HALFWAY TO THE STARS
Marcy Sheiner
Copyright © 2011 by Marcy Sheiner
Smashwords
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“To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars…”
From Deer Park to Babylon
I’m grateful to the sex radicals who taught and still teach me so much, in particular: Susie Bright; Cara Bruce; Phyllis Christopher; Nan Kinney; Carol Queen & Robert; Shar Rednour & Jackie Strano; Annie Sprinkle; Debi Sundahl; Kat Sunlove & Layne Winklebleck; and the late Marco Vassi – with heartfelt appreciation for all those who dare to keep climbing.
Table Of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter
1: Lusty Ladies
Chapter
2: The Word is Cunt
Chapter
3: Monday Morning Libertine
Chapter
4: Rachel’s Bi-line
Chapter
5: National Masturbation Day
Chapter
6: Boys Bend Over
Chapter
7: Sisters Doin’ It For Themselves
Chapter
8: Reality Check
Chapter
9: Rachel & Mandy
Chapter
10: A New Kind of Story
Chapter
11: She Works Hard For The Money
Chapter
12: Stand By Your Story
Chapter
13 Bye Bi Love
Chapter
14: Games & Negotiations
Chapter
15: Rachel & Fred
Chapter
16 Everybody’s Looking for Something
Chapter
17 All The Naked People
Chapter
18 Happy Birthday Libertine
Chapter
19: In BAD
Territory
Chapter
20: Goddess Hooker
Chapter
21: Love Disguised as Lust
Chapter
22: Rachel Pulls a Fast One
Chapter
23: Rachel & Charley
Chapter
24: Member of the Wedding
Chapter
25: The Sultans of Smut
Chapter
26 The Earth Moves
Chapter
27: A BAD Situation
Chapter
28: Rob & Lindsay
Chapter
29 Freedom’s Just A Word
Chapter
30: In The Men’s Room
Chapter
31: Libertine
On Trial
Chapter
32: The Thrill of Living
“To Mom.” Rachel Max waved her martini glass in the direction of Shari and Gwen, who were sitting across from her at a small table in Vesuvio’s. They were celebrating Rachel’s twenty-seventh birthday.
“Mom?” Her friends’ voices were totally in sync.
“It occurred to me this morning,” Rachel explained, “that my birthday is her day. All our birthdays are actually our mothers’ days. We should honor them, not the other way around.”
Shari shook her head, her long dark hair undulating with the movement. “Have we reached the age of forgiveness already?”
“Yeah, I think it’s time,” Rachel said. “Twenty-seven is already a grownup, dontcha think? It’s closer to thirty than to twenty. Adolescent rebellion doesn’t wear well with age.”
“Age is all in your mind,” said Gwen.
“And your hips, and your thighs…not to mention your hair. Look! Just look at this!” Rachel pulled a strand of gray down in front of her face. “I found this yesterday.”
Shari leaned across the table to study the strand of hair; at the same moment, the waiter arrived at their table. Rachel noticed him lowering his eyes to Shari’s cleavage. This was nothing new: Rachel had been watching men’s responses to Shari Warner for more than a decade. Whether she wanted it or not—and surprisingly often she didn’t—Shari drew male attention like a magnet. She’d inherited the best of her parents’ racial backgrounds – Mom Japanese-American, Dad African-American – with her deep brown eyes, tawny skin, wide sensual lips, and a mane of straight-as-a-board jet black hair that did anything she wanted it to, from dreadlocks to braids to retro pageboy. If Rachel were the type to be jealous, she would be—but she’d long ago made peace with her looks, which were adequate, cute even—just not stunning like Shari.
Once, early in their friendship, they’d been eating lunch together in a deli, totally absorbed in conversation, when a man walked right up to their table and asked Shari for her hand in marriage. She’d coolly flashed her ring finger, armored with gold band around a tiny ruby, and told the guy she was already taken. Afterwards, when Rachel asked her how she’d felt, she said “Stupid. And annoyed. He interrupted our conversation.” Then and there Rachel fell in love with Shari for life.
“Can I get you ladies anything else?” the waiter asked in a charming Italian accent, his eyes still focused on Shari’s breasts.
Shari leaned forward even further, shifting her gaze from Rachel to the waiter. When he smiled a dimple showed.
“What would you recommend for three old ladies?” she asked. The waiter, embarrassed, searched the room as if for assistance.
Rachel, sweeping her one gray hair back into her mass of auburn curls, was mildly annoyed. It seemed to her that since they’d moved to California, Shari was no longer discouraging passes from strangers; she’d even stopped wearing her ruby ring. She and Gwen had discussed it, and came to the conclusion that Shari must be feeling insecure since the move, and was relying on male attention to shore up her self-esteem. Gwen fit into Rachel’s category—pretty enough, but no great beauty, with clear blue eyes and long blonde hair. Every once in awhile she and Rachel would jokingly ask each other, “How come someone who looks like Shari hangs out with us?”
“It’s my birthday,” Rachel told the waiter, willing his eyes away from Shari’s cleavage, “and we’d appreciate three more of these.” She pointed to their martini glasses.
The waiter made a gesture between a nod and a curtsey, put their glasses on his tray, and departed.
“Did you notice the pictures on the walls?” Rachel asked, craning her neck to gaze upward.
“No, but I noticed the men waiting tables,” Shari giggled.
“Look,” Rachel insisted. Shari and Gwen looked up to admire Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and other writers of the beatnik era. “This is where they hung out.”
“Jack Kerouac,” Gwen murmured, almost like an incantation. “After this drink, we have to go to City Lights Bookstore.”
“You will die,” Rachel said. “I cried the first time I walked in there.”
“You know, Rache,” Shari said, “I can see why you like San Francisco. You do fit in better here than in LA. There’s more of a literary scene. Plus, people seem looser—more accepting of eccentricities.”
“Are you implying that I’m eccentric?” Rachel said, raising her eyebrows.
“This is news?”
“Even in San Francisco,” Rachel said, “they keep telling me I’m ‘amazingly straightforward.’ I had no idea I was ‘straightforward’ until I came to California.”
“In La-La Land they called you aggressive,” Gwen reminded her. “Straightforward is an improvement.”
“Which reminds me,” Shari said excitedly, “you won’t believe what happened to us yesterday when the electricity went out.” She launched into a tale whose subtext was the “vapidity” of Los Angelinos—a topic the three of them never seemed to tire of.
