Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat

by Victoria Fedden

  Don’t take banana bread to your booty call. Just don’t. And don’t take your booty call a loaf of banana bread that’s almost a week old because you thought for sure he’d call sooner this time and you could give him the treat fresh. Don’t do it even if the banana bread is from scratch and studded with dark chocolate chunks and toasted pecans which are, of course, your favorite. No matter how good of a baker you are, you can’t win him over with sweets. All that business about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach is a load.

  “You baked me banana bread?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, um, well, that’s interesting. Never had a girl bake me banana bread before.”

  “Do you want to try it?”

  “Uhhh, I’m good right now. You know, I work out and I don’t eat a lot of carbs and whatever, so uhh, yeah. But you know what I do like to eat? Let’s get out of the kitchen. Come into the bedroom with me.”

  I took his hand and went and listened to more of his hard cock and wet pussy nonsense and the more he talked the madder I got. I was disgusted with him but I was even more disgusted with myself, because by this time I knew better. I knew I was being used and I knew I was not being treated fairly. I was well aware that he had no genuine feelings for me and I felt like a failure because I was unable to make him have feelings for me. I thought if I had been good enough then he would have respected me and wanted to treat me better. One of the problems was that I didn’t know what being treated well by a man even looked like. Evan had treated me so poorly for so long that it had altered my perspective on relationships and significantly lowered my standards. I thought as long as someone called me and said nice things to me once in a while that that was pretty good because at least they weren’t hitting me, directly insulting me or threatening me.

  “Do you do drugs?” I asked him after we’d had sex and were lying in his bed. I wanted him to curl up beside me and stroke my hair again, but instead he’d gone to the kitchen, cracked open a beer and grabbed the TV remote before flopping back on the mattress as far from me as he could get without landing on the carpet.

  “Yeah, I party. No big deal.”

  “Like cocaine? Pills? What?”

  “Yeah, both whatever. You want something?”

  “No. I hate drugs,” I said.

  “You should party a little. You’d loosen up. Learn to have fun.”

  I didn’t stay over at Adam’s house that night and I went home swearing I would never do this again. I knew he wouldn’t call me and if he did his calls would come weeks apart and it made me sad, but not as sad as Evan had made me, so I knew I could get over it. I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted in a man, but I was collecting a solid list of what I didn’t want. No excessive dirty talking, and no late night booty calls and while we’re at it, how about a little more than a salt shaker?

  I was right. After that night I didn’t hear from Adam again. Not for a few months anyway.

  14

  Brent phoned from the club’s corporate offices before my Tuesday afternoon shift the following week.

  “What’s up, Librarian?” he asked when I answered.

  “I don’t know, not much. What’s going on with you?”

  “Look, don’t come in for your afternoon shift. We need you on tonight.”

  “I thought I was starting nights next week,” I said.

  “Change of plans. The nighttime door girl Asia quit and our other hostess Amy started cocktailing last weekend and refuses to go back to the door because she makes more money in the corset. If you ask me, she was the main one bagging the covers anyway. So I need you, Vic. You game?”

  “Sure, whatever,” I said. It’s not like I had any plans on a Tuesday night anyway. Just sitting around watching Monsterfest.

  “Look,” Brent said, “I need you to go to Lace to Lust and get yourself something appropriate to wear. Get one of those stretchy, slitty gown things the dancers wear and put some makeup on. Nightshift’s a little different, especially on a Tuesday.”

  “Seriously? Why Tuesday?”

  “Shoot, Tuesday’s as big a night as Friday around here. Don’t you know?”

  “Apparently not, what?”

  “Tuesday is Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat.”

  Most people don’t take their moms with them when they go shopping for appropriately whorish strip club attire, but my mom, as I have stated ad nauseum already, is not like your mom and we headed off in her silver Navigator towards East Oakland Park Boulevard, which, if a city could be said to have a Slutty Fashion District, was Fort Lauderdale’s.

  “I been saying forever that you weren’t wearing the right clothes. How much you usually make in tips?” my mom asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess I average about thirty to forty a shift.”

