by Jay Fox
We begin to explain our connections to Ilkay. Teddy was a friend of his brother. Angelica had not known him during her years at N.Y.U. (“I mean our school was so big; it's no wonder we never met”). Most of the others at the table are also connected to the school. I've met six of the seven of them before, but I think the exchange of words between us may have been in, perhaps, the double digits. The other, who sits next to me, I've never seen before. He introduces himself.
“Name's Che,” he says as he slowly pushes his hair behind his ears.
“Like Guevara?”
He nods uneasily. “I try not to associate myself with the most commercialized icon of communism. My parents fled Cuba for a reason, after all.”
“Were you born there?”
“Yes, but I don't remember it as well as I remember my time here. This country is my home.” An obvious question follows. “I was ten. We lived in Miami for a long time before moving to Tampa.”
“Did you come up here for school?”
“Yes and no. I am a student at S.V.A., but I also came up because my uncle offered me a job.”
“I see.”
“Hey Che,” a new arrival calls out, “Viva la revolution.” The man holds up a fist until Che acknowledges his presence with an exaggerated smile and a wave.
“Yes, it gets old very quickly,” he responds to a girl whose question can be inferred. “So many Americans are obsessed with this idea of revolution, as if there is no bloodshed involved. One day it is tyranny, the next liberation. War does not work that way,” he says peremptorily. “And no revolution has ever occurred without a war.” He rolls his eyes when a man from the group responds. “How can an American youth such as yourself be in favor of violent revolution?” with vehemence. “Have you ever held a firearm?” The defendant shakes his head. “Then how do you anticipate fighting a war with the most powerful military on the face of the planet? Can you imagine what an M-1 tank rolling down Bedford Avenue would do to a hipster militia with little or no weapons training? Are they going to take pop shots at heavily armored vehicles with fucking slingshots?” He scoffs to the six of them. “Another American revolution will never happen because modern capitalism is elastic; it is not rigid. Our political system is founded upon compromise—class war is now conducted on the floor of the Senate. This is a lack of foresight on the part of Marx and all of those ancient theorists.”
He goes on. I want to argue with several of his points, but, as Hitler and Goebbels believed (and exploited), rational thinking will always be silenced by vehemence. I turn back to Angelica and Teddy. “So, Boston, huh?”
I had managed to catch a quick nap after meeting with Tomas and Aberdeen, so only a remnant of the alcohol from earlier in the day continues to float in my head. I maintain a conservative pace on the libations; others rush through the stages of inebriation with asperity, if not abandon. Conversations, meanwhile, sail through the turbulent waves of argumentation, frustration, soliloquy. One grad student among us complains that contemporary capitalist society is founded upon two elements: faith and eternal adolescence (“How Houellebecquian!” another grad student exclaims). Teddy and I exchange pleasantries for a while until Angelica begins to feel neglected. They get into an argument, quietly at first, and then take the matter outside.
The other seven by this time have calmed down some. Coprolalia comes up as a topic, but the discussion switches to favorite Beatles album once it is discovered that the only things on the walls in the place's bathrooms are those ubiquitous deodorant advertisements.
A round of shots accompanies the resurgent Teddy and Angelica. They have swollen lips and rubicund cheeks. Not to be outdone by their display of generosity, one of the unnamed residents, who refers to me as “Alex's roommate,” orders a second. And as alcohol makes superconductors of us all in terms of social friction, dialogs without the more Laputan elements of academia begin to sprout up like prairie flowers after a flash flood. The subjects range from favorite position to fondest memory from college, and just about everyone is genuinely entertained by the stories being told around the table with the exception of Che, who evidently hasn't discovered a means to remove the chip from his shoulder or the stick from his ass. By midnight, he has reverted to a surly pout, which grows in severity each time he is ordered to lighten up.
