(s2) prologue
February, 2022, Midtown. Out the Uber I go. Feet, pavement, feet, pavement. The club is Nebula, the occasion is ‘Umm... 'research...”’ The outfit is the usual, I scooped around my closet's back-corner banish pile to find it, again. I make it to the sidewalk and balance-beam on the curb towards the club’s entrance, bypassing all the people in the queue. It's been months since I've applied winged eyeliner, I hope I didn't draw it all wobbly an⏤
‘Wow, gorgeous, much?’
Ok, cool, this thing still works. I give my admirer from the queue a demure lil’ ‘thanks’ wave without breaking pace. Not today, Wall. But, my man, my brother in Dionysus. Gonna have’ta do better than that. Just earlier today, I was walking through Washington Square Park, when:
'Oh, so you go to the Supermodel School for the Uncannily Beautiful?'
What a line! And I didn't even have makeup on. Jack Black returns with the much-anticipated follow-up to School of Rock—‘Cello, you got 'a bitch!’ Dude was cool, though, chatted a bit, he asked for my autograph, not innuendo, thankfully. Maybe he just does that, because. Some guys ask to snap pics of my feet, some collect Jane Hancocks, and again, not innuendo, thankfully.
I pass by the club’s entrance. Hi, little velvet rope. Nice to see you again. Reaffirm me my superficial worth, will you, just this one more time. It's awfully reassuring for there to exist such a touchstone so physical, so binary, for this express purpose. One doesn't have to get their metaphysical hands dirty, that way. My hands look like this, so hers can look like this. As I always say, a superficial value judgment a day keeps the inner beauty thinkpieces away.
On the opposite side, girls and promoters don't really line up so much as Fall of Saigon up. The orderly queue of capital; the unruly snarl of labor. Finding promoters you don't know in the thick of this cattle call is tricky business. Their individual appearances vary greatly, thus their collective heterogeneity overstimulates survey:
...Not you, not you, and certainly no⏤wait, yes, wait, no, for sure no⏤not you, not… Hmm, did I screenshot this guy's Insta, yes, I did, but wtf, he's nowhere to be found in his own insta, it's like, all hustleporn entrepreneur spam, not helpful, wow, how on earth am I suppo⏤oh, I'll just dm him, I'm like, super distinctive, I stand out in a crowd…
…But I don't hit send on that last part but I see the other messages turn to 'seen' almost immediately, but no 💬, why, urghrrhhmm. I stuff my phone back into my coat pocket, why can't they just make this whole thing ea⏤Wait! You again, didn't I already pass you? And oh god, and I made eye contact with you again, the intrusive are-you-who-I'm-looking-for kind, but phew, because he didn't noti⏤oh wait, oh fuck, now he's giving me that hello-is-it-me-you're-looking-for? look in return, sorry, sorry not you, wait, you're looking like you recognize me, do you recogni⏤
'Partygirl?'
Finally. Still slumming it like this. Perhaps I'll fall in with an outfit of promoters I actually like, run with them, wolfpack-style. Pfft. Like I have the patience for that, for this strange little world.
'Oh! Hey, yeah, that's me! Glad I found you...'
I walk over to stand beside him. Me and Mr. Hustlepornentreprenuerspam are bringing up the rear, behind about a half-dozen other girls, a short guy in a black puffer seems to be cat-herding us all towards the entrance.
'Me too,' he says. 'Cold out, huh?'
'Yeah, really... Never been out when it was this freezing before... And you’re out in this, what, every night?'
'It's a job, hah, I have to... But it shouldn't be long, everyone's already here... Lots of people trying to get in tonight, supposed to be a few celebs here... How did you find me?'
'Oh, I'm not sure… I guess I just was clicking through Nebula's tagged posts, I think?'
'Hah, the power of social media. And you're by yourself tonight? No friends? Where are you from? You're like, kinda distinctive in how you look… very distinctive... like, are you from Euro⏤'
People, I am Texan! As far back as the 1800s! Eastern Europe is very far away from there! Do I need to deck myself out in Stetsons and Ariats for you to get the picture? I want it to be as clear as the waters of the Brazos aren't that I remember the fucking Alamo. That, if you so much as mouth 'ₜₕₑ ˢᵗᵃʳˢ ₐₜ ⁿᶦᵍʰᵗ ₐᵣₑ ᵦᵢ𝓰 ₐₙ𝒹 ᵦᵣᵢᵍʰᵗ' in my vicinity, you will activate me like a sleeper agent and your eardrums will be shattered by the loudest CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP you've ever heard.
