Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (2 page)

I guess you begin with what resonates, what sounds like who you want to be. You can pick something wholesome: Kimberly, Jennifer, Amanda, Kelly, Michelle. Something urban: Phoenix, Houston, Dallas. Something Western: Cassidy, Cody, Cheyenne, Montana, Dakota. Perhaps something exotic: India, Vienna, Geneva, Paris, Egypt. Or something Gallic: Gigi, Lulu, Lola, Frenchy, Deja. Something From Russia with Love: Natasha, Nikita, Katia, Katrina. Something girly and sweet: Angel, Baby Doll, Bunny, Bambi. (And let's not forget Lolita. Of course.) Something timely: Summer, Autumn, April, June, May, December. Something weekly: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. A name that's ripe for the picking: Cherry, Strawberry, Peaches. I even met an Apple once. Something sweet: Honey, Candy, Sugar, Cookie. Something spicy: Ginger, Pepper, Cinnamon. Something fast and expensive: Mercedes, Porsche, Lexus. Or something precious: Silver, Gem, Jewel, and Bijou.

For credibility's sake, I will avoid the whole Sandy, Mandy, Brandy axis entirely.

There are names that are floral: Violet, Rose, Daisy, Wildflower, Heather, Holly, Jasmine. Names that sound aristocratic: Page, Hunter, Taylor, Tyler, Morgan, Victoria. Colorful names: Jade, Sienna, Blue, Amber, Ebony. And tomboy names: Mel, Teddy, Bo, Charlie, Frankie, Joey, Johnny, Danni, and Sam.

Some names imply feline appeal: Tiger, Kitten, Kat, Cougar, Lynx, and Lioness. And some are things that are nice to touch: Velvet, Satin, Silk, and Lace.

I love the mythical and literary names: Penelope, Persephone, Circe, Ophelia, Cassandra, Daphne, Emma, Isis. And I have a special fondness for women who name themselves after biblical figures, for I appreciate homage to Lilith and Magdalene, the fallen women who preceded us all. I'm deeply moved by the story of Tamar, who attained righteousness through feminine wile, and I have to say, I never met a Jezebel I didn't like.

Maybe I should come up with a name of paralyzing wit, something like Kit Marlowe or Ann O'Dyne or Gloria Patri. But I'm attracted to a simpler, more obvious name: Barbie.

I don't have an adversarial relationship with Barbie. If anything, I'm Barbie neutral. I had plenty of Barbie dolls when I was a little girl, and I especially coveted the glamorous, super-dressy Barbies that came with evening gowns, handbags, and earrings you stuck into holes drilled into Barbie's head. But within days of taking the doll out of the box, I'd invariably start losing shoes, separates, little earrings. Her hair would bunch into an uncombable snarl and then I'd end up ditching Barbie altogether to chase after my older brother and sisters, who were always doing something much more fun than playing fashion show or make-believe prom. So I'm not choosing the name in order to alleviate some long-standing Barbie issues. It's just that in creating this stripper persona, I strive for the blondest common denominator, and what's blonder than Barbie?

Barbie. Okay, so the first name is taken care of. Now for a last name.

Barbie Doll—it's been done.

Barbie Dahl—stupid.

Barbie Winters—too cold.

Barbie Walters—that's funny. But no. Barbie Wittgenstein—ugh, too pretentious. Barbie Freud—that's kind of scary. Barbie Francis. Barbie Ferris. Barbie Ferrous? Barbie Frost …

Barbie Faust. That's it. That's perfect.

The timer on the tanning bed goes off. My ten minutes are up. I lift the upper canopy of the bed and sit up to check my tan lines. I peel off the bunny sticker—-the white spot is more pronounced. I'm getting darker, I can definitely tell. Almost ready now.

I hurry into my jeans and sweatshirt, still tingling from the heat of the tanning bulbs. I leave the salon, jump in my truck, and drive down East Lincolnway, my skin shouting all the way home.

TWO

Randy and I met because of the weather.

