Brett Battles - The Pull of Gravity

It wasn’t that they were stupid. You wouldn’t last long on Fields if you were stupid. It was a case of the here and now. A thousand pesos in their pockets tonight was better than the chance of two thousand pesos tomorrow. It was a grab-as-you-can attitude. But who could blame them? They were all supporting families back home, and probably an unemployed Filipino boyfriend somewhere in the city, and perhaps even a baby. Maybe two.

The real sad part was they seldom had any plans. Dreams, sure. The girls had tons of dreams. Going to college, working in an office in Manila, owning their own bar. Meeting a foreign guy, and getting the hell off this islands. But most of the time, dreams were all they were. Money earned was as good as money spent, if not by the girls themselves, then by their families on things they didn’t need, or by the boyfriend who took her cash to buy cigarettes or beer or a part for his motorcycle that never seemed to run right.

As much as I could, I encouraged them to save their money. I didn’t know if I got through to anyone. They always gave me a big smile, their eyes wide as if they were learning something truly important, but then the next day they’d be just as poor as ever.

About the only thing I could do was try to minimize as much as possible the chance they might get hurt. After a girl told me she wanted to go out on a bar fine, I’d go with her over to the guy and start up a little small talk. If he seemed like an asshole, I’d make some excuse, fill him up with free drinks and send him on his way alone. The girls would be disappointed, but they trusted my judgment. If the guy seemed okay, I’d let the girl go.

It wasn’t a perfect system. To truly gauge a person, you needed more than a few minutes and gut instinct. It worked more than I had hoped, but it didn’t work all the time. Some sons of bitches hid their asshole tendencies well.

Unfortunately, when something bad happened, I didn’t usually learn about it right away, when it might have been possible for me to do something. Something like having another little chat with the guy, only this time there’d be nothing friendly about it. It wouldn’t reverse what he had done, but it might stop him from doing it again, at least at The Lounge.

But the way it worked, news would filter back to me through the girls days or even weeks later. Something like “so-and-so had been roughed up by some guy” or “stiffed on the tip” or “forced to do things she didn’t want to do.” When I did find out, I’d take the news hard. Then I’d tell all the girls again that they didn’t have to put up with any crap, and they had to tell me when they had problems so the same thing wouldn’t happen to any of the other girls. My biggest fear was that one day someone would come to tell me one of my girls was dead.

It never happened to me , but that didn’t mean it never happened.

It was my fourth year on the job. It wasn’t summer yet, but there were still plenty of tourists around. Isabel had been working for me for a few months, but hadn’t met Larry yet.

By then I had settled into a pretty regular routine: up by one in the afternoon, breakfast and a beer at The Pit Stop at three, “office” at six, last call at three in the morning, doors locked by four, in bed by four thirty, sometimes alone, sometimes not. Then repeat.

I lost months that way.

I didn’t drag myself out of bed until almost two p.m. that day. It was March 14 th, three days before our big St. Paddy’s Day blowout. We were going all out that year: green beer, body-painting contest, a pot of gold chocolate coins. I was looking forward to it. I had moved from de facto to official head papasan, or, if you prefer the more common term, bar manager. Good or bad, when something happened at The Lounge, I was the one who gave Robbie the news. So as boss, I decided Dandy Doug was going to help me that night. That way I wouldn’t have to work too hard and could actually enjoy myself.

Even though the event was three days away, there was still a lot to do so getting a late start didn’t put me in the greatest of moods. It was thanks to a few too many San Migs, courtesy of a regular customer who hadn’t been in town for several months. I hoped he didn’t plan on showing up again that evening. By the time I was sitting at my regular table at The Pit Stop, it was closer to four than three.

Dieter Russ, a German ex-pat who’d been working as a papasan almost as long as I had, was already there. His shift at Sinsations didn’t start until the same time mine did. We sometimes called Dieter “Wild Man” behind his back. He had this head of hair that just refused to stay combed. Within an hour of leaving home, he’d always look like he was wearing an unruly brown bush on his head. I bought him a can of gel once, the foamy kind. If he ever used it, I couldn’t tell.

I waved him over, and he joined me. The waitress brought over two San Miguels without even asking. Sometimes it paid to be a regular. I ordered a ham and cheese omelet, while Dieter got a plate of spaghetti. We tapped our bottles together, then took a drink. It was his second of the day, so his perpetual hangover had already subsided to manageable white noise, while mine was still restricting my ability to speak.

Until I was about three-quarters of the way through that first bottle, Dieter did all the talking. About what, I don’t remember. The girls, probably. It was the default subject.

The food arrived just as I was beginning to feel like this wasn’t going to be my last day on earth after all. Fifteen minutes later, my belly full of beer and grease, I was Angeles’ normal: internal temperature approximately ninety-nine degrees, vision slightly blurry, judgment questionable.

“When I have my own place,” Dieter said, “I think I’ll put the stage along one wall and the bar along the other.”

It was a common dream among the papasans to one day own a bar. At that point, I never gave it much thought. After all, I was only doing this on a temporary basis. At least that’s what I told everyone.

To hear Dieter or some of the other papasans talk about it, their places would be the best on Fields. They’d never make the mistakes their bosses did. They’d have better lineups, cheaper drink prices, nicer layouts. And something special, a hook that would keep people coming back. Like the almost nightly contests at Torpedoes, or the fireman pole through the ceiling they put in at Blenders so the girls could slide down onto the stage. I have to admit that last one was clever.

But few papasans ever actually took the step and bought a bar. And those who did soon found that their lineups weren’t any different than those at the other bars, that they couldn’t afford to offer cheaper drink prices, that most layouts were just a variation on a theme, and every gimmick they came up with had been done before.

“And I’m thinking of maybe a Hawaiian theme,” Dieter continued. “Maybe call it The Luau, something like that. What do you think?”

“How about The Stuffed Pig?” I said.

“Hey, that’s not bad.”

He started riffing on a list of possible special contests he could offer, but I barely heard him. My attention had been drawn to the entrance, where Tom Hill had just walked in looking very serious. Tom was a short, wiry man in his sixties with the reputation of never being happy about anything. He owned a small Internet cafe just up the road. After a disagreement with Carter, The Pit Stop’s owner, over something so stupid I couldn’t even remember it, Tom seldom set foot in the place anymore.

“So?” Dieter asked. There was a moment of silence, then, “Doc, you’re not even listening to me.”

“Sorry,” I said, then nodded my head in Tom’s direction.

Dieter turned to take a look. “Shit,” he said. “What’s this all about?”