I’ve been gone. I’m sorry. I’d tell you where I’ve been, if I knew.
I’d like nothing more than to know where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I’d like to pull my brain out through my ear, pop it in the VCR, sit on the couch with you, a vodka and a bowl of popcorn and see what happened; see the things my brain is busy blocking out. Or maybe it’s the vodka that blocks it all out. There is no way of knowing.
“The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.” The movie in my head that we’re watching has been edited by a monkey, but not that Shakespeare monkey. I have a shit-tossing, public masturbating, screaming howler monkey. He’s collected random outtakes found on a barroom floors across the city. Blasts of dialogue. Seconds of music. Bits of light. Sound and vision run sideways, backwards, not at all, skipping, skipping, skipping. Some things look familiar. A flash of a foot, cut to a hand holding a glass of vodka - it could be mine, there is no way of knowing. Jump to nothing, nothing, nothing, an unidentifiable horizon. Pan to darkness, nighttime, maybe the lights are just off. Maybe none of it’s real. Maybe all of it is. There is no way of knowing.
I never talked about the Big Man again, I know that. I never report him to the police.
Police don’t take care of people like us. We take care of us. Except when we don’t, and then you’re on your own.
I was on my own, I knew that, too.
Remember and know are different animals.
I know I was born. My mother remembers it.
Here’s what I know: You can’t see the bruises and burns for the welts my own body has created. From my collarbone to my pubic bone, and every inch of skin in between, I’m covered with hives. My face has cracked open. My cheeks, my scalp, my eyelids, even the tender skin under my eyes, dried and cracked like a desert floor.
Here’s what I know: Rape is trauma. If it happens to you, you should see a professional, you should see several. Police officer. Registered Nurse. Social worker. Trained counselor. Trusted clergy. Medical doctor. Lawyers. Therapist. Psychiatrist. Maybe a support group.
I consulted a dermatologist who said I’d developed an allergy to commercial soap. I never use soap on my face again. Ever.
Here’s what I remember: Being raped did not affect me at all.
Thirteen years and 100 men later I will finally take another man into the same bed I was raped in. Although I will not notice it at the time, he will be look exactly like the Big Man. It will take me weeks to make the connection, despite the fact that the next morning my body is covered in hives.
Two years after that I will write about that night for the very first time. And once again, my body will be covered with hives.
Twenty-nine years after the fact, just the thought of writing about that night will send me into a depression that will swallow Thanksgiving and everything in its sway until some time around St. Patrick’s Day.
But that’s the future, none of that has happened yet. Today, like a shark, I move forward because there is no other choice. I leave the Lollipop and think, I’m going to start over, make a fresh start, a new life. I’m fine, I just need a job. And a cocktail.
This entry was written by , posted on March 11, 2010 at 3:25 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1982, Lollipop Lounge, Paul's Mardi Gras, rape, the abyss, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
It’s 3AM and the Lollipop is empty, except for a few regulars. Everyone’s feeling good and it’s like this morning never happened. Piper’s sitting up on the bar, chain smoking Newports and laughing about something Chief’s saying; Myron’s in the back with a new dancer who believes him when he says he can make her a star, and me and Max are huddled across the bar trading insults. It’s what passes for flirting between us and I’m so into this game, I didn’t notice the Big Man come in; I don’t even know he’s in the bar until I hear the tap tap tapping of his diamond pinkie ring on the bar.
“Amaretto sour”, he says and smiles directly at me.
Everything stops, frozen. Then the floor falls away. White noise floods in, fills my ears. I’m deaf. I can’t hear the jukebox, the conversations. People are moving again, their lips move but I don’t hear anything.
This morning, as he was leaving, he told me that he loved me, that he’d never really hurt me, that he’d be there, watching over me for the rest of my life. That’s what I hear. Over and over. “I ain’t going anyplace, baby. I’ll be watching you, for the rest of your life.”
Everyone is far away. I am trapped in the wrong end of a telescope. Trapped in the silence. In the white noise. In the rest of my life. I’m trapped.
I don’t know where I am.
It’s not real.
He’s not really here.
He wouldn’t.
I can’t.
“I told you I can’t stay away from you, you’re my girl. ” He reaches out, stroking my face with the back of his hand. I step back, staring. I still cannot find my voice. “How ’bout that drink, now?” The Big Man smiles as he pulls out a cigarette, tamps it lightly on the bar. “Gimme a light, girl.”
