Love Monkey

by Kyle Smith

  “Stiff. Starchy,” says Eli.

  “Probably got on a whalebone corset underneath,” says Mike.

  “So constricting,” says Eli. “Like a prison. Like the Bastille.”

  “Political prisoners,” says Mike, “must be freed.”

  Marie’s got one foot up on one of those Frenchy-looking chairs that clutter the sets of talky period movies, and she’s pulling up her dress to expose an endless leg in a pristine white stocking. It takes hours for her to reveal the little black garter on her lovely lean thigh. It has a nice cloth rose on it.

  The guys behind me are in a frenzy. “Let her eat cake! Let her eat cake!”

  The garter comes off first. Marie twirls it around on her index finger, which has a long bloodred nail. She looks around for target possibilities and notices Shooter. She gives him a little smile that looks suspiciously unstaged, and flings the garter in his lap.

  The guys behind me make wolfy noises. “Let her eat me!” one of them shouts.

  Marie has both stockings off and is running an index finger along her décolletage when Ken Talent breaks in with a breathless update.

  “Lads, bad news, I’m afraid. The queen of France has been too tightly stitched into her corset. It just may be that Marie Antoinette will need a little help getting out of her kit tonight.”

  The red curtains are already parting behind her.

  “That’s why it’s a good thing she has friends like Lucrezia Borgia!”

  Lucrezia is dressed in the hottest look of the fifteenth century, much simpler stuff than Marie’s getup. Just a modest stiff cone of a white robe, like a giant coffee filter with red borders. The thing weighs about 50 pounds and, like Marie’s, it’s floor length. No need to unpack the goods too soon. She and Marie fix their gazes on each other.

  The queen of France is reaching up to her powdered white wig and taking it off, shaking out her long red hair so it cascades down her neck. I have to admit, I’m paying attention.

  This time the song is “Papa Don’t Preach.”

  “Daddy’s girl Lucrezia got married at age thirteen,” Talent tells us. “But her father, Pope Alexander VI, didn’t like the boy so he had the marriage annulled. Then Papa Pope had her declared a virgin while she was six months pregnant. Wild days, then, in a time they called the Renaissance!”

  “They seem well acquainted,” says Mike.

  “Old friends,” says Eli.

  “Kiss each other hello,” says Mike.

  “And good-bye. And every occasion in between,” says Eli.

  “Too bad it’s hot in here.”

  “So hot. Brutally hot.”

  “Taking off something might cool her down.”

  Talent is leering over his microphone. “Her first husband said the baby wasn’t his; in fact, he said even Lucretia didn’t know who got her pregnant, because it could have been either her father or her brother! But poor Lucrezia didn’t get to keep her baby, boys!”

  The crowd answers as one man. “Awww!” they say, as Lucrezia starts to slow-dance with Marie.

  “Sadly, the boy was raised in secrecy,” says Talent, “but Lucrezia consoled herself by killing her second husband and rising to the title of history’s most evil woman!”

  Cue new song. Familiar piano chords. Wow. This one sends me somewhere. I’m thirteen again.

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding.

  “That’s the fucking spirit!” says Shooter. “You like what Lucrezia is doing with Marie’s sash, don’t you?”

  “I meant the song,” I say. “I love ELO. It’s ‘Evil Woman.’ ” Hearing this on the club’s stereo was worth the trip. So few of the neighbors in my apartment building have signed off on allowing me to play late seventies art rock on a four-thousand-watt system.

  The guys behind me are stomping their feet and whistling. They look Italian. Maybe they carry a grudge. They like the idea of a nice clean Vatican. Why should popes go dating their daughters when there are plenty of perfectly healthy altar boys?

  Marie and Lucrezia are peeling away each other’s inhibitions and getting pretty creative in the kissing department too. But Ken Talent is back on the mike to ask us if they look lonely. Meanwhile the deejay takes off a great song and replaces it with that insipid synth-pop torch song from Top Gun.

  “While Marie and Lucrezia are celebrating a new era in Franco-Italian cooperation,” Talent tells us, “little do they know that they’re being spied on by a lusty lady in lederhosen, the frisky fräulein who couldn’t find a boyfriend who wasn’t a mass murderer! Give a weak wilkommen to that heil-raising Valkyrie vixen: she’s bad, bad, Eva Braun!”

