The Pull of Gravity (4 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

It was back in the early days—my sailor days—when I’d been introduced to the go-go bars of Subic Bay and Angeles. Those days had been wild with sex shows and naked pool parties and beautiful Filipinas willing to do anything you wanted. And if they really liked you, they’d even do it for free. I was young then, and a lot of it was too much for a small-town boy from Arizona to take. But not all of it. 

I couldn’t help it. No one could. If you were a heterosexual male with even a faint pulse, you couldn’t resist the FYBs, short for what Hal called
fine young babes.
All that flesh, right in your face, and offers coming at you from every direction.

“You take me home, I keep you up all night.”

“Look at my tits, they’re all yours, baby.”

“I like you, baby. I make you really happy.”

They’re smiling and rubbing against you and you’re young and far from home and they’re saying “you’re so cute” and you’re looking at them thinking the same thing and they’re telling you they want to come home with you and you’re wanting exactly that. You can only say no so many times. And once you say yes, it’s all over. You’re hooked. What you don’t realize at the time is your life will never be the same. If anyone asked you, “Have you ever paid for sex?” you might tell them no, but you’d know the truth. And in the eyes of my aunt Marla, and those who thought like her, you were now categorized and forever branded a “sexual deviate.”

•    •    •

When I expressed my newfound boredom to Hal, he told me that he sometimes filled in as a papasan at one of the bars on Fields Avenue. Since my retirement move to Angeles, I had yet to return to the go-go scene. There was no real reason for this. I just hadn’t felt the urge. Maybe my growing weight had something to do with it. Maybe it was how miserably I had failed with Maureen. Whatever the reason, I had all but forgotten about the nightlife that was only a few miles away. So when Hal suggested I come with him one night, I agreed. Anything, I thought, to mix things up a bit.

The bars were pretty much what I remembered. Perhaps there was a bit more neon, a little more polish. But the girls were the same—young, brown and beautiful—and the scene seemed just as crazy as ever. The men were older. There were still some young guys around, but the steady flow of sailors and Marines and airmen was gone with the closures of the American bases. At first I thought it was funny and a bit sad, these middle-aged-and-older men looking for comfort from girls half their age and sometimes younger. I had always thought it was a sign of youth to fall prey to these desires, but that these older men were true sexual deviants.

Only then, as I sat in the bar as one of those older men, watching the girls, chatting with them, laughing with them, and talking with the men, too—men who back home in the U.S. or Australia or England or wherever they were from had regular jobs and regular lives—I began to think maybe I was wrong.

One of Hal’s friends came by the bar around ten p.m. He was a barrel-chested Aussie named Robbie Bainbridge. Robbie and I hit it off right from the start, and we spent several hours drinking and talking about everything from how to make a perfect margarita to the political situation in nearby Malaysia.

When it was time for him to leave, he threw a thousand pesos on the bar and told the bartender to keep the change. He stuck his hand out to me, and we shook.

“Good meeting ya, Jay,” he said as he stood.

“Thanks,” I said. “Enjoyed meeting you, too.”

“Come by my bar tomorrow night if you get the chance.” He’d mentioned earlier that he owned a place a few blocks down on Fields called The Lounge.

“Sure,” I said. “If I’m around, I’ll come by.”

He leaned in toward me. “Make a point of it,” he said softly so only I could hear. “I have something I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t really have any other plans. “I’ll be there.”

•    •    •

The next night I stepped into The Lounge for the first time. It was early, half past eight, and there was only a handful of customers scattered around the room. On stage, half a dozen dancers were wearing hot pink bikinis, and more were milling about the bar, either talking amongst themselves or entertaining the customers. I didn’t see Robbie anywhere, so I walked over to the bar.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five and probably stood no higher than five foot two. She was thin, had long dark hair and small dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.

“I’ll take a mineral water,” I said. In the Philippines, mineral water was the same as your basic drinking water back in the States.

She retrieved a bottle quickly and set it on the bar. She then wrote something on a piece of paper and stuck it in a wooden cup in front of me. My tab for the evening had begun.

