Topless

by D Keith Mano

  present occupation. Here I speak as mediator and surrogate for

  Ethel Wilson, sitting beside her swimming pool. Which is not

  an enormous moral franchise.

  And, of course, The Car is no different from St. Mary Mouldering in Hackensack—women fall in love with the rector.

  Must be the uniform.

  Bubbles is a NUISANCE. And, God, a sweet, lonely, yearning child from—of all places—Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

  She has decided to fall in love with me. Fall, as in avalanche.

  But Bubbles’s passion is so volatile that the whole thing might

  be a parody, for all I know. Can she possibly have contracted

  such a case in two weeks? Is she making fun of me?

  And, on top of it, she’s pregnant. Three women—since I got

  here—have told me, in passing, as a casual remark, that they

  were pregnant. Abortions, apparently, are just as casual. I HATE

  that. I never have liked it. But after the adults-that-be made

  Amanda abort, made her kill my child . . . Okay, I know we

  were young. I know it would’ve ruined my life—deprived me of

  a chance to ruin it again. But NO ONE ever asked me. I was a

  kid, I was a schmuck, I did a bad thing, but I was the FATHER.

  In America they only treat you as a father when they want child

  support. Otherwise, the female machine grindeth or grindeth

  not.

  I wish, at least, that Amanda had brought my child to term

  and put it up for adoption.

  Worse, Bubbles asked me to lend her $250 for the clinic. I

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  don’t believe in abortion, I said. This intrigued her. Everything

  about me intrigues her. I ’m an intriguing man.

  “ You don’t believe in abortion?”

  “ Yes. I don’t. And I run a topless bar. I know. It’s inconsistent. I ’m just made that way. Sorry.”

  “ But, like, what about a women’s right over her body?”

  “ A woman should exercise that right when she gets in bed

  with a man. Women forget about that other right. The right not

  t ’get laid.”

  ‘ ‘But I ’d make a terrible mother. ’ ’

  “ I suppose you would. W ho’s the father?”

  “ Like most things today, you know, it was done by committee. Please, please, please lend me the money. You gave me a lousy booking, and still I came in. I ’m gonna make eighteen

  dollars in tips. And I gave $300 for Rita’s fund. And I ’ll need

  some time off after the D and C. Don’t lend me the money for

  an abortion. Lend it because I ’m m e.” She smiled and caught

  her beauty mark before it hit the floor.

  “ Because you’re you is the problem .”

  “ Then gimme a mercy fuck, huh? Huh?”

  “ I don’t like committee work.”

  “ I ’ll fire the com m ittee.”

  “ No, Bubbles.”

  “ Drive me home at least. A cab’ll cost me eleven dollars and

  with my hair style I ’m a target for trouble. ”

  “ I—” She caught my hesitation.

  “ You do it for Tanya. ”

  “ All right, I ’ll drive you home. But no fooling around.”

  “ Not m e,” she said. “ You know what you remind me of?”

  “ W hat?”

  “ A married man. An unhappily married man. Who doesn’t

  have the guts t ’let go.”

  The unhappily married man line got to me—the Church was

  my child bride. How does the Song of Solomon go? “ Thy navel

  is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like

  a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like

  two young roes that are tw ins.”

  The car ride was worse than a tag-team match. I swear, I

  almost dumped Bubbles on the verge of the Brooklyn-Queens

  Expressway. First she sat in the back.

  “ Why are you doing that?” I asked.

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  “ Because you said ‘no fooling around.’ ”

  “ You take everything to extremes.”

  “ I ’m a kid, whaddya expect?”

  “ I feel like a chauffeur. You can come up front.”

  Wham. 135 pounds of pre-bimbo jackknifes over the seat

  back. From sitting demurely in the rear, Bubbles is now prone

  with her face in my crotch. I pull her up (all this while doing 55

  mph over the Kosciuszko Bridge.) She has a hand on my cock,

  she has a hand up/under my shirt, she is kissing my neck. Nothing will stop her—it’s so extreme, it’s sexless. But ve-ery distracting.

