Grace

It wasn't until Friday – the very last day - that he finally asked me about it.

He caught me on the way out of chapel, said he wanted to know how I was getting along. We made small talk as we walked around to the back of the building, where we sat on some flat rocks by the chimney facade. I finally felt like I was pulling off a believable smile.

"I just want to know why."

The ground beneath gave way, the air was gone from my lungs, but I wrestled my face into the blankest expression I could muster. I avoided eye contact tried to imagine my frozen gaze burning through his counselor's shirt, but his words swiftly pierced a tender, hidden pressure point in my psyche, and the world was hidden behind a curtain of burning tears. I couldn't remember the last time I cried. With what willpower I could muster, I groped the darkness of my frustration for an answer. Not the answer to Jeff's question, but the why it hurt me so much. I'd been asking myself the same question every day, but it never affected me like this.

In chapel earlier, I had listened with all my will, aching with guilt, sore heart tugged everywhere and nowhere. I imagined what it would be like on that final day. I imagined imagining. I wanted to care so badly. I knew two masters. I knew no one could love two masters. I wondered if I could love either one.

I woke Friday morning feeling alright. This was a relief - I'd been tossing and turning hours after my bunkmates drifted off Thursday night. Eventually, my anxious heart found a humble peace from the endless and earnest petitions for forgiveness I made to the God of the Universe. But I knew my reputation would be harder to assuage. God would wipe away the eternal stain of my sin. As Thursday night drifted away, I slowly accepted that I didn't have anywhere to turn for help with the mess I'd made on earth.

I sat with the counselors at lunch Thursday. They smiled a lot, I tried to fit in. Then Steph called something "fruitful", and I lost it. I'm not really sure why that hit me so hard - it was probably the third time I'd heard it that day, but then again it was the only time I'd heard it in a real conversation. Maybe it was just that when these people talked from the heart, they sounded like sermons. But unlike any sermon I'd ever heard, they sounded - real. I felt like I'd never heard something so honest. But when they looked at me, the honesty disappeared. As hard as they tried to look accepting, I couldn't buy it. They didn't hate me, far from it, but I did disappoint them. Three days ago, I'd been earnest, honest, loving, caring, pure, and righteous. But now they didn't see anything but a defiled temple. Something for pitying, and not much else. The sinking feeling that started with their honesty only got worse when they started to play pretend for me. I excused myself from the table and went to my quiet time early, walking to the lightly wooded far side of the lake where I tried to take a short nap. Soon, I was woken by music echoing across the lake, announcing ten minutes until the start of Chapel. I made it just in time to sit in the middle of the kids with poor hygiene and social skills. Before I even realized I wasn't listening to a word of the sermon, I was chastising myself for inattention.

I had woken Thursday morning wanting to put everything behind me, but Wednesday night my muscles ached to be angry. All day long I’d seen eyes averted, heard wordless whispers cut short when I walked near, I knew they all knew, and I knew there was no way to make them understand. I’d lost my best friend and my whole entourage in one stupid act. My heart slowed, my blood pulled out of my biceps, it felt like a slow and willing paralysis. My mind screamed, “FIGHT!! FIGHT!!”, to no avail. I heard nothing but a placid in and out - the breathing of my peers, asleep in the bunks around me ╨ and as my body filled with lead, I yelled all the louder in my head. It didn’t occur to me then, but my body was probably just trying to preserve itself. It knew the only person I really wanted to hurt was myself.

Wednesday afternoon I sat in the pool gazebo across from a small group of girls, thinking some friendly talk would do me some good. At the very least, it would distract me. Whenever I thought of something clever, I’d try to join the conversation, but they wouldn’t acknowledge a word I said. I would have left, but shortly some more boys joined us. It didn’t escape my notice that they sat directly between me and the girls, to the girls’ visible relief. But at least the boys would make eye contact with me every now and then, and laugh at some of my jokes.

After quiet time on the third day, Heather came to me in tears. Mascara dripped pitifully down her face. We walked behind the cabins, facing the athletic field, a place I felt sufficiently private, yet not intimate in the slightest. She was grateful, I imagined, for my selfless thoughtfulness. A dark curl, frizzy from daily swimming and hard water showers, fell past her face. When I tried to hug her, she forcefully pushed me back. Roughly whipping her hair back behind her ear, she still said nothing, but looked at me. We spoke with our eyes,
-I don't even know what to think anymore.
-I know.

We began to talk, but our eyes still said more.

"Don't blame yourself for this."
-Did we really do anything wrong?
"What are you saying? It’s my fault. The only people involved were me and you, and you wouldn’t have –“
"Simon…
-I think I might know.
-You might know what?
"Heather, if it was any other boy-"
"Who cares? It wasn’t, it was you, and me, and..."
-Can I trust you?
-Of course, yes.
"I’m just so mad at myself."
-I love you.
-Please, don't.
"I know."
"I wish I could help you, but I can’t even help myself."
-But I love you.
-How can this be so simple for you?
"I know."

