by Catlyn Ladd
I walk back to the dressing room. I don’t need to get ready for anything, but I figure I’ll give him some time to eyeball Candy. I’ve told him the rules and got him primed; now I need to back off so that he doesn’t think I’m greedy. Maintaining the illusion that we’re all just here because we’re into each other is key. If he decides that all strippers are materialistic, he’ll leave. That will deprive me of the hundred bucks in his wallet.
I open my locker and scan through my outfits. I am wearing one of my early costumes; as the evening wears on my clothing becomes more and more elaborate. I quickly peel off the green dress I’m wearing and remove my leopard costume. It consists of a halter and micro shorts in a wonderful animal print. I don it quickly and switch out my heels for ankle-high platform boots with silver buckles.
Katrina glances up at me from where she’s curling her hair at the mirror. “Got someone on the hook?”
“Maybe.” I quickly freshen my lipstick just as I hear my name called to stage.
Over the course of the evening I ply Jason with drinks. Not enough to get him smashed but maintaining him good and tipsy. He visits the ATM twice after spending the cash he has. I make two bills off him and the rest of the girls do well. I convince him to tip $5 a song per dancer. Overall, he drops several hundred dollars.
I also learn that he’s new to town. Originally, he’s from Alabama and we spend a while sharing stories about the South. He’d just graduated from the University of Alabama and had been headhunted by a local tech company. Fresh out of college he has a good job with plenty of potential to grow.
I tease him about his accent, and he responds by grilling me about why I don’t have one. I tell him that it only comes out when I drink, and he orders me a refill.
I don’t expect to see him again soon; the amount of money he’s spent is significant. Even for a boy with a fresh, new job it’s a welcome-to-town kind of splurge. He has a good time and I introduce him around to make him feel welcome. But he’s young, decent-looking, and I figure that he’ll quickly wind up with some nice girl who won’t want him in strip clubs.
The next night, in he walks. Then the night after that. Then he’s a regular.
He doesn’t always spend big, but he always buys drinks for the dancers and tips a few of us well. But at least once a week he drops a grand or close to it.
I don’t think that much about it initially. I know that he’s sharing a house with a couple of guys and I know he makes good money. He spends a lot, but I figure he lives off noodle bowls the rest of the week. He drives a nice car that’s several years old but reliable and fuel efficient. I assume that he’s an adult and knows what he’s doing.
For several weeks he hits on me relentlessly. He wants my number, to take me out, to buy me pretty things. I milk him for all he’s worth, knowing that eventually he will figure out that I will never be his girlfriend. He buys me costumes and brings me jewelry. I promise but never deliver.
It all comes to a head one night after he’s had one too many drinks.
“When will you go out with me?” he slurs for the thousandth time, putting an arm around my waist and pulling me close to him.
I push him away playfully. “I have exams right now. I have to study. So maybe next week?”
He pouts for a minute and then brightens. “But I’ll see you at breakfast?”
He’s become enough of a regular to get himself invited to breakfast after Saturday shift, when a bunch of the dancers, the bartenders, the DJ, and some of the bouncers go out for food. Several of the regulars come along as well. The local 24-hour café holds the backroom for us, and there’s usually a group of 15 or 20 people.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I’ll sit with you.”
He brightens a bit. “But we’ll go out next week?”
Suddenly, I’ve had enough. He’s grown on me. I feel affection for him like for a small, over-exuberant puppy. He’s sweet and lonely in a new place, and all at once the money is no longer worth it. I watch him drink heavily three nights a week, and the amount of money he’s spending has got to be above his means. I cannot lead him on anymore.
“Jason.” I put my hand over his and gently turn him toward me. “I can’t be your girlfriend. I’m sorry.”
His lip trembles and I fear that he’s drunk enough to cry. “Why not?” he asks plaintively.
“Because I don’t date customers.”
“Why not?” he asks again.
I try to explain it as briefly and directly as I can. “I don’t mix my personal life with my job. I’m here to make money. That’s it.”
I have broken the stripper code, and the fantasy comes crashing down around him. But I don’t let up.
“You’re a nice person and I’ve really come to care about you. I think that you’re drinking too much and I’m worried about where the money is coming from.”
He turns away from me and darkly contemplates the maple wood of the bar. “I had an inheritance.”
I wince at his use of the past tense. “How much of it have you spent?”
He sighs deeply enough to break my heart. “All of it.”
“How much was there?” I’m hoping for a small number.
“Sixty thousand dollars. It was from my grandmother.”
I feel a sinking sensation in my stomach. He’d been spending even more than I had allowed myself to believe. “You’ve spent 60 grand in four months.” It’s not a question but I have to vocalize it to wrap my head around it. I mentally calculate: that would be about $15,000 a month or $1200 three nights a week. Every night I’d taken several hundred, plus gifts and drinks. He regularly bought rounds for the girls and the regulars, and I wasn’t the only girl he tipped generously.
“Jason.” I make him look at me again. “You have to stop.”
He swigs noisily from his glass. “But I love you. I love all of you.”
