Strip (16 page)

My life-saving smile barely hid my embarrassment. I wanted to crawl under their table, admit defeat, wave a white tissue and then flee. Some of them smiled sympathetically, and the others looked away. The song ended. No one spoke to me. Some of them spoke to each other. Then one of them handed me five bucks. All I wanted to do was apologize. Even worse, Louis, the owner, was sitting at the bar watching. “You 'aaave to do somet'ing about your dick. Marcel, he tell me you 'aaave a nice dick.” Black light made his false teeth look yellow.

“I do.”

“Somet'ing like dat costs
me
you know. You, too. I can't afford dat. Doz girls pay my mortgage every time they order another round of drinks. Be dirty. You gotta be dirty.”

I didn't think that I would have more worries here. Ballet was worth obsessing over, not stripping.

The rest of the audience was made up of men. The women had left quickly and quietly—definitely not contributing to Louis's mortgage—probably to be up early for work, and to tell everyone at the bank about the shrivelled dancer. I didn't end up table dancing again that night. Bobby said guy strippers were busier on the weekends, with couples and women in groups. Part of me wanted to rise to the challenge, and the other part wanted to take a flying leap off the honeymoon parapet of the Chateau Frontenac.

Then Steve was at my shoulder. “Sorry about the song.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It's short, that's all.”

“Not the only thing that's short. It took forever.”

“I didn't want you to suffer your first time out.”

“It just didn't inspire.”

“Don't worry gorgeous. I had a good time, all alone in that booth. Know what I mean? Every first timer goes through it. Don't worry.” He patted me on the back. “You're a fresh one. And the sooner you stop worrying about your dick the better. Your dick is your friend. That's my only piece of advice. Make it everybody's friend. It all comes from there, buddy: before, during and after. All you have to do is smile, maybe give them a bit of Bette Davis eyes. Get it?”

Downstairs the others walked me through Marcel's steps for the second show. By now all of my co-workers had seen most of my white butt and some of the rest of me or no doubt heard about it—I avoided eye contact. No one seemed to care. It was time for another costume change tornado of spandex, Mylar, sequins and feathers. The second show was completely different, but just as gaudy. The third, at 1:30, was a repeat of the first. Since the room was almost empty by then, I ended up playing it to Steve in his booth. He was my biggest fan at this point. His bleached curls and capped teeth glowed every time he leaned near the black light—the mysterious non-light that was the enemy of falseness. Later most of the girls started looking tired, drunk or stoned, although they still managed on their heels, except Nadine, who collapsed on the back staircase with her drink, leaving a mess of blood and spilled vodka on her legs and hands, crying and babbling. Vasili hoisted her into the change room.

By 3:30
a.m.
we had all changed, girls had wiped their mascaraed eyes, makeup cases were shut, outfits hung. Boyfriends and tricks showed up and the last of the drunks were digging absent-mindedly for their car keys in the lining of their coats. When the bar lights went on, the spell was broken; the room was a sea of chipped tables and scratched worn chairs, the girls were pink-eyed and pasty. I had no idea what I looked like, but it couldn't have been much different.

Suzette's guy showed up in leather and a motorcycle helmet with a little boy, maybe six or seven years old, in leather, too. “These are my babies,” Suzette squealed. “I thank the Mother of God he didn't destroy my career at childbirth. Thank the blessed Virgin my tits don't sag, though God knows he sucked hard enough on them, harder than you, eh,
ma beau
? Can't believe I'm putting myself t'ru it all again.”

Marcel told me that Patrice, the magician, would drive me home. “It's murder getting a cab out here, and it's expensive.” But with no tips I wouldn't have had to worry about a cab because I would have been walking.

“It sucked tonight,” Marcel said.

I gave Marcel a light kiss on the cheek, trying to avoid a mouthful of hair—“I'll see you tomorrow night”—and followed Patrice out to his waiting carriage. We only spoke French, and then only minimally, since we both may have feared being misunderstood. Conversations grew in length as we got to know each other. “Une belle soirée.”

“As-tu passé une bonne soirée?”

