The Table of Truth - Chapter One, Part 1

CHAPTER ONE


Part 1

Worthless


There is no such thing as wasted time when you feel worthless. When you feel like your life is the waste of time. Every day and every night is just like the last. Hope is no longer a thing of the future, but a product of the past.
January was just that kind of wasted time for me.
I woke up as late as noon every day. Without turning on the light, I stumbled naked into the bathroom where I lay in the tub, sometimes for ten minutes or more before I turned on the water. Then I sat there dumb-faced for usually around three hours. At last I would pull the drain from the tub that was almost empty from evaporation, and my withered body stumbled out, only to go tumbling back to bed where I would lie for the rest of the day.
Sometimes I didn’t make it to the bed. Sometimes I simply lay down numbly on the floor and cried. I lived in darkness. I rarely ate.
“I don’t feel like it anymore.” That’s all Jenny had said. No more of an explanation. Nothing for the years of comfort, of caring, of nights coming home to that warm light; nothing for the years of sacrifice and commitment; nothing for the mutual struggles and support; nothing for the affection, the love, the promises. How does one live with one’s self after promising never to leave, then breaking their word on a whim? How do they ever look into another’s eyes and say those words again knowing they broke them so casually before? I didn’t even take her seriously until I came home a few days later and found the apartment half empty. It was like a thief had sneaked in and taken everything that was hers; everything that was important to me. I tried to call; I tried to write… she apparently blocked my email before she had even left. That was how four years of my life ended.
At work my hand cramped and I was no longer able to type. It was just as well. I hardly heard what anyone said on the tapes I was supposed to be transcribing. I was too busy obsessing over why. I thought of every misstep I had taken, of every wrong thing I had ever said. I beat myself mercilessly in my head for it.
I had money saved for a honeymoon which would instead be used for a leave of absence and a much needed vacation. I switched on the computer and brought up the internet to look at where to go.
I received an email from my friend Tim. He told me about a wedding invitation he had received. She had only left me four months before and she was marrying a musician she had known. I didn’t read any more details. Something was bubbling up through my stomach and I ran into the bathroom. After that, no one heard from me for weeks.
The phone would ring. I just let it go and curled up into my little pool of self-pity. Only the glow of light against the curtain told me whether it was day or night. Soft light it was day, harsh light it was night. I didn’t keep track of how many times this repeated.
One day a knock came at the door, the first one in weeks perhaps. I wrapped the blanket around myself and held it together like a toga.
“Hey, Jake! What’s been going on!” Eddy said, his smile broad and welcoming, as though I was at his home. Then he noticed the blanket over the bare body. “Oh! Did I interrupt something?” His faced spoke an apology while his eyes tried to peak past and get a look at who I had in my bed.
“No,” I told him, but he kept trying to spy past me. “What’s up?”
“I’m here to ask you that,” he said. “You haven’t been answering your phone for fucking ever. Some of us are worried.”
“I’m fine. Thanks for checking in on me.”
I was about to close the door when he offered to take me out for drinks. What the hell. I needed to see sunlight for a change.
But the sun had gone down by the time I got clothes on and we were driving. At the bar I slumped over the table like a bar fly from a cliché painting. A pitcher of some German lager sat between us, and though it was meant for me, Eddy downed it while he regaled me with tales of his adventures in Tijuana. “I was partying at this great club where there were all these hot Mexican chicks,” he said. “Then I suddenly realized, I’m in a brothel! And I went, hey, this is sweet!”
The excitement of the exploits were in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol Eddy consumed. I saw Jenny sitting on the other side of him. Not the real Jenny, but the one from my mind’s eye. She rolled her eyes, the way she always used to. But now she was marrying a man who thought the word “sexploit” was clever. I had met her husband-to-be on a few occasions. He was the kind of man who made Eddy look like a deep thinker, the kind of man who never quite matured out of junior high. This was the kind of man Jenny used to hate with a passion. How could she be marrying him?
“You want some more?” Eddy was offering the pitcher of beer to me. I snapped out of my angry daze and shook my head. He had the rest, and finished his stories.
