“Don’t worry, it’s probably not real,” said Lisa. “Some of the smaller guys compensate by putting dildos in their thongs, that’s all.”
“How the hell do you know these things?” But I did relax a bit.
Miriam scoffed. “After what I paid, that thing had better be real!”
“After what Lisa paid, it had better not be real!”
“Ricky, what the hell are you talking about?”
Just as I was about to tell Miriam exactly what the hell I was talking about, Lisa stepped between us. “All that matter is that Gladys is having a great time.”
“Exactly,” said Miriam.
“Gladys. Not him!” I shot back.
“You two knock it off. The show’s going to end any minute now. Everyone had a blast and no one got hurt. Right?”
I knew Lisa was right, but something about Miriam’s casual attitude toward Gladys’s comfort and safety bothered me. I could not imagine that even Studs regulars would be comfortable with an erect stripper humping them in public, let alone understand why a woman slated to marry in a week would not mind. Especially with her fiancé’s sister in a front-row seat.
The music stopped and the DJ’s voice boomed over the speakers. “Ladies, thank you for visiting Studs, and we hope that you’ll come again real soon.”
“Let’s find a nice café somewhere for some dessert and coffee,” Lisa said.
Now that the show had ended and Gladys would rejoin us soon, I had no choice but to let the matter go. “That sounds cool.”
Miriam said, “Great.”
“OK, let’s get the blushing bride and get out of here,” said Lisa. We looked toward the now dark and empty stage. “She was there a minute ago.”
“Maybe she went to the bathroom,” said Miriam. “Where is it again?”
“Up the stairs and to your right.”
“I have to go myself so I’ll go find her and bring her down.” She took off and Lisa and I sat down at our table to wait. We watched as the young black girl and her friends put on their jackets and collected their purses. She held a giant lollipop in the shape of a chocolate penis, still wrapped in clear plastic and tied with a red bow. One of her guest spotted Tyson Squared—now fully dressed in denim overalls and a matching jacket—reached into her purse for a camera and called him over to their table. Grinning, he sauntered over and posed with the bride-to-be while everyone gathered around them with their cameras. Then he posed good-naturedly with every guest who wanted to take a picture with him while the bride obliged and snapped photos. When they were finished, Tyson Squared took the bride’s hand and kissed it, teasing her about the massive rock on her tiny finger and wishing her a long and happy marriage. Then he bid the party a safe trip home and walked out the side exit.
“How sweet,” said Lisa.
“Yeah.” I chided myself for overreacting about the General’s stuffed G-string. I looked up toward the balcony toward the ladies’ room. From what I could see, the line had whittled down to only three women so I figured Miriam and Gladys had made it inside and would rejoin us soon. Club employees milled about us, sweeping gift wrap and multicolored confetti into neat mounds, returning tables to their proper places and placing chairs on top of the tables. A server came by to wipe down our table and pile the glasses onto a tray. When he finished and left, I said, “I didn’t mean to get all paranoid and rain on the parade.”
Lisa smiled. “You didn’t. You were just being you.” Then she chuckled. “Remember that big fight you and Miriam got into at the Latin Quarter our senior year?”
“Don’t remind me.”
During our last year at Barnard, the four of us caught a bad case of senioritis. After Lisa triumphed over her last final, we headed to the Latin Quarter on Broadway at 96th Street. Until that night we had an unspoken code that wherever the four of us went together, we left together. Or so I thought because it had never been different. Nor did we ever wander out of each other’s sight for too long or leave any of the others alone with someone she had just met. That night at the Latin Quarter, however, Miriam met a guy and changed the game plan.
After going without sleep for almost three nights, I barely danced with my seat that night. If it had been up to me, we would’ve just stayed in our dorm room and celebrated by ourselves. Besides staying up late to finish papers and study for exams, I lost sleep at the thought of moving out of our two-bedroom apartment on Claremont into a tiny studio on West 115th Street.
