BY TARRI DRIVER

Copyright is held by the author.

EVERYTHING TINGLED. My cheeks were on fire as the humiliation enveloped me. A cheap chair’s tattered, plastic weaving dug into the backs of my thighs. Emptied glasses and bottles slid around in their sticky sweat on the spindly, small table, and my mom danced around next to me, laughing, hollering, and in her element. Her big, white teeth gleamed in the dark, amid the sweeping spotlights. Our matching airbrushed tank tops glowed a hi-lighter yellow. A thunderous chorus of laughter surrounded me, and I wondered if this was what Carrie had felt like in the group shower scene in the old horror movie. Inside the crowded room, the air was thick and humid despite the spaciousness and high ceilings, and there were so many women. A mob of them, all yelling, laughing, dancing and screaming. Fascinated, I noticed that some of the women were even crying.

Earlier in the week, I had been under another heavy blanket of depression and called my mom for support. She and I had always been more like best friends instead of “Mother” and “Daughter,” and I was well aware that my move south had hurt her to the marrow. I’d left, because I had to see if I could make it on my own; I hadn’t even been gone for six months. Despite my weak protesting, she’d begun packing her car before we even hung up the phone.                                

“You’re my namesake!” Mom reminded me.

“Of course I’ll be there ASAP!”

Without hesitation, she had driven the eight hours south to come to my aid.She had booked a hotel room for us on the beach; the picture window faced the ocean. She surmised that I just needed to get out of my head and into the sun.

Mid-week, I had finally felt motivated enough to get out of the bed and take a walk, stretch my legs and breathe fresh air. The sun was an orange disc fading into the horizon. Glittering flecks of gold and magenta reflected onto the buildings, and the evening mist felt cool on my cheeks as I listened to my mom’s incessant nattering. We were walking along a side street and heard bass beats pulsing from a nondescript, concrete block building. A small, handwritten sign on the door read “Beefcakes.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me into the vibrating place, and now here I sat, as she shrieked, shouted and jiggled with the rest of the crowd.

The lights flashed before me like a Pokémon cartoon — pink, green, yellow, blue, purple — at a steady clip, both hypnotizing and nauseating. I was nursing my third or fourth watered-down daiquiri, and while I worried about the potential for seizures, a robust, hairless man wearing a knee-length, white trench coat and white, calfskin moccasins jumped out from behind a sequinned curtain. I watched him on the stage, surrounded in swirling smoke. He looked a little like He-Man with a spray-tan, mysterious and otherworldly, as he growled and prowled around on all fours. The fringe on his boots swung back and forth, the rhythm reminding me of the old plastic kitchen cat clock with the tick-tock eyes and tail.

The room of women fell silent, in awe. Like an ancient mystic, he writhed back and forth in the smoke. Undulating, spinning, gyrating, then stillness. He faced the room and in one swift, velcro-enabled motion, he tore off his rip-away costume like a wrestler, revealing a smooth and bronzed torso. His remaining neon Speedo blazed like a beacon into the crowd. In roaring waves, screams rose and fell as the women were jolted to another level of excitement by the blinding fabric barely covering his bulging gonads. I wondered if it was real. Surely he stuffed.

The frenzied women pulled out money from their wallets and purses and bras. They pulled on their own hair, and they pulled at each other, jostling for position. Hair, shirts, skirts, high-heeled shoes, feathers, beaded fringe and $1 bills swirled around in a kerfuffle that smelled like Panama Jack, coconut, Jack Daniel’s and stale ash trays. Mom offered me cash, but I held up my hand in protest. He-Man, The Speedo Mystic worked the room, beckoning the women around him with his quick, yet graceful movements, plucking the bills from their eager paws and humping the air with flair. I grimaced, shook my head and apologized every time he approached me.

The lights dimmed, and Mr. Speedo Man slipped into the shadows. Simulated lightening and manufactured mist fell from the ceiling. The white smoke turned purple. The beat changed. A hush fell, and then another collective scream erupted through the gaggle of titillated admirers as two more hairless men, twins, appeared from behind the curtain. Their skin gleamed and sparkled like weird space babies. The men grinned, revealing straight rows of Chiclets. In the rainbow laser-eviscerated darkness, the effect was menacing. The twins began a synchronizeddance routine, strutting and shimmying to the beat, aligned like a single, mythical beast, a dancer with four heads, four arms and two heads. The whole surreal scene literally glittered, reflecting from and bouncing amid multiple disco mirror balls at irregular intervals, blinding me for a moment here, a moment there. I lost my breath. I lost my balance. I lost my head. I was about to vomit. It occurred to me that I might be drunk.

I stumbled around and tried to find something or someone to grasp onto for leverage, but the crowd was a pulsating blob of slick, rubbery flesh. My hands couldn’t find anything solid and grabbed only at air or slipped from jellied limbs. I fell onto my hands and knees, and thought I could hear my mom calling for me from far away. The floor was tacky on my palms, and the grit of it ground into my knees like tiny pebbles. I felt the sharp heels from various women’s stilettos and booties poke into my spine, the backs of my hands and the crown of my head.

A hand yanked on one of my tank straps and tore it, and one of my shoes was dragged from my foot. Sweat trickled down my forehead and into my eyes and mouth; I tasted its salt on my tongue. The back of my head stung, and I could already feel the echoes of a migraine rippling throughout my brain. Panicked, I groped my way along the floor until I saw stars when I smacked my forehead against a wall. My head spun. Still on my knees, with one hand on the floor, I followed the wall with my other hand. Frantic, losing it, I somehow felt a cool, metal door frame and curled my fingers around the handle bar. I pulled myself up onto my feet, and with all of my weight, threw myself against the door and tumbled out into the street.

Standing bent over with my hands on my knees, I emptied my guts onto the asphalt and swore to myself again that I’d never get drunk with my mom. I wiped off my mouth with the back of my hand and cried a little bit. Mom stumbled out the door. The neck of her tank top was stained with sweat, and the contents of her purse spilled out onto the sidewalk as she handed me a tissue. She looked at me with pleading eyes. Nobody said anything. I took the tissue and with the ocean breeze on our faces and the dawn rising, we started the walk back to the hotel.

***

Tarri Driver is a lifelong creative artist with a wide range of independent, academic, professional and therapeutic arts experience. Her work as an art therapist along with her teaching experiences inform both her worldview and her art and writing. Forthcoming works include the third children’s book in her Lunar Mooner Lula series and a book of short stories for adults. Her stories have appeared in issues of Wising Up Press, Tiny Spoon, Quarter(ly), 5 on the Fifth and Literally Stories. Her work can be found on tarridriver.com.