by Unknown
You couldn’t miss the garter of a girl who had banked. The carefully pleated money sprang out every which way in a garish green starburst. This odd flower was worn with pride, like an ankle corsage at a topless prom. The strippers at Schieks never carried purses; they wore their money against their bodies and in full view. Like a Girl Scout merit badge, or a retroactive price tag, this display of cash ensured that everyone was aware of everyone else’s price per pound. Sometimes a girl who had a devoted regular customer carried thousands of dollars strapped against her delicate tibia, a practice that was risky but looked totally cool.
Regulars, or “regs,” are the bread and butter of upscale strip clubs. A reg spends inconceivable sums of money on one cherished girl, and at Schieks, the regs appeared with, well, regularity. One stripper, Sidnee, had a reg who came to see her at least three times a week and handed hundred-dollar bills to her as if they were pocket lint. Sidnee rarely danced onstage (she was too busy attending to her smitten reg), but when she did, she always peeled off her lingerie to an urgent techno song called “I Need a Miracle.” It seemed fitting, even though some would argue that Sidnee needed a miracle less than any of us. Her reg kept her rich. But I knew that her standard of living was contingent on the interest of one middle-aged man in a Cosby sweater. If his obsession ever waned, she’d be back to steerage with the rest of us, hawking two-for-one laps with a free cigar-cutter included.
Once in a while, a customer of mine promised to return to Schieks specifically to see me. “What nights do you work?” they’d ask. I feigned delight at their interest, but I knew they probably wouldn’t come back. I never offered enough of an incentive. Sex with a customer was out of the question, and I didn’t even pretend to consider it. And it was about sex, always. Fucking was the natural endpoint of the stripper-reg relationship, and it was also the quickest route to a new car or a sapphire bracelet to hock. I wouldn’t fuck anyone for money, though—and not just because of Jonny, who was mysteriously comfortable with the idea of pay-for-play—but because the idea of physical reciprocity in that context revolted me. I had no problem grinding on customers, touching them or even granting the occasional coquettish kiss on the cheek if I thought the gamble might pay off. But the idea of one of them freely touching me in return was nauseating. A mouth on my tit, a hand on my ass? Gag me with the keys to a Karmann Ghia.
I’m not sure when the money began to matter to me. I had come to Schieks mainly for kicks, to be the kind of wanton slutburger Magdalene who had been vilified in the churches of my youth. I had also come because I was subconsciously rejecting the grown-up position I was being nudged into by my boss. Being accountable for other people’s profits terrified me more than the sex industry ever could, and I sensed the need to escape the rabbit warren of gainful employment before they got me for good. For the first time, I was seeing the alternative: living by my wits, pissing on my solid Second Wave feminist education, becoming a con artist disguised as dimbulb arm candy. And I liked it. Plus, Schieks’s payout structure forced me to crave cash; if I didn’t make their money back first, I’d never make any for myself. It turned us all into buzzards, circling the room even after every customer had been picked over. We needed to justify the indignity of wearing thongs in public. We needed to bank.
To my surprise, we were required to sell more than lap dances. Entertainers at Schieks also had to circle the room periodically with T-shirts, caps, cigars and manicure kits, offering them to customers at a “discount price” with the purchase of a dance. I didn’t particularly mind this until I was informed that we were heavily fined for the items we failed to sell. Not only did the merchandise sales bring the already-competitive atmosphere to a fever pitch, but the constant shilling embarrassed everyone. It’s tough to maintain one’s erotic mystique while trying to pressure a guy to buy a $40 pair of nail scissors. Whatever happened to just getting naked? The corporate bullshit made me long for the relative purity of the Skyway Lounge. (They kept it real at the Skyway, man!)
Sometimes, though, the money traveled fluidly from a customer’s billfold into my silver garter. On these nights, I felt bulletproof and diamond-hard. I’d arch my back over a guy’s pelvis during a lap dance, caress my bare breasts and stare up at the gargantuan crystal chandelier. It was cinematic, decadent, almost absurd to see myself reflected that way in the mirrored ceiling panels. I would have barely recognized the girl who stared back at me if it hadn’t been for the tattoos.* Her eyes were so passive, so assured. She had mastery over her body, something I’d never been able to claim. I’d always been clumsy and wary of my body’s limitations. As a kid, I hadn’t even been able to control my bladder, let alone my limbs. But this girl, my mirror image, didn’t know anything about that. Stripping had stolen her memory, stripped her membranes and made her into a new animal.
