Adventures of the Artificial Woman (5 page)

W
hen first on her own Phyllis had no address. She could not use most of what was offered by an abode. She did not eat, sleep, or require a bathroom. Heating and air conditioning were personally meaningless to her.

To charge her batteries a source of electrical power was necessary periodically. She used the 110-volt outlets provided at public-library tables for laptops needing a boost, where the other patrons were scholarly solipsists.

She spent a good deal of time at libraries, doing research into show business, in trade papers or on the internet. She learned that even to get a toe in the door could not be done without acquiring an agent, but little was more difficult than persuading one to sign you on unless you already had some work, which situation was another of the apparent absurdities in human affairs.

But before looking for an agent, she had to establish a reliable means by which he could get in touch with her if he found her a job. Having no home and lacking the money with which even to rent a room, she had no telephone.

At first a public phone on a street corner seemed to be the answer, but in choosing the right one she attracted the interest of some other women walking nearby. They were prostitutes. As soon as they determined that Phyllis was not the competition, they became friendly with her and, illogically, invited her into their ranks, another of the absurdities almost routine when trafficking with human beings.

At the outset, Phyllis thought practicing this profession temporarily might provide her with an income with which to acquire a domicile where she could have a telephone. As a whore she would have certain strengths peculiar to a nonhuman: immunity to disease or pregnancy, tirelessness, and a constitutional incapacity to be offended physically, emotionally, or morally by any demand.

But it turned out that streetwalkers were handled by agents known as pimps, who wore elaborate clothing and cruised in gaudy cars, and according to the working girls to whom Phyllis spoke, commandeered the moneys so earned, returning to them only meager allowances.

This arrangement, which made no sense to Phyllis, because the pimp brought them no customers, all of whom the girls hustled themselves, was however perfectly agreeable to the hookers who were her informants. “He really love us bitches,” said Lily, six feet tall counting the height of the red wig, to which Ashley, shivering in her skimpy satin teddy on a 40-degree night, added, “And we motherfucking love that daddy. It's a family, Phyl, you know what I'm sayin'?”

But Phyllis could see no advantage for herself in this calling. She also learned that selling one's body for sexual purposes was illegal though lending it for free was not. Human beings could also legally sell their own blood.

Ashley did make one suggestion that seemed viable, namely, that Phyllis might want to try her luck at a strip club with what looked like a good body that hopefully, unlike Ashley's own, was unscarred by surgery done by butchers and free of the track marks conspicuous on Lily's skin-and-bone forearms.

 

“Nice tits. Now drop your drawers,” said Eddie, a balding man wearing a dark suit over a black T-shirt, behind a desk in the office of a club called Flashes.

Phyllis removed her underpants. Eddie's office had dark-green walls on which photographs of naked female performers were displayed, along with a calendar, advertising a firm called Currier & Ives, which bore a picture of persons of a bygone age about to enter a vehicle to which a team of four-footed, long-legged animals was hitched. No doubt there was an explanation for this picture. Phyllis was at her greatest disadvantage when asked to deal with the past, having so brief a one of her own.

“Great ass,” said Eddie, indicating, with a revolving motion of a hairy crooked finger, that she should turn. “Know what I like about your bush is you don't have a bikini burn.” He made a shrug that involved his thick neck and shadowy chin. “Phyllis, is it? Okay, Phyl, you can go on soon as you get an outfit, which you pay for. Understand, no money ever goes from the club to you. The girls are all amateurs, not employees. You don't get no benefits—health, vacations, that shit. But you keep all tips, and they are up to you so long as you don't break the law, which is you can't touch a guy's cock with your hands and he can't touch your tits or pussy with his. Between sets you go into the audience and do lap dances, rub your lower body against his clothed crotch, but he can't expose his dick.”

“I am stripped completely nude?”

“That's right, you're naked but he ain't. Also, you can't jerk him off with your hand but you can get him off with your ass. Makes sense to the lawmakers, I guess, and undercover cops come in from time to time to check. We generally recognize them, but we got to be careful because at this time they're not on the take and could bust you and close us down…. It's risky to make dates to meet off the premises if money's involved. You could be charged with prostitution.”

“The club makes its income from the cover charge and the drinks?” Phyllis had observed that financial matters ranked among the most important in human connections, probably because they were easier than emotions and morality to quantify.

“You got it,” said Eddie. He opened a desk drawer and groped within, at last finding and passing on to Phyllis a little printed card. “Where our girls get their stage outfits. Give 'em this and get ten percent discount. Now the only thing left to know is you don't have to blow the bouncers for free, irregardless of what they tell you. They bother you too much for sexual favors, just let me know. As for me, that's my old lady who's the cashier. Nuff said?” He showed very white teeth in a probable smile.

 

The performer did not simply take off her clothes when she came onto the stage at the far end of the club. While slowly stripping, the removal of each garment taking as much as a minute, she danced to the loud music that came over the public address system. For some this had a fast tempo and spirited rhythms, but other girls moved to slower, more measured accompaniment. When asked her preference, Phyllis had not had any. She could not understand why men who wanted to look at naked women needed all the unnecessary hocus-pocus attending what should have been the simplest of events.

Also, she had never danced and had difficulty in making order of what she saw the other girls doing, most of which motions seemed to have no organic relation to those used in walking. The music, of whichever sort, was more hindrance than help.

