4/20/00

I've been thinking about the customer I yelled at the other night. He's really had it coming for a while - or has he? For years, he's been nothing but complimentary… but it's the kind that always sounds insincere. I tend to think that if you tell me I'm beautiful 14 times in ten minutes, it's for one of a couple of reasons: 1. You don't think I believe you - either because you assume my self-esteem is bad, or because you really think I'm repulsive and you're just telling me I'm beautiful to blow smoke up my butt; or 2. You think that I have no other accomplishments or assets, and that my looks are the only thing worth mentioning. Either way, not so endearing as one might think.

This guy is the kind who speaks to women in that wheedling, patronizing voice without ever really realizing that he's talking down to us. He always uses that too-intimate tone that I associate with heterosexual male hairdressers who don't really like women but make their living styling their hair. He wants to endear himself to the dancers, but he doesn't really see them. He doesn't really see any women. Maybe he doesn't really see people in general, but my guess is that he gives men more consideration and regard - again, perhaps without ever realizing that he's doing it. I think he sees men as people and women as soft, warm, gooshy creatures whose breasts are symbols of our eternal (or maternal) receptiveness.

He always calls me 'Madonna' (a really dismal way to try and score points with me. Right up there with fur coats and vacations at hunting lodges) and tries to slip his arm around my waist. "Where's my hug," he asked me the other day as I passed the pool table.

"Probably with someone willing to touch you," I replied. He laughed. It's actually so difficult for him to see me that he can't tell when I'm not being very nice (bearing in mind that saying I wasn't being very nice is like saying Mt. St. Helens 'wasn't being very dormant').

We ended up playing pool. He's a very good pool player. Sadly, I find that lots of very good pool players have a great deal of their egos - and even, in some bizarre way, their gender identity - tied up in their game, so that they can't enjoy it because they're too obsessed with winning. That always takes the fun right out of it for me. It's a pity. At any rate, I beat him, and when I came over to shake his hand, he asked in his higher-pitched talking-to-a-woman voice, "Was that a good hit?"

Well, of course it was a good hit. I've been playing pool for twelve years. I play for money. I take a great deal of pride in my game and don't need to fudge to have a very, very respectable win-lose ratio. It's a perfectly reasonable question from your opponent, though, and it didn't offend me at all. What happened next really, really did.

"Sure," I said amiably. "Didn't it look like a good hit?" An exaggerated downward look at the ground: "Well, honey, if you say it was, then it was."

My temples began to pound.

"Either it was or it wasn't. Which is it?"

Magnanimously: "It was. It was. You win, fair and square."

"No, no, no. Don't patronize me. Explain it or pipe down. Don't pretend you're being kind and letting me have the game when you haven't been able to tell me why you think I didn't win. Either back yourself up or get the hell off my table."

Hesitation, and then, in a subtly reprimanding, instructive tone: "You're a lady, honey. You're still a lady." I guess I wasn't behaving the way they taught me in finishing school. Thanks for getting me back on track… Daddy. "My snatch doesn't make it any harder for me to see where the ball went, my friend." He looked startled. "Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean that you need to coddle me. Now, if you want to criticize my game and contest my win, it seems to me that you ought to be willing to back that up. If I were a man, you never would have pulled this kind of pencildick bullshit." His jaw dropped and he made a petulant, hurt little noise. Abruptly, he spun on his heel and went to where his cue case was leaning against his chair, immediately beginning to dismantle his stick.

The gentleman I had just beaten the game before (much to his consternation and chagrin) came back to the table to see when his next set of quarters was coming up. He immediately made the assumption that the other man - my current opponent - had won. I find that this phenomenon isn't peculiar to strip joints. Pool has been considered a 'man's game' for a very long time and people of both sexes often make the assumption that the woman standing next to the table is there for some other reason and isn't a viable contender. That's okay. It just means that people who are usually much smarter about their bets end up paying my bills.

"Hey, man," Mr. Chagrin said to Mr. Pencildick. "Aren't you going to take your table?"

"I would," Pencildick replied, sotto voce. "She's too mean, though." Allowing Chagrin to assume that he had won the game fair and square and that I, the Harpy, had driven him from the table in some sort of hysterical rage-filled display of monumentally poor sportsmanship.

"No, that's not what's going on at all," I bellowed across the expanse of felt. "Let's shoot for accuracy this time, Sport. What really happened is that I'm right and well equipped to defend my position - something you don't seem willing or able to do yourself. Now that seems a little like 'mean' to an outside observer, but it's really a different thing entirely. Whether you're able to come to terms with that isn't my problem at all." To Chagrin: "So, what that means is you're playing me."

Now Pencildick eyes me warily when I pass, as if he fears I may leap at his throat. I think I may have allowed the years of smarmy, fatuous flattery to influence my actions in the face of a relatively insignificant conflict. I just got so tired of his feeding me sticky platitudes like spoonfuls of tepid Wheatena. Words of a smoother, blander texture - easier for women to digest, like baby food. Bleah.

I think that was a Saturday, though, and Saturdays are always the most fun in the dressing room after we close. We scream and laugh raucously and Monique gives out spankings. There was a new girl there that night who had come to the club despite rumours that the girls where we worked were scary and hostile. We told her it was time for the new girl spanking, and she took it like a trooper. Monique loves to give spankings, and she's better at it than anyone I know. She always gives your butt a motherly little pat before she traumatizes it. I always volunteer, and she raises welts on me almost every weekend and then gives me a warm, friendly hug. Of course, after the first Saturday night Spankfest, the new girls are always amazed at how sweet everyone is and how welcome they've been made to feel. I've heard that countless times over the years. The Spankfests are a new tradition, an acceptance ritual of sorts. I always leave on Saturday nights feeling absolutely blessed. They're idyllic. Those will be the memories that are so good they'll make me weep when I'm old.

It's such great fun to work with the women at my club. It's an amazingly friendly environment, and the time we all spend in the dressing room at night sounds a little like a USA up-all-night movie, but it's really been the best time of my life. Other people may never see how that can be, but my time with those women has been a gift.

I adore them.