Spent (7 page)

16

F
rom our fishbowl, men's
faces wobbled and bobbed. Their blurry eyes darted in the darkness as they watched us dance behind the glass. When the money ran out, the black, rickety partitions slid down with a crash. Hot light bounced against the mirrored walls as I slid down the single brass pole one more time before stepping off the main stage.

My knees creaked from bending over in seven-inch stilettos, and my thighs burned from lifting them above my hips and pushing my pussy against the glass.

It was time for my shift in Private Pleasures. Through the satin red curtain was the bright white dressing room where I snatched my backpack out of my metal locker and filled it with dildos, lube, and a thin, black boa. I inhaled cum and bleach as I approached the cage, using a flashlight to guide me to the Private Pleasures booth. I dodged crumpled Kleenex scattered in corners of the hallway, but one caught on my shoe, and I scraped my heel across the floor to free it. The cage was near the front entrance to The Lusty Lady, where the shock of sunlight clobbered me the same way it would walking out of a matinee into daylight. I squinted and unlocked the employee entrance door, hung my turquoise robe on a gold hook, and crawled into the cage where it was always night. It wasn't big enough to stand up, just big enough to wiggle around on all fours on scratchy red carpet.

Inside Private Pleasures, I could speak with customers through a microphone from my side of the wall by pushing a silver button. They could talk too, but they had to feed the cash machine or else the wobbly window fell down, separating us by a thick wooden wall. I sprayed Windex on the windows until they were streak free. I arranged my three little dildos on the ledge from small to large and felt sorry for myself for having such an asshole for a girlfriend.

That morning, Marya and I were sitting in her Pepto-Bismol-pink kitchen drinking tea when she saw me shove the dildos into my backpack for work, which meant I intended to use them for my Private Pleasures gig.

“Why ours?” Marya asked. The steam from her tea wilted her green Mohawk. It slid over to one side.

“I make better tips if I show variety.” She lunged for a toasted poppy seed bagel, and her monkey tattoo bulged. She dipped a knife into the gob of fake butter between us. Our knees touched. Our dildo was a thick, bright dong with pin, marbled stripes—almost the same color as her greasy walls.
What kind of person chooses that color for walls
?

“Is it for Herbert?” she sneered.

“No. Herbert's a Morning Missile.” Herbert was also known as Zucchini Man. He was slim and brown with luxurious black, wavy hair, and he always wore one silver feather earring that dripped gracefully down his neck. He liked to contort himself like Gumby in a corner booth and balance on his shoulders so he could suck his own dick. After applauding him, we dancers watched him lift a zucchini the size of a body builder's forearm from a plastic bag and lower himself onto it. He showed up at 9:00
a.m.
, right when The Lusty Lady opened; and the 9:00
a.m.
clients were called Morning Missiles. I envied him for knowing exactly what he needed to feel desired and seen. His desire was a pure, direct arrow hitting my bisexual gut as I drifted from boys to women and back.

“Throw it away,” Marya said. A collection of poppy seeds gathered in her big teeth. She wanted to keep me to herself—or at least the cocks she fucked me with—but, like the last stick of bubblegum in a pack, I always came back wrinkled and soggy.

“What?” I munched the other half of her bagel.

“I bought it. Toss it.”

“I'll replace it.” I stood to leave and was halfway down the stairs when cold water soaked the back of my faded Pat Benatar shirt and mangled peonies splattered my platform boots. I turned around. Marya, the mellow, soft butch with deep dimples and bloodshot eyes—a lifeguard at an Elementary school—was shaking with rage. I slammed her front door shut, rattling the stained glass tulips, and vowed to do whatever the fuck I wanted with whomever the fuck I wanted—girlfriend be damned.

In Private Pleasures, I pushed the silver button which signaled to clients “I'm here,” but no one was waiting for me. Might as well masturbate. Then again, I could be paid to masturbate. When men watched me do dildo shows in the cage, I felt like I had a purpose.

Just as I pulled the oily cabbage rolls from their white takeout box, I heard the steady click of money being counted by the machine. The red digital display showed twenty-five bucks: my tip was five bucks on the twenty. The curtain lifted and a tall man with a wide forehead and noble nose stood in front of me. He waved delicately.

