Club Hump was on Crenshaw, not in South Central, but up in Hollywood; still, it was a mostly black club. The head dancer met me at the door. His real name was William, but at the club, he went by Daredevil. He broke it down for me.
“You get two songs. Either you pick ’em, or the DJ does it for you. I’d pick ’em if I were you. Slip him a dollar. He’ll play your shit for sure, then.” He took a moment to look me over, a concerned look on his tough face. “You ever done this before?”
“No,” I admitted. “Not really.”
Daredevil put a protective hand on my shoulder, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Just don’t show no fear out there They will mothafuckin’ rip you to shreds if they smell fear. You got that?”
I nodded. Daredevil patted me on the back and walked away, shaking his head, as if he knew something I didn’t.
There was no changing room at the Hump —just a “VIP” room upstairs, which housed a pool table, some hangers-on, and another dancer, an effeminate black kid named Jason. He seemed quiet, but when I said to him, smiling, “You nervous?” he shook his head, seriously.
“I just love to dance.”
As I dressed, the club started to fill up. The crowd included vaguely menacing “thug” types, there with their straight-billed baseball caps; a number of quiet, masculine, clearly gay black men, conspicuously not on the DL; a sprinkling of strong-legged, rowdy transsexuals; and quite a few big, fat black mamas. Assembled together, they vibrated with a terrible potency. I feared the worst.
The DJ began to warm up the crowd. “We know that y’all come out here on a Wednesday night for juuuuust one thang, right? To see a little ass!”
1 he crowd roared in approval. I saw one of the trannies at the bar pick up her glass, as if toasting the idea.
The DJ continued: “Club Hump, as usual, is bringing you its best. We got some hot young brothas here tonight; scooped ’em up right off the street! Y’all ready for some ass?”
They answered with another roar, with animal intensity.
“Y’ALL READY FOR SOME ASS??”
They throbbed together like hungry dogs, starving for meat.
“THEN LET’S DO THIS!” He threw on the first record of the night, and Daredevil bounded down the steps to greet the mass of wild flesh. He was wearing a trench coat, which he quickly discarded to reveal only a black pair of bikini briefs. The crowd went totally berserk. Especially the big girls.
Daredevil rippled his muscles and fucked the air. He wagged his crotch up and down, in a sort of dorsal double time that white mortals could only dream of imitating. ’The man had a huge cock. You could see it straining against the black nylon of his underwear. He was cut, sculptural, and they were lining up to go stuff money into his g-string. Men elbowed one another with degenerate abandon, bodies swaying as they jockeyed for position. The ladies bared their claws, hissing viciously. All to be near that awesomely articulated midsection. The ’Devil cleaned up. He made something like $200 in five minutes.
I (most unfortunately; most pitiably) was next.
Picture it, if you wilclass="underline" cheap leopard-skin-prin+ briefs, secured at the ninety-nine-cent store, hugged my genital region. A pair of light blue Skechers that my mother had bought me in San Jose, months before. No socks. My little yoga body didn’t feel so hot, compared to Black Panther, king of the Crenshaw jungle. Who am I fooling here? I thought wildly. I have wide hips and minor scoliosis.
And then, to top it all off, the DJ put on a Prince song.
I’ll never forget that feeling of walking down those stairs. The look on the crowd was one of utter blankness. Gone instantly was the collective, shared desire. It had disappeared, vaporized. There wasn’t even a “root for the underdog” undercurrent in the room. Just an impassiveness—and hostility, wanting to explode.
Like an ass, I began dancing wildly, enacting a pathetic burlesque of sexual abandon.. Color you peach and black. Color me taken aback. Ba-by. But no. Absolutely not. Dangerously intimidated, I decided to shift gears: asserting myself in reverse, I brandished my bikinied buttocks at the hostile mob. I waggled them from side to side, looking back hopefully over my left shoulder. The hateful faces staring back at me told me all I needed to know. I was bombing as only a pasty-white Jewish boy adrift in a new city, showcasing a flaccid, five-inch wiener suctioned by polyester fabric dangerously close to his naked left thigh, could bomb.
A few people gave me pity dollars—handed them to me—and when I attempted to dance close to them, in some form of gratitude, they smiled, looked embarrassed, and focused on the wall behind me.
Mercifully, my time ended, and I stumbled offstage, up the ignominious stairs, where I retrieved a towel from my bag. As I wiped the sweat off my body, my breath returning to its normal rate, I observed the rest of the show. Jason, the young kid, had followed me, and he was wearing knee pads, for some reason. If memory serves, he was dancing to Janet Jackson. He seemed quite acrobatic, doing weird hip-hop push-ups, maintaining absolutely no eye contact with anyone, gazing at the far wall. He lacked only the Madonna microphone to complete his sad, superstar image. No one really tipped him, either, which cheered me enormously.
I took my six dollars that I’d earned and approached the bar, where I bought a beer. I drank from it, my energy spent.
“You want to fuck me up the ass?” asked one of the transvestites, leering.
“Huh?” I said. But before she could repeat herself, the words registered, and I shuffled back upstairs to change.
EIGHT
My parents and I had a little thing going where we spoke on the phone every Sunday. A couple of weeks after I’d gotten settled in LA, I decided to come clean to my old man. It had been a long time coming.
“Dad? You know how you’re always talking about how you want to know what I’m doing with my life, but I never tell you anything?”
‘Yes. You guard your privacy jealously. Like a jackal. You haven’t told us a single thing about Los Angeles since you moved there.”
“Well, I decided you were right. It’s not good, and I owe you an apology.”
“Accepted,” he said. “Thank you for saying that.”
“Would you like to know what I’m doing with my life?”
“Please, mystery man.”
“I’m producing porn.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.
. Excuse me?”
“I said, I’m producing porn.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said You wanted to know what I’m doing with my life. Well, against all odds, I’ve managed to insinuate myself into the porn industry. Pretty cool, huh?”
He cleared his throat. “Ellen, get on the line.” He waited until my mom clicked on How long have you been doing this?”
“To be honest, I’ve sort of been ‘in the business’ for about half a year now. Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, Sam,” she said. “What’s this nonsense?”
‘ Oh, I make porn,” I explained.
“But what about the juice bar?” snapped my father.
“I worked there. Part-time. But now I make porn.”
My father’s temper had held remarkably well to this point, but now he exploded. “But this is nonsense! Ellen, say something, please! What has our son gotten himself into this time?”
“Dad,” I said calmly, “there’s no need to get all riled up. I’m part of a very well-established, historically sound industry. Stood the test of time. In fact, you could sort of say it’s the second-oldest profession.”
“That thousand dollars I lent you,” he mumbled, remembering. “This was your business plan?”