Inside the Girlie Playhouse white afternoons are still discreetly extinguished in candlelit rooms, while outside the demonstrators have begun their second week. The street is lined with sleeping bags and coolers. Activists hoot and holler muddled slogans. Misguided, albeit well-meaning, City University students from the Oppression Studies Department show their support, passive, by sitting on the curb eating avocado wraps. Matrons and old ladies wag banners and jerk pickets, respectively.

I have to go under the police department's clumsy blue sawhorses just to get into work. As I do so, one of the Gideon Angels in a provocative red cap, worn stylishly askew, shows me her poster: "A Woman is not a Plaything."

I suppose she means Trixie. She was once my partner: pale waifish, with long limp black hair and navy eyes. Trixie still skips through my sphincter-clenching dreams. On stage, her skin reflected blue light, mine reflects pink. She liked sequins; I like feathers, and we danced sometimes in sync.

I loved the girl, so I can understand why just the idea of her keeps the Gideon Angels up at night, keeps their confusion tickly and keen. She was attractive, absolutely, but with a trace of tawdriness about her that—irritatingly, unreasonably—made her all the more fascinating. The Angels formed a loose circle around the Playhouse and made their demands. Our boss invited them in to have a look for themselves, but they declined.

Then came the cameras. Unfortunately, the outline of Trixie's story is, I confess, perfect for the tabloids, chock full of sex and controversy. But there's more, if one cares to look. I'm still waiting for public television to arrive, set up and start filming a proper documentary. Anything would be better than Inside Story. 

Everyone, no doubt, has heard about the married man who won seven million dollars in the lottery and squandered it on seven strippers? Well, I was one of the seven, and Trixie was the favorite. (We actually received less than seven million, but the alliteration was too much for the press to resist.) 

The story hit when the wife filed for divorce. Her husband—whom we knew as "Max"—was portrayed as a toothy libertine, though he was actually too preoccupied to smile much. He had a silver-backed gorilla build and slow thoughtful speech, which made him a natural target for an impatient press. 

The dancers fared no better. During the televised proceedings, an "expert witness"—one of our own, redheaded Audrey—provided some pretty damaging testimony. She disclosed all the details about how and why the "prodigal playboy" had taken us to a beach side "motel" (actually, it was an inn), and how we had each been paid for our trouble with a red sports car. In the wake of all this negative news coverage, The Girlie Playhouse became the neighborhood hot spot for about one week, and we really "raked in the dough,” as reporters were quick to point out. But now that the initial excitement has died down, only the dregs remain. Most of my regulars have been scared away. Gadfly-ish rumors are going around that we will soon be closed down, boarded up, condemned. 

Max's wife won her suit. When she came out of the courtroom, she looked in the cameras and sobbed, "Max, I still love you. Come home." I, like everyone else no doubt, pitied Max's attractive, humiliated little wife. Her lot was truly sad, however common.    

Trixie's story, on the other hand, is gorgeously uncommon. My aim in telling it is: to be kind, but above all, thorough; to be truthful, but more than that, poetic—after that farce on TV. I’d always thought Trixie was inexplicable, not easily reduced to a type. But they managed it. Yes, indeed. My own method is to complicate the issue rather than to clarify. You will never find me resting on one side or the other. To make a judgment, you see, is to stop feeling.

These days—besides the mulish protestors who have vowed never to go away—only the odd, lingering foreign correspondent remains, those who haven't quite given up on the possibility of a miraculous reappearance. What gets me most is the cruel stupidity of it all. And it is funny, yes. That's what's so horrible about it. I was laughing, with some anxiety though to be sure, right up until the last few seconds. Now, I, like a whore, unpack my heart with words. 

Naturally, my version disputes Inside Story's. Trix was not merely a tramp who trapped gullible husbands, but it's a little too difficult to say exactly what she was. Life is really lived at the crossroads: that's where you feel moral distinctions most; that's where you come to know. And I—I have sampled, as it were, both the moral and the immoral often enough to guess at the difference. That's more than most could say. So you see there's reason to give one pause. The Girlie Playhouse deserves a fair accounting too, one that sees into the dressing room. And how far does one have to go? Not so far—be not alarmed—just far enough to touch the hem of the garment. That will do. It must do. No one who hasn't lived a dubious life can imagine what it means, finally, to decide what's right and what's wrong, for her, for him, for now, for then. 

But then you've anticipated such denials. Indulge me a moment. I loved Trixie—all the girls, the whole business—well enough to look intently and long. I know. My entire life has been an expression of my peculiar love for girls with meretricious charms. The mere clicking of pave-worn high heels down an empty corridor gives me a thrill. 

But whence came my special fondness for topless dancers? From out of my past, that's where, straight out of my past. Let me explain.

Yes, I was wholly enamored of Trixie; that's indisputable. Never let it be said that I admired merely the idea of her or the symbol for which she stood. I loved her. I loved her thin arms, her automatic laugh and her brutal temerity. I loved her more thoroughly and intimately than anyone before or since. But she wasn't the first. 

