Skin tight. Not exactly eating pants and all I was thinking about was food.
I took a baby sip of the vodka, unzipped and took a grown up sip. I peed, trying for a little bit of extra room. I hate peeing when I’m drinking. I paid for the booze, I want to hang on to it, to keep it inside doing its dirtywork as long as possible. It’s mine, mine, mine, mine–even when someone else is paying. But, sometimes, like it or not, I have to pee.
Doug was on the pay phone when I came out. I pirouetted once or twice through the crowd for audience reaction–pimps are notorious appreciators of a good pirouette–landing in front of him just as he hung up.
“Now? Dinner…?”
“We gonna get Donna Rose first, she’s coming with us, you don’t mind, right little girl?”
I stomped an imaginary foot. “Ack! Stop that.“ Smiling, he threw his arm around my waist, lifted me off the ground and spun me around planting a soft kiss on my cheek. “I don’t give a shit who comes, I’m starved. I’m ready to pass out.”
I did mind, though. Donna Rose was a dancer and from the first day we hadn’t spoken outside of what was absolutely necessary. She acted like she was better than me, that’s why I didn’t like her. I had no idea why she didn’t like me. When the Caddy pulled away from Guys for the second time that day, I was in the back seat, alone. Donna Rose rode shotgun next to Lightfoot. I’d been replaced by the pretty girl. I was not liking her just a little bit more than before.
When I was little the pretty one was my mom. I was never pretty enough. I was never going to be. That shit makes me go just a teensy bit blind, like a blackout without the fun of the booze or a long slow motion blink. It feels like a split second, but I close my eyes in one place and when I open them again, everything’s changed and I have no idea what happened between then and now.
I blinked while we were still in the Porkpie. Then again when I found myself in the back seat. When I finished, we were somewhere in Jersey, some highway, some anonymous roadside motel. Lightfoot had the car door open and was helping me out of the backseat. I hadn’t been paying attention. I was busy being hungry, angry, tired. Busy feeling sorry for myself. In other words, I blinked. I’d lost entire days that way.
“Look, it’s getting late. I’ma get you a room, little one. You sleep here, safe and sound. We’ll have all day tomorrow. Then I take you home’n make sure your old man ain’t hanging around. Make sure no one can bother you.”
“So, wait. What? What happened to dinner? I gotta eat.” It was dark for the second time since I ate last. Thirty-six hours since I’d put something other than vodka and Newports in my stomach. I hate menthols. “Take me home, Doug. Take me back to the city, anyplace. I’ll find my own way. I’m so fucking tired.”
Radio Rover 2007
“You’ll go upstairs. Donna lives a few minutes from here.”
She sat in the front seat, still wearing her sunglasses even though it’d gotten dark. Smoking. Not looking at me, like I’d never even existed.
Doug kept talking and moving me along. “I’ll drop her off and be right back for you. We’ll get a big dinner. Steak, lobster, anything at all my girl wants. We can bring it back to the room if you want.”
We were halfway up the stairs before I even noticed. Blink. I was so tired. He unlocked the door. Double bed, color TV, fake oil painting, stiff white towels and a single glass wrapped in wax paper, coarse carpet and that whiff of mildew. Not the Bates Motel, but not the Waldorf either. The picture window overlooked the parking lot, the highway and a diner across the street. All I saw was Donna looking up as she flicked her cigarette out the window of the Caddy.
“If you need anything, Lockey - you remember Lockey? He’s right next door, just knock on the wall.” Lightfoot tossed my dance bag down on the bed–I’d forgotten I had that with me–and flipped the TV on.
Come and knock on our door / We’ve been waiting for you
Where the kisses are hers and hers and his / Three’s company too.
Irony is usually lost on me.
“Twenty minutes. Thirty tops. Relax, freshen up and I’ll be back before you know it.” Doug bent down and kissed me on the lips.
