Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat

by Victoria Fedden

  “Umm, no,” I said, composing myself. Focus. Information about Evan.

  “Coral Ridge Presbyterian is a Godly church. Very well know. Reverend Kennedy there is world famous. I highly recommend attending a service,” Merle said.

  I nodded and looked off to see Faith engaged in a conversation with a gangly boy whose receding chin was splattered with acne. Her father supervised, bouncer-like, to ensure that no touching took place and oh, if only these Bible thumpers knew how very similar they were to pornographers.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll have to give it a try,” I said, “So, um, have you talked to Evan lately?”

  “Not really,” Merle said.

  “I think they’re pretty busy getting ready for-” Merrilee started but Merle nudged her hard with his elbow and she instantly clammed up.

  “I’ll go get more punch. More punch Merle? Victoria?” she said.

  We handed her our cups.

  “Getting ready for what?” I asked.

  “Well you know his new girlfriend moved in and they’re getting ready for their new life together I suppose,” Merle said with a shrug.

  “I knew she moved in last summer. What does she look like?”

  “Average.”

  “Average what?”

  “Tall, thin.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “I don’t look at women other than my wife that way. I’m sure she’s attractive, but anyway, I really think you should try Coral Ridge Presbyterian. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes. I pass it on my way to work all the time. Is she skinnier than me?”

  “Victoria, this isn’t healthy, but yes. I’d say she’s maybe twenty pounds or so lighter. She has a very slim build. Oh look, here’s Merrilee with the punch. Thank you sweetheart.”

  Merle took the two cups his wife brought and passed one to me.

  “Do they look happy?” I demanded.

  First Merle nodded and then shook his head.

  “Let’s just drop it. This girl talk is making me uncomfortable and by the way, have you read The Confessions of St. Augustine yet? I have a copy in the van for you if you’d like to read it on the plane home. I think you’d find it fascinating.”

  “Ok sure, whatever. Sounds enthralling. So what is she like?”

  “Honestly, I thought she was very low class. She listens to very loud rap music. We can always hear her when she pulls into the driveway. I don’t understand these people with the bass on their speakers turned up like that. It can really damage one’s ears. She also wears these gigantic gold earrings with her name on them which look like they could also injure the ears and she has a hair weave. But back to St. Augustine… Did you know he lived a worldly life before finding the Lord?”

  “Hmm. Well,” I said, at a loss for words. Evan never liked rap music and what was he doing with a ghetto superstar? He’d cheated on me with a girl who drove around with bass booming out of the trunk of a hooptie? Name plate earrings? You have to be kidding me. You can’t take a girl like that to Augusta National and that was Evan’s crowd as far as I understood. Had I been living with a stranger wrapped up in a double life for seven years?

  I excused myself from Merle. With news like that there was only one thing I could do and that was eat, so I meandered from table to table, stopping briefly to scrape with broken crackers whatever green globs of spinach dip still remained. Once I’d exhausted that option, I emptied the pretzel dishes, practically even eating the salty crumbs left behind when every last shard of pretzel had disappeared and that made me thirsty so I spent the next hour camped out by the punch bowl waiting for Rachel and Caleb to cut the cake. I was so bored I could have cussed.

  Everyone made small talk with everyone else while nibbling chips and sipping their cups of frothy, red, sugar water. They discussed who was courting who, engaged in some barely lively banter about slight differences in theology, discussed a new pastor at a nearby church who was apparently stirring things up by adding a “modern” service where people could wear jeans and tee shirts. They talked about whose kids were attending Pensacola, Liberty and Bob Jones and if it was a good idea to educate daughters when they were just going to marry anyway. One table I eavesdropped on decided it was a good idea because the Christian colleges were a great place to meet a mate. Meanwhile, the happy couple circulated, stopping to greet each table and receive hearty blessings for many healthy children.

  The cake was good. Actually, that cake was better than good and I inhaled three slivers and was about to start on a fourth when Rachel noticed my excess consumption. I hadn’t talked to her all day and I was anxious to congratulate her and give her a hug.

