19- Petition drive

 

  

Journal: March 19, 1987

 

            Okay so I come to this little hole in the wall three times a month, the same go-go bar Hank used to drag me to when I still lived in Montclair – more a hangout for losers than a T&A show place, but it’s a perfect place for a would-be writer like me who wants to see by not be seen, with a few café tables off to one side of the oval bar where I can sit and observe.

            The patrons are always looking the other way at the dancers to care about what I might be doing behind them, and usually the dancers are so busy taking tips and pushing off men’s advances they don’t care about me either.

            So sometime back in November, with notebook in hand, I came in , pushed a chair out from under once of the tables and sat down to write, jotting down ideas that had been running through my head all day, sometimes sneaking glances at the bar and the people so I could make up stories about them, their lives, and what brought them to a dump like this. It was always a good routine for sketching out strange characters for use in fiction, and a nearly perfect plan that allowed me to drink in peace.

            But with every good plan, there is generally a snag and last night that snag was a five-foot-five inch go-go dancer named Peggy, who took one look down at me and growled for me to stop.

            “Do you think you’re something special or something?” she asked from the stage, her hands on her hips like a scolding teacher. “Get over hear at the bar with everybody else.”

            The sheer audacity drew me up to a stool.

            She was a pretty woman but overdressed for a dancer, a hefty frame without being really fat, although the barmaid told me later, Peggy is always conscious of her weight.

            One of those odd things about women in our culture. No matter how pretty they are; no matter how grand a personality, they always manage to find a flaw in themselves to gnaw over.

After I settled at the bar, I opened my notebook and started to write again. This didn’t seem to bother Peggy, who seemed more concerned with my invisibility than with what I actually did, as she insisted on keeping everybody within view.

            So, the next few times I came in over the next month or so and she was there, I made a point of finding a seat at the bar – if only to avoid the embarrassment of being singled out again.

            Although in fact I had started to like the woman, not so much her twisting body but the face and eyes. I liked to watch her watch her patrons, and a few times, she caught me watching her watch, and frowned, her eyes asking, “What the hell are you looking at me, mister?”

            It was clear that her eyes were the one part of her anatomy that wasn’t for sale.

            Each time she caught me, I grinned, shrugged and went back to my writing. This was always a short exchange, and left a less bitter aftertaste than the watery beer, and with me being generally broke, I usually finished my beer and vanished before she finished her set.

Not that I thought she would consider coming over to me. There were always too many other men waiting in live. The few times I was still around when she took her break, she found someone else to sit with, rough and ready men with mouths spouting bullshit, making snide remarks about her outfit or her singing. . She often sang the songs she played on the jukebox. I later learned she went and bought the records for the juke box just so she had songs she could listen to and sing when she danced.

            I learned later she often bought her own records for the jukebox just so that she could have songs she could listen to and dance to.

“I hate that disco crap,” she told me later. “Rock and roll is my thing.”

One thing about all go-go bars no matter how peaceful they seem, men come to see the women and often come with something more in mind than evening tea. So most evenings are a game of dash and dart as men make jokes full of sexual innuendo and the dancers dodge around the issue. They can never come out and simply say no. The men would stop coming.

There has to be hope for each man that keeps us glued to our chairs and buying drinks. Short of the private deals on the side, hope along that man might get lucky kept him glued to his stool, dropping big bucks for drinks and tips.

            Peggy was particularly good at never saying no. She had a good routine, too, stock phrases that kept conversation moving during her breaks, so that even the shyest of men were ever left in the lurch. She laughed and yelled, mocked anger, her voice often rising above the sound of the juke box.

            One dancer, later when Peggy finally came over to where I sat to see what I was up to, actually asked us to move down to the end of the bar so that she didn’t have to hear Peggy’s honking voice.

            I refused to budge an inch.

            Sometimes, in-between her stock responses, the truth seeped out.

