Fat Hogs

The rumor was that a certain dangerous biker gang had a controlling interest in the club. A few of the dancers were the old ladies of members serving time and management never called those dancers into the office, no matter how drunk, how high or how often they went without nipple latex. Many members of the bike club, especially those higher up, spent a lot of time and money in the topless club. Reportedly even their leader, whom many of the dancers spoke of wistfully.

When I finally saw him for the first time about 2 months after I started dancing he didn't look much like the picture in my head. He was younger and cleaner with not very long hair. He was also kind of short, about an inch shorter than me in my heels. But his eyes were two ebony flames and he had the confidence and curt charisma of a Roman general.

Sweetwater was drinking at his table and she called me over and introduced us. He was occasionally caressing her, but none of the bouncers said a word about it. He asked me to join them and sent the waitress to get me another beer. Sweetwater got up to do her stage and he looked at me.

"I've never seen you before. Are you new?"

"A couple of months." I was a bit buzzed and no one at the table was talking. They just sat there looking at me. I was getting nervous and when I do sometimes I talk too much and occasionally my babbling turns into a kind of comedy stand-up act. Tonight it did. He and his buddies thought I was hilarious and bought me another beer and a Cuervo.

As the waitress bent down with our drinks she said, "Doug wants to see you in his office."

"Uh-oh, Mia. Little Dougie's probably going to give you a hard time for talking to me. You'd better hurry before he gets annoyed." He said this sarcastically.

As I walked through the office door, Doug started shreiking like a 13 year old girl. "Are you trying to get us all killed, Mia??? Do you realize who you've been talking to for the last half hour??? That's G----------!!! He's chief of the B-------!!! Haven't you heard the stories? What's wrong with you??!!!???"

"Dougie, relax! He liked me just fine. That's why I sat there for so long. He bought me drinks."

"Ohmigod, Mia!!! He never buys drinks, not even for Sweetwater or Dominique or Jasmine! He never buys dances, nothing! Why would he buy drinks for you? It must be something he does before committing mass murder. I'd better go out and talk to him and straighten out this mess you've made."

I shook my head and walked out of Doug's office. When I got back out to the floor I went back to his table and he smiled at me. "Did Dougie give you a good talking-to, Mama Mia? Are you in big trouble?"

"Not quite yet."

Just then, Doug came stumbling up behind me holding out his right arm to shake hands, loudly greeting the table. " G-------, so nice to see you!" Everybody started looking around. He gave Doug a long, cold stare. Doug was sweating. He looked like he was going to shit his pants. "Mia, honey. Trot up to the bar and have Rachel make me a Tanq martini." I rolled my eyes at Doug, but complied.

When I brought the drink back to the table, Doug said, "Thanks, Mia. Now run along and stop bothering these gentlemen." I was horrified, but all 3 bikers burst into laughter -- laughing at Doug.

He angled his chair away from the table and pulled out a $20. He looked me in the eye and handed me the bill. "Mia, I want you to dance for me."

I gave him a dance choreographed by the butterflies of desire, fluttering in my stomach.Yes. I wanted to fuck him.

Very much.

But we didn't.

And I never saw him again.

Sweetwater!

Sweetwater is beautiful, a fine blend of Apache and Swedish. She's six feet of bronze skin with legs up to her ass, a fantastic set of hard-earned tits and large almond eyes the color of coffee that contrast nicely with her long blonde hair. She's so crazy beautiful it hurts and I am reminded of the geometric rainbows thrown off a shattered windshield on a day of pure sunshine.

She was so bitter cold to me at first. But one slow Tuesday she was having a bad night and as I tottered by (you can never just simply walk in 5 inch heels) she said, "Mia! Sit down!" patting the bar stool next to her.

"OH! Mia, Mia, Mia, MIA! I'm such a bitch. I need a friend so bad, right now. A real friend. Why are you so real? Why are you so kind? Why am I such a bitch?" All of this was said with a generous amount of flair and drama but her words were almost unintelligbly slurred. Almost, but I am fluent in drunk.

"LOOK at me, Mia." I complied. Her face was a Jack Daniels meltdown, mascara running in streams down her cheeks, eyes bloodshot, lipstick faded and smeared. Her bra was even crooked.

"OH MIA! I miss my son. I miss my boy. He's with my mom. I can't take care of him. I CAN'T. LOOK AT ME! I'm a barely functioning addict. I'm a crazy fucking mess. He's safer with my mother -- but then again, she's the one who did this to me."

Rachel brought me a double Cuervo and a beer on the house. Rachel is an excellent bartender.

"OH MIA! I'm so drunk. I'm such a mess! Doug just fired me! I can't even keep this stupid job and all I have to do is take off my top and shake my tits. Fuck me!"

I looked into her slightly crossed eyes. "Sweetwater, you're gorgeous. A dozen guys come in here every afternoon just to see you. You have twice as many regulars as any other dancer and a bunch of semi-regulars, too. Are you sure Doug fired you?"

"OH MIA! I'm sure he means it this time, because it's the third time he's fired me this week....but, wait. Would you talk to him Mia? He listens to you, because you don't get too fucked up and you always show up and you sell a lot of booze for the house. And he doesn't want to fuck YOU! Oh...ummm...I mean...I mean, he respects you. Talk to him for me, please?"

