Man Gone Down

by Michael Thomas

  We’d hear the front door open and click quietly shut, and we’d know he was gone. While I got ready for bed, she’d pick out a book for me, and in the lamplight, surrounded by the pictures of great men, some shadowed, but because of the busted shade, some still with a hint of glistening, I’d read to her until I fell asleep.

  “Why is it called the oldest profession?”

  We ignored Brian. Shake turned the car on, startling the woman. She was alone in the alleyway, looking at us. She was short, chubby, and wearing the obligatory blonde trick wig. Brian was watching her as though he would call on her, if he could’ve found his pecker through his lysergic haze. He started to roll down the window. Shake stopped him cold.

  “You roll down that window and I’ll break your fuckin’ arms.”

  “I just want to ask her something, man.”

  “Leave her the fuck alone.”

  “I just want to ask her something.”

  “Ask her what?”

  “Why she does it.”

  Gavin fogged up his window with his breath and quickly drew a cartoonish eagle—tongue out and cross-eyed, like some rascal had just brained it with a mallet. The horns introduced the Beatles. Gavin wrote, “Love, love, love” under his sketch. She walked out of the alley, past the car, and down the street. I could see that Brian wanted to defy Shake, but he was starting to hallucinate. He began to stare at the carburetor’s hump as though he was a herpetologist and it was an anaconda sleeping on the floor. She disappeared into one of the strip clubs on the street.

  The snake disappeared, and he jerked his head up. “You’d think that it would stop.”

  “What would stop?” asked Shake, annoyed.

  “Prostitution—sex for sale.”

  “What are you, high?”

  “No, Shake, hear him out.” Gavin turned to Brian, who was now fiddling with his coat zipper.

  “I mean, why isn’t something else the oldest, like selling bread or wheat or water? What about wisdom? Haven’t people needed knowledge as long as they’ve needed sex?”

  “I thought you said wisdom,” said Gavin.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.” He opened a beer and looked into the hole as if it was an imploded star. “You’re confusing your terms—your argument. You’re confusing me.”

  Shake started to laugh. Gavin tried to hush him.

  “You guys are just fucking with me because you think I’m fucked up.”

  Brian snorted and grunted like an angry two-year-old. The acid seemed to be making his face distort—for me. He settled himself and looked out his window back down the alley, then out the front, down the street, at the row of strip clubs on both sides. He sighed, “Why doesn’t someone do something?” He shook his head, gestured in front of his mouth to conjure the words—“Something heroic.” He pointed out the front window. “Look, there’s at least six strip clubs on this block alone and I don’t know how many hookers and pimps in alleys, man.” He sipped at his beer and made a face as though it should’ve tasted different. “I mean, I thought technology was supposed to be the great liberator.”

  “Technology?” spat Shake. “What technology?”

  “Technology,” he stressed, as though changing the intonation would provide clarity. He waited. No one responded. “Like cars, bombs, indoor plumbing, electronic radios.”

  “Maybe,” said Gavin, “technology just turned out to be a more advanced oppressor—each advancement that much less humane.”

  “Aw, fuck it, dudes—fuck it. Forget it. I’m just tripping.”

  “Nah, Bri,” said Shake, turning, suddenly taking him seriously. “But you’ve got to understand that this,” he gestured out the windshield, “this is just a microcosm—for capitalism.”

  “Dude, you sound like you’re high.”

  “Capitalism?” asked Gavin. He erased the crazy bird, finished his beer, and opened another. “Capitalism—hah—we need more beer.”

  “Yeah, Gav,” warbled Brian. The drugs were working on his voice. “How many beers do you have stashed in your coat, man?”

  “Enough.”

  “You gonna sell your surplus back to us later on?”

  “My good man, with beer, there is no such thing as surplus.”

  “See, dude—they got you right where they want you.”

  “Who?”

  “The beer companies.”

  “Yes, they do, underage and chemically dependent.”

