Dancers

“Can you believe you’re making love to this body?” Tabitha asked rhetorically, admiring and petting herself as I grinded it out, thinking of something else and looked for a cue to end it. I reminded myself to remember this next time I obsessed on sex.

“I love to give all my boyfriends blow jobs!” she said with a clumsy wink, so I let her, what the hell. “You have to hang out to see me and Pebbles in our new costumes and check out our hot new routine.”

She started her exercises, putting an ankle up on the bar and combined ballet, yoga, and tai chi to cover all the bases. “To make sure my spine is aligned with the Earth force,” she explained. With an angry seriousness intended to conjure great skill, she struggled, as I sat nodding at her glorious over the top intensity.

Pebbles stepped into the room in a white trench coat, the way most of Tabitha’s dancer friends appeared, like apparitions from another world through unlocked doors and into the lemon light of her rooms.

They went into a bedroom then emerged as ballerinas in pink tutus with the scrapes and bruises on their legs showing through their tights. Pebbles said, “I wore this under my coat and flashed the guy at 7-11. He almost fell down.”

They both laughed with fresh surprise at this tease test which they constantly conducted, amazed not only by the predictable outcome but that they made over a thousand every week doing it for “suckers, clowns, and chumps.”

“Okay, tell us if you think this is ready for tonight,” Tabitha said, putting on a hair band balled. They performed what looked like formal ballet steps that quickly dissipated into the typical grinds, spins and spreads.

Pebbles kicked up a long leg, caught it by the ankle, then placed the bottom of her foot next to her face and pushed out her crotch which seemed to swell and contract.

Then Tabitha did her trademark move. From a standing spread she touched the floor, rotated her big rear around and around then lightly bounced it up and down. They finished and looked for a nod, posing like rock stars.

Although there was nothing new there except those half-ass introductory ballet steps, I had to be honest so told them, “You guys will make a fortune off that.”

“It’ll be hotter when we use the pole,” Tabitha said.

At the Foxy Pony, Jerry had the idea of putting girls on stage teasing in role costumes then slowly stripping down to nude. He had a school girl, businesswoman, housewife, nurse, policewoman, and tonight - ballerinas.

“This is old school burlesque, back when it was an art form,” Jerry said, and meant it. The place was packed every night.

The steel arrow of buzzy yellow bulbs on the rent-a-sign out front pointed to the door and teased the feature act in plastic letters.

TONIGHT AT THE PONY

TABITHA AND PEBBLES ARE BALLERINAS!

PLUS OUR STABLE OF EXOTIC DANCERS

Rowdy college students lined the edge of the main stage in front of hunched over working class types, then a row of businessmen in their secret lives, then a thin layer of marginal personalities, such as Sherman, who was in love with Pebbles and wept while putting fives in her garter as she pumped it six inches from his face.

As the girls came out in costumes, the drunk and rioting college guys showed little appreciation for the art of the slow strip tease. They hooted and screamed, “Take it off!” and “What the fuck is that? Take that shit off ho!”

I watched this from the upstairs VIP club with the other boyfriends and Jerry, who stood with his arms folded tightly and said bitterly, “Yet another reason to bring back the draft.”

The other boyfriends were a heavy metal band and traded stage clothes with the girls then walked down the street in leather, spandex, leopard and zebra prints, biker jewelry and teased-up varnished hair.

The boyfriends watched closely that no sucker, clown, or chump got too close or touched the girls. They suspiciously gauged the fakeness of the girls’ interest as they chatted-up customers and passed big tippers phone numbers to Dial-A-Joke or the local AA.

Tabitha came upstairs on break, bunches of cash falling out of her garters, and ordered a vodka cranberry. She said, “You might want to go home. It’s going to be a long night and I got some business to do later.”

That was my cue to beat it. She was going to an after hours party with Steve O., her cocaine boyfriend, who I had seen moving around like an oily fish in the dark shadows at end of the bar and had no doubt been priming her with a tease of short lines all night.

Outside heading for the car, I watched some drunk guy arrange the letters on the sign to read:

TONIGHT AT THE PONY

TABITHA AND PEBBLES ARE BALLERINAS!

PLUS OUR STABLE OF TOXIC DANCERS

Tabitha arrived as usual with the morning news, a total wreck. Drunk, stoned, aged ten years. She would throw down her nylon costume bag then fall on the bed and snore into the afternoon.

I collected the piles of cash in the costume bag, separated it into stacks, flattened and rubber banded the stacks, then pocketed about a forth or a third as salary for being her organized boyfriend.