Scream
Page 23
“Well, no,” I said. I mean, I was thinking, why would I go on a talk show to promote someone else’s book? I have enough trouble promoting my own, and I get very nervous going on talk shows. “He’s booked on a talk show and he can’t promote his own work, himself?”
“You don’t understand,” the man said. “You’d be with Peter Parker in a comic book. Peter Parker is Spider-Man’s alias!”
“Are you serious!?” I said. “Of course I would appear in a comic book! I’d be totally thrilled!”
That’s how I ended up in a Spider-Man comic.
© Marvel. Used by permission.
postscript
Finally I get to go to the Snake Charmers Lounge, the bleak-looking “gentleman’s club” on the tourist wine trail road, near the Christmas shop and the Glen. In summer the road is always busy. But in winter, which lasts for around nine months of the year, almost everything shuts down, except for this lounge. According to the contractor, the legal (and illegal) Mexican workers from the dairy farms need someplace to go, and they’re known to spend entire paychecks on lap dances.
I’ve been waiting for this moment, but I was always too much of a wuss to go there on my own. The construction worker takes me. He pays admission to a grayish figure at the end of a bar—it costs something like ten dollars each—and we get soda (there’s no alcohol in the place). There aren’t really any customers, either, apart from us. There’s a big table surrounded by bar stools and a long, glistening table with one pole, and in the corner of the room are four or five bored girls in bikini tops and panties tossing their manes and stomping their high-heeled hooves. He gives me a stack of singles. Now a girl comes out from behind a doorway and gets on the table. First she cleans the pole with some presumably antibacterial wipe and fairly promptly takes off her clothes—except for her high heels—then writhes, undulates, and performs various contortions, stopping in front of us. The construction worker tucks a dollar in her garter and she places his head between her breasts. Her dance is over. “That’s one of the owner’s daughters,” he tells me.
“Who’s the owner?” I say. “That guy who you paid at the door?”
“Yes.”
A man is sitting across from us now, and another girl comes out and wipes off the pole. The man has a very appreciative expression, and as she spreads her legs, allowing him a look at her vagina, he gives her a dollar. This one is even more agile and is able to spin on the pole upside down and so forth. “That’s another of the owner’s daughters,” he says. They have very nice bodies and dance without any sensuality whatsoever. I can’t tell how old they are.
“The place is empty,” I say.
“Oh, it will get crowded.”
But it never does.
Each girl wipes off the pole. I can’t tell if it’s to get rid of the previous dancer’s perspiration or if it’s because each is pathologically afraid of obtaining a disease. The whole place reeks, smelling of marijuana and the kind of disinfectant that haunts you forever after you use the toilet on the bus or train. One girl is wearing striped thigh-high stockings and sleeves and platform sandals in bright clown colors, and she waves her breasts at us, bending low. “Ooh, what a cute outfit!” I say, even though that doesn’t exactly seem like the right comment to make. “Where did you find matching shoes!”
Now a young girl comes out, and she doesn’t appear to be any older than fourteen. She has to be coached by another dancer, who sits in the corner nearby, gesticulating to the girl how to move and what to do. This girl seems very nervous, unlike the owner’s daughters. I’m thinking, why was I so upset when my dad wanted me to enter a wet T-shirt contest? I am just so old-fashioned, right? A strong skunky odor wafts out from the side room from which the girls emerged. I guess there’s no alcohol in this place but these girls smoke plenty of pot, no doubt with their dad.
Such sad parents my daughter has, right? With her own father telling her grandfather not to get his granddaughter high and a mother who spent a lifetime trying to discourage her daughter from getting a job as a topless dancer as a career choice, and advising her not to get any tattoos. The first semester that kid was at college, the university sent out a letter at Thanksgiving warning parents not to be alarmed if their child came home with a tattoo, that it was perfectly normal. Only it was too late.
Now another girl comes out, I don’t know if she is yet another of the owner’s daughters or what. First she splays herself in front of the construction worker, and then, coming to me, begins to nuzzle me on the side of my face, reeking of dirty hair and that skunky smell. I want to shove her off me! Quickly I give her a dollar. How much will I have to pay to keep her away from me? If she puts one hand on me, I think, I’m going to start screaming and I won’t stop. Any hope or aspiration I had of becoming a lesbian is now ended forever. My life would have been better, possibly easier, had I been gay but now I see there is truly no hope.
My contact lenses are bothering me and I should have known not to wear long underwear to this venue. It’s freezing outside, there’s a chance of snow, but what kind of idiot wears long underwear to a nude club? Finally we get up to leave. I take a deep breath, glad of fresh air, only . . . the smell is worse than inside. All that time indoors, it was nothing as strong as it is out here. As we get closer to the car—the side the dressing, or undressing, room was on—the odor becomes more ferocious. It really is a skunk! Some skunk must have pooted right under the side of the building.
Is there a moral to any of this?
None that I can think of.
Fiction has morals; fiction has a point.
Life? I guess not.
There are always two sides to aisle 11.
And sometimes, not always, aisle 12 is nearby.
acknowledgments
With much thanks and appreciation for my friends, some of whom are also friend/agent, friend/editor, friend/publicist, friend/teacher, friend/support—in various combinations—all of whom have saved me in one way or another:
Christopher Schelling, Carrie Thornton, Matthew Daddona, Joseph Papa, Greg Villepique.
Stasia Newell, Tim Dunlap, Tara Bricker, Sue Martin, Kristine Shaw, Lyn Gerry, Cat Rossiter, Lindy Feigenbaum, Debbie Schmitz, Diane Shetler, Susan Ward, Mark Ramos, Joe Chicone, Anne Cridler, Annie Hauff Madison, Mark Raymond.
Jo Hunt, Mary Ott, Peter Baker, Carol Alexander, Missy Blauvelt, Tom Bell, Millie Nash, Cathy Carlson—there when I needed you.
To those who were with me when I was told my mom had died: Sue Laughlin, April Borden, Sylvia Laughlin. So compassionate, kind, and supportive.
Jill Abrams!
Sally Judd, Paige Powell, Brian Dannelly, Michael Urban, Glenn Albin, Barton G. Weiss, Nick Fox, Fay Weldon, James Ivory, Tim Hunt—rescuers all of you—and last, but numero uno, Willow Hunt.
Special thanks to the New York Foundation for the Arts for their aid—financial and psychological—at a crucial moment in my life.
about the author
TAMA JANOWITZ has published eleven books, which have been translated into twenty-two languages and made into several films. She lives in upstate New York with her dog, Zizou Zidane, now that the other seven have expired, and her quarter horse mare, Fox, with whom she studies under Stasia Newell.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
also by tama janowitz
American Dad
Slaves of New York
A Cannibal in Manhattan
The Male Cross-Dresser Support Group
By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee
A Certain Age
Hear That?
(for children; illustrated by Tracey Dockray)
Peyton Amberg
Area Code 212
They Is Us
credits
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Cover photograph © Lynn James / Getty Images
Photographs, unless otherwise credited, are provided courtesy of the author.
copyright
This
is a memoir. My memories. It is what I remember. Except some of the people were a lot worse. I changed some names and minor details. Quotes are re-created to the best of my ability based on my keen recollection of the events.
SCREAM. Copyright © 2016 by Tama Janowitz. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-239132-2
EPub Edition August 2016 ISBN 9780062391339
16 17 18 19 20 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
about the publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com