Friday Night Chicas

by Mary Castillo

  Temptation is a part of life

  It doesn’t matter if it’s wrong or right.

  Gladys dug her nails into my arm and shrieked in my ear like a kid at her first circus. Miriam stood to her feet, raised her arms over her head, and clapped so hard I thought she might burst into flames. Even Lisa looked over her shoulder to grin at me with anticipation. I polished off my cosmo, waved over a server and told him, “Bring us four tequilas, keep the rounds coming, and give me change for this twenty.”

  “Singles?”

  “You got it, papa!”

  The spotlight finally settled on the figure on stage revealing the boyish MC. He looked to be in his late twenties and wore a navy suit and black T-shirt. While a few of the women welcomed him with polite cheers, most of the crowd booed his attire. For such a handsome guy to be dressed so smartly, he obviously did not look like he had any intentions of getting naked, and these women were not going for it.

  “’Dito,” said Lisa.

  “’Dito, my ass,” yelled Miriam. “TAKE IT OFF!”

  The crowd joined her chant. “TAKE IT OFF! TAKE IT OFF! TAKE IT OFF!”

  The MC grinned and shrugged his jacket off one shoulder. The women roared, and he laughed. He motioned for them to settle down as the DJ faded out “Temptation.”

  “Ladies, I want to welcome you to Studs. All our regulars know that we’re pretty laid back here.”

  “Whoo, hoo!” someone in the balcony yelled.

  “We want you to have a great time with us, and in order to do that, we ask you to follow a few rules. First of all, we ask that you not throw anything on the stage at any time.…”

  “What about money?” the balcony heckler asked.

  “Only if it’s bills, honey,” answered the MC and everyone applauded.

  “Why’s he just the MC?” grumbled Gladys. “He’s so cute.”

  “Ladies, we also ask that you do not take pictures during the show.” The crowd protested and the MC had to wait until they quieted down. “I know, but believe me, these guys work hard to put on a great show for you, and cameras are a distraction. If you like what you see, just come back!” The audience cheered that suggestion. “And finally, at times a lucky lady is invited by a dancer to join him on the stage for a special performance.…”

  “Ooh, ooh!” cooed the balcony heckler.

  “If she’s so damned enthusiastic,” I said, “why the hell is she sitting all the way up there in the first place?”

  “I was beginning to wonder the same thing myself,” said Lisa.

  Miriam smirked. “Maybe she’s getting a private show up there.”

  “That’d explain all the hootin’ and hollerin’,” I said.

  “If you happen to be one of those lucky ladies, Studs ask that for your own safety, you set your drink on the table before you take the stage.”

  “No more damned rules!” yelled You-Know-Who.

  “Now, now, there’s one last rule, and that’s, have a fabulous time! Without further delay, please welcome your first dancer of the night. He’s a mucho macho from Massachusetts. Ladies, give it for him, and he’ll give it up for you … ULTIMO!”

  Dressed in combat boots and a camouflage set with a matching cap pulled over his eyes, Ultimo strutted toward his appreciative audience to that annoying Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah song by Kaylie, Kylie … you know the skinny bitch I’m talking about. He grabbed the bill of his cap and flicked it off, revealing tawny skin, dark curly hair and an aquiline nose.

  Gladys lost her mind. She jumped to her feet and screamed, “Oh, my God, he looks just like Benjamin Bratt!” Lisa and I looked at each other and giggled. No, he didn’t. Still, we were thrilled that Gladys had wasted no time in getting her fantasy on. After all, she was the reason why we were here.

  I shoved a few of my singles into Gladys’s hand. “Get ’im, girl!”

  Gladys rushed to the edge of the stage waving the bills, but Tammy Tequila and her entourage had beaten her to the punch so Ultimo gyrated his way over to their side of the stage. The server came with our tequila and set them before us. I grabbed the salt shaker, sprinkled a small mound on the back of my hand, and then looked to pass it to Miriam. She was peering at Ultimo as if trying to locate him through a fog. I nudged Lisa, passed the salt shaker to her, and then pointed at Miriam.

  Lisa cupped her hand over her mouth and called her. When Miriam turned, Lisa said, “If you’d stop being so vain and put on your glasses, you’d get a better look.”

