by Sylvia Math
Once I was booked into the "Copenhagen" room on a very slow day shift. With the same 19 year old girl who... gave me oral sex for the first time in my life.
Management paired us in the theme rooms a lot. We had chemistry...
We used to trade off making decisions about costumes, music. (We did not agree, had very different taste.)
That day, it was her turn to choose, and she made me wear a stupid white vinyl nurse costume. She was wearing one also. And the music was Dr. Love, Hot Blooded, etc. I hated the music AND the costumes. We had little nurse hats too, and that was my LEAST favorite thing...
It was a dreary, boring day. She was smoking weak ragweed joints all day, and eventually I took a few drags as well. We got kinda loopy, and I amused myself by picking fights with her about the hats. "I'm NOT wearing the stupid hat!!" I would say. And she would reply "oh YES you are!!". Then we wrestled on the floor. She was bigger and stronger than me, so I lost every time. But we had fun, lots of giggling.
Around 5pm, joint finally got busy. VERY busy. A manager came into our dressing room to inform us that the entirety of a San Francisco sports team had just entered the Copenhagen audience, and they were waiting for us to perform. I don't know ANYTHING about sports, so I forgot which team, which sport. I think it was baseball, last day of spring training for them, so they were celebrating. Something like that.
The manager really bitched us out, too. "You have been fucking off ALL DAY, wrestling on the floor, smoking bad weed and giggling! But NOW, the whole team is here and it's time to WORK!" (I think that baseball or whatever team was full of celebrity athletes, had been on a winning streak?) He wanted us to put on a good show, make the theater look good, etc.
As soon as he departed the dressing room, I started mimicking him, to make Leigh laugh. "The WHOLE TEAM is out there, you dumb lazy potheaded slut!! THE WHOLE TEAMMMM!!" Then I told her I wasn't wearing the fucking hat, and we went at it...
We were laughing so much THE WHOLE TEAM heard us, and one of them said "are they laughing at us?" A sobering moment. Imagine being a famous ball player, and worrying that a couple young and stoned strippers are laughing at you? Men are weird as fuck.
Right before our music hit, I told Leigh "sometimes you feel like a nurse, sometimes you don't"--- and she had to pinch herself really hard so she wouldn't exit laughing. I tore my hat off and threw it at some athlete and he caught it, put it on his buddy's head.
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Sylvia Math went to "charm school" at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater in San Francisco. Now she lives in NYC and has work in Hobart, Vol1Brooklyn, X RAY, Burial, The Bulb Region, and others.