Fake Hair, Pancake Make-Up and Bad Outfits.
Tasteful.
Thanks to
Circe for the pics.
The 'Real' Article 4.30am. Soon Justin (Software Analyst, 37, balding, recently divorced, lifelong paranoia about size of penis) will be forking out 1700 bucks for entry to the vastly over-priced Champagne Room – a ‘private’ cubicle rented by the hour where men can, ostensibly, get a ‘closer’ lapdance than on the mainfloor of the stripclub. He is not presently aware of this fact, being more concerned with staring at my boobs as I grind in his lap.
"Ah Mimi, you crack me up Princess. There's really something between us."
Right now it's a full bladder. All those vodka-redbulls. I nod to the Manager as I slip off to the bathroom. He discreetly slides onto the table to convince Justin that parting with his disposable income is a good idea. He nods happily, drunkenly slurps a glass of Dom Perignon. "You take your time Princess."
By the time I return Justin’s waiting for me in a tiny, windowless, leather clad room in the back of the club. It's eerily dead at this time in the morning. Justin opens the door cautiously, sees my face and leaps back in excitement. "Ta Da!" His small, flaccid penis dangles pathetically between skinny, hairy legs. He still has his shoes on, I note curiously. Terry-cloth sports socks and loafers.
"I asked the waiter for a condom, but they didn't have any..."
His arms are raised in spectacular display, for what purpose I’m unaware. Praising God seems a little hypocritical in this place of sin, but it's all I can think of as he stands there naked, looking like the crucifixion, a misplaced member of a gospel congregation, bottle of Dom Perignon waved aloft like a blessing, stupified grin plastered across his drunken features. His penis twitches oddly as if it were making a heroic yet doomed effort to stand to attention. There's very little I can think of to say to this bizarre and wholly unexpected early-morning entertainment.
"Top-up of Dom, Princess?"
What have I become?
I arrived in February 2005 at the age of 25 with the intent of becoming a journalist. I wanted, more than anything, to be a writer, ever since I graduated from Cambridge with a first in English Literature back in 2000, and then gained my MPhil a year later. The first article I wrote in The Village Voice, the famous New York weekly, caused a ripple of interest amongst New Yorkers. I was invited on a show called ‘The O’Reilly Factor’. The Voice asked for more pieces and started talking about a column. And then I hit a brick wall.
I had no visa.
I applied for a journalist’s visa, and sat back and waited the requisite 4 weeks for it to process. Except 4 weeks stretched into 8 very long months, where I wasn’t allowed to leave the US while my visa processed, and I wasn’t legally allowed to work. I lost job after job because of my ‘undocumented’ status. I resorted to lying to employers, using fake papers to gain employment. And I became increasingly isolated, scared and miserable as my savings dwindled. Alone and new in the Big Apple, there was no one to turn to for support. I was wandering desolately along Broadway one afternoon, trailing into restaurants to look for jobs, when I passed a gaudy sign, FLASHDANCERS, a discreet dark entrance. And then it hit me. I remembered reading somewhere how stripclubs pay everyone in cash. It rarely goes through the books. I didn’t want to strip – surely strippers were Pammy Anderson lookalikes with huge, heaving plastic bosoms and acrylic hair. I couldn’t do that. I was young and innocent-looking. Think Dawson’s Creek, rather than The Pussy Ranch. FlashDancers Gentleman’s Club. Possibly the last place you’d expect to find someone acquainted with the logistics of Magical Realism in Post-Colonial Literature, but there’s a first for everything.
On a complete impulse I walked straight inside, my heart beating. Inside there was a tiny girl with huge, heaving plastic bosoms and long, blonde hair gyrating listlessly onstage with a bored, vacant expression on her face, the sharp smell of beer, cheap perfume, pheromones. Twenty or so girls flitted around in slinky, bright dresses, glittering emerald, gold, silver, ruby in the musty darkness, laughing and sipping drinks, their arms around men, bodies inclined towards them. I remember one guy sitting alone at the stage, gazing in ecstasy at a blonde girl, nursing his mineral water. I later came to know him as ‘Heaven’s stalker’. He was obsessed with a girl called Heaven, and had been for eight years. Everytime she worked he came in, bought his water, sat at the stage, pined if she was with another guy. The club itself was large – one of the biggest in Manhattan, I later found, with a central stage, leopard print carpet, small cocktail tables and thirsty men balanced precariously on the side, waiting for a girl to approach them. It was quiet now, in the middle of the day, empty and sad, but a resilient sense of hardened glamour prevailed regardless. I was shocked. But I tried to be cool, to appear as if I was used to the breasts, the g-strings, the way the girls wrapped their bodies expertly around men in erotic and explicit poses. I spoke to the bartender, and she directed me over to the manager, a haggard, chain smoking New Yorker with a taut facelift. There and then she gave me a job as a waitress. “You gotta wear makeup” she told me,. “I am wearing makeup”. She looked at me and laughed. “Go look at da rest of da girls. You ain’t wearin’ no makeup.”
