Many thanks to the Adventurous Alpacas who have glanced at this and offered wisdom and insight! Any misplaced pronouns are of my own doing ;-) This has been slightly edited from the original I posted for the 'On the Job' challenge, with more chapters coming!
~*~*~*~*~
When I envisaged my college years, I never would have imagined I would be in a dark and dingy bar, getting ready to take my clothes off as I danced. How far I had come from Miss Vanessa's Dance Academy as a six-year-old.
I had always been a dancer. Even though my father was a padre in the Army, and we moved around a lot, I always found a dance school and indulged in my love of the art. I was meant to be an assistant at a dance school when I moved to college, but the lockdowns saw that opportunity evaporate.
My parents had moved overseas as missionaries and did not think about coming home when the crisis started. It didn't worry me. I was seen as the black sheep, a heathen who told them I didn't agree with their faith and did not believe in higher beings. I knew they would have conniptions if they knew I had become a stripper!
Stripping had never been my plan, but I was not able to get a job over my summer break, and I was now desperate for money having burned through my meagre savings the year before. For my sins, so to speak, my parents had arranged for me to stay with my father's sister, as Godfearing as her brother. My nerdish older brothers visited over Christmas, but they were more like my parents and Aunt Catherine than me. I borrowed books from the library and went for jogs around the streets surrounding Aunt Catherine's suburban house, but it was clear to me that I was an outsider.
Aunt Catherine volunteered at the local Christian bookstore, but having been told of my atheist ways, she and I both agreed that helping her was out of the question. Most shops had closed during the lockdown last year and there was little work going anywhere.
Tonight was my third night stripping. I had agreed to it after Cindy, my best friend at college, told me that one of her former colleagues from a cabaret they had worked at before lockdown had started doing it and was making great money.
Cindy and I had clicked as soon as we met. I had wanted to spend time with her at Christmas, but she told me there was a family emergency and the two weeks I had planned to spend there disappeared into more walks and book reading in suburbia. Cindy told me she didn't want to talk about it and I respected her wishes. When we returned to college for our second year of university, she admitted her Mum and Dad were having issues, but she did not elaborate.
Through a contact in the university Pride Association, Cindy had got a job at a gay bar and offered to get me a gig there, knowing I was fairly straight. No jobs were going anyway, no matter how many doors I knocked on or how many tight t-shirts or short skirts I wore. We were in an extreme economic downturn if you read the papers correctly. We had dodged a bullet by closing everything down and going into lockdown, but so many businesses had suffered.
"Elizabeth, is it?" Marilyn, the owner and manager of the strip club had asked me at my interview.
"Yeah, but I go by Libby."
"I see... Most girls choose a stage name, I'll let you think about that. Now we take ten per cent of all earnings. If you want to take a guy to a back room, remember it's a hand job only and try and get a good price. Some guys just want lap dances, or just to talk, but you need to ascertain a price beforehand. Other girls just strip and do no back-room work. We are not a brothel, but I do turn a blind eye to girls leaving with gentlemen who have been here for the evening. Have you got any questions?"
"Um, Vanessa. I think I'll go by Vanessa." I remembered the name of my first dance teacher, the lady I thought was so exotic.
"Excellent— Vanessa the Undresser!" I hadn't thought of that.
"Um, do I need to supply my costumes?"
"We have plenty here. Do you have a persona in mind?"
"Um, not really."
"What are you studying?"
"Teaching."
"We've already got a couple of teachers. What else do you like doing?"
"Um, dancing, it's why I'm here I suppose."
"Oooooh... We had a stunning girl a few years back who came out in a tutu and stripped down to black leather underwear before only her suspender belt and stockings remained. She made a bit too."
"I could do that," I said, not even knowing the first thing about stripping.
I had done some online searches and had a fair idea of what was expected. I was glad I was not expected to go to the back room. I was no virgin, despite my parents' pleas for me to be a virginal bride, but I was not very experienced. I found it boring giving Scott, my only boyfriend, a hand job and figured I would spend a few months just stripping but would never rule back-room work out entirely.
My first two nights were dreadful— midweek with few patrons present. Selina, one of the girls who did a teacher routine, told me that unless I was prepared to go to a back room then I'd keep not making much. My first night I made $20 and Marilyn told me to keep it all. My second night was slightly better. One guy asked me to go to a room with him and when I refused, he put the $20 note he was holding back in his pocket. From my two sets, I managed to take home $45 after I gave Marilyn her cut.
Marilyn sent me on early in the night knowing there were few patrons present. I had practised a dance to Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" which morphed into "Lady Marmalade." The music was already there and Marilyn gave it to me after my interview. I was relieved it didn't morph into Tina Turner's classic about strippers.
I was a dancer. I knew how to dance and I had made money from dancing throughout my high school years. I knew a lot of the dads that came along to the end-of-year concerts as I was growing up, did so for the older girls, or young women really, who twisted and turned about the stage in sexy poses, albeit with their clothes on. I knew I would be able to come up with a decent dance routine, but incorporating stripping was all new to me and I knew it was a little forced.
Walking off the stage with $30 I guessed it was going to be another long night.
"Ness, isn't it? I'm Mandy. I only work Fridays and Saturdays. Come here." Mandy was applying makeup. Most of the other girls hadn't talked to me or anyone else, and I was not sure how to take this approach.
"Um, yeah, Vanessa, well, Lib -- "
"Nope! Only stage names here. First rule. Now, I saw you up there and I've got a couple of tips. I mean, it's clear you're a dancer and you have some great moves, but the stripping part was a little jaded. I'm guessing you're about a D cup like me?"
"Um, yep." I was embarrassed by my larger breasts on my small frame, but Mandy didn't bat an eyelid.
"Here— this is an old set of mine. See, the straps go around the body so you may not feel as exposed and see here, the cups, they're clipped on, so you just need to grab them and rip them off and the form of the bra is still there. It works great with bigger tits. Marilyn has this thing for leather, but it's not comfortable. This g-string here has clips at the side so again you can just rip it off. Your suspender belt is great, no worries there, but if you're going to make money, you're going to have to remove your bottoms too."
Mandy took me into a dressing room and I changed into the new underwear. It felt strange. I knew I had purposefully run out of time to fully strip to just my suspender and stockings. I practised with the new bra and knickers and it was much easier to get them off. Mandy was right, the straps that went from the bra to the suspender belt helped me feel less exposed, even though my pussy was in full view.
I stood on the sidelines and watched Mandy's show. It was obvious she was used to stripping and men were throwing money at her. She started in a tight nurse's costume which she removed to reveal white lingerie that highlighted her long red hair and light complexion. At the end of her set, one of the guys she had been focussing on stood and they went to one of the backrooms.
"How are you going, Pet?" Marilyn had come up behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders, "I asked Mandy to have a word with you, I hope you don't mind."
"No, she's, um, given me some new lingerie which I can easily get off and I'm going the full monty next time."
"Good for you, girl. It's a good crowd tonight. I worried that men having to give names and phone numbers as part of the COVID protocol might be reticent, but most of the old regulars are back, plus some new faces. Don't forget you can give a public lap-dance if the guy flashes cash at you."
"I'm sorry, Marilyn, you must regret hiring me." I looked down and could not look her in the face.
