All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, (8 page)

Once I finished the spring semester, after final exams had been given and grades turned in, I decided to throw myself fully into stripping.

The Follies featured dancers only on weekends—and they liked to rotate guys around—so I knew that if I wanted to work more I had to start dancing at one of the other clubs.

I chose Secrets, located two doors down from the Follies. This strip club, which showed off some of the best male bodies in town, was one half of a larger club that also featured drag shows. The drag side of the club was called Ziegfield's (pronounced
Zig-felds,
like the legendary Ziegfeld Follies). The part-stripper/part-drag vibe made the whole place like the physical manifestation of a vaudeville Mr. Lady act.

The drag show was overseen by a campy, glam wunderkind named Ella Fitzgerald. Born Donnell Robinson, he grew up in Warrenton, Virginia—a small farm town about an hour from D.C. His mother, who was a domestic, used to take in white folks' laundry on the side, and little Donnell would often sneak away blouses and shirts to play dress-up. He'd wait until everyone was asleep, then put on women's clothes and use a pair of stockings for hair. Sometimes he'd tie the stocking legs together in a braid; other times he'd pin them up in a nylon bouffant.

In 1975, Donnell left the farm with little more than a stack of Diana Ross 45's and a new polyester dress from Montgomery Ward. His destination; D.C. This is where he created his Ella persona. "In that era, in the seventies, anybody that did drag had to pick a celebrity's name," Ella once told me. "It was tradition. There was a Lucille Ball and a Mario Thomas and an Elizabeth Montgomery, all the actresses."

Ella worked his way up through the ranks of the local drag scene, and on July 4, 1980, he got his big chance hosting a weekly drag show at a new club called Ziegfield's. Four years later,
Washingtonian
magazine named him best female impersonator.

By the time I started working at Secrets, Ella was a genuine local gay institution. Gone were the days when she used to stuff her bra with birdseed and dirty socks. She now used silicone implant bags that a nurse friend gave her. She also had an arsenal of great lady wigs and contacts in sea green and blue.

I wanted to work at Secrets because it had a laid-back vibe. I'd never seen dancers there yelled at by bartenders or management, and unlike at some of the other clubs, dancers didn't have to pick up empty glasses and beer bottles or take out the trash at the end of the night. I preferred my stripping less "blue collar," more "fire engine red Speedo."

Most important, though, I decided to work at Secrets because I didn't have to dance solely on top of a bar. Dancing on a bar terrified me. I lacked the grace of the boys who seemed to glide past a land mine of bottles, glasses, and threatening wet spots, and I knew I wouldn't be able to work the bar into my performance like this guy I once saw who stirred a drink with his cock. I just knew I'd end up either falling on my ass or getting someone's crotch wet, not because of my sensual moves but due to a foot-launched cocktail. Secrets offered a variety of different dancing areas in addition to the bar. There was a stage and about three sturdy raised platforms throughout the club. Dancers rotated among the various areas. I knew I'd have to log some bar time, but at least it would be limited.

The first weekend after school ended, I started at Secrets. I didn't even need to audition because a bunch of my Follies regulars put in a good word for me. I have no idea what the customers said; all I know is that the manager told me I could start anytime because I'd been "highly recommended."

I worked four nights a week, Thursday to Sunday: nine to two on Thursdays and Sundays, nine to three on Fridays and Saturdays. I danced in twenty-minute shifts and got paid $50 a night plus whatever I made in tips. If I walked out with at least $100 in my pocket, I was happy.

Working so regularly changed everything for me. The block, which could sometimes feel threatening with its pushy panhandlers and frequent car alarm squalls, now seemed homey. There was one older, needle-thin black man, Bobby, who would meet me at my car each time I arrived at work. I'd give him a couple of bucks to watch my car and I never had a problem.

One night I was running late and there was almost no place to park, so I had to pull my car into the middle of a deep mud puddle. In order to get to dry pavement, I squeezed out of the passenger door and climbed over the car. I was crawling on top of my hood when someone jumped out of the shadows and rushed toward me. I quickly slid down the back of my car and got to my feet ready for a fight. But then I saw it was Bobby.

"Oh, hey," I said. "You scared the shit out of me."

"My fault," he said. "I thought someone was fuckin' with my man's car."

"No problem," I said, handing him some bills. I was stunned that he took his role as a car protector so seriously. I always figured he just took my bucks and ran.

"Stay safe tonight," I told him.

"You, too, my brother," he said, walking back beyond the streetlights. "You, too."

This exchange with Bobby was an example of how I was seeing many things about stripping and the whole scene in a new way.

I spent much of those first few weeks at Secrets trying to find my comfort zone. It was about figuring out what kind of stripper I was going to be. Would I be one of those flash-dancing pole spinners, or would I follow in the paths of those showboys who had a trademark shtick, picking up a dollar with their ass cheeks or placing a quarter on their hard dick and then flicking it out into the crowd? Each of these options held its appeal, but then again, I knew they would never work for me. Spinning around the pole seemed too much like a sport, and since I was always the kid who couldn't pull off even the most elementary magic trick in grade school, I figured any type of razzle-dazzle stunts were out of the question. Basically, I opted to be the guy who comes onstage, quickly takes off all his clothes as if taