Play Something Dancy

by Dee Simon

  “Damn. Are you all right?”

  I attempted to help her stand up, but she pushed my hands away. “You suck. I hate old sh-i-i-i-t. Prince s-s-ucks.”

  I ignored her drunken blathering but was deeply offended. She deserved to be slapped for insulting Prince. “Let me help you stand up, and you can rest on that couch. And, for the record, Prince does not suck.”

  “Prince s-s-s-ucks!” she screamed and started laughing hysterically again. At this point, Brie had managed to roll over onto her ass, and with her legs in the air, she playfully kicked at me while still screaming, “Prince sucks!” over and over again.

  “Stop that. You need to get off the floor.” I jumped back before her right heel would have smashed into the side of my head.

  “T-t-t-ake m-my heels off.”

  “Okay. Sit still and stop kicking me.” Brie was still laughing but stopped kicking long enough for me to unbuckle her right shoe. She reached over and removed her left on her own. Grabbing Brie under her armpits, I hoisted her to her feet, surprised at how little she weighed. Without her heels on, she couldn’t have been more than 5’3” and maybe weighed 105 pounds. I steered the drunken girl to the couch, and she collapsed onto it, pulling me on top of her.

  She began kissing my neck while simultaneously apologizing for her obnoxious behavior. “I’m s-sorry. Y-y-you don’t suck. I l-l-ike you. I’m s-s-sorry. I’m d-d-drunk.”

  “Really? I had no idea.”

  “Ha, ha. You’re funny. You remind me of Dane Cook.”

  “Dane Cook? You are drunk and possibly retarded.” I gently pushed her away and tried to stand up, but all in one motion, she grabbed my neck, pulled me on top of her, and shoved her tongue in my mouth. Her breath smelled like cigarettes and garlic. “Jesus, stop. Seriously. Stop!” I slipped out of her vise-like grip and backed away. Brie started giggling and lay on her back looking at me mischievously.

  “What? You don’t want these?” She pulled her bikini top to either side and freed her large D-cup breasts. She then pinched her nipples and cupped her breasts while playfully sliding her tiny pink tongue around her lips.

  “Yes, of course. But I-I-I…” I was trying to rationalize the reason I was not licking her breasts at the moment. “I can’t. I’m working. And if I get caught messing around with you, I’ll be fired.” At Ruby, there were only two major infractions a DJ could commit on the job: fucking a dancer, and snorting cocaine. If he’s caught engaging in either of those activities, he’d be fired on the spot. Unfortunately, the potential for both was there almost every night. As difficult as it was for me to abstain, I did not want to be fired that night, especially on account of this drunken idiot. “Listen, I have to work. You can chill here if you want, but you gotta leave me alone.”

  “You’re no fun,” Brie pouted and lay back on the couch, not bothering to put her top back on.

  I walked over to the console and checked to see how much time was left of the current song. There was over a minute, which was more than enough time to pick out music for the next dancer. Glancing at the whiteboard, I could see that Cinnamon was coming up next, and I knew that she liked hip-hop. I flipped through my book of CDs until I found Notorious BIG’s “Hypnotize,” one of her favorite songs, and cued it in the CD player. I announced Cinnamon to the stage and pressed play, before I felt a small hand slide down the back of my pants. Instantly, I whipped around and was met by a fully nude Brie standing directly behind me.

  “Whoa, what the fuck are you doing? Where are your clothes?”

  Brie giggled, grabbed my head on either side, and shoved my face between her breasts. I reared back but not before she pulled me towards her and forced her tongue in my mouth. Though her breath reeked, I was turned on and forcefully kissed her back. Still kissing her, I leaned over and slammed the door to the DJ booth shut. In one motion, I lifted her small frame onto the bar stool next to the console and shoved her back against the wall. I grabbed her massive breasts and began licking and biting her nipples but stopped short when Brie emitted a retching sound like a cat attempting to dislodge a hairball.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, actually concerned this time.