            Sometimes, she didn’t even know what it is she said such as the tale she told to her “trusted men” about how her mother marked the booze bottles at home to see how much she was drinking.

            “But I fooled her,” she said. “I mark the bottle after I’m done so that she doesn’t know which mark is her. It’s my father – the jerk – who came up with the idea of marking the bottle while it’s turned upside down, and I didn’t know the last time and so I’m marking the bottle so it looks like I’m taking even more than I really am. The jerk.”

Alcoholism is a huge problem among dancers, or any of those who spend too much time in this environment. It’s part of the job, taking the drinks patrons offer, the higher the booze tab, the more often a dancer gets to work. Some dancers work just for the alcohol, saving their own money while allowing others to feed their habits.

But it appears with Peggy, the situation has progressed if her mother has taken note of it. I’ll talk more about this later.

The first real attention Peggy gave me was during football season when her previous Giants started making noise in the NFL. She danced and talked on and on about them to anyone who would listen. I often saw her on Sunday nights – my regular night and she would be hoarse from screaming. Even when the games were played out of town, she apparently screamed at the television.

            Some patrons complained about her outfits – or rather the Giants’ t-shirt she wore over it, and her response was, “You got a problem? You don’t like the Giants?”

            This usually silenced the most vocal opposition. Her voice could intimidate even the most hearty.

            I made the mistake of cracking back.

            “Sure, I like the Giants, but their quarterback stinks.”

            A cat’s back couldn’t have arched any better than Peggy’s did. She turned slowly like a character from a Lou Costello movie.

            “What was that?” she asked.

            I repeated myself.

            She glared.

            “You’ve got some fucking nerve coming in here,” she said. “Where are you from anyway? I’ll bet you’re a Jet’s fan.”

            I assured her I wasn’t.

            “I’m simply not the fanatic you are.”

            “Well,” she said in a huff, and coldly turned away again.

            The conversation was over. But not the looking. Her gaze came around to me more often after that, the familiar frown appearing even when I wasn’t directly looking at her.

            She seemed puzzled by my existence. She didn’t merely question why I was at the bar, but why I even inhabited the same planet.

            Over the next few weeks, her chill thawed, and the conflict became something of a running joke. She started sitting near by between sets – that is when she couldn’t get a drink out of some poor sucker. Sometimes when she had to sit with someone else, she would pause long enough to growl “Jet fan,” at me.

            The enormity of her love for the Giants became even clearer a few weeks later when she thrust a petition under my nose and said, “sign it.”

            “What is it?” I asked, squinting at the form in the dim light.

            “It’s to make the team change their name to the New Jersey Giants.”

            “Does that mean we’ll get stuck with Sims?”

            “Sign it and shut up!”

            I signed. She went on her way, promoting the issue from the stage when she was supposed to be dancing, cajoling even blackmailing the other patrons to sign.

            She must have gotten thousands of names.  My name among them became a peace pact between us and the frown seemed to vanish. Now she smiled instead, often singing at me to the expense of other patrons around the bar.

            I began to squirm, not because I was uncomfortable with the attention, but because there was a twinge inside of me that suggested a growing attraction. I actually liked this woman, not as a dancer, football fan and all around clown, but the person behind the mask.

Behind the frowning gaze, I realized, was something every vulnerable. Our talks began to vary from the football team. I began to find out about her and the paradox that dominated her life. She was a certified public accountant. No lie. She admitted she was a little frightened by her job, especially by the fact that she was assistant head accountant her place of employment, next in line for the top job.

“I just don’t know how to fire people yet,” she said, the mask totally gone, a sincere little girl showing. “That’s what I’m waiting to learn. How to face my old friends and be their boss.”

I wanted to tell her that such things weren’t so easily learned, that it took a specific kind of person to be able to betray her fellow employees. It was the single most aggravating flaw in a system that promoted people through the ranks. It was a kink in the capitalistic system that made me hate it.

