

Scenes from the Petting Zoo

Mark Gross and Bobbi Hills, et al

Published by Mark Gross at Smashwords

2nd edition

Copyright 2014 Mark Gross

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Have you heard this one* -

A guy walks into a bar, buys a beer and sits down at a table.

After a few moments, a nude ecdysiast** sashays up to the table, and says:

"Do you want a dollar dance, handsome?"

The guy looks her in the eyes, and says:

"Thanks, but no thanks – but, hey mama, can you tell me a story?

"What kind of story do you want to hear, honey?" She replies, getting curious.

"Tell me a story about something that has happened to you, or that you have seen happen, while you have been doing this job, here or elsewhere. I'll buy you a drink if you want one. If I like your story, I'll give you some cash and I may include it in a book" He responds.

She sits down at the table, crosses her legs and gives him a pensive look:

"I got a million of 'em, honey, give me a minute to pick one for you, and I'll have a shot and a beer back"

"Coming up", he replies as he heads up to the bar, looking forward to her tale.

*It isn't really a joke, but you might find it to be an interesting book . . . .

**An ecdysiast is a strip tease artist, who may prefer to be called a dancer over being called a stripper. Some don't give a damn what you call them, as long as you're smiling.

The names in this book have been changed to protect the innocent from the guilty and to protect all of us from the litigious. A reminder - this is a collection of stories told in bars. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in bars knows that bar stories are to be taken with numerous grains of salt.

However, I believe that there is a high degree of plausibility in these stories. You might even call them factitious, or perhaps reality fiction . . .

I hope you have half as much fun reading these stories as I had gathering them. . .
Zada –

When I was a young man, in the '70s and '80s, I would have referred to a woman like Zada as a stone fox. My dad would have said that she is built like a brick shithouse. Young men today would probably consider her a MILF. Her hair is platinum blonde at the moment and she stands about 5'10''. This is tough to judge precisely due to the ever-present spike heels. She is statuesque and curvaceous and close, but not quite voluptuous. I can discern the long muscles within her frame as she moves - muscles that have been toned by 19 years of pole dancing.

Zada says that she started working in a topless club about 1990, when she was 17. It seems to me that she is a career professional, that her act is polished, that she keeps it together well and that her head is on straight. She has done more than just survive, she thrives in this strange environment and occupation. She tells me that it is difficult to stay ON, to put on the face and go to work on the men, including me. She works to create and maintain the fantasy that a woman like her might actually consider us worthy of her sexual and emotional attentions. In spite of her claim that it is difficult to maintain this effort minute-by-minute and day-to-day, I have never seen her without a bright, readily flashed smile and a quick laugh for even the lamest of my attempts at humor. She always seems happy to see me, as well as any and all of the other club patrons. She has elevated schmoozing to an art form.

Zada tells me that one of the major paradoxes for dancers is the occasional regular customer who buys into the illusion too completely, who deludes himself that the contrived fantasy relationship between them is real. This happens in spite of the fact that the transactions between them continue. For a regular who deludes himself in this way, it must become a different type of transaction. In his mind it may become love gifting that only appears to others to be mere commerce. This creates both the ethical dilemma and also a paradox for the dancer. When this transformation occurs with a delusional regular, a dancer can begin to make serious money. He sometimes becomes extraordinarily generous as he tries to distinguish himself from the other men in the club, with whom he still competes financially for her time and attentions.

She goes on to describe a current regular who considers Zada and him to constitute a couple. For him there seems to be a flame within a real relationship between them. She literally and figuratively dances a fine line with this man, milking the cash bull if you will. She must try to avoid helping him to carry himself over the edge and bring her along for the fall.

This leads us to Zada's first story, things that happened earlier in her career while dancing in a club in another state.

One night, one of the other dancers in the club was telling her co-workers and her regulars that this was to be her last night dancing, that she had decided to move on to another line of work. One of her regulars, a delusional one, did not react well. Shortly after getting the news, he left the club. He returned some time later with a pistol, shot and killed the dancer with whom he was obsessed and then killed himself as well.

After the police and the coroner had come and gone, the owner of the club, allegedly a figure involved in the rackets, had a rug thrown over the bloodstains on the floor of the club. He demanded that the remaining shocked and horrified dancers return to their work. Zada tells me that dancers are sometimes placed in the position of near captivity by club management, forced to perform regardless of their own need or desire to be elsewhere. This is also regardless of dancer's usual status as independent contractors, they are not employees.

She says that at that time, the clubs in that state were allowed topless exposure only, panties stayed on. Also, there was no alcohol allowed on the premises, topless clubs were not allowed liquor licenses and were considered juice bars only. Some dancers would keep booze in their cars, others would smuggle it in with their cosmetic and dance kits.

Zada tells me that one of the ramifications of the panties-stay-on law was that she knew post-boob-job pre-sex-change-op wannabe trans-sexual men who danced as women. She says they looked good doing it and also made money doing semi-private, VIP lounge lap dances.

As she unloaded this particular gem upon me, the unexpected nature of the revelation set me back for a few very long moments. It suddenly occurred to me that Zada herself is one of the more lady-like (no pun intended) dancers that keeps her panties on when moving around in the club and also when dancing on the stage. Thinking about it further, however, I decided that she must undoubtedly take her panties off when in the VIP lounge doing lap dances. This is something I can't speak about from direct experience. I am happily married and thus not in the market for semi-private heavy petting and dry humping. The current local market rate for this service is $20 per 3 – 4 minute song, discounted to $15 on Humpday in this particular club. Regardless of my lack of direct observation of that particular part of her anatomy, I am reasonably certain that our fair Zada was born with female parts and didn't acquire them later.

So I finally recover from several long moments spent questioning reality and allow her to resume her anecdotal account. Zada tells me that the local police had targeted this allegedly racket connected club owner. One of the tactics that the police used was to send in undercover vice squad detectives posing as customers. She tells me that the vice officers would sometimes give dancers prostitution tickets for teasing customers by playing flirtatiously with their panties and also just for excessive eye contact.

Zada relates to me another story which occurred in this same club in another state, also involving the vice squad. She says that one day, she and another dancer arrived early and were sitting at the bar in their street clothes, shooting the breeze. Suddenly, several men in the club rose, displayed badges and then arrested all of the currently working dancers for prostitution! Uniformed officers came in and escorted the arrested dancers out.

As you might expect, the civilian customers also departed. This left the club containing only the bartender, the manager, Zada, her friend and several plain clothed vice squad detectives, who inexplicably just hung around. After a few minutes the manager demanded that Zada and her friend get to work! What ensued must have constituted a strange scene indeed. Zada and her friend took turns dancing topless while trying to appear as demure as nuns, for a club containing only plain-clothed vice squad detectives watching them closely for any potential legally actionable impropriety.

Like many of the others, Zada is a single mother. Most of the dancers I have met who are single moms have babes or youngsters. Zada says that her three daughters are 13, 17, and 20. She complains to me about them and about her current major concern, that her eldest daughter might become a single mom herself, if Zada can't figure out a way to prevent it. She says that she is a homebody, she likes to get to bed early and that she is working towards purchasing the home she is renting.

She tells me that for a long time, her kids did not know how she paid the bills. She has also worked as a bartender, so she maintained that story as a pretense for her kids. Bartending is not nearly as lucrative as dancing, at least for Zada. She tells me of having to throw her dance kit bag - containing her heels, various assorted skimpy outfits, cosmetics and other essentials - out of an upstairs window and onto the roof of her car. That way her kids would not see her leaving home in the afternoon with an overnight bag. This would be difficult to explain to young, inquisitive minds in a single parent household. She says that her bartender cover story was recently blown when the boyfriend of her daughter's best friend came into the club while she was on stage.

Zada seems to have a good heart; I think she has not yet become jaded by her work and that she still does care about people. She befriends the other women working in the club and tries to help those that are struggling if she can. I haven't seen her drinking when she is working. She tells me she doesn't party with customers, or with the other dancers. Most of the younger dancers seem to respect her and listen to her advice, which can include important survival skills gained from her considerable experience. This brings us to another story that she relates to me.

Back in another club in another state, one of Zada's friends was at the club visiting her co-workers. Named Amber, this dancer was 8 months pregnant. After visiting for a while, she called her boyfriend to arrange for him to pick her up. He wasn't able to do so and told her to have one of the other dancers give her a lift home. It turned out that she couldn't get a ride from one of them either, but one of her regulars offered to get her home. Dancers try to avoid this situation, as the customers are somewhat anonymous men, a percentage of whom may be sexual predators, or worse. Amber and her co-workers believed this particular customer was OK, he had been a regular for quite some time, so she left with him. Her body was found the next day beside the freeway.

As told by the venerable Master Li to his class –

Students, one spring when I was a young monk, I traveled on a pilgrimage with another monk named Wu. Late one morning, in the mountains, we stopped at an inn to beg for some rice and rest for a time. Shortly after continuing, the path led us to a small creek, running fast and cold with snowmelt from nearby peaks. On the opposite bank of the creek stood an unusual sight for this setting – a courtesan!

Wu and I carefully forded the stream – heed my advice here students! – use a stout walking staff to provide stability and to test for deeper water ahead of you. Seek another fording place if the water is running fast and is over your knees! As we worked our way across, I glanced a few times at the woman, who was watching us cross. She was very fine, with long hair in a single loose braid, slight, with delicate features and wearing a colorful kimono of the best silk.

Reaching the bank first, I approached her, introduced myself and asked if she wanted help crossing the stream. With demurely downcast eyes she said yes, please. I turned and took to one knee as she gathered the lower portion of her kimono in one hand. In a lithe motion, she climbed onto my back, with her free arm over my shoulder and around my neck and wrapped her legs around my waist, locking her ankles together. I rose and carefully forded the cold rushing stream again.

On the bank, I descended to one knee again and she dismounted. I rose and turned towards her and she thanked me, met my eyes briefly and wished me a good journey. I told her the inn was only a short distance up the path and she turned and walked away, towards the inn. I watched her for a long moment and then I forded the stream a third time, shortly joining Wu where he stood awaiting me on the bank. He turned and led me up the path and we continued our journey through the woods and hills in silence. It was a fine day and the countryside was beautiful. I was a young man and I felt very much alive.

After an hour or so I became aware that Wu seemed troubled and shortly thereafter he turned to me bearing a stern expression and blurted out: Such women are a powerful temptation, we monks should have no contact with them!

At first, as he glared at me, I was somewhat taken aback. Shortly I returned to the present, the pleasant day and the beauty of the surroundings. Once again, I was at peace. I smiled at my stern friend Wu and tried to identify the paradox for him, as I will again for you students today.

I carried the courtesan for only a few moments, helping her across the stream. Afterwards, as Wu and I walked along, she carried me. The day somehow seemed even more beautiful and my step was quicker and lighter as I catalogued my memories of her in my mind. To this day I remember her braided hair cascading past my face, the scent and the feel of it as it swung freely along my cheek. I remember her delicate arm and hand resting upon my shoulders, her bare, shapely legs clasped around my waist, the pressure of her breasts and belly upon my back and the sound of her moist breathing past my ear. I remember the rustle and feel of the fine silk of her kimono and her soft, melodious voice. I remember her grace and the sway of her hips as she walked away. And I remember the deep dark pools of her eyes, the greatest gift that she bestowed upon me.

Wu was correct to say that such women are powerful. The full feminine force of Yin that they express and employ is as much a force of life as the water streaming down the mountainsides, the life force within the forest and its beasts, the sun, the wind. The mere memory of her has carried me forward many times. That, students, is power!

The paradox is that, although Wu did not carry her, somehow her memory became a considerable burden to him, causing him to remain agitated about her more than an hour after a brief encounter! He seemed to have judged her to be in some way unworthy of my help. By the stern reprimand he expressed to me and by his tone and expression, he seemed also to have judged me to be unworthy for having helped her. I ask you, students, how is it possible for one woman to simultaneously carry one man and burden another?

The answer lies in what else each man carries. My friend Wu was burdened by a rigid, externally imposed moral code which he tried to burden me with on that day as well. I carried - and still carry to this day - a flexible and evolving code of ethics which I myself derive through education, experience and introspection. My ethical code leads me to conclude that each of us should develop and employ our own code. I can perceive no right way to impose ones own code of ethics upon others. I helped the courtesan across the stream as I would have helped anyone else who needed it. Wu would only help those that he believed could pass the judgment of the arbiters of the moral code that burdened him.

This Parable is drawn, adapted and expanded from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Pepper –

Pepper is my type, in more ways than one. First, she bears a close physical resemblance to my first wife. Second, she is in her late forties, close to my own age. While I am happy to watch, talk with and spend time with younger women; I prefer women who have accumulated some road miles. Third, she is a simple, true-blue, common sense kind of gal. If she wears make-up, I haven't seen it. Like anyone who has been around for a while, she has lines and wrinkles on her face, but she doesn't seem to give a damn who sees them.

Pepper tells me that she has been dancing since she was 19, so she has more than 25 years of experience as a dancer and many stories to tell. She is divorced and has several teenaged and older kids. She is determined that her daughters have a better life with more choices than she has had. She knows that she is getting old, although she still looks amazingly good. Pepper dances naked and seems proud of it. She gets lots of tips from much younger men who were born after she started dancing. She says dancing is getting old for her. She would like to go back to bartending or perhaps run her own club.

She is one of the first dancers that I met and got to know, due to her resemblance to my first wife. She dropped off my radar for a couple of years, then popped up again suddenly when I walked into a club that I had not been in for a while. She was dancing naked on the main stage and I was happy to see her, so I immediately sat down at the stage and put a sawbuck on the rail. She saw the fiver, but I don't think she recognized me, because she sat down on the rail and gave me a wide angle close-up of her goods. Then she leaned back and put her ankles on my shoulders. Before I could react she thrust herself forward; suddenly she had me in a headlock and her closely-shaven crotch was right under my nose! I said Pepper, please back off - yes, I'm serious! - don't you remember me?

Once I reminded her about my wife and the keeping proper distance rules, she was very apologetic. Later I realized that while she had my head locked in her crotch, all I would have had to do was pucker up and lick my lips and I would be an adulterer, no matter what Bill Clinton thinks. I told this story to another non-combatant, a married woman visiting a friend who danced at the same club. She laughed and told me that it in strip clubs there is indeed a very fine line and it frequently gets tested, pushed right to the edge and beyond.

After finishing her set and making her taxi dance rounds, Pepper comes to a booth to have a beer with me and catch up. She is excited about a new man in her life and wants to tell me about him, a guy she met while working. She says that this guy seems serious about her. He has a steady job, owns his own home, rides a Harley and has a good relationship with his mother. She says that it is unusual to meet such men in clubs, most talk a good game, but few actually deliver. I don't usually ask personal questions of the dancers who tell me stories. I feel like their private lives and relationships are their business and if they are not sharing, I don't probe. Pepper seems to want to talk about it, however, so I ask her about intimacy.

Specifically, I ask her about working a long shift at the club, being groped and having virtual sex with a number of strange men over the course of her nights work. Once she gets home, is she ready for yet another man groping her? Peppers answer is illuminating – she says she is a morning girl, when she awakes she is often horny and a new day has dawned and with it she is reborn. The previous night is history and she is ready and eager to be intimate with her man.

Next, I ask Pepper if she has, in her experience, ever encountered a club that is owned or managed by a woman, or women. She thinks about it and says that she can remember only one – a short term situation in which a club became the property of a woman as the result of a divorce settlement. She says it didn't last because the lady who became the new owner of the club was not able to successfully manage the dancers, which is understandable if you get to know some dancers.

Pepper has a great sense of humor, laughing as she tells me about an old man in his nineties who managed to get her completely flustered recently during a VIP lounge lap dance she did for him. As she led the old codger back to the lounge, she thought that she should take it easy on the old fellow; she didn't want to shock his heart. It turned out the old goat had fast, wandering hands and it nearly gave her a heart attack fending him off!

She then tells me about a fairly butch woman who worked as a welder and who became an admirer and a regular for Pepper some time ago. This lesbian customer pitched a lot of money and pressure on Pepper to give the pink team a chance at bat. Pepper says that, as long as they follow the rules and have had a bath in the last month, she'll dance for anybody, male, female, and anywhere in between, but she likes and prefers men.

Pepper is another example of what seems to be a common type in most clubs, an older dancer who becomes something of a mother hen, a queen bee, basically a matriarchal figure for the younger dancers. They can benefit greatly from her experience if they are willing to grant her some respect in exchange. Pepper tells me of walking into the dressing room of a club and unexpectedly intruding on a tragic scene. A young dancer had just had a sudden miscarriage and was standing over the wastebasket, bleeding profusely and sobbing hysterically.

Pepper then relates other hard experiences that have lead her to adopt a protective role towards the younger dancers. She says that she has suffered a rape at the hands of a customer. When she reported the rape to the police, she was told by the DA that due to her occupation, it would be difficult to convince a jury that the sex was not consensual in some way. The DA's office could not pursue the rapist for that reason.

Pepper says that she also successfully fended off an attempted rape by another customer, a friend of her brothers, who drugged her by slipping a mickey into her drink. When the drug started to affect her, she escaped into the dressing room before she collapsed and she refused to allow the man who drugged her to "drive her home". Both experiences have taught Pepper to be very assertive in defense of her own person. She also defends the rights of dancers to make what may seem to the less experienced to be overly paranoid efforts to protect themselves from sexual predation.

Pepper says that she also asserts herself whenever she sees real sexual activity happening in the VIP lounge. She says that most clubs have strictly enforced policies about this, since the club can be closed down by police for proven prostitution cases. She tells me that there are video cameras throughout the club we are in, which tape the action, partially in an attempt to prevent illegal activities.

However, she tells me that some dancers still try to find ways to make extra money selling various kinds of happy endings, in spite of the cameras and the rules. There are about a million things that are wrong with this practice. Just one is that, if the club owner overlooks it, condones it, or seeks to profit from it, then it forces the legitimate dancers who are only offering virtual sex in the form of lap dances to move on. If they can't afford to move, they may be forced to offer real sexual services themselves, in order to compete in a very competitive environment. To combat this difficult situation, Pepper says that whenever she sees these activities, she immediately calls attention to it, rapidly becoming louder and more strident in her protests until the activity stops.

The untouchable fucking philosopher –

A long time ago, far, far away, I drove a cab graveyard shift in the Pomona Valley, south and east of L. A. My first experience in a strip club happened one night while I was working. I was sent by the radio dispatcher to a bar to pick up a guy who turned out to be too drunk to drive himself home. As I entered the bar, I had no idea what I was walking into and was stunned at what I encountered. There was a horse-shoe shaped bar with a bunch of men sitting around it, drinking. Laying on a large wooden table in the center was a naked woman, writhing around to the music. I was appalled and shocked and 21 at the time. I tried to avoid looking at the poor woman as I found my fare and helped him out of there as quickly as I could.

As I drove my drunken fare to his destination, I thought about what I had seen in the strip club and made myself a deal, that I would never again enter another strip club if I could avoid it. I kept that deal for almost 30 years. At that point I had already made one similar, somewhat related deal with myself - never to pay for sex - and I never have. However, when I told him about this deal, my dad pointed out to me that the divorce settlement that I worked out with my first wife could be considered a wholesale service purchase arrangement. In his defense, he laid this gem of hard-won wisdom on me a few months before he died after a long illness. At that point he had been through a long, difficult divorce from my mother, had tired of his second wife and was jaded about marriage and life.

Several years ago, my friend and neighbor had a brain aneurysm, which is very similar to a stroke. He was a carpenter who had helped me greatly when I built my home a few years prior to his stroke. The stroke caused him to lose control of his right arm and leg. He also had some damage to the memory and speech centers of his brain. Over months of effort and physical therapy he re-learned how to walk, using a cane. Learning to speak again has been much more difficult and his progress has been limited, so limited that he is not aware of it. He understands most of what we say to him; however he has great difficulty expressing his own thoughts. At times, this inability to communicate has caused him to become depressed, as you might imagine.

Early on, during one of his bouts of depression, I decided to try to cheer him up. I broke my 30 year old deal with myself by taking him to a strip club for some stripper speech therapy. My thinking was that most are taught, perhaps even seduced into learning to talk by women, usually our mothers. I thought the strippers might similarly motivate him to make that effort again. The dancers had a great time getting him to name various anatomical parts and he did seem to make some progress. It also brought him out of his funk.

After talking with my wife about it, I decided to continue the experimental stripper speech therapy and brought him to the same club a couple of times a week for several months. It seemed to give him something to look forward to as he spent his days in an assisted living facility among the old folks, most of whom were at least 10 years older than he. When on these outings, he seemed happier and more engaged and did seem to make some progress in his speech, although it was still very slow.

I've been happily married to my second wife for more than 20 years and she graciously went along with my stripper speech therapy plan. I promised her I would keep my hands off the dancers and also keep them from handling me. I have been able to keep my hands to myself, but sometimes the dancers need to be convinced that I am serious about keeping my promise. In one club, I learned that some of the dancers had a pool going on me for a while, with the pooled cash to go to the first dancer to lure me into a VIP lap dance. They finally gave up on this, after I turned down several offers of free lap dances. I guess they drew the line at offering me a piece of the pool money, or perhaps they realized that I would have turned down that offer as well. As a result of my efforts to keep my promise to my wife, I have become known to the dancers as untouchable. I imagine that Gandhi would probably laughingly accept this version of untouchability, which is not uncommon among strip club clientele.

Besides my commitment to my wife, my ability to resist the dancers is also largely due to the fact that I am in my late-50's. Sex is no longer the powerful urge that it once was. I don't take boner pills and so my penis and I are operating at very similar energy levels. I prefer to spend time in my recliner, take regular naps and usually don't stand up unless I have a readily accessible destination. I consider the time I have spent in strip clubs to be my mid-life anti-climax, not a crisis at all. I am confident that I am sufficiently wise, self-aware and committed to avoid doing anything stupid that would effectively pour gasoline all over the carefully constructed life plan that my wife and I have collaborated on for the past 20 + years.

During my salad days in my mid-20's, I was locked in a dramatic struggle with several rivals for what turned out to be the less than exclusive favors of the woman who became my first wife. Most of the drama involved a lot of moving her furniture and other belongings from one abode to another, occasionally in the middle of the night. During this time, one of my rivals began referring to me as the fucking philosopher, a moniker which I learned to appreciate.

I do have a philosophical approach to life, as I tend to think about and analyze things, perhaps to excess. Over the past few years, much of the time I have spent in strip clubs has been spent watching and wondering about the goings-on, what does it all mean? This book is my attempt to work that out.

A sermon from the gospel according to Mary of Magdala –

In the twenty years since his passing, my memories of my time spent with Jesus of Nazareth have sustained me. I speak now of a few days that we spent alone together, camped in a meadow upon the bank of the River Jordan. They were the happiest of my life, a quiet time before the tumult and tragedy that brought about the early end of his days walking among us.

In the twilight of our last full day in that meadow, we sat upon the bank gazing at the river. We reached the decision to gather up our camp the next day and continue on our journey. Wistfully, I spoke to him of my wish that we could spend the rest of our days together, camped in that meadow. He told me that he also had been very happy to be there with me. Then, as was his inclination he started thinking aloud, telling me about time.

He told me that the best analogy he could imagine for time was a deep and wide river similar to the Jordan. He said that for creatures like people that are endowed with the gifts of both consciousness and memory, each day of life is spent nearly fully immersed in the current. The river of time carries us where it will, our heads above the surface only during the brief period of our waking lifespan, allowing us to observe the continual changes to the scenery as they unfold on the bank as we float by.

He said that time flows on forever, for us traveling in only one direction. He told me that if it was possible to see it all, we would observe that it has neither ending nor beginning, for it flows in an inconceivably great cycle. He said that in the fullness of time, all things come to pass. He told me that everything that is imaginable and everything that is not, might be witnessed from the river, looking towards the bank.

As you spend your days, brothers and sisters, think about that.*

*As imagined by the author, who asks your forgiveness, Mary of Magdala and Jesus of Nazareth, both for imagining you together and also for having the audacity to speak for you.

With your permission, I will stretch the analogy a bit further. I imagine that, if there is an eternal paradise, it exists on the distant opposite bank of the river of time, invisible to us through the haze and fog. All the prophets and many other great old souls reside and travel in either direction along that far shore, watching over us as we bob up and down in the river. It takes both wisdom and spiritual power to transcend the current and thus break free of the eternal cycle of reincarnation.

My imagination becomes somewhat whimsical now, as I also imagine that Jesus of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala have chosen a meadow on that far shore to be alone together again. They do occasionally host a picnic, and Siddhartha, Zoroaster, Moses, Mohammed and other prophets try not to miss it. The musical accompaniment at these picnics is sublime.

Aimee and her daughter, Cindy –

Aimee has the enduringly handsome and intellectually deep beauty often found among Frenchwomen, film stars such as Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant and Julia Ormond come to mind. She is also something of an anachronism, since she has a very modern style with multiple piercings in both public and private areas, as well as a number of elaborate tattoos, yet she also has adopted the stage persona of a '50s pinup queen. Of short to medium height, she is round in all the right places. Looking at her and after talking with her, I am fairly certain she could kick my butt in a New York minute. She just seems to be a tough and determined woman with a no-nonsense attitude. She also seems to be one of the more obviously intelligent dancers that I have met and her sense of humor is readily apparent as well. She enthusiastically jumped on my request for stories with both feet, telling me several humdingers right out of the gate.

Aimee has been dancing on and off for almost 20 years. She took a fairly long break from it during which she worked a number of regular jobs and also spent 4 years getting a nursing degree, which she recently completed. She is the only dancer I have met who has a daughter who is also a dancer. Her daughter also works at the same club where Aimee dances, tends bar and schedules the other dancers. The first story she tells me is the common introductory story that dancers choose to relate; how she got her start as an exotic dancer:

When Aimee was about 21, she found herself in difficult circumstances. She was newly divorced, with 2 daughters, one still a babe and one just a toddler. Her ex-husband disappeared from the scene and was no help, financially or otherwise. Aimee did have family in town to help with childcare, but financially she was desperate. She was able to work part-time as a cocktail waitress in a strip club. She tells me she chose this job partially for its shock value, trying to make a rebellious statement to her somewhat straight-laced parents.

Her situation got worse, as her 19 month old second daughter became ill, was diagnosed with leukemia and died. This left Aimee in grief and also deeply in debt for medical and funeral expenses of about $44,000! One of the regular customers at the club where she waited tables, a man who knew of her plight, requested a VIP lap dance from her from the club management. This happened occasionally and it was up to the waitress to decide whether to comply with the request. Although hesitant, Aimee needed the money desperately, so she agreed to dance for him. She led him back to the VIP lounge and started to strip. To her surprise, he began throwing hundred dollar bills at her and kept doing it! She stopped him after he had given her $1700!

This experience led her to conclude that the only realistic possibility she had to dig her way out of her staggering debt and properly provide for her remaining daughter was to switch from waiting tables to dancing. She did so and was very successful, paying off the entire debt within the first year! Aimee tells me that one positive thing that came out of the tragic and grievous loss of her baby girl was that the forced introduction and involvement in her daughter's health issues and care led her to an interest in medicine which eventually caused her to pursue an education in nursing.

Aimee then tells me another story, also from her early days as a waitress in the first of many strip clubs she has worked in. In an earlier and happier time than the previous story, she was breast feeding her youngest daughter. She would sometimes lactate a bit while she worked the tables. A regular lunch crowd customer noticed that her blouse was stained and damp and asked her about it. Although a little embarrassed, she explained that she had a baby at home that she was breast feeding. Then the customer made a very strange request. He offered her $50 to spray breast milk in his face, right there and then, in the middle of the busy lunch crowd! She couldn't believe it, she thought he was joking, so she laughed and walked off. The next time she went near his table, he attracted her attention and repeated his request, proffering up the $50 and swearing that he was absolutely serious. She looked at the $50, then opened up her blouse and let him have both barrels, producing much laughter and applause from the lunch crowd in the bar! Aimee tells me that this guy came back for lunch several times, getting a face full of milk and paying $50 for the privilege each time! She also tells me that she later found out that this milk lover was a judge! Got milk?

Aimee then tells me that men with strange fetishes are not unusual among the clientele of strip clubs. Dancers can sometimes make surprising amounts of cash in exchange for compliance with their kinky requests. She tells me that one day, her friend and roommate, also a dancer, came to her at work and asked for an immediate ride to a customer's house. The customer was offering $250 if she would squat on his glass coffee table and take a crap while he lay underneath and observed! Aimee gave her a ride and the job was completed as requested. As strange as it was, I doubt that it would qualify as an act of prostitution; it seems more like the pursuit of somewhat twisted scientific curiosity to me!

Just getting warmed up in the storytelling, Aimee then continues on the light side, telling me about one of her most embarrassing moments. She has several vaginal piercings and tells me that she tries to inspect the area carefully after urinating and wiping. Pieces of toilet paper can get caught in the piercings and even the tiniest specks will shine bright blue under the ultraviolet lights of the stage. She learned that lesson the hard way, as one day she was dancing on stage and a customer told her that something was "down there". Not believing him, she laid back on the stage, which was ringed with a low mirrored wall. She gave herself a quick exam on the spot, finding a corner of toilet paper stuck "down there". Somewhat embarrassed, she pulled it free and thanked the customer for letting her know about it. Then, inspired, she asked him if he wanted to buy it for $5! The guy laughed uproariously and the next time he came back into the club, he brought her a roll of toilet paper with a $5 bill rolled into the center!

Aimee tells me that she finds exotic dancing to be stiflingly boring, and that she is looking forward to moving on to her next career as a nurse. She returned to dancing last year because she couldn't find any other decent paying work that meshed with her final year schedule of nursing classes and internship. She left dancing in 1996, walking off the job after receiving a better offer from a club customer who worked in the construction business. He was a foreman on a short handed job site. He took a liking to her and offered her work as a dump truck driver, offering to give her a quick training that afternoon and pay her $32/hour if she could start immediately. She says she didn't have to think about that at all, she just walked back to the dressing room, put her street clothes back on and walked away from dancing for 12 years. That afternoon, she learned to drive a dump truck, a particular vehicle that she calls a Terex UTE. She says she already knew how to drive a manual transmission vehicle and that she didn't need a special license because she only operated this vehicle on the job site, never on any public roads.

Aimee says that, at first, the other construction workers had a lot of fun at her expense. Her second day, she arrived to find that they had welded an extra pair of lower level steps onto the cab access ladder and had also attached extender blocks onto the gas and brake pedals. She tells me she didn't need any of these "improvements', she was able to climb into the cab and operate the pedals without difficulty the way they were. She tells me that she was used to the antics of construction workers from the strip clubs and that she found them fairly easy to manipulate whenever it seemed worthwhile to do so.

Aimee then tells me about an occasion in which she was backing up her truck carefully and slowly, on a job site in which she had to avoid a low concrete wall on one side and a drop off on the other. She couldn't see very well, as the mirrors were cracked and broken, so she had to proceed cautiously. The entire job site was at a standstill, waiting for her to complete the maneuver and get out of the way. After she was done backing up, the construction company owner climbed up onto the step on the passenger side and yelled through the window at her that she backed up like a grandmother!

Aimee says she immediately put on her best 7 year old girl wail, which she was intimately familiar with as she had a 7 year old daughter at home, besides having been a 7 year old girl once herself. The hard assed boss wilted immediately, apologized profusely and never yelled at her again!

Another story Aimee tells me is about an embarrassing moment that another dancer had on stage. Aimee says this gal was tall and skinny, with big fake boobs and an attitude to go with them. She was blond; with something Aimee calls a banana clip that attached additional length extensions to her hair. This dancer had climbed fairly high up on the pole doing some sort of elaborate trick when she hit a slick spot on the pole and slipped, sliding and falling in an uncontrolled way until she landed on her head on the stage. This caused the banana clip to pop off and her excess hair to fall off. Unhurt, the dancer started laughing so hard that she peed all over the stage as she tried to stand up.

Another story that Aimee tells me is about a feud she had with an obnoxious dancer, who repeatedly rubbed Aimee and others the wrong way and paid the price. The exact nature of the other dancer's offenses is unclear to me, but Aimee gleefully relates the retaliations. The first thing she did was to pour a can of tuna cat food into the other dancers dance bag, all over her assortment of skimpy outfits, close up the bag and mush it all together and then set it down next to the wall heater.

