Skin Deep

Skin Deep
by Rod Nibbe

It’s Friday, five o’clock in the afternoon, I’ve closed up the store early. As I pull into the parking lot at Foxes I’m surprised to see it’s hopping already. More cars and trucks than I expected are angle parked against dirty piles of plowed snow. Foxes is a weather-beaten building with faded wood siding in an old forsaken industrial area of the city, far from the meddling covenants of my pleasant suburban home. Outside, it looks like an ordinary two-story building, but that’s deceiving. Inside, it’s dimly lit, hollow like a church, with worn out wood floors and aching walls where deception takes on a new role. The second floor is missing, save a few dressing rooms accessed by a narrow balcony cantilevered over the main floor. A steep and narrow staircase with a rickety wood spoke balustrade is the only way up and down.
        Scanning for a place to park I steer carefully down a narrow lane between an outside wall and a continuous row of rear bumpers. I settle into the last space in the row, next to a filthy orange pickup, its bed filled with snow. In the driver’s seat a startled bull terrier ratchets his gaze on me as he strains angrily at his leash, attached to what I don’t know. The dog is slowly becoming encased in a cocoon of glazed ice as its breath freezes against the windows. Unaccountably, I imagine this dog tearing apart one of our toy suburban dogs that my wife insists on pampering. I don’t know why my imagination does this; maybe it reveals my insecurity in the company of the kind of men inside. Getting beat up here has crossed my mind, though crime of any sort is rare at Foxes. Most of the men here are enervated relics of their younger selves; they come here for relief from whatever they spend their days doing, a retreat to forget the insignificance of a week at work. I wouldn’t deny a trace of the same in my motive for returning, though my relationship with Diamond, the reason I’ve come back, has matured to the point where I’m now more than just a customer. She’s told me this. Tonight I’m going to ask her again if we can meet somewhere else, away from the stupefying thunder of rock music, the stifling miasma of cigarette smoke, perspiration odor, beer farts and stale perfume.
        I feel for my money clip in the pocket of my wool pants, finger-comb my thinning bangs in the rear view mirror and check for any unsightly nose hairs, then step outside, lock the car and set the alarm – whoop whoop. My leather-soled shoes squeak on packed, frozen snow and I almost slip and fall on my way to the front door. I ignore the portent of clumsiness.

Billy the bouncer recognizes me with a quick nod, nothing more, as if he were keeping a mental headcount tonight. He’s a tall man with an enormous stomach, probably in his forties. He’s dressed like he always is, Paul-Bunyan-esque, a red ‘n black checkered flannel shirt beneath a black leather vest (at least one size too small for him), a black, back-knotted bandanna stretched tight around his skull, and dirty blue jeans. I can tell he remembers me and if only temporarily it lifts my spirits and relieves the unaccountable feeling of uneasiness I’ve had since I closed up the store. I stomp snow from my loafers and politely nod back at him. Billy keeps the gropers in line here. One breach of the rules and you’ll never see three hundred pounds move so fast. Diamond's told me she's summoned Billy personally when some "schoolboy punk hopped up to the gills on Budweiser" (her words) thought she might like to see his dick. It wasn't out of his fly more than five seconds when Diamond screamed and Billy was on him. He cradled the schmuck under one arm as he would a bundle of firewood, paraded him amid jeers and taunts past tables and chairs, around the pool table in the back room and dumped him like trash outside the fire exit. Billy’s the last resort. The wrath of the any one of the girls, ignited should a customer’s hands begin roaming where they shouldn't, is usually a frightening enough prospect to keep most of the insecure oglers in here tame – and Billy the meek sentry on his barstool at the front door checking IDs.
