The frat boys who harassed me so joyously in the Knockout ring managed to understand my dual roles as student and stripper.
I ran into a bunch of them unexpectedly in late spring, six months after our bout in the Sport Saloon. It was an afternoon barbecue for a graduating friend, a beautiful day, relaxed family atmosphere, students and their parents milling about. My friend Rick was eager for me to meet his buddies, Stuart and Thomas. I was shaking hands with the two attractive guys when I saw the terror in their eyes. (I was their wrestler, the stripper they had been animals with last fall!) Still holding Stuart’s hand, I peered into his eyes, trying to connect, then said, “It is very nice to meet you again, especially under these circumstances.”
Embarrassed, surely remembering the ass he had made of himself,
Probably remembering mine, too
he stammered, unsure, “Nice to meet you, uh, you know … I’m sorry …”
I interrupted him, shaking my head and smiling, “You were out to party, having a crazy, silly time.” Then I repeated, “It is nice to meet you here. My name is Heidi.”
He breathed a sigh of relief, as did Thomas. I didn’t know these men and I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. They had only been customers, and I had only been the wrestler of their choice. Nothing more. By diffusing the entire issue, relegating it to the proper station, we all rose above what could have been an intellectually stagnating situation.
This feels good.
Like the mirror installer, they realized the appropriateness, or inap-propriateness, of their behavior. I didn’t judge them for their behavior. If I could be a stripper, they could be customers. No loss of my self-respect and dignity was required. Following my example, they rose to my level and expanded their understanding of the world. This woman Heidi could be respected and treated honorably, not only because she demanded it, but also because she deserved it.
Maurie, a friend of mine and onetime makeup artist at the Foxy Lady, was a perfect example of self-respect attracting respect in general. Everything she did — from styling the hair of a sweaty dancer to mopping up spilled coffee and cigarette butts to informing Jackie she needed her teeth fixed — she did with dignity and respect for herself and all those around her, deserving or not. She became a role model instead of the unappreciated errand girl, the usual treatment of the backstage staff by the insensitive dancers. Before long, all those around Maurie began holding their backs straighter, speaking more eloquently, behaving more politely and honestly. Dignity, as it turned out, was catchy.
Dignity at a strip joint?
Being true to myself was not an easy task. But it was a luxurious privilege, afforded me because I was self-employed. I thought of the millions of women in the workplace who had no choice but to hide or compromise their beliefs in order to survive. Practically and mentally, not everyone can afford to stand outside society’s norms. Perhaps one day, armed with my Brown degree, I would take a normal job. Would I no longer be able to be so self-righteous?
During Thanksgiving break I visited my friend Erich in New York. He was also visiting the city, successfully working the scene — dining with the right people, working out at the correct gym, applying to the best financial firms, diligently flexing his talents and skills. He introduced me to Victoria, a recent Brown graduate who was an assistant editor at a well-known national magazine. She was appalled to learn, one night in a crowded Manhattan hot spot, of my stripping career. “How can you degrade yourself?” she yelled over the din, grimacing through her heavy makeup.
Curious, I yelled back, “What about your job? Does it matter when and how you smile, and at whom?”
She sipped her cocktail silently, eyes focused on me, and flipped her shiny hair back from her forehead with a practiced swipe of her manicured hand.
I continued. “You have beautiful hair. What if you cut it all off or did nothing at all with it?”
Her eyes grew wide at my suggestion. I could see how her eye shadow technique accentuated the little bit of green in her mostly brown eyes.
“Your hair is so bouncy and vibrant
She smiled, resting the drink daintily in her palm.
“… and I’m sure you look sharp in your suit. Donna Karan makes serious clothes look elegant and attractive. Do you wear flat plain shoes or stylish feminine shoes?”
She stopped me, laughing. I could barely hear her over the crowd, but her lips said merrily, “OK, OK. Yes, of course I play the game.”
Hungry to make my point, I pushed toward her and asked, shouting in her ear, “I grant that you and your officemates are qualified, talented employees, but on top of your skills on paper — how important is this game?”
I could smell her perfume, a vague, almost androgynous scent, as she huddled closer to respond. “Well, it’s pretty much everywhere. You can’t get away from it.”
A group of beautiful-young-things, male and female, trailed by, pushing me into Victoria. One murmured, “Excuse me.” His teeth flashed luminous white.
Victoria jostled me, supporting us both against the crush. Shouting too loudly, she continued. “It’s OK. I like it. And I’m good at it,” she said, flashing a mischievous smile.
Also smiling, I made my point, conversationally now, as we were leaning against one another. “I play the game, too. Except — all the players, the men and women, admit the nature of the game. And strippers, who never have to disguise or muddy their intellectual pursuits with this silly game, make five times what you do. And they still have time to study, write books, invest in real estate, raise children, travel the world …”
“Hmm …” She considered my words, toying with her drink. “You have a point,” she admitted, then looked wistfully across the barroom. I followed her distracted gaze to Christy Turlington. The supermodel, with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, was holding court in the back of the place, looking like a queen. Her angular face was laughing, and her thin body was surrounded by admirers. Both Victoria and I agreed she looked gorgeous.