Another time, she opened up the dancer's bag and rubbed jalapeno peppers all over the crotch of the poor girls G string. She says that this brought about all sorts of interesting and unusual gyrations when the poor dancer next got up on stage after an outfit change. Lastly, Aimee relates how she and the other dancers who were trying to give this poor obnoxious dancer a hard time, would bump the juke box "accidentally" when she was on stage. This caused the machine to reset and forced her to come down off the stage to re-enter her dance tune selections, get back on stage and try to start again.

The last story that she tells in our first session is about an obnoxious and abusive customer who seemed determined to give Aimee grief, trying on several occasions. The first time he was just verbally abusive, calling her various names, bothering her while she was on stage, criticizing her anatomy and generally being a pain in the ass. After an afternoon of this, the guy getting worse as he became more intoxicated, she had enough. He was sitting next to the stage, leaning forward on his forearms, talking trash to her. She was on her hands and knees at right angles to him, facing another customer. Finally having reached her limit, she lifted her leg and carefully planted her spike heel right in the middle of his forehead. She says she will never forget his cross-eyed look as he watched the heel jab into his face. Finally showing some sense, the guy left, but came back another day, getting drunk and acting stupid again.

The same basic scenario repeated itself, but this time culminated when he assaulted her from behind as she was doing a table dance for another customer. The customer was seated next to a small round table and Aimee was leaning forward with her hands on his shoulders. The idiot came up behind her, grabbed her hips and started thrusting his pelvis against her butt, simulating rough sex. Enraged at this sudden assault, Aimee grabbed the candle cup off the table and flipped the hot wax back behind her and down the shirt front of her assailant! He screamed and fell backwards at the sudden sharp pain as the wax burned his neck and chest and he left the club immediately. He called back later and spoke to the manager, threatening to sue for pain and injury. When questioned about it, Aimee replied that she was merely defending herself from his physical assault. Amazingly, this was not the last confrontation between these two.

The final incident happened a few days later, the guy returned and started getting verbally abusive again. At this point, Aimee was unwilling to let this go on for any length of time, so she got a pocket knife from her dance bag. The next time he said anything to her, she pulled it on him and told him to leave her alone! This guy must have had some sort of learning disability, because he just stood there and said the famous last words of many an idiot – "you're just a girl, you aren't going to stab me!" At this point she was more than willing to rise to his challenge, so Aimee feinted a belly jab and then stabbed him in one of his butt cheeks! You would think that this would be enough of a signal for any man to comprehend, but not this guy. He came in to the club again a few days later, made a half-assed attempt at an apology and asked her out on a date!

At another meeting with her, Aimee tells me of more recent events, coming into work unscheduled because she needed an extra $8 to complete her rent payment; setting that as a goal. The bartender told her she should think big and go for $10. The current state of the economy is having a definite impact on the dancers and their income expectations. Anyway, after a while a guy came in, an unfamiliar face. He seemed most interested in Aimee, who was taking turns going up on stage with a couple other, somewhat younger dancers. After watching for a while from a table, he came up to the stage while Aimee was dancing, tipped her a few bucks and agreed when she asked him if he wanted a VIP lap dance. She was happy to hear this, as she would undoubtedly make her minimal goal and be able to head home! When they got back to the lounge, he immediately put $60 up on the rail. This is three times the normal charge for a VIP dance, so Aimee knew that she had a live one and it might pay off to stay for a while!

After a few minutes of lap dancing, he asked Aimee if he could "take it out"! Aimee is a very assertive woman and very clearly told him that would NOT be OK with her! Furthermore, he should keep his hands planted on the armrests, or put them behind his back. Not offended at all by her stern reprimand, in fact he seemed to respond meekly. This led Aimee to suspect that this guy might be a submissive, which turned out to be the case. After a bit more of her lap dance, he started begging Aimee to make a date with him for later that day and offered her $600 to allow him to lick her asshole! Aimee is not a prostitute and sternly reprimanded him again. Once again he responded meekly, downgrading his request, asking if she would allow him to sniff her asshole for $300! Over the course of that day, he tipped her over $300 with no ass play of any sort included.

During the next few days, Aimee had an ongoing conversation with this fellow. He was from out of town and seemed to be looking for trouble. He propositioned several of the dancers and paid one of them in advance for a rendezvous which she told Aimee that she had no intention of keeping. Aimee, the most senior of the dancers working and bartending at the club, angrily convinced her of the error of her ways and to return the money. He eventually found a prostitute at another bar and came in a day or so later to Aimee's club to complain about his experience and seek sympathy.

He told Aimee that the hooker came to his apartment with a white powder which he assumed was coke, but which turned out to be very low quality meth. It made him and the hooker sick. He eventually passed out. While he was unconscious she trashed his apartment, stole $600 and disappeared before he awoke. He never did receive the services he was looking for! Not offering him any sympathy at all, instead Aimee gave him another stern lecture about lying down with dogs and waking up with fleas, a moral which seems appropriate to his fable.

The next time I see Aimee, she introduces me to her daughter, Cindy, who also has stories to tell. Cindy is a cutie, only 4'9" and nearing her 22nd birthday. Aimee and Cindy have very similar bodies, as you might expect. Cindy also has quite a few piercings, like her mom. Cindy has 3 children already, having had the first when she was only 14 and the second at 15. She tells me that she has only been dancing for 4 months and will only dance for as long as it takes to get her new car paid off. She says that she plans to become a hair stylist.

The first story that Cindy relates is about a regular customer, a mildly autistic man in his early 30's who comes into the club to play the lottery machines after panhandling change on the streets. Whenever he wins, he cashes in his winnings at the bar and then uses the money to tip the dancers, either for dancing for him, or for catering to his fetishes. Cindy tells me that this guy once tipped her about $165 over the course of 30 minutes merely for tickling him under his armpits. She also tells me that his mother sometimes drops him off at the club, asking first if he has been behaving himself on previous visits and if it's OK if he hangs out for a while. This is fine with the dancers, as he is harmless and can be entertaining at times.

Another fetish that this character has involves whoopee cushions. He brings them with him and wants the chosen dancer to give him fake errands and to "hide" them on his chair while he is gone on the mission. When he returns and sits on the whoopee cushion, the dancer is to make loud comments, such as – "You must have just crapped in your pants!", which seems to delight him immensely. The club also has a small couch and coffee table area and there are girlie mags for those who are interested in looking at pictures of naked women while in a strip club, which seems strange to me right out of the gate.

This fellow likes to sit there with a dancer while she looks at the magazines and chooses a pictorial of a girl that she prefers. She then is to ask him for his opinion and a critique of the pictured girls' body. Cindy tells me that he usually only chooses dancers such as herself for these "special" projects, dancers who have an "alternative" style and appearance. The more normal looking dancers still get smaller tips from him, but just for the "usual". She also tells me this fellow is something of a savant, as he is supposedly fluent in seven languages!

Other anecdotes that Cindy relates include the man who mistook her for her mom. He repeatedly referred to her by her moms name during a private dance and then became embarrassed and tipped her an extra $20 when she corrected him at the end of the dance. She also tells me of a couple who tipped her extra merely because she was so short and cute. Another strange guy gave her $17 to lay on the stage and pretend to be asleep. One customer gave her money to go and sit by the stage and tip her mom while her mom danced, this guy observing their interaction from the bar. Recently, she tells me of a guy who wanted to come up on the stage while she danced and did her pole tricks. He just stood there watching her. At one point she was hanging upside down on the pole and spinning; she accidentally kicked the guy in the side of the head as she spun around, almost knocking him off his feet and down the stage stairs. Unhurt, he actually apologized to her for getting too close as she did her pole tricks and tipped her $20 for the privilege of getting kicked in the head.

Lastly, Cindy tells me that when she was in grade school, she was very proud and bragged often to her friends that her mom was a stripper. She and her friends all thought that was very cool indeed. Her mom, however, tried to shush her and to convince her to be more discreet about the subject, which Cindy could not understand at that age and time.

The Onion –

When I described my purpose in writing this book to her, Aimee responded that figuring out what's going on in strip clubs is like peeling an onion. Each layer removed reveals more of the same stuff, and it will all bring tears. I pointed out to her that is exactly the same reason that her ass is also called an onion, a slang term of which she was unaware. I find that surprising considering that she sits on a very fine example of an onion indeed.

Before starting to peel the strip club onion, consider what it looks like on the surface. Most of this may seem obvious. Appearances can be deceiving and in any analysis, assumptions should always be identified and questioned. That is a key part of the scientific method. Of the available religions, science is probably the one with the most obvious practical daily applications, at least for me. From my perspective, science is indeed a religion, a belief system based upon faith in underlying assumptions.

Furthermore, I agree with Gandhi, who said that all religions are true. Mark Twain attempted to provide clarification of all such statements when he said that "all generalizations are false, including this one". Within Zen philosophy, contemplation of paradox is one of the roads to enlightenment. I am still seeking enlightenment and the environment within strip clubs seems to be ripe with paradoxes. So, without further ado, on to the generalizations!

Women working in strip clubs take some, or all, of their outfits off in the hopes that the customers will tip them. They are usually not club employees, but instead are considered to be independent contractors. They work entirely for the clubs customers and solely for the gratuities they receive. The degree to which they expose themselves is legal as defined and limited by the laws of the states and communities within which each club is located. This legality is based partially upon the limitation of the clubs clientele to adults only and mainly upon the dancer's first amendment right of free speech. This right has been extended by the courts to include the artistic expression of their strip-tease dance, semi-nude, nude, or naked. They take turns dancing on the stages and then wandering through the club, seeking individuals or groups who are willing to tip them to express themselves in this manner.

In the above paragraph, I describe in careful language how American society has contrived to put a great deal of lipstick on a pig. The pig in this case is lust, heavy petting, foreplay or virtual sexual contact and services for money and in the shadows, prostitution - real sexual contact and services for money. All of these involve the economic exploitation of one group, namely women, by another, the customers - almost always men. Some may argue that the men are being exploited by the women and I agree that a small minority of men are exploited in these establishments. Others may argue that the women in such clubs are there by choice and therefore are not being exploited. Hogwash, I say. I will get into these arguments in more depth as I start peeling the onion in later chapters.

Many of the experienced dancers that I have spoken with have complained that the accumulation of tips that they receive in the daily course of their work has declined over the years. To say it another way, when viewed over the long term, their average daily income has steadily decreased. I can attribute this to several factors. First, as they age, each dancer is in less demand because a youthful appearance is favored by many men here in the USA and youth is one of the major elements of our culture's version of beauty and sex appeal. Second, when they started dancing they were novel. Such novelty is appreciated and tipped more by those "variety-is-the-spice-of-life" customers, who have a continuous appetite for new dancers that they have not seen before. This is one of the main reasons that some dancers tend to move around a lot. They become novel again if they move to another town with new clubs, which provides them with a sort of renewable virginity.

This generality also has some exceptions, since there are some customers who tend more towards loyalty. These tend to pick one or a few dancers and favor them with their tips and attention. For this reason, as well as for personal and family reasons, there are some dancers who try to stay put. They want to build up a group of regulars who might maintain them with a steady income stream. Zada has expressed this to me as a reason she doesn't like to change clubs. She believes that she will lose some of her regulars in the transition and thus lose the consistent income they represent to her.

Over the past 20 years, the seamy side of the internet has come into competition with strip clubs. On a side note, some people claim that it was Al Gore who first envisioned the internet. Actually, it was a much earlier visionary - Charles Darwin - who first imagined an infinite number of monkeys, at an infinite number of typewriters, jerking off and throwing crap (in the virtual sense) at each other.

Anyway, the internet offers a virtual and more private version of the services offered at strip clubs, for minimal or no cost. This seems to be driving a trend that pushes dancers to expose more and more of themselves. Strip clubs are not your father's titty bar anymore! The internet driven trend also pushes dancers towards prostituting themselves in order to compete successfully with the sexual images, video and virtual interaction available on the internet. Ultimately, real sex may be the only offer they can make that distinguishes them from the virtual and increasingly interactive experience that is available online.

The internet is the most powerful force driving the multi-billion dollar adult industry, as well as driving trends for its workers, including exotic dancers. Supporting this last generality I offer this trend – in the early 1990's, nearly 20 years ago and predating the explosion of the internet, women depicted in men's magazines and other media almost always sported pubic hair. Today, it is unusual to see pubic hair anywhere in any media or on any club stage. I am old enough to recall the battles that Playboy and other such magazines had with government censors and Bible belt moral arbiters to publish photos displaying even a wisp of a woman's pubic hair. Having eventually won those battles at considerable expense, it must be especially strange for Hugh Hefner now. He probably never sees a bush growing on any of the many buxom blonde girls who seem to live next door in his neighborhood, anymore.

This brings up my last point - in the last 20 years, driven by changes brought about by the internet and economic forces, dancing has moved more into the mainstream as an occupation and lifestyle for ever larger numbers of young women. Dancers are usually drawn from the growing lower middle class and the poor. There are more strip clubs and more dancers working than there used to be, in an increasingly competitive environment. This is another complaint that I have heard from more experienced dancers; that most clubs now have a higher population of dancers working at any one time than in their earlier days on the job. Especially in the recession of '08, '09 and beyond, it has become a more frequent occurrence that I am either alone, or among only one or two other customers present in a club. Meanwhile, there may be 5 or more dancers perched at the bar texting on their cell phones or strutting around the club, trying to attract my attention and my dollars.

While most men would consider this an ideal circumstance, in reality it doesn't work out that way. I call it estrogen overload, the atmosphere in a club overpopulated with dancers. The highly competitive situation tends to darken the mood drastically, especially when combined with their frustration about their minimal hourly tip income. They also become angry at club management for over-scheduling them. It is just not as much fun as the happier attitude of the dancers and resultant improved atmosphere when there are more men in the club and money is there to be made. When things are slow in the club I am hesitant to leave, which would cause the situation to go from bad to dismal and leaving would make me feel like I'm a rat deserting a sinking ship.

This is analogous to the feeling of an aging man, facing the waning of his libido and approaching mortality, considering his upcoming check out time, leaving behind an overpopulated and troubled planet. He craves the feeling he still has something to offer, even if it is only to give a bunch of bitchy strippers a couple bucks each in exchange for taking turns wiggling their hairless pudenda in front of his nose.

On the surface, the strip club onion looks a lot like a 16 year old boy's wet dream to me. My inner 16 year old enjoys seeing pretty women in skimpy outfits strutting around, dancing, doing pole tricks and stripping down. Of course it's fun for men, young, middle-aged, old, it doesn't matter. I imagine that it might be fun for a while for some dancers as well, playing with and teasing men, manipulating money out of their pockets. My outer 57 year old wonders what it costs us all to make a 16 year old boys wet dream into a reality and a common fixture of our society and culture.

VJ the DJ –

I call him Verbal Jay, or VJ, for short. He and Zada are long time friends and co-workers. VJ has managed or worked as a DJ in many clubs over the years. He now prefers the position of DJ, as he is burnt out on trying to solve problems for and with dancers, which is a club manager's chief burden. He says he has many stories to tell and I believe him. I also envy him a bit. He is almost as homely as I am, yet even if you filter out the usual exaggerations; it is obvious to me that he has gotten more ass than I would get in 25 lifetimes. From the first stories he tells, it is also obvious that for him, familiarity with dancers has bred a level of contempt.

Verbal Jay is definitely one fast talking dude. He talks for a living, riffing on the mike about each dancer as she gets on the stage and then again as she leaves it. He comes outside, to the much quieter smoking area in the shade under the back eaves of the club, to tell me his stories during each dancers 2 song set. In exchange for the tips he receives from each dancer, he works the digital music computer and controls the batting order. This is a valuable and sometimes amusing position to be in, as he describes to me in his first story.

VJ tells me that one dancer, scheduled to follow another particularly good looking dancer in the rotation, complained to him that she did not want to do so. He says that for some reason, on this particular day, he asked her why. She told him that she could not fairly be expected to follow this other gorgeous dancer because the other dancer had dated her little brother in the seventh grade, had broken up with him and had broken his heart! VJ says that he has since learned this is one of the golden rules of strip club management, not to ask dancers for their reasons in response to any request; it is not worth the grief.

His next story elaborates further on the issues a club manager has with dancers. He says that in one of his first managing gigs, the dancers complained to the club owner that he was being too much of a hard ass; that he should lighten up. The owner called him over to his table in view the dancers, but out of their range of hearing. The owner told VJ sternly that he should look and act like he was being reprimanded. Furthermore, when the conversation was over he should leave the table with a long face, like he had been taken down a notch or two. The owner also told VJ that he should immediately call a meeting with the dancers who were present; the meeting to be held in the dressing room of the club. The club owner said that VJ should tell the assembled dancers that the owner had told him that he was not being strict enough with them. He also wanted it made clear to the dancers that the owner was not interested in hearing their complaints!

So VJ put on the long face of a much chastised man, called the meeting as instructed and then told the dancers that the club owner had instructed him to tell them that the only complaint that they should bring directly to him is that VJ is not being strict enough! VJ says that is the main reason that club owners hire managers, they just don't want to listen to dancers whine, bitch and moan – they would much rather pay someone else to do it!

VJ then tells me about another "bonus" of working as a club manager, dancer emergencies! One day early in his club management career he was called urgently to the dressing room; a dancer was down on the floor! Rushing back there expecting the worst, he found a dancer laying spread eagled on the floor surrounded by several others, all stricken with worry. They all looked to him anxiously for a solution to the problem – her tampon would not come out! VJ says that he has since learned, when faced with such female difficulties for which he is completely unprepared, to use one of two standard responses. First option - fake an incoming cell phone call, say that it is urgent but that he will return soon to deal with the crisis and then disappear for at least a half an hour. Second option - mumble something unintelligible in the general direction of the closest dancer while nodding and smiling, give her a warm hug and then leave!

In yet another example of the familiarity breeds contempt idea; VJ tells me that one day he was introducing one more of a seemingly endless series of blonde, big-fake-boobed dancers to the stage; this particular one wearing a silver sequin mini-dress. Speaking into the mike, he said something to the effect that he, like many, is attracted to shiny things. The dancer stopped in her strut towards the stage, looked puzzled and then came over to him in his booth. She asked him not to say things like that, she didn't know what he meant by that? Another blonde dancer standing there offered brightly, maybe he means you have a shiny clit piercing? The dancer wearing the shiny silver sequined dress looked even more puzzled, saying I don't know, do I? She then lifted up her dress and looked down there, checking to see if she had a clit piercing!!! Still wanting to be helpful, the other dancer helped her check! Neither of them finding the expected piercing, the two blondes looked back to VJ, seeking an explanation of his shiny object remark!!! He said, oops, my mistake, I thought you were pierced, my bad, I won't say that again, sorry.

This story brought to my mind the still growing trend of dancers to get multiple piercings and also tattoos. Having seen a fair number of interesting tattoos on dancers myself, I asked VJ to describe the best tattoo he'd ever seen on a dancer. He said that his favorite had been a tattoo of a headless skeleton bowling with its own skull with the caption in French: "Laissez les bon temps rouler!", which translates to "Let the good times roll!". He then went on to tell me that the hardest lesson he had learned in his years working in clubs was not to fuck the dancers he was working with; it always ended up costing him money somehow.

VJ gives me an example of this idea. He was rooming with two dancers who had a love/hate relationship going with each other. At any point in time either they were lovey-dovey or at each others throats. He went out with both of them, separately. According to VJ this started a rivalry between them, each was trying to one-up the other in terms of the extravagant dates and subsequent wild sex they would have with him.

Of course he says he played this to full advantage, becoming a kind of human ping pong ball between the two as they competed with each other through him. However, while this was going on he noticed that his tip income from the club where they all worked was declining steadily. He figured out that his two "girlfriends" were unpopular with most of the other dancers in the club and they were punishing him for "favoring" the other two by not tipping him! Once he broke up with the two rivals and moved out, his tip income rebounded. The other dancers kept coming up to him, giving him big tips and then dishing to him about the two unpopular ex-girlfriends, who had stopped tipping him after he moved out!

VJ's last item from this first storytelling session was about an audition he gave a young dancer at a club he was managing. She was young and gorgeous, so of course he "hired" her. Afterwards, she asked him, aren't you going to wish me happy birthday? He looked more closely at her ID, saw that it indeed was her birthday and so he did wish her Happy Birthday! This prompted her to say that she was looking forward to starting work, she had always dreamed about being a stripper! VJ says he was struck by the thought of a young girl growing up with such limited options that she aspires to be a stripper, auditioning within a few hours of becoming old enough to do so! He then added that he thought my book concept was a great idea; that truth was frequently much stranger than fiction, especially in strip clubs!

I couldn't agree more. As I described earlier, during the time that VJ told me these stories I had been sitting in the shade of the eaves of the back of the club. I sat looking out towards club parking lot through a chain link fence. Beyond that was a vacant lot, then a busy street. The back of the club where I sat could likewise be seen by pedestrians and drivers who might look over, at a distance of perhaps 150 feet from the street. VJ came out to talk with me for about five minutes at a time while each dancer, in rotation, would dance and strip through her two song set. Then he would go back in, talk her off the stage and introduce the next. Meanwhile, I was scribbling my notes as fast as possible, to preserve as much detail as I could from the rapid-fire stories that the fast-talking VJ spewed out at me.

During the hour that this went on, a clean-shaven young woman laid in the sun on a towel on the concrete walk at my feet. Other dancers came out back after their dance sets and subsequent club circuit spent soliciting brief table dances for small bills or $20 VIP dances from the customers. Most came out to this public back-parking-lot area wearing only their skimpy lingerie or some variety of revealing stripper outfit. They would sit, smoke and text quietly on their cell phones while awaiting their next turn.

The sunbather at my feet turned over occasionally, working on her all over tan. When VJ went back into the club to do his thing, she occasionally made brief comments to me about my book or about VJ's stories. As I was preparing to leave, she apparently decided to conclude her tanning session and stood up to put her lingerie on, getting "dressed" outdoors in public before she went back into the strip club! Stranger than fiction indeed! I gave her a couple of bucks, thanked her and told her it had been entertaining!
Two kinds of strip clubs in the world –

Big ones and small ones; the big ones are fancy and elaborate, with many dancers. The small ones are usually just bars that offer one or more naked, or near naked women. They all offer multi-level experiences, but in different ways.

A recent visit to a large club in the Midwest was unusual and revealing in a number of ways. First, the city in which it is located prohibits full nudity if any alcohol is served, so clubs in this town are either topless bars or fully nude "juice" clubs. This one was an example of the latter, although most of the guys seemed to be drinking the currently trendy energy drinks. I drank my fill of diet soda during the 3 hours I was there. As usual, I spent the time trying to get a handle on as much of what was going on as I could.

The large main stage in this club had 3 tall poles and was surrounded by 30 chairs, which in turn were surrounded by at least 40 small circular tables, each with at least 2 chairs. Initially fairly quiet, the place was about half full by 11 pm when I left. Ascending from the stage level was a 40 foot tall spiral stairway. Dancers used this stairway to ascend to and descend from the clear lucite second level VIP stage floor, at about 25 feet above the main stage. Some also ascended to another level above that, a third even more exclusive area which was not visible from the main club floor. Access to these upper areas was restricted to VIP customers who paid for services rendered there of which I do not partake, as I have explained.

During the time I was there - midweek and during a big league baseball game being played in the stadium a few blocks away - I counted about 25 different dancers strutting around the club. Of these, about 15 of them went up on the main stage and stripped, the rest seemed to have regulars in attendance keeping them busy enough that they did not feel inclined to dance for the rest of us assembled around the stage.

There were two large screen TVs hanging on the wall on either side of the stage, showing the local baseball game. The poor dancers on the stage had to compete with the ballgame for the customer's attention. This led to some strange moments, as an otherwise dull game occasionally produced an exciting play, shouts from the gathered men and bewildered looks from the dancer on stage. After the extra innings game let out, even more dancers and more customers began to arrive as I was leaving. The fully nude, non-alcohol clubs in this town can stay open later. Boozers need more sleep I guess.

About every tenth song, the DJ would announce a two-fer or three-fer special, in which patrons could purchase a single song VIP dance and receive either two or three songs worth of lap dances. The dancers would circulate, offering themselves at this discount. During the entire time I was there, this is the only conversation that I had with any of the dancers, who stopped approaching me after I explained my wife's "look but don't touch policy".

This is one important difference that seems evident between the large and small clubs. In the smaller clubs, extended conversations seem to happen as a matter of course. In the large clubs, such conversations between dancers and customers may interfere with the business at hand, selling VIP dances. In the small clubs, I frequently tipped dancers who seemed inclined to sit and chew the fat with me. These conversations may also happen in the VIP lounges in larger clubs, perhaps "après-virtual-sex".

As a result, I prefer the small clubs located in smaller towns. The atmosphere, business model, local ordinances and management style produces a multi-level variety of experiences in these clubs as well. My favorite type among these is the "local sports bar with naked babes". Drinks are reasonably priced, often there is a happy hour, sometimes the dancers don't show up but there are still guys sitting around drinking, bullshitting with the barmaid and watching sports on the screens. The dancers in these clubs are usually not road weary traveling professionals, but instead are local gals, decent women trying to make a few extra bucks for whatever. We're all just plain folks hanging out in a simpler, less-contrived atmosphere, passing the time.

The big clubs in larger towns have a tough time competing with that, and they don't try. They offer a different experience which seems to me to be worth less, yet costs more. Go figure.

To illustrate this point I offer this story which occurred at an intermediate sized club in another Midwestern city. It was also an evening mid-week, but this topless club was crowded with customers due to the hyped appearance of a visiting feature dancer, a supposed porn starlet. This club had a single large stage 3 feet above about 150 seats on one level. It is located in an industrial area that has five other, smaller clubs within a half mile stretch along one boulevard, a "red-light district", if you will. There are other, larger gentlemen's clubs located downtown, but I didn't want to mess with finding a place to park.

Within a few moments of my arrival and location of a seat at the last available table, a young woman approached me, introduced herself and asked if she could join me. This was completely unexpected, as I am used to being invisible to dancers, usually unseen except by the bartender. I was pleased to accept her company and bought her an energy drink, since she was only 20 and under legal age to consume alcohol. I had a domestic brew.

After a few minutes I told her about my wife's no-touch policy, that I would not be buying any VIP dances from her and gave her a sawbuck for her trouble. To my surprise, she stayed with me, which is also highly unusual. Most dancers quickly seek greener pastures after receiving this news. The only explanation I have was that she had only been dancing for 3 weeks and she may have been somewhat overwhelmed by the large crowd awaiting the featured porn starlets appearance. She sat with me for nearly 3 hours until I had to leave! We had quite a conversation, especially considering the crowd and the loud music. She is quite a talker, which worked out well since I usually don't talk much. She is a good kid and I wish her well.

She was dressed in a long red evening dress, slit up one side, and red gloves, up to her elbows – a very glamorous looking young brunette. The entire time I was there she did not get up on stage to dance, so I have no idea what she looks like out of her clothes, also unusual in a strip club. In hindsight, it was kind of a "retro" experience. It may have been comparable to the time that WW2 sailors and GI's on leave had with the original "taxi dancers", although we did not dance, there was no time clock to punch and I had no gruesome war awaiting me.

The much hyped and long awaited arrival and stage appearance of the porn starlet was a bit of an anti-climax in comparison. Sure, she was a voluptuous corn-fed blonde and sexy as hell. I could have gotten an autographed picture with her, as a number of the other customers did. However, I was busy listening to my newfound friend tell me about her life and about her first experiences with her new job, etc. It was very entertaining and to me it was well worth the $50 I gave her over the course of the evening.

Unlimited Kinds of Strip Clubs in the world –

It is within the nature of paradoxes that they are difficult to accept and decipher. For example, there are two kinds of people in the world - First Kind: Those who believe that there are two kinds of people in the world. Second Kind: Those who don't. The nature of paradox is bound up within the nature of language and of reality. Despite our own minds desire that things clearly be either black or white, things are not clear at all. Reality is muddy, it is both black, white and the full spectrum of color between, simultaneously and continuously.

Acknowledging the muddy nature of reality frees your mind and spirit, allowing you to acknowledge your own paradoxical nature. I think strip clubs exploit, denigrate and objectify women, but I enjoy hanging out in strip clubs because I like strippers and I appreciate everything that they reveal to me. As determined as they may be to be whoever they think I want them to be, they cannot help but be themselves. Stripping to the skin, they reveal their surfaces to me, yet their selves remain hidden. Stripper and customer share this human condition, no matter how much is revealed, there is always more that is hidden.

My ability to allow my ethics to "flex" in this way may seem to be hypocritical on my part. I rail against hypocrisy, yet am a hypocrite myself. The answer to this paradox is that I consider myself to be the only human qualified to judge myself – and I allow my code of ethics to flex. A hypocrite is someone who similarly allows their own ethical or moral codes to flex for themselves, but not for others. They believe themselves capable of rendering judgment of the actions of others and by rendering such judgments, they can rightly be judged to be hypocrites. There are few rules which have no exceptions, that is the full spectrum nature of reality and of paradox. This leads one to the true meaning of the Christian tenet, "judge not, lest ye be judged". Within reason, each individual has the right to act according to their own best judgment and to be free from the judgments of others.

Each new stripper seems to be yet another naked woman. After a while they seem to blend together in my mind into one blonde meaninglessly named Amber or Candy. Outside of my mind each is unique and much more than just another naked woman. Above, I said there are two kinds of strip clubs, but there are as many kinds of strip clubs as there are naked women in the world.

There are clubs that have a vague and transitory existence. You might find them in a city only through an internet post. This directs you to a narrow gated doorway and a stairwell that plunges down from the street level into the stygian gloom. The troglodyte bouncer-gatekeeper guarding the doorway at the bottom seems to be inviting you into the first pit of hell. Once you have been granted entry, before your eyes adjust, the smell tells you where you are. If you could turn on some lights, it would immediately be apparent that this dive needs to be gutted and then thoroughly pressure washed with a steam hose.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the high-dollar "gentlemen's" club. These are heavily and publicly advertised as chic night spots for the sophisticated. Big money has been spent on the furnishings and the ambiance, but the song remains the same as in the dingiest dive. There are also club franchises that attempt to duplicate their experience from one locale to the next, a sort of Mickey-D approach, but it doesn't work. The product cannot be duplicated.

Although a sixteen year old boy's wet dream anticipates women to be animated Barbie dolls, they are not. Although cosmetic plastic surgeons may strive mightily to reshape women to fit that mold, it doesn't work. That is the truly fantastically paradoxical thing about it. It doesn't matter how determinedly the forces of capitalism may work to recreate women as men would like them to be. It doesn't matter how compliant and passively accepting women may be, it just doesn't work. Leave your fantasies and fetishes behind, in pursuit of them you are only chasing yourself down a rabbit hole into a two dimensional trap. Pursue reality instead, no matter how paradoxical, it adds unlimited depth and true flavor to conscious existence.

Zada reveals much more –

Zada has decided to share more of her life story than just the brief scenes that I have asked other dancers to relate. She wants to give our readers an opportunity to learn how one woman's career as a nude dancer got started and her good, bad, ugly, sad and humorous memories.

For Zada, the difficult decisions and struggles pounced upon her fairly early in her life. As a teen she started to suffer extreme panic attacks and anxiety, which still affect her to this day, although she has learned to control them. When she was 16 she became pregnant, the details of which she chooses to keep to herself. Zada tells me that her mother wanted her to get an abortion, which Zada resisted. She says that her mother tried to get her committed as mentally incompetent and force the abortion upon her, an effort which failed. After Zada gave birth to the first of her three daughters, she was struggling to make ends meet. This sets the scene for the start of Zada's personal accounts, which have been edited somewhat.

Zada's first experiences working in Gentlemen's Clubs –

I was 17, and a single mother, living on my own for the first time. I had looked for weeks for a job, but had found nothing. My sister suggested that I apply at what she called a juice bar located about 20 minutes from my apartment. I prettied myself up, jumped on the bus headed for what seemed to me to be my last chance for a job.

The bus stopped right outside a building that had no windows and that seemed to blend in with every other bar on the block. Nothing really suggested anything about what awaited me behind the door. Overcoming a few butterflies, I opened the heavy door and stepped into the darkness, blinking a few times to adjust my eyes. My attention was drawn to the left where there were bright lights. A figure came into focus with her back to me, all I could see is her long brown hair. She spun on her heel and turned towards me and my heart stopped as I realized that she was topless. I quickly turned away, pushed back out the door and stood on the sidewalk for a moment.

