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Strip
By
Marna Martin
© copyright by Marna Martin, July 2008
Cover art by Eliza Black, July 2008
ISBN 978-1-60394-217-1
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s
imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or
events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
The note on the door was simple. Babe, came by for the rest of my shit. Later. Vintage Ethan, really. Lissa didn’t doubt that Ethan had planned his little foray for a time when she would be out. She wasn’t sure how he got into the apartment after the locks were changed, but Ethan did have a way of getting into places where he had no business going. Lissa was pretty sure the only reason he’d bothered to leave a note at all was to keep her from calling the police. Not that she had anything really worth bothering the police over. They’d laugh and tell her to stop wasting their time if she called them out.
She sighed and opened the door, dropping her mail and worn denim backpack on the sofa, the nearest flat surface. A quick look around showed Ethan had claimed the oil paintings he’d always laughingly referred to as his share of the rent, the ones he’d had her pose for late into the night. Most of the books were gone from the cinder-block bookshelf, particularly the uber-expensive science texts that she’d saved for future resale. A quick glance at the kitchen showed the big butcher-block table was gone, replaced with the tiny café set the upstairs neighbors left on the curb when they moved out.
Lissa opened her cabinets. The dishes were gone, and all the alcohol. The bastard even took the four-pack of wine coolers from the back of the fridge. Ethan hated wine coolers, but he certainly wasn’t above cleaning them out just to prove his point. Great, she thought, he can come and go as he please—not really all that different from when we were dating, she thought.
In the bedroom, the 400-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets he’d talked her into putting on her credit card had been stripped from the bed. The steel dagger she kept under her mattress for protection was jammed in the door frame. Lissa opened the jewelry box she’d had since she was a child, the pink ballerina standing on tiptoe in frilled dignity as she twirled to the strains of ‘Musicbox Dancer’. The ring was gone. The ring. Ethan had spotted it in an antique shop and declared it perfect for her. The gold band twisted and wound through pairs of opals and diamonds in an Art Deco design. “It’s the perfect engagement ring,” Ethan said as he slid it onto her finger. “Once I pay it off, we’ll set the date.” Buying it had completely maxed out the tiny limit on her credit card. The ‘engagement’ was over, but she’d held onto the ring simply because it was such a beautiful work of art. Lissa slammed the lid shut on the serene ballerina.
Ethan did know the way to her heart, for better or for worse.
She picked up her mail and began sorting through it. Anything was better than the thought of Ethan ghosting in to her apartment and taking whatever struck his fancy. Pizza coupons, supermarket circulars, the standard mailbox spam. Snail mail ads were almost as annoying as having a SpaMail account. The one actual envelope was from the university. Lissa ripped it open with the corner of one chipped nail.
One thousand seventy-five dollars for tuition and fees, due in three weeks. She’d been turned down for financial aid again, no more tuition assistance until she got herself off academic probation.
Ten-seventy-five. That was about three times what she expected to make in the next few weeks as a waitress. A quick inventory of the cramped apartment didn’t hold much hope. A secondhand TV and stereo, a couple of pieces of cheap costume jewelry, hand-me-down furniture in assorted shades of dirt, all the things Ethan didn’t think were worth taking, all told, it would bring maybe two hundred dollars at a pawn shop.
Damn. Mom was broke, always had been. Her sperm donor of a father made his feelings about college education clear years ago—his responsibility ended at 18, and he wasn’t wasting a penny more on an unwanted kid. Her own credit cards were still maxed from too many little luxuries, dinners at nice restaurants and art supplies Ethan couldn’t live without.
Reaching into her backpack, Lissa pulled out the student newspaper. She dropped the tuition bill on her milk-crate coffee table and spread open the newspaper. The classifieds weren’t promising, just the standard collection of quick in-and-out jobs. Study subjects for psych experiments, wait staff, telemarketers.
Dancers needed.
Big money.
Call now.
Gentlemen’s club.
Lissa sat back on the sofa. Exotic dancing. Stripping. Taking her clothes off in front of a room full of strange men. Would they be allowed to touch her? Would they expect her to have sex with them, too? No, that would be an automatic quit. But just letting people look at her—maybe.
