Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 11

Carmen hired two DJs to handle the early shifts from 2 p.m. to 6 and from 6 p.m. to 10, when the partying started to get hot and heavy. She herself took the shift from 10 until God knew when, not only because she wanted it, but so did Kit and half of West Hollywood. The Planet on Gay Pride Night without La Pica spinning the tunes, emceeing, and flaunting her gold lame booty shorts, spangle top and one of her trademark porkpie hats just wouldn't be right.

Helena, Tina and Shane arrived around 10:30, and threaded there way through the crowd, hoping to find an open table or at least a few extra chairs. The volume was incredible, and they'd never seen the placed so packed. It was solid wall-to-wall dancing and partying, mostly women but a significant number of gay men as well, including several in full, flaming drag, and a couple of topless trannies showing their chest scars where they'd been topped. Passing near the dais, Tina, heavily pregnant, managed to cut her way through the crowd by calling out, "Lady with a baby." She was determined to make her way up to say hello to Carmen, who leaned over and blew air kisses at her. Helena, too, had tried to get close, but couldn't make it. She managed a wave from ten feet away, and Carmen grinned and waved back in a big, exaggerated gesture that made Helena laugh. Shane hung back, but made brief eye contact with Carmen, and nodded imperceptibly.

Carmen came around the table and jumped down onto the floor next to Tina.

"Hey!" Tina said, leaning carefully forward to give Carmen a hug.

"Hey, hey! Happy Pride! Oh, my God, you are huge!" Carmen shouted, trying to be heard over the din as she patted Tina's belly. "Oh, my God. You are so pregnant. Wow."

"Hey," Shane said, coming forward.

"Hey!" Carmen said. She shoved her hands in her pockets nervously as Shane, Tina and Helena headed off to find a place to sit Tina down for a while. Carmen climbed back up on the dais, feeling a little strange at seeing Shane. She looked around the room but had lost sight of the trio, but she saw Jenny on the far side of the room, on the outside but looking in through the glass on the door. They made eye contact for an uncomfortable moment, then Jenny looked down and away. The tune came to an end and Carmen put on her party DJ face to announce a new record.

***

A woman in her late 50s saw Jenny through the glass in the door. She walked up to and tapped on the window, getting Jenny's attention, and then walked around the door. Jenny saw she had a drink in her hand, and she appeared to be moderately buzzed.

"Hi," Jenny said.

"Hi. What are you doing here?" the woman asked. Her speech was slurred.

"I'm celebrating Gay Pride, I guess. I don't know," Jenny said.

"You mean ... gay shame. That's what it really is," the woman said.

"Why?"

"'Cause ... most of us have more shame than pride." She took a sip of her drink.

"I think that you might be right," Jenny said quietly.

"Do you want to dance?"

Jenny looked at the woman and smiled sadly. "No," she said kindly.

"What's the matter? Am I too old or too suburban or something?"

"No. You're perfect," Jenny said, smiling and meaning it.

"Do you want to kiss me?"

Jenny smiled at her, took her face in her hands, and gave her a sweet kiss on the cheek. "Happy Pride," she said, and walked away. The woman, sadder and lonelier than ever, watched her go.

***

The party finally seemed to be winding down, and Carmen had been up on the dais for nearly two hours without a break. She took the last swallow from the Dos Equis she'd been nursing and decided her bladder had had enough punishment. When the song she'd been playing, Amanda McBroom's The Rose," came to its beautiful end, she put on Jane Siberry's Love Is Everything, the K.D. Lang version on her new Hymns of the 49th Parallel CD, and jumped off the stage and headed for the lady's room. Halfway across the dance floor she found Shane standing in front of her.

Maybe it was to learn how to love

Maybe it was to learn how to leave

Maybe it was for the games we played

Maybe it was to learn how to choose

Maybe it was to learn how to lose

Maybe it was for the love we made

Carmen looked at Shane, wondering what was going on in that complicated girl's head now.

Shane hesitated, lowered her gaze, struggling for the words, even though she'd rehearsed them a hundred times. But she really managed to catch Carmen by surprise.

"I never had a hamster," she began, "but I had a dog, and her name was Remy. I ... I ... have a brother, but ... I never met him, because we ... never grew up together. And my mom put me in foster care when I was nine ... but I still love her very much."

Carmen's eyes filled with tears. She knew how much this effort had cost Shane, and how difficult it was, despite the seeming simplicity. Nothing came easy for Shane, this kind of thing least of all.

Carmen gently cupped Shane's face in her hands, leaned forward so they were forehead to forehead, and whispered, "Thank you." Then she giggled, "I'm sorry, I gotta pee so bad," and she hurried away into the crowd.

Maybe it was to learn how to fight

Maybe it was for the lesson in pride

Maybe it was the cowboys' ways

Maybe it was to learn not to lie

Maybe it was to learn how to cry

Maybe it was for the love we made

***

On the following Wednesday Carmen got an e-mail from Jenny, inviting her to meet at a bar whose name Carmen didn't know, at an address she was unfamiliar with, at 9 p.m. the next night. "Pleeze pleeze pleeze," Jenny's e-mail concluded. "You'll see something you never thought you'd see! Promise promise!"

