by Tom Harvey
Joe and I burst out laughing.
“Hey, we just pour the drinks,” I slurred. I could barely stand, and Joe’s face was as red as Tina Turner’s flaming-red wig.
Anna grabbed my unsteady shoulders, locked eyes and said, “I need you … and … I said you’d fill in!”
“Fill in? Fill in what?”
The mob in the other room began to chant.
“Tom, Tom, Tom, TOM, TOM, TOM!”
“You’ve got to do it,” Joe agreed.
“We want Tom! We want Tom! We want Tom!”
“I’ve got just the thing,” Anna said and held up the most absurd piece of polyester I’d ever seen. Even in my drunken stupor I had enough sense to say, “You don’t have anything else?”
“Oh, no,” Anna grinned. “This is the ticket.”
Joe followed me in the bathroom with a drink in each hand. “Give us two minutes then blast the music,” he told his sister.
“WE WANT TOM! WE WANT TOM! WE WANT TOM!” The natives were restless.
There we stood in Joe’s small bathroom looking at a g-string in the form of a black elephant trunk. It had plastic beady eyes the size of quarters with nothing but a string in the back.
“This is insane, Joe!”
“I know! Hahahaha!”
To say that I stripped would imply that I started fully clothed and worked my way to the g-string. That’s not what happened. As the music blared from the living room, and the chanting continued, I stepped into the ridiculous scrap of clothing wearing nothing but … the ridiculous scrap of clothing.
Joe opened the door, slapped me on the bare ass and said, “Go get ‘em tiger!”
I’m not above saying that the eight-inch trunk afforded puh-lunty of room. I went out with trunk-a-bobbing, hips-a-gyrating, and head-a-spinning.
After twenty minutes of dancing around, I earned exactly one dollar.
The doorbell rang and I dashed into the bathroom. The “hired professional” had arrived. He looked like a blonde bodybuilder.
I re-emerged in my waiter apparel to enthusiastic applause.
I had another tasteless drink in the kitchen and started mashing my face with my fingers. “I can’t feel my face.”
The music started and the chants began anew. “We want Tom! We want Tom! We want Tom!”
“You have got to be kidding,” I said to Joe.
Anna strode back in the kitchen. “I need you back out there. The girls like you better!”
The girls got a 2-for-1 that night. And, still, the night’s income stayed at one dollar.
After the party, I spent the rest of the night sleeping on the bathroom floor with my head literally in the toilet. The next morning, Joe’s mom lifted my head out of the toilet bowl cheerfully. “I’ll feed you breakfast!” Where did she come from?
It didn’t take long for word to spread that, in addition to my job masquerading as a hospital maintenance man, I was a self-employed exotic dancer. As I walked down the hospital hallways, nurses clustered together, giggling and pointing. Seemed everyone had heard about the elephant trunk. Great.
Nurses aren’t shy creatures and one of Mom’s friends, Sarah Myers, paged me to her nursing station.
“Tom, I hear you’re available for hire.”
I didn’t know whether to be flattered, embarrassed, or angry.
She continued. “My niece’s thirtieth birthday party is coming up and I’d like to hire you.” A small group of nurses leaned into the conversation. It was just like that old EF Hutton commercial, When EF Hutton talks, people listen.
I raised my eyebrows.
Dressed to make $50 plus tips … the hard way!
“How much do you charge?” She pressed on.
My mind raced. Do I tell her she was mistaken? Do I accept the invitation calmly and coolly? Do I have to report self-employed income on my taxes?
“I charge …”
Hell, I didn’t know what I charged.
“I charge … fifty dollars plus tips. How does that sound?”
“Done.” Every nurse within earshot broke into a smile.
What have I just done? I wobbled off down the hall.
My mix-tape consisted of Good Thing by The Fine Young Cannibals, You’re So Fine by The Egyptian Lover, I Want Your Sex by George Michael, You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC, Going Back to Cali by LL Cool J, and the live version of I Just Can’t Get Enough by Depeche Mode. The mix of pop, funk, and rock, as I discovered, worked well.
