Nudity For Fun and Profit Chapter Nine: Poles and Pulpits

“Just leave it over there with Jose, he’ll make a copy of it and you’ll get it back later. In the mean time, go on and get changed. You got fifteen minutes,” Tim says. He squints at me. “And put on some makeup, there.”

“I’m wearing makeup,” I tell him.

“Well, I don’t see none. Go put on some more.” He turns back to his clipboard.

I give my driver’s license to the cashier on the way to the dressing room and make my way down the narrow staircase. This time I’m careful to hold the rail.

In the basement, there’s a flurry of girls vying for prime space in front of the mirror. They’re making small talk while they cram themselves into their outfits and trade items like baby wipes and body spray. The room smells of powder, sweat and bitter marijuana.

There’s no place to put my bag down except the floor. I scan the area uneasily. I don’t want to ruin any more good clothes. I find a space that appears dry, set down my knapsack and open it. My selected outfit is a sheer baby doll negligee. And it’s tight on top, just like I told Heloise it would be.

Everyone else appears to be in far better shape than I am. They could all be runway models, in fact. Heloise would be right at home in this realm of flat stomachs, firm buns and sleek long legs.

I suck in my tummy as hard as I can and resolve to live on celery for the next month. Knowing that everyone could see my pooch didn’t bother me the last time I was here, but then again, I was inebriated.

I never worried about my weight, not once in my whole life, before my Winston Global debacle began. Since then, however, the only laps I’ve taken have been back and forth between the desk, the copier and the file cabinet. And it shows.

None of the other girls are putting on lingerie. Instead, they’re sporting tight gowns or skimpy bikini sets. All of them have got the same style of footwear, too. Giant platform shoes with spike heels. My own shoes are short and clunky in comparison.

From upstairs, one of the girls yells into the dressing room. “Ten minutes!”

I look down at myself uneasily. Crap. I forgot to shave my legs. I hope no one notices.

“How ‘bout that. Wouldja look who made it back here after all.”

Sara from the other night is standing next to me with her head cocked to one side. She blows a fat, pink bubble and then lets the gum collapse back into her mouth.

“You going to a pajama party?” she asks, indicating my outfit.

 “Let me guess. You have something better I can borrow,” I reply. “And look at that. It has a matching blindfold. They’re all the rage these days, am I right?” I eye her coolly. “I’ll pass this time. Excuse me.”

There is space in front of the mirror and I start to move that way, but I’m too late. Another girl gets in there before I can. I swear under my breath.

Someone taps me on the shoulder. I whip around. “What?”

Sara hands me her compact. “You have to get in here earlier if you wanna get anywhere near those mirrors.”

“Thanks,” I say in a guarded tone. I still don’t really trust her after the audition fiasco. I open the compact and start applying my lipstick.

“By the way? Just so’s you know… I wasn’t one of the people who pushed you onto that stage,” Sara tells me. “That part had nothin’ to do with me.”

I give her a funny look over the compact.

“And all due respect, hon?” she continues. “You need a thicker skin if you’re gonna work here.” She pauses to look me in the eye. “Those men up there are like wild animals. You can tame ‘em and have ‘em eatin’ outta your hand. But the minute they smell fear on you, they’ll eat you alive.”

“Oh, well that’s fabulous, because I was feeling great about doing this already.” I finish dabbing on my lipstick and give Sara back her mirror. “Got any Rolaids?”

“Oh, hush. It’ll be fine,” she says. “It’s good that you’re startin’ on a Monday. You won’t make a ton, but you might learn the ropes better than you would when it was packed in here.”

Someone opens the dressing room door and yells down the stairs again. “Two minutes!”

Sara elbows me. “Come on. Tim probably wouldn’t fine you since it’s your first night, but you never know. You can never, ever be late gettin’ out on that floor. If you are, you owe them fifty bucks right away.”

I stare at her. “I owe them money?”

“Yeah, fifty dollars is the late fee, a hundred for a no-show. So let’s go!”

I follow her up the stairs behind everyone else, our heels all clopping on the unfinished wood together. The other girls look to me like a stampede of giant Barbie dolls. I wonder what I look like to them.

Tim is standing by the door with his clipboard, marking off what appears to be an attendance sheet. After nodding to him, the girls disperse into chairs against the walls. A wiry, olive-skinned brunette with pigtails is dancing onstage, moving her body mechanically and staring out into nowhere. She reminds me of a wind-up toy.

