Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat

by Victoria Fedden

  Ok, I thought. I had to stop putting this off. I would not only go to Velouria and tell her the situation, but I will also confront the bubbling, possibly oozing, definitely poisonous Italian Wedding Soup. Except it was gross and very unpleasant and certainly not fun. Tomorrow, I told myself. I’ll do it tomorrow. But tomorrow came and I didn’t tell Velouria and I didn’t clean up the mess.

  Enter my mother – the eternal voice of reason.

  “Could you tell me what in the Sam Hell name of Jesus you’ve got festerin’ in that ugly assed orange Tupperware?” she asked. She was on her way out to the back patio for a smoke and I was on my way to the mall before work. Yes, I know I was supposed to have stopped shopping but I hadn’t been to the Galleria in over a month and I wanted to see if Bebe had anything new for Spring. I’d make six hundred bucks the night before and it was burning a hole in my pocket.

  “Italian Wedding Soup,” I said. I didn’t make eye contact and jingled the keys in my fist.

  My mother gave me a look that is very particular to mothers who don’t take crap off their children ever. If you have one of these mothers, who can be identified by the fact that they never ever put their children on wussy time outs, but instead threaten to skin them alive if they are bad, you know exactly what this look looks like. It is not pretty and I hadn’t seen the look probably since high school.

  “You mean to tell me that you’ve had a quart of soup sitting on the kitchen counter for damn near two weeks now?”

  Her hands were on her hips. I was in trouble.

  “Yeah.”

  “And what purpose does this serve?”

  Now she was tapping her left foot in its bright turquoise, bejeweled flip flop.

  I went through the whole ridiculous mess and my mother became more and more worn out with me until finally she demanded I clean it and announced that after hearing such nonsense come out of her oldest daughter’s mouth that she needed to go outside and chain smoke for a solid hour.

  But did I clean the Italian Wedding Soup and end the story?

  No I did not. Because I am an idiot.

  Instead of just doing it and having the great relief that the saga was over, I decided instead to make the situation three hundred times worse. While my mother was outside puffing on Vantages to comfort herself from the anguish I caused her with my stupidity, I decided to hide the Tupperware container under the kitchen sink. My mother should have disowned me.

  I continued to avoid Velouria. She continued to think bad things about me. I had no proof of this but I was certain it was fact. Going to work began to cause me stress. Instead of looking forward to the antics of strippers and those who loved them, I began to dread sitting on my stool at the door because I could not go back to visit Velouria. I took my dinner breaks alone at a card table someone had set up for the construction workers in the still unfinished steak house area. All of this over soup.

  By and by, a bad smell appeared in my parents’ kitchen. They believed a rat died inside the walls. A rat had not died inside the walls. A stupid daughter hid a container of soup under the kitchen sink. My mother called the exterminator, who was wildly in love with her and took this as an opportunity to stay at our house for seven hours looking for the dead rat. The exterminator traced the smell to its origin under the sink and found the soup. My mother hit the roof. The words she uttered are not fit to print and would make blood come out of your eyeballs if you read them.

  “CLEAN UP THIS MESS!” she yelled.

  She also made me pay the exterminator for his wasted visit chasing phantom dead rats. It was only fair.

  I could not bring myself to clean up the mess because I am such a germaphobe and have such a weak stomach that the only way I could go near the soup was if I were wearing a Hazmat suit and could go into a decontamination chamber afterward. Obviously those things were not possible, so I opted to throw out the entire container. I put on rubber gloves and tied a scarf around my face to do it.

  “You follow her out there and make sure she does it,” My mother ordered the exterminator and of course he did it because he was in love with her.

  I carried the Tupperware outside to the big trash cans, exterminator in tow. The soup inside had become solid and heavy. If the lid opened, a Pandora’s box of toxins would have immediately erupted killing everyone on our block along with all of the fish in the Intracoastal canal, so I was very careful. When it was over, and the soup was gone, I had to figure out what to do about Velouria and her now destroyed container that she had clearly managed to preserve since the mid-seventies.

