Christian Kubik Cedeño

ABOUT BAD SHIT ONLY

We had spent too much time cooped up in a car from New York: me, upstate, the homies from the Bronx. Toronto was the move, and here we were! Fred, on cue, suggested a blunt, spreading out a grinder and “God Bud.” He sprawled his kit across a stained GQ magazine that had seen many days and many blunts.  

“Oh shit, are we about to smoke?” Juan said with a nervous laugh. He had his feet kicked up on the oak coffee table. All around us, luxury abounded, the AirBnB giving us a whiff of a life we would never inhabit. Clean edges, stainless steel appliances, middle of downtown—a smell of richness.

Fred shot him a look. Sucked his teeth. “Imagine this in the BX,” he said, fixating on a fat, velvety nugget. Juan and Oscar fidgeted on the couch, cutting short their conversation on Street Fighter. “How many times we walked around paranoid, and it’s legal here?”

“Might not be a bad idea,” Oscar added. Juan swung his legs off the coffee table and leaned forward onto his knees, wiggling his thumbs about. 

I read Juan’s anxiety. He had put up for the AirBnB, after all. Click, click! Fred conjured up a lighter out of nowhere and at the sight of the flame, Juan’s eyes widened. Fred waved the flame over the tip of the blunt and studied how the sparks spread. A trail of smoke wandered from the blunt, and the sweet smell of skunk tinged the air. 

“God Bud,” Oscar read, picking up the package. “Derived from a mysterious strain known only as ‘God.’ Huh.”

Juan stared at the smoke alarm above us. 

“Nah real talk...” I said, clearing my throat. Fred, for once, lifted from his intense focus on marijuana. “Why don’t we...take this on the go? Go for a stroll in the 6?”

“Yes!” Juan said, jumping up. 

“Better to hit the blunt before the stroll,” Fred said. He raised his arms, swiveling his head as if to encourage the same evaluation of our luxury AirBnB. “And enjoy our spot for a second.”

“Dude, the smoke is gonna stick,” Juan said. 

“Trust me, we’re not the first people to smoke in here,” Fred shot back. “That’s why we had to Venmo you and include our share for the ‘Cleaning Fee,’ remember?” 

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“We have time,” I cut in. “We could always smoke later.”

Oscar and Juan had brought Fred on the trip on the same terms as me, a third to their duo, except I met Juan and Oscar in college and Fred knew them from high school. Summer before this, Fred had returned to the city after a stint along the Finger Lakes coast, working as a residence hall coordinator for a SUNY. For the first time, our neat trio expanded for a night out. Imagine my surprise when the new guy displaced me in all the childhood references, all the inside jokes...and imagine his, pulling me aside on that first night, asking, so, where are you from? “Blanquito,” he called me. 

Then, fall had passed, and, at the urging of Juan and Oscar, I agreed to a road trip, to a magical adventure in a distant land, a tale in the making. We knew. We knew. The change in seasons marked transitions for all of us. Juan had a son now; Oscar had embarked on a new, ambitious career path in education; I had moved further into Brooklyn after my girl, Claire, had moved away for law school, where she sunk into a deep culture of legal talk and cold calls in class. And Fred, supposedly, was engaged, now brushing past us, leering at me. He wet his fingers in the sink, muted the blunt tip, and scanned me up and down like an insult. 

“You don’t smoke?” he asked in the same way he might have asked if I believed in God. Maybe the question was the same—did I believe in God Bud?

“I mean, a little...”

He smirked. He shuffled past me en route to his room. “Get ready then. Because we’re gonna be out in these streets later, too, trust me.”

We lumbered toward the Christmas market in sync: the wide one, Juan, who claimed he gained sympathy weight when his baby mama was pregnant; the tall one, Oscar, who eternally sported a loose beanie that almost slipped off the top of his scalp; the muscular one, Fred, who, from my guess, faithfully stuck to work, gym, wifey. And me, right? Same cut, same angled fade, same shaped-up beard, only ten shades lighter.

Corito, we called ourselves—a small chorus. We echoed the same lines! Literally. Fred ripped the blunt; I half-puffed in peril. Weed made me weird. The shots and blunts kicked in and, without a second thought, Juan whipped out a portable Bluetooth speaker and started blasting tunes. By this area of Toronto, I knew we peered at its best: the towering presence of the CN Tower, the neat cuts of the esplanade, sophisticated families and their ever-groomed pooches. Yes, we were going to be those people out there. A middle-aged man sneered at us as we passed. Hoy voy a beber! Man had his polyester vest on too tight, anyways. 