        I say, "Yo," as I step by him on my way to the bar. The greeting feels awkward to me, I’m not used to saying Yo. He nods again, as though he heard me, though he couldn’t possibly have, not over the blare of John Fogerty singing Fortunate Son. My pupils begin to dilate as they adjust to the dimness inside. Star is on the main stage, naked. This is probably her second of two songs; rarely do any of the girls take everything off in their first. I can appreciate Star, she's older than most of the girls, fitter than most of them too. She doesn’t smoke, drinks hot chocolate and tea instead of beer and champagne, and pretty much keeps to herself. She’s a classy veteran with a style all her own and she's always dug CCR. The music thunders in Foxes from a cluster of a large speakers suspended by heavy metal chains over the main dance stage, itself U-shaped and raised about four feet off the floor, rimmed by a red velvet cushion and a narrow ledge for drinks and ashtrays – a.k.a. the meat rack. I despise the term, it sounds disrespectful, though I’ve never heard any of the girls object. The velvet is deeply stained with beer and black-spotted with cigarette burns. Men belly up to the meat rack with fistfuls of dollars they use to coax the girls to come closer so they can gawk at what they can’t have. The girls kneel, sit, and swivel on the cushion – whatever it takes to get the money moving. It can get pretty intimate. Seated there you’re struck with an uneasy sense of reciprocal vertigo. At the beginning of her routine a girl will emerge from behind a backstage curtain, undulate up four low-rise stairs and step onto the stage, then dance, strut, spin, contort – whatever – and finally tower over you naked in spike heels suggesting dominance which I'm sure is no coincidence.
        In the dim light I step carefully toward the bar, backlight my wristwatch to check the time and try to act casual. The bartender is a skinny woman I don’t recognize wearing a white tank top, she’s crouched down putting bottles of beer on shelves in a refrigerator. When she senses I’m at the bar she turns around and sort of scowls at me without a word. I have to practically yell my order to her over the music: “Miller High Life!” She shouts back impatiently, "Just Genuine Draft - no High Life!" A bottle opener dangles from a metal chain around her neck. Hand waving, facial gestures, and novel body language substitute for speech here because there's only brief quietude between meat rack dances when the music isn't deafening. I give her a shrug and mouth “Whatever.”
        My pupils have fully dilated and things begin to take shape. I turn, relax against the bar rail, and scan the main floor and the booths along the wall looking for Diamond. I see Phoenix, a tall and flamboyant red head in one of the booths, waving her cigarette around in high drama as she carries on with two men seated on either side of her. Down in front I see the new Vietnamese girls looking wobbly on their very high high-heels, like toddlers new to ice skates. They’re pitched so far forward on them it looks like they might tip over with the slightest nudge. They’re standing behind a man who has long greasy hair cinched in a ponytail. He’s seated alone at a small cocktail table with the girls bent over him, leaning against the back of his shoulders, whispering in his ears. They’re new here, and they claim they're twins, though I don’t think it’s true, more likely a titillating novelty they believe will move more dollars from the wallets of men with Asian fetishes into their phony leopard skin clutches. I see Carmen giving a private table dance to a man in a Parka. They’re together in the far corner booth, beneath the DJ's perch, a favorite spot for Diamond and me. Carmen’s writhing against him as though she were double-jointed while Fogerty wails the chorus line "... I ain't no fortunate son!" Sophie, Crystal, and Zena are seated together on barstools at the far end of the bar, smoking, drinking – their furtive glances darting here and there, maybe trying to spot a customer wanting a private dance. They catch my attention and wave. It sets me at ease to know they recognize me. I wave back and probably blush, but in the near darkness nobody can tell. I see a couple of girls I don't recognize playing pool in the back room. One is dressed in a black slip and metal stiletto heels, the other, chalking her cue, in what looks like nothing more than a bra and panties. It boggles my mind how they keep the goose bumps at bay, but they seem to. I give a quick glance upstairs to the balcony. All the dressing room doors are closed. I don’t see Diamond anywhere.
        The skinny woman in the tank top returns with my beer; I hand her a five and throw the two quarters in change in the plastic Tip barrel dangling above the bar. I feel unusually happy, even for a Friday. I've got a cold beer in hand and I sense Diamond is here tonight, probably upstairs changing. Satisfied, I walk to an empty cocktail table behind the meat rack chairs, settle in, and wait for Star to finish her second dance.

