Sydni Ellis

For those of you who don’t already know, I make lesbian erotic films.  I write, cast, direct and sometimes perform in them, too. 

I have many illusions of grandeur.  It troubles me that porn never quite made good on its promise to become a sophiticated form of adult entertainment.  It concerns me that adult actresses and actors are snickered at by the “mainstream” world, their work discredited and devalued. Now that I understand the limitations inherent to a small film budget, I can see why so many people try to make porn cheap and dirty.  I realize there’s a market for people who like their porn served straight up with no dialogue or storylines, and with a concentration on explicit close ups and looping orgasms.   

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that; just that the bar is very low and it’s hard to get anyone to raise it.  Once it’s been established that money can be made by doing very little and catering to the lowest common denominator, why would anyone be inspired to do more?

When I was first introduced to erotica, I thought it magical.  Unlike regular books and movies, it aroused in me feelings and ideas that I had always considered private.  I was doubly intrigued by anything a bit interesting or smart, and when I found something I liked it made a huge and lasting impression.  In literature, the Victorian classic “A Man With a Maid” was my favorite book, and naturally, I worshipped Anaiis Nin.  When it came to films, I was drawn to the soft core lesbian variety.  I prefered stories where the relationships between women were depicted as rich and interesting and complex, both sexually and psychologically.

My goal as a filmmaker is to mix the hard and the soft.  I love hard sex and dirty talk and explicit shots.  But I also love good stories and depicting relationships as I have experienced them in the real world.  The relationships I’ve had, particularly with women, have been multi-faceted, complicated, baroque.  I have never fucked an Avon lady who came to my door selling lipstick, and never wanted to.  But I have fallen in love with a boyfriend’s female friend, I have kept secrets, I have silently struggled with situations and feelings that I knew would sound crazy to speak of aloud.  To depict those experiences fully, with the benefit of explicit and real sex to tell the whole story, is what my journey as a filmmaker will be about. 

I haven’t made this drive in ten years but it’s all coming back to me.  Especially “Bauchet Street”, the name.  I always thought that was a funny street for a jail to be on.  Boo-shay, with the French accent.  Someone tells you they’re going to Bauchet Street and you imagine a quaint little street in France where beautiful women sit drinking cappacino at outdoor cafes.  But life’s not a fantasy on Bauchet Street, not even close.  This is as real as it gets.

I’m thinking things haven’t changed much as I drive into the parking lot across the street from the Twin Towers,  There’s Tower One and Tower Two and I don’t know which one my brother is in, but I’ll figure that out in a minute, I’ll ask someone where I should go.  The sign says it’s six bucks to park, pay in advance, so as I drive into the lot I give the attendant two fives and he starts to wave me through but then he says oh wait a minute, and presses four singles into my hand.

So I pull in the lot and it’s all coming back to me, I remember this place, oh yeah, those steps over there, I remember those.  I’ve got fifty bucks in my back pocket and Jamie’s booking number on a piece of notebook paper clenched in my hand.  I keep putting it in different places: my coat pocket, my purse, the dashboard, picking it up and putting it down.  I need this, I keep thinking.  I don’t want to lose this.  And my driver’s licence, gotta have that, too.  That’s in my wallet, I’ll keep it there for now.  It’s almost eight-fifteen and there’s already a line outside the jail, visitors are standing in the rain waiting to get in.      

* * *  

My brother killed someone twelve years ago and since then he’s mostly been in jails and mental institutions.  The guy he killed was either a respectable man with a pretigious job and an expensive, fluffy dog, or he was a scumbag who lured boys into cars and tried to make them do shit they didn’t want to do.  Maybe he was both.  But my brother didn’t have two selves, he only had one, and his self had a knife in his pocket so when the respectable man pulled out his dick Jamie pulled out his knife and stabbed the man twenty-seven times.  When it was over Jamie ran back to the shitbag motel he’d been staying in since his girlfriend kicked him out and he picked up his dog — a Doberman Pincher named Terminator who liked Jack Wagner music — and came to see me.  He woke me up that morning, he was standing on the front lawn with his dog, crying and shaking.  I did something bad, he said.  I did something real bad.  I remember thinking, fuck, maybe he knocked over a 7-11 or something, maybe he really messed up this time.  It wasn’t until we were in my car that he told me, I killed someone.  I think he’s dead, he’s gotta be dead, after what I did to him.  Yeah, I think he’s probably dead… It was two days after Christmas and people still had decorations on their lawns, blinking lights and waving Santas and snow-covered divinity scenes.  I kept my eyes fixed on them as I drove, trying not to listen.  There’s a lot of blood when you kill someone, he was saying.  There’s more blood than you think.

I haven’t spoken to my brother in about a week.  He doesn’t call before a visit, and Mom says that’s because he’s afraid if he calls we might try to get out of it.  We might say ”Oh, I’m sorry I can’t make it this week after all.”  If he doesn’t call we have to come, because it would be rude to just not show up without canceling first.          

Now I have to figure out which tower he’s in.  Two has a pretty long line outside so I stand by the pay phones and scan the people waiting to get in. There are a lot of gangbanger types: guys with shaved heads and wifebeater t-shirts.  Pretty latina girls with long kinky hair and shaved eyebrows; their real ones replaced by thin lines drawn unnaturally high on their foreheads.  They look like wayward Harlequin dolls.  I’m about to ask someone if I’m in the right place when I notice a sign that reads “Inmate Information” with a phone number  — cool, just what I need.  I put two quarters in the phone and dial, and a voice tells me all operators are currently busy but to please remain on the line.  It doesn’t say my call is very important, but there is some waiting music: I Second That Emotion by the Miracles.  Finally I hear a series of clicks followed by a busy signal and I know I’ve been disconnected, but I keep waiting until a voice says if you would like to make a call please hang up and dial again.  “Motherfucker,” I say loud enough for people to hear, but nobody turns to look at me.

