Numbness

The bar was dimly lit and the drunks on the stools were too. They all sat apart and didn't speak to one another. Eddie Echers stared at the TV screens that piped in the off-hours extreme sports shows. Another TV in one corner was tuned to CNN and President Reagan was speaking to a bunch of microphones jammed into his face. He took a long pull off of his Heineken and set his gaze on the posterior of the aging barmaid. He assessed that she might have been quite a looker in her day. But, judging my the cigarette rasp in her voice and the crow's feet that perforated the skin beside her eyes, her day was long gone. That was okay to him, so was his.

The front door, behind Eddie, to the bar opened, a slice of afternoon light cut through the smokiness, and a tall figure entered the saloon. The men on their stools all turned to see who came in. Before Eddie's eyes could adjust, the man walked past him and sat at the opposite end of the "horseshoe" bar that faced Eddie. Eddie turned his gaze back to the televisions.

"Whatcha havin', honey?" the barmaid rasped.

"I don't know what to most unemployed people drink? Give me a gin and tonic."

That voice, Eddie thought. He knew it from somewhere. He looked across the bar, taking a closer look at the newcomer. The man's face looked pretty familiar but he had a beard and mustache and was still wearing sunglasses. The man removed his shades and his eyes gave him away.

"I'll be damned! If it ain't Tony Touide, whose whole sausage he can't hide!" Eddie said as he got off of his stool and walked over to him.

"Dan Long? Is that you?" Tony said as Eddie approached and took the seat next to him, "How's it hangin'? Oops! Sorry, I didn't mean . . ."

"That's all right, Tony, I've accepted the fact that all it will do from now on is hang. By the way, it's Eddie, now. The days of Dan Long are, well, long gone."

"So, whatcha been up to these day's Dan, er, Eddie?"

"Selling cars. And you?"

"Well, Explicit Video let me go, last week. It seems I suffer from the same thing you do."

"When'd you get the flat?"

"It happened while I was getting fluffed to do a scene with Zsa Zsa Star. It was working well, the fluff girl was incredible, and the minute I was about to get into the scene, WOOoop," Tony made a descending slide whistle sound. "It wouldn't get back up again. Sven Bridges was directing and he thought it was Zsa Zsa so he put me in another scene with some really hot, young newcomer who doesn't even have a stage name yet."

"Still wouldn't work?" Tony nodded. "Same here," Eddie said.

Tony drank his drink in one gulp and offered the empty glass to the barmaid, "Doc says it's done. Something about not enough blood is able to go into my unit. The irony. The very thing that made me my fortune has gone and quit on me. He said a reduction might help, some. It would allow me to have normal sex again."

"Oh, Tony, I'm so sorry for you. Really, that fuckin' sucks."

"Don't feel sorry for me, man, you're in the same boat."

"But I'm not," Eddie replied.

"Bullshit. They kicked you to the curb, too, after your dork took a powder."

"My dork works fine. It just works when it wants to."

Tony motioned to the bartender to bring them both a round by swirling his finger over their drinks, "Like here today, gone tomorrow? That sort of thing?"

"No. It's a psychological thing. I can get intimate with a lady but the minute she puts any pressure on me - - like, 'harder' or 'deeper' - - I lose it. I can't handle doing it under pressure. And then sometimes, when I'm in the middle of it, I just lose feeling and I go limp."

"So, you can be cured? Like through a shrink, or something."

Eddie looked at Tony through the yellowed mirror across the room, "I've thought about it, but I'm not really interested in the biz anymore."

As the barmaid brought the drinks, the front door opened with its bright intrusion. The drunks at the bar turned to see who was coming in. Eddie and Tony did, also. Since their eyes were still adjusting, they could only hear the clicking of high heels on the dirty tile floor. A woman, in her late twenties or early thirties came through the smoke and into the cone of illumination emanating from a recessed lamp in the ceiling above the farthest corner of the bar. The barmaid turned her back to Eddie and Tony to wait on the newcomer.