My adventure outside had yielded one major result, I had become interested in looking at what was happening beyond my four walls. I turned on the world’s encyclopedia, the internet, and did what I did best, obsessed on every small detail.
I turned to Tijuana and found Eddy’s adventure spots. I paged through photographs and detailed information, soaking in more erudition than a local. It was a whole other country, a scary place I imagined myself disappearing in, being kidnapped, or simply murdered and thrown into one of the alleys pictured next to the bars and brothels I was staring at. Or maybe the police would take me in for not paying them a bribe, and all kinds of unspeakable things would happen in prison before they at last decided to drive me out to the desert and abandon me. What would the police code be for that?
When I finished I could see by the glow on the curtain that the sun had risen. I lay back on my bed and stared at the familiar ceiling. I now knew every detail, every bump, every stain above me. The phone rang. It was Tim. I still wasn’t ready to talk; not willingly, at least.
Instead, I hopped out of bed, walked out the door, and headed to the border.
From Long Beach it’s about a two hour drive. “I want to fuck something,” I told myself over and over. Not someone. Something. To hell with respect. No more moralizing. I wanted to find Eddy’s bar and fuck like an animal. I had lost all sense of prudence, all levels of nobility, all thoughts of veneration.
I had tried so hard to be a good person, and it had only brought me loneliness. Women had always overlooked me for the bad boys, always passed me and all the thoughtful guys I knew in favor of the arrogant pigs who had no respect for them. They wanted to change these men, and never gave a thought to being with the ones that don’t need changing. They lived in a self-fulfilling prophecy of recompense which they complained about endlessly like victims who had no part in the decisions they made. And now Jenny had joined those ranks, getting married to a man who regularly referred to his many girlfriends as “my bitches and hos.” They laughed about it, sometimes complained, but they always wound up in bed with him. Then they wondered why so many men treat women so badly.
My only hope of ever being desired by women was to become one of these chauvinists that they complained about but always chose to give their hearts to. I had to become someone they wanted to change.
And it would start with this. It was time for carnal pleasures. It was time to fuck something.
The trip became a reality to me when the freeway sign read “San Ysidro Exit, 1 mile,” and below it was only a wide, blank space; nothingness, like I was reaching the end of the world. The grade lowered and ducked beneath two freeways. As they receded overhead, the grand spectacle opened up before me. Small dots of yellow and silver dotted the coffee brown, hilly landscape where makeshift houses hugged the dirt organized by the grid lines of gravel and cement roads. A giant Mexican flag drifted languidly in the wind over the city, and below it hunched a silver archway marking a downtown filled with brick and mortar buildings.
This was Mexico; a completely different language, a completely different culture. Out there, millions of people were living their lives in ways I couldn’t imagine, speaking words I didn’t understand.
The road curved downward toward the border’s gates like a slide heading to a gaping mouth. The sign that read “Last American Exit” begged the question, was I sure I wanted to continue?
I got off the freeway and onto the side streets. Dozens of cars filed slowly down the row of shops intended for visitors to either country. Mexican Insurance, immigrant legal counsel, job searches, tourist guides, shuttle service to just about every major city in Southern California. I found an all day parking location for four dollars in the parking lot of a hotel that looked like it charged by the hour. I left my car at the mercy of a man leaning back in his chair watching a forty year old television.
I dodged the San Diego trolley as it rolled to a stop in front of the last American restaurant, McDonald’s. The border now stood before me.
It was built like a prison. A large, three story building of iron and cement and windows where guards watched arched over the street where orderly gates met the cars coming and going. The building was flanked by intimidating walls protected at their tops with barbed wire. Border patrol trucks waited at half mile intervals.
People steadily trickled out the sliding doorway of the trolley and poured up a ramp going to the opposite side. I entered this stream and was swept along. A distant clanging denoted where we were headed. It sounded like a cattle yard, and it got louder and louder the closer I came.