Together they’d moved from Vermont to Los Angeles a year and a half ago. While Shari and Gwen immediately found jobs and developed social lives, Rachel couldn’t seem to adapt. Californians made fun of an accent she never knew she had and of a style she’d thought was her authentic self, not an ethnic or regional stereotype. She was constantly being told, couched as compliment, that she was amazingly honest, or outspoken, or down-to-earth: whichever the chosen adjective, Rachel would cringe, afraid she’d committed some California faux pas. She couldn’t find a job—or rather, she couldn’t keep one for more than a few weeks. Accustomed to taking the initiative at work, she found that here when she voiced an idea it generated resentment among the rest of the staff. She hated everything about LA: the fashionable clothes and even more fashionable people; the smog; the freeways. Most of all, she hated who she was in Los Angeles.
One weekend the three of them visited San Francisco. Walking across Golden Gate Bridge, Rachel felt the pull of something indefinable. The fog struck her as romantic, and she imagined literary ghosts calling her home. A wild diversity of people and styles of dress conveyed an Anything Goes attitude. Gay sensibility ran like an undercurrent through the city: there wasn’t a straight person who didn’t at least know someone gay. Living among sexual outlaws, straight people got to feel a little bit like outlaws themselves. The result was a deeply tolerant and free society where an atmosphere of daring prevailed.
When they’d gone back to LA, Rachel announced that she wanted to move to San Francisco.
Shari was appalled. “But all the men are gay!”
“And it’s still California,” Gwen pointed out. “People are still laid back.”
But Rachel’s instincts had been right. In San Francisco she went to poetry readings and hung out in cafes, and she made friends easily. Although it had taken awhile to find a job, eventually she got one that suited her.
“So, tell us about the job already,” Shari said after the waiter brought their drinks.
“Well, it’s a writing job—writing and editing—and you know how hard those jobs are to get. I’m Assistant Editor of Libertine-dot-com, the website of all things pleasurable.”
“Like what?” Gwen asked. “Chocolate?”
“Libertine?” Shari asked, screwing up her face as if searching her memory. “Isn’t that the political party that wants the government to leave people alone?”
“That’s the Libertarians! Libertine means free spirit, sort of.” Her friends’ faces remained blank. “It’s a sex site, you ninnies!”
Shari and Gwen groaned. “Oh, Rachel! Those things are so sleazy!”
“No, no, it’s not one of those pornographic sites full of babes with boobs. This is more intellectual—articles about sex, opinion pieces, stuff like that. It’s female-owned.”
“Oh.” Their faces showed uncertainty. They’d never run into anything like this in Vermont. Nor had Rachel.
“We write about things like censorship,” she went on, “or what’s new in sex toys and enhancements—and about the San Francisco scene.”
“What scene? Gay?”
Rachel paused; she knew what she had to say would shock her friends. It had shocked her to discover the sexual underground of the City by the Bay —though it could hardly be called underground, what with sexually themed events openly promoted in newspaper ads and on flyers stapled to telephone poles.
“It turns out there’s this huge network in San Francisco. Readings in cafes and bars, even in regular bookstores, of what they call ‘smut.’ The performers use sexual material—I saw one show where a guy in a wheelchair simulated sex with a woman. They have sex fashion shows and sex workshops—they even have sex parties.”
Gwen rolled her eyes.
Shari’s face lit up. “Sex parties? But Rachel, I thought San Francisco was gay?”
“That’s why the place is so out there. Gay men push the envelope, and straight people here take their cue. Because of AIDS, gay men started having masturbation parties instead of fucking in bathhouses—so now straight people have them too. Some parties are for both gay and straight people. And there are a lot of bisexuals too—men and women.”
Gwen made a face. “It sounds kind of gross.”
“I don’t know,” Shari mused. “It might be fun.”
“Well, anyway, it’s a job,” said Gwen with finality, as if she didn’t want to hear anymore.
“Right. The publisher is a little crazy—but what publisher isn’t?”
“From what you’ve told us,” Gwen said, “every one of them is certifiable.”
Rachel laughed. “It’s true. So far, I’m getting along with this one. Get this: her name is Trixie.”
“Sounds like a stripper,” Shari observed.
“I know. I think she once was, or something like it—she has about six different names—people call asking to talk to women I never heard of, and I say, nobody here by that name, and then somebody in the office tells me, ‘Oh, that’s Trixie.’”
“How bizarre.”
“Yeah, it makes me feel like I'm part of an undercover operation. But the pay isn’t bad.” What Rachel didn’t say was that the pay wasn’t particularly good either. Her job was considered entry level, something she’d thought she’d finished with in Vermont, having put in time as a stringer until making it to the City Desk. Now she was an assistant, garnering even less of a paycheck than stringer. But writing jobs were hard to come by anywhere; Rachel hadn’t realized just how hard until she’d moved to the Bay Area, where the competition was fierce. She was thrilled when, just yesterday, Trixie gave her a story assignment, her first. She still hadn’t told her friends she wanted them to accompany her on a research expedition – she was trying to get them drunk first, and suggested another round, but Gwen insisted on going to City Lights right now! She would wait not another minute to see the store whose owner had published Howl and defended it in court.
Rachel toted up the bill; they left a generous tip for the “darling waiter,” as Shari called him, and gathered up purses and coats. Gwen rubbed her hand along the buttery leather of Rachel’s new jacket. “You look like the quintessential San Franciscan,” she teased affectionately.
For the next few hours Rachel played tourist guide: she led them to the bookstore where they soaked up the romantic history of the Beats, then walked up Columbus Avenue to Caffé Sportt where waiters play-acted hostility to tourists and served the best pesto to be found outside of Northern Italy. After dinner she took them to Café Trieste to sip amaretto among poets with pierced lips and tattooed necks. Around midnight Rachel noticed Gwen stifling a yawn. It was now or never.
“Girls,” she began, inhaling deeply, “I’ve got one more place in North Beach to show you.”
“What is it?”
“Now before I tell you, let me explain: I have to write a story about it, and since it’s in the neighborhood I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone….also, it will be a great birthday adventure.”
“Rachel, are you talking about a strip joint?” Gwen asked, her eyes narrowing. “Because no matter what you say, I am not going to a strip joint.”
“Not exactly. I mean, it is kind of like that, but much more tasteful. Even women go to this place.”
