Sydni Ellis

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.