Clits and Tits

Not only was it a crappy day shift that I had to endure today, but I was also presented with a full on clitoris shot.  I was just minding my own business and serving a drink to the guilty girl and a very perverse (and rich) regular when he asked me to come sit by him.  I knew something was up, and as I came to his side I realized that he was the one who was up and we were both facing a spread eagle stripper without any underwear on.

He then asked me if I liked it, I told him it wasn't for me and he replied, "Can you believe she had a kid? Looks tight, no?" Now it usually takes a lot for me to be at a loss for words, but all I could do was laugh. When she preceded to ask me if I liked girls (no) and if she could turn me out, I refused. Then she wanted to just 'look' at my covered parts, Tony offered money to comply, but I smiled politely and shook my head. She went on, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours".  Looking at her still exposed labia I answered, "You're not very good at negotiating are you?"  That was the end of the conversation and they headed off to the private room. He's so gross.

Dirty Money

I'm always getting a whiff of cocaine at the club.  Okay, I just gave myself away. Obviously I'm no saint- I don't do coke, per se, but I have tried it. It's been a really long time, I swear, but I'll never forget that distinct dirty coke smell and I think I smell it at the club.

It's especially strong by the cage- the window in the basement by the changing room where strippers pay their house fees and bartenders pick up and drop off their bank. The money room. When I'm flattening out and organize our tip jar I smell cocaine too. It's all over the cash, I think. At first I didn't say anything, but recently I made a comment about it and someone answered, "Everyone says that."

Rich Boys

One of my customers disappeared into a private room a little after midnight and then reappeared at closing time.  He was a young guy, decent looking and buying everyone shots.  His friends were cool enough too- those rare groups of young men who don't need to be there but were looking for something different to do.  One didn't like to be touched- especially by strippers.  

When 'Chad' showed up at 4am he started complaining immediately to me about being ripped off upstairs.  "They kicked us out 15 minutes before our time was up," he told me, "I'm never coming back.  Even the girls agreed that it was too soon."  As if the stripper would disagree with anything he said.  I apologized and asked him if there was anything I could do- careful not to give him the real name of the host that he was accusing (since he was calling him by the wrong name anyway).  Chad told me everything was fine and that he would call management the following day to complain.

Ten minutes later or so, with the lights on and everyone being ushered out, Chad approached me again and laughed, "I'm fine.  I have a trust fund so whatever.  I'll probably be back tomorrow."

The Last Days

A friend of mine quit. She had been working at a different gentleman's club in the city, one I used to work at with her, and said she couldn't do it anymore- it's slow and a lot of the girls are selling themselves (an impossible service to compete with). Another popular strip club in the city was recently shut down over prostitution and drugs.

If the strip club circuit is a litmus test for the state of societal morality, it appears the worst of the worst is getting worse and worse.

Bianca, we'll call her, is a massage girl. Or was. She moves from guy to guy making twenty a song to rub their neck and shoulders on the floor (equipped with lotions, money clip and Purel). It used to be commonplace for Bianca to be paid by the hour and brought into a private room -just to massage- whether because one guy fell for her or because a group of ballers wanted another luxury along with the strippers they purchased. She used to be able to knock on closed room doors to see if anybody wanted a back rub.

Not anymore.

Long gone are the days of the looking without touching, bachelor parties where a topless dancer is the highlight, and parties on the corporate credit card. If a guy comes out of his own pocket to take a girl to a private room, he's expecting sex. You don't want to poke your head in on that room.

Does Aunt Flow Know You're a Stripper?

My girlfriend asked me yesterday what the dancers did when they got their period. Tampons with a cut string, I told her. She really wanted to know about the whores, and we discussed the alternative options they had. But do they have an honest relationship with the managers to tell them, 'I can't work for the next 5 to 7 days'? Probably. Recently I listened to a girl's loud, sexual moans from a room for a good half hour and the manager did too, but she was never reprimanded as far as I can tell. 

I have had conversations with girls about the ways they tricked their regulars so as not to have to do it- ketchup on a pad, tampon in anyway, crying and complaining, etc. But what does the menstruating hooker do when she's supposed to appear to only be a stripper (keeping the days she's agreed to work)? Take a loss, pay the fee and sit around?  Resort to... clutching my pearls... getting naked on the main floor for less money? I don't think I know the answer, but I bet the master manipulators that make up the sex-for-money crew have plenty of answers and rationalizations.

A while ago a girl was giving a well dressed man a lap dance and bled on his lap. She was horrified, he was disgusted, and the club paid for the dry cleaning. Wonder if that's tax deductible for them.

No Sex in The Champagne Room?

What would be the point then?  The girls are rubbing up against the Johns on the floor during their lap dances enough to get them off, so what's left to do in the rooms besides sex? Besides drugs?

Those are the two most popular room activities: sex and drugs.  They're the promises that lure the men into the private areas for massive amounts of money. I immediately think of some close, clean stripper friends of mine. One insists on going in to rooms with coke heads because they can't get aroused, she says, and they just sit and talk all night. I have a hard time believing you can do this without partaking in the blow. My other friend doesn't get into the drug hustle.  She just dances, no touching, but she has to work almost every day and all night. Drunk. Her rooms are rarely renewed for additional time, because she's lucky to trap them for whatever they initially decide.  And nine times out of ten he's going to leave frustrated. Every now and again one might fall for her and come back, become somewhat regular- but those guys take a lot of time and energy outside of the club to maintain, i.e. texting and dinners. 