  “Come here…” She pressed her lips against mine and I shoved my tongue into her mouth, when, without warning, it happened. Brie burped and retched again before expelling a stream of puke into my mouth. I instinctively jerked away, but the vomit continued to shoot out of her mouth, leaving my face, neck, and chest covered in half-digested linguine noodles and chunks of clam and garlic. I began dry heaving as I pulled a piece of clam off my bottom lip and ran to the trash bin just in time to empty the contents of my stomach. When I finished, I looked up to see Brie crawling naked on all fours in a puddle of vomit. She was crying and laughing at the same time.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Wha—” Brie was laughing so hard that she couldn’t even speak. Her hand suddenly slipped and she fell onto her left shoulder into the puddle of vomit. Now, her puke was all over her naked body, and her hair had so many pieces of garlic, clam, and partially digested bits of pasta that it looked like a blonde spiderweb dotted with the corpses of rotting insects. She rolled over onto her back, in the puddle of vomit, still crying and laughing hysterically.

  “Jesus Christ. I can’t fucking believe this. You need to clean yourself up and get out of here.” I grabbed a roll of paper towels from the shelf and wiped her puke from my face and neck. Since my Calvin Klein black dress shirt was soiled, I undressed and put on an oversized Ruby Club white T-shirt. It didn’t look as large once I tucked it into my pants.

  “I’m going to call a house mom to come up here and help clean you up. This is fucking ridiculous.”

  “No, please d-don’t.” Brie looked up at me pleadingly. She wasn’t laughing now. “I’m new. I’ll get canned if they see me like this.”

  “Oh, fuck. I don’t need this.” I helped the naked girl to her feet and gave her some paper towels and water to clean herself off with. She ambled over to the couch and clumsily put on her bikini, which was untouched by the torrent of vomit. Laughing under my breath as she picked chunks of food out of her hair, I returned to the console and noticed that Cinnamon had been onstage for almost two full songs.

  “Hey, do you have a cigarette?” Brie asked, still picking out bits of food from her hair.

  “I only have one left. I’m sure someone in the dressing room has an extra smoke.”

  “I can’t go down there right now. Can I split it with you?”

  “Here, don’t smoke the whole thing.” After this experience, I needed a cigarette. More like, I needed a shower and some morphine. I took Cinnamon off the stage, announced the next dancer, and put on a house compilation. Thankfully, there were only two dancers left. I really needed this night to end. “Hey, let me have a hit.”

  “Oh, no. You shouldn’t. I have a nasty cold sore.” Brie didn’t even bother to make eye contact, her attention was focused on her cellphone. It might have been the fact that we had just sucked eachother’s faces and she neglected to mention this or maybe her blasé response, but either way, I was done dealing with this girl.

  “That’s it. Out. Now. Go!” I threw open the door and stared daggers at the blonde idiot smoking my last cigarette on the couch.

  “Damn. Why are you tripping?”

  “Out. Out. Out,” I yelled pointing at the doorway.

  “Okay, okay. Calm down. Geez.” Brie smashed out the cigarette in her martini glass, picked up her purse, and sauntered past me. She stopped briefly just outside the door and turned her head around to face me. “And, for your information, those songs you played weren’t dancy.”

  It took every ounce of restraint for me to resist punching her in the face, but instead, I smiled widely and waved goodbye with my middle finger. Sadly, these “play something dancy” experiences occurred once a night at almost every club I’ve worked at. I was in my own living hell, but at least I was being paid good money to be there. Eventually, I cea
sed asking the new girls what type of music they liked altogether. I didn’t care anymore. If they didn’t specifically tell me beforehand, then they were dancing to either rock or house, depending on the crowd or my mood at the time.

  Mariah Carey’s Rainbow

  As I mentioned before, music selection varied based on the quality of the club and the clientele the club attracted. At most upscale clubs, the DJ controls the music, and other than suggesting songs that they like, the dancers have little input in music selection. Conversely, at the lower-tier clubs like the Doll House or Foxys, the dancers were allowed to bring in their own music and would meet with the DJ before their stage show to select the songs that they planned to dance to. I never understood the reason management allowed them to do that. Every dancer seemed to own one of these nondescript black CD books containing about thirty discs shoved haphazardly inside. I think they purposely bought the same cases and refused to mark them with their names just to annoy the DJs. We called them to the DJ booth to “check sound” prior to their stage show so they could pick out the music for their set.

