Strip

by Catlyn Ladd

  A waitress comes over and talks Kim into ordering a round of shots. I order a kamikaze because it’s easy to reduce the alcohol content without the customers noticing.

  Kim is fixated on Lila. “She’s so beautiful.”

  “Yes, she is,” I agree.

  Lila is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in person. She has naturally curly jet-black hair and skin so pale and flawless that she glows. She’s thin and lean with pert breasts, narrow waist, and full hips. It’s hard not to look at her.

  “Unfortunately,” I divulge, “she doesn’t like girls.” I do not feel like this is a betrayal; I’m saving her the embarrassment of having to tell customers herself. On a couple of occasions I have watched her perform for women, and if it wasn’t so painfully hilarious, I would have felt badly for her.

  Kim’s face falls. “That is too bad.”

  “It is,” I agree. “But luckily we can watch from over here.”

  “I feel bad watching without tipping.”

  My opinion of Kim goes up a notch. She gets it. “Ken can tip,” I point out.

  He lights up. “I can!” He roots hurriedly through his wallet. “Today it’s good to be a man,” he tells us and heads for the stage.

  Kim and I watch Lila dance for him, enjoying the show as much as he does.

  “I love to watch women dance for my man,” Kim sighs.

  I laugh. “And he obviously enjoys watching women dance for you!”

  “Yeah,” she says absentmindedly, her attention fixed on the show happening before us.

  When Ken returns he’s a bit flushed, and Kim grabs him by the shirt and kisses him passionately. I glance away, watching from the corner of my eye.

  He’s even more flushed when she releases him. “I think we need a private dance immediately,” he says to me.

  I finish my cocktail at a swallow and stand up. “Well, come on!”

  It’s technically against protocol, but I let Kim sit in Ken’s lap instead of her own chair in the private dance area. I’ve been working here long enough now that management trusts me not to break state law even when I bend the rules of the club a little.

  Another way I bend the rules is by getting entirely too close to Kim. Turning my back to them, I start my show by sitting neatly into a cross-legged position and then leaning back into her lap, making full contact against her body, my head against her breasts. I undulate slowly, my back between her legs, creating slow friction. Her body is pressed back into Ken.

  I mostly dance for her, but I know that it turns Ken on. They get their money’s worth. At the end of the set Kim’s chest is splotchy and her eyes are dilated. Ken is a bit more composed but grinning from ear to ear.

  “How much do we owe you?” Ken asks.

  “It’s $20 a song,” I say, hoping that he gets that it’s per person.

  I do not need to worry. They’re experienced customers. He hands me two twenties and a ten. I make the bills disappear; I try to keep the money mostly out of sight. I don’t like to remind customers that ours is a financial relationship, and I also like to keep the customers’ minds off how much they’re spending.

  “I need to go get changed for my next set,” I say. “But Cody will be on stage two next, and I highly recommend being there. She’s awesome.”

  “Thank you!” Kim says and reaches to hug me. I allow this, amused by how tightly she grips me.

  As I walk away, they’re making out in the chair. The bouncer gives me a questioning look and I hold up a finger, signaling that he should give them a minute before breaking them apart. Customers aren’t supposed to stay in the private dance area if they’re not getting a dance, but 50 bucks is worth a bit of leniency. I want them to have a good time. And come back.

  They do come back. Once or twice a month they come in for an evening and buy a private dance with me and usually Cody and sometimes Trinity. They also tip well on stage and are well behaved, polite, and fun. They’re also clearly very into each other, listening closely when the other speaks, obviously hot for one another, respectful of the other’s preferences and desires. Sometimes they diverge in their taste for women, and one or the other will wander off in pursuit of a different dancer.

  “Don’t you get jealous?” Trinity inquires of Kim one evening when Ken has disappeared into the private area with Lila.

  Kim laughs, sounding genuinely surprised. “Of course not! Ken is free to do whatever he likes.”

