(What follows is too long. It's a conversation with a stripper that took place in Amsterdam at 1 a.m. 24.6.04.)
Isis Alize is the soon to be legal name of Katherine Lorna Jones. Born in Reno to a mother who was screwing around and a father who didn’t find out he was a
father until she was six years old, Isis is 22 years old. Her pregnant mother befriended one of the
customers where she was waitressing in Reno
and he began to take care of her. She,
honoring his altruistic intentions, began sleeping with him. Christina was born and raised Mormon like her
mother, her father and her new stepfather. At age 6, her step father moved them to a little house in Maui. She painted pictures- a picture of dolphins
and planets- undoubtedly terrible art, but on the strength of this painting she
won artist of the month at a local paper. She felt, she still feels, quite devastated that this painting was
stolen. She lost interest in painting
and took up the new hobby of fibbing to her parents.
She ran away from home her senior year and joined the army
shortly thereafter.
This is not how the conversation started. It was around 11:30 at Bob’s Youth Hostel in
Amsterdam and I was thinking that maybe I’d drink enough 1 euro Heineken to
fall asleep in my uncomfortable fourth floor bed where I shared a room with
forty other tenants.
Hollandhad beaten a miserable Latvian football team 3-0 so there wasn’t much hotly
debated Euro Cup talk. I was talking to
Michi, my new friend from Munich
who was trying to pony up enough dollars to live in Amsterdam
and continue his education, when I noticed this very American looking blonde
sitting diagonally across from me at the blocky wooden tables in the basement
of the hostel. She was wearing a pink
sweat suit and a very purple trench coat. She made very friendly eye contact (a complete anomaly in a town like Amsterdam),
the kind you might make if you had a question about someone. She was also drinking hot chocolate, a
peculiar drink in this den of iniquity.
“You enjoying your hot chocolate?” I asked, trying not to sound creepy.
“Yes. But only cause
I hate beer.”
I thought of my first night in Amsterdam when an gangsta looking Morrocan walked past me.
“You need any cocaine.”
”No, man. I’m good.” Cocaine? What the fuck, I thought this was a weed town.
“If you’re good, why are you here?” His accent was a little thick for me to know
whether the ironic word play was intended but his aggressiveness harshed my
mellow after I had already indulged in a couple of joints after getting off the
train.
Now I was three or four days into my visit but still turning over the question,
“if you’re good why are you here?’ over and over.
She said her name was Isis. (“Like the Egyptian Goddess?” “I guess.”)
She said she was from Hawaii. She was a stripper in Las Vegas on vacation. Had spent two years in the army. She’d had a child that she’d given up for adoption. She’d been discharged from the army for shin
splints. She had $35,000 dollars in the
bank in savings. These were things she
offered up in the first moments of our conversation.
I told her that I thought she was very friendly
“Stripping has given me a chance to learn excellent people
skills.”
She talked about stripping with such a matter-of-factness that it really
alarmed me. She asked me where I was
from and when I said that I was going to school in Florida she said that she had danced in Daytona at a Bike-a-Thon.
“They dance totally nude which is weird for me because I
don’t like to put my clean pussy on your dirty pants.” She said pussy in a way that seemed odd to
me- not sexual or obscene- the way I’d say elbow or chin. She explained as she touched my jeans in a
very friendly, but not too familiar way, that denim, seems, and buttons can
scratch nipples and chafe thighs during lap dances. So she ingeniously devised a way to gover a
guys groin (“his pup tent”) with a piece of rabbit fur, better for him, better
for her.
She spoke more about stripping apparently unconcerned with
how much or how little I was enjoying the conversation- she said she was looked
down upon by other members of her field for her very unprofessional habit of
making small talk with customers before she’d give lap dances. Standard Operating Procedure, according to
her, is a quick smile and a “Want a Dance?”
That wasn’t for her- too much ‘hustling’ so she began just talking topless to
people sometimes for an hour without doing any dancing. She worked out a saying- after six to ten
minutes of small talk- she’d say,
”I’ve really enjoyed talking to you but I am working tonight so if you’d like
to dance we can continue our conversation over there otherwise if you could tip
me for our time together, I’d appreciate it.”
She had a beaming smile. But she wore no make up. She
didn’t drink. She didn’t do drugs. I was wondering if she was going to tell me
that she’d enjoyed conversing with me and asking if I’d like to pay to continue
having it somewhere else..
”Tell me about the military.”
“Well I was actually in ROTC in high school and I thought,
you know, never-gag-but then I ran away from home for the last six months of
school so I missed all the application deadlines for college. I was an A student.”
I believed it. She seemed to be
determined to be in control of this conversation. Of how I perceived her.
“Hey, if anything I ask you is out of bounds, you’ll tell
me, okay?”
”Sure.”
“Why’d you run away from home?”
”My stepdad was bothering me.”
“Bothering you?”
”Molesting basically. No
penetration. I went to tell my Mom about
it but she told me that my stepdad had been abused as a child. So she sort of rationalized his behavior,
plus I wasn’t his kid, I wasn’t blood you know?”