While I was not a girl who had led a sheltered life, these kinds of places were not yet part of my world. I jumped on the next bus and I wondered if moving back home was even an option. I was always a very reserved and shy girl and working in that kind of environment was not something that I believed that I could do. That evening, I lay awake thinking about my choices and the dire situation I was in.

I began to rethink my decision to walk away from the club. My panic attacks and anxiety make it difficult for me to hold down many kinds of jobs. I had a baby to care for, so the next morning after some coaxing from my sister I headed back to the juice bar. Standing outside the door again, knowing what was inside made it much more difficult to open it and step in. With my heart pounding and hands shaking I summoned the courage and pulled open the heavy door once again.

Thankful for the darkness, I made my way to the bar and was met there by a smiling man with kind eyes. He took my hand and asked me if this was my first time in the club. I tried not to look scared as I told him yes. I told him that I was looking for a job as a waitress. He chuckled and asked me if I was sure that I was not interested in becoming a dancer?

The shocked look on my face must have answered his question, but I went on to explain to him that there was no way I could ever do that. He smiled and handed me the address of the office where I needed to go to apply. He told me to dress to show off my best assets and walked me to the door. Before I left he told me that I would likely be working there with him and to just relax.

I stepped outside and breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I can do this, I tell myself as I catch another bus and head towards the address the man at the bar had written on a cocktail napkin for me. Arriving at the address I saw that it had a sign identifying it as a talent agency. I went in and found a serious looking office with a receptionist. I walked up to her desk and asked her if I could talk to someone about a job as a waitress. I was pointed to a chair and asked to wait.

As I waited, my mind returned to the man in the club with the nice smile. I figured if he was so nice, maybe everyone else working there was nice too. I was to find out that was just wishful thinking. After a 15 minute wait I was led back through a hallway reeking of cigars towards an office. The office door was closed and as I approached it, I could hear men yelling loudly behind it. The receptionist opened the door and a cloud of cigar smoke billowed from the room. I stepped inside and found myself surrounded and being closely inspected up and down by five or six very large men.

After a few moments I was asked to sit and the man behind the desk started to ask me questions. Had I ever worked in a topless club, if I had ever danced and what my background was, etc? After what seemed like an eternity he informed me that I had the job. He told me to buy a short skirt and a white top. He came around from behind the desk and took my face in his hands. He said "You'll do just fine", and then he walked me to the door. I left that day unsure of what was going to happen, but sure that I would not have that job long – just until I got on my feet and found something better.

Hours before my first night working at the club, as I stood in front of the mirror in my short little skirt and my tightly fitted shirt, I could hardly recognize the girl in the mirror. Being shy and reserved, my wardrobe mostly consisted of loose sweatshirts and baggy jeans. Being on display was uncomfortable for me to think about. My ongoing battles with panic attacks and anxiety made me wonder if I would be able to continue down this road. The safety of home seemed better every minute. Then as if on cue, my baby daughter walked up and hugged my leg. I knew that I had to put my anxieties aside and do what needed to be done to take care of my little girl. I put her to bed, kissed her good night and headed to work after the babysitter arrived.

As I entered the club my first night, I knew that I would not be able to ignore what was going on around me. Even if I didn't agree with what they were doing, I had to remember that everyone has their reasons, just like I have mine. It was not for me to make judgments about anyone except myself.

I worked as a waitress for about 6 months and made good money, usually in the $300 to $400 range per night. However, living and childcare costs were high in the large city in which we lived. During that time I became friends with a few of the dancers. I still maintained firmly that topless dancing was not for me. However, my bosses were not men who took no for an answer and I found out shortly after being hired as a waitress that their main reason for hiring waitresses was to lead attractive women into dancing. The bosses, the bartenders, the other dancers, the customers and the lure of the money all were pushing me towards topless dancing in the club. Finally, after much urging I entered one of the frequent waitress beauty contests held in the club.

A couple of the girls got me dressed up and snuck in some alcohol for me. I went up on stage in front of a packed house. I had no clue what I was doing and was so nervous I thought that I would pass out. I figured I would get through it somehow and that I would lose, and that would be the end of it. I won however and I made about $400 in stage tips plus $200 in prize money for about six minutes spent on stage. Still a little tipsy from the alcohol and the lure of the easy money, I agreed to a dance schedule. The other dancers told me I could make $1000 per night or more and I figured that I could work less and spend more time with my baby girl.

I had a boyfriend when I started dancing, a guy that worked as a maintenance man at the security apartment complex where I lived. At first he said that he was fine with my new job, but soon became jealous and possessive. He would come down to the club and try to intimidate any man who talked to me. Of course this became an issue for my boss, who told my boyfriend to leave and not return during any of my scheduled hours.

After he got kicked out of the club, we had a short argument on the sidewalk in which I told him that I had no other job prospects and had to care for a baby girl. I said that I could not be with someone who made me feel this way and I walked back into the club. That evening, I returned to my security apartment to find that the door was standing ajar. I went to the manager's office and asked for a safety check. The security guard came back to the office to tell me that my apartment had been vandalized but was safe. My boyfriend immediately became my ex-boyfriend when I found that he had spray painted his obsessive feelings for me all over the walls of my apartment. I moved to another building immediately and thankfully never heard from him again.

After dancing for a few weeks, I began to pay more attention to the announcements of the DJ and I noticed the fear and dismay on any girls face when her name was called to go to the office. I asked my friend about this and she simply stated that it was like going to hell. I got my own chance to go to hell a few days later.

The club owner always came to his club along with a small entourage of men who stood around as if at attention. This fascinated me and my interest caught the attention of one of the men in the entourage, who looked back at me for a moment, then whispered something in the bosses ear. He then beckoned to me to come over. I was greeted with a hug from the owner, who then ordered me to do a turn for him. I did as I was told and was rewarded with a smack on the ass, along with a few words of encouragement.

I was then dismissed and as I walked away I felt some relief, feeling that I had dodged something. However, a few hours later, the DJ called my name, summoning me to the office. Catching my friend's eye, I saw the same fear in her eyes that I felt in the pit of my stomach. Believing that perhaps I was over-reacting, I did not run out of the club, but instead walked towards and then into the office. As I walked in I was grabbed around the waist and the door closed behind me. The lights went out, so I could only feel the hands upon me and someone breathing on my neck. Someone grabbed my forearm and pulled my hand down and a voice in my ear told me to touch it. I felt like I was going to cry and started to think about screaming, but suddenly the door swung open.

One of the men who worked in the club came in, apologized to the boss for disturbing him and said that a VIP customer had requested my company. He led me back out into a quiet corner of the club. I was trembling and started to cry. He handed me a bar napkin and told me to sit down for a while and pull myself together. He told me that there was no VIP customer and that he thought that I was too young to be messed with that way by the boss. He told me that this incident was not to be talked about.

Some of my first experiences as a dancer were not so serious. In hindsight many of them were pretty funny, although embarrassing at the time. For example, it took more than a month before I could begin to move around with any confidence while wearing spike heels. In this club back then, most of the dancers wore 5 or 6 inch stiletto heels with no platform. Most high heels that dancers are wearing today have a platform under the toes and the ball of the foot which gives the illusion of higher heels but which cut down the slope of the heel. For example, these days I wear a 7 and ¼ inch heel, but the toe platform is 5 inches, so the actual slope of the heel is only 2 and ¼ inches. This explains why Mark estimated that I was 5'10, while I am actually 5'6". I am standing on a platform that raises me off the floor by 5 inches.

Anyone who has ever tried to walk around with a 5 inch stiletto heel will tell you it takes some practice. When I started, I lacked the experience and had to practice on the job. My plan was to limit the actual distance that I walked while at work. This plan did not work at all. For one thing, the dancers were required to move around among several stages, the main stage and two side stages. While you are on the main stage, you dance to the music you choose then move to one of the side stages while another dancer also dances on the main stage to whatever she has chosen. So I was at the mercy of the more experienced dancers who were used to dancing in very steep heels. For me, dancing on the side stage to the fast beat tunes they chose was nearly impossible. I would hang on to the pole with one hand and run around in circles trying to keep up with the music while also trying to keep from spraining an ankle.

I found myself in this predicament one of my first nights. I had moved from the main stage to a side stage and "The Devil went down to Georgia" started playing. This tune has a very fast beat. I was doing my best to make it to the pole without looking like someone who needed help crossing the street. I finally managed to get one hand on the pole, which I clung to for dear life. Looking over at the main stage, I saw that the dancer there was getting a lot of attention and tips, so I made the mistake of trying to compete.

I let go of the pole and gave the one man remaining sitting by my stage my best smoldering look. I decided to show him my sexiest moves, took one step towards him and caught my heel on the base of the pole. I began to fall forward while flailing my arms; it seemed like slow motion at the time. I knocked the poor guy in the head with one of my arms as I fell face down onto his table.

I briefly considered pretending to be unconscious before I decided that I might be carried into the boss's office, with even worse results than embarrassment. So then I tried to get up off the table, which caused me to roll off and fall on my back on the floor. I opened my eyes to see a bunch of guys standing over me, looking concerned. I started to giggle and then everyone began laughing at my predicament as they helped me to my feet. I got a bunch of tips just for the entertainment value they got watching me execute that spectacular fall from the stage. I was unhurt and the guy I whacked with my arm didn't seem to mind either.

My mother used to let us sit in an old fashioned barber chair in our living room as we were growing up, but only when she was giving us a hair cut. I liked to sit in the chair, so my hair was always fairly short. This was never a problem until I became a stripper. Watching the other girls, I noticed that those with long hair made more in tips. Having short hair was a disadvantage for me, so I decided to overcome that by getting hair extensions. These turned out to be too expensive for my budget, so then I checked into wigs.

Wigs also were very expensive, especially if they are made with real hair and fitted. I decided that I was smart enough to shop around for a discounted wig and save on the fitting charges. They just seemed to me to be an un-necessary expense. I finally settled on a discounted brunette wig which cascaded hair way down to the middle of my back. I declined the $50 fitting charge and headed for home, with visions of bigger tips coming my way.

At home in front of the mirror, I slipped my new wig over my hair and arranged it carefully. My daughter, sitting at my feet, looked at me with a bit of confusion. I picked her up to reassure her that I was still her mommy and she immediately showed me the error of my ways by easily pulling my wig off my head. This delighted her immensely and caused me to start rethinking the fitting issue. However, with a few bobby pins I felt confident again and headed to work.

On the way there that evening, I was a little nervous wondering whether someone in the crowd might loudly bust me for having fake hair! I thought about taking it off, but had not properly done up my own hair, so I was committed to the wig. Entering the club I felt strangely empowered, not the shy short haired girl anymore but instead a long haired seductress. I could confidently ask any guy if he wanted a lap dance and would never be refused!

The first guy I approached seemed hesitant. I leaned forward and draped my new long tresses over him, the hair creating a curtain of privacy for us, as I had seen other long haired dancers do. It worked; he agreed to pay me for a private lap dance! Heading back to the VIP lounge, I congratulated myself, a bit too early as it turned out. We had barely gotten started in my dance for him when he leaned back and pinned some of my new hair against the chair. As I moved around, I felt a sudden tug and my new hair fell off my head and onto his chest.

As a wave of embarrassment suddenly hit me, I grabbed my hair and turned to bolt back to the dressing room and attempt repairs. Unfortunately I still wasn't as good at moving in the heels as I wanted to be, so I only made it about 5 feet before falling flat on my face. As I lay there with my eyes closed, I thought to myself that maybe I should have paid the $50 for the fitting.

Another story told by the venerable Master Li to his class –

Centuries ago, in a land far to the west, there lived a man who was wise, learned, and enlightened to a degree greatly ahead of his time. This man lived to share the knowledge and enlightenment he had gained, choosing the role of a teacher over the ascetic path which may lead one to Buddha-hood. As you may know, students, we call any such selfless teacher Bodhisattva.

This man was employed in the court of the king of that land as an adviser and a teacher to the nobility and their children. He was one of the first men in history to maintain a library of written texts and also one of the first historians. He set to paper many orally transmitted accounts of times past, thereby preserving them. He studied philosophy, long before it was called by that name. He was also a friend and advocate for the common people, lobbying his king for their education and advancement.

He was also a family man with a loving wife and three daughters. The youngest daughter was his favorite due to her ravenous hunger for learning, insatiable curiosity and eternal questions with which she plagued and delighted her father. Her name was Shar'Zada and this is her story, a legend of her land that is known far and wide.

When Shar'Zada was 12, the kingdom in which she lived was torn by a civil war. This war ended quickly after the assassination of the previous king and the rise to power of a tyrannical usurper. The new king ruled the land with an iron fist, putting any who might have opposed him to death. Through his wisdom and with some luck, Shar'Zadas' father managed to survive the purge but lost his place in court. He returned to quietly teaching the common people.

A man of very large ego, the tyrant king considered himself to be a gift from the gods to the women of his kingdom. He demanded that a beautiful virgin be provided to him for his use each night. In the morning the unfortunate girls were beheaded, never to have had carnal knowledge of any other man but the king.

When Shar'Zada was 15, soldiers of the king's army came to the home of her father and demanded that he surrender one of his three daughters for the king's pleasure. Although not as intelligent as she, Shar'Zadas' two older sisters had read the handwriting on the wall and had sought out willing young men and . . . needless to say, they were no longer virgins. However, young Shar'Zada remained innocent, although wise far beyond her years. The king's soldiers dragged her away after clubbing down the protests of her desperate father. As she looked back upon her home and family, she surrendered herself to destiny, resolving to make the best of what time may remain for her.

She was delivered by the soldiers into the king's harem at his palace. The eunuchs and female servants spent a few days preparing her for her upcoming night with the king. During this time she prepared herself as well and when her appointed night arrived she was ready. She did not surrender herself like a turtle, nor did she beg for mercy. Either response to the situation was common for such unfortunate girls. Instead she greeted the arrival of the king to the bedchamber as if he was her long-lost lover finally returned to her and then she assaulted him as if determined to make up for lost time.

After about an hour of her sexual onslaught the king needed a breather. While he lay resting quietly, she asked if she could tell him a story. Grateful for more rest, he happily agreed. She had prepared a great story for him and spent the next few hours telling it. By the time she was done, the light of a new dawn was breaking. The king had greatly enjoyed her story and asked if she had another to tell. She said yes, I have a thousand more such stories, but our night is gone and my fate awaits . . .

Truth be told, the tyrant king probably could have gotten by on one virgin a week at this point in his life. He suggested that he would be interested in hearing more of her stories. However, he demanded that each story be at least as good as the previous, or she would meet her fate. Shar'Zada, hoping for any sort of extension, agreed to his terms.

For the next 999 nights she survived this way, telling the king a new story each night, thereby entertaining and charming him into granting her just one more day. She drew heavily on the great education her father had imparted to her. Each day, she researched and improvised the upcoming night's story and prepared herself for its telling. She drew from history and myth and used allegory and analogy. Her stories were interwoven with the elements of theater - comedy, tragedy and pathos. She had an underlying purpose within all of her stories. She was working for more than just one night at a time, her plan was to educate and enlighten the king!

After the 1000th night, she had one night remaining and still was uncertain of her fate. In the interim she had given the king two fine children and would soon give him a third, before the next new moon. She wanted to live and she had one more story to tell. Also in the interim, the king had mellowed. He had learned in many ways of the plight and suffering of his people, the history of the land he ruled and of other known peoples and cultures. He had also learned of the schools of thought and belief with which Shar'Zadas' father had enlightened her. It was a different man in bed with her than had been with her that first night. In some ways he had graduated from his prior animalistic nature and become a human being, although he had not yet realized it.

Before she began on the 1001st night Shar'Zada asked the king humbly, "Please sire, this will be my last story, but let me live until I can bear my third child for you, it will only be a week or two". Then she told the king her last story, the same story that I have just related to you, students! At some point, as she told him her own story, with an incredible rush of self realization the king was enlightened!

Shar'Zada was the last virgin taken for the king's pleasure and he never did get around to having her beheaded. Instead he married her and she became his Queen and also his closest adviser. She helped him rule, which he did as a benevolent monarch from that day forward. Among many other things, the king had learned of the obligation of leadership - which is that those who govern must do so with the consent of, and respect for, the governed.

The people of that land flourished under their rule and continued to do so long after the king passed on. He and Shar'Zada had chosen one of their sons to succeed him. They prepared him for that duty and he did well. He heeded the wise counsel of his mother. When she finally passed on, after thousands more nights and days, he drew from the education and philosophy that she and his grandfather the Bodhisattva had passed on to him.

Shar'Zada's descendents ruled that distant land with a benevolent hand for generations. It became the first great culture known from the dawn of mans recorded history. They provided us with the beginnings of what we know today as the rule of law, mathematics, science, medicine and architecture. Much was added to the never-ending story, the ongoing development and enlightenment of humanity.

The story above was drawn, expanded, and adapted from the legend known in the west as The thousand nights and a night of Scherezade. The origins of this legend are obscured by the clouds of time, but it likely originates in the Middle East, perhaps from ancient Persia or Mesopotamia.

Zada talks about Beauty and Dancers pursuit of it –

I have had and have seen many beauty mishaps over my 20 years of dancing. Quite a few have been with false eyelashes. One friend waited too long to put hers on, didn't apply the glue correctly and ended up losing a lash. She didn't find it and didn't find out what happened to it until another dancer told her that she had seen a customer leaving the club with a false eyelash stuck to his collar. If he was married, we all hoped that he found it before his wife did!

Beauty is a big deal in this business. The men who come into the clubs have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. If they knew, it might ruin the fantasy for them. I knew girls who used to spend hours applying makeup all over their bodies to hide imperfections and stretch marks. Any white shirted man that they danced for would end up with that makeup all over their nice white shirt.

In a more recent experience, a dancer had one of her hair extensions fall out. She had left the glue at home and no one in the club had any. We all started brain storming about ways to re-attach her extension. Just joking, I suggested that we try some duct tape! The DJ said he knew where there was some, we tried it and it worked! Now that makes 10,002 uses for the miracle tape!

Men don't make it any easier for us to stop obsessing about our appearance. Many of them will make derogatory comments about our weight, our skin, our makeup, etc. simply because they feel they can. As a result there are quite a few girls who spend hours getting ready for work, thinking about every conceivable detail. Some girls will test out their perfume, trying to avoid any that leave long lasting scents on a man's clothes, so as not to get the married men into any trouble.

There are also other girls that simply don't care. They seem to roll out of bed and come as they are, sometimes not even stopping to shower. I envy these girls their lack of concern, as it seems much easier than all the obsessing that I and a lot of other girls do. Some of us can get as superstitious as ball-players about details of our appearance or outfits which seem to pay off for us, sticking with it fanatically if we believe it helped us get good tips. It might be a belief that it was long hair, short hair, blond hair, brown hair, nail polish, no nail polish, body sprays or perfume, tan or no tan. Whatever we think it was that brought us a good day, we'll try to repeat it the next.

Small things you wouldn't consider can be very embarrassing. We often work under black lights, which cause all sorts of things to glow eerily. Bits of toilet paper fiber, some lotions and shampoos and even some deodorants will leave us glowing in places that we don't want to glow.

Another big issue is when it is that time of the month. Some girls just take that time off, but most just figure it out. Tampons are the common method of choice; however, the string can become an issue. I have seen this dealt with in various ways, cutting it off or tucking it in is the usual solution. I once saw a girl set the string on fire, with spectacular results.

Changing tampons in the dressing room is a common practice and not usually noticed. However, when I saw a dancer using a lighter to burn away the string I had to stop and see how this would play out. Another dancer tried to stop her, but she said she never had scissors, but always had her cigarette lighter handy. Apparently this method had worked for her before. Anyway, she put her leg up on a chair and set fire to the tampon string with her lighter.

The loose fibers of the string caught instantly, the flames quickly traveled up the string, and poof, her muff was aflame! I should take a moment to mention that this was early in my career, back when most dancers still had muffs. Anyway, at this point a whole room full of dancers jumped to their feet as the unfortunate who had suddenly burned off her muff started shrieking curses and crying in pain. Everyone wanted to help, but there was nothing to do but go to the pharmacy and get her some burn ointment. The flash fire hadn't burned her badly, just painfully. She sure got a lot of sympathy from us all. I will never forget the look on her face.

Fire has unfortunately been the source of several interesting situations over the years. I have seen girls set their hair on fire while lighting cigarettes, pipes and even eyeliner. One that I will never forget was a dancer who was participating in a nationwide showgirl contest. Each dancer competing prepared a fairly elaborate stage performance. My friend's performance began with slow, monastic theme music and a costume in which she was concealed head to toe in a full monks robe. With the lights way down, the floor of the stage covered in fog from a machine and a spotlight upon her, she practiced lighting flash paper held in her hands as she reached the center of the stage. The flash would momentarily blind everyone as she flung off the monks habit, revealing herself in a skimpy costume, whereupon the music would change and she would start her dance. This went off flawlessly in practice.

The night of the performance, she had a couple of drinks to calm her jitters. It was all very dramatic, as she had planned. However, when she lit the flash paper some of her hair had come out of the monks' hood and was ignited by the flash paper. Simultaneously the flinging off of the robe brought more of her hair into the flame. She had prepped her hair with hairspray, which added to its flammability, so her entire head suddenly became a ball of fire.

Several men jumped on stage and smothered the flames with her robe. She was very shaken but luckily was unhurt. However, her eyelashes, eyebrows, and most of the hair on the front part of her head had been burned off.

Another strange work related injury occurred at an unusual club where I danced for a time. It was unusual in that the services that the club provided to the dancers were quite luxurious. We had individual dressing rooms! There were hair dressers, makeup artists, costumers, masseurs and even tanning beds in the extensive dancer's area of this very fancy club. One night, after her last dance set, one of the dancers decided to do some tanning before she headed for home. She fell asleep in the tanning bed and when she awoke a few hours later, everyone had gone home. Luckily for her, the tanning bed timer had turned off the lamps before she was badly sunburned. However, the catch mechanism on the bed was malfunctioning. She was trapped in the tanning bed and had to spend the night and a good part of the next morning laying there waiting for someone to arrive at the club to prepare to open it up for business the next afternoon.

Joy –

I don't know how she does it, but Joy is a happy woman. She seems to enjoy her work - she's just a big, happy, healthy girl. After I got to know her a little, it struck me that she is a 22nd century version of the ideal woman of my youth, an earth mother if I ever did see one. Guessing, I would say she stands about 5'9", or 5'10", in her spike heels she may be a tad taller than my 6'1". She is lanky, but well rounded in all the right places and has mid-length dark hair. She has a lot of interesting piercings in various private areas. She and Zada are friends, having worked together for some time.

Joy is a divorced single mom, with a couple of teen-agers living in another state with her ex and a twelve year old son living with her. She lives a double life, since many of the people in her public life are unaware of her private occupation. She says that this can be tricky at times. Joy is very much her own person and definitely an original character. She is also unusual among the dancers I have met in that she has both the desire and the confidence to write her own stories. I present them here with only minor edits, as I find her voice as interesting and potentially valuable to the reader as the stories she writes:

Wow....dancing? Really? Who'd of thunk it? None of my given or assumed names is Joy, and I started working as an exotic dancer roughly 7 years ago give or take and I honestly just never thought about it as an option for me. I was 28 when I first started. I had been a divorced stay at home mom for 10 years, livin' on next to nothin' and I didn't have anything I was doing just for me. A friend of mine and I were in a local dance bar (non-titty variety) and in the bathroom complaining to one another about kids and finances when a stunning blond came in.

She listened in on our conversation while she was in the stall and when she came out, I remember she said, "Why don't ya just dance?" I replied, "I just was dancing didn't you see me?" I didn't realize what she meant by dancing. After she cleared up the misunderstanding I started laughing! I told her I have three kids and a belly and I think a girl has to be really pretty to do that for a living. She convinced me to show her my bod, a sort of off-site audition and she said come in when I'm workin' we'll have a few drinks, it'll be fun!

It took weeks for me to build up the nerve to even go to the bar much less talk to people while I was there. The manager hired me without an audition which meant that I truly had NO idea what would be expected of me?!

I stayed most of the evening just watching other dancers that first night. I was so intimidated by the skill these girls, ladies and women were exhibiting. My very first dance was so awkward. My legs were shaking; I could feel heat rising behind my ears and up my neck. I was so nervous that I completely forgot to take any of my clothing off! The owner said, "Hey that was great now can I see it naked?"

My first few weeks as a dancer were so exciting and seriously a bit intoxicating. The money was so good! Especially for a single mom who'd been outta the workforce for like 3 years. I lied to my live in b-friend and all three of my kids. I said I had a waitressing position at a members only club. I wasn't sure it would fly but they all bought it. It was hard to hide sometimes because I am so naturally chatty but it worked. Eventually I came clean.

On Valentines Day two months after I started dancing it was really slow and quiet at work. So I had lots of time to ask myself: How the hell did any of this all happen? What about my boyfriend? If he ever found out he would be really mad! And then I remembered that it was Valentines Day! Holy Crap! I'm in a strip club on the other side of town taking my clothes off for everybody in town except him! I think if I had been able to be open and honest right away about wanting to try dancing we could have made it as a couple. I was too afraid of ridicule. It was that Valentines Day that I decided I had to tell the bf where I went and what I did every day because I didn't want to spend another day as a liar. Also I had to recognize that he really wasn't the guy for me if I would choose to lie and create distance over being honest and close. He didn't take the news well and we broke up.

Dancing, Stripping, Entertaining, getting naked, spreading smiles, the list goes on really whatever you wanna call it, for me it's just dancing. It's a pain in the butt too! I swear, there are those days when an eighty-two year old man really does ask you - "I just really wanna see your asshole sweetie, is that OK?". Gross, I'm sorry but gross! And so you show him your asshole. People go into strip clubs for a variety of reasons. Men whose wives have passed on and they just want to cuddle, men who are social cripples, hugely overweight, toothless men, bikers and/or extremely introverted (as in there is no way he will get a date ever) and we have one regular who has severe brain damage.

One day I went to work, went into the dressing room and got ready as usual. Getting ready as usual means goin' into work in jeans and a t-shirt with a large duffel bag or back pack or suitcase. Next, take off "street clothes" to dress in costume - some combination of thong and bikini top w/skirt or assless chaps w/halter. It's all naughty type wear that can be purchased at the porn shop plus 6-8 inch stiletto platform high heels. Then fix your hair and make-up to match an evening gown and lots of body spray and hairspray. But before you put your costume on its really important to use baby-wipes to give your vag a quick clean up while bending over in the mirror. Make sure there is no tiny piece of toilet paper stuck to your labia or anus that will definitely glow in the dark while you are on stage. Check your teeth for scraps from lunch, too! Underarm deodorant is often applied to the bikini line so that your bikini area's dermal layer doesn't become irritated by sweat and pole work. As a precautionary measure (in case any girl is wearing body oil of any type or not fully absorbed lotion), I will lightly spray down my legs with hairspray so they will adhere better to the pole as well as avoid losing my grip or slipping.

Anyway, so now I'm finally ready to go and I went out onto the floor. There was a girl working that day who I hadn't worked with but a few times and she kept looking at me from across the room. Not in the - oh hey how's it goin' kinda way but the coming down off drugs, I hate all girls that aren't me way. I really didn't give it any attention so as not to exacerbate the situation. There were only three of us there and it was still early, so not too many customers yet. I was on stage when a group of her male friends came in. Her friends were polite and tipped well and one even asked me for a private dance. I was stoked, yeah the first 20 bucks of the day and maybe the upset one would mellow if her friends were wanting to be social. I went to the dressing room real quick (vag check) and came back out to deliver the guys dance. Awesome! He was an easy customer to dance for, not pawing at every opportunity or lewd either.

Afterwards I went back to the dressing room to freshen up and found my curling iron had been smashed into probably the wall or stepped on repeatedly until it was definitely a nonworking device. I knew it was the one who had been givin' me the stink eye but decided that it was really a compliment! I laughed and laughed just thinkin' wow I must really be havin' a great hair day for that to have happened! If I had gotten mad and told the boss or yelled at the dancer responsible, it would have made a big ugly scene. Also, it would have made it harder to make money and wasted valuable floor time on a point that didn't matter. No one was gonna reimburse me for the damaged curling iron and in this industry the winner is the girl that walks home with lots of money in her pocket, a smile on her face and no unresolved emotion about the day's events. It's not always that easy though.

I recently was forced to change clubs and my first day at the new club was awkward. I had just been fired from my previous club for the third and final time. The first time I was fired for smoking marijuana in the dressing room instead of outside in the designated tobacco smoking area. The second time I got fired because an eighteen yr. old dancer sucked my long island ice tea down while my head was turned. The final firing came from one really fun night....we'll get to that in a minute.

My first day at the new club, I was working with a whole group of women who I had never met and one woman that I'd casually worked with off and on for a couple of years. It started off slow and when the DJ arrived, I was relieved (he's someone I really knew well). He picked me up off my feet, gave me a great big hug and the owner treated me the same. So after three long time customers, the owner and the DJ all knew me by name and bought me drinks and got a couple o' dances, then two of the girls came up and said OK who are you and where did you used to work? How come our regular customers and DJ and boss all know you and we've never heard of ya?

So I introduced myself and just stayed at the bar or on stage. I was makin' these girls uncomfortable. It felt like I was steppin' on toes a little so I called in a friend of mine to help me get acclimated to my new environment. He came in and sat down across from the stage in a booth while I danced on stage for a two-song set. The one dancer I know sat down next to my friend and asked him if he wanted a private dance. He said no I'm really just here to support my friend on her first day here so if I get any dances they'll be from her today. She got so mad (she was pretty well inebriated) that he said no to her she loudly stated - "fine get dances from the ugly chick! I don't care".

I've been doin' this job seven almost eight years now and that's the only time I've ever had that experience. I didn't get angry but my guest did. He got up outta the booth and said that's bullshit and I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you bad mouth my girl on her first day in a new place. He walked out while I was on stage and so I finished my set and followed him out. He says you're gonna be so mad when I tell you this. I shouldn't even tell you, but he told me what happened and what the other dancer said about me. I just laughed and laughed, mister if I'm gonna let the drunken ramblings of some girl wreck my day then she's not my biggest problem, I am. He got a few dances and left after a while.

Well it turns out she knew my friend...they'd slept together once like five years ago and she is currently friends with his dad (slept with him too she tells me) so she felt slighted and said sumthin' stupid while drunk. I didn't address it till the next day. The next day right when everyone was in the dressing room I recounted my experience without pointing fingers or mentioning names. I just said it's better for us as dancers to be supportive of each other even if we think a chick's ugly we shouldn't say it to customers. It might offend the customer with catty behavior and it's just bad business.

And now for the really fun night that got me fired from the previous club for the third and final time. It was summer time and I was eating a lot of hallucinogens. I love mushrooms and acid and it had been a couple of high weeks so it was time to come back to reality. But I can't throw out what's left so I ask a girl from work if she wants to come over and help me finish off my stash. The girl is the owner's girlfriend, he's married but still that's his 23 yr old girlfriend. She comes over and we eat 2 eighths of mushrooms, share three capsules of molly (mdma) and split an e-tab. Then we started drinkin'. We got out the art supplies and made pretty pictures and then we gave her a Mohawk. The Mohawk was too much for her so we shaved it all off and then rubbed blue vegetable die all over it. Then we went skateboarding at three in the morning, wearing boy-shorts style panties and scarves for tops. We crashed and used our hands, feet and butts for brakes.

At daybreak we went to the nude beach and stole 60 pounds of river rock. We played in the river and were just two girls havin' a lot of fun. Road rash and hamburger meat were the adjectives we used when describing our injuries. It was awesome! However there are consequences to everything. The owner was sooooo mad that I got his girlfriend high and shaved her head. I am never allowed to work there and I'm also never allowed on the premises either! I hear through the grapevine that my name is in the top three on the 86'd for life list! It was worth it though! We're still great friends and if we get the chance I'm sure we'd do it all over again!