When I started my first strip club shift I remember assuming that the dancers who worked every night, the girls who moved around the room a lot from man to man, must be more crazy. It's so intense! Do they like it? Are they spending their money on drugs, and that's forcing them back every night? Aren't strippers supposed to have lots of free time? She works as much as I do. Then I learned the truth. The girls who show up sparingly and sit calmly at the bar when they do, they're more likely crazy. The money is even faster and the attitude is more lax when you're a high end Manhattan hooker. That kind of girl waits for that one guy to make their night - she could've set it up already. Bang. Big money. Or if she hasn't made 'a date', she knows that she's in a place where men with too much money and a buzz on are going to eventually come... pun intended.  She's willing to give them that, and for that the men will be willing to pay. It only takes one. A straight up stripper has to work for it- one by one by one. House fees are high (the cost to be an 'independent contractor', or dancer, in a club), and you don't want to get naked only to break even, so if you're only dancing then time (or songs) are money. Go go go. 'No I won't suck your dick, gimme 20 for the dance, NEXT!'

Another shift passes.

Beer with your lap dance?

I work in a strip club... with my clothes on!  I have to remember to throw that in right away. 

People judge so quickly, so first thing's first: I'm not a stripper, I'm a bartender.  Not that there's anything wrong with stripping, but there is a difference between the service workers in the strip club industry and the strippers (like strippers might actually 'service' someone). These spheres of employment do sometimes share a grey area, I won't deny that, but they definitely are separate. 

Oh.  And I actually do think there's something wrong with stripping (many things), but we'll get to that.

The thing is, my formative years were only semi-traumatic and dysfunctional, so although I have trouble dealing with much of the behavior I see at 'the club'- even from behind a protective bar, rail full of booze, ice bin, thin layers of clothing, and sarcastic attitude - I can handle it. While I was exposed early to some of the corrupted side, I was also raised in a great small city, loved, supported and taught by intelligent people. A village! I can handle AND report back.

But I must warn you, it gets disgusting. I notice every millimeter of contact my exposed skin makes with something or someone for the full 11 to 14 hour shift at a strip club.  Have you ever seen a champagne room in daylight? It's quite literally a dirty business- dirty money, dirty people, dirty couches, carpets, forks and glasses. Use your imagination. You can't see it with the flashing lights, but I know all the dirt.

A blog is the next logical step. To deal with my inability to process what I witness at work, I've gotten into the habit of writing down the most horrific stuff.  Then there's also some just plain funny crap.  Another grey area.  While the idea at first was that I'd write to get the visuals off my chest so I could sleep better, I don't know that it's really working.  It's adapting to an overnight schedule and building immunity to general debauchery that have probably helped my sleeping patterns most. Still, this is better than a stack of notes on napkins and receipt papers stuck in full notepads anyway. Slap on a pen name and send it out into cyberspace! Turn my nausea into someone else's laugh! Ya know, I forget that some people don't know how to play Stripper Charades, and don't know what funny money looks like or what a house mom does. Then I find myself defining something as simple as a knee job to set up a story worth telling. Perhaps an education in Gentleman's Club 101 is my calling.

Disclaimer: What I can't do is reveal the real me, the real name of the club or the people in it. 

Besides obvious common sense and polite discretion, I won't be outright for two specific reasons: I don't have the nerve to step on the toes of any major strip club owner AND I've had nightmares of my father coming in looking for me. In my dream Pop's pissed even though I'm only bartending when he walks in. He points at me from across the room and I wake up.  I never remember what I'm doing exactly behind the bar at that moment. I could've been making a drink; giving a customer shit for calling me something inappropriate; laughing with my new coworker friends; or leaning over to serve a coked up, drunk pervert while wearing a short skirt and my cleavage hanging out. Maybe I was the only girl dressed in the room. Is everything still relative then? Still the weight of that feeling stays for a few very real minutes of humiliation after his angry eyes wake me. I really don't want my father to find out.

Moving right along.  It's too interesting to ignore.

My mother and stepfather know where I work. I joke about it with them - they're bartenders too.  I give some credit to them for my first few layers of thick skin with all the time I spent in a 'regular', alcohol-only serving bar while growing up.  Their daughter, my teenage sister, knows about my employment history as well, while my other, much younger sister on my father's side obviously doesn't. Blah blah blah... point (again) being, one has to be a little screwed up to deal with the strip club environment to begin with, and I grew up pretty quickly. Even the protective father who haunts me in my dreams is a musician- hardly innocent.

I think I've deemed myself qualified to embark on a behind the scenes strip club blog. And what's more is that I need the outlet- obviously. Once extended time is spent peering into the deepest of the dark side (like working in a brothel... er... strip club), no matter how much you actually partake, your own center of moral gravity can potentially shift away from the, well, The Light.  I have to be careful and keep perspective and writing seems to help.

It's not like I can quit. The money's good.