by Lacey Lane
I took the hideous garment and went into the locker room. Thankfully, it was empty. It was odd that nobody was in there—usually, one of the girls was doing something—but I took it as a sign that Someone up above had seen the monstrosity of this outfit and cast His pity on me.
Quickly, I stripped off my clothes and pulled on the misfit teddy. It felt even worse than it looked, if that were even possible. Thank God I remembered to bring in my bathrobe that day, for if one of the other girls, or worse yet, one of the customers, spotted me in that get-up, I would have never heard the end of it. I returned to the VIP Room and doffed my robe. Victor’s jaw dropped and tears (I swear) began to seep from his eyes. “Oh my God,” he cried. “It’s even more beautiful than I imagined.” He told me he knew it was going to be a sight from the very first moment he had sketched it out. Well, it was a sight all right, but I’d bet every cent I had that his definition of the word and mine were drastically different.
He circled me for almost 20 minutes, inspecting this and examining that, all the while making notes on a sketch pad that contained a colored-pencil rendering of the deformed underwear I had on. When I eventually took it off, I felt like my epidermis had been violated and the shower I took seconds after getting home was one of my most memorable in years.
A week later, Victor returned to the club with two new creations (pronounced manifestations). Again, both looked as if they’d been dragged from a pit of primordial ooze well before they were ready. The first was a bikini-type outfit, complete with garters, that not even Dennis Rodman would wear. It was sewn from mismatched swatches of ostrich skin, and to each of the bumps he had attached a colored plastic tip, which resembled either technicolor zits or rainbow puss-filled nipples, depending on what you were smoking at the time. The second item was another teddy, similar in design to the first piece of visual cruelty I’d donned the week prior, but this one substituted fur—faux rabbit, I think—for the clear vinyl. It didn’t help to improve the appearance, although I must admit it was a hell of a lot more comfortable, aside from the rubber straps, which needed to be smoothed out.
Once again, Victor did his shark routine, circling me like I was a piece of bloody bait, making notes on his sketch pad all the while. He also asked for my feedback, which I gave with many grains of salt—neither did I want to shatter his dreams, nor nix this easy-paying gig. In all honesty, modeling his homemade lingerie, despicable as it was, was a welcome break from the dancing. Essentially, I was getting paid just to stand there, even though I looked like a sex goddess from hell.
Over the course of our working relationship, I must have tried on close to 60 pieces. Sadly, none of them were marketable. Granted, that’s just my opinion, but I couldn’t see a single one of them hanging in a store or adorning the page of some catalog—unless they were looking to go out of business. I don’t think that even the freakiest of hardcore punks would have donned one of those nightmarish get-ups.
My modeling sessions for Victor came to a close when he informed me during his last visit that he was moving to Pennsylvania; he’d accepted a better paying job (in the computer biz, I think) and the 3,000-mile gap would obviously make things too difficult. He said he’d have to find another model near his new home to help him (lucky her!), but that there’d always be a special place in his heart for moi (lucky me!). But he went on to promise that when he made it big, he’d come back to the club, whisk me away, and pamper me for the rest of my life.
Trust me, I didn’t hold my breath.
In the years that followed, aside from one pair of crotchless panties rimmed with what looked like barbed-wire—a garment I refused to try on for numerous reasons—I’ve never seen anything in the retail marketplace that even remotely resembled one of his designs. The day I do, I’ll be sure to buy a sturdy umbrella, because I know that pigs will be flying.
Bond, James Bond
People love to pretend they’re someone they’re not. That holds especially true for strip club customers, who often brag about having some fanciful megabuck occupation in the hopes of convincing one or more of the dancers to go home with them—usually to a cheap motel instead of their even-cheaper residential cave. Not wanting to waste their time pursuing men with champagne tastes and beer budgets, the dancers pulled out all the stops to discern the true identities and occupations of their pursuers. From having a friend follow the guy home or playfully rummaging through his wallet (if the opportunity presented itself) to hiring a private investigator for an exhaustive background search, we were very sneaky—but the ends justified the means.
