Sin City (31 page)

We talked for hours. I met her at the free champagne party, the first one I've attended. It was all part of my New Year resolution thing – take my chances, get about. Norah wouldn't come. She seemed so upset about that flying place, she simply went to bed – at six p.m. Actually, I was feeling quite self conscious, standing on my own in a vast ballroom with no ball, not even many people. So when Angelique came up, I was terrifically relieved, especially when I heard her English accent. I hadn't realised how cut off I'd felt. Because we speak the same language, we presume Americans are like us, stamped from the same mould, but actually I suspect they're more foreign than the French. Angelique said she'd never change her accent. It helped to get her jobs and guaranteed a better class of boyfriend. Her current man is a pit boss at the Gold Rush, which was how she had wangled an invite to the party. (I'm not sure what a pit boss is, but I didn't like to ask.) Anyway, we stood there chatting about cosy things back home like C and A and Wimpy Bars and golden syrup. (Angelique said the only English things she missed were golden syrup and milkmen.)

Once she'd told me her story, I entrusted her with mine (with certain bits left out), and she said if I wanted to make money and was so good at competitions, then why didn't I copy her example and enter a nude dance contest? I almost choked on my champagne. I can't dance for toffee and as for taking all my clothes off in front of half a million people … Then she suggested a wet tee shirt competition, said they had one every Wednesday at a club called Ritzy's, with a male strip show first to entice the women in – just ordinary working girls who didn't mind a lark, or wives and girlfriends of men in the audience who were game for a bit of fun.

“It's Wednesday today,” she said. “Let's go.”

I started to object. I didn't like the sound of men emptying pails of freezing water over girls in tee shirts to make their breasts stand out, show the outline of their nipples, and anyway I was wearing not a tee shirt but an expensive blouse I didn't want to spoil.

“Oh, come on, Carole, be a sport.”

“Are
you
going to enter, then?”

“I don't need the money. You do, obviously. There are lots of prizes, all in cash, and even if you don't win a thing, the guys in the audience all shower you with dollar bills, just to cheer you on.”

“No.” I shook my head. One of my New Year resolutions was to stop acting so impulsively, landing up in situations I regretted. I was also worried about Norah who seemed really quite depressed.

“Ritzy's
is
Las Vegas, Carole. You've got to see it. You don't have to enter anything, if that's what's bugging you. We'll just go along and watch, have a ball.”

I didn't want her to write me off as a spoilsport and a wimp when I'd only just met her and I needed a real friend, so I downed my champagne to give me courage and five minutes later we were streaking along the Strip in her Mercedes. Well, not quite streaking. With one day to go till New Year's Eve, Las Vegas is bursting at the seams, hotels as well as streets; “No Vacancy” signs flashing everywhere and the Strip a traffic jam. There's a convention going on as well (maintenance engineers), which means ninety thousand extra visitors. Ninety thousand spare men with spare parts, as Angelique put it.

I was rather disappointed when we eventually drew up outside the club. It looked shabby, almost sordid, a low one-storey building with a balding palm tree shivering outside. Beneath the palm was a tiny group of demonstrators – just three beleaguered females holding up placards saying “WOMEN SAY NO TO PORN”, and “SISTERS, WHY BE SEX OBJECTS?” All three were plain, one with heavy glasses, one with frizzy hair, the youngest in a boiler suit with a pale and piggy baby on her back. Yet all had principles, cared enough to stand there in the cold, risk ridicule and worse. I tried not to meet their eyes, felt a sort of traitor as I slunk past them through the door; almost bolted out again when they asked me for a twenty-dollar entrance fee.

Angelique pushed forward. “Don't worry. I can get us in for nothing. They know me here.” A smile, a whispered word or two, and we were squeezing through the bodies, being ushered to a table. Angelique pointed out her friends – the six-foot Negro barman, two rather gorgeous waitresses, and a sultry dark-eyed dancer performing up on stage.

“Alexis Lovejoy – well, Mary Brooks to you and me. She's quite a girl.”

