Drowning Tucson (7 page)

The pirate theme inside the bar amused most of the soldiers. They often talked before and after PT about the grand finale each night, when the entire bar lit up with swirling blue spotlights and the whole cast of dancers reappeared in mermaid outfits, flopping around the stage, touching each other while the men lifted their drinks and swayed and sang yo, ho, ho, and a bottle o’ rum. When they finished, the lights came up and the men scurried out the door to meet their girls or to find a piece out on Miracle Mile.

But it was still early in the evening, and Manny was happy. Instead of sitting at his desk all day and then returning home to his wife, he was doing exactly what he heard most other men on the base talking about every Monday when they came to work smelling vaguely of alcohol and bragging about bagging yet another female from off-post. He fit in here, where all the men in the area hung out—bikers, lawyers, military men, bankers, teachers, politicians—men of all rank and stature. At that moment they were men together, all wanting the same thing—a piece of Desire. But when her set was finished, she was forgotten and they shouted and cheered for Peaches, a waifish blonde girl in a sheer pink teddy who came out with a pacifier on a cord around her neck and a baby doll under her arm, and the men slapped their foreheads and said goddam look at THAT piece, and after more drinks they got up the nerve to yell at Peaches instead of each other, will you marry my boy over here? he’s cryin over yo sweet ass, and they ordered more rounds of drinks from the waitresses and slapped them on their asses, asking can you hook us up with Peaches? does she have a boyfriend? until they were quieted by Peaches removing her teddy and twirling it over her head, using it to wipe the brass pole, which she promptly wrapped her legs around.

After the initial shock of her angelic nude body wore off, they resumed talking to one another about gettin an eightball cause I’m jonesin and maybe a sack of weed since our next piss test aint for five more weeks.
Manny ignored their comments, even though they were soldiers of lesser rank and he could get them discharged if all their talk was true, but that’s what MPs are for. He was glad to be around them, happy knowing that each of them was dying to get off, happier still that the few soldiers who noticed him acknowledged him with a nod. Occasionally, while Manny looked for a waitress to order a drink or checked his watch, he sneaked glances at the men in their Dockers or uniform slacks. He looked at the bulging muscles of the bikers, sweaty and covered in hair and tattoos, wondering at the firmness of so many years of alcohol packed into a dense loaf beneath their white T-shirts. He nudged the man next to him with his elbow and said man, I’d throw a couple kids up in her gut. The other guy laughed, shaking his head, and said man, that’s some fucked-up shit, but she is fine, and they laughed some more and slapped hands. When Peaches came closer to them, Manny grabbed a five-dollar bill from his wallet, holding it out for Peaches, who took it and placed it between his lips. She pushed his drink out of the way and sat on the edge of the stage, rubbing her tits in his face, smashing them together between her fists to grab the bill from his mouth. She shoved her crotch in his face and rubbed it on his nose and she smelled like flowers and vanilla beans and better than any woman he had ever smelled. He smiled, yeah, I’m the man, the main man around here. He felt everyone’s eyes on him—the jealousy, the sex—and he was content to think damn, that Peaches digs me. Then Peaches left.

Girl after girl came—Hope and Ambrosia and Rose and Deidra and Satin—each one testing the limits of the audience, pretending not to notice the urgency in the air but knowing that every man in the place would give a leg, would run a microwave at full power right next to his mother’s pacemaker, would lick the pope’s ass for even ten minutes alone with one of them. The music played on. The lights flashed. The smell grew stronger, almost unbearable for Manny, who was flinging bills onto the stage and yelling yeah, just give me a kiss, and the girls came up and smiled, sometimes sitting in front of him and rubbing themselves for a second, pretending that he, Manny Torres, was the reason they were there that night, as if the sole purpose for their existence was to give Manny a show and make sure he approved of them and their bodies and
the way they did their hair and their clothes. Then they would move on to the next man waving money and give him the same treatment. But the time spent with each man grew shorter as men pressed their way to the stage, tripping over one another, slobbering, slurring out words of love, offering everything they were worth—their rank, their money, their very lives—to the women who moaned and made faces and slapped their asses, sending ripples of sex down their thighs, damn if they aint having orgasms right there on the stage, and licking their fingers.

