Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (12 page)

I get my share of special cases—customers with silk teddies under their business suits, or carrying a lunch box with a dildo clipped in where the thermos would be. More than these men want to look at me, they want me to look back. They furtively dart into my booth, obtain witness, then skid out on their pall of shame and perversion.

While I perform I silently taunt the men, revolted by their hostile neediness. Their bodies don't bother me—I only see what I want to, the scuff on a shoe, the loop of a jowl, the sweep of a raincoat. It's the talking I can't stand. I don't want access to their interior life in any way—and I certainly don't want them in mine. When they try to get to know me, who I am, what I'm really like, they are immediately rebuffed. No sale. I suppose I should feel "degraded" when they prefer to see me naked, but I am relieved to be just a body. I am safe hiding behind this flesh, this husk.

After several moves around the Lower East Side, I finally get a passable place to live—a run-down one-bedroom on East 11th Street. Deb, who let me stay in her apartment when I first got to town, was evicted after she came back from tour, so when my fifth roommate runs off to Florida on a coke bender, she moves in with me. A tiny person with brown saucer eyes and curiously intelligent hands, she sits on the steps of the loft over the living room that I sleep in and we talk for hours about the lives that we're trying to carve out, though I'm floundering more than carving. I guess I'm finding myself, if finding one's self means traveling with bands, dating stupidly, club-hopping, crafting bad performance projects, sleeping late, and shopping nonstop. Deb, seven years my senior, is much more together. She has a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's in journalism from Columbia, so when she isn't playing guitar in front of a roiling mosh pit, she writes financial columns for Barron's and Investor's Daily. After several months of living with me, she develops an extra-curricular interest in nudging me toward a goal.

She comes home late at night from band practice, wrestling her guitar case down the hall and into the apartment, yawning, "I have to be awake at 3 a.m. when the London bond market opens." Then she sees yet another heap of hot pink Betsey Johnson shopping bags on the living room floor and is scarcely able to conceal her alarm. Being much too sweet to come right out and tell me to get a life, she sighs deeply and says, with hesitation, "You know, maybe you should think about investing some of that money you're making."

Much of my earnings come from Calvin, who frequently visits me at Peepland. He stood out right away. Unlike the other customers, he doesn't simper or bark out commands. He leans against the glass and fixes his wistful gaze on me, then drifts away into whatever fantasy he's got working. He is not an attractive man, short and stoop-shouldered, his hair a weird orange frizz sticking out from under a tan fedora, but he is polite, almost reverential. He never fails to ask me how I'm doing, so eventually we begin talking. He tells me he is a former pianist who now hosts a popular radio show on the big jazz station. At first I don't believe him, because here I've heard all manner of lies, including a man who said he was a certain noted psychiatrist, passing his business card through the slot and saying, "Call me! I can help you!" while he shuddered violently. But I tuned in one day and heard Calvin's voice. It was true.

"So why don't you play anymore?" I asked.

"Too slow," he said, holding up his hands, which are thick-knuckled and stiff. "Arthritis."

Recently divorced after twenty-one years of marriage and living alone near Lincoln Center, Calvin doesn't appear to have much besides work (and Peepland), so I try to make him happy. I am almost moved to defend him when I hear two girls backstage snickering over his affection for garter belts.

If I focus my eyes a certain way, I can see both my own reflection in the glass and Calvin on the other side. When I do this, our disparate selves merge—lost angry girl and lost lonely man. His body becomes mine, the unholiest transubstantiation. And though I don't want it to happen, he will stay a part of me, as immutable a memory as my first kiss or my last day at home. In years to come, his face will come to me whenever I hear the sad reedy wail of jazz saxophone, or brushes whispering on a snare drum. What gets under my skin is what I can't understand—how could someone with that much accomplishment feel that empty?

The weight of the pathos is too much for my teenage self to bear and after a while, I begin to hate him. At first I was flattered by the attention, but I grow repulsed by this man drooping his way into my booth three, four times a week. What did he want from me? He is one of the most famous voices in New York radio, and I am just some dumb naked girl in a peep show. Didn't he have someone else to dump his troubles on?

