The Naked Truth: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewife of New Jersey--In Her Own Words (14 page)

Now that I was dancing at Gallagher’s, I decided to step up the showmanship of my game. Costume makers came to the strip clubs several times a week for a few hours a night, taking orders and measuring the girls. Most of the designers were ex-dancers who knew exactly what would attract the customers and turn them on. They also knew the fabrics had to allow us to break them away, yet be durable enough to wear them while dancing hard during our hottest numbers. I began buying custom-made outfits along with the other dancers at the club. Even if the designer used the same fabric for some of the other dancers’ outfits, each would have a unique ribbon or unusual hardware attached to make them look different.

I got creative, trying to coordinate my outfits with the themes of my favorite onstage songs. For instance, I’d wear holsters holding water pistols while the DJ played Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun,” or I would wear all black for AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” These outfits cost anywhere between $200 and $400 apiece, but they were well worth the money. The costumes made the performances more like a striptease than just
straight dancing and was more theatrical, sexy, and alluring to the customers.

Next, I wanted to learn how to work the pole. One Gallagher’s dancer, Cindy, was extremely talented on the pole. She was actually a dancer in the show
Cats
and would come to the club right after the Broadway curtain came down. She had incredible stage presence, and I watched her closely to pick up tips on how to use the pole to my best advantage. From where to hook your legs, to how to go upside down, to how to run, turn, and land in a split, I eventually got it down pat.

In only a few short months, I became a “feature” on the circuit, meaning that I could pick where I wanted to work and what nights suited me. When you’re a featured dancer, you get the stage all to yourself. I would do six twenty-minute sets a night. I’d start off with a fast-paced song, go into a medium-paced song, and end with a slow one, reaching a climactic point before I would receive the customers’ tips. I danced hard and would be sweating by the end of each set—it was an incredible workout.

I knew how to make good money as an exotic dancer. I was the only dancer in any club—and I was told this often—who would motion to a patron “Just a minute” when he was holding up money for me. I had the presence of mind and confidence to smile and tell guys in the audience to hold on to their money for a minute and not take it from them until I was finished with my dance.

Another trick that I picked up was that making eye contact with each patron was key. I made each man feel as if he were the only one in the world, even if it was for just a brief moment. While looking deep into his eyes, I would seductively roll my hips, turn my body one more time, then move on to the next patron. When I was finished with my set, each and every person was holding up money for me. Whether it was men or women in my audience, it didn’t matter. I knew how to turn them on, and I didn’t even need to take off all my clothes to do so.

I moved out of Rosario’s and into my own apartment in Howard Beach, Queens, where Kevin would come to stay. Although Rosario never made it to work in Gallagher’s with me, her advice was right on target at every club I worked in. When men look at a woman onstage in a club, chemistry is involved; a fantasy is created. I’ve found that a dancer can completely ruin a fantasy by actually giving a man what he’s fantasizing about. When that happens, the guy usually gets bored and moves on to a new fantasy. I made sure that my male fans
never
got bored or moved on from me. I never gave them anything beyond seeing me onstage—and that was enough. When men left the club, I remained their true fantasy. To keep that image going, when I left work, I remained aloof and unattainable. I never spoke to or hung out with any of my customers. If they wanted to see me again, they would have to come see me at the club the night I worked. That was it.

One night while I was working at Gallagher’s, Lilly, the dancer who was dating the wealthy Japanese man, came into
the club on crutches. I hadn’t seen her in about three months and heard she hadn’t been working for a while. Lilly had fallen and broken her leg and began doing a lot of coke, and her Japanese boyfriend had apparently lost interest in her. I could see that Lilly was upset and out of control, which was not at all how I remembered her being. I was saddened to see her this way, but not surprised, since she ended up dating one of the customers and ruining the fantasy.

When I started working at any new club and befriended the other dancers, I realized that we all had a lot in common. Like me, many had been sexually abused. I would say that over 90 percent of the girls dancing had been abused in some way. This shared experience created a sort of comfort zone for me and, I think, for them, too. Most of the dancers talked openly and honestly about being abused. They would not chat about it nonchalantly, but when it came up and they started talking, it was without too many inhibitions. Sadly, quite a few girls committed suicide because of the abuse that haunted them from their childhoods. The hardest suicide for me to cope with was that of a girl named Gina. She was a beautiful, part Jewish and Italian girl from Brooklyn who was only twenty-two years old who couldn’t take the pressure and live with her secret past any longer. The night she died, she overdosed on sleeping pills and a bottle of vodka. She left a suicide note behind, detailing what her father had done to her as a child.

When the coroner established the time of Gina’s death, I realized that I had spoken to her just a few hours before. Our
conversations were always deep, and we seemed to have a lot in common regarding our pasts, but some women can handle it and some can’t, I guess. I am not saying that I am the strongest person in the world, but I can honestly say that the people who have judged me the hardest in my life are those who probably couldn’t survive a tenth of what I have gone through. True friends don’t judge me, or others, for what has happened in the past; they embrace us for the strength we’ve conjured to overcome the negatives. After all, we couldn’t prevent what occurred. For all I knew, Gina might have met somebody in her life around the time of her death who was tearing her down and not accepting her for her past. On top of her already tortured childhood and tough life, she might have been dealing with somebody who made her feel worse for what had happened. This was the case with many of the dancers I encountered.

Another common thread among the dancers was that most were abused by their boyfriends or husbands at home. Many of the girls came to work with black eyes, bruises, and cuts on their bodies. I was no different from the rest. Curiously, many of us weren’t insecure about it. It wasn’t as if we were going to the supermarket with a black eye; we were going to a strip club where other women had black eyes, bruised legs, and random cuts. We would help one another cover the bruises with makeup before starting our sets; luckily, the red spotlights that shone down on us and the smoke machines helped hide the black-and-blue marks as well.

