Every Breath I Take

It was early December in Ontario 1976, and the weather had been on and off rain and ice for the past few days. The 401 had been shut down between Toronto and Hamilton due to multiple wrecks and road conditions. It had also turned out to be a bad week for strippers in Ontario, as the Provincial council had just voted to allow nudity in the clubs. Fully dressed bureaucrats had decided that to increase the tax revenue from alcohol sales they would force exotic dancers into baring it all onstage. In one fell swoop, our G-Strings had been yanked off by pencil pushers in a faraway office building.

Both events were doubly troublesome to me, Ontario seemed like a safe haven for stripping, as they had not allowed nudity up until that point. I disliked dancing in the nude, especially because just plain nudity never was enough for audiences. Once they had that the clubs would insist upon more and more concessions from the dancers, such as explicit nudity and worse.

I flipped on the television in my hotel room to see if the news station had anything on the new laws. They were still talking about the weather and the 401 shutdown. It still wasn’t completely open yet, which meant my boyfriend, Jake probably wouldn’t be able to get down to see me on Saturday.

The manager of the club I was working at in St. Catherines, Ontario, approached me and my friend, Jesse, one of the other strippers, in the hotel coffee shop and explained the change in nudity laws that afternoon. He left it up to us how much nudity we chose to do during our shows.

For my first show, there were only about a dozen customers in the place, all sitting at the bar. I had decided to do my Doll show, with the white face makeup and the heart cheeks and bow lips painted on with pink lipstick. I used extra large false eyelashes for my eyes and penciled in thin, arched eyebrows. My hair was curly that year, so I fluffed up my curls to complete the look and zipped myself into the green and black striped ballet tutu with the satin corset.

The show started with the song, Hello, Dolly, a fast-paced, fun tune, then switched over to several slower songs about dolls to which I pantomimed a stiff, jerky mechanical dance to. For my chair routine, I danced to I’m Your Puppet, pretending to be manipulated by an invisible puppeteer above the stage. The only real change in that show came at the very last minute of my cape-twirling dance to the theme from The Valley of the Dolls.

I decided to get changed into my red pantsuit for the fire show- this time without the fire and hang out a bit before the eleven o’clock show. Yesterday had been long and boring and I didn’t want to be stuck in my room all evening again.

After I got the doll makeup goo off my face I dressed and came back down to sit at the bar. I caught the last of my friend, Jesse’s show and all of Miss Waddle Duck’s, the nickname I gave my arch nemesis, the snooty stripper. I switched over to grasshoppers because this bar had a real mixologist- a rarity in strip clubs. It was a very good drink and I have always been a sucker for sugary things, so, when a guy about my age plopped down next to me at the bar, I happily took him up on the offer of ‘just one more’.

Halfway through Miss Waddle Duck’s act, Jesse and her new squeeze, Gary, came down to the club. She brought him over and introduced him to me. “Tina, this is Gary- he came to see me this afternoon.”

Aha! That’s why there was no answer from her at dinner time. She looked pretty happy, even though she missed a meal. Her blue eyes were shining, and her pale face was flushed- probably from the sunny weather or something.

“Hi, Gary, nice to meet you. What were the roads like today?”

“Shitty,” He replied. “The 401 is still shut down.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “I saw that on the news.”

The guy sitting next to me introduced himself and we sat for another half an hour, the four of us, joking and telling funny stories until I had to go back onstage at eleven. With patrons sitting closer to the stage than for my first show of the night I was a bit more reticent about the G-String removal. The black chiffon twirling cape was going to cover me most of the time. But I was still nervous about stray glimpses by the audience of my baby-making mechanism.

Jake, my boyfriend, had said he didn’t care one way or the other about me going nude. However, that was before the law had changed. I wondered how he would feel now that it was no longer a hypothetical question. I was glad, for once, that he wasn’t there tonight, and wondered how this was going to affect our relationship going forward. I knew how I would feel if Jake whipped “it” out in front of a crowd of horny women. Someone would get hurt. I’d go to jail. He would never have those children he talked about because I would be taking “it” to jail with me.

I changed back into jeans and a blouse and came back down to the bar to hang out with my new friends. The party had moved to a table, and I joined them. Jesse was up doing her last show for the night, and we all got refills. By the time Miss Waddle Duck was onstage the four of us were in pretty good spirits and the unattached male decided he wanted to get attached to me temporarily, I’m sure. Nevertheless, he started getting a little handsy, making me uncomfortable, even in my four-grasshopper state of mind.

“Um, um. No touching.”

He ignored me. So, I picked his hand up off my thigh and set it down on the table. What the hell was it with men and my thighs? Did I look like a rotisserie chicken? Random guys kept grabbing my thighs for some reason.

