Roommate Chronicles: Cardi* the ShotGirl
Pt. 2 Recap: Mama Cardi Loves Black Girls
Did you know hair schools drug test? Neither did Cardi. She claimed they only found weed, but we know the truth.
That girl was on coke. She’d been acting jumpy and anxious. She’d disappear for days at a time. She also became messy AF. Actually, no, she was downright dirty. When I tell you I watched this girl climb up a mountain of dirty clothes to get in her bunk bed (we’re talking 6ft off the ground). Real talk, she might be smarter than all of us because climbing ladders is bad on the knees.
She was in the midst of a downward spiral already so it wasn't surprising that school was the least of her concerns.
Mama Cardi was understandably pissed. Cardi came from a wealthy family with all the trimmings of white privilege, but couldn’t stay in school or hold down a job and drank more beer than she did water. And, even though Cardi’s apple fell dangerously close to her mother’s tree, I could still understand the disappointment. The final verdict from Mama Cardi was that if she couldn't get her shit together they were cutting her off.
Totally respect that. Our moms would have done the same, but me and BestFriend were like wait...who the hell is gonna pay her rent? Sorry Cardi, but neither one of us does well with evictions. She told us not to worry because she already had a job lined up.
I wasn’t comforted by that because Cardi didn’t have many skills. I’d seen her paint a door once, but even that was streaky and she got paint on the carpet. I wondered what kind of job she'd found that quickly that would give her enough coins to cover her part of the rent.
Later that night she emerged from her bedroom in hot pants and a crop top, face, arms and legs dipped in body glitter. Me and Bestfriend looked at her like Da Fuq? But, before we had a chance to ask she told us she got a job at Omar’s.
Omar’s is the grossest, dirtiest strip club in Lansing, MI. It’s hot and smells like baby oil and basements. It’s a terrible place that no young girl should work in.
But the rent.
So, we told her good luck and let her go on her way.
The next day when I got home I walked in to see Cardi standing by the kitchen table with one leg hiked up on a chair, watching a Youtube tutorial on “twerking”.
“Hey Kimber! I’m trying to learn how to twerk”.
Obviously.
She told me about her first night at Omar’s and stressed that she wasn't a “Stripper”, she was a “Shot Girl” and there’s a “difference”. At the beginning of the night she'd buy a tray of shots and it was her job to sell them and recoup the money. All she had to do was dress cute, be flirty and occasionally let a man take a shot from her boobs (which I thought was a real feat since Cardi was about an A cup on a good day).
She wanted to earn more tips and noticed the girls who could twerk were making the most money so she was trying to learn. She asked if I could show her.
Do I know how to twerk? Of course I do! But I knew she was only asking since she assumed I could twerk because #melaninpoppin so I told her I didn't know how and went to my room.
A few months later she spilled an entire tray of shots without paying for them and never went back to Omar’s, but before that happened-- Cardi found a boyfriend.
:) KB
Read Part 4 of the Roommate Chronicles next Tuesday to find out about her love life!
Spoiler Alert: Cardi becomes a scammer.
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of each person.
