“I’ve fucking had it with this place!” declared Tara, running a toned forearm through blonde-tinted hair. Elaine, who sat on the stool beside her, sighed at this oh-so-predictable statement of rebellious intent from her friend post-shift.
“No I mean it this time Elaine, I really do. I can’t stand working in this shithole any longer”. As predictable as Tara’s original plea always was, so too was the dismissive attitude that Elaine always regarded it with.
It was nearing 5 in the morning and the bouncer-clad doors had just closed out the world, expelling the last few punters in awkward drabs – out-of-town businessmen and tired drunks who had yawned their way through their fifth or sixth private dance of the night and now tried to rub the impending slumber from bloodshot eyes as they struggled to remember the way home.
At the faux-marble bar top Elaine could sense Tara’s repulsion simmering to the fore and resigned herself to the fact that they were inevitably going to dive into the same argument that they always did. “What’s happened this time?” she asked with calm reluctance, drinking from a bottle of Smirnoff Ice.
“Nothing’s happened in particular. It’s just, I dunno, the whole thing. I need to get out of it, I can’t stand it anymore”.
“I don’t know why you carry on with it if you hate it so much, you’ve been moaning on like this for weeks now” said Elaine, dusting with fingertips the vestiges of an incoming bruise, set to touch down on her upper right thigh before very much longer. A smashed teenager, out celebrating his 18th birthday with a gang of rowdy mates, had been unable to restrain himself and lunged to touch the sensual skin that Elaine taunted him with, prompting his swift ejection from the building. Many happy returns cocksucker, Elaine had thought bitterly as his protesting clan dragged their heels and followed their mate back out to the early morning streets.
“Come on you know I can’t just jack it in. I need this job to pay for Lottie. She starts play-school this week, I’m absolutely broke.”
“What happened to that fella you were seeing?” asked Elaine, feeling the not-uncommon sense of gratitude that she wasn’t straddled with a young kid like Tara was. Far too much unnecessary responsibility to be lumbered with at this point in time.
“Mark? Ah that tosser’s long since bolted. He had his fun and then fucked off as soon as he got a bit bored.”
“Bastard” Elaine sympathised, knowing all-too-well the type of bloke they were talking about.
“I dunno why I didn’t see it coming a mile off. That’s me though, never been a very good judge of character. Big downfall.” She said this with such dejection in eyes that had been frozen into a vacant glaze all night, that Elaine felt an almost over-whelming urge to lock her in embrace. In truth she felt like a big sister to Tara, and in the 8 months they had worked at the gentlemen’s club together they had grown close; primarily because they were the only girls out of them all who refrained from doing coke on a nightly basis. As a result, the other girls just became mechanised and hollow; unable or unwilling to communicate with anyone, staggering through the night in a state of wired undress. In Elaine’s opinion, you had to have some interaction in this job or otherwise you’d lose the will to live, but she empathised with those who clung to the drugs as a means of getting them through the night.
“Look, I know how much you’d love to just up and quit right now, but think of it like this – it’s only a job. It’s not like you’re fucking the guys is it? Just tease em and rip em off. Easy!” Elaine said with a smile that didn’t entirely betray the feeling that her words of encouragement would quickly go unheeded.
“Yeah, but do you not feel so cheapened though? We’re leered at and lusted over by these guys like pieces of meat dangling in front of their faces.” Elaine felt her heart sink a little. As much as she understood Tara’s angst, even recognised it within herself on occasion, the last thing she wanted was to get into another theological debate at 5am. Tara, however, had the bile building up inside her and wasn’t about to cap it off with silence.
“I mean, we are just puppets that dance in front of them as a means of fuelling their own sex drive. I hate the feeling of being exploited for a tenner a time.”
“Yeah I do see your point, but can you not see the other side of the coin? We are exploiting the men. It’s their fault they are shallow enough to come in here, pissed-up, throwing their cash at us. If they want to pay me to get my gear off just so they can recall it later to toss themselves off, that’s fine with me, I’ll take their money every time” Elaine said.
“So you’re telling me you feel empowered do you?”
“In a way, yes I do.”
“So its empowering lying there on the floor with your legs spread wide open, just because they’ve paid in, is that what you’re saying?” Tara countered.
“No” Elaine began to protest. “I mean, yeah, I get the satisfaction of giving them what they want, showing them what they want to see, accepting their money. Why shouldn’t we exploit them to our own benefit huh?”
As ever though, Tara could not be persuaded. “I just can never stop thinking about what my parents would say if they knew about it. It’s no way to make a living. We’re only slighter higher than hookers you do realise?”
“Bullshit. There’s a definite line with us. We know that, and supposedly they do too” Elaine said, gesturing her fresh bruise.
Feeling the familiar sense that each of them had their own reasoning and convictions for following such a line of work, they moved on instead to sharing stories on recent lovers and relationship prospects.
“It’s really disastrously bleak at the moment if I’m honest” Elaine said, having moved on now from Smirnoff Ice to a glass of dry white wine, although the sugar from the Smirnoff had shrink-wrapped her tongue and had rendered the wine almost undrinkable. “I’m fucking this guy called Tom but there’s nothing in it. I don’t really know anything about him. He could be married with kids for all I know. In fact I think he might be married...” She tailed off pensively.
“Well Mark was dreadful. He loved the fact I was a stripper. I know he used it as bragging rights with his mates. Problem was, there was absolutely no feeling between us, he treated me like his whore the whole time. I can’t be putting up with that, not when I’ve got Lottie to be thinking about. I need a guy who can love me for who I am, not desire me because of what I do for a living.”
The two friends shared some more wine and began to laugh together at their respective ineptitude when it came to dating and relationships. It was coming on for 6am when Tara blurted out an idea that took them both by surprise. “Fuck it, we should form a pact of celibacy.”
Slouched on the bar, Elaine snorted wine through her nose having just taken a gulp, but Tara sat up straighter on the stool as the idea began to coagulate into some form of sense in her sleep-fractured mind. “I’m serious y’know. Sex has been nothing but trouble for me for far too long. I’m about ready to call a halt on the whole thing. Cut my losses. What d’you say?”
Realising her friend had swiftly adopted a more serious tone Elaine stopped giggling and said “Well for how long? And what for exactly?”
“Well I dunno, until we meet guys who will accept us for the people and personalities we are and not just use us to satisfy their lust. I might even whisper it to every punter I perform to in here from now on, so whilst he’s there imagining himself all over me, he will know that I am truly unobtainable from him. A lap dance can’t be that erotic when in the back of his mind he knows I have made a choice to quit sex can it?”
Elaine looked at her friend with a bemused resignation. “You’ve lost the plot, you really have.” But they agreed on it nonetheless, Elaine feeling it easier to appease Tara than attempt resistance, and as they stepped out of the club into the harsh light of the morning, each feeling about as un-erotic as possible, felt a sense of renewal that could only come with having aligned the mind’s crosshairs on a fresh target, a change, the pursuit of sexual resurrection.
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