I slumped over toward the ground, away from her.

"We can’t be around each other anymore, not the way we were."
"Yes, yes, we need time apart if we’re going to grow through this."
-Why must I love you?
-Why must you?
"Thank you for talking with me about this."
"Heather, I'm so sorry about this all. I'm so sorry talking is all I can do."
-I must.
-Then why mustn't I?
"That’s not your fault."
-Because one of us has to be mature.

It was at orientation Monday morning that I first saw her, but I didn’t formally meet her until shortly after we moved into our cabins. She was a friend of Esther's from school. I had never been that good friends with Esther, but she wanted everyone to love her, particularly boys, which combined with her uninspiring, undeveloped figure to make an acquaintance supremely approachable. When Esther introduced us Heather parted her lips in a shy smile and slightly arched a tender eyebrow. We restlessly fidgeted on tree stumps circling a blackened fire pit as Esther's imposing social presence conducted us briskly through friendly jokes and small talk. When we stood to go to chapel, I stood up straight, self-consciously filling my whole height, not slumping for the first time that day. She smiled and took my arm, with Esther on her other side, and the three of us skipped across the soccer field together, laughing. Meanwhile I tried to focus all my observational energy on the inches of forearm she brushed against, and tried to hold in my heart the feeling of her light, thin wrist against my awkward, gangly teenage form.

Monday ended with a late night swim. Dancing light from below tinted laughing faces above teenage boys' hairless chests and girls' mandatory modesty t-shirts, almost all of which were white, and by this time transparently clinging to hidden bodies and swimsuits in a most immodest way. The warm water embraced me and teased my longish summer hair as I dove toward her legs. So far I had done little but watch and laugh, but now I was beginning to feel more confident. My hands slipped around her smooth ankles, I heard a muffled giggling scream filter through the water, and I opened my eyes to her blurry, backlit figure crashing backwards away from me, vague showers of white bubbles shooting toward the surface from behind her billowing shirt as a wave of long black hair flipped forward, encircling her face. I surfaced and helped her up, laughing. She fell back a second in a prolonged nervous giggle, still holding my hand. The instant she was on her feet she jerked my hand, and I instinctively fell in and out of a quick friendly hug. Back at a distance and still caught off guard, I hesitated a half second as her green eyes bloomed. As suddenly as our awkward flirtation had begun, we moved on, returning to the safer laughter of old friends and old jokes. The evening ended without interruption, and I found myself awake long after the rest of my cabin, unable to think of anything but that brief glance.

Tuesday morning I woke with an aimless optimism. I hurried past the empty pool to breakfast, past a lonely striped towel draped awkwardly over the back of a disheveled poolside lounger, damp with a cool dew, while the low sun peaked the surrounding hills, its soft morning light heightening the smell of chlorine and sunscreen left open overnight. I jogged up the astroturf steps and pulled open the glass doors of the dining hall to be greeted by the low rumble of cheerful conversation and clinking dishes. I unconsciously scanned the tables and was quickly rewarded with her warm smile and wave. It was going to be a good day. To this day, I have never started a meal with as much excitement as that morning.

I saw her crying in afternoon chapel Tuesday. When it ended, I half-consciously followed her, even though it was quiet time and we were supposed to be alone. Suddenly, she turned around and looked straight at me. Her steady gaze almost brought me to my knees.

"Am I interrupting your quiet time?"
"Oh, no, not at all."
"Ah, Caitlin’s standing over there. Come on, let’s get out of here."

I led her around the chapel to a dented metal door, bits of weathered steel slowly rusting under flaking black primer. It had no handle, but I quickly found a finger grip where the metal was bent away from the frame and pulled the door open. I motioned for her to enter. Conspiratorially, we climbed in single file, the cramped red-carpeted staircase was hardly wide enough for a person. Reaching behind, my clammy hand met hers. The way ahead was lit by the blue sunbursts of her deep green eyes, sparkling past her dark freckles, shadows on the wall flicking back and forth with her bangs. Suddenly, when ducking to clear a fire extinguisher pipe, my hand grazed her breast. A tremor of excitement ran through my body.

"I'm sorry."
"I don’t care, it's just skin and fat."

It wasn't the first time I'd heard her say that, but I'd never understood it, and I definitely never believed she really felt that way. We were sweating silently in the stale backroom air, and breathing short, excited breaths when we reached at the top of the stairs. A small door lay ahead of us.

"What is this?"
"Open it."

