And some of them were just bitches.
The first one to show me what was possible in feature dancing on an artistic level was Leslie Wells. She wasn’t famous and didn’t care about getting into magazines or movies—she was all about the theatricality of her shows. A green-eyed blonde from Chattanooga, she could have just coasted on her looks and boobs. But her shows were so much more than that—they were mini skits that embraced the fun and humor of taking off your clothes in front of everyone. As I started to think about how I would structure my own shows, I modeled them after hers. It’s a strip club—it’s okay to smile. She quit performing and now is a wonderful playwright with two kids. I was honored to go see her and buy the costumes from some of her best shows. She said she didn’t want anyone to have them but me.
But the feature dancer who had the biggest impact on my life was Devon Michaels. A gorgeous, incredibly fit brunette, Devon was about ten years older than me and had a lot of success parlaying her centerfolds and covers into feature dancing and the best-body contest circuit. She gave me the number of the first photographer who ever shot me, Dan Sparks. I went to see him at his studio in Atlanta and he shot all my very first layouts in one day. Those pictures got me the covers of D-Cup, Gent, and Hustler’s Busty Beauties. The magazines identified me just as Stormy or Stormy Waters, my short-lived nom de porn at twenty.
Devon didn’t stop there. She believed in me and was so generous that she flew me to Tucson, Arizona, to meet Jacquie the Costume Lady, who still makes all my costumes to this day. Jacquie measured me and I bought my first five thousand dollars’ worth of spangled-out feature costumes. You might think all I need is a bikini, but that’s not how a real performer works. When you command a room—getting not just the audience’s attention but earning their tips—you need to be a sort of one-woman circus. You’re a ringmaster, clown, lion, tightrope walker, magician, and magician’s assistant all in one. Your clothes have to tell a story, and like any story there have to be layers and reveals to keep people focused on you. There’s a reason one of the first things I did when I planned out my act was to learn how to blow fire.
Devon came through with phone numbers of agents, and using the pictorials and covers that came out that summer, I booked feature dancing gigs starting in September. My boyfriend Brian was always cool about me being a dancer—after all, it’s how we met—but he didn’t like the idea of having a live-in girlfriend he never saw. We decided to split, but it was completely amicable. I kissed Sasha good-bye and started life on the road.
I needed a roadie, so I asked one of the Gold Club’s bouncers, Mac, if he wanted to come along. Mac had been a marine and was a big guy who could get volatile quickly. A bouncer should be looking to resolve all problems, but Mac could sometimes start problems in the name of protecting me.
Nowadays, I mostly fly everywhere, but back then I drove around in my Dodge Durango with a twelve-foot trailer full of my costumes. Living on the road before GPS, I learned how to use a map and figure out the best routes for time and scenery. Mac and I just went from place to place, and I learned so much in all the strip clubs. My reputation was good, and the same clubs would ask me to come back. I showed up on time, I was polite to the staff, and I think the biggest thing was that I didn’t drink. A lot of the girls got messy and would need babysitting by the end of the night.
The summer of 2001, Mac and I were at the Cheetah club in Pompano Beach, Florida. We were hanging out in the dressing room between my two shows for the night. The DJ bombed in, coming in so hot that he hit his head on a low pipe.
“You gotta come onstage right now,” he said.
“I thought I had twenty minutes,” I said.
“Pantera just walked in.”
Mac sat up. Pantera was my favorite band after Acid Bath, but they were definitely Mac’s number one.
“It’s their drum tech’s birthday,” said the DJ. “His name’s Kat, and they wanna know if you can pull him up onstage.”
“Of course!” Mac and I said at the same time. I did the show, pulling Kat up onstage to cover him in chocolate syrup. From Pantera, there was the drummer Vinnie Paul and bassist Rex Brown, along with Paul Gray from Slipknot, and Kerry King and a couple of other people from Slayer. And one more guy, a not particularly hairy tour manager they all inexplicably called Wookie. Mac got to meet them all, and he was in thrash metal heaven.
At the end of the night, the Cheetah closed and we actually stayed a little later to clean up my dressing room. (You see why clubs love me?) We got in my Dodge Durango to leave, and when we pulled around we saw the rock gods from inside sitting on the curb.
“What are they doing?” I asked Mac. “Should we offer them a ride?”
“They’re fucking Pantera,” said Mac. “They don’t need a ride.”
“Hey,” I called out the window. “Do you guys need a ride?”
“Our cab hasn’t shown up,” said Vinnie.
“Where do you need to go?” I asked.
They told me what hotel it was, and I said, “Okay, get in.” We had to lay the seats down to get everyone in the back. Once we were on the road, Vinnie Paul said, “Play something.”
Mac and I had been listening to Mötley Crüe, so I pressed Play and “Shout at the Devil” filled the air. These six or seven guys all started singing along behind me, and we did, too.
When we got to the hotel, Vinnie said to me, “Can we buy you guys a drink?”
Before I could answer, Mac jumped in. “Yes!” We went to the hotel bar, which was probably supposed to be closed, but I would learn that when you’re a rock group you can pay to keep stuff open. There were some groupies there, and Vinnie whispered in my ear, “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Depends what it is,” I said.
“There’s this girl here who won’t leave me alone,” he said. “Will you sit on my lap and hold my hand and pretend we’re together?”
I did, and we actually had a great time talking.
“Are you guys gonna come to the show tomorrow night?” he asked us. I didn’t know there was one. Mac looked at me, mouthing a subtle “Please, please, please.”
“Pssh, yeah,” I said. “Of course.”
The show was at the Sunrise Musical Theater in Miami, so I told Mac we could spend one extra night in Florida. Wookie gave us laminates, which are backstage passes that hang from lanyards. They’re magic keys at concerts. It was the Reinventing the Steel tour, so we were backstage with Slayer, Static-X, and Sepultura. Pantera opened with “Hellbound” and closed with “Primal Concrete Sledge” before coming back for an encore of “Cowboys from Hell.” There was this great moment right before the last verse when the lead singer, Phil Anselmo, who was screaming the whole show, said a very polite, “Thank you all for coming.”
Then Vinnie said backstage, “Are you coming tomorrow night?”
We were. We followed them to Orlando, where they played the Hard Rock. I realized I was following the band. It felt weird to be trailing them in my Durango with all my stuff. They liked having me around, so I sent Mac packing with my truck and trailer back to Louisiana, and I stayed on Pantera’s bus for two weeks.
There were three buses, with Anselmo and his girlfriend Stephanie staying holed away by themselves on his own bus. Then there was the crew bus. And the bus I was on, which had Vinnie Paul and Wookie. It was the fun bus, a mix of the band and crew. Those two weeks were what got me addicted to the tour life. Waking up in a new city every day and sitting on the bus sharing stories with these great people.