The three couches in the dance area are in bad shape. So bad that I remember them and then don’t go to work. Words cannot properly express their condition. They need to be put out to pasture, relieved of their misery, returned from whence they came. They’re a forgotten box of baking soda in the back of the fridge and can’t absorb any more. They’re shell craters that suck wallets, keys and phones. They’re Grizabella from “Cats.” Oh, and they’re black leather. Cracked, chafed leather, with the stuffing oozing and fill that no longer exists.
I have to apologize every single time I take a customer back for a dance. There’s no way I cannot say something. It would be less weird to puke on him and pretend nothing had happened. But first, I have to intercept before he can sit down. I’ve had guys just plop back onto the middle of the couch, slamming their tailbones into the exposed framework. I politely implore every customer to please sit on one side of the couch and pat what’s left of the remnants of a cushion, guiding him. I pat the corpse as if nothing is wrong. There is something so morbid about the couches that these poor guys can’t just enjoy a lapdance without also facing their own mortality.
I’ll laugh and sheepishly admit that the couches “have seen better days,” clearly in denial that Occupy camps have superior setups for doing dances. It’s a delicate balance between acknowledging that the couch is less than ideal but not allowing either of us to dwell on how horrible they are, lest it kill the mood and interfere with my dance sales. And interfere it does. Customers’ sunken-in butts fall asleep while I carefully navigate around the skeleton of the couch. I bang my knees anyway and try not to cringe. I remember not to pull on the back part because the whole couch wants to curl in half like a Venus Flytrap. At most strip clubs, getting the customer to the dance area is the biggest challenge. At this place, it’s keeping him there. But then again, overweight customers get stuck and struggle before accepting my hands so that I can tow them out. I may as well just surprise them with some pamphlets on erectile dysfunction.
Lately I’ve been saying that new couches are on the way and that I’m so excited, trying to bring a positive spin to a desolate situation, “Hey, by the next time you come in, they’ll probably be here!” I am lying, just as the new manager lied to me when he said that he “already ordered them” in December. They have to order couches eventually, right? I had a gentlemen’s agreement with a customer over whether or not they would get new couches while closed for “remodeling.” It would have been a bet, except that I didn’t want to lose money. They were in desperate need of replacement two years ago, and yet. We can’t just keep dancing on what are mere memories of couches past, reminders of The Recession, of better times long gone. Or can we?
Oh, and since a picture is worth 1,000 words and I don’t have any, I would say they are on par with the following couches:
