by Andrew Binks
I ordered water and got beer.
Two big guys in charcoal suits slid on and off bar stools to the door and back, flexed their shoulders and cracked their knuckles. They looked like a genetic twins experiment gone wrong. Both probably weighed the same but were completely different shapes and composed of very different body mass. They were dark, Greek maybe—“He’s Vasili.”
“No, he’s Vasili. I’m Mihalis.”
“No, I’m…” And on and on. The heavy one joking that he could be mistaken for his brother, the muscular one. The other one, too thick to figure it out. Vasili must have weighed in at a sloppy three hundred pounds—white shirt untucked, hairy belly hanging over his belt. He kept tucking himself in, like he was trying to carry rising bread dough from one place to another. A few days’ growth of whiskers covered his double chins, and ringlets of hair shone on his oval head. Everything about him said grease. He was chowing down on a bag of poutine, which he tried to share.
Mihalis was big, too, but it was three hundred pounds of triple-A prime Greek muscle, a former Mr. Canada contender. When he shook my hand I held on tight. Biceps practically split the sleeves of his suit. Shoulders like an ox. Face like an ox, too. Forehead tilted like a Neanderthal, as if the supplements were going wonky, or he’d been hit by a truck. I was curious about these muscle-bound types. They had some sense of aesthetic. Was it anything like mine? Mihalis had a dream. He owned a gym in Lower Town. That was his passion. So he must have understood if I stared a bit, since it was the nature of his career, and mine too. Both of us were exhibitionists; we had a connection to physical pain, narcissism, single-mindedness, perfection, dissatisfaction and being familiar with every inch of our bodies. Was there truly no line between the dancer and the dance? Was my need to dance coupled with my need to embody and possess the human form in all its potential sensual and sexual beauty? Most would not think a monster like Mihalis beautiful but so many, Michelangelo for instance, had tried and captured it.
Vasili came over, licked the grease off his fingers, and stuffed his shirt in his pants. “Come I introduce you to da girls,” he said.
I followed him to the jukebox where some of the girls were sitting, feet up on the edge of the stage. A small one in a white fur bikini, high white leather boots and blonde hair down to her behind was someone’s little-girl fantasy. Mihalis called her Chaton. We were ignored by a tall s&m dominatrix in leather hot pants, breasts stuffed into a matching tube top, straight black hair, dark narrow eyes. Then there was one who looked as wholesome as an old-fashioned Hollywood starlet. Her hair was pressed into curls. Her name was Nadine but I’d say she was more Rita Hayworth. She wore a white blouse and a pleated plaid miniskirt. She took my arm and pulled me toward her, whispered something in my ear and laughed. Vasili rolled his eyes and told me she was crazy. “Poor Nadine,” he said. “Her ’eart was broke ten years ago and she’s still not over it. She should be teaching kindergarten.” Then he said something to them and they giggled. The blonde little-girl Chaton nodded toward me, said something, and they laughed some more.
I took my place back at the bar and during three more complimentary beers I watched as after-work businessmen trailed in and slid over to the vacant tables. A few of the girls were dancing on boxes. One was in chain mail, one in a leopard and fishnet bikini and one in a black unitard, with her spandexed bum in some guy’s face. They had a routine: pose, run their hands up and down their thighs, squat, take off their tops and then tickle their nipples.
And every time a waitress went by she checked me out, like she wanted to see what the new guy was like. Soon they were winking at me while they were shoving their rear end in some guy’s face.
Meanwhile Chaton, now up on the stage in her white fur, was in a state. She yelled to anyone paying attention, “Cureees.” She was stuck, and looked like she was trapped in a poodle outfit, squirming and tearing at her zipper like she had fleas.
I stayed at the end of the bar and leaned against the wall. Another beer came. I sat. I stared at the rim of the glass.
