Mallory's Camera

Jump: Preston, MN → Hayfield, MN – School grounds: 55 miles
LEFT out of the lot and arrows back to HWY 16 WEST
RIGHT onto HWY 63 NORTH towards Rochester
After you pass I-90, look for a LEFT onto HWY 30 WEST to Hayfield… arrows to the lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm

Nothing in Hayfield, so I drove to Blooming Prairie

Nothing in Blooming Prairie, so I drove to Dodge Center.

Nothing in Dodge Center, so I drove to Kasson.

Nothing in Kasson but by then I was sick of driving so I ducked into the local public library where the librarian – big blonde, looks like she should be serving 18 months in the slammer for steroid use on the professional wrestling circuit – eyed me suspiciously.

Civil service or not, this librarian would not pass her performance review in the San Francisco Bay Area, lemme tell you.

For one thing she kept trying to get my car towed. At regular intervals I would hear her on the phone, presumably with local traffic control: “Well, the red car’s been there for two hours then, dontcha know –“

And I would rise from the little desk where I’d been typing, announce, “It’s my car! Do you need me to move it?”

And she’d say, “No, no. So long as you’re in the library, you’re a library customer, you can park there. But it is taking up a parking space.”

There were never more than four people inside that library the entire time I was there. There were six parking spaces.

Also she didn’t seem to like Hispanics. And Kasson – unlike the moribund farming towns surrounding it – had a significant population of Hispanics, possibly because of its proximity to Austin where the Hormel Chile and Spam factory is located.

Whenever a little blond-haired, Howdy-Doody-faced, white child wandered up to the front desk, asking where – say – the Harry Potter books were located, she’d flash her horrible, cavernous smile and gush, “It’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish.” Then she would proceed to try and indoctrinate the hapless child in the mysteries of the Dewey Decimal System.

Whenever a dark-skinned, dark-haired child asked the same question – accent strongly suggestive that English might not be her first language – the librarian would snarl, “Over there somewhere,” then rudely turn her back.

(JB, to whom B told this story, thought it was so hilarious that at the end of the last show, after all the trash receptacles had been cleared away, when a lady approached him with a cotton candy wrapper in hand, asking, “Where can I dispose of this?” he waved his hand expansively: “Oh, just throw it on the ground. The brown people will deal with it.”)

Jump: Foley, MN → Annandale, MN –Bendix Elementary School: 50 miles
Go out the same way we came in… LEFT onto HWY 25 SOUTH
RIGHT onto HWY 10 WEST
LEFT onto HWY 24 SOUTH to Annandale… arrows to lot on LEFT as you enter town
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm

In other news Drew the Mechanic and JB decided to drive to a strip joint called Fat Jack’s in nearby (sort of) Bock, asked Ben if he wanted to come along.

I’m not Ben’s mother, I wouldn’t dream of giving or withholding “permission” for any kind of an adventure except maybe to a crack house. He asked anyway which I suppose indicates an admirable sensitivity to my sensibilities.

In fact I might have suggested tagging along if I hadn’t suspected that Drew and JB, Midwesterners to the core, would be horribly embarrassed by my presence. Prospect of watching them squirm while I belched and woohooed “Look at the titties on that l’il brunette!”, tucking five dollar bills east and west of g-stringed pubic stubble was very-ry tempting indeed though.

Only the girls didn’t wear g-strings. It was a naked bar.

And the girls didn’t actually dance.

That’s because the girls don’t actually get paid to dance.

In fact, they pay the owner of Fat Jack’s for the dubious privilege of being able to give lap dances and other private – uh – performances in the VIP rooms.

“But that’s outrageous!” I sputtered. (I debriefed Ben fully when he staggered back to the lot a little after 1am.) “That’s totally exploitative! You should have turned around and walked out!”

“It would have gotten cold in the car. Besides, I didn’t bring a book.”

There were five girls, ranging in age from early twenties to about 40. (Forty is old for a sex worker.) They would take the stage at 20 minute intervals, more or less stand there – maybe swaying slightly depending on alcohol intake and what music the jukebox was playing. Display their wares.

“So you got to see a lot of pussies, huh?”

Ben grimaced. “You know seeing pussies under these circumstances is not all it’s – you should forgive the bad pun – cracked up to be.”

The forty year old gave up after five minutes, spent the rest of the night drinking hard at the bar. She’d had stretch marks and piercings in places you don’t want to see holes. She told Ben her story – single mother, two teenage girls, laid off from her job six months ago. I wonder what kind of career counseling she gives her daughters?

In the interests of full disclosure I should note here that just after college I was a topless dancer for a brief period of time. Didn’t do it for the money, did it – well. So I could say I’d done it.

Also topless dancing was kind of a family tradition. Annie danced for a few years after she was fired by UC Santa Cruz upon officially abandoning her PhD thesis on the semi-obscure Italian Renaissance poet Leopardi. Annie went on to write a novel about the experience; Thunder LaBoom paid for her house.

Then my mother started doing it basically because she was terribly competitive with Annie. My mother brought her own unique OCD perspective to the activity, Thanksgiving celebration for some years afterwards enlivened when – after a couple of glasses of vino – she’d demonstrate her trademarked method of gyrating her boobs in opposite directions while holding pencils beneath each breast. “I never, ever dropped those pencils!” she’d crow. “Not once!” (Small wonder Thanksgiving has always been my least favorite holiday, eh?)

Drew the Mechanic dropped $300 on private visits to the VIP Room with one of the dancers. Then he tried to talk her into coming back to the lot with him.

“He was quite taken with her,” reported Ben. “She was the prettiest girl there. Very young. Waiflike. Covered with tattoos.”

I often want to tell young girls who are thinking of covering themselves with tattoos, DON’T! Please. Sure tatts look good while you’re young and your flesh is firm. But honest to God, you spend a lot more of your life being middle-aged and plain (and then old and ugly) than you do being young and beautiful. And nothing looks quite so awful as a flabby tattoo unless it’s a flabby tattoo on top of stretch marks.

“Why’d the scumbag name his club after Shakespeare?” I asked.

“Shakespeare? What are you talking about?”

“Fat Jack?” I waited expectantly. “Hel-lo? Falstaff? Shakespeare's most famous character?”

“Ah! He didn’t actually. This is his fourth strip club; ‘Jack’ was first name of the last mayor who ran him out of town. Apparently he tried to bribe the city council to let him stay. When that didn’t work, he painted the building bright pink and fled.”

“To Bock, population 106. Where they wouldn’t have the money to fight the fuckwad.”

Understand this guy isn’t a fuckwad because he owns a strip club. He’s a fuckwad because he’s not paying his workers. Much as I hate the fucker I have to admire his balls: move to a busy thoroughfaire in the tiny town makes good business sense.