When I first started dancing a girl took me under her wing and set me up with my first stripper bag. Contents: deodorant; scented lotion; fds (feminine deodorant spray, for your vag); preparation H (instant cure for bags under your eyes and bruises acquired from pole work); a curling iron; hair spray (for hair and it will help your legs stick to the pole if you lightly spray them too); baby wipes (for your vag); white eye shadow (it's dramatic and black light reactive); body glitter; epsom salts (use in a hot bath for aches and pains after a long shift); a tube of shoe goo (in case the tread on a shoe starts to give, that can be dangerous); Advil(for pain swelling and hangovers); febreze (if you don't have enough time to run a load of laundry it's a quick fix); small sewing kit (for quick alterations and repairs); and safety pins.

The other day I received a poem from a regular guest. Many dancers in the area have received a poem from this guy. This is a facet of the industry that is a little off but does no harm. He really likes roleplay. He wants to be the rescuer of a damsel in distress. He calls private dances sessions and has piercingly blue eyes. It's the eyes I think that does it, he's just weird.

So the first time I danced for him he asked me "is tape ok?" I said, ever so sweetly, my goodness aren't you adventurous! He is a very quiet soft spoken man and so I didn't wanna scare him off. After all we are wearing exotic lingerie and outrageously tall heels. Not reality - won't see it in the supermarket, must be a fantasy. But I did tell the bartender to watch the cameras because he brought his tape with him today and ya might not hear my screams over the music. Freaked me out a little but honestly also entertained me a lot. Curiosity getting the better of me, we went in the back. He doesn't want you to take your clothes off at all.

He asked me to put my hands behind my back. I did, then he taped my mouth and he taped his own mouth. Then we mumbled together for a minute. He took off my tape and covered my mouth with his hand and asked me if I feel safe? What? Safe? Are you kidding?!

Everything you've ever learned growing up, whether male or female says that's not a safe choice. But he's sooooo gentle and soft spoken, oh yeah we have to either whisper or mumble under tape because it's important for his fantasy, no loud voices. Truth be told the strip club is probably the safest place for that type of fantasy. I'm pretty darn sure any one of us could break him in two. We're a motley crew; we often lift our body weight while pole dancing, messin' with us is not a safe choice either.

He asked me more recently if we should invite a damsel. Of course I said yes. So he asked another dancer if she would enjoy having a session with us. She thought we were goin' to smoke weed! Hahahahaha poor girl, I should have prepared her but I didn't. I've never seen her eyes get so big as when he pulled out the tape! I had to smoke a LOT of weed with her that day. She is usually the loudest voice in the club but she was so quiet, soft and sweet with him. Then she yelled at me outside for what seemed an eternity while I laughed. Zada has danced for him too I'm sure and she probably has gotten her very own sweet poem from him as well. Also, he really likes telling you that he dreamt about you and uses soft fuzzy nuzzle adjectives about the feeling he had when he saw you in his sleep. Maybe he's also a romance novel addict!

Selling Sizzle not Steak –

In the Madison Avenue world of advertising, a slogan of the business is to "Sell the Sizzle, not the Steak". Sex, appeals to sexuality, sexual imagery and innuendo are all frequently used in advertising to attract attention and sell virtually everything, no matter how unrelated to sexuality.

In strip clubs, the situation is entirely different. Dancers are in the business of using sexual imagery to sell foreplay or virtual sex. They actually do "sell the sizzle"! If they then proceed to "sell the steak" they may get arrested and the club may get closed down by the authorities. It is a cultural paradox that sexual imagery can legitimately be used to advertise the sale of virtually everything except sex.

Visiting a strip club in another state on a fairly busy Friday evening, I was able to find a seat. I was ignored by everyone including the French maid attired cocktail waitresses for a while. Finally a dancer surprised me by approaching me from behind and laying one of her large breasts on my head – putting one boob on top of another, if you will. Then she introduced herself and asked me where I was from. I told her I was from out of state. She asked me if I had been to the club before. When I told her that I had not, that I was just passing through, she insisted that she just had to give me a "tour". I wondered why I needed a tour, but I followed her. She led me to the VIP lounge area - which was a maze of small booth size spaces all carpeted - floors, walls, ceiling - in deep red shag.

I looked around – and tried to avoid looking into any of the occupied booths, and then looked over at her - she was just standing there looking back at me. Then, point blank, no lead up at all, she asked me if I wanted a blowjob! I was momentarily dumbfounded, and then I told her about my wife and the rules of engagement. She put on a disappointed look and then asked me the usual question - how would my wife know, etc., etc. After I explained it to her, she seemed to understand, then she asked me brightly - well, how about if I sit on your face?

She had a good pitch and she certainly demonstrated a clear understanding of the power of sexual suggestion in advertising. She applied that understanding well during her pitch. In this case she did not make a sale, which is unfortunate because she undoubtedly needed the money.

Joy gets a "promotion" –

I've been dancing for eight years which for some is just a drop in the bucket and for others precious time lost. However, it seems that a promotion is in store for me, if you can call it that. I'll just tell you the story and you decide whether it was a step forward or back. Recently, money was tight all around in the club with things going from bad to worse. First, we lost our group of regular customers who show up for lunch just after the club opens. This was mostly due to our daytime dancers inability to show up on time for their shift. Also, the bartenders seem to consistently take all damn day to get anything you want or need. The only dancers that are showing up are giving hand jobs and blow jobs in the VIP lounge to keep their income up. My shoes stick to the floor....YUK!! Things were just not going well and finally I just totally broke down and cried.

On my next day off, I visited most of the other strip clubs in town. I just wanted to see what they have that we don't and see what we might do to improve things and generate more business. After this little tour of some better run clubs I felt even worse! Being at dancer at the dingiest dive in town totally made me feel dirty, more like a prostitute than an entertainer. So I called the somewhat absentee owner of our club and told him what I'd done with my day off. We met at his house to discuss strategies. I recommended we shine our shoes and fire all our masturbating, head giving girls that tell the customer they fuck for money when their shifts done (and they do!). He said if we did that we wouldn't have any girls except me and one or two others. Then we talked about ideas for upgrades. At the end of our chat he said that he wanted me to be the house mom and that we would work together to shape this place up from the inside out. I said that's cool - let's start by having something they don't, let's take good care of our girls.

First, I worked out a list of supplies to keep in the house dancer supply closet. That way dancers would have a better chance of having something they need in the club, instead of having an excuse to leave to fetch it, whatever it was and then not returning. Here's my list of supplies for the supply closet: Body spray, deodorant, coochie spray, toenail clippers, fingernail clippers, cotton swabs, nail polish remover, q-tips, razors, shaving cream, gum, breath mints, hair spray, baby wipes, a spare outfit, a spare pair of shoes, douche (some ladies get real good lovin not too long before they get to work and we don't want a patron to smell man juice in the entertainer), band-aids, Neosporin, peroxide, bobbi-pins, rubber bands, a blow dryer, 3 different sized curling irons, tampons, toothpaste, toothbrushes, dental floss, a hair brush, lotion, make-up pencil sharpener, emery boards, shampoo, conditioner, a towel. I went shopping for all this stuff on his dime.

Some other changes that he made on my recommendation: He got firm with the dancer who owned the small trailer in the parking lot, got her to get her little bordello out of there. We instituted a policy of charging dancers late fees if they didn't show up for their shift on time. He says he is willing to pony up for some new carpet and other improvements, including upgrading the smoking area. However, he was concerned that the dancers would not spend much time in the club if it was too comfortable outside. I wrote up a notice in the dressing room announcing my new position and also letting them know that I was not getting paid, just to keep the envious bitching to a minimum.

Posting the notice had an unintended side effect, as the owner surprised me, saying that he would find a way to pay me. He said that he just had to figure out how to do that without jeopardizing my independent contractor status. Well, some time went by and he never mentioned it again. He's a very smart man and I realized that he was waiting for me to ask about it, which would put him at an advantage. Finally, I approached him about it and asked for 500.00 a week, pointing out that I was already starting to get his dancers in line.

He said no, so I waited for his counter offer. He came back with waiving my house fee and taking me off the dancer rotation schedule, meaning that I could come and go as I pleased. He said he would pay my gas expenses and provide me with a few free drinks each day. All that didn't add up to peanuts and I told him so, so he said he would also pay me bonuses when he saw improvements in the club income. I agreed that would be fine, as I knew that the club badly needed direction and that things had begun to improve as soon as I got started. He agreed that things were improving and told me he was glad to have me working to create some order out of the chaos.

So the first two weeks I busted my ass, working to get dancers to show up on time, getting the owner to help out a few dancers that could be relied on to bring customers and money into the club. It worked, too! I had the bartenders paying more attention and more customers coming in to the club. Unfortunately, the club owner did not come through with his end as quickly as promised. He supposedly ordered some new couches, carpets, etc. But no sign of any of those promised improvements materialized, so we were basically still the dirtiest dive in town, no matter how hard I worked at it.

For six weeks I wore myself out trying to make it work. When girls didn't show up as promised the bartenders would call me and I would go in myself, working many more hours than usual, screwing up my school work and my home life. Girls were still giving head in the VIP lounge, and having sex too! I put in a lot of effort with those girls, getting them to work and back home, getting them hot showers and meals on occasion was just the beginning. The list of things for me to do kept growing and all I ever saw from it was one check from the owner for $150, not nearly enough for all my efforts.

During this time, I really put myself out to help one dancer, Louisiana, just 21 and hooked on heroin. I took her and her no-account boyfriend into my home for two weeks. She claimed she wanted to get clean, so I helped her find detox drugs, then helped her get on a program, which she blew off after only a few hours. Just because someone asks for help doesn't mean they really want it, or are serious about making the necessary effort.

Debbie, yet another heroin addict, was also an impossible house-mother project case for me. These girls would show up two hours late for a shift, make enough to get high and leave to go make their drug buy. Then return, get high in their cars in the parking lot, come in and stay 'til closing time. Then off they go to moonlight late night parties with customers in a motel. I remember being an active addict and it sucked! I guess that's the difference between 21 and 35.

Anyway, after all of that, to keep my sanity I had to ditch the house mom gig, so I moved to another, tonier club in a neighboring town, hoping to recoup my losses by making that change. That plan didn't work out either. I'm $500 behind on my bills, the house fee at the new club is $10 a day, paid a week in advance. Because of the house-mother "promotion" I had to drop classes last term, which put me into financial aid suspension and further screwed up my financial situation.

I swear I am tired, tired of scraping and scrambling and feeling like the work I do is slowly eating away at the fiber of my being. I dream about normalcy, but I am not sure how to obtain it. These lessons I am learning are all about priorities! Mine have been a bit off but seem to be getting back on track. Kids, Bills, School, Boyfriend, Work. Still seems like a bit much! When do things get easier? Do they? Sometimes I think that at ninety I will look back on all these transitions and see how I could have made it easier on myself!
Peeling the onion - Seek and ye shall find –

Abortion, abuse, acceptance, addictions, adolescence, adornments, adultery, adults, adversity, advertising, agendas, aggressiveness, agony, alcoholics, alibis, alliances, allure, amusement, anatomies, angels, anger, angular-momentum, ankle-sprains, anthropology, anti-depressants, apathy, appetites, apple-pie, arrogance, art, aspirations, asses, assholes, ass-men, athleticism, attitudes, attraction, auditions. Baby-fat, baby-mamas, bachelors, back-rubs, bad-asses, bad-boys, bad-choices, bad-falls, bad-fingers, bait, balance, bankrolls, banter, bar-fights, bartenders, barter, bashful-babes, bastards, beer, beauty, bedonkadonk-butts, beliefs, best-men, betrayal, big-spenders, biker-babes, bikers, birthdays, bitching, bitch-slaps, black-lights, black-mail, blasphemy, blonde-bombshells, blood, blow-jobs, blue-balls, body-image, bondage, boner-pills, boob-jobs, booty-calls, boredom, botox, bouncers, boyfriends, brazen-hussies, bread-winners, break-ups, breast-men, broken-hearts, broken-promises, bruises, bulimia, bullshit, burlesque, business, business-suits.

Callous-disregard, captivity, caregivers, car-keys, caresses, casualties, catering, cat-fights, cattiness, cell-phones, cellulite, champagne-rooms, chances, chaos, characters, charity, cheerleaders, cheesecake, child-care, childishness, children, child-support, chubby-chasers, cigarettes, closing-time, cocktails, coffee, collusion, comedy, comfort, companionship, compassion, competition, complexity, compliance, compulsion, con-artists, concealment, conception, concern, conflict, confusion, connection, conscience, consequences, consolation, conspiracy, contagion, contempt, contests, contortionists, contraception, control-issues, conundrums, conversation, convicts, coordination, cops, copulation, coronaries, cosmetics, cougars, counterfeits, courage, courtesans, cover-charges, cowardice, cowgirls, craft, crank, creativity, criminals, cripples, crises, criticism, cross-eyed-mary, culture, cunning-stunts, cunnilingus, cupcakes, currency-violation, curses.

DJ, DUI, daddy-issues, dance, danger, daughters, daydreams, dealers, death, deception, decrepitude, defeat, defensiveness, defiance, demons, denial, depression, depth, desire, despair, desperation, derelict-dads, deviants, dieting, different-strokes, dignity, dimness, din, disbelief, discrimination, disdain, disillusionment, divorce, double-d's, doubts, dominance, drama, dressing-rooms, drive-bys, dropouts, drugs, drunkenness, dumb-looks, dysfunction. Easy-money, ebonics, ecdysiasts, ecstasy, education, ego, emancipation, embarrassment, empathy, emotions, encouragement, endeavor, endurance, enlightenment, entanglement, entertainment, entrapment, epiphanies, erections, escape, escorts, evangelists, evolution, excitation, excuses, exhibitionism, expectation, exploitation, expression. Failure, faith, fakes, family, fantasy, fashion, fast-talkers, fast-women, fat-cats, fat-chicks, fear, feature-dancers, fellatio, fell-off-the-wagon, fertility, fetishes, feuds, fidelity, financial-planning, fire&brimstone, flesh, flirtation, flowers, folly, foot-fetishes, fornication, fortitude, freedom, french-maids, friendship, frustration, full-dance-cards, fun, funny-business, funny-smells.

GHB, gambling, games, gang-bangers, gangs, generosity, genetics, gestures, gifts, girlfriends, girls-girls-girls, girl-on-girl, girl-power, glitter, gluttony, gold-diggers, gonorrhea, good&evil, goodbyes, good-times, goose-bumps, gooses, grab-ass, grace, grasping, gratuities, gravity, greed, greetings, grooms, groping, g-strings, gunplay. HIV, habits, hairdos, hair-extensions, halloween-outfits, hallucinogens, handcuffs, hand-jobs, happy-endings, harassment, hard-feelings, hard-hearts, hatred, headers, head-locks, healing, hearing-loss, heavy-hands, heavy-petting, helen-of-troy, heroes&villains, herpes, hickeys, hidden-cameras, high-heels, history, homelessness, honesty, hookups, hope, hormones, housewives, hugs, huh?, humanity, human-relations, humor, hunger, husbands, hypodermics, hysterectomies. Identity, illiteracy, illumination, images, imbalance, implants, impotence, inadequacy, inadequate-clothing, incest, indentured-servitude, independence, indignities, infections, infidelity, inhumanity, injuries, insanity, insecurity, insinuations, instability, intercourse, intergenerational-voyeurism, invasion-of-privacy, investments, irrationality, irresponsibility, irony.

Jealousy, jezebels, jiggling, jokes, judgement-of-paris. Karma, kinks, kisses. Lactation, lady-luck, landing-strips, language, lap-dances, last-call, lawsuits, lawyers, laxatives, laziness, legal-troubles, leg-men, lesbians, liability, licentiousness, lies, life, lines, lingerie, liposuction, lipstick, liquid-lunch, listeners, live-nude-girls, loneliness, loss, lost-children, lost-panties, lost-wages, lounge-lizards, love, lubrication, luck, lunacy, lust. MILFs, mafiosos, mammaries, mania, manumission, marijuana, marriage, masochists, mastectomies, masturbators, maturity, meanies, meaning, medical-bills, melodrama, memories, menstruation, meth-mouth, mickeys, milk-shakes, minors, mirrors, misbehavior, miscarriages, misfortune, misogynists, mistakes, mistresses, misunderstandings, mobsters, mona-lisa-smiles, money-honeys, money-trouble, monogamy, mothers, motor-boats, murder, music, mystery. Narcissism, naturals, negotiations, neuroses, noblesse-oblige, no-health-insurance, nonagenarians, nurses, nymphomania. Obsession, octogenarians, on-the-wagon, opportunity, orgasm, outfits, outrage.

PMS, pain, pandering, paradox, paranoia, parental-rights, parents, parking-lot, parties, party-girls, passion, passivity, pasties, pathos, patriots, payback, pay-offs, pedophilia, perfume, periods, personality, personal-space, perspective, perversion, pettiness, petulance, phat-asses, philosophy, photo-sessions, physiques, pickups, piercings, pimps, plasticity, platinum-blondes, play, players, pleasure, pole-spinners, pole-tricks, police, poly-amorists, poor-hygiene, pom-poms, pornography, portfolios, poses, possessiveness, potential, poverty, powerlessness, power-trips, practical-jokes, prayers, predators, pregnancy, prey, procuring, profits, promises-kept, proposals, propositions, prostitution, protection, pseudonyms, psychoses, psychology, pubic-hair, purchase, pursuit, pushers. RPMs, racism, rage, rape, rap-sheets, reality, rejection, relationships, release, rendezvous, renewal, rent-money, repression, reproduction, repulsion, rescue, regulars, responsibility, restrooms, retaliation, revelations, rewards, ridicule, risky-business, rock-n-roll, role-playing, romance, room-mates, rump-shakers, rubbers, runaways.

STDs, sacrifices, sadists, sad-songs, saints, Santa-suits, satisfaction, satyriasis, scams, scars, schoolgirls, services, separation, septuagenarians, sexuality, shallow-graves, shallowness, sky-pilots, sickness, sick-kids, silliness, sins, single-moms, sisters, size-matters, skin, slang, slap&tickle, slavery, sluts, smiles, smoking, snow-jobs, soap-opera, sobriety, sob-stories, sodomy, soft-touches, space-cases, spanks, sperm, spice-of-life, spike-heels, spitting, spotlights, stab-wounds, stages, stalkers, stepfathers, stimulation, street-smarts, striptease, students, stupidity, style, submission, substance, subterfuge, subtext, subtlety, success, sugar-daddies, suicide, superficiality, surrender, survival-skills, sweeties, sympathy, syphilis. T&A, table-dances, tan-lines, tassels, tattoos, tax-audits, taxicabs, taxi-dances, tears, temptation, texting, theft, thongs, tickling, tips, titties, titty-dancers, tongues, tragedies, tramp-stamps, transactions, trans-sexuals, trickery, triumph, trust, truth. Ugliness, unconsciousness, understanding. VIP, vaginas, validation, vampires, vanity, variety, venus-de-milo, verbal-contracts, vices, violence, virility, voluptuousness, vomit, voyeurism, vulnerability. Wakes, warm-hearts, weakness, web-cams, web-sites, wedding-rings, wet-dreams, what?, wigs, wing-men, wives, wit, witches, work, wrinkles. Yeast, yoga, youth. Zoology.

Holly -

A larger-than-life character, I consider Holly to be the Forrest Gump among the dancers that I have met. If half of what she tells me is true, she has had one hell of a wild ride. Unlike Forrest, she is the type that has gone looking for it, it hasn't just happened to her. She is a professional dancer and is in amazing shape for a woman in her late 40's, lean, lithe and graceful. She moves like a cat and seems like a natural athlete. She tells me that she was a serious long distance runner in her early years.

She readily admits that her breasts are augmented; they are large yet proportional to her thin frame. She tells me that she is having trouble with one of her saline implants leaking and will soon have surgery to replace them. Holly has never been married, nor has she had any children, which seems unusual among the dancers I have met. Holly is a very high energy person; I suspect most men who are initially attracted to her hyper, bubbly persona have eventually tried to get her to slow down and relax, which I don't believe is in her nature.

Besides her long career as an exotic dancer, she has also worked as an electro-mechanical technician and a welder. I imagine she worked rings around most of her co-workers in those jobs. Holly currently runs several different but related businesses, among which are: retail and online sales of apparel and accessories for dancers; an escort service; massage therapy; entertainment promotions; and health education. To this point, she is the only dancer that I have met that employs a personal assistant.

Holly tells me that she had been a drug abuser for much of her 25 year career as a dancer. Early on it was with hallucinogenic mushrooms, then angel dust and later, crystal meth. These days she drinks hard while she is on the job entertaining men at her club of choice. She is one of the rare drug and alcohol abusers with the cast iron constitution necessary to survive and to thrive in spite of the rigors of her fast moving, hard living lifestyle. It seems likely to me that Holly will bop until she drops.

Holly says she has a lot of stories to tell and I believe her. She seems more than willing to spend the time to tell me about her life. She does so in between her stage sets and the subsequent trips around the club seeking tips and VIP lounge dances. The first story she tells happened to her early in her dancing career, in a major city on the west coast during the '80s. The club where she was dancing was owned through a front by an organized crime family, which was also in the cocaine business.

One night she was chosen to escort a visiting elder business associate of the family and they ended up alone together back in his hotel suite. She spent a couple of hours watching him coke himself to the gills. Holly preferred angel dust at that time and there wasn't any available for her. She listened to him whine and cry about how much he missed his family back in South America. At one point, he asked her how long she had been working with the "family". She chose to deliberately misunderstand the question and told him her family was doing fine. After a shower, he finally surrendered to the coke jag and passed out on the bed.

She found herself alone in the suite with an unconscious gangster and no safe way to get home. The room contained several large duffels. Also, in plain sight the top shelf of the closet was stacked high with bundles of cash. She suspected that the duffels held more cash or coke, or both. She felt trapped and unable to leave the room. If any cash or coke turned up missing after she left she knew that it was highly likely she would end up in a shallow unmarked grave.

She decided that she had to stay and curled up on a chair to spend the night. Shortly thereafter, an overly large South American bodyguard let himself into the room and offered to drive her wherever she wanted to go. When they got down to the street and into the limo he asked her if she needed anything to "help her sleep".

After hesitating she asked him if he knew where to score some angel dust. He told her not to be embarrassed about her drug of choice. He said that he had recently escorted and driven for an ambassador and his wife and also spent some time partying with them. He had scored some PCP for them and so he found some angel dust for her as well. She spent several more hours with him, partying in the early hours with the gangsters driver/bodyguard. When he finally took her home dawn was breaking.

Then Holly tells me the story of how she got into dancing in the first place. She was a military brat; she ran wild and ran away from home when she was 16. A free spirit, she was drawn into the lifestyle of northern California. She got heavily into nudity, pot, and hallucinogenic mushrooms. She spent the next 7 years with her first boyfriend. They traveled together over much of the western US. He was working in the oil patch and she was getting educated in electronics. She worked for a while in Silicon Valley and also learned to weld. With that last revelation I suddenly realized that the plot of Flashdance is somewhat plausible after all! Anyway, towards the end of this 7 year relationship, her boyfriend's brother had a beautiful half-Filipina girlfriend who was a dancer and who talked Holly into giving it a try.

The first club she danced in was a totally nude establishment, which was somewhat unusual at that time. Holly tells me that she was so nervous and excited when she first went on stage that she danced through 3 entire songs before she realized that she had forgotten to take her outfit off! She says that in spite of this, she already had $75 in tips on the stage. Once she stripped, the money started to really pile up and she was hooked!

Holly tells me that during this early period, she really went overboard with the money and the lifestyle. She bought several cars and other big ticket items. She began using angel dust, was arrested a couple of times for being under the influence and she also lost track of her boyfriend. After a couple years of this she went overboard in the other direction, finding Jesus and becoming a fanatical born-again Christian. She swore off drugs and dancing for a year or so before the lure of the money dragged her back into the night life once again.

Holly then jumps forward more than 10 years, to the early and mid '90's. She tells me that she had become a feature dancer for a string of clubs that was owned by a company fronting for an organized crime family. She traveled from club to club all over the west, all expenses paid and earning big money in tips. Her image was featured on billboards and adult cable channel advertising. She regularly helped to open newly established clubs for the franchise line.

During this time, Holly was still heavily into drugs and partied often with various biker gangs that were business associates of the family running the clubs in which she danced. This was the peak of her career and of the strip club business, just before the internet boom began to change everything, including the adult industry. Holly tells me that if she had saved $2 out of every $100 that went through her hands during that 5 year period, she would be comfortably retired today.

Lindy –

Lindy is a pretty blonde who looks younger than the experiences and the life story she relates. She has 2 children; a son age 5 and a daughter, age 8. She has just started dancing at the club where I first met her and seems eager to tell me her story.

Most of the experienced dancers that I have talked with have told me that in the course of gaining experience they have established close-knit, extended family relationships with their co-workers. The first story that Lindy tells me seems to be a fine example of this family type relationship in action.

Lindy says that about 4 years ago, in early December of that year, she was dancing about 60 hours a week. She was feeling very run down and was having female problems. She had a month long menstrual period, and then had a miscarriage. She went to see an obstetrician-gynecologist, who ordered a number of immediate blood tests and sent her to the emergency room. The blood tests indicated that she had very low blood platelet, white cell and red cell counts. The doctors told her that these tests and her symptoms indicated that she either had AIDS or leukemia. Further tests determined that it was leukemia.

From the emergency room she was admitted directly into the hospital to begin a fairly new chemotherapy treatment. She was quarantined because the treatment reduced her immune systems effectiveness. Her long blond hair all fell out. During this time her family and her dancer friends helped with childcare and gave her kids a Christmas. While in the hospital Lindy went blind, which the doctors assured her was very likely temporary. After a month in the hospital she was released into an outpatient program and scheduled to continue the chemotherapy for about 6 months.

Although she was both blind and bald, after her release from the hospital she immediately went back to work at the club as a cocktail waitress. She wore a bandanna to cover her baldness. In the dark environment of the club, with the help of the dancers, she was able to do the job and to conceal her blindness from the customers. She tells me that the darkness actually helped her eyes to heal. They were very sensitive to light during this time and were frequently running with tears merely in reaction to the minimal lighting of the club.

While she was in the hospital her dancer friends in the club convinced the club management to allow them to throw a fundraiser party for Lindy. This was to help with her medical bills and childcare and other expenses. They raised several thousand dollars, which helped a lot and also lifted her spirits during a very difficult time. Lindy survived this ordeal and appears to me to be a healthy young woman. This is a tribute to her intestinal fortitude, the strength she drew from her friends and family and to the miracles that modern medicine accomplishes every day.

Joy helps film a porno –

The next time I see Joy, she is back to dancing at the same dive club where she tried to do the house mother gig and it basically blew up her life. She says she is now just dancing to get caught up on her bills, every morning she is pounding the pavement looking for a regular job. Afternoons and evenings she is back to dancing, but now she is looking the other way whenever she sees management type things that need doing. She says she has learned her lesson on that score.

Joy has decided that she no longer wants to write up her own stories. She now wants to follow the same process as I employ with the other dancers. I usually write the stories up after each dancer tells them to me at the club where each works. Later, I bring back a first draft for them to check for accuracy, make any edits they would like, or add more details to their stories.

So Joy's next story is about a couple of younger dancers who recently approached her for advice and help with a proposition they had received from a customer. He wanted to make an amateur porn film using them as "stars". In this film they would get it on with each other and then also with him, all to be filmed on digital video. The dancers wanted Joy to act as chaperone and security. Her first task was to talk with the customer and judge whether he looked "safe" and if so, to firm up the business arrangements. Joy told them that she was willing to help, under a couple of conditions. Joy wanted their agreement that they would first: insist that it would strictly be a "safe sex" production, and second: follow her directions without hesitation or question during the filming on whatever "set" he chose to use.

The two young dancers agreed to her conditions, so Joy set up a meeting with the amateur film-maker at the club. She explained to him that the terms were non-negotiable. She told him that at any time, if she didn't like what was happening, she would cut him first and ask questions later. She says the guys eyes got real big at this news and I don't blame him. Joy is a big, healthy woman and can look pretty fierce. I suspect it is her Native American heritage combined with a nearly 10 year dancing career in which she has gained serious assertiveness and street smarts. She explained to him that she would not be filmed and would keep her clothes on at all times on the set. She wanted $100 cash up front in payment for her role and wanted each of the "stars" to be paid half of their fee up front, non-refundable. The balance would be paid in cash at the end of the one-day "film shoot", whether the film was completed to his satisfaction or not.

She tells me that the deal was struck and the film was made under the agreed terms. Joy ended up doing a good portion of the camera work, especially during the time that the customer was having his ménage-a-trois with the two young dancers, "doubling up" in the parlance of the times. I suspect that this transaction would best be qualified as acts of prostitution being recorded for posterity rather than an artistic film endeavor. I have no idea how the law would view it, but it would likely be on the edge of legality, if not over it.

On an interesting follow-up note, Joy tells me that the "film-maker" customer came back into the club a few days later, wanting to know if he could get a VIP dance from her. She says that he paid her another $100 for the privilege and that he was very respectful, asking the "rules" up front, and sticking by them.

This brings up an interesting point about men – even in the presence of naked and nearly naked women, we tend to wonder about the one wearing clothes. I suspect that his return trip to the club to "see" Joy was prompted by his speculations about fully clothed Joy. I don't doubt that his mind was working on that simultaneously as she filmed him having sex with the two younger dancers.

I have seen this behavioral oddity within myself several times while in the clubs. I would be watching the bartender walking around doing her work and wondering what she looks like under her clothes. Meanwhile there are several naked or more provocatively dressed dancers strutting around, doing so specifically so that I may view them in that state. Yet there I am, watching the bartender and wondering. Screwy, isn't it? The good news is that, if you hang around long enough the odds are excellent that sooner or later the bartender is going to flash you. She might even get up on stage and dance when things are slow if she gets bored. It rarely fails, women are just competitive that way - ya gotta love 'em.

To Strip or not To Strip, that is the Question –

In a club on the eastern seaboard recently, my wife and I watched as a dancer had a brief existential crisis on stage one slow Tuesday afternoon. We had been in the same club on the previous Saturday evening, and the place had been jumping – a couple dozen dancers and a standing room only crowd of male customers of all ages. The booze and the money were flowing heavily, the dancers were doing well and a good time seemingly was had by all. My wife did eventually get bored and tired of the crowded conditions, so we left the club to seek a late seafood supper.

This particular club is unusual in several ways. First, it is the only strip club for many miles, located in a heavily tourist travelled and retiree haven portion of a "full nudity allowed with alcohol served" state, so it doesn't have any local competition. Second, although it is fairly large, it has more of a neighborhood bar atmosphere than that of a fancy gentlemen's club that one might expect of a club as large as it is. Third, it has a nautical theme that coincides with its coastal location in a tourist area. For example, instead of the usual rail around the stages, this club has ½ inch diameter ropes around the stage, similar to those found on a sailboat. I would call it a biker/pirate roadhouse atmosphere.

Anyway, back to Tuesday afternoon. When we arrived mid-afternoon, there were four or five dancers in the club, and two or three customers, including us. It stayed that way – more dancers than customers, for several hours. The DJ had trouble convincing the dancers to go up on stage, and those that did were definitely not putting much into their performances. It produced a strange and disheartening climate that I have seen often in these financially troubled times. However, the result was different in this location, I suspect due to the lack of competing clubs in the area. In the part of the west coast state where we live, there are many more clubs and the customers tend to move around on a slow afternoon, looking for a club that has dancers who are willing to dance. Sometimes, even the dancers move around, looking for a club that has a few more customers who are willing to tip.

Being the only game in town, we all just hung in there waiting for things to pick up, but it just wasn't happening. At one point one of the dancers seemed to have enough. She stopped dancing in the middle of a song as she was working on undoing the knot holding her top on. She just stood there for about 15 seconds, staring at the ceiling. There was one guy sitting at the rope-rail by the stage, and my wife and I, sitting by the bar watching her and waiting to see what she would do next. She turned and walked to the far end of the stage, sat down on a table next to the stage, crossed her legs and started looking at her nails and bouncing her foot.

Her body language was very expressive, indicating frustration and anger, which is why I will call her Fury. After about a minute of this, the DJ went up to her, they had a brief conversation and then she angrily stood up and flounced her way around the stage a few times, glaring at us. I had a strong suspicion that I might gain some material for the book if I tried to talk with her, so I did. I stood up and walked up to the stage and she walked over to me, looking curious and defiant at the same time. I told her that she and the previous dancer had a fundamental philosophical difference.