“Hi handsome. On your lunch break?” I said. The tall man wore a suit and a beige fedora. He stood in front of me but didn't speak. He had a rolling black suitcase next to him.
Must be staying at the Hilton
, I thought. He removed his clothes with care like Mister Rogers. He hung his pressed shirt on a fancy wooden hanger and placed it on the door handle. He got naked except for the hat. I could see his busy fingertips moving in the dark. He held scissors and a couple of large black garbage bags that he lifted out of his suitcase, and he began to cut the bags until he had one big flat piece of plastic. He taped the flat pieces together with tape and attached the whole thing to the wall behind him, like a tarp.

He bent over again then popped up holding an enema bag. He held it close to the window and dangled it like infomercial ladies do with porcelain kittens. I placed my hands on my cheeks with feigned surprise. The red digital clock buzzed, alerting the end of our time and the window slid down with its raspy crash. “Oh no,” I said. I heard an elbow smacking the door and the rustle of legs hit the wall. He put more money in and the window rose. Our eyes were glued together again.

He showed me that his enema bag was filled with water and he held it up with chalky white gloves. He placed his water bottle down onto the floor. I smiled politely at him. He smiled back with the same smile he gave his five-year-old son on mornings when he'd slice a ripe banana and toss it on top of his Rice Krispies. The same smile he gave his wife after a kiss on the forehead—the same smile I gave Marya that morning.

He inserted the enema bag into his behind and began pumping in the water. I could tell that he was getting full because his expression changed from thrilled to relieved to nirvana, then he cringed. “Oh my!” I said, trying to sound repulsed instead of delighted. I leaned back onto my elbows to watch him from my cramped glass box, cold and slim as a coffin. I opened my chilly legs and turned my rug-burned knees towards him. His eyes were closed. From the cage, my only requirement was to watch him—but I doubted my every gesture. I reached for the lube, wet my fingers with it, and moved them towards my pussy.

“Do you want me to play with myself?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

His expression moved to bliss again, and his forehead bumped against the glass. He vibrated and jerked with peppy violence—as if he were a dancing vessel to be filled up and emptied. His hat tipped and fell off, and his left hand held his cock. He bit the trial size packet of lube with his teeth and set it down on the ledge in front of us. I placed my palm on the glass for a half second, but he kept pulling away from the window—stretching the membrane between us.

Moments later, he came with his hand on his cock and his eyes to the ceiling, water and shit sprayed behind him—raining all over his tarp. He reached into his luggage for a roll of paper towels and wiped his ass. He threw the garbage bags into the trash can and cleaned his hands and legs with antibacterial wipes. He zipped his slacks, buttoned his shirt, and put on his coat and hat. He opened the door and knocked on my window with his clean knuckles. Then he walked towards the pure and silent sunlight.

17

A
tiny red light glowed
like a Jawa eyeball in the blackness of the one-way booth in the corner.

“Look at that. What is that?” I asked Star.

Dancing next to Star was like dancing next to an Amazonian Bond girl with magnificent natural boobs and a beautiful face. She had soft freckles and full lips, and ornate silver hoops twinkled from her earlobes. She was a belly dancing, fire eating, vegan, bisexual, world traveler. Star was one of many well-read, punk, bohemian dancers at The Lusty Lady, most of whom held college degrees and carried on non-monagamous relationships. Star walked over to the one-way booth towards the red light, where a special thick glass enabled customers the privacy of watching us while we couldn't see them. “You're being filmed,” she said to me. “Move over there.” She pointed to the other side of the stage. I drifted over to the other regular windows where two men in clown masks and noses bounced up and down wildly jerking off, oblivious to the confrontation happening onstage.

The music mostly drowned out our voices so Star was practically yelling, “I see you.” She blocked the window with her whole body. “Turn your camera off. I see you.” She put her elbows on the window to block his view. “Turn it off or we will have you thrown out.” She spun around and stomped offstage. I bent over for the clown guys who laughed and jerked, their wiry, frizzy wig hair moving in sync, bouncing in the air above them. A door slammed shut. The clowns left. “What happened?” I asked Star. She stood with one six-inch platform heel in a window ledge and moved her pale hips side to side.

“I told her guys are sneaking in cameras and filming us. They could do anything with that footage,” she said. Some girls who danced at The Lusty Lady peepshow had kids, teaching jobs, or partners who didn't know they worked here.

“What did she say?”

