How to Talk to a Widower (18 page)

27

THE TOWN OF NEW RADFORD HAS ONE OF THE
best public school districts in the country. We have well-funded libraries, beautiful parks, clean streets, an exemplary police force, and great shopping. What we don't have anywhere in the vicinity is a single decent strip club. Someone tried to open one a few years ago, but nothing galvanizes an upper-middle-class bedroom community faster than the threat of tits and ass. Local lawyers offered their services pro bono to file all the legal motions, the wealthier financial professionals funded the opposition, the minivan set picketed the proposed site, and the local family associations and religious institutions united and mobilized to cram the zoning board hearings with raucous crowds to make sure the application and all subsequent appeals were shot down. Ironically, these same men who gave of their time and money to keep the strippers out are now forced to drive the forty minutes into Manhattan when they want to be grinded on by topless dancers in G-strings.

Even before I was married, I never liked going to strip clubs. Not for any grand moral reason, or because it objectifies women—I believe in a woman's right to choose to be objectified—but because I can't help seeing myself through the eyes of the dancers; a dumb, sexless mark too pathetic to achieve female contact on his own terms. But after Hailey died, the married guys saw me as the perfect excuse to make these trips. Going to a strip club might be a seedy and wretched act of misogyny, but bringing me along transformed it into a humanitarian mission, a noble act of friendship and compassion, the men gathering to buck up the sad, lonely widower in their midst. It was the flimsiest of justifications, but when naked women are involved, that's generally all a man needs. And so, with this rationale tucked neatly away as ammunition for the imaginary defense they would never present to their wives, they would call me, advising me that it would do me some good to come out and party with them. I knew that sitting with a group of middle-aged married men and watching them chat up the young, naked dancers writhing on their laps would only make me feel shittier, but sometimes it was easier to grin and bear it than to explain that to them. And so the night finally came that I found myself being dragged along on one of these little outings like a team mascot; not one of the players, but there to foster team spirit.

At first I figured I would just sit at the bar, or on the couch, get drunk on the watered-down drinks, tap my foot in time to the eighties hard rock, and take a mental nap until it was over, but then I learned yet another incontrovertible truth about being young and bereaved: everyone wants to buy the widower a lap dance. Like waving a pair of powdered tits in my face will somehow ease my pain. And suddenly I found myself shouting down the men in my party, who were throwing money at the girls and telling them to show me a good time, and then fending off the aggressive advances of the strippers themselves, who had sensed the dynamic and were ready to work the situation for all it was worth. And so I followed the dancer they'd selected for me down the dimly lit hall to the VIP room, but as soon as I was out of view, I ducked out of the club and used the batch of twenties my well-meaning friends had shoved into my hands for the dances to take a cab back to New Radford. And that was the last time anyone asked me to go to a strip club.

“We're going to a titty bar,” Max says. “As soon as we finish here.”

Max is Mike's younger brother, a good-looking guy in his mid-twenties, the kind of guy who still says things like “sweet” and “dude” and, of course, “titty bar,” and who earlier informed me, apropos of nothing and without the slightest trace of self-consciousness, that one of his fraternity brothers “has this banging house in the Hamptons, and on weekends it's wall-to-wall models, man. You should totally come, dude. I'll hook you up.” Whenever he speaks, I can picture him in his fraternity T-shirt, chugging beer through a hose, paddling the naked asses of freshman pledges, and date-raping semiconscious sorority girls.

It's Monday afternoon, and the members of Mike's wedding party have all gathered in the dressing room of Gellers Tuxedo Studio in lower Manhattan, to be fitted for our gray waistcoats and tails. I had hoped that Mike would have better sense than to dress his groomsmen, but I forgot that Mike is not calling the shots, and Debbie wants all the ushers dressed up as Kennedys. In addition to Max and myself, Mike's wedding party contains Paul, a hedge fund guy, and Rich, an investment banker, both from the neighborhood, who never stop taking cell phone calls and urgently checking their BlackBerries. And then, awkwardly enough, there's Dave Potter, Laney's husband, who is Mike's partner and whom I should have anticipated but somehow didn't, maybe because I've trained myself to forget he exists.