I couldn’t. Could I?
Big money. Did one thousand seventy-five dollars count as big money? Or was the ad promising more than it could deliver, like most ads did? It would be nice to not have to worry about money, to know that the power would be on from month to month. It would be nice to be able to buy books without having to scramble to meet rent.
Mom couldn’t find out. She’d have apoplexy if she knew stripping was even a possibility. What was it Uncle Jake used to say about strippers? “You know you fucked up as a parent if your daughter ends up dangling on a brass pole.” Yeah. That pretty much summed up the family attitude. None of the family had visited in the last three and half years. They probably wouldn’t start any time soon. It shouldn’t be that hard to keep them from finding out.
What would her friends say? Lissa wasn’t the most popular student in the graphic arts department. Always scrambling from job to job didn’t leave much time to party with the other students. Other than quick smiles and shared projects, there really weren’t all that many people she could call friends. Still, how long would it take for word to spread through the art department?
It didn’t matter at the moment—time to get ready for work. Lissa shucked off her grey STATE sweatshirt as she walked to her room. Passing by the closet mirror, she paused. Light from the bedroom window turned her into an outline of a body, limned with light. Her boobs could be bigger, but her waist was small. Her tummy had just the tiniest bulge—the kind the French chick in a movie had rhapsodized on as a sexy little pot. The ass was tight and legs nicely muscled from walking across campus five times a day. Her skin was pale, the milky-white of an Irish heritage that went from no tan and freckles to lobster-red after ten minutes in the sun. Her deep red hair and green eyes screamed out Irish as well. If nothing else, she cleaned up well when she put any effort into her looks.
Lissa snagged a blue oxford shirt and khaki pants from the closet, the non-uniform of Rouster’s wait staff. Red hair twisted up into a ponytail, black tennies and she was ready to head out the door. She grabbed an apple from the kitchen, dug her bus pass out of her battered backpack, and bolted for the bus stop.
* * * *
The dinner shift was insane, as usual. Eleven full tables, and a whopping one hundred twenty two dollars in tips. Shit, Lissa thought as she stepped outside for her dinner break. Working her butt off for spare change, not even enough to cover the cost of one textbook. She looked up the hill at the glowing neon sign spelling out Delila’s Gentleman’s Club. Dinnertime, and cars were trickling into the club’s parking lot.
Prep chef Jack leaned by the door, solid and nearly as wide as the brick wall, having a smoke. “Don’t even think it, girl-child,” he said, exhaling a long plume of tobacco- and weed-scented fumes, waving his blunt in the air. “Money might be good, but you’re too good a kid to get involved with that mess.”
“Oh, really? What makes you say that?” Lissa asked.
Jack smiled, gently closing his bulging eyes. If there’s one thing he loved, it was having an audience. He used his dark smoke-stained fingers to gesture roughly uphill. “My buddy Lon goes there from time to time. He says the girls there are like nothing he’s ever seen before, have these crazy tattoos. He’ll go out for a night and sleep for two days after.”
Lissa laughed. “So if Lon thinks it’s such a great place to go, why warn me off?”
“You know why men go to places like that, girl?” Jack asked. His gaze was sharper than normal, the horizontal creases on his brown drawn together in concentration under his crinkly black hair. “They don’t go to get to know a gal, I’ll tell you that.”
Lissa laughed. “Does it really matter why men go there, Jack? I’m not trying to find the love of my life. I just need to make rent.”
“It matters. Man goes to a place like that, he’s not seeing a person. He’s seeing a buffet. It’s the only place a man like me gets treated like a Roman emperor. Don’t like the blond, send her away. She fails to please me. Like the redhead? Mmm, yes. Have her washed and sent to my room with a plate of peeled grapes.” Considering he was a southern black man with an accent thicker than molasses, Jack did a surprisingly good imitation of Dom DeLuise as Emperor Nero. “You really want men looking at you that way?”
“Pay’s supposed to be great, though,” Lissa countered.