I stood in the middle of room watching as he closed the door behind him. Watched through the window as he got back in the Caddy. Watched as they pulled out of the parking lot.
I had no idea who Lockey was. I had no idea where I was.
This entry was written by , posted on September 14, 2009 at 9:18 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, blink, Guys & Dolls, lonliness, New Jersey, pimps. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
It was still early when I finally got to Guys & Dolls, but I was still late. Once they understood I couldn’t go home with them, my parents tried to drive me to work, but sometimes I know better. I dragged them in for the crazy but they didn’t need to see all of the crazy, they didn’t need to see this place, not even the outside. It could in no way make them feel better about my life.
When I got there Rocco and Lightfoot were the only ones at the bar. Lightfoot came almost every night and every night he was there, we talked. I liked having someone to talk to. Wolf didn’t really talk to me, unless you counted when he spoke Spanish, which I didn’t count since I didn’t understand Spanish. Or when he was telling me how he could kill me, which was not technically a conversation. The dancers were busy with the suckers, the suckers were busy with the dancers and the floor managers are all hustle, hustle, sell, sell. I’m still not a good hustler, I’d rather drink and shoot the shit. I shoot the shit here, with Lightfoot.
Michael Douglas Lightfoot has a business card that says he owns a recording studio. Every pimp has some sort of business card and none of them say “PIMP”. Hookers are interior decorators and models, pimps like the recording industry cachet. It sounds legit if you don’t know better and explains the money, the drugs, the flash, and the lifestyle. I know better, I just don’t always know better.
I don’t know if he fired me for hanging out with Doug (does everyone hate pimps?), for missing half my shift, or because he finally had an excuse. Either way, when I got to work, Rocco let me know that Lightfoot was the only thing waiting for me. Sitting at the bar, handsome as ever in his cowboy hat and alligator boots.
“Asshole.” I stared at Rocco. “You fuckers really get a kick outta firing me don’tcha?”
He swung the door to the street open.
“Okay. Just let me work tonight. I’m busted, Rock, broke. My old man flushed it all down the toilet last night.”
Rocco shook his head, and hand on hip, he leaned against the open door. “Tough life.” He wasn’t smiling. “Go. Take the pimp with you.”
Lightfoot’s Caddy was parked outside, I filled him in as we walked, leaving out anything about my parents. I don’t talk about them to anyone. It’s the only way I can think to keep them safe. I climbed in, taking the lit Newport Doug passed to me. I hate menthols. They all smoke menthols dammit, but I wasn’t in any position to be choosey.
Michael Douglas Lightfoot, wearing his big white Stetson hat and pointy toed alligator boots instead of the usual feathers and rainbow pimp wear. It didn’t make him look anymore like the Indian he claimed to be, or any less like a pimp. He was black to the bone, but it accentuated those Sidney Poitier good looks and he knew it.
“Next move, little girl? Want me to take you home?” He murmured softly as he slipped his key into the ignition.
“Yeah, okay. No. I don’t know. I don’t wanna go home. I don’t wanna be alone. I’m still freaked out. There’s like all these bad vibes bouncing around my house, in my head, like I’m going crazy, Doug. Can’t I just stay with you for a while?”
I flicked my cigarette out the window and looked up at him, giving him my best please take care of me I need someone to take care of me eyes. He was my handsome spade cowboy. I liked that. He had a big white Cadillac convertible to match his big white cowboy hat. He knew the original JJ, JJ Huntsberry, my JJ. I liked that too. It all felt safe.
“Okay, little girl,” he slipped his arm around me and pulled me close. I snuggled into his Ivory soap smell. “You don’t worry now. Lightfoot’ll take care of you tonight.”
“Little girl,” I pouted, fiddling around with the radio till I found an R&B station, more for him than for me, “I really hate that ‘little girl’ thing. You’re not my father.” I tried to sit up, to move back to my side. I felt him smile as he held me tighter, so I snuggled in closer, exhaled and watched the city speed past.
