Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (5 page)

Table—
a one-on-one dance between you and a customer, either in the public, main floor area of the club or in a private VIP section. Usually done while standing in front of the customer, on a platform by the table, or in the space between the customer's feet. Body contact may or may not be permitted, but usually it is limited to leaning your hands on his shoulders or knees for balance.

Lap/Couch/Bed—
these are "friction" or "contact" dances, where the dancer rubs her body along the customer's, either by sitting in the customer's lap, straddling him, sliding against him while standing, or, as in the bed dance, lying down. I tune out the description since I've already decided that I'm not working in any contact clubs. But "bed dance" is a new one to me—sounds very extreme. Yikes.

After a half hour for lunch, Jade gets onstage, bounces on her toes, and claps her hands together. "Now let's get you moving!"

We stand in two rows on the stage and practice our walk. One at a time, we travel the length of the stage toward Jade, who stands at the end, coaching.

She calls us baby doll, honey, cutie pie, and babe.

"Okay now, cutie, as you come toward me, I want y'all to give me hips and eyes. It's all about the eyes."

"That's right, baby doll, work that butt. You've got a great butt—slow and sensual now."

"Honey, great walk! Very high energy! Ooh, I can tell, honey, you've been on the runway before!"

"Now slow down, slow down, baby girl. You're going to be my Mae West. Make them work for it. Slide your hands down your belly. Yes!"

When it's my turn, I walk toward her, dragging my toes, moving as slowly as I can. I bring my eyes up from the floor to meet her gaze and wink.

She slaps my arm playfully and says, "That's it, cutie pie, you're going to be in my next video!"

By the end of the first day, we're much more relaxed. Jade flirted us right out of our defenses—no wonder she earns enough as a dancer to buy a new luxury car every year!

When I get to Jeanette's parents' house after dinner, I fall dead asleep.

…

On the second day Jade teaches us a few simple dance steps, then we break out our costumes and perform onstage, just as if we were working in a club. The deejay drops in to cue up our music and introduce each of us before we dance, as is usually done. Everyone looks petrified—this isn't dancing for a bunch of horny, tipsy men who are just grateful to watch women ready and willing to strip down, regardless of skill. This is being exposed before a jury of our peers, the naked-in-the-classroom nightmare come true. We know the difference between good striptease and bad, and if our pinched moves, chewed lips, and wooden smiles are any indication, I'd say every one of us is afraid of coming up short.

In my black-and-silver minidress and silver stilettos, I clod-hop around the stage to a Crystal Method song, stiff and self-conscious like the rest of the girls. Scary as this may be, it's a good sight more efficient than the typical "learn as you go" means of learning to strip: First an aspiring dancer needs to dredge up the nerve to get onstage in the first place, quieting the anxious "what if" questions ("What if someone I know sees me?/I look like an idiot?/my parents find out?") with visions of heaps of cash on the stage, or maybe a few stiff drinks. Then, once she's worked awhile, she crafts a profitable image and over time, the moves are finessed. All of this is fostered through observation, dressing-room tutelage, trial and error, and practice, practice, practice. Any scared, awkward girl will get slick and smooth if she keeps at it long enough.

When I get in the car after school, I yank off my hairpiece. I open the windows to get some cool air on my itchy scalp. At an intersection, I glance over and see Lexus and Gabrielle in the next lane. They look at me funny, trying to figure out if I'm the girl they know from class. I pick up my hairpiece and shake it at them. They laugh, the light changes and we turn off in opposite directions.

…

On the radio is a song I used to dance to all the time. The deejay comes on: "That was by Madonna, released ten years ago this week." It can't be ... the song doesn't seem that old. Then it hits me. My god, it has been ten years. In stripping things can change overnight, and a girl can reach obsolescence even faster than that. Ten years. And so much has changed, especially outside the business. Most notably, being a stripper isn't such a big deal anymore. Maybe this is because every other video on MTV has strippers in it. Or maybe the claims of massive moral decay are true, and decadence-wise, stripping seems like relatively small potatoes. Or maybe we can thank Courtney Love. I don't know. But in the past decade the stripper seems to have gone from a social outcast to a thonged "whatever." The strip club business is booming. The publisher of the Exotic Dancer Bulletin estimates that there are 250,000 exotic dancers working today. And the number of clubs in the United States has skyrocketed to roughly 2,500, an increase of almost 30% since the late 1980s.

