Last Dance
April 28, 2008
It was a lot more emotional than I thought it was going to be.
I’ve been dancing for three and a half years now, since September of 2004. It has put me through school (a private school with a $30K+ annual tuition, plus books), helped me buy a house, and has allowed me to live a lifestyle few women my age are able to achieve. My girlfriend, Nikki, also dances. In fact, she was the one who got me started dancing. But that’s another story.
I have always enjoyed dancing, working weekend evenings for what averaged out to be about 20 hours a week. With my impending exams, graduation and move to the other side of the country, though, this past weekend was to be my last weekend working as a dancer. I knew it’d be tough, but I had no idea how tough.
The club I work at has about 120 dancers on the roster. Of those, probably a good 60 or 70 of them are “regulars” – dancers who are routinely in the club, on a schedule, such that you can get to know them. Nikki and I typically work Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights until to 2, 3 or 4 in the morning. As girls with some seniority, we get the pick of the time slots to work, and the late evening/early morning weekend time slots are easily the most coveted. The girls who work during the week get the majority of the itinerant businessmen and whatnot, while those of us who work the weekends get a higher percentage of regular customers (upon which most of us rely on for the majority of our income). I had a slew of regulars, and they frequently told me they really enjoyed watching me dance because it looked like I enjoyed what I was doing.
I’ve always liked to tell a “story” with my dance sets. I had three solo stage sets each night, plus a lesbian-themed set I did with Nikki. The lesbian set was so popular they scheduled it for the midnight feature every night we worked. Not only was it popular, but it invariably got us two-girl VIP dance gigs for a good two hours or so after we got off the stage. This is one of the primary reasons we were always in the top ten money earners in the club.
The “story” revolves around two girls who experience a forbidden attraction to one another. This part of the story is represented by the song Lips of An Angel, by Hinder. I’d have never come up with that song on my own, but it was suggested by an online friend, and the more we listened to it, the more we thought it fit the concept perfectly. We start out on opposite sides of the stage doing synchronized pole and floor work, with the occasional furtive glances towards one another. The song progresses, the attraction intensifies, and we begin playing off each other’s movements and mirroring and mimicking each other. The last 30 seconds is some pretty complex pole work done while we gaze at each other.
As the first song winds down, a pole rises out of the middle of the stage, and we begin to move toward it tentatively, retreating back and forth to our original, respective poles. This is where we are “fighting” our attraction and is done to the song Stop, by Jamelia. When this song is over, we’re holding onto opposite sides of the same pole in the middle of the stage. Finally, the attraction is consummated to the beat of an erotic remix of Justify My Love, by Madonna. We spend a lot of time dancing very erotically and playing with each other and it ends in a long, sloppy French kiss. It always gets a really good reaction from the crowd.
Last night when we got ready to take the stage for that set the DJ, a guy named Jeff (though I call him Jazzy) made it a special point to announce that this would be my last dance; that I was moving onto bigger and better things. He also made the statement that I was “one of the most special dancers he’d ever worked with,” that he would miss my smile, and he wished me all the best wherever my life took me. I was stunned. Nikki and I just looked at each other, and the music began. As we got to the first point where Nik and I meet at the middle pole, I could see tears streaming down Nikki’s face, and I just lost it. I couldn’t finish the dance because I had too much water in my eyes. Nikki just stopped and embraced me and we cried together for a few seconds before people started standing and applauding. I have to imagine the image of two practically naked women on stage crying in each others’ arms had to be a pathetic sight to behold. I’d been completely caught off guard, and was so incredibly embarrassed – my first three stage sets had gone off without a hitch. After I regained my composure a bit, we walked off stage back to our Green Room (a staging room where dancers wait until their turn on the stage or clean up after their set).
When I got back into the Green Room, more emotion. There was a cake and balloons, and a banner that read “Good Luck” spread across one of the walls. We’d never done this for anyone on their last day before. Not that I recalled anyway, and I knew that this was “out of the ordinary” special. I couldn’t help but stand there and bawl my eyes out like a little baby. Our house mother made a short speech about how much they’d enjoyed working with me and that I’d be sorely missed. Everyone applauded.
Strippers have a reputation for being backstabbers, especially with respect to each other. Everyone in the club is in competition with everyone else for those hard-earned dollars. Symbiotic relationships, when they come about, are generally developed out of necessity rather than any semblance of friendship. I was different, though. (To be fair, so were several other dancers). I went out of my way to be friendly with everyone; I took new dancers under my wings and coached them about how to fit in and not piss off the others. I had helped many of the dancers with advice when they had questions about sex or sexuality, including “how-to” advice, as well as helping many of them deal with their first same-sex attractions (a very common experience in an all-girl environment that is as sexually charged as ours is). I had transcended the stereotypical dancer image and I was just now realizing how unique that made me among my peers. I’d never given it much thought before now; it was just who I was.
