My Worst Date

by David Leddick

  As I bobbed up and down, far out I could see something brilliantly yellow. Coming toward me. I kept my eyes on it and wave after wave it got larger and larger. And yellower and yellower. It would pop up into view as the waves lifted it … yellow … and then sink from sight.

  After much bobbing up and down on both our parts the yellow thing became a rowboat. With a small dark man rowing. He rowed and rowed and rowed, up and down, up and down. It was pretty rough to be out in a rowboat in the Atlantic, but he managed well.

  Reaching me, and I was beyond the other swimmers, he rowed past me, without a glance, straight for shore. I followed him. Rowed right up through the final breakers, leaped out, and pulling the boat up, turned it over, put it over his head and shoulders like a yellow turtle shell, and marched off across the beach. Steadily and sturdily even if he had rowed in from nowhere. Out fishing? I didn’t see any fish. In from Cuba? The beach in Miami Beach was certainly a great place to land. No one was going to stop him. Wherever he was going, he knew where it was.

  Close to shore I could see Macha on her beach lounge. Around her was a selection of male beauty. A row behind her was Mr. Bodybuilder That Was. Still good body but bulky. Dark glasses. Several impressed male cronies. Looked like a drawing for Flash Gordon. The cronies were of the Eve Arden school. You know them. Thin, never good-looking. The wise-cracking girlfriend role is for them. If Eve Arden had never made movies to be seen on The Late Show or Our Miss Brooks, what would they have done?

  In the sand nearby was a younger, Latin-type bodybuilder. All greased up. With his girlfriend. He wasn’t too built up. But short. Would definitely get fat later. But certainly very okay. Those were the best selections of the day.

  Other than Mr. Paul, who was standing at the back of the beach bunks looking about. White shirt, navy blue shorts, no shoes, big white towel. So far, so good. What you wear and take to the beach says everything, doesn’t it?

  I came out of the water and lifted one arm toward him. I slicked my hair back with both hands. It’s a nice gesture and makes your body look good as you’re approaching someone.

  We met at the benches and I introduced Macha.

  “Macha, this is Mr. Paul. He’s a client of my mother’s.”

  He said, “I’m glad to meet you. Actually an ex-client of your mother’s, Hugo. I took the house. Signed for it this morning. And I think I’m young enough that you can call me Glenn.” He sat down. I sat down between Macha and Mr. Glenn Elliott Paul.

  He said he thought the water looked good. I told him it was. He said he thought he’d go in. And asked if we’d join him. I said I had just come out. Macha demurred. We were supposed to think it was her period, I suppose, so she wouldn’t have to run the perfection gamut.

  Glenn Elliott stood up and pulled off his shirt and his shorts. He was wearing a snake-green bikini. On the edge but on him definitely all right. He had some body.

  One of those natural hard bodies that just come that way. Lean. Pecs, but not the saggy kind, biceps but the long interwoven muscles, not grapefruit. Plus a very nice ass with a faint white line across the back where his bikini wasn’t up quite high enough. Nice thighs. And it all went with his thirtyish Paul Newman face. He walked down and dove in and swam strongly straight out to sea.

  “Can I handle this?” I asked Macha.

  “Very major league,” she said. “I’d certainly take my time.”

  And then we just lay back and took the sun until he came back in.

  “Wake up,” he said. And flicked water on us. Just like another high school kid.

  He stretched out on his bench on his towel and propped his head up on one hand. “Well, what do you think?” he asked. He wasn’t asking Macha. Just me.

  “What do I think about what?” I said.

  “Oh, you know. Life. Everything,” he said back.

  “I don’t know. Everything is pretty good right now. I’m doing okay at school. Mom is doing okay at work. I’ve got my friends. We’re having a good time. I guess at sixteen that’s about as much as you can ask. Don’t you?”

  Then he said, “And what’s next?”

  Sex. I thought. “You mean, what’s after high school?” I said.

  “Yeah, that’ll do,” he said. “What’s the plan?”

  “Well, let’s see. Macha and I have been talking about the both of us going to Barnard. Where her mother went. It used to be only girls … women … but now they have men. It sounds cool,” I said. I thought I sounded really silly. Just like a sixteen-year-old. An extremely cool guy in floppy yellow shorts came over and lay down in the sand where we could see all his muscles clearly. Yellow seems to be the color of the day.

