Chapter 5: Almost Home

He walked into the bar on a Tuesday night with the few, wayward wisps of hair at the sides of his scalp dripping wet from a rain that pounded the city streets and soaked his clothes straight through to his skin. The old regulars were there, milking their drinks, but the bar lacked the vitality of the younger college crowd that sometimes overran the place, and there was no doubt that an immediate beer or two would enliven the otherwise dull mood that had settled over the regulars like a thin shroud.

The few who were there sat on the other side of the bar and nodded their heads to deliver a tacit greeting, but they soon went about the business of watching one of the many television screens that showed the infield of Yankees Stadium with a green tarp and puddles of water over it as well as the never-ending reruns of the first few innings. It was too early in the season for anything exciting, and the game was just one of the many the Yankees were losing that month. He figured the regulars would have rather watched the delay than be at home with their wives, and he smiled a little knowing that the loneliness of being a bachelor was much better than the irritation of being married, although the jury was still out on that one.

After he shook himself dry and hung up his sports jacket, the two girls working the bar took their time putting his usual pint of beer in front of him. They didn’t say hello but only did their duty before returning to where the regulars were. He had always liked the blonde barmaid, Lisa her name, and she avoided him in favor of the middle-aged men on the other side of the bar. He had tried flirting with her once before, but it was something she just couldn’t take. There was scorn and disdain for him in her pretty blue eyes, and he had little idea what put these things there. Perhaps it was the way he talked or just the look of his portly body that she didn’t like. It never occurred to him that she may have liked him better had he not gotten drunk every night and closed the place down with an insult or two before leaving. He hated being ignored, certainly, but after all, he did think of himself as a good man, only that he wasn’t good enough for reasons only the truly beautiful knew.

Granted that his job in customer service didn’t pay very much, and his Japanese import looked like shit most of the time, but Lisa could have at least been sophisticated enough to notice the tenderness behind his eyes or at least the music beneath his serious talk, and it seemed to him that women generally stayed away no matter how hard he pushed them.

There was something about him they didn’t like, some sort of deficiency they refused to accept, and instead of being nice around him, they usually just filled his beer, took his money, and insulted him behind his back, or at least that’s what he thought they did. And the regulars, well, they were just losers all the same who talked about things so trivial as to make the barmaids giggle like girls, and it didn’t make much sense to him why he couldn’t be as superficial as they were. He instead preferred politics and all sorts of ponderous intellectual rubbish to which the women in the bar had a fast aversion.

No one liked politics and religion with their beer, but for some reason it was something he couldn’t let go of, and on a few nights when he would corral one of the young college kids sitting on the next barstool over and talked about the possibility of a draft for the war spreading in the Middle East, the kids would politely listen to him, sure, but the talk immediately got the attention of the barmaids who sometimes had the gall to yell at him for what they considered to be his unpatriotic leanings. They were, after all, fierce patriots, and he a liberal intellectual, and that didn’t sit too well with anyone at the bar. He had faith that they would one day know what he was talking about, but until then his words fell upon deaf ears, kind of like Noah before the flood, and they were sorry souls if they didn’t see such a thing coming. But that still didn’t change his status as a bachelor that night. And in order to get himself back on Lisa’s good side, he decided not to engage in any of his political and philosophical ramblings for the time being. He wanted Lisa to like him after all and tried to get in a few words edgewise as she put the beer in front of him.

He said, “you’re looking mighty nice tonight, Lisa,” to which she gave a curt little smile. The next time she came over, he said, “how about I take you out after your shift,” but she wasn’t having any of it. She poured him the beer and then went to the other side of the bar to chat with those whom she thought would win the game of life with their smooth talk of the popular trends that still managed to captivate the young and the beautiful.

He had showed up at the bar alone that night, and perhaps this is what Lisa didn’t like about him. He remembered when she used to fawn all over him during his first few months there, but then his usual sweetness took a turn for the worse when the war came, and after a week or so of heavy drinking something within him became fascinated by the bloodshed overseas. For a while he wouldn’t shut up about it. His once good nature turned to pessimism and cynicism, and this, he figured, was one of the reasons why the regulars didn’t like him anymore. He was a man of principle after all, and when Lisa figured this out, she quickly did an about-face and never really returned to his side of the bar. He figured some people were that way and couldn’t be helped. Yet he wanted to be liked again by the people assembled there, and maybe for once they’d forgive him for the sorry ass he had become and slowly allow him back into their quaint little social circle that had formed ever since his negativity took hold. It seemed that nothing could arrest their good spirits, no matter how hard he tried, and somehow he would have to try to win them over again.

But being a single man fast approaching middle age didn’t attract too many women into his corner. The others must have noticed how lonely he looked, how pitiful and sad he looked, and one would think that this would merit some kind of attention from the barmaids working the night shift, but it got him the exact opposite. They never said anything to him directly, and there was always the overpowering suggestion that he should leave and never come back. Every bar needed a scapegoat, or at least someone who could keep their conversations going if only to give their own spite something to chew on, and he was the one they had selected that month. Maybe he did hit on Lisa too much, but it was only because he thought her pretty, and getting too drunk over her meant that in some small way he did, in fact, love her.