“Lesbian women, you mean.”
“No, not just lesbian women. A lot of straight couples go to this place. And it isn’t a strip bar….it’s…it’s more aesthetic. It’s dancing. It’s artistic…”
“Artistic!” Gwen laughed. “Because they dance when they take off their clothes? That’s what strippers do.”
“No, really, Gwen, listen. Shari, come on, we’re all grownups aren’t we?”
Gwen and Shari remained uncomfortably silent.
“Four or five women wearing sexy outfits dance in this little room, and the customers go into these booths….”
“Oh, a peep show!” Gwen crossed her arms over her chest, looking for all the world like a schoolmarm straight out of Central Casting. “Now, that’s artistic!”
“Why must you make everything seem sordid? It’s not like that, really it isn’t. The dancers are normal women just like us…. students working their way through college, single mothers supporting their kids. The place is woman-owned, the only one in the whole country. The dancers are starting a union.”
Gwen and Shari burst into laughter. “Rachel Max, your socialist grandfather is rolling over in his grave!”
Rachel stood up, angry. “You girls are as uptight as any right-wing religious nut. I am going over to the Lusty Lady to research my story, with or without you.” She threw a bill onto the table, pulled on her leather jacket, and stormed out of the café.
“You pay the bill,” Shari told Gwen. “I’ll go talk to her.”
Outside, Rachel leaned against a doorway and wiped away tears. Were her friends really so provincial, so un-informed, so… immature that they thought strippers were a dirty joke? If she wasn’t working at Libertine, would she act the same way? Had she changed in such a short time? She liked to think that the reason she got the job to begin with was that she already had the kind of open-minded sensibility it required.
Shari came outside and put her hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it. I thought you just worked there because you needed a job. I didn’t realize you were actually into it.”
“It’s not that I’m into it—it’s that I don’t consider it beneath me. I’m supposed to write about these women, and I’m going to write about them without getting all silly and adolescent about it.”
When Gwen joined them she looked questioningly at Shari, who threw her a warning glance.
“Okay, okay,” Gwen said grudgingly, “I guess we were acting a little silly. Of course we’ll go with you. It’s not that big a deal. Just, it was a surprise, that’s all. Maybe you should have told us earlier, instead of springing it on us all of a sudden.”
“Yeah, maybe I should have. Maybe I’m asking too much. Maybe we should just go home.”
“Absolutely not!” said Gwen. “We’re your best friends, and we are going to get you through this the way we’ve always gotten each other through things, standing shoulder to shoulder. I should have realized that you need us, that you wouldn’t ask unless you did. I wouldn’t dream of letting you go into a place like that alone.”
Rachel smiled weakly. She’d never admit it, but the truth was, she had been scared of going into The Lusty Lady by herself. It wasn’t that easy to walk in flanked by Gwen and Shari either – but they looped their arms through hers, and the three of them started down the street.
“Where is this place?” Shari asked.
“Right around that corner, on Kearny Street.”
And so it happened that three young women from a provincial little New England town, none of whom had ever set foot inside a strip club, peep show, or even a pornographic movie theater, marched boldly into the darkened lobby of San Francisco’s Lusty Lady.
Strip City, Part One
By Rachel Max
Almost every country in the world deems some territory or other as the exclusive purview of the male animal, off limits to those of the female persuasion. In Saudi Arabia, it’s the open road. In Japan, it’s the top of Mount Omine. In America, it’s strip joints.
De-lete!
For godsakes, Rachel chided herself, this is supposed to be a sexy story, not a feminist lecture.
Hey all you gals out there--when was the last time you visited a strip joint?
De-lete!
Last night three San Francisco Cinderellas got to go to a strip club under cover of respectable journalism.
De-lete!
The truth was, Rachel felt reluctant to reveal what had been, for her, an intensely erotic experience. The last thing in the world she’d expected was to be turned on by the dancers behind the glass—but that is precisely what occurred. It wasn’t their looks or their moves that aroused her—it was the situation herself. Although she couldn’t see them, she knew that inside every other booth stood a man with his fly unzipped, hard penis in hand. As a woman she should be appalled by this, and the objectification of women, and by the unspeakable raunchiness of the place. Yet it was this very raunchiness that aroused her to fever pitch. It was the simple knowledge that men paid to look at women’s bodies. The dancers touched their own breasts and vulva, spread their legs, slapped their asses, and simulated blowjobs on their fingers. Rachel and Shari were mesmerized; Gwen was disgusted.
Shari claimed to be erotically unmoved, admitting only to fascination, “as if we were a team of anthropologists,” she said. Rachel was too embarrassed to admit she was aroused, that her panties were wet. If she couldn’t tell her best friends, how was she expected to tell the whole world—or at least the readers of Libertine?
I’m sitting in a crowded corner booth sandwiched between my two best friends, nervously feeding quarters into a slot. A metal shade rises to reveal a room in which four women in various stages of undress move around more or less in time to some unidentifiable tune, music with a hard edge and an insistent beat. The women dance near the back wall, gyrating their hips, lifting their arms to maximize the view of their breasts, touching themselves in key locations. One of them tosses back a long mane of shiny blonde curls that cascades nearly to her waist; she closes her eyes and slowly makes her way toward the windows of the booth—toward us. With her eyes still closed, she parts her legs slightly and touches the trimmed hair on her mound with a long, blood-red fingernail. Her breasts are so perfectly round and firm, I can’t help but wonder if they’re real. When she opens her eyes and sees three women staring back, her face undergoes a range of emotions: surprise, relief, amusement, and, finally, genuine warmth. I’m glad we’ve brazenly opted for a real window rather than a one-way, so that our dancer can see we’re sisters. She leans down so her breasts hang in front of her, the nipples hard and elongated.
“Hi there!” She smiles, holding up a hand and wiggling her bejeweled fingers. We wave and smile and say hello like a bunch of giddy high school cheerleaders. Just as we’re about to go over the edge into hysteria, our dancer straightens herself up and resumes fondling her genitals.
Rachel crossed out “genitals,” then in rapid succession typed “pussy,” “vagina,” “vulva,” “private parts.” The last one made her roll her eyes at herself. She typed in TK wherever the noun was to go. Trixie or someone else at Libertine would have to fill in the blank.