  “This could take a while,” says Mike. “I’m going for another round before anyone gets naked.”

  “What’s the name of this stupid song?” Shooter says as guys slap their tables and stomp their feet. One guy gets up and goose-steps around the back before a gorilla can chase him down.

  “ ‘Take My Breath Away,’ ” I say.

  “The fuck?”

  “By Berlin,” I say.

  Shooter motions one of the waiters over to our table urgently, stuffing twenties into his pockets.

  “For the love of God,” he says, “play some music for men. This isn’t a tea party.”

  “And what is it you’d like to hear, sir?”

  “Stones. 1968 to 1978. And don’t try to sneak in any of that crap from Their Satanic Majesties Request.”

  Marie and Lucrezia are helping untie Eva’s pigtails and fussing with her dirndl when I decide to stretch my legs. The Stones’ “Some Girls” comes on within seconds. I gotta hand it to Shooter. Seeing money spent at close range is almost as much fun as spending it.

  The bar is off to the side, away from the floor show in a dim little corner with TVs bolted overhead. Mike is on a stool surrounded by three girls not his wife. They appear to be looking straight at his crotch. They’re making little cooing sounds.

  I order a glass of water while Mike grins at me.

  “Here she is at four weeks,” he’s saying.

  The girls are shedding their neon-fired veneer, melting into little pools of hair extensions and silicone. One of them touches his knee fondly. Another one puts her head on his shoulder for a second.

  “I’ll bet you’re a great father,” one of them says.

  “The best,” agrees another.

  The one with her hand on his knee puts both hands on his cheeks and gazes deeply into his eyes. “You are every woman’s dream, you know that?”

  “Let me show you the little princess on her horsie,” he says, arrogantly. Really, who would have guessed that this would ever be a hot pickup line?

  “Oh,” says one of the girls with a sharp orgasmic intake.

  “My,” says another.

  “God,” decides the third, completing the thought. Silently I wonder how to broach a delicate topic with Mike. Surely, as a good friend of many years’ standing, I have earned the right to have my name put forward in a serious discussion of the possibilities of weekend baby rental? I mean, one stroll in Central Park is all I really need to refill my little blank book. I could pick up one phone number approximately every 100 yards.

  Eli comes over to the bar. “It’s been amusing, fel lows. But I have someone waiting for me at home.”

  “Come on, stick it out,” I say. “Your blow-up doll can wait.”

  “I’m not the one,” he says, “who will be doing the blowing tonight. Peace,” he says. And he’s gone.

  What am I doing here? I mean, besides watching the TV over the bar, where a guy named Sven Olaffson, or possibly Olaf Svensson, is picking up a seven-hundred-pound log and stumbling a few tortured yards with it before dropping it in the sand. Thank God for all-sports networks.

  Shooter appears beside me. “Double Laphroig,” he tells the barman. “That chick who plays Lucrezia Borgia is a pretty good actress too,” he says. “She was the star of this whole series of pornos based on Bob Dylan records.”

  “Dylan?” I say.


  “Oh yeah, very artful, you know. Forever Hung. Blonde on Blonde on Blonde. Blowjobs in the Wind.”

  “Please,” I say. “Can we go? It gets so boring. They’re all the same.”

  “This is the point,” he says. “Consider this your reeducation. You have to get over that girl. You’re going to allow yourself to be hung up on someone just because you like the way she tickled your giblets? There are a lot of girls besides her, and they’re all built with the same equipment.”

  “I want her equipment,” I whine.

  “Listen,” he says, knocking back his Scotch in one, “if I had that attitude, where would I be?”

  “Can I join your coffee klatch?” says Mike, settling in next to Shooter.

  “This round’s on me,” I say, and we all reload. Shooter gets another double. And a Corona chaser.

  “Tell him,” Shooter says. “Tell him about women.”

  “They’re all the same,” Mike says. “Except for my little girl. She’s the most beautiful girl in the world.”

  “Oh shut up,” I say.

