by Dee Simon
Prior to my strip club career, I was an avid consumer of pornography. While I appreciated porn on an artistic level, I primarily utilized it as a medium for intense self-discovery and to introduce my girlfriends to the wonderful and exciting world of bisexuality. Like any fist-bumping, beer-drinking American, porn played an integral role in my life. That is until I worked at a strip club. Foxys ruined porn for me. My gradual desensitization to porn was akin to losing a relative to a terminal illness. It was a measured and emotionally heart-wrenching process that was strangely much more tragic than my desensitization to watching the dancers get naked. That made perfect sense to me. I worked with the same ten girls almost every shift. Initially, the sight of their nude bodies swinging on a pole was stimulating and somewhat distracting, but over time, I grew accustomed to their naked flesh, and for the most part, I wasn’t even all that attracted to them in the first place. Pornography, conversely, is always exciting; especially in the era of the Internet. If you have a decent online connection, it’s virtually impossible to become familiarized with porn. With a few simple keystrokes—no pun intended—one has immediate access to every imaginable genre: new actors, new scenarios, new positions, new stories. Porn was always exciting until I was forced to watch it eight hours a day, five days a week. Anything consumed to the point of excess will become tedious and ultimately repellant. And sadly this was the case for me. My beloved porn, my secret lover, had transformed into the Discovery Channel. It ceased to be arousing or stimulating in any way. It completely lost its effect on me. I soon realized that I stood there viewing images of people fucking, people sucking, people screaming in orgasmic frenzy with the same disaffected countenance that I assume when I watch Animal Planet. The porn starlets with their gigantic breasts and gaping holes, and their male counterparts with their colossal members, were nothing more than naked mammals mating on film. Porn had become background; it was little more than wallpaper to me. It took years to become excited by porn again.
We had a massive box of porn in the office that was pillaged on a daily basis by most of the employees. It was filled with low-grade, clearance porn flicks that the owner received at a discount from the various adult video stores in the neighborhood. These were the six-hour porn films with a fat and sweaty Ron Jeremy in at least five scenes and titles such as Sweet & Sour Slits, or Crazy Cum Fiesta, or my personal favorite porn series, The Blowjob Adventures of Dr. Fellatio, Volumes 1-39. Depending on the manager on duty, we would usually watch at least three to four different films per shift. One of my managers, Pepper, was the exception. Pepper was an irascible black man in his late forties who had been working in the adult entertainment industry for over half his life. I heard that his real name was Maurice, but if you called him that, he’d slap you in the face. Pepper was the stage name he used when he danced for Chippendales in the mid-eighties, and he preferred that to his birth name. We weren’t allowed to question any of Pepper’s management decisions for, as he never failed to point out, he had been working in the industry longer than most of us had been alive:
“Yo! You can shut the fuck up right now cuz I seen it all, man. You ain’t gonna teach Pepper shit. Bitch, go get yo fine ass up on that motherfucking stage. Damn.”
I dreaded working with Pepper because he scared the shit out of me, and it was more than obvious that he didn’t like me. Personally, I think he distrusted white people, but he never told me the actual reason he disliked me. He’d just say, “There are two kinds of people in this world: people you dig and people you don’t. You’re in the second category.” Even though he had retired from stripping over a decade ago, he worked out constantly to maintain his bodybuilder physique. He combed his relaxed hair straight back and wore two or three thick gold chains over the lapels of his shimmering emerald three-piece suits. He looked like the comedian Katt Williams on steroids. Pepper ruled Foxys with the iron fist of a seventies pimp. One particular area where he asserted his authority was porn film selection. Pepper only liked blowjob films, in particular, the Dr. Fellatio series. What I found remarkable about these films was that every shot consisted of a man’s erect penis in the mouth of a young woman. And every scene concluded with the man climaxing in the woman’s face, and that was it. There were no other sexual positions and very little female nudity. In fact, the woman’s naked body was never fully displayed. It was simply one dick after another in the mouth of a different girl. I suppose if you really liked oral sex you’d find these films quite appealing, but I always found them rather boring. Pepper obviously had a fixation with oral sex, which was evident by his oft-repeated adage that “if a woman can suck the head off yo dick, then she’d make a good wife.” He firmly believed that a woman who was willing to please a man orally until climax without sexual reciprocation of any kind is a woman who would dutifully tend to a man in other areas of the relationship.