She re-read what she’d written; all right, she was getting there. Still, she was finding the English vocabulary limiting when it came to sexual description. She hadn’t yet conveyed what she saw as the key element: a hypersexualized atmosphere generated by the buying and selling of sex.
Were the dancers turned on? she wondered. Or did they feel contempt for their clients? Did they enjoy showing off their bodies, or feel vulnerable and exploited? Rachel jotted down these questions to ask when she interviewed one of the strippers for the second part of the series.
And just who were these men? Were they married? Normal everyday men out for a bit of harmless entertainment? Or did they fit the stereotype: lonely wankers who could only get their jollies for a price, so pathetic they couldn’t even afford prostitutes?
Rachel had tried to check out the clientele, but it was too dark to see much at the Lusty Lady, and besides, waiting for a booth had been an excruciating experience. Rachel was too uncomfortable to look directly at the men, each one clearly impatient for his turn. She’d maintained silence and a poker face, inwardly dying, and was grateful for Shari and Gwen, who were also frozen in place. No way, she realized, could she have done this by herself.
Once inside the booth, though, they breathed a collective sigh of relief, safe from the men’s curious eyes, as well as from the hostess who’d effusively welcomed them. They were visible only to the dancers.
It’s Girl’s Night Out, and our dancer is thrilled. She maintains a position directly in front of our booth, neglecting her male customers, dancing just for us. She calls to one of her co-workers, who sashays over--a long-legged, firm-breasted redhead wearing nothing but six-inch heels and a G-string. Her face undergoes the same transformations as her friend’s did a moment earlier, and she immediately gets with the program. The two of them face one another and begin a slow seduction, gliding their hands over each other’s flesh, rubbing their genitalspussiesvaginas together. Suddenly I realize they must surely think we’re lesbians, and I’m seized with an urge to jump up and shout, “No, you’ve got us wrong, I’m only here to write a story….”
Rachel stopped typing. That sounded homophobic, not humorous as she’d meant it. She deleted it. Was she homophobic? You wouldn’t know it from the way I feel, she murmured to herself. It was true: the area between her legs was positively tingling, and the more she wrote, the hotter she got.
She stood and walked over to the window. Sadie, her golden retriever, roused herself, shook vigorously, followed Rachel to the window and pushed against her hand. Reflexively Rachel scratched the dog’s head.
Rachel’s apartment faced the Panhandle, a half-mile stretch of grass and pathways leading to Golden Gate Park. She watched the joggers and dog-walkers for a few minutes, trying to sort out her feelings. Sadie let out a high-pitched moan that sounded like a question.
“No, baby, we’re not going out yet,” Rachel told her. ”In a little while.”
She watched the men in running shorts, the women in halter tops. In her fevered state, both genders aroused her.
Don’t tell me I’m bisexual. It was the last thing Rachel wanted to be; she would have even preferred to be lesbian. Opening her sexuality to both genders, she thought, would make her available to all comers, and a strictly platonic friendship couldn’t then be assumed with anyone. The idea was scary.
With all her years of soul-searching, writing in diaries and journals, making up stories, and professional journalism, this was the first time Rachel could recall such intense inner questioning. Was this what the sex beat did to a person? Did emotional turmoil come with the territory? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t glimpsed the potential for that: the past two months at Libertine had brought a succession of jarring moments and minor shocks.
Rachel had always thought of herself as sexually savvy simply because she was relatively free in bed, and hip enough to have a few gay and lesbian friends. But now people marched through her office who defied categorization: people with “fluid gender identity,” “gender-benders,” men who dressed like women, women who bound their breasts to look like men, men with pierced tongues, women with pierced vulva, couples publicly enacting master-slave relationships—these people now populated her workday world. She was privy to conversations about orgies, gang-bangs, rope tying, whippings, swinger cruises, polyamorous communes. In the face of it all she’d remained unflappable—yet one visit to a strip club had turned her into a frothing, sex-crazed animal ready to fuck anything that moved.
“Come on, Sadie,” she said, grabbing hold of the dog’s collar and leading her into the kitchen. She filled the water dish and sneaked out, closing the door securely behind her.
Alone in her combination office/bedroom, she threw herself face down on the bed and folded her arms underneath her head. She closed her eyes, and naked women danced behind her lids, beckoning her with curled fingers. Rachel moved her hand between her legs to stroke herself. Leaning hard on her fist, she pressed against it as if it were a lover’s body. The woman behind her eyelids offered her breasts like a precious gift. Rachel’s mouth tingled with longing. Her hips moved faster. She shoved her hand into the elastic waistband of her sweat pants and groped at her genitalspussyvaginavulva until she was coming, her genitalspussyvaginavulva contracting around two fingers shoved up inside that hot wet space that never failed to provide pleasure.
When she’d finished coming, she went immediately to her computer. Over all the TK’ s she typed in the word she’d been taught was a deadly epithet, but was nevertheless the one to which she felt most intimately connected.
The word was cunt.
Chapter 3:
Monday Morning Libertine
“What a load of crap!”
Four heads snapped up from their respective computer screens: four underlings fervently hoped it wasn’t their work to which Trixie Nyland, Publisher and Executive Editor of Libertine, was referring. The door to her corner office opened with a menacing squeak, and out she came.
Nearly six feet tall in her bare feet, Trixie wore high-heeled boots that lifted her another three inches. She was possibly the only woman in America who still wore shoulder pads, thick as a football player’s beneath her black suit jacket. Flaming red curls were piled high atop her head, adding another inch, with a few escaped tendrils flying free. Her voice was so deep that phone callers regularly mistook her for a man. She viewed the world through cats-eye glasses. Despite her physical attributes and the way she carried herself – she had perfect posture – there was something about Trixie that suggested an underlying mania. This formidable creature stood in the center of the room, her eyes moving slowly from one desk to another.
Libertine’s editorial staff occupied the main area of what had once been a shipping warehouse; their work stations, though relatively far apart, were undivided by cubicles, screens or walls—Trixie harbored a theory that open space encouraged the free flow of ideas, but in reality the seating plan encouraged fear and paranoia, as workers couldn’t indulge in personal phone calls or private conversations.
“Who is responsible for this piece of juvenilia?” Trixie boomed, waving a sheaf of papers through the air. Rachel half rose from her chair and peered at the papers. Her stomach lurched: it was her story.
“Me,” she croaked, barely audible. “I wrote that.”
