The doorman, Jim, is a big guy about twenty-two years old. Although friendly enough, he ignores my feeble attempts to make conversation as he rounds up the people and documents necessary to begin the application process. He seems overly cautious toward me, but it could just be my imagination. Maybe it’s because of my clothes. I’m not dressed the way I imagine stripper job applicants on television might dress. Maybe it’s my age; he might think I look too old to be a stripper. I refuse to entertain this idea for long because if I start thinking that way, I’ll lose my nerve altogether. 

Before I have much time to imagine all the club employees snickering in the back at the prospect of me as a stripper, Jim asks for some identification. Sadly, this request is unrelated to any possibility, however remote, that I might be underage. Photocopying identification is strictly formal procedure. I could look sixty and they would still insist. 

The club is dimly lit, but not too dark. The bar, with an adjacent pool table and scattered tables nearby, looms immediately beyond where the doorman takes the entrance fee. To the right is a large room with three stages, each surrounded by seating. There is no seating at the bar itself, presumably to keep customers from stationing themselves there instead of near the dancers.

The atmosphere is upscale. The furniture does not strike me as new, but not worn either. The tables are clean and free of obvious scratches or gouges. The seating consists of neatly upholstered chairs in an easy to clean, heavy-duty vinyl, and high-backed fabric chairs, both in the ladies restroom area and in the smoking lounge. I see no clearly identifiable place where Starsky and Hutch might situate themselves to advance an investigation, yet the interiors do seem vaguely familiar. 

On the side nearest to the door is a raised platform that runs along the length of a mirrored wall where small tables are set up with chairs facing the mirror. Table dances are performed here, and cameras, presumably for security, are strategically placed around the club. On the opposite wall, behind one of the stages, is a short set of stairs with a guardrail in front of it, leading to the curtained entrance of the dressing room. To the left of the bar is a separate smoking lounge with one stage and two pool tables.

I’m sent over to the bartender, who hands me a long set of paperwork. I'm stunned at how detailed it is. Even as I feel guilty for thinking it, I wonder if these strippers are capable of completing such complicated forms. I’m pretty sure that I’m not.

I do the best I can in a hurry, and when I’m done I deliver them to Kurt, the club manager. Kurt gives me some rules to look over so that I can finish completing the paperwork. Page after page describe in detail the rules for dancers, mostly based on state law. Foremost, no drugs or prostitution are allowed. Despite the very creative spelling and grammar, the remainder of the rules is fairly specific, and occasionally graphically descriptive.

I may not touch my genitals or breasts. A caveat to this rule - apparently I am allowed to use my upper arms for the purpose of squeezing my breasts together. I may not touch the customer when I have my top off. I must remain at arm’s length from the customers when on stage. I may not simulate masturbation, oral sex, or any other sex acts that might occur to me given enough time. I may not pick up a tip with my “rear,” not that I could, even if I wanted to.

Rule number 21 is my favorite, Please dress in an appealing and sexy manor (sic). Our customers would stay at home if they wanted to see a girl dressed like an old housewife. There are a variety of regulations about drinking, smoking, disputes with other employees, and punctuality. No one can leave for the night until the dressing room is clean.

There are some disturbing rules, too. For instance, You cannot use your mouth to take a tip if the customer is touching it. Which part of this rule is critical? Can I take a tip with my mouth if a customer is not touching it? Do not insert your finger or any part of your body in a customer’s drink. I could have gone my whole life happily ignorant of the need to post either of these two regulations.

 

Despite a few odd rules that I can only suspect must have stemmed from some prior bizarre and hopefully isolated incident, when I consider the vulnerability of the situation, and the true need for people (particularly the dancers) to respect each other’s space, the rules are straightforward, make sense, and do not seem especially oppressive.

 

I’m surprised to read that dancers of age are allowed to buy and accept drinks. Later, when I pay $6.50 for a small glass of white zinfandel, it becomes clear why management does not require total abstinence. According to my list, which I was required to sign, date, and return, we are allowed to accept a customer’s offer to buy a drink, but it is strictly forbidden to solicit one. I have my doubts about enforcement on this one.

Kurt has someone call a dancer to the bar so she might show me around and explain the job further. “Delilah” is bubbly and greets me with warmth. Cynic that I am, I assume Kurt must have called over the very nicest dancer to show me the ropes. She is slender, athletic, not too tall, and is wearing a silver halter-top and matching low-rise stretchy bell-bottom pants. On her feet are enormous platform, glittery, high-heeled shoes.

I admire the piercings in her bottom lip and belly button and she begins to show me around.

“The dressing room is where we change costumes and freshen up between sets.” Right away it’s we, and I like it. Delilah shows me the contents of her locker as she goes over the basic guidelines, some that are on the list, and some that are not.

“I’m nineteen; I started dancing the day after my eighteenth birthday. This is my favorite place so far. I’m from Michigan, and you would not believe the crazy shit that goes on there!”

I listen, nodding and smiling.

“Guys would get drunk and rowdy and whip their dicks out, and fuck no, if you think anybody ever does anything about it! And it’s no big surprise because the girls do everything, which means if you want to make money then you have to do everything, too. Everywhere you turn, someone is trying to fuck you or fuck you over. You can work twice as hard and they’ll pay you less than minimum wage, then have the balls to cheat you out of it, make up reasons to dock your pay or short your check, thinking you are too stupid to count! It’s not like that here, but it is pretty strict. You can’t get too crazy, or the club could get fined and you’ll get fired. So you don’t make as much money as you would somewhere else. Here, if a guy looks at you funny, and you want him gone, you tell a bouncer and he’s out of here. That hardly ever happens; they behave themselves for the most part. Mostly salesmen and techies.”