“First time here?” she asked.

“Here, yeah. But not Angeles.”

“I didn’t think I had seen you before. What’s your name?”

“Jay. What’s yours?”

“Cathy.”

I unscrewed the cap from the bottle and took a drink. “I’m supposed to meet Robbie. Do you know if he’s here yet?”

“Robbie?” she asked.

“Said he was the owner.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “Papa Rob?”

“Sure, I guess. Is he here yet?”

“Not yet. But not long, I think.”

She moved away to help another customer, so I turned around to watch the show. Some loud pop song I’d never heard before was blaring over the sound system. (Months later, after hearing the same song at least twice a night every night, I knew it was “Livin’ la Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin. By then I had become an involuntary pop expert.)

Unlike strip bars in the States, where it was usually a single girl on stage dancing a choreographed routine, in Angeles there were always multiple dancers, none of whom seemed to have a real plan of attack. There was a lot of swaying back and forth, and some swinging of the hips. A few of the girls danced with each other, occasionally with moments of mock foreplay that would inevitably end in laughter, while others just seemed bored.

As I watched, a couple of the girls closest to me on the stage started aiming their attention in my direction. One was tall for a Filipina, maybe five foot seven, the other was several inches shorter. Each had black hair, the tall one’s coming down to just above her shoulders, and the short one’s going halfway down her back. Both were thin, but the shorter one had the larger set of breasts and the better smile. The taller one had one of those mouths that curved downward, giving her that just-smelled-shit look anytime she smiled.

I think the tall one realized pretty early on that I wasn’t really interested in them. She soon turned her attention elsewhere, but the shorter one continued to work me as hard as she could. She began rubbing her hands slowly up and down her body, then dropped her chin toward her chest, giving the appearance that she was looking up at me. She
was
cute, I couldn’t deny that.

As the song ended, she pointed at herself, then at the chair next to me, looking hopeful. I laughed, then said, “Not now.”

She stuck her lower lip out in an exaggerated pout. “Come on,” she said. “Just one drink.”

“Maybe later,” I told her.

“Really?” Her face brightened.

“Maybe,” I repeated.

A new song had started up, so the short one began dancing again. She continued to focus her efforts on me for several more minutes, then melted back into the pack of her friends.

•    •    •

An hour later, after I’d ordered a couple of beers from Cathy, Robbie finally showed up. No matter what the girls were doing, they all seemed to stop and shout, “Hi, Papa Rob!” It was like a rock star had entered the room. I watched as many of the girls ran up and gave him a hug and kiss on the cheek. Robbie, a huge grin on his face, was obviously loving it. At one point he picked up a girl in each arm and lifted them high off the ground. They screamed in delight.

“Cathy,” he called out as he set the girls down. “A round for everyone.”

Another cheer went up, and suddenly everything went from lively-bar mode to wild-party mode. Cathy and one of the other bartenders laid out dozens of shot glasses on the counter and began filling them with tequila. A third bartender pulled out a stack of sliced limes and several salt shakers, while whoever was in charge of the music turned up the volume several notches. Any attempt at conversation now meant screaming in each other’s ears, but no one seemed to care.

On stage the dancing became raucous. After the girls drank their shots, several bikini tops came off. Sex radiated from every grinding hip and sultry pout. Somewhere, someone pulled out a spray bottle full of water and began squirting the girls on stage. More squealing, more laughter.

Cathy set a shot in front of me, and I gave her a questioning look.

“He said everyone,” she shouted.

I made a fist with my left hand, sprinkled some salt on top of it, licked it off, downed the shot, then chased it with a lime slice. I could feel the heat of the alcohol as it traveled down my throat.

I smiled. The boredom of the past several months was suddenly a distant memory.

It was like The Lounge had become the place to be that evening. Guys seemed to be pouring in the door. Robbie had only been there for twenty minutes but the room was packed. Hal had told me that some nights it seemed like you couldn’t get anyone to come into your bar, while other nights there weren’t enough seats to go around. It was like a wave you couldn’t predict.

