Showgirls, the novelization: She doesn't suck
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[Explicit content ahead, obviously]
IV.
The next six weeks went by in such a blur that Nomi could barely remember it. But Molly did. Molly remembered all of it. Molly’s place was actually a trailer, but it was quite cozy for the two of them. Molly was a wardrobe stylist for one of the big Vegas shows and always had cool scarves hanging off ledges and an unlimited supply of chips.
Molly came inside after getting her laundry in time to watch Nomi doing her nails. Nomi was good at nails.
“Check it out!” she said, wiggling her fingers at Molly.
“They’re great!” she said. And they really were.
“They’re neat!” Nomi corrected her. Nomi was always correcting her. It was really fucking irritating. Molly had an associate’s degree in fashion merchandising and Nomi could barely spell pizza. The nerve. At least she has heat, though Molly.
She suddenly had an idea. Cristal, the new girl at work, loved a floozy. Maybe she’d set them up!
“Want to come with me tonight? We’ve got a new lead. She’s good.”
“I’ve got to work,” said Nomi, and then laid back down and turned the tv to C-SPAN.
“You don’t have to work for three hours,” Molly told her. “What are you going to do, lay around and watch TV and eat chips?”
“Wait, where are the chips? You ate them didn’t you?”
“I did not,.” Nomi jumped on her and started ticking her. Non-sexually.
“Yes you did!” Nomi insisted. They had this same fight every night like they were an old married couple.
“Come on, you can show your nails off. They will all be jealous.”
“You think?”
“I think.” I just said so, bitch.
“What am I gonna wear?”
“I don’t know. Wear that dress I made last week.”
“The fringe one! Can I?” I JUST SAID SO, BITCH.
“Yeah.”
Nomi squealed. “I’m gonna put my hair up!”
“Nomi, we don’t have time to put your hair up!”
“I’ll hurry, I promise, I promise!”
“Hurry!”
Nomi didn’t hurry.
Molly and Nomi arrive backstage for the Goddess show at The Stardust. Molly got to work right away, helping all the sexy dancers get fitted in sexy costumes. Nomi loved the energy backstage, and all those different personalities! The gay one, the angry one, the sweet one, the black one! They were all there!
Julie, a sexy dancer grabs Molly. “I don’t know what happened, it ripped!” she said referring to her costume. Molly started sewing the costume back together. “It's okay, it’s almost done,” she told Julie. If she had a nickel every time she mothered these girls!
“LAST CALL, TWO MINUTES,” boomed someone over the intercom.
Annie, another dancer, had also ripped her bodysuit. “Molly where are you?” she asked annoyed. “If you don’t fix this, they’re gonna see a smiling beaver.”
“Be right there!” she yelled to Annie.
Julie, suddenly noticing Nomi standing there with no purpose, confided in her. “She wants to smile her beaver. I’ll bet she tore that thing herself.”
They are so bad! thought Nomi. It’s so exciting, so glamorous, so...Vegas.
“You’re terrible, Julie,” said Molly. Julie smiled a smile that said, yes, I am terrible.
Nicky, a dancer but with red hair, swooped by them, asking, “What is that smell?”
“It’s that damn monkey act,” said Julie. “He feeds them garlic.” Feeding monkeys garlic? That’s crazy!
“Oh god,” said Nicky, acknowledging the Bakhtinian carnivalesque of it all.
Annie still had the whole in her bodysuit. “You expect me to go onstage like this?” she asked Molly.
“I’ll be there, I’ll fix it!”
“Who’d want to see her beaver anyway?” Julie asked, rhetorically.
“I certainly wouldn’t,” said Daryl, an effeminate dancer said while swishing by. He was gay and didn’t like seeing vaginas.
Nomi couldn’t believe the shenanigans she was witnessing!
Molly, seeing Nomi stand there like a dope, instructed her to go watch the show by the spotlights.
“Can I go up there?”
Bitch, I wouldn’t have told you if you couldn’t. “Molly we’ve got one minute!” screeched Annie.
“Wouldn’t it be great if one night she fell down the stairs?” Julie said to Molly. What a weird thing to say.
Then everything became a blur of fake eyelashes, mesh, and glitter as the dancers ran up the stairs. On her way out, Nomi saw the door of a large dressing room open slightly, showing off a sexy leg. Is that leg attached to someone? Nomi wondered.
Up at the spotlights, Nomi watched Goddess. Women in blond wigs and gold chemises writhed around smoke machines and an aluminum foil volcano. The audience was barely full. The music was shitty. Nomi was enthralled.
Suddenly, an announcer announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Stardust proudly presents, Miss Cristal Connors.”
Who was Cristal Connors? Nomi wondered.
The volcano exploded in a puff of dry ice and glitter, and a short woman with dark hair emerged, her breasts all oiled up for the world to see.
Nomi assumed this was the aforementioned Cristal Connors.