I smell singed hair. I smell burnt flesh.
I grab a bottle of vodka and just walk away. I don’t say anything, don’t make eye contact, not with anyone, but I see him in the mirrors. There are mirrors everywhere, on every wall. I cannot not see him. He’s spun around, arms stretched out on either side of him, resting on the bar, leaning back. He owns everything.
For this minute, at least, he owns every piece of me.
My vodka keeps me safe, it is my vaccine, it is my shield, it is my bullet proof vest. My vodka is my body guard, my sword, my rosary.
“You’re mine now, girl,” he says from his spot at the bar. His voice reverberates off the narrow walls of the staircase, surrounding me, smothering me.
Vodka is my armor, I shall not be in want.
I reach the bottom step, crack open the bottle and crawl inside.
It guides me downstairs to the basement, it restores my soul.
Curled up on the cold cement floor next to the lockers, I try to listen to the muffled voices and footsteps from upstairs. The vodka helps stop the shaking, the little epileptic like spasms.
and I shall dwell in the house of the Vodka.
forever.
Half the bottle is gone by the time Piper sits down on the floor next to me and takes a swig. Big Maxie stands in the shadows on the wooden staircase watching both of us.
He loves us. I know he does, in his own way. We’re his A-Team, his moneymakers. He just stands in the shadows and watches.
“Is he still here, Piper?” I hand her the bottle.
“He’s gone. Maxie 86′d him for a couple of weeks.” She takes a swig and passes it back. “What happened J? Did he do this to you?”
~~~~~
You know, you don’t think this kind of thing happens to girls like you. This kind of thing happens to stupid girls, new girls, young girls, girls with no…affliation. Not you.
You have Huntsberry. You have the Ice Man. You have affiliations. He’d showed you where his baby daughter lived. You’d met his friends. Everyone had seen you out together. So when you said he could sleep on your couch instead of driving back to Jersey, you thought you were being nice.
You tell how you woke up when he was already halfway up in the loft bed. You don’t mention how you and your mom get matching robes for Christmas every year and he was wearing the red robe you got last year, the one with the hood. How seeing him in that robe made everything seem okay and not okay at the same time.
You tell how you right away figure he’s too big to fight off, too big to kill with the skinning knife you keep wedged between the mattress and the wall ever since you threw Red Wolf out. You say how you thought he would just fuck you and leave and that that was better than him beating you senseless, then fucking you and leaving. You remember thinking you need to get a bigger knife, a thicker blade.
You tell how you couldn’t breath with his weight on top of you. How you lay in bed after, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of him dressing, calling his baby daughter, getting his things together, getting ready to leave. You lay there staring at the ceiling, listening and waiting for the sound of the door closing behind him.
Then he starts yelling about the diamond pinkie ring you stole, he drags you out of bed. You know you didn’t steal anything and you thought he’d leave, but he isn’t. He isn’t leaving. He isn’t leaving without the ring he says, his girls sold good pussy to pay for that ring, he says, good pussy and your pussy ain’t shit, bitch and throws you against the wall.
You don’t remember getting dressed up. Or when he tied your wrists and ankles with the mens neckties you had hanging on the ladder to the loft, each one a romantic souvenir of some man whose name you’ve forgotten.
You tell how he shoved his fist in your ass looking for his ring, how he made you shit and piss in front of him, dragging you from room to room because your ankles were tied together so you couldn’t walk, couldn’t run away.
You tell about the cigarettes, the smell of burning flesh; the lit matches flicked at your hair, the smell of singed hair.
You tell how it went on for hour after hour. Two hours, three, four, more than that. It went on until it was over. You tell how the ring was in his cigarette case the whole time, how it was all a game, a turn out.
You tell how he untied you, kissed you gently on the lips, told you he loved you and left.
You don’t say anything about how even after he was gone and the door was closed you couldn’t move, couldn’t get up to lock the door after him and even if you could, what was the point, really? You don’t say if you cried or not, cause what’s the point, really?
You simply polish off the last of that bottle of vodka and say “That’s what I get for trusting someone.”
“That’s what you get for hanging around with niggers” Maxie mumbles as he turns, walks up the stairs and leaves the two of you on the floor.
