Like a Virgin, page 14
> sure
> Sis man! Really?
> its nothing. if u do it right it only takes a sec
> Gross!
> such a prude!
> Am not, that’s just disgusting.
> Y u neva give little Lucas one?
> NO and don’t call him that.
> u shld it might loosen him up a bit
> You’re such a cow.
> u 4get we share dna if I am u r
> Also …
> What?
> No it’s nothing.
> What Grace?
> It was weird, he had no hair down there, you know? Do you think he shaves?
> Bwahahahahahahahaha he might wax, lots of guys do it, they call it a back, crack & sack. Personally I prefer it. You dnt get pubes stuck in your teeth.
> EEEEUUUUWWWW NATALIE! I’m going now.
> dnt 4get babe its all in the wrist
*
> Hi Lucas. How are you, love?
> Grace, I’ve been really worried about u. Where have u been?
> Sorry ran out of battery last night and got home too late to message.
> But it was a school night.
> I know – went for supper with some of the other teachers.
> I was worried something had happened to u!!! And I told u I don’t like it when ur phone is off.
> I’m sorry, okay. I am allowed to have a bit of fun while I’m here.
> Not too much without me!
> I’ve made a friend here. One of the other teachers who stays in the house. Her name is Paris.
> How’s school?
> I’m learning a lot.
> Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?
> How’s home?
> Lonely without u. I was thinking about the wedding and where we should have it. Have u had any thoughts?
> I haven’t exactly had a chance to think about it.
> Going out for dinner with ur new friends is more important?
> That’s not fair! … Look, I’m going to go, I don’t want to fight.
> Sorry I just miss u. And I get worried when I can’t get hold of you.
> I miss you too.
> Soon ull be home and we can get married and settle into normal life.
> Maybe we can come here for our honeymoon?
> What to Amsterdam?
> Yes, it’s beautiful.
> I was thinking we could go to Beaverlac. They have these great camping chalets
> Oh. Ok.
> Roadtrips are always fun.
> Sure.
> My mother says she can’t wait to go wedding dress shopping with u. Just think, soon u will be Mrs Lucas Hall. I can’t wait.
> I can’t wait either. Tell your mom I say hi. I have to go. Chat later.
> Love u too much, Grace. WhatsApp me as soon as u get a gap. XXX
… Will u Grace? Promise? XXX
> I promise, Lucas.
*
As I turn off my phone and slip it into my pocket, Madonna comes into the lounge in shorts, a sweatshirt and a pair of patent-leather, studded Converses.
‘Ola,’ she says.
‘Morning,’ I say with a smile.
‘Everything hokay now with jhoo and Marilyn?’ she asks as she grabs her foot and pulls it up behind her back in a stretch.
‘I think so. I feel terrible about it. I really didn’t know he was her … her … um …’
‘Her reg?’ Madonna says, clasping her arm behind her back to stretch her shoulder.
‘Yeah, I had no idea.’
‘Is good. Now jhoo know and everything is okay, si,’ she says, slinging an arm around the floor-to-ceiling stripper pole in the corner.
I hadn’t even noticed the pole there when Dania first showed me around. I can’t believe how naïve I was just days ago. Within a couple of seconds, Madonna has both ankles twisted around it and she’s hanging upside down.
‘You make it look so easy,’ I say wistfully.
‘I practise a lot,’ she says.
‘How long have you been working here?’ I ask.
‘Eight month,’ she says, after a second’s thought.
‘And before this?’ I ask.
‘I been dancing in clubs two year and three month,’ she says. ‘Mostly in Barcelona. And also in London and Rome. But here is much more better for me. Here is just topless, jhoo know? Also there is not so much touching as in clubs in other places. Because is more a show than a strip club, is more a respectful atmosphere here? Also here in Amsterdam is everything legal. Medical help, advice, we even have rights, we’re the bosses.’ Then she flips back upright, and holds herself sideways on the pole. The muscles in her arms bulge.
She drops to the ground and leans against the pole, thinking about it. ‘I like this dancing,’ she says. ‘I like the music, the attention. Is a new challenge every night. Exciting. Different people, different things to deal with. I couldn’t do behind a desk all day for nothing money, and no travels, ay!’