“Ah oui, mais les clients ce soir étaient tellement tranquilles.” Gradually some of the French I heard, seeming at first incomprehensible, started to sink in. Phrases would come up at the oddest times—calice, tabarnak, tabarnouche. I had no idea what they meant but curiosity sent me running to a dictionary or to ask someone at the club. Grammar was out of the question as far as anyone helping me; you just said what you said and they'd figure it out. Most of the time we just said fuck, or
ça va
, as a question or a comment.

Patrice could have been Liberace's long-lost poor cousin. His teeth were big, like Louis the owner's—big capped ones. (Dad could have cleaned up in this town.) Patrice's streetwear was a step up from his costume, minus the squirting plastic flower and the extra wide tie. He wore a white leather go-go cap,
à
la Petula Clark, from the sixties. On his pointy manicured fingers, all ten of which clutched and kneaded at the steering wheel, he wore big, showy rings with huge rhinestones. This was all brought together with a white leather bomber, not the trench coat, and a scarf. Whenever I looked over at him while he peered into the dark empty route, I saw something sad, protected and fragile about him.

He ended up driving me home every night, and one night we stopped at his tiny house (even in the dark I could see it was fuchsia and lime green, with a Virgin Mary in an upright bathtub in the front yard) to meet his mother who didn't go to bed until he rolled in, but was happy to sit in the kitchen smoking, stroking their hairy cat Pirate (“pee-rat”) and listening to the radio. I realized this was the obligatory meeting for a one-sided courtship. She looked at me with the same enthusiasm one does at a vase full of flowers well past their prime. Here it was, four in the morning, when the entire company back in the West was resting from a full day of repertoire, lovers all over the world were entwined in one another's bodies, dancers were swatting suitors away like flies, and I somehow found myself auditioning for some sixties gender-blur's vicious mother in Vanier.

Sometimes we'd stop at a diner, Le Rosier Flamant, with a burned-out buzzing pink flower above the door. I guess my companionship was my payment for the drive home, and though I felt like a hostage at 4
a.m.
, he'd usually buy me a banana split (I didn't mind the extra calories as I had been on my feet for at least eight hours) while he nursed a cigarette. The first time we went there he read my palm. Held it. Tickled it. I wished he'd stop. I wasn't going to sleep with him for a free ride.

Anyway, he managed to read my palm and tell my fortune. He saw that someday I would have money. In slow French he told me my past and my future: “Tu étais une danseuse Russe…” He said I was a Russian ballet dancer in a past life. A female, a ballerina. That's why my expectations of a lover were very high. And my father in that life was a domineering tyrant—wanted me to be a star more than I ever did. That's why I have had trouble with male authority figures. I didn't need a past life for that kind of insight. “Mais c'est l'amour, qui vous donnerais de la peine…” But it's love that will cause me much pain and sadness. He told me I would be at my best when I had love, and even better when it came from one person, a man, and not just an audience. He said I was smart, sensitive and I worried too much, and I tried too hard to analyze my life. He scolded me, too: “Don't t'ink so much about your dick.”

At home, I wondered if Kent was tucked in on the other side of that four-foot-thick, four-hundred-year-old wall as I washed the layers of smoke and sweat off of my body, working my way down from my stiff hair, my clogged nose and ears, my sticky ass (I must have sat in something at some point), arms, legs—disgusting and so satisfying at the same time. Many nights I was a little drunk and always dead tired, and would be hypnotized by the water swirling around my black swollen feet. The only time I ran a bath was when I figured I wouldn't fall asleep in it and drown. After I scrubbed myself clean, I left the tub coated with a brown filthy film.

My one prayer before bedtime was that the sky would stay dark until I fell asleep, but the world was already into a new day as the old, ragged, sweat-soaked, sometimes bloody and tear-filled night vanished into the shadows. There was always the music coming through the floor from the café downstairs while they were baking for the morning, twisting
pain au chocolat
and croissants—letting the baguette dough rise near the warm hearth, then punching it down.