* * *

I visited my father in New York back when Jamie first started serving his time.  We’d sat on the floor in his apartment eating cold pizza from the box and looking through a stack of court documents.  My father was a private investigator and he was able to obtain,” as he would say, the police photographs, witness statements and the autopsy report from my brother’s case.

I noticed a death certificate sticking out from the pile and picked it up.  I already knew the dead man’s name, that he was a homosexual, older than my brother, successful in his field, but now I wanted to know more.  What strange link existed between the two doomed strangers, one of whom I used to play hide and seek with?  How did fate decide that pictures of this rich man’s corpse would end up scattered on the floor of a shitty walk up apartment in New York City at ten o’clock on a Sunday night?

Name:   Donald Stuart Mooring
Sex:       Male
Age:       42
Weight:  200
Manner of Death:  Homicide

I stared at the words, ready to face my brother’s victim.  I’d kept him out of my mind for months, refusing to acknowledge his loss or grieve for anyone’s pain but Jamie’s.  But I had so many questions.

Why did my brother do this to you?  Did you deserve it?
Nobody deserves this, not this…
Jesus, I’m sorry…  I’m so sorry.

“Brace yourself,” my father said, and he began handing me pictures of the crime scene.  I took them and for the first time saw what Jamie had described to me that morning in my car.  One was a close up of the man’s bloody face, his eyes and mouth ghoulishly slack, deep gashes visible on the left side of his head.  Another showed his lifeless body hanging out of his car, legs grotesquely twisted, feet barely touching the blood-soaked ground.  As my mind struggled to fill in the blanks I envisioned my brother’s face contorted with rage, raising a knife above his head.

“Look at this,” my father said, passing me a photograph of bloody footprints.

“What?” I said, but I already knew what was coming. 

“These footprints come from a size ten sneaker.  Your brother wears a 12.”  Dad took a long drag on his unfiltered cigarette and stared hard at the photo, his finger tracing the outline of the footprint.

“He didn’t do it,” he said.  “He’s covering up for someone.”

We’d had this conversation before.

“Dad,” I said, “he came to me right after it happened, he told me — ”

“He ‘told‘ you — don’t be an idiot!” he yelled, snatching the picture out of my hand.  “What did he tell you?  He didn’t tell you anything! Come on, huh?”

“He told me he did it.  He was crying and he said he did it.”

My father shook his head in disgust.  “And you’d rather believe he’s a murderer than a liar?” he asked.  “What kind of sister are you?”

There was another picture in the stack; the dead man as he was in life, his fluffy dog sitting on his lap.  He was looking directly into the camera and smiling; maybe even laughing.  I knew Jamie had seen this picture because he mentioned it to me afterwards in one of our phone conversations, he sounded a little shaken up.  I remembered it because it was the only time I’d heard Jamie mention the dead man with anything that sounded like regret.

“I didn’t know he had a dog,” he’d said.

* * *

I walk up to a dark skinned black man in a stained blue t-shirt and ask where I can find my brother.  Tower One is for the men, he says. you go that way.  A heavily tattooed Hispanic man with a shaved head and an open flannel shirt follows behind me saying, the way this place is designed, you gotta be a moron to figure it out.  But I find Tower One and get in line behind two middle aged Caucasian women with carefully coiffed hair.  One of them is wearing a cheerful pink sweatshirt with big red polka-dots, the other looks like Sally Jesse Raphael in an embroidered vest and less expensive glasses.  Someone’s aunt, someone’s mom.  They look like they should be home serving breakfast in some idyllic cozy kitchen, pouring maple syrup on someone’s pancakes.  Maybe they did do that, until something went wrong.  Now they’d spend their Sundays on line on Bauchet Street trying to look like they don’t belong here.  As I take my place in line I can’t help but notice that black people seem far less unnerved than whites about this place.  Where whites tense up and refuse to make eye contact with each other or anyone else, black people are warm, friendly, their dignity untainted by the county jail scene.  We’ve been going through this shit forever, their faces seem to say.  It’s just another part of life, like death and taxes.

The bald guy in the flannel shirt is in line behind me, talking to someone about his son.

“He was just hanging around with the wrong crowd, and now he’s in prison for eight years,” he says, struggling to control his outrage.  “Hey, I’m not saying he didn’t have no trouble before — every kid has trouble, okay?  But eight years? Plus, they gave him two strikes on the same case!  I mean, isn’t there some kind of law — can they do that?”

Everyone on line is talking to someone, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, high-fiving each other in solidarity, or offering a consolatory pat on the back.  This is the first time all week I’ve overheard casual conversations that don’t include the word “Enron,” but there’s still plenty of talk about corruption.  Society is corrupt, the judicial system is corrupt, the government is corrupt, and something’s gotta be done about it, ’cause it’s no goddamned fair.  Everyone on line at Tower One, Black and White, Asian and Hispanic, young and old, can agree on that much.

* * *

“What the hell is Terminator doing here?

My mother was furious when she came home from work to find my brother’s dog sitting on her couch, his massive paws scratching at the upholstery.

