“Just don’t call them ‘strippers.’”
“I should probably tell you I haven’t got a pen and paper, I’m not dressed to go onstage and I’m mildly stoned. Oh, and I haven’t put wax in my hair.” I ran a few fingers through my gray quiff; it was fluffy instead of stiff.
“Go ask Siggy for what you need,” she said, gesturing toward the DJ booth. “Wait! Lemme see what you’re wearing.”
I unzipped my leather jacket to reveal a hoodie and a well-worn T-shirt from the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival with a bent signpost on the front. I didn’t know what year it was from, but it wasn’t recent.
“You’ll do. Call it ‘chilled vintage.’” She looked me in the eye. “How stoned are you?”
I knew Reno didn’t approve of even the mildest of illegal substances. She had told me in the past to avoid making drug references from the stage, in case it encouraged younger people to take up the habit. But I can’t take my drink, so the occasional joint is my way of unwinding.
“A bit.” I crossed my eyes.
She laughed and I realized there would be no condemnations this evening. “This should be interesting. Well, you didn’t plan to go on tonight and neither did they, so anything that happens will be spontaneous. And that’s how we like it here!” She guffawed and I knew what she meant: that the club was all about the improvised, the ad hoc and the edgy—Reno took risks, so did the acts and the audience, and it generally paid off.
I tripped up to the DJ booth where our resident hipster bear, Siggy, asked me not to talk to him. “When I’m DJ-ing, I’m performing, I can’t chat.”
Rejected, I tripped back down to the shabby dressing room. I knocked and entered—and immediately felt welcome. Two beautiful younger women in underwear were exchanging makeup, and they smiled at me in the mirror. I tried to retain a professional demeanor as I introduced myself as the host for the night, while taking in the view.
One girl had wavy blonde hair, generous tits and the curvy belly of an early pregnancy; she greeted me in a French accent, professional and restrained. This was Marie. Her friend Leila had a dark bob, skinny frame, and removed her everyday bra while she was talking to me, to reveal small pert breasts and beautiful pink nipples that I tried not to stare at. Leila was friendly and confident, telling me exactly how to introduce them. She looked me in the eye as she talked about their act… then pressed her fingers deep inside her lacy panties, apparently making some professional adjustment.
“I might need your help after the show,” she said in a light American accent as she put on a raunchier bra to match the panties.
“That can be arranged.” I spoke calmly but had to plant a hand on the counter to steady myself. In the mirror: silvery hair shaved short at the sides with semierect quiff, that “vintage” T-shirt, dark jeans with a telling bulge for those who cared to look… which part of the package had caught her attention?
I had recently watched a TV comedy in which a male scriptwriter is stuck in a dressing room with the female star of his show, who takes off her bra while chatting with him. That moment flashed through my mind.
Rationally, I knew that in this situation, any act would be getting changed, and a burlesque act would be less shy than some others about doing so in front of the MC. It wasn’t a come-on, even though it felt like it. But what was she doing now? Still moving her hand about in her panties for some reason.
I forced myself to look away. The small space was crammed with their stage props: a bouquet of dark red roses; a flowery china tea set spilling from a vintage wicker picnic basket; an abundance of ripe strawberries atop a bag of groceries. These girls did not travel light.
Reno burst into the dressing room. She’s a big soft daddy of a woman who you’ll find in a sweatshirt in winter, a T-shirt branded with the name of the club in summer, leather harness at any play party within a thousand miles of London… all the genders at once.
“You know we’re going to make a mess of the stage?” asked Leila.
“Yes, yes, it’s not a problem. Freddy will clear up after the lights go down at the end of your act. And maybe our host will help if we’re nice to her. Right?”
“Sure,” I said.
“If there’s any piss, I’ll bring the bucket myself!” Reno said with a laugh, and I wasn’t sure if this was likely or not.
They talked about spray-cream and the breakable, antique picnic set, and I wondered what exactly they were going to do. When Reno left, Leila turned to Marie and said, “At the end of the cucumber, can you remember to make allowances for me getting the cork out.”
“Bien sûr.”
My mind was boggling. When they started to discuss whether Leila should or should not be wearing white panties and she said she’d stopped bleeding and reached down to pull out her menstrual cup, I finally found the tact to leave the room.
I had a pee, did what I could about my hair and picked up free drinks from the grungy barman for the duo. When I returned to the dressing room, Leila and Marie were resplendent in 1950s polka-dot dresses with ribbons in their hair and carefully drawn makeup to extend the line of their eyes. They both wore glossy lipstick and were gleamingly perfect.
“Ready girls?” I asked.
“Sure are!” said Leila. She scooped up the bunch of red roses from the counter and pressed them into my arms, taking the opportunity to brush her hands against mine.
“You shouldn’t have,” I jested, as her touch buzzed through my body.
“Strew these round the front of the stage for us, sweetie?”
The air between us was electric as I stood waiting for the theme music for my entrance. My mind was not my own. The encounter with Leila, spiced with the pot I’d smoked earlier, was separating me from reality so that the part of me that would usually be planning what to say didn’t give a shit.
My theme song belted through the speakers: “Intermission” by the Scissor Sisters. I parted the red velvet curtains and stepped out onto the stage I know so well, my arms full of roses. But I was laughing before anything had happened, before I’d said anything funny. Somehow I redeemed myself, giving a bit of chat, then building up the burlesque act and making the odd joke. It helped that Leila had given me a great line.
“Put away your phones and your cameras,” I told the audience, “because there will be no photographs tonight.” There was a groan of protest. “Tonight there will be only mental snapshots .” I loaded the phrase with perversion and they laughed. “Mental snapshots that will stay with you for the rest of your life. If you try to take a photo, the girls will have to kill you. Which would you prefer? No, don’t answer that, you perverts, just put your hands together for… the Paris Paramours!”
As I said this, I cast the flowers down on the stage in an arc. The applause was tremendous. I’d done my job. On came the duo with their wicker basket, as I crossed behind them and quietly slipped out front to watch. No way was I going to miss this act!
They had asked me to give Siggy a CD of four tracks to play for them. The first was a slow, summery number to which they unpacked their picnic before lazing on the ground, feeding each other strawberries. They were both dancers and their graceful movements and charming smiles made it uncertain whether things would get truly raunchy.
By the third track though, the mood shifted. Marie started to doze and Leila gave a devilish smile and threw her arms in the air as a naughty thought occurred to her. She was going to take advantage of her friend’s dulled senses to seduce her.
The more I saw, the more difficult it was to act like a professional compere instead of a drooling fan. The dresses they wore must have had special fastenings for their stage act because Leila managed to rip off the top half of Marie’s frock and reveal her well-filled bra. The blonde girl kneeled up, as if suddenly awoken by this enforced disrobing, and the two of them exchanged dramatic, smoochy kisses.