I reluctantly let go of her hand. She cautiously opened the door. Her wide eyes shot around the room. They were so beautiful, like I had never even imagined. When she looked back at me, the graceful curve of her gentle eyebrow became the ultimate feminine. I made myself look into the doorway. It was the attic above the chapel. Rickety walkways hung from the roof, visible only through the streaks of dusty air lit by the chapel lights, as bright as sunlight, shooting up from below. Hidden in the darkness, we could see the college volunteers below, talking in muffled voices while they stacked chairs for the evening social. She turned back to me. I must have already turned back to her. I felt a sinking feeling, surrounded by green and blue, with a moving wet feeling across my mouth, and with a start realized she was kissing me. Her grip tightened as I began to kiss her back.

"Were you really sorry?"

She pulled my hand up her shirt. My body rejoiced in a wild freedom beyond understanding. As we began to move in unison, I realized that most of our clothing was gone. I let myself fall away again, until suddenly I felt a more tender kiss. Her lips suddenly broke with mine, her breathing deepened. Those endless blue-green pools sealed shut, and soon mine, I knew nothing but the rhythm. It led, I followed, I followed, it led, and then I was midair, stretching in every direction for solid ground, unable to recall why I hungered.

My eyes opened, and I saw her. Beads of sweat crept across her face. Her makeup was smudged beyond hope. Her hair – half bound, impotent, loose to fate. We looked at each other and laughed silently. And then we heard the door creak open beneath us. Shame fell over us, and before we could realize what we were doing, we were scrambling to cover ourselves and disguise our recent activities. But it was too late. Caitlin walked into the room.

Wednesday I woke with a bizarre energy. Sure, I lost something beyond value, but I discovered something beyond description. Inside me, a war raged between my conflicting emotions - pride and humiliation, ecstasy and horror. I was already losing my concept of myself. I hadn’t even begun to think of what everyone else would think. My slate wiped clean, a small, nervous energy wormed its way through my psyche. It was as if my routine sin had wrought a wonder worthy of a holy mystery. It felt altogether wrong, but in the best way anything had ever felt wrong.
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If You Can't Live For Something...

I remember everything about the first gunfight I ever saw. I remember everything but the names. Too young for names. But I remember everything else.
I was 7 years old, playing with the other kids my age. We took turns pushing each other down because we were boys and that's how boys are meant to play. I pushed Bill down, and he in turn shoved Lowry to the dust, and Lowry pushed Keller into a wall, the wood splintered and Keller started tearing up. So we all pushed Keller again because boys don't cry.
Anyways, we were playing like that when our Ma's came out to run us inside. Well, everyone else's Ma, mine was dead since I was born. But everyone else's Ma's came out in a rush. But I stayed right there, back against the wall, watching as two men yelled across the street for everyone to clear out.
Something about those real gunfighters, you could always tell. Covered in dust all the time, boots worn flat, constant bristle on their jaws. Their guns hung like pieces of themselves, like they were born with a torn up, old holster hanging on their waists. The man closest to me was a gunfighter, the other was just a fighter. Everything about him was too new. He looked like most of him came from the store yesterday. His gun glinted in the noon day sunlight. The gunfighter's gun was bullet gray and didn't bother reflecting anything.
Dust blew through town on a hot wind, blistered your face when it hit you, and these two men staring at each other from 50 feet away. Seemed like five minutes passed just them staring each other down. Up and down the street were women sealing themselves away from the world, closing curtains, locking doors, and men standing out on the street, looking on, and boys looking out from windows on top floors.
Five minutes of this, then it was over like it never even began, only now, a man was dead. A loud bang and the shiny, new man fell to the ground in a lump of twisted bones and skin and blood and dirt. The gunfighter stood, smoke rising from his pistol like a whisper. The men lining the street said nothing, but went to the shiny, new dead man and dragged him to undertaker's to get fitted for his shiny, new box.
Nobody said anything, but I was close enough to the gunfighter to see the ruby red dripping from his lowered hand. If you looked close at his dusty frame, you could see the bullet glinting out of his shoulder. The newest thing on him.
Then Bill and Lowry and Keller came back out and we started pushing each other again, because we were boys.

