Ignoble Bastard, She Said

one night at Sundancer

You can’t see the stars in the city. If you could, they’d be looking down on us—looking down on me in particular because I’m pretty sure I did the wrong thing again. Ariana tended to what wounds she could see on my face. Ariana’s not her real name. Except for my name and any place names, none of the specifics are real. Long ago, I realized that sometimes I could tell people’s stories if I didn’t identify them. People are due their privacy.

“Your eye is swelling pretty bad.” She said, tapping the skin around it with her mocha latte finger and immaculate nail, trying not to hurt me any more than I already was.

“You’re an ignoble bastard.” She said.

“You mean glorious, don’t you? I think your vocabulary is off again.” I said.

“My English was better than yours before I left Iran.” She said.

That part was probably true. Her father was an engineer for the Sha. When the Sha fell, an awful lot of people had to find a new place to live outside of Iran. Her father was an engineer, the product of an English private education. Her education was pretty remarkable, too. She worked at Sundancer, awaiting word on whether she’d be accepted into the PhD program she wanted.

Her father had two daughters and no sons. He didn’t think much of what The Islamic Brotherhood might do about how his precious, brilliant daughters lived, so they came to America. He worked as an engineer for a man in Mississippi who would change how the world communicated. That’s not an exaggeration. I always thought it strange that people coming from the other side of the world, who could go anywhere they wanted, would plant their flag in Mississippi. I always bring that up when people who were born here then decide they can’t take it anymore and move.

“That’s gonna swell. You need to put something on it.”

“I have a bag of frozen English peas and carrots at home,” I said

“That’ll do.” Ariana tended to me like a disapproving mother. She pulled the handkerchief from my shirt pocket, licked it, and tried to wipe the blood out of my mustache.

“Be Kiram” She said, under her breath. Disgusted with me.

“I remember what that one means,” I said.

“Good! Fuck you. Fuck your stupid ideas. Fuck your antediluvian ideas about how men should behave.” She said.

“Still,” I insisted, spitting something out, something red. “There’s a difference between noble and ignoble,” I said. “There’s no reason to bring my mother into this.”

“I KNOW the difference.” She insisted. “You’re so stupid.” She said. “You’re always doing the right thing in the exactly FUCKING wrong way. One day, something bad is gonna happen to you, you stupid bastard.”

She buried her head in my chest and pulled my arms around her. The moonlight danced in her blacker-than-black hair like some sort of golden black thread, dragon’s gold, the stuff of dreams.

“I love you.” She said.

“You love me?” I said with an impish smile.

“Not like that.” She said, and fake punched me.

“Foiled again,” I said. I would love her if I could. She knew that, but it was never like that. She treated me like an equal, and she knew all my secrets. That’s enough.

“Go home,” she said. Put something on that eye. I’m going to have that bastard banned.”

“Don’t do that,” I said. Y’all need the business. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’d count that as a victory. So would she.”

Ariana watched me drive away into the night. In three months, she’ll move to Boston to get that degree she wanted. I’d never see her again. We’re friends on Facebook. She’s Dr. Ariana now, with two kids: one who just finished his undergraduate degree and one who’s just beginning—big, strong boys with jet-black hair and coffee-colored eyes. God knows what they’ll become. I’m sure they’re brilliant, but we’ve never met.

I used to drink quite a lot, like every night sort of quite a lot. I had a regular rotation of places where I would go to drink so that nobody would suspect I had a problem if I didn’t go to the same place every night. People I cared about quite a lot also had a problem. Like me, they knew how to hide it. Where do you think I learned it from?

Homebase was CS’s. That was for drinking with people I knew and loved, as was Scrooges. I met my wife at Scrooges. By then, I’d quit drinking by a few years. Besides those two, there were Poets, George Street, and Sundancer.

George Street was where the legislature and reporters met and met each other. That was kind of a gilded age for Mississippi Politics.

Poet’s was where girls from Ole Miss and nursing students went. I never really talked to them. I just liked looking at them. Sometimes, I would bring a book with me to the bar. Ironically, being in a very crowded room full of people talking can have a calming effect on my ADHD as long as I don’t try to listen to any of them. In Poets, I read the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” “In Search of Excellence.” and “The Screwtape Letters.” I thought I could read my way into being a better businessman and Christian apologist. One never worked. I’m still learning to be a Christian apologist. For you, reading is just something you do. For me, reading is an accomplishment. In a way, reading books in a bar full of tight-bottomed dancers with longer than shoulder-length hair was probably my way of showing off.

Sundancer was for more serious drinking and music. They had an upright piano covered top-to-bottom in what looked like ivory but was, I’m pretty sure, white bakelite. They always had a pianist and, some nights, a slinky-dressed singer. I wore a tie and pretended to be Sam Spade or Rick Blaine. The thirties and the forties always suited me much better than the eighties or nineties, although those wouldn’t have been very good years to live in Mississippi.