It was the last time any one of us mentioned it.
This entry was written by , posted on February 14, 2010 at 11:50 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, dirty boys, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime, pimps, rape, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
“Jesus, JJ. What the hell…?” Piper flips her hair away from her face and drags me into the light for a better look at my face.
“I’m fine, Pipes. Forget it.” I just want to get behind the bar, to get a drink, to work, to forget this happened.
“What? Are you crazy? J, you should really have someone look at that. What happened, baby? Does it hurt bad? Sit. I’ma make you a drink…Maxie said you had an accident?”
“Maxie says, this ain’t a freakin’ tea party. That’s what Maxie says.” How a big man like Max slips in and out of a room unnoticed is beyond me. But he does. You never notice him come in, and you never see him leave. “Behind the bar, both of youse.”
“Max,” Piper cracks a fresh bottle of Smirnoff for me and flashes her best St. Louis smile for him, “just let her sit for a minute. I can handle everything for a while. Don’t I always get you every last dollar and send ‘em to the bank for more?” She giggles at him, pushes a rocks glass full of vodka in front of me and heads towards the back room. She touches my hair as she passes, just a brief touch, a second, and for that one single second, I think, I’m safe now, and then it’s gone.
Maxie slides onto the stool next to me and looks at my empty glass. I’d swallowed it in one gulp.
“Here, kid. Ya look worse’n usual. You could use another.” He pushes the bottle towards me. I can always use another, I think. “Now, spill it,” he says.
I pour my own drink, skip the ice, and look up slowly into those watery Bassett hound eyes. I wish he could just make me his, look after me, protect me, make it all go away.
“What’re you my boyfriend now, Max? My father? What? Leave me alone, OK?” Finishing my cocktail in one swallow again, I get up to go behind the bar, still holding that bottle of vodka in my other hand. My bottle of vodka. The only thing that’s making me feel safe at the moment, my vodka.
Max grabs my free arm and pulls me towards him. “You want me to be your daddy? You’d like that wouldn’t you? Not that I give a shit,” I can feel his belly press against me, his stubble tearing at my cheek, his voice rumbles about my face and ears. “But tell me, who hit ya?” He pops bar nuts into his mouth and waits for my answer.
“Nobody, Max. I told you, I fell is all. It was an accident. Lemme go, you’re hurting me. You’re gonna leave a bruise. I gotta set up the bar.”
“I’m gonna leave a bruise? Take a look at yourself.” He flicks his head in the direction of the mirror behind the bar, but he doesn’t let go. “Do ya know the guy?”
“It was an accident.”
“Do I know the guy?”
“An accident Max, it’s nothin’.”
“Fine,” pushing me away, “You wanna protect some piece’a shit, then maybe you asked for it. Maybe you got what you deserved.” He spits on the floor and walks into the back room, still popping nuts into his mouth.
What could I say? How could I explain any of it? I invited him in. I’d offered to let him sleep on the couch. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought I was untouchable. Safe. I thought I had Nigger JJ on my side. I thought I had the Ice Man. I thought we were friends. I thought…
Glad to be alone and busy, I start setting up the bar.
Idiot work for an idiot girl.
I fill the tiny champagne bottles with ginger ale, screw the tops back on and tuck a new bottle of Smirnoff away under my cash register. I was sure Myron watered down the booze. Piper thought so, too. We set aside a fresh bottle every night. Tonight I wanted one all to myself.
“Take a look at yourself,” he’d said.
I don’t do that, look at myself. Not my whole self. Just the bits and pieces I absolutely have to. One eye at a time, or just my mouth. But I don’t ever look at my whole face in a mirror.
“Take a look at yourself,” he’d said.
I look up into the mirrored wall opposite the bar, behind the tiny platform the girls danced on. I see my reflection standing behind the bar, my body from the waist up, but I can’t see my head at all. I am the headless barmaid.
The clinking of quarters in the jukebox brings me out of my reverie. Customers. It’s Showtime.
This entry was written by , posted on February 8, 2010 at 6:47 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, drinking, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
flickr photo courtesy of nasrulekram
“J? I know it’s early, but…”
9 AM. I’d only just crawled into the loft bed when the phone rang; I was still playing solitaire, obsessively. I play three games, every night. I have to win, or lose, three in a row before I’m allowed to sleep. I was so wired even if I could get the cards to work right…but Laurie? She was never up this early, or this late, depending on which side of life you’re looking at it from.
