by Johnny Shaw
“Why not?” Bobby asked, as serious as I’d seen him. “We used to come down here all the time. It’s no big deal.’”
“Bobby,” I said, defeated.
“We’re here. We’re right here,” Bobby said. “Nothing is going to happen. Well, probably nothing. If something was going to happen, it already would’ve.”
“It did. I got attacked in a bathroom. Jesus Christ, I’m a fucking grown-up now. I don’t get drunk and in fights every weekend.”
Bobby laughed. “That supposed to be some jab at me? Shit, like I care a dog fart what you think. For all the places you’ve been and all the shit you’ve seen, how can you be such a puss? ‘I’m a fucking grown-up now.’ What the fuck does that even mean?”
“I’m covered in piss. My own piss. I want to go home.”
“Fair enough on that front. Chalk that one up to experience.” Bobby shook his head. “But this prom date ain’t over ’til you put out. You’re here for Jack. Your father, not mine. You asked me, remember? I shouldn’t have to convince you. We’re friends, and I’m going to back you no matter how stupid you are and no matter what stupid you do. But as a friend, the last thing I’m letting you do is quit. We started this together. We’re going to finish it together. So sack up, put all your personal shit away, and let’s go find a hooker for your old man.”
Bobby walked to the door of Cachanilla’s, not waiting for my response. I nodded abruptly and followed him.
Very few people can pull off a purple velveteen suit. The guy working the door at Cachanilla’s might have been one of them. He was dressed like Superfly by way of Cantinflas, deep purple down to his snakeskin shoes. It was hard to tell if it was fat or muscle under all the ruffles of his frilly shirt, but he had size. Luckily he was one of the friendliest guys I had ever met.
He looked at me and Bobby, did the math, and smiled widely. Two Americans standing outside of a Mexican strip joint didn’t make for that complex of an equation. He smelled money. And after the doorman gave me a whiff, he obviously smelled piss, too. To his credit, he didn’t say a word. It takes one hell of a salesman to ignore urine. He went straight into his patter. “Best floor show in México. Beautiful chicas. Cheap tequila.” He turned to me, smiling. “You like Mexican pussy?”
I smiled and laughed under my breath. His Mexican accent sounded slightly affected like he was exaggerating it to sound more like the Mexican that he thought we thought he was.
He didn’t wait for my answer. “You come in, you have a drink, another drink, you watch the girls, talk to them, have fun, buy the girls some drinks, you know. You like to have fun, no? Sí? Sí. Some drinks, some more drinks, you find a girl, you like her, she likes you. You think maybe I want to be alone with her. She wants to be alone with you. Another drink just to be sure. That’s when you talk to Guillermo.”
“Who’s Guillermo?” I asked.
“I am Guillermo. Whatever you need. Talk to Guillermo,” he said, pointing at his inflated chest.
“Thanks,” I said, taking small steps inside. Bobby had already squeezed past and was leaning against the hall wall, laughing at me.
Guillermo kept up his patter, leaning in closer to my ear. “One hundred dollars. Any girl. All night. Guaranteed. Only one hundred. Nothing to a man like you. All the girls, they’re clean. Doctor did the full check two days ago. Bueno. And these girls.” He whistled. “They do it all. Everything. Whatever you want. They love it all. In the mouth. In the pussy. In the culo. They love it.”
I finally got past him and made my way inside. Behind me I could still hear him. “Weekday special. Three for the price of two. Whatever you want. Talk to Guillermo.”
As strip joints go, Cachanilla’s was a bit of all right. It was a big room with a large stage jutting out of one wall, stripper poles at each corner. Harsh, bright light illuminated the stage, but the scattered tables and booths quickly receded into shadows and darkness, the corners black with depraved potential.
A nude-except-shoes, mid-thirties Mexican woman was on the stage not quite dancing, but gyrating her hips in uncoordinated spasms that made a mockery of eroticism. It quickly grew on me. There was something splendid about her bored lack of effort.
Bobby pointed to the bathroom door against the far wall. “Go clean up. I’ll get us a table and some drinks. That scuffle made me dangerously close to sober.”
