There are no white knights

04/09/80

The My Way is crowed with burly men in heavy coats, overdressed against a mid-spring chill, anxious for the seasons to change so they can shed these and flex their muscles in an offstage strip show meant to impress dancers – who are never impressed.

I come underdressed carting a notebook and a bundle of pens I put down on the wet bar next to the beer mug Mary has waiting for me, knowing just when I usually arrive, greeting me with a smile she saves for people who aren’t constantly hitting on her or pretending to care as much about her as men do the dancers.

Most of the men overlook the barmaids in their hunt for something they can’t ever take home to their wives.

Mary doesn’t even mind my talking to the dancers, who are drawn to me for many of the same reasons, all wondering why I come here to “do my homework,” and then paw at my notebooks to see if I’ve written anything about them – when I always do.

Many tell me their deepest secret even when they do not mean to, stripping off more than their clothing when they settle into the stool beside mine to accept the drinks I buy them.

Tonight, it is a straw-blonde (the color of which comes from a bottle of bleach or bad hair dye) who settles next me, mockingly at first, and then eventually, she talks about pain.

Ultimately, they all do, pain or misery of some kind that has brought them to this place where they can bask in men’s admiration, accepting their drinks without the commitment most other barflies have to suffer through.

After all the usual preliminaries, she starts to talk about the men she’s known – and loved, and how at age 16, she fell in love with a man who beat her if she even looked at another man or another man even looked at her.

And routinely in this, she stops, frowns and asks: Why am I talking to you?"

Because I listen, I think, but do not say, and do not seek the same comfort in these women’s arms as other men do, a kick myself for it, needing such comfort as they do.

Perhaps, I simply need to hear it all, to get a glimpse of the dark world `that I tread lightly around, like a butterfly landing on the extended leaves of extremely poisonous plants, too insignificant to get sucked in easily, a daring escapade that could end with a wink or a nod, and with any mistake I might make about thinking I can survive such a plunge, regardless of how tempting it may seem.

I’m not nearly as naïve at Hank or Michael, one who thinks he can touch and not be stained by the dark forces that underlie this world, and the other, who foolishly sees the dark world as more authentic than the Madison Avenue world we live (the illusions of morality and order), and perhaps it is authentic, the way our primal brains are, and deadly, we needing the façade of society to protect us from our most primitive selves.

I know where nights like this end, and know I have to leave soon, break away from this flower before I get sucked into where the nectar and the poison reside, waiting only for the moment when she must climb back onto the stage to dance.

I don't want to reach that point where she might ask me to come home with her the way some other dancers have, knowing that no such invitation comes without a cost. I don’t want to have to fumble around until I come up with a socially acceptable way to say, “no.” I don’t want to turn into another abuser, a vicious bee dipping into the deepest part of her only to flirt away covered with her essence and leaving her empty and bitter at yet another man.

Like others before her, she touched by pad and ponders what it is I find so interesting in this world to write about, and why I don’t ever let anyone read it, and why I won’t let her read it now.

I cannot give her a reason, knowing that each word I write here amounts to a confession, me as guilty as any other man in this place, my head filled with the same dreadful drama.

Then, she goes and mounts the stage, pouting as I pay for my beer and turn to leave, her eyes full of promises I don't want her to keep.

"How often do you come here?" she asks as the owner shouts for her to dance.

"About once a week," I say and take up my note books, and turn to leave, feeling sorry for her, but knowing, too, I am not the answer, just an example of what is possible beyond this place and this life, one of many men who don't immediately want to fuck her. Deep down, through all the horniness and guilt, I want to be kind and loving, even though I don't always achieve that goal.

I feel sorry for her use of drugs which she said she needs to shoot to help her erase the memory of the men.

"One man is as good as any other," She whispers, her hard eyes saying she means every word.

Why does she continue this if she hates these men so much, these worst of men, truly flawed men, the men who breathe violence and hate as part of their everyday lives?

She lives in a self-created jail cell she can’t easily walk away from, in love with the attention these men give, if not with the men, each of them a prison bar or a jail guard that keeps her contained. She cannot survive in the Madison Avenue world where we live with other illusions, with pretenses of morality that do not exist here. Perhaps, Michael is right. Perhaps we come closest to the essence of who we are in places like this.

And yet, this girl like most of those I talk to here, holds out the illusion of a different kind, that somehow out of this pit of pestilence a white knight will rise up to rescue her, and each girl like her growing more and more bitter when each one turns out to be an empty suit of armor.

I see this hope in this girl’s eyes as she mounts the stage and smiles back down at me at the bar, the flash of armor reflected there, when I am no more one than any of the other men around me.

There are no white Knights, no one to rebuild her.

She has to do that for herself, only she can’t do it here, in a dark world full of demons and death traps, where foundations of any castle she builds are constructed on ill will and despair built by and designed to appease desperate men.