Spent (18 page)

43

W
hen I opened locker
twenty-nine at 5:00
p.m.
, it was sweltering in the dressing room. I peeled off my damp jeans in favor of a light blue skirt that wasn't really a skirt—more of a faded doily with loose threads. I stood in front of a big silver fan that blew dust on my greasy face. It was my third consecutive night working at Visions. My thighs burned from over use. At forty years old, my stripper days had been numbered for ten years. Now, making more money than ever, I felt like the Brett Favre of strippers: injured and aging out, but reluctant to retire. My winning streak could change on a dime.

Stripper Fog is like a hangover without drugs or alcohol. The few hours of sleep you get have no effect because it's the sleep that happens between 4:00
a.m.
and noon. It's a full-body ache, a stiff neck, and a headache that no amount of ibuprofen or coffee can remedy. On Stripper Fog days I'm up until sunrise; I pull the curtains shut and count my money—separate out the cash that goes to pay rent and bills into Ziploc bags to hide in a secret compartment inside my suitcase. I shower to calm the buzz, then crash like the tail end of a speed bender. I don't reach for Xanax anymore to get quality shut eye, even though I want to. When I wake up the sunlight's so bright I feel like my eyes will explode. I approach migraine territory when I'm run down—I get them more easily. My boobs sore from high impact fondling, I smear a thick salve of greasy medicinal homeopathic goo on them until they stick to the inside of my T-shirt. The gel removes bruises and heals nipples chafed by whiskered chins. I have razor burn on my crotch from shaving it every single day.

The recovery time is longer than it used to be. Stripper Fog requires rehydration and rest; gallons of water and thousands of milligrams of vitamin C. I soak in Epsom salts until the water runs cold, soothing the speedball of Diet Coke, sugar free Red Bull, and Excedrin PM. My knees have bruises the size of poker chips from crawling on a wooden stage for eight hours. My lower back aches, a recent development. It's from bending over in six-inch heels at an unnatural angle so frat boys from Alabama can stick dollar bills in my garter. The angle bends my hips forward, and after hours of dancing it hurts to bend over. And then it hurts to sit down. Finally, it hurts to lie down and sleep.
I'm going to miss this
, I think. In a few hours I'll head back to Visions in the backseat of a taxi towards Downman Road, even though it's hell to turn my neck, and there's shooting pain from my shoulder to my elbow from swinging around the pole by one arm. I will hold a large iced coffee from Café Beignet and balance my bulky pink bag of costumes between my knees and wonder how much longer I can do this.

By the time I walked into Visions, the sun had dropped and the heavy wet air glued my t-shirt to my sweaty stomach. In the locker room, I grabbed baby wipes for a quick bath and, having forgotten a towel, I ripped scratchy brown paper towels from the dispenser over the sink and dried off.

“Hey, it's that bitch with that hair.” Chloe, a local stripper with a cigarette in one hand and a Miller in the other slammed her locker beside me. Between her country Louisiana accent and her drunkenness, I barely understood her, but was happy to see her. “How's it out there today?” I asked. She was bowlegged and pretty in the face with defined cheekbones and a tough, sarcastic smile.

“I don't know about this luau,” she said. “They're drunk but they're not spending.”

“The worst kind of crowd,” I said. She mumbled something and walked back out onto the floor. New Orleans was dead in the summertime. It was also hurricane season, so to encourage business Visions hosted a luau—a Hawaiian meal-cum-feast.

I shoved a turquoise flower comb in my hair and prepared to throw my legs over my head and dance for the next seven hours. Visions had a skanky reputation, but it was my favorite club by far—my tried and true safe haven. I was never expected to touch dick or asked to by customers, even though people assumed that was the norm. Visions was a locals-only titty bar, and its sleaze factor worked in our favor. I walked out onto the floor like I was grateful to own the place and surveyed the land. Chloe tipped her beer in my direction and I became that bitch with that hair among the pulled pork, cheese cubes, and jambalaya on platters on top of the pool tables—buffet style for the luau.

