The New York Doll

by Ellie Midwood

  Chapter 13

  - Stop looking so pretty! – I turn around and there he is, smiling at me, my boss, Italian-mobster…Robert DeNiro’s double. And since I can’t reveal his actual name because of the circles he’s in, I’ll be calling him just R.

  I just finished my stage and was holding a pile of tips in my hands.

  - I’m sorry, I can’t help it! – I smile back at him; nobody can’t help but to smile back, he just does it to girls.

  - Would you like a drink?

  R. is a perfect gentleman and the most sociable of all three bosses of “Velvet”. Even though he stops by only couple of nights a week, he always makes a party around him. Guys love him, girls adore him, and just a week ago I was discussing his hot butt with Mikky. Of course I want a drink with you!

  R. got me my Bellini and like a real old school gentleman gave me his seat. I liked that. We toasted and after that started such a familiar for me conversation that every guy has with every girl in a strip club: where are you from? How long have you been working here? Where else do you work? Only this time it didn’t feel like a necessary “pre-dance” interrogation, but more like a regular conversation that two people would have if they just met at some bar. R. asked me if I would do a shot of Patron Café with him. Normally I wouldn’t do strong shots like that, but I couldn’t say no to my charming boss. The bar shots are pretty big, way bigger than the shot girl’s, so I miscalculated while drinking it and spilled a little on my stomach.

  - You’re supposed to drink it, not wear it! – R. is laughing. I’m laughing too. Somehow even such an embarrassing situation he could turn into a joke and make me feel at ease.

  One of my regular customers was waiting for me at the other side of the bar, but I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay here, with R. We were having such a great time talking to each other and I really wanted to meet him again, but I didn’t really know how to do it. Luckily, alcohol always makes me very inventive and I thought that a little trick might do just what I wanted.

  - You know, my family here in Staten Island is involved in different business projects, so I thought if you would be interested…

  R. interrupted me even before I could finish the sentence.

  - Oh yeah, sure, - he took out his phone and smiled at me. - Do you want to give me your number so I could give you a call later to discuss it?

  - Absolutely! – I took my iPhone out and we exchanged numbers. Yay! – It was really nice talking to you. Thank you for the champagne.

  - No problem, honey. – R. kisses me on the cheek before I go. – I’ll give you a call then.

  - I’ll be waiting. – I smile at him and make sure I walk away like a runway model.

  I have no clue about his marital status, whether he has a girlfriend or not, if it’s a good idea to flirt with your boss like that or not, and what am I going to do if he asks me out? All I know is that I’m really happy that I have his number, and once again I finally feel butterflies in my stomach.

  _______________

  - I want you to meet my mother.

  Zed really knows how to bring me back to reality.

  - What?

  - Remember we planned a barbeque for this weekend? Well, I didn’t realize it’s gonna be Mother’s Day. So my mom is coming over from Manhattan. I would like you to meet her.

  We are driving back home from the club and even though I was pretty drunk before, I sobered up right away.

  - Gee, Izzy, I don’t know. I mean it’s very nice of you to offer that, but we know each other only couple of weeks, don’t you think it’s a little bit too soon?

  - Oh, she already knows so much about you! She’s very excited to meet my new girlfriend who I told her I’m going to marry.

  Zed is so enthusiastic and has such a huge smile on his face; meanwhile I feel chills going down my spine.

  - Of course you can’t tell her that you are dancing. I told her you are a waitress. She’s leaving to Greece soon with her fiancé, isn’t it so awesome that they’re gonna meet you before they leave?

  Oh God! He’s making it even creepier!

  - I guess…

  - Cool! So I’ll tell her that you’re coming.

  - Yeah, okay…

  - We’ll do shopping early in the morning and we’ll get all the stuff we need and then we’re gonna cook it, it’s gonna be such a cool family barbeque, don’t you think?

  “I think it’s not normal that you are talking family and marriage after two weeks of knowing me! And the whole last week you didn’t even see me because I took days off when you were working, because you really started creeping me out!!!”

  - Aha, I guess…

  _______________

  The next day when I was talking to Mikky, she absolutely supported me in my position.

  - I don’t even know what you are doing with him. I mean, he’s just so immature for his age, I still can’t get over the fact that he’s forty! He looks younger, yes, but the whole piercing in his ears, tattoos, the chain on his jeans, all that gotta go. What’s with that chain anyway? He walks around rattling his keys like some frigging janitor or something!

  I can’t help but burst into laughing.

  - He’s so in love with me… I’m being a total bitch with him, telling him that I hate cooking and would never do that, he agrees to that. He says he’s gonna cook. I say that I can’t come over to his house for a movie because of my puppy, he lets me bring her over even though he hates dogs. It’s just nice that he’s so crazy about me…but you’re right. He’s very immature. He still believes that if he moves to LA, he’s going to become a huge star there. He doesn’t want to admit that he might be a good DJ, but a bad composer. Do you know that every night he took me home after the club he would make me listen to the improvements he made in his track?

  - No! Poor thing! – Mikky’s laughing. – And now his mother thing? He’s obsessed with you, baby. And it’s a little freaky.

