Hello darlings. For those of you who remember me from the Chez and those
of you I've met online: I'll be returning to the Chez this Sunday,
December 7th. See you there...


A VACATION IN THE LIFE OF A DANCER

My favorite feature of an Amtrak train is the bathroom. On the bi-level
Superliners, Amtrak provides women with a spacious Ladies Lounge. 
Located downstairs in each coach car, the lounge includes a couch, two
sinks with stools, a large mirror, cup dispensers and a connecting toilet
cubicle for added privacy. When I am getting restless on the train and
want to be separated from other people by at least two walls, I sneak
into the Ladies Lounge. I bring a magazine down there to read while I
spread out on the couch and indulge in herbal facial masks and peppermint
foot rubs. The Men's Lounge is much less spacious. I discovered this one
afternoon during my 9359-mile trip, when the Ladies Lounge was occupied. 
I tried the unisex restrooms, looking for a vacant cubicle. I didn't
even realize I was in the Men's Lounge until I noticed a tiny stool and a
small mirror set off to the side of the toilet. I asked my friend, who
runs a tattoo shop in Berkeley, California and is also an enthusiastic
Amtrak fan, about this size discrepancy and he said that men who need
that kind of emotional nurturing time and space can use the handicapped
restroom. The handicapped restroom is actually the largest enclosed
space-even larger than the sleeping compartments-in which any passenger
can be alone. I got caught with a man in the Ladies Lounge. This was a
long time ago, before I developed the proper respect and understanding of
the behavior appropriate to each compartment of the train. I departed
from Springfield, Massachusetts, pushing the limits of Amtrak's carry-on
luggage regulations with all my possessions packed into five suitcases. 
I had recently graduated from a small women's college in New England, and
my "academic" interest in sex-work and the adult entertainment industry
directed me to San Francisco, to research eternal truths in the clubs and
dungeons and sex shops. Fieldwork, you might say. On that first train
trip, I discovered that each space on the train has a specific purpose
and to abuse or misuse any space is to disrupt the equilibrium of the
train. Train Attendants, who appear to have an easy job of punching holes
in tickets, are actually a distinctive species; from birth they are bred
to develop their intuitive powers of determining that a naked 18-year-old
girl and half-naked 32-year-old cowboy are fumbling around their pockets
and backpacks, looking for a condom. "Conductor, please report right
away to the Ladies Lounge of Car 1211." The Train Attendant glared at us
as she spoke into the intercom. Earlier in the evening the conductor
jokingly reprimanded us for "getting a little wild in the Cafe Car." 
Chad had slipped a $20 bill to Jesse, the Dining Car Manager, in exchange
for a private dinner. I wonder now, why didn't anyone stop that ski bum
from taking advantage of this innocent and naïve young woman? Ah, but
they did. That is why we were crowded into the luggage compartment with
the Train Attendant and Conductor, awaiting the Conductor's final
decision of whether he would allow us to remain on the train or throw us
off in the middle of Utah. In the middle of the night. But none of that
happened on my recent Amtrak vacation. I was two years older and about
two decades wiser. By then I had developed an intensely personal
love/hate relationship with the adult entertainment industry and sex-work
world. I had worked in an adult erotica shop, Passion Flower; danced at
the unionized Lusty Lady; stripped and lap-danced at the Chez Paree;
gotten spanked at Fantasy Makers, a fetish dungeon; enjoyed a photo shoot
with California's sex-newspaper, Spectator Magazine; and seen myself
featured on the box cover of an amateur video from Starbright
Productions. I felt like I had gone through a Ph.D. program in Personal
Boundaries. When I traveled, I was no longer an innocent and naïve young
woman. (Well, not in the same way as I used to be.) Now, I was a
Sex-Worker on Vacation. What is it like to be a Dancer on Vacation? I
had an image in my mind of a lot of blond bunnies prancing around on
topless beaches in Europe. But that image, probably from an Private Video
box cover, was a myth for me. Being a dancer on vacation was weird. 
When I am at work, part of my job usually includes chatting with
customers, finding out where they are from, what they do and what they
are interested in before we begin the lap-dance, sub-session, or vibrator
lecture. In addition to staring out the window and reading, train travel
consisted of making a similar kind of small talk with strangers. 
Sometimes small talk on the train led to...more talk. Making the
transition to a deeper conversation was very different from moving to the
private booth, dungeon, or vibrator department. To further complicate
things, there was always the question of whether I wanted to tell my new
acquaintances how I earn my living. If I am asking a customer at the
Chez Paree about his job, he already knows, by default, what I do for a
living. Sometimes on the train, I didn't say anything and just kept the
conversation light because I could already sense that this was not the
kind of person who could treat a stripper with the proper reverence (oh,
um, I mean, respect) outside of a club. Sometimes I made a general
statement, such as, "I am an artist." Sometimes I used a code that was
easily decipherable to someone who might be open-minded about these sorts
of things: "I am an experimental dance performer." In one way, my
