Candy Girl Read online

  They cruised the room like thin, tawny cats, their legs like jointed drinking straws, their protuberant breasts leading the parade. They had no physical boundaries. Unsolicited, they climbed onto customer’s laps. They languidly picked off of fruit plates and appetizer samplers. They buried their heads against dudes’ peckers, miming fellatio. They led a succession of suckers into the private suites (to actually suck them off? I wondered). Some of them canoodled with the same men all night, whispering hot nonsense in their ears, stroking them off beneath the linen-covered tables. They were better than girlfriends; they were fabulous fakes. I couldn’t fathom how they did it so convincingly, wooing those graying Lutheran husbands like long-lost sweethearts. I couldn’t follow suit.

  The scene on the stage wasn’t nearly as interesting as the psychosexual drama unfolding on the floor. Most of the girls looked bored during their sets and moved like poorly articulated action figures. They danced mostly to nondescript dance beats and shrugged off their clothing nonchalantly. Although the customers watched intermittently from their tables, the colored lights glancing off their bald pates and aviator lenses, they never approached the stage to tip. I thought that was strange, especially since Schieks’s clientele were known for being rich white-collar types with dinero to spare-o. The Skyway might have been a dive by comparison, but the tough dames there had been a lot more fun to watch.

  After unsuccessfully trolling the “library” for customers, I decided to return to the dressing room to count my money (Kenny Rogers would disapprove, as my dealin’ was far from done). I’d lost track of how much I’d earned, and there was a sizable stack of twenties tucked in the vinyl top of my stocking. However, as I walked toward the staircase, my stocking slipped and my wad of ill-gotten gains fell to the floor.

  “You need to get a garter. You’re going to lose all your money that way,” a passing stripper scolded as I bent to recover my earnings. She showed me how she wrapped her garter around her ankle and twisted the bills a special way to secure them. I thanked her, and continued toward the dressing room.

  As I took the stairs, an apple-cheeked Katie Holmes doppelgänger nearly knocked me over, clapping a few shreds of white lace to her body. An ardent customer had torn off her lingerie. She hooted with laughter at my startled expression. “Welcome to Schieks!” she yelled, thundering up the dressing room stairs like a ghost in tatters.

  The shift was over more quickly than I expected. Like every stripper every night, I wanted just a few more hours, a couple more chances to find the perfect mark and rob him blind. I hadn’t sold my “suite coupon” (the private suites spooked me, frankly), and I hadn’t earned much over my quota. As I paid out the house at the end of the night (a chilly ritual that seemed to assign a price to my very head), I realized that I was ready to crash. Being an entertainer at Schieks was harder work than I had anticipated, kind of like being a Fuller Brush man in fetish heels. A two-song set at the Skyway hadn’t prepared me for the reality of the Scheiks hustle. My three exhilarating stage sets had been worth it, though. Hullo, Minneapolis! We are Roxanne!

  When I came home, I took the money out of my wallet and rifled through it intently, as if each bill were a mysterious document. Then I took a scalding hot shower before crawling into bed with Jonny. I scrubbed my thighs and belly like Meryl Streep in Silkwood and thought about how repulsive stripping was, how cold. Could there be anything grosser than pleading with undesirable men for three minutes of their company? The whole ritual defied logic, nature and the time-honored tradition of “Schlub Chases Babe.” I wondered if the customers ever spotted the naked disgust behind the mirage of inviting smiles. But I knew I’d go back there. Continue the charade. Learn to bank.

  The next morning at the agency, I felt wrung out. I’d worked until 1:00 A.M. at Schieks, and my feet looked puffy and irregular, like swollen pink Floridas. Still, I’d taken home almost $150 in mangled bills, and that was no chump change to a copy typist. I decided that this stripping gig would be worth keeping, if only for a couple of nights a week. I could increase my earning potential, as they say in the scam rags. I wasn’t one for being phony, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a better outfit (brightest chartreuse), maybe quit gnawing my nails bloody and go on one of those fad diets that recommend steak and whipped dessert topping for maximum weight loss.

