What We Are (42 page)

“Please, young—Sorry, sorry. You don't understand: I'm begging you. You're as close to a sure thing as I'll ever have here. Gimme the leftovers, that's all. Just for half an hour, no longer.”

No wonder he gets fed upon at
SCREW
. His flesh is dripping weakness. But I'm going to go in there with him—
why the fuck not?
—and I'm going to get drunk enough to forget the past, up to a minute ago, and not think about the future, about a minute from now. And if both happen at the same time, even better.

“All right, look. Just stop calling me youngster.”

“You got it!” he shouts, hugging me, I hope for the last time.

I think about the Punjabi “youngster” he'd stolen from at the screw property site. “All right, all right, take it easy.”

“I'm putting in a good word for your two–week eval tomorrow.”

“Whatever,” I say.

He detaches and asks, “Did you drive here?”

“No.”

“Of course you couldn't drive here.” He snickers. He's clowning my car, this coward is actually clowning my car. “I'm just joking.”

“That's right you're joking.” I'll make him pay for that cocky gesture, make him pay for the whole night out.

“Let's go! The ladies are waiting!”

As we're walking toward the establishment in question, my miscreant superior is handing me bathroom mints and generic winter-green gum and half a pocketful of banana-flavored willies with bumps for her pleasure and offering tidbits of sophomoric advice about the shady nuances of the soon-to-be vanquished elderly ladies of the club. I look over and say, “Only a half hour, Chuckie.”

He fires a canister of Old Spice in my face that makes me gag briefly at the base of the steps and says, “Come on, man, it's not mace,” moves up the steps.

I look up through the mist and see the old lobster bouncer smiling down on me in the soft light. I'm close enough to see his arms, shaven like a triathlete, and his teeth, so white they make you squint. It's like he never put anything edible in his mouth. He's glowing with extraterrestrial pizzazz, radioactive.

I nod respectfully at my elder, this sixty-two year old doorman in the muscle shirt about to OD on Viagra.
Be sure to contact your physician if your hard-on lasts for longer than sixty-two years
.

He says, “No hats, man.”

It's an inconceivable directive: I'm not wearing one. My beanie's in my pocket. He's a little nervous with all the horse steroids flowing through his system so I look down at my slippers to give him reprieve. Despite all the investment with the local Vietnamese beautician, his features—close up—still look older than mine. He's wrinkly at the neck and there's a sag in his chest that may get worse during my temporal stay at his establishment. He only has so many more years to stop juniors like me at the door for infractions of fashion.

I pat his shoulder. “Can I go in now?”

“You have a good time, bro,” he says to me, a meaningful nod at Chuckie of the cowboy hat, a patron he obviously recognizes.

The place is one big heartbeat. Chuckie's shouting in my ear, his head bobbing to a growing pulsation, something about the electricity
in the air and that he likes the jam. We get to the bar, which is packed with people, and for just that prompt registry of the miraculous, I'm shocked. That's saying a lot these days. I never thought I'd see a dance floor of quinqua- and septuagenarians freaking to the mating calls of a 50 Cent slam. But there they are, as tangible as time, pushing their hips to the physiological bounds of agility, hands in the air or on each other's (age-appropriate term here)
derrieres
, faces plastered with desire. A separate clique in the corner of the dance floor nearest the bar is shouting in synchronicity to the ghetto beat of 50, “Heyyy! Hoooo! Heyyy! Hooo!”

I close my eyes to try and find peace behind the void of my eyelids: follow my uncle's advice. Perhaps it will work. But I know better: it won't. Can't. The thumping of the rap song and the deep streety mumble of 50 betray me.

At the club—
boom-doom-boom-doom-boom
—at the club.

I am truly tired of myself. The clock has yet to strike midnight. I shake my head out, rattle its contents, open my eyes, reregister with reality, say, “Jesus Christ.”

“Told you! Told you!” shouts Chuckie, tugging on the sleeve of my shirt with naked vigor. He throws his hands in the air. “Heyyyy! Hooo! Heyyyy! Hooo!”

I almost shove him. The gold around his neck is heavy and doesn't move. For some inexplicable reason, I put my index finger in his chest. “I'll have a Guinness!”