When at last I saw this gate I hesitated. The clanging sound came from the aluminum bars of the revolving door hitting the metal of the barred wall. It was like the gates at an amusement park, once you are in, you can’t come back. You have to go all the way through the ride and exit when it's done. No turning back. No chicken exit. I took in a deep breath, then stepped through.
A long walkway channeled the crowds down a thin corridor to a split where they could venture forth on foot to the right, or take on the crowd of taxi drivers all calling out for attention straight ahead. I took on the latter.
Out of the crowd I focused on one. I began with the usual cliché, something I thought I’d never do; I spoke in a loud, exaggerated way, as if he was deaf and stupid instead of someone who spoke a different language.
For a moment he looked at me like I was a mental patient. “You want to go where, my friend?” he asked, opening the door, eager to please.
I only knew one place. “Chicas,” I told him, the place Eddy had talked about. “You know it?”
A slick smile grew on his lips. “Oh, my friend! Hop in, I take you there!”
I slid in, and as we started moving, I noticed the first restaurant on this side of the border was also a McDonald’s. You just can’t escape.
I focused on my goal. ‘I want to fuck something.’
The cab left me off in front of a curtained door with a large awning overhead that read ‘Chicas’. Four large men sat on stools that looked like they should break beneath their weight. They watched the men enter and checked ID occasionally. I walked tensely by, one of the men staring at me the whole way.
A smoky haze hung over the large club, something I had not been used to for a long time since California had banned smoking in buildings. Through the mist I could see two women dancing on a stage that stretched into the crowd of men who stared up at them like acolytes. Other half naked women mingled among the booths, flirting, sitting with the men, sometimes on their laps. Others held the hands of men whom they led out the curtain to go to the hotel next door. A couple women in street clothes entered behind me, passed by and walked into the ladies room to my right. They emerged soon after dressed in their slinky work clothes.
On either side of the club were bars where a handful of men sat hunched over a drink with their rotten memories written all over their faces. I wasn’t the only one here to escape.
Tables sat in between these bars, making room for the stage in the center, and a row of booths marched its way across the opposite wall toward the men’s room where a hoard of women massed around the entrance like bees by the hive, hoping to catch the customers as they exited. Some wandered in and out, talking with the towel server and commenting about the men at the urinals. They wore every manner of nightgown; the white ones glowed, reflecting the bluish tint of the black light. They smiled, and a few made noises with their tongues as the guys passed.
At one of the booths sat a group of large, hairy men passing a young blond woman around and tasting of her like meat on a stick. She occasionally planted her feet, waving her butt in their faces so they could stick money into her pants. They tossed her around, but she clearly had them in the palm of her hand.
I planted myself on a bench in a corner where there was a slight rise overlooking the rest of the club so I could soak in everything. I counted a couple dozen men and an equal number of women. A slow day? I had no idea.
I noticed that many of the women had clean cut, dark holes where their belly buttons should be; as though someone had come with a hole puncher and sliced into their stomachs. They were neither swollen nor pressed; just a perfectly round hole that disappeared into the darkness of their stomachs.
Then, as though straight out of a detective novel, a skinny woman wearing a tight leather bikini strutted out of the smoke which slid around her form as though excusing itself to let her by. Her long, jet black hair draped over her bare shoulders as she claimed a pillar and leaned against it, crossing her arms and studying the place with her deep, dark eyes.
I couldn’t help but stare, not just at her beauty, but the wonder that no one had gone to her yet, that she wasn’t occupied in some room at work every minute. In an L.A. club, she’d be arm in arm with a celebrity. Here she was struggling to make a buck. All I had to do was go up to her and she would leave with me. I wouldn’t be blown off, or treated like a worm. I could have what I came for, it would just cost a little money, but no more than it would take to impress an American girl.
And yet I was afraid. When she glanced my way, I diverted my eyes. I had to build up my courage just to look at her. She kept eyeing at me expectantly. I turned away again.
“You’re here to fuck something,” I reminded myself low and under my breath. “Now get over there and do what you came all the way here to do.”
