Roadwarrior

by Nick Molloy

  She would often let me see what she had written about me in her diary. Most of it was complimentary and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel good. I felt wanted in her company and that was something that I didn’t seem to be getting at home and hadn’t for some time.

  Ultimately however, Natasha had her issues and they were deep seated. Despite her outward self confidence there was an insecure frightened little girl inside. Her use of recreational drugs with all of her ‘ra ra’ friends was far from endearing to me. They made her moody and unpredictable and I didn’t like the company of her numerous toff friends.

  It became like a game to her. It was like she felt she had numerous assets with which she could lure me in. Money was one of those assets and she once talked about what was the use of having so much of it if she couldn’t spend it with a man like me. She even then talked of throwing herself of an 11th storey balcony. She was prone to depression and her drug use can’t have helped. Although she was too selfish, I felt, to ever seriously contemplate actually jumping, it was representative of her state of mind. She was used to getting her own way and she hated it when she didn’t get it.

  I soon became an object which she wasn’t getting her own way with. In her eyes I was malfunctioning. She had an intellectual arrogance about her that was not very attractive and she despised it when I proved her wrong. She even wrote in her diary of how I kept ‘logic chopping’ her into submission. By contrast, I welcomed her intellectual challenging. She however, wanted to control my thoughts, not run with them.

  I liked Natasha but she had a nasty side to her. Like too many women I’ve met as a stripper, she was incredibly selfish and ultimately that turned me off.

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  The minute I had put my mind to it I had emptied my balls into the mouths of three different women, from three different shows in four days. All of the women had been bona fide fag hags and there was a certain addictive quality to what I had undergone in the last few days. Things were not going well at home. I was convinced I had lost Zoe’s love because she didn’t respond to me anymore.

  These new women had watched me perform and wanted to have me. Their motives were different in each circumstance, but it probably is fair to say that it boosted my ego and made me feel wanted at a time when I was a little low.

  Also it was starting to unleash elements of my true sexual character. I’ve always had this ‘darker’side. Zoe had kept it in check. She preferred ‘normal’sex. I was more kinky, exploratory and adventurous. I was always straining at the leash whilst Zoe would pull me to heel. In a wild three days the leash had lost more than just its tension. It appeared to have snapped in two.

  Whilst my inner demons sought to over-run my inner goodly heroes, I had the added complication of dealing with my depleted finances. There was no way that I could continue to strip and not have another source of income. The company that had headhunted me for the job in Dubai had weighed in with a firm offer. After some bluff calling on my part we settled on a 12 month contract at just under £8000 per month tax free. The way stripping was going I would do well to clear that in a year. There seemed little option but to take the job.

  I really didn’t want the Dubai position all that much. I welcomed the finance it offered, providing a genuine opportunity to clear the mortgage quickly. Also, I was disillusioned with the British culture somewhat and this presented an opportunity to test the old adage that a change is as good as a rest. However, the thought of once again joining the rat race terrified me and gave me nightmares.

  Also, I was really starting to enjoy and embrace my fledgling strip career. What started out as an act of rebellion, mixed with a peculiar curiosity for me, had become a form of chemotherapy attacking the cancerous cells all to prevalent in the corporate slave nation our society is rapidly becoming.

  I had discussed with Zoe at length about the possibility of a 5 year plan to kill the mortgage with me as a stripper. Given the then current growth rate of bookings, this was not an overly ambitious plan assuming her salary was managed properly. However, her reaction was lukewarm at the time of discussion and her actions were downright contrary to my suggestion. My head hurt from banging it on a wall and our relationship was going downhill fast. We were approaching terminal velocity and the brakes pads appeared to be worn to the bone.

  It seemed like I had no choice. The only person that could have helped me fight off the cancerous corporate lifestyle was Zoe and she offered no lifeline. It stands to reason that on some subconscious level I had to resent her for doing this. Reluctantly I agreed to take the Dubai assignment and almost simultaneously I came to the conclusion that the rock in my life was no longer hard. She had melted away and only ashen remnants remained.

  She took with total amazement and utter shock my suggestion that I should move into the other room. I felt I was being forced to start afresh and I told her that I was going to pay off my mortgage. In the meantime, she was welcome to keep wasting her money away, but no longer mine. I was truly expecting complete nonchalance in her reaction to my bombshell, but the opposite was the case. It hit her like a combination from a peak Mike Tyson, but I was hurting too. My pleas had fallen on deaf ear too many times. I simply didn’t believe she was going to change now. We had just been put on probation.

  I felt like a man on death row. On December 9th 2002, my life would end as I knew it. I would be enslaved again into a sort of corporate living death and my rock of the last nine years was no longer there to lean on in support. I was feeling the strain. For a condemned man, every breath tastes sweeter than the last and with the stripping in those final weeks that’s exactly how it felt.