When I get back to Jeanette's house, she's at the glass-topped mahogany breakfast table with her mom, younger brother, and neighbor, playing poker.

"How was school today, dear?" She looks up from her hand. There's a pile of nickels on the tabletop, next to her red plastic tumbler of juice.

"Let me show you what I learned!" With my hands on my hips, I attempt the kick-ball-step combination Jade taught us. Kick your right foot, step quickly onto the ball of your left, then step out to the side with the right.

Jeanette laughs, auburn ringlets bouncing. "What the hell is that? River dance!"

"No, wait, wait, let me take off my shoes." Clunk, clunk go my black suede platform slides on the terra-cotta tile.

Kick-ball-step. Now it looks even worse because I can't blame the shoes. The neighbor looks at me as if I've just fallen from the trees.

"Stripper school," Jeanette explains. "Ah," he says, eyeing me warily.

Tomorrow will be better.

Scarlett's is an "upscale" club. The nicer places aren't billed as "classy" anymore. Managers of clubs that court white-collar clientele are style conscious enough to get with the vernacular of the times. "Classy" is a blue-chinned guy with a half-chewed cigar in his mouth saying, "Hey, honey, fix your eye patch before you go onstage. This is a classy place!" "Classy" is a Classy Lady T-shirt. "Classy" is, basically, a kick-me sign.

At Scarlett's, the lighting is low and sultry like a jazz club, dark cloths cover the tables, the carpet and upholstery are immaculate, and the main stage that spans the room's center has a transparent square in the middle so you can see down to the elegant foyer below. It's a very nice touch, but we have to be very careful when we do our routines because there's a nonlevel seam between the wood and the Plexiglas. One of the girls in class already tripped on it once.

On day three, Jade teaches us a portion of a routine to the Commodores' "Brick House"—a series of cross-steps and side-steps. She leads us across the stage in formation and we waddle behind like baby ducks after Mama. But the real lesson of the day is eye contact. The class manual reads: "You have to fully understand why men come to a club to begin with. They want to see beautiful women, fantasize about them, and enjoy conversation with them. They want you to pay attention to them."

So as we all get ready for our individual stage time, we're told to "push our personalities out." We're reminded: It's all about the smile and the eyes.

I do full Barbie drag onstage: platinum hairpiece down to my behind. Hot pink gown and thong, clear Lucite platforms, rhine-stone choker, and earrings. Pink beach towel with a cartoon Barbie framed by starfish, shells, and a couple sea horses, to lie down on when I do my floor work. False eyelashes, frosted lipstick. The whole bit.

Our dancing goes much better today—we're all more confident. Over the music, everyone whistles and cheers each other on. Stripping is hard and we know it's hard, and flattery is a critical lubricant. We're used to affirmation in cash and here we get none, so a kind word goes a long way. When a girl gets offstage someone says, "You look so great up there, I can't believe you haven't danced in four years," or "Wow, there is no way anyone could tell you haven't done this before." Ann Marie sits with her feet resting on the side of the stage, smiling as she takes notes on a yellow legal pad. Jade sits by her side, watching us, giving lascivious winks or an occasional thumbs-up.

I'm particularly excited because this is pole-work day. Thumper leads us over to the small—tiny, really—stage in the corner, the only one with a pole on it. She teaches us how to shinny up the pole ("Don't do this in a dress or in bare feet. You need your skin and the shoes for traction"), cross your legs around the pole, then lean backward and slide down.

This looks really stupid when inexpertly done. As I find out firsthand.

"Lean back, I'll spot you!" Thumper commands, coming in close.

"Uh …," I say, trying to cross one leg over the other way up there. I'm suddenly aware that I'm wearing nothing but heels, a thong, and a torn-up old bra. I look at myself in the mirror and try not to wince at the range of cellulite puckering up where my thighs strain against the pole.

"No, really, do it! Lean back."

"Thank God clubs aren't lit like this all the time," I say, stalling for time as I wrinkle my nose at my reflection.

"Would you just do it?" Thumper huffs like a fourth-grader issuing a decree from her official position as Queen of the Treehouse.

