Class War Baby!

By I.M. Pembroke

Embittered by the patriarchy, former model and Ivy League grad Lydia Aspinall embraces life as a stripper, whore and pornographer, driven by a fervid curiosity in licentiousness. When her Deep State, diplomat father finds out and cuts all ties with her, she directs her fierce rage against the liberal values he embodies by devising a distinctive form of terrorism. Recruiting two other beautiful sex workers as allies, they concoct a scheme to bring devastation to Main Stream Media by targeting leftwing journalists for assassination, using Critical Theory to analyze the crimes of each journalist. The three head out across America thereafter, to wage a class war which forces their own critical assessments—on their roots, their fates, and their nebulous pursuits of love—but they never forget to deliver their swift and often gruesome brand of justice against journalist enemies of the people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: I.M. Pembroke
• Release date: May 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985845402

I.M. Pembroke

Disappointed by the long process of filmmaking, one-time screenwriter I.M. Pembroke turned to novels to express his story-telling urge. As he mulled about what to write next while sitting in a heavy metal bar in Brooklyn, a helpful barmaid offered him some sage advice: “Since you don’t have to write for others, write the wildest, craziest, sexiest thing you can think of!” Thus CLASS WAR BABY! was born, and drawing upon Bertolt Brecht’s theories of epic theater, he concocted a narrative fit for today’s issues and obsessions, applying them to three beautiful rightwing terrorist strippers—Lydia, Patty and 2Lip.While not compulsively writing, Pembroke spends his days plotting his escape from New York City, where he has spent most of his life. Travels to the distant Rockies beckon him, perhaps to follow in the peripatetic footsteps of Patty, his very own literary creation.

Book preview

CLASS

WAR

BABY!

BOOK ONE

I.M. PEMBROKE

Copyright © 2021 I.M. Pembroke

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author's use of any actual persons (living or dead), places and characters is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of this work, or to disparage any person, or any company or its products or services. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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For Bjanka

The fiercest of them all!

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 — When Worlds Collide

Chapter 2 — A Carnal Campus

Chapter 3 — Lucy Lucifer

Chapter 4 — A Rabbit Run

Chapter 5 — Lairs of the Lynx

Chapter 6 — A Birth, of Sorts

Chapter 7 — Flotsam and Jetsam

Chapter 8 — Reservation Blues

Chapter 9 — The Bugs Bunny Theory

Chapter 10 — Bimbo Politics

Chapter 11 — Punching Out the Sparrow

Chapter 12 — A Fury Alone

Chapter 13 — Mountain Divides

Chapter 14 — Gummy Games

Chapter 15 — Skating on Clay Feet

Chapter 16 — I Trust Profit

Chapter 17 — Hate Is a Human Right

Chapter 18 — A Killer Shopping Spree

Chapter 19 — Thought Rape

Chapter 20 — To Bacon, Or Not to Bacon

Chapter 21 — Hawk and Sparrow

Chapter 22 — A Crack In Confidence

Chapter 23 — Kansas City Curlicues

Chapter 24 — A Final Thesis For You

Acknowledgments

For those of you who feel invisible: Please know that your story matters. Your ideas matter. Your experiences matter. Your vision for what our world can and should be, matters. So, don’t ever, ever let anyone tell you that you’re too angry, or that you should keep your mouth shut. There will always be those who want to keep you silent, to have you be seen but not heard, or maybe they don’t even want to see you at all. But those people don’t know your story, and if you listen to them, then nothing will ever change.

—Michelle Obama, 2020.

Chapter 1

When Worlds Collide

A drop of water forms on the rim of Patty’s hoodie and pauses there to dangle in front of her eyes, mustering critical mass for a duel of nerves. Patty takes up the challenge by keeping perfectly still, distracted by this brief, scintillating life on the edge of things. There’s poignant beauty in a quivering pearl and this is the way to see it, pitting patience against probability—a game of endurance she often plays out in the wilderness.

