Last week, I wrote something brand new and read it. It's the tail end of a tale I've prolonged telling. Now a week in review, I realize there are, of course, things I'd flesh and pad, things I left out, things too short, and perhaps things too long. I thought I'd post it as I read it (minus the charming, serendipitous technical glitches and parapraxis). For the previous installment of my strip stories, go here, and for the very beginning, go here.
The whole summer of 1999 was essentially one long, last night. It
was the end of CeCe, my strip-self, and it crept up slowly, until, as ends have
a tendency to do, it came in a great sweeping rush. Thinking back to that last
summer working at FlashDancers, I get that weird cinematic fast-forward
quality, as if every moment had sped inexorably toward the death of CeCe,
toward the night that I put her to rest. CeCe was six years in the making, but she
took only about ten weeks to die.
Reconstructing
the last few months of CeCe’s life, I feel my chest crush with the weight of
that summer’s extreme ennui. Nothing, nothing was as boring as stripping had
become. I’d gladly have been paid to watch paint dry--I wanted to anything more
than I wanted to engage in the nightly smile and glide, the shimmy, the shake,
the sweeping of my delectable ass over the groins of some man named…whatever.
Six
years into the strip game, I had hit the wall and I had hit it hard. I had
found myself afflicted by a strange aphasia. Each night, I’d walk into the club
with my dance bag filled with dresses, make-up, accessories, and Lucite shoes.
Each night, I’d wiggle myself into my Lycra dress, slide my feet into my heels,
straighten my make-up, brush out my hair, take a deep breath, and promise
myself that tonight I would make money.
And
each night, increasingly, I would not.
I
had lost that stripping feeling. I had lost the ability to play the game. I
wandered around the small floor of FlashDancers like a dying shark, unwilling
to move forward, but also unable to curl up and die. I could, in some atavistic
part of my brain, dimly recall how I once upon a time made money. I remembered
sailing through the room as if borne by zephyrs; I remembered the aureole of
confidence that glowed like the halo of a medieval saint; I remembered the
bubbly banter I’d make—it floated and popped and was scented with apricots,
with peaches. I remembered feeling weightless.
I
could, if I tried really hard, recollect how I’d smile and twinkle, how I’d
make eye contact, how I’d approach a table and how I’d find something funny,
yet non-threatening, to say. I remember how I’d chat, my hand lingering lightly
on a lapel, stroking a tie, twitching the brim of a baseball cap. I remember
arching my back and thrusting my breasts. I remembered that I once would ask
for a dance, and that, once upon a time, I’d get it. I remembered
dancing, the sinuous seduction that ended in my air-fucking for cash. I
remembered doing that—all of it—again and again.
I
remembered making money. I remembered feeling lighter than helium. I remembered
feeling alive. Shiny. Bright. Expensive.
And
now I felt moribund and heavy. This strip part of me was a malingering thing.
I’d known the end was coming—I was going to be teaching college in the fall,
and I realized my students would have fake IDs and could feasibly stumble into
Flash. While I had no issue with their being hot for teacher, I didn’t feel the
need to give them the full Monte. And anyway, I’d hit the wall. I was also 37,
old for a stripper, and I knew full well, knew with every dendrite in my
keening brain, that I could not do this, be this, anymore. I decided that I’d
pull the plug in August, and slowly June came, and July came, and then August
came. The final week loomed and shone, and finally, I saw the final night.
The
last day before the last night, I followed all the totemic acts that I always
did before a night at work. I rose at 11:30; I drank a latte and walked my dog.
I went to the gym; I ate a Spartan breakfast. I did errands and I tanned. When
I tanned, I visualized the amount of money I wanted to earn that night. As I
did so, I spent an even three minutes on all four sides of my body, rotating
like a chicken on a spit. I summoned consecutively all my dead—my grandmother
and grandfather, my ex-boyfriend, that guy from high school who died in a motorcycle
crash, and two strippers: Janet from Another Planet, dead of an overdose, and
Tiffany Blue, dead in a car crash. I thanked them all for their contributions
to my life and asked them to help me reach my fiscal target. It was a lot to
fit into twelve minutes.
Patrick
Batemen would have been impressed with my pre-stripping rituals, but they were
a part of my magical thinking. My belief that this dress or those shoes would
keep me safe and solvent. My faith that this set of actions would keep me in
the deep, dark, glossy black.
That
last day before that last night, I did it all again, and for the final time. I
stuffed my dance bag with all my strip stuff; I knew it would all be gone but
for a couple of dresses and my shoes. I descended into the subterranean club for
the last time. For the last time, I was struck by that peculiar eau de Flash, a
mixture of beer, smoke, perfume, vomit, fried food and cleaning solvent.
For
the last time, I greeted Nunzio, the avuncular manager. For the last time, I
made small talk with the House-Mom and the bouncers. For the last time, I gave
Tony, my nemesis floor man, the stink eye. For the last time, I did it all, the
chit-chatting, the crazy boring meandering, the stages. For the last time, I
ran through my sinuous series of moves as the flashy-flashy lights played on my
fleshy ass; for the last time, I danced on the stage behind the bar; for the
last time I bent over bottles and noticed the dirt in the cracks; and for the
last time I walked up to tables and asked for dances. For the last time,
I cajoled the customers by telling them it was my last time.
For
the last time, I wasn’t into it.
For
the last time, I was called to stage, and I did two songs, and then I was
suddenly, surprisingly, unexpectedly, alone on the stage. I dimly heard the DJ
announcing that this, right now, was my last stage ever. For the first time,
something new happened. Waves of girls, shiny and bright, smiling and
glittering, flocked to the stage. Like a dreamy army, they all raised their
hands in the air, saluting. They stuck dollars and fives and twenties and
fifties into my garter, my g-string, my hands. They dragged their customers
too. A crowd of glittering girls, all waving cash, all saying good-bye in the
language of strippers: bills folded vertically and scented delicately with apricots,
with peaches.
For
the last time, the night ended, and for the last time, I tipped out the DJ and
the House-Mom. For last time, I counted my money, and for the last time, I was
disappointed that I didn’t make a grand. I’d hoped that on my final night, I’d
finally make a grand. I didn’t, which means that in my entire strip career, I
never did. I never broke $1,000. For that last night, I made $840.
For
the last time, I gathered my things. I sold some of my costumes and gave away
the rest. I got many hugs and many promises to keep in touch. I said good-bye,
and I stepped into the Gotham black.
I
started writing my strip memoirs in March, 2005. I’ve spun out my tale in
fitful increments, the last chapters coming further and further apart; I wrote
my last entry before this piece way back in 2007. I’ve felt like Penelope,
weaving my burial shroud only to shred it at night, prolonging the finality,
keeping the suitors at bay and under sway. I know that I’ve not wanted to write
the final piece because to tell the end is to admit that it’s over. CeCe shall
never dance again.
That
last, long, malingering summer at Flash, as my CeCe self hovered somewhere
between life and death on her spandex and rhinestone gurney, I had thought I’d
hit that strip wall, that I’d lost the strip magic. I realize now what I felt
was loss. It was grief, pure, and simple and painful. Though I tried to
step lively, I found standing in my path a giant monolith: the certain
knowledge that this was the end.
And
yet, ends are tricky things. In Tarot, the Death Card signifies not mortality,
but change. These days, as I tell this story that I’ve staved off telling, I
realize that CeCe lives, after all. Like Jim Morrison, like Elvis, like Frodo,
CeCe lives.
You
see, a stripper never really dies; she just moves on to a different stage.
