Let Down Your Hair (21 page)

The keyboards at the internet cafe were gray with grime, and the keys felt warm, as though the fingertips that soiled them had just left. The warmth was repulsive but grounding, anchoring me to the desk chair beneath me, and the mouse rolling under my hand. Inside, me everything was vacant, as if my heart and brain had been unplugged and locked away.

I clicked on a real estate website and scanned their online rental application form. A trickle of fear began in my chest at the long list of things I didn’t have.
Current address. Cell number. Occupation
.
A deposit of one month
’
s rent
. With rubbery fingers, I opened a website with private ads for housemates. But without any income and no prior references, who was going to want me?

The trickle widening to a waterfall of panic, I went to a job-hunting website. I clicked on a link for a data entry job, and a registration form popped up, wanting my name and contact details. I could set up a webmail account on the spot, but I still needed a cell phone. Resolving to buy one when the shops opened tomorrow, I did a search for cheap accommodation.

As I scrolled down the list of youth hostels and boarding houses, I realized I was being watched. Behind my left shoulder, two teenage boys with their hair in waxy spikes were exchanging low-voiced commentary. When they saw I’d noticed them, they sniggered.

“So,” said the shorter one, “do you come here often?” His smirk stretched the pimples on his chin.

The taller one bent over in his swivelly chair, shaking with voiceless laughter. My toes curled inside my shoes. Pretending I hadn’t heard, I hitched my chair closer to the screen, unsettled and a bit confused by their attention. Before, I’d been invisible to men in these glasses and hand-me-down clothes. Why were these boys staring?

The shorter boy lounged against the desk beside me, and I turned my screen to block his view. He ambled to my other side and I stiffened as he draped his arm on the back of my chair. “Looking for a hotel, huh?” he said, in a voice that smelled of Coke and cheap pizza. “You’re welcome to stay at my place.”

His friend doubled over again, and I jerked my chair free of his arm.

“Excuse me,” I said, stony-faced and impregnable, “could you stop reading my screen?”

The boy widened his eyes. “Sorry, am I hassling you?” He turned back to his friend. “Am I hassling her?”

“No,” said his friend. “You’re offering to help her out.”

The first boy turned back to me. “Not very grateful, are you? Where’s your manners, gorgeous?”

Gorgeous. Beautiful
. Now I was homeless, pregnant and desperate, the thrill had faded from these words. They felt sticky and unwholesome, like cobwebs that spread more and more when I tried to brush them off.

I pressed
Print
, logged off, and strode over to the printer. When my pages emerged, I swiped them, paid at the desk, and walked straight out the door.

“Hey, where are you going?” called the boy as I yanked it shut behind me.

The convenience store two doors down had a payphone. I ducked behind the magazine rack and counted my fennel-scented money. Four hundred and thirty-two dollars. Enough for fifteen fruit salads, or one designer dress. I bought a city map, fed the change to the payphone and rang hostels, working up from the cheapest.

The third cheapest hostel had a vacancy I could have for two weeks. Long enough to buy a phone, and hopefully find a job, so I could get myself a permanent place to live. I unfolded the map and zipped the cash in my backpack.

The streets were dry and cool, and the pavements were teeming with people. I set out for the hostel, which was half an hour’s walk. As the blocks wore on, the crowds grew louder and drunker. A car horn honked a few feet from my ear. I jumped, and heard a volley of laughs and whistles from an old car with four youngish men hanging out the windows.

“Hey, hot stuff!” one shouted.

Head down, heart thumping, I walked faster and faster, and the car kept pace along the gutter. Andrea’s voice returned to my head, reciting advice from her classes in self-defense.
Men hassle women in the streets for a reaction, to feel powerful, and score points in front of their friends. Be boring, and most will just give up.

“Love the glasses. So what’s your number?”

If they persist, double back, or cross the road so they can
’
t drive beside you
. I did an about-face, ducked into the crowd and walked in the opposite direction. The car made a tire-screeching U-turn and kept pace with me on the other side of the street.

“Hey hot stuff, where ya going?”

Never lead them straight to your destination, especially if there
’
s no one there to meet you
.

“Are you running away from us?”

I turned up a one-way street, and the car screeched away with a shout of “Show us your tits!”

Wobbling like a broken chair, I took refuge in a doorway. When my limbs steadied, I returned to the road and walked on facing oncoming traffic until I came to a big T-junction. On the building opposite was a woman on a billboard, with her forearms crossed over huge, naked breasts. I checked my map and realized my hostel was in a lane off the main street that ran through the red light district.