Jamie was in a motel in Lomita.  I’d given him enough money to stay for a week.  It took everything I’d made onstage the night before, and now I was broke.  He’d called me about six times already, with requests for more money, more food, someone to listen.  He asked me to come by when I got off work and I said I wouldn’t be off until two in the morning but he said that was fine.  I need someone to talk to, he said.  It was two days after Christmas and someone was dead, and somewhere a family was wondering how did this happen, what kind of monster would do this?  My nerves were shot, my head filled with images of gore and blood and faceless, crying relatives.  I didn’t want any of it to be real, but now my mother was standing in the dining room lighting a cigarette and demanding answers.

“He knows he can’t leave his dog here! Where is he?”

“He can’t get the dog right now,” I tell her.

“He better get the goddamned dog!”

“Well he can’t Mom, okay? So shut up, just please shut up…”  I sat down and covered my face with my hands, pressing them against my eyes until the darkness turned to swirling colors.  When I looked up again my mother was starting at me, waiting.     

“What the hell is going on? What aren’t you telling me?” She didn’t sound worried, she’d stopped worrying a long time ago.  These days she was merely fed up.

“Something bad has happened,” I said.

“So what else is new?” she asked dismissively.  She walked into the kitchen, her high heels snapping against the linoleum.  “What, was he evicted again?”

I was exhausted from trying not to cry, and as anguished sobs began to escape me, my mother’s expression turned from anger to surprise.

“Someone is dead,” I heard myself say.  I’d promised Jamie I wouldn’t tell, but like the tattling sister I’d always been I once again proved myself completely untrustworthy.

“What do you mean, ’someone is dead’? He killed someone?”  She stared at me, expressionless.  “Is that what you’re telling me? Is that why the dog is here?”

“I don’t know for sure if the guy is dead,” I said, trying to compose myself.  “It was in Hollywood last night, some guy in a car…”

“Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ…” Mom kept saying.  “Jesus Christ.”

“I want to take him to a mental hospital,” I told her.  “I think he’s really sick.”

“You can’t take Jamie to a hospital, he’ll never go.”  She was lighting another cigarette and her hands were shaking.

“Then I’ll have to drive him to Mexico or something.”

She thought for a minute and then shook her head.  “He might be lying,” she said.  “Remember when he made up that story about having cancer so we’d give him money? He lies, you know that.”  Her arms were folded, her cigarette dangling under her elbow as she considered the possibilities.  I glanced over at Terminator, who was shoving his snout between the couch pillows, looking for crumbs.  I realized I hadn’t fed him all day.

“We have to call the authorities,” my mother said, trying to take control of the matter.  “Let’s call the police and ask them if there was a murder last night, and then we’ll know if he’s lying or not.”

“And then what?” I asked.  “Am I supposed to turn him in?”

“Someone might be dead,” she reminded me.  “If he killed someone, he needs help.  He needs to be off the streets.”  For Mom, it was as simple as that.  “Let me call the police and see if someone was killed last night.  If not, then you call your brother and tell him to come get his dog.  Deal?”

I know if I say yes, it’s all over.  I know the guy is really dead, and no detective is going to answer our questions about an unsolved homicide and then just let us fade back into the woodwork.

* * *

He claimed he’d only wanted a ride home.  The man was a stranger to him, just a guy at the bar who’d offered to give him a ride and Jamie accepted.  Jamie gave the man his name and address in front of witnesses, told him what streets to take to get him there fastest.  He’d gone out to have a few drinks and figure out how to win back the girl he loved, he said, not to kill someone.   But he had a knife in his pocket, one his girlfriend had given him when she threw him out with nowhere to go.  “You may need this,” she’d said “Crazy shit happens in Hollywood.”  The man offering him the ride was even taller than my brother, a big guy.  Not someone you’d ideally choose as a victim, especially after a few drinks.  It just didn’t add up.  Jamie said he knew something was wrong when the man said he needed to stop by his own place first before taking Jamie home.  The man drove to a fancy condominium with an underground parking lot and when the security gates clanged shut behind them Jamie said he’d felt trapped. 

Nobody knows what happened next.  The D.A. said Jamie tried to rob the man and killed him during the struggle.  Jamie said the man told him that if he wanted that ride home, he’d have to earn it.  All that can be certain is that someone did something terrible; demanded something that had not been agreed to and wouldn’t take no for an answer.  Jamie reached for his knife and couldn’t stop — it was brutal, literal overkill.  I don’t know for sure who my brother was killing as he thrust his knife into the man’s head, whose blood he carried on his shirt as he ran in the early morning twilight, his fingers brown and sticky as he threw the knife and the man’s empty wallet into a dumpster.  But I have my suspicions.

* * *

He was charged with first degree murder and was only days from trial when it was discovered that lurking in the dead man’s past were accusations from other young men.  They hadn’t had knives, but they had stories to tell.  The D.A. feared the jury’s reaction and offered a plea bargain of manslaughter, eight to twelve years.  Jamie took it, and was ushered off to Pelican Bay, a level four maximum security state prison.  I wouldn’t see him again for eight years.

