James Baldwin: Burn Artist

Resigned, I went into Nicolai’s office and scrounged through boxes of ammunition and old paperwork until I found some earplugs. I put them in, and then took a tin of Altoids from my pants pocket, popped the lid, and folded two of them into my mouth. Peppermint oil was one of the more reliable methods to turn the acute agony of loud music into a dull roar.

Sirens was a strip club, first and foremost, but it did have a dance floor and surprisingly good acoustics that also attracted a small disco crowd. The sound of The Jets pounding through the walls was muffled by the earplugs, but I could feel it in my teeth. Bass throbbed on my tongue in choking waves, thick as Karo syrup. Treble caused screechy, needle-like pinpricks of pain all the way down my throat. Synesthesia was truly the worst superpower in the world.

I stepped out into the wall of sound and the blast of fans. Even on a Wednesday, the place was hopping at three a.m. The smaller parlors and the main stage were occupied and surrounded by a thin crowd of eager men, as were the shower booths – boxed stages where girls danced in bikini bottoms and pretended to clean themselves as they pressed various body parts to the Perspex walls. I glanced at them on the way past, mostly out of habit, and continued to where I knew my colleagues were going to be.

Between the bar and the stairs leading up to lap-dance rooms was a corner booth with a long padded bench and small tables currently cluttered with bottles and ashtrays. To my relief, there was no sign of Grigori. Vassily and the others were laughing uproariously, cheering on Slava while he got head from a dancer pulling him a favor.

I slunk in around the edge of the night’s entertainment, taking a seat beside Vassily. He was all too eager to switch his attention from Slava to me. “Hey, Lexi! How’d you go?”

“Interesting night.” I fixedly ignored what was happening down the row, and found my eyes drawn to the catwalk. Three girls were finishing up their set: a busty blonde cowgirl, and two tall, thin Grace Jones lookalikes in bikinis that left nothing to the imagination. I settled for staring at the floor between my knees instead. “I have to head back. There’s work to do.”

“And I’m going to court on Monday and want to have some fun, so I’m gonna stick here for at least a couple hours,” Vassily shouted over the music. “You head home if you want, man. I’ll follow you later.”

“Ladies and gentleman, new to Sirens and all the way from Germany… Crina Jay!” The MC’s blurry microphone was nearly drowned out by the beat.

It was hard to articulate why the notion of leaving disappointed me. Maybe it was that I was twenty-five and wanted nothing more than to finish the book I was reading at home, while everyone here had the ‘real fun’ that I’d never understood. Maybe it was because Vassily was going to court soon, and he was enjoying himself and would enjoy himself more if I stayed. Maybe it was because it felt like I was running away.

The boppy music had shifted to something harsh and minimalistic, a transitional beat spun by the DJ. I fought past the reserve, and lifted my head to say that I was leaving just as Vassily elbowed me in the arm. Confused, I followed the jerk of his head and his quizzical expression.

A tiny woman in very high heels and a very severe bun was striding down the catwalk that led to the poles on the center stage, dressed in a full-length gray wool greatcoat. She was unsmiling, her pretty, boxy face hard and sultry behind a fine black lace veil. Her unorthodox appearance had silenced the whole club, drawing titters from a few of the men in our corner. For the first time I could remember, I found myself curious. The dancers often wore coats out back, but I’d never seen a girl fully dressed on-stage before.

As her song began to play – Laura Branigan, I was sure of it – Crina spun lazily around the pole, once, and then tore the coat open and threw it the ground on the second time around. She was still mostly dressed underneath: corset, thigh-highs and knee-length skirt, all black and glittering under the cheap stage lights. She flung a leg up along the pole, stretching herself up until she was in full splits, and leaned forward from her hips until her head touched her toes.

He says that he can read my mind, the power to turn iron into gold…

She says she’s seen the other side, and knows the place the fire burns all night…

“Well… uh…” Vassily blinked several times. “I uh… guess this is the new girl Rod was talking about.”

I found myself smiling, just a flicker at the corner of my mouth as this new woman stalked around the pole like an Art Deco sculpture, hooking her ankle and twirling herself around and then up… and soon, I found myself captivated as she clung with her legs and shed the gloves one at a time, throwing them down into the gathering crowd with the subtle challenge and sudden alacrity that she’d shed her coat. Once they were off, the dancing really started, and Crina flung herself around the pole, her skirt managing to cover her crotch at strategic moments, climbing up until she was almost to the ceiling. She straightened out there, and undulated back down horizontally, as if running in slow-motion through water. It was not something I’d seen anyone here do before. Her slender muscularity was evident, and when she swirled around and touched the floor, light as a fairy, I saw her tuck the balls of her feet and arch her heel. She was ballet-trained.

“Wow.” Vassily rubbed his hand over his mouth and jaw. “We must be getting classier or something, because—”

“Quiet.” I didn’t want to be distracted.

The audience was crowding up around this woman, hands waving bills as she crawled forward on her knees, unlacing her corset as she went. She tore it open and shoved it down as she reached the edge of the stage, snaking out and forward so that she could accept the first round of offerings down her cleavage.

Vassily shoved at me. “Go up and tip her, Lexi.”

“Well, I don’t know if I need to do that…” I didn’t look across at him, too busy watching Crina roll sinuously across the stage.

“Seriously, man, I’ve never seen you look at a chick like this. Go get her, for reals.”

He was thinking sex: I was thinking power. Her song was about magic, and as she flirted with revealing her breasts – never quite showing anything – and turned into a broadside splits with her head turned, eyes dark and intense from over her shoulder, my smile broadened. Tiny as she was, she commanded the room… and I knew a fellow ceremonial artist when I saw one.

Quite abruptly, I rose and pushed toward the stage. Jeering and cheers followed from behind me. As if I’d never spoken to a woman in my life… I’d never had sex with a woman – that was true – but the approach had never been the hard part.

I had to strategically elbow larger, hornier men out of my way to get where I could be seen, just in time to watch the lady launch back into air. She arched backwards, practically upside down, and dropped her corset to the stage with a thump. It left her in her lingerie and garters, which she made full use of when she dropped back down to collect her next round of tips, crawling like Catwoman on hands and toes. For a moment, she met my eyes, and I saw hers widen in the second before I held up a folded twenty in my gloved fingers. I tapped my watch and motioned toward the stairwell with my head, and she gave a subtle nod on her way across. She was expecting to give me a lap dance. I wanted to talk, and the money was the same either way.

Her eyes hooded, and she rolled her scarlet lip under her teeth on her way across to me. I made to feed it under her garter, but she leaned in toward me and very delicately, very deliberately took the note between her teeth. We were eye to eye for a few seconds, and then her ass was where her head had been, and I was suddenly able to count the rhinestones sewn into the seat of her panties.