Wages of Sin (13 page)

Stephanie was allowed to only go on group outings to the movies, with parents doing the driving. Robert Martin talked to her more about boys and sex. Her sophomore year, she was allowed to date.

Roxy Ricks and her boyfriend drove over to the Martins’ to pick her up. Stephanie wasn’t ready, as usual. She still needed to iron her shirt. In bra and panties only, Stephanie Martin walked into the room holding her shirt in her hands, ready to iron it in front of Roxy and her boyfriend.

“Uh, Stephanie, that’s kind of rude,” said Roxy, who was self-conscious and shy about her body, believing she was all hips and no breasts.

Nothing deterred Stephanie. She was always confident and comfortable showing off her body.

 

 

At sixteen years old, Stephanie Martin was pregnant.

Robert Martin sat down with his daughter. “Stephanie, how could this have happened? Are you going to be able to keep the baby? What’s the boy going to do?” Robert Martin believed he knew what the boy was going to do. “The boy’s going to do nothing but maybe send you fifty dollars.”

Robert Martin thought the boy was nice, but he was young, like Stephanie. Martin believed his sixteen-year-old daughter had the maturity level of a twelve-year-old, and a twelve-year-old wouldn’t make a very responsible parent. Stephanie Martin wanted an abortion.

He heard the words in his mind,
The parents inherit the sins of the daughters. The parents have to either take their daughters to the hospital to have a baby or have an abortion.
It was not a grand option. There was a part of Robert Martin that wanted his daughter to have the child.
That way, she’ll understand what’s going on,
he thought.

Against their Christian beliefs, the Martins got their teenage daughter an abortion.
I wouldn’t do it again. Not ever. That was a mistake for my daughter,
thought Robert Martin.
But she’s so young. It’s a onetime boo-boo. She’ll learn from it, and we’ll go on.
He just wanted his daughter to feel okay, and he just wanted his wife and himself to feel okay. But they didn’t.

It was also at that age, that Robert Martin had his proudest moment from his daughter—she placed in the top five in a statewide jazz dance contest. He smiled big that day. He knew that if he and his daughter had been teenage boys together, they would have been holy hell on wheels.

That same year, she smoked her first marijuana joint, and dedicated herself to Jesus Christ. Stephanie Lynn Martin often dreamed that she met God and He told her that she was to be a great leader. She also often dreamed that Satanists were trying to kill her. Stephanie Lynn Martin watched a lot of horror movies.

She felt she finally, fully understood that God had sent Jesus to save her from her sins and that she could have an intimate relationship with God.

 

 

Stephanie and Roxy were on the high school drill team. Just before drill team practice, the best friends sat eating in a Ponca City restaurant. The restaurant’s outdoor umbrella, thought the teenage duo, was really cool.

“Yeah,” breathed Stephanie with excitement, “let’s take it.”

“Okay,” said Roxy.

“Go get your car, pull around, and open the hatch. I’ll throw the umbrella in, and we’ll leave.”

So they did.

During drill team practice, a cop walked in and asked them to come with him. “Is that your umbrella?” he said, pointing to the rear hatch of Roxy’s car.

“No, we stole it.”

“You know, I could arrest you for grand larceny. Just give it back, and we’ll mark it off.”

Rarely, however, did Stephanie Martin get to dance with her drill team. Her grades were too poor.

One of the few times she did get to dance, Martin allegedly forgot to wear her briefs, which were supposed to be worn over her pantyhose. When the dancers lay on the floor with their pom-poms and did X’s with their legs, teenage Stephanie Martin flashed an entire side of the pep rally. The boys went wild with their screams.

Roxy never dreamed, and certainly never believed, that perhaps Stephanie Martin knowingly “forgot” her briefs for the second time since seventh grade. Roxy just thought she and Stephanie were airheads. She thought Stephanie was gullible.

With high school, Roxy Ricks and Stephanie Martin began to establish different friends. Roxy began to tire of Stephanie’s shenanigans, particularly that Stephanie was always late, as well as that they each had boyfriends. Stephanie dated a young man who was as daredevil as she was. The two constantly got into trouble. Ricks presumed it was for the thrill of getting away with it.

