Legacy

Melissa, a blonde with pierced nipples and hair down to her lower back, was grinding on top of me.

“You don’t have a dick to work with, you know? I just don’t know how to dance for girls,” she said.

Two guy friends and I had gotten a private room with Melissa for $300 an hour. We spent the majority of the time conversing with the dancer as she moved from lap to lap, making her way down the sofa. On the club floor, customers are not allowed to touch the strippers, but in the rooms, anything uncovered is fair game. Melissa was only wearing a small black thong.

She seemed comfortable with us, and (considering the circumstances) our conversation was absurdly mundane. We discussed female body image, and Melissa complained that the club owners encouraged her to lose weight. My male companions dismissed the idea and told Melissa that guys like girls with some curves, “a little something to hold on to.”

“That’s what I tell them!” she insisted. “But other than that, I really like my job. It’s good money and good hours.”

I asked her if there were ever times when she didn’t like her job. “Well, sometimes in the private rooms you have guys get on top of you and try to hold you down,” she told me. How did she get out of these situations? She replied bluntly, “You scream.”

I returned to the same strip club a few weeks later. There was no cover charge, so I walked through the door and had a seat at a small circular table at the back of the room. I was the only one in the club other than the employees. The club had two stages, each with a pole and mirrored wall behind it. All the chairs faced forward, waiting to be occupied by a lusty club patron.

Within a few minutes, a petite stripper wearing a Catholic schoolgirl outfit approached me. “You’re looking for people to interview?” she asked, sitting down in the seat next to me. “I’m Liz.” She extended her hand in introduction.

An elementary education senior at LSU, she strips because she needs the money. She also works two other jobs.

I asked her how much money strippers typically make. “It really just depends,” she responded. “I don’t know what we make per hour. I don’t think we make anything.” Liz said she makes about $70 in tips from stripping, but she normally tips those out to the bartenders, DJ and bouncers at the end of the night. The real money is made in the private rooms on the second floor — partitioned areas blocked off from public view. She told me she charges $300 per hour for a private room but can make up to $600 on a good night.

Liz explained that she makes almost all of her money from regulars. “Thank God for my regulars!” she said emphatically. “I don’t know what I’d do without them.” I asked her what usually goes on in the rooms. She said that usually the guys just wanted to talk to her. Liz acknowledged the sexual component of her job, but she seemed to think that arousing customers was secondary to their need for conversation. “I have guys who will talk to me about their divorces, their ex-wives … they just need someone to talk to. I think I represent something pure for them, like maybe something from their past or their younger days,” she said.

She explained that her regular customers are mainly older men, but she doesn’t feel uncomfortable dancing for men three times her age. “I don’t like it when younger guys come in here, or girls. They don’t really have any money to spend.”

I asked her if guys ever tried to do inappropriate things with her in the rooms. “Well, sometimes …” she trailed off, her eyes darting to the voice recorder on the table. “You really want me to say?” I nodded.  “Sometimes they try to cum on me,” she said.

I asked her how she responded when this happened. “I just leave,” she replied simply. “You don’t have to stay if they’re doing something wrong.  You can sort of tell when it’s about to happen so you just get up and leave.”

She told me keeping boyfriends with this job was often difficult. “I used to have a boyfriend and he was fine with me stripping, but then he found out that I had regulars who come to see me a lot, and he wasn’t OK with that,” she said.

However, Liz said the other girls in the club serve as a support system. “I’ve gotten close to a lot of the girls here. I’m really close to her,” she said, nodding in the direction of a girl onstage. “My roommate works here too,” she added. Liz said she likes to keep her work life and private life separate. “My roommate hangs out with all of the girls after work, but I don’t really,” she said with a shrug.

Liz refuses to see any of her customers outside the club, but inside the club she has to keep them wanting more. “My regulars always try to take me out to dinner, and they want to see me outside of the club, and I can’t just tell them, ‘Don’t you understand I’m not interested?’ because then they wouldn’t come back and see me,” she explained.

Throughout the interview, Liz was patient with my (often awkward) attempts not to offend her. She looked me straight in the eye when she spoke and when the conversation fell silent, she would offer more information to keep our dialogue afloat. She seemed interested in me, and even asked me several questions about myself. Despite her schoolgirl outfit and 5-inch heels, she was everything an elementary teacher should be.