  I procrastinated telling her for another three days. Finally I went back to the dressing room. She eyed me suspiciously and I told her the entire story. During my endless tale of bacterial reproduction, Velouria looked at me like I was the biggest moron alive. She blinked her green eyes which were ringed with sparkling magenta shadow and she reminded me of a magnificent, jeweled octopus. Something about Velouria always made me think she belonged in an enchanted ocean with lots of mermaids waiting on her.

  “I’ve heard a lot of stupid things working in this place,” Velouria sighed,”But this is truly in the top five. Now give me a hug, you idiot!!”

  So of course this whole disaster had been created in my own mind. I made it all up, every bit of it about Velouria hating me and thinking I stole her Tupperware. No one really cares that much about a Tupperware container. They’re meant to be lost. I concocted my own anxiety and I made a gigantic mess out of what would have just been a little mess, quickly forgotten. In doing so, I caused myself a tremendous amount of worry and I created a disgusting task for myself out of something that probably wouldn’t have been all that bad if I had tackled it early on.

  The more I put it off, the grosser it got and the more I didn’t want to face the problem. The longer I avoided the situation, the more disgusting and poisonous it became. I’d done this all the time in life, not with Italian Wedding Soup, but with other things – jobs, relationships, important tasks and all sorts of things that when not dealt with, simmered for years getting worse and worse and more overwhelming. As much as I’d like to blame Evan for what happened with our engagement, ultimately it was my fault because there were plenty of red flags. I knew I should have gotten out earlier, but I put it off and stayed and stayed until our relationship rotted and I ended up, well, working the door at the Bubblegum Kittikat, living with my parents and desperately looking for love on Jdate.

  I’d finally learned my lesson, I decided. I was done with procrastination. The next morning I drove to the Salvation Army and dropped off the unwanted clothing smashed into the backseat of my BMW. As I pulled out of the parking lot I almost veered right into the northbound on-ramp to I-95, but no. I’d accomplished a lot already, I told myself. I’d visit the registrar’s office at the community college tomorrow.

  48

  I’d been working nights exclusively for several months now, but as a favor to Brent I picked up a couple day shifts because the current daytime hostess had taken the stage. They all did eventually. Hostessing was a gateway job. I was an anomaly in lasting so long behind the desk, but it’s not like I didn’t think about stripping too sometimes. I thought about it a lot in fact and the temptation was always there with its Brazilian wax and garters full of green flapping right under your nose. Could I do it? What was it like up there?

  Since my first day at the Kittikat, I’d wondered what it would be like on stage, and who could blame me? A lot of people wonder what it’s like to be a stripper. They’d love to feel the thrill of the lights gleaming on them and the music vibrating through their naked bodies. There seemed a certain power in the profession. The dancers appeared strong. You’d have to be to throw your clothes off in front of hundreds of people and when they strutted across the stage in their towering heels they seemed not like the rest of us lowly humans. Amazons, goddesses, Wonder-Women. Maybe it was the awed reverence with which so many of our customers approached the stage, arms outstretched, hands bearing dollar
s like offerings to an idol. Perhaps it was also the lift of the shoes combined with the height of the stage that exalted them.

  I always wanted to act, always thought I’d be great at it, but in high school we’d moved too many times for me to be in any drama club. In my early twenties I’d tried to take an acting class but bailed out after a few sessions and after that I summoned the nerve to try out for a bit part in community theater. The audition had been disastrous because I couldn’t project my voice. The director kept telling me to speak up and finally he dismissed me. Humiliated, I gave up my dream, but secretly I’d always fantasized about being a star. Like most people, I’d never have a chance at acting. I’d never be in the real limelight or on the silver screen, but while the stages of Broadway were an absurd impossibility, the three stages of the Bubblegum Kittikat were absolutely accessible. Maybe that was what attracted a lot of these girls. Stripping is a shortcut to stardom, not real stardom of course, just an illusion. But still, with enough champagne and under enough disco lights, the illusion can be convincing.