I nod.
‘Also for what girl isn’t nice to be told jhoo beautiful every night,’ she adds. ‘And the money, si, for sure.’
Katy Perry and Britney Spears come into the lounge carrying takeaway coffees, chatting in Russian.
‘Hey girls,’ Britney says, folding her legs underneath her on the couch.
‘Rihanna wants to know, how we like this job?’ Madonna asks, then spirals back up the pole.
‘Is okay,’ Britney says. ‘For today. For tomorrow, maybe is not okay.’
‘I no like it,’ Katy Perry says. ‘For me, I’m gone by now next year. When my daughter is starting at kindergarten school. I don’t want to be dancing while she’s in school. Too much grabbing, touching. David Junior, blech. The men always staring, is disgusting how they look at us. And what they think of us is no good.’
‘Pliss. Vhere is another job vhere you make pay so much but you don’t nyeed a high school diploma, or degree in physics or even for references? You not even to nyeed experience,’ Britney Spears says to Katy Perry. ‘Here vithout study you can make as more money like a doctor or accountant, only must know how to smile, how to dance, how to tease. Have boobs, have EU passport.’ Quite a few of the girls nod.
‘But for how long? And for what cost? What do I say to my daughter where mommy works? I’m not whore for sale. And the hours are from hell. Who wants to work all night, every night? Then we sleep all day like bats, and the days fall into each other. A month can pass and I don’t know what day is it. And my ears, we all be deaf before we thirty with the loud music. And you can say goodbye to your knees, also,’ Katy argues. ‘How you dance for years in shoes so high? Why you think the dancers here are always sitting in man’s laps all night? Is sore feet, that’s why. I make chop-chop big money, then I’m finished! I can be a secretary or waitress or bartender,’ Katy says, wiping her palms together. ‘Finish can’t make fast enough.’
‘But there are parts of any job that is difficult,’ Britney says. ‘Not just here. Even nurses, secretaries, cooks, athletes; they have things they don’t like, hard on their body. They also have bad bosses who want to touch them inappropriate all the time. But they verk anyway. Because they must to bring the money and you will miss the money. How you earn minimum vage after this? This it spoil you.’
‘I like this job,’ Madonna says. ‘I like the lights, the dresses and costumes, the money, the glamour of the show. So the men is not always great, but is sometimes hokay, si. And they are in love with us every night. They looking at us with puppies’ eyes. And I love the music, it’s inside me always because I love to dance. So, I do it while I still can, while my chichis are still good,’ Madonna says, climbing down from the pole and grabbing her breasts, ‘and while the money is still good for me.’
Paris wanders in and joins me on the couch, cradling a box of caramels. She empties one block of caramel onto her palm at a time, and slips them into her mouth mechanically.
‘Hey,’ Madonna says to Britney, ‘show me how jhoo do that move where you make with your arm like so on the pole?’
Britney puts down her coffee and unzips her jacket. She rolls her shoulders a few times, then wraps one arm around the metal so that the pole is lodged in the crook of her elbow, and spins around it. Then she launches into a super-complicated series of moves, all while holding the pole only with the crook of her elbow.
I watch, astonished. ‘Where’d you learn how to do that?’
‘I study ballet for ten years at home. This vhat ve do, is just pole ballet. You try?’ she asks.
I shake my head. ‘I’m not very good.’
‘Come, is easy. You learn, make practise,’ she says. ‘Try basic climb. Like so.’ She clasps the pole with both hands, and then wraps her knees around it, locking her legs together and then pulls herself up the pole. ‘See, easy,’ she says, dropping back onto the ground. ‘You turn.’
The others murmur encouragement, and Paris nudges me towards the pole. Britney makes it look easy, so I stand and rub my hands together. I clasp the pole, then take a deep breath and pull myself slowly upwards, then wrap my legs around it.