  Trinity is clearly baffled. I know that she’s been married for several years and has a young daughter. She won’t let her husband come to the club because she’s afraid that he will look somewhere other than at her.

  “But what if he cheats on you?” she asks Kim.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Kim says matter-of-factly. “If he wanted to have sex with someone else he’d tell me.”

  “What would you say?” Trinity asks, sounding horrified.

  “I’d probably ask to watch!” Kim replies with a laugh. She sees the shock on Trinity’s face and sobers. “In all seriousness, Ken and I have an agreement that, if one of us wants to have sex outside our relationship, we’ll discuss it rationally.”

  Trinity turns to me. “What do you think about all this?”

  “I think that it sounds perfectly reasonable. Communication is key in any relationship. And jealousy is lethal.”

  Trinity shakes her head. “Y’all are weird. I gotta go get ready for stage.”

  Watching her walk away, I say to Kim, “It always amazes me how strippers can be such prudes.”

  “In my experience, almost everyone is a prude,” Kim says. “I find that strippers are usually a bit more sexually explorative than the rest of society, but puritanical attitudes still exist, even here.”

  Kim and Ken come into the club for their bachelor and bachelorette parties. They are finally tying the knot, and they bring all their friends in for the pre-ceremony celebration. We show them a good time.

  For $60, a groom, or bride, or someone celebrating a birthday, can be brought onto stage to have three girls dance for him or her. Ken and Kim go together and choose Cody, Bambie, and myself to dance for them. We sit them back-to-back in straight chairs and make them sit on their hands to restrict any urges they might have to grab at us. The three of us rotate, a wall of female flesh.

  As the second song starts, I kneel between Kim’s legs and pull my halter top over my head. Flipping my hair forward over my face, I grind my head along her thigh, stopping just short of the juncture between her legs, teasing, simulating. Running my fingers along the tops of her legs, I pull her shirt out of her jeans, watching her face, making sure that I have permission. Slowly I pull her shirt up. Cody takes one of her hands and Bambie takes the other up over her head, and I pull her shirt up and off, revealing a lacy white bra and a smooth expanse of stomach. She laughs wildly and flushes. Ken cranes his head around to see. The crowd applauds and hoots. Money rains onto the stage.

  Bambie leans her forward in the chair and unclasps her bra in one quick move. Kim flushes even more but lets us take it off, freeing full, heavy breasts. Pulling Cody and Bambie in on either side of me to hide my actions, I run my fingertips out along her collarbones and then very quickly down the slope of her breasts, brushing her nipples. The flush spreads along her chest, but it’s no longer embarrassment.

  I step back, smiling victoriously as we move back around toward Ken, who has been neglected. In addition to the money lining the stage, now shots have appeared, a whole row of them. The other customers in the club have wandered over to watch the show, and it’s three deep around the stage.

  Standing 3 feet above the crowd, the lights shimmering on my bare skin, I breathe it in, this surging sexual energy. I love the club like this, when everyone is having fun, the flirtation and playfulness of both the customers and the dancers filling the air. This feeling is so taboo in American culture and I wish that it wasn’t. It’s okay to exult in sexuality. It’s fun to play and tease. It’s empowering to disrupt so
cial norms.

  Of course, if this was generally acceptable, I couldn’t make thousands of dollars engaging in the forbidden. Stripping is taboo and that’s what makes it lucrative. I close my eyes and lean back into the feeling. Right now, in this moment, I am exactly where I want to be.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Black and Blue

  Beside me, Tess sighs deeply, causing me to glance in her direction. We are alone in the dressing room, though soon it will begin to fill with dancers checking in for the night shift.

  Tess stands naked in front of the mirror applying foundation to the bruise that I now notice spreads across her cheek. “What happened?” I inquire.

  Her eyes meet mine in the mirror, and I see uneasily that she is on the verge of tears. I don’t know her well; I keep most of my stripper colleagues at arm’s length. I have just potentially opened a door that I will not be able to close. But the bruise is dark and angry.