My father’s friends went to Sundancer—particularly Brum and Rowan. Rowan was recently divorced, and Brum was still in his “catch me if you can” phase with women. One eventually did, but it was just moments before the final bell rang. Rowan drank “The Famous Grouse,” so I did too. They probably kept it on the top shelf just for him. Ordering from the top shelf is a pretty manly thing to do, but only other gentlemen would even recognize it, gentlemen and people who had ever been bartenders. Ariana was the bartender on some nights and waitress of the cocktail variety on others.

They spent a fortune building and operating Sundancer, but they never made a dime operating it. It was a comet blazing through Jackson’s nightlife—brilliant but short-lived. Some boys from Murrah bought it and turned it into Bravo. It’s been printing money ever since.

I’ve always preferred either girls who were older than me, older enough so that they might teach me something, and girls who were within five years of being my same age. A sort of neutrality happens when you’re the same age, where it’s harder to lie to each other.

So far, I’ve only twice kept time with girls ten years younger than I. While I don’t regret it, those weren’t happily-ever-after kind of stories. We’re still friendly, but they’re both with other men closer to their age. The last one made me wonder why she even wanted to be with me instead of guys her own age. “Stability,” she said. The last thing you ever want to tell a guy is that you’re with him because he’s stable. Men like to at least feel dangerous, even if they’re not. Plus, in my case, stability is kind of an illusion. I absorb the blows life gives me without visibly flinching. It makes an illusion that I’m stronger than I am. I’m not strong, not like that. You’d never know it, though.

Some guys prefer younger women—considerably younger women because it makes them feel virile and successful. Younger women become a medal or a trophy for these guys, one they convince themselves they’ve won rather than bought. Sometimes, they’ll collect younger women without telling their middle-aged wives. In the night scene of Jackson, that happened quite a bit. It happened with glaring openness, like there’s some culture-wide agreement not to tell somebody’s wife if you saw them at Sundancer with somebody considerably younger.

In “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” Jimmy Buffett sings about younger women. He was never the kind of guy who pursued younger women to prove how successful and powerful he was. He pursued them because he was a pirate who didn’t want to grow up. I can respect that, and so did the younger women.

Tommy was younger than me, still in high school. For a while, I had some sort of legendary reputation among the younger men in Jackson. Not for anything good, but for doing things I oughtn’t and having fun doing them. I’ll accept that.

Tommy was built like a crooked-necked squash. He lifted weights at the same place I lifted weights in an attempt to flip the squatty part of his body to the top and the spindly part of his body to the bottom. It never worked out that way. He always liked me and always spoke to me. He knew my stories by heart, and I wish he hadn’t.

I knew his mom from the Zoo, the Opera, the Ballet, and the Stewpot. She was a beautiful fifty-year-old woman with three extraordinary children. I’ve seen photos of her when she was younger at Millsaps. She was tall and thin with legs that went from here to there. After birthing and raising three boys, she looked kind of like a crooked-necked squash, too, but really, who cares? At fifty, a woman is no longer judged by the same rules governing her when she was an ingénue. She was beautiful because of her life and the life she returned to others. Her husband apparently didn’t think so.

I have to make up a name here. Let’s say her name is “Larry.” I can’t stand the bitch, but I should admit that I did date her five or six times, and I had a sort of limited carnal knowledge of her. A lot of girls only dated me because they thought they were getting a kinder, gentler version of my dad. Larry saw “meal ticket” printed on my forehead, where my hair used to be. I figured that out after the second date but decided to try a couple more times just to make sure. Plus, she kissed well.

I’d noticed Larry and Tommy’s father holding hands in the dark part of Sundancer before. “How about that,” I said to Ariana.

“I can’t stand him.” She said. “He tips well, though.” She added.

Tommy’s father considered himself a real mover-and-shaker among the financial elites of Mississippi. The real powers in the financial world, the ones I’d known since I was a child, considered him a poser who mostly invested with his father-in-law’s money. All of that was true. I loved Tommy’s mother, but I wouldn’t piss on Tommy’s father if he were on fire, and now, now while Tommy’s mother was feeding the dog and moisturizing her elbows somewhere in Eastover, Tommy’s father was in Highland Village playing slap and tickle with a girl, a year younger than me in the dark at Sundancer while I was trying to get drunk and listen to music like a decent person.

Since high school, every boy I knew had been doing unspeakable things with Larry. She was, without moral constraint, when it came to the carnal desires of Southern Boys. It made her feel powerful, which she probably was. Having burned through all the boys who played golf on his daddy’s Country Club membership, she was now moving on to the daddies themselves. Clearly, her goal was to be a wealthy second wife, which bothered me quite a lot because Tommy’s daddy was living off Tommy’s mother’s father’s money, and Tommy was already a boy that the world never made feel very strong. Learning his father was a snake could only make things worse.

Night after night, I drew in my little pocket sketchbook, listening to music and sipping Famous Grouse and ice while trying to convince Ariana we should be more than friends. Most girls didn’t talk about the things that were important to me, not with me, at least—things like books, art, and jazz. I didn’t talk about these things because I had no confidence in my ability to navigate those waters, and I couldn’t read like a normal person. Dyslexia will ruin a boy who wants to write. You have to read well to write well, and if you can’t read well and you can’t write well, what can you ever know about the beautiful things in life?

