by Nick Molloy
It was all a bit strange, but nonetheless an interesting experience. The audience had essentially been welcoming and friendly, yet with that flasher in a long raincoat feel to them just under the surface.
The question I am continually asked is what it is like performing for gay men when I am straight. People assume that it must be a very difficult thing to do or that I am lying to them. That is to say that I am in fact gay myself. Neither assumption is correct and my feelings on the subject haven’t changed in the slightest since that first performance. As a straight man, I take it as a great compliment that a large volume of gay men want to have their wicked way with me. To take it as an insult would be both simultaneously prejudicial and moronic. Instead, I am truly flattered by their interest. If people assume that I must be gay from watching my act then I am again flattered for a different reason. If my act is sufficiently ‘gay’ when performing in a gay venue then I am doing my job correctly. If I am entertaining a largely male audience then I at least owe them the service of possibly fantasizing that they might be able to ‘pull’ me. Many gay men have a fantasy about sleeping with straight men. However, a similar number are the complete opposite and border on being heterophobic. I therefore have to walk a fine line in the image I portray to the gay audience.
With regards to the actual performance itself, the more butch and macho members of the male populous struggle, particularly with the concept of a straight man performing to a gay audience. How possibly for example, can a straight man allow a gay man to rub baby oil onto him ? How can you let them touch you ? These again are questions of a prejudicial birth. They often sprout forth from individuals with small minds and even smaller penises. I am not entering an arena whereby I am in any danger. I am perfectly comfortable with my sexuality and another man touching my dick does not threaten or endanger my sexuality. When I wonder out onto the stage I am about to engage in an act. It is a performance that is devoid from reality. My alter ego the stripper is delivering the performance. He has a certain image and personality to portray. When I come off stage I revert to my real persona. The stripper and Nick are two different people. On stage the stripper is a sexual object who is available to all and sundry. When the stripper comes off stage, the body he inhibits is again controlled by Nick. It is Nick’s sexual preferences and desires that then dictate to the body.
Most people have a real problem grasping the concept of being able to control your mind to the extent that you can portray a different sexuality. Again, I would refer people back to a sporting example. People who are truly driven can put their mind to almost anything they want to achieve. Successful sportspeople are probably the most ambitious and driven people there are. Sports psychologists are now hired to help the genetically blessed but the mentally weak channel their mind more effectively in competitive situations.
A combination of factors have meant that I have developed into an extremely strong adult (on a mental level). Although my childhood was not traumatic in an abusive way, my parents and upbringing were certainly dysfunctional. I have developed many of the traits of adult children of alcoholics. There was a well known psychological study whereby children who had grown up under alcoholic parents developed certain traits and behaviours as adults as a direct result of their childhood upbringing. This study was eventually broadened out and the heading of ‘adult children of dysfunctional parentage’ was more accurately applied.
I undoubtedly exhibit many of the traits of an adult child of dysfunctional parentage. One of these is that the child tends to develop very strong coping strategies at an uncharacteristically early age. I learnt to deal with immense disappointment very early. It was very difficult at the time, but as it continued I developed my own way of dealing with it to the extent that very little of what anybody else ever did or said had a major effect on me. I found that mentally I was able to cope with virtually anything and the only person going to let me down, or, effect me in a big way was myself. Also, in the sporting world I was not the most genetically gifted. I had to use everything else at my disposal to give me an edge. If I was genetically disadvantaged but psychologically advanced, the pendulum might just swing back in my direction. The result is that I am yet to meet anybody who is as mentally strong as I am. My coping mechanisms have meant that I can easily adjust to a variety of different situations. I am incredibly self confident and assured compared to most. This is not to say that I am arrogant. I just don’t concern myself too much with what others have to say or feel about me. If someone has constructive advice or help, I can’t get enough of it. However, if they don’t like me for personal reasons, that is their problem not mine.
In essence what I am saying is that although a straight man stripping for a gay audience may seem strange to many, it needn’t be if you just expand your mind a little beyond its normal horizons. Sure, what I do is beyond the realm of most people. It requires a certain type of personality. Yet, if someone is so closed minded that they are unable to grasp this concept then I would simply classify them as weak willed or even worse, possibly as inherently bigoted. I’m straight, but I love gay men. Many are now very close and dear friends. They don’t bite, they haven’t got contagious diseases and they are not dangerous. If you think otherwise you need a head doctor……
I wondered out of the club and along the road to the train station, looking a little conspicuous carrying all my gear in a huge rucksack that had toured with me throughout Nepal and Sumatra. One of the punters followed me back to the train station under the premise that it was time for his bed. It might have been, but you will have to call me a cynic. Given everything I had just experienced and witnessed I am sure he was making a speculative attempt to get into my knickers. He babbled on about how he liked the performance and other strippers he had seen. As my train pulled in and I got onto it he was still babbling to me from the platform. I smiled and waved thankful to at last be alone and free from his clutches. I sank into the comfy seat on a virtually empty train and drifted off with my slightly surreal thoughts.
