Jim racked up thirty dollars in ATM processing fees. In the dark room, among the huts edged in neon, he returned again and again to the same window behind the same black curtain. T.J. and I smoked cigarettes, wondering what was so special about Jim's girl. We snuck up behind the black curtain, the music concealing our footsteps, and peeked in. We saw a woman's arched back, yellowed bruises along her spine. Jim pressed his face against the tip slot, moving his mouth. For a moment, we thought—no, they couldn't be. Jim pressed his palm against the glass. The song broke.
"...and that's kind of where I'm at these days," Jim said. The stripper nodded her head. The light above the window began to flash. Jim slipped a single through the slot. The shade came down.
"You're a fucking pussy, you know that?" T.J. said.
"Fuck you, guys! How long you been there?"
I shrugged. Neutral.
"Long enough to know you're a pussy. She's not your therapist, you idiot."
Jim held his arms out and looked around the dark room. "I don't see a sign anywhere. Do you, Anthony? Do you see a sign that says I can't talk to them?"
I laughed, but no one could hear it over the music.
"You need a fucking sign. No joke," T.J. said.
"Whatever. Can we just go?"
"No way. Gotta hit Club Inferno."
With this I was clearly in agreement.
"It's too bright in there," Jim said. "Feels creepy."
T.J. laughed and looked at me. "Listen to him. Creepy."
We turned and left Jim standing alone in the dark room.
New York law stated that if your dancers were totally nude, you couldn't serve alcohol. I wasn't sure what difference a G-string made but apparently the penalties for noncompliance were high. Some clubs navigated around alcohol restrictions by serving juice and allowing customers to bring their own booze. Men in lumpy coats would belly up to the stage, wave dollars in one hand, and with the other, pour nips ofvodka into their cranberry juice.
A gorilla-necked bouncer encased in a white STAFF t-shirt guarded the entrance to Club Inferno. He bent and twisted my ID, waved it beneath a black light. He looked at me and smirked, then let me pass. Two drink tickets were included with the ten dollar cover charge, and the bouncer peeled them offfrom a giant spool; the same tickets Chuck E. Cheese used to load into Skee-Ball machines. I followed T.J. through the entrance and over to the bar, ripped off one of the tickets and redeemed it for a tall glass of orange juice. As we were about to head deeper into the club, we turned to see Jim jogging toward us, his socks glowing in black light.
The long runway, the "thrust stage," was wide at the base with a golden pole in the center. A group of Asian men in suits lined one side. A blonde woman crawled toward them, stopped, then slowly arched her back. They leaned against the stage, whispering to each other. One younger Asian man stood away from the stage. A big bronzed man with spiky blonde hair walked up to the young man and slapped him on the back. "Get your ass ringside!" he shouted. "This is your last chance!" The young man grinned like a child approaching an ice cream truck.
She slid off the pole, slinked over to the man, put his dollar between her breasts, grabbed his face and rubbed it against her. The men in suits leaned closer to the stage. The woman laughed. When she finished with the young man, she released his face, and he stepped back into his group of friends, shaking his head and fixing his messy hair with his fingers.
Once we all had our juice, we walked toward the stage and took a seat at one of the tables far away from the loud group. From there, I saw another section of the club, a balcony overlooking the stage. A row of leather chairs faced the wall, each one containing a naked woman—Asian, black, white; big breasted, small breasted; rail-thin, pleasantly-plump. They ground themselves into their customers. Only the back of each man's head was visible: bald spots like eggs in a carton.
We sipped our juice. Whispered. Jim and I giggled. T.J. stared at the stage. The blonde was replaced by a brunette. She leaned over the railing and shouted to the DJ.
"Okay, fellas. We got Misty coming to the stage right now. Come on, give it up!"
The next song was so loud it drowned the men's cheers; their open mouths and wide eyes exclaimed nothing but the club remix of Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me," a song that begins with a man asking his friend how to hide his affair from his wife, then kicks into pulsating drum machines and synthesizers. Misty strutted down the stage, popping her hips to the bass. Her small hard nipples, visible through a white sheer bra, were like pink rocks.
"Turkey's done," T.J. whispered.
