Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (25 page)

…

Now I can accept that having been a stripper means I may always be an easy target for ridicule. Act cheap, reap the cheap shot, right?

I'm less distracted by outsider derision and insider propaganda: The slut-baiting, the proselytizing, the rationalizations.

I'm learning to examine the chaos of my past yet remain in the present.

I'm learning to repress less and discriminate more.

Through this account-settling and inventory-taking, I may be "better." Less angry. Less defensive.

I'm more realistic about what can't be wished, or litigated, away—the burn rate, the danger, the market demand for novelty, youth, and beauty. And I'm more concerned with my quality of life than my shelf life.

I'm definitely more balanced.

But I'm nowhere near finished.

And I'm nowhere near Zen.

Honey.

SIXTEEN

A contest for the title of Miss Topless Wyoming? Why, I'd be a fool
not
to enter!

The event takes place in mid-October out at the Clown's Den, and is open to any woman who dares to enter. I'm not traveling-anywhere until Thanksgiving, so I've got a couple of weeks to prepare for the four categories in which contestants will be judged— swimwear, interview, evening wear, and performance.

I've only ever done one stripping contest—besides the kind that act as a conceit for an audition, I mean. In 1993, while I was visiting my friend Sue and her roommate Julie in LA, I entered the amateur night competition at a dinky, run-down club called Star Garden in the Valley. The Los Angeles area has a pretty advanced system of amateur-night contests—there's at least one being held somewhere on any given weeknight, whenever they need to goose the draw. Guys like seeing newcomers get up and shake it—even if they're only "newcomers" to that particular place—and the girls like the chance to scoop up a couple hundred bucks for two or three songs worth of dancing. Some retired dancers supplement their incomes by working the circuit, taking their costumes out of the mothballs for a week every few months, going from club to club in search of first-place payout.

My night at the Star Garden was a fiasco. Ten women showed up to compete and we drew numbers to establish the order of our performance. I drew first.

After we handed the deejay our music selections, we were allowed to use the dancers' dressing room to change into our costumes two songs before we were due to perform. The dressing room was a tiny, curtained-off area, accessible only from the stage, so I had to scoot along the stage's edge while another woman was dancing.

The dancer up was a tall, nervous, Gidget-like blonde in prancy white go-go boots, doing a loosely fashioned Pony to the Monkees' "Stepping Stone." Her freckles glistened under a fine film of perspiration and her sun-streaked pageboy swung impishly as she danced.

When her set ended, she came huffing through the curtain, which was covered in lipstick smudges and unidentifiable crust, and flopped down on the floor, scattering her tips around the room.

She rummaged through a small, flower-print makeup bag to find her powder and started swiping at her sweaty, small-featured face with a tatty pink velour puff, muttering to herself angrily.

"These guys bate me. Once I get my nose done it'll be a lot better," she announced to the room, snapping her compact shut with a desperate resolve.

I burst through the curtain when my stage name—"Amy" that night—was called, attempting sexiness and professional command. The audience, metalheads downing pitchers of beer, rumpled construction workers with Carhartt jackets and split knuckles, and a couple of middle-aged Pakistanis in short-sleeved button-down shirts, was unimpressed. I could have come out doused in gasoline and set myself on fire, and they still wouldn't have batted an eye.

Three songs is an eternity when the audience considers you as entertaining as the wallpaper. Seductive glances yielded nothing. I couldn't impress them with pole tricks because they weren't allowed. The third song was the worst. Because of the laws in L.A. County, dancers can't be within six feet of a customer when they're topless, so for my last song—when I dropped my top—I had to stay within a triangle outlined in tape on the stage. If guys wanted to tip me, they couldn't give the money to me directly. So they'd ball up the money and toss it in my general direction. When you're on a stage wearing only panties and stuff is flying your way, the nature of the projectile, negotiable or non-, doesn't matter. It's just not very fun to have things thrown at you.

I finished to scant applause, with only twenty dollars or so in tips. Then I changed into my street clothes and sat down with Sue and Julie to watch the other contestants.

An emaciated girl from Las Vegas with snaggle teeth, lank brown hair, and a screech of a voice did a forty-five minute set of extended Ozzy Osbourne mixes. She came out dressed in a parochial school uniform and anklets, skipping—skipping!—to the merry-go-round musical intro to "Mister Tinkertrain," trying to appear coy and girlish, and succeeding only in looking like a speed-addled babysitter. At one point, she dropped down on her hands and knees and beckoned the crowd, grinning with those pointy, evil teeth, which prompted Julie to grab the back of my chair, whispering, "Hansel and Gretel, Hansel and Gretel!" under her breath with a mixture of panic and repressed laughter.

