The Stripper's Daughter

The alley seemed to stick to his feet, and the night stars spun like a disco ball if he looked up.He just had a couple of blocks to walk and then he could lay down. Ethan Blue judged how well he done at these things based on how many drinks people bought for him after he read.

"I killed tonight", he thought and shuffle-stepped a little to regain his balance. Then unzipped his pants and began to piss in the middle of the alley . It was the shadow crossing his own that he noticed first. He straightened a moment, shocked, then

his shadow collapsed on itself.

 6 weeks ago

Blue woke in the hospital sore from open heart surgery, his hand went straight to his phone. Checking his notifications he was pleased to see how many people had checked in on him. Even his ex-wife had come to St. Vincent's to hold his hand the night before the operation, five by-passes and a valve repair. He had been pretty whacked out but he smiled and remembered telling her that she had broken his heart and that this would fix it.

Looking at the scar that ran down the middle of his chest he thought it looked cool so he took a selfie that featured the pinkish line of puckered skin and the tubes coming out of his chest. When he posted, like always, women from all over left nice compliments about his looks. Harmless flirtations of an electronic age from women he would likely never meet. He wished they weren't quite so quick to say he was handsome, and maybe a little faster about appreciating the words he wrote. Still he would take what he could get, and the number in the red bubble at the top of his page was oddly tied to his satisfaction level any given moment.

 “How do you feel - okay?” the nurse asked walking into the room and making notes from the oft beeping- steady humming device that hung next to his head.

“ Pretty good, where's my laptop?”

 “ They put all your things right here, do you want me to help you set it up”?

She pushed a little wheeled desk that could be raised up and down over to the bed and sat the laptop on it. As she was straightened the cord of the charger she asked, “So from one to ten how is your pain level? I can bring you something.”

“Uh, seven, yeah could I get something before I start hurting bad”?

 “Be right back.”

He logged into his account, the red bubble full again, and the comments and kind words continued.  More “friend” requests, his first real book had just been made available on Amazon and the requests had started coming more frequently. Mostly old home town acquaintances who thought that someone with a book might be a more interesting subject for the new voyeurism that passed for entertainment now, some locals with an interest in things cultural, fans.  He clicked through them accepting most, others trying to decide how they might know him.

 Coming across a tall blonde with a great rack he went to her friend list. They had a mutual friend who was a supporter of the arts, an owner of a little restaurant downtown and a serious drinker of wine.

He looked through the blondes pictures and saw she was just back from Europe. In most of the pictures overseas she was with an attractive girl with a hip look and an aggravated smile.

 “A lesbian”, he thought and accepted her request to be his friend. The nurse came back into the room, cheerful. It was easy for him to believe that she was here just to tend to him, but she was busy with many other serious patients up and down the hall. She laid her things in his lap, and opened a syringe drawing fluid from a small upturned bottle, recapped it, then repeated the process with a second syringe and bottle.

 “ This is for pain management” she unscrewed the needle from atop the first and snapped into into a sort of “Y” in the plastic tube that fed into his bloodstream, pushing the drug in slowly,  “ And this is so the other one won't make you sick.”

“ I taste it', he had said as soon as it was connected to the tube. She had smiled to herself, understanding the relationship that he had with Opiates. “ Okay, and here is your call button if you need anything. I’ll be just down the hall.”

The warmth slipped through his body. It was like he was sleeping with an old girlfriend, familiar and good. He never shot heroin or Oxys anymore but he was not afraid of relapse and he enjoyed the sensation without guilt. After a moment he shifted his weight and swung his feet over the side of the bed. Pain rolled through him, his abdomen was so sore that it could not be counted on to assist him in sitting up. The brown canvas messenger bag where he kept his computer was still on the table and he ran his hand into its side pocket and came out with a plastic baggy and some rolling papers. Then he made the arduous journey of five steps to the bathroom  to smoke a joint, dragging the humming beeping thing he was attached to behind.

The blonde's name was Carrie, she began to flirt with him online. First a “like” here, a comment there, and soon they were private messaging. After leaving the hospital he  had gone to stay with friends and spent his days watching bad television made more palatable by eating Vicodins like M&Ms and smoking weed.  

