Candy Girl Read online

  I worked my can off at Deja Vu two nights a week, and spent the following mornings in a somnambulatory trance. The shifts lasted nine hours, sometimes ten, and I spent the bulk of that time tirelessly hustling. I also danced about six sets per night, either on the main stage or upstairs in the “exclusive” VIP room (which, puzzlingly, was free and open to the public). Bed dances were a regular part of my nightly routine, and I learned to vary my crotch pressure subtly in order to maintain a customer’s state of arousal without prematurely blowing the transaction. I knew that what I was doing was akin to a $60 hand job, but I felt like one of the cool girls when I scored repeat dances from some throbbing schmuck. There were occupational hazards, though, like the Mexican guy who bit my tit and drew blood, or the tourist from Bombay who tried with near-success to stick his fingers inside me, or the guy from Detroit who whipped out his dick and tried to shove my face onto it, laughing as I thrashed in horror. (On all three occasions, my manager scolded me for “allowing” these assaults to happen.)

  And then there was the indignity of “up time”: After every four songs, all the dancers were required to line up on the main stage, at which point the DJ would introduce us as we waved mutely like auto-show bikini models. After the introduction, we were supposed to exit the stage, disperse and solicit two-for-one lap dances as quickly as we could. The girls who didn’t have any takers were required to return to the stage and dance en masse for the next two songs, a mortifying ritual known among the strippers as “the loser dance” or “loser stage.” If you missed an introduction, or failed to participate in the loser dance, you could be fined. (The managers were far more likely to fine girls they didn’t like, trust or habitually fuck, and I fit the bill in all respects.)

  I occasionally rushed up to my locker for a clandestine protein fix (beef jerky, consumed quickly so no one would see my food and beat me up for it prison-style), but the managers had a foul habit of bursting into the dressing room and shouting at us to get our asses back downstairs. Sometimes I was even afraid to pee, since the Mustaches didn’t seem too humane for a midstream sabotage. I imagined them breaking down the stall with a phallic battering ram, their nostrils frothing with cocaine.

  One night I got sick. You might say I was in intestinal distress. (Okay, I had explosive, pyrotechnic diarrhea. Pretty!) This presented a couple of problems: First of all, there were only two toilets in the dressing room; they were adjacent to the hot tub and far from private. The last thing I needed was to be scorned by strippers for daring to “drop a deuce” (thus destroying the collective illusion that we were all sterile, fragrant fuck-dolls incapable of eating or excreting). The second problem was the extreme difficulty inherent in stripping when one is wracked with abdominal cramps.

  I wanted to go home, but I’d heard that girls could be fined up to $180 for skipping out on a shift. Quitting was an ever-present option, and yet I knew, somehow, that the ride wasn’t over and I couldn’t pull the brake just yet. I locked myself in the toilet and hoped the Mustaches wouldn’t find me or fine me. That was one of the first times it occurred to me that I was working in a pink gulag. I suspected that the Mustaches would rather see my lower intestine fall out of my ass onstage than allow me to go home. Outside, someone banged on the stall. “Loser dance, honey. Get downstairs.”

  Sugar Low

  Regardless of the fact that I spent my nights grabbing my ankles for absentee husbands, I still aspired to be premium girlfriend material. Loving Jonny was easy: He played guitar, he cooked a revelatory Tater Tot hotdish, he wore Ben Sherman shirts, he wasn’t a carrier of commitment-phobia or other notable boy diseases and he used expensive moisturizer. That’s about all it takes to bang my gong. Plus, his daughter, whom he addressed as Peanut, was starting to grow on me in a weird way. This was a slow and circuitous process, like a seed germinating in a Dixie cup.

  Peanut was the original candy girl, a bona fide sugar fiend. Actually, she’d eat anything sweet. Pancake syrup. ChapStick. The vitamin-fortified silt in the bottom of the Cocoa Puffs box. She spent most evenings staring at my personal stash of lollies and pleading for a fix. I usually relented, because candy made her grin like a movie star. One night, the girl was eight miles high on Pez and Pop Rocks and Jonny couldn’t get her to sleep. No amount of Beatles medleys could lure the little monkey into the arms of Morpheus; she was a hot mess and growing increasingly manic. While Peanut zoomed on sucrose and Jonny struggled to subdue her, I watched Letterman and felt strangely enervated. Compared to the buzz of stripping, everyday life flatlined on my radar and bored me to sobs. Drag city, man.