Cases in point: I danced for a civil servant who tried to pretend he was a successful defense attorney, a burger-flipper who said he was the head of a major corporation, and a petroleum-distribution technician who said he was a heart surgeon. I’ve also danced for countless men with oh-so-boring occupations (accountants, librarians, and telemarketers, to name a few) who did everything under the sun to convince me they lived a life of danger and adventure—Indiana Jones wannabes without the whip and fancy hat. In most cases, their facial tells were dead giveaways. I can usually spot a liar. But one guy tried to get me to believe that he was a secret agent. And I have got to tell you, the jury’s still out on him.
It figures that this scenario unfolded in Southern California. In Hollywood, everyone is trying to make it in the film biz—even an LAPD officer who pulled me over for speeding, then gave me a signed 8x10 instead of a ticket! The Tinseltown fame contagion causes people from all walks of life to play make-believe on a daily basis, so I wasn’t overly surprised when one of my VIP Room customers confided in me that he was actually a British secret agent. Of course, I didn’t believe him. Granted, he looked the part: He was fairly tall, moderately handsome, and garbed in a smart looking dark suit and expensive shoes, but his dodgy British accent, which sounded like an odd combination of Higgins from Magnum, P.I. and Welcome Back Kotter’s Vinnie Barbarino, just didn’t fit the bill. Still, I played along. Hell, if he wanted to pretend he was Jesus H. Christ, so long as he paid me, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Too bad he didn’t look like Sean Connery. Then he could have said he was the Queen of England and I would have played along.
The first night after a lap dance and a drink, my self-proclaimed 007 motioned for me to sit beside him. After a thorough inspection of the VIP Room—during which he claimed to be checking for bugs—he leaned in close and whispered that he was really employed by Her Majesty’s Secret Service and was here on loan, collaborating with the CIA and the U.S. Secret Service in order to crack some bigtime international espionage ring. Yeah, right. And I was really Imelda Marcos, devoting a warehouse-sized room in my Beverly Hills mansion solely to my shoe collection. After that night, each time he came in to the club, which was becoming more and more frequent, we’d follow the same routine: right to the VIP Room for a drink and a lap dance, followed by a thorough bug sweep of the room and a new story. Each time, I wowed and gasped at his every word, playing the dumb little stripper girl that he obviously believed I was, all the while relieving him of as much coinage as possible. And for the record, there were no pounds sterling in his billfold—just plain old U.S. currency, crumpled fives and tens for that matter.
Money aside, his stories weren’t half-bad. Ian Fleming he wasn’t, but I’ll bet if he ever decided to put a pen to paper and scribble some of his bullshit, he’d be able to put some food on the table.
He told me about his hand-to-hand combat training, where’d he become a master of more than a dozen different martial arts; about his intensive language training, where he’d become fluent in nine different languages and dialects; about his firearms expertise, and that he could shoot any type of pistol, submachine gun, or assault rifle on the planet with deadly accuracy; about his aviation skills, and that he had a pilot’s license for nearly every kind of aircraft. He explained to me what a safe house was and that he had access to many all around the world. And he recounted his daring adventures: stealing secret documents from this place; ferrying top secret comp
uter disks to that place; horrific tales of imprisonment and torture; spellbinding stories of assassination, and on and on and on.
Did I believe anything he said? Not a word. I wasn’t born on a turnip truck.
Even when he showed me the pistol he wore in a leather concealment rig beneath his suit jacket—too small to do any real damage—I still didn’t think his stories, passionate as they may have been, contained even a grain of truth. But on his last visit, something strange happened, although it wasn’t until a few weeks later that I put the occurrence into perspective. After our usual drink, dance, bug sweep, and story session, he presented me with an extra large tip and said he wouldn’t be coming back for a while, and possibly never.
Hating to see a steady customer go, I pressed him for a reason. He asked if I remembered why he was in the States in the first place—the espionage ring he was helping the CIA and Secret Service to smash. It was a wild story that I wouldn’t soon forget, and I told him that I did. He then told me he’d been successful, that he alone had found the turncoat—the “mole” was what he called him—and that the head bad guy had enough power to put out a large contract on his life. He said at that very moment, numerous world-class assassins were looking for him and it was only a matter of time before they found him. He said he had to go underground to save his life.
