I walked away from the apartment complex, with Lip noticeably perplexed. Part of me did feel mildly bad for him, but I was still not about to pay one penny. As I understood it, as Lip and I had discussed, this place was essentially to be a private strip club. Free entry and you paid for drinks and table dances. From what Lip had told me, the only real difference between this and real strip clubs was that here one could also pay money for whatever else one wanted, blowjobs and sex being, presumably, the main others. I told Lip, though, I was definitely not on the market for any of these “others.” Christ, as I said to him an hour ago, I was just bored.
Granted, this isn’t how most Emory kids relieved their boredom, but I think I was also a lot more bored and dissatisfied than most. Okay, I suppose I didn’t have to seek entertainment of this variety, but, well, you got a better idea? So shut the fuck up.
No man, Lip told me, I can’t just walk away like that, I gotta at least pay the woman ten bucks, she got that girl to come all the way over and all that, we gotta pay her something for her time.
I’m sorry (though I wasn’t, especially) I told him, but that was just not, at all, what I had in mind, not at all what you told me was going to happen. I’m sorry (not really), but I absolutely refuse to pay money for that, it was not what I agreed to.
At least five bucks, he begged me, Lip said that he’d get his ass kicked if he doesn’t go back with at least five dollars. He looked out for me, now please, look out for him was his argument. “I’ll get my ass kicked,” he again pleaded.
The truth is, there was one bargaining chip he might have been able to somehow play, if only he knew that he had it: I didn’t know where I was going. I knew I had to go a couple blocks and turn right, but a couple blocks in which direction? Was I going the right way? Was it up here that I take a right to head back to Five Points Station? Shit.
He was still talking about us staying together and I told him that fine, maybe I’ll give him five bucks. I said this only because I wanted to make sure he stuck around as my guide. My only fear at this point, though, was realized as he said he’d just have to run back and give her the money.
I understand that I’m a moron, but even I wasn’t dumb enough to trust that I’d ever see Lip again if I gave him some money with nothing more than his word that he’d be back in a few seconds.
When he started saying he’d have to run back, I reverted to my previous stance that I wasn’t going to pay money for not getting what we hadn’t agreed to. I asked him if I take a right up ahead and he said yes, thereby unknowingly outlasting his usefulness to me.
Then he started pleading me for just three dollars, as he did have two and three more made the minimum five he said he needed. I figured that I didn’t care all that much about three lousy dollars and said I’d give it to him, only to realize that I didn’t have any singles. Sorry, Lip. Then I got an idea. After I had his single and four quarters I turned over a five dollar bill. He went off on his way and I made mine back to Five Points Station.
I spent my walk considering. Things like whether or not Lip was actually going back to give her those five dollars. Just how many times I was going to be able to get away with doing shit like this before I finally do get in a bad spot around the wrong people and get myself killed, for another.
I also wondered what that girl’s story was. How in God’s name she wound up on her knees at my feet in a shitty bathroom in a shitty apartment, telling me that I was good-looking and apparently ready, willing, and able to give me a blowjob right then with 51-year old Lip watching. I mean, how?
◊ ◊ ◊
Outside, I again told Lip I was pretty unsure about this all, this is not what I felt like he told me this place would be. Sure it is, he insisted, he said it was at an apartment and it is; the girls would be here soon. See, there’s one now he said, pointing to a woman who was jogging across the busy street and then walked on over to us.
In her mid to late twenties, I’d say this young, black woman (every person I met today has been black, the significance of which I pondered) whose name I forgot within seconds of hearing it, if I ever did hear it, was just not attractive. We went inside and Lip shuttled me and her into the bathroom where he joined us.
The woman who seemed in charge, the second fat woman, said something about him leaving me and the trashy girl alone in there, but Lip said no, I had said I wanted him to stay. Which was true, we had discussed this earlier and I said that I didn’t want to split up when we got here. I was, of course, thinking that if there was exotic dancing, I’d like to know where Lip was at, at all times. Had I actually planned on having this poor slut blow me in the bathroom, however, I would certainly not require Lip to be watching her gobble me like a drumstick.
This did, however, bring a host of questions to mind. Questions that I sheepishly admit part of me wishes I had pursued answers to. Like, what were the price tags here? It could have been 25 cents and I would have passed, but I was genuinely (and quite) curious what kind of figures we would have been talking, and in exchange for what?
What I’d really love to get, though, is a chance to sit down and talk to this woman. Figure out how she got here, what fucking happened in this poor girl’s life that this is what she does. It isn’t all she does, is it? Surely she has a real job that doesn’t involve as much perversion. Right? Tell me this is just on the side to pick up extra money to help you get through college or something. And how often does this, happen?
I was glad that the bathroom door remained open, though, I did want to be able to see what was going on in the apartment. Nobody had given me any indication that there was anything to worry about, but as far as I was concerned that reassuring fact was anything but.
