Donna Summer isn't my real name

(Warning: Mild adult content)

Donna Summer isn’t my real name, the email began.

I can’t tell you my real name, I can’t afford to do that, it went on.

So, there’s me, all huddled up under my cosy, winter-tog duvet, still basking in the glow of my new job.

All the girls get called the name of the singer of the song they’re dancing to, she wrote, (me assuming she was a she).

True, it hadn’t been easy getting there and I still had a whopping loan to pay off for tuition fees, but right now, sat in front of my PC, Monday morning, a week of writing stretched ahead of me, imagining Donna and the girl who gets to be Meatloaf, it felt like bliss.

But back to the email.

And I need you to hear my story.

I glanced at the time. Sent at four this morning. Just over two hours ago.

Because of what happened last night.

Whoever she was, cosy wasn’t what ‘Donna Summer’ was feeling this morning.

I had to read this.

*

I first realised something wasn’t quite right when I noticed Sheena’s silver-sequined bra left on the stage, just draped ready to fall in front of me as I strutted on.

“She works hard for the money”

They didn’t shine like normal sequins. They were that dull type, the ones you sometimes get on a sweatshirt or some other more obscure top that doesn’t ask to be noticed. It seemed out of place amid our gawky feathered and shimmering g-strings. I remember giving it a gentle kick so that it landed near her feet and to where she was sitting, in the lap of a guy in a big group.

“So hard for it honey”

The table in the centre of them heaved with glasses and bottles. Some full, some empty, some spiked with fruit and mini-umbrellas, a few still smoking dry-ice. They were close enough to pick up and take a sip. I tried to focus on the music.

“It’s a sacrifice working day to day”

I kicked my leg high into the air, hoping the knicker elastic would hold. I didn’t want my number ruined. It was small solace, but I had trained years to perfect some of these moves and I still had my own standards.

“For little money, just tips for pay”

When I landed a double pirouette, I heard her group roar. They were a rowdy lot and had obviously had a lot to drink but Sheena seemed relaxed, and while she twerked, she laughed.

“So, you better treat her right”

Sheena had performed just before me, and I had watched her gladly from the wings, trying to pick up ideas. I had felt those butterfly nerves, and almost had to dash for the loo but her song was coming to an end, and I couldn’t risk missing my cue.

 “My baby takes the morning train”

Marking my moves in my head as I stood in the shadow of the twirling footlights, I had to make do repeating the showbiz mantra I had picked up on the Italian cruise ships. Merda, merda, merda…

“He works from nine to five and then”

When Sheena span round the pole, wrapping her legs and her heavy silver platforms upwards so that her whole body seemed to reflect in the dazzle of the mirrored orb on the ceiling above the stage, she made it look so easy. Her act became my objective to work for.

“He takes another home again, to find me waitin' for him”

Sheena had complained aloud before the show in the dressing-room.

“I want to do Rihanna tonight. I practice for that, and instead,” the inflection in her voice tipped downwards and her Baltic accent underlined her irritation, “it ‘80s night”. She pressed her lips on a tissue to smudge the excess lipstick.

“You did okay love, getting Sheena Easton. Look at me,” a girl in a little mini-suit-and-tie attempted to button up her over-small jacket. “I got Dolly Parton.” She let out a big laugh, so loud she got a “Shhh!” from the guy in the wings. His eyes quickly scanned her and more so her kit, then he grinned and went back to ogling the opening routine. Soon he’d know us all quite intimately, even if he’d never learn our real names.

“Cause it's hustlin' time, a whole new way to make a livin”

When I’d first arrived, Dolly had done a quick induction. No details spared she had recited the grooming requirements like a beauty salon price list ending with a reminder to “wear stockings if you haven’t shaved”.

“Gonna change your life, do somethin' that gives it meanin”

Timing was important too, she added. Slow but not too slow. “You wanna be topless by the end of the song.”

“Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living”

She put a black plastic notebook on the table and wrote my name in it. My real one. “I keep check of all the dancers here and cross you off when you pay me the house fee”.

I must have looked startled because she said, “all the money you make comes from tips. At the tables.”

“Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving”.

Dolly turned her head towards the main stage and squinted from the sharp buzzes of light that repeatedly pierced the pitch-black. The darkness that enveloped us gave me a sense of safety. We were invisible but you could almost touch the camaraderie I felt with this other woman. This stranger.

She turned back to me and held me in her gaze, “Most of the punters think they’re the nice guy,” she smiled, with the smile of someone who knows her stuff, “not the creepy one.”

She closed the notebook and slid it into her clutch bag. “If a guy offers to take you to his hotel room,” she paused and half-shrugged, “it’s totally up to you. What you do outside the club is your business.” She got up from the chair, which looked more like a throne, however shabby. “We ask all the girls to leave from the back exit, but of course, at the end of the night it’s your decision which door you leave from.”

“They just use your mind, and they never give you credit”

Anyway, rules and warnings aside, I liked this woman. Blunt, yes and straight to the point but it occurred to me that in this job that’s all you could be really, the job itself had all the pretence a place could handle.

“One last thing,” she turned and whispered behind her hand as I followed her through the maze of tables towards backstage, the buzz of the audience warming up for the frenzy to come, of drinking and writhing bodies, “If a guy offers you a drink, say yes, champagne or you’ll be sacked on the spot.” She gave the studded door a push, “but you’ll be fired for getting drunk as well.”