I looked at her again; at that perfect, tight body and red lips. She would say no. They always say no. And even if she didn’t, this was wrong. ‘You’re here to fuck something. Now do it!’ My mind was wrestling with my spirit.
At last I forced my legs to stand. Stiffly, I made my way over to her. Her cat-like eyes shot over to me. I panicked and walked right past.
On the other side of the pillar I froze. This is what I was here for. But I couldn’t bring myself to just take her upstairs. I needed at least the pretense of romance. Even if it was just a fuck, I needed to convince myself it was something more.
I saw a man having drinks with a lady at a nearby table and nodded. That’s what I would do.
I spun round to the thin woman with the black bikini and put on my coolest mask. She looked at me, and I motioned my head toward what I thought was a table. She glanced over, then back at me confused. I turned my head and saw that I had just motioned toward the men’s bathroom. Reverting to my usual clumsy self, I motioned to one of the two person booths and she sat down with me.
Immediately a waiter was at the table asking me what we would drink. I ordered the only one I knew in Spanish, Corona. She ordered the same, and he produced them out of his pocket. I wasn’t sure whether I should drink it, but I saw the woman pop the top and start downing hers immediately.
“That’s nine dollars,” the waiter told me.
“Nine?” I asked. I thought the drinks here were supposed to be cheap.
“Two dollars for yours, seven for the lady's.”
I figured I was being scammed, but what choice did I have. I gave him a ten, then he handed her a tag of some sort, which I figured out later was her kick back, the amount they paid her for keeping a loser like me company.
I had never been able to sit and talk with a therapist because I couldn’t get past the knowledge that they were listening to me only because I was paying them. I often referred to them as mental prostitutes. It was hard to get past that now, so I stumbled for conversation.
“So, how long have you… been here?” I asked.
“Not long.” Her left arm pressed tightly against her waist like a school girl while her right hand reached out for the drink. She took a sip and looked out at the crowd. I kept staring at her. What could I say that would mean anything? Could I say something that she hadn’t heard from every other guy?
“You have family near here?”
Now she looked straight at me, her eyebrows wrinkled, confused. She shook her head, placing the drink on the table. “You?”
“Not really. I came quite a ways.”
“How far?”
“From Long Beach,” I said, relaxing. “About two hours.” She didn’t look impressed. “Well, with traffic it can be quite a bit more.”
She nodded, took another swig and looked out at the bar. I looked down at her leather bikini, at her smooth, young skin pressed tight against it. I tried to work up my courage. She noticed me staring, took in a breath, and pushed her chest forward, advertising while she continued to look out at the bar.
I felt ashamed. The voice that told me to get laid was gone. I simply couldn’t do it. I reached for my wallet.
The girl shifted. She took in another breath and grasped her small bag, ready to go upstairs.
“Here,” I said, handing her a little money. “I’m not going to take you upstairs. If you have to work, I understand, but if you’d like to stay here and talk, you’re more than welcome.”
She stared at me for a time, she looked down at the money, then grasped it and looked back at me, considering.
For a moment I thought she might stay, that she was intrigued by the clumsy guy sitting across from her, that the music would rise and…
Nope. Away she went.
I sat there long enough to finish my Corona. I didn’t want it to look like I got rejected and left. ‘Aren’t you going to fuck something?’ came the voice in my head.
‘Nope,’ I answered simply, and the beast shut its mouth. I had wasted my trip. But I still didn’t get up to leave. It was as though I was stuck there, watching.
The blond woman from the booth of hairy men got up and headed toward the bathroom. A young man, probably eighteen, stopped her for a moment and asked her a question. She answered politely, then continued into the bathroom.
The largest of the hairy men got up and walked over to the eighteen-year-old. He leaned down into his face and said something I couldn’t hear, but the slow shaking of his fist said it all. He was in plain view, and none of the waiters did anything.
The large man sat down at his own booth and a few minutes later the blond woman returned from the restroom. She walked up to the young man, and he turned away from her. She tried to lean into his field of vision and he turned further away. Stunned, and perhaps even a little hurt, the blond woman walked away and returned to the table of bullies to be passed around again.