Sexy bitch, I’d mouth at my reflection. Those were the good nights. But there weren’t enough good nights in the naked library. Not for me.
I knew I would never find the money I suddenly desired if I stayed at Schieks. I was too unconventional-looking and not nearly companionate enough to slake the aging vampires who frequented the club. But instead of quitting stripping for good (like I had originally planned to do after a couple of months) I researched alternative clubs. I found my answer in Minneapolis’s warehouse district, in a three-story building the color of strawberry sherbet. Welcome to Big Pink.
Big Pink
After a particularly bad week at Schieks, I made a firm decision to score a gig stripping elsewhere. I decided on Deja Vu, a large franchise club affiliated with Hustler magazine. The Vu was the most notorious club in town, and I’d seen many seasoned girls wrinkle their noses in distaste at the mere mention of the place. It was a wild joint, they claimed. A “hustle club.”* It was the antithesis of Schieks’s genteel, slow-motion approach to adult entertainment. Plus, the dancers were fully nude at Deja Vu and lap dances there were rumored to be far more risqué. It wouldn’t seem like an obvious first choice for a new workplace.
However, one day at Schieks, I was talking to Tammi, a chesty, sad-eyed blonde who always shocked me with her mundane anecdotes about yard work and property taxes. “I’m just not making any money here,” I told her. “I hate sitting with the guys for hours and pretending to be interested in racquetball and tech stocks.”
“You should go to Deja Vu,” she rasped. “If you like to keep moving, it might be more your scene.”
The next afternoon, Jonny and I walked through the muddy spring snow to Deja Vu. I’d never laid eyes on the pink brick building before, and I was overwhelmed by its size. It was the biggest strip club in the area, featuring three floors of entertainment. An awning above the door advertised 1000’S OF BEAUTIFUL GIRLS AND 3 UGLY ONES. I shuddered as we ducked inside.
The club looked nothing like Schieks and exactly like every strip club I’d ever seen in the movies. It was lush wall-to-wall sleaze, all dark velour, bordello styling and bad hotel-lobby carpeting. The main stage was ringed by a tip rail that could accommodate at least twenty. Above the stage was a glass-floored second stage, which allowed customers to look up and watch another girl dancing overhead. This multidimensional display of poontang reminded me of the 3-D chessboard on Star Trek, which in turn reminded me that I was a huge nerd.
A two-story pole connected the second stage to the first stage, allowing daredevil girls to slide down like fire-fighters and begin their stage sets on a dramatic note. There was a nonalcoholic bar against one wall, where customers purchased their mandatory $9 soft drinks upon entering. (Most fully nude clubs in Minnesota don’t have liquor licenses.) I snickered at a banner advertising O’Doul’s nonalcoholic beer. Imaginary suds struck me as a very appropriate strip club beverage. Illusory intoxication, the name of the game.
Jonny and I paused to watch the stripper on the main stage from a distance. “This place is balls,” I muttered.
“That girl is dancing to Kiss!” Jonny remarked admiringly. The dancer scaled the pole, climbing e
ffortlessly to the very top. She flipped upside down and unhooked her bra, dropping it to the stage below. She pulled herself back upright, then swung her legs over head in an aerial split. She was like the Olga Korbut of adult entertainment.
“And she’s getting tips,” I pointed out. “Look.” The men seated at the tip rail withdrew their wallets in succession and dutifully placed dollars on the stage. This thrilled me, as girls were rarely tipped onstage at Schieks.
I flagged down the manager (whom I identified by the requisite clipboard he carried). All the night managers at Deja Vu looked the same to me: mustache, gleaming dark hair, monkey suit. Even after several months of working there, I still had difficulty telling them apart.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m interested in working here.”
