Jo Weldon

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Table Dance
at the Cheetah, Atlanta, 1993

I bend over (knees bent, ladylike-not allowed to show too much in this county) to the stranger sitting at the edge of the stage, but I don't make eye contact yet. I drop my hair over my head and swoosh it gently over his face, letting him feel its silkiness. It takes me an hour and a half to dry it straight, but when it's wavy it's not long enough for me to make contact without showing my tonsils from behind. I wouldn't mind doing so if I were allowed to, but the law states: "…shall not bend over in a manor (sic) so as to expose the interior genitalia." The joke is that we don't have any private parts left. However, the county is ever vigilant of our privacy, so bending over is one of our most delicate arts. The club management has decided that, due to this vigilance, we must not bend over even when fully clothed, which I am, in a manner of speaking; I haven't removed any part of my costume yet.

I pause with my hair hanging down. I can feel my calves tensing, my haunches tightening. This is how I stay in shape. The guys ask how I stay in shape, and I say, "Like this," and do it. Their jaws go slack when I do it. I'm not just selling sex. I'm selling fascination. I'm selling them the opportunity to believe in my mystique, one second at a time, one pivot, one pose at a time.

Just when my muscles start to protest, I swoosh my hair around and fling my head back, holding my stomach in. My hair brushes the small of my back, the top of my glutes. I enjoy it. I put my hands on either side of my face as if to hold the hair back, look down at him. I make full eye contact. I don't need to smile because all he wants to see, at this split second, are my eyes.

He's glassy-eyed. His ass is mine.

I run my hands down over my face, my neck, to my shoulders, with the move I've perfected which pushes my breasts together between my forearms. The county doesn't allow us to touch our breasts, either, but after some debate the managers of the club agreed that the pushing-together-with-the-arms move is acceptable.

I reach over my shoulder and slowly fiddle down the strap of my white gown. I make these gowns myself. I've made twelve exactly like this one, because they're pearly white, and no matter how carefully you clean them, they lose their sheen after awhile.

He holds up a dollar, folded in half lengthwise. I slide my hands down my side (management decided that touching one's waist is acceptable, again, after some debate). It looks like I'm in love with my body, which I am. I LOVE my body. That's what I'm saying over and over, with every silent move: I love my body. It feels good to say this in a world where most of the time women are wondering if their asses are too big, if their bellies are too soft, if their knees, for God's sake, are too lumpy. This is my message: this body is perfect just the way it is, and I'm lucky to have it, and you're lucky to see it. I say it all night long, in spite of the fact that my ass is too big, I'm too short, I'm bowlegged, and my nipples are heading south. I say it because it's true, true, true.

Elsewhere women are suffering from eating disorders, domestic abuse, genocide, but not here, not in the square yard of stage I'm occupying at the moment. Here I'm safe, perfect, in love with myself. Everything will be all right for me. This is not precisely fair, and I'm grateful to be here and not there. Gratitude. This is the other thing I'm expressing, with every calculated move.

I didn't always feel like this. I used to feel desperate when I danced, anxious about not being beautiful enough, not getting enough money, not being in the right place at the right time. I would drink and feel more desperate. But since I quit drinking this is what I experience, this sense of self and safety--nothing to be desperate about. Like the men, I leave my worries at the door of the club. I may pick them up again on the way out, but for now I have this luxury. Some people never get it. I'm very lucky.

I reach down and slowly pull the gown to the side, where I sewed the slit open all the way to my hip so that it moves smoothly across my crotch and reveals the thong, which, again, I made myself, so that it would be both opaque and tight enough to show the shape of my vulva underneath. His eyes flicker over my crotch almost guiltily, but of course guilt is redundant in here. We all paid to get in, so we're already guilty. My shift fee, paid to the club, comes to about $70 per night. He only paid $10 to get in, but what's left in his wallet is about to be mine. He's about to pay my shift fee, I can tell. And it's only 8:30. I usually don't start making any money till about ten. Then I make money continuously till about 2, and then I hang out and pick up a few extra bucks by the end of the night. That's just how it is, unless there's a convention in town, which there's not.

The best convention is called (by us) "The Chicken Pluckers." It's a poultry convention.

Then, sheepishly, he realizes that I'm exposing my garter, not my crotch (as if I didn't know where his eyes would go, what a wonder of sights and smells would flit through his mind), and he gives a little smile and slides the dollar bill under the sequined strap. I always wear my garter on my right leg. Again, I made the garter myself. I have unusually slender legs, and the last thing I want is a standard-size garter full of dollar bills sliding down my leg, spilling my hard-earned all over the stage.

I drop the skirt and turn around slowly, gracefully, a move I've done literally thousands of times. I never get tired of it, though-that little return to the world around me when eye contact is broken. But before he can look away from me, possibly get distracted by someone younger or taller than myself, I slide my skirt gracefully up over my ass. The ass tightened by years of bending to receive dollars. He can't look away now, of course. It's crude, but I know perfectly well what he sees and that it isn't crude to him at all, that white fabric sculpting my vulva, and moving in a narrow band over my asshole, which shows in slight indentations on either side of my g-string. I know he's not thinking crude thoughts. I wouldn't care if he was, but frankly, guys who are thinking crude thoughts don't pay me as well. Fascinated guys-those are the ones who reward me for my self-loving message.

