Billy’s
January 15, 2004
Billy’s Topless is long gone, and the girls who worked there — the handful I still talk to — joke about the bagel shop that took its place. “Have you been?” one of them asked me recently.
“Once,” I said.
I remember the sidewalk in front of the club essentially being a junky mini-mall. Homeless winos and addicts would be selling odds and ends salvaged from the garbage, or stolen through the broken window of someone's car: cassette tapes, ashtrays, broken tools, worn-out shoes, and grubby clothes. All of it splayed on dirty blankets beneath a massive sign on the Masonic Hall across the street: "God. Family. Country. Fraternity. Philanthropy. Community Service."
It's all gone now—every trace of it.
Inside the bagel shop, the walls and ceiling were so white and brightly lit that it made my eyes ache.
It seemed as if the new owners hoped to obliterate the space's illustrious history with a profusion of fluorescent lights. Well-dressed people stood in line holding shopping bags and dry cleaning, patiently waiting to order fancy bagels. I squinted and tried to visualize how it once had been. The red vinyl stools, the shabby bar, the acoustic tiles. Sunlight now streamed through the large plate-glass window previously sealed off with a thick, black curtain. In front of the curtain, a mural once hung that my ex-girlfriend, Andie, had painted. It was large and colorful, featuring several topless dancers in G-strings with “Billy’s Girls" written in decorative script across its top. She'd been proud to have such substantial evidence of talent beyond stripping on display. Who knows what happened to it? Likely tossed in a dumpster along with everything else.
The din of Billy’s interior had always strived to exist unaffected by day or night. At the end of Andie’s day shift, it would often still be sunny outside. Exiting through Billy’s battered door into the crisp light of a beautiful day could be shocking. Andie would rush home, remove her makeup, and jump in the shower. With her hair still damp, she'd change into shorts and a tank top, slip her painted toes into flip-flops, and rush outside to catch a few dwindling rays. But even when she was sober enough to be quick about it, there would only be a few minutes before the light faded to the same dim level of the bar. During these twilight moments, with her lips still faintly stained with lipstick, my ex, Andie, and her alter ego, Willow, were most at odds.
When she worked night shifts, I was usually fast asleep by the time she came home at four or five AM, but not always. Sometimes I’d wake up and find her having a smoke and counting her money —dollars damp with beer and sweat, pulled out of her bag in fistfuls. Her fine, blond hair would be matted into clumps from sweat and hairspray. her head bobbing to some imaginary tune. Sometimes I’d get up, sit with her, and help her count.
I’d kiss her glittered forehead, tasting the twelve or fifteen beers as they worked their way through her pores. She was only five-foot-four and never weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds. Everyone marveled at her ability to drink so much beer. She showed a certain sense of pride whenever someone asked, “How do you do it? Where does it go?” She’d just smile and shrug and take another sip.
“How was the night?” I’d ask. But she was usually too wasted to make any sense.
She’d get defensive and tell me in a slurred mumble that she wasn’t that drunk. She was always able to compare herself with this girl or that. So-and-so passed out in the dressing room, or this one fell off the stage. The truth is that many times she was the one falling off the stage. Once, she came home with a gash across her nose and dried blood on her white tank top. Another dancer, Felicity, kindly escorted her home and handed her over to me with a shrug. In the right light, you can still see the scar.