        I'm the owner of two small furniture stores, one on the north and one on the south side of the city. I try to play the niche overlooked by the warehouse giants – imported futons, armoires, Scandinavian designs, that sort of thing. I spend a lot of my day behind a ten-key keeping the books. I fight with suppliers and their backorder excuses, hire help, then fire the help when they no longer help, and generally I try to fulfill the desires of customers who want something nicer than pressboard sandwiched between wood veneers. Once I experimented with a section in the north store dedicated to renaissance antiques. It failed miserably; we only sold one piece all of the first year. I was hoping this new venture would defeat the monotony I was feeling at home and at work. If I had children they'd provide me a convenient excuse for going nowhere the last nine years. There are times when I want my wife, of the same nine years, to walk up behind me and have her initiate the hug, or do to me lying on the beach when we take vacation all those little intimate things wives do to their husbands when they feel that sudden and irrepressible feeling of intimacy. Or maybe even slip on one my long-tailed shirts, and nothing more, and surprise me late one night in the garage where I'm often refinishing furniture, or any one of the other things one sees couples do when they’re in love. Those things aren't happening. Not between my wife and I. Our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, they’re all still alive. They live in the Midwest. We travel there once annually and use them as relief valves from our boredom with each other. Same with our common friends, many of them used to live in the Midwest too, but now they’re scattered about the country. We can no longer use their company, as we once had, to relieve our unspoken tension.
        We, my wife and I, are comfortable together only in the company of others. Alone, at dinner, for instance, tens of minutes might pass before we look up from our plates and wonder how the other is managing their ennui. I’ve tried to fix all this. I’ve her bought one of everything – push-up bras, thongs, camisoles, garters, teddies, sexy shoes, strapless this and that – I even bought us various oils and other accessories from a mail order outfit to get our love going again. Even if she once wore some of these things, it was only once, and now everything is stuffed away in a dresser drawer where intimacy remains hostage to boredom.
        I saw, while at a party at my friend's house – he's divorced now, four years – a small blue jot pad held by a magnet on his refrigerator door. At the top of each page it said: I used to live alone ... and at the bottom: ... then I got a divorce. I stared at that for I don't know how long until someone asked if me if I was feeling alright. Sometimes people say they experience frightening portents in their life.

        I join the muted applause for Star as her dance comes to an end. She is crawling around the stage on her hands and knees picking up the few dollar bills that came her way, but nevertheless smiling appreciatively at the men who rim the meat rack. The DJ fills the brief break in music with his own perfunctory praise: “Give it up for our veteran Fox, Starrrrrr,” and as he dwells on the rs I suddenly feel four hands slither over my shoulders. Someone is licking my neck and someone else is playfully nibbling my ear lobe. It feels good. I uncross my legs and turn to find the Vietnamese twins soliciting a dance from me. They can do anything they want to you, anything that is that the surly house mother won’t fine them for, but you dare not touch them wrong or else there's Billy. Worse, you could get a reputation as a groper. I disappoint them and decline a private double-decker dance, though their flattery in whisper – "you so beaucoup" – leaves me wondering if it wouldn't have been forty bucks well spent. It's almost five thirty and the place is beginning to fill up.
        Valerie stops by my table – black short shorts, halter top, pencil wedged above her ear – tilts her head and raises an eyebrow while gently tipping my empty bottle. I understand and nod back, "Yes, I'd like another, Valerie." All this because the roar of Guns ‘n Roses has begun booming off the walls like a church bell gone mad and we're all reduced again to lip reading and sign language. Phoenix explodes onto the stage and suddenly, though expectedly, men move from the tables to fill the few unoccupied chairs around the meat rack. Phoenix’s style is elaborate and smooth, and I must say inviting. She's dressed in a Tarzan-like motif – leopard skin cutoffs and a matching halter top, both with a saw tooth hem. Her feet are squished into four, maybe four and a half inch white leather pumps. Her caramel-colored skin, dark from hours on the tanning bed, glistens in the red and blue stage lights. A strong scent of coconut is suddenly palpable as she pirouettes twice and strides gracefully to the end of the stage farthest from the meat rack chairs. She leans on a waist-high brass rail with her legs spread wide, face to face against a tall mirror. Etched into the mirror is a silhouette of a languorous woman. She steadies herself there in a seductive pose as the music crescendos. Then boom! She spins away like a human tornado in sync with the chorus line…”Welcome to the Jungle!” She’s the center of attention; the men around the meat rack are transfixed as though they’ve all seen an apparition. I can’t take my eyes off her either until, in my peripheral vision, up on the balcony, I sense light coming from a dressing room door that has been cracked open. Expectantly I look to see if it is Diamond, but no.
