Adam knew the moves from every hot sex scene in every one of my favorite movies, or at least it seemed like he did. He made out like Maverick in Top Gun.We steamed up my bedroom like something out of Body Heat, twisted and writhed on top of my mattress like Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin in The Big Easy. I always wanted a Henry Miller to whom I could play Anais, forget stupid June with her annoying Bronx accent, and here he was. Oh I was so getting married to this guy. I didn’t care how big his thing was and maybe I could get used to his dirty talking.
Adam left as the sun rose.
“God, it’s a shame you live with your parents or I could stay longer but I’ve got this stupid tee time in a couple of hours and I have to see my family tonight, but I promise I’m going to take you out this week.” he said. We were spooning in bed and he was stroking my hair, which caused me to nearly die because I’d always wanted someone to stroke my hair in bed after sex. It was so wonderful I almost cried when he jumped out of bed and left.
The whole next day I danced around the house singing “I have a boyfriend!!”
Because I did right? Once you sleep with someone you’re in a relationship. Right?
I finally went out for Chinese with Angelina and Michelle that night and told them about it while we split a Happy Family.
“I told you he had a small dick, didn’t I?” Michelle said.
“So it’s the size of a salt shaker,” I shrugged, “I’ll give you that, but it was the best salt I’ve ever tasted in my life. Wow.”
“I think you just haven’t gotten laid in a while,” Angelina suggested, “Maybe you were salt deprived.”
“Seriously, because it wasn’t that great with me. The dude does not shut the fuck up. I couldn’t take it. I mean, dirty talk can be sexy sometimes, but Jesus Christ, it’s like he has some kind of fetish,” Michelle said, “Please tell me he’s stopped that by now? No? He hasn’t? For God’s sakes. How long was it since you’d had sex?”
“Like a year probably,” I said.
“There’s your answer,” Angelina laughed.
I broke open my fortune cookie and in my blissed out, finally having gotten laid state I half expected it to say: “You have met your soulmate. Your suffering is over. Celebrate because someone wants you. You will get engaged in one month.” But all the silly slip of paper in the stale cookie’s crack said was: “Your career looks bright.” What BS. What the hell did a crappy pastry know anyway?
Mr. Salt Shaker called me again around nine on Tuesday night.
“Sweetie, I am so exhausted from work. I was going to take you out, but I’m so tired. Why don’t you just come over here and watch a movie with me?” he whined.
After ingesting enough Imodium to back up an Angus bull, I practically teleported myself over to his house, where he had not rented any movies. He had no cinematic plans, although I have a feeling if I’d have wanted to watch porn, he’d have already had his DVD player cued up.
“You know what really gets me off?” he said, taking a break from kissing me, “I want you to tell me a story.”
A terrible dread ran through me. He wanted me to talk dirty to him the way he talked to me. OK, I thought. I can do this. I loved stories and I’d even written a couple.
“What kind of story do you want?” I asked.
“Don’t look like that. Don’t be shy. Look, you’re blushing. Just tell me a story about us, about what we’re doing.”
“Right now?” I asked because it seemed dumb to just recount what was happening. Surely I could be more creative than that.
“No, make something up. Tell me what you want to do.”
“All right…umm. We’re in Paris, on the banks of the Seine in winter and it’s snowing and we’re kissing passionately,” I began.
“And I slip my hand up your skirt!!” he added.
“Uhh. OK, so we’re standing there kissing as the lights from the buildings dance over the cold water and there are snowflakes on my eyelashes and -”
“And then two hookers show up next to us and they’re both wearing leather thigh high boots and you take off your coat and you’re naked underneath it and I bend the blonde hooker over while you and the red head start going at it!!”
This story telling business was not working out at all because that was not even remotely how I had imagined the sequence of events. I was actually pissed that he hijacked and subsequently ruined my beautiful, delicate and romantic story about kissing on the Left Bank. The nerve of this idiot bringing prostitutes into my fantasy!
“And then…” I said.
“Yeah baby, tell me what happens!” he urged, getting more excited.
“And then the blonde hooker has a raging case of herpes which you get and spend the rest of our trip with sores, begging to get back to the States where you can get some Valtrex!”
Adam was not amused by the ending to the story and said I needed practice in dirty talk.
“But it’s ok because I still think you are so hot and so beautiful and I just want to spend every single day with you,” he said and instantly I forgave his literary transgressions.
Later that evening, in the middle of sex, that was definitely not nearly as mind-blowing as the first time, he began to shout.
“Tell me you like my cock!”
I was horrified and trying to not burst out laughing at the same time. I tried to ignore it, thinking that maybe sometimes people say things during passionate moments over which they have little control and which they later do not remember, but I was wrong.
“Come on, tell me you like my cock!” he insisted.
Oh dear God. He wanted me to say it. Never ever had the word “cock,” or that other c word, been in my extensive vocabulary. I had never and would never say it. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t say that word. It sounded ridiculous.
“Let me hear you! Tell me how much you love this huge cock!!!”
