Thomas leaned his chair-back up against the wall.
It was dark in the club, very dark. If it were any darker, he thought, he wouldn’t be able to see the beer bottle sitting on the table in front of him. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It wasn’t his nature to overindulge but for several weeks he’d been doing just that – drinking beer, eating jerk chicken and sleeping.
It was an easy trap to fall into when one had little else to do.
He recognized that his situation was due to a total lack of motivation on his part, and he accepted that.
“Reformation shall be my salvation!” he chuckled. Then, more seriously, he thought, I’ve got to pull myself up out of this rut. Cut back on the beer, maybe only have a quarter-chicken instead of a half.
The strip club – he would stop visiting it altogether, he decided.
At some point, he would have to start planning the trip back North. But that was for later, much later. His intentions were to put that voyage off until the end of April when it would be safe to venture north of the 45th parallel without the risk of frostbite. Thomas detested the cold.
The interior of the strip club was illuminated by three lights. Two pulsing, multi-coloured floods lit the ‘stage’, which was a low wooden box, painted black with a wobbly, smeared brass pole planted in the middle. A dim fluorescent bulb hung behind the bar, and that was it. Thomas knew that utilities in Jamaica were expensive, but the lack of lighting seemed excessively frugal. It made excursions to the men’s room interesting.
His thoughts turned back to personal reformation. It wouldn’t be difficult to break the strip club habit. He’d fallen into it, so he could just as easily fall right back out – he would just do it. And he would pay more attention to what he ate. As much as he enjoyed it, his daily dinner of jerk chicken was becoming monotonous.
Cutting back on the beer, however, that might present a problem. Shortly after arriving on the island he’d developed a taste for the local Red Stripe beer. Actually, he’d become enamoured with the brew the very day he arrived in Montego Bay. He loved its crisp taste, and the stubby little bottle fit in his hand perfectly.
Regardless of how difficult it might be he would make an effort to cut back on the beer. A month of lethargy and beer swilling was beginning to show; a bulge had starting to form around his middle. He reached down and pinched it. He’d always tried to stay in shape, and the extra weight made him uncomfortable. Worse still, he’d recently re-joined the ranks of the officially unattached. Maybe he would take up running again and just run the bulge off. He had to do something.
He thought it might be easier to embark on his personal journey of reformation if he left Montego Bay. Get away from its puerile attractions. Truth be told, MoBay was becoming a bore. Maybe he would go out to the country and find a place to stay that was close to a nice beach – do some swimming.
The previous month Thomas had completed a contract job delivering training and handing over an air traffic control display system that the company he worked for had installed in the airport control tower at Montego Bay. It had been a pretty good gig; the company had provided him with a car and had put him up in a nice apartment that was located in the hills overlooking the airport. The views from the balcony up there were awesome, especially at sunset.
That task accomplished, he’d found himself between jobs. So, thinking that it was too cold to go back home and that another, he’d decided to stay in Jamaica. And now that he was single again there really was no compelling reason for him to go back home; the decision to stay on the island had been an easy one. His only concern was that his townhouse back in Ottawa was now uninhabited. Eugenia, his ex-fiancée, had moved out. But a friend had said he would keep an eye on the place, so Thomas wasn’t losing any sleep over it.
It was hot, humid and smoky in the club and the music was cranked up to the ‘deafening’ detent on the dial. Two enormous banks of speakers bracketed the stage, each six feet high and just as wide. Temptations was not a roomy club by any measure. It was a cozy space and the wall of sound emanating from the speaker banks was physically overwhelming. To make matters even worse, it was Thomas’s opinion that the currently popular genre of Dance Hall/Gangsta music was not music at all, merely an irritating torrent of noise. Unfortunately his musical tastes were not shared by the club’s DJ, who played only Gangsta, loudly and exclusively.
“Yuh look bored Thomas.”
It was Tanisha. She’d crept up on him in the gloom and was leaning over to talk directly into his ear so as to be heard over the din of the speakers. She put her hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze and then nuzzled his ear lobe. “How yuh doin’ baby?” – these words transported on gentle puffs of hot, moist breath in his ear. It sent an instinctual quiver down his spine.