I’d told Lip more than once that I didn’t think that this girl was, well, attractive, and found myself wondering just what the plan was from here. Regardless of the girl I had made it clear, a number of times, that I was not looking to get laid, not looking to get my dick sucked; I just want to see dancers and am not looking to go any “farther” than maybe a table dance. If even that. I suppose that if I actually found this girl to be attractive then I would have to admit that the thought of somehow getting with her would be a pleasant one, but even then I just, well, I couldn’t do that.
And now this trashy woman was kneeling directly in front of me. I felt it pretty clear where she thought this was going. I couldn’t. I had just told Lip, again, that I thought she did not look good (I later concluded this was not a good enough reason in and of itself, though). Lip mumbled something somewhat incoherently to the girl about my not thinking she was good-looking enough. She thought that Lip had said my worry was my not being attractive enough for her.
She said I was not a problem, noting that she thought I looked plenty good (and my self-esteem was saved). Lip didn’t clarify the situation and I was okay with that, I really didn’t see any need to tell her to her face as she knelt in front of me that I didn’t think she is hot enough to blow me (Ugly or not, I guess I’d have to say she would be attractive enough to do that, were it not for the fact that I most definitely was not there for this. But what kind of standards does one have for that, anyway?). This had gone on just about long enough for my taste. I told Lip that I was sorry (nope, still not), but I was out. This whole thing has just not been what he had told me it would be, and I was leaving. The fat woman said something to Lip about his or my paying her $10 for her time and efforts at getting that girl over here, but I ignored this. My dealings had been with Lip, I certainly never agreed to pay her anything. He had assured me multiple times that entry to see the girls, that part was free.
◊ ◊ ◊
A thought occurred to me as we were walking up the entrance to the second apartment complex Lip had led me to, and I quickly and subtly took my credit cards out of my wallet. I put them in another pocket so they wouldn’t be in my wallet should somebody choose to, say, stealthily or forcibly make the decision that my wallet and I no longer belonged together.
We knocked on the door, a second fat woman opened up, and we walked into the second apartment, with me again worried that she might be one of the girls Lip spoke of. Fortunately, she was not. I was directed to a chair with Lip taking a seat in a chair facing mine, and there was some guy looking to be no older than 30 sitting back and sort of sleeping (?) on a couch next to Lip’s chair. There’s was NFL football game on the television, but the reception was so bad I couldn’t even tell who was playing. Every 30 seconds or so the guy on the couch roused himself enough to mumble a couple words to Lip before dozing back off again. Oh, I get it! This was the definition of “sketchy.”
Starting to feel a little bit funny about all this, I told Lip that, sorry, but I was uncomfortable. He told me that he trusted me, now I just needed to trust him. This was not good enough for me and I walked towards the open door where the big woman who lives there and apparently doubles as a madam had walked out to wait for the first of the…. I don’t know the proper nomenclature; slut or prostitute or whatever, to arrive.
I walked out, Lip came with me, and we began to speak in front of the apartment.
◊ ◊ ◊
We finally arrived at the apartment complex where a big fat woman answered the door. I was momentarily concerned that she might be one of the women Lip was telling me that there would be here to see/touch/fuck/etc., but fortunately Lip came to explain that she was more of a conduit to the women.
There was a little kid in this apartment with a man and woman who, I speculated, were the parents. They looked like regular, normal, everyday kind of people and I couldn’t help but wonder what they were doing here. Also if they knew what I was doing here, with Lip having assured me that we were heading for a private strip club. Something just doesn’t seem to fit, and I told Lip it didn’t feel right, what was going on?
No, no, no, Lip said, everything is fine; just trust him, trust him. He was trusting me, I should trust him, too….yeah, you’re trusting me. As if there could be anything he had to be worried about from this hapless white boy from Emory.
I kept asking him what the deal was. He told me that we just needed to cross the street, the girls are at another apartment. Wondering why we came here then, I let Lip guide me across the street.
◊ ◊ ◊
The walk had been longer than Lip said. When we got to the closed (on Sundays) strip club, Lip told me not to worry he knew a place, with a wave of his hand, “just a couple minutes over there.”
Fair enough, it’s not like I had anything better to do. This other place wasn’t exactly a business, Lip explained, but an apartment. It, like the strip club he explained, was free to get in, you pay for the beer and table dances. Sounds very much like a strip club, indeed, I thought.
Lip asked me why I wasn’t just “getting some pussy,” why I was going to this strip club with him. I didn’t have an answer I wanted to give or would satisfy him. I was bored, had grown to hate Emory’s campus on the weekend, and, was bored.
Lip’s mind was stuck on “pussy” and he asked me how long it has been. I told him too long. I told him I haven’t “gotten any pussy” since this summer, so almost three months. Now, given my sexual history, this actually isn’t terribly long.
