Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat

by Victoria Fedden

  One thing I would definitely not be doing though was coloring my pubic hair. I knew that women did a lot of ridiculous things to make themselves attractive, but pubic dye-jobs had never occurred to me and wouldn’t that, well, burn? Lord have mercy. A number of dancers sported little yellow tufts, as if they were holding a baby chicken between their legs, in an attempt to make the carpet match the drapes, but their dye jobs weren’t very convincing. I thought they were even kind of creepy and my God, where was I? What sort of alternate universe had I landed in where people actually lightened their pubes? Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe it.

  I had to stop gawking and get to work because more sailors arrived followed by an older man with a wet comb-over. He wore his clothes too big and his thick glasses were enormous, covering most of his face. He looked like a composite drawing of a serial killer and when I attempted to charge him five bucks to come in, he wordlessly pulled a Kittikat Kard from the pocket of his slacks, rolled his eyes and shuffled towards the lame buffet by the bar.

  “Dude is a freak,” Big Mack said, “He comes every single day for the free buffet. He sits on the floor by the stage and every so often he’ll get up and give the girls on stage a dollar but he never says anything. Dancers hate him. Creeps them out.”

  “I see why. That buffet doesn’t even look good.”

  The “buffet” was nothing more than a reheated pan of frozen lasagna, another pan of institutional meatballs in watery Ragu and a tray of stale dinner rolls.

  Big Mack looked at his watch.

  “It’s almost two. Stock brokers’ll be coming in any second and they’ve got the big money. These sailors are small change. We’re all nice to them because you gotta give the love to your service men but the stock brokers have the real cheddar. You’ll see some ladies come alive up in here when they’re here. Wait ’til you see Mohammed.”

  With all the hype, the real Mohammed was bound to disappoint I guess. I expected a royal entrance, maybe a Trump style gold chopper landing on the roof. Maybe he’d ride in be-turbaned and wrapped in silks on top of an elephant. I guess it takes a lot to impress me.

  Mohammed walked in the front door like everyone else. He was with Ray Haines, Ray’s girlfriend Tracy and about five or six other guys all in their forties and fifties and all balding and looking like they worked in an office somewhere. It was a less than impressive entourage. Mohammed himself was your average tall, thin Indian man. He wasn’t quite fifty and wore his hair long in front and gelled to one side in an unmovable black wave. The sheen and drape of his suit screamed expensive and although I knew little of watches, I recognized a costly hunk of diamond encrusted Rolex when I saw one. Mohammed’s watch was rivaled only by Raymond Haines’ timepiece, which he stared at, wrist turned and outstretched like he might forget the hour and minute if he looked away for even a second.

  Mr. Haines was one of those men who liked a lot of jewelry, both on his women and on himself. He was a dead ringer for Roger Moore’s James Bond only with a “Frankly My Dear” accent instead of a posh British growl and he’d obviously gotten all of his fashion sense from re-runs of “Miami Vice.” I’d never seen him in anything other than Sonny Crockett, white linen suits and pastel silk tee-shirts.

  Ray’d brought his current girlfriend Tracy along, latched onto his left arm and at barely five feet tall, the petite former stripper had to practically stand on tippy-toes, even in stilettos, to gawk at Ray’s apparently new, tri-color Rolex. Tracy, with her fall of wheat-colored mermaid curls was more good Jewish girl, think Baby from “Dirty Dancing,” than lap-dancer. If you met her, you’d assume she worked at the bank, at least until you laid eyes on her chest, which held up a massive set of torpedo shaped fake breasts. Tracy’s freak of nature boobs entered a room five minutes before she did. They commanded such attention that the rest of her seemed to disappear in their shadow. I’d honestly never seen anything like them and I couldn’t stop looking at her chest in awe. What would possess someone to do that to themselves? Did men really find that attractive because to me, those things were circus act, not sexy. I wondered if she’d gone into the plastic surgeon’s office and said “Fill ’em up Doc. Give me the biggest set you’ve got.” Did they hurt? Because realistically they had to be painful, especially supported by her miniscule frame. The girl was the size of a ten year old for God’s sakes and for that matter, so were each of her breasts.

