by Dee Simon
“Hey, ladies, you might want to give him the special treatment. His brother told me he’s a virgin and that we have to pop his cherry tonight.”
This made the crowd roar with laughter, which soon devolved into catcalls and whistles when the dancers walked onto the stage.
“Eighteen years old and still a virgin. Well, that’s gonna change tonight,” I said, my voice booming over the microphone.
The dancers ripped the kid’s shirt off, exposing his hairless, bony chest. They unlatched his belt, released it from the loops, and used it to bind his shaking hands behind his back. I scanned the wildly cheering audience for the Marine whom I expected to see in a front-row seat participating in the festivities. Since he had forced his brother to endure this torture, the least he could do was provide some moral support. I found him sitting in the same seat in the back corner with the same stone-faced countenance that he had had before. Oddly, the Marine didn’t seem to be enjoying this experience any more than his brother. About midway through the song, I noticed that the boy’s complexion had blanched into a pale, ghostly white. The girls filed into a single line, and each one of them bounced on his lap in turn. Perhaps they were feeling a bit more sadistic or hateful because the customers were spending so little money on them, but regardless of the reason, they were merciless on that particular night. They took their full collective wrath out on that kid. I felt deep pangs of sympathy for the kid. Some of the girls climbed to the top of the pole and mercilessly slid down on his small knees with such force that it made the chair bounce on the stage. Others climbed onto his lap and smashed his face into their ample, oily bosoms. It appeared as if they were beating the boy with their breasts. A right. Then a left. And then another right-left combination. And then, bam. Knockout. The kid’s head smashed against the brass pole behind him so hard that you could hear it over the music. The crowd loved it. They were cheering, clapping, and tossing crumpled dollar bills at the girls and their whipping boy. Amid the thrashing, I threw in an occasional “That had to hurt” or “Damn, I’m glad it’s not my Birthday,” but I was losing my enthusiasm. The kid’s body seemed to quiver within its restraints, and I could see tears streaming from his eyes. The boy was so scared that he was actually sobbing. I had never emceed a birthday show like this. I wanted to put a stop to the thrashing, but the harpies weren’t quite satiated yet. One of them bent the kid over and held his shoulders down while another grasped the elastic of his tightie-whities. She yanked so hard that it tore the elastic clean off his underwear and the boy let out a lingering wail. At this, the girls started laughing and smacking his ass even harder than normal. The kid was hunched over, bawling, and his whole body seemed to tremble with each slap. I cut the song short because it was time for this kid’s humiliation to end.
“Ladies and gents, how ‘bout a big round of applause for the Birthday Boy! Happy Birthday, Billy! Thanks for coming to the Doll House tonight.”
The crowd clapped and cheered while the dancers loosened the belt straps around the kid’s hands and helped him to his feet. Then I heard a high-pitched female voice shriek:
“Oh my god. He peed his pants.”
This caused all the strippers to turn around, look at the kid, and break out into shrill fits of laughter. The entire room seemed to point their index fingers accusingly towards the stage as the audience convulsed into a tsunami of laughter. The sniveling boy stood there mortified under the flashing white, red, and blue lights, staring down at the darkening stain on the crotch of his light blue jeans. Everyone in the room, with the exception of the Marine and myself, hissed and jeered. I hastily flipped on the next song, turned up the volume to drown out the jeers, and ran a 2-for-1 dance special. The laughter soon eroded into a chuckle, and the girls started making their way around the room in a vain attempt to find someone to buy a lap dance. Meanwhile, the Marine took this opportunity to snatch his brother by the arm and forcefully haul his quivering frame off the stage and out of the club. I half expected him to demand his money back, and I was more than willing to return it. I felt horrible. This kid’s first sexual experience with women involved a savage beating and public humiliation. If he wasn’t gay before, he was definitely gay now. Or more likely, he’d become a twisted serial killer. As the Marine walked by the booth dragging his sobbing gay brother, I mustered an apologetic expression on my face and reached into my pocket to retrieve his money. With his brother’s elbow in his death grip, he glanced over at me, muttered a terse “Thank you,” and quickly exited the club. I shoved the bill back in my pocket and was overwrought by these unsettling feelings of remorse and bewilderment. At the end of the night, I used that crisp $100 bill to purchase drugs. I had to get rid of it.
