Strip

by Andrew Binks

  I pitied the three of us, stuck in the land of what was supposed to be. First grandpa, a gentleman farmer in the Wild West, betraying his name. Then Dad, turning perfectly good teeth into movie star fangs. And his disappointed wife, Barbie doll–perfect, surviving treacherous Edmonton winters by golfing in Phoenix. And lastly, a son who got the genetics all wrong, who loved being a man and loved having one. Had I done this to make their lives difficult? Was it a conspiracy? That’s what the chartreuse was saying by the end of the night.

  In the lobby bar at the Chateau—over Manhattans for me and my mother, and a double rye and ginger for Dad—with traces of cold cream and stray bits of mascara burning my eyes, I tried to put it all into black and white. “Once the show ends, I’ll start auditioning again. I had some offers in Montreal but I didn’t want to let Marcel down. Do you know that his mother danced in the original Lido? You should see their place. It’s a palace. A shrine to kitsch. This has all been a great experience. Marcel is a great choreographer and Madame has given me so much. But it’s time to move on.” I forced an optimistic note.

  “Those boys…”

  “Yes?”

  “Those friends of yours from Toronto.”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking the inclusion of seven standard junior executives would finally present some legitimacy and hope to my life.

  “They said they met you down south. When?”

  My father conveniently excused himself “to settle up the tab, we have an early checkout.”

  “Oh, you know, a few weeks ago.”

  “Did you go with Kent?”

  “No. Not really. No.”

  “Alone.”

  “I’m sorry I…”

  “I don’t blame you. I can’t forgive you right now, but I don’t blame you.” My mother sipped her drink, then cleared her throat, changed her tone. “The Company was in town.”

  “Did you go?”

  “Of course, well, I did. Your father…”

  “Had to work late?”

  “No. He had a conference to go to.”

  “What did they dance?”

  “A mixed repertoire. I think we’d seen it before. You know, de Mille, Balanchine.” She paused. “I was so sure I saw you up there.” She cleared her throat.

  Part of me desperately wanted to say I was sorry, and then wave my magic wand and go back to being in the Company, being the son she was proud of. But life wasn’t like that. To say I was sorry would have been admitting defeat halfway through what had become a huge battle. The best I could muster was a reassuring, “Well don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” Then I got them a cab and said I’d walk home to get some fresh air.

  From this stairwell I can say that I have become familiar with the stages of imminent death, and of a few of the stages following death. And when our big event was finished, it seemed that we had entered into a period of mourning that comprised of cloudy bad decisions, vague incomplete actions—trying to kill the beast quickly, but carelessly prolonging its suffering.

  I caught up with Marcel and the group at the Clarendon for a fun, funny and drunken moment—the way life should be. I heaved a huge sigh that my parents would be heading to the airport for an early flight. (I took great comfort in knowing that they would probably spend the next few weeks shaking off this experience with endless golf in Phoenix, and the past few days would end up being no more than a distant nightmare.)

  Like all after-show parties, we behaved like self-centred brats. I showed Guy the mark from his spear, fumbling to untuck my shirt. Then, in bad drunken French I slurred something like, “Tarzan, what big tits you have—what a jaw—and that dick,” and I shoved my hand between his thighs. Guy was from petite ville Quebec where they still had small-town manners, but with one beer too many he took my face in one big hand, squeezed my cheeks so my lips opened like a snap dragon, and when I thought he was going to snap my neck in two, he openly kissed me—hard and for all, including Steve, to see. He took his revenge, and I took my punishment like a man.

  After hours of table-hopping, bathroom visits to pee the gallons of liquid imbibed—while others giggled as they inhaled, sniffed, snorted, dropped or tasted various substances—and more yattering, weeping and laughter, everyone faded. Familiar faces, Bichon and Sugar, kissed goodbye through tears and promises. It had been the kind of night I wanted the rest of my life to be—eternal irresponsibility—and so I asked Marcel in a haze of drunkenness to come back to my place for a nightcap.

  We had the apartment to ourselves. The accountant-types weren’t back. Kent wasn’t home. It was too late to still be at the restaurant, so he must have been with someone. If he came in, he’d understand; once again I told myself he’d had his two thousand and I had to catch up. It was almost as simple as that. Almost.

  Marcel and I stumbled onto the queen-sized foam. He kissed me and then made a kind of whimpering sound. And he was soft like his nature—the smoothest skin I’d ever felt. When you feel a body like that, you swear they never had it tough. No calluses on his hands, soft feet. Hadn’t he danced? He was a true softie, hoping to be cuddled and coddled. As we lay there, he asked me not to tell François, whom he said he loved like a brother.

  I guess I’d had big plans for that night. I wanted a grand finale, but as I touched Marcel all I could think of was Kent and of all the times I had touched him and how electric that touch was. I was sad that he was not home.

