He was ever so polite.

  “That’s Yoko Ono,” said Isaac, finally pushing to the front. “We’re all Water, from the album Some Time in New York City. And that’s her vocal solo,” he said, in reference to the shrieks and wailing.

  “Welcome back,” said The Bouncer, opening the front door.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” screamed a Viking Woman. “Look at him. I wouldn’t let him fuck me if his cum was liquid gold. And you’re gonna choose him over us? Did you even look at my boyfriend’s beard?”

  “We take our karaoke seriously,” said The Bouncer.

  “Fuck you,” screamed The Viking Woman. “Fuck you both. You fucking norms. Fucking fucks. Who do you think you are? Huh? Do you even know who I am?”

  Obviously, she felt as if he should.

  “Do you know who he was in his past life?” she said, pointing to her boyfriend – the one with the pointiest beard. “You have no idea who you’re talking to. Have you even heard of Ragnar? Huh? You ignorant cunt. Fucking Nazi.”

  The men, meanwhile, merely twisted their beards.

  “You’re not getting in,” said The Bouncer. “Do yourselves a favour; go home, have some water, and get some sleep.”

  He didn’t need to punch anyone, everybody knew what he was capable of.

  “Count yourself lucky,” said The Viking Woman. “If this was circa 786, you’d be dead by bow. This whole place would be fucking rubble. You’re a nobody – a fucking nothing,” she screamed, sickened by The Bouncer’s sheer cultural and historical ignorance. “Measly thrall!”

  Her face was shaped like outrage.

  “You think you’re cool? You don’t even know what cool is. I bet you can’t even grow a beard, can you? You don’t know cool. How could you? Cool is right here in front of you and you can’t even see it. You suck. You fucking suck.”

  The more she screamed, the more fragile her voice became. Soon enough it got to the point where her boyfriend started to cry. Once he did, the whole tribe was in tears; shouting and weeping and consoling each other, in-between vile and often xenophobic taunts.

  The Bend in the River, as it was called, was like a doorway to another dimension. Like a drawer full of odd socks, it was not for the faint of heart; neither was it a place for the cool or the fashionable.

  Though he was by himself, in no way did Isaac feel alone. Everywhere he looked, he was greeted with smiles and salutes of one form or the other. Finally, Isaac had found his place; finally, he felt like he belonged.

  “You, sir, have quite a set of pipes.”

  It was The Man in the Chair, once again accompanied by his carer.

  “I can’t say much about your dance moves but ah….then again,” he said, hinting to his twisted tiny limbs. “I can’t say much about dancing in general. But you gave it your all, and your people, they loved you.”

  “My people?”

  “This is your family now. This is home. And yes, we are your people and you are ours.”

  “Hopefully tonight I can do better.”

  “You’re here,” said The Man in the Chair. “That’s all that counts.”

  There were at least a hundred people in the club, all of them darting like particles from one place to another, diffusing to the sound of the music until it was impossible to distinguish one from the other. Isaac strained to see through the smoke and strobes for one person in particular.

  “Is she here?” he asked.

  The Man in the Chair knew just who he meant.

  “I have to see a fisherman about some crabs,” he said.

  And then his carer wheeled him out the back.

  Isaac rushed after him but two legs were no match for four wheels, a downward slope, and a sturdy push. When he caught up, he found himself in another world altogether.

  Outside, the club took on a different vibe. It was less about music and more about sex, cocaine, and gambling with every square inch of space taken by a checkers board and a couple of plastic crates.

  The lights were different too; they were dark and murky, making it look like they were at the bottom of a swimming pool; perfect for all the hugger-mugger.

  “Hey, you can’t be here.”

  Isaac was stopped by a lady sitting on one of the crates. She spread her legs and pushed one of her long red heels into his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” said Isaac. “I was looking for someone.”

  His nerves rattled about as he spoke. It might have been the stony look in her eyes or the fact that she wasn’t wearing any panties. Whatever it was, it left Isaac sounding as scared and out of place as he looked.

