Finally you stumble upon the bar, close by the dance floor. A girl—or a good imitation—leans over, her Nazi cap low over kohl-lined eyes, minimal breasts bare, tiny pierced nipples erect and staring at you. She does not ask you what you want. You have an impression of deep disinterest. Didi shouts his order and gestures for you to do the same. You lean in and her face shows distaste as she eyes the coat you clutch to your body, her look implying you are not brave enough to be here. Above the pounding, you scream “Jack, straight up!” Without a nod, she turns her back on you, and fades into the darkness. You glance to the right to watch the dozen or so dancers.
Young. Slim. Naked. Sweat dripping down sinewy bodies that have never known fat. These Danse Macabre figures writhe and jump to the beating noise, eyes rolled up so the whites glow in flashing black light strobe, tongues lolling, corpse-like puppets yanked on strings. One penis, erect, suddenly shoots into the air like a fountain. Two dancers fall to their knees to lap up the discharge.
The light allows you to see patrons next to you at the bar, others across the dance floor, stripped of clothing, waiting, watching, fondling themselves and one another. All are skeletal, ribs jutting, hip-bones prominent, many bald, skulls so large compared to the child-like bodies, enormous fetuses. They resemble drawings of aliens, photos you have viewed of victims in interment camps. Watching them makes you hot, and you feel like a pedophile. Or a necrophile. You wonder when it became sexy to look as if you’re starving to death.
The harsh tapping on your shoulder goes almost unfelt—the rhythm is the same as the music, the same as the fingers around you groping, the same as your heartbeat forced to synchronize to all of this. But you do notice, eventually, and turn to find your drink. Behind it, one hand still on the glass, the other fondling a ringed nipple, the capped bartender releases your shot to hold out an open palm in much the same way as the door person, the coat check. You have the impression of beggars, starving, willing to take anything from anyone, but of course they will not take less than they demand. The image is titillating in its obscenity. You offer bills that are snatched away even before reaching the palm.
You want to ask Didi questions, about this place, about the preponderance of the thin, the beautiful who may live fast and die young for all you know, but the music prohibits verbalization. You only know this place is called Ecstasy, a 24-7 club that is more than a club, that is a lifestyle Didi assured you, frequented by transvestites, transsexuals, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, straight couples and singles, fetishists, hardcore SM players, everyone with the need to be ecstatic, in Didi’s words.
Kevin, you know, loved to get high. Most of his life he gravitated towards anything that would obliterate his pain. You watched your brother transit sexual preferences, chemical intoxicants, liquid libations, extreme physical ritualistic practices, various cults, and endless trendy diets to reduce the bulk he is prone to, all designed to take him out of the mud of this physical realm he loathes and lift him to spirit. You stood by helplessly for the thirty years you have known Kevin, unable to even aid yourself, let alone him. Each of his ventures was the answer, the salve to soothe the wound of living in a terribly imperfect world. Each would bring him the love and acceptance he longs for. Each was abandoned, or incorporated into Kevin’s perpetual morphing. You understand him, only too well. He acts out the inner turmoil you silently endure daily, turmoil that has driven you to three quiet suicide attempts, that causes you to sleep more hours each day than you are awake, that leaves you alienated and too depressed to make contact, or even to exhibit symptoms of your despair. Only the bulimia you battle in secret is evidence of your pain, and that goes unnoticed in a twisted world that values minimalism in everything to the point of praising your rejection of nourishment.
Kevin has tried it all, and you have watched like a voyeur, living vicariously through his efforts. Someone getting the thrills without the risks. You encouraged him, perhaps to placate the demon within you that demands extremes. When Kevin told you about his plans for the operation, and how if he were female instead of male, if he had been you instead of himself, life would be different, fulfilling, accepting, that night you had the first of what would become a recurring nightmare.
Stuck at the bottom of a dark empty well, you look through a soulless mirror that liquefies. This noir river begins to flow into you, your nose, mouth, ears, anus, vagina, even your pores. Little animals with barbed bodies scratch this tender penetrated flesh, stimulating you almost beyond endurance. You are poised in midair, air black as night, body throbbing with desires that will not allow release. And only when the black fire of passion forces a scream of exquisite agony from your lips do you wake in your lonely bed, covered with sweat and tears, thighs slick with juices. And no amount of stimulation releases your volatile frustration.
Eventually, when you had dreamed this enough, and cried miserable tears until your ducts emptied, it dawned on you what had been happening all along. And now, like the religion that both of you turned away from when it failed you, you have come with no answers to save Kevin from himself. But in the process of trying, perhaps you will be rescued as well.
Didi nudges you and you follow, away from the safety of the bar, around the outer corners of the room. You pass between people, and hands reach out to touch you, finding fabric instead of flesh. You smile, happy to have thwarted their expectations. But then one hand discovers your secret and worms beneath the fabric, inside your blouse, down under your bra, the body pressed hard against your own, following, in step, bony fingers tweaking your nipple in time to the pounding beat, forcing your head back, your mouth open, the black river flowing once again—
“This is it, what we came for,” Didi says. The hand is gone, leaving your nipple burning, your body freezing.
Didi opens a door and enters. You step into a cathedral of ice, with lighted grottos on each side of you. As you walk down the aisle, you pass these “rooms.” On the left a man is suspended by his wrists and ankles. Four naked attendants shave his head, strip the hairs from his torso with wax, pluck out his eyebrows, and the hairs around his anus … To the right, a bald woman’s bare body is cut with a scalpel, little cuts, deep enough to bleed, not enough for permanent injury, her flesh a canvas of tiny crosses, out of her mouth deep erotic pleas for forgiveness … A genderless being is having finger- and toenails clipped very very short, eyelashes singed, dead skin cut from the feet … You bend to peer inside a small door to find three pale and slender bodies prone on blond-wood shelves, sweat pouring off them as an attendant splashes water onto steaming rocks … Another grotto, a woman with her finger down her throat, vomiting, peeing, shitting, bleeding from her vagina, all at the same time …
You have seen each of these worlds in one way or another, and they do not shock you. All your life you have known that to rid the body of everything leads to purification, to spirit. Every major religion reinforces this value. The culture in which you reside prays for the destruction of the flesh.
At the end of this corridor of pain and humiliation is a white door with a white Gothic arch above folding inward. Didi opens the door and you realize that somewhere along the way she has discarded the rest of her clothes. You move up the three steps to this altar of rejuvenation.