        Valerie returns with my beer. I hand her a five and wave off the change.

        I first began coming here this past summer, when the fishermen flow in, wallets bulging from one of two annual influxes of pay, filthy and odorous as if they'd just stepped off the boat, rowdy, and looking to do some serious biannual partying. Soon after that I met Diamond, after I'd become a regular – regular enough that I was no longer just another anonymous ogler with a wallet. The girls began calling me by my name, Vance. Some of them sat on my lap; Tanya liked to play with my thinning hair, re-parting it while calling me Daddy, and Carmen once removed my necktie and used it between her legs during her routine on the main stage. All that attention was like a narcotic for me. I soon began stopping in two, sometimes three nights a week after closing the store, sometimes even on weekend nights when my wife was “tired” or “wanted to turn in early.” She is forty years old and I’m forty three and we argue without conclusion about why she’s so tired on weekends. I'd tell her I was going out for a beer, or sometimes I'd just say I was going out, without saying where, and I'd sneak in to see if Diamond was working because before long her and I were regularly snuggling up together in our favorite booth and as long as I paid for private dances she stayed with me instead of working the floor. Though nowhere in Foxes is intimate and quiet, our booth offers the best you can get.
        Diamond smokes a lot of cigarettes and it seems to me that she’s fascinated by my furniture business. She asked me how I’m going to furnish our house someday after we're together. It's right then that she'll snuggle closer, check for the house mother and take a liberty with her hand that I don't mind at all, followed by her tongue tip and warm breath in my ear. I could spend hours with Diamond but if she's serious, if we're really going to settle down and live together someday, then we need to get to know each other much better. Plus I’d need time to prepare, to get the affairs of my life in order. I told her this last week when I was in, “I need to get you away from here, to talk.” She got real angry and shouted back at me, "This is my life, bucko. This is what I do!" She made a big stink about it, grabbed her clutch in a huff and clomped away in her platform heels. That was last week and I've not been in since.
You shouldn’t think that I'm a letch. That's not why I come here; I think I've made that clear. Too many people think a place like Foxes is where men come to objectify women, exploit them. If you spend anytime in here you'll find many of the girls are pretty sharp, they dance to pay college loans or to support their children. They have political views. I like that. They are not whores bottom feeding off the wallets of drudges. I think it’s silly to call them artists (though Phoenix's act, where she emerges under spotlight dressed as a nurse, playfully taking pulses as she struts past tables on the main floor, shedding clothes as she goes, comes pretty close) but they are professionals and damn it they do take this seriously.

        A few months ago my wife and I started keeping a day-to-day log of our marriage. Our arguments revealed that we disagree over shared experiences and what they mean. Now when she says something or behaves in a way that bothers me I write it down, and she does the same. The idea (her idea) is that we will review and compare our logs the next time we argue, which she believes will help us get to the root of the misunderstanding we have with each other, “See, remember, you said this, and then I said that, and what I meant by that was this, but you thought it meant…” Ugh.