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I awoke the next day in the early afternoon to start what would eventually become a familiar pattern. I have always been a night owl so it wasn’t exactly an earth shattering change, but the legacy would soon be cemented. I wondered into the bathroom to get a shower. When I had arrived back the night before I had been very tired and had crawled straight into bed. Zoe was already asleep and it didn’t take me long to join her. The next day when Zoe arrived home she asked me how it went the night before. With typical understatement I said “fine”. With her typical nonchalance she never mentioned it again.
I was all sticky and gooey from the baby oil the night before. As I arose and went to relive myself it became apparent how sore my dick was from the previous night’s activities. It was a little sensitive to touch, the skin was bruised around the base where the elastic band had been and it was actually uncomfortable if I pulled or stretched the skin on my cock. I washed my nether regions with unusual sensitivity and tenderness that morning.
I telephoned Michael to ask him what the feedback was from the night before. It was essentially positive. He began by saying that he is very protective of all the strippers that he introduces and people rarely critique them. This could have meant one of two things. Either Michael produced brilliant strippers all the time, or, people were too afraid to offer their critiques to him. He went on to state that everybody had been astonished at how cool and composed I had been for the first time. The main critique had been about my hair and eyebrows. These were probably fair. My eyebrows met in the middle and my hair was how it grew. I had never put gel or any other hair product in it in my life ! I did not know where you would even buy such products. Besides, such critiques were minor. Nobody had actually whinged about the show.
Michael had said that if I cracked the Bromptons crowd the future would be bright. I appeared to have won their approval and this gave me a false sense of future optimism. As I was to soon realize there were many things wrong wit
h my show, but, I had to travel a long and lonely road to discover this.
Michael was my initial contact in stripping and he was widely respected by many people. He had started the careers of many strippers and they were mainly very grateful to him. The gay world is fairly small and he was widely known by a certain generation of people on the ‘scene’. However, his time had largely come to an end a few years before. He was essentially out of it and on the fringes when I met him. He also has a somewhat formulaic view of stripping performances. It can and still does apply in many instances. However, it is also a bit old hat and things have moved on too. I was entering an alien world and he was my only advisor so I took much of what he said at face value. One of the ‘problems’ with Michael is that he is too nice. No matter how many times I would ask him what was wrong with the show or how it could be improved all he could say was “Darling, your show is just Marvelous”. It was a nice pun and well intended, but factually incorrect. As I performed more shows it became obvious that everything was not as good as it could be, but Michael persisted with his argument that it was.
Contrary to what Michael had said and what many people also subsequently assumed, Bromptons was quite an easy opener. The audience of regulars were very stripper friendly and supportive. They were certainly a collection of oddballs – but nice and well meaning oddballs. They were understanding of one’s first time and not too expectant. Furthermore, if you were to walk onto the stage naked and simply stand there for 15 minutes they would still appreciate it on one level.
As I performed more shows and elsewhere, that lenient expectancy of the first time performance was dissipating somewhat. I could see that some people were not satisfied with my performance or were expecting improvement. However, the position of mentor is a difficult one and one that few people seem to genuinely have a gift for. I certainly remember back to my childhood, when very few teachers at school were actually any good at it (teaching). Similarly, I have met very few people in other situations who were any good at it either. Those that can do are not necessarily good teachers, often fearing the imparting of any knowledge lest it come back to haunt or compete with them in the future.
I could see that people were becoming more critical of my performance (which hadn’t changed) but they were unwilling or unable to enunciate why. I would ask constantly for constructive feedback or criticism from anybody who was willing to discuss it (especially those who I felt were detractors) and never received any. The great irony was that those people would still stand there and criticize even after being asked to share their critique. Yet, were unwilling to do so. A touch of hypocrisy I felt.
Also, how can anybody be expected to improve with out some pointers in the right direction. If people were unwilling to share what was wrong then it would be fair to assume that I would think nothing was wrong ! I have seen this phenomenon in virtually every area of performance on every level. Everybody is a critic but nobody is a coach. One of the things that stood me apart in my first job was that I was able to coach people through scenarios. Instead of just giving them targets and asking them to get on with it, I was able to actually show them how to get on with it and coach them through it step by step. That enabled me to clone my performance in others. This ability appears to be very rare. I was very lucky in that first job in that my friend, Chris, became my mentor and I was able to tap into his 15 year experience in that sort of role. He was also willing and able to share his knowledge. I didn’t have this in stripping. Any attempt to garner any help or advice from a fellow stripper was a complete waste of time. They were terrified of imparting knowledge to the enemy.
