by Unknown
“Naked Bill Gates,” I’d mutter, ticking off the litany on my aching digits. “Frodo Baggins. Exercise Man. Gay whore. Some guy dressed like a nun.”
“Really? A plainclothes nun or, like, a Franciscan nun?” Jonny always requested specifics, a quality I appreciated.
“More like a Jesuit nun. You know, modest. Sackcloth and all that.”
“Did he have a veil?”
“Yeah, that’s how I guessed he was supposed to be a nun.”
“Was he naked under his habit?”
“What do you think?”
We’d drift asleep in each other’s arms, undisturbed until Peanut inevitably woke up whimpering from a night terror. Jonny was an ace at smoothing Peanut’s frayed subconscious; he’d go into her room, lie beside her in bed and sing entire British record albums in a honeyed Liverpudlian tenor until she fell asleep. (Peanut was possibly the only toddler in existence who knew the Rolling Stones’s Their Satanic Majesties Request album by heart.) Each day she was with us, I watched Jonny draw baths, make kid-friendly breakfasts, tend to bloody noses, kiss oozing boo-boos and explain for the umpteenth time where step-mommies come from. His commitment to Peanut was borderline angelic, and laserlike in its focus.
I knew a lot of guys in town who were divorced fathers and only saw their kids sporadically. No one pilloried them for neglect; guys are notorious for losing interest in their sperm once it exits the vas deferens. But Jonny had successfully fought for three full days a week with Peanut, and he treated each of those days like it was the last time he’d ever stroke her warm, shiny head. So when uncouth outsiders implied that Jonny was a jerk or an unfit father for divorcing Peanut’s mom, it incensed me. He worked harder for his child than any father I’d ever observed, hitched or divorced, and I despised seeing him vilified because he’d dared to fall in love with some lost bird from Chicago under less than perfect circumstances.
“Good night, pretty,” Jonny would say to me, climbing into bed again after Peanut’s sobs had subsided.
“’Night,” I’d reply to the only person who still saw the gold in me.
My breasts, the very ones I’d cursed as an adolescent for being too small, turned out to be saviors in disguise. They were making money every night; they were keeping us alive. I used my Sex World money to furnish Peanut’s bedroom, clothe her in stylish Dora the Explorer togs and keep our fridge stocked with luncheon loaf and Juicy Juice. Women have always been known to nourish with their breasts; I saw myself as just another participant in the grand tradition. Our bank account was finally solvent, despite legal bills and spousal maintenance. In a way, I was nursing the whole fucked-up family. This knowledge comforted me in times of strife and tension.
White Christmas
My first holiday season in Minneapolis crept up on me like a drooling sprog in Dr. Dentons. The city was already choking on snow, the roads paved in compacted, dove-gray schmutz. The plows growled all night long, seemingly for recreational purposes, since the snow didn’t seem to go anywhere. Still, it was a gorgeous new winter, all sparkling drifts of Bing Crosby fantasy snow. Stainless snow, like the cotton batting that chokes the trunks of Christmas trees. One night I stood outside Sex World and waited in vain for a taxi on the snow-blind avenue. The sidewalk was buried in subzero crystalline fluff, and I couldn’t resist doing the old run-n-slide in my purple patent go-go boots. Death spiral! A guy driving his mammoth Escalade down Washington honked at the flying stripper, so I insouciantly flipped him off Italian-style. It used to embarrass me to hang out in front of the store (guilt by association), but not anymore. I was brazen in my wig and leopard-print trench, bikini still on beneath. Anyone who didn’t like it could suck a fuck.
A flier appeared in the Dollhouse dressing room inviting all and sundry to the annual Sex World holiday party, which consisted of a walleyed-pike supper (de rigueur in Minnesota) and go-kart racing; spouses welcome. I found the idea of porn-store employees and their significant others speeding about in go-karts hilarious. In reality, I imagined it would be a very wholesome affair, when you’ve spent the entire week alphabetizing fist-fucking videos* and booting sleeping crackheads from video booths, you probably don’t feel like tearing it up at the company Christmas party. Fried fish and go-karts are probably just the ticket.
