The Glass Stiletto, Opening Shift

So there’s this guy that worked at a strip club back in the late 90′s. His name was Xavier. Tall guy. Goattee. Curly black hair.

He worked at the front. The lobby area, kind of. Cash register, counter, phone to the managers office, a stool to sit on and an old computer. Velvet ropes that lead each awkward, perverted, customer into the dark mystery of the Glass Stiletto and it’s devils.

Sometimes he got bored. Yes, at the strip club. With all the naked ladies, all the constant, sexual innuendos, the tornados of flirting rubbering across the place, from velvet wall to velvet wall, with all the fishnet stockings, the pasties, the lip gloss, the body spray, the six inch heels, with all the naked ladies walking around.

It happened. Shit, if you eat enough chocolate, day after day, for years and years, you’d get sick of chocolate real fast. That’s how it happened for him. He just got desensitized to the whole thing.

So on those boring days, he’d write poetry. On the computer. Right next to him, at the front.

The computer was so old. Even by late 90′s standards it was old. A dinosaur. nothing but fossil fuel and residual petroleum. It could only hold basic programs, like a calculator and a notepad program, default 16-bit games, and couldn’t hold anything more than 56MB. The main purpose for this computer was ring up customers who bought products from the “Love Boutique” which was adjacent to the front counter.

There was a printer, but a not a real one. It was a small receipt machine. It only printed receipts. A customer receipt and a carboned merchant receipt. It sounded senile when it printed. Had a typewriter sound to it. The little machine shook, literally, shook while it printed out receipts.

This dinosaur computer and this old man printer was how he kept from dying of boredom.

On the notepad program, he had to make sure all his poems fit on the left half of the 81/2″ x 11″ notepad document so that when he printed them out, it would all fit on the printer paper. As a result, his poems became really short. Terse. to the point. It helped him with concision and precision.

He worked there for three years. Worked the front. Rang up customers for entrance and a drink fee. Wrote poems on the side. Read books and magazines. Talked to the strippers. Stole money when the cameras weren’t looking. He worked five times a week, five hours a day. The opening shift into the swing shift.

Strange that a strip club would open at noon, but then again The Glass Stiletto was a franchise, a publicly traded company, a corporation. Hundreds of lawyers, a number of shareholders, everything that every other respectable company would have. Except that this was contemptible. Until he became numb to the whole thing.

See, he grew up with some shady characters. But the kinds of shady characters that had hearts of gold. Good guys with bad circumstances. You know the type. Hell, you probably have a friend like that yourself. Well, Xavier grew up with a bunch of them. He was one himself. Thieves, ruffians, rogues, scoundrels, that’s who they were. They stole, sold, and manipulated just to keep their head above water. Like I said, good guys with bad circumstances who decided it was better to survive ugly, than die, period.

Some of these fellas didn’t go to college. In their early twenties, because of an older generation of fuck-ups, these fellas got jobs at the Glass stiletto parking cars. After a few years, they moved to the frotn door. Then the camera room. Then the DJ booth. Then the security. Then, eventually, they became managers. Just like any other respectable job. Except this was contemptible. I guess…

Xavier didn’t graduate college either. He joined a theatre troupe that toured across the country. He got into it after his ex-girlfriend, Mai Anh Mai, cheated on him. But that’s another story. Let’s keep it consistent, shall we? Anyway, he didn’t make much money traveling and performing. Even though it was fun and something that was the complete opposite of what he grew up in, he figured out real fast that stage lights and a monologue weren’t going to feed him. So he asked his friends who were managers of The Glass Stiletto for a job. Xavier ended up with the easiest shift. The opening shift.

Imagine what kinds of people would go to a strip club during the day, noon to five in the afternoon. I’ll give you a second to think about it…

That’s right. Millionaires. Motherfuckers who were so rich, so bored, and so lonely, because while creating their empires, they had no time for love, they drove their Porsche’s and their Lamborghini’s into the lot, walked in with a wearing baseball caps, shorts, and plain white t-shirts, while sporting a 100k rolex and a 10k platinum necklace. These were the dudes who frequented strip clubs during the day. These were the motherfucking reason why The Glass Stiletto opened it’s doors during the day. And that’s probably why The Glass Stiletto was a multi-million dollar corporation.

Xavier knew all of them. The “High-Rollers” they were called. Tim, the mousy, dirty blond, who owned a chain of construction companies, married to a wife who snorted Ritalin. Bernard, a retired sixty year old, lonely, widower, ex-stock trader, who owned a shit load of property in North America. Blake, a plastic surgeon, who lived and practiced in Hollywood, who was on his fifth marriage. There were a few more “High-Rollers”, but these were the repeat customers. These were the guys Xavier got to know.These were the perfect marks for the day-shift girls.

There was a big difference between the day shift girls and the night shift girls. The big difference was, the day shift girls were smarter. There was only ten girls during the day shift, because the customer totals only maxed out at one hundred during the opening shift, but these ten girls knew who the clientele was. Rich, lonely, men. Looking for comfort. Desperately seeking someone to hold. Once a day shift girl got one of these fools to fall for her, that guy would come in twice a week, only for her, and drop thousands upon thousands of dollars. Just for her. No sex either. Just cuddling.”Money-Makers” we called them. Because these day shift girls made almost half of the weekly revenue than the night shift did, with 100% less customers.

Tim divorced his wife for Alexia thinking she would marry him. Bernard just needed someone to talk to and Malibu was the perfect naked lady listener. Blake was just plain fucked in the head and Persia was just the right kind of crazy to make him feel normal.”Money-Makers”

Day in day out, for three whole years, five times a week, five hours a day, Xavier watched everything. Watched all of it happen. Watched every single story unfold. Watched every unhappy ending. New “High-Rollers” came, “Money-Makers” changed hands, employees were fired, managers were hired, DJs left, waitresses turned, Xavier watched all of it happen from his safe place at the front of the Glass Stiletto.

And he wrote poems about it all. Saved on that old, dinosaur of a computer. Not a single soul ever had a chance to read any of them. Even after he left The glass Stiletto.

Not until I came across them yesterday.