At the tip of the stage, she dropped into a spread-legged squat, slowly undulating her spine as she rose and rose. Flicked her head left, right, whipping her hair, obscuring her face. Back up the runway, strands of hair clinging to her fiery lip gloss, she kicked one leg high in the air and then rested her shoe's sharp heel on the pole. Rocked her body up, down. Her heel slid down the pole, guiding her split to the stage; then she bounced several times, head thrown back, eyes closed.
The bronzed man strutted up to the stage, reached into his hip pocket and tossed a wad of singles in the air, at least fifty dollars worth. We smirked and watched the singles rain, draping her thighs, her breasts, her forehead. The man walked back to his empty table. The Asian group went wild; the young man, like a pro, pumped his fist in the air. Misty writhed on stage, stuffing dollars into her bra, her G-string, her boots. An older black man slowly leaned over the stage, dangling a dollar above her closed eyes. She didn't take it; her chest heaved, her body spent. Then her eyes opened, and the single charmed her head up, up, up until she clenched the bill between her teeth and ripped it from his hands. He watched her, rubbing his chin. The entire room stared at Misty, everyone nodding as Shaggy told us to imagine banging her on the bathroom floor.
As the song faded, she collected the rest of her singles into a pile, scooped them up, and trotted offstage.
"Give. It. Up!"
Misty returned to the club with a red boa wrapped around her neck, draped over her bare breasts. She weaved through the cocktail tables, easing herself between chairs, leaning in to run a red fingernail down a man's cheek. Nobody paid attention to the flat Asian girl on stage.
Misty headed toward us. Our sweaty glasses of orange juice stood in tiny puddles. She motioned to an empty chair and sat beside me.
"How you fellas doin' tonight?"
T.J. reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers. "Real good, sweetheart. Real good." My face burned. Jim covered his mouth.
She leaned back in her chair and nodded several times, as if bopping to a tune in her head. "That's good, baby. Got plans for the evening?"
I smiled and took several quick sips. I didn't want to stare. I didn't want to be rude. I didn't want to miss a thing.
"Lookin' at it, sista."
Misty nodded again and flipped the boa around her neck. She looked older up close and smelled like baby powder. She crossed her bare legs and rubbed the top of her thighs.
"Chilly in here, right?" Jim said. T.J. shot him a look.
She laughed. "Yeah it is. Always fucking freezing."
"Need something to warm you up?" T.J. asked.
"Depends what you had in mind."
I glanced at our reflection in the mirror.
"What's the market like these days?" T.J. asked, leaning back in his chair. Misty stared at him.
"What's your friend talkin' bout?" she asked me.
I shook my head.
"You know what I'm talkin' 'bout." Misty stared at T.J. "Twenty for twenty."
T.J. exhaled. "In this economy? That's steep, don't you think? Don't you think that's steep, fellas?"
"Seems fair," I said.
T.J. shook his head, reached into his pocket and pulled out several twenties. He peeled one off and waved it at Misty.
"Not me, darling." She flicked her boa at the bronzed man across the stage.
T.J. squinted. "Why? He gonna dance for me, too?"
; Misty laughed. "House rules."
T.J. looked at her. Me. Jim.
"Well, we wouldn't want to break any rules. Heavens, no. Not here." He sipped his juice. "Not in this fine establishment."
"Shut the fuck up." Misty stood, lassoed T.J.'s neck with her boa, and guided him out of his seat and across the club. T.J. looked back and smiled.
Jim and I watched T.J. pay the bronzed man. The man nodded and pointed to the balcony. Misty led T.J. up the stairs. The last few steps she turned and walked backwards, until they reached an empty leather chair. She shoved him, and he disappeared.
My ears felt numb from the bass pumping out of the speakers. The dark red light made Club Inferno look like a giant submarine, walls covered in posters advertising new porn movies or upcoming appearances by porn stars, most of whom I knew by their first names. We traded porno movies like baseball cards. Got 'em, got 'em, need, 'em, got 'em. Once, I found a porno in the back of my closet, one that had been passed around Team Destructo so many times that we could recite entire scenes. I must have hid it so well that I'd forgotten about it. I emptied my entire closet and was in the middle of rearranging my clothes when my father came into my room and saw the tape. He grinned.