Being out there would have been better than getting drenched outside a dreary university lecture hall near Portland, Oregon. It hardly passes for the rough and tumble of the great outdoors.

It’s late fall and leaves get blown about in showery gusts that send people scurrying in this dull, suburban neighborhood, one which Patty nevertheless finds oddly absorbing. Is there more to life in a place like this, where everything is planned and predictable? In her imagination she sees people huddling near cozy hearths, with hot totties and teas—and why would that be so bad? Her own plans have ensured she would always be on the outside, peering in through some proverbial window, at others next to comfortable fires. But maybe they’re just dreaming of a life outdoors, in turn?

Outside she only has Lydia’s exhortations for company. Rain is ideal, rain is your friend, she would say. You should always look forward to it.

Yeah, right. Like a wet rag is your friend.

Patty shakes off her hood, ending the droplet-game. She draws out a cigarette, even though this is not an ideal place to light up. An inviting grove of trees stands nearby, a vestige of nature in the middle of gridland, offering shelter.

Nature is a riot, Lydia once said. Not even a laugh riot, but a horrible riot of life and death! Maybe so, but for now the trees beckon like the vagrant’s retreat they’ve always been, so that is where she heads.

Inside that red-bricked university building Eileen McClarsky—one-time reporter, former feminist firebrand, nascent interpretive dancer, now a single mother-of-two—is on stage imparting wisdom to another generation of would-be journalists.

In her young radical days McClarsky dressed provocatively, but now she opts for more conservative attires that lend a befitting gravitas to a newly tenured professor. She’s even added a necklace of faux pearls to her outfit, a sober yet subtle token to femininity.

The topic of her lecture is Postmodern Narratives in Flux: An Ethical Challenge. Some students seem to be interested, though you never could tell what they do on their laptops. Had they been thinking, they might have wondered what narratives had to do with journalism in the first place? But McClarsky soldiers on; one only needs to convert a handful for the good fight.

Nate Kinkaid, for example, needs the credits from this course. He’s deeply in debt to student loans, and though his major is PoliSci, he figures journalism is worthwhile because he’s going to need some kind of job after he graduates, at least before he defaults on his student loans, which is part of his revolutionary plan. Now he’s nursing a hangover which wasn’t supposed to happen, but shit happens and there you are. He’s glad McClarsky’s not one of those teachers who randomly asks questions of students.

The professor’s drone causes him to stare sideways at Ann, of the nice bangs. Banging Ann; he’d do her in a minute. Just not right now.

Young and pretty Ann Norwood—who aspires to work in communications at the United Nations—types on her laptop as fast as she can and as much as she can, because some of the professor’s terms are so unfamiliar, like cultural syntax and progressive paradigms and non-linear praxis. These terms might end up on the final exam, so she plans to ask some of the other students what they mean, later.

In her state of mild anxiety she twirls her hair and chews gum with frenetic, eye-catching tempo. McClarsky looks at her young charge, notes the incipient trichotillomania—the obsessive tugging of hair—and is reminded of some deconstructionist paper where women’s desire to chew gum (and women buy more gum than men) can be equated to a desire for the comforts of mother’s teat, or to an attempt to please dad through fellatio.

McClarsky only smiles whenever she sees female students chewing gum. If only they knew.

Zeke, the wannabe music critic, is settled down with his feet propped up on the chair in front of him. He distinguishes himself with his completely disheveled clothing style. McClarsky’s not one to begrudge someone their comfort, yet she’s strangely discomfited by the display of worn soles on Zeke’s shoes, one of which he’s apparently tried to repair with duct tape.

There were more such aspiring journalists in the auditorium, but the course was not a popular one and there were way more empty seats than students. Patty knew this because she had snuck in weeks before, scoping the terrain.

She wound up concurring with Lydia: the whole hall of phonies, professor included, were enemies of the people.

