“Listen kid, this is how you pick up dancers.”

“You sit at the table farthest from the stage.”

“And keep you sunglasses on and the brim of your cap down low, like this.”

Jack was slouching in a lounge chair in the crew room, adjusting his hat, visually explaining life to the the young man across the room.

“Just chew on your toothpick with no expression and never make eye contact with the dancers.”

“That drives them crazy.”

John the new hire, off the farm from Maryland, had no idea what Jack was talking about.

“Stay away from dancers, though,” Jack continued. “They are nothing but trouble.”

“All they want is your money,” he said in a grizzled voice that matched his weathered skin.

John Boy, as they came to call him at the steel mill, just nodded.

On hiring, the supervisor told him to ignore Jack. “His brain is fried from smoking too much weed. We call him The Mouth but don’t pay no attention to anything he says.”

Jack’s brain wasn’t fried from smoking dope, and his voice wasn’t grizzled from too much drink, and he wasn’t always stoned, as most people surmised. He was just loud. And being loud for so long, affected his every word.

Jack was the youngest of five, with four older sisters. “His mother and I decided we would keep trying until we got a boy,” his father would explain, sometimes in front of him. “I often wonder why we bothered.” Even as a screaming toddler, Jack was loud. By the time he was a teenager, his parents were near retirement and the girls had taken all of the parenting out of them. For the most part, Jack raised himself.

“I’ll tell you what,” he continued loudly. “On Thursday when we get paid, I’ll take you over to the Slut Hole and show you first hand how to score a dancer.”

On the West side of town, just beyond the respectable businesses and the elementary school was The Fruit Bowl, a low-brow “Gentlemen’s Club” housed in a converted dairy barn. Doug the owner, formerly an appliance salesman, was proud of the clever name he devised. On the side of the barn was a big billboard featuring a bowl of exploding cherries.

A sociologist studying the regular clientele of The Fruit Bowl, mostly steelworkers, contractors, tradesmen, and landscapers, might have thought the name was apropos for an entirely different reason than Doug.

Local townspeople often referred to The Fruit Bowl as the Butt Bowl with shamed humor, from which the steelworkers derived the vulgar tag – the Slut Hole. Ironically, it was actually Jack’s wife Meg, who coined the term first.

“I cannot go,” mumbled John Boy, being the first words he ever spoke directly toward Jack.

“Why the fuck not? Is Thursday the night your momma washes your cock?”

“I cannot go because I am a Catholic,” John Boy continued in explanation, immediately wishing he hadn’t mixed his faith in with this crude conversation.

“That’s OK,” Jack permitted, “Most of the girls down at the Hole are Catholic too. And they’re all trying to earn a living. So you’ll go.”

***

Lauren’s parents had thrown her out of the house. At least that’s what she told her friends on the way out of Darien.

Technically she ran away after they gave her an ultimatum regarding her downtown boyfriend. The original plan had them leaving for the city together, but in the end his parents forbade him from going, and Lauren was on her own.

After a few nights in a Hilton Garden outside of Trenton, New Jersey, Lauren’s parents reported her debit card stolen, and after a few more nights in a rundown Motel 6, she was out of money. A flyer taped inside the Motel 6 elevator advertised The Fruit Bowl, with a footnote: Dancers Wanted.

Lauren had danced in Darien, but was not so naive as to think her 10 years of ballet would make her any more qualified for this employment. However, she needed cash.

It was early Wednesday afternoon when she worked up enough nerve to walk into The Fruit Bowl. Behind the bar a moderately attractive woman with jet black hair rinsed beer glasses, and on Lauren’s employment inquiry, she nodded toward the door marked Manager. The bar was nearly empty with only two old men sitting at one end.

Lauren knocked on the door and found Doug checking liquor invoices when she stepped into the little space with no windows and an air conditioner cut into the wall and sweating almost as much as the man at the desk. Doug hated paperwork and was happy for the respite.

“What can I do for you, young lady?”

“I am here about the dancing job you have available.”

Doug sized her up quickly. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two,” she lied.

“Have you ever danced before?” Doug inquired.

“Yes, for ten years,” she replied truthfully.

Oh brother, he thought silently. “OK. Take your shirt off.”

Lauren hesitated, thought about bolting, but realized she had no place to go.

She pulled her T-Shirt up over her head and stood in front of the interviewer in her bra.

Lauren was petite and pretty with reddish blonde hair and she never went to a day of prep-school without a half-dozen wannabe suitors seeking her attentions. For the first time in her life she was self conscious about the way she looked.

