Stranger Will (30 page)

Terry, familiar with the club, helped us navigate the erections to find an accommodating table in a dark corner. I immediately took to the beer. The others took to the strippers. Within minutes, the opened alcohol had opened their wallets. I’ve never been comfortable at a strip club. I would love to claim otherwise, as I already lack the social prerequisites for manliness—I hate sports and I don’t like steak—but I simply can’t play an adequate pervert. So while the rest of the group bathed in glitter and shame, I drank. And drank. And drank.

Inebriation allows me to remember four specific events: 1) me stealing Doug’s attention away from his own saddled stripper to show him cell phone pictures of my son; 2) the near-empty cooler with only a few bottles floating among remnant ice; 3) me attempting to twist off the cap of a bottle only to injure my hand in a way that wouldn’t become apparent until twenty minutes later when, after being gifted a lap dance, I notice the stripper, spotted with blood like she’d suffered a machete injury whacking her way through our erection jungle. Suddenly, my own hand throbbed. I looked down to find my arm more red than white with a bottle cap shaped slice in the meat of my thumb. For the rest of the night I sat silent, mentally preparing myself for feigned shock and awe should the trail of blood be tracked to my chair.

Or worse, the trail doesn’t lead my way, and the poor stripper gets fired for a faulty tampon. That’s a dialog I’d love to hear when work history inevitably comes up during future job interviews.

Event 4) Terry being cock-ridden while his son looks on without a stripper of his own. Let me not understate the visceral poignancy of this image. They sat adjacent to one-another, Terry just a few gross dry-thrusts from explosion and Nathan, wishing not for a stripper of his own, but for his Nintendo DS.

The next morning, we re-grease our emptied stomachs with a diner breakfast. Mid-meal Terry steps out for a cigarette. I follow. The logic of the previous night escaped me, so I wasn’t going to let the rationale of glitter-dusted father-son bonding go unquestioned.

Seated at wooden bench just outside a window looking into the others, still eating, Terry asks again, “How old is your boy?” I tell him again, three months. He says, “If I can give you one piece of advice, it’s this: do everything you can with him. Go to all of his stupid events and all of his boring games. You won’t want to—in fact you’ll think of every excuse not to do it—but you can’t get those times back. You’ll be tired and pissed at yourself for even having him, but do it anyway. I missed a lot with my boy,” he glances in through the restaurant window at Nathan, who sits quiet with his nose to his cell phone screen, “but I’m making up for it.”

I wanted to prod him to qualify “everything,” but I knew already that our concepts of such wouldn’t mesh well. We’d just argue, and certainly I would then feel compelled to approach Nathan, ask him questions about his interests as a father might, his video games, give him a hug even. But their relationship is not my relationship.

The scar on my hand has since faded, too soft now for a photograph. I take care at every beer bottle, though, taking the few seconds to test the cap’s grip before twisting. Despite Terry’s advice, I will never experience this essay with my son. He can play all the video games he wants. I just hope he’ll play for fun and not to fill a void of my own creation.