by Tom Wolfe
The moment the leader and his orangeade-faced follower entered, BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung began BEATING and thunging into their central nervous systems. It wasn’t a fast beat and not terribly loud, but it was relentless. It never changed and never stopped going BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung. There must have been a musical score generating it, but you couldn’t hear it in this small walled-in space that served as a box office… a curved counter… behind it, a paunchy, forty-whatever white man clad in a white polo shirt with an orange Honey Pot logo embroidered on the chest pocket. He was the cashier. John Smith gave him forty dollars for the two of them. The man tried his best to be jovial. He smiled and said, “Have a good time, fellas!” The smile looked like a mean streak turned up at the corners. Nestor led the way through the door into the club itself… BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung and sure enough, there was music behind the beat, recorded music. At the moment a girl with a teenage voice was singing, “I’m takin’ you to school, fool, an’ if you don’ get it, I don’ give it, an’ if I don’ give it, you don’ get it. Get it, fool? You cool with that?” But after a few moments, the song didn’t matter. It was sucked up by the BEAT-unngh thung BEAT-unngh thung.
Swivel—Nestor’s and John Smith’s heads turned simultaneously. Many eyes watching them! Off to the side, near the door they just went through, was a bar with a seven-to-eight-foot partition separating it from the rest of the club. Packed with women it was, young women with jacked-up white legs, pushed-up white cleavages, three-hundred-watt white eyeballs—white girls and only white girls, their white faces decorated with the tarty black arts of the eyeliner, eye shadow, eyelash paint, black-laden eyelids… white girls with libidos-to-let only to white customers… ¡Dios mío! try mixing the white, the black, the brown, and the yellow in a place like this! It wouldn’t last one hour! It would explode! Nothing left but blood and sexual debris—
“How you guys doing?” A big beefy man, close to fifty, materialized from out of the darkness… clad in the Honey Pot polo shirt with a laminated card pinned to the breast pocket bearing the orange Honey Pot script logo and the inscription ASSISTANT OPERATIONS MANAGER.
“There’s plenty a seats—” He stopped right there and stared at Nestor. He frowned so hard, his eyebrows drew together like two little muscles gripping the top of his nose. “Ayyyyy… don’t I know you?”
::::::Goddamn YouTube again! Growing this eight-day stubble of beard—some disguise, right!:::::: But by now Nestor was tactically ready. “Probably,” he said. “How long you been working here?”
“How long have I been working here?” He seemed to find the question impudent. He closed one eye and sized up Nestor with the other. Do I swat this pest or do I let him off this time because he’s so obviously clueless? The latter, he must have decided, because after the ominous pause he said, “About two years.”
“Then that’s it,” said Nestor. “I used to come here a lot with my friend Igor.” He detected a pained look on John Smith’s face. “You know Igor? Russian guy? Big mustache?” With his fingers Nestor did another air sculpture of Igor’s mustache. “Half the time I don’t know what he’s talking about. You know? But he’s a great guy”… He smiled and shook his head in a Good Old Days way. “Know if he still comes here?”
“If it’s the guy I think you mean,” said the man, somewhat reassured, “yeah, he still comes here.”
“No way!” said Nestor, eyes wide open… a happy boy. “Is he here tonight?”
“I don’t know. I just come on.” He gestured vaguely toward the interior. “There’s plenty a seats.” <<
John Smith’s pale face was agitated. He kept clenching his jaws and then pressing his lips together. “I don’t know if that was such a great idea, Nestor, bringing up Igor’s name and telling that guy that you know him. What if he comes in half an hour from now, and the guy tells him there’s somebody here asking about him?”
Nestor said, “Well, the guy—did you catch the title he has, pinned here on his chest in big letters, Assistant Some-kinda Manager? If you ask me, he’s got BOUNCER written all over him.”
John Smith smiled ever so slightly and said, “Did you mean that as a play on—”
But Nestor cut him off. “The guy gave me the YouTube look. You know? So I had to give him another reason why he recognizes me. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up Igor’s name, but now we know he’s still coming here.”
John Smith said under his breath, but not very far under it, “We already figured that much.”
Nestor said, “Come on, John! Don’t be so cautious. Sometimes you gotta goose things along.”
