by Lacey Lane
He invited us to sit down with him, then reached inside the backpack, taking out and distributing four books. Kat got a book on art history, Mandy on the Vietnam War, Vanessa one full of American poetry, and I one on Greek mythology.
“What are we supposed to do with these?” asked Mandy, who definitely wasn’t the reading type. Unless a book had pictures in it—color ones at that—chances are she’d never pick it up. Nice to look at, she was, but Mandy had the personality of a sweat sock.
“I want you to help me study,” Brett replied. “I’ve got final exams coming up and if I don’t pass them all and earn my degree, I’m not gonna get my inheritance.”
At the mention of the word inheritance, we all perked up. “How much are you supposed to get?” Kat asked.
“Sixty,” he said casually.
“Sixty thousand is a lot of money,” I said.
Brett smiled and shook his head. “No. Sixty million.”
The four of us almost choked on our tongues. None of us were wearing engagement rings, a fact we immediately brought to his attention. He laughed and took a sip of champagne. “If I don’t pass those tests, I’ll be asking you for money.” We got a good laugh over that one, but we were all mesmerized by the number he had just rattled off. Of course, he could have been lying, but I didn’t think so. He didn’t strike me as the lie-for-effect type.
We were all dying to know about the specifics of his inheritance. I mean, sixty million dollars isn’t exactly chump change. That’s “fuck you” money: When you have that much cash, you can say “fuck you” to anyone you want.
Vanessa was the boldest of the group—with a 38-DDDD chest, what do you expect?—and she came right out and asked him. Turns out Brett dropped out of college before his junior year to pursue a career in music. But after a few months the band floundered and he got wrapped up in booze and drugs. A year and two rehabs later, he was still just spinning his wheels, expecting to be able to live off the family fortune, though how they made their money he never said. But when his grandfather passed on, he stipulated in the will that Brett couldn’t touch any of it unless he completed college and got a degree—in anything, as it turns out—before his 22nd birthday. Apparently, that day was rapidly approaching, so this was, for all intents and purposes, a one-shot deal.
We spent two hours asking Brett questions from the books, from areas he had previously highlighted. He got most of them right, and when he was wrong, he was still pretty close. I bet he would have kicked ass on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.”
The comic relief of the night was listening to Mandy pronounce the Vietnamese names and cities. Not that I could have done any better, but she was really struggling and kept cracking us up. At least she was a good sport about it.
After two hours, we took a break and gave Brett a couple of four-girl lap-dances that really straightened his toes, among other things. Before we started quizzing him again, he ordered us a feast of Chinese take-out. With all the food they delivered, he must’ve told them to send one of everything on the menu. The bouncers couldn’t even finish the leftovers, and those guys could probably eat Iowa if they tried. They were so thankful for the free grub, they told Brett he’d never have to wait in line again and that if he needed anything in the future, just to ask them and they’d take care of it. I got the impression Brett was used to that kind of treatment. The only thing money can’t buy you is poverty.
We helped Brett study for nearly another five hours. By then we were all exhausted. But when he offered to take us out to a 24-hour coffee shop for a late-night snack, we all woke up. The limo ride was fun and the conversation at the restaurant got pretty raunchy; Brett asked a lot of personal questions—in some cases too personal, I thought: how often each of us had sex, what our favorite positions were, did we like to use sex toys—but for the most part it was harmless.
Afterwards, the limo dropped us off one at a time. Vanessa (and her monstrous pair) was last, but we were pretty sure she wouldn’t be going home that night. Our suspicions were confirmed the next night at work. She wouldn’t give us all the details, just that it was good thing he had a big bank account.
About a month later, Brett returned to the club. No limo this time, just a beautiful black Mercedes Benz 600 SL. He’d passed all his exams—just barely on the one about the Vietnam War, no thanks to Mandy’s pronunciations—and wanted to reward us each with a present. The four of us got identical pieces of jewelry—gold-heart pendants with a picture of Brett inside. The thought was sweet, but the pendant looked like it came right from Zale’s—during a slashed-price sale, no less. Not only will money not buy you poverty, it also won’t buy you class.
