by Leigh James
I didn’t have her gift. I couldn’t look at someone like she did — like she knew who they were, and they didn’t disgust her. Like she still wanted them and liked being with them. All while managing to get paid a large sum of money. It was a business transaction, and Adriana got that. I knew what it was supposed to be, but I couldn’t get over feeling like it was some sort of messy emotional exchange that I wasn’t at all capable of.
“You’re up,” she said and pointed with her chin to where Alex had appeared at the door. He looked like he had spent too much time in a tanning booth, which in fact he probably had. Like so many other men in Vegas, he used too much hair product and had too many sparkly details on his too-expensive jeans. But this was his perpetual look, like he had no choice in the matter; I couldn’t picture him any other way.
Alex was chewing spearmint gum loudly, and it seemed like I could have smelled it from halfway across the room, mingling with his cologne. My stomach suddenly hurt. I couldn’t tell if it was the smell of him that was making me nauseous or if it was my regular jitters. “Gonna go out on the floor tonight?” he asked, snapping his gum, smiling at me. He always smiled, even when there was no reason to.
I returned the smile from under the protection of my makeup. “Probably not,” I said, shrugging. I couldn’t go out on the floor. Not yet. He knew that.
“I don’t know how you’re paying your bills,” he said, returning my shrug, “but it’s your talent you’re wasting.”
I kept my smile plastered on and managed to laugh a little. “Talent? That’s a fancy word for what I’ve got.” Then I heard the music that I danced to. I touched his arm. “I gotta go,” I said, keeping my voice light. I had to play nice if I wanted to make rent this month. I needed all my shifts and probably some extra.
He smiled at me while snapping his gum. And then slapped me on the ass on my way to the stage.
I made myself keep my shoulders straight; I said he was usually okay. I told myself that I probably deserved it, just for being here.
As for talent, Alex and I both knew I had none. Adriana had the brains, Keisha had this ethnic-goddess thing going on that drove the customers wild, as well as absolutely no problem telling them to knock it off if they started grabbing her body parts, and Tracy was just plain aggressive. So were many of the other girls. They just kept grinding it out every night, literally, moving from guy to guy, dollar to dollar.
My “talent,” if you could call it that, was my looks, and the fact that I seemed innocent. Alex told me that. He told me none of the bartenders or the other girls could figure out why I was stripping, when I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t swear, and wouldn’t give lap dances. In reality, I swore often and drank occasionally — I just didn’t do these things in front of other people. That bad girl behavior was not to be seen by others; it was my private self.
I always went home right after my shift and usually brought a book to read for when I was in-between stage time. This was not normal stripper behavior. Not that most of the girls were bad — but pretty much everybody needed a free drink when they were done with this kind of work. I probably did, too, but I always just went home, like the scaredy-cat that I was.
Hence my schoolgirl outfit, which consisted of a white button-down shirt and a plaid skirt. And exceedingly naughty lingerie underneath. It was Alex’s idea. “You have that look,” he’d said, leeringly. “Barely legal and no tattoos. Like you lost your fake ID and gotta get old guys to buy you wine coolers from the ABC Market. Like you could be here on break from boarding school.” He’d wagged his eyebrows suggestively at me. I wasn’t sure why he’d thought the idea of boarding school was hot, but a week after I was hired I wore the outfit he suggested, and the customers sure did seem to get excited when I started taking it off.
I wasn’t ready to take my clothes off tonight, but I was never really ready. My stomach hurt. I knew it wasn’t the smell of Alex’s gum or cologne. I took a deep breath. I straightened my shoulders again. I pulled my shirt down a little, pushed up my bra, and put my chin up. They were playing my song, and it was time.
* * *
Even though stripping was scary, there was something about the stage that I found oddly comforting. The lights were on me, and I could only see myself and what I was doing. All of the guys in the bar were in the shadows. I could only see them if I tried. Sometimes I could get lost in the music and just dance.