Then, he asked—begged was more like it—if I’d be willing to go home with him that night, seeing as how he didn’t know when he’d have the opportunity to be with a woman again, if ever.
This was the question I was waiting for. The scum-sucking slime. I had a feeling he was going to come up with some lame story to try and goad me into going to bed with him. But two could play that game. Rather than just shoot him down with an angry rejection, I told him that I couldn’t possibly sleep with him and never see him again, because my heart would be shattered if I thought something terrible had happened to him. I said that if it was just a one-night stand he was looking for, it would have been okay, but now that I knew about his dark secret and the danger he was in, I couldn’t possibly sleep with him, much as I wanted to. Immediately, he went pale and began trying a new tactic, but I told him my mind was made up and that he’d better leave now before I broke down crying. I told him I’d grown close to him and that if he stayed any longer, I’d just fall apart thinking how much danger he was in. I kissed him gently on the cheek, bid him farewell, and ran from the room, false tears pouring from my eyes.
The moment I reached the dressing room I nearly screamed with laughter. My performance was worthy of an Oscar—I only wished there’d been a Hollywood agent in the club to see it.
Weeks passed and, true to his word, my secret-agent buddy never happened in. Maybe the bad guys had caught up with him, I thought. Yeah, right. Then, the strangest thing happened. Two guys, leg-breaker types wearing dark suits and sinister expressions, came by the club and started showing a color photograph around, asking the bartender, the other dancers, and myself if anyone had seen the man in the picture.
It was a photo of my “secret agent” client descending the ladder of a small airplane. Apparently, the bartender and the other girls didn’t remember him. Then, it was my turn. I stared at the photo for a long time, trying to figure out what to do. When my mind stopped spinning, I did the only logical thing: I looked them right in their eyes and flat-out lied through my teeth, telling them I’d never seen him before in my life.
Their faces wrinkled. They asked if I was sure. Concealing my fear, I told them I was. It was another damn good acting job—but one that could have had serious consequences if I didn’t pull it off, assuming the two suits were for real. Apparently, I was convincing enough. The men thanked me for my time, took back the photo, and left without another word. I took the rest of the night off, got drunk off my ass, and went to sleep wondering exactly who the hell my Secret Agent Man really was!
The Cheese Wiz
Big Mike, as he liked to be called, owned a small Italian deli not far away from a strip club I used to work at. Often during lunch, he came by with monster-sized combination hoagies for the bouncers and stayed for a few drinks and lap dances. Big Mike also had a weird fetish he liked to play out in the VIP Room: The guy had a passion for cheese (usually muenster, occasionally Swiss). But more than that, Mike had a certain way that he preferred to eat it. I’m just thankful he wasn’t the owner of a seafood restaurant with a penchant for lobster!
You see, Big Mike liked to roll up single slices of cheese, wedge them into a dancer’s butt crack, and, for lack of a better term, eat them out. The tighter a dancer’s ass the better. Those dancers who could really squeeze the cheese, giving him solid resistance and making him fight for every slice, got bigger tips.
Despite my love of money, I never took Big Mike up on his offer. The idea of having some scruffy-faced deli owner—or anyone for that matter (well, maybe not George Clooney)—feed on cheese from my cheeks was not the most appetizing of images. It didn’t matter that the girls wore their g-strings during Big Mike’s feeding frenzy; he could’ve let me wear a goddamn suit of armor and I still wouldn’t have okayed it. He offered me everything from $200 cash and jewelry to free cold cuts for six months to allow the chump to chomp from my rump. And each time, I refrained from slapping him—only because he gave the bouncers free food—and simply laughed off his disgusting proposition. Had Diamond or Vanessa worked at that club, I’m sure they would’ve done it. Hell, Vanessa probably would have done it for a free sandwich! But other girls didn’t have a problem with Big Mike’s strange obsession. At least if they did, the money factor more than made up for it. Tiffany, a pale lanky brunette whose choice of a stage name, in my opinion, was an odd one considering she looked like she came directly from a trailer park—without showering—had a Vanessa-like attitude. She was always ready and willing to make a heinie sandwich for Big Mike, and who knows what else she did with him back there in the VIP Room.
