By Betty Rage
Pixie* sits in our anthropology class, slumped down in her chair, arms crossed loosely across her chest, eyes closed. Being only 5'1' it would be kind of hard to notice Pixie slid down low in her seat amongst the room full of people. If it weren't for one thing: her pink hair. (Which more closely resembles a piece of Bubble Yum Original rather that Kelly Osborne's let-me-dye-my-hair-a-bright-color-and-maybe-no-one-will-notice-how-horrible-I-sing-shade of pink.) So is Pixie catching up on her sleep because our teachers lecture is so deathly boring? No. (All though it is so mind crippling that I want to keep shoving dull crayons in my ears until I can't hear anymore.) It's because she was up late the night before working the 7:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. shift at Angels*, our local strip club.
"By the time I actually get out of the club and make my way home it's already around 2:45 in the morning," Pixie says to me. Class is over and we're at her house. She's getting ready for work. She opens up a plain black duffle bag and tosses in her "costume" which isn't much.
"When I come on as Pixie I wear these." She pulls out a pair of pink, purple and glittery silver butterfly wings from her closet and lays them carefully in her bag. "We have lockers at work where we can keep all our stuff in, but I don't trust any of those bitches." Bitches, I ask. "Yeah, I don't really like any of the girls there. They cause too much drama." We'll get back to that later.
For now, Pixie talks about how she got started stripping which is really quite a simple story.
" I needed money to pay for school. All that was out there where jobs flipping burgers. No thanks. My sister's friend worked at Angels. She told me they were hiring and here I am."
As she's telling me all this, she applies her make-up. First, some noticeable purple eyeliner which she takes way beyond the corners of her eyes and makes into curly q's along the sides of her face. Next, some pink eye shadow, which is a tad bit darker than her hair, followed by three coats of black mascara. She then applies clear gems all across the tops of her eyebrows. She puts one purple-tinted tear drop shaped gem right smack dab in the middle of both brows. She throws her hair up into two messy (but cute) pink buns and begins to shove Pixie Stix through them. ( I thought I was the only one that did that!) She fixes a gem that has fallen off and I ask her if she always wears that stuff and does her make-up that way when she works.
"The make-up, yeah. Sometimes I'll change the colors up. And the wings. But I only wear the gems and Pixie Stix on Saturdays. That's our biggest tip day."
She throws a Misfits c.d. in her bag along with Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar, NIN's Downward Spiral, and Rob Zombie's American Made Music to Strip By. "I love dancing to this music," she says.
Did I mention that Pixie is a Goth girl? She is which is one of the reason why she enjoys "dressing up" as Pixie so much. "I normally don't wear such brightly colored make-up or anything. I'm Gothic, that's who I am, but at the same time, it's fun to dress up and be somebody that's completely different than who and what you really are."
What do the other dancers think of her being Gothic?
"All the other dancer's are the snobby mall bitch types. Blonde hair, blue eyes, look totally fake. They know that I'm Gothic. They see me when I'm not Pixie and they don't seem to mind or anything. I used to go onstage as