The first time Kevin saw me dance, he went nuts with
jealousy and told me he wanted me to stop immediately. However, he also wanted me to make money for him. It was a double-edged sword. When he saw how quickly I became successful as a dancer, he was filled with rage. I had no idea that this would be the beginning of a pattern.

I tried to work as often as I could to get away from him. It was my only freedom. I also tried to work in more high-end places, so I could give him just a percentage of what I was making and not all of it. That way, I could put some money away for myself and he would never know. Kevin never questioned me as long as he felt I was giving him what he thought I was making. Plus, if I had given him the full amount I was actually making in high-end places, he would have accused me of selling my body. He accused me of it even when I was giving him just 10 percent of my nightly tips.

After my shift ended, I didn’t sit down with my customers to have a drink like some of the other girls. Once in a while I would take five minutes to stand at the bar to say good-bye to everyone, but when I did this, I made sure to have a bouncer next to me. When I said my good-byes, I discovered that my customers were actually charming and quite smart. The more people I had intelligent conversations with at the clubs, no matter how brief they were, the more I realized that I was living a nightmare that I didn’t know how to wake up from.

SOMEONE TO TALK TO

To say that Kevin and I had an unhealthy relationship couldn’t be more of an understatement. The physical and emotional violence made my life a living hell.

When he’d finally come to his senses and realize how much he’d hurt me, he would sometimes attempt to gain control of himself. He would express regret that almost seemed sincere and try to be sweet, calling me his pussycat. What Kevin didn’t see on the outside was the emotional battering that he had inflicted on me. Those emotional cuts were even deeper than the physical ones.

During periods of calm in our relationship, Kevin would make an effort to take the medication that seemed to help keep him balanced. It made me realize that he was capable of being
civilized when not under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately, these moments of peace were few and far between. They would surface and last for only a couple of days, if that, before his demons of addiction would knock on his door and he would answer. Almost without warning, he would drift back into his old out-of-control self. A drink here, a snort of cocaine there, and he was off into a totally unpredictable state of mind, almost like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformation.

It didn’t take much to set him off—it could almost occur with the simple snap of the fingers. The cycle became crystal clear: I was on a roller-coaster ride that I had no idea how to get off of, so I stayed on, naively hoping that things would get better.

All Kevin had mentioned since we first met was the prospect of marrying me. I never understood why he was in such a rush. It was a technique of his to keep me in the picture. I realized soon after we said “I do” that, to him, marriage was more about controlling me than loving me. Kevin’s definition of love was ownership, and he wanted to own me. In hindsight Kevin’s last name being attached to my name was tied in to his identity in a powerful way, but this was far too complex for me to fully comprehend at the time.

I had always loved the idea of marriage. My relationship with Jorge, who was a wonderful man, should have resulted in our standing at the altar together. However, the timing for both of us was off. I was primed and ready to get married, finally at the point of settling down, but the legal complications
ultimately got in the way. Then Kevin came along. I foolishly believed that marriage would change things for the better in our relationship.
Once we get married, Kevin will feel totally secure, and he will be fine,
I thought, with hope in my heart. I would daydream that our marriage would finally make me feel safe and secure as well. I’d have someone standing by my side at all times.

Kevin had his addictions, for sure, but I had mine also. My addiction was the storybook fantasy of love and what it was supposed to feel like. I was more in love with the idea of marriage than I was with Kevin. I think this is a common issue in dysfunctional relationships. I suffered from the delusion that if I married Kevin, then I would finally feel love. I would be Mrs. Maher, and the love I sought would accompany the title
wife.
I imagined that once we got married his insecurities would diminish. He would stop taking drugs and drinking. He would quit obsessing over me. He would make a concerted effort to be a good husband and the supportive man who I had always wanted him to be. Foolishly, I thought we had a shot at normalcy.

Our trip to the altar on October 20, 1988, wasn’t exactly what wedding dreams are made of. In fact, it was a nightmare.

Kevin brought his pal Mark, who worked in a car dealership on Long Island, with him to be our witness in front of the justice of the peace. After we said our
I do’s,
Kevin accused me of flirting with Mark. Kevin had come back from the bathroom in the municipal building and didn’t like the way Mark was leaning over and talking to me closely.

“I think you offered him sex,” he said, his voice filled with jealousy and rage.

“What! You’re crazy, Kevin,” I said.

“I’m going to show you what happens when you even let another guy talk to you.”

We didn’t even make it out of the parking lot of the justice of the peace before Kevin lived up to his promise. As soon as I got into the car and looked up from buckling my seat belt, he smashed me in the left side of my face with his fist. My head flew back and hit the passenger-side window, and I blacked out for a brief moment. When I came to, I immediately covered my face as he continued to yell and scream.
This is supposed to be a grown man, my protector, my husband,
I thought. I had thought Kevin would change once we got married, and he did change. He became more brutal and jealous.

I had told my mom about my plans to marry Kevin, and she made it clear that she did not approve. However, as I said, my parents and I did not have a normal relationship, and I never looked for or sought my mom’s approval. I always felt I was the stronger one in our mother/daughter relationship. Her opinion of Kevin was correct, of course, but I didn’t listen; I was young and thought I knew better. After he hit me the first time, I called my mother and told her what had happened. She told me to get away from him. When I told her I couldn’t, she was upset to say the least, but I still thought I knew what I was doing. Women in their early twenties often do, even when they’re making big mistakes.