“What’s wrong Lo?”
“Your friend. The guy…from last night? His car wouldn’t start, he said. He just wanted to use the phone. I thought, I thought you were still with him, out in the car… but you’re home. And, and he’s here…and… waiting for the tow truck, I guess, and I know it’s…I thought you could come back and…
“Lo? Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
“Scared?
“No. Maybe..yes.”
“Sit tight, I’m on my way. Say whatever you think you need to say to make him happy. He’s crazy Lo, you understand? Crazy. But, he’s just fucking with your head. He’ll leave with me, so, really, no worries, okay? He’s watching you talk on the phone with me, isn’t he?”
“Uh huh.”
Every time we go out, me and the Big Man, we stop at the diner on Eighth Ave, across from Piper’s building and around the corner from Possible 20. P20 is supposed to be a jazz joint, but it’s really just one more pimp bar. Piper’s building is crawling with pimps, too. My neighborhood has junkies, hers has got a pimp infestation. A pimpfestation. Anyway, the Big Man gets me broiled lobster with melted butter and a baked potato. To go.
Piper doesn’t want him in her apartment, P20 closes at 4am and he won’t let me eat in the car.
My girls worked hard to pay for this car, he says. You can’t be disrespecting them with that fish stank, spilling butter on my leather. Lots of good ass got sold to pay for that white leather and not a dollar’a that come from you.
So, I wait till we get to 366 or Harry Brooklyn’s or some other afterhours where I sit in a dark corner and eat lobster with my hands while he sits at the poker table.
We never just stay at the diner and eat like regular people.
366 is around the corner from Laurie’s apartment. I thought, just once, it would be nice to not eat in the dark. And she always has wine. We did line after line of the Big Man’s coke, washing it down with wine stolen from the Italian restaurant where she worked.
I meant to be generous, to pay her back for taking care of me. That’s what I meant to do. But once again, I’d brought crazy into Lola’s house. She had no business getting involved with Havasha. Lola was strictly a good girl. She was strictly Long Island Jewish. She didn’t know what to do with a crazy man, what to do when they turned on you. H fractured her cheekbone. You’d think she’d of learned after that, that my boys were out of her league. She should not be allowing them any one of them into her house if they weren’t with me.
Havasha’s crazy couldn’t hold a candle to the Big Man’s.
I was at her door before she could hang up the phone.
The door is unlocked. He’s sitting in a chair across from her; quietly crushing cigarettes into the bare skin of his chest and watching her reaction. One after another. He lights one, takes a few puffs, staring at her, then grinds it into the festering sore in the center of his chest.
His name was Michael and Sammy and JJ. He had other names, I couldn’t know them all, didn’t know if any were real. He was a big man, about six five and somewhere between 280 and 300 lbs. Maybe not. Maybe he’s just grown in my memories.
But he was big and I shoulda seen it coming.
Just another pimp doing just another pimp job. In the antiseptic halls of my intellect I know he didn’t have the right. But deep inside, in the darkness that hides my heart and soul, I know they were right.
I got what I deserved.
This entry was written by , posted on February 2, 2010 at 12:38 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, Chelsea, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime, pimps, whores. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
…………… (a little mood music)…
“Hurry up,” he grumbles counting the money in my register, “Two Shoes is waiting.” I shake my generous butt at Myron and smile over my shoulder as I flounce out of the bar and into the back room.
Piper and Carl are sprawled across one of the loveseats. The Lollipop “private lounge” is pitch black except for the high school stoner/head shop black lights. White clothing gleams, dental caps radiate pale blue, lipsticks glow bright orange and hair dye shines with a dull greenish hue, but black things, like Carl, are nearly invisible.
I don’t need to see to know there’s a loaded gun between Carl’s legs. Piper would be stroking it, saying oh baby, it’s so big, it’s so hard, pushing the gun up against the flaccid penis in his pant, the cock that never got hard. Sometimes he’d rub his “cock” over your face or your nipples. It made him harder, he said. He liked for you to stroke his cold metal “cock”, to push your tits up on him, whispering into his ear how big and black and hard he was, how you wanted it inside of you, tearing you apart, pushing, deeper & deeper. He wanted you to do that until the soft piece of flesh inside his pants exploded, leaving a small stain on his dark pants.
