08- Drunk again?
I went and got drunk last night. Something I was really too
tired to do, and foolish for doing. I always tend to be idiotic in the
exhausted state, and this was no exception. Worse still are the places I
choose, rather one place, from which I used to begin great and epic journeys
through the go-go-strip-club world.
The My Way Lounge goes way back to my early days with Hank,
who discovered it as a refuge from the scum of other go-go bars. But the
history of the place goes deeper, and the people have begun to become even more
familiar now that I go there less often than I once did.
I met two very special people there: Bethame – an over the
hill go-go dancer who became my friend, and Chris, a My Way barmaid who, dying
of cancer, decided to live out the rest of her life in a “Devil & Mrs.
Jones” fantasy.
People in these places change frequently, a coming and going
in which only the customers remain the same.
Go-go dancing, prostitution and porno – like most things in
our society – are young people’s games.
This is especially true for the dancers – with, of course,
the exception of Peggy, a fanatical New York Giants football team fan, who I’ve
seen here on a number of occasions but have only recently got to know – well, a
little.
She’s older than nearly every other dancer here – in her mid
to late 20s, which is old for a stripper. She seems less hard-edged than most,
softened perhaps by her love of football which she goes on and on about,
especially in regard to the NY Giants. She lacks the mean, always hungry look I
see in the eyes of the other dancers. She’s less stuck up and very outgoing,
always giving zealous speeches from the stage. She tends to talk more than she
dances, which gets the owner peeved at her.
She’s hardly in perfect condition either, the first signs of
middle age spread pushing out here and there, although not enough to stop her
from being attractive.
Her talk dominates people, often speaking too loudly,
pushing herself onto those of us she thinks she can trust (who knows if it is a
come-on or what?)
And, of course, the one question I always have is the one
question almost always asked of dancers here, what the hell is she doing here
doing this?
With strippers, you always have to ask yourself if they are
prostitutes, too. Many are using the dancing as a bill board advertisement for
what comes later after the club closes, and they get taken somewhere else.
Peggy’s dancing is hardly an advertisement for anything. She
seems too rich a soul for such a shallow deed, always eager to laugh or mock or
tease.
Unlike the new generation of dancer who comes to this part
of the world from Manhattan, Peggy is a local girl, living in nearby Lodi – so
local in fact that last night she collected signatures for a petition to make
the New York Giants changes their name to say New Jersey.
One of the men I’ve met here before seems intimately
connected with Peggy and a number of the other dancers, coming and going at
their beckoned call. He tells me he often drives them home.
This is no bluster of a drunk macho bragger, showing off
what a stud he is. If anything, he is almost shy about it, like a reluctant
pimp.
I didn’t catch his name.
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