The bathroom was filthy, but empty. A toilet, a urinal, and a sink all against the same wall with no dividers between them. I felt a noticeable rise in the humidity. The walls and floor were wet from I don’t know what. I didn’t want to touch anything, but I washed my hands and tried to pat down my pants with a wet paper towel.
As I was giving myself a failing sniff test, a plump woman walked in pulling a short Mexican man in his fifties behind her. She sat down on the toilet, nonchalantly crossed her legs, unzipped the man’s pants, and began working his shank with the same motion and interest as someone inflating a bicycle tire.
In an effort to look in any other direction, I stared at myself in the polished steel that passed for a mirror. My kingdom for a partition.
When I glanced back, the Mexican man had one of the woman’s breasts in his hand. He squeezed it as hard as he could without moving a muscle. The woman continued her violent pumping, staring directly at me with a shrug and a face that said, “It’s a living.”
What is it with me and Mexican bathrooms? My pants were clean enough.
“Dude, you still smell like piss,” Bobby said as I sat down.
“I was kind of a third wheel in the john.”
There was a shot and a beer waiting for me and the same in front of Bobby, but Bobby waved the girl over anyway. “Una cerveza más. En una taza, por favor.”
“Do you see Tomás?” I asked.
Bobby nodded his head toward the back without looking. My eyes drifted toward a very dark booth in the corner. Tomás was in his twenties, looking good in a suit, button-up shirt, and no tie. He held court with two bar girls and a hard-looking guy in a cowboy hat. A giant stood in front of the booth.
Tomás had a stack of American dollars on the table in front of him, probably twenties. I watched the cowboy sitting next to him peel one off and bring it below the table toward one of the girls. She feigned a sexy smile through her discomfort. Eventually he brought his hand up from under the table, gave his finger a quick sniff, and took another drink. Tomás stared at the man for a second past comfort and then returned talking to the girl next to him. So much for the kid I taught to ride a bike.
The girl handed Bobby his glass of beer. Bobby paid, and the girl walked back to the bar. Bobby said, “I’m not going to apologize.”
“For what?” I asked.
And Bobby threw the full beer into my lap.
“What the fuck?” I half-yelled, half-standing.
“Rather you smell like beer than piss.”
“I’m fucking soaked,” I said, pulling the dripping pants away from my wet skin.
“You’ll thank me later.”
“Well, fuck you now.”
I wasn’t quite ready to talk to Tomás. I needed a break. I’d had more excitement in the last hour than I’d had in some time. I was beginning to embrace it, but it was definitely exhausting. So I did what you do in a place like Cachanilla’s. I drank and watched the ladies on the stage.
The woman on stage was dancing to her first song. It was a corrido that I didn’t recognize, but they all sounded the same to my ethnocentric ear. She was in her thirties and danced fully clothed in what looked like a circa 1985 gold lamée prom dress. No tease, she danced with concentrated disinterest, watching herself in the mirror on the far wall. She swayed and turned like she was displaying merchandise, which appropriately she was. She didn’t take a stitch of clothes off during the length of the song.
The second song was “Ace of Spades.” But even with Motörhead’s increased tempo, she maintained her slow sashay. At the very end of the song, she took the dress off. Not slowly, not seduc
tively, but awkwardly, unzipping the back and letting the heavy fabric drop to the ground. It was so workmanlike that I found myself looking at the crumpled dress instead of her naked body.
The third song was, of all things, “Baby, Baby” by Amy Grant. She danced in the nude except for her clear plastic high heels. Full bush and real tits, it was only sensual in its total lack of effort.
I turned to Bobby, who kept his focus on the woman on the stage. “Look, man,” I said, “I’m sorry if I’ve been a drag. It’s just been a long time since I’ve been down here, and I can’t get comfortable. I don’t got that thing you got, to do shit like this so easy.”
Bobby shook his head and grinned, the kind of face you make when you’re frustrated with a small child or a dog. “What in the holy fuck are you talking about?” he said.