 

 

Five

A dancer's back forms
the part of the core that embraces and defines space and negative space. On the way down, the spine can curve into itself or reach to superhuman degrees, carrying the trunk to the earth to fold the torso against the legs, and then roll up again in one fluid motion, while the blood rushes back to the dancer's head. Then the hand, joined by an invisible thread above the centre of the sternum guides the spine back, while the trunk, bracing to hold the curve, opens the chest to the heavens.

 

At eight, the alarm
ripped into a sleep where I was dreaming I was trapped onstage in one of Madame's ballets, wandering aimlessly with dancers dressed as squirrels, chipmunks and skunks, all with bare bums showing through their costumes. I was naked and the audience was laughing me offstage. I knew Madame would tear me apart when I returned to the wings, so I started to dress onstage.

I picked myself up off the mattress after barely four hours of too deep of a sleep. I showered again. Cold. Hot. Cold. My head spun and my heart banged. Although I walked to the studio to warm my muscles, it didn't matter, Madame immediately saw how tired I was and gave all of us one of her killer classes—an old trick, not just limited to Madame: the more tired you are, the more complicated and strenuous they (regisseurs, ballet masters and mistresses) will make it. I tried to ignore everything about Madame—her mood, her games, her shouts—except her instructions. With my fatigue I had lost all patience for her temper. But I had also lost my sense of balance: my back was full of knots, my hips and hamstrings ached, and my calves and Achilles tendons rebelled. If she wanted me to think I was a shitty dancer, less capable than her Jean-Marc, then she was right and for once I didn't care. I had to survive; Madame was no longer necessary for that survival, so I ignored her.

That afternoon we rehearsed
Pinocchio
, the lead played by Bertrand with me as Geppetto, a role that demanded I lift Bertrand over my head in joy as he becomes a boy. But hoisting Bertrand's 160 solid pounds over my head finally finished me off. It was three o'clock, the end of our day, when he was over my head and when my back froze. Madame got the last word; she told me to stay and take a class with the little girls who come in after school—an offer that mixed me with joy and panic. How would I teach these girls and also squeeze in some rest before the club? Would I be able to quit the club and teach regularly? It never rains but it pours. Why had I thought she hated me when she was offering me this?

“It will do you good to return to the basics.” When I realized she didn't want me to teach the class, I swallowed a “Fuck off,” to the linoleum floor.

I walked back toward the Old Town, hoping to loosen up before I got home. I limped through the gates, slowly climbed rue Sainte-Ursule, passed Kent's door, passed the café, prayed for the day when I could sit there again and have whatever the hell I wanted—café au lait, hot chocolate, sugar pie—and just stare at the wall for a very long time.

At four I put my head on the pillow and closed my eyes until the alarm went off four hours later, at 8
p.m.
I reached the phone and called Kent. “Can you come over?”

“Should I bring wine?”

“Something stronger. I have to work and I can't get up.”

I crawled to the door to unlock it and lay there until he arrived. “I brought rum.”

“Walk on my back.”

“Naked or…”

“Barefoot, and all your weight.”

“I didn't know you were into this.”

“Lots you don't know. Oh my GOD that feels good.”

“You sure you're okay? What happened anyway?”

“Pinocchio needs to learn to jump up, not on.”

“Sounds dirty. Did you know the feet and dick brain functions are very closely related? Probably why you love dancing, come to think of it. We'll have to put that theory to the test, um, to the testes.”

“Please don't make me laugh in this condition. Do you know that in just a few months I've gone from thinking about penises the average amount of times in a day…”

“Six thousand?”

“I didn't tell you I have to strip.”

“You sound like you didn't expect it.”

“I didn't.”

Kent sat beside me, his white, veined feet close to my face. “It wasn't obvious?”

“Well it's a disaster. I shrivel up whenever I have to get naked. I'm going to get fired from a last-resort job.”

“Can you call in sick? I'd give you
un massage
.” He squatted, and I pulled myself up his backside. “Be careful, we both don't need bad backs.” I hung onto his shoulders and he walked me to the shower.

“First you need a rum and Coke and then you need something to perk you up. He fixed us each a strong drink and then he rummaged through my summer stuff, grabbed some painter pants and a billowy striped shirt, all stuff I had thrown together for the act.

