Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America by Lily Burana Page B
Authors: Lily Burana
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cluttered, brightly lit shops that sell fake I.D.s and Chinese throwing stars, in the vicious heart of Times Square. This is Peepland. This is where I work.
I could blame it on New Jersey. When I was twelve my family moved there. Not to the broken-down boardwalks and smoke-belching factory towns of Springsteen country, but farther west to the low sloping foothills where white-collar families raise college-of-their-choice children. You don't hear much about this area— Madison, Chester, Bernardsville, Tewksbury, Livingston, Jefferson Township—a region beyond the reach of the turnpike, and therefore immune to the "what exit" joke. It's almost an entirely different state than the steel-and-grit parts they call Jersey.
New Jersey is the last stop after numerous executive peregrinations. The moves are hard on my family, given its size. I'm sure things were easier for my parents at the outset. There is a photograph of my mother and father, taken early in their marriage, with my brother and eldest sister on their laps—my brother, Tad, a jug-eared tot in black woolen shorts and a button-down shirt, my sister Barbara a newborn, her tiny form lost in a delicately embroidered christening gown. My father, at the time attending graduate school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is beaming down at my brother, handsome in his dark suit and skinny tie. My mother, with her black hair in a short pixie cut, smiles coyly at the camera, prim in a black jacket with a Peter Pan collar and matching black skirt from Peck and Peck. My parents look smart and tidy, like they've got the world on a string. Whenever I see that photo, I think, they really should have stopped there.
But they don't. My family moves to Sweden and my mother gives birth to three more children, my sisters Annette and Kelly eleven months apart, then, five years later, me. After two dark-haired children from two dark-haired parents, my sisters and I are an aberrance of blondeness, prompting much family ribbing about Swedish mailmen. But the three of us all have father's close-set, heavy-lidded elfin eyes and mother's forbidding pointy chin. We belong.
When I am still an infant, we move back to the States. As we grow, the five kids form our own universe—a solar system loosely arranged in orbit around my mother. My father is the chief breadwinner, but like so many, he's a phantom dad—more absent than home, more aggravated than content. So he moves among the planets as a separate, belabored presence, whirling out of sight as quickly as he appears—a vital satellite, a scowl of moondust.
Since I'm the youngest by a wide margin, I am frequently ditched by the older kids; who don't want to be saddled with the baby. So my mother and I form an inseparable pack of two. I am happy to be a hip-pocket kid. I stand so close to her side as she works in the kitchen that whenever she moves her arm, her elbow strikes my forehead, which doesn't hurt and makes us both laugh. An indulgent mother, she makes me feel like I am her favorite and never does anything to contradict my assumption that this is truth, not wishful thinking.
In idle moments, my family will impress their hopes upon me. "She should go to Harvard like Dad and be a philosophy major." "She should go to NYU and study acting. They have an excellent drama department."
"She will do whatever she wants," my mother says, then later tells me she wishes I'd take up the drums.
They fuss over my future as if I am the family's last great hope. The exact outcome is uncertain, but that I will grow up to do something grand, turn into someone significant, is not in doubt.
What I turn into is an all-American misfit, a sullen, moonfaced ghoul. Come fourteen, I hate school and hate New Jersey, and don't want to do anything but listen to the radio, go to the city, and read. At my English teacher's behest, I launch into the junior outcast's canon— Hesse, Salinger, and Plath, who quickly becomes my favorite. Holden Caulfield seems to me a
I could blame it on New Jersey. When I was twelve my family moved there. Not to the broken-down boardwalks and smoke-belching factory towns of Springsteen country, but farther west to the low sloping foothills where white-collar families raise college-of-their-choice children. You don't hear much about this area— Madison, Chester, Bernardsville, Tewksbury, Livingston, Jefferson Township—a region beyond the reach of the turnpike, and therefore immune to the "what exit" joke. It's almost an entirely different state than the steel-and-grit parts they call Jersey.
New Jersey is the last stop after numerous executive peregrinations. The moves are hard on my family, given its size. I'm sure things were easier for my parents at the outset. There is a photograph of my mother and father, taken early in their marriage, with my brother and eldest sister on their laps—my brother, Tad, a jug-eared tot in black woolen shorts and a button-down shirt, my sister Barbara a newborn, her tiny form lost in a delicately embroidered christening gown. My father, at the time attending graduate school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is beaming down at my brother, handsome in his dark suit and skinny tie. My mother, with her black hair in a short pixie cut, smiles coyly at the camera, prim in a black jacket with a Peter Pan collar and matching black skirt from Peck and Peck. My parents look smart and tidy, like they've got the world on a string. Whenever I see that photo, I think, they really should have stopped there.
But they don't. My family moves to Sweden and my mother gives birth to three more children, my sisters Annette and Kelly eleven months apart, then, five years later, me. After two dark-haired children from two dark-haired parents, my sisters and I are an aberrance of blondeness, prompting much family ribbing about Swedish mailmen. But the three of us all have father's close-set, heavy-lidded elfin eyes and mother's forbidding pointy chin. We belong.
When I am still an infant, we move back to the States. As we grow, the five kids form our own universe—a solar system loosely arranged in orbit around my mother. My father is the chief breadwinner, but like so many, he's a phantom dad—more absent than home, more aggravated than content. So he moves among the planets as a separate, belabored presence, whirling out of sight as quickly as he appears—a vital satellite, a scowl of moondust.
Since I'm the youngest by a wide margin, I am frequently ditched by the older kids; who don't want to be saddled with the baby. So my mother and I form an inseparable pack of two. I am happy to be a hip-pocket kid. I stand so close to her side as she works in the kitchen that whenever she moves her arm, her elbow strikes my forehead, which doesn't hurt and makes us both laugh. An indulgent mother, she makes me feel like I am her favorite and never does anything to contradict my assumption that this is truth, not wishful thinking.
In idle moments, my family will impress their hopes upon me. "She should go to Harvard like Dad and be a philosophy major." "She should go to NYU and study acting. They have an excellent drama department."
"She will do whatever she wants," my mother says, then later tells me she wishes I'd take up the drums.
They fuss over my future as if I am the family's last great hope. The exact outcome is uncertain, but that I will grow up to do something grand, turn into someone significant, is not in doubt.
What I turn into is an all-American misfit, a sullen, moonfaced ghoul. Come fourteen, I hate school and hate New Jersey, and don't want to do anything but listen to the radio, go to the city, and read. At my English teacher's behest, I launch into the junior outcast's canon— Hesse, Salinger, and Plath, who quickly becomes my favorite. Holden Caulfield seems to me a
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