I'll never forget that day because it's the day I saw and understood what a man is. Looking at that gunfighter, I saw his eyes squinting toward the distance. I saw that he wasn't thinking about dying or about killing, but about standing for something. He had ideals that he kept, and the shiny, new man had stepped on those ideals. People got shot all the time when I was a kid, but rarely did they give themselves the glory of a gunfight. Those are set aside for real fights about real things, not barroom brawls. They were for ideals and fighting for them.
The legendary outlaws from my childhood all fought against something: the unjust law, western expansion, territorialism. They fought with guns and dust, and they knew that they were in the right. They had that confidence so rare.
But now they're all just legends from years past. Billy the Kid was dead, Jesse James, Doc Holliday. All dead. And with them died the idea of man as a man. In my teenage years, western expansion finally took us, and my town was no longer a place for men, but rather a place where smooth-handed bankers could start fresh careers, girlish train station heads see that trains come in on time to take people away from this god-forsaken town and bring in the new type of person, a person whose only possible application of life is behind a desk, writing things down for the person in charge of him. That person in charge incapable of doing even the slightest thing for himself. Never worked a day in his life of real work. A generation raised by over protective women. My town became, by the time I turned 20, the shiny, new pride of Texas.
Our boots were shined, our collars starched. Like we were going off to Sunday school everyday. Disgusting.
I remember when the bank came out and “repossessed” my Dad's farm. This weasly, little man in a vest and glasses, head shiny bald, came out and used that word, and my Dad looked at him dead on and said, “When did you ever possess this land?” It didn't stop anything, the shiny,little man took our land away with a piece of paper and a signature. That's all it takes these days: some scribbles on a dotted line and everything you ever had becomes somebody else's.
This is what those gunfighters were fighting, only back then it was easier because it was happening so slow. You see the shiny, new man and you stop him in his tracks before he can dig himself in and “repossess” anything. You take him before he takes you. But now it's too late, you'd have to kill every man in town to get things back to the old ways. You'd have to burn down all these old houses and buildings to send the message.

22 years old and I take the old holster down off the wall and strap it around my waist. I walk downtown and walk into the bank, grab the bank manager and pull him outside to the middle of the street. I pull out the revolver and level it at him and I hear everyone on the street screaming. Not a real man out here. I speak slow so he can hear me: I want you out of my town.
Of course I'm just saying him, but I'm talking to his ideals. Everything that this little twat symbolizes, everything that has driven truth and justice and dire need out of my town. His uncalloused hands, gold pocket watch glinting in the sun, his weakness. He trembles and tears up and I hit him in the face because boys don't cry.
Then the sheriff walks cautiously out onto the street. Keller. I can see him second guess every step he's taking toward me. Obviously somebody told him he should get out there and do his job, well here he is.
“Hey there, Mickey,” he says to me in a raw stutter. “What are you doing?”
I tell him what I'm doing and he looks at me, not understanding a word. I tell him I'm fighting for the past and for the real justice of the land and for good. And he says, “Well, that's all well and good, Mickey, but why don't you just put down the gun and come with me. We don't want nobody to get hurt now.” This is Keller, all over.
The banker tries to get up and I hit him in the face with my pistol. I look around me and I only see stares that whisper about the crazy man in the street, what kind of lunatic stands against the law? And the world is shit and I'm standing knee deep.
“Just put away the gun, Mickey.” But it's not that easy. If I put the gun down, I've given up and I've lost. And this weasly, little man and baby sheriff will have won and please God, I can't let that happen.
“Do you remember when there were gunfights, Keller?” He nods.
“Did you ever see one?” He says his mother didn't let him. Figures. No one in this town has seen what a man really looks like, what a hero covered in blood and scars from battle really is. To these people, these things are myths and legends, impossibilities. They don't exist.
“These people have to know what a man looks like.” I look at Keller, but my eyes are drawn to a pair of bright blue eyes looking out of a window behind him. The eyes of a little sandy-haired boy, the product of a generation, but those eyes showed his heart and his heart was a boy's heart. His gaze is so familiar to me, like looking through a mirror.
“These people have to see it.” Keller looks on curious, but scared as hell.
I look back at my banker, the yellow stripe on his back glaring through his front. I kick him in the gut and drop a gun for him, tell him to pick it up. He's sobbing. Keller has no idea what's going on. He never did.
I pick the banker up and tell him to walk until I tell him to stop, and if he stops before then, I'll shoot him in the back. If he tries to run, I'll shoot him in the back. If he tries to do anything but what I tell him, I'll shoot him in the back. He walks straight away from me down the street, blinking back tears the whole time. Keller thinks maybe he should stop me, but maybe nothing's going to happen.
“Stop.” The banker stops.
“Turn around.” The banker turns around.
“Now point that gun at me and when I count 3, you fire. If you don't kill me, you're dead.” The banker drops to his knees. “Get up and do it.” I fire a shot in his direction to wake him up, hit a coffee can off a banister. He jumps up and points his shaky pistol somewhere in my direction. Keller's trying to talk some sense into me, but I'm not listening.
“What the hell are you doing, Mickey?”
“1.”
“What are you trying to prove?”
“2.”
“Do you want to die out here?”
“3.”
There's a loud bang and it's all over. Every bullet in town hit me. Both of them, the banker's and Keller's. But as I lay in the street bleeding to death, I catch those blue eyes behind the window, and I know that he knows that he's watching a man die. That if you can't live for something, the best thing for a man to do is die for something. That if you're going to die, you have to die fighting because for a real man, there is no other way. Read more...