The door opened into an even darker nook where steps led up to the cubby-holes for dressing-rooms.

“It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it”

As I began to peel off the layers of my old life and get ready for the show, I couldn’t not notice signs of the other girls’ other lives. Some rain-soaked lumberjack boots under a chair, a care-home uniform hanging on a peg by the mirror and lots of photos of kids stuck all over the ornate gilt frame. As a sharp image of my own three suddenly zoomed into my mind’s eye I caught my reflection in that mirror, and I stopped for a second. Who was she, that woman looking at me? Adjusting a costume little more than a bikini and applying fake spidery eyelashes? Which was the mask, and which was the real me? What was I doing here? That question wanted an answer. Of course, I knew it. I needed to keep my little family afloat, ever since the fallout, the failure, the fights. I needed a bit extra, a bit of security for my kids, for me. A bit of peace. If this is what it would take, I was ready to try…

“Working 5 to 9, you've got passion and a vision”

What was Dolly’s reason? I wanted to ask her, but as I began the question she left, off to the next cubicle to fix her wig.

“Working 5 to 9, ‘til your dreams come true”

 I smiled at Sheena, “I don’t wanna be nosy, but d’you mind me asking why you do this job?”

Sheena smirked but her eyes smiled back. “I not can say you. My English…” The sentence trailed off but watching herself in the mirror she stood tall, took a deep breath and sucked in her tummy muscles. She gave me a wink, “My turn now. Wish me the luck”, and she swayed out of the makeshift curtain that acted as a door in the direction of the catcalling. Dull sequins spiked, doing their utmost to shine.

I followed her, but because I was a beginner, I couldn’t actually follow her.

My turn.

I lunged to the floor and stretched out to the edge of the stage just as the two bouncers lifted Sheena out of her punter’s lap, like she was a flimsy feather from one of the costumes, sending the table flying and bottles and glasses cascading to the floor. The din of protests and shouting couldn’t be heard over the soundtrack. I just kept grovelling.

“She’s seen her bad times”

A couple of punters, the more pissed ones tried pushing their faces in the bouncers’ space, but the bouncers just gripped harder, and Sheena yelled. But she also didn’t resist when they swept her away, past the swarming bar, the leering men, draped with more dancers, towards the exit.

 I watched this scene through the ripples of my gyrating hips and thought, “Seriously? They’re going to make her leave through the front door?” That didn’t seem fair, whatever she had done. Give her a glimmer of dignity. And a chance to go home without being molested by the vultures outside. These men didn’t seem the type to know the difference between work and play. Where to draw the line.

“She already knows these are the good times”

So, what was her crime I wondered? Not the sex, from what Dolly had told me. Maybe drugs? Too much champagne? I hit a pose. Maybe not enough champagne?

“Never sell out, she never will, not for a dollar bill”

My big finale was coming up and I grabbed the pole with two hands, but I couldn’t keep from thinking of Sheena. As I jumped into the splits and my stilettoed feet searched for their grip, I felt angry. Whatever Sheena’s reason for being here tonight, strutting and stripping and selling a whole secret persona that I would never know, I felt envy that she had actually left. I span on the pole and let my fury carry me round, one, two, three, four times. I even heard the lyrics like they made sense.

“She works hard for the money”

I threw myself into the walkover and abandoned my legs in the air until I felt my shoes hit the hard floor of the stage and I came upright. My last pose.

“So, you better treat her right”

 I slid into the wings, feeling half the size than on stage, and brushed past Dolly, who was about to perform after me. She widened her eyes and nodded her approval.

“Whoa! Well done you! You got through to the end, with all that commotion.” I noticed the applause had died down and the song had changed. “She was three days behind with the house fee. Poor cow.” Dolly blew me a quick kiss as she clicked onto the stage with her briefcase prop. “By the way, you got the job. You can start tomorrow.”

“Well, I tumble outta bed and stumble to the kitchen

Pour myself a cup of ambition”

This will never be my dream job, and I have my doubts about the money. At least tonight I didn’t have to go to the tables. Tonight was a freebie. Tonight had been my audition.

*

I want to reply to her. I want to know.

What will you do tonight? Turn up at the club again?

I know my day mapped out ahead. Another manic Monday. But it’s fine. This is what I want.

Another 1980s song comes to mind. How did it go?

“Six o'clock already, I was just in the middle of a dream

I was kissin' Valentino, by a crystal-blue, Italian stream”

While I sing those words, I imagine what the girls at the lap dance club would do with them and I realise I owe it to them to tell their story. I sit up straighter in my bed and catch a glimpse of my legs in the mirror. I can’t imagine them wrapped round a pole, let alone straddled over a total stranger. The thought makes me both giggle and cringe. I wonder where she is now, how her kids are and what she’ll decide later. I also know that if she doesn’t carry on lap dancing, she’d make a great journalist. She’s inspired me.

I open a blank document and hug my duvet tighter, enjoying the luxury of the dream and simply being able to. Dream.

Donna Summer isn’t her real name, the article begins.

(With thanks to the music of Donna Summer, Sheena Easton, Dolly Parton and The Bangles)