She should have seen that he loved her, he thought, as a sipped his beer. Going to the place night after night became a punishment, a battle to be won, and he wouldn’t stop until they all respected him for his knowledge on the subject of war. The war, though, never came up unless he was drunk enough to bring it up. No one liked a spoiled-sport. People liked him more when he got along, and to be so left out and on the outside of everything stung bitterly, especially when young Lisa, a twit as far as he knew, smiled upon those who made her laugh instead of think about the bigger picture, which he hoped one day would include him.

He finished off his pint of beer and thundered out of the place thinking they would miss his company. The rain darted down as menacingly as before, and he drove off a little drunk, making sure to keep on his side of the road. He soon found himself in his studio apartment with very little to do but watch television, a bland and monotonous universe of electronic nothingness that filled an intimate need, not to know more about anything in particular, but to be closer to the beauty and good fortune that had blessed the fictional characters on the screen. He felt a little less lonely with the television on, as it brought women who looked like Lisa into his living room. Old laundry had been sitting in small piles on the floor, and small, irritating crumbs from a turkey sandwich he ate at dinnertime stuck to the back of his thighs as he lay on his couch flipping through channels.

It wasn’t long before he realized that television no longer filled the void but only served as something to get angry over. He tried reading a newsletter his company sent him by mail, but this only put him to sleep for a few hours. He awoke in the middle of the night to a captivating silence that normally would have demanded the ongoing chatter of the television but instead gave him an awkward feeling that he could do nothing else with himself but wait his boredom out until morning. Yet he preferred the fluidity of night, a time when the earth seemed to stand still and the quietude of the city streets tranquilized whatever anxieties the daylight brought with it.

The window in his studio offered a view of a narrow alleyway two-stories down where several cars slumbered, and this, he thought, must have been part of his overall problem. Like a rat he was caged in and didn’t have the capacity to gnaw his way out. His aunt who lived about an hour away suggested that he find a new hobby, but hobbies sucked away time and too much money, and anything that did interest him, aside from war and politics, only held him for a few days. He usually abandoned these new hobbies and reverted to the sedentary lifestyle that had been with him since childhood. He also thought of traveling to some far-off island, but winced at the sight of himself in a bathing suit and so put off the idea of such an adventure until he had lost enough weight to look good without a shirt on. Unfortunately, he only put on more weight by drinking beer every night after work, thus ruining his plans.

He again tried reading the newsletter but was overwhelmed by the nighttime silence. It didn’t put him to sleep a second time around but only created this awkward feeling that his life should be much more, if only he had a good woman.

And with a good woman perhaps his life would have been much different, or so his thinking went. Perhaps he had been too busy making a man out of himself by talking the way he did at the bar. He only acted a little rough around the edges because he figured that that’s what women wanted – the hero on the movie screen who saves the maiden in distress – and because he could never live up to these heroes, who always seemed to win the fair maiden’s love, he got his revenge by eating too much red meat and too many French fries, hoping to combat the fascism and poison of such fairy tales. From childhood he noticed that the women loved these heroes, no matter the era, and that he would be the first to make the ugly beautiful by being a hero himself, as this was his ultimate ambition.

But being so revolutionary in his approach brought him a special kind of loneliness he couldn’t shake, and while reading the last lines of the company newsletter, while craving the steady stream of chatter another round of television-watching would provide, he instead picked up an old magazine he kept around the house just in case he needed it.

A young stripper with long brunette curls and a see-through tank-top graced the cover of the magazine. Her fishnet stockings and black leather miniskirt provided some relief, but not enough to shoo away his loneliness. Her legs were long, and her chest abundant, and he couldn’t mistake the power of her image, even though it was something he wanted to be deprogrammed of. His plump fingers caressed the spaces of skin the glossy magazine cover permitted him, and while doing so, he came to the firm conclusion that it was time he take some sort of action, or else continue living like a rat in cage. He couldn’t stand thinking about it anymore, and he quickly rifled through the magazine to find a list of classifieds in the back.

He found the section that read ‘adult services,’ and with careful deliberation read each of these ads that offered a sexual experience without actually saying that sex would be performed. There were Asian women available, two for the price of one, exotic Russian beauties who looked like runway models but barely spoke a word of English, and big-busty women with their measurements printed in bold typeface, their names similar to the girls he wanted in high school but was always too afraid to ask. There were many possibilities, even ads for a she-male and a dominatrix, but he found these ads to be too outlandish if not distasteful. What he really wanted was a girl like Lisa, and she would be hard to find among the names of women listed in the classifieds.

