Traffic was good today so I had arrived to work early.
I had attempted to enter the club through the back door where the kitchen is but the cook had decided not to answer the doorbell we have back there – or he was drinking at the bar. Either way I still prefer to park in the back. My car is safer parked out of sight, where drunks won’t kick it or crash their own cars into it. These auto-related nuisances can seriously eat into a nights earnings.
It was still fairly bright out and the usual bunch of smokers were gathered at the front entrance, puffing away and muttering to each other. One of the dancers had braved the cold and stood wearing just a short coat and a bikini. Free advertising for the club I thought since the front door was in clear view of the highway. A dancer would always have company while she smoked outside. A perfect chance for a customer to talk privately with the lady – conversation is always easier without loud music. You could ask questions quietly. There was always a feeling that there was more of a chance to hear the answer you want to hear. A customer can whisper a proposition – instead of screaming it into her ear. It just seemed more proper.
The mullet haired DJ was playing the same overplayed songs he always plays. A dancer who was really too old to be in this business anymore prowled the stage. The funny thing was most of the girls in this area of the city who worked as strippers were too old – so the fact that she was older ultimately, in this case, made no difference. The stripclub scene was a reason in itself for her, and dancers like her, to still be there. These ladies looked great in the 1980’s and early 90’s. Their customers loved them then. Now much later the same sort of customer – now much older – pursued and spent money on the same dancers – now much older. Like an ongoing soap opera that never ends and refuses to refresh it's characters; steadfast in a silent decision to neither move on or evolve.
The Boss was sitting at the bar. And the cook was at the bar – drinking - as I had suspected. I guess there were no orders at this point in the day. The Boss had opened this club immediately after graduating university. He had been young for a stripclub owner when he started. His easy going and humble nature won everyone’s respect so his youth was never a hindrance. Now years later he was still there, still in business. Clubs galore had opened and closed around him but his was still running. No small feat these days. He looked extra tired and more miserable than usual.
“What’s up Boss?” I asked.
“Had to fire Colleen.” He said. Colleen was a dancer. She had excessive stretch marks on her stomach. That didn’t matter though – what mattered was the fact that she was crazy, possibly on many kinds of illegal drugs, and entirely unreliable. I always wondered about Colleen. She seemed to always have this desperate smile when she performed. Sort of like saying “Please spend money on me – I fucking need it!” People that worked at the club and some regulars would comment on her stretchy stomach. Supposedly you could grab a mitt full of the skin and pull it out a foot like baking dough or something. It was sad, I had always figured it was probably motherhood to begin with that had driven her to stripping (since she was unqualified to do anything else and desperate for cash), and yet it was motherhood that subtracted the necessary ‘perfection’ needed to make good bucks dancing “clean” for customers. The less perfection, means the less money – or you get a little 'dirty'.
“Too bad”. I said. “I wonder how she supports her kid. She must collect welfare on the side or something”.
“They all do,” says The Boss, “these one’s are too stupid to work a real job, and too stupid to make the most out of this stuff. They can make a few hundred in one day and they’ll still be flat broke. Colleen doesn’t live with her kid. Her ex has it, or the Children’s Aid or whatever. Long gone. It’s not even her problem anymore – and she still can’t get her shit together.” He had a way of shaking his head side to side as he talked, like he never got used to this, like after all these years it still disgusted him or surprised him and he still found it difficult to believe. “You know," he continued, "if you took everyone’s brain in this place – you’d have the collective intelligence of one single, logical human being.”
“Yeah, that would be about the extent of it. I’ll be behind the bar”. And I started my shift.
