twenty-two- Scars will remember

Some people get numbers.  Numbers on their backs.  On their calves.  On their arms.  Dates.  Anniversaries.  Death dates.  The day their cancers went into remission.  Jersey numbers.  One or two digits they can wear throughout life, remembering their best play.  Touchdown.  Home runs.  The benches they kept warm in their most formative of teen years.  Bones they broke.  Muscles pulled to sprains.  Scars from ancient cuts through polyester uniforms. 

But it’s the scars they get here that they remember.  They touch them and they smell the grass.  Run their fingers across the slight raised skin and they feel the dotted texture of pigskin.  The stitches running the round of a baseball.  They don’t need mirrors.  Just touch it.  Feel the tattoo.  Remember the pain of a thousand stabs in each stroke of ink.  These are the scars they will remember.  These scars tell the story that they’re too sad to admit they’re already forgetting.  Already forgotten.  The happy moments.

Nick keeps himself busy cleaning the stations.  The itchy feeling of waiting for an appointment to show up, he cleans the ink-guns, sorts the containers of colors.  The iPod is plugged in and the surround doles out random songs.  Britney before The Proclaimers.  Kings of Leon begets Smokey Robinson.  He sweeps the floors.  They don’t really get dirty or dusty.  All to keep himself busy.  To stop him from watching his wristwatch.  Springsteen follows The Killers.  Ok Go opens for Carole King.

The phone rings.  Nick drops the broom and counts his steps and the rings.  Three.  Three is enough.

“Hello?”  He grabs the planner next to the desk.  The pages flip open, most of the dates and names scrawled in Audrey’s handwriting.

“I got you down for half an hour from now.”  There are doodles on the sides of the most recent pages.  He smiles.  ‘She’s doodling again.’ 

The surround gets more random.  Al Green then Dream Theater.  Poison takes the mic from Howie Day.

“I can push you back another half hour, but that’s all.”  The front door swings open.  A man in a good suit.  Nick notices the shoes first.  Faraway leather, shiny as the sea it must have crossed to get to this guy’s feet.

“That’s fine.”  The man on the phone and the man standing in his shop have the same voice.  Nick puts the receiver down.

Looking up from the shoes, the gray suit pants pressed stiff, the suit jacket falling an appropriate length from the modest belt buckle.  The tie tip right above the buckle hiding the buttons running the length of the cotton polyester blend white dress shirt.  The cellphone coming away from his ear.  The sunglasses brought to his jacket pocket.  The nose that looks like it just healed from a break.

“Henry.”

“I lied about my name when I made the appointment.  Sorry.”

“You’re not the first.  It’s a new trend.”

Some people get names.  Their grandparents.  Their mothers.  They’re family people.  Their brothers etched on their shoulders.  Their sisters on their wrists.  You can never let go of your family.  So they etch their names on their bodies to carry with them forever.  Decomposing.  Decaying.  But never alone.

Their lovers.  All kinds of names.  All kinds of spellings.  Expecting parents should throw away the books and consult tattoo artists.  These names are loaded with history and emotions.  Marissa the blue-eyed siren of Pearl District.  Robert the wise submissive of Gresham.   Shandi the brick-toting jealous bitch of Old Town.

Tattoo artists see patterns.  Reincarnations.  They can tell you what your kid will become if you name her Wendy—she’ll seduce men with her chicken potpie, mother’s recipe, then cling like Elmer’s—or name him Luke—hopeless romantic, will write a love song with generic lyrics so he can insert a new name each time he gets dumped.  Janes have abandonment issues laced with repressed feelings for their fathers; modern day Elektras.  Zachs want what they can’t have then don’t want it when they finally get it. 

Tattoo artists.  Historians and seers.

“Is this a business meeting?  Or do you actually want something?”  Nick watches Henry slip off his suit jacket and lay it on the sofa.  The sofa where he was with Audrey just a week ago.

“I lied about my name, but I do want a new tattoo.”  Henry unknots his tie and drops it on the jacket.  He fingers the cufflinks open in his French cuff sleeves and plucks them out.  These he puts in his pants pockets.  The right in the right.  The left in the left.

“Relax, Nick.”  Henry taps on his watch.  “We have plenty of time now.”

Nick looks at his own watch.  He makes an hour for each appointment and with Henry’s pushed back half an hour, they have plenty of time for whatever reason Henry came here.  He looks back at Henry, his top half undressed to a white Jockey’s t-shirt.

“This is about Audrey.”

“Yes.  This is about all three of us.  You know Herbie?”  Henry walks towards Nick and stops when they can smell each other’s aftershave.

“Chloe’s assistant.  I inked him last week.”  Nick’s fists start to close.

“You did.  He’s a friend of mine, used to be my boss’ secretary a long time ago.  I introduced him to Chloe.” 