He comes to see me one afternoon and instead of listening patiently to his workaday miseries, I light into him. "What's your fucking problem? Don't you ever have any good news?"

His face freezes in a rictus of shock and agony, like he's just been shanked.

When I see his expression, I know I've done something needlessly cruel. I want to take it back. I can't take it back. When the window goes down, I hear the door slam and I am sure I won't see him again. Oh, well. Shrug. Too bad.

I step out of the booth. A squatty black man in a bus driver uniform is lurking, pretending to inspect a display of European bondage videos. I call over to him, "Are you ready for me now?"

My mother's eyes are a dark, mercurial hazel—by turns the color of moss agate and thunderheads. She has a withering stare, handed down and refined through centuries of Puritan reproach, that when turned on you is like having your foot nailed to the floor. I have done much as a teenager to earn that excruciating look—the all-nighters at CBGBs, the nose ring, the second nose ring, the college applications left unfinished on the dining room table. But now I am out on my own and she is away at school working toward another master's, and the only tether that connects me to her is her voice on the phone. When we speak, I do what I have to to keep that voice even, appeased. I am shaky out here, so I don't dare court her rejection. I need her love too much.

Do I intend to tell her about Peepland? No. Never. I would go to the ends of the earth to spare my parents the truth. When they ask me what I'm doing for work, I make something up. I am a maid, a waitress, a clerk. I will be anything but what I fear most: a disappointment. But I am much too young to understand the frailty of never or the true meaning of what it is to disappoint.

EIGHT

Meanwhile, back in the present and back on the road, I'm lugging around the Exotic Dancer Directory as my preferred reading material. I just can't put it down—not because of the pictures of the dancers, or the handy listing of clubs by city, state, and type. It's the club names. The names kill me.

Late at night when I'm by myself in my motel room trying to come down from the molar-rattling adrenaline high that keeps me up a good three or four hours after a shift, I'll mentally index the names. There seem to be a few distinct categories.

Cats-n-horses: Jaguar Club, Feline Cathouse, Cheetah's, Pussycat Lounge, Crazy Horse, Wild Horse, Pink Pony, Foxy Filly, that type of thing.

Dolls: The Doll House, Satin Dolls, New York Dolls, Regina's House of Dolls, and the like.

Precious metals: Solid Gold, Pure Platinum, Gold Club, Gold Fingers, Platinum Club, etc.,
etc.

Body parts and movements: Hipps, Legs, Bunns, Cheeques, Shakers, Lookers, Jiggles, Wiggles, Knockers, and Beavers (which would be a little over the top were it not in Oregon, the Beaver State).

And a category so rife with stealth and guilt, we'll call it Sexual Rorschach: Cheaters, Obsession, Teasers, Anticipation Lounge, Tattle-tales, Antics, Secrets, Scandals, Sinners, Titillations, Forbidden Fruit, Skin Games, Peepers, Dangerous Curves.

I like the "Lounge" names. They're cozy, not a feeling this business often engenders: Glo Worm Lounge, Shark Lounge, Peek-A-Boo Lounge, Foxy Lady Lounge, Bigfoot Lounge.

The namesake clubs make me curious—I wouldn't mind knowing who exactly they're named after. The owner, in tribute to his or her dream come true of owning a strip club? A child? A friend? Big Earl's Goldmine, Juicy Lucie's, Frank's Chicken House, Big Frank's Hen House, BookEm Dano's, Wild Bill's Pink Cadillac, Cadillac Carl's Cabaret, Brad's Brass Flamingo, Trixie's Gold Room, Nicole^ Fuzzy Grape, Coz's Eight Ball Lounge, Phyllis' Angels. The austere and dignified Club Fred.

There are a handful of establishments that were named with some actual wit: Double Dribble Tavern, George's Dancin' Bare, Pop-a-Top Pub. And a couple that are clever, but maybe they shouldn't have bothered: 19th Hole Lounge, Up Your Glass.

…

In no particular order, some club names that I am taken with:

Prince Machiavelli's is perhaps the best name for a strip club that I've come across thus far. But that's the only good thing I can say about the night I spend working at this El Paso hole-in-the-wall.

