Has anything changed? Does anything change? Could I?
Bianca and I hauled wooden chairs around town and repainted them ten times and reupholstered pillows with stolen fabric swatches. Sharing meth with Bianca was like swimming underwater and spitting lava into her mouth. We held the night up by our arms as the hours collected lint in our pockets; black swollen pupils big as walnuts, locked in a trance. Everyone else fell away like burnt sun.
Speed made me crafty with a staple gun. Falling and flying became the same thing. Bianca was my parachute. There was nothing accidental about it. We rose and crashed. One day became three. I had chronic diarrhea. I cut class, rarely made it to a lecture. Friday became Wednesday; thirty pounds less showed bones in my chest. This was not the humorous, ironic, joyous feminism I’d chased. It wasn’t Lacan’s jouissance. This wasn’t Foucault. This was a living death, memory loss, hair loss. I forgot school, forgot work, forgot home. Forgot you. Forgot myself.
“People should pay you to hang out with you,” my dealer said. He meant I should try stripping, but I didn’t get that yet. I heard he’d spot me free shit for looking good in his white fur chair. My mom’s worried voice on my answering machine became my only thread to the outside world. “You’re killing me. Cut up my credit card or I’ll never speak to you again.” Erase. Erase. I was supposed to use her credit card for emergencies only. I had been using it to bankroll my habit. Habit—it was more than that, it was life itself. In a négligée and platform PVC boots, I walked the projects in the Mission at 4:00 a.m., looking for Bianca.
“I’m really quitting this time,” I said. Bianca snorted a line off a CD cover and one huge tear fell from her frozen black eyes. I heard Mom’s voice on my answering machine.
“I’m coming next week,” she said.
Mom found me in my filthy apartment. She looked at me like I’d become ugly. I was skeletal.
“I have to leave for a while,” I said.
“If you go, I’m gone, that’s it,” Mom said.
“Just for a while.” I needed a bump. The voices were louder. I’d have to cut off my ear.
“I won’t be back. Ever,” she said. I popped a couple Xanax. In the mirror, I saw her red nose, her gray marble eyes. When her mouth moved, I heard:
Take her by the neck and cut her throat. I scanned the room for knives. I kept them under my haunted television.
“Here’s your credit card.” I handed her the plastic pieces.
Would she kill me over this?
“You have to pay me back. This was not a gift.”
I’d moved my knives. I checked under the bed.
“I have to go out for a little while,” I said.
In response, I heard Kill her. Snap her neck. She wouldn’t say that. I needed more speed. I needed more Xanax. She was an orange circle, a toothy goblin.
“Just for a while,” I said.
In the mirror, my skull protruded. Cheekbones. Rib cage. Pointy nose. Collar bone. Same blue gray eyes as hers. Twin frozen marbles.
Thin at last.
I pulled on a long, soft white T-shirt, crawled into bed with her and waited. She put her arm around my mid section and said, “You should eat.” Then she turned on the reading light on her side and reached for her paperback. She had goosebumps on her forearms. I did too, but I was used to being chilly from staying up for days and nights. She smelled faintly of White Shoulders perfume.
“Tomorrow,” I said. The walls were getting fuzzier by the second. I was crashing.
“Are you cold, Mom?” I asked. I reached for the burgundy blanket at the foot of the bed and unfolded it; I made sure it covered her legs and smiled at her.
“You’re going to lose your teeth. You had such nice teeth.”
I leaned my face into the side of her pillow and slept hard.
10
“You can’t be a bald stripper,” Claire said.
“Why not?” I rubbed my newly fuzzy head. My hair was short and blonde. Bianca painted the walls of our apartment seven times and finally settled on battleship gray with burgundy trim. I decided to buzz my hair off.
I wanted to feel the rain on my scalp. I wanted to look like Sinead O’Connor.
“Put this on,” she said. She handed me her curly brown wig that smelled like it had been held captive in a bucket of Downy fabric softener since 1985.
“How does stripping work?” I asked.
