slaves

slaves of satyricon

Love story to the olden days of the Club Satyricon in downtown Portland. Any resemblance to people, places, things or ideas is purely coincidental, but if you recognize yourself, that's your problem.

More than anything these days I get a sinking feeling when I walk into this club. I used to come in just shining like a candle and work the place good and hard, feeling eyes flicking over me and away, or even better, staying glued to me like my body was made of epoxy; but now the waves of looks are about half hungry and half contemptuous. They all WANT something from me. What can I give them? I'm here, aren't I? I just want a shot and a beer and to listen to "Get Down Tonight" on the jukebox.

It's not my fault I'm good-looking. I know that now. For years I denied it, everyone denied it, they couldn't deal with it. I don't see that it makes me that extraordinary. Why this freakish fascination with a beautiful person? I used to have this stunning girlfriend who was actually quite dull besides the fact that she was beautiful, and she was terribly unhappy. I saw her pain as depth. It wasn't. But she and I would go out together and sit at a table and be gorgeous, and both of us hated it and hated each other and ourselves for being gorgeous. It's hollow. I don't like to feel hollow -- I feel as though someone will bite off my head and look down my middle and see nothing in there.

But, dammit, there is something in here. "Can I get a pint of Henry's Dark and a shot of well whisky? Thanks." I actually have depth. That's a monstrous curse -- to have this face and this body and the stuff that goes with it, and to have en eternal soul and a consciousness and an appreciatioon for the ugly, imperfect things in life.

"It's on the house, honey."

"No, really, take the money."

"But I want to --"

I fling the money down and walk towards the jokebox. Bitch, interrupting my intelligent musings. I have to have them now and again, to remind myself that I do have a brain. Sometimes I do my best to destroy it, but it always pops up again, like a hard-on in third-hour high-school calculus.

I take the shot like a good boy, then turn and scan the room anxiously for someone to talk to. Always the problem coming to this place as a bar -- if you don't start talking to someone soon, you end up in a conversation with Elvis that has no end in sight. I see some of the usual horde, eyebrows plucked, patent-leather hair in place and nubuck jackets slung over the backs of chairs just so. Not a chance. I don't even want them to see me, although I know that when I walk into a room almost everyone notices me almost immediately. Fuck. I see one of the women turn to me with a half-smirk, one hand raised with a figer outstretched, half "fuck off" and half "c'mere"... ugh. Flee.

In time I spot a fantastic lady -- one of the Plain Women of Portland that I love so dearly! It's women like her that keep me here when I feel like moving to Pocatello and opening up a bait shop -- hair kind of messed up that will never be perfect no matter how hard she tries, hooded sweatshirt over an ill-fitting dress, sensible shoes, and glasses -- of course. I barely feel a flicker of anything if there aren't glasses. I'm a perverse son of a bitch, but I must, I must. I head over to her table and sit down comfortably, spreading my legs with just the right amount of je ne sais quoi. I look back over my shoulder at the tableful of slumming lingerie models. "I'll trade you a beer for one of your cigarettes," I offer.

The fascinating girl looks up from picking at a loose thread in her tights. "What?" she demands suspiciously.

"A beer. A cigarette. Trade you." I smile at her, trying to be harmless.

She's almost done with her beer, and she looks down into her empty glass, then up at me. "Are you making fun of me?"

"What? I'd never do that. I'm just out of cigarettes."

"Buy some at the machine."

"I'd rather have one of yours. Let me buy you a beer," I sigh. This isn't working. I'm losing it. Maybe she only likes blondes, or maybe she's gay. I could dye my hair, I suppose. "What are you having?" I half rise out of my chair, barwards.

She fumbles in a bulky purse and hands me a Nat Sherman Mint.

"MacTarnahan's."

"Cool."

While I'm waiting for the slag at the bar to give me another pint, I suddenly get an attack of the nervouses -- I have this violent urge to go pee, which is just a sublimated impulse to go hide under a booth and alternately giggle and cry. I noticed that girls found me much more attractive once I accepted within myself that the urge to hide someplace and giggle wasn't such a bad thing. I've never been the most masculine boy in the world, although I look like the world's saddest ugly barfly when I'm in drag. You know the type -- fantastic gams, but put a bag over

your head, will ya? Not pretty, me. I look too much like Marlon Brando.