  It wasn’t enough to be a nude girl, I decided. You had to be the nude girl. You had to sparkle, you had to coruscate, you had to bounce like the phantom cheerleader in the vault of every man’s memory. Your skin had to be oiled to reflect the purple strobes, your hair had to be coaxed into a voluminous Nashville tangle. You had to possess the vein and make the puppet rise. You had to make the average man’s wife look like one of van Gogh’s potato-noshing peasants by comparison. Coarse. Earthy. Plain. It was, I realized, a tall order.

  Later that night, Jonny and I shared cocktails and schemes at our haunt-of-choice, a cozy bowling alley called the Texa-Tonka where Jäger-pounding jocks peacefully coexisted with local eccentrics.

  “I could have done better,” I confessed. “I mean, I saw girls who were going home with ten times the money I made.”

  “It was your first night,” Jonny reasoned, nursing the dregs of a dirty vodka martini. “You can’t expect to make a thousand dollars right away.”

  “I looked all wrong,” I said. “The other girls were pornographic. I always thought I was kind of cute, but I must have been kidding myself.”

  “I’ve got to come in and watch you work,” Jonny insisted. “I bet you’re spectacular. You’ve got something special that they don’t have. You’re rock ’n’ roll, man. You’re tops!”

  “Darling,” I sighed, employing my favorite term of endearment for the boy. “You’ll be the ruin of me.”

  I knew how lucky I was to have a guy like him. He made me feel like my whole ass-for-hire scheme was clean, sexy fun. I needed his levity in order to continue, because the reality of Schieks was like being locked in a humidor with a thousand grasping zombies. Jonny’s idealism fueled my one-woman muscle car, made we want to keep mowing down the undead and raiding their wallets. Vroom, baby.

  Parallel Lines

  I began working on Sundays and Wednesdays, from 7:00P.M. until closing time. In an attempt to compete with the savage babes at Schieks, I bought two new outfits: a sparkling dress of wide-wale mesh that had an unfortunate tendency to snag my nipple piercings, and a pale pink halter dress that I immediately retired when I encountered a girl of sumptuous proportions wearing the same item. (The black tube dress wound up exiled to the darkest perimeter of my closet, where my cats discovered it and promptly christened it with piss.)

  Mysteriously, I was advancing at the agency. My boss had taken a shine to me and was hinting at a promotion. I needed the money, but the idea of increased responsibility made me quake in my Chuck Taylors. There was a simplicity to being a typist that I relished. Copywriters cruised over to my desk on silver Razor scooters and dropped off the revisions they’d made to their scripts. I updated the copy, printed it and sent it through a gauntlet of grim proofreaders. I was a genial robot in Old Navy career wear, quick with a quip and able to lavish even the most uninspired frozen-food advertisement with heaps of insincere praise. This translated to mild popularity in the serpentine corridors of the agency. I didn’t want to upset the ecosystem with a promotion.

  I was aware that my coworkers could come into Schieks and see me shaking my moneymaker, but it seemed unlikely. The people at the agency were too self-consciously hip to go to a titty bar (they generally favored Nye’s, a Polish restaurant with live polka music and geriatric regulars, for their weekly exercise in condescension). I didn’t sweat getting caught with my pants down, so to speak, because I was confident that none of my au courant agency peers would bother showing up at an airless morgue like Schieks. The place was so anti-cool.

  You sense where this is going, right? My third time working at Schieks, two of my coworkers showed up. I didn’t know them very well, but I recogniz
ed them as roving troubleshooters from the IT department. Nerds! I caught them staring at me, slack-jawed, as they settled in at a table near the stage. Confusingly, I felt a surge of slumber-party giddiness when I first spotted them. It was almost as if I’d been secretly hoping to get caught, though the prospect horrified me on a conscious level.

  That night, I was wearing my new mesh outfit and doing miserably. “I don’t like the dress,” a patron told me flatly as he bounced me on his knee. (I’d learned to deep-six my phobia of cooties and cuddle with the bastards.)

  “Well, what do you like?” I asked seductively, hoping he’d ask me to lose the dress entirely.

  “Really small blondes,” he replied. “Like her.” He pointed to one of several girls named Diamond who worked at Schieks during my tenure. This one was a Kate Hudson look-alike with cherubic curls and a gamine body.