“Three months?!” Lip exclaimed, saying how long that was for one to go without getting pussy. He said it has been about a month and a half since he has last “eaten any pussy.”
I was pretty bewildered at how, exactly, Lip supposedly found women who wanted to get with him. I don’t know, I guess there must be womanly equivalents to Lip, but my God, I found myself hoping that even Lip wouldn’t get on his female counterpart.
I mean, nobody in their right mind would be attracted to “Tooth,” and how would he come up with the money to pay for it, otherwise? But he did say that he had been here many times before, that he was real familiar with the place.
Talk returned to the apartment we were (supposedly) fast approaching. Entry was free, he again assured me, but you have to pay for anything else. Lip did say that it would be real easy “to get your dick sucked” and to have sex. “They even have condoms there.” I told Lip I didn’t think this was exactly the kind of thing I had in mind, I just wanted to see some dancers.
Yes, I imagine it would be a more enjoyable time if I went ahead and fucked one of the girls, but, well, I just couldn’t go there, I was not about to do that. The walk was definitely longer than I anticipated. I didn’t complain, exactly, but I did point out a couple times that I hadn’t realized it was more than just a couple minutes away. Lip noted that I sure do walk fast. I didn’t mean to be or seem impatient, but I really was very curious to see just how this adventure was going to unfold. I wanted, not so much to see the supposed girls as much as just to see, exactly, how this endeavor was going to play out. After one of my modest complaints about the walk, he said that we’d take the bus on the way back. I wondered who he was expecting to pay for that.
◊ ◊ ◊
Hmmmm…… You know…… I turned around. “Actually, I might have some change.” I dug my hand into my pocket, realized the quarters weren’t there, and tried the other. Feeling a half dozen or so, I grabbed onto two, and handed them to the man, thinking about hair salons. “Here you go. But can you tell me if there are any, like, strip clubs or anything around here?”
Sure thing, the clearly homeless guy told me. Just over there, he said, pointing a finger, just a minute this way.
He smiled and extended a hand. I shook it, as he told me his name was Lip. “Ian,” I responded, and considered two things about his name. One, both of his lips sure seemed pretty-damned large, perhaps he should go by the plural, “Lips.” Two, if he was really married to the singular name idea, he could always go with “Tooth.” Though maybe not, it was entirely possible that he had more than the sole tooth I could locate in his mouth.
Mildly self-conscious (but not really, I mean how was I going to feel self-conscious around this guy?), I explained that “I’m just bored; honestly, I’m just so fucking bored.” Lip laughed and said “at least you’re honest, though, at least you’re honest.”
We made our way down the street, towards the strip club that Lip gave me the impression was but a couple blocks away. Lip saw a penny on the ground, bent over, and picked it up. “I never pass anything by.”
I didn’t really expect that there would be any strip clubs in the neighborhood of Five Points station, near the Coca-Cola Museum and Underground Atlanta. After a couple blocks, though, the area started to look a whole lot crappier.
Lip asked me if I wanted to see some “black pussy,” telling me that the dancers would be predominantly black like him. I said that was fine by me, naked chicks are naked chicks. Which is true, to an extent. The truth of the matter though is that, yes, I was pretty sure I’d generally prefer for an exotic dancer to be white. I don’t know if this means anything bad about me, and I’m not sure why exactly this is, and I’ll skip the “nurture vs. nature” debate because I don’t know the reason, but I am typically more attracted to white chicks. Sorry.
◊ ◊ ◊
Having finally given up on locating my old buddy Victor, I turned to my real true objective. Time to fucking come up with something interesting to do today, I was so hideously bored and sick of Emory life. I guess I shouldn’t blame Emory, most people seem perfectly content there. Unfortunately it’s just not my place. It didn’t much seem fair. I think I’m a decent person. Emory looks like a nice enough place. You’d think a decent person could find a decent place there. It’s enough to make you wonder if maybe there’s something to that old cliché, that just maybe life really isn’t always completely fair, after all.
It sure doesn’t seem fair as I walked around Five Points. I wondered, as I looked at the dozens of people there, going about their business, had I ever done anything to earn all that I did have? When I’m running low on spending money and my parents send me a check, well, how many of the people I could see right then had a net worth of less than my average check from Daddy? How many are on their eighth semester at a school charging better than 15 grand per?
Of course rationalization, no matter how right, did nothing make me feel much better. I walked around the blocks surrounding Five Points Station. Wow. There wasn’t much to do here, was there? It’s too bad there isn’t a train station in Little Five Points, that’s an interesting area to just wander and people watch.
Speaking of people-watching, I was very amused to note that, again, I was just about the only white person in sight. I didn’t feel any hostility at all, any irritation at my Caucasian presence, I just noticed that I was the only one.