“Listen here, if you have a bitch who will suck yo dick till you blow yo load and then get up and do the dishes, mop the floor, wash your motherfuckin’ car, and make yo supper, you better marry that bitch. Cuz if you don’t, Pepper will. And I ain’t fucking around. I’ll marry a bitch like that. Damn.”
Pepper invariably began or ended every statement with a perfunctory “Damn.” For the better part of every shift, he leaned on the DJ booth with his left arm resting on top of the CD player and, completely ignoring the girl dancing onstage, commented on the dick slurping that was occurring on the screen before us:
“Damn. Now that bitch can suck a dick. Look at that shit. That is some dick-sucking lips. You know what I’m sayin? DSLs. Are you watching, boy?” He punched me several times on the shoulder to make sure that my undivided attention was on the screen. “Damn. She loves that shit. She wants more dick. Bitch can’t get enough dick. That bitch loves sucking dick. I’d bet she’d suck three dicks at one time. I’d marry that bitch. Damn. You ever have a bitch suck yo dick and yo friends’ dicks? No. Hell no, you ain’t never had that shit. Don’t lie to me, boy. Goddamn. You white boys don’t know how to get yo freak on. Get yo’self a sista and yo’ll get yo freak on. Damn.”
I stood there, feigned interest, and nodded in silent concurrence with everything he said. In truth, I didn’t want him to punch my shoulder again. Pepper claimed to be a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and his punches were quite painful. Not to mention, he was practically twice my size. Frequently, I’d end my shift with a massive purple bruise on my shoulder. The majority of scenes involved two white people, but there were at least one or two scenes in every Dr. Fellatio film that had either two black people or a black man and a white woman. The latter were Pepper’s favorite. His eyes lit up when he saw a gigantic black penis looming in front of a nervous white woman. He punched me really hard to make sure that I was watching those scenes.
“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Finally got a real dick up on that screen. Fourteen-inch Alabama Black Snake. Goddamn. She finna dig that shit. All bitches love the taste of black dick. They might say they don’t. But that means they lying ass hoes. Cuz all bitches love the taste of black dick. Know what I’m sayin’? Heh, heh. I know you don’t cuz you ain’t got a black dick. You white boys ain’t got nothing on that shit. Damn.”
Grinning with pride, he laughed loudly and repeatedly slammed my shoulder with his fist. Not knowing the proper response, I would usually smile and anxiously laugh along with him while vainly attempting to block his blows. Sometimes, I’d picture myself with a fourteen-inch black cock attached to my diminutive Semitic frame. I just don’t think a huge black dick would pan out for me all that well. I’m quite certain that most girls would be frightened by the anomaly. Now, I think there is some credence to the urban myth that black men have larger penises on average than other races, but I don’t think it’s true in all cases. I was dubious of Pepper’s penis-size claims. He boasted to every dancer that he had a massive penis, and he highly doubted that they could “handle his shit.” And if they ever did “have his shit,” they would summarily leave their white boyfriend
s. In my opinion, if a man, regardless of race, did indeed have a gigantic dick, would he always need to draw attention to it? Would he always need to constantly inform everyone he encounters that he possesses this mammoth cock?
“Damn. Now that bitch is scared. Look at that. She know she finna gag on that shit. She only got the tip in. Oh hell no. I’d be like open yo throat, bitch. It’s Dr. Clifford Huxtable, and I finna check those motherfucking tonsils.”
Normally, I ignored his nonsensical blathering, but on this occasion I chose to correct him. “Actually, Pepper, it was Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, or Cliff, which was what his wife called him.” He looked at me incredulously for about three or four seconds before nailing my shoulder with a crushing blow.