The snaggle-toothed girl did several pole tricks (against the rules) and later a dancer named Princess, a pert-breasted Latina who wore a pink feathered g-string, flashed her pubic hair at the audience (also against the rules). Subterfuge! No fair!

Neither of them ended up winning, but neither did I. I came in next to last, an honor that netted me a twenty-dollar prize. Any customer who might have clapped to help me win the applause vote was long gone by the time all ten girls danced. The contest started at seven and we didn't get out of there until midnight. I was there for five hours and made forty stinkin' bucks.

I spend my free nights preparing for the Miss Topless Wyoming contest. For the evening-wear portion, I buy a white spandex strapless gown and trim the hem and thigh-high slit with a white feather boa, affixed with several dozen well-concealed safety pins. I sit watching MTV, painstakingly gluing clear, star-shaped plastic gems to a pair of white mesh opera gloves, and trimming the tops with the remaining boa. I coordinate an outfit for the theme set and listen to the song for my routine for hours at a time, to get the choreography down.

I've decided to go with a cosmopolitan cowgirl motif. I will wear Randy's bull rider chaps—which are baby blue leather with silver metallic fringe, a shiny silver bikini underneath, a matching silver body-hugging cropped zip-front jacket, a beat-up straw Stetson with a silver sequined hat band, and silver stiletto heels. I practice unbuckling the legs of the chaps and stripping out of them in time to the music. Randy dremels the holes in the leg-straps so they're easier to undo, preventing any clumsy onstage buckling drama. I saunter around the house in the chaps, bow-legged, fringe swinging, bellowing in a Western drawl, "Giddout a the way, pardner, or I'm a-gonna hafta challenge yew for the title of Miss Topless Wahhhhhh-yoming."

I'm a fairly competitive person, but I can't take this contest too seriously. It's not like Miss Topless Wyoming first, Nobel Prize next. Still, why bother entering if you're not going to go to the limit? I agonize over every detail—hem length, hand gestures, what accessories will make me a more convincing cowgirl. I draw the line at spurs—they won't attach to the spike heels and, besides, I wouldn't want to get disqualified for scratching the surface of the stage.

…

The night of the contest, I get to the Clown's Den early, with my outfits in a garment bag and my props loaded into a plastic laundry basket. The dressing room is already full of contestants elbowing their way to the mirrors, lotioning their legs, struggling with curling irons, hot rollers, and hair spray. The atmosphere is pretty tense. Ashtrays harbor several smoke-spuming cigarettes and a few girls sit with a drink at their elbow. I'm the only contestant who doesn't work at the club.

The entrants, who range in age from twenty to about thirty-five, are very friendly, though. Nobody is bitchy or tries to psych out their competitors. I think we're all pretty realistic about the significance of this event. We offer assurances, zip each other into dresses, and wait for instructions from Sheila, the club owner.

Sheila comes into the dressing room and has us pick numbers out of a hat to establish the order of the line-up. Dammit, I drew first again. Another contestant kindly offers to swap with me for fourth place.

The evening-gown portion starts the show. We line up in order and the emcee leads us across the club from the dressing room to the stage. In the big contests for exotic dance titles, like Miss Nude World or Miss Nude Universe, there is great emphasis placed on "BQI," beauty queen image. The closer you get to mainstream pageant presentation, the better. Here, though, "evening wear" is a matter of interpretation. Girls wear anything from floor-length purple sequined sheaths to Snow White-style ball gowns.

The judges, local men hand-picked by Sheila, sit at the first row of tables in front of the stage, marking down our scores. No spectators are allowed to sit at the tipping rail to afford the judges an unobstructed view.

For the swimsuit segment, an escort walks us to the stage one by one, then helps us up the stage stairs so we can do a brief pageant walk-and-wave before we join the other girls in a line along the back wall. When I cross the stage wearing a black mirrored bikini Randy bought me, I beam extra wattage into my smile—as girly tradition dictates. Toothsome and irresistible, I am every babe hawking product at a trade show. I am Miss America. I am Esther Fucking Williams. My face is killing me.

The emcee isn't exactly Bob Barker. He's wearing baggy jeans and a beer logo T-shirt, and looks like he just rolled out of bed. The interview is just one generic question: What are your turn-ons? or Is this your first contest? or How long have you been a dancer? When it's my turn the emcee steps up to me, reading from my entry form. "This is Barbie." He stops to look me over. Up and down. "Forget it," he mutters into the mic, shaking his head, "it's too easy. So, Barbie. Tell us where you're from."

"Well," I say, smiling smiling smiling, happy, yes, smiling, "I was born in Sweden, but a year ago I moved to Cheyenne from New York City."

From the back of the room, a drunk yells out an incredulous,
"Why?"

For the final leg of the contest, the theme set, we transform ourselves from bikini-clad contestants to a cop, a French maid, a cave-woman, a good-girl-gone-bad, a schoolgirl, an angel, a Celtic wench, a baseball player, a painter, a Brazilian Carnival princess, and two cowgirls.

When the escort walks me across the floor to the stage for my act, a beer-steeped roar goes up from the crowd. My fringe is flailing and the overhead spots are reflecting off the silver. This is why I chose these costumes—the white gown, the mirrored bikini, the shiny cowgirl drag—to take advantage of the light.

I stand on the stage with my back to the room, one hand on my cocked hip and the other tugging the brim of my cowboy hat. At the first strike of guitar chords, the audience goes ballistic. "Bad to the Bone" is one of those instantly recognizable, can't-fail guy songs. Like "Tom Sawyer" by Rush or AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long," its rhythm courses through the veins of every red-blooded American male born after 1950. It also boasts the raunchiest sax solo known to rock-n-roll.

Every second of my act is premeditated—from the grinds, to the spins, to the exact moment that I unhitch the buckle at the waist of the chaps and drop them to the floor. I pull the tie on my bikini top as slowly as possible, while the saxophone wails lustily. I turn my back to the audience once again, drawing the string out to its full length. I look over my shoulder. You want this top to come off?, my expression entreats the audience, No problem. All you have to do is beg for it.

When I get enough applause, I undo the clasp and bare my breasts as I spin around the stage, then I head to the corner where I've tucked a pink fuzzy blanket. I spread the blanket on the stage and start in on my best floor work. I check my reflection in the mirrored wall behind the stage to make sure the motion is right as I wind my torso in a backward crawl. When the last verse of the song starts, I grab a bottle of lotion and throw my head back as I pour it all down the front of my body. I watered down the lotion beforehand, so it's thin and runs everywhere, from between my breasts to between my legs. ("Do you know what that lotion looked like when you squirted it on yourself?" Randy will ask me later, with a devilish grin. Of course I knew!)

Underneath my thong is the world's tiniest g-string. It's so small I feel like I'm wearing a slingshot, but the discomfort proves worthwhile when in the last few moments of the song, I stand up, loosen the strings on the sides of the thong and, to the thunderous approval of the unsuspecting crowd, drop it to the floor. As the music ends, I'm standing on the stage, clothed in nothing but blue light and a brief scrap of silver.

While I take my bows, the judges mark their score cards. I cover up in a short, red satin robe and the escort meets me at the stage steps to walk me back to the dressing room. When we pass two young sporty gays sitting on a bench next to the hallway by the dressing room, one of them says, "Barbie, if you don't win, there is no justice." Right then, every minute I spent at the Pure Talent School honing my technique was worth it.

Tallying the scores takes hours. I mean hours. When they gather the contestants on the stage to crown the winner, it's almost one o'clock.

We're all standing in a row, clapping for each other as winners are announced in the categories of Best Interview, Best Face, Best Breasts, Best Legs, Best Buns, and Best Pole Work. These are certificate titles, and the women step forward to pick up their laminated awards.

Now it's time for the trophy titles. I'm trying to stay calm, but I am anxious despite myself.

"The next category is Best of Show. And the winner is... Barbie!"

Best of show! That's quite an honor. That means they liked my cowgirl routine. Excellent! I step up to accept the trophy and try to put out of my mind that they have the same category at the Westminster Dog Show.

I didn't take first place. I will not go down in history as the seventh Miss Topless Wyoming. I cannot use the title to garner tables at the chic eateries in New York ("Clear the DiCaprio party from the corner booth. Miss Topless Wyoming is coming for lunch."). But I made first-runner up, losing to the other cowgirl, and that's just fine. I got two honkin' big trophies, half a dozen roses, and $225—two hundred for first runner-up, and twenty-five for best of show.

…

Randy marches into the house brandishing my trophies like a proud papa after a Little League championship win. "Let's put these in the living room!" he crows, rearranging the framed photos atop the television armoire to clear a space.