Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

“Dude, you’ve lost it.”

“Fuckin’ Brian. What kind of Irishman are you?”

“I’m half Greek.”

“Oh fuck you, asshole — Greek — you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”

“Okay,” said Shake. “But until Lorna Doone and his great wave of heroes dry out, what gets done in the meantime?”

“Yes,” said Gavin, still agitated, pointing a finger in the air. “There needs to be a plan in the interim.”

“What?” asked Shake.

“Love,” said Brian.

“Love. Shut up. The closest thing I’ve seen to being an act of love has been my dad’s three jobs — how much he did work, works, and will continue to work.”

“Why, so he can buy you a car?” Gavin scoffed.

“I bought this. I see you riding in it, too.”

“I know. I know,” sang Gavin. “I wish my old man worked like yours.”

Shake went back to Brian. “So an act of love is going to stop tricks from getting turned, or these guys from drinking, or you from getting high every day?”

Brian pointed at the largest club, the Naked Eye. “There are women, and men, in there being exploited.”

“They want to be there,” said Shake.

“No, they don’t.”

“You ever been in a strip joint?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.”

Brian snorted again. His eyes were spinning crazily in his head. He rubbed them to get whatever it was that was flashing before him to stop. When he uncovered them, they were still.

“What’s the antithesis of love?”

“Hate.”

“No, fear.” He propped himself up in his seat — proud for a moment. “And if you refuse to perform or receive an act of love, it’s because you live in fear and are therefore subject to all fear encompasses.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” asked Shake.

“All of us.”

“You’d better back the fuck up.”

Brian shrank again, but Shake kept going. “You’re like a bad cover song, man — Pat Boone or some shit — fucking establishment mouthpiece talking to me about love.”

Gavin fogged up his window again and drew a house with a smoking chimney. He took a dip of Skoal and reached back for the pint. I gave it to him. He rolled down the window and spat. “Odorless, colorless. .,” he breathed. He held the bottle aloft for a second, looking through the clear liquor. “This is a fucking disaster,” he mumbled, had a drink, and pocketed it.

“Gav,” I asked. “Can I get some?”

“Of course, my friend.”

I drank. I could taste the tobacco in the sip. I felt a slight flutter in my guts, wondered what it was, then remembered the promise I’d made earlier. I wondered what the pang would’ve been had I promised anyone but myself. The fab four faded out while trying to reassure us all of a nameless girl’s affections. I took another drink, sat up, and realized I was blasted.

“I don’t think it matters — who says it,” I mumbled.

“Who says what?” said Shake, trying to rekindle his interest.

“Love.”

“Uh-huh.”

Gavin was my best friend. Everybody knew that. Shake and I had been enemies — or positioned as such — two black boys growing up in a white world, who were really nothing alike. We got past it, I suppose. When we ended our strange competition, Shake had walked away with the blackness crown. The mantle he’d lorded over me before we became friends — that which had come to imprison him as a type he resented, but still mined. I suppose he tried to take care of me — assumed things; for me a naivete and for him an overarching practical knowledge. And in part he was right, I needed a brother who knew, but neither of us liked it.

He was never good at being gentle, so he cut the silence. “So what, is there a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on in there? Do the Naked Eye and places like it exploit?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“But is it any worse than anyplace else?”

“That doesn’t matter.” I took another pull. It seemed to fix my head, yank me back toward clarity. I tapped Gavin on the back with the bottle. He took it from me.

“Why not?”

“Because you have to pick your battles — so pick a battle.”

“So this is our battle?”

“It is today.”

“Why this?”

“If a man hasn’t found something he’s willing to die for . .”

“Spare me.” Shake patted his chest. “I know it as well as you.” He shook his head repeatedly, trying to force a smile. He closed his eyes. “You’re like that other kind of bad song,” he thumbed at the radio. “Original, but still bad.”

“Love, love,” Gavin cooed from the front, over the commercial. He laughed and finished the pint. He reached into his coat again and produced two nip bottles.

Shake laughed, too, but seemingly at me. “I can’t believe people get suckered by the whole whore-Madonna thing. I can’t believe you fell for it.”

Gavin turned to Shake, opening one of the nips as he did.

“Somebody had to.” He offered him the drink. Shake shook his head but took the bottle. He stared at the windshield and muttered to himself, like a man going through a checklist before skydiving. He jerked his head to the side as though he heard something. He closed his eyes again. His face went blank and he shook his head again, this time slowly, as if he was gravely accepting what he saw. He opened one eye and stared, both outside and in, as if reconciling his vision with the night. He drank.

“Let’s do this then.”

We locked Brian in the car. Shake said it out loud, and Gavin and I agreed that he’d be a liability. He shouted out advice to us through the closed window—“Guys, no one buy a lady a drink!” We all flashed our fake ID’s and went into the Eye. Neither Gavin nor I looked a day over sixteen, but we were waved in. It wasn’t as seedy as I’d thought it would be. It was like a high-end diner, which made me think woman burger, which made me wish it had been seedy, after all. They were playing heavy metal music, but not too loud. There were three small stages to one side, a bar to the other, and a dark velvet curtain in the back, above which read, VIPS ONLY. There were only about twenty people scattered about, a cigarette girl and a male bartender. I heard one woman in a gold lamé leotard and tiara say to a man at the bar that she was Cleopatra. In the middle of the room were two giant men, former third-string NFL defensive linemen packed into cheap double-breasted suits. Gavin and Shake went to the bar. I went to the center stage, as the other ones were dark and empty. Five men were sitting in front of it on stools, waiting for the next show. A voice boomed over the PA, “Ladies and gentlemen — Diana.”

Diana appeared from behind a heavy curtain. She was tinted orange by the gelled Fresnels that hung above the ramp and the stage. Some loud disco came on, drowning out an effects-laden guitar solo. The music bounced and then so did she — across the ramp to the little round stage in front us. She was dressed like a jazz dancer going to an aerobics class, and it looked like she’d been wearing the outfit while being attacked by a bobcat. Her hair was dyed jet black — too dark to be altered by the lights. She wore heavy black and red makeup — a gothic fitness guru. She tore her top off and threw it at us. A man in front of me snagged it before it hit my face.

Someone sat down next to me.

“You’re too young.”

I turned. It was a woman — a girl — another stripper, I gathered from her makeup. She wore leather and bandannas and didn’t seem much older than me. She was very blonde and tan — too tan for anytime in New England, especially early winter. I wanted to respond to her quickly with something I supposed a normal person would say— “Too young for what?” —but I missed my chance. I just looked at her. She raised an eyebrow, perhaps provocatively, perhaps only a signal of her growing scrutiny.