CHAPTER 44 -STRIPPER

I quit Tango Palace. A rumpled guy named Joe I found in the back pages of The Voice met me at his office in New Jersey. He had the aura of an old show-biz guy, cigar and all. Photos of Catskill entertainers and pretty girls decorated his veneer-panelled walls. He seemed like a guy who, having no access to sexy girls who would choose him, settled into a sexy-girl-adjacent role in society. Joe became my 'agent'.

You'd think I'd remember the very first time I stripped. The times blend kaleidoscopically, though --all those smoky moments stepping onto the stage to be adored and at the same time resenting that I was giving something so intimate away to guys who are out of my league, and not in a good way ... the hint of danger in all of it.

My body remembers. |Years later, at a saloon in WA state, while bent over a table near the bar about to serve two heavy plates of nachos off a tray, when some Yahoo thought it would be fun to slide a finger up the butt crack of my tight jeans. It took no time at all for my body to react and in moments, thick white restaurant plates and this guy's blood and Nachos went flying through the air. I had slammed him pretty hard without any premeditation.

I think I boarded a train at Grand Central with my little bag of sexy costumes you could buy anywhere in Times Square before Guilliani magically cleaned it up. This was the era when Subway vigilante Bernard Goetz took crime prevention into his own nebbish little hands and serial killer David Berkowitz, 'the Son of Sam' was out and about. I say out and about like he was a sick boulevardier, a twisted fop, a demented dandy. I could go on, but I won't. A murderous man about town! OK, I'm done. But the point is, these were scary times for a girl running around to strip bars.

I got off at Bridgeport, CT,  hailed a taxi, feeling mature and independent, like a miscreant Marlo Thomas in That Girl.