"Hey, boy. Whatchu got there?"
"Um. You know. Just a little homework for my Film Studies class," I said.
"Yeah, I bet you been workin' at home."
I shook my head and pulled out more clothes and sneakers from the bottom of my closet.
"You tossin' all this?" he asked.
"Yeah," I lied.
"Well, then. Don't mind if I do." He bent down, picked up the tape, and walked out.
Months later, I was looking through my father's closet for a tie and saw the tape on the top shelf, hidden behind a few shoe boxes. What struck me first was that my father had hidden the tape the same way I did. He was almost fifty-five years old; who was he hiding it from? Why couldn't he just go out and buy his own? I wanted answers to these questions, but still, I was grateful. I didn't want to imagine how the situation would have been different if my mother had walked into the room.
Jim and I split a nip of vodka, mixing it into our orange juice. At first my drink gave me the chills, but I soon warmed up.
"Okay, you horny fuckers, we got fresh meat coming to the stage right now. Put yo' dicks together for the wild, the ferocious, the sexiest cat this side ofthe Nile—give it up, for Chee-tah!"
A club remix of Jethro Tull's "Bungle in the Jungle" blasted out of the speakers. A quick flash: my father's puzzled face listening to this mutilated version of a classic tune. But his expression, our expression, changed once Cheetah, a pale redhead in a leopard thong, crawled onto the stage.
"Holy shit," Jim said. "That's her, man."
"That's who?"
"Her. The chick from the whack booth."
Jim's eyes locked on Cheetah.
"Guess they let her out of her cage," I said, waiting for Jim to smile. He didn't.
Cheetah moved across the stage, performing a routine of sharp-nailed swipes and well-timed growls. She licked her boot. She bit singles out of the Asian men's waistbands. She crawled off the stage and roamed the audience. Jim took out a single and flapped it like a distress flag.
"What are you doing?"
"I gotta talk to her."
"Relax, man. She's not your girlfriend. She's a stripper."
"Fuck you."
He waved his dollar until it caught her eye. She grinned, and made her way to our table, scrunching her nose as she got closer, sniffing us out. When she reached Jim's feet, she put her hands on his thighs and pushed back onto her knees.
"Hey there, drummer boy." She smiled, revealing yellow and black rubber bands in her braces.
Jim leaned in and whispered to her. I had never seen Jim talk this much to a girl. I knew Jim as the kid in the basement hosting Wrestle-mania parties in middle school, hopped up on Dr. Pepper and Ellio's Pizza, pretending to lick the screen as Jake the Snake's girlfriend bent over in jean shorts. This was different. Jim wasn't playing for laughs. He was serious.
As Cheetah whispered to Jim, I noticed the other men in the room, staring. The stage was empty, but the Auto-Tuned version of "Bungle in the Jungle" kept playing. One of the Asian guys stood up and held out his arms. The young one waved a single, trying to get Cheetah's attention. Jim leaned in closer.
"Hey buddy, this ain't a confessional." The bronzed man had a squeaky voice.
"It's okay, Chuck," Cheetah said.
Chuck looked at her. "Oh, it is? Guess I didn't get the memo." Cheetah looked back at him. "Less talkin'. More shakin'. Got me?"
Chuck stared at Cheetah. Then Jim. Jim handed Cheetah a dollar, and she tucked it into her waistband. Chuck grinned and walked away. Jim leaned back in his chair and watched Cheetah snarl and growl toward the stage. She got down on all fours, stalking around the chairs, then squatted and leapt onto the runway. A few more swipes, a few more growls, and then Cheetah crawled offstage.
"Top notch, my friends. Top fucking notch," T.J. said, settling back into his chair. I wondered when and where he had all these lap dances to compare to Misty's, but I didn't ask.
"Good shit?" I asked.
"Phenomenal. She works hard for the money," he said, snapping his fingers.
I laughed and shook my head.
"Where's Jim?"
"Said he was feeling sick. I think he's outside yacking." T.J. laughed. "Figures."
The DJ blasted a song I'd never heard before. The blonde returned to the stage.
