A stalled tropical depression drenched Fort Lauderdale that day and the parking lot partially flooded. As I stepped out of my Saturn my foot sunk into a deep puddle, so for my entire first shift I’d have one squelching shoe and be annoyed to no end by a damp pant leg sticking to my bare ankle. It was just before noon. I’d arrived on time, so I could cross that off my list along with the professional dress (I did the best I could dammit) so now all I had to do was go inside and find some guy named Phil.
Going into new places alone makes me nervous. I can’t count the number of times I’ve stood outside of front doors hesitating to open the door or ring the doorbell when I’ve been invited to a party. If I’m with someone else it’s not a problem, but alone I always feel like I don’t know what to do with myself. That’s how I felt in front of the Bubblegum Kittikat. I didn’t know what to expect inside. I didn’t know what I might see or how they’d treat me. At least I’d know somebody. Brent would be there too.
The wind picked up and I hurried to find the entrance, catching a glimpse of myself in the warped mirrors that covered the building. I was a black smudge with a lunch bag standing on a soaked red carpet, slouchy as the flooded palms failing to thrive in planter boxes filled with cigarette butts and chewed gum. And just like that I found the front door, which someone swung open for me as a gust caught my umbrella and blew me inside like Mary Poppins.
9
“Look what the cat dragged in!”
Brent’s familiar Georgia accent calmed my nerves as I shook the drops from my umbrella and waited for my eyes to adjust. Even though the day was dismal, outside still seemed bright compared to the inside. The place was as sealed as the innermost chamber of the Great Pyramid and the lack of natural light created the illusion of permanent night. That kind of darkness messes with your circadian rhythms. You become disoriented, losing track of your place in the day, unaware of the passage of time and if it’s actually too early to start drinking fourteen dollar cocktails or not.
The club hadn’t yet opened for business, so employees were scurrying around setting up. Ice dumped from buckets into bins at the two bars located at opposite ends of the enormous square space. An obese, ginger-haired man in a stained chef’s jacket lit sternos under two chafing dishes at a feeble looking buffet table while sliver thin cocktail waitresses adjusted their fishnets and checked the bills in their garters. I understood immediately why Brent said he couldn’t picture me in their uniform. The cocktail waitresses trussed themselves into identical, black satin corsets with black thong panties over first a layer of flesh-toned nylons onto which they pulled black fishnet thigh highs. Taut garter belts clipped the stockings to the corset top and most of the servers also wore a ruffled garter, like the kind they toss at weddings, around one thigh, and this is where they kept cash. As if the corset bustiers weren’t enough to make these poor girls uncomfortable, they had to spend their time at work running back and forth from service bar to table wearing black patent platform heels, the platforms of which were at least five inches high. The shoes were ridiculous. As soon as I saw them I just knew somebody was going to snap an ankle before the day was out.
“You sure you’re in the right place? I don’t think we use the Dewey Decimal System in here!” Brent teased, “What’ve you got in the bag? Wait, don’t tell me. PBJ?”
“With raspberry jam,” I replied.
I got out my slip of legal paper.
“I’m supposed to see Phil,” I said.
“He’s managing day shift today. Head straight back past the main bar and past the little stage with the pole you see there off the main stage and go through those double doors. That’s how you get to the back of the house. There’s some construction going on where the steakhouse is going to be, but you’ll find the manager’s office on your left. Phil’ll be in there, but hurry up so he can show you around because it’s going to get busy. It’s Fleet Week and the weather’s bad so we’re about to get hit with a hundred or so Naval officers.”
“Drunken sailors? Oh dear me. Are you going to be here?” I was mildly panicked and starting to feel queasy.
“I’ve got to get going upstairs to the main office to work on getting these books cleaned up, but if it gets too crazy I’ll come back down. Now go on. Don’t just stand there with your PBJ looking all deer in headlights.” He shooed me away with a legal pad in his left hand.
And as I found my way onto the sunken, maroon-carpeted floor, winding past tables and plush chairs penned in by brass railings, towards the distant double doors, I heard Brent snickering behind me, probably shaking his head.
“Peanut butter and jelly. Lord have mercy.”
