Get Outta Debt Girl

Once upon a time, in another life, I was a go-go girl. I don’t mean another life like Paris in the 1960s. I don’t even mean the halcyon days of my actual youth, gadding about fancy free and untethered in the naughty aughties of NYC. This other life was within this decade. Tethered I was, indeed, to a tall British ball and chain and our small offspring. I was, and still am incidentally, quite attached to both of them. After years living in NY and the UK, like a salmon I’d swum back to spawn in my birthplace. After the first years of childrearing and us living off my husband’s inconsistent freelance income, there was a squawking albatross of accrued debt hanging ‘round our necks. Our financial situation felt a lot like climbing a near vertical sand dune; we’d make some headway then slip back down again, wondering “How does one climb a cliff of sand? Where are the footholds?” For one thing we lived beyond our means in one of the most expensive places in the country, but also we were classic creatives: talented, visionary, hopeless with a budget.

One day I picked up a self-help book on achieving financial stability. This was most uncharacteristic for me, a lifelong novel-gobbler, but I persevered. As expected, it was a total snooze-fest, but one of the takeaways was that to be able to tackle our debt effectively, I should get a night job. The example the book gave was delivering pizzas. Well, I was dairy intolerant and couldn’t face that sort of piping hot temptation. OK, that’s not true. I don’t even like pizza that much. The truth is, I was mortified at the idea of delivering pizza to people I knew from high school or mommy playgroups. I was broke, but my filthy pride was very much intact. I’d had a full ride to a NY liberal arts college. I’d worked my ass off to graduate in 3 years instead of 4 so I could head straight onto the stages of Broadway and fulfill my destiny as a triple threat. But it turns out that in NY everyone’s a triple threat, so that didn’t really work out how I thought it would. All I was left with was the sheen of snobbery that comes from getting somewhat educated and cultured in a big city, then gallivanting off to the UK and picking up a habit of over-enunciating everything. When I had finally returned to my hometown from the UK, besides being pregnant I was also carrying a small chip on my shoulder, and sporting a Mid-Atlantic accent like that of Moira Rose. Of course Moira Rose did not yet exist, so my family and friends likened my accent to how Madonna sounded like when she was married to Guy Richie. I didn’t know what they were talking about. To my newly refined ear, I sounded correct and they all sounded like preposterous valley girls.

So there I was, pretentious, indebted, and desirous of finding a non-pizza-related job after dark so I could be present to dispatch my progeny toward her slumber. Sometimes I still like to talk like Moira. I mean I wanted to be there to put my kid to sleep before going to work. I quickly consulted craigslist for “nighttime work” and just as quickly logged out, aghast at how many opportunities there were to be an erotic escort or star in adult films. I wanted a literal job at night, I didn’t want to be a lady of the night. Night nurse, maybe? Out of my wheelhouse. Uber-driver? My car was a sputtering jalopy. Wait tables at a casino or all-night diner? I know my pretension is showing again, but this idea saddened me almost as much as watery diner coffee. I was a bit desperate, but I still craved meaningful work. As an aside, I don’t think I knew then what I think I know now, which is that anything you do in life can have profound meaning provided you’re actually paying attention. Also, diner coffee is not that bad with enough cream and sugar. I know this now, but back then I was still talking like Moira and lamenting about wasting my education and talent. At which point my languishing degree in dance peeked its head out like a thong from low rider jeans and piped up, “What about stripping or go-go dancing at a nightclub? It’s dance, and you’re a dancer… too bougie for them apples?” Hmmmm… this idea merited some thought.

