He said, “What money?”
I said, “The money you make from your job.”
He said, “I’m saving.”
I said, “For what?”
He said, “It’s a surprise.”
I said, “I hate surprises.”
He said, “You’re too young to hate surprises.”
I said, “All right, I like surprises, but I also like knowing.”
He said, “Well, you can’t have both.”
I said, “I can if you tell me and then I forget it.”
He said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you choose. You can have the surprise, or I can tell you what I’m saving for. It’s up to you.”
That was a killer. In the end, I decided to wait.
While I waited, Eddie let it slip that Dad was managing a strip club in Kings Cross called the Fleshpot. A strip joint? My dad? How could this happen? And as a manager? My dad? How could Eddie have convinced his shady connections to hire Dad for such a position? With responsibilities? My dad? I had to see it for myself.
One night I wound through the Cross, up side streets that were nothing more than long public urinals, past the drunken English tourists, a couple of glassy-eyed junkies, and a skinhead who looked weary of his own persona. As I entered the bar, a middle-aged hooker shouted something about sucking, her croaky voice lending the suggestion a nauseating picture of withered lips. A bouncer grabbed me by the shirt and squeezed the collar until I told him I was here to see my father. He let me in.
My first time in a strip club and I was visiting family.
It wasn’t what I imagined. The strippers were shaking their bodies, unenthused, bobbing up and down to repetitive dance music under glaring spotlights in front of leering muted men in suits. Sure, I felt elated to see so much smooth, pliable flesh in one place, but I wasn’t as aroused as I’d expected. In real life, almost naked women straddling poles just isn’t as sexy as you’d think.
I spotted Dad yelling into the phone behind the bar. As I walked over, he sent a frown to intercept me.
“What are you doing here, Jasper?”
“Just looking around.”
“Like what you see?”
“I’ve seen better.”
“In your dreams.”
“No, on video.”
“Well you can’t stay in here. You’re underage.”
“What do you actually do here?” I asked.
He showed me. It wasn’t easy. There was the running of the bar, and while there were naked women floating in front of it, it had to be run just like a regular bar. He chose the women too; they came and auditioned for him. As if he knew anything about dancing! Or women! And how could he stand it, all those supple sexual creatures bending and flaunting their haunting slopes and curves day in, day out? The life force is like a hot potato, and while impure thoughts may make you burn in hell for all eternity once you die, here in life what gets you baked and fried is your inability to act on them.
Of course, I don’t know everything. Maybe he indulged his lecherous fantasies. Maybe he fucked every dancer there. I can’t picture it, but then, what son could?
So working in this lovely den of sin was how he chose to support his family- me- and save. But for what? To help stave off my curiosity, Dad broke into his bank account to buy me a little present: four bloated fish in a grubby little tank. They were like goldfish, only black. They survived in our apartment just three days. Apparently they died from overfeeding. Apparently I overfed them. Apparently fish are terrible gluttons with absolutely no self-control who just don’t know when they’ve had enough and will stuff themselves to death with those innocuous little beige flakes imaginatively labeled “fish food.”
Dad didn’t join me in mourning their passing. He was too busy with his strippers. For a man who had spent the majority of his working life not working, he was really working himself to the bone. It turned out I had to wait more than a year to find out what he was saving for. Sometimes it drove me crazy wondering, but I can be tremendously patient when I think the reward might be worth the wait.
It wasn’t worth the wait. Really, it wasn’t.
I was thirteen when I came home one day to see my father holding up a large glossy photograph of an ear. This, he explained, was what he’d been saving for. An ear. A new ear to replace the one that had been scarred in the fire that consumed his town and family. He was going to a plastic surgeon to undeform himself. This is what we’d been sacrificing for? What a letdown. There’s nothing fun about a skin graft.
Dad spent one night in hospital. The pressure was on to buy flowers even though I knew he wouldn’t appreciate them. Flora always seemed to me a non sequitur of a present for someone in pain anyway (how about a flagon of morphine?), but I found a couple of huge sunflowers. He didn’t appreciate them. I didn’t care. The important thing was that the operation was a success. The doctor was very pleased, he said. That’s a tip for you: never bother asking after the patient; it’s a waste of time. The important thing is to discover how the doctor is feeling. And Dad’s was on top of the world.
I was there when the bandages came off. To tell you the truth, the anticipation had built to such a level I was sort of expecting something on a grander scale: a colossal ear that doubled as a bottle-opener, or a time-traveling ear picking up conversations from the past, or a universal ear hearing for everyone alive, or a Pandora’s ear, or an ear with a tiny red light that showed when it was recording. Basically, an ear to end all ears. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was just a regular ear.
“Speak into it,” Dad said. I moved around to the side of the bed and leaned into the new arrival.
“Hello. Testing. Testing. Two. Two. Two.”
“Good. It works,” he said.
When he was released from hospital, he ventured out in the world eager to catch a glimpse of himself. The world provided. Dad lost the ability to walk in a straight line. A to B was now always via the side mirrors on passing cars, shop windows, and stainless-steel kettles. When you obsess about your appearance, you notice just how many reflective surfaces exist in the cosmos.
One night he came to the doorway of my room and stood there, breathing loudly.
“Feel like playing around with my camera?”
“Are you making porn?”
“Why would I be making porn?”
“That’s between you and your biographer.”
“I just want you to get a few snaps of my ear, for the album.”
“The ear album?”
“Forget it.” Dad made a beeline for the hall.
“Wait.”
I felt bad for him. Dad didn’t seem able to recognize himself. The outside of him may have been more presentable, but the inside shrank down a size. I felt there was something ominous in all this, as if by adding on a new ear, he’d actually broken off a fundamental part of himself.
Even after the plastic surgery, he worked every day. Once again there was no money. Once again our lives were unchanged.
I said, “OK. What are you doing with the money now?”
He said, “I’m saving again.”
I said, “Saving for what?”
He said, “It’s a surprise.”
I said, “The last surprise sucked.”
He said, “This one you’ll like.”
I said, “It better be worth it.”
It wasn’t. It was a car. A slick red sports car. When I went outside to look at it, he was standing beside it, patting it as if it had just done a trick. Honestly, I couldn’t have been more shocked if he had blown the money on political donations. My dad? A sports car? Pure lunacy! It wasn’t just frivolous, it was meticulously frivolous. Was it a distraction? Was he announcing his dissolution? Was it a surrender or a conquest? Which part of him was this meant to fix? One thing was clear: he was breaking his own taboos.