Herschel’s strip club, is called Diamond Lust. It isn’t considered one of the most prestigious clubs in the city. It’s more of a hole actually. There is a central stage with two poles, surrounded by wagon train of chairs, we affectionately refer to as depravity row. The club is poorly lit at the best of times, with rope lights and black lights and the occasional blinking strobe. There are various tables outside the stage’s circumference and we sit in the protected cul-de-sac of pervert’s cubbyhole, a table that is unobtrusive but close enough to the action to get an eye-full.
Bubba and Ellis made this place their second home. In fact, once the two had spent all their entire pay on lap dances. Ellis, afraid to confess to his mother that he had blown all his money on strippers, had to fake a mugging. He had walked around for a week with a vicious black eye from the fist of Bubba Burlock in order to give his story validity. His mother believed him and the eye eventually healed.
We ordered a round of beer and shots.
Looking down and shaking my head slowly from side to side, I said, “God---did you ever fuck up tonight Bubba,”
“Yeah but Jacob hired him,” Ellis defended. “So ultimately isn’t it Jacobs fault for what happened?”
Bubba gave no response to either of us. He just looked blank. It was as if he had withdrawn into his own little world. He was probably shell shocked from Jacob’s reading of the riot act. His gaze hardened as he lay in that festering wound of his subconscious and Ellis and I decided to let him be.
Herschel saw us and came over to extend a hand of hello. He constantly complained about his business and the strip club destroying his life and finances, sucking the money from his other business, a small produce store like Jacob's. “Hey guys.” He spoke in his usual raspy tone. “Glad you could make it. ---Off work huh?”
“Yeah Herschel. How’s business?” Ellis said with a sly smirk. He just couldn’t resist.
“Bad. Really bad. Nobody spends money. They just sit there for hours nursing one beer. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I should?. . .” and we clued him out until he was finished bitching.
The DJ announced, “Gentlemen put your hands together for Sunshine. Now we had something to focus our attention on.
“....and the hooter shooter girl told me to stick it up my ass just before she walked out. Hey you guys want me to get Wang to whip up some chicken wings?”
“Shit Herschel! You’ve got Wang working here now?” I inquired.
Wang was one of Herschel’s long time employees. He practically ran the store since Herschel was there only to bring the product in from the market. I didn’t know what bugged me more. The fact that Herschel had Wang working here, or the fact that a guy named Wang was doing the chicken wings.
“Yeah that bastard cook was ripping me off. You know he tried to . . .,” and we faded Herschel out again.
Ellis was playing with the wet circle where his beer had been as he gazed at the dancer on stage. Bubba was just looking down into his brew, like it was a magic 8-ball, and would give him some sign as to what he should do next. “Magic 8-ball will I find another job?”
Prospects look highly unlikely.
“Magic 8-ball do I have a future where I am now?”
The future seems cloudy ask again later.
“Magic 8-ball will you shatter into a million pieces when I through you against the fuckin’ wall?”
I still had my mind on Wang. Next thing you know Herschel would have him up on the stage. Wang with his coke bottle glasses sliding down his nose, and a G-string barely concealing his package. Sliding around that pole. Shaking his booty to Shania Twain’s, Man I Feel Like a Woman.
Herschel's voice began to invade our stupor once again, “.....and I’m sure he urinated in the deep fryer. That filthy bastard!” (Herschel said ‘bastard’ frequently.)
“You don’t say?” I put in, like I’d been listening all along, “Hey that’s swell, Herschel. Good luck with all that . . . stuff there.”
“Enjoy guys,” Herschel said and got up to leave.
“No thanks,” Ellis added as the offer for Wang’s chicken wings finally registered.
“What did he say about enjoying guys?” Bubba questioned, as he looked up from his beer. “Fuckin’ fag ass!”
The DJ spoke again, “Oh Yeah Gentlemen, Sunshine’s got two more for you and then she’ll be down table-side for a little private one on one action . . . Candi to the DJ booth, Candi to the DJ booth.”
“I’ve had an epiphany guys,” Bubba said.
“Well go the washroom and clean it up,” Ellis kidded playfully. “I don’t want to smell it here.”
Bubba just looked at Ellis with a gaze that said, Fuck You!
I didn’t think Bubba could even say epiphany, let alone use it in a sentence. “I’m gonna do it guys. I swear to God I’m gonna fuck that mother fucker up good,” Bubba warned.
“Oooo careful with the double entendres,” Ellis mused, “We might get the wrong impression.”
“I’m fuckin’ serious, you fuck!” Bubba, gritted his teeth. The color was now back in his face and a deep anger was percolating.
“Can’t you stop saying, fuck all the time? I feel like I’m in a Scorcese film” I felt that, any minute, Joe Pesci was going to come out of the kitchen a plate of Wang’s steaming chicken wings in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, charging at us to beat us all to a bloody pulp. “Who ordered the suicide wings mutha fucka,” he’d scream over and over amid the carnage of busted skulls.
As I day dreamed Bubba went on. “It would be real easy. I could get him late at night after the store is closed and he’s leaving with all that money in his pocket. One shot into his brain pan and it would be all over. Or I could use a knife. Nice and quiet. Cut his throat without a sound . . .”
I was still with Joe Pesci dancing in my thoughts. Ellis’ attention was also focused elsewhere as he smiled coyly at Sunshine swinging around the pole as she backed up.
“...Fuck no one would even suspect me with all the enemies he has. That fuckin’ avocado eatin’ weirdo with the lazy eye for one.”
“Sully Goldstein? You’re not serious. No one would believe he’d do it Bubba. What’s his motive? ---the avocado’s too ripe--- Christ sake Bubba, he can’t even dress himself properly. Come on, I can’t believe I’m even discussing this with you.”
I could understand Bubba’s frustration I really could, but I didn’t agree with his
method of handling it. We had all fantasized about offing our boss, usually after he had done a triple gainer with a half twist off the deep end because someone had put up a bruised apple on display, but we would never do it. We all just fantasized about it in the same way you, as a child, you prayed for God to kill your parents after you felt you’d been unjustly punished. My dilemma was, should I take him seriously and say something?
The girl on stage removed her thong and tossed it to Ellis. The booze was beginning to take effect with the drugs he’d ingested on the way over and he began deeply inhaling the panties. With a silly grin on his face he began feeling around his pants for an errant $20 he could use for a more private viewing.
“Anyone’s capable of killing another human being if he’s pushed far enough . . . even you!” Bubba spat, “You take it up the butt for years and years and finally you snap and it’s always over something simple. But you snap none the less. Then you make them pay. He pushed me too far tonight Malveen. He humiliated me without any thought to my condition. You have no idea what I went through after Jacobs phone call. I’m absolutely sick. Sick physically and sick of everything that makes me that way and it’s time that I eliminated those things.”
Now I was really worried. This was the longest series of thoughts I’d ever heard Bubba construct without the use of colorful metaphors.
Tomorrow: The Limits of Respectability
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