Before the period can close his last sentence, Henry slams a punch into Nick’s side, dropping Nick onto the desk.  Nick tries to push himself up but the ache running the length of his torso and Henry’s heavy palm on his back keep him face down on the desk.

“Herbie’s a decent guy.  He told me Audrey left this shop that morning.  Something about you wiping her lipstick from your mouth.”  Henry lifts Nick by his shirt a foot above the desk then slams him back down.

“This is good, Nick.  You deserve this.”

“I kissed her.  We didn’t do anything after that.”  Nick groans, propping himself up with his forearms.  Henry pulls him to his feet.  Toe to toe, the swelling soreness keeps Nick looking at Henry’s shoes, shiny as floor-tiles in a hospital lobby.  The surround plays on.  The soundtrack for his beating.  Ray Charles loses to The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  Tom Petty triumphs over Lilly Allen.

“I believe you Nick.  But we still have a lot of time left.”  Henry digs into Nick’s gut, collapsing him at the waist.  

Holding him up by his shoulders, Henry plows a knee into the fresh bruise.  A cufflink falls out of his pocket.  He releases Nick onto the fresh swept floor.

“So Nick, why do you think people get tattoos?”  Henry bends down and retrieves the cufflink.  The two H’s flash in Nick’s eyes.  Henry Hurt.

“Hurt,” Nick groans from the floor.

“That’s right.  The cheerleaders used to chant, ‘Henry Bring The Hurt!’.”

“And I’m guessing you brought it.”  Nick pushes a choked laugh from his burning lungs.  His side burns.  His gut burns.  His nose burns from breathing to close to a dust pile he swept together before the phone rang.  ‘I should have picked it up before I answered,’ he thought in his dizzy head.

“I did.  I miss college…”  Henry helps Nick up to his feet and leans him against the desk.  Nick sits down on the edge holding himself up by his knees.  In front of him, Henry stands arms crossed and head slanted and bowed slightly.  His eyes watch Nick from under his great brow.

“It’s so hard to forget pain but it’s even harder to remember sweetness.”  Nick steadies his breathing.  He tries not to wince with each inhale.

“Concussion?”  Henry tilts Nick’s head back and scans his pupils.

“No.  I’m answering your question about the tattoos.”

“Hmm.  Very poetic.”

“It’s a quote from this book that Chloe’s reading.  It’s called Diary.  It’s by Chuck Pah—”  Henry interrupts him with another fist to his gut.  He catches him, stops him from falling forward, and steadies him back on the desk before letting go.

“Sorry.  I’ve been angry about the Chloe thing.  But now I think I can move on.”  Henry laughs loudly, reminding Nick that he remains healthy and upright.  Nick responds with a few heaving coughs.

“It’s so hard to forget pain but it’s even harder to remember sweetness.”  Nick looks at Henry, at his fists.

“I won’t hit you again.  Promise.  Go on.”

“People get tattoos because of the pain.  We remember pain and what caused it.  The sweetness?  The good times?  We forget those easy.  We remember that they were good and that we were happy.  But we forget the details.”  He coughs some more.

“It makes sense.”

“Pain.  We remember the details.  The moment the bone breaks under your skin.  The skin stretching as the broken bone pushes against it like a tent.  The tearing as the bone digs out.  The scars stay.  But we don’t even need them.  We won’t forget.”

“So the pain helps.  We hide the sweet memories in the tattoo.  Remembering the pain of getting the tattoo reminds us why we got it.  Good answer!  You believe it?”

“I do.”

Henry nods at Nick as he rolls up his sleeves to the elbows.

“I told Audrey that she can cheat on me.  With you.”

“…”

“Audrey wasn’t over last night.  She wasn’t at her place either.”  Henry stands bladed, his shoulder facing Nick.

“I was alone last night.”  Nick struggles through a deep breath.

“So no Chloe to give you an alibi.”

“No, but believe—”

“It doesn’t matter.  I came here to give you my blessing.”

“I’m not—”

“You will.  I know.  She will too.  It’s alright.  I’ve got two on the side.  This’ll keep it fair.  Honest.”  Henry rubs his knuckles slow.  The way he’s standing, Nick can only see one of his eyes.  The other he has to imagine.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to.  Just take my blessing.  Shake my hand.  Then the tattoo.”  Henry’s one eye glares at him serious.  Waiting for a response.

“Alright.”  Nick sits up straight holding his hand out to Henry.  Henry swipes it away.

“The blessing first.”

With a half-cocked grin Henry drives his fist into Nick’s eye, shattering skin around it.  Blood on his knuckles.  Nick falls off the desk, dropping onto his hands and knees.

“Now shake my hand.”  Henry pulls him up and takes his limp hand.  He shakes it slow.