Piper & I trade on and off with Carl. He’s a good tipper, easy to work and a vice cop. Carl has the good drugs, all the time.
“Hey Carlos, my man, what up?” I drop down onto the couch besides him. He has a joint in my mouth before my ass hits the cushion.
That meant they were finished. The stain was already there. It was the way it went, part of the ritual, first the cocaine, then the “sex”, then the pot and a coupla drinks.
I don’t really like pot. The better it is, the more I hate the way it makes me feel. But, sometimes doing stuff I don’t like is just easier than saying No.
“Mmm. All the pretty white girls,” he mumbles into my hair, reaching inside my top to fondle my breasts. I take a couple of tokes as my eyes adjust to the darkness, and look down at Carl as he plays with my tits. I hear a sharp metallic click.
“You need help up front J, or you just need a break?” Then, a small quick series of clicks. “Carl, here. Your turn.” Click.
“Myron says we’re going up to Joey’s.” The clicks again. “What the hell is that?”
“Here, baby girl, your turn,” Carl slurs as he places his service revolver in my hand and nestles his face against my chest. “It’s OK - Piper took the bullets.” He holds up a handful of bullets, takes the gun back and puts it up to my neck, wedging it up under my jawbone, pointing up to my brain, the long way. Click.
“One of these days they’re gonna cut you loose on a psych Carl, you know that don’cha? You’re gonna be out on your pension, living in a locked ward, shuffling around in paper happy face slippers, spending your days playing dominos with the wet brains and waiting for the nurses to bring you your meds. You be lucky if you don’t wind up with electro-shock and a bite stick.” I take the bullets away from him with one hand, push the gun away from my neck, grab Piper by the wrist and stand up.
He smiles and lays down on the couch, “But you’ll always love me, won’t I?”
“Always, Carl. You sleep a while now, I’ll send someone back for you later, before your shift is over.”
Piper and I leave Carl to sleep it off and head down the stairs, back into our street clothes. Little Maxie’s taken our place behind the bar. There’s a hundred-dollar bill stuck to his forehead with spit, a stunt usually reserved for the afterhours. It cracked him up, the way the girls reacted to him then. We grab the booze–Black Label and champagne for the boys, Smirnoff for us–and a cab uptown. There’s a party at Joey Two Shoes’. Well, there will be when we get there.
Leaning back, I open my hand. “Pipes? Honey? If you took all the bullets outta the gun, how come I only got five here in my hand? Doesn’t that gun hold six?”
She just bats her eyes at me, tosses her hair over her shoulder and starts to laugh.
“Jee-sus,” I reach over, crack open a bottle of vodka and take a swig, “you’re gonna get me killed one day, Piper, you seriously gonna get me killed. Maybe I’d be better off in a locked ward.”
“Maybe, J, but it’s a helluva ride till then, ain’t it? It’s a helluva ride.”
courtesy of esc.ape
This entry was written by , posted on January 18, 2010 at 11:27 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, dirty boys, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
January 1981
The Butterfly is gone. Myron set up a new place for us called the Lollipop Lounge.
I got into a scene with Piper and Joey Two Shoes. We’re pretty good friends now. Me and Piper, not me and Shoes. He’s a loan shark or something.
Junior moved in, but he’s sleeping on the couch, so I guess we’re not a thing. We did a thing, but we’re not a thing. Piper said he’d been indicted for murder 9 times. He admits to three of them–the indictments, not the murders.
So, that’s who I spend all my time with now. Killers, loan sharks, coke dealers. But mostly well-dressed. The well dressed underbelly.
So, that’s who I am now. High class slime.
February
Mommy came in yesterday - to yell mostly. She thinks this job and this lifestyle are bad for me. I’m sure she’s right, but even when I had a respectable job I was with people she didn’t like in places she worried about. So, nothing’s really changed. Except now I make more money.
February
Mommy wants to know how I see myself in the future. I don’t know. I’m past my expiration date, like a quart of soured milk. Maybe I could marry Louie the Ice Man or someone…
??
