Read Online Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana - Free Book Online Page A

room that's the size of a large closet. Two women sit at the vanity, smoking cigarettes. They both turn to look at me.
    "Hi," says one, a skinny girl with a choppy brunette bob. She has homemade tattoos on either shoulder—a four-leaf clover with LUCKY inked in uneven hand beneath it on the left, and a letter C on the right. "Are you new?"
    "Yeah, I just came in for an audition. How's the money here?" I say, pointing to the chair next to hers.
    Lucky nods for me to take the seat. "Sucks," she says, stubbing out her cigarette in a fluted plastic ashtray.
    "No way, really?" I pull a couple dresses from my bag. The black minidress with the mirrored squares on the front, the minidress with the bugs.
    "I worked yesterday from three o'clock until midnight and made three fuckin' dollars."
    My eyes widen. "You're joking, right? It couldn't have been that bad." I pull my sweatshirt over my head and take off my jeans. "Which dress?" I ask, holding them both up.
    "The bugs. And I'm serious. Three dollars. You would not believe how slow it's been here lately. I usually make good money when my regular comes in, but he's in jail."
    "My doctor guy is supposed to come in tonight," interjects her friend, Kitten, a short, plump redhead with fine lines at the corner of her mouth. "I really hope he does. He hasn't come in for two weeks and I am seriously hurting."
    When I stand up in just my underwear to pull on the dress, Lucky looks me over, fumbling with an unlit Salem. Her fingernails are covered in acrylic tips painted with chipping red polish. Two tips are missing, the underlying nails bare and ragged. "You've got a good body," she says, coolly. "You're nice and thick."
    Here we go. Back to the arena where every aspect of my body is up for scrutiny. I'm not skinny, and without dieting, I never will be. So I don't know why having this pointed out bothers me so much. "Thick" isn't an insult, I guess. It's just not what I want to hear.
    "I could do better," I say, steering the appraisal back to her. "I wish I were thin like you."
    She observes her reflection in the mirror, turning to the side, placing her hands on her plainly visible ribs. I'm the size of two of her put together. She seems pleased by what I said.
    Slipping my feet into red stiletto heels and straightening my dress, I say, "Well, I guess I'd better get downstairs. I'll see you guys later. If they hire me."
    "Of course they'll hire you. Won't they?" Kitten says to Lucky.
    "Oh, for sure," Lucky nods, exhaling a plume of mentholated smoke.
    Nice girls. Good.
    Lucky and Kitten were right. The standard-issue three-song audition on the main stage goes by in a flash: First song in the dress, out of the top by the end of the second song, topless for the third. There are only ten or so women working in the club, and half of them sit at the stage for my audition and tip. The Mexican guys at the tipping rail seem energized by having them in their midst. Hoots and dollar bills all around. When I get offstage the manager tells me I can stay and work for the rest of the night.
    There aren't many customers in Aloha Glorya's, so after a couple turns onstage and two hours of absolutely nothing to do except gossip with the other dancers, I head to the bar and ask for a soda.
    A beefy middle-aged Asian man in chinos and a polo shirt swivels around on his bar stool. "Hello, I'm Arthur. You must be new!"
    I hop up on the bar stool next to his and he buys me a drink. He tells me he stops in every day after work in his manufacturing concern, then proceeds to recite a list of the things he owns—two houses, three Harleys, a customized vintage Corvette. Plus, his business is worth several million dollars. And that, you see, is why he can't divorce his frigid, pain-in-the-neck wife. If he does, she'll get everything. His solution? Rental girlfriends.
    He peels off two twenty-dollar bills and puts them under my glass. Then he leans in close, touching my arm. "What would you say to a proposition?"
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