“No, baby girl, not your father,” he whispered into my ear, “but I’m your Daddy. Remember that, girl. Never forget who’s looking out for you.”
Good guys wear white hats. Everybody knows that.
It was all going to be okay. I’d find another job. Lightfoot would take care of everything.
This entry was written by , posted on September 7, 2009 at 10:27 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, family, Guys & Dolls, pimps, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I don’t remember calling my mother, risking their lives by exposing my parents to this crazy man, but honestly, it wasn’t the first time I’d brought real live crazy into their lives.
She remembers being absolutely frantic, racing in from Long Island, running every red light in the hopes of getting stopped by the police, in the hopes the police could fix it all, make the crazy man stop beating her little girl. I picture my dad, knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, silent, stone faced and focused; my mother, small fireworks of nervous energy exploding in the seat next to him, pressing her foot to the floor as if there were a second gas pedal on the passenger side and she could make the car go even faster.
It hadn’t occurred to me to call the police, but somehow by the time we all got back to the apartment on 7th Street, they were there.
He’s still asleep when I come back an hour later with my mother, father and two large uniformed police officers. That’s how I like my cops, bigger than me & on my side. I wait in the living room, prying a dead cockroach out of the blue shag rug with my toe, while they go into the bedroom to wake him. Their voices are muffled by the walls & the city noises that slip in through the cracked windows. His voice is muffled by the blue serge of their uniforms & the thickness of their bodies as they hustle him past me, past the holes he punched in the wall when he missed my face, past the bathroom where he flushed my money down the toilet. But his voice echoes off the cold tile & dirty marble of the hallway where the dump him confused, naked & very angry. The smaller of the two large blue men, huge in his own right, grabs a pair of jeans from the back of a chair.
“His?”
I nod & hand him Wolf’s black Chinese slippers as well. The cop tosses them into the hall, smiling as he watches Red Wolf climb into the jeans. Yelling, cursing in Spanish, then begging and threatening in English, Wolf leaves the building, bare-chested and broke. The cops stay while I gather the rest of his clothes & the offending Bible, everything he brought with him. Everything except the rug and the tv. I’m keeping those. Wolf stands across the street watching, shooting me the evil eye as they dump everything he owns on the stoop and start to leave.
“Hey, wait up,” catching up to them at the front door, “I’m going with you to file charges. I want the son-of a bitch locked up.” Two blank Irishy cop faces stare down at me. “What? I want him locked up. He tried to kill me.”
The smaller one is staring down at his shoe now. The other one focuses somewhere over my shoulder.
“You’re not bruised, not enough,” he says to his highly polished black lace up, “It’s a waste of time to do the paperwork.” He looks up, not directly at me, but sideways.
“A waste of fuckin’ time? Not enough bruises? Are you fucking kidding me? Do I hafta wait until he breaks my fucking arm? Or my neck? Would you find the time to do the paperwork if he had killed me? I mean, come on here…god-dammit.”
“She’s upset,” my mother apologizes to the short cop, to both of them. Touching my arm to calm me down, “He’s gone. You’ll stay at the house, in your old room. I’ll make stuffed cabbage.”
Stuffed Cabbage. Chicken Soup. Brisket. Chocolate Pudding. It’s the way she says ‘I love you’. But my old room is my father’s office now. Some parents keep their kids rooms like museum exhibits the last day they lived there. Mine got turned over the minute I left. She doesn’t like me cursing at the police, it’s not the way I was raised. But then my life isn’t going exactly the way she had planned, not even a little bit. I’d completely forgotten they were there.
“There’d have to be more bruises than you got,” the big cop one says. “Sorry, but it’d be thrown right out. No witnesses, nothing broken, no case. Sorry, but I’d get the locks changed if I was you.” He glances across the street, but Wolf is gone.
I watch them walk out of the building and think I know where not to go next time I need help.