  “Gentlemen, round number two with sexy Coco. Destiny will be up next. Destiny, check sound.”

  When they heard their name being called, they’d run to the booth with a minute left before they had to go onstage and, in a shrill, panicked voice, ask for their CD case. I’d look at the shelf behind me that held about forty of these nondescript black CD books, and then look back at the girl with a frown.

  “And which case is yours?”

  To my chagrin, she’d apathetically respond while staring blankly at her cellphone, “The black one.”

  Yes, of course, the black one. Less than thirty seconds remaining, I’d have to rummage through all forty of the CD cases, find hers, and then allow her to pick out her music. And to make matters worse, the tardy dancer would have the temerity to ask me to cue her song in an unused CD player so that she can listen to it and determine whether it’s the song she wants. Resisting the urge to verbally eviscerate her, I’d try to explain as diplomatically as possible that we didn’t have enough time to do that.

  “Baby, we’re running out of time, just play what you did last set. Okay?”

  “All right. But I wanna dance to something else next time.”

  “No problem. Just come over here five minutes before you go on, and we’ll pick something out.”

  I said this to placate her, even though we both knew that she’d forget this conversation as soon as she exited the booth and an hour later we’d repeat this same scenario. Working at a strip club is a lot like the movie Groundhog Day but with tits. It was a mystery to me why the dancers didn’t just write their names or put a butterfly, dolphin, or fairy—they obviously liked these symbols because most had them tattooed on their lower backs—or some other type of marking on their cases. This would not only ease the entire music selection process, but it would also aid the DJ in returning her CD to the proper case. And this was a lesson I learned the hard way: Never lose a dancer’s CD. Let me amend this by adding: Never scratch a dancer’s CD either. A dancer will never again tip a DJ if he loses or damages one of her CDs. She will hate him for eternity. Any occasion that his name enters into conversation with other DJs, dancers, or management, she will refer to him as the “asshole” that lost her CD. Despite his explanations or even reparations, she’ll never forgive him for this transgression. Never. In her small, myopic mind, he will be forever branded an asshole. And worst-case scenario, she’ll convince her friends to hate him and not to tip him either. Just don’t lose the dancers’ CDs. Protect them like you would an adorable puppy.

  At the Doll House, I worked with a soulless harpy named Selena. I’d be willing to wager that there is a Hispanic stripper at every club across the country that uses the stage name Selena. This particular Selena was an eighteen-year-old Latina who was very specific about her music selection. To the extent of being considered obsessive-compulsive, she meticulously labeled each CD with her name—both fake and real—and her tracks of choice. Amazingly, she was one of those rare dancers who even labeled her CD case with her name. But there was no mistaking Selena’s CD case as it was emblazoned with stickers bearing the Rocawear insignia. Working in the strip club industry led me to the observation that this fashion line is extremely popular amongst young Latinas. Selena was completely outfitted in Rocawear clothing. From headband and jumpsuit to belt buckle and pom-pom socks, she was a walking advertisement for Jay-Z’s clothing line. It should come as no surprise that her case was filled with rap and R&B music, and of her entire collection, I’d have to say that her favorite CD was Mariah Carey’s late nineties album Rainbow. She coveted this god-forsaken record and danced to two tracks off it every time she went onstage. I heard those wretched songs so many times that I subconsciously memorized the lyrics. To this day, if I walked into a club and heard any track off the Mariah Carey Rainbow album, I’m sure I could sing it. If not the entire song, then at least the chorus.

