Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (7 page)

"I'm sure you're a very generous man, Arthur. But so much of what I hear in these clubs is all talk." Careful to suggest but not promise, I am leveraging my Maybe with another woman's Yes—a classic stripper feint. I don't particularly like this part of myself, but I'm impressed by my own audacity. I never attempted such a stunt when I was doing this for a living, I was afraid I'd scare the guy off. Funny how much nervier you can be when it's not for necessity but sport.

Arthur folds up another hundred and presses it into my palm, confidently. "Well," he says, getting up off the bar stool and stretching, "I should skedaddle. It's getting late. You think about what I asked and I'll see you soon."

Not likely, I think, crunching down on an ice cube. I turn round on my bar stool and watch his broad back as he leaves the club. Grimy yellow streetlight shows through the open door.

Considering the setting, I'm not insulted by Arthur's proposition, but by the same token, I'm hardly flattered, because it has nothing to do with me. For Arthur, the art of the deal is key: What do I have to do to buy this girl? It's simple dollar-cost averaging—for every seventy-five girls he drops a couple hundred bucks on who say no, maybe the seventy-sixth will say yes.

I return to the dressing room to patch my makeup and a buxom dancer in a tropical print bikini sidles up to me at the mirror. The furrows in her forehead deepen as she raises her eyebrows, trying to look aggressively neutral. "I saw you sitting with Arthur for a while. He likes you, huh? You'd better watch out."

"Why, what's the deal with him?"

"Oh, he's a total dick," she sneers, fluffing her long poufy wheat-blonde hair with chubby fingers. "He'll pester you forever to screw him and if you give in, he'll be really mean to you from then on."

I tell the girl I'll take what she said under advisement. There's an oft-quoted adage: "When you go to a strip club, you might get screwed, but you won't get fucked." I finger the hundreds wrapped around my garter, feeling scuzzy and superior at the same time.

What surprises me about tonight is not how slow it is or how quickly I get back into the swing of things, but how I feel as if I never left. So many years away and I realize now that I still feel, have felt all this time, like a stripper. Like I fit in. Everything is strangely similar to what I remember, like a childhood home that has remained exactly as it looks in my memory or an old acquaintance whose face has been untouched by time.

All the dancers start filing into the dressing room to get ready for the full-dress introduction. This would be a good time to clear out for the night. Since I just dropped in for an audition, I doubt the manager will care if I want to leave early. The girls crowd into the locker room, zipping each other into dresses and complaining about what a waste of time it is to put on evening gowns and parade across the stage when there's no one out there to be introduced to.

"Ouch!"

I look in the locker room and one girl has another pinned to the floor with her knee and she's biting her ass. The pinned girl is roaring with laughter while her grappling partner tears at the hem of her blue polyester gown with her teeth.

The bitten girl rises up off the floor, grinning and twisting around trying to see her butt cheek. "You fucker," she shrieks, her eyes alight with glee, "you left a mark!"

The stage fee is twenty-five dollars a shift. On my way out the door, I settle with the manager. He asks how I did tonight.

"Okay. But not great. Is this a typical Friday night for your club?"

"It's been slow," he says, apologetically. He opens a notebook ledger to mark down that I've paid.

I steal a quick look at the ledger and see that a number of the girls are running a tab on their stage fees, some as high as a hundred dollars. That means four shifts when they didn't earn enough to part with twenty-five dollars. Assuming it's always this bad, or this bad even half the time, a girl might be better off working at McDonald's after all.

I see it before I even know what I am seeing. The accident, I mean. In the southbound lane of the freeway on the outskirts of Pueblo, the traffic sits at a complete standstill, pale yellow headlights queued up as far as the eye can see. The scene of the crash is eerily still. No sirens, no horns, just the loud diesel chug of a generator running an overhead bank of blinding blue-white disaster lights. The highway is lit up like a football stadium. An unintelligible voice crackles over the radio in one of the squad cars.

