Free Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana Page A

fence.
    The parking lot is full of old camper trailers and station wagons loaded down with hastily packed possessions—clothes stuffed in plastic trash bags, pots and pans in cardboard boxes, heaps of grotty toys.
    I flick on the light, a single lightbulb screwed into an ancient four-bulb ceiling fixture. The room is just as depressing as the scene outside. I should have asked to see it first, but I was in such a panic from seeing the accident I didn't think. Cigarette burns pock the bedspread and the television cable is torn from the wall. Fist-sized dents mark the plaster walls, and the door has no chain, sliding bolt, or deadlock.
    That the Reagan-era bone-colored telephone works seems a miracle. I punch my calling card numbers on the sticky gray pushbuttons. Now I'm only eleven digits from home. Randy picks up on the first ring, which makes me smile.
    "You took the phone into bed, didn't you?" I say after I hear his eager hello.
    "Are you kidding? Of course I did. How are you? Where are you?
    "I'm in Pueblo. At the Misery Motel," I crack, trying to come across light. I don't want to sound like a girl crying to Daddy because she skinned her knee.
    "Are you going to be okay staying there?"
    "Mmm, yeah," I fib, not wanting to alarm him.
    He sounds assured, ready to shift gears. "How'd you do tonight?"
    "Oh, you would not believe it. Awful! Awful, awful, awful. Like two hundred bucks and I think I did better than anyone there."
    "Of course you did!"
    Aww!
    I hear a whisper of sheets. He's changing position. "So," he hesitates, "did you meet anybody?"
    Meet anybody? Oh, the poor guy. I'm not the only one having a tough night.
    "No"—I drop my voice down to the comfort register—"of course not. I miss you and I'm sorry you're not here."
    "I love you,"
    "Love you, too."
    "Miss you,"
    "Same here."
    "Bye."
    How strange those words sound. So safe. Routine. Simple. They make the distance between us seem greater. I place the receiver back in the cradle. A seam of icy white shines between the stiff, nicotine-stained drapes.
    Love you. Miss you. Bye.
    Perched warily on the side of the bed, I hear the generator hum from the crash site. The air in the room tastes like suicide. I feel a guilty stab of self-recrimination about the awfulness of the room, the guiltiness magnified by the absurdity of such a feeling when there's a dead person lying two hundred yards away.
    I find my bearings and regroup. I cannot spend the night here alone. I will find a nicer place up the road and leave for Las Vegas first thing in the morning.

FIVE

Las Vegas, Nevada
    Susan Sontag is wrong—there is only taste, and Vegas. It's a 24-7 excursion of neon-lashed moral vacuity, God bless it, and no place typifies the soul of this town—or lack thereof—better than Cheetah's. Every man I know who's been there—whether he's infatuated with strippers or is the more common curious skeptic—has had an absolute blast, so I figure why not me, too? Cheetah's was made famous as the nudie springboard for Nomi Malone, the googly-eyed sex whippet in the film Showgirls. But it's not a fully nude club, as I discover. In fact, dancers at this open-24-hours establishment have to wear two g-strings, to keep any errant pubic hairs from peeking out and giving pissed-off vice cops an excuse to yank the club's liquor license.
    If you want to work in a strip club or a casino in Las Vegas, you need a sheriffs card. To get a card, a club has to hire you and give you an application signed by a manager. Then you bring your paperwork and I.D. down to the office on Fremont Street, take a number, and wait. And wait. Standing in line, number in hand, with all the aspiring blackjack dealers, casino maids, and bartenders, the strippers are easy to spot—we're the only ones in full hair and makeup at nine in the morning. The reason why the line is slow goes something like this: "I'm sorry, Mr. McGilicuddy, but you need to list all of your arrests in the past seven years. You only listed