"I bet that old broad was a hell of a lay in her day," Tony said.

"As long as she kept her mouth shut, I bet she's a good lay now, at least for me. And she can't be that old. What? Around forty?"

"She reminds me of the broads from the 'Golden Years,' like Nina and Selena and all those other chicks with one name that still do the dance tour for peanuts or, after they found God, write books about how awful the biz was to them."

"No, she reminds me of someone who's spent too many days on the back of a Harley." Eddie said as he turned his head to look at the woman who had just come in. She was tall, blonde and made up like she was about to go to a five-star restaurant. She wore a low-cut gold sequin dress that revealed ample cleavage. The woman took her drink from the bar and walked over to the nearest patron, a man in his late forties. She set her drink down next to him and took a seat. Within seconds, she had her lips to his ear. The glum look he had worn since Eddie and Tony had arrived turned into a look of thrill and surprise. She picked up her drink again and moved to the next patron, a thirty-something guy wearing some kind of uniform jumpsuit. She did the same to him and his reaction was like that of the first man.

"What do you think is going on here?" Eddie asked.

Tony took his gaze from the woman, "Hooker?"

"If she's a hooker, it looks like she's giving it away."

The woman worked her way to each patron down the bar until she came to Tony. She put her face close to him and nuzzled her nose in his ear and murmured something Eddie couldn't quite hear. She stepped away from Tony and said, "Him too. The more the merrier," and walked out the back door.

"What's going on?" Eddie asked.

"She says she wants to blow every guy in the place."

"Why?"

"No reason. I guess she's some kind of freak. Probably having some kind of breakdown, or something." Tony lit a cigarette, "You wanna take her up on it?"

Eddie looked into his lap and back at Tony, "You know, I'm not sure if I could."

"I thought it was the pressure," Tony asked.

"I simplified it. It's not just the pressure, it's just . . . Well, it's just hard to explain. It just works when it wants to, that's all."

Each man that was sitting at the bar filed out, one by one.

"What the fuck is going on here?" the barmaid squawked. "Where the hell are you guys going?"

The thirty-something guy said, "We'll be right back, Cheri. Keep the tabs open. This won't take long."

The men filed past, behind Eddie and Tony and, almost as if she were following some kind of magnetic pull, the barmaid came toward them, "What the fuck is happening here?"

Eddie spoke first, "It looks like the customers are getting the tips today."

"That's a matter of perspective," Tony interjected. "Could we get another round? And make mine a double this time."

The barmaid gave them a blank stare, her face showing a total incomprehension of what they were trying to say, made their drinks and brought them. As she set them down, she asked, "Really, what's going on?"

Tony began to say something but Eddie wedged his own words in quicker, "That girl there offered every guy in the place a blowjob."

The barmaid's eyes widened, "What!"

"That's right," Tony said.

"So why aren't you guys out there?" the barmaid asked.

"We'd rather drink," Eddie said.

"Besides," Tony added, "between the two of us, we've laid enough pipe to make the Alaskans envious."

The barmaid looked at them sideways and turned to wash some glasses, "Yeah, right."

"Don't you know who we are?" Tony asked.

"We're nobody, Tony," Eddie said.

"So who the fuck are you supposed to be?" the barmaid asked.

"Nobody, just nobody," Eddie said.

Tony stood up off of his stool, "Fuck that! We are somebody . . . or, maybe we used to be. But damn, dude, we were champions! It's not like we could do what we did because we were just average guys. We could make a couple slabs of flesh turn into rock-hard cocks at will. We could make erections at command. We got paid to screw beautiful women who could walk into a bar and offer to blow every guy in the place without conscience, like her." Tony motioned toward the back door and shook his head, "No, we're not nobodies."

The barmaid looked at both of them. She started to go back to the glasses, hesitated and went back to them and put her elbows on the bar in front of them, revealing cleavage that had seen too much sun. "Really?"