All three lanes are covered in broken glass. A red sedan, every window smashed. The front end accordioned almost to the backseat, it faces backward in the lane. A tow truck waits on the side of the road to load and haul it away. A silver hatchback, the rear and passenger side totally crumpled, rests on the bed of another tow truck. In the center lane, stretched horizontally across, a putty-colored tarp drapes over a long, narrow form. I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and clutch at my chest. That's a body under there.

I want to get off the freeway immediately. I spot a motel with a VACANT sign a couple hundred yards ahead so I take the next exit and double back on the frontage road. I sign in and drive around the outbuildings scanning for my room number. Just my luck, the building with my room in it is located at the very end of the long parking lot—right across the highway from the crash site. Half the motel room doors stand open, and a group of children gathers at the concrete guardrail to watch the emergency crew clean up the wreck. Standing in a row, barely tall enough to see over the divider, their faces are blasted to a featureless white by the intense light, their heads like turnips lined up on a garden fence.

The parking lot is full of old camper trailers and station wagons loaded down with hastily packed possessions—clothes stuffed in plastic trash bags, pots and pans in cardboard boxes, heaps of grotty toys.

I flick on the light, a single lightbulb screwed into an ancient four-bulb ceiling fixture. The room is just as depressing as the scene outside. I should have asked to see it first, but I was in such a panic from seeing the accident I didn't think. Cigarette burns pock the bedspread and the television cable is torn from the wall. Fist-sized dents mark the plaster walls, and the door has no chain, sliding bolt, or deadlock.

That the Reagan-era bone-colored telephone works seems a miracle. I punch my calling card numbers on the sticky gray pushbuttons. Now I'm only eleven digits from home. Randy picks up on the first ring, which makes me smile.

"You took the phone into bed, didn't you?" I say after I hear his eager hello.

"Are you kidding? Of course I did. How are you? Where are you?

"I'm in Pueblo. At the Misery Motel," I crack, trying to come across light. I don't want to sound like a girl crying to Daddy because she skinned her knee.

"Are you going to be okay staying there?"

"Mmm, yeah," I fib, not wanting to alarm him.

He sounds assured, ready to shift gears. "How'd you do tonight?"

"Oh, you would not believe it. Awful! Awful, awful, awful. Like two hundred bucks and I think I did better than anyone there."

"Of course you did!"

Aww!

I hear a whisper of sheets. He's changing position. "So," he hesitates, "did you meet anybody?"

Meet anybody? Oh, the poor guy. I'm not the only one having a tough night.

"No"—I drop my voice down to the comfort register—"of course not. I miss you and I'm sorry you're not here."

"I love you,"

"Love you, too."

"Miss you,"

"Same here."

"Bye."

How strange those words sound. So safe. Routine. Simple. They make the distance between us seem greater. I place the receiver back in the cradle. A seam of icy white shines between the stiff, nicotine-stained drapes.

Love you. Miss you. Bye.

Perched warily on the side of the bed, I hear the generator hum from the crash site. The air in the room tastes like suicide. I feel a guilty stab of self-recrimination about the awfulness of the room, the guiltiness magnified by the absurdity of such a feeling when there's a dead person lying two hundred yards away.

I find my bearings and regroup. I cannot spend the night here alone. I will find a nicer place up the road and leave for Las Vegas first thing in the morning.

FIVE

Susan Sontag is wrong—there is only taste, and Vegas. It's a 24-7 excursion of neon-lashed moral vacuity, God bless it, and no place typifies the soul of this town—or lack thereof—better than Cheetah's. Every man I know who's been there—whether he's infatuated with strippers or is the more common curious skeptic—has had an absolute blast, so I figure why not me, too? Cheetah's was made famous as the nudie springboard for Nomi Malone, the googly-eyed sex whippet in the film Showgirls. But it's not a fully nude club, as I discover. In fact, dancers at this open-24-hours establishment have to wear two g-strings, to keep any errant pubic hairs from peeking out and giving pissed-off vice cops an excuse to yank the club's liquor license.