“She goes, Star, you need to understand if you're uncomfortable, then you can go work somewhere else.”

“Fuck,” I said.

“And I go: We are all uncomfortable with it. And, you need to know, I'm going to change things around here,” she says this to her reflection in the glass where a suit watched her long, strong legs spread for him. The stitches on my wrist had healed, but I still wore a black leather cuff to hide the angry red scar. I had removed the stitches myself with needle-nose pliers and rubbing alcohol the week before. I felt giddy, like something horrible and great was about to happen. I believed Star was going to change things, and I wanted to change things with her.

Management called a staff
meeting and it was during this meeting when I realized our labor war had begun. We brought up the problem with video cameras being snuck into the one-way booths, and our solution was to replace the one-way mirrors with regular glass. “It's too expensive to replace and customers like the one-ways,” they'd countered. They also didn't allow us to confiscate customers' cameras—even though the Mohawk boy did it anyway. The only thing management agreed to do was print out flimsy paper signs from their shitty printer with an image of a video camera crossed out and post them. They wouldn't make any waves, so we felt we had to.

Onstage, we made plans. “All they care about is moving customers through these doors,” Star said. I knew it was the truth.

“When I had bronchitis, I couldn't find anyone to cover me and I didn't get my raise,” Sybil said. Black girls were allotted fewer shifts and hardly ever worked in the Private Pleasures booth. Busty girls had to find busty dancers to cover their shifts. Black girls had to find other black girls to cover theirs. If we didn't find a girl to cover within our “type,” we would be missing from the schedule the following week as punishment. In response, we organized. We elected a union organizer and shop stewards. We hired an attorney and got to work. We dressed up in skimpy outfits and passed out free condoms in baskets on Market Street holding up signs that said “Support Your Local Stripper.” Our community buzzed with the delight of making change happen, but we showed up to work churning with anxiety. If show directors caught us talking onstage, they would write us up. They fired us for tiny infractions while we researched unions and union busters. Management used every single tactic in the union-busting manual including a poster-sized check for ten grand made out to the union with a sign that said, “Don't write this check,” implying that union dues would break the bank, and we'd be better off without the union.

My work place had become a chaotic war zone, but one in which we felt strong and bonded by our determination. We were going to make the world a better place for strippers. We were also scared of the possible repercussions. We taped flyers to the mirrors in the dressing room that said “Bad Girls Like Good Contracts” and left a copy of the book “Confessions of a Union Buster” on the dressing room table. My legs ached from riding my bicycle from the Lower Haight to North Beach in order to avoid being even one minute late, which would get me fired. Velvet whispered to me “watch it. There are moles onstage.” Later that day, Summer was fired for talking onstage about the union. She had a young son and no other job. We walked out in protest and stayed out of the club for forty-eight hours, scared and broke. Our rage only made us fight harder. In the Private Pleasures Booth, I procured support from my regular clients, like Speculum Man. He always brought his favorite dancers toys and kept them at the front desk in Ziplocs with notes. I did a show for him in Private Pleasures and then we made plans to meet up across the street at The Onion where we gathered signatures from clients and friends to support our union, played pool, and talked about wanting our basic rights. During one lockout, Star arranged for one of her devoted clients to do a show with us outside. He wanted to take us to a construction zone where we would cover ourselves in mud. For a day of posing for him in the hot sun we would make a few hundred bucks each. Afterwards, as I cleaned my ears with a pile of Q-tips, I was elated by the feeling of being unified inside and outside of the club. I called Mom.

“Mom, we are trying to unionize at my job.”

“The clothing store?”

“No, the place where I took you—the club where I dance. A girl got fired the other day for talking about our union. So we are on a lockout.”

“Honey. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Remember that.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

The dispute took months of long negotiations and meetings. They tried to tire us out by protracted delays in order to test us—to see if we really wanted to go through the trouble to unionize. During one of many tedious contract negotiation meetings, we demanded that they rehire Summer. After several months, we won our election 75-15, becoming SEIU Local 790: The Exotic Dancer's Alliance. The Lusty Lady was the first strip club in the United States to successfully unionize. By then, I had already moved over to the full-contact lap dancing clubs to make the real money. But knowing we had won made me dance with a new determination and confidence that I'd never before associated with stripping. I was proud to strip and felt like a member of my community of dancers.