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2006-12-30 - 9:41 a.m.

This is continued from the last entry:

The guy working the front door was an older black man sitting on a high stool behind a wooden stand, in his sixties and looking tired and bored. �Five dollar cover from each of you,� he said without looking up from the book in his lap.
I started digging for my wallet, but Curtis stopped my arm.

�Hey, man,� he said to the bouncer. �We just want to check it out for a minute.�
The door guy squinted at him and seemed to mentally debate whether engaging in a dispute was worth the trouble.
�Look, there�s only a few guys inside,� Curtis gestured through the open front door. �It�s early afternoon. Help a brother out.�

The older man shook his head sadly and blew out a breath slowly. �You punks get ten minutes before you have to come back here and pay up. Don�t make me have to get off this stool to find you.�
�Thanks, man.�

We walked in to find several dozen girls milling around the floor. They all wore what seemed to be the official house uniform: a white t-shirt and ABA short shorts. There was a large stage in the middle of the room on which a few dancers were desultorily wiggling to Nelly�s �I Am Number One�. They�d stripped off their shorts to reveal thong panties underneath. One girl was down to bare breasts; the others still had halters or bras on.

The topless girl was dancing at the far end of the stage in front of one of the only actual patrons in the place. He looked like a trucker (maybe he actually was, but there�s a weird segment of Rhode Islanders who look like they�ve come from Mobile, AL, or some other country-fried backwater). He had mullet hair, a porn-star mustache, a redneck tan, and was actually wearing (probably without irony) a John Deere cap.

He was alternating between sucking on a Budweiser long neck and blurting out �Yeah!� when the girl dancing in front of him occasionally gave her breasts a good shake. He was also bobbing his head vigorously to the music and uninhibitedly wagging his finger in the air to indicate number one. It seemed that, in his own mind, Nelly was singing about him. He was number one, you see.
�Come on, Curtis. This is depressing already. Can we go?�
�No, no, man. This is where it�s at. Here, have a seat.�

As soon as we sat down, the numerous girls wandering around zoomed in on us (there being a dearth of other customers to target). I started to worry that I�d accidentally bump into a classmate working her secret job. I�d heard about girls stripping their way through college, even Brown. Our school was certainly the sort of allegedly subversive environment from which girls could �experiment� with exotic dancing and claim it was �empowering� (and even believe it).

But then it occurred to me that the place we were in wasn�t exactly where one would go to take it all off expecting fortune to roll in. If anyone I knew stripped on the sly, it certainly wasn�t here. Tuition was far more expensive than anyone could possibly pull in around these parts. This was rather the kind of place that served as a last desperate resort for girls like the disturbingly emaciated tweaker who stopped feverishly scratching her butt long enough to approach me.

�Hi! How�s it going? You want to party?� she asked.
Oh man. How to politely fend them off without seeming uninterested to the point of gayness? �Uhm. Well, we just got here. We�re still looking around.�
�See anything you like?� She leaned over, I guess to let me look down her shirt. Unfortunately for her, her meager bust didn�t really provide enough cleavage to make this work terribly well.
�Uhm. Like I said, we�re still feeling things out.�
�Well, if you want to feel something really nice, just let me know when you�re ready for a lap dance��

I looked around the room, which simultaneously oozed tacky glitz and fetid dirtiness. It would be hard to imagine a less appealing place for what is an extremely tawdry act anyway. �What, right here?�
�No, silly. We have private rooms downstairs.� Her attention was already elsewhere; she was scanning the room for better prospects. She wiggled her fingers in a little wave. �Ta-ta! Call me over if you want to party later.�

The song on the sound system switched to �Cherry Pie� by Warrant and different dancers went up on the stage. As there were few actual customers to dance for (beyond us and the trucker who was number one), the girls on our side simply worked on their dance routines. One seemed to be some sort of slumming ballerina (or, more likely, a former ballerina given her advanced age and not-easily-liftable weight) who practiced a lot of pirouettes and pliets.

Along one wall of the stage was a waist-high bar, the kind you�d usually find in a dance studio for dancers to stretch with. One girl was gyrating next to it and apparently trying to figure out how to incorporate it into her routine. She tried lifting her leg up onto it, but couldn�t quite reach. She almost lost her balance being precariously outstretched, but recovered to a two-legged stance as her leg came crashing back down on the ground.

She tried it again and again. As much as I respected her persistence, I really didn�t want to bear witness to her repeated pathetic attempts. Despite myself, I became rather engrossed in her struggle. I found myself silently rooting for her to succeed and get her damn leg up on the bar! She never did however. The music segued into �Nasty Girl� and she was still trying. I almost wanted to get up and help her. Then I snapped myself out of it. Whoa. How lame was I being? How lame was this scene?

�Curtis, please. Please can we go? Do you see that girl?�
He looked over. �Man, she was trying to reach the bar at the beginning of the last song. No, trust me. She�s just like the warm-up act. It�ll get better when more people come in.�
He grinned at me and then shouted at our friend, �Bitch, get your leg up!�
She flipped him the bird before heading off stage.

An older blond replaced her. She did the bump-and-grind, but seemed to have her mind elsewhere. She kept looking around the room, I assume scanning for customers she could get tips out of. Curtis and I were in clear view, but we seemed to have been mentally flagged at this point by the dancers generally as deadbeat tightwads not worth the effort to impress. Seeing no other patrons on her side of the stage, she apparently decided to stop even trying to work it and went off the stage with a sigh in the middle of the song.

I followed her with my eyes. She came down the few steps from the stage and walked to a corner of the room where a steamtable was set up. That must be the free buffet; I�d quite forgotten about it. She took a plate from the side and deposited a scoop of pasta on it. Then she started preparing a sandwich, placing a split open roll on the plate and arranging slices of cold cuts on it.

�Okay, Curtis,� I said, standing up. �We really have to go now. That�s our cue. That dancer over there is making lunch.�
�No really, trust me! This is the spot.� His voice wavered a bit with hesitation. He looked over to where I was staring. The woman seemed to be trying to decide whether to add a slice of what looked like pepperoni next or a slice of ham.

�Okay, fine,� he relented. The woman�s tongs slipped and she dropped some ham on the floor. �We can go.�
The bouncer smiled as we went towards the door. �You boys coming back to pay the cover?�
�No, we have to go. The buffet wasn�t quite what we expected.�

When we went out the door, the glare of the sunlight made us blink stupidly and shield our eyes with our hands.

� 2006 Geoff Gladstone

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