“Okay,” Mustache said brusquely. “Let me find a girl to show you around.” Before I could open my mouth to ask another question, he ducked backstage and returned with a tan, gum-snapping girl in a Day-Glo bikini.
“This is Sherry,” he told me. “I told her to give you a tour of the club.”
“I’ve been at this place forever,” Sherry informed me.
“Okay,” I said, helplessly waving good-bye to Jonny.
Sherry took me up to the third-floor dressing room in a rattling death trap of an elevator. She had fake breasts the size of muskmelons, but other than that, she looked nothing like a Schieks girl. She was healthy. Cheap. She looked like she’d spent the day roller-skating at the beach, then accidentally pitched face-first into a vat of Bonne Belle warpaint.
“So, have you danced before?” she asked me in a thick Minnesota accent.
“Yeah, at Schieks,” I said.
“They’re robbers, them guys,” Sherry commented.
“Tell me about it,” I said. “That’s part of the reason I’m leaving. So how much do you pay the house here, then?”
“They count your lap dances,” Sherry explained. “At the end of the night, you have to pay a $20 shift fee, plus $7 for every $20 dance you get.”
I did some quick mental math. “So, if I get ten dances, or $200, I have to give the club $90 of that? That’s a lot of money.”
“Yeah, but you get to keep all your stage tips,” Sherry said. “And since they only charge you for the dances you actually get, you’ll never owe the house more than you’ve made.”
“That sounds reasonable,” I said, even though it didn’t. Still, it was an improvement on my current situation. I actually owed Schieks $50 and counting in back house fees.
The dressing room at Deja Vu was a tiled labyrinth vibrating with stripper activity. I was fascinated by the lockers, which were plastered with glittery bumper stickers, Polaroids, political statements and personal vendettas scrawled in eyeliner. There was a strip of masking tape on each locker bearing the name of the occupant. I saw that the stage names at Deja Vu tended toward the unrealistic: “Adore.” “Latte.” “Nikita.” “Dynasty.” There wasn’t an “Ashley” in sight, I noted with some relief. I preferred the vivid fantasy names to the rich-girl-next-door monikers that were popular at Schieks.
The stickers that decorated nearly every locker were even more revealing than the name tags. They ranged from proud declarations (STRIPPER; SEXY MOM; I HAD YOUR BOYFRIEND) to wry sociopathic statements (YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY FUCK YOU; MY BITCH GIVES GOOD HEAD; SPEAR BRITNEY!) to ethnic and racial signifiers (PICOSA; COCOA GODDESS; AZIAN PRIDE). I wondered what kind of sticker I’d adhere to my locker, and then I spotted the perfect one: DROPOUT.
“Let me show you the gym and the tanning bed,” Sherry said, leading me past the phalanx of lockers.
(The what and the what?)
Sherry wasn’t being facetious. There were two unoccupied tanning beds, in fact, just off a small mirrored room where ambitious girls attempted tricks on a pair of practice poles. Next door was a small studio with free weights and workout equipment from wall to wall. I was floored by this rare display of dressing-room luxury. While the facilities weren’t health-club clean (the whole place seemed to gleam with a varnish of crotch sweat and Bain de Soleil), they were impressive. I wondered if such perks were a common advantage of working for a successful franchise rather than an independent club.
“Here’s the Jacuzzi,” Sherry announced, gesturing at a large stagnant whirlpool next to the shower area. As if on command, the jets started up and the lapis-colored water began to percolate and froth.
“You guys have a hot tub?” I exclaimed. I have always equated hot tubs with hedonism, success and exhaustive fucking. “This place is dope!”
“It don’t suck,” Sherry concurred.
We headed out of the dressing room into a darkened hallway. “This is the Erotic Loft,” she explained, pointing to a pair of locked French doors. “There aren’t any surveillance cameras, so a lot of guys like to get their dances in there. It’s pricey, like $90 and up.”
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“Beds,” she shrugged. “If you’re lucky, you’ll spend a lot of time in there. That’s where the high rollers go.”
I peered through the glass doors, but all I saw were some makeshift curtains rigged to protect the most wayward girls from prying eyes.
