THIRTY-SIX
Same night, different club. Or is it same club, different night? All these places are alike. I’m listening to bad music muffled by a worse P.A. and trying to convert time into money. I’ve lost count of how many auditions I went on after leaving Angels. It’s just finally come down to needing a source of income. So here I am.
There’s not much action yet. It’s the same old story – I’ve tried every guy in the room. They’re each going dollar for dollar at the stage. This place doesn’t see nearly as much traffic as Angels does. Still, I’ve worked at Lucille’s for about a week now and it’s tolerable. On average, I’m going home with about three hundred a night. Which isn’t great for a nude club, but it’ll keep me from starving.
I light a second cigarette off the butt I’m smoking. I eye the stage. It’s a nice one, I have to admit that. You’d never think so from the street level, where a doorman stands under an awning and ushers men into a dark elevator. But the crowd’s so thin. I’ll bet that elevator is a deal-breaker for plenty of marks, who are horrified thinking about what urban legend might be waiting for them here on the fourth floor. I know I would be.
Once they’re in, though, the front room opens up into a low-lit ballroom. The shiny, massive stage contains three long poles. There’s fake shrubbery behind some of the tables. The whole place looks almost elegant.
On my first day at work, I was warned about the cameras that monitor the private rooms, forcing everyone’s game on to the same level – no extras, no exceptions. Sam the bouncer is huge and friendly. I feel safer here than I did in any other club.
My eyes light on the girl who is crawling the length of the grand wooden stage. She manages to stop me in my tracks without even catching my eye, because I think maybe I know her.
The hair is different – this girl’s got hers done like Marilyn Monroe. I’m not close enough to see much more. She pulls her dress down, revealing a pair of large, fake breasts that I am positive my old friend didn’t have. But anything can change in a couple of years. And in my experience, it usually does.
The girl onstage notices my reaction to her. She waves to me. I squint and try to figure out whether that girl I knew in what seems like another lifetime would have found her way into a place like this. I’m not sure how I feel about it if she has.
I’m also not sure why I care. My life before strip clubs may as well not exist. If that’s the person I think it is, a conversation will be awkward. How can I explain my presence here? Do I have any right to ask about hers?
I continue to stare despite myself. Maybe I’m just lonely. There are Christmas displays in every store window now. The holiday season seems geared towards reminding people like me that we are the less fortunate.
Barry has stayed gone this time. I haven’t seen the sun in over a month. Sean’s away at school, and I think he’s still pretty upset with me. My social circle was limited to begin with. Now it’s nonexistent. I work, I go home, I get high, and I pass out. Rinse and repeat. When I don’t work, I curl up in front of the TV and watch movies on HBO. Often they’re the same movies, over and over again.
I didn’t notice when the Marilyn Monroe girl got dressed and left the stage. But now she plunks down in the chair next to me, smiling.
“I saw you watching me dance,” she says.
“Oh, yeah, I was. I’m sorry,” I say as I get a good look at her close up for the first time. I was mistaken. I’ve never seen her before. “I thought you were somebody else.”
“I am somebody else,” she quips. “So are you.”
I laugh with her, relieved that she isn’t who I thought she was. “Fair enough.”
“How long have you worked here?” she asks.
“About a week,” I reply.
“Like it?”
“Heh. Um. S’okay.”
“It gets better,” she assures me. “I’ve made eight hundred in one night a few times.”
“Ever break a G?” I ask.
“Not in this club,” she admits.
I shrug. “It’s not as bad as the new place on the West Side Highway.”
A fairly attractive, forty-ish mark wearing a suit and shiny black shoes wanders up to us and then he just stands there, beaming. We both smile politely. But she’s the one he’s looking at.
“You’re gorgeous,” he pants. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Kelly,” she says, extending her hand. She’s wearing long, white opera gloves that go nicely with her blue, satin gown. “And who are you, doll?”
The mark takes her hand. “Kelly, will you dance for me?”
“Certainly,” she says. She winks at me and gets out of her seat, wrapping an arm around the mark’s shoulder and holding her body close to his. In her stilettos, she dwarfs him as they walk off together toward the dance room. She’s got to be six feet tall in those things.
I hear my stage name over the P.A. I try to look happy – or at least, not look miserable – as I climb onstage.
These poles are three times the size of the ones at Angels, and I’m almost intimidated by their sheer length. I climb to the ceiling and then flip backwards to hang upside down.
I strain to stay in position. Blood rushes to my head. No one is watching me.
At the end of the night, the Monroe girl glides into the dressing room and parks herself behind me as I pull my street clothes out of my locker.
“What’re you doing now?” she wants to know.
“I dunno… a diner, then bed?” I say, surprised.