  Brian propped himself up and clenched his jaw like he was either summoning all his courage or trying to suppress a violent stutter. He threw in a finger point, too. “So who’s the pimp and who’s the ho?”

  “Pal,” Gavin chuckled, “I’m afraid your analogy isn’t analogous.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “No, sir, it is not.”

  Shake jumped in. Still strangely interested. “Anheuser-Busch is the pimp. Budweiser or Michelob or whatever product is the ho, and the drinker is the john.”

  “No,” said Gavin.

  “No?”

  “No.” He took a long pull. “You’ve misnamed some players and omitted others.”

  “Go on then.”

  He pointed at his can. “Anheuser-Busch is a company, made up of employees, many of whom don’t share in the company’s profit. Augustus Busch—whichever number they’re on—and his family, are the only pimps, and everyone and everything assisting in the delivery of the product to the consumer, who in turn is not substantially enriched by the process—anyone who truly labors is the whore.” He took another pull and exhaled in mock satisfaction. “You are correct in saying that I, the consumer, am the john, but alas, you’ve forgotten the product, which is the buzz, the high, that swirling in my heart and head that makes me feel a part, that makes me continue on, babbling in this most idiotic manner about this idiotic topic, that makes me carnal and stupid. Gentlemen, yes, indeed, they have managed to distill, package, and market sex, good times, and death in a tin can.”

  “Dude, you’re tripping.”

  “No. You are. I’m drunk. But I’ll tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “As soon as I wean myself off this cosmic barley tit, I’m going to turn Augie Busch’s little ash can out into the streets of East Saint Louis. Hah! Trick or treat, Bud Man!” He crushed the can and, forgetting that he’d rolled it up, bounced it off the window.

  “Dude, you’ve lost it.”

  “Fuckin’ Brian. What kind of Irishman are you?”

  “I’m half Greek.”

  “Oh fuck you, asshole—Greek—you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”

  “Okay,” said Shake. “But until Lorna Doone and his great wave of heroes dry out, what gets done in the meantime?”

  “Yes,” said Gavin, still agitated, pointing a finger in the air. “There needs to be a plan in the interim.”

  “What?” asked Shake.

  “Love,” said Brian.

  “Love. Shut up. The closest thing I’ve seen to being an act of love has been my dad’s three jobs—how much he did work, works, and will continue to work.”

  “Why, so he can buy you a car?” Gavin scoffed.

  “I bought this. I see you riding in it, too.”

  “I know. I know,” sang Gavin. “I wish my old man worked like yours.”

  Shake went back to Brian. “So an act of love is going to stop tricks from getting turned, or these guys from drinking, or you from getting high every day?”

  Brian pointed at the largest club, the Naked Eye. “There are women, and men, in there being exploited.”

  “They want to be there,” said Shake.

  “No, they don’t.”

  “You ever been in a strip joint?”

  “No.”

  “Then shut up.”

  Brian snorted again. His eyes were spinning crazily in his head. He rubbed them to get whatever it was that was flashing before him to stop. When he uncovered them, they were still.

  “W
hat’s the antithesis of love?”

  “Hate.”

  “No, fear.” He propped himself up in his seat—proud for a moment. “And if you refuse to perform or receive an act of love, it’s because you live in fear and are therefore subject to all fear encompasses.”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?” asked Shake.

  “All of us.”

  “You’d better back the fuck up.”

  Brian shrank again, but Shake kept going. “You’re like a bad cover song, man—Pat Boone or some shit—fucking establishment mouthpiece talking to me about love.”

  Gavin fogged up his window again and drew a house with a smoking chimney. He took a dip of Skoal and reached back for the pint. I gave it to him. He rolled down the window and spat. “Odorless, colorless . . . ,” he breathed. He held the bottle aloft for a second, looking through the clear liquor. “This is a fucking disaster,” he mumbled, had a drink, and pocketed it.

  “Gav,” I asked. “Can I get some?”

  “Of course, my friend.”