May
It’s been months. Past events are starting to fuzz. Details lost. A little unstable. Lots of lonely. Worked 20 days in a row. Some jerk driving me home from one of the Jersey gigs tried to pull into a motel. Hadda jump out. $25 cab ride back to town.
The Big Man stayed at my house. Raped me. Said I stole his ring, but I didn’t. Tied me up and gagged me with pantyhose and neckties anyway. Maxie 86′d him from the Lollipop for two weeks. Two weeks?
Construction on Myron’s after-hours club halted. Sleeping with BooHoos guy, Roman. I think he’s a bookmaker or something.
Phone number changed to unlisted. Contact lenses. Money in the bank. Roaches in the house.
Still drinking.
I want to be left alone with someone else.
To be naturally beautiful when I wake up.
To have 2 days off a week.
There’s a car sitting across from me with a guy watching me and jerking off. I wish they’d all go away.
Rich man
Poor man
Beggar man
Thief
Knights of Decadence
Daze of Grief
Woke up on the couch, the door unbolted. There’s a puddle of water in the center of the floor and a chair in the middle of that. I know who I came home with and that we fucked but after that…who knows? I hate everyone from the Deuce I meet.
Fancy dressers
Smooth talkers
snakes in the grass
sweet kisses
endless praises
just for a simple piece of ass.
The streets seem less and less friendly - or maybe it’s just me.
Same places
different faces
different places
with the same faces
round and round she goes
down and down she goes
nothing changes
and it’s never the same
This entry was written by , posted on January 11, 2010 at 7:35 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, dirty boys, drinking, Lollipop Lounge, lonliness, New Jersey, rape. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The sun sets behind me as we roll onto 46th Street, past guitar stores and half a dozen Brazilian restaurants and bars that make this single block into “Little Brazil.” Routing through my bag, through clothes, makeup, shoes and everything else I drag around everyday, I find my last softly crumpled fiver and hand it to the Paki cabbie. It’s always my last fiver as I roll into work. Doesn’t matter if I worked last night or I’m at the tail end of a five day run. Either way, the cabbie gets the last bill. But, as long as I have enough to get to work, it’s all good.
I pull open the heavy glass door to the hallway. Directly ahead of me, stairs lead to a cute little apartment with a two sets of French doors– one separating the living room and bedroom, the other leading out to the tiny terrace overlooking the Church of St. Mary the Virgin across the street, and Myron’s newest bar, the Lollipop Lounge, below. It’s very sweet and very French and Myron’s been trying to talk me into renting it. I’d save on cab fare, he says. But I’d one flight up from the bar, I think. No more screening calls or calling in ‘home in bed with the flu’ when I’m really home in bed with Mr. Just Got Home from Prison or Mr. On His Way to the Crazyhouse. They’d be knocking on my door all day and night to use the phone or the bed, for a quickie or to crash, using the whole place for making deals, cutting things up. I’d be the goddamned back room.
Nope. I pass. Not even for French doors. Not even for two sets of them.
I ignore the stairs, turning left and pushing open the door to the Lollipop.
I’d expected music loud enough to drown your sorrows, rumbling out of the old style jukebox. But there’s only some general mumbling and subdued laughter, clinking of glasses and ice, shuffling of bar stools and feet. The mediocrity of real life normally drowned out by blaring and repetitive disco beats.
“What the fuck…,” the carpet crunches as I step inside. “Jeez Louise.”
“Nice, right?” Piper laughs, leaning against a train wreck of multicolored plastic rubble and mechanical gizmos. She takes a drag of her Newport and pats what’s left of the jukebox with a perfectly manicured hand. Lights limp and sputter sporadically–yellow, red, blue, and glaring white through the broken plastic. Cracked 45’s and colored shards of thick plastic litter the floor.
It’s bad.
Myron loved his jukebox; I’m genuinely surprised he let this happen. Last time they’d all jumped to her defense, as if she were some fragile Southern belle. It was a sticky summer night in Times Square, one of those nights so hot the garbage starts cooking up into a stink stew. A muscle bound base-head wandered in, his eyes spinning, his body slick with sweat. He wasn’t interested in drinking, or naked women. But he fell in love with the flashing lights of that jukebox. He stood over her, watching her lights flicker and dance, for 20 minutes.
