fucking off

Sunday night, $10 dance night, dead as a stone. Economic downturns hit the luxury market first, and leave us naked girls -- pneumatic, Lycra-clad little luxury objects that we are -- sitting at the bar with our chins in our hands.

Late night it picks up a bit. I got on stage for the umpteenth time and there's a lady in a T-shirt at my tip-rail. Lady customers in titty-bars are a questionable quantity. They hate their husband for bringing them, and me for being there. Or they've got something to prove and prove it by slapping my ass and biting my nipples just as mean and rude as the nastiest male customer ever born. Yeah, I'm real iffy about wimmins in clubs. But shut my mouth, this chick is into me. She's got her chin tilted up and her eyes all big like the cutest little stripling boy who ever lived. She positively glows. I do my thing and she tips me, and then she goes back to the table she's sitting with and gets a bunch more dollars and tips me some more and then I get off main stage and go to one of the satellites and she follows me, tipping, tipping, tipping.

I get off stage and go over to her table. "Hello, future wife," I say. She's a sweet little elfin Hispanic lady, probably pushing forty, classy vibe. Probably a professional of some kind. Smart. Her name is Veronica. She buys a dance, and dancing for her is so freaking fun. I am concious that I am letting her get away with a little too much, especially right out here on the main floor in front of the main stage. But I love the way she handles me. Her hands are confident and strong. I want to bite her. I restrain myself.

I sit with her too long after the dances are over. We drink a drink. She talks so dirty to me, I'm swooning. Finally I drag myself up and away. I've got to make money. It's been slow all week. I'm behind. A youngish man flags me down. I start to sit on his lap, but he waves me into the chair next to him. "My girlfriend's in the bathroom but she's been waiting for you all night," he says. "She really likes you."

Well, cool. It's nice to be liked by women. It doesn't surprise me anymore when guys want to nail me, but when women do, it's shocking and flattering and intimidating like I'm a teenager all over again. His girlfriend comes back and she's stunning, with eyes like Angelina Jolie. I know celebrity comparisons are lame, but serious, that's exactly what they look like. She's got on this little cashmere sweater and talks in a clipped, polished voice that I used to think was affected, but now know is just the way people with money talk when they're shy. "I saw you playing with that other girl," she says. "I wanted to come over and join you."

I talk her into a couch dance, which we end up doing a couple of, and then she excuses herself and tell me to wait right there. She comes back with my first friend by the hand. "I thought we could share a dance," she says. Veronica is giggling. Hell, yeah.

So they molest me for a couple of songs, and I am overcome with the visuals of it. They are both so pretty. Unfortunately, I can't really feel it, the way I can't really feel 80% of what happens in the club. Even if someone is nice, even if they're good-looking, even if they smell just right, I'm still at work.

I'm thinking about whether the next song has started yet and worrying about whether you are going to pay me, and making sure that everbody stays that critical inch or two away from the pink that is all the difference between everything being OK and getting clobbered with a shoe in the dressing room for being an extras girl. I'll be jilling myself for weeks on the memory of this encounter, but I'm sad to say that at the time I might as well have been being wrapped in a quilt and lightly pelted with small bean-bags for all the sexual impact of the experience.

I seem to feels things less and less. Not just at work, but everywhere. It's as though my senses were dimming one by one, leaving me in a world of numbness and fog and muffled sounds. It's not too noticeable, unless I'm doing something that requires my full physical presence, like conducting business on the dayjob, or fucking my boyfriend. Then it is sad and frustrating to know that I'm not really there. The rest of the time I drift.

Sometimes I have to think to know what room I'm in, and who is there with me. Sometimes I can't beleive that I'm awake. I need my meds, adjusted probably, because this is stage one. Stage two is sleeping all day long. Stage three is horrible.