  “Hey, Diamond,” I called out.

  She pivoted and stared at me.

  “I think this dude wants a dance from you,” I said, climbing off his lap.

  Diamond weaved through the crowd, a rhinestone Playboy bunny pendant winking against her xiphoid process. She always looked very warm, even when the temperature in the meat locker was intolerably low. Not just warm in the basic physiological sense, but warmed up, like a horse that had been exercised for hours, all pliant flanks and clean sweat. The best strippers have this quality, and Diamond was definitely a blue-ribbon show pony.

  “Hi,” Diamond said to the guy, eyeing me warily. It was more than unusual for a stripper to relinquish her customer to another girl, but what was I supposed to do? Hound the dude for action when I wasn’t his preferred flavor? I was too proud for that shit. I still wanted to believe in the cult of stripper-worship, even if it was a charade. If a gal zeroed in on the right customer, she would be treated like a deity (and paid in kind) until the lights went up. Begging, extortion and/or haranguing a reluctant guy into parting with his cash? Not quite so appealing. I wanted the guys to savor the attention I granted and return it in kind. If they didn’t? Send in the blonde.

  As Diamond attended to her new pal, I found myself impulsively walking toward the table where my two workplace acquaintances sat and gawked at the entertainment. There was a sinewy Russian girl onstage, a trained ballerina who whirled in reckless circles as though the grand prize for effort was a Baptist’s severed head.

  “Hi,” I said. “Care if I join you?” I figured their money was as good as anyone else’s. Besides, they’d already spotted me.

  “Not at all,” one of the IT guys said. As I sat down, we were immediately dive-bombed by a cocktail waitress. Schieks trained them to descend like carrion birds in fishnet hose and pressure the customers to buy cocktails for the strippers. I ordered a vodka Red Bull: upper meets downer in an effervescent hybrid of bubble gum and junkie piss.

  “So, where do you work?” Computer Guy No. 1 asked.

  “I work at an advertising agency,” I said, daring him back.

  “So do we,” interjected Computer Guy No. 2. “Which one do you work at?”

  I told them. They glanced at each other, their faces crumpling in pained smirks. The jig was up. I was officially grist for the office gossip mill.

  “You work there, too, don’t you?” I asked. I sensed that they were more embarrassed than I was, since their faces had gone cerise.

  “Yeah,” No. 1 said sheepishly. “We thought we recognized you!”

  “This is my night job,” I said. “The agency pays shit, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “Oh yeah,” No. 2 said, relaxing a bit. “Totally.”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” I said, cocking an eyebrow. I have remarkable eyebrows. Everybody has their something, even grade-D strippers.

  “We won’t tell on you if you don’t tell anyone we were here,” No. 1 offered.

  “That sounds like a fair trade,” I said, inhaling my caffeinated booze through a dinky bar straw. Actually, it didn’t, but I was grateful for the proposal. I had a lot more to lose if I was outed at work, whereas no one would penalize two red-blooded network administrators for going to a strip club.

  “How long have you been dancing?” No. 2 asked cautiously.

  “I just started last week,” I confessed. I disliked the question. It had a way of instantly dissolving my patina of cool and exposed me as the quaking newbie I was. I envied the girls who’d been stripping for years, even though they all had hammertoes, coke-worn sinuses and intimacy disorders as a result. They were cool. They had champagne in their veins; they glowed like radium. Customers bought them appetizers, jewelry and the occasional Porsche.

  “Do you like it?” they asked.

  “Sure, it’s awesome,” I said.

  We sat in pensive silence for a few moments. I ordered another vodka Red Bull, since the first one hadn’t done much to loosen the stubborn knot in my stomach.

  “So,” No. 1 finally said. “How about a dance?”

  “Seriously?” I said. “You want a dance from me?”

  He nodded. I wondered how long they had been drinking.

  The DJ cranked “My Sharona,” and I shimmied out of my mesh dress. No. 1 leaned back, parted his legs and placed his hands at his sides, the universal posture of lap-dance recipients.

  “I’d better get my hardware upgraded for this,” I joked as I kneeled between his legs and gingerly stroked his thighs.

  “Sure,” No. 1 said, his eyes half-closed. “Whatever you want.”