'TEXAS! I'M⏤sorry. I'm from the South... south part of Texas. Not... anywhere else…’
'Oh... Huh. I was gonna say, you look , like, European... German, maybe. I have a few people from Germany joining us later, actually, which is why⏤'
'Oh godda⏤sorry, yeah, I know, I've met, uh, my share of fellow, um, Germans on this... circuit... I'm sure your people are cool though! Give them my deutschregards…'
We reach the head of the queue. I hand the lead bouncer my driver's license, I'm assuming he's the lead bouncer, he’s the tallest, but also because as ID checker he's the club’s tightrope-walker, entrusted with the solemn responsibility of maintaining a population equilibrium where most girls only appear to be ludicrously nymphetish⏤that is, above the legal drinking age⏤but enough are actually nymphs⏤below the legal drinking age, or worse⏤to introduce just enough uncertainty such that any one girl exists within a nymph-not-nymph superimposition. And it’s rude to collapse that superimposition.
Lead Bouncer is still not through wringing whatever data he needs out of my driver's license. He's fiddling with some weird cyborgish card reader appendage that's strapped to his left hand, it won't seem to lessen the vice grip its jaws have on my card. He presses firmly in several places on the gadget's hideous-on-the-eyes-blue backlit LCD screen, to no avail. I do my part and throw some worthless chatter onto this fulminating bonfire of stasis:
'Technology, eh? I think there's a meme that covers, like, this exact scenario... ...Okay, okay, you got me, I'm on the no-fly list, I'm a conscientious objector of ETOPS. Can I at least have my ID back?... ...Ooh, does that thing shred fake IDs on the spot? Man, that'd be so cool... You could be all cold and look the gal straight in the eye as you dump whole the whole little bird's nest into her purse, then give her the boot...'
Lead Bouncer’s Power Glove is still glitching out. Enterprise technology, everybody. Hmm. I shuffle a half-step over to another bouncer standing nearby. He’s the guy who unclips, then re-clips the velvet rope, patron after patron, promoter after promoter, girl after girl, night after night. But now, his cadence arrested, he's holding the end of the rope as close as possible to its docking point on the opposite pole, looking slightly pained. He's even using his thumb to hold open the little clip doohickey at the end of the rope, as if to minimize potential seepage of some æther of exclusivity that’s escaping through the crack.
I wave my vaccination card in his face, to offer him any kind of distraction. He kinda subtle-guy-nod acknolwedges it without looking up from his rope. Last month's Omicron wave seems to have sapped any residual due diligence from the previous year. I hear a curt mh-HM escape from the depths of Cyborg Lead Bouncer's throat, and turn just in time to catch a glimpse of the little device's LCD turn green, then hideous-searing-blue once more. It spits out my card, at last, and in a single practiced motion he launches me onwards with a grunt-cardreturn-wave.
Ushering, more ushering, I pinball-bounce among six or eight other bouncer-looking-guys in dark suits not doing much of anything until I find one who seems interested in weapons-searching my pearlescent envelope clutch, who nods in ascent to no one in particular before I can even fiddle the clasp open. I mull around for a few seconds; I seem to have lost my promoter, and the rest of my group. They’re probably just inside. No more hoops to jump through? Okay, I hustle in, one foot hovering over the threshold, when practically all of the bouncers erupt in unison:
‘Tall girl!’
'ₜₐₗₗ gᵢᵣₗ!'
,¡lɹıɓ llɐ⊥,
'𝕿𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖌𝖎𝖗𝖑!'
'tคll ງirl!'
'ᖶᗩᒪᒪ ᘜᓰᖇᒪ!'
'̸̭̓T̴͖̈͊â̴̟̕l̵̗͕̎͝l̸̘̮͋͋ ̶̫̣͛g̶͎̀̅í̷͇͔̒r̷̛͎̜l̵͎̜̆!̶͉̑̂'̷̜͆͜
'🆃🅰🅻🅻 🅶🅸🆁🅻!'
Okay, goodness gracious! They must be referring to me. What did I do wrong? They probably discovered this blog. That’s what the holdup was with Cyborg Lead Bouncer’s little go-go gadget glove, it was having a stroke reading through it all. Some klaxon is no doubt blaring right this minute at TAO H.Q., ‘We got her!’ I’m savoring my last few minutes of fresh air before I’m chucked into an Escalade-cum-paddywagon and locked up in their drunk tank for the terminally uncool, where inmates are waterboarded with nonstop Internal Family Systems until they brainwash you into dumping just oodles of unconditional love on your hurting inner child who was relentless bullied all throughout grade school, and you reemerge all squinty into the blinding daylight of society equipped with a newfound sense of confidence and self-possession, and⏤
‘You forgot your stamp!’
It’s the second bouncer, Mr. Airlock. He jerks his neck at another black-suited bouncer, who whips out a little black-and-gray plastic contraption from his coat pocket.
'Oh! Sorry... Umm, one sec!'
I hustle over to him and hold out my wrist. SCHLAMP. Ow! I don’t even see a stamp, either it’s invisible ink, or they simply rely on the welt to last all night long. I trot over to the door again, tapping a toe over the threshold, looking back at all the bouncers. No reaction. I rear back with all the physical comedy I can muster, pause a beat. Still no reaction. Fully expecting I’m about to brickwall myself like Wile. E. Coyote, I leap into the dark interior of Nebula’s foyer.
—