and then kissed him, and he could taste the sting, maybe that would help. He might like her more if she drank bourbon with him while they were naked. If she smelled like bourbon and fucked him, that would increase his esteem for her. He could probably learn to love her if she poured bourbon on her naked body and said, “Lick this, clean it up.” He would really dig her if she had bourbon dripping from her breasts and vagina, if she spread her legs and poured it on herself and said, “Lick this, drink here. I’m a mess.” Or what if she got fucked by a lot of guys, big guys who liked fucking her, and they all stank of bourbon and come and she said to him, “There! See! I have a purpose. I have a place, and a value. These guys like to fuck me and now I stink of their come. That proves that I am worth something, and the closest you’ll ever get to being worth anything is to clean me up. Put your stupid fucking face on me and lick up that come and booze. Lick me clean so I can go fuck someone else. That’s what you get. You can aspire to be Apprentice Sloppy-Cunt-Licker. How’s that sound? Your fucking validation in your face!” How very strange that would feel, to be so well understood.
He finishes his bourbon and talks the bartender into letting him slip out with a bottle of beer to drink on the short drive to one of LA’s second rate strip clubs. Since they are more or less free of prostitution his money will be more or less safe from a full frontal assault during a moment of weakness. He’ll also stop for a half-pint. They don’t serve alcohol in California clubs that feature total nudity. To him this annoyance is a typically compromising guess by a legislative body fearlessly striking out at a cause that could never strike back with a credible lobby. Pussy and potables don’t mix, at least not the overt kind. That sort of entertainment requires a clear head, quick reflexes.
One pocket stocked with bourbon, the other money wise, Ben pays his seven dollars, hears all about the one drink minimum, and enters the club. No sooner does he wiggle into the spacious and comfortable seating next to the lavish and ornate stage, than he is attended to by one of the courteous and helpful cocktail waitresses.
“There’s a one drink minimum per show. I hope you saw the sign when you came in. Anyway, they’re supposed to tell you. What do you want,” says a swimsuit clad girl—one piece, but it’s a small, oddly shaped piece—holding a small tray.
“Yes, I heard,” says Ben. “That’s no problem. What are my choices?”
The girl sighs. Why is her life plagued with ignorant dolts? “Everything’s three-fifty and there’s no alcohol,” she says.
“Okay, but what do you have?” he says.
“No alcohol. You gotta get something else, and it’s three-fifty. Now what do you want?” She is making it clear that she is irked and can’t be expected to stand around waiting forever for this guy to figure it out.
He tries, “What do you think I should get?”
This is almost too much, now the jerk can’t make up his mind. She gives him what she imagines is her most intimidating look and slowly pronounces, “Non-alcoholic malt beverage, orange soda, coffee, sparkling apple cider, water. One drink minimum per show. Everything is three-fifty. Tell me what you want or I’ll eighty-six you.”
“Water. I’ll have water, please,” he says. “And just how much is it for you to eighty-six me?”
She walks away without responding. She is moving slowly, but her speed picks up as soon as she gets the word water written down on a napkin.
As he waits for her return, he watches a naked girl on the stage. Legs spread and knees in air, she grinds out a message to another patron who sits opposite Ben. With great ceremony the man places a dollar bill on the edge of the stage, fixes his gaze between the dancers wide open legs, and winks at her pussy. On the corner to his left another man scribbles nervously on a napkin. Watching this, Ben’s about ready for a slug of bourbon in the rest room, but he wants to pay the waitress first and avoid any further difficulty. He doesn’t want to be eighty-sixed.
She returns carrying a styrofoam cup, into which she splashes some water from a ten ounce bottle. She puts the dripping bottle and cup on the counter in front of him.
“Three-fifty,” she says, staring not at Ben but at whatever might be occupying the space five inches above his left ear.
“Could I have fives, please,” he says, placing a one hundred dollar bill on her tray. This is his way of asserting himself at a strip club. He is making it known that he will be tipping with five dollar bills instead of the ubiquitous singles that are stacked in front of the other customers. Often he is outdone by some guy using twenties or even hundreds, but that’s overkill. All he needs to do is to distinguish himself from the crowd. He’ll be attended to as well as the really big suckers now. At the most he’ll drop eighty or ninety bucks, small price to pay for a room full of two-minute girlfriends. It is his ugly masculinity surfacing in an environment that loves to entertain such folly. He is buying their attention. They will all pretend to like him now. “Keep one for yourself,” he says absently as he watches the dancer.
The waitress says nothing but is pleasantly surprised. She has already pegged Ben as an asshole, and as she walks away, she applauds herself on her perception. Ben looks after her swimsuit covered little frame. She is small, less than five feet, tiny and cute with no substance, an appetizer. The other girls are looking at him as the small one reaches the group for the tag. They bend to listen and then smile at his caught eye. He ambles into the bathroom, thinks about jerking off, downs his bourbon, and returns to his seat. A different dancer is on the stage and his fives are next to his drink. The waitress, who has been standing guard, raises her eyebrows at him in acknowledgement of his return and twirls away.
He turns his attention to the dancer on stage, or, more accurately, to her reflection in the giant mirror-covered wall on the side of the stage. Tall and blond, the reflection dances as much for its more tangible partner as
for the roomful of hopelessly average men sipping orange soda. To him there is nothing more beautiful than the relationship between the reflection of a woman and the woman who creates it. The opportunity to stare at this phenomenon is the best part of a strip club, for even these hardened exhibitionists, these visual prostitutes, cannot escape betraying their fascination with themselves. He sees exposed a self-communication far beyond superficial hope and disappointment, and close to contentment. When they look at their own images they become nothing but vulnerable; they touch reality, and it is that moment which sends through him a shot of electricity, inspires him with an oh, so temporary knowledge of humanity. At least this is how it seems to him; this is his view. And when, having collected their tips from the railing and floor of the stage, they kiss his cheek and thank him, he feels closer to them. And if their kiss lingers or if he thinks it might have lingered, he falls, for a drunken moment, truly in love with them.
The dancer turns her back on the crowd, and with her hips swaying to the music, faces fully an electric fan on the corner of the stage. Eyes closed, she indulges in the fast moving air. The sweat glistens on her face, drips along little trails down her back, shines on her buttocks. Wildly blowing hair is thrown about in a blur as she spins and mounts the vertical mirror. Head down now, legs spread, feet straddled, and hands stretched high above, she presses herself against her reflection and grinds out the rhythm of sex. She turns and struts back to the front of the stage. The glass no longer holds the reflection, but on its surface remain her two hand prints. There they will stay for the rest of the show. They will hang silently in the background as the other dancers perform, one after another. Ben will look back and see them as he leaves for glasses yet unemptied. They will be there all through the night as the club sits in stillness. Then they will be wiped away by the small Korean cleaning man who maintains his survival through the wielding of torn rags and dented buckets. He’ll dutifully clean away the hand prints, having never seen the reflection.