Now
She tells me her name is Candy. Swear to God. Her name is Candy. Her real name. I look surprised and she notices. She leans back towards the other end of the soggy leather loveseat, pulling dirty blonde strands away from her eyes and nodding as if to say, “I’m telling the truth. Stripper’s honor!” It’s dark in this room and I’m glad. It’s impossible to see anything without squinting or leaning into it. The way these people run these places, they keep it dark. Not too dark. There’s still the weak glow of blacklights and neon, weak enough so you don’t see any stains on the furniture but bright enough to count money. I tell her I believe her.
“And why wouldn’t you?” she says, almost offended.
Wow Nick, you offended a stripper because you couldn’t believe what came out of her overly lip-sticked mouthpiece. Congratulations! You managed to find the one “dancer” left in Portland
“No need. You just paid my AmEx for last month.” She shoots me a crooked smile. It was charming when she first came up to me in the main room. And still is, I guess. But I’m spent. Both ways. And it’s hard to think someone charming when you paid them upfront to fuck them. My favorite movie hooker? Elisabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas
I guess I’m wrong about the self-esteem thing. I just paid her AmEx for last month. All she had to do was—well, the same thing I did. Except I’m hundreds poorer and she’s hundreds richer.
That song by Ray LaMontagne? Where he sings, “love is a poor man’s food, don’t prophesize”? I realize now what it means. That lyric is as true as fact. Sure I could have met anyone, anywhere. Bought her a gyro, called her pretty things then found myself spent on a cleaner couch in a less fluorescently lit dark room. And it would have been gratis. (If you don’t expense the gyro.) But the real cost would be the second step: Calling her pretty things. I can’t really lie and whatever I’d say comes from inside, not necessarily deep inside but shallow enough for me to get my feet wet. And at the moment, I’m soaked to my knees. I’m damn immersed in it.
Afraid to fall in love? After Maria and Audrey, the first Audrey (The one tattooed on my arm. I’m not going to think about her while I’m in a strip club.), any guy would be gun shy. But I’m not. This isn’t about love. I’m damn in love! With two women! A tug-o-war with my heartstrings that they don’t know they’re on opposite sides of. And I really want her to win… But in the end I know we’re all going to be immersed. In mud. Wet. Heavy. Shit-brown. Mud. No one’s walking away clean. Except for Candy, my one-woman pit crew on this romantic race track.
But that line, that lyric, it means that when you got no money, then love is all you got. And when you got a lot of money, you can skip love and just pay for the sex. Isn’t that what it’s all about anyway? All the dancing around, the eye-contact, the long-rehearsed lines (one for every situation), and the word. The word: love. It’s a password. It lets you inside. What happens if you don’t know the password? Don’t feel it? You pay. You pay your way in. You buy her out of her clothes. Buy her all kinds of shiny things. Take her out to places you’ve made sure are overpriced. Wave your paycheck in her face every morning when she wakes up in your king-sized bed in your two floor apartment with your cars and motorcycle and your fucking Modern salary! Dammit! I might as well be in love with the man. I think about him as often, sometimes more, than Chloe and Audrey. Oh my god. I bet he’s fucked Candy too… But why should that bother me? She’s a whore. That’s really not fair (but true). I apologize.
This time she gives me a weird look. A look as if to say, “You’re weird.”
I look at my watch. I still have 12 minutes. I catch her catching me looking at my watch. Most of the time, these girls will just get dressed and walk you out of the private room once you’re done. After all, you didn’t really pay for the time. The time was just to make sure that—well, that you had time. Most guys go 15 minutes. 15 minutes and he’s out of there, the girl with her arm in his, guiding him back to the main room like a Nursing Home nurse walking a senior to the rec-room. (The similarity is in the walk. The cautious limp.) The girls bring them back to their seats, where they got a preview before buying the private room package, then abandon him to poach the new arrivals. In a way, a stripper’s like a cabbie. The faster she gets you where you need to go, the sooner she can pick up another fare. The more fares a night, the more money she goes home with. Like I said, love is just a password. But in here, it’s like everywhere else. It’s no different from night clubs with guest lists and long lines. No different from most women. You can buy your way in.
I look at Candy, she’s fully dressed again. By fully dressed I mean she’s put her thong and a-size-too-small bikini top back on. But she’s still hanging out. She’s actually talking to me. Maybe she made her quota off me.
She’s telling me about her apartment and her roommate who’s a researcher up at OHSU. How her roommate works with mice, injecting them with prostate cancer. This is how they find cures, apparently. By spreading the disease. (To mice at least.) She tells me how her roommate came home last night crying. Apparently these mice are cloned, or something like that. They’re manufactured to be born with the cancer already inside. Apparently, sometimes the Fates are cruel and by some divine accident, or scientific error, some mice are born completely healthy. Last night, Candy’s roommate came home crying because she found one such mouse in the batch. And in accordance with lab protocol, she had to kill it. She had to inject it with a tranquilizer, freeze it in the freezer then snap its neck. This is the ethical way. Sweet mercy.