“You can do better than being a titty dancer. Money’s one thing, but what happens to your self-respect when you’re up a pole?”
“I may not have much of a choice, Jack. I’ve gotta pay for classes somehow.”
“Not that way. Places like that are poison. They’ll get you hooked on all kinds of shit if you go up there. Take a term off, and go back to school next semester.”
“I can’t,” Lissa said. “Some of the upper-level courses only get offered once every three or four years. If I don’t take them now, I may not get another chance. ‘Sides, you know me. I’m smart enough to stay away from the drugs.”
“Just keep working on it, girl,” Jack said, patting her on the shoulder. “Anything’s better than working one of those clubs. You’ll find another way.”
Lissa sighed, and turned back to Rouster’s employee entrance. The nightshift manager was waiting in the kitchen, his prize silver-plated stopwatch clutched in a sweaty fist. “Seventeen minutes for a fifteen minute break,” he snarled. “I sent Doris to handle your tables. You’ll split your tips with her tonight.”
“Thanks, David,” Lissa muttered as she slid past his bulk towards the restaurant floor. Just what she needed, handing half her tips over to the latest cow to give David a blow in the stockroom. Dinner shift got a lot easier once you got on David’s ‘good side’. Jack could mouth platitudes about how she was too good for stripping all he wanted, being a waitress wasn’t all that different.
No harm done in stopping by after work, just to see how sleazy it was. Really. Once she saw it, she’d know it wasn’t right for her.
* * * *
The thump-thump-thump of over-amplified bass permeated the crowded parking lot and shook through her body. It was after eleven, and Delila’s was in full swing. Lissa took a deep breath before grasping the ornately ridged brass handle and pulling open the heavy wooden door.
The door opened into a small vestibule paneled in dark wood. A heavy counter ran the width of the room across from the door, leading to another set of doors leading further into the club. T-shirts and caps were pinned to the wall behind the counter with tiny placards advertising their costs. A row of framed smiling faces on the wall featured an ‘Entertainer of the Month’ for every month of the past year. Lissa was rather surprised the pictures were of just faces. From the stories she’d heard breasts were more likely to be recognized by the men coming through. The music was muffled in the little room by black-painted egg crate foam lining the walls, the pervasive bass felt more than heard. Every thumpa-thumpa-thump shook through the nervous spot in the pit of her stomach. Smoke writhed in the air, glowing faintly in the dim lighting. The room smelled of stale smoke, alcohol and anticipation.
A pretty brunette wearing a ‘Hi! I’m Brooke’ nametag looked up from the open textbook next to the cash register. A tiny ankh on a leather thong peeked out from underneath her Delila’s t-shirt. Her eyes flicked across Lissa to the door swinging shut behind her, waiting to see if another customer was coming in. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said with a thick Southern drawl. “We don’t allow girls in here unless they got a boy with them. Company policy.”
Lissa sputtered, “I … I … I’m interested in working here.”
Brooke smiled reassuringly. “Oh, that’s different! You want to see what it’s like?”
Lissa nodded. Brooke reached under the counter top and pulled out a baseball cap embroidered with the Delila’s logo. “Here, put this on, and tuck your hair up. Make sure you sit in the back so you don’t get in the way of the payin’ gents. I’ll let Ramon know you’re coming in, and that the girls shouldn’t bother you about the drink minimum.” She flipped open a shutter and leaned through the opening.
The other carved wooden doors swung open, letting a blast of sound into the small vestibule. A large black man hulked through the doorway, clad in a conservative gray suit. Even disguised by the suit, Lissa had no doubt this man not only worked out regularly but could probably break her in half without a strain. The faint light gilded his blunt features and cast his eyes into hooded shadows, hiding his expression in the contrast of light and dark.
“This here’s Ramon,” Brooke said, cheer evident in her voice. “He’s one of our bouncers, and he takes real good care of us girls. He makes sure the customers don’t get out of line, and he gets us out to our cars at night. He’ll keep an eye on you while you’re inside, make sure nobody bothers you.”
