by Nick Molloy
I am very much the strong silent type. However, I can be very chatty when people talk back. If people aren’t talking to me, I constantly have to make an effort to talk and thus not appear to be rude. The Bull wasn’t one for idle chatter, he left that to his skirt.
I was to go on first, but not before Bells. Bells spent the half hour before he went out in a constant state of divadom, which for him is saying something. He was moaning about his dress, his makeup, the stage, how professionals like him had to tolerate amateurs and just about everything else around him. Meanwhile, Jason gave a knowing nod to all his concerns and acted as a counterbalancing calming force to his prime diva. After Bells had finally caked his face in make up, adorned a frock and put on a ridiculous wig, he grabbed the microphone and strode onto stage. I was told that after he went out I had about 20 minutes in which to get ready and be on stage.
The circumstances to my getting ready were slightly different to Bromptons. I was sharing my dressing room with other artistes and the situation was slightly more public. I had already laid out my costume and began to play with my dick this time in front of an audience who politely pretended to do something else. The Bull and his skirt actually left the room, whilst Jason began to busy himself preening wigs. In the distance I could hear Bells twittering away, the words not quite decipherable through the walls. He had just finished ‘singing’. This I knew because the decibels had been considerably heightened during the ordeal.
Wanking in the presence of a coy gay man was a slightly strange experience. Despite all my previous usage of sports psychology - the blocking out of all surroundings to purely focus on the job – I still found myself aware of Jason’s presence as he was busying himself in the background, sneaking the odd glance. The result was that it took me a minute or two longer to get a full erection, but this was hardly a major problem. I made the same mistake I did the first time in tying off a little too soon and as experience would eventually show me, I was using the wrong size of elastic band.
As I was putting on my final garment, Bells began to chant loudly into his microphone
‘WE WANT DICK, WE WANT DICK, WE WANT DICK’ in an attempt to whip the gathered throng up into an increasingly heightened frenzy. As the Eye of the Tiger began blaring from the speakers I began my short walk to the ‘arena’. The doorman pulled back the curtain and I began bouncing up and down and broke into a slow jog as I had to make my way through the gathered mass of women to the stage. I was conscious of hands grabbing at my clothing as I made my way past and there was an inordinate and inaudible amount of yells and shrieks coming from the crowd.
It was a completely different experience to Bromptons in virtually every way. Unlike there where the lights blinded me and I could hardly make out the faces in the crowd, this time the lighting was low and I could make out everybody on this bright, early summer’s evening. Unlike the gay audience, which politely observed and showed quiet appreciation, the girls were rowdy, loud, drunken and unappreciative of any theatre. This was payback on men night. The strippers were not so much objects of adoration as they had been to the gay men, but multi faceted symbols of both sexuality and rejection. The strippers were there for their express pleasure; to be laughed at, photographed and humiliated. Any fantasizing over the strippers was to be kept low key. Peer pressure dictated that the stripper was an object of mass consumption, not a symbol of personal desire.
I made the mistake, but learnt the lesson, on this night of how a stripper must always control the audience. Having described the whim of the audience above, I must confess I fell victim to it. I have always had latent sexual fantasies about being controlled and dominated by women. Although this situation was not overtly sexual, I allowed myself to be physically stripped by the women in the audience. Whenever I walked out into the mass I literally had them tearing at my garments trying to remove them and the same can be said for the women I brought up onto stage. This obviously was not in the script (although as I have already mentioned my choreography wasn’t up to much anyway at this time), but I allowed them to do it anyway. I thereby handed control to them and effectively lost the respect of the audience.
I completed the act and made my way back to the dressing room. The g-string I was wearing had gone. It had literally been pulled off and was no doubt now nestling in somebody’s handbag as a souvenir. My dick was sore. A couple of them had grabbed hold of it and yanked on it pretty hard, not to mention the whole elastic band thing. The Bull’s skirt pointed out that I now had several raised red marks on my skin – scratches - or war wounds to remind me of the experience.
I could see that Bells wasn’t too happy that I had let the audience gain control, not the other way around. However, I can only see this with hindsight. His body language showed that he thought the performance was indifferent. I explained what he already knew. Namely, that I was brand new to this and would welcome any constructive criticism that he could offer. I went on about how I could not possibly improve if people didn’t point out my mistakes and as I had no industry experience I couldn’t readily pick up the errors on my own. Despite requesting the feedback and explaining that my feelings would not be hurt by criticism, I could not get any. Bells merely stated with complete flippancy and insincerity that my performance was adequate for my first time on a ladies night. The only advice he imparted was the suggestion that I pluck my eyebrows so that they did not meet in the middle. Although, I think this advice was sound, it wasn’t quite what I was looking for at that stage. He then suggested I go out and sell Polaroid’s.
I had purchased an instant camera for this very reason on the advice of both Bells and Michael. Apparently, there existed a phenomena whereby the women that attend ladies nights are willing to pay £5 for the privilege of having an instant picture (such as a Polaroid) taken with the stripper. As the film averages out at around a pound per photo that is a profit of £4 per photo. Legend had it that a stripper could double his fee on a good night. As I was receiving £80, I would need about 20 pictures to do that. It seemed a tall order, but I was willing to try it under instruction.
‘Sissy, how do you do this ?’ I asked, more than a little uncertain. ‘Go topless, go and visit them at their tables and ask them if they want a photo’ came back the reply. ‘Don’t you at least announce it over the microphone ?’ came back my logical reply. ‘There is no need’ said Bells, clearly not interested.
So it was, that I wondered back out into the Lions Den. I had previously been doing a sales role that involved constant cold calling and mass rejection. This sort of task wasn’t exactly new to me. However, this felt different. Perhaps I didn’t believe in the product. Everybody had been taking pictures during the show and here I was trying to sell them a grainy photo for a fiver. The Unique Selling Point was that I was going to be in the photograph with them. Put simply, I didn’t see myself as a better than them, as a celebrity, or of any importance. Offering to sell the pictures felt like a phenomenal act of arrogance whereby I was proclaiming my betterment over the audience. I felt distinctly uncomfortable.
Wearing nothing more than a pair of tracksuit bottoms I began to circulate around the numerous tables with an instamatic camera. The fact that Bells had shown no interest and had failed to announce that I would do this did not help my cause. Half of the women were elsewhere (the loo, the bar, next door, etc). Some of them were openly rude and showed complete disdain to my suggestion of a photograph. Others gave polite refusals, some were put off by the price and a grand total of four bought a photo. At the end of this humiliating and degrading process I returned somewhat sheepishly to the dressing room. Bells enquired how I had done. ‘That’s alright’ he said in attempt to make himself feel better.
Bells was now getting ready for the second half of the evening and it wasn’t long before he again donned his wig and ventured back into the arena. My work for the evening was officially finished. I had been paid but I decided to stay, watch and learn. The Bull began to prepare himself for his show. A cowboy outfit had b
een neatly laid out on the table. A porn mag emerged from his bag with accompanying pieces of material. The Bull preferred to tie off using bias binding. This he soaked in water before wrapping it around his member. He then turned one of the chairs into the wall removed his underwear with his back to us and settled into a comfortable position – porn mag in one hand, his dick in the other. Everybody looked the other way while he did what he had to do.
Upon completing the necessary, the Bull donned his cowboy outfit, shy of horns, and strode out into his play area. I wondered out to see if I could get a look at his show, but the view was largely obscured, so I wondered back in again. The Bull returned about a quarter of an hour later devoid of his clothes and again turned his back to us all and grabbed a pair of scissors. He let out a large bellow as he cut the binding restricting the blood flow to his nether regions and he again began to breathe normally. Throughout the evening he had been very aware of preventing people gawping at his package, but being a stripper it was inevitable that people would have to see it at some point. The Bull definitely wasn’t hung like one and he knew it. He seemed very aware of the fact and he kept it covered as much as possible. Using bias binding certainly allows one to tie off more effectively. It prevents less blood loss and therefore a greater percentage of the erect size remains. However, given the bellow the Bull let out in his release, I thought I’d stick to elastic bands for now – they didn’t seem as painful.
Upon his release the Bull and his skirt were immediately galvanized into action. The Bull donned a g string that rode high up his arse whilst his skirt waved around an instamatic camera. They went out into the foyer area where there was a fair amount of transitional movement and the skirt effectively acted as an agent and the chief photographer. Maybe it was my inexperience, maybe their tag-team system was a proven formula, maybe I’m just ugly; but the Bull sold far more photos than I did and he returned soon after with another 50 quid from his Polaroid sales. I won’t pretend this didn’t bother me- it did. I didn’t resent his success, I just wanted to know how I could improve mine and they weren’t exactly queuing up to tell me how.
I packed up my things and carried them out to the car. There were a couple of the girls standing outside having a cigarette. Their eyebrows rose when I opened up the Impreza. ‘Flash car for a stripper, innit. You must get paid well for this job’ ? she quipped. ‘Not really’ I retorted. ‘It it true that it was your first time tonight’ she asked. I nodded. ‘It was good’ she said lacking sincerity.
It was early days and I needed to improve. Throughout my life I seem to have learnt most things the hard way. That is, by making mistakes with little outside guidance. It looked like stripping was going to be more of the same.
Chapter 7 – A Learning Process
Over the coming weeks I began to market myself in the stripping world and learnt very quickly that there were no friends. Drag queens were bitchy and the strippers were even bitchier. To call some of them assholes would have been an upgrade. Prejudice was rife on virtually every level. In my naivety I had expected a level of professional respect to come from the other performers. Instead, they were all carrying AK47s and they couldn’t wait to gun you down at the earliest opportunity.
One example of this occurred whilst I was on a modelling job for a website. Several males had been hired along with a gymnasium for the afternoon. The idea was that we would go into the changing rooms undress and go into the showers. Once showered, we would be required to get dressed again and leave the changing room. Shortly afterwards, we would again enter the changing area and repeat the process in a different set of clothes. The whole process was being filmed on camera and would be used on a website where supposedly there was a ‘hidden’ camera in the men’s changing room. Sorry to shatter any illusions but yes, hidden camera websites are faked.
The whole day was quite enjoyable. In between filming I was able to train in the gym and the work was about as easy as they come. There was also 150 notes waiting for me at the end of the day. Scott, who ran the agency, introduced me to another one of the models. Scott knew I had just started stripping and said that Evander, the other model, was actually a longstanding member of the Bell Ends.
We shook hands at the introduction, but Evander did so reluctantly. He eyed me up and down with complete disdain and my conclusion was that he resented the prospect of further competition. Evander was a very large, muscular white South African. By the end of the day the old Spitting Image song ‘I’ve never met a nice South African’ had entered my head and didn’t want to exit. Thankfully, I have met quite a few nice ones. Evander on the other hand, could have been a prison guard under the old Apartheid regime.
He proceeded to tell me how the stripping business was ‘so tough and difficult, mate. It’s not for the faint hearted’. When I asked him to elaborate further he was either unwilling or unable to do so. He continued to paint a very generalized picture in which the industry was ‘tough’ and newcomers were not welcome. ‘If I were you I’d do something else’ he said with sarcasm. I returned the volley with an equal amount of sarcastic spin ‘If it’s so tough maybe you should quit and let others have a go. Evander tried to stare me down. A more appropriate name for him would have been Tyson, for I was actually his Evander. Intimidatory tactics will only ever influence the weak. Evander and I didn’t exchange contact details and were not going to invite one another to dinner.
On the way home from the fake peep show I gave a lift to one of the other models. Vinny it turns out had done a fair amount of gay porn. I should also point out that Evander and I were the only two models on the day that looked like they had ever been to a gym ! The rest looked like they had only heard of the term. Anyway, Vinny explained that gay porn paid far more than straight porn and that shoots could pay around £300-£400 for a day. I enquired about whether the perceived rumour is true that large cocks need only apply. ‘Nonsense’ he said. ‘If a shot is required of a big one they just bring in a ‘Stunt Dick’. I tried hard not to swerve off the road with laughter (I managed, but only just). Thinking about it logically it made sense, but the thought of the stunt dick tickled me all the way home.
The very next show I did, the blind prejudice began in earnest. Michael called me and offered me the show. Apparently a stripper called Aimless had telephoned and asked him to help find a replacement for his absence. I filled the breach. I drove down to Brighton and found the somewhat small establishment, went inside and introduced myself as the stripper. I was met with a suspicious look by the manager who had very clearly already made up his mind, that I couldn’t possibly satisfy the expectations of an audience that wanted to see a male stripper.
I often make the mistake of taking people at face value (Aspergers) and automatically assume that people will show me the same courteousy. This they rarely seem to do, but it always takes me an excessive period to learn these this. I look young and I often turn up to shows wearing baggy clothing hiding my athleticism. People often therefore assume that I don’t look the part and wonder who this skinny youngster is trying to imitate the role of a male stripper. Probably because I have spent a lot of time around athletes and given my highly analytical nature, I don’t make these mistakes. I can look at someone who may be dressed but certain clues will tell you what they look like underneath. (e.g. the taughtness of their skin, the way they move, etc). People often get a surprise when I undress, but the first impression often sticks despite the fact that their eyes may now be betraying that first impression. Essentially, they are highly prejudicial.
I now go out to shows wearing a tight fitting top to combat this type of prejudice. However, if it is the middle of winter and freezing outside, I’ll still enter the room wearing an artic jacket and the prejudice often remains. I’m not particularly tall (at 5 foot 9) and athletic rather than stocky. The height should not be a problem, there are an unusual amount of short strippers. However, they all (to a man) wear platform shoes in a vain attempt to elevate their status. I wear trainers and the prejudic
ed don’t seem to notice such an obvious irregularity. Furthermore, because I look so young in a distinctly adult industry I don’t conform to the stereotype of what a stripper should look like. I even had a woman say to me once that being a stripper, I should be ugly. ‘Strippers are always ugly’ she said. ‘That way us girls can go home without pining too much’.
It wasn’t long before the other stripper arrived and he joined me in a dingy office that doubled up as a store room. This was to be our changing area for the night. Wyatt Earp was a tall athletic type and as it transpired he used to throw javelins. He was training to qualify as a masseuse or something similar. Stripping paid the bills, whilst he was completing his studies.
I explained that I was brand new and had been introduced to the business by the Rock of Ages (Michael). So too had Wyatt, who turned out to be very chatty and quite forthright in offering some sound and poignant advice (highly unusual as I was to discover).
He went on to explain that the business was nowhere near as glamorous or as demure as people are lead to believe. By way of example, he pointed to our changing area for the night, but went on to say that compared to outside toilets in the middle of winter, this was at least warm and relatively (I stress the relatively) uncramped. He also opined that gay shows often go more smoothly that the hen nights. ‘It doesn’t matter what you do on the hen nights. Every fourth show you will have a bad one. It’s not you, it’s not your performance, you just won’t go down well. Do not let it get to you or affect you in any way and you’ll be fine’.
