Girl, Undressed: On Stripping in New York City (22 page)

Reaction: Pause, consider: Was that offensive? Oh
yeah?
Well take this: Nice little jab to the jaw. Uh oh, look, there’s a manager, he’s grabbing my arm in one of those well-practiced manager maneuvers, but hey, my other hand’s still free! And I look at it with admiration as it makes a spectacular grab for the vodka-cranberry, the vodka-cranberry makes a sublime arc, crystallizes momentarily in the air as all the girls turn, admire—before it connects.
Fuck.

Can’t really speak, sllllurrrrinnng. Dressing room, already it’s a distant memory. “You goin’ home Mimi?”
There’s no place like home, just a sublet.
Ah, yeah. Punched someone. “Again?” Yeah.
The usual. Jus’ the usual.
“How many drinks this time?” Uuuurrrgh. Dunno. See ya tomorrer. “Door’s that way sweetie.” It is?
Whe’ they change thi’ place aroun’?
“You know Dorothy’s shoes were really meant to be silver? Like, in the book. They just changed it to red for the movie.” She bends over, runs a finger down a slim leg, admires her glittering ruby slippers, winks, flits away down the yellow brick road.

Outside it’s dark, midnight in Manhattan, winter coming, chilly, but I have the beer jacket on. And the tequila jacket too.

“Honey, you OK? Someone pickin’ you up?”

The tears arrive suddenly like amyl nitrate, brain cells popping,
It’s not enough to be here, writing, it’s not enough. I need the break, the fuckin’ break, but who’s gonna give it to you? You gotta get it yourself. Like you gotta make the rent, buy the clothes, find money for the lease, pay the bills . . . where d’you fit the writing in all of this, all of this stress and worry and drinking and dancing? An’ when you do all this, juggle it expertly every day, build the precarious Emerald City, what’s left of you, your ambition?
Ambition becomes a well-practiced sentence repeated at intervals in the club, more to keep others happy than yourself.

Someone comes closer, couldn’t tell you who.

“So what happened?”

“Punche’ someo’.”

“Fuck, you shouldn’t be
doin’
dis job.”

He says “job” like
jawb.
I love that about New Yorkers. I love the fact I have to say
“cawffee”
to get the brown stuff, because they don’t get my accent. I piece my dreams here together, one by one, plan the construction of my Emerald City. Next—a place of my own. A dog.
Dawg.
I giggle and hiccup behind the tears. Ooh, another brain cell implodes. Headache.

“Your eyelashes are fallin’ off.”

The Emerald City’s in ruins. Feigning fitful sleep, I plot my escape. All I need are some warm clothes, the laptop, the lucky rabbit my sister gave me. I have three grand, it’ll get me by, that’s just over one and a half thousand pounds. I could go back to Europe. I could go anywhere. I won’t say good-bye. I’m an expert at leaving, a professional of reinvention. Same name? Yeah, Mimi. Doesn’t bring me luck, but it seems to fit. Dorothy? Don’t get me started. Fuckin’ hangover. Could stay, would be easier if I had my own place. Problem: No fuckin’ money for lease. Could stay, making money at the club. Problem: Imminent departure advisable after punching that guy in the face. Could stay. Problem: Who the fuck will pick up the pieces? Who’ll be there if something goes wrong, something fucks up? Eton? He didn’t even make it this far. The Berlin Fucking Wall lay between us in the middle of the bed, subdivided by a yellow brick road. Sun up.

It’s an altercation with myself, when the film stops every morning at five a.m. What next? Where to? Alone, always alone, that was for sure. To stay or to go, when was enough? When was the break? The break came with the resolution of the confusion ripping me up inside. I speak like an English-American, weaving my clumsy way down the yellow brick road, trying to get out of Oz, trying to find courage, and a heart, and a brain along the way. I’m alone now, always. Have to make that decision to walk the yellow brick road, to the far side of Oz, do it before the Wicked Witch of the West Side gobbles me up.

There’s no place like home.
I tap my heels together three times.

It don’t do shit.

I left
La Bella
in St. Martin. Joined a new boat for a bigger wage. Lied on my résumé to get the job. No one knew me in the Caribbean. I thought. Then I bumped into Jon-jon.