Along with some others, Carrie would check in from time to time, they had exchanged phone numbers but still chatted via Facebook and were soon learning a little more about each other. As it turned out, she wasn't a lesbian at all but rather she had visited her daughter, the hip chick from the posts, who was studying in France. Actually Carrie had had some kind of long distance affair with an aging rock-a-billy guy from England and  that was why she went but that somehow went bad after she had gone to see him.

“ It was nearly over for me after that”, she told him and he knew how serious she was about the words left untyped. He had tried before himself.

Carrie also had great taste in music, she liked the same alt/country sound and all the saddest songs. She started to make an excuse for liking the “downer” ones but Ethan said, “Justin Townes Earl says there ain't but two kinds, sad songs and zippity fucking doo da - so what are ya gonna do?”

 “My friend in Nashville used to date him, they did bad things together.”

 “Who JTE?”

“Uh-huh, they went out a while. Crack I think, anyways Townes said it first”

It was his first real hint about her life, he was interested, thinking this one might be not be the same old thing. Truth was that for the first time in his life he was feeling pretty mortal. Wasn't sure of himself, he was trying to convince himself to like her, easier because she knew Townes Van Zandt, a favorite of his.

 “When are we going to meet in person”?

He typed a vague response, they kept clicking at keys, filling in gaps about who they were. Then she typed,

 “ Okay, here's the deal, I danced for 15 years, you know danced”.

For a split second his fingers hovered, still, above the keys then he burst out in laughter, “Hell I was married to a hooker!”, clicking  quickly, and they were both relieved that the other one was real, a genuine flawed human being. He was oddly comfortable and told her much of who and what he had been. He left out that he’d been homeless for years until not long ago but shared many other dark secrets. They set up a time to meet at the little gypsy joint where she worked.

The plan was for him to come in around 7, have a drink or two until she got off at 9. He put on his favorite jacket and caught a ride with his buddy downtown. When he walked in and saw her behind the door he was pleased at how she looked. It did seem strange to him to date a woman his own age but she was attractive, dressed in a stylish way, and they shared a common dark and twisty past. Sitting, he didn't even have to ask before she had made him a drink and sat it in front of him. He began to relax a little, thinking this might work.

“ Zoe will be here in a little while, she's at Chadwick's band practice and I will give her a ride home.”

“Zoe?'

“My daughter”, and she turned to seat a couple who had just come in. Ethan stirred the bourbon coke with his fingertip and watched her go. Two more drinks and about an hour and a half later and a girl with giant eyes and a cupid smile walked straight up to his table. Her features were exaggerated giving her the stylized look of a toy, she was too cute to be real.

 “May I join you?”

 “Holy Christ”, he thought, “this is the daughter – I’m screwed” ,then he smiled his most charming dive bar poet smile and said “Sure”.

 Turned out she was just back from France where she studied Literature, she read most of the same writers that he did, and eagerly discussed them. By the time Carrie had clocked out and joined them they were fast friends, both enchanted by the other.

The three of them laughed and traded stories until long after closing and no one had the least hint of sobriety by the time Carrie drove them all home. In the car Carrie told about a guy that had dated Zoe but now called her all the time.  Button down shirts, Khaki pants and handsome -he didn't really do it for either of them. They had a preference for guitar guys or quirky types. It was interesting to learn that Carrie, like Ethan, was accustomed to dating younger than her age. When he said something about it Zoe chimed in.

“ I like older men, my cut off is like 35 unless they are famous, then its like 50.”

 “Really, what if they are like semi-celebrity locally?”, Ethan asked.

   “ Yeah Zoe, Ethan has written books- he is a poet.”

Ethan was a little scared, a little confused, and a whole lot excited. For the life of him he could not figure where this might go. Luckily it was a moot point because when they arrived at Carries everyone fell asleep pretty quickly. Ethan and Carrie slept together but that was all, Zoe slept in her own room.

It became a sort of pattern, he would come to the bar sit with Zoe and go home with Carrie. They were intimate but not physical. Carrie having never gotten over the rocker guy, Ethan not even sure what he wanted and Zoe driving him mad with flirtation that went nowhere at all. Eventually he had most of his clothes, his laptop and toothbrush at there place. For all intent  and purpose he lived there. Soon he learned that Carrie, having lived her life as a six foot tall blonde with huge tits was accustomed to men fawning over her. Taking out her trash, paying her light bill, making her coffee in the mornings – all those little ways that a man says I love you. Sort of. The problem, if there was one, was that Ethan was also accustomed to being taken care of. He quickly played the poet card and only worked when necessary, occurring mostly between girlfriends. It was a standoff of a less than politically correct nature.