"OK." She did bring a lot of guys into the club. Revenue would go down if she went somewhere else. Doug understood money and when I put it like that he might be reasonable.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, THANKS. My drink is done. I'm going next door to the dyke bar. Talk to Dougie and then come tell me what he said."

It was an hour before my shift ended, but the place was dead and I wasn't making money anyway. I went back to Doug's office and sat in one of his pleather chairs, sipping my Cuervo and presenting Sweetwater's case as one part business negotiation, one part humanitarian generosity. Doug ate it up but said she was unmanageable and told me she had to promise not to come to work already drunk. He let me leave early so I could go tell her.

Neither one of them wanted her to leave but they were both too proud to fix it. She played me, and I knew it.

Next door, Sweetwater and I laughed and talked and drank like fish. Periodically, we would get up for a little two step with the swaggering middleaged butches who asked us.

And so began one of the more dysfunctional, exhausting and thoroughly entertaining friendships of my life.

Flashback...Interview

Doug was the manager. I first met him on that fateful Tuesday, after interviewing for a waitress position at the lesbian country western bar next door. The gay boy wearing wranglers told me I was perfect, and they would hire me next month -- when the current waitress moved to California.

Shit, shit, shit!!! I needed money yesterday.

As I waited to turn out of the parking lot, I noticed the strip club had a sign posted, "Waitress Wanted". I threw it in reverse.

Inside, the bartender I would later know as Rachel brought my resume into the back rooms. She came out a few minutes later. "Dougie wants to talk to you."

Feeling as if I were falling like Alice, through the black painted hallways and into a black painted office with a couple of lamps, a couple of faux leather easy chairs and a very, very long desk. There was Doug. He stood to shake my hand. His hand was white, flabby, soft and clammy. He stood about an inch and a half taller than me, making him about 5'5''. He was chubby in a gross, wimpy way, kind of like the pillsbury doughboy. All of this obvious dorkiness, yet the overwhelming quality he emitted was unfounded arrogance.

"I used to manage 3 Chuck E. Cheese's before Jonas and Mike recruited me to run this place," he proudly announced, running his limp sausage fingers over his de riguer band t-shirt like a pigeon preening. I thought to myself, if this were true:

A: Why kind of idiot brags about managing a Chuck E. Cheese while interviewing someone and

B: What kind of sick misogynist fucks were Jonas and Mike, to recruit a guy from a kids' playground of bad pizza and video games to manage a couple of dozen women who found themselves dancing naked?

Doug continued, "I looked over your resume. You can waitress if you want but you won't make much money. You could be a dancer. I need someone else for the afternoon shift. You could start tomorrow at four, and work until ten. Most dancers stay later if they're making money but you have to stay at least until 10."

"What would you pay me?"

"Your payment is the opportunity to work at this pleasant establishment. You pay the house $20 or ten percent of your earnings each night, whichever is higher. That goes to the bouncers, because they protect you from all of the drunk, horny customers. You'll also want to tip out the bartender about 10 or 20 bucks each night. We expect you to sell drinks but you don't have to drink alcohol. Maybe it's too early for you, so when you start your shift tell the bartender not to send you any booze until you say. Right away a guy offers to buy you a drink and you ask for a Grey Goose screwdriver. The bartender sends you a glass of $10 orange juice at a $9.50 profit, and the guy is happy. He buys dances because he thinks you're getting drunk. But you can't have sex with the customers on the premesis. It's illegal. Also, no whoring in the parking lot. You don't look like the type, but it happens. You'll get fired."

"From a job I'm not getting a paycheck for? Besides, I didn't say yes to dancing." It seemed like crossing a giant moral line. Then again, I had been a hippie chick and had certainly run around enough topless. Doug explained that you wear a thong to cover your ladythings, because this club sold alcohol. I didn't like the way dancers had to pay the club like some kind of pimp but it sounded like I would make my rent money within a couple of days. If I waitressed, it would probably take more than a week and I'd be in the same environment, with the same gross men, only schlepping drinks.

"All right, Doug, I'll try it out for a week and see how it goes."

"OK. You'll need to pick a stage name. You also need to get some of this." He pulled what looked like a blottle of white nail polish out of the desk drawer. "It's a latex pastie. You can get it at most costume shops. There's a decent one one Central and Lomas. You paint it on you nipples and it dries clear like Elmer's Glue. Some of the girls mix it with lipstick. You can ask them for help in the dressing room. Jasmine and Mary Jane and Brandy are pretty nice. Some of the girls are crazy, drunk or mean -- or just plain bitches."

"Why do we have to wear that?"

"Oh, it's a law. Some nutjob in the state legislature got it passed a few years back. All women of an age in which they might be capable of lactating must seal their nipples with latex in the presence of open containers of alcoholic beverages or some nonsense. You also need to think about your costume. You want something that will turn a man on enough to buy dances and give you money. I'm going to tell you a secret because I sense you are a respectable person, unlike most dancers. I have a good sense of people. Go buy some fringed white boots. Fringed white boots are hot. You'll make a million dollars! See you tomorrow at 4 o'clock."

White-fringed boots? What an asshole!

"Heroin Girl"

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