Oh, like a shark!
"Like a sneaky shark," she says, completely serious. "You can't do that."
Natalie O'Neill
Natalie O'Neill
While the bus is parked, Twee pole-dances.
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As the bus pulls into a convenience store parking lot, a TV reporter materializes out of thin air. The tag around his neck reads "Bay News 9," and he sucks in his gut as he asks for an interview.
"Sure!" Twee, the acrobat, agrees.
He switches on the camera.
Twee hails from Lexington, Kentucky, where dancers are considered only a notch above streetwalkers. She is more like a gymnast, though. Or a monkey. A muscular 110 pounds, she can climb the pole, flip upside down, and hang with no hands by squeezing together her thighs.
The cameraman isn't interested in any of that. He has some pressing questions. "Just to play devil's advocate," he says, "what if a mom with kids is driving by and sees?"
Twee tells a little white lie. "Well, if we see people we're going to offend, we sit down." The answer seems good enough to him, so he shuts off the camera and asks to climb aboard for more footage. The girls gyrate against each other as they ask, "Are you for or against this?"
"Uh, well, uh, I have to remain objective," he responds, zooming in.
When the news segment airs the next day, it's not flattering. The bulk of it is devoted to sound bites from a wide-eyed brunette named Paige Madison, who blames the Stripper Mobile for a near-death experience. "I was scared," she says smugly. "I had to merge over to the left lane because a semi wasn't paying attention."
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Kali wiggles her green-bikini-clad booty for a powwow of drunken football fans cradling plastic cups outside Club Deuce on South Beach. She turns to see if they like her moves and then frowns. "I hate looking at them," she says, her voice growing louder. "They're just fucking laughing at us!"
Kali has great dimples, but she rarely smiles. Every ten minutes or so, she gets a call from a different man on her cell phone, at which point there is generally an argument. Her hoop earrings dangle like Christmas tree ornaments, and she wears dark-blue eye shadow. She looks like the kind of girl who might hit on your boyfriend while you're in the bathroom.
Behind her, the sidewalks are jammed with tourists wearing gold New Orleans Saints jerseys. Hummers and stretch limos clog every other block, and a cluster of Miami Beach bicycle cops seems less than worried. One officer elbows his partner and points; they both grin.
Sure, the Stripper Mobile has been controversial in other parts of the nation. But in Miami-Dade — the capital of sexually perverse scoundrels — the bus is a runt in the kennel with the big dogs.
Witness, for example, some reactions from the offices of our underwhelmed public servants:
Commissioner Natacha Seijas: "She is very busy."
Commissioner Dorrin Rolle: "You won't be able to reach him."
Commissioner Barbara Jordan: "She has decided not to comment."
Out on the street, too, nobody seems to care. It's a big letdown to the girls.
You might think a local professional, such as stockbroker Andrew Buckner, would get riled up about the porn on wheels invading his hometown. But no. "Come on," he laughs. "They fit in here. This city was built on stuff like this."
As he speaks, a gray-haired woman passes by and looks like she's going to make a stink. The girls give her a free Déjà Vu T-shirt, and her thin lips curve into a smile.
When Waldo Blanco, an airport worker from Hialeah, throws money into the street, you can tell he's not protesting either. His only complaint: "I just wish I could get in too!"
A few blocks away, at Club Madonna, South Beach strippers sit up a little straighter when they hear about the flashy out-of-towners. But is there rivalry? "Oh, God no," says Gia, a striking brunette wearing lipstick the color of a Twizzler. "Men come in here because they want a fantasy world where life isn't complicated. That bus isn't going to facilitate that."
After an hour on South Beach, the Stripper Mobile tour proves fruitless: There are no camera crews, no trailing stretch limos, no pockets full of money. In fact, the girls barely get a reaction. Tired and bored, they head back to the Super 8, hanging their heads like a sports team that just lost.
Later, Ice gazes in the direction of the beach, where topless women tend to lounge free of charge. He doesn't plan on sticking around. "We're gonna get the hell out of here," he says. "The girls are getting cranky." With that, they pile into the Stripper Mobile and drive north, where they are bound to make someone angry.
