Girl, Undressed: On Stripping in New York City (13 page)

She smiles at me blankly.

6

WHEN MIMI ABANDONS ME,
her absence is like the absence of a lover, a Siamese twin, my heart limping on erratically without her presence to goad my pulse into a rhythm. In those briefer moments when
I
turn my back on
her,
my heart cleaves and hurls flip-flop as if I’d lost myself. I miss her, when she’s gone.

I overheard another girl talking on the subway the other day, a civilian—you know, not a stripper. “So in front of the whole lecture theater the professor made her take her lab jacket off because it wasn’t pressed, and all she had on underneath was a
bra.
All the girls in the class were
crying.
” Oh, the shame! Hurt pride! Wounded, humiliated indignity! Shame, shame,
shame.
I feel for your exposure, all you virgin milk-maids of the world. I
feel
for it, really I do. But when it comes to pride you have to admit that I lost it better than you—much more, harder, faster, dirtier, in a more spectacular fashion than you can ever comprehend. My point is that stripping is an art, like anything, an art that one can learn. But the ability to be shameless, the ability to turn our shame into our pride—
that,
you’ve acquired well before you got onstage, with the knocks, the blows, the uppercuts, the scratches, and hair pull ings. You either have it or you don’t.

The rest of it—the coy glances, the immunity to sickly, stagnant breath, hard dicks, urgent hands, and sticky shame, the money hunger, the greed, the language, the predatory instinct—you have to learn. I had to learn.

 

Ole Hank was hustling the bitches like his life depended on it. The doors opened at twelve and the lustful wandered in, the bitches got primped up and the new waitress stood uneasily in the corner.

“How are you finding it?” I ask.

She looks at me with enormous eyes, like fucking Bambi or something.

“It don’t pay so good. They said if we want more money we gotta go into the Champagne Room with a client. D’you do that?”

I shrug. “Have done.”

“How d’you
get
guys in the Champagne Room?”

“You play on their minds and their cocks.”

“Oh.”

Pause.

“Whadda you
do
in there?”

“You dance.”

Pause.

“You don’t have to take your clothes off though, right?”

“No, you
do
have to take your clothes off, unless the guy knows beforehand he’s paying four hundred bucks for a dry grind.”

Pause.

Huge, liquid eyes. Whispers, “I feel kinda self-conscious about my body.”

So don’t do it baby. You gotta choice.

Two hours later Bambi’s flirting like a fucking pro as Mimi eyes her from the corner, where she’s holding a conversation with Mr. Cum-In-His-Pants, so named because he cums in his fucking pants all the time.

“What’s your real name, Mimi?”

“Michelle.”

“You’re such a sweet girl. I can tell you’re genuine because you look straight at me with those huge eyes of yours. You look kinda like Heather Graham.”

One hand on your cock, the other on your credit card. Take it for what it is baby and stop deceiving yourself. It ain’t nothing genuine, but the money’s real enough. Mark the DJ wanders up, and he and Mr. Cum-In-His-Pants talk about their kidney stones. Did you know you have to
piss
those fuckers out? Well, neither did I, but fortunately for Mimi, this means Mr. Cum-In-His-Pants’s thingy ain’t working too darned good at the moment. Champagne Room?
But of course, sweetheart. Anything for you.
Hank’s hustling the bitches like his life depended on it. Extra brownie points for Mimi, the quickest learner in all of Foxy’s. Four weeks as a waitress and she’s a fucking pro, in the non-pro sense of the word, if you get my meaning. I mean, she could be a dancer, cause she ain’t serving drinks no more during those eight hour shifts. Hank hustles the bitches like his life depends on it, and enters the Champagne Room to call a time-out five minutes early when it looks like Mr. Cum-In-His-Pants’s thingy may have made a miraculous recovery. Thanks Hank baby, I owe you one.

Mimi stumbles out and straight to the bar, where tequilas are lined up for the five o’clock watershed, courtesy of Mr. High-Ranking UN Official from the good ole United Kingdom. Mr. UN is playing a dangerous game fucking with Mimi, but of course Mr. UN don’t know this, and instead makes Mimi’s life pretty fucking miserable, the middle-aged cunt. Forty-five, never been married, never said I love you, never known what it’s like to wake up, curled around someone you care about. A heart too hard to ever be broken. You don’t find the ones you fall in love with
here.
I drink two margaritas. It’s enough. I turn around, and the lights are swirling pretty bad now to match my head, and Mr. Pedophile is standing next to me.