  Miriam stuck her tongue out at her and leaned toward us across the table. “I’m almost positive I’ve seen that guy somewhere before.”

  “Damn, how often do you go to these kind of places?” I teased.

  Lisa said, “You know, the same guys who do these revues often work bachelorette parties. Maybe that’s where you saw him.”

  “Or maybe she saw him in a porno,” I said. The tequila warmed me up so much so fast, I started wriggling to Kylie’s bass line and singing Nah-Nah-Nah along with her.

  “I remember!” Miriam yelled with recognition. “It was a bachelorette party! For Gladys’s sister.”

  “Hold the phone,” I said. “Her sister got a stripper for her bachelorette party, and she turns around and throws Gladys a sedate little bridal shower. Whatta bitch!”

  “Now you see why I wanted to do this for her.”

  “Good call.” I raised my palm and Miriam gave me a high five.

  “Am I a good friend or am I a good friend?” she said.

  “You’re a damned good friend.” I even grabbed Gladys’s tequila, toasted Miriam, and then downed it.

  Lisa motioned toward Gladys and said, “Did she react to him like that at her sister’s party?”

  Miriam said, “No, the poor thing was too busy playing hostess to really get into the show.”

  “Oh, maybe that’s why she doesn’t recognize him.”

  As if on cue, Gladys turned around, her face flushed with frustration. “I need a hand here, guys, or else I’m never gonna get Ben away from that skank in the plaid skirt.” Then she turned back to the stage and started banging on it with one hand while waving her single with the other. “Ben! Over here! Beeen!”

  “It’s Ultimo, loca!” I said, laughing. Although our rivals had managed to tuck quite a few bills into Ultimo’s waistband, he had only taken off his shirt, which Tammy wasted no time in draping over her bony shoulders. I started to count off several singles from the batch the server gave me, but then I had a better idea. I grabbed my purse and scoured it until I found a five-dollar bill. I joined Gladys at the stage, pressed the five into her hand, and banged the stage along with her. “UL-TI-MOOOOO!” Lisa and Miriam did the same and sure enough, we made enough of a racket to grab his attention. “Later for the cheap tricks and their chump change, baby. Come to mama!” Spotting the five in my hand, Ultimo flashed a perfect smile and shimmied over to our side.

  Gladys jumped and hooted as if she had won the lottery. “He’s coming!”

  Miriam yelled, “Make him earn it. He’s gotta take off something.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed.

  Like an obedient protégé, Gladys nodded. She waved the fiver at Ultimo, who planted himself right in front of her. He pivoted to show off his muscular tush and then bumped downward to the music into a squat. He bounced his ass, suggesting that Gladys tuck the bill inside his waistband. Instead she responded with swift slap across his butt. “Ow!” The four of us screamed in laughter.

  Both hurt and impressed, Gladys said, “It’s like he’s got rocks in there.”

  “Do you, Ultimo?” I said. “Let’s see what ya got.” I reached into my purse for another five and waved at him to show him I meant business. No stripping, no tipping.

  Ultimo got the message. He grabbed his camouflage pants at the hips and gave a hard yank. Quicker than you can say Velcro, Ultimo’s pants were in his hands and his ass on display. Only a sliver of army green fabric stood between the four of us and his firm rump. For the first ti
me I found myself embarrassed. I quickly tucked my bill into Ultimo’s G-string at the safe crook of his well-defined hip.

  Lisa gave me a playful shove. “You talk so much shit!”

  “Shut up. I’m a happily married woman.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She poked her bill into Ultimo’s thong and threw her arm around me. “C’mon, if anyone knows how to loosen up without losing control, it’s you.”

  Lisa’s teasing made me laugh at my own self-consciousness. I came here to show my friends a good time, and that pretty much required that I have one myself. So long as I didn’t do anything that would upset me had Eduardo done it, and I had no intention of doing that.