I end up talking with Brandy, the bartender, for a few minutes when I return to the bar for the third butt-fucking cowboy of the night. I've come to realize that my initial impression of her needs some revision. She is not contemptuous, nor is she particularly contentious; rather, she seems contemplative and somewhat despondent. As she talks, she gently fingers the locket at the end of a silver necklace. She expresses a distant lament about a seafaring transient when I ask her about the cherished piece of jewelry. “I knew what I was getting into when the whole thing started,” she says. “Look, I'm sorry I've been so bitchy tonight,” she adds after a moment of silence. “I have the tendency to take my problems out on other people sometimes. On a normal night, I'm actually a pleasant person to be around,” with a forced smile. “Seriously,” she adds. “It's just that I always get this way whenever he leaves.”
She removes her glasses to rub her eyes. I realize that they are of a variety that is more prevalent in cartoons and poetry and song than reality. “Look, I'm the one who's supposed to be listening to sob stories,” she says with a contrived laugh. “I'm not the one who tells them.” The ox-eyed goddess of libations becomes sighted again. “Let me buy your table a round.”
Che has departed by the time I return. His friends complain about his petulance. An exchange-student shakes his head and recites the following: “He is an idealist without ideals; a vagrant upon the political landscape. He decries humanity both for its greed and its laziness, so he is never surprised by the misery created by the free-market or the corruption and inefficiency of the state.” He sighs. “Such a bathetic contempt for humanity—how European.”
“I don't even understand why he comes out anymore,” someone adds as I take my seat. “He's so fucking negative, so self-righteous.”
“Everything has to be so fucking dramatic.”
“It's so fucking annoying.”
“Where do you think he went?”
“He probably went home.”
“It's not even midnight.”
“He probably went to that chick's place. He's been boinking her pretty regularly.”
“Really? Boinking? Are you fucking Al Bundy?”
“Actually, it's twelve-thirty.”
“Okay—with whom he has been having regular coitus.”
“You're such a tool.”
“Really? Where have I been?”
“He's got a girlfriend?”
“Lady-friend.”
“Fuck-friend.”
“It's fuck-buddy, numb-nuts.”
“Is there really a difference?”
“Fuck-buddy?”
“You don't introduce your lady-friend to your friends.”
“So you're saying he has a mistress?”
“If you really want to call her that.”
“Fuck-buddy.”
“Heard you the first time, Dave.”
“He's not a bad looking guy.”
“Yeah, but he's such a whiny little bitch.”
“Well, if she's not dating him, who the fuck cares?”
“That's not the point.”
“What's she like?”
“What is the point?”
“Who?”
“The lady-friend.”
“You're a fucking douche bag, that's the point.”
“Fuck-buddy.”
“Jesus Dave, you're like a child who wanders into a movie….”
“Hey, who ordered the shots?”
“The bartender picked up the round,” I respond.
“Looks like somebody's getting his dick wet tonight.”
“And it's not going to be you, you misogynistic fuck-stain.”
“Yeah, it's Alex's
old roommate.”
“Thanks for spelling that one out, Dave.”
“I'm not a misogynist, you bitch.”
“Fine. You're a fucking twat, then.”
The shots are taken. The mood once again becomes gregarious and far less slanderous. Personal stories and quotes from favorite movies and television shows are traded like baseball cards. Dumb and Dumber has a surprisingly large number of fans. Books eventually get their time in the limelight. One of the nameless cites Cormac McCarthy as his favorite author. He claims the judge in Blood Meridian to be metaphorically tied to Cain, but cannot provide an explanation as to what the bear at the end of the book is supposed to symbolize. “Is the bear the wilderness of North America? I mean, there is that one bear that kills one of the guys in the group in, like, the middle of the book. The bear in the last chapter could represent the…the…you know, the….”
“Subjugation?”