“Where'd you get this stuff? It is so
rummage sale
. I love it.”

“Sally Ann. For emergencies. Parties I'll never get invited to.”

“I knew a woman called Sally Ann. Imagine naming your kid that. Anyway, get rid of it. You don't want lice. You can go through my closets. You'll find a thing or two from my clubbing days. Wait a minute, these are my clubbing days. What the hell am I doing here? The eighties were supposed to be my decade. But then again, so were the seventies.”

He walked me to the bus. “I think we need to talk about this as a career choice, and why it might not be a good idea.”

I leaned on him and wanted to cry. “Some other time.”

“Now don't worry about your cock. Just don't do any coke. It'll make those gorgeous big balls dry up like raisins—in your case, prunes.”

“Maybe it's you who should strip. Heck, I'd watch.”

“And if this is what you want then you better stop walking like a dancer.”

“But my back.”

When your back is better, relax your chest, your back, your ass, your dick. You dancers are such an uptight bunch. It's like everyone has to know that you're a dancer. Why? I mean look at Daniel. I hate to say it…”

“I already told myself that, and now I can't walk at all. And what do you mean
if this is what I want
?”

“It's just that you seem pretty tied up in this new job. Don't you want to dance?”

This was the first time I'd felt really humiliated since I'd stripped for that table of eight women. Something or someone always manages to force you to stop and take a good long look at yourself when you least expect it.

“Spend the bus ride thinking about me locked to your dick.”

“I'll get a hard-on.”

“Exactly.”

“I can't table dance with a boner.”

“Why not?”

“It's against the rules.”

“You just have to take advantage of that lead in your pencil.”

“You're an angel.”

He waited for the bus to leave. He shoved his tongue in his cheek, mimed a blow job. I forced a grin, ignored onlookers—he had meant well.

You need talent for many things, especially to sleep well on a bus. If you arrange your bones and muscles in a certain way, you won't wake up with a stiff neck. I bent my elbow so my head rested against the wedge it created, with my forehead pressed to the window. It was a job, for Christ's sake. I didn't want to do anything at this point other than survive. I closed my eyes on that bus ride—thought about my body, my ass, my cock—while the rum went to work. I saw the colour red flowing into my crotch and burning up into my back and down into my thighs. I relaxed my stomach for the first time in years and breathed deeply. I thought of what Kent said, thought of my posture—saw myself walking like the oafish football players from the university—feet turned in, shoulders hunched—stubby hands on each other's asses. That got me hard. I thought my way into Bobby's body: his walk, his posture, his confidence. I thought of Madame's girls and Bertrand and Jean-Marc. I thought of all of the dancers I'd ever seen walking down the sidewalk, flocks of them, eating in restaurants, sitting in the audience on an off-night, backs straight, eyebrows raised, as if a conductor's baton had accidentally been shoved up their asses to their stubborn thick skulls.

As a dancer I have always used the mirror—checking my arches in any position, assessing my line with quadriceps flexed, gauging the degree to which I can turn my thigh in my pelvis to keep my lines long and flowing. All of those things dancers obsess over and hate because they are never good enough. Now, before going off to my night job, I would have to look at myself from every other angle. How to stand? Pelvis forward? Legs turned in? Or better, the bas-relief of Nijinsky's
Sacre de Printemps
—if Nijinksy did it, surely I could, for part of my waking hours. I would have to relax all the parts of me that were so tightly held and held together, as a dancer. I would present the hips and relax the shoulders to create bulk in my chest and accentuate the width of my back; cave in so that everything was drawn toward the earth. But in the morning when I woke I would have to rise as a dancer again, with everything corporeal the exact opposite, pointing toward the heavens. From now on, I vowed, I would leave the dancer at home every night, and take the stripper to the Chez Moritz.

 

At the club, Marcel
supplied sympathy and Scotch and Coke. Most of the other dancers were already well into the more sophisticated substances. Some of them, especially the circuit girls who stayed at the motel next door, showed up at work in bad condition, and Louis would send them away if he happened to notice.

