Ivy League Stripper

by Heidi Mattson

  I can never be a real boxer. It hurts way too much.

  I was happy inside and outside, but troubled by my deceit. I left the day after Christmas, explaining that “I have to be back at work.” I told my parents I was waitressing at a bar. They were curious and concerned.

  My mother asked questions. “A bar! What is it like? Is it safe? What is your uniform? Not a cheerleader outfit like that fifties place, I hope?”

  I only said, “Just a regular old bar. My uniform is typical waitress stuff. You know, black on bottom, white on top.”

  Despicable! What is the choice? You’re an adult now, Heidi. This is one of those things you keep to yourself. Be strong.

  I returned to Providence, but the nagging problem of not being strong enough to tell my family remained. Geographic distance helped. As the days passed I felt less disturbed by my guilt. It was winter break. I worked steadily at the Foxy Lady each night, storing up nuts for the rest of winter. I knew each day there lessened my financial burden. In fact, I was looking forward to the spring semester.

  I’ll be a real student, only work on weekends and during spring break. I’ll study and make friends. Be normal.

  I didn’t deny, however, that I needed to come to terms with stripping. Realistically I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret forever.

  Is something like this possible?

  How would I share the fact that I was working topless?

  8

  Struggles with the Downside

  Be nobody’s darling; be an outcast.

  — Alice Walker

  I felt like everyone’s darling, at least in the Knockout Sport Saloon. The bosses loved me, the Knockouts accepted me as one of their own (although Bobbie did affectionately call me “The Brain”), and the clientele — well, they communicated their appreciation generously.

  “Three fifty!”

  “Do I hear three seventy-five?”

  Although the economic aspects of life as Heidi, Ivy League Stripper, were positive, I felt like an outcast. It was finally possible to imagine my bills being under control and spending the coming semester as a regular student, but regular student I would never be. I had become a politically incorrect anomaly, which did not endear me to the campus community. I wasn’t terribly surprised. Brown’s combination of extreme political correctness and narrow-minded liberalism (so pighead-edly liberal it approached conservatism) created an atmosphere tolerant of only the cool abnormalities such as homosexuality, homelessness, and ultra-radical feminism. Still, education was my top priority and my battered hopes for completing my degree and achieving success as a Brown graduate were renewed.

  I can afford it!

  But I was paying a price. Stripping wasn’t only how I perceived it, as tuition and books; it was — according to my community — degrading and immoral. Existing beyond the fringes of respectability, practically invisible to society, my new world of sexual commodities trading was fraught with dangers as well as advantages. My attempts to shut the job away as not real, as absolutely not a vital part of Heidi, were to no avail. The downside presented itself as soon as I could afford to enjoy the upside.

  But the downside didn’t surprise me. The money was too easy — I didn’t trust a job so effortless. “The harder one works for something, the more one appreciates it.” My parents had repeated this often throughout my childhood; it had become a mantra permanently installed in my mind. I was lying to my family and cavorting far off the squeaky-clean path of the American Dream. I dared to hope that this off-the-radar streak of ingenuity and individualism would pay off, cir-cuitously, helping me achieve educational and personal success. It was a dangerous dare.

  I had to protect myself as much as possible.

  Establish boundaries.

  My rule was to keep my real life safe from this nightly carnival of cash and strange men. The rule developed into a taboo. I had other taboos: one that I would leave the moment I felt uneasy and another that I would fight the urge to project. That is, I wouldn’t say to myself, “I want to make twelve hundred this week.” I also never planned. I never said, “I’ll work four shifts this week.” I took the job one shift at a time. I could leave anytime I chose.

  The power of choice was vital. That was why school was significant to me, because my education would allow me myriad possibilities. The majority of the girls at the Foxy Lady had no choice. They were either uneducated or addicted to the unique qualities of the job — or both. The lack of options created in them a desperation, a trapped-animal mentality. They were stuck. I swore I would never be stuck. A top education was my ticket to excellence. I was to learn, however, the relative value of education and the value of experience. I was already finding that following the rules wasn’t enough.

  The rabbi overstepped the boundaries; the university did, too. So much for society. I’m down to determining my own personal boundaries.

  Carefully stepping off the beaten track, I discovered life was more exciting and fresh than ever before. The rich environment of the Foxy Lady nurtured characters and adventures well beyond the regular garden variety. With this new territory, however, came new problems and an appreciation for the negative power of stereotypes and stigmas.

  Even before I shared my secret, I sensed trouble. Only a few months earlier, I had prejudged strip clubs as bastions of prostitution, drugs, and sleaze. I placed a premium on truth and reality, so I demystified my preconceived notions. But I knew I couldn’t expect such behavior from the general population. I also understood that morals run deeper than society’s norms at large. Values are personal and varied. Some people would surely have bona fide objections to my work, no matter how demystified stripping was. I had to respect that. I was still hesitant to feel righteous, because I didn’t know how to defend my position.

  Strapped into a shrunken Lycra wrestling suit, rolling about in hot oil with my professor’s husband!