I was breaking stereotypes, stretching narrow concepts, blowing the mindless act of categorization to bits. Yes, I was proving there is more than meets the eye! I was strong, capable of entering the lion’s den
dressed as a piece of succulent meat
and emerging unscathed, and much improved, armed with increased self-knowledge and confidence and the money to finance my attendant aspirations. I had plans for my profit.
I wasn’t degraded. Dominique wasn’t degraded. Maurie wasn’t degraded. We maintained control, our self-respect, and class, and the men and women, in and out of the club, who bothered to know us followed our lead and respected us. They appreciated our abilities to be sensual and ambitious and worthy of respect and regard — all at the same time.
But nothing comes free. It wasn’t always easy. Being surrounded with customers, always men, always being silly and dumb, was a challenge. They threw their dignity to the wind, and picking it up and dusting it off for them became monotonous and pointless. I respected their choice to be lazy lumps of irresponsible maleness — that’s OK, this was the place for it — but it wasn’t effortless. Lines could blur, stresses build. This was where responsibility came into play.
During the reading period before December finals I worked a few shifts. One evening, a customer, Humbert — I can’t remember his last name — approached me, hands fumbling, shirt untucked. In the past he had often come to me between my sets and table dances for other customers to share his emotions. Usually this resulted in his stuttering and blushing, occasionally emitting a few words. “Hello, ah, um, pretty tonight, um.” I would give him a small hug or a pat on the back, smile, and say, “Thank you, Humbert. Have a nice night.”
This night he was prepared. He had obviously rehearsed and he recited quickly, “I love you. Your soul is the purest palest bird, it soars above me, around me. I adore you. I love you.”
Sad.
Sad because it was inappropriate. He worried me. I excused mysel
f and as I was leaving he gently slipped an envelope into my hand. I took a water break in the dressing room with Tamara, the coffee-addicted dancer I had emulated early in my career. We opened the envelope together, and both of us frowned to find a painstakingly handwritten poem. An epic, it was so long.
The final two stanzas read:
Someday time will not be a factor, no deadlines will be due.
It would be really great to finally get to know you.
Whenever my eyes water as they fill with tear,
It’s because of memory, because you’re very special, dear.
I’m sorry, sometimes jealousy gets the best of me,
But you’re the only one that I really come to see,
Pleasant memories and feelings return and it feels OK, so true.
Because up in Heaven, my wife would have wanted me to
Fall in love with someone like you!
It was personal, sincere … and awful. Tamara strutted off, eager to dance, saying, “Man, I’d rather hear trash talk than that!” This customer didn’t realize how obscenely inappropriate this was. I had treated him gently, honestly.
Then kept my distance. No money was enough for that.
I must have been attracting the writers in the audience because that same week, a note, written on a cocktail napkin, was tucked into my bra strap: “Your smile [smiley face drawn here] explodes and the crowd fades into the music. My heart has melted, and pouring onto the stage holds the image of the grace and beauty of your dance.” This was sweet and appropriate. I didn’t even care that the man didn’t tip me.
Good vibes are always welcome.
After finals I worked more intensely at the club, to begin saving for next semester. With the added hours, my sense of humor slipped one night. I found myself irritated with the limited scope of one man. I had been prancing about on the Solid Gold stage, artfully disrobing. My belt tossed to one side, I slid my tissue-thin skirt down to my feet. Elegantly I stepped out, my eyes sparkling, boring a hole through a particularly entranced man. Stepping down, my right heel landed on my belt, breaking the cheap metal buckle with a neat snap. The same man I was performing for laughed derisively and exclaimed, “Good thing you’re so beautiful!”
I got the beauty act down, if I could just learn the grace part.
I felt a surge of frustration rising deep inside me. My pride was mutely screaming to be heard. “I’m more than beautiful! So much more! How dare you fail to realize that?”
The mirror act was getting to me at that moment. The job required constantly bouncing the customer’s expectations of me, the stripper, back to them. As if saying, with all my body and expression, “Yes, I am beautiful. I am worth your money.” I was usually good at this, but just now my guard had dropped. For a second the sexism bothered me; the assumptions I was encouraging and promoting rubbed me the wrong way.
Men were talking down to me and discounting me. This happened regularly, and I understood this. After all, I was setting them up, giving them a safe environment in which to do it. I was reflecting their lazy gaze right back at them. Of course some of them would discount me. That is what they paid for: a mirror.