If you want to work in a strip club or a casino in Las Vegas, you need a sheriffs card. To get a card, a club has to hire you and give you an application signed by a manager. Then you bring your paperwork and I.D. down to the office on Fremont Street, take a number, and wait. And wait. Standing in line, number in hand, with all the aspiring blackjack dealers, casino maids, and bartenders, the strippers are easy to spot—we're the only ones in full hair and makeup at nine in the morning. The reason why the line is slow goes something like this: "I'm sorry, Mr. McGilicuddy, but you need to list all of your arrests in the past seven years. You only listed the one in 1995, and we can see in the database that you have eight more." I've never had to register with the sheriff anyplace I've worked, and even though I've never been convicted of a crime, I'm paranoid that I won't pass muster for some reason. Then a man comes in wearing a maroon sweatshirt on his head as a do-rag, and a backward pastel seashell-print hospital gown over a grey trench coat and he gets a card, so I figure I'm in the clear. I hand over my paperwork, pay my thirty-five bucks, get a mug shot taken, and give them a full set of fingerprints. By the time I scrub off the printing ink with the citrus-scented granular hand cleanser, my laminated card is ready and I am good to go in Vegas.

Cheetah's is literally all smoke and mirrors, and there must be at least sixty women working the floor tonight. Here's a foxy Mexican girl in hot pants, lace-up boots, a baseball cap over her luxurious ponytail, and a baby-T that says SEXY. A perky, cropped bumpkinette flounces by in a red-and-white gingham Daisy Mae bikini while two Jheri-girls mingle in rainbow-striped Day-Glo hip huggers and matching calypso tops. There are lots of implants here, some of which look lumpen and sad, others that have an admirable impudent thrust. Real breasts may have more cachet, but they're so squishy and vulnerable looking, I wonder sometimes if it wouldn't be nice to have a few inches of saline and silicone bubble-wrap as armor between me and the elements.

There's a bacchanalian thump to this place that's irresistible. The deejay slides from techno to rap to disco to heavy metal with ease and sonic acuity. He seems to favor the metal, which I appreciate, since a lot of the upscale clubs won't play anything heavier than Van Halen. Not even Metallica, which blows. To forbid the glorious Wagnerian pomp of Metallica is a gross misread of the male libido— their songs are the most righteous manifestation of testosterone-fueled virtuosity and aggression. The guitar is presented with the same respect that an artist's brush lavishes on an odalisque, and guys go nuts when they see a pretty little girl take on a song as big and brutal as "Enter Sandman." To deprive them of that spectacle is nothing short of a shame.

A commuter class of dancers comes from around the country to work in Vegas, especially during conventions when the city overflows with expense account money. Tonight, the dressing room is alive with out-of-towners hoping to cash in when the latest batch of corporate junketeers comes out to play. The women compare where they're from—Alaska, Washington, New Hampshire—while they curl their hair, apply their makeup, have a smoke, and in my case, read the rules.

The house rules at Cheetah's specify no grinding, no lap humping, no touching the customer's crotch. But here, as in a lot of clubs, there are two sets of rules—those that they tell you and those that you actually work by. I wedge my way into a leopard-print dress and double-decker g-strings and bound out of the dressing room just in time to see a girl turn away from her customer, place her ankle on his shoulder, and slide her leg back until her crotch is right in his face. How am I to compete with a girl who wraps herself around a man like a jade necklace? I must be radiating nerves, because I can't get a dance to save my life, even though the club is mobbed. Finally, Paulie, a burly body-builder, catches my eye and offers to buy me a drink. I ask him where he's from. Colorado. What's he doing in town? Bachelor party. Has he been here before? No, first time. Then it's my turn. Have you worked here long? No, sure haven't. How old are you?

