RichardDaub.com, November 2023

In the cab of the Carson Home Improvement dump truck rumbling through Farmingdale, behind the wheel, 38-year-old Carmine, foreman of the cleanup crew, and, on the passenger side, his summer hire, a strapping sixteen-year-old named Carl.

“Hey, I know where we are,” Carmine said. “The Crystal Café, the strip joint, is over here. I used to go there in my drinking days.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was back in ’81, ’82, ’83. Lots of hot broads there back then. I can’t believe it’s still open. Ever been to a strip joint?”

“Nah. I wouldn’t even try it with my shitty fake ID.”

“Wanna try right now?”

“What?”

“We don’t have any more jobs today. All we gotta do is go to the dump and then go back to the shed, so we have a little time to kill.”

“I don’t even have ID on me except my real license.”

“I bet they don’t even card you.”

“Really?”

“It’s three in the afternoon. The place will be dead, and there probably won’t even be a bouncer at the door. During the day they’re usually sleeping in the back and they only get bothered if there’s trouble, so whoever’s bartending will decide whether to card you. And both of us are covered with dust and plaster. They ain’t gonna card me, and you look way older than sixteen, especially all dirty like that. Hey, I know what we can do. We can go to the dump and get you a little dirtier so you’ll look even older. We’ll walk in there like real working men.”

“Are you okay going to a bar?”

“Sure. I’ll just get a club soda and lemon, and I’ll buy you a beer. And if they ask for your ID, we’ll say you left it in the truck and we’ll just get out of there.”

At the dump, Carmine instructed Carl to stand near the spot where the load would be dumped, then went into the cab and pressed the button. The bed rose and the plaster and broken wood and sheetrock and old sinks and toilets they’d collected during the day slid out, creating a sizable dust cloud that enveloped the lad.

“Now spit on your hands and rub your face and hair and arms,” Carmine said.

Carl did so, smearing the gray dust on his exposed skin, then wiping his hands on his jeans and Led Zeppelin “Swan Song” t-shirt.

“Now you look like you’re at least thirty,” Carmine said. “Thirty and dirty. Fuckin’ filthy. Now let’s go to the strip bar.”

The dump truck had large Carson Home Improvement signs on both sides, so Carmine parked behind the building, out of sight from the traffic on Conklin Street.

Caked with debris, Carl, butterflies fluttering, followed his boss around the building and through the front door into the secret world of adult lust, an experience that, until now, had been limited to magazines, videos, and sneak-peaks behind the curtain of the XXX section at the video store. But no images of women he’d seen on VHS box covers, nor in film, nor on the pages of Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler could compare to seeing the real thing mere feet away, a woman bearing some resemblance to Susanna Hoffs, lead singer of The Bangles, wearing only a neon orange bikini bottom, her long, teased-up, curly brown hair hanging down the front to her large bare breasts, dancing for the only customer in the place seated at the bar, her big brown eyes turning towards the newcomers before turning back to the man.

Dazed, Carl followed Carmine to the bar, behind which awaited an attractive woman with blond hair also with an amazing body covered only by neon green tube top and bikini bottom. He thought for sure she would ask for his ID, but Carmine had pulled from his front pocket the large wad of cash he always carried around and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, greeting her with a friendly, “How we doin’?” and slapping the bill on the bar. Before she could respond, he was ordering a club soda and lemon and a bottle of Bud and telling her, “Don’t mind my buddy here. I told him I’d buy him a beer if he put in a hard day, and, as you can probably tell, he did a hell of a job today.”

The woman smiled and picked up the hundred and brought it to the cash register and Carmine subtly nudged Carl’s ribs with his elbow. Moments later she was back with their beverages and Carmine’s change, all singles and fives.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Carmine said, taking a five from the pile and sliding it towards her, a generous tip for a three-dollar beer and two-dollar club soda. She smiled and thanked him, then he took two more fives from the pile and quietly said something to her that Carl couldn’t hear over the music and she nodded, then took those bills and dropped them on the stage with the several singles that were already there.

The Aerosmith song ended and the place became uncomfortably quiet. The bartender said something to the dancer and they both looked in his direction, then the bartender put in a new CD. Seconds later, a John Bonham drumbeat/cymbal crash exploded into the room, followed by the chromatic progression of Led Zeppelin’s exotic masterpiece, the trancelike “Kashmir”.

The dancer slid off the stage and went around the bar, smiling at Carl.

Carmine leaned over and said in his ear, “You know the rules, no touching.”

Carl was aware of this rule and remained stone still as she swayed to the music, her bare breasts dangerously close.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Carl,” he mumbled.

“Hi, Carl. I’m Angel.”

“Hi.”

She swayed before him, her Susanna Hoffs eyes encouraging him to look at her breasts, then turned around so he could admire her perfectly curved bottom. Carmine kept sliding over bills for him to add to the tip pile, which, by the time the near ten-minute song started fading to silence, was up to twenty-seven dollars.

When it was over, Carmine applauded and whistled and Carl clapped too but stopped because of the construction dust clouding from his hands.

“It was nice meeting you, Carl,” Angel said, allowing him one last closeup of her breasts before gathering the pile of cash from the bar and collecting the money and her other belongings from the stage.

The bartender put on at a lower volume Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls”.

“You alright in there, kid?” Carmine asked.

“That was the greatest thing ever,” Carl said. “My loser father would never do anything like this for me.”

“Well, most fathers wouldn’t take their sixteen-year-old sons to strip joints and buy them beers. I’m more of a lesson of what not to be.”

“My father’s already a lesson like that.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have more than one. Ultimately, you’re gonna have to make your own mistakes and learn your own lessons the hard way, but, along the way, just keep me and your old man in mind. Trust me, kid, you don’t wanna turn out like us.” ▪