Fight, Fight, Fight

Shortly after my return to dancing at the Bottom's Up club in Rochester, New York, my ex-boyfriend, Frank wandered into the club and tried to rekindle our old, whatever it was. It sure hadn't been much of a romance. He had dragged me across the country, lying, cheating, and beating me, until he dumped me in the middle of Arizona for a middle-aged barmaid. I'd been nineteen and he was thirty-two.

Things were starting to go right for me, so that tracked. Whenever my life was looking good he would show up and destroy it again. That was not happening this time. I had an escape plan.

Another stripper friend of mine had passed along her agent's business card the last time we worked together. It was time to go international. The next morning I went down to the pay phone in the apartment lobby and called the “Misty” Agency in Canada. A quiet woman with a soft accent answered.

“Misty’s of Toronto. How may I help you?”

“Hi, Bobbie Brown gave me your card and told me to call you. I’d like to work in Canada for a while.”

“Do you have promo pictures?”

“Not yet. I wanted to sew a few more costumes before scheduling a session.”

That was sort of the truth.

“How long have you been dancing?”

“Two years now.”

“And, you’re a friend of Bobbie’s? Will she vouch for you?”

“I think so. I worked with her in December.”

“Give me your mailing address. After I speak with Bobbie, I will send you two contracts. One is yours to hang onto for crossing the border and the other one you must send back to me immediately, so I can get you booked. To cross over into Canada, you will need a driver’s license or another form of ID, such as a passport. When you get to the border you should state that you need a work permit, and they will process you at the customs office. Understood?”

“Yes, thank you.”

I gave her my new address and real name.

“You don’t happen to speak French, do you?”

“Sorry, no. Three years of high school Spanish.”

“Sigh. All right. Just hoping.”

Just like that, my stripping career had gone international. I hoped my current shows were going to be good enough for Canada and that I had enough variety of music and costumes.

I wasn’t sure how long the contract would be, and I wasn’t entirely certain about how to go about presenting it at the border. Would the bus stop for me at the customs office and wait for me? I’d never been out of the country before, and it was intimidating. Plus, when the agent asked if I spoke French, it caught me off guard. Did everyone in Canada speak French? That would sure make things dicey. The only words I knew in French were ballet terms, like, “Plier, entendre, releve, touner, and arabesque.”

If I had to order food in a restaurant in French, I’d be smack out of luck, unless they were serving tutu-ala-king.

It was a long couple of days waiting for the contract to arrive. Finally, on Wednesday, the week before June 1st, I opened my mailbox and found the envelope from 'Misty's International Dance Agency'.

I hurriedly opened the envelope on the kitchen table and read the letter that came along with the contracts, instructing me on border procedures and directions to the first Club on my tour.

My first two weeks were in Toronto at a hotel called the Warwick on Dundas and Jarvis Streets. Misty had written that all the new talent was booked there first so she could meet in person with us and explained whom to ask for at the front desk when I arrived. Then there was the matter of promo pictures, which she would help me get when I got to Toronto, taking the cost of the pictures from my first week of work.

It sounded way too fancy for the likes of me, and I worried that my shows would be rubbish compared to the international professionals this woman usually booked. I laid out all my costumes on the bed with their coordinating accessories to make sure everything was in order. Then I put fresh batteries in my tape player and reviewed my music for the hundredth time.

Finally, the day was here for boarding the bus to my first gig in Canada. Getting my contract validated at customs was a simple process and the bus waited for me and several other folks.

When the bus dropped me off at the Toronto station I collected my suitcases and found the cab stand out front. I had the address of the Warwick Hotel written down in my purse- however, I learned very quickly that all the cabbies in Toronto knew exactly where the Warwick was.

The Warwick was an old, rundown brick building with a small restaurant situated on one side of the hotel entrance and a staircase on the other side that led to the “All Star Nude Strip Review” club in the basement. The hotel was up another set of stairs with a doorman who sat in a little cubicle in front of a set of locked double doors. No one, but the current occupants of the hotel were allowed to venture beyond those double doors.

Jim was the fellow who manned the cubicle on the weekends. I handed him my contract to verify that I belonged there. He asked for ID and offered to help me carry my luggage to the room. The hallway had a threadbare rug that had probably been elegant in ages past and the brass sconces on the striped satin walls were tarnished and dusty. The room was a surprise though. It was large and airy, with a big window overlooking the busy downtown thoroughfare on East Dundas Street. There were lots of dresser drawers and a large chifforobe for my costumes. There was even a radio and an alarm clock on the side table near the bed. At one time this hotel must have been quite the landmark in downtown Toronto.

