Girlie Show

Los Angeles scofflaw photographer and writer Scot Sothern has dangled from the rim of propriety his entire career. His revealing images and quick stories have been exhibited and translated around the globe, and his whore-noir NSFW column, Nocturnal Submissions, left us thirsty for more pictures and stories from his camera and keyboard. So we asked Scot to whip up a new column that gives us another look at life from low angles. This is Sothern Exposure.

At the North Florida Fair in Tallahassee, I’ve rented a booth in a pavilion where vendors are hawking everything from macramé to handguns. I’m a knockabout portrait photographer and I’ve got my photos on display—Floridian denizens, sexy girls and mothers, cherubic babies, and Republican businessmen. I give out coupons for a free portrait sitting while the passersby “ooh” and “ahh” my photos and the blue ribbons attached to the frames.

I hang a sign that says "I’ll be back." I walk down the midway through the dirt and noise, the rides and the squeals, to the girlie show. The marquee reads "New York Alley-Kat Revue." The canvas tent is drab and dusty with primary colored banners on shiny oilcloth. There is a stage in front of the canvas backdrop with a black girl on it. And there is a guy on a tall stool at the ticket counter howling words into a microphone that's spurt out through the tent's muffled speakers.

“Step right up fellas. This here is Velma Bells, and she can ring your bell and pull you by the tail. I think you understand what I’m talkin’ about.”

Velma is wearing a green two-piece top and bottom with fringe and sparkles. She has a wide, content face with a serene closed-mouth smile.

“Tell you what, you boys back in the back, get up here closer and say 'hi' to Velma. Go ahead Velma, say 'hello' to the boys.” Velma grinds and bumps and blows the boys a smooch. The band—an electric guitar and a snare drum—accentuate Velma’s beautifully lewd moves.

The menfolk move up closer and put their hands in their pant’s pockets for a covert squeeze.

“Let me tell you boys a secret you don’t need to be repeating. What happens to Velma Bells when she gets to dancing is she gets hot, and I do mean hot. So hot she gotta strip down to just about nothing just to cool down.”

Velma is daintily fanning herself, winking at the boys and jiggling her tits. The guitar goes “whoohoo” with a suggestive twang and the drum says “fuck yeah.” The barker, a skeezy white guy, is selling the last few tickets, the tent is mostly filled-up and the next show starts right away. I walk around to the side, pull back a tent flap and head backstage to the make-up and dressing room, a long windowless trailer filled with lights and mirrors and girls and costumes. Somewhere close-by a generator groans. I was here earlier and made a couple of friends, one in particular thinks I’m pretty fucking cute.

The band starts up on the other side of the curtain and I pass a stripper—the only white girl in the show, decked out in feathers—on her way to the stage. The crowd whistles and applauds. At the trailer/dressing room there is a carny worker-bee, a big dumb guy, standing by the two-steps up to the trailer. It’s his job to deflect people like me. I’m wearing a camera, a Leicaflex, which isn’t mine but if I need to leave town in a hurry, I’m taking it with me.

I ask him how’s it going? “Looks like you got the best job here. Keeping watch over the girls. Let me know if you need any help, I’m available. Did you notice if Pansy’s inside? I’m supposed to take her picture.”

“I don’t think you oughta go up there. Maybe Pansy don’t mind, but I can’t say for nobody else. Hell, they don’t even let me go in there.”

“Yeah, well,” I’ve got a foot on the first step. “Pansy expects me and the other girls are cool with it.” I’ve got a foot on the second step. “Just to make sure, I’ll go and ask and then I’ll let you know.” I’m inside.

The room is filled with every tawdry thought I ever had. The smell is sweet verging on nasty and the girls, on both sides of the center isle, are mostly undressed. I need to squeeze through them to get to Pansy and one of them takes a swipe at me when I rub by her backside a little too slowly. Pansy sits on a stool at a small vanity with a mirror and make-up. She has a sweet face with a sad smile. She looks like the girl in a whorehouse in Sedalia, Missouri, who I watched get smacked around by a pimp a few years back. I still have fantasies of decking the pimp and saving the girl. I squat Arab style and get up close and tell her she smells good.

“You really wanting all what you think I got, don’t you white boy?”

“I was thinking maybe you and me could meet up after the last show tonight and maybe take some pictures up on the stage.”

“You was maybe thinking what you and me should be doing?”

“Yeah, what do you think?”

“Maybe, baby. Maybe. You know that boy out there with the orange in his hair?”

“Yeah, I know him. He owes me ten bucks.”

We’re talking about a dancer with the review, a sleek and sleazy show bro I photographed earlier. He bet me $10 he could eat a can of Budweiser. He chugged it down and then ripped the can in half with his teeth, which I explained isn’t really the same thing as actually eating it. I didn’t see him swallow anything that looked like a beer can. He thinks I owe him ten bucks, but he’s wrong. He owes me.

“The guy’s a fuckhead, what’s he got to do with you and me?”

“He take care of me and some of the other girls sometimes, you know, get’s us dates. He might think maybe you should be paying me for my time as a professional model, you know, baby?”

“You don’t need him. Besides, I thought we were in love.”

“We are baby.” She takes my head into her hands and plants her lips on mine, puts her tongue into my mouth, and squirms into my soul. My dick is hard as a blackjack. One of the other girls screams out, “Pansy, you one crazy bitch. What you doing with that little peckerwood?”

We come apart with spittle going both directions. “I do love you baby. You just need to take your time with a girl like me. I don’t think you never know no girls like me. We’ll do this later. It’s time. I gotta go an’ work.”

I follow her out of the trailer, down the steps. The routine on the other side of the curtain is coming to a close. Pansy goes up three steps to the stage right entrance. The hillbilly stub-holders hoot and stomp their boots and the white girl comes backstage with her feathers, g-string, and pasties and heads for the dressing room. I finagle a pose from Pansy and make an exposure. She takes the stage and I look out at the men crowded together on benches. They’re a bunch of creeps with dirty dreams not much different than my own. The three-piece band goes into a bad rendition of “Louie Louie.” A guy in the front row spits a glob of something brown then yells through megaphone hands.

“Take it off, Jemima. Let’s see that coochie coo.”

Later that night, after the last show, I come back. Pansy is not around and when I ask the guy who owes me $10, he laughs and tells me to go fuck myself.

Scot's first book, Lowlife, was released last year and his memoir, Curb Service, is out now. You can find more information on his website.