The women cheer me on and shout instructions, but I’m too busy holding on for dear life to hear what they’re saying. In the split second I’m up the pole I feel like a koala bear, but then my hands start to slip and I slide all the way back down, the inside of my thighs on fire as my skin sticks to the metal, bruising as I slide all the way down with a zerbert sound. I land on my butt on the floor. My cheeks flush with embarrassment as they laugh at me.
Madonna helps me up, and I collapse back on the couch next to Paris, sweat beaded on my forehead after only seconds of work. Then Madonna swings back onto the pole effortlessly.
‘Some foundations will cover up,’ Paris says. ‘Bruises no good for business.’
‘It’s useless, I’ll never make any money out there,’ I say.
‘Pah!’ Britney says. ‘Is easy.’
‘Really? It doesn’t feel easy. You got any tips?’ I ask.
‘Ummmm …’ Britney thinks about it. ‘Always to hold client’s hand when you valk vith him to the VIP room,’ she offers. ‘The mens like it, stops them changing mind, chickening it. Makes intimacy, excitement for them. Eye contact also.’
Katy Perry looks at me pointedly. ‘If you can’t afford big boobs, good bra and tape is my best advice,’ she says. ‘The biggest boobs are getting the biggest tips.’
Madonna and Britney hum in agreement.
‘Dolly must be coining it,’ I say. Then I look at Paris.
‘You think you can do, you can do. You think you can’t do, you can’t do,’ she says, popping another caramel in her mouth.
Finally we all turn to Madonna to hear what advice she has to offer. ‘Hmmmm,’ she muses. ‘Hokay, best advice I ever get for making money, if I don’t want to do it – dance naked or give client a lap dance or make hand-job – somebody else will, and I may as well get that money. So then I do it,’ she says with a shrug.
‘Also maybe good advice for you not to dance on pole for now, da?’ Britney says. And I flush as they all burst out laughing.
- €226.90
‘Have any of you seen Paris?’
‘I think she’s backstage,’ Jennifer Lopez says. There’s still half an hour before Dania comes to the dressing-room for pay out, so I head down the back passageway, in search of my new friend.
I catch a glimpse of a blonde in the wings across the stage. I peer through the darkness – her back is to me and it looks like she’s kneeling to pick something up.
‘Paris, you won’t believe it, I did eight lap dances tonight, eight!’ I shout as I, stride towards her. ‘And I didn’t have to give a single hand-jo … ’ I freeze mid-sentence. It’s not Paris, and she’s not alone, and she’s not picking something up off the floor, either. David Junior has his back against the wall in the shadows. Marilyn is on her knees in front of him. I gasp. David fumbles to pull up his pants. Marilyn wipes the edge of her lips. Even in the dim lighting, her red nail-polish glints.
‘I’m sorry!’ I say, backing away from them. ‘I’m so so so so sorry. I thought you were Paris, I didn’t see anything, I swear!’ I turn and gap it.
*
> R u having a good time, babes?
> Hi Lucas! Wow, it’s a real experience.
> What’s it like?
> Pretty wild. I’m seeing a lot of … astonishing things.
> Sounds great. What are the other teachers like?
> Ummm surprising. And interesting. There are teachers here from Romania, Hungary, Spain, all over.
> U must be making lots of interesting friends.
> Yes, some.
> Send pictures I’d love to see them all. U haven’t sent me ANY pics.
I picture Lucas’s face if he ever got an eyeful of Paris or Madonna, or any of the girls, in fact.
> Sure. I’ll take some on my phone this weekend.
> I miss u, babes. Do you miss me? U are still so quiet.
> Yes. Sorry. Between lesson plans and settling in and stuff it’s been soooo busy.
> I understand. I can’t wait to see u and hold u and have u as my wife.
> I can’t wait to be home.
> So u can plan our wedding?
> Yes, and get back to normal life. Right, I’m off to bed, it’s been a long day, and it’s a school night.
> Night, night my princess. Promise to message me first thing in the morning, love dove?
> Promise
*
‘You message a lot,’ Marilyn says, her voice sweet and soft, as usual.
She’s applying mascara. It’s the middle of our shift, and I can hear the beat of the music in the club getting louder and then softer every time the dressing-room door sweeps open and closed. I look around and realise we’re alone.
