Candy Girl Read online

  Doll Parts

  Working at a nude hustle club had emboldened me. I was fearless, jaded and calloused from the waist down. My wallet was thin, my boundaries ambiguous. I was ready to transition from dancing girl to peep-show prisoner, and I knew just the place to do it.

  Sex World is a three-story, twenty-four-hour circus-themed porn emporium featuring “live” nude models (as opposed to comely zombies?), video booths, smoking paraphernalia and every imaginable sexual novelty from dick-shaped lollies to cyberjelly replicas of porn star Alisha Klass’s anal cavity. Snickering bachelorettes share the aisles with fidgeting perverts, and the joint is perpetually jumpin’—where else can one procure an erotic cake (breasts and cocks artlessly rendered in frigid butter-cream), a three-foot bong and a stash of amateur porn all under one roof? It’s the Wal-Mart of sex, the kind of place where you go simply to purchase the latest issue of Taboo and wind up buying four vibrators and T.T. Boy’s entire oeuvre on VHS.

  The peep show at Sex World, otherwise known as “the Dollhouse,” was notorious for the fact that the girls in its employ were on public display. They lounged behind a pane of glass like Barbies with giantism, fully visible to the flesh-starved crowds that milled in and out of the store at literally all hours. When a customer wanted a show, he’d point dumbly to the girl he liked the best, and she’d join him in one of the private booths along the east wall of the enclosure. I’d shopped at Sex World before, but I’d never approached the window; it seemed like a disturbingly concrete point of demarcation between “us” and “them,” and I didn’t want to spook the fish. Plus, the peep-show girls looked so hip hanging out and smoking in their little Amsterdam, and I was afraid if I walked up and perused their environment they might poke fun at me. (I know, I’m a total wienie.)

  After the hard hustle of working the clubs downtown, the prospect of working at the Dollhouse was tempting indeed. I viewed it as a sex-work sabbatical, a chance to relax in a glass box for a while and let the customers solicit me before returning to the hectic stripping scene. I’d heard that Sex World issued weekly paychecks and offered health benefits, which had serious appeal compared to the independent-contractor status most strip clubs offered (along with an extremely broad interpretation of the “independent” part). I decided to apply and see if I’d be asked to join the ranks of the dolls.

  After filling out a standard application (under “Military Rankings” I wrote “Major Babe”), I posed for a fully clothed Polaroid taken by a sullen clerk with wooden plugs corking his stretched earlobes. Within a couple of days, I received a call from the peep-show manager, a self-aggrandizing Don King of a woman who looked like she’d both weathered and administered beatings. She always referred to her employees as “the dolls,” matter-of-factly and without affection.

  “One of the dolls just quit, so I have a shift open from six to midnight,” she told me. “Five days a week. Take it or leave it.” I took it.

  “Okay. Bring a blanket, some lube and whatever sex toys you want to use,” she added. “These are masturbation shows, and you’ll make the most money if you use toys.”

  I agreed, but I neglected to ask if I’d be able to see every Tom, Dick and Harry as they tooled like Bonobo monkeys on the opposite side of the booth. For some reason, the voyeuristic aspect of the gig, what I would see, concerned me most of all.

  My first day in the Dollhouse was a Monday. The manager showed me how to get inside via an ingenious secret entrance (an obvious portal to Doll-land would have attracted too many potential rapists/lovelorn perverts). She led me down a narrow hallway to the dressing area, which was so tiny it made the locker room at the Skyway Lounge look like backstage at the Tropicana. There was a sink, a punch clock, a coffeemaker and not much else. Across from the dressing room were three doors marked A, B and C. These were the entrances to the cramped booths where the shows were done. I was told to pick a booth to work in. I chose A. It was painted pink on the inside, and contained a cracked leatherette chaise with brackish stuffing issuing from the seams. There was a portable CD player tethered to the wall with an imposingly large chain; I guessed they took theft seriously at the Dollhouse. A long, thick pane of two-way glass separated my side of the booth from the customer’s side (so I would have to look at all those masturbating plumbers, lawyers and COBOL programmers after all!), and both sides had one of those black prison phones to enable filthy communiqués.