  She forces a smile. “Oh, you know. I deserved it.”

  No matter how many times I hear stories of abuse from women, the language they use always shocks me. I shake my head. “Nope. No one ever deserves to be hit. Ever.”

  Her eyes drop from mine and she fusses with the little pot of foundation. “You sound like someone who knows.”

  I puzzle over her words. Does she mean that I speak with conviction? Does she think that I have experienced being hit?

  “My boyfriend threw a television at me once,” I share finally. “I broke his nose.”

  She laughs, wiping her eyes. “I bet he really beat the shit out of you then!”

  I shake my head again. “Of course not. I kicked him out of the house and broke up with him. Had the locks changed by that evening.”

  She looks at me in disbelief.

  “As soon as someone is willing to use violence against their partner, it’s over. Always.” I go back to brushing foundation over my cheekbones.

  “But you know what men are like.”

  I feel myself getting irritated. “Stupid boys have been getting away with violence against women for centuries because women rationalize it using shit logic like that,” I snap.

  Her eyes fill with tears again and I feel bad. I turn to face her. “Look, you have to learn to stand up for yourself.”

  Her chin trembles and she looks down. “I don’t know how,” she whispers.

  I feel tightness spread across my chest. I am out of my depth here. I do not understand abuse or the mentality of the victim. No one has ever touched me with violence. Even the TV-throwing boyfriend did not so much throw it as knock it off the counter in my general direction. And the look of sheer misery on his face told me immediately that he had no intention of harming me. I still ended the relationship, though. I didn’t want to give that miserable look a chance to grow into something else.

  “Look.” I reach out and take her hand. Her fingers close tightly over mine. “Men are just people. There are good ones and bad ones. And you can’t allow yourself to stay with a bad man.”

  “But …” Her voice is no more than a whisper. I have to lean in to catch her words. “But he loves me.”

  “No.” I give her hand a hard squeeze, then reach out and lift her face when she does not look up, forcing her to meet my eye. “Love is soft and caring and playful. Sometimes it’s hard but it is never violent. It’s normal to quarrel and struggle to communicate. But no one should ever hit. Ever.”

  “You hit your man.”

  She’s got me there. “That’s when I knew it was over,” I reply finally. “I knew I couldn’t stay in a relationship where that sort of thing had been introduced.”

  She is openly crying now and I hand her a tissue. “But they have all hit.”

  The tightness in my chest drops hard into my stomach. I feel myself sway and grip the edge of the dressing counter. “All of them.” I repeat her words, trying to make sense of what she’s telling me. I think I know what she’s telling me. “Everyone has always hit.”

  “Starting with your parents,” I say. I’m not really guessing. I know this story.

  “Yes,” she whispers. “My mom used to …” She falters and then steadies herself. “My mom used to trade me for drugs.”

  Now I do sit down. But I keep holding her hand. “How old were you?”

  She scrubs her eyes with the tissue and shakes her hair back, seeming to brace herself. “It started when I was six.”

  “Oh, my god.” Now I am the one whispering. “Oh, Tess. I’m so sorry.”

  She meets my eyes. “You’re saying that this never happened to you?”

  “Nothing like that has ever happened to me.”

  She stares at me, seeming almost angry. “You’re saying that no one has ever hit you.”

  “Never.”

  “And no one has ever molested you.”

  “No.”

  “Raped you.”

  I shake my head, mute.

  She pulls her hand away. Taking one last swipe at her eyes, she says, “Well, aren’t you lucky.”

  I’m stunned. She picks up the foundation and begins covering the bruise, working quickly and methodically.

  “Tess …”

  She glances at me in the mirror, her eyes hard. “What?”

  “I am lucky,” I say.

  “You bet your ass you are.”

  I am silenced in the face of her anger. I have revealed myself to be a different sort of woman, one who does not fear men. I am an alien creature, dismissed as impossibly distant.