  But Mikky had no idea what freaky really meant until I met Zed’s mother and her fiancé the following day. Don’t get me wrong, she was a delightful Cuban woman, looking gorgeous in her seventies, who was really nice to me the whole time during our barbeque. She was genuinely interested in me and concerned how it’s going to be between me and Zed, but her genuine participation was that straw that broke the camel’s back.

  - So, Milana, you’re Jewish?

  - Well, I don’t really observe it, but yes, I am. – I touch the diamond Star of David on my neck.

  - That’s nice. – she smiles at me. – You know, in our church we have a lot of Jews who converted into Catholicism. Such nice people! We are all one big family over there.

  “Did she really just say that?!”

  I look at Zed, but he just cuts his steak like nothing happened.

  - Yeah, I’m not sure how much you know about Judaism, but you can’t really convert to any religion. If you are born Jewish, you just stay Jewish your whole life. You can only convert into our religion, not the other way round.

  - Don’t get me wrong, sweetie! I didn’t want to offend you or your religion, I’m just saying that those people became happier after our Savior Jesus Christ changed their lives. It’s not for everybody of course, and that’s why it’s so great that our religion accepts every single lost soul. Jesus loves you.

  - I’m sure he does, - I don’t know what astonishes me the most, her sincere smile and assurance in her eyes that eventually she’ll bring my “lost soul” to the Savior, or Zed’s poker face. Not only he didn’t point out to his mother that this is quite a shaky topic for discussion on our first meeting, but he looked pretty much supportive of the whole conversation. Ok, you want to be a jerk, I’ll make sure I put some oil on the fire too!

  - By the way, when I have kids, they automatically become Jewish. If mom’s Jewish, so are her kids. That’s why my puppy’s name is Eliana, she’s Jewish too, because I’m her “mommy”. Funny, isn’t it?

  For a second I thought all three of them would cho
ke on their meat. My grandpa would be very proud of me: he fought Nazis in the World War II not for some “second coming” witnesses would try to turn me into their religion during a family barbeque.

  - What? – I put more salad on my dish and smile at Zed. – Don’t tell me you didn’t know that.

  I was a sweetheart for the rest of the barbeque though. When Zed’s mother mentioned that Zed was thinking of moving to LA, I nicely shrugged and said that I love New York too much and would never leave it for any city in the world. When she asked me if I had any siblings, I very nicely answered that I was the only child, and a very spoiled one. Do I want to have kids? Not in the nearest ten years. I have my puppy as my baby. And once again, she’s Jewish, so I’ll be celebrating her Bat Mitzvah when she’s 13 months old. Oh God, I can be such a ball breaker when I want to!

  _______________

  Strippers and politicians are the people who lie the most in their lives. Both do it for money, but strippers, unlike politicians, don’t try to fuck you. Actually, when you are working in a gentleman’s club, you have to lie. First reason is to protect yourself from all the crazy stalkers who will creep you out waiting for you outside the club, trying to pay your co-workers to get your Facebook name or even follow you home after your shift (thank God I never had this experience, but I heard stories). Second reason is that this kind of job requires a lot of acting, so you simply have to do what students do during acting classes: you create a character, you give it a name, you make up a story and then you just improvise, make believe, persuade, seduce, promise… They are ready to pay big money for your performance.

  I had fun doing it. I changed my hair color from dark brown to natural blond, put on hair extensions for a night, fake eyelashes, a lot of make-up, perfume… I created this walking Barbie Doll, Milana, who crazily resembled Victoria’s Secret Angel Candice Swanepoel, but who was dancing on a pole instead of walking the runway. They loved Milana, they were going crazy for her, and if I would get a dollar every time a customer asked me out, I wouldn’t have to work at all. I would lie if I said I didn’t like it. I liked the admiration, I liked that it was easy money and that I felt so powerful when guys were fighting over me, I liked how they were going crazy when I would put on a show on stage. But other than that, I hated my job. I was coming home at 4 in the morning, drunk and tired. Sometimes I couldn’t even sleep, so I was just sitting on my bed, still dressed, and thinking of what am I going to do with my life. I already knew, I wanted out.

  Chapter 14

  Back in my teens, when I was suffering from depression, I read a lot of books on psychology and spoke to a lot of therapists. All of them were saying one thing: if you are depressed, first of all, change your environment and get rid of everything and everybody who makes you depressed. And one morning I woke up and decided to change my life, once again. First of all, I needed to get rid of everyone who was making me feel bad. So at the cup of coffee I told Zed that it’s not going to work out between us and it was over. He seemed to be very upset and angry (I would be too, if “my wife to be” and “future mother of my children” who I met couple of weeks ago, dumped me). Anyway, I couldn’t sacrifice my happiness and dignity even for papers with Michael who I was actually in love with, so why would I do it now with the guy who I only tolerated just because he caught me on a rebound and made me feel loved again. By the age of 24 I already knew that I also needed to love back, and that one way relationship works only at the club, while imitating “boyfriend-girlfriend” relationship with customers.

