Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (16 page)

Initially, the event was just a burlesque reunion, a chance for the older performers to get together, catch up, and relive their former glory. But the occasion was somewhat lacking, so Dixie decided that new blood would make the event more fun, and give a sense of continuity to the dying art of burlesque. Dixie gives a tinkly little Marilyn laugh. "I said, I think I'll have a Miss Exotic World Pageant and get some younger people. And we did. The young girls come 'cause they like to pay respect to the bygone era." Dixie takes her role as burlesque preservationist very seriously, bless her heart, even if the nutty, caravan-car quality of the museum doesn't have the historical gravitas of the Met. Burly-Q, bally girls, carnival strippers, tassel twirlers, and cooch dancers may be a thing of the past, but as long as Dixie's out here, sparkling like a desert gem, the Exotic World Burlesque Museum and Miss Exotic World contest will honor their existence—fringe, feathers, baubles, and all. I'm very glad about that, and I bet future generations of stripteasers, wondering from whence they came, will be, too.

Onstage, the world's worst Elvis impersonator is wrapping up his act after having scared away half the audience, and the contestants are gathered on the stage for the announcement of the winners. The sword-balancing belly dancer, a twenty-two-year-old from Los Angeles named Kina, who looks surprisingly like the fifties burlesque queen Yvette Dare (famous in her day for her "Dance of the Sacred Parrot," in which the trained bird took off pieces of her costume with its beak), takes first place. Photographers crowd the stage to get a shot of the winner.

"The girls today are dying to do gimmicks again, to put together an act of some sort," Dixie says happily. "I know that they've got to get down and make their money, because they don't have the theater structure that we had. But I think the girls are trying to do something fun when they work—if that pole doesn't get too much in the way."

ELEVEN

The landscape as you drive north on 1-25, then farther north still on 1-90, changes a million times between Cheyenne and Billings, Montana. Certain areas, like the green-black mottled peaks of the Bighorn Mountains that rise to the west near Buffalo or the moon-cratered valley near Ayres Bridge, have a divine beauty. You can't believe there's so much unspoiled land, that nature could assume so many breathtaking forms. Other parts—miles of parched grassland interrupted only by craggy beige bluffs—look accidental and sorry, like God's stubbed toe.

ZZ Top blasts from the truck speakers as I press toward the Montana border at a steady eighty-five miles an hour. Randy naps in the passenger seat, head lolling against the shoulder strap, his black cowboy hat tipped down low to cover his eyes.

Driving to Billings was a spontaneous decision, as was Randy's coming along. There's a reason I'm not traveling by myself this time—we both wanted it that way. We have no protocol for these things—we can only follow the dictates of need, of jealousy, of pro-tectiveness on a site-by-site basis. We're flying on instinct. When the prospect of Montana came up—tough-as-nails, fully nude Montana—we were of the same mind. Even though I wasn't going to work while there, I would not go alone.

As the trip to Alaska is imminent, I thought it might be a good idea to reacquaint myself with nude clubs, observing at first to get comfortable. I'd asked a dancer in Cheyenne for a suggestion, and she insisted that I had to visit Billings.

"What's so special about Billings?"

"Oh," she said, her lips curling into a smile wicked as a joker's, "you'll see."

After an eight-hour drive, I pull into Billings, passing the tall sandstone rimrocks that flank the Yellowstone River like twin guard walls. I wonder what I'm in for, exactly. And I wonder if I shouldn't just blow the whole thing off. I start each journey with a burst of excitement, gassing up the truck and cleaning the windshield, consulting the atlas, totting up travel times, and loading CDs and bags into the cargo area, just so. Then as I approach wherever I'm headed, my heart shrinks against my ribs, pressing in as if trying to make itself smaller in my chest. Anxiety threatens to topple curiosity and I want to turn back. Every time. I've never been an anxious traveler before—I've scaled rocks in England in the wind and pouring rain, wearing a sundress and slippery-soled boots, and sped down Thai highways riding in the bed of a pickup truck with questionable shocks. Never had a second thought about much, but now I'm seized by apprehension. I'm not afraid of physical harm. Though I do nave that fear, it shows up at different times, in different forms—like when I'm alone at night in a motel room or passing a group of men in a dark parking lot. This anxiousness is more vague and more constant. It has something to do with fear of failure. I'm afraid of wasting my time—that I'm going to end up pissed-off or bored or agitated by something I can't sort out. Anything less than clarity is a wash and, joys of the open road aside, I'm on a desperate search. It wouldn't be too much of a cop-out to just check in to the motel and watch cable all night, would it?

ZZ Top reminds me, "
I'm bad. I'm nationwide.
"

Shotgun Willie's isn't in Billings proper. It's a ways west, twelve miles down the highway in East Laurel. I turn into the parking lot of the Pelican truck stop, drive around back where there's a campground full of camper trailers and teepees, then pass a dozen parked semis positioned like sentries, blocking the club from view. Small and nondescript, the building is huddled in the back corner of the lot like it's got something to hide.