        We shared our logs with a marriage counselor my wife recommended we see, which I easily agreed to. Her name is Ms. Morris and right away I wanted her to see me as rational and honest so I never raised my voice during our sessions, and I tried to conduct myself in a way as to never become adversarial or sink to complaining about my wife. I wanted Ms. Morris to view me as being above all that. She was a few years younger than my wife and always nicely dressed when she met with us, often in a solid color skirt hemmed just above the knee, a button down blouse, nylons and heels, a modest (though provocative) amount of makeup and studded earrings (usually a brilliant gemstone) as her only jewelry. Always her hair was tied back in a French braid. She was a very pretty woman. Frequently I would notice that she’d pause from taking notes and simply listen as my wife and I discussed our weekly log entries. When she did this I noticed that she’d slide her pencil sensually above her ear. Early on it was obvious to me that she wanted to pay equal attention to my wife and I, making eye contact with each of us when it was our turn to talk, though as our sessions continued I noticed more and more often she would look at me, cross her legs in my direction, while momentarily ignoring my wife who was carrying on with an interpretation of an entry in her log. The three of us met in Ms. Morris’ office each week, late on Thursday afternoons, and arranged ourselves in comfortable chairs placed together in an intimate triangle. Her office is on the eighth floor of a tall building near the ocean bluff. It has a large, west-facing window and as we talked for those ninety minutes I would look up occasionally to watch the sun fall away into the horizon. If I wasn’t doing that I was studying Ms. Morris, the folds of her sheer blouse, the visible lines of her bra, the way she relaxed in her high-back leather chair, or the hem of her skirt as it rode up her thigh; her ankles, her shoes, the way the braids in her hair crossed, or the gentle movement of her slender fingers and manicured nails over the pad of paper she used to jot notes about the problems my wife and I had brought to her to solve. Occasionally she would look up and catch me doing this; we’d dwell for a moment in a private smile to each other then turn our attention back to my wife who was carrying on about her weekly log entries. When my wife said that she thought the sessions were helping and asked if I thought the same I quickly said, “Oh yes, I think they’re making a big difference,” and readily agreed we should continue meeting with Ms. Morris.
        For a while I actually did believe the sessions were helping. So a couple weeks ago I thought a surprise celebration of our tenth anniversary might help. It was on a Friday and I had asked my wife to pick me up at the north store, about seven, and we’d go out for dinner. Instead, I closed up early and rearranged an area of the showroom floor. I made up a Scandinavian bed, one with a beautiful solid teak frame that I had just gotten in, with silk fitted sheets, down-filled-pillows and blanket, even a bed ruffle with a scalloped border. I placed a rose on her pillow, slid over the pair of matching nightstands, and tucked inside one of the top drawers the lingerie of hers that I had brought from home that morning. (Killer stuff, really, I was anxious to see if she liked what I had picked out). Earlier in the day I had arranged for a caterer to prepare us two steak tournedos dinners, complete with chocolate mousse for dessert (my wife’s favorite), and deliver them just before seven, before she was due to arrive, when I knew it would be dark outside. The dinners came on silver platters with half dome silver lids, it was all perfect. I set them on a twin-leafed end table, pulled over two high-backed padded chairs, and slid them all cozily up against the foot of the bed. I freshened up, dimmed the showroom lights, lit two candles and put them on the center of the table, then waited for her to show, thinking that for sure she would see them flickering through the storefront window, become curious and come inside. By the time she showed up twenty minutes after seven the dinners were barely warm. She waited in the lot, the lights of her Volvo beaming impatiently through the storefront window, as if to say, "Come on, let’s go." She never even got out of the car. She waited there in the dark in the parking lot with the car idling. I was surprised she didn’t blow the horn. I blew out the candles and put the champagne in a refrigerator I keep in the back room. I didn't even bother with the food. I turned down the heat and locked the front door behind me. We ended up going to Greg’s Cattle Barn for dinner.

        Phoenix has finished her second dance. Men are hooting and hollering as though they’ve just won the war. From the seats behind the meat rack they’re still throwing dollars which fall like confetti on the stage while Phoenix wipes the last of the whipping cream off her legs. She has virtually patented the whip cream act here; according to Diamond no other girl would even attempt to copy it because there would be hell to pay in the dressing room.
        And then I hear the DJ say it, over the raucous applause and the shouts for an encore by Phoenix – “Diamond, you’re on deck.” Phoenix throws all the dollar bills – some new and crisp, some folded, some crumpled, some wet with beer – on her blanket, then bundles it up and slings it over her back as she struts off the stage, waving. Once she’s backstage the house lights go out – then up on the balcony a white circle of light appears, scanning the wall before settling on a dressing room door. It flies open to reveal Diamond dressed in a burlesque-style outfit, a thick and flowing Boa looped once around her neck. She’s leaning against the doorframe in a tempting erotic pose, holding a lavish cigarette holder to her lips. Everyone is watching her. Ever so slowly, held in the circle of light, she strides along the balcony toward the top of the stairs. The click of her heels on hardwood is all that punctuates the silence. When she reaches the stairs the music begins to come up – Pearl Jam’s Jeremy. She pauses at the top; men begin to whistle and I feel myself get excited – for Diamond, for us. I see her move the cigarette holder from one hand to the other, and then in one elegantly choreographed movement she reaches for the railing and her foot comes forward searching for the first step.
