Stripper Lessons Read online

  He hits the sofa and switches on the TV via the little non-clicking rubber nub of an electronic button on the remote. But the unrestrained parade of late-night commercials that assault the bargain air time like a crowd hitting a holiday mall puts him off; it always does. These dubious appeals to some abject lonely troll inside of him, that he should seize the telephone, dial the salacious beauties pictured on their own sofas, getting off on their own phones, really just talking to their own studs while they wait for Carroll to call. They are at the very far end of his spiraled line, imploring, urrrging him to push some buttons, clutch himself, and rape his phone bill. Two dollars for the first minute, advises an afterthought of a superim-position on the bottom third of his screen. Ninety cents for each additional minute or any fraction thereof. So that would be what . . . three, four bucks? Now a guy in Garden Grove wants to sell him a piano—in fact ANY piano. Evidently there are quite a few to choose from. Hundreds fill the screen, the camera passing over them from above like so many used Toyotas in the recurrent Jax Jalopies commercial that will almost certainly follow.

  He taps the remote—Pfftssszzzz- - - - z—the screen sizzles, and the phone girls, their studs, and the piano man are laid to waste like so much coagulated bacon grease. Not so bad. Really. Not so bad some nights, but tonight he just can’t stop thinking about Nikki and the way she spun around on her heel. That really was a cool move! Now that he thinks about it he realizes that the girl has something, that arched back, that poise, that little special something. How did that go now? Let’s see: the one foot up like this. . . . No, cause then she wouldn’t have been able to lift her. . . . Wait, that’s right, she had her thigh tight against. . . . But then how could we see everything if it was like that? He’s vexed, and he suddenly realizes that he’s contorted on the sofa, half standing in his efforts to recall Nikki’s dance. He reddens, jumps up, and goes into the bedroom, where there’s a good–sized mirror: he’s gotta try this.

  Kill the living room light (it’s not jiggling it’s not jiggling), quickly goes the short trip to the bedroom, and stripped to—let’s see—just socks and underwear. Okay. The closet door is positioned twice, then again, until the bare-bulbed sixty-watt, unseen in its interior, creates a spotlight effect: a vertical column of even yellow light emanating. . . . Okay, not at all like a spotlight, but this is what he’s got and it’s as good as it gets. He checks the space in which he can spin and finds it’ll just do if he’s careful. No music, that would be TOO much. . . . Okay, music.

  Now the clock radio is on, and it sounds just horrible, nothing like the system at Indiscretions. He tries a few experimental prances, sways, and drops his hands to his hips. The floor creaks like it always does, but he’s too engrossed in his mimicry to notice. He closes his eyes, returning himself to the club and recalling the picture of Nikki, her performance earlier tonight. It’s there, as clear in his mind as his own image is in the mirror before him. He spins low on his heel, simultaneously bending forward in a tricky twist and giving a full view of his white-cotton backside to the latex-painted drywall that surrounds him on three sides. It’s a cool move. It is a cool move.

  Wednesday thursday

  “Morning, Carroll.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Chase.”

  As the multiple doors of the elevator squeeze to an immutable closure, the double-breasted Mr. Chase leans toward Carroll conspiratorially, indicating with his left pinkie, free from the burden of supporting a Styrofoam coffee cup shared by the other four fingers, that Carroll should do the same. He does, and together they breathe a common air, Armani aftershave laced with coffee from the plume of steam rising out of the cup between them and infused with the reliable scent of the elevator’s high-pressure system. Morning air.

  “Just Chase. As long as there are no partners around (a clandestine glance around the empty elevator to confirm this) it’s just Chase.” Then, from behind a Real Nasty grin reserved for those moments of extra-special bonding: “Fuck the mister !” Chase snorts; a droplet of coffee peeks out of one nostril.

  Carroll titters respectfully. “Good morning, Chase,” he says.

  But as the elevator bounces to a halt he is admonished by an urgent nudge: shh! 11, says the digital display. “Eleven,” says Chase–Mr. Chase. This, then, would be their floor.

  So the celestial hum of the elevator is replaced imperceptibly with the telegraphlike tickclick of a hundred well-tuned keyboards, as if they were simply different ends of the same noise. In the distance, mostly muffled behind a walnut-veneer door, springs the throaty laughter of a man and his chums; one can almost hear the chunks of croissant strike the open sports pages, soggy projectiles and the business at hand. Walking directly from the elevator to his desk in the file room, Carroll keeps his head low in an effort to minimize the number of morning greetings he must endure before reaching the all-business sanctuary of his workspace: his folders, his labels, his carefully constructed abbreviations for whatever litigation filing is likely to cross his desk, truncated corporate names destined to sour in the ear when fully and properly pronounced by some overly anxious neophyte, all the meticulosity he harbors there that will make this day fly. Zip he goes around the corners, feeling the centrifugal force in his eyes and gut. He can get behind a file cart in these hallways, pick up speed and corner on two wheels, command respect. Coffee-toting associates have learned to listen for that fearsome shopping-cart rattle. Steel on steel, nerves on ice, eyes on the floor.

  “Hi, Carroll.”

  “Hello, Kathy.”