Ramon nodded and gestured for Lissa to precede him, holding the door open for her. Heart in her throat, Lissa stepped through the doorway and into a wall of multi-colored lights and pulse-pounding music.
The main room was a bustling hive of activity. Men crowded around small tables while waitresses and dancers flowed through the room. Layers of smoke caught the lights in a scintillating rainbow of shifting colors. Lissa felt she had plunged into a tobacco- and booze-scented scene of shimmering gold, cobalt blue and crimson hues. Walking to an empty table along the dimly lit outer wall, Ramon pulled out a chair and held it for Lissa to sit. After seating her, he patted her shoulder and flagged down an elfin blond waitress. He spoke briefly in the waitress’s ear before striding back to his post by the entry. The waitress knelt by Lissa’s seat. “Ramon said you’re looking for work. Are you interested in waiting or dancing?”
“Um, dancing, I guess,” Lissa said, speaking loudly to be heard over the pounding music.
“Great! We just lost some girls at the tail end of the semester. I’ll send our House Mom Jodi over to talk to you. Would you like some Coke or juice, on the house?”
“OK, um, cranberry juice, please.” Something to settle her stomach would be good. The queasy feeling that indicated a huge case of nerves had her suppressing the urge to glance around for the nearest restroom.
The waitress dropped a logo-bearing white paper cocktail napkin on the dark wood of the table. “I’m Becky. If you need anything, just wave me down or let Ramon know. Jodi will head over as soon as she finishes her set.” She nodded towards a petite dark-haired girl hanging upside-down from the nearest brass pole before disappearing towards the bar.
Lissa sat back and studied the rectangular room that made up the body of the club, her feet tapping to music. The doors she had entered through were tucked away in a corner on the long wall behind her. Ramon stood by the doors, right hand clasping the opposite wrist, quietly watching the customers. A series of other doors were placed along the same wall. Dancers came and went through one door, but the others stayed firmly closed. The wall farthest from where Lissa sat housed two restroom doors and a DJ booth flanked by a small, unused stage. A large, U-shaped bar jutted out into the main room from the center of the long wall opposite the entrance. The bartender, a golden-skinned man with black hair, tossed and caught bottles of alcohol with practiced ease. Two long stages with flashing lights embedded in the stage floors flared out from the bar in opposite directions. Lissa noted that in moving from one stage to the other, the dancers walked directly over the scarred wood of center portion of the bar. Each stage supported a polished brass pole, and low brass railings separated the lit stage from a wooden drink rail. Small, high tables dotted the room, each supporting four or five high bar chairs of dark wood with deep red leather-look vinyl seats.
A leggy blond wearing only a black thong had moved onto the nearest pole, holding a split while her strong arms suspended her from the pole. The men clustered around the stage whooped and cheered and waved dollar bills in the air. Lissa noticed that some of the bills were fives and tens.
Further down the stage, the girl Becky had pointed out as Jodi knelt next to the brass rail as an older man fumbled a bill into the garter on her leg. Becky leaned over the rail for a moment, her face glowing in the light from the stage. Jodi glanced towards Lissa, nodded, and casually scooped her top from the stage as she stood. She sauntered across the bar to the second stage, dropped the wadded fabric, then ran and leaped at the center pole, spinning wildly around it three times before her high heels hit the stage. As if on cue, dollar bills folded in half lengthwise appeared around the perimeter of the stage, grasped in sweaty hands. The men clustered around the stage came from every walk of life, judging by their dress. Construction workers in worn blue cambric shirts and jeans rubbed elbows with distinguished-looking men in power suits and ties. They all appeared to be having a good time, laughing and joking.
Lissa watched Jodi as she held out her garter to receive tip after tip. She didn’t look to stand much over five and half feet, even with the spiked platform heels she wore. Her skin caught the flashing light like bronze, shining as she moved. Ebony hair hung down her back to brush the upper curve of her ass. She had tight, high breasts with garnet-red nipples, and an enviably flat stomach decorated under her left breast with a large tattoo of an eye picked out in kohl, lapis and henna.