I look at my watch again. She watches, still talking. Bright red pillows opening and closing in the dimness. We’ve killed ten minutes talking about her roommate.
I think about the mice, the diseased ones. I think that we’re all mice. The world is a sterile laboratory and we’re all predetermined to die. Die so they can find a cure. Who? I don’t know. God? Gods? The Government? That last one was a joke. I’ve no problems with “the Man”. No. Maybe there’s no one trying to find a cure for our great illness. Maybe there’s no cure at all. We’re all just born with a cancer: the inescapable and inevitable cancer that is Love. We’re all manufactured to fall in love. It spreads and multiplies, eating its way through our systems. Irreversible. Death by love.
I think it would be nice to be that mouse. Born completely healthy. Tranquilized. Frozen. Then—snap! But there’s no place here for that kind of mouse. Love is the password. You either know it or you’re out. The one place you can’t buy your way in. Life. Love is the password. That cancer is the key.
I lied when I said this isn’t about love. She told me her name is Candy. I still can’t believe it. Her stripper name is Karen. I’m in bizzaro world. I didn’t come here to escape life, or love. I came here because I’m in love with a woman. I’m in love with another woman too. I just left that one’s apartment an hour and a half ago, lying on her couch listening to Johnny Cash. She was listening to that song, the one that goes, “bound by wild desire, I fell into a ring of fire”.
I never understood that song. Love is simpler than that. It hurts like hell, yeah! But it’s no ring of fire! No. Love is easy. We’re born with it. Born to fall into it. We make it harder by setting it ablaze. Because I think it’s so natural to us. This sickness. This painful cancer. I feel like we have to exaggerate. We have to blame the disease, when it’s all on us. We set each other on fire. We like to watch each other burn. Because we like to know that we’re not the only ones dying. I’m no exception. I’m another diseased mouse.
I came here because I can’t tell her that I love her. I can’t tell her that I love her more. I can’t walk up to Henry and punch him again. No. I’m caught in the tug-o-war, the slow even race. I added another rope, put a couple more turns on the track. I love Chloe. But I was already deep in mud. I should bow out. Surrender. I love Chloe. But I loved Audrey first. Before Chloe. Before Henry. And we’re all mice. And we’re all dying. And we’re all on fire. And my heart’s a burning torch.
I didn’t come here to escape. I came to surrender. Even with Chloe, I’m one lonely bastard. As much as I love my weathergirl, she can’t fill the Audrey-sized hole I’ve dug in my chest. I can’t let go of the rope, the heartstrings. I can’t let go of the wheel. So I made a pit-stop.
One minute left. I look up from my watch, up at Candy counting her money, my money. I ask her what her name is.
“I told you. Candy.”
With a frown I pull a wrinkled One from my pocket and throw it down on the soggy leather between us. She giggles.
“Mr. Washington
I breathe deep. Frustrated. I pull a Twenty from my pocket and drop in on the One. Candy picks up both bills and folds them into her bra with the rest of my money. Her knees mount the couch and she leans into me.
It was the smell. Nothing else. Her perfume. I turned down most of her coworkers. But Candy, Karen—I couldn’t turn her away. It was her perfume. It was the same.
Her hands press against my chest, squeeze around the hole inside of it. Her lips graze my cheeks leaving red tire tracks. She whispers into my ear.
“My name’s Audrey.”
Before
I parked my car across the street. So I could walk in quickly. I’ve only been to a strip club twice. Both were bachelor parties. I’ve never gone alone. But I was feeling really alone. My favorite movie strip club? The Blue Iguana.
I paid the cover. It was like going to a club or a Carl’s Jr. I walked up to the counter and handed over my money. It was very normal, the business of it. Then I walked through the doors that separated the very normal “lobby” from the actual club. That’s when it hit me.
Both at the same time. The seizing strobe lights and the loud-as-hell surround. It was like getting slapped. If there ever was a time that you wanted to make a cool entrance, this would be it. You want to walk into a strip club confidently or the girls will pounce on you like a bleeding elephant. But I felt like I was just slapped. My eyes were squinting, my face turned to one cheek. I lost my balance. I looked like a child. A bleeding elephant child.
I stumbled into a seat and they descended on me. It was awkward. Terrifying. Luckily my eyes adjusted themselves and I gained a little bit of the composure I dropped by the doors, with my balls. I told them I just got here and I wanted to get comfortable first, making no eye contact. They flocked away, back to their perches on the mirror-clad walls. Relieved, I surveyed the room.There were two “stages”, both with tall brass poles connecting the glossy decks to the pink ceiling. There were dancers on both poles, swinging around like monkeys. Silicon-ed monkeys with pornstar bodies, wardrobe, make-up and hairstyles. It made me dizzy. My favorite movie stripper? Natalie Portman in Closer.
I looked around at the audience. Another relief. I wasn’t the only one here by himself. All around me on all kinds of steel and leather furniture, we’re allies. Men of all kinds with stacks, rolls, clips of bills enjoying the pornographic circus, throwing, dropping, handing, and even sticking their money onto the performers, the naked acrobats.
I foolishly felt like I was better than them.