  I drank. I could taste the tobacco in the sip. I felt a slight flutter in my guts, wondered what it was, then remembered the promise I’d made earlier. I wondered what the pang would’ve been had I promised anyone but myself. The fab four faded out while trying to reassure us all of a nameless girl’s affections. I took another drink, sat up, and realized I was blasted.

  “I don’t think it matters—who says it,” I mumbled.

  “Who says what?” said Shake, trying to rekindle his interest.

  “Love.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Gavin was my best friend. Everybody knew that. Shake and I had been enemies—or positioned as such—two black boys growing up in a white world, who were really nothing alike. We got past it, I suppose. When we ended our strange competition, Shake had walked away with the blackness crown. The mantle he’d lorded over me before we became friends—that which had come to imprison him as a type he resented, but still mined. I suppose he tried to take care of me—assumed things; for me a naivete and for him an overarching practical knowledge. And in part he was right, I needed a brother who knew, but neither of us liked it.

  He was never good at being gentle, so he cut the silence. “So what, is there a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on in there? Do the Naked Eye and places like it exploit?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “But is it any worse than anyplace else?”

  “That doesn’t matter.” I took another pull. It seemed to fix my head, yank me back toward clarity. I tapped Gavin on the back with the bottle. He took it from me.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you have to pick your battles—so pick a battle.”

  “So this is our battle?”

  “It is today.”

  “Why this?”

  “If a man hasn’t found something he’s willing to die for . . .”

  “Spare me.” Shake patted his chest. “I know it as well as you.” He shook his head repeatedly, trying to force a smile. He closed his eyes. “You’re like that other kind of bad song,” he thumbed at the radio. “Original, but still bad.”

  “Love, love,” Gavin cooed from the front, over the commercial. He laughed and finished the pint. He reached into his coat again and produced two nip bottles.

  Shake laughed, too, but seemingly at me. “I can’t believe people get suckered by the whole whore-Madonna thing. I can’t believe you fell for it.”

  Gavin turned to Shake, opening one of the nips as he did.

  “Somebody had to.” He offered him the drink. Shake shook his head but took the bottle. He stared at the windshield and muttered to himself, like a man going through a checklist before skydiving. He jerked his head to the side as though he heard something. He closed his eyes again. His face went blank and he shook his head again, this time slowly, as if he was gravely accepting what he saw. He opened one eye and stared, both outside and in, as if reconciling his vision with the night. He drank.

  “Let’s do this then.”

  We locked Brian in the car. Shake said it out loud, and Gavin and I agreed that he’d be a liability. He shouted out advice to us through the closed window—“Guys, no one buy a lady a drink!” We all flashed our fake ID’s and went into the Eye. Neither Gavin nor I looked a day over sixteen, but we were waved in. It wasn’t as seedy as I’d thought it would be. It was like a high-end diner, which made me think woman burger, which made me wish it had been seedy, after all. They were playing heavy metal music, but not too loud. There were three small stages to one side, a bar to the other, and a dark velvet curtain in the back, above which read, VIPS ONLY. There were only about twenty people scattered about, a cigarette girl and a male bartender. I heard one woman in a gold lamé leotard and tiara say to a man at the bar that she was Cleopatra. In the middle of the room were two giant men, former third-string NFL defensive linemen packed into cheap double-breasted suits. Gavin and Shake went to the bar. I went to the center stage, as the other ones were dark and empty. Five men were sitting in front of it on stools, waiting for the next show. A voice boomed over the PA, “Ladies and gentlemen—Diana.”

  Diana appeared from behind a heavy curtain. She was tinted orange by the gelled Fresnels that hung above the ramp and the stage. Some loud disco came on, drowning out an effects-laden guitar solo. The music bounced and then so did she—across the ramp to the little round stage in front us. She was dressed like a jazz dancer going to an aerobics class, and it looked like she’d been wearing the outfit while being attacked by a bobcat. Her hair was dyed jet black—too dark to be altered by the lights. She wore heavy black and red makeup—a gothic fitness guru. She tore her top off and threw it at us. A man in front of me snagged it before it hit my face.