  I shoved my cleavage in his face and gently buffeted his cheeks with my tits. “That’s nice,” he said approvingly.

  “Maybe you can bill this night of debauch to the agency,” I said. “Tell them we were having an important status meeting.”

  He laughed. “I wish.”

  Hours passed, and I had performed at least five lap dances between the two computer guys. I had ridden more nerd jock than a hooker at an electronics convention. Meanwhile, the boys grew increasingly polluted on Schieks’s finest imported beer offerings.

  “I’ve had a crush on you for weeks,” No. 2 slurred. “Whenever I see you in the elevator at work, I want to talk to you, but I’m real scared.”

  “Right,” I said, counting my bills briskly. “I think that’s the Guinness talking. Yeah, it is. I distinctly heard a brogue.”

  “No, seriously,” he insisted, handing me another twenty-dollar bill to disrobe yet again. “You are sooo beautiful.”

  “Man, you are going to be so embarrassed the next time you run into me at work,” I said. “In fact, I’m going to be pretty squicked myself.”

  “No,” he insisted. “It’s all good. I won’t be embarrassed.”

  I finished the last dance, excused myself and ran up to the dressing room. The situation had acquired a certain gravity, and it was freaking my scene. Still, I had about thirty ounces of well vodka effervescing in my bladder. (I rarely boozed at work, even though most of the girls I worked with couldn’t bring themselves to solicit a single lap dance without a few shots of liquid hubris beforehand. They smoked joints and downed budget champagne in the stairwell, and the potent combination of ganja and swill made them walk pigeon-toed.) I flopped down dizzily on a bench and counted out my green: three hundred bucks. Not bad for a frosty Wednesday night in the city that never wakes.

  The next time I passed the computer guys in the hallway at the agency (and ever after), they couldn’t bring themselves to look at me or offer a greeting. I’d anticipated that reaction, but it was still unexpectedly sad.

  Material Girls

  After several weeks of working at Schieks, I decided that strippers were the most fascinating, inscrutable animals I’d ever observed. On a busy night, there could be fifty girls working the room in various states of undress (and sobriety). While this made for an endless rotation and limited my stage sets to only two or three per night, I relished the chaos. Schieks was a fulgent, slow-motion bacchanal of disembodied breasts, tipped champagne flutes, Coco Red lipstick and invisible math. Four more dances,
girls murmured to each other in private moments. Two more dances and I’ll make house fee. Ten more and I’ll make rent. They changed costumes frequently, superstitiously, as if wearing a different fluorescent color would dramatically redirect the evening’s cash flow in their favor. This is my money dress. I always make money in this dress. Just watch.

  I never changed my costume during a shift. I figured the customers weren’t there for a fashion show. They went home and crept into the marital bed and masturbated to the afterimage of a certain pair of tits, a particular ass, the costly touch of a paraffin-soft hand. They didn’t care if their mental fuck was wearing a red gown or a gold one. But the other girls were insistent that the opposite was true. They claimed that men were such slaves to visual cues that the right color or fabric could mean the difference between a $500 night and a $1,000 night. Maybe they were right. Sometimes the theory was bolstered when a girl changed clothes and immediately banked, but usually, the evidence was inconclusive.

  There was one inviolate principle that even I came to recognize: Men dig white shoes. A girl invariably made more money when she wore shining white stripper-stilts instead of black. White shoes evoke summertime, innocence, the ruddy-chested ICU nurse bearing post-tonsillectomy marshmallow sundaes, the girl on the pier in seersucker shorts who remained 99.44% pure until college, new roller skates. Good girls wear white. Men respond in kind. A tan girl in white shoes was irresistible; unfortunately, I was pale enough that white shoes blended seamlessly with my flesh.

  Of course, the strippers also took pains not to appear too innocent, valorous or bookishly inclined. (In direct opposition to the Swayze Mandate of 1987, everyone puts Baby in the goddamn corner.) The ideal persona to assume on the floor was that of a self-centered, brain-dead circus contortionist, loose of both moral and sinew. This was a difficult exercise in mixology, but a successful actress could retire in furs by twenty-eight and buy a four bedroom Tudor in Shakopee.