Since Paul and Rich are too busy being important, jabbering into their cell phones and frantically shaking and pounding on their BlackBerries like they're about to beat the high score, Dave gravitates over to me, talking while we get dressed. “I've been reading your column,” he says. “It's amazing to me how you can write something so honest and raw, but still make it funny. You've really got a knack for it.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure. I hope Laney's not driving you crazy, bringing over food all the time.”

It's strange, hearing her name spoken so casually by him. “No,” I say. “It's really very nice of her.”

“Sometimes she can go a little overboard.”

I think of Laney straddling me, her auburn hair falling wildly around her face, eyes closed, mouth open, as she bucks and shrieks her way to orgasm. “It's fine,” I say. “She's a good friend.”

He pulls off his try-on shirt, and there's something about seeing the love handles and sagging pectorals of the man who doesn't know I'm sleeping with his wife that makes me feel even worse than I already do. Dave's not a bad-looking guy for forty-five, but he married a young sexpot and then let himself go, and I just want to grab him and haul him in front of the tailor's mirror and say, “Look at yourself, you dumb fuck. What did you expect?!” And for one crazy instant, I find myself stepping forward and opening my mouth to tell him, because in the long term I think there would be an upside for both of us, but then Max makes his announcement about the titty bar and Dave nods his head and says, “Now you're talking,” flashing me a conspiratorial, titty-bar grin, and in that instant I feel a little less bad for him, and the impulse to reveal myself is gone before I can get myself into more trouble than I'm already in.

Max herds us to a high-end gentleman's club a few blocks away, the kind with crimson velvet ropes and stanchions out front, and the Armani-clad heavies working the door greet him by name. I consider a variety of ways to make my apologies and leave, but Mike and I have only just buried the hatchet and I don't want to do anything that might lead to a new misunderstanding. So pretty soon I'm sitting on a long, L-shaped couch in the dimly lit club with the other guys. Max heads over to the bar to put down a card, stopping to admire the two ladies currently dancing on the poles, while a handful of the other dancers working the room start circling us like birds of prey in their high heels and negligible lace outfits. Within minutes Rich has pulled out a wad of cash and bought Mike his first lap dance. A small-breasted brunette with a crown of teased hair and a sequined G-string is leaning her nude torso across him, moving slowly to the music, running her hand down his thigh as she whispers in his ear. Word of a bachelor party in the club spreads quickly, and soon we're surrounded by more dancers than we can handle. Paul grabs himself a tall blonde and heads for the champagne room, still talking on his cell phone, while Mike, Max, Rich, and Dave are content to have basic lap dances right there on the couch.

I miss my wife.

“Hey!” Mike says, looking out from behind his stripper, who is now sitting on his lap with her back to him, grinding herself against his crotch in a circular motion. “Someone take care of Doug.”

“I'm fine,” I say, holding up my drink. “Today is about you, not me.”

“Bullshit,” Mike says. “Max. Find this man a girl.”

“I'm a little busy right now, man,” says Max, who is almost fully reclined on the couch, looking lasciviously at the petite redhead bouncing on his lap.

“You're my best man, Max,” Mike says. “Do your job.”

“Stay where you are, Max,” I say, quickly getting to my feet. “I can take care of myself.” I head over to the bar on the far side of the room, and order myself a Jack and Coke. The trick is to keep moving, so as to avoid becoming a stationary target for any of the roving dancers. While I wait for my drink, I watch Mike and the guys in the mirror behind the bar, whispering and flirting with the girls on their laps, cracking jokes and high-fiving each other. Dave, in particular, seems enamored of his dancer, an Asian girl with disproportionately large breasts, and his hands keep snaking around to cradle her ass, a flagrant violation of strip-club etiquette, but he must be tipping well because she doesn't seem to mind.

