I dredge up another story, “555.” This is from my collection, Fake House (2000). It begins in McGlinchey’s, the cheapest bar in Center City, Philadelphia. After discovering it in 1982, I did just about everything in that stale aired joint where time stood still. By design, its one clock had barely legible hands, so it’s easier to forget you’d been pickled inside for half a day or lifetime.
Anxious fools, we witnessed each other at our saddest, cutest and most desperate moments. It is, again, last call, so the lights must go on to expose, in full nakedness, enormous cockroaches who are almost too embarrassed to move.
I didn’t start out as a writer but painter. Since I had to maintain a studio to do that, I was head locked and booby squished to Philadelphia. It became my turf. I got to know Philly not just through various jobs, as a housepainter, house cleaner, window washer, art installer and, very briefly, jive professor, but by roaming all over it.
Though “555” deals with many themes common to my writing, such as displacement, sham intimacy or language as shield and weapon, etc., its texture is, I hope, quintessentially Philly, but maybe its insecure harshness is all mine.
The Fergie in the story is Fergie Carrey, an Irish immigrant who arrived in Houston with just $500. Leaving grubby McGlinchey’s, Fergie opened Fergie’s Pub, Monk’s Café, The Fairview then The Goat Rittenhouse, all iconic by now. Fergie’s been annointed Philly’s Pub Kingpin and even Philly’s Unofficial Mayor.
************************************************************
The pack of 555 was a sure giveaway.
“Give that guy a shot on me, Fergie,” I said, gesturing toward the scowling man sitting by the cash register, a pack of 555 in front of him. It was a Saturday afternoon, in the summer, and most of the ten people sitting at the bar had their faces tilted toward the TV. Lenny Dykstra, going against Maddux, was working the count to 2 and 2. There was no score in the third. The bases were empty.
In fifteen years of going to McGlinchey’s, this was only the third or fourth time I had seen a Vietnamese there. Koreans and Chinese, yes, but almost never a Vietnamese. I walked down the length of the bar and sat next to him. I began, in Vietnamese: “I’m Bui.”
“I’m Thanh.”
“First time here?”
“Yeah.”
“The drinks are cheap in this place.”
“It’s not an issue,” the man replied, somewhat oddly. He was about forty-five, brown-skinned, sturdy-looking, with a perpetual squint in his eyes, betraying a catatonic form of concentration.
“Want a shot?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“What do you drink?”
“It makes no difference.”
“What was that you just had?” I pointed to the empty shot glass in front of him.
“I don’t know.”
“Then how did you order it?”
“I pointed to that old guy across the bar and said: ‘Shame!’ ”
“Two Jamesons, Fergie.”
Thanh looked at me, squinting. “How long have you been in America?”
“Since I was eleven,” I said, “since 1975. How about you?”
“Seven months.”
“Seven months!”
“Look,” he opened his mouth wide, “I got no front teeth.”
And he really didn’t.
“What happened?”
“Prison.”
“They rotted?”
“No, punched out!”
“V.C.?”
“V.C.”
I felt elation, then shame. To chase this feeling away, I offered, “Two more shots?”
“I’ll buy this time,” Thanh countered. “Two more, Fergie.”
I thought of a man I had met once who, after the war, was imprisoned for thirteen months in a tiny underground cubicle. He used the cotton lining from his flak jacket to wipe his ass. When Fergie came back, Thanh gave him a five-dollar tip.
“That’s too much,” I whispered as the bartender walked away.
“Money is not an issue when I’m out partying,” Thanh sternly said. He snuffed out his cigarette, then lit up another 555. He handed me a dollar. “Could you put music on the jukebox?”
“Any preference?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I went to the jukebox and punched in Nina Simone, Patsy Cline, Sam Cooke, and Dylan, bypassing the grunge. When I came back, my friend said, “I came to town today to fuck a whore.”
“What?”
“Fuck a whore in Chinatown.”
“Oh.”
“There’s a massage parlor at Eleventh and Arch. You pay forty dollars for a massage, then twenty dollars for a blow job, or fifty dollars for a lube job.”
“A what?”
“A lube job. You’ve been away from Vietnam too long.”
I had once paid a red-headed girl in Washington. “So how was it today?”
“I didn’t fuck her. The girl I picked was Vietnamese, but I didn’t know it at first.”
“The girls are usually not Vietnamese?”
“No, they are all Koreans. Some of them are Chinese, but never a Vietnamese.
“I’ve been going there every other payday—once a month, for about five months. The girls there are not so pretty, but they are pleasant, and the place is clean.”