  Now a guy named Thor Orgenborg or something is pulling a Dodge Wrangler. With his teeth. Half a dozen supermodels in bikinis are dangling their feet off the back of the flatbed and waving to the crowd.

  Shooter looks up. “Always go with the Samoan in these things.”

  “I’m betting on Sven. Or Olaf,” I say.

  “That sumo wrestler is looking good,” says Mike. A couple of the girls he was talking to earlier come up behind him and start whispering suggestively in his ear. Then he gets up.

  “ ’Scuse me,” he says. “Something about a private, um, exhi bit ion they’d like to show me.”

  “What about us?” I say.

  Mike shrugs. “They told me I’m special.”

  Shooter and I stare as the girls giggle and lead Mike away, one on either side of him. They all head for a little curtain of beads, where another doorman stands at attention and unlocks something for them. What wonders is Mike about to experience? There are no girls left at the bar.

  “You really are social ebola,” says Shooter.

  Thor is doing well, though. He makes it about sixty yards.

  “Concentrate,” Shooter says. “A hundred on the Samoan, but Thor has one of those slashes through one of the o s in his last name. He might be worth a side bet. Thor over Sven. What do you say? Fifty bucks.”

  I take a gulp of my drink. It is always your rich friends who cost you. Somebody said that, I’m pretty sure.

  The Samoan bends over and starts to grunt as he tries to lift a giant wrought-iron seesaw. It’s perfectly balanced, with a rotund white guy sitting on one end and a “big-boned” black woman on the other. Both of them are familiar faces to the tabloid man.

  “Shit,” Shooter says. “Tough gig for Aretha. Who’s that guy on the other end?”

  “It’s the latest fat guy from Saturday Night Live,” I say. “They try to have a porky cokehead on staff at all times so he can die prematurely and they can sell lots of prime-time Best Of specials and memorial videos.” Tabloid broke the story, of course.

  “What is that?” Shooter says. “In Aretha’s left hand?”

  “Looks like a bacon cheeseburger,” I say.

  “If you fast-forwarded the tape, you could actually see her butt get bigger,” he says.

  We watch the Samoan stumble and totter. The sound is not turned up, so we can’t tell if the judges are deducting points every time his stutter stepping makes Aretha spill her chocolate milk shake.

  In the main room, Talent is babbling something about a history-making Jell-O wrestling event between Medea and Lizzie Borden.

  Voices behind me. I turn around. It’s the three guys from the table behind ours.

  “Samoan has it all over the Swede,” Shooter tells them, clipping a cigar.

  The three guys all start betting with each other and ordering drinks. This bar is built for about four guys, and there are six of us crammed in here.

  “Is there anyone left out on the floor?” I ask the guys.

  “Coupla Japanese businessmen, that’s about it,” one of them says.

  I finish my Scotch and let it slosh around in my brain. What’s wrong with us? Offer us a choice between sex and sports, and we’ll say: depends on who’s playing. Happens to every guy. You’re trying to watch a football game or something, your girl is crawling all over you trying to get your attention, nibbling your ear, whispering unusually dirty things—is there some kind of girl hormone that only kicks in on Sunday afternoons?—and even though the Broncos are up three touchdowns with five minutes to go, you’re sitting there thinking, Get out of the way! I must know whether the Raiders beat the spread!

  The Samoan tops Thor, so now it’s up to Olaf, or Sven, to stand and deliver.

  “There is no way,” says Shooter. “Can’t be done.”

  The Swede picks up a Volkswagen Rabbit with a backseat full of kegs of the sponsor’s beer. He moves it an impressive twenty yards.

  Another voice behind me. “Who want action?”

  Now the two Japanese guys are here too, backing the sumo wrestler.

  The Samoan manages to move the car five feet. The sumo guy can’t even pick up the car. I win.

  “Fuck me,” Shooter says. A Japanese dude pays him, and Shooter pays me. I can’t remember the last time I won a bet with him. Must not be his night. He sways a little, his eyes going feral. “Back to the floor, mate.” Suddenly there are four empty bottles in front of him, and he springs for a couple more beers to last us through our walk back to our table. The guy is going through Coronas like his Range Rover goes through Exxon super premium. Rarely have I consumed this many drinks on a weeknight, but then life with Shooter is a series of miracles.