  There were a lot of reasons I wondered about stripping. It was more than curiosity and the desire to perform on stage. The money was sick. As the Bubblegum Bucks girl I was banking big time, but I was also now privy to the amounts the dancers were making since I cashed them out at shift end. Crazy money. Thousands per shift. What would it be like to make that kind of money and at what other job could I earn that? Nothing legal, I promise you. What would I do with money like that? I could move out of my parents’ house. I could travel. I could buy anything. I could walk into Barnes & Noble and buy a trunk load of books, and yes I realize I’d probably be one of the only strippers in history to ever spend her tips on a literary shopping spree.

  I was convinced I’d be a hit. I already had a target group of customers. My dark haired, fair skinned Beetlejuice look appealed to nerds. Few guys glanced twice at me in a sports bar, but if you set me loose at a comic book convention or a Renaissance festival I’d own the place. I’d have to beat the geeks off of me. Which was fine. You have to work with what you’ve got. If I stripped, my regulars would all have Asperger’s Syndrome. That was fine too because a lot of those computer guys, math whizzes and engineers made good money and we got a decent flow of them in the club. The Bubblegum Kittikat was a place where they could enjoy the affections of good looking women and those good looking women had no problem pretending to listen to drawn out speeches about the merits of Tatooine versus a small moon in the Dagobah System as long as the cash kept coming. If it were me, well, I’d probably forget to ask for my twenty-five bucks and debate that Hoth should not be discounted. Snow can be very pretty and a Taun-Taun ride looks like a lot of fun. The nerds would eat me up because I was one of them.

  In my daydreaming, I even came up with my stage name. Choosing a stripper name is important for business. With a name, you create a character and the character should be based on some unoriginal archetype of male fantasy, be it the girl-next door, the school girl type, the princess, the femme fatale, the gothic vamp, the brassy slut, submissive Geisha, Malibu Barbie or the Girl Gone Wild. There are plenty to choose from. I’d be the nerd goddess with a hint of goth glamor and a tinge of medieval warrior princess, I figured. Move over Princess Leia. Vixen was here.

  Vixen was the perfect stripper name for me. For one, it shared the first syllable of my actual name. You can’t go wrong if your stage name starts with V. Stage names should be suggestive and the letter V implies vagina and vulva. Even the shape of the letter reflects the V between a woman’s legs. Vixen also contained an X; again a very popular and suggestive letter for a stripper’s nom de danse. Think of an actual vixen too: a female fox, a predator, cute but sassy and beware, she bites. I loved it. Vixen is slang for a sexy, irresistible and clever woman. As a name it possesses connotations of darkness, or something primal, of everything I felt when I smoked my eyes in black shadow, plumped my lips scarlet, showed off my cleavage in a midnight colored, satin bustier and caged my pedicured toes in strappy stilettos. Come to think of it, wasn’t Vixen also the name of one of Santa’s reindeer? On Prancer, On Vixen? I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but hey, I loved Christmas so whatever. I was going with the name anyway.

  Vixen began as my secret, daydream doppelganger. She was the woman I wished to be and played at being when I went to work, but lately it seemed I was more often Vixen and less and less Victoria. Vixen longed to take over and she wanted to put her clear heels on. She wanted to swish her hips down the silver staircase at Feature, and while Victoria hadn’t “been ready for this” as the song asked, Vixen sure was.

  Stripping wasn’t something I could just jump into though. Averse to risk, I like to think about things for a very long time before I act and I wasn’t positive I could even do it. One slow afternoon I casually brought it up to Chris, the manager on shift. Since noon, only a trickle of regulars had come through the doors. My fishbowl only held a couple fives that I threw in as bait and no one needed Bubblegum Bucks. I didn’t even have a door guy. It was so slow that we didn’t need one.

