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

catch Raoul looking at me hungrily more than once, I don’t like people thinking they know me, my actions, but I stare resolutely at the movie, ignore a tentative hand on my knee, until I fall asleep and wake up in the morning, alone.
     
    Monday morning in the office. Brenda reveals to me a new gift—in the form of office attire, complete with shoulderpads.
    “I thought that you could do with some more suitable clothes. Maybe baggy combats aren’t the best wear for some of our more priority clients? We’re, like, the same size, right?”
    Brenda brandishes a size 16 jacket.
    Swamped in tweed, bolstered by shoulderpads, and inhaling the pungent stench of ozone and menopause, I commence my sentence. The phone rings.
    “Hello, Star Skivvies. How may I help you?”
    It is Polly, the septuagenarian Texan millionairess.
    “Who’s that? Who is it? Is that Brenda? ”
    “No, it’s Mimi. How are you, Polly?”
    Bill, Polly’s dearly beloved, passed away on Friday, presumably after overexposure to their noo “colored” nurse, Dotzy, from St. Lucia.
    “I’ve lost his teeth. They’re gone. That noo nurse stole ’em. Tell her to give ’em back. I need Bill’s teeth fer the funeral. I can’t bury him without his teeth . . .”
    She starts to weep hysterically. I switch to speakerphone. Brenda snickers cruelly before turning back to People magazine and a bumper packet of Twinkies, keeping one eye out for any new instant messages from Leroy in PR. I transfer Polly to the harassed office assistant, Sally-Jane. Sally-Jane is Brenda’s favorite target. She bears the brunt of the brutal and cutting instant messages that Brenda had honed to perfection after years of mastering the skilled art of office sadism.
    SJ. R U S2pid? Do u want 2 keep this job?
    Sally-Jane flutters anxiously.
    Have u put on w8?
    SJ palpitates visibly and retires to the photocopier. I had earlier informed Brenda that I possessed a debilitating and highly unpleasant bowel disorder that necessitates frequent hourly trips to the bathroom, thus ensuring my cigarette breaks go uninterrupted. Noting that I have twelve callers on hold, I decide it is prudent to exercise one of such breaks, and vanish to my usual spot outside Ground Zero.
    Returning to The Office, I am greeted by a sheaf of letters that have, yet again, failed to live up to the high standards set by Brenda and must be retyped for the sixth time. I surreptitiously click on the Internet while Brenda works industriously on her eleventh Twinkie of the day, and I start to write an e-mail. Instantly my IM flashes.
    R U on the internet?
    I close the window and return to correcting letterheads. Check the time. Reach, quietly, for my cellphone. The IM icon flashes.
    R U making personal calls?
    The phone rings.
    “Hello, Star Skivvies. How may I help you?”
     
    I arrive home that night to find that we had run out of toilet paper, we could no longer reach the bathroom because of the amount of trash piled in front of it, and the cat had developed unsightly dags all around its derriere. The musicians were nowhere to be seen. “Japan,” says Raoul vaguely from his horizontal position on my bed, presumably favoring it to his own. “On tour. We’re looking after the apartment.” We, this ubiquitous we. It makes me uncomfortable, though why I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t fucking him and had no intention of it, though I could, and probably would have, under less trying circumstances. I used to believe, once upon a time, that you should save yourself for the special ones, the ones you love, the ones you care about. Then when I left the old me behind, started to unleash this Mimi-monster lying sleeping within me, I stopped.
    I venture deeper into the apartment. A thick, fierce stench wafts up from some indefinable location, disseminated swiftly through the loft by the industrial heater blasting like a giant blow-dryer. I follow the aroma of poop to what is not, as I had thought in a brief moment of