Strip City: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America

297 Pages·2002·1.12 MB·English

by  Lily Burana

Praise for Strip City
"A colorful, often funny and always thought-provoking examination .. .
Burana does a masterful job ... with the kind of easy, intelligent style that
makes other writers envious." —Rocky Mountain News
"Lily Burana gets my vote for producing the best sex worker
autobiography to date! Strip City is insightful, super honest, and
beautifully written." —Annie Sprinkle
"She's a talented storyteller." —Seattle Weekly
"In Strip City Burana has written the selective parts of her personal
history in an authoritative voice. She has also recorded her yearlong
crosscountry trek in language that's rollickingly joyful, evocative and
incisive. Elegant and eloquent, Burana's prose has a gentling, not to
mention, distancing, effect on the edge that she still insists upon
walking." —San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
"Burana is a great writer; her self-deprecating, casual style is not only
engaging, it's seductive. Burana doesn't glorify her work, but her honesty
certainly glorifies her." —The Nation
"First rate." —Publishers Weekly
"Strip City is to strippers what On the Road was to the Beat Generation.
This is a significant literary work for an entire sisterhood of women,
bringing them out of the shadows and into the light. Lily Burana has done
something amazing." —Alysabeth Clements, Private Dancer magazine,
feministstripper.com
"An engaging writer." —San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Funny, ardently Americana, and intelligent. Witty and irreverent …
fascinating." —Austin Chronicle
"Burana writes well … she's got a sense of humor and can capture a face
in a sentence." —Palm Beach Post

Strip City
A Stripper's Farewall Journey Across America
Lily Burana

To Gypsy—for being there at the beginning.
To Beth, Lynn, Elliot, and the
women of Operation Daisy Change—
women of Operation Daisy Change—
for the illuminating detour along the way.
And to Randy—
for being tougher than the rest throughout.
ONE
Spandex as a Second Language
It takes me several tries to get the bunny head thing just right.
As with much in life, it's a matter of positioning. You have to make
sure you place the decal in the exact same spot every time, or you'll muck
up the whole enterprise. I learned this the hard way. Careless application
brought me, in succession, a three-eared bunny, then a bunny with too
many eyes, then a blobby bunny with a club-ear and no distinct presence.
Today, at the start of my tenth tanning session, I made sure the sticker
was stuck just so, and when I'm done, I'll finally have what I am after: a
small white patch in my tan, just below and to the left of my navel, in the
shape of the Playboy bunny.
The girls who use the bunny heads are something of an amusement
here at the busiest salon in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The plastic dish of
decals sits next to the towels on a shelf by the cash register, in full view
of every beautician and customer in the place. When a girl reaches into
the dish, the women who run the shop look up from whatever make-over
or pedicure they're doing and give one another a knowing glance. Oh,
these ladies know that their job is to groom, not to judge—if you want
your hair dyed a shade of copper-penny red that hasn't been seen since the
days of "I Love Lucy" or your nails air-brushed blue and orange to show
team spirit when you go down to Denver for a Broncos game, they'll
oblige without comment. But something about a girl with the bunny tan
sets the beauticians spinning. She's a little tacky, a little wild. The kind of
girl who drives up to the salon in her Camaro fifteen minutes before
closing, grabs a decal from the dish, and strides into the tanning booth for
her ten-minute fake bake. Afterward, she's off to the Outlaw Saloon for a
night of drinking, flirting, and, if the air is right, fighting.
That's not really who I am, but for my purposes, it's an image I can
live with.
live with.
I have been making twice-weekly trips to the tanning salon for
several weeks now. I started out pale as milk but I'm making significant
progress toward my goal of a sensuous golden brown. Never mind that up
close, my skin is starting to look knobby and taut—a little like the texture
of a regulation football. The color is fantastic. From a distance, I'm the
picture of health. I've never tanned in my life—I was a Goth as a teenager
and didn't leave the house much during daylight in my early twenties, so
all this dark, rich pigment is a novelty. I think it's great.
My dermatologist begs to differ.
I spent the morning getting yelled at in the skin clinic. I stopped by
to see the doctor about a strange and sudden rash on my chin, and in an
offhand moment I asked her, oh, by the way, if she would, please tell me
about the effects of using a tanning bed.