“Come, we’ll pack a few things and…,” my mother steps up next to me, so close I can feel the warmth of her body and get a little whiff of Jean Nate. Her everyday summer scent. I smell her sweat too, a little bitter, tangy even. Nervous sweat.
The cops couldn’t look at me.
I can’t look at my father. I know she blames him for a lot of my mess, him and his wild stories.
I can’t look at my mother. I can’t handle her fear.
I can barely manage my own.
It’s not right, what I do, dragging them into the mess of my life.
“I gotta go to work, Ma.” I don’t tell them he took all my money. I don’t tell them we had sex last night. I don’t tell them I miss him even though I’m scared.
I tell them to go home.
This entry was written by , posted on September 3, 2009 at 6:37 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village, family, Guys & Dolls, lonliness, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Loving me makes him weak.
I’m not stronger than Wolf, and Lord knows he’s got crazy on his side, but I don’t love him anymore, so I’m stronger than I was when I walked through the door, stronger than when he hit me the first time today. Stronger than when I let him convince me to throw Nada out of the house, when he first started with the washcloths and the crazy. I don’t love him anymore, so I’m stronger.
I believe he loves me and I believe that is my only weapon.
I throw myself into creating the Sarah Bernhardt of asthma attacks, hyperventilating huge loud wheezing noises.
The hitting stops.
Maybe he’s exhausted, or sobering up, or maybe we’ve just reached the end of today’s regularly scheduled programming, the Messianic Crazy Hour. Or just maybe a year of community college acting classes weren’t a total waste of time and he’s afraid I’m going to die.
I didn’t realize how much I want to live. I’ve been ready to die since I’m 15 years old and now, faced with an earlier than scheduled departure, I’ll be goddamned if I’m going anywhere.
He stops fighting & cradles me in his lap, rocking me as I wheeze, shake & tremble, whispering into my ear, “I could’ve killed you, I still can. I love you, but I can still kill you.” I can hardly hear him, the ringing in that ear is still loud, but his breath is damp & sour on my cheek, his arms, cold with sweat, stick to my skin.
I’m counting on that love. I stay curled in his arms, slowly letting my breathing appear normal, rocking & planning…
He pulls me into the loft bed, laying down behind me. Even now, our bodies fit perfectly. He strokes my hair, finger combing the curls, tucking a stray wisp behind my good ear, comforting me, he whispers, “I can kill you right now, but I love you. I can kill you in your sleep if I want to.”
He nudges my legs apart, entering me from behind, sliding in smoothly. I’m wet. I hate to say it, but I am. He croons softly “I love you, but I can kill you anytime” over and over as he makes love to me. Our bodies, utter perfection, my cunt made for this, for him, made for each other even in the insanity, until finally he comes inside me and falls asleep.
I stay awake in his arms all night. Staring at the back alley through the bars on the window. Motionless
I wonder about the baby I think I’m carrying, his baby. Our baby.
He’s still sleeping the next morning as I pad into the bathroom, shower & appraise the damage. I find a few new painful spots as I scrub myself. I want the smell of him off of me. The scalding water beats down on my scalp, tender from being dragged by the hair, running in streams off my nose, the tips of my breasts, down my stomach, between my legs, any place he’s been, any place he’s touched. I want to burn him off of me.
He’s sleeping still, as I let myself drip dry. Let the little bit of June that makes it through the air shaft caress me, tend my wounds, purify me. Extra makeup erases last night. Carefully, layering foundation, cover up, blush, eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, & finally lipstick–a recipe that starts our nightly battles. My eyes are red & puffy, but my head is clear & my hearing is back. I listen to the whoosh and hum of his breathing in the bed above me.
He did not die in his sleep.
I’ll pray harder next time.