Fiona
I loathed emceeing the girl-on-girl shows and would’ve gladly given up a weekend shift to avoid them. These shows occurred at Foxys once or twice a night on Friday and Saturday night shifts, and only certain managers would force us to do them. And by certain managers, I mean Pepper. Pepper fervently enjoyed the girl-on-girl shows. If he had enough volunteers, he’d have happily ran five shows a night. Luckily, he rarely had volunteers. The truth was that the dancers either despised doing the shows or were absolutely terrified of them. Pepper, however, was cunning and persuasive and always seemed to be able to extort or bribe the girls into participating. He might not have had much of a formal education, but he was definitely streetwise. Shedding his abrasive demeanor, he’d approach a dancer with a sensitive, almost paternal mien. He smiled widely, massaged her shoulders, and whispered softly:
“Damn, baby. You lookin’ good tonight. Ummm. Ummm. For real tho. You lookin’ damn good. And you smell like a bouquet of the finest red roses. Girl, I need you to do Pepper a little favor. You want to be in that girl-on-girl show tonight? That’s cool if you don’t. It’s just that I finna make sure you’ll make bank, baby. You know you owe me one.”
After he delivered his opening lines, most dancers, especially the seasoned ones, would look at him with an expression of disbelief and respond with a curt, “Hell no! Nigga, I don’t owe you shit.”
But Pepper anticpated this response, and once his initial anger had subsided, he looked the girl over once or twice, smacked his lips together, and calmly replied, “Damn, girl. You don’t need to be like that. Pepper’s jus’ tryin’ to help you make some money. Now I know you showed up twenty minutes late tonight. Technically, I’m supposed to charge you a late fee, but we don’t have to go there if you help a nigga out.”
This ploy worked like a charm on the less experienced dancers, and they’d accept his offer to avoid eighty dollars in late fees. Whereas the seasoned dancers would still reject the offer because they’d done these shows before and had concluded that the compensation was not worth the effort and humiliation. To persuade them, Pepper had to resort to harsher tactics. He shifted into “angry pimp” mode and looked them directly in the eye when he spoke.
“Damn, girl, why you disrespectin’ me like that? You know I’m here to make you money. Listen. If you don’t do the show tonight, I might have to fire you for smoking herb in the dressin’ room. I don’t want to do that, but you ain’t givin’ Pepper much of a choice.”
The accused dancer immediately denied his accusation. “Pepper, I wasn’t smoking herb. Who told you that? These bitches lyin’. For real. I ain’t never smoked herb in the dressin’ room.”
“Girl, I had three ladies come up to me and tell me this, and you know we have a camera back there. Videotape don’t lie. You want to take a walk upstairs and see fo yo’self? Listen, girl, we don’t have to go there. I don’t want to fire you. You make me too much money. I’d be hurtin’ myself by doin’ that.”
Most of the girls, including the veterans, were too dense to realize that it was illegal for management to install video cameras in the girl’s dressing room. At this point, Pepper had them, and when they cried and confessed, he embraced them and ran his fingers through their hair and said soothingly, “Damn, baby. You don’t need to
cry. But you do look fine when you cryin’ tho. We can forget about all of this if you do me one small favor tonight. Fo’ real. I’ll make this go away.”
