“Do you have cash?” I ask him.
“Of course,” he says.
“Perfect,” I say, and he follows me through the club, weaving through the drunk people standing around, staring at the stage. When we get to the lap room, he pulls out his card.
“Sorry darling, it’s cash only,” I say.
“Oh, right. Well I’m going to need to get some cash out then,” he says. I curl my toes in my heels. I seem to have this interaction on a nightly basis.
A few months ago this wouldn’t have been a problem, but now the club won’t let me take payments on my phone anymore, so everything has to be through the ATM. They think they’re going to make more money from the ATM fees but they don’t know that slowing down the process of booking a dance is actually costing them money. In the time it takes me to wait in line with a customer at the ATM, watch him fumble with his card, and then watch the money spurt out of the machine, I could have finished a booking and brought a different customer into the lap room, putting more money into their till. The owners have never worn eight inch heels or stood in front of a stranger in a g string, they don’t know that when the customer says yes you have to go to the lap room right that second and process the payment before the fantasy has a chance to slip or the guy’s friend walks over and says “no mate, don’t get a dance, it’s a waste of money”. Somehow my ten years working at dozens of clubs, dancing on hundreds of poles, and undressing in front of thousands of men means nothing. These people who just decided to open a strip club a few years ago know more about making money than I do, of course. I’m a stupid bimbo stripper after all, with no brains and no common sense. So I take him to the ATM and hope that he still wants to follow through with the booking even though the process is more complicated than just tapping a card.
I hate standing around waiting for customers to get cash out. It’s more time for me to think about the things that I hate about the industry, like being told I have to work certain nights, or getting asked over and over to post some stupid Instagram story that isn’t going to bring anyone into the club anyway.
I try not to think about anything. The customer hands me the cash and I do the dance. He asks me over and over again, “why don’t you have a boyfriend?”. What am I supposed to say? After leaving my ex boyfriend I don’t know if I could ever trust anyone again. I just giggle and say “I’m just having fun by myself” and ignore him when he keeps asking.
Once the dance is over I walk back out onto the floor. There’s a man in a puffer jacket sitting down on one of the couches, so I walk over to him.
“What are we celebrating tonight?” I ask.
“I’m on a family holiday,” he says, pulling his jacket closer around him, even though I’m the one wearing next to nothing in the middle of winter.
“I left my wife and kids at the hotel. I just needed some me time,” he says.
I smile and nod. I mustn’t say what I want to say.
“Look, I’m married. I love my wife, but we never have sex. Haven’t for years. I’m beginning to think I’ll never have sex again. I don’t know what to do, I really need it,” he says.
“She’s probably stressed,” I say. “Have you done anything to help her relax?”
“Yeah,” he says absent-mindedly, looking at my boobs.
“We’ll, let’s at least go have some fun while you’re here,” I say.
“Sure babe, how long for?” He asks, and I grimace at the “babe”, but I must keep smiling for the money.
“We can do an hour if you want,” I say.
“An hour would be great, yeah babe,” he says. He reaches for my butt, and I move his hand up to my back instead.
We walk into the room and I wonder how I’m going to deal with him for the next hour. He keeps talking about how hard the last few years have been for him, since he hasn’t been able to have sex with his wife.
“I just need something, you know?” He says, pointing at my chest.
He’s wearing footy shorts, so I manoeuvre around him differently. I don’t prop my knee up on his thigh like I would in any other dance. I don’t want to accidentally touch his junk, even through his shorts. That’s a drawback to working in Queensland - the dress code is a little more relaxed than the other states. I think back to one night at another club, years ago, when a man wore footy shorts into the venue. When he sat down in the tipping seats we could see his dick poking out of the polyester.
After a few minutes my bra is off and I sit in the space in front of his crotch, facing away from him. He taps my nipples, quickly and gently, trying to arouse me. I’m not your fucking wife, I want to say, but I am quiet. I hate that customers can touch me in Brisbane. I think of the venues I’ve worked at in other states, and how I always felt like the distance was some magical gap where I could be a woman performing a striptease, instead of a thing they could grab and play with.
I used to be able to put my discomfort to the side and just deal with it, but it gets harder and harder these days. Sometimes I feel nauseous when they touch my nipples, and I can’t turn it off.
He writhes in his seat, telling me how badly he wants, no, needs it. I wonder if he’s even going to end up lasting the whole hour.
“You know I can only give you a lap dance in here, nothing more,” I say.
“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s just so hard.”
I nod and keep dancing. A minute later he tells me he needs a break, he’s worried he’s going to, “you know”.
We go back to the bar and he orders a drink. Once upon a time I would have asked the controller to pause our time, but I have no sympathy for this man. He orders a Jack Daniel’s and coke. I get a soda water with lime.
“Are you sure you don’t want a proper drink?” He asks.
“No thank you,” I say.
I think of the woman who birthed his children, now sitting alone in the hotel room. How there’s no way she could have left her family to go bar-hopping on a family holiday, no matter how much she needed “me time”.
We go back into the lap room. He keeps kissing my neck so I end the dance early. When I say “I told you you’re not allowed to kiss me” he says, “I know”. He walks back out with his head bowed and goes back to sitting on the couch.
I walk back out onto the floor, and tell myself better customers are coming. I stand in the corner and watch, waiting.