Friends In Low Places

Part One. Part Two. Part Three.

Part Four:

I didn’t make a lot of friends at the clubs I worked in. Most of the girls that worked there were all full of drama and I don’t have the patience to put up with it. But, as I said before, I have that face that makes people tell me stuff I don’t care to know and then they ask my advice even though my advice is usually along the lines of “fix it or shut up about it already”.

There’s the tiny, young chick who was complaining to me about her boyfriend. She said to me, “You wouldn’t like him.” I said, “Why do you say that?”
Her: He’s in jail.
Me: What’s he in jail for?
Her: For putting me in the hospital. He nearly beat me to death. I was in the hospital for 2 weeks.
Me:……..[silence]……
Me: Why do you like him?
Her: I don’t. Not really. Not anymore. We have a kid together and I think I’m pregnant with another one of his.
Me: How’d that happen? You said he’s been in jail for a few months now.
Her: He pays off the guards so we can sneak into the bathroom together. I don’t really want to even visit him anymore much less have sex in a jailhouse bathroom but I have no choice.
Me: What do you mean you have no choice?? You always have a choice.
Her: No, you see… he’s head of a gang and he sends all his little gang-banger cronies to check up on me. Last time I didn’t visit him, he had one of his boys come find me and beat me down. I’m scared to not visit and do what he says.

I gave her the name and number of a person who helps abused women get away safely. I don’t think she ever did anything with it and she was pregnant again.

There’s the girl who’s boyfriend would drop her off when the club opened at 11am and pick her up when it closed at 2a then next morning and take all her money to buy crack.

There’s many others and like I said, before and after work, I got ready in the locker room as fast as I could manage to avoid all that mess and drama.

I did have a couple of friends though.

At TD’s, we had a “customer appreciation” night and the club wouldn't have to pay the club the usual $5 an hour to work those nights because there were lots of “free” dances. I put free in quotes because if the DJ or waitresses caught a guy not tipping after a free dance, they would call them out on it and embarrass them.

On these free dances, you would give a guy about half a song and move from guy to guy. At one point Cheryl and I ended up at the same guy and we laughed and gave him a double! It turned into a very profitable gimmick for us and we would dance together for people all the time. Sometimes, after work, we’d go get something to eat together but that was about the extent of our friendship.

At Ten’s I became pretty good friends with a girl we’ll call Mary. Mary and I talked at work all the time and we hung out outside work quite a lot. She was another with man troubles though. She was dating one guy who was a complete tool and dating is a rather loose term for what they had. He mostly booty called her and she’d always go when the phone rang. She was at the end of him when we started hanging out. I remember she called me from a bar a few miles from the really crappy part of town I lived in. She was there with that guy and his buddy and they were all playing pool and did I want to meet them?

I had nothing better to do so I went. She and I were sitting by the pool table waiting our turn, she put her feet up on my knees and I asked how her ankle was doing (she’d twisted it slightly at work the previous week). Her guy came over and said, “Oh, now I know why you like her [meaning me], she’s obviously a dyke.” I said, “I’m not but with guys like you around I wish I was.” He got all up in my face and we almost threw down! What a dick! When she finally dumped him, she told her mom how much she liked him and how heartbroken she was over the break-up and her mom asked if Mary would mind if she [mom] dated him!

We actually saw them at a hockey game we went to. They were on a date! WTF?

Mary ended up dating and eventually marrying and having a kid with some other abusive asshole and we fell out of touch. Last I heard, she divorced that guy. I wonder where/how she is?

The club had Feature Dancers about once a month. These were “professionals” – either porn stars or women who made their living posing naked for magazines. The feature hangs out in the locker room and every two hours from 7p-close, she comes out and does a 4 or 5 song show. Different costume each time and lots of build-up inbetween. Then she signs pic’s of herself and sells them or sometimes, she’ll take polaroids with the guys and sign/sell those. On top of the picture sales, the clubs pay them a few thousand a night to show up and do their thing.

I remember one skinny neck bitch whose man had parked his truck practically on top of my Mustang in the parking lot. His back bumper was touching mine and had scraped some of my paint. Now the old girl's paint was bad enough without help so I asked for their insurance info. They refused to give me that info so I had to call the cops and it was this big stupid scene. It was pretty funny though when she made a run at me and the cops put her ass on the ground!

There were the twin sisters feature act and I thought that one was a bit…disturbing. They didn’t touch each other but one show they did, one sister was seated, topless, blindfolded and tied to the stage pole while the other (wearing a floor-length hooded cape and not much else) dripped candle wax on the seated sister’s tits. Ummm. Ew.

One feature was really nice to me. She was a tiny, curvy blonde and her claim to fame was getting the cover of Swank magazine more times then any other model. She took a shine to me and we talked for a long time in the locker room, when I was getting ready to leave. I told her how cool it was that she could be so sexy and never wear stilettos in her shows! (One outfit was a construction worker’s costume w/timberlane boots). The conversation went from there. When I mentioned her impressive number of Swank covers she said, “It’s not as impressive as it sounds, my dad owns the magazine.”
Ummmm. Ewwwwwww. I went home shaking my head the whole way. One of those things you can never unknown, right?

One of the best features I saw involved a shower. I thought it was her own set-up but turns out it was a new thing that Ten’s had purchased for the club and she was just the first one that got to use it.

They put a kiddy pool at one end of the barbell stage and she stripped her way over. At the top of the pole, they had a shower set up and when they hit the strobe light, she crawled over to the kiddy pool, dipped her long hair into it and flipped her head back. With that strobe light? Mesmerizing!

I used that shower set-up a few times myself. Ten’s had a couple of “Best Dancer” competitions and I entered them all. I didn’t actually care about being voted best, it’s just that the prize money was pretty great. I got second place ($250) when I wore the chaps, stripped out of them and did that same thing with my hair, that strobe light and that pool!

Still flipping my hair flirtatiously, Ruth!