She also told me that had become a Republican organizer (she meant envelop stuffer) and that she loved Ronald Reagan, and that she spent several nights a week working as a volunteer for United Way.

But she never mentioned her drinking. During these conversations, she sucked up drink after drink, until I was broke, and when my money was gone, I rose and told her I had to be off. She always looked disappointed. One time, she asked me for a hug.

So I hugged her.

I have to admit it was among one of the biggest thrills of my life, and later, still slightly buzzed from the booze, I wondered at the turmoil of feelings going on inside of me, the tumbling that I’d not felt since the first time I’d fallen in love.

Love?

The idea leaped out with a fury and panic all its own.

Was I crazy? One does not love a go-go dancer, even if she did graduate college with honors, even if she was a CPA.

            The rule stands with good reason. The strip club scene excludes love. Most dancers are in love with themselves, often more aware of their own figures in the bar mirror than of any of the faces staring up at them from the stools along the bar.

While Peggy didn’t have that problem, she had a million others like her drinking, and suggestions that she might have even deeper problems I don’t know about.

She reminded me of my generation when I was young, the disillusioned Kennedy kids, who searched around looking for that magic again.

Her love of Ronald Reagan seemed to reflect a perverted version o that, but I didn’t argue about it. And it would be sacrilegious to put down here previous Giants.

Still I found myself planning a campaign to ask her out. A date? What harm could that do? I was attracted to her after all.

I had many of the same thoughts about her moving body as the big mouthed clowns at the bar did.. She was lovely and grand. But when it came to actually asking her out, my mouth just wouldn’t work right. She seemed to be waiting, touching my shoulder more than she should, demanding hugs regularly.

            I kept putting off the question.

            Normally, she only worked once a week, on a weekend if possible, but lately there had been cancellations and she leaped into them and I found myself following behind here, still pondering my question. Then it came to me: I’m a writer. Why am I worried about trying to get my mouth to work. So, I wrote it down and handed it to her at the bar, but my mouth was working at that moment, and I said, “I was wondering what you might say if I asked you out to dinner?”

            “I might say yes,” she said.

            Then, we both got drunk and in the middle of it I managed to give her my number.

            I was convinced she would never call. But figured the whole experience was fun, until I ran out of money again and stumbled out, and home and thought about it from the dizzy world of my bed, watching the ceiling turn, wishing I didn’t feel the way I did.

            Who was this girl named Peggy? And Why did I like her so much?

            Her alcohol use troubled me – especially the liquid lunches she took at work.

            “I don’t hang around people who want to go to Roy Rogers for lunch,” she said. “Not when there’s a bar nearby.”

            I wondered just how much she was drinking. I had seen her car. It didn’t even have an inspection sticker but this pink card they give at motor vehicles that says “thirty days, “ and even that didn’t belong to her car, but to some guy who once brought a Pinto and gave the card to her.

            Where does all her money go?

            Booze, of course. Or maybe something harder. Cocaine? I never asked. I won’t ask. I simply watched her when she went home, her car weaving into the oncoming lane, with no one to care if she lives or dies, nobody capable of telling her anything, least of all of the fact that she has a serious problem.

            I wanted to help. But I didn’t even know her last name. And what was I to do?  I was just another slug seated at that long bar, one a bit more bashful than most, but not much different from the men who came to get their piece of T&A.

            I even thought about calling up her job and begging her boss to do something. Yet the most that would do would be to ruin her career.

            If I knew her last name, I might have gone to her church (The first Presbyterian in Wallington) and talked to the pastor there. (she claims to go to church every Sunday except during football season). Yet even that is presumptuous, a stranger invading her life, a bar-fly writer injecting his opinion where he had no business.

            In truth, there was nothing I could do. Nothing at all. And that’s the hardest thing to take, and though I care for her and Know when she is dancing, I will not go. It is just too much to watch her watching, both of us knowing that at any minute she will fall apart.

Peggy Main Menu

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