Cigarettes and Shady Agents

Hollywood. Sometimes I love it for its dirty glamour, sometimes the glamour wears like worn lamé and all that's left is the dirty.

On Sunday I drove back down from SF for a private party, a dear friend celebrating a decade of teaching belly dance. While I was very much looking forward to seeing friends, having a relaxing evening, and wiggling about in my scanties in front of a crowd, I couldn't suppress some inner grumblies regarding the lack of sufficient remuneration in such admittedly pleasant activities.

Part of the problem with doing what you love for a living is that when you love it, you must do it, whether or not someone is willing to pay you for it. Almost by definition, work is something that you do because someone pays you to do it. Why should they pay you if you want to do it? For a much more complete discussion of this topic read "The Gift" by Lewis Hyde.

Fortunately, shortly after arriving back in LA I was presented with an opportunity to do something decidedly unpleasant, for money. I was slapping on my war paint (just got a new foundation from Makeup Forever that I luurrve) when the phone rang. It was a fellow calling from V*** Casting regarding a belly dance gig that I had applied for on LA Casting over a week ago. The gig started at 10pm that evening, could I do it. The guy sounded a little desperate, and more than a little stoned, so I talked his price up by 75% and agreed to run over there after my friend's party.

It was a 3 hour promotional shift for a certain unnamed cigarette brand that frequently employs belly dancers because of their North African themed mascot.

Now, working for cigarette companies contains within it a morass of ethical dilemmas which, in my college years, flush with scholarships and a lucrative writing gig, I would have debated with gusto. However in the last year or two those debates have been trampled by the stampede of unpaid bills, and I'm sorry to say that this was not my first stint for this particular cigarette company.

I myself do not smoke, have not smoked since high school, and personally loathe cigarette smoke. Yet I had agreed to stand around in the smoker's tank of a hip Hollywood nightclub for three hours in my belly dance gear to attract potential smokers to the nook where company reps were giving away free packs in exchange for the victim's personal details (name, age, home address) delivered by a convenient scan of their drivers licenses. Were I to dwell for too long on the fundamental yuckiness of this situation, I would  not be able to play the part. So no dwelling, just smiling.

The three hours passed relatively uneventfully. There was one other chick on the job as well, a "burlesque" dancer with some distant belly dance training who had actually been forced to audition for this shitty gig. Even worse, she didn't seem to think the gig was all that shitty. She grew up in LA and I think she felt "cool." Never the less, we kept each other company.

The first club we worked at was on Hollywood Blvd, not far from Vine, in the heart of Hollywood hipsterville. The smoker's section was a midsized room blocked off from the rest of the club by large panes of glass. It rapidly filled with smoke, and the smokers moved about like fish in an algae-infested aquarium. Fish with very stylish haircuts, cropped jackets, skinny jeans, and designer footwear. Each of them walked, sat, talked, and leaned against the wall with careful casualness as if auditioning for the part of "smoker" in the nightclub scene of a Hollywood hipster movie. One bouncy Peruvian with a belly full of booze tried to talk my phone number out of me, but for the most part these characters were far too cool to have anything to do with a chick in gold sequins. The cigarettes attracted them to us, rather than vice versa. Which was fine with me.

For the last hour we walked around the corner to another Hollywood hangout. It was a reggae/dancehall night and the crowd could not have been more different. Most of the crowd was black, quite a few were older and elegantly dressed, and everyone appeared to be stoned. Joints were being passed back and forth in the smoking section, which was a tall white tent outside the front door, and the whole place was so packed that we were squeezed into a corner behind a girl in a mini skirt who was swaying back and forth with her eyes closed and singing along to all the songs at the top of her lungs. I felt like a backup dancer with the wardrobe from a different show. A couple of the older gentlemen came over to dance with us but they were so flowery and courteous in their lilting Jamaican accents that I hardly minded, and it helped the time pass faster.

