by Joanna Angel
“Naomi . . . G. My name is Naomi G!” This wasn’t very creative. My real name was Naomi, and my real last name was Greenfeld . . . so Naomi G was just a shortened version of my actual name. But it just rolled out of my mouth, and it felt right, and it also kind of sounded like Cardi B—but not so much like Cardi B that if she ever checked in on her old strip club, she would get mad at me. I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.
“Alright! I like it!” Brandi said. From a distance I heard the DJ saying, “Calling Brandi to the stage . . . Brandi, come to the stage.”
“Shit!” she said. “I gotta go on stage—I’ll see you after!” She kissed me on the cheek. I put my slightly torn dress back on and smiled. It wasn’t even 3:00 p.m., my internet bill was paid, I had been an integral part of someone else’s orgasm, and I had a cool new name. I felt like an important contributing member of society . . . or, at least, of this society. I confidently walked out of the dark room, toward the music and the neon lights, excited to see whose pants I could mess up next.
To continue with Naomi in this fantasy, turn to page 26.
To go back and see Naomi explore the club herself, turn to page 82.
I entered the strip club part of the club. There were a few customers by the stage, and a few standing near the bar waiting for nonalcoholic beverages. It was early afternoon. Did these men have the day off? Being at a strip club in the afternoon on a weekday showed an impressive dedication to tits and ass. I’ve had men show up three hours late for 10:00 p.m. booty calls who lived four blocks away from me.
I wasn’t sure what to do with myself at this point, so I just . . . found a wall and leaned against it, like I was the James Dean of the strip club. Brandi was now on stage, so I figured I would remain propped up against the wall, watching her.
She strutted around the stage, demonstrating some incredibly fine-tuned twerking skills. Her body stayed still while her ass moved like a separate living organism, shaking to the exact beat of the music. The eyes of the customers tried to keep up, as they blindly handed over all the money in their wallets. She kicked her legs up and landed in an upside-down position on the pole. Somehow, amidst this sexual acrobatic display, she managed to strip off her shiny pink dress midair. The dress slipped from her fingers and fell to the side of the stage, and she laughed and glanced over in my direction. From the “oopsie” look she was giving me, I deduced that this dress falling on the floor wasn’t intentional. I’m coming for you Brandi! I’m here to save your dress!
I grabbed the dress and attempted to hand it to her from the side of the stage. But she said, while still upside-down, “You know what, keep it! I got another one just like it!” Then she spun around the pole. While I took great pride in my thrift shop stripper aesthetic, I was also honored to have been invited into this sisterhood of the traveling pink sparkly stripper dress. Perhaps one day I too would pass it on to another stripper in need. “Take this too,” she added, as she slipped a pink garter off her left thigh and threw it at me, like I was a bridesmaid at her wedding. There was a matching pink garter on her right thigh with a stack of folded money under it, which she obviously kept for herself. She swung around the pole, wearing nothing but folded money, and I will admit, it was a good look for her.
I went to the bathroom and did a complete wardrobe change, like I was Cher, or something. I crumpled up my Marc Jacobs getup, which was once a prized possession, but now felt like a nuisance. I slipped on the dress and slid the garter up my thigh, with the determination to fill that thing up with rent, or at least half of it. I walked out of the bathroom feeling like a sparkly pink superhero.
I wandered around the club aimlessly, but also confidently. Brandi eventually found me, now in the same exact dress I was wearing, only hers was silver. Where the hell did one buy these outfits? Let alone multiple ones in different colors?
“Now, you gotta check in with the DJ—I’ll introduce you!” Brandi said. I followed her blindly. I knew I had just been up on the stage not that long ago, but after seeing Brandi dance, the thought of going back myself was intimidating. This wasn’t a funny experiment. This wasn’t a weird accident or a whim. I was . . . actually at work?
If the strip club was an ocean, then the DJ booth was the lighthouse. It was elevated, and the DJ sat at the top in a circle of enclosed glass, watching over the sea of strippers—and more literally like a lighthouse, he actually did control the lights. There was some generic techno beat playing on a loop. It was repetitive and mundane, like a specific kind of elevator music designed for night clubs instead of office buildings.