I lean back and the skin on my inner thighs makes a terrible noise—squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—against the pole as I slide slowly down.

The second trick goes better—grabbing the pole at mid-chest level, kicking my legs up over my head, spreading them, and sliding to the stage upside down—because I already know how to do it. My only decent stunt.

But Thumper teaches me a twist: While upside down, I hook my ankles behind the pole, move my arm down the pole toward the floor, and flip around so I'm facing the pole. Then I put my hands on the stage and slide down head first.

Very cool.

"You can also push yourself back up the pole and wiggle down like an inchworm," she says.

I try the first variation again and lose my grip, almost landing right on my face.

Think I'll save the inchworm thing for later.

As the makeup artist lectures us how to do hair and cosmetics for the stage, Ann Marie and Jade call us out to the hall one at a time for our evaluations. I know they're not going to tell me anything nasty—would you say something bad to someone who paid 750 bucks to take your class? Still, I dread my turn.

"Well, Barbie ..." Ann Marie begins.

Oh God. She's going to tell me to give it up. I'm a heinous geek. A has-been and never-was all at once.

"We just can't believe you haven't been dancing all this time. You move so well."

My cheeks are burning.

Jade nods. "You know what you remind us of?"

I shrug, smiling.

"Did you ever see Austin Powers? You know those FemBots? You remind us of them."

My heart thumps, threatening to leap right out of my chest. A FemBot. Retro. Girly. Plasticky. Lethal. Yes. I couldn't be more flattered if they'd compared me with a Bond girl.

Ann Marie agrees, "It's clear you have your look down. Maybe, though, you could try to harden your appearance a bit sometimes."

I'm sure what they're saying is just to build me up, but, hey, that's the point and it's working. The sloppy, brittle-tough image I retain of myself is shrinking to an insignificant dot.

I float out of class on a Barbie-pink cloud.

Day four. Time to learn how to crawl. I remember watching a man teach models how to walk on the runway. The opposite leg and shoulder should move forward at the same time: right leg, left shoulder. Left leg, right shoulder. The same thing applies to a crawl: left knee comes forward at the same time as your right hand. We all try this, at Jade's urging, followed by rolling over onto our backs and arching into sexy, statuesque poses, then sitting up. My lower back cracks and pops. I slide my fingers along the floor behind me as I sit up, arched and aching.

When it's time for individual shows, Alisha struts onstage in a suit, tie, and fedora. Once she's stripped of all but her necktie and hat, she takes off the tie, threads it between her legs, wraps it around her hips, and tucks in the end, fashioning a g-string. Jade taught us how to do this, and when she sees Alisha execute the trick perfectly, she looks so honest-to-god happy I think she might cry. Jade has been such a good teacher this week, coaxing the shy students like Angela and Melissa, slowing down the fast ones like Lexus and Holly, and making each of us feel good about our personal style—be it glamorous, innocent, or nasty. Considering that one aspiring feature entertainer in the class was taught exotic dance by a woman so mean she earned the nickname "Hitler in Heels," we're very lucky to have had such expert instruction.

I only half-listen to the afternoon's lecture from the personal trainer because I've decided to blow off fussing over the minutiae of diet and fitness while I'm on the road. I know how I get when I dance, stressing every ounce, every angle—a typical impulse, I realize, since you're severely naked out there and have plenty of time in the dressing room and onstage to compare and get overcritical—but I don't want to get sucked backed into that nit-picky trap. I've decided to try limiting my body anxiety to worrying about my tan and my nails—two things I can easily control, two areas of maintenance that seem reasonable. I've already watched one of my classmates pick all the meat out of her sandwich at lunch and throw away the bread ("I only eat carbs once a week," she said to the girl next to her), and I don't want to get crazy about weights and measures. I've got too many other things I want to pay close attention to, things far more important than the ever-changing state of my ass.

Day Five: Graduation Day. The girls who want to do another routine change into costume and get up onstage, but I am pretty sore from dancing three days in a row for the first time in forever, so I sit this one out.
The lecture for today addresses the topic of "longevity in a shortlived business." The gist of Aim Marie and Jade's advice: Think of yourself as a professional athlete. Save your money, because you've got a short run at this. I don't know that the idea sinks in with the younger girls but Holly agrees, saying, "The first day you work is when you should start saving for your last."