That question came from my best friend–I’d been talking about buying one of those long clip-on ponytails. I used to wear them all the time–post stripper days–in various shades of blonde or red, depending on what my hair was at the moment. Now I was looking for one that was all white and the store where I’d bought my hair twenty years ago was gone.
I’m 65, my hair is mostly white, and I’ve been making a living with my clothes mostly on for more than thirty years.
I was also talking about looking for the right over-the-top top for the faux black leather skin tight pants I’d bought. These days, I work from home and the clothes I mostly have on are pajama bottoms and a thread-bare t-shirt or jeans and a t-shirt that’s not quite thread bare enough to qualify as a good sleeping shirt. It’s a head and shoulders Zoom world now; my tits and ass stage days are mostly over.
But this is different. I’m going to be appearing with some of the most glamorous women I know. All of us former strippers or sex workers. I’m the oldest and fattest I’ve ever been and I’ll be standing next to:
- The perfectly proportioned flame-red redhead who founded the NY School of Burlesque.
- A tall, curvaceous blonde talented and smart enough to parlay quitting the naked for money business into a successful book.
- A stunning award winning Black dancer turned life coach who can make assles spin in any direction she wants.
I’m smart. I’m a good writer. I know that.
They are also all smart, good writers–who look like Vegas showgirls or Vargas pinups. I’ve been the primary caregiver for my elderly demented mother for over five years and it shows. I used to be “she’s got a good personality” and now I’m tired all the time and I’m “she’s kinda cranky, but she’s funny.”
I usually don’t worry about comparisons, this is not the first time I’ll be standing next to a real life Jessica Rabbit or Rock ‘n Roll goddess. But in the past the lighting has been more…complimentary. Let me translate: I’m used to reading in bars where it is much darker. This is going to be in the NYPL, in itself intimidating enough, lit well enough so they can also livestream it. I need to up my game, for my own comfort.
The answer to that question is no, we do not get over being strippers.
At least not me, not the strippers, go-go and topless dancers of my era. When men still looked both ways before entering the bar and girls lied to friends and family about what they did. We were a closed community because we had to be. Some jobs are by definition so distinct from the rest of the world, that the rules of conduct and survival are different. Our culture was insular and intense, cut off from the civilian world we’ll carry part of it with us for the rest of our lives. Looks weren’t everything, but looks helped. Even when you get older. And fatter. So yes, a long ponytail ala Sharon Tate would help.
I have a memory disorder, as in I don’t remember stuff. A lot of stuff falls through a lot of cracks. Except things from that time period. I only fully remember the details of my time in the topless bars of Times Square. All my memories may not be accurate, but they’re vibrant and textured.
I’ll never get over being a stripper, it’s the only part of my past in Technicolor. The only part that’s even close to a complete picture. It’s why I keep talking about it. Keep writing about it.
“Okay,” my friend says, “but be careful, because, as you know, there is a line between sexy and…”
“What? Looking like those old ladies who I won’t give a seat to on the bus? With the dyed red hair, purple lipstick and fishnets when they’re obviously in their 80s and that shit is not cute anymore?”
There was a dancer back in the day named Peggy, she tended toward the showgirl kind of costumes no one was wearing in the late 70s and early 80s, the kind rarely seen outside of Vegas. Her daughter was also a topless dancer. Peggy was probably in her mid 40s, if that, twenty something years younger than I am now. When I think of her, I think of how ridiculous we thought she looked next to us twenty-somethings and–if I’m honest–teenagers, some of us not even old enough to get a DMV learner’s permit. We called her Grandma Peggy–behind her back.
Yeah, that’s exactly what she meant. She was warning me against turning into Grandma Peggy. It was said with love, but I already know I can’t compete, that at 65 and 220 lbs you might be able to imagine me as a strip club house mom, but only the people who knew me when I could still dance, grind and bend over without losing that string of rhinestones I’d draped across my nipples could imagine me living that life. And most of those people are dead.
But when I write, I remember and the more I write the more I remember and discover about myself. I’ve worked with clothes on for more years than I did with them off, but somewhere inside me there is a doorway, a portal, and I can go back and forth between then and now. I couldn’t close that door if I wanted to and I’ve never wanted to. When I read, I can take you back there with me.
Thursday, 2/23/23, 6:30p In Person & Streaming live from the NYPL, I’ll read new work about the dark days from WHOREPHOBIA – Strippers on Art, Work and Life. Tickets: https://ton.nypl.org/borden