Tanisha was attired in her work clothes. Her outfit, teasingly revealed through a thin blue chiffon drape, consisted of white sequined bikini bottoms and a matching bustier. She filled her ensemble quite marvellously. Her patent leather, red platform dancing shoes jacked her up to well over six feet in height.
Thomas reached up and turned her ear close to his lips. “I’m doing okay, but you’re right, I am bored,” he said. Then, more for his benefit, “I need to make some changes.”
Tanisha and Thomas had established a symbiotic acquaintance over the preceding few weeks. She was one of the regulars at Temptations. She danced several times a week, depending on how much money she had, needed or wanted. Tanisha believed that Thomas had a great deal of money. He was somewhat embarrassed by the fact that he was unemployed so he’d said nothing to disbar her of her notions. Rich or not, Tanisha had managed to extract what amounted to a very large fistful of Jamaican currency from Thomas. He’d resist, but in his vulnerable state he would occasionally succumb to her flirtatious inducements in the wee hours of the morning after having consumed too many Red Stripes.
She’d dance for him, he’d pay her. For a few minutes he’d feel wanted; they both got what they needed.
Tanisha was a dusky exotic beauty. She was tall and very thin, had flawless chocolate skin, flashing white teeth and mysteriously dark eyes. She wore a stud in one of her nostrils. A gold ring pierced her right eyebrow. Thomas thought that Tanisha resembled a cheetah.
As attractive as Tanisha was, it was the way that she moved her body when she danced that made her irresistible. She’d raise her arms in the air, thrust her hips out, look down at Thomas and start moving her hips in tiny stop-and-go increments that were synchronized to the music. She called it her ‘Tic-Toc’. Once she had the Tic-Toc going she’d roll her belly in slowly undulating waves that flowed from her groin up to her sternum. When she did this the effect was completely mesmerizing, and Thomas found it impossible to take his eyes off of her.
Tanisha danced, swayed, smiled and cooed, stroking his wounded ego with innate aplomb. He’d lap it up and hand over wads of tattered bills, the denominations of which he was unsure due to the paucity of illumination at his table along the back wall of Temptations. He knew he was being had, even in his mildly intoxicated state he knew it. But it felt good, and it seemed natural enough.
Besides how could he reject a woman who’d fought, and won, a barroom brawl to secure him as her exclusive customer?
When Thomas had first started frequenting Temptations there’d been another dancer who would sit at his table. Her name was Zara. One night when Zara was off, Tanisha came over and sat with him. The next time he visited the club Tanisha sat with him again. That night, about twenty minutes after Tanisha had joined him at his table, Zara had come into work. At the time Tanisha was shaking her booty at Thomas. Zara saw this and immediately stalked directly over to the table, picked up the Screwdriver that Thomas had just purchased for Tanisha, and chucked it in her face.
Needless to say, this resulted in a melee.
Tanisha and Zara pulled at each other’s hair and scant bits of clothing while hurling high-pitched but totally incomprehensible epithets at one another. The club’s patrons quickly congregated around the two girls, forming a ring. Tanisha broke free of Zara’s grasp, stood erect and delivered a surprisingly hard slap to her face. Zara went down. Nobody made a move to stop the fight, not even the bouncer who was watching it from within the throng that had gathered. The DJ turned on a strobe light that illuminated the girls and added a stuttering, surrealistic effect to the spectacle. The match went on for another minute or so until Thomas, overcome with guilt at having been the root-cause of the confrontation, grabbed Tanisha and pulled her off of Zara. Another Good Samaritan withheld Zara, who had lost her top at some point during the fracas.
From their separated positions Tanisha and Zara continued to scream at one another, unabated, for several minutes. The spectators held their ground; fervently hoping that round two would soon break out. To their ultimate dismay, the yelling subsided, the DJ turned off the strobe, and the fight was officially over.
By virtue of the knockdown, it was generally agreed that Tanisha had won the bout.
The patrons returned to their tables, appreciating the fact that the show hadn’t cost them a single bill.
By dint of her victory, Tanisha won exclusive rights to Thomas’s table, no other girl, least of all Zara, dared approach.
Zara still works at Temptations. Whenever she and Tanisha cross paths they hiss and snarl at each other.
* I'm working on part 2 *