  I needed time to determine my take on sex work. But to defend it — I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to do that. Problems didn’t exist solely on campus; I suspected there may be a downside within the club as well.

  Naughty Neeki, before she became Naughty, had worked two years as a checkout girl in a grocery store. During that time she had learned English, earned a green card, and built a house for her ailing mother back in Brazil, whom she supported. She had been eighteen when she immigrated alone to America.

  Now she was twenty-one, a Foxy boxer, and the roommate of Tawni (the Tantalizer). Tawni was a cheerful little dynamo with creamy white skin and an Ivory soap face. Neeki, taller and darker, was exceedingly moody. One moment up, singing popular songs and dancing with natural ease, the next down, exotic eyes flashing, pouty mouth cursing in Portuguese. Tawni had a powerful temper herself, but generally saved it for extreme cases of stress and the boxing ring. Neeki didn’t need an excuse, but was lovable regardless, because she was so open and honest. The two were family to each other, even named their dogs after each other. They befriended me quickly.

  I’m probably the first co-worker they’ve had who lacks an attitude.

  I felt good about them, too. After all, mood swings weren’t against the law.

  One night after work I agreed to go to Betty’s with them. Betty’s was the after-hours hangout for the Foxy Lady crew and the older night crawlers of the Providence area. Although a basic greasy spoon, the atmosphere was decidedly, if decrepitly, classic Hollywood. Under layers of grease fuzzy with dust, Marilyn graced the walls, posing in various stages of undress accompanied by the croonings of Frank Sinatra. Occasionally an Elvis tune would be selected on the jukebox, but for those in the know, Sinatra was king.

  Neeki and I settled across the booth from Tawni and her beau, Jonny. We had a view of the dark street and busy parking lot across the way through the window. To our other side, we watched the bustle of Betty’s. Business was good for the staff; several middle-aged doughy women and their sulky daughters rushed about. Their stained and discolored uniforms set them apart from
Frankie, the host and owner. He wore a slick suit, only rarely removing his jacket to reveal crisp, white dress shirts and shiny ties. With style he proudly conducted the diner. It was a well-oiled machine, neatly spewing out platters of home fries and eggs, burgers and pancakes, matching the pace of the kinetic after-hours rush.

  The three of us looked on passively, unwinding after a very physical shift. Tawni turned down Jonny’s offer of a cigarette with a sigh, and asked me casually, “How were your tips tonight?” Normally, income talk was off-limits, but we trusted each other as much as we could.

  “Not so bad. Kissing-for-Tipping was pretty good.” My answer was vague but warm enough.

  A couple of nights like this and I can take a few weeks off! This won’t please the Knockouts, but I must concentrate on school.

  We looked normal, not like strippers. Except for mine and Neeki’s wet hair (we had wrestled last), we could have been college kids out for a study break. I leaned against Neeki in the booth, feeling snug and warm in my jeans and sweatshirt, my winter coat bundled around me. I was anticipating my grilled cheese sandwich in this happy state when suddenly the view out the window became exciting.

  Police cars speeding from every direction gathered raucously on the sidewalk outside, brightening the shadowy street. Tires screeched, a siren blared, and car doors opened. Officers emerged, serious expressions all around. I could hear radios and static, evidence of the substantial business at hand. It was like watching a movie. Inside, at the table with me, Tawni and Jonny began whispering and squirming. Neeki turned quiet and unnaturally still. Her eyes sent me a warning.

  The police, in a somber, almost formal assembly, began closing the gap between them and the door of Betty’s. The patrons’ talk dissipated into a hush. That was when I heard Tawni and Jonny arguing in low voices.

  “You hold it.”

  “No fucking way, you gotta be fuckin’ crazy, no fuckin’ way,” Tawni replied softly.

  “I can’t hold it!”

  Hold what?

  Tawni grabbed wildly at him, snatching the cigarette pack out of his chest pocket. He settled down suddenly as the cops came inside. Tawni ignored him, ignored everything, and puffed vigorously on her newly lit cigarette. She looked straight ahead. I couldn’t see the cigarette pack anywhere. Jonny courageously attempted to look nonchalant, but instead came off looking as if he’d swallowed something nasty.

  The officers, five of them, gravely surveyed the tables, blocking the door and the waitresses’ path. Until Frankie spoke up. He stood in the kitchen area, legs slightly spread, suit jacket unbuttoned, stomach projecting importantly. He raised his arms above his head and hollered, “Yo, it’s up!”

  It’s up!

  This was really something.

  Here I am, a stripper sitting with two other strippers and some guy named Jonny — and someone is holding something that is making them very, very nervous. This is no longer like watching a movie.

  Ettie, the oldest waitress, walked carefully toward the cops, arms extended in front of her. Her wrinkled face was turned down, her eyes focused on her hands. She was managing to balance, precariously, several large grease-stained bags of takeout. Frankie followed behind her bearing a cardboard box piled with donuts, dripping coffee cups, and wadded paper napkins.

  Jonny shakily motioned to Tawni for the cigarettes, avoiding all our faces. The pack mysteriously reappeared, swiftly transferred between their pale palms. I turned from Neeki to Tawni to Jonny — no response. Plates appeared, clattering into the forks and spoons, and we began to eat, silently watching the cruisers pull away. They didn’t appear to be rushing now.