  Second, I needed to move away from my so-called family, before my vampire auntie sucked all my blood out. Mikky promised to let me know as soon as she has any available apartments in her building in Brooklyn, but I was a candidate number two actually: Mikky already let her former co-worker from the Russian strip club Gulnara live with her while she was waiting for an apartment as well. That’s ok, I can wait, I know how to be patient, at least now I have hope, and hope was the force that always made me move forward and never give up even during the most difficult situations. I was starving before; I was almost homeless when I had nothing to pay for my rent; I was abused by my aunt while I couldn’t find a decent job, but in spite of all that, I’m still here, I’m independent and free, and now I’m going to build my life all over again.

  _______________

  Always focus on positive moments and things, doctors were also saying. So I focused on the most positive thing I had, my sexy boss R. It all started when he bought me a cheesecake and I made all my customers wait while I was enjoying both the dessert and our conversation. R was always making me laugh, but at the same time we were talking about everything as if we knew each other the whole life. We were texting each other all the time, and one night when we were both pretty drunk, we had a phone sex. Not even talking, but texting, or better say sexting… He apologized to me the next morning, just like an old school gentleman, and asked me to forgive him for being drunk and obnoxious. I said that he can make it up to me, but I’m still mad as we haven’t even had a real date yet, and already had phone sex. Of course I wasn’t mad and R. knew that, but nevertheless he said that the date situation needs to be fixed as soon as possible. I caught myself smiling at my phone like a 17-year-old school girl. I’m having a date!

  But that date was soon threatened by a very unpleasant incident. It was a warm, beautiful May day in New York and I was getting ready to meet Mikky in Manhattan for our long ago planned visit to Metropolitan Museum. Since both of us originally came to New York from the two Russian cultural capitals, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, we have always been craving this non-stop educational process. We were so happy that we became friends, as now every weekend we could spend at the museum, or exhibition, or theatre, or watch some educational movies together. We loved discussing everything we saw, we loved sharing our knowledge and our views on different subjects and, like any other hot girls in NYC, we loved taking pictures and posting them on Instagram. Taking into consideration this funny fact, I got dressed to kill: I put on my silk leopard print top, jeans shorts, sandals (there’s no way you can wear heals if you are going to spend several hours in a museum), put my hair up, my headphones on, sunglasses, cross-shoulder bag, and I was ready to go.

  Mikky and I agreed to meet at around two, since my way from Staten Island would take good couple of hours. Not having a car of my own, and of course not wanting to ask my “Aunt Dracula” to give me a ride to the ferry, I had to walk thirty minutes to the nearest train, then after a twenty minute ride catch a ferry, then take another train into the city, but on a such beautiful spring day I didn’t mind walking at all. Everything was blossoming, the birds were singing like crazy (I even heard them through the music playing in my headphones). First day in such a long time I was really enjoying myself and everything around me, first time I was looking at my future with hope and optimism. But suddenly my happy train of thoughts was interrupted by a text message from R.: “Milana, have you ever been involved with Zed?”

  My heart sank and all of a sudden the world got dark and gloomy. I can’t believe that asshole told R. that we have been going out. I was actually pretty ashamed of that relationship and that was the reason why I never told anybody in the club about it. The only person who knew (and strongly disapproved of it) was Mikky. But why would Zed even bring it up now? Because it didn’t work out between us and now he can’t stand the thought that I can be happy with someone else, so he decided to destroy it for me?

  “We were going out for a couple of weeks, but it didn’t work out and we broke up. I didn’t say nothing because I wasn’t proud of it and besides he asked me not to tell anyone, and I respected his wish.”

  That was the truth. If R. was a customer, I would have come up with some bullshit, would’ve been naughty, would’ve been nice, would’ve completely thrown him off track and promised something for the next time he comes by. But I didn’t want to lie to R. even though it would have probably been easier. If he doesn’t want to see me anymore after
that, well, so be it, I deserved it by being so stupid and getting into relationship with Zed that wouldn’t take me anywhere. But I didn’t want to start my new relationship with lying and playing games.

  R. wasn’t answering and I very much surprised myself by how very upset I got. It turned out that I liked R. way more than I thought, but now it all probably didn’t matter anyway. And for the first time in a very long time I started praying, praying to God inside my head, asking him to make R. forgive me and give me a chance so I could prove him that I am a good person, I’m still a good Jewish girl, just like my mom raised me, but who is forced to dance on a stage in her underwear.

  I was waiting for a train when I finally got a respond: “We are still going out, but you’ll have to make it up to me, bad girl”.

  I closed my eyes with my hands and started laughing. I think if someone offered me a green card at that moment I wouldn’t be happier than I was. God heard me!

  “I promise I will,” – I text back and look at the sky. It’s blue again.

  _______________

  While Mikky and I were walking through halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, she wouldn’t stop wondering how can I get out of situations like this.

  - God helped me. – I smiled at her.

  - Your hot ass helped you! – Mikky laughs. – Milana, you’re unbelievable!

  - Oh look, Degas’ ballerinas! I love Degas!

  - Yeah, it’s very pretty. But don’t you change the subject. When are you going out?