Carmen was suspicious to begin with, but she became even more suspicious when she drove past the place a few minutes before 9 on Thursday night, looking for a parking spot. A flashing neon banner said "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS."

"Oh, shit," she muttered, and found a spot around the corner. She knew standing outside it was going to be trouble. But Jenny had called her and specifically invited her -- no, "begged" would be a better word. "Pleaded." And Carmen couldn't say no.

The bar was packed, and it took Carmen about 30 seconds to realize the clientele were about ninety percent men, and not just men but burly biker-type men, working class men, and a proportion of men wearing country-and-western cowboy clothes, the kind Carmen thought of as "Hollywood faux rodeo." Worse, it was a straight bar, not a gay man in sight. The centerpiece of the room was a stage where a woman was stripping off a white leather fringed halter as heavy metal pounded out over the speakers. The woman appeared to have forgotten to wear an undergarment under her halter, but seemed unconcerned about her costume malfunction. Men crowded around the stage, howling and cheering over the music as the woman revealed her breasts. Carmen looked around and saw Shane standing toward the side of the room. She threaded her way through the crowd toward her.

"Jesus Christ," Carmen said, half yelling, when she got to Shane.

"Hey!" Shane yelled back over the noise.

"Nice place!" Carmen yelled.

"Oh, yeah. Did Jenny invite you?"

"Yeah, she did. Have you seen her?"

"No," Shane said.

"This just doesn't feel right. I'm going to go look for her. God, why would she want to come to this hellhole?"

The woman on stage stripped and writhed as she danced. Some of the men pounded the stage, grunting and shouting at her. Shane watched the stage without interest and then suddenly heard Carmen shouting angrily at someone. She walked over, and discovered Carmen face-to-face with some redneck asshole.

"What do you mean, 'Cool your jets, honey'?" Carmen yelled at him, getting in his face. "Don't fucking touch me! Get your fucking hands off of me!"

"Whoa, honey, honey, cool your jets," the redneck said again, actually backing up and raising his hands defensively. Carmen wasn't having any.

"What the fuck is your problem, man? Why do you have to fucking touch me, huh?"

"Hey, hey, whoa, baby, whoa," he said.

"What?! Why do you have to fucking put your hands on me?"

Shane got to Carmen just as a bouncer came over and separated the guy from Carmen. Shane put her hands on Carmen's shoulders and walked her away from the scene, laughing.

"Asshole!" Carmen said, glaring back into the crowd and ignoring Shane.

Carmen was still totally pissed. Shane wondered exactly where the guy had put his hands, but wasn't about to ask. Instead she asked, "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Carmen fumed.

Another guy bumped into Carmen accidentally and she shoved back at him a little. "Goddammit!" she cursed, and Shane wondered if the pair of them were going to get out of there alive tonight.

Shane was grinning, though, at Carmen's feistiness. Not for nothing was this terrific woman raised in the barrio. If it came to a brawl, Shane was taking Carmen and the points. Shane leaned close to Carmen's ear, shouting over the music. "Do you want to go out sometime?"

"What?" For the first time Carmen turned and focused her attention on Shane.

Shane bent in to Carmen's ear again. "Do you want to go out with me sometime?"

Carmen stared at her, dumbstruck. "Are you ... asking me out on a date?"

Shane felt a little stupid. She'd been working on this very moment for a week, ever since her conversation with Phoebe Sparkle. "Well ... yeah. I am." Because let's face it, it wasn't every day a lesbian asked another lesbian out on a date in the middle of a redneck biker titty bar. In fact, in the entire history of Western Civilization ...

"Oh."

"Is that okay? To ask you for a date?"

Perhaps one day far in the future Carmen would sit in her rocking chair with a couple of her devoted grandchildren hovering at her knee and begging, "Granny Carmen! Granny Carmen! Tell us again about the time Granny Shane asked you out on your first date in the middle of a redneck biker titty bar!"

"Tell us again, Granny Carmen," the youngest one, Shanalina, would plead, "and tell us again about how you kicked that guy in the balls after he goosed you and asked you if you wanted a mustache ride!"

"Uh ... yeah. Yeah, sure. That's great," she told Shane, finally detaching her mind from the asshole and the argument she'd been embroiled in, and focusing on Shane. "Yes, I accept. I'd love to go out on a date with you. When? What time?"

"Saturday night? I'll pick you up at 7:30."

"Uh ... yeah, okay, sure," Carmen said. "Seven-thirty."

***

The girl on the stage finished her number to loud applause and cheering, picked up her clothes and departed stage left. The MC came out quickly, a mic in his hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "please welcome a special new dancer. Give it up for ... Miss Yeshiva Girl!"