  “I don’t wanna sleep,” Peanut announced shrilly in her bedroom. “I want pizza. And I want…the MALL OF AMERICA!” Jesus, what a snapshot.

  “It’s bedtime,” Jonny said soothingly. “All little girls need their sleep.”

  “Not me!” Peanut shrieked, kicking her mattress in waltz time.

  Jonny began crooning “Eleanor Rigby,” arguably the most morbid song in the Beatles catalog but a longtime Peanut favorite. Slowly, the protests subsided and the butterfly kicks slowed like a heartbeat. After nearly an hour, Jonny’s kid finally began to snore.

  Jonny shut Peanut’s bedroom door quietly. “Sorry about that parental moment, babe.”

  “Understood,” I said. I knew that when Peanut was over, I was relegated to the deli bin just opposite chopped liver. That’s part and parcel of the stepmom gig, if you want to hear it straight.

  “I’m also sorry that her mom left that angry note on your windshield this morning,” Jonny said.

  “Vastly preferable to the usual angry voice mails,” I replied. Peanut’s mom didn’t dig me too much. She had this irrational suspicion that I was too motherly toward her child, which was super hilarious. I had the maternal instinct of a grouper. I even felt weird holding Peanut’s hand when we crossed the street, like things were moving too fast and I needed to see other toddlers.

  “Yeah, that’s not cool, either,” Jonny conceded, joining me on the divan and filching a pizza roll from my plate.

  “It bugs,” I said. “But then, so does everything lately.”

  Despite our best intentions, our rented domicile had become a Roman circus of late. Jonny, though darling, was a man with enough heavy baggage to pitch a 767 into the Baltic Sea. Evidently, he wasn’t divorced on paper (surprise!), and the acrimonious proceedings were still underway. Jonny is a fellow who avoids conflict at any cost, so it didn’t surprise me that he’d never finalized the split. What did surprise me was how guilty I felt about rogering someone else’s husband every night.

  By moving to Minneapolis, I’d unwittingly walked into an emotional abattoir that would have reduced even the coolest cuke to pulp. Maybe I deserved to get screwed. It’s gloriously stupid to move in with a dude—a dad—who’s married to someone else, even in the antiseptic legal sense. Jonny was adamant that he loved my ass, but he was also haunted by the possibility of losing his little Peanut because of me.

  I felt sorry for Jonny. He’d been brought up Lutheran and the concept of penance (or spiritual bribery) was alien to him. Me, I’d been reared to believe that ten Hail Marys, a couple of Our Fathers and a Fleet enema could mend the hairline fractures in a guilty conscience. However, thirty thousand petitions to the inviolate Virgin couldn’t absolve me of my alleged crime: the willful dissolution of a family. I’d shat on the sixth commandment, and I’d have to grind out the sin with my hips. I’d complete the first all–lap dance rosary in recorded history, bead by bead, joint by joint. Besides, if I was going to be branded an adulteress, I was going to act like it.

  Fake Plastic Hair

  After a few weeks of Deja Vu, I decided to buy a blonde wig. I had just gotten phony French fingernail extensions (applied by a Korean youth using illegal methyl methacrylate) and I decided to take the stripper look all the way to the stratosphere. A blonde wig would complete my transformation, and (I hoped) make me rich. I refused to accept that my lack of success was owing to my attitude or de
arth of confidence. I firmly believed the issue was purely physical, and could be remedied once I assumed a more Barbie-like form.

  I went to a depressing pink-and-gray wig salon in a third-tier shopping mall. It was the kind of mall where the fountains ceased operation years ago and the anchor stores are rapidly liquidating their inventory. The wig salon was more evocative of chemotherapy treatments than glamour makeovers, but I was too impatient to shop around. I was planning to strip that evening, and I wanted to do it with my fantasy hair. I would snare customers in my golden locks and bind them until they were purple and gasping. Then, I’d grab their wallets and run cackling into the night. Rapunzel the rapist. Fucking right on.