*
The place is clean and the girls are pleasant. You find it by word of mouth. It is on a second and third floor, over a travel agency with posters of Hong Kong, Seoul, and Ho Chi Minh City in the plate-glass window. Next door is a Cantonese restaurant serving dim sum on Sundays. At street level, above a dirty glass door, is a tiny red sign with a single Chinese character for Gym. There is nothing to see beyond this glass door but the green-carpeted stairway. A surveillance camera browbeats you from its stanchion. You ring the doorbell, wait for the Korean bouncer to buzz you in.
Thanh sat on the green couch, fidgeting with his complimentary midget-size can of Coke. It was noon outside, but inside, with the windows painted over, it was always evening. Three nearly naked girls, returning from their assignments upstairs, were arrayed on a row of folding chairs against the opposite wall. One of them had to stifle yawns. Up all night, they were waiting for another hour so that they could go home. The burly Korean bouncer, with a quarter in his left ear, chewing on a toothpick, was sitting at his desk meticulously cleaning a .22. Thanh was not satisfied with the current selection, and neither were the other two customers. On the couch with Thanh was a cook from Ho Sai Gai, in his white uniform, yellowed by old grease. To his right was a baby-faced guy, not bad looking, about twenty-two, sitting on an easy chair. He didn’t lean back but was hunched forward, with his forearms resting on his thighs. He was sniffling and wiping his nose periodically with the back of a hand. He stank of beer. Why, Thanh thought, would a kid like this go to a whorehouse and pay almost a hundred bucks to get laid? Can’t he find a girlfriend? A new girl entered the room: short, small-breasted, with a cheery, innocent face, wearing a green silk blouse. She smiled. As the cook and the baby-faced guy hesitated, Thanh stood up, nodded at the girl, and walked to the desk. He forked over his forty dollars, took his sneakers off, and followed her upstairs. She led him down a corridor, stopping at a linen closet to pick up a white towel. The fact that these transactions were often carried out with little or no conversation suited him perfectly. He never picked the same girl twice. The idea of fucking a complete stranger appealed to him morally. No dissimulation—that’s what he liked about it—only intimacy.
The room had a queen-sized bed and a chair, to put your clothes on. It was lit by a single red bulb. There was a shower stall, but no toilet. Thanh promptly took his T-shirt off, stepped out of his jeans, and walked into the shower. The girl stuck a hand under the jets of hot water, fidgeting with the knobs. It was a bit too hot, but he said nothing. Still in her blouse and panties, she stood to the side and ran a new bar of soap all over his wet body. Then she rubbed him with a big sponge, lingering for a long time about his privates. Although her movements were efficient and perfunctory, like a man washing his car, or a mother her child, he was genuinely touched by this attention. He watched her small, bent figure, and thought of an incident from the night before: Someone had thrown an egg at him from a passing car. It landed at his feet, spattering his sneakers with yolk. He saw a blond girl in the passenger’s window. She was yelling something.
The water was turned off and she dried him with the towel. She held his hand and walked him to the bed. “I must sleep,” she said, “I’ve been up all night. I must sleep for five minutes, then we can fuck.”
She lay down on her stomach, closed her eyes, her face turned away from him. Thanh, erect, lay next to her. He wanted to sniff her hair but dared not. He stared at her white panties, pink in that light, for a moment before deciding to peel them off. She yanked them back on. “My ass is cold!”
“Du Me!” he cursed.
The girl turned around, frowning. “You’re Vietnamese!” she said in Vietnamese.
“And so are you.”
He grabbed the towel to cover his prick, which had suddenly gone limp.
“What’s your name, Brother?”
“Thanh.”
“Nice to meet you, Brother Thanh.”
“And your name?”
“Huong.”
“Your real name?”
“That is my real name.”
They laughed. Her face brightened up.
“How old are you, Huong?”
“Why should I tell you?”
Huong looked about seventeen. Thanh said, “Are you in school?”
Huong nodded.
“What are you doing in a place like this?”
“What do you think?”
“You should be home studying.”
Huong stared at Thanh, expressionless. In two quick motions she pulled her blouse and panties off. “Let’s get this over with,” she said. “I’ve got to go home.”
Thanh did not move, the white towel still covering his prick. “What do you study at school?”
Huong, becoming irritated, said, “Five more minutes and I’m going back downstairs.”
“I don’t want to, uh, fuck anymore,” Thanh said, “but I’ll pay you for your time.”
Huong cheered up. “I study history, biology, English, and French.”
“Conjugate the verb être for me.”
“You must think I’m stupid.”
“I’ll give you fifty more bucks if you can conjugate être for me.”
Huong’s lips were pressed together in consternation. She thought it over, then said, “I’ll conjugate être if you promise never to come here on the weekend again.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll never want to see you again.”
“It’s a deal.”
“Je suis,” Huong blurted, with vehemence, accenting each syllable, “Tu es. Il est. Elle est. Nous sommes. Vous êtes. Ils sont. Elles sont.”
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