by Lacey Lane
One night, after some Monday Night Football game on which he apparently won a ton of money—he claimed more than $100,000—he blew up close to 50 balloons. I made more than $1,000 in 90 minutes that night, one of my biggest tallies ever, but believe me, I worked damn hard for it. My feet and legs were so tired from stomping, I took the next couple of days off and treated myself to some well deserved pampering at a fancy Sin City hotel spa. Massages, mud baths, seaweed wraps, a pedicure and a facial—and my rent got paid, all for a single balloon safari.
After a few more visits he stopped coming in. Maybe he bet all he had on the wrong team. I wouldn’t have put it past him. All I know is, I sure missed him. Despite his freaky little fetish, he was pretty cool. But I felt the absence of his money even more.
Lounge Lizard
I love animals. Dogs, cats, birds, fish, even snakes—I danced with a python once, but that’s a different story. I had quite a few snakes as customers, too, but that’s totally different story. To tell you the truth, I like animals better than people. The majority of them just want to be left alone to do their own thing or be loved by their owners. But despite my love for all creatures great and small, that didn’t mean I wanted to dance for them.
At one club, a close personal friend of the owner was a rare reptile dealer. This guy, Steve, had all types of lizards and snakes and used to get bent out of shape if any of the dancers had on snake- or lizard-skin shoes or outfits when he came into the club. One time after hours, he brought in a real cobra to show the boss and actually let the thing go in the VIP Room for a little while. It had fangs, a hood, and everything. (I thought they were illegal—and should be—but I was informed otherwise.) He wanted to put a rat in there with it to show us all how it hunted its prey, but the other girls and I made the biggest fuss, saying that if he tried to feed some poor defenseless rodent to that evil serpent in our presence, we’d all quit on the spot. Needless to say, the boss made him put the snake back in its box.
Of all his creatures, Steve’s favorite was an iguana, a huge five-foot-long dinosaur-looking thing named Rudolph. It had a strange dark-red blotch at the tip of its nose, so I guess the name was appropriate. Rudolph had a gold collar set with a slew of semi-precious stones that probably cost more then any of the jewelry myself and the other strippers wore. There’s just no justice in the world when a cold-blooded lizard has nicer accessories than you do.
One night, Steve brought Rudolph into the club for a special occasion: his ninth birthday. The lizard wore a small glitter-covered party hat and its usual “gimme some food and leave me alone” grimace. For the festive occasion, its owner wanted to treat him to a double-girl lap dance. As luck would have it, the guy picked me and a dancer named Veronica to do the deed.
So into the VIP Room we went. Steve ordered each of us a drink—I needed a double for this gig—a vodka rocks for himself, and a Coors Light for Rudolph, which he poured into a bowl. Judging by the way the lizard lapped it up, Rudolph was no stranger to brew.
“All he drinks is Coors Light,” Steve informed us, as if we really cared. “Everything else gives him nasty gas.” More than enough information.
When Rudolph finished his beer—without a belch, I must add (perhaps he’d read Emily Post’s rules of etiquette)—his owner set him on the couch and plopped down beside him.
“Okay,” he said. “Make my lizard happy.”Veronica and I looked at one another. There are nights when all dancers wish they’d chosen a different career path. This was definitely one of them, for both of us. But Steve was a friend of the owner. Better yet, he was a paying customer, and in the topless profession, that’s really all it boils down to.
So we danced for the birthday iguana, a total of three songs, and wouldn’t you know, that damn lizard actually watched every move we made. Good thing he stayed on the couch, though, because if he hadn’t I would’ve had a new pair of iguana shoes and a matching purse and belt.
However, I must admit that both Rudolph and his owner were on their best behavior. After the dances, Steve thanked us for taking him seriously and tipped us an extra $50 apiece. In the spirit of the occasion, I gave Rudolph a little peck on the top of his head—Veronica was afraid to go near him—and wished him a happy birthday, too. The ungrateful reptile didn’t even bother to say thank you. That’s the last time I kiss a lizard, birthday party or not.
Bored Games
I’ve never been one for board games. I don’t understand chess. Checkers seems moronic. And I don’t have the patience to sit through games like Monopoly or Life. I’m okay at backgammon, but there are other things
I’d much rather do—like watch paint dry. But if you throw money into the equation, well now, that’s a whole different story.
I’m not talking about playing for money, mind you. No chance I’m going to bet on something unless I have some kind of edge—hey, I worked in Vegas, remember?—but if some schlub wants to take me into the VIP Room and pay me to kick back, relax, and play him in the game of his choice instead of busting my butt dancing, where do I sign up?
And that was exactly what Ernie wanted. All that was missing from his get-up was a pocket protector and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. I’d bet a week’s worth of tips that he was the president of the computer club in high school and that his favorite movie was Revenge of the Nerds. He always had plenty of money, but he was extremely shy and didn’t seem to relate well to people. However, he had no problem talking to me, though he never said much.
The first time he came in, he sat at the end of the bar and sipped his drink, seemingly ashamed to even glance at the girls on stage. I felt sorry for him, so I walked over and sat down beside him. I offered him a cigarette, which he refused, and I nearly finished my entire smoke before he said one word to me and that was this: “Do you like to play games?”
Immediately, my wheels began to turn. Another pervert, I figured, looking for a dancer who didn’t need a dictionary to define prostitution. But against my better judgment, I asked him exactly what kind of games he had in mind.
Ernie reached inside his jacket pocket, took out a miniature folding Scrabble set with magnetic letters, and asked me if I’d play him.
I told him I’d love to—lying through my teeth, of course—but as he could plainly see, I was at the strip club because I was—guess what, peckerwood?—working. That’s when he explained that he had every intention of paying me whatever I normally got to dance.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, expecting someone from “Candid Camera” to pop out from behind the bar and tell me I’d just made the next episode, “You want to pay me to play you in Scrabble?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “However long it takes to play a full game, I’ll pay you your normal rate.”
A dream client, I thought to myself as I took him by the arm and led him to the VIP Room. After ordering some drinks, he set up the game and we picked our tiles. I began trying to formulate a word. After a few minutes, I knew there had to be someone upstairs with a sense of humor. I had a Scrabble. My word: nipples.
Can you believe that? I couldn’t, but I put it down and Board Games raked in the points. I wound up kicking his ass badly that day and made $160 in the process. Ernie didn’t even want to see my tits.
A few days later, Ernie came back, this time with a full chess set. Like I said previously, I know very little about the game. The horse moves in weird directions. Those little guys up front only move straight ahead. The king acts like a fairy because he can’t touch anything. Forget it. But one of the other dancers was really good. Her boyfriend actually played in tournaments. Whoever says topless dancers don’t like intellectual men have another thing coming—smart guys are the best, so long as they’re cute and have money.
Anyway, I brought Carmen into the VIP Room with me and she absolutely destroyed poor old Ernie. Believe me he was trying, too. She beat him five games straight. In one game, I think she only made six or seven moves before she put him in checkmate.
Over the c
ourse of two months, Ernie and I played all kinds of games, including a number of different “kiddie” card games—Go Fish, War, and Concentration. Ironically, he didn’t beat me once. Good thing he didn’t play me in poker—he would have gotten really hammered.
I looked at my VIP Room time with Ernie as paid breaks and I was truly sorry when he stopped coming in. Still, there was something creepy about the guy I just couldn’t put my finger on. I’m only glad he was a good sport and never snapped while he was in my presence. Guys like that—the quiet ones with peculiar habits—are the ones you need to watch out for.
King For a Day
I’m sure you’ve heard about—or know of—people with a Napoleonic complex. Well, I once had a customer who had a Caesarean complex. No, he didn’t have a desire to come in through the window or burrow into my belly. He simply wanted to spend a day being treated like a Roman emperor: waited on hand and foot by a slew of semi-naked lovelies, myself among them.