  “That ain’t jack shit. You could be making three and four times that and more. You sit up in there in them button up sweaters and disappear into the corner so nobody even knows you’re there hardly. You gotta stand out.”

  “It’s cold. They keep the damned AC at like sixty degrees so the dancers’ nipples stay hard.”

  “They do?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m not joking.”

  “So it’s working for them then. Tonight, forget your daggoned sweater and don’t wear a bra and see how it works out for you.”

  “Well, I guess I’d stand out then. Ha. Ha. Hilarious. I’m dying over here.”

  East Oakland Park Boulevard was home to every shop in town catering to sex workers and those who wished to dress like them. You know how there are wholesale restaurant supply stores? Well, these places fulfilled the same needs for the sex industry. Strippers have to buy their clear heels somewhere after all and where do you think the cocktail waitresses find their matching black bustiers?

  The sex worker supply houses didn’t sit in the prettiest parts of town, that’s for sure. East Oakland is low-rent, crowded on both sides of the busy road with ugly, one story strip plazas and fast-food joints with weeds tangling up into their cracked and littered drive-thru lanes. Garish signs written in Spanish advertised phone cards to Central America on graffiti streaked bus benches and on one corner, an old Taco Bell had been converted into a Haitian Pentecostal church. Next to a garage specializing in flashy rims, in the parking lot of a BBQ shack, black barrel smokers chuffed out the scent of hickory and hot pig fat. We pulled into a strip mall across the four lane road from the slow roasting baby backs and parked in front of a scraggly, knee high cocoplum hedge and went in.

  We went to Lace to Lust not just because Brent had recommended it but also because it had the biggest sign, a black and white cursive number that hung over a window packed with displays of fetish gear and club wear. Even the mannequins in South Florida had breast implants. These things were outrageous. Whereas most department store dummies have conservative A-cups, these faceless torsos boasted some triple D knockers stacked on top of teeny plastic bodies with narrow rib cages and waists so cut-in that only famine or severe anorexia could produce their slight measurements in real life. One headless mannequin stood decked out in neon yellow latex while another sported a shiny vinyl lady cop get up complete with handcuffs.

  If it wasn’t shiny, slippery, feathered, furry, pleather, rubber, plastic, studded or dazzled in sequins, they didn’t sell it. An entire section of the store devoted itself solely to bondage gear while another shameless displayed sex toys that bobbed, buzzed, tickled and plugged. “Club Wear” appeared to be code for “stripper clothes” and that was the closest to what I needed so I concentrated my efforts there once I’d recovered from seeing a butt plug taller and curvier than Mrs. Butterworth. Some clubs allowed their dancers to wear costumes on stage. Cheesy clichés, such as the naughty schoolgirl or the French maid, were quite popular. Lace to Lust filled a room with costumes and there is, I would learn, a slutty version of every outfit for every character and career you can imagine, but The Bubblegum Kittikat, klassy as it was, didn’t allow sl
utty Dorothys skipping around the club in platform ruby slippers, nor did it want any frisky nurses giving their guest check-ups. We had a strict dress code. Our cocktail waitresses and female bartenders laced themselves into identical black corsets, bouncers donned tuxes and our dancers wore gowns, thongs and clear heels. Period. And then of course there was me. I wore cardigans, but we were about to change that.

  I don’t know. When I think of the word gown I think wedding. I see taffeta and ruffled 80s prom dresses hanging off of one shoulder, bridesmaids, miserable in pink, scuffing their Dyeables down the aisle. Or I imagine the Miss Universe pageant’s evening gown competition, Vanna White in some Cher-worthy Bob Mackie beaded number spinning vowels. The gowns strippers take step out of every second song aren’t in that league. I think they just call them gowns as part of the whole false illusion of glamor the clubs perpetuate. Lightweight things, the dresses seemed to be made from the same material as swimsuits. Patternless gowns came in every color and two simple styles: spaghetti strapped plunging neckline or strapless tube top. Both styles faded down into sleek, floor length pencil skirts, slit up both sides clear to the hipbones. Some were edged with rhinestones or feathers and a few had been embellished with glittering medallions, but for the most part, the dresses were plain, waterproof and one hundred percent wrinkle resistant. They also weren’t very forgiving. Until I tried one on, I’d never seen a garment through which you could actually make out your individual lumps of cellulite. Oh God, not flattering at all. No wonder strippers stayed so damned skinny having to wear these evil schmattes all night long. At least they were cheap enough. I bought two for eighty bucks – a black and a red. Two days’ tips.

