Stripper Lessons

by John O'Brien

  But if she answers at all he misses it, or perhaps simply doesn’t remember as he awakens to his still-dark apartment. It’s 4:38am. He’s up. For the first time since he’s lived here he hears no noise from the street. Then a boom car thunders through the distant air, and Hollywood resumes around him. Moved by the vision of his dream, he feels alone, feels the need to share his humanity, feels afraid of the dark, and this takes him to the only place he has at this late hour: his television. It’s in the other room on a short particle-board bookshelf, a box of stubby utility candles kept on one side because they would be easy to find there in the event of a blackout, and another box of the same kept on the other side because they were two for a buck during K’mon-n-Mart’s Bargain Daze.

  First there is the always unsatisfying and unconfirmed push of the electronic button on the remote. A burst from the center of the screen, it widens to life: pure aggrandizement. Hello: a black-and-white movie in which he recognizes no one. Non-click: static. Non-click: something with captions in Farsi. Non-click: looks like a Twilight Zone. Non-click: static. Non-click: static. Non-click: a phone number, undoubtedly Jesus’s. Non-click: nobody here but us car salesmen. Non-click: static. Non-click: static. Non-click: a fitness show with six women. He settles for this until a thick-chested guy shows up looking like their fitness pimp. Non-click: static. Non-click: music videos. This will do.

  Lots of promises here. Amidst these songs lie the specious whispers of love in his future, flesh in his face. These guitar-strangling boys with voluminous hair that cries loudest in its length and seems already to be thinning threateningly on top are howling for the girls who will faithfully show up in the little movies that flicker between choruses. The story is told. It could be your story. These could be your girls! What would that take? Stay tuned (we are harnessing the machine). Please stay tuned (we are grasping this awesome power). But really, these girls don’t make much sense in the light of Stevie, and to that end, after a party-line ad whose small-print super briefly warns of an unprecedented five-dollar-per-minute charge, comes a spot that captures Carroll’s attention.

  “Women. You can meet them,” advises one of them, a woman. She is somewhat attractive and sitting in what is meant to be a restaurant, though it clearly isn’t. Then she dissolves into another woman, lying prone on a sofa, who agrees, “You can meet them. You can meet US!” Moving nothing but her mouth, she manages to squeeze her cleavage and adds coyly, “I like shy men best.” Finally, as if to lend credibility to the claims of these females, a man, wearing a suit and sitting on the front of a desk, conquers the screen like he’s here to stay and confirms, “You can meet women! All kinds of women! IT JUST TAKES THE RIGHT TOOLS!” With this startling pronouncement he reaches to the desk and, without looking, picks up a small box. It’s a videotape, and as he continues, its cover fills the screen. “The Shy Man’s Guide to Meeting Women,” he reads along with us from the front of the box. “Yes, this is the one you’ve been hearing about. It’s all here: The Approach; Just Talk to Her; How About Your Place?; The European Way; and much, much more. Step by step the Guide takes you along, at your own pace, to that magic place you’ve always wanted to go but thought was reserved for ‘other guys.’ No more! Chock-full of interviews with sexy ladies who tell you what TURNS THEM ON, what they LOVE TO HEAR from a man. You’ll learn, as I did when I first ordered the tape—that’s right, I’m a graduate—that you DON’T have to be handsome, that you DON’T have to be rich. Women want just what you want: to have a good time. Sound incredible? It’s all on the tape!” Back to the man, now seated authoritatively behind the desk: no more Mister Nice Guy. “I think you’ll agree that thirty-nine ninety-five is a bargain. . . . What? You say that’s a lot of money? Well of course it’s a lot of money to guys like you and me who work for a living. But ask yourself: What are you really working for ?” A pause, his face lights up: he’s gonna work with us on this one. A smile: Monty Hall. “Okay. You’re right. Guys like us don’t have yachts to mortgage or movie studios to auction off. Tell ya what: call me up at this number (a telephone number bites off the bottom of the screen) RIGHT NOW, and I’ll send out your copy of ‘The Shy Man’s Guide to Meeting Women,’ new in the box, for only twenty-nine ninety-five, AND I’ll give you a thirty-day money-back guarantee. That’s right. If you don’t meet more women over the next thirty days than you have in the LAST YEAR! . . . then I’ll send you back your lunch money.” This last line is added like a challenge. His arms fold over a veritable paragraph of superimposed details, which no doubt relate to the guarantee; then the phone number returns, chasing them away. The man returns. He is standing behind the phone number with the two women from earlier in the ad, one on each arm. “Order now,” he entreats. “That’s sound advice . . . from a Winner!”

