Daniel is in his fifties with thinning red hair. We have virtually nothing in common; he has a high school education and is into sports and that’s about it. I’m finishing my master’s degree and find sports to be a boorish manifestation of hypermasculinity.
But my job is to be the perfect woman for every man. So I know how to ask intelligent enough questions to keep him talking about himself. Daniel loves to talk about himself.
“So then what happened?” I ask, leaning toward him, my gaze raptly on his face. I make a game of looking at the bridge of his nose so it looks like I’m meeting his eyes.
He’s telling me a long, rambling story that started with a tailgating party and appears to be culminating with having drinks with some ball team.
“Then … then …” He’s laughing so hard his eyes water. “Then Hank says, ‘That’s what she said!’” He collapses into chuckles.
I throw back my head and laugh with him, though I’ve lost the thread of the story and never cared in the first place. Daniel’s not a bad guy but it’s almost like he’s not a person at all. He takes up space, talks words, and pays. He pays.
“I think it’s time for you to have a private dance,” I say and pull him up. He comes willingly.
I like dancing for him because then I don’t have to talk to him. He pays me to sit with him as well but only to the tune of $5 a song. A private dance is $20 a song. Usually I can dance for two or three songs before he lays money on the stage, indicating that he’s done.
It’s hard to keep things fresh in the private dance area. The stage is a little raised platform that’s about 4 feet square. The customers sit in plush chairs on the stage. The setup doesn’t leave us a lot of room to move around. I compensate for my energetic floor show by moving very slowly here, making every move languid, keeping lots of eye contact, letting the customer really look. I can make one pose last half a song.
Daniel has two or three dancers he likes, so we rotate around him through the evening. When I finish my dance I catch Valentine’s eye. She’s sitting with one of her other customers and gives me a tiny nod in acknowledgment. She’s up and now I can go hang out with one of my other regulars who has just arrived. At least he’s a decent conversationalist.
In the coming weeks Daniel starts to distance himself from me. It begins when he starts only buying a single dance. Then he slacks off tipping me to sit with him. When I do sit with him, he seems distracted. It’s not hard to figure out that he’s watching Valentine. He’s hyperaware of her every move, following her with his eyes, getting up to sit at her stage even if he’s sitting with someone else. Obsession is building. I’ve seen it before.
“Have you noticed that Daniel isn’t paying as much attention to us?” I ask Tyler. She’s the other girl who has received his attention in the past.
“Oh, yeah,” she says. “He’s got it bad for Valentine. That cash cow has dried up.”
Valentine is sitting farther down the dressing table doing her hair. “He does have a bit of a crush,” she admits.
“Work it, girl,” I tell her. “Dude’s loaded.” Daniel has some sort of middle management position and his hobbies are sports and strippers. Most of his money comes to us.
She gives herself a smile in the mirror. “He’s gonna pay my bills tonight.”
“Good for you,” Tyler says. “Honestly, you can have him.”
“He just likes me because I can talk football,” Valentine says.
“Have at it.” I grab my purse. “He is all yours.” I head onto the floor and pass him without a glance. Peter is waiting for me, and he’s worth more and can also keep up his end of a conversation. It was nice when I had the income from both regulars, but I’ve still got several guys on the hook. Not having to sit with Daniel will open up new possibilities.
I’m aware that Valentine sits with Daniel pretty much all night. She gives him several private dances and lavishes attention on him when she’s on stage.
She’d better be careful, I think to myself. Excluding other money to milk one guy has its dangers. If that one regular loses interest, then a dancer can be left without regulars. Just dancing on stage is a lot less lucrative.
“How’d you do?” I ask at the end of the night.
“Paid my bills,” Valentine replies with a smirk. “Tomorrow I’ll start on next month’s.”
I laugh. “Good for you.”
And that’s what she does. Daniel arrives about 30 minutes after she does, every single night she works. All night she sits with only him. Often he is the only one sitting at her stage. Valentine has a sleek little body but nothing spectacular. She’s plain in the face with hair that frizzes in the humidity. She’s cute but nothing more. It takes connection to get people to the stage, or an awesome stage show, or bombshell looks. She’s capable of making good connections, but now she’s ignoring everyone.
I understand her choice. He’s easy money and a lot of it. And it’s none of my business so I pretty much forget about the whole thing.
Then Valentine announces to the dressing room one evening that she’s pregnant.
This is several months later and I glance up, only half interested. I’m not close with her and don’t know her that well.
Other girls rush to congratulate her with hugs and exclamations.
“How long do you plan to keep working?” Celeste asks.
“Oh, until I’m showing. I’m going to try to push it to my fifth month,” Valentine answers.
“What did Seth say?” Celeste says. She has an arm around Valentine and is absently rubbing her flat belly.
“He’s so excited!” Valentine exclaims. “We only just started trying.”
I surmise from all this that Seth must be baby-daddy-boyfriend, and that the pregnancy is both wanted and planned.
“And look!” Valentine shows her left hand where a glittering diamond adorns her ring finger.
The chorus of congratulations begins all over again.
“We’re saving up for a house,” Valentine explains. “I want to be all moved in before my third trimester. Then we’ll get married next year. Once I have my figure back!” She laughs.
Later that evening, passing her all snuggled up in Daniel’s lap, I smirk to myself. That’s what the down payment on a home looks like: middle-aged and balding.