It is 1997, two years since I've moved back to New York City from San Francisco to jump-start my writing career. In that terrible way that you get what you wish for, a magazine sends me in search of a story that requires a crosscountry drive for the entire month of December. I fare pretty well from New York to Iowa but by the time I am halfway across Nebraska, energy is flagging and I am feeling grim.

Somewhere near Ogallala, about six hours into that majestic, maddening prairie, I realize that half an hour has passed since I've seen a vehicle in either direction.

Oh, I think as I finally see a pair of headlights draw nigh in the eastbound lane, so this must be where the West begins.

Wyoming looms in the distance in the form of a tiny sawtooth ridge of mountain. If I can just get there and get some rest, I'll be fine. Near midnight, after eight hours on the road, I cross the state line like a marathoner blasting through the ribbon—I did it! I did it!—and pull into Cheyenne an hour later just as it starts to snow.

The snow hasn't been too bad, not much accumulation, so I try to leave town the next day. But I don't know—couldn't have known, really—that the fifty miles of Interstate 80 between Cheyenne and Laramie is one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in the country. That little mountain ridge I saw as I drove into the state is part of the peaks that surround the Summit—the highest point on 1-80, at over eight thousand feet—a treacherous clearing hacked from the Laramie Range of the Rockies. Preceding the pass is a wide-open landscape that sees more wind than a Yankee urbanite could ever imagine. Even when it's not snowy, the road is often closed just because of the gusts.

But the road is open, so I head out toward Salt Lake City just after breakfast. As I edge onto the windy highway, blowing sleet dashes the windshield, and snow clouds up and swirls off with an angry hiss. Visibility is so poor, all the vehicles slow to a twenty-five-mile-an-hour crawl. I watch, goggle-eyed with fear, as a gust of wind catches a wood-paneled Jeep Cherokee and spins it around 180 degrees on the icy roadway, then blows it straight into a light post. The post falls over the length of the Jeep, bashing a divot into the roof, which crumples under the weight. I nose my car onto the shoulder, jump out, and carefully pick my way across the road.

The driver is sitting upright, a rivulet of blood congealing to a gummy red-black on his forehead. He's just a young kid.

"Hey man, are you okay? Do you need me to call 911?" I ask when he rolls down the window.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." He waves me off with his left hand. His right hand is torqued off the wrist—broken, I'm sure. "I already called on my cell. They're on their way. But thank you."

I drive at a slow creep to the next exit and turn back toward Cheyenne.

Shortly after noon, they close the highway for the remainder of the day.

I spend the afternoon touring the town, which at first glance appears to be mostly car dealerships and cute motels: the Hitching Post, the Home Ranch, the Thunderbird, the Ranger, the Lariat. I find the mall and poke around in there, get my nails done, then rent a room for the night, and spend the evening rearranging the contents of my luggage while watching cable.

The next day the highway is still closed. I can't face another evening by myself in front of the television. After dinner, I put on some jeans, a sweater, a pair of engineer boots, and my parka, and get in the car and head south. Ten minutes later, I am just beyond the 80 overpass on South Greeley Highway, drawn toward a two-stories-tall dummy of an oil derrick with a glowing star on top. Beneath the derrick sits a squat brick-faced building with grayscale rodeo murals painted on the front—a saddle bronc rider in mid-buck, and a roper bearing a calf in his arms with paternal tenderness. The sign out front reads JACK AND GLORIA HORN'S COWBOY BAR.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

I have only been in the bar for two minutes when a man pushes his way over and stands right in front of me. I step back and look him up and down: Beat-up buckaroo boots, skin-tight dark blue Wranglers, a tooled belt with a rodeo buckle, a faded denim button-down shirt, and a black cowboy hat with an Indian hatband.

His eyes are dark brown with a playboy glimmer, and he has the chubby cheeks, cleft chin, and black mustache of a young Ernest Hemingway. Muscled and obviously macho, he looks like low-grade trouble.

If I were out in New York and I saw a man like this, I'd think, "Okay, where'd this guy ride out of, Toon Town?" I'd look around for Allen Funt, like, this is a joke and it's on me, isn't it? The camera crew would pop out so everyone could have a good laugh at my expense. The guy would peel off his fake mustache and turn out to be an accountant masquerading as a cowboy to reel in the ladies for the amusement of millions of viewers nationwide.