  And thank the Baby Jesus up in heaven that I didn’t have to wear stripper shoes because there’s no way I could have ambulated atop eight inches of clear acrylic without ending up in the emergency room. Strippers at the Kittikat had no choice but to wear them and I guarantee you they suffered as much as ballerinas in toe shoes or the centuries of Chinese women with their feet hideously bound into golden lilies. The shoes were open toed slip-ons, different from the buckled mary-jane style that tortured the cocktail waitresses. With chunky eight-inch heels in the back, the toes needed a good four inches of solid platform in order for the girls to be able to move in them. The absurdly thick and rounded platforms looked like horses’ hooves, transforming the dancers into pathetically prancing show ponies, but the exaggerated proportions of stripper shoes served a purpose, or at least everyone believed they did. Heels that high pop the calf muscles and lift your ass, while trying to walk in such an unnatural state pulls in the gut and tones the thighs. Even petite girls soar into super-models with that much lift, adding further to the fantasy.

  Every stripper wanted to be a princess and the shoes they danced in were as close as they could come to glass slippers. Cheap Cinderellas trapped in a bizzarro fairy tale, spellbound by the hopes of riches and the possibilities of rescuer princes, they twirled and spun into the darkest hours of the night until their feet blistered and bled. How Grimm. And I let myself believe that I was nothing like them. I was impervious to that spell, or so I thought.

  15

  That Tuesday, I squeezed myself into my new black gown and worked my first night shift. When I arrived, everyone was talking about Mohammed. He’d disappeared and everyone wanted to know where he was. He’d been missing for a few weeks now. After telling Mr. Haines he had some business in the Bahamas, Mohammed had left, apparently for good, and now all of a sudden his numbers were disconnected and according to Brent, who’d been tasked by his uncle to drive by his house, his residence was empty – cars and furniture gone. Even the lawn crew had quit coming so the grass shagged around the gates and sprouted up between the pavers. Mohammed had skipped town, taking with him a rumored half a million of Raymond Haines’ fortune, just like my mom had predicted (she’s always right, remember?). Mr. Haines wasn’t the only one Mohammed had ripped off. He duped several people into “investing” in his nonexistent fund. That’s where all the money he passed on to the staff and entertainment of the Bubblegum Kittikat came from. When Mohammed came into the club, the whole building turned into one of those glass booths you always see on game shows where the contestants step in, the bills start blowing around like crazy and you have to frantically try to grab as much money as you can before your time runs out. Well, the time ran out. The buzzer went off and we’d all, yes even me, gotten what we could. At least most of the employees had made a profit, unlike Mr. Haines who lost big time and was pissed. Humiliated that he’d made such an easy mark, he hadn’t come to the club in ten days by the time I worked my first night shift – Amateur Night as it was.

  Nightshift had me on my toes, which were thankfully hidden in ballet flats under my spandex “gown” which I kept tripping over because in truth the thing was meant to be worn with at least stilettos and was ridiculously long. Heidi Klum would have needed a hem. Hell, so would Conan O’Brien had he worn it in drag. The rules stayed the same at night. The cover doubled and bigger, needier crowds, along with twice as many dancers, kept me busy snipping cigars and ringing up Marlboro Lights. The phone rang endlessly with idiots wanting to know what they needed to do to compete in the amateur contest (show up at nine thirty and sign up) or if Sabrina and Desiree were working that night (nope). I called in Papa Johns for two tables and placed at least a dozen orders of sushi for the dancers.