  Someone sat down next to me.

  “You’re too young.”

  I turned. It was a woman—a girl—another stripper, I gathered from her makeup. She wore leather and bandannas and didn’t seem much older than me. She was very blonde and tan—too tan for anytime in New England, especially early winter. I wanted to respond to her quickly with something I supposed a normal person would say—“Too young for what?”—but I missed my chance. I just looked at her. She raised an eyebrow, perhaps provocatively, perhaps only a signal of her growing scrutiny.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Hah.” Her laugh was forced, like it should’ve been a giggle but she was running an age game on me, holding her alleged experience over my head. She leaned in. Her face was inches away from mine. She exhaled. She had cool tic tac breath. I had kissed a girl once, under pressure from Brian. Word had gotten out that Sally was on the pill, and one day between classes he’d waited to congratulate me. I told him the truth—that she’d gotten the prescription to dissolve cysts on her ovaries. He’d taken a step back when I told him, as if I’d tried to kiss him in the locker row.

  “Dude, your sex life is none of my business.”

  “I don’t have a sex life, Brian.”

  “I know. Is there a problem?”

  He told me he’d pick me up that evening and take me to the big party at Nate Gladstone’s, that we’d discuss strategy on the way there—how to get Sally alone downstairs and then how to get her alone upstairs and what would follow. I’d been alone with her before—she was my girlfriend, after all, and her mother was a nurse, who often worked at night. I’d been alone with her before, and I think I’d wanted to kiss her—I just never figured out how. I could never tell if she was damaged, too. I always thought I detected a hint of it, no matter, I stank enough for the both of us. I was worried she could smell it, too.

  We’d parked outside the party and drank a few beers. I showed him my book of poems.

  “What’s this?”

  “I’m going to give them to her.”

  He turned to one and then another. “No, dude. No.”

  “Why not?”

  He flipped through
the pages, shaking his head. “Dude, they’re dark. Have you shown these to anyone?”

  “Gavin.”

  He rolled his eyes. “What did the altar boy say to the choir boy?”

  “He thought they were very powerful—very mature. He said any girl would be lucky to have them.”

  “Oh, I’m not arguing against that, they’re powerful.” He looked at me as though he could assume some kind of patriarchic authority over me, as though the look alone granted him that.

  “You guys are intense. You’re kind of like a part of a shotgun blast.”

  “So give them to her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re the part of the blast that misses.”

  So inside Gladstone’s party I kept careful count of my drinks—four to be human, six to be sociable, eight to be interesting but not scary, and the window between ten and fourteen when I was in control. When everyone else had had too much to drink and were willing to do almost anything, I’d coaxed her into Nate’s sister’s lightless room and sat her on the floor, the deep pile carpet, with our backs against the bed. I brushed her straight blonde bangs away from her face. Her lids were drooping over her moon eyes.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  “Hey,” I whispered back. And it seemed quite natural to take her cheeks in my hands and guide her face to mine. There’d been times before—many—when my world had seemed to either stop or spin wildly or be detonated or implode. When time seemed irrelevant and then was discarded, and good or bad there seemed to be a bridge between me and the action, and I could see myself walk over and disappear, dissolve like a bouillon cube in my mother’s stew, or times when I could see myself regarding that bridge’s absence—watching from the stage or from center field as my mother moved in the all-white audience at my recitals and ball games, her awkward form scaling the bleachers; a cop car trailing me while walking home from school; the opening strands of a favorite song or the first beer of the evening, watching curbside, with all the white kids chattering indoors, then opening another and watching the stars align, smelling the rush of hops in my nose and the night sky becoming fixed and recognizable. Sally’s lips were warm and dry and when she opened them she inhaled. I felt myself go in and in as though I was a ceaseless breath. She felt it, too. She gasped and shut her mouth tight and pulled away.