The image in my mind of a male stripper came from the Chippendale’s scene out of the Tom Hanks comedy, Bachelor Party, so that’s what I went with: black slacks, long sleeve white shirt, and black bowtie. At the time I was, arguably, in the best shape of my life–able to bench-press 225 pounds weighing a trim 170 pounds. I also had enough hair to pull back in a pony tail which further added to the look.
I called David to tell him of my new business venture.
“What the hell are you thinking?” he asked.
“I figure I’ll be the only sober person in the room. That should make it easier.”
I showed up at that very first “gig” excited, nervous, and confident. I met Sarah at our agreed upon time outside her house–the party’s finale was a surprise. She ushered me to a back bedroom and I handed over my ghetto blaster.
“Give me five minutes,” I said.
“You got it.”
“Hit play on the tape and crank it.”
“You got it.”
“Oh, and you’ll have to point out your niece to me. It looks like you’ve got a house full of women.”
“I will. And I do.” She looked me up and down and laughed, “Oh, if your mother could see you now.”
“Oh, and here’s my camera. Would you mind taking pictures until it runs out of film?” With slightly shaking hand, I handed her my small, point-and-shoot camera.
“You got it, Tom! Five minutes!”
She closed the door leaving me to my pounding heartbeat. I dropped to the floor.
One, two, three, four, five.
The pushups came easy as adrenalin surged through my body.
Ninety seven, ninety eight, ninety nine, one hundred.
The guitar riff of The Fine Young Cannibals hit song blasted through the living room. I flung the door open and swaggered down the short hallway.
The house was alive with energy from two dozen women ranging in age from 18 to 80 scattered all over the place. Parting the sea of giggling women, fingers pointed to the guest of honor.
Oh, she was pretty!
Taking your clothes off for a room full of enthusiastic women requires a bit of mathematics and the equation goes like this: Divide the number of items to be removed by the total music time. Too fast and the last song isn’t climactic–too slow and the last song is rushed. Without a practice run (an embarrassing notion even in the privacy of Mike’s living room), I figured I had twenty minutes to achieve the following, in this order: 1) remove shoes and socks, 2) remove long sleeve shirt, 3) release ponytail,25 4) remove pants,26 5) remove satin black shorts, to 6) ultimately arrive at a pair of bikini briefs.
I strolled around the room, music cranking, girls clapping, camera bulbs flashing. Any aspirations of becoming an elected official permanently flew out the door after that first picture.
This is unbelievable. All this energy is for me. Hell, this is easy!
And, it was easy.
I pointed at a girl–a dozen girls shrieked–and she removed my shoes and socks. The first song ended.
I chose another girl to dance with as she unbuttoned my shirt. The second song ended.
Girls pointed at the guest of honor and I pranced around her–yeah, her time was coming. She and I danced the entire last song. When the music ended, I bolted from the room amid rip-roaring applause. Now that was fun and I made a total of $89 ($50 “fee” and $39 in tips) in twenty minutes!
Talk of the party spread like wildfire around the hospital and Sylvia from the pharmacy hired me a few we
eks later for her sister’s divorce party. I want to say her sister’s name was Sheila.
This one was just plain crazy.
“I’d like you to show up at dinner dressed as a UPS guy. I’ll get you the uniform. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good!”
What I didn’t immediately realize was that dinner was at China’s Alley (pronounced CHEE-NA), a Mexican restaurant in Lindsay, filled to capacity for this private party. When I pulled into the overflowing parking lot the night of the deed, I immediately thought, This is a bad idea. There are tons of guys here and riotous girls turn husbands and boyfriends into jealous husbands and boyfriends.
I walked into the restaurant wearing jeans and a brown UPS shirt carrying my mix tape and an empty box. The place was packed with people eating, drinking, and standing around the bar. The middle of the room had a linoleum dance floor. My heart pounded as I looked at the mass of people.
