"Wow." I said quietly.
I guessed that I had been here before, judging by the way the sheets in the bed were tangled, there were popcorn bowls on the table, and my laptop was up here. I went into the bedroom, and into the smaller sitting room that was in there.
The small nook, had a desk with my laptop on it, and many, many drawings and pictures cramped on the wall, and in the corner. As I looked at each one, little flashes passed through my mind.
There was one of me and a girl with blonde hair, we were laughing. That was...Jackie, another one of someone sitting on a bench outside in the dark, her head was down. She was thinking. I remembered that I had drawn that about the day kids at school had found out I was a stripper. The last one that I looked at was one that I had drawn a very long time ago.
Flashback
Tears were streaming down my face, the comments they had said to me were still ringing in my mind, I could still feel his touch. It made me shudder.
I had started working at Tony's two days ago, and still wasn't used to the atmosphere of the place, men were always there, and you would see the occasional woman. There would be the main stage, and then two off to the side where two girls would dance, and we would alternate with them. Everyone had to perform on the main stage. Then there was the rooms in the back, for private lap dances.
I had already performed on the main stage, but my shift wasn't over, so Tony told me to just go on the smaller stage toward the back of the room. Before I went to the stage, I went into the changing room to change into a different outfit, one with more layers. I knew I would be on that stage for longer.
I walked out and onto the stage. I didn't wait for a new song to start, I just went on with the one that was already on, and changed my dancing when a new song came on. I noticed that a group of guys had started to crowd around where I was, these guys were regular customers, and regular drunks.
"Hey babe." one of them slurred to me. "You wanna come down from there and we can go back to my place? You can give me a very private lap dance, and maybe more."
His buddies chuckled at his comment. I ignored them and kept on dancing, the other girls said that you would deal with this from time to time, but to not let it get to you. I heeded there advice, and just ignored them, but they kept talking.
They started to get mad as I didn't respond to them. They started calling me a whore, and a slut. Suddenly, the lights started to flash, and the light where I was, dimmed. That meant my time on this stage was up, and I was happy, the guys were really starting to get to me.
I got off the stage, but was held back by one of the men.
"Where do you think your going Dana?" he asked.
He pulled me to him, and put his hand on my breast, and squeezed hard. The rest of his friends started to fondle me too, and I screamed out knowing that Tony, or one of the bouncers would hear me.
"Hey!" I heard Mark, one of the bouncers, yell. 'What do you think your doing?"
I knew that Mark was fast approaching because the men all stepped away from me, and held their hands up as if they were being arrested.
"What the fuck did I tell you?" mark shouted, causing the whole club to look this way. "I told you the last time, next time you touch a girl, your gone and aren't coming back. Now leave, you are no longer welcome at Tony's."
"you can't kick us out!" on guy yelled. "Your not the owner of this club, we don't have to listen to you."
"No, but you do have to listen to him." Mark smirked, looking at Tony as he came up to us.
"Is there a problem here?" Tony asked. "You guys are disrupting my club."
"Yeah there's a problem." Mark told Tony. "I told you about these guys. These are the ones that keep harassing our girls, I told them that if they did it again that I there weren't welcome here anymore. They didn't listen, they were just fondling Dana here. I told them that they were no longer welcome here, but they said that since I am not the club owner, they don't have to listen to me."
Tony went from calm, to angry in a millisecond.
"No one, I repeat, no one, touches the girls in this club. They are giving you a fucking privilege to look at what you can't have, so you have no right to violate them in anyway. And they are in no way asking for it just because they strip for a living. They do it for exactly that, to live. Now, Mark here will escort you out of my club, and I never want to see you here again. If I do I will call the police, and have you arrested for drunkenly misconduct."
Mark escorted them out, and Tony took me to the back while the club started up again.
"Are you okay?" he asked me. "You seem shaken."
"Yeah, I'm fine." I assured him. "I'm just going to go home, and get ready for tomorrow."
"Are you sure?" he asked uncertainly.
I nodded, and got up to change out of my tiny bikini and into my normal clothes. I washed off my make-up, said goodbye to the girls, and went to the train station.
When I got home, my mom was in the same place that I had left her, nearly nine hours ago. I thought back to what happened tonight, and felt a surge of hate toward her for the first time in all my life.
If she was a normal mother, I wouldn't have to do this. If she took care of me like she was supposed to, I would never have to strip, and I would have never gotten felt up like that by fourty year old men.
I went to my room, and got out my paint, and put my last canvas frame on my stand. I didn't think this drawing out, I just drew from the heart, from my emotions. I was so caught up that I didn't even know what I was drawing. When I finished, I looked at it.
It was of my mother and me, but in a different roll. I had drawn her as the one on the pole, the one in the skimpy outfit, and me on the couch. Surrounded by bottles and pot, in last weeks clothes. In the middle of the frame, we were us, as we are now. I had drawn it so we were looking at each other with understand and pain on our faces. Understand, for we knew what the other had to go through; Pain, because we felt hurt, for what one another had to go through.
End Flashback.
Good God, I had gotten most of my memories back, just by looking at things I had drawn and painted and taken pictures of. I know knew why I hadn't been able to remember anything from when Chris left me to up until I left for Florida; it was because I hadn't wanted to. All those memories were painful, and made me feel bad about myself, though I knew I wasn't a bad person.
As that realization hit me, I dropped to the floor and cried.
Story of a Teenage Stripper {Arranged Marriage} Chapter 30
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