Super Girl not Supergirl by Dominic Marco
I’m pulling work clothes out of the large wooden dresser, mine since I was too small to open the heavy draws by myself. My mother’d spent hours painting it with perfect strawberry red curlicues and trim. These aren’t the outfits she’d had in mind. This isn’t what she’d planned for me. This isn’t even what I had planned for me…fuck, I’m going to be late for work.
Fleshtoned tights first, then black fishnet pantyhose, followed by a shiny red Lycra halter body suit. Tight, it hugs my body and keeps my breasts skyward. Platform high heeled sandals. I look like Supergirl on the stroll. I wish I felt that powerful. I throw on a wraparound cotton skirt, grab my dance bag: makeup, there’s enough change from the bottom of my purse for subway fare, brushes, combs, date book, phone book, pens, a knife, keys, sunglasses, contact lens solution, toothbrush, deodorant, everything I need to leave the house for an indeterminate period of time.
I grab my stuff, close the door quietly after me & head uptown. On the way to the subway, I stop at a payphone. “Mom? Mommy? It’s me….”
This entry was written by , posted on August 30, 2009 at 10:54 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village, Guys & Dolls, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Arms fly from every direction. Someone is screaming. Someone is growling, barking. A rabid animal. My brain shuts down, the floor drops away, time freezes.
There is only Wolf, who has lost his mind, running at me, throwing punches. There are only fists and anger. And me. Crouched in a corner on the metal cot that is was Nada’s bed. I don’t remember jumping up here. Where the fuck is Nada? He wouldn’t be like this if there were witnesses. He’d be sweet, he’d be singing if she was here.
I was an idiot to throw her out.
Nada Tokay, if you can hear me, I fucked up.
I fucked up.
I really fucked up.
He towers over me, one hand holding the Holy Bible, the other a fist. Frantic twists of red hair crawl out from beneath the beret, sweatpaste themselves to his face. In the eye I can see, the one without the patch? No one is there.
“The Devil’s got your soul. I will save you,” he proclaims. I can’t take my eyes off the Bible, sweet Jesus, here it comes, he swings it at me like a bat. Whack.
Direct hit. Right side. Cheekbone, eye, ear.
“What the fuck? Wolf? What the fuck are you doing?” Whack.
Direct hit. Same side.
Sirens scream in my right ear, so loud I can’t hear him on that side anymore. I watch his lips move, afraid to expose the other side, the other ear.
“I’ll save your soul,” he whispers close to my face. “Satan’s in you, you whore. I can cast him out. I can make you free.” Louder now, he stands erect again, it’s building, “I am your Savior, I am your Redemption.”
There’s a crash of cymbals.
He swings again.
This time I dodge.
He’s quicker most of the time, most of his punches will find their mark, but twice he misses & ends up punching the wall behind me. It’s brick, his knuckles are bruised, bleeding. He doesn’t feel it. We’re way past drunk, we’re in the neighborhood of insane now.
Think. Think dammit.
Whack.
I curl into a ball, protecting my soft and tenders.
Wolf hits me with the Bible, again. And again. And again.
He tells me he loves me, again. And again. And again.
He says he’ll free me from Satan even if he has to kill me to do it.
That’s how much he loves me is, he says.
If he doesn’t kill me, I’ll cut his throat while he sleeps, I think to myself.
“Devil money” he mumbles pulling out handfuls of tens & twenties from my bag. He marches to the bathroom with all the money I have, all we have in the world, and flushes four hundred dollars down the toilet. Two months rent.
I don’t feel anything.
That’s not true, I hate him. But I’m past pain and fear.
There are only his fists, that Bible and me.
There’s only me and my need to survive long enough to kill him.
“These belong to the Devil, too.” Wolf picks up my grandmother’s kitchen shears, the ones I use for cutting through chicken bones, & holds it up to my credit cards.
I can make more money.
My bruises will heal.
Keep your fucking hands off my plastic.
I throw myself at him, grabbing at the credit cards & the chicken shears.
He said he loved me enough to kill me.
He said he loved me.
