Like a naughty twenty-two-year-old with skinny upper arms and no stomach goiter—a woman without the foresight to see that one day she would be forty-two and out of options unless one counts the advances and free swordfish from the seafood manager at Bi-Lo—I thought I was hot stuff. On the dance floor, I stuck out my teeth and all but brayed, extending one hand in a “Howdy” move, while doing a bit of the Hokey-Pokey combined with a John Travolta Saturday Night Fever pose thrown in here and there, that Statue of Liberty thing he does. I combined it all with a shock-eyed, crazed-woman grin and if I felt limber or tipsy enough, I’d arch and do a back bend and crab walk in a full circle around the guy.
At this point the men, even those with pig foot crotches and plenty of larceny convictions, would barely make it to the song’s end before hightailing it back to Nerd or Penitentiary Land. Sandy and I invariably employed the Howdy Doody dance on many occasions when plagued by the outcasts of the dance club world who weren’t satisfied with a single mercy dance.
The only bad part of that routine is that no cute men would ever ask us to dance once we’d pulled one of our best One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest performances. This was not nice, what we did. I knew it was mean. I knew one day I would be paid back for all this naughtiness. Mama told us countless times growing up we would reap what we’d sown. What comes around goes around. Make fun of someone and whatever they have, you’ll get it. Call the lady with the huge fanny a “fat butt” and you’d wake up one day with an ass that could cart bags of charcoal and russet potatoes.
But I wasn’t quite ready for the punitive end to this fun just yet. I had another round coming before I was willing to pay the price for my evil dance floor ways.
That time dawned when my dear friend Leslie was getting married and our whole gang threw her a bachelorette party, complete with a limo and stripper. Only she didn’t know about the stripper. We’d booked him through Fantasies Alive and were told he had “the complete package.”
“He’ll do three or four dances and take off everything but his G-string,” the woman on the phone told Lisa, maid of honor and in charge of arrangements. “He could be a Chippendale if he wanted,” the woman bragged. “You oughta see his G-string. It’s black with a red devil head rising out of his groin. And let me tell you, he’s loaded. He fills out both the horns, if you know where I’m coming from.”
Oh, how utterly lovely, I thought.
This stripper was to meet the party of wild women and bride-to-be at one of those cheesy hotel lounges where drunks and desperadoes hang out for the free hors d’oeuvres and house-brand hope.
Maybe they’d get lucky. They must. They keep coming back, these same types, clinging to the bars and the slim chance they’ll see eight sizzlin’ babes tumble from a black limo and enter this lizard’s lair.
Here we were: Leslie, the bride-to-be, oblivious of the stripper on his way to this hotel, and the rest of us pretending as if nothing was going on but good old girl fun.
We all danced and waited eagerly for the Best Western lounge doors to swing open and Mr. Chippendale with the devil horns to sashay in. We danced and waited some more.
“He’s an hour late,” Lisa said, using the pay phone near the restrooms to call Fantasies Alive and getting only a recording. “What’re we gonna do?”
“Give him another half hour,” I said. “Maybe he’s running over from another gig.”
“But Leslie’s already sloshed and is wanting to go home.” That was the problem with Leslie. She would drink her white Russians too fast and then konk out early.
I surveyed the dance floor, seeing three bald men in golf shirts shaking their flat, concave butts with three ladies who appeared to be divorcées searching for husbands or overnight company. There was Leslie, tottering about with Teri, both bombed and laughing at nothing. There was Diane and some greaser bedecked in gold chains and then there was…Oh, Lord have mercy, there he was…our answer. Here was our substitute stripper.
He was tall, pasty, and so wasted he was out there hoofing it alone, trying to mimic a combination Michael Jackson and that Lord of the Dance man, but looking very much like he knew the moves to my Howdy Doody routine. I inched in closer as the lights flashed from overhead and Earth Wind and Fire pounded from the speakers.
The lone dancing man went wild. I especially loved it when he jumped up and fired off an air split before crashing to the floor, scrambling on all fours during the part of the song about boogying down. His red tattered T-shirt rolled up over his enormous gut like a window shade yanked too hard and his paunch poured over his faded black jeans. Hairs sprang in sporadic mangy clumps from around his navel, which by the way, protruded like a big toe. He wore the expression of one about to give birth and grabbed a set of abs that could have housed four to six fetuses.
He wailed and wallowed on the floor and I reached down and pulled his besottedness to his feet. His eyes, each seemingly independent of the other, wobbled like something on springs, one rolling in his head and getting lost and finally reappearing and focusing on my face. “I need you to do us a favor,” I screamed over the music, taking him aside. This was when I noticed he perfumed the air with an odor that could kill locusts, a scent much like a cross between a urinal and unwashed skin folds.
“Whachu need?” he slurred, falling against an empty table and grabbing the railing. “I’m here to please.”
I wondered just who he thought he could please. “You ever stripped?”
“Stripping’s my middle name. I’s a professional at one point.”
I’m sure, I thought. “Listen here. The stripper we hired didn’t show up, and see that girl over there?” I pointed to Leslie, who was almost asleep in her chair. “She’s getting married next weekend and we need for her to have a stripper or it’ll be bad luck. Her husband’s getting one and we gotta balance the deal out. How much to strip? All we have is about twenty bucks left.”
I could see his eyes counting the drinks that would buy. “I need thirty and to run home and get my good underwear. I ain’t stripping in these.” He tried to pull up the band of his briefs, but I stopped him. “I got me some good-lookin’ Calvins at home.”
“We need you now. I don’t care what you’re wearing. Just dance around to a couple of songs and then take off a layer. We’ll give you a shirt to put over that one, and then you can throw off your pants. You know, sort of twirl them around. Do this in front of her face and when the second song’s ending, turn around and show her your glutes.”
His head toppled back as if his neck support had failed. I handed him my Michelob and he sprang to life. “I ain’t about to strip in these drawers,” he said.
“She won’t care. When it gets to the grand finale or whatever strippers call their last move, just shove your rump in her face and give yourself a wedgie so it will look sorta like a G-string real strippers wear. You gotta hurry. She’s falling asleep.”
“I ain’t about to give myself a wedgie in these drawers. Look here, you crazy woman. I been on the road, my band and all’s touring, and I ain’t had time to change in six days. I gotta run home and get my black Calvins, you understand what I’m saying? I ain’t gonna feel sexy unless I got on the right underwear to showcase my package.”
I did not want to even think about his package. “We don’t have time for you to run home and change clothes. I don’t give a damn if you’ve got track marks up to Maine in those skivvies. Keep them on and I’ll get you your thirty. Otherwise, I’ll ask that man over there to do it.” I pointed to a golfer type with fat red cheeks who looked one cigarette and erection away from a heart attack.
“Him?” The stinky potential stripper swilled the beer I’d given him.
“Oh yeah. Him.