Stripped Down by Keith Stacey

Author:Keith, Stacey [Keith, Stacey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-11-27T14:00:00+00:00

After sunset, downtown Los Angeles is the urban dystopia of nightmares. Each window is spectral, bereft of life, as though a plague wiped out all who work here. Homeless guys sprawl across the sidewalk. Trash scrapes along the curb. Even Zack, massively stoned but determined to drive me to my first bachelor party, grips the steering wheel a little tighter. He hasn’t uttered a single word since leaving Malibu.

On the one hand, I’m angry. What does he expect me to do? How else does he think I can support us? It’s not like when he met me, I was, say, a successful commodities trader. He knew the tune before he danced to it.

On the other hand, I can see that he’s trying. He’s gone on job interviews for personal training at gyms. We take elaborate pains to remember that he’s saving us money by driving me. A regular driver costs upwards of two bills a night.

But I feel like a lamb led to the slaughter as I stare dumbly out the window. Bachelor parties seem one step closer to prostitution. On stage, removed from the audience, you’re an idea. In the trenches, you’re mortal and within the realm of possibility.

Our first party is at a dentist’s office. I read the information twice before I can process it. Seriously, dentists?

We park and sit for a minute, staring up. More office buildings. The mirrored windows reflect more mirrored windows, a metaphor, if you ask me, for most of the people in this city.

“Well, you ready to do this thing?” Zack says.

“No.”

Silence. He knows I want him to turn the car around. To save me. I feel like he’s sending me to the gas chamber, even if my death march is voluntary. Sure, I could have said, “Screw this,” and walked away—from him, from California, from my half-baked acting ambitions. But it’s easier to blame him..

There are a thousand moments of truth in every relationship, especially the one you have with yourself. Zack says nothing as he gets out of the car. He holds my door open for me while I hand him the boombox. Slowly we go upstairs.

The office door is rosewood. A brass-plated placard reads: Simon Seavers, D.D.S. We have to lean on the bell for a whole minute before someone comes to the door.

The man who answers is so massively wasted, he barely looks human. Not drunk, not stoned, but annihilated by something far more powerful. It looks particularly surreal on him, with his Polo shirt and pressed jeans and blow-dried hair. I can tell he doesn’t know why I’m here.

In the office behind him, about a dozen men lie on chairs like corpses in various states of decomposition. My heart sinks.

“Oh, shit, you’re the stripper,” Polo Shirt finally says. “Shit, come in, come in. We’ve been waiting for you. Shit.”

Zack and I reluctantly enter. If I stand any closer to him, I might be able to fuse myself to his leg. The place looks like a particularly gruesome Civil War reenactment, in modern dress.

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