Family Day
Story fragment by Clark Humphrey
7/1/99
I had to escape Family Day. I knew that. I just didn’t know how.
My city’s “progressive liberal” government had had proclaimed the Sunday after a major holiday to be a one-shot test of Family Day. The concept was to appease the “family value” conservatives by testing the renewal of Sunday bar closings, a post-Prohobition state law that had been thrown out back in `63. The only exception, now as then, was that private clubs could still serve booze to their members.
Only finding such a club, one that would let me join on the day in question, proved a problem. I finally tracked one down on the Internet. It was a small outfit I’d never heard of, in a remote and slightly run-down residential neighborhood I’d seldom if ever visited.
The bus driver wouldn’t let me off at the stop nearest the club. I had to keep riding nearly a quarter-mile beyond the place, until one of his regular riders also had to disembark. Both the driver (a curly-lipped 30ish man) and the other passenger (a prim old lady) gave me icy glares as I walked down from the bus’s steps to the sidewalk. They both had surmised where I was going and expressed a loud-silent disapproval. I looked like I always looked; a little rumpled but clean and shaven. They could probably tell I was no alcoholic desperate for a sauce-dose on this dry day. No, I was deliberately defying both the letter and the intent of Family Day.
(I had no family anyway, at least none around this state. But that didn’t matter to the politicians, nor to the conservatives who’d pressed for the dry day. Indeed, some futile opponents of the law had complained on talk radio that the conservatives wanted to make anybody outside a standard nuclear family feel lonely and guilty.)
Six blocks of cracked, weed-strewn sidewalk after leaving the bus, the grey winter midday found me outside the former neighborhood Masonic Temple storefront, now housing the independent private club whose name you’ve all heard of by now. The quaint little building was surrounded by a closed video store and a closed hair salon. (Retailers, restaurants, theaters, and other destination businesses hadn’t been forced to close on Family Day, but were strongly encouraged in the media to do so.)
Other little storefronts on the half-block bore small window signs announcing meetings to discuss the future of the neighborhood–meetings which, I later learned, were intended to force the club to close. Attempts which, I am happy to say, have yet to succeed.
Past the main lobby was a big, dark room with black-painted walls and a once-beautiful wooden floor. The bar, at the room’s rear, was just as I’d expected, a worn-down, `50s-style installation with more plastic than glass bottles (i.e., the cheap stuff), more duct tape than upholstery on the stools, and plastic-relief signs promoting once-popular beer brands. Everything had the distinct patina of too many years of cigarette-stained air, including the 60-ish bartender and his somewhat younger clientele (about two-thirds male).
Now that I’d asserted my right to drink, I didn’t really feel like drinking. Especially here. Especially after a polite young man in a mall-bought suit quietly informed me of the cover charge, which he was careful to call a “membership fee and first month’s dues.”
I’d have left, if not for a darting glimpse of the day’s entertainment. The polite young man informed me the club was holding a “Family Day Cabaret.” It was planned to celebrate the cameraderie of the membership as a family-of-choice, just as real and deserving as any biological family. The entertainment consisted of six young women, seen in my first glance while they were sitting in an even-darker side area of what was a pretty dark room to begin with. They were smoking cigarettes and adjusting their make-up and costumes. Their faces were not like those of the currently-popular fashion models; they were clearly women of this neighborhood or other neighborhoods like this. Their hair and faces were done up to a kind of perfection. I could not tell the shape or form of their costumes from my vantage point, but they were clearly colorful and clearly thin. I paid the polite young man and sat at a small, wobbly table.
The cabaret did not begin until an hour after I arrived, a half hour after the polite young man said it would begin. During this interval, I nursed a sequence of whiskey sours, made from some of the best plastic-jug liquor Oregon produced, and waited, alone. I did not seek the friendship of the club’s regulars, nor was it overtly offered to me as of yet.
After this interminable brief moment, it began. The dim lights were dimmed further, if that were possible. The green EXIT light above the lobby doors was the brightest spot in the room; that and a few spots where light snuck in from windows whose black paint had begun to peel.
From somewhere near the bar, a tinny boom box issued forth lilting, ethereal electronic music of the old 4AD Records variety. My first thought: Totally inappropriate for this pre-copmuter-age room. My second thought, after a minute or so: Nice, homey, cute even.
The women didn’t enter the room. They just stood up from their corner table and began to dance across the room with a slow, serene, Butoh-like grace. My eyes were now sufficiently darkness-adjusted to that I could see their costumes–combinations of diaphanous long shawls and veils, in colorful silky cloth and in that sheer grey stuff dressmakers use to test their cuts. From the way they started twirling them about, it was quickly obvious there would be some undressing. But they took their sweet (in their case, quite sweet) time at it. They didn’t exactly “tease” so much as they very deliberately led my eyes, and the eyes of the other patrons, toward each body part they emphasized in turn with each stance and motion they smoothly led into. By the time nipples began to appear, I felt as if I’d already seen them many times before, that each of these women had long been a special friend to me.
After an indeterminate amount of time, each woman had her upper shawls completely off. Some had their lower veilage also removed. These strips of cloth were either strewn along the floor, lying on patrons’ tables (or, in one case, draped over a bald male head), or were still in the women’s arms, being used as faux stoles or boas.
For the final stage of the performance, the women invited members of the audience to take turns dancing with them. Some of the men performed traditional ballroom steps with the women, while the men’s wives/girlfriends sat and admired. At least one man attempted to engage a dancer in what commercial strip joints call a “lap dance.” The dancer politely declined that, but did invite him to stand up and dance a real dance with her. He agreed, and began a prom-style slow dance. During this, he hesitantly attempted to touch her breasts, first with his shirted chest and then with his hands. She allowed this, smiling her approval into his stricken eyes.
Some time after that (this segment took up the rest of the day and evening), he had left the room and I found myself dancing a prom-style slow dance with the same dancer. I also caressed her tender bosom and her muscular, dancer-trained back, looked contentedly into her captivating eyes, and even shared a few closed-mouth kisses. At the end of the song, I turned to see some of the non-dancer women in the room making out with some of the men in the room, not necessarily the same men these women had been sitting with back when I’d entered. Despite having not spoken to most of these people, I began to feel I was being welcomed into their realm, their tribe. A kind of indirect connection, via being touched and enraptured by the same women, came between me and these other men, and (a further step) withthe dressed, non-dancer women.
If anything further happened among anyone there, it did not occur in any part of the building I was in. The perfume, the smoke, the stronger-than-my-usual drinks, and the other contributing factors caused me to feel like I was about to pass out. Before I did so, the bartender had already called a taxi for me, which arrived promptly and sent me back toward my home, away (for the time being) from my new, and only real, family.
