Stripper Lessons

by John O'Brien

  Well, maybe . . . but he doubts that it should be worn with these green jeans. Just a hunch, but it does seem awfully colorful. He goes to another bag, soon another yet. The many combinations take hold, chuck the bags, empty, crumpled bags, about the room. Spent vessels. Carroll waxes the reluctant model, an end-of-summer twelve-year-old being cajoled by a weary school-spent mom into each of his new fall outfits. Parade around the kitchen for your father. But Carroll is alone, and he finds that the longer this self-imposed torture drags on, the longer he spends on each visit in front of the mirror. Some sort of silent revenge, like maybe if he works hard enough he can wear out the mirror, wear out all mirrors and never have to look at himself again.

  He bought so much stuff that none of it feels like his, like the only way to have so many new things around is to be at someone else’s house. Tags are saved along with the receipts in one of the smaller bags set aside for this purpose. Less fortunate bags are uncrumpled, folded, and stacked. Wayward threads are carefully clipped from new garments, an anxious twinge snapping his gut at each snip. Wet towels in the locker room and somebody’s gonna get hurt. By evening he’s reached and gone beyond his saturation point. He never did have much of an eye for this stuff, and now each outfit is merely a minor variation on The Same. He’s got to make a decision on what to wear tonight. It’s Saturday and the club will steam along hard into the wee hours, so he can push it a little, not be there so early. But on the other hand it’s Saturday, and he doesn’t want to miss anything. Night of hopeful significance, it’s bred into our genes. Wonder if it’s a special night in jails? That would be easy, wear only black and white stripes—but then that’s gotta be strictly movie stuff. Naked and bemused, he postpones his decision and climbs into the shower for some distance, and to be that much closer to ready.

  It works. Emerging from the shower—wade the little lake that he can’t believe isn’t caused by the crack on the bottom of the frosted plastic door, though the maintenance man says it’s only a hairline and that all the stalls have them—he is decided. He is committed to wearing a black shirt with blacker curlicues raised all over it, a shirt he didn’t remember buying until he opened the bag. The shirt then as a given, he’ll wear whatever pants fall into line—he supposes the green jeans will do—and with this resolution in place he towels himself, a bit more cheerily than he might have otherwise. Braced up, he is, for the evening, and he sets about the preparations, later the dressing.

  By the time he heads down to the Vega it’s past eight. Traffic flow no problem, as if in accordance with an unspoken citywide agreement to not mess up anybody’s Saturday night plans. At the club the lot is packed, and he’s stuck with the alley. But he doesn’t give it another thought, so focused is he on seeing Stevie tonight. When he stepped in front of the mirror for the final time tonight he knew that he looked about as presentable as he will ever look, and thus the last obstacle had been removed. Tonight he will talk with her. If necessary he’ll buy a table dance. He’s got money, he made sure, over a hundred dollars, enough over that he could buy five table dances if he had to and still have enough for drinks and cover and dollar tips. He locks the Vega, doesn’t look back (well, maybe once, just to make sure that he didn’t leave the lights on), and crunches across the gravel to the front of the club.

  “. . . name of Tasha, gentlemen, put your hands together for the lovely Tasha. Tasha will be right back for the third of three . . . no . . . yes, the third of three, gentlemen. Remember that Tasha, and all our lovelyladies, are available for those private topless table dances. Just ask—”

  A scratch and squeal rip through the speakers, cutting off the DJ/doorman and quitting as abruptly as they began. Carroll moves to the admission booth, pays his cover, and passes through the curtain. Tasha. He recalls a Tasha here about six months ago, but she left; left, he always suspected, under suspicious circumstances. He knows no details, but the last night he saw her here was coincidentally the same night as one of the few skirmishes in the history of Indiscretions, that is to say the portion of that history which includes Carroll as a witness. Not much to report, really. Just a guy rising from a booth in the middle of his table dance and calling for the manager, Carroll watching from across the room. Tasha, a disgusted look on her face, sauntered off to the ladies’ room, never came out? Maybe? In any case that was the last that Carroll ever saw of her at the club. Manager calmed customer, who left anyway. Details were not forthcoming, and if they were Carroll wouldn’t have known where to listen. If such a thing happened today, he supposes, he could ask Stevie about it. Such are the benefits of being well connected.