All three bartenders were working, and the bar was packed with local dudes drinking a scary pink half-price rum drink, which explained why my shoes stuck to the floor when I walked over to the pool tables. I popped three purple grapes into my mouth, watching two customers eat cubes of cheese off a cocktail napkin and play the slots. I checked in with Eddie, my favorite DJ who was always quitting smoking. He was playing “Just Like Putty” by Jimmie Vaughan and chomping Big Red gum.

“You quit again?”

“And how,” he said. “Candy, you're up in three girls.”

“I'm feeling The Black Keys and Zeppelin,” I said, studying the potential classic rock diehards in the crowd. He knew this meant “Lies” and “Whole Lotta Love.” During my seven-minute set, Zeppelin fans walked up to the stage and tossed dollars in the air, heads knodding in sync to the rhythm. The stage was slick, and my heels were ground to the metal tips—like dancing on two ballpoint pens. A tall white guy wearing a baseball cap walked up to me. I noticed he preferred the older chicks, like the curvy black girl named Promise who's in nursing school and wore no makeup, and Marianne, a tall, thin girl with crazy black mermaid hair and three kids. The nurse frowned at me when Dennis talked to me, but I always smiled at her. I knew I must watch myself with the local girls—play extra nice and help them out once in a while, or they could fuck up my hustle by talking shit about me. I'd seen them shun outsiders and considered myself lucky to have slipped beneath their locals-only radar. Management told me I couldn't work on Thursday nights because only the local girls could get on the schedule that night.

On stage, I kept my gaze on the baseball cap guy. He grinned with his whole head. His tiny bright blue eyes stared out behind thick glasses. I squatted for dollars with my feet on either side of his head with my heels on his shoulders, then pushed my pelvis up towards the ceiling. Too exhausted to do more pole tricks, I cat-crawled on the wooden stage. When I glanced at the TV screens above the bar, I noticed the Saints were winning again, and the customers at Visions were ecstatic about it. An electrical current of euphoria buzzed. The Saints were rebuilding their spirit as I was rebuilding mine. I winced from the shooting pain in my neck and realized that I liked to swing around the pole and float upside down because floating was easier than landing. When I was onstage, I got a rush of happiness and monumental relief from knowing men desired me—knowing that I was desirable. I realize this was childish. It wasn't the real world, but it was the world I was in longer than any other.

“I'm Dan,” the guy said. Dan waited for me by the stage while I dashed into the manager's office and popped three Advil, then made the required rounds dancing on top of the bar.

A tall, curvy blonde who always danced to Michael Jackson and Madonna wore a black flower in her hair and a white, oversized men's dress shirt was dancing in front of me. She had a devious smile and great, thick legs. She did this thing with her boobs where she flexed her pectoral muscles and her boobs bounced one at a time. I followed her along the bar where we had to dance in front of every guy, which could take about twenty-five minutes, and if every guy tipped one or two bucks, we could make about eighty bucks right away. I liked to use stage time as a way to hook guys—flirt and coax them into a lap dance for the real money. That night, I was annoyed that I had to follow the blonde. She took her time. She was drunk. She was chatting and crouching in front of every single guy. She was taking forever. And she was doing her boob thing. I was pissed, and I was going to do something to get her to make a move.

I reached over and felt her tit with my right hand and smiled at the guy in front of her. “I've never made out with you,” she said to me, bewildered and ignoring the customers. I kissed her for a while, tongue and all. She tasted like sweet alcohol, which was unusual for me. The guys at the bar in front of us held out more than a few singles. We moved onto the next guys to do our kissing routine.

The blonde could kiss. I hadn't been kissed in a while. I hadn't realized how insanely lonely I was: devastated, furiously alone. I would've kissed a gator. The blonde pointed to the guys in front of us. “Not them, they're too country,” she said. I trusted her local instincts and danced for them on my own, grabbed the bars above me for balance and twirled around, bent over at my waist. When bent in half, I could touch the bar with my palms. A customer's hand touched my calf. Where else was I going to walk away with five or six hundred bucks on a Friday night? Where else were strangers going to tell me I'm intelligent and wonderful? How will I do anything else?