Don’t go clutching your pearls, but I have been to a strip club or two. I even bought a private lap dance once- partly because as a feminist it seemed like the right thing to do to support the efforts of the hard-working women there, but also partly because I was really shit-faced drunk at the time and easily peer pressured. I have to say it was one of the more awkward experiences of my life. Imagine you’re a straight gal, curious about what a lap dance might entail. Imagine you suddenly find yourself in a curtained cubicle with a fellow red-head who’s wearing only a thong and nipple stickers. She’s pretty obviously jacked up on coke or something. She’s humping your knee at hyper speed but her mind is clearly miles away. She’s like an Energizer Bunny dressed up as a playboy bunny, but… distant. Wistful, maybe? From the perspective of a dance snob- which is what I obviously am if I hadn’t already made that abundantly clear- she didn’t seem committed to the performance, wasn’t very embodied in the craft, you know? To be fair, I probably wasn’t performing my role correctly either, so far was I from my comfort zone. As she twerked and shimmied around me mechanically at 2.5x speed, staring vacantly into space, I wished I could offer her a nice calming cup of chamomile, maybe have a heart to heart about our life goals. As a dance teacher I was dying to offer her a few friendly tips on how she might slow her roll and move more sensually - my god, how obnoxious am I? Sometimes I’m the worst. I refrained, and instead asked if she enjoyed her work; I wasn’t just making uncomfortable small talk, I was also genuinely curious. As she climbed up onto my seat and jackhammered her crotch near my face, she told me conspiratorially that she was just doing it in order to put herself through culinary school, as she eventually hoped to open a bakery. This gave me much food for thought as I sat stiffly through the rest of the uncomfortable rigamarole. Mostly the whole experience taught me that while of course I could critique strippers on their work like I would any artist, I should never judge them for the work itself. It’s honest work. This woman had a dream and a plan and was proactively pursuing her goals. She had my respect; they all did. I imagine that stripping has the potential to be incredibly empowering in certain circumstances and for certain people. But like any job, it’s often just a means to an end or a way to survive in the world. While it can be a true calling, I reckon most folks don’t go into it for the warm fuzzy feeling objectification gives them. I wasn’t even any good at receiving a lap dance. So- and I say this with total respect for those who do it- I concluded that stripping was not the path for me. 

But go-go dancing, that was another story. Some folks conflate the two, but in go-go there’s no-no strip-strip and no lap action. I’m not adverse to stripping down. I do it frequently at nude beaches and hot springs. But the communal strip feels more equitable to me than the nightclub strip- though clearly not as lucrative. So although I’m pro-strip, my personal boundary is to only get naked with other people who are also getting naked, preferably near water where we can obscure our nakedness. Like strippers, go-go dancers get paid to dance in nightclubs. Are they also sexually objectified? Of course. But a go-go dancer’s job is to just dance: to be the club’s party starter and scene-setter, the eternal enthusiast who keeps the energy high and the money flowing. It’s true they wear very little, but what little they have on stays on, and for me the protection of that skimpy armor would make a world of difference. Go-go derives from the phrase go-go-go for a high-energy person and was influenced by the French expression à gogo, meaning “in abundance,” which is in turn derived from the ancient French word la gogue for “joy, happiness”. Ok, so go-go dancers have an abundance of joy and high energy and don’t mind making a spectacle of themselves? That described me! Seemed like just the ticket: don an alter ego as the cloak of darkness fell, as my daughter dreamed of bunnies hopping through green fields or whatever 4 year olds dream about. When I was her age I probably dreamed of jazzercise because I was obsessed with the doll “Get in Shape Girl.” I had the legwarmers, I had the striped leotard, I sang the theme song on repeat. I WAS Get in Shape Girl. And now here I was 3 decades later embarking on a jaded, updated version of her: “Get Out of Debt Girl,” complete with fishnets, pushup bra, and crushing debt. Everything old is new again!

