Strip Malls

by Delia Goglas


There's always a man. Always this man or a guy. He's always there somehow, waiting, willing to help you along it seems. I noticed after some time living in New York, almost two years, that I don't really have friends. I can't afford to have them. Afford isn't right. I mean can't allow myself friends. What I do, this work I do, doesn't really allow for it. And why that should be the case, maybe not necessarily the case, but I don't seek friends, because I would have to be....I have parents living on the other side of the continent, California. Here, I have lovers. Lots. Usually in quick succession. Sometimes there's overlap when I'm not too careful because I'm bored, distracted, embarrassed by my choice, or they are. My family doesn't know the kind of work I do. Family consists of my mother and stepfather, his children from a previous marriage who are much older than me that I never lived with. They're not blood, but I call them family, childhood holidays were spent with them. There are cousins on both coasts, an aunt, an uncle, all blood, but hardly family, my way of looking at it. None of these people know the work I do is stripping. Working topless clubs. To see it as work is to see it as--I don't see it as work because work is something you should love, want to do. It's a job. A way to pay bills, the rent, things like that. It's temporary, maybe six months at the most. Helps pay for acting classes. I know of girls in the clubs who boast their parents know, that they've told someone in the family and it's cool. They're cool about it, they'll say. Tell my parents? It rattles me to the core just to think of it, or God forbid, if they were to find out in some unforeseeable way and me having to imagine their faces upon hearing it, their faces playing out images in their heads, my mother, my stepfather, (my real father is dead, years ago). Again, their faces--that's a hard thought. Even the dead one's. Instead, I make up tales that I wait tables at expensive restaurants where tips are good. They're so far away I can tell them just about anything. Or, I come up with a story about doing dispatch for a car service and making a really good part-time salary. They've no idea what it's like here, they're far away in an upper middle-class bedroom community on Mount Helix in Southern California and often making plans for vacations or JAMA conferences in Europe, maybe Asia this year. I'm with roommates in a one bedroom flat, as it should be, because at twenty-two, I'm just starting out.

But, in truth, there was some truth to the dispatch thing. I wasn't working the clubs yet, that hadn't happened at the time when I met this guy. And, although I know some of the things I say are true, I...and because some of what I say may not be truth, yet, there was this old guy driving a livery car who stops for me in a rainstorm. It's late April and I'm in the street mid-town somewhere during a heavy rain trying to hail a yellow taxi but the chubby Checker cabs breaking waves in the streets blink on their off-duty signs the moment they see me waving my arms, a broken crow of an umbrella spiked over my head. The thin rain coat tied at the waist gives so little protection I feel the dress underneath cling to me. My toes, cramped in open-toed high heels with no stockings, begin to feel numb from sloshing through gutter water. I should jump on the train, but I don't want that wet metallic, oily smell to carry me home. But, out of the dismal blur of grey, a white livery sedan slows to the curb and the hum and squeak of a power window glides down. I peer into the car to see a moon-faced guy at the wheel. He asks where I'm headed and I say downtown. He gestures for me to hop in. He may have said that, "hop in." Before I think to ask the fare, I grab for the rear door handle when I hear him shout for me to come up front, saying he won't charge the ride in such lousy weather like this. I'm in. I tell him thanks and he says what lousy weather, asks how long had I been waiting, that it must have been awhile judging from my state. How about some heat, he says, and I feel the dry warmth blast over my feet. He looks like Mickey Rooney, an old Mickey Rooney, perky and plump, balding with some bristling hairs making a last stand. His feet barely make the pedals even with the seat all the way to the dash and a cracked vinyl cushion under his butt to prop him higher. He's very chatty, and I'm getting warm, glad to be out of the rain. When he asks what I do, I give him a rough sketch of myself. Not of my life, just of my current situation.