  I returned to play a gay venue in Portsmouth. The first time there my reception had been ok to lukewarm. This time there was a visible improvement in their reaction and the personnel had changed little. Even the compering drag queen offered words to that effect as I left the stage.

  I did another gay club in Kent where prior to going on I also did a photo shoot with a photographer in the cellar. The pictures probably appeared in some gay magazine stateside but I never heard from the photographer again. It’s a shame as we actually got on quite well that night and when I returned from my Arabian prison over a year later he had changed his number.

  The night was made most memorable because of the behaviour of the resident fag hag – a big girl with died red hair and a foreign accent. I tried to talk to her, but didn’t get very far. Several lesbians were present in the club that night and one particularly pretty one kept sneaking me glances. However, she was with her girlfriend so I continued to probe with the fag hag. What little I did glean from her was that she possessed a high degree of insecurity coupled with a fear of rejection. She only seemed comfortable around gay men and ostracised me the moment she realised I preferred women. I gave several of them a lift home at the end of the evening. Matt (the photographer) called me the next day in a state of anguish. The large fag hag had tried to jump into bed with him and a couple of the other gay men where he stayed the night. Talk about wanting what you can’t have !

  I performed at a club in Brighton, where they wanted me to play only to their rave music, rather than my usual music. It was a slightly unnerving concept at first but I soon got into it. Dare I say it, but I actually danced (sort of). The performance was on a very high raised stage and it certainly seemed to go well. It was a very surreal setting where everybody seemed high rather than drunk. Arms of both sexes were raised towards the stage reaching out in a vain attempt to grab me as I performed my act. It reminded me a lot of the archive footage you see from rock concerts on the TV. If someone had handed me a guitar I could have smashed it up and dived into the audience to complete the scene.

  My penultimate show was a gay pub in Watford who had seemed reticent to book me at first. However, the show again went very well and one of the publicans reverted from hostile to pleasant within 20 minutes. That is, from going on stage to coming off. With that said, one could hardly call it a
stage. It was more like a couple of beer crates with some wood over the top. There wasn’t room to swing a spider let alone a cat. I was starting to get a feel of how to interact with an audience and what was expected from a performance. I had made a few little adjustments as I was going along but nothing major. My choreography was still lacking, but I had learnt what was expected and had started to adjust to it. It was starting to show because my reception was improving everywhere I went and it wasn’t just because people wanted to get into my knickers.

  I also acquired a few more hen shows in those final few weeks as Marvelous. Most of the work as Marvelous had been on the gay scene and the hen scene had proved more difficult to access. On the gay scene they were keen to view new, young blood. Many of the strippers playing the circuit had been doing so for three decades. Few had more than one or two acts, a few were saggy where they were once toned and generally audiences were tired of the repetition. New pretenders were welcome to come and challenge the established elite. The gay scene also likes its ‘chickens’. The term chicken is an extension of the abbreviation ‘chick’ as in newly hatched. Gay men, by enlarge, like their quarry young. If one demonstrates an ability to pull a chicken half ones age, I guess it does wonders for ones self esteem. Because I look a lot younger than my real age, I fall into the chicken category. Although, there is a demand for older performers, the mass market demands youth and this is on my side compared to a lot of the competition. As a result gay venues were willing to give me a try with little or even no recommendation other than an accompanying picture.

  The hen night circuit on the other hand was much more of a clique with a certain air of Mafiosi about it. Although Michael had provided me with a list of drag queens to contact who regularly partook in hen shows, they were far too diva-ish to return my phone calls. If they picked up the phone the reception was mild to lukewarm. In essence, hen shows were declining and there were not all that many about anymore and those that were available went to the established clique. Certain agents used certain drag queens, who in turn, booked the strippers. Why the said agents left the booking of the strippers to the drag queens is beyond me. Agents should book the entire show – that’s why they are an agent after all ! There is also this assumption that drag queens are the centre of professionalism, whereas strippers are a modicum of unpredictability. By enlarge I would agree with the accusation levelled at the strippers, but in my experience drag queens fall into exactly the same category. Too many of them fall ill at the right time, have their cars explode on them at a convenient moment or have their 4th mother die on the night of the show. Their excuses for not turning up are as dire and as prevalent as those of the strippers.

  Furthermore, given that the drag queens are often handed the reins when it comes to recruiting the strippers, many of them have also turned into miniature Don Kings. They will recruit the cheapest strippers they can find because then they pocket the rest! Win-win is not a concept many of them believe in.

  Strangely, the drag queens have little difficulty in recruiting cheap strippers in this way. The majority of the strippers are straight. Hen night audiences tend to scream loudest and often give the biggest ego boost. Thus, you will find many of the leading strippers willing to take bargain basement money just to appear on a hen show. The drag is often paid double or even treble what the stripper is paid, yet, still beats the stripper down that extra tenner so he can keep it for himself. Some drags are notorious for booking strippers that will allow themselves to be ‘given a hand’ prior to tying off. Those that allow this are asked first. The whole stripper-drag thing is an unholy alliance, far from harmonious, steeped in tradition and ultimately unnecessary. Drag comperes are not essential for hen shows but they are traditional. Britain is nothing if not a traditional country.