  “Nothing personal,” she said. “It’s just your abled so….”

  “Sorry?”

  The Woman nodded her head backward, hinting to the table of disabled men, taking shots of tequila, doing lines of coke, and arguing over whether to place the pieces on the white or black squares. There was not an abled body about.

  “I’m sorry to bother,” said Isaac.

  He was awfully apologetic. His apologies were awful.

  “It’s no bother,” said The Woman, her heel still firm in his chest. “You’re new here.”

  “It’s my second night,” said Isaac.

  “I thought so. You act new. You should try not to do that.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “There are no rules here, but there’s a flow. You come here often enough, you’ll get that flow. For now, you act new, and it kinds of weirds people out.”

  “I’ll try to come more often,” said Isaac.

  “You should. I heard you singing the other night.”

  “Yeah,” said Isaac, a little shy.

  “Don’t push me cause I’m close to the edge,” she rapped. “You were good.”

  Isaac went red. This was different than the adulation he sought and seldom received from the academic world. This was a world all on its own; one that he was starting to make more and more sense the further he embedded himself. Adulation here was not about anyone discipline; choosing what to sing and when to sing it was just as important, if not more so than how he sang it.

  “You’re kind of weird,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Isaac.

  “Stop apologising. That’s a good thing.”

  Isaac smiled. As odd as this all was, he was starting to unwind. Normally he would feel strange, obtuse, and perpendicular in a place like this. Whenever he was in public, he always felt like a pointy tack in a room full of pretty balloons. For the first time, though, he felt as if his awkward demeanour was a ubiquitous trait; as common as standing upright - and nothing at all to get worked up or be all self-conscious about.

  “You’re cute,” she said.

  Bashfully, Isaac looked away from her eyes, only to fall between her open legs. It was then that he noticed the tattoo above her vagina; a symbol he hadn’t seen since tenth-grade geometry class. She didn’t find it rude that he was looking but she did think it was best to explain.

  “I don’t know if anyone told you or not, but I’m a superhero. And that,” she said, turning her attention to the polygon above her vagina. “It’s my bat symbol. Do you like it?”

  She moved her hips so he could see better.

  “Heptadecagon,” she said.

  She didn’t give him time to count all the sides.

  “I can see,” said Isaac. “A little different to butterflies and rainbows.”

  “Like I said – superhero.”

  “Why a polygon?”

  “Math,” she said. “I love it. It’s in everything. Take the Fibonacci sequence. All those beautiful patterns repeating in nature. Math is nature, nature is math. One point six one eight. Amazing,” she said. “Math.”

  They both stared at the seventeen sided shape above her vagina.

  “And yet all anyone will tell you is that math is stupid. It’s a waste of time. What’s it good for? You don’t use algebra or calculus in the real world. Fuck that,” she said. “And fuck them too.”

  Isaac was well equipped but ill-prepared for this manner of discourse.

  “I’m uh, I’m a scientist,” he said – sounding anything but.

  She didn’t care; this wasn’t about him.

  “In our culture,” she said, barely breaking her stride. “We build muscles and bodies. We know without a doubt that no pain means, no gain. It’s so god damn ingrained in us that every time we’re lifting heavy crap over our heads and it starts to pinch, tear, and hurt – we smile. We smile because pain means progress. Yet you teach some kid about flow dynamics and he’ll tell you his brain hurts and he’ll go study something that makes him feel good. Fucking pussy,” she said, taking a long drag of her cigarette.

  “I think the argument is that rarely in life will you ever have to find the variant of ‘y’.”

  “And how often will you have to squat your way out of a bank loan? It’s not about the exercise,” she said. “But what effect it has on the body and math – or algebra for that sake – is no different to a lunge or a squat. It’s not about whether you’ll use it or not in real life; it’s about how studying it moulds your brain.”