Limp with fear, I fumbled for my printout of cheap city hostels. Most would be full on a Saturday night. If I didn’t ring ahead, I could end up walking from hostel to hostel all night. Without a cell phone, I’d probably be better off walking the last three blocks on this seedy but well-lit street.

Locking my hand around the straps of my bag, I stepped into the red light district. The names of the shops and venues were more tawdry than I remembered, and the women on the billboards had bigger breasts and lips, and more garishly unlikely fake tans. Below them, the pedestrians were almost all men, some furtive, some brash, some blasé.

More shouts and car horns floated my way, from cars and men passing in the street. Several admired my glasses and asked “What time’s your shift?”, presuming I was on my way to work. Eyes on the pavement, I walked at normal speed, and survived the first block intact.

Ten paces later, a venue called
French Kiss
disgorged a group of men in their thirties. Something about their belligerent, self-conscious swagger put me on my guard. They lingered just ahead of me, blocking my path and exchanging sniggering commentary on the show they’d just seen. I edged past, planning to cross the road, and a hand grabbed the straps of my bag. My back broke out in beads of sweat.

“‘Scuse me, princess,” said the owner of the hand, in a voice that smelled of lager and steak. He was wearing a business suit, with an off-center tie and a gravy smudge on his right lapel. A circle of male eyes slithered over my cowering body. “You work around here?”

“Let go of my bag.” I tried to sound firm, but the words came out in a quaver.

If someone grabs your bag
,
don
’
t pull it back, they expect that. Shove it toward them, and they
’
ll often lose their grip in surprise. If they do, snatch it back and run. If they don
’
t, sacrifice the bag. Nothing in it is worth getting assaulted for
.

“Me and my mates are looking for a good time.” He peered down my shirt, and I slammed the bag into him. Knocked off-balance, he released the bag, but another of his friends grabbed the strap. I let the bag go, dodged a lunging hand, stomped on an instep and bolted as they swore and gave chase. I steered through random laneways, dived through an open door and crashed into a woman in a shiny black dress.

“Settle down,” said the woman. She was sitting on a stool, stockinged legs crossed, jaw rotating around a wad of gum. Her hair was black and shiny too, a dyed blue-black that matched the heavy pencil round her eyes. “Got lost, didja?”

I stared at her, blood and breath pulsing behind my eyes.

She waved me at a chair and sauntered to a velvet-draped desk. “Sandi, right?”

“Sadie.”

Still listening for my pursuers, I sat. Long seconds passed. As my breathing slowed, I scanned my new surroundings. Black tiles speckled with silver. Low lights, red walls. Piles of shiny flyers that read
Wild Thing: OPENING NIGHT SPECIALS
. A huge suited man with a number in his buttonhole and a neck the same width as his head.

“I’m Dana,” said the woman, writing something in a clipboard and checking her leopard print watch. “So what happened, girlfriend? It’s twenty to eleven.”

Her plucked brows were arched, and her voice was disapproving.

“Sorry, I was just … some men stole my bag, and I … I was …”

Dana’s face changed from disapproval to outrage. “You got
mugged?
Jesus! Have you told the cops?”

“No, not yet, I was just—”

“Watch the door for a sec, Jay.”

The huge man nodded, and she beckoned me through a door into an office that smelled of new furniture. The small sense of security this provided cleared my head.
Sandi
, Dana had called me. As if she’d been expecting me, and some time ago.

“Jesus,” repeated Dana, shaking her head. “Sit down. You OK?”

“I’m fine.” Except for having no home, no money, and nothing but the clothes I stood up in. With the bag had gone the last of my money and saleable goods, so I now couldn’t pay for a hostel. Or even a meal to nourish me and the two tiny babies in my womb.

“Still wanna do your shift? I can put you on from eleven to three.”

Shift?
A poster on the wall caught my eye.
WANTED
, it read.
Performers, bar staff and waitresses for new adult venue. Industry experience preferred but not essential. Apply in person
.

The sweat on my body turned cold. “Actually,” I said, in a quavery voice, “I’m not Sandi. I’m not here to work.”

Dana’s rotating jaw went still. “Then what …”

“I was running away from the men who stole my bag, and I just … ducked in.”

Dana’s plucked brows descended, and her scarlet lips tightened. “Look, girlfriend, I’m sorry you got mugged, but this is a club, not a refuge, OK? Patrons and workers only. The cop shop’s a couple of blocks that way.”

She pointed into the night with a long scarlet fingernail. My legs turned to putty. If I didn’t leave, she’d throw me out. With no money, no home and those men still out there, angry and looking for revenge.