  And yes, I know Kent taught me, Sex is sex, and cock is cock—but I’d say that when you finally get taken, and fall in love, it’s the heart that really gets fucked. Without noticing, Daniel had come to resemble my warning flag against bad choices. He was a lesson in what not to do ever again.

  The phone rang way too early that next morning and I noticed Kent was back in his bed-in-the-kitchen, snoring loudly—which meant he’d probably taken a sleeping pill or been very drunk—and Marcel had me in his arms. What had I done? I answered the phone and it was François. He knew Marcel had spent the night there but didn’t suspect anything, since François was a good person, and good people don’t suspect things. Someone sleeping in the kitchen, and seven on the floor, would be my alibi if pressed. “Can I speak with Marcel?”

  “Il dort encore. He’s still asleep. What is it? You sound flustered.”

  “Flustered?”

  “Oh God, um, oh yeah, enerver.”

  “Oh, yes, well I ’ave some bad news. Nadine, she kill ’erself. Last night. She wasn’t at da spectacle.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. She took pills.”

  Beautiful Rita Hayworth was dead because of a ten-year-old broken heart.

  My head throbbed, Kent and Marcel both snored. I sat in the kitchen, made coffee and watched Kent. When would the running in and out of this place like it was a bus depot ever stop? Would we ever unpack and have a goddamn schedule? Would we die like Nadine before we had a chance to be sane with each other?

  If I hadn’t filled my life with these oddballs, I might have done the same thing to myself. Pills and booze. But most of the time I saw a death beyond my control, something more dramatic: sliding under a bus, freezing to death on the way to the club, having a stage light fall on my head, having a heart attack during pre-show sex. It would be too pathetic to die on that queen-sized foam matt on the floor in front of the sealed fireplace, at the foot of Kent’s bed. It didn’t have the prestige of dying of consumption in a Parisian garret. There, they had working fireplaces but couldn’t afford wood. How about dying at the Chateau Frontenac in that Monroe-in-the-sheets pose? I could get them back for not hiring me for that busboy position. I could run a tab, stuff myself on room service, Chateau-briande, Chateau-neuf du Pape, gateau de Chateau, before doing the deed. I’d pre-choreograph the wake, down the street at Belle Époque. I had to at least give my parents’ friends and relatives something respectable to utter behind their backs next Christmas. I didn�
��t want to go alone like Nadine. I knew whose arms I wanted to be in.

  The remainder of the shows seemed a battle against the gloom; we held a memorial for Nadine in the club a few nights later, and everyone arrived early. Bichon and Sugar wore black chiffon to cover their faces. In the concrete basement we lit candles, Marcel put André Gagnon on his boom box, and we created a little shrine with a photo someone took of all of us, surrounded by pieces of feathers and sequins. We took turns saying things about Nadine; some I understood, some I didn’t. The girls who had worked with her for years were devastated. The rest of us were simply in shock. We all cried and then we laughed. I prayed the spirit of Nadine would know true love.

  After that, all I could think of was the closing of the show. Bichon and Sugar would be gone. The world of the show would be a memory. Someone might ask if they didn’t used to have a show.

  I always say I’ll see people again, to make the leaving not as painful. In this case it was ridiculous: I would never again see the bitchy Chaton in her tiny fun-fur bikini; my fan Suzette, the pregnant mother with a Harley escort; my driver Patrice; Mihalis the fit and Vasili the not-as-fit; and their stupid parole. They weren’t showmen; they would still be there.

  The second-last night of a run of any show, whether it’s with a prairie ballet recital or with the Company, is always the toughest. I find myself blinking back tears and swallowing a lot, thinking that the final show will be the most difficult. It is always the second-last show that catches me by surprise.

  Kent took the bus out to the Chez Moritz with me for the last night. I blinked my tears and stared through a reflection of snowy lights, not knowing where we were. I couldn’t look at him when I spoke. “Can I ask you something—without starting an argument?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why did you bring my parents to the club?”

  “That’s been bugging you?”

  I swallowed and spoke. “The truth did them good, I guess.”

  “Did you good.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You were hiding. You still are. Afraid of the truth.”

  “Not again.”

  “I’m here to remind you.”

  “That’s why you brought them?”

  “No. No, I knew you would never introduce me as more than a waiter friend.”

  “It’s that important to you?” For a moment I had a deep and searing feeling of belonging to someone.

  “You’re secretive. Gay is still gay out there in the real world, even though everything may seem fine and dandy in our little land of make-believe, bars, strip clubs, cafés. It’s not a joke.” He stopped as if something was caught in his throat. “Okay. To know you is to love you. I think your mother understands, but your father doesn’t get it.”

  “You’re a softie beneath that tough exterior.”

  “You know, in some parts of the world they have honour killings. Here they have no trouble with honour ignorings. Yes, I am a softie.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You have to be authentic to those closest to you.”

  “Stripping?”

  “You’re allowed a secret or two. What did they say about me?”

  “It’s important to you?”

  “In some respects.”