A little after midnight, the four of us agreed to leave at one. Soon after, this older guy approached Miriam and asked her to salsa. With our blessing, she headed to the dance floor with him. One moment we saw Miriam’s partner twirl her around, the next she disappeared. From where we sat we scanned the dance floor, but no Miriam. Gladys convinced me that Miriam was fine, but Lisa agreed to go dance with me so we could look for her. We spent a half hour on the dance floor and still no Miriam. Now Lisa began to worry, too. We went back to our table, and Gladys said, “Oh, Miriam stopped by. She said if we want to leave, go ahead. She’ll be fine.”
Well, I wasn’t fine with that. “Where the hell is she now?”
“Last I saw her, she and I-Forgot-His-Name were headed to the bar. She’s coming right back though. I asked her to bring me a Coke.”
So Lisa and I sat. Or more like Lisa sat and I seethed. Miriam returned, all snuggled up with her newfound friend. She introduced him to us, but his name went in one ear and out the other. She placed Gladys’s soda on the table and asked, “So you guys are heading out at one, right?”
“No, we’re staying,” I said.
“We are?” asked Lisa.
“We can’t leave Miriam by herself.”
“Oh, go ahead. I can take a cab.” She gazed at I-Forgot-His-Name-Too. Clearly, he had promised to cover her carfare back to the dorm.
“We’ll wait,” I said.
That was when Miriam whispered something in the guy’s ear. He nodded and headed back to the bar. When he walked out of earshot, Miriam whirled around to me and said, “What’s the deal, Ricky? You guys agreed to go home at one, and I want to stay a little while longer. I’m cool with…”
“No, Miriam. We agreed to leave at one. And if you insist on staying, we have to stay here with you.…”
“You don’t have to anything. In fact, I want you to go…”
“… about to leave you alone in a crowded club with some guy you just met, you must be out of your fuckin’…”
“… home, Ricky! Just fuckin’ go home already!” Miriam spun around and stormed away from me.
And I pursued her. Not knowing what else to do, Lisa and Gladys followed me. At the bar, I saw Miriam giggling and drinking while I-Forgot-His-Name-Too whispered in her ear. “Don’t go over there and embarrass her,” Gladys begged.
“Calmate, I’m not going to go over there.” Instead I planted myself at the bar around the corner from where Miriam sat. “We’re just going sit here and keep on eye on her until she’s ready to leave.”
“What’s the difference if we stay one more hour?” Lisa said as she slid into the stool next to me. “The place closes at two.”
“I don’t want to sit around waiting for another hour,” whined Gladys.
“Then go dance.”
“No one’s asked me.”
“Then ask somebody.”
“I want to go home.”
“We all stay or we all go.”
So Gladys marched over to Miriam. Without excusing herself, she walked in between Miriam and her “date” and told her something that apparently required a whole lot of head rolling and finger swaying to thoroughly convey. Miriam responded with a quizzical look, and Gladys pointed to where Lisa and I sat. Or more like where Lisa sat and I fumed. Gladys stormed away from Miriam and headed back toward us.
Meanwhile, Miriam whispered into her dance partner’s ear. He reached for a matchbook with one hand and inside his jacket for a pen with the other. He tore the matchbook cover in half and scrib
bled across one piece. Then Miriam took the pen from his hand and scribbled across the other. They exchanged scraps, she kissed him on the cheek, and then barreled toward the exit without giving the rest of us another glance.
When we hit the street, I jogged a few paces to catch up to Miriam. We trotted a block in silence. Then I finally said, “I don’t know why you couldn’t just take his number down in the first place.”
Miriam came to a halt, spun around to face me, and hollered, “How dare you embarrass me like that!”
And then we had it out like we never had before right there on the corner of 97th Street and Broadway. Gladys and Lisa knew better than to interfere. The best they could hope for was that Miriam and I would shout at each other to the point of fatigue before a cop arrived.
“How dare you abandon your friends in a club over some guy you barely know?” I have to admit that at the time I felt like a whiny teenager. You flat-left me.
“But I told you to go. How many times did I say, ‘Leave’? You think because you live with me, you’re entitled to know my business and invade my privacy cada vez te da la fuckin’ gana? You’re not my mother, Ricky!”