John Smith averted his gaze and didn’t respond. He was not happy.
Their eyes began to adjust to the gloom. They could now see that the blaze of light on the far wall was from a stage. At this moment the show was obviously… on. <<
Out of the darkness came a girl jacked up on six-inch-high heels, all of her, her long blond hair, her wisp of black thong cache-sexe, her filmy long-sleeved shirt, wide-open, revealing most of her breasts. She passed right in front of them, barely five feet away—leading a young Anglo—midtwenties?—by the hand. All he had on was a tank top—a tank top!—hanging outside of a pair of filthy blue jeans and a baseball cap worn backward. The notable bulge in the crotch of the jeans he obviously wasn’t trying to hide. John Smith looked stunned—mesmerized. He couldn’t take his eyes off them until they disappeared through a wide doorway on the far wall where a bouncer seemed to be standing guard. Over the entrance was a small but rather stately sign saying, “Private CHAMPAGNE ROOM for Invited Guests.” The couple was no longer to be seen, but John Smith’s eyes remained fixed upon the doorway. It was as if it held him in its hot little Sunny Isles thrall.
Nestor shook his head. “Listen, John,” he said, “this is a strip club? You know? There’s girls with no clothes on in here. Okay? But we gotta go to work. We’re looking for only one hot body, Igor’s.”
By now their eyes were getting used to the nightclub gloaming that stretched on before them all the way up to the theater lights—but there were no theater seats. The audience sat in what looked like a furniture showroom with the lights off… couches, banquettes, love seats, coffee tables arranged in no particular order. The only furniture you could really see were ten or twelve bar stools that rimmed the stage at one end.
As he threaded his way through the deep dusk of the furniturescape, Nestor was astonished at just how many barely clothed girls were leaning over the men who lounged back in all that furniture. The place was far from full. Women, any women may have been welcome at the Honey Pot, for all Nestor knew, but he saw only the kind of girl who looked primed to—ziiiiiip—unzip a zipper and shed every thread she had on and let it all fall into a tiny clump on the floor. More girls than he could ever have imagined were making their catches right here upon the upholstery of the Furniture Land lounge, and hauling them off toward that door, the door that so obsessed John Smith. Lots of lovely dirty girls—but no Igor.
A show had just ended. Good; several high seats on the rim of the stage had been abandoned. Once they were seated, it was like sitting at a dining room table… and the stage was the table, where you could inspect, as it were, all the juicy dirty-girls before you and smack your lips… and then eat it… eat it all up.
Nestor was checking out their fellow diners in the bar chairs… Not a very classy bunch. Strip club dress was casual, but these characters were down to the level of wife beaters and T-shirts with lettering on them. Half of them seemed to have dollar bills sprouting from their fingers. Nes
tor couldn’t figure it out until he saw waitresses bringing drinks to these high-sitters. Scruffy though they were, they were tossing one-dollar bills onto the girls’ trays as tips. There was a regular green blizzard. For protective coloration more than anything else, Nestor and John Smith ordered beers. The girl returned with the two beers and a bill for $17.28. The Treasury, John Smith, gave the girl a fifty-dollar bill. She brought back four fives, some coins… and twelve one-dollar bills, in case they hadn’t figured out the protocol, which was: If it moves, tip it. John Smith gave her four of the twelve.
A disembodied Master of Ceremonies voice—they couldn’t tell where it came from—announced with the jolly gravity of that calling: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome… NATASHA!”
A smattering of applause and catcalls, and BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAT thungs and a girl, the heralded Natasha, came swinging around the pole at the far end of the stage. Like the previous dancer, Natasha was a blonde, a pretty one, too, not gorgeous but gorgeous enough for this crowd… good enough for John Smith, too. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her… Libido-lorn Nestor Camacho could… he kept scanning the men who had started coming toward the stage to get a closer look… “Natasha” wore a bright-yellow outfit that looked like a little boy’s soldier suit. The jacket’s military collar closed around her neck. Two rows of big white buttons ran down the front, which ended three or four inches above her navel… pierced by a tiny shiny gold ring… The pants began three or four inches below it and came down only to the top of her thighs. Her legs looked impossibly long, tiptoed atop a pair of high-heeled yellow shoes… Nestor saw all only in peripheral vision. His head was turned in a different direction… looking for a man with a waxed black Russian mustache… “Natasha” swung this way and that. She swung with the pole right up in her crotch and her legs on either side of it. Ziiiippp—with one zip she opened up the entire jacket and her breasts popped out. They were not very big, but big enough for this crowd. She smiled suggestively as she BEAT thung THRUST thung HUMP thung SHIMMY thung PUMP IT thung and otherwise swung around the pole.