I didn’t, but was I supposed to feel weird? Are black people supposed to feel weird when they’re surrounded by nothing but whites? And if they’re not supposed to, do they oftentimes feel it anyway?
The whole thing reminded me of being in South Africa a couple summers ago, where I’d often found myself to be the sole white person in a large group. Then, like now in Five Points, I honestly felt a little bit guilty in not being uncomfortable; I felt like I should be. What can I say, I guess I have to blame the black people on both continents for their unwillingness to create a racially awkward environment.
Regardless, I wandered about outside, looking for anything or anyone of interest. There were a lot of people (Homeless? Maybe not, on a Sunday) sitting on benches, a lot of people walking around. I saw a store, the sign above it read “Pure Essence.” Oh my, could that be some kind of adult entertainment establishment? This could be an interesting trip into Atlanta yet.
Dammit, hair salon. Oh well.
I kept walking, looking, observing. It was a busy day, lots of people milling about. As I walked past a man with strange, unusually large, lips, he asked if I had any money so he could get something to eat. I have no idea what this says about me, but I just mumbled something about no, sorry, without giving it a second thought.
◊ ◊ ◊
I got off the train, trying to remember which way I went last year when I was interviewing Victor. I didn’t know and just headed for the nearest exit. I quickly oriented myself, realized that there weren’t any vending stands where Victor always used to be, and wandered over to where the stands sat now, scanning for my portly friend. Nope. I asked one of the vendors if he knew Victor Wright, and if so where he was, and why he wasn’t there. I knew him about a year ago, I explained, he was always here. This guy said he didn’t know him, but that he’d only been around for about four months.
I asked another vendor who said he thought he did know him. “Yeah, Vic. Big guy?” That’s him, I said, do you know where he’s at? He didn’t and asked somebody else if they knew the story on Vic. According to them Victor was still out here occasionally, but wasn’t a regular and certainly wasn’t around every day. I thanked them and moved on, disappointed.
◊ ◊ ◊
The bus arrived at the Edgewood/Candler Park MARTA train station. About to go up the stairs and walk over to the trains, I remembered to first check the bus schedule for that afternoon. Every 50 minutes or so the number 6 would depart here, eventually passing through Emory. There was one departing at about 3:30, 4:20, and 5:10, give or take a minute or two. Every 50 minutes including 3:30. Remember that.
Up the elevator, across the bridge, down to the trains. As I started down the stairs, I realized that a train was about to leave. I got to the bottom just in time to see both eastbound and westbound trains pulling out. About 15 minutes later the next westbound train took off, four stations east of Five Points, my destination.
The trip to Five Points was fairly uninteresting. A crying baby for a time, but it didn’t really bother me. At some point I noticed that of the 30 or 40 people in the train car, I was the only white person.
Former Atlanta Mayor William Hartsfield may have been partially right when he coined Atlanta “the city too busy to hate,” but perhaps another factor was that ours can also be a city too segregated to hate? A friend of mine once pointed out the “bitch of an irony” he saw that in a lot of ways whites and blacks were never more integrated, never in more personal contact, than on a slave plantation.
◊ ◊ ◊
I walked to the bus stop, not having any idea when the next bus was scheduled to head for Lindbergh Station. The number 6 bus goes past Emory and terminates at Lindbergh Center MARTA Station. Well, even on Sunday, I figured, it can’t run less often than once an hour, worst case scenario. That would suck, waiting an hour, but let’s face it, I had nothing better to do with the next 60 minutes.
I headed to the student center, stopped at the ATM to get some cash, and walked to the bus stop. Once there I alternated between sitting down in the grass and leaning against the bus stop pole, as I read the bulky morning newspaper.
Forty minutes later the number 6 showed up. It didn’t say “Lindbergh Station” on the front as I was expecting it to but rather “Edgewood/Candler Park.” I wasn’t sure what was up with that. Turns out that on Sundays the 6 doesn’t go all the way to Lindbergh but rather turns around back to Edgewood/Candler Park Station. This was fine, any MARTA station was good. In fact, while Lindbergh is six stations north of Five Points, Edgewood/Candler Park is only four stations east.
◊ ◊ ◊
I was feeling bored and depressed, particularly bitter about my merry Emory career. Fuck this. I just wanted to get out of Dodge, away from Emory for the day. I had the whole city of Atlanta, right? I should go look for Victor, my old acquaintance who I profiled last year, outside of Five Points Station at his vending stand. Plus, that seems like a relatively interesting area, I thought. Surely I could find something to entertain me, no? And the fact of the matter was, also, that I was just so, so fucking bored.
I stuffed a bunch of quarters for MARTA in my jeans pocket, put up an AIM “away message” of “off wandering Atlanta looking for something not boring,” walked out of my dorm room, and got to work.
◊ ◊ ◊
For Lack of Anything Better to Do
Sunday, November 9, 2003
by Ian Squires