It began with the strike of a match on a hot summer afternoon in June of ’85 and ended a month later in a beer fogged glaze in a lonely stripper bar, but in there laid a world of difference. I was young then (no excuse at all, I know) and quite literally insane, attending classes on a crowded urban campus by day and making my way through the ways of flesh by nights lit only by a two faced moon. I knew somewhere in there that there had to be something wrong in all this madness but as to what it was I had absolutely no idea. Rather, I continued on as if it was quite all right, attending lectures in post feminist theory in early morning. Then, hours later, to an antiapartheid rally over sushi and crackers. Followed, as if it were only the rightful order of things, to Lady Godiva’s performance on Queen’s Chapel Road.
And who was this creature, born of night, who enticed me so easily like the once legged reptile in the Garden Of Eden? Well, before you, Dear Reader, go on making wild assumptions as to beauty, class, and charm, let me assure you that this girl was by no means a “lady.” Instead, if you were to peer with me into this lens of her suffering, you would see needle tracked arms and legs, a junkie’s listless eyes, and breasts hung like a child’s from shoulders sagging with despair. This was no radiant beauty. This was no class act. No, here, Friend, was the worm of a Tequila bottle ripe for the bite. I have here no illusions in my simple tale, no little men pulling magic tricks behind the curtain as fairyteller Baum would have it. No, Sir, here is only rock bottom despair from which redemption might only come from dirty streets and a whore’s angry cry. There with, beware my tale.
How our paths met was most simple indeed. I sat there at the stage, nursing that All American Budweiser while she, up above, went through her motions about the May pole as she had done a hundred, no, a thousand, no, gang, let’s make that a million times before, oblivious as usual to my sight. Without question, I was just another guy in the bar watching her performance in life’s mud puddle. But, then again, that may never have changed. Only the opportunity presented itself to be proven by the parties in question. Such has happened ever since Jezebel first presented her skirts to the king, and, no doubt, will continue long after we are gone from this earth. That’s the road we walk on, hard and rocky as it is.
Well, I lit my match for the cigarette (bumming it from the tight skirted waitress as was my wont), lighting it on the brown pad that sidled the pack and sliding the whole thing back in my pocket without giving much more thought to the matter. I lifted my beer bottle and my now lit Kool smoke instanteously to my mouth as if to sample both at the same time when my shirt went up in flames. I had not even bothered to blow the match out before sticking the cinder into my pocket! Flames blew up from my shirt as my beer bottle and cigarette went rolling on the floor. Before I knew it, the waitress and the stripper were both by my side.
“Do you need some help?” the waitress asked while I ripped out the pocket from my shirt, scattering ashes and soot onto the edge of the bar from the heel of my hand.
“Yeah,” I said. “Another beer.”
“Right up,” the still dressed girl replied while the naked one hung from her metal pole, saying, “Cool.” And so it began.
The stripper wrapped a robe of green dragons about herself and joined me on the floor, me with my shirt hanging in rags from my forearms, she with but little else to tell. And so we talked. She discussed life on the streets and in rehab centers while I spoke of classes on campus as if she was just another coed from a dorm across the way (now that she was down from the stage that made all the difference in the world). We drank our beers (complimentary drinks were the order of the day) and spoke of matters large and small, from global politics (hey, girl, dig that Ayatollah!) to our choice of smokes, and pressed our still clothed bodies to one another with the ease of practiced lovers discovering some new road to travel. Afterwards, a hug, a kiss, and a goodbye with the promise to meet again. And again. Hell, as many times as possible. While she was possibly in mind of just another trick, I was after some crazed romance, as if this was just an overgrown little boy’s latest bag of tricks. How quickly we learn.
We met every day after classes and stripping affairs, again discussing things as if nothing was the matter. A whole world of futures unknown appeared before us, from new dances to learn to post modern economics in the world of today’s junkies. We met over drinks paid with ill gotten gains and talked about a life together; dreaming both with lust and puppy dog love intermingled together. Tables for two, please. Always.
I mentioned the possibility of her moving in with me. She did the same and then some. We’d meet outside the bar, tongues dancing as her scarred legs might, and discussed this as if it were the most natural thing to do. Never mind that our two worlds would scarce meet in those rooms, filled as they were with pictures of middle class parents and shelves of tattered paperbacks on Post-Beat literature. Until the day came that a fork appeared in the world and we each walked our separate paths. She, to an early grave. Me, well, back to Momma. And so it goes.
One day, it seems, I stopped in the bar after one too many drinks under my belt already and sat at a table far away from the stage, indifferent to her world and mine. She danced her way through another number and sat before a gentleman three chairs from me who enticed her with his silence. I sat peering at the label on my bottle, reading the ingredients (hops, water), thinking perhaps some answer to my problems lay beneath its surface. She waved me to come sit with her and the well dressed (coat, tie) man who stared straight across thin air to his property. Over and over, she beckoned me to her world and that of what could only be her pimp, her dealer, or an animal of erstwhile persuasion, but there was a wall I could not cross even in the state I was in. The beer foamed in my glass. The sweat misted its way onto my glasses. And the next thing I knew, I was on my feet, the half empty mug behind me, the dusk filling the ruddy sky of the doorway before me, my steps echoing in the streets all around.
Behind me, I could hear some strange ragged voice calling out into the night, “What about us?” But I walked on, rendered whole if only for a moment. Home was still a dream away.
THE END
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