Staple guns and fabric swatches covered the floor from our reupholstering frenzy that morning. Now Bianca was repairing the dryer. I thought about Claire and her girlfriend working together. They did girl-girl shows at strip clubs in the Tenderloin and made good dough.
“Can I just walk in and audition?” I asked her.
“You should come work at New Century,” Claire said.
I offered her a free line of crystal on a glass block, like I did for most of Bianca’s customers who were also friends.
“Do they touch you onstage?” I asked. Claire snorted the thin, white line then thumbed through Bianca’s tower of CDs. I handed her Rickie Lee Jones’ version of “Rebel Rebel” and Sinead O’Connor’s “Stretched on Your Grave” extended remix.
“Something more upbeat.” She handed me the Breeders CD. Pointed to “Cannonball.”
“What do I wear?” I asked. I heard scratching inside a wall. I pulled back curtains and there were construction workers digging a hole in the ground with a jackhammer. I pulled out my entire underwear drawer and emptied it onto the bed. I grabbed a vintage white veil, held it in place on my head, and marched around the room. Maybe I’d pull a string of pearls out of my pussy. I thought of it as performance art, after all.
“Here.” She pulled a striped, soft, ankle length T-shirt dress out of a vintage bowling bag, tossed me some scuffed plastic heels and a pair of tight, spandex black shorts. Shadows moved across the streaked walls. “You need a g-string underneath,” she said.
I tore through the pile of panties and fished out a black one.
“Take it off on your last song,” she said, matter of fact.
I pulled on the baggy, unflattering dress and the too-big shoes and slunk over to Bianca who looked up for a sec then disappeared into her toolbox. Claire nodded. I peeled it off and shoved it in my backpack with a ripped pink lace slip then I poured two long, thin white lines from a Ziploc and offered her a straw. “Lady lines,” I said. She snorted it and cringed. A single fat tear fell from her eye. “What if I don’t get hired?” I asked. I snorted my line and sniffed hard, then swallowed bitterness. Numb all over.
“They’ll hire you. They need girls.”
On the bus with my three CDs, and my scraggly wig, the tick-tick-tick sound of mice echoed behind me.
I studied Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae and embraced her shock tactics. I’d rebel against male desire and straight attractiveness. Yet, I was going to make my body available to men. Sure, I’d dance, convince them to part with their money, then laugh all the way to the bank. In queer circles, stripping was the solution to the rent problem.
That was the plan before I knew anything about golden handcuffs or hustling, when stripping was art. Making three or four hundred bucks in five hours would give me plenty of time to study for my midterm exams. Of course I should strip. I needed rent, and I was getting bored hanging around the house all day with sketchy tweekers camping out in our room, singing Throwing Muses songs. Still, the thought of it made me so nervous I wanted to throw up—which was no reason not to try it.
11
New Century Theater was no theater. It was a cobwebbed dive on the corner of O’Farrell and Larkin Street, next to the famous Mitchell Brothers club. New Century was the Mitchell Brothers’ skanky stepchild. I was anxious about the audition, so I walked to the corner store for gum. A tranny in a wheelchair was bumming change out front while smoking a Pall Mall. “Nice wig,” she said. I dropped a co
uple quarters in her Styrofoam cup. She glared at me. “You idiot. That’s my coffee.”
I scurried through the entrance to New Century and stared at the posters in the windows featuring stars with boobs the size of watermelons. No way would they want my barely B-cups. My hands trembled. “Can I audition today?” I asked the man behind the counter. He told me his name was Manny and handed me a job application form to fill out. New Century was a dark, musty theater with metal seats facing an enormous stage and a long, dramatic catwalk with poles on both sides of the stage. The air reminded me of old mattresses and Lysol.
“Go upstairs. I’ll come get you for stage,” Manny said.
I walked up some steep, narrow stairs into an attic with a low ceiling and gray metal lockers. I put my bag down on a chair and got undressed. I secured my frizzy wig and attached my faded white wedding veil. I peered into the big cracked mirror and smeared on bright pink lipstick.