  The two bored teenage girls minding the store noshed on veggie subs and gossiped in low tones. They smiled when I entered, but didn’t offer any assistance. I strolled the perimeter of the store, grimacing at the Carol Brady mullets, hot-roller shags and plasticene bobs on the hauntingly featureless Styrofoam heads.

  “Do you have anything that isn’t totally ugly?” I asked the girls.

  “Most of the people who come here are old ladies with no hair,” one of them answered derisively. “So we don’t really have anything good.”

  “There’s some longer stuff over there,” the other one offered, pointing to a corner of the store. I spotted a long, ash-blonde wig with bangs. The color reminded me of Krystle from Dynasty, but the style was more Alice in Wonderland. I took the wig off its assigned head and tried it on. Startling. The length of the wig elongated my face and emphasized my nose, which wasn’t exactly the effect I’d had in mind. However it was pale and silky and innocent, which was precisely the image I wanted to project. Also, it was made of human hair (creepy!) and felt realistic, despite the fact that it looked totally hinky.

  “I’m going to take this one,” I said.

  “That’ll be $99,” one of the girls said, folding the wig into a bag. I gulped and paid in dirty cash, inwardly reassuring myself that the investment would pay for itself many times over.

  That night in the Deja Vu dressing room, I did my makeup differently. I lined my eyes heavily in black kohl (Estée Lauder, the best to be had), patted my eyelids with bruise-colored shadow (Benefit Traffic School) and applied pale beige lipgloss (Urban Decay Midnight Cowboy), the color of which reminded me of a prosthetic leg. The effect was very Playboy, flaxen and atonal, with eyes so sooty that I looked like I’d been slugged by a jealous rock star at Chateau Marmont. I put on a mesh wig cap and pulled the wig over it. I was like an entirely different person, much to my delight.

  I took the back stairway (which, in an amusing attempt at ambience, contained a single potted palm with a price tag still dangling from it) and pranced down to the main floor. Immediately, one of the blonde Russian girls (Sasha? Oksana? Sashkana?) charged up to me.

  “Are you new girl?” she demanded.

  “No, I’m Cherish,” I said, grinning like a skull. Success!

  Sashkana raised her eyebrows, which were intimidating Gothic arches fashioned of MAC brow pencil. “Cherish? I didn’t recognize you!”

  “I bought a wig,” I said dumbly. “I’m incognito.”

  “Is good wig,” Sashkana concluded. “Yeah, is good wig.”

  “Thanks bunches for the vote of confidence,” I said. “Blondes have more fun, right?”

  Sashkana pondered the cliché, and frowned as if she hadn’t had fun in years. “Maybe. I dunno. Some girls. Not me.”

  Predictably, I sold my first lap dance of the night to a man who was enchanted with my phony blonde head.

  “You have such beautiful hair,” he said as I straddled him and humped his semierect junk with vigor. “Are you Swedish?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m one hundred percent Swedish. In fact, I was just whale-watching in Stockholm with my friends Bjorn and Annika. Then we picked lingonberries and lashed each other with thorns and twigs. Thank goodness for subsidized health care.”

  The man closed his eyes contentedly. “You’re so hot.”

  “Like a meatball, right?” I said, bouncing gaily on his lap. Blonde, blonde, blonde! Whee! “Am I your little Swedish meatball?”

  “Absolutely,” the guy said. “In fact, I’d like another dance, if you’re not busy right now.”

  “I’m in high demand,” I said, “but I have such a crush on you that I couldn’t possibly walk away.” He smiled and arched his crotch hard against my pelvic bone, as though he wanted me to mash his cock to a pulp.

  I kept fairly busy as the night rolled on, though I wasn’t as staggeringly successful as I’d hoped. At one point, I approached a wholesome-looking, sweatshirt-clad young man, hunkered down next to his table, and asked him if he’d like a lap dance.

  “No, thank you. My friends brought me here, but this just isn’t my scene,” he explained as I knelt on the floor like a spaniel begging for Snausages. “I’m getting married in six days, and I’m more interested in my fiancée than I am in strippers.”