“Can you be a little girl? Can you be a little girl for me?”

“Honey, I’m twenty-six. Buy a fucking Cabbage Patch Kid if that’s what you want.”

The response don’t go down too well with Mr. Pedophile, but Kim the manager gets the joke, and we laugh and laugh and laugh, and suddenly it’s eight P.M., I’m standing outside the club, and the elastic around my ankle snaps, dollar bills floating down Broadway, dancing and twirling in the faint breeze of passing traffic. A guy stoops down and gathers them up for me. Mr. UN.

“Good
God,
girl. What the hell are you doing? You’re drunk. Come with me.”

He points to a nearby wine bar.

“Have you eaten?”

I shake my head no. You never see clients outside the club, but this place is close enough to feel safe. I know the bouncer.

Diet Coke, expensive Italian meats, dusky olive oil, crisp, fresh bread. Mr. UN regards me thoughtfully.

“
Bloody hell.
You look like you’re about
twelve.
”

Mr. Fucking UN, lives for his work, never made love, always fucked like a goddamned terrier. Trying to reach out, trying to be nice. But there’s a reason why guys are forty-five and alone, and I saw that reason in the club. I down the last slurps of my Diet Coke, grab a piece of ciabatta to go, make my excuses, leave. I stand up, trip over the chair, fall down on my butt. A ripple of disgust? Dismay? Amusement? Anticipation? Hey, look guys, look at the high-ranking UN official with the twelve-year-old slut stripper, ain’t it
cute?
Call the goddamn
New York Post
! Heads are shaking, Mimi steps straight into a cab downtown. Thirty minutes later, I’m sitting blankly watching a TV program I couldn’t tell you the name of if I tried, and it’s very strange, I’m just crying and crying and crying. Must be the tequilas, must be exhaustion. The walking, talking Mimi doll’s batteries are running low, low,
low.

Later, I sit in the kitchen with Raoul drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, and we both cry, and neither of us quite knows why.

I walk past the Men Who Hiss At You on the street on the walk to the subway the next morning. They smile sweetly at me. One of them calls out, “God bless you, baby.”

God Bless You.
Do I fucking look like I need
God
on top of all this shit?

 

I set the audition for the next week. It seems simple enough. Dance three songs onstage with two other dancers. First song, dress on. Second song, dress half off. Third song, dress off, down to G-string. End of third song, retrieve dress, wait for replacement, leave stage. This would be accomplished with finesse, with lackadaisical, flippant skill, with shamelessness. I would adopt the bored, hard, devastating glare of one immune to indignation, of one whose pride was utterly incorruptible, on account of already being utterly corrupted. It was not the nudity, it was not the pornographic assault of a man’s stare, it was not a feeling of, maybe, sexual inadequacy that plagued me. What divided me from the dancers now was the stage. It was the fact I could not walk in heels. I could not apply makeup. I could not twirl around a pole. I looked like a twelve-year-old girl, not a stripper.

Mafia Joe (who claims to have mafia connections) turns to me with a smug grin on his lined, corporate face, one hand planted firmly on Becky’s ass, the other stroking a silicone tit.

“You auditionin’, Mimi? You gotta stick to the drinks tray, baby. You ain’t the strippin’ type. Not like Becky here. Tell you what, lemme take you out for a drink after your shift and we can talk about it. I don’t have time now, gotta bottle booked.” He harrumphs, Becky’s talons slide lingeringly on his knee, and she glides away to check her butt for skid marks, gargle with Listerine, have a quick cigarette, and bitch about Mafia Joe, tight-assed bastard, never leaves a bloody tip and expects to suckle on your titties like a newborn calf.

“Ah. You’re taking
Becky
into the Champagne Room?” I breathe innocently.

“Yup.”

“That’s great. That’s
great.
She’s been a little paranoid ever since the sex-change op. I keep telling her she’s all woman, but the emotional repercussions are always hard to deal with.”

Mafia Joe (who claims to have mafia connections) freezes. Becky doesn’t do so well today.

Poor Becky.

Lily takes me aside and presses her saline tits into my face. She’s proud of those little puppies. But only her boyfriend gets to see them, oh yes. Only her boyfriend.

“Your friend auditioned today. Black girl.”

“Lucy?”

“Yeah. She was hot. They said no though. They don’t like having too many black girls. It’s good that you’re a blonde.”

“Yeah.”