  As a result the whole hen night thing was a bit more difficult to crack and even today I wouldn’t pretend I have it sussed. Back then the offers were few and far between. Sissy Bells offered me a few shows but over 50% of what he offered fell out of bed before it happened. The cynic in me suspects that he found a stripper to perform at a cheaper rate and therefore cancelled me by telling me that the venue burnt down (or some other lame excuse).

  One show I turned up at looked like a complete disaster. The drag queen was calling the audience names and stormed out of the venue. When it came to my turn to perform, the DJ played the wrong music and then accused me of messing it up because I didn’t come out ! With what had happened earlier in the evening with the drag queen, I think they were looking for a fight with everybody and anybody. I don’t know exactly what had happened, but as far as I could gather the drag got heckled and didn’t take it too well. If heckling is a problem to a performer, he or she really ought to look at something a little quieter – maybe a librarian’s role might suit him better.

  At the end of the evening they gave me only half the agreed fee citing the whole show as going wrong from start to finish. Short of taking the till, there was little I could do. The girls seemed happy enough. I could hardly forget the one that told me she had just split up with her boyfriend and asked me to sleep with her so she could get back at him ! I figured I would sort it out later as they just seemed upset at the drag queen swearing at them and storming off.

  However, discussions with Sissy Bells on the matter the next day didn’t prove very fruitful. He clearly had no contractual arrangement with them at all and was a middleman for another cowboy agent. Everybody had skimmed their bit of the top and the performers went out for rock bottom. I said I would just have to sue the club for the excess unless he could provide the precise details of the booker.

  ‘If you do that I’ll never book you again’ came the reply.

  I weighted up the options. Bells was hardly booking me much anyway so that didn’t make any difference to me. Now I had said it, whether I did sue or didn’t sue, he wasn’t going to be in contact again anyway. We were only talking about £40, but more important to me was the principle of the matter. I typically push principle a long way, but on this occasion I let it slide. I was scheduled to go to Dubai in a matter of weeks and could hardly justify returning to England for a court case over £40. Reluctantly I let the matter drop.

  My final hen show before departure was a more pleasant affair. I had responded to a posting on a website called the muppetboard from a drag queen called Lady Jayne Van Campen who was looking for a couple of southern based strippers. He accepted my offer of work and we met one night in Corby.

  At that point, my experience of both strippers and drag queens was highly negative. This was the first occasion where negativity became at least neutral. Lady Jayne was professional, likeable and a good performer. The girls loved him and his Northern accent completely belied his Dutch heritage. His partner was also totally delightful and a pleasure to be around.

  The other stripper was a fellow called Heartburn. At first he came across as a little Tim Nice but Dim. He seemed totally in awe of the discovery that we both had the same underwear. He clearly had a history of steroid use, possessing the size but also that watery, flabby look that also often presents itself with usage of testosterone based steroids. However, Heartburn was the first stripper I had met that had the potential to be likeable. The ego was in check.

  I performed first, often a disadvantage on hen nights. Commonly the girls are a little unsure at first and the first stripper often releases their inhibitions and ‘warms them up’ a little. By the time the second stripper arrives, they are typically more rowdy and raucous. The decibels have risen in direct correlation to the amount of alcohol consumed. The second stripper is therefore typically better received. By way of contrast, the second stripper may also receive more abuse as a result of the afore mentioned alcohol.

  Perhaps it was a measure of my progress, but for the first time on a hen show, I felt I actually went down better than the other guy. I was standing at the back watching Heartburn perform his act whilst two or three girls were constantly vying for my attention, paying little atte
ntion to Heartburn. Towards the end of his act, one of them even threw in the comment :

  ‘You’ve got a bigger dick than him”

  There are some big boys that play the circuit and some average ones too. Heartburn was one of the latter.

  A good night was had by all. I had not performed on many hen shows, but my final one before flying away had left me with a warm glow.

  My final show before departure was where it had all started back at Bromptons. I was on stage at 10pm and due to start work the following morning at 9am. Natasha had come to watch my final performance. It struck me as ironic, but also reflective, that Zoe had never seen me perform. She had never shown the interest or inclination to view my new form of earning a living.

  It was quite an emotive occasion for me. I actually debuted a new act, where I started out in a white naval officer’s uniform. It was a remnant from the lap dancing club. Half way through the act I peeled off all the naval clothes to reveal a boxer underneath where I picked up from the old act. Although it may have seemed a waste if time, I wanted to do it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I wanted to prove to myself that I could add to my stripping repertoire. That is to say, that I wasn’t just a one trick pony. Also, the good folk of Bromptons had seen my boxer routine a few times now and I wanted to offer them something different.