Well, your counsellor didn’t specify exactly what kind of after-school job you should get. Being new at the job and her first week, she was loaded with ideas and she took an interest in you. That was until you found out she took an interest in everybody, she was a recent graduate from UCLA and loaded with optimism. She kept saying “think outside the box”. Dog groomer didn’t work. You got bit twice, both times; Chihuahuas. Bagging groceries didn’t work – that incident with your girlfriend’s mom getting you fired on the spot didn’t work either. Gas stations were mostly self-serve – everybody wanted the library gig – McDonald’s was a last resort.
But there was that one ad you spotted on the bulletin board outside the Ralph’s you got fired from. Big bold print: Entertainers Wanted. You were a “kind of” Drama major. Athletic build – you lift weights – you run – no pudge. Dancing – you’ve got some moves down. Must be 18 or over. Deal breaker normally, but you have fake i.d. and you look older than being seventeen – you bought beer a few times, so “over 18” counts.
Destiny II – Ladies Night – Overland Avenue. Club owner hands you what looks like a shiny sling-shot and puts on an Andrea True Connection record. Okay, you admit it felt weird. Convinced yourself you were auditioning for West Side Story and conjured up stuff you saw on Soul Train.
You got hired – salary was “okay” but the owner informed you the tips could buy you a Rolls.The sound of Cash Registers took up space in your brain for the next two days, until Ladies Night. Your “entertainment coordinator” handed you a waiters uniform and a bottle of baby oil. It was part of the gimmick and you kept saying over to yourself “think outside the box” while mentally counting up your weekend haul of tip money you were bound to get.
Friday night rolls around. It’s you and the three other guys offstage waiting your turn. You’re wondering how good your fake i.d. is. The room is full of drunk women – hollering and shrieking somewhere above the sound barrier.
Your turn. You amble onstage, wearing your waiters uniform, the one that’s two sizes two small for you, for a reason – it peels off in seconds. After reminding yourself it beats bagging groceries but every ounce of saliva has drained from your mouth and you’re moving too fast for anyone to notice you’re shaking like the San Fernando Valley during an earthquake. Dollar bills held by howling and shouting housewives are waving like flags all around the stage.
You start scooping them up – a few of the borderline raunchy ones are stuffing them drunkenly down your g-string. You experience the odd sensation of being felt up in front of a few hundred half-baked women who roar with approval.
Including one, who empties a wad of dollar bills into your stuffed slingshot and makes eye contact with you long enough to gasp.
It’s your Guidance Counselor – the one who convinced you to “think outside the box” – the one with her equally plastered girl friends howling like banshees – only your Guidance Counselor isn’t. She freaks out. She freaks out loudly and she freaks out badly – she’s dying of embarrassment – not only because you’re up there, getting felt up in public, but because she knows you’re only seventeen and you could all get busted.
Your career as “Entertainer” at Destiny II didn’t last long – it didn’t last the night. For all the tips being stuffed into your crotch it didn’t make it past $50.00.
Couple that with a somewhat ironic lecture from your Guidance Counselor about taking dicey jobs. She didn’t get too hardcore because she knew that you knew that she was smashed out of her brain at a Strip Club, and so what if it was a Bachelorette party – could have gone to Disneyland instead. But no.
You make it home somewhere around two in the morning – your clothes stained with the baby oil you didn’t manage to wash off before you got kicked out of the club. The best you can do is collapse in bed, flick on the radio and figure out how you’re going to spend those fifty one dollar bills.
You stare at the ceiling and mutter “do you want fries with that?” until you start to snore.
And here is 90 minutes worth of KROQ from September 26, 1986 just to remind you it was the 80s after all.
