Perhaps that’s unfair. Brian was disabled, troubled. Chanel wasn’t the one who wrapped the noose around his neck and knotted it to the ceiling fan in his living room. He’d done that himself and surely dark forces ate away at his mind that we at the club couldn’t see when he came in every night, though I always suspected their existence. A normal, healthy person would never waste his life savings, would never take out second and third mortgages, borrow, gamble and pawn his few remaining belongings just to spend a few hours nightly with a stripper he believed to be his true love. What would Brian have done if he heard the way she called him a putz and laughed at his admissions of going into debt just to take care of her? He never heard Chanel mock him. She put on a brilliant performance, holding his hand, stroking his doughy cheeks and playfully patting at the gut hanging over his elastic-waisted slacks. She gazed longingly at him with her black eyes while she danced in front of him and whispered to him a million deceitful promises of devotion.
I waved him in that last night and I could tell something was wrong. He dug around in his pockets looking for change to toss in my fishbowl. I told him not to worry about it.
“You want a drink, Brian?” I asked, “I’m on my way to the bar now. I’ll get you something.”
He looked down at the dulled marble, then out towards the stage, shuffled a bit. When he looked up his face seemed to tighten in pain.
“Chanel here?”
“I’m pretty sure I saw her. She’s wearing a red dress tonight.”
I scanned the crowd. We were busy and soon it would be standing room only. Amateur Night again. Chanel’s blood colored gown stood out. The disco balls glinted off her light hair. She was two songs into a table dance for a successful cardiologist named Ahmed who came in fairly often and never tipped less than a hundred bucks a pop. The girls always fought over him.
“There she is,” I said, pointing her out, “The third song’s starting now and then she’ll be free.”
Brian stared across the room and sighed as Chanel unlaced the ties that held her gown closed at her sides. She knew how to tease, to pull the knot slowly until it popped open causing the spandex to collapse in a heap at her ankles.
“My God, that woman is beautiful,” Brian gasped. He’d seen her naked a million times, but he acted like each time was the first and he didn’t take his eyes off her until the song ended and she grabbed a handful of bills from the doctor and folded them into her garter before she tied her dress back on.
She must have been expecting Brian, because her dark eyes darted around the club as if she were searching for someone and when she finally noticed him in the lobby she made her way through the crowd to greet him with a coy “Hey Baby” but since Chanel was French-Canadian, with her accent it sounded more like “Heh, Bébé.”
He tried to kiss her, to put his arm around her and draw her in closer but Chanel pulled away.
“Did you bring me a present?” she asked.
“Honey you know I would, but…”
They looked ridiculous together. Brian pale and flabby, close to fifty with a crew cut and coke bottle glasses, those elastic pants he always wore. Chanel aglimmer with pearlescent, Love Spell body lotion, her maple syrup skin, her youth, the Niagara of ash blonde hair rolling down her back, that red dress, two carat diamonds in each ear. Brian had bought those for her. Once he’d been a wealthy man. The tennis bracelet came from him too. So did the matching anklet, the Hermes bag in her locker, the bottle of Joy she said smelled like her grandmother. The Mercedes convertible.
“They took my car today,” Brian said.
“So what does that mean?” Chanel asked. She looked more interested in Caress who was moving in on Ahmed, asking if she could dance for him now that Chanel had cleared out.
“Honey I- I don’t know. Can you leave with me? Can we go sit somewhere together?”
“What are you talking about? I have to work.”
She still didn’t look at him.
“Beautiful, can you just dance for me one last time? I can’t give you anything else. I don’t have anything left.”
Chanel turned sharply towards Brian.
“This is my job,” she said, “I can’t dance for you for free.”
“Please, just one last time. Please, Chanel.”
His voice was strangled and cracked, horribly high pitched.
“This is my job. I dance for men who pay me.”
I wanted to jump across my glass counter, leap over the stupid beer koozies and fuchsia thong panties and smack her.
“Give him back all those diamonds you ungrateful whore!” I wanted to yell.
“I’m losing my apartment,” was all he could say.
“So what do you want me to say?” she asked.
“I couldn’t get dinner.”
He was weeping now.
“Please,” he begged.
“Brian, I’m sorry. I have to go back to work.”
She deserted him. She abandoned him and you should have seen the wad of cash, a grotesque lump, obscenely swollen, rubber-banded to a black silk garter at her thigh. She could have bought him groceries, paid his rent. Given back. Helped a friend. Except to her, he wasn’t a friend; he was just another client. Although she’d draped her naked body over him almost every night for the past year and a half, tonight her priority wasn’t Brian’s sob story, it was keeping Caress away from her newest high roller.
I tried to give Brian my tips.
“Take it, please. Get yourself a piece of pizza,” I urged shaking a messy handful dollars at him, but he shook his head fast and left.