The verdant esplanade filtered into the Christmas market: a tidy brick walkway, a rustic wagon against the backdrop of smart stores, and a sculpture of a brilliant red heart framing it all, as if dropped in with a brushstroke. Love! Fred scoffed. 

“The Spanish people always get the short end of the stick, man,” he said. “Toronto got this and, in New York, Spanish people gotta live in the fucking Bronx.”

“This is just like, one percent of it, dude,” Juan said. 

“You really think TO has something like the Bronx here?” Fred said, searching for a response from me, of all people. I gave him a blank face. I didn't grow up in the Bronx. I grew up with the Dominicans, Haitians, and Puerto Ricans who made it out of there, flowing upstate to the condos that offered a relief from city life. When we first linked—Oscar, Juan, and me—we found a common language because all our childhood friends came from the same places. But my friends adapted to peaceful afternoons in Whispering Hills, balling in courts carved into meadows, and Oscar and Juan never left the Bronx, except for college. I chimed in when they mentioned hip hop and kept quiet when they talked about getting mugged outside of the bodega.

A Japanese joint attracted us as self-proclaimed otakus and anime-nerds; trying to appeal to Fred, I bought him sake while asking about his trip to Japan. That animated him, and he jumped out of his seat to mimic how Tokyoites gawked at him for trying to cross on red at stoplights. Oscar slipped out a chatica of rum and the party moved to the street, fueled by reggaeton classics pumping from Juan's phone. 

“What you looking at, bro?” Oscar said, noting Fred’s focus on nearby window displays while the rest of us danced. As he neared Fred, and saw what he saw, his celebration turned sour. His feet stopped, his arms slowed, and he fell stuck in a shade off to the side of the main mall, ambling on his own. 

"My mom’s gonna talk so much shit when I'm back," he said. I neared the tall glass: Get the perfect gift for mom.

"Como si yo tuviera que trabajar every single day,” he continued. “Else she's gonna say I'm lazy. Even with the new job."

"That’s how our moms are man..." I felt Fred’s gaze narrow in on me. “They’re trained to take care of us, baby us, give us a red carpet to life, wash our clothes, feed us. But they’re not worried about what they get back. They’re worried we’re gonna fuck up what they gave us."

Oscar neared me and jutted a finger into my chest. His eyes had glazed over and reddened with the rum. In the distance, the Christmas tree of the market sparkled amid cheering families, and the middle-aged man from before stooped down to pick up his child. Visions of life like this irked me, sometimes, whenever I felt like life came too easy for others. 

"Fuck you for being so right," he said. 

"How would Blanquito know?” Fred said.

"Because his mom is like ours, bro," Juan said. 

“Fuck what up? What are we supposed to fuck up? I haven’t fucked up shit.” 

“Look at us man,” I said. "People don’t expect us to make it to nice universities, have nice jobs or...you know.” An image came to me of Claire in a cozy library, commiserating with her companions while I day drank a world away. “Hold it down with a girl.”

"He don't know about that shit,” Fred said, examining the rest of the path before us. The Christmas market emptied out into a busy intersection and, beyond that, the buzzing downtown of Toronto awaited us. “He doesn't know shit about this."

"Why, your mom's pissed you came out, too?" Oscar said.

"Nah, I'm just saying. I really don’t know why you invited this guy when he's not about it. He's gonna ruin this whole trip. He's not gonna want to do bad shit. He's not gonna want to hit the clubs. He's not gonna want to talk to bad bitches. He’s not like us." 

"Bad bitches!” Oscar and Juan said, double-taking in unison.

“Fred, you're practically married!" Oscar said, and Fred jerked his head toward him, as if he had revealed a dark secret. 

Oscar never seemed any more or less than the bar he set for himself. He never snapped out of his bit, like me, playing whiter than I made myself out to be, or more Latino. Oscar owned his nerdiness, down to spend a night playing video games while, on other occasions, taking out a sniffer spoon to hit a bump in a bar bathroom. He never made himself out to be any more or less of a partyer or a geek—he just was, and he sniffed out Fred. 

"Yo, you are the one fucking with the vibes right now, bro," he said. "You’re not about shit, either." 