Marcel’s voice pulled me out of my reverie as he announced “le premier spectacle du monde,” backed by a bum-bada-bum disco beat. Four leggy showgirls, like giant peacocks, heavy with silver sequined harnesses that pulled trailing rainbow feather tails, swayed corner to corner. They balanced glittering headdresses, sometimes tipping and getting stuck on ceiling lights or each other. The Rita Hayworth girl, Nadine, spent most of her time scowling. Then Marcel made his entrance in a one-piece bodysuit split down the chest and opened around the top of the bum. I swear his head of hair was bigger than Gino Vanelli’s, which made him look even shorter. He lip-synced Chevalier’s gravelly “Le Temps” while the girls posed at either corner of the stage. He was convincing. He took himself seriously, and he’d done his homework. And the show wasn’t bad; it was genuine glitz. But it wasn’t dance.
After the intro two guys—smooth-muscled, tanned torsos—strutted on (clumsy too, like they were trying to remember which foot goes next) in stretchy bell-bottoms to escort the girls in huge circles around the edge of the stage. They were easy on the eyes, and that’s what this show was about—costumes and titillation. Their main assets were their chests, arms and behinds. But most of the show was about Marcel lip-syncing and the girls posing in different costumes with deer-in-the-headlights, I-hope-my-tiara-stays-on looks.
Finally everyone disappeared and Marcel’s voice piped up: “le meilleur … le premiere.”
Then an old guy in a trench coat and bent flower in a broken top hat wandered onstage to do a couple of naughty pranks: you know, flash his boxer shorts, wear a dildo on his sunglasses while he had another one sticking out of his shorts—that kind of naughty. He set up his card table and did some bad magic with Nadine as his assistant. He was so bad I thought it was on purpose. The show finally ended with more fanfare and all of the performers taking a bow. It was over, the whole thing taking about thirty minutes. The only applause came from an old guy sitting at the edge of the stage.
After that, the other girls, the strippers, got back to lugging the boxes they table danced on, above their heads, over to the clients’ tables and plunking them down to start work again. They also took turns choosing a few songs on the jukebox, getting up on the stage, and stripping.
Then Marcel was back, sashaying through the room in a noisy chiffon dressing gown and swishing onto a stool at the bar beside me.
“What did you think?”
“C’est fantastique.” I could tell that this whole thing, for Marcel, was high art. It was art he would suffer for. It had a very particular aesthetic that was soaked headfirst in absolute unapologetic tackiness.
“You speak French? You won’t need it here.”
“It can’t hurt.”
“I gave Patrice, our magician, the gig to keep him off the streets and out of public washrooms.”
“Well don’t do me any favours.”
“You’ll be taking Luc’s place.”
“He’s good.” (I meant to look at. He could barely walk, let alone dance.)
“He’s going to Montreal. The money’s way better, but it’s more of a head trip.”
I had missed an important connection. How could a klutz, never mind a hot one, make it in Montreal? Was I really that clued out? “Head trip?”
“The money, the free jewellery, the come-ons—if you’re stripping in a gay place. But he who pays the stripper calls the tunes.”
“So he strips?”
“You should have seen his finale on Saturday night.”
“So guys strip here?”
“Usually two of them during the week. You’ll meet Bobby tomorrow night.”
“Who do they strip for?”
“Oh. Not for men. Well maybe, but not specifically. Not specifically for anyone specific, I guess you could say. A few women come in during the week, either in groups or with their boyfriends. Weekends
it’s all couples, and pretty middle class—Shriners, Kiwanis, you name it. I still don’t get it and I’ve lived here most of my life. Anyway that’s something you don’t need to worry about. Come back tomorrow night and we’ll walk you through some of this stuff before we go on. The second show’s different but I think you’ll pick it up. You don’t have to stay tonight. You might as well get some rest while you can.”
“I can’t believe this but I left my wallet at home. Can you lend me bus fare?”
He must have heard the desperation. But I could tell, the way he glanced up from under his eyebrows and big hair, and his gentle manner, that he was a gentleman. He slipped me twenty. “You can pay me back when you hit the big time.” Lending me bus fare was barely a sacrifice when the show must go on.