A brief summary of what goes wrong:

1. A man I'm dancing for puts his hands on my hips and pulls me toward him. "C'mere so I can do a line off of your tits," he breathes, a slimy operator like Eric Roberts in Star 80. When I refuse, he shields himself from the bouncer's view and uses a Visa card to chop several fat lines of coke on the sticky, wood-look laminate cocktail table and snorts them up through a hollowed-out ballpoint pen.
   
2. Half of the customers are from Juarez, just across the border, and have trouble speaking English. And I have trouble speaking Spanish. (Why French in high school?
   Why?
   ) A moment of levity between a Chihuahuan and me when I ask him "What's Spanish for... [
   holding my hands out indicating huge fake breasts
   ]." "Tetas falsas," he says and we both laugh.
   
3. The ringleader of a preppy bachelor party flags me down to dance for the groom-to-be. "Let me see your tits first!" the bachelor snarls, a bitter pill in a khaki wrapper. "Gee, how'd your fiancee nab a catch like you?" I snarl back, balling up the twenty and throwing it at him before I walk away.
   
4. Cocaine Guy follows me around the club sweating bullets and offering to give me a new Corvette in exchange for having sex with his wife and girlfriend while he watches. Please, like I'd be caught dead in a new Corvette anyhow.
   
5. Crawling around on stages in thigh-high boots for a week straight has abraded my knees so badly they look like massive popped blisters—red, skinned, and oozing. I show the manager my knees and he mercifully lets me leave at midnight. I have him escort me out the back door to my car because Cocaine Guy is hovering near the front entrance.
   
6. I'm hungry. Understandable craving for Mexican food. By the time I leave Prince Machiavelli's, it's too late for a real restaurant so the only "Mexican" I can find is Taco Bell. I get a bag of
   grande
   burritos and eat in my motel room watching the lights twinkle over in the brown haze of Juarez.
   

Home suddenly feels very far away. I reach for the phone.

It's high noon at the Cruise Control Cafe and I am headed toward Wyoming with my lunch nestled in my lap. I've discovered the perfect configuration for eating a combo meal while driving: burger in the left hand, fries clasped between my knees, the right hand free to reach for the soda in the cup holder. And to steer.

I know a lot of people consider fast-food chains a modern blight and drive-throughs a decline of civilization, but I am truly grateful for them. They are a mercy of convenience, rescue for lonely travelers like me who just can't stand the thought of another meal in a restaurant alone. Telling the hostess, "Just one, please," then hiding behind a newspaper while gulping down a pot roast special so I don't have to make eye contact with other diners.

I am near Trinidad, Colorado, about six hours from home. El Paso to Cheyenne is two grueling days—a long while alone under the endless ice-blue spring sky, rolling along listening to the radio. After ten days spent largely in darkness, my eyes sting. I'm thrilled to finally see sunlight, but does there have to be so much of the stuff?

I flip between stations looking for the perfect country song. I've come to love country-and-western. I used to hate it, but now, between the deft storytelling and open-heartedness, I'm hooked. I like the trendoid-sanctioned artists just fine—Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard—but my favorites are the more pop-inflicted acts: Brooks and Dunn, Alan Jackson, George Strait. I'm not entirely sold on the yeasty sincerity of Garth Brooks, but his song "Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old" is one I sure can relate to today.

I am tired, with a bone-deep fatigue I haven't felt in years. I turn the dial, trawling for sad songs. I need the formula for conveying heartache that country does best. A world-weary voice, stark and plaintive against the weeping of the fiddle, a steel guitar coming in to address the grievances of the strings, and then a crescendo that brings the three together, pulsing with emotion and blood—taste and restraint be damned.

The heartrending emotionality is pretty excessive, but I don't mind, for these are buttons that desperately need to be pushed. After days and nights of listening to couched offers, half-sincere compliments, and flat-out lies, both giving and receiving, I am desperate to hear something wholly-felt and true.