Juan was more like Fred. When he got his first big boy job in a corporate office, he mentioned renting a yacht and throwing a party with us and a hundred girls; that idea later distilled down to a marathon rewatch of Dragon Ball at his new apartment with pizza rolls. That said, whenever he felt the urge to push back against that impression of himself as geeky and quiet, he sought out Oscar, our divining rod for how to be. Juan picked up on something in Oscar’s tone.

"So what's your bad shit, bro?" he asked Fred. "What's the shits? Y tu? Tu te quedaría en la casa, comiendo batata."

Fred lit up. "Nah man! I'm about it!" 

We recoiled, chanting a loud oooh shit! in unison. Though I didn't know much about his fiancée, I knew that Fred took his relationship seriously, often bookending his hangouts with obligations to Omyra—I gotta dip, otherwise Omyra will get mad. When we first planned this trip, Fred took the longest to come back to us with dates as he quadruple-checked them against Omyra's schedule. And, when he had broken his silence on the ride up, it was only to ask that we come here. Right here. The Christmas market, to look for souvenirs for Omyra.

"Omyra’s gonna cut your dick off when she finds out you’re talking about bad bitches, bro," Oscar teased. Fred grew visibly angry, pulling away from us. 

"Fuck that, I'm about it!"

"You’re not about shit!" Juan said, finding more momentum behind Oscar. “You’re not about shit!”

On cue, Fred took out his vibrating phone. He answered in a hush tone, trying to palm his hand to cover the phone. 

"Your boy's about to hit the strip club, Omyra!" Oscar shouted. Before Juan could add to the chorus, Fred mouthed a quick "I love you" and pocketed his phone.

"What the fuck, dude! She almost heard you," he said. 

"Come on man, let's go to the video game bar. Fred's too stuck up Omyra's ass to go to a strip club."

"Fuck Omyra," Fred said.

Juan quieted. 

"Fuck Omyra!" he said again. “Fuck Omyra!”

His face tightened and he took out his phone. He breathed hard, swiping with intent. 

“Don’t worry,” Juan said, winking at me. “You can tell Claire we’re not gonna end up at the club.”

As we settled, and I laughed off the moment, fully expecting the same—a yacht full of women reduced down to a night watching Dragon Ball—I felt a buzz building in my chest. 

Though Claire and I held steady, we also never broached the topic of next stages. Now that she had tumbled off for law school, the lingering conversations of our future had taken a backseat to her studies.

That said, she loathed the idea of other women entering my purview. She had leased me the time for this trip, claiming that if I had time to go to Toronto, I had time to visit her. Regardless, she asked that I call every night.

Night approached. I hadn’t thought to call. I looked at my phone. Claire hadn’t texted. Nah—I hadn’t texted. The buzz in my chest expanded. Claire had no clue of what I was up to. 

“I’m down for the strip club.” A voice sounded out. The voice was mine. 

“What?” Oscar said. “Don’t even trip, Chris. Fred’s just acting out.”

At this, Fred firmed in his resolve. 

"Nah, okay, now we have to go," Fred said. He held up his phone. "Uber is en route."

Club Zanzibar resembled a sad sports bar after a hometown loss. Some lame tunes played out from a decade past—a desperate attempt to cultivate a vibe while putting the lights on too bright. Of course, how could we look? We entered with the other afternoon clientele, meaning we preferred sticky floors in a dark den to the sunny peace of a stroll in TO. 

In the back, a body flitted behind a semi-closed curtain, and Fred jumped, locked onto the stage. In contrast, Oscar kicked back, seeming right at home. From how he relaxed, he might have been in front of his living room TV, coasting to the white noise of a sitcom. 

Juan shifted about in his chair.

"How do we get the ones?" he blurted out. "I don't have cash."

"They probably have an ATM here,” Oscar said. “And you could hit the bartender for the change." 

"That's now how it works," Fred said. “There’s not a lot of tipping on the stage.”

He stared at the empty stage. We had arrived at a transition time between stripper shifts, but Fred hadn't looked away from the stage since sitting down. Some older businessmen crept in with the rush of the outside wind: a mix of the brisk winter and too-sultry Tom Ford cologne. White guys, all of them, wearing these puppy-dog faces as they bounced about.

"How do you know how it works here?" Juan asked. 

Fred shrugged. 

"I researched it before the trip."

A Chris Brown song came on and the lights dimmed. Fred activated, gesturing us to shut up. Two strippers walked out onto the stage: a curvy one with a pink seductive look, complete with corset, and the other, rail-thin, in a more traditional, black lingerie set. At the sight of them, Juan patted at his beady forehead, glancing at us in a way that seemed to say, are we really doing this? 