  Finally, I throw her aside and in so doing, break the rearview

  mirror off. Smacked it with the back of my hand and—oh—I

  had a July Fourth of pain. This sobers Bubbles up at last.

  “ I ’m sorry,” she says.

  “ Don’t. Just don’t .”

  “ I ’m hurting my chances with you.”

  “ Not really. You never had a chance.”

  “ Oh,” she said.

  Silence.

  “ What’re you thinking?” I ask.

  “ Gee, these Lincolns sure are made cheap.”

  Then, from annoyance, my mind flipped into amazement and

  fear. This child lives in one of the worst parts of Brooklyn. All

  black. Empty lots. Gutted buildings. Half the windows in her

  tenement were boarded over. And, on the stoop, there sat seven

  or eight black men smoking dope.

  “ You live here?”

  “ It’s cheap. I have, you know, expenses.”

  “ Cheap? Aren’t you afraid of getting raped?”

  “ I was raped the first day I moved in. Long as you don’t hurt

  my face, I said. I made them laugh. Two of them. It was good

  sex. Now they protect me from the others. I have a way with

  people.”

  “ I ’ll walk you in,” I said.

  “ Okay,” she said. But she didn’t need my protection. Her

  great, cordial, open, foolish, feminine manner is a shield. “ Hi,

  boys,” she said. I nodded (I was scared green—I don’t have a

  great, cordial, foolish manner.)

  “ Hi, Cherry [her real name]—want a hit?”

  “ Not now. This is my pimp,” she said.

  “ White pimp don’t give you no benefits,” someone said. But

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  it was good-natured. (Though I didn’t like the way they mentally

  undressed my car.)

  Bubbles’s room—her one, 10x12 room (toilet down the

  hall)—could make you cry. Wall and ceiling, it’s papered with

  rock star posters. Maybe a hundred of them. She has a mattress,

  she has a chair. She has six or seven items of clothing. The

  telephone lay tom out of the wall. She has a tiny, old-fashioned

  record player that must have come from the room of her adolescence—if ever Bubbles had such a commonplace thing as an adolescence. She has a TV and VCR. She has a box of cookies.

  She has cat food for her kitten, Roadie. She has a sink with two

  dishes, one knife, one fork, one spoon.

  She has nothing much.

  Lord Jesus Christ—I don’t know these people. They are wild

  strangers in my sight. I would pray for their needs, but I have

  no idea what they want.

  MONDAY, JULY 4

  Went to a doubleheader at the Stadium—and screw Ethel. Had

  to get my mind off Tony, Rita and The Car. (Pearl said, Go

  ahead, you deserve it, I wo
n’t tell her.) Yanks lost 6-3, 6 - 1 . . .

  dreary. But what a pleasure to get out in the sun. And to see,

  again, that cavernous blue place.

  How I wanted to be a ballplayer: drifting back under a deep

  fly against high clouds on a summer day. Makes me want to

  sing the national anthem. How uncomplicated a life, compared

  to the profession I have chosen. (Yeah, yeah, until you’re 38 and

  you can’t get around on a 90-mile-an-hour fastball, and the crowd

  boos, and you start free-basing. The grass is always greener in

  center field.)

  But the evening was hell. One argument, one confrontation

  after another. And it hasn’t been easy booking 12 dancers for

  Pearl’s party. Bubbles, for sure, gets a slot. (And, after what I

  saw last night, a regular Friday or Saturday.) But a lot of my

  regular dancers don’t care for die odds. That is: 11 to 1. They

  know I can’t triple the crowd without breaking fire laws. Maybe

  I can double it. But I ’m tripling my supply of women—which

  means tipping will probably be off a third. I may have to offer

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  bonuses. Or prime bookings. This has become a point of honor

  for Pearl: she considers herself an institution on Northern Boulevard. And, God knows, she is useful: the afternoon crowd, old stage door Johnny types, are loyal to her. It’s rather Old World-ish and romantic, with “ Fuck you!” thrown in. Of course, she

  also pours one free shot for every three her regulars pay for,

  which custom generates very large tips. Everyone’s got a scam.