“Yeah…and destruction of the wildness, as well as the breakdown in Western morality—like the sanctity of life and all that. I don't know, though; something tells me it goes deeper than that.” He asks if there is a bear anywhere in the Bible. Someone responds that Sodom was filled with them. Laughter. This is followed by an etymological query: Is there such a thing as a Gomorrite? A debate on sexual perversions—“A socially constructed concept,” as is evidently not obvious from the word's appearance almost exclusively in value statements—blossoms from the fecund question. I hear of felching for the first time. Munging is defined. The conversation ends with an awkward silence among intoxicated and slack-jawed extroverts.
Two people decide to make their way to the dance floor soon after, which initiates a domino effect that nearly empties the table within a few minutes. As the organs begin to grind, minutes dissolve into memories, smiles become abundant, sexual tensions oscillate. Ilkay disappears. The music ceases to have a discernible melody. At one thirty, I get a text message from Tomas that reads: “LIC party like orgy stop get yer ass herf [sic.] now stop.” Tables get rearranged, reconstructed. People find themselves in new contexts, experiencing transculturation on a microcosmic scale—at least that's what one of the grad-students muses at one point. Vinati and I eventually find ourselves sitting next to one another.
“Evan Klein and the Babymakers,” I respond to a question about my high school band.
She laughs. “Evan Klein and the Babymakers.”
“I was one of the Babymakers…obviously.”
“And you played the bass? You played the bass in a band called Evan Klein and the Babymakers?”
“Yeah.”
“Any relation to Naomi Klein?”
“I wouldn't know.”
“Do you know her?”
“No.”
“Oh, she's great. Probably the best journalist out there right now.”
“I'll check her out.”
“You should.”
“Is she a friend of yours? Another girl from Queens?”
“No, she's Canadian. And I was just born in Queens. We moved to a brownstone on Berkley Street, about half a block away from Prospect Park, when I was four”
“What do your parents do?”
“Is that your phone?”
I look: Tomas.
“It's not important.”
Caesura
“You were saying.”
“Well, my dad owns a few restaurants—mostly in Brooklyn.” She names three in Park Slope.
“Never heard of them.”
“Not a fan of Indian food?”
“Not a frequenter of Park Slope.”
“You should go there more often. There's a new bar that opens, like, every week.”
“You're still there, I take it?”
“No, I've moved into a place in Williamsburg last September. It's kind of a shithole, but it's cheap.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“You're there, too?”
“Bushwick.”
“Bushwick or East Williamsburg?”
“Bushwick—a few blocks from the Knickerbocker stop on the M.”
“Shut up,” she exclaims. “Why are you living all the way out there? It's dangerous.”
“I didn't really have any options.” She squints. “It's kind of a long story.”
She nods slowly. “I worry about you.”
“I know how to handle myself.”
She's unconvinced, but doesn't push the subject. “So Ilkay took off, huh?”
I roll my eyes. “He was like a shark out there. I didn't even get a goodbye.”
“Neither did I. You'd figure he'd want to spend some time with his friends because he's going to be gone for, like, a month. He's so fucking inconsiderate sometimes.”
She is quiet for a moment. I can feel my voice growing hoarse because of the volume of the music, and the pause in conversation is tacitly welcomed. We look to the human shapes dancing to a standard two-thirty-in-the-morning jam without much in terms of substance propelling them along. There is the reoccurring theme of sex (or, rather, the anticipation of sex with a desired object) in the lyrics, but the rhythm patterns convey the drudgery of orgasmless fucking. It's very Libertarian, very free-love without the love. Faces and voices are difficult to make out, so one can only read a body language that has a lexicon consisting of consent or rejection. It's usually straightforward enough, though there are a few people probably looking for “innocent” fun, the types who wear their wedding rings in their jeans or purses. Pragmatics rears its ugly head even in binary, evidently.