“No, I’m just your friend.”
“Friends don’t cock-block!”
“Cock-block? If that’s what you think I was doing, then to hell with you, Miriam. You don’t know what the hell a friend is. And you know what? Fuck me, too, for wanting to make sure you didn’t get raped or worse!”
I started back up the street. Within seconds, I heard Miriam say, “Ricky, hold up,” and run toward me. I ignored her now more out of hurt than anger. After years of enduring her teasing—Miriam loved to call me the Amazon of Washington Heights—she truly thought I insisted on waiting for her at the club out of some twisted jealousy.
I felt Miriam grab my arm and I yanked it away. “C’mon, Ricky, let’s stop acting like we’re in junior high school and talk this thing out. We’re graduating in a few days, and I don’t want this festering between us when we might not…” For the first time I realized that I wasn’t the only one who was anxious about the potential permanence of our impending separation. “I don’t even want to wait until we get home to deal with it. Instead of bringing all this anger back to our apartment, let’s just find a café or a park bench or wherever and talk.”
Gladys and Lisa caught up to us. “There’s an all-night diner right up the street. Gladys and I can go home, leave you two alone.”
“No,” Miriam said.
I nodded. “Stay.”
So the four of us went to that all-night diner and sat down, and Miriam and I hashed out our disagreement like adults. I apologized for treating Miriam like a child and being rude to her “date.” She apologized for acting like a child and being rude to us. The four of us hugged, cried, and told one another that we loved each other and vowed to be friends for life.
Then graduation came, and we went our separate ways. I moved into that Columbia-owned studio on West 115th Street while I attended the School of Social Work. Lisa headed to medical school in Georgetown. Gladys left for Illinois to get her MBA at Northwestern, and Miriam moved back to her mother and aunt’s house in Queens and took a job at a fashion house. For the first few years after graduation, we managed to stay in touch and saw each other in pairs over the holiday season and summer months. In the mail, I received an announcement about Lisa’s graduation from medical school and an invitation to Miriam’s wedding. It so happened that her wedding took place somewhere on Long Island the weekend before I had to defend my dissertation, and I decided I could not afford the risk of losing a day’s preparation time. We never managed to get together as a foursome, and eventually the telephone calls became emails, the emails dwindled into Christmas and birthday cards, and finally the cards faded into prolonged bouts of silence. That is, until this Friday night.
I looked down at my watch. “Where the hell are those two?”
“I was just wondering the same thing,” said Lisa. “We’d better go get them. You know how those two can be when they get in front of a mirror.”
I laughed at that truth, and we collected our things and headed up the staircase. But when we arrived at the bathroom, we found a handful of women primping for the next escapade on their evening’s itinerary and a Studs employee emptying the trash bin. Lisa even checked under the stalls for Miriam’s Valentino sandals while I called their names. We walked out of the ladies’ room and back down to the main floor. Pockets of stragglers made their way toward the exit, but we saw no sign of Miriam or Gladys.
“Let’s check the bar,” said Lisa.
When we got to the bar, we found no one but barmaids cleaning up for the night. One even said, “Sorry, ladies, we’re closed.”
“We’re just looking for our friends. Is there another bathroom here besides the one upstairs?”
“No, ma’am, the only other bathroom is backstage and for employees only.”
Lisa and I exchanged dumbfounded looks. “Maybe they went outside.”
I wanted to believe that but instinctively knew that wasn’t the case. “Will you go look?”
“OK, but they may not let me back in, so if I don’t come back…”
“Then let me go with you.”
Lisa and I walked to the exit. A bouncer stood at the door bidding patrons farewell while handing out fliers for an upcoming event. Lisa walked over to him and said, “Listen, we’re looking for some friends of ours. Do you mind if I just stepped outside for a moment to see if they’re out there and come back inside if they’re not?”
“No, miss, I wish I could let you do that, but once you leave, I can’t let you back in. Club policy.”
