Karaoke Night at the Mambo Club

The glass block windows 
once installed to stop thieves
are now -- with a splash of neon -- vogue.
Everything that once made the place 
a dive is now referred to as quaint.
And somehow I'm still single --
but successful and self-fulfilled.

It's Karaoke Night at the Mambo Club!
This new crowd thinks they're cool
sitting on red-vinyl barstools,
and they'll pay three fifty a drink
to prove it.

I watch them look at pictures of me 
wearing G-strings.  Fuck it -- I hung up
everything that made me:  broken records,
old costumes, shrunken balloons,
newspaper clippings about Bruno's death
and my subsequent arrest and acquittal:
marriage and death certificates
hang like my honorary degrees.
  
People talk about the subjection of women
while examining my pastie collection
that's now preserved behind glass 
because everyone who saw them
touched them.  How nostalgic.  

As if deliberate disgrace
is more dignified than the plain 
old shame of a tramp, I should thank
Madonna for increasing
every whore's clothing allowance.

Women of the nineties are muscular 
but aren't allowed to eat
so clever young men carry condoms
on sticks that look like delicious red suckers.

I watch men singing "Hot Blooded" 
or "Do You Think I~m Sexy"
doing the dance of the drunken pelvis.
I let them do all the talking, 
knowing they count on me
to be easily impressed.

Young men think older women are easy
because we've already had the dick
so now they think we *need* it.

I smile, do a shot, feel it burn my throat
thinking of my younger days -- 
the low tolerance for whiskey and men
and wonder how many years
my last kiss will have to stretch across.





copyright 1994 kathy jo kramer