i remember taking dona to trader tom's, a strip joint in g'ville. we were living there prior to moving up to c'ville & uva. trader tom was a guy who'd worked in p'cola for trader jon, the venerable old strip joint in pensacola. he'd left his mentor & opened his open space in g'ville. what i'd remembered from my various forays there in my youth w/mike & joe moran was that he had several rooms for performances, no nudity regulations, &, most important, his line-up of women were mostly co-eds from uf working hard for the money to pay off student loans while living an opulent "student" lifestyle.
beautiful, young women taking ALL their clothes off was a rare thing back then. the first place i'd ever seen completely naked women dancing was in the "boat bar" on duval street in key west. this was way back in the early 70s & the shrimpers pretty much still ruled the city. i wrote about a moment i had in the "boat bar" back then but suffice it to say that the women dancing nude there weren't co-eds. w/a couple, it was a toss-up whether they were women at all. i will say that for someone as young as i was, who'd seen only let's say 5-6 naked women, it was an astonishing experience to see these women naked in public w/other men.
there was also the place in ft walton beach that i took holly to many times. none of us can remember the name of the place but i will say that it was NOT a hole-in-the-wall like many of the places you'd see naked women dancing. here women who called themselves "dusty rhodes" or "autumn summers" would prance(definitely not dance)around the stage displaying bodies that were so surgically altered they should have been called feminsteins. many looked like my middle school teachers on steroids.
however, they were less alarming then the sad decayed crones w/o rhythm or looks dancing "in-between" sets. the saddest still were the women who were so far over the hill their acts were "gags," built around some roadhouse or vaudeville routine---the bride dressed accordingly w/the mc(yes, this place had male mc's up on stage a'la' lenny bruce)oogling them & commenting on their gradual state of undress, a "gag" act, indeed.
by the time i took dona to trader tom's, i'd not only known several dancers quite well but i'd lived w/two. strippers were no longer fantasy figures for me. they were quite real. i remember walking into trader john's in p'cola & there on stage, halfway through her act, was donna bailey, a high school girl friend. she was looking pretty good, five years out of high school. she didn't seem to recognize me tho see seemed to look right at me during some of the most erotic, to me, parts of her routine. she was dancing to fleetwood mac's "over my head." donna had been a wild-child in high school, a friend of my first love, alicia, & had almost gotten me to drop acid. tho i didn't associate her w/this kind of MOR music, she still looked damned good. i struggled w/myself about approaching her. she was doing the dancer thing & bouncing from table to table after her dance for tips. when she got to my table i said, "hey donna." she froze, then squinted. "uh...who?...wha?...," she mumbled. "danny. danny jones," i replied. her hands flew up to her wide-opened mouth. "o my god," she exclaimed. her crazy eyes were trying to make sense of what what happening. they seemed to spin in concentric circles. i began to doubt the sanity of my intrusion. this was the first time i'd broken down that "4th wall." hell, i'd never TIPPED the dancers (& i hadn't tipped her). she fled the table.
a minute later she was back at my table. i thought there was going to be trouble. i was not ready for it. i never am. "o my god, danny...i couldn't tell that was you," she said while gesturing to the alarming cat's eye glasses she was now wearing. "o my god, give me a hug." & i did. & i was happy & oddly thrilled, indeed, totally excited by the little scene we were making in the middle of trader jon's. we sat & made the expected small talk, catching up on the five years we hadn't been in touch. i told her she looked great. she got a wicked smile on her face. she leaned over very closely to me & whispered, "do you still eat pussy the way you used to?" i'm sure i was visibly vibrating when i assured her that i did. "better than before," i asserted stupidly & needlessly. personally, i don't know how i ever got laid.
"well, we'll see about that," she replied. then she asked, "can you come home w/me tonight?" "sure, sure. of course." what the hell else was i going to say? she leanedover & kissed me quickly on the lips. "good, i haven't had a good orgasm in weeks. i've got to go back to the dressing room. i get off at 2am." she darted away & then behind the curtains that led back to the women's dressing rooms. my head was spinning. i felt very alive. donna was very much alive.
i left to check out a couple of the other strip joints down on south palafox at the time. quayside inn, mike's favorite(o those asian women!!!), the place cattycorner from traders, gentleman jim's(or something like that). i may have gone up to the red garter, the tranny/gay bar w/live shows. i do know that i was back at traders five minutes before 2am.
No comments:
Post a Comment