vacation was kind of like a Private Video box cover. I liked meeting men
on the train. Lots of 'em. I collected phone numbers and email
addresses of Men who Ride Trains the way some people (some of my favorite
people) collect leather floggers. Two highlights included a retired
gentleman who worked for "the railroad" fifty years ago, and a nice
Jewish boy/drummer. I traveled with the older gentleman, Dod, all the
way from Chicago to Oakland. He didn't actually have many stories to
tell about "the railroad", but he described medical tragedies that befell
members of his family.	On several different occasions, the doctor had
said to call the next day, but unfortunately Dod's sick relatives always
died overnight. Dod collects old railroad lanterns, the kind that
engineers used to use to signal oncoming trains, before they developed
electric signals. Dod told me that he worked as a Ticketing Clerk half a
century ago, but instead I think of him signaling the oncoming trains to
avoid collision and disaster, which he could never seem to do with his
beloved family members. Davie, the drummer, turned me on. I met him in
Albuquerque. I had been on the train 24-hours from Los Angeles. I had
just said good-bye to Dylan, a man twice my age who makes expensive
wooden mazes and toys sold in upscale toy stores. I walked down to the
end of the platform, breathing in the New Mexico air. The landscape
lined itself up perfectly for an instant and I knew I was witnessing a
moment of synchronicity. I panned the view as if I had a 360 degree
camera lens: Wide open space----train on tracks---train station filled
with people---parking lot dotted with Native American craft
vendors---city of Albuquerque----wide open space. I walked over to one
of the trailers in the parking lot and purchased a few postcards and a
bottle of water. The vendor on the trailer alerted me that the conductor
had already called "All Aboard." I quickly paid, ran out, jumped on the
train and found my way down the aisle to my seat before the train started
moving. (It is easier to balance in stiletto pumps onstage than it is to
walk in sneakers on a moving Amtrak train.) I saw Davie's arm first,
hanging over the edge of my armrest. I approached the seat and stood
there and let myself be fantastic and movie-star-like: freshened by the
air, hair wild, sunglassed. Later, I curled up in the window seat and
watched him air-drumming next to me. I asked him what he wore during
gigs. As he answered, I imagined the shorts and T-shirt drenched in
drummer sweat. I looked at his hazel eyes, the eyes of my people. I
imagined our children's Bar Mitzvahs. He told me he had seen the movie
Crash twice. I imagined that after Davie got off the train, I would have
to go lock myself in the Ladies Lounge to...have some personal time and
space. Masturbating on a moving train is pretty exciting as long as you
can masturbate standing up. I never got caught masturbating on a train,
which makes me think that such behavior did not violate the time-space
continuum of a train, which I mentioned earlier. I guess this was
because such an act was between the Amtrak train and me. And ultimately,
Amtrak trains claim a big part of my heart. I didn't even realize this
(we never do, do we?) until Amtrak and I got into a fight. It was a
little thing really. I wanted to make some changes to my ticket, like
adding a stop in Springfield, Massachusetts so I could visit my friend
Tony who wanted to buy me some new lingerie and costumes, but the Amtrak
telephone representative said that such a change was prohibited with my
cheap-o fare. I claimed that at some point one of the ticketing agents
had told me that I could make these kinds of minor changes for a minor
fee, but the telephone representative denied this was true. And for some
reason, perhaps because I had nothing else to do while visiting my
grandparents in West Palm Beach, Florida, I argued my point for several
hours with the phone rep. Finally I hung up. My grandparents took me to
see Everyone Says I Love You but I couldn't focus on the movie. I was
crying because I felt like I had gotten into a fight with my best friend.
The train's wheels had lulled me to sleep like a lover's breath for two
weeks. In fact, during the nights I spent off the train, I turned on a
fan so that I could have some kind of constant background noise. This
was Intimacy. Later I called back Amtrak and actually apologized and said
fine don't make the changes. And they said they would make one of the
tiniest changes I had requested and they wouldn't charge me and that was
our make-up. That night, I lay awake in my grandparents' house,
listening to the ceiling fan, wondering how I would feel when I boarded
the train to New York the next day. I needn't have worried. At the West
Palm Beach station, the ticket agent saw me staring longingly at his
Amtrak calendar that featured a stylized portrait of the new station at
Oakland's Jack London Square. He gave me the address to write to get a
calendar of my own. Now I wait for it to arrive and check my mail the
way other people wait for a love letter. I have to remember to ask my
therapist if it is healthy for me to have such an endearing relationship
with a long, phallic shaped, fast-moving and powerful piece of steel. On
the way back to Oakland, the same Dining Car Manager, Jesse, who had two
years earlier served Chad and I our "private dinner", greeted me. I love
coming to the end of a cycle as much as the next person does. I don't
think Jesse remembered me; nevertheless, he gave me a free piece of
cherry pie "for being such a good passenger."

ritajrich@aol.com