YOU'RE
STILL WRONG
POST
MRR COLUMNS
by
Mykel Board
"I knew it was possible to objectify and not disrespect, to objectify and not wish harm upon a person. I wanted to share a pleasure. “ – Nina Hartley, pornstar, and pro-sex activist
Note:
this month's column is a bit late. Two reasons:
First,
I've been busier than the mopboy at a peepshow... with the New Year
(5775) and fasting away my sins, planning my life and impending doom.
Second, a trip to Montreal inspired me to change the whole... er...
thrust of the column. You'll see why. This one is called,
A
TALE OF TWO WOMEN
Usually,
having a penis is a convenience. It's easier to piss standing up, for
example, or re-dress after a bathroom quickie. But sometimes, having
a penis is a pain in the ass.
Right
now, mine is somewhere between overcooked spaghetti and the
Washington Monument. I sit at Le
Gentleman's Choice, a
strip club in Downtown Montreal. I'm here with three of my friends
from New York-- all Japanese guys. One of them, Kenji, sits next to
me. A quick glance as he shifts on his seat shows that he, too, is al
dente. Takeshi and Taro are in the back, in private booth lap dances.
There
are girls galore here, from a full-mast inducing Ethiopesque to a
downright scary biker babe. On stage now is a collegiate-looking
woman with an athletic body and small, pointed nipples.
I
walk up to that stage and lay a crisp US dollar bill on it. No one
else is tipping, maybe because Canadian dollars are coins. I return
to my seat next to Kenji. The girl on stage picks up my dollar,
smiles, and flashes some gash-- directly at me.
A
beautiful girl... barely twenty... smooth skin the color of (white)
piano keys... wearing a blue wig and not much else... sits down on
the other side of me.
“You
want a lap dance?” she asks. “Just ten dollars.”
Her
accent does not seem French.
“I
don't do lap dances,” I tell her. “They don't work for me.”
She
starts to get up.
“But,”
I continue, “I'll buy you a drink if you talk to me. You get a
commission on that, right?”
She
nods.
I
signal the waitress, a pretty, but not very friendly woman, dressed
in black with a white
apron.
“Une
bière, et ce qu'elle veut,” I tell her.
“Now,”
I say. “First, tell me about your life. Start with your name.”
“My
name's Veronica,” she says.
“Come
on,” I tell her. “What's your REAL name?”
She
smiles and shrugs, “It's Marta, in English, Martha.”
And
then she talks to me.
MARTHA'S
STORY
“I'm
from Poland,” she says, pronouncing it like BOW-LAND, “You know
Poland?”
“I
may be American,” I tell her, “but I'm not an idiot.”
She
laughs.
“My
first dream was to go to America,” she continues, “but I have a
cousin here... she works in Montreal.. It was a lot easier to come
here.”
“Does
your cousin work here?” I ask, nodding toward the stage.
Martha
laughs, shaking her head. The wig shakes slightly slower than her
head. “She would be afraid to do this. She's a waitress, in one of
those tourist beer gardens... it's awful... filled with dumb French
tourists... and Americans.”
She
looks at me and pouts... a prostate-aching pout... “Sorry,” she
says, “I didn't mean to say bad things about Americans.”
“It's
all right,” I say, adjusting myself, “I say bad things about
Americans all the time.”
She
frowns again, then looks at my face and laughs.
“I
love it here,” she says. “It's such a... how you call it... ego
trip... dancing for all these guys. They all look at you. You're
number one in their minds... you excite them. On stage, you are the
center. You're like a queen.”
“Does
it pay?” I ask. “I was the only one tipping.”
“No,”
says Martha, “they don't tip here. The girls' money comes from lap
dances. $10 a song. I take home nearly a hundred thousand a year. I
don't need dollar tips.”
“Are
there male strip clubs in Montreal?” I ask. “Either for men or
for women?”
“There's
Le Two Eight One,” she says. “That's guys who dance for
girls. I guess there are some gay clubs too. But I don't know them.”
“You
know anybody who works at one of those clubs?” I ask.
She
shakes her head. “Those clubs don't pay. Girls don't want lap
dances as much, and the clubs are... I don't know... how you call
it... slow Z.”
“Sleazy?”
I offer.
“Oui,”
she says. “Sleazy. The boys don't make much money unless they...
you know... they have to...”
I
nod, surprised at her modesty.
Just
then Takeshi comes back... scowling. He ignores me, but sits on the
other side of Kenji. They speak to each other in Japanese. I look at
him, frowning a question.
“I
was cheated,” he says to me-- in English. “I thought the dance
was ten dollars, but it was only for one song. The girl didn't tell
me when the next song came on.”
He
says something else-- in Japanese-- to Kenji. I can't hear it, but I
do see another girl... the one he went to a private booth with...
jogging from the booth. She kneels in front of Takeshi. In her hand
is a ten-dollar bill.
“I'm
sorry,” she says to him. “I thought you understood. Here, take
ten dollars back. I don't want you to feel cheated.”
Takeshi
shakes his head. “I had the dance. You should get the money.” She
smiles and leaves.
It's
a little while later that Taro returns, grinning like a chimp on
Animal Planet.
“I
went,” he says in English as he approaches the table.
“I
think you mean you came,” I correct him.
He
nods.
Back
in New York:
I sit at a bar in Midtown... right near my school. It's a typical NY
faux-Irish bar. Waitresses with Irish accents and breasts. Customers
with jackets and loosened ties (men)-- or business
casual skirts
and sensible shoes (women).
It's
9PM. The woman next to me is slightly tipsy... about 30 years old...
faint crowsfeet at the edges of her eyes... dark circles underneath.