New Orleans showed me
how to do death. During Mardi Gras, locals dressed their dead up like a parade and marched through the streets, clapped hands, and danced wildly, covered in feathers and beads. I needed to jump into the arms of Death and celebrate the cycle of life. I walked graveyards and offered glitter nail polish to Marie Laveau. I needed a miracle to sew me up so I walked among the dead—the washed up hillbilly bones in graveyards of the poor. In New Orleans, death was an elaborate pageant that caused people to hop up and blow horns. Marching bands and Mardi Gras Indians came out into the streets, and I lunged into the middle of it.

Mardi Gras was gray and misty in New Orleans. I walked to the French Quarter to meet up with friends who were Mardi Gras pros. By 3:00
p.m.
the streets were frantic with marching bands and thousands of drunks in silly hats. They screamed at each other on balconies—threw green, purple, and gold sparkling beads. It was a mob scene of hot dog stands and plastic cups, including police roaming around perched atop their horses, surveying the crowd. They're only decoration, really, there's no order during Mardi Gras and all bets are off. On the ground, beads covered Bourbon Street and gathered in mud puddles right in front of The Bruiser, my next place of employment.

I surrendered to the mob scene. Dove in, clutched my wallet, and was carried into work by the crowd.

My soul belonged in
New Orleans, but the rest of me missed California. If I ever wanted to go back, I had to complete a diversion program to get the arrest stricken from my record. After a month of dancing, I longed for home: ripe oranges and figs from the trees in my backyard, organic cherry tomatoes, fresh squeezed carrot juice, and wheat grass shots in the caf
é
s in my neighborhood. Besides, California was my mom. I sensed her tucked inside the branches of redwoods like the fog. What was the other option? Move full time to New Orleans and be a forty-year-old stripper? I couldn't leave California entirely—I couldn't leave Mom behind. I was still in grad school and was writing papers, preparing a lecture, and completing my book-length manuscript on my days off. I promised her I'd finish grad school and had six months until graduation. I needed to get back to class for my upcoming residency. I missed my one-bedroom apartment in Silver Lake, with the monstrous avocado tree that tore up the sidewalk—its powerful roots shifted the ground beneath me, reminding me of earthquakes.

I read Faulkner, Lorrie Moore, and Mary Gaitskill. I learned that a comma goes inside the quotation marks. I learned that tension on the page is two people saying “No.” I devoured stories by Barry Hannah, Steve Almond, and Richard Yates. I was directed to vary my sentence structure. I studied with professors whose direction and input became deeply influential—not only in writing, but in life. They made a living reading stories and writing books, while I was having a stare down with forty—and dancing topless in New Orleans to pay rent in Los Angeles.

I packed a bag and flew back home, knowing I could skate a while on the dough I'd made in New Orleans, and knowing as long as I had enough for a flight back, I could make more.

44

I
had an 11:00
a.m.
appointment with the Alternative Justice Program back in L.A., which is how I could avoid jail time and a record. I needed to run on dirt. The sun was already white-hot by 8:00
a.m.
The light skipped across the water while lazy ducks floated around on the surface. On my run, I cooed at toddlers on jungle gyms and watched yoga moms with glorious ponytails stretch on mats in a bright yellow room. A man about thirty-five held a baby, walked, and talked on the phone. I wondered what that's like, to have a baby, and wondered if I missed out on that possibility.

My knees and hips made morning clicking noises as I warmed up. Lap number one was like the first cup of coffee. By the second lap, “good morning” blurted out of my mouth to everyone that passed by. The rain had just stopped after several days of downpour, so there were lots of runners out. I dodged brown puddles and mud.

I know how lucky I am. Years ago, when I worked at the law firm in Century City, during my endless commute, I used to stare at morning runners with envy.
I'd give anything to be able to get up and run every day,
I had thought.