In the grove Patty finds a tall pine tree with a carpet of needles still fairly dry and here she plops herself down. She gets her lighter to work. No matches, ever, Lydia would say. Zip the lighter inside your pocket, and after smoking, zip up the stub too.

Then Lydia would usually go all schoolmarm on her: Of course it would be better for you if you’d just quit smoking!

The pine tree smells good. Patty could pick up on that forever, like the scent of a lover lingering long after sex. She starts picking at some tar that had sweated off the bark, when weather was warmer and insects were laying their potential larvae. This could be amber, in maybe like a million years.

Experienced in deer hunting—perhaps the one single gift her drunkard Dad managed to impart—Patty is completely okay with the art of waiting….

She observes birds taking cover in the foliage, frantically twitching their heads before resuming flight, probably because of her. Some leaves rustle farther on, stirred by a darting vole that perhaps did not like what it sensed. A forest squirrel springs forth fearlessly, approaching her in carefully measured hops, only to pause and stare at her as if to ask: What are you doing?

Soon enough it scoots away, in whatever mission prioritized by its acorn-craving brain. Admirably camouflaged, Patty soon couldn’t track it by sight.

Patty’s camouflaged too, sort of, in a long black raincoat drawn about her black fatigues, to keep out the chill. At least her feet are warm. She wears second-hand oversized men’s hiking boots, with two layers of heavy woolen socks to compensate for the extra space. Even though her hands are getting chilled, her feet are nice and toasty: underneath the socks she wears black rubber stockings, the kind you can only find in fetish boutiques.

Inside the auditorium Professor McClarsky dismisses her class, which results in a flurry of students squirming to escape. She picks up her coat and handbag, scanning the auditorium to see if anyone’s hanging back, wanting to perhaps ask questions?

No one ever did.

Outside, Patty has a line-of-sight through the underbrush. She sees students running off, their heads under hoodies and umbrellas. Lydia was right; rain is your friend.

Unzipping her pocket she produces a pair of surgical latex gloves that she stretches on her hands, wetting them from a tube of hand sanitizer which she carefully zips back in her pocket.

Then she recites the little rhyme Lydia taught her: One, two, let’s go do. Three, four, open the door. Five, six, take your picks. Seven, eight, stab with hate. Nine, ten… drop your pen.

Okay, it didn’t sound so good as a poem and it felt kind of dorky, but Patty wasn’t about to tell that to her friend and mentor, the one single person in the world that she actually admired and found impressive. Everything Lydia talked about, be it politics, history, business, philosophy—or mythology, especially Greek mythology—Patty had lapped up like a kitten learning from a worldly-wise tomcat mom.

In the distance McClarsky steps outside and assesses the weather, pausing to unfurl her umbrella, before heading to her car.

Patty finds it interesting that she should still be thinking of Lydia as she plods along a muddy footpath in her man-sized boots, a route chosen by Lydia, towards the parking lot.

The professor sees her as she’s about to open the door of her SUV, and is taken aback, momentarily, by the approaching beauty, whose pale skin and melancholic eyes are framed by jet black hair matted wet on high cheekbones, accenting her full, almost naturally crimson lips. In the early evening hour she seems to have stepped forth from some fairytale, like a figure whose rightful place should be by one’s fireside, for convivial chats over herbal teas….

Professor McClarsky? Patty asks.

Yes! the professor replies.

Patty’s knife lunges at the professor’s throat, cutting the string of pearls around her neck, sending them clattering to the lot. The professor has just enough time to make a faint chortle.

She falls conveniently between two parked cars. Patty stabs her again in the heart, and a third stab plants the knife in the belly, where she leaves it sticking upright.

In a final gesture Patty reaches inside a plastic bag, suspended in a string around her own neck, to extract a short piece of household electrical wire tied with a single knot in the middle. Opening the professor’s mouth, she pushes the wire inside.

Nine, ten, drop your pen.

* * *

Can music sound even crappier these days, or what? 2Lip is stuck inside a van in a supermarket parking lot, waiting for Patty to do her thing while she has to listen to the dreck coming from the radio, none of which meets her thrashing demands.

