How was your day, Dan?: long post

How was your day, Dan?: long post:

Hello there.

I’m sitting on my couch, laptop on my lap top, watching Pretty Woman on HBO. Perhaps more telling about me than a “100 Things About Me” list is the fact that I am, yet again, watching Pretty Woman. Because I like it.

Did you ever notice Julia Roberts’ bra in the first seduction scene is the same shade of lavender as her dress in the final scene of My Best Friend’s Wedding? Perhaps she made both wardrobe choices for herself, and she really likes lavender.

Speaking of hookers—

When I was 21, I worked at a bar called Splash, in New York City. At the time, Splash was the cornerstone of the burgeoning gay scene in up-and-coming Chelsea; Splash catered to the gay after-work happy-hour scene, where professional gents in Zegna suits sat around cocktail tables with their ties slightly loosened, talking and laughing laughing laughing at nothing much. Above the businessmen stood several go go dancers strapped into brightly-colored thongs, who danced as much as they could on individual little platforms dotted here-and-there. There was also a stage that stuck out in the middle of the room, where dancers would splash around in water that streamed from a giant golden showerhead. Hence the name of the bar. Splash was delicious old-school burlesque, lots of drugs all over the place, people screwing in dark corners from time to time. It was very naughty. I didn't partake in the goings-on, but I felt dangerous just being there. That was enough.

As beautiful as the dancers were, the patrons would largely ignore them as naked wallpaper, as if you see that type of thing every day. Of course, in New York, sometimes you do. At the time I found nothing unusual about the place, either; or the fact that my work uniform involved combat boots with electric-blue square-cut trunks, which if I were a woman would have been called "hot pants." Hot pants, FYI, that I still own, and can no longer fit into. Because now I have a bigger butt. Anyway--so I would leave work, with my huge roll of tips stuck in my shorts' waistband, and just walk down Sixth Avenue, hop on the train, and go home. I never put on pants. Who cares? It was New York, you could get away with it.

“Reg... Bev... Wil.” Best line in the movie.

My first day on the job came about somewhat by accident. I was wandering around lower Manhattan, fresh off the plane from making no money as a model in Milan, when I ended up in Splash and half-heartedly asked if they were hiring. Lucky for me the coat-check guy called in sick that day, and the manager said if I started working immediately they would put me on the schedule. So I took off my coat, then took off my shirt, took a deep cleansing breath, and I went to work. After an evening of tearing little paper stubs off hangers and tracking down the occasional lost scarf, the manager offered me a job serving cocktails and chatting up the gentlemen looking for a friendly face once in a while. “There’s a rumor that you have to have sex with one of the managers here in order to get a job,” he said. And he didn’t blink or move his eyes from me when he said it. “I don’t know if you’ve heard that or not.”

Do you think I did it? I didn't. (...of course!) I fired back at him with some haughty comment like "Allow me to be the first to break the trend," or something of the sort. I got the job anyway. And I made good money working there.

Several of the dancers were “escorts,” which is a polite way of saying “hookers” or “sex workers” or whatever you want to call it. They were very nice, actually, for the most part; after performing, (and drying off), they would chat up would-be customers in the lounge, where they would sip drinks served by yours truly. Not all of the dancers were for sale, by any means; one was a law school student, for instance, who carried books with him everywhere he went. Then some of the dancers were straight, and their girlfriends would visit to watch them work. It wasn’t hard to pick the girlfriends out, being the only women in the bar that weren’t surrounded by a group of gay men repeatedly telling them how “FABULOUS” they were for no reason at all. Instead, the girlfriends always had a look of quiet, victorious strength on their faces, watching male patrons slip dollars into their boyfriends’ thongs and knowing that beautiful man on the stage was going to go home with the woman he loved. Too bad for some of those women that many of their boyfriends ended up snorting lines of coke in the bathroom and having sex with a bartender or two, who were of course also men, surprise surprise; but it was none of my business, and I always presumed the women knew deep down inside anyway.

“Thongs” is a silly word.

In the bar's back room, the dancers would all stand around in their little outfits and chat casually, with their hands on their hips, as if chatting in a purple thong was the most casual thing in the world to do. It looked like a weird underwear catalog, where all the men look so happy. One day a new dancer was struggling with fastening a cock-ring around his junk, to make it stick out more and look bigger (the male push-up bra, if you will) when an older, more-experienced dancer saw him and gave him pointers on how to do it right. The older guy had a very fatherly, kind tone to his voice, taking the youngster under his wing, and the young guy was very appreciative. No one understood why I found that scene to be funny, or so strangely touching.

Several months after I stopped working—perhaps it was years later, I don't remember—I heard one of the owners died. He was a very nice man, and the story bothered me a lot. Rumor had it he died of a drug overdose while at a sex party of some sort. I never delved much into it, as (again) it was none of my business, and it was an entirely believable story judging from what I knew of the bar's drug supply and the prevalence of sex. But the thought of him getting so high, trying to force himself to have a good time, that he ended up killing himself...I just couldn’t imagine it being a very happy way to die. Although is there is such a thing?

Now Splash is a gay tourist trap, catering to non-New Yorkers who think they’ve hit paydirt because they read about the city’s nightlife in a Damron guide. The shower stage is mostly gone, having been replaced by a cheesy dance floor where wannabes bounce around to sterile remixes. It all seems very sad, the whoooooole situation. At least the smut days were exciting, if you could tough it out.

People talk about drug overdoses as if there’s some glamour in the whole thing, like a nightlife battle scar. It’s like when alcoholics repeatedly boast about not going out and getting bombed, as if the world owes them a pat on the back for living a life that is so much harder than anyone else's. It just seems so self-indulgent and gross. There's a fine line there between moving on, and resting in your past accomplishments. I wonder if they’ve ever accepted responsibility for their own actions. Really. Probably not, right? And they never will. It’s frustrating. Sometimes you want to slap people.

Self-control is always in fashion, people. And think what you want about Splash, back in the good ol' days--but at least the "escorts" were honest.

Time for bed. Hugs.