Beauty Amulets: Rachel

Make it stand out

Working in a strip club can make a girl superstitious. There are good nights, there are bad nights, and you need a good night.

In the dark of the club we were all beautiful, all hair, shadow, lashes, scent. We’d all start in the hole: $100 to the managers for a “stage fee”, $20 to tip the make-up artist, tip-outs at close to the house mom, DJ, “private room concierge”.

When the night is good, the grip around your ankle thick, you almost forget that the club is set up to fleece you, the stripper, as much as the clientele, or when the men are only buying you drinks, you may forget this point entirely, and your mind will spin a logic about the last good night: it was the dress, the lashes . . . no: it was the perfume.

My favorite perfume at that time was I’Dylle by Guerlain, a bottle of which my ex bought on a doomed trip to Paris a few months prior, I loved the scent but if one wears perfume for luck, I couldn’t risk it. I’d taken to tossing a bottle of Coco Mademoiselle in my work bag but having heard that one must spend money to make money, I decided an update was in order.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

What was better than leaving the house after a good night? Leaving the house with cash and the aimless intention of shopping... this was how I would’ve come upon my good luck charm: L'eau D’Issey by Issey Miyake. 

You’d see the specific routines for a good night in the dressing room: the careful way Jade would apply apple-scented body dust, the transformation hair extensions offered to bleach-blondes, the entire tray of professional eyelashes Chloe would pull from her bag. It’s a system. 

I don’t want to give the impression that the powder-room area was glamorous. It was a storage room painted xanax-peach. We crowded around two mirrors reflecting stacks of cardboard Michelob boxes, wheeling around one another to curl our hair, to moisturize, to baby-wipe.

“You’re all just drag queens, when it comes down to it,” the make-up artist repeated. I saw his point but got the sense no one much liked hearing it. 

A bad night was a slow night. A night of rejection. Some men come to the strip club to showcase their hatred like it’s something precious: the ugliness of spirit, mirrored in their features, neanderthalian. You had to be careful to not let their brutish aura attach to yours, or else you’d be muttering to yourself–“dingbat”, “ding-a-ling!”, “dum-dum!”–as you walked up and down the club, spiralling in a labyrinth of troglodyte rejection,. 

The secret, as often it often is, is to be beyond it. Float by in confidence, as if above.
I’m not suggesting a perfume alone can accomplish this.
Just, it serves as a reminder of your own ethereal nature.

You’re lazily watching a stage set when the cleaning guy pops up to spray the stage mirrors with Windex.

 “This is the third time tonight,” Amber says in a huff.

It was true. Whether the club was busy or not, that dude would come up from behind you and start spritzing the mirror, no warning, as you’re trying to act sexy on stage. 

When guys weren’t buying drinks we’d walk the floor, that tiny club unconvincingly tripled by wall mirrors would reflect a stretch of paisley carpet, glittering bottles of Heineken, the dark shapes of men rejecting dances:  “just here to have a drink,” they’d say, tapping a half full bottle.

So now you’re thinking incessantly about your ex. What if he were to walk in? What if he walked in right now? 

Of course, there were times you wanted him to walk in … only when you were doing well!

Not that I have much talent in the way of dancing, I’d come up with my little moves… more in the style of a girl in her bedroom, writhing around alone, unhinged.

”You smell like angels,” the men who bit would say. Or else: “My ex wore that perfume.” 

Approaching men all night, it’s clear that scent is key when seducing a stranger. 

The men smelled beery, sour laundry seeping from their pores, shifting their bodies in the giant leather chairs with a gaseous waft.

A man in khaki shorts whose name I try to remember ... Jeremy ... is passing me twenties to sit and drink with him. He doesn’t want a lap dance on the floor, yet isn’t committing to the private room, The club is loud and dark. It smells of Windex and spilled beer. After a few drinks, I leave Jeremy to circle:

Sell two songs to an extremely drunk man who falls out of the chair as he invites me to his table. Drink with the table and sell a lapdance to his friend. Dead space. Another girl is with Jeremy. Drink more. One more lap dance with a drunk man, who is buying lap dances from all the girls. Find Jeremy. Sell an hour, private room. Start over, more tipsy.

You could momentarily forget a heartbreak this way. The perfume’s magic was working. Scent is about memory and luck is about repetition and repetition is a comfort. It was real.

Perfume is a way of creating presence, and strippers have cultivated the artform of presence. 

I once had seen a fight break out over such a thing.

Tiffany accused Mikayla of “stealing her perfume” which was Flower Bomb. 

Mikalya wasn’t having it. 

“Keep smoking crack,” she yelled, the entire dressing room half-watching in the mirror, annoyed with mild interest. 

“Why would I need to steal from you?”

Tiffany called Mikayla a cokehead bitch, and Mikayla reached for her giant, fake Louis duffel. She pulled out a bottle of Victor & Rolf. 

“I just bought this. See? It’s full. Goddamn, I even have the Sephora bag in here.”

“Exactly, Flower Bomb,” said Tiffany.

 “Like I said you stole my perfume. That’s my scent.”

Words: Rachel Rabbit White | Images: Hana Haley