Club Xtasy was a smallish single-story, flat roofed building in the shadow of Interstate 5. It stood a block away from the cement banks of the LA River and next door to a chroming shop. Directly across the street was a ancient print shop full of giant machines that stamped out flyers for illegals to place on car windshields. This was the perfect titty-bar neighborhood, light industrial, old, run down but not a ghetto. On the border between Silver Lake and Atwater, which meant both communities could frequent it, but neither had to claim it. To class the joint up, Uncle Manny, the owner had the bright idea of putting plaster replicas of Greek sculptures along the top of the building, Venus de Milo and her scantily clad sisters, all missing limbs. Statues of damaged girls outside, advertising damaged girls inside. The less than classy huge pink plastic letters on the side of the building screamed out “GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS” and “LIVE NUDE”, which begs the question, who the hell would pay to see a dead nude? Then again this was LA, they’d probably line up around the block just so they could say they’d seen it. Two planters in front of the door held dying palm trees. Not that the guys who come down here ever noticed. The working stiffs thought it looked good and the cats from the nice side of town were too busy trying not to be seen sneaking from their Lexus’ into the club, to ever notice the facade.
Moving through the turnstile into the dark club I was washed in the thumping bass of Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet”, “…I’m sorry momma, I never meant to hurt you…” The blonde monster sang. I slipped off my shades, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim shadows, outside it was mid day, but once you passed through that thinning velvet curtain it was permanent midnight. A short bar ran along the wall next to the entrance, it had room for three bar stools and a waitress station. The back bar was limited, nothing fancy, it was mostly a beer and whiskey crowd. Martini rat-pack madness had skipped the strip scene. Our boys wanted to get drunk, see some tits and ass, pay a filly to grind on their lap and blur on home like it was all real.
“Where’s Kelly?” I asked Turaj. He was at his station behind the bar, in his collar-less black silk shirt and slicked back hair he looked every bit the Mack Daddy pimp he thought he was. His Uncle Manny owned the joint, but when Manny was AWOL, gardening or watching his grand kids, Turaj was the big swinging dick. He wasn’t a bad kid at heart, he was just one of those pricks who acted like he thought a tough boss should act. He was always a little squirrelly with me because unlike the girls, I knew I worked for Uncle Manny and no one else. He tried to yank my chain once and almost lost an arm in the process, since then he plays nice.
“Fucking cunt walked out in the middle of her shift,” he said in a voice that crossed boredom and disdain perfectly.
“What did you just say?” I tensed, ready to jump over the bar.
“Fucking cunt walked…”
“Look around here, don’t look at me asshole, look around here.” I swept the room with my hand. “You see any cunts in here?”
“Fuck you Moses, what the hell? You going all feminist on me?” He puffed up trying to hold my eyes, but couldn’t. “It’s just talk Moses, you know talk? Your girl, she bailed and left me without a waitress. It’s bad enough she doesn’t take her clothes off, but now she won’t even serve drinks? If we get a rush I’m screwed.”
I’m not sure what I expected, I told her fifteen minutes over an hour ago. I could go blasting out after her, chase her down and let her tell me all about her drama. Or I could have a cold one and try and slow the drum squad in my skull.
“Give me a draft,” I told Turaj, he seemed relieved to see I wasn’t going to give him any more stress. Taking a sweet deep swallow, I turned my back on him and scanned the room. On the center stage in the middle of the room China was wiggling her way out of a leather mini-skirt. She was a hard-bodied Asian girl with the best tits money could buy, not those gaudy old school balloons, her store-boughts were round and swooping like soft flesh ski slopes up to her perky nipples. The surgeon screwed up when he moved her nipples, so now she had no sensation, but damn they looked good. A ranked teen tennis pro at one time, her father put a racket in her hand as a child and pushed all the way. China hit the age of consent and decided to show her old man a thing or two. Eighteen months ago she had been a young woman on fire to prove something to the world. Her parents sealed her off like a room they would never enter again. Now she was just another girl working for tips, trying to get through with a minimum of pain. Stripped down to a G-string and prancing around the stage, you might even think she was enjoying herself if you didn’t make the mistake of looking too close. Odd thing about LA you can show guys a topless girl and sell him all the booze he can drink, but if that same girl slips off her G-string, you can’t sell booze. I guess there is some fear that if a drunk man sees naked poontang he will go wild and take out a city block trying to get at it.