The songs are followed by sooo many commercials, settling sooo much festering sediment in people’s heads, so 2Lip finally turns it off and imagines better ideas for music, something akin to a nails-on-a-damn-steering-wheel beat.

Tappety-tap-tap. Nah, doesn’t work. She sighs, her eyes returning to the dashboard clock, waiting for the minutes to pass. They couldn’t carry cellphones, so 2Lip made sure the clock was synchronized beforehand. She has to patiently wait here because a van in a supermarket parking lot is going to raise less attention than being on a street somewhere. Or that’s Lydia’s theory anyway and Lydia is super careful about everything and probably paranoid. Healthily paranoid, Lydia would add.

It’s boring here though and 2Lip just about loses her mind because she has no one to talk to. The dreariness of waiting is not very conducive to creativity either. When working on her art projects 2Lip would forever bewail the lack of time to think things through, but now, with time galore—when she could be conceiving new artistic ideas and concepts—she draws a blank on just about everything.

She sooo wishes she could be there! To see Patty in action! She knows every step Patty is taking, from the plodding footpath to the bull’s-eye at the parking lot. Having to content herself to seeing it with her mind’s eye is not very satisfying.

For now, she just has to be the getaway driver. Observe, remember, relate, Lydia had said. You two should learn from each others’ best practices.

The dashboard clock finally clicks to the right minute and 2Lip starts the engine with not a second to lose.

It’s time to scoop up some Patty.

Right after her hit Patty takes a pre-determined route, avoiding the few surveillance cameras affixed to various campus buildings, all of which they’ve noted beforehand.

There’s the bicycle 2Lip left earlier, locked to a streetlight. Patty unlocks the combination, takes off her black raincoat to reveal another raincoat, a light blue one. The possibly blood-spattered black one goes into her backpack. She uses a small hand mirror to check her face for any spatters before getting on the bike, to pedal away through side streets, they too researched for their lack of cameras.

2Lip is at the rendezvous, as rehearsed. She sees Patty in the side-view mirror and rolls down her window, intent on giving her a cheerful reception. Patty rides to the window, calls out a laconic done, then loops around to the rear of the van before 2Lip has time to say anything.

Ah, yeah. It’s all business with that girl.

2Lip starts the engine promptly. Patty opens the back door and swiftly lifts the bike inside before climbing in herself.

And, we’re off! 2Lip calls out triumphantly.

Staying on top of some plastic drop cloths already taped up in the back, Patty strips off her boots and clothes, still wearing her rubber gloves. All go into a garbage bag, to be replaced with some colorful clothing she had worn earlier in the day. The drop cloths come down and go into the garbage bag, which is pre-filled with spaghetti leftovers and rotting food particles. She shakes the bag to mix the contents up a bit, but brings the boots she had worn up to the front seat.

There you are, hot stuff, 2Lip says. I was beginning to think you fell off the turnip truck.

The very cheer in 2Lip’s voice causes unease in Patty. She starts to think if she had forgotten something. She stares silently at the wooded countryside, her mind racing through the steps… one, two, let’s go do—

Are you okay, honey? 2Lip asks. It’s time for their rehearsed routine, and though 2Lip doesn’t feel it’s necessary, it’s probably not a good idea to deviate from their training. Patty might need the routine, to come back from the brink.

"On that stretch of straight road," 2Lip recites out loud—as Lydia exhorted her to do, for both of their sakes— slow down and check for cars. 2Lip checks her rear-view mirror. Throw the first boot down the ravine and make sure no one sees you.

Patty brings down the window and throws out Boot Number One.

"Drive another mile before you throw out the other one," 2Lip recites.

The rain’s picked up and the windshield wipers make an annoying, squeaking sound as they slap along. Everything should be quieter as far as Patty is concerned.

Here’s a good spot, 2Lip says, checking the mirrors. Nothing’s following. I’m tired of saying it out loud. You know the routine.

