Phil Klay - Redeployment

First female I saw after that,I smelled first. The whole table of us, at the chow hall at Al Asad, and the smell of her short-circuited our collective brain and the conversation stopped and we all turned to her at once and she walked right by, neither pretty nor ugly but a woman, not seen through a scope, close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to smell.

Me and Flores got into a conversation about what we’d like to do to her. I mean, things we didn’t even want to do, just us competing with each other for the dirtier thing. Flores won when he said, “I’d let her piss in my mouth just for a sniff of her snatch.”

“Who wouldn’t?” said Old Man.

“You guys are idiots,” said West. Later, though, West got all motherly and told me how much he missed his family, and he asked me, “You got any girls back home you’d like to see?”

“Not really,” I said.

“You know,” he said, “sometimes, girls who wouldn’t give you the time of day when you were in high school change their minds once you’re a war hero.”

I didn’t feel like a war herowhen I got back to Lejeune, especially not after the memorial service for West and for Kovite and for Zapata. It was a lot to take. Everybody got drunk afterward. Flores couldn’t deal and went to the barracks to be alone. I wanted to go with him, but I stayed with Old Man. He needed looking after. And Old Man wanted to go to the Pink Pussycat, this strip club in a double-wide trailer, painted pink. The Pussycat was off-limits for Marines, but Old Man said it was the best place for what we wanted, and Old Man was the one to know.

“So there’s whores in there?” I asked him when we pulled into the parking lot, which was nothing more than a mud-and-grass field. I thought I knew the answer to that. Whores was the whole purpose of the trip.

“They don’t think they’re whores,” he said. “They think they’re dancers who sometimes fuck their clients.”

I laughed, but he stopped me.

“I’m serious,” he said. “You fuck this up, you aren’t getting laid. They don’t see themselves as street whores.”

“But…” I pointed at the trailer.

He laughed. “I bet there’s girls that fuck at the Driftwood, too. There’s girls that fuck at the nicest strip clubs in the world. And there’s a few girls here that don’t.”

“All right,” I said. “So why’re we here?”

He started counting out reasons on his fingers. “Most of the girls here fuck,” he said. “It’s less expensive. These girls treat you better because they aren’t hot and they want repeat customers. You and I are just back from deployment, so really hot women are wasted on us. Also, there’s no dress code.” He pointed to his crotch. “There’s a reason I’m wearing sweatpants.”

Old Man saw me shudder at that, and he laughed again. If I’d felt like I had a choice, I would have walked away. Something about the sad little parking lot, with a few busted-up Buicks and trucks lined out in front of the pink trailer, it was too far away from what I hoped I’d get. Some hot young chick who was doing it for the money, yeah, but maybe one who really liked me, too. Old Man headed over to the door, and since he had the car keys, I followed him.

We walked in and there they were. Naked women. It was a small space, smelling of beer and sweat, with seventies rock blaring. There were only seven or eight customers in there, all but two of whom were definitely civilians. The chairs and couches all looked like they’d been picked up off the side of the road. We stood at the back for a few seconds, and then we went to the front and sat down together in a pleather, zebra-print love seat by the side of the stage, which was a little square about a foot off the ground at the end of the trailer. Old Man got me a beer and I drank it quick, taking small but quick sips and looking around at the girls and the customers, trying to figure how the whole thing worked. Then the dancer onstage got down in front of me and I stared straight ahead, into the tiny strip of fabric between her legs. She was an older woman who didn’t have the greatest body but didn’t have any scars that I could see and who looked like she’d probably been pretty when she was younger. I didn’t breathe for a bit. When she got up, I asked Old Man how we got the girls alone.

He could see how I was, and he smiled. He pulled two twenties out of his wallet and gave them to me. Then he pulled out a one, folded it, waved it in front of the dancer, and tucked it in her G-string.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m gonna buy you a lap dance. Then you ask the girl to take you to the VIP room.”

I looked around.

“It’s in another trailer,” he said. “You get there, she gives you another lap dance, you ask her if there’s anything else she could do. You tell her you like her so much and she’s so great and you just got back and is there anything else.” He pointed to the two twenties in my hand. “Don’t give her more than that. And don’t give it to her until after. And don’t settle for her letting you grope her.”

I looked down at the money. Two hours earlier, I’d spent more on whiskey at Alexander’s.

“It’s good here,” he said. He pointed to the corner of the room, where a tired-looking woman was standing, waiting to take the stage. “That’s my girl. She’s real sweet. We’re like an old married couple—we only fuck once every seven months.” He paused for a second. “She’s good. After I finish, she stays with me till the time is up.”

I nodded. When the first girl got off the stage, Old Man paid for my lap dance. Then I did what Old Man had said.

The VIP lounge was a white trailer about fifty yards from the main one. We stepped out of the music into the fresh air, and I was excited, walking a step ahead of her. Inside, the trailer had a corridor and a bunch of little rooms. There was loud music in that trailer, too, so you mostly couldn’t hear what was going on in the rooms around you.

The woman was very polite. We settled on forty. I felt bad arguing for less than that, and she pulled down my pants. I wasn’t hard, but she took me in her mouth in a very professional way and then she put a condom on me and then we had sex and then I paid her the money Old Man had given me.

As I walked back to the main trailer, I didn’t feel anxious anymore. She had been a little dry, which made sense, but it had felt great right until the moment that I came and the world crashed back into focus.

Inside the trailer, Old Man was getting a lap dance, his face buried in the stripper’s tits. It wasn’t from the one he’d called his girl. It was another woman. This one looked something like my mother, before she’d died. When she finished, he whispered to her and they got up. He nodded to me and walked over.

“How was Nancy?” he said.

“Nancy?” I said.

“That’s her real name,” he said. “She’s good, but she can be kind of a bitch sometimes.”

“It was good,” I said.

He patted me on the shoulder. “Take your time with it,” he said. “Talk to the girls.” And he went back to where he was sitting and motioned to the one who looked like my mother. She climbed on top of him again and I looked away.

Nancy walked back into the trailer and started working the room. She smiled at me as she passed and then climbed on the lap of some civilian. I looked away from that, too.

Old Man had the keys in the pocket of his sweatpants, and there was no easy way to get them, so I waited in the back while he had his fun. I had a whiskey, then another beer. I was pretty far gone at this point, but I kept drinking. I waited and waited and I looked at the sad women onstage. Some looked zoned out. On something for sure. Old Man took his time. When he went to the VIP trailer with his girl, I counted the money in my pocket. I had more than enough. If I let myself get into it again, it’d be almost as good as not being there.