I couldn’t wait to explore Toronto. It was still daylight and I wanted to look around and find something to eat. Jim, at the desk, suggested a Chinese restaurant about five blocks up on Dundas. It was still a bit chilly, even in June it seemed as though Rochester’s Winter had followed me here and I pulled on my down jacket before leaving the hotel.

Saturday night was bustling with people crowding the sidewalks. The trolleys were picking up and dropping off passengers up and down the street. There were restaurants of all stripes and kinds lining the strip. Greek, Italian, German, Polish, Kosher, Indian, Pakistani, you name a country or a culture and there was a representative restaurant located in Toronto. Pretty soon I came to the Chinese restaurant the doorman had suggested and he was right, I didn’t need to read the sign. The smells drew me inside.

I couldn’t understand the menu, so the waiter brought out something he called poopoo. And, yes, I laughed when he said it. He brought me a silver three-tiered tray with bites and tastes of all kinds of delicious Chinese foods. Won-ton, egg rolls, crab Rangoon, Sweet and Sour Chicken, General Tsao chicken, pork ka-bobs, sauteed shrimp and so much more. I had to take the rest back to my room.

I wanted to catch the evening shows in the club that I would soon be working at, so I darted back to my room and changed into something that didn’t have General Tsao chicken sauce all over it before freshening up my hair and makeup.

It was about nine PM by the time I made it downstairs to the club. The show was just beginning when I found a seat at an empty table in the back of the room. The waiter, dressed in a formal-looking black vest and pants with a bow tie, took my order and returned, swiping the table with a linen cloth before setting the drink down. Onstage was a tall, voluptuous woman in a sequined gold gown, with an oversized big hair wig, a feather boa, and absolutely huge stiletto high heel shoes. Honest to God, this woman must have worn a size eleven.

Her makeup was so thick it creased and cracked as she spoke to the crowd in a loud, raspy voice. She told some raunchy jokes and picked on the crowd mercilessly until the whole room was roaring. Then, the live band that had been patiently waiting at the back of the stage hit the music and she started belting out Let Me Entertain You, with just the right bumps and grinds in all the right places.

By the time she ended her routine, the crowd was eating out of her hand. She announced the first stripper of the night, Tiffany Diamond, and whooshed off stage in a cloud of pancake makeup powder and hairspray. I can still remember what she smelled like because I was sitting in the back near the dressing room. That was my first introduction to Brandee, alias Allan Maloney. He/she was a rarity in the 1970s. A queen among queens, Brandee was a trendsetter in the Toronto nightlife culture.

She/he had a gloriously generous personality and fawned on all the nervous newbie strippers at the club, handing out advice, counsel, and warm wisdom. She taught me the trick to applying false eyelashes correctly with just the right amount of spirit gum, how to keep stockings from sliding down my legs without garters, what makeup colors made me look my best under the new pencil spotlight the club had acquired. After I had met another abusive boyfriend a few years later, Brandee taught me how to camouflage bruises and offered to have a friend “off” my lover.

Sunday was a quiet day in Toronto. The club and the little restaurant attached to it were closed to the public, and the streets were still, compared to Saturday night. I strolled down Dundas all the way to Yonge Street, looking for a restaurant. Finding none open I stopped at a King Papaya fruit drink stand and ordered one of their specialties, the famous King Papaya frozen shake. I’ve never found them anywhere else and the recipes I’ve found online for them don’t taste the same. Next to King Papaya was an Indian street vendor selling something I couldn’t pronounce made with lots of rice and a spicy sauce rolled up in tin foil. I took my treasures to a bench in a little neighborhood park to people-watch as I savored my lunch.

A shameless people-watcher, I never minded hours waiting in bus stations or airports during my years of traveling. People were endlessly fascinating to me, as long as they didn’t breathe on me or get any bodily fluids near me.

I walked back down Dundas Street to the hotel and spent the evening preparing my costumes and tapes for my first day of stripping in Canada. Tossing and turning most of the night, I got up early and had breakfast in the little restaurant at the hotel, then went back to my room, anxiously awaiting my first show at noon.

Six dancers worked at the Warwick Revue from noon until midnight Monday through Saturday. In the afternoon the MC was a lovely, petite, dark-haired girl named Judy, who sang between the strippers’ acts and introduced us. We used our tapes or records for the afternoon shows. Judy would often help us record our music if we came in early enough before the club officially opened at noon.

I worked there so often during my time in Canada that Judy and I became friends and would sometimes get dinner together in the upstairs restaurant or we’d go to charity Bingo together on Sundays when nothing else was open because of the blue laws. BINGO was allowed because it was for charity.