  The DJ played Destiny’s Child’s “I’m a Survivor” while Mirage, on the main stage with her back to the mostly empty tables, flexed her glutes alternately in time to the music. The guy who always came for the free buffet shuffled up to the stage and dug around in his pockets. Mirage turned and squatted down with a hopeful smile, hoping he would add to the skimpy roll of ones in her garter. She kissed her fingers and patted her crotch, but Free Lasagna Man scuffed back over to the food, filled another paper plate with lukewarm pasta and stale rolls so he could leer at her from the bar while he stuffed his miserly hole. She looked pissed and I wondered if she thought: “I bleached my landing strip and burnt my pussy lips with Nair for this?” or if she’d take it in stride, hoping a hoard of brokers might declare an early Happy Hour or a vacationing millionaire might roll up in a Maserati feeling charitable. I didn’t have high hopes for that afternoon though. The weather was too nice; a perfect Florida spring day at eighty degrees with low humidity and calm seas. Everyone had gone to the beach.

  Chris, bored too, milled around the entrance chewing on the straw stuck in his Shirley Temple. I could see how he’d become such an object of desire with his square jaw, straight nose and blue eyes but I wondered how he got his head so shiny and what his hair would look like if he grew it in.

  “You inventory tobacco?” he asked. He’d already inspected the glass, but I’d windexed within an inch of my life before I sat back in my stool with a Barbara Kingsolver book.

  “I did it Friday,” I said. I dog-eared my page and set the book down where Chris picked it up and turned it over a few times without really looking at it.

  “We keep coming up short. Sales and inventory don’t match,” he said.

  What the hell? This was the third time this had happened. I’d even checked the locks in case someone was stealing.

  “Do it again, ok?” Chris said.

  Fuck, I thought. My book was getting good and I didn’t feel like counting Parliaments.

  “You worked last night, right?” Chris asked and I nodded.

  “Your bank didn’t add up. I’ve spent all day trying to match receipts,” he complained.

  “I know. Brent and I were here ’til five and I had to be up at eleven to work this double. I was pissed. I’m not a math person.”

  “Clearly,” he said, “Maybe you should try something else.”

  He didn’t say it to be mean and immediately followed his comment with praise.

  “You lose some weight? Get some sun? You look different.”

  “Both,” I said, glad he’d noticed.

  Shockingly, I had gotten some sun. A few Saturdays on the ocean in my dad’s cruiser, a couple afternoons on the sand with Angelina and my new poolside reading spot had given me a new glow. Still far from the burnt sienna shade favored by the dancers, my sun-kissed complexion, dare I say, flattered me. It felt good.

  “Maybe I should dance,” I laughed
. I’d said it as a joke, but only in case he shot down the idea, which he didn’t.

  “Why not? You’d be great.”

  “You think?” I asked, perking up.

  “You look better than that,” he said. Chris pointed to Candy, one of the veterans who hung listlessly on the pole while Kid Rock, whose “Bawitdaba” begged for a more energetic routine, kicked from the speakers.

  “That bitch is busted,” he remarked and then laughed into his mocktail.

  I wasn’t sure how much of a compliment that was. Most people looked better than Candy. No one knew how old she was. She claimed to be thirty-five but her crepe paper skin and flapping upper arms tattled that she was a lot older.

  “So, um, if I wanted to dance,” I started, “Would I be dayshift or nightshift?”

  “Sweetie, you are one hundred percent nighttime material,” Chris replied.

  49

  Angelina and I went to the beach the next afternoon and I decided to ask her opinion on whether or not I should give it a go and try to get up there on stage. Angelina had experience, wasn’t judgmental and could give me realistic advice, such as use sunscreen. I told her I didn’t need it. Vixen didn’t wear SPF.

  “You’re gonna get burnt,” Angelina said.

  I brushed her off and said I’d be fine.

  “How’s the Kittikat?” she asked.