When the front door closed behind him, Brian turned around as if to take one last look, but though I could see out, Brian couldn’t see back in. The mirrored doors only reflected back his own pathetic reflection. He placed his right hand flat against the glass and stood there a moment until a rowdy crew of juice-heads hopped off their Harleys and stormed the entrance. Brian turned and hurried away. It had begun to rain and he covered his head with his hands and ducked as he ran towards the bus bench. That was the last time I ever saw him.
Once he had been a wealthy man, I thought.
Three songs later Chanel came sniffing around the lobby to make sure he was gone.
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” I assured her.
“Good. Fucking putz,” she said, rolling her eyes.
She flicked a ten in my direction.
“Send Juanito or Rodrigo or whatever the fuck his name is to get me a chicken.”
45
I’d been living off of chicken, but Chanel made me hate it. The sight of a roasted bird turned my stomach after that and I had to give up on Big Mack’s diet, although I must admit, I lost seven pounds on it. Maybe it was Brian’s suicide too. After I learned he’d killed himself I lost my appetite. I started to feel nauseated when I looked at the lithe and augmented, pretty young things competing for whatever a wallet held, no matter who the wallet belonged to and no matter where the money came from. Not that I was any different. I gladly scooped the handfuls of cash from my fishbowl too. My grandmother always told me that if someone gives you a compliment or money, to smile, take it and say thank you with no questions asked and that’s what I did. Even worse was that lately, I’d stopped being satisfied with my tips. I wanted more.
I’d feel guilty once in a while and I’d wonder if these men were wasting money that could have gone to their families, if they had them. Couldn’t the cash have been better spent on a charity, I’d wonder, but then again, wasn’t the strip club a sort of charity? I tried, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else where I’d seen such unabashed outpourings of generosity, most of which came with no strings attached other than dancing naked. I was able to justify a lot if I thought about it enough and every time my conscience would start pestering me, my greed always managed to shut it up.
Chanel didn’t care that Brian killed himself or if she did, she didn’t show it. She said she wasn’t responsible. He was nuts, she said. He had
issues. He chose to spend everything he had on her. It hadn’t been her idea for him to take out mortgages and pawn anything he owned that was of value.
“What kind of an idiot would do that?” she said.
Brian’s suicide was hotly debated amongst Kittikat employees for some time. Was it really Chanel’s fault? Should she have given back his gifts, loaned him some of her loot so he could get back on his feet? What ultimately did Chanel owe Brian? A few of us thought she owed the man some kindness at the very least, but quite a few dancers sided with Chanel’s brutality. Brian made his choices, they said. Chanel was doing her job and nothing more. She was a stripper and she danced naked and pretended to like men for money, not out of the kindness of her heart and not for free. In the Bubblegum Kittikat money was always the bottom line and I was about to rake in a hell of a lot more of it.
“You’re looking good here lately,” he said. Shift was changing and I was just clocking in. I’d run into Brent in the backroom by the office as I was making my way back to Velouria for some Aquanet and body glitter.
“Well thanks,” I replied. Remember the rule about accepting money and compliments.
I’d given up Big Mack’s diet for Atkins because duh, bacon and cheese, at the same time, come on and I’d lost about ten pounds without having to exercise, which is my kind of diet. If I can sit around and eat brie and steak and still lose weight I am in. Ten pounds down, I’d finally stopped (at least temporarily) cramming cookies into the mouth of my sorrow. I could fit into the clothes I’d splurged on a few months ago and I’d stopped shopping out of boredom and insecurity (also at least temporarily). I’d probably never be as rail thin as I was when I lived in Atlanta, but maybe I was too skinny back then. Abusive relationships’ll do that to you and I’d trade in my size fours and flat abs if it meant not being backhanded by my boyfriend any day.
Brent wanted to see my in his office alone. Oh God, I thought. What now?
“I’m giving you a promotion,” Brent said, “Kinda.”
That perked me up. I raised my eyebrows at him and tilted my head.
“Jen is leaving. She’s graduating next month,” Brent continued.
“Yeah she’s a CPA now, right?”
Brent nodded and went on.
“So we need a Bubblegum Bucks girl.”
“And you want me to do it?” I asked.
“Honestly I think you can handle the door and the Bubblegum Bucks at the same time and if you can I’ll give you a little more hourly and your tips are gonna go through the ceiling. You’ll get six percent of every Bubblegum Bucks purchase plus most of the VIPs will tip you on top of that.”
“It can’t be that hard, right?” I figured.
“The only hard part, if you can call it that, is that one, you’ll have to stay past closing to count both registers and two, at the end of shift you’ll be responsible for cashing out the entertainment. They’ll swamp you with the Bubblegum Bucks at closing trying to get their cash. They can be a god damned pain in the ass, but you have to keep them organized and don’t let them get the best of you. The girls who like you will give you a tip for cashing them out too if they’ve had a good night. If you can handle it, I promise you’ll make a small fortune.”
