I was coincidentally working on revisions to this part of the book when the announcement was made that the Westboro Baptist Church would be here in Columbia to protest at the funeral of our local fallen soldier, Spc. Sterling W. Wyatt. I wanted to share this as a reminder of what we do to one another, and of what we can do for one another, each in our own little ways, if we let the light in.
The War Years
Papa pulls Kyle’s
wheelchair up the stairs to the VIP, Kyle still seated in it, peering over his
shoulder as if he were backing a car out of a driveway. I put my eyes on the
stairs, or on the contents of my purse where I toy for lipstick or some other distraction,
keeping them anywhere but on what is happening in front of me. It’s not such a
big deal, just a bouncer helping a guy up a few steps so he can get a lap
dance. It’s only during the walk up these stairs that my eyes can’t meet Kyle’s
because I’m afraid he’ll see how guilty I feel for my completely able legs,
carelessly climbing up behind him, so taken for granted.
Once
we’re at the doorway to the VIP, Kyle smiles and thanks Papa as we take our
respective places. Papa starts the jukebox and Kyle ditches the chair next to
the couch. I watch his thick biceps stretch the sleeve of his t-shirt. My hand
reaches out to touch them, to slide down the back of his arm and feel the tight
definition, the power under his skin. His full lips part over his teeth,
pulling into a perfect smile. I don’t have to pretend to flirt with him.
I
sit on his lap, let my body wrap around his. He strokes my hair and pulls me
tighter to him. My hands roam along his shoulders, down over his chest,
skimming the ridges of his abdomen. I
slip them under his shirt, creep over warm skin of his torso, around to the
smaller part of his back. His injuries are healed, but I can feel the odd
creases just above his hips, places where skin from his thighs were
transplanted, hairless and rippled. Beneath these ridges, down below his waist where
Kyle’s back begins a sharp twist like the trunk of a tree battered by kudzu and
wind, he won’t feel my hands on him.
He
told me once that he’s lucky to have his legs, even if they don't work. The IED explosion that took his
ability to feel his lower body also took his friend’s legs completely
off, and took another fellow soldier’s life. Kyle feels like the lucky one,
even though he can’t feel my body on his, even though what he gets from this
dance isn’t what the average guy gets. He doesn’t get an erection; he doesn’t
jerk and buck his hips up to meet my body as I move slowly on his lap. He holds
me close to him, and I press my body back into his, listen to his breathing,
let him run his hands over my shoulders, and slide gently around my waist.
The Clinton
Administration was a damn fine time to be a stripper. Outside of the malaise
induced by Newt’s Contract with America, the ever-presence of moral warrior Ken
Starr, and Monica Lewinsky’s beret-topped head on the nightly news, people had
been happy. Saturday college football and income tax refunds. People drank
lemonade-flavored beer; they listened to Matchbox Twenty and thought it was
art. The masses were out more than ever, celebrating payday at the strip club.
I never thought about war. Maybe I was just young and stupid and not paying attention, but war wasn’t something we did anymore, not since Vietnam,
and the memory of body counts and disabled vets and Operation Rolling Thunder and
carpet bombs belonged to my parents, to their generation.
Of course there
were always soldiers fighting . . . Beirut, Panama, the first Gulf War, Kosovo.
But they were called military actions, not wars. My classmates weren’t being
drafted and the nightly news told us that ultimately life should go on without diversion.
I watched the
bungled 2000 election results on a big screen TV at the stripclub. Dan Rather
said things like: “This knock-down, drag out battle drags on into the night,
and turn the lights down, the party just got wilder. Florida comes out of the
Gore column, back up in the air.” Then the local news anchor broke in to
announce that despite having been killed in plane crash just weeks prior to the
election, former Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan had been posthumously elected
to the U.S. Senate, beating the still very-much-alive former Missouri Governor
John Ashcroft.
A little less than
a year later, the Towers fell in New York. The Pentagon was smashed by an
airplane. The whole political stage changed, but, even when the world goes crazy, the strip club stays pretty much the same.
In time, I rely more
on regulars, those benefiting from tax cuts for the wealthy. I pounce on
customers when stimulus package checks are doled out. Recessions, political upheavals,
bad weather and bad business, a man will still slip into the club to forget
about his troubles with the company of a showgirl. In a nuclear fallout, the buzzing neon lights
of strip clubs will still read Open for
Business.
Soon, the military boys appeared, Missouri National Guard boys mostly. They ship out to places with names like Kirkuk, Mosul, Basrah, and Baghdad. Young boys,
gung ho, shouting “HOO-AH”. A two-piece camouflage number that makes my ass
look fantastic, an outfit described on its package as Sexy Army Chick, made its way into my collection of costumes. I give
lap dances to outbound kids also dressed up like soldiers.
“Ain’t no pussy
where you’re going, man,” his friends will yell when I ask: “Are you ready for
a lap dance, Private? What’s that? I can’t hear you. Are you ready for a lap
dance, Private?
“Ma’am, yes,
ma’am.”
I hope they take
it with them, the untroubled illusion we conceive in the nudie bar. I hope that
in the darkness of worlds I cannot know, the American boys think about strippers
the way they think about Bud Light, or barbecue, or the Fourth of July;
something from home that goes on, unchanged, waiting for their return.
Others will come home. Quiet souls whose eyes I
search for some kind of understanding, some hint of what is going on outside
the strip club, outside our sheltered United States, out there where we send
them.
Kyle is the only
customer that makes me feel like what I do means something, beyond being a
living sex toy for ten hours a night. Something better comes from being the hot
girl on Kyle’s lap. If just for a moment, just the length of a few songs, we
can escape, hold each other tighter for a little while. In an unlikely place,
Kyle and I embrace a momentary calm. Not just a stripper and a wounded veteran,
but two people, witnesses to the darkness of which the human heart is capable,
sharing together a kinship that says: We are human beings. We are souls still capable
of finding the good in the world. In the shadows of all the wickedness that
breeds in the hearts of man, we can generate light, bright enough to illuminate
a tiny corner of the universe where love and goodness can grow.