It amused me that strippers, who are hustlers by their nature, would fold so easily to such an unfounded allegation. Regardless, this tactic almost always proved to be successful for him. He now had his performers for the girl-on-girl show. I don’t think Pepper truly believed that these shows were successful promotions as much as he derived some type of misogynistic pleasure from watching two desperate women shove dildos up each other’s openings. In short, that was what the girl-on-girl show consisted of: two forlorn strippers on a stage surrounded by screaming men chucking crumpled dollar bills at them while they dispassionately shoved dildos up each other’s vaginas and assholes. It was a deplorable scene that appealed to the lowest common denominator of male sexuality. I found nothing erotic about these performances. At least one of the participants was either frozen in fear or so high on heroin or GHB that she just lay there while her partner sodomized her with a lubed dildo, and a crowd of whooping eighteen-year-old males pelted them with dollar bills. I found the whole scene revolting, and as much as I would try to sound enthusiastic as the emcee, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t have an issue feigning enthusiasm during the Red Light Specials, but the girl-on-girl shows bothered me. Pepper was well aware of my lack of gusto, and once the show started, he’d walk over to the DJ booth and call me “faggot” or a “pussy,” grab the portable microphone, and take over the announcer responsibility. I was more than willing to relinquish the job to him regardless of whether he thought I was less of a man. In reality, I really didn’t give a shit what Pepper thought of me. I gladly handed over the mic and stepped outside for a cigarette break for the four songs that comprised the show. Occasionally, I wasn’t given a choice and had to emcee the whole show, but usually Pepper preferred to be the emcee and relegate me to a supporting role. It was eerie to observe Pepper shed his false paternal, benevolent persona and transform into the shameless deviant that was his true character. His eyes lit up with sadistic excitation, and his tone was forceful and commanding. He genuinely enjoyed being the ringmaster of this debauched spectacle and directing the girls to debase themselves in front of a crowd of drunk, salivating meatheads. Pepper definitely was skilled at inciting a crowd, I’ll give him that. He literally stoked them into a feeding frenzy, each one fighting for a position at the main stage to whip crumpled dollar bills at the miserable perfomers. With 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny” blaring through the club’s speakers, Pepper bellowed:
“Damn. Two bitches on the main stage ready to get nasty wit’ ya. Let’s go, fellas. Come on. I said let’s go. Get on up to the front row for one hell of a show. The bigger the bills, the harder the thrills. Use those dollars to make them holler. I want to hear these bitches scream. Yeah, baby. You like it like that. They getting down and dirty up there. You nasty girl. Damn. Slap that ass. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. You can do it, put yo ass into it. Ummm. Lemme hear you make some fuckin’ noise out there. Come on now. You heard about the 69. How ‘bout the 88? That’s when you put four fingers in the pussy and four fingers in the asshole. Double fistin’ that shit. Now that’s what I came here for. Damn.”
I would occasionally chime in with a “damn” or “goddamn” or “we love it when she does that,” but for the most part, I let Pepper emcee the show on his own. These shows bothered me, and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when Pepper was thwarted and couldn’t find any willing participants. Though he’d attempt to cajole every dancer who showed up that night, sometimes he had no choice but to cancel the show.
The only dancer I ever worked with who managed to foil Pepper was a diminutive woman named Fiona. She was a genuinely evil person who cared little for the well-being of others, including her own offspring. Rumor had it that at the age of twenty-six, she had been married twice and given birth to three children who she had not seen in over six years. Fiona was a natural hustler. The hustle was a component of her genetic makeup; it flowed through her veins. She followed a matrilineal line of sex workers: her grandmother was a prostitute, her mother was a prostitute, and she had become a prostitute at the age of thirteen when she ran away from home. Originally from Panama, she had moved to the States when she was seventeen and had worked as a prostitute and a stripper in clubs across the country. I wouldn’t describe her as attractive. I thought she bore a striking resemblance to Sylvester Stallone if he was a 4’10” brunette with massive, surgically-enhanced 36-DD breasts. Yet, she did very well at Foxys, so I assume there exist some men who find this type of woman appealing. Either that, or she charged less than the other girls for blowjobs.
Fiona detested the stage and usually tried to bribe me to remove her name from the dancer rotation. She experienced severe birthing complications with two of her children that resulted in massive scarring across her lower abdomen. Though she expertly concealed her blemishes with exotic scarves wrapped tightly around her waist, one could see that she was deeply self-conscious of her body. Bribery of the DJ is a frequent occurrence at all strip clubs. It’s a huge risk because if he gets caught, he will be severely reprimanded by management or possibly terminated. Depending on the amount of the bribe, my relationship with the dancer, and the manager on duty, I usually took the risk. I didn’t like Fiona much at all and she was well aware of this. She was also aware that management paid little attention to the stage rotation, and it was completely up to the DJ who danced that night. Therefore, our relationship was solely opportunistic. If she gave me $50 at the beginning of her shift and another $50 at the end, I would remove her name from the list and she’d avoid the stage completely. Fiona also had a notorious meth habit and was repeatedly tardy for her shifts, which gave Pepper an advantage when negotiating her participation in the girl-on-girl shows. She was typically forty-five minutes late for every shift and had to pay the regular stage fee of $50 and an additional fine of $80 for being late. And not to mention the $50 that she gave to me to take her name off the stage rotation. That’s a lot of money for a meth-addicted stripper to come up with at the beginning of her shift. As soon as she crept into the club, Pepper swooped on her, flashed his gold-toothed smile, wrapped his arms tight around her tiny shoulders, and smugly said:
“Damn, girl. You didn’t think you could sneak past Pepper? Come on now. You know me better than that. If you want to work tonight, you owe me $130.”