Phyllis had to get a loan from a reluctant Eddie to buy a costume at the fancy-underwear shop he recommended, two doors from the club: fishnet stockings supported by a black-lace garter belt under which was a black satin cache-sexe, the strings of which converged into one in the furrow between her buttocks. Above the waist she wore a filmy bra through which her breasts were visible but could be made even more conspicuous by folding back little panels that covered the apertures through which her nipples protruded. Though the dancer was almost bare to begin with, the prevailing style was deliberately to remove garment by garment, taking much more time than should have been needed to undress, but as Phyllis observed, it apparently did not annoy the audience of men, which began with those seated immediately around the U-shaped stage, the floor of which was low enough for them to lean their forearms on it, with fists clutching paper money. From time to time the performer would crouch before a man waving a bill and rapidly thrust her pelvis toward him, withdrawing it as quickly. On average she repeated the movement thrice before leaving her groin in the extended position until he inserted the bill behind the patch of satin concealing her genital organ—without, according to Eddie, touching the flesh with anything but the money, on pain of violating the law and being expelled by the bouncers.

Phyllis had carefully observed the girls who performed before her, and when it was her own turn to go on she made an initial effort to imitate them, but could not quickly catch on to dancing, which, if she tried too strenuously, threatened to take her back to the early days when Ellery was training her to walk, when she had often fallen to the ground. Who would repair her if she damaged herself now? So she confined her movements to a vigorous stride around the U, undressing as she went, and when nude she knelt before the nearest man brandishing a greenback.

He wore eyeglasses and graying sideburns. His nose was sharp with exasperation. “Where am I supposed to put it?”

Phyllis relieved him of the problem by taking the bill with her fingers.

After she had done the same with two more customers, Eddie looked out from backstage and gestured for her to come to him. “Listen, Phyl, you ain't makin' it. Go out and do some lap dances instead.” He told her to collect her garments and put them on. “You can sit facing the customer with your legs spread and rub your titties in his face, or you can spread
his
legs and get inside them and rub your crotch against his dick. Or you can turn and sit down facing away and grind your ass into him. Collect the tips soon as you sit down, and then get some more from him if you stay more'n three minutes. Don't quote a price, but you don't have to accept less than you want. Also remind him he's got to buy a drink every ten minutes. The waiters are the bouncers, and vice versa.” He smiled at her. “You never done any of this before, have you? What are you, some college student? I never asked for ID, was I wrong?”

“I'm not legally underage.”

Eddie chuckled. “Know how I knew that? I can tell a girl's age within two years by one look at her snatch.” He raised his eyebrows. “I mean it. I seen so many!”

Phyllis made her way as far from the stage as possible, suspecting that the customers who sat at tables in the twilit rear might constitute a better market than those closer to the dancers, who would be more interested in looking. A burly bouncer-waiter had just placed a bottle of beer in front of a frail-looking little fellow in a suit jacket that rose up and away from the back of his collar.

“
Twenty
dollars? Twenty for a bottle of domestic beer?”

The waiter pointed with a carrot-sized finger. “Get the fuck out.”

“I'll pay,” the little man said. “But I can complain, can't I?”

The waiter seized the extended bill. “No!” He lumbered away.

“How do you like that?” the man said to Phyllis. “I don't know why they have to be nasty in places that have to do with sex.”

“I think it's because these places are somewhat degrading. Many of the clients would not like it widely known that they come here, the married ones for obvious reasons, and even the single men would probably want to be discreet about it, because people might get the idea that they are incapable of normal sexual relations. So those who run these establishments feel superior to their clientele.”

“Are you the house philosopher?” the man asked. He pushed his chair away from the table and patted his narrow lap. “Put it right there.” She stayed where she was. “Oh, that's right,” said he, producing a bill that even in the dim light Phyllis could see was a ten. But two of those she had collected on stage had been tens. Surely a lap dance was worth more.

“How much do you want, then?” the man asked.

“I'm not a prostitute.”

When he held out another ten, she sat down on him and brought her clothed breasts against his face. He pushed her far enough back to converse and, though the nearby tables were empty, spoke in an undertone. “I'll pay another twenty if you slip your hand into my fly and jack me off.”

“That's against the law,” said Phyllis.

“Only you and me will know.”

“Do you want me to grind my behind into your groin?”

“Let's go somewhere private and you give me head. It's worth fifty to me.”

“The rubbing with front or back is the only thing that's allowed here.”

“Why?”

“It's the law,” said Phyllis. “As you know very well. You're an undercover policeman.”

“You're nuts.”

Her hasty departure from the man's lap brought the waiter-bouncer. “Your ass is grass, pal.”

“Step back, bonehead,” said the smaller man, rising from the chair with a badge in his hand.

“Yes, sir. You bet.” The bouncer rapidly left the neighborhood.

“You lucked out, baby,” the detective told Phyllis. “See you around.”

“I never break the law if I know what it is,” said she. “That's the way I was made.” When he was gone she counted her money and, finding she had accumulated fifty dollars, found Eddie in his office.

“You're quitting already?”

“This is really not for me. It might be otherwise if I could dance.”

Eddie grinned at her. “There's something different about you, Phyl, though I can't put my finger on it. Listen, you just leave the outfit in the dressing room, and I'll call us even.” His grin widened to reveal the tips of his canine teeth. “We own the lawnjeray shop too. I'll keep the fifty, and you can take the g-string with you.” He was of course not aware that she was incapable of soiling any intimate garment, nor did she perspire. He accepted the money, though not without counting it. “So, whatya going to do now, Phyl?”