But when I started to take my clothes off, I could feel all eyes on me.
It really wasn’t fair that I got tipped as well as I did. I usually made about a hundred dollars more than most of the other girls on stage, and I was not a good dancer. Maybe it was my mother’s good-looking genes. Maybe it was the boarding school factor. I didn’t know. All I knew was that when I started to strip, the crowd got quiet, and people seemed to pay attention. Then they started putting money on the stage. Tonight it would be one dollar bills from the college boys, but I’d take it. These tips were the only thing keeping me in my cockroach-infested apartment and away from the Champagne room. At the rate I was going, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold out.
If I was being honest, I would say maybe I liked stripping… a little. I felt something when I was up there, dancing with only a thong on, with a hundred guys staring at me like they were hungry. I felt powerful. But even better than that, I felt untouchable.
If I did private dances in the Champagne Room, though—if they could touch me—then the spell would be broken. It would be real and I would have to tell them to stop, to keep their hands off, and I would have to say it repeatedly. So I had held out, even though everybody knew the only way to make any real money in this business was to get people to pay for lap dances. That was your chance to get the guy so riled up that he was willing to spend a couple of hundred dollars, sometimes more than a thousand, to go with you to the darkness of the Champagne Room. It was real money, but the stakes were higher. The guys were a lot bolder in the semidarkness. Sometimes the girls got hurt. One night somebody bit Tracy on her thigh and broke her skin. She had to get a tetanus shot. Up on stage they could want me, but they couldn’t touch me. It made me feel in control, for once.
If only the rest of my life up until now had been like that.
From what I could see, tonight the young crowd was mostly what I expected: they were wearing baseball hats and drinking domestic beer. I tried to concentrate on my body, my music. It was funny, but the boarding school outfit sort of turned me on; I liked the idea of looking buttoned up and then surprising someone. Because I was like that. I was conservative. I read books more often than I talked to people. I’d never had a boyfriend. So the idea that there was somebody absolutely wild underneath the white button-down shirt and plaid skirt appealed to me. When I danced, this wild girl took over. It was so freeing to not be scared all the time, to let my guard down, to not hold my breath. The wild girl liked people looking at her. She liked the feel of the cold stage beneath her when she rolled on it. She liked to get close to some of the men near the edge of the stage and know that they wanted her.
She really liked the fact that they could never have her.
At one point when I looked up I could make out Alex out there, talking to a group of men. He kept looking at me, gesturing. I couldn’t tell who he was with. It looked like a mixed group of older and younger guys with suits on. I only noticed that because they stood out in the sea of baseball hats and tee-shirts tonight. I didn’t get to see much more. My song was ending and I had to collect all my money before Tracy got out on stage. As I was leaving I winked at the boys near the stage, just for fun. They hooted and hollered. Tonight was a good night. Even though I was first and hadn’t made nearly enough money, I actually found myself smiling my real smile as I went into the locker room.
The smiling didn’t last long. I had just sat down with some water and my latest beaten-up paperback when Alex walked up. “You know, you are the only stripper I’ve known who checks out books from the library,” he said, bu
t the comment was perfunctory and I could tell he was no longer in the mood to chit chat. He ran his hand through his over-gelled hair; he would have to go wash his hands soon and leave me alone. I hoped. Instead, he just stood there and took a deep breath.
“I need a favor,” he said and smiled a big, fake smile. My stomach dropped. I was not into giving favors. Favors were free for the recipient, but they always cost the giver something. In Vegas, it was usually your dignity. I was hanging on real tight to the little bit I had left.
“What?” I asked, impatiently, all traces of my fake and real smile gone. I couldn’t afford to be unpleasant to Alex, but I couldn’t afford to be taken advantage of, either.
“I have a very important client who wants to meet you,” he said.
I closed my book and looked at him levelly. “Meet?” I asked. Meeting was one thing. Something else was, well, something else.
