Underneath It All

The Deep Six is notorious for being one of the most active Goth clubs in town. The club sits beneath the ground in a warehouse district of the city. On any given night, most notably Friday, sweaty counter-culturists from all over the bowels and boroughs of New York City come out to play. The streets outside of the club are often awash in obscure band flyers, radical literature, and sex shop flyers advertising buy one get one free deals on varieties of dildos, vibrators, and bondage whips. Sketchy drug peddlers walk up and down the line to get into the club scoping out target consumers. Ketamine, cocaine, ecstasy, poppers, uppers, downers, and weed are always in abundance and are consumed both outside and in the club.
Before getting too much into why I’m at the Deep Six, I might as well explain how I first discovered this dirty club. Sometime around the late 80’s, I graduated college. I would tell you the exact year and place and time of the whole ordeal, but it really makes no difference. Not knowing what else to do I did what most 22 year old boys did. You better believe I drank. I hightailed my ass to my parent’s old summer house on Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire. I had been visiting the lake every summer for the past five years. The house was fantastic because I had some old friends from high school who lived next door in a small two-bedroom house right and grew weed. The hydroponics system which they used to grow their cash crop was very sophisticated and used a high priced desalinization machine which took water in from the lake to feed the plants. It was always almost impossible to walk through their house without picking up faint hint of their skunky secret. The house sat perfectly on the edge of the lake that had far too many windows. It made sunsets the highlight of the day with a view from almost anywhere in the house. And when morning came, the sun would penetrate through every piece of glass making it almost impossible to sleep past eight. That summer, my pals and I spent endless hours on the algae-enflamed docks watching as stunning New England girls zoomed by in jet skis. When our eyes weren’t morbidly fixated on the hum of jet skis across the waters of the lake, we indulged in the finer things in life. Cheap beer and crappy plastic handles of rum, whiskey, and gin were favorites. It was on a night blanketed with fog in July when we chose to have our big summer extravaganza. In Retrospect, it would’ve been safer to wait until the fog cleared. As the night opened up, Friends from school dropped by to get shit faced and reflect on the year. Most of them hadn’t gone very far. This one guy Frank Lenam was divorced, and had spent 3 years collectively behind bars since high school for a variety of offenses, and looked like he hadn’t seen a dentist in his entire life. The class sluts were also there, both male and female and everything in between. Meredith Selton had put on about 30 pounds since school had ended and still looked as loose as she did junior year. Then I saw someone who I had never really befriended in my school career. His name was Shawn Wright. I hadn’t spoken to the guy since a time in middle school when we went on a trip to Williamsburg. He was caught crying in the back of the bus after having shit himself. He wept as many tortured children and animals have done so before. After the trip he kind of took on an unintentional reputation and spent most of high school glued to a computer screen, his hand stiff and cracked from too much masturbation. We always thought he was a glue sniffer or sexually abused. Shawn approached me dressed sharper then I had ever seen him. He wore an olive green cashmere sweater and some nice slacks. I noticed the watch on his wrist. It cost more then my car. He told me he was now a big time art dealer in New York City. He told me about all the freaks he encountered (Ha! Him telling me!). He told me about one artist of his who was really putting out groundbreaking work. Serious, deep shit he told me. Shawn told me the artist wore purple and green makeup on his skin to appear as he was decomposing. He said he listened to a lot of Bauhaus and thought heroin was glamorous and only snorted coke because crack was “So east village”. He slipped me a card and told me his door was open whenever. It made no sense to me at the time and probably never will. I had mocked and tortured this kid so much in school and probably helped The Cure’s album sales. Why had he taken such an interest in me? I had to find out and left soon after that summer.
When I arrive at Deep Six, I receive the best VIP treatment. Because the club is one of Shawn’s investments, he takes good care of me when I come. I’m hailed through security quickly and sometimes use the company room. When you first enter the dance floor, troupes of mascara dripping social clichés dominate the dance floor as hard, industrial music plays. Colored lights beam from the dark ceiling reveling cobwebs that may or may not be real. Overhead pipes are exposed and occasionally, a cold drip of something synthetic smelling falls onto your forehead from above. Over by the bar, you can find some of the most predictable types of club patrons. Low key music producers who own studios at the edge of the farthest boroughs. Sleazy club promoters who will come up to you and tell you every reason why their venue is better. Clean cut and well dressed pedophiles looking for some kind of snuff photography session usually sit against the farthest wall of the club where the third bar is. They meet young girls with rows of metal trappings dangling from every orifice and loose piece of skin and take them home to fuck, film, and sometimes even kill.
At the bar, I order Jaegermesiter with root beer. The waitress working stuns me. She’s wearing 20 eyelet leather boots that end just below the bottom of her metallic silver vinyl skirt. It appears she’s wearing no stockings. I feel an impulse beneath my underwear but I pretend to hid it. As the music blares louder and faster, I drink more heavily. The room swirls and I start to smell strange scents. Gasoline. Perfume. Formaldehyde. The bartender sees me now. She sees my animalistic stare and gives me a look of disgust. I imagine myself as a satanic goat watching an angel undress. I see my friend Richard from work across the bar. He comes over and sits with me. As he feels for the right seat next to me, he grins and a and stumbles to balance himself he asks
“How the fuck are you?” I think to myself and peer over at the bartender making sure she doesn’t see me. Her ass is perfect and I try my hardest to not go overboard with my psychological orgasm.
“I think I’m doing alright over here. On my second drink. How about you?”