  I’m telling you, if you ever want to get rich quick forget multilevel marketing, forget day trading, forget the Power Ball Lotto. All you need to do is open a sushi bar next to a strip club. You will be a freaking millionaire overnight because strippers eat nothing but raw fish and they have an obscene amount of disposable income to waste on it. I saw strippers eat veritable oceans of sushi every single night I worked at the Bubblegum Kittikat. I had to order so much of it that I knew the Japanese word for every fish in the sea and had memorized the entire menu of the closest Japanese restaurant that delivered. I’m pretty sure we kept the place in business. At least two or three times a night the delivery driver, who appeared to really, really love his job, at least when he delivered to us, would march smirking through the front door carrying, I kid you not, a whole wooden sushi boat, beautifully arranged complete with edible orchids, which Sparkles would retrieve and trot off to one of the champagne rooms.

  Strippers are obsessed with sashimi for a few reasons. They’ll do anything to be skinny and raw fish has like three calories. It’s nice and slippery too so if you’re bulimic, which many of them are, it’s very easy to puke back up. Much of the stripper sushi craze has to do not just with its lack of calories, but with a perceived sort of exoticism. It’s Asian and expensive. You eat sushi with sticks or with your bare hands. It contains all sorts of things not common to the traditional American diet of macaroni and Velveeta. It’s pretty, and in the past it was considered very daring and almost avant garde to consume raw fish when most people were more used to having their fish breaded and deep fried in little sticks. The wealthy, exotic and the beautiful eat sushi. Sushi is sexy. You can’t deny that there is something utterly sensual about sucking the satiny, salty, pinkish slices of fish flesh between your lips. Eating sushi is like eating pussy. So how could strippers and their devoted regulars not live on it?

  At the beginning of my shift, I’d tossed a twenty into my own fishbowl. I did it as a hint, to let people know that hey, this is what I wanted and this was where to put it, and the bowl filled up fast, even with Mohammed on the lam. The thing was, there were plenty of Mohammeds in South Florida. There was no shortage of rich men with more money than good sense who liked to live it up and make themselves feel like hot shots by giving their probably not so hard earned dollars away to sex workers. I thought it was disgusting. What a pack of assholes, I thought even as the crumpled bills piled into the fishbowl.

  I sold a pack of Parliaments to a stripper with a body like a fourth grader’s. Her name was Iris and she swore up and down that was her real name and she
kept shit real by using her actual name instead of some bull crap, made up hooker name. I’d heard all about her because she was an alleged big time trouble maker, fighting with her coworkers and occasionally going ape shit on customers if they made her mad. She’d once knocked a guy out with a champagne bottle after he bit her breast during a lap dance, but I could hardly blame her for that. The funniest thing about her was that she banked sick money and she wasn’t even pretty. Iris looked like a skank, with hair so heavily highlighted and lowlighted that her head was literally striped and she’d tanned her skin so deeply that it appeared varnished. Her worst feature was her teeth. Tiny and pointed with spaces between each tooth, the girl looked like a piranha. Everyone in the club referred to her as Iris, you know, that crazy assed bitch with the jacked up grill. Iris was my first friend besides Brent.

  “What’s the matter New Door Girl? You can’t smile? What’s up?” Iris asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m just, I don’t know,” I said.

  “You got a broken heart. I can see it all over you. What’d the motherfucker do to you? Huh? Tell Iris. What did that piece of motherfucking shit do to you?”

  “Which one?”

  Iris thought this was the funniest thing she’d heard in her life and high fived me about ten times between whoops and hollered YEAHs. I couldn’t figure out if she was manic, coked out or both.

  “You just need to smile,” Iris said, “Because this place is bullshit. Life is bullshit. All these stupid motherfuckers who come in here? They’re all bullshit too. Nothing’s real my friend so you gotta laugh it all off. Only thing that’s real is Iris. Look at these tits. REAL motherfuckers!”

  Iris yanked down the top of her dress and yes, there was no way anyone could accuse her of having had breast augmentation. She had nothing more than little nipples stuck to her chest like craisins.