  “Tri-color Masterpiece Rolex,” Ray drawled, smiling, “Now that’s a friend, Mohammed.”

  “The least I could do for a good friend like you. The very least,” Mohammed said.

  I don’t know what it was. The guy looked greasy and his eyes darted constantly so I instantly mistrusted Mohammed. Maybe it was because in my world gifting someone with a nearly hundred thousand dollar watch and giving up an even more expensive Mercedes as part of a lost bet just wasn’t normal. The strippers sure loved him though. They might have been like ants to the sailors, but with Mohammed they turned into a pack of frenzied jackals lunging and snarling to get their share of an antelope carcass. Most of them abandoned the Navy guys to get a piece of the Mohammed action and he clearly loved the attention, sorting through the cluster of girls and handpicking the ones he wanted to entertain him privately in the Champagne Room. He liked blondes. How typical, I thought, and I knew just how the brunettes felt, left behind to wander the floor, trying to sell table dances to drunk seamen who’d already lost most of their cash in the first ten minutes they’d been there. Middle school cafeteria all over again. The popular kids get the good table and everyone else inside secretly wishes and hopes “let it be me, let them want to sit with me, let me be one of them” but it never is and everyone else is left on the periphery, at the tables by the garbage cans, just close enough to see the fun but never allowed to partake. I knew how badly that sucked because that had been my fate at every new school in every new city my parents had dragged me to. Why do you think I dropped out?

  A scrawny blonde in a Juicy track suit that looked like it was sewn together from the hides of several well used, pink, stuffed rabbits, flung open the front door before Big Mack could open it. She huffed and rolled her eyes, which were clumped and sooty with last night’s smudged mascara, and before I could tell her women weren’t allowed in alone, Big Mack scolded her for using the front entrance.

  “Fuck you, Big Mack! Fuck you! I worked ’til four am last night and then went out to Rottweilers and I was fucking rolling my ass off and had a bottle of champagne on top of that and now this fucking little asshole Brent, whatever his name is, calls me up and says Mohammed fucking requested me and to get my ass in here? This is fucking bullshit, Big Mack. It’s bullshit. I was supposed to get my asshole bleached this afternoon.”

  “The money ain’t bullshit so shut the hell up and be happy and get your unbleached ass in the back and get dressed before he changes his mind, Stormy.”

  Stormy scuffed off sullenly, dragging her Louis Vuitton backpack on the floor like a first grader. Well, a rich first grader anyway.

  Wait, did she say she had to get her asshole bleached? Are you kidding me? First dyed pubic hair and now bleached butts? I had to ask Big Mack about it, but he just chuckled.

  “It’s real, yeah, but she’s an idiot that one,” Big Mack said, “Ungrateful bitch. She’s complaining meanwhile she’s gonna make easy couple grand at least before the day’s through. Jesus Christ, would you look at this?”

  Big Mack abandoned post to run to the main stage where a sailor failed at crowd surfing. The third song in the current set played, Eminem complaining about his life again, so all of the dancers had stepped out of their stretchy gowns, leaving me to once again enjoy the thrill of being surrounded by at least ten naked women, a definite record for me, though once I’d start working nights there’d be three times that many bare crotches and exposed boobs within my scope, especially on the weekends.

  “EXCUSE ME!! I SAID EXCUSE ME!!!!”

  Startled, I turned around where a sincerely pisse
d off Indian woman slammed her key ring down on the glass counter of my box. She had on the most ridiculous outfit I’d ever seen and I think I was so blinded by her rhinestone encrusted red, white and blue pants and American flag, jeweled tee shirt that I couldn’t react quickly. The outfit was that loud. Steven Tyler would have thought it was over the top. There was barely a millimeter of fabric without a stone, sequin or sparkle. It was like Bedazzlers Gone Wild and had to have weighed at least twenty pounds and doubled as a suit of armor. Where would someone even get an outfit like that, I wondered and what kind of person would see it in a store and be like “I must have that. I must turn myself into the Fourth of July incarnate.”

  “Is my god damned husband here?”

