Spent (17 page)

39

“A
re you a prostitute?”
A beautiful, Latina with long straight hair in a single ponytail asked me. Her brown eyes glowed in the dull, cramped holding cell. She reminded me of girls I stripped with back in SF when I was a bald, lesbian, feminist with a pierced septum, ready to take down the patriarchy with my boring, self-righteous anger. This girl was barely eighteen.

“Do I look like a prostitute?” I was sitting on a metal bench, squished between two women, knee to knee.

“There are five black women, a Hispanic woman, and you. You're a prostitute,” she said. She turned around, hopped up on a ledge, and looked out the tiny window, then back to me. I nodded.

“Why are you a prostitute?” she asked. Her voice just above a whisper. I chewed my lip. Looked up at her.

“That's a good question,” I said. If she were Andrea Dworkin, she would accuse me of being a brainwashed drone of the patriarchy, succumbing to the violence against women. But I'd never thought of myself as a prostitute.
Until now
.

I'd never been a streetwalker or even a call girl; never worked for an agency or Madame. I'd made a choice in my early twenties. Unlike many young women, I wasn't forced by a pimp. I hadn't been sold into sex slavery by my family. I had chosen to fuck once or twice for money—but had also chosen to stop. I'd scaled back to handjobs only. So I didn't feel deserving of that label. Sex worker, yes. Prostitute, no.

Was there a difference?
I remember thinking,
If I smoked crack a couple times, does that make me a crackhead
? But crackheads are helpless. I was not helpless.

Until now.

The girl looked sorry for me, or disgusted. She shrugged and looked away.

There was a loud buzz. The door was released. A muscular butch with one very long braid walked in and hugged my gorgeous Latina cellmate. They kissed and the cell began to heat up. The lovers had been in a bar fight and were covered in pepper spray.

My throat itched. The rest of the women coughed and put their heads between their knees for air. One drunk girl squatted on the toilet and threw a used Maxi pad across the cell. She laughed as it hit the wall and slid down.

The black girls who were busted for prostitution told me to request O.R. This meant I'd never been arrested before and could perhaps be released without bail. They settled in, knew the ropes, and followed procedure. One made a call for me to ask about my release.

“You shouldn't be here,” she said. “They may keep you all weekend.” She rested her head on my lap and feel asleep.

Hours later, we were escorted upstairs and told to stand against a wall. The light was a dead yellow. We were handed scratchy blankets, which were more like tarps. The jailers snatched my black tights and stuck them in a Ziploc bag, to prevent me from strangling myself with them. I was buzzed into another cell where a woman was asleep in the lower bunk. Her clear stripper shoes—exactly like ones I owned and danced in—were on the floor below her.

I climbed onto the top bunk where, on the wall, someone had scribbled the words “I love you, Mom.”

Fuck
. Of course I get the bunk where someone scratched “I love you, Mom” in glitter nail polish. Why couldn't I have gotten dad? Or just a pimp's name like “I love Rico My Baby Daddy Forever.” No, it said Mom, and now I had no choice but to sit here and think about her. I wanted my mother. She had been dead for a year.

The only light was through a mail-like slot that looked into the center of a room. All I could see was a pay phone and women in line for showers. Over a loudspeaker, names were called for court, but not mine. I heard other sounds: the yelling, buzzing, coughing, and lights snapping on and off. No way could I sleep here. I bolted up and went to the door. Pounded against it. I found a buzzer above the toilet. I held my fist on it. My breaths were shallow.

“Guess you're staying all weekend too,” my cellmate said from her bunk.

“No,” I said. I sunk down near her dirty stripper shoes, ashamed at what I had become. Helpless.

40

“S
top ringing the bell
or I'll leave you in there all weekend,” a jailer barked over the loud speaker. I laid on my back. It felt like hours were passing. I focused hard on the shimmer-scratched words. The word “Mom” left a taste of ashes and vanilla in my throat, and I wanted to call her. Who could I call? My breaths were short and tight. I mouthed the written words with the taste of her ashes in my throat, like a prayer. Unable to sleep, I breathed in the vanilla sweat from my jacket armpits—echoes of Mom's rice pudding smells haunted me.

Breakfast was dropped through the mail slot as if I were a stray dog. I felt like one as I nibbled a sausage patty, then I fell asleep briefly under my jacket. My answering machine dreams were back: Mom's voice talking about a detour ahead. “You've made a wrong turn, honey. Turn left up ahead. Would you just look at this spaghetti squash?”