I procrastinated perhaps another hour. I tried to convince myself that I would give it another try. But if I wasn’t going to do it with the fantasy in black leather, who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to do it at all.
At last I got up to leave. I made it to the door, but I stopped and looked back in at the club one last time. A moment later, the blond woman from the booth of the big men came out of the ladies room again and strutted by me with the confidence of a biker-chick. Watching her pass, I noticed an intricate tattoo of a butterfly struggling for freedom that ran down the small of her back, and into her tight jean mini-skirt.
If this trip was to have any redeeming value I needed to gain something from the experience, something I could chalk up to learning. If I wasn’t going to hire someone, I wanted to at least learn how the hiring process works. So I reached out to tap the woman on the back, but my finger froze. Frightened again by nothing, I was panicked out of action.
Then fate stepped in and created one of those moments frozen in time forever, like a cross-roads in life. A waiter crossed in front of the woman and she stopped to let him pass. My finger tapped on her shoulder.
The woman turned around. She had emerald eyes, a bright face, sparkled make-up, a crooked smile with gaps between her teeth, and soft dimples.
“I’m curious how it all works,” I said. She looked at me strangely, not understanding.
One of the men from the booth, the largest one, stood up, gazing at me.
I sped up, “How does it work? Did they rent you all night? How much does that cost…”
“You want me all night?” she asked, her face shocked.
“No, no,” I said, watching as the big man started toward us. “I noticed they haven’t taken you upstairs, but they have you at their table just to themselves…”
“You want to take me upstairs?” she asked.
The man was getting closer.
“Not really. I’m just curious…” There was no more time for the language barrier. He was almost to us. “Sure. Yes. Let’s go upstairs. Right now. You and me.” And up we went, as quickly as I could encourage her along.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She took a moment before answering. “Nina.” It seemed awkward not to find out more about her, but I didn’t know what to ask, so I followed her all the way to the top where a booth was set into a wall.
Three attendants took information from ladies like Nina, gave them their purse, a key, and a towel with various items wrapped up in it. They took the money from the men, then told the ladies what room to go to. Women leaving the rooms were dropping off these items at the desk and the men they had been with were continuing on down the stairs without so much as a goodbye.
Nina spoke Spanish with the man at the desk, then turned to me. “It’s eleven dollars,” she said. I paid the man, then we continued down the hall to a room. I kept looking behind us, still worried we might be followed, until we were safely in the locked room.
A flat, square, hard bed sat in the middle, a shelf jutted from the wall to the right, and a bathroom opened up beyond that. Directly to my left sat a window to the hallway which Nina immediately closed the shades to. The air was close, stuffy, and stale.
“Well, um…” I started. “This is sort of my first time. What do I do?”
“It’s sixty dollars,” she said. I put it on the shelf, took my glasses off and placed them next to the money, then waited. She removed her shirt, then looked at me quizzically.
“Shouldn’t we get on the bed?” I asked.
“You have to take off your clothes first, baby,” she said, and she began doing just that.
I tried to take off her skirt at the same time, but fumbled as I felt around for a latch, or zipper, or strap, or something. She laughed and did the services.
At last she got me down on the bed. I kissed her on the lips, and she puckered them tight enough to escape any feeling, but smiled as if she’d enjoyed it. It was time to reach for the condom, so I did. I unwrapped the casing while looking into her eyes. They had a brightness to them, but they squinted with a queer look as she laughed.
“That’s the soap,” she said, nodding at what I had just unwrapped. Then she said, “Try that one, baby,” and pointed at the other wrapper in the towel.
I took it. My hand was shaking, so she took it from me and unwrapped it, then enfolded the contents in the proper place. I tried to ask her what she enjoyed, and she writhed on the bed. “Let’s just fuck,” she said.
I tried to make myself comfortable on the bed, tried to find a position that felt right, tried in vain to get myself excited enough to make love. Nothing quite worked.
At last, sweaty and unfulfilled, I sat back on the bed discouraged, and wondering if there was something wrong with me.