She looked it. Her spangled satin sheath-dress was Durex-tight, her long legs tapering down to three-inch heels. She was pouting in a spotlight, peeling off her elbow-length lace gloves – teasingly, provocatively – finger by erotic finger. I watched, amazed. She couldn't have been more than twenty-one, yet again she was so confident, so elegant, so utterly assured and in control. I couldn't help comparing her with the three denimed frumps outside, felt ashamed to realise I'd rather have her glamour than their principles. Soon, we were sitting right up near the catwalk, so close that we could touch her if we wanted (several people were – the men, at least). I don't know how we got the seats. The place was packed.

Alexis seemed more a stripper than a dancer and was taking off more clothes; really involving the audience, bending forward so a man could undo her zip or unlatch her bra, draping her black stockings around another fellow's neck, tickling him with her scarlet feather boa. I felt a bit uneasy, even squeamish. These guys were total strangers, yet she was kissing them on her lips, taking their hands and stroking them against her naked breasts, pushing her buttocks right into their faces. I've never seen a stripper before, except once on television and she stayed up on stage, strictly out of bounds. With Alexis, it was no holds barred. Men were reaching out to fondle her, touching any flesh that they could reach, really slavering. She stopped in front of one guy, removed his spectacles, slipped them down inside her g-string, then rubbed them up and down against her crotch. He ground his face right into her breasts, used both hands to knead and pinch her bum. Slowly, she took the glasses out again, replaced them on his nose, stayed pressed up close against him, legs open, tongue flicking in and out. I could feel myself blushing. I don't know why. Everyone else was cheering and applauding, including Angelique. I stole a glance at her – the stern grey eyes, the prim and high-cut blouse. Did she dance like that herself? I couldn't picture it, somehow didn't want to. For the first time in my life I felt a prude, began to feel a kinship with those three brave girls outside.

There were quite a lot of dancers and they all went just as far – or even farther – Cheryl and Miranda and a tattooed one called Tyger, two Orientals and a gorgeous black girl who looked six feet tall and called herself Delilah. Angelique said they almost always changed their names and quite frequently their shape as well, so that sometimes they were more silicone than flesh. I couldn't take my eyes off them. Although I was shocked and almost disapproving, there was also that hot and creeping excitement I'd felt when reading the escort magazines. These were women like I'm a woman with the same curves and holes and slits, yet they were making money from it, parading their bodies, not hiding them away. Why are we ordinary girls so modest and so private when we could display ourselves for profit? Is it really all that wrong to be a sex-object? It's easy to say yes when you've got some other asset – brains or skills or influence – but for a lot of girls it's their bodies, or oblivion. I felt really quite mixed up: disgusted when a dancer went down on her hands and knees and started tonguing a man's bare and hairy paunch; admiring when the whole ecstatic audience cheered her in the cancan.
I
was cheering too, felt a weird sort of tingle when I caught glimpses of a cunt, or watched naked boobs bouncing up and down. That worried me as well. Why should other women turn me on? Was something wrong with me, something else (and worrying) to add to my fat pile of Beechgrove case notes?

I was really quite relieved when they announced an interval. I didn't like the thought that I actually wanted to stare at women's breasts and fannies, could get a thrill from it. I sat sucking ice-cubes to try and cool me down.

I'm still sucking ice-cubes. The interval has lasted half an hour, though the fat man razzles on, cracking jokes, or shouting out to members of the audience. “Is that your wife, Sir? Send her home! Bringin' your wife to a joint like this is like bringin' a dildo to an orgy.”

“Hey, you, Sir, with the beard. You're not queer, are you, Sir? A lot of queers wear beards to hide the stretch marks.”

I'm blushing again, right down to my feet. I'm not sure I like this place, and it's getting frightfully late. It's too dark to see my watch and I don't really want to check it in case Angelique assumes I'm bored. It's just that I'd promised myself an early night, so as to save my stamina for New Year's Eve tomorrow. We're going to that show – the one with lions and tigers and God knows what else besides. And after that, there's another champagne rave-up, the biggest yet. If they don't buck up a bit here, I'll be going straight on from wet tee shirts to wild beasts, without a wink of sleep between. We haven't had the male strip yet, let alone the tee shirts, and there's no sign of any stirring from the wings.