“I can’t cross a border and just see people differently. Can’t see Mexicans and Americans as different. People are just people to me,” I said.
The song ended, and the woman walked off the stage. Bobby turned to me. “I’m officially calling bullshit on that. You’re as much a racist as me.”
“It ain’t racism. I ain’t explaining right. It’s Mexico, the country. Look at where we are. What we’re doing right now. I enjoyed her dance. You think she did? Or do you think she’s doing it to have some money to send south or to save up to get to El Norte or to just feed herself? Or her kids? I can’t help think of that shit when I’m down here.
“Like those kids on the fucking street. If I was anywhere in the U.S. and a six-year-old came up to me, I’d immediately ask where his mother was or find a cop or do something. Here, it’s not just that I don’t ask. I don’t need to ask ’cause I know. There’s no point. In doing anything.”
Bobby held up his hand. “When’d you turn all hippie? Christ. You guilty for every starving child in the world? They’re out there whether you see ’em or not, you know. What are you going to do about it? You going to take all the little kids in and save them? Save the world?”
“No. That’s the thing. I ain’t going to do nothing. I ain’t even going to try. And it makes me feel like an asshole.”
Bobby sat up. “Look, man. Mexico is like a house that’s caught on fire. And as an American, you’re outside, standing on the sidewalk, right? You’re watching it burn, but you see people inside. You see them on fire, burning alive. But you can’t save them. There’s nothing you can do. You got only two choices. You can stay and watch, or you can say to hell with it and walk away. Don’t matter none to the people in the burning house. Either way, they’re fucked.”
“We’re participating. I came down here to find a prostitute.”
“For a good cause,” Bobby interjected. “And don’t tell me you never got some Mexican tail. Never came down, hit the whorehouses.”
“Not proud of it, but yeah, once. But when I went back to her room, the room she lived in, slept in when she wasn’t fucking, and she took the stuffed animals off her bed before we were supposed to screw, I realized how fucked up it was. How human and vulnerable and tragic that poor girl was. How I was about to use her. Like that was why she existed. I couldn’t do it.”
“Dude, you’re making me feel bad for being in a strip club. Don’t ruin titties for me. I’ll go vegetarian before I let you ruin tits for me. You got no right.”
“I stopped coming down here because I got tired of seeing people get used. Being back just reminds me that nothing has changed.” Listening to myself, I wondered how I had gotten so maudlin and introspective, and then I remembered that I was on my umpteenth beer.
“You’re spinning this whole ‘if you’re not a part of the solution, you’re part of the problem’ bullshit. It makes a great bumper sticker for your shittily painted VW bus, but sometimes there ain’t no solution, so you just enjoy the problem.
“You see that youngish lady over there.” Bobby pointed at a girl talking to a couple of older Mexicans at the bar. “She’s going to fuck someone for money whether you like it or not. She could grab one of them rough-handed campesinos. Or maybe she lucks out and ends up with a sensitive fella like you who gets all guilty and gives her all your money as you cry into her pillow about how unfair the world is. No matter what, she’ll be back the next night, throating some dude in a back booth. For all you know, this place is an improvement from the shack she grew up in and the father who beat her three times a day.”
“That’s your thesis? Some people are just fucked?”
“And if you believe different, you’re the most naïvest fucker on the planet. There’s a large population of this country where hooker work is a step up. Didn’t the last line of Chinatown mean anything to you?”
“Forget it, it’s Mexico,” I said, cracking a smile.
“Exactly, Jake. So go talk to Tomás and stop thinking about shit you can’t change.” Bobby downed his beer.
As I approached Tomás’s booth, the giant took a few steps toward me. He put his hand up like a traffic cop. Taller than me and built like the Michelin Man, he looked completely immovable.
“I need to talk to Tomás,” I said, smiling and attempting to appear as nonthreatening as I could.
He shook his big rock head, his face expressionless.
“I know him. He knows me. Ask him.”
Not even a head shake, just a bored stare.
“Look, I’ve had a lousy night. Do you speak English? I smell like piss and I’m ready to go home. But I came down to your shit sewer of a ciudad to talk to your patrón, so I’m going to talk to him. Get the fuck out of my way, cabrón,” said Mr. Tough Guy.
