Fell the Devil -- Part 2
They walked the white sand, four conquerors, Jeff their leader. From no higher than the second round Jeff found his game, on the hard courts of the Philippines, and blew through his first title—dropping only two sets in five matches and winning the grand prize of forty-four thousand dollars (2 million pesos). Now, the girls talked to them, undressed for them, licked lime and salt off each other’s tits for them, went home with them, kept them up all night for them. Jeff had just minted money he’d always imagined, and he was quick to spoil himself. They went to bars, barhopping from one to another, looking for the hottest girls they could and making them into an entourage. He was playing like he was a Don. “So much pussy and only one dick,” he said to Clay as the door girl, one who looked like she’d recently given birth but was still kind of pretty pulled a string connected to the doorknob of a big door. They walked into the front door, through a little passage, then the dark tube opened into a two-level main room. The girls, wearing hot pants and bikinis—both metallic silver—were lowered and raised from a platform. The whole spectacle had a lunar feel. There was a back stairway that led to a catwalk across from them with couches. This led to the Executive Room. Here, the girls were plentiful and they danced in front of a mirrored corner. They did a show, then a slow topless strip tease where one girl got on one round drinking table (with her platform boots), followed by a modeling show.
With a simple scoop of the hand, James called one Japanese-looking girl over. She was in the back, near the mirror. Directly in front the table dancer took her bikini off to show small firm tits. Her ass was incredible. She had a sarong, with a little fish on it, and her bikini top in her hand. She crawled through the air, crept like a crocodile in the Amazon, or dust particles in interstellar space, they watched her ass, James took the other girl under his arm and asked her what she’d like to drink.
Three waitresses flocked over and recorded a mango juice which came in a moment in a very small fluted glass with a bill rolled into a bamboo container about the size of a shot glass.
“You’re cute,” he said to her.
She smiled, and said, “you’re gwapo.” She took a small sip of mango juice that half emptied the glass. She looked at herself a moment in the mirror. Then she turned to him.
“You boom-boom?”
“Boom thing okay.”
“How about finish on the face?”
“Never tried but it’s okay.”
Clay helped the one on the table down. She had her bikini back on now and wrapped a sarong around her waist. It was black with a green luminescent fish covering her firm ass.
“That’s some fish,” he said to her.
He bought her a drink.
“James, you have a nice looking girl in front of you,” Clay said. Then he turned to Jeff. “Look at that perfect ass. “Have you ever seen an ass like that?”
“It’s a good ass. The best in the place,” Jeff said.
She shook it a moment, while turning to simultaneously smile at them with a pouty smile and big open eyes, then she stopped shaking, and seemed to think of something else. “That’s my sister,” she said, pointing to one of the dancers.
“Is she older than you or younger?” Jeff said.
“In the middle,” she said.
He laughed loud. “Did you hear that?” he asked Mark.
Mark nodded. “They just don’t listen.”
They were bargirls—dancers, waitresses, all on call, all able to go home for a small price paid to the bar.
“What’s bad is I understand.” He took a gulp of San Miguel beer. There are three sisters and she’s in the middle.”
At the table to the right Jeff had four girls with him. He sat back, arms around two, while two danced in front of him. He shot a smirk at Mark, “I told you it would be like a hip-hop video up in here.”
Mark smiled, but he was slightly worried about Jeff. He turned back to James, “Ask her how many sisters she has, don’t be so sure you understand.”
“Hey, that’s not what I meant,” James said to her. “I meant is she older than you or younger than you.”
“She smiled, “she’s older.”
“You have three sisters, right?”
“Nine.”
“So she’s five. Wow. Which are you?”
“Two younger than me.”
“Do they work here? Do they all have asses like you.”
“No work here. Too young.”
“You’re not too young, are you?” he squeezed her ass. “No cherry girl here.”
She leaned back into him, nuzzling her lips into his neck and whispering something.
Some days later, Clay and James with a few beers sloshing through their bodies and Mark beside them sober and nursing a cold, they found themselves sinking into this lifestyle. It was raining outside. Inside was dark. On TV were old music videos from the eighties. Over the sound system hip hop boomed. Mark wore his track jacked and a bandana.
“You’re all wet.”
“Yes I am. And I don’t like the way you’re looking at me, like I’m a beave or something.”