I secretly wished Jonny and I could attend, but the party occured during one of my scheduled shifts, and I decided I’d rather avoid a “discussion” with my unreasonable manager (though I was curious about the husbands and life partners of my fellow tarts-under-glass). As a concession for missing the porn-store shindig (and to celebrate our recent engagement), Jonny and I decided to hit a fully nude juice bar we’d never been to before. The place, enigmatically called Choice, had a reputation for high-mileage, hands-on debauch, and was reportedly raided by cops earlier in the year. Sweet!
Choice was a raucous joint. It was a small, intimate space reminiscent of a Greek restaurant, with gold-painted columns and a fresco of a nighttime scene amateurishly rendered on the wall behind the stage. The girls were wildcats, climbing all over each other onstage and wriggling their blacklight-sensitive tongue studs at the crowd. Every time I dared to place a dollar on the tip rail, I got affectionately molested by the performers onstage. Two of them even yanked my shirt up to my armpits, to the delight of the crowd. “You bad girl! You’re not wearing a bra!” one of them exclaimed as she exposed my tits to the crowd. (The strippers were so attentive toward the ladies that one female customer fled the club in embarrassment.) A stripper in a fur-trimmed elf costume dumped a cup of ice cubes down Jonny’s pants with an ear-to-ear grin. It was a total riot.
Jonny and I decided to get a double lap dance from a beautiful Hawaiian dancer who had impressed us onstage. She was a perfumed pillar of radiant heat, an island fantasy in an abbreviated Vikings jersey and matching panties. We headed back to the private–lap dance room for the good stuff. She climbed on top of me first, burrowing her head under my shirt and licking my nipples. (I flashed Jonny an ecstatic thumbs-up.) She emerged to grind against my crotch, buffeting my cheeks gently with her warm, augmented breasts, doctoring my closed eyes with miles of fawn-brown cleavage. Bobbing up and down like a carnal mermaid, she wriggled her tongue hard against my carotid artery and bit my earlobe. When my song ended, she turned her attentions to my saucer-eyed fiancé, who was similarly lavished. Best. Christmas. Pageant. Ever!
Being at the club as a customer rather than an entertainer reminded me why people were so fascinated with strippers. Some girls had that sweet, spreading warmth, that total generosity of sex and spirit that made even the fortieth customer of the night feel like a coddled VIP. I’d never been able to give that much. It was impossible to imagine myself on the other end of that lap dance, even though I’d done it literally hundreds of times. I’d never had any idea what my customers were feeling. I’d been humping a post all that time, disembodied.
Since Sex World was open 365 days a year, my manager informed me I had to work either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Hilarious. I chose not to work Christmas Eve, since it had considerably more of that “O Holy Night” magic ’n’ mojo. I wanted to play Ms. Santa Claus (ho!) to my soon-to-be-stepdaughter on the night before Christmas, and I also wanted to see what kind of people come to a peep show on Christmas Day. Some of the girls wore appropriately themed costumes when they worked holidays. I told everyone I was going as myrrh.
Back in Black
After four months of flogging my increasingly unresponsive genitalia at the Dollhouse, I found myself desiring, nay, panting to strip onstage again. I missed the eye of the storm, the poles and the panty auctions and the threat of raids by vice. The evening Jonny and I had spent stageside at the little jack shack had left me wondering if I could ever be as fully engaged as the stripper who’d knocked us senseless. She was like a bottomless Jedi master, the personification of the reason why live nude girls exist in the first place. I hadn’t sensed her pain or her exhaustion or anything festering inside that gorgeous s
hell. There was no evidence pointing to the young son I later found out she had. Just pure charismatic heat rising under the seven veils, a ylang-ylang-scented tower of power. Could I tap into that cask of delirium-inducing sexmagick? When I’d danced before, I’d tried to disguise my weak corporate butt as a bona fide candy ass. This time, there’d be no hiding. I would become what I wanted to be, sweeten my whole deal until I was irresistable to dudes. Flies to honey; my latest mantra.
In February, I found out that Choice, the club Jonny and I had visited, was holding auditions. I was working at Sex World that night, but I knew I could escape the Barbie box for an hour or two. There was something appropriate about resuscitating my stripping career at the very joint that had inspired me to do so. So at eight o’clock sharp, I waved good-bye to the cashiers, pulled on a pair of jeans and a faux-fur bolero over my bikini, and left the Dollhouse vacant (a mortal sin for a Doll, but I didn’t care). The entertainment district in Minneapolis is as wee and precious as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood; I only needed to cross the street to audition.