 “This”, Carrie said waving a finger back and forth between them, “you and me I mean, can never work.”

He laughed because he knew exactly what she meant but he wasn't sure what to do about either. He racked his brain to work out how he could remain friends with Carrie and end up with Zoe. But even in the midst of flirting Zoe had made it clear that she had a man and he had no hope.

“ His name is Chadwick Gabriel and he plays bass for Godless.”

 “Godless, what the hell kind of band is that? “ he had asked.

   “ Here look”,she said turning her laptop to face him.

It was a YouTube video of a punk band shot with a smartphone probably from Vino's downtown or some other similar venue. The guy she pointed at had a big pompadour long chop sideburns, he was swinging his bass over his head and crashing it into the stage. Swinging and smashing it until it broke, body connected to neck by beefy strings alone. The camera panned around and there was Zoe decked out in her best “my boyfriend's in the band” outfit. Oh how he wanted that which he could not have he thought to himself.

The truth was, as much as he liked being there with Carrie and hanging out he knew that it wasn't anything “real”, but for two reasons he couldn't bring himself to leave. First, if he were not there the back and forth game he had been playing with Zoe would be over. Secondly, with Valentines Day just around the corner, he did not feel good about doing anything but pretending he loved Carrie, she was doing much the same for him. She still seemed so fragile from the Rockabilly guy.

He had nursed heartache since his marriage, so he felt for her. They weren't so much trying to fool themselves as they were consoling each other. For a shallow self-absorbed drunken wreck of a man like himself, it seemed a hell of a spot. He rolled a joint and pondered his choices.

*********************************************************************

---

Ethan had read a half dozen poems already and he was having that Zen moment that he had read about- plus he was drunk.  His voice lower, deeper than when he was sober and conversation may have slurred but not his poetry. At the mike of a stage in the big little town where he lived was his natural spot. The new Southern culture welcomed odd ones like him and he felt grateful. The crowd smiled and he only had a hint of regret that Carrie, or Zoe, or somebody hadn't been there with him. Carrie had wanted a little distance, Zoe had  predictably done likewise after Blue had drunk posted on her Facebook page, she said he had crossed a line. None of that mattered one bit to Little Rock's Troubadour when he read out loud his darkest musings so he smiled and said

“ This one is called 'One', it's a new one that I just wrote”, and he read this poem.

Photographs,

women I have loved

hang framed

and glass covered

among

half finished paintings

and 33 1/3 speed

collections

of folk and country

sounds.

Mixed with group

shots of

dead poets from

college and

close-ups of pretty

tattooed feet,

toes spread wide.

Snapshots of past

lovers, a two year

old calendar and

a couple of

Observer columns and

one of those magnet

and metal filing games

you got as a

party favor when

you were a kid.

This one looks

like Zoe.

I keep the photos

of the old ones and

the new ones don't

mind.

They know.

I only really

loved the one.

What are a few framed

memories after they

have already laid in bed

with me and listened

as I talked about the

one.

They clapped and smiled and sent him drinks and when last call came and went  Ethan started walking home. Back to his futon in the rear of a friends office where he stayed between short lived romances. It was only a couple of blocks away and he knew a shortcut.

The alley seemed to stick to his feet, and the night stars spun like a disco ball if he looked up, but he just had a couple of blocks to walk and then he could lay down. Blue judged how well he done at these things based on how many drinks people bought for him after he read.

"I killed tonight", he thought and shuffle-stepped a little to regain his balance. He unzipped his pants and pissed in the middle of the alley . It was the shadow crossing his own that he noticed first. Looking up he saw a small angry guy that looked like a cross between Elvis and Wolverine with an expression that announced murderous intent. In his hand was what appeared to be the broken off neck of a bass guitar. Etha Blue straightened a moment, as the punker started his swing.

“The freaking guy from YouTube?”, his shadow collapsed on itself. Blood crusted and unconscious he had haunting dreams that no one knew who he was.

Or cared.