The crowds cheered and those next to it beat on the edge of the stage, howling. They really didn't give a damn who came out, or what her name was, and not a single one of them knew what the word "yeshiva" meant, and wouldn't in a hundred more years. Another heavy metal number began to play. The men waited expectantly, and after a long pause, just as a few of them were beginning to wonder if there was a problem backstage, a single high-heel shoe came flying out.

The background noise in the room began to drop. In a moment it was dead quiet. Shane, like everyone in the place, had her eyes riveted on the stage. Just then Dana came up to her.

"Hey!" she whispered.

"Hey!" Shane whispered back.

"I feel like I'm in hell. What is this place?"

"It's Jenny," Shane said. "That's her, up there."

The spotlight moved from the center of the empty stage to the side curtain, where the flying shoe had come from. The crowd started to murmur, and there were a few boos, because no stripper had come out.

Dana looked around. "Where's Alice?"

"She went to look for you," Shane said.

From the side of the stage a piece of clothing came flying out, a blouse. The crowd cheered. Then, without warning, Jenny stepped out on stage, casually. She was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, certainly just about the last kind of costume anyone expected to see up there on stage. She looked out over the audience cooly, without interest. A few men began to howl and cheer, and one shouted out, "C'mon! Hurry it up! Take it off!"

A cheesy bump-and-grind soundtrack began to play. Carmen and Alice materialized next to Shane and Dana. Together they watched with a mixture of fascination laced with horror.

Jenny slowly walked out to center stage as though the room was empty. She turned and stared at the men close to the edge of the stage, without much interest. She looked ... bored.

"What the fuck is she doing?" Shane whispered.

The crowd was starting to turn hostile, with some jeering. Jenny looked around the room, unconcerned. Then, in a low voice, she slowly began to sing, a prayerlike Hebrew song almost no one could hear. She reached down and slowly peeled off her T-shirt in a manner that was as casual and sexless as possible. The men began to cheer.

Jenny held her T-shirt out and dropped it on the stage. She looked around, and then reached behind herself, releasing the hooks of her lacy black bra. In a heartbeat she was naked from the waist up, her small breasts white in the spotlight, her nipples pink and loose, not erect at all. She tossed her bra out into the audience, and the men cheered again, and called out to her for more. She acted like she hadn't heard a thing they said, and probably she didn't.

She sang a few words of Hebrew quietly, not really trying to keep a tune. Her hands went to the gripper on her jeans, and she unsnapped it, then dropped her hand to her side. The audience was mesmerized by the slight hint of skin disclosed by the gap at her fly. Then Jenny's hands went to her waist, and slowly pushed the jeans down her legs below her knees. Unaided, her jeans collapsed around her ankles, and Jenny stepped out of them carelessly. She kicked them to the edge of the stage, where a man grabbed them and thrust the crotch to his noise, sniffing, as his friends laughed and pounded him on the back. Jenny ignored him.

She stood now in nothing put a pair of frilly black panties and sheer black stockings that came to mid-thigh. The men were going crazy, yelling, howling, hooting, calling out.

At the back of the hall, Carmen put her hand over her eyes, and couldn't watch. "My God," she said. "She's lost her fucking mind." Dana couldn't watch, either, and turned away, heading for the door. Alice followed her out. Shane watched, frowning. She shook her head, no. Please, no.

On the stage, Jenny made eye contact with a man by the edge of the stage. They stared at each other for a moment, and then Jenny smiled faintly, and looked down at herself, at her belly and her panties. She tucked a finger inside the tops at each hip, and slowly began to inch them down as the noise level in the bar rose exponentially. In a second, the top of her bush began to show, the dark hair trimmed but matted down. She pushed her panties down further inch by inch looking down at what she was revealing. Now her pubic region was fully exposed, the panties just below her pussy lips, which were discretely tucked away and virtually invisible. The men in the room exploded in cheers and catcalls. Jenny looked up, and then suddenly thrust her arms in the air, smiling: TA-DAAAH! You want cunt, you muthafuckers, you got cunt. Here it is. Brunette snatch-o-rama. Twat. Gash. Slice. Pubes. Take a good look, Charlie, it's all you're ever gonna see. Sorry I didn't shave it for ya, boys.

The audience loved it. There was no question that in all the thousands of man-hours they'd spent staring at stripper pussy, they'd never seen an act like this before. The complete absence of faked sexuality was at once both less sexual and more sexual than anything they'd ever seen.

Jenny let them have another minute of ... whatever ecstasy it was they were experiencing. Then she lowered her arms and slowly pulled her panties back up. Show's over, assholes. The men protested, shouting "No!" but to no avail. Jenny walked to the edge of the stage and took her jeans back from the man who held them, still sniffing the crotch. Her lip curled in revulsion as she grabbed them away from him, and he let her do it, such was her power over these men at this moment. In some perverse sort of way no one there understood, Jenny had turned degradation and humiliation around. She turned and walked off the stage, not looking back.