Brandi pushed through a mini-barn door at the top of the fourth stair that led to the DJ booth. My friends in Brooklyn commonly think that “real” DJs spin vinyl, and all other forms of DJ are bullshit. While I have nodded and smiled and agreed on the issue for the sake of conversation, I never actually cared about who was a “real” DJ and who wasn’t. But I will say that this set-up looked rather legitimate to me. It wasn’t just a little booth to play music and do recreational drugs in, this was the command center for the entire strip club. A cluster of buttons and controls for smoke, a different one entirely for lights, and a feed showing security camera footage of the front door, the stage, and little rooms that must have been somewhere in this club but that I hadn’t seen yet.
The DJ also had an impeccably well-organized desktop, with rows of folders named things like “Chevalle,” “Kendra,” “Angelina,” and “Sabrina.” While there was nothing vintage or rare about his music collection, and none of his three computers were designed by Steve Jobs (yes, I’m afraid they were—gasp-PCs), this looked very “real” to me. He was the man behind the curtain, and his random selection of Top 40 hits from different decades was the brain, heart, and courage the strippers needed. And to his credit, unlike the other DJs that I knew, this guy apparently got up in the morning. And there’s something to be said for that.
The DJ was pale and skinny, with a leopard print shirt and long black hair. I wasn’t sure if his hair was greasy or intentionally combed through with gel to give it a bit of a “wet” look, but either way it complemented his animal print. He had giant headphones on, and he was nodding his head to the beat, clicking away on a mouse, furiously dragging and dropping folders like he was preparing for a digital battle. Brandi tapped him on the shoulder and interrupted his trance.
“Hey TJ!” she said, yelling over the music.
“Sup Brandi!” he replied with a smile. I saw him pull out a mini-whiteboard from behind one of the computers and write Brandi’s name down in red dry-erase marker. “Whatchu feeling like for your next set?”
“Enough of this techno shit,” she said. “Play me some Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, maybe Travis Scott? Some old, some new! Mix it up!”
“Aww come on. You know Tony doesn’t like too much hip hop on the weekdays.” He shook his finger at her like a parent scolding a kid for eating too much ice cream.
“Well, tell him to suck my dick.” She took a ten-dollar bill out of her cleavage and put it in his hands. TJ the DJ took the money, but, hesitantly.
“I’m telling him you said that if I get in trouble!” he said.
“I’ll tell him right now,” she said, and she grabbed a walkie-talkie tucked away behind his sea of laptops, clicked the side of it, and shouted into the speaker, “Tony, suck my dick.” She and TJ giggled. And then the walkie-talkie beeped, and a fuzzy sounding voice replied, “Lick my nuts.”
Brandi and TJ the DJ laughed hysterically at this response. What the hell was I doing here again? Should I chime in and tell someone to do something to part of my nonexistent penis?
Mid-laughter, TJ’s expression suddenly changed. He threw his headphones back on and faded out of the looped techno and into a remix of a Katy Perry song from a few years ago. He grabbed the microphone and said, “Coming to the sage it’s Kendra! Kendra coming to the stage!” This he said in a radio announcer voice—or should I say, strip club announcer voice.
“Alright, hip hop
it is.” He immediately snapped back into conversational mode and slipped his headphones off. That was impressive. I’d been standing silently in the dark, observing all this, but suddenly I was very much not in the dark . . . because in that whirlwind moment when TJ went full DJ, he hit some kind of switch that made the lights flash, and one of them was right above my head. He saw me and did a double take.
“Oh hey—this is Naomi G. She’s new,” Brandi said.
“Hey! What kind of music do you want to dance to?” he asked. More stressful decisions I was completely unprepared for. I had to come up with a fake name, and then also had to come up with some kind of soundtrack to complement that fake persona. The classic punk and modern discordant alt-rock that filled my iTunes probably weren’t going to work here. I already knew from my eavesdropping that I couldn’t request any hip hop . . . Tony and I were very far from any kind of jovial dick sucking or nut licking relationship. What should it be?
“You like rock? Techno? Top 40? R&B? What’s gonna get you moving around up there?”
To see Naomi dance to rock, turn to page 32.