The woman below me stirred. “Fuck, fuck,” she said.

It slowly sunk in. My cats weren't going to be fed. My car was going to be towed. My rent was going to be late, and I was in a cage.

I thought about my brother, who had been in and out of jail for petty theft. We wrote letters when he was in San Quentin. I had my brother's back when he was in jail. He got degrees in jail. He cooked and fought fires. Mom sent packages with socks and money for cigarettes, but she was still saddened and disappointed by Alan.

I didn't want to disappoint her, but I knew that I was. This was the tipping point I was afraid of—the serious fucking-up my life part. A series of bad turns until I was lost, never to return. In this cage, I was subhuman: lower than an animal because animals ate drank, slept, and shit. I did none of those things. Hours later, we were led to another cell with a bunch of concrete benches. The jail guard pointed to a woman who was busted for smoking weed in her car. “You have a visit.” Then she looked at me. “You do, too.”

“What?” I said, feeling stupid.

The jailer gave me a stern, annoyed look, and talked slow as if I was a retarded monkey. “You. Have. A. Visit.”

I followed the woman who had smoked weed in her car and stood, waiting in line. When I got to the window, it was Kara. I put my hand on the glass on top of hers and cried.

“I'm going to get you out of here,” she said. My tongue was so dry I couldn't speak. “You don't belong in here.” She laughed gently. Shook her head. “You're the most innocent prostitute.”

After a while I said, “I thought they got you, too.” I was led back to the concrete cell with the others and covered myself with a scratchy gray blanket, waiting in the dark. One girl was passed out on the floor, but most of the women sat with their knees up on the cool cement bench, waiting.

I must've dozed off because I heard the same jailer yell, “You're O.R.” I was sticky, smelly, hungry, tired, and ashamed, but I knew what those letters meant, and they meant I was free.

Back in my apartment, the cats were loud and hungry. I removed all my sensual massage ads from the Internet. T-Mobile threatened to shut off my phone in twenty-four hours without two hundred bucks, and I was in shock—too scared to book any more clients. My apartment was in disarray. I received hurt and angry emails from the client I was supposed to meet me later on that night—a finance man from Palm Beach. Kara was spooked as well. We had been doing sensual massage jobs together and hadn't feared the cops. We figured there was enough violent crime in Los Angeles to busy the police. We thought wrong. I'd heard from a sober junkie who used to rob banks say that, “Once you get arrested, you keep getting arrested.” I couldn't break my mom's heart the way my brother did. My brother, who was dumb enough to hold up our favorite corn dog shack, Fresh Freeze, where we rode our bikes as kids and sat at the picnic tables outside and sipped chocolate milkshakes and nibbled fish sandwiches with way too much mayo. He got three years for his troubles. I didn't want to ruin my life with a misdemeanor for prostitution on my record. I couldn't do that to her again. Even dead, I wouldn't do that to her.

Then again, it was a tribe of sex workers who had helped me survive, by showing me how to make phone calls and being kind to me; explaining that I could be released O.R. and that I had no business being in jail—no business at all.

41

I
fell apart; so did
my shit brown Nova. Broke down right in front of Cheetahs on Hollywood Boulevard, where I was making about a hundred bucks a night with punk, hipster strippers—girls with an edgy, fetish look. The economy was in bad shape and getting worse, and I saw it tire the eyes of the customers at the bar. They'd suckle a Budweiser for an hour, rest their chins on their fists, and watch the Lakers on the television screen above the Ms. Pac-Man video game. Financial tension made the girls cranky. They'd strut from table to table, glaring at each other while competing for the two customers at the bar. One guy, Larry, never bought dances unless he fell in love with a girl and got her drunk. She had to promise to date him, and if she did he would give her six hundred bucks a night. Another guy, a Russian thug, only liked young, skinny blonde girls with flat chests. As a thick, non-drinking redhead with muscular thighs and tattoos, I didn't have a chance. Cheetahs was dead, but we still had to be dressed and on the floor by seven. Dressed—meaning in our underwear. A leggy girl with a Mohawk got up from a card game and pressed her cheek against our floor manager's hairy chest.

“We're starving, Vinny. Get us a pizza.”

He mumbled something about piranhas and walked away. Her desperation cracked the veneer of her tight Hollywood smile. She clung to a little Hello Kitty purse that held blow and lint.