Again I let my hair fall over the small of my back, this time letting it slide down into the crack of my ass. This, I know from experience, is almost unbearable for guys who like my style. But I don't turn around to see his expression yet. I look into the mirror across from me, giving the impression that I'm far away, I'm into myself, I'm enjoying looking at myself as much as any man here. Which is kind of true.

I catch Darlin's eye in the mirror, and she grins at me. She's on a table behind me, but I can see her. Half an hour ago, while we dressed for our shift, we were talking about our moves. Hers are totally different from mine. We imitated each others' moves so perfectly that all the other dancers in the dressing room howled, and begged us to imitate them, which we did, in unison. The moves we do are the moves that work for us, not the ones that work for other dancers. We pick them up from dancers we saw when we first started, back when we were the young ones, the babies. Moves handed down from generations of dancers. The ones that worked for us, we kept. The moves that are followed by tips are the ones our bodies return to over and over. We all do the same thing song after song, but we don't do the same things as each other. There are little differences distinct enough to be our inside jokes.

I don't grin back, but my lips press together and I tilt my hair over my face. This is something I do a lot. I've known many of the dancers here for years, and we can convey our inside jokes with the slightest change of expression. Darlin won't mind that I'm not responding, though. She knows I'm working this guy.

I turn around and meet his eyes again, that eye contact that is as much of a rush as the first kiss with someone you've known you were going to kiss for some time, but you didn't know when, and it's now. Now. He says, "Table dance?"

At this club, unlike any other I've seen, the dancers are allowed to step down during their sets and do table dances. When one of us steps down, another takes her place. It's lovely.

I gesture with my head and he follows me to the edge of the stage. I've never found the straightforward walking as easy to manage as the dancing. I'm attractive, but I'm not really stunning. I don't have moves when I'm just walking.

But when I get to the steps at the end of the stage I have him take my hand to guide me down-that touch of flesh keeps them going. He points at a table and we go to it, and he gives me his hand again as I step onto the chair and from there to the top of the table, which has lights built into its surface. Flattering lights, thank God.

He sits in front of me and I begin all over again with the hair swooshing and so on. I take his ten-dollar-bill in my garter and move my hand back up to my straps and slowly release my breasts, first one, then the other, a move for which this dress was built. Very, very carefully. Then I pull up the skirt slowly and raise it over my head, always that moment of panic when you're standing on a table in five-inch-heels and you can't see a thing, and stretch so that he can see the smoothness of my belly, and pull the dress over my head and shake out my hair, hair which has been so carefully dressed in order to look good when shaken out.

I drop the dress on his head. I know that's it's warm and smells fresh, lightly perfumed. When I get home every night I rinse out the dress and lightly perfume it. There is at least one of these dresses hanging on the showerhead in my bathroom every day. My boyfriend has to move it to the towel rack so he can shower. He knows better than to throw it on the floor, believe me.

This man knows better, too. He gently drapes my dress over the back of the empty seat next to him. A thoughtful man, even in the throes of fascination.

I look down at him and hold his eyes while I undo first one side, then the other, of my g-string. Holding his eyes is part of the fun, because he wants to look at my crotch so badly. To give him permission, I look down at it, and accidentally drop the g-string, making his eyes fall. I have been warned about this by management, but sometimes I still do it anyway. He picks it up off the table and reluctantly hands it to me.

I fold it into my garter, where he can look at it and imagine how fragrant it might be. How it might smell differently than my dress.

I start over, doing the same swoosh, the arm press, the shoulder stroke, the waist stroke, etc., etc., etc., I do it for five songs-Prince, The Rolling Stones, Alanis Morrisette, Mariah Carey, Iggy Pop. I dance exactly the same to each song. He continues to silently feed money into my garter to keep me moving.

After Iggy Pop, he stands up and puts an extra twenty into my garter, and says he has to go. He hands me my dress, which goes on in somewhat the same way it comes off, but I can show a little humor here-I yank it down a bit too far, accidentally-on-purpose, so that my breasts pop out. He grins.

"I just stopped in for a quick drink on the way home," he said, "but you really caught my eye. You're a very captivating woman."

"Thank you," I say. It's nice to be appreciated, even by a stranger on his way home. "You're very sweet." Actually, I suspect he is very sweet. Jerky guys usually don't dig me, which is great anywhere but here.

"Can I ask you a question?" he says, sheepish again. "If you don't mind."

"Sure," I say. I already know what it is.

"What do you think about while you dance?" he asks.

MONEY "Mermaids," I say, "moving underwater."

Some guys believe this. They even expound upon it, telling me about my flowing hair, my sinuous movements. I move like I'm underwater. I know this.

But not this one. He laughs. I laugh too. I actually like it when they're onto me. It's better than when they want to talk about how wonderful it must be for me to be so beautiful. With a guy who's onto me, I can talk about what his favorite movies are, which is the only thing I really like to talk about in here. But I won't get to talk to him about movies, or even ask him his name, because he's got to go home. I can see his wedding band, and I bet he's a very loving and considerate husband. He may occasionally get in late from work, but you can bet he pays the bills on time.

He kisses my hand, bows over it, and leaves.

I look around for a stage to get on. It's 9 pm and I have seven hours to go.

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