Dark Love: Part One

by JB Duvane

  He shrunk back, and with the sweetest puppy dog face handed me another twenty and left.

  “All right!” the DJ called out. “Let's all give a hand to Cat Woman!” He motioned for me to come over. “You gotta go talk to Red.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know, but he doesn’t seem happy.”

  “He never seems happy.”

  “Just be quick.”

  I rushed downstage toward Red's office, where he was sitting quietly with a bottle of whiskey in his hand and a blunt in the other. “Close the door.”

  I did.

  He poured me a shot and passed it to me. I downed it like it was water, and snatched his blunt from him. Before he could grab it back, I had two lungfuls of smoke, and I was already starting to cough.

  “Why'd you call me in?” I asked.

  “Shut up, bitch,” he shot back, and ran around the desk with the lit blunt still sticking out of his mouth. “You better dance your fucking ass off, you got that?! This is the last thing I need. You’re the only one I got here tonight.”

  I stared at him with my mouth wide open. I had no idea what he was talking about. I had been dancing my ass off. I tried not to show my disgust at the smell of his breath as he hovered right in front of my face.

  He took a puff and handed the blunt to me. Then he stepped back while I took a pull. “You've got a VIP waiting for you. He's a heavy roller, so you're gonna give him everything he asks for.”

  “The fuck I will.”

  “Don't get so worked up. He doesn't want your pussy.” He grabbed the blunt and sat back down to take another shot. “You don't look at him. You stay behind the white line. Other than that, you do exactly what he says.”

  “Whatever.” I slammed the whiskey and walked out to go change.

  Red was a prideful man. To him, the club was a milestone. It was the only strip club for hours, sitting directly off a major interstate—a famous household name, or maybe at one point it was. Back then, he wouldn't have had any trouble talking to the girls however he wanted to.

  But now, I was the only thing bringing money into the place. There were some good-looking girls, but outer beauty has little to do with drawing a crowd. It's about how well you can play a man. You have to be confident enough to do what it takes, sexy enough to have what they want, and you have to know how to move. None of the other girls could do that the way I could.

  I was an artist, and when I left, he'd be sorry for speaking to me like that, because this place was going to burn down to the ground. He was never going to get another girl like me.

  Marie was my personal masterpiece. She wasn't an archetype. She was an individual with unique tastes and a personality that had to be studied rather than simply understood. She was a vengeful goddess, named after the voodoo queen Marie Laveau.

  She had short black hair that curled around her chin, a china doll face, and a low-cut green and black teacup dress with an old-fashioned apron on the bottom half. I liked the dress because it emphasized my large breasts and small waist while simultaneously disguising my overly plump ass.

  Marie was always very quiet, never one for conversation.

  Once I put the costume on, like with all of the others, I became Marie. I took on her cold, cynical presence with a straight-lipped expression, and pushed past the empty tables toward the red glow of the VIP room where Mando was waiting in front.

  “What's he want?” I asked him.

  “I don't know. But I'll be right here. He ain't gonna touch you.”

  I walked past the beaded curtain and the lights switched off immediately. There was a white line in chalk just past the entrance to the room, and a shapeless head moving against the light that reflected against the back wall.

  He didn't say anything. I waited forever, shuffling around, staring at him. But he didn't say a word until I turned around to walk out.

  “Wait.” His voice could move mountains.

  I turned around, squinting into the light. “Well, do you want me to dance for you?”

  He didn't answer. He just sat there, staring at me. Then he said, “Turn around.”

  I started to.

  “Slowly. Very slowly.”

  I gave him what he asked for.

  “Lift your hands up like a ballerina.”

  I lifted my hands up. Then I dropped them and faced him. “I could be making some serious cash ri—”

  He threw a wad of hundreds that landed at my feet. I darted down to pick them up. It was enough to leave and survive until I found a place to work. This was it, and all I had to do was pose for this psycho.

  “Will you do what I want?”

  I would have sat down in the strange man’s naked lap for this.

  “Maybe.” A smile crept up the side of my lips, and I twirled my hair.

  “Will you take your wig off for me?”

  My hands dropped to my sides and I sucked in my breath. Did he know what he was asking? I never gave this to anyone. He wanted me to give him a piece of the real me. I felt like a caged animal, waiting for this beast to snap my neck.

  “You don't want to?” he asked curiously.

  “No.”

  “But will you?” I heard his chair squeak as he leaned forward. He wanted to know if he had control over me.

  Did he? I had more than a thousand dollars in my bra and a way out. All I had to do was give a part of myself to somebody else—someone I didn't know, and I didn't trust—who got off on watching women and controlling them.

  I had a way out, though.

  I pulled up on the back of my wig and threw it to the side, revealing my hair cap.

  “That too.”

  I threw it off and shook out my hair so that it fell down around my shoulders. Then I stepped a little closer to the light, giving the beast the look I knew he needed.

  I watched him lean closer and sigh while I stood waiting for him to decide what to do next. “Thank you. You may go.”

  I grabbed my wig and ran out to my car.

