I never knew her real name. The first time we met – after she stumbled off the stage – she told me it was Lisa. The next time she said Sage, then Starr... ridiculous stripper names that mocked her half-hearted attempt at dancing. She signed her release forms with different names still, and I never did get a good look at her driver's license.
She had 'It', as my boss would say. 'It' was the way she walked; the way she looked; the way she talked; and that self-conscious way she brushed strands of hair from her forehead whenever she felt nervous – which in her profession was constantly.
She was a creature from a different planet, as far as I could tell. She didn't belong in this world, but somehow that pothole-infested road carried her up to the club and deposited her right under my nose. I wanted to consign her to some corner of my brain and shut her out until the next distraction arrived, but instead she stayed there - right in the center of my existence. And even after she left without a trace - simply missing one scheduled night, and the next, and the next into infinity - she stays right there, always in my thoughts.
Now, when business slows to a crawl, which is often, I sit on that same barstool where I first talked to her and twiddle cocktail straws around my fingers and wonder which of the half-dozen names she gave me fit her best, and what I'd say to her differently if I ever got the chance to see her again.
I might be driving some two-lane blacktop, concentrating on keeping my car on the road with that awful Wyoming wind trying to force me into a barbwire fence, and suddenly there she is in my mind. I see her as I last saw her. Her eyes are nearly closed in some sort of delirium, and her lipstick is smeared around her lips and onto her cheeks. I've pushed her legs apart - and to pin her beneath me - my arms are hung around the inside of her knees, which are now nearly to her ears. I grab a fistful of that crazy-sexy red hair just to feel it in my hands.
And as my eyes take all of her in, I smile as I see that her little wispy top has finally been removed. I've pulled it up past her breasts, and she's pushed it back down to cover herself a few times now. I know this well: she doesn't want me to see. But I can't help myself, and so somehow – perhaps due to simple doggedness – I've won against her modesty and mystery. I've cajoled her top off, and it finally lays disused somewhere on the bedroom floor.
Now when I look down I see those stunning, mouth watering breasts that landed her the job in the first place, and yet more importantly I see the mark – her signature - running like a zipper down the middle of her chest.
It's a scar. It's the strangest thing I've ever seen. I've pondered over it from a distance and up close these many months - a cruel, long scar from some surgeon's knife - and even healed these years later the scalpel's cut still looks fresh. It runs from near her collarbone to a point just above her bellybutton and seems to split her ribcage in half. And I wonder – as I always have – if she ever understood just what that little disfigurement meant to me.
*********
My boss liked girls with 'It', as he constantly reminded me. He wanted girls that had It - and he wanted them on the stage, serving drinks, or milling around in the back by his office as much as possible. Over the years I learned and adopted his view of It: I used it to fill the club, to keep his private dance card full, and to earn my modest - but safe - income. I learned that It varied considerably, and went far beyond mere looks or conventional notions of attraction. It was certainly different than a number/letter combination on the back of a bra, a dress size, or a girl's measurements - no matter how much men obsessed boobs and female statistics.
My one big triumph in the world of It was creating Fresh Talent Nite - a so called 'open-pole' night every week, which brought in new girls and provided the perfect opportunity to search and find those few female souls that possessed those special characteristics....
Every Thursday night was the same. The girls stood around, or they nervously went backstage and looked in the mirror. They engaged in time-wasting conversations among their group and avoided eye contact with everyone else. When their names were called – a stage name only, of course – they either bounded or slinked up on the stage. They did their thing. They twirled on the stage; they gyrated; they kicked their legs in the air and adopted provocative pose after pose.
It worked. The sad-sack men called-out; they clapped; they unanimously approved. There was something illicit and deeply sexual about ordinary yet attractive girls coming to a place like this and taking off their clothes. The unspoken suggestion was that these girls were innocent: last night at the grocery store they might have bagged your food or run your canned noodle soup under the scanner - or maybe in Casper last year one of them got you a great deal on your car insurance.
Now look at them. They were done up and ready to take you places you could barely imagine.
Yet the truth was usually less glib. Many had done this before, and it showed in their calculated moves and artificial flirtations. It was an act they learned once and never forgot, even if it had been a few years and several pounds ago. Others craved the attention. They got a thrill being lusted over, and as soon as they got home, took a shower, it was straight to the nightstand by the bed, where they pulled out a vibrator waiting on yellow alert and indulged their fantasies.
I sat in judgment and followed my instinct on the topic of It. Some girls were returned to the big world outside. Some were kept for regular dancing at the club. And others... Well, they needed to be primed for the boss-man, and his dance card was all that really mattered.
*********
The club was dark, as always. In the day, you walked in from the blinding light of a blizzard that sent snow sideways and twisted around you and then stepped into a blackness that made you stumble on the frayed carpet. Anyone over six feet walked bent over for the first few minutes, as if an invisible weight was pressing down. As your eyes adjusted the room always seemed wider than it should, and the ceiling lower; then there were the bodies; the girls; the abstract splotches of color that moved and flowed and suddenly became obvious as garter belts, pantyhose, shoes, and skin.
My Thursday conversations with the boss-man on the topic of It remained oddly consistent from one Nite to the next. There he would sit, surveying the room like a gargoyle. His table was near the back, just by the door to his office and up a few feet on small rise; the location gave an unobstructed view of his domain.
"Nick," he'd bellow – his voice cutting through the din of the room - and then gesture me over to his table with a nod of the head. After I made my way over to his side he would gesture the direction he wanted me to look, recognizing that a flat-out point with the finger was a touch indiscrete.
I'd follow his gaze and then he'd murmur, "See that little lass standing in the corner? She's got that cute outfit on...", or some variation of the same.
As usual, I'd look across the darkened room to find a woman standing by herself on the fringes of the herd of girls, waiting and semi-dreading the inevitable moment on stage. Most of the time his girl of choice was attractive yet non-descript - except of course, for the fact that she was in a strip club and donning a barely-there outfit. It was a combination of qualities that always gave a sort of power and star quality I doubted she'd ever recognize.