  Around the corner was the so-called den, the display area where the girls hung out in full view of the store until they were summoned for a show. (Most people I knew called it “the box,” as in, “You mean you’re one of those girls in the box at Sex World?!”) The den was painted oxblood red with a splishy gold faux finish. There was a red sofa shaped like Marilyn’s pucker, and a pair of chairs shaped like stiletto heels. It was all very reminiscent of the eighties trend toward “wacky” high-concept furniture; I half-expected to see a hamburger phone. There were a few dated issues of Entertainment Weekly strewn about, and the room smelled like recent Chinese takeout. A girl in a dark pageboy wig sat on the couch with a sketchbook and a tin of pastels in her lap; she smiled and introduced herself as MacKenzie.

  Harsh fluorescent light fixtures surrounded the front display window. Compared to the ambient subterranean darkness of strip clubs, this grocery store lighting was molto unflattering, especially considering I’d be displayed like a veal chop for all to see. I noticed a boldly printed note taped beneath the window. A transcript of the memo, punctuation and spelling preserved:

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I WANT THESE LIGHTS

  ON ALL THE TIME I DON’T CARE HOW THEY MAKE

  YOU LOOK OR IF YOUR GETTING A HEADACHE IF

  I FIND THEM TURNED OFF YOULL RECIVE A

  WRITTEN WARNING AND OH YES I WILL WRITE

  YOU UP FOR SOME DUMD SHIT LIKE THE LIGHTS

  NOT BEING ON TRY ME ANY QUESTIONS.

  I was a long way from those scooter-riding copywriters at the ad agency.

  Another notable feature of the den was the two-way radios. The peep-show girls had a pair for security reasons, but the cashiers and sales help throughout the vast Sex World complex used them to ask each other questions when a customer made a specific inquiry. I instantly knew I’d enjoy eavesdropping on the clerks’ conversations. As I unpacked my leopard-print blanket and nubby pink vibrator, I overheard the following exchange on the radio:

  Clerk #1: “What’s that movie called with the people having sex underwater?”

  Clerk #2: “Either Sex Underwater or Underwater Sex.”

  Clerk #1: “Roger that.”

  I draped the chaise in my booth with the blanket (the last thing I wanted to do was frolic in some other girl’s residual sticky-icky) and placed my vibrator on the window ledge. When I peeked into MacKenzie’s booth, I noticed that she’d brought a huge Tupperware container that was literally overflowing with tools of the trade. There were jelly dongs of all lengths, girths and skin tones, anal plugs, nipple clamps, ben-wa balls, a flog, a can of whipped cream and even a so-called “window rider” (a dildo that could be mounted on the glass with a suction cup and gaily fucked by a flexible girl). I suddenly felt a wave of inadequacy due to my wee pink gherkin of a vibrator. Penis-proxy envy.

  The manager left, and MacKenzie explained to me that a receipt printed each time a customer deposited money in the booth. We were to turn in our receipts at the end of each night, and each Friday we’d receive a check for half the sum of our receipt totals. The store kept the other half, which seemed excessive, but I was accustomed to being swindled by the flesh trade by then.

  I crept into the dressing room and donned an eight-dollar nautical bikini from Hot Topic, stilettos and a new black Mia Wallace wig. I didn’t want any of the jerks from Deja Vu to come over and heckle me, so I’d reinvented myself as a Goth pinup. I joined MacKenzie in the den; we sat in silence and waited for customers desirous of ass to tap the glass. I wondered what my first show would be like, and if it would be revolting to watch a stra
nge guy masturbate to completion. Finally, a guy who looked like Bill Gates walked up and pointed to me mutely. Showtime!

  When we were settled in our respective sides of the booth, Bill Gates picked up the prison phone and requested a forty-dollar nude show. I promptly took off my bikini and began awkwardly preening and fondling myself like a drunk socialite at a photo op. (I’ve always been a fairly no-nonsense masturbator, and I wasn’t quite sure how to glamorize the act for public consumption.)

  To my confusion, Bill Gates began removing all his clothes, hanging them slowly and methodically on a hook that had been provided on his side of the booth. When he was completely naked, he grinned at me, produced an extra-large bottle of Astroglide, poured an utterly excessive amount into his palm, sat down and began fingering his asshole contentedly. Squelch, squelch, squelch.