A few weeks later, I traveled to New Orleans to try to speak with other exotic dancers. I walked into a small strip club on Bourbon Street and took a seat on a red velvet couch in the corner of the room next to the stage entrance. I watched a college-aged girl walked past me toward the stage. She was wearing a black swimsuit top, a tiny, black, pleated skirt and pink-and-black, knee-high socks. She disappeared through a doorway that led to the stage, but as the music began, a different girl appeared on the raised platform. A few seconds later, the girl in the pink and black socks emerged from the doorway looking perplexed, then disgruntled. I made eye contact with her, so she walked over and stood in front of me for a few seconds. I offered her the seat next to me.

“Ugh, I fucking hate this job,” she said as she plopped down on the couch.  “I’ve been a waitress here for three years, but for the past four days they told me that I have to strip because I’m ‘the prettiest girl here.’”

“Danny” said she hated stripping because it made her uncomfortable. She also didn’t see the point of dancing naked onstage when waitresses tended to make more money, both hourly and in tips. “Waitresses make more money than dancers because guys like to see girls with their clothes on, because they like to imagine what’s underneath,” she theorized.

“I don’t want to be here. I’m so tired. I had an organic chemistry test today and I stayed up all night … studying for it,” she explained. “I’m a graphic design major, and I also coach soccer for seven-year-old girls.”

Danny grew up in Baton Rouge and attended high school there before moving to New Orleans to attend Loyola. She’ll graduate this May. “I’m so excited to graduate!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands and bouncing up and down in her seat. “I’ve been through so much shit, so I’ll be so happy to walk across that stage.”

Stripping is a temporary job for Danny; she doesn’t plan to continue after graduation. “After I graduate, I’m opening a design company in Atlanta,” she said proudly. “I’m a little worried right now though, with the economy and everything. It’s not a good time to be getting started.”

Danny and her boyfriend were high school sweethearts, and they have been together for seven years. Her boyfriend recently returned from Iraq, where he spent the last year and a half. He was going to visit Danny in the strip club later that night. “My boyfriend hates it when I strip,” she laughed. “[He’d] probably get turned on, but he still doesn’t like it.”

How does she deal with patrons who didn’t behave themselves in the club? “I’ll fucking punch a dude, I don’t care. One time I had a guy try and grab me down there”— she gestured downwards — “but I just hit him. I don’t put up with that shit.”

I asked Danny if she ever worked in the private rooms as a way to earn more money than just stripping on stage. She snapped, “I have fucking self-respect, like, I have morals. You know, I’m smart! I don’t need to do that shit.” She explained that she would give lap dances and strip onstage, but that’s where she draws the line.

Danny often leaped from one topic to another without warning. “That girl’s really nice,” she said, motioning towards the girl dancing onstage, “but she’s fat.” I asked if the managers had guidelines for the girls’ looks. “Oh yeah, definitely. That girl onstage is wearing a wig because her head is shaved. My hair is actually fake — these are extensions. And see, they make me wear makeup.” She turned her face towards me and closed her eyes so I could see the traces of glittery eye shadow and liner she had applied to appease the management. “I never wear it normally, like to class or anything.”

Suddenly, Danny’s name was called over the loudspeaker and she let out a long sigh.  “Here we go,” she grumbled as she walked to the stage. The music came on, and she ambled toward the pole in the middle of the stage. She seemed indifferent and a little self-conscious; she glanced at me constantly, making funny faces as she danced. She finished her second song with two crumpled dollar bills on the stage. I waved goodbye to her and left for the next club.

I strode just a few paces down Bourbon Street and stopped in front of a strip club to talk to the two doormen. Their job was to grab people off the street and entice them to enter the club.

I asked them if working at a strip club changed the way they looked at women. “No, not really,” said a stout guy with a jovial personality. “But I definitely don’t go to strip clubs anymore. I mean, like, I’ll go with a buddy for his 21st birthday or something, but I’m not just gonna suggest going to one anymore. It’s like I’ve been desensitized to boobs!” He chuckled.

He clarified that it would still be a thrill to see a girl naked if he were romantically involved with her. “There’s a difference between boobs onstage and then boobs for me,” he explained. “I’m definitely not desensitized to boobs for me, but otherwise, it’s just a show.”

As we spoke, a group of male Asian tourists walked between us and the door. The portly doorman stepped beside them and gestured towards the door. “Hey guys, wanna have a good time tonight? Boobs and asses in your face? Think about it …” The men wandered away.

It was the other doorman’s fourth day on the job. I asked him if he’d already had to deal with customers’ misbehavior. “This one guy took his dick out and was slapping the dancer on the ass with it, so we had to kick him out. The girl was lettin’ him do it though!” he exclaimed incredulously.

Perhaps she just didn’t realize what he was doing. “Oh, she knew what he was doing,” he responded confidently. “She just had dollar signs in her eyes. All them girls do.”