  “Victoria, you’ve had a lot of cake there. You don’t want an upset stomach on the plane do you?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry. I was starving and it’s just so good and plus Merle told me about Evan’s girlfriend and you know how I get when something upsets me. All I want to do is eat,” I apologized.

  “Merle told you what trash she is?”

  I nodded.

  “Victoria, I’m so sorry. We had all agreed ahead of time it was best not to bring up Evan and get you upset, so I didn’t want to say anything. It’s awful, I know. It’s because Evan doesn’t know the Lord that he behaves that way. Here, go ahead have another slice if it helps.”

  She slid another wedge of yellow and white cake onto a paper plate for me and I wolfed it down.

  “Look,” Rachel said, “Go into the kitchen and get one of the sherbet containers, rinse it out and bring it out here so I can fill it up. No one’s going to eat this cake and it’s best not to waste it. Take home as much as you’d like.”

  I couldn’t thank her enough.

  “It’s the best wedding cake I’ve ever eaten. I’m not kidding. I love the almond extract.”

  Rachel smiled down at me. She looked like the Virgin Mary and it was no wonder she always got the lead role in her church’s annual Christmas pageant. She dabbed at my mouth with a napkin embossed with her name and wedding date.

  “You have frosting on your face, hon. It’s not becoming,” she said.

  Rachel and Caleb left early under a vigorous pelting of raw rice, heading back to their new home where Caleb would presumably carry her over the threshold and then they’d spend the rest of the night trying to figure out how to have sex. That was too much pressure. They’d only hours earlier experienced their first kiss and when I thought back there were literally years separating my first kiss and the night I lost my virginity to my high school boyfriend. I’d had the freedom to round the bases at my own pace, moving on only when I felt comfortable, but these kids went from nothing to everything in a half a day. I couldn’t even imagine what that would be like and I hoped she’d be ok.

  When Rachel and her groom ducked giggling into his waiting Toyota, complete with coke cans streaming from the back bumper, I caught her attention with a whistle and waved, knowing it was the last time I would ever see her and sadly, I was correct. We’d talk every few months after that. Our conversations spaced further and further apart and then one day she never returned my call and I stopped leaving her messages.

  Merle took me to the airport shortly after Rachel and Caleb made their dramatic exit. Merrilee had had enough. Her pregnancy was making her tired and giving her wicked reflux and I couldn’t have been more thrilled to trade Paulding County for Broward as soon as possible. I saw the cityscape from I-20 as we approached Atlanta and for a millisecond I felt like nothing had changed, like we’d take the Fourteenth Street exit, turn into Home Park and everything would be as I’d left it and that feeling made me want to weep, made me want to tear open my plastic tub of cake and lick out every lashing of sugar and Crisco out of that sherbet container to forget. But Atlanta was no longer my home and we turned south towards the airport instead north towards where I’d once lived, away from Turner Field, away from the gold domed State Capitol building, away from the cylindrical sparkle of the Westin Peachtree, away from the ornate midtown tower,
the jewel of the Atlanta skyline, where Evan still worked.

  When you leave a city and a home you’ve loved so dearly, coming back to visit is like spending a weekend with an ex. It’s a tease. You think you’re getting back together at first and you’re excited but then you start seeing that it’s changed. Your relationship is different than what you thought it had been. You keep looking for that old familiar comfort, wondering if it had even ever been there in the first place and your disappointment in not finding it is enormous and empty. Too much has changed. Where is your home now, you wonder? You leave. Again. And you have no idea who you were before when this was where you lived, who you are now or who you’re turning into.

  35

  I stopped by the club on the way home from the airport. I’d seen the spotlights sabering up into the sky from the plane; the Bubblegum Kittikat’s contribution to the light pollution that made it nearly impossible to see a star on a clear night from anywhere in Fort Lauderdale. I guess in South Florida our stars are all fallen anyway. Ten pm on a Sunday was quiet and most of the employees were milling around trying to watch a football game on the TVs by the service bar. Luz made me a grasshopper. I’d tried to refuse and asked for a Shirley Temple but she’d insisted, saying I looked like I needed a drink. Maybe I did. Coming through to scatter the bouncers, waitresses and barbacks away from the game and back to work, Brent noticed me.