“Shut the fuck up. I know that nigga’s name. Ain’t too many black doctors on the TV. Shit. This white boy thinks he knows The Cosby Show. Next thing you be telling me Fred Sanford worked at a motherfuckin’ liberry. Damn.” He returned his attention to the dick slurping on the big screen still shaking his head in disbelief. “Now that’s fucked up. White bitches be scared of that black dick. They scared at first, but then they learn to love it. Yo, you got a white bitch, right?”
“Well, yeah, I guess.”
“You guess. What, you can’t tell the bitch is white? You never know these days with the weaves and spray tans and shit. She ever been with a nigga?” As usual, he didn’t wait for my response and answered his own question, “Nah. I didn’t think so. That shit ain’t right. All bitches should be wit’ at least one nigga. It should be a law and shit. Damn.” I chose to remain silent even though I was curious as to how the state would enforce such legislation.
Pepper refused to watch any porn films other than The Blowjob Adventures of Dr. Fellatio series. I don’t know if he even liked other porn films. He told me that he truly believed porn was degrading to women, but he fervently enjoyed watching “a bitch give head. Damn. I ain’t never get sick of that shit.” And, he never tired of these blowjob films. In fact, Pepper was usually too lazy to put in a new film and would just let the machine rewind the one that we had already watched and we’d be fortunate enough to watch it again. And again. And again. Most of the time we watched the same blowjob film five or six times a shift. I worked four night shifts at Foxys and only one day shift a week, and I worked with Pepper for three of those shifts over a period of six months. According to my calculations, I must have watched the movie The Blowjob Adventures of Dr. Fellatio, Volume 33 over 500 times. Years have passed, and I still know every scene of that film. I envisage myself fifty years from now, a lecherous old goat popping Viagra while strolling into a dingy porn theater to see if I can still manage an erection. As I stumble into the dark room searching for a secluded seat, I look up and see The Blowjob Adventures of Dr. Fellatio, Volume 33 playing on the big screen. I stand there staring blankly at the screen, and all of a sudden, I feel my entire being shudder with a tidal wave of complete and total recognition. In slow motion, I crumple to the ground knees first, and then roll onto my right side, mouth foaming, in a fit of apoplexy. My tongue darts in and out of my mouth, my hands clawing at the air. Four men dressed in white clothing place my withered old husk onto a gurney, and I’m wheeled out of the theater and into the dementia wing of some convalescent home, the whole time incoherently muttering, “Damn. That bitch can’t get enough dick. She loves that shit. Goddamn.”
Pepper was the only manager that forbade us to watch other porn films. Most of the other managers didn’t care as long as we were watching some kind of porn film. One of my favorite managers, Patrick, used to have fun with Foxys’ porn mandate. Patrick was a functioning alcoholic in his mid-thirties and one of the more sartorially challenged men I had ever met, but the reason we got along so well was that he possessed a rather odd sense of humor. It was more than obvious that the dancers despised the perpetual porn films. Not that they were feminists who were outraged by sexual exploitation; they hated the porn because it drew the customers’ attention away from their stage show. They had a legitimate complaint. Customers, especially during the day shift, would sit there for hours, drinking free carbonated beverages and staring at the sex acts on the screen, wholly oblivious to the naked girl on the main stage. They wouldn’t tip, buy dances, or acknowledge their presence in any way. They ignored the stage show and focused solely on the porn. This enraged the dancers. Some cursed directly at the customers from the stage while others incessantly complained to the manager or asked me to say something over the microphone. I usually obliged.
“Gentlemen, I know you didn’t come all the way to the Foxys to watch porn. You can do that at home. You came here to party with real live pussy. So, fellas, let’s head upstairs and buy a lap dance. Go get the real thing. Or at the very least, tip the girl onstage, you fucking perverts.”
But despite my best efforts, they still didn’t tip or buy private dances. The managers generally disregarded the girls’ complaints and were content with the customers’ apparent lack of interest in their stage shows. Pepper actually sided with the customers.
“If I walked into this motherfucker and saw yo hurt ass on stage, I’d be watchin’ a skin flick my own self. Damn.”
