False Reality

Tonight she was Caitlin. She had decided her identity for the day when she had woken up in the morning and reassured herself after the doors of the elevator closed shutting off the bells and whistles from the ringing cash registers and slot machines. The silence of the elevator going up gave her time to get into in the moment. There was a lot she liked about Las Vegas but the slot machines weren’t one of them. The only time she came to the casinos was to meet a client. There was just too much false reality in the casinos from the lure of riches to the empty chatter of tourists and a few lustful eyes that slid up and down her thin body dressed professionally in black slacks and white blouse pulling a medium size carrying a bottle of water. She kept her eyes straight ahead and spine straight shattering any illusion of availability.

Caitlin liked most of the theme casinos that had risen up in the last twenty years. It was one of the reasons she was drawn to Las Vegas. This one was her least favorite though. It always seemed she got lost at some point in this place. She also felt the earth colors scheme left the place a little dim and depressing. She found the door she was looking for and with a knock she pulled herself up with a bright professional smile. A young college student answered and she knew this would be an easy assignment. She offered her hand and her name as she walked into the room.

She looked around the room. It was a single room with bed splitting it in half. The large picture window looked over the vents to the casino’s and kitchens and the low jagged mountains beyond it. The television was switched onto a sports station. She took a swig of her water and turned to him pushing the off button of the TV. The agency said she wanted a dominant so dominant was what he was going to get. He looked like a lost puppy. She knew he was out of his element. An easy job.

An hour later she was back in the lobby with smiling to herself with seven hundred dollars cash in her pocket. She was right, it was an easy assignment, he was satisfied with less and she barely had to get into her character as a Mistress Caitlin.

It had amazed her how much Las Vegas, especially the Strip had changed over twenty years. None of the glamorous family theme park had been there when her family had first moved there and started work at the famed Stardust Casino. She had been seven. Both her parents still worked in the Casinos though for different ones and both seemed happier now the shadowy casinos had become neon fantasies. Twenty years ago there was hardly a third of foot traffic along the strip as there was now, hardly any children. She remembered how many nights she had been left alone with baby-sitters.

She remembered her childhood with fond regret considering it another world, a connection between that world and this one was missed and she wasn’t quite sure how. She loved school. She loved to read and by the time she reached high school was reading several levels above her level. She balanced her overdosing of literature with a healthy dose of physical activity. In high school she took ballet, gymnastics and ran track. She went to state finals in both gymnastics and track where her specialty was long distance. Even now, when it got light early enough she would jog almost the entire length of the strip from her apartment to the end and back. She took pride in body.

She had stopped at the fountain show in front of the Bellagio Hotel. This was her favorite attraction along the strip because of it simplistic complexity of dancing water. It was so natural in its fluidity. She wondered where the simplicity of her childhood disappeared to. Was it when she was taken to seen a special showgirl presentation of Les Follies Bergere, no nudity in this performance for children? She was swept up in the magic of the performance, the false reality of different worlds made so easy by graceful floating dancers. In the back of her head she new how much work went into creating the illusion which swept her even more away. And when she left the theatre she declared she was going to be showgirl to which both her parents scoffed.

She doubted her parents had forgiven yet for leaving UNLV after one year to chase her dream. She had worked hard through high school, probably too hard to be the perfect girl : a four point student, state championships in both track in gymnastics as well as after school classes in voice and ballet. She was tired needed a break There was only so many times one could completely refuel on short breaks until the desire was no longer there. And that was what happened. She had waked up one morning after only two hours sleep once finishing an English paper realizing she longer had the desire to compete. When she left school she had promised herself she would go back someday. She felt she was a person who never quit at anything

And now, almost ten years later, she was wondering where the promise was. When she left school her parents had cut her off so she had no money and a very small run down apartment. And now she had spacious large window condo, a jaguar and a bulging bank account. She quit what she was doing at any time but she caught in the false reality of more was better.

She loved Las Vegas for the false realistic physicality. It seemed like her in many ways. She had grown up in a physical world. She loved material things. She loved to relate to the world in a physical way with her sports and energy. She had always felt best when she was outdoors. And yet there was a part of her that felt she couldn’t have her world on her terms. She remembered when she told her mother that she wanted to be a dancer her mother doused her fiery dream with the question: “So what are you going to do for a living”. Everyone told her to get an education. To do well in high school and to go on to college. Get a job. Get a life.