  Now, I was well aware of the precise organization of Selena’s CD case and took great measures to carefully put the Rainbow CD in its demarcated plastic sleeve. Most strippers hardly know what day it is, let alone the condition of their CD case, so it was highly unusual to encounter such organization from one. And since Selena was a decent tipper, I went out of my way to look after her CDs. I sincerely appreciated how much she cared for her music, mostly because it was the only thing we had in common. One harried Friday evening at the Doll House, I played the Mariah Carey Rainbow set for Selena, and when the second song came to an end, I pressed the eject button on the CD player to retrieve her disc—but nothing happened. It would not eject the CD. I pressed the button again, and it still would not eject. I was confounded. The three other CD trays were working fine, but for some reason, tray four would not open. This had happened to me once or twice before with the ancient CD players at that club, but after hitting the eject button a few times eventually the tray would slide out. Trying not to panic, I pounded the eject button five or six times but to no avail. It would not open. My next recourse was to force it open with my Swiss Army knife. I jimmied the longer blade under the tray and tried to slowly pry it open. I had to be careful because management would have a conniption if I damaged their precious equipment. God forbid they might have to replace these twenty-year-old pieces of shit. Finally, the tray slid open, but surprisingly, the Mariah Carey Rainbow CD wasn’t on it. The disc was nowhere to be found. I grabbed a flashlight and searched under, around, and above the CD player. Frantically, I looked through all of the girls’ cases just in case I placed it in the wrong one. But despite my thorough search, I couldn’t find it. It seemed to have vanished into thin air. My only conclusion was that the CD player had swallowed the disc and it was stuck somewhere inside the machine. There was no other explanation. Knowing that Selena would scrutinize her case at the end of the night and discover the missing Rainbow CD, I had no choice but to explain to her that the machine had swallowed the disc and I was unable to retrieve it. Anyone that meticulous had to be a rational person and should understand that these things happen at low-end strip clubs that use faulty machinery. Besides, she earned more than enough money in one night shift to buy twenty copies of that record. The shift ended about an hour later, and when Selena arrived at the booth to collect her CD book, I calmly informed her of the situation.

  “Hey, Selena, I’m sorry to have to say this, but the CD player swallowed your Mariah Carey disc. It won’t come out of the machine. This is a total piece of shit.” I pointed to the machine and shook my head, trying to look as apologetic as possible even though I was somewhat relieved that I wouldn’t have to hear those horrid songs any more.

  Selena flashed me an incredulous look and pondered what I had just said for a few seconds before replying with a laconic, “Huh?” I calmly explained the situation to her a second time. The news finally registered. And when it did, she snarled her lips and, with her thick hood rat inflection, said, “Bitch, you gots me heated. I best b
e getting my Mariah right fuckin’ now!” She cocked her head back and jerked it from side to side as she spoke, and her right hand bitch-slapped the air in front of my face.

  Her response caught me off guard. Up until this point in my life, I don’t think I had ever been called a “bitch” by a woman, and furthermore, I was confused as to what she wanted me to do. I wasn’t about to dismantle the machine and retrieve the CD for her. And I didn’t own Rainbow, so I couldn’t give her my copy.

  “Selena, look, I’m sorry. The machine ate your disc and I can’t get it out. You should ask Joe to replace it for you.”

  “Fuck that shit. Give me my motherfuckin’ Mariah. You stole it, bitch. I want it back.”

  “Do you honestly believe that I stole your Mariah Carey CD?”

  With her lips still snarled, she replied, “Yeah. Where’s it at? Give it back, bitch.”

  This time she said the word “bitch” rather loudly and alerted the other dancers who were lining up to cash out their money with the manager. Now all eyes were focused on the altercation in the DJ booth. At this point, my patience had worn thin.

  “Okay. First, I’m not a fucking bitch. My name’s Dave. Second, look at me. Do I look like a person who listens to Mariah Fucking Carey? Seriously, do I? No. I don’t. Look through my CD case: Metallica, Motorhead, Motley Crue. No Fucking Mariah Carey. I don’t have your fucking CD. I’m sorry, but your CD is in this piece-of-shit machine, and I can’t do anything about that. All right?”

  Now, we had the undivided attention of everyone in the room, including the General Manager, Joe, who was marching towards the DJ booth to see what was going on. Selena’s face was red, and it appeared as if she was trembling a bit. Those weren’t fear trembles. Those were anger trembles. She looked at me and menacingly waved her index finger and thumb of her right hand in a gun sign towards me.