Patty nevertheless feels compelled to look through the rear windows herself, to make sure no cars are following, before launching Boot Number Two.

Out-sa-daisey! 2Lip says. Boy am I glad that’s over with. I rea-al-ly didn’t think we had to go through so much just for those damn boots!

Only now does Patty feel relieved enough to strip off her rubber gloves, zipping them in her pocket. Thanks to the rubber stockings she wore earlier, those boots shouldn’t carry any DNA whatsoever. Except perhaps from the previous owner, whomever he was, bought as they were by Lydia from a suburban yard sale.

Finally allowing herself to relax, Patty reflexively takes out a cigarette, then remembers she is not to smoke in this van.

Now I could really use a smoke, she says, dropping her hands to her lap, exhausted. 2Lip reaches out to squeeze her hand.

I’m sooo proud of you!

2Lip’s twinkling eyes usually manage to win people over, but Patty can only look at them with the tired eyes of a soldier returning from combat. 2Lip looks cute enough with her strawberry blonde hair, cropped metalhead-short, highlighting her attractive features. But her bright blue eyes are strange; to Patty, it’s as if they always danced. But to what do they dance? Is she like an autistic kid, or a hyperactive, or something? Lydia once said, don’t you feel that when 2Lip smiles, all the angels in heaven are smiling too? Patty always sees something different in that smile, something she couldn’t put her finger on, but it was no angel.

Did everything go well? 2Lip presses.

Patty would have preferred to sit in silence, to think about things: the squirrel, the professor, the squirrel…. The squirrel sticks in her mind more than the hit. Is that normal? Or is she the only one who would think this way?

As for 2Lip, only the words of one of Patty’s many state-appointed stepmoms comes to mind. Let’s all exercise the Lord’s patience with each other. Maybe that stepmom had a point. Maybe it’s better to play nice and throw 2Lip a bone.

No problem, Patty replies, in a laconic tone of hers that really said: Don’t bother me. Her deep, serious eyes drive the point home.

Cool, 2Lip says, figuring it’s better not to go there—Of course!

Now she could really kick herself!

Who the hell would want to chat after killing somebody?! Stupid, stupid, STUPID! She begins to blush in spite of herself, which gives Patty a welcome respite from the chatter.

It was Lydia who suggested that they should pair up for this first hit. Fostering teamwork from the start seemed prudent, given their diverse backgrounds: Patty Hawkswatch, the half-Native American who grew up on a reservation trailer park—and who did a stint in prison; and 2Lip Gorlick, who hails from a rich, white, liberal family in Hollywood, where her father had been a studio executive.

The only thing they have in common is that they’re strippers and pornographers. Sisters in the sex biz.

In fact, they’re due to perform at the local strip club, where arrangements had been made for two out-of-town guest strippers to join the evening’s roster. It gives a perfect explanation as to why 2Lip and Patty should be in town together at the same time. These two popular porn stars were out to market their brands by connecting with their adoring fans, in a multi-city publicity tour.

2Lip, for one, couldn’t wait to get the fun started!

Chapter 2

A Carnal Campus

There was a sort of particularized focus, and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of—not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.

—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, commenting on the Nov. 13th, 2015, Parisian Muslim terrorist massacres.

In all her stripping days 2Lip forever loves the first moment she steps inside the dressing room of a dank club to join the ranks of nubile bodies, prepping and powdering for the carnival. It is a moment filled with anticipation, of joy, even, because in one quick-release instant everything is freed. The defenses she wears against the outer world’s dreary demands slip away as she sheds the burdensome exoskeleton that keeps her rigid for the world’s inanities. An inner world unfolds instead, one infused with warm, naked bodies; a sensible one, vibrant and gratifying.