About ten minutes before we were supposed to finish up our employer appeared, the agent who had called me earlier in the evening. Apparently the cigarette company had hired V*** Casting to supply the belly dancers, and he had hired us. A pox on middlemen. He was light-skinned, wiry, with thick modish glasses and the jittery energy of a speed freak. I disliked him immediately. After checking to make sure that we were dancing he ran off again and didn't reappear until we were packed up and had blown up his phone for about ten minutes. He looked even more wired.

The chick who was running things for the cigarette company handed him a check, and he turned to the other dancer and I and said that we were to get our cars and meet him at an ATM where he was going to cash the checks so that he could pay us.

Now, for those of you who might be thinking that this could be a bad idea, I agree. Who is this character? I know nothing about him. I could walk to my car and never see him again and then how would I get paid for three hours of lung-polluting drudgery? Or worse... he could be crazy or violent or just another pervy, entitled LA industry pig.

I asked him for a business card, I figured at least then I would know there was some sort of legit operation behind this hustle, and that's when he started to get angry. He began to berate me in a loud voice, still in the middle of the club and in front of the cigarette crew. He demanded to know why I was being "difficult" and why I didn't appreciate how lucky I was that he chose me out of all the thousands of girls who wanted this job. Typical. How is it that these guys don't realize that they are walking clichés? How can anyone live with being so blatantly unoriginal?

At this point the cigarette chick, who was as tired and cranky as I was, stepped in and asked what the fuck was going on and why he was yelling and carrying on in their place of employment. I told her what he was up to and that I thought it was seriously shady, and to my relief she agreed.

This is what pissed me off the most. The other belly dancer decided to get involved to tell shady agent that she had no problem and would go with him to the bank. Honestly. This is why people think they can treat us like chattle. Because for everyone one of me there are fifty of her, desperate little girls with the self esteem of a wadded up tissue who will roll over for any man with an ounce of power, or just a Napoleon complex. They both disgusted me.

However, I did have cigarette chick on my side and she was not having any of this. When we both announced that I was not going to the bank with him, he then suggested that I accompany him to his car to get a personal check. Then he wanted to know where my car was, and began to yell at me again when I wouldn't tell him, especially after I suggested that perhaps he should have brought his checkbook from his car since he knew in advance that he would have to pay us.

Finally cigarette security arrived at the request of cigarette chick and it was decided that they would all wait with me in front of the club while he slimed off to his car to get me a check. The other belly dancer left with him. Part of me wants to look her up and make sure she's okay, but she didn't even turn her head as she walked past me and I am convinced that she was working her way into his good graces by denigrating my ungrateful manners as they disappeared into the darkened streets.

Whatever. We have already established that my ethics were compromised five hours earlier when I wasn't angry and exhausted. She wants to treat herself this way I can't save her. I'm no fucking superhero.

I was heartened, as I waited for shady agent to return with his checkbook, by listening to cigarette chick's impassioned monologue delivered into a pink iPhone about the disreputability of shady agent and how this particular cigarette company will never work with him again.

Finally he reappeared and scrawled me a check in childish hand, post-dating it by three days. When I pointed this out he whined that it was my fault for being so difficult... if I had just come with him to the atm I could have gone home with cash... blah blah. He then proceeded to grab the arm of cigarette chick and launch into a tirade: "I have thousands of girls, much better girls than this one. Next time I'm going to send you a really good girl... " His voice was raised in thinly veiled desperation. I saw for a moment the shabbiness of him, the glamour worn thin, his twitchy eyes inadvertently telling a story of glory long gone.

We walked away from him, leaving him to scurry back to whatever dank life he led and whatever satisfaction he could wrest from lording it over the other dancer. Perhaps their relationship was more symbiotic than I had suspected, feeding each others' illusions of the glitter world. But not me. I wont play that game. The glitter world is fun sometimes, but it isn't the real world and I wont sacrifice my pride or my safety to gain entry.

The next day I took my check to the bank where a perky teller wearing false eyelashes and a giant hairpiece sympathized with my story and allowed me to withdraw the funds early. It was a good thing, she told me, since he barely had enough in the account to cover the check. Now I can afford to dry clean my belly dance costume which reeks of cigarettes.