I’m not a lonely loser who goes to strip clubs and lets these tramp vamps bleed my wallet dry. I’m with Chloe Clarimonde, PDX’s morning jewel! I’m a celebrity’s beau! They’ve all probably seen me in a magazine, or on T.V. escorting her on the carpet, holding her purse. I have better than most of these girls! I’m James fucking Bond. I’m Gaius frakking Baltar.
I’m here for what these girls like to call “a little fun”. I’m here for a Bond Girl. A temporary bombshell. A fling to last me till the credits. All these girls are such. This isn’t real life. This is a matinee; a short mission that’ll have me back in Portland
And it’s not just their names. This is the only place you can lie about what your job is and no one cares, as long as you have cash. A lot of cash. Here waiters pretend to be hot-shot lawyers, lawyers pretend to be big-time doctors, and doctors pretend to be rock stars. We’re all secret agents. We’re all somewhere we’re not supposed to be. We’ve all got real lives and real jobs with real people outside these mirror-clad walls. We’re all lonely bastards.
Two songs played since I sat down. The girls came back. One at a time. Divide and may the best girl conquer.
I turned them away, one after the other. They were all gorgeous. I just didn’t want any of them. I was hoping, maybe that one of them would look like her. None of them did. Not the ones who approached me. Not the ones on the poles. I started to wonder why I came.
I looked around at the guys more than I did at the strippers. I noticed a couple of them had rings. Either they didn’t care to take them off or they couldn’t. One of the guys looked older. Maybe he’d been married a long time. The gold ring burned around his finger, welded on. I wondered why he was here. I wondered why I was here.
I thought of something I read by Osamu Dazai. “Love flies out the window, when poverty comes in the door.” I couldn’t understand it. All these men seemed to have money. Not excluding the ringed ones. It wasn’t making any sense and my head was starting to hurt.
I closed my eyes and rubbed the lids. That’s when I smelled it. The perfume. The same perfume. My eyes opened to a blonde overly made-up and really underdressed stripper who was drenched in her perfume. In Audrey’s scent. I watched her carefully as she walked up, stopped at my feet, wedged a stocking-ed knee between my legs and confronted me with her recklessly exposed breasts.
Suddenly, I was drowning. Immersed in it. I almost couldn’t breathe, my chest was heaving. I was aroused. I was hard.
She looked nothing like her. She looked nothing like her. But I wanted her. I wanted to drown in it. She told me her name was Karen. I nodded as she grabbed me by the zipper.
I declined the lap dance. I wanted more then the length of a song. I nodded when she suggested a private room. We talked prices. I wasn’t really listening. I said yes once she finished her sell. She giggled.
“You came here on a mission!” She seemed happy that I was so ready, so easy. She was at work. I made her job easier. She led me by the hand across the main room, past the stage, the audience, to the back curtain that led to the private rooms. I was being paraded. She was showing off her catch to the rest of the girls. Damn, I felt cheap.
“You have to pay me first,” she said as we walked into the room. It was pretty dark, bright enough to see her lipstick and her green eyes but just dark enough for me to do this. To close my eyes and forget Karen. I counted the bills twice before handing them over. She watched me count and trusted me enough to accept the money and stuff it in one of her stockings.
I didn’t notice her undress. It couldn’t have taken long to drop the thong and her bra that was obviously too small. But when I handed her the money she was already naked—more naked than she was before I paid.
There was no dance. I don’t remember what the DJ had on the surround. No foreplay except for her sliding me into the condom. Hers is a dangerous job.
Once it was safe, she dropped herself around me. We had a moment. Our heads fell back then slowly recovered as she sat deeper into me. Slowly our eyes returned to each other’s and I held her by the hips, holding her in place. I asked her what her name was again.“Karen.” The word spoken through a breeze out her painted over lips. I breathed her in.
I pulled a Twenty from the wrinkled pocket above my knee and held it between us. I told her that I wanted to change her name. She giggled.
“OK. What’s my name for the next hour?” She pulled the Twenty from my grip and stuffed it in her stocking. I told her she was Audrey. For the hour I paid for, she was Audrey. She giggled again. This made me a little mad. I told her not to talk. Just be Audrey. She nodded and went to work.
I was drowning. I was swimming in her. In her perfume. My eyes were closed for most of it but even when they opened we were so close to each other that I was able to forget. Forget Karen.
She moaned. I pushed harder. She gasped. I pushed faster. She dug her nails into my back. I squeezed her closer.
I told her, told “Audrey”, that she was beautiful. I was breathing fast. My chest rising and falling like violent waves crashing against the face of her breasts.
I told “Audrey” I needed her. She bit her lips staining her teeth red, leaving small domes in the thick balm.
I told her that I loved her. She moaned louder. I moaned too.
I told her that I loved her. We pulled each other closer. She sank deeper into me. I crashed harder against her.
I told her that I loved her. She told me her name was Audrey.
Photo1: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/9/74564906_d288683280.jpg
Photo2: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1270/1030101088_6edef0e5e1.jpg
Photo3: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2334/2246274004_43487a545e.jpg
Photo4: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/35/72147817_e75f27b708.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment