I, Miss Lala Bigg, okay, okay so, my name is really Dagmar Mildred Klungerrud. What was I supposed to do? How could I go on stage and shake my fanny with a name like Dagmar? They told me to pick a name that was catchy after my first boob job and Lala Bigg had a nice ring to it. I was Doc Saperstein's favorite patient back in the day before there was a boob butcher on every corner in Vegas. It used to be pretty much just for us showgirls who ended up strippers, but now every broad on the planet wants a pair of bongos. Christ Almighty, I've even seen pumped-up boobies on 14-year-old girls walking down the Strip. They look like they have a pair of balloons hanging off their chests.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.
I, Miss Lala Bigg, of the City of Las Vegas, in the County of Clark, State of Nevada, do hereby make, publish and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament and revoke all former wills, including the one I wrote on a cocktail napkin at The Golden Nugget one morning after three days of partying, and the one I wrote on the inside cover of my copy of Valley of the Dolls when I didn't think I'd make it after I wolfed down a couple of boxes of No Doze and drank a pint of bourbon when that puss hound, Phil Marino, dumped me for that trashy piece of tail that worked the corner of Rainbow and Paradise, and all deals, promises, vows, including all five of my marriages, oaths, anyone I owe money to and any codicils.
What codicils means is a mystery to me. When I called the phone number on the infomercial after I received Suze Orman's CD, How To stay Rich When You're Dead: Five Easy Steps To Writing Your Own Will, they assured me it wasn't a dirty word, so I left it in to make it look more legal. According to Suze, "If you know how to make sound legal decisions, you'll be comfortable in death and at the same time on the road to financial success."
Now, what comes next? Okay. Being of sound mind and body, this first part I can prove because I can still name every mobster who came into Mr. Tease and know how many guys they whacked when I danced there, back when it was still on Tropicana, before the suits tore it down and built Casino World. Can you believe it? Some big-shot corporation came in and demolished that beautiful old strip club. The worst part is, they hired snot-nosed kids barely old enough to wipe their rear-ends to call the shots. Not a mobster in sight. Ole Blue Eyes must be rolling in his grave.
As for the second part, about having a sound body, just ask my pool boy, Kyle. Only he's not really a boy. He's 18 and a half. I checked him out real good and made sure he was of legal age after that last little problem with the twins, Derrick and Dougie.
Anyway, back to who gets what!
To my sister, Irene Mae Rosenquist, who still lives where we grew up in Blizzard, North Dakota, and is still married to that fat Swedish piece of crap, Pete Rosenquist, and who should've stuck to her own kind and married a good Norwegian like Lars Benson, who's been in love with you ever since the time you were both stuck in the granary during the ice storm of '45, I leave Grandpa Larson's bug collection. Yes, that's right, the one he brought over from Norway when he was a boy. So, now, Irene, you can have a different bug for every day of the week to replace the one that's been stuck up your ass for the last 50 years, ever since I won the Miss Lefse pageant during Uff Da Days instead of you. Why did Grandpa Larson give me his bug collection and not you? I guess he felt beholden to me because I was the one he chose to fool around with, that good-for-nothing horny old geezer. No wonder Grandma Larson made him sleep alone in the back bedroom above the kitchen. I can still hear him yelling from the outhouse door, "Daggie, rip me off some more of the Sears catalog and bring it here."
You and I both know he already had plenty of paper out there to wipe his scrawny ass with.
Winning that pageant was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was 16 and you were about to get hitched and leave me alone with him. My prospects didn't look so good. If I hadn't been standing on top of that hay wagon in the middle of Leif Erickson Park wearing that crown with the missing rhinestones, my first husband, Lyle Buckmeier, would never have spotted me and whisked me off to Bismarck, North Dakota.
We sure did have fun. Those were fast days for us, back in Bismarck. Lyle was a tractor salesman for Tillerman's Farm Implements. We were a popular couple in farm-implement circles. Back then, farming was still king and there was a ton of money to be made, and we sure did spend it, like rich farmers at the state fair with a lot of parties and socializing at the Legion Club in downtown Bismarck.
Okay, here we go again.
To my great nephew, Elroy, who appreciates the female form more than anyone I know, judging by how many times I caught you with my before and after pictures, the ones Doc Saperstein used in all his advertisements, I leave you a lifetime pass to The Flesh Factory, just off the Strip, where I worked after Mr. Tease closed until I retired. Just don't let your prissy wife or your counselors at your sexaholic group find out. I just don't understand some people these days. They think seeing a little flesh now and then is a sin.