Dreams are good but dreams don’t pay the bills. Unless you are place like Disney World or Las Vegas where dreams are created to pay the bills. Much of her life had been a struggle between two needs: the need to physically explore the world, physically relate to the world, she learned from the world. She learned from doing, from trying from physically challenging herself. It was why she loved dance and gymnastics so much. You could only learn the routine, the dance, by doing it over and over again. It was the same for a song. You only learned the tune by doing it over and over again. The other side of her inner war was the intellectual. She had always done well in school. She liked to psychologically worked. Why things happened as they did. For the dance and the song it was all about understanding the emotion of the song, of the character and somehow finding a way of connecting. The trick, she learned, was to find new ways to connect herself with the art, the character to keep the work fresh and new.

Maybe that was why she walked away from college. She couldn’t find the balance between the physical and the intellect. The personal connection. Perhaps, after two years, she walked away from the showgirl. She could no longer find the spark deep in her to keep it fresh. She still needed that physicality that dance brought so on an instinctive whim she joined the staff of an up scale strip club just off the strip. Here she took the name Sedusa Medusa.

There were laws against how much contact there could be between a dancer and a customer. She placed her own rules of having no contact with the customer. The trick became how to arouse the client. Where most of the dancers did mostly improvisation in their works she placed a lot of time in choreographing her works. In her condo her main living room was bare with furniture pushed up against the walls leaving the wooden floor open to work. She had no television and when she wasn’t working she read. A whole wall was one big bookcase filled to bursting with all types of books. With her quick imagination and years of learning quickly she could often put together a three to five minute routine in a few hours. She had to be quick for management often announced the theme nights without very much warning.

There was magic to her work. Often when she premiered a new dance other dancers stopped to watch her work. She developed a regular group of guys that came to watch her on a weekly basis and packed the place on theme nights because she always revealed a new dance. She found herself never dancing the same piece more than a couple of dozen times. When piece became more of routine than an work of art, when it lost the edge of exploration she retired it for something new.

For her the challenge was continually to find a way to arouse the patrons with only suggestive gestures and the erotic teasing of removing but never becoming explicit of what would follow. It was best to leave those things up to the wet dreams of the individual. Her job was only to be a fantasy. A real vision in what their dreams could wrap around. She noticed when she watched other women performed that those who were much more explicit than her didn’t get as much in tips. She guessed that it was one thing to suggest the fantasy but to act out the fantasy was to overly assume what the customer’s fantasy was. And if you guessed wrong you turned the customer off. It was better to lead him to the edge but let himself go over the edge if he wanted. There were some who thrived on being led to edge

In the business the meaning of succes was money and when the other girls saw how much money she was bringing in they asked her choreograph pieces for them. At first she declined saying it was a personal feeling in which she worked. She eventually helped the other girls to choreograph their pieces suggesting how they interpret the music so it becomes an extension of themselves. She suggested to use more obscure pieces to work with saying the with popular songs people were more likely to have a connection with a memory and that could work against them. She felt that if she was able to connect herself with a piece was able to tell herself a tale with the music she would achieve more. For her the hardest part of making a new routine was choosing the music. She would often she sit for hours listening to all types of music waiting for the right song to speak to her. The right song gave a visual image of what the dance was to look like.

Above all, she taught her protégées they must dance the way they feel, not to think of the way the customers would like it. She added though she danced for customers, she mainly danced for herself. She felt customers got a better deal when they felt the dancer was customer was comfortable and having fun with stripping, that they were doing it for themselves as well as for the customer. She told several girls that they should find other work because they were so nervous about exposing themselves it showed in their works.