Colin Raye's "Little Rock" starts playing. I am singing along when my voice breaks, and before I know what is happening, I am sobbing uncontrollably. Not because what I'm feeling is so bad, but because it is so much. I am flooded with memories. The cold proposition that first night in Pueblo, the skin-peeled-off shame in Las Vegas, the sweet deaf couple looking at me so urgently in Dallas. That creepy, coked-out man trailing after me in El Paso. Desires and demands rushing toward my naked skin like greedy fingers. And the rest of it—the horrible car wreck, too many bad meals and not enough sleep, wrong turns and missed exits, the searing twang of pain in my thigh muscles from squatting over rest stop toilets, and the remnants of those desperate days at Peepland, which, whenever dredged up, always seem better off buried. I went through it all without any defense but emotional defense—and that's no kind of reliable armor.

When this was the only way I knew to survive, I had one focus: making money. I made myself slick and efficient. Anything else that crossed my mind seemed superfluous, almost irrelevant. If something disturbed me, or touched me too deeply, I would push it away or float up into the ozone of my own head and keep right on going.

But now I can't pull back, I can't callus over. I have worked too goddamn hard to slough away the bullshit posturing, the knee-jerk emotional withdrawal. I am dogged by ghosts of opinion, phantoms of need, but I am not able to shake them off. I can't just pull over to the side of the road, open the door, and say, "Everybody out!" This is cargo I'll have with me for a while.

Stripping takes out of me things that I didn't even realize I had. The near-nudity isn't the problem, or the physical vulnerability, or working well outside the margins of acceptable female behavior. It's the damn neediness: Angry men scowling at me like they can buy me for a dollar, lonely men professing love after a ten-minute chat with the specter of femininity that wafts before them, and confused and desperate men convinced that if only they could get a girl to do what they ask, however outlandish, things will be better somehow. These men don't just hunger for a glimpse of skin, because they could stay home and look at Miss August were that the case. They want some kind of connection, to tap the life in a live, nude girl. And no amount of professional distance on my part can keep that leeching feeling at bay. I've nothing left but exhausted tears, choked out silently, running in fat rills to my chin. I drive along crying and mopping my face with wadded-up Burger King napkins.

Randy answers his cell phone, the sound of hammers and a saw blade whining high and sweet through soft wood in the background. When I phoned him last night, he insisted on a three-calls-a-day schedule: when I wake up in the morning (or, more likely, afternoon), before I leave for the club or my next appointed town, and immediately after I get into my room at night. I'll be in Cheyenne soon enough, but I need him right now.

"Hi-ii." Oh God, I sound like shit.

"Baby! What are you doing? Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," I sniffle deeply, clearing my snot-clogged sinuses. "I'm just so fried," I start, tears rolling again. "You have no idea."

"Where are you? Can you make it home?"

"I don't know where I am. Somewhere in Colorado," I say, eyes roving the landscape on either side of the highway. "I think I'm in Castle Rock." I feel better for having heard his voice. I'm coming back down now, almost on terra firma. "Yeah, there's the rock. Hey, it really does look like a castle!"/

"That's only four hours away. You can make it. Just hurry, 'cause I miss you!"

I manage a faint, phlegmy squeak.

For a long time, I swore that stripping couldn't affect me deeply because I was working "with my body, not my soul." How ever did I get the idea that the two functioned separately? The muddle in my brain is exacerbating my physical weariness, and I'm bleary-eyed with fatigue.

This is what I was after, this clarity, and I'm overwhelmed. I know now why I tuned out so much, why I focused on the bottom line: Had I paid attention to. every single thing that happened around me when I danced, and taken it all in, I would have gone absolutely out of my mind.

If part of my motivation for getting back into stripping was nostalgia, Lord, that notion is blown to bits now. What's that expression? "Happiness isn't found by looking back?" Making a tourist destination of the past is always a dicey proposition—you might be sorely disappointed that things were more boring or shallow than you recall. Or, in my case, you might find they were more complex and difficult than you originally thought. Sentimentality has been soundly trounced by reality. This is way harder than I'd remembered.

How the hell did I do this for six years? Well, I didn't work straight through nonstop. I took a lot of time off—weeks, even months. Sometimes almost an entire year. I needed plenty of breaks. And I need one now.