A strip joint dressing room is like an eternal homecoming, one where everyone gets to be queen! An inveterate people watcher, she cannot get enough of how individual libidos, decked in the artifice of stripper dress and make-up, bud forth into the roles to be enacted in the coming cavalcade. They are nature’s very own rebels, finding expression in an overbearing culture dominated by breeders. They’re carnies too, circus people honing hustling skills, perfecting stripping talents, all under the rubric of seduction. It’s all the more fulfilling in that it yields income as you study, so easily.

Today is significant not only because they had just fired off the opening volley of their violent campaign, but also because 2Lip will finally meet the Portland strip club manager whose praises have been sung by strippers far and wide: the legendary old codger, Curley. As Lydia so enigmatically maintained during their planning sessions, this unlikely Lothario would be an essential component to their success.

In the halcyon days leading up to the campaign 2Lip occasionally diverted herself by reading the many computerized dossiers Lydia compiled on everyone. It was a treat to be given access to the files of the somewhat secretive Lydia; she had even let 2Lip read her own file, which heartened 2Lip with its benign and truthful assessments.

Curley’s file turned out to be an interesting case study. A car mechanic from New York, he was divorced by his wife after she found thousands of porn images on their shared home computer (he had hidden them in the Systems File, thinking she’d never look there). Promptly locked out of house and home, Curley decided to follow his calling to Chatsworth, California—home of Big Porn—to knock on doors, until he finally landed a job as a stagehand, elated at being on real porn sets where they actually did all the fucking. It was a dream come true, a longing fulfilled, but it paid practically peanuts, so eventually he had to take a job as a bouncer, inadvertently landing at a club owned by Lydia.

This guy is actually going to be working for us? 2Lip had asked incredulously.

He is to know nothing of our plans, Lydia instructed. He will nevertheless be an important component, so be nice to him. Treat him with respect.

Respect was needed, for time had not treated Curley kindly, having robbed him of his hair, bestowing a pot belly on his midriff. He became more cantankerous in the process, his illusions having given way to a view of the world as a hopelessly hypocritical one, forever untrue to real sexual longings. In the inner worlds of the clubs, however, he found his true vocation as caretaker of the girls, those wondrous beings of his fantasies, who became the focus of his tenderhearted attention.

He’s one of my best managers, for wherever he works, morale is high, Lydia said, betraying an obvious fondness for the guy. They tell him all their troubles, too, as if he was a surrogate father. He’ll even remember their birthdays, which is significant as many of them have parents who never do.

It was Curley the girls turned to when their boyfriends dumped them, or did drugs, or beat them, though they eventually realized Curley had to be their last resort if they were beaten, because those boyfriends would often wind up within an inch of their lives on a hospital bed. Curley never did the dirty work himself—he was way too out of shape to do that by now—but he certainly knew how to get the job done.

He’s the only one for whom I’ve ever arranged a surprise birthday party, Lydia revealed. I had a whole video made of it, cut from my spycams and mikes, on the premises. Wanna see?

The video showed Curley getting an urgent call in the upstairs office before rushing down to the basement, then almost having a heart attack when the lights went on and topless girls yelled SUH-PRI-IZE, waving their arms like sexy goblins out to get him. A chocolate cake came out to a round of Happy Birthday. He blew out the single candle to raucous applause, before the girls announced an even bigger surprise.

There’s this nutcase there, Cassandra, Lydia explained. "She agreed to be the first one. She has this great talent for mimicking voices from SpongeBob SquarePants."

Kneeling in front of Curley, Cassandra unzipped Curley’s fly and gently brought out his cock, saying in SpongeBob’s nasally voice: Time to blow this candle, Curley! All the girls applauded as she wrapped her chocolate-smeared lips around his cock and went up and down at it until another girl said okay, my turn, followed by another, and another, until Curley couldn’t hold off anymore, his spunk splooging into the air, to the cheers of all the girls!

Lydia later paid $1000 each to the girls who were willing to suck his dick, though she exhorted them to keep it a secret. Don’t ever let him know that I paid for it, she told them. If he bothers you for more, tell him only on his birthdays.