Downstairs, two identical twins were onstage dressed in black PVC dresses with ringlets that dripped down their backs. They were gliding across the stage to the Pixies’ “I Bleed.” Their creamy skin glowed illustrious under the lights, their dresses fell down to the black stage, and their eyes were locked together in an embrace. One unfastened the other’s bra. They were mesmerizing. I would have to do something extreme to get hired—I was clunky and out of shape. I had stage fright. I felt dizzy and clumsy.
When my turn came, I was blinded by the lights as “Cannonball” by the Breeders started. I jerked and moved too fast but couldn’t stop. Speed bubbled inside me, and my jaw ached from grinding my teeth. I slipped into some cheerleader moves, but tripped. Claire’s shoes were too big. I held the pole and noticed goose bumps on my arms. It was freezing out here. At the end of the song I pulled my slip off, tore the straps free then walked backstage. I fastened my wedding veil in place and crawled back onstage, punctuating the drama of Sinead O’Connor’s goth remix. I flung my bra into the darkness—towards the only man I could see. I aimed for his glasses, which reflected the stage lights. The song was ending, so I grabbed the pole and hoisted myself up to stand, pulled off my wig-veil and tossed it onto the stage in front of the man. I slid onto my belly and lay face down with my arms straight out in front. I figured the glasses man in the immaculate white shirt would give me my first lucky lap dance.
I felt proud—I’d reached the end of my first routine. I walked offstage thinking, This is something I could get used to. It might be something I could excel at. This could work…
“Don’t ever do that again,” Manny said, wagging his finger at the wig in my hand.
“Do what?” My heart was about to explode on his shiny brown shoes.
“And, dance more slow.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I fastened the wig back on my head.
Being scolded wasn’t part of my feminist manifesto.
“You want to work here, you have to work day shift,” he said. He paused like he was expecting me to decline his offer.
“Okay, I will. Thanks.” I smiled widely and gave him a thumbs up and walked into the dressing room where there was a white board with names written on it like “Violet” and “Luscious.” Manny looked at me, a sharpie in his hand.
“Well?”
He exhaled a great, impatient sigh. “I don’t have all day, princess,” he said.
“Camille?” I blurted out. After Bianca’s Karmann Ghia and Camille Paglia. I immediately regretted it. Camille sounded like lavender-scented baby wipes or tampons. I wanted my name to be “Blue” or “Roxanne” or something ballsy and artsy but it was too late. For now, I was stuck with “Camille.” Maybe that name would psychically transport my girlfriend into the musty New Century theater so I wouldn’t have to be there alone.
Manny walked down the creaky stairs and back to his perch behind the front counter. I sat at the dressing room mirror with busty girls who were applying face powder with expertise under dark yellow lighting. I felt shabby and greasy. I was jonesing for more speed, too. I didn’t match up, not in comparison to the women around me. They paid top dollar for their costumes. This was a joke, right? We weren’t supposed to dress like the girls in Penthouse. We were playing with artifice and identity, no? We were revolutionaries fucking with the artifice of representation and having a face-off with the phallic transmission system. The artifice was on our side, right? I crumpled in the mirror, afraid of my image. My pupils were dime-sized, eclipsing the blue. Dark brown shadows collected underneath my eyes. I hadn’t slept in three days. The sound of hyper rats scraping along the ceiling kept distracting me as custard-skinned girls glued on eyelashes and curled their hair with necks like tipsy swans.
Mom kept calling. I kept deleting her voice mails, but I always listened to them. I always listened to the whole thing. “Where are you? Where’s my girl? I’ve been trying to reach you. Call me when you hear this. Call me.”
I secured the wig with bobby pins and walked downstairs from the dressing room into the audience to watch and learn. I was paranoid. My skin was cold and jittery, and I heard girls whispering. I stood around, maybe for an hour. I was a failure—way too flat-chested for this job. The women around me were soft and languid and knew the lingo. I was brittle and stiff. A blonde girl in white smacked her gum right beside me.
