The Table Dancer`s Tale

The Table Dancer’s Tale
Lupita Domínguez
Translated by
Sabina C. Becker
The Table Dancer’s Tale
Original Spanish title: Historias del Table Dance
copyright ©2011 Lupita Domínguez
English translation copyright ©2012 Sabina C. Becker
published by
David W. Bodwell, Publisher
centro comercial Plaza Galerías, local no. 8
calzada Camarón Sábalo no. 610
fracc. El Dorado
CP 82110 Mazatlán, Sinaloa, México
Tel: (+52 or from the U.S and Canada 011-52) (669) 916-7899
email: [email protected]
U.S. office:
6917 Montgomery Blvd. NE, Unit #E23
Albuquerque, NM 87109
Ph: (505) 349-0425
Typeset in Filosofia OT by 1106 Design
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012940186
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Domínguez, Lupita.
The table dancer’s tale / Lupita Domínguez ;
translated by Sabina C. Becker.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-937799-19-9
“Original Spanish title : Historias del Table Dance”
1. Domínguez, Lupita. 2. Prostitution—Mexico.
3. Prostitutes—Mexico —Biography. I. Becker, Sabina. II. Title.
HQ151.A5 D66 2012
306.74/2092–dc23
2012940186
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the U.S.A.
Table of Contents
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
v
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION — Double Standards
CHAPTER 1: Rolex
1
CHAPTER 2: Luxor
11
CHAPTER 3: My Story
27
CHAPTER 4: Cuban Show
41
CHAPTER 5: Here Comes Chente!
CHAPTER 6: Carla
CHAPTER 7: Lipstick
47
53
65
CHAPTER 8: Mother and Daughter
CHAPTER 9: The Cousins
CHAPTER 10: Valeria
vii
69
73
87
CHAPTER 11: No Jealousy Here
91
CHAPTER 12: What Chaos, Gentlemen!…What Chaos!
CHAPTER 13: The Famous Vouchers
CHAPTER 14: Madame Cristina
CHAPTER 15: Bianka
111
CHAPTER 16: Scandal
119
iii
97
105
95
The Table Dancer’s Tale
CHAPTER 17: Puerto Vallarta
125
CHAPTER 18: The Foreign Women
CHAPTER 19: Thalia
143
CHAPTER 20: Los Cabos
CHAPTER 21: CanCan
CHAPTER 22: León
149
155
159
CHAPTER 23: The Little Mermaid
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
iv
133
181
165
About the Author
Life is beautiful, angels…
L
upita Domínguez is an artist…a pole dancer. She
has worked in various cities throughout México in
the best—and sometimes not the best—table dance bars.
She learned English in Puerto Vallarta, México and lived1
in the United States for a year perfecting her English and
taking a writing course as a follow-up to her first literary
work. Today she combines her night job with courses for a
career in business administration and hopes to open her
own bar in a Mexican port such as Manzanillo, Vallarta,
Mazatlán or Puerto Peñasco. And continue writing stories
of Mexican nightlife, because the bar waitresses and the
ladies of the house have many stories to tell. Now, she will
share some of hers with you…
1
Lupita is a legal resident of the United States and spends part
of the year there and part in México.
v
Author’s Introduction
Double Standards
The future belongs to those who believe
in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
I
have always wanted to write this book. It is important to explain that I am a dancer, a girl of the pole…
or a prostitute as some people (especially the proper
wives, both formal and informal2) like to categorize us.
My intention in this book is to let you know that behind
this world of glamour or easy living, there are an infinite
number of stories: sad stories, stories of personal triumph,
stories with a happy ending and also funny stories. In my
2
In México, a formal marriage is one registered with the
local Registro Civil – Civil Registry. Although this is easy and
inexpensive, informal marriages, called Uniones Libres – Free
Unions – are socially accepted, as women, by law, do not change
their names when married.
vii
The Table Dancer’s Tale
ten years of working in the table dance bars day by day…
or rather night by night, I learned to listen, to value and
to love these brave women—I proudly include myself in
this category—who do everything to give a better life to
our families. In this book you will get to know the double
standards of my beloved México, for though I love my
country and am proud of my Mexican roots, I consider
the all-pervasive culture of machismo and the double
standards of México to be the true reason why so many
young, beautiful, educated women end up with this kind
of “easy job”.