At this, she just stared at me, looking confused. I asked her, do you want to know what the fundamental philosophical difference is? She nodded back. I said that the previous dancer had danced and taken her clothes off in the optimistic expectation that she would be rewarded with tips from the two guys who were watching, and she was. She herself was a pessimist, she would not strip until she had been tipped and it seemed unlikely that she would be tipped until she danced and stripped!

I told her that, in the state where I live, there are more clubs in competition and that the dancers have learned to deal with slow days. When things are slow they tend to spend less time dancing and more time visiting with the few guys that are present in the club. This is one way that I have gotten to know many of the dancers that have contributed stories to this book. I told her it was a classic chicken-and-egg paradox, the stripper dancing and the customer tipping dichotomy. Fury didn't seem to get it, she was too frustrated. Not wanting to anger her or to argue with her, I backed off, telling her that she knew a lot more about her business than I did. She readily agreed with that, loudly saying that she had been dancing for twelve years. Then she turned and left the stage, still wearing her outfit and without any tips.

It was too bad for both of us – I like to talk with experienced dancers and don't mind tipping them just for talking with me for a little while – and she clearly was hoping to make some money that afternoon, but was blocked by her pessimistic mindset. Not having the competition, she lacked the pressure that it brings to bear to think outside-of-the-box, to break out of her rut and be creative.

The previous dancer was one of those uninhibited souls that you run into in the clubs occasionally. Instead of repeatedly taking her outfit off and putting it back on, she just stayed naked most of the time. She seemed willing to get up on stage and dance around to the music whether there were a lot of guys present to watch, or just two. Watching her express herself in that way, I couldn't help but tip her. That is the essence of the existential crisis for poor, jaded Fury. Why did she come in to work that day? She is lucky enough to be a healthy and beautiful woman and men will pay to see her dance, so why not dance?

I am reminded of an unattributed and appropriate quotation that I saw on the wall of a bar recently during our trip: "Dance as though no one is watching you, Love as though you have never been hurt before, sing as though no one can hear you, live as though heaven is on earth". The optimist's joyous motto clearly and profoundly expressed. Researching it on the internet, this wonderful quote is attributed to a mysterious character named Alfred D. Souza.

I acquired another anecdote on the subject of tipping in another state on the eastern seaboard – this one a "full nudity allowed, but no alcohol served" state. After their turn on stage, the dancers in this club walked around the floor of the club, approached each customer present and demanded their tip! I was initially taken aback by the very unusual display of feminine chutzpah that is required for a nude or nearly nude woman to walk up to a fully clothed man and demand a gratuity! Despite the incongruous extension of the meaning of gratuity, after thinking about it for a while I decided these dancers should be applauded for their assertiveness and determination to receive payment for their work!

On this particular trip east, I also became aware of a cultural trend that is more apparent on the east coast than my usual haunts out west. There are many dancers from Russia, the Ukraine and other fairly new countries that were former Soviet republics. I talked with one who had a sideline, finding potential American husbands for her girlfriends in the Ukraine. She said that the American men were more than happy to pay her to find them a pretty young wife who had begun to learn to speak English.

The next stop in our trip was our nation's capital, Washington D.C. I identify it to make a point. Clubs in DC operate under a "full nudity allowed with booze served" regime. Apparently men in the seat of our Federal government do not need to have their moral innocence protected from the wiles of naked women as they are drinking. In most other states, it seems that either the men are more vulnerable or the women more wily, since most states and locales seem to disallow the combination of full nudity and booze.
Venus –

Venus is a beer drinking country gal through and through. I call her Venus because she bears a striking resemblance to Botticelli's Birth of Venus. She is a pale, lanky strawberry blonde/redhead. Her Irish heritage stands out like her freckles in the sun. She is also an identical twin, although her twin sister died about 8 years ago in a car accident. Venus says she misses her twin every day. Venus has about 15 years of experience as a dancer, although she left it for a while after the experience she describes in her first story. Nowadays she mostly dances when her longtime boyfriend is traveling for his work, passing the time with some of her closest friends who are also dancers when he is away.

She doesn't go up on stage much, usually she just sits at the bar drinking and talking. Every once in a while when the spirit moves her she stands, pulls her dress over her head unabashedly revealing that she wears no underwear. Then she wanders the club in her cowgirl boots, soliciting table and VIP dances. When done with that she returns to her barstool, puts her cash away in her purse and puts her dress back on. Then she sits down once again, takes a long pull on her waiting beer and returns to conversation. I have noticed that the spirit moving her to make her rounds often seems to coincide with a country song coming on in the music rotation!

Her first story is fairly short. Quite some time back she was doing a dollar table dance for a somewhat drunken customer when he suddenly leaned forward and bit her nipple, hard! As the pain washed over her she tried to pull back away from him, but he would not let go! A brief struggle ensued which ended when Venus stuck one of her fingernails into the drunken assholes eye, causing him sufficient pain that he opened his mouth, finally releasing her nipple. Venus immediately covered herself and went back to the dressing room. As she left, she heard the guy start to loudly protest that she had tried to gouge out his eye.

The bartender came back into the dressing room, starting to yell at her that she was fired, to get dressed and go home. She shut up when Venus uncovered her bleeding breast and explained that the man had bitten her and refused to let go until she stuck her fingernail in his eye. The bartender became very apologetic and said that she could stay. Venus said no, I have to go get medical attention and she did so. She ended up with 4 stitches as well as antibiotic shots to cleanse, disinfect and repair the wound. She was turned off on dancing for a while after that, understandable given the circumstances.

Venus has quite a capacity for alcohol and, like me, she prefers beer. I suspect she could easily drink me under the table despite the fact that I outweigh her by at least 50 pounds. She also has a good sense of humor, as evidenced by the next two stories she relates. The first happened quite some time ago, when her twin was still alive. She ran into one of her twins male "friend-wannabe-lovers" in a bar. He sat down with Venus, being very familiar, apparently mistaking her for her twin. He started complimenting her, trying to warm her up, likely in preparation to busting a move. Then he began running down Venus, saying that she was not as good looking as the twin he thought he was with. I suspect that he thought he might try to gain something by exploiting a sibling rivalry between the two. We can imagine where he thought he was going by dishing to one identical twin about the other, but this hound was definitely barking up the wrong tree!

Venus allowed this to go on for a few minutes, watching the guy dig a hole for himself. Finally, she let him know that he was actually talking to the "homely" twin and that the "pretty" twin that he thought he was complimenting would be arriving shortly. Venus said the guy turned beet red, stuttered and sputtered for a moment and then left in haste. I don't blame him for beating a retreat. I just wonder how he was able to walk out with one foot in his mouth all the way up to the knee! I suspect he may have changed his name and moved to another state!

Venus tells me that she and her twin never did try to make the switch that identical twins are supposedly famous for – although she says she had been tempted at one time. She says that her twin's husband was a very handsome man, but Venus herself didn't have a fellow at the time that might similarly tempt her twin! Venus says that one of her best memories of her twin sister is that one year they both had been pregnant. They each gave birth within about two weeks of each other. Venus had triplets and her twin had twins! Shortly thereafter, they were able to take turns babysitting and breast feeding each others babies!

Her next story is also a humorous one, although it definitely was not funny at the time it happened to Venus. She says that she got a DUI and was on a county road crew doing court-ordered roadside cleanup for a couple of days as part of a sheriffs work detail. The second day was hot and she had been drinking a lot of water. The road crew and the officer detailed to watch them had come out in a county passenger van pulling an outhouse on a small trailer. She says that when leaving the county jail the officer had done a head count and when ready to return, he did another. It was towards the end of the long day and she went back to the outhouse to relieve herself.

While she was in the towable johnny the officer decided to drive the van up the road to retrieve some of the other workers, who had spread out during the course of the day. He jumped in, pulled out and did an immediate fast U turn, all with poor Venus sitting on the pot. The trailer was wildly swaying back and forth while she hung on for dear life! Afterwards the sheriff's officer was very apologetic, saying that he had actually done the same thing a couple of times before and he begged her not to report the incident.

Her next story involves an idiot customer, who apparently was also a bigot. Venus walked out of the dressing room one day to find this guy harassing the bartender, an Asian woman. He was using various slurs and then threatened to go get his pistol and shoot her! The bartender told him, go ahead, you idiot, do it! Amazingly, he did, he went out to the parking lot and came back into the bar brandishing a semi-auto pistol! Venus knows firearms and could see that the hammer was down and the safety on, so she came up behind him and grabbed it out of his hand, nearly breaking his finger in the process! Then she told him to get the hell out and not come back. He did come back a few days later however, demanding the return of his pistol. She calmly told him that it was at the police station and that the cops were waiting for him to come in and retrieve it, as well as to explain his side of the story. That was the last she saw of him.

The last story that Venus tells me during our first session is another painful one. She says that it happened early in her career when pubic hair was still evident on dancers. One day she noticed that she needed a trim, but her scissors were missing and none were available to be borrowed. Her closest friend was also working that day and offered her some mousse to apply to the area. This worked well when she laid it on thick and patted it down. Then Venus went out onto the club floor, walked up to a regular and offered him a table dance. As she moved in close he switched his cigarette from one hand to another and the glowing coal on the end ignited the alcohol fumes coming off the mousse. Instantly her pubic hair was ablaze! Similar to an incident involving Michael Jackson and flaming mousse that had been applied to the hair on his head, Venus received painful and disfiguring burns which took quite some time to heal. When she finally returned to work, she found that her coworkers were all calling her fire crotch!

I ran into Venus again about a week after our first story telling session. I buy her a beer and we start talking after she reviews what I have written. She tells me a bit about a long term regular that she considers to be a stalker, a local business heavyweight. It turns out I have met and know him by name and reputation, so I decide not to include her story about him for various reasons.

Anyway, after that we get to talking about The Birth of Venus and how much she looks like the woman depicted in the painting. She starts talking about how she is heavier and has smaller breasts than Botticelli's Venus. I have had a couple of beers at this point and my internal alarms are not working as well as they should be, so I forge ahead. I tell her that many of the dancers that I have met have similar body image issues, that as far as I can see, her body looks exactly like Botticelli's Venus and that she looks just fine to me. She thanks me for the compliment and then starts running herself down again.

At this point I am basically having a conversation with a woman who seems to want me to give her a critique about her physical attributes. This is something I have tried to avoid like the plague, especially when I am sober. This time however, I forge ahead, telling her that although her breasts are smaller than most dancers, they look fine. I also tell her that she can't expect to still have her original slim, girlish figure. After all she has had children and filled out a bit; she is a woman now, with a woman's shape. So then we get further into a conversation about her breasts and about her body image. I begin to feel like I should tread carefully, sooner or later I am going to put my foot in my mouth big time, if I haven't done so already.

So I start talking about body image in more general terms and also start being critical about my own body and my weight control issues. Like Venus, I have a tall and light frame and was downright thin when I was younger. Now that I am in my mid-50's, I have put on about 30 pounds and am a bit flabby, definitely out of shape. I am starting to get love handles and a beer gut and have grown a pair of man-boobs of my own, truth be told. She laughs at this last bit, saying that she wishes her boobs would grow a bit too, so we are back to her body again. The subject of body image is tough and I am wishing for a graceful way to move on. She seems to sense this and has mercy on me. She announces that she is going out for a smoke and does so. I breathe a sigh of relief, hoping she has not been offended by something I have said.

Somehow, shortly thereafter I find that I am back in the same hot water again. This time I am talking with Samira. Venus and Samira are longtime friends who now both are dancing at the same club once again. Samira comes over to join us and I buy her a beer as well. We start talking about Botticelli's Venus again and sure as shit, I soon find that we now talking about Samira's particular physical attributes. This is generally the same NO NO, but an entirely different kettle of fish than Venus, since Samira is a completely different body type. At this point, I should know better, but I start to put my foot back in my mouth before I catch myself and successfully change the subject. Spending time talking with naked women can get hairy!
The first layers of the Strip Club Onion –

I've spent a lot of time sitting in strip clubs, watching, and wondering. What are these people doing? Why are they here? On the surface, it seems obvious, the dancers are here to get paid, the men are here, wishing, hoping, dreaming they might get laid. Most know the odds are against it and are willing to accept a virtual substitute that they can think about later. Guys, there is a very, very slim chance that the dancer rubbing herself all over you is doing so because she enjoys the very close company of many different, unknown men. If she didn't need the money she would not be there, taking her clothes off and putting them back on. She does it over and over, like a soldier in boot camp digging a hole, filling it up and then digging it again.

Of course, some men are just there for a beer and a cheap thrill. But they bring their daydreams and their agendas in with them. In biological terms, the sexual agenda of men is fairly simple. Keep it casual, frequent and with as many different partners as possible. For women, their sexual agenda is as serious as life and death and much more selective. Both agendas are in large part instinctive, can be seen in the different ways that our reproductive organs work and are driven by millions of years of evolution.

For evolution deniers, doubters, creationists, etc. I offer these thoughts to consider - if your mind is sufficiently open – might evolution be one of the primary tools of the creator? Could creation be an ongoing process and not merely a historical event? To my mind, the nearly irrefutable theory and science of evolution does not preclude the existence of a creator or the possibility that the universe and the life within it is a creation. How about them apples? I am probably misquoting somewhat, but didn't Jesus say at some point, something like this: "In the fullness of time, all things must come to pass"? To me, this sounds like a simple description of how evolution works.

But I have meandered off the track somewhat. In strip clubs, the agenda of most of the dancers is not sexual. They are there for other objectives, such as to provide food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their children. Many dancers are working in strip clubs by necessity and if they had other workable options, they would pursue them.

Of course, some don't yet have children. Some of these, usually the younger dancers, are in the club for what they consider to be easy and plentiful money. It pays for their shopping habit, or they dance because the money and the hours combine well with their college schedule, tuition and other continuing education costs. Others are dysfunctional in some way – they were abused as children, or they are drug and/or alcohol abusers, or they may be mentally ill. Occasionally you will meet a rare career professional, hopefully socking money away for retirement just around the corner, because dancer's careers are short, similar to professional athletes.

In strip clubs, on the surface and in the first layers, it appears that special bullshit rules may apply. Among those present, who is being themselves and to what degree, and who has assumed some other persona and to what degree? Among those who are drinking, what are they drinking? Is it safe to leave your drink unattended while you step out for a cigarette, to take/make a cell call or to go to the restroom? Who may be under the influence of illegal drugs or medications? If under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, are they revealing their true nature, or are the effects of the intoxicants burying their true nature further?

When you walked into the club, what was your agenda in doing so? Could that change if you have a few drinks? How much credence should you give to anything you see or hear in the dim light and the loud music? How credible are the dancer's stories that you read in this book? As you are observing the goings-on and pursuing your agenda, whatever that may be, are you also being observed by others? Are they formulating an agenda involving you? Is someone you can't see watching and possibly recording you on a hidden camera? Are you being broadcast on an internet webcam?

If you have been drinking and then you agree to buy a semi-private VIP lap dance from a stripper, are you positive that she is female? If she is a transsexual and her surgery is good enough to deceive you, does it make a difference? Regardless of her actual sex at birth, are you in the right state of mind and prepared to make a healthy choice if she works you up and then tries to sell you a blow job or more? What is an acceptable risk in this circumstance? If you are married or in a committed relationship, would your significant other also consider it to be an acceptable risk? If you contract an STD and bring it home to her, then who is responsible?

How about outside of the strip club, are people in general acting more like themselves than in the club, or less? How much of what you think you know about anyone, including yourself, is valid? What level of bullshit rules continuously apply, if any?

Joy gets stopped for driving while poor –

The next story Joy tells me reveals the hidden costs of the dancer's lifestyle and occupation. She is still struggling to catch up on her bills after the house-mother fiasco and has spent a long afternoon and evening hustling tips in the club. It's late and she is driving home on her usual route. She drives a beat up old Vdub which is more than 40 years old. The main benefit of this car is that it is a relatively simple, mechanically speaking. When it fails she can usually fix it herself, which is a big cost-saver.

Anyway, she gets stopped by a police officer. She says this happens frequently when she is driving home late, but rarely when she is heading to work during the day. She thinks that the cops are looking for drinking drivers; that they target her regularly because her car indicates to them that she is poor and an easy target. She says that it is often the same damn cop, some young dude who seems to enjoy wasting her time and making her sit on the curb while he searches her car for contraband.

Usually he doesn't find anything and she always gives herself time to sober up before heading for home, so she has never had a DUI. This time though, he found a small baggy containing a few crumbs of pot and also her pipe. Finally his long harassment pays off for him and he gets to write her a ticket for misdemeanor quantities of pot, possession of the paraphernalia – the pipe - and also for failure to maintain proper lane. She says that was what he used for an excuse to stop her in the first place. She says that she was not weaving; she was driving home as carefully as she always does and watching her rear view mirror in case someone might be trying to follow her from the club.

She tells me that she is waiting to receive the ticket and summons in the mail. She says that she is certain that the fines will total a couple hundred at least and so she knows that long day she spent shucking her clothes and hustling dances was wasted for her. She tells me that these kinds of hidden cost "gotchas" pop up frequently in the dancing biz and make it even more difficult to make ends meet. These things seem to happen most often when money is tight, a corollary of Murphy's Law.

Samira –

Samira seems to be an unusual character among dancers. She has an artist's temperament and viewpoint and she carries this into her work as an exotic dancer and also as a belly dancer. She is in her early forties, short and voluptuous, with long brown hair. She has been dancing for 24 years. The first story she tells me concerns events that she saw happen early in her career.

Samira's mother was visiting her workplace to see for herself what it was like. In the dressing room with her mom between sets, suddenly Samira's friend Samantha bursts into the dressing room, naked and in a very agitated state. She says that she has just gotten into a fight with a customer who tried to insert a pool cue into her as she was on stage, bent over and facing away from him. Before he accomplished this, she saw what he was doing in the mirror and turned and swatted him hard with her open hand. She told Samira that he then tried to hit her with the cue stick. These activities then brought several customers to her aid and a full scale bar fight had ensued, at which point Samantha had fled into the dressing room.

Samira peeked out of the dressing room door to see that one of the regulars, a local drug dealer, had pulled a pistol. This seemed to have ended the melee, as everyone was standing around looking at him. He was standing there swearing at another customer, who was holding a pool cue – apparently this was the pool cue pervert who had tried to penetrate Samantha with the cue stick. As she watched, another customer walked in and said that a police car had just pulled into the parking lot. The drug dealer concealed his pistol on his person and went back to sit at the bar.

A few seconds later, two uniformed police officers entered the bar and began their work, trying to figure out what just happened and what they were going to do about it. The bartender called out to the cops, saying that she had called them and that their arrival had interrupted a bar fight. The officers asked everyone in the bar to sit down at a long table against one wall and started asking questions. Shortly, they heard about the cue stick incident and they took the pool cue pervert aside and started interrogating him separately. Almost immediately he told them about the pistol, which caused them to call for backup and one of the officers present retreated to a corner, hand on his sidearm, ready to draw.

As you might imagine, Samira says the atmosphere in the bar became fairly tense at that point. The officers wanted to know who had the pistol. One of the customers, a friend of the drug dealer, said that there was no pistol and that the pool cue pervert was lying to them. The cops immediately had this customer stand up and patted him down. Their natural assumption was that, since he was the one to protest that there was no pistol, the odds were high that he was the one who had it.

What followed was a grown up version of hot potato. The pistol got passed around under the table, got sat on by various customers and generally was everywhere except where the officers were looking for it. Samira says that they never found it. In addition, no one in the bar verified the pool cue perverts assertion that a pistol had come into play. The end result was that the officers arrested the guy who deserved it, the pool cue pervert, after taking a statement about his attempted assault on her person from Samantha. Samira's mom left shortly thereafter, having had a fairly extreme introduction to what it was like to work in a strip club.

I ran into Samira again recently, entering the club as she was about to leave for a belly dancing gig. On impulse, I asked her if she had ever worn a burka. She told me she had seen a woman wearing one once, but had never worn one herself. Then she added that she had once tried on one of the formal head, hair and face covering garments that Muslim women sometimes wear at formal public gatherings. I don't know and she couldn't remember what they are called. Then Samira blew my mind, commenting that she thought it would be cool to wear a burka commando, which is a slang expression for not wearing underwear.

The first thought that occurred to me in response was that would defeat the concealment purpose of the burka. No matter how bulky and stiff the fabric, it seems unlikely to me that any single garment could ever successfully conceal the movements of Samira's very large breasts. Then it occurred to me to wonder if some Muslim women might be going commando in public in their burkas as a protest against the strict fashion dictates of the male dominated Islamic theocracy. With that came the realization that it doesn't matter whether a single Muslim woman makes such a silent protest.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that many Muslim men fantasize that the Muslim women they see in public are naked underneath their burkas! That thought brought along with it an epiphany. Regardless of the restrictions they place upon Muslim women, the Islamic theocracy is engaged in an exercise in futility that has lasted for centuries and which may go on forever. There is no way they will ever be able to control the fantastic imaginations and daydreams of men about the women around them.

If a stripper slaps her fanny onstage & there is no customer to see it –

Did it truly happen? Having occasionally spent time in clubs as the only customer, I have mentally speculated about what goes on in clubs when there are no customers at all. It is a similar speculation to wondering what goes on in ladies rooms when two or more gals go off there together. While my male imagination runs wild, I suspect that the reality in both restrooms and clubs is similar and not as exciting as that imagined. Probably all that happens is women sitting around texting or talking about whatever women talk about when there are no men present to hear.

The Zen paradox suggesting the possibility that trees might fall silently in the forest does nothing for me. Of course they make a sound. Suppose that there is no one present on an ocean beach at night as the waves of a storm are rolling in to shore. Of course the waves make continuous roaring sounds as they crash upon the beach.

Joy lays down the law –

Joy sez: Behavior is an issue. The best, most favored customer is the one who knows how to properly behave. Strip club etiquette is kinda bizarre really when you think about it, but the basics are:

1. Do not touch dancers unless clearly invited to do so.

2. Keep at least 6 inches away from dancers roaming the club floor, unless one walks up and hugs you.

3. Do not ask dancers to buy you drinks. We are not going to bend over backwards to cater to your fantasies and spend our money on you.

4. Do not ask a dancer for sex in exchange for money, drugs, or out of the goodness of her heart.

5. If you sit at the stage you should tip any dancers on stage at least one dollar per song.

6. Don't expose yourself.

7. Don't masturbate.

We love it when a customer asks us for a private dance, as opposed to our having to sell it, exposing ourselves to rejection when we are at our most vulnerable. It is much more fun for us to feel desired than to feel like we have to overcome customer's objections to "make the sale." Also, when a customer demonstrates that he is able to keep his hands to himself, then a dancer feels more comfortable and free. If we are not worried about defending our body parts from roaming hands, the client gets a better dance.

A regular is a client who comes in often to see a particular dancer and who can be counted on to get multiple VIP dances on each visit. A regular client means steady income for us; we need that income and we see such regular clients as awesome. Like the song goes, money makes us come – into the club to work.

Good behavior by a regular is when he always gets dances from his favorite, steady dancer and maybe from some of the other girls too, while being liberal with his dollar tips to all the dancers. A favorite regular will give his most favored dancer the most attention, money, gifts and occasionally pony up for outfits or new shoes, too.

Customers are not the only ones who frequently either don't know how to behave, or don't care and misbehave just because they feel like it. Dancers misbehave all the time, making it difficult for other dancers who do know how to behave to keep it together.

Dancers! - Don't fight or argue over who "owns" a regular customer while the poor guy is standing there with his wallet out, wanting to spend money on somebody. Some customers might get an ego boost out of being fought over, but what happens most frequently is they turn around and walk out, making money for nobody. My example story involves a guy named Fred, who came in for 6 months at opening time and would buy $80 dollars in dances from me, sometimes also getting dances from others as well, gotta love it.

One day, just before opening time another dancer and I were doing lines off the toilet lid in the ladies room. We were just having a casual conversation and I notice that she has coke all over her face, so I started making fun of her while laughing about it. Somehow she misunderstood and decided that I was going to try to get her fired from the club; that I am going to tell the club owner that she is a druggie or something, I don't know what she was thinking. So she runs out and goes into the office to complain to the club owner about me.

Meanwhile, the club opens up and Fred comes in. I greet him warmly; hug him, etc. working his name into it, telling him how glad I am to see him, etc. Then the other dancer comes out of the club office as I am walking with Fred back to the VIP dance lounge and starts yelling at me about stealing her customers! Strangely, she calls him Bob, so while she rants I ask him, is your name Fred, or Bob? He says it's Bob, which blows me away, because I've been calling him Fred for the last six months, very awkward for me. I ask him, why you didn't say anything? He shrugs and says, what's in a name; if you want to call me Fred it's fine with me.

Anyway, the angry dancer gets even more pissed off that we are having a conversation while she is yelling at me, so she starts yelling at him, telling him that he is a dick, she never wants to talk to him again, OMG she is a stripper gone crazy. So he leaves, taking his wallet with him and nowadays will only get dances when crazy stripper is not there. Her possessiveness is bad stripper behavior. I could understand if he was sitting at her stage and I pulled him away – which is a big NO NO. Or if, while she was in the john I had stolen him away from a table they were sharing - another big NO NO - but that wasn't the case. Anyway, it is much more professional to hash such complaints out when customers are not in the club, either woman to woman or at club meetings.

Joy writes a primer for newbie dancers and dancer wannabes –

As is her prerogative, Joy has changed her mind again about how we work together to write up her stories. She now wants to work together with me to compose them. We decide to meet at her apartment to do this and I bring my wife along to meet her boyfriend and son. After our second writing session at her place, Joy tells me she thinks this is the best way for us to work together. She likes to visit with my wife and finds it easier to stay on topic when we chat while she types. She also likes the collaborative aspect to it; she says it makes it more fun.

Dancers usually are introduced to the concept by someone else who suggests it to them. The outfits, shoes and accessories are kind of a trip. We get to play dress up, play the flirt, be sexy and tease men, seemingly with no repercussions and a sudden increase in income. No one lets new dancers in on the downsides at this early stage. Nobody tells them about the $4 total made for an 8 hour shift, about some mean dancer pouring tanner all over everything in your bag, or about some old codger wanting to see your asshole. Some days, it seems like everybody is looking for sexual favors. On those really tough days, you can't get a VIP dance to save your life unless you are willing to promise to meet up with them for sex later.

New dancers typically start spending their new income like it is going out of style, usually on ridiculous stuff that won't last and won't pay for itself. Examples of this are tiny thongs, shoddy shoes, cosmetics, expensive acrylic nails, fake hair and eyelashes, and razors.

One big mistake that new dancers make is not getting their money up front for private dances. The best way to make sure you get paid is to not completely disrobe during the first song. That way the client is eager to see more and readily agrees to another at the finish of the first. Collect as you go and you'll never go wrong.

Sometimes a client will have $50 and say I want as many dances as this will get me. There are two options here; first you can opt, if it's busy, to only give your client two private dances but make 'em both fully nude that way he's happy and so are you. Win-Win! Second you can opt to give your client 3 or 4 dances that way he thinks he's always gonna get his money's worth. First one's always free kinda thing - honestly we're the peddlers of live soft core porn. Never forget to tuck that $50 away before you begin. I recommend having a secondary, non-descript money pouch secured to the interior of your purse. The number one thief in strip clubs is your coworkers!

Another mistake often made by new dancers is not brushing their money from off the stage rail onto the stage floor. Often times, and I hate to say it - a customer will actually slide their currency back into their own lap and place the same dollar a second time, just to get your attentions without truly paying for services. That's why there is usually a railing around the stage; it's easier to spot a customer reaching over the rail to grab the money that you've already earned off the stage floor.

New dancers become intoxicated by the level of attention they are suddenly receiving and are at times blindsided and their naiveté taken advantage of; usually by other dancers. New dancers are elected to give rides home or to pick up supposedly innocuous packages that may actually contain contraband. Other dancers will tap you for loans – monetary - as well as clothing, which never gets repaid or returned. Bouncers are lecherous, bosses are exploitive and other dancers, while claiming their gypsy ties, are often merely larcenous liars.

Remember girls, you can only be murdered once and there are a few rules to keep that from happening. Never leave the establishment with a client. Private parties can be monetarily alluring however potentially dangerous. Always have at least one other dancer if not two as well as a body guard to stand by in case of any inappropriate behavior or emergency. The rules about agreement on price and advance payment apply here as well. Don't let the clients take any identifying pictures; they'll end up on the internet and the dancer never receives any royalties!

Many times the client will have an idea that the dancer may perform lewd or sexual acts once outside the establishment. Given enough liquor, drugs and testosterone influxes the danger of rape increases greatly. Statistics have proven that most rapes are committed by someone the victimized woman knows. Prosecution under these circumstances is an uphill battle that is rarely won by dancers due to the societal assumptions made about women who work in the sex industry.

As far as I am concerned, dancing is working in the sex industry even though we don't have sex. Our sensuality is misconstrued as sexuality. The community at large puts a huge moral judgment on dancers. Sexual predators know this and once they know who you are and what you do for a living, they will try to prey on you. They know that the odds are good that they will not be prosecuted.

Every dancer has their own set of rules, some stricter than others. The rules we as dancers set for ourselves are there to insure our safety. I have a set of rules and even though I follow them closely and also try to be sure that my patrons do as well, things happen. Some time ago, at another club I left my drink with my guest while I went to the bathroom (this is a strippers way of letting the other strippers know he's being entertained, like the sock on the door signal). When I returned my drink had been drugged.

Unknowingly, I went ahead and drank it. I started feeling funny and went into the dressing room. I told a co-worker that I felt strange and texted home for a ride saying that I'd been compromised. My eyes rolled back in my head and I don't remember anything until the next day when I woke up scared and wondering what happened.

My boyfriend arrived at the club to find me being carried out - along with my money and belongings - by a co-worker and the bouncer. They told him that I'd been drugged, most likely with roofies. My boyfriend got me home. Apparently I told him I wanted a bath, although as I said, I don't remember any of this. He said he put me in the bath and I nearly drowned. Then he got me out of the tub and into bed and I didn't move until 7 the next morning. I sat bolt upright gasping for breath asking where my son was and what happened! So that's another rule to add to the list. Never leave your drink unattended.

Zada describes the Strip Club biz –

The gentlemen's club business is very competitive in many cities, most of which have zoning ordinances that limit the locations in which such establishments can operate. This can cause a very difficult business environment in which several clubs are located close together and any newly opened club will have a tough time getting started. I have been involved in promotional wet T-shirt contests, jello wrestling, twister contests, Foxy boxing, and shaving contests. All of these promotions were attempts to gain a competitive edge.

Mark has asked me to elaborate about shaving contests – it is fairly simple as one might expect – the shaving contest winner has the most interesting, original, or elaborate "moustache", if you will. I have seen lightning bolts, arrowheads, stars, fish-hooks, eyeballs with brows, question marks, dollar signs, plus symbols, circles, bulls-eyes, various letters and numerals, exclamation points, and Hitlers. No, Mark, I have never seen a dancer sporting a handlebar "down there", or anywhere else, for that matter. These days, you don't see many fancy shave-jobs, as that trend seems to have come and gone. The current trend for the majority of dancers is to keep that area hairless. Piercings and tattoos are also very trendy right now. One of these days I'm sure I'll see a dancer with a tattoo made to resemble pubic hair!

Anyway, getting back to the biz. One new club owner was an immigrant who had sunk his life savings into opening up a small club. In an attempt to draw customers for the opening night, he offered a VIP dance special for only $3, usually costing $20 or more in the other clubs. An incredibly large crowd of men were drawn by this special rate, so many that the owner set a 2 hour limit for customers to stay inside the club, as men were lined up on the street outside. Some waited up to 3 hours to get in the door! I worked a 10 hour shift that day, and brought home about $600. This may seem like a lot, but I danced non-stop through the entire shift. Normally, at $20 each I would have made about $4000 for that many private dances. I was young and naïve and had very little business experience. I didn't realize until later that the new club owner was taking advantage of us, discounting our services to promote the startup of his club.

