hag bar

Venus’ Boudoir

The place I use to work doesn’t give and credit to the scenarios you see in the rap videos and movies. It’s not the pseudo-glam-bottle-service-no-sex-in-the-champagne-room-Vegas-mega club and it is not the sleazy-addict-ridden-blow-jobs-in-the-back-room-hag bar. With two pool tables and nine T.V.s of various sizes, it’s more of a sports bar and the topless women, no matter how old, are just icing on the cake.
The Mars to Venus interactions here are a silent acceptance of flaws. Delinquencies hide behind fake names and forged resumes. $10 and a cocktail can buy three minutes of ignorance of your shortcomings.
The Venus Lounge sits on the east side of Beach Boulevard nestled between two small used car dealerships. First-timers have said that they drive by the place twice a day and have never even noticed it. The nonintrusive presence of the building mimics the low-key vibe inside.
When I pulled into the parking lot, Bubba, our wall of a bouncer, was blocking an obviously furious man I didn’t recognize from Stevie, our regular sloppy-drunk pool shark. It was not even 9 p.m. and Stevie was already teetering on his legs. I stepped out of my car and could hear him belligerently slurring. I looked up at the moon and begged him to take it easy on me tonight.
I passed the threesome through the front door.
“Oww! Hey fellas, our favorite waitress just walked in.” Raul, the night shift DJ announced me, as always, like I was a Hollywood celebrity crossing a red-carpeted turn style. “Hey Star, looking extra sexy tonight.”
Raul was my favorite male in the building. On dead nights, we’d log onto Limewire and create a soundtrack for the evening. Our choices would show our age; Blackstreet, Guy, old school Prince and Maxwell. On nights like that, the nostalgia was all that got us through.
Red lights can hide almost all superficial flaws. Stretch marks, cellulite and blemishes, except in extreme cases, are hidden from the general public. Tonight was an exception.
Sadie didn’t anchor down her silver lame’ bikini top before she bolted off the stage. With an arm full of breasts, she clopped down the stairs through the kitchen to the dressing room. She didn’t make a round to collect her tips or return to sit with Carl to finish her Midori Sour.
I gave change for a rum and coke and then went to see what was wrong. As I stepped into the light, I heard Daisy’s Salvadorian accent.
“Ah, bebe, jou know that Gary ees an esshole. I done even know why he come in here.” She was trying her best. “I think he like to turture the woman. I think he get off on it.”
She caressed Sadie’s shoulders and kissed her forehead before turning it over to me. I nodded, and we switched posts. Daisy turned her ripe, glossy lips downward and stepped back out to the floor.
“What happened?”
Sadie is 42. She has four children and an ex-husband who somehow weasels his way back into her house periodically. He always takes and never gives. She is a grandmother with big fake boobs that she shows off to support her family of six and a half in the three-bedroom apartment she rents in Anaheim. I know this because I give her a ride home from time to time when she has had too much to drink.
“He called me a old hag.” She wailed, mascara bleeding down her face. “He said, ‘Nice tits, old hag’ and he didn’t tip me.”
Not sure if I was genuinely offended for the woman, I stormed out to the stage. The anger may have had more to do with that I knew I would inevitably be chauffeuring a very intoxicated Sadie 20 minutes out of my way and I had an exam in the morning.
“Look here, that’s the last time you insult these girls! Get up and get out!”
“She’s, like 70…”
“Then sit at the bar. You can not sit here, get a front row seat to her tits and then insult her and not tip. This is the tip rail.”
“Saggy ass tits….”
“Get out!” I had already prepped Bubba. He was standing six feet away, thick arms crossed, waiting. He hadn’t had any action since Stevie hustled that big guy last month.

In her book “Facing Codependency”, Pia Mellody suggests the disorder has five major symptoms. She states that codependents have difficulty with their levels of self-esteem, maintaining personal boundaries, taking adult responsibility for their needs, owning and, subsequently, expressing their personal reality.
“Look at that. Look at her.” I felt so bad, he looked so broken, spirit wise, that is. “She won’t even talk to me. She acts like she doesn’t even know me. Just ‘cause she changes her name she thinks I don’t know.”
The previous Wednesday, the day shift bartender’s name was Candy. Today when I came in I saw Chanel on the whiteboard and wondered who the new girl was. It turned out that, sometime between last Wednesday and this, that Candy had switched her name to Chanel. Also different this week was that she would not speak to her long time sugar daddy except for to take his drink order.
Carl was distraught, to say the least. In the coming weeks, he would find himself sitting, misty-eyed and shaking his head trying to understand how someone could be so cold. He had spent the forgoing two years giving “Candy” all that he could including diamonds, a brand new Mercedes SL 500 convertible, several rent payments, new boobs and an I-Phone. The most recent was a condominium, paid for in cash and put entirely in her name; her real name.
By some series of unfortunalities, in the time between the condo purchase and this particular night, poor Carl’s technology business went bankrupt and then he went bankrupt.
“Here you go, sweetie. Can I take your empty, love?” I set his bottle of Coor’s Light on the high table top.
“Girl, mm, mm.” he shook his head, “Don’t nobody take care of this old man like you. I don’t even gotta ask and you bring it right on time.” JD is our resident dirty, old man
I counted out the change for his twenty and handed it to him. “Keep it.” He always said to keep it, I knew this, but I kept up the illusion just to be cute.
“Who’s running this week, sweetie?”
JD bets on horse races. He had settled on me picking his ponies from the week’s race schedule because I’d refused to go with him to the track for weeks. He called me his good luck charm. I only picked a winner once.
I settled on a horse named Midnight Run. I picked him because I was 12 a.m. on the dot. I figured it was a convincing enough sign. I gave him a peck on his dark, leathery cheek, told him I’d be back when he was empty.
“You sure do make my wizzle sizzle.”
He shared this personal fact with me at least twice a shift. At least twice a shift, I acted as if he didn’t.

“Me and Seria work harder than anyone in this building.” I had a horrible habit of getting too mouthy with my manager, Robert, whom I truly believed had a major inferiority complex; the kind that comes from his girl beating him and forcing him to wear an apron. No control of anything outside of these walls.
None-the-less, I was no push over, especially for some skeezy strip club manager. He had cut our shifts and gave away my bread-and-butter Friday night shift to some new comer he thought he had a chance to bed.
With school starting up in two weeks there was no way that a Monday, Wednesday and Saturday (daytime mind you) schedule would be lucrative enough for my time.
Venus festers a kaleidoscope of dysfunctional relationships. The dark anonymity breeds this disease. Men come to play out fantasies not possible in the real world. Women come to pretend that they have the control in their lives they desperately lack.
I quit without giving notice.