Manny noticed Vinnie had finally moved away from the other men to order a drink. He waved at Vinnie and pointed to the seat open beside him. Vinnie walked over and extended his hand to Manny, who said I’m going to see if we can get one of these girls to give us a couch dance, unaware Vinnie had been considering whether or not to leave. He brushed the seat off and sat down beside Manny, thinking that’s awfully nice of the captain, but I make plenty of money. I don’t really need or want a lap dance from some slut in here. Why’s he being so pushy? He beckoned to a waitress and asked her for two beers. Like a gentleman. No ass slapping. No crude jokes. Hey, thanks for the offer, Captain. You don’t have to do this.

It’s my pleasure, Vinnie. And call me Manny. Help me pick one of these ladies out. Manny scooted his chair a little closer to Vinnie, admiring the smell of his cologne, and they pointed at various dancers until they decided Hope was good enough. After waving her down, they got up and went to the back room, where dancers sat next to their clients or on their laps, sometimes kissing them on the neck or teasing them by rubbing their crotches on their legs or, if they were lucky, on their hands or faces, all the time not allowing the men to touch them back. The clients, desperate and bewildered, made proposals, invited the women back to houses they did not own, asked them on dates as if they were the first person to come up with the idea. The jukebox played Parliament, and Hope was taking off her clothes while Manny smiled at her until she turned her back to them and bent forward. While Hope danced in front of the two men, Manny sneaked glances at Vinnie, who looked over and gave him an awkward thumbs-up to show his appreciation. It was fifty well-spent dollars. For Manny, it felt good to share such a
private moment with Vinnie, even though who knows what the guy thinks, at least he’s happy he got a free show.

When the couch dance was over, the two men sat for a couple minutes making small talk. So, how about that chick, huh? She was sweet. He noticed Vinnie kept sitting up slightly, like he was going to leave but was having second thoughts, and each time a feeling of panic stabbed at Manny. Vinnie looked directly at him, then down at the floor, saying she kind of looks like my girl waiting at home for me, minus all those fuckin tattoos. Manny touched him lightly, as if it were an accident, or out of agreement. Yeah, well, that’s better than most women these Air Force guys get. Mine’s not so bad. Vinnie was oblivious, unaware Manny’s hand lingered a second longer on his forearm or his knee than was acceptable. Manny felt this was the place where he should mention his wife, but he didn’t want to. He felt an awkward sense of apprehension about admitting to being married. Not that he was ashamed. That wasn’t it at all. He simply thought that if he mentioned his wife he wouldn’t be able to talk to Vinnie the way he wanted to. His wife was beautiful, and everyone on the base knew her, but the last thing he wanted to do with Vinnie was compare notes on their two women.

Vinnie stood up and thanked Manny, and since there was no reason for them to stay in the couch room any longer, they parted ways, wishing each other a good night, saying I’ll catch you around, and Manny said I’m going to take you up on that Vin, and then he staggered back into the main room of the Loveboat just in time to join in on the chorus of yo, ho, ho, and a bottle o’ rum, while men swayed and crashed into each other, not feeling a thing, numb from the alcohol and happy with how much they had already accomplished, spewing up Jack Black and Coke or shots of tequila mixed with nachos, then wiping their mouths on their sleeves and downing the rest of their drinks with smiles and roars of contentment, each looking to the other for approval.

Amid the chaos of hundreds of drunken maniacs, Manny decided he’d try to convince Vinnie to stay a little longer, but he saw Vinnie was already going out the door, sucked into the night like a wisp of smoke. There was something about talking to Vinnie. The sound of his voice.
The way his Adam’s apple bobbed when he laughed. The way he blushed and his eyes shifted, unable to meet those of the stripper when she sat on his lap.

Manny looked around, desperate to find someone he might be able to talk with over a drink. But the men around him were too drunk, or at least not in the mood for talking. So he looked up at Satin, a girl whose skin upheld her name and caused every man around her to clutch his ballsack for fear of exploding in his pants.