“What’s with you?” he said, in his nasty jaapie twang. I didn’t get what he meant. I’d been sitting in a pavement café in St. Barts in the Caribbean, sipping a margarita, escaping the boat, work, guests, for a few hours, when he turned up. “I don’t get what you mean,” I murmured in a monotone, and watched as ash drifted down, down, down onto sun-bleached cobblestones.

“Last time I saw you in France, you were fucking everything in sight, drunk in a gutter and high on pills.”

I smiled at him. Maybe it was a sad smile. Maybe it was a sweet smile. To me it was a vapid smile, the smile a baby makes when it’s about to burp. Reflexive. “Was I,” I said. “That’s nice of you to notice. Well, now I’m not. I’m working on a sailboat as a chef for rich, fat Americans, and I’m writing a book.” I eyed his uniform, the epaulettes.
Mouth snarled on mine, a hand tugging down flies, the other squeezing, kneading, unknotting my breast. The sound of guests on deck, my name called by the deckhand, an inadvertent growl, an ache.

“Am I in it?” he asked.

“Yeah, you’re in it. So’s your brother. Who’s on your boat this year?”

“Naomi Campbell. P. Diddy. Usual lot.”
Name dropper,
I thought, and sipped my margarita. “Name dropper,” I said.

“Yah, you think I give a
fuck
about these stupid people? At least I am not a fucking pill-popping English slut.” He grinned crookedly, straightened the epaulettes, stood up, walked off down the port. “D’you think people change Jon-jon?” I called after him.

“Yah, sure. But you confuse me, Cambridge. Too fucking clever to be so stupid. Living too hard. You are interesting, yah, but I wouldn’t fuck you again. God knows what I’d catch.”

Thanks Jon-jon,
I mouthed as he walked away, and made that same smile. Empty, about to burp, hovering somewhere between a reflexive laugh, a refluxive cry, acid and stinging.

 

I knew I’d been a bad girl when I woke up wearing an unfamiliar G-string with a thousand dollars in twenties scattered around me.

I knew I’d been a bad girl. I just couldn’t recall how, or why, or when.

“You were funny last night,” Bambi would say, and I’d smile like I remembered. “Laughed my ass off when you punched that black dude, that was fuckin’ funny.” The bartender’ll stop me. “Don’t you remember? Managers said no more drinks until you start behaving.” Jolie will drift over. “You know last night when we were dancin’ for those guys . . . ?” Chloe, the masseuse, rolls her eyes and sighs when she sees me. “Don’t you ever fuckin’ do that shit again Mimi. I’m tellin’ you now, you can do that shit in front of me cause we’re friends sweetie, but there’s people here who are gonna drag you down, who wanna see you in the gutter, you know? You gotta start watchin’ yourself.” A man will wink, squeeze my ass, give me a smile,
thanks for last night baby
a kiss on the cheek, turn back to the Veuve, the clients he’s entertaining. A girl I don’t know (at least, I don’t think I know), drags me into the bathroom, the harsh strip lights exacerbating my eyes into huge limpid puddles, a ghoulish moth in the mirror staring right back at me. “Mimi, I heard about Tuesday. Me and you gotta talk honey. You got my number. We can’t talk here, but outside. Too much shit goes on here.” She sees my face, my pale and trembling face, my face that needs a drink, a slap, a wake-up call. “You remember dontcha?”
You remember? You do remember?
It’s a chiming refrain, it’s Quasimodo’s bells, it torments me, a writhing, malignant devil child sitting heavy and stubborn in my womb, it horrifies me, because I don’t remember, I don’t remember,
I don’t.
I laugh. It’s a horrible sound, like Jolie’s laugh, wrong.

11

I WANT TO STOP YOUR NIGHTMARES,
Eton said, and I appreciated the thought, really I did. I appreciated the effort, him casting himself as Saviour, because it saves me and Mimi the bother of looking for the hero. In the short time we’ve had together it’s been fun, I’ll admit. I’ve felt safe, and warm, and cuddly, and sweet. But then Mimi gets restless. And I walk away again, and I’ll start writing, getting it out of my soul, but it doesn’t seem to make it any better.
I want to stop your nightmares.
I’m torn between being fascinated by my own destruction and disgusted by it. I’m torn between wanting to kill Mimi off altogether and yet fearing that when she goes there will be nothing left to me. I’m torn between wanting him and hating him, needing him and despising him, because when he holds me tight until the nightmares go, I am reminded that I should not
be
with someone like this. I should, by rights, be with someone who crawled out of the same hole I came from.