”Fuck.”
”So I ran away and suddenly, I fell in love with the army recruiter. He was beautiful- part Japanese, so he had
these cool eyes, not slanty eyes, you know but just gorgeous. And I told him that I liked him and he
started talking about regulations and how he had to be three months away from
this duty before he could see anybody he’d recruited so I went off to Basic
Training.”
”How was that?”
”I got ate up.”
”What’s that?”
”In the army, you can either get ate up or you can be squared away. If you’re getting ate up then they say
‘you’re getting ate up- you better focus and get your shit together so you can
be squared away.’ It sucked.
It did. But I was in
two years and able to get my honorable discharge. I have a rare condition known as shin
splints. I was also pregnant but I was
discharged for shin splints. I entered
the army as a virgin in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I will tell you without bragging that I was
the best looking woman on the base. I
didn’t get along with other women in the army. I mean I was nice to them but before I’d ever been with a single man
ever they were already starting rumors about what a slut I was so little by
little I started trying stuff and, fuck, there are some hot guys in the
army. And I had my pick so I just went
on doing my thing in Missouri,
and then Georgia and then I got discharged and moved to Seattle with my
real dad. I couldn’t tell my mom, she’s
Mormon, plus it’s like now that I’m gone the family is perfect now. Those get everything- my mom couldn’t ever
pick me up after school so I could do drama and speech and debate but for them
she’s a soccer mom. Even my step dad has
shaped up- it’s no fair though, you know? I got A’s and these kids got C’s.”
I’m reminded of the fact that while she talks about these things like they’re
ancient history everything she’s says has an absolute bearing about how she
feels about herself. She’s not angry
about the person she is, but she knows that under different circumstances she’d
be leading a much different life.
“So I moved in with my father in Seattle. Near Seattle. I liked being pregnant but I didn’t like
having a child at 20. I gave the baby up
for adoption- through an agency. I can
still be in his life, you know- it takes 10 years to adopt an American baby? Black market, I could’ve sold that baby for
100k. Easy. I wouldn’t, but sometimes I think about it.
“After the baby was gone I was going to night school sixty
miles from the Wal-Mart where I was working for $7.25 an hour. In this class I was taking for electrical
engineering there was this boy in it and he really built me back up. I wasn’t feeling good about myself. I had a belly from the baby-I still have it.”
And with that she shows me a handful of flab from her midsection. I was surprised considering her profession.
“He found out I was working at Wal-Mart and he was like, ‘What
are you doing, you’re so beautiful, why don’t you strip for a while, make some
fast money- get in, get out, you know? I
told him I didn’t feel very good about myself because the baby was only six
months ago and so he took me to a strip club. Well, I was better looking than
all of them-”
She broke off
quickly, looking for a girl to compare herself to but was amazed that only men
were at this hostel.
“Different music and cuter guys and this place would be just
like the army. Anyway, you know how some
women are fives and some women are eights and some women are tens? Well I would say that 90% of the girls who
strip are less than eights. If I ran
those places I’d never hire a girl who wasn’t at least an eight, right?”
So what are the men like, I asked.
“You tell me. What do
you think they’re like?”
I speculated that among the regulars they were over forty, on the heavy side,
lonely.
“You’re correct up to a point. There are very few regulars at a strip
club. We hate them anyway- because they
are just there to drink; they’d never pay for a dance. But there aren’t a lot of people who own up
to being steady customers at strip clubs. The most times anybody ever told me he’d come to a place was five. But I got really good- good at small talk,
good at dancing, good at hustling- all of it. I mean, I’ve had a couple of bad experiences-
here’s one: it was my second day and I
hadn’t learned how to hustle yet and the night was really slow. I’d made like $60 and I hadn’t even broken
even with the club which charged a $150 fee- a cut. So there are these four Mexicans. I hate Mexicans. Let me be more specific: there are black
people and there are niggers, there are white people and there’s white trash,
there are Mexicans and there are Beaners. Beaners are the worst. For
starters, they don’t speak English- or they pretend they don’t so when they put
their hands on you they don’t understand when you tell them to get them
off. Hey, I understand when a guy
touches my thighs or my lower back when I’m dancing- but grabbing my tit, my
ass, lifting my g-string and trying to… this is not acceptable, okay? NO. And
the licking, if it passes in front of their face they’re going to try to lick
it. I’ve had my elbow licked, my back,
the top of my ass, it’s disgusting.
That and the two for ones. Mexican guys, excuse me, Beaner guys are always trying to haggle with
you- two for ones and such. And then
they pretend they don’t understand when it’s time to pay.