  I knew then that what had been growing in me was mutual. “Nothing. My mother said you were nice.” I could never tell him my father’s request to not bring him along. “Nice means a lot in my mother’s world.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “See, you’re more than a ‘waiter friend.’ She knows that.”

  “So?”

  “I know that, too.”

  That’s mostly what I remember from that bus ride. I wonder now—hanging out at the fifth-floor exit—when it was I started to have an effect on him. I never asked him. But the fact that he was at my side, then, made the ending of the show at the Chez Moritz that much more bearable—as if he had been through all of it with me. And he had. “I can’t believe you take that bus every night,” he said, as we walked single file along the shoulder of the highway.

  “I’ve only missed the stop once and it wasn’t because I was asleep—I was keeping myself busy by making eyes at some guy.

  Imagine.” When we finally arrived at the club they were all asking if Kent was mon blond, my man, since some of the girls recognized him from before. The girls, even Steve and Guy, most likely needed to believe there was something more to keep me company than my misguided ambition. I could see it in the way they looked at me—loners are intimidating.

  The evening show felt similar to trying on an old, out-of-style, too small, never-to-fit-again pair of jeans. And we performed with less enthusiasm than corpses, with barely anyone in the audience to witness the dirge. Sugar’s beau from Montreal, a machismo Latino who made his living as a lead drag queen in a big Montreal club, had come to watch. I made the mistake of thinking her guy was the miniscule hairdresser friend he had brought along. This put Sugar off.

  If Bichon were a woman, I would have said she was on the rag. And the other girls were speaking in an angry, fast Québécois about a girl who got the boot for letting a client touch her. There was also an outbreak of “box rash”—severe goosebumps on anyone whose bum had come in contact with the boxes we used when stripping. At one point, all bent over, it looked like we were searching for a lost contact lens, when in fact we were examining each other’s derrières. It was definitely not a love-in that last night.

  Patrice hadn’t talked to me for about a month. He’d long given up hope of a fruitful encounter and our drives had been silent, moody and dutiful. He made sure he got me home for the good of the show, that was it. He was the only performer not losing his job; he would continue to pull fake rabbits out of top hats while some new topless assistant posed like a deer in the headlights and held his props.

  By the end of the third show, we were drunk, sad and forgiving, and after we’d all hugged for the nine hundredth time and a very patient Kent was looking exhausted and drunk, it was time to go.

  Being drunk made this next part easier.

  “What next?” Kent asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe thinking of moving,” I said.

  “So you’ve thought about it? Maybe you could have shared it?”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “So have you. Where to?”

  I had to swallow against a huge lump that was forming in my throat. “Toronto seems logical.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Really?”

  “You’d be crazy to stay. I figured it was a matter of time. I ran away. You have to run, too.”

  “You want me to go?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ve pretended all along that it hasn’t gone to shit.”

  “Me, too. I should have put your ass on a bus way before now.”

  This bond was odd. What had brought us together, and made it not matter that his bed was now in my kitchen, or that I loved his fingers entwined in mine on the cab ride home?

  “There are decisions I have to make on my own.”

  “So, what will you do?”

  “More of the same, I guess.”

  “Strip or dance?”

  “Only until I can get ahead…”

  “Really?”

  “It’s what I am.”

  “Then it’s a waste.”

  “Of course I want back in. But I may never be able to do it on the same terms again. It’s hard. I’ve lost the keys to the kingdom. It may be too late.” I was trying to get him to realize what the odds were, but my own words terrified me.

  “I was locked out of something,” he said.

  “Your roommate beating you up doesn’t count.”

  “You knew?”

  “I figured it out.”

  “Well
, not that.” He swallowed, trying to stay on track. “Once upon a time I had been a pretty boy, someone’s date. Some called me bumboy to the big city’s finest.”

  “Finest?”

  “Actors, dancers, writers, musicians, artists, you name it, politicians, too. Am I bitter and old?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “You bet I am.” He laughed.

  “God, dancer’s years and gay years—and dog years—have a lot in common. I have got to get a move on. I mean, we both do.”

  “So it’s still about the career?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You still have your eye on that one thing.”

  “I’d like to find it again if possible.”

  “There’s no room for inconvenience?” he asked.

  “Depends.” I felt his grip tighten.

  “On?”

  “Well, you could be an inconvenience and that might be okay, if you…”

  “I?”

  “Never mind.” I tried to make out his expression as the streetlight and shadows flashed across us.

  “I think I understand.”

  I couldn’t bear the ensuing silence. “And?”

  “We could be inconvenient for each other,” he said.

  “I guess that’s what I meant.”

  “So I could come, too, when I get my things in order here.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Henri’s sick.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “Real sick. Don’t know if it’s the clubs, the poppers, too much fun or his trip to New York—but now they’re calling it gay cancer. I told you. It’s not going away.”

  “The girls have chattered about it, but it seems as real as giant alligators in the sewer.”