We never saw Brett again, although he called Vanessa a few times and I think they went out, but she never really talked about it. We didn’t press her for information. Prostitution isn’t the kind of thing strippers talk about openly and she knew the rest of us weren’t into it. All she said was she had to pay for her boobs somehow.
The Jerker
Contrary to popular belief, there are some things the majority of women who work as exotic entertainers at strip clubs won’t do for money. Vanessa, of the big boobs and Brett, was an exception. Her morals were about as strong as Bill Clinton’s marital commitment, perhaps a tad less. From the stories I heard—many from her own mouth—when it came to clocking dollars, she was up for just about anything.
There are all types of strip clubs out there. They range from full-tilt nudie bars, where the girls can show you anything and everything, including the orifice of their choice and anything they’re smuggling inside it, to overly innocent bikini bars, where even thongs and dental-floss string bikinis are too risqué. But the majority of strip clubs fall somewhere in between. These are the ones I worked at most of the time—classier joints where dancers don’t have to worry about simulating sex acts with other dancers or giving near masturbatory performances to rake in the money. They just have to look pretty, dance erotically, and show their tits.
At these clubs, if a guy touches you for any reason, other than to hold your hand while you sit with him or something harmless to that effect, he’s gone. See ya’. Bye-bye. Back in the VIP Room, you can do things to him—within reason, of course—but he still has to abide by the rules. On the other hand, every dancer has her own set of rules and they apply them as they see fit.
In regard to men touching themselves while you perform for them, that’s also forbidden, at least in the clubs I worked at. However, in many clubs out there, guys can touch themselves ’til the cows come home. In some, guys sit in private rooms and put coins in a slot to raise a partition and watch a girl dance for them. In others, they sit in chairs and watch as girls model lingerie just a few feet away, with no partitions separating them. These are almost always sleazy establishments, often referred to as “jerk lounges,” for obvious reasons.
During one summer evening, Vanessa decided to turn the VIP Room at our club into a jerk lounge of her own.
She was having a really bad night—in four hours I think all she’d made was $60—and was stressing for money in the worst way. She was bitching about her rent, car payment, and maxed-out credit cards to the point that the other dancers and I were ready to give her our own hard-earned cash just to shut her the hell up. Strangely, we were all kicking ass that night, but she just couldn’t seem to score. Incidentally, that was how it was with Vanessa. Her boobs were so big and fake, guys were either really turned on or off by them—nothing in between. That night, Vanessa couldn’t turn on a lightbulb.
Finally, a guy asked her if she wanted to go the VIP Room. He had on grubby wrinkled clothes and a multistained baseball cap that looked like a drain plug. I once dated a guy who liked to fish and he took me out on a Southern California party boat one time—Vanessa’s guy reminded me of one of the boat’s deckhands.
No sooner had Vanessa closed the door when the guy confessed to her that he wanted to jerk off while watching her dance. Man, did he pick the right girl. Any of th
e other dancers—myself included—would have smacked the shit out of him. But not Vanessa. She told him sure—but he’d have to pay her $200.
The guy complained that he didn’t have that kind of cash on him and if he did, he’d just go spend it on a hooker. She dropped her asking price to $150, but he said he didn’t have that, either. Ditto for $100. Well, desperate as she was for money, she was not about to let some guy spank his monkey in front of her for peanuts. But then he proposed an interesting scenario: He offered to pay her $10 every time he pumped his wang.
Vanessa contemplated this and quickly determined that even if this guy were the premature ejaculator from hell, it would still take him a decent number of jacks to get his rocks off. So she agreed.
Dummy!
Vanessa began her dance and was “really working it,” but the guy just stood there, arms folded across his chest, acting as if he didn’t care. But as soon as her top came off, he unzipped his zipper, yanked out his semi-hard little Johnson, gave it two quick pulls, and came a split-second later.