He wasn’t a model prisoner, and often ended up in solitary confinement, better known as the Hole.  We always knew when that happened because his phone calls would stop coming, and a week or two later the prison would send home a few boxes of his things; no personal items were allowed in the Hole. I’d rummage through them with a voyeur’s shame, knowing my brother was helpless to protect his privacy.  They usually contained the same things: prison issued pants and shirts, old photographs, Nirvana and Soundgarten CDs, half written letters to his girlfriend demanding to know why she wasn’t at home when he called.  Are you seeing someone? he had written, then crossed it out.  In one box was a birthday card he’d received from our father.  It was for Jamie’s 26th birthday, but it was the kind of card you’d give to a little kid.  On the front was a cartoon dog wearing a cowboy hat and chaps, holding a big, red balloon.  “Happy Birthday, Birthday Boy!” it read in big, cheeful letters.

My mother picked up the card and looked at it.

“Did you see this?” she asked.

“Yeah, kind of weird.” I said.

She closed the card and stared at it, then tossed it back into the box.

“Sick.” she said.   

* * * 

California State Department of Corrections considered him a parolee, not a patient, and as far as they were concerned he’d earned his right to be back on the streets.  The prison medical reports diagnosing him with everything from psychosis to schizophrenia were forgotten as his release date approached.  He’s fine, the prison warden told us.  If he needs help, he can get it on his own like anyone else.  It’s not our problem anymore.  For his part, Jamie was eager to reclaim his old life, to pick up where he’d left off.   He wanted to turn the clock back a decade, and face down his ghosts one by one.  He even returned to the bar where he’d met the dead man that night, walked in the front door and took a seat as if he’d never been away.  I can’t believe you have the nerve to come back here, the bartender told him, but Jamie kept going back, and after a while it was like old times again.  The biggest difference was the nickname given to him by the regulars — they now called him “the Killer.”

He was free for nearly a year before the ghosts caught up with him.

* * *

“I wanted to do a car chase for Mom, I know how she loves watching those car chases on TV.”

It was a year and a half since he’d been paroled, and Jamie and I were laying on the grass on the visitors’ grounds of the state mental institution.  His wrists were shackled to his waist belt, and he was trying to explain what happened.  He had been charged with kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon and if he was ever found competent enough to stand trial he’d be facing Life.

“I thought that would be cool,” he continued, slurring his words.  “She’d be sitting on the couch watching the car chase and then at the end when they pulled me out she’d be like ‘Hey, that’s my son!’”  He smiled, imagining how things might have been if they could just go right once in a while.

I was silent, just listening, staring up at the sky.  These visits were hard.  Jamie was heavily drugged and nodding off every few minutes, so I gave him my jacket to use as a pillow.  I stuck it under his head and propped him up a bit, he couldn’t get much leverage in the restraints, couldn’t really move at all.  As I brushed the hair out of his eyes, he reminded me that he had taken care of me when I was a baby, so now we were even.

“Tell Mom I’m sorry,” he said slowly, drifting off again.  “Tell her I tried.”

* * *

Visitors have to put all our stuff in lockers once we get inside Tower One; we’re not allowed to carry anything to the visiting room except our ID and locker key.  I shove all my stuff in a locker and take a seat and it isn’t long before my brother’s name is called.

“Five to the left,” the guard tells me as I approach the metal detector.  I have no idea what this means but I keep walking, hoping I’ll figure it out as I go.  I follow the visitors walking in front of me into a small elevator at the end of the hall.  I get off at level 5 and go left, into a small waiting room lined with booths.  I’m alone, but a voice from a loudspeaker says “He’ll be down shortly, ma’am,” and I realize they’re watching me on video.

He has a beard now, and walks slowly.  I start to cry when I see him, and he stares at me hard as he sits down on the other side of the bulletproof glass.  The guard snaps a handcuff to Jamie’s wrist and then to the seat so I can’t jump through the glass, Jamie mouths to me, gesturing at the glass with his free hand.  He picks up his phone and he’s smiling at me, I know he’s smiling because no one has cried for him in a long time.  He tells me he’s doing fine.  Does anyone bother you in here? I ask.  No, of course not, he says.  I’m fine.  Are you still on your meds? I ask.  Yeah, I take my meds three times a day — hey your hair got long, he says.  You look good.   He asks me about our father.  I wrote to him on September 11th, after the buildings went down, he says.  Did he write back? I ask.  Yeah, he says chuckling, shaking his head.  He wrote back to tell me that when the planes crashed into the buildings, a mirror broke in his house and fell right on his toe.  That his toe was bleeding real bad and there was blood all over the place.  The whole letter was about his toe.

I look at my brother and try to remember when we were kids, what it was like to live in the same house and take baths together.  I try but I can’t do it — they feel like someone else’s memories, someone else’s life.  I take in every inch of his face as I do each time I see him, hoping to commit him to memory, knowing one day it will be the last time I ever see him again.  Then I put my hand up to the glass and he presses his palm against the other side and we’re touching hands.  He smiles at me and says, “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” and I remember when I used to follow him around and copy him, how I used to get on his nerves, I wonder if I still sometimes do.  I promise him I’ll be back soon, next week maybe, but if not then definitely the week after.  I blow him a kiss goodbye and he pretends to catch it, and the guard comes and unlocks his wrist from the seat.  When I get to the elevator I turn around to wave one more time but it’s too late, he’s already gone.

A petite black woman is standing next to me in the crowded elevator, and she reminds me of a frightened bird.  She’s hugging herself like she’s cold, but when she catches my glance her smile is warm and sincere.  “I don’t know about you,” she says in a tiny voice, “but I wish I could bring my husband home with me right now.”  I want to hug her but I just smile and touch her arm as the elevator door opens and we walk back to the lockers to collect our wallets and purses and keys.

