I flew home on Southwest on Christmas Eve. The stewardesses demonstrated the plane’s safety features in “The Night before Christmas” form (“The air masks were hung from the ceiling with care”) and were met with hearty applause from the other passengers. They probably would have received a standing ovation if the seatbelt sign weren’t on. I was wedged next to a grown woman and her mother. They were fighting about how to use the mom’s smartphone that she clearly did not know how to use.
This felt familiar, coming from where I had recently heard that “You’ve got mail!” greeting and realizing that people still use AOL, and that they google search “Facebook” when they want to use Facebook. I picked my battle and made the case for changing the batteries in the remote. My relative was pretty sure it was Xfinity’s fault that the remote barely worked. Then the replacement batteries were expired, which should have been surprising but wasn’t. And yes, I put the batteries in the right way. Yes, I was sure. My brother told me that his mother-in-law still uses the actual yellow pages. Not only that, but she even flips through them really slowly, licking her index finger.
It was time to turn all electronic devices off, so they went from squabbling about the phone to filling out what looked like college applications. Except, then I spotted “pre-K.” This was some Charlotte from Sex and the City shit. One of the preschools was in Massachusetts and had a name that sounded like a law firm. From what I could eavesdrop, the mother was the child-too-young-to-grasp-the-concept-of-an-admissions-application’s pre-school teacher and the daughter was helping her fill these things out when she shouldn’t have, because there was some talk of how the comments should be in the mom’s handwriting. It was obvious that they both agreed the kid didn’t deserve to get in. I decided to rest my forehead on my tray.
Patience can be finite, especially for those you don’t love. On my last shift before vacation, I was at the point where I didn’t want anyone gross’ twenty dollars, which is a horrible business model at the strip club. Take the guy who reached his veiny hand out and grabbed my thigh as I was sitting down. I was actually a little shocked that he couldn’t at least just count to three before pawing at my body like an animal. I guess if you’re going to be inside an anomaly where you can touch me without getting pepper sprayed, let alone before even asking my name, you may as well live it up.
I tried to ignore the fact that the skin on his hand felt like paper and focus on the mind-numbing small talk at hand. This club is mostly white collar businessmen and has reminded me that there is such thing as a stupid question. There is also such thing as a conversation that consists solely of a series of the same stupid questions and these conversations are remarkably almost verbatim. The customer will ask a question, and then ask another question based on my answer, and then ask another question based on that answer until I’m letting him know the hospital in which I was born. I wish I were joking, but if I don’t take the reins, the conversation will always follow this rigid formula until there’s nothing left to ask about except maybe where I was conceived.
With some dude who just got done working on the new light rail line, I can ask him what the different keys on his key ring are for and then we can talk about what TV shows we both watch. Then maybe he’ll show me his sick dragon tattoo and we’ll do some dances without his ever having assembled a detailed timeline of my life to date.
I lied to Hand that I was from Arizona for no reason, really. He suddenly lifted his hand and flipped his iPhone over. The stopwatch was running and he stopped it and nodded proudly. I asked a question I already knew the answer to: if he had been timing the song that just ended. He answered as though he had just cracked a code and was the first cheapskate in the history of strip clubs to record the length of a song, a big consumer advocate. I couldn’t believe I had been sitting with him for under four minutes.
He had empirical evidence that the VIP was too expensive. I said something about how it’s not just about time but my heart wasn’t in it. I already knew that it wouldn’t work out between us. He told me he did want a $20 dance and asked if we should go before his food arrived. I said that I thought we should wait until after he ate and then got up. Lazy stripper. Or maybe intuitive stripper.
The DJ who plays the radio edits was there. I’ve only worked with him so far, so I thought that G-rated versions of strip club music was a club policy. There is something so ridiculous about hearing the “Forget You” version of Cee-lo’s “Fuck You” when peoples’ assholes are exposed. Not even just swear words are missing. Words that are sexual in context are gone. When Gucci Mane’s “Freaky Gurl” plays, the “get some brain” in the “get some brain in the front seat of a Hummer” is gone, so it’s like he and a moderately freaky girl are just in the carpool lane or something.
I was trying to bond with the DJ, so I was all, “What’s up with those cheesy radio edits? I can’t believe that make you play those. So weak!” which was when I found out that he brings all those songs in himself. Whoops. I do understand his rationale and see how hearing lots of cussing and n-bombs might be off-putting to clientele like ol’ paper hands, even if they don’t know what “brain” is. And at least that DJ is nice.
If you think I could make it through a single blog post without mentioning that I miss the closed club, you are wrong. I love how that place is basically a shitty acquaintance that I borrowed a pencil from one time, but whom I shall revere as my best friend in the world now that she died in a car crash. Maybe I wouldn’t even be working there if it were still open.
I convinced a friend from that club to come to the “fancy” club with me that night. She’s in town on Christmas break from nursing school. We worked our asses off together all summer and it was really nice to see her. Once we got out onto the floor and it was just the two of us, she whispered that the other dancers were kinda bitchy. “Um, YEAH,” I laughed. Before I had arrived, she had asked the whole dressing room where the bathroom was. They all shrugged and told her they didn’t know. What the hell kind of mean girl shit is that? Pretending not to know where the bathroom is? Who does that?!
Anyway, I have to get ready for work now.