Doug nodded his head and said just as nonchalantly, “Lose the shorts.”

Lauren obliged, standing in this stranger’s office with no less on than if she was at the beach, she reasoned, or perhaps rationalized.

In earlier times, Doug would have tried to fuck the applicant, but since he started sharing a bed most nights with Haley, this non-essential part of the interview process was skipped.

Haley was a good dancer, but more importantly she had gone to business school and knew how the world worked.

When the IRS and ABC tried to shut down The Fruit Bowl, Haley offered to use her cognitive skills to save the business, instead of her basic assets. Nobody knew the deal she made with Doug on this account, but most people presumed his balls were in a container under her care. Nobody knew the deal she made with the authorities either, but The Fruit Bowl remained opened for business.

“Lets see if you can dance?” Doug stood up and motioned toward the door.

Lauren froze.

“Come on honey, its just Ralph and Joe out there right now and they’re both so nearsighted they can’t even see their own dicks when they piss.”

In fact there was a few other people at tables, but they didn’t seem too interested in the young girl in her underwear.

Jasmine was on the schedule until 2 O’Clock, but the lack of potential tips kept her in the dressing room most of this afternoon smoking Marlboro Lights. She heard Doug’s voice and made for the stage like she was just coming off break.

“Show this lady the ropes will you Jas?” Doug suggested.

The stage was small with two brass poles about twelve feet apart. The bar made an L around the stage and on the opposite side were a dozen small tables. Jasmine introduced herself and said, “Just do what I do.”

On Friday and Saturday nights there was usually a DJ, but during the week, all too familiar soundtracks burned onto CDs, played continuously. AC/DC queued up on the sound system and Dirty Deeds blared through the Fruit Bowl.

This was not in the repertoire of the Darien School of Dance and Lauren wasn’t sure where to start.

Without much of an audience, Jasmine grabbed the pole and with a tune in her head that was obviously different than the one blaring from the speakers, danced with the pole in a lyrical and not so erotic manner. Lauren thought it was beautiful in a weird sort of way. She imitated Jas as best she could, and in two minutes and thirty seconds she had a job, if not a career.

“You can start tomorrow at Noon. You will work with Bethany. Pay is $75 per day, cash, plus tips, which you share half with the bartender,” Doug explained. “After tomorrow we’ll get you on the regular schedule.”

Last summer Lauren had a job in the food court at the mall selling frozen yogurt. She thought she remembered there had been a lot more paperwork involved and the matter of providing a Social Security Number. It occurred to Lauren that she hadn’t even shown identification.

Just as well, she thought. It was exhausting all the same.

***

Thunderstorms rolled in overnight and it was raining steady when Lauren showed up at The Fruit Bowl twenty minutes before her start time on Thursday.

When she walked in the front door she was surprised to see several dozen heads turn toward her. She could feel twice as many eyeballs undressing her as she headed toward the dressing room. She was relieved that no one was back there and she sat down to reconsider her situation.

A few minutes later Doug strolled in. “Bad news babe, Bethany is a no show. It’s all you this afternoon. I’ll see if I can get a hold of Jas, but normally she has something with her kid on Thursday.”

“I don’t suppose you have a costume, do you?”

This never occurred to Lauren, although it should have. Costumes were always a major part of dance recitals in Darien. Not that this was comparable.

“Well I can’t have you out there twirling in your fruit of the fucking looms. I’ll be right back.”

State Law precluded total nakedness in The Fruit Bowl since it served alcohol. The ABC required a certain amount of decorum.

“Here, put these on.” Lauren had not even noticed Doug’s return. “He handed her two pasties that looked like they were part of a Wonder Woman costume. Red and blue with a white star. “Don’t let these fall off.”

“Almost as an afterthought he handed her a red G-string.”

She wondered where this had all come from and wanted to throw up.

Not long after noon, Lauren was on the stage, wondering how she had gotten there. Not in an esoteric sense. She literally wondered how she had gotten from the dressing room to the stage.

Coincidentally, or maybe not, Dirty Deeds was blaring again through the sound system and Lauren concentrated on replicating the performance Jasmine had demonstrated the day before.

“Hey Doug, why don’t you hire dancers with some tits?” cracked a middle aged man in a stained Fruit Bowl T-shirt.

“Hey Howard, why don’t you shut the fuck up?” retorted Jack immediately, always an advocate for working people. He was in his regular spot at center of the bar.

The previously sullen bar erupted with laughter and heckling.