“This is what you have to say about the working conditions of strippers?” Her voice seemed to echo off the walls. Sebastian, her personal assistant, and Roberta, Libertine’s Webmaster, pretended to be engrossed in work. Lily, the Photo Editor, had run to the bathroom the minute Trixie had made her entrance.
“Um, well, Trixie, this, um, this is just Part One. Part Two will be about the union. It was your idea to do it this way, remember? You wanted me to write a more personal piece first, as a way of pulling in the reader. I’m going to interview a couple of dancers later on this week.”
“Over my dead body,” Trixie said, throwing the papers onto Rachel’s desk. She leaned forward so her face was merely inches away from Rachel’s. “I won’t have you humiliating Libertine. Someone else will do the interview.”
Rachel choked back tears. “What’s wrong with it? Just tell me, I’ll rewrite it.”
Trixie drew herself upright. “It needs more than a rewrite—it needs a perspective that is apparently unavailable to you.”
Rachel was afraid to say anything more, lest she burst into tears. From the corner of her eye she saw Sebastian stand up. He walked over to Trixie and put an arm around her shoulders—no mean feat, as he was a good four inches shorter. Besides booking Trixie’s pedicures and delivering her lattés, Sebastian served as mediator between Trixie and her staff. Without him Libertine would not have survived its first two years—there would have been too much employee turnover.
“Maybe we should take this into your office,” he suggested, his voice as soothing as a hypnotist’s. “I’ll make us all a nice cup of tea, all right?”
Trixie let out a long dramatic sigh. “What would I do without you, Seb?” Sebastian winced slightly at the chopping of his name.
“What’ll it be, Rachel? Mint, chamomile, Earl Gray?”
“Earl Gray,” Rachel mumbled. To date she hadn’t made use of Sebastian’s invaluable services, and wondered what the protocol was.
Just then Lily came back to her desk, moving stealthily, aiming at invisibility. She avoided looking at Rachel, who followed Sebastian into Trixie’s office. She had not been inside that room since her initial job interview.
Trixie closed the door and turned the two locks, one of which was the kind of deadbolt ordinarily used on outer doors; she’d had them installed when Libertine first moved in. There were days when Trixie locked herself in her office and nobody saw her for the duration. Sometimes her staff didn’t even know if she was in.
Rachel understood why Trixie might not want to leave this office: not only was it private, but spacious. A huge picture window overlooked the bay with a partial view of the baseball stadium. When the ball park had been built a dozen or so years ago, the neighborhood had gone the gentrification route; decrepit warehouses, seedy waterfront bars and parking lots full of towed vehicles gave way to expensive high-rise condos, chi-chi restaurants, and prime office space. Rachel couldn’t help but wonder about the rent Libertine was paying, considering their low salaries. Writers and creative workers, she thought, could use a few organizing lessons from strippers.
She sat on the cream-colored leather sofa. Trixie leaned forward in her swivel chair, holding the article out so they could both look at it. Rachel’s stomach churned when she saw dozens of red-inked notes scribbled in the margins.
“For starters, you open with yourself and your friends,” Trixie began.
Rachel maintained a poker face, waiting. After a long pause, Trixie said, “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that an article about strippers would open with the attention on the writer?”
“I thought that’s what you wanted—a personal birds-eye view. You’ve seen my writing, you know that’s my style. You even said that’s why you hired me.”
“This is more than a birds-eye view, Rachel—you made yourself the whole story!” Trixie threw the papers onto her desk. “And that’s not all. This is a totally false, biased, and ignorant portrait of sex workers. This bit about the dancer flirting with you and your friends—no stripper worth her pasties would ignore male clientele for the occasional female.”
Rachel was thinking, incongruously, they don’t wear pasties anymore. “But she did flirt with us!” she protested.
“In your dreams.”
“Why would I make up something like that?”
“I’m not saying you made it up—you misinterpreted what was going on. Strippers are in it for the money. She knows a woman isn’t likely to pay for a private booth, or come back and request her – so she doesn’t waste her time on women. You’re being narcissistic.”
Rachel stared out the window. She was used to getting critical feedback of her work—but none had ever been brutal. She fought the impulse to stand up and say, I quit.
There was a faint knock on the door; Trixie opened it and Sebastian came in carrying full tea service on a big round tray. With a flourish he shook out a cloth napkin, shoved aside a pile of magazines, placed the napkin and tea things on a low table, and poured hot water from the pot.
“Is mine chamomile?” Trixie asked, rubbing her forehead. She looked like the most beleaguered human being on the planet.
“But of course,” said Sebastian with a mock British accent. “M’lady needs to calm herself.”
“Oh, I do, I do need this.”
Rachel took her cup of Earl Grey and blew on it.
“Sebastian, you go to gay strip clubs, don’t you?” Trixie asked.
“Um, yeah, I’ve been, a couple of times.” His apple-round cheeks turned pink.
“Tell me, Seb—if a woman came in, would the stripper pay her more attention than he did to the male clientele?”
“Uh, Trixie, that’s a little bit different from female strippers.”
“Not very. Come on, what would a male stripper do?”
“He’d ignore her. But Trixie—“
“That’s all I wanted to know.”
“That is ridiculous!” Rachel burst out, no longer able to contain herself. “You’re comparing apples and oranges. Of course a gay male stripper wouldn’t pay attention to a woman—he’s gay!”
“He’s a sex worker,” Trixie insisted, “and sex workers go where the money is.”
“He’s a man catering to other men,” Rachel insisted. “Women strippers get burnt out on men. A woman customer is a relief after all those guys—“
“Rachel Max, don’t you dare sit there and tell me how a stripper feels!” Rachel was stunned into silence, as it dawned on her that the rumors of Trixie’s past as a stripper were true. Why then hadn’t she spoken to Rachel, given her some tips, before sending her off on the assignment? Why hadn’t she at least admitted to a familiarity with the subject?
Shit, she thought, Trixie had set her up. Her lower lip trembled; she could no longer control her emotions. A tear dripped down her cheek. Another followed. Oh Jesus, how humiliating! This was surely the worst thing she could possibly do in the situation.
“I have an idea,” Sebastian piped up, surreptitiously sliding a tissue into Rachel’s hand. “Why don’t I read the article? Maybe you’re both too close to it to be objective.”
“Sure,” Trixie said, without much enthusiasm. “Go ahead.”