A long row of Harleys is parked out front, chrome gleaming under the lights hung in the eaves. Most of them are new, all of them are huge. Tricked out and fussed-over, they look menacing and elegant. I'm always happy to see bikes like these outside a club—they signify interesting times ahead.

The admission is three dollars for me, five for Randy. Stepping through the doors of the club, I smell beer right away—that's different. Pretty rare to find any sort of alcohol in a nudie club, anywhere. Opposite the entryway is a long bar. I head over to it immediately, taking a seat so I can wait for my eyes to adjust. The room is long and narrow, with a large thrust stage at one end. The ceiling is low, and the walls are painted a soft, dark red that makes the room welcoming. Almost womblike. A female deejay breaks in over the music, telling the customers, in a forced, breathy voice that sounds like porno and bullshit, to "keep your hands at your sides and your tongue in your mouth!"

I think I'd better have a beer.

I scan the room—pretty full, a blue-collar vibe for sure, with masculine goodwill and mayhem floating in the air thick as smoke. A few tables on the far side of the club are staked out by bikers in vests that read ROAD DOGS in big red letters. Along the right side of the stage are cowboys—or at least men in cowboy clothes. On the left side of the stage is a band of twenty-somethings, male and female alike, nudging each other, gawky, and embarrassed. Right in front of the stage, at a small cocktail table, sit two women who look like they're together. Behind them is a well-groomed middle-aged couple, she's wearing a little black dress and tasteful gold jewelry, he is in dress slacks and a button-down shirt. The rest of the club is full of local-yokelly looking men, and oh yes, dancers. A rowdy hotchpotch. Everyone is chattering happily, slapping each other in play, careening around, and hollering for more beer. Waitresses wheel through with full pitchers and a lone, bald-headed bouncer smiles in his watch over the club's jovial vulgar bounce.

A couple beers later and the door to the ladies' room doesn't lock. I search the club looking for a dancer or a barmaid who might show me to another bathroom—maybe one in the dressing room. The only dancer on the floor is sitting at the Road Dogs' table. I approach with caution.

"Hi, cutie," she says, looking me up and down with a glance that could either be read as "hello" or "fuck you," depending on what you wanted to make of it. She's got long, tawny curls and a full, real-girl body that looks like it's been through a lot but is suffused with a primitive grace that enables it to bounce back, no matter what. She's balancing a shot of whiskey on her knee.

"Well, hi." I smile. "I'm here visiting from out of town. The bathroom door doesn't seem to lock. Is there another one?"

As she shakes her head no, one of the Road Dogs pipes in. "There's rest rooms at the truck stop," he says, pivoting on his bar stool to face me, then pushing up his wire-framed eyeglasses with one thick finger. "If you'd care to hop on the back of one of our Harleys, one of us would be happy to take you over there."

It's a flirtation of sorts. And a dare.

I look at him, tidy and restrained despite his shaggy beard and considerable girth. His jeans and T-shirt look freshly washed. I picture him in an undershirt and boxer shorts, lumbering around a utility room, moving clothes from washer to dryer. Then I imagine him as a small boy, holding up a valentine to a schoolmate, handing his father a wrench as he bends under the hood of a car, pedaling a bicycle furiously down the sidewalk to test the limit of his strength.

"Don't listen to him, honey," the dancer says. Then she turns to the biker, "Would you
stop?!
" She lands a hard punch on his fleshy biceps.

"S'okay," I say to her, "you can't blame a guy for trying." Then I turn to the biker and bow a little. "Very nice of you to offer."

He cocks his head and leans over toward me, brows knit. "God, I'm sorry, honey, now what did you say?"

"I said, thanks anyway," bending in close to yell in his ear. He's a grizzled fellow, a fast-living forty, at least, and years of rock-n-roll and unbaffled pipes have probably left him hard of hearing. "But I don't think my Harley-riding husband would appreciate that very much!" I nod in Randy's direction. He's palming his beer bottle and looking my way, eyes round and careful. A girlfriend at a table full of bikers demands close watch, and he knows it.

The biker looks at Randy, looks at me, then leans back on his bar stool and raises his hands to say, "no problem." I squeeze the dancer's knee to say thank you as I walk away.

I risk the bathroom with the broken lock. No one comes in.

…

"Remember, gentlemen," once again the breathy-fake phone sex voice cuts in over the music, "keep your hands at your sides and your tongue in your mouth at all times." This may be the only club I've ever been in where hands-on and tongues-out is a continual hazard. Man after man flops onto his back on the stage, like trained whales in a marine park show. A big guy lands on the stage with such force his T-shirt slides up exposing his stomach, which rises rounded, hairy, and dough-white from the waistband of his jeans. He's got a bill tucked into his fly. A dollar in between his teeth.

With their hands clasped in wait over their bellies, or pressed flat to the floor, the men form an obscene, fleshy wreath around the perimeter of the stage. A naked girl with a blonde bob is dancing, her sinewy body twists and prances with an almost elastic quality. She steps over one man so she's facing away from him, and drops into a Russian split, landing with her bare crotch right on top of his head. Lying on her stomach now, her chin propped in her hands in an exaggerated gesture of carefree femininity, she bounces her knees on the stage, making her thighs and buttocks jiggle, messing up the guy's hair. Men all around the stage whistle and scream.

