They called her Rita... She was a dancer

I first met Rita when she was around 18. She was friends with my son Jimmy. They were both into the grunge Goth thing. I thought she was probably one of the ugliest girls that I had ever seen. She had her hair shaved except for this giant Mohawk that was died some god-awful colors and was wearing black and bedecked herself with black leather with spikes sticking out as a choker around her neck. Her eyes were rimmed with kohl and her skin was rough and blotchy.



The next time I saw Rita was 12 years later. She had moved to New Orleans and shared a house with her sister and her sister’s kids. Well it wasn’t her sister but Rita had adopted her. Rita had adopted Jimmy when he moved to New Orleans and gave him a place to live as he learned to survive in one of the toughest areas in America. As I was to learn later Rita was always adopting stray young people who showed up in New Orleans looking to find the dream of the Big Easy.



This was definitely not the same Rita. Her hair was long and lustrous and the natural light brown color shined with highlights. Her make-up was perfectly applied and her clothes were simple but stylish. Her home was in perfect order and well-decorated on a small budget. I never did figure out what caused the change.



But Rita still had an edge; it was just packaged in style and elegance. I now realize that even in her grunge Goth stage Rita wanted attention. She craved love and wanted to know that men especially loved her. Rita had been badly treated by an alcoholic father and it scarred her for life. She was like many of the young women I met in New Orleans who had came looking for love and were finding it in all the wrong places.



When I moved to New Orleans, Rita was 35 and she was one of the oldest strippers, pardon me, dancers on Bourbon Street. I had never seen her dance and so she invited me to come to where she worked and when I arrived she introduced me to all the girls. I learned how they worked the room and earned their money. Even though the sun glared brightly on a hot sunny day, it was dark and cavernous in the bar.



A small stage was surrounded by mirrors and a brass pole went from floor to ceiling. Around the stage was a bar with chairs and there were about ten tables in the room plus another bar with a bartender. I sat with the bartender as Rita now went and put some money in a jukebox and made her selection. The place was mostly empty with just a couple of guys drinking beers sitting in front of the stage. I watched Rita as she went to the two steps that went up to the stage.



She was elegant. She was beautiful. She was wearing a long black dress with sequins that she had hand-sown herself. She had on five inch spike heels in black suede with a red dragon emblazoned on the platforms which took her from about five foot three to about five seven. She started to move to the music. I was witnessing a spiritual dance dedicated to the Goddess. As she moved in perfect rhythm to the music she was not in that bar. She was someplace far away – perhaps a temple of Erzulie, voodoo goddess of love. I could not take my eyes away as she sacrificed each item of clothing to ecstasy. Totally naked except for her heels, the tempo increased as she wove herself around the pole like the boa used by the priestesses of voodoo in their sacred rites. She slowly slid down the pole until she, in orgasmic relief, lie on the floor as the music came to an end.



She picked her dress up off the floor, exited the stage and walked back to the women’s restroom which also functioned as the women’s dressing room. She emerged in tight black pants and a halter top but still wearing her spike heals. Impeccable, she sat with me at the bar and had her traditional Bud in a long neck bottle with no glass. Somehow, it was extremely sexy and up until then I never had been able to accept that women drank beer if they were ladies. I changed my mind about a lot of things that day.



In a dark, smoky strip club in New Orleans, I learned that spirit can be evoked and love can be shared and sometimes girls just want to have fun and as I wrote earlier, “Ain’t nobody’s business if I do.”