   

This is my first attempt at designing a website, and the approach I’ve opted for is, “What’s my idea of the perfect party?”

First, I want to invite the right people, and that’s why this website will cater to my most valued and beloved friends and fans (i.e., the smart and interesting ones who like to write and talk and think.)  Second, there has to be sex, because any great party has sex (preferably orgies!)  Of course, we’ll also want to spend some time talking to each other: sharing ideas, discussing art and literature and ideology, and of course, obsessing about LESBIAN EROTICA.    There will be photo galleries of the sexy/artsy variety, as well as a few boring pics of me in everyday life (coming soon.)   I’ll also be sharing my attempts at serious writing with you guys, so my apologies in advance.

I love discussing lesbian erotica, sexuality and porn, but I also don’t mind talking about other things here, so feel free.  In fact, you may see some weird categories pop up that seem a bit incongruous and strange.  My love of science is hard to keep under wraps, and I suspect its dorsal fin will slice the surface of this otherwise calm, lesbian porn cybersea at some point or another.

Now, for the benefit of the search engines:  SYDNI ELLIS! SEX! LESBIAN EROTICA! LESBIAN PORN! HOT WET GIRLS! FRACTALS! CELLULAR AUTOMATA! CRIME AND PUNISHMENT! GOGOL! NATIVE PLANTS OF PALOS VERDES! STRIPPERS! HOT REDHEADS! SEXY HOT WET LUSTY LESBIANS! JERSUSALEM CRICKETS! SEXY MATURE MILF HOT LOVE LUSTY LESBIAN ORGIES! 

Now, let me get you a glass of wine, turn on some music and try my best to entertain you….   

I think I’ve been poisoned.  No, not think — I know.  Or drugged.  Someone has put something in my drink.  In my cigarette, maybe - probably.  Laced my Capri 120 with something, who knows what kind of crazy drugs are floating around in this place, I’m sure there’s shit I’ve never even heard of.  But whatever it is, it’s bad, and it’s killing me.  I can feel it fucking with my brain, making me sick, making me crazy.  I should get George the bartender to take me to the hospital.  I’ll give it a minute and see how bad it gets; I might start to feel better, that happens sometimes.  But this time is different — I have a feeling this is really it.  I can’t stand it anymore anyway, so maybe it’s for the best.

I take another drag on my poisoned cigarette hoping the smoke, before it claims my life, will calm me down.  I tell myself that none of this really makes any sense, that people don’t die of poisoned cigarettes.  It just doesn’t happen.  But this time is different, this time I really am dying.

I’m waiting for the Normal to return, for the part of my brain that understands the importance of suspended disbelief, to regain the upper hand so I can go back out on the floor and serve drinks, do table dances, talk to people and laugh and flirt with them.  But right now my heart is racing, and I think the poison might actually be giving me a heart attack.  It’s definitely making me crazy, this shit is.  Every inanimate object in the dressing room has taken on special significance, everything here is to be deeply considered, marveled at, feared.  It’s as if I’m visiting from another planet and I’m seeing all these things for the first time.  Lipstick on the counter under the mirror.  Look at that — how fucking weird is that?  Lipstick!  A shot glass with a cigarette butt snuffed out in the bottom.  Baby Doll’s CD case.  How does Baby Doll stay in a good mood all the time?  Damned if I know.  I’ve never even seen her drunk, and she’s been dancing here for years.  And she’s never even been poisoned.

I look at myself in the mirror — God, I’m really pretty.  It’s a shame I’m going to die tonight, I still look pretty good for 27.  I wish my lips were bigger, though, I kind of wish I had gotten some collagen injections at least once before I died, but as we know, not everything works out the way you want it to.

I have one more song left.  We’re allowed to sit in the dressing room for three songs after we get off stage, and Leticia is on stage now.  She dances to country music though, so the songs are not very long.   But it’s slow tonight, so they might play a break song in between dancers since there’s only five girls working right now.  Once I die, of course, there will only be four.

There’s no one in the dressing room but me, and I hope to God none of these crazy bitches comes in and starts talking to me or I’ll have to run out of the room.  I can’t talk to anyone when I’ve been poisoned, and I can’t listen to anyone talk, or even overhear other people’s conversations.  These things become torture when poison is working its way through one’s veins, attacking the neuropaths of the brain, eroding one’s very soul.  The insipid shit people talk about, just listening to it concentrates the toxins in my body and moves the poison along, killing me even faster.

I’m sitting on the wooden bench by the mirrors, but I didn’t put a towel under my ass before I sat down, which is bad because all I’m wearing is a g-string and a dirty satin cover up that my beautiful but very dead ex-girlfriend Sonny gave me.  I’ll probably get an infection, something will get in my pussy, some bacteria from one of these other skanky girls, or hairspray or perfume or who knows what.  I pull the bottom of my cover up down as far as it will go under my crotch and try to sit on it, but I can only pull the tiniest bit of corner down far enough to cover the bench under my pussy hole. I’ve never actually gotten an infection from sitting on the bench, though, so I’m not too worried.  I’m much more worried about the poison.

The chills come, as the poison continues to ravage my brain and my vital organs, and I pull the sides of my cover-up together and fasten its clear plastic buttons.  I wear this cover up on stage every night as a tribute to Sonny, my girlfriend who drove her car off a cliff a few years ago, and I also wear it because it’s the prettiest one I’ve ever had.  White satin with two buttons in the front, it’s long enough to cover my ass and it glows in the dark onstage.  There are lipstick smudges on its shiny cuffs and fake tanning lotion has turned the underside a tawny brown, but you can’t see any of that under the red stage lights.  I never wanted to wash it because I wanted it to always smell like Sonny — a distinctive blend of Eternity perfume and Aqua Net hairspray.  But it really doesn’t smell like her anymore; now it just smells like cigarettes and Egyptian Musk. 

