“And that is your ex?” Glenn said.
“Oh, very much my ex. What did you think?”
“Still good-looking but what else? You wouldn’t still want to be with him?”
Mom made a funny shape with her mouth as though she tasted something sour. “I wasn’t going to shake his hand, Mom, no matter what you did,” I said. They were going outside and we went out and waited for Glenn’s car. The soft, sweet salt air was blowing. It was warm and I felt relaxed. We were all going home together. My family. My weird, weird family.
roberto shaving
It was curious seeing Iris again. It was curious and I was curious. She looks well. Capable. You never could shake her up very much. Of course she had every reason to leave me. I think I probably set it up to get caught with that American so she would leave me. She was very sweet and very beautiful and very famous when we met.
Not like Lorene. Poor Enrico. He tells me that she is still very eager to make love. He’s got his work cut out for him. Twenty years ago he was a good-looking man. But always so polite. Even in bed. Always, “Sorry … If you please … May I.” It’s being Catholic that got him through all this. Duty, duty, duty. He must have thought he would outlive Lorene, she being so much older. I’m not so sure. She may outlive him. Then it would be my turn to marry her. Better Eduardo. He wouldn’t mind the fucking part.
I think I’m jealous of Iris. She has a career. A handsome boyfriend. I did her a favor. But not much money.
I’m sure she doesn’t know her handsome son works in a strip club. Even if it is the best one. I wonder what that’s all about. That he’s a vicious little boy with the face of an angel. Seen those boys before, haven’t we? A vicious little boy who enjoys all the natives ogling his body. Or perhaps he just likes to get fucked. Or maybe he needs money? Americans are so difficult to figure out. They can take the most sinister kind of sex deviation and turn it into just another way to make money. And the bright light of moneymaking cleanses all. If you can make a good living doing it, can it be bad? I sort of like that idea.
My son, my son. What can be done with my son, the beautiful boy? A beautiful boy like that, there’s certainly something better for him to do, some better way for him to make money than that dingy little strip club?
God, I’m going to have to have a face-lift soon. I look like hell. But where’s the money supposed to come from? The vicious circle. No money if you don’t look good. And if you don’t look good there’s no money to be had. I must ask Lorene who did her last three jobs. So I can avoid all of them.
My mind keeps running down all these little blind alleys like some half-crazed rat, and there’s no money at the end of any of them.
And once Eduardo gets the picture he’s going to be history. And who cares? Dull little twat. All he can think about is how large a cock he can get inside himself. And he’s not even very careful about condoms. He’s not going to be around very long, one way or another.
So Hugo, my thoughts keep coming back to you. There’s got to be some way to make a bundle with a little cutie like you, my very own son. But how? I’ve got to put some real thought into this.
And where is Eduardo? He went to the pool two hours ago and no sight of him out there now. Probably being fucked by that guy in the cap who’s been crawling around here ever since we arrived. He’d find somebody to fuck in the Antarctic.
the hooters
The Hooters, the Hooters, the Hooters. Macha wanted to go see the Hooters. Don’t ask me why. But we’d been seeing so little of each other I felt like couldn’t say no. I asked Fred at work about the Hooters. I said, “I thought the Hooters were those restaurants with the waitresses with the big gonzobs where men go to act macho. So this is women’s football?”
“Yes, it’s topless football. There’s a national league. Who are they playing? The Toronto Tits? Or the Buffalo Bosoms?” Fred asked, sorting out the sale T-shirts, which the customer had thoroughly messed up without buying any.
“I can’t believe this, Fred.” I started helping him fold and pile. “Here, this is a medium. Football hurts. What happens when they get tackled? Why bother wearing a helmet if you’re breasts are bare?”
“I know, I know,” he said. “Why don’t we put the navy blue down on the end? But when they come out of the huddle and hunch down the line, it’s quite a sight.”
“A: Fred, it would not be quite a sight for you. And B: I’m sure it’s a sight you’ve never seen. And I don’t believe you.”