My research on go-go turned up nothing relating to how one might procure a place on a platform. Were there auditions? Did you have to know someone who knows someone? I was more enmeshed in the play-date scene than the club scene at that point. Was the pay ok? I had no idea, and I had no one to ask. The elusive night job still far from reach, one summer evening I read my innocent child “The Country Bunny” until her eyes got heavy, then on a whim threw some fishnets, boots and booty shorts into a bag. I kissed my bizarrely supportive husband goodnight and drove an hour to the Castro district of San Francisco to hawk my wares- I mean, scout the clubs. I chose the Castro because I suspected it would be a scoch less objectifying to dance for gay men and women than for entitled straight tech bros with more money than frontal lobe. I drove around the Castro, wandered into a few clubs while it was still early in the night, and politely inquired, “hello, sir, do you have any go-go dancing positions available?” I must have gone about it wrong because those club managers just gave me the side-eye and shook their heads. I thought I played it pretty cool. It’s not like I handed them my dance resume, which incidentally I had tucked in my bag just in case. Maybe they were picking up on the suburban hippie mom vibes emanating off of me like waves of patchouli and freshly baked cookies. I inquired at several clubs with no luck and was feeling pretty defeated when I wandered into a tiny club in the heart of the Castro. As luck or fate would have it, the bar manager was in a tizzy because his female dancer had literally just called in sick. When I asked him about go-go dancing he said,

“Oh my God, can you dance?”

“Yes! I have a degree in dance!”

“You got a better outfit than that?” Looking pointedly at my jeans and down jacket. C’mon, San Francisco is famously freezing even on summer nights- I wasn’t gonna scout for work in my skivvies.

“Yes! I’m prepared like a good slutty Girl Scout!”

“Can you go on in 30?”

“Yes! Absolutely!”

Then I turned to the self inside myself and said- OMFG, what is happening right now?! The self inside myself reminded me that this was exactly what we had come for, even if I didn’t actually expect it to happen tonight. I made a mental note that the night was shaping up like the plot of a charming rom-com. Since I had a husband and child at home asleep and was clearly no longer the ingenue, I figured I was playing some supporting role, like maybe the bawdy bestie with a heart of gold, desperate for cash but also trying to get her groove back after slip-streaming behind her husband’s career for a decade and losing any sense of herself as an autonomous sovereign being during the first few years of child-rearing. Yeah, that all checked out.

As I pondered how my little cinematic subplot would unfold, the manager hustled me into the “locker room,” which was actually just a storage room for liquor with some lockers squeezed in between. It had a drain in the middle of the concrete floor which he explained apologetically was where the male staff peed when the restrooms were packed. So inside this storage urinal, I stashed my clothes in a locker labeled DANCER, shimmied into my slutty Get Out of Debt Girl outfit, and waited anxiously for my moment to mount the platform. I took a few deep breaths. The air was pungently perfumed by that classic club odor: liquor and beer breath layered over sharp BO peeking out from behind the heady mask of god-awful cologne. I gave myself another mental pep talk: “Gurl. Although this is perhaps not what your college mentors foresaw for you when they awarded you the Gold Medal in Dance, it is a perfectly valid use of your talent. You show these folks how to dance like no one is watching!”

I got up there and shook my money-maker with sheer exuberance for hour upon hour. It was an absolute blast. At first I danced like no one was watching, but as I gained confidence I started to dance like everyone was watching. Because I was on a raised platform in a sea of people, yes, but also because it turns out people tip more when you make eye contact and acknowledge their presence. To my surprise, people would reach up and casually stuff money into the waistband of my booty shorts. Back in the locker room, I was delighted when I stripped off my shorts at the end of the night and all that accumulated booty bounty poured forth. A veritable Niagara falls of bills spilled onto the gross cement floor- lots of ones and fives and tens but also plenty of twenties. It wouldn’t exactly pay off our medical and credit card debt, but it was more than I expected to supplement the hourly pay. I’m certain my male counterpart on the other platform had much fuller shorts; not just because of the penis stuffed in there but because of how enthusiastically he thrust it around for the clientele. But I liked the vibe of that place. So despite its urinous locker room, when the manager offered me a regular slot I took it, and gladly.

