Jimmy Yang - How to American

My crush had a boyfriend; that’s a familiar scenario that I’d experienced consistently since middle school. My mind was in denial; it tried to keep my hopes alive, hoping maybe one day she would break up with him and run into my arms. Days went by and I was completely out of sorts. I had to talk to someone about this, so I talked to Shooter. Like a college roommate, I went up to Shooter and said, “Paige is pretty cool, huh?” Hoping to prompt him into a nice conversation about Paige.

Without skipping a beat, Shooter said, “Paige, she’s a pathological liar, you shouldn’t believe a word that comes out of her mouth.”

Shocked and unconvinced, I asked, “Really? How do you know that?”

Shooter laughed and replied, “I fucked her.”

My innocence died with those words.

LAP DANCE SALESMAN

Shooter taught me the most important thing about selling lap dances was the showcase. A showcase is when the DJ calls all the girls onto the stage for a roll call and pressures the customers to get lap dances. The designated song in our club was the classic strip club anthem “Girls, Girls, Girls” by Mötley Crüe. Shooter didn’t have many rules, but he was very clear that that song must accompany every showcase. After every third stripper, I would play that song and belch out in my strip club DJ voice: “All right, gentlemen, it’s time for our showcase! I want all my girls to the stage right now! We have Jade, Milan, Paige, and the oh-sooooo-sexy Sauceyyyyy. We are doing two-for-one lap dances right now! Get two lap dances with your favorite girl or get one lap dance with two of your favorite girls at the same time! Don’t be shy and don’t be tight with your wallet. I want everybody in the VIP! Two-for-one lap dances, next ten minutes, two-for-one lap dances right now!” I would keep repeating that until every customer got a lap dance. The club was never that busy, which meant I just kept screaming at two customers until they finally caved in to the pressure.

Combining the microphone skills I learned from being a comedian and my salesmanship from being a used car salesman, I became an incredible lap dance salesman. According to Shooter, lap dance sales went up 44 percent the first week I started working there. I never took Shooter as an accounting wiz, but apparently he was meticulously keeping record of every lap dance sold at his club like Ernst & Young. Shooter was very impressed. He told me I reminded him a lot of himself. It’s always a good move to compliment someone, then tell him he reminds you of you; it’s like patting yourself on the back using the other person’s hand. Shooter started giving me more responsibilities at his establishment and really took me under his wing. I felt like Henry Hill earning the trust of Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas ; I felt like a made guy.

Shooter trusted me so much, he started to have me deliver the cash box from the strip club to his house. In hindsight, this was such a stupidly dangerous job for someone without any protection. I could have easily gotten robbed or killed during my cash delivery trips. But at the time, I didn’t put much thought into it; I was just happy that Shooter entrusted me with his cash. Every night Chef would hand me the cash box and I would hop into my Toyota Celica and drive to Shooter’s apartment at three in the morning.

At Shooter’s apartment, there were always a couple of goons passed out on the couch. Till today, I’m not sure if they passed out because they had partied too hard, done too much drugs or that was just their permanent dwelling. I learned to not ask too many questions in a gangster environment. I was always on high alert. I knew there were guns, drugs and a lot of cash in that house. It was a volatile place. But then I’d see old Larry from the car lot there, and that eased my mind. It was like going to a new friend’s house and seeing an old friend already chilling there playing video games, except Larry was usually binge-drinking instead of playing Halo .

One night, I struggled through the shift with a fever. I popped a couple Advils but it wasn’t helping much. I made my usual 3:00 a.m. delivery to Shooter’s house. There was a different vibe about Shooter that night; he was quiet and serious. I would usually just drop off the cash and leave, but Shooter wanted to have a talk with me. I was in no condition to have a serious talk with a gangster; I was ready to collapse from my illness. I told him I had a fever and I should probably go home, but he insisted I sit down in his kitchen.

He grabbed me a glass of water and said, “Take this.” He put an unmarked bottle of pills in front of me.

I asked, “What’s this?”

He simply replied, “It’ll make you feel better.” All I could hear was Denzel from Training Day saying, “Didn’t know you like to get wet” after he tricked Ethan Hawke into smoking PCP, or as he put it, “Sherms. Dust. PCP. Primos. P-Dog.”

I politely declined the pills and Shooter said, “It’s not going to kill you. You don’t trust me?” There was an intense moment of silence as I sat there, half coherent, contemplating my next moves. Should I just take the pill and hope for the best, or scamper out of the house and go into witness protection?

Shooter let out a rare laugh and said, “I was just kidding! It’s just Vicodin, take some if you want.” I took a deep breath, I might have peed my pants a little. Shooter’s tone got serious again.

“You been doing a great job at the club, kid, and everyone trusts you. I just came into some money and I’m going to be opening up a new club. I want you to run it for me.”

Time stopped and my brain cranked into hyperfocus. I knew this was one of those life-changing crossroads. People always say your life comes down to a few key decisions that define you; this was clearly one of them. I had to decide if I wanted to become the underworld strip club king or continue to tell jokes at the Comedy Palace. For a twenty-two-year-old who watched too much BET Rap City, this was the toughest decision of my life. “Think about it,” Shooter said. I spent the next three weeks thinking about nothing but that. It took spending Christmas at the strip club for me to finally decide on my path.

A STRIP CLUB CHRISTMAS

It was the saddest Christmas ever. I had no family in San Diego, so I went to my usual nine o’clock shift at the strip club on Christmas night. A few girls came in, hoping to make some money off people’s sorrows. But the place was empty all night. I was actually pretty glad that it was; I would have felt really bad for whoever left their family behind to spend Christmas at a strip club. Chef called for an early midnight close. And just when we were about to shut our doors, a pair of drunken college kids around my age stumbled in. A tall white boy and his smaller Indian buddy; both were drunk as hell. Beast kindly told them to leave as we were already closed for the night, but these kids wouldn’t take no for an answer. “It says on your Yelp page you close at two!” the tall one exclaimed. I was surprised we had a Yelp page too. Beast probably had no idea what Yelp was; I doubt he had to use it in prison. Beast calmly repeated, “We are closed for tonight.” Still not satisfied, the smaller kid said, “That’s bullshit!” Beast just stared at them with his murderous eyes. The pair finally thought better of it and stomped out. I was sure these kids were going to leave us a one-star review on Yelp, but we could care less. Our customers were not Yelpers.

I didn’t think much of it and continued my closing routine, cleaning out my DJ booth and shutting down the old computer. Suddenly, Beast walked over to Chef and said, “They are still outside talking shit. Let’s go.” Without hesitation, Chef grabbed a two-by-four antique table leg that he had stashed behind the bar. “Motherfuckers,” he said. He said it in such a determined way, I heard it like a war cry from Mel Gibson in Braveheart .