“That’s what this is,” Oscar said. “Sit back. Enjoy.”

On cue, the two strippers whipped their hair in parallel, hooking a leg around the pole next to them. Fred’s mouth lazed into a dumbfounded slackjaw. 

The duo mounted the poles at the same time, climbing high with ease. A cheer sounded out. Not from us, though. Juan kept looking back over the bar and asking if we needed more drinks; Oscar, dialing into his drunkenness, kept shaking his head. But what if? If we didn’t need to drink, we needed to sit here. If we needed to sit here, we had to watch the strippers. If we had to watch the strippers...

“So none of y’all wants a lap dance?” Oscar said, finally. 

Pink corset held me in a trance. Her ass wasn’t fat, per se, but padded full, her dappled flesh catching the light in just the right way as it shimmered with each pump of her hips. Something stirred in me, and, the more it stirred, the less I thought of Claire. 

In a moment, I needed it. I knew I couldn’t grab at her cheeks. I knew I couldn’t smash. But I could lose myself in that dappled flesh shaking away. I could lose myself in the potentials of things just so near to us, no matter how out of reach. 

“I’m gonna get one.” That voice again. My voice.

“Ayo!”

“Chris, my man!”

I fixated on the idea of pink corset pushing her ass up on me. For a moment, just a moment, nothing more, Claire could exist in a different universe.  

“See! Chris about it! Fred is just play-pretend! Fred not about shit!” 

Fred began nodding over and over, as if to pump himself up. 

“I’m about it.” Fred’s voice came as a whisper from deep within the booming bass of a Chris Brown ballad. “I’m about bad shit only.” 

Then, having finally convinced himself of his next move, he jutted his other hand into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He counted out twenties on the table.

"In Canada, you pay for the lap dance and drinks," he said, handing out at least a hundred to both Oscar and Juan. Our eyes met. "You're good, right? Your mom wouldn’t want you to fuck this up right? Holding it down with a girl?"

My face burned. A tight line drew between us, Fred and me, and I could feel Oscar and Juan evaluating from afar. 

"Listen, bro," Juan said after a beat. "I'm not gonna ask why you have money like this ready to go, I'm not gonna ask why you know so much about Canadian strip clubs, I'm just gonna take your money because yo vine pa’ aprovechar un poco del ambiente al norte." 

Oscar, nonchalant still, nodded along with Juan, swiping the money off the table at the same time. As they left, he shot me a look, as if to ask, are you going to be okay? I managed a weak smile. Then, approaching the strippers at the stage, they held out their cash and advertised their intent; the strippers beamed and Juan blushed. I imagined him tripping up on his words as he tried to be polite and “about bad shit” at the same time—“yo what’s good shorty? Would you be interested in rubbing your backside on my crotch?” 

Juan finally had a story to tell, about Africa in Canada, a luxurious yarn he’d pepper with details of VIP lounges, celebrity strippers, and, best of all, he’d have Oscar there to verify—his muse in bad shit. Juan hadn’t gotten his yacht with a hundred girls, but he had gotten a lap dance. 

The second they left, Fred turned to me.

"Omyra knows about this. I already texted her. She said, you know, 'go ahead, that's fun,' so she knows."

“Okay?” 

"You know I'm not some boring kid. I'm into this shit too. I grew up in the Bronx with them, you knew that?"

He returned to watching the stage, engaged again, leaning forward, analyzing an empty stage while the strippers’ replacements coordinated behind closed curtains. Fred tensed, tapping a foot against the ground. 

“This might be the last time I go to a strip club!” Fred said. “Then I’ll be wifed up!” 

The buzz resided. The sad Chris Brown songs threw my animal needs in contrast. Pink corset, all things told, offered nothing new, and staring at dappled cheeks spared me no blame from having forgotten Claire. I took out my phone. I drew up a text: Hey, babe. TO has been great. How are you? 

"What's it like?" Fred said, rubbing his eyes. His voice caught me off guard. 

“What?” 

With Oscar and Juan gone, his eyes took on a new, pleading quality. I saw a split between the Fred here and the one propped up by the Bad Shit Gang, el Corito. This same Fred had wondered about souvenirs for Omyra—even when he hoped to shroud himself in bad shit only, he cared for the one closest to him, a country away. 

"What's it like, bro?” Fred asked again. 

His tone now insinuated that we had been good friends for a while—at least, me and this new Fred.