But I'm not in New York, I'm in the capital city of Wyoming and this fellow is still standing in front of me, waiting for an answer while I fiddle with the zipper on my parka, dumbstruck.

Nice of him to offer me a drink. I am here alone, after all. But, me? Hook up with a honky-tonk player? I don't think so.

Then he gives me a hopeful smile, blinding white with a big black gap where one of his front teeth should have been.

I find myself softening. "Sure." I smile back. "A drink would be nice."

To be honest, it isn't love at first sight. Far from it. I only follow him across the cavernous room to his table—a couple dozen pairs of eyes following with me—and let him buy me a Diet Coke because I want to find out about the missing tooth.

"Well, it started when I was fighting with my sister when I was twelve and she was fourteen," he tells me over a Bud Lite. "She punched me right in the face and the tooth got loose. Then, ten years later I got kicked in the mouth while I was sparring during kick-boxing practice and the tooth came out."

I have to admit that's a pretty good story.

"Actually," he says, sheepishly, "the kick just loosened the tooth some more. It really came out the next day when I was eating lunch. I took a bite out of my sandwich, and when I looked down the tooth was sticking out of the bologna."

This being a weeknight, and a snowy one at that, the place isn't very crowded. People clustered loosely around the corners of the long bars just inside either entrance sit with their backs to the room. The televisions in the corner are mute, tuned to the broadcast of the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. The voices coming from the speakers, singing upbeat country songs of love triumphal, barroom brawls, and redneck pride, brag to no one. The beer signs cast a rainbow of invitation on the empty wooden dance floor, announcing brand names beneath tubes of neon twisted into cowboy hats, guitars, and the silhouette of a man on the back of a bull.

When the band gets back onstage after the break, I tug on Randy's sleeve. "Let's go dance!"

We've run out of things to say—I've told him all I'm willing to about me, that I live in Manhattan, I'm just passing through for work reasons and I'm leaving tomorrow, and I've already learned that he has lived here all his life, he has an older sister and a younger brother, and he is two years older than me. That he rodeos in the summer and kick-boxes, and owns a local construction company. By the time my Diet Coke runs out, so does the casual bar banter and my interest.

Things change when we start dancing.

"I'm warning you," I tell Randy as we pass through the pole fence that corrals the dance floor, "I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Don't worry, I'll teach you."

This guy, it turns out, is a wild, wild dancer. As he whisks me to and fro, patiently guiding me through a basic West Coast Swing, his shoulders bunch up near his ears like he's doing a frug, while his feet do crisscross steps like a side-passing horse. Yet his moves are so tightly controlled he hardly assumes any space on the floor. I've never seen such economy of motion.

"Oh, sorry!" I yell over the music as I step on his feet yet again with my heavy engineer boots.

"Sorry!"

"Uh-oh ...!"

"Sorry. Am I hurting you? Sorry!"

When Randy tries to teach me a two-step, I can't pick up my feet off the floor and still keep rhythm, so I shuffle along, one-two, shoof shoof. One-one-two, shoofshoofshoof, like I'm doing a modified soft-shoe. He notices that I'm struggling and sort of puts his weight behind his lead, shoving me gently across the floorboards like a push broom.

Later in the night, when the band comes back for another set, we're two-stepping past the stage and the singer looks down at us and says over the mic, "Way to go, Randy!"

"Everyone here knows each other, I take it."

"Small town," Randy whispers in my ear, keeping a steady rhythm as we shove on by.

I leave the bar at one with Randy's phone number in my pocket.

Turns out the next morning that the highway is still closed.

I can't say I'm disappointed.

That night, I meet Randy for dinner at the Albany, an old saloon in the heart of downtown Cheyenne. Most of the surrounding buildings are vacant—former hotels from when the town was built around the railroad in the late nineteenth century. Across the street is the old train station, its tall clock tower spire piercing the night sky. Passenger trains stopped coming through in the 1980s. The freights, wheels clacking heavily as they roll past, are all that's left.