“What a wise young man you’re becoming,” he said over the armful of forest green long-sleeved T’s he was moving around to the other side. “The Hooters are just a football team, sponsored by the Hooters restaurants. Eight-man team. Some guys who used to play for regular professional teams. We used to play eight-man in high school.” Fred always had something surprising to pull out of his mysterious past.
“I thought you went to a convent school? That’s what you tell everyone.”
“Yeah, but the nuns were crazy about football. I was center. No remarks about bending over.”
“Macha wants to see them,” I said.
“I’d kind of like to see them myself,” our Fred said.
“Let’s go.” And so we did.
Quelle evening. Turns out Macha wanted to go because she had met some girl who was a Hooters cheerleader for the team. And was very impressed. Her dentist’s dental technician I think. In certain groups being a cheerleader for a professional football team is major prestige. What kind of prestige is attached to being a Hooters cheerleader I don’t know. We were going to find out.
We were in the Miami Arena. Not great seats. We’re in the end zone, behind a huge net that stops the ball when they kick it over the miniature goal posts. But as Macha pointed out, a great place to see the Hooter Girls in action. First things first. Macha seems to be into reverse snobbism. Her big concern being how she stacks up against a Hooter Girl. Hair, legs, face, etc.
On first sight, I knew poor Macha was hopelessly outclassed. She has the legs for it but she could never make the moves. The Hooter Girls are sort of like frantic wind-up Barbie dolls, life-size. A couple had good hair. Their faces, who could tell? They are nonstop movers doing a series of something between aerobics and chorus girl routines. With pom-poms. Great legs, we have to give them that. But zip this way, kick that way, hands on hips, shake that booty. Their backs were to the audience and grinding their buttocks in the audience’s direction was a major part of the choreographic inspiration. At least they got to wear Adidas. It would have been hell to be on the move like that all night in heels.
It was kind of nice, actually. It’s kind of a future for ex-high school cheerleaders. It isn’t all over after high school. You can take that pep and peddle it at the professional games. I imagine in time they’ll have geriatric football and we’ll have the pleasure of seeing frantic grandmas kicking over their heads. With all this Baby Boom chat it’s got to happen.
Macha has never been a cheerleader in high school. That was far too enthusiastic for her. So I told her she was setting her sights pretty high hoping to be a Hooter Girl. Or Hootette, as I started calling them, which she said nothing about but obviously found irritating. Grace Kelly dreaming of being Marilyn Monroe.
The poor football players kind of got lost in the showbiz shuffle. First the Hootettes did a kind of chorus routine, grinding and shaking, stomping and kicking. Then the lights came down and lasers flickered as a herd of motorcycles came charging out of the lower depths and circled the field, carrying some biker girls who made the Hootettes look like debutantes. Spidermen came dropping out of the upper reaches of the arena on cables, James Bond style. Could these have been some division of the Miami Police? Or is this some new variation on bungee jumping, the Cable Club? Down they came, dangling by an arm, a leg, a neck. Got me. Once they hit the ground smoke began billowing out of the ramp entrance and out the players came, one by one, announced over the intercom, like showgirls. They raised their arms, they punched t
he air, they ran jauntily down the field. A couple of them had cute runs. Impossible to tell if anybody was good-looking or not. Not that I could care. Of course not.
The other team got the same treatment. The scoreboard showed us that the Miami Hooters were playing the Fort Worth Calvary. Could this be? I asked Fred. He said, yes, they used to bring them out nailed on crosses but religious groups objected. The announcer finally told us that they were in fact the Fort Worth Cavalry. But Calvary was what it was for the poor Hooters, for all their cute ways of running. There was lots of ball-dropping interceptions, throwing passes into the stands.
In desperation the announcer told the crowd that something very special was going to happen in the last quarter. Maybe my fantasy was going to happen in the last quarter. Maybe my fantasy of the Hooter girls playing topless was going to come to pass. It was about the only thing I could imagine that was going to keep the restless, sexy guys around us in place.