The groovy girl is staring at me when I walk back and put her pint on the table. She looks like a porcupine caught in headlights -- terrified and defiant at the same time. I really like her nose and her eyes in combination -- I once read a magazine article where a woman was described as Picassoesque. This girl is Picassoesque, but not as much; her nose doesn't quite go straight out. I like a crooked nose. "You gotta light?" I ask politely.

She lights my cigarette. "So why are you talking to me?" she asked.

"Because I don't want to talk to them," I say, jerking my thumb over my shoulder.

"I'm a convenient diversion to avoid a socially tense situation?" she surmises, downing a quarter of the pint.

"Oh... uh, well, I don't mean it that way. You look like you're more fun to talk to. You say things like 'convenient diversion'."

"I know bigger words, too," she says, looking away towards the stage. She couldn't be less interested.

Ouch. Maybe my haircut won't save me this time.

"I have to go to the little buckaroo's room," I say, rising, "I'll be right back."

She makes a noncommittal noise halfway between a grunt and a laugh, the universal language for yeah, right, asshole, and I've got a lovely steel bridge in north Portland I'd like to sell you. I'd like to debate my way around that grunt, but I really have to go.

In the men's room I stand at the urinal and bang my forehead against the wall two or three times.

"You know, if you unzip your pants and aim, you'll find the process a lot easier."

I look up. It's S., the only boy in town who actually is sexier than I am. He's pissing casually, if such a thing can actually be described, one arm thrown up against the wall. He seems to have had a few, judging by the intensity and clarity of his stream. "Oh, Hi, S.," I sigh. "Actually, I don't think I need to pee at all... I'm just... I'm chatting up this girl outside and I tell you, man, she's like the Berlin Wall."

"Big and stoned?"

"No..."

"Covered with graffitti and Pink Floyd playing behind her?"

"Jesus, no, shut up. Why am I trying to talk to you, anyway? You're wasted and you hate me, anyway." I'm starting to whine.

He puts his wanger back and smooths his imported Italian nylon vintage one-of-a-kind shirfrtont down into his waistband. Little fucker, he's got like a twenty-two inch waist and hands like Michaelangelo's David. He's me, five years ago, down to the artfully tousled hair and the "I slept in my goth makeup" eyeliner. I think that's why he annoys me so much. "No, I understand, dude," he says, smiling disarmingly. "You know what your probalem is, CT? Your problem is, you ought to be getting some of that Barbizon pussy out there, but no, you've got to have that 'ineffable something more'. Don't you get it? There is no 'something more'. And with the ugly chicks, you've got to get through an entire high-school's worth of insecurity to get to the cooze. I tellyuwhut, man, it's not worth it."

"How would you know?" I snap, finally working my way into a urinary mental state.

"Nice Spidey underwear, man."

"You like 'em? I got 'em on Haight last time I was there."

"Sweet... got any nail polish remover?"

"No. Fuck off."

He used to adore me. When he was sixteen and I was twenty-one, I used to buy him and all his fresh-faced skater "Kids" buddies liquor and tell them they should listen to more T. Rex. Now he's got his own groupies, his own followers. Does that make me Marc Bolan and him Bowie? No, dammit, that's not right, I have to be Bowie or there's no playtime. Nobdy gets to be Bowie but me, damn it.

So I did have to pee after all. I imagine the groovygirl with Pink Floyd playing behind her while a horde of stoned German teenagers start a mosh pit and sing along to words they don't quite understand. Something about that makes a lot of sense. So things are working out pretty well after all, after my well-needed micturition.

After I got back I asked her to come next door to Fellini with me, and we played the John Lee Hooker drinking game -- one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer -- until we both ran out of money. She can hold her drinks pretty well; before I ran out of money I was feeling very foggy indeed and she was looking more and more like the girl of my dreams and I was talking stupider and stupider. She had come to see the band playing -- whose name I never got, but who were really good in that now-you-rock-it-, now-you-don't style -- and I balanced myself against one of the flyer-plastered square columns and watched her do an inspired rendition of the Portland Rock Appreciation Dance -- hands jammed deep into pockets, one foot forward, rock back and forth while shaking head from side to side ("Yes, yes, the rock, it is good! No, no, no, don't stop rockin'!"), and on the "now you rock it" breaks, she would jump a bit in the air and spaz out neatly on the downbeat. It was a beautiful thing.