  The club is crowded. Tight air holds shredded conversation like a dirty vacuum bag, splotchy lumps, that uneasy murmur that lurks between songs here. The DJ/doorman is evidently working to fix that—witness the desultory knocks and hums from the speakers. This girl (lots of new girls lately) this girl Tasha is yet to be revealed, lurking in the dressing area, preparing for her third of three, it was, the DJ/doorman said. There’s not much available in the way of seating, and Carroll’s ready to settle for a wall space when he sees a chair behind him. On less busy nights this is the on-deck area for the table dances, a place for men to await their favorite lovelylady, or for Man and Favorite Lovelylady to await the timely punctuation of a new song, though Lovelylady, of course, never sits and Man always does, the club perhaps being uncomfortable with a standing man. But on busy nights like tonight the area is given to regular use by regular guys, at the early stage of being merely potential table dance consumers. The whole thing likely sits better with fire code enforcers, having asses in seats, that is, and Carroll quickly takes this chair in the erstwhile on-deck area. After all, there may yet be table dances. There may yet be.

  Dchooo dchooo, electronic synth-o-thunder chases smoke about the room. New music on old speakers, naked girl out of curtain. It is the Tasha that he knows from before. Not that she knows him, of course. Nevertheless he has a slight feeling of warmth, insofar as his relations with dressed or undressed women go, a feeling of longtimenoseeness. Silly, but it’s nice to know that people aren’t dead. Tasha is pretty much the same girl he remembers: five-five, one-fifteen, medium breasts that look a bit pointier than most, especially under the sheer tops that she likes (or used to like) to wear open, shoulder-length sandy blond hair that matches all over, and a pretty face, sharp, with a hard-to-identify English look to it though he doubts she has an accent and in any case has never heard her speak.

  As she falls to it Carroll recalls her routine with crystal clarity. Tasha dances with her pussy. Way more than any of the other girls, like in a different league, this being largely a breast place. Oh sure, all the dancers pay lip service, placing their pretty behinds in your face as they bend forward and wink at you from in between their pretty legs. Occasionally a girl will even feign masturbation, her fingers gliding over her pubic hair or wrapped around some imaginary cylinder, but this is sometimes crude and is kept to quick corner gestures, close-in with known customers. Tasha, now Tasha is a different story, and evidently little has changed. He watches her saunter directly to a corner, put one leg up on the brass rail and part wide her thighs for the benefit of the two or three men who are favored with a propitious angle. She puts down her open hands, one on each inner thigh, squeezing her own tender flesh, stretching what she can out of the club rules, inspecting herself right along with her audience, a gynecological flair. Satisfied with the state of things, she looks to the men, studies their faces, as if to say: Have you seen this? Take a look-see down here. Snap shut the thighs . . . maybe not quite that quickly. In any event she is off, a moment spent center stage in an obligatory tit twirl-heel down and the stage is her compass—before strolling off to another corner. The guys don’t know what to make of her; they hate being second-guessed like this. A bit of a shame, he remembers, in all the time she was dancing here and he was watching, Carroll never saw her up close. He was always seated elsewhere, never at a chosen spot along the rail. Tasha, again
, unlike most of the girls, never covers the whole stage during any one song, or set for that matter. She is a very specific girl. Carroll decides he likes her, likes her because she had trouble with management, likes her because, in a way, she makes a joke out of what she’s doing, likes her because she’s a free agent, free from right and wrong.

  Stevie’s here, he notices right off, chatting with that new redhead; ought to get her name tonight. Tasha looks to be wrapping up, leaving a side rail where some guy is blinking in confusion; probably saw more than he wanted to. DJ/doorman makes it known that Sylvia will be dancing next, and that we should all be sure to lay a little green on Tasha, whom some of us may remember from olden times at the club and who is now finally back from her extended vacation. DJ/doorman admonishes us fellas not to read too much into said vacation. DJ/doorman remarks that he’s sure we’ll all agree that it’s the same old Tasha. This seat, near the booths and new to Carroll, has its advantages. Like before at the bar, he has a bird’s-eye view of things, a step up, this one. Stevie’s arrival at the club has done many things on many levels. Profound things on which he dwells constantly, but nice touches as well, like shaking him around this room. For months he would sit in the same place, always careful to arrive early enough to not be shut out, almost growing roots into the crusty carpeting beneath a wobbly chair, random spot on the side of the stage. Circumstances now are otherwise, and he likes not knowing until the last minute where he’ll be sitting, sizing up the room like James Bond entering a casino, off-handedly being shaken about the place by Stevie’s playful hand, one special bean in a bag.