Just before the start of Stephanie Martin’s senior year in high school, she and her mother and father moved to Round Rock, Texas, the growing northern suburb of Austin. It was a huge change of pace.

Ponca City had one high school. Round Rock had three. In Ponca City, Mrs. Martin was a stay-at-home mom. In Round Rock, she went to work for the First Baptist Church of Round Rock as a secretary.

Brothers Cid and Jeff stayed behind in Oklahoma. Stephanie Martin’s boyfriend was in Oklahoma. Roxy Ricks was in Oklahoma. The only one who wasn’t there was Stephanie. She cried the entire first day of their drive toward Austin. That bothered her father—he’d never seen her do that.

Once they settled into an apartment, to wait for their house to be built, he let her phone Ponca City relatively often for ten-to fifteen-minute conversations. He even let her boyfriend come down for a visit.

Despite the fact that they had been going in different directions, even separate states, the move upset Roxy Ricks. No one knew her like Stephanie did. Stephanie understood her weirdness and stood up for her with the Martins.

Stephanie and Roxy planned visits. Stephanie’s parents didn’t approve when Roxy came to Austin. Unlike the boyfriend, Ricks absolutely was not welcome under the Martin roof. They set her suitcases on the front porch of their neat, upper-middle-class Round Rock home.

By then, Robert Martin had bought his daughter a car. Senior high students Stephanie Martin and Roxy Ricks drove into Austin, rented a Motel 6 room, and partied the weekend away on Austin’s Sixth Street, a wild and loud few blocks of downtown, notorious for falling-down drunken college students doing Jell-O shots, dancing until the sweat forced the clothes from their bodies, and easily obtaining one-night stands.

Oh, my god, what have I done?
thought Robert Martin as he heard about Sixth Street.
I’ve moved to the party capital of the world.

Stephanie Martin scurried one block off Sixth Street and threw open the dark doors to Ohms. With its pulsing dance music, throbbing lights, and vampire-dressed teens, Ohms was Martin’s favorite club.

Grinning and grinding to the music, she pumped her body out to the back patio, stared at the murals on the walls, and slipped herself a hit of Ecstasy.
Dancing on X,
she thought,
this is better than sex. Then again, sitting down and eating a whole cheesecake can be better than sex.
Martin laughed to herself and danced. She started doing X every other weekend for three or four months.

Martin and Ricks drove down the streets of the party district and passed a man leaning against a pay phone, wearing a trenchcoat, and looking and behaving, they thought, like a crackhead. Martin noticed the bum just as she wondered what time it was.

She jumped out of the car. “Hey, what time is it? Do you know what time it is?”

He grunted at her and slapped toward her, urging her away.

“No, what time is it? Do you know what time it is?”

“Go away,” he drunkenly muttered.

“No, no, what time is it?”

He reached into his trenchcoat.

Ricks jumped out of the car, grabbed her friend, and pushed her to safety. “What are you doing!”

At eighteen, Martin dropped her first LSD. She went to class at Austin Community College during the week, and partied with dancing and drugs on the weekends. She danced until the sun rose and the club owners forced her out their doors.

As she had done with X, Martin dropped a bit of acid on her tongue every other weekend for several months. She simply slipped from one drug to the other, like a girl hooked on Oreos, then on moon pies, and back again.

 

 

Robert Martin wanted his daughter home at what he considered a decent hour. She wanted to drive fast and party with her friends, often getting speeding tickets, sometimes getting dents. Whenever she dented the car, she told her father immediately, never trying to hide the accident.

Her freshman year in college, Robert Martin gave his daughter an edict—“I think it’s time for you to get an apartment.” His was sick and tired of her refusal to come home at a reasonable hour. “That’s got to stop.”

With the edict, Stephanie phoned Roxy Ricks and asked her to move to Austin. It had been two years since the Martins had moved to Texas, and Ricks was sick of small-town Oklahoma. As she wanted to go to the University of Texas, she jumped at the chance to room with her best friend.