Still, I love the way it looks on me when I’m naked.  I’m five foot ten with long crazy brown hair and I have big tits and long legs, and when I come back onstage to pick up my money in my white satin cover up and thigh high latex boots, a cigarette dangling from my mouth, crawling on the stage like a pathetic animal picking up my dollars, I look sexy and fucked up and scary — or at least I like to think so.  I like to think the men in the audience who fancy themselves good judges of character look at me and think, “What happened to that one?”  I love that they see me as someone tragic and broken, but they still want to fuck me and I can still take their money.  They always tell me I could have been a “real” model, or gone to a good college, that I’m so smart, so pretty, my life could have been so nice.  But instead I’m crawling around onstage wondering who poisoned my cigarette and looking back to make sure I didn’t miss a dollar.

“Nietsche!” Sam laughs, sticking her head through the parted curtain that separates the dressing room from the rest of the club.  “There’s some fuckin’ guy out there lookin’ for Nietzche, is that you?”  Sam’s eyes are glazed over but still surprisingly alert.  As fucked up and drunk as Sam gets every night, you’d still be wrong to try to get anything past her.  The girl catches everything, watches every angle.  It must be from all those years dealing crack, not knowing if someone was going to kill her and her husband Big D at any second, break in and kill them and take all their money and drugs.  Another dancer here who was dealing dope was murdered recently; her stage name was Darla and I just found out that her real name had been Kristen.  The killers took Darla to an abandoned house in Hollywood, where they tied her and her boyfriend up and gave them “hotshots”, which I’ve been told means to shoot them up with battery acid instead of heroin.  Then the killers set the place on fire, and Darla and her boyfriend burned to death if the battery acid hadn’t already killed them.  Nobody really had the details, but there were plenty of rumors floating around, including the one about the hotshots.  Maybe that part wasn’t even true, but everyone had accepted it was.  There are so many liars in this club that you really couldn’t trust anything you hear.  Club people love drama and love to tell stories.  If it isn’t front page material, it isn’t worth talking about — so everything’s gotta be front page material even if you have to embellish it a little.

Darla was a beautiful girl, and it was still hard to believe that she was dead.  That all that was left of her pretty face with those huge brown eyes, and her perky little titties with the perfect pink nipples, and her long black hair, was a burnt corpse that nobody had yet claimed from the morgue and none of us would be able to recognize.  Sam had gone down to the house in Hollywood where Darla burned to death and left flowers outside the gate, and she wrote some poem about Darla that I kept meaning to read.  Sam was always writing poems.  Darla and Sam hadn’t been close friends but Darla’s death seemed to affect Sam a lot, which wasn’t something you saw very often — anything affecting Sam.

“Yeah, that cranky guy? He calls me Nietzche for some reason.”

“Whatever. Get your ass out here and help me get his money. Let’s do a double!”

“No, I can’t right now.  I’m sick.”

Sam rolled her eyes and parted the curtain with her leg as she swept in to the dressing room.  Every move she made could work easily onstage: long strides, a slight thrust of the hip, confidence she had no right to have.  My friend Sean had watched her onstage one night and said to me, “That girl works the pole like a freak!” and she really did.  The word for Sam was fearless, and she could get money out of practically anyone.  Even on the slowest nights, Sam made money somehow.  One night a Native American customer gave me a bracelet he’d made for me himself, and I’d lifted it up proudly to show its colored beads to to Sam, who immediately grabbed it from me to make fun of it.

“Oh Sydni, oh I LOVE you, oh you’re so SPECIAL, Sydni!” she laughed, grasping the bracelet to her breasts and pretending to swoon.  “Look, stop making them fall in love with you and tell them to give you some fucking money.  And another thing! If anyone is gonna give you a bracelet around here, it’s gonna be me, you fucking whore.”

Tonight Sam’s skinny legs were encased in purple fishnets and cut off denim shorts, and on top she wore a ripped up t-shirt held together by safety pins.  A tattoo of a lipstick kiss was visible on her left ass cheek.  Sam’s hair was long, blonde and fake, her face was once exquisitely beautiful but had begun to show the ravages of a life lived too hard and wild for too long.  Except for her eyes, and her smile.  In her eyes and smile, Sam would always be five years old.

I was in love with Sam.  God, she was such a mess. But there was more to Sam than anyone else who worked here; and less.  She was a bit of a sociopath, there was something impenetrable about her, and she could be more violent than practically anyone.  Sam and I had become friends by almost getting in a fight.  Because she was crazy and violent, everyone was afraid of her, but I had learned quickly that the fastest way to get treated like shit was to act scared of the other girls.  You had to threaten them before they could threaten you.  You had to “out-crazy” them, make them think you were capable of anything, that you might pull a knife out of your thigh high boot and slit their throat, or slam their head into the mirror.   Which is something Sam really did to a new girl once — slammed her head right into the mirror.  The new girl was pretty and wore a brand new lingerie set, she sat there looking like a perfect little barbie doll, and Sam hated her on sight.  “You better make sure you follow the rules onstage because we don’t fuck around here,” Sam had said to her as the new girl sat in front of the mirror, applying another coat of mascara to her long fake lashes.