‘Your phone’s always bleeping then tap tap tap message message,’ Marilyn says.
She rarely speaks to me, and I wait for the barb or harsh comment. But nothing comes.
‘It’s my fiancé,’ I say. ‘Back home. He likes to know what I’m up to.’
Marilyn raises an eyebrow at me. ‘It doesn’t bother you that he’s so nosy?’ she asks.
‘No, he’s not, he just misses me,’ I say as I turn off my phone and stash it in my locker.
‘If you say so. I would suffocate,’ she says. Then she adds, ‘If you ask me, there’s missing someone, and then there’s stalking and obsessing over them.’
I want to tell her that I didn’t ask her, but I sense that we’re heading into a new phase in our relationship, one where the waters are smoother, and I don’t want to create a chop.
‘Do you have a boyfriend, or someone special?’ I ask. It comes out awkwardly. It’s a stupid question, given our tiff over her reg, and then that whole embarrassing incident with David Junior hanging over our heads.
‘Some,’ she says with a raised eyebrow. ‘But it would drive me crazy if any of them were on my case as much as yours is.’
‘I just want you to know, Marilyn, that I’d never say anything. You know, about anything I saw. You know, with you and anyone here … you know?’ I stammer. The music gets louder as the door swooshes open and Lady Gaga and Pink step into the dressing-room, laughing their heads off. Gaga is wearing a red-leather, one-piece catsuit. I’m astonished daily by the depth of her wardrobe.
‘Oh, you girls missed the show,’ Pink says.
Marilyn stops boring a hole through me with her eyes. ‘What happened?’ she whispers.
‘I was doing a private dance in the library,’ Pink says, ‘when this guy whips out the smallest thing I’ve ever seen. So small you’d need tweezers to get him off,’ Pink says, wiping tears of laughter from her cheeks. ‘The poor little shit.’
‘What did you do?’ I ask.
‘Told him how huge he is and then …’ Pink sticks up her two little fingers, holds them a centimetre apart and then runs them up and down, as Marilyn and Gaga fall about laughing.
‘I once had this client whose dick was so curved he could have seen around a corner with it,’ Gaga says, laughing as she peels off the catsuit, which is so tight the seams have left long dents in her skin.
‘What about you?’ Pink asks Marilyn. ‘What’s the worst one you’ve ever seen?’
‘Oh,’ Marilyn says, turning to glare at me again. ‘I never kiss and tell.’
The music ramps up again as the door swings open and Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears burst in. Christina’s blouse is torn down the front, and she’s covering the left side of her face with a hand. A string of furious Russian swear words fly out her mouth.
‘Shit, what happened?’ Gaga asks, as Christina swears her way towards the showers.
‘Some lady comes into mezzanine level vearing a long coat, but I see she’s vearing pyjama bottoms with sheeps patterns on them underneath. Then I think it’s not so good thing! Christina is making a private dance for man, and lady goes screaming at her it’s her husband, then she pushes her and scratches, before the bouncers carry her avay,’ Britney explains.
Pink clucks her tongue. ‘Bouncers at the door should have seen her pyjamas. They shouldn’t have let her in.’
‘Wait!’ I say. ‘So you’re saying some woman comes into the club, finds her husband getting a lap dance, and she hits the dancer? That’s crazy! What about the husband? Surely it’s his fault? Why doesn’t she hit him?’
‘I’m sure she will later,’ Gaga says.
‘Is Christina okay?’ Pink asks.
‘I once worked at a club in Spain a few years ago where women weren’t allowed into the club, to protect the dancers from this kind of thing,’ Marilyn says.
Christina comes back to her dressing-table holding a wad of wet toilet paper against her face, still swearing.
‘You okay?’ Pink asks, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Christina pulls the paper off to reveal scratch marks down her cheek.
‘Here, use this, so it doesn’t get infected,’ Marilyn says, scratching around on her table and then holding out a bottle of surgical spirits.
Christina takes it, then sits down at her dressing-table.
‘I hope he paid you up front,’ Gaga says.
€932.42