  Macha sat up and said, “Barnard sounds like fun. They kind of let you figure out your own curriculum and you can study what you want.”

  “Which is?” he asked in a kind of inquiring voice. Definitely not sucking up.

  “I think I’d like to be an actress,” Macha said.

  “She’s really good.” I told him. “She’s in all our plays at school. She did Tennessee Williams, This Property for Sale, for Talent Night. All the parents got very shook up.”

  “Well, there’s certainly a very great demand for actresses these days,” he said. There is maybe really something to this guy. Then he looked at me with those kind of light blue husky dog Paul Newman eyes and said, “And you? Do you want to be an actor?”

  “I’m thinking about it, but actually, I think I either want to be a reporter or go into the diplomatic corps. Or be a high school teacher. Nothing too great. Just something that I think would be interesting to do.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Come in the water with me again. I’ve got to get going.” He leaped up and jumped right over Mr. Cool in the yellow shorts and dove in. I got up and followed him.

  He bobbed up out of the water behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. I heard him say, “I just want to know, do you go out with guys?”

  I said, “I don’t know if I go out with guys, but I sleep with guys.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” he said, letting go of my shoulders and sinking under the wave that came cresting over his head. Coming up he said, “I’d offer you a ride home, but obviously your pal has a car.”

  “Yeah,” I said. He sounded a little jealous. He didn’t like Macha, that much was clear.

  “You coming in?” he asked. And I nodded that I was and we walked out of the water. I wondered how we looked together. Did people think he was my father? I’m sure they thought I was his tootsie. And that he could do better. With them. Ha!

  He just pulled on his shirt, leaving it open, and said good-bye, his towel and his shorts in his hand. “It was nice meeting you,” he told Macha. “It was nice meeting you,” she answered. Quite civilly, for her. Although I’m sure he wondered what that meant. I did. And he walked away on those great legs. With that great ass. Not at all gay. Just a god, that’s all.

  “Where will all this end?” I asked Macha.

  She said, “I wish I were a guy. A gay guy. All the really humpy, fabulous guys are gay. It’s not fair. That guy—Glenn—is great. If my father looked like that I’d consider sleeping with him. Fortunately for him, he doesn’t.” I said nothing.

  Mr. Yellow Shorts interrupted us. “Could you tell me the time?” he asked. We both looked at his waterproof watch. “It stopped,” he lied.

  “I think it’s about four o’clock,” Macha said. I dug around in my bag and found my watch.

  “Four-ten,” I told him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “By the way, my name is Ken.”

  Ken was all right so I said, “My name is Hugo. And this is Macha. We’re both pleased to meet you.”

  Ken said, “Are you from around here? You don’t seem to be models.”

  “Is that a compliment?” said Macha. “Or not?”

  “No, no, no,” our Ken said. “Well, it’s not really a compliment but it’s not an insult either. You just both seemed so nice and relaxed and having a
good time with your dad or whoever he was.” So, I wasn’t a teenage hooker on the beach. Anyway.

  We found out that Ken was from Chicago. He was trying to be a model. He was with Models One. He was staying at the Breakwater. And he was going out to dinner with Macha.

  He had made his choice between us, and it was only fair. Macha needed a love interest. I’m sure Ken had no idea she was only sixteen. And besides, I had Glenn—my Mr. Paul—to mull over. Actually, I think Ken picked up on that. He may be from Chicago but you don’t model for more than twenty-four hours and not learn something.

  the bomber club

  I needed money. For a lot of things. The real estate business was dead in Miami Beach so Mom was just squeaking by. I suppose I’ll go to college when I finish high school in two years so I ought to be getting ready. I’m not really into clothes, but even so, the Reeboks, the Gap T-shirts, the leather jackets aren’t free.

  I knew if I just took care of things Mom wouldn’t notice, and I could always say I worked down at the Perfect Pizza with Macha.