Valentine makes good on working to the end of her fourth month. She starts to show a little, round belly but she’s well aerobicized and carries the weight well.
But Daniel notices.
I find myself next to him at the bar one evening. I’m wasting time until I have to be up on stage and he’s ordering a beer.
“How are you?” I ask casually.
He smiles at me. “I’m good, Star. How you been?”
“Good.”
He leans closer toward me and I tilt my head toward him. “Have you noticed …” He hesitates.
“Have I noticed what?” We’re whispering now, as much as one can whisper over the music.
“Valentine has gained a little weight.”
I glance down at his little pudge before I can help it.
“I know,” he says, catching my eye. “She just usually takes such good care of herself.”
I look him straight in the face. “I hadn’t noticed,” I say.
Valentine makes her last day a Saturday. We all know that she’s leaving and many of the dancers pile small gifts at her place along the dressing room counter. But she carefully doesn’t make a big deal about it. She sits most of the night cozied up next to Daniel. At the end of the night it’s hugs all around and then she’s gone, off into her new life.
I don’t think about it, or her, one way or another. Dancers come and go. My focus is school and my own social life. I work but the rest of my life is quite separate.
The next Friday Daniel arrives as he has done for almost a year. I don’t think about that either. My regulars are in and I’m hanging out with them, business as usual.
Then Tyler comes over and grabs me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure. Excuse me,” I say to Peter.
“Hey, Tyler,” he says and she shoots him a tight smile. Clearly there’s something on her mind. Pulling a girl away from a regular is not standard operating procedure.
“What’s up?” I inquire once she has me sequestered off in a corner.
“Daniel is crying,” she tells me.
I gape at her. “What?”
“He just asked me where Valentine is. I said she’d quit.”
I blink stupidly at her.
“I didn’t know she hadn’t told him!” Tyler exclaims, taking my silence as some sort of condemnation.
I hold up my hand to stop her. “Wait. You’re telling me that Daniel just now found out she quit. Just now. When you told him.”
Tyler is nodding. “And now he’s crying! Star, I don’t know what to do!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I curse to myself. “That was a shitty move, not to tell him.” I grab Tyler by the arm. “Come on. I’ll come with you to talk to him.” I shoot Peter an apologetic glance and he tips me a wink.
Daniel is sitting at one of the corner tables and Tyler’s right: he’s openly sobbing. I pull up a chair and sit. Tyler takes the chair next to me.
I don’t say anything at first, just hand Daniel a cocktail napkin. He swabs at his eyes and sniffs miserably. I pat him gently on the shoulder as he pulls himself together.
“Is she really gone?” he asks me when he’s capable of speech.
“Yes,” I tell him. “She retired. I can’t believe she didn’t tell you.”
He grasps my hand desperately. “Do you have her phone number, Star?”
“I don’t,” I answer honestly. “I actually don’t know her that well.”
“But …” He hiccups. “She owes me money!”
Tyler and I glance at one another. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“I lent her a bunch of money,” he explains. “Thousands of dollars.”
Tyler’s eyes go wide and she looks at me helplessly.
“Okay, wait,” I say to buy myself time to process what he’s saying. “Do you think that the money you gave her was a loan?”
“She asked me a couple weeks ago if she could borrow some money. Of course I said yes!”
This is worse than I’d thought. He’s still holding my hand and I give his fingers a squeeze and then draw away.
“Okay, Daniel. This is going to be hard for you to hear, but it’s really important and you need to listen.”
His wet eyes are on mine, still streaming, but at least the sobs have stopped.
I give it to him straight. “No money that changes hands in a club like this is ever a loan.” I wait for my words to sink in.
“You gave her that money and you’re not getting it back. She took it and she’s gone.”
The tears stop as though a faucet has been turned off. “I can’t believe …” His words trail off.
I gesture around. “Nothing here is real, Daniel. Valentine was not your friend. She was a woman you paid to see naked. That’s it. It wasn’t nice of her to let you think that you were loaning her money, but it happened. All you can do is get over it.”
“I can go to the police.” His tears are rapidly being replaced with anger.
“No, you can’t,” I explain. “You gave a stripper cash money in a strip club. There’s no written contract. Do you even know her real name?”
“Her name is Valentine,” he says confusedly. “She’s Russian, named after her grandmother.”
“Her name is not Valentine, I can tell you that with absolute certainty.”
“Is your name Star?” he asks.
“Of course not,” I snap. I can’t believe that he’s this naive.
He glances at Tyler.
“Nope,” she says.
“But … what’s your name?” he asks me. “If it’s not Star?”
“That’s none of your business. We work under pseudonyms so that men like you don’t stalk us after work.” If I’m going to be straight with him I may as well explain the whole deal. He has clearly missed learning the rules of strip clubs.
“I need to find her,” he says.
“No,” I say. “If you look for her she can have you arrested for stalking and slap a restraining order on you. What you need to do, what you will do, is walk out of here right now and never come back. You just learned a very expensive lesson. Take it for what it’s worth and leave.”
He glares at me. “I can’t believe this.”
“Believe it.” I rise and pull Tyler up with me. “Goodbye, Daniel.” I turn and walk away without a backward glance. As I pass Rodney, one of the bouncers, I tip my head toward the corner where Daniel sits. Rodney pushes himself off the wall he’s leaned against and heads over.