  I should have put two and two together, but like I said, that outfit, plus all the surrounding nudity, along with the passed out sailor with the bloody forehead sprawled under a cocktail table all set to “The Real Slim Shady,” messed with my head.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Who the fuck hired you? Another dumb ass whore working in the titty bar playing dumb. You think you’re cute? You think you can get his money? I’ve got news for you – it’s all mine!”

  She clawed her keys back up off the counter and even her acrylic nails were patriotic with glitter.

  “You can’t come in her alo-” I started, but she’d already made a bee-line for the maroon drapes encircling the room.

  She tripped on the three steps leading to the first champagne room, landing face down, but still managed to throw open the curtains, revealing a petty officer suffocating in a black girl’s weighty cleavage. This was not going to end well. Nope. No way, but god damn, I’d been working two hours, made a total of twenty-five dollars, hadn’t had to do much of anything and was I bored? Hell no.

  Mohammed’s wife continued around the room looking for her husband. It was like a pornographic “Let’s Make a Deal,” finding out what was behind curtains number two and three (more sailors, more lap dances) before she finally hit the jackpot on number four and she was in such a fury that she ripped part of the drapes right out of the ceiling before Big Mack and the other bouncer on duty could get to her and pull her off of Stormy who had undergone an amazing transformation, having caked makeup over her hangover. Mr. Haines flew up off of the couch yelling for more security, except there wasn’t any. Tracy bolted for the service bar. A bar back notified Brent and Phil, who came blasting out of the double doors from the back office to pull strippers off of Mrs. Mohammed as she attempted to take them all on at once because apparently, her outfit made her feel like some kind of superhero (and I mean, how could it not?).

  Who doesn’t love a good girl fight? Ok, I’d never seen a girl fight outside of a Jerry Springer hair tearing, but I was pretty excited that one was happening on my first day of work. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending on your angle, the fight didn’t go very far. Mohammed’s wife attacked Stormy and the other girls in the room came to Stormy’s rescue and overpowered Mohammed’s wife. The bouncers broke it all up pretty quickly. Mohammed stood there with an open bottle of Cristal in his hand hollering “Get her out of here! Get her out of here now!” until Big Mack literally picked her up, rhinestones and all, tossed her over his shoulder and escorted her outside to her car.

  “This is not the first time this has happened,” he told me when he got back.

  “You’re kidding. That’s insane. She should divorce him if she doesn’t like him coming here and I mean, I can’t blame her for getting mad.”

  “Not my business. I’m not getting involved in that shit man, but Mohammed needs a cigar. Get a tray and get a couple of Cubans out of the black box in the bottom of your case. They’re his only. Cut them and take them to the Champagne Room.”

  “Cubans?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Aren’t those illegal?”

  “Don’t ask questions like that. If you’re rich, nothing’s illegal anyway. Just do it.”

  I delivered the Cubans to the champagne room, gingerly hopping up the steps and pulling the maroon velvet aside as daintily as I could. A few more bottles of Cristal had calmed everyone down and Sparkles, the Champagne Room waitress, had brought a fresh fruit and cheese platter out from the kitchen, but no one touched it. Mohammed held court in the center of the couch flanked by two dancers who coiled themselves next to him. One stroked his hair while the other Brent her long nails along his chest and played with the buttons on his shirt like she might undo them. Stormy danced in front of his face. Her big draw was a silver belly chain that she liked to wear. It had a chain with a lightning bolt charm attached and she could move in such a way that the chain and the charm bobbed in the crack of her ass. She’d bend over, spread legged and grab her ankles, then vibrate her entire body in a way that didn’t seem humanly possible so that her audience could see the tiny lightning bolt repeatedly strike her asshole. I was the only one that lightning shocked because her little routine made her thousands. It was why Mohammed had specifically requested she come in that afternoon when she exclusively worked nights.

  Why in God’s name someone would pay that much cash to see someone’s butt is entirely beyond me or how a girl could so unabashedly open her cheeks and expose that part of herself, for money no less, is even further beyond my realm of comprehension. I would die of shame and embarrassment if someone saw my butthole. I preferred to pretend it didn’t even exist and I certainly hadn’t come up with any great plans to pay my bills with it. I’d be glad if I could go the rest of my life without anyone ever seeing my anus, but yet, here was this girl, this peroxide blonde in her early twenties who by most accounts was pretty, providing strangers a grand old time with hers. It takes all kinds, doesn’t it?