Rachel stared silently into her teacup while Sebastian silently read the story. When she heard him emit a soft chuckle, she looked up briefly. From the look on Sebastian’s face, Rachel could tell he liked what he read. In fact, when he spoke, it was clear he was actually toning down his enthusiasm. In a well-practiced neutral voice he told Trixie, “This isn’t so bad. I can see what’s bothering you, for sure—but it’s typical first draft. With a nip here and a tuck there, it’ll be fine.”
“You don’t think there’s too much about the writer and not enough about the strippers?” Trixie’s voice wavered with uncertainty.
“Yeah, there could be a little more focus on the strippers’ point of view,” Sebastian conceded, “but I kind of like Rachel’s tone. She’s letting the reader know it’s okay not to be nonchalant, that stripping isn’t your everyday job. It’ll soften up their stereotyped ideas, so maybe they’ll be able to look at strippers as workers instead of judging them.” He looked directly at Trixie now, taking a more intimate tone. “Of course, Trixie, you know the reality better than any of us, so I could be wrong. On the other hand, maybe it’s harder for you, as an experienced professional, to put yourself in the mindset of the typical reader.”
“Libertine’s readers aren’t typical,” Trixie said, but with little conviction. The fight had gone out of her.
Sebastian sighed. “I suspect they’re more typical than we like to think.”
“What about the way she describes the first stripper paying attention to her and her friends? Strippers are in it for the money, they know they won’t get rich playing to women.”
“But if she says that’s what happened,” Sebastian replied, “I believe her. And the way it’s written, it’s believable.”
“Trixie,” Rachel said, emboldened by Sebastian’s support, “maybe things have changed since when you were stripping—“ Sebastian’s face stopped her mid-sentence. His lower lip was stretched out, his eyes wide, his head shook slightly in a ‘no.’ He might as well have been hopping up and down waving a big red stop sign.
Rachel stopped.
Trixie stood abruptly and unceremoniously opened the door. “Go. Fix it. Tone down some of the ‘I’ stuff. Don’t make such a big deal about the stripper playing to you. Go on, get to work.”
Rachel almost bolted from the room. At her desk she sat taking deep breaths, squelching another onset of tears.
In a moment Sebastian emerged from Trixie’s office. He leaned across Rachel’s desk. “Never,” he whispered, “Never never never remind Trixie she’s getting older.”
“Huh?”
“Maybe things have changed since you were stripping,” he mimicked.
“But it’s true!”
“That’s exactly the point. Listen up, I’m about to give you the only real advice you need if you want to work at Libertine. Yeah, things have changed—but Trixie Nyland doesn’t want to know about it. It’ll come up again, believe me; it’s been an issue with almost everyone who writes for her.”
“So what’s the solution?”
“Learn to anticipate her reaction, and be prepared with a rebuttal—which should be gentle and realistic, but never, never, Things have changed.”
Rachel shook her head. “But that’s crazy-making!”
Sebastian pointed a finger at her. “You got it!” he shouted like a game show host. “Six hundred dollars to the writer from Vermont!”
Roberta and Lily looked up from their computers. “Is it time to play Trixie Jeopardy already?” Lily asked.
“Sash. She’s still here,” Sebastian said, a finger over his lips. “Later.” He waltzed off to his desk in the rear.
“Trixie Jeopardy?” Rachel asked Lily in a whisper.
Lily smiled as if she held a great secret. “It’s a game we made up when she was on vacation. It keeps us sane.”
“I could use that.”
“I’ll bet you could!” Lily said, bursting into laughter that quickly escalated into near hysteria. She gave Rachel a look that seemed to say, you’d be hysterical too if you knew what I know.
Jesus, Rachel thought, this place is totally bananas!
Blocking out the sound of Lily’s laughter, she pulled her story up on the computer and began making changes, cutting and pasting, buffing up, toning down. By the time she looked up again she was the only one left in the office.
Trixie stood in front of an easel, a thick black marker in one hand and a long pointed stick in the other. Libertine’s small staff sat in a semi-circle, watching her. She was wearing a red leather skirt and a white camisole beneath a lightweight jacket, under which her shoulders rose like a quarterback’s. One of the categories in Trixie Jeopardy, Rachel had learned, was Trixie’s Wardrobe.
Nearly a month had passed since Rachel’s stripper story and its sequel, “Strippin’ With the Union,” had run; more than a month since she’d seen her first strip show, interviewed a stripper, and had her first run-in with Trixie. It all felt like years ago, she’d learned so much on so many levels in such a short time. She could even admit a grudging respect for Trixie’s editorial direction, if not her delivery style—Rachel’s writing was improving noticeably.
The attraction she’d felt toward the strippers had gotten Rachel thinking of women as potential lovers. She’d discovered a subculture of bisexuals within the gay subculture, and was trying to work up courage to attend one of their events. Thus, when Trixie asked for story ideas, Rachel showed her a flyer for a conference titled Bi Bi American Pie.
Trixie peered over her cats-eye glasses. “Bisexuality?” she asked, apparently amused.
“Yeah,” Rachel said, wavering in the face of Trixie’s response. “It’s next week.”
“See this? Trixie said, pointing at the flyer. “Did you happen to notice it says ‘Tenth Annual?” Trixie stared, deadpan, at Rachel.
“So?”
“Tenth. Annual. Does that tell you anything, Rachel?” She paused, awaiting a reply. When none came, Trixie went on. “Bisexuality is so last century. We’re way beyond that.”
Rachel cringed. She herself had only just become aware of bisexuality as a viable identity.
“I mean,” Trixie amended, “Libertine is beyond it. We must’ve run fifty stories on bisexuality back in the day—but we’ve moved on. Jeez,” she said with a giggle, “we’re up to transgender now. To our readers, bisexuality is a given.”
Lily half raised her hand. “Can I say something,” she almost whispered. Trixie nodded. “I recently shot a bisexual commitment ceremony between two men and a woman. They were all sexual with each other, and they had three kids between them.”
“Now that might be interesting,” Trixie declared. “A commitment ceremony of a threesome--not some dry academic conference.”
“Maybe I could write about those people,” Rachel said hopefully.
“They don’t want to go public,” Lily said. “The pictures were for their private use. I just brought it up to show there’s still more to be said on the subject.”
Rachel cast her a look of gratitude. “There must be other interesting bisexual stories.”