Choice was dark and mostly empty; early evenings are downtime for most strip clubs. Still, the rubber plants, tented jury-rigged rooms and twinkling fairy lights created an atmosphere of low-budget coziness that I found quite pleasant. I filled out a brief questionnaire, requested a couple of tunes at the DJ booth and watched as a coltish, ponytailed thing auditioned in sandals.
When I was summoned to the stage, I did a two-song Rolling Stones set, cheered on by Nico, who’d accompanied me for (im)moral support. The stage was banana-slick, as the girl who auditioned before me had coated her hindquarters in sesame oil and rolled around on the floor like an epileptic sun worshipper. However, I was able to execute a few of my signature kung-fu kicks and drum punches, much to the delight of the strippers clustered around the tip rail. I was also the only auditioning girl who bothered to work the pole, and I did so with gusto. My Bettie Page wig seems to inspire chutzpah; whenever I wear it, I’m like Popeye on iron supplements. As “Beast of Burden” faded out, I crouched to collect my tips and was pleased to see that I’d amassed a substantial pile of cash for a Monday night. As I left the stage, I felt completely energized. I was back, man!
Afterward, the general manager, a former stripper in slouchy suede boots and a pair of silicon antiques, asked to speak to me. She told me that she’d just fired a girl for fucking a customer in the VIP room, and offered me a job on the day shift. “You were good,” she told me. “You have the kind of body that men like.” It was the first time I’d ever been the recipient of positive feedback from management about my dancing or image. A good omen, I reasoned.
I started working at the club two days later. (My manager at the Dollhouse snorted and hung up on me when I timidly informed her I was leaving.) I didn’t bother with costumes (save my black Bettie wig) or a goony stage name; I simply went as myself and worked alone, projecting nothing but the hilarious illusion that I was the axis of the sexual universe. I whispered in dudes’ ears. I touched their chests and legs and necks and and didn’t automatically reel. I played the girlfriend. I pulled them close so they could smell the Stella McCartney I’d dabbed on my pulse points. I deep-sixed the librarian act, shut my smart mouth and rode them like ponies at the Preakness. Ram-a-lam-a-lam. Suddenly, they all stood up when I seized their hands. I made over $1,000 within my first three days. I’d figured it out. Riddle solved. Case cracked. I felt like I’d graduated, only instead of “Pomp and Circumstance,” the band played Warrant.
I just needed to be dumb, sometimes in both senses of the word.
My relative success at Choice eventually made me a target for stripperly ire and the subject of much dished dirt; hell, I was everyone’s mud-flap girl. I’d never been hated at a club before, but I realized that was because I had never made money before. New girls are never popular, really. At a normal job (say, at a tax-preparation firm, women’s clinic, petting zoo or advertising agency), new employees are greeted with curiosity, courtesy and, in some cases, deference in the guise of freshly baked brownies. At a strip joint, however, a new girl might as well don veal underwear and dance the Watusi through a gauntlet of jackals. Most veteran strippers are punch-drunk on Haterade, and they’d sooner dredge their Vuitton clutch in a cow pie before mustering a pixel of common courtesy toward their fellow woman.
I learned to keep to myself, and it served me well. Instead of yakking and popping uppers in the dressing room with the other day girls, I lurked patiently on the floor and logged every move the customers made. I learned to sense when they were ready for me, or for anyone; I imagined them as ripening apples slowly heading into the red. Then I’d descend. “Hi, sweetie. You look ready.”
Since I was now determined to take stripping seriously, I determined it was time to attain a quasi-exotic, noncarcinogenic tan. Strippers must be tan. A proper suntan (whether authentic or phony) conceals cellulite, enhances the complexion and lends one a burnished Girls Gone Wild–esque aura of health, wealth and desirability. Coco Chanel knew it. I finally acknowledged it.
