I didn’t go back outside until lunch time. The crew ate at tables and chairs that were set up in the parking lot. A caterer delivered the food and today it was Italian. Apparently it had been Italian for quite a while because the crew was grumbling about it. I was so hungry I didn’t care what it was, and loaded up my plate with a little bit of everything. I saved a seat for Caroline, who I had barely seen since we parted ways that morning, but I quickly learned she wasn’t coming.
“She’s back over by the trailers, giving the actors their lunch,” Jess said as she sat down to eat.
“Is she coming after she’s done?” I asked.
“No,” Jess answered, annoyed. “She has to stay back there, that’s her job.”
I made another plate of food equally heavy as mine and took both over to the trailers. I found Caroline sitting on the steps of one of them, her elbows on her knees and her chin in the palm of her hands. When she saw me, she got up and took the plate I handed her.
“Thanks,” she said gratefully. We sat on the steps and started to eat our lunch.
“How’s your morning been?” I asked. Caroline grunted disapprovingly.
“The Bun is a bitch,” she said as she put a bite of ziti in her mouth.
“Who?” I asked.
“Jess,” she said, stabbing another bite with her fork. “I call her The Bun. That thing is ridiculous, it makes me want to grab it and shake it really hard.”
She mimed shaking an invisible bun, her fork still in one hand. The piece of chicken parmesan that was on the end of it flew off and landed in the gutter, but Caroline didn’t seem to notice.
“All I’ve done all day is take orders from her,” she continued. “Go get this actor a coffee. Go bring this actor to hair and makeup. She just tells me what to do all day long. And I don’t really think I need to be here, she’s just doing it to be mean. She’s a mean, self entitled jerk. I don’t think the actors even like her.” We ate in silence for a few minutes, Caroline shoveling her lunch in her mouth like she hadn’t eaten in days.
“Hey easy there,” I said, gently catching her eating arm. “Do you remember your eighth grade pizza party? Slow down.”
Caroline lowered her fork hand and chewed her bite slowly. We sat eating in silence for a moment.
“How was your morning?” she asked after a while.
“I got the director a coffee. That’s pretty much all I did,” I said. “He’s mean too.”
“Great,” Caroline said sarcastically.
After lunch, I walked over to the trash can in the parking lot to throw away my plate. Josh approached me as I chucked it in. It was the first time I had really seen him since he handed me off to Damon at the beginning of the day. He had come to set a few times throughout the morning, flitting in and out with pieces of paper to show to Alex and they would go off into a corner of the hall and discuss things in low voices. Their meetings would break up and Josh would leave, managing a tired smile as he passed me and looking more stressed than when he initially came in.
“How did it go this morning?” he asked.
“Okay, I guess,” I answered.
“That’s good,” he said as if not really caring about my answer. “Listen, you should know that we are done with the scenes in the private room and will be moving onto the big scene in the main room when we are back from lunch.” He checked his watch. “Which is in about three minutes. I know the strippers got ready this morning, but you should make sure they are really ready now that we are actually on to their scene.”
“All right, no problem,” I said. Josh nodded, satisfied, and I walked over to the strippers table. They had been getting increasingly restless throughout the morning and a couple of them had found me at my lock up and complained about not being used, so I was glad to tell them they wouldn’t have to wait much longer. They seemed receptive to this news, and got up from their table to get ready.
Three minutes later, the crew was moving all the equipment that was in the private room hallway out into the main room. The main room wasn’t quite what I had pictured. I was expecting a stage along a wall with a runway jutting out into the audience seating with a couple of stripper poles. Instead, this stage was small and round with a pole in the middle. It was in the center of the room, with seating all the way around. Alex saw me looking around the room and beckoned me to him.
“Are the strippers getting ready?” he asked me when I got to him.
“Yes, that’s what I told them to do,” I answered.
“Good,” he said. “When they’re ready, let me know. Zach wants to get a look at them before we bring them to set. You should line them up in their dressing room and make sure they have robes on.”
“Okay. They don’t mind being naked,” I said, trying to be helpful.
“No, they need to have their robes on. It’s important,” he insisted.
“Okay, sure. No problem,” I said. Alex nodded.
A little while later, the strippers were robed and assembled in a line, shoulder to shoulder, in their dressing room. I told Alex that they were ready. When he brought Zach in, I immediately understood the importance of the robes. He looked at them like it was taking every ounce of willpower not to do something inappropriate. He checked out each woman carefully, with Alex by his side ready to intervene if he had to.
“You,” Zach said, pointing to the short curvy blonde. “What can you do?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Do you have any special skills, or a signature move or something?” he asked.