This startup club was in a relatively small building and it had a parking lot in back that was adjacent the back lot of a large, fancy, well-established club. It would be like opening a mom and pop store next to a Walmart! Looking back on it, the new owner never really stood a chance. After the opening week, things slowed way down. Within a few weeks it became apparent that he was going to lose his business and his initial investment, which was everything he had saved. Day to day he gradually became more agitated and unstable. Finally one night, he stumbled out into the back lot in a drunken rage and started shooting a pistol indiscriminately towards the large club that he felt was stifling his business and his dream. In my career I have seen several club owners spiral downwards into alcoholism and drug abuse and sometimes also abuse the dancers sexually, verbally, and physically.

We almost always are working for ourselves as independent contractors, for tips only. We are not club employees and receive no payment from them. In fact we pay them stage fees for the privilege to dance in their establishment. At the club where I currently dance I pay a daily house fee of $5 plus 10% of my earnings go to the bartender and DJ. This has been averaging $25 a day. Some of the larger clubs where I have danced have substantially higher fees. For instance, in one large city the nightly house fee was $180, plus you paid the bar $2 for each main floor dance and $5 per VIP dance. This could easily add up to $400 per night. In a club this large, with about 35 dancers each night, you can see that these establishments can draw more than $10,000 per night just in fees from the dancers. Of course, clubs this large and fancy had many perks that they provide to dancers, sometimes including bookkeeping and tax consultants to help keep their financial records!

A club that takes good care of the dancers is rare, however. Most of them use the economic power they have to replace us to limit our rights and mistreat us in other ways. At one club where I danced, it was possible to owe the club more in fees than we made. When that happened, dancers in debt were required to come in on their next day off and surrender everything they made until the debt was paid, then leave.

One club manager had 18 counts of sexual harassment filed against him by dancers and lost his job. Other club owners have cameras mounted throughout their clubs, including the dressing rooms. Some have even broadcast the feeds from these supposedly private club areas out onto the internet. In one club, the dancers took turns driving the bar manager home at the end of the night because he was always so high he could not get home on his own.

The stress of working in this environment forces many dancers into drug abuse or alcoholism just to cope. This usually just makes things worse. I heard a story recently about a dancer that was so drunk that during a VIP lap dance, she lost control of her bowels and defecated all over the customer. This caused a great controversy in the club. The dancer in question tried to keep the incident quiet, going so far as trying to manipulate the club owner into shutting out the dancers who witnessed this event. This is a very unusual circumstance. Instead, usually the girls fall down, pass out, get sick and end up in the dressing room sleeping it off. Often, if still out of it at closing time, they need to be driven home by another dancer, the DJ, or a manager.

Another onion layer – crazy strippers – born or made, nature or nurture?

There are degrees of crazy, or to say it in a more sensitive and politically correct way, sanity and normalcy are relative terms. I imagine that paranoia is a normal and even a necessary state of being for many women. There are lots of men, normal guys as well as stalkers and sexual predators, who actually are out to "get them". Like Zada, who suffers from panic attacks, there are many dancers that have some sort of neuroses that prevents them from being able to function under the pressures of a more usual job. However, that is no reason to deride or to look down upon them since there are many in our society with similar dysfunctions. Other people with such minor dysfunctions also gravitate towards those types of jobs and careers which allow them to function and survive, for the same basic reason. Ultimately, we all strive to find a niche into which we can fit.

Then there are the more serious mental health issues, manic or bipolar depression, schizophrenia, etc. These are most likely conditions that the stricken individual was born with, so their condition is in their nature and does not predominately result from how they were nurtured. There is also no reason to look down upon these individuals or to subject them to derision, as their condition is no fault of their own. They are ill and need help. Any decent society will try to provide it.

Then there are the dancers who suffer from alcoholism or some other drug dependency, or the long term after-effects of these conditions. I have met many dancers who are struggling with alcoholism and also a number who have meth-mouth. The ravages that long term methamphetamine addiction causes to their teeth and gums are very sad to see. Most will recognize these dependencies as genuine illnesses, to deride such individuals is to contribute to their negative self-image and is just plain cruel. These conditions are not necessarily in their nature, although some will argue that alcoholism may be hereditary.

These dancers came by their self-destructive habits through the way they were raised and through the pressures upon them as they deal with a continual series of mind-fucks as they try to survive in these very strange workplaces. So these conditions can likely be attributed to lack of nurturing. Once again, to deride them or to look down upon them for their afflictions is unfair and cruel. They may have been able to help themselves and avoid these pitfalls, but their foundations were not strong enough.

Then there are the women-gone-wild. Their behavior varies from mean-as-a-junkyard-dog to nymphomania, depending on how they feel and perhaps on the phase of the moon. Say the wrong thing at the wrong time and you may end up seriously injured or maimed. Running into the so-called nymphomaniacs, women who are acting like they are in a hyper-sexual state can also be less fun than one might imagine. It depends on what you were looking for when you walked into the club. Either of these states can be considered to be expected responses to the environment in which these women find themselves.

All-in-all, strippers cannot rightly be blamed for abnormal behavior. If you deride them or look down upon them, at best you are probably an asshole or you may have psychological issues of your own. The hypocrisy of a male-dominated so-called Christian society that denigrates dancers pisses me off big time! Remember, they are merely trying to make a living by catering to male fantasies, lust, and self-delusions. They very generously do so for virtually any and all manners of men who have the necessary chump change!

Many dancers are decent women who were faced with very difficult choices at an early age, before they had an opportunity to acquire skills, education or on-the-job experience. Often they chose the vastly more difficult yet morally-approved "I'm-keeping-my-baby" path and had no help from irresponsible boys who merely fled the scene. They have suffered many grown men taking advantage of them. They have borne many indignities, insults, and injuries, and have shown Herculean endurance for their children.

In spite of their sacrifice for their children, the arbiters of Christian morality offer them no respect, instead railing against them as sinners and home-wreckers from their pulpits or high offices. Some of these same moral arbiters have subsequently tearfully fallen from grace after being caught sinfully spending time in the company of strippers.

Of course, many strippers do fit the stereotype, being lazy, greedy, dumb and easy. However, many women, even more men and some moral arbiters in our society fill the same bill. It is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Ironically, the people of the kettle are usually of higher quality than the people of the pot. Kettle-folk tend to be more tolerant and lack the holier-than-thou attitude and agenda that the judgmental people of the pot tend to spread around like manure.

Grace –

Whether departing or arriving, clothed or not, Grace embodies one of the lead items in the plus column of being a man, the simple pleasure gained from merely watching women walk around. This is one of the enjoyments that make strip clubs worthwhile. Anywhere else, a guy can get into trouble for staring, but in the club it's accepted and expected, as long as you cough up tips now and then in return for the privilege. Different women move around in different ways, each has her own carriage and gait. From my point of view, Grace's is really special and unusual, you have to be there to see it. I can't do it justice by describing it, so I won't even try.

She stays well tanned and is long-legged and slim-hipped, with full, natural breasts, also unusual for a woman that slim. Guessing, I would say she stands 5'10" to 5'11", in her spike heels I think she may be a bit taller than I am, at 6'1". Grace has a very big, bright smile and a boisterous, genuine laugh which she shares often, as she seems to have a great sense of humor.

She and Zada are friends and between them, if they had similar body types they could possibly save money by shopping for bikinis and lingerie sets together. Zada tends to keep her panties on and Grace seems to like to keep her brassiere on. Her reasons for this escape me; I have seen her breasts and they are worth the wait. But what the heck, if she's happy wandering around bare-assed with her top on, then I'm happy, too.

Grace has worked in different clubs in several states. The first story she tells me concerns an experience she had in a club in another state. Through a chance remark made to her by a regular, Grace learns that there are live webcams in the private dressing room of the club. This fact has not been disclosed to the dancers. The cameras are concealed and their permission has not been sought. The depth of the invasion of privacy and betrayal of trust between the club owner and the dancers that this represents was completely lost on the club owner. He took the position that the dancers prance around in the buff in the public areas of his club, so what is their problem with displaying their nudity while in the dressing area on the internet?

Needless to say, this revelation and his attitude caused a storm of biblical proportions among the dancers. Grace led the group of 9 dancers who sued the club owner for invasion of privacy and the unauthorized and unpaid distribution of their images on the internet. She tells me that her financial situation at the time forced her to accept a fairly small settlement agreement. Otherwise if she had had sufficient funds and a good attorney, she believes that she and her co-workers probably would own that club today and I suspect she is correct in that belief.

Another anecdote that Grace describes to me also applies to her circumstances earlier in her career. She says that she used to seek out barter arrangements with regular customers, such as exchanging VIP lap dances at some mutually agreeable exchange rate for the remodeling of her home by a contractor. Incredibly she also bartered similarly for the ghost-writing of a term paper by the professor who taught the junior college class for which she was supposed to be writing the paper!

She says that her motivation behind seeking out and promoting barter transactions was not to evade paying taxes on cash tips. Instead, she tells me that she just liked finding out what her regular customers did for a living. Then she would see if she could creatively find a way to generate additional business for both of them! Talk about thinking outside-of-the-box! This woman should be running General Motors.

She tells me that she doesn't seek out barter deals anymore because she is married now. I surmise that to mean that having a husband limits her freedom to interact with club regulars outside of her workplace, the club. This seems understandable to me and I don't ask her to elaborate because it is none of my business.

Grace then tells me about more recent events that have occurred to her. She had a difficulty with a younger dancer, one of the favorites of the club owner. Such favorites tend to try to use their position to their advantage in the politics of the club. The problems began when Grace lucked onto a customer who happened to have recently won a good sized lottery jackpot and was spending it very freely. In one evening spent in the club, he tipped Grace over $3000! The next time he came in, he immediately started up with Grace again. She was all over him like white on rice – hugging and kissing him freely, hoping for more big tips.

Jealous of Grace's windfall, the younger dancer made a loud comment to the entire club, pointing out that Grace is married and shouldn't be so free with her attentions to strange men. Rising to the challenge, Grace responded that was an example of the pot calling the kettle black, pointing out that the younger dancer was involved with a married man. Her antagonist then walked over to Grace and tried to provoke a fight, insulting Grace in various ways and finally spat in her face. Grace is in her mid-30's and believes that she has outgrown such dramatic antics. However, she believes that the provocations would have been sufficient justification for a violent response. Instead, she chose to talk with the club owner privately, which lead to a grudging apology from the younger dancer a couple of days later.

A couple of days after that, violence caught up with Grace in a separate, unrelated incident. She tells me that she was a little tipsy, which is not uncommon since she often drinks heavily when she is dancing. She was sitting with a small group of customers, including a local woman with gang-related facial tattoos and a couple of men that she had not seen before. The woman seemed to be getting jealous of the attention that the men were paying to Grace and said something insulting. Without thinking, Grace responded with an insult of her own. She ridiculed the woman's facial tattoos and then left the group to dance on the main stage.

Shortly thereafter, she stepped outside for a cigarette and was immediately ambushed and assaulted by the woman with the tattooed face. Grace did her best to defend herself until the two men joined in against her. She was knocked to the ground, kicked and pummeled by three assailants. She was kicked in the head and blacked out. She tells me that she suffered a concussion, a broken nose and numerous bruises and contusions. She says that her head is still kind of fuzzy at times. She says that, according to her conversations with police detectives investigating the assault, the two men who took part in her assault are members of an out-of-state gang.

I ran into Grace again several months later and she told me that her head injury is much better although she still gets headaches at times. She says that one of her assailants, the woman, was caught and tried and got jail-time time for the assault. Grace seems to have left the incident behind her and has moved on. I buy her a glass of wine and have a beer myself and she tells me about her plans for the summer – she will be moving out of state and enrolling in nursing school. I am immediately struck by how much fun it would be to have this stunning woman as a nurse. I am sure that guys from 9 to 90 will immediately start to feel better whenever she walks into their hospital room.

Talking some more, she tells me that she has had enough of dancing, especially the pressures that dancers get from club management. At one club earlier in her career, she says that she turned down a VIP dance from a customer. The customer complained to the club management and the manager told her she had to give him a private dance or she was fired! She says that made her feel like they thought she was a whore. I told her that it sounded to me like they were treating her like an employee. Legally speaking, I suspect that if dancers are indeed independent contractors then they would seem to have the right to refuse their service to anyone for any reason. They would also seem to have no obligation to provide their reason for doing so. Grace tells me that she just didn't like the guy, he seemed pretentious to her and she didn't feel like dancing for him, so she didn't.

That type of experience with management is common for dancers. Conflicts with management seem to be continual, especially in regards to the issue of scheduling, dancers attendance at scheduled times and punctuality. Grace tells me that she prefers to be known as unreliable. That way when she does show up, management is pleasantly surprised, rather than continually being mad at her when she chooses not to show up.

Managing a strip club must be exasperating. Many dancers are flighty at best and trying to organize them and get something resembling reliability and accountability from them must be like herding pole-cats, pun intended. However, this problem is of their own making, since strip club owners and managers do everything they can to maintain the arms-length business relationship with dancers as independent contractors. They don't want the responsibilities of employers, but they just can't have it both ways.

Venus has man trouble, so I pull out my –

Psychobabble! The next time I run into Venus, she and another dancer are sitting at the bar talking with the bartender in an otherwise empty club. As I walk in and my eyes adjust from the bright summer sunlight to the dimness of the bar, I see this and ask the three assembled ladies if they have been waiting for me. Venus tells me that there had been a couple of customers there for a while earlier that afternoon, but they had successfully chased them off. I asked her how she was doing and she gave me a dark look and said that she was in a bad mood. Hoping to take her mind off whatever is troubling her; I ask her if she wants to tell me any more stories. She says she'll think about it while she goes out for a smoke. To encourage her thought process I tell her that when she returns, I'll buy her a beer. She says OK, tells me what she wants and then goes out for her smoke. I buy her beer of choice and get my usual as well, looking forward to some more good stories from her.

When she returns, she starts telling me about her bad mood – it turns out that she has man troubles! My heart sinks as I realize that she wants to complain about her longtime live-in boyfriend. I accept my fate by finding the silver lining; happy hour was due to start in about 20 minutes! As I am listening to her a short time later, I realize that her tale of romantic woe is worthwhile material for this book. I ask her permission to write about it and she says that it is OK with her. I realize then that more than being in a bad mood, she is really feeling blue and just wants someone to listen. I settle in to my apparent pre-destined role for the afternoon: buying beers, listening and dispensing my best psychobabble when it seems appropriate.

She starts with her own diagnosis of her boyfriend – she says that he is emotionally abusive. She tells me that he is a professor, that he is very intelligent and has a doctorate in some esoteric field. He spends a lot of time traveling and lecturing and is sometimes away for weeks at a time. She tells me that he had just returned from one of these trips, having been gone for more than three weeks. She says that they spent one good day together, then during his first night back she must have elbowed him while they were sleeping. He took offense to this innocent mishap in his usual way, by clamming up and turning the cold shoulder. She says he tries to manipulate her by withholding himself from her – which constitutes emotional abuse in her book. She has been battling with him about this behavior for some time and had recently given him an ultimatum: Shape up or ship out!

So now, her sleeping elbow jab has set him off once again and she is sad because it means that she has to dish out the serious side of her ultimatum. The only other option is to cave in to his manipulation and let him ride her life like a cowboy. Her sadness stems from her grief, she seems to believe that the relationship is over. She knows herself well enough to know that she is not going to surrender. She is too independent and free-spirited for that. She also knows him well enough to know that the elbow jab is not the real problem, her dancing career is.

He has repeatedly told her that he wants her to quit dancing. He makes plenty of money to support them both. He wants her to get a hobby, or to volunteer her time doing something. He just can't seem to accept the knowledge that where she works, other men are handling her. He also knows her well enough to know that she won't respond well to direct pressure to quit her longtime career and close friends. Instead he clams up and turns a cold shoulder towards her whenever he perceives an "injury" that he can use to try to take her on a guilt trip. She says that often she has no idea what sets this behavior off, which is very frustrating because he won't talk.

From previous conversation with her, I know this guy is a European immigrant. I start thinking about my dad, who was also European. He was also a manipulative mind-fucker, which is what Venus's man is beginning to sound like. Listening some more, I suddenly realize that she is also describing behavior that I have exhibited myself in my own relationships! I am inspired to give Venus the first of my psychobabble insights – her man may be acting like a jackass because his father used to similarly act like a jackass - and his father before him, and on and on the story goes.

I can psychobabble with the best of them, having spent my early adult years living in California in the seventies and eighties. This qualifies me automatically for an honorary psychobabble degree. I tell Venus that I think her man's behavior is driven by possessiveness and jealousy and that it is best understood if one tries to walk a mile in his shoes.

The underlying sexual agenda driving the possessive behavior of men in romantic relationships is very simple and also very similar to that of a billy goat with a harem of does. First, the billy goat lives to impregnate every single one of "his" does. Second, he will fight to the death to drive off anything that he perceives might potentially have the slightest interest in trying to get past him and impregnate one of "his" does. This incidentally, is the origin of the term "billy" club, used to describe a short, stout piece of hardwood. It is used to convince billy goats and those acting like billy goats to do something else for a while.

Venus tells me that she loves her man and that she keeps faith with him when he is away. She also loves her co-workers, some of whom she has been dancing with for more than 10 years. This is considerably longer than she has known her man. She thinks of them as family and needs their company when he is away. I tell her that the current prevalent psychobabble is that female porn-stars and exotic dancers are drawn to those occupations because they have "daddy" issues. They supposedly had dysfunctional or absentee fathers and are looking for male figures to replace that void in their lives.

Venus tells me that in her case it was her mother that was dysfunctional. Perhaps it is a generally dysfunctional family that prepares dancers for their future careers. If that is the case then a sizable percentage of the female population could be considered ready for stripping careers, since many families are dysfunctional in some way.

After all this talking, I can see that Venus is really upset. At times, her eyes well up and I feel sorry for her. Eventually, I get the feeling that she wants more than a listener. All I can do is to give her a hug, so that is what I offer and she accepts. We stand there and hug for a long moment. I tell her that love is a pain in the ass, but definitely worth it. I advise her that she should be absolutely sure before she gives up on the long term investment she has made in the relationship. I tell her that everybody has problems and that his problems seem relatively minor. I ask her – has he ever raised his hand to you? She says no – he doesn't even become verbally abusive – she yells at him much more often than vice versa.

I tell her about Thomas Edison and his long search for a material to use as a filament for the light bulb. He had tried more than 10,000 different materials with no success. Someone asked him whether he was getting discouraged. He replied that, on the contrary he felt that he was closing in, because he now knew of 10,000 materials that would not work! I told her that, in spite of the failed attempts that she had made with her man, she still had other options. For one thing, she could tell him to stop acting like his father and to go get some therapy to work through those issues. If he really is as intelligent as she says, he will recognize the truth in that and work out that his dad has no business in their relationship.

She starts looking sad again and tells me that she has given up. Her heart is not in it anymore. After a long moment looking in her eyes, I can see that she is already grieving her loss and that is part of her moving on process. Her man may have lost her! I tell her one of my dad's many jokes, which is one of my favorites. He told jokes that tended to also be life lessons. This one is definitely one of those:

A man is walking down the street in the city. More than a block ahead of him, he sees another man walk up to a building and start bashing his head against a wall. After a moment, he walks on. The first man follows behind the head basher, who stops and does his head bashing routine a couple more times before the first man catches up. Approaching just as the head basher is doing his thing once more; the follower cannot contain his curiosity. He walks up just as the man turns from the building he has been head butting, slightly cross-eyed and with a sickly grin! He says: excuse me sir, but I couldn't help noticing that you have been knocking your head against the buildings as you walk along – why do you do that? The head basher focuses upon him and smiles, saying – because it feels so good when I stop!

I tell Venus that the life lesson in my dad's joke is that, if you find yourself bashing your head against a wall, you should stop! You will feel much better. She laughs – which is good to see - and tells me she likes the joke, it seems appropriate to her situation. She then goes on to tell me that she has noticed something interesting in the past couple of days since her man troubles have come to a head.

She says that her numerous exes have suddenly been coming out of the woodwork! Either they are showing up unexpectedly at the club or calling her out of the blue! I tell her that is one of the reasons that there are so many people on the planet – women give off some sort of vulnerability and availability vibe – and men can sense it somehow! I tell her it is actually kind of perverse. Here she is down and depressed and all these guys show up, sensing it somehow and their response to her man troubles is to try to fuck her! I tell her that, if I was 20 years younger and single, I would be no better than any of the other guys – I would be all over her like white on rice!

That brings up another of my dad's clever witticisms – he would say that, if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle! And it's true in this case as well – if I was 20 years younger and single, Venus would not likely have told me her tale of woe, unless she wanted me to try to jump her bones!

Venus's man troubles are very common for dancers. They have a lot of trouble maintaining long term relationships while continuing their dancing careers. The reasons for these troubles are fairly obvious, mostly to do with the possessiveness and exclusivity issues that men have with other men handling their woman. No matter how determinedly a dancer will profess to her man that she is keeping faith, his imagination will always tell him otherwise. Decent men who can accept and live with this are rare. Other men who don't seem to mind are most likely not committed to the relationship. Or they may be benefiting from the dancers occupation and income, giving them an incentive to put any potential feelings of jealousy and possessiveness aside.

The generation gap –

At a club on a Friday evening recently, I watched a young dancer that I had not seen previously. She had a very modern persona, with one side of her head shaved and the other braided in an unusual tufted do that I can't really describe well. She had multiple piercings and many tattoos. She was very sexy and completely uninhibited in the way she danced. After she finished the on-stage portion of her performance, she walked around to the customers assembled near the stage doing brief dollar dances all over them, eventually working her way around to me. I handed her a couple of bucks and thanked her.

She looked at me and asked me if I wanted the same close-up dollar dance she had been giving the other guys. I said no thanks and explained briefly about my wife's rules of engagement. She looked around, then asked: Is your wife here? I smiled and said no, but that doesn't make any difference. She looked really puzzled at that, so suddenly inspired, I told her to think of it as a kind of retro kink thing. I told her that I made a promise to my wife and I intended to keep it. She thought about it for a second or two and then thanked me for the tip and moved on.

I could tell she still didn't really get it. I decided it was a generational misunderstanding. I suspect that in her mind and to other young people like her, sex is something like shaking hands with a new acquaintance. For them it is meaningless and of little consequence, sort of a shared masturbatory act. To make a lifelong commitment about it must seem to her as foreign as the dark side of the moon. Fellow baby boomers, that seems to me to be the generation gap of our youth coming back full circle to tap us on the shoulder.

Venus throws a major league changeup –

The next time I see Venus is about 10 days later. I spent the best part of a Sunday afternoon and early evening visiting with her at the club. As the end of her shift approaches, she surprises me bigtime. She tells me that she wants me to take her out for more drinks, which is the first such invitation I have received from a dancer. She knows my wife and how committed I am and seems to have no ulterior motive other than wanting to continue our conversation. I am game, so I have some coffee and spend an hour sobering up as her shift draws to a close and the evening dancers start to arrive, albeit a little late.

About a half hour after her shift has ended, she changes into her street clothes and wheels her dance bag out of the dressing room. We leave the club together and I put the bag in the trunk of my car. Then we drive off into the pleasant summer evening. Finding a country station on the radio is her first priority. She does this while I head over to a nearby bank branch to draw a little extra cash from the ATM.

To backtrack a bit, while talking with her at the club our first conversation was about her ongoing relationship issues with the European guy, let's call him Rene. She had been all set to move out of his place the day before, but he begged her to stay and pledged his love and she relented. I am happy to hear this news, since what I hear from her about her man does not sound so bad to me and I think she may have trouble finding better. She disagrees with this, telling me that she can find another man inside of an hour if she wants. Looking at her, I suspect that she is probably right about that.

Then she admits that her previous rebound relationship choices have not worked out so well. She says that she left her first husband for good when he started stalking her during a trial separation. She ended up marrying the cop who answered her call for help after she found her soon-to-be ex-husband hiding in the trunk of her car! It turned out the cop wasn't any better – among other misdeeds, he cheated on Venus with her mom!

Anyway, moving forward again, we go to a bar she frequents which happens to be across the street from my bank branch. We order and she surprises me again; she wants to buy the drinks and will not be dissuaded! This is shaping up to be an unusual evening and it is only getting started! We settle into a booth and she starts the conversation by telling me a story about her very first night as a dancer. She says that at that time she didn't know anything about dancing at all. The first thing that the bartender/DJ wanted her to do is to choose a stage name. She didn't have a clue what to pick, so she asks him what the other dancers in the club are going by.

There were four other dancers working: Lexus, Mercedes, Porsche and Corvette! Well, she assumed from this news that she was supposed to use a car brand or model as a stage name. She pulled Volvo out of her hat and that is how the DJ introduced her as she went up to the stage. Anyway, she danced for a while and the customers in the club seemed to get a kick out of her stage name. They asked her about it; why had she chosen Volvo? She told them that she was not the fastest or most expensive dancer in the club, but she was the safest!

I tell her this story reminds me about a side benefit for me of getting to know so many dancers and writing this book about their stories. I'm getting a little long in the tooth and need to actively work at keeping my memory functioning. I tell her that keeping track of dancers various names has been challenging and has helped keep my memory active. However, things do tend to get a little muddy after I've had a few beers. It also doesn't help that for many of the dancers, I have to try to keep track of three names. For some, I also make an effort to remember their kid's names and possibly the name of their significant other. The three names I file away for each of them are: their stage name, plus many have also told me their real name and then there is the name I use for them in the book.

Venus then tells me that this reminds her of similar problems she has had when writing checks for purchases at the market. If she is not thinking about it, she sometimes signs the check using her stage name. Of course, that is not the name printed on her checks. The store manager then gets summoned and she has to go through an extended verification process and provide an explanation of her multiple identity issues before they accept her check! She says this pitfall of having multiple identities has happened to her several times. From a psychological perspective her identity issues are even more complicated than that. Venus now dances using the name of her deceased identical twin as her stage name!

Venus then goes on to tell me about how she lost custody of her four children. I had suspected there was a story there, but knew that it was a difficult subject for her. I left it for her to tell me about it when and if she was ready to do so. It is very sad and I don't believe it will help the reader to hear it. I also believe that it would not do Venus any good to relate it in print, nor her kids any good to read it, as they are likely to do at some point.

I suddenly realize that she seems to have a number of good reasons to drink as heavily as she does. I hope she can work through it all somehow and come out the other side in good shape. I decide that I am done buying her drinks forevermore. I don't want to enable her self defeating behavior.

That being said, I should also say that she holds her liquor much better than I do. I have never seen her sloppy drunk. She has always been lucid, intelligent and good company in our conversations. This is as much my problem as hers, since I have a family history dealing with alcoholism. Both of my parents were alcoholics. My mother was particularly affected by the disease and it definitely had a large impact on my and my younger brother's childhoods.

Anyway, Venus is a beautiful woman with a great sense of humor and is good fun to hang out with. As I sit there with her I am thinking that if I wasn't happily married I'm sure I'd try to get to know her better. Then she really blows my mind! She tells me the same thing, saying that she would happily "do" me if she could. Then she goes out for a smoke, leaving me sitting there dumbfounded.

A few minutes later she walks back in to the bar from the smoking area outside. A guy walks up to her and I watch as they converse briefly. Then she leads him over to the booth. She introduces him to me as Rene, her long term live-in boyfriend. I stand and shake his hand while Venus returns to her seat next to where I had been sitting. I sat back down, but over on the other side of the booth from Venus, leaving the seat next to her open for Rene and he sits down there.

I shift seats because I do not want to give either of them the wrong impression; I am not a combatant in their arena at all. What ensues is one of the strangest introductory conversations that I have ever had with anyone. Having just met this guy, I start telling him what I have heard about him from Venus and about the conclusions I have suggested to her about their relationship! I figure this is worth diving into at this point because their relationship is on such rocky ground. I think it is worth it for them to make the extra effort before it fails. I tell Rene all of this and I also laid some of my psychobabble on him. I tell him specifically about his father not belonging in their relationship and that I think the underlying issue that they are not talking about is Venus' career as a stripper.

As I said, Venus has heard all of this from me previously. Rene looks uncomfortable and somewhat shell-shocked and I don't blame him a bit. It occurs to me that Venus may have set this whole thing up for exactly this purpose, to give her man a jolt and to give an old fool an ego boost in the bargain!
Epiphanies arise in deeper layers of the strip club onion –

My first epiphany is that Zada is a Muse! Or, to be more precise, Zada is a personification in my mind of what the ancient Greeks used to call a Muse. As I understand it, the polytheistic ancient Greeks believed that their Gods and Goddesses looked just like people, often acted like children and sometimes mingled with people, occasionally even having sex with mortals. Among the many interesting characters in their mythology were the nine Muses, all daughters of Zeus, who was the main deity and also quite a player.

Considered to be goddesses, the nine Muse sisters were all extraordinarily beautiful, with a great deal of what we now know as girl-power. Through this power they exerted considerable influence on men. They indirectly and inadvertently inspire creativity within men's spirits, which supposedly led to many of the ancient Greeks impressive achievements in the arts and sciences. Like most characters in Greek mythology, the Muses were somewhat eccentric and capricious and were considered to be careless, or perhaps oblivious or even ditzy. Please forgive me Zada, I am not suggesting that you are a ditzy blonde, but you are sometimes somewhat oblivious and kind of an eccentric, in a good way.

Anyway, in my belief system, I think much of the Greek's polytheistic opera was an attempt to explain and excuse human nature. If their gods were often childish, angry or horny, how could mere mortals be expected to act any better? Among the ancient Greeks population were these rare, gorgeous, loving women, charming birds of paradise that had great power over men. By their mere existence, they inspired men to do amazing, silly and amazingly silly things. Possessing such power, they must be goddesses, the Greeks reasoned. In my own somewhat eastern leaning philosophy, I disagree with the ancient Greek's assessment that Muses are goddesses, although I respect them for recognizing their presence among us and for calling our attention to them.

I think a Muse is a rare woman who possesses both great physical beauty and a kind, compassionate and ancient soul. Looking back, I now recognize that I met a couple of them at different times when I was a much younger man. I remember briefly being alone with one and receiving the full focus of her attention, which reduced me to blithering idiocy. Having achieved a bit of wisdom and power of my own since then, I have no such problem when visiting with Zada, which I find myself drawn to do whenever I am in town. I must caution men of any level of awareness who have the good fortune to meet her face-to-face. Merely by looking you in the eyes for a moment she will overwhelmingly remind you from whence you came, an experience which still takes my breath away, every time. Consider this a word to the wise, gentlemen.

I will now muse further about Muses – amusingly, I hope – put on some music if you wish, later, perhaps visit a museum. Our language is laden with muse references, if you think about it. Anyway, I imagine one of the first Muses, a cave-woman, shivering and rubbing her shoulders against the cold. I also picture a cave man, a dreamer admiring her from afar. He sees that she is cold and goes outside to find some dry sticks which he rubs together as he thinks. He knows that dry wood burns and that creates heat and warmth which he wants for her, but he doesn't know how to get it started. To his surprise, after a while the energy of his thoughts causes the sticks he is rubbing together to start smoking. Finally, after much effort he is able to produce a flame. He builds a campfire and proudly offers it to her to warm herself.

To serve a Muse well is very good karma. It will bring flashes of inspiration and also epiphanies, good fortune and prosperity. My imagined fire-starter undoubtedly became chieftain of his tribe, known far and wide as the keeper of the sacred flame and husband of a hell of a looker. They lived in a cave full of kids and also her large menagerie of pet frogs, turtles and salamanders. I also imagine that most of the men and boys of the tribe spent quite a bit of their time hunting up worms and insects so she can feed them to her pets. The time spent was worth it, since she would bestow her knockout smile upon each of them as they delivered their catch.

A modern example of a Muse and her power is Marilyn Monroe. I can picture her on a balcony with JFK one night in the early '60s, gazing at the moon as she murmurs; I wonder what is up there? Several years later, three guys with big hairy nuts strapped themselves into a tin can on top of a Saturn rocket containing a million pounds of rocket fuel and liquid oxygen. They blasted off to the moon and brought back a box of rocks and dust.

This example of Marilyn's Muse power brings up another important point about Muses and leads to my second epiphany. It is bad news to abuse a Muse as it will bring awful karma down upon you! And it is even worse to start a romantic relationship with a Muse if you can't offer her fidelity. To jilt or scorn a Muse is sure to bring you a shit-storm of bad karma, as JFK learned the hard way on that fateful day in Dallas in November 1963, shortly after he capitulated to Jackie's ultimatum and dumped Marilyn.