Cheetahs reflected my ugly loneliness back to me and I couldn't stay away from it. I'd say anything for twenty-five bucks. Instead of selling dances, I sold loneliness, got them smitten. Made empty promises, gave them my phone number, told them I'd meet them for dinner, play tennis with them, go to Vegas, Mexico. “I'll kill you if you don't marry me,” one guy said. I told him I would.

Stripping wasn't always this emotionally complicated.

Part of the problem in L.A. is the rules that separate booze from touching. Local and state laws change every few years regarding nudity and physical contact in the clubs. Where there's alcohol, there's no contact. When Willy Brown was mayor up in San Francisco in the nineties, full contact lap dancing was legal. We paid a stage fee, and dot-com money flowed. Now, in L.A., topless clubs weren't even topless anymore. Touching was a misdemeanor and owners feared losing their businesses.

Which is why I got called into the manager's office.

“Why do you let them touch you?” Vinny asked. He pointed at the monitor.

“How do you know that guy's not undercover? You want to get us raided? You want to do more, go to the Bunny Ranch in Vegas.”

My knee rubbed a customer's inner thigh. I let him grab my hips. My hair poured into his face. My lips touched his neck.

My days were numbered.

I got a text from Christine, a friend who was dancing in New Orleans: you should come work at Visions. It's good here.

It took one text to extract me from the claws of lady Los Angeles—I bought a one way ticket to where I could be groped without being fired.

On the way to the airport, I played Mom's old messages over and over: “You've got to get that degree. Just stay in grad school. If I were your age and not married, I'd stay in school the rest of my life.”

I could do my schoolwork from New Orleans. The thing about writing is you can do it anywhere.

42

W
hen you fall you
have to land, preferably somewhere dimly lit and topless, where funny money is tossed like glitter and there is full contact lap dancing, loose rules, and lots of tourism. I flew to New Orleans with twelve bucks in my pocket. I wasn't going to get arrested dancing topless on Bourbon Street. “The weather's ninety degrees with ninety percent humidity,” the stewardess announced on the plane. People moaned, but I was ready to be wrapped in southern steam. Out of the airport, I was hit by heat. New Orleans is a sweaty pussy that sticks to your face, soaks into your skin, and stays the night.

“Visions,” I said. Like hairdressers and keepers of the occult codes in New Orleans, the cab driver knew where to go.

Visions is twenty minutes from the airport, nowhere near the frenzy of Bourbon Street. The only things that far off Downman are some railroad tracks, a Domino's Pizza, and a condemned liquor store. There are no billboards advertising Visions, just a sign on the building that reads, “Visions: where the locals go.”

From the outside, Visions looked like a gutted Denny's. A wire fence held back weeds and ivy, but the vines pushed through the fence, crashing to the gravel below. A truck parked in the lot had a bumper sticker: “Nawlins. Proud to swim home.”

I stepped out of the cab with my rolling suitcase, duffel bag and computer, sticky from the air. Live oaks reached across the sky and dangled curvy shadows across the street. The rain suddenly stopped, and the sun seared through the mist. I walked up cement stairs and entered. It was dark as hell: a smoky dungeon promising spiders, tits, and beer.

My friend Christine worked here but not that night, so I had no pull. “Talk to the night manager, Rick,” she'd said. “He's the nice guy.”

“I'm here to see Rick, to audition,” I said to a thin, pale guy with a big head and a limp. He crossed his arms and eyeballed my suitcase.

“He's not here. And it's Friday night so you can't get on the schedule.”

I figured I wasn't going to get hired: I was too fat, too old, and too tattooed. Still, he hesitated.

“Wait at the bar,” he said.

I rolled my luggage to a stool and watched the day shift girls change into the night shift.

In the dark heat, I knew this was my world: a smoky place where the lonely hide and tough girls jiggle their butts.
I dialed Mom's number to hear her voice on the machine for luck, but the club was too loud. I could barely hear her cheery hello.
The topless girls dancing on the bar wore g-strings that were more like strategically placed threads. Meaty thighs wiggled to the rhythm of Jimmie Vaughan's “Can't Say No.” The rule was that guys had to tip if they sat at the bar, and they had to be drinking or they'd be asked to leave. A recorded male voice said so every few minutes, to remind customers and discourage squatters.

I was relieved to see the range of body types and the signature dead gazes come from girls floating on plastic heels. They were real girls with round hips, stretch marks and crooked smiles; their garters held stacks of green. They were making money. Maybe I could, too.