Vanessa was horrified, the guy was satisfied, and the floor of the VIP Room was anything but dignified. While putting himself away, he produced a $20 bill with his free hand, flung it in her direction, and raced from the room, leaving Vanessa to clean up the mess.
The saddest part of the whole event: Later that night, when regaling us with her tale, Vanessa was actually proud of her ability to turn a man on, and pop him off without touching him, so quickly. If only she had a clue!
Lickity Spit
In every club, the stage is an integral part of a dancer’s strip routine. This is usually the first place customers get to see the dancers and check out the goods. A majority of the customers’ selections for the VIP Room take place after the dancer has performed on stage. Most dancers have gimmicks that they use to separate themselves from the other girls and attract their VIP Room clients. It’s a lot like fishing, where the best bait often catches the biggest fish. For instance, some girls are real swingers and use the stage poles as if they’ve had years of private lessons from Tarzan. Other girls seductively rub themselves with oils and lotions. Some girls use fingerpaints to spell out their intentions, writing all sorts of nasty notions across their bodies, and some play with whipped cream, chocolate syrup, honey, and other sweets, knowing that the best way to a man’s heart—and wallet—is through his stomach.
Then there was Diamond. Diamond didn’t need to bring any accessories onto the stage for her creative gimmick. She relied solely on her two best friends—and her spit. For Diamond’s 25th birthday, her ex-fiancé gave her a new lease on life. Actually two: boobs. Thanks to a platinum Visa card and a top Tinseltown plastic surgeon, in a little more than an hour, Diamond’s lackluster BB-sized ta-tas became bodacious double-Ds. With her toned and tanned body, sexy tattoos on the small of her back and biceps, blonde hair and big firm boobs that stood at attention like a Marine during inspection, Diamond was a ringer for Pamela Anderson. The guys loved it. But Diamond also played a little game that drove the men out of their skin (and pants). She filled her mouth with saliva, then slowly allowed it to trickle out. It flowed over her collagen-enhanced lower lip, streamed down her chin, and cascaded onto her breasts.
When she was on stage doing her thing, guys lined up three-deep to tip her and drink her juices. They lay on their backs at the edge of the stage, tilted their heads back, and opened their mouths wide. Diamond stood over them like a mama bird stands over her chicks during feeding time, lined up her nipples with their mouths like a big-game hunter centering a trophy animal in his rifle scope’s crosshairs, and pushed her breasts down, or lifted them up, to speed or slow the flow of saliva. She teasingly criss-crossed their faces and foreheads with her mouth nectar before actually feeding them her goo. But once, while giving a private session in the VIP Room, a customer got more than he bargained for.
Much more.
Diamond was chewing a piece of gum to help build up her saliva when she accidentally swallowed it and started to gag. Prior to dancing for this customer and on her break, Diamond drank a protein shake from a nearby juice bar. The shake, combined with the glass and a half of White Zinfandel she’d also consumed, came back up. She couldn’t cover her mouth or pull away in time—maybe she didn’t even try. Either way, the customer got a liquid meal he definitely hadn’t ordered. He turned green and vomited as well, emptying the contents of his stomach, which turned out to be sushi from a business dinner. The floor of the VIP Room looked like a horror-movie special-effects-artist’s leftover bin.
After thirty minutes of mopping, the room was reopened for business. As for the customer, he got a refund—and a free ginger ale. At the boss’s insistence, Diamond took the rest of the night off.
Domo Arigato
Speaking of sushi, three regulars—Japanese businessmen in their late 40s—who always came in together, hardly spoke to the girls, never once asked for lap dances, but always tipped the dancers on stage came in one
afternoon and shocked me by asking to be taken straight to the VIP Room. Eager to relieve them of some yen, I grabbed two by their hands and marched the three to the back.
