20DEC04, 11:52:05
Dear Villain,
Hey, how’s it going? I’m good. They’ve got me staying in the same hotel Johnny Cash once stayed in back in the late Seventies. Every channel I turn to is playing The Good, The Bad and The Ugly over and over and over again, which is kind of surreal.
When I was getting a haircut this afternoon there was one guy ahead of me in line, and a second one fast asleep in an empty chair. Presently, this second guy kicks off his shoes, slides down onto the floor, and sprawls out. Just makes himself at home, snoring away, drunk off his ass. Hey, it\'s not my town, so what do I care?
An older lady was cutting hair and got all freaked out. Said she\'d called the cops, but they never showed up. \"The only way to get arrested in Anchorage is to let your parking meter expire,\" says the first guy from behind a wry grin. Eventually, the city patrol boys showed up. One of them reached down and goosed the drunk tight inside his thigh. That woke him up in a hurry, and they dragged him out into the snow in his stocking feet, mumbling and swearing incoherently. The old lady charged me half-price for being patient.
Also, I went to a strip club here last night. No cover to get in, $5.75 for a pint of Guinness. Clubs here are topless, bottomless. Lap dances are $20, no touching for less than $50.
I braced myself as I walked in the door. Everywhere I turned, I saw beautiful women wearing an identical smile. \"It\'s all for money,\" I thought to myself. \"It\'s just an illusion, like David Copperfield but without all that theatrical hand-waving. None of these smooth-skinned creatures are real. You must ignore their long, luxurious hair, full mouths, and firm breasts. It is a trap. Understand this, and you will be fine.\"
Ten minutes later…
\"So what brings you to Anchorage?\" Mariah was 5\'11\", easy, her curly black locks and sculpted body smelling faintly of sweet shadows as she dragged herself across me.
\"Business,\" I said, reclining in a darkened booth at the back of the room, my face upturned to hers in quiet awe. My mouth was dry.
\"What kind of business?\" She was soft. Her smile was captivating me. Her eyes were backlit. She was clearly not of this world.
\"I\'m a hired gun,\" I replied. \"A media geek. What do you do?\" I thought I saw tiny sparks explode somewhere behind her eyes when she laughed. I bet she hears a million jokes like that a day, and still she laughed at mine. She occupied a separate universe from me just a hair’s width away, barely grazing my mouth with her own. As she clawed her nails lightly along my neck, a bolt of primal lightning charged up my spine. The result was fantastic, like an army of miniature crackheads were breaking up my chest with electrified sledgehammers in search of loose change. It couldn’t have been my heart! No way. Not mine. My heart’s never done that before.
Twenty bucks doesn’t seem like a lot of money to pay for the experience of having a sensuous creature cavort slowly in your lap like a charged fire hose, but it buys the average man the kind of attention we long for from the kind of women we dream about.
It took quite an effort to keep my hands to my sides, gripping my thighs and doing everything I could to adhere to that most basic of house rules: THOU SHALT NOT TOUCH. It’s true that some rules were meant to be broken, but this one’s important. I knew the 500-pound gorillas wearing matching goatees eyeing me closely from the door wouldn\'t hesitate to cross the floor in a hurry to remind me of this fact. I know this rule, and I chose wisely to abide by it. A gentleman can survive anywhere. True story.
I can’t say what she might have meant to anyone else last night, but for the instant she was there in front of me-- filling my senses, taking my money, and serving as the catalyst for what felt like my first heart attack-- Mariah (if that was her real name) was every woman I’d never had the guts to ask out for dinner, a drink, or a cup of coffee. She was beautiful and charming and perfect. But make no mistake, when those three minutes of flawless relationship ended, I handed over my money and she sauntered off, her soft hair cascading down the gentle curve of her back, bright smile clearing a path across the floor.
\"There she goes,\" I thought, \"headed off to create a similar memory for another perfect stranger. A walking assembly line, churning out the tiny scraps of life we shall recall as aged men.\" There’s a lesson to be learned here. I was just another sucker, and she was $20 the wiser.