How is it possible that our own mothers push us to
work in the nightclubs? Why do they, whose moral duty
to their sons and DAUGHTERS is to give them love, protection, moral foundations and above all, to help them
whenever they have problems, duck their heads and prefer
to hide the problems just because of what people might
say? Some of these women, whom the world by mistake
gave the good luck of bearing children, dare to call their
daughters whores—not prostitutes, but WHORES, which in
México is the worst word we use when we want to offend,
put down and insult a woman—when they live off them.
Yes, week after week they go shopping with the money
those daughters whom they call whores…and of whom
they are ashamed…send them the money they need to
buy food for those children and the good-for-nothing
husband they have at home. There are other “mothers”
viii
Author’s Introduction – Double Standards
who prepare their daughters from an early age for this
lucrative “work”.
Stories of incest, in which the daughter, of course,
is the one to be blamed for it. Abuses committed against
them by brothers, which our mothers dare not report
to the police for shame about what they might say
and because they might haul a beloved son off to jail.
Fortunately, there are also stories with happy endings.
Stories of girls who found love and the support of a
partner in one of those so-called sin clubs. Enjoy, and
please, mothers, support your daughters…love them…
value them.
These double standards also include our macho
Mexican men: fathers, brothers, uncles, buddies; who
are all models of rectitude at home, but come nightfall, transform themselves…buying dance after dance
from us to show their friends what machos they are.
“Machos”, even though some pay us to put our fingers
in their anuses. Men who are brutes at home with their
families…but in the nightclub are the most splendid
of gentlemen.
I have seen friends almost come to blows to pay the tab
when they haven’t even gone home with their paychecks
yet. Men who bring their sons to “debut” with the table
dancers, while keeping their daughters at home to clean
the house and wash and iron their brothers’ clothes.
Because a good Mexican macho doesn’t wash clothes,
ix
The Table Dancer’s Tale
doesn’t clean the house, doesn’t go grocery shopping…
and doesn’t give good sex to his wife.
Lupita Domínguez
Mazatlán, Sinaloa, México
x
Chapter 1
Rolex
Death is the surest and firmest thing
that life has invented to date…
Emil Cioran
T
halia, Thalia, Thalia…
It was twelve midnight, and Rolex, one of the table
dance bars of the moment in Guadalajara, was bursting
at the seams. Thalia was the attraction of this nightclub.
She was a short girl, not pretty and not a great body, but
she was super available for the clients.
In this club, hooking was the main thing. For every
drink a girl took, she makes 40 pesos, around $3 US. It’s
best to ask for a “six”3, which comes watered down, like
3
six—a bucket of ice with six opened 6oz. beer bottles fi lled
with either greatly watered down beer or simply water colored
with a bit of cola to resemble beer. Only ordered by the table
dance girls, never given to paying clients. “Pitchers” or
“tequilas” ordered by the girls are diluted in the same manner.
“Pitchers” or tequilas ordered by their clients are the real thing.
1
The Table Dancer’s Tale
the tequila. If your client wants something alcoholic, you
have to ask for a pitcher, which is the equivalent of a six
in commission. For every six or pitcher ordered for us,
we made 240 pesos, around $20 US.
Tonight was a very good night, I believe there were
sixty of us dancers, and we were all busy. We were working
a table where the clients were workers for a bus company,
really great guys. Susana, Paulina, Joaly, Raquel and I
were at one table. The boss of the company, and therefore
a bigwig, was not at all happy with the girl by his side. He
was Thalia’s client, but she had a long line of customers
waiting in the area of the “sexys”, as private, nude lap
dances were known in Rolex. For each ticket—which only
lasts five minutes—we got a commission of 90 pesos, or
$8 US. If the dance was at the client’s or clients’ table,
as it is in most cases, they pay us $4 US. Thalia was the
queen of the sexys.