A complainer by nature bemoaning his fate, Curley is nonetheless eternally grateful for being able to work there. And Lydia has cause enough to keep him happy.

He doesn’t mind doing the extra things she asks of him, going out to buy disposable cell phones, in cash, for the touring girls (they were always losing them), and getting prepaid credit cards, lots of them, and monthly train and bus passes, and making bookings for all those girls that traveled in what Lydia described as The Circuit, a constantly varied cavalcade of porn stars and strippers that toured the country from one strip club to another, many of them partnered with Lydia’s clubs.

Curley was, in effect, a ready-made concierge for the girls, perfectly groomed for 2Lip, Patty and Lydia to utilize when they, in turn, would fan out on their grand crusade—one which, in this manner, did not require them to leave much trace of their own footprints.

* * *

Lydia’s exhortation to treat Curley nicely becomes understandable when 2Lip finally meets the guy at the door of the club, glumly collecting entrance fees, guarded by a bouncer.

Hello, I’m 2Lip! she announces sunnily. You must be the Curley Lydia told me so much about! 

Curley’s eyes brighten: 2Lip’s cheer is a delightful respite to a dull day.

Hey, how ya doin’, 2Lip! Good to meet you, at last!

I’m told you are the master of ceremonies in more ways than one, 2Lip says impishly.

Well, I try to be, I try to be.

Not entirely sure what she meant, he’s charmed, nevertheless. Well aware of 2Lip’s online fame, he personally escorts her to the deejay’s booth, where release forms are signed and her name is added to the evening’s roster.

So, let’s take you down to the dressing room, he says, ushering her to a musty, brick-lined Employees Only access to the basement.

Oh, yay! The very creepiness of the entranceway gives 2Lip delicious goosebumps. With Curley leading the way they descend to the netherworld, already hearing the hubbub of denizens within. A second door opens to a cement-floored, brick-lined basement, illuminated by countless bulbs at make-up tables that brightly display the dancers busily prepping for showtime.

Right away a stunning beauty catches 2Lip’s eyes, teetering half-naked on high heels, emitting cartoon-like voices while rummaging through her backpack.

Listen! Curley whispers. That’s SpongeBob! Isn’t she great?

Cassandra, right there, in person!

She looks upset, Curley says. Let’s not bother her. Find a space at one of the tables and get ready. Showtime is at eight.

Leaving SpongeBob for the time being, 2Lip moves about the crowd wide-eyed, taking in the luminaries she had read about before.

She spots Christina, carefully applying long fake eyelashes, which will soon be caked with so much makeup that her eyelids would droop on long nights. According to the dossiers, she has drag queen friends advising her on makeup and, let’s face it, it shows.

There’s limber Lorelei, well-known for clambering up stripper poles for displays of great acrobatic skills. She loves clubs that not only have vertical poles, but horizontal ones as well, far above the bar. On those poles she can hang by her knees and let her breasts droop where gravity dictates, for major upside-down tit twirls—and major tips.

Gloomy doomy Cleopatra, with her pharaonic haircut and finely-chiseled cheekbones, never smiles as she sits like a stone monarch, painting ancient Egyptian ankhs around her eyes that spread to the sides of her face. Don’t call her emo though, Lydia’s notes had said. Curley never does, and he’s the only one she likes, because he lets her be.

Shopaholic Jasmine, a dazzling black woman with long, bouncy hair—who’s studying for her real estate license—had a great shopping day and couldn’t wait to show off her new outfits. Oh my fuggin gwuad, Jasmine! Yes, we love it!

There’s green-eyed Evelyn, the surfer girl, proud of her tall, trim body. She only dances here because it’s a job where she can make tons of money while doing her stretching exercises, all in prep for trips to the waves of the world: Hawaii’s awesome tubes; Australia’s Bondi Beach; the Outer Banks during hurricane season; the cold waters off Chile; the never-ending Amazonian Tidal Bore; the shipwrecked shores of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast.

Evelyn knows Lydia very well because they