“Fuck you,” the new girl responded, not even bothering to make eye contact with Sam while she continued to doll up her pretty new-girl face.  So Sam grabbed her by the back of the head and just slammed her face right into the mirror, fast as lightening, BAM, it was done, and then Sam threw back one last shot of tequila and went onstage as if nothing had happened.  The pretty new girl left and never came back.

Just looking at Sam filled me with love and desire.  She was so fucking horrible, and I wanted to be with her so bad.

I had somehow screwed up and gotten myself “86’d” from the club again.  This was the fourth time in the past three months, and I was starting to wonder what was wrong with me.  My habit of spending too much time in the dressing room and not selling enough drinks were among the lesser of my offenses, but apparently there were countless others too despicable to mention.  Sharon, my boss, had barely been able to articulate the horror my behavior had caused and could only manage to say, “I will fire you every goddamned week if I have to until you learn to follow my rules.”  I responded with some clever rhetoric along the lines of, “At least I’m not shooting up in the bathroom like some of the other girls, doesn’t that count for something?”

 

Sharon was not amused.

 

“Oh you think you’re a real smartass don’t you?  Well, take an extra week off for that.  Call me when you’re ready to do as you’re fucking told.”

I desparately needed to keep working.  Despite a nightly intake of nearly $400 I was way behind on bills, and my used-Chevrolet was breaking down on a nightly basis.  This meant I needed to dance locally, and Sharon’s was the only “good money club” nearby.  Through hard work and tireless self promotion I had succeeded in attracting a coterie of “regulars” who would show up each night to watch me dance and give me money and gifts.  Sure, they were a little creepy — sometimes they’d leave notes on my car, bad poetry written on napkins that I’d promptly roll my eyes at and toss to the ground — but it was a small price to pay for the increase in my nightly booty.  I was not about to start all over again at a new club where the girls would be mean to me until I proved myself by punching someone in the face.  I had already paid my various dues at Sharon’s and it hadn’t been easy.

 

At twenty-one years old I still felt largely unable to navigate my life and relationships on my own, so I decided to do what I had always done in the past.  I turned to Mommy.

 

“Mom, can you call Sharon for me? I really need my job back.”  My casual tone suggested this request was as minor as asking her to pass the string beans.

 

My mother, not bothering to look up from her Woman’s Day magazine, responded with a sobering analysis.

 

“You want me to call your boss at the strip club and ask her to rehire you,” she said calmly.  “I am supposed to beg this person to allow my daughter to dance naked at some bar.”  She shook her head, mystified but not completely surprised.  Nothing I did surprised Mom anymore.

 

“You say it like that and it sounds really bad, but Mom, think about it,” I said logically, as if beneath the veneer of absurdity I was the most sensible person in the world.  “Do you want me to go to another club where I won’t make as much money? Because that’s all that’s going to happen.  It’s not like I’m going to suddenly enroll at Harvard or something.” 

 

She silently turned the pages of her magazine. It was time to pull out the big guns.

 

“Mom,” I said.  “Do you want me to have to move back in with you?”

 

She looked up at me, her bottom lip quivering slightly.  
 

* * *

Sharon and her husband Dick were delighted that my mother called.  In fact, they decided we should all meet together at their home to discuss my future as an employee.  My mother triumphantly handed me the phone so I could schedule the meeting.

 

“Come on, does my mother have to come?” I whispered into the receiver, but I already knew the answer.  Sharon and Dick lived for moments like this.

 

“Listen,” Sharon explained, “Your mother is a very sensible woman and we want her there as a witness.”

 

“A witness to what? How you like to humiliate me?”

 

“Look Sydni, either we do it my way, or you go work somewhere else.”  I expected her to hang up on me at this point like she normally would, but instead she waited in silence for my response.

 

“All right,” I said.  “I mean, obviously I have no choice.”

 

“Oh, you have a choice,” Sharon quickly reminded me.  “You can stay on the 86 list, that’s your godamned choice.”

 

Sharon and Dick lived in a huge house in an upscale, gated community.  But one only needed to step into their foyer to realize that these were not the sort of people whom God intended to have money. The stench of beer and cigarettes permeated throughout the house, and there were actual velvet paintings on the discolored walls.  An enormous fish tank filled with tacky figurines and clouded water overwhelmed the living room.  Sharon and Dick’s home, like most people’s, was a perfect illustration of their sensibilities.  From the moment I entered it I wanted nothing more than to leave.

 

Sharon led my mother and me to the living room, where Dick sat waiting.

 

“It’s the fuck up!” he announced happily as I entered the room.  He smiled and gave me a hug.  Despite his obesity, Dick seemed to prefer wearing shorts and sleeveless shirts, and he never combed his dandruff-laced, thinning hair.  It was as if he were committed to being as physically offensive as possible at all times.   

 

“She’s a good kid,” Sharon said to my mother, gesturing to me.  Her long, acrylic nail poked me in the chest.  “But she’s got her head up her ass.  She doesn’t understand the importance of rules.  But we’re hoping to resolve this because she’s a good draw and we’d like to have her back.”

 

“She could make us a lot of money if she’d stop fucking around!” Dick bellowed, playfully pushing me down into the seat next to him.