“Alright,” Nick whispers through the loudness of his pain. 

Henry helps him back to the desk.  His body loose and weak, he stares at the shoes, shining and sharp like knives in a drawer.  A red spot on one of them.  A dull ruby on black sands.

“I read that book.  I lent it to Chloe months ago.  She can keep it.”  Henry wipes his painted knuckles with a handkerchief.  Two letters flash before Nick’s eyes: a black H and a red H.  He wipes his wounded eye with the back of his hand.  The red H turns black.

“Why did you come here to kick my ass?  What the fuck did this solve?”  Nick watches Henry fold the stained handkerchief and return it to his pocket.

“We have no scar to show for happiness.  We learn so little from peace.”  A low single laugh.

“A line from the book.”  Nick tries on a crooked smile.  The pain chases it away.

“I think we’ve learned a lot this morning.”  Henry takes in a long clean breath.

“You should clean yourself up before we get started.  You’re bleeding.”

Nick stands up wobbly and searches for the bathroom.  The surround still going.  The ringing in his ears and the wash of painful numb all over him.  He can no longer hear the transitions.  The randomness.  Just one concert now.  One stinging symphony.  Bonnie Raitt’s deep song backed by The Polyphonic Spree.  John Legend and The Strokes waiting their turns to jam with Miles Davis.  Nick finds the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

With his shirt off, Henry closes his eyes and runs his fingers across his tattoos.  Evelyn.  His hometown.  He sees his house in the black distance of his eyelids.  The high school appears beyond it.  Goalposts and grass.  Poles of lights towering like metal trees.  The warmth beneath.  The field where he played.  Where he earned his football scholarship that brought him to Eugene.  The bruises and the cuts.  The bone he broke.  He can smell the green and white of the happy field.

He reaches over his shoulders and feels the tattoo south of his neck.  Sine Qua Non.

“What is it?”  Nick is standing outside the open bathroom door, watching Henry reach behind to his subconscious.

“What?”  Henry, a little embarrassed, lowers his arm and puts his hands in his pockets.

“Sine Qua Non.  Without which not.  What is it?  That which, without it, you are not?”

“Let’s get started.”

Nick points Henry to one of the stations.  He obliges and sits on a chair, his chest pressing against its back.  Gloved, Nick pulls up a stool and sits behind Henry.

“What and where.”  Nick opens packets of alcohol swabs.

“Right under.  The same font and color.  Audrey.”

Nick sweeps his skin with the swabs.  He readies a tiny cup of black and adjusts the gun, playing with the dial on the box it’s plugged into and testing the pedal at his feet. 

He pulls a remote from his pocket and mutes the surround.  No more randomness.  Just the hum of the needle.  White noise.  The one note lullaby.  He sets the needle to Henry’s skin and begins.

“So, Candy Moore?”  Henry chuckles above the buzzing.

“She told you.”  Nick paints strokes of black, a thousand stabs in each one.

“She’s a great lay.  She’s great in the office too.”

“You gave her a job.  That’s good.”

“Yeah, I got her working for my assistant manager.  Loves her.  She’s on top of everything.”

“Yeah.”

“We could be great friends, Nick.  We fuck the same girls.  Read the same books.”  Henry laughs through the pain sticking his spine.

“Yeah.”

“Too bad we can’t.”

“Too bad we can’t.” 

“Because of her.”

“Because of her.”  Nick’s foot massages the pedal, feeding power to the gun.  The tattoo artist.  Skin to write on.  Needle to write with.  Historian.  Seer. 

This is only the second time he’s recorded an Audrey.  And they’re the same person.  No pattern yet.  What she will become is still a mystery.

“You’re a funny guy, Nick.”

“So you’ve said.  What’s funny this time?”

“Candy.”

“…”

Henry bites down hard, the needle sending sharp painful vibrations the whole length of his spine.  Nick struggles breathing, his body aching tremendous.  The burning swell.  The stinging soreness.  His eye squinting through broken bloated skin.  These scars they will remember.

“Candy, she smells just like her.  Doesn’t she?”  Henry starts to laugh.  Nick digs the needle in deeper fuller strokes; filling in the outline.  Henry withdraws the laugh.  It hurts too much.

“She does.”

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photo3:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/167/372511937_0fdd2acc13.jpg

seventeen- Nick's Audrey

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 with self-esteem.  That’s not fair.  I apologize. 

“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 knows me as Karen.”

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 before Chloe knows I’m gone.  This isn’t real.  This isn’t me.  None of these guys are real either.  Strippers aren’t the only people in a strip club who go by fake names.  Sparkle.  Jade.  Vanessa.  The patrons do it too.  Jake.  Leo.  John.  Only the really lonely guys use their real names.  Something about hearing your name said with such wanting, such importance. 

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

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