  6

  Charlotte

  I remember sitting down on the floor in front of my father's spot on the couch while he recounted stories about my mother and how beautiful she was. His words would paint a picture of a woman so perfect she couldn't possibly have existed. Nobody could be so kind and generous. They wouldn't have had anything left to give. They couldn't love somebody with everything they had and still love themselves. I didn't believe that there was enough love in the world to accomplish such a task.

  Then there were the physical limitations. Every woman has a part of their body that they simply can't stand. It could be something as simple as a red dot on their face, or it could be something like a three-inch-long flap of dangling pussy lip, but we all had our shame points. They take over our thoughts, burrowing deep within our minds until they become a part of our identity. We define ourselves by our shame points. We are who we are because they are a part of us.

  It's why women pay doctors to cut them up and reshape them into their idealized image of what they should look like. None of us measure up so long as those shame points exist.

  My shame point was always my pudgy belly, especially the lumpy sides that stuck out an inch past my belly button. It was always there when I looked down, just resting, reminding me that no matter what I did it was never enough. My pudge was invincible. Sometimes I thought that it would be there after I died, taunting my tormented, disembodied spirit with its saggy, dark eye.

  That's why I was parked in Maddie's parking lot, sitting in my car with my face drenched in tears. I was insecure; that was what I was hiding when I dressed up to dance. I never showed anyone anything about me, least of all the fact that I was ashamed of my body, but somehow that man knew. He didn't know me. As far as I knew he'd never seen me, but he seemed to know my secrets just by looking at me. That was enough to break me, but he really had to twist the knife. He had to exploit my insecurity.

  When I started stripping, I told myself that I would never sell out. I w
asn't exposing myself. I was just putting on a costume. Nothing could hurt me. But there was something about him. Something that made me go against my own rules. And standing there in front of him, fully clothed but with my real hair showing, made me feel more naked than I had with a room full of guys screaming at me while I was doing tassel twirls in a g-string.

  I had to leave, and I had to do it tonight. Time and distance were the only things that could make this feeling inside me go away. When I got to Phoenix I would figure my shit out, but for now I just needed to move. I got out of the car, not even bothering to wipe my face. It was all out there now. What did it matter?

  When I walked into Maddie's, she was sitting on the couch reading with a beer at her feet, surrounded by a smoky haze that dimmed the yellow lamplight. “You're leaving,” she declared.

  “Yeah.” I stomped over to the side of the couch to grab my clothes that I'd left there, then back into the bathroom to get my toothbrush.

  “Come have a smoke with me first.”

  “I'm gonna be on the road all night. I should probably get going.”

  “It won’t kill you to relax a second, sweetie.”

  I leaned against the counter and looked up into the mirror. I looked like a washed-up prostitute, with patches of black mascara covering my cheeks and red lines of lipstick leading from my lips all the way to my ear.

  Pathetic, I thought to myself as I tried to wipe away some of the black and red streaks. I really needed to wash up, clear my head, and dry out. This wasn't the time to be flying out into the night just so I could displace myself in a dangerous metropolis.

  “All right.” I walked back in and sat down on the other side of the couch while she pulled out a Pall Mall and handed it to me along with an old silver lighter. I loved those old brands of cigarettes. The kind a dad or the sixty-year-old bartender at the strip club smoked.

  Red still stacked those old brands into the ancient vending machine at the back of the club near the bathroom, and customers still fed their quarters in to claim a pack. It’s where I always bought my dad’s Chesterfields. I didn’t know where he was going to get them after I was gone.

  “Thank you.” The rush of smoke pounding back into my lungs brought the first wave of relief I'd had in more than an hour. It was bliss.

  “Heh.” She put down her book and smiled.

  “What?”

  “There's something about an angry smoker finally getting a hit of a cigarette.”

  “Oh.” I fiddled with the lace on the bottom of my dress. She was stating the obvious, to put it mildly.

  “I'm gonna miss you. You're the only thing worth seeing in that club.”

  “It's not that bad, Maddie.”

  “Oh,” she scoffed. “Come on … Thelma?” Maddie raised one eyebrow.

  Thelma was a bald pile of leather with nothing but a baby patch of hair and no teeth. She was known in every surrounding county for her no-teeth blow jobs and sometimes didn't even bother to wear her dentures when she was dancing. She'd just storm up on stage with the same crazy wig she'd been wearing for years and ride the pole, screaming like a kid on a roller coaster till somebody finally stuck a dick in her mouth just to shut her up. She had good tits and narrow hips, but that was it for her good points.

  “What happened to her?” I sniffed.

  “Oh,” Maddie ashed her cigarette. “I thought you knew.”

  I paused.

  “Not sure exactly what happened. Sheriff found most of her out in the desert with one of Red's matchbooks in her pocket. So they came to the bar to ask about her. I guess one of the customers got her to go with them. She was always doing things like that.”

  “For the money?”

  “No, ‘cause she didn't have anyone. She didn't have any dignity. She would do just about anything for one of those crummy old skanks. For attention or love or whatever you want to call it.”

  “That's sad, Maddie.”

  I took a puff and watched the ringlets of smoke curl outward, then dissipate in the air.

  “It's sure as hell ain’t pretty.”