“What do you say to them to get them to get a dance?” I finally asked.
“Ask them if they wanna play with the kitty,” she said and blew a bubble, staring straight ahead. She had pink barrettes and white knee socks. Her name was Madeline, and she kept ordering pizzas from the pay phone, but the pizzas never showed up. Her nappy dealer boyfriend did. He sat in the audience waiting for her with his arms folded across his chest. She sat next to him for a long time. I counted five songs that she stared into space. They didn’t look at each other. Then he split. When I saw her later in the dressing room, her skin was gray and dead.
Onstage, a woman danced with long red braids and a tiny waist. She was at least six feet five in heels.
“I don’t know if I can do this. I’m in love with my girlfriend,” I said to Madeline. She bumped against my hip with hers and laughed. “Don’t make a fuss, just get on the bus.” She giggled and drifted away like a phantom Barbie.
I did more meth.
It didn’t take long. The touch of strange hands crawled across my thighs, ass, and breasts, and my first instinct was to swat them away. Soon, revulsion became compliance and compliance turned into assertive hustler. I enjoyed the power I had to turn men on with a gesture, a look, a phrase. I kept my feelings at bay in order to do my job.
It’s not that I made killer money right away. I rarely left New Century with over two hundred bucks, but it was enough to keep my speed habit fed and wine bottles around the apartment, at least for a while. I could walk into New Century whenever and leave whenever, as long as I did my stage shows and paid the stage fees. I could wear black lacy kinder whore costumes. This other thing I became, “Camille,” was not a stretch.
Stripping was another rush I came to need. Not that I had other skills. I drifted from lap to lap and collected cash from men who became devoted customers. I watched and learned from girls like Danielle Willis. She was skinny and pale and long from her nose to her fingernails. Sharp knife hip bones jutting out of her expensive Victoria Secret lace bra and panty sets. She floated across the room in buckle boots, a fishnet shirt, and not much else; she danced to Siouxsie; whispered things to the men, and to me, while bent in half. She ensnared them; she secured regulars. I learned by watching her.
She was just so fucking sexy.
Camille was this other thing, who smiled when she was sad, and grinned even bigger when she was angry, and laughed when she was rejected. As Camille, I tried to maintain my militant feminist ideals within the context of lap dancing. I tried to feel empowered while swatting men’s fingers away, and I always came home with cash to Bianca. But often what I really felt was mangl
ed, by the way the system rewarded me financially for disregarding my boundaries. I broke my own rules, crossed my own lines of conduct. Survival took over in the cavernous frenzy of the clubs as wallets opened and closed. I told myself men weren’t invited into my life or my skin, and then began to have orgasms during lap dances—which did feel like power, for two minutes.
I allowed myself to get off so I could focus on work. I’d find a man who wanted me and gyrate on him like a piece of furniture until I came. I never shared my orgasm with them. It was only for me. I felt distraught that I’d morphed into a caricature, ignited by men’s desire for me. I became that thing for that cash, and the line that once separated the dancer from the girl reduced to a fine spray as the system had its way.
12
Time was a hurricane with Bianca: weeks and months of snorting and fucking; more former than latter. Then silence. She ignored me so I stripped more, moved on to a bigger and better strip club called Crazy Horse. We stopped talking. We grew chilly from the speed and from the neglect that happens when two people love each other plenty but love their drugs more.
When I wasn’t at Crazy Horse, I worked part-time at a used clothing store, Wasteland, sorting clothes and arranging shoes with all the local punks. Marya swaggered in one day to shop for a belt buckle. She was the Rhinestone Cowboy of dykes with black leather motorcycle pants, steel horns pierced through her chin, and spurs on the heels of her black boots. She passed me her number on a torn piece of binder paper, which I wrote on the beam upstairs in the break room with a black sharpie. I called her on my lunch break.
“What are you doing later?” she asked. My heart flopped out of my rib cage and onto the floor, begging for water.
“Not much.”
“When are you off work?”
“I live with my girlfriend,” I said.
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