To Manny’s surprise, Satin made eye contact with him and smiled. He wasn’t even holding out money. She made her way toward him, switching her hips to the music, adjusting a bra that was so miniscule it could not even be made into a baby’s sock, and rubbing her middle finger in the creases of fabric between her legs as she came closer. She winked at him while every man within spitting distance followed her movement, reached out to touch her, to sniff the flowery air trailing her, turning in her direction whether they wanted to or not, speechless, though if they had the time they could each come up with exactly the words she needed to hear to quit her job and move in with them, but she walked on faster toward Manny, and a universal awareness settled on every man that Satin had Manny in her sights, and they smirked in unison and said to one another goddam if she aint makin a beeline straight for Cap’m Torres, and snickered and then held their breath as they watched her make her way up to him and whisper in his ear, and he nodded and she grabbed him by the hand and led him out the back door and the bartender yelled, without conviction, time to get the fuck out, boys, while the gettin’s good, and then he turned around and began wiping out glasses that he never used, only served plastic, but he liked to keep a pretty row of crystal on the rack above his head anyway because it made him feel like he was running a real five-star establishment, something that would one day make it into the Tucson Chamber of Commerce pamphlet for places that tourists must see, which is why he dressed every night like he worked at Caesar’s Palace and not the Loveboat, that ungodly eyesore of a ship sitting in the middle of the desert like an absurd mirage, and to make his customers clear out he yelled some more slogans that he had read in the appendix to
The
Bartender’s Bible,
which he studied each night over a glass of seltzer water after he got home and stripped down to his boxer-briefs and flexed a few times in the mirror while fantasizing about becoming the Southwest’s most renowned bartender, the one that people came from miles around to see in action because his name, Chris Tall, was displayed on billboards all along Interstate 10 between Las Cruces and Riverside, but these patrons ignored him, more interested in Satin and the fact that she had nabbed some man and was making her way out with him in tow, and they all followed, silent now, as if the ensuing spectacle was something they could one day tell their grandsons about, and they shuffled in an orderly fashion as if they were out in the field on a drill in rows of two, no longer bumping each other or slobbering, but now intrigued because she had picked out the one man who was not known on the base as a philanderer—an anomaly in the service—and had decided to propose christknowswhat to the lucky bastard, but they all had to see with their own eyes how he would handle the situation, and when Manny walked past a few of them ribbed him good and said tear a chunk out of that ass, Cap’m, and winked or tilted their heads in a manner that promised the utmost confidentiality because what happens at the Boat stays at the Boat, and Manny flushed at the idea of so many men watching him at the same time, and he had to work some sleight-of-hand to tuck his hard-on beneath his starched waistband and adjust his walk in case of the small chance one of the men checked out his ass instead of Satin’s, and he tightened his cheeks, pinching them together for a fraction of a second like a runway model, acutely aware that the men weren’t cheering for
him
but for him to get a piece of Satin, which he supposed would work just the same, because if they were going to see him lay her, they would have to have a good long look at his cock too.

The next thing he knew he was standing behind a dumpster where homeless men slept on cold nights, sometimes forgetting to wake up before the garbage truck came to empty it in the morning. Then the dumpster was gone, pushed away by the throng of deprived men wanting to see him unleash a fury of fuck on the stripper who had probably picked him out of the crowd because he was the only one without a strand of drool as thick as linguine hanging from his lip. She had a point
to prove. But all that was lost in the immense audience that began to chant TOR-RES TOR-RES TOR-RES and all Manny was aware of was their bodies, his and Satin’s, surrounded by a panting brood of men who would not leave until someone had gotten their rocks off. They stabbed the air with their fists and yelled and hooted and laughed and chanted his name, yet he had no idea—what the hell do they want me to do? what does she want to do to me? and when Satin undid his belt and pants, a blast of chilly night air enveloped his body and he felt his nuts shrink up like a walnut shell, which was quickly taken care of by Satin, who dropped to her knees and began pawing at his sack, rooting until he came out of his shell and felt his balls drop like a bag of apples, which made him feel immensely better because I’ll be damned if all these airmen are gonna see an officer with a weak pair.