The shows at the Warwick Review ran at noon, two, and four, with a break until nine PM when the evening shows began. From then on the shows ran continually until Midnight. The evening shows were accompanied by a band, that could play anything we requested ahead of time. They were amazing. Whatever fears I had of not using my own music went away after my first set with live music.

Their favorite music of mine was from the blues show with Etta James and Peggy Lee songs. I loved anticipating each note they would play. On my first night there I did the Blues show and the White Satin show. The shows were shorter than normal, because there were six of us, plus Brandee, the MC, singing in between our shows. I’d say the shows lasted about twelve to fifteen minutes at the most. It was sort of, hurry up and get on with the strip part, for goodness’ sake.

We weren’t allowed to leave the dressing room after our show until we had changed into street clothes. We couldn’t rush off stage clutching our costumes over our bosoms and escape to our rooms upstairs.

All of the other girls dancing that week were from the states. It was exciting to be part of the evening review because everything moved so quickly, and Brandee kept everyone organized backstage and didn’t allow anyone to gum up the works. It was all very professional and it made me feel like I was working in a Broadway show.

Despite the marquee for the Warwick claiming they had an All Nude Strip Review, we were never truly completely nude. At the time it was illegal in Ontario to remove our G-string. Pasties had long since been abandoned there, but G-strings were still essential.

On Tuesday night a group of a dozen or so boys from a college in Oshawa, Ontario came roaring into the club.

The formally dressed waiters looked ready for battle when the kids tumbled into their seats and started pounding on the tables.

“Where’s the hookers? Where’s the hookers? We’re here for the hookers!”

One of the strippers was onstage in a G-string and heels, finishing up her act when a college kid shouted,

“Is that it? We want to see the pu—y! The sign says Nude!”

The waiters surrounded the table and told them to pipe down or they wouldn’t be served.

“Oh, OK, James. Hahahaha. Bring us a dozen Labatt Bleus and we’ll pipe down.”

At that point, the musicians put down their instruments and descended from the stage standing ready to help if there was trouble.

“We need to see some ID, boys,” One of the waiters demanded, “and I don’t want to see any fake shit.”

The kids grumbled but dug out some ID cards and the waiters were satisfied they were real.

“Fine, you can be served- just be forewarned that if you insult the girls or get rowdy, you’ll leave faster than you arrived.”

Fantastic, because after Brandee got done embarrassing the heck out of them it was my turn to dance. The band was sitting back down behind me onstage playing The Lion Sleeps Tonight while I twirled and whirled around the stage in my leopard print jumpsuit to whistles and cat-calls.

“Whooo, baby, show us your tits!”

“Come on over here, my lion ain’t sleepin' tonight- Haha”

Ignoring them I brought out the chair and stripped off the leopard skin to the band’s rendition of Wild Thing to whistles and more cat-calls.

“Nice ass! Come and sit on my face, baby. I’ll be your chair.”

Well, Wild Thing was their style of music, I guess. I was almost afraid of doing a floor routine in front of these jerks. I needn’t have worried as while I was in the middle of my chair gymnastics a beer bottle came sailing over the crowd and smashed into the chair, missing my face by mere inches. At first, it didn’t register what had happened, all I knew was that I smelled like Labatt Bleu and my hair was wet.

The drummer scooted his drum set aside and pulled me, chair and all, behind it. After checking to make sure I wasn’t bleeding he joined the rest of the band in the fracas that ensued. Watching from the relative safety of the back corner of the stage, I saw the entire room devolve into what looked like a drunken frat party brawl.

Tables had been overturned while chairs and more beer bottles flew. The business class in the audience ran for the exits, along with the row of prostitutes, neither group wanting to end up in the newspaper stories the next day. The people without reputations to lose remained to fight on. Too bad YouTube wasn’t around in those days. That video would have gotten a couple of million views on its first day online.

When the dust had cleared, the hotel won, and the police rounded up the leftovers. The hotel’s owner was a savvy businessman who never missed a chance to make a buck.

One of the waiters had retrieved a student ID from the rubble and handed it over to the owner, who then called the troublemakers’ prestigious learning institution with a deal to not publish the college where the rowdies were from if the school quietly paid for the damages, plus.

In the end, except for a few black eyes, one broken nose, and bruised musicians and waiters, no harm was done. The dancers, waiters, and musicians all got the rest of the evening off and resumed our daily grind the following day after the hotel owner’s cleaning company, also paid for by the college, swept up the broken glass and spilled beer.

Oh, and as for me? After washing the beer out of my hair, I noticed it was much softer and fuller than before.