Get Out of Debt Girl and Get in Shape Girl became as one that year. It turns out dancing for 4 hours on platforms in platforms is one hell of a workout. My newfound fitness also led me to a day job as a fit model for Athleta and various other clothing companies around the Bay. Ironically, fit modeling did require stripping, but just behind a curtain. For that job, nothing was required other than staying within the exacting size 6 measurements, trying on clothes and taking simple directions like “lift your arms”, “turn around”, and “stand still.” Being an animated mannequin was not particularly meaningful work, but it was surprisingly well-paid. Between that and the dancing, my contributions actually started to make a dent in our debt. Were either of these things my life’s work? Nah, but I was coming to realize that my life’s work was not paved out so clearly, and my job was to keep following the breadcrumbs - or the rising dough - through the forest. 

It was approaching my one year anniversary as a go-go dancer. I often saw regulars in the club, but there were always new faces, an endless stream of them. One night, an exquisitely dressed older gentleman I’d never seen before beckoned me to lean down to him. He was wearing a silk vest and ascot and was impeccably turned out in every way. The music was too loud to hear him from my perch, so I squatted at the edge of the platform and leaned in close. He spoke distinctly into my ear in a refined, unidentifiable accent, “You don’t belong in this place, my dear. You are a true artiste.” He then folded a $100 bill into my palm, and patted the top of my hand with avuncular tenderness. I thanked him, placing the hundo against my heart as we shared one of those classic movie moments where you lock eyes and the rest of the scene fades out. If I were filming it I would have done a 360 pan around both our heads. This was obviously when my rom-com subplot climaxed. I wanted meaning? I mined some from that moment. Then he was absorbed back into the crowd and I was left there on my little island feeling simultaneously buoyed and deflated. At that point I had to admit my enthusiasm for the job had waned. Pumping away in the background was a tedious dance anthem with the refrain “there’s no place I’d rather be.” It was the third time in an hour that song had played, and it made me distinctly aware suddenly that there were multiple places I’d rather be: most especially at home, in my bed, spooning my husband. I had gotten what I needed from this job, and it was time to move on. I had made some sweaty cash and in the process had exorcised a need to individuate from my entrenched identity as mother and wife. I loved being both those things, but my year as a go-go girl helped me remember myself as a performer and free spirit as well. I’d been shaken out of the domestic torpor I’d used as an excuse to stay at home playing it small. The venue hadn’t been glamorous, but it had been fucking fun and I think I had been able to bring some of my essential effervescence to it. But I was still clinging to a pole as a crutch, and corralled within 5 square feet. I knew then I had to release the platform and the pole to move onto bigger stages. I was curious about what I could stretch myself into given the space to explore and expand. 

I did have one final hoorah as a go-go dancer. It was the weekend of Pride. I was once again filling in last minute for another dancer. The Castro and its clubs were teeming with ebullient bodies celebrating their identities loudly and proudly. I had to elbow my way to my platform. All night, ecstatically drunk and wild-limbed patrons tried to climb up and fling themselves around my pole. The manager signaled me to shove them off, but like rainbow-clad zombies, they just kept coming. It was a zoo but their ecstasy was contagious. At one point I flung myself a little too far from my pole and smacked my head on the air conditioning unit. But because Gwen Stefani was repeatedly telling me over the sound system to “keep on dancing,” I just kept on dancing, despite the stars in my eyes and the goose egg forming on my sweaty brow. Someone in the crowd was gesticulating wildly and shouting to me from the dance floor, and I finally heard their SOS: “You’re bleeding really bad!” I reached up to find it was not sweat pouring down my face, but blood. A lot of blood. The line to the bathroom was so long that I went straight to my piss-sodden locker room, grabbing napkins on the way to mop up my nightmare face. I scooped my things out of the beat-up locker labelled DANCER and left the club for the last time, telepathically (later digitally) sending my apologies to the manager who was too swamped for me to flag down. I high-fived the kindly bouncer goodbye and stumbled back to my car, not because I was drunk or even concussed, but because I was still wearing my ridiculous slutty 6 inch platform heels. I’d been so desperate to leave I hadn’t even changed into my civilian clothes. I wasn’t in pain, I was just bloody over it, and absolutely thrilled to be going home to my little family. I felt ready to forego go-go, and embrace my identity as a “true artiste,” whatever the hell that meant for me next.