Leaving was an ordeal. Since I ride a motorcycle I ride the bus during the winter. It is Presidents day and I forgot, so the buses are not running like they are supposed to be. The weatherman says that it is 36 degrees and I look out the window and it has stopped snowing, so I decide to walk the 14 Salt Lake blocks to the stop that leads to the airport. It's 5:30AM.
The first 10 minutes of the walk are OK and then everything changes, like being in love with a younger woman. The temperature drops 10 degrees and it starts snow, really snowing. The snow is wet and my shoes are sloshing with freezing water. I am wearing a green 50's style jacket and I look like a sugar coated green bean.
I cut across a large parking lot to make it to the bus stop on time. The wind has picked up and I feel like Amundsen crossing the Antarctic. The bus is not coming for another hour and I will miss the flight. I call for a ride. I wait an hour in the cold walking to keep warm. On the plane my feet and hands are tingling with sharp pins till they warm up.
Augusta, the de -facto home of James Brown. We are staying at a hotel three blocks from where he shined shoes when he was 5 years old and a few blocks from a statue of him that was by buried four feet of flowers, pictures and letters when he died. The convention center in town was where his funeral was held.
The seminar is the worst we have ever done, not one person bought anything. But the city is calling us. On the corner of Eighth and McComrick is a sad blue horse standing on a balcony. Srange but true. I am talking to the hotel manager and she tells me about the Spirit Ple dust down the street. This is a pole that slaves where chained to when they were being auctioned off. She tells me how people( read White) have tried to tear it down. One man chained the pole to his truck and as he tried to pull it down had a heart attack and died on the spot. "I don't believe in evil spirits" she says. I look at her and say, "Who said they are evil, I think they are the guardian spirits of memory." She looks at me with a barely hidden disdain.
The team is down, I don't really care, the only thing I want to do is explore Augusta. We finally leave at about 8:30PM.
We walk down eighth street and pass a few strip clubs, I am not in the mood and suggest that we look for a good local bar. We ask a guy on the street and he tells us about a local basement bar that white guys will like. We walk in and a young guy is playing guitar and singing Jim Croce, " Bad bad Leroy brown." There is a table of very gay men giving a birthday bash for their straight girlfriend. The bar is mostly empty, otherwise but the beer is cheap. We stay awhile. The highlight of the bar is the men's restroom. It hasn't been updated for 50 years and it feels like a time machine. I think of all the men taking a leak after too much beer, and all the things they were running from by drinking, the broken dreams, the lost loves or even the celebrations of birthdays, births and marriages.
We walk back towards the hotel and we want something different. Matt says we should at least check out a strip club. We decide to stop at the Discotheque Lounge. Under the 60's something neon sign it says "girls girls girls." We walk in and pay the cover. The club is mostly empty and very attractive early twenties girl comes and talks to us. She is tiny and though not my type beautiful. I don't like strip clubs for the most part, all the women ridden hard and put away wet, sad and dark, and something I have a moral conundrum with, but the women here don't have the same feeling, their faces are open and look healthy. Matt and I talk to Bunny. Bunny is very sexy but not very bright. We talk about her job and are maybe too inquisitive about it, but she wants $20 for a table dance and will put up with us for the few extra dollars. Its a financial mis-step on her part but she opens up to Matt and they talk as a new girl starts dancing on stage. She is physically perfect
Black hair, blue-green eyes, long waist and long legs. I sit at the stage and put a few dollars up. I am reading Chris Abani's The Flaming Virgin and in one scene he describes the smell of strippers, like they all buy the same lotion from Victoria Secret. She is dancing in front of me and tells me to stand. She takes off my hat and glasses and puts my face between her breasts. The smell...intoxicating and expected. She looks at me as she walks off stage and smiles.
The next girl comes to dance and she too is physically perfect, more curvy than the last girl. This girl's face is not as open as the last, she is more reserved, less comfortable. I am a man of contradictions. I watch her, there are tears in my eyes, I am not sure why I am crying. She probably thinks that I am some freak. Maybe I am. I want to posses her sexually, want to save her, want her to save me from.... I don't know what. She finishes dancing and disappears. I don't blame her.
My first stripper comes out, we talk. She tells me 20 for a table dance. We walk over to the table and I give her 20, tell her she doesn't have to dance. She says that she has to, "house rules:". She dances for me and I get lost in the curve of her right side, the changing movement of back.
She finishes and sits next to me and we talk. I tell her that I am a poet and she tells me that she loves E.A. Poe, especially "The Tell Tale Heart" We talk about her mother, the club, her boyfriend. She asks me to recite a poem to her. The club is loud so I put my mouth to her ear. I can feel my lips against her ear, the heat of my breath. I recite, The Hotel Cavalier and The Green Chair I look at her when I am finished and there are tears in her eyes.
We talk about her job and her boyfriend, how he read her diary and confessed but realized how much she loved him. I told her its hard for a man to love a woman who is a stripper and it has nothing to do with her. She understands, tells me how her man brushes the hair away from her face every morning and kisses her goodbye on his way to work. "I usually pretend I am asleep and rarely say anything but I love it." I tell her to tell him, I tell her how I have done that, no matter where the relationship was, and how I would have loved to have been more appreciated. She tells me I am right. I tell her to go home tonight and hold him, feel his breath, the rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his body, smell him and feel nothing but gratitude, then tell him how grateful you are that he is in your life and you appreciate how he loves you." She is smiling and crying and tells me she will." We talk about other things and say goodbye. She gives me gentle kiss on the check and tells me thank you.
Matt and I walk out into the night. It has cooled down. We walk the empty streets not saying much. Finally we go back to the Hotel and sleep peacefully.
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