To the One Hundred Years of Strippers Exhibit and G-string Museum, I leave all my costumes. Just be careful with the ones old lady Svendsen made for me, they're so old they're about to turn into dust, just like me. She made them when I got my first dancing gig in Omaha, right after I left Lyle. I figured it was about time I turned pro and got paid for dancing around in my birthday suit instead of doing it for nothing at all those sales conventions Lyle dragged me to. It still frosts my ass when I think about how cheap those salesmen were whenever Lyle passed the hat at the end of the night. Not to mention Lyle pocketing most of the money I made dancing and getting plum full of beer and losing it all a few hours later playing poker. When I told him I landed a bona fide dancing job, he was madder than a wet hen. "No wife of mine is going to have a job! I make enough money to fill a silo. How will that look? Lyle Buckmiester, the number three tractor salesman in North Dakota, with a wife who works. What will the other guys think? You better shape up, missy, or I'll leave you home from now on."
Well, the rest is history. I packed my trunk, raided Lyle's billfold and caught the next Greyhound to Omaha.
Anyway, back to that old battle-axe, Mrs. Svendsen. She lived below me in the boarding house on Broadway and Tenth. I thought she was going to have a cow when I showed her the patterns for the costumes I got from the other girls at the club.
"The devil's talking in your ear. You'll roast in hell wearing those sinful things," she said.
I waved a five-dollar bill and a pint of Sunnybrooke in her puckered-up face and she shut the hell right up. Back then, five dollars was like having a corncrib full of money.
Even when I first started to take my duds off for money, I wasn't ashamed. I wasn't about to let anyone push me around, let alone some wrinkle queen with a Bible tucked under her scrawny arm and a bottle under her lonely bed. I'd enough of that nonsense, first with Irene always bossing me around, and then that bigmouth Lyle, expecting me to have babies and stay home and stop drinking Hamms beer and smoking Chesterfields while he was out gallivanting all over the county with his buddies, making deals with farmers and making hay with their daughters.
I just want to make sure those rum nuts who operate the stripper museum do right by me and display my vintage collection of feather boas real nice, in a glass case, just like at the Liberace Museum on Tropicana Avenue. Except my boas aren't mangy-looking, like they're some molting extinct bird, like Mr. Showmanship himself, may he rest in peace. They're special, the kind you can't get anymore, real ostrich feathers, not those synthetic feathers that itch and leave a rash on your ass the size of a crap table. Just make sure they're displayed right when you walk in the front door, next to the tribute to pasties and G-strings. I want visitors to get a feel for the golden days of exotic dance, when it was still classy, with beautiful costumes, and swanky clubs. There was nothing dirty about it, either. Back then, any self-respecting stripper had standards, not like dancers nowadays, bending every which way so those jackasses in the audience can shine their flashlights up every crack and crevice, like it's an anatomy class for drunken perverts. Nobody takes their job seriously these days.
To my best friend, Honey Sweet, whom I've known for 50 years, I leave all six of my girls: Miss Peaches, Sequins, Dusty, Champagne, Casino and Tassels. Just remember, Tassels poops a lot for a Chihuahua, but then, so do you, Honey, judging by all of those boxes of laxatives you toss in the shopping cart every week when we go to the Pick-n-Save. I also leave you, Honey, all of my promotional photos, including the life-size cardboard cutout of us when we were billed as Double Delight, wearing nothing but whipped cream and green and red maraschino cherries. We sure knew how to get those guys going, didn't we? We made more money in a week working private parties in the back room at Mr. Tease than that manure mouth Lyle ever did in a month of Sundays.
To my friend and sometimes enemy over the years, Jitterbug, who stole my second husband, Ricardo, away from me, even if I should've seen it coming when my makeup and G-strings kept turning up at your apartment. You guys sure made a cute couple, at least for a few months, until that hound dog Ricardo got a whiff of some other tail and took off. That crazy Brazilian never was too particular whose doghouse he put his bone in. I leave you my Precious Moments collections: the birthday, Christmas and angel series. It's the closest I've ever come to having a real family, even if they're made out of porcelain, what with that business with Grandpa Larson and all. They're your family now, enjoy them. You probably never had any precious memories growing up, either, with all those run-ins with your Mormon uncle despite all of his wives. I figure you need a family after all these years of going without one. Just be careful with them! They break easy.
The remainder of my assets, and I'm not talking about my caboose although it still looks good after all these years; my house that I've lived in for the past 40 years, I leave to VOICES IN ACTION to use as a sanctuary for incest victims. There, I said it. It's about time. Maybe if I'd had some place safe to go, my life would've turned out differently. Who knows? I might've settled down with some square guy and had a barn full of kids. That's all in the past now, like I am. So, lets get on with the show. It's time for my finale.
I, Miss Lala Bigg, have taken an oath and swear the above statements are true enough and that this is my last Will and Testament. I am not under any undue influence (I made sure I was good and sober before I made this out), am free of duress (What duress? That's why I came to Vegas all those years ago, to whoop it up and forget about the bad things) and am 18 years of age or older (It's none of the state's damn business how old I am) and execute it as my final act (even if my clothes are on). Viva Las Vegas.
Miss Lala Bigg