When Stephanie told her mother, Sandra Martin responded, “Oh, no. Not that Roxy.”

Ricks immediately drove to Texas and moved in temporarily with another friend. She got a job hostessing at Bennigan’s restaurant making $100 a week.

“How can I afford to get an apartment on this?” she asked.

Stephanie Martin had just quit her job as a nursing assistant at a home for the elderly, realizing that she didn’t like working with old people despite dreaming of a career as a nurse. She looked at Ricks and her roommate, her hazel eyes twinkling.

“I know how we can make money.” She paused and grinned for dramatic effect. “We can dance topless. We can strip for money.”

“No way,” cried Ricks. “I don’t have any breasts. Come on.”

Martin’s smile danced. “Someone just told me what them bars are like.” Her voice grew deep as she relayed the information to the girls. “It’d be fun. It’d be on the edge.”

Roxy Ricks sighed. “Let’s just go look and see what’s out there.”

They jumped in the car and soon careened into the parking lot of Sugar’s, an upscale strip club. They walked in, their eyes having to adjust from the brightness of the summer sun to the darkness of the smoky room. Music blasted. Young, shapely girls moved slowly, their hands rubbing across their bodies, their knees grazing the men’s thighs. They eased their fingers between their bodies and G-strings and slowly pulled the thin material, allowing the men a glimpse of intimacy.

Ricks blinked with embarrassment. She hadn’t realized the girls wore only G-strings.

They were asked if they wanted to dance.

“Oh, no,” said Roxy. “We’re just thinking about it.”

“But that looks so easy,” said Martin. “They’re not even dancing.” She laughed. “They’re just moving real slow, right.”

The dancers’ looks were so good, their bodies so hard, it intimidated Roxy.

They walked out of the bar and drove a few quick miles to the Yellow Rose, at that time, perhaps, Austin’s second most popular strip club. While its clientele was a bit more blue-collar than Sugar’s, it still had its fair share of U.S. representatives and senators and high-end attorneys on its customer list.

Martin’s eyes grew bright as they stepped into the Rose’s darkness. The stage at the Rose was bigger, much bigger than Sugar’s. Martin loved that stage. Its atmosphere seemed slower, mellower, and there weren’t as many girls dancing—less competition for the bucks and the men.

They walked out the door. Martin and her friends were comfortable at the Yellow Rose, with its white warehouse look on the outside, fancy cars parked in the front, pickup trucks parked in the back. That was the place for them.

They made a plan. They’d go home, they’d work and whip their bodies into shape for the next week, then they’d start taking their clothes off for money at the Yellow Rose. They’d work their way up to Sugar’s. They’d strip for only a year.

And that’s what they did, partly.

 

 

It was a slow day shift in 1991. Stephanie Martin and her friends stood in the Rose, adjusting their T-backs and slamming back a couple of Long Island iced teas. Waitresses, sedate in black pants or skirts, white tops and black bow ties, wove between girls naked except for their G-strings.

The veteran dancers looked relaxed, as if they were simply sitting at home naked on their beds manicuring their toes. As they danced in the men’s laps, pushing their breasts and swirling their groins into the men’s noses, the dancers continued to look as excited as if they were manicuring their toes.

They stared back over their shoulders to check out the women and men. They talked to each other. They reached for cigarettes.

Martin and Ricks reached for another iced tea. Ricks pulled out onto the stage, grabbed the pole, wrapped her legs around it, and swung her body to the music as sports and news flashed on every TV in the room.

It felt like power!

Martin blasted onto the stage, with Ricks cheering. She thrust and throbbed her body in a routine heavy on aerobics. Martin danced as though she’d been stripping for years.

When Martin climbed off the stage, her smile was huge.

No one in the club could believe this was the girls’ first time. Martin walked over to a table, made eye contact with a customer, and sat down to talk to him.

The girls earned about $175 that day.

Soon they switched to the more lucrative and prestigious night shift. Around 10
P.M
., the Rose transformed itself from a slew of unsmiling loners to a wailing crowd of free-spending, gangly university students and wealthy professionals.

