I saw the Walkman first: a bright yellow with SONY across the front that connected to the waistband of its owner’s acid-washed jeans.
The man behind the jeans went by the name of Rick.
I knew this because the letters of his name were tattooed on the fingers of his left hand, which hung forlorn over his penis, his thumb tucked neatly into the belt loop above his left pocket. His moustache was dark but the whisker tips were stained the same shit brown that often gathers in the butt of a Marlboro filter.
If a mullet is a business in the front and a party in the back, then Rick’s business was selling hand-rolled cigarettes from the back of an ’86 Chevy pickup, and his party involved overdoses of AC/DC and Labatt 50.
His black T-shirt bore the image of a mystic wolf howling at the moon — tucked in, no belt.
“When they fit this good,” he’d say in front of the mirror, “who the hell needs a belt?”
The bulge of his package was obscenely obvious and it caused me to shift uncomfortably in my seat. His loose black foam earpieces were held in place awkwardly by a thin metal band, which also marked the divide between his haircut’s business and party. I could hear Def Leppard pouring from his earphones as he passed me in the bus’s narrow aisle.
He wore no socks and pulled the two Velcro strips extra tight across his black nylon running shoes. Rick absent-mindedly toyed with his moustache to “Pour Some Sugar on Me” as he rode.
His eyes glazed over as he lost himself in the music and the memories of the woman he had been so enthralled with the previous night.
Her name was Crystal, Crystal Chandelier. With thirty-four years’ experience, she could work a pole like few dancers of her generation. She moved like gelatin on a plastic spoon, her stretch marks and sagging appendages lost in the shadows of the Tuesday afternoon lunch crowd.
After the show he handed her a bent cigarette and kissed her on the cheek.
“Great show, Mom.”
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