  Macha has a thing about asking her parents for money. She does real well on tips. One of the old men there the other night said, “What’s a shiksa like you doing working in a place like this?” She said, “Oh, come on. Wake up and smell the cappuccino. I’m not a shiksa.” He said, “You’re not, with that cute little nose?” And he tapped her on the nose and left her a big tip. It’s the long blond hair that does it. But as Macha says, “In this day and age, if you don’t have it, you get it.”

  It was really Macha’s idea that I work at the Bomber Club, the male strip disco down on Washington. She goes down there all the time even though she’s only sixteen. She was going there when she was fifteen. Her best girl pal graduates this year and has her own car so with the car and fake ID they both hang out all over town. They tell Macha’s parents she’s staying overnight with Elouise, and she does, eventually. Macha’s parents have a lot of mileage, you’d think they would have figured that one out, but evidently after forty the “figuring it out” switch goes off. Even Mom’s is pretty closed down.

  I said, “But you have to be eighteen to go into the Bomber Club.” And Macha said, “You may have to be eighteen to go into it but I don’t know that you have to be any age to work there. Look, you dance like gangbusters. You have a very nice body and you could make it even nicer if you went to my gym once in a while. You’re blond. You’re no movie star but you’re young. Let’s go to Fred Faricanelli, who owns the place.” It seems she knows Fred well. Chats him up at the bar all the time, even though she never drinks anything but Evian. Macha could chat up the Pope and make him think maybe it would be nice to be Jewish.

  So I practice a little at home. I think House sucks myself, but if that’s what they’re going to play, I’ll make my moves to it. And I look in the mirror. I’m no Marky Mark, but he isn’t blond, either.

  And we see Fred Faricanelli. Macha called him up and we drop down after school. “Is he eighteen?” Fred says. It’s a little like I’m invisible. Or more like I’m the product. Macha is the saleswoman. She says, “Would I bring him in if he wasn’t?” She’s so smart.

  “So,” says Fred, “let’s see what you can do.”

  “Should I take my clothes off?” I ask. Fred just looks at me like I’m speaking Swahili.

  “You’ve got your jams and T-shirt on. Just take it from there,” Macha suggests. So I get up on their little stage, Fred turns on the music, and I pretend I’m at home in front of the mirror. I hear Macha yell over the music, “How long is each number?” Fred holds up one hand with all five fingers up. “That’s long,” she shouts back. Fred tucks his thumb in. I take off my T-shirt and pull my jams down so you can see the top of my skivvies. I thought I’d wear boxers and under them Calvin Kleins. So I show Fred this move I thought up where I move on one foot kind of like the twist while I pull my shorts off one foot and then shift to the other to get them off all the way. I do my boxers the same way. This is the longest five minutes of my life. I pull my Calvin Kleins down a little and the music ends.

  Fred says, “Will you go all the way?”

  “I’d rather not,” I said.

  “Yeah, none of the guys want to,” he says. “Gives ya more longevity in the club. You can show them something later if they get tired of you.”

  Macha says, “You’re going to use him?” I can hear a little hint of excitement in her voice. Fred probably can’t. But she’s so cool, a little bit of uncoolness shows.

  “You his agent or something?” Fred asks. “How much do you take off the top?”

  “How much is on the bottom?” Macha asks. For sixteen this woman is incredible.

  “Okay. He only works Friday and Saturday nights. I don’t need him during the week. He does three shows a night. I can give him a hundred dollars for the two nights.”

  “What do the other boys get?”

  “They get more because they’re professionals. And they do other stuff.”

  Macha says, “Well, that’s their business. And please, professional. You forget I hang out here a lot. Hugo dances better than most of them do.”

  Fred says, “He’s a little stiff.”

  Sacha says, “Don’t you wish.” (Where does she get this dialogue!) “I think he should get a hundred fifty. And two hundred in six weeks if people like him. After all, he’s a nice boy from a nice home who’s doing this to earn money for college. He’s not some twit off the boat from Cuba.”

  “Okay, have him here Friday at ten o’clock. We’ll see how it goes.” And Fred bids us adieu. When we walked out the sun seemed twice as bright as usual. Really bright. I squinted. And now I had to keep my nerve up. Mom was no problem, I’m always out on the weekends and she’s asleep when I come in.