Quick as a flash, the dancer spins around on all fours and crawls over and down the length of his body until her nude crotch is maybe three inches from the man's mouth. Working her way down to his knees, she backs up, grabs the dollar that's in his fly with her teeth, and biting a little of his trouser fabric, she bobs her head up and down like she's giving him a blow job. Backing up farther, she pauses with her chest over his mouth and takes the dollar clamped in his teeth by squeezing it between her breasts with her hands. She ends up sitting on her knees, smiling into the man's face like she's a flower coming into bloom just for him. Then she moves on to the next guy and does the exact same thing all over again.

I'm stunned. I've never seen anything like it.

In every strip club I've been to, the stage is sacred space. Girls Only. Men can approach the side of the stage to tip, but that's it. Dancers and customers may get scandalously close to each other on the floor, but the stage is the locus of female control and solely her domain. At one club, if a man so much as propped his feet on the stage, the deejay would shine a spotlight on him and say over the P.A: "Get your feet off the stage!" Not in a brother-take-heed voice either, but in a tone that meant, "Move them, or lose your kneecaps." The sanctity of the stage is highly symbolic—like a woman's virtue, her bedroom, her sex—violate it and you violate her. And yet, here they are, breaking that basic rule.

There are no free tables near the stage, so the female couple invites us to sit with them. One of the women, fireplug stout with graying brown hair cut into a surfer mullet, sees my shocked expression and laughs a deep laugh, one that shakes her to her toes and back again. "What you're seeing here tonight? That's nothing," she says, waving her hand. "We were in here a couple weeks ago and the women weren't even using their hands to pick up the dollars from the guys' mouths."

"You mean…?"

"Yep. They'd just squat down over a guy's face and pick them up, you know..."

"Down there?"

"Exactly!"

"Holy fucking shit," I sputter, before I even know what I am saying. I look at Randy. He says nothing.

One dancer stands out from the rest. Her hair is glossy black, layered, and teased full—like a guitar god from the 1980s. Her lower lip has a pronounced droop that gives her a look of sensual, exaggerated disappointment. What's remarkable about her is the way she dances—furious and agile, like a wild animal on attack. During her first song, she does a series of flips off the overhead bar, then crawls with impressive speed to the edge of the stage and lies down on her back. She spreads her legs wide, then—
Wham! Wham! Wham!
—she claps her thighs together like she's playing the cymbal part in
The Thieving Magpie
. When a man prostrates himself on the stage, she lies over top of him and, shaking her shoulders back and forth, she pummels him in the face with her breasts with comic aggression.

Her name is Stormy.

Stormy doesn't carry herself like an alpha-babe; in fact, she seems almost oblivious to her own magnetism, which only makes her more striking. She's obviously a crowd favorite—everyone swarms the stage when she performs, and afterward a steady stream of men whisk her off behind the gaudy tinsel curtains at the back of the club for a private, one-on-one nude couch dance. It's not that she's so lovely— although she is quite attractive—or so nice. Propelled by this amazing blast of carnal rage, she just naturally outshines everyone else.

"That girl is
scary
" says Kendall, the other of the two women who are sharing our table. "She could really hurt somebody." The deep, mournful hollows of Kendall's pale blue eyes indicate caution as a default position. With thin arms, she hugs her plaid flannel shirt around her as the air conditioner vent overhead spills out cold, sour air.

"One time when I was here," says her mullet-cut companion, who introduced herself as Darcy, "a girl was taking a dollar from my mouth with her teeth and she bit right through my lower lip." She pulls her lip down to illustrate. "I had to get two stitches. Another time, a girl stepped on my pinkie and broke the bone at the tip. It was an accident, though."

Now Stormy is grabbing onto the overhead bar that runs along the ceiling over the stage. She's got her legs over a man's shoulders with his head in a scissor lock between her knees. With a wild grin and a whoop, she presses her spike heels into the man's chest and pushes off into a back flip with cartoonish effect.

"You know she reminds me of Tigger, from Winnie the Pooh," I say to no one in particular.

"Okay, gentlemen," yells the deejay at the start of Stormy's second song. "It's time for a hostage dance!" A sheepish young man in khaki shorts and a red pullover sweatshirt is pushed toward the edge of the stage by his drunken buddies. The bouncer helps the man onto the stage, sits him down, then puts the victim's hands behind his back and handcuffs him to the go-go pole. The song starts and Stormy does a series of little torturous gyrations on and around him. His friends tuck singles behind his ears, in his pockets, in his mouth, down his shorts. Stormy works her way around his body, nipping the tips with her teeth, gathering them between her breasts, even taking up a bill between her butt cheeks. Occasionally she stops stripping the man of his money to grind lasciviously on his crotch, lap dancing in extremis. Then she grabs the pole right by the guy's ear and, throwing her legs up over his shoulders, repeatedly rams her crotch against his.