Phil looked like a cross between an Oompa Loompa and Pauly from The Sopranos, which was appropriate because so far the Bubblegum Kittikat reminded me of Willy Wonka’s candy factory morphed with the Ba Da Bing, which was incidentally, the clearest mental image I had of a strip club because I never missed an episode of The Sopranos (the Kittikat was much glitzier though). My other two strip club visits had been so brief and traumatic that I think I repressed the memories of what the places were actually like. I’d only peeked at my surroundings those times through my fingers, as if I were watching the crucifix masturbation scene from The Exorcist.
“I’m Victoria. Mr. Haines told me to see you. I’m supposed to start hostessing today,” I said quietly, looking down where I couldn’t help but stare at Phil’s flashy purple shoes.
Phil was a lot shorter than me, though his pompadour added a couple inches to his height. The man was a walking stereotype. I had no idea people like this actually existed outside of Mafia movies, but here was living proof – teal satin shirt, dyed ostrich skin loafers and all. I was positive that after work he hung out at the greyhound track with all of the other fictional, Italian men from New Jersey.
After W-2s, Phil showed me where I’d be working and what I needed to do. He didn’t talk much. He more like grunted, but the job was simple so I picked up on the instructions easily. I’d take cover charges, sell cigars and cigarettes, cut the cigars with a little plastic guillotine looking device and try to get “guests” to pay astronomical prices for a bunch of junk like tee shirts, thong panties and beer koozies with the Bubblegum Kittikat logo on it. Basic stuff. I could work a register and answer the phone no problem. I’d done plenty of that. Windex the display and the front door periodically, smile, say hello to people. Call cabs, order take-out for customers if they wanted it. Sure. Done.
“You neva neva eva let a lady in by herself,” Phil said, “Women ain’t allowed in here. They gotta be escorted by a man and women are always free. You neva charge a lady a cova. Just the men.”
Ok, so no women. Got it, but I had to ask why.
“Sometimes the ladies, they don’t like their husbands bein’ here. They’ll track ’em down, try to come in here and cause a scene. We don’t want no trouble so we keep ’em out. This is a gentlemen’s club after all. Sometimes a gentleman’ll bring his lady friend and if that’s what they’re into, no problem.”
“I see,” I said.
“And next, you gotta recognize the VIPs. Some of ’em got a membership and they’ll show you their Kittikat Kard. They don’t gotta pay the cova and they’ll get mad at you if you ask for it. It’s a insult, you know? You gotta make ’em feel important. That’s why they come here.”
“How will I know?” I asked, mildly panicking.
“Like I said, some of ’em have the card.”
Phil showed me the Bubblegum Kittikat membership card. It was black with a silver silhouette of a cat. The “kards” had been sold as part of a now discontinued promotion. Two hundred and fifty bucks got you a year’s worth of cover-free entry.
“But there’s plenty of VIPs without cards. The real VIPs. You’ll get to know ’em fast. You can tell by the way they walk in. You’ll see the girls freakin’ flock to these guys. They look like somebody, you know. Your door guy’ll recognize ’em if you don’t and let you know, so don’t worry. You
’re gonna get the hang of it fast. Mr. Haines told me you were smart and you don’t even know what kinda dumb-asses we’ve had in here lately so you’re gonna do just fine.”
Finally, a vote of confidence for me! I liked Phil.
My training ended as the DJ warmed up with Snoop Dogg. Someone flipped on the disco balls, flinging chips of light around the room and I took a seat on the barstool behind the register and waited for something to happen.
I worked in a waist high, rectangular box made of polished walnut and glass display cases. The register and telephone were at the end closest to the front door and at the opposite end I could let myself in and out through a gate that, to my delight, I could lock. I even got a key and this key also opened the cases and the cabinets where all the tobacco products waited for sales. With the main floor behind me, all I saw was the lobby which was pretty spare save for a few fake palms and cement ashtrays filled with sand. I liked my box. Fenced in, I was safe and separated.
Naked women were about to dance behind me. I wanted to look at them, of course. I was dying of curiosity, but I didn’t know the proper etiquette. Should I pretend they didn’t exist? Would it be rude to take a peek?