  Here comes Tasha for her take. Tamara, who seems to be working more nights these days, is attentively watching her, he notices, from just outside the ladies’ room, ostensibly talking with a customer who is so transfixed by her tits that he doesn’t catch her wayward eye, goes right on chatting like he’s the fucking center of her world. Wonder if she likes Tasha, or is she a spy for management? Wonder what it’s like for two girls in love—same cake with different frosting? Tasha’s too much: her set is over and still she’s giving them more than they bargained for. Wearing a wraparound skirtlike cloth, she just snatched up a five spot from the rail. Hand carries bill under skirt and comes out empty. Carroll saw it, the guy who put out the five did too, nobody else, not even Tamara. The guy laughs nervously. That was her last tip to collect this set, so Tasha vanishes behind the curtain, that five-dollar bill most likely under a garter.

  Sabrina strolls by and smiles at him. He’s gotta admit it: he feels pretty sharp in these new clothes. Some gooey love song from the seventies starts up, one of those songs that everyone seemed to like at the time but that today sounds adolescent. Carroll learned to be an adult in the seventies and this is what he came up with. Stuck with it. Sylvia sticks her head out from behind the curtain to get a look at the crowd—like it’s changed in the last few minutes since she was out here—and whatever she sees doesn’t do much to chase away the doleful look on her face. Discouraged, finally, maybe, Carroll thinks, about having the smallest chest at the club. Still, she gets her share of table dances, and he often wonders if guys don’t cotton to her because they think she’ll be grateful for the attention . . . and do what for them? Be Real Nice? Sometimes you look at her face and have to grab a fast clue of yourself, real quick and just to recall what’s what, like saliva in your mouth, or maybe the way your shoe feels untied. Then you think about what money can’t buy. Sylvia’s pretty groovy. It can’t be very easy for her, yet here she is.

  She finally comes out—a little too far into the song so your first impression is to think, Hey! I’ve been cheated, until you remember that your cover charge bought an endless stream of bare asses, asses past, asses that will come again, asses yet to be scrutinized—and Carroll, though he doesn’t even know her, knows right away that she’s not herself. First off, not three steps out of the curtain, she stumbles, stumbles, but recovers so languidly that half the men who notice (Sylvia never really rivets the crowd) think it’s part of her imperfect dancing. Carroll knows better, and he makes a point of watching her carefully: a concerned father, a worried son, an empathetic sister. Her movements are uneven at best, but her dancing is always like that. It’s just that tonight she’s uneven in different spots, something he can’t point out but knows is there, like a smudge on his sunglasses. You’re looking out, something’s wrong. Sylvia hits the floor. Not that she falls, no, she drops to her knees, a strictly technical difference in this place. She leans backward, arching her back and exposing her precious-little tits to the glimmer of the mirrored ball. It’s a suppliant posture, but her heart’s not in it. Her pussy—call it her cunt—is wide open to suggestion. And suggestion is forthcoming in the form of ones and ones, dollars on the rail, more ones. And Sylvia’s eyes roll up, not so much unnaturally, but still in that way you don’t like to look at. She stays there through the end of the song, this, the first of three. Doesn’t even bother to get up, to go backstage and change—why should she, she’s already as naked as you get. She is naked, first of three and she’s already naked. Strange he didn’t notice earlier. Should’ve spotted it the moment she came on stage. Of course the costumes can get pretty skimpy, and it probably doesn’t matter all that much, but still he’s never seen another girl do it. Cut-to-the-chase Sylvia, we’ll call her. She lies there through the break, eyes glassy, slowly blinking. Music starts, second of three. As it picks up so does she, not that anyone looked all that worried. Maybe Carroll.

