Life at Jack’s was fun at first. There were parties every night, and during the day I hung out at the tattoo shop whenever Preacher, whose biker club met there, wasn’t around. I don’t know if I forgave Jack for what happened, but I put it out of my mind. It was my only choice.

Most of the girls who hung out with Jack’s tattoo and biker friends worked at a strip club called Crazy Horse Too. When I left my job as a showgirl after two months, Jack suggested I join them. It made sense. After all, it was just like being a showgirl, except without the pasties over the nipples and with a lot more money. Besides, stripping is what the girlfriends of tattoo artists did. And, as pathetic as it was, that was how I defined myself at the time. I was no longer a daughter, a sister, a student, or a girl with any identity of her own whatsoever. I was just Jack’s girlfriend. That’s how I usually introduced myself. Pathetic.

The Crazy Horse Too was the best strip club in Vegas at the time, a flashing neon oasis in an industrial wasteland underneath the freeway. When I first walked inside, even though it was 4 P.M., the club was so dark that I couldn’t see a thing.

I just stood in the doorway, waiting for my pupils to dilate, until I could make out two long stages on either side of a bar and a pool table. That’s all there was to the place, besides round booths along the walls with tables that had stripper poles thrust through their centers. It was my first time in a strip club.

A little old lady stood at a nearby display case, selling memorabilia. She seemed as if she’d been there since the beginning of time (and, in fact, she’s still there today). Around the club were about twenty girls, most of them gorgeous, with bodies ten times as firm and breasts that much larger than mine.

I suddenly felt a pair of eyes on me. A small, tan, well-dressed Italian man with salt-and-pepper hair stood nearby. He was clearly in charge. Like an Italian mobster, he carried his power wordlessly. It simply emanated from his being.

“Are you the manager?” I asked.

“What do you want?” His tone was impatient and patronizing.

“Do you have any jobs available?” The mouse was out now, squeaking at yet another authority figure. I hoped he’d at least give me a chance to show him what the mouse could transform into.

He took one look at my face, said, “Come back when you’ve got those off,” and walked away. Fuck, I’d forgotten to cover my braces with my upper lip.

I was tired of hearing the same shit from everyone: Come back when you’ve lost the braces, come back when you’re older, come back when you’re taller, come back when you’re Korean. When was I finally going to get a chance to participate in life?

I returned to Jack’s house. He wasn’t there, of course. I turned up the shower as hot as I could stand and peeled off my clothes. I stepped inside and just marinated. It’s funny, but as soon as you stop thinking —or trying to think— all of your best ideas come to you. When you don’t focus on a problem, your subconscious will solve it for you. And that’s what happened.

About ten minutes into my soaking, I had an epiphany. I leaped out of the shower, ran dripping to the hallway closet, and took a needle-nose pliers and wire cutters out of Jack’s toolbox. I rushed back to the bathroom, rubbed a clear circle into the fog on the mirror, and began snipping the wire holding my braces together. Then I popped each metal link away from my teeth, one by one. I screamed, I swore, I doubled over in pain. But I got most of those fuckers off. The only problem was that I couldn’t pry four of the metal braces off my back teeth —they were larger than the other ones and had hooks for the rubber bands— but it didn’t matter since no one could see them anyway. Then I chipped and cleaned the dried cement out of my teeth, and smiled. It was an adult smile.

The next afternoon, I went back to the Crazy Horse in a tube top that was far too small for my breasts and a pair of teeny white terry-cloth shorts. I walked right up to the Italian guy who had sent me away and smiled.

“They’re gone,” I said. “The braces are gone.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, in genuine shock, a rare thing for a guy who looked like he had seen everything. “You got your braces off?”

“I pulled them off myself,” I told him.

He threw his head back and let out a long, guttural laugh. I just watched him, hoping this meant that he would let me audition for him. “How old are you?”

“I’m seventeen.” My voice failed me here, and it came out like a squeak.

“Sorry you had to go through all that, girl,” he said. “You aren’t old enough to work here.”

I wasn’t ready to hear no. In fact, I never liked that word. “Listen,” I told him, giving him my best I’m-as-serious-as-your-life stare. “I will make you a lot of money. I’m very good, and I know how to do this.”

Actually, I had no idea how. But I knew that if I set my mind to it, I could figure it out. I’ve never believed in using words like “can’t” or “don’t know.” Instead, I’ll just pretend like I can. Otherwise, I’d never get the chance to try anything.