Then he tried the old, ‘just stretching’ routine and landed his arm around my shoulder- purely by accident, I’m certain. I plucked the offending arm off me and tried to stand up, when he grabbed me around the waist and set me down on his lap, laughing like a hyena. Okay. This wasn’t funny anymore. I was getting pissed.

Jesse’s friend, Gary intervened, “Hey, she doesn’t want you all over her. Let her up.”

“Relax, dude. She’s fine. Aren’t you, honey?”

“No, I’m not fine.” I spit at him between gritted teeth. “Let me up. Right. Now.”

Gary stood up and said, “You need to let her go. Can’t you see she’s not enjoying it?”

“Dude,” the drunk guy slurred at Gary, “You need to mind your own business.”

By that time, the bartender noticed the brouhaha and came around the other side of the guy. Somehow, between him and Gary, they peeled me off him and Gary walked me through the hotel lobby and up to my room, making sure I got in safely, then he went down to the club to wait for Jesse.

So much for having fun between shows. Yikes. What a mistake. I waited for Jake to call at one o’clock. Maybe he got held up by work. I stayed up until three, hoping he’d still call. Nothing. I finally drifted off to sleep.

I waited all day for him to call on Saturday and was disappointed once again. The weather had made it a strange week for everyone. Jake was probably just caught up in the fallout from the storm. Working on a construction site during an ice storm must have caused a ton of problems for them. Still, I barely ate anything all day, the absence of communication with Jake was tugging at my worst insecurities. Was he in Hamilton with his wife? Was he chasing another girl somewhere? Had he decided I was too much trouble?

For my eight o’clock show, on Saturday night I decided to do the Jungle Fever music, with Nature Boy by Jose Feliciano, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Wild Thing for my chair routine, and ending up with twirling my black chiffon cape to Jungle Fever by the Chakachas. Switching out the final floor routine for the black cape twirling would give them the required thirty seconds of nudity. During the show I searched the audience, hoping Jake would surprise me and just show up unannounced.

He wasn’t there. Deflated, I wandered back up to my room to get ready for the next show at ten o’clock. I pulled out my White Satin costume and tape because I could do the cape twirling routine in place of a floor routine at the end. All evening I fought back tears. Maybe this was it. He was going to disappear into thin air. He didn’t really owe me any kind of explanation. I would be easy to walk away from.

My emotions might get the best of me if he didn’t show up at some point that night, and I’d end up blubbering through a show. That would be a disaster. Time for the ten o’clock show. A quick scan of the audience told me there was no Jake this time either. I pasted a smile on my face and managed to get through it without acting like a baby.

I put on the Cabaret costume for the final show of the week, kicking my way through, Come to the Cabaret and Don’t Tell Mama. Then pulling my chair onstage for the Mein Herr routine, and changing my floor routine to Maybe This Time to a twirling dance with my black cape once again to play hide and seek with the audience. I was concerned that the song, Maybe This Time, was going to push me over the emotional edge that I’d been teetering on all weekend.

The shows were over for the week, and I made it through without breaking down. I shuffled dejectedly past the tables to the hotel lobby, where I looked up to see Jake leaning against the stair railing with an inscrutable look on his face.

A shot of adrenaline surged through me as I crossed the tile to where he was. “Oh, my God. I didn’t think you were going to show up this week. I waited all night for your call.”

“Did you?” He asked in a flat, cold voice.

Something was wrong. Usually, by now, we would have been dragging each other up to the room. Instead of reaching out to touch me, he just stood there staring at me.

“What’s going on?” I choked out, “Are you mad at me?”

“I don’t know.” He said through gritted teeth. Should I be mad at you?”

“I- I don’t know.” I nervously squeaked, feeling ill. “I don’t know what I did.”

The chilling exchange took me back to Arizona with my ex where he would punish me for doing things he imagined when he was at work. I suddenly started shivering, afraid that Jake was going to beat me for some imaginary infraction. Oh, God. Not another Frank.

Just then, Jesse and her boyfriend, Gary came down the stairs, laughing and holding hands. They stopped when they got to the bottom and saw Jake and me.

Jesse squealed, “Is that your Jake?”

“Um, yes.” I cleared my throat and introduced everyone. “Jake, this is my friend, Jesse, and her boyfriend, Gary. Gary and Jesse, this is Jake, the guy I told you so much about.”

Jake looked confused and asked, “What the hell was going on here last night? Why were you taking that guy,” pointing to Gary, “to your room?”

“What?” I replied. “I wasn’t taking anyone to my room.”

“That’s not what it looked like to me.” Jake spat out, looking like he was about to pounce on Gary.