  “Maddie I—”

  “Look kiddo, I know you're not into drugs and drinking, and I know you don't let the men at you. What I'm talking about is what's inside.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You gave up a little too much tonight. I know you did. I saw you run out. You don't want people to see you, and it's not because you want to preserve your dignity. It's because you don't want them to really see you. Something about dancers and that place,” she took another puff. “They're broken. Oh hell, we’re all broken. Some way or another we start to hate ourselves.

  “It seems like women—young women—are always on display. It starts out so that we’re just trying to look nice, but then all we end up doing is thinking about whether or not our makeup looks right or if our nose is crooked. A whole lifetime of that bullshit. It magnifies that part of the female nature that is constantly reminding us that we're imperfect. You might work hard to keep your secrets, but that's what'll kill you. It's what killed Thelma, that's for sure.”

  I sat there, staring at her and shaking, ready to crumble in a fit of tears. “God, you're right,” I groaned. “But what am I supposed to do? I have to survive.”

  “That there,” she pointed a finger. “That's what keeps those girls on the pole. Keeps them from grabbing life and running with it. They think they don't have any other options—no resume, no piece of paper to validate them to the rest of the world. Well, it's wrong. I've seen plenty of women walk out of that hole in the wall and make it. They're the ones that weren't afraid to try. It’s over for me, though. I had my chance years ago, but now who wants an old beat up hag but Red.”

  Maggie took a long drag off her cigarette while she stared at me. “When you go, find something decent, hon, even if it's waiting tables. Find something better. Don’t let your chance slip through your fingers. Thelma was only in her late forties when she was working for Red.”

  “No, she was not.”

  “Yes, she was. She sure as hell didn’t look it, but she was. Do you want to end up like her? Because I’m telling you, sweetie, that’s the road you’re headed down. You’re young and pretty—“

  “Oh, come on, Maggie.”

  “You are. Maybe you can’t see it and that’s a damned shame. But you’re a beautiful girl and you’re throwing it all away on a bunch of assholes that just ain’t worth it.” She took another drag off her cigarette while she eyed me. “You’re a sweet kid. I can see it. You don’t get too close and I can only imagine why, but can see it in your eyes.”

  “What?”

  “Kindness. You’ve got a good heart and you care. Maybe too much. But you’ve got eyes that are looking for something, maybe for something you don’t have inside you. And I’ll tell you, you’re not going to find it in that place,” she said, pointing her finger in the air. “And maybe you figure those acts you put on every night are your only escape. But when you get out of here you’ll be free of all that. I can feel it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Maggie put out her cigarette and offered me the ashtray so I could put out mine. I leaned my head back against the couch with a sudden urge to shriek, or break something. I just wanted release.

  She was right. I made a huge mistake going to Red's. I'd already been wallowing in self-hatred for years, but getting up on that stage only seemed to make it worse. I didn’t know how to find what I needed to make me feel whole. But Maggie could see something that I never could. If I didn’t do something I was going to wake up one day and find myself still in the same dead-end strip club in some other dusty ghost town.

  “Rest here tonight. You smell like a concert,” she laughed bitterly.

  “You sure?”

  “You can't drive tonight.”

  I lay down and curled up, letting the lace on my teacup dress ruffle against the couch. “Thank you, Maddie.”

  As I drifted off to sleep I thought about the wa
y I had always pictured my life. In my daydreams, I was always in lavish surroundings with beautiful antiques and fabrics with intricate patterns. Places I’d only ever seen in movies. I pictured a man who adored me, who would finally see and appreciate the real me. I hoped maybe I’d find that man in Phoenix and then laughed to myself at how silly I was being.

  Yeah, right, I thought to myself as I drifted off. Unfortunately, the dream I had that night was far from beautiful. It was a patched together memory of my childhood that always came to me in the anxious hours of the night when I wasn’t really sure if I was asleep.

  I hated the dreams I had during that time of night.

  I lay on the carpet, with its tough surface swollen from ancient filth, staring at a can with my head ducked so he could see the TV. I always had to duck. The can was red, white, and blue, as quintessentially American as it got—beer and TV.

  My father picked up an unopened can from atop the coffee table, opened it, and knocked the whole thing back. Then he kicked me in the side, just hard enough to make sure I knew he wanted something. “Go get me another.”

  I got up and ran to fridge, which was filled with beer cans and one dried up package of half eaten lunch meat, then grabbed him another beer. “Here you go, Daddy.”

  He snatched it right out of my hand while I waited patiently for him to drain it. It didn't take long. Then I ran back and grabbed him another while he added the empty can to the pile sitting next to the coffee table.

  “Wanna see my tutu, Daddy? They showed me how to make it at school today.” I grabbed two beers and ran back, only to find myself being slammed in the face with a fist like a solid rock.

  “You're gonna grow up to be a little fucking slut, aren't you?”

  I looked up, my head throbbing and my lower lip quivering. “N-n-o.”

  “Yes you are. You ain't gonna be any good at it either. You're ugly as shit. You got those nasty-ass buck teeth, and you're stupid. I should beat the whore out of ya. Make sure you know the right way to do things, rather than running around in some glittery outfit trying to get men to look at you.”