“Wanna hang out?”
“Where?”
“My place. Come meet my boyfriend, Willy. He used to DJ here, and he’s really cool. I don’t meet a lot of girls that I like very much. You have a certain…” She cocks her head to one side, studying me. “I want to say panache, and I don’t know what that sounds like to you.”
“Well, I don’t have to work tomorrow,” I say. I don’t know why, but I like this girl.
“Then you’ll come visit us,” she says, linking arms with me.
She’s a charming broad. It’s impossible for me to say no. Besides, what else have I got going on? An empty house and an empty bed.
“I’m Sharon,” she adds. She thrusts her body into a tight pair of jeans, and throws on a fake fur coat right over the opera gloves.
“I heard you say your name was Kelly,” I remark. “Sharon’s your real name?”
“They’re both my real names, honey,” she responds. “Kelly’s my last name. Sharon Kelly.” She bows low. “At your service.”
We walk out of the dressing room together and towards the elevator.
“I’ll pay for the cab. I made money tonight,” Sharon offers.
“That’s okay. I have my car.”
The elevator is packed. I hope I’m only imagining that I can hear it strain and creak on its pulley. It takes forever before it delivers us to the ground floor and relative safety.
“Good night, Buddy,” Sharon says to the doorman.
I nod to him also. He smiles at us. I’ve never really looked at him. Now I notice he’s missing a few teeth. He’s probably lost as many as Barry has. Must be in style this year. I cringe.
“My car’s this way,” I say. We step over sheets of ice on the uneven sidewalk, and the wind nearly pushes us over.
“I hope it snows for Christmas,” Sharon says.
“Why fuckin’ not? It’s snowed almost every day since Thanksgiving,” I grumble.
“You don’t like snow? I love it. I think it’s pretty.”
“I think it’s annoying,” I say, opening the car door and gasping a little at how cold the handle is. “This is my least favorite time of year. It’s not like you can make a snow angel in Manhattan.”
“Central Park,” Sharon says brightly as she gets into the car.
“Oh, hell, honey, don’t tell me you’re one of those Pollyanna Silver Lining types.”
Sharon tosses her coat into the backseat of the car and puts on her seatbelt. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch her expression. One eyebrow is raised, and she’s smirking.
“Not even close,” she says, peeling off her gloves.
Her track marks aren’t the worst I’ve ever seen. In fact they’re pretty faint. She looks at me as if she expects me to be shocked.
I nod, and start the car. Another junkie. Big deal. “Okay. So where do you live?”
“Spanish Harlem,” Sharon replies. “Drive all the way up Park Avenue. I’ll show you where to turn.”
I flip a knob, and the Damned comes blasting out through my speakers. I turn it down to a more acceptable level. “This okay with you?”
“Oh, cool, I love all kinds of music,” she breathes.
Crosstown traffic is easy at this hour. I adore driving through Manhattan at four-thirty A.M., before anyone’s awake, when it still feels like nighttime. There’s a certain peace to it. Especially once we get to Park Avenue, where I turn the radio off so I can listen to the neighbourhood’s slumbering silence.
“We just have to make a quick stop once we get across the street from my house,” Sharon says. “I didn’t procure my evening’s entertainment before work.”
I give her a sidelong look. “Are they out this late? Or early, I guess.”
“Yeah, actually, this is the best time,” she says. “It’s harder during the day. You wait in the car, huh? They know me. Better they don’t see your face. You probably look like five-oh to them.”
“I look like a cop?” That’s actually pretty funny.
“Well, you know. Not to me, but to these guys maybe. You’re cute and skinny and white.”
“How do you get away with it then?”
“Before they knew me, I used to send Willy. He’s Mexican.”
“Yeah? Your boyfriend’s from Mexico?”
“No. He’s from New Jersey.”
Park Avenue narrows dramatically and divides as we get farther uptown. The car bounces over potholes and other giant blemishes in the pavement. Within a few blocks, the whole neighborhood has changed.
“Okay, make a right,” Sharon says, sitting up. “Yeah. Here’s my place. Park in front of it.”
I parallel park next to a grimy sidewalk in front of an old, dark brick building that looks as if it should be condemned.
“I’ll just be a minute or two, okay?” Sharon slams the car door behind her without waiting for an answer. I watch her run across the street towards the projects, and then she disappears around the corner.
I crouch down in the car in front of the steering wheel. I want her to hurry. I’m feeling like maybe I’m a little bit out of my element.
When she reappears, she looks jubilant. “China white tonight,” she exclaims in a singsong voice. “Come on inside. Oh, Willy’s gonna be so happy.”