“No,” Trixie yelled, slamming her pointer against the easel. ”No no no no no! I already have an assignment for you, and trust me, it’ll be more fun than those dreary bi’s.”
Trixie handed Rachel a scarlet-colored flyer advertising “National Masturbation Day.” Studying it, Rachel learned that this “holiday” had been inaugurated some ten or fifteen years ago by a consortium of sex toy stores in response to the firing of Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders when she’d suggested that masturbation be part of sex education. It had caught on among certain populations and now vied with Gay Pride for San Francisco’s High Holy Day of the year. When Rachel read a passage encouraging people to stay home from work that day and masturbate, she couldn’t contain her laughter.
Trixie smiled. “Nowhere but in San Francisco, huh?”
Rachel had to admit that it made the bisexual conference sound dry by comparison. One of the events for Masturbation Day was a 24-hour marathon of readings, poetry and performances by luminaries in the sex industry.
“You don’t have to go for the whole day,” Trixie told her. “Just stay a couple of hours. Catch a few acts, then go out to eat, maybe go back for a few more. The later you start, the better—these things tend to get rowdier as they go along.”
“These things?” Rachel asked. “It says it’s a first.”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “Rachel dear, I meant erotic readings and such in general.” Rachel swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. Dear God, she had better learn not to take everything Trixie said so damn personally. Soon the meeting broke up, and Rachel went with Lily to the café on the corner. As they waited for their takeout orders, Lily peered at Rachel curiously. “Doesn’t she drive you crazy?”
“Crazy isn’t the word. She makes me feel like a tiny bug, stupid and incompetent.”
“Wow. You’d never know it. You come off so strong and assertive with her.”
“You really think so? At one point I was almost crying.”
“Well, you do a good job of hiding it.”
“Does she ever treat you like that?” Rachel asked. Lily had been working at Libertine for over a year.
“Not anymore she doesn’t!”
“She used to?”
“Yeah. But not since the day I left.” At this Lily’s smile gave way to a small giggle, and the giggle grew to a raucous laugh – by now Rachel knew Lily was headed for a bout of hysteria, and tried to head it off at the pass.
“You quit?”
“Not exactly,” Lily replied through small hiccups. “I just left the office and didn’t come back for three days, until she called and asked if I was sick. I told her I didn’t feel like coming in if she was going to yell at me. I told her I can’t work when people yell at me.”
Now Rachel knew why Trixie barely ever spoke to Lily—she was probably terrified of losing her. Lily might be a laughing hyena, but she was no slouch if she’d managed to gain the upper hand with their formidable boss.
“Oh, she didn’t really quit,” Sebastian told Rachel later. “She just wandered off like a space cadet until we corralled her back in. The woman’s a nutcase. A creative genius, but a nutcase.”
Rachel’s curiosity was piqued; she began studying Lily. There was an inner dimension to her that, Rachel felt certain, went deeper than her workday persona. She went quietly about her work, almost detached, as if wearing protective armor. Rachel would have liked to cultivate some protective armor herself—but quietude was so far from her natural style, she doubted she could pull it off. Still, she swore that the next time Trixie verbally abused her, she wouldn’t cry or be intimidated, but would think of Lily and emulate her detachment. And she would remind herself that Trixie needed them more than they needed her.
Chapter 5:
National Masturbation Day
Saturday morning Rachel lay in bed, anticipating the day ahead. What a strange new world I’ve come to, she mused, where the highest holy days are reserved for masturbation and homosexuality.
Rachel had invited Shari and Gwen to come up for a visit and go to the performances with her. Actually, she’d bribed Shari with ballet tickets, which weren’t enough for Gwen.
“Remember the strip joint?” she asked over the phone. “You don’t want me hurling all over your bathroom again, do you?” She had a point.
“Are you going to need us to hold your hand every time you do a story?” Shari teased.
Rachel was momentarily startled. “That is what I’m doing, isn’t it?”
“I’m just teasing, Rache. I’m sure you’ll get used to this stuff eventually—or you’ll make friends with people who go to these things. Besides, I could use a change of scenery. LA is getting on my nerves.”
Rachel met Shari at the airport, and they took the BART train straight from the airport to the performance space. “Not a minute to fix my face,” Shari complained.
Rachel looked at her friend’s heart-shaped face with the perfectly symmetrical features and tawny skin. “What could you possibly do to your face to make it any more beautiful?”
“It’s an expression,” Shari said, “like they used to say powder your nose.”
“I know a really good coffee shop near the gallery,” Rachel promised, “with a big clean bathroom. We’ll go there first and you can powder your nose and fix your face to your heart’s content.”
Appeased, Shari turned to other topics. “Gwen thinks I’m crazy and that you’re in the hands of the devil.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She wasn’t. According to Shari, Gwen had suddenly found religion – or, rather re-found the religion she’d been raised to believe. “She’s been going to church on Sundays,” Shari said, “and she talks about living a moral life.”
“How can you stand it?” Rachel asked, stunned. The three of them had always been in agreement as agnostics, with each of them going through more or less intense periods of questioning and soul-searching. Never had any of the three claimed to have found a definitive answer to the ongoing mystery. Nor had they ever judged one another when it came to religion or spirituality.
“Gwennie was always a little bit religious. Don’t you remember how she used to go to confession when we were younger?”
“Yeah, but that was so she could go right on sinning,” Rachel laughed. “So, I guess it was a big faux pas to invite her to another sex thing, huh? Was she upset?”
“Like I said—she thinks you’re in the hands of the devil.”
Rachel was at a loss for words; what kind of reply could she possibly make? She was more concerned for Gwen’s own state of mind than of what she thought of her, Rachel.
The performances were in a gallery devoted to erotic photography; a few of Lily’s pictures hung on the walls. They heard sounds of laughter as they approached the ticket window where Rachel proudly flashed her press pass – she still hadn’t got used to having one in SF – and paid Gwen’s admission. They were directed to go down a circular stairway and into a brightly lit auditorium, where four or five people cavorted on stage for an audience of half a hundred. Most of those in attendance were dressed in everyday clothes, but here and there Rachel spotted a leather bustier, a taffeta dress showing miles of cleavage, or leather pants with holes cut out for the buttocks. They settled into seats close to the exit.
Audience members were telling stories—sex stories—while the group onstage acted them out. Studying the program, Rachel learned they were an improvisational drama company who’d been on the David Letterman Show. The director was quoted as saying they were thrilled for an opportunity to improvise sex scenes; in their usual venues their shows were strictly PG.