Ariana was different. Around her, I felt like I could say whatever I wanted. She even knew the names of every villain Godzilla had ever faced and his allies. Ariana was a seventh-generation rich girl from one of the most ancient and important places on earth. Mississippi boys didn’t impress her, so if she talked to you, it meant she liked you, and she talked to me.

“Does he ever come here with his wife?” I asked Ariana, pointing with my eyes so he wouldn’t see it. Larry kept a close eye on me. She knew, that I knew, that I probably told Ariana what her the score was on her. I did.

“I’ve never seen his wife,” Ariana said. “Do you know her?”

“Yeah, we’re on some boards together. She came to some of my football games in High School. I really like her. He, the husband, he’s not really a board-serving, high school football game-going kind of guy. If you know what I mean.” I said.

If I had just seen him there with Larry once, it wouldn’t have much changed my already poor opinion of him, but it wouldn’t have bothered me. I went to Sundancer once, maybe twice a week, and he’d almost always be there, sitting in the dark with that horrible woman, when I knew for certain Tommy’s mom was somewhere in Eastover, not knowing any of this was happening. Larry knew it, too, only she didn’t care.

“Defend the right. Guard the honor of woman.” You’d be surprised how often that phrase echoed in my head. It still does. In college, I’d sworn to do just that. Opportunities to do it came up more often that I expected.

After a few months of this, one night I decided I’d had enough scotch to foment a very poorly designed plan.

In the darkness, I sat on the bench leading to the Highland Village parking lot, where I knew Tommy’s dad had his convertible BMW parked. I smoked cigarettes and girded my loins, and waited.

I knew Tommy’s dad and Larry would be pretty drunk when they came out. I sat in the dark, just the cherry tip of a cigarette in the night. They walked past me, arm in arm, giggling. I called him by name.

“Look. um. Hey. I’m a friend of Tommy’s. I know your wife. I’m concerned that if I can see what you’re doing, then it might get back to Tommy. I like him, and I just think you should consider that.”

Tommy’s father was the kind of guy living in Jackson who considered me an over-privileged, over-grown, over-confident, utter idiot and asshole. He was probably right. In his mind, I was the last person on earth who had the right to question whether or not he should cheat on his wife. Who was I? He had an office in the DBG Building. He had a convertible BMW. He had a super hot twenty-three-year-old girlfriend! Who the HELL was I? Who the HELL did I think I was?

My hands never left my side. His did, though. My eye, my jaw, my eye, and my eye again. I never budged. I wasn’t going to fight him. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I can’t say he threw very good punches, but they were enough. I spit blood out of my mouth. “You’re never gonna hurt me, hitting me in the face,” I said. My feet and my hands never moved.

“Come on!’ He said to Larry. “Fuck this asshole! Fuck YOU Campbell!” As he dragged her to the car.

Larry wasn’t done with me. I’ve been slapped by stronger women. Again and again, across my face, once to my ear. “How dare you!” She screamed. Tommy’s dad pulled her away, and they drove off into the dark. I’m sure he was well rewarded for defending her honor from my attack. “Fuck you!” she screamed out the window as they drove away into the night.

I sat down on the bench, dropping my elbows to my knees. Ariana ran outside in her apron. “What the hell happened?” She said.

“I reminded dickless over there that he had a wife,” I said.

Ariana sat next to me and began taking an inventory of the damage. My eye wasn’t cut, but it was swelling. Blood dripped from my nose into my mustache. “Why didn’t you fight back?” She said.

“That wasn’t the point,” I said.

“What was the point?” She said, frustrated with my attitude.

“On my worst day, I can take more abuse than he can. I think I proved that. He’s never gonna forget this. He’s gonna hate me for the rest of his life. Maybe one day, somebody will tell Tommy that I stood up for his momma, but I hope not. A father needs to be a gentleman.” I said.

It wasn’t a great plan, but it was my plan, and I think I made my point. I was hoping Tommy’s dad would act exactly like he did. He couldn’t hit me without acknowledging that he was doing something wrong, something he shouldn’t.

Tommy’s mother eventually divorced Tommy’s father. She moved to an enormous house in Madison County, with horses and dogs and every manner of blooming thing you ever heard of. Larry married a starving musician who beat her. I don’t know what changed her path from marrying a rich older man. Maybe she saw herself the way I saw her. Tommy learned to sell real estate in Nashville. I don’t know if he comes to Jackson much. We’re friends on Facebook, but he doesn’t use it much.

I’ve changed enough of the details that you’ll never figure out what’s what and who’s who. I owe people their privacy—especially Tommy’s mom and Tommy. Once, there was a place named Sundancer that played Jazz at night. Once, there was a beautiful Iranian woman who tended my wounds. Defend the right, Protect the Weak, and Guard the honor of woman.