  Who now looks away. These attenuated pokes around the stage are not exactly encouraging fare, and encouragement is exactly what he’s looking for. Stevie is a specific activity too, insofar as what he is doing tonight. It’s what he was doing all day, his clothes shopping, small offering. Now she’s with him, in this room. Again he spots her. His eyes linger as she talks on, unaware of him (or is she), evidently wrapping up her chat with the new redhead. Against his better judgment he holds his gaze. Those things are magnets, gazes, and sure enough she looks up and catches his eye. There they are. He’s winging it, terrified to be doing this so boldly (at all), terrified to back away and live forever with that breach of faith, searching her face for a sign of recognition. And she does see him, has seen him enough by now to not be surprised, or even put off by his infatuation. It’s not like she’s never done this before. It’s not like she hasn’t spent a lifetime looking back at these eyes, the same longing gaze emanating from a thousand puppy eyes in five hundred hopeful heads. And he is sweet. And he does smile at her. And she doesn’t recall him being obnoxious at all during their few contacts. And that’s about the best a girl like her can hope for, and she lifts her head a tad, boosted with a smile of recognition: old friends. And he sure as hell caught that one! And he looks away so as not to spoil it: a hand darting back from a house of cards. And that’s what we call encouragement.

  Back on stage, and Sylvia must be spending too much time in front of one customer; the other men along the rail are looking beyond her to the table dancers, and even the guy she’s with keeps stealing glimpses of Candy, who is off to his left, preoccupied with something on her slipper. The cocktail waitress whom Carroll saw for the first time Tuesday night is on tonight. She has to squeeze her way between two guys wearing name tags and fooling with a calculator to get to him, and her attitude as she takes his order betrays her suspicion that this is somehow part of his grand stratagem to stiff her. Sparkling apple cider may be delayed. He watches Sylvia conclude her set without major incident. The night is young. There’s no point in avoiding it, this ineluctable conclusion, he’ll have to ask Stevie for a table dance tonight. No big deal, he’s done it before. She’s pretty busy, popular around here, and it may be the only way to have a private conversation with her. Could be she’s even waiting for him to ask. Can’t suggest it herself to him (violation of club rules). Best loosen up first though, get some cider in him, drop some singles on the rail—good way to find the groove.

  He’s got three, singles after coun
ting, three. Sylvia has yet to reappear to collect her tips, so he slips out of his seat and puts one on the rail. Maybe a bit late, impulsive, but it’s up there now and he’s back in his seat. Cocktail waitress will be sure to give him his change in ones, so there’s no anticipated shortage tonight. Sylvia comes out—still naked, and that’s still strange—and collects her tips. She obviously doesn’t want to do it, and she keeps her thank-yous to a minimum, not even looking up or trying to guess at the source of Carroll’s tip. Water over the dam. Candy, presumably satisfied with the condition of her slipper, braces the corner of the bar along with Tamara, who is presumably satisfied with the condition of Tasha, still in the dressing area, presumably. Beyond them he spots the cocktail waitress, quiescently inspecting her nails in blithe disregard of the sweating bottle of sparkling apple cider and the glass of liquefying ice cubes on her tray. A changing state of matter, and now the barmaid’s got a story to tell. Cocktail leans in, something else that Carroll won’t hear.

  All of a sudden someone is in front of him, all smiles: “Hi. My name is Andrea, and tonight is my first night here at Indiscretions. (a pause to let that sink in) I just wanted to take this opportunity to meet some of the customers and to say that I hope you’ll stick around for a while (pause) and watch me dance.” She gives her head a little bob, and she is on to the next guy.

  Wow. Never has a dancer gone around and introduced herself like that before. He can hear her next to him, two guys at once this time: “Hi. My name is Andrea and tonight. . . .” Is this a new club policy, or is it, more likely considering the delivery, her own personal policy? Won’t know for sure until she dances. You can always tell when a girl has danced on a lot of different stages and is getting used to a new one. Not that that’ll prove anything. Okay, so that’s Andrea. It’s getting so he can’t keep track anymore. It’s getting so he doesn’t know if he should. Let’s see: very slender fashion-model look, brown hair and olive skin, slight European accent but impossible to be more specific just hearing that sales pitch (makes him want to buy more clothes), and he wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Okay, so that’s Andrea.