An hour passed. I was tired from the flight. My outfit wasn't sexy, and I had nowhere to stay. Christine was at Jazz Fest, not answering her phone.

The limper paced the club with his smirk. Guys like him have the power to reject the beautiful girls they couldn't touch in high school. Managers of strip clubs were always cartoon versions of themselves, and I was a faded, tired version of myself.

Rick showed after all. He had the bleakness that only guys whose days begin and end in strip clubs understand. He waved me into an office the size of a bathtub where both managers stood in the dark.

“How'd you find out about this place?” Rick asked. There was a cash machine counting bills. It stopped at a hundred. It was loud as a hair dryer.

“Christine told me.”

“Show me your body.” I lifted up my shirt and removed my bra; pulled down my pants to my knees. He ran one hand over his greasy silver hair, and with the other he grabbed my ass and held it, sampling the flab there. It was ample.

“Are there any more tattoos or just your arms?”

“Just my arms.”

“You need day girls?” Rick asked the limper.

“Naaah.” The limper shuffled papers. His eyes glowed in the shadows. The cash machine spat out bills. Red lights showed digital numbers and a click-click-click of plastic heels announced a blonde stripper, puffing on a cigarette. My eyes burned.

“Go downtown. Try Bourbon,” he said. They loved their hazing routine and were delighted to reject me. Nice guy Rick stuck a rubber band over a wad of cash. I pushed my boobs together and tilted my head to the side, begging. I had to convince them of my earning abilities. I needed one night shift to prove myself, but they didn't care if I'd come from sucking off Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion, they didn't want me at Visions. I pulled up my jeans and fastened my bra. The limper laughed and shook his head. Rick checked his watch. My audition was over.

“Stick around for an hour and if I need girls, you can stay,” he said. I rolled my suitcase into the dressing room where naked girls barked into cell phones, slammed metal lockers, applied mascara, and smoked cigarettes. A drunk girl with black Cleopatra bangs collapsed on the floor. Her eyeballs rolled back in her head.

“My brother's dead. Is my brother dead?” she said. A tiny redhead in a plaid skirt held her by the waist. “You've got to go home, sweetie,” she said to the girl, who tried to stand but slid back down to the floor instead.

Rick appeared and walked over.

“Get dressed. You're going home.” He reached in his back pocket for bolt cutters and opened her locker.

“My brother. Is he dead?” She stuck to the wall and didn't let go.

The plaid skirt girl looked at me.

“Hand me her stuff.” I reached up to locker twenty-nine and grabbed her clothes.

There's an unspoken bond among strippers. No matter what happened, if a dancer's in trouble, the girls help, or mind their own business—whatever is needed.

We dressed her and called a cab. The other strippers went back to their glitter, body spray, lip gloss voodoo. I shoved my bag into locker twenty-nine and knew I'd found my tribe: a pirate society that understood itself. We were there for a singular purpose. If pressed, it was us against the world. Rick put the bolt cutters back in his pocket and turned to me. He said, “Welcome to Visions.”

On the main floor, the cowboy sized me up like I was livestock.

“How old are you, sweetheart?”

“How old do you think?”

He held my jaw in his scratchy palm and moved it around to check my profile.

“Well, you're not nineteen.” He crossed his arms over his belly that bounced as he laughed. “Most the girls here are twenty-three.” He stared hard at my face for an indication of my fossil stripper status.

“And most of them are lying to you,” I said. Most of them had husbands or boyfriends, three kids at home with a sitter, and had danced on this very bar for ten years. They had wrinkles, an eighth-grade education, and crooked teeth, which is exactly what I loved about Visions—it was the creamed corn of strip clubs, and I fit in. I looked country, as long as I covered my tattoos and shut my mouth about my post-graduate studies.

The cowboy guzzled a Bud Light and squinted at me through smoke. I was teetering towards geriatric stripper, and I wondered if he knew it. I grinned at him anyway, because after a couple drinks he wouldn't give a shit. He'd get a few dances, and I'd leave with a stack of twenties.

“You'd be correct in guessing I'm not nineteen,” I sassed, sipping a Diet Coke. “I just turned thirty-three, and am fast approaching my sexual prime. You should invest now while you still have a chance.” I slapped my ass to punctuate.
I could really do with about five hundred bucks
.