I met with my young, Jewish lawyer in his office downtown. “You're pulling on Superman's cape,” he said. He asked me to stop writing about sex work until I completed the diversion program. I didn't want to pull on Superman's cape. I wanted to twist his balls off and eat them with gluten free pasta. I wanted to scream, “Fuck you, LAPD.” But I didn't want to return to jail where an eighteen-year-old girl sat twitching on my lap saying, “My daddy's in here, too, my dude is busted,” and, “I've been ho'ing since twelve.” I remembered the Latina woman on the toilet pulling a dirty pad out of her underwear and tossing it in the corner. All the voices chanting, “Are we going to court? Are we going to court?” Jail smelled like a kennel. Questions were thrown at me, “Why are you a prostitute?” The guard yelled, “You're staying the weekend. Push that buzzer again and I'll leave you in there.”

I pulled into the parking lot. My ads were no longer online, but I still had clients. I noticed an attendant directing a car out of a tight space. He didn't hand the driver an orange ticket or collect any money. My phone rang. I was eight minutes late but answered it anyway. A woman with a thick nasal Hispanic accent asked me, “Do you do couples? Are you available right now?” and “I'm a transsexual. Do you have a problem with that?” I could smell the meth through the phone. I'd never done a session with a tranny before and no, I didn't have a problem with that, but I smelled trouble. I felt trouble in my belly. “I'm not available right now. I have a screening process before we meet. Maybe we can talk tomorrow.” I knew the person on the other end of my phone wouldn't jump through my security hoops.

Twelve minutes late, I walked into a dark lobby and into a moldy elevator.
How does an elevator mold?
I found the right door where a note was posted that read: “Back in five minutes. Please wait” in Spanish and English. A Latina woman showed up with a trolly full of boxes. “We're moving files from a storage unit,” she said. I walked into the office, watching her carry the boxes into the office, then slide them onto the floor. I picked up a magazine and sat down. “I have to go to the restroom, so I have to lock the door,” she said. I didn't move.

“You can't be in here,” she said, annoyed with me. I was a criminal to her. A prostitute. A waste of time. An animal. I was paperwork to her. More files in more boxes to store and unload. I walked back into the hallway and waited for her return.

“You can come in now,” she said.

She wrote me a receipt, peeling my pink copy from her pad. Her handwriting was pretty and loopy, like my mom's. Anyone with penmanship that stunning should get the job, no matter how many times she left the “Back in five minutes” sign on her door.

She didn't ask me one question about my case, but complimented my black leather ankle boots. I forked over the fine: three hundred fifty-five bucks, most of which I borrowed from a friend. She handed me the paperwork.

“Take care,” she said, without looking up.

Three fifty awarded me a DVD and workbook for a class called “Think About It,” which was a take home, forty-page, multiple choice, third grade reading level workbook containing questions like: How to avoid violent behavior? Answer: Take an exercise class or go running. Don't pick up a pillow or take up boxing.

I refused to see clients unless I had seen them a few times already. I only had a couple happy ending regulars who called me once a month. I clenched my teeth and applied for a job at a juice bar. I wondered what it would take to quit this life. I was afraid that the detour I'd chosen would affect my life forever. I remembered, when I started stripping, hands crawled across my body like crabs and thick calloused fingers slipped beneath my g-string. I needed the money. I was in love with my speed dealer girlfriend. Sometimes I cried. It's never just about the money. I watched the other girls perform onstage in a way that appeared powerful and sexy, like they had emotional shellac that enabled them to shake off systematic rejection from men. I was snorting a quarter of meth a day and needed fast money so I learned how to mute my emotions—no one wants a topless dance from a crying stripper. I climbed from man to man no matter how I felt. There were come stains on my costumes, filthy fingers on my boobs, and beer breath in my face.

Sometimes I wish I had made a different choice when I was broke and feisty and alone. But I didn't. I became the hardest working dancer I could be. I learned how to extract blood from stone. I learned how to shut off. I put down the drugs and alcohol, only to develop an addiction to sex work. How would I get out? My friend Kara suggested I check out a massage parlor where the girls screened clients and had tight security. She knew a girl who managed the place and told me I should email her.

At home, I found the paperweight with the picture of my mom inside of it. My mom was about eight years old and wore braids. Her cheeks were lightly freckled and her face held the joy of a just bitten strawberry. Checkered red and white ribbons tied her long braids. She was such a pretty girl.