  Carroll impulsively starts repeating the number under his breath while he jumps to the kitchen counter. There he writes it down, not really knowing why but aware that he’s been given a vision tonight in his dream, and if this strange commercial is a way for him to understand that vision then he’d better follow up. Bigger than him. Pieces to a puzzle. A mission in this madness. He received an omen once and ignored it. . . . Actually, that’s not true. . . . Well, he’s not sure. To date he’s never believed past what he can see, touch, feel. God never called, so why should Carroll answer? But this seems different. Very different. One doesn’t fuck with angels. He picks up the phone.

  “Concept Marketing.” The voice is a woman’s, and he wonders if it’s one of the girls on the commercial.

  He’s really on the phone now. All nerves. Perhaps he should have waited; this girl sounds tired. In an embarrassed whisper, he asks for the tape, having to repeat himself twice. This girl really is tired. He hears keys tapping, like the computers at work. Maybe he should hang up and call later. Maybe the man would answer then.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re not accepting any more orders for that particular item. Now if you’d like—”

  “But I just saw the commercial! He said to call right now!” He stops, shocked that he interrupted her, and hopelessly tries to think fast of a way to take it back.

  But she undoes it for him with her tapping. “Sir, I am showing that item as now available in stores. If you’ll tell me your zip code I can give you the location of a nearby K’mon-n-Mart store where that item is available.”

  I wonder if this is meant to be, he thinks after replacing the phone in its cradle. K’mon-n-Mart is perfect; he can get a VCR there as well. Today. During his lunch hour.

  There’s still plenty of time before he needs to prepare for work, so he returns to his sofa, very much awake yet not really listening to the broadcast, which waxes religiose.

  Sitting at his desk later that morning, Carroll’s mind drifts back to the missing SoLo/Bombgate file. He’s not sure why—initiative and diligence are largely discouraged at the firm—but it would be nice to knot this little loose end, at least until it comes undone in a couple of days when the file disappears again. To that end he first makes a perfunctory call to Pam, extension 455, so if the need arises he’ll have a witness to later substantiate his good intentions; in any case, he’ll bail out at the first sign of a problem. Then he waits for noon, busying himself with the chronology of a dead file on its way to the archives. He’ll just have to take a late lunch today.

  By twelve-thirty he’s upstairs on the twelfth floor, the undeclared domain of the firm’s senior partners. At this hour the place is predictably devoid of life, the partners being always willing to demonstrate to a client their ability to cut through a peak-hour waiting list at the local restaurants, their secretaries compelled through watch-glancing hints of impending post-lunch projects to dine concomitantly, preferably in the courtyard. Carroll moves swiftly around the bend, slows while passing the empty . . . ? Yes, it is empty. He stops and turns back, just beyond the unoccupied office wherefrom he expects to emerge with the elusive SoLo/Bombgate file.

  Heart pounding (what am I afraid of?) intractably, he ent
ers the office. This guy better be at lunch. He’s used to anxiety, even terror on a daily basis; what really catches him off guard is the hitherto unfelt exhilaration of defiance, deep inside, tickling his gut with the tongue tip of no! instead of the feather of fear. But emotion notwithstanding, this search won’t be at all easy or reflexive. The name So-Lotions Inc. garnishes almost every scrap of paper in this corporate jerk’s life, and as much as he doesn’t want to risk being seen examining documents, finding the neglected Bombgate litigation will take more than quick glances. Hopefully there’s some order to this mess. Hopefully the guy eats like he looks.

