More than half of the men in the room knew each other for at least several months. To return to a sordid place with such unappealing light and horrendous furniture is an indicative of genuine friendship. People make the place, the place does not make the people.
There was around eight of them. Four, at least, were convict Christians. One Catholic, three Pentecostal. Davis said the Reformation backfired institutionally. He said the purpose of the Reformation was to get rid of all the intermediates between the common man and his Creator, and that what would follow from that was more intimacy in communion with the Divine Order. That through this, and mass literacy, men would be more open to God about their sins, less afraid of a priest’s judgement. But in the course of the Great American Project, and all the chauvinism that came along with it, Protestants became repressed. About that, Davis was being maybe a bit judgemental — very hypocritical of him — because he was not one of the Christians, he was a self described atheist with “a taste for the dispossessed”. Can you imagine a family man saying this? Some morals on the guy.
Romeo was the Catholic one. He said he was half Italian, but the other men conspired he was just hiding his Puerto Rican ancestry because of the bouncer of the venue who looked a bit like a Nazi. Romeo was always well dressed, and for this I should probably tell you his name is not Romeo, and that he acquired that name because he slightly resembled Romeo Santos according to the proudly Puerto Rican kids hustling outside of the venue. Now Davis’ judgement is that Catholicism has aestheticised the repression in order to give it an outlet. Grand fucking anthropologist, Davis, thinking he has credence on the basis of being one-sixteenth Irish. He talked of rituals, pointed at the fact Romeo would only jerk off on his knees, eyes closed, almost apologising. Romeo often feels inferior hearing this talk, but he doesn’t really want to start shit by gossiping about Davis to Martin and Paulie, the two Protestants there. Underneath it all, I think he still agrees with Davis, who is still taking a dig at the other two.
So Davis’ working theory is that, because the newfound Evangelicals have a hard time ritualizing their shame, because they don’t have the sculptures and the Vatican and the self-flogging and the fancy clothes, they make everything phallic. So you have mega churches, and screaming preachers, and the U.S. Army. The Evangelicals there also share some hustles, that is to say, they’re both into dog breeding. Davis thinks it’s a perversion, not guided by money, but because they like to watch muscle animals humping and making more muscle animals. Paulie once said, right before climax, that nature should “take care of itself” and we censor it too much instead of encouraging it. Carlisle went quiet.
He said that before busting a load over Slim-Jim’s hand. Slim-Jim nearly went soft that day, because he got scared both men (Paulie and, of course, Davis) would end up brawling, and that’s no fun for anyone. They’re lovers, not fighters. So in order to not embarrass Paulie, who was in the middle of making a point, he kept the handjob going while staring intently at Nikki, so that his manhood could keep up.
Nikki was the working girl. She got along fine with that group, better than others. They were on time, tipped consistently, and gave her some creative freedom. It all depends on the vibe: some nights she had to act as a mother and talk them through it; others she was the hand of the Devil coming to atone them for their vicious actions for the week, hearing them confess to lusting after schoolgirls and mumbling racial injuries; sometimes she had to bring one of the working men in so she could remind her pupils of the science of fucking which have escaped each one of them for the last 7 years; lastly the least tiring job was when she was a muse, and just stood there allowing them to admire her, but eventually things would get derailed as the men talked to each other and sometimes argued over politics and sports, at which point her profession would dislocate into refereeing and mediating.
No one touched Nikki, but Davis gave her cigarettes on the way out and Martin has driven her halfway home a couple of times. This kind of trust is monotonous, slow building. They were like a family; not like an actual family as they hated each other, but more like when your work colleagues call the team “a family”. At times, Nikki had the impression that those men only barely put up with each other, and at first she believed they only insisted in the group for the fantasy she sold. She then justified it with a sad disdain which she is now ashamed of: Carlisle in a wheelchair and living off veteran charities, Slim-Jim with no friends and commuting for two hours and fifteen minutes for his job at the food bank, Davis disowned by his father, Trevor has fallen to epilepsy enough times on session that she now stashed a medical kit for the eventuality. Some men had performed first aid on each other. Some men have had to pull each other from fights in the ticket queue for the peep show. Trevor once called Slim-Jim to ask to be bailed so he could make it in time.
So much of men made by their own hands. This is what struck Nikki over time: after three months, the men started talking to each other with more than grunts, then their hands would push personal spaces further. Words became sentences, sentences became questions, questions became answers, hands reached out and started asking to be reached out to. When Nikki started asking the men to close their eyes and reach with their hands, they reached towards each other, they held and stroked each other, and Nikki was no longer a mother or muse, but an excuse. Sometimes she dissipated, and felt like the statue of Virgin Mary in a touristic church. But of course, she held her tongue on that, because there were Evangelicals (the Viagra-infused offspring of the Protestants) in the room.
Nikki silently agreed with Davis. When reaching climax, the Evangelicals became beast-like: regressed into back into the first memory of their mother’s breast, they would throw tantrums, demand sexual favors of their peers, and often want to exonerate their sins onto the face of the poor Puerto Rican Catholic, who was reluctant at first but eventually capitulated. The Polish dock worker was the most recent addition to the group, and his chain smoking habit during the sessions was interpreted as an oral fixation with need of redirecting. To this effect, his alias has become “The Pacifier”. The most recent awkwardness is owed to the possessive tint Carlisle took over him, resulting
in a stabbing threat towards Trevor. But in the sad sway of cheap thrills, everyone was a democratic citizen, and The Pacifier brought the men-children back to sound, grounded sleep.
No one could comfortably call the group sessions a secret, because that would imply a downcast mirror of a public life. None of the men had a public life, so that any secrets lost their stakes, and they might as well become park exhibitionists. No eyes were set upon them, and aside from a couple of wives and the religious contenders, they were accountable to no one aside Nikki.
Their neighbourhoods could be exchangeable, their family lives swapped around, their bank accounts passed and used, their affections disenchanted, their ambitions mocked, their skin leased and their tongues sold for parts. No communion created any particularity, and either you or me could mistake Slim-Jim for Davis, for Carlisle, they were all the same person, or circuit, mistakeable and remiss, vacant signifiers of expenditure. Sometimes, in Nikki’s dreams (much to her surprise) they appeared as circus elephants, bank tellers or heads of states. The “every” in their “everymanism” was virulent, gutted from the architecture of identity: they were one in the same because they drooled and huffed so much, and secretions flew from one onto (or into) the other like an anonymous tax code, ringing the triangulated mistress with gratitude and self-piteous lust.
Maybe Davis felt his own repression lift at the light of the red bulb; moaning away his blues in the circle jerk with his only friends.
Image: Still from ‘The Working Girls’ (1974), dir. Stephanie Rothman