Going back in time again for another great and appropriate example of a Muse, there is Helen of Troy. She inspired the Greek poet Homer to write the first two great stories of western civilization, his epic poems, the Odyssey and the Iliad. Helen was married to a Greek king and took part in a beauty contest judged by a dude named Paris, after whom the romantic city of lights in France is named. Paris judged Helen to be the winner of the beauty contest, deciding that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Then Paris went way off script for beauty contest judges - he kidnapped her and shanghaied her to the city of Troy, where he had powerful friends. This led to war and the renowned siege of Troy, which went on for quite some time. The siege finally ended with the big hollow wooden gift horse that the Trojans should have looked in the mouth; all that and much more, a hell of a story.

My final epiphany regarding Muses is that, without the power that Muses possess to inspire us, I suspect that we'd likely all still be living in the trees.

Venus and I talk about Latinas and panties –

So the next time I see Venus, several months after our last visit together, she is engaged, is drinking less heavily and seems happy. We spend an hour catching up and then we start talking about other things. A new dancer, a young Latina, is in the club where Venus now is among the senior dancers in residence. I comment that I gave this girl an extra dollar tip because she kept her panties on throughout her two song stage routine. I say that is likely because, as a Latina, she is most likely a Catholic and so has standards. Venus seems somewhat offended by this, because of course, she doesn't wear panties while at work and so when she dances, she is stark naked shortly after she starts. I have to backpedal a bit, explaining to her that it is not the retention of the panties that I respect and reward; it is the cultural identity, the Catholic Latina thing.

Of course, Venus has an instant comeback to this, replying that isn't it the Latinas that have various kinds of sex with donkeys down in Tijuana. For once, I also have an instant comeback, namely that once the Latinas cross whatever line it is that they perceive exists, for them there is no other line. In other words, they believe that once they are hellbound, there is no further line to cross, they have crossed the only one that there is.

The point turns out to be moot because later in the evening, I see the young Latina dancer has shed her panties, both on stage and wandering the club soliciting dollar dances and VIP lounge dances. My perception of her lines may have been just that, my perception. This does bring up another thought related to panties, however. In my travels around the country there seems to be some sort of connection, at least in the minds of some local authorities, between panties and alcohol. In most localities that address the issue, either there is booze in the club and the panties stay on, or there is no booze allowed and the panties can come off.

In a land that is predominately Christian, there does seem to be some sort of line related to panties and associated with alcohol. Not being a Christian myself, I have no idea what the connection is. I can tell you, in my admittedly limited experience, that as they say - Candy is dandy, but Liquor is quicker. So there probably is a connection between alcohol and panties, but only God and the local arbiters of morality know what it is.

On the road again –

Some months later, I find myself making a move to a major metropolitan area in the Southwest. There are lots of clubs in the area, and also several varieties of clubs due to a strange mixture of rules and regs in the city and closely surrounding suburbs. In general, the clubs are larger, cleaner and fancier than those I frequented in our prior home base area in the Northwest, undoubtedly due to the greater concentration of money often found in major metropolitan areas.

In one particularly wealthy neighboring municipality, the first place I have ever seen with a Maserati or a Ferrari dealership, the dancers have to wear both thongs and silver latex paint on their nipples & aureoles! For gals who have large aureoles, they end up with most of their breast painted silver! It seems absurd to me - I imagine the city council meeting in which they discussed the subject, decided that painting the nipples was necessary and then decided they must also choose a color! I suppose they believed that rich guys can't control themselves in the presence of both alcohol and naked nipples. I really doubt that the councilors ever considered painting their own nipples with the same paint, just to see what it was like to remove! The dancers tell me it stings and leaves the area raw and more sensitive than usual.

As I found in many other states during our long circuit around the country, this is yet another state that relates panties and alcoholic beverages. If the dancers get nude, then the raciest thing you are drinking is a hyper-caffeinated soft drink. For myself, in these juice bar variety strip clubs, the inclination is to check out the talent while I get hyped up. Then I usually use the artificial energy boost to motor myself out and down the road to a club where I can buy a beer. Another thing that I have noticed about the juice bars is that the dancers tend to be younger, which makes some sense if you think about it. However, again from my own preference, I seek out dancers who have been around for a while and with whom it is more likely that I can converse for more than a couple of minutes.

A third variety of so-called gentlemen's clubs is evident in some of these communities. This one seems almost certain to be an unintended result of the attempt to connect panties and alcohol in the law books. These are the private dance only clubs, entirely too much like a brothel for me. There is no public dance floor, just a smaller entry area where you pick a "dancer" out of a lineup and go back to a private room with her for "one-on-one interaction". Since alcohol is not a part of the equation, her panties can legally come off. Since the only interaction available is a "VIP private dance", the walk-in-the-door initial out of pocket cost is higher than the usual strip bar. This type of club is not for me, since the interaction is entirely outside of the realm of the agreement I have with my wife.

This brings up another experience I recently had as I explored the variety of clubs in this area. For the first time, a dancer suggested to me that, if I was not in the market for a private dance, what was the point for me to be there? This question floored me, both because the answer seemed simple and obvious to me, yet also had a lot of layers and angles to it, both in terms of our differing perspectives as man and woman, service vendor and customer. She suggested to me that she did not have rabies, what is wrong with her touching and dancing for and upon me? I told her that it was not within the behaviors my wife was comfortable with for me, and that I was doing my best to keep her comfortable. I also told her that even if she had rabies, if I felt is was OK to do so, I probably would consider it worthwhile to get rabies.

In spite of my attempt to compliment her, she got pissed off. I explained to her that I enjoyed watching dancers dance and move around the club, both in and out of their skimpy outfits and that I happily tipped a minimum of one or two bucks per stage dance for the privilege. I told her that I also tip more for impressive or unusual stage performances and skill displays and for dancers who are willing to spend a little of their time sitting with me and conversing, since I usually enjoy their company. Apparently this was not sufficient for her, and during her next stage dance, she flipped me off. My paltry contribution was apparently not worth her time and she went out of her way to make me feel un-welcome, a first in my many experiences in clubs all over the country, so I left and I haven't returned to that club and probably won't for a while, since there are quite a few other clubs in and around town to check out.

A couple of days later, my explorations brought me to the best organized, best designed, and one of the nicest clubs I have ever been in. The most impressive thing about it was the degree of consistency that the management of this club has managed to mold into the behavior of the dancers; it was actually kind of scary. Getting to know dancers over the past few years, one of the most consistent character traits that they have is that they tend to be fiercely independent. Each tries to accentuate her own individual characteristics in comparison to others, perhaps essential in the competitive environment in which they work. I have often marveled at how difficult it must be to manage and organize a group of dancers, similar to trying to herd housecats.

Nevertheless, in this amazing club, with a main stage and two secondary stages, the dancers strutted around to a tight schedule, appearing at the main stage exactly as their dance number came up and moving precisely between stages according the cycle. The stages were well lit, the nearly nude dancers clearly visible, looking like fully mobile statuary of female pulchritude. It has occurred to me before that a great deal of the worlds art depicts the female form, often idealized. To me, the experience to be had in this club most closely approaches art appreciation, in which the middle man - the artist - has been eliminated, and the subject is alive, not frozen in time, arms intact.

Finally, I could not contain my curiosity and I had to talk with one of these "Stepford dancers". She had just completed her circuit and approached me to solicit a private dance. I asked her if she would just sit and talk with me for a few minutes, and offered her a sawbuck up front to entice her to do so, which she happily accepted. She told me that the club was one of the pickiest in town in its dancer screening practices, but that it was worth it because of the tip income was consistently relatively high and the house charges to dancers were reasonable. The club management excelled in other ways as well, having reasonable drink prices (it is a panties stay on, booze served type of establishment), further discounted during an afternoon happy hour. Moderate in size, the club was very clean and had comfortable chairs and tables. All in all, it seemed to be a textbook operation for how to run a strip club.

After she had filled me in about the club, I thanked her and asked her a final question about her pierced nipples, which I noticed had seemed to glow eerily when she was dancing. She smiled and took her top off again and gave me a close look, explaining that she had applied a kind of lipstick to them that she found which reacted and glowed under the ultraviolet stage lights. I thanked her again and complimented her on her creativity and originality. As I have said, for me, the strip club experience has almost always been rewarding when I have an opportunity to sit and talk with the dancers. They are almost always friendly and always real, no matter how artificial their reputation.

A couple of days later, my wife and I visit another club in our new home-base community, to relax, have a few beers and watch a world series game on the advertised big screen. It was a hell of a good game and a lot of fun for me to try to keep up with everything that was going on, at times a sensory overload. My wife was popular with the dancers, who told us that this club attracted few couples, that non-dancer women in the club were rare. As a result, we got an unusual number of opportunities to have conversations with the dancers. It was also a bit frustrating for me at times, as my wife got considerably more physical contact than I ever get.

Anyway, one of the most interesting and lengthy conversations we had was with a young dancer who apparently wanted to talk with us about marriage. She said that she was mulling a proposal from a boyfriend, and was uncertain of what she wanted to do. For us, our twenty year anniversary is fast approaching and this young lady wanted to know our secret. She was looking for our take on her opinion that marriage is an outdated and unnecessary institution for young people of her generation. We explained to her that for us, 17th century romantic love is just an occasionally entertaining pretense; our relationship is more of a lifetime contract which we both have the desire and the ethical basis to maintain. While we don't have any children, our "partnership against the world" has served us both well, and the whole is definitely more than the sum of its parts, as we complement each other.

So I told this young woman that I believed that there are two longstanding and continuing good reasons to believe in marriage as an ongoing and valuable institution. The first is the mutual benefits of the partnership, which usually has a great deal more depth than a mere business arrangement. The second is the benefits of a stable relationship and home life for children. Although children can adapt, survive and thrive in all sorts of strange environments, they consistently have the best chances for mental, social and physical health and development if they have two loving parents in a committed relationship. After I explained all this to her, she got called up for her turn to dance on the stage. As she was leaving, as is my usual custom I offered her a tip for talking with us. She declined it, saying that I had already given her value. Apparently she really was looking for advice and listened to what we had to say.

Zada talks about men's fetishes, strip biz trends & the future –

Almost every aspect of strip clubs is designed to cater to men and their fantasies. Most men's fantasies are fairly simple, but some are very strange. Some can be accommodated in the semi-public environment like a strip club. At customer's request, I have seen dancers punch, kick, step on and verbally abuse these poor sick bastards. Foot fetishists are also fairly common. Toe sucking, foot smelling, foot fondling, foot massaging, I've seen it all and had many such requests. One customer would come in at the end of the evening and would pay $100 per song in the VIP lounge to rub our sweaty, tired feet. He would moan in ecstasy as he massaged our feet.

Another strange guy is into having a dancer put tape over her mouth and then hum into his ear along with the music. Another customer brings in thigh high stockings. He pays us to allow him to put them on our legs and then take them off again. He makes a big production out of it, giving out legs and calves a good feel in the process.

Probably the strangest customer yet is the otherwise fairly normal guy that we call "Count Dracula", after the Sesame Street character. He regularly drives several hours to visit his favorite dancer. He uses a clicker to keep count of the VIP dances he buys from her. He clicks it each time a new song starts. After each of these sessions, they sit together at the bar while he enters the date, time, number of dances and dollar total that he has paid her for that session in a pocket sized expense record book. This guy regularly tells his favorite exactly how many dances he has bought from her and also exactly how much he has paid her, since they first met. We have spent quite a bit of time speculating about what possible use these meticulous records might have. We haven't come up with anything that makes any sense, so we have decided that this bean counter has an arithmetic fetish.

As you might expect, our outfits are a very important part of each dancer's persona. Some clubs have themes and dress codes. One required that we only wear evening gowns when not on stage, or only lingerie, no swimsuits or other clothes. One club required that we each have one theme costume and theme performance per night. Some of these can be very creative and entertaining. One dancer did a fire dance every night which included putting split matches on her nipples and having the lights in the club turned down while she danced in the darkness. Usually though, the dancer's outfit themes were more commonplace, such as schoolgirls, french-maids, etc. In a club near an army base, the dancers often wore military style outfits.

I naturally have dark hair and kept it short for a while after my early wig incident. However, I kept noticing that dancers with long blond hair got more tips, so I started growing my hair out and coloring it. As it got longer, my tip income definitely improved. After a while, my hair had grown very long, nearly reaching the small of my back. One day I came to work to find a newly installed spinning pole – a pole which rotated on bearings top and bottom, which made many pole tricks easier. These spinning poles are now very common in strip clubs. Unfortunately, as I learned the hard way, the bearings also make having long hair and doing some tricks more complicated. Doing one of my tricks, I got my long hair completely wound up in the lower bearing. The only way to free me and also free the stage for the next dancer was to cut off most of my long hair!

Recently, a long-haired dancer told me a story about a dance shift in which she found that she was getting a lot of big tips and VIP lap dance requests and she couldn't figure out why. After several hours, another dancer told her that she had "something" in her hair which looked "funny" in the black lights of the stage. It was a glob of toothpaste, but it looked like something else. This led the customers to get the wrong impression and got their hopes up for a "special" VIP lap dance.

The amount of contact allowed between customers and dancers is something which varies from state-to-state and also club-to-club. It depends on local and state laws and also on management policies. Over the years, things have loosened up a lot. The changes have worked against "clean" dancers like me and to the benefit of "dirty" dancers. Some dancers act like children seeking to test their boundaries. They allow increasing amounts of physical contact with customers and discover that they make more money doing so. They also gain a competitive advantage over clean dancers. For as long as they continue to profit and get away with these activities, they continue.

It is very depressing for me to spend time talking a customer into a VIP lounge dance and then go back there with him, only to find another dancer giving a customer a blowjob. When this happens, usually the man expecting a VIP lap dance from me will decide that he wants a blowjob too. I then have to explain to him that he is not going to get one from me. As a result, he often will walk out and I lose the customer and the money I would have made from the VIP dance, which I need to pay the bills and feed my children.

Some club owners are taking advantage by creating small private spaces with an hourly rental rate. The customer pays the club management for the "use of the space". The main purpose of the private space is to enable prostitution to occur undisturbed. Such club owners might be considered in the eyes of the law to be pimping the dancers or procuring for the customers, or both. Some club owners get so brazen that they have month long competitions among the dancers. There are cash prizes for the dancers who do the highest volume of private space rentals. In such environments, clean dancers like me have few choices. These are: a.) Move on to another "cleaner" club; b.) Loosen our moral and ethical standards; or c.) Try to find another way to make a living, with no skills to offer and children to support.

The club management themselves are under the same pressure to loosen up and change with the times. In general, if it is available, many men will go to a club where they can get more than a lap dance. This may force the management of clean clubs to add such private spaces for rent too.

When I started my career, strip clubs were like burlesque stage shows. The future of the strip club seems to look a lot like a brothel or an hourly rate "hot-sheets" motel. I miss the days when stripping was a form of entertainment and less of a dirty dancing competition. Contrary to what some believe, like many clean dancers, I am not a prostitute. I only offer men a fantasy, an escape, someone they can be themselves with and someone to talk to. I provide a service which some men seem to appreciate and value. I consider myself a professional entertainer and I believe that I am good at my job.

Bizarre & Interesting, or just Gross, you decide –

So I am starting to meet and get to know several interesting dancers in our new home city. Just yesterday I met one, I'll call her Luna, who truly blew my mind with a fetish story from earlier in her 12 year career as a dancer. Luna was dancing in Southern California several years ago and told me about a fellow who paid her $300 each month for more than 3 years for her used tampons! This story takes me a few minutes to process before I am ready to ask for details. Apparently the guy became Luna's regular customer and got to know her well enough that he knew the timing of her menstrual cycle, since she took a few days off during her period. Somehow it became a routine that on the first day of her return to work each month, Luna sealed her last used tampon in a plastic bag and then placed that bag inside a brown paper lunch bag. She delivered this package to the club manager upon her arrival at the club. The manager would handle the transaction, receiving $300 cash for the brown bag, keeping $20 for himself as a handling fee and giving Luna the balance. I asked her what the guy did with her used tampon, she said she didn't have any idea, and did not really care!

Telling it like it is –

As we get closer to the center of the onion, it has become clear to me that strip clubs are a war zone in the battle of the sexes. It's all about power, inequality, freedom and responsibility. The power that holds down the women who work in strip clubs is largely economic dominance. The inequality is biological. Women get pregnant and bear children. They also do most, if not all, of the child rearing. In the sense of individual liberty, a key principle in American democracy, this is fundamentally unfair and limits the freedom that women have in their lives. Women are forced to take responsibility for this biological role by virtue of the accident of their birth as females and also the strength of the emotional bond they usually have with their children. American democracy is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for each individual, including women.

For women, the battle of the sexes is about external struggles. They struggle to overcome male dominance and to force men to accept their share of responsibility for the never-ending task of continuing the species, one child at a time. Women also struggle to get society to make adjustments for the inequality of their biological burden and to guarantee their individual freedoms. For men, the struggle is internal, with themselves, struggling to overcome age-old habits and cultural conditioning.

This is an age old problem and many previous cultures have wrestled with it and most are wrestling with it still. How this problem is addressed by a society may be one indicator of its quality and long term viability. If not adequately addressed, women suffer and their children often suffer with them. Children who suffer during childhood usually don't grow up to be fully functional members of society and tend to pass their suffering along. Vastly compounding the problem is that we become sexually active and capable of reproducing long before we have matured into fully rational adults. It is even longer before most become economically self-sustaining. Juveniles do what comes naturally, always have and always will. Any culture that denies that ultimate fact of human nature is in denial about the facts of life, like trying to deny the sun and moon or hold back the tide.

Many societal institutions, morals, educational efforts and cultural indoctrinations are directed at this problem. Societies sometimes clash between each other based upon their differences in addressing women's rights. The best current example of this clash is that between western and Middle Eastern cultures.

Are we in the west really in a position to reach a judgment that forcing women into burkas when in public and cloistering them away from men as much as possible is the wrong solution? Can we really say that the way that western culture economically forces poor women into a form of indentured servitude in strip clubs is not just one of many indicators that we may indeed be the great Satan? What about the things that are done to women on camera in order to cater to men's sexual obsessions on the internet? Until we deal with this type of injustice in our society, have we any claim to the moral ascendancy necessary to allow us to judge other cultures to be mistreating women?

Up until fairly recently, western society sometimes dealt with sexually active young women – so-called fallen women - by institutionalizing them into Magdalene Asylums. Often their newborn babies were forcibly taken from them and adopted. Many of these women labored in sweat shop conditions. Working in strip clubs is seemingly a small step up from that previous institutional servitude for poor, sexually active young women. However, it is far from a solution to the basic human rights issues I describe above and does not address the needs of their children beyond allowing them to stay with their mothers. Even this is not guaranteed, as the parental rights of strippers are sometimes terminated by state legal actions. In these cases, they are often faced with unfair and hypocritical judgments and economic disadvantages.

It seems an ultimate and insufferably painful irony. Walk for a moment in their stilettos. Imagine yourself as a poor young woman who has followed her heart and also the moral arbiters' doctrine not to terminate her pregnancy. She has chosen instead to give birth and to take on the huge task of raising her child on her own. Now imagine further that you have been forced by economics to submit to the indignities of exposing yourself to numerous men in order to feed, clothe, shelter and nurture that child. Then imagine yourself shunned by society and judged negatively for having done so. Then your much loved child is taken from you as a result of that negative judgment. Is it any surprise that these events can and do drive some women into self-destructive behaviors? Is it any wonder that some of these women end up crazier than a shithouse rat? Wouldn't you be?

Do not delude yourself, there is a battle of the sexes and it is far from over. Which side are you on? Having spent time in the war zone considering it and having met and talked with many dancers, I side with them and with women in general. I have not fathered any children myself, but I have no sympathy for divorced dads who whine about their child support payments and their court mandated child care duties. Those deadbeats who do more than just whine and actively dodge their responsibilities are not worthy to be considered as fully functioning men. A male animal that instinctively plants his seed and then moves on is not to be blamed. A male homo sapiens with the gifts of consciousness and reason has no excuse. Sorry guys, but that's how it is, deal with it.

Getting men to accept their responsibilities as fathers is only the beginning. What is the best solution to the problem? I suspect that the best is probably also the oldest. Close-knit tribal structure could be combined with egalitarian individual human rights principles to create a viable and fair society which might allow all individuals freedoms and also ensure that responsibilities are fairly distributed among the members of the tribe. It is strange and comical to realize that I came to this anthropological Utopian vision hanging out in strip clubs, watching and wondering.

In the modern USA, the closest we come to this tribal vision is the case of large multi-generational family clans. These aid young single mothers in the clan as only one part of their function, seemingly as a matter of course. That is what truly functional families do and have done, for countless generations. If that family support is not present, then young women often become fodder for the strip clubs. They have to be tough, learn fast and be lucky to make it on their own in that environment. Many don't, and become casualties of the battle of the sexes, along with their children.

Zada describes an obsessive Customer & Dancer relationship –

The complicated relationships that sometimes develop between customers and dancers is another subject that brings interesting stories to mind. One recent, ongoing story stands out, between my friend and co-worker, Sublimity, and an older man, I'll call him Ray. Like many men who come into clubs, Ray met Sublimity and immediately fell for her, head over heels. This was inconvenient and presented problems for him, as he lives several hours away and is married. At first, he would come into town every few months when he could come up with an excuse to make the trip – usually it would be work seminars or something similar.

As his infatuation with Sublimity grew, he realized that he wanted an excuse which would allow him to visit her more often. His solution was to buy a boat that he could claim he was taking to a nearby lake. He would go so far as to buy fresh fish from a local market to bring home with him as evidence of his fishing trip. As time passed, Ray became completely obsessed with Sublimity and desired to be more involved in her life. He repeatedly would ask her to meet him outside of the club for lunch and other such "dates".

Until recently, Sublimity resisted Ray's efforts to meet with her. After he had a triple bypass, she gave in and promised to meet him for lunch on his 60th birthday. Ray was very excited about this date and probably hoped for a romantic rendezvous. However, to protect herself from such expectations, Sublimity threw him a curve by inviting her husband along to join in the fun! I cannot imagine how this was going to work. But Ray was determined to spend time with Sublimity and sat through a strange afternoon with the object of his affection -and her husband!

During Ray's next visit with Sublimity at the club, she told him that her husband had really enjoyed meeting him. Her husband had spoken of wanting to meet again sometime to hang out and get to know him better. She gave Ray her husband's cell number and asked him to call. This conversation took place in the VIP lounge of the club as Sublimity gave Ray a lap dance! This bizarre story is only warming up.

A couple weeks later Sublimity got into a wild fight with another dancer in the club dressing room. At one point in the battle, she tried to pop the other dancer's breast implant! As a result, she was suspended from the club for a week, during which time Ray was expected to come into town on one of his "fishing expeditions". Knowing that he was on his way and that she would not be able to meet him at the club, somehow Sublimity concluded that it would be good to invite Ray to her home to have dinner with her husband and kids!

During this strange dinner date, it came up that Ray would be having a camping get-together with his family at a nearby state park soon. A fair sized group of his extended family would be in attendance, including Ray's wife. Somehow, Sublimity decided it would be cool to crash this party with her family and did so! During this encounter, Sublimity met and spent some time talking with Ray's wife and they became friends! After this meeting, Sublimity decided that she did not feel comfortable dancing for Ray anymore. However, Ray apparently doesn't care whether she is comfortable or not; he still comes in regularly and demands that she dance for him.

Joy talks about an epiphany of her own –

After 3 months on the road with my wife, I return to town to catch up with the other women in my life, my new dancer friends. I run into Joy first, she greets me happily and agrees to meet a few days later at her place to let me in on an epiphany that she had hinted to me about before I left town. My wife comes with me on the appointed day and we show up at Joy's house at about noon. We spend a happy half hour looking at Joys wedding pictures; she had gotten married to her long term live-in boyfriend a few days after we left for our trip.

Anyway, after a while we sit down to write and it soon becomes apparent that Joy wants me to write while she tells me about her epiphany, which is related to regular customers. She says that she now has three regulars on the string and they are providing her with the bulk of her income. The first, Mr. A, started out as a customer of her young heroin addicted friend Louisiana. Louisiana did not have any experience in how to direct the mini-drama of a long term customer relationship, i.e. how to develop and maintain a regular. Mr. A is a very high maintenance regular – so Louisiana seemed relieved when Joy offered to help her and show her the ropes. She seemed to be learning for a while, but the extra effort seemed to bore her, so she let me "have" Mr. A as my own.

Just so you know, as a rule, customers who seek a special relationship with a particular dancer are always expecting to get laid, and sooner rather than later. Some dancers, like myself, do not put out. But it is not necessary, as the relationship built on expectations of sex can be transformed into loving, platonic and genuine friendships, although it requires some fancy dancing.

Dancers create a fantasy. The club is a safe environment to talk about whatever weird little fantasy is likely hidden in the customers mind. This brings us back to Mr. A. He likes to talk about the kinkiest, weirdest off the wall stuff. This is fine with me, as one of my chief roles is to listen. "Wow, really?" is a safe response to almost any strangeness a man can come up with.

Mr. A is 62 and likes to buy and wear women's lingerie. Somehow he got hold of and completely ruined one of my pink flowered lace thongs, which will never be the same since he "used" it. One evening, he showed up at the club wearing it under his shorts and proudly let me in on his little "secret".

It is necessary to stay on your toes in any conversation with a regular – quick changes of subject and acting dumb are a couple of the best tools to keep in mind. Somewhat wealthy and always unkempt, Mr. A feels good about having a woman in his life that he can shower with gifts – it makes him feel good about himself. With him, there is lots of animated and playful dialog. He calls at all hours wanting to talk about his feelings.

Sometimes he calls and wants to talk while he watches porn online. At one point I was able to redirect his online use while we talked. I got him to log on to the web site of the local power utility and pay my overdue bill. Somehow, through no fault of my own, he also clicked the autopay check box, so he ended up paying my power bill for the next 5 months. Eventually he called the utility and got them to stop docking him for my power bills. Every time Mr. A comes to town, I can bank on receiving $200 cash and either a shopping trip for hair stuff, or a porn shop trip for heels and club outfits.

Mr. B is also in his early 60's. He grows a lot of pot and has done so for years. He seems to have an anger management problem, which may have been an issue with his prior relationships. This may explain his social interactions with women being limited to strip clubs. He is really focused on having sex, but he won't get any and he currently is not even allowed to flirt with me. I told him to stop. The main problem I have had with Mr. B is his wandering hands – he is very grabby and it was tough to break him of that.

With Mr. B, it never fails – when he comes to town I get $100 and half an ounce of pot. If I'm in a bind and need extra cash, he brings me 3 ounces of weed which I turn over at work, converting it into the cash I need.

Mr. C is tougher because I really like him – he could be a friend – so it is tough to do the exploitative and self-centered things that strippers do to regulars. Mr. C is alone because he put too much of himself and his time into his business and his wife eventually left him after some minor embezzlement. He is very open and honest and likes good company. He comes to the club to talk; it is very rare that he wants a lap dance.

Mr C. is in his mid 40s and seems to be trying to gain some skills in interacting with women, perhaps to prepare for eventually re-entering the "normal" dating scene. He tends to give me cash, gifts and weed. He is not a drinker, smoker, or a drug user, but he tolerates and interacts well with people who do. He will often be readily available to get me rides to/from work, or to go shopping. Mr. C will do his best to provide what I need, or he will send someone else if he can't break free. He seems to enjoy our conversations and also seems to believe that he is gaining from our relationship.

My epiphany about regulars did not come quickly or easily. I saw lots of dancers who had regulars and who seemed to relax whenever one of their regulars came into the club. They had made their days income as of that moment. Other dancers did not talk much about what their regulars did for them, because they did not want to talk about what they did for their regulars.

Dancers get a lot of perks from their regulars. I work in a gray area with them because I don't put out, but I am working at providing regulars with something better, which may be difficult to believe. My goal is to interact with my regulars on an intellectual, social, spiritual and emotional level instead of merely on a physical level. I have graduated from being a stripper to a much more rewarding occupation, I am becoming a courtesan.

Jewel shows us that at the center of the onion is love –

I met Jewel in a club in the southwest recently. A beautiful, shapely young woman of 26 with cocoa brown skin and dark eyes, she drew me in to her personal space seemingly without effort. Being a standoffish kind of guy, this is quite an accomplishment. The story she told of her beginnings as a dancer blew me away.

Several years ago, she was doing child daycare work and had a room-mate who was a dancer and single mom with two young children - a boy and girl by different fathers. One day, Jewel came home from work to find a note from her room-mate, saying that she had left town with a guy. She had also left her two young children behind for Jewel to care for, without a word of discussion about it. After some time with no word from their flighty biological mother, Jewel was able to find the father of the little boy, but could not find the father of the little girl. So Jewel is raising this little girl as her own and has been for a few years now.

Being struck by the extraordinary strength of character demonstrated by this story, I suggested to Jewel that she must have had at least one strong parental figure. Jewel told me that her mother fit this bill. When Jewel found herself with childcare responsibilities of her own, she took up dancing. It paid much better than child care and she could work nights while her new daughter slept, in the care of Jewel's own mother. This left her free to be a mother for her new child during the daytime.

Jewel told me that she is dreading the day that she must explain this story to the little girl who has become her daughter. I suggested she could start working on writing a letter to her girl, explaining the story. When the day comes, the letter will become the focus and a cherished possession of a young woman. It will be the basis for a mother-daughter contract, a true and profound description of the origins of love in human relationships.

What love is not: Lust, desire, passion, possessiveness, selflessness, surrender.

What love is: a powerful urge to ensure the safety, well-being, freedom, happiness and growth of someone else and also one-self. Your self is one of the gifts of consciousness and is worthy of your love. Excessive self-denial is not healthy and is ultimately not as effective a path to growth and enlightenment as learning to love yourself and as many others as your capacity for love allows.

For most women, love is instinctive. Maternal instinct allows women to automatically love their children and by extension, others. I believe that, while some men do learn to love, it is not built into us and other instincts cause most men to confuse possessiveness, desire and other emotions with love. This is a common problem for both men and women, as most of us mix up love with other emotions into a complex stew, which causes endless confusion, drama, anguish and grief.

This is the first epiphany about love that I have gained from thinking and writing about strip clubs, that love should be distinguished and separated from other emotions. It is hard to see through muddy water. For a similar viewpoint on the subject, I recommend Philippe Caland's film, Ripple Effect. In this film, the character that Forest Whitaker portrays seems to have learned what love is, as a distinct and separate emotion from desire and possessiveness. It seems to have been a profound epiphany for him, too.

Their instinct and ability to love us unconditionally gives our mothers considerable power in each of our lives. Lacking that instinct, our fathers love us in their own way, if at all. Even if they try, there is little if anything that our fathers can do to come close to matching the nurturing care that most of us get from our mothers from day one. It is not surprising that many of us seek a powerful male figure who can also love us unconditionally. It is also not surprising that monotheistic religions which offer a male deity do well.

This is the second epiphany about love. The notion of god as an almighty male creator, who will love you nearly unconditionally if you worship him, is a reflection of our own search for unconditional love from a father figure. There seems to be no reason to believe that god created man in his own image. Instead, we seem to have imagined god in the collective image of our own fathers as we would have preferred them to be.

To say that we may have incorrectly personified the creator is not to say that there is none. I suspect that the creator and creation are one and the same. To my mind, the universe is a boundless, eternal, spiritual and material entity. Paradoxically, the gift of consciousness is also a burden, in that it provides us with the illusion of an individual identity which seemingly has an existence separate from creation and the creator. I think that the creator is present within each and all of us and surrounds us. We breathe, drink, eat and move within the material body and spiritual essence of the creator. We all are doing our lonely dance and searching for profound connection to others and also to something larger than ourselves, yet those connections are continuous and inescapable.

Looking back, I seem to have taken you on quite a journey, from dancers strip club stories to the fundamental paradox of consciousness. All that is left is my conclusion, some guesswork about short-term trends for strip clubs and then my final chapter. Since this book is about dancers and their stories, Zada deserves to have and will finish off with the last word.

My conclusion is that the male dominated and driven strip club industry utilizes women's instinctive maternal love to entrap thousands of disadvantaged women into a self-defeating indentured servitude. They would likely not stay in the trap for long, were it not for their love for their children. This defeat is compounded by the tendency of others in society to shun these women based upon unfair and often hypocritical moral judgments. The children also suffer, creating an ongoing cycle of defeat that can continue through generations.

