Every Breath I Take, He’ll be Watching Me (1)

It was early December in Ontario 1976, and the weather had been on and off rain and ice for the past few days. The 401 had been shut down between Toronto and Hamilton due to multiple wrecks and road conditions. It had also turned out to be a bad week for strippers in Ontario, as the Provincial council had just voted to allow nudity in the clubs. Fully dressed bureaucrats had decided that to increase the tax revenue from alcohol sales they would force exotic dancers into baring it all onstage. In one fell swoop, our G-Strings had been yanked off by fully clothed pencil pushers in a faraway office building. Both events were doubly troublesome to me, as Ontario seemed like a safe haven for stripping, as they had not allowed nudity up until that point. I disliked dancing in the nude, especially because just plain nudity never was enough for audiences.

Once they had that the clubs would insist upon more and more concessions from the dancers, such as explicit nudity and worse. I flipped on the television in my hotel room to see if the news station had anything on the new laws. They were still talking about the weather and the 401 shutdowns. Apparently, it still wasn’t completely open yet, which meant my boyfriend, Jake probably wouldn’t be able to get down to see me on Saturday. The manager of the club I was working at approached me and one of the other strippers in the hotel coffee shop and explained the change in nudity laws, leaving it up to us as to how much nudity we chose to do during our shows. The club in St. Catherines was easygoing about the nudity, however, there weren’t going to be many other clubs so generous.

For my first show, there were only about a dozen customers in the place, all sitting at the bar. I had decided to do my Doll show, with the white face makeup and the heart cheeks and bow lips painted on with pink lipstick. I used extra large false eyelashes for my eyes and penciled in thin, arched eyebrows. My hair was curly that year, so I fluffed up my curls to complete the look and zipped myself into the green and black striped ballet tutu with the satin corset. The show started out with the song, Hello, Dolly, a fast-paced, fun tune, then switched over to several slower songs about dolls to which I pantomimed a stiff, jerky mechanical dance. For my chair routine, I danced to I’m Your Puppet, pretending to be manipulated by an invisible puppeteer above the stage.

The only real change in that show came at the very last minute of my cape-twirling dance to the theme from The Valley of the Dolls. I decided to get changed into my red pantsuit for the fire show and hang out a bit before the eleven o’clock show. Yesterday had been long and boring and I didn’t want to be stuck in my room all evening again. After I got the doll makeup goo off my face I dressed and came back down to sit at the bar. I caught the last of my friend, Jesse’s show and all of Miss Waddle Duck’s, the nickname I gave my arch nemesis, the snooty stripper. I switched over to grasshoppers because this bar had a real mixologist- a rarity in strip clubs. It was a very good drink and I have always been a sucker for sugary things, so, when a guy about my age plopped down next to me at the bar, I happily took him up on the offer of ‘just one more’.

Halfway through Miss Waddle Duck’s act, Jesse and her new squeeze, Gary, came down to the club. She brought him over and introduced him to me. “Tina, this is Gary- he came to see me this afternoon.” Aha! That’s why there was no answer from her at dinner time. She looked pretty happy, even though she missed a meal. Her blue eyes were shining, and her pale face was flushed- probably from the sunny weather or something. “Hi, Gary, nice to meet you. What were the roads like today?”

“Shitty,” He replied. “The 401 is still shut down.” “Yeah,” I replied, “I saw that on the news.” The guy sitting next to me introduced himself and we sat for another half an hour, the four of us, joking and telling funny stories until I had to go back onstage at eleven. With patrons sitting closer to the stage than for my first show of the night I was a bit more reticent about the G-String removal. The black chiffon twirling cape was going to cover me most of the time. But I was still nervous about stray glimpses by the audience of my baby-making mechanism.

Jake, my boyfriend, had said he didn’t care one way or the other about me going nude. However, that was before the law had changed. I wondered how he would feel now that it was no longer a hypothetical question. I was glad, for once, that he wasn’t there tonight, and wondered how this was going to affect our relationship going forward. I knew how I would feel if Jake whipped “it” out in front of a crowd of horny women. Someone would get hurt. I’d go to jail. He would never have those children he talked about because I would be taking “it” to jail with me.

I changed back into jeans and a blouse and came back down to the bar to hang out with my new friends. The party had moved to a table, and I joined them. Jesse was up doing her last show for the night, and we all got refills. By the time Miss Waddle Duck was onstage the four of us were in pretty good spirits and the unattached male decided he wanted to get attached to me on a temporary basis, I’m sure. Nevertheless, he started getting a little handsy, making me uncomfortable, even in my four-grasshopper state of mind. “Um, um. No touching.” He ignored me. So, I picked his hand up off my thigh and set it down on the table. What the hell was it with men and my thighs? Did I look like a rotisserie chicken? Random guys kept grabbing my thighs for some reason. Then he tried the old, ‘just stretching’ routine and landed his arm around my shoulder- purely by accident, I’m certain. I plucked the offending arm off me and tried to stand up, when he grabbed me around the waist and set me down on his lap, laughing like a hyena.

Okay. This wasn’t funny anymore. I was getting pissed. Jesse’s friend, Gary intervened, “Hey, she doesn’t want you all over her. Let her up.”

“Relax, dude. She’s fine. Aren’t you, honey?” “No, I’m not fine.” I spit at him between gritted teeth. “Let me up. Right. Now.”

Gary stood up and said, “You need to let her go. Can’t you see she’s not enjoying it?”

“Dude,” the drunk guy slurred at Gary, “You need to mind your own business.”

By that time, the bartender noticed the brouhaha and came around the other side of the guy. Somehow, between him and Gary, they peeled me off him and Gary walked me through the hotel lobby and up to my room, making sure I got in safely, then he went down to the club to wait for Jesse. So much for having fun between shows. Yikes. What a mistake.

I waited for Jake to call at one o’clock. Maybe he got held up by work. I stayed up until three, hoping he’d still call. Nothing. I finally drifted off to sleep. I waited all day for him to call on Saturday and was disappointed once again. The weather had made it a strange week for everyone. Jake was probably just caught up in the fallout from the storm. Working on a construction site during an ice storm must have caused a ton of problems for them. Still, I barely ate anything all day, the absence of communication with Jake was tugging at my worst insecurities. Was he in Hamilton with his wife? Was he chasing another girl somewhere? Had he decided I was too much trouble?

This relationship was tearing me apart but I had no intention of letting go. I didn't know how to. It would have been like stepping out into thin air with two broken wings. The next day was spent with my heart in my throat, wondering, fearing if this was going to be the end of my first real love affair.