The men were louder, faster, and wilder. The music was louder, faster, and wilder. But the job wasn’t as easy as it looked. Stephanie Martin knew she had to learn how to hustle the men. She watched and she learned.

She walked up to a table. “Would you like some company?” The customer could barely hear over the deejay and music, but that didn’t matter. Martin steadied her hazel eyes on him. She knew when it came to table dances, the eyes were the most important asset.

He gestured for her to sit. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Talk was the second most important asset.

Martin leaned close to listen. The body was merely the third asset. She smiled. “Would you like me to dance?”

He shook his head. She moved to the next table. She was learning, time was money. Conversation was money. The next man said yes to her offer to dance. She started earning $500 a night.

Martin got into the life of topless dancers, though not so much the drugs. She had Roxy to keep her away from that. They had watched too many dancers enter the bar depressed and crying, do a line of cocaine, and be ready to party.

But the rest of the stripper world, especially the money, Stephanie liked. “I’ll pay you three hundred dollars if you’ll go eat breakfast with me.” Stephanie Martin went and ate breakfast. She also liked the men at the Rose. She thought they were young and good-looking.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Take me home with you,” a patron said, as she danced, her thighs sliding up and down his.

“No,” cried his buddies. “Don’t take him home. He’s getting married tomorrow.”

“I know,” said Martin, her hands slipping down his body. “I’m not going to.”
God, he’s good-looking.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” said her customer. “I’m not really in love with her. I’m just gettin’ married because she’s pregnant.”

“That’s even worse,” laughed Martin.
But, God, is he ever attractive.
She left with him.

 

 

After a few months at the Rose, Stephanie Martin met a customer who was a bit older than she—Todd Brunner, a smart and successful mechanical engineer in the high-tech industry. They started dating, and Martin quickly got pregnant.

“I don’t want a baby,” she heard Brunner say. “Here’s the money. You better go get an abortion.”

Martin didn’t know whether she wanted to have an abortion. It wouldn’t be, after all, her first. She was nineteen years old, and she seemed to suffer morning sickness morning, noon, and night. She got an abortion, got depressed, and moved in with Brunner.

“Stephanie, think,” Brunner constantly scolded her as she drove down the streets of Austin too fast, or as she did anything he thought was stupid. “Stephanie, think.”

Martin started having migraine headaches.
I have nobody to support me emotionally,
she thought.

“I’m sorry,” she heard Brunner say about his insensitivity regarding the abortion. She thought they’d eventually marry. She thought he was a “good, good boyfriend” who never got loud or violent with her, who complimented her on her grades and her workout regimen.

“I will not marry a woman who’ll get fat, who’ll be lazy, and who’ll have a lot of kids,” she heard Brunner repeatedly tell her.

“I want to go to church,” she said. “I want to join Riverbend.”

Riverbend, on Austin’s expensive west side, was a church that many local fundamentalist Baptists considered sinfully liberal because its preacher didn’t scream “sinner” each Sunday morning. “Sinner” is what Martin believed she’d heard her parents call her as a child. She
really
liked Riverbend.

“I don’t want to go,” argued Brunner. “They’re all judgmental hypocrites.”

“Why don’t you give this church a chance?” said Martin. “It might be different.”

“No, Stephanie. That’s where you’re so naive. You don’t know people like I do.”

Stephanie Martin felt that Brunner was always telling her she was dumb. She went to a psychiatrist and was put on antidepressants. Less and less, she wanted to have sex with Brunner. More and more, she thought of him as her best friend, as a father figure.

And with Todd Brunner in Martin’s life, Martin didn’t see Roxy Ricks as much—Martin didn’t have time for friends when she had a lover.

Besides that, Ricks was sick and tired of always waiting on Martin. She’d been three hours late just to dress to go to Lake Travis and hang out in the sun. If she went to Lake Travis with Stephanie and Todd, Roxy spent her time listening to Brunner’s foulmouthed berations at Martin.

“Goddamn it, you bitch! You stupid bitch!”

Roxy still loved Stephanie, but she was disappointed that her childhood friend dated stripper bar customers. That was a rule that one just didn’t break.