So You Want To Go To A Titty Bar?

alternately titled "I just KNOW this entry is gonna get perused just because some men will see the word Titty and pounce on it". But this is actually a rather serious albeit warped entry. Yes, there are funny stories about working there but I have a headache and am not feeling funny right now. Maybe tomorrow I'll be humorous for ya again.

Once upon a time, when I was young and pretty, I lived in the land of Strip Club. It was an odd odd land, populated by women wearing duct tape around their breasts and necks when off stage and men who thought five dollars meant you owned a woman body and soul. Well, for a little while anyway.

But alas, that was, as I've said, when I was young and pretty before the twin demons of childbirth and middle age spread set in and my own perky friends became downcast and sad.

Back in those days, in that odd little land, I worked as a cocktail waitress at a strip club. I was one of those young women who was fully clothed though admittedly scantily so and went and sat down with the lonely looking men and got them to buy me a five dollar drink. This drink they bought me had no actual booze in it of course though the customer didn't know this. It was from one of many special bottles kept under the counter for us girls with our choice of fruit juice, cola or tea in them. Yes, we were ALLOWED to drink and many of the girls did; alcoholism is a job hazard in that environment but I didn't because I was scared of not being in control sitting with some man who hoped the drinks would lead to more.

There are many many things that those of you who may frequent those clubs don't realize and I'm here to enlighten you. So come to attention class because there will be a quiz at the end.

1) That woman dancing on your lap and gyrating as if she is right where she wants to be??? She just wants your money because nine clubs out of ten, the women receive no real wages. They are dependent on those bills you shove in their g-string. She doesn't REALLY think you have "the worlds greatest package" nor does she have any intention of doing anything with that phone number you gave her. In the majority of cases, the women feel disgust for these men who they they see as so hard up they can only get a woman's attention by paying for it.

2)The room where the private dances go on? It AIN'T private. Other than a camera recording every move, there is usually a large peephole tucked away somewhere so that if the guy gets a little too close (closer than the woman wants anyway... it's usually up to the dancers discretion) the big burly bouncer named Hal can come in and throw you out... he loves his job.

3) Ya know the drinks they bring you in that private room?? Many is the time when a customer that the girls were scared would get too frisky unknowingly scarfed a drink that was loaded with downers. The man gets woozy, the woman keeps asking for more money for increasingly LESS attention paid to the guy and he goes home much poorer but not remembering why.

4) Speed is the drug of choice. It is taken before the shift starts, a while before their twelve comes up, after they're done because they're exhausted and before they leave because they have real world tasks to attend to or are planning to go party with friends... or customers who flashed a lot of cash.

5) Technically, the girls aren't supposed to partake in paid sex. Technically because the owners and managers know the letter of the law. But I saw more than one girl get fired because she refused to set up "dates" thus lessening the cut the club made of her money. Any money the dancers make they have to "share" with the club. They pay for their dance time, their room time. It is rented out to them and if they can't make enough money one night, the cost is rolled over to the next night. It gives new meaning to owing your soul to the company store.

6) This one is humorous in a painful sort of a way. Many of the girls will duct tape their breast as high up as they can, putting the tape over their necks and partway down their backs. They do this all day when not at work and until their twelve starts. The effect of the tape is to give them more "lift". It last for a few hours.

7)Many of the girls have been known to ummm... stay clean using things such as diluted bleach or pine sol because of the many instances of a customer getting too friendly or they themselves doing a little work on the side. They didn't know where that hand had been. A lot of the girls became quite germ phobic.

8)95% to 100% of the girls had drinking problems. We waitresses weren't as prone to it because our job was easier. We just had to flirt and make the men spend money. The dancers however were encouraged to drink because it loosened them up and made them more willing to show off on stage. The management keeps full bottles of each girls favorite liquor in the dressing rooms (assuming there are any... many clubs don't want to waste the money and the girls change in the restrooms) and encourage drunkenness 1) for the less inhibited dancing and 2) so that there is more chance the girls will take dates.

EDITEDTO ADD NEXT TWO PARTS-
I am adding this next one in a little bit later. I hadn't put it in the original text because serious though this entry may be compared to some of my stuff, I didn't want to push it. But... heck with that. Strip clubs are a sordid business and what I am writing is nothing less than the truth.

9) The suicide rate amongst dancers at clubs such as these is sky high. In the four months I worked at the club, three girls killed themselves. One after a rape by a customer, one because she could no longer handle the shame of what she was doing for money. She was 17; shouldn't even have been there legally but she had been abused and had no family to back her up so fell into the life to survive and one girl killed herself in the back of the club rather than continue on the path she was on with drinking and drugs. Her suicide note still rings in my head when I think about those days.

10) The instances of abuse by the owners of and managers of (and the bouncers) towards the girls is disgusting in it's frequency. Again, the bulk of these girls/women are there because they feel they have no choice. Either they come from abusive backgrounds or poor families where there is no hope of education or from immigrant families who need the money to survive. So when they are told that they WILL perform oral sex on the owner to keep their job, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Say no and end up on the streets or say yes and lose what little shred of self esteem they have left?

All in all, what the customer sees in the front... bright lights, loud music, dancing women who seem to be having the time of their lives is beyond any falsity Hollywood can put on it. It is one step up from prostitution, sometimes not even that, populated by single mothers who have to do it to feed their kids, young women lured in by the promise of easy money and stuck now by their own drinking or drug habits, & older women who know they are the clubs "lone old fat bi***" who is kept there for laughs but who suffers that humiliation to pay the bills. Next time you go to a T&A club, look in the eyes of the woman there. Smile AT her not at the guy next to you in a comradely leer. Be that one guy in a thousand who even though he is there actually still shows the women there some respect. You'll make her day and maybe even be the reason she doesn't feel so damn UGLY and dirty at the end of the night.

God, I'm glad i'm not nineteen anymore.