Snake Bit, Part Two

 

 

 

I don’t recall if Denny, our latest roommate, ever did get a job, but Gwen and I became dancers at a club in downtown Honolulu. We were not exotic dancers but we were definitely scantily clad. Honolulu is a military town and such was our clientele. The club owner sold posters of the dancers and mine announced that I was Shannon from Vancouver (no mention of Canada) and that my statistics were 42-24-36. They could do that back then without our consent. Or at least they told us that they could. Naturally we graced a lot of locker doors on several military bases.

One young man desperate for a date knew that I wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle and told me that he had a little 250cc job that would be perfect for me to learn on and that he would be happy to teach me. When he arrived to pick me up it was on a somewhat souped up 650cc bike, someone had borrowed the other one, but this would be no problem, he assured me. Sometime later, after tearing up a good chunk of the football field at Hickam Air Force Base and finally wrapping the motorcycle around a plumeria tree, I begged to differ.

Shortly after the motorcycle incident my career as a dancer came to an untimely end as well. During one of my stints on one of the little stages, between which I waited tables, I had an epiphany. This was brought on by a small patch of powder put on the stage by the dancer before me so that her shoes would not stick to the floor. My shoes did not stick to the floor even without powder. In 1975 we wore very high heeled platform shoes. Mine were on a  2 inch solid carved wooden base with 4 inch heels and macramé tops. With these beauties I stood about 5’ 11”, quite a sight with my scantily clad “statistics”.

Shortly into my number, with one foot raised above my head, the other slid into the patch of powder. Lying on my back with the wind knocked out of me and staring up at myself in the mirror on the ceiling I had the epiphany. No amount of money, or lack there of were worth this. I also thought that perhaps if I just lay there they would think I was dead and carry me away, after which I could slip out the back door never to be seen or heard from again.

Instead, with a heavy sigh, I got to my feet and carried on as I ran through the article in my head that I would write and send to Reader’s Digest about my life’s most embarrassing moments. Although our wages, paid under the table, were practically non-existent the tips that we earned at Tammy’s Nightclub for men were fairly lucrative. For this reason, I had managed to squirrel away some money and I decided to give up this somewhat seedy endeavor to look for work a little more in line with what my mother might have approved, although I doubt that actually occurred to me at the time.

I worked in Honolulu but I actually lived in Waikiki, in a four story apartment building just off the main drag. I lived in a studio apartment on the fourth floor and had I been on the right side of the building would probably have had a beautiful ocean view. As it was I was on the other side which looked over our small pool and even smaller poolside bar, a tiny  English Pub style venue called The Picadilly.

After having quit my job without any other prospects I retired there for the evening to drown my sorrows, only to find that a large group of servicemen from the downtown club had followed me to Waikiki to lament my parting of the ways with Tammy’s Nightclub for men. This was more business than The Picadilly had ever seen in one evening and the following day they actually gave me a bottle of Jose Cuervo 1800 as a thanks for all the money it made the previous evening.

I had been drinking this tequila that evening when I first arrived and the boys of the military just kept them coming. At one point I recall sitting cross-legged on top of a Watney’s Red Barrel beer barrel surrounded by young men. This was certainly an improvement over lying on my back on the stage at Tammy’s Nightclub for men. Then of course, because I am Snake Bit, the lid of the barrel fell in leaving only the top of my head and my feet sticking our. They had to turn the barrel over and dump me out, bruised and once again humiliated. The snake bitten story of my life……

 

Stay tuned for part 3, and I promise I will wrap it up!