Tony leaned toward her, "Ever see 'Hookers From Mars'?"

"No."

"What about 'The XXX Files'?"

"Are you talking about movies?"

"Yeah, porn movies, ya know?"

Eddie sucked down half of his Heineken and set the bottle down a little too hard, "C'mon! With titles like that - - The triple x-files? - - what other kind of movies could they be?"

"You guys are porn stars?"

Tony leveled a stony stare at Eddie, "Yeah."

"We used to be," Eddie said. Tony let out a hard breath and faced his drink.

The barmaid leaned in closer, deepening the creases in her breasts, "Really? We don't get many celebrities in here. Are you guys for real?"

Eddie started with a partial "No" but Tony interrupted, "Yeah. And we were good. Not like Dan, um, Eddie, here and I worked together much, but I've seen him work and, shit, we were at the top of our game not too long ago. What's going on outside, in the alley, is just something that me and him saw every day. The difference is that there's not lights, a camera up your ass or a director yelling out what position you need to be in next."

Eddie got up, "I gotta take a leak." He walked toward the back door, paused, and turned into the men's room. He stood in his stall, unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis. He looked down at it and remembered when a situation, such as the one that was currently occurring in the alley, would've made it at least semi-erect. As he urinated, he read the graffiti in the stall: "For a great blowjob call 555-9676 Ask for Candy" "I fucked your wife" and on the condom machine next to the stall: "don't buy this gum it tastes like rubber." It was all the same shit he had read in every dive he'd ever been in. He shook himself off, tucked his member back down his left thigh, and went back out to the bar.

As soon as he sat down, the back door opened and let intruding light in again, The older man that Eddie had first seen, when he came in, walked in with a smug look on his face. The man took his place. Another man came in, and a few minutes later, another. As each patron came in, the barmaid tended to each one, pouring each a drink, if they needed one, or emptying an ashtray. Each man that had left, came in and didn't say a word, but they still had the same look on their face. Finally, the last of the men they saw leave came in.

"You guys need another?" the barmaid asked.

"Sure," Eddie said.

The back door opened again and all the faces in the bar turned to look to see who was coming in, as if they didn't know. The woman in the sequined dress came in. Her hair was speckled with what looked like stringy pearls and her cheeks and breasts shined as if they were wet. "Yeah! That's what I needed!" She said as she sauntered up to the bar, "Bartender, I need a Stoli and grapefruit!" The men at the bar simultaneously said that they'd buy her one.

The barmaid was still at the opposite side of the bar, "I ain't serving you."

Complaints rippled through the bar. The barmaid turned to the men and said, "Look at her. She's disgusting!" She turned to the woman, "Get the hell out of here and don't drip any of that shit on the floor!" She was heading back to Eddie and Tony talking to nobody, "What would make anyone do something like that?"

"In my experience," Tony said, "Some girls just like to be treated like that."

"No," Eddie said. "Not that one. She was making a point." He looked at the barmaid, "Can I get my tab?"

"I got it," Tony said. "You takin' off?"

"Yeah, it's getting late and I better get home."

"Late? It's only three o'clock."

"Yeah, but I've got a pretty good buzz on and I don't want to drive in rush-hour traffic all fucked up." Eddie shook Tony's hand, "Thanks for the drinks, man. You take it easy." Tony smiled and nodded.

As Eddie was walking away, he heard Tony saying to the barmaid, "So, I'm Tony Touide."

"As in T-W-O? Or as in T-O-O?" She said.

Eddie didn't have to hear the reply. He had heard it from girls he'd worked with: To-ooh-oooh Wide. He stepped out into the Los Angeles sun and walked toward his car. He turned the corner and saw the woman squatting behind the door of a Lincoln Continental the color of her sequins, retching. He stopped to say something to the woman, but got into his car instead. There was nothing he could say.