  “What the heck are you doing here, stranger?” he laughed, “You’re not due back ’til Amateur Night. You’ve got two more days left.”

  “Couldn’t stay away I guess.”

  “This place’ll do it to you. Trust me. I know. How was the ATL?” he asked.

  I shrugged, “You know. Things change.”

  “Good timing you’re here though. Just a heads up. I’ve got a new girl training with you Tuesday night on the door so don’t get your panties all in bunch when you come in and she’s at the register. I asked her to come in early and then she’ll shadow you for the night.”

  “Ok, no big deal,” I said, “But what happened? I leave for a week and you replace me already?”

  “Never!”

  “You better not. So what’s the new girl’s story?”

  “I don’t know. Just moved here for a guy or something. She’s hot. Used to be in the Coast Guard.”

  “What’s her name?” I wanted to know, but before Brent could answer a fight broke out between two patrons at the main bar. It was over Destiny.

  Destiny’s regular came in half-lit and sunburned. Dom had spent the afternoon at Shooters, a cheesy tourist trap on the Intracoastal with cheap drinks, outdoor seating and bad bar food. The place had a nice view and on Sunday afternoons, when all the strip clubs were closed (no weekend day shift, sorry guys), Shooters was the place to be for its late afternoon Hot Bod contest. A take on the classic wet tee shirt contest from days of Spring Break past, the Hot Bod attracted every skinny, slutty gold digger and aspiring lingerie model from Palm Beach to South Dade to compete. Like they did on Amateur Night, these girls, clad in string bikinis, would jiggle and jerk, booty shaking their way towards the prize money while a raucously bawdy crowd of inebriated football fans went wild, barking and howling like caged dogs at the ASPCA, at whatever whore with saline knockers and a twenty-two inch waist could mime the best blowjob on a Corona bottle.

  You could generally count on a Sunday night brawl because our customers would stumble in straight from the Hot Bod contest already past the legal limit and jacked up on their own testosterone, which surged from spending a long afternoon in the sun screaming at football games and half-naked women. Alcohol, sports and bikini contests, like certain prescription drugs, should never be combined. Side effects include extreme aggression and possible loss of money and/or dignity.

  Dom was one of those regulars who had convinced himself that the stripper to whom he paid at least half his weekly salary was his girlfriend. It was a common fantasy, but could cause some serious problems and I always wanted to say to these guys “Come on, snap out of it! She’s mashing her cleavage in your face because you’re paying her, not because she finds you irresistible!!” You wonder what’s going on in their heads. I mean, how could you actually think you were in a relationship with a woman you’ve never seen outside of a bar or for that matter who won’t even carry on a conversation with you unless you’re doling out at least twenty-five dollars every three songs?

  Since Dom thought Destiny was his girlfriend, he went ballistic when he came in a little later than usual Sunday night and found her astride Sal, a personal trainer and another regular. The girls loved Sal because he owned a chain of fitness centers and dojos and was super badass in that break a concrete block over your own head/motivational speaker kind of way. He wasn’t someone you’d want to mess with unless you were intoxicated and delusional, which Dom was. I have to admit that I always wanted someone to start some shit with Sal because I wanted to see him bust out some crazy martial arts moves, so I was glad I was there to see Dom’s confrontation. Unfortunately, all it ended up being was a lot of screaming and yelling along the lines of “You fucking whore! I give you three grand a month and I catch you on top of this motherfucker?!” Then Destiny tried to smooth things over by explaining that Dom was late and that she’d been waiting for him, but Dom pushed her out of the way to get into Sal’s face.

  “I own this bitch you hear me? She’s mine, motherfucker! I pay for her and she’s mine, so keep your fucking hands off her!” he hollered.

  “Come on man, chill the fuck out, ok? She’s a stripper. I paid her for a lap dance. I still have two more songs to go. She didn’t even take her dress off yet,” Sal said.