She talks a mile a minute, and I begin to wonder if she is on speed or cocaine. Given my preconceived notions, I jump to that conclusion until she picks up a little jar of tiny, fruit-shaped candy, and dips her hand into it every three or four minutes. Her eyes are perfectly clear, and she has the bounce-off-the-walls exuberance of a little girl who has had too much sugar.

Delilah shows me some basic moves and reminds me twice not to slam down on my knees or they will fill with a fluid that will eventually require surgical drainage. She knows this, because she has just recovered from having that particular procedure done. Delilah goes through her locker and shows off some of her costumes. “You want your T-bar to be skimpy, but it needs to have a little triangle or something at the top to cover your butt crack.” Evidently, a T-bar is the same thing as a G-string, but, as she explained, with some additional detail or fabric to cover the cleft of the buttocks, which by club rule, city ordinance, or state law, must not be visible. Typical thong underwear looks like grandma’s underpants next to these babies.

She turns away and bends over - all the way over - looking intently at me from between her long legs,

“Oh, and you want to shave everything even back here too, or the customers will talk about your hairy ass behind your back and who needs that, right?”  Her voice is a little scratchy. She has a prominent mid-western accent, but with a deep, sexy quality to it. While I stand there trying to be only an observer, an objective bystander chronicling this decorum-free zone, I find myself so taken by her self-assurance and character that I have to stop, make a quick mental note about her presence, and refocus on what she is telling me.

“This really is a great place to work. Most of the dancers here are super nice. There are some bitches, like anywhere, but for the most part the girls are great. See that purse? It’s been sitting there all day. You have to be careful because some girls will come through just to steal and then move on. Lock everything up. You’ll have to wait until a lot of other dancers quit before you can get your own locker. Find someone who will share with you or lock up your bag and try to keep it out of the way. Are you going to audition tonight?”

She’s talking so fast that I can barely keep up with all the information. What happened to we?  I have to audition? I say no, I want my first impression to be a good one. Since I didn’t shave my legs this morning, much less any other private parts soon to be public, I’ll have to come back. For some reason, I hadn’t even considered having to audition. I guess I assumed that if you wanted to strip, you just signed on and showed up. I get a little panicky at the thought that I might not get hired. I imagine falling down at my audition in those enormous shoes.

“Have you ever fallen down in those shoes?” I ask.

“Oh no, Honey,” she giggles at me, “Don’t worry, you won’t fall down, you get used to them.” 

She begins to tell me how we make money.

“First of all, you need a name. And don’t tell anyone your real name. I mean, you can tell the dancers your real name, but then they’ll end up using it sometimes, and you don’t want that, so it’s just best to stick with your stage name.” I realize that I hadn’t given this much thought either. Maybe I’ve been overly focused on my one big concern up to this point.

 

I am going to be naked in front of a room full of strangers.

Clearly this is far more complicated than I would have expected based on my extensive viewing of seventies television. I don’t care much for the very stage-y names like Emotion or Vanity (besides, these were already taken), but because Delilah is steadily introducing me around, I feel under the gun to come up with something.

“What about Diva?” I interject, which, by the way, is the name of my Great Dane who is currently boarded with my other two dogs, a boxer and a lab-chow mix, until we get settled in and find a more permanent place to live. I dismiss my own suggestion before they could even respond. Roxy chimes in,

“If I were a blonde like you, I’d call myself ‘Champagne’.” This doesn’t sound like me at all.  The thought that keeps coming back to me during this stripper name brainstorming session is that my mother would consider all of these names to be very affected. Like Lauren Bacall’s voiceover on commercials for cat food, stripper names are affected. As if, when my mother finds out about this, her big issue will be with the name I choose. Finally, I settle on “Trinity” after the heroine in the high-grossing nerd favorite, The Matrix.

“Are you married? Do you have kids?”  I would be asked these two questions hundreds of times during my brief tenure. I answer affirmatively,

“Yes, I have a boy, Dmitri, he’s sixteen, and a girl, Maria, she’s almost twelve.”

“Don’t tell them you’re married or have kids. They want the fantasy. They want to believe that you might go home with them. If they want your phone number ask for theirs instead or give them a fake one. When they find out it’s fake, they’ll just pretend they didn’t try to call. And don’t ever go out with customers. Some girls here do, but I think they are out of their freaking minds. But it doesn’t matter what you tell them, just tell them what they want to hear. And look into their eyes. Don’t forget to stare into their eyes.”

Delilah’s turn comes up, so I sit at the stage and watch her dance. She is very flexible and does the splits on stage. I figure I will be just fine if I don’t try that myself, but when I see her hop up and spin her body around on the poles with a sexy confidence and flair, I’m more than a little envious. Also, she bangs her boots very loudly on the stage floor as she flips herself around several times during her performance. It looks - and sounds - to me that she is slamming her knees down on the stage just the way she told me not to.

There are too few customers, and Delilah looks bored.  I can see that she is phoning in her usual routine and could be saving her energy for later if things get busier, or for her own evening out after the shift. I get up to ask Kurt about auditioning. We arrange my audition for the following Wednesday night at eight-thirty.