|
|
DOS & DON'TS
RELATED ARTICLES
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MISTER ELEGANT - PART 2If you’ve seen the video people uploaded on the Internet, of the naked muscleman flopping like a fish, surrounded by women holding Rum Hurricanes and Blue Hawaiis, his pink balls popped out one side of his black G-string and slapping in a puddle of his own piss, then you know what kind of mistake that last lie turned out to be. Everybody in the world’s seen that video. Little bastard teenage kids, now they even do a dance they call the Mister Elegant where they keel over in the middle of the dance floor and wiggle like hyperactive spastics being electrified. Little shitheads. People imagine it’s so easy to be a Chippendales-type, high-energy exotic dancer. Male people, they imagine your worst problem is not sprouting a woodie. Some other questions on that same medical examination form, they ask you: “Do you suffer from stress-related incontinence?” And, “Have you ever had an episode of narcolepsy?” Just from those questions, I should’ve seen where this was headed. Lawyers don’t just pull those questions out of a hat. Any big dance company from your Bolshoi Ballet to Chippendales, they’ve mapped out their doomsday scenario. Maybe smack in the middle of Swan Lake, some swan pitching a fit center stage, her eyes rolled up to only show the whites, drool gushering out from her long, yellow beak. Sweating. Pissing her lovely white feathers. In the Savage Knights training brochure, they teach you to watch for anybody in the audience with a pad and pencil taking notes. Some deal called ASCAP—stands for American Society of Composers and Something-Something—if they catch you dancing to a song and not paying a royalty, they’ll sue you and Savage Knights. Besides them, every state sends liquor-commission spies to fine you for touching a patron inappropriately. Even just wearing white paper cuffs and a black bow tie, you risk a cease-and-desist letter from the real Chippendales for copyright infringement. Don’t even ask me about managing body hair. Really, the worst part of this job is paying to buy people a new Tequila Sunrise after you boogie off a pubic hair. Just a single good hip check can mean you buying the front two rows a fresh round of banana daiquiris. Live Your Fantasy… Again, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Getting a drunk anybody to put money in your pants with their teeth, it’s worlds harder than it sounds. So is staying 24 years old. One minute you’re shaking your bag in the face of some bachelorette so shitfaced on Long Island Iced Teas you can smell your pube stubble curl from her lit cigarette. Her ugly bridesmaid is sticking a dollar bill up your ass with her tongue, and her mother’s shooting video. That’s how drunk virgins behave. Police officers or firemen—I mean real ones—they complain about job stress. They don’t know real stress. Dancers I worked with, they used to soak their bag in salt water, the way a boxer will pickle his face to tough it up before a big fight. Every bit of your free time, you spend pickling your balls and managing body hair.  The only other most important part of job training is telling time by songs.David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans,” that gives you an exact five minutes of fuzzed power chords. Keith Sweat’s “One on One” is a slow grind song (5:01) perfect for choreographing an elephant. By that, I mean any dancer too bulked up to move except for hitting competition poses. Step, flex, step. The Double Bicep. The Crab. How you keep from getting a hard-on is you’re counting all the time to anticipate the end of each song. You name a song, and I can peg the time—and not just the minutes and seconds listed on the jewel box liner. I can tell you the actual time that shows on the deck in the booth. A good dancer knows the Digweed remix of Bryan Ferry’s “Slave to Love,” the liner says four minutes, 31 seconds, but in actuality it’s 24 seconds. A lazy dancer will find himself still waist-deep in drunk women when the music stops. You shaking your junk to a pounding mix of Underworld’s “Mo Move”—a relentless bass heartbeat for six minutes and 52 seconds—that’s artistic. But if you don’t make it backstage by when the music stops, even in just one moment of silence, you shaking your shaved parts at strange ladies—that’s just harassment. Again, another slippery slope. And do not ask me how I know. Silence. Silence and the closing lights coming on, bright, that’s Cinderella turning into a grinning, naked, greasy, and sweaty guy with his penis too close to your face and your watery $10 White Russian. As outlined in the Savage Knights training brochure, Mister Elegant makes his entrance, handing out roses to the front tables. He dances the Joey Negro Club Mix of Raven Maize doing “Fascinated.” A three minute, 42-second grabber song. Then he moves to the edge of the stage and dances one shorter high-energy song to bait out the folding money. He works the edge and the floor, humping laps and taking tips, and he’s offstage just one beat before the Police Officer’s grabber song. The next night in Spokane, same deal. Then Wenatchee. Pendleton. Boise. A job so simple even a brainless, heartless parasite can do it. Mister Elegant loved the dollar tips and the phone numbers. Phone numbers written on dollars. Phone numbers on scraps of paper towel, looped under the elastic leg straps of his black G-string. All the way up until Salt Lake City. CONTINUED: MISTER ELEGANT | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next>
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- VICE@VICELAND.COM
- PRIVACY STATEMENT
- TERMS OF USE
- © 2000-2009, VICE MAGAZINE
Development: Solid Sender