Miraculously a bus did come before too long. On the way home, staring out the window at a landscape of electric light and the reflections of car lots and warehouses I found myself humming that song Shirley MacLaine had sung in Sweet Charity, “If They Could See Me Now.” Those who wouldn’t get it if they saw me then or now were those from a few years earlier in the ballet studio at the university, the girls who demanded no less of me than the Kharkovs and Kozachenkos had. They were a collected wealth of ballet know-how. They showed me how to partner, again and again—which finger to offer for a fouetté—how to keep them en pointe—find their centre of gravity—control their centrifugal force. It was like learning how to drive without power steering; their ballast had increased since they had left the severe world of training and starvation. It forced strength upon me, control, and the kind of listening that the body has to do. I learned how to trust them through a turn. They told me to be more “zen” in what I did—remain rooted in the moment and trust the instinct of knowing when it was time to stop the turns.
All of them helped me. They knew the advantage I had of being a male in the dance world. They generously passed on their tricks like a flock of mother swans. I wondered if any of us stop doing what we love without a fight, including these women. I found out the answer when I offered to choreograph them—put the designs that were swirling in my mind to music and into a pattern on paper, and from paper onto bodies and all of it onto the stage. There was no question they would perform. It was in their blood. They offered me their trust for one more chance. Did they think about that first dream? Did they wish it for their daughters?
And soon everyone at the university heard about a dance extravaganza—from the jocks too thick to recognize the fantasies of a creative fruit, to their girlfriends who dragged them into the theatre to relive some childhood dream. I was a freak running from cheerleading practice to Drake’s ballet school in town to more ballet with the women in the gymnasium. If they could see me now. But when I told Kent, he didn’t bat an eye.
“It’s going to be like a real job—money, hours, even a real paycheque,” I told him on the phone. “What have you been up to?”
“Just doing the town.”
“Be careful doing the town.”
The next night my grand entrance was a matter of squeezing between the front door and an obliging Vasili, who opened it for me now that I was on the payroll. He made a big deal of treating the employees well; he’d wink and share a private joke, though I didn’t understand any of it.
Marcel was waiting at his spot at the bar, where I’d left him the night before, now in a kimono, hair in a plastic cap, traces of cold cream on his face. He was tapping his nails on the bar. He said we needed to have a talk then whistled a long sigh through the hair under his nose. From the look on his face, I was sure he was about to fire me. “Louis, the owner, won’t put you on the payroll just to do the show. You’ll have to wait tables, too, between shows.”
“Tips are okay—aren’t they? But I’m a crappy waiter.”
“Oh sure, tips can be good I imagine…”
“He’s been warned…”
“That won’t matter as much, but you have to dance. Strip. Table dance.”
“Sounds like I have no choice.” Drunkenly stripping down to my boxer shorts as a cheerleader at a university football game was one thing, but to stare down a room full of paying customers? I suppose it wasn’t so much about my body doing something as it was about my body being a certain way. I was starting to feel more and more like a commodity to help others tell their own story or create their own art. Clearly I was not in my own driver’s seat. Was this my new path, from the Company to the Conservatoire to Madame Talegdi’s to flashing my harnessed ass at the Chez Moritz to sugar-daddy-dom at some dark strip club in Montreal? What a thought. “Okay.”
“You don’t have to worry. You have a nice ass and the rest is obvious. Are you okay with that?”
“I won’t argue.”
“Have you ever stripped?” he said.
“At football games.”
“Football games?”
I was caught between wanting to brag about it, and the urge to deny. “From college days, I had a routine.”
True, the idea was titillating, and challenging, but I couldn’t imagine how it would all come together, the mechanics of it—standing on a box or being on a stage—being watched closely. Until recently, nakedness was confined to the dressing room, although I had had fantasies that involved being naked with strangers. It didn’t matter. I had to keep moving forward, and anything that involved a paycheque at this point was a move forward.