  “Wow,” I said with sincerity. “That’s really refreshing.”

  “My fiancée may not be as beautiful as you girls,” he said. “But she’s a good, honest person.”

  That gave me pause. Even though the man obviously thought he was speaking highly of his fiancée, I couldn’t help but think that she’d be insulted. Just as strippers balk at being stereotyped as amoral, damaged sluts, no “civilian” woman wants to be thought of solely as obedient, sexless and wholesome. I could tell by the man’s disapproving expression that he couldn’t imagine his faithful wife-to-be as belonging to the same tribe as the lip-licking birds of paradise who splayed themselves across the Deja Vu stage. But she could have been one of us, even if he didn’t realize it. There were some good, honest people running around at the strip club; most were just well hidden under an impenetrable mantle of makeup and Mystic Tan.

  “Well, good luck in your marriage,” I said. “Maybe you should bring your wife here some time.”

  “Oh, she’d never come here,” the man said, assured of the purity of his betrothed.

  I noticed something strange as the night wore on: The other girls at the club were a lot friendlier to me since I’d been reincarnated as a blonde. It was like I’d joined the Aryan sisterhood. Suddenly, I was privy to backstage gossip and instructions on how to execute the latest pole maneuvers. I had assumed that my wig would elicit a chilly reaction from the girls (since it would ostensibly make me a more formidable competitor on the floor), but the opposite was true. Now I was a contender, and therefore worthy of respect and friendship. The strippers drew their enemies close to their immobile, silicon-cutlet bosoms, and ignored most everyone else.

  Around 1:00 A.M., one of the Mustaches cornered me.

  “Can you do a panty auction in VIP?” he asked me. “No one else is available.”

  “Sure,” I said, pleased to be the last-resort panty-auctioneer-of-choice. “How does that work?”

  “We give you a pair of Deja Vu panties to wear. You go onstage for two songs, and the guys at the tip rail bid on your panties. The guy who puts down the most money gets them.”

  “I can do that,” I said. Mustache tossed a pair of green satin panties at me. They had shamrocks on them (it was June) and fit like a diaper, but I figured I could make do.

  “Guys, now’s the time to head up to the VIP room for a chance to win Cherish’s panties!” the DJ hollered into the mic. He always sounded so smug because lots of strippers were fucking him.

  I took the stage, and was greeted with surprisingly hearty applause. The tip rail in VIP wasn’t very large, but it was crowded with drunk university boys who grinned as though it were Christmas morning and Santa had brought them a sleigh loaded with semiconscious Hustler honeys. I smiled and smoothed my Irish diaper enticingly. (Remember those old Victoria’s Secret satin bikini panties that always looked pouchy in the ass? These panties were exactly like that.)

  “Give ’em to me!” a boy shouted, laying a five-dollar bill on the rail. On the other sid
e of the stage, another boy retaliated by constructing an elaborate pyramid of folded singles.

  “The pyramid guy is winning,” I declared, dancing up to the front lip of the stage and twirling around the pole. “I award extra points for effort.” I figured I’d make the bastards work for my skanky green drawers, you know?

  In response, the first guy pulled out more money and laid it down. He pointed to his chest wildly. “Pick me! I gotta have your panties!”

  The pyramid guy’s creation increased from modest Mayan scale to ancient Egyptian grandeur as he added more dollars. He smiled at me conspiratorially. A few more guys pulled out money, eager to join the competition. They began tossing handfuls of money at the stage, which I wallowed through delightedly, shuffling the bills about like dead leaves. I was literally ankle deep in cash, and it kept coming. The sound of legal tender hitting my legs was exquisite.

  The second song began. I pulled off the panties and dangled them teasingly in front of the tip rail. Naked but for my black stilettos, I sat down on the edge of the stage, leaned back and spread my legs for the big finish. A flying dollar hit me square in the crotch. I scooted backward onto the stage and began rolling around dramatically in the scattered pile of money. (I couldn’t pass up an Indecent Proposal moment.)

  “Panties! Panties!” the guys chanted. I waved the panties in response, giggling as I writhed in my bed of crumpled money. This was the zenith of my adult sexual life. Had I even lived before I’d auctioned off my underthings?