The Constant Companion

Writer's block.
I had a friend who used to call it “Writer's Herpes,” because just when you need it least, it'll resurface making it impossible to sell yourself. I thought that was pretty catchy. Clever. So now, these days I say I've got herpes and it's a little inside joke with myself.
I've got herpes, but really I have writer's block. Sores in my mind keeping me from writing anything of any substance down.

I sold a story to some British copycat of the New Yorker when I was 20. It was some short I had written in high school about girls and how if a girl acts like a guy, they're considered “skanky.” My English teacher told me it was insightful, but I was just writing what I knew: I see myself naked in the mirror and revel in the fact that I have boobs, I think about sex so many times a day it's hard to believe I could find time to study, I'm forward and aggressive and I never fit in with other girls. They all called me skanky.
I wrote this down, and it was published in a widely circulated British rag. This is what people want to read these days: the mindless musings of a horny 16 year old American girl in a medium sized town. Nothing special, nothing real, nothing to change the world, just the way my body works. I thought writing was an art, but it's really just pencils, paper, and hormones.

Herpes hits you when you've had too much. The same with writer's block. You're exposed to too much, it all hits you at once and clogs the pipes. You're left staring at blank pieces of paper wondering where all the insight you were planning on spilling on the world has gone and why it's not writing itself down in front of you.
You light a cigarette and look out the window of your 21st floor apartment, paid for by Daddy's money because you were meant for higher things than real work, and you look out at the city that you've become a part of. Assimilated.
In college, English-Literature Bachelor's track, they teach you words to better express yourself, but all they do is – what's the word? Obfuscate? - congeal and coagulate until you can't even find the right words even to say how you feel about a puppy staring up at you. A good vocabulary can make you cynical if used correctly.
They teach you that behind every piece of good writing is the hidden, deeper meaning, that you're supposed to derive, implicit. That writing speaks of the author's psychology. Bad writing, however, speaks of psychology too: the psychology of needing to make money. Needing to see your words in writing to relieve your narcissism. Needing to die, but not having the guts to kill yourself, so you kill off your characters. The one that looks just like you, with her blond hair, long hairless legs, and melancholy demeanor.
Kill her off. Give her cancer from that cigarette. Throw her from the window of her 21st floor apartment. Blow her up. Use your imagination, but just kill her. Then you'll be free.

I was looking at one of the millions of reports that come through my office and find their way to my desk when Charlie Dawn came in with a question. His hair was all sorts of brown and fell over his left eye, lending him a mysterious aura. You could tell that beneath his shirt and tie was a body of pure muscle. And here he was in my office needing my help.
“Yes, Charlie?” I said, setting the report on top of the pile to give him my full attention. I wonder if I was being obvious, if he could tell how badly I needed him, right there, on the desk, right now.
“Ma'am,” he said, always the gentleman, “I need you to confirm...”
“Stop right there and kiss me.”
So he did, and if it wasn't obvious before, it was plain to see now.

My romance novels were all cries for help. The hidden message, behind the writing of what I know women want to read, is me screaming, “I have nothing to say! Why am I still alive, let alone writing for a living?” But if worded correctly, cries for help can pay the bills. I had sold and presold hundreds of Charlie Dawn and the boss stories. Women ate the first few up, fanmail coast-to-coast all saying, “I wish my husband could be like Charlie,” or, “I wish I was as strong a woman as the boss.”
The boss has remained unnamed, but I always write in the first person. I might as well just sub my name throughout the story. Not that it's a memoir, but rather a fictional resignation to be nothing. “As strong a woman as the boss”? The boss whose only business seems to be to fornicate with an underling? It's a miserable existence just writing about her. But this is me: the miserable, herpes-ridden, used up, nothing at the top of the ladder. The reports are fanmail, and I used to give each a brief look over, but now they just pass from one side of the desk to the other, and thence to a dumpster in the back. Thank you, secretary (who is, by the way, a man).

In college, they taught me that every novel is essentially a memoir because it's all about perspective: no one but Joan Didion could have written Play It As It Lies, no one but Ken Kesey could have put down One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The books were reflections of the people, even if it was a fictional story. In a book, you are, “peering into the soul of another person, personified in the main character.” It was all bullshit, but I guess I'm finding out it's all right. Every cheap romantic line I put down was still coming out of my mind, whether I thought it was stupid or not. So now I'm the romance goddess.
I've come such a long way since high school. When I wrote respectable things. So what if they were juvenile and stupid, they were still things. Now I write pages and pages of nothing. I look at the blank pages filled with words and wonder where all my real thoughts went.