The direction of trends that I see in strip clubs is basically more of the same. First, dancers will continue to expose more and more of themselves. I expect that you might soon see vibrators, dildos and even specula in use on the main stage of strip clubs. I know of some dancers that already use vibrators in the VIP lounge while customers watch. I can foresee a dancer inserting a wirelessly controlled vibrating egg as she gets on stage and then auctioning off the remote controller to the highest bidder, so he can play with it as she dances.

Another aspect of themselves that dancers will expose will be their orgasms, which many will undoubtedly have lots of fun faking for an audience of more than the usual one. Also likely to be commonly seen soon are bondage and S&M gear being employed, with 2 or more dancers getting up on stage. They will role play together as the customers look on, either present in the club, or watching on the internet via webcams. Many may remember the recent news of a political scandal involving a club in the LA area dedicated to this particular fetish theme.

Another trend I see is that strip clubs are moving more towards what brothels or private sex clubs look like. Some strip clubs now offer small rooms available for rent to customers, providing sufficient privacy for dancers to sell happy endings. Such rooms reduce their risk of arrest for prostitution, as well as providing a greater degree of safety than meeting their johns somewhere in a less controlled setting. If law enforcement allows this trend to progress to its logical conclusion, then some strip clubs will eventually become small lounge areas leading to a hallway of private rooms, which is what a brothel looks like. If access is limited to members only and the rooms are larger and fancier, some with fetish themes, then it would be a private sex club. These are usually more expensive and exclusive than brothels.

Lastly, it seems likely to me that some strip clubs will adjust to their virtual competition on the internet by adopting some virtual elements themselves. I have already observed one aspect of this adjustment during my recent travels. It seems that some clubs are adopting tenuous, temporary virtual locations, in which their only permanent location is on the internet, while their physical location moves around. The strip clubs that are doing this are becoming similar to a combination of the concepts of ecstasy raves and traveling orgies. They attempt to skirt government regulations and controls on both the sale and use of alcohol and drugs, as well as on sexual interactions, by becoming difficult for officials to locate, similar to the speakeasies of prohibition days.

Another way that clubs are adopting virtual elements is in the services they offer. The rental of in-club champagne room spaces, along with the private attentions of one or more dancers, readily become virtual when such spaces are all in use. Suddenly the champagne room moves out into the parking lot, or into a nearby motel, becoming a concept instead of a space. The dancers then become items on a takeout menu when this concept is applied.

This is what newbie dancers can expect: More competition, less money, increasing exposure, more pressure to engage in prostitution, more cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and exploitation, hidden risks, shortened careers and life expectancy. For most, it probably won't be exciting or glamorous for long. If you are thinking about dancing and have a plan B, I recommend giving it a serious second look. Lacking other options, then approach your new dancing career as a marathon. It will take a great deal of endurance, disciplined self-control and also some luck if you are going to make it to the finish, which is surviving relatively intact as you exit the club door for the last time.

Zada talks about feature dancers and another pole mishap –

Some dancers go to freakish lengths in this business, altering their bodies and appearance to become a unique fixture in the club scene. They travel around doing paid appearances for club owners, which the owners advertise in order to attract business. They usually will do a two night run, doing elaborate stage shows and having photos taken with men who might be considered "fans". They usually don't do private dances and are sometimes accompanied by an entourage of support staff. Either they are special for their god-given looks, their talent, or their augmented features. One of the latter was a feature entertainer who had her breasts augmented to 58HH size. It was rumored that she had skin grafted from her butt to her chest to accommodate the very large implants.

When appearing, she did not do anything special on stage, just changed costumes each time she went up. The house would usually be packed with men eager for a glimpse of her huge breasts; some of them would stand in line for hours afterwards to get a picture with her and them. Many of these feature dancers are such traveling freaks and this is their only draw, but a few definitely have talents.

My favorite of these are the pole performers, basically gymnastic athletes. It would be cool if there was an Olympic event in pole dancing and if there was, these gals would want to compete! Some of them seem to defy the laws of physics. I often wonder if they just have no fear. The last thing I want to do when I grab onto that pole is try to spin wildly, upside down and naked, hanging on for dear life! I have seen many dangerous pole mishaps as dancers try to acquire these skills. These stunts should really only be attempted over thick pads. Instead, there is only the hard stage surface surrounded by low walls, and a drop off. Frequently these acrobats are also under the influence of alcohol!

The worst pole mishap I have ever seen involved a birthday celebration for a popular DJ. One of the dancers had had quite a few drinks and went up to do her dance set. Things were slow in the club, so most of us were gathered around the stage to watch her drunken antics.

She was acting pretty silly, but then she climbed to the top of the pole. While spinning around she swung her head out to let her hair fan out. Suddenly she whacked her forehead hard on the ceiling. There was a loud thud and then she fell hard to the floor. Being drunk, the fall did not seem to hurt her. As we stood over her anxiously, a huge softball sized bump grew on her forehead as we watched. Seeing the concern on our faces, she started to freak out a little. The DJ tried to calm her down by telling her that it was not that bad, but that she might want to get it "looked at". She turned out to be OK, but she had the bump on her head for a few weeks.

The tale of two dancers' tails –

It would have been far, far, better to have done at least one of these two, than to have never done either at all. Sorry, couldn't resist that. So my friend, the carpenter who had the aneurysm, the guy who got me into all this, seems to be an ass-man. I can easily draw this conclusion when I review in my mind the features of the dancers that he had chosen as his favorites during the time that I was taking him to the clubs.

Sadly, he has been unable to overcome the damage the stroke did to the speech center in his brain. The frustration of being able to understand others but not being able to speak himself caused anger management issues for him and he became emotionally unstable, to the point that I did not feel comfortable taking him out in public anymore. The potential that his frustration might boil over and he might angrily cause an injury to himself or someone else just seemed too great.

Anyway, a dancer once asked me what my favorite part of a woman's' body is - to which I replied the part between her ears. Beyond that, I am not particular - I appreciate the entire woman - a holistic approach to being sexist, I guess. My stroke-stricken friend, he seems to have been able to make a commitment, he likes big butts. I ran into one of his faves again recently - let's call her Alicia - on a trip back to the Northwest.

Alicia knows her hinder is special and makes it work for her. She always struts slowly around the club, taking mincing little steps on her trademark black thigh-high leather boots - swiveling her hips as she does so, twitching that booty back and forth. I imagine that a famous celebrity sportscaster would be inclined to take a bite out of it. It's definitely fun to watch and I was glad to see her again.

On this particular occasion, I was lucky enough to have my first opportunity to have an extended conversation with her. This is in spite of the fact that she previously danced in the same club as Zada and so I have seen her fairly frequently and admired her from the beginning. She's got to be good-lookin' 'cause she's so hard to see!

Besides her somewhat exaggerated strut, Alicia has another interesting feature to her presentation of herself when she is working. From my perspective, she seems to have mastered a smoldering, come-hither gaze. I once told Zada about this, that when Alicia focuses her attention on me it makes me uncomfortable, like she wants to have my baby and she wants to get started on the project right now! I tell her about this, that from the first time I laid my eyes upon her - and vice versa - I have had the feeling that she is trouble. She laughs and says that she resembles that remark.

She has been dancing for quite some time and readily admits that she is fine-assed. She herself brings up the subject of her rear-end and also tells me that she has resisted all suggestions to get a boob job. Her breasts are small, but still very perky for a woman in her late 30's. Erskine Caldwell, a tit man if there ever was one, would undoubtedly have appreciated them and called them erect. I tell her that her itty-bitty-titty-committee is just perfect and so cannot be improved. I also tell her she looks great and seems to maintain herself well.

She smiles, saying that she does yoga, doesn't drink or smoke cigarettes and then thanks me for the compliment. Then she turns around and shakes her moneymaker at me, winking saucily as she does so. To date, I have been a relative gentleman, at least as far as strip club patrons go. But lord help me, I almost reached out and grabbed her - the temptation was very powerful - even for an old guy going through testosterone withdrawals. Alicia knew it too, she laughed at me as she sashayed away, the shameless hussy!

Also in the same club that evening was another dancer I have admired for quite some time, a petite gal in world class condition - let's call her Diana. If they ever make stripper pole an Olympic event, my money is on Diana for the gold. Soaking wet, she probably weighs 95 pounds, but she is definitely an athlete. Completely at home in her own skin, she goes through her stage routine - starting out with stretching as she disrobes, then getting to the naked gymnastics. Slim and small-breasted, with six-pack abs, Diana also has a nice can - but a completely different one from Alicia's. Diana's butt is like two tight little grapefruits, no slack flesh at all, just muscles working around in there. Grab her at your own peril, gents; she's in better shape than some marines.

She's also a very assertive woman, determined in her efforts to get the tips she deserves from the guys watching her awe-inspiring and revealing stage performance. After a couple of beers too many, I get into real trouble with her, due to a misunderstanding and my chew-on-your-own-foot yoga. Like many, after a few too many beers, my usual well-refined filter between thought and spoken word can become somewhat out-of-kilter and wackiness ensues, as they say.

Having observed and appreciated her assertiveness on several occasions, on that evening, after she got down from one of her stage routines, I said to Diana something that I have thought about dancers from the beginning. Here it is - "It always amazes me that I can give you the same 2 dollar tip that I give to the lady barista at the coffee house, but all she does is make & bring me a cup of coffee, she doesn't take anything off!"

Well Katie, bar the door, as soon as I said it I knew I had offended her - without a response she gave me a look and went out to have a smoke. Alicia came over to chew the fat some more and I told her that I think I just offended Diana. Without even considering it, I repeated my line to Alicia! For a minute or two there, I was in hot water with her as well. At least she gave me a chance to explain myself! I am amazed at how generous dancers are to be willing to show all comers the wonderful gift of their bodies in the hope of being tipped a couple of bucks from each! She understood what I meant and told me that she was not offended and that Diana would probably get over it.

Shortly thereafter, Diana came past after finishing her cigarette and gave me a long, flat look as she did so. I protested to her that I wanted to explain, but all she gave me was a chance to talk to the hand! I decided to give her some time to cool off before I would try to mend fences - and so I didn't watch her next couple of turns on stage and also did not tip her. During this half-hour or so, at one point I saw that she and Alicia were having a conversation - and I am fairly sure that Alicia was trying to convince Diana to give me a chance to explain myself.

A bit later, after she went out for another cigarette, she stopped when I called to her as she walked by. I told her that I was sorry if I had offended her and asked her if she would please give me a chance to explain. She nodded, but I knew that I had better make it good. I told her that the first time I had come into a club, that very one, I had tipped the dancers $20 each time they had gone up on stage and that they had looked at me like I was crazy. I told her that I was very grateful for the generosity of dancers. I was going through a mid-life anti-climax in a somewhat controlled way - trying to stay out of trouble and stay happily married, while I made a fool of myself and gradually become weaned from testosterone and potency.

Anyway, that and the $20 I gave her seem to have saved my bacon. She brought me a cup of coffee, told me to sober up and gave me a hug, saying that she forgave me. It didn't occur to me until much later how ironic and deliberate an act it was that she brought me the cup of coffee!

I think she understood where I was coming from and that the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her feelings. Guys, dancers get a lot of stupid and mean comments from drunken and not so drunken, assholes like us. You can't blame them for being sensitive to it. Learn from my mistake, they are willing to show us their asses, but that doesn't mean we should show them ours.

Joy and the Golden Boy –

At our most recent session, Joy tells me about an incredible event that she saw occur at a club within the last year. She says that an very elderly man - perhaps in his '90s \- came in and sat down at the stage rail early one slow afternoon - just the lady bartender and 5 dancers in the club at the time. A dancer immediately went up on stage to perform for him.

Shortly thereafter, a much younger dude, maybe in his mid-30's, burst into the club and walked up to the nonagenarian and accosted him, asking him to step outside! The bartender, suspecting the outcome would not favor the clubs image, inserted herself into the situation by getting between them. She asked the younger man to leave, suggesting that he should go somewhere else and cool off.

The younger man turned to her and said: I just caught this old bastard fucking my woman a 20 minutes ago! The bartender replied, well, that's even more reason to leave, please do so. Then the bartender was apparently unable to restrain her curiosity. She turned to the elderly gent, who was still sitting down next to the stage and asked him – is this true, were you really fucking his woman? The elderly man said, well, I paid her! She turned back to the younger man and said, I'm sorry sir, we can't condone violence in the club, we will have to ask you to leave – but come back another day after you've cooled off.

The younger man left. Dancers gathered in disbelief around the elderly man, seeking details about this extraordinary event. It turned out the younger man's girlfriend was a dancer at another club and the elderly man was one of her regulars. At the other club the previous evening, she had approached him seeking money for a past due power bill. He offered to help, in exchange for sex. She agreed and they scheduled a rendezvous for as soon as her boyfriend left for work the next morning. She told him - I'll call you, you can come over, we'll seal the deal and I'll get the money I need for the utility bill.

Unfortunately, that morning her boyfriend returned home unexpectedly. The old fellow was forced to hot foot it as best as he could, using the traditional exit for these situations, the back door. He made it to his car and was pulling away before the boyfriend caught up with him on foot and got a good look at him. The boyfriend then ran back to his pickup and followed the old man to the club where Joy works and the rest is her story, pun intended.

This incredible tale brings to mind a couple of things I have been thinking about. First, I was recently watching a TV special about the 1969 concert at Woodstock. A memorable phrase was used to describe the older guys watching the young hippie chicks bathing and frolicking naked in the pond. The phrase was intergenerational voyeurism, which struck me as a good description of what is often going on in strip clubs.

Second, how long is a generation? If you ask a pregnant teenage daughter, it could be as short as 15 years. If you ask her father, he will probably suggest that it should be 25 years, or even more. If one averages out over the last 10,000 generations, I would side with the daughters' answer. So based upon 15 year generations, the elderly gent in this story would easily be old enough to be the great-great-grandfather of the dancer he had fucked. While an extreme example and also somewhat difficult to believe, I suppose it is possible that it actually occurred.

America truly is the land of opportunity – all it takes is a nonagenarian with a dream and a boner pill and father time graduates from his second childhood and becomes a horny teenage dirtbag once more. You see a lot of older men in strip clubs, especially during the current recession. The current large population of lecherous boomer dudes with their retirement plans and pharmaceutically induced erections may be among the few that still have both the money and the time to spend. The oldest working dancer I have met was 48 the last time I spoke with her. She is definitely a rarity; the majority of dancers are in their 20's or early 30's.

Venus and Joy try to work out some personal issues –

I'm involved with other issues of my own for a while and the next time I see these two they are both dancing at the same club, although on somewhat different schedules. Venus is still on the fence about her fiancée and is very hesitant about getting married yet again, thinking that she has given the institution several opportunities to work for her and it hasn't. I suggest to her that, although her choices in men are not the best, perhaps she is getting progressively better at it. She thinks about this and agrees that it is true, each of her husbands has been an improvement over the prior and that her fiancée seems to be the best of the bunch. I can tell that she is still working it out in her mind.

Joy, as always, seems very happy, still in the first year of her new marriage. However I notice that she seems to be getting skinnier every time I see her, and I soon find out why. A second generation earth mother, she has always had a taste for pot, mushrooms and other mild hallucinogens. However, she tells me that she has fallen into a downward spiral with meth and heroin. To make matters worse, she has also been caught up by the video slot machines that are prevalent in the clubs in this state. She says that it had gotten so bad that she had to confess her addictions to her husband and ask him for help. This impresses me, as she is a very independent and free spirit. He has responded by grounding her for a few weeks, basically taking charge of her free time and her income. She is giving all her tip income to the bartender to hold and to give to her husband when he comes in to see her after he gets off work. She is under strict instructions from her husband to turn down any offers of drugs from club patrons or other dancers.

The first afternoon I spend with her after learning about this, she seems to be toeing the line well. However, a few days later, I stop in to the club again and she is working the slot machines. Amazingly, she hits a fair sized jackpot, which I tell her only goes to show that God has a sense of humor. I have also kicked the gambling habit as of the first of the year. Joy knows this and she wants me to watch her play, to live vicariously though her, but I tell her that I can't do it. I don't want to enable her as she indulges her weakness for gambling, as I myself had at one time.

After a few days I stop in again, Joy isn't working, but Venus is in the club. I haven't seen her in a couple of weeks. In the interim, she has made a really healthy move, taking a couple of weeks off to quit drinking. Alcohol has been a monkey on her back for as long as I have known her and well before then, from what I understand. She seems very serious about sticking to this decision and I am proud of her for having the intestinal fortitude to do so.

She also says that she is cutting way back on her dancing schedule, illuminating her reasoning in a very succinct and profound way. She says that she needs more light. I ask her to elaborate on this and she explains that strip clubs are always so dimly lit that it is depressing, without the alcohol in her system keeping her down she can now appreciate that the best way out of the dark atmosphere of the clubs is to spend more time in the daylight.

I argue the existence of a Supreme Being –

There are various flavors of arguments on this subject, which I wish to distinguish from another, somewhat different subject. This is the argument concerning why one should believe in a Supreme Being, or why one should have faith. This latter question has all sorts of social ramifications, is a society better if its citizens are believers? If so, is it necessary for them all to believe in the same concept of the deity, or is it sufficient that they all are held to similar codes of conduct? I won't get into this argument, beyond suggesting that doctrines of faith are imposed by organized religions and those have had a predominately negative impact on human history, in my opinion.

The arguments supporting the existence of a Supreme Being is the issue I am considering here. One argument is similar to the "I think, therefore I am" argument, basically stated: "I believe in a deity (or deities), therefore one (or many) exists." This argument brings up numerous questions. If ones faith establishes the existence of the deity, was there none prior to the choice to believe? Are there as many deities as there are believers imagined deities? Do these deities exist as they are imagined? Or once their existence has been established by believers, do they then have free will and action? Do they cease to exist if they lose all their faithful? This argument soon becomes unworkably crowded with deities and unanswerable questions about them and as such, doesn't seem viable. So I conclude that mere faith does not establish the existence of a divinity.

There are also various ontological arguments which attempt logical proofs of the existence of a supreme being. None of these proofs use deductive reasoning, which requires direct evidence and such evidence is sadly lacking in this question. My argument on this subject is fairly logical, however I do not consider it a proof, instead it is merely an assertion.

First, for evidence, I suggest that we each must find our own. Appropriately, I was smitten by mine yesterday in a strip club while Zada's friend Sublimity was on the stage. She is an uninhibited young dancer that I had seen and admired a number of times previously. She is lanky, with nice legs, a great onion and all American sex appeal. Sublimity combines the best of Ginger and Mary Ann, for those who remember those two characters from the Gilligan's Island series on TV.

Anyway, as I was admiring her yesterday, I was struck by and had an epiphany about a feature of her anatomy. On either side of and slightly above her tailbone she has two perfect little dimples. They are quite distinctive and I had noticed them before yesterday. However it had not previously occurred to me to wonder; what purpose do they serve?

Well, this got me going for at least an hour as I sat there pondering this question. I sat watching the other dancers, checking their backsides for similar dimples. For a while, I became an ass dimple guy. There weren't any other dancers in the club who had them. Sublimity was it, as far as ass dimple contemplation went.

Seeking purpose for the dimples in her lower back, I came up with three possibilities. First, similar to belly buttons, they could be used to contain salt. For best results, Sublimity would be laying on her belly, in bed or elsewhere. Then someone else could put salt in her dimples and roll carrot and celery sticks in the salt. Second, they could similarly be used to hold cocaine for those characters out there who aspire to snort coke off a stripper's backside. Lastly, it seems that they may be indirect evidence of the existence of a Supreme Being. Since that revelatory day it has occurred to me that there are all sorts of such indirect evidence, not just Sublimity's butt dimples. However, it was her dimples that triggered the chain of reasoning that put it all together for me.

You see, despite the salt or cocaine thing, in the strictest evolutionary sense those dimples seem to have no purpose. They are just there, perfect and beautiful yet unnecessary. Sublimity would be just as attractive without them. Even without them, I don't doubt she would still be married and have had her kids, thereby fulfilling the evolutionary purpose of her beauty and attractiveness. I call this portion of my argument in favor of the existence of a Supreme Being: Beyond Intelligent Design.

The so-called Intelligent Design argument holds that the creative hand of a Supreme Being is evident because the complexity of many of life's forms could not possibly have evolved. I don't agree with this contention. I think that the people who hold to it are first: desperately trying to dispute the theory of evolution when I think they should embrace it, and second: lacking a grasp of the concept of the fullness of time. In combination with very large quantities of time, evolution will always produce intelligent designs. That is how evolution works; the smart stuff gradually gets even smarter and the dumb stuff gets eliminated. As I have suggested earlier, this is a great reason to consider that evolution is a tool that the Supreme Being uses to create intelligent designs. There is no reason to believe that there is a time limit on the creative process of the Supreme Being.

Let's return to Sublimity's butt dimples and the other such indirect evidence of the existence of a Supreme Being - my Beyond Intelligent Design argument. What is unnecessary beauty for, what purpose does it serve? My first assertion is that the only point for things that are unnecessarily beautiful is to highlight the creative power and thus the existence of a Supreme Being; they seem to serve no other purpose. It is said that the devil resides in the details, but I suggest that in the beauty of many unnecessary details, one can find the divine. One might counter my suggestion with the question - what is the purpose of things that seem pointlessly ugly? My answer is that the only truly ugly things are of our own creation. The point of their ugliness is to convince us to stop creating them.

The second assertion of my argument supporting the existence of a Supreme Being is simple. First - there seems to be no direct evidence available. Second - the universe is unimaginably vast, inconceivably eternal and profoundly laden with paradox. Last - it just fits that the universe is also a living entity, an eternal Supreme Being, filling in the last piece of the greatest puzzle ever made.

The third and last assertion of my Beyond Intelligent Design argument supporting the existence of a Supreme Being is also fairly straightforward. It makes no difference whether we believe or not, either to the Supreme Being, or to us. From the standpoint of the Supreme Being, if we don't recognize its existence, we are merely expressing our consciousness in that way. Does a whale care whether a cell in its liver realizes that it is part of a whale?

From our standpoint, how does the question make a difference in how we conduct ourselves? The 17th century French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, famously addressed the question. The world concept of his time was much smaller and they believed God to be closely coupled with humanity. The faithful of his era believed that God watched over them and recorded their conduct. Many still believe it today. I suggest that the concept of God as a close coupled grandfather figure is outdated and limited in comparison to the concept of the limitless universe as Supreme Being.

Pascal argued that to have faith in a close coupled God who does indeed exist and to conduct oneself according to that faith would allow access to heaven and eternal bliss. Lacking that faith and conduct would deny it. The reverse, believing in such a God who does not exist, seemingly has relatively minor downsides in comparison. Thus, believing in a close coupled divinity and adjusting one's conduct accordingly becomes a way to hedge your bet and bring yourself the rewards of heaven if they are available. That is why his argument is called Pascal's wager, because his reason for having faith is basically that it makes sense to hedge your bet.

Believing in the existence of a Supreme Being that exists on the same scale of magnitude and time as the universe implies our acceptance of the insignificance of that belief. However, we do not have to accept as a corollary that we ourselves are insignificant. On the scale in which we exist we are definitely significant, we are the dominant species on this planet. We are learning that our collective conduct has an impact upon it. Similarly, as individuals we directly and indirectly impact others around us. We are all inescapably connected in ways both large and small. Our conduct should therefore not be governed by our ideas about the existence of the divine, but instead by our ideas about ethics and morality.
Most of the time, a stripper pole is –

In the throes of a lustful little death, Bill Clinton unintentionally reminded the American consciousness that Sigmund Freud was right, sometimes - on very special occasions \- a cigar is indeed more than a cigar. In fact, with a nod to Carl Jung, it can even become more than a symbol. On these highly unusual occasions, it becomes a substitute, a pinch hitter. For anyone who has ever smoked a cigar that came off President Clintons' desk, it may even become a mysterious highlight to their lives, a source of wonder - a soul searching memory test and the kind of existential question that they will likely take to their graves. Was there any special, unusual flavor to that damn cigar? Was it indeed just a cigar, or did I smoke a used dildo?

Unlike cigars, which are only rarely more than just cigars, stripper poles are almost always more than just the poles around which strippers dance, upon which they climb, hang and spin, which they embrace and stroke with their hands, their breasts, their buttocks and their sex. Comparatively speaking, in the Northwest, dancers are extremely concerned with the cleanliness of the pole. In most Northwest clubs that I have visited, nearly every dancer will spray, vigorously and often seductively wipe and then towel down that sucker before they do any dancing, although most incorporate the cleaning process into their stage performance. In some other parts of the country, pole cleanliness does not seem to be as much of a concern. Yet, nearly everywhere, I have seen dancers lick, kiss and dry hump that steely dan.

So it seems to be in their job description to have a very close physical relationship with the pole. That relationship during their stage dance is a teasing warmup to their economic relationship with dozens, hundreds, thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of phalluses over the course of a several decade career. That is after all, the point of their strip tease dance, to raise the interest of as many VIP members as possible. In one of my rare conversations with a strip club patron, I was told that he only tips and buys lap dances from dancers who "wake up his johnson" during their stage dance.

Speaking for myself only, it is highly unusual that my own little richard wakes up in a club. First, I'm kind of a tactile kind of guy - not as visual or as easy as most - and second, I don't enjoy sexual frustration and definitely won't seek it out and pay for it. Third, I'm getting kind of long in the tooth and he doesn't wake up anywhere near as often as he used to. Lastly, the research for this book has taught me that he has definite and highly selective "taste" in women. After having watched the best on-stage efforts of at least a thousand dancers and having had close conversations with several hundred attractive, under-dressed younger women, he has woken up during such convos on only a handful of occasions. Knowing how my wife would feel about it, I find an excuse to end the conversation when that happens and leave the club shortly thereafter, when circumstances allow a graceful exit.

Cabo –

I had the good fortune to meet Cabo at a fancy, newly remodeled, southwest club that was under new management. It was a Saturday night and, in spite of the relatively reasonably priced beer and drink specials, the bartender, the DJ, Cabo and I were the only people in the club for several hours, on and off. She is a short, well rounded, vivacious, talkative and friendly latina, too young to be my daughter. She has a two year old son at home and the baby daddy has fled the scene, as they are sadly inclined to do. In my humble and admittedly very hind-sighted opinion the poor bastard is an idiot, for Cabo is one very sweet young woman, not yet jaded by this bizarre profession because she has only been dancing for five months.

Having that rare opportunity to talk with her extensively that first evening, we became fast friends. I got a little loaded on the discounted beer and did something I haven't done since high school, 40 years ago. I got up and danced with her! Not on the stage, but in a small floor area near the bar, we danced together to a 30+ year old Aerosmith rockout! Not a contact dance, but an old-fashioned, Rock & Roll, show 'em your moves booty shakin'! The bartender and the DJ told me later that watching my painful contortions was the funniest thing they had seen in a long time! Besides being painful for them to watch, I could only last through one song because my damned hip started to hurt - but bless the god-dog, it was fun! I have watched thousands of dancers dancing, but Cabo is the only dancer that I have danced with, in fact one of only a handful of women I have danced with in my entire life.

She doesn't dance at that club anymore, because it still hasn't attracted customers and so the dancers don't show up there either, a vicious circle that the new club management is probably very worried about. However, I ran into Cabo again at another club and we visited some more for a few hours one afternoon recently. No dancing this time though - very similar to drinking beer, the first dance is always the best. I promised her that I would bring my wife in to meet her and party a bit - after a couple of drinks my wife will occasionally allow a friendly dancer to assault her - she has had much more physical contact with dancers than I have!

Speaking of dancer assaults, on a recent late Friday night visit to Cabo's new club, I was sitting by the stage in a corner of the club when a group of about 10 ballplayers in town for spring training came in and sit down at several tables around me. About 10 minutes later, a bunch of new dancers show up out of nowhere and immediately pounce on the ballplayers! I suspect that the club management keeps a bunch of extra dancers in mind to call for just such a circumstance - but it was amazing how fast these gals showed up! Trying not to be conspicuous about it, I kept an eye on the goings-on. It was incredible how aggressively these hotties were handling the athletes! I got a very strong sense that, at least in this case, the dancers were the predators and the ballplayers were their prey!

Anyway, getting back to Cabo, I'm sure that my wife will like her too. I feel blessed and lucky to have married such a trusting woman who was and remains open to allowing me to make a fool of myself during my mid-life anti-climax. I also feel blessed to have the opportunity to make friends with young Cabo. I also count myself lucky to have had the chance to meet everyone that I have encountered during my "research" for this book. The variety of stories I have heard while writing it has been illuminating and revelatory. There has been much introspection and soul searching. It has been diverting, thought-provoking and very sad at times, all in all it has been both real and real fun!

Zada has the last word –

I had to laugh when I read the chapter about crazy strippers, born or made. I have worked with thousands of strippers and I can honestly say that I have never worked with one that society would classify as "normal". Most of these girls are leading what could be called straight lives. They are wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. They sometimes work what we call "real" jobs during the day and dance in the evening. I have worked with nurses, doctors, lawyers and everything in between. I sometimes have looked at these women and wondered how they ended up dancing when they clearly had other options, so I decided to start asking them why? The answers were what you would expect, with common threads. Single moms raising kids, deadbeat dads and no other way to make the money they need and still be a part of their children's lives.

This is a very cruel business. I have said many times that dancing is like an abusive relationship. You go to the clubs day after day with hopes of making money and except for a select few, we don't make as much as you would think. We barely get by day after day and just when you are about to give up and try to find another job you have a good day and make a lot of money and it sucks you back in.

I think the mental abuse this job comes with is worse than anything. We go there every day being judged and put down. We work long hours and walk around in whatever the men want to see you in, regardless of comfort or temperature. We are put down over and over, being told we are too fat, too skinny, too old, or too young. They don't like our short hair, blond hair, brown hair, breast size, butt size and countless other things.

We listen to hours of stories about why they are unhappy, all the while waiting for those magic words: "yes, I would love a private dance", but most of the time that doesn't happen. A lot of the guys that come in the clubs are just looking for someone to listen to them, so often we are more therapists than entertainers. This frequently leaves us with very little money and even less self esteem. This cycle repeats itself over and over. Then a couple of guys come in and decide you are exactly what they are looking for and the cycle starts again. Some girls cannot see this cycle clearly. After sitting at the bar drinking all day and not making money they try to blame their misfortune on everyone else. They will claim that too many girls are dirty dancers, others are undercutting them and come up with countless other complaints. Some slow days make for grumpy dancers and back room fights. Big fights don't happen often, but there are lots of little fights and other dramas that happen every day.

I've had my street clothes stolen by vindictive dancers, leaving me only my work outfit to try to get home in. There is nothing like sticking 20 naked girls in an area competing for money, it is always entertaining. If you think it takes a long time for a woman to get ready to go out for an evening, you should see what goes on as strippers get ready to dance. It's amazing what some of them look like walking in the club and what they look like when they walk out on stage. There are the usual fake nails and fake tans, but be careful, what you see might not be what you're getting. They apply all over body make-up to cover anything they dislike, hair extensions, bronzer to make nipples darker, make-up to give the illusion of hard abs, false eyelashes of course and the newest – false eyelash implants. As we age, breast implants, butt implants, chin implants, cheek implants, nose jobs, face lifts and laser hair removal of all kinds. The old saying, that you have to spend money to make money, rings true here. Then of course there are the girls on the other end of the spectrum – they don't shower before work. I worked with a girl who put baby powder in her hair to soak up the oil because she only showered once a month or so. Some girls just don't get it, that a strip club is a fantasy land for the men who come in.

Many men come in to spend money to see the opposite of what they have at home. One regular comes to mind – a thin middle aged man with his own business, a wife and a couple of kids. He shows us pictures of his family and we noticed that his wife is larger than him by quite a bit. This sheds some light on his tendency to spend his money on thin, tattooed blondes, the opposite of his wife. He definitely seems to love his wife and family, he just likes the variety.

This tendency of customers to prefer variety is very common and causes dancers to frequently do things to change their appearance in numerous ways. Some girls will try to mimic other girls who seem to be making more money. This rarely seems to work, as the special, unknown something that attracts a man to one girl is often very difficult to identify and even harder to mimic.

*****

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Mark Gross