Becky stopped by the table, dropping off a scotch glass of red juice. “Jodi's been doing this a long time,” she said, nodding towards the dancer. “She's one of the best we have. You'll learn a lot from her.” Lissa sipped her drink hesitantly, trying to keep her hand from shaking. She made a slight grimace at the tart tang of the juice. Jodi left the stage and began slowly working her way in Lissa's direction. She made a point of stopping to thank each customer who tipped her on stage.
Jodi flashed a two-fingered V at Becky, who nodded and disappeared towards the bar. Jodi smiled as she pulled out the chair across from Lissa and collapsed into the seat. “So, you'd like to dance?” she said, kicking a heel off under the chair and casually rubbing her foot. “Any experience? Are you legal?”
“No, no experience and I’m twenty-two,” Lissa answered, flushing. “I saw the ad, and I was wondering just how well it pays.” She was surprised to notice that while Jodi’s features were even and regular, she wasn’t outstandingly pretty. Her almond-shaped eyes were large and dark, her nose straight, her full lips pouty and outlined in a deep, vibrant red. She was, Lissa thought, a girl who would easily blend in with a crowd, neither ugly nor pretty enough to draw attention.
Jodi laughed, lighting up as a smile caressed her face. “I like a girl who gets to the point!” she said. She pulled a wad of bills out of the garter on her leg. “This is from the set I just did,” she explained, “I cashed up to twenties just before I went onstage.” She began counting the money, separating out the fives and tens. As Becky trotted up with a blue drink, Jodi held out a handful of neatly stacked bills. “Eighty please,” she said, tucking five ones back into her garter. Becky fished a wad of bills out of her wait apron, and counted off four twenty dollar bills. Jodi folded the bills over and added them to a small stack rubber-banded to the back of her garter. She took a gulp of her drink and met Lissa's eyes. “That was one set—three songs onstage. I'm good, and I generally bring home six or seven hundred a night. Starting out, you'll have the advantage of being new, and new girls make more for about three weeks. I'd say as long as you can move and smile, you'll probably be making two or three big bills a week. That's entirely up to you, though, and how well you work it.”
Lissa gulped. The amount of money Jodi was casually discussing would be more than enough to make tuition and books. “What's the minimum wage here?”
“There is no minimum wage. You don't work for the club—you are an independent contractor, renting space in the club.” Jodi began ticking off points on her well-manicured fingers. “Your pay is nothing but the tips you earn and the lap dances you hustle. Lap dances are twenty bucks per song. We go with the set price so none of the girls start undercutting each other. At the end of the night, you tip out ten percent to the club, five to the bar, five to the bouncers and one percent to the house mom. That would be me. We don't keep track of how much you make, we don't pay taxes, and we don't pay retirement—you are responsible for that on your own. If you get caught turning tricks on the side, you're out, no questions asked. Still interested?”
Good question. Even with the mandatory twenty-one-percent tip-out, it was still more than she'd make at Rouster's. “Yeah,” she said, knocking back her juice and hoping she sounded more assured than she felt. “I'm interested.”
Jodi grinned. “Great! Come by tomorrow, around two and meet the managers. We'll pop you up on stage and let you get a feel for it. When you come in, wear standard jeans and a t-shirt, but bring two or three sexy outfits you can get out of easily. Front closures and side snaps are your friends here. We'll run you through the basics, and put you up for the afternoon crowd as an audition. If they like you, you're in. Cool?” She held out her hand, ready to seal the verbal deal.
“Cool.” Lissa stood, her head reeling under the barrage of instructions. “I guess I'll see you tomorrow.” She shook hands with Jodi, who then turned with a smile and headed off into the crowd. Ramon stood at her elbow, ready to escort her from the club.
The cool night air was a relief after the close, stuffy feel of the club. Ramon was a silent shadow as he waved down a cab. Lissa slid into the back seat, and Ramon leaned through the window to hand a folded bill to the driver. “You don't have to ....” Lissa started to say. Ramon looked at her and slowly winked.
“They take care of the girls here,” the cab driver said, pulling away from the curb.
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