She finally swung off the pole and headed across the stage BEAT thung BEAT thung SHIMMY thung THRUST IT thung down Nestor’s and John Smith’s way. Nestor couldn’t have cared less. He was looking into the faces of a bunch of men turned into goats by lust… Oh, Christ… some dancer, our girl… ziiiiip!—but the zips on the sides of the soldier boy pants that were supposed to make them fall off—“Natasha” couldn’t get them to work BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAT thung she had to stop and struggle out of them one leg at a time BEAT thung BEAT thung the audio took no note of the problem. It got a bit awkward. But worth waiting for! This crowd didn’t ask for much… Now, where the pants had been… nothing, nothing at all… a totally naked crotch denuded even of pubic hair… Brazilian-waxed away… clearing the way for the star of the show, her pudenda. That made everything quite okay with this crowd. Down to nothing but her wide-open soldier boy jacket, she thrust her pudenda and pumped her pudenda and threw her arms back and the little yellow jacket flew off and BEAT thung CROTCH thung TAIL thung CRACK thung PERI thung NEUM thung she sinks to the stage right in front of John Smith and crawls about naked and on all fours… in this case, her knees and elbows… Her tail is thrust up like a bonobo’s or a chimpanzee’s toward John Smith, offering a full view of the perineum and its forbidden folds, crevices, cracks, clefts, cloven melons, alluring labia, gonopores—the entire fleshy arc. BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAM thung STAGE lights HIT spot PORN spot LUST spot PERI spot NEUM spot BEAT thung BEATing POUNDing MEN rush FORward STUCK dollar bills INto the CRACK in her bottom… John Smith is transfixed, once more… eyes wide, mouth agape… Nestor searches the faces of the men packed in front of the stage… a waxed mustache… a waxed mustache… that’s all he’s looking for… A big Miami Beach municipal bus driver in uniform going “Hoot hoot hoot hoot!” in an ironic way but obviously roused to grinning pleasure by what he sees… reaches over John Smith’s shoulder to get his not one but two one-dollar bills into the crack… Okay, time for more protective coloration… Nestor extends his arm across John Smith and puts three dollars in the crack… and finally John Smith—gingerly—reverently?—before the Devil’s altar?—places a dollar bill in the CRACK in “Natasha’s” ASS, and BEAT thung thung BEAT thung thung BEAT thung thung TODO el MUNDO has DOLlar DEStined for the CRACK in the ASS. The WAITress MAKES all CHANGE in DOLlars ADDRESSED TO the CRACK of a PRETTY girl’s ASS or MY tray. Every man so BEAT privileged as to have a seat thung on the rim feels HONOR-bound to STICK a dollar bill thung into the CRACK thung of her ASS. In NO time the ENtire CRACK is STUFFED with DOLlar BILLS, and many more are stuck BEAT in between the thung ones that BEAT it into the thung crack itself… until the BEAT pretty girl looked as thung if she had some sort of great green peacock tail coming out of the CRACK in her bottom. BEAT thung BEAT—
The moment the music stopped, she looked John Smith in the eye, directly… right in the eye… still on her hands and knees right in front of him… with her bare breasts hanging down practically in his face… and winked. Then she got to her feet and began walking backstage, twice turning to wink at him again. Her posture was excellent. Her gait was queenly, not too fast and not too slow… She would have been the very picture of a ladylike young woman, had she not been stark naked with a promiscuous heap of dollar bills STUCK IN THE CRACK OF HER ASS. Not once did she reach back to dislodge it or otherwise note its existence. Why should she compromise her dignity? Halfway across the stage the bills began falling out of their own accord. But why should she look back at the green wake she had created? Two little men, Mexicans, if Nestor was any judge, came out immediately with brooms and dustpans to gather the dollar bills, many of which had been thrown onstage by those who, despairing of reaching the crack, settled for aiming them in her direction.