Maybe he was there an hour, I wasn’t paying too much attention. But I remember his arms, thick and strong, and the way he gripped each side of the jukebox firmly, the way you do a woman’s hips when you’re taking her from behind. He had a beautiful prison body, that perfection you get from lots of free time in the yard. After a while, I guess the flashing lights flipped a switch in his brain-stem. He leaned back, still clutching the box. Pushing his pelvis against the jukebox and dropping his head back, he let loose with a howl. It was primitive, boy oh boy, something that came from the very bottom of his beat-up Chuck Taylors. He howled again, curled back in toward the box and proceeded to lift it straight up, every muscle straining. I watched from the bar, waiting for the muscles of his arms to just…pop.
Big Maxie grabbed the wooden baseball bat from behind the bar and walked over slowly, dangling it out of sight just behind his thick leg. He stood with the bat swinging softly behind him like a metronome and talked the kid down, talked him into putting the jukebox tenderly back down on the floor. I know it’s easy to be calm when you’re holding a baseball bat, but if that kid could lift a full size jukebox straight up, there’s no telling what damage he could do to a man, even a bulldog like Big Max. But the basehead put the box down, and him and Maxie talked, drank and smoked a little while Myron sat at the bar, still shelling pistachio nuts and popping them one at a time into his mouth. His eyes’d never left his prized possession as Maxie talked the kid down and you could tell, he’d sit there and watch just the same if Maxie had to bash the kids head open to get him to put the jukebox back down. Myron watched, shelled and popped until the kid was gone, and that’s all that was worth remembering of that night.
So I wondered, what the hell could have happened here? The box was a goner; there was no repairing it, nothing worth saving except maybe a shard of blue plastic for sentimental reasons. It looked like it had been at the bad end of real old-fashioned beat down.
“What the fuck, Pipes?”
“Chief shot it,” she says. I look at her; she shrugs her shoulders and laughs. “I don’t know JJ, he was sitting at the end of the bar same as always, whispering his crazy Chief shit, then he pulls out a pistol and shoots the thing. Bang. Bang. Bang. Three times.” She takes another drag off the Newport. “He said it made a threatening move at ‘im.”
Chief is crazy, but not so’s you could tell by looking at him. Tall and balding, with a dark bushy mustache and glasses, he looks like an accountant. An annoying accountant, but still, he looked harmless. Chief’s brand of crazy was the kind you’d never see coming.
“Piper…?” I turn and hold my hands out, ala Carol Merrill on ‘Let’s Make a Deal’. This was more than three bullets worth of damage.
“Well, Myron & Max were outside, they come running in. Max looks at the box, looks up at Chief, looks at the box, then back at Chief again. Chief’s still standing there with the gun in his hand, he looks at them and says,” Piper starts to giggle, slightly insanely, “JJ, he looks at them and says, ‘It made a threatening move’. Max comes over to the bar, all pissed off, you know how he is, and grabs the bat. ‘It made a move on ya?’ he says. ‘Yeah, it made a move Maxie, I hadda do it, it made a move,’ Chief says. So, they all went after it. They took turns with the bat, Little Maxie’s in there with a car jack. I don’t know where the crowbar came from. Max, Chief, little Max, even Myron. Everybody. Hadda be done I guess – after all JJ,” she shrugs and starts to walk away, “it made the first move.” She laughs, heading behind the bar.
“Shit, I miss all the good stuff,…”
“That’s what you get for going home, J…”
“I’m thinking maybe I move upstairs.” I shake my head. I love this job. You never know what’s going to happen. I mean, really, everyone knows Chief is dangerous, so who’d expect a single unarmed jukebox would be the one that would try and take him out.
I scoot up onto the bar stool next to Chief for my standard pre-shift double Vodka, with just enough Seven-Up for bubbles. I’ll drink through the whole night, but I like one to start the night out right, for luck. The boys are all busy talking, rehashing the fight, who did what to the box, how it got what it deserved, and on and on. Chief leans over. He smells warm, of scotch and cigarettes, his lips soft to my ear, his mustache rough against the curve of my earlobe, “Tickle your ass with a feather,” he whispers.
“What? Say what, Chief?” I turn to my friend, this crazy man, this jukebox killer, and smile.
“I said, ‘How’s the weather?’” He signals for Piper to top off my drink.
The jukebox never should’ve made the first move.
This entry was written by , posted on December 31, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
onlythejodi