She’s my enemy, my nemesis, the devil, the fake me, Mimi. But she came to me when I needed her most, when
he
was not there, when
he
failed me. Throughout all this she’s the one who did not leave me, who made me earn money, get a job, keep going, survive,
breathe.
That first breath sunk deep, slapped hard my blue oxygen-starved body, and with that inhale came the exhale, the long, hard wail
I want to stop your nightmares,
he said, but how can he stop what I can’t even recall, I can’t even articulate? How can one eliminate an invisible, impalpable foe?
I want to stop your nightmares
but I don’t think he realizes that I need them to keep me alive, to keep me from falling backward, to keep me from assassinating the only friend I have. I fight him, I struggle in calm, capable arms, I punch him, I want to wound, biting, plunging my small, white teeth into his innocent, pure flesh, dirty teeth, dirty fingernails, scraping, licking, tangling, digging, corrupting. I hate him, despise him, loathe him, want to pluck him out of my heart, burrowed deep within my skin, I want to kill him, I want him to leave us, just
leave us be,
festering in our misery, our triumph, our sin.
I want to stop your nightmares,
he said,
Oh shut up! Stop! Enough, no more!
We
need
them, we
need
each other, you must go,
please
just
leave,
I
have
to finish this, get it down on paper . . .

I want to stop your nightmares, he says.

 

Jolie’s a nice girl. She likes me. That don’t mean shit, because I know as soon as I see her it’s going to be a long, long night.

“Mimi! We gotta talk. I gotta give you the update on my fiancé.”

She’s from Texas, and the words roll off her tongue with a distinctive elastic twang, softened by the years in New York. She has a sweet voice, gentle, jarring uncomfortably with the huge fake breasts, the sharp ribs jutting out underneath, the shapeless legs that never saw a treadmill, the emaciated wrists.

“So he’s been avoiding my calls, and he made this road trip like five hours outta Texas, and he
never
makes road trips, and he got real pissy with me for calling him so much, but you know, after the incident with the
hard-on
”—she lowers her voice, whispers the words for fear of offense, continues in a normal tone—“I get real
worried
about him, you know? You think he’s cheatin’ on me?”

“Sounds like it. Just dump him.”

“Well, he’s movin’ in with me Thursday—it’s like a big commitment. I know he’s mean, but I love him. I dunno how I can keep workin’ here though. He
hates
me workin’ in stripclubs.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“In a stripclub.”

There’s not a trace of irony in her vapid dark eyes, the glossy lips, the soft words slipping off her tongue in a relentless, unceasing confession.

“So then I met this guy Saturday. Here. And afterwards we were gonna go get breakfast. So I wait for ten minutes on the corner of Ninth and he doesn’t show. But I know where he works, so the next day I hang out on his street, and I can’t find the place, so I go to a gay bar and get like,
totally
wasted with these drag queens, and then I decide to find where he lives ’cause he said it was nearby, and the first house I go to has his name on the door! So I ring and he jus’ buzzes me in. Opens the door and is like,
totally
freaked out and excited to see me. So we’re makin’ out on the bed, and we’re just about to have sex, when he tells me he has a girlfriend, and I freak out and start cryin’ and tell him I love him and he’s an asshole, and then I storm out. You think he thinks I’m crazy?”

“So—you stalked him, nearly had sex with him, told him you loved him after an hour, and reacted badly when he told you he had a girlfriend, despite the fact that you have a fiancé?”

“Yeah.”

There’s something broken in her, even I can see that. Broken as she lies to herself on a daily basis, stores up the self-deceits for her unloading sessions with me. She looks to me for confirmation that she’s normal for screwing cunts she meets in stripclubs, for giving handjobs in the back for an extra fifty, for letting some guy push aside her G-string, get his kicks by plunging his fingers into the moist, warm depths. There’s something cracked and wrong, flawed, out of sync, crooked, rotting, decaying inside her. It’s almost imperceptible until you’ve worked for as long as I have, gotten to know the girls, built up trust, shared some secrets. And then it surrounds you, an intangible whiff of souls slowly decomposing as they wait for the slap.

Chloe sits down next to Jolie. The club swirls on, out of focus, somewhere behind us, still early, not that many clients yet. Bambi’s onstage. Good job. She hates these girls, blond hoochie bitches, she calls them. Chloe turns around and addresses me, waving a martini in the air.