Page 3 of Spark
Pale-pink ruffles and ribbons, sailor dresses with bows, lots of knee socks, and plaid. There were several routines that involved props like teddy bears, dolls, and a giant rocking horse. She sold me as a virgin, and I was…am.
But although Heather loved how much money I made her, the owner of the club, Benito, didn’t like the idea that anything in his club wasn’t for sale. Over the year that I worked there, he started to resent the persona that Heather created for me. He wanted me to work the private room. He wanted me to offerthe real virgin experience to his customers, and he didn’t like it when Heather told him no.
Benito is in his early fifties, with dark features and a thick New York accent. He looks and acts like a parody of a movie gangster. I’m not sure what exactly his and Heather’s relationship is, but the more she said no to him, the angrier he seemed to get.
The last night that I worked there, I’d heard them arguing. The other girls in the changing room glared at me because we all knew this was about me. Like Benito, the other dancers hated that I wasn’t expected to do private dances or get groped like they did. They hated that while they had to dry hump the stage to get one-dollar bills thrown at them or shoved into their G-strings by sweaty-handed customers. Heather only allowed me to dance in a room that had a door fee and a rule that if anyone tipped me less than a five, they were banned from the club for the rest of the night.
They hated that while they were giving blow jobs for fifty bucks a pop and having to give Benito forty dollars for providing them with the customers, I was making almost as much money as them without getting on my knees.
Heather made me a spectacle. I was a virgin stripper. I was an innocent in a world of depravity, and it turns out that dirty old men and creepy young ones love to imagine what it would be like to have me. They liked to watch me dance dressed like a child, to take off almost all of my clothes, to press my tits against stuffed bears and ride on a rocking horse while they jerked their dicks in their pants and threw money at the stage.
But Benito wanted to sell meandthe fantasy Heather was peddling. My final day there, we all heard the sound of the slap and Heather’s cry of pain, followed by her muted sobs. No one had tried to stop Benito when he’d barged into the changing room and dragged me out.
“If you want to work here, you need to start earning your keep,” he’d growled, dragging me into Heather’s office and forcing me to my knees. “From now on, you’ll be dancing your usual slot, then you’ll be working the private suites for the rest of the night. You’ll be auctioning off that virgin pussy as many times a night as I can sell it. Then once you’re well and truly broken in, we’ll do the same with your virgin ass.”
“No,” I’d whimpered, shaking my head.
“There’s nothing special about you, Cherry. Everyone here sucks cock, and so will you.”
Unzipping his pants, he shoved them down, letting his wrinkled, semi-flaccid dick flop out.
“Cherry, you’re fired,” Heather yelled. “Go. Now,” she’d said as she’d grabbed my arm and pushed me backward.
Risking a quick glance in her direction, I saw her pointed look as she’d mouthed the word “run” at me.
I don’t know what Benito did to her that day. I didn’t stay to find out. I’d scrambled to my feet, grabbed my purse and run.
The moment I’d gotten back to my apartment, I’d started packing. Benito knew my address, and although Heather might have saved me from him, I had a feeling he wouldn’t just let me leave.
Everything I owned was packed into my car an hour later, and I dropped my apartment key into the manager’s mailbox on my way out of the door, driving away into the night without looking back.
After driving my car to Bozeman, I tried to find a job, but even fewer employers would take on a twenty-year-old high school dropout whose last job was as a dancer at BJ’s Boob Bonanza. So with no money, no job, and no fixed abode, I parked my car up in a deserted parking lot behind an abandoned bowling alley.
I pawned anything I had of value—there wasn’t much, but it kept me in sandwiches and enough food to not starve to death, and spent all day, every day going from shop to bar to restaurant looking for a job.
I’d been in Bozeman for seven weeks when I walked back to the parking lot and found my car gone and what was left of my belongings dumped on the ground beside where my junker used to be parked.
That was two months ago.
I’d picked up as much of my stuff as I could carry, including the stupid tent my dad and I had taken from place to place for over a decade, and walked toward the bus station.
It was late, and there weren’t many buses or people around. The first bus to pull in was one headed for a place called Rockhead Peak, so I bought a ticket and found myself in the middle of a tiny town full of expensive B & B’s and people visiting to see the lakes or the mountains that had been covered in snow only a month or so earlier.
With only two fifty-dollar bills in my pocket and a handful of coins, I’d followed a group of people down the street and listened to them talking about the trails they planned to hike and the campgrounds they were going to stay at. Right then and there I remembered the tent I was carrying, and suddenly I had a plan.
It was dark by the time I made it to the start of the hiking trail, my arms laden with stuff. That first night, I’d only wandered a few yards off the trail, pitching the tent under the bright moon and the stars my dad had promised me all those years before.
The moment the sun had risen in the sky, I’d packed up and ventured further into the woods, following the hikers who started arriving early. When I found a fork in the trail, I’d turned left when everyone else turned right and found a tiny copse oftrees, only partially visible from the trail, and I’d hidden my stuff there.
Each night for a week, I found somewhere new to pitch my tent until I learned the flow of the trail and became familiar with the hikers and the routes they usually walked. Once I was sure I was unlikely to be found, I pitched my tent a hundred yards from a rarely used trail and left it there.
When the sun was up, I’d head into town, using the library to search for a job while learning everything I could about bushcraft. I worked out how to dig a fire pit and start a fire, which berries were wild blueberries and which were likely to land me in the ER if I ate them.
I found out that if I volunteered to help collect trash and direct cars and hikers, I could collect a hot breakfast sandwich and a bagged lunch each day from the ranger’s station. I learned that several of the property owners along the lesser used trails had respite stations with free water and sometimes protein bars and fruit.
Obviously, I can’t live in a tent in the woods forever. But as long as I’m not obvious about it, I can shower in the multiple campgrounds’ communal shower blocks without anyone questioning who I am, and although I’m definitely not thriving, I’m surviving, and really that’s all I’ve ever done.
THREE