It was an innocent question, and I simply was not prepared for the
response. I gripped the edge of the counter in the examining room as the
dermatologist dressed me down with vitriolic force strong as the heat
from a blast furnace. "Oh, tell me you're not tanning," she moaned,
closing her eyes and pressing her fingertips into her temples in
frustration.
"Just a little," I lied, my eyes averted to the diagnostic posters on the
exam room walls. Sebaceous Glands 101. Skin Occlusions At-A-Glance.
Melanoma Made Easy.
"You seemed like such a smart person when you walked in here,"
she shrilled, "but after hearing what you've just said, I have to treat you
totally differently!" She went on to tell me that by doing only ten tanning
sessions a year—a year, she repeated for emphasis—I increase my risk of
developing skin cancer seven times over.
The doctor spoke with the certain fury of a true believer, and she
The doctor spoke with the certain fury of a true believer, and she
assured me that she had science to back her up. She called for her
assistant to bring in a packet of information about indoor tanning.
Slipping the thick sheaf of papers into a plastic sleeve, she said to me,
"Do yourself a favor and stop right now. If you bought a package of
tanning sessions that you haven't used up yet, give it to someone you
hate."
With goggles to protect my eyes and a towel draped over my face, I
lie in the tanning bed bathed in the eerie blue-purple glow. The industrial
hum is oddly soothing, as if I'm a baby in a man-made womb listening to
the muffled rhythms of the world outside. This snug, warm, thrumming
space is all the universe I need. The white noise, the doctor told me, is
part of what keeps tanning enthusiasts coming back, despite the known
dangers. "Some people get addicted," she says. "Try meditation as a
substitute."
In the packet she gave me is an article on the ills of tanning that
says, "A tan is your skin's response to ultraviolet-induced injury; it's
trying to tell you something. Just imagine if your skin could scream
instead of tanning." I remember Fran Lebowitz writing about being on the
phone with a Hollywood type, and describing him as "audibly tan." I am
quite sure this is not what she meant. It would give a sensible person
pause, this screaming-skin analogy. And if that wouldn't, the facts would:
A tanning bed zaps the user with a day's worth of concentrated sun in ten
minutes. Frequent use can cause premature aging, irreversible skin
damage, and sun poisoning. One bad sunburn can equal years of
accumulated exposure to natural sunlight.
But as far as risks go, tanning seemed pretty minimal compared to
what I needed it for.
When a man gets engaged, his friends might throw him a bachelor
party. They'll herd off to a club to see strippers, or order them in, and
raise a glass to the groom—that poor sucker, that lucky bastard. The
bachelor party is a raucous, ritual demarcation between the chaos of
bachelor party is a raucous, ritual demarcation between the chaos of
single life and the mature orderliness of pairing off. One final night with
the antiwife before wedding your wife-to-be, it's a time-honored way of
saying, "Goodbye to all that."
But what does a former stripper do when she's about to get married?
On my bed at home, I've carefully laid out everything I'll need for
my trip: costumes, jewelry, makeup, hairpieces, brushes, combs, and
curling irons—all the things that make a girl girly. Like a good tan, these
tools of the trade are critical, because for a dedicated exotic dancer, form
is just as important as content—if not more so.
It's a wonder that I made any money at all when stripping was my
sole means of support. I was a bit of a slob. I'd wear the same costumes
for a year. Instead of buying new outfits each month like many of the
girls, I'd take their hand-me-downs. I had roots here, chewed fingernails
there; I ate cookies for breakfast and, in general, was not much of a pro.
But this time I am finessing every detail. With the knowledge that this
upcoming trip is the last of the last, I'm building my ideal stripper persona
from the ground up. Or rather, from the outside in. Starting with the
wardrobe. Thus far, ready to be packed, I've got:
Long spandex halter-top gowns and matching thongs in fluorescent
pink, red, and leopard-print
Black strapless evening gown with gold beading
Black minidress with silver reflective squares on the front
Baby doll minidress made of insect-print fabric
Silver metallic thigh-high boots
White patent thigh-high boots
Gold iridescent platform sandals with long ankle straps that wrap
around five times
Clear Lucite platform mules
Ankle-strap stiletto heels in white, gold, silver, and black
Day-Glo orange-and-black zebra stripe bikini
Pink velvet bikini sprinkled with rhinestones
Hot pink bikini with white polka dots, trimmed with white bows
Garters to tuck tips in
Add to that one bottle of wig shampoo; a wire wig brush; hair spray; hair
gel; one large tub of body glitter; fruit-scented body spray; emery boards;
nail glue; nail polish in turquoise blue, burgundy, gold, and silver glitter;
tissues; cotton swabs; false eyelashes and adhesive; safety pins; bobby
pins in two sizes; cocoa butter; a five-piece set of pedicure tools;
Dermablend body concealer; lady razors; shave cream; deodorant body
powder; a toiletry kit; my makeup. These are the bare essentials.