“Well bring it on then,” I said, “Bring it on.”
Bubblegum Bucks were pretty ridiculous in concept if you asked me. Fake strip club money, they were another way for the club to screw customers. You can’t exactly charge a friction dance to a credit card, but you can use that credit card to purchase Bubblegum Bucks at a thirty percent surcharge. That means that if you bought a hundred Bubblegum Bucks, we’d charge your Mastercard, Visa or Am Ex a hundred and thirty dollars, six of which would go to me and then you’d also be expected to tip me on top of that. If you had good sense you could also go across the street to the ATM for free but the majority of our guests didn’t have good sense and thus bought money for more money than it was actually worth. Whoever concocted this idea was clearly a genius. I couldn’t believe anyone would fall for a scam like that but damned if they didn’t. On a slow night, like a Sunday, I’d usually sell at least a grand of fake money and on Friday or Saturday nights, well, it was way over that. The part that really cracked me up about the Bubblegum Bucks was the way they were served. I hand delivered them to a table or champagne room, the pink and black bills fanned out all pretty on a little silver tray. I guess it was supposed to make the buyer feel like he was getting something really special here.
Jen trained me in less than an hour and the first night, I made a killing.
46
I’d sometimes watch Dr. Phil before work. He came on before Oprah and one of his favorite hackneyed sayings was “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” If this is the case, which it is according to Dr. Phil, then I was insane, at least when it came to online dating, but the very essence of online dating, or any dating for that matter, is to keep on doing it until you get a different result. There is no other option. Dating then, is madness, and in spite of that, I remained steadfast in my Jdate quest, hoping the perfect lawyer or doctor would appear in my email inbox and materialize at my front door with a bouquet of blue irises to drive me away from my problems in a luxury sedan.
Late at night, after work, I’d often fall asleep on the phone with a doctor who worked in a Miami trauma center. He worked crazy hours too and when he had a slow night or a break he’d call me and talk to me about poetry and literature, most of which I hadn’t read or even heard of, but I loved our conversations because I found them a lot more intellectually stimulating than some of the things I talked about at work like stripper drama and other peoples’ boyfriend situations. Little by little, the mysterious doctor revealed to me that he wasn’t even Jewish. He was a Quaker. Not a problem for me since I wasn’t wholly Jewish anyway and religion wasn’t a priority by far. I often suggested that we meet up, even offered to make the drive south, but he made excuses before finally admitting that he lived with a woman already. After that he stopped calling.
Another young lawyer seemed promising and after several lengthy conversations that flowed naturally and were dappled with laughter, we made a dinner date. He lived in South Beach and I gladly drove the forty minutes to meet him at his apartment. First he told me we’d go to Chinese, but when I got there he thought maybe we should just stay at his place and get delivery, but then even that ended up being a hassle.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, kicked off his Gucci loafers and unbuttoned the top three buttons of his white Oxford while I sat uncomfortably on his sofa ready to go.
“You know what? I’m not even hungry. Let’s just take some Ambien and go to bed,” he said.
Sleeping pills? On a date? No thank you, date rape. What the hell? What on earth would possess someone to think that was an ok way to spend the evening with a girl he’d just met? This gave sleeping with someone on a first date a whole new meaning.
And then I met Barry Schitt.
Although Barry Schitt was a Jdate regular, that’s not how we met. My grandfather set us up, which speaks to my desperation because my dad’s dad was eighty and a cantor in a conservadox temple in Delray Beach where not one member of the congregation had been born after the end of World War II. My grandfather had no idea that I worked in a strip club and would never find out. My dad’s parents inhabit an insular bubble of extreme Judaism. They survived the Holocaust and barely speak English and probably don’t even know what a strip club is. They’re that religious. People who find ham shocking don’t generally have minds that can process the existence of the sex industry and it’s just as well. That their favorite kosher deli raised the price of the scallion cream cheese should be my grandparents’ greatest worry, not my alternative employment.
Saba and Savta, as I called my father’s parents, had been greatly concerned about my spinsterhood and were overjoyed to learn that I was on Jdate.
“What do you expect from thi
s goyim?” my grandfather had spat when he learned what Evan had done to me. In his minds Jews didn’t do that sort of thing. I didn’t tell him about Adam the Salt Shaker.
And now Saba wanted to set me up with the great nephew of a prominent member of his synagogue.
Barry Schitt? Really? I could not go out with a man named Barry Schitt. I just couldn’t do it. What if I ended up liking him? What if we ended up getting married and I’d forever be known as Mrs. Schitt? I couldn’t have a boyfriend, forget a husband, whose name sounded like something cats do.
“You have to,” said my mother.
“Why?”
“You can’t insult Hyman Lebenklutz. How would it look for the Cantor’s granddaughter to turn down a date with the nephew of one of the biggest contributors in the congregation?”
Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat Page 29