The more limited the man’s gaze the more dangerous it was to allow the mirror to slip. The sudden realization that there was a whole person looking back could be scary for them. One man, seeing me four feet above him, confident and oozing self-worth, grew uncomfortable. Squirming in his plastic chair, the thousandth man to sit there that month, he countered my image with, “Why are you looking at me?” I focused blandly on his face and reminded him, as neutrally as I could, “I’m not looking at you. You’re looking at me.”
His suspicion that more was going on with me than my pretty surface tickled me. Stripping was constraining only when I expected more than I should. The relationship between stripper and customer, image and observer, was only that — a particular interdependence, my job.
Another night during winter break I encountered and reflected the intense stares of a very well-dressed, handsome man. It was late, the last set of the night. Alone on Pure Platinum, I danced for him, my sole customer. Bored, and feeling social, I bent toward him and asked, “How are you tonight?”
He looked back at me, as though I had threatened his life. Trembling and clutching the edge of the stage so tightly I could see the whiteness of his knuckles, he spit his words painfully, one by one, “You don’t even know, how fucking beautiful …”
I began to smile.
What else would your obliging sex object do?
His voice, sounding as if it was being dragged over hot dirty coals, rose, “So fucking beautiful. So fucking beautiful.” His eyes didn’t leave mine for the entire
conversation?
As always, the song ended, the set ended, the night ended. I never saw him again (as far as I know.) More and more a pro at the club, I was becoming less and less passive regarding the exploitation of image outside the club, in the real world, in advertising, in media, and in the job place. It disappointed me. But worse, it confused those people susceptible to it.
Unconsciously, I had learned to be an object. Don’t make waves, I was taught. I had been taught to smile when I really wanted to say, “Don’t look at me like that.” I hadn’t even realized it. Increasing my self-knowledge and understanding of society had changed things; consciously, I now chose not to censor myself outside the club.
I could celebrate the power of the stage, but it did not empower me. It was fantasy. The money, however, was not. The money was the only thing
besides the sore feet and self-knowledge
that translated to the outside, real world. As a topless dancer once said in an interview for Horrible Prettiness, the female’s attraction to stripping “has less to do with any personal kinks than with the distortion of female sexuality in our culture.” Smarter, stronger, I decided I would giggle and smile when I chose, not out of fear of expressing other, less feminine, charms.
I realized that while I had learned a great deal about the part of me that could be an object, I also was learning about the part of me that could not. It was as if, finding the exploited object in me, I also found the rebel. This gave me a surge of self-esteem. Gloria Steinem would call this my “revolution.” I wasn’t afraid to challenge the society’s standards any longer. At a university function the previous spring I even stood up to the mayor of Providence.
It was at Campus Dance, when thousands of alumni and friends gathered on the green for celebration. I was talking with a friend while another stood in line for refreshments. I sensed someone’s eyes on me and looked up to see Mayor “Buddy” Cianci and a crony checking me out. I mean really checking me out, as though they had never heard of political correctness! They examined me, head to toe and back to my head again. I looked straight back, fighting the impulse to smile shyly and look away. With not a word to my companions I drew in my breath and strode over to the men. “Hello. Do you know me? My name is Heidi Mattson.” I offered my hand. Then, with eyes sparkling, I asked the mayor, “Who are you?”
Sputtering, he introduced himself. “I’m Vincent Cianci.” Then laughing nervously, he added, “The mayor of Providence.”
“Nice to meet you.” I smiled, pulling my hand free of his grip. I stood, looking from one to the other, privately enjoying their loss of control.
C’mon, they deserved it. Besides, I was extremely polite.
“Buddy” introduced me to his sidekick. Curious, my friends moseyed over and after a few minutes of small talk we broke into our original groups. I was proud that I had overcome the urge to be cute and passive when looked at inappropriately. I think it set a good example and, although I hadn’t had many such experiences, most had been positive. Not censoring myself came with a price, though: removing the mirror can upset some less evolved people. Tolerance and sensitivity definitely remains important, and practical.
If I had a job as an editor at a cutting-edge magazine, like Victoria did, I would dress smartly. Image is a par
t of life; it is a recurring judgment call. What would I do if I got a raise because the boss was favoring me (and I performed my job well)? Am I going to complain? Gray areas abound.
As a stripper I avoided gray areas. I communicated with customers in their language. I frolicked unrecognized in their territory, grabbing the goodies; I practiced the ancient Eastern philosophy of Aikido: “Let attackers come any way they like and then blend with them. Do not focus on your opponent: he may absorb your energy.” Blending with them was a form of self-censorship.
How far should I take it?
David Rochette was a youngish suit who draped himself aloofly in the champagne section of the club at least once a week. He had his favorites — Dynamite T and LeiliAna, both dark and exotic beauties. It was obvious he was generous. LeiliAna would never spend the time with him otherwise. I’d heard he’d paid for her trip to New York to fix her extensions — hair — after Lavender, LeiliAna’s partner, set it on fire during their stage show.
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