  Wouldn’t want to spill the coffee.

  Finally Jonny and Tawni eyed each other. Tawni seemed angry, Jonny meek. Both were clearly relieved. Neeki had retreated, either thoroughly disgusted or bored, I wasn’t sure. I also wasn’t sure what had just occurred — or almost occurred.

  He’s got to be carrying drugs. And he apparently has reason to think the cops are after him. How involved is Tawni? How involved am I if I’m sitting with him? It would be pretty easy for them to slip something into my coat pocket — and how would I, a stripper, defend myself? It wouldn’t look good.

  What was the difference between Tawni and me? We were both strippers, sharing late-night breakfast with a drug-carrying nervous wreck. But I was a student, an Ivy League student — not just a stripper. None of us is just a stripper: Tawni dreams of being a jockey, Neeki is training to be a translator, Kristina teaches kindergarten, Trina wants to sing and dance on Broadway, Jackie is raising her twin daughters, alone. I didn’t carry a sign proclaiming my skills and dreams, and I shouldn’t have to, but the stripper image is powerful. It is what earns money inside the club. To the world outside the club looking to make a quick assessment, the stripper image overpowers, blinding the viewer to those less obvious skills and dreams.

  I felt confident about my ability to sense a good heart — I knew Neeki and Tawni possessed sweet and kind souls. The best intentions would count for little, however, when laws were broken, or drug-induced paranoia took over. Neeki and Tawni were my friends, no changing that, but I decided that though I was against stereotyping, it would be prudent to be more aware.

  I realized I was discounting my instinct whenever I sensed negativity in another stripper. I was attempting to compensate for the stripper image, to not succumb to the stereotypes. While stereotypes are all oversimplifications, any quick judgment is weak and problematic.

  At first Queenie, a dancer upstairs, seemed to be an overachieving mother figure, but something I couldn’t identify gave me the willies. She did features on weekends and reigned over the dressing room most night shifts. I first saw her table dancing, grinding a few inches above an entranced man’s lap. I felt a sick curiosity toward her. Her attitude could be cruel, then suddenly charming and sweet. She had a baby face, soft blue eyes, and a darling, genuine smile. Her body, however, was a monument to change, and she had the scars to prove it.

  Stripper Bride of Frankenstein!

  Among other alterations, Queenie’s breast size had been bumped numerous times, from a modest — very modest — proportion to a monstrous, unmeasurable dimension. I thought she was overdoing it, but it brought in the bucks. Queenie wasn’t stupid; in fact, she had earned a master’s degree in writing at Brown ten years earlier. She was a businesswoman, took her work seriously, and separated it from her real life as a mother and wife. I respected that. I even liked that.

  It wasn’t long before she approached me, sniffing me over like a territorial dog. On the surface she was pleasant, even friendly. She seemed to want to take me under her royal wing. I felt suspicious. I worried that I was guilty of prejudice, distrusting her for being a career stripper. We had similar intellects, and I couldn’t resist her stories of her affair with Cat Stevens, a glamorous drug addiction, and her early days as a rebellious Boston blue-blood, dancing naked at the age of sixteen in order to shock her disinterested parents. (Now, fifteen years later, she hid her stripping from her family to insure her massive inheritance.)

  Ivy League status and well-meaning souls didn’t carry the weight I always thought. Among others, I had met sweet women with hearts of gold harboring drugs for their dealer boyfriends and well-educated feature dancers with serious character defects. Nothing was what it appeared. Most of these women took multiple names, matching their multiple personalities. Image, reality, manipulation, fantasy, it was a stew of deception and fatal flaws. I sometimes wondered what my Achilles’ heel was.

  Some bad cases were easier to spot than Queenie would be. Amanda, a Knockout, regularly got hammered at work, sneaking shots of tequila in between Kissing-for-Tipping and wrestling. I became used to her sudden exclamations of profound feeling. “I love you, Heidi,” she would announce as I stepped out of a Dawn dish detergent shower. She would comfortably hang over my shoulder, her perfectly enhanced breasts jutting mine affectionately. “You’re the best. Such a little cutie!” On and on she w
ould celebrate her alcohol high; silly dance steps on the tables, funny faces in the ring. She was generally amusing to all of us.

  And harmless.

  She must have concocted and enjoyed an especially potent mix of mood-additives one night, because she decided, quite unexpectedly and violently that …

  “I’m going to kill that little bitch Heidi!”

  I’m in for it. Besides having the advantage of alcohol-induced capabilities, she is a much better boxer than me. And her lover is our trainer.

  It wasn’t a great surprise — anyone who “loves” you after five minutes and five drinks can’t be expected to be stable. It was, however, a threat she meant, and — as I learned later — she had the cocaine up her nose to back it up. Evidently, I had really pissed her off. Three months into the job I still celebrated newgirl status, and my novelty often won me generous bids. I had wrestled only once that evening, but my bid was high, two seventy-five. Amanda had gone on after me, performing her housewife act.