  Carroll starts with the left side of the credenza, a likely place for things misplaced: Harper Fos— No. So-Lotions Inc. Quarterl— No. So-Lotions Inc. vs. Westcros— No. PolySec— No. So-Lotions Inc. 19— No. So-Lotions Inc. vs. Sunlution— No. General Sta— No. So-Lotions Inc. Cayman Is— No. So-Lotions Inc. Minu— No. So–Loti—

  “Everything in order, sport?” booms a challenge from the door, startling Carroll into a gasp of confession. The man’s face is tight and red, his tone laced with enmity. Shirtsleeves. Jacket still hanging behind the door. Plain as day. Should’ve noticed. Dumb.

  “Um . . . actually . . . I was looking—”

  “Yes, yes, Carl, I know you’re from the file room. If you’re in need of something I’d appreciate it if, in the future, rather than rummage through my office, you’d simply call my secretary and— Say, you’re not still looking for that litigation file, are you? Tell me you’re not in here looking for something I already told you I don’t have!” This guy is really fat.

  Really, Carroll notices. “Um . . . SoLo/Bombgate, it was. Yes—” Dumb.

  “Dammit! After I took the trouble to help you locate a file that your department lost? Are you saying that you didn’t believe me? Is that it?”

  Carroll can’t think of anything to say. After all, that is it.

  Trying unsuccessfully to temper himself: “Look, Carl, I don’t have time for this right now, and I should think you wouldn’t either.” Newly enraged at the notion of employee indolence: “Dammit! Why the hell are you wasting time on this? Why do you care about this file? Don’t you have WORK to keep you busy during the day?” Finally, drooling with implication: “Everyone else around here seems to!” And leaving unspoken: Or maybe you shouldn’t be around here?

  And for the briefest instant Carroll has the insane urge to ask him if he has SoLo/Westcross anywhere in his office, just so he can wave it in that fat face after the guy denies it. You Fat Fuck. “Sorry, sir,” he mutters instead, on his way out. Says it again for no apparent reason upon leaving the eleventh floor, returning to his desk on ten.

  But he doesn’t linger at his desk for long. Not only does K’mon-n-Mart, his lunchtime errand, beckon, but he would just as soon avoid a follow-up phone tirade from upstairs. So he’s fleeing for an hour . . . sort of. . . . The thing is: it’s kinda more about procedure than it is about actual fear. Circumstances dictate that he should split for a while. In fact that scares the hell out of him. He should be absolutely, positively, frightfully shaking. Trembling, vIbRaTiNg with the strings, he should be. In the throes of a breakdown, he should be. But none of these, he is. Maybe it’ll hit him later. Maybe this is so much worse than, say, a jiggling light, that it can’t even be addressed in the same universe of dread. Maybe later today he’ll be sitting at his desk or walking down the hall and he’ll just pop, just fall to the floor whimpering, spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital. Already his hand is shaking, and. . . . Fuck it. He drops the pencil he was worrying. He’s got a videotape to buy.

  And at the K’mon-n-Mart Carroll comes to pass a self-standing corrugated cardboard point-of-purchase display dedicated exclusively to the promotion of “The Shy Man’s Guide to Meeting Women.” And at the base of this display, unseen by Carroll or by any other, is the twisted black ember of a discarded match, smoldering, near dead, and unable to ignite the flame-retardant coating of the cardboard, which only chars two millimeters inward from one acute corner. And on the display the tapes are laid apart on two wings, each given the measure of three tapes across and four tapes down. And Carroll first selects a tape from the left wing but then replaces it in favor of one from the right wing because, after all, it is the right wing. And while he intended to make one single combined purchase of tape and VCR, this cannot be done, for the tape must be paid for and subsequently run atop the mysterious box of alarm detoxification that sits next to the register of this highly departmentalized department of the K’mon-n-Mart. And this department where Carroll now stands and pays for his tape is known as the Video Department and can be found easily from any point in this capacious store because it is on a platform two steps or one ramp above the rest of the store. And Carroll now owns a copy of “The Shy Man’s Guide to Meeting Women,” and as he descends the currently un-wheelchair-laden ramp of this platform he is given directions on how best to proceed to the Home Electronics Department, which lies across the vast expanse of the K’mon-n-Mart.