This ability to be loud and carefree was something new. It wasn’t prozac or paxil. It was culture, travel, experience, knowledge. As Mark’s eyes opened so did his capacity to extrovert.
Each of them had at least one girl every day. Sometimes one girl would spend the night, and then after she left in the morning another, who had scribbled her name and number on a cocktail napkin the previous night would substitute. It was an adult sandbox to mess around in.
As it got wet, however, the sand turned to sludge and held them at the ankles.
Jeff took it further than any of them. He couldn’t stop. One at night, another in the morning, pop into a daytime bar with a short stay room for a quickie. He was insatiable.
There is an old George Carlin joke: I never had a ten, but one night I had five twos.
One night Jeff went home with twenty-girls. He was finding the power of his money.
Mark watched somewhat pejoratively, but took part in it too. Not at Jeff-scale but every night, for seven nights, he had a different girl. Some nights two. He told them about Ana. This night, as he nursed his sore throat and swollen eyes, one taught him bits of Tagalog. He found himself turned away from her crying. It reminded him of Ana.
Mark had a fever. Traveling always gave him a little fever. There were bacteria from the different girls he had kissed, there were sexual diseases, urinary tract infections, there was the common cold floating around the entire globe, there were allergies, sinus infections, virus’ plural, flu, stomach parasites, salmonella poisoning, food poisoning, sulfuric water and so on causing a little fever before the great calamity struck. And these little fevers gave one the feeling of a dream-space—like it was all surreal, all going to vanish upon the instant of waking. That man, with the crooked teeth, how could he ever be real, on the beach, eyes silk-screened with sunlight? Is that a jet ski or a boat? All impossibility.
One felt ball hit with just enough topspin to clear the net and then dive back into the court at a crucial tiebreak gave him the access to this fever. How improbably it all is. But was it?
Now it was done. He would have it forever. They would have it forever. This trip was a success already. Now he had to get his life in order. They could go back. In fact, Mark knew Jeff and the others would leave soon. Ana wanted him back. He could go back. What was keeping him?
Marcelo was born in Argentina but came to New York when he was one and a half years old. Tennis was an important sport to his family, as was soccer. He played these two sports well while growing up and throughout high school. He learned tennis at four and maintained it through college. He was never dominant.
Now he looked like a praying mantis, his face was long and angular. He wore a mustache just like the insect. He was tall and he sort of loomed in his triangular way, like he was carrying an invisible load on his back.
Jeff was born outside of Tucson, Arizona. He played sports but was never that interested in tennis. His mother taught him to play and paid for some lessons with a real instructor but he never loved it as much as the other sports. In high school he started with baseball. He was a great athlete. He was the number three hitter on his team and he was a pitcher and shortstop. Then he joined a team with his town that competed nationally. His coach told him not to play high school baseball anymore because of schedule conflicts. Still wanting some sports in his school he joined the tennis team. One season later he was the best player, outplaying guys who were playing seriously their whole lives.
In fact, sports also meant a lot of partying and Jeff never learned how to say no. He was talented enough that he could get tanked at night and then go 4 for 5 the next day or serve out a match with an ace. Because of this, he learned the bad habit of indulgence.
Jeff, now far from home, walked the beach and held hands with this girl. He met her playing pool. She seemed to have very big ‘so-sos’ as they call titties and he wanted a taste. She wasn’t as giving as the other girls he had but somehow he stayed with her. Maybe it was a survival instinct—a self-preservation impulse. The world was crazy, many things gunning for you—there were people trying to get your money, diseases, accidents, tragedy, catastrophe, surprises, and maybe just maybe, he stayed with her just because he felt things, he, could get out of hand and get him hurt. He didn’t really know her, or trust her, yet there she was still in his arm.
He hadn’t hit a tennis ball in five days. It made him feel anxious. He’d established a wonderful harmony between ball, toss and racquet. Now he would have to re-adjust.
It was strange how on the court, ball in air, the world seemed to steady—wrist just there, just enough pressure from the pad of the bottom of the ring finger, the tendon of the forearm taut but not too taut, wrist pronated. Mark said to him again and again, “the court never moves. You move. And the ball does.” This logic unfolded onto the world. People remained essentially the same. It was the other things that moved. At least from the vantage point of the court.
(Read the end in Fell the Devil -- Part 3)