“Better yet, why don’t you get up there and do a set. You probably have a couple cup sizes on her,” added a patron with a baseball cap advertising a local plumber.

Lauren wanted to crawl under a table. She missed her Mom and Dad. But she kept spinning around the pole, concentrating on not getting dizzy and not puking.

“Don’t worry Honey, you’ll get used to it,” whispered Louise the matronly barmaid with the black braided hair. Louise was a dancer before two kids and gravity promoted her to her current position. It was her bar noon to midnight every weeknight and until one o’clock on Friday and Saturday night, when she also had help.

Saturday lunch she worked the kitchen and on Sunday she had off. All for $500 per week cash, plus tips. Hers and half the dancers’.

After a Van Halen song, followed by a Queen anthem, Louise interrupted Lauren’s ballet and explained that she needed to work the bar for tips. Louise after all, had a vested interest.

Lauren knew she made a terrible mistake starting with the man in the dirty Fruit Bowl T-shirt, as soon as she was standing in front of him. He was holding a dollar bill in his hand resting on the bar. She looked at him and he looked at her and she looked at the dollar and thought about the twenty dollar bills her parents handed off to her every time she went out the front door.

“Hey darling, come down here a minute,” called the man with the baseball cap. She was more than happy to abandon her current position. The baseball cap leaned forward and whispered in her ear. Any remaining color drained from her already pale complexion.

The man in the baseball cap sat back and held a dollar between his thumb and forefinger. Lauren looked at the dollar, and grabbing her breasts pushed them together in order to use them to pluck the dollar from his fingers.

The bar erupted once again in cheers, applause, and laughter.

Lauren was mortified as she repeated this process all around the bar. But by one o’clock she had almost thirty dollars in tips.

***

“It never rains on the steel mill, it only rains on the men,” was one of Jack’s favorite expression on days like Thursday. He had repeated the mantra so many times during the morning, that his co-workers were relieved at ten o’clock when he announced, “Fuck this shit, I’m going to the Hole. Who’s coming with me?” Nobody followed. Jack’s wife had a good job, but the rest of the men needed their full paychecks.

Not long after Jack left, a hydraulic line on the backhoe burst and the back-breaking and tedious task of breaking up a concrete pad got that much worse. And then the sky opened up in a torrential downpour, and worse turned into as bad as it ever gets.

Most of the crew was glad that Jack had left so they didn’t have to hear him complain. But John Boy, in his naivete, was twisted that the rest of the gang had to pick up his slack on an already daunting job, and under the most adverse conditions. With Jack gone he complained bitterly and openly.

Jimmy was an old head that liked to stir up trouble just to pass time a little faster. “Boy, why don’t you march yourself down to the Slut Hole and give ol’ Jack a piece of your mind. Tell ‘im we all said it ain’t right, him sitting in a bar feelin’ up dancers while we hump fucking slabs of concrete and rebar in the goddamn rain.”

It took John Boy a few minutes to get his head around this statement, but the rest of the gang piled on.

“Lazy sack of shit.”
“Self-centered bastard.”
“One-way fuck.”
“Cocksucker.”
“It just ain’t right.”
“It only rains on the men,” Jimmy added in mockery.

By quitting time when they went to see the foreman for their checks, John Boy was so torqued on the subject, there was no way but for him to head to the Hole for a confrontation.

The rest of the gang debated whether they should follow, in order to witness the showdown, but they all had wives, girlfriends, kids, or some combination waiting at home for them, or more accurately, their paychecks.

So John Boy set off for The Fruit Bowl on his own, full of sound and fury. The rain had slowed to a drizzle when he slid into the stone parking lot and he almost forgot to shut off his truck he was so pumped for a fight.

As dark as the afternoon sky loomed, the inside of the bar was even darker and there was no way for John Boy’s eyes to adjust fast enough as he charged into the front door, and he collided with another human form, exiting with equal alacrity.

Lauren’s tiny frame was no match for John’s bulk and she spilled out the door onto the sidewalk.

She was not so much hurt as overwhelmed by the shocking day and immediately burst into tears.

John was stunned. He could not believe the absolute beauty of the half naked girl that was sobbing at his feet. Any aggression with which he had arrived was swept away with apologetic emotion and grief over making this angelic creature cry.

“Here, let me help you. I’m sorry,” he stuttered.

He helped her to her feet and apologized again, but she had no capacity left to answer and spun away from him toward her car.

He watched her disappear, as quickly as she had entered his life, and filled with despair, he forgot, more than abandoned, his original mission. He simply walked back to his car and drove home.

###