  At 8 p.m. this accountant-looking guy bolts in. Wire-rim

  glasses, bald. And—well, we print up these match pads. Our

  address is on them. A slogan, TOPS IN TOPLESS. And our

  LOGO—a railroad car with smoke coming out of it. Also, on

  die reverse, a photo of an attractive nude model. Our accountant

  friend screams that SHE! (pointing to Raven, a young and cynical barmaid, who would dance if she weren’t flat-chested as Gumby), that SHE! put match pads in all his pockets because

  SHE! was rude and he didn’t tip her—which was his right, dammit—and now his wife’s threatening to leave him. Because, worse, Raven wrote fake numbers and names inside (he produces his evidence—CRYSTAL 555-6190 and so forth) and now Mrs. Accountant thinks he’s having an affair.

  Raven says, “ Bullshit.”

  He goes for her. Leonard and I restrain him. It might be

  comical, but this guy is distraught and we don’t (I don’t) want

  to hurt him. His marriage is in severe snafu. He’d like to blame

  us—but we are, ah, just a palace of cheap dreams and never

  liable for the damage we cause. This is where-love-has-gone.

  I said to Raven, after we got the accountant outside and called

  the precinct cops (who talked to him firmly about taking responsibility for his life—Leonard’s free drinks do pay off), I said to Raven, “ Try that again and you’re fired.”

  “ You take his word over mine?”

  “ He’s a customer. He pays. Or he did. Please don’t cost me

  money. You aren’t worth it.”

  “ You’re a cold son of a bitch, aren’t you?” she said. “ Seeing

  Rita like that didn’t even faze you, did it? It just bounced right

  off.”

  Come join me in my dreams, you little whore.

  But that was just the beginning. Lars-Erik comes in with a

  “ friend,” who is considering topless as a moonlight job to go

  with her regular gig as a perfume lady at Bloomingdale’s. “ She

  wants an audition. Isn’t that right, Daphne?” says Lars. “ Yes,

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  it is,” says Daphne, the way you do at a wedding, when you’ve

  committed yourself and it’s too late to back out. And—LIGHT-

  BULB—I catch on. This is how the famous artist El Cheapo gets

  by. He finds himself a susceptible broad and turns her to topless.

  Sort of safe-sex pimping for the Nineties.

  Daphne is dense. Thicker than a wall of Hitler’s bunker. Her

  attention span cannot be measured by any technology known to

  science. Quarks are longer. While Lars-Erik is in the john, this

  conversation takes place.

  ‘ ‘I just got a phone. ’ ’

  “ G reat.”

  “ My first.”

  “ Congratulations. ’ ’

  “ I mean, my first in an apartm ent.”

  “ Uh-huh.”

  “ O f mine. My parents had a telephone.”

  “ How advanced of them .”

  “ And tomorrow I ’m gonna go t’the store and buy my telephone books. ”

  I just stared at her, but she was serious. Daphne was going

  to a store—which one did I think was the nearest?—to buy her

  telephone books. Daphne comes from Arkansas. After Daphne

  I ’m afraid to fly over that state.

  L-E comes back. Can Daphne go up and have an audition?

  Gee, she only has cotton underpants on, and they’re black, and

  would it be okay, but she’s never undressed in front of—Go up,

  I said.

  I had four Brazilians on. Two up and two in the locker room:

  Chinga, Chunga, Changa and Roxanne their names are. Approximately. I tell Changa to take five. She heads for the locker room. Daphne goes up: very brave, very disoriented. I look at

  L-E, and he says to me:

  “ I find great stupidity in women arousing. But, at my age, it

  has to be great stupidity. Mere dumbness doesn’t do it for me,

  anym ore.”