  Studies reveal that a woman who has been sexually abused is almost twice as likely to be abused again. Abuse changes a person, makes them take more risks, normalizes assault. Maybe a person who has been raped is likelier to project victimhood, attracting predators.

  I have always been fierce, a fighter. I communicate in no uncertain terms and demand respect. I was taught to make good choices and never settle for anything less than being seen as a human with autonomy.

  But I am also lucky. Predators sometimes target women like me. I cannot take full responsibility for remaining unassaulted. It is good fortune and not anything I have done that has kept me safe from the lecherous uncle, the drunken frat boy, the creeper in the bar following me home.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Addict

  I stand at the bar sipping juice; the bartender blends orange, pineapple, and mango with just a little lime soda to make a sweet, bubbly cocktail. It is early in the night and the usual crowd of regulars are arriving to take their places at the bar. They will sip beer all night, teasing the dancers and ribbing one another about past transgressions, real and imagined. Only two stages are open and a couple of guys sit at each.

  I hear the doorman talking to an arriving customer, and I glance back to check out the new arrival. The guy is young, baby-faced. He’s got to be barely 21. He gives me a nod and a smile that looks slightly nervous. I smile back.

  He takes his change and slips his wallet back into his jeans. Behind him the doorman gives me an imperceptible nod. Baby Face is loaded for business. The bouncers often see into customers’ wallets and alert us when someone comes in carrying a lot of cash. My smile widens.

  “Hi,” I step forward, hand outstretched. “I’m Star.”

  “Jason.” He gives my hand a shake.

  “First time here?”

  He’s looking over my shoulder at the darkened club floor. Candy stretches out on stage one, her skin sparkling with glitter that we’re not supposed to wear. The owner fears that customers’ wives will wonder why they’re coming home covered in body glitter and has banned its use. But we all break the rules.

  “First time ever in a place like this,” he says and shoots me the nervous smile again.

  “Well, let’s get you a drink,” I say and lead him to the bar.

  “Would you like anything?” he asks.

  “Why yes, thank you. I’ll have a seven and seven,” I tell the bartender.

  When he pays I glance quickly into his wallet. He has ov
er $100 in twenties with a few smaller bills tucked in. He also has three credit cards lined up in the wallet’s pockets. Two of them are platinum.

  “Let’s sit.” I pick up our drinks and lead the way to a table just back from stage. Candy arches her back, looking at us upside down. I wiggle my fingers at her and she flicks her tongue playfully.

  “So.” I lean toward Jason, my breath in his ear and along his neck. “If you’re a strip club virgin, what would you like to know?”

  He’s riveted by Candy’s body laid out like a buffet. “Everything.”

  “I like the sound of that,” I purr. “If you look, it’s polite to tip.” I nod toward Candy.

  He flushes slightly and looks back at me, his eyes sliding quickly across my chest before meeting my gaze. “How much should I tip?”

  “A dollar or two. If you sit at stage you should keep a dollar in front of you.”

  He peels a couple of bills off and hands them to me. “Can you show me?” He nods at the stage.

  I stand and step to the stage, folding the money lengthwise and placing the dollars side by side. Candy rolls onto her stomach and rises to all fours, crawling across the stage to me. When she places her arms around my shoulders and pulls me into her breasts, I smell the bubblegum-scented body spray she favors. It’s cloyingly sweet.

  She pulls out the strap of her G-string a couple of inches and I slip the money in. She releases the elastic with a snap.

  “Just like that,” I say, sliding back into the seat next to him. Jason grins, and the flush on his neck is not embarrassment.

  “It’s also nice to tip a girl if she sits with you for a bit. And private dances are 20 a song.”

  “How much should I tip you?”

  I bite back a grin. “Five bucks here and there is standard.”

  He slides a five across to me and I tuck it quickly into my shirt.

  “I have to go get ready for stage,” I tell him. “I expect to see you there.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He tips me a cocky little salute.