“Oh me? I’m fine. I’ve snorted enough dust to make my nostrils raw like sandpaper. I have this terrible case of the clap I picked up from some nasty broad I met at this dive down near the bowery. And my utilities have been shut off at the apartment. My life is just fucking great! The oil painter next doors apartment smells like turpentine and shit and I’m worried he’s going to blow himself up”
“Sounds intense. Have you considered moving?”
“Yea. I tell you the fucking housing prices in this city. I’d rather live in the Bronx then next door to a damn Paki”.
We smile to eachother as he gets up and leaves. He pats my knee. The racist bastard.
“Get laid.”
Outside the back of the club I go to have a quiet smoke. The bartender from earlier sits along a railing. I approach her with sweat pulsating out of every vein on my forehead and ask for a light. She smiles and provides me with one. We stare at each other with lust, confusion, angst. She seems letdown by the world. There is no room for love in my world partly because of my schedule. I can’t think of anything to say. I think back to silly middle school dances I suffered through in the 70’s where everyone sat against the wall eagerly anticipating that one single, perfect person who’s face doesn’t resemble the grounds of Mars to come and ask for a dance. I feel like a silly asshole on the verge of crapping himself. Then she speaks. I tell her my name and she tells me hers.
“Ilene” she says.
I think to myself what a pretty name. Then I start to think what the hell was wrong with her parents for naming such a beautiful creature after a mediocre Dexie’s midnight runner’s song. I soon realize that the song was only released two or three years ago. Me and my mind. While speaking to Ilene I start to romanticize her complexion. Her skin is white like that of a Japanese porcelain puppet. This is definitely relative to the pounds of makeup she wears, but it’s erotic. Like so many other girls who spent their adolescence divulged in magazine clip outs of David Bowie and Billy Idol, she tells me she likes rockers. Somehow the conversation leads to the things I usually end up speaking to girls about. Masturbation? Whenever I can! Drugs? Not really since the 12th grade with an exception of a Valium addiction sometime in college. Favorite Authors? This is where I tell some fibs. She looks like she reads Neil Gaiman novels cover to cover. I tell her that I think The Sandman is genius but that it lacks good art.
When we enter my apartment at about 3am, we’re both pretty hammered. Her knees have somehow gotten dirty after a long shift and her vinyl skirt ha the sticky and acrid remnants of various liqueurs she’s spilled. Before I can even run to my bathroom to fill up on the necessary supplies to continue our night, I’m accosted and thrown onto the bed. Because of my intoxication, I hit the nightstand hard on my head and black out for a moment.
In my quick slumber, I remember a time in P.E class with Shawn. It’s a fall day and almost my entire grade is on the blacktop. We’re playing street hockey. Sticks and pucks rattle. I see popularity for myself as I get the nasty idea of pulling down Shawn’s shorts in front of everyone. I pull them swiftly from behind and run as quickly as the attack happens. As I’m running, I look behind me and Shawn is huddled on the ground shorts less while everyone points and stares. They call him Capt. No Dick because of an injury he sustained at a young age after a malignant type of cancer took out his prostate, testicles, and a large portion of his phallus.
I’m awake now and my mind tries to process what is going on. I’m moving all about the place and soon realize that Ilene and I are in the process of making love. I can see the sweat from my forehead is dripping onto her breasts from above. As her head pulsates and rotates around the shaft of my penis I shake with an excitement of utter satisfaction. She tugs ferociously on my belt and motions for me to undress. Her washed out pink lips grip the folds of my cock as I wrap my fingers around her ass. She smells of sweat, whisky, tobacco. I claw inwards gently grazing her asshole. I feel uncomfortable playing with her behind but she giggles as I toy around with her lips both up and down. We find things hard to continue in our current position so we quickly shift around on the edge of the left hand side of my bed trying not to make a lot of noise. This feat however seems impossible as I throw her against the upper shelf of my headboard and lift the remainder of her skirt up. With a sharp pull, I rip the small piece of cloth that’s an excuse for underwear away from her nether region. I bring my head down between her legs and savor the glorious stench. The inside of her is warm and inviting. I enter her slow, feeling the pressure of her muscles as I slowly enter her deeper. She screams in lust with a fiery, almost demonic facial expression. She turns around and instructs me to pull her dry, straw like black hair. Her pubic hair is the same color. It reminds me of a wig.
I wake up the next morning. The room is dark except for the shadows of sunlight sliver through my blinds. The bed and sheets smell of sex. I try to extend my arm to set my alarm clock. I find difficulty doing this when I soon realize that my hands are both tied to bedposts. Ilene is gone. So are the few things I have to show for my living. A nice watch, a money clip that presumably had money in it. I feel dazed and my head is throbbing like a swollen thumb. The TV flickers and cracks with static in the background of my room. I feel someone is there watching me. But who? I see shadows and call out, but hear no answer. Then it happens. I feel hands on me, pulling at the ties around my ankles and wrists. I feel something cold and crusted, possibly by rust. As my vision adjusts to the darkness around me, I make out the shadow of what appears to be a man. As I look closer, I see it is a man. It’s my boss Shawn and he’s holding shrub shears. The shears are obscenely large in his hands and look like something out of a cartoon. I see flakes of rust on the blades which are now pointed at my crotch. I can’t piece together what exactly is going on. I remember Ilene and her beautiful face, and ears, and ass. I remember my flashback from the night before. Now I figure out why my head hurts. But my head hurting is the last thing on my mind as Shawn lowers the blades that fix around my penis ready to cut.