Gin and cigarettes taste like cancer.

Writer's block is worse than death because of the very fact that you're still living. You still have to see the world move around you, while you're stuck. Paralyzed.

Convoluted! That's the word I was looking for earlier when I was talking about vocabulary making things worse. It “convolutes” things. All these words and nothing to express with them. If only I knew less, if only it was like high school, where my joy was in the fact that I'm a woman with a sleek and sexy body. If only I were just a body again, instead of a mind. Then something of substance would come to me without me even having to think about it.
But I am thinking about it. I'm thinking about how my typewriter yells at me when I'm drunk. I'm thinking about how stupid women with no selves read my books. I'm thinking about how I can't kill off the character that looks like me, she's locked into a 70 book deal with Random House. Even if I killed myself off, she's still on contract, and I would live on in vile, stupid infamy. Screwing Charlie Dawn on the desk in hundreds of different ways. Screwing my married secretary.

Writer's block is just like herpes. My friend's coinage is apt because, like herpes, it never leaves you alone. Even when it's not technically present, it's still there hiding just beneath the surface, looking for the opportunity of another outbreak.

“Stop right there and kiss me, Charlie.” Being the gentleman, he obliged, and we made love right there.



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A Night's Entertainment

The last time my buddy Charlie was in town, we hit the ATM, cashed our 20's at a gas station, and made our way to a strip joint: this behemoth of sin called Night Trips situated close enough to several colleges that the place was constantly packed with kids our age or a little older looking for a night's entertainment. The parking lot was packed worse than Disneyland when we showed up, but we found a place, paid the cover charge, and made our way to the bar to buy some hand accessories so we didn't look out of place.
There were roughly a thousand poles in this place, each with its own girl circling it, wrapping her legs around it, jumping on it and flipping upside-down, and each of those girls was reflected in the wall of mirrors that surrounded the entire place. It was total Feng-Shui: who knew how large the room actually was or how many people were actually in the place. Each stage was surrounded by people drinking and watching these girls in terribly uncomfortable looking clothing do things I can't do if I tried. I've always been impressed by stripper acrobatics, I have no idea how they do most of it, and all I can think of is how great of a work out pole dancing must be.
Charlie and I head upstairs by the pool tables where, a few feet away in a relatively dark corner of the world, people were getting lap dances. The lack of privacy scared me off: I've never been one for intimate encounters with thousands of people surrounding me (well, at least not with someone I don't really know [well, at least not here, tonight]). We were approached by a sullen and somber version of a woman with deflated breasts and deflated personality and walking like she had a disease inside her somewhere. Not interested, but Charlie's always ready to try new things, so he goes hand-in-hand with her into the darkness, and I'm left alone in the pseudo-blacklight to wonder about things.
See, I don't come here to these places for an erotic time, but for the people. I watch the girls spin round their poles, reflected in mirrors all over so that one girl equals twenty girls, and I watch the people sitting around the stage, eyes glued to some part of a girl's body, mouth slightly gaping. These people cash their paychecks in dollar bills for this kind of thing. I watch as a man approaches the stage with a five or something: the stripper takes it, he wraps his arms behind himself, and she gives him a quick one-on-one show, all the while a stupid, proud grin plastered on his face. She takes his head and holds it between her bare breasts and shakes. I have no idea what this could possibly be doing to the guy, but all the strippers do it to clients like this, even if they have no breasts. Meanwhile, a line of equally stupid-proud looking people was forming behind him, waiting to get their faces smothered in breasts.
But like I said, I come here for the people, not just the gatherers, but the workers too. It's interesting to me that these girls are all just caricatures of people. Sure, the girls are all different, but their nonchalant toplessness, their long legs and slight baby-fat on their stomachs, their generally messed up teeth all add together to make up just a reflection of the person. I wondered what they were like at home, if they just casually walked around naked at their college dorm, if they had boyfriend's who talked like the Fonz. I watch their reflections spin round their poles, their deflated breasts and faces engraved with hints of melancholy, and people kept throwing dollars.
The main attraction was a girl called Tina: for twenty bucks, she would lactate on you. I watched her do it to a guy and I couldn't believe I wasn't in some sort of horrible nightmare. She came to my side and locked eyes with me, squeezed her massive breasts together and beckoned, but again, I'm not interested. I thought about how somewhere she had a child, or maybe it was dead, who knows?
She wasn't really the main attraction for me. My main attraction was a pretty and normal-looking girl walking about with a tray to pick up beers. She wore clothes, and had a feisty look that said, “if one more guy hits on me, or tries to get me to sit on his lap, I'm gonna beat him until he can't stand anymore.” I fell in love immediately. I gave her my empty bottle and helped her collect the ones around the pool table and gave her a look which I hope conveyed my honesty and understanding. She disappeared into the crowd, and Charlie showed back up with his stripper.
“Your turn?” she said to me over the music. I didn't quite hear her so I asked what she said: “Want to dance?” Trying to be funny, I said sure then pushed my butt against her like I was giving her the lap dance. She laughed. Another stripper came up laughing, saying I was pretty good, then she taught me how to do a “bend and snap,” where you crouch down then stand up with your legs first then follow it with your body in such a way that if you have long hair, it flicks behind you. I tried it out and got a quick laugh from the professionals, then they went their way to do their business with people who are interested in a transaction of sorts.
We were both kind of fed up with the place by this point (about 20 minutes in), so we started thinking about leaving. When we saw a guy from our high school, that sealed the deal and we hopped in the car to find something else to do, preferably not another huge, franchise-type strip joint but a small mom-and-pop-type strip joint. We found this place called Boscoe's with an empty dirt parking lot, only a few cars in it. Paid the cover, went in, and this place was better. I love it when the girls aren't just interested in money, but will talk to patrons. We had a quick chat about income with this girl and what her boyfriend thought about her doing this kind of thing. He was the jealous type, which is too bad. Perhaps he should get out of the relationship, I mean, the money at a place like this is too good to pass up. 600-700 a night, generally. She pointed her boyfriend out to us at the bar, we waved and he waved back as congenially as he could muster to these people who were talking to his nude girlfriend.
She said at first he tried to keep her occupied all night, but it cost too much for him, and it was bad business to focus on just one guy night after night. A stripper has to be a kind of showman.
This kind of thing is why I come to these places. I love conversations like this, and there are only a few places to have them...
At 4, we made our way to a hole in the wall breakfast place: the kind where your waitress has existed since the dawn of time, never getting younger, never getting older, asking, “you want some coffee, shuga?”
“No thank you, Ethel. Just want some eggs and toast.”
Her vein-covered arms and droopy cheeks tell a thousand stories, just like the deflated breasts and secret melancholy of the strippers, just like the proud, stupid grin of a client. And they all speak of humanity and life and loneliness and greed and desire and let-downs and pick-ups, and every story is true and, like a reflection of a reflection, very rarely do they ever end or begin. Read more...