She's dressed like any midtown secretary. She looks at me looking at
her... squints, as if trying to get me in focus.
“Hey,
sailor,” she says. “...or whatever you are. How 'bout buyin' a
girl a drink?”
“Sure,”
I say. “If you'll tell me about your life.”
“You
don't want to know about my life,” she says... surprisingly NOT
slurring her words.
“Sure
I do,” I tell her.
“Hey
Maggie,” I ask the bartender, “give this young woman a drink on
me. Nothing top shelf, but... how 'bout a Jameson's.”
“Well
thanks... er...” says the woman.
“Mykel,”
I say.
“My
name's Justine,” she says. I don't ask her for her real name.
JUSTINE'S
STORY
“How
long've you been in New York?” I ask her.
“About
a year,” she tells me. “I was born in Missouri... small town. It
was my dream to come to New York.”
“So
you did it,” I say.
“Hah!,”
she answers, taking a sip of her Jamesons, “more like a nightmare
than a dream.”
“You
don't like the city or you don't like your job?” I ask.
“Yes,”
she says.
She
tells me about her job. It's with McKenzie & Cromwell, a
law firm. She is a paralegal.
“That means a secretary who has to kill time on LexisNexis.” She
explains that LexisNexis is some kind of database for looking up
precedents and court cases.
“Mckenzie
and Cromwell?” I ask. “Sounds goyish. Do you like your job?”
“It's
as boring as golf,” she tells me. “Oh, I hope you're not a golf
fan.”
“Do
I look like a golf fan?” I ask her.
She
smiles and shakes her head.
“The
pay is shit. The men make twice as much,” she continues shaking her
head. “I know strippers who make more than me.”
“Me
too,” I don't say.
“But
that's not the worst of it,” she says, draining her glass. I signal
to Maggie to bring two more drinks. Another Jameson for her and a
Yuengling for me. “It's the... I dunno... impersonality of it
all.”
“What
do you mean?” I ask.
“I'm
like a cog in a wheel,” she says, mixing her metaphors. “I mean I
sit in a little cubical with dozens of other people sitting in their
little cubicles. I don't know their names. They don't know mine. I'm
not a person. I'm a thing... a piece of meat. Nobody ever says nice
job or even nice
haircut. The company tells me
how to dress. I might as well be working at McDonald’s for all the
attention they pay to me as a person.
“And
every day I feel like shit about myself,” she says. “The whole
purpose of the company is to cheat people. We bill more than a
hundred bucks an hour... for dicking around on the internet. I get
home and want to wash the smell of scam off my body. It's awful.”
I
nod.
“And
I'm not the only one,” she continues. “There are girls working
there... from all over... I think some recruiter promises them jobs
with (she uses her fingers to make air quotes) A BIG LAW FIRM, and
they sign the papers. Once they get here, they can't get out of their
contract without being shipped back to Kabukistan or wherever the
hell they're from. It's like slavery.”
““It's
called Human Trafficking,”
I don't tell her. “It's only illegal if you show your twat.”
“Thanks
for the drink,” says Justine. “I hope I didn't bore you with my
story. I wish I could invite you home, but I got a lazy boyfriend I
gotta support. I hope the story was worth the two drinks.”
“It
was,” I tell her. “just what I needed.... I went.”
“Huh?”
she asks.
I
just smile.
ENDNOTES:
[You
can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com.
Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music
or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137,
New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified
when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS
Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]
-->Huh?
dept: Jason Torpy, The president of the Military
Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, said, "The lack of
belief in a god should not be a disqualifier to access to
chaplaincy." And in April 2014, the U.S. Army announced that
"humanist" would be an officially recognized "faith," although so-far, they're not allowed to have chaplains.
I
say: a CHAPLAIN is a religious leader serving the military. “Lack of belief in
a god:” kind of puts the kibosh on “religious” doesn't it? A
lot of atheists are dogmatic and evangelical... but somehow I don't
think that's enough to qualify.
-->Your
private donations aren't dept: Brendan Eich, former CEO of
Mozilla gave $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8, a
constitutional amendment that would outlaw same-sex marriages. This
was in 2008-- six years ago. Eich is a co-founder of Mozilla and only
recently became the CEO. He has since resigned because of the stink
raised by the donation.
-->Rush
Limbaugh... again dept: The
girls are on Rush Limbaugh for saying that every adolescent knows
that when uttered by a girl “No
doesn't always mean no.” You can read the petition here.
Of course, Limbaugh's right... but that's irrelevant to the outrage.
Something as mundane as the truth never stopped a feminist before...
won't stop one now.
-->The
good guys dept: Not
In My Name
is a group of Jews, some in Israel, some elsewhere, who reject the
Israeli-caused genocide in Gaza and Palestine. They also reject the
Jewish hawks and other rightists speaking for “all of us.” Mazel
tov!
-->More
about strippers dept: There a great article
in This Week called Surprising Facts About Strippers.
After reading this column, you won't be surprised.
-->Twisted
numbers dept:I just read Michael Bloomberg, former king of New
York, bragged that during his term "the life expectancy of the
average New Yorker increased three years." He wanted to claim
stupid anti-smoking and pro-bike lanes were making New Yorkers
healthier.
The
real reason? Rich people live longer than poor people on average.
Mike Bloomberg threw out the poor and replaced 'em with rich. Violá!
An increase in longevity!
-->Keeping
the Pressure on Dept:
I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring
Back Mykel
effort directed at Maximum
Rock'n'Roll.
Send your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com
with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.
-->And:
I'm on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs,
cassettes, VHS videos, CDs and a few 7-inch singles. Just pay
separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway
-end-