Tonight everyone seemed to want to get involved with me: Mer
la
, a seamstress, showed up once or twice a week in our change room with an open suitcase full of outfits—latex, spandex, neon and fishnet—bikinis,
g
-strings, fun-fur stockings, boas—wraparound, pull-away, Velcro or zippered—micro-minis to body stockings. Early that evening, the girls surrounded me, wide-eyed, and presented me with one of Mer
la
's
g
-strings. It was metallic black with shiny scallop shell sequins, the size of fingernails, on the front. There were small hooks and eyes on the side for quick removal.

Mer
la
's assistance reminded me of my mom. Once when my university football team had an away game in my hometown, I got to come home as a cheerleader, doing my folks proud as the successful son home from university for the weekend. I slept off one too many vodkas and orange juice in my room while my mother stitched to the classics. When I left on Sunday she gave me my cheerleading uniform cleaned, and with the stripes Velcroed back on. The stripes had shrunk in the wash, bunching where they were attached to the pants. But now, thanks to the Velcro, the stripes could be pulled away before going in the wash, or as part of my act.

That night, over Mer
la
's
g
-string, I wore the bleached painter pants from the Sally Ann and the wide, blue-striped dress shirt from Goodwill that made me look like a popcorn vendor. It went with my white jazz shoes, borrowed but never returned from a humpy, closeted Company-wannabe we had all taken bets on to see how long until he came out. He left in a huff when I became soloist, but I later heard he saw the big pink light and is living it up in Manhattan, trying to get into the Joffrey.

Over the next three nights, my back loosened up. I slept in four-hour shifts and dreamt only of more sleeping. One night when I got home there was a pair of leather shorts and a studded wristband hanging on my door handle, and another night some dumbbells, courtesy of Kent's connection at Kresge's no doubt. I guess everyone knew the rule of thumb: stripping was just costume changes to get to the goods. It certainly wasn't cheerleading, where I drank with the guys, slapped their backs and their asses, wore a uniform—the crest, the banner, the sweater—and jumped around trying to convince myself I cared about the green and white. All I actually cared about then was the booze, and with enough early morning Saskatchewan Sunrises it was easy. I cheered my pompoms off, popped around the field, carried the girls, made pyramids, human caterpillars, bridges, bad gymnastics, you name it, all done half-drunk.

But that one time I pulled off my sweater to cool down, a wolf whistle combined with two or three half-time Saskatoon Berry Purple Jesuses were all it took to get me going. The band woke up and played a spirited rendition of that old standard, “The Stripper.” Off came the tie, the shirt, the pennant. My belt, oooh. I shook my pompoms between my legs. My shoes arced through the air. Who gave a fuck about the game? We were all dizzy drunk, laughing at my pink body steaming in the cold, and I had their attention for a whole minute. My clothes lay in a clump. I was small-town famous.

When football season finally ended, I sobered up and spent cold Saturdays after dance class walking along the river. I had had one awkward time with Drake, the ballet master. We never talked about it, and barely looked at each other because of it. He lived in a small wood bungalow on the outskirts of a suburb that stared onto blank prairie, with his policeman paying him visits from Regina most weekends. And I preferred to be alone, hoping some confused jock would give in to his urges. Then, as now, I wanted to lie next to someone.

I tried to squeeze into the leather shorts Kent had left late that night, and the wristband, and strutted around my place half done up before falling onto the mattress.

 

Saturdays meant two extra
hours of sleep before going to Mihalis's gym in Lower Town and being surrounded by deformed mammoth men who walked as if they were balancing trays on their chests, even when they were relaxed. (This was not a posture to which I would aspire.) It was my day to blast my stripper muscles with bench presses for my chest, chin-ups, dips and curls for my arms. The lower half had the day off. My thighs, rump and calves were the envy of the gym. But watching this parade of guys around me, climbing on each other to squeeze out one last calf raise was an education. It was all form, size and shape, hindering any type of function. The change room dynamic was unlike any other: eyes met eyes, eyes roved over body parts to openly appreciate, compare and admire. It was as if they wanted me to stare.