  “Packets of evil don’t come much tinier than our next girl,” Talent is saying. “She graduated from the Manson family to strike a courageous blow for seventies feminism when she became the first woman to try to assassinate a president of the United States! True, it was only Gerald Ford, but let’s give freaky Squeaky Fromme a big roar!”

  And whoever is running the sound system can’t resist the urge to take this cue to drop the Stones and give us “I Am Woman.”

  “God damn it, where is that little homo?” Shooter says, looking around wildly. “I give that guy three bills for Helen Reddy?” I’m well lit, but in his present state he has the crackling wattage of that eighty-foot Coke sign in Times Square. You know what they call those giant neon monsters? Spectaculars. That’s Shooter’s state now, a spectacular.

  The waiter comes over and Shooter uncorks on him. “Are you sucking each other’s cocks back there?” he says. “Seriously, I want to know. You and the sound guy, you are butt bandits, right? ’Cause, just tell me. I want to know. If this is a gay tit bar, my fucking mistake. I’ll find another establishment to patronize. Did I not specifically ask for the Stones?”

  The waiter doesn’t say anything. But he gives me a little eye roll. Uh-oh. He’s working some sort of voodoo, I can tell. I don’t feel so good.

  Up on the stage Squeaky has come out. The Helen Reddy goes away, replaced by “Monkey Man,” all lust and apocalypse slam-dancing together. It’s one of the Stones’ best but it gives me a vague memory of unease. Something about this album used to make me sad. As for Shooter, he seems to have entered a trance. He’s gone absolutely still. Squeaky is this little blond waif, nothing special if you ask me, not much of a bod, hair conspicuously unstyled, scary makeup. She’s got a little derringer in one hand and she wanders around in her bell-bottoms and hippie peasant blouse as if she’s never done this before. She looks volatile and sarcastic, like she doesn’t need a gun to hurt you.

  The song makes me think of the first time I ever saw a monkey house. My grandparents, who then lived in New Jersey, took me to the Bronx Zoo. At the time the Bronx was running a surprisingly competitive second to Cambodia as the worst place on earth, and I was looking in the cage logging crime statistics in my head, thinking,
Okay, that’s a rape, attempted rape, assault, public masturbation. I hadn’t been to New York before. So I thought, This city is so tough, even the monkeys are criminals. They deserve to be behind bars.

  “Monkey Man” begins on the piano and ends in the jungle. In its finale, the guitar is like bullets being fired overhead and Mick Jagger has lost the power of speech. He’s disintegrated into pained lusty yelps, nothing left of him but shriek and holler. This was his greatest moment. When he loses it, gives himself over to chaos in the fadeout, you can actually sense him tumbling down the evolutionary ladder, dropping a species or two. The room is heaving and teetering around me, but in my mind the meaning of “Monkey Man” is utterly clear. That level of intensity can’t be faked. Mick was reaching deep inside for that one. And a question seems very important to me. What could have made a monkey out of even Mick? It wasn’t drugs. The man was clean. It was something more dangerous. And if it made a monkey out of Mick, it could make a monkey out of any of us.

  Shooter says nothing. He just wags his head at the stage.

  It’s when the next song starts that I remember why “Monkey Man” carries a built-in payload of dread. Because anyone who’s ever listened to Let It Bleed knows what follows. The churn of the wild slips into aching prettiness. A dazzling feint, then a sucker punch. Mick was just setting us up with his horny baboon cries. Why did the Stones choose to end the album with those two songs, in that order? They were trying to tell us something.

  The children’s choir. The acoustic strumming. And Mick starts to tell us one more time about the girl he saw. Today. At the reception.

  A cloud passes over Shooter’s face. I’ve never seen this expression on him before. It’s as if all the confidence has been leached out of him.

  “Shooter?” I say. “Shooter.”

  “That girl,” he says. “She’s…” his voice trails off into a strangled row of consonants.

  “A skank?” I say.

  This remark seems to angry up his blood. He gives me a foul stare. Then he leans in close and puts a hand on my shoulder to make sure I’m paying attention. “She looks like Allison.”

  Mick say: “You can’t always get what you want.”