The interior doesn't smell too pleasant, kind of stale, close and humid, as though he's been working in it too long. It's okay, we're talking. He asks again where to and I tell him downtown, and he asks where was I coming from just now that I'd be out in this weather and I say an audition. An actress, he says and wants to know has he seen me in anything. I'm just starting out I tell him and he says he's going to look for me, I'll look for ya. I know what he means, but for a moment, I feel a kind of weird thing because here I am, right here, but...After a short silence, he tsk-tsks, that's a tough field, very tough field. Honestly, I don't get why people feel they have to say something like that, as though they must--after all, I'm just starting out. Things won't stay this way, they'll change, soon. So I give a tight smile and say that the only tough part I'm playing right now is unemployed and needing a part-time job. He says, and very cheerily, he says he could probably help me with the part-time part. I ask, doing what. He owns his own car and limo service, they're always looking for a good dispatch girl to take calls, he says, give out car numbers, give drivers pick up and drop off addresses, take reservations, really easy stuff. It's cash, off the books, under the table, flexible hours. As he's explaining this, I'm getting goose bumps from thawing out, the heat feels so good, and something is expanding. A possibility, a job. I start blabbing this could be good, allow me time to go out on the calls I read in the trades, Backstage, Show Business, and I hear myself explain, kind of smugly, I no longer pick up Show Business because I heard most of their ads were bogus, like he really needs this information. And I'm thinking with a job like this I don't have to get all stressed slinking out of work. All sorts of possibilities just seemed to open up over this scrap of a promise he holds before me and I must sound so elated and positive that he asks if I've had anything to eat today. Without waiting for a reply, he says he knows of a place, a really good restaurant serving the best Italian in the Tri-State area, saying it's real classy. ( You can tell someone doesn't have "class" when they have resort to using the word like that. Especially if they say, "classy." I'm conscious of that sort of thing. I know my mother would never say something like that. She'd be embarrassed to use the word that way. In my stepfather's professional world he firmly believes class doesn't exist, socially, is what I think he means, because he's convinced that "we," some general "we," are all equal. True, that this is the same man who had his secretaries of the group's medical office stay late so he could go home early and one year decided for some reason, a reason unknown to my mother who told me this, to veto their bonuses at Christmas time, though, I guess equality isn't such an issue in that or class, for that matter; just no bonuses. By my mother's account you either had class or you didn't and saying so didn't make it so. It was something conferred upon you, like grace, whether you were dirt-poor or filthy-rich, etiquette is all, politeness everything and being a class in the middle it is best you never mention it unless to say, perhaps, that a person has no class or wasn't a class-act. My mother might say something like that, but I'm beginning to wonder now if that's right. Anyhow, that's how I was raised.)

He and I trade names but I don't remember his. I'm warming up, I'm in a car purring with heat. He says he knows a place out in Jersey, New Jersey, great place, expensive, serves the best Italian in the Tri-State area. I look out the window and in spite of the rain, it is a very light, early afternoon, a pale gray day. There's a job I can do that is easy, dispatch, and it would free up my time to do the things I want, to do what my mom always writes in my birthday cards "pursue your dreams" along with a check written out by my stepdad. Pursue my dreams, I let the phrase tumble around in my head. I tell him, sure why not? And he heads the car to the darkened tunnel. Out on the other side is New Jersey. "New Jersey" a pair of words, the butt of sketch comedy gags and derisive attitudes I assumed I should adopt because I live in New York and normally I might turn my nose up at it, but he's in the driver's seat, not me, so New Jersey it is. During the drive, the old guy talks non-stop about a lot of things meaning nothing to me, rising gas prices, garages that try to cheat you, steal your parts replace them with broken ones, his work I guess.

I think, this is April and it rains. In California, the flowers are drying up, grasses are turning brown. But New Jersey looks beautiful, what are people talking about? Trees everywhere, thick like woods, forests lining the highway. We turn off onto a narrower byway. I catch sight of bunches of purple and blue flowers growing all over the place. I ask him what those are. You never seen lilac before, he says. Lilacs. A lilting but empty little word becomes a vision. They're lovely against the green wet leaves. The gray sky brings out more color. The blossoms nuzzle up against the sides of neat white houses that have little windows stuck in rooftops, simple and clean. (Later I would go on a mission to buy the lilac bunches I saw wrapped in crisp white paper in the corner Korean deli's back in the city, I wanted to fill the apartment with the fragrance and look of those charming blossoms. So imagine my shock when I saw how much they wanted for two or three measly limp branches. It grows like crazy out here in Jersey yet in the city they want so much for them.