  Miriam pulled back Ultimo’s thong so Gladys could slap her bill right on his tailbone. Despite all this appreciation, his hungry eyes already had caught a wave of Hamiltons beckoning him to the opposite side of the stage. So with his cable bill paid, off he went to entertain the wealthier bachelorette party and earn his rent. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

  The four of us sat down and had another round of tequilas. Miriam told Gladys, “Don’t you remember your new boyfriend? He’s the same guy who danced at your sister’s bachelorette party.”

  Gladys was still wincing from the shot. “Really?”

  “I swear to God, it’s the same guy.”

  “It’s not like I walked into some modeling agency and picked his picture out of a stack of headshots. I just called a number I found in the Yellow Pages and prayed they would send me a stud!” Gladys squealed at her wordplay. “God, how did I miss him?”

  Miriam said, “You were in the kitchen most of the time, remember? Mixing piña coladas and warming up hors d’oeuvres.”

  “No, I was in the kitchen on the phone,” Gladys said. “Fighting with your brother over God knows what.”

  “Well, I know someone who’s getting army fatigues from his bride on their wedding night.”

  “Pablo would never wear them,” said Gladys. “Especially if he knew where I got the idea.”

  Lisa, Miriam, and I yelled in unison. “So don’t tell him!” We cackled and pointed at each other.

  “And if he really gets bent out of shape just tell him…” Lisa started but then she stopped herself. “Forget it.”

  “What?”

  “No, we’re having fun, and I don’t want to spoil anyone’s time. It’s not important.”

  “What?”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “WHAT?”

  “A lot of the guys who do this are … you know … gay.”

  “No way!” Gladys face dropped so fast I thought her chin would hit the table and shatter.

  “Not all of them, but…” Lisa shifted in her seat.

  Gladys huffed in disbelief. She clapped her hands, stomped her feet and cheered Ultimo’s name. “My Ben is not gay.”

  “Come to think of it, that makes perfect sense,” I said.

  “It’s OK, Ricky,” Lisa said. “Let it go.”

  Seeing how uncomfortable Lisa had become, the last thing I wanted to do was let it go. We came to Studs to get buzzed and pay gorgeous men to strip to their thongs while we ogled them. Fait accompli. Give Ultimo his money, bring another round of drinks, and send out the next hunk. Gladys was getting hitched, I already was, Lisa was gay, and Miriam wished she were. It should not matter to a single one of us who Ultimo/Ben curled up with after the show.

  “No, think about it,” I continued. “How does a guy get felt up by all these horny women and not get excited? I doubt while he’s up there shaking his thang, he’s reciting baseball stats to himself. And how many straight men you know would go to such lengths to trim their nose hairs let alone get a razor that close to their balls? I mean, if my husband shaved under his arms even once, I’d shove singles down his pants, too.”

  Miriam whooped at my remark—louder than she ever did for Ultimo—and I wished I could take it back. I said it for laughs but not one of that kind. Yes, I genuinely wished Eduardo would shave under his arms. I also wanted him to cancel the subscription to the Playboy channel, hang out less with that Neanderthal Dave and more with his coworker Greg, and do more chores around the house without my having to harangue him to do it. Most of all, I wanted to be able to gripe freely about these things to a girlfriend without feeling like I was betraying Eduardo because she secretly took pleasure in his imperfections. Like she was rooting for our discord to be something worse than the typical marital squabbles. I found myself getting angry at Miriam.

  “Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  Lisa grabbed her purse, too. “I’ll go with you.” She threw some cash on the table. “Why don’t you guys order us another round.”

  I asked a woman at the next table where the bathroom was, and she told us to head up the stairs to the balcony and make a right. Lisa and I made our way to the staircase that led to the second level. “What the hell…?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I never should’ve said what I did,” said Lisa.

  “Stop apologizing. You didn’t do anything wrong.” We found the line into the ladies’ room and joined it. “First of all, what does Gladys care if some dancer she’ll probably never see again is gay?”

  “Well, this was the second time…”

  “Lisa, stop it! She didn’t even remember him. And she’s getting married to her college sweetheart next weekend. Her best friend’s brother! Why the hell’s she so disappointed?” I realized the women ahead of me were eavesdropping on our conversation, so I lowered my voice. “And Miriam? I don’t know about you, but she’s starting to scare me, and she’s not even drunk yet.”