I can see how a man might lose track of decades in a place like this, drunk on pleasure and drained of his paychecks until finally he staggers forth into the sunlight one afternoon many years later without a penny to his name, and nothing to show for it but shaking hands, a ruined liver, a stack of illegible phone numbers scrawled on crumpled paper napkins, and the kind of skull-splitting smile morticians charge extra to erase.
There were beautiful women of every shape, color, and fantasy in that place: blondes in chaps, brunettes in bikinis, and redheads in cowboy hats. I was quite taken by a rather incredible woman; a tall, curvy, well-proportioned Amazonian in black rectangular glasses. Clearly, someone’s been reading my mind. The mere sight of this \"intellectual goddess\" drove a steel spike of pure pleasure through my brain, and gave me some cause for concern. I’d created a second hole in my head through which still more of my fantasies could escape.
There were young faces cycling their way through cigarettes, and older ones with more plastic in their chest than I had in my wallet, but all of them were amazing. It felt so good to be able to drink them in with my eyes, and when they pressed against to ask me if I wanted a dance (\"Sorry, sweetie. I gave it all to Devon and Mariah and Taylor and Christ-I-can’t-remember-who-else....\"), each time I’d empty my lungs and inhale their sights and smells, replacing bad air for better, drunk on madness and sweet delight. Fantastic. Everything was utterly fantastic.
But there was one girl, Villain, one incredible woman with such striking features. Carmen. Her name was Carmen. I watched her dance on the stage and felt my heart burn and melt like a lava lamp. I felt joy that she was real, and wept bitter tears knowing she wouldn\'t last this way forever and ever. How many men have felt like this? We are such tragic beasts!
She looked Egyptian, so delicate and perfect. If you know me, you know I don’t use the word \"perfect\" lightly. As I watched her walk up the stairs and move along the open rail toward the dressing rooms after her show, so cool and so aloof, I wanted her more than I wanted my next breath.
I had no next breath! I couldn’t look away from her!
I asked another of the girls, \"Could you get her for me, please?\" and pointed to the oasis in kitty-cat bangs sauntering slowly along the rail. \"Sure, honey. I’ll see what I can do.\" She smiled and left.
I wanted to stop time and stare at Carmen forever. I wanted her attention more than money, to know her life’s details beyond the suddenly-tedious bullshit of this too crowded, smoke-filled abattoir crammed with useless and earthly delights. I wanted to know what she was really like as a person, what foods she ate, what music she liked, how untidy her bathroom was, what color the towels were. I wanted to discover what made her laugh, what made her cry. In that instant, I wanted to take her away from here and spend the rest of my life making her happy. How easily I fall in love! Surely you can understand.
I sighed deeply, feeling all the usual pangs of longing a man like me experiences when a symphony like her passes by on street without offering up a single word to please his hungry heart.
Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. Some heavy roller paid her a lump sum to sit next to him for the rest of the night and make him look good. What a fucking bastard! That\'s like hogging the last gasp of fresh air through the slats of a rail car headed straight for Hell. She looked unhappy, but maybe I imagined that.
How else can I describe such women to you? Have they invented any new words which make a writer’s job any easier? I see now the problems that confronted Henry Miller during his time in Paris (in addition to room and board and food and, and, and…)!
I promise I’ll never forget any of the women I saw last night. I’ll take their pictures from the small wooden box I keep inside my head and look at them during long plane trips to strange places, and on those lonely nights when I’m struck by one of my infamous and frequent bouts of insomnia. I will examine these women, but carefully, aware that the images of these beautiful girls are changing, even in the UV glow of my mind\'s eye. Did I really see what I thought I saw?
No one can know. Memories don\'t belong to us. We hold onto them as long as we can before they slip away, vanishing in the fog of time. We die with nothing to show, but the grin I mentioned earlier.
On the road till the end of time.
Your Friend,
- Cray