This is probably a good time to tell the convoluted story of how I ended up participating in a stranger's memorial service at a strip club in East St. Louis after dropping off my kids at their grandma's.
The trip back to Chicago usually passes through St. Louis. There was a Biblical rainstorm that day (important) and a big rush-hour traffic jam, so Google Maps gave me a route around the city. Possible that somewhere along the way I missed a turn.
The rain has stopped by this point, and the thing is, I really need to take a leak. So I take the first exit I see, and end up in East St. Louis, IL, which has something like one squalid strip club for every ten residents.
East St. Louis, if you've never been there, is a bleak place. The streets are like the surface of the moon. But it has just rained, and the potholes are filled with dark, dirty water. They look like puddles.
I am looking desperately for a gas station to pee in when I fit a pothole the size of a crater. Right in the middle of an intersection. And my car, it just dies.
I'd been in an ugly car accident a couple years earlier. I'm shaken. I get out. Here I am, middle of an intersection in East St. Louis. On one is a strip club. On the other end is another strip club.
I can't even remember our insurance off the top of my head. I'm thinking I'm going to have to call my wife and them call roadside assistance to get my car from between two strip clubs. I am going to have to do a lot of explaining.
I try a few things. Eventually, the car starts. But of course I still need to check under it, see if everything is okay, so I pull into a strip club parking lot. No damage. But I still really need to take a piss.
The strip club, it has a sign: "No cover before 6 pm." It's before 6 pm. The strip club has to have a bathroom. So of course I go in to relieve myself.
Now, there is no production designer who could have imagined a strip club that looked so dank and squalid. The walls are black and dirty. The mirrors behind the stages are smeared with prints. The ceiling is leaking after the rainstorm and there are plastic buckets on the floor.
I have this problem. I feel really bad if I duck in to use the bathroom somewhere & don't buy something. Maybe it comes from working jobs where people did that all the time. Plus, when else am I gonna see a place like this? So I pay for a soda.
There are maybe a dozen strippers there. Neon fishnet bodystockings that are a size too small, translucent heels that look like deadly weapons. And maybe just a few guys. Middle-aged, big guts, t-shirts with suspenders. Regulars. But no one is dancing. There's no music.
A folding table with a plastic sheet over it is set up against one wall. And as I sit down at the bar, a stripper comes out from the back, carrying a huge sheet cake.
This is a memorial service. For a woman who used to strip here. She died of cancer. Her mom is there. She is wearing a t-shirt with her daughter's face printed on it.
The regulars are not part of it. They're just sitting around, looking grumpy, waiting to get ground on. I get to talking with the bouncer who let me in. He's a nice guy, very friendly. I finish my soda & he asks if I will give him a hand carrying some stuff outside.
Next thing I know, we are carrying boxes of Japanese paper lanterns out to the strip club parking lot. The strippers follow, teetering on their heels.
We set the boxes down. Then everybody holds hands in a circle. Me too, because I might as well. There is a prayer. Many of the strippers are crying, some are sobbing.
Everybody takes a paper lantern. I have a lighter with me. It gets passed around. We all light the lanterns and then release them. They drift up over the strip club. They catch a wind and fly off toward the horizon over an abandoned lot across the street.
The sight is eerily, breathtakingly beautiful. The sky is getting dark with more rain. Everybody gives me their phones and asks me to take group photos—one phone after another, the strippers and the mom and the bouncer in the strip club parking lot.
Once everyone is done wiping their tears, we file back in. The cake is cut up. Music starts. Strippers get back to work. Cozying up to the regulars, flirting with them as though they weren't just outside praying and crying about their friend. I take that as my cue to leave.