That night, a tsunami hit Robbie’s place. By midnight the bell had already been rung three times—tying a one-night record, according to Cathy—and the vibe that started with Robbie’s arrival showed no signs of ebbing. The bikini tops that had come off earlier had been joined by others until it seemed all the girls, save the bartenders and the waitresses, were topless. And while the guys loved every minute of it, it was actually the girls who seemed to be having the most fun. You could see them, even when they weren’t with a guy, joking or dancing with each other or just smiling large infectious smiles. It was a goddamn all-out party, and no one was going to ruin it.

I was having so much fun watching everything, I almost forgot that Robbie had asked me to come by for a conversation. Not surprisingly, we had yet to have any one-on-one time. He had said hi at one point, but was quickly pulled away by a pack of roaming dancers.

The second time he came by, he said, “Don’t leave. I still want to talk to you.”

He then pulled my drink slips from the cup and handed them to Cathy, motioning to her that all my drinks were on the house. I didn’t see him again until close to two in the morning. I was talking to the short one who had been working me hard earlier. She was leaning against me, her hand resting high on my thigh, when Robbie walked up and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said into my ear.

I nodded, then gently removed my new friend’s hand from my leg and stood up. “Sorry,” I said.

She stuck out her lip again, but I knew the moment I left she’d move on to the next guy. That night, there were plenty to go around.

I followed Robbie through the front door and out onto the sidewalk. Suddenly I could hear myself breathe again. Up and down Fields Avenue, groups of Filipina girls and mostly white men moved from bar to bar. Trikes—small motorcycles with attached, enclosed sidecars—roared loudly as they drove by taking their fares to God knows where. Occasionally a jeepney—a privately run bus that kind of looked like a squished school bus—would pass by. But mostly it was the trikes and foot traffic that dominated.

Within a five-minute walk of Robbie’s place, there must have been nearly two dozen more bars, each lit up with neon, and their entrances enhanced by beautiful door girls trying to get the traveling hoards to go inside.

“Hungry?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I said. In those days I was always hungry.

“The Pit Stop, then.”

The Pit Stop was action central. It was a large, informal restaurant sitting at the corner of Fields Avenue and Santos Street, right in the middle of the most popular section of Fields. It had a swimming pool out back that had been home to some famous wet T-shirt contests, a small hotel on the second floor, and the famous Immortality go-go bar on the east side. But when someone mentioned The Pit Stop, it was the restaurant everyone thought of.

On the first floor where the restaurant was, along both the Fields and Santos sides, there were no outer walls. Instead, there was a four-foot high rattan-covered counter that allowed customers to sit and watch all the action on the streets. Inside, there were tables, a few booths, and several pool tables.

It looked like the place was about half full, mostly with guys and their current girls. Several people called out their hellos to Robbie as we crossed the room to one of the booths back near the pool tables. A short waitress in a Hawaiian-print shirt and white shorts brought over a couple of menus, and asked if we wanted anything to drink. I opted for another beer. Robbie, on the other hand, ordered a whiskey.

“So what’d you think of The Lounge?” Robbie asked after the waitress left.

“Is it always like that?” I said.

“Some nights are better than others.”

One of the guys who was playing pool, an older guy with a gut that spilled over the top of his khaki shorts, walked over, a grin on his face. “Hey, Robbie. How ya’ doing?”

“Well, son of a bitch.” Robbie shot out of the booth, and the two men shared a hardy handshake. “Frank Pearson. When did you get in town?”

“Just this evening,” Frank said. He had an American accent with a slight Southern tinge. “Haven’t even unpacked yet. Who’s your friend?”

Robbie looked over at me. “Frank Pearson, meet Jay Bradley. Jay, this is my old friend Frank. He’s an Angeles regular.”

“You here on vacation, too?” Frank asked.

“No,” I said. “I actually live here.”

“An ex-pat,” Frank said, sounding impressed. “Lucky bastard. Where you from?”

“Arizona originally,” I said.

“I’ve been to Phoenix once,” Frank said. “I’m from Missouri. Jefferson City.”