When I was very young, I loved another famous stripper who met a bad end for her terrible pride. So when Trix came along, I was equipped with a kind of horrible hindsight. This precursor of Trixie's, this slain starlet, was my own mother.

Though Mother was murdered when I was only four, within that important brief span, she instilled in me the happy predilection for nudity. In my infancy being naked in general was largely approved. Later, my mother's death and the rumors about her life led to my obsession. For years, unwittingly, I sought her among "floozies," “strumpets," and others known by various such endearing euphemisms. Then I met Trixie. Dea certe. They both were so beautifully calm. Weirdly oblivious to others around them. Neither would listen to the wide groan of public opinion.     

While Trixie was a potent reminder of Mom, I was also especially attracted to the plain fact of her. And I felt a closeness because of our rhyming names. (The memory of the DJ's, "Showtime. Trixie on the front stage, Pixie on the back," haunts me even now.) Trixie was her real name, short for Beatrice. 

My own name is adopted. I was first called "Pixie" in grade school because my aunt kept me in a pixie hair cut, an economical home bowl-cut that made me look like a boy.  The "Mad" part of my name is a more recent edition. I am so-called by customers, because of the artless way I dance.

I'm best when I'm naked, without script, without anyone trying to tell me what to do. I have this in common with most Playhouse dancers. For reasons that should be obvious, strippers have a lot in common. It takes a special kind of girl to do that kind of thing, you know. 

So I'm sympathetic to the plight of my peers, in-tune to their feelings, wants, fears and so on, even if such things don't come up in discussion per se. Shyness is a pretty common affliction. I've a terrible time making friends. Most of the time I sit around watching other people going about their lives. This, however, makes me a pretty good reporter. Lucky for you. 

Being shy, in case you don't understand this condition, doesn't prevent one from being brave. The more shy the girl, the more courageous are her acts. Being timid and apprehensive has made me find other avenues of expression. I think I've found the one that requires more courage and is, in the end, most effective.

So much for the unique architecture of my mind for now. Doubtless, you want simple facts. I'm five foot, four barefoot and five foot, ten in four-inch heels. I have very long, white-blonde hair (actually it's peculiarly clear, like silken strands of fibre optics), and spooky dark brown eyes and brows like my mother. My features are delicate and bright, somewhat on the juvenile side. I'm usually described as "cute." I would have much preferred "good-looking" or even "interesting" such as my mother was called. Customers usually guess I'm about nineteen. I'm in excellent shape—a Playhouse dancer has to be—and my breasts are a B cup. (I think it's okay to mention that, given my profession and all). I'm not the most attractive dancer at the Playhouse. Some of the girls are inhumanly beautiful, you know, and sometimes we have to share a stage, but I have my own special charisma, which gets me through the day. I like being naked, and I think it shows (everything shows up there). 

When I do wear clothes, I wear shortish A-line dresses with empire waists and high collars. I've never worn pantyhose in my life, only stockings. I don't wear jewelry of any kind and never much make-up: I've been told not to. My nails are unpainted. I tend to smile a lot at nothing.

Ever since the day Mother died, I have been dancing, always naked, usually alone, even on the days I don't go into the cabaret. Barefoot in the late morning, I switch on the kitchen radio. Then I stand on the porch in my short white nightie, sipping coffee, and thoughtfully explore my navel with my finger. Beyond my porch, there is always some blackbird in the man-sized red maple to scrutinize me. Any pair of eyes will do. 

Shaking out my bed-crumpled hair, I begin to hum and dance, and I watch my reflection swaying prettily in the window glass.  I recall a certain (yawning) feeling that I'd once forgotten—along with others in that murky chronicle of my life called "fond memories."  Dancing works on me like a favorite perfume:  when I smell the Iris 99 Mother wore on that day—so vivid, so compelling—the whole episode is replayed.  I think about all that frustrated hope, all that unused future, as I struggle out of my nightie and step from the warm folded cotton that has just fallen to the floor.  

I dance as if no one were watching, as if I were completely alone and nothing mattered, nothing at all.  Have you ever seen yourself naked? really naked? without those unfortunate experiences? those uncomfortable lovers?  Can you throw them off, like a damp wool coat?  Who are you without them? when the night has no moon and no one has picked you up at the bus station and you're walking home alone?  Can you describe yourself in detail without faltering, overshooting or flinching?  And if you could—so few of us can—would you feel untroubled about it? and guileless too?  I do.  I can.  I know that moment, marked by the slight rise in body temperature, when I'm dancing and the audience begins to take a harder look.  They look with quiet wonder and recognition.  They peep each out of their private little holes, hooded in darkness, without letting on to the others that they are perceiving this thing, this creature, this naked something, dancing without music, without applause, without motive, without sense, merely dancing, for her life, it seems, quietly, maniacally for her life.

 

© V.N. Alexander 2026

This is an excerpt from the novel, The Girlie Playhouse by V.N. Alexander, Heresy Press 2026