Do I lie about my age? Honey, I lie about everything. Highly impolitic, I concede, but what about this profession isn't? My job is not to be who I am, but what the average strip club customer wants, and those two things are, I'm resigned to admit, quite different. Sure, some guys might find my loopy urban pedantry attractive, but they aren't the men who frequent strip clubs. Men who come to the clubs want to be soothed, catered to, and stimulated ... but not too much. The governing principle of stripping is Thou Shalt Not Threaten. So when I dance, I'm not an engaged, cranky ex-punk rocker with a stack of published articles and the larger portion of my twenties behind me. I'm a twenty-six-year-old milk-fed girl from Minneapolis who's come to town to help her sister take care of her newborn. And a Pisces, should you care to ask. All this chicanery has a purpose apart from pleasing the men—it protects me. Like, if they find me repulsive, they're not rejecting the real me, they're rejecting this shimmery tartlet who looks like she sprang fully formed from the head of RuPaul.

Once I'm done with Paulie, I turn away from the table and see a girl reclining in her customer's lap, her head thrown back, her perfect small breasts vaulting heavenward. As she grinds on him she runs her hands up her torso and pinches her plump, caramel-colored nipples. I stand there riveted to the spot as if I've been struck between the eyes with a poison dart. Not because I'm repulsed, mind you, but because it's just about the sexiest thing I've ever seen. I stare at them for a good long time and then I think, Man, if I see this every day at work, I'll become seriously demented. It's sexy the first time, but how long until I see something like that and shrug, So what? I don't want to be inured to lust.

Stripping didn't used to be so touchy-feely, but in the past ten years, it's become a full-contact sport. I understand this evolution from an economic perspective—there are a lot more clubs, hence, a lot more competition, and as stripping becomes more acceptable, local legislations relax. And if adult entertainment thrives by offering something beyond the pale of convention, the look-but-don't-touch fleshiness of today's culture has to be done one better by adult venues and that means hands-on treatment. It makes sense, but I can't lie—if increasing contact is the trend, I worry what the next generation of strippers will have to do to keep up. It's hard enough rearranging your psyche so you can comfortably work half-naked in front of strangers, but touch is something quite apart. Touch changes everything.

Not making any money, and not being willing to do the contact dances to get it, I am left with nothing to do but work myself into a jealous snit. I spend an hour stalking among the tables watching the girls, conjuring up all sorts of hypothetical scenarios in which Randy would choose one of these women over me were he given the chance. I want to throttle the customers, shake the money tree till the very sap flies out. When I complain to two sweaty men in suits that I can't make any money, one of them says, "Well, you need to grab these guys by the crotch to get their attention." He tries for a ribald laugh but it ends up an embarrassed yelp.

I used to be able to do the wild stuff, but in the time I've been away from dancing I've gotten in touch with my inner prude. I don't know if it's because I no longer have the defenses to deal with being touched by a stranger, or that I simply no longer have to do it, but I can't. So realizing this, do I leave the club? No, I do not. Do I pay for it? Yes, I do.

By 1 a.m., I'm wiped out, my quadriceps shrieking and my "no contact" rule torn and bleeding. The table dances here—which are performed only in the center of the club (for privacy, the heavy-contact lap dancing is relegated to the seats at the perimeter of the room and in the VIP area)—are too close for comfort. I pledged to myself that this stripping odyssey would be a break-even proposition, but getting the needle back to zero requires thrusting my breasts into men's faces—not what I'd planned on doing. "Oh yeah, an ambitious girl can get awful beard burn in her cleavage working here," a zaftig British girl sighs sympathetically in the dressing room as she dabs antibacterial ointment on her scratched decolletage. Of course, I could maintain greater distance between myself and the customer, do my table dancing totally clean, but that would mean going home broke. These are very educated consumers, and with dozens of girls only too eager to peddle their wares, the men watch closely and choose with great care.

I could've gone to another club, too, but I picked this one because the reviews sounded fairly conservative. I can't imagine what I might find elsewhere if this is what passes for tame in this town.