Gary intervened on my behalf, “Dude. Some drunk guy was hitting on Tina and wouldn’t let her go. The bartender and I pulled him off her and I took Tina to her room, so he wouldn’t follow her.” He continued, “Then, I went back to the bar to make sure my girlfriend was Okay. There ain’t nothing going on.”

I was the furious one then. “You were here last night and because you imagined I was cheating, you just left me alone all night wondering if you were dumping me?” I argued, “How could you do that to me? That’s how my ex treated me.”

Jesse’s music had begun, and she and Gary left us in the lobby staring at each other. Jake looked away, smoothing his mustache down and I continued, “Frank would spend all day imagining me talking to someone, and then he’d come home in a snit and start accusing me and throwing stuff around and threatening me. I was scared to death of him and never knew when he would ambush me with an accusation.” I complained.

Jake interrupted, “It looked like you were taking a guy to your room- that’s all. What was I supposed to think?”

“What were you supposed to think? You weren’t supposed to think anything.” I yelled. “You were supposed to trust me. You were supposed to come to my room and ask me what was going on instead of assuming the worst of me.”

In frustration, the tears began to roll. I hated that. I was livid, not sad. But the tears always made me look weak.

“Jesus,” He said, “I honestly just thought you were done with me. I got mad and drove back home.”

“Hm. Drove back home,” I reminded him of the situation, “had revenge sex with your wife because you thought I was cheating on you.” I paused to let that fact sink in, “But I’m the bad guy here because you thought I was cheating. How does this relationship work in your head?”

“It sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? I guess I deserve to know how you feel when I go home.” He admitted sheepishly.

“Except for me, it’s worse because that’s something I can’t change and something I’m not even allowed to complain about. Have you got any idea how I feel when I know you’re with your wife?” I chided.

“I guess I do now. I feel like such a shit. Why do you put up with everything?” He asked.

“Why do you think? Why do you think I sit around all week waiting for a stinking phone call like a teenager with her first crush? Why do you think I keep my thoughts to myself when you come back from being with your wife?” I raged, “Why do you think I am willing to take lousy crumbs in this relationship when I could have the whole deal with someone else?”

“I honestly don’t know.” He acknowledged begrudgingly.

“Because I love you, you idiot. I’ve loved you since the day we met”, I confessed, “and I don’t know what to do with all these feelings. If I could, I’d climb inside your skin just so I could be with you all the time. Trust me, I don’t like sharing. I don’t like losing. I never did. But I’m willing to share you because I love you too much to walk away, no matter what I have to put up with.”

“I’m so sorry for last night. You’re right.” He sheepishly acknowledged, looking like he was in pain. “I should have just asked you what was going on. You’ve never given me a reason to doubt you. God, you’re right, I am a selfish, jealous idiot. So, where do we go from here?” He asked.

“Room 206. You can apologize there all night. Or until I tell you to stop. Which I won’t.”

“I don’t deserve for you to love me,” he said, stroking my arms and my stomach after his first apology, making me wish for an encore of what we had just finished.

“I don’t have any control over that. Trust me. I tried not to.”

“I’m such a jerk,” he whispered into my neck, igniting every nerve in my body. “I’m such a lucky jerk.”

I pushed him over on his back and let my lips wander all over him, right from his head to his toes, with a short stop somewhere in the middle. It appeared to be time for another apology, so I laid back and enjoyed watching his arm muscles flexing on either side of me. There is just something about a man’s arms in that position I cannot resist. I like all the other stuff, don’t get me wrong. But a man’s arms can take my breath away, and Jake had great ones.

In the morning we packed up my stuff and stopped at a diner for breakfast, before he dropped me off at my next gig in his hometown, Hamilton, Ontario. He warned me, “I know way too many people here. We’ll have to be careful. Just know that I’ll be here looking out for you, even if I have to pretend we don’t know each other. Here I go again,” He lamented, “asking you to give up a part of yourself for me. I seem to always be doing that.”

“No. I get it.” I brushed it off, “Don’t worry about it. Will I see you after work this week at all?”

“Yeah, I’m going to figure something out. I promise. Hey, and look,” he continued, “I don’t expect you to sit alone in your room all week. I understand you have to be sociable, and I trust you. I really do. Next time I have a problem with something I think you’re doing I’ll talk to you. I promise.”

“Good. Thank you. Can’t you tell how I feel about you by now? I just want you- all the time. Sometimes, when I know you’re back home I feel like I’m dying. Believe that,” I assured him as we collected my suitcases, and he walked me to the hotel.

We stole a long, wistful kiss in the doorway before he took off. Once again, I was watching his truck’s taillights fade away down the street and my heart slowly broke- again.