  Isaac didn’t work out but he understood the analogy.

  “What math teaches you,” she continued, “is that no matter how big a problem is, you can break it down into smaller pieces and write it out, just like a sentence - and you can solve that shit.”

  The music was thumping in the background, what sounded like a dozen chainsaws and jackhammers being sung over the top by just as many growling dogs. The constant cheering was almost a distraction.

  “You don’t need to be emotional. You don’t need to have a panic attack. Just calm the fuck down, take a breath, and look for your constant. Hell, sometimes when I’m depressed I’ll do some calculus just to stop being such a Debbie Downer. Works like a charm. That’s what they should be handing out at pharmacies instead of Zoloft and Vicodin. Give em a problem instead of stupefying em with a solution.”

  “Makes sense,” said Isaac. “I hadn’t thought of math that…practically.”

  “And that’s what math teaches you – logic. It teaches you that every problem has a solution, and if it doesn’t, then count your lucky stars because you just stumbled on a paradox, and if that’s the case then folks are gonna be mentioning your name for the next hundred years.”

  “That’s so true,” said Isaac, laughing. “I’m a scientist, I told you that right?”

  She smiled like she didn’t care.

  “I’m a superhero,” she said, spreading her legs as wide as she could. “And my pussy is a god damn abacus.”

  They both laughed.

  “Why a superhero?” he asked.

  He wasn’t being rude, or at least he wasn’t trying to be. He looked in her eyes whenever she spoke and he stared praisingly at her vagina when it was clear that she wanted him too.

  “I only fuck the retarded,” she said. “I use my pussy for good.”

  The way she spoke, it was as if she donated marrow in her spare time.

  “I’m pretty sure you can’t call them that anymore?”

  “What?”

  “Retards.”

  “I didn’t call them retards,” she said. “That would be mean. I called them retarded; it’s different.”

  “Pretty sure that’s the same thing.”

  It wasn’t that he had any moral objection. It was more of a learned remonstration; as if he were correcting her for conjecting that Pluto was still a planet.

  “Semantics has nuance,” she said. “It’s subtle. And political correctness is not. The adjective describes the state; the noun states. They are retarded, yes, that is the state of their minds and bodies and how they experience the world. And they are also wonderful human beings. One can be retarded and still be whoever the fuck they wanna be.”

  “Just sounds wrong, is all.”

  “What? Retarded? You think changing the name of a condition is gonna change the condition? Euphemisms make you feel better, not them. If anything, it sounds like you’ve been spending too much time talking about the retarded and not enough time talking to the retarded.”

  “I suppose I’d never really looked at it that way.”

  “How often have you ever looked at a retarded person except out of pity or some condescending pride? ‘Way to go champ!’ That type of patronizing bullshit. When was the last time you argued about misspent taxes or gun control in a bread queue with a retarded person? When was the last time you called a retarded person an idiot because his opinion was contrary to yours? When was the last time you spoke to a retarded person like you did to your neighbour? When was the last time you treated them like they were actually normal? Never? Of course never! The retarded are people too, you know? We don’t get to choose what body we’re born into or how fast our brains tick. It’s just genetics and pot fucking luck. Most people look at these fellas like they’re freaks; as if because they’re deformed or slow that they don’t have desires – the same fucking vices as everybody else. But that’s total bullshit. They’re no different to you or I. They love to get their balls cupped. They love to get their dicks sucked and their clits licked. They’re just like us. They love to cum. We all love to cum. Cumming is where happiness is kept when you’re an adult. Did you know that? Our lives are so full of worry and misery that the only way to survive is to become a cynical piece of shit and bury that happiness deep down inside. And the only way you get it back, men and women, is when we cum; one brief explosion of pure happiness. Now you don’t think they want to be happy? You don’t think cumming feels good for them too? Of course, it does. Hey, Sugar Nuts,” she said.

  The man beside her – Sugar Nuts - had, aside from tumours and cysts, an enormous smile on his face, the kind reserved for dogs at the end of an evening run.