She sat beside me and looked forward for a moment, perhaps wondering if she had done something wrong. Then she looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re not very usual, are you?”
“No,” I said. “No, I… I’d say I’m probably not. That’s actually probably an understatement.” We were both silent for a time. Then I said something to fill the silence. “So, tell me about your family.”
She squinted her eyes in annoyance, then said, “Tell me about your wife.”
“No. No wife.”
“Girlfriend then.”
“None.”
“The fia… Um, fiace...”
“Fiancée?”
“Yeah.”
“None.”
“Pshaw. You got girlfriend.”
I thought of Jenny’s smile. “No. No, I don’t.”
“I never see guy that looks like you that don’t have girlfriend.”
“Well, that’s very nice of you.”
“It’s fine. You no have to tell about girlfriend. Lots of guys don’t want to talk about wife or girlfriend.” She climbed out of the bed and walked to the mirror on the wall next to the window.
“What about you?” I asked. “Boyfriend?”
As she looked at herself in the mirror, she bunched her hair up in the back. Her breasts looked like halos caught in the overhead light as she stretched her arms back, her silhouetted body shaped by the glow through the Venetian blinds. She presumptuously took a stick of my gum and began chewing it, then put my glasses on her face.
While she admired herself in the mirror, she said, “Okay, you can ask me one question and I’ll answer it.”
I thought for a moment, staring at her. Then I asked, “If you could spend a half hour with anyone, anyone in the world from the past or present, who would it be?”
“In here?” she asked.
“Um, well, sure. Make that part of the question. Who would you spend it with, and where would you go?”
She thought for a little while, then turned to me. “How do I look in your glasses?”
“You’re changing the subject,” I told her.
She sat down into my arms, put my glasses on my face and squinted into my eyes, studying them. “Why are you being like this?” she asked. “You’re never going to see me again.”
“Being like what?” I asked.
“So nice. No one ever ask me what I like.”
“That’s the saddest thing I ever heard,” I said.
There was a short silence accompanied by the soft sound of the air conditioner before she asked, “How old are you?”
“I’m turning 34 next month.”
“Wow.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. Then, “Okay, if you’re not going to answer my last question, answer this one. What do you want to do with your life? What else would you like to do other than this?”
A silence while she thought about how to say it. “Si, si, psychology? Is that how you say it?”
“Psychology is a word, yes. Is that what you’re interested in?”
“Study of people, right?”
“Yes. It was my minor in college.”
“You went to college?”
“In New York.”
“Ooooo.”
“It was something. You’re interested in people, huh?”
“People come in here, I study them. I like to understand people. But you I no understand.” She stood up by the mirror again and studied me. “You look good with glasses,” she said. “On or off, you look good. I no believe you don’t have girlfriend.”
“Now you’re just doing your job,” I said.
“No,” she responded. “We stopped doing my job ten minutes ago.”
Then a knock came at the door. She disregarded it and asked about my life back in Long Beach.
“Not much to tell,” I told her. Then I looked into her curious face. “You should come up and visit.”
She responded with a sarcastic look. Like that could ever happen. The border was less than a mile away, and she knew there was no hope of ever crossing even for a short visit.
Then I suggested she follow up on the psychology interest, and she looked at me with the same sarcastic expression.
After several more disregarded knocks on the door, we at last emerged from the room twenty minutes late. We walked down the stairs and I stopped at the front door.
“Aren’t you coming in?” she asked.
I thought about the hairy men. “I better get going.”
She looked shocked, even hurt, but snapped out of that expression quickly. “Okay then,” she said. “Well, goodbye.”
I offered her my hand, but she stepped forward and gave me a long hug. I didn’t want to fool myself, but it felt real. When at last she let go I took out a business card I had for my personal transcribing business and I handed it to her.
“Si!” she said excitedly. “I will call you. Will you come visit again?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?” We were both lying. I don’t know how much we were lying to ourselves, but we were certainly lying to each other. I knew in my heart that I would never see her again. But it was fun to pretend, if for just that moment.