“Okay! okay!” he shouts, his hands still thrown up overhead.

I'm a little lost. “And a shot of Stoli!” He nods. “Black currant!” Nods again, waiting for further instruction. I withdraw my index finger, walk into the crowd and, all eyes on me, spot a booth.

I slide in, sit down and scan the floor for my Aunt Lanell. The mystery woman. Unless she's had some major reconstructive surgery—and that is, I suppose, a very real possibility—she's not here. So she got lucky early, like Chinaski said, and is already heading out
to her hook-up's house/apartment/dorm room. The image makes me a little queasy, so I break down the dynamics of the place by gender.

When it comes to the ladies, there are two kinds in this place. The first is white, older, powdery and flat-assed and led by sloped, Catwoman eyebrows, held together in the middle—you can see it faintly—by a tube of girdle, hungry for sex. This would be my Aunt Lanell's category. The second is Southeast Asian or Melanesian, middle-aged women, prim and serious, internationally uppity, tight-figured in svelte black dresses and bodysuits, just slightly gaudy with the jewelry, foreign translations of money-speaking lips. The two enemies are here for the trade: the first pack gives up their wealthy limp-cocked husbands in exchange for the second pack's broke boner-ready boys. Each can deal with the loss. They wouldn't be here otherwise.

And the men, symbiotic to the equation, are either old loner sugar daddies or young horny foreigners—mostly Afghans and Persians—in twos and threes.

You look at something like this and almost feel responsible for the mayhem: so this is just how far the tentacles reach? It goes across the country, over the pond, right through Europe, and into some Ottoman village; or it stretches back across the Pacific and drops into an impoverished Filipino borough. And then it goes backwards, too, suction-cups some lonely baby boomer into the now. These geezers are really victims—
that's what they are
—the sacrificial lambs of sensationalism, white noise, speed, and immediacy. Bling-bling, Rock the Vote, and Microsoft. They've set themselves up like pins to be bowled over by my generation.

Chuckie puts the shot and the beer on the table, and I waste no time. Before I take another breath of air, they're both down into the system, liquid fuel for illusion. I look around at the quick blur, listen
to 50 wind down. The DJ is a young Southeast Asian in a black fade, sunflower shades over his flat head. He's elated, life spilling out his ears. America, America. He mouths his mic, bellows, “Are you weady for the mother of gawd?”

“Yeah!”

“Are you sho'?”

“Yeah!”

“Get on that dance flo', potty people, 'cause it's a holiday up in this place!”

“Yeah!”

The wolves circle. Madonna's techno-squeak filters through the joint—
dunt, dunt, dunt, dunna dunna nunna nunna, dunt, dunt, dunt, “Holiday!
“—as Chuckie, smiling, swaying, shouts, “Want some more juice?”

The loudness of the place puts you right on the brink of ecstasy. I fight the need to shout above the noise—
dunt, dunt, dunt, dunna dunna nunna nunna, dunt, dunt, dunt
—which seems wrong, almost perverse. I grab Chuckie's shoulder hard, dig into the muscle.

“Juice?” he shouts.

I nod.

“The same?”

I nod again.

Chuckie crosses the room in that high school hallway swagger, and heads turn from both packs. I realize something I missed before. I didn't give Chuckie enough credit, but he's a wanted man in the Pheasant, and it isn't just the hat. Marginally young and marginally rich, he transcends the mutually exclusive terms, at least for a night.

We walk through the leering eyes of the ladies. They can spot subservience with or without the afflicted vision, can connect the dots—
Chuckie's his bitch—
and they're right. If I claim it, I can have
any woman I want tonight. The ultimate flattery or the ultimate insult.

I finally disregard personal safety and make eye contact with a lady a couple booths down. Not true: she makes eye contact with me. I can feel her stare for the eternity of seconds. She's twirling an olive on her tongue, nibbling it, enshrining it on the straw of her martini. It's the lady from the lot who smiled at me. Sitting down, she doesn't look all that bad, but who knows what kind of gravitational forces will take over once she stands up.

An eighties song starts into the refrain—
When the walls ... come tumbling down
—good old John Cougar.