I have a confession to make. In the locker room, I looked. Starting in middle school and continuing on through the three-quarters of high school that I managed, I’d check out the other girls as they changed out for gym class. Looking amounted to extreme taboo according to teen protocol. Lookers equaled lezzies. Lezzies lunched alone. But I couldn’t help but want to see what my classmates looked like under their Bennetton rugbies. I looked because I wanted to know if I was normal in comparison but I admit that I liked looking. I got a thrill from seeing people unclad, even if it was just in their bras and panties. I secretly wished I could see everyone naked and now here I was in a place where I could have a field day looking at bare breasts and bottoms, because did I mention the Bubblegum Kittikat girls were totally nude?
In some strip clubs the dancers are only allowed to go topless. I’ve even heard of establishments where they have to wear pasties and panties at all times, which seems beside the whole point of going to a strip club. Other cities allow full nudity but only if the club serves no alcohol. The rules are different wherever you go, but The Bubblegum Kittikat lucked out. South Florida was a free for all and you could see as much vagina as you wanted while getting drunk off your ass and no one cared as long as you paid your tab and tipped the girls and didn’t start fights.
Big Mack, the daytime door guy, showed up buttoned into a snug tux and took his place at, obviously, the door. Two bouncers usually worked the dayshift while the busier nights usually needed four or even five guys to maintain order. During the afternoons the crowd was way tamer so one bouncer would mill around the lobby opening the door for people while the other one patrolled the floor and made sure none of the guests got out of hand and touched the girls. Touching, I learned quickly, was a huge no-no, at least on paper. Big Mack explained to me that by law men can’t lay their hands on the dancers, but they did all the time and the dancers only complained if the guys were gross or cheap or did something to hurt them.
“This is my second job,” Big Mack said, “I’m actually a trainer.”
He certainly looked like a trainer. He was a light-complected black guy, with a shaved head and goatee, who stood at least six three. He demonstrated his mean face, which was extremely intimidating, but Big Mack was incredibly nice and far more interested in gaining new clients to train in the gym than he was in kicking anyone’s ass.
“I train at least thirty-five percent of the girls in here. You work out?” he asked.
“Yeah right.”
“I could work with you,” he said, “get you looking lean and mean in thirty days. You’d be hot.”
“I’m good. You know, I’m just not the gym type really. I prefer to sit on my butt and read.”
“You got the perfect job then. You’ll do a lot of sitting on your butt working the door. Nobody cares if you read on a slow day either. But if you change your mind and you want to drop a few pounds, tighten up a little, you just let me know.”
I was about to say I’d be sure to, when a group of sailors, complete with the little round, white Popeye hats clamored through the door ready to party while on shore leave. I managed to get them all through the door efficiently without screwing up the cash register, and once in, they scattered to the far ends of the club seeking drinks and boobs. With my eyes I followed them and they reminded me of ants.
In Florida, you can’t avoid ants. The amount of pesticide you’d have to spray to get rid of them would kill you and the ants, so everyone gets used to them and knows to clean up every molecule of food. If you happen to miss a crumb of cake, within seconds, hundreds of ants, smelling the cake, will appear to seep from crevices in your cabinets and walls you didn’t even know existed. They will descend upon the crumb, antennae whirring in excitement to get their share. Strippers are exactly like ants. As soon as the sailors hit the floor, lines of dancers slinked from every dark corner, drawn by the scent of money.
They were a parade of life sized Bratz dolls. Sleepy eyed, lids heavy from glitter and false lashes, in similar spandex gowns slit to the waist, dancers sniffed their ways to the fans of dollar bills eager sailors clutched. A few enthusiastic Latinas with dulce de leche for skin already scored table dances and began to sway with their necks craned backwards so their long, highlighted hair tickled the smalls of their backs. Blondes and redheads led the Navy boys into rooms hidden behind merlot colored drapes. Some of the soldiers blew their money pretending to be big ballers in the champagne rooms, while the others went for the cheaper lap dances hidden in a mysterious area of the club known as “The Friction Room.” A group of officers bobbed en masse and waved, whooping and pumping their fists victoriously in front of the main stage where a buck-toothed, Bettie Page look-alike undulated beside a rail thin black girl with an ass that looked like two grapefruits bobbing under her neon yellow dress. Toddlers yelling and shaking the bars of their playpen, I thought, but hey, I could cut them some slack since they’d probably been at sea for months without much fun. I could imagine how they felt.