To see Naomi dance to R&B, turn to page 40.
“I’ll um . . . I’ll dance to rock!” I said. It seemed like the most vast and generic category, and it felt safe. Being a bit of a music nerd, I was suffering from second-hand embarrassment. No one used the term “rock” anymore. People said “classic rock,” or “punk rock,” or sometimes even “hard rock,” but plain old “rock” isn’t actually a genre of music anymore. Was he going to play Bob Dylan? Did rock mean Third Eye Blind? Did rock mean Marilyn Manson? Eighties hair metal? Elvis? It could technically mean any of these, and while none of these selections particularly inspired me, none of them offended me. So, rock it was.
He nodded, and I saw him spell out the name “Naomi G” on his mini-whiteboard. TJ the DJ put his headphones back on and disappeared back into the matrix of buttons and lights. Brandi exited the booth and I followed her out. We were now on the floor, and I felt like we were two wandering kittens out in the wild, if the wild consisted of about eight businessmen uncomfortably sitting around staring at an empty stage, waiting for a vagina to appear.
“There might not be a lot of people here now, but trust me, people here at this time are coming to spend money—and they’re gonna spend it quick. You’ve gotta get them in VIP before the other girls get to them.”
I was taking notes, listening to my stripper mentor, but my mental note-taking was interrupted with an announcement from TJ.
“Calling . . . Naomi G to the stage! Coming up next . . . It’s Naomi G!”
“Shit, I guess you gotta go!” Brandi pointed in the direction of the stage. I was on my own now.
I walked out onto the stage to the song “American Woman” by Lenny Kravitz. A song I forgot existed, but I somehow knew all the words to, without ever having owned a single Lenny Kravitz album. The men by the stage nodded their heads. One of them even mouthed the words to the chorus, and the chorus was basically the entire song.
Okay. Here I go. I attempted to look “Tyra Fierce,” as Tyra Banks would say on America’s Next Top Model.Tyra always said the look you gave the audience when you first walked out on the runway set the tone for your performance, so I gathered up all the fierceness inside me, took a dead stop in the middle of the stage, and stared at the four men gazing at me. Yes. I know I said eight before, but four of them were whisked away by other strippers, one of them being Brandi. That was okay, though. She’d left me the Lenny Kravitz enthusiast, who was now playing air drums in addition to mouthing the words.
I grabbed onto the pole in the middle of the stage. I had no idea what to do with the pole, of course, but my body just gravitated toward the phallic piece of metal. I leaned against it and shimmied back and forth. I turned around, used the pole to balance myself, and shook my ass slowly back and forth. As I arched my back, the dress perked up and showed off a peek of my pussy. I mean, I knew the thing was going to come out shortly, but I figured I should tease them until at least the, um . . . eighth time Lenny Kravitz said the song title.
I felt guilty about it, but I had to admit I was enjoying dancing to this song. It didn’t fit with the genres embraced by my Brooklyn hipster culture—while listening to some modern pop songs would be considered acceptable, this hit from ten plus years ago was not ironic enough. But I couldn’t help it—something about this repetitive guitar riff made me feel sexy. I didn’t want any of these men to throw me against my bedroom wall and fuck me. I wanted them to worship me, and while I’d never considered myself a seductress, the combination of Lenny Kravitz and TJ the DJ’s skills instilled the power in me to transform. Naomi G didn’t have any doubts or weaknesses. She was confident and sexy, she existed to turn you on, whoever you were . . . and she listened to “rock.”
I turned back around, and my back slid down the pole. My legs naturally spread open—they kinda just did that. My dress was technically still on, but with my knees facing straight up, my pussy was exposed. There was something very seductive about my breasts still being covered but my vagina being exposed. I can’t quite explain it, but I liked it.
I spread my lips open . . . you know the ones. The guy playing air drums stopped playing air drums. He did, however, keep mouthing the words to the song, looking directly into my vagina, like he was singing to it. I wasn’t exactly proud to identify as an American woman, especially in the country’s current state, but my vagina was totally fine with it. I slid my fingers up and down my lips, so my pussy was now singing back to him. He put a stack of dollars in front of him.