The result was that I actually had to learn the slow and painful way by making errors. I began to analyse the reaction of the audience at various points in the act and glean as much as I could from talking to them afterwards.
I can look back with hindsight now and honestly say that my show wasn’t very good when I started. In truth, most people probably aren’t too hot when they first start. However, to counter that I would argue that if someone was given all the necessary advice and information there is no reason why they can’t hit the ground running. Michael had given me a formula : 5 pieces of music, a couple of punters on stage, dick out towards the end, no choreographic assistance. He had assumed that my look would carry me through and to a certain extent it did, but only to that certain extent. Michael gave me as much help as he was able. His formula worked perfectly 10 years before but times had changed. Poor Michael was getting on and he had recently been diagnosed as a diabetic. He had also had a couple of toes removed. Walking was difficult for him and he simply couldn’t get out like he used to. He was seeing fewer and fewer strippers and lost touch with the scene. Still, if I never met him, there wouldn’t have been a stripping career and you wouldn’t be reading this. I’m eternally grateful to him.
I realize now that I was ‘filling’ far too much in my show. When I didn’t know what to do next I would just shadow box. I felt comfortable with this, but clearly the audience eventually became bored with it. Also, the people I dragged on stage were also ‘fillers’. I didn’t actually do anything interesting with them because I wasn’t sure what was expected. I was getting them to hold my ankles for doing sit ups or hold boxing pads. Essentially, I was getting them to enact the role of a trainer. It took up some time but probably left the audience slightly bemused. It was neither funny nor overtly sexual, which I learnt over time was the purpose of bringing someone on stage. Some strippers embarrass their ‘victims’ terribly when bringing them on stage. Nowadays I will only embarrass my victims slightly and some get a big thrill out of it. However, when I first started I was leaving them a little nonplussed.
Also, the whole cock flashing thing was the wrong strategy, I believe. People go to see strippers for very different reasons. Some go for the theatre of the performance, some go for a giggle, some are curious, but the common denominator in virtually all strip goers is cock. It dawned on me slowly that by flashing my cock at the end, for all of a few seconds, I was actually leaving people disappointed. A fair proportion of any given audience would actually want to play with it or suck it! Therefore, by denuding their eyes of the visual pleasure the whole strip performance suffered.
All in all it took me about five months to realize where I was going wrong and then another year or so of reflection whilst working abroad. I believe that I have now got it right to a large degree, but improvements can always be made, as in anything. The day we stop learning we are no longer alive.
Chapter 6 – Women have Talons
The following Friday I was to perform my second show and my first hen show under the watchful eye and tutelage of Sissy Bells. It was to be held at a social club somewhere near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. An 80 mile drive ensued in the pleasant early evening sunshine, which was made less pleasant by the jams on the M25. I had allowed plenty of time and after struggling to find the place for about 15 minutes or so, I finally arrived and was greeted by Bells and his gruff Scotsman. They raised a few eyebrows when they saw what I was driving but refrained from passing comment. Half my fee was being poured back into the Impreza just to arrive at the venues. Michael had mentioned that I would need an old, but reliable car, that didn’t drink as much fuel. He was right, although I hadn’t yet come to terms with the thought of trading in the Impreza.
I retrieved my bag from the boot and followed Bells through a side entrance into what looked like a boardroom (albeit a cheap nasty one) A wooden table sat in the middle of the room surrounded by chairs. Various amounts of costume regalia were strewn about everywhere.
I wondered outside into the hall and peeked beyond the curtain. There were a lot of women present, my best estimate was that they approached 250 in number. They varied massively in shape and size with a full age range spectrum. Tables dotted the room with between 10-15 women at each one. At the far end of the room was a slightly elevated stage. The din from the constant chattering was loud and seemed strangely intense.
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nbsp; I moved back to our changing area and sat down adopting my characteristic quiet observational stance on the world. Bells was in a state of near pandemonium and panic. The show was far from starting, yet he was pacing nervously up and down making the odd quip to his gruff other half about some item of regalia or another. Jason began wittering on about the number of assholes this business contained and how I would no doubt soon be meeting a few of them. ‘Stick with us kid and you’ll be alright’ he said reassuringly.
There was a little commotion at the door and a stocky gentleman accompanied by a leggy brunette entered the affray to a rapturous welcome from Bells. They kissed one another on the cheek and I was promptly introduced to ‘The Bull’. The Bull was quite a big boy, although not down below as I was later to observe. He had an action man crew cut, spiked on top, was about six foot tall and probably weighed in somewhere around the 14 stone mark. He had the physique of a drugged up bodybuilder and although not cut to the bone, was pretty lean considering his mass. He reminded me of Mike Tyson in a silly way. He had quite an intimidating physique but came with a girly high pitched voice. Nonetheless, he seemed nice enough, although he was definitely a man of few words. His girlfriend was more chatty and acted as his mouthpiece.