At quarter-time, four Hootettes, one wearing a hardhat, one an Indian bonnet, the others scraps of military uniforms, led the crowd in a chorus of “YMCA,” the Village People number. The words were accompanied by gestures, which everyone in the Arena except me seemed to know. You stood up and opened your arms above your head for “Y,” drooped your hands down to your head for “M,” and so on. Macha and Fred amazed me by knowing all these things. I was pretty agog that this very white bread crowd was doing this big gay anthem number and loving it. I guess it just went right over their heads. Or maybe they got it just fine and it was their naughtiness for the evening.
There was a gang of really good-looking young guys right in front of us and they were moving their pelvises around to beat the band. These were guys who had never been in a gay club in their lives, unless I was sorely mistaken, and here they were making all the moves. Here they were. A night out with the boys. Is the whole world gay? I know. I just had to ask.
As though to answer my question, as everyone’s gyrating around I see my father with his boyfriend Eduardo in the next section. They are not doing the YMCA maneuvers either. In fact, they are looking right at us. Eduardo sees me looking and he waves. Hey, wait a minute. Am I hallucinating, or what? I asked Fred and Macha to look over in that direction and see if they recognized anyone. Macha didn’t of course, but Fred did.
“It’s Rik and Rak, the night of the living dead come back to haunt us,” he said. “Those guys who tried to pick us up at the Bomber Club are on our trail.” He would have keeled under the seats if I broke the news that it wasn’t just two gay guys from Rio. It was Dad. And his lover. To hell with it. If we run into them I’m not going to introduce him as my father. He doesn’t deserve it. That’s out. It will just be Roberto and Eduardo, the weirdos from Ipanema.
Of course, at half-time while we’re getting hot dogs, they appear. I introduce them to Macha as Roberto and Eduardo and explain that Roberto is a friend of my mother’s. He had his “don’t blink an eye” number down cold, but I noticed that his little friend bobbled around a little, so he knows.
They decided to come over to our section and sit behind us for the second half of the game, the only interesting part of which was when they threw dollar bills down from the rafters to keep people in their seats. It was pretty clear that the Hooters were not going to get inspired. I got the feeling they didn’t care very much. What with all the smoke-cloud introductions and spidermen and Hootettes, they probably don’t feel a lot different about their show than the strippers did down at the Bomber Club. That’s showbiz.
At third quarter Roberto and Eduardo got pretty insistent about our joining them after the game and we were pretty hooked because Macha kind of dug them. She would, with her taste for weird.
She even came up with the idea that we should all go to the Winter Palace on Lincoln Road. Seems that she and her friend Gale have been going there on weekends for the fun. “It’s quite different from the Bomber Club and the Paragon,” she said. “Quite different, you’ll see. It’s a little raunchier.” Eduardo and Roberto perk up. “But it’s quite a different kind of crowd. It’s great!”
“Oh, Macha, Macha, Macha.” It was three against two. I did say that it wasn’t exactly that much of a treat for Fred and myself but she cried out, “You’ll love it! You’ll love it!” In high gear Macha is not to be denied.
When we got there Roberto insisted on paying the five bucks admission fee for everyone. My father, that is. I wonder if there has ever been anyone else whose father paid their admission to a gay strip joint?
The guy at the door recognized Fred and me; he used to work the door at the Bomber sometimes. “What are you guys doing here?” he wanted to know. And refused to take our tickets. “Refund, refund,” he yelled out to the cashier. “Celebrities, celebrities.” Everybody around us stared. Middle-aged gay accountants from Homestead. Which was exactly the crowd. Macha and I didn’t have any trouble getting in, so they weren’t making any big attempt to keep out people under twenty-one. But the under twenty-one crowd was definitely not on at the Winter Palace. Except maybe onstage. Like myself, some of the dancers looked pretty young to me. But their fans looked pretty old. This wasn’t the busting-out-of-your-T-shirt crowd. There were even some guys in vests. And I don’t mean over bare abs.