How old are you?
The age stigma didn't apply to guys—a thing that made me want to pour my Diet Coke on his lap, instead of grind on it. His cigar smoke surrounded us when I moved close enough to see his face. He could've been anywhere between forty and fifty-five. Southern men age faster than California men. They eat fried catfish and pralines, skip gym memberships and go fishing. They smoke nonstop, which adds lines to their fat faces. I eyeball a biscuit and my thighs expand. I smell a cupcake and it adds an inch to my middle. Next time around, I want to be a tall, skinny man with the metabolism of a whippet. My mom, the expert baker, taught me how to worship sugar. I begged to lick her cookie dough bowls the minute I could talk. I couldn't shovel sugar into my mouth fast enough.

When her body shriveled from the first cancer, I started running on the treadmill. The treadmill was the place my rage could pummel the ground without hurting anyone. I ran from cancer.

“How many kids you got?” asked the cowboy.

“None.” I shook my head. Time felt like peanut butter in Visions. I played like I was relaxed and just hung out while mentally counting songs and strategizing the best moment to bring up business. This wasn't it.

I'd wait until he finished Bud Light number two. Zoey was onstage. A skinny blonde thing in pigtails, knee socks, and a white skirt. She danced to Bonnie Raitt. Unlike the clubs on Bourbon Street that insisted on upbeat top forty bullshit, like Kings of Leon and Lady fucking Gaga, we could play whatever music we wanted at Visions. At Visions, we got to be edgy. I stripped to everything from Skinny Puppy to Ike Turner. The cowboy gulped down a second beer.

“You eat Zapp's potato chips?” he asked.

“Why? Do I smell like onion dip?”

He chuckled. One of his arms wrapped around my hip.

“I guess it's your lucky night,” he said. It certainly was. Considering the quality of conversation and the fact that I didn't have a shotgun within reach, it was a lucky night for both of us.

“I think they have some of those chips in the vending machine. You want some?”

I glanced across the room. Next to the poker slots, where two men chain-smoked, the vending machine was sitting swathed in yellow-green light.

“No need. You're looking at the creator of Zapp's potato chips.” He puffed up his chest like a rooster.

“No kidding,” I grinned wide and squelched an impulse to smash his beer bottle into my forehead. “Well, Mister Zapp, let's get better acquainted.” I pointed to the VIP lap dancing area, where I could finally extract some dough. “I just got married, and I love pussy,” he said. Strutting like a rooster he followed me into the room where I straddled him and offered my boobs like M&M's for his open mouth.

“You should move into my trailer,” he offered. I considered this proposal carefully, imagining a grubby trailer with gingham curtains lodged in a marsh.

“Does it have Wi-Fi?”

Christine let me crash at her place in Algiers Point that she rented from a redheaded bartender at a famous bar on Bourbon Street. She introduced me to the redhead's family, and I ended up renting the place by the week while she stayed at her boyfriend's place uptown. Her pad not only had Wi-Fi but a Chi Machine: a funny plastic machine that plugged into the wall and wiggled my ankles for a timed five minutes. Mom would've loved the Chi Machine. It was hypnotic, relaxing, and soothing for my lower back. My body may have wanted to be fat but, like any retirement-aged athlete, I followed a strict diet and exercise regime that involved lifting weights and soaking in bags upon bags of Epsom salts, while depriving myself of sugar. I thought about Mr. Zapp barging into the place and expecting payment worthy of rent. “I've got a place already.”

I stood on the sticky red vinyl couch riddled with holes from spiked heels, my pussy inches from the cowboy's face. His loneliness collided with mine. It made me sick but felt like the best thing in the world.

He was the first in a string of big southern kahunas that talked to me about their jobs and golf games, tweaked my nipples, tried to stick their fingers in my pussy, and spent hundreds of dollars on my body. Every night I danced at Visions, I cleared anywhere from three hundred to a thousand bucks. The better I got at hustling dances, the more I noticed my boundaries slide. I made customers think I was invested in them, that I was accessible. And I was. That part of me that allowed them to get smitten for twenty minutes or an hour was happy and free. Sometimes, I let them camp out inside the hole Mom left. But after they left Visions I made them disappear by dialing my answering machine, listening for the comfort of her voice: “They're trying to kill me. I have to get out of here. You should come get me out of here.”

In Algiers, I ran along the levy—the one that didn't burst during Katrina, while cicadas buzzed in the river. The humidity was heavy and hot. My pace slowed but, dripping with sweat, I watched boats gliding on the surface of the Mississippi knowing Mom would've loved Algiers Point.