At last Thalia was done with her dances; we thought
she must have done thirty-five sexys after her show on the
stage. Don Pedro, the bus company boss, and therefore
the head of the table where we were working, is her client
and of course had been waiting for her to finish up so she
could sit down at our table. But Raquel didn’t want to get
up, even though we were all begging for another round
of sixes without her.
Raquel was about forty, ugly, poor thing, with a bad
attitude. Madame Cristina, the mistress of the club owner
2
Rolex
and therefore our boss, of whom I will write more later,
had already warned her that if she didn’t fi x up her body,
she would no longer work in this club. She hailed from
Monterrey, in the north, was an alcoholic and conceited.
I have never understood what the poor thing had to be
conceited about.
Finally, Don Pedro told Raquel to please leave the
table. Raquel got up, very pissed-off, and says to him,
“You’re ousting me from this table because I haven’t had
any operations, you old bastard, but tomorrow I’m getting surgery, and I’ll come out looking really good. But
you will never get back the body you were born with, you
nasty old fatso.”
Everyone at the table started laughing. Yes, it was
true, Raquel was slated for bust and butt surgery, lipectomy, a nose job and facelift tomorrow. I didn’t know how
the surgeon would dare to operate on her with so much
alcohol in her blood.
Alcohol brings out the worst in us. Don Pedro, normally an elegant and well-mannered man, was already
drunk. So it didn’t matter to him if he gave oral sex to
Thalia right on the table. For all of us, including the
other clients, it was disgusting to see that. Not because
we were very moralistic, but because Thalia’s success
at the sexys is due to her letting them touch and lick all
of her, including vagina and anus. In the heat of such a
spectacle and with so much alcohol in them, the other
3
The Table Dancer’s Tale
bus company clients want to do the same with us, and it’s
high time we changed tables.
It was showtime for Susy. She was from northern
Baja California; a cachanilla4, she calls herself. Susy was
a young pretty girl, but she is very bad-tempered and
two-faced. She called herself Thalia’s good friend, but
she had been sleeping with Thalia’s boyfriend, a cashier
at Rolex who was young, handsome, married and fond of
the good life. She was a morena – dark-complected – with
long black hair. Since she got her liposuction, liposculpturing and oil injections in her buns, she’d been really
spectacular. Her one show wasn’t that impressive, just
walking around the stage, but when she stripped, the
crowd stared in wonder at her glorious, oiled-up ass.
She had no children. She was simply one of those
who work in table dance bars for love of the art. She
called herself everybody’s good friend, but she gossiped about everyone. She lived in Guadalajara with her
grandmother; she had fled her old home because she
left her husband, a narcotraficante5, who she claimed
wanted to kill her.
I was sitting at the same table as Susy. I knew Susy
didn’t drink alcohol because I saw her dump the shot of
tequila they served her with her pitcher of colored mineral
4
cachanilla – a person from Mexicali, the capital of Baja
California. From the name of a common plant that grows there.
5
narcotraficante – a member of a drug smuggling cartel.
4
Rolex
water. At around 3 or 4 in the morning she acts drunk and
starts fights among the other girls with the classic line,
“Don’t tell anyone what I told you.” When the other girls
were all taken was when the trouble started.
Susy was bad-mouthing me with the clients at the
table we were working. She didn’t know I was right behind
her listening. When she saw me and realized that I had
heard her, she tried to smooth things over, saying it was
Joaly who started the bad-mouthing. I didn’t say anything
because for me, the client was the main thing, and that
night was a good night.
Joaly was the star showgirl of the night. That’s why
she got paid so much more—a thousand pesos for the night
for only two shows. Everyone admired her because she
had one hell of a body. Slender, with implanted breasts
and buns, though she swears they’re natural…but I’d
known her since she started dancing, and she didn’t have
those buns then.
Joaly invested a lot of money in becoming the club’s
best girl. Her wardrobe was the most expensive; just one
of her dresses cost around $100 US, and she had three
lockers full of them in her dressing room. She wore blond
extensions that cost several thousand dollars. She was
Madame Cristina’s favorite.
Every night, she performed in some special get-up.