  “Yeah?” he said, putting down his cards and taking a puff on his cigar.

  He had all the swagger of a man four times his height.

  “Do you enjoy your dick being sucked?”

  Sugar Nuts gave two thumbs up.

  “Sure do,” he said with a snake-like lisp.

  “And what about eating pussy? Do you like eating pussy?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s the best. Well. Everything’s the best really. I also like billy carts and Raptors are my favourite dinosaur but T-Rex would kill them all.”

  “If you had to choose only one?”

  “Oh, well that’s a hard question.”

  “That’s ok,” she said. “I know which you prefer.”

  Sugar Nuts went red.

  “You think this world is ever gonna give him a chance to be happy? Of course not. It’s just the abled fucking the abled; the handsome jizzing on the pretty. Well, fuck that. Everyone deserves a bit of happiness, and they bloody well shouldn’t have to pay for it from some back alley toothless whore whose pussy looks and tastes like a dirty old sock. Look at my mine,” she said, this time really extending her hips. “Isn’t that a wonderful looking pussy?”

  Isaac didn’t want to look, even though she wasn’t presenting herself in any rude or inappropriate manner. At least that’s not how it came across. She presented her vagina with the same showmanship as a magician might, his most compelling trick, one he had been mastering in privacy for years.

  “Wow,” said Isaac – clearly marvelled. “It really is.”

  She wasn’t wrong. If her vagina were a flower then all other flowers would come to be known as weeds. If it were a celestial object, it would be the centre of the universe.

  “It’s the symmetry,” she said. “There’s none other like it. It’s the most amazing pussy in the world. I'm serious; I’m not just saying that. I have a document to prove it; signed by The Pope himself.”

  She was right. Isaac could find no fault.

  “I didn’t make this body,” she said. “I didn’t choose to be in it. But it’s a good one and I look after it. I could fuck anyone I want.”

  “I’m sure you could.”

  “Sex is about giving. Real sex anyway; the sex that gives me pleasure. I cum when they cum,” she said. “Every fucking time.”

  “That’s damn right,” said Sugar Nuts, still with his two thumbs up.

  “Listen,” said Isaac. “I’m looking for someone. You might know her. A girl. Late twenties maybe. Long black hair. Big goofy glasses. Real pretty face. She sang here the other night. The whole place went crazy. Then she just left. She’s supposed to be a regular or something – comes and goes all the time. Do you know her?”

  “I’ve seen that face before. You’ve fallen hard for her, haven’t you?”

  Isaac blushed.

  “I know her. Relax. Everyone does. She puts a gypsy spell on people – not just the fellas either. There’s something about her. I can’t quite pin it.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “We don’t ask each other that. There’s no need for names here.”

  “What about Sugar Nuts?”

  “Who, him?” she said, tugging on the man’s lapel. “That’s not so much a name as it is his most endearing quality.”

  “I don’t get ya.”

  Part of him didn’t want to know; the other part of him really wanted to know.

  “Hey Sugar Nuts,” she shouted.

  This time the whole courtyard turned.

  “Show our new friend here why we call you that.”

  Sugar Nuts – the man in question – again put down his cards, this time face up, showing that not only had he left the game, but he had also won the pot. Then he put out his cigar and pulled down his pants.”

  “Holy shit,” said Isaac.

  “Impressive, right?”

  His testicles were enormous - proportionately unfathomable. They didn’t look deformed or grotesque in any way; quite the contrary, in fact. They were like two perfect spheres. They looked noble, reverent, and stoic. Isaac felt as if he were staring at some fifty-foot statue, carved into a mountainside in homage to some ancient Greek warrior. They looked bold and courageous; grandiose and majestic. And also, they were covered in flour.

  “He sweats profusely,” she said.

  “Like a swimming pool,” said Sugar Nuts. “And sometimes I gets dizzy and I fall over.”