As we ate on the cake, several of the girls came up and hugged me, told me they loved me, and wished me the best of luck. Melissa, a stunning 19 year old who was as naïve as they come when she auditioned, came up and thanked me for taking her under my wings for the first few nights she worked. She’s one I know who’d not have made it had I not helped her out. Not to brag on my own abilities, but I know that none of the other dancers would’ve helped her out, and she was a lost as a baby kitten without its mother when she walked through those doors that first night. I taught her how to give a lap dance, how to hustle, and got her started on the pole. She’d found her footing and was becoming a much more confident salesperson for herself. She gave me a little present that turned out to be a package of pretty stationery.
And there was Aurora, the 34 year-old corporate attorney by day, dancer by night. I never really got to speak to her much in the almost four years I’ve been here, and I was dying to know why she worked as a stripper with a job as an (theoretically high-paid) attorney. She enjoys the attention she says. She finds dancing freeing. She had an absolutely tight body and spent her off time in the gym; she was one of those high-energy, high-drive individuals that just never stopped. We were never close, but she told me she’s admired me from afar, and it really struck her how I went out of my way to look out for others in the club. There weren’t too many people like that in any club, she says. I, too, had admired her because she was a strong woman, and I knew she wasn’t dancing just to make money, but because she enjoyed what she was doing. It was her release, and she truly wouldn’t be seen as someone who had to dance to make ends meet.
And then there was Sandy. Technically, this was the girl who made me a whore. A year or so ago, she came up to me and said she’d heard that I really knew what I was doing when it came to going down on another girl. Allegedly, she’d heard this from one of the other dancers Nikki and I had played with in the past. Sandy wanted to find out for herself. She wanted me to fuck her in a room off the Green Room. So I did. After she’d had her second orgasm, she got dressed and pulled out a $100 bill and handed it to me, telling me she wanted me to be “her whore;” I’d earned it. From that point forward, whenever Sandy wanted to get off at work, she’d always ask me to take care of it. She never paid me again, though. Sandy came up and gave me a long, passionate kiss, followed by a big hug. “I sure have enjoyed you. I hope you can come back to see us when you make it back to Florida.”
I spent the rest of my shift receiving well wishes from other coworkers, club staff and a few of my regulars that had come by to say good bye. I took the $600 I’d earned thus far and distributed it to the various people I usually tip following work. Our house mom, an outstanding, gracious, but stern woman who kept the girls in check and mediated the little spats that arose over customers, clothing, who got to use the bathroom first, etc. Our makeup girl, whose services I rarely used. But she did do touchup work on me from time to time, and she made all of her money from tips. Some girls tipped better than others. I gave her $100 tonight and told her to treat herself to something special for a change. She was speechless.
I went out and hugged our DJ, Jazzy. He’d always helped the girls out with mixing their songs like they wanted rather than like he wanted. Sadly, that isn’t the norm – most DJs mix songs the way they want them or they weren’t incredibly adept at mixing to begin with. And I thanked him for causing me to cry and fuck up my last dance! 
Then there were our three security guys who, on more than one occasion, had saved someone from having his ass kicked by me. Guido (No, I’m not kidding) told me if I *ever* needed anything to let him know. He was as big as a house, but had a tender heart and the patience of a saint. It took a lot to piss him off, but God help you if you did. These guys did yeoman’s work and, insofar as I know, only one girl was ever seriously injured while they were there (and that was out in the parking lot by an ex-boyfriend). They always, always had a kind word to say when you came to work every day. I called them the Three Musketeers because they were always on shift at the same time – they seemed like brothers, even though they weren’t related.
Normally, I work until 2AM on Sunday nights, but with everything going on and my mental state, I just couldn’t get back into the groove of things. So I hung out in the green room and watched the other dancers ply their trade for a while; it was interesting to actually sit and watch the interaction between the dancers and the customers. Other dancers who’d been committed in the VIP Room during the earlier festivities would pass through and wish me well as the minutes ticked by. That and grab some cake, of course.
I spent my last few there minutes cleaning out my locker and waiting for Nikki for finish up with the cashier, just staring around at the girls moving through, conversing with one another about customers, boyfriends, dealers, or whatever else had captured their attention at the moment. It all seemed so surreal.
I will miss this. I will miss the aura of the club. I will miss having this as one of the main foci of my life. And, most importantly, I will miss the wonderful women I’ve worked with here. Strippers get a bad rap from a variety of sources. But some of these women are absolutely incredible, warm, thoughtful, brave, conscientious beings, and I’ll sorely miss their spirit.
I collected my stuff and we walked out the back door toward my car. I couldn’t look back. I went home, took a quick shower to wash the club funk off of me, and crawled into bed. A few minutes later Nikki joined me. She wrapped her arms around me. “You’re such a special person.” I squeezed her hand in acknowledgment.
It was a lot more emotional than I thought it was going to be.
Posted by Alexa | Filed Under Alexa
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3 Responses to “Last Dance”
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You continue to surprise me, Alexa…
- nina
Wow, I’m really sorry I didn’t live in - or visit - FL while you and Nikki were dancing together. I’m sure I would’ve asked for a dance or two, or 20….
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