So I bought a drink. Nobody came. So I had another one. And another.
And another.
And then people started to show up.
By this time, I was eager to get on that sorry excuse for a stage. I got on one pole, and Mediocre #1 got on the other.
I was pretty buzzed, and I relished the idea that it had been awhile since Lux was out, since she was wearing these shoes, doing what she does best. I danced, I stretched, I crawled, I flirted, I laughed, I thought to myself, this feels like home. But as I danced and danced, the men kept staring, and I stared back. And then the buzz started to wear off, and then I saw what was happening. And then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I spun around the pole, and then I saw that I was half naked behind a sketchy bar in Queens. And then I wanted to go home.
But all I had made was $2.
In the back of the bar was where a customer could take a dancer to purchase a lap dance. It was like stripping at Spencer Gifts at the Arizona Mills Mall - tacky animal print chairs, bad lighting, beaded curtains. There was nothing right about it.
Alex, a ghetto Colombian 20-something in oversized everything, had that strain in his eye, snap in his gum-chewing, and carelessness in his touch that only dudes on cocaine have.
"Come home with me and my boys," he said. "Call your girlfriends."
"I can't, " I said.
"Wanna bump?" He showed me.
(See, told you.)
I kept dancing, and he looked up at me. His eyes were too scary to look into. I tried to think about my bed. And sweatpants.
He grabbed my ass and pulled me closer. I looked around. Nobody was going to save me from anything.
I froze there, straddled in front of him. He moved his hands up my back, and then rubbed them down to my thighs. He started to kiss my collarbone and he rubbed my inner thighs so hard now that it hurt. And I was scared.
"Sorry, I gotta go!" I said in my best perky-stripper-who-isn't-affected-by-anything voice. He eventually reluctantly gave me my $40 with no tip, and I went straight to the dressing room to grab my things and go.
I made it out the door, to the subway station, through the train ride. I made it to my apartment, to my room, to the sweatpants, to the bed. I fell asleep. I made it.
I woke up the next morning and looked over at my kitty collar and pearls on the floor. And then I cried.
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