“What’s what like?”

Fred worked the bridge of his nose. He seemed exhausted all of a sudden.

“You know. Being white. Growing up in a nice place. No drama, no beef. Just families, parents you know, two people who love each other, not fighting, going for walks out in nice parks and shit."

Back in the day, Oscar and Juan boasted of their Bronx living, recounting specific routes on Townsend Ave and 171st to avoid muggings, or a homie adopted into a clique—something just shy of a gang. A mythology grounded their understanding of themselves. Back in my day: maybe I was a rich, prep-school white kid, and my father and I tied sweaters around our necks as we discussed our family hedge fund business. Back in my day! My Townsend Ave: maybe I totalled car after car on Main St in drunken bouts that somehow resulted in dismissed DUIs. Or nah! Maybe, I embodied the nerdy type: I lost myself in a world of Star Wars minor character model kits, earned straight As out of fun, and tripped into a great university off  “quirkiness” alone. 

Or...maybe I was the white guy who found the high school sweetheart at 15, never once peeped a fat ass out the side of my eye, married and started every bio as “Husband to Claire.” 

That’s what they didn’t expect of us, right? Nice job, nice university, hold it down with a nice girl. 

"Um, nah, yeah,” I said, putting my phone back in my pocket. I cleared my throat. “I mean...my hometown was very suburban, the same shit as everywhere, but with all these people from the city who moved up. So I grew up with lots of heads just like you.”

"Yessir," he said, nodding. "That's where I'm gonna be one day. I'm gonna have all that, bro. I'm gonna be in peaceful ass upstate New York, and I'm gonna have a boring life and I'm never gonna have to do shit like this ever again. I'll never have to take another step in the Bronx."

An airhorn sample sounded out—bwaaa bwa bwa bwa bwaaa! A new stripper waltzed onto the stage. A light slashed across us, swiveling about the sad club. 

The gray heads of the businessmen had amassed next to the stage, having grown impatient after Juan and Oscar departed with their only bait. One pumped up a fistful of dollars while another egged him on, slapping his shoulder. More! More! Fred perked up, as if he had just remembered where we were. This new stripper embodied that “MILF” theme, teasing the businessmen with an extended foot, gliding with grace about the stage in slower, purposeful movements. Stacy’s mom, has got it going on! Pertinent lyrics. She flashed a silver streak in her hair as she flipped it back, grabbing at her busty tits and gyrating her hips. 

“I haven’t always been a good fiancé,” Fred said. “Just like the songs. Just like the reggaeton. Promise one thing to Omyra, and break the promises as soon as she turns her back. I’ve made mistakes.”

A weight pulled down on Fred’s eyelids. He analyzed MILF as if finally coming to terms with what it meant to be in a strip club. They strip the clothes off their bodies. MILF threw a high-kick, flashing a semi-sheer thong. For a second, I lost myself again in the glimpse there, between her thighs, the sheer beauty to her curves.

“Me neither, man.” 

The air horn blared out again: the next stripper’s introduction. Ella le gusta la gasolina! Daddy Yankee? One for the restless businessmen, another now striding out with fierce steps, resembling a football player sprinting onto the field more than a femme fatale. She closed the distance between us. Up close, she pointed to us, mouthing to come closer as she gestured the same with a finger. The “Latina” type, of course, she sported a literal flag across her tight crop-top. She whipped her high ponytail to and fro; she worked her outrageously large hoops in the now-dimming light. And her ass, my goodness, her ass full out, pushed out from leather short-shorts two sizes too small, and yet, there, right there, between her hoops, her ponytail, and her ass, I spotted happiness for just a second. 

“I’m trying to be like you, bro,” Fred said. 

He rose from his chair. He navigated the table and aisles of our area as he neared the stage.

“Latina” held out a hand, and Fred took it, a salsa dance in motion. Fred matched her hips to the right, to the left, and then dug in his pocket for the some remaining bills. When he held them out, though, like buying produce from a stand, she flipped around, shaking her ass in his face and pointing to the thin string of a waistband. The string afforded no privacy and, with just a peek, just a slip further into temptation, more awaited us there, with “Latina.” From afar, I found myself willing Fred on.

But Fred declined, setting the ones down in a neat pile at her feet, and waved at her like a dork as he pulled away, looking more like he had hit the fruit stand than a strip club.

"I gotta call Omyra back," Fred yelled back to me, winking. "If Oscar and Juan come back, tell them I got a lap dance."