“You the stripper?” a guy yelled over the roar of conversation.
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’m the DJ. I’ll let Sylvia know you’re here.”
I handed him my cassette tape.
Sylvia came over grinning.
“Sheila is completely oblivious! How do you want to do this?”
Sweat poured down my face as groups of people watched our huddle by the front door. Sylvia, her sister, and their dates sat in a booth at the far end of the room. I was to burst into the room calling Sheila’s name, holding the empty box. When I said the magic words–“absolutely nothing”–the music and lights were to start.
With Sylvia satisfied with the plan, she announced, “Twenty minutes.”
I walked back out the front door as people streamed in. Just around the corner, I began my push-up routine … one, two, three … ninety eight, ninety nine, one hundred.
You’re out of your mind on this one.
Mexican guys dressed in their best cowboy attire filed in. I looked at their dangerously pointed boots.
You are going to get your ass kicked. That’s what going to happen here. These guys are going to be pissed by the time this thing is over.
My heart slammed in my chest.
Five minutes passed.
Ten minutes passed.
I paced around in the cool night air, sweat pouring down my face. Even from the parking lot, the place was loud and riotous.
I did another hundred pushups. My arms and chest ached in pain but my biceps bulged, full of blood and adrenalin. Despite the cool night air, the brown UPS shirt was drenched in sweat.
The door swung open and the DJ shouted, “You’re on!”
Dizzy from two hundred pushups and thoughts of getting a steak knife in the back, I squeezed through the throng of people. There they sat, thirty feet and a hundred people away. Sheila sat at the end of the booth, oblivious to the plan, talking with her date.
I held up the box and yelled, “Is there a Sheila here?” Half the restaurant didn’t hear the question.
A spotlight came on, blinding me.
My heart still crashing in my chest, I repeated the question. “Is there a Sheila here? Special delivery for Sheila!”
A hush fell over the crowd.
Fingers pointed to Sheila. People had confused looks on their faces. This was a surprise to all but a few.
When I reached Sheila, I looked the pretty Hispanic girl in the eyes and asked, “Are you Sheila?”
“Yes.”
“I have a special delivery for you.” I held up the box.
“What’s in the box?”
I looked around the room, my face quivering in nervous energy. “Absolutely nothing!”
On cue, the beginning of The Fine Young Cannibals’ Good Thing came on and I led Sheila out onto the dance floor. Sylvia followed behind us pushing a chair. A rainbow of pulsating lights lit up the floor and there we were: the bogus UPS delivery guy and the new divorcee. I threw the empty box over my shoulder and began circling the now seated guest of honor.
A fitting picture. The fake UPS guy praying not to die in the packed Mexican restaurant. I mean, look at the dude to my left. He already looks pissed!
As my eyes adjusted to the array of lights and the bright spotlight, I scanned the room. Yep, this is a very bad idea. My initial thoughts of pulling various women into the act, working my way up to Sheila for the finale, quickly went out the window. Every woman on the perimeter had a fierce looking guy sitting next to her and they (the women, that is) looked at me with wide, pleading eyes. Eyes that said, “Please, please, please don’t come near me … for both our sakes!” Every guy in the room had his arms crossed with a glare that said carne muerta!
Sheila, on the other hand, enjoyed every moment of it. She shaked, rattled, and rolled with me. It was, after all, her coming out party. After posing for pictures with her afterward, I fled the premises.
I did six gigs that summer before calling it quits. The upside was a glove-compartment overflowing with cash–a hundred dollars in ones and fives tumbled to the floorboard whenever I needed gas money. The downside was coming home bruised, scratched, and bleeding. B.B. King said it best after I dug a ten dollar bill out of the crack of my ass: the thrill was gone.