  And now emboldened with said ownership as well as with the knowledge, gleaned from the small italics on the back of the box, that “The Shy Man’s Guide to Meeting Women” runs a duration of only four and ten minutes, Carroll is blessed with a plan that is so divinely inspired it seems to emanate from the very fluorescent lighting far above him, from a source, in any case, to which the salesperson in Home Electronics would surely wish to defer propitiatingly. And when he arrives in Home Electronics there is indeed no clerk at the counter, that person being otherwise occupied at the joystick of a personal computer and relieved to be able to deal with Carroll by merely nodding without having even to divert his eyes from the more cogent invaders. And Carroll takes this as further confirmation that his mission is righteous and well guided as it has been from its inception at his home early this morning. And again it is so, for having never before operated such a device, his hand is swept about in the correct set of feather-touch commands on the face of the VCR demo unit, dancing lightly as if he had touched his first harp . . . and came there the music.

  And the Home Electronics department of the K’monn-Mart comes alive with the image of the Concept Marketing logo blazing across four true and sturdy shelves of between nine and twelve television sets each. And follows there times forty-one a bursting of letters in all their sansserifed glory: “The Shy Man’s Guide to Meeting Women.”

  And all of these televisions produce sound in varying degrees. And what from some does emanate is every word of the tape. And what from others does emanate is the sibilance of our broadcast day: ssssssssss.

  And fourteen minutes commence.

  And Carroll receives the word, ssssssssss.

  “Sylvia.” This from the barmaid.

  “Oh! Me?” This from Sylvia, black haired, small chested, and looking more like a wife than any dancer at this man’s club (never mind that this man doesn’t have a wife).

  “Oh! Meee?” apes Carroll in a semi-audible falsetto.

  Whatwasthat, thinks Sylvia, turning pretty damn quick from her position by the stage but seeing only that guy who’s always in here. Nobody. Nothing. Her imagination.

  Carroll draws a finger line down the side of his glass, and a drop of condensation clings to his skin. Round and ready to fall, that drop is under his mild inspection. Sylvia’s ass ticks off toward the bar. Then a red conduit of light hits the mirrored ball above the stage, starting it on a slow rotation as if light really . . . well, mattered. The DJ/doorman lays down some patter, and Jasmine mounts the stage.

  The men at the stage are numbers on the face of a clock. Jasmine always dances with order. She is the tiny luminous disk on the tip of the second hand. Carroll, sitting for the first time at the bar, has a slightly elevated viewpoint, and his feet search for atavistic clues re gaining purchase on the base of his barstool. Red splashes from the mirrored ball circle the stage lambently, like so many red-sweatered skaters in a rink. This is the flow that Jasmine takes, in a sense then
spinning the room as she remains in place and entertains the visits of the men as they pass. She’s good, really good, in a democratic sort of way, for the difference between her longest and shortest pauses in front of the men is merely seconds, if that. So she dances, to the confusion of her audience, with a statistician’s disregard for the size of each man’s tip as it dangles from the rail. Mr. If–you’re-lucky-you’ll-get-a-buck-when-you’re-naked enjoys the same dose of her attention as Mr. Yes-boys-that-really-is-a-twenty-dollar-bill-in-front-of-me. Tick, tick around the stage. Jasmine doesn’t care. To her it’s X dollars per man, Y men per set, Z sets per night. The current of the red lights rolls her out of a flowing body scarf and on to bachelor number N, where N is derived through an interpolation involving length-of-song, time elapsed, and the already assigned variable Y. Not to worry, N-1 (but we’ll just call you Cashmere), she’ll be comin’ ’round again when she comes. Twice more.

  “Lovelylady by the name of Jasmine, gentlemen. Jasmine will be right out for the second of three. While you’re waiting, gentlemen, don’t forget that all our lovelyladies are available for topless table dances. They’re up close and personal, and if you’d like one they’re all yours. Just ask your favorite lovelylady for details.” Whine, two thumps, a needle scratches. “Okay, gentlemen, as promised with the second of three, put your hands together for the lovely . . . Jasmine.” Some papers flutter over the closing mike, though from where he’s sitting Carroll can see no papers being handled. The DJ/doorman returns to his chicken wings, picks up a plastic fork then puts it down. Never eat potato salad from a restaurant.

  And as Jasmine, now two-thirds naked, retakes the stage, Stevie, who is killing time as well as her manicure in the dressing area, inquires of a dancer named Tamara, “So how come only days? Doesn’t the money suck?”