“C’mon, she just wants to take a peek and not get stuck out there alone if they’re not out there,” I said.
“I understand that, but I can’t let you do it. Club policy.”
“What do you think she’s trying to do? Smuggle in a sleeping bag and spend the night here?”
The bouncer sneered. “Oh, you’d be surprised what some of you women would do after a show like this.”
Then I heard Miriam call my name. Lisa and I turned, and my stomach sank to see her alone. “Where’s Gladys?”
“Last time I saw her she was with the General,” she practically sang. “Lord lift us up where we belong!”
The bouncer snickered and shook his head. “Aw, man. Fuckin’ Frank.”
“What do you mean the last time you saw her she was with the General?”
“We were on our way out of the ladies’ room when the DJ came up to us and said that Frank wanted to talk to Gladys. I could tell that she really wanted to go see him one last time so I said, ‘Hey, tonight is your night. You go have fun and whatever happens here stays here.’ Just like we agreed.”
Lisa surprised me when she yelled, “You let her walk off with him and you don’t know where the hell they went?” She pushed past Miriam and stormed toward the main floor. “Show me where you saw her last.”
Miriam froze at Lisa’s sudden abruptness, so I gave her a gentle push to follow her. “The DJ said something about a VIP room.”
Lisa walked up to an employee sweeping the floor. “Where’s the VIP room?”
He looked up and pointed to the opposite side of the balcony. “It’s not a room really. Just a section we curtain off sometimes for…”
“Thanks,” Lisa said and headed up the staircase. I stayed on her heels and Miriam struggled to keep on mine. We reached the balcony in time to see a short guy in a baseball cap emerge from behind the curtain.
“That’s the guy I spoke to, that’s the DJ,” said Miriam. Then she scrambled in front of Lisa. “C’mon, what are you doing?”
“We just want to make sure that Gladys is OK,” I answered.
“Why wouldn’t she be OK?”
“You can’t be serious?”
Lisa marched right around Miriam and past the DJ toward the curtain. He stopped to watch us and when he saw where we were headed, he dashed past Lisa and p
lanted himself in front of the curtain.
“I’m sorry, ladies, no one is allowed past this point.”
“Is this the VIP section?” I asked.
“Yes, it is, that’s why…”
“A friend of ours is supposed to be here,” said Lisa, “and we just want to make sure she’s all right.”
“I can’t let you go back there.” Lisa tried to push past him, but he blocked her path. “What does your friend look like?”
Miriam started to describe Gladys, but I cut in, “Look, we’re not going anywhere until we see her.”
“Then I’m gonna have to call security,” he said.
“Yeah, why don’t you do us all a favor and do that,” I replied, calling his bluff.
The DJ flustered. “Just wait right here,” and disappeared behind the curtain.
Miriam called behind him, “Tell her that we’ll be waiting for her out…”
“Right here,” Lisa and I said.
Lisa and I exchanged one look, then at the same time, we each reached for opposite sides of the curtain. For some crazy reason, Miriam tried to stop us, but together we were too strong for her. Lisa and I jerked back the curtain with such a force, the rod trembled and several of the hooks popped off and bounced across the floor.
In a corner on a sofa, Gladys sat on Frank’s lap. He cooed in her ear as his hand disappeared up her skirt. Both were fully dressed (or at least that’s what I believed at the time) and oblivious to the fact that their private party had been crashed.
The DJ bounded out of a dark corner and over to us. “I said y’all are not allowed back here.”
Ignoring him Lisa yelled, “Gladys!” She finally looked up and saw us. Embarrassment flooded her face. Gladys slowly climbed off Frank’s lap and straightened her dress. He stood up and turned his back to us, presumably to tuck away his manhood and close his zipper.
The DJ said, “Y’all need to get out of here now.”
“As soon as we get our friend,” I said.
“She’s a big girl and can take care of herself.”
No. He. Didn’t. “You don’t know the first thing about her, puñeto,” I yelled. “So mind your fuckin’ business and get out the way before you get hurt.”
Friday Night Chicas Page 23