Toward the end of the summer, it occurred to me that I could make more money working sixteen hours a week at the hospital than twenty hours at the video store–even with the two and a half hour drive. This was ideal for studying as I no longer had to work weekday evenings. Ray was kind enough to honor my request, and I spent the next year driving up and over the Grapevine, back and forth, every Friday evening to Porterville and every Monday morning back to Northridge. In no time, the paint on the hood and roof of my VW Sirocco blew off by the Santa Ana wind that rattled through the Grapevine.
CHAPTER 21
The date was October 29, a Sunday. It was 3 p.m. and we were congregated in the maintenance shop–just fifteen minutes before punching out for the day. One of the swing shift guys burst through the door and said, “Oh, there’s a fresh one in the ER! You guys gotta check this out!”
My pulse quickened. I looked around, hoping the regular guys found no interest in the news.
My coworker and confidante, Odie, bounded up and grabbed me by the arm. “Well,” he said, “what are we waiting for?”
Knowing that a dead body is less than a hundred feet away, and that you have unfettered access to an upfront peek, is surreal. As we approached the locked side door to the Emergency Room, I felt dizzy.
All six treatment rooms swarmed with doctors and nurses working on multiple car accident victims. With all rooms occupied, “expired patients” (that’s the politically correct lingo) were temporarily moved to side hallways and hidden behind accordion style olive green screens. This afternoon, the guy on the hallway gurney was in no longer need of–well–anything.
Odie opened the locked door and walked up to the body. I stood outside for a moment, my balance not quite steady.
“Oh, c’mon,” he said. “It’s not like the guy’s gonna jump up and bite you. Besides, the cops will be here any second!”
I approached the corpse with a mix of horror and fascination. The guy was black–which was a bit odd since there weren’t that many African Americans in Porterville (like less than ten in my high school of fifteen hundred). His short sleeve white T-shirt was saturated dark red. He wore baggy camouflage pants and grungy white Nike high-tops.
His shoes hung over the edge of the gurney.
His arms were draped over his chest.
His hands were rugged–fingernails, dirty.
And …
His face was gone.
Where his eyes, nose, and mouth were supposed to be, a thick pool of congealed blood lay. His face was completely crushed in.
It’s probably silly to say, but when a person is lifeless, the air is still.
A bead of cold sweat ran down my face.
Other than the guy’s missing face, everything looked normal–his arms and legs were perfectly intact, not a scratch
on them.
We stood there for a long minute in silence. This was no joke.
His face was so mangled–so traumatized–that I stared at his shoes.
“Look at his shoelaces,” I whispered. “He laced up those high-tops this morning thinking today was like any other day.”
Odie said nothing.
“Someone else will unlace those shoes now.”
At that moment, two young California Highway Patrol officers swung around the corner, startling me out of my trance.
Odie tipped his baseball hat, “Officers.”
The officers nodded at us and we stepped back in unison. One held a camera, the other a binder with a pad of paper. They casually began taking notes and photographing the body showing no reaction whatsoever. I turned and walked out the door into the hot, bright day. That poor guy had no idea today was his last.
I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw those shoelaces tied all the way up those dirty white Nike high-tops.
Sidebar #7:
AIDS in 1989
One class that sounded like fun was entitled “Communication and the Sexes.” Joe and I enrolled thinking it would be a good opportunity to meet girls. The fact that the class was in the largest classroom on campus sealed the deal for this, and it would be our last common General Education class together.
From his place at the base of the semi-circular auditorium, our professor looked up at two hundred students and lectured on gender related communication behavior in a variety of settings.
Sound riveting?
Actually, it wasn’t.
The day Professor “Smith” (that’s what I’ll call him for his sake) announced he had a guest speaker was memorable.
Dressed in brown corduroy pants, a long sleeve shirt and a vest, our guest lecturer looked the part of a young academic. He appeared to be in his early thirties, wore round glasses, had short brown hair, and smiled up at the full auditorium. Students murmured among themselves. With three words, two hundred students fell silent.
“I have AIDS.”
It was as if everyone stopped breathing–the air hung in perfect stillness.