China had her story, every other girl had one just as twisted. The deal was, if the customer bothered to ask, they were all college gals working their way to a degree in child development or nursing or some other non- threatening all-giving career. I knew this one Lithuanian broad, got a square to front her six grand for tuition. She split for Vegas the next day. Hey man, if you believed a single word spoken on this side of the curtain, you got what you deserved. We were in the business of selling fantasies, if booze and naked bodies blurred that simple truth, screw you. The world is made up of hookers, John’s, pimps and bouncers. You pick your role and play it best you can even if the deck is stacked against you.
Tits, yabows, massive ta-tas, the guns of Navarone, chee-chees, tetas, mountains, sweater meat, orbs, melons, boobs, knockers, mammary glands, fleshy fun bags, cleavage valley. Oh that I go through the valley of the tits I shall fear no evil for I’m a man. A couple pounds of flesh and men fall apart. Big ones little ones it don’t matter, tits, “size just doesn’t matter it’s all about the shape.” “More than a handful’s a waste”, hell I like two handfuls. Maybe we all want to get back to our mother, suckle at the breast of our childhood. If that bitch crawled out of the grave, came to me and opened her shirt, I’d close my eyes, turn and walk away. There never was any succor there, never was any peace at those tits. She taught me a valuable lesson when I was little. If things are bad now, they can always get worse. Things never change for the better. I hear some mommas say to their babies, “Don’t worry baby it’ll be alright”. That wasn’t mine. Momma you said, “If it’s going bad, it’s probably something you did. Something you did against God and Christ.” Religion was a hammer used to make me feel shitty. Tits? No tits in the bible, no sir. So who the fuck wants to read that book.
I was jarred from my gentle childhood reminiscence by a Mutt and Jeff pair of pimped up Armenian thugs stepping out of the private lap dance room. The little one looked around the club with the cold smile of ownership. It was an arrogance I was used to in Glendale, hell they owned that town, they puffed up and you got out of their way or got run over. But these punks were two miles across the border that we all knew Armenians didn’t cross, at least not strutting their junk. My boss was from Iran and didn’t truck with the Armenian gangsters. They had their own gentleman’s club down by the old Southern Pacific tracks in Glendale, it was my job to gently point them in that direction, draw a map on their face if that’s what it took.
The punks stopped in front of the stage and leered up at China as she slid her ass up along the pole. The skinny little rat-faced one beckoned with a crooked finger for China to come over to the rail. She looked off balance as she danced up to him. She leaned down to hear what he was whispering. His hand shot out and slid up her leg, two fingers stroked her G-string. Shock flitted across her face. I started to push off from the bar but Turaj caught my arm.
“Let it be, they’re good guys,” he said, not meeting my eyes. The skinny punk stepped back from the stage sniffing his fingers and laughing to his huge partner who only returned a stone stare. Whoever had worked them in the lap room hadn’t come out yet. The girls always beat the men out of there, if the guy still had some cash they might come out on his arm, if not they ran for the dressing room to smoke or drink or do whatever it took to wash away the feeling. I moved quickly but without hurry toward the lap room. The bouncer’s strut is a trick of moving rapidly without drawing attention, from the belt up you have to look like there isn’t any place you need to be, while you move your legs fast.
The Lap Dance salon is a small back room lined with mirrors, floor to ceiling. It had six raised booths with chairs in them where men sit and get friction dances. Piper was sitting in one of the chairs, reflected on three sides by the mirrors. Her flame-red hair flowed down her back like a burning waterfall. She had on a tube top that was being stretched beyond the suggested limits of its elasticity, her muscular shoulders gleaming in the dim light and her long powerful legs spilling out of her silk tap pants. She’d been in the game long enough not to cry, but I could see the flicker of pain and fear behind her eyes.
“What’d they do to my lil’ girl?” I said. She looked up at me, hesitating. “If you don’t tell me, I can’t fix it.”
“God damn son of a bitch…the little pencil dick wants a grand a week or…” She didn’t need to finish it. Whatever they said they were going to do to her was ugly and painful. Had to be to scare a pro like Piper.