Halfway through the prime rib I spring the stripper thing on him. Is my past any of his business? Not at this point, but I feel a major crush brewing and I know from experience that if someone can't handle this bit of background, we don't have a chance at moving from crush to relationship. Granted, it's not who I am anymore, but it's a damn significant part of who I've since become. If Randy fails this very important litmus test, I'll know to quash my infatuation and end the evening early. Which would suck, after those patient hours on the dance floor and the good manners and the adorable knocked-out tooth and all.

We're right down the street from the Green Door, the only go-go bar in town, which gives me an excuse to broach the subject.

"So what's that Green Door place like?" I ask, trying to keep my voice as even and neutral as possible. My tongue is thick in my mouth and I can't feel my lips. I hope my face isn't turning red, I don't want to give any indication of how much this matters to me. I push a piece of beef around on my plate with my thumb.

He doesn't flinch. I may as well have asked him about the weather. "Nothing special, really. A buddy of mine used to date a gal who worked there. She was all right—she didn't take any shit from anybody."

I like this response. He's not jumpy or critical or overexcited. Promising.

Reaching across the table, I take both of his hands in mine and gently rub the tender spaces between his knuckles.

I had a feeling he'd be down, but it's not something I can safely predict. There's nothing about a person—class, age, race, lifestyle, or personality type—that can accurately tip me off. All I can do is calmly float the subject out there and gauge the reaction. I can figure out how someone feels in a heartbeat—what does stripping teach you if not keen intuition based on body language? The posture will shift almost imperceptibly—moving closer in lechery or farther away in disgust or defense, and the face will register an impulse to recoil, leer, grimace, or smile before a muscle even moves. A flicker behind the eyes says everything. I don't think someone is a loser or a prude if they don't want to date a woman who has stripped—it's a lot to deal with. But I'm really clear that I need someone who is unfazed by that part of me. I don't require applause, or even approval. Just someone who can hang.

Well, I've cracked the egg, may as well reveal the whole truth. In the process of telling him in the most nonchalant manner possible that I was a stripper, I take a bite of mashed potatoes that goes straight down the wrong pipe.

"I just hope that you don't care," I say, coughing and reaching for my water glass.

"Why would I care? I think it's cool."

"Sometimes it was cool. Sometimes not," I say, clearing my throat and dabbing at my watering eyes with a napkin.

"Well, it doesn't matter," he says, his smile tough and sweet over the rim of his iced tea glass. "I think you're awesome."

Randy puts the glass down. I take his hands again and squeeze as hard as I can. He squeezes back and gives me a conciliatory wink.

A week later, I call him from a truck stop in Arizona.

"Hey, you know what? They have this special thing at the restaurant counter here. It's 'Truckers Only.'"

"Yeah, I know. Every truck stop is like that. It's so truckers never have to waste time waiting to be seated." His voice is light with amusement.

I was trying to be clever—sharing this little anthropological flourish from my travel like a slightly bored teenager holding up a fun, corny souvenir in front of her friends. Instead I feel a mild jerk of annoyance that my attempt backfired to reveal a basic ignorance. I could tell you about the seating politics of any trendy restaurant in New York, but I don't know jack about truck stops.

Randy, thankfully, isn't neurotic enough to hold such a trivial offense against me.

"So what will it take for you to come see me again?"

"I don't know," I tell him. "A plane ticket?"

And so it goes. I fly out to Cheyenne a month later for a six-day visit and end up staying six weeks. Then, three months later, I pack up my laptop and fly out with plans to stay for the whole summer.

…

I wouldn't say Cheyenne is unfriendly, but there's a vestigial coarseness to the place that betrays its renegade roots. It feels restless. Maybe it's the Air Force base and its migratory population. Or the ferocious wind that blows in off of the Rockies and beats the prairie senseless. It could be the myriad railroad tracks that cross the town from north to south and east to west. It may be the interchange between the two huge highways, 25 and 80, which run from New Mexico almost to Montana and New York to San Francisco, respectively. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something about this town that says Keep Moving.