  More screaming and yelling ensued. Brent and Sean rushed over to break it up and Dom tossed a chair out into the lobby nearly hitting Cheyenne, a waif-like eighteen year old with poorly applied, black extensions and track marks that she tried to cover up with foundation. Sal demanded his twenty-five dollars back and Dom said he was going to beat his ass for disrespecting his “girlfriend.” Sean threw Dom out the front door and Sal got pissed and left, calling Destiny a cheap whore who wasn’t worth what he’d paid because she refused to give him his money back. He said he was going to Tigress because there at least he could get a handjob in the Champagne Room without a hassle. The whole scene was over in five minutes and by the time the next Feature came up, Destiny had shrugged it off and was back to parading around the room trying to sell herself.

  I was back. Welcome home.

  36

  A new girl? Whatever, I thought. I’d trained Casey before she turned into super-stripper Amberlyn and most of the door girls, ok, ALL of the door girls except me, aspired to greater things. Hostessing was a gateway job, because unless you were me, a true outlier in the strip club hierarchy, you’d quickly become seduced by the sick tips you’d see the cocktail waitresses making. From there you’d realize that running your ass off in stiletto pony hooves trying to balance a tray wasn’t all that and you’d start to wonder how it felt to strut across that mirrored stage and wrap your thighs around that shiny pole. I started making bets with myself on how many shifts at the door it would take for the new girl to ask Brent if she could wait a few tables and how long after that before she was slipping on the clear heels and renaming herself Envy. I wasn’t even remotely concerned about her being competition. As far as I was concerned, I owned the door of the Bubblegum Kittikat.

  When large groups of women are forced to spend any consistent amount of time sharing a space there’s bound to be competition and such was the case at the club. While we often enjoyed a sense of sisterhood, uniting in our estrogen against the common enemy of men, the girls at the Kittikat could turn on one another suddenly and ruthlessly and sometimes over occurrences as petty as two strippers both wearing the same dress on the same night. Plenty of entertainers talked shit about each other’s bodies. That slut looks like she got her tits at the fleamarket. Skanky assed bitch’s cunt smells like Nine Lives. They’d complain that Chris and Bren
t should fire certain girls because their asses were too big or their breasts were as saggy as a hound dog’s ears. They’d waste away, willing to look brittle as kindling in order to claim the title of thinnest. Heaven, who ate nothing but raw fruit, had flown to Costa Rica four times, two times alone in the three months I’d been there, to have her breasts done and redone because she wanted them larger and larger. I didn’t like the idea of being competitive with other women and I believed I was above such behavior. Sure, I obsessed (and that is probably an understatement) about Evan’s new girlfriend and really, I would have jumped at the chance to compare her crotch to canned cat food, but with Keisha, whom I’d never even seen, I just wanted to understand what she gave Evan that I couldn’t. That whore had stolen my life. The girls I worked with hadn’t done anything to me and they were of no consequence so I never felt threatened by them or like I needed to be better than them in any way. My life (and intestinal tract) stayed calmer when I remained outside of drama’s perimeter, so of course I wasn’t worried about some random new girl that Brent’d hired while I was in Georgia. At least not until I saw her.

  “Sunny!” she said sticking out her hand, “Nice to meetcha.”

  She smacked her gum and shook hands like a man on a job interview. I took one look at her and knew she could drive a stick shift. She even had my dream hair. All my life I’ve entertained fantasies about tossing around a head full of frizz-free, golden ringlets but my hair has remained stubbornly flat and lifeless. I’ve tried everything. Curling irons, hot rollers, curl enhancers. You name it. I’ve twisted and braided and within five minutes, two in Florida’s soupy humidity, my hair loses consciousness and falls back into its customary slack straightness. I don’t even want to get into the results of spiral perms I’d inflicted on my poor scalp back in the late 80s in an attempt to look like Kelly LeBrock in “Weird Science.” That very night I’d come to work with my hair slicked back in a ponytail because I couldn’t get it to look how I wanted and now here I was about to train Goldilocks herself.