 

Always eager to be liked by even God’s most repulsive creatures, my mother didn’t take long to join in on Dick and Sharon’s “good natured” jostling.  Soon she was recounting embarrassing anecdotes from my childhood, including my adolescent impersonations of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to JFK.  I found this encouraging.  If Sharon and Dick liked my mom I didn’t think they’d have the heart to deny me my job back.  Then I suddenly remembered with whom I was dealing and I stiffened in my seat.

 

“First of all, she was doing one of my DJs,” Sharon began, going down the long list of my dancer-crimes.

 

“No I wasn’t,” I tried to sound convincing.  I was telling the truth, but she was so sure I was lying that I felt as if I were.

 

“Oh really, so that was just a ‘rumor’? Sharon asked, affecting a sing-songy, sarcastic tone.  “Sydni apparently thinks she’s so fascinating that people have nothing better to do than start rumors about her!”  She rolled her eyes at my mother, as if to say “You know what she’s like, don’t you?”

 

“Well I don’t know if it was a rumor, I don’t know who told you I slept with him,” I said diplomatically.

 

“What if HE told me?” Sharon said, hoping to trap me.

 

“He’d be a liar, basically,” I said.

 

“Basically?!” Dick yelled, certain he had just caught me in the act of spin-doctoring.

 

“Okay, look,” I said.  “I want to be honest because I need to go back to work.  It wasn’t the DJ.  It was that security guy, the one who looks like Andy Gibb. But he doesn’t even work there anymore, so what difference does it make?”  Now I looked to my mother to roll my eyes but I found she was staring at Sharon, her eyebrows raised as if to say “I had no idea my daughter was such a slut.”

 

“Did you come on to him or did he come on to you?” Dick wanted to know.

 

“Um… I don’t remember. Who cares?”

 

“WE fucking care!” Sharon yelled, spittle flying from her mouth and landing on the Biker’s World magazine on the table beneath her.  “I want to know what goes on in my goddamned club!”

 

As I searched my memory for the details of my brief romance with Andy Gibb, Dick and my mother adjourned to the fish tank where Dick proudly pointed out a huge, ugly Oscar swimming slow and meaningless circles around the tank.  It had apparently intimated the other fish into one tiny corner, claiming most of the tank, as well as the food, for itself.  This had happened months ago, Dick explained, yet the other fish remained in the corner treading water and fearing for their lives 24 hours a day.  Dick thought this was just marvelous.

 

“This fucker will rip them apart in a goddamned second,” I heard him tell my mother.  “They fuck with him, they lose – and they know it.  You can learn a lot looking in this goddamned tank, that’s what I tell my kids.  You want to know how to succeed in life, everything you need to know is right here.”  He knocked on the glass with large, bloated knuckles and the agitated Oscar grazed the side of the tank as if to issue a warning:  Fuck off, Dick.

 

Sharon was staring at me, waiting for me to say God knows what.

 

“Sharon,” I began, “Can I just say I’m sorry and I will try harder and can I PLEASE have my job back?”

 

“I’m thinking about it,” she was trying not to smile.  “Dick,” she called out, still looking at me.  “What’s the verdict here? What do you want to do with this kid?”

 

“How many we got on shift tonight?” he asked.

 

“Seven, if Ashley shows up.”

 

“All right,” Dick made his way back over to us, his swollen feet laboriously negotiating the few steps it took to reach the chair.  He sat down and looked at me, his gaze quickly hardening to a glare.

 

“Do you understand the rules now?” he asked.  I wasn’t sure I did, but I nodded dutifully.

 

“The people you work with, they’re not your friends, they’re not your lovers, you don’t confide in them, you don’t give a shit about them, do you understand me?” Dick asked.  This was clearly not an observation but an order. 

 

“If you see anything happening in there that doesn’t look right, you see anyone fucking up, you go to one person only: you go to Sharon.”  He pointed his middle finger at Sharon, which I appreciated. 

 

My mother, apparently feeling it was time to show her solidarity with my employers, chimed in with “This is your contact, right here,” and gestured to Sharon, who nodded back.

 

“Got it,” I said.

 

Dick smiled, happy to have broken my spirit.  “Sharon, put her on the list for tonight. You be there, ready to work and on the floor by six o’clock. Don’t be one fucking minute late.”

 

I thanked them; probably profusely.

 

As we were leaving, Dick decided to show my mother his new Harley Davidson motorcycle.  I was already in the car waiting to go when I saw them lingering in the garage, and I rolled down the window to listen.  I could have sworn I heard my mother say she’d like a ride sometime.  Oh Jesus Christ, please say no, I silently prayed.  Please don’t let Dick take my mother out on his Harley.

 

“You got time right now?” he asked her.

 

“MOM!” I called out.  “Can you guys hang out later? I have to get home if I’m gonna be on time for work!” 

 

“We better go,” my mother said.  “But give me a call and let’s all get together again!”

 

“You got it!” Dick said enthusiastically, and gave my mother a big hug.  The sight of Dick hugging my mother was not a visual experience I’d ever wanted to have, but at least I had my job back.

 

As we drove, I lectured my mother on the importance of not socializing outside of one’s social class.

 

“They do cocaine – you know that, right?” I asked.  “That’s why they’re so paranoid.  I can’t believe you were going to let him take you on his bike.  He’s a scumbag, Mom!”

 

“Look, I got you your job back, so don’t start giving me a hard time,” she responded, annoyed.

 

“I just wish you’d be a little more dignified sometimes,” I confessed.  My mother sighed and signaled to enter the left turn lane, taking me home to get on with a life she could neither condone nor understand.  But she would never stop trying, and deep down she knew that I loved her for it.