I started the next day, poured into a tight satin bodice and hotpants, holding a drinks tray, feeling somewhat ridiculous with my butt hanging out of my shorts. I didn’t make friends at first. My education made me different from the girls, many of them from third world countries. I was middle-class, well-educated and I didn’t know how to talk to anyone who wasn’t – well, the same as me. Jasmine, one of the other waitresses, a tiny Indian girl with enormous fake breasts eyed me coolly. “You look cute sweetie. But you need to learn how to do your makeup.” We laughed, and the waitresses confided in me that they too could go to the mysterious ‘Champagne Room’ to supplement their paltry tips. Jasmine never went. She scrunched up her nose. “I love my boyfriend! I couldn’t do that.” But Nicki, 23, from India frequently did, and earned just as much as the strippers, without ever having to go onstage. As waitresses we were sought after by the men, as we were seen as ‘off-limits’. Yet like everything in the club, even we were for sale, and although we weren’t allowed to dance onstage, we could go in the Champagne Room. At 500 dollars an hour, of which we gained 200 dollars plus a tip, this was good money. I wanted to try. Something inside me, the girl who never even gone topless on the beach, was daring myself to become so at ease with my body I could bare it all wearing nothing but a tiny g-string, use it to seduce money from men. In some ways, maybe I was rebelling against my education. I wanted to fit in somewhere – here. I wanted to see if I could change myself from a brain to a, well, slut. I had a good body– years of yoga had seen to that. The more hours I spent in the club, the more the sharp slap of that initial glimpse into this dark seedy world faded from my cheek, and the more what I saw seemed ‘normal’. The first time I ever went into a private room, two weeks after I’d been working there, I was still a waitress. I’d never done a lapdance before. I’d watched the other girls intently – they probably thought I was crazy! - a part of me sickened, a part curious, wondering if I could ever do the same. And when one afternoon a young Bostonian, ‘Joe’ bought me drink after drink, I felt empowered and drunk enough to try, and the management encouraged me. The same haggard, chainsmoking woman, Dolores, threw a g-string at me, told me to put it on under my clothes, briefed me what to do. “If he asks you for a fuck, a blow job, a hand job, oral sex, or to masturbate in front of him, the correct answer isn't, 'Maybe', or even, 'Let's discuss this later'. The correct answer is, 'I'm not that kinda girl', and ; 'This is not that kinda place'. Got it?"
I felt numb, palms sweating, legs shaking. As soon as I walked into the Champagne room, took a sip of a drink, locked eyes with ‘Joe’ who gazed in awe at my figure, something inside me felt strong, in control. It was easy. This was what any girl did on a night out – flirted and fooled around with guys. But here, in this dark windowless room, I was getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to simulate attraction wearing nothing but heels and a g-string, and I didn’t even have to have sex with the guy! I used all the tricks I’d learned from two weeks of watching the other girls. I breathed heavily on his neck, but kept my lips away from his mouth. I let my knee trail between his legs, turned around and ‘ground’ lightly by pressing my butt into his crotch. Already I was learning to evade men’s hands, their lips, their desire for more, with words as well as my body. I could talk about anything, and that, to this day, has always been to my advantage, supplementing the body, the dress and the makeup. ‘Joe’ was polite, but at one point his arms, which should remain by his sides, sneaked up onto my hips, squeezed tightly. The power of his grip frightened me, and simultaneously turned me one. I gently placed his hands back down by his sides and he groaned softly. “Mimi, you’re killin’ me.” I almost forgot that was me – ‘Mimi’. One of the girls had told me to use a different name with the guys. “It’s easier,” she’d shrugged. “It keeps them from getting under your skin. Gets you into character.” ‘Mimi’ – a nickname from an exboyfriend, was the first name that came into my head, and it stuck. I came out of that hour, blinking from the dark of the private room into the glitz and the boom-boom-boom of the club, and I knew then that I’d become ‘Mimi’ . Now I’d danced in the privacy of the Champagne Room and convinced the guy I was a ‘real’ dancer, I’d suddenly been given the confidence to do it onstage. Joe never even said goodbye as he grunted, slipped off into the crowd to find his friends. And it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I never felt disrespect for the men I danced for, although some disgusted me. I still don’t. I’ve seen the quietest, gentlest man, intelligent and polite, go insane when he’s in a club, being assiduously pumped of money by a girl who knows exactly what buttons to press, managing to convince him she’s in love with him without ever having her lips touch his. This is a tremendous skill – we’re modern day geishas. It takes a lot of practise to continually keep men dangling without actually giving them anything. And whilst there are some freaks in this business, most men are fathers, husbands, bachelors, party-goers – and they are, and always will be, our victims, loved only for their cash. Men don’t want to know your real name, your real feelings, what degree you have, what ambitions your harbour. They want the fake name, the plastic boobs, the spray on tan, the feigned sighs of pleasure, the illusion of attraction without the repudiations of infidelity. And you give that to them, keeping what’s real tucked far away out of sight, the only part of you not for sale.
I left Flashdancers after six months, decided to try somewhere more ‘upscale’ now that I’d grown in confidence. And now, ten months, and five stripclubs later, I’m a pro. I laugh when I recall my debut appearance onstage several days after my first Champagne Room experience, when I couldn’t walk in my six inch clear plastic heels, bought from an online stripper store, ‘Jingo’s Playhouse’. I grasped the pole and teetered there anxiously, looking longingly at the other girls striding easily and seductively around. My dress, borrowed from a Colombian dancer with enormous breasts, hung sadly off my 32C chest, and a part of me still couldn’t quiet believe any guy, or any of the girls, would ever believe I was a ‘real’ stripper, whatever that is. And then as month after month slipped by, I became more adept at makeup, more skilled in using wigs and hairpieces to give the illusion of being a stripper. I painted on not just my face, but my personality. I learned, slowly, after painfully screwing up over and over again onstage, how to twirl around the pole, crawl across stage, pout, preen, and the most important thing of all – how to make the other girls like you. I painted over my Cambridge persona with thick foundation. And as I became more like the other strippers, my earnings increased. On average I’d take home between 300 and 600 bucks, all from giving lapdances and going to The Champagne Room. The most I earned in a night was over 2,000 dollars. Sometimes I earn nothing at all, and yet still have to pay the ‘rent’ of up to 150 dollars to be there as a ‘freelance contractor’. But it’s always an adrenalin high, the constant attention. From being the ‘clever’ girl, I became the sexy girl, using my intelligence to attract the high end clients who occasionally wanted a little more than just a dance - conversation too. I hadn’t had a boring life – I’d travelled so much, and always had a lot of male attention. But there’s something about deliberately becoming the object of male desire which is plain exciting. It’s a role where we have express permission to act completely immorally – turning men on simply to get their money. One of my female friends from Cambridge, now a Head-hunter in London, visited me in my present club several weeks ago. She was shocked watching me crawl across the stage on all fours. “Ruth, you’re so different when you’re Mimi! It’s incredible – you’re completely physical, and so confident.” Yes, it’s empowering and seductive. My body, which I never felt comfortable in as an academic, is now my paycheck, and I’m proud of the toned curves I barely acknowledged before. I don’t hide what I do from my friends or my family, who find the whole thing entertaining. Am I addicted to it? No, and yet if I gave it up, I’d miss the attention, the constant validation that you’re a woman and you’re sexy. I’d miss the partying, the money, even the girls who at first seemed so intimidating and different to me. Yet sometimes it’s disgusting. When you’ve spent half an hour constantly pushing a guy’s finger out of wheedling its way under your g-string you'll know what I mean. And when you've been asked for the fiftieth time that night if you'll give a handjob for an extra fifty bucks, you're sickened. I’ve never done this. I’ve had men ejaculate into their pants while I was dancing after becoming too over-excited – and no, you never get used to that or find it acceptable. I nearly gave up, several times, always lured back by my quick fix of cash, the beat of the music drawing you back to the stage. It wasn’t too harmful to my self esteem, I reasoned, not recognising that I was drinking more and more every night, that I was frequently getting memory blanks, that I was becoming tired, permanently hungover, bad tempered, unpopular with the management. My boyfriend at the time, an upper-class English guy I’d actually met in Flashdancers, was growing more distant. At first he’d loved that I was a ‘sex symbol’, as well as intelligent. But then he became alienated by my late hours, the drinking, not knowing who had touched what should be his. Gradually the sex symbol of ‘Mimi’ subsumed the Cambridge grad ‘Ruth’, and we broke up. Obviously this has an effect on you. I started to think, for the first time, that I was ‘damaged goods’ in some way. That I had crossed some line which marked me as different from my Cambridge peers. Less worthy.
I left one club in November, took a two month break, and worked on my writing. Even the thought of returning made me want to retch. But when the money ran out again, just as my visa arrived – I went back. Even now, legal, I’m held in the thrall of having no money. I work for a month, then take two weeks off to write. But it’s no way to live. It’s not stable. It’s not what I spent four years in Cambridge for. It’s not ‘normal’ – and I want, more than anything, a stable and normal life, to make money from writing. Not dancing.
I wonder if by becoming a dancer I’ve lost something irretrievable, irreparably etched some scars across my soul I can never remove. But then the music starts up again, the beat fills your body like a pulse, and you notice the guy in the Armani suit flashing the cash around next to the stage. And you hold those thoughts. Because right now, until you can become a full-time writer, you can’t afford to think like that.