  I gulped and continued to masturbate. Bill gestured for me to insert a couple of fingers into my pussy, so I did. The rules about penetration were very specific at the Dollhouse. Technically, inserting fingers or toys was illegal, but vaginal and anal toy shows comprised most of our business. To circumvent this hurdle, we were instructed to never insert anything anywhere until the customer was masturbating. The logic behind this was that an under-cover cop on duty was unlikely to drop his pants and jack off. Therefore, it was safe to proceed with a toy show once the customer had whipped out his rig. This was neatly summed up on an amusing sign posted in each booth: IF YOU DON’T SEE SKIN-ON-SKIN, DON’T YOU PUT NOTHING IN!

  When Bill Gates came, he motioned for me to put my head up near the glass, affording me a clinical perspective of his orgasm. Rather than the mighty geyser of baby-gravy I’d feared, it was a disappointing trickle of ejaculate, clear and sticky like albumen. I suspected he’d already masturbated earlier in the day. Still, I stared up at him with fake reverence, as if he’d gifted me with the display of a lifetime. Mount St. Helens, eat your molten heart out! I left the booth and washed my hands aggressively at the sink. MacKenzie coughed drily in the den, and I wondered if it was embarrassing knowing that your coworker had just been masturbating several feet away. If it was, I suspected I’d have to get over it quickly.

  During my first night, I serviced the following customers:

  1. A shoe freak who begged me to lick one of my stilettos whilst “jacking off” the heel of the other. He told me I was a natural at jacking off shoes. (Frankly, I had no idea.) In a successful attempt to hasten his orgasm, I cooed, “Ooh, I wish you could cum on my shoes.” He replied, “Really? Want my phone number?” Nein.

  2. An immaculately dressed businessman whose wife had ordered him to go to Sex World, get a peep-show girl to masturbate and describe the entire thing to her via cell phone while she masturbated. To my relief, he was fairly complimentary in his description of my technique. He kept telling his wife, “No, seriously, she’s quite attractive,” as if they’d both been expecting me to be a hatchet-faced leper.

  3. A leering young man who told me that he frequently fucked his sister and that my pussy looked exactly like hers. I suggested she sneak in and cover a few shifts for me, à la The Patty Duke Show, since we’d be indistinguishable from the waist down. He was from Ecuador, though, so he didn’t understand.

  4. A guy who wanted to be dominated and said things like, “Fuck my ass! I’m your sissy maid!” provoking a very un-mistress-y gale of giggles on my side of the booth. (Bossy bottoms absolutely slay me.)

  When my shift was over six hours later, I swabbed down the chaise and phone using alcohol and hospital-grade disinfectant as per the rules. The stink reminded me of a shopping mall ear-piercing kiosk. Luckily, the dolls weren’t required to clean the “client side” of the booth. That task was reserved for a cadre of Goth janitors, one of whom wore a T-shirt that said SMOKE CRACK AND WORSHIP SATAN as he mopped up the man-made lagoon on the floor of my booth.

  As I left the store and hailed a cab, I felt strangely satisfied. I’d made $200 for a laughably minimal amount of effort. I mean, I actually got paid to masturbate for six hours! Unlike at Deja Vu, there were no fines or mandatory tipouts to worry about. No soda-pop hustle or groping customers. I felt as if I was actually in control of my developing talent as a sexual surrogate. Behind the window, I felt cherished and untouchable, like a dildo-wielding Precious Moments tchotchke. Pristine. Like Snow White in her glass coffin, preserved for the masses.

  After a week or so, I’d met or worked with just about everyone employed at the Dollhouse. There were around ten girls working at the peep show, usually two or three on each shift. They were physically diverse—some fat, some lanky, some glamorous stripper-types in expensive costumes, some welfare queens in bare feet and Baby Phat sweatpants. One of them, Ava, was seven months pregnant and could squeeze colostrum from her nipples, much to the delight of our mommy-fetishist customers. One of the “girls” was a former journalist of forty-two, though she could handily pass for thirty-something. Donna, our resident head case, was fond of slashing at her own flesh, and her pretty white arms were latticed with scabs. When she was stoned, she’d cackle maniacally like Tom Hulce in Amadeus. Another girl, Ariel, was undeniably gorgeous, but she was convinced she was fat and disgusting. She’d sit and compulsively smooth her thighs, talking in quiet, even tones about how every time she was passed over by a customer, she mentally added ten minutes to her daily workout regime.

  (Ariel, for all her insecurities, had the loudest, most powerful vibrator in existence. I’m serious; this instrument of “pleasure” must have been of dubious legality. When she went into her booth for shows, it sounded like she was operating a leaf blower in there. I half expected the scent of scorched flesh to waft from her booth; that’s how much friction this thing generated. But, she boasted, she couldn’t come any other way.)