“I’m really good on the pole,” she offered. “I can climb really high and slide down the pole upside down.”
This piqued Zach’s interest. He turned to Alex as if he wanted to nudge him and say, I want to see that. Don’t you want to see that? But Alex just glared at him. Zach turned back at the curvy blonde and said in as a professional a voice that he could muster, “Well, why don’t you show me what you got. Maybe we’ll use it.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“Do you need music or something?” Zach asked.
“It would help, yeah,” she said.
Zach turned to Alex, who then got on his walkie. “Hey guys, let’s find the owner, we need to use the house sound system.”
Word got out faster than you could say “stripper pole” that there was going to be an audition. Practically the entire crew gathered to watch as Damon found the club owner, who showed him how to work the sound system. The curvy blonde, whose name was Cindy, walked casually onto the stage, her thin robe flowing behind her.
“You ready, Cindy?” Alex called to her once Zach settled in his chair.
“Just a sec,” she called back. She took her robe off and threw it onto an unoccupied seat close to the stage. Now she was wearing nothing but a G string. Murmurs rippled through the crowd, but she didn’t seem to care. I glanced over at Alex, the only one in the room whose eyes weren’t on Cindy. His eyes were closed and he was rubbing his temples.
Cindy drew a deep breath, then grabbed onto the pole with both hands, wrapping her legs around it. She then shimmied up the pole until her head was just brushing the ceiling. She perched up there for a moment, her hands touching the pole lightly. The only thing holding her up there was her legs and buttocks. I had to admit, it was pretty impressive.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she called out. Alex stopped rubbing his head and looked up.
“Okay, Damon. Hit the music.” Damon did as he was told and the music came up. It was Low by Flo Rida. Cindy took her hands off the pole completely, then arched her back and slowly bent backwards until she was completely upside down on the pole. Very slowly and controlled, she slid down hands free until her hair touched the floor of the stage. Then she did this half cartwheel thing to right herself again. The rest of her routine was what I expected, though admittedly the flexibility required for most of her moves was impressive. Zach sat in his chair, thoroughly enjoying himself. When the music stopped, Cindy took it upon herself to end her routine. Visibly disappointed, Zach got up from his chair.
“That was great, thank you,” he said. He turned to Alex. “I think we can start on her,” he said. “We’ll start on her, on that pole upside down move thing, then the camera will pan off of her and we’ll start the dialogue with the actors down here by the edge of the stage.”
Alex nodded. “Okay,” he said. Then, addressing the crew he called out, “Let’s get going people, we’re starting to fall behind schedule.”
Now that the show was over, everyone reluctantly got to work. Cindy was the only stripper we needed for the time being and Alex told me she was my responsibility. I was in charge of making sure she was ready to go, so when camera was ready, we weren’t waiting for her. I wasn’t really sure how to accomplish this short of following her around, so that’s what I ended up doing. She was a very good sport about me stalking her.
“All right,” Alex said on the walkie after a while, “We should get Cindy ready to…do her thing.”
“Copy that,” I said. I had learned some walkie lingo over the course of the day, and the word “copy” was one of them. I felt a little weird saying it, but realized that I had to get over it since everyone said it without a problem.
I turned to Cindy. We were outside and she was talking to the same ponytailed sound guy that was teasing me earlier about making coffee. “Cindy, we’re ready for you inside.”
“Oh, right,” she said, stopping amid her story about flashing a police officer because she didn’t think he was a real cop. She turned to the ponytail guy. “I guess we’ll finish the story another time.” She turned to go back inside and he stared at me, annoyed. I shrugged.
“Just one of my responsibilities,” I said to him. “Get the stripper ready. Right there with getting people coffee.”
Moments later, Cindy and I were in the main room on the floor, waiting for Alex to give the word for her to climb up the pole. I looked around. The actors were getting their final hair and makeup touch ups while Zach yammered on his cell phone about some big party he was “hitting” that weekend. What a tool.
“Will we be ready soon?” Cindy asked.
“Looks that way,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about.
“Okay,” she answered. She tossed her robe onto a nearby chair and was once again just wearing G string. She reapplied her lipstick and put the tube back in her robe pocket, then fluffed up her hair.
“So, have you been in the business long?” she asked.
I turned to her to answer her question, but I was afraid my eyes would fall somewhere that would seem inappropriate, so I turned quickly away again.
“Not long,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I’ve only been in Los Angeles for a week, actually.” I felt silly not looking her in the face. Silly and rude. I knew that she didn’t have a problem being naked in public and that it was completely my own insecurities. Still, I couldn’t quite get over it and pretended that something across the room was extremely interesting.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
“The Boston area,” I answered.