John Smith’s pale face had turned red. Was he embarrassed? Was he aroused? Nestor had no idea. He had no take on pale genteel americanos like John Smith. As for himself, he was down too deep in his Valley of the Shadow to get cocked over whores with banners of money flying from the CRACKS of their ASSES. And that was what they were, every last one of them, WHORES.
—BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAT thung BEAT thung the BEAT thung
Nestor scarcely glanced at her. He was scanning the men still gathered in front of the stage. Just beyond that bunch—what is it about that one? Nestor’s eyes were fixed upon a heavyset man wearing a black shirt unbuttoned halfway down the front, the better to see his big hairy chest. He had no grand mustache… just a scraggly one that only barely went past the corners of his mouth… but that unbuttoned black shirt and that big sloppy show of chest hair made Nestor think immediately of the photo of Igor he got from the Miami-Dade cops. He knew that picture by heart… the black shirt, the hairy chest, even the way the deep gulleys that began on either side of his nose ran down past his lips and merged with his jowls… the crooked twist of the lips that was probably meant to look cool.
He leaned over toward John Smith. “Maybe I’m seeing things, because the guy has only a little mustache, but I’d swear he’s Igor!”
He turned back to show John Smith—mierda!—the man had disappeared.
Uh-ohhh. A bevy of somewhat-dressed girls descended upon the two of them. A blonde—what was it with this universe of blondes?—got to John Smith first. She wore a denim dress with a top like a bib overall’s… denim suspenders over the shoulders… except that she wore nothing under the bib and her breasts bulged out on the sides, and you could see the nether curves, too, where they joined her chest. The dress looked like—one yank!—and it’s off!… a mere puddle of cloth on the floor. She shook hands with him—by clasping the inside of his thigh and giving him a big suggestive smile and saying, “Hi! I’m Belinka. Having fun?”
Where was that guy? Nestor got a glimpse of him again… talking cozily with a bouncer. John Smith at this moment was incapable of thinking about their mission. All he could think about was what had appropriate
d his thigh… his inner thigh… not far from—The pale white face of Mr. John Smith blushed the bloodiest red Nestor had ever seen. He had no answer to her question except “Unnh hunnh.” Nestor enjoyed his distress enormously but didn’t dare dwell on it—now where has that guy gone? He was right there a half-second ago!
“I bet you wanna have more!” said “Belinka.”
John Smith paused, at a loss for words. Finally he managed to say—his voice distraught with embarrassment—“I… guess so…”
I guess so. It was so lame, Nestor loved it, but he didn’t watch. Any second… he scoured Furniture Land… any second—
In the next instant he felt a hand on the inside of his own thigh.
“Hi! I’m Ninotchka! I can see you’re—”
“Hi,” said Nestor, without looking at her. His eyes remained fixed upon Furniture Land. “What kind of name is Ninotchka?” he said idly.
“It’s Russian,” she said. “What are you looking at?”
“You’re Russian? No kidding,” he said. His eyes remained pinned on Furniture Land.
Long pause. Finally: “No, but my parents are… What are you looking for out there?”
“You grow up around here?” said Nestor—and he still didn’t look at her.
Another pause.
“No,” she said, “I grew up in Homestead.”
He smiled to himself. ::::::That’s the first true thing you’ve said! Homestead is so Low-Rent, nobody telling lies would ever have herself coming from Homestead.:::::: To her he said nothing.
The whore had had enough. He was toying with her, mocking her. Two could play that game. She slipped her hand a little bit farther up the inside of his thigh and said, “What’s your name?”
“Ray,” said Nestor.
“You come here a lot, Ray?” said the whore.
Nestor just kept scanning people moving about in the glamorous-damn-it nightclub gloom.
“You know, you’ve got a really big neck, Ray.” With that she lifted her hand from his thigh and cupped it around his genitals… gently but completely. “A very, very big neck,” she said. She gave him a mocking smile. “Your neck’s getting bigger… How about a big, wet kiss on your neck?”