Caitlain had no problem with her body. She had been brought up to love and admire her body. Her parents had always been frank with her about her body and her sexuality. She knew other girls in school who became so uptight and awkward and she when puberty hit because their parents were so uptight about talking and acknowledging their daughters budding sexuality. In a way her puberty brought her mother and herself even more together as they shared secrets and confessions that she would not share with anyone else. And now, as she looked at the flames of the Mirage’s volcano spread across the water she wondered where that intimacy had disappeared to. It had been a long time, too long, since she had a long conversation with her mother. Her mother was never happy with her choice of leaving school to become a showgirl. The last time they had talked was when they had a long argument about her becoming a showgirl. Her mother had seen her as a showgirl only once and had mixed reactions to it. Though she liked the show overall and liked the complexity of the numbers she felt uncomfortable with the over abundance of nudity.

Caitlin had never shown her mother her stripping routine and never talked about her escort work. Too many secrets had developed between them and she regretted that. She missed the intimacy between them.

The pinnacle over stripping career came when The Palace created a evening where all the routines were choreographed by her, She was overwhelmed by the honor but after watching the girls do their own routine she saw the preferences and talents of each dancer and worked with each one to create an evening of unique performances capped by her own. It was when she was working with one of the new dancers of the club, Kitty, that she learned about the escort service.

Kitty arranged a meeting with the owner who managed to convince her that all precautions were taken. That for the most part meetings were with business men and collage boys at the hotels. He explained that though most men called for sex she was under no obligation to do so and if could find ways to get around giving it was okay. He said they charge a flat fee for sending the girls to the room and what happens after that is negotiated between the client and girl. He said the flat fee belongs to the service and the negotiated price is split 70/30 in favor of the girl. The service would cover all medical conditions, supply of condoms, any legal fees that arise. The first couple of times the service sent her out was on dates with long time regular clients who were gentle and comfortable that she was new to the scene.

Even though she was comfortable about her nudity and her sexuality the first couple of times she had sex with a client it was awkward for her because there was no emotion. She learned to be a great actress no only sexually but also as a person. There were some clients who were extremely boring and she had to learn to act interesting. Every once in a while, after all she was human, there was one she was attracted too. For those she gave more. The one thing she liked about the job was meeting a wide variety of people. She always took time in getting to know her clients, making them comfortable and to seek out their fantasies.

It was a different realm for her and yet it was the same. She was still an actress but something new emerged. She quickly learned to separate herself from her character. She learned how retreat her personal self deep into her. She took pseudonyms like Mistress Caitlin or Medusa, or Angela, whatever the character called for she became. She met with a real dominatrix and learned some of the simple tricks of S&M. Most men who called the service didn’t really want the hard core reality but the fantasy. It was a game to them but she tried to make the game as real as possible. Like Las Vegas was changing to be she was attempting to become all illusion. An expensive illusion but illusion all the same.

There was a time where she even became a submissive in a relationship. She wanted to explore a part of her that didn’t exist. It scared her to realize how it easy it could be to fall under the will of another. How lazily easy she could allow someone to control her. It scared her but it also showed her how much she fought. for her own fate, her own identity. And now looking up the reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty she wondered if hadn’t lost her identity because she had fought so hard to keep herself. Was she living a false reality because she didn’t want to conform? Was her purpose for doing all of these characters, these illusions of people, was to prove everyone wrong. If that was case than she knew it was all for the wrong reasons.

But how could it be? It was Las Vegas did. Changed its identity from a place run by mobsters to a family orientated place but still the same purpose to bring in people, to have them spend money. Las Vegas was all about money. No matter how much the appearance changed, it was about the casinos in the souls of each place.

And what was in her soul? What kept her moving from one illusion to another? The people she met? That was some of it but it wasn’t all of it. No, it wasn’t the people she met outside of herself but the people she met inside of herself. It was learning about all these people who she was and how they related to the world.

She looked around at all the corners of the world that had risen on the edge of the desert from ancient Egypt to Paris and Venice to New York. She was surprised something with the orient theme had risen but she knew it was only a matter of time until someone built one. There was a new Taj Majal going up so they were gradually moving west and along the money was coming in for false realities new themes would be escape to. But how do you escape when your world was false reality?

She walked into the casino and too a cash machine where she withdrew a thousand dollars from her checking account and getting in her jag drove away from the neon lights that promised false realities. It was an impulsive need to see the stars. She felt the stars would give her the answers she needed. At a convenience store she filled her car, threw out her cigarettes and bought some water. It was time, she concluded, to end this false reality for something solid.