1980 : afterparty

“Well, JJ, you look pretty pleased with yourself.” Piper hands me a vodka & seven and leans back against the bar smiling like she knows what happened upstairs. She probably does, the Quarterback is not that good with secrets and besides, you can smell it on me.  Myron closes out my register, ka-ching, almost seven grand tonight.

Tonight, I’m the golden child.

“Yeah. Look at ‘er.” Myron’s on the second count of my money before bagging it up. “One night. One night she brings in money instead of spending the whole, the whole, fucking night snorting coke, sucking down my liquor–my liquor–or creaming over some toothless loser…”

“Howie’s not a loser.”

Piper practically chokes on her drink. She looks up, “But, he is toothless, J.”

It’s true. I can’t argue that fact. He’s sweet, and fun, but there isn’t a single tooth in his mouth. I shrug, and go back to my vodka and seven.

“…creaming over some toothless LOSER and she thinks she’s the fucking queen.” He talks about me like I’m not here. At least he’s not trying to make me cry. That game only gets played when nothing’s going on. Some guys do crossword puzzles or scrape the dirt out from under their fingernails to kill time. Myron tries to make me cry. Some days it works. Some days I just look at him, with his little paunch and tinted avaitors–the posterboy for mid-life crisis and male pattern baldness. The reason he knows this business so well is that he’s a trick at heart, and I’ve got things I can learn from him. So when I can, I let it slide.

“Fuck you, Myron.” From my perch on top of the bar, I reach one leg out and poke him playfully in the belly with my foot. “I did good. I did good, didn’t I Max?” I don’t know why, but I’ve really got a thing for Big Maxie. He’s Jackie Gleason fat. Not adorable Honeymooners Jackie Gleason, but Minnesota Fats Jackie. Cold. Smart. With a face like a big ashy bulldog. Maxie says mean things and has never given me a second look. I’m kinda crazy about him.

“Yeah, you did good JJ. Don’t let it go to your head,“ bouncing his trigger finger against my temple. “You pull like this every night, then you got something. This,” he waves his hand around, ala Ralph Kramden, “was luck.”

“You’re sweet on me, ain’tcha Maxie.” I smile, take a drag off my cigarette and lay down stretching out on the bar, a satisfied kitten.

He slides a beefy hand from the middle of my back down to my ass, gives it a fast and painful spank and shoves me off the bar.

“Hey!” I hit the floor, ass first – thankful this once for my ample ass padding, cigarette still in hand. He smiles at me over the bar, turns and walks upstairs to make sure everyone has cleared out of VIP.

Maxie likes me. He’s like an eight year old boy pulling pigtails.

“So’d you suck his dick, JJ?”

“Shit Myron, don’t be an idiot. Suck his dick. Jeez. Me and Carrie up there, if anyone was gonna suck his dick, who’d you think it’d be?”

“So, the answer is yes, you did suck his dick.”

“Fuck off, Myron.”

The upstairs hallway is littered with dancers and floor girls sprawled across the floor waiting for the payout, waiting to go home. I step over a few on my way to the bathroom to change out of my sticky bar clothes. Bridget is applying yet another layer of a thick federal penitentiary orange lipstick that matches her hair. The smears and stains on her hands and around her mouth reveal just how much work her mouth has done  tonight.

“Your hands, Bridge,” I point, reminding her to wash them. Bridget’s blowjobs are second only to Carrie’s, but Bridget’s are more, well, hands on. She says they can’t tell in the dark, that friction is friction and skin is skin and as long as everything is warm, wet and firm and there’s a mouth on one end it doesn’t matter if there’s a hand in the middle. Everyone goes home happy and she doesn’t have to deal with the whole gag reflex thing. That’s Bridget’s secret. I don’t know Carrie’s. Well, to be truthful, I guess I know a little bit more now than I did when the night started.

Piper, still pristine in her white leotard and ever present Newport,  her hair still perfect, sits on the sink. Leaning against the mirror, she crosses one leg discreetly over the other and looks me up and down. I smooth down my skirt and check myself; lavender grey button down rayon blouse, matching knee length wool cigarette skirt, stockings and low-heeled grey pumps. If I’m wearing a straight office chick’s clothes, I can pass for a regular broad out in the world.

“I don’t know J, I’m not saying you are, but you still look like a whore to me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that mind you, but now you just look like a whore who mugged a straight broad for her clothes.” She hops off the vanity, tosses her cigarette into the toilet and flounces out the door. I look at myself again.  She’s right. Fuck. She’s always right. No matter how much I clean up the outsides, my insides keep oozing through.  I unbutton enough to expose my cleavage, reach in and rearrange my boobs for full effect, toss the pumps in the garbage in favor of my spikes, add another layer of lipstick and mascara, and head down the stairs.

It’s almost five a.m. by the time we settle onto the Brasserie’s red leather banquettes and start ordering– shrimp cocktail, pâté de foie gras, Perrier-Jouet, steaks. Me, Myron, Piper, Big Maxie, and Little Maxie - you’d think we hadn’t eaten for a week. The Quarterback and Nicky Fireplug broke off somewhere. I think the Fireplug’s got a wife somewhere in Queens. It’s almost dawn and the Brasserie isn’t full or even technically open, but men in dark suits and darker pasts drink cognac and smoke thick cigars alongside flawlessly dressed women in thin heels and flamboyant creatures of the night–

–each one of us getting rid of the money as fast as we made it.

courtesy scott fraser

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Posted December 17, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, dirty money, partners in crime, Times Square. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.