"Her again?" T.J. said. "Guess they don't have that many girls on tonight." He leaned back and sipped his juice. The Asian girl moved from table to table, whispering into the men's ears, but they all shook their heads.
T.J. reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty. "Hey, sweetie!"
"Dude."
"Fuck it. Round two." T.J. stood up, hooked arms with her and led her to the bronzed man.
Alone. In a room full of muscle men and naked women, DJ blasting music, bartenders pouring juice, bouncers sweating beneath their tight shirts, I was alone. Alone in dark, shallow water. Night swimming. I want to be here. I do. Just not right now.
I saw the word Adult all over Sin-derella's. Flashing in red neon above the juice bar or printed in bold on movie and magazine posters. Adults Only. Intended for Mature Audiences. These words reminded me of the warning labels on cigarettes or beer: Smoking is hazardous to your health. Pregnant women should not consume alcohol. The labels made sense to me because they protected people. Why did I need protection against a movie or a woman?
Adults told us to act mature, that if we wanted to be treated like adults, we should behave like adults. I looked around Club Inferno. The guys laughing and shouting were around my age or a few years older. The men, the ones who I considered adults, sat alone. Some looked like they were sitting in a quiet restaurant, waiting for a meal. Others leaned over the stage and whispered in a woman's ear, tipping her again and again.
"Where's Jimmy?"
I turned to see Cheetah, slightly more clothed, hands on her hips.
"Oh, he went to the car. He should be back soon, probably. He just had to get something from his car."
She nodded. Then looked around the club and sat beside me.
"What's your story?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what's your story? Got plans for the evening?"
Her eyes seemed far away, as if she were asking her questions to someone on the other side of the club. She smiled.
"I think this is the last stop for us. Probably just go home."
"Aw," she pursed her lips.
"I know. Not too exciting."
"You gotta make time for excitement. We only go around once."
"That's true," I said. "Very true."
I wondered how many times she'd done this. Our conversation so thick with cliches it was like we were yelling obscenities and speaking in code at the same time.
"Twenty for tw
enty?" she asked.
I looked around the club for T.J., for Jim. Then reached deep into my pocket, fished out a mess of singles and flipped through them like a gas station attendant.
"Deal."
Cheetah led me down the line of grinding bodies: bare, smooth backs; thick-knuckled hands; tangled legs. Brief eye contact with several men, their expressions a mix of confusion and pleasure. Some closer to pain: Gritted teeth. Mouths shaped to whistle.
She guided me by my wrist, stopped, turned me to face her and gently shoved me into a leather seat. She kicked her leg up, stabbing the heel of her shoe into the arm rest. The man beside me moaned; his body smothered by a gyrating black woman in pink lingerie. Cheetah touched the side of my face.
"Right here," she said, pointing to her eyes, index and middle finger forming a split.
I nodded, but I couldn't see her eyes. She was an apparition, a figure in shadow, the outline of her body bleeding into darkness. A flash of leopard print. The whiff of cheap perfume. Body glitter glinting like stars. Her fiery hair flowed over my legs, onto the leather seat. She quickly shook her head, then brought her face up below my waist. Stomach. Chest. My collarbone. My ear. Her nose brushing mine; warm minty breath. Back down. Down. A wake of baby powder, a scent I thought was Misty's. Perhaps powder is the final preparation, the last detail before the women crawl into the crowd. Perhaps most of it had rubbed off of Cheetah, but now her movements revealed another layer—chalky residue in the crook of her elbow. Her underarms. Beneath her spotted waistband. She rubbed the length of her body against me and whimpered.
"Are you okay?"
I didn't answer. She pressed herself into me. As she moved, her thighs stuck briefly to the leather then ripped away. Stick. Rip. Stick. Rip. Until her legs began to sweat, and her skin glided slick on the cushion.
She reached down and grabbed hard, adjusting me. The top of her chest to her lower stomach—she flowed over me like warm water. Powerful, controlled movements, steady as the tide. Crashing. Crashing. Crashing. Blood ripped through my head, and I tried to stop myself—too late, too far. My body broke.
The Language of Men Page 16