Got to Work

The things we find ourselves doing to provide for our families!

Photo from a discontinued clothing item on Amazon, sold by a brand called Wangdoaxop

Two days out of surgery for removal of an infected lymph node, I had a choice to make: Go to work somewhere, tomorrow, at a job that will get me paid tomorrow. Or move myself and 3-year-old David out of my apartment and go … somewhere. I had been ill for weeks, unable to pay my rent, and the sheriff was at my door.

How to get paid that quickly?

Stand on a street corner in a short skirt and no underwear? Or become a go-go dancer?

The job — at a nightclub in Monterrey, California, just outside a military training base in nearby Seaside — was not demanding once the stitches were removed. I was encouraged to learn the latest dances to 1960’s hits: James Brown’s “Do the Mashed Potatoes,” Chubby Checker’s “The Wah-Watusi,” Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike.”

There were maybe a dozen dances with equally silly names that I had to master, most of which were variations on stand-in-the-gilded cage-in -your-bright-red-lipstick-and-gold-lamé bikini-and-gyrate. Customers confused about which way the hips should go could watch me. It was fun watching them try to copy my moves.

After some months of working five days a week, however, it seemed no longer possible to get off work at 2:00 a.m., pick up David from the…