I'm consumed by wild hunger, and after settling with the house, I leave Cheetah's in search of food. I decide to try the Stardust. There's elaborate planning behind the layout of casinos—the clocks are hidden and it's very hard to find an exit. This is supposed to encourage people to stay and gamble their lives away, but in my compromised state the crooked unnavigability of the casino floor just makes me want to torch the place. I finally find the Stardust's #@&% coffee shop, which has a cloying tropical theme—it's called the Cranky Parrot or the Rusty Pirate or something. As I wait for my food, I realize I've been ground down by the sleaze factor—it's so obvious that I got in too deep yet I refused to admit it. Dancer-cum-performance artist Jill Morley calls it "go-go head"—you get so amped up on the ego, the money hunt, and the "I can do anything" daring that you don't know when to quit. Hoisting the fork to my lips with a hand heavy as lead, I inhale an entire Prime Rib Special— hot rolls, salad, soup, slab of meat, peas and carrots, mashed potatoes, gravy, giant Diet Coke—in mere minutes. My hunger goes way beyond the physical yet I don't seem to be tasting much. From my fingertips to my taste buds, it appears I've gone quite numb. Then, when I get up to settle my bill, I start to burn. I feel like my skin has been peeled off and I'm transparent; that anyone who looks at me—the waitresses, the man in the hotel lobby, the family in the elevator—can see me for what I really am: a weak and greedy person. Bad Boundary Barbie.

I'm not sure why it is that a bad night stripping is a million times worse than a bad day at any other job. Maybe it's the sinister voice in your head asking you,
if you can't make it doing this, what the hell else is there?

I head back to my room at the Circus Circus and sink into fitful sleep.

The next morning, I lie on my back on the bed in my rented room, vibrating with a bad case of seller's remorse. Sore and spaced-out, I feel like I've been dropped back into my body from a great height. I'd give anything to take back the night before. Choosing a hotel with a circus motif was a bad call. Wherever I look, I'm assaulted with ominous good cheer—screaming colors, jeering clowns. Every move I make seems like it's accompanied by a laugh track and the toot of taunting calliopes. I spend the early part of the morning trying to work up the energy to walk over to the hotel's Pink Pony coffee shop, but I just can't face the restaurant's bright red carpet with white and pink carousel horses, so I order room service.

I hang my head off the bed as I talk to my friend Eleni in L.A. Every girl needs a friend she can call with her most screwed-up, esoteric conundrum. Someone who not only sympathizes but isn't the least bit fazed by either the stupid thing you did or how bent you feel. For me, that's Eleni. She's never stripped—she looks like a twelve-year-old boy, albeit a heavily tattooed one. But she's been through her ration of shit and I trust her with my girl drama.

"I can't believe this happened," I tell her. "I set strict limits from the get-go, and just like that, I undid them. And for what? It's not like I need that much money!"

"Aw, honey, listen. You have to look at it the way a recovering alcoholic looks at having a drink. You slipped." Her voice is careful and soft.

"You're right. I know you're right."

"I know you feel like you let yourself down, but you can use it as a marker for how far you've come. It was just one night."

"Yeah, but then why doesn't it feel like progress? I feel like if I am going to bend the rules, I ought to just suck it up and deal." But she's got a point. Why should I abide something that I don't feel right about? I could be tough, since strippers know from tough, and marshal through compromising situations without complaint, or I could be strong and avoid such situations entirely.

"Be nice to yourself," Eleni says. "Don't go back to work there!"

I promise to heed her advice, even though my first instinct is to march right back in there. "All right, you bastards, I'm here, and I will prevail! Hand over your money!" But she's right. Don't try to reverse the situation, just walk away.

When I hang up the phone, I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror. I look wild-eyed and pale. Tired. The "shouldn't have" face.

The room service waitress comes in, takes one glance at the upended costume bag on the floor—shiny boots and little dresses and crumpled singles strewn about—and makes me immediately. The look she gives me—a sympathetic smile followed by a brief, courteous nod—says it all. She knows the drill. She knows what I've come to town to do and that I'm not in good shape today. She leaves the tray on the desk and closes the door behind her carefully so it doesn't make a sound.