He lowered his head and scanned my body.

“Okay, then. Go in the back and get dressed.”

“What do you mean?” I stammered.

“Go in the back and get dressed,” he said, either impatient or pretending to be. “You are going onstage.”

Suddenly, it hit me. I was going to have to follow through. There would be no audition, no rehearsal, no preparation. I was going to strip for a hundred guys.

“I’m Vinnie,” he said. “What name do you use?”

I told him the name I had always used in my imagination for my fantasy self: “Jennasis.”

“Like ‘In the beginning’?” he asked.

“Exactly.”

He called over a handsome Italian man and told him, “Gino, take her in the back and give her a locker. She’s going on next.”

As we walked back, Gino asked me what songs I wanted to dance to. I chose “Fire” by Jimi Hendrix and “Black” by Pearl Jam.

The locker room was immense, brightly lit, and full of women in various stages of undress. There were redheads, blondes, brunettes, even shaved heads and mohawks; there were leopard-print bikinis, satin nighties, denim cutoffs, and strapless evening dresses; there were old women, young women, and just plain tired-looking women. And every one of them turned to stare at me when I walked in. I represented money leaving their pockets.

They looked so jaded and hardened. I didn’t see a friendly face among them. There was no way I could survive here. These girls would eat me alive. They had cases of makeup, racks of costumes, and tons of experience. I hadn’t even brought anything to wear onstage. I scanned the faces —most of which were not a pretty sight under bright fluorescent lights— and found one that seemed friendly. She was a blond girl just a little bigger than me. I asked her if I could borrow something to wear onstage, and she gave me a light-blue bikini and a pair of black high-heeled shoes. I felt so uncomfortable that I snuck into a bathroom stall to change.

As I did so, I heard an announcement on the loudspeakers: “Next on stage,” came the voice of the DJ, “is a girl I know you’re all going to love. She’s new, she’s young, she’s blond —she’s Jennasis!”

I slammed my feet into my shoes and ran across the locker room. About halfway to the door, in front of all the other girls, I caught my heel on a fold in the carpet and hit the ground, bruising my bony knees. I could feel all the other girls laughing at me, even if they weren’t.

The opening chords of “Fire” rang through the locker room. I was so woefully unprepared to do this in front of a bunch of leering guys. I had always imagined how sexy I would be stripping, and what a turn-on it would be teasing all the guys, but all I was conscious of at that moment was the sweat forming in my underarms and actually dripping onto the stage. My body was out of control: my knees were knocking compulsively like chattering teeth.

I realized, a tad too late, that I didn’t know any stripper moves. Fortunately, I found a friend onstage: the metal pole. For some reason, I couldn’t let go of it. I just held on to the pole and stared at the stage, too scared to make eye contact with anyone in the audience. The shoes were too big for me, and it felt like I was going to fall on my face again at any moment. I was sure that everyone was making fun of me.

Fortunately I had my dance lessons, preteen pageants, and chorus lines to fall back on, and my body sputtered to life and started moving by itself while my mind twisted into nervous knots. When the song finally ended, I heard applause and whistles. “Fire” was a good choice: it pumped up the crowd. Then, of course, “Black” started, and it was perhaps the most depressing song the men had heard all night.

I was so naïve that I didn’t even stop to gather the dollar bills that were left for me when the song ended. As I left the stage, I realized that people were actually applauding. And when I sat in a booth in the back corner, hoping not to be seen, I could see the interest in the eyes of the men around me. They wanted me.

When it was my turn to dance again an hour later, I was ready. Nobody cared what I danced like, I realized, because I was that little blond teenage girl that they fantasized about while they were in bed next to their wives.

I walked onstage as if I owned it, like I was at a dance competition, and ran through one of my old pageant routines. I worked the men like I had worked the old pageant judges, looking directly into their eyes as if to say that this dance was for them. I was in control —of myself, and the men around me. And I loved it: I loved the attention and the confidence it gave me. Even though I had no idea how to hustle guys for lap dances, I was the new girl, and they all wanted me.

By my last dance of the night, men were crowding around the stage and throwing money at me. It was then that I knew not only could I make it as a stripper, but I could get each and every one of those other girls back for laughing at me.

The one thousand dollars I made that night didn’t hurt either.