Macha disappeared as soon as we hit the inside and I saw her in a few minutes up on a dancer’s platform over by the stage, hurling herself about. She seemed to be well-known and lots of guys were yelling, “Macha, Macha!” I guess she’s some kind of mascot for the place. There were maybe half a dozen lesbian couples here and there about the place, and the rest hard-stomping teachers and bookkeepers. Eduardo asked me if I wanted to dance and I said, “No, no, I want to watch the dancers.” The kids onstage were mostly Latin types and they went all the way with their strip. Which made it pretty hard to collect the money. Some of them had the money stuffed in their mouths.
The big deal were the shower booths on each side where the dancers took showers after they danced. Much soaping up, suggestive lathering, you get the picture. “I think we got out of this business in the nick of time,” Fred muttered in my ear. “It’s clean, but is it good and is it fun?”
Macha dragged Fred out onto the dance floor and left me to deal with the two wild guys from Rio. Roberto started, “I’ve been thinking about you, Hugo, and about your dancing in places like this.” Whoa, I thought. Am I going to get the fatherly advice on such short notice or what? “I’m sure you’re doing it just for the money, right?” I nodded. “And your mother doesn’t know about it, right?” I nodded again. “I don’t think you should be doing this. This is a tough way to get the money together for your education. And I think I know what kind of person you are. You don’t want your mother to worry about things and you want to take care of it yourself, right?” That wasn’t exactly insightful on his part, but it was surprising me.
“I have some background in making films, and I think that maybe I can help you.” So. He’s not going to offer to pay for my schooling after all these years. Eduardo was sitting perched over his margarita like a cat getting ready to jump on some poor little mouse. Something’s cooking here, that’s for sure.
Here it comes. “So, I had this idea. I have a friend in Rio who does very beautiful films. And it’s excellent money. I was thinking of maybe doing the scenario myself, and Eduardo and you could be the stars. I think we could get you ten thousand dollars probably. And it’s not a lot of work.”
I was pretty well stuck to my chair. If some other creep had suggested it I could have laughed about it with Fred. Let’s face it, it’s a lot to handle. Your dad, whom you’ve never seen, wants to put you in a porno movie. Very far out.
He didn’t seem to notice that I was pretty thunderstruck. “At first I thought we might do it with your friend. That maybe you’d like that better. But he’s black and there’s less of a market for that in Argentina. And Eduardo and you would make a beautiful couple. Eduardo thinks it’s a great idea.”
Eduardo said, “Some movie s
tars started this way. Stallone. It could maybe lead to something. In Hollywood.” Dream on, Eduardo. It might lead you to some pretty big peckers but I don’t think it’s going to get you to Hollywood. I finally said, “Well, gee, I hadn’t even thought about it.” I wanted to yell, “You fucking creep!” but didn’t want to make a scene. Not in a swell place like the Winter Palace. I stood up. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
I could feel I was kind of losing it as I dug my way through the three-piecers, looking for Fred and Macha. Macha was just heading up for another turn on a platform and Fred was heading back when I ran into them. I dragged Fred over to the men’s room and kind of acted like I was freaking out on cocaine or something. This whole thing was getting to me.
“We’ve got to split, Fred. Right now. Macha will be all right. She’ll get home. You’ve got to get me out of here.”
Fred looked scared. His little Mr. Super Cool was crying and pounding the wall and generally coming all to pieces. He grabbed me and said, “Okay, okay, okay. Calm down. We’re getting out of here. Come on. We’re leaving right now.”
He headed for the door. I really freaked. “No, no, no. I can’t go back there. I can’t see those guys again.”
Got to hand it to old Fred. He looked around, tried the window, it lifted with a lot of effort on his part, and he looked out. “This is a piece of cake. No, it doesn’t smell like a piece of cake. It smells like a piece of shit. But here we go, Bucko.” And he pushed me out the window into the alley. There we were, standing among about forty-two garbage cans right behind Burdine’s.
I was shaking and crying and shivering and stumbling. I was shot. Poor old Fred. But he got a grip on me and walked me down the alley toward the parking lot over across Meridian. “I should really go back and tell Macha we’re leaving,” he said.
My Worst Date Page 20