This entry was written by , posted on August 27, 2009 at 12:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, dirty money, East Village, Guys & Dolls, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Guys & Dolls isn’t at all like the old Mardi Gras, except for the naked girls, the champagne hustle and the wise-guy wannabe manager.
The Mardi Gras had Times Square written all over it. It was three stages of glitter, mirrors, lights & glamour. It was Ringling Bros & Barnum and Bailey - a three ring circus complete with costumes, stars and trained animal acts.
Guys & Dolls is more like the Beatty Cole circus. One small tent, a lot of in-breeding and just the one fly in the buttermilk. There’s only Lightfoot.
Like the old school Chinese restaurants, G&D has a small front bar, but all the action is in the back. I work the front bar. Behind me there’s an oversized round dining table type stage surrounded by chairs. Dinner. Family style.
When the girls do floor work (and now, watching it daily & having it occasionally, I know what Ralphie had wanted of me…) you’re close enough to know who shaves & who needs to. A thick red carpet covers the floor, the stairs, & the stage and despite the non-stop pounding dance music, it gives the club a soft menstrual quietness. In a style known as Early Guido, everything is flecked with gold–the flocked wallpaper, the marbling through mirrors, the banister of the spiral staircase…
The stairs get you to the “VIP lounge”. Well, the stairs & an $80 bottle.
The lounge is just a large room divided by thick velvet curtains and even more mirrors. Each section has a small couch (velour), a potted fern (fake) & a platform (small) meant to be a private stage. There’s an odd garage dampness and the odor of mildew & Jovan Musk.
There’s another scent, it’s subtle. The johns don’t notice it, but I do. Sweat layered over the Kiwi paste wax the Port Authority shine boys use. It’s the smell of the floor managers. I can smell Rocco’s spotters between the curtains & behind the two way mirrors. They make sure nothing really happens in the lounge, that nothing more than the champagne cork gets popped. Occasionally, a girl manages a quick handjob, if the money’s right, but mostly it’s all smoke & mirrors on premises until the time runs out - off premises, that’s another story.
But here, a guy goes upstairs with girl & a hard on, he returns fifteen minutes later with the same erection and he tries again. Sometimes with the same girl, sometimes with someone new. They act like it’s some kind of lottery or slot machine and they’re hoping to hit three cherries. Suckers buy lottery tickets and play the numbers. Suckers buy bottles of champagne, they live in an yin yang of hope & denial.
Leave ‘em wanting more, sell up or move on…
Wolf hates my job, but, really, I’m having a pretty good time. I make money off bottles bought for me (Okay, I don’t get a LOT of bottles– there are other much more naked, pretty girls around, girls like Toni Rose. Toni is a cross between My Little Pony and Twiggy, with her big eyes, long legs, little boy haircut and phenomenal tits. Another chick dances with a boa constrictor, putting its whole head in her mouth. I can’t compete with that kind of action. But it does happen.) & what’s in my cash register, tips, salary & whatever extra I can “find”. I kinda enjoy the endless stream of porno especially when the porn star’s in the house. Then it’s like being at a pep rally with all the hooting and cheering and go, go, go, ’til he gets to the money shot. It feel like home movies.
It feels like family.
I’m getting better at “finding” money. Generally anyone here who’s not a dancer, manager or pimp is money. Boyfriends, you never can tell. Some are on to the game, some are in a cash flow based “relationship”. Those guys are someone’s personal bank account. They’re also off limits.
General sitting at the bar dopey, lonely suckers are a free for all. Anyone can take a stab at what’s in their pockets : hustling drinks, taking tips, getting bottles or just reach out and take what you want. When a guy is drinking booze, watching titty, booty & poontang & trying to figure out how to get his hands on any of it, he’s pretty focused. If his mind’s on someone else’s panties, getting into his pockets is usually pretty easy. If he does notice, I slide over to his crotch as if that was where I was headed anyway, smile sweetly and what I hope is seductively.
