You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers Page A

said.
                "That doesn't even make sense," I said.
                "So what the fuck?" he said.
                "You're disgusting."
                "I can show him to anyone I want, fucker."
                "I don't know you."
                He scoffed. He was such a messy drunk.
                "Don't ever show that picture to some random waitress again," I said.
                "I'll do whatever."
                "You fucking won't."
                "Guys!" Raymond said, with an arm between us. "Easy."
                I walked out and waited in the cab. I wanted an hour alone inthe cab in the cooling air but they followed me out seconds later.

                Hand asked again that we be taken to the jazz club, and I wanted Hand back in St. Louis. He was the wrong guy to have brought. The picture. What kind of --? I couldn't go home, couldn't leave him, though, because we were in Dakar and only had this week.
                Five minutes through deserted streets and the next place was precisely the same but worse and without Val Kilmer. "In every part of the world," explained Raymond, "cabbies are trained to bring men to clubs like this. We go in, the cabbie gets a kickback, everyone's happy. We are merely cargo. The way you guys are traveling, you're gonna be targets everywhere. You're perfect prey."
                This time, immediately upon entering, we were all attacked in a very real way -- women pushing each other to get closer to us, throwing jagged looks at each other, one grabbing Hand's crotch in a way less erotic than territorial. Raymond wound up next to a large woman with bursting eyes and Hand ran to the bathroom. I was being left more or less alone so ordered a drink and saw, across the bar, the two Sierra Leonian sisters, in the corner, beyond the dancefloor. They saw me too and laughed a warm and commiserative laugh.
                They were still on the make. The place was full -- more French sailors, three dozen hungry Senegalese women, and the rest a hodgepodge of Italians and older European businessmen sitting alone, still waiting, waiting. We watched the dancefloor crowd, clear and change and at one point the Sierra Leonians were dancing alone and I decided then to give them the contents of my left sock, about $400, before we left.
                Hand returned from the bathroom with a story. Apparently there had been a few French sailors inside and they'd asked him his nationality. American, he said. "America!" they said, "you pay for the world!" Then they both cheered and patted him on the back. He probably made it up.
                "The crazy thing is," Hand said, "I think they were serious."
                "You show them any pictures?" I asked.
                "Fuck you," he said.
                "They're young. They'll learn," said Raymond.
                "Learn what?" Hand asked.
                "Derision," he said.
                I was impressed by Raymond. He could break out a word like derision, in his second language, and even better, he was an aphorism kind of man, who could conceive of such things -- We are merely cargo - - and slip them into conversation -- You give chaos, chaos gives back. I always wanted to be a guy like that.
                I watched the dancefloor, full of slack shoulders and heads hung and swinging, arms reaching passively up, up. Women tucked their hair behind their ears and men pecked their heads to the beat, hands as fists.
                What was wrong with Charlotte? Nothing. Every complaint now seemed ridiculous. She had long dark hairs that swirled around her nipples and I'd seen this as problematic instead of loving her indifference to them. And I'd disliked her sighs. She sighed too much, I announced to myself one day, and worse, her sighs