        Something goes wrong – maybe her heel catches a crack, the flimsy railing yields unpredictably under her weight, the spotlight momentarily blinds her, who knows – and she falls forward and crashes shoulder first on the stairs. The music stops dead and I hear a collective gasp go up. Some of the men near me leap to their feet. Before I can think I’m out of my chair, running toward the stairs, then I’m taking them two at a time. Someone behind me shouts, “Wait a minute!” – but it’s too late, I reach her and ask, “Diamond are you alright!” and the second the question leaves my mouth I realize the inanity of it. She’s crumpled on her side, head first pointed down the stairs bawling and moaning – “Oh, Jesus it hurts – Vance! Get me to help – oh God, please, Vance –” and as I’m trying to think someone behind me says, “Who the hell are you?” I jerk around and there’s the DJ glowering at me from his perch. The lie issues from my lips so fast that for a second I actually believe it myself, “I’m her boyfriend.” It doesn’t phase his suspicion so I try bullying him with more false confidence, “Put the phone down. I’m taking her to the hospital. It’ll take too long for 911 to get here!” He looks confused but he sets the cell phone down. And then suddenly Billy is behind me, two steps down. He appears calm and indifferent. Diamond is bawling and moaning even louder now, the ankle bone has ruptured the skin and it’s swollen to the size of an ugly fruit and rapidly turning black ‘n blue. Her shoe came off in the fall; I see it on lying on the top step, the heel broken. She’s in a horribly awkward position and I want to move her, comfort her anyway I can, but the slightest touch makes her yelp. Billy asks, “You gotta car?” Yes…yes I do,” I say hurriedly. “Go pull it around. I’ll get her ready to go.”
        I’m scrambling like crazy to adjust the front passenger seat as flat as it will go when Billy comes out the front door carrying Diamond wrapped in a blanket. Someone else is following along, carefully holding up her injured ankle on something that looks like a makeshift pillow. Diamonds hands are covering her face, she’s still bawling, and obviously in a great deal of pain. Billy sets her down gently in the passenger seat and I thank him, thank him profusely, but he waves it off. I hear the music restart inside the club just before I close the car door and pull away. Diamond is crying and in so much pain I don’t think she’s aware of where she is. I want to reach out to hold her hand but she’s far too tense and uncomfortable. “We’ll be there soon Diamond, hang in there sweetheart.” I see her look down at her ankle, “Look at it Vance! Jesus Christ – oh Jesus, look at it! What am I going to do! I need this job! …oh God, Vance, what am I going to do!” I have to agree with her, the ankle looks bad, real bad; she won’t dance again for a long time, maybe ever again. Snow begins to flurry as we drive on, still a few miles from the hospital. When I finally make the turn onto Dayton Avenue we’re stopped by a line of cars waiting at a traffic light, “We’re almost there Diamond, hang in there.” She has quieted to short sniffles and muted moaning, there are clotted streams of blue and orange on her face where tears have mixed with makeup.
        While we wait for the green light I consider that I’m a forty three year old man, married, childless, and driving to the hospital on a Friday night with an injured erotic dancer in my car. The idea of carving out a future with Diamond is for me suddenly too fabulous an idea to come true. Things break, they fall apart, nothing lasts forever. I drop her at the hospital and remain anonymous; I explain the circumstances to the nurse and tell her I only wanted to help. After I’m sure Diamond is taken care of, I leave her to the doctors and lie to her that I will come back to check on her in the morning.
        During the drive home I wonder how I’ll account for my whereabouts to my wife. It’s getting late now and I haven’t even called her. We will talk, things will get said, meanings misinterpreted, there will be fresh misunderstandings and new entries in our weekly log books. We have our session next Thursday with Ms. Morris, of course. I expect I will have a lot to talk about.