She was right.
V.
Two of the male dancers lifted Cristal Connors out of the paper-mache volcano and set her on the ground. The music turned into a funky, sexy beat, and Cristal and the dancers started a sexy dance. There were lots of sharp moves that Bob Fosse would approve of. Nomi watched from afar. One of the moves was fluttering your hands in front of your face very sharply. Nomi tried it.
She was good.
Dancing in goddess whas exactly what Nomi wanted to do.
And Cristal was exactly who she wanted to be.
Backstage again, the cast and crew bustled around in their usual cast and crew type activities. However, it was different this time because an impromptu press conference being held. Karl Karman, owner of the Stardust, fawned all over Cristal, who put a silk robe on but didn’t cover her breasts. But who hadn’t seen Cristal’s breasts tonight?
“We could have gotten anyone in this show tonight. La Toya, Janet, Cher, Madonna, you name it. But we wanted Cristal. Cristal Conners is all what defines Las Vegas is about. She’s dazzling, exciting, and very very sexy.” Karl Karlman spoke as if he was trying to convince everyone. Cristal stood there, preening in the attention.
A reporter asks her, “Miss Connors, how did you feel about the show tonight?” putting his journalism degree from Columbia to good use.
“I think this is the best show I’ve ever been in. I just hope I can do it justice.” She spoke with a slight Southern accent.
“You did my dear,” said Karl. “We’re thrilled that you’re with us.”
“I’m thrilled to be here.” Cristal assured him.
A photographer snapped several pictures. “Mr.Karlman, can we have one of you handing Cristal the roses?”
“Only if I get to keep them,” she joked. The room laughed because it was funny.
Cristal left to go into her private dressing room. Molly turned to Nomi. “She’s great, isn’t she?”
“She doesn’t suck,” said Nomi.
An athletic but otherwise generic looking woman called for Molly. “Cristal needs you.”
“Come with me,” molly said to Nomi.
Nomi shakers her head. She was scared!
“Come on, you can be my assistant.” She wasn’t going to pay her though. Was that clear?
Nomi let Molly pull her into Cristal’s dressing room, which was the size of two of Molly’s trailer and covered in roses.
“Yes, Miss Connors?” Molly said to Cristal.
“Cristal, please.” Miss Connors was her mother! “You are-”
“Molly Abrams. “
“Molly, this top is too tight,” she says, picking up a crop top made of tiny mirrors. “My breasts are getting crushed!’
“I’ll loosen it,” said Molly.
“Like about here, okay?”
“Sure.”
“A little less maybe,” cristal reconsidered. “I want the nipples to press, but I don’t want them to look like they are levitatin’.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks.’
Nomi stood by awkwardly, not understanding a single word of that weird costuming language. Cristal caught her eye in the mirror, rubbing her sore nipples. She hoped Molly would fix it so they wouldn’t hurt so much!
‘”You were great tonight, Miss...Cristal.’
“Thanks, darlin’.” She pulled off her eyelashes.
Molly notices the card on a big bouqet of flowers.
“These are from Andrew Carver?” she gushes.
“If that’s what the card says, that’s who sent it,” Cristal says, bored of these basic bitches.
“I just love him!” Molly said. She had posters of him all over her trailer, and she masturbated to his albums all the time.
“This is my friend Nomi, she’s a dancer,” Molly says, suddenly remembering she invited Nomi into work and into Cristal’s dressing room for no reason.
“She is” Cristal asked.
“Where do you dance, darlin’?” Cristal asked her.
“The Cheetah,” Nomi says sheepishly.
“I don’t know how good you are darlin’, and I don’t know what you’re good at, but if it’s at the Cheetah, it’s not dancin’, I know what much.”
Nomi, stunned. Then, “you don’t know SHIT!” she screams at Cristal and storms out.
“I’m sorry Miss Connors” sau Molly.
“I told you, it’s Cristal!” Cristal said, annoyed. She cannot stand to be called by her mother’s name!
“She has nice nails,” said Cristal. “Maybe she can do mine sometime.”
Molly caught up with Nomi, who was stomping away from the building, enraged.
“Hey!’ said Molly. “Listen, I work here, okay? I need a paycheck. I don’t want her pissed off at me.”
“I’m sorry!” bratted Nomi. Then, “I’m sorry,” she says, making herself sound sincerer.
“Jesus, Nomi.’ Nomi hits her car, pukes on her, eats all her chips, but she can’t help but love her. But not like a lesbian.
They get into the car.
“I’ll drive you to work,” said Molly.
“I’m not goin’.” huffs Nomi.
“He;ll fire you.”
"I don’t care.”
“Yes you do.”
“No I don’t.” Nomi pouts like the fucking brat she is.
“Okay,” sighs Molly. “Let’s go,”
“Where?”
“You know where?”
Nomi screams with delight.