  I waited, as Big Mack had instructed, until the song was over and Stormy had slid back into her blue and silver gown and poured herself another glass of champagne, to present Mohammed with his cigars. Not looking away from the set of breast implants now sitting astride him, he handed me a hundred dollar bill.

  “Oh no, these are free,” I said.

  He looked at me, his bushy brows furrowed.

  “Oh gosh,” I said, “I’m sorry. How would you like your change? Three twenties, two tens the rest fives? Do you need any ones?”

  “I don’t need change. The money is for you. Your tip.”

  The strippers laughed their asses off.

  “She’s new!” one of them squawked. She had obvious hair extensions and big teeth.

  Every year for my birthday, my grandparents sent me a card, one of those really corny ones with roses and lots of metallic cursive, and inside was always a hundred dollar bill. That I would receive this, no matter where I was or what I’d gotten myself into, was the most reliable event in my life since childhood. It was also the only time anyone ever gave me a hundred dollar bill until now, and I don’t even remember if I said thank you. Inside I was all “OH MY GOD!! A HUNDRED DOLLARS!!” and I was already thinking of all kinds of things to spend it on: thai food, a non-frumpy dress, fancy chocolate, lipstick at Walgreens, some kind of fruity bath gel from Bath and Body Works, and then ugh, those legal bills, because I was still embroiled in a lawsuit with Evan and that was why I was here in the first place, wasn’t it? Because I had to pay those bills and fight that lawsuit.

  Yes, but guess what? For the first time since June twelfth, the day I flew back to Florida, I had gone a total of three hours and forty-five minutes without thinking about my ex, my house, my ex’s new girlfriend or the fact that I was being sued by some of the most powerful attorneys in Atlanta. That counted for a lot, so right then and there I decided this was the job for me, at least for the time being. It beat the hell out of every other way of making money available.

  10

  I was making money again, so I decided to waste some. The new clothes didn’t count. They were an investment and I was sick of Brent making fun of me (although maybe he was flirting?) whenever I clocked in. His favorite line was “You hostes
sing at a gentlemen’s club or The Olive Garden?” I thought a few new outfits from TJ Maxx might shut him up, but they didn’t. I guess I still wasn’t sexy enough, but what was wrong with capri pants? Come on, in some countries it’s considered outrageously shocking for a woman to bare her ankles.

  With my new income, I also, incidentally, enjoyed a few cartons of mild green curry chicken and began showering with a new bottle of Sun-Ripened Raspberry. None of these things I considered a waste. After the summer I’d had, I felt I was due some minor indulgences and compared to the men I was now seeing each afternoon who practically tossed handfuls of cash around like it was as meaningless as a pocket of old gas station receipts, Thai food and fruity bath gel were nothing.

  I wasted my money going to a psychic. There I said it. I spent seventy-five dollars on a clairvoyant who claimed to look backwards and forwards in time, through the ether, at my past, present and future lives. She even promised to read the Akashic records in order to tell me my fate and my purpose for this incarnation. Whatever. I just wanted to know if I’d get a boyfriend soon. I religiously checked my horoscope in the local paper every afternoon to see if there might be love in the air for lonely Scorpio and there hadn’t been, so I thought the psychic might provide the answers the Living section was missing.

  I’d venture that three-quarters of the people who go to psychics want to know the exact same thing. Will I ever find someone to love me, they ask? The other twenty-five percent go because they’re grieving and want to talk to dead people. Loneliness compels us to act in ways which cause us to abandon good sense and to spend money on anything promising to relieve our aching solitude, even temporarily. That’s how advertising works. That’s why men drop their life savings on sex workers and it’s why I handed over Mohammed’s tip to a woman who sat in the back of a New Age bookstore, in a metal chair in front of a folding card table. I wanted to hear my future and I wanted it to include a handsome prince with a BMW, giggling babies with big brown eyes and a house that smelled like snickerdoodles. I wanted a general idea of when that might happen because if I knew it would happen, and that there was hope, then I felt like maybe I’d be able to stick out the slow, slow healing of the wounds gouged in me by Evan’s rejection.