Her apartment is a tiny room – scarcely larger than a walk-in closet, and sparsely furnished. I doubt it’s been painted since the place was built. There’s a loft in one corner, and in the other, a mini-fridge with a hot-plate on top of it.
“I’m sorry about the mess,” Sharon chirps to me, and then, “Hi, baby! Guess what I got!”
She kisses the tall, lean olive-skinned guy with the sideburns and gentle eyes, and opens her palm to reveal five glassines. He smiles at her. He has a warm smile, which widens when he takes my hand to shake it. He can’t be older than twenty-five. I like him immediately.
“I’m Willy,” he says shyly. “Welcome to our home. I’m so sorry, if I knew Sharon was bringing anyone home I would have cleaned up.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, although the place does indeed look awful. There are crumpled tissues and empty cereal boxes on the floor lying next to jeans, shirts and bunched up towels. There’s a colorless rug buried somewhere underneath all that – here and there I can see squares of it.
“I wish I had something to offer you, a drink maybe. We didn’t go shopping yet this week,” Willy continues.
“Can I use your bathroom?” I ask.
Sharon hands me a key and a roll of toilet paper. “Round the corner, last door on the right hand side,” she says. “Don’t worry if you see any of the neighbors. They’re harmless.”
Their hallway is as depressing as the rest of the building. And the bathroom smells like old piss. As if no one’s ever cleaned up behind years of drunken men missing the toilet bowl. I make an effort to breathe only through my mouth, and I hover over the seat while I pee. When I wash my hands, there’s no place to dry them except for my jeans.
I return to Sharon’s room, where I’m surprised to see Buddy, the doorman from Lucille’s, sitting in the corner.
“You didn’t tell me you had company,” Buddy mumbles to Sharon, nodding at me.
“She’s cool, I promise. She won’t say anything,” Sharon answers. “Willy got fired when they found out I was dating him,” she explains to me. “They don’t know Buddy hangs out with us. Do you want a bump?”
I nod, and she hands me a glassine with a few crumbs left in it. I pour the contents on my hand and snort them. It’s not enough. I don’t feel anything. I’m the only person I know who does dope but won’t shoot up. Maybe that’s why for me, heroin is no different from any other party drug.
Buddy looks like he’s much older than we are. I don’t understand why he’s even in the picture until he rolls up his sleeve and starts tying off.
A few minutes later, his sweaty face has turned purple from the exertion of searching for a vein in his arm that will take the shot. He’s hunched over the needle, muttering to himself as he grows more and more desperate. Finally he asks Willy to shoot it into his neck. I turn away. I can’t watch this.
“Hey, you have an audition tomorrow, remember?” Willy says to Sharon. “You have to get some sleep.”
“I’m not tired,” Sharon says airily. “What time did I need to be there? Maybe I’ll just stay up.”
Both of them ignore Buddy, who is nodding in the corner.
“Last time you did that, you complained that you had puffy eyes and they didn’t call you back,” Willy reminds her. “Sharon almost wound up on a soap last month,” he tells me.
“It’ll be fine,” Sharon snaps.
“Hey, if you’ve got stuff to do, I need to get home and sleep anyway,” I interject. “And I’m sure my cats are hungry.”
“We’re hanging out again though,” Sharon says. It sounds like more of an order than an invitation.
“Of course,” I say, putting my coat on.
“Are you working on Friday? They have a Christmas party that night.”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Great,” she says. “Don’t make any other plans. We’ll go to after-hours. Okay, Willy?”
“Sharon, we don’t have money for after-hours,” Willy says.
“Shut up. You know I can make money whenever we need it. Quit being such a buzzkill.”
He shrugs. “Sure, okay. I’ll see you soon,” he says to me.
Sharon comes over and gives me a big hug. “You should let me do your eye makeup for the party,” she says.
“Thanks for coming over,” Willy says. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Come back soon!” Sharon says.
They’re both still smiling when the door closes. I’m not even halfway down the hall before I hear the muffled arguing begin.
“I said, don’t tell me what to do!” That’s her voice.
“Okay, then do whatever the hell you want – I don’t care!”
I suppose Buddy’s used to their quarrels. There’s not a peep out of him.
I shake my head, and continue walking to my car, glad that for a change, it isn’t me doing the yelling.
Continue reading:
| « Previous: THIRTY-FIVE | Next: THIRTY-SEVEN » |
Subscribe via RSS
Subscribe via email
May 14th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Well, at least Sharon seems a better potential friend than Alannah!
Emily really needs to catch a break.
She’s so much smarter than everyone around her, I’m somewhat mystified why she’s so stuck in the stripper lifestyle.
May 17th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Fiona, thanks for following the story. To answer your question – for Emily, loneliness is a powerful equalizer.