“Just a drink. I told him you were unavailable for more,” he said, and I relaxed. Alex really wasn’t as bad as some of the other girls said. He did bad things on occasion, but I bet he felt guilty about them. Sometimes.
“Do I have to pay for my drink?” I asked. An eighteen dollar gin and tonic was not in my budget. Eighteen dollars bought a lot of macaroni and cheese.
“He’s buying your drink — he’s a gentleman!” he said. “White wine okay? Let’s stay away from hard liquor...I’ve never seen you drink. I don’t want you getting crazy!” he said, and I could tell he was relieved that I seemed cooperative. “And if you’re so worried about paying for your drink, you should think about picking up some extracurricular activities,” he said, and wagged his eyebrows at me again.
“I’ll have a drink with him and that’s it,” I said, firmly. Maybe some wine would be nice. A lot of the other girls smuggled in drinks to have before, during and after they went out on the floor, to calm their nerves. None of us could afford the steep prices at the bar and we only got that one free drink when we were done. That was, unless the customers were plying us with shots — which most of the girls thoroughly enjoyed. I had made a deal with the bartenders: they sent me Sprite and cranberry in a shot glass if someone wanted to buy me a drink. That way, the bartender got a free drink, the customer was happy, and I didn’t look like the total nerd I was.
“Who is this guy?” I asked. “The one who wants to meet me?” I’d never had Alex ask me to do something like this before.
“He’s a friend of Cruz’s,” he said. Cruz was one of the owners, but I’d never met him. I heard he lived in Brazil most of the time. “He’s a gentleman, I swear!”
“A gentleman in a gentleman’s club? No way,” I said, and my real smile was back. The irony of that was at least funny to me. Alex laughed a little and I relaxed. Sometimes it was okay to actually talk to someone, even though he’d grabbed my ass not that long ago. I was over it, so I would go talk to this guy he wanted me to meet. I just hoped the gentleman would be a gentleman.
I told Alex I would meet him out there. I buttoned up my shirt a bit, put on some more lip gloss, and ran my hands down my hair. I was always relieved to see my reflection in the mirror, and it wasn’t because I liked the way I looked. I had grown up feeling that way. I relied on my own eyes steadily looking back at me. Things could be crazy around me, people I loved could be falling apart, but I was the same. So now I looked at myself for another second and I took a deep breath, telling myself to be nice, even though I knew I wouldn’t be too nice. That comforted me. I could trust myself, even though I couldn’t trust anyone else.
I went out to the floor and tried to focus on Alex in the distance. He was talking to the same group of men from when I was dancing. I kept my eyes on them and tried to avoid the comments from the baseball-hat wearing crowd as I waded through them; they wanted a lap dance, they wanted to buy me a drink, they wanted a one-on-one. There were some grabbers, but I knew the bouncers were watching out for all of us, so I just kept moving. No one got a good grip, and I wouldn’t look at them. I didn’t smile.
I thought about Tracy and I felt guilty. I was so high and mighty now, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Tracy had been twenty-one once, too — and now she had two kids, a little cellulite, and a boyfriend with a coke habit. That was gonna be me if I didn’t watch it.
That was gonna be me. That’s what I was thinking when I saw him. I knew who the very important client was before Alex had a chance to introduce us. He was tall, maybe six-two, with slightly shaggy brown hair and a creased face. He was old enough to be my youngish father, probably mid-forties. He was wearing a suit and tie. I had seen a lot of businessmen in Vegas; I could tell he was not in photocopier resales or insurance. There was something about the cut of his suit and his beautiful tie that conveyed money and sophistication. Because I had neither, I couldn’t put my finger on it. But he didn’t have the look of a drug dealer or some sort of thug, like so many of the men did here. There was no jewelry, no spray tan, no hair gel. He just looked clean and healthy, like he took vitamins and smelled good without cologne.
He turned towards me and smiled. And then my heart stopped.
* * *
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