Cat In An Aqua Storm

The woman tucked the rolled-up bill in the side of her G-string, then repeated the performance with another man who had cast himself faceup on the stage, “smoking” a greenback. Temple contemplated the likely denomination of those bills—ones? Too cheap. Fives, maybe. Tens, twenties? Irrelevant curiosity often distracted her from maintaining a strong moral posture at all times.

As for taking strong postures, period, the dancer had faced the mirrors, dropped down on her hands and stretched out her legs to demonstrate an exercise that Temple had viewed intimately many times in aerobics class. The men seemed to find it vastly more interesting than she did, especially when it was performed without benefit of leotard and tights. A man from an outlying table had come quietly to stand before the stage. Temple didn’t notice him until the performer did. She must have been watching something else.

Smiling, the dancer moved to his position, pulled up her pale hair with both hands, and began to gyrate her significant parts in a sort of presentation package. Since the stage was only at table level, her athletic ability to move up and down gave the expression “in your face” a whole new dimension.

Then the dancer dropped down to sit on the stage rim, putting her arms around her one-man audience’s shoulders, whispering in his ear, lifting the G-string over her hip almost coyly, allowing him to place a rolled-up bill in its elasticized safekeeping.

“Garters,” Temple said sagely to no one who could hear her, “have come a long way, baby.”

Beside her, Ruth Morris just shook her head.

By the time Miss “Wild Thing” left the stage, bending provocatively to retrieve her bit of elasticized dress, her G-string sides bristled with bills, which added a piquant savagery to her costume.

Within a minute, a successor was announced, and then another. Some performers’ names sounded like a yuppie parent’s dream: Berkeley, Madison, Tracy. Others fancied liquor names: Champagne, Brandy, Tequila. Temple was struck by how many adopted place-names—Miami, Phoenix, Wichita—established both anonymity and a stage persona tied to place, to a possible home. Nobody picked Tampa, probably because it sounded too much like “tampon.”

Each act lasted only the four or five minutes of a song. Then the main stage performer rotated to bartop or tabletop, writhing for the solitary men who occupied the stools and seats. After several acts, Ruth indicated she was decamping. Temple rose to accompany her, and Lindy followed.

Instead of leading them to the big front door, Lindy threaded a path through the tables occupied by a sprinkling of men. Ruth was as nervous as Temple about their passage blocking the audience’s view of their entertainment. They scurried after Lindy like ducklings not about to abandon Mama, and dove in relief through an open doorway to the right of the main stage.

They found themselves in rest room so unglamorous that the phrase “ladies’ john,” however oxymoronic, best described it. Temple took in graffiti-tattooed, generic cubicles, a single sink, a mirror above a powder-strewn shelf. On one cubicle door, the words “Theda’s Throne” were picked out in transfer letters and adorned with the iridescent metallic decals so popular among teenage girls.

Besides the standard wall-hung tampon dispenser, this john offered a wall-hung perfume dispenser, mute testimony to how hard a girl had to labor to make disrobing look easy.

The irregularly shaped room, obviously chopped from whatever space was available, also served as a hallway. Lindy passed through to a long narrow room equipped with lockers on one end, and with the stock mirrors and makeup lights lining both long sides.

Only a couple of chairs occupied the space, abandoned far from the mirrors. This was not a dressing room where one sat and applied makeup with leisurely care.

Three or four slim, small-breasted dancers in a state of stage undress stood before the mirrors fussing with their getups. Nylon gym bags gaped open on the countertops before them, disgorging hair spray, makeup and pins.

Female visitors were immediately drafted as dorm sisters.

“What do you think?” a blonde with Madonna-black roots asked the newcomers, ankling over on high heels. A purple satin garter belt frosted with black lace was all the coverage her thong-back G-string got, and was the only thing holding up her black lace stockings.

She turned. The garters were absent from the back set of black satin streamers. “Can I get away with tucking these suckers up?”

While she demonstrated what she had in mind, Temple wondered how long the energetic pelvic motions required on stage would keep anything tucked up, including the presumably private portions of her anatomy.

“Looks stupid,” said a towering redhead wearing a Day-Glo G-string-plus-suspenders outfit. It mimicked a teddy that had been left in the rain too long and had shrunk beyond belief. “Pin the ribbons to the stockings.”

“No pins!” the first woman wailed.