She had an impressive wardrobe of costumes: nurse,
policewoman, devil, nun, schoolgirl, bride (complete
5
The Table Dancer’s Tale
with veil and bouquet)…even Batman, Superman and
Catwoman. She had special music to go with every costume. The DJ even put on special lights when she danced.
When you really got to know her well, you found out
that she’s a good-hearted girl. She’s quiet, and she only
talks with the other girls when they’re sharing a table.
Her big problem was that she changes a lot when she’s
had alcohol. She couldn’t work the tables without getting drunk. She didn’t understand why the others always
wanted to hit her.
She was always busy with the clients, she almost never
talked to the girls, and she didn’t interfere with the waiters business…which is generally cheating the clients. But
even though Joaly didn’t talk much, her attitude caused
trouble for her. Don’t turn around to look, or you’d almost
trip over her. When she did her show with bubbles, ice or
beer, everyone applauded her, including us dancers, but
she never smiled at any of us. Susy took advantage of this
attitude to get her own cronies to attack Joaly.
At 4 in the morning, breakfast was served at Rolex.
We had a cook who usually made pozole, menudo, tacos or
steak. I didn’t know how Madame Cristina expected us to
stay slim on this kind of breakfast. This was my favorite
hour, because hot food and drink brought on the confessions from the girls. But that morning the atmosphere
was very strange, heavy and almost dismal. I went to the
bathroom and heard Thalia praying, which didn’t surprise
6
Rolex
me a bit because that’s just how she was. Suddenly she
came out and asked me if they’ve already taken away the
body. “What body?” I ask, intrigued.
“That kid they shot, of course.”
I felt cold. I changed clothes, completely forgetting
the clients. All I wanted to do was to get out of the joint
immediately. But when I got down to the main room from
the second floor dressing rooms, everything was in chaos.
“The devil’s on the loose,” as Thalia would say. The club
was closed and no one was allowed to leave, neither clients
nor girls. I ran to the table I was working with Joaly and Susy
to tell them what happened, and that we had to get out. Joaly
was completely drunk and didn’t understand the magnitude
of the problem. Susy got hysterical and slapped me.
“Oh no, you don’t fuck with me!” I thought to myself.
I knew her too well, she was taking advantage of the
moment. I grabbed a dish of hot pozole, which gave the
poor cook a good scare, and threw it in Susy’s face. There
was no time to say anything because at that moment they
opened the door so some important clients could get out.
Tony and his pals, the clients we were with, pulled
us out of there quickly. Even poor drunk Joaly sobered
up when they told her what had been going on. And what
happened was no less than this: the guy who was shot
and unfortunately dead, was a youngster of just twenty or
twenty-two, who had come with his buddies to celebrate
his bachelor party. The club owner had asked Joaly to
7
The Table Dancer’s Tale
perform in bridal costume because there were two bachelor parties tonight.
Joaly couldn’t believe that this boy, for whom she had
done so many dances, was dead. His buddies had bought
dances for the boy—and he only wanted her—because of
her show, because she was dressed as a sexy bride. She
said this boy was really lovely and respectful to her, and
that she never saw him drunk.
When we got to Tony’s car, Tony being Susy’s boyfriend, he lifted up the false bottom of the car’s trunk
and there was a veritable arsenal in it. He grabbed one of
the rifles and aimed it into the air, saying he was ready.
The club owner came running and told him to please put
it away, and that we should get away, because the police
were on their way. Only now do I realize that we had been
drinking with an arms trafficker…not with a normal
businessman as we had all believed.
It was 4 in the afternoon. I arrived at Joaly’s house, and
we went to the club to see what was going on. Obviously it
was still closed. Several of us were trying to find out what
happened and what would happen to our jobs.
Sadly, the poor kid was dead just because the stupid
cashier of the nightclub was a drug addict and had snorted
too much coke that night. The girls and staff were locked
up in the club until noon giving statements to the police.
Unfortunately, the stupid cashier had fled.
8
Rolex
The friends of the dead guy threatened to shoot up
the place if they opened up. They were pissed-off…with
every reason in the world to be.
Joaly and I left. She decided to take a few days’ break
to get over what we’d lived through, and I dedicated myself
to writing.
9