So this night, I’m working. My second night ever, there’s an hour left and I’m still $90 out of
pocket for going to work and then there are these four Beaners and I make the
small stock and they say they want two for one. I say I’m already out $90, they say if I do
two two for ones I’ll make a hundred and I’ll be in the black. So I agree and I take the first ones over to
the sideroom and he’s touching me, and he’s licking me, and I’m warning him but
he’s pretending he doesn’t understand so finally I just get up and I dance
facing away from him, not even touching him. So I turn around and he’s got his thing out. And he’s jerking off. Well, that’s not allowed. I could get fired and he could get in trouble
so I come over and I sort of wrap my teddy around him to screen him from the
bouncers and like that! He came all over me. I was so pissed. I lied and told
him that this was my only outfit and that he had to give me some extra money to
pay for it but he pretended not to understand. So then when I went to change he laughed and
said I still had to dance for his three friends. I got this huge bouncer and he picked the guy
up out of the chair and threw him and his friends out. And he punched that Beaner in the face for
me.
Sorry. Anyway,
getting back to my story, the guy I was living with in Seattle was little by little trying to push me into hooking. “Honey, you’re so good you can’t possibly
give it away for free,” you know, that kind of stuff so eventually I had enough
money from stripping that I moved away from him because I felt like he was sort
of pushing hard for me to let him pimp me. So I moved to Las Vegas by
myself where I’ve been for the last nine months.”
I tell her about a thing I’m writing about a prostitute who is very good at
what she does- considers herself a valuable commodity- like a sports car. The girl in the piece has no qualms with what
she does because she’s so good at it. I
ask her what she thinks.
“I can see that. I
feel like that. Like a sports car. Here, lean a little closer.” And I do and she says more quietly, “because
I’ve done that.”
She takes a deep breath. The noise in the hostel has been constant, different languages from
every direction.
“Here it is. Once you’ve
been stripping a while it is impossible to avoid getting asked the question:
what would it take for you to come home with me? Now, I figured it wasn’t for me so I invented
a number that would scare people off so when someone says, ‘Come home with me,’
I’d say, ‘Sure, give me a grand.’ That
ends the conversation. But one time
there’s this really hot Chinese guy and he’s only been in the club about five
minutes so I don’t have time to get a read on him. And that’s a skill I’ve got from stripping,
from the army, from my teachers at the Mormon school. I want to call it the Holy Spirit but I don’t
think it’s really the Holy Spirit just a reading you get off people as to
whether or not they’re all right. So
this guy’s talking to me five minutes and he’s hot and he asks me to come home
with him. I say a grand. He says okay and puts a thousand dollar bill
in front of me. Just like that. Well this guy is hot and Asian, and I love
Asians- I love how respectful and friendly they are and I figure I’d probably
have had sex with the guy for free. So I
do it. And all of a sudden I’m sort of
on the guy’s arm for a while- at a thousand bucks a night. Turns out the guys a Whale. You know what that is? Okay, a Whale is like a high roller who is
more than a high roller- the kind of guy casinos are trying to get. The Whales have private V.I.P. everything-
their own rooms in restaurants, special suites you can’t even rent no matter
what you pay the casinos.
Well, the guy asked me if I might be willing to do some work
with some of his friends- when he’d come in on business. Other huge rollers. I said fine but that we had to set it up like
a date- dinner, then back to their place, I do pretty much whatever they wanted
and then I left in the morning. Again,
the guys were good looking, I had control, people were respectful and I got a
grand. And it was during this time that
I met my boyfriend at the strip club.
I never imagined I’d meet a guy at work, I mean c’mon it’s a
strip club but Matt came in like a regular for a while, super super good
looking Korean guy- 33, and there alone, never in a big party. I’d try to talk to him but he’d always
politely put me off.
‘Go make some money’
I was very attracted to him and couldn’t figure out why this
black belt jujitsu gorgeous guy was hanging out at my strip club. So I asked him out and he said he’d had his
heart broken by a couple of girls who’d fucked him around five years ago and
wasn’t looking for a relationships. But
whatever, I started seeing him more and more. I started turning down money to see him. I couldn’t believe that I could like a guy enough where I take the night
off to be with him while he was in town.”
How does he feel about your hooking?
“He doesn’t care. He
knew from the start. The other guy, the
Whale, he pretty much introduces us. Anyway, we’re swingers.”
I had told her from the outset that I was recently engaged but the swinger
comment took me aback. I tried to
explain how I liked polyamory conceptually but didn’t understand how it could
play out in a long term relationship.
“Oh I think that’s true with most guys- every guy can handle
two girls at once, but can you watch your wife get taken from behind by another
man- and being happy because she’s just loving it?”
I tried to explain that that wasn’t what I meant but I was, to my chagrin,
obviously creeped out by where the conversation had arrived. I tried again with a different tact.
So what now? What’s
next?
”Well, I’ve got 35 grand in the bank and I need a break so I’m off from Amsterdam to see Europe and Asia for a few
months and then I’m going to start a photo studio. I’m very good with make up and photography
and I figure- like a glamour shots sort of thing. Look at me now, no make up- I’m still pretty-
but look here.”
She took out her driver’s license from
Hawaii. She was pretty like runners up in beauty
pageants are pretty. You noticed the
effort.
Hey, I said, your names still Katherine Lorna Jones.
”I know, but when I get back to the states I get to pick up my new birth
certificate and from then on I’m legally Isis Alize.
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