“Jason.” I repeat his name. “I know you think you love us. But none of this is real!” My gesture takes in the whole club. “This is a fantasy. Something to indulge in once a month or a few times a year. The people here aren’t your friends.”
His lip trembles again. “But you’re so nice to me!”
I harden myself. “Only because you spend money.”
His eyes do well up now. I take the glass out of his hand and tug him to the door. “Jason is ready to leave,” I tell Dean the bouncer. “Get him a taxi.”
Jason pulls away from me. “I can’t leave my car. I have to work.”
I grab a pen and write my cell number on his hand. “Call me tomorrow. I’ll come get you and bring you to pick up your car.”
He stares blearily at his hand. He now has in his possession what he’s been trying to get for weeks. “I don’t have cash for a cab. I gotta go to the ATM.”
I peel $20 off the roll of cash in my purse and hand it to Dean. “Put him in a cab.”
When Jason tries to resist one last time, Dean takes him firmly by the arm. Dean is 6 feet 5 inches and 250 pounds of muscle. No one resists Dean. “Fuck,” I curse to myself watching the two of them walk out the door, Dean towering above Jason. A cab from the queue pulls forward and Dean dumps Jason unceremoniously in.
He rings me at two o’clock the following afternoon. He sounds sober and meek. “Can you take me to get my car?”
“Sure. Where do I pick you up?”
He’s waiting for me on the front step when I pull up in front of his house. He is pale and shrunken in the bright afternoon, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. “You’re even prettier in the daylight,” he tells me.
“Thank you,” I say. Then, “Have you thought about what I said last night?” I’m not even sure he totally remembers.
“You said that none of you are my friends.”
“Put your seatbelt on,” I order and pull away from the curb.
He complies, childlike, saying nothing.
“That’s right,” I continue. “I said that we’re not your friends. That doesn’t mean that we don’t like
you; we do. But strippers make money off men. That’s what we do. It’s a job.”
“So you kept telling me that you would go out with me so I’d give you more money.”
I flinch internally. But I can’t stop being honest now. “Yes.”
He doesn’t say anything else and I don’t push him. When we pull up next to his car, sitting lonely in the vacant parking lot, he turns to me. I wait to see what he’ll do.
“Thank you for telling me,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” I reply.
“And thanks for the ride.”
“Of course.”
I leave him standing small and alone in the bright sunlight. I don’t expect to see him again.
The next week when I walk in the door for my Saturday night shift, he’s standing at the bar. Next to him stands Fate, a day-shift girl I don’t know well. She’s tall and voluptuous with the palest skin I’ve ever seen. Chestnut hair falls in thick waves to her waist. Her green eyes narrow at me.
“Star!” he cries and comes to hug me. I smell the alcohol on him, see it in his eyes.
I hug him back. “Hey, man. What’s the haps?” I wonder how long he’s been here today. A while, judging by his level of intoxication. Over his shoulder Dean rolls his eyes.
I pull away. “I have to go change for my shift. Good to see you.”
That night Fate stays past shift change. I watch her with Jason in the private dance area. They’re over there for a long time. Afterward, Dean pours him into another cab.
I continue to see him every weekend. Fate switches her shift to work nights. Now he comes only for her.
Over the next two months I determine that I don’t really care for Fate. I don’t let her see it though; I walk away a lot in this job in order to keep the peace. The other girls are more open in their disdain, and so Fate latches onto me because I don’t treat her like total shit.
Here, there are day-shift girls and there are night-shift girls. Everyone starts working at least one day-shift; it’s part of the hiring requirement. And there are a handful of girls who want to work days for whatever reason. Some of them go to night school; some work other jobs. Some have kids they like to put to bed. But most girls want to move to nights as soon as possible because the money is much better. Management determines who gets to work nights and it’s all about earning potential. Looks are some of it, but personality and showmanship are part of it, too.
Fate is pretty, but she’s not a real performer and she has an overdone, brassy quality that can only be described as “trashy.” In a club that markets itself as high end, it’s about class, not flash. Fate is all flash.
But Jason comes in at night and brings enough money with him to buy Fate onto the night shift. In addition to the money, the gifts pour in: clothes, shows, jewelry, and then one day a car.
That night, as she gloats over the new gift in the dressing room, I ask her bluntly, “Are you fucking him?” I had seen her the night before, standing with him at the bar, her hand rubbing softly along the front of his jeans.
She looks at me. “No,” she says.
She seems so direct and matter-of-fact that I find it hard not to believe her. “But you give him hand jobs under the bar.”
A flush rises along her cheekbones. “It was only once. And I just stroked him some. He didn’t finish.”
I shrug and go back to dotting glitter along my eyebrows. We rub up against customers all the time and claim that it’s by accident. The line into intentional is slight. I don’t really care, but I am curious. He is crashing and burning so spectacularly that I find it hard to look away.
A couple of days later he calls me in the middle of the afternoon. He’s crying so hard that at first I can’t understand him. Then the words come out more sensibly.
“I’m leaving,” he says.
For a moment I fear that the emotional outburst is suicidal in nature and my heart takes a leap in my chest. “Where are you going?”
“Home.”
Not any better. “To Alabama?” I clarify.