A Brief (ie. Long and Drawn Out), Vaguely Racist Transcription of Chinese Food Philosophy

While attending college, I have had the good fortune to be surrounded by delicious Asian cuisine. This is due to the location of my campus: in the heart of the Asian District, completely surrounded by... ASIANS! And it seems like each and every one of them owns their own cheap, hole-in-the-wall restaurant where you can get enough beef fried rice to feed you and all your pets and loved ones for under $4. It's like being in heaven, if instead of a mansion, you got amazing Chinese food.
Anyways, these restaurants always spark my fancy, not only for the scrumptious food, but also for the interesting atmosphere. My favorite Chinese place is called “China House,” and the best thing about it is how much it looks like an old Dairy Queen, with those bright orange, rock hard booths you can only get from the 60's. The silverware is plastic and is located at your table in a large plastic cup (which you may find is also the same cup that Egg Drop Soup comes in). There is so much soy sauce in the room, your kidneys almost roll over and quit as you walk in the door.
The guys behind the counter seemed like pretty friendly guys, one not too much older than me, the other not too much older than him. They helped me get my beef fried rice and Sprite in less than 2 minutes, then I sat alone at one of the booths and ate in silence while they started talking. Here's where my imagination got on a train and left town for a while because they were speaking another language. Possibly Cantonese, Vietnamese, or Chinese, but it really could have been any of the -ese's from that region of the world and I would never know the difference.
Most people in the Midwest don't really like when people speak other languages around them. The sentiment is generally echoed throughout Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas that if you moved to America, “you should learn to speak GOD DAMNED ENGLISH!!!” I completely disagree with this sentiment. After watching countless foreign films and operas, I found that one could generally tell what was being said given three things: context, tone, and facial expression. Sometimes in foreign things, some of these elements are dropped in an effort, as far as I can tell, to make the common American feel like an idiot, which I don't mind. For instance, there's no context in French Surrealism. There's not really anyway to tell tone in the midst of an aria, and sometimes they make happy lyrics go with minor keys to get a reaction, so there's no help there.
Returning to my point, the two guys were speaking in their language which was far from my own. I decided to try to figure out what they were talking about, but I was lacking two of the three necessities: context and facial expression (I was staring at my food to avoid getting caught staring at them). As a result, I was able to supply my own context, and thus my own conversation.
I imagined that they were probably discussing the finer points of moral philosophy or Einstein's Theory of Time-Space, or with the best of luck, they were doing both simultaneously.
“In present times,” one would say, “we can't think of things as black and white, we have to view them as differing shades of gray. Otherwise, we become no better than the Nazis. This is why there's such a fine line between Religious Fundamentalism and Racism. They think that it is their job to tell the difference between the black and the white and that they have to eradicate the black to make way for the white. It's a self-destructive system, but as long as there is 'evil' in the world, they will believe that it is possible to eradicate it, not considering the idea that morality is relative and that what is right depends on the time and place.”
“I just can't agree with relative morality,” the other would retort. “If that's true, then there really is no morality. The gray area is not defined enough to tell whether anything is really right or wrong. For instance, let's say a guy robs from another guy. The robbee would, in turn, kill the robber, as is written in the law. But the robber was only stealing to help his family, in fact, he gave everything he stole to his mother. Is it then necessary for the robbee to kill the robber's mother because she's an accomplice?”
“You make a valid, if irrelevant point. We have no need to dispute intuitive wrongs,” he would say matter of factly as he removed the sweet and sour chicken from the hot oil.
“Intuitive wrongs?”