I’m just giving him permission to believe what he already wants to believe.
Don’t look at me like that. It’s not just me, the dancers at my bar are doing the same thing. If I catch them, we split it in exchange for me not ratting them out management. Management would take it all. You know that they would.
Everything about this is chilly except Red Wolf’s attitude.
I could quit if he’d get a job. I tell him that.
I wouldn‘t quit though.
I don’t tell him that.
This entry was written by , posted on August 19, 2009 at 10:55 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, dirty money, Guys & Dolls, pimps. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
There are some decisions I’ve made, actions that’ve changed the arc of my life entirely. At the time they seem like just so much nothing. I threw Nada out of the apartment in the middle of the night. It wasn’t even a blip on my radar.
We fit like puzzle pieces when we make love. I feel loved, finally, when we make love. Afterwards, when he’s fallen asleep, I sneak out of the loft bed and go sleep on the couch.
I can’t sleep in the same bed with my husband.
My husband. Red Wolf. We exchanged rings a month ago. Turquoise, coral & nickle, a American Indian design, of course. They were two for five dollars. I paid for them, also of course.
He doesn’t have a job, my husband, Red Wolf. American Indian, by way of Puerto Rico, by way of Williamsburg, via Washington Square Park. There might’ve been one once or maybe we’d just talked about money before he moved in, I could’ve sworn someone mentioned it, but even though there isn’t one now, he does his best to help furnish my our little apartment on East 7th Street. It needs all the help it can get. He hung the bamboo shades we I bought at Azuma. He’s brought home a blue shag area rug for the living room, stereo speakers, a shelving unit and a small TV. I’m not sure where any of it came from. I mean, none of it is new…
I do have a job. The summer’s over, film school was, well, just more school and so I’m working again. Guys & Dolls is no where near the glamfest that Robbie’s Mardi Gras was. Instead of glitter & sequins, everything is red. The rug, the circular stage, the walls. It’s like being inside a giant menstruating vagina, if that vagina had a bar & non-stop porn on screens everywhere you look. The manager, Rocco, is a slicker, meaner carbon copy of Ralph.
Wolf hates me working in topless bars, he just doesn’t hate it enough to get an actual job himself. He hates that I wear so much makeup to work. He scrubs my face with a washcloth when I get home. I don’t need gilding, he says to me in Spanish. He knows I don’t speak Spanish.
Dame una cerveza. ¿Tienes menudo?
Gimme a beer. Spare change?
That’s the extent of my Spanish.
He talks to me a lot in Spanish. I mostly nod and smile.
If he catches me in public wearing makeup, at the park, he dunks my head in the fountain and smears it all off with his hands. I don’t meet him in the park anymore after work.
He was probably lying when he told me about him and Nada, that she fucked him while I was at work. Fucking Polack bitch.
Nada hooked up with Red’s brother, Brown Wolf, so he moved in with us too. And the kids from the park, every night, a different mass of runaway bodies sleeping on the living room floor. It was just too many people for one apartment.
I know she didn’t fuck him. Now, that a few days have passed, I know it. I feel bad I threw them all out in the middle of the night, bad about all the screaming too. Nada, Brown Wolf, all those kids. But it was too much. Too many people…and I was so tired. Working at the bar, trying to earn money and take care of a home. Trying to be someone’s wife. I don’t know anything about being a wife. With all those people in the apartment, I was stuck in the same bed with him after we had sex.
I can’t sleep with someone in the bed. Not even Wolf.
I’m just so damned tired.
And now, it’s just the two of us.
Me. And my crazy husband.
That’s what he wanted all along.
We fit like puzzle pieces.
Afterwards, I sleep alone on the couch.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it’s not very useful.
Nada Tokay, if you can hear me, I fucked up. I really fucked up.
This entry was written by , posted on August 16, 2009 at 10:10 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, East Village, Guys & Dolls, lonliness, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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