We arrive at a boxy single-storied building that seems to be in the middle of nowhere, plopped center of a large parking lot only yards from the road with a few cars in the lot. This is it, he says. Could the restaurant have been a hot spot years ago? It looked to be dying a slow death now. As we enter, the signage above the door is cracked but I can't make out what it reads. Inside, by a maitre d' station is a huge tower of vegetables made of tomatoes, carrot and celery sticks giving off a slight odor reminding me of that zoo slop they give to giraffes and hippos. A fly or two dive bomb around it. There are several couples at their separate tables, all old people, but they're so still you'd hardly know they were eating. Plenty of empty tables around. A head waiter guy ambles over to us in what looks like a busboy jacket, maybe it is. Maybe he is the busboy. He seats us and comes back for our order. The old guy waves his hand in a flourish from behind a billboard-sized menu that I should get whatever I like. I order the veal. But when it arrives, the meat looks more gray than white, swimming in a mostly corn starch sauce. The broccoli overcooked to a dull green, everything is bland. I eat, thinking of the restaurants my parents took me to--Ernie's in San Francisco, Perino's in Los Angeles, The Four Seasons, New York. But to be fair, I may not have expected much from a place in New Jersey and maybe that's why I didn't get much in return.

While he cleans his plate, smacks his lips, wipes the napkin across his mouth, I gingerly gnaw at the rubbery meat and think, Here I am, a year after graduating from the acting academy, fresh out of school and no prospects other than the possibility of doing some dispatch caller thing. Yet I couldn't see myself going to work for peanuts doing concessions again at a movie house. Bloomingdale's was out of the question. I hated the customers, women mostly, tapping the counter glass with their keys or the edge of their yellow, red or silver Bloomie's card, demanding hop-to-it service because the world should know that they're about to make a pricey purchase. I can't work in an office, that nine-to-five thing, when would I audition? Drives me crazy having to make excuses to get out and then fret whether I'd have a job to go back to the following day because some office manager's schedule gets frustrated by my struggling actress one. Besides, I can't seem to catch on how to use the word processor. An employment agency gave me a test once when I tried to get by telling them I knew the program. Isn't it hard enough trying to find an agent to represent you as an actor let alone having to get another agent to send you out for torturous office work so you can afford to find an agent to rep you as an actor? It makes no sense. As for restaurants, I can't work in those either, it's not for someone like me who's too small-boned for lifting huge trays of cups and dishes, all that grease, the food smell. Once again, customers--demanding things of you, letting you stand there, pencil poised while they labor over what to choose from the menu, annoying questions of what's in it, what's it come with, could I have more...what? All I'd want to answer is "serve your damn self and get away from me." That's asking to be fired within a day. Yet, I can't ask my parents for money anymore. That only turns into a lot of tension between my mother and me that will only break out into a fight later on because we'd skip around the issue like prizefighters when the tension started in the first place.

The livery driver and I walk back to the car, and though still overcast the rain has slowed to a drizzle. After eating, I suddenly feel very cold. Crossing the mostly vacant space of split asphalt he chuckles saying that's what he calls a great little meal, a great little meal. I don't answer figuring he's musing to himself. I'm recalling only the carrots sticks in a stainless steel tray that were crisp and very sweet and I'm anxious to get home. This New Jersey place. There are counties in California that could swallow the state whole. That's out west. But I'm here, back east. I want to get back to the city.

We're in the car but he doesn't turn on the motor. He swivels his round body my direction, the vinyl squeaking. He starts rubbing my bare knee, his hand hot against the coolness of my skin. What're you, Spanish? Italian, or something? Now he wants to ask questions. I nod "Spanish" without going into details of my mutt-ish mix of a Latin American background. He's murmuring, very low, that I look nice, so petite, he could just gobble me up and did I think I would like that. That kind of thing. My mind goes blank. Would I like that? Like a power switch that flicks off or it is on? but in me. His hands, fleshy white, are tweaking me here and there, under my chin, at my shoulder and upper arm, rubbing and saying how pretty my neck is. That threatens to break the blankness, the possibility he could snap my neck? There's strength in those stubby fingers of his. Yet, no life-preserving defenses go up that perhaps should. Instead, I'm lulled like a beast having it's belly stroked. Squeezes my arm, kneads along the inner side of my thigh, asking if I like him. I umm an affirmative, add mechanically, sure. My mind has gone empty. I'm becoming fluid and my knees spread apart, just a little. I'm listening to the rain starting up again, tapping the metal of the car, my eyes follow ropey rivulets coursing down the windshield, mist fogs the insides. No one is around. No one will see. Someone might, they could if they took the trouble to come right up the window. It's a real possibility, because it is a lot by a restaurant, but one that is mostly, or is, completely empty.