“You’ve got really great skin,” she said. “I wish I had skin like yours. I think I’d have to quit smoking though, I’m not ready for that.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“What are you looking at?” she asked. She tried to follow my gaze. This is ridiculous, I thought. I decided to stop being an idiot and shifted my gaze so I was making eye contact with her.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I thought I saw my friend Caroline, but it wasn’t her.” There was a brief silence.
“How long have you been…in the business?” I asked.
“Well, a while now, I guess. Three years, I think.” She stood there with no clothes on talking as casually as she would if we were standing in line for a movie, about how she got into stripping when she was in college and originally only meant it as a means to put herself through law school. I cursed my sheltered upbringing and lack of knowledge when it came to stripper etiquette. I began to question whether or not it was polite not to look. After all, Cindy was topless and it was her choice to do so. Was going to a strip club and not checking out a topless stripper’s rack like going to a jazz club and not listening to the music? Did she expect me to look, if only for a moment until my eyes found her face? These were all questions that I wanted the answers to. I wondered if four years of college in LA made Caroline any wiser than I on the subject.
It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a thing Cindy had been saying. I prayed that my eyes didn’t glaze over and gave me away.
“Okay, we’re ready for Cindy!” I heard Alex’s voice say in my ear.
“Oh, thank God,” I muttered to myself.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Cindy asked.
“They’re ready for you,” I said.
“Oh, right,” Cindy answered. She left me and walked out onto the stage. She climbed up the pole.
“All right folks. We are rolling camera,” said Alex. Cindy did her move, as perfect as it had been on her audition. When we cut, Cindy came back over to me to wait to go again.
We did a lot of takes. I stopped counting after five. Zach seemed unhappy about something, though what exactly it was I had no idea. Despite the fact I didn’t feel any wiser about my stripper knowledge, I did begin to feel more comfortable talking to Cindy and maintaining a conversation with her.
“How many takes are we going to do?” she asked after what seemed like the hundredth take. I shrugged.
“Beats me,” I said.
“Aw, crap,” she said suddenly. “My heel is coming apart again. Can I use you to balance for a second?”
“Ah, sure,” I said. She put one hand on my shoulder and adjusted her heel with the other. After a few seconds she righted herself and suddenly was standing very close to me. She didn’t seem to notice.
“I really need new shoes,” she said, studying them. “But these ones are my favorite and they don’t make them anymore.” She sighed and stepped absentmindedly towards me, her nipple grazing my arm.
I didn’t know if stepping away was rude or not, but it didn’t matter. I was rooted to my spot. Cindy, who was talking about some store that she got all her work outfits from, didn’t notice as I swayed as far as I could out of the line of fire, but it didn’t make a difference. Any time Cindy gestured big enough, that nipple would get me. I was suddenly very relieved that Caroline wasn’t in the room, that she was back by the trailers having a miserable time with the Bun ordering her around. If she saw me, I would never hear the end of it. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and took a step backward. Thankfully, the nipple didn’t follow me.
After Zach was finally satisfied, we moved onto the rest of the scene. We didn’t need Cindy anymore, but we did use a few of the other strippers. Though, they weren’t as featured as Cindy was and were used in the scene as topless waitresses instead. They weren’t too happy about that. At the end of the day, Cindy came up to me. She was dressed in real clothes and I almost didn’t recognize her.
“Hey, thanks for being so nice,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” I answered. As she left, Caroline approached me.
“You ready to go? I am so ready for a long shower and a glass of wine,” she said.
“Yep,” I said. Caroline reached her hand out in front of her and looked at me intently. I sighed, dug into my pocket and gave her the car keys.
“Thanks,” she said. As we were about to walk out of the parking lot, Josh ran up to us.
“Hey ladies, thanks for your help today,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I replied.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get more time to talk, but if you ever want advice on how to break into the business, give me a call.” He handed me his card.
“Okay, great. Thanks,” I said.
“And if you need more help, let us know,” Caroline added.
“I will,” Josh said. “Goodnight.”
We waved goodbye and walked out of the parking lot.
“So?” Caroline asked as we neared the car. “How was your afternoon?”
“Oh, you know. Got to second base with a stripper. The usual,” I answered nonchalantly.
“What?” said Caroline incredulously.
I just smiled at her. “I’ll tell you the story if you let me drive.”
We reached the car as Caroline contemplated this offer for a moment, then tossed me the keys. “All right. But it better be good.”
Tags: Chapter 1