Free Girl, Undressed: On Stripping in New York City by Ruth Fowler Page A

water torture. Brenda wears brown tweed and shoulderpads. I spend an hour playing solitaire on the computer. The phone rings.
    “Hello, Star Skivvies. How may I help you?”
    A quavering voice trembles across the line.
    “It’s Po-lly. Who’re you? I don’t know your voice. Who are you?”
    I put the call on hold and tell Brenda that it is Polly. She mouths (using accompanying hand gestures) that I should tell Polly, one of their clients, a Texan septuagenarian millionairess living in New York, that her nurse, Ramona, had gone to the hospital to have a cyst removed from her inner thigh and that Nurse Gloria would be caring for her today. Charades over, Brenda resumes instant messaging with Leroy in the PR Department, on the next desk. I go back to the call.
    “Hi, Polly, Ramona can’t make it today . . .”
    “I know, but I don’t want a noo nurse, I jes’ want my Ramona or nobody, young lady . . .”
    There is a scuffle in the background. A croaky male voice yells, “Is she young? Good lookin’? Ready fer anythin’?”
    Polly’s voice tremulously reemerges.
    “ Shurrup, Bill. That’s ma husband. Tell me, young lady, this Gloria, is she . . . black? ”
    “Erm . . . no?”
    “Wa-all, I guess I kin have a noo nurse jes’ fer one day. I’m jes’ worried about the time it takes me to open the door. It takes me a real long time to open the door. What if I spend all that time gettin’ to the door, and she ain’t there no more?”
    I check the time. 10:20 A.M. Gloria is scheduled to arrive at 11:00 A.M.
    “Polly, tell you what, how about you set off for the door now, and by the time you get there, she’ll probably be standing on the doorstep waiting for you.”
    “Oh. I guess. Oh. I’ll get up now. Oh it hurts. Oh the pain . . .”
    I hang up.
    Star Skivvies prides itself on its staff-selection process, which is, according to the website, “likened to Fort Knox” in its ability to filter out “smokers,” “those with fake documentation,” “illegals,” and other “undesirables.” How they managed to miss the chain-smoking illegal on the front desk answering the phone for ten bucks an hour with a fake SS number and no work visa is anyone’s guess.
     
    Back in Brooklyn. “How the hell you manage to get that job?” Raoul inquires as he tenderly cradles his scrotum and holds aloft a Bud Light glistening with dew, standing in the doorway of my room wearing a pair of graying boxer shorts that are disturbingly full. His attitude had changed. He was now playing the role of concerned parent, plying me with beer and food when I stepped into the apartment, telling me about the JAP he was fucking, carefully watching my inscrutable face for signs of interest. He was not used to women ignoring his charms. He was coiled, ready to snap, but he was admirably controlling his temper and his sexual frustration. I didn’t trust Raoul. I look at him sideways. He assumes a vacant expression.
    “Craigslist.”
    He grunts, amused, hands me a beer.
    “So what’s the plan now? Stay there until the visa comes through?”
    “Well, I guess. They pay me in cash, which is nice. But I’m still trying to write more articles for other newspapers. I was going to do a piece on illegal sex workers, sex trafficking—that kind of stuff. Going over to a stripclub at the weekend to speak to some of the girls. To be honest, I think I’d rather be a fucking stripper than work with Brenda.”
    Raoul looks at me and laughs.
    “You ain’t got the titties for that one, girl. Good job as well. You don’t wanna be one of them fucking hos. You wanna watch Hiroshima mon amour with me afore I get back in the box?”
    We sit on the sofa wrapped in a duvet. I feel defiant. I didn’t, have never, liked being told what I can’t do. You’ll never get to Cambridge, they said back home, because people didn’t, not from my town, not to read an arty-farty subject like English Literature. I don’t like being told what I can’t do. I