Mixed: My Life in Black and White (21 page)

“I didn’t know Ebony was working tonight, or I wouldn’t have had to tell Alice that you wasn’t black. They have a four-black-girls-a-night maximum. Just play it off. Shit, you look like you could be something else anyway, specially with that wig. You got any lotion?”

I always have lotion. What black girl doesn’t carry lotion? There is nothing worse than having on shorts in junior high and a schoolyard full of boys pointing out that your knees are white and chalky while your body is brown. In the summer, I have regular lotion and lotion with SPF 30. I’m the only girl I know who can have ashy knees
and
sunburned shoulders.

While Morgan lotioned up, I threw cold water on my face and inquired again about my nipples.

“Alice meant your areola. I told you Delaware is real strict. She wanted to know what size tit cover to get you. We have to cover at least our areolas or they’ll shut the club down,” Morgan said. “There are more crazy rules, like, the dudes can’t touch you at all and you can’t touch dudes below the belt. You can stabilize yourself on their shoulders if you’re giving them a private lap dance, but don’t actually let your lap touch their lap. You’ll get fired.”

So, the guys would pay me
not
to touch me? Cool! Almost every time my girls and I go to a regular club, we have to pay to get in
and
some guys try to sneak a free feel while we’re dancing.

One of Morgan’s press-on nails popped off, so I decided that my stripper name would be Lee. I wanted something that could be a first or last name, Asian, Puerto Rican, or Irish. “Yes, Lee. Short for O’Reilly.”

We left the bathroom in our street shirts and skimpy bottoms. Morgan introduced me to the deejay as Lee and asked if he could make sure we were on at the same time. When we got back in the dressing room, Alice held two little conical pieces against my shirt. They looked like two small Chinese farmer hats, except these had red sequins on them. Alice told me to try them on my breasts. When they fit, Alice told me to put some double-sided tape on them to make them stick; I owed her ten dollars for them, but I could pay her after I auditioned. She then gave me my locker key and told Morgan to take me on a tour until the deejay called my name. When my name was called, I was to report immediately to the stairs above the stage.

My audition would take place in front of the whole club? I thought I’d be spinning on some private pole while Alice graded my performance. I wanted to take off my hot-pink heels, throw my jeans back on, and thank Alice and Morgan for the experience, but my lifelong fear of being called a quitter was stronger than my fear of making a fool out of myself in front of horny men who paid women not to touch them.

On our way to the floor, Morgan reminded me to listen for my name. I told her she had to get me a shot of vodka or I was going to lose my confidence. She did and told me that if I unfolded my hands from my chest and smiled, I’d make more money. I told her that Puerto Asian Irish girls don’t smile. I downed my Absolut, and my confidence went up. I’d been multiracial before; I could do this. I thought back to how my mother used to instruct me to tell people, “My dad is white and my mother is black.” If I just told people that, she said, everything would be okay.

Just like David Hasselhoff being mixed, it was a lie. Instead of opening my mouth to educate people about my background, I learned to stand off to the side and study every new situation for signs of racial strife before going in. That didn’t leave me many places to go. But here I was, in the corner of a strip club, using those same analytical skills to calm myself and make my environment feel secure.

I counted how many stairs I would have to descend to the stage when the deejay called my name. I estimated the square footage of the stage (about the size of an Olympic swimming pool) and counted how many neon lights zipped alongside it. I noticed how the soft red and blue spotlights shone down on the dancers and how the size 14 girl’s cellulite was undetectable under the red and blue lighting. I made a note to get that lighting for my bedroom.

There were two poles onstage and always one girl on each pole. When a dancer heard her name, she descended the stairs and claimed the pole closer to the stairs. The previous pole dancer moved to the second pole, while the dancer who had just worked both poles walked around the stage bar to collect her tips.

Simple enough, but these dancers managed to be rhythmic, and they had on heels lower than mine. The vodka warming my chest wasn’t enough to get me past the fear that Tattletales would transform into a comedy club when its patrons saw me in heels trying to keep the beat with whatever hard rock song the deejay played during my set (they didn’t play rap or soul music; it was an upscale club). I wondered if everyone was insecure about how they looked while they were dancing or if it stemmed back to Fat Pam and her diagnosing my white half as the cause of most of my disabilities.