I groped for my voice and found a high-pitched squeak. “What if I … took the shift?”

Dana looked at me suspiciously. “You looking for work?”

“Yes.” Somewhere inside me, Andrea was screaming, but I fought her off with logic.
It’s only for one night. I’ll earn money, with security guards to protect me, and by the end it’ll be four hours nearer daylight.

“Stand up.”

I stood, and Dana appraised me. “You’ve got a good look.” She licked a taloned fingertip and took out a form. “Young, classy, nice rack. Any experience in the industry?”

The industry
. The words had a sinister ring. “Experience?”

“Stripping, pole dancing, burlesque.” Dana waved a hand, as if to indicate other things too obvious to mention.

Writing essays about pornography?
I swallowed a bubble of brittle laughter. A week ago I was living in a middle-class home with my grandmother. Sharing her luxury office. Doing a PhD in Women’s Studies. How could I be applying for a job in a strip club? It was ridiculous. Impossible. In a minute or ten I’d wake on the futon, and tell Ryan my dream so he’d laugh.

“I did a lingerie shoot, once.” It occurred to me that the lingerie shoot had been today.
Today
. It felt like it had happened in another world.

“No performance work?”

“No.”

“Have to put you on tables, then.” She made a note.

Tables. Waitressing, presumably. Four hours of waiting on tables in a strip club. I could handle that. Although …“Um, what do I wear? When I’m working?”

“Costumes are provided.”

Costumes. Not topless, then. Surely if it was topless she would have said so.

Dana handed me a pen and an Employee Registration Form. My first job. I remembered Andrea, sneering that Fran’s irresponsible parenting would end in Freya working as a pole dancer.
Half her luck
, I thought.
All your parenting got me was a waitressing job. Pole dancers probably get more.
“What’s the pay rate?”

“Twenty-five bucks an hour for table work. Plus tips. Is that cool?”

A hundred dollars. Enough for a cheap cell phone and a meal or two. “That’s fine.”

I entered my name as “Sadie Rusden”, with a made-up cell number and a random address in Ryan’s suburb. At the thought of Ryan, something lumpy and painful rose up in my chest, but I managed to flatten it again.

The next item asked for my banking details. “Um, sorry, but … I don’t have my banking details on me. They were in my wallet, but …”

“Sorry, that’s right, you got mugged.” Dana clicked her tongue and drummed on the desk with her scarlet nails. “Look,” she said, “how about I pay you in cash? Keep it quiet, though. We’re not meant to.”

“Thanks.” My voice squeaked again, this time with relief.

“No problem. The changing room’s the last door on the right. Get yourself a costume from the railing at the back, and I’ll be down to fill everyone in.”

The black vinyl bustiers provided by the club left a gap an inch wide above the cleavage. The criss-crossing laces that straddled this gap dug into my sore, swollen breasts. I tugged at them, conscious that
What to Wear during Pregnancy
said to avoid bras with underwires, which could press on the milk ducts, and lead to a disease called “mastitis”. The brochure didn’t mention lace-up bondage gear.

Dana strode into the change room. “OK girls, six minutes until you’re on.”

Five other women were starting on my shift, and all but one sounded middle-class and educated. One or two had smiled and attempted to chat, but my face was too numb to respond. The others had arrived dressed in track pants and hooded tops, as baggy as my hand-me-downs from Andrea. Small wonder the honking men on the streets had been convinced I was on my way to work. Which, as it turned out, I had been.

I went to join the others by the door. Dana surveyed us, and when she got to me, her plucked brows drew together. “No glasses on the floor.”

Suddenly my lenses seemed essential protection, like the transparent barriers in taxis designed to protect drivers from attack. “But … but I need them.”

“You can see enough to get around, can’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Get ’em back at the end of your shift.” She held out her hand.

I gave her my glasses and the world contracted to a puddle ten or twelve feet wide. Beyond it, the world was a soft-focus fuzz, where I felt as vulnerable as a half-blind baby bird.

Our job, explained Dana, was to mingle with the patrons and hand out complimentary finger food. “Now for those who haven’t worked in the industry before,” she went on, “remember we’re a club,
not
a licensed sex venue. Patrons can perve all they want, but they’re
not allowed to touch,
OK? Most guys know, but you always get a couple of assholes. Tips go in the pockets on the sides of your hot pants,
not
down the front of them and
not
in your cleavage. If a patron tries to feel you up, back away and report them to Security. Whatever you do, don’t hit ’em. Girl at a venue where I worked last year got charged with assault. And let me tell you, girls like us never win in court.”

