Sydni Ellis

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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 1:54 am and is filed under My Life as a Stripper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.