Ha Jin: A Free Life

The next day Danning wanted Nan to take him to Chinatown. Ping-ping again asked Shubo to stand in for Nan, so after dinner the two friends drove west along Buford Highway toward Chamblee. Entering Norcross, they saw a road gang in orange vests and caps gathering garbage on the roadside, where stood a blue van hauling a trailer loaded with shovels, rakes, and barrels. Danning wondered who these young men were, still working at this hour. "Prisoners," Nan told him.

"This is a good way to reform them. I didn't know American prisoners also work."

" Some of them do. I once saw a prison detail planting trees and flowers."

The sight of the convicts reminded Nan of their mutual friend Hansong, who had gone crazy and shot an old man eight years earlier in Massachusetts after he heard that his girlfriend had disappeared in Tiananmen Square. Nan knew Hansong hadn't completed his prison term when he was deported three years ago. He asked Danning, "Do you happen to know how Hansong is doing?"

"You haven't heard he's married?"

"You mean, he was released from jail?"

"Yes, but he can't find a regular job in China. Nobody wants to take English lessons from him, so he's been a freelance translator." "He was a smart man. What a waste."

Nan felt sad as a lull set in. The traffic light turned red and he hit the brakes. Somehow he caught every red light today, which gave him a premonition that there might be trouble this evening.

As they passed a shopping center near the Korean supermarket, Danning cried, "Stop! Double back. I saw a strip bar over there. Let's go have some fun."

Nan hesitated but jammed on the brakes. He did a U-turn and pulled into the plaza. The parking lot was full, so they left their car behind the building of the strip club, in front of an adult movie theater. Nan wondered if he should go in first to scout this place out, but his friend was already heading toward the bar's front entrance, so he followed him. The second they stepped in, a brawny, hard-faced man boomed at them, "Five dollars a head."

Nan gave him a ten. It was foggy and clamorous inside. They took a table near the passageway to a small room blazoned with vip on its door, since all the tables in front of the dance platforms were occupied. From where they sat they could watch the performances from the side. Along the walls stood some Mexican workers wearing cowboy hats and nursing beers. They seemed reluctant to take a seat at the tables, which would amount to inviting a girl to do a lap dance or table dance. A short-haired barmaid in a lavender skong came and asked Nan and Danning, "What would you like to drink?"

Though he'd already downed a few glasses of wine at dinner, Dan-ning ordered a shot of bourbon and a mug of lager. Nan asked for a Molson. He was afraid his friend might have had a drop too much, but he said nothing. Among the tables several topless girls were doing lap dances. In a corner, a girl in a blue bikini raised her bony rear end, swaying it at a stocky Mexican man, who, holding a tall can of beer, seemed intimidated but couldn't retreat further, his back already against the wall. On the string of her briefs several dollar bills were flapping as she thrust her backside at him. She was so thin that her ribs showed. Unlike the standing Mexicans, the white men sitting at the tables seemed at ease, though naked girls were wriggling in front of them or gyrating on their laps. None of them looked excited, and at most some were amused.

With a twang the metallic music resumed, and two young women wearing high heels went onto the central platform and began dancing. One of them jumped up and gripped a chrome pole and with one leg spread out revolved around it. The din was so deafening that Nan 's eardrums itched.

He was giddy, never having been to such a place before. He had passed this club every Monday morning on his way to the World Bookstore to buy the Sunday newspaper and had thought that it must be stylish in here and that at most the girls would be topless when they stripped. Now he was astonished to see that some of them didn't have a stitch on, and that a few women, already over thirty, wagged their wide, ungainly bottoms tagged with a bunny's tail as they walked around bartending. He looked at Danning, who was ecstatic, grinning, his eyes aglitter. Danning tapped the table gently with both palms as if playing a drum to accompany the music. The room looked so hazy and so crowded that Nan felt as if he were in a ship's cabin.

A tall brunette came and asked them while batting her dark eyes, "Would yuh care for a lap dance?" Her accent betrayed that she must be a recent Eastern European immigrant.

Nan lowered his head and saw a tattooed butterfly on her inner thigh. "How much?" he mumbled, and felt his cheeks flushing.

"Ten bucks."

Before Nan could say another word, Danning banged the greasy tabletop with the heel of his palm and crowed, "Yes, dance for us."

The girl turned around, swaying her hips, and began slipping out of her bra little by little. Nan lifted his eyes and saw her youthful breasts, the nipples erect and the areolas pink, flecked with a few pimples; he forced his eyes farther up, to her face. She was affectedly ogling him, the tip of her tongue wiping her teeth and lips, while she raised her rump at Danning, wagging it from side to side. She craned her neck, gently kissed Nan below his ear. He wondered if she'd left a smudge there. She groaned in a whisper, "Don't you want me?" Smiling, she opened her mouth, a tiny pearl sitting at the center of her tongue. Nan was breathing hard, his mouth dry, and he had no idea how to answer. He wondered whether the pearl had been fixed to her tongue permanently. How could she eat with that thing in her mouth? It wouldn't be easy for her to brush her teeth either. What did it stand for? Why did it have to be kept in there? As he was speculating, she lifted her upper body a little and began grinding her behind against Danning's lap. The music went faster and noisier while her gyration turned wilder. Danning's laughter grew louder and louder as her bottom kept revolving.

"Ouch!" she cried, and straightened up. "No tarching!"

Danning laughed, baring his buckteeth. "Keep going!" he grunted.

She resumed lap dancing, but a moment later stopped again. She looked annoyed and sputtered out at Danning, "If you tarch me again I'm gonna tell security."

Danning grinned and kissed the tips of his plump fingers. "You're delicious," he said.

Nan glanced at the front entrance, where a big hulk of a man, wearing a flattop, was looking in their direction, flexing his corded arms and bulging pectorals; the top of his right ear was missing. But Danning was already too befuddled to care. He said in Chinese to the girl, who refused to dance anymore, "You, little whore, you want to throw me out? Do you know who I am? Look at this face." He pointed at his nose. "Don't you know me? I'm a major novelist, an award winner, famous in the whole country. Give us a good dance. We want the same service for our money. You danced for that man longer and better just now. Why don't you smile at us like you smiled at him?" He pointed at a hairless white man, whose eyes were half closed while a girl leaned supine over him with her arms raised backward, hooked around his neck.

"Stick to English," the lap dancer fired back. "I don't know Korean."

Nan was frightened. He stood up and handed a twenty-dollar bill to her. "Take zis, miss. Keep zer change. I'm sawrry, he's drunk. I'm taking him away."

The girl stretched out her right leg and pulled open the elastic string around her thigh, with which some singles and fives were already attached. Nan inserted the twenty, but a bill fell on the floor.

He picked it up and put that in as well. She smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek, whispering, "Thank you, sweetie." Then she went away to the bar counter to join the girls perching on the mushroom seats.