Was this actually happening to me? How I didn’t crack up I’ll never know, because I have, and have always had, the maturity level of Beavis and Butthead. I was laughing inside. I was ready to explode with hysterical, hyper-ventilating, pee my pants laughter. A guy with a ding ding the size of a salt shaker was trying to force me to say I loved his huge cock. What terrible thing had I done that I deserved all this punishment? But I really liked Adam, and I wanted him to like me back, so I had to say it even though getting the word up was as difficult as trying to forcefully regurgitate a flounder’s spine.
“You love this big cock, don’t you?” he rephrased.
Ok, finally I could just answer him and maybe he would give it up.
“yes,” was my tiny, meek and less than enthusiastic reply.
Later we had a talk about my prudishness. I wanted romance and intimacy, not vulgarity. I was starting to realize that the Adam and I were on two entirely different planes of existence.
“You seem unsure of yourself, like you’re holding back. You need to let go and have a good time. I thought you’d be totally different. Are you sure you work at the Bubblegum Kittikat?”
Adam had a point. It was true that I’d always been a little unsure of myself, however, in this situation I think it was warranted. I barely knew him and we hadn’t spent any significant time together. Obviously I was going to be a little apprehensive. It had always taken me a while to warm up to new people and I was put off by the foul language and his reenactments of X-rated movies.
For the next few weeks things went about the same. Adam kept promising to take me out and then calling at the last minute with a million excuses why he couldn’t, although it was perfectly fine for me to come over to his house late at night and I went because he wanted me to and because when I sprawled under the down comforter in his king sized, I felt like I was really sticking it to Evan. I had someone too during those moments. I began to wise up some, but at the same time I kept hoping that maybe Adam would change. I held out in hopes that maybe he was telling the truth and maybe he would fall madly in love with me and soon his fantasies of
Paris would not involve orgies with hookers, but would become reverent and meaningful like mine.
“You are just his booty call,” Angelina told me.
“I told you he was an idiot. He has no respect for girls. He’s probably one of those guys who likes girls who abuse him and if a girl is sweet and innocent like you he treats her like a doormat,” Michelle chimed in.
We were having lunch again. Adam hadn’t called me in over a week. I tried to call him but he wouldn’t pick up his cell phone.
“What is wrong with me that he doesn’t want to go out with me?” I lamented.
“He doesn’t respect you. Rick tried that crap with me but I don’t like him. I told him I wasn’t interested in him. He called me last night and said he and Adam were snorting oxycontin. What losers. He kept asking me if I wanted to do a bump of coke every time we went out and I was like eww, I don’t mess with that shit. That’s disgusting,” Angelina said.
“They do cocaine??” I was very upset. “Does everyone down here do cocaine? Are all the guys in South Florida out to do drugs and get laid by as many girls as possible? Is nobody serious in this place?”
Angelina and Michelle nodded.
“Pretty much,” they said in unison.
“Last night he told me he had to go somewhere with his dad!” I cried.
“He was out with Rick in South Beach.”
“I told you he was an asshole. You didn’t listen to me,” Michelle told me yet again.
12
I thought people who did those kinds of drugs lived on the streets, were hippies (or worked in strip clubs). It made no sense to me that Adam would do drugs because he owned a business, had investments and seemed incredibly responsible and well put together for his age. He had black labs and Yankee candles! People with Yankee candles aren’t the type to smash up prescription painkillers and snort them. Plus, he never seemed high when he was around me and whenever he called me he was in the car. That jackass. How could he be messed up on all these drugs and still able to work, drive, take care of pets and keep his house looking so nice?
I expected drugs at the Kittikat. Even I wasn’t so naïve to think a strip club was as drug free a zone as the local elementary school. Still, the first time I saw cocaine there was jarring.
I had to pee. I had to pee so bad I couldn’t concentrate on anything else except not wetting my pants, but it was five-thirty in the evening and if I could make it not even forty-five more minutes, day shift would turn over, I’d be home and could pee in my own clean toilet. I didn’t like to step out from the safety of my box. Roaming freely on the floor, I often felt lightheaded and disoriented the way people feel in earthquakes when the ground won’t stop rolling beneath their feet. I wouldn’t touch anything if I could help it, especially in the bathroom. I felt like the whole place was crawling with chlamydia and supposedly you can’t get herpes from toilet seats, but it makes absolute sense to me that you very well could, so why tempt fate? With my luck, I’d get herpes from a toilet seat, so avoiding the ladies room at all costs seemed a smart plan except when I had to go so badly that my renal system practically shrieked in agony. When it started raining outside, peeing at work became non-negotiable.
Female customers were few and far between during days (rumor had it more ladies showed up at night but I had yet to find out) so guess who frequented our ladies’ room? Yes, that’s right, strippers. They had a locker room in the back with showers, a tanning bed, a full on beauty salon and a bunch of scuffed and torn black leather couches to flop on and of course there was a toilet back there, but they liked the front of the house potty better. It was closer and Marie, the attendant, waited on them like they were royalty and let them loiter and linger over the sink, whereas the house mother and make-up artist, whom I hadn’t yet met, apparently hustled them back out on the floor and allowed for very little fooling around.