Fiona squirmed out of his grip, sneered, and continued walking towards the dressing room completely ignoring him. This enraged Pepper, and he yelled, “Damn, bitch! Don’t you ever turn your back on me when I’m talking to you. Now get yo ass over here. Listen. You’re late. Now I can make you pay $130 to work tonight, or I can make you pay nuthin’. Whatcha want: $130 or nuthin’? That’s right. You want to pay nuthin’. I want you to be in that girl-on-girl show tonight and I’ll forget about yo late fee and I’ll even forget about yo stage fee. Know what I’m sayin’?”
He knew that he had her. Pepper often said that “managing bitches is like playing poker. You gotta know when you have the upper hand, and you betta lay down that shit, nigga. Damn.” He could tell he had the upper hand by the fury burning in her eyes. “A bitch’s eyes never lie, and if they do, you want to leave that bitch alone. She’ll cut yo dick off. I ain’t lyin’ about that. Damn.” Fiona had no other choice but to pay her fees to the house—which I highly doubt she had—or do the girl-on-girl show and pay nothing. She reluctantly opted for the latter.
“Okay, Pepper. I’ll do the show tonight,” she relented with a sinister smile.
Fiona was a born hustler and devised her own method of excluding herself from all future girl-on-girl shows. Her partner that night was a young Hawaiian girl named Kiana who had been stripping at Foxys for less than a month. She had also arrived late for her shift that night, and Pepper had easily manipulated her into doing the show to avoid the late fee. She had absolutely no idea what lay in store for her. It was dif
ficult to watch. With her mouth twisted into a devious smile throughout the two-song ordeal, Fiona brutally sodomized Kiana with a large dildo, spat in her face, pulled out some of her hair, and smacked her ass with such force that the pitiful girl was left with a red handprint for the next three days. Kiana fled the stage in tears while the crowd roared with hoots, laughter, and applause. After this heartless display of aggression, there was not a single dancer in the club who would dare go onstage with Fiona. Even the new hires had heard rumors of Fiona’s cruelty and refused to be in a show with her. To Pepper’s dismay, she had disqualified herself for lack of a willing partner. And knowing that the girls feared her, she would constantly taunt Pepper by volunteering to be in a show or innocently inquiring whether there was one scheduled for that night. He ignored her jibes and pretended that he was working on some pressing business matter all the while muttering hateful, misogynistic comments under his breath.
Play Something Dancy
In my professional opinion, I would have to say that the music is the most crucial element of the show. Well, that is, aside from the tits. The music is not only used to manipulate crowd reaction, it sets the overall ambiance of the club, and that’s the reason the DJs are required to spin songs that are up-tempo, energetic, and, most importantly, recognizable to the audience.
The DJ must maintain a festive, party atmosphere throughout the night as to ensure that all patrons have a positive experience and return to the club in the future.
I had a manager who made all of the DJs repeat this mantra three times every night shift to make sure we understood how to run the show. It’s news to me that shelling out nine dollars for a domestic beer and paying a stripper exorbitant amounts of money only to be left sexually frustrated could be considered a positive experience. Perhaps a positive experience is subjective. Most upscale clubs strictly regulate the style and tempo of the music to manipulate the mood of the crowd. The management requires the DJ to play house or trance music that’s at least 120 beats per minute, classic rock, current Top 40 rock, and, sadly, a surplus of eighties music. These clubs target a specific demographic: Caucasian businessmen within the thirty-to fifty-year age range. A portly Causcasian man with a disposable income is a strip club owner’s wet dream. These are the people who can afford to purchase VIP-Room lap dances, eagerly reach for their wallets when asked to buy a dancer a glass of Cristal, and annoyingly, love to listen to eighties music.The club’s owners had done their market research or employed someone to do it for them and ordered their DJs to spin music that’s enjoyed by their target audience. Conversely, at lower-tier clubs, music is not as much of an issue, and the DJ tends to have more liberty in selecting songs. At the Doll House and Foxys, we were allowed to play music ranging from Slayer to The Notorious BIG. There was much more diversity in race and age amongst the patrons, and this was the music that they listened to.