Patrick was the only manager who listened to their pleas. When they complained to him, he looked at them with an earnest expression of real concern and nodded his head empathetically. He gingerly rubbed their shoulders and replied, “Don’t fret, my dears. I will wreak justice on these vile miscreants.” Words like “vile” and “miscreant” were part of his typical vernacular. I think he spent his nights snorting rails of speed and reading Hawthorne novels so that he could confuse the dancers with words that they will probably never learn the meaning of nor ever hear again. Initially, they stared at him perplexedly, trying to figure out if he was serious, but in a few moments they’d pace through the club eager to find out what vengeance their fearless manager had in mind.
Patrick enjoyed ridiculing the perverts about as much as I did and brought in his own porn videos for this very purpose. He collected bizarre pornography that ran the gamut from German scat films and barnyard bestiality to Brazilian transsexual amputee films. I am not sure whether he collected these movies for shock value or sexual gratification, but he was very proud of his collection and considered pornography an unappreciated art form. It never failed to amuse me when he played a film from his private collection. These films were for extreme circumstances when it was obvious that the customers were merely taking up space and not spending any money. He never played these movies when the club was crowded or when he knew that the GM was in the vicinity. In his mind, it was better to disgust them and make them leave the club than have them waste any more of our time, but in reality, I think he relished the shock value of it all. Not only would the customers be disgusted, the dancers would be disgusted and loudly express their revulsion by laughing, screaming, and telling each other that Patrick is “a crazy motherfucker” or “one weird dude.” But, they also took pleasure in watching the stingy patrons, who they previously had complained about, become uncomfortable and hastily exit the club. It was hilarious to watch them suddenly overcome with simultaneous feelings of confusion and revulsion. Allow me to create the scene:
Over the past two hours, the pervs had sat in the club swilling soda, ignoring the dancers, and staring vacantly at Cum Fiesta playing on the big screen. Without warning, the movie stops and the screen becomes blank. They anxiously glance around the room, trying to figure out what happened. A test screen slowly comes into focus, and they breathe a collective sigh of relief as another film begins to play. Their attention is once again diverted to the screen where an attractive exotic woman with her back to the camera is disrobing in front of a man. Then, the woman turns around, and to their utter horror, she reveals her large, uncircumcised penis. Most of them would shield their eyes and turn away disgusted and bewildered. The remainder ceased watching once they saw the man sodomizing the transsexual. I don’t know if they considered it a threat to their sexual
ity or if they realized that we were mocking them, but you could tell they were visibly disturbed. Now, they had no choice but to pay attention to the girl onstage, buy a dance, or compromise their heterosexuality and watch the tranny porn. The Mexican customers seemed to be particularly bothered by the homosexual acts and would openly express their dissatisfaction with grunts and curses as they shuffled out of the club. A similar reaction occurred with the German scat films and the midget porn. What kept me entertained was that Patrick would continue to play the movie even after the customers had left. The girls begged and pleaded with him to turn it off, but he would laugh, shake his head, and tell them that they got what they asked for. And they did. They released the Kraken and now had to deal with it. I loved working at Foxys for this reason. Since I no longer found porn sexually arousing, I was pleased that there still existed some type of porn that I at least found entertaining.
Doug the Retard
“Hey, can you piss for me?”
“Right now? I just went to the bathroom ten minutes ago,” I replied, sounding a bit annoyed with the question.
“Fuck. I guess I can wait. Do you have a cigarette?” Zoe asked as she jumped onto the stool next to the soundboard. Zoe was a diminutive brunette who barely stood five feet tall even wearing her stilettos. Though she was around twenty-five, she looked like a twelve-year-old wearing a neon green g-string. I felt like I was committing a crime by lighting her cigarette. Her beauty was disarming, and her youthful appearance made her quite popular amongst the true sexual deviants and fetishists who frequented the Ruby Club. Zoe had a host of perverted regulars who visited her on different days of the week. At least three times during her shift, she’d escape to the DJ booth for a cigarette break and to complain about the requests that she received from them. We became good friends, and I’d always try to lend a sympathetic ear to her travails and help her out whenever I could. This afternoon, she had one of her more insufferable regulars, Chad the Piss Guy, waiting for her to return with a champagne glass filled with her urine.