Fighting Filipinas

Luciana and Katrina have an ongoing beef that seems to have happened accidentally. Luciana has seniority. She’s a curvy tan Filipina with wavy ash blonde hair. She’s been working our club for four years now. Katrina is one of the newer hires. She’s itty bitty, the kind of girl who’s tininess becomes a fetish for a special crop of rotten men. She’s also a Filipina, but with straight blonde hair and tight breast implants. The original misunderstanding arose with the best of intentions. Katrina is a bubbly, social girl who is rarely working without a drink in hand. She maintains a consistent buzz throughout her shift, and as a result, has repeated many conversations multiple times. She’s introduced herself to me twice and told me the same stories both times. She’s done the same thing with a few of the bouncers and the chef who all called her on it in a playful, chiding way. I didn’t take it as malicious, however Luciana did when Katrina asked her a second time if she’s Filipina. Katrina had intended it as an opportunity to bond over their shared heritage, but Luciana didn’t take it that way.

“You asked me that already!” Luciana snapped at Katrina.

“I’m sorry, I forgot,” apologized Katrina.

“Whatever,” Luciana spat, as she turned back to the dressing room mirror.

Katrina brushed it off that time, but the rift only grew. Later that night, Katrina was passing Luciana who was hiding in the dressing room when Heidi, one of Luciana’s friend’s, pinched her butt. Luciana thought it was Katrina and whipped around, livid.

“Don’t pinch my butt, bitch! You don’t know me!”

Shock hardened into indignation on Katrina’s face.

“It wasn’t me. You need to calm down, bitch.” Katrina said, holding up a hand.

“Don’t you tell me what to do!” Luciana snapped, quite literally, her long bejeweled fingernails clicking in Katrina’s little face.

“Bitch, you better hit me.” Katrina stepped forward.

“Bye! I’m done with you. Bye!” Luciana waved Katrina away with a Red Bull sloshing in her hand.

“Bitch throw it in my face. You better throw that shit in my face! Watch what happens.” Katrina is not one to de escalate. Luciana on the other hand, is all talk. Luciana turned away, in essence ending the conflict. For the moment.

“That’s right.” Katrina sipped her drink as she walked away.

I should note that the two of them are 4’11” and 4’10” respectively, and while I would not want to fuck with either of them, the whole situation was a little bit adorable. I’m friends with both parties, and was not about to pick sides. I know how frustrating it is to have people ask my ethnicity multiple times, and I also understand that it’s easy to forget when I’ve had a conversation twice. The club is kind of like Groundhog Day, every night we repeat the same things to men who are not differentiable, it’s easy to lose track of what conversation you had with whom.

Luciana has also let me know on multiple occasions that regulars I currently have were once her regulars. I have not intentionally leeched anyone, but these things happen, and from what she’s told me, a lot of those relationships ended prior to my arrival. Recently we were in the dressing room together. Luciana was on her phone, browsing tattoo photos on Pinterest. I noticed a tattoo on her shoulder appeared especially brightly pigmented.

“Did you get a new tattoo?” I asked.

“I got my old one corrected, but it’s ugly. I hate it. Isn’t it ugly?” She declared then asked in rapid fire.

I assessed the tattoo. It was fine, perhaps not my style, but I liked the fresh colors.

“It’s not ugly.” I replied, pragmatically.

“You hate it. It’s horrible. They did such a bad job.”

“What did it look like before?” I inquired. She scrolled through the photos in her phone and pulled up a picture of the tattoo before the touch-up. It looked mostly the same except slightly faded.

“The color looks a lot better now, and the red is nice against your skin.” I replied.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really. You look good.” I responded.

She let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank you so much! I was hating it but I feel a lot better now.”

“No prob.” I turned, attempting to return to my initially mission to wipe my neck of customer saliva, but Luciana was not done.

“You still talk to Mark?” she asked. Mark was one the regulars we had in common.

“Not really,” I replied, “he was kinda weird.”

“What happened? He used to be my sugar daddy, you know.” she stated. We had had this conversation before, but I wasn’t about to fight about it.

“I think you mentioned that before. We went shopping and--” she cut me off.

“He used to take me shopping too!” she reeled herself in, “Go on.”

“He brought this container of what I thought was an energy drink, but he smelled like alcohol. I asked him about it and he told me it was actually full of vodka, ‘in case [I] went crazy shopping.’” I explained.

“Oh that is weird. The same thing happened when he was my sugar daddy. He was always drinking— pretty much an alcoholic. One night he got drunk and angry at me I wasn’t going to have sex with him and he beat me up!”

“That’s terrible. I’m sorry.” I said frowning.

“It’s okay. That was a while ago. It just sucks because he used to spend so much money on me!You should invite him and tell him to get a doubles dance with both of us.” She decided.

“Um…” I was confused. What had just happened?

“Text him! He’ll come if you tell him to.” she insisted.

I didn’t want to see Mark, but she was right, he always spent a lot of money. He hadn’t abused me, he had only proved to have a drinking problem, but I definitely believed Luciana’s story. It was a slow night. I went through the million and one “Mark’s” in my phone. I texted one of them, unsure of which one I was texting. Turned out to be the wrong Mark. He corrected me, saying I’d texted a “Marcus,” not a “Mark”. I felt humiliated. I took it as a sign, this whole business wasn’t meant to be. I apologized, and he accepted my apology, and promised he would visit me at the club, so long as I call him Marcus and never, ever again Mark.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” She said and returned to scrolling Pinterest and I walked back out to the floor.