A Haitian Buddha, surrounded by urinating dancers, Marie sat in the bathroom silently handing out hairspray, gum and paper towels for a pittance of tips. Her livelihood depended on the generosity of those needing tampons, nail clippers, Bonne-Belle bubblegum lip gloss or a spritz of Designer Impostors Confess. Her job, I figured, was easily the worst in the club and because she made so little money, she worked double shifts every day, meaning she came in around three in the afternoon and didn’t leave until three in the morning. The woman sat in a restroom for twelve hours straight every single day and she’d seen and cleaned the worst the Bubblegum Kittikat had to offer, though she didn’t seem to mind any of it. I always wondered what Marie’s story was. We all had one, so what was hers? What brought her from the slums of Port Au Prince to the stalls of Fort Lauderdale?
Marie smiled and waved when I came in. I tried not to touch anything in there and I guess that was obvious.
“I clean for you,” Marie said.
But how clean can a place be when two barely legal dancers, one of them a tan-lined Malibu Barbie named Samantha, and the other a lanky Israeli named Dani, whose claim to fame was that she’d been in the Israeli army and could shoot an Uzi, both stood with one leg up on the counter, gowns hiked up past their hips, so they could examine their crotches in the mirror? They weren’t comparing parts. They were looking for scraps of toilet paper and this was standard practice for dancers after a bathroom visit. You didn’t want to go on stage or give a lap dance with Charmin hanging out of your vadge, especially since the white tissue glowed alarmingly bright blue in the black lights.
“You’re good,” Dani said to Samantha.
“You too, no TP.”
They did this as casually as Olivia and I might look for an errant piece of arugula in one another’s smiles after salad.
I couldn’t get past them to the stalls, which were occupied anyway so I stood there, my bladder about to pop like a water balloon tossed from a motel balcony.
“What? What are you looking at? You try to get on stage with toilet paper stuck in your twat!” Samantha said.
I didn’t realize I’d stared and was mortified. Marie waved them off, giggled and handed each of them a fresh baby wipe.
“Jesus, Roxanne, hurry up in there. You’re almost up. The DJ said we’re on next. What the fuck are you doing in there?” Dani yelled. She was loud and brash, with a thick Israeli accent and a hawkish profile that made her look predatory.
“Hold on! God dammit!” Roxanne called from the stall and then “Shit! Motherfucker. Shit! Shit! Cocksucking Shit Balls! FUCK!! I dropped it!”
All you could see under the stall door was a pair of bony feet, spray-tanned orange, French manicured, strapped into mile-high, clear heels stamping in a pile of white powder. At first I thought she’d kicked over a can of Comet Marie’d left behind the toilet tank, but when Roxanne got down on her hands and knees with her highlighted hair extensions dragging across the wet floor tiles and began frantically trying to paw the substance, which looked exactly like baking soda, into her palms, I knew it was a lot more valuable than scouring powder. So that was cocaine. This was blow, snow, yeyo. I’d seen it in plenty of movies, but never in real life, and here was a young woman, calling herself Roxanne and God knows what her real name was, so desperate for the stuff that when she couldn’t gather every last gram of it into her hand to shove up her nose, that she actually tried to lick it out of the grout.
In elementary school, a police man visited our classroom as part of the “Just Say No to Drugs” campaign of the 80s. He’d brought a suitcase with him filled with plastic versions of drugs so that we’d be able to identify them when pushers tried to lure us into getting high. We’d watched some corny film-strips and the entire class had gotten bored and antsy after five minutes and the film hadn’t succeeded in doing much for us except getting us out of fractions for an hour. If the policeman had really wanted to scare us straight, he should have showed us Roxanne. Kids, if you do drugs you’ll end up like this – a woman who takes off her clothes for money and tongues the grimy, piss-splattered floor of a titty-bar restroom to get hig
h. Could there be a worse life than that? I can’t really think of one. Whatever Marie’d escaped from in Haiti might even be preferable, and with goings on like that in the Kittikat ladies’ room, can you blame me for holding it? That’s enough to make anyone hover, and while I stood there frozen in the snow storm, Marie practically howled with laughter at the scene, slapping her pancake hands on her giant knees over and over.
13
I didn’t hear from Adam until after Halloween, which was about ten days after my most recent meet-up with Angelina and Michelle. I had already written him off, and the saddest part of the story is that I was pretty depressed about it. I could just see Evan laughing at me, probably while trying to come up with another lawsuit to file.
“See. You aren’t even good enough to be someone’s booty call. No one wants you,” he would say and point, while his girlfriend snickered in the background wearing one of my old outfits, probably one that my fat ass could no longer fit into.
Adam’s rejection was Evan’s rejection all over again, compounded unworthiness, and there was nothing I could do to make myself feel better except make homemade chocolate chip cookies. I was eating one when Adam called.
I should have told him not to call me ever again, but I was so happy to get some attention, any attention, that I didn’t click end and toss the cordless across the room like I should have.
“Sweetheart, baby I am so sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been swamped at work. You know, this isn’t a good time in my life. I can’t have a girlfriend right now, but I do like to see you sometimes. You understand right? You’re sweet and you’re so beautiful and when I’m not with you all I’m thinking about is how your body feels against me and I know you’re thinking that too. Please come over. Come over right now.”
Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat Page 9
