Michael tries not to make it look as though he feels out of place, but he does. The discomfort makes his skin feel as if insects are crawling all over. London strip clubs always appeared to be a who’s who of pervy, middle-aged, mediocre businessmen attempting to escape their mind-numbingly dull lives of a boring job, boring wife, and boring children, but here, it is different. Everyone in this room looks and acts like him: young, fresh, cool. The room slowly fills up. Some are young men, flashing cash, some are groups of women on a night out with friends, some are even couples. Banga returns with more drinks. Banga looks at Michael with an ever-familiar grin, and says, “I knew you wouldn’t come if I told you where we were going.”
There’s an ATM in the corner. Banga walks over to use it. A woman approaches Michael for a dance. She turns around and slowly backs up into him. He feels her soft body against his hard. It startles him, and he steps back. Banga watches and giggles, holding his drink up to cover his mouth. Banga whispers something in the woman’s ear, which she nods to, and he hands her something. Michael then also walks over to the ATM to withdraw some money; he places it in his wallet.
Lust leaps from Michael’s eyes as he makes a playground of their bodies, but he remains far within himself. There are spotlights flashing on the main stage, which everyone now moves around. The host—a barely five-foot middle-aged man in sunglasses and an oversized five-button suit that makes his core look long and legs short—hypes up the crowd. Women arrive on the stage and start to dance on the pole, showcasing their Olympic-level athleticism. A woman in an orange bikini spins at the top of the pole, holding an outright stretched position as if a superhero in flight. She drops all the way down, evoking gasps from the crowd, as she stops within an inch of the stage floor. Michael watches in awe of their bodies, akin to art.
Banga moves closer to the stage and is cheering and whooping. He pulls out a wad of cash and sprays it on the stage, to the women. Everyone around him is doing the same. Michael realizes it’s not just about the dancing, it’s also about the overzealous display of wealth. So he too joins in throwing money on the stage. The women on the main stage finish the show, yet the night continues. Banga says, “Follow me,” and leads him away.
“Where are we going?” Michael asks anxiously.
“Don’t worry. We going to the private party,” Banga replies, even more excited than before. They go through doors that Michael was oblivious to, as if a hidden passageway to another world. They enter a room, and the music and smoke submerge them like a fog; loud, and thumping. The room is dimly lit, with a burgundy-red tinge of light, which covers them like the sky above. There are a few guys around, tall, morose, clothed with money, standing in their cool.
“Yo, this is my boy Michael.” Banga introduces him to a guy, who nods his head, and does the handshake that only they know; as if showing that he too is from here. They sit down on a large leather settee, divided by a table, with champagne on ice and glasses atop. Banga pops the bottle and is surrounded by women. He pours the drinks. There’s a young woman sitting on the leather banquette, in the seat directly parallel to Michael. She is staring beyond him, beyond the room, staring into a universe of her own; she returns and makes eye contact with him. Her eyes are fierce; her face is fire and fury, rendering all things in its path to dust. He imagines the storm inside her, raging through a desert, through the abandoned city of her soul, and never settling.
She stands up in the light and stretches her body, her hair bouncing. The silk garb she wears hangs loosely from her shoulders, lightly covering her nipples. What the light does to her skin, only the mystics understand; she is the shade of the canvas of the stars. Black is essence; Blackness, then, is essence manifesting. Her eyes are two colliding nebulas; her mouth swallows constellations whole.
Michael watches her as she stands and joins in with another woman, dancing. She pulls the woman in closer, closer, close, until they are hip to hip, navel to navel, breast to breast. She kisses the woman, but just ever so lightly, on her lips; enough that they touch, but not too much, leaving only enough room for the dim light to break through. She looks at Michael, her face a cry for war; a journey between life and death.
Michael looks beside him and Banga is gone. He keeps cool. But inside, his heart flees with panic. Another woman approaches Michael, smiling; her hand stretches out, reaching for his.
“You want a dance?” the blonde-wigged woman says. No, he thinks nervously. But he stands regardless and follows her. The woman stands in front of him, and then slowly turns, rubbing her perfectly sculpted body onto him. Michael is surrounded by one, two, three, he loses count. She takes his hand and says, “If you see something you like, follow me.” Weakened by urges, overcome by loneliness, he obliges. She leads him and a few other girls into a dark room. The bassline of the music is muted, but the vibrations shake the bed he now sits on. The women dance sensuously in front of him. This is the stuff of teenage fantasies, stories that I would run to tell the posse, but here I am feeling confused, disassociated, and alone. I don’t want to be here. And yet, I don’t want to leave.
She is in there too, with her warrior face. She looks at him as if looking through him.
“So, what would you like?” the blonde-wigged woman says, pushing her chest up against him as he feels her through his shirt. Michael leans down and whispers. The blonde-wigged woman looks up at him and smirks, nodding, and stretches out her hand. He reaches into his pocket and passes her some bills without looking. The blonde-wigged woman then signals for her and the other women to go, leaving but one in the room. She.
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“So, you just gon’ stare?” she says, as she stands in front of him. Her voice is just how he imagined it, a revolution; peace to a nation at war.
“I don’t know how these things usually start.”
He motions for her to sit down next to him and she does. They remain in silence for a while, the only sound the beating of their hearts, matched with the beating bassline of the music.
“What’s your name?”
“Savannah Jade.”
“Your real name.”
“Oh”—she chuckles—“you don’t get to know that.”
“Why are you here?”
She laughs at the question. “Are you okay?”
“I mean, why are you here?” Michael continues. “Doing this.”