Mind you, I don't think I could get out if I tried. The crowds are so thick they're jammed solid round the tables, ten-deep round the bar. The waitresses are amazingly good-tempered, squeezing between bodies and stepping over legs. The blonde one brings us two more pina coladas. I think they're free as well. I hope so. They cost three pounds each in England which is why I've never tried one. They're delicious, all frothy, like milk shakes, with little coloured paper parasols stuck into the froth, and lots of ice. We need the ice. It's stifling in the club with all this press of people. They're squashed so tight in some spots, you can't quite tell whose arms or heads are whose, except there seem too many hands spare – hands grabbing, waving, snatching, pointing, groping. I've already had three separate hands explore my knee; someone's elbow keeps knocking into mine, and I can't hear Angelique for the brays of beery laughter or garlic-flavoured guffaws blasting in my face.

There's a sudden fanfare from the band, as clarinet and trumpets shrill above the din. “This is it,” mouths Angelique, as the curtains on the stage swing down, rippling red and silver in a burst of coloured lights. “The guys are coming on now, and the women just go wild.”

I can already hear excited screams as the fat man reappears, no longer in his shirt-sleeves, but wearing a purple velvet jacket, straining at the seams.

“Good evening, folks, again. Welcome to Ritzy's All-Male Strip Revue. Our strippers are sheer dynamite. How many girls out there wanna see our guys strip down to their muscles?”

Shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!” and not only from the girls. Angelique told me they get a lot of gays here, and also straight men who want to see how they compare for size. It's odd how men are so obssessed with such a tiny part of them. If a six-foot man has a six-inch prick, that's only 8.3 per cent of him, yet he probably spends half his life fretting about its length, breadth, stiffness or performance. I'm not that sure I'd want a prick at all, whatever Freud's supposed to have said. Why have something dangling there which worries you so much?

“Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together and make a lot of noise for our first great guy, the one and only, the incredible Mr Nude Universe.”

Lights and music go hysterical, followed closely by the crowds. The curtains swoop apart and a hugely muscly bodybuilder struts on to the stage, dressed in a red satin jacket, matching satin shorts and red laced boots, with a wide white satin sash draped across his body as if he's just been crowned Miss World. He takes up several different poses, showing off his physique, turning this way and that, so that everyone can admire him from every different angle. He then removes his sash, tosses it behind him and throws himself into an energetic workout as if this were his private gym rather than a nightclub. Sweat pours off his face as he works through sidebends, leg-swings, squats, touch-toes. He mops himself with a scarlet towel, then prances down the catwalk, stops in front of a small and rather mousy girl, who giggles nervously.

“How come all you girls in the front row have your legs crossed?” cackles the fat man from the wings. “What's your name, hon? Brenda? Brenda's bin here since three o'clock this afternoon waitin' for this guy. Brenda, do you wanna see Mr Big strip down? Do you wanna see his muscle-tone?”

Brenda nods, seems too keyed up to speak. Mr Universe is easing off his jacket, inviting Brenda to help him, stroke his naked chest. She does so, between another bout of giggling. He stands over her, one foot on her table, takes up another swanky pose, tensing all his muscles.

“Isn't he a hunk?” the fat man shouts. “Don't you girls all love him?”

Obviously they do. They're all shouting and applauding as he prowls back to the stage to fetch his sash. He's so well developed he has mini breastlets – well, not so mini, actually. Some girls I know would swap with him, if it weren't for the coarse black hairs around the nipples. He drapes his sash over each nipple in turn, wiggling them alternately, making the sash flick and twitch without ever falling off. The crowds go wild, though I refuse to clap. He pinched that trick from the dancing girls. Cheryl did it first, and better – not with a sash but with her sheer black stockings, rotating each breast individually so that the stockings seemed to dance themselves. I must admit it got me quite excited. She had smashing tits, really full and round, and everything she did was so sensual yet graceful. She pulled one stocking taut and massaged her nipple with it, up and down, round and round. The nipple went quite stiff and hard. I noticed that particularly.

This man's breasts are really only rolls of fat, tangled with hair and shining with a film of sweat. His lips are full and sullen, his eyes bulging with his biceps. I'm the only one who's not a fan. The other girls are salivating and even the fat man has come down off the stage to dance attendance.