“Hi,” says a plain-faced brunette with long coltish legs and a sheer halter top, rubbing my shoulder as she sidles up to the chair next to me. “I'm Shawnie.”

“Hi, Shawnie,” I say.

“What's your name?”

“Jack.” She lied first.

“You want to come with me to the Champagne Room, Jack?”

“No, thanks.”

“How about a lap dance?”

I pull a twenty out of my wallet. “Here,” I say. “You see that guy over there with the brunette on his lap?”

“Yeah.”

“His name is Mike. Go give him a lap dance and tell him it's from me.”

“Mike,” she repeats.

“Right,” I say. “But tell him your name is Debbie, okay?”

“Who's Debbie?”

“Who's Shawnie?”

She grins. “Debbie it is.”

I drain my drink and order another, turning to watch as she pulls off her top and climbs onto his lap. He leans over to look past her at me, and I raise my glass in his direction. He flashes me a quizzical look, but then a new song starts, something by the Black Eyed Peas, and Mike disappears behind Shawnie's arching back.

Twenty minutes later, I'm still at the bar, realizing with disgust that while trying to stay just long enough to leave, I've drunk too much to drive, when Mike comes over to get me. “Doug,” he says drunkenly. “I want to tell you something.”

“Okay,” I say. I'm pretty buzzed myself at this point.

“I feel funny, being in this place with you,” he says, sitting down on the bar stool beside me. “I mean, I'm marrying your sister and all, and here I am, in a strip club.”

“Don't worry about it,” I say. “It's just some harmless fun.”

“That's right,” he says. “I just want you to know that I love Debbie very much, and I would never do anything to disrespect her.”

“I'm sure you wouldn't.”

“This is just some stupid male-bonding shit.”

“I know, Mike. Don't worry about it.”

“Debbie's way hotter than any of these chicks anyway,” he says proudly, making a grand sweeping gesture with his arm.

“So is Laney Potter, but that's not stopping Dave,” I say. We turn to look at Dave, whose face is buried between the giant breasts of his lap dancer, rocking her up and down with his legs to the beat of the music. “If only your clients could see him now.”

“You think Laney Potter is good-looking?” Mike says.

I look down at my drink, wondering why I brought her up at all. “I don't know,” I say. “That wasn't the point, really.”

“No,” Mike says, steering me away from the bar. “The point is, you're my buddy and you've been through a lot and the guys and I want to buy you some lap dances.”

“That's okay, really,” I say.

“Just sit down and enjoy yourself,” Mike says, shoving me onto the couch, and the other guys call out their own intoxicated bellows of encouragement. Max leans forward and gravely whispers to me, like he's sharing state secrets, that for an extra hundred some of the girls will blow you in the Champagne Room, and before I know it, there's a naked girl on my lap with bleached blond hair and a metal stud in her tongue. She smells of gin, lavender body lotion, and baby powder, and her high gum line makes me wonder briefly about strip clubs and dental plans. “Hi,” she says. “I'm Vanessa.”

“Jack,” I say, avoiding eye contact. She can't be older than twenty, and her body lotion makes her taut belly sparkle like a sidewalk, which makes me think for a sad instant of Brooke's eye shadow. And then the song starts, and it's an old Van Halen song that reminds me of Julie Baskin, my first high school girlfriend. Vanessa starts to sway and grind on my thighs, and I close my eyes and remember a party in someone's house, and how Julie and I stood outside in the shadow of the house, pressed up against each other kissing and petting, while inside this same song was playing on the stereo. She smelled clean, like scented soap, and tasted like Juicy Fruit gum, and I can still feel how in love I was, how pure and exciting and perfect it was to stand outside on a cool spring night kissing a pretty girl, and how whole we still were, as yet untouched in any way by life, and how easy everything was, because it was never meant to last. We never even broke up, just kind of dissolved peacefully, and a few weeks later we were each making out with someone else at another party, in love all over again.