1001 Nights Cast

I’ve always been glamorous and don’t let anyone tell you different, darling!

The Glamour Girls. I was the star. I’d float across the stage in high heels, like you wouldn’t believe, like a peacock on the prowl, the headdress, sequins, feathers combined with my tall, willowy frame was well over seven feet. A seven foot tall peacock. Mind you, that’s the only sort of cock you would’ve seen at those shows.

The moves, the routines, were simple back then when I started, still a lot of the girls that came and went over the years managed to fuck them up regularly. Until I took over. I shook the show up and made it what it was. From then on, I was The Glamour Girls, hosting, telling the jokes, the main attraction, designing the outfits and making up the routines. When I came out to perform the closing number in this amazing purple and silver outfit everyone’s jaws dropped, darling, and I mean everyone’s. Of course they all wanted to know what was going on underneath that purple and silver g-string, didn’t they? How could I hide it so well? Everyone loves a good mystery, love. Sure enough there was no small amount of men who wanted, and were willing and able, to solve that one. They were always sniffing around after the shows. The answer was, of course, I didn’t hide it. And, of course, they knew that too. You wouldn’t believe how many pretended they were going home, saw all their friends off, waited around and went home with me. In the bedroom, trying to turn me around, they’d all say the same thing too. ‘You know what I want’, thinking they were the only one who would, or would ever think to say it. Oh, God, please! Well, I’d smile back and tell them, that’s not the way we do it around here, darling. Those with wives, they were the roughest, a barely concealed anger I always knew was directed at themselves, at their own lives and I’d have to coo in their ears I’m not her, darling. I’m not her. It was the closest to glamour, real glamour, they were ever going to get. The poor things.

I was luckier than most of the other girls. I never had, never needed, much work done. The girls today aren’t interested in the shows, they just have surgery for the sake of it. One of the younger girls in the show at one time, Jessie, a beautiful thing, she died of a heroin overdose when it was just getting a foothold in the country, when the term junkie was still confused with someone who hoarded a lot of rubbish. She’d come from a country town, like a lot of girls did and just went crazy, didn’t want to know herself, the person she’d been. Myself and a few other girls, some showgirls, some not, had to go through her stuff afterwards. She didn’t have a will, as you’d expect. Her parents had long disowned her. I rang them to see if they wanted her belongings shipped home. I was even willing to pay for it! When the voice I supposed was her father’s refused to acknowledge he knew Jessie, I had to use her old name, Jeff. ‘We don’t know any Jeff anymore either.’ And the phone went dead. Old bastard. One of the other girls came across a large envelope that had Jessie’s X-rays and before and after surgery pictures in it. Jesus Christ! She’d had the works. Large stark white areas in the X-rays showed her cheek and thigh implants, her boob job. The before and after shots showed a nose job, chin and forehead bone shaves, among other things. Everything that she could have had done, had been done. Jessie’s father was right. There’s no way he would’ve known his own child.

My hips are slim but not too much, my jaw line’s brittle and my eyes are big enough to get lost in. The only thing that gives me away, or used to give me away more than anything, was my shoulders were too broad. Apart from my Adam’s Apple, of course, but it’s amazing what the right make-up and a scarf can do, love.

The one thing I hadn’t even contemplated snuck right up on me—baldness—and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. These wigs I wear, specially made for me when I ran the show way back, are like me, a little old, a little frayed, the hairs splitting, but gorgeous and one of a kind! These clothes were fashionable, designer things once, but everything fades. I’ve always smoked a cigarette in a holder, it’s one thing that’s kept the lines around my mouth to a minimum, and who wants to end up with those filthy nicotine fingers? A lady has to have some class.

Would you believe peoples’ eyes still widen when they see me on the street. They do ‘the bounce’. Their gaze starts at my head then travels down my body, taking in my shoulders and clothes, all the way to my toes, back up to my face, and they look me in the eye again when they don’t mean for it to happen. I never look away, love. Why should I? I’ve been looked at my whole life, darling, no point in pretending now. They’re sometimes shocked, sometimes stunned, sometimes accommodating, often repulsed, but never, ever, is there no reaction at all.

So what? What would they know? What have they done? I’ll tell you, people are always quick to judge, and slow to think. I’ve performed to thousands upon thousands of people, I’ve done something with my life and they can never take that away from me, darling.