Chapter 10: My First Real Outfit, Part 1

I quickly fell into a routine; any day that I wasn't working at the library, I danced at Lipstick, so Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays were characterized by bare flesh and grimy money.

Every day I was greeted with the same smell of stale beer, grease, and cigarettes. When I arrived, the kitchen staff would already be unloading cases of beer, hosing down the floors and outside area, and firing up the ovens. Rolling in around 10:30 or so, I straightened my hair, plastered on some make-up, and got dressed. (Or, undressed, I should say.)

It was extremely slow-going at Lipstick. In one full hour, I would meet and greet a customer, make small talk, give them the dance, and try to get them to buy another. Sometimes two or three hours would go by where no matter how many customers I greeted or talked to, no one wanted to shell out for a lap dance. There was the occasional three-dance customer, but I rarely got more than two songs out of a single customer. I lacked both experience and a client base.

A black guy entered, decked in Dulce&Gabana, so starched and pressed that his clothes looked like they had just come out of the factory. He approached the stage and tipped me, complimenting my voluptuous hips. He invited me to his table when I was finished. I happily went over, expecting this tipping customer would want a table dance or two. He was young and cute; he had a round face, with beautiful eyelashes, full, long, and curly. He invited me to sit on his lap, which I happily obliged. We made small talk for a while, the same sort of thing: what's your name, what's your real name, where are you from.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"Does he know you do this?"

"No."

"Good," he said. "It's better if he doesn't know. Guys get jealous."

He eyed my chest. "I just gotta say…you're very beautiful," he said.

"Well thank you."

"No, I mean it, I mean…you are so beautiful. Here, let me look at you."

He bade me to stand up, and he turned me around to more fully admire my legs and my ass. I sat back down on his lap and put my arm around his shoulders and leaned in close. I prayed my breath didn't smell bad. He invited me to start dancing on the next song. When the first song came to an end, he said, "Keep going." Two songs turned into three. As the songs faded into one another, he murmured things like, "Don't stop," or "Keep going," or sometimes nothing at all. I kept the tally in my head; when we got to five, he took a short, quick breath in, like he had just finished a sprint and said, "We can take a break, for now."

Five dances.

Five!! One hundred dollars in half an hour. Until this point, I had only given one or two dances at a time. Never more than three, and certainly not five. I tried to act cool and nonchalant as he pulled the bills out of his wallet, when I actually felt like a kid at a fair, who had just been given a huge cloud of cotton candy. All this for me? I sat back down on his lap.

"So, you're new here," he said.

I winced.

"Is it still that obvious?"

He laughed. "No, no. I mean, yeah kinda. But I just haven't seen you around before, and I'm here a lot. I usually come at night, but I just stopped by here this afternoon to wait out the traffic."

I giggled. "Yeah, I just started a couple of weeks ago."

"Right on, right on. Plus, you don't seem like the type to do this. You should get out now."

"No one is making me do this. Besides, I like having a little extra pocket money," I winked at him.

"If you say so," he said. His face was about level with my breasts and he glanced down into my cleavage then back up to my eyes.

"Is that the only outfit you have?"

I pretended to be outraged.

"What, is this not sexy enough?" I shrugged my shoulders forward and pouted my lips in a sort of 1950s movie starlet way.

He laughed, chastened, and rubbed my shoulders and back saying, "No no no, you are drop-dead sexy. But you need some outfits that will emphasize everything. You need something to stand out from the rest of the dancers."

I paused to consider this. My ensemble generally consisted of one of two babydolls I owned for personal use (that never really got any mileage anyway). One was black, with small white, pink, and red strawberries all over it and tied in the front and split down the middle. The other was simply plain black with little white bows. I also had matching panties, but there was little point in wearing them, because they were not legally "T-backs." Some dancers rocked the double-undies, with a G-string on top of t-backs, simply to have more to take off. But I would have felt silly with them. Even though these outfits were sexy enough and showed enough, they were not stripper "outfits," and only highlighted my inexperience.

"Well, actually, I do need some more shoes. I was going to get some after I got off work today," I said.

"Let me take you there. I'll buy you some outfits. What time does your shift end?"

"In about two hours."

"But you can get off early, right? Seriously, please let me buy you some outfits. I know this place just off Northwest Highway, they have some pretty good stuff."

I honestly didn't know what to say. Was this guy for real? Was a stranger offering to buy clothing for me?

"Um. Sure. But I mean, I have to pay to leave early, unless you want to wait?"

"How much would it cost to leave early?"

I tallied it in my head. "About forty bucks."

He pulled out two twenties.

"I'll meet you around back when you finish changing."

I took the money. Getting off early and the promise of new clothes?

I went up to one of the managers[4].

"Hi, uh, I would like leave early, if that's alright."

He looked at me with a mixture of boredom and jealousy. He took me over to the roster to look up my "name" to see when I had come in.

"Rose? Fine, it's forty dollars to leave early." He said it almost accusingly. But I didn't care about what he thought; the money did my talking for me.

I paid and left. I had never left a shift early in my life. But I realized I now had a new freedom to work on my terms. I could leave two hours early! I could leave three hours early, if I wanted and was willing to pay. I wasn't beholden to "clocking in" or a fixed schedule. I could come and go as I please. Realizing I had the freedom to make my own time was like being a horse stuck in a corral, walking in in the same circle every day, and one day someone burns down the gate.