She looks like she's in her late fifties, early sixties, but you can't get a clean read on it with all these perfectly positioned, cavernous pockets of shadows. It's like they hired a Hollywood lighting techie as interior decorator, an airbrush for the flesh in the flesh.

Beneath this post-pubescent mating ritual, I see something that disturbs me. I flash back to childhood, Scott Lane Elementary School, Xavier Lumabacoda: he was the nerd on the playground looking for a friend. That look each day scared me into complicity. She has it now: despite her boldness to peek over at me, deep down she's expecting rejection. She knows I can do without her. She's taking the risk that I've been kind to nerds for decades. And she's right: I have been. I'd give Xavier Lumabacoda an ear, at least, if not the heart. I'd indifferently hear him out. But tonight I feel the urge to set something straight in this henhouse.

I lift an eyebrow, kind of half chuckle, look away at the dance floor, chuckle again, look back. As if I were sitting on a throne of gold, a twenty-eight year old emperor of the sun. The transmission hits home. Her facade implodes. She's fragile as a fossil, this woman. What's worse: she stands—
tumbling down
—and walks off to the bathroom.

My liquor sponsor for the evening has moved to the dance floor.
Mid-eighties George Michael kicks in. Or is it Wham!? The sights interfere with my ability to track the pop chronology. A woman in vertically striped spandex is humping Chuckie's leg. He's got his stubby arms over his head, my drinks in his hands. He's on rhythm, keeping up with the crazy beat, his brain sloshing around in the cranial pocket, the big electric sponge for titillation. It's like the cowboy hat's just holding everything in, midwest head dressing for the wound of unfettered hedonism.

She rips off her shirt and—a tribute, no doubt, to modern history—there's the black sports bra,
S.I
. cover shot of Brandi Chastain on her knees at the World Cup, two straps each digging into a shoulder. She wraps the T into a ball and throws it toward the booths, indisputable American victory.

Someone shouts, “Yeah, baby! You go!”

Temptress, invitation: she takes Chuckie's hat and pulls it down low over her brow. Her stomach and back are spilling over fabric and his big, slightly sloped, long-lashed eyes are glazed with desire. He throws me a thumbs-up. I point in the direction of the restrooms. They're right before the exit, and Chuckie panics. This is his place, his cash, and yet he can't freak an old fogie without me. He twirls his partner, steals back his hat, and heaves her off deeper into the crowd like a folk dance. Before I can get past him, he's at my side.

I grab both drinks, take the shot, chug the beer, finally shout the truth: “I can't stand you!”

“Come on, youngster, just stay another hour!”

“Stop calling me youngster!”

“Lighten up! The ladies are waiting!”

“I! .. . Don't! ... Like! . .. You!”

He finally hears me. Guess what? He doesn't care. That's how lonely he is. Guess what? I don't care either. He shouts, “Come on! The ladies are waiting!”

The airwaves zoom into the late-eighties. I hear, “Hammer time!”

“I gotta use the head!”

“All right, youngster! I'll have juice for you when you get back!”

“Do that!”

I sit down on a bench outside the restrooms. Behind me is a dining room of glass tables, the lights off, framed photographs of 1920s New York on the wall. Skyscrapers in black-and-white, team photo of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a shot of Ella Fitzgerald at the NYC Downbeat. So the place doubles as a restaurant during the day, a modest feeding zone in its quieter hours. There are a couple of potted plants guarding the exit, two young ferns whose fronds extend across the double doors, head high. People walk right through without knowing they're being touched by something born of this new millennium. Tickled and blessed by photosynthetic youth. Thinking back on it, I'd ducked into this place like I was entering a haunted house.

My lady friend comes rushing out the bathroom, right through the fronds, and exits the Blue Pheasant. I follow her down the flight of stairs, bound across the lot. I put my hand gently under her elbow and she stops without turning.

I step around, face her, and smile. “Hi.”

We're right there under a kaleidoscope of color, the electric maze. A nightlight from the street accentuates the deep crow's feet under her eyes. She does have beautiful eyes, though, luminous pools of blue and green. I'm waiting for her Blanche DuBois moment, shading her wrinkled face from the trueness of light. She inhales through her nose, the nostrils flaring. I cannot think of what to say except, “Can I get you a drink?”