  The manager always offered jobs to very young girls who applied. Once, she hired two teenage sisters who routinely and cheerfully offered to meet customers outside and fuck them in the parking lot after work. When someone complained to the manager that the new girls were using the peep show to hook up with potential johns, the manager replied, “White guys like young girls. They’ll bring in money for the store. I can’t fire them.” The funny thing was that the sisters were hardly nubile, creamy-skinned Lolitas blushing on the bough. In fact, one of them looked like she’d beaten herself with a tire iron during a smallpox-induced hallucination, and the other looked like a close-up photo of a wolf spider. But the manager was so convinced of their youthful “appeal” that she kept the sisters on until they simply stopped showing up.

  Girls turning tricks presented a criminal threat, but the manager was far more paranoid about drug use. There was a threatening sign posted at the peep show that read, NO DRUGS ARE ALLOWED AT WORK! THIS INCLUDES POT, ACID, HEROIN, COCAINE, HAPPY PILLS, PILLS WITH STUFF IN THEM, CRACK, AND ANY OTHER BULLSHIT UPPERS OR DOWNERS THAT YOU MAY BE CARRYING. I can’t imagine a sign like that being posted in the break room at an H&R Block, you know? However, I found that while many of the strippers I knew had become champagne drunks out of necessity, very few of them were bona-freak junkies. I attribute this finding to core Minnesota decency, since I’ve heard many contrasting stories from other corners of these United States.

  For instance, one girl I worked with was twenty-four, a prostitute and a mother of three. But she once told a story in the dressing room about discovering cocaine at an acquaintance’s house: “I’d never seen cocaine in real life,” she said earnestly. “But I saw the movie Blow, so I knew it was coke.”

  We all laughed good-naturedly at her naive conviction. It seemed so weird that a girl who regularly boinked complete strangers had only seen cocaine in the movies. The world of stripping is populated with such contradictions, suburban girls with bruised veins, ghetto girls on Atkins, innocents who strip to get dirty and dirty girls who strip to clean up. The whole scene is bananas.

  The customers at Sex World were their own brand of bizarro. Foot-fucking, cross-dressing and sadomasochism were the most commonly cited feti
shes, but loads of guys were into “golden showers” and other varieties of fun-by-the-fluid-ounce. Frequently, customers asked me to pee, or alternately, to sell them a cup of my urine. This was forbidden according to a posted memo that read, NO SHOWER SHOWS, AKA ‘PEE SHOWS.’ THOSE CAUGHT DOING SO WILL BE FIRED. However, a couple of girls had successfully sold their used tampons to customers, one of whom was willing to pay $50 to watch a girl ceremoniously extract a soiled Tampax from her person.

  Sometimes I got bored with run-of-the-mill Plexiglas johns and the tired Penthouse Forum fantasies they absently mumbled into the phone. To combat ennui, I’d make up absurd stories that bordered on the avant-garde. For example, the following exchange occurred in my booth and was duly recorded:

  Customer (whipping out standard-model short, pink Minnesota dick): “Hey, baby. How old are you?”

  Your Writer: “Twenty.”*

  Customer: “So, tell me something sexy. Tell me about the first time you had sex.”

  YW: “I was, uh, at tennis camp.** I was only thirteen, and I had this really hot, overbearing tennis instructor who was, like, thirty-something. One day he decided to punish me for my sorry backhand, so he just fucked me. In the ass.”

  Customer (impressed): “You had anal your very first time?”

  YW: “Anal and regular, yes. Then, he spanked my ass with a tennis racket.” (At this point, I accidentally allowed a snicker to escape.) “Sorry. I was just remembering something funny that happened at camp.”

  Customer: “That’s hot. What’s the naughtiest thing you’ve ever done?”

  YW: “Aside from the tennis camp incident? Well, I have a cousin who’s only fourteen, and I fucked her recently.”*

  Customer: “Ohhhhh yeah.”

  YW: “She’s, uh, an elite-level competitive rhythmic gymnast.** You know, those girls who jump around twirling a ribbon to ‘A Fifth of Beethoven’? So she’s really flexible and stuff. I told her I’d train her to be a lesbian, and then I fucked her with a big dildo. My family would be heart-broken if they knew.”