The storyteller in the audience told of his experience as a cab driver with a seductive passenger. It was the kind of story printed every month in the letters section of Penthouse Forum, but the cliché was redeemed by the skillful interpretation of the actors. Next, someone in the audience told about being arrested for having sex in the back of her boyfriend’s pickup truck. Another story involved a cross-dressing man and his married male lover. The actors illustrated each vignette with maximum hilarity; along with the rest of the audience, Rachel and Shari were in stitches.
When the actors left the stage, a tall lanky guy wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a Stetson hat delivered a soliloquy in defense of masturbation. It was almost violently assertive, and reminded Rachel of Portnoy’s Complaint; she laughed so hard tears ran down her face. “I loved that!” she whispered to Shari, who was applauding wildly.
“He’s kinda cute too,” Shari said.
The next performer was a belly dancer, after which a man came onstage with a huge snake wrapped around his arms and neck. Shari inhaled sharply: she was phobic about snakes, had been since childhood. Without a word, Rachel took her by the hand and gently led her outside.
Shari leaned against the building and shuddered.
“Sorry about that,” Rachel apologized. “The snake isn’t on the program—it just says the guy’s an erotic dancer.”
“I don’t see what the fuck is erotic about that!” Shari snapped, shuddering again. “Can we go eat lunch now?”
“Good idea. I can’t take too much of this all at once anyway—we can come back later.”
Over burritos they discussed the show. To Rachel’s relief, Shari agreed it was entertaining and hugely funny – except, of course, for the reptilian dancer. “The real reason I wanted you to come was as a reality check,” Rachel confessed. “Sometimes I think I’m losing perspective, that I say I like these things just to be hip, cause I’m afraid to sound like a prude.”
“You a prude? You are losing perspective!”
“The thing is, I’m not allowed to be too critical—Trixie says a sex-positive journal has to be, above all else, positive.”
“Sounds like fun,” Shari said dryly. “What happens if you hate something?”
“Hasn’t happened yet.”
“It will. I know you, Rache—you’ve got a built-in shit detector. If something’s phony or dumb, you’ll want to say so.” Suddenly Shari grabbed Rachel’s arm. “Don’t turn around, but guess who just walked through the door?”
“Who?” Rachel asked, thinking it must be some celebrity.
“The cowboy, the one who did the masturbation speech. He’s even cuter close up.”
As Masturbating Cowboy passed their table, he tipped his Stetson a smidgen at them.
“What a riot,” Shari giggled. “He’s got his persona down pat.”
“Should I interview him?” Rachel asked.
“You can do that?”
“He’s a performer in a show I’m reviewing.”
“Far out. Go ahead. Find out if he’s single.”
“You mean find out if he’s straight—in this city, that’s the first question.”
“Whatever,” Shari said, giving Rachel a gentle shove. “Go.”
“Wish me luck,” Rachel said.
Masturbating Cowboy sat down at the counter. Rachel took the stool next to him.
“Hi there. I’m Rachel Max from Libertine,” she began, “and I’m writing a story about the show. I saw your performance a little while ago. Can we talk? ”
Cowboy Mike smiled, his thin lips stretching from one side of his face to the other. “Sure. Mike Caswell.” He looked, Rachel thought, like a cartoon character as he put his hand out to be shaken.
“I loved your performance,” Rachel said. “The writing reminded me a little bit of Philip Roth.”
“Wow, that’s high praise. What paper did you say you write for?”
“Libertine—it’s an online journal.”
“Holy moly, I love that website.” He sounded like a rube just in from the farm. Donning her professional cap, Rachel began asking questions: if he wrote a lot; was he published; had he performed before; what he thought of the other performers. It turned out he’d been doing this show annually since its inception—but he claimed he wasn’t really a writer; sex performance pieces were the only things he ever managed to finish. His day job was something to do with computers, like half the people Rachel had met in the Bay Area. After a few minutes she thanked him and slid off the stool.
“Wait a minute,” Mike said. “Don’t I get anything in exchange for the interview?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Let’s see. A kiss? No, that’s probably too much. How about a date?”
“A kiss is too much but a date isn’t?” Rachel laughed.
“You don’t know the way I kiss,” Mike said, his bovine eyes boring into her.
Despite herself, Rachel blushed. She reached into her handbag for a business card. “Here. Call me.”
“I do intend to, ma’am, ” Mike drawled, tipping his hat with a grin.
Rachel returned, smiling, to Shari, who’d been watching the entire mini-drama.
“You are awesome,” she whispered.
“Get outta here.”
“No, really, Rachel, you are. I couldn’t hear anything, but it looked so smooth. I saw you give him your card.”
“Yeah, he wanted something in return for the interview. I agreed to a date.”
“What a hoot! This job is a great way to meet men. Why didn’t I realize that before?”
“This is the first time anything’s ever happened.”
“Well, gee, you’ve only been doing it a few months.”
“Yeah, but I interviewed people for the newspaper back home all the time.”
“Yeah, like the town councilmen,” Shari reminded her, “and old fogies you talked to about the sewer system.”
“It’s true, my world has expanded.” Rachel picked up the check. “Come on, let’s go back to the show.”
“Let me pay.”
“Are you kidding? This is on Libertine.”
Cowboy Mike was at the cash register. “You going back inside?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I was thinkin’ on it. ‘Course, if you two lovely ladies are, it sorta motivates me in that direction.”
Rachel introduced him to Shari, and together they walked back to the gallery. When Mike found three seats together, Rachel and Shari exchanged a knowing look.
The stage was now a study in chaos. A man in a motorized wheelchair was surrounded by four or five nude women dancing to an Indian raga blaring from a cheap tape deck. Each of the dancers seemed to be in her own world; none of them were in sync. Every once in awhile the guy would race his wheelchair across the stage, and the dancers had to scramble to avoid being hit. A roll of toilet paper appeared, and the dancers wove it around the chair, the man’s body, and themselves.
Rachel let out an involuntary laugh: the scene was surreal. Someone scowled at her.
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny,” Mike whispered.
“What’s it supposed to be then?”
“Art.”
Rachel bit her lip to keep from laughing again. This was not easy: the scene struck her as hilarious. “Maybe it is supposed to be funny,” she told Mike, “but people are afraid laughing would be impolite.”