Girls like us
. Working girls. Women in adult entertainment. Ladies of the night. The floor was dropping beneath me like an elevator.

Dana opened the door and music flooded in, with a drum track like the throb of an evil red heart. My own heart hammering, my toes cramped by patent stilettos, I headed down a ramp to a shadowy function room, with wine-and-gold paper on the walls. Mounted on these were electric candelabras, dimmed to a menacing glow. The new smells of sawdust and paint were receding behind a creeping tide of beer and male sweat.

The room was dotted with round, black tables, at which patrons sat on stools. In the middle was a larger, kidney-shaped table, skewered by a long, brass pole. On this, lit up by the chandelier above her, a woman was rotating like a lamb on a spit. She wore lacy red lingerie and a chunky silver watch, which she checked now and then, looking bored. In two of the chairs at her table sat two leering patrons in their fifties, balancing beer cans on their paunches.

The flesh contracted around my bones with dread as Dana led us through the room to the kitchen. The only men who studied us in detail were the pair at the pole dancer’s table. Some clutched their drinks and shot self-conscious glances; others appraised us briefly with superior cool while talking to their friends.

The stilted conversations I heard between patrons were on real estate and sport and other matters not linked to sex. The chats between patrons and waitresses could have come from an ordinary party or bar. It occurred to me that this was why many men came: for food and attention from attractive young women who’d normally snub or mock them.

We filed into the kitchen through swinging doors that shut out the club’s throbbing dark. I retreated to a corner and slumped against a bench, letting out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding, and inhaling the smell of frying meat. Three or four lungfuls of oily air later, a woman with an Irish accent addressed me.

“You OK there?”

A pale, pretty redhead was standing in front of me, ample bosom showcased by a low-cut white blouse. Behind her, on a trestle table, sat about fifteen oval platters with a range of deep-fried snacks. In the center of these sat ramekins of sauce that made the platters look like giant, greasy eyes.

Sympathetic dimples dented the redhead’s cheeks. “First time working in one of these places?”

I nodded. The last of my fellow waitresses banged out the door as the kitchen staff clattered and fried.

“You get used to it,” she said, in a voice that reminded me of my own, addressing Chloe. “Any time you need a break, pop in here and catch your breath.” She winked and headed out.

Scraping together the last of my grit, I picked up a platter, shouldered through the doors, and made myself walk to a table.

“Spring roll?” I said with a rigid smile to a moon-faced man in a suit.

He cast an eye through the laces of my top, with a flick of his fat pink tongue. “That depends,” he said, with a jowly chortle. “Are your spring rolls better than hers?”

In the shadows on the other side of the table was another waitress carrying a platter of spring rolls. She squeezed out a weak laugh. Heat flooded my face, but before I could apologize a low buzz behind us drew attention to the kidney-shaped table. The woman in red lingerie was tucking a twenty dollar note into her giant perspex shoe.

A worm of fascinated revulsion coiled in my gut. One of the men at her table must have paid her for a lap dance. Which presumably meant she was about to sit in his lap and “dance” against his erection. I shuddered, but like the unheeding crowd at an accident, I couldn’t make myself look away.

Back against the pole and mesmerisingly slow, she slid to her haunches, her shoulders undulating. Even the men who’d affected lazy cool fell silent and turned to watch. Her thumbs slid under her bra straps, plucked them twice and slipped them off. As they fell into the creases of her elbows, she peeled back the cups and inhaled so her nipples lurched in his face. They were large and pale, with a ring through the left one, on breasts the size and shape of half-cantaloupes.

I recoiled, but the men leaned forward, as did she, jiggling and squeezing them together. Above them, her face was detached, as if her breasts were just tools of her trade. She lowered her buttocks to the table and undid her G-string, which seemed to be attached at one side. As
Nudity for twenty bucks?
flashed across my brain, she pointed her toes and slid her legs onto his shoulders one by one.

My platter hit the table with a
clunk
. Through the melting ice of shock, I watched her legs flex and kick, his head in between them like a censor’s round ink blot. I briefly glimpsed her fully waxed genitals bucking in his face before I blinkered my eyes with two cupped hands and bolted for the kitchen.

I crashed through the doors and collided with someone who caught me by the wrists. For a brief, crazed moment I thought it was the man at the pole-dancing table, but the hands on my wrists were female, and the voice saying “Hey. Hey.
Hey!
” had an Irish accent.