  What we haven’t considered (which is an oversight of mine),

  what we haven’t considered is Daphne’s tight blue jeans. I

  should’ve told her to strip down in the locker room. There is

  NO WAY to remove her tight blue jeans sensually. In fact

  there is NO WAY to remove Daphne’s blue jeans at all. The

  blouse, okay. The bra, okay (though, frankly, she had trouble

  with that). But the blue jeans, NADA. She gets them down

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  like someone chased from a public john by a police raid. Not,

  at any rate, sexy. L-E has to pull her pants off, one foot up

  against the stage. And she is pissed at him. Everyone (all 16

  of everyone) is whooping with laughter.

  At this juncture I hear “ Eeeahhhh!” in Portuguese. It’s the

  only word I understand in that language. “ Eeeahhhh!’’ a g a in -

  coming from the locker room. I get there before Leonard: to

  find Changa standing over the prone and, respectively, supine

  nude bodies of Chunga and Roxanne. In passionate friction.

  Changa’s taking five took them by surprise.

  And Changa has a knife. A very big knife. It is a major tool.

  I can’t tell whom she intends to use it on.

  Apparently Roxanne was her fiancée, Chunga is her sister

  and, well, Sophocles would’ve drawn a veil over it all. Changa

  keeps making really distasteful cunnilingual motions with her

  tongue. My appearance doesn’t distract her at all. Leonard, because of me, can’t get into the tiny room. I do not want to be stabbed. It is a gruesome mess.

  Finally Changa decides that stabbing is too merciful a punishment. She starts to kick rib with metal toe-tap shoes. Chunga grabs her ankle. Chinga, whose stake in this is too deep for me

  to contemplate, begins screaming behind Leonard outside.

  Chunga and Changa wrestle t
o the floor. I dive and start working

  on Changa’s wrist to dislodge the knife. Roxanne, this dove, this

  love-tossed flower, decides I am out to injure a fellow countrywoman. She punches me in the left eye. Now I have the knife and / want to kill her.

  Then, all of a sudden, Roxanne’s face goes white.

  Leonard, with his vast experience as a cat-fight referee, has

  reached his hand between Roxanne’s nude legs from behind.

  And grabbed her by the lush pubic hair. I don’t approve. I really

  don’t approve. But it was effective. And I needed help. Roxanne

  kinda curtsies, says bye-bye and tiptoes out, peaceful as a

  Quaker.

  That leaves me with Chunga and Changa. Good grief, these

  women are like pythons. I ’m not weak, but I ’ve never taken on

  lesbian jealousy before. I just don’t have the passion. At which

  point Changa unloads a spray can of Adorn—splat—in my face.

  I ’m half blind. I almost topple into a toilet stall.

  “ You’re fired,’’ I say to Changa, while splashing sink water

  in my face. “ Open your mouth and I ’ll call the police. Po-li-

  zi-a.”

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  “ She fired, to o .”

  “ No. You started it.”

  “ She fired, too. She got no green card. Roxanne got no green

  card. Only I got green card. I tell im-mi-gray-shon. ”

  So I have got to fire Chunga and Roxanne. This is another

  Brazilian problem. Mind you, they had both shown me green

  cards and ID to go with the cards—you employ an illegal, it’s a

  monstrous fine—but all were borrowed or phony. I said to Leonard, we should go through agents and let them screen everything. I ’m tired of personnel problems. But even an agent can get fooled. Changa has a card. Agent gives her ten bookings:

  Changa sells them to Chunga and Chunga arrives at your joint

  claiming to be Changa. And she has Changa’s card. And they

  can’t quite speak enough English—ever.

  Still there is something, oh, distancing about the Brazilians.

  I prefer to work with them (though they aren’t that good for

  business: talk is an important aspect of topless). Same way you

  hire a foreign maid. It is harder—for me, anyhow—to discipline

  an American girl. Brazilians are anonymous, different. And they

  don’t require the personal attention, die prodding and validation