Koi, a petite Japanese girl (also strange that she took the stage name of a carp-like fish) with the largest set of natural boobs I had ever seen on any Asian girl, also had no qualms about packing cheese for Big Mike. She was paying her own way through law school, without benefit of any scholarships (or so she said), and whenever there was an opportunity to make extra money in the cheese arena, Koi was never lactose intolerant.
By now, you’ve probably surmised (correctly, I might add) that this particular club had a very liberal attitude when it came to interpreting the law of what was legal and what amounted to prostitution—or near prostitution. Needless to say, I didn’t work there very long. The customers were scummy, the management loathsome, and the other dancers as sleazy as they came. But I got a few good stories out of the time I spent there, without compromising my own values and beliefs in the process, which made it all worthwhile.
Hot Air
It was always refreshing to dance for a guy—or group of guys—who really got into the act. You know, people who could let their hair down and have a good time—within reason, of course. I hated busting my butt for bump-on-a-log types, no matter how well they tipped me. Don’t get me wrong, money was an extremely important part of the strip game, but seeing a customer smile, laugh, and genuinely enjoy himself outside the fact that he was staring at my toned and tanned nakedness was often just as rewarding. (Okay, who am I kidding? It was a distant second!)
While working at a club in Las Vegas, I came to know a man who really understood the meaning of life. I never saw him without a smile and judging by his demeanor, he got the most out of every single second of every single day. Of course, it helped that he threw money around like it came from a Monopoly game, but why not? You can’t take it with you, so you might as well go balls to the wall with it.
His name was Ryan and he claimed that he made his living as a professional gambler. Given the fact that we were in Sin City, I’d say he was probably telling the truth. But he didn’t look like a professional gambler, at least not in the stereotypical sense. He didn’t wear a lot of j
ewelry, except for a diamond-encrusted Hublot watch that undoubtedly cost more than my car. He didn’t wear flashy clothes—usually just blue jeans and a nice dress shirt. And he didn’t have the telltale bloodshot eyes that looked as if he’d been staring at chips, cards, or dice for 72 hours straight. Believe me, while working in Las Vegas I met many of those types. After a while, they became easy to spot. But Ryan did have his own eccentricities: for one, a major thing for balloons. I don’t know if he used to be one of those kids’ party entertainers before he made his fortune, but he sure learned his craft somewhere.
He always had a pocketful of long colorful balloons and could blow up a dozen of them in a few minutes—definitely not a smoker—and twist them into all sorts of weird animals. He made dragons, two-headed dogs, bird-fish things, and other odd creatures that not even Dr. Doolittle would have recognized.
But he didn’t stop there. Oh no.
Ryan paid me to use them as props while I danced for him, and he hooted, hollered, and cheered me on every step of the way. The more I worked the balloon creature into my routine, the more excited he got—and the more he paid me. Now, I don’t want you to think I was humping these balloon animals or rubbing them against my body or kissing them or anything like that. That wasn’t what he wanted. If I had, I would have told him straight up to get some other chick (unless the $$$ was really ripping).
No, Ryan liked it—correction, loved it—when I abused the balloons. Punched them, kicked them, threw them against the walls, you name it. Of course, he wanted it done in a sexy way, not just full-on attacks like Mike Tyson battering Peter McNeely. He wanted to see all my usual shakes, wiggles, and gyrations, provided they were done in the context of causing the balloons harm.
And then came the big finale: the “death” of the balloon creatures. Ryan inserted $20 bills into the balloons (sometimes $50s) prior to blowing them up, thereby giving me incentive to stomp the shit out of them. The louder they popped, the louder he squealed. A couple of times I thought he might have had an orgasm. Even some of the other dancers questioned me about that after he left. When they saw the broken balloons scattered about the room, they really got curious. I tried to explain what was going on, but I honestly don’t think they believed me. Hell, I didn’t believe it myself and I was the one doing it. Still, weird as it was, his money was as green as the next guy’s and it sure beat some drunken bum trying to put his dirty paws all over me.