Read More: A brief Q&A with Hannah Sward
Cinnamon. Honey. Cat. Beth. Who am I? Irina or Ava? I can’t remember. At first I serve drinks. Diet coke and apple juice. No liquor or beer. It’s all nude. Only topless places serve alcohol. I wear blue and white checkered Swiss Alps outfit. White knee socks. Black patent leather heels. Two braids. Girls dance. Men watch. I take orders for juice.
I stop serving soda. Start giving lap dances in the back with Nina, my little sister. And shower dances. We don’t like being hosed down.
We have a routine at The Wild Goose. Go to 24 Hour Fitness at noon on Gower. Go home. Get ready for work. Hair in rollers. Shave legs. Dark eyes. Glossy pink lips.
After a summer we move onto The Gentleman’s Club. Prettier girls. More money. More competition; Celeste with her little tanned bum. Big auburn hair. Fake boobs and black patent leather thigh boots. Beth. Blonde hair, boobs, long legs. Lily, the tiny Asian. Looks fourteen. Wears bobby socks, pleated school uniform mini skirts. Dusty with her nude splits, back flips and tricks on the pole. Taylor and her fishnet skin suit. Candy just walks out onstage nude with her bare feet and boobs.
Daytime girls. A little heavier. A little older. While daytime men eat stale lunchtime pizza strip special. These girls have kids. Make less money, dance at two pm on Wednesdays for regulars. Big Red himself comes in at four pm in his blue and white overalls. Sits on a stool. Supply of Big Red chewing gum on the bar table. Stays until closing. Having a slow day? You can count on Big Red paying for a dance, can always count on him for a dance.
I avoid cute, younger guys who come in on a Saturday night for bachelor parties. Not sure I’m pretty enough to ask if they want a dance. Businessmen, city workers. Asian men who come on buses. They all like me and I’m sure to make money when I see the buses. White men don’t like me. They like Beth, Taylor and Dusty who look like this is really fun to do.
In the Gentlemen’s Club my name is Claudia. Nina is Lola. We seem to do well in the beginning. They like to see us together.
“If Claudia and Lola don’t do well,” the girls used to say,” You know it’s a bad night.”
Maybe it’s slow for us now because we don’t buy clothes at Fredrick’s of Hollywood like the other girls. We wear bras and undies from Marshals. Eat rice cakes, frozen yogurt and sticky rice. After we go to IHOP on Santa Monica Boulevard for blueberry pancakes. And we are curvier than the other girls. We never see them eat. Maybe we should lose weight.
We do meth for a month. Don’t eat. We’re in a bad mood. Get clumsy onstage, losing balance. And don’t lose a pound. Everybody loses weight on meth. Not us. We get on phen phen. A diet drug. Get skinnier like Dusty, Celeste and Beth.
We think we look better. Cut our long hair.
Make even less money. Buy hundred dollar wigs on Hollywood Boulevard. Me, a platinum blonde long wig with bangs that shifts to one side when I dance. Nina, a chestnut fall, attached to the back of her head, swinging it around like a sexy pony onstage.
I start to sit on the side. Cry. Lola, she seems to do alright with her good dancing and ponytail wig. Not me. I get real sensitive and sad. Taking my phen, phen. Getting skinnier and skinnier. Sitting there with my big blonde Hollywood Boulevard wig.
I have Frank though. He followed me from The Wild Goose to The Gentleman’s Club. He never asks the other girls for a dance. He only comes to see me. First as Irina or Ava or whatever my name was at The Wild Goose. Now as Claudia. I wanted to be Alexis but that name was already taken. Frank brings me flowers, Shalimar and money for private dances. An Asian architect with a big belly, he wants to bring me to The Magic Castle for dinner and shopping at Victoria’s Secret. But I keep it to the club and private dances. Sometimes I let him touch me when the bouncer isn’t looking.
There is another man who comes to see me regular. I think he is a director at the studio nearby. He is quiet and doesn’t sit at the stage. Tall and thin with gray hair in a short ponytail, narrow nose and small eyes that look like they see a lot. I liked him right away. He comes in, sits at the bar and orders an apple juice. I never go up to him. Let him take his time.
Today after his juice he starts walking to the back. I follow him behind the black velvet curtain, take his long thin hand and lead him to a mirrored private dance booth with the fake red leather chair.
Doc, the bouncer, an ex football player has his hand on the black velvet curtain. He sees me straddle the director in my Swedish barmaid outfit until the song is over. I had sex with Doc once. I didn’t know he had a fiancée. She climbed through the window and chased me out. I ran through the yard with his litter of pit bulls running after me and barking. […]
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Hannah Sward is the award-winning author of Strip: A Memoir. Widely published in literary journals in the US, Canada, and the UK, her most recent work can be read in the NY Times, LA Times, HuffPost and The Rumpus.Hannah is on the board at Right to Write Press, a nonprofit that supports emerging incarcerated writers. She lives in Los Angeles where she is working on her next book. To find out more hannahsward.com.
“Nobody Wants A Crying Stripper” originally appeared in Arts and Letters.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Hannah Sward