I got down on all fours and crawled over to him, but I realized that with my face pointed at him, my vagina was facing the wrong direction. He picked up his fake drumsticks and began to play the god damn air drums again.
I moved into a yoga bridge position, where I grabbed onto my ankles and I thrust my hips up. The stem of my heels worked perfectly as something to grab onto, like two mini-stripper poles on the bottom of my feet. My pussy was now propped up and fully exposed. He stopped his air drums again. Thankfully, this guy’s passion for real vagina overrode his passion for fake drums.
I waved it around, up and down, hypnotizing him with my entire pelvic area. He threw dollars at me—I couldn’t count how many, but it was definitely more than I would make in a tip jar in an entire shift at Fix. I clenched my fists tighter around my heels and swirled my vagina around in a circular motion. TJ changed the lighting configuration just slightly, and I could feel my vagina illuminated, as if it was going to be beamed up into strip club heaven as a reward for its good behavior. Mr. Air Drums continued to hand over his stack of money, throwing it bit by bit onto the stage. His stack became smaller as my pile of ones became larger. It was a live demonstration of redistribution of wealth, as if my pussy had the power to break up the capitalist monopoly.
Lenny Kravitz was starting to say goodbye. The song was going to end soon. Me and Mr. Air Drums had a good thing going here, and I wasn’t sure if our relationship would last once a different song came on. Luckily, a few more men had walked over. How exciting! My exposed yoga-bridge pussy was doing alright for itself, but it needed to get out to different parts of the stage and entice other people.
TJ the DJ chimed back in on the microphone in his official sounding announcer voice. “Alright guys, we’ve got Naomi G . . . Naomi G on the stage. Don’t be mean, show her that green if you wanna see her take her dress off. She’s got one more song—put your hands together and show some love for . . . Naomi G!” I was embarrassed. Was this normal? Or was I just doing a really bad job, to the point that TJ felt like he had to step in and force people to give me money? I had my own little thing going, I was fierce and untouchable here, and I didn’t want to appear desperate or greedy. I really needed to have a conversation with this TJ guy and explain to him my brand.
But then, people did put their hands together, did clap, and did in fact throw a bunch of dollar bills on the stage. Or, um . . . “green” as
he called it. I couldn’t believe it. His extortion haiku yielded some impressive results.
I stood back up and leaned against the pole again as a new song came on. What was this? Oh. I was pretty sure this was Nickelback. There are a whole bunch of bands that blend together in my mind, and they all kind of sound like Nickelback to me, but I think this actually was Nickelback. It had a faster tempo, so it was time to pick up the pace, but before I decided what my new dance moves should be, I had to take this dress off. I slid the spaghetti straps off my shoulders and it fell to the ground quite perfectly. I stepped out of the dress and pushed it to the side. I moved my hands up and down my body to the tempo of the music . . . and, please don’t tell anyone I said this but, it was the perfect tempo.
I got back down on all fours and did an over-dramatic hair flip that actually turned out much better than I expected it to. I saw my long strands of brown hair fly up in the air and then land back in place, looking so much sexier than they had before. I was moving around a bit faster, now, and I broke a bit of a sweat. I could feel the droplets of moisture running through my hair, and it helped style it perfectly with that messy, sex-hair look.
I didn’t have large breasts—they were perky Bs—so it felt a bit silly to shake them . . . but it did feel appropriate to smack them. Something about the sweat and the sweet sounds of Nickelback just made me want to smack my own tits. With more of an audience and a faster song playing, I had to spread the attention around. I couldn’t just use my pussy-hypnotizing powers on one person.
I got on my back and positioned my legs in a perfect V shape, and from my point of view I could see one man’s head as if it was coming directly out of my pussy. Then I touched myself. Not like a full-on masturbate-to-completion type of touch, just a little rub, and as I rubbed, I looked directly into the eyes of the stranger in between my legs. He was handsome in a slightly older, silver fox way—like if George Clooney had a less attractive brother or something. He was handsome enough to get a four-and-a-half-second vagina rub, and I was genuinely excited by him watching me. I spread my pussy for him to see. He gave it a little half-smile, and then threw some dollar bills at me. The whole interaction felt quite polite.