Undressing the Audition Myth
By Rita Rich

I wasn't hired right away at the Lusty Lady peepshow. First, there was
an interview.  The only thing I remember about the interview was being
told how high, in inches, my shoe heels should be during the audition.
Later that afternoon, Dawn and I looked around the Embarcadero shops for
shoes.  I tried on a pair that would have been perfect but then Dawn
examined them closely and found a teensy bit of scuffing.  This was one
of Dawn's "create-a-discount" ploys.  When the salesman wouldn't give us
a few dollars off, I didn't buy them.  I think this signifies that I
wasn't ready.  I spent a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two, looking
for the same shoes elsewhere.  I finally found a pair at Macy's, where I
get all my shoes anyway.  They were quite similar to my original
prototype; plus, they were made of that shiny black material which looks
good on stage.

I gyrated around my studio apartment pretending the bare white walls
were windows opening and closing.  I gyrated and gyrated in the
medium-shag carpet.  Sometimes I listened to Dead Can Dance and forgot
about the windows and did silly interpretive dance movements in the
middle of the room.  When I didn't know what else to do, I moved back
toward the wall and gyrated more.

Ben took me out to buy special stage makeup for covering my tattoo.  The
day we drove to the makeup store I was still so fucking naïve and
innocent about the industry.  As we turned onto Howard Street, I
shouted, "Howard Street! Howard Street is where Good Vibrations is
located!"  I hadn't yet visited Good Vibrations, but it was a landmark
in my personal guidebook, a symbol of why I moved out to San Francisco.
I was starry-eyed and enthusiastic.	Like any women's college
graduate, I was polite and prompt.	If I had been in another
industry I would have been rewarded.  But it didn't matter for shit in
San Francisco.

I returned to Macy's for a makeover.  I said I wanted a glamorous look
for "going out at night."  He glanced at my cotton pants and knit top,
tennis shoes, and plastic frame glasses.  He gave me a makeover that the
Lusty Lady manager later referred to as "understated."

When I finally called the "theatre"  back to schedule an audition, the
manager asked me why so much time had passed since my interview.  I
bluffed something about needing to have closure with my other
commitments, but the truth was that I couldn't find the right fucking
shoes and I had to learn how to put on makeup.  On the day of the
audition, I drove to the city with Dawn's wife, Shauna.  Shauna had
danced at the Regal Show World on Market Street.  At the time of my
audition, she was a dominatrix and graduate student.  Now she is an
elementary school teacher.  I am not saying that to be spectacular.  As
we crossed the Bay Bridge, she said, "Maybe I'll audition, too."  I
asked her not to, because I needed all the attention focussed on me.  I
was afraid they would hire her and tell me I was stupid.

Contrary to popular belief, not every stripper-wanna-be can work at
every club.  After I had danced at the Lusty Lady for a few months and
was ready to start lap-dancing at a regular strip club, my friend Hornet
told me I should audition at the Crazy Horse because there were no
redheads there.  I called ahead to make sure I'd be able to audition
that day. When I got to the Crazy Horse, the guy at the front desk told
me the roster was full.  FYI, a strip-club's roster is never full.  I'll
never know what that was about. Maybe the door-guy didn't like redheads.
On the other hand, the Chez Paree will hire anyone who walks through the
door, but the club is so competitive that few new girls last more than a
week.  I think that anyone can get an audition at the Lusty Lady but
only a certain type of girl gets hired.	The Lusty Lady is all about the
Girl Next Door.

I spent half an hour covering my tattoo.  I hadn't put on any other
makeup beforehand, so I needed another half hour to do my face.
Shannon, the manager, kept peeking into the dressing room to see when I
would be ready. I worried that I was giving a bad first impression:
being slow to put on my makeup and therefore not demonstrating a strong
work ethic.  But like I said, no one in the sex industry gives a shit
about decorum for decorum's sake. Later there would be rules: If I was
late, I wouldn't be allowed to work.

When I was finally ready, Shannon walked me down the hallway to the
stage. She asked for my stage name. "Marina," I said.	She announced me
on the intercom, "Murmur murmur welcome Marina murmur murmur."

Then I was on stage.  It didn't really look like a stage but it
obviously had performance-type activities taking place on it.  It was
the size of a small bedroom, glowing amber and orange, sometimes yellow.
There were about a dozen windows.  There was a pole in the middle of the
room.  There were four other girls, each pressed against a window.  I
walked out to the center of the room.  A corner window went up and the
man inside looked at me. He was excited.  I was thrilled.  I gyrated.
He liked that.  I gyrated more.	I was about four feet away with one foot
up on the platform, like I was riding an escalator.  I was far away from
him, but our eyes locked onto each other.  I gyrated and gyrated from
far away. My smile was huge.  He raised his eyebrows up and down.  I
thought, "Wow, this is easy."  His eyes started wandering. He looked at
another girl.  He looked back at me.  I thought, "I don't know what else
to do."  I thought, "I'm stuck."  He saw that I was stuck.  I gyrated
desperately, making wider and faster circles with my hips.  His window
went down.

I looked at the other girls.  None of them were gyrating.  They were
pressed against the windows.  I pressed myself against a window.

Shannon peeked into the room.  She caught my eye. This meant my audition
was over.  In her office she told me that she wanted me to audition
again.	I returned a week later and re-auditioned.  I flirted and
teased, moved back and forth between windows, varied my distance, my
pace, my movements.  It was like I had been doing it for years.

I never met anyone else who was asked to re-audition at the Lusty Lady.
Either they were hired or they were told their tummy was too big, or
they had too many tattoos, or sorry, the roster was full.  I wonder what
made Shannon break her usual hiring patterns.  Maybe she could see how
new this was to me--she had seen how I had exploded and then deflated
out there--and she felt sorry for me.  Perhaps she couldn't resist my
willful fateful dive into the industry, a dive which wouldn't stop until
I had experienced almost everything.  Or perhaps she just sensed I was
the kind of girl who would do my best, try to please everyone, and
always arrive to work on time.