“I could ask you the same thing,” she says, and he has no answer for her.
“I’m here to earn a check, to make money. It’s a job, just like how you have a job… apparently.”
“You seem so much more.”
“Yo, where you from?” she asks, which, in his ears, translates more so to who do you think you’re talking to? You don’t know me. She leans away from him, closing her silk garb.
“London,” Michael replies.
“Oh,” she responds, with a new kind of understanding. “That’s why you’re askin’ all these dumbass questions?” She chuckles.
“What about you?” he asks. She hesitates.
“New York,” she eventually answers. “Are you one of them weird niggas who are shy and into fetishes and shit?”
“No, no…”
“Good ’cause, I don’t get paid enough for that.”
“No. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to alarm you…”
“Alarm me?” She laughs. “Nigga said ‘alarm.’ ”
“I just want to talk…,” he says to her. She stops laughing and falls silent.
“Can we lie down?” Michael continues. He goes first and lies down. After a few moments, and a deep sigh, she joins him. She is far from him, on the other side of the bed; the space between them a canyon.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“No,” he replies. She looks over at him. He looks up at the ceiling. He remembers his promise. That he cannot and will not come close to another, but she, she is different; he is desert, and she is ocean, and somewhere on land they were destined to meet.
“You ever wish that you could die… but without all of the dying?” he says. “Like, not die, but just cease to exist, disappear, be invisible, every trace of your life, even the memories of you in other people’s hearts and minds, all gone.”
“You need to be on a therapist’s coach, not in a strip club. I don’t get paid to deal with all this…” She sits up as if she is about to walk out, but then stops.
“Life is so hard,” she continues, “and I know it’s hard for everybody, but I can only make sense of what is hard for me; what I feel, in this mind, in this body, and I don’t want to feel this way. Not anymore.”
She lies back down and breathes deep, reaches her hand out and touches his with her fingertips—electric. As if by instinct, their fingers entwine, bringing their hands together. He feels her pull. He rolls toward her, she moves closer to him, and the distance between them is no more. She is cupped into him, his arms now wrap around her; she uses his arm as a pillow, his fingers stroking her hair.
Their breaths synchronize, his chest rising and falling in line with hers. They speak for a while. They speak of death, and aliens, of multidimensional realities, omniverses, and time travel. She says, “Do you know that once you travel faster than the speed of light, time ceases to exist,” and he replies, “So is that what this feeling is?” They speak of sex and of love, of home, of where they would like to go, of their favorite books: his of a journey of many seasons, hers of heroes and heroines; his of a man he knows not well enough, hers of a woman who turned the tragedy of her skin into triumph. Of Blackness, and their different forms, of how their journeys have transcended both time and space, and that if they are both here it is because of the amalgam of infinite possibilities; that somewhere along the line an ancestor fought for them to live, even though they were only imagination and not yet memory. They speak of here and now, and of nothing; nothing at all. In the silence, Michael pulls her in, closer again, and feels her warmth. He wonders how close Icarus got to the sun before his wings started to burn, and if ever his falling still felt like flying.
Michael wakes up. He reaches out on the bed to the space beside him. It is empty. He sits up, and slowly comes to the realization that he fell asleep. Where is she? He frantically searches his pockets for his phone and wallet. They’re not there. Fuck! He jumps out of the bed and flings the duvet off. He rubs his hands across the bed searching, under the pillows, throws them off, under the headboard, the mattress, the bed, but does not find them. I’ve been robbed. I should have known. Defeated, Michael sits back down on the bed, and looks across to the bedside table. He switches on the lamp. He sees his phone and wallet. He also finds a note: “If you’re ever in New York—give me a call.” He breathes a sigh of relief and clutches the phone, wallet, and piece of paper to his chest, grinning. He opens the wallet, and checks in between the compartments. The money is gone. He kisses his teeth, but smirks and is humored by it all. He remembers where he is and that he is alone. He is desperate to leave. Where’s Banga?
Michael leaves inconspicuously, navigating his way out of the club and back to the industrial wilderness. He finds Banga in the car park, leaning against the cab, smoking his last cigarette.
“Where did you go, man?” Michael rushes toward Banga, who is startled and throws the cigarette on the snow-covered pavement.
“Yo, man”—Banga laughs—“the question is where did you go?”
“I was looking for you. One minute you were sitting there, and the next you were gone.”
“Had to take care of some business. I knew you’d be good. I wanted you to have fun and enjoy yourself. I thought I’d just wait for you out here.”
“But what if something happened?”
“Well, did it? Damn, chill, bro. You’re here now. Let’s go,” Banga says, shivering in the cold. They both get into the taxi, with its old, vibrating heaters that blow out cold air before it gets hot.
“So, did you like it?” Banga asks, grinning. Michael shrugs his shoulders. “I come here all the time, man. You see the girls in there? Fine as hell. Tell me you got some, bro?” Banga carries on. Michael does not reply.
“You did, didn’t you? Haha, that’s my dude.” Banga reaches out for a high five, or something of equal affirmation, and, seeing the nonresponsiveness, clutches Michael’s shoulder instead, big brother to little brother.
“I just wanted you to have some fun, man. You seemed like someone who just needed to have some fun.”
Michael huffs resentfully.
They drive through leafy, suburban Chicago, back toward the South Side. The moonlight falling onto the snow makes it look as though it’s glowing. Banga blasts blues music from the radio and sways his head with a loose rhythm while singing along. Michael thinks about the girl whose name he does not know, “New York,” and checks his pocket to make sure the paper with her phone number is still there.
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