If you’re in the house, you’re on the bar, on stage or working the floor. On stage you’re untouchable, but on the floor you have to be pleasant, seductive. Tell him how handsome he is, how desirable, run your fingers down his arm, tell him what a piece of shit he is, say what ever it is he needs to hear, how you’ll leave your man for him if only if…as long as there is a glass of champagne in front of you. No drink and it’s just a smile tossed over your shoulder, an eyeful of your ass walking away. He can take that into the bathroom and jerk off. Or he can buy you a drink.
The drink is champagne even when it’s not. A $20 nip buys a short five minutes at the bar. More time means more money. The girls are friendly, time is fluid, the champagne endless.
Every champagne glass comes with a chaser, an empty frosted “spit” glass to dribble the champagne into after each sip.
Dancers spit, they don’t swallow.
Drunk girls are accidents waiting to happen. They wake up next to men they never meant to fuck. For free. Drunk girls get sent home, they’re not earners. And cheap champagne is the worst hangover ever. Trust me, I’m a drunk girl.
Most days though, I “restock” the bottles, taking the ones with good labels, that don’t look too battered, filling them with ginger ale from the soda gun and twisting the caps back on.
Twist tops. Classy.
I put one or two spit glasses aside, unwashed, for assholes. I leave some spit in there.
I do my best to work the champagne hustle, but everyday brings new displays of feathered hats, sherbert colored polyester pimp suits and matching patent leather and alligator shoes - orange, lime green or grape. Pimps don’t buy titty bar champagne. They buy Golden Cadillacs and Grasshoppers. Cocktails to match their outfits and coat their stomachs. Cocktails that need to be shaken. They come to see me shake, to see the new girl JJ Hunstberry is grooming. JJ is top dog, if someone can grab me away from him, I’d be a feather in their cap. No one knows he still sends me home untouched at the end of every day.
The pimp parade leaves less and less room for the middle class white guys–incredible shrinking men in white short-sleeved button downs and two dollar ties. The scotch & soda, gin & tonic boys. The ones who buy the champagne. Meal tickets are afraid of pimps.
The girls complain to management. The meal tickets complain to management. Management complains to me.
Ralphie’s got me in the office, again, in the middle of a shift. His jowls shake as he yells at me for the thirty-first time. “Jus’ give the niggas their fuckin’ drinks, take the money and walk away. Ya not here to talk to niggas.”
But no one else talks to me, I think…
I’d never gotten the hang of making friends in my old life either.
dirtygirl asks: Do we choose our friends, do they choose us or is it all just proximity and circumstance? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
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Posted July 20, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, dirty money, JJ Huntsberry, pimps, Robbies Mardi Gras, Times Square. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.