There's this vampire, only a dream but there he is, always chasing me but what he's after, blood or a patch of real estate for his bones, has long been replaced with the desire for a fight. I will give him one. In the dream I am returned to the broken down room I once had at the old Martha Washington. I know he's coming, so I stand poised by a light switch. The idea is to flip it the moment I sense his presence letting the flood of incandescent light destroy him. He will not be expecting this. He'll enter the darkness believing I'm asleep. I do a checklist, the light, he'll show up somewhere over there, maybe, hit the switch, the exact moment, time everything right. Suddenly, he's here, I know it. There's nothing to see, only a presence felt. While thinking out these strategies I nearly miss the moment. He's here, he has come. As though yelling at myself in sleep, I command, Now! I flip the switch triumphantly, my eyes searching the twilight darkness of the room. Nothing happens. No light comes on. In that instant I realize he's won by anticipating every move, having accessed my thoughts. It is over, once again, and what is left is the inevitable, the sure belief one must die. Otherwise, there is no point to this.

The old guy, the driver who has promised me a job tells me to lie down along the bench seat of the car. He has opened his fly without taking down his pants after hooking a finger onto the top of my panties, slipping them down below my knees and lifting the skirt of my dress. I don't think how dare he, hey, I'm not that kind, or what are you doing Mr. Rooney. I don't think anything. There's only an automatic shift that takes over and succumbs, stares at the fogged windshield overhead, has a view of the top of his bowling ball head of little white hairs, as he grinds away, not hurting me, not even inside me. And though I tell you I'm not thinking, I do begin asking myself a series of questions. Do you feel any flesh, do you feel his thing at all? No, there's only the belt buckle and the polyester cloth of his pants. Is he hard? Too hard to tell, barely there, a bump with the dead weight of an old man's body behind it and the back and forth friction of synthetic fabric against skin, the grunt, grunt. A moment later he's zipping himself up. Another shift. Here I was almost ready to come, situating myself along with his movements that I could have without letting on. But he's so fast I didn't get a chance. Stopping at the brink tenses me up and I feel surly. I lift my ass to snap on the underwear, leaning hard against the arm rest of the car door. Now come the how dare he's and what do you take me for's. He's popping the glove, grabbing a tissue, wiping at himself briskly, adjusting his clothes. I check the field of my skirt for anything, wrapping the still damp rain coat about me. And just how old do you think I am, Mister? He jerks his head at me, mouth open, wide-eyed, tries to smile. Pushing on, I tell him I want to get home right away. I want to add, if my boyfriend found out, blah, blah, but some unexpected instinct tells me to leave off, this is a mild-mannered guy. And, although my flare up has him fumbling, you can never tell when a mild-mannered guy like this could go off, do something rash and stupid, out of fear. Why risk fabricating I have three brothers, mean guys in a Puerto Rican gang, four cousins in the police department, stuff like that, only to have him shove me from the car leaving me stranded in the parking lot of a dead and dying retired folks' restaurant, in an outlying area of Nowhere, New Jersey? He starts the ignition and lurches the car into reverse talking about how late it's getting and that he wouldn't want us to hit traffic. I'm silent for the moment because I'm wondering, What about my dispatcher job? So I ask him. Oh, sure, he says looking around over the wheel for oncoming traffic, gunning the sedan onto the highway, you got my card, you call that number, I'll speak to the boss. I tell him, I thought you were the boss, you said it was your company. He's clearing this throat, popping a Certs, want one? But I persist, asking is he or isn't he the boss, the owner of the business? Well, I've got a partner, he says crunching the mint candy in his mouth, passing a hand across his forehead, tugging the collar of his necktie, I've got to ask my partner just to be sure, that's all, just to be sure the position's still open. That's all, he says, that's all. The car speeds along. I settle back into the seat stuffing the impulse to roll down the window and feel the breeze, the air's coolness. Instead, I mull over the word "job," a job at last, thinking that wasn't so hard to come by. Life is amazing, a wonderful city New York, a stranger, some old guy gives me a lift, a business card, dinner and I'm convinced I've got a job.

We drive in silence. I'm eager to see the little houses again framed by their clinging bushes, the soft hues of the lilac in blue, purple and white. On the way back there is only strip mall after strip mall. No lilacs, no little houses. Perhaps we've come a different way.


Delia Goglas is to receive her B.A. from The City College of New York in May 2010.
This is her first published work.