“Why do they all have their clothes on?” I asked Big Mack.
“It’s the first song. They dance in three song sets. First song fully clothed. Second song topless and third song they take it all off.”
“Why? Don’t guys pay to see naked women?”
“Of course, but it’s all about the anticipation, the suspense. You gotta make them earn it, you know so they keep paying wanting more and more. You’ll learn.”
Sure enough when Big Pimpin’ faded into Mystikal, every dancer on the floor robotically peeled down the bodice of her gown and stepped gingerly out of it to dance in a g-string. All of my locker room dreams came true. I could look at as many bare breasts as I wanted and get paid for it. Twelve-fifty an hour no less. I’d never made that much and done so little.
The variety of breasts amazed me. I’d always hated my pointy B-cups and thought they were funny looking, deformed even because they looked nothing like the boobs I saw in pictures and movies and that was what guys wanted, right? Apparently not. If the breasts bared at the Kittikat were any indication, there were many versions of perfect, and even obvious flaws were acceptable. Pointy, saggy, deflated as an empty Capri Sun or pumped full of silicone and saline – they all made money. Some were scarred, many were striated with silvery pink stretch marks and no one, neither the customers nor the topless women seemed fazed. Even enormous nipples, long as cheese doodles with areolae the size of pancakes which would have left me permanently celibate with shame, were proudly displayed. I couldn’t believe it.
“You’ve never been to a strip club before have you?” Big Mack asked.
“Huh? What?” I said startled and turning around, “Why?”
“You look hypnotized or something.”
“I’ve just never seen – I mean, am I not supposed to look?”
“You can look all you want. Nobody cares. We all look when we first start working here but pretty soon you get used to it and you don’t even see it anymore. Enjoy the show while you can.”
I’d envisioned a clone army of busty blonde fembots with teeny waists and toned calves but I couldn’t have been more wrong. There were a few Pamela Anderson look-alikes sure, but they were actually the minority. The Bubblegum Kittikat’s entertainment was certainly a model of diversity and there was a girl or two to represent every race and ethnicity, but it went deeper than that. The dancers didn’t all have perfect bodies. I was stunned. Some girls had belly pooch and others bared the results of hack boob jobs with jagged scars and nipples pointing in opposite directions like lazy eyes. Skin sagged, cellulite dimpled a few thighs, a c-section scar cut across the hips of a freckled, and obviously natural, red head who looked far too young to be anyone’s mother.
By song three, I’m pretty sure my mouth hung open in a combination of shock and awe. There were as many styles for pubic hair as there were for the hair on your head. Some of the dancers were as smooth and bald as pre-schoolers but some preferred a closely cropped line or Dorito-sized triangle. Strippers put forth great efforts to maintain their bikini areas and that made perfect sense when I thought about it. They wouldn’t want a tumbleweed of hair obscuring the view, if you know what I mean, and good grooming down there is essential when your panty-free crotch is mere centimeters from someone’s face and you’ve been dancing for hours in South Florida’s humidity. A full bush though was nowhere to be found. The natural look was as out of style as a brown, polyester jump-suit; something women had back in the seventies. This was the new millennium and coochie coiffure was in, especially with strippers. You could shave or wax your crotch into a landing strip, a pencil line, a tortilla chip, Hitler’s moustache or a heart. Some girls even decorated their pubic regions with stick-on rhinestones. The possibilities were endless. Who knew? These women trimmed and shaped their pubic hair like topiaries. I wondered if they decorated for the holidays? You could shave a jack ‘o’ lantern, a Christmas tree and maybe an Easter egg or how about bunny ears? To think, I’d been missing out on a whole world of bikini line fun. I made a mental note to invest in some good razors in case inspiration hit.
Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat Page 5