“You ain’t nothing but a white girl. You better learn how to dance. Don’t ever let anyone see you moving like that,” she’d say.

I was too young to understand that my lack of rhythmic movement could be due to the contact high my little body was getting off her burning nickel bag. Now, even though I know I can dance, I still almost never get up at the beginning of a song or feel right when people gather around me and chant, “Go, Angie!” I think they really want my ass to leave.

The deejay had just called Coco Diamond to the stage, so I knew I was up next. Maybe if I fell off the pole, she’d find a way to make it look like it was planned. Maybe we could stage an erotic fake fight or something.

Morgan danced down the steps at the start of a George Michael song and swung around the pole with little more enthusiasm than people show when they are holding on to a pole inside of a bus. Three quarters through the song, the deejay called out, “Lee. Calling Lee to the stairs. Lee to the stairs.” I climbed to the top of the stairs, gripping the handrails with my sweaty palms, and tried to breathe deep into my stomach as I felt my throat closing up.

I tried to calm myself by reminding myself of how strong I was and how part of living a good life was taking risks and making sure you didn’t have a boring eulogy. I promised myself that I could say
no
to anything I was afraid of for at least six months after this without beating myself up for it. The deejay called out, “Let’s welcome Lee to the stage!” and as I started walking down the stairs, I forced myself to make eye contact with the men looking up at me. Surprisingly, the nervousness vanished as I did this. The men were clapping and hooting and looking at me like I was the pop star they’d had hanging on their wall since they were fourteen. I was smiling and enjoying my power. I’d purposefully thrust myself into the spotlight with only a wrap, sequins, and a wig to cover me. It felt damn good.

I swirled around the pole, making eye contact with a man drinking alone, then bit my lower lip as if I was shy and looked away. I then quickly looked back and he looked embarrassed to receive so much attention from me. A Johnny Depp look-alike called out, “Wow, your breasts are real, aren’t they?!” I swung around the pole again and nodded my head
yes
and gave him a smile of appreciation. I was still too nervous to let go of the pole or even attempt to climb up it, but I was still proud of how well I was doing.

The song wound down and the deejay asked the crowd to “Welcome Amber Lynn to the stage,” so I strutted to the next pole and watched as a blond girl glided down the stairs and climbed up her pole in two seconds flat. Amber Lynn’s movements screamed sex. She descended the pole, then flew up it again in time with the beat. How does she do that? Bitch probably had a tree house growing up. I suddenly felt incredibly unsexy.

Finally, the song faded out and the deejay told the men to give it up for it being my first time, and I scurried around the stage to collect any money the men weren’t saving for Amber Lynn. Most of the guys slid at least a dollar into my G-string, and those who didn’t tip gave me a sincere compliment about my breasts or quadriceps (who would have thought so many personal trainers go to strip clubs?). I felt a bit of the same high I get when I’m falling in love. I thanked them sincerely and wondered why I went to college.

I had to find out if I was hired. Alice said I did well for my first time and told me “Go make that money, bitch.” As soon as I exited the dressing room, a white man in a suit approached me, told me he enjoyed my stage show, then asked where I was from.

“Philly.”

“No, where originally?”

Oh, here we go again. But this time, I was not upset. Strip clubs are about fantasies, and my job was to be whatever this man wanted me to be. Suddenly my racial ambiguity wasn’t something that caused me to retreat to the margins, hoping not to be noticed and questioned; it was a source of power. I tried to guess what this cheap-suited man wanted me to be. This man could have been an associate college professor, so I was afraid to say Asian, lest he’d just finished giving a lecture on East-West Relations Since 1800 or something.

“I’m Creole,” I said, falling back on the lie I told during my freshman year of college.

“Creole, beautiful! I’m Mark. Talk in private?”

Wow, the first man I talked to asked me into the Champagne Room for a private dance! A private dance cost twenty dollars for ten minutes. Five dollars of that went to the house.

We entered a side room manned by a bouncer who collected the money from Mark. There were three girls in there already, not touching their Marks. The bouncer sternly told my Mark the rules: Ten minutes and it’s over. You want more? You pay. Keep your hands where I can see them. Enjoy yourself, brother.