Now there’s nothing wrong with being pampered, especially by sexy servants. I’ve indulged in numerous queen-for-a-day spa routines myself. But this scenario was a bit different. The “king” in question was somewhere in the vicinity of 100 years old, had more wrinkles than Willie Nelson’s grandfather, was on a portable oxygen machine, and arrived in a wheelchair under the care of a full-time nurse (a sweet black lady in her mid-50s) who went everywhere he did. But this didn’t stop him from renting out the VIP Room for two hours to fulfill a lifelong fantasy.
Why he waited so long, I’ll never know. Even if this guy was using Viagra or some kind of African yohimbe root or ate a couple dozen oysters or some other exotic aphrodisiac, I doubt he could have gotten a woody. If he had, his heart would probably have stopped from lack of blood flow. Although I doubt that a woody would have made his VIP Room experience more enjoyable. I mean, it’s not like he was gonna get laid. But the way he sat there and drooled, it didn’t even seem like he knew what was going on.
Still, we honored his requests to the best of our abilities. Four of us dressed in togas, which we eventually stripped out of, down to our g-strings, and fanned him with fake plastic palm fronds that his nurse doled out. One of the girls attempted to feed him grapes, also per his request, but he couldn’t chew the skin, so she just rubbed them against his lips.
Despite his feeble appearance and condition, the old geezer had the alcohol tolerance of a career drunk. He put away two bottles of cheap red wine and was still coherent enough to direct us through our lap dances, telling us exactly how he wanted to see us move. Although some of his commands were little more than drooly mumbles, we just did what we thought he was saying and his smiley bobbing-head-doll nods clued us in that we were right on the money.
While it was obvious he was having the time of his life, I think the two hours of ecstasy—or perhaps the two bottles of wine—took their toll on the guy. With about ten minutes left on the meter, we noticed he was sound asleep. At first, I thought he might have kicked the bucket, but his nurse quelled our fears and said he was just napping. (I checked his pulse just to be sure. It was faint, but it was there.) The nurse settled his tab, added in a lousy $5 tip for each of us, and wheeled him away.
The Tape Worm
Fetish freaks are common in strip clubs and I met my first about a month after I started dancing. For years I’d been keeping a journal, writing in it every so often, but after this experience I began a daily log of my stripping adventures—or in some cases, misadventures. Ultimately, it was this story that spawned my book.
His name was Darren and at first glance, you’d swear he was a GQ model. Tall, lean, handsome, great dresser, awesome smile, perfect teeth—the guy had the full package. Somewhere in his late-30s, this was the kind of man most women would consider the catch of a lifetime. But looks can be deceiving, as I quickly found out.
After my turn on stage, Darren asked me if I would accompany him to the VIP Room. Are you kidding? For you, I’d dance for free. But as soon as we set foot inside the VIP Room, everything changed.
Darren reached inside his sport jacket and removed a small reporter’s notepad, along with an expensive-looking tortoise-shell fountain pen. After writing down my name, he handed me the pad and told me to write down exactly what he said. Clueless as to what he was talking about, before I knew what was happening, he pulled out this tiny tape measure, dropped to the floor, and attempted to measure one of my feet.
I immediately stepped back and asked him what the hell he was doing. He simply told me to look in the notebook I was holding and I’d understand. So I did. It was filled with women’s names, a few on each page, and below each were all sorts of numbers. No words beside the numbers, mind you, just numbers, many with fractions.
Darren was a measurement freak, an obsession I’d never even heard of up until that moment. Apparently, his mom was a work-from-home seamstress and throughout his formative years, he was her helper. Now in adulthood, his passion for measuring had taken over. He had hundreds of names in that notepad—and thousands of corresponding measurements. Who knows just how many notepads he had at home?
Still a bit weirded out by the whole scenario, I told him I didn’t really feel comfortable with the game. You’ve got to remember this was early on in my topless tenure. Never did I expect anything like this. If I’d known then what kind of zany things were going to happen in the years to come, I probably would have become a flight attendant. If things got too freaky, you could always toss the offender out of the cabin or strap on a parachute and jump out yourself.
I told Darren the only way I’d let him measure me would be to bring some of the other dancers into the VIP Room. Safety in numbers and all that jazz. Of course, he’d have to pay us all for our time. I didn’t think he’d go for it, but realizing he didn’t have a choice, he reluctantly agreed.
Before I left to get some other girls, I made it extremely clear to him that there’d be no touching of my breasts or any other sensitive areas. I told him straight up that he’d lose his hands at the wrist if he tried. If he wanted certain measurements, the other girls would handle it—and he’d have to pay extra for those. (Remember, I was a fast learner.) I left and came back a few moments later with Misty and Jasper. At first, they didn’t believe me when I told them why I needed them, but the thought of easy money, along with their own curiosity, resulted in a high-heeled footrace back to the VIP Room.
Darren was overly pleased with the two women I had selected; Jasper played semi-pro beach volleyball and stood close to six feet tall. Sizing her up, I think his measuring tape became erect!
After introducing Darren to the girls and agreeing on the dollar amount—Misty and Jasper still didn’t believe he was actually willing to pay for this strange service and insisted on cash for the equivalent of two lap dances up front—we got down to business.
Once again, Darren began with our feet. Not only did he measure the length and width of each foot, but he measured individual toes, too. When he finished with our feet, he measured the span from the ankle to the knee. Then, he went from the knee to the thigh, a measurement he should have let us handle based on our previous agreement. Before we could stop him, he put the tape to skin and brushed Jasper’s nether region. Whether he did this on purpose or not was irrelevant—he paid the price big time.
Like lightning, Jasper pounded him on the top of the head as if she were making a kill shot. Darren hit the floor, more startled than injured, but I’m sure if I checked his head a few minutes later, there’d be a bump the size of a kiwi fruit.
Lifting her foot, Jasper glared at him and said something like: “Give me one good reason why I don’t turn you into an orthodontist’s wet dream?”Darren swallowed hard and quickly produced a $50 bill. “This, plus my sincerest apologies.”
Jasper snatched the bill before he could withdraw it, then let him off the hook with conditions. “If it happens again, your entire wallet won’t be enough.”
“Understood,” he said. Then he recovered his measuring tape and
got to his feet. “May I continue?”
I’ve got to hand it to him, he had guts. And we all had bills to pay, so we agreed. However, we kept him in pretty tight check. If he even got close to brushing against us inappropriately, the glares we assaulted him with sent shivers up his spine. Fortunately, none of us had to “punish” him any more that day. Good thing, too. I had just gotten my nails done and I didn’t feel like breaking one.
Darren measured just about everything on the body that could be measured: fingers, fingernails, eyelashes, eyebrows, lips, even a strand of each of our hair. It takes all types and this guy was definitely one of the wackier ones. However, aside from that one incident with Jasper, there never were any other problems.
He came in at least six more times, measuring just about all the girls in the club. He even got the house mom and one of the bouncers to agree to go into his notebook. I’m not sure what he paid them, but I’ll bet it was more than he paid us. What he did with all those numbers, we never knew.
Trick or Treat
Of all the many cities I’ve danced in, Los Angeles has, by far, the most resident nuts, kooks, weirdos, and freaks. I’m convinced that, many years ago, a large number of mental-institution parolees got together and rented an apartment. When that apartment got too crowded, they formed a city—L.A. But I can’t blame it all on Tinseltown, for my former profession tends to attract a shitload of screw-loose individuals. Ask any stripper and she’ll tell you that sooner or later—in most cases, sooner—a weird customer with an even weirder request will happen along.