At least that got a smile.
“Hey, Tomás,” I yelled over the giant’s shoulder. As Tomás squinted through the darkness in my direction, the giant gave me a straight-arm to the chest. He probably thought that he pushed me lightly, but it sent me tripping backward. I Dick Van Dyke Show-ed over the top of the table behind me, my hands grabbing at air. The table tipped, sending me and three empty highball glasses flying ass over tits. Glass crashed around me. I landed hard, but unhurt.
I got to one knee. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bobby getting up from his chair. His eyes focused on the giant. I whistled over the music, and he turned to me. I shook my head. Bobby sat back down, visibly reluctant. He shrugged, smiled, and pulled the nearest stripper onto his lap with a big laugh.
I stood up and walked back to the giant, who surprisingly didn’t apologize. Behind him I saw Tomás staring at me. I gave him a nod and yelled, “I must’ve read you Billy Goats Gruff one too many times when you were a kid. You hired your very own troll.”
Recognition lit Tomás’s eyes. He pushed at the girl, rushing her out of her end of the booth. He slid to his feet, his eyes never leaving my face. He smiled. “Hijo de la chingada” was his summation of the situation.
He rushed over and cuffed the giant on the back of the head, not maliciously but as a form of instruction. The giant showed nothing. He moved to the side, his face the same expressionless mask.
Tomás held out his arms. “Jimmy!”
As I stepped in, he held me away from his body. “You smell like beer piss.”
Tomás walked me back to his booth. The cowboy stood at the edge of the booth. His turquoise silk shirt would have been loud on a gay jockey. I didn’t let the clothes fool me. The guy’s face was stony with tough guy disdain.
“Jimmy, this is Alejandro. He works for me. And yes, he’s as mean as he looks.”
Alejandro gave me an almost imperceptible nod. The formality of a handshake seemed overly audacious for the particular moment and setting.
Tomás gave Alejandro a slap on the shoulder. “Why don’t you check on the room?”
He was being dismissed, but Alejandro’s face only allowed the slightest sign of insolence before he walked away.
Tomás and I sat down. Without any instruction or command, the two women slid in on either side of the horseshoe booth. It was a tight fit, everyone pushed close together. The girl next to me rested
her hand on my crotch.
“It’s good to see you, Jimmy,” Tomás said. “Been a long, long time. Good to see a friend from the past. Seems lately I’m only around new people.”
“What about Mr. Morales?”
“Mi abuelito? I don’t see him as much as I should. I don’t think he approves of my lifestyle.” Tomás smiled.
I looked around the place and at the two women, then back to Tomás. “What exactly is your lifestyle?”
Tomás opened his arms wide. “This is it, Jimmy. Or at least part of it.”
“You own this place?”
“Not on paper. Never on paper. I use it as a form of office.”
“And what’s a day at the office like?”
“It’s like ruling the world,” Tomás said, putting his arm around the girl next to him. She dutifully laughed.
When he had spoken to Alejandro and the giant, Tomás had a hint of a Mexican accent. But as he spoke to me, I couldn’t help notice the accent fade, except when he chose to pepper in the occasional Spanish word with newscaster inflection. There was an ease to his voice, but a control in his language. Every word was enunciated and selected for its purpose.
“I guess that makes you upper management. I don’t know if you know this, Tomás, but most businessmen, you know, suit and tie guys, they don’t have henchmen.” I pointed over my shoulder at the giant.
“Little Piwi? He’s security.”
“Little Piwi. That’s clever. Because he’s a big guy. The old switcheroo. He’s big, but his nickname makes him sound small. I get it.”
“Sabihondo smart-ass. I didn’t name him. That’s the name he had when I picked him up at the pound.”
I looked toward the bar and saw Alejandro talking to one of the dancers. He rested his hand on the back of her neck. It wasn’t an affectionate gesture, but an unsubtle expression of dominance. When he sternly jerked her toward him, I physically flinched. I turned back to Tomás.