…
I have been engaged for six months, and I'm being called by some
inner voice to go on my own bachelorette odyssey. I quit working as a
stripper almost five years ago. When I stopped, I charged right into a new
life as a writer, and never took a long look back. I left a lot of loose ends
dangling and I didn't have the time or the emotional energy to take any
kind of personal inventory. That period of my life is well in the past, and
most would say I'm better off for it. But the past has a tricky way of not
staying put. The idea of stripping my way around the country, an old
fantasy of mine, has resurfaced. I've met several women who have done
it, and I envied their adventures, their courage to hare off to a strange
town with little more than a bagful of costumes and their own curiosity.
Now, the thought of taking such a trip myself comes to me all the time—
when I'm brushing my teeth, when I'm working at the computer, when I'm
lying on the living-room rug watching TV with Randy, my intended.
With a mate and a journalism career and a house to consider, I can't just
pick up and leave for an open-ended venture, but I want to get out there
somehow. I look at Randy sometimes and wonder, does my desire to do
this mask a fear of settling down? If I married him tomorrow and hadn't
gone out on the road, would I feel resentful?
But when examined closely, my yearning to take this trip is less
about sweeping the path to the altar clear than it is about needing to settle
this for myself. For my own sanity. Those inner voices can be pretty
persistent, after all. Sometimes they seduce: "Wouldn't you love to see the
persistent, after all. Sometimes they seduce: "Wouldn't you love to see the
clubs in Dallas?" Other times they nag: "You think you have your whole
life to take a trip like this? Train's leaving the station, honey. Better get on
it!" It's strange: When I quit, I wanted out so badly and now the pull is
just as strong to go back in—a surprise to many. Myself, most of all. On
the desire's surface is the basic hunger for adventure—the same impulse
that sends people scaling Mount Everest or off on the Iditarod, despite the
protestation of family and friends, and regardless—or perhaps because—
of the danger and the length of the odds.
I miss the bright lights, the showmanship, the gamble. Beneath that
lies a feeling of incompleteness: For all the time I spent as a stripper—six
years, on and off—I still feel there's so much I didn't see, and even more
that I don't know. At the very core of the urge, nesting deep like a secret
seed beneath the thrill-seeking, the stage hots, and the curiosity, is the
startling realization that I sleepwalked my way through stripping the first
time. And while I've had ample exposure to what everyone else feels
about stripping, what eludes me still, after so much time, is how I really
feel about it. I don't want to enter the next stage of my life leaving six
years of my past unresolved and incomplete. Like veterans compelled to
revisit a battle scene or refugees who years later sojourn to the homeland,
I need to go back in order to move on. That's why the desire for this is so
pressing, I realize. It's nothing I can reason away. You don't always
choose your journeys in life. Sometimes they choose you.
I can't play the carefree California hardbody type to save my life,
and I'll never pass for a supermodel or a pouty-but-pure teen queen, so I
don't draw much inspiration from the sex symbols of today. Finding a role
model for my stripper self requires a look back in time, to the 1950s,
when a vamp could be a vamp, and there wasn't nothing like a dame.
When sex symbols had some hips, some thighs, and some mystique.
The obvious icon of the era is Marilyn Monroe, but she's never
appealed to me that much. She seemed too vulnerable, too much a victim
of circumstance. And too straight-up Hollywood. The girl for me is the
campy Marilyn knockoff, Miss Mamie Van Doren. She is a classic vamp
whose most notable achievement is making an impressive number of