Sherry led me into an alcove, revealing a pole that led from the third floor down to the second stage, and an accompanying spiral staircase for the cowardly. “You can take the stairs. I’m gonna pole it,” she said. Nonchalantly, she leapt forward, caught the pole in midair and slid down, her thighs squealing against the tarnished brass.
I crept down the staircase and met her at the bottom. We were standing on the transparent second stage with a panoramic view of the club. Fifteen feet below us, a nude dancer scuttled across the main stage like a blonde sand crab.
“This is the VIP stage,” Sherry said. “It doesn’t open until the night shift.”
“What are those little rooms with the curtains?” I asked, pointing to the back wall adjacent to the bar.
“Those are bedrooms. Where we do the bed dances.”
“What’s a bed dance?” I asked with trepidation.
“It’s like a lap dance, but you lie down on top of the guy and pretend to fuck him. It costs $60. The club counts that as three dances, though, so you have to give them $21,” Sherry explained.
“So basically, I get $39 for acting like I’m fucking a dude,” I said.
“Yeah, but you’re just pretending.”
“Groovy.”
“There are private lap couches up here, too,” Sherry said. The wall was lined with partitioned-off booths; each divider was emblazoned with the image of a woman’s fishnet stocking–clad legs. Inside each booth was a small table and a battered love seat. The obvious emphasis on privacy and intimacy at the club was intimidating. Somehow, I wasn’t comforted by the tiny security cameras trained on every niche in the room (to say nothing of the areas that deliberately lacked cameras).
Still, I was enchanted by the visceral rock ’n’ roll vibe of the joint. The Vu made Schieks and its fake library look positively square. I was also very curious. Was it freaky to slide down those insanely tall poles? Did anyone ever fall down? What actually happened in the Erotic Loft? Did guys actually spend money without alcohol to lubricate their judgment? Deja Vu stank of intrigue and industrial antiseptic.
Later, I attempted to justify the move as Jonny and I downed Cosmopolitans at the Texa-Tonka. (They only had two martini glasses there, so we were lucky to score the pair for a few hours.)
“Strippers are nomadic by nature,” I explained. “No one stays at one club for long. That’s why I don’t feel bad about leaving Schieks.”
“You’re going to like Deja Vu a lot better, I think,” Jonny said. “The girls there looked cooler. One of them was wearing a nurse costume!”
“I know, right?” I said. “How campy is that?”
“When are you going to tell Schieks you’re quitting?” Jonny asked.
“I’m not,” I said. “They won’t even notice I’m gone.”
And from what I hear, they didn’t.
Girls, Girls, Girls
“Frankly, I don’t think you’re going to do well here,” the night manager told me from across the bar. His cocaine-duster mustache twitched irritably. “You look mean. You have a very mean look.”
“I’m not mean,” I spat. My hair was newly dyed bubble-gum pink (which had caused a pleasant ruckus at the office), and I wore a turquoise Lycra playsuit. I had intended to look like an insouciant teen hooker, but apparently my expression was pure punk hostility. I made a mental note to invest in Botox and happy pills.
“You, however, are going to do very well,” he said to the girl sitting next to me. She was eighteen, lovely and looked like a counselor at a Christian tennis camp. “You’ve got a docile look. Very sweet, very fresh. The guys love that.”
“I’ve never danced before,” she admitted, staring at her lap.
“That’s why I’m talking to you two before you start,” the manager explained. “I like to explain the procedure to all our new entertainers.”
“I’ve danced before,” I volunteered. “At Schieks.”
The manager ignored me. “What stage name are you using?” he asked the other girl.
“Nicollette,” she said. “It’s my sister’s name. She’s my best friend, and…”
“That’s a stupid name,” Mustache interrupted. “It’s not going to work. Pick something sexy, like Diamond.”
She nodded, cowed.
“You’ve got to touch the guys,” Mustache barked, running his hand down Diamond’s bare back to demonstrate. She stared at the floor. “Walk up to them and say, ‘Hey, baby, want to come play with me?’ Touch their hair, sit on their laps. You have to be sexy, otherwise you won’t make any money.” His hand slid down to her thigh. I hastily sipped my soda to curb the gag reflex.