The chairs around the stage are all empty. A stocky, middle aged guy with a beard sits in the corner and gapes at the brunette’s lower half. I’m not sure whether he realizes she has a face. Across the room, a light skinned black girl is sliding her butt around in a customer’s lap. She bobs up and down on him backwards. I can’t see his head at all.

Once Tim sits down at the bar, I approach him. He looks me up and down, gimlet-eyed, before nodding.

“The makeup’s better.” He pats the seat of the barstool next to him. “Now sit down a minute and I’ll give you a rundown of how it works in here.”

The moves are no problem for me. In fact, they’re a lot of fun. During my first set, a few more customers come into the club, and all of them tip me. The place is quiet compared to Saturday night, though. At the end of my set I’ve only got fifteen dollars. Which I’ve just found out is the minimum tip-out for the DJ.

The way the girls make their money here is to sell lap dances. The dances are fully nude, and unless the customer buys time in the VIP room, they happen in front of everyone. So the real objective is to get the men into that dark area in the back of the club. Where I’ll be alone with them. Naked.

Tim has assured me that this is safe. “There’s a bouncer right there the whole time. He hears so much as a whimper from you and the dance ends. Period. You got nothin’ to worry about, understand?”

I can’t help thinking that it’s easy for him to say that.

More worrisome is the fact that Angels doesn’t pay the dancers. “A girl dancing makes so much money that it’s not fair to everyone else if she gets paid,” was the explanation for this one. “You do everything right in here and you hustle, you’re not walkin’ out with less than three hundred. I got plenty of girls that make a grand a night.”

That last part sounds pretty good. Perhaps I can work here for two weeks and then quit.

One thing is certain. This is a temporary solution, nothing more. The club is closed on Sundays, which leaves me one weekend night to work. In order to stay on the schedule, I have to come in four nights a week.  And the shifts don’t end until four o’clock in the morning. I explained to Tim that I have a day job – in fact, I came here straight from the office today. And even though he said I could go home early tonight and work from six to two on my weeknights from now on, that’s still not a lot of sleep to look forward to.

Of course, my job at Winston Global takes up very little brain power. I probably can do it while I’m asleep. Most of the time, that’s essentially what’s happening anyway.

I find myself a seat in the corner and try to assess what my selling points will be for these customers.

Whoever owns Angels isn’t giving us an environment with a whole lot to work with. When I was here the other night, it didn’t completely sink in that this place was such a dive. But now that the club is less crowded, I’m acutely aware of some of its more charmless aspects.

Angels is dark, smoky, and more than a little bit grungy. It’s painted black and sparsely decorated. There are mirrors covering almost every wall, maybe to make the space look larger than it really is.

The front entrance of the house is a narrow vestibule about the length of the bar, ten feet long at the most. Across from the bar and right next to the front door, there’s a little booth containing a CD changer and an emaciated, stoned-looking guy with long blond hair and too many piercings.

Next to that is a doll-sized stage with a brass pole mounted on top. A very low ceiling covers the area. I can’t imagine what possessed someone to put a pole there, because there isn’t enough room to climb or spin around on it.

Where the stage ends are two doors, side by side. The second one leads into the basement and our dressing room. The first one is a mystery. I didn’t ask what was behind it, and I suppose Tim didn’t see fit to enlighten me.

Across from these doors is, strangely enough, a pulpit. Somebody clearly has either a highly inflated sense of his own importance or a very twisted sense of humor. Perhaps it’s both. Jose the cashier sits behind that thing, running the customers’ credit cards and dispensing dance tickets – called “funny money” – to the waitresses.

The club’s entire main room is no larger than my own Brooklyn two-bedroom apartment if you took away all of the walls, with a rectangular stage eating up the room’s whole center. There are two brass poles on either side of that stage. It’s surrounded by a wooden lip where customers can place their drinks and their cash.

At the back of the room, a stoic bouncer with long dark hair and a moustache sits perched on his chair like a sphinx, staring straight ahead. All I can see behind him are the beaded curtains. Otherwise, it’s too dark for me to do more than wager a guess about the depth and dimensions of the VIP room.

So that, then, is the prize. From here, it looks like a big, black hole.

I hope that bouncer is really as mean as he looks.

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