The Irish barmaid steered me to a chair, where I hunched, my brain a kaleidoscope of fragments from things I’d read.
Legitimate performance art. Degrading and misogynist. Empowering and liberating. Symptom of a patriarchal society. Women
’
s right to choose the work they want. Men buying a window of power over women. Women exercising erotic power over men. Raunch culture. Slut-shaming.
And behind these, the dancer’s naked labia kept convulsing inside my head, in a ceaseless, gross parody of intimacy.

After a long time, maybe two minutes, maybe twenty, the kaleidoscope slowed and the image began to fade. I opened my eyes. The Irish barmaid’s dimples had vanished, and her brow was creased with concern. “You OK there? Maybe you should go home. Should I tell Dana you’re feeling poorly?”

I swallowed and shook my head. My skin felt pinched and clammy under the black vinyl, and I could taste vomit in the back of my throat. But I had no home to go to, and I desperately needed the money.

“You sure?”

I nodded. After two failed attempts, I rose and picked up another platter of spring rolls. With a last, worried look, she held the swinging doors open. As I tottered through the door I heard a raucous laugh that turned my bones to wire. The man from the streets who’d stolen my bag had just arrived with his sleazy group of friends.

Dana was surveying the room from the ramp, like a football coach watching her team. Clutching my plate, I half-ran to her, almost losing one of my stilettos.

She frowned. “What’s up, girlfriend?”

“The men that just came in.” I hadn’t run far, but my voice was breathless and wavering. “They’re the ones from the street. The ones that stole my bag.”

Dana’s chewing jaws stilled. “The ones that mugged you?”

“Yes.”

She squinted across the room, one scarlet fingernail tapping the railing. “Look. You haven’t got your glasses on, and if I’m ringing the cops, I need you to be sure. Can you get a bit closer, see if they’ve still got your bag?”

I bit my trembling lip, and her face softened.

“Don’t stress, girlfriend, they won’t recognize you. I’ll get Mo to watch your back.” She indicated a doorway-sized man with the number 14 pinned to his jacket, and he gave me an unsmiling nod. “Now walk tall, OK?”

I crept toward the men, the world contracting further until all that remained was the platter of spring rolls. Before I could retreat, one beckoned me over. Turned to concrete with fear, I hobbled closer, and they started dunking spring rolls in sauce.

None of them recognized me with makeup and no glasses, but they were definitely the same men. The one with the gravy stain looked me up and down, his wet mouth open. As I turned my head from his sour, beery breath, he deliberately elbowed my platter. Spring rolls tumbled to the floor.

“Oops,” said Gravy Stain, mocking and wide-eyed. “Better pick ’em up, princess.”

His friends chuckled, waiting for me to bend over in my too-tight hot pants.

Panicking, I looked around for Mo, and to my relief he was heading my way, arms like folded iron girders on his chest. The men withdrew a little as his unsmiling bulk arrived.

“What’s happening here?” Mo’s gruff, grim monotone sent a nervous ripple through the table.

Gravy Stain raised both his hands as if to protest innocence. “She dropped stuff off her tray.” He attempted a matey half-smile.

Mo’s granite face didn’t move. “Any more shit and you’re out, understand?” He escorted me back to Dana, who dispatched someone to clean up the mess and went to call the police.

Minutes later, a shriek drew a bevy of guards to the bar. Before they closed in, I glimpsed the Irish barmaid, yanking a man’s hand from her shirt.

Someone tapped my plate from behind. “Hey,” said a male voice. “Can you come here for a sec? My mate Jim wants to apologize.”

Hairs rose on the back of my neck. I snatched my platter out of reach and hurried off, but the footsteps followed. Two sets of footsteps. “Hey,” said the voice again. Beer in hand, Jim of the Gravy Stain overtook me and blocked my way. A fresh film of sweat formed under my vinyl costume.

“Hi, princess,” said Jim, his wet mouth closed and mock-repentant. “I wanted to say sorry about the spring rolls.”

“Excuse me.” Heart battering my ribs, I tried to steer around him, but his friend moved across to stop me.

I caught the eye of an unoccupied bouncer, who started sauntering over.

“Before I let you go,” continued Jim, “I want to show you my appreciation.”

Leisurely as a leopard toying with its prey, he took out a fifty dollar note. Eyes on mine, he rolled it into a cylinder and inched his tongue along the edge, as if sealing a roll-up cigarette. He hooked open the pocket on the side of my hot pants, and snuffed with laughter as I shrank from his touch. He thrust the rolled note in and slid it in and out, to the gleeful guffaws of his friends.

His eyes rolled back with a theatrical moan, and my brain whited out. Honed by years of self-defense, my muscles took over. I slammed my elbow into the back of his flushed neck so his head hit my knee in a bone-jarring thud.