Now it's over, and I got her back to my place, and I got her out of her dress and sweatshirt and leggings and we got together rather sloppily and with good cheer on the couch, still partically clothed, my breath fogging up her glasses.

I stagger to the bathroom, whizz with great relief, give my teeth a quick brushing, then stand there, hopelessly drunk, staring at myself in the mirror. Thee's an almost romantic light coming in off the street -- a ame-like luminescence from the street lights, heightened by the mirrors in the room so that it's almost bright enough to read by. I still have my underpants o; I hook my thumb through the waistband, thinking about taking them off, but I get distracted by the sounds of her moving around in the next room. Her name's Louise.

She comes into the bathroom and sits on the chekerboard linoleum and peeks around the edge of my leg. She still hasn't taken her glasses off, and she's put her underpants back on -- really beautiful and decadent panties, green silk with a golden lace band around the waist, about half an inch below the elastic so that the lace doesn't chafe. One of her small, plump hands with the polish chipped on the nails curves around my thigh. "You look like 'The Man Who Fell To Earth'," Louise says softly.

"I feel... like I'm... fucked up," is about all I can manage.

"You must stand in here all day, looking at yourself," she says, looking around at the hall of mirrors, silver everything, mylar balloons reflecting us back distorted and spread thin with color. "If I looked like you, I would."

"I used to," I say. "I don't like to stare at myself anymore. I mean, why am I in this body? I don't feel like this should belong to me. I feel like my body drags my brain along on a leash behind it -- they aren't connected in any way. I dress and groom myself like you would a Barbie doll."

Louise stands up, sighs. "You think too much, CT," she says. "Why can't you just be hunky and dumb?" She takes a pee, then leaves me in the bathroom alone.

I bend over the bathroom sink scooping handfuls of icy water up to my mouth, drinking half, spitting the other half down the drain in a milky spiral. My head is beginning to feel like styrofoam, coming apart in tiny white disconnected balls.

When I come out of the bathroom the girl is gone; all her stuff disappeared except for the half-empty box of Nat Shermans. I search through the cigarette box frantically, looking for a phone number or something, but there's nothing. She just took off. It's four in the morning. I'm already hung over.

***

I hate this club more and more every time I go, especially if I go two nights in a row. Three nights in a row, this time. I don't know what I expect. I'm dressed rather shabbily today -- jeans, thermal, Dinosaur Jr. T-shirt, Adidas. My PVC pants are at the dry-cleaners and it's too cold to wear something flimsy on top. No tattoos in the air tonight, then. I'm going to get one drink and then go home and read Bataille.

I sit at the bar next to Julia. "Hey," she says noncommitally without looking up.

"Hey," I say. To the bartender, "Shot of well whisky."

"You look depressed," Julia notices.

"I am," I say. "Girl trouble."

That gets her attention. "*You?!*" she laughs. "Fuck, the end is nigh."

"What are you doing here? I didn't think this band was your scene."

"Scene, schmene. I'm waiting for somebody. We're gonna go see a movie."

I envy her. So cool, so collected, so disconnected by choice, but irrevocably part of everything. I'm none of these things -- I'm a thoughtful tortured geek trapped in the body of a CK model. But what hand do I play in the creation of my own hell? Maybe S. is right -- I should be hitting the models, the Bad Kitty salesgirls, cigarette girls in microminis. I should get out of here -- maybe go someplace where nobody knows me, start a band, come back here and terrify the hell out of everyone. Play songs that sound like that other bands, and then maybeLouise will come and see me, and I can take her out for miniature golf and Red Lobster afterwards.

"I gotta go," says Julia, her silk skirt scraping as she lowers herself down from her bar stool. I help her on with her jacket, and she leaves me alone at the bar, early on a Wednesday night, with a full shot of diesel fuel on the bar in front of me. I glare at it, hold my nose, and take the shot like a good boy.