  “Did you hear what she said about her son in the restaurant? You’d think she’d wish she never had him. All because his father turned out to be a moron.”

  “No, what threw me for a loop was when she said, ‘I should’ve cheated on him when I had the chance.’ What was that about?”

  “And she’s supposedly cool with my being gay, but it’s because she sees me as the stereotypical man-hating dyke. At first, I thought she was really OK with it, but now…” Lisa looked over the balcony and her eyes fell on Gladys and Miriam in the crowd below us. Gladys folded her arms tightly across her chest while Miriam wagged her finger in her face about something Gladys clearly had heard many times before. “I feel so bad. First time in years since we’ve seen each other, and here we are talking about them behind their backs.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “So?”

  “So?”

  “You don’t think they’re fuckin’ talking about us right now?” I rested my elbows on the rail of the balcony and said in my squeakiest voice, ‘Lisa doesn’t even like men anymore, OK, so how would she know if one was gay? And how come she knows so much about strip clubs? You know, a lot of these guys do this, a lot of these guys do that? Oh, my God, Lisa Pacheco’s a lesbian!’”

  Lisa laughed and came back to me as Miriam. “‘¡Ay, can you blame her? And Ricky’s either losing her mind or lying through her ass. She’s not married. This Eduardo probably doesn’t even exist.’”

  Then I tried Miriam on for size. “‘I mean, look at her, Gladys. I know she’s some nonprofit crusader, but c’mon! Hasn’t she ever heard of Century Twenty-one? Isn’t that the same dress she wore to our graduation?’”

  “‘I didn’t notice,’” Lisa as Gladys said. “‘I was too busy making sure Lisa wasn’t trying to check me out.’”

  And we laughed like we used to in our dorm room late at night. The kind of laughter that’s rooted in who you really are and can only be released by another soul grown from the same soil. I laughed like this with ’Uardo, but I have to say, there was something special about doing it again with a woman who knew me from a previous lifetime.

  After exiting the stall, I elbowed my way to the mirror and touched up my makeup. I looked around for Lisa and then quickly pulled my cell phone from my purse. I opened it, and sighed with relief. Eduardo had called and left me a messa
ge.

  “Busted!” Lisa propped her chin on my shoulder. “You miss your hubby, you miss your hubby.” She moved to the sink next to me and pumped soap into her palm.

  “Shut up.”

  “How many times did he call?”

  “Just once.”

  Lisa stopped washing her hands to coo. “Aw, that’s so perfect,” she said with utmost sincerity. “Often enough to show he cares yet infrequent enough to show he trusts. He’s a keeper.”

  With such an enthusiastic endorsement, I stopped resisting the urge to dial my voicemail. “Let me check the message to be sure there’s no emergency.” Hey, sweetie. It’s your husband. Eduardo. Cordero. Remember? I’m kidding! Just checking in, hoping everything’s going well. Anyway, when you’re done shoving dollars down some guy’s pants, call me back and tell me how bored you were. Love you.

  “Everything OK at home?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  When we finished in the ladies’ room and returned to the table, the next dancer—a black guy so beautiful he made Tyson the model look like Tyson the boxer—had already taken the stage. Dressed as a construction worker from his hard hat to tool belt, he wound his hips with his back to the crowd to Amber’s “Sexual”:

  It can’t be intellectual

  The way I feel is sexual.

  Then Tyson Squared stepped aside and in the center of the stage sat Tammy Tequila, grasping a twenty-dollar bill between her teeth. He straddled Tammy’s thighs and grinded his way onto her lap. The women roared. Tossing back another shot of tequila, Gladys slammed the glass onto the table and joined the din while Miriam forced a smile and took a long sip of her fresh apple martini.

  “I get it now,” Lisa said. Then she grabbed my hand and pulled away from our table and toward backstage. “Come with me. I’ve got an idea.”

  Gladys paid us no mind, but Miriam asked, “Where are you two going?”

  “Forgot something.”

  We wove through the crowd of chanting bodies until we reached the door that led backstage. There we found the show’s MC standing guard. Lisa tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned. “Sorry, ladies, no one’s allowed back here. Employees only. You’ll have to wait until after the show if you want an autograph.”