“Yes, things which one knows instinctively is wrong-”
“You're contradicting yourself. If a person knows instinctively that something is wrong, that means that there is a definite wrong and a definite right, there is no gray.”
“Instinctive contextually.”
“Contextually instinctive?” The debate was getting heated.
“Yes, given a certain set of circumstance, people instinctively know that one choice is right and another wrong. You can see this every day. Let's say you're walking down the street and you bump into a guy, then he turns and shoots you. Contextually, is that morally right? No, obviously not. Now you're walking down the street and you happen to bump into a guy whose mother you just killed, then he turns and shoots you. Contextually right? Yes, I would say so.”
“So to you, morality is on a sort of continuum?” He indicated what he meant by rubbing the side of the Coke machine to demonstrate its smoothness (no lie). “Just a smooth plane that we float from one side to the other? And over here,” he felt up high, “morality is completely different, sometimes opposite of what it is over here?” he felt down low.
“Yeah kind of like that, like how when approaching the speed of light, physical measurements change and even time slows down. It all depends on how you look at it.”
“You are not even going to tell me you believe all of Einstein's crap!” One does not normally go into a Chinese restaurant expecting to hear statements like this.
“Einstein's crap?!”
“Yeah,” he would say as he stirred the Egg Drop Soup, “Einstein was like Popular Science for Idiots. Going faster changes physical measurements, my ass! That's a load of crap! Haven't you heard of Schroedinger's Cat?”
“Yeah, and the problem with Schroedinger's Cat?”
“What?”
“It doesn't prove anything! It's like someone trying to prove that God exists using the logical fallacy, 'prove he doesn't.' It's just stupid.”
“But the point is that it doesn't prove anything, thus knocking a hole in Einstein's theory, even though the pop science junkies couldn't see it...”
At this point, another customer walked in, a moderate sized black woman, but she had feet the size of watermelons crammed into her size 10 shoes. I stared at her feet wondering, “how do you gain weight in just your feet? What kind of foods do that?” I soon realized that I couldn't stop staring; that if she stood there forever, I would stare forever wondering about her gargantuan feet. Instead, she got her box of Chinese that the guys had been making during their conversation and left, and my ears perked up to hear the continuation of the discussion which I was attributing to these guys, which I was adding in at the bottom of the screen like English subtitles to their whatever language, but the younger guy just came over and sat down at a booth across from me.
He said one more thing to the older. I assumed it was him getting his final word in. Something like, “If Einstein was indeed correct in his Theory of Relativity, then I could understand morality being relative, because everything would be relative. However, I don't believe he was correct because I can't make myself believe that time and space and morality and mortality and everything are like some tremendous Fruit-By-The-Foot that stretches and bends and contracts and rips and has funny shapes that don't make any sense. To me that is living in a fantasy world in which everything can be described in variable terms, and the only reason I am able to sit in this booth is because at this moment the booth is deciding to occupy the space beneath me and only that space, when it really could be occupying any space or time. And I can't believe that.”
“There's just no convincing you,” the other would say as he went about his restaurant duties.
Here, I finished my rice and got another soda. “80 cents,” the younger one said, so I gave him a dollar and left him the 20 cents. It was the least I could give for the night's entertainment.
This is the conversation I transcribed for them, and I really wanted to believe that it was true. That in this tiny, runt of the mill Chinese place with burger-joint booths, these somewhat greasy young men were waxing philosophic in a language I couldn't understand. Not like I can't understand Kierkegaard or Hegel, but literally couldn't understand. There was something hidden and exotic about the whole idea, but in all likelihood, they were probably talking about women with ridiculously large feet. Just like I was. I don't know. I can only guess.


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