First, I tried using self-tanning foam. This resulted in streaky, tangelo-colored flesh—I resembled a jaundiced infant rather than a sun-kissed goddess. I decided to seek professional help in the form of spray tanning, a relatively new technology that involves being hosed down with an industrial-strength darkening agent in a claustrophobic facility. Spray tanning is scary. You slowly asphyxiate in a booth while automated jets douse your naked body with a chilly amber mist. It’s alarmingly noisy, and for some reason, the whole process made me want to pee. You must take pains to shield your palms from the spray (assuming the approved “spray-tan stance”) and coat your ashy toes and knuckles with “barrier cream” (which, I suspect, is simply hand lotion.)
A spray tan takes around twelve hours to develop, which means that you can hit the pillow a translucent, blue-white lass and wake up looking like a Cosby kid. Brilliant! I “tanned” three times the first week, and gradually went from Sondra to Rudy. At work, I danced with an extra switch in my hips. It felt delicious to be fortified with bogus melanin, and my skin didn’t glow under blacklight anymore.
Such physical renovations were necessary to compete at Choice. Most of the strippers there were extra-tasty (“Best-looking day shift in town,” the owner of the club boasted to me once). There was Veronica, whose drum-tight ass bobbled hypnotically as she traveled from table to table. There was Sinnamon, whose breasts were nearly the size of regulation basketballs and certainly as pneumatic. Little Courtney looked exactly like Pamela Anderson plus ten years and spontaneous dwarfism (close enough for her legions of devout customers). One girl had even had cheek implants, proof of a commitment to self-improvement that garnered silent respect from even the most enthusiastic scalpel-junkies. And I could never forget Coco, a sweet drunk with tattooed eyeliner and lipstick and a Chicago accent that rivaled my mother’s. They were all lifers, the kind of gals who work in the industry until they’re hauled off to the dementia cottage at Olde Oakes Convalescent Facility. I admired their gumption and their scars.
The day girls at Choice liked barbecues. During a stretch of unseasonably warm days in April, they dragged a Weber grill into the parking lot and cooked up piles of chicken wings, whooping at their own ingenuity. Passing cars on Second screeched to a halt at the sight of fifteen half-naked women gnawing on chicken in broad daylight. They even kept their platforms on.
“I’m going to get arrested for this,” the manager moaned as the girls fanned the smoke and giggled, their faces aged in the sunlight.
Because the day shift tended to attract more seasoned perverts than green curiosity seekers, I got to know a lot of customers very well. There was a foot-obsessed publishing executive who came in three times a week to massage the girls’ bunions and pull their toes. He liked my manky feet a lot because they supposedly reeked the most of anyone’s.
“I’ll give you money for your video game if you let me pull those icky toes for fifteen minutes,” he’d offe
r hopefully as I pumped quarters into the Playboy Match* machine in the back of the club.
“Deal,” I’d say, extending my foot graciously in his direction. Point, flex, ka-ching. Too bad we didn’t have any paying slots; I’d probably be downing lime rickeys in Barbados by now.
Another regular was a computer engineer from Nigeria who claimed I exemplified his ideal woman: a friggin’ hulk.
“So strong!” he crowed once. “You are so thick and so strong. Such muscles! You are big, big, big!”
“I am not,” I replied. “I’m a delicate lotus flower.”
“No,” Nigerian Man repeated. “You are so big. Wow, big legs and hips!”
“I hate you,” I said sincerely. I was in the best shape of my life thanks to that fucking pole, and this guy was acting like I was Gilbert Grape’s mama.
“I saw a show on television the other day,” Nigerian Man said, switching gears abruptly. “A show with a woman called Oprah.”
“I think I’ve heard of her,” I said drily.
“Big women are so wonderful! I truly think you are my friend,” Nigerian Man insisted. “My true friend. Like big college buddy.”
My least favorite regulars were the assclowns who insisted on wearing parachute pants sans underwear to the club for maximum stimulation during lap dances. You could feel every wrinkle on their cock during a prolonged session, and they’d often pause the dance to “adjust.” Some of them even wore condoms beneath their loserhosen, and after a private dance, they’d discreetly pull off their used Trojan Micron and shove it between the couch cushions. Later, some poor girl would find the drenched latex treat and shudder. The manager would be summoned to retrieve it, and arrive wearing rubber gloves and a defeated expression. I wished those men would stay home and hire prostitutes, rather than coming into the club and demanding high-friction dances. But when I explained this to one of them in exasperation, he told me that it was more exciting to get off in a forbidden environment. He liked to see the girlies squirm. Yuck.