We reached the VIP Room and as I was about to shut the door, two much younger Japanese men arrived. Both were dressed to the nines in dark suits and ties—I figured them for assistants or associates. One carried a folding table, the other a large cardboard box.
The two younger men politely excused themselves, brushed past me, and proceeded to set up lunch: a full-on sushi banquet, complete with miso soup, edamame (soybeans), and enough raw fish to make the Pacific Ocean take out Missing Persons ads on milk cartons. They even had a large thermos of hot sake, from which they poured me a shot. It tasted like warm nail-polish remover. Ycchhh!
One of the older men walked over to me, produced his wallet, and said: “How much you dance one hour?” He was cute and reminded me of Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid, only he was shorter and his English was worse.
I figured I’d start high and come down if necessary. “Four hundred,” I replied.
The man said something to his friends in Japanese. They nodded. He smiled, paid me what I asked for, and returned to his friends. Silly me. I should have asked for a grand!
I went to work as the men ate, their assistants catering to them like professional waiters. Strangely, not one of them bothered to look at me the entire time they were there. Not even so much as a quick peek!
They ate, conversed in Japanese, and that was it. I was dancing my ass off, moving in ways that usually brought men to their knees, but they were oblivious to my gyrations. It was like I wasn’t even there.
Exactly one hour after the luncheon began, they all stood and prepared to leave. As their assistants packed up what remained of the meal, and the table, the older men walked over to me and, one by one, tucked an additional $20 bill in my g-string, giggling like little kids who’d sneaked into an R-rated movie. The last man to go, the oldest of the trio, patted me delicately on the shoulder, bowed slightly, offered his thanks in English, and that was it.
After that visit, the men came in numerous times, sitting by the stage as always. They always smiled at me and sometimes even waved, but they never went back into the VIP Room again.
Victor’s Secret
No matter how hard they try, some people just aren’t cut out to follow a certain path in life. Whether due to lack of skill, lousy luck, or simple fate, sometimes wanting something, no matter how bad, just isn’t enough. For instance, there are wanna-be doctors who faint at the sight of blood, wanna-be lawyers who are afraid to speak in front of crowds, wanna-be singers who are hopelessly tone-deaf, wanna-be chefs who couldn’t boil water, and wanna-be prostitutes who couldn’t get laid in a frat house. And then there was Victor, who wanted to design women’s lingerie more than anything in his life. Sadly, he had the fashion sense of a clothing buyer for the Salvation Army.
To put it mildly, Victor couldn’t create a teddy if Frederick himself walked him through th
e color-by-numbers steps. I mean, the guy was so inept, a moldy burlap bag with holes in it would’ve looked better on a woman than any of his pathetic creations. Trust me, I know. For the better part of three months, I was his model.
The first time I danced for Victor in the VIP Room was a routine gig: a couple of songs, a couple of drinks, some mindless banter, a decent tip, and sayonara. He never said a word about his passion for (attempting to) design sexy bedwear. I should have guessed by the way he was dressed—a maroon silk suit, an olive-green tank-top, and a pair of black-and-white wing-tips—that his fashion sense was severely lacking.
During his second visit he popped the question and asked if I would be amenable to modeling a “sexy new line of lingerie” that he was preparing to release the following year. I told him I’d do it, but only at the club. Originally, he wanted me to go to his house with him before or after work. Uh-uh. Not a friggin’ chance. If he wanted my services, he’d pay for them during my normal work hours; taking a break from dancing to model a few teddies certainly wouldn’t hurt my feet—or my bank account—one bit. But when I saw the first of his creations (creatures describes it more appropriately), my eyes started to water.
In a word, the teddy was freakish. The back was sky-blue velvet with criss-crossing red-rubber straps connected to a triangular front piece of clear plastic with golden grommets for attaching the connectors. At first, I thought he was joking. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. Victor was dead serious about his wares and he honestly believed he could beat Victoria at her own game. (Incidentally, the guy’s real name was George, but Victor seemed more appropriate for the story, given his attempted career path.)