Then came an entirely different rationale for making the call, and it concerned his needs as a man. It went along the lines that a man needs sex, because he is, in fact, an animal in many respects, and without sex he would surely perish and do damage to himself. Having sex, then, is as natural as eating food or drinking beer, and because the women in his life, like Lisa, cut him off from this essential activity, he should then avoid becoming something unnatural by conforming to his own nature as a natural man. A man hungered in this respect, and to deny him would be to repress him. Repression would then lead him to violence or some other deviance that would stall his evolutionary development and keep him a child. A child certainly can’t survive the bitter city streets like an adult can, so he better call a woman and have her come right over if only to cheat death and affirm his own life. To deny him sex would be to deny him life, and since the women somehow stayed away from him no matter how hard he tried to improve himself, paying for the service would have to suffice, even though it was a last resort. And like tuning up an engine that needs to perform better, so sex is that lubricant that makes the engine run up to standard.

He had heard many times before the arguments used against hiring women for this kind of service. The argument went that these women are usually of the abused and victimized sort who really don’t want to have sex with strangers but must do so in order to survive themselves. These women are the immigrants sold into slavery by underworld crime bosses, or women so terribly abused in childhood that they must prostitute themselves in order to bolster an otherwise shattered self-esteem, yes, he had heard all of these arguments before. The women only get a percentage of what the Johns pay them, as the rest would go on to their abusive pimps, and maybe he should steer clear from taking advantage of these young and impoverished souls. He knew better than to give into lust at that hour. Neither did he want to drain his bank account and plunder the couple of the nicely-sized paychecks that took over a week to clear. He knew it was wrong, but couldn’t stop the urge. He needed a woman right then and there, no exceptions, as this one time would somehow make up for all the times Lisa had ignored him at the bar. There was really no other choice.

Finally he made the phone call, dialing slowly and hoping not to feel too embarrassed when discussing such an intimate proposal with a complete stranger on the other end.

“May I help you?” said the operator, a female.

He immediately hung up the phone in embarrassment. He waited a minute or two and then tried again.

“Hello, may I help you?” said the same operator.

“Hello,” he sputtered, “I would like a date for the evening. I’ve never done this sort of thing before, so I hope –”

“Don’t sweat it sweetheart,” she said. “What type of girl would you like?”

“Oh, just any girl, I suppose.”

“Well, we have black, Hispanic, Asian, and white.”

He wanted to say ‘white’ here, as that’s the type he preferred, but he knew he should remain open and balanced about wanting only a white woman, in keeping with his ‘equal opportunity’ stance on the matter, although in this case it was a perversion of that stance.

“Anyone would be fine, but if you have a white woman, I’ll take her.”

“I have a white woman. She’s 5’4” with brown hair and hazel eyes, 34C-24-36, and her name is Randy.”

“That sounds fine,” he said nervously. “How much does it cost?”

He surrendered his credit card information to the operator, and she promised to call back after the information had been verified. He hung up the phone and noticed that his palms were sweating. The operator called back after he waited by the phone for a couple of minutes. He gave her the directions to his studio and then was told the driver would call him when he was near.

“It’ll be about a half hour,” she said.

When he hung up the phone, he could scarcely believe that the process of ordering a woman was as simple and hassle-free as ordering his favorite dish at the take-out Chinese place down the block. He also couldn’t believe he didn’t make the call sooner. He found that waiting for Randy was incredibly difficult, and he found himself pacing in his room, struggling to form a mental picture of what she looked like. He imagined someone in lingerie underneath a trench coat, as it was still pouring buckets outside, and he imagined taking her in his bed and fulfilling every erotic desire imaginable, as it had been ages since he’d been with a woman. In fact, he was comforted by the fact that he lusted for her. His lust proved, above all else, that he was indeed a heterosexual man, a wild beast who couldn’t be restrained, and not some freak everyone slandered at the bar. Randy would give his manhood back to him, and although there were moral implications involved with paying a young woman for sex, comforting the raging throb inside of him that would otherwise lead him to kill an innocent man on the street outweighed such implications. In fact, he was taking the high road on this one, and if a man couldn’t have a women due in part to his natural ugliness or lack of a higher paying job, then paying her for the service was the next best thing. And so his thinking went.

As the minutes slowly passed, he tried to find something to occupy the time. He watched television a little, but only found the programs he had been used to watching at such a late hour both bland and vapid. Nothing compared to the real thing, he figured, and yes, he deserved at least one hour of happiness in his life. He would never be successful at anything other than making sure his boss didn’t fire him, although he had at one time tried to get promoted, or at least as a younger man he had dreams and ambitions so wild as to merit their blundering pursuit. But success in the conventional sense, much like the success of those he constantly watched on television and the ones he read about in the glossy magazines, he would never achieve. A man needed to slide once in while, or come to terms with his own ugliness every now and then, in order to feel that he’s really alive. If he flirted with a little danger now, he wouldn’t have to be consumed by it later. There were so many reasons why this was the right thing to do, and from all angles of his conscience, this was the best thing he could do for humanity at the present.

His pacing became furious, and every few moments or so he glanced at the digital clock above his microwave. He thought about having a drink or something to eat, but his heart was racing now, his impatience driving him to lie on his sofa bed and sink his head deep within his pillows and grind his teeth at his maddening impatience. He thought of calling the service again, just to remind them that they had a desperate client waiting for a girl, but he didn’t want to ruffle any feathers his first time out there. Better to keep it casual and discreet, as they may not deliver her due to his agony.