Vinati seems like the dancing type: tiny, cute, and friends with Ilkay, who habitually frequents places that refuse to grant you admission if you're not wearing the right shoes. These are the types of places guarded by men behind velvet ropes, men who give you the once over as though you are a cut of meat, men who tell you whether or not you're cool enough to pay thirteen dollars for a bottle of Amstel Light after waiting at a bar for over half an hour to get it. The real problems with places such as these, of course, are those you encounter once you pass through the gates of Elysium: guys without necks try to pick fights with you, girls without grace try to convince you to buy them drinks, dipshits run into you, thereby sending about three-dollar's worth of beer down the only shirt you own that has a label reading dry clean only. Wealthy E-Harmony couples and blind dates attempt to be delicate as they explain themselves above the music that throbs like a bad case of priapism. The people around them drink in a communion of decadence that will ultimately lead to intoxication, conquest, crabs. The dance floor is an orgy of egos. Things are going on in the bathroom. Bad things. Speed freaks scan the room with fidgety eyes and try not to jump out of their skin. The people who are rolling hard are accepting resumes for fondling positions. The few people too humble to jump into the whirling madness stick out like anchorites in Caligula's court.
Maybe I misjudge her, though. There are certainly those who simply like to dance without all of the hedonism that usually gets attached to the club scene. She's here with me for whatever reason, gazing to all of the people lost in the sea of light and sound with a less than sober grin and an unusually reticent demeanor. “Do you dance?” I finally ask.
She smiles. “I've been dancing all night.”
“Do you want to dance?”
“My feet are killing me,” she responds. “This douche-bag Mexi-goth wouldn't leave me alone, and he kept crushing my feet with these, like, Doc Martin boots. Who wears fucking Doc Martins out to a club?” I shrug. “To be honest, I was hoping for someone to just talk with.” I watch the people on the dance floor rubbing against each other with increasing carnality, sweat beginning to appear on the bodies that suffocate in air redolent with stale breath, booze, sex, and excessive recirculation. “I thought I knew more of Ilkay's friends,” she eventually says. “Speaking of which, where are all of your friends?”
“Out of town. The only two I've really gotten to know tonight are over there.” I point out Angelica and Teddy, a tangled mess of left feet, stiff joi
nts, and whale-belly skin. There's a substantial ring around them. The black guys are trying their best not to laugh. The Puerto Ricans are mesmerized. “They seem nice.”
“The lush and yuppie?”
“Well, if you want to be cynical about it, yes, the lush and the yuppie.”
She laughs. She laughs a lot.
We talk for a while. Her hands keep finding their way to my shoulder or knee. My eyes keep falling down her dress. She eventually takes a sip from an empty bottle, which prompts the following: “Do you want to do a shot?”
“Sure,” I beam. “Howzabout a butt-fucking cowboy?”
“Won't Ilkay be jealous?”
Being that it's three in the morning, the place has cleared out somewhat. We are the passing shower's concluding drops. Table service has been discontinued, so most of the people for whom dancing is not a joy have either left or gone up to the bar. This is not to say that the area surrounding the bar is packed; most of the patrons are still dancing, thereby leaving both of the bartenders with relatively little to do for first time of the night. The faithful are nursing their drinks by this time; even the contingency of terminally drunk habitués still trying to abandon the last semblance of sobriety have slowed their pace.
Brandy presents the shooters with an almost demonic grin before I can even place an order. There are three of them. “L'chayim,” she toasts. I am familiar with the taste of the drink by now, so I only make a grimace as I take down her concoction. Vinati's face turns a shade of sour that portends trouble. Brandy looks to her own drained glass with something like a wince. She turns to me: “Is it better on the rocks?”
“I have to run to the restroom,” Vinati says as she begins for the undulating crowd, a sea that even Moses would have had difficulty parting. Suffice to say, she doesn't make it to the other side.
“Your girlfriend can't hold her shit,” Brandy proclaims proudly.
“Oh, she's not my girlfriend.”
“Well, in that case, the girl you were going to bone tonight can't hold her shit.”
“I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the cards.” A crowd of women encompasses Vinati. They whisk her off.
“Well, looks like the deck's being put away,” she says as her eyes point towards the exit sign that hangs above a parting velvet curtain. “You should go help her out. It'll prove your good intentions.”