I climbed up on the stool beside Marcel and ran my fingers along the edge of the bar as I thought of all the reasons why I was destined to pull it off. I thought of all of the sittings for all the photographers when I was that kid. I was the only child with no siblings on either side. I was all blond, all blue-eyed with a pout to bring you to tears. They said things like, “What perfection, a perfect boy, he always, always, always smiles,” which was fitting for the son of a dentist. I was a walking advertisement; I was well behaved, I never argued, was never contrary, ornery or selfish. I was unspoiled, perfect, angelic, cherubic with “cheeks like ground soapstone.” And it didn’t end in kindergarten. I stayed the favourite and when that wore off I learned how to be the teacher’s pet. I knew what and how much it took to get by. I developed a “lip” repertoire: the pout, the “poor me” look, forgotten, adorable, even able to make myself look like I was thinking deep thoughts. I was quite the actor until the blankness set in.
The first year of junior high, “teacher’s pet” lost its allure. There were too many teachers—too many students—too much competition. My attempts to fit in ended in sprained ankles from volleyball tryouts, a bloody eye from basketball. The truth hit me by the time I reached high school that I was merely anonymous, and teacher’s pet died as fast as it had arrived. Real pets had real brains, talent, cutthroat popularity, muscles, moustaches, sneers, breasts, makeup, cigarettes, annoyed glances and character, not pimples and Acne-B-Gone, a bird’s nest of chlorine-damaged straw hair, textbooks held tight against the chest, crushes on other boys and a jarring nothingness to their stare. The only place for approval was at the pool, or alone, locked tight in the huge basement bathroom after the snow had been shovelled, Tchaikovsky’s pained violin concerto sifting through the air duct, my torso twisted to the mirror and my back round like the forest creature in L’apres midi d’un faun, and only then did I know I was good enough, even if no one had any idea what was meant by beauty other than peach fuzz and rusty cars. I stood on my toes and reached my arms to the mirror like the dancers I had seen, which led to thoughts of lean long thighs, flexed calves, round bums and possible stardom.
Marcel touched my hand and took me back over to the girls. It was early. They were sitting by the jukebox flicking their nails, smoking, looking bored and bothered, but looking sober enough, while they waited for clients or anyone to come into the dark. Chaton, the tiny one with blonde hair down her behind in a fun-fur bikini—the hysterical poodle in her own little cloud of anger—smoked, away from us. Nadine, Ri
ta Hayworth, now wore a sixties knitted bikini, the top suspended by breasts that defied gravity—looking elegant—probably still thinking of what went wrong to end that relationship ten years earlier.
There were two new ones sitting in the group. One was a tall woman, long straight black hair, I’d seen at a distance the night before, in suede fringe and feathers smoking one of those elegant non-cigars: “Smoking deez always makes me busy, every time I light one up someone wants me to dance and I have to ditch it. Like waiting for da maudite bus. Then it comes just when I light one.” And the other was Suzette, a freckled, outdoorsy, chubby girl-next-door you could have a beer and an arm wrestle with, in peek-a-boo lace baby-dolls, rough and tumble, leaning forward, legs splayed, confiding that she was a bitch and didn’t know why she was a mother (she was pregnant again), while her cigarette drooped from the corner of her mouth.
They all said “B’jour,” or “Salut,” like, We saw you already last night, so what? But when Marcel told them I’d be stripping as well as doing the burlesque show, they perked up. Suzette guffawed something in French and then asked if I’d ever stripped before.
I looked at Marcel. “Not in a club,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” said Suzette. “We show you da ropes, mon ami.” She turned to the other girls to translate and they looked at me with no more interest than they might the neighbouring cigarette machine, with their eyes at the same level as the knobs. I doubt anyone had time to show me the ropes.
Again, Marcel led me down to the basement, his cover-up billowing around him. There were two makeshift dressing rooms, huge sheets of plywood for walls. One was for all of the strippers, both sexes, and the other was an empty room reserved for any featured en vedette performer.
A hall beyond the rooms led to a bigger space where the cast of the spectacle changed: a few scattered chairs, ashtrays, empty and half-full drink glasses, and a rack of elaborate costumes for the show.
