The Mambo Club Stays With It I couldn't sell liquor on Sundays but kept the club open and served coffee to college students who I thought were so groovey. They came to see folk acts who worked cheap (they really came to stare at me, a real ex- go-go dancer) and smoked foreign cigarettes while nodding their heads to songs about the exploitation of migrant workers and they never tipped. Then there were the *intellectuals* who used words like "liquefaction" and "preclude" and left dirty needles in the bathroom. What is it about being "introspective" that makes the world so unbearable? And what is it about being "self-expressive" that precludes the need for liquefaction in the form of a bath? No wonder *evolved* junkies wore black. I overcharged fancy-schmancy students because they acted like they deserved to be served for free and that scum like me should pay for the pleasure. I never overcharged the mill hunkies because they acted like they deserved *me* for free. They slid their hands on me like my skin seethed suggestions. I told myself that they didn't phase me -- that they didn't really touch me. Nobody had touched me in years. I was saving myself for someone special, a college student who always had a corsage in the refrigerator, a cloak for every puddle. Hope can cause the worst kind of hate. copyright 1994 kathy jo kramer