“Yes.” He gulps and brings himself more under control. “My parents are here. They’re packing me up. I snuck away to call you.”
I consider a 22-year-old man “sneaking away” from his parents. “Do you want to go?” Given the hysterics I think it’s a reasonable question.
“No!” It is a drawn-out cry.
“Where’s Fate?” I ask.
That starts the sobbing again. “She doesn’t love me.”
“I could have told you that!”
My response startles him into silence and then he chuckles. It makes me feel much better to hear that little laugh. “You did tell me that.”
“I did,” I agree.
“She just used me and then dumped me when I ran out of money.”
“I thought you were already out of money.”
He pauses. I can’t even hear him breathe.
“Jason? Where’d you get the money you’ve been living on? To buy that car?”
He sighs deeply. When he speaks again he sounds ten years older. “I embezzled it from the company I work for.”
It’s much worse than I would have imagined. “You what?”
“My dad paid off the company. But I’m $80,000 in debt to credit cards.”
“Oh, Jason. How did this happen?”
“I don’t know!” he wails and now he sounds like a toddler. “We had to meet with the owner of the company. He agreed not to press charges but I have to leave the state.”
“You got lucky,” I say. “You could be headed for jail.”
“But I have to live with my parents!”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “You’re lucky you have parents who can bail you out.”
“They’re so mad.”
“I bet! You spent, what? Close to $200,000 in six or seven months? You blew through an inheritance, stole from your place of employment, and ran up debt you’ll be paying off for the next 20 years. Of course they’re mad.”
“I don’t know how it happened.” He pauses. “They’re making me go to rehab.”
“You probably need it.”
“I thought you cared about me.” Now he just sounds sulky.
I feel exasperation rising. “You know, I do care about you. But if we’re being honest, I don’t care that much.” I hear a shocked inhalation. I continue, relentless. “I think you’re a nice enough guy but you’ve been very, very stupid. People you can buy are not the people you want to be with.”
“I bought you.”
Now I’m angry. “No, you didn’t. I took your money until I figured out that it was hurting you and then I walked away.”
“But you didn’t help me!”
“That is not my job. You did this all yourself.”
He’s silent.
“I wish you the best, Jason. I really, really do. I hope you learn from this.” I wait to see if he’s going to say anything. “Goodbye, Jason.”
“Goodbye,” he says.
Chapter Sixteen
The Female Gaze
The dancers are simultaneously in control because they watch and are controlled because they are watched.
—Alexandra G. Murphy
Stripping is a violation of cultural norms and yet that was one of the things that attracted me. I am, and have long been, an intellectual. I am interested in what is considered forbidden. The scholar Michel Foucault notes, in several of his works but most notably in Discipline and Punish, that one cannot truly understand a society without looking into its shadows, the places that the culture says are taboo, off limits, dangerous, insane, morbid, or disgusting. Sex work is the only industry in the world where women consistently make more money than men, and there is a reason that it is considered distasteful, and regulated or illegal. Part of me loved making money through exploitation of the male gaze. If patriarchy is going to objectify my body, then I am going to benefit from that and use it to my advantage.
Another part of me grew profoundly aware of how
women are objectified, not just in gentlemen’s clubs but in life. Strippers report concern for their safety as being a high priority when choosing a club and remaining satisfied at work (Maticka-Tyndale et al. 2000; Bernard et al. 2003; Lilleston et al. 2012). But all women are concerned for our safety. That’s why we walk through parking garages with our keys balled in our fists. It’s why we dial 9 and 1 on our phones when walking home alone, finger hovering above that last digit. It’s why we watch our drinks at clubs and practice the buddy system at parties. Contrary to popular opinion, I have been more afraid for my safety walking along a public street than I ever was in a strip club.
In the countless articles and books I have read by academics studying sex work, two points become apparent. First, many of the assumptions found in society regarding sex workers are also found in academia. Second, one assumption academics make is that sex work is not formally studied by many people. While the assumption itself is false, there are aspects of stripping that have not been studied: male experiences, the differences between different kinds of clubs, and the different attitudes between different dancers cross-correlated with race, educational background, work in other aspects of the sex industry, partnership status, parenthood; the list goes on.
Statistics often hide as much as they reveal, and academics seem as prone to getting it wrong as anyone else. Even researchers have biases, often unconscious, that influence what they study. For example, writing for The American Journal of Public Health (2012), Eva Moore, Jennifer Han, Christine Serio-Chapman, Cynthia Mobley, Catherine Watson, and Mishka Terplan conclude: “Young women in exotic dancing have an increased need for reproductive health services relative to women in other professions” (1833). This conclusion is based on a sample of 71 women in their “early twenties,” 75% of whom reported that they had worked, or were working, as exotic dancers. Sixty percent were black and 33% were white, with negligible numbers of other ethnicities reported. The study was completed in downtown Baltimore, and the authors paid no attention to the impacts of race, class, educational attainments, or whether or not the young women who also made money in other areas of sex work were at higher risk than those who did not. The findings indicate that “61% of the dancers … reported … having sold sex” (ibid). The assumption drawn by the researchers is that high percentages of dancers also sell sex and are thus in need of reproductive care.