“But it ain’t enough. You’re gonna need a lot of help if you wanna get hired as a dancer.” She cracks her hot pink gum and presses those puppies, those curiously hard puppies, deeper into my face. “I heard what you said to Mafia Joe. You’re funny. You’re clever. But the other girls don’t like that. Here’s what you gotta do . . .”

Behind us Bambi whistles through her teeth at a Scandinavian tourist grinning crooked and sexless. You can tell he’s squirming in his seat thinking about plunging his dick deep into her with a few slaps on her ample ass, a cry, a convulsive squirt of pleasure. For a quiet bitch scared to get her tits out last week, Bambi’s a fucking hustler all right.

That bitch is a hustler.

“Oh my. That man is
damn
fine. I’m gonna be havin’ me a piece o’
that
after my shift ends.”

“He payin’ for you to go to the Champagne Room?”

Bambi sniffs and flicks an acrylic ringlet from her eye, dislodging her wig slightly so that her pinned, slapped afro peeps out jauntily from beneath.

“No. We talked about it and he decided we should jus’ hook up
after
work.”

There is a ripple of disapproval through the ranks.

Bambi sniffs indignantly.

“Shut the fuck up. I’m auditionin’ next week with Mimi ’cause I’m sick of y’alls bullshit. There’s money out there and youse just too damn shamed to go get it.”

“I thought you were afraid of the Champagne Room,” says Basia flatly, a flat voice to match her flat chest, flat personality, flat, ovulating, eggy breath.

Aishwarya, a Champagne Room regular who, it is rumored, has enormous nipples like dinner plates, which are the only thing that prevents her from quitting her job as a waitress and becoming a dancer, giggles.

“Is money baby. No one shy when money at stake.”

 

West Fourth. Used to be Times Square, but Times Square got Giulianied. Gift-wrapped. Sugar-coated, candy-frosted with a thick layer of acid-inducing buttercream. Made up for White Trash America. The rules came in. No stripclubs within five hundred feet of schools, churches, day care centers, homes—unless 60 percent of the space was devoted to “non-adult activities” like watching sports, eating sushi, and playing pool. In America ogling titties is what makes you an adult, and you can have only 40 percent of your time and space for that. So, West Fourth. In the twenty-first century, West Fourth Street is where you go to buy your crotchless panties, your battery-operated devices, your see-thru plastic heels, your acrylic hair. We’re in a store, attended by a titless goth child of the Marilyn Manson variety. “Love those heels,” she drawls in Middle American. “I’d wear them to go to a club.” She points to stripper heels that resemble a weapon from Hammer horror films, sharp, pointed, silver, deathly. Lily, Lucy, and Bambi inhale in awe. I have to tell you, I have my doubts about the new company I’m starting to keep. I really have my doubts.

“Mimi, you gotta get them. Girl, they
hot.
”

Hot
is a subjective term.
Hot
applies to breasts bulging like bursting carbuncles; hair so long you could wipe your ass with it.
Hot
refers to an iris papered over with plastic indigo coloring, rimmed with thick black kohl liner to whiten the yellow of bloodshot, coked-up eyes. Hot is plastic-fantastic, hair-free holes, feminine excretions exuding a Victoria’s Secret stench.
Hot
is subjective, but subjectively, objectively, I am
not
hot. I take the shoes. The girls are enjoying this. They sense the waves of doubt exuding from my boyish pores and assuage me with G-strings, Lycra dresses, cosmetics, hair-removal products. I had the soul of a stripper but lacked the science. Later, much later, months afterward, I will sit in a different club in front of a female journalist, a microphone peeping surreptitiously from her bag. “Can
anyone
do this job, or do you think you have to be a particular type of person?” she’ll ask. “Do you think it changes you, your perception of men?” And I will pause, as if I’d never heard these questions before, these clichéd questions I am asked a hundred times a week, these clichéd answers, unvarying, uninventive, unused, and blithely replaced by what they want to hear. “No, it doesn’t change us,” I’ll say, and then stop, wondering whether to go further.
Because by the time we get on that stage we are already beyond redemption.
She’ll call me up later, the journalist, tell me she thought about my response. “I wonder sometimes, if I could do it. Dancing,” she’ll say. “Because I’ve had that, you know, flawed past kind of thing. I’ve slept with a lot of guys, done some kinky shit. I think it’d be kind of . . .
sexy.
” My smile will be twisted.
Just because you like anal doesn’t mean you’re a stripper.
But I’ll do the verbal equivalent of noncommittal mum blings, assent, soothing, letting her take what she wants from the situation without taking anything from me—and all the while she fails to realize that
this
is what makes you good at the job. Not the other thing.