  Friday night I go in a little early. Macha and Elouise go with me, to wait and take me home afterward. I could walk, actually, but it will be late and I’ll be excited.

  We go in the back door and Fred’s cousin Walter is there. “This the new kid?” he asked. I nodded. “You girls can’t hang out back here. No women in the dressing room.”

  “You probably let men in,” Macha said.

  “Give me a break, Macha,” Walter said.

  So the girls left and I went into the dressing room. Go-go boys don’t wear makeup but they sure look at themselves a lot in the mirror anyway. There was a long counter, a big mirror over it, and a row of chairs, each one occupied. I held out my hand to introduce myself down the line. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Hugo.” “Oh, what a great name,” said the short dark boy with an extremely beautiful body in the first chair. “We’ll call you Huge. Are you?” I let that one pass. “I’m Coco Rico. That’s what I work under anyway.” And there was Maximum Shell. Very big. Very blond. A Dolph Lundgren lookalike. Very beautiful. And three others. Only one was swishy. He worked under the name Myrtle Beach and did a kind of drag strip, I guess. But he had a great body. They all did. I closed the door, bang, on any cubbyholes called Romance. This place was the Gaza Strip of sex if I ever saw it. With land mines under every step.

  I didn’t feel so nervous. I already had on what I was going to wear. And I was doing what Macha does. When I asked her how she could be so swift when she was talking to Fred, who is after all a grown-up, if a kind of unimpressed one, she said, “I just pretend I’m my mother. You know what she’s like.” So I pretended I was someone like Matthew Broderick playing the part of a teenager going to work in a disco strip club.

  Walter came and said, “You’re on, Coco.” I went out and watched a little bit from the wings, but that made me nervous. “Just go out and hit it,” I thought. “Don’t think about it.” Though I could hear a lot of yelling going on over the music. Some of the other guys worked. They all did pretty much the same thing.

  I heard Walter’s voice over the mike saying, “An’ now somebody new, just in town from San Francisco. Hugo. Some people call him Huge.” He must have heard Coco in the dressing room.

  So the music started. Not
“Blue Hotel,” which I’d requested, but a really bad cover of “Besame Mucho” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I walked out. It was surprising. The club was full of guys but I could hardly see them, the lights were so bright on stage. I just kind of pulled my clothes off as though I was just undressing. I mean, I didn’t even know what they might like so I couldn’t very well be suggestive. I was down to my Calvin Kleins when I could see well enough to see Macha and Elouise at the bar. They were looking enthusiastic. Next to Macha, who was turning to him from time to time to talk, was Glenn Elliott Paul. Mr. Paul. He didn’t look anything at all. Very deadpan. And I split, leaving Walter to figure out what to do with the rest of the music.

  iris’s soliloquy

  Let us say, what I can tell you? Probably first, my name isn’t really Iris. It’s Irene. I’ve always thought it was rather a stupid name. Like a nurse. Nurses can be named Irene. There’s something clean about it. I heard a song once years ago, “Good Night Irene.” I used to sing it. “Good Night Irene, I hope you’re clean.” Horrible name.

  I was born in Trieste. My other name is really Mayer. At least my father’s name was Mayer. But I was always known as Caratelli. Irene Caratelli. My mother’s maiden name. We used it after my father went back to Germany. I shortened it to Carey when I modeled.

  Caratelli was my mother’s name and I never asked her if it was her mother’s maiden name. Not to say that my mother wasn’t married to my father. She was. But he was German. You can see I have blue eyes. Gentian, someone once told me. Did you ever see a gentian? I never have. One of those flowers that grows in the Alps, very likely, that no one has ever seen. Dark blue, in any case. At least they’re not cornflower. Ever see a cornflower? Me either. Light blue, I suppose.

  In any case. I was born in Trieste. I vaguely remember my father. I was four I think when he returned to Germany. They had met after the war, of course. Does this sound like a terrible motion picture? It always has to me—in a really rather ordinary way. He had something to do with shipping things out of Trieste. He was a good bit older than my mother I think. Mother was his secretary. She was pretty. The war hadn’t been over very long. Everyone was poor. I suppose it was a romance of a kind.