How could a man enjoy himself when he’d just been barked at like he’d sped through a school zone?
Keep your hands where I can see
them?
I was embarrassed for Mark. Weirdly, Mark didn’t seem to care. I led him to a couch and told him to sit down. He listened better than kids I’ve babysat for.

I tried to watch what the other girls were doing while Mark broke the silence by telling me how he spent fifty out of fifty-two weeks on the road and had top-tier status on two airlines. I danced for Mark and I hoped the look on my face didn’t betray my boredom while he ran down the benefits of being a Premier Executive 1K member at United Airlines. His time was up; he thanked me for the dance and asked if I’d have a drink with him out on the floor later. I smiled and said, “If some other man doesn’t snatch me up first.”

That’s the boldest thing I’ve ever said to a man in a club. I get self-conscious when guys in nightclubs only dance two dances with me and then lean in and say thank you. When they do that, I run and check my nose for boogers, and if there’s nothing in there I’m all,
Why doesn’t he like me?

And hell, Mark was white; there was a time I couldn’t even speak to white men; they terrified me. It took me eight years of therapy to figure out that my fear had a connection to anger I felt toward my father. Thank God for therapy. If there is one thing that will guarantee failure in America, it’s white-man-phobia.

I wished my college therapist were there to see that I’d just looked a grown white man in the eye and told him I couldn’t guarantee I’d be available to have a drink with him. My more-evolved brain always knew it didn’t make any sense to fear conversation with all white men, just like it didn’t make sense to take the long way to work to avoid the corner where I had my first car accident.

So far, my first private dance had done more than talk therapy. Could I take and use this boldness in real life or did it only work in soft lights when I was wearing a wig? Did it only work when I was not black? Any other time, I was fighting to be black, but here I felt no shame about being everything but. Now, if I’d won a Nobel Prize and the selection committee told me they had a four-black-recipient limit and I’d have to say I was Irish and Asian to get my Peace Prize, I’d be pissed—but I was a stripper. Did the world really need one more black stripper? Who was I hurting by claiming
other
for one evening?

To fulfill customers’ fantasies, other dancers had to hustle backstage to change outfits; I simply had to change nationalities and I could do that while wearing the same bargain getup, thanks to my mixed-race heritage.

The next four hours were just as easy and filled with more Marks. I smiled at men; they told me about their jobs, and I acted like fixing copiers/day trading/being the-guy-at-the-car-wash-who-drives-the-wet-cars-over-to-be-dried was the most exciting and sexually stimulating thing I’d ever heard. With only a few minutes left in my shift, I looked for Morgan. Stripping was so easy, I was thinking about coming back again. So far tonight I’d been Russian, Sicilian, Papua New Guinean, Mexican, and Jewish. I even got real bold and told one drunk guy with Argyle socks that I was Argylean.

On my way to see if Morgan was in the dressing room, a group of young men in business suits called me over to their table. As I approached, the alpha male of the group shouted, “We need you to give our friend Mike a private dance. Help us loosen him up!”

I smiled at Mike, who was looking down and waving his hands in front of his face to protest all the attention. Mike looked like he hoped the chair would suck him up and spit him out anywhere but here. I grabbed his hand and promised him that a dance would be fun. Mike wouldn’t budge from the chair.

Alpha Male said, “I think he needs more than a dance. He needs your big ass in his face.” He then lapsed into the best slave accent he could muster. “Hoo-hoo, honey chile, how did you get such a black ass? How much to buy that?”

I would rather he had spit on me and punched me in the stomach. I was speechless.

Was he drunk? Was my face showing how much that comment and accent had hurt me? My entire shift, I’d freed myself; I’d allowed myself to shed all the protective layers I carry, but it seems I also forgot why I carry them. Because I’m intensely vulnerable when it comes to being judged on any aspect of my blackness, I have myriad ways to deal with every question about my identity. It’s why I cut my hair short, so no one could call it good, why I still sneak to the tanning salon with another half-white girl so we can get our complexions to that perfect warm brown level where no one asks us, “Are y’all mixed?” This drunk strip-club-going fuck had just stripped me of my four-hour high. And all I could do was remain silent and smile.