  “Morning, Carroll.”

  “Good morning, Ms. Thompson.”

  “Whaddeyaknow, Carroll.”

  “Ahh . . . not much, Mike.”

  “Oh, Carroll, I’m glad you’re here. Listen: get yourself settled and come on back with your coffee or whatever. We still can’t locate the SoLo/Bombgate file—heck, I’d be happy just to find the litigation clip! Anyway, HE’s going nuts in there, and I told him that you and I would put our heads together and figure this out. Okay?”

  He purses his lips. There is the usual moment of panic, captured and swallowed and known only to him this time. He knows who’s got the file: the corporate partner who, though no longer working on this hoary Morris Bombgate action, brought in So-Lotions Inc. as a client when he dumped his own loser practice to join the firm and since has always kept tabs on his baby, now as large as he is fat. He impatiently denied it two days ago, almost daring Carroll with his eyes to ask again, but then his office is such a fucking nightmare of a mess that he wouldn’t know if he had it or not. Carroll wishes he had the guts to sneak in there during lunch and just slip away with it, back to the file room where it belongs.

  “Okay, Pam. I’ll be back in a minute,” he says with no particular plan or reason. He supposes they’ll rummage through her secretarial bay for an hour or so until something else comes up for her to do.

  “Take your time,” she sparkles back.

  Carroll proceeds to his desk, hearing at his back Pam’s boss’s importunate groan: “Pammy!”

  At five-thirty, with the day’s crises either resolved or postponed, he busies himself at his desk, face buried in a correspondence clip as the bulk of the office drains down the elevator shaft and out into the courtyard (L) or more likely the garage (P1, P2). Five-thirty-five and Carroll splits. His red Chevy Vega, oxidized and anachronous amidst its spiffy Japanese brethren, and sitting cozily in the southwest corner of P2, shoots a Quaker State spunk onto the wall behind it before blasting him out of that nasty tomb. West LA straight down to Inglewood, never any point to going home first. Tonight there’s just a prudent stop at one of his bank’s ATM machines for a couple of twenties, the stuff that change is made of. He carefully folds the little card of a receipt into his wallet for later accounting.

  Show Time. The parking lot at Indiscretions kicks gravel on his car—not actual gravel, but rather the funky too-light chunks of aerated detritus that one finds scattered around construction sites or on the shoulders of an
interstate. The place is crowded for a Wednesday, and he has to drive almost to the rear of the lot before finding a small space to tuck the Vega into. Key to off, the car shudders once as if declaring the gridlock-plagued journey from his office to be the last straw. He locks his doors and walks up to the club’s entrance under the tan Los Angeles sky.

  Indiscretions always looks closed in daylight, probably because the heavy front door sits flush and locked-looking against the building, and the flashing lights that one would normally expect outside of such a place are reserved for the dark and so are the favored customers. As usual, during the moment before he remembers that it really is open and that everything’s all right, Carroll’s heart skips a beat, and just that quickly the sweat creeps to his upper lip, the back of his neck. None of this is helped by the fact that even after almost two years of coming here he still grows instinctively trepid when entering. To him this is still one of the darker places, the rough side of the city, a place where anything can happen, where a man’s got to keep his eyes open, his reflexes tight. He passes into the small space between the door and the velvet curtain inside. He stands. His eight bucks is at the ready, and he looks expectantly to the DJ/doorman behind the glass.

  “Back for more, eh?” says the DJ/doorman. He says it just a beat too late, as though he’s been planning on saying this for quite a while and finally decided that now was the right time.

  Carroll is stunned. This is the first time that the DJ/doorman—this one or any of his predecessors—has spoken to him. They always ignore him, and it isn’t lost on Carroll when they laugh it up with the other guys who come in, guys whose names always seem to be on the mysterious lists attached to the DJ/doorman’s clipboard. “How are you?” he even tried once to a new DJ/doorman, who, thought Carroll, might have been more receptive to such pleasantries. But he was ignored. The guy just talked right through him to the man waiting next in line. “How ya doin’, ace,” he said.

  His eight dollars is no longer in his hand. The turnstile is buzzing come on. Carroll realizes that the DJ/doorman doesn’t want him to respond, doesn’t care whether or why Carroll is back for more, didn’t mean the eh, doesn’t want to talk to Carroll at all—not now, not ever. It was a rhetorical question, and Carroll spots that. He passes through the turnstile, as well the velvet curtain.

  Sabrina is on the stage. She’s been at the club for about two months, the average stay for a dancer, or so Carroll has observed. He can tell by her nakedness and by the copious bills set spaced along the rail like so many lunch tickets hung before a fry cook that she is dancing her third number in a set of three. The stage is packed—well, there is one seat free, but it looks to be more trouble than it’s worth. He knows that he’ll outlast the crowd, so he takes one of the seats set in the rear. These really aren’t that bad, now and then anyway. From back here he can watch not only the stage, but also the booths reserved for table dances. Heady stuff, those, and he intends to keep his distance. Some guys seem to spend the night there; what that must be like he can’t imagine, can’t imagine the . . . well, balls. Why even think about it, they must be a fortune. Sabrina’s wrapping up. There’s Jasmine, Candy. In front there’s some girl walking away whom he doesn’t recognize (oh good! somebody new, a little treat). He can see Tina’s swaying cheeks in a booth (they always leave their panties on for that), no doubt some old goon burying his face in her chest. How much are those things?

  “The lovely Sabrina, gentlemen, put your hands together for Sabrina. The lovely Sabrina. Coming up, gentlemen, a lovelylady by the name of Melissa. Melissa, coming up with the first of three.” There is a pause, the sound of obscured conversation. A brief electronic squeal ends in a pop, and the DJ/doorman continues. “Once more for Sabrina, gentlemen, put your hands together for the lovely Sabrina. Remember, as with all our lovelyladies here at Indiscretions, Sabrina is available for table dances. You need only ask her, or any girl of your choice, for details. Now we’re ready for the first of three with the lovely Melissa. Put your hands together for the lovely Melissa, gentlemen.”

  As Melissa takes the stage Carroll is keeping an eye open for the new girl. Standard operating procedure, this, for he likes to be on top of the comings and goings at the club; it’s one of the responsibilities that go with his diligent nightly attendance. But so far she’s nowhere in sight, and this, he knows, probably means that she’s in the dressing area behind the stage, either having danced just before he came in or preparing to go on after Melissa. Since he saw her walking away a second ago, it must be the latter; besides, Sabrina had been up there for almost a full set by the time he came in. Yes. That’s almost certainly it. The new girl must be dancing next, right after Melissa, who (though he would never tell her this) tends to take forever with her sets. No big deal. He’s got all night.

  Melissa. Her breasts. What must it be like for her, relating to the world through her breasts, always through her breasts. That’s the deal. You look at Melissa and you see her breasts, naked or not, first you see her breasts. Carroll’s watched her a lot. She takes off her top as easily and off–handedly as she might take off a jacket. And topless she’s totally at ease and confident, like a belligerent guy in a bar with all his friends around. The bottoms are a little different, a little harder, harder in fact than most girls. But come off they do, though never like the top. You can see that she’s naked a lot, not just in the club, and she was naked a lot before she ever heard of Indiscretions. That’s it for her. Her breasts are her passport to the world. She needs a date? Here are her breasts. She needs an apartment? Here are her breasts. She needs out of a speeding ticket? Take a look at her breasts. And not just men. Other women as well. Small-breasted women must climb mountains of psychological torment, for what? Have you seen her breasts? Even large-breasted women, beautiful large-breasted women, familiar as she to the syndrome, must first cross that hurdle in the form of a silent communication: we know each other. Men who don’t know her: leering at her breasts. Men who do know her: obsessed with her breasts. Women who don’t know her: mindful of her breasts. Women who do know her: familiar with her breasts. You want to talk to Melissa? Talk to her breasts. That medium is the message, only bigger.

  Melissa must really like her routine, for it varies little. Carroll imagines that this must be the cause of some friction between her and the powers that be, but then her breasts, of course, would go a long way toward winning an argument, even that argument in this place. Melissa, a one-trick pony, does very well here. And for some reason she seems to resent this, seems to narrow her eyes in antipathy at each new bill placed on the rail, looking then to the man behind it as if to catalog the perpetrator. She’s been at the club for over a year—longer than any other dancer Carroll can remember. All that time, always the same. Her first song is generally danced in a white T-shirt and panties, occasionally an adolescent teddy: little girl stuff. She’ll then disappear behind the curtain (standard procedure) and return almost immediately (most girls wait well into the song), sometimes even before the DJ/doorman can get things spinning. This second number is invariably done with a large translucent off-white scarf. She whips it around and about her otherwise naked body artfully, never exposing simultaneously her top and bottom, front and back. This is pretty tame stuff for the crowd, who by this point are used to being treated to more graphic fare. Then comes the third and final, and she can be expected on stage, again too early, wearing only her disdain. This dance can be downright vulgar, guaranteed to make the men at the stage repent their earlier calls for More Pussy! In fact, it was during one of Melissa’s third numbers that Carroll witnessed the only instance of a dancer touching herself—that is, putting a finger inside—at Indiscretions. He remembers that the room got really quiet. He felt one with the crowd, mysteriously contrite, and he wished that Melissa would look at him and laugh, or spit, or something.

  So why does she stay up there so long? Other girls’ sets go by much quicker (they really do, he’s timed it). Melissa picks longer songs. She’s out
there early, lingers too long after her set, just languidly orbiting the inner stage, darting to the rail now and again to snatch up a bill and shoot a sneer at its giver. Actually she’s toned it down some in recent months. Maybe the whole thing was just in his imagination to begin with, but these days she does seem sort of beaten. Here she comes for her second song, same old off-white scarf (it couldn’t be the very same one?). A guy in a three-piece suit and no tie puts a twenty on the rail, but she just turns away, eyelids drooping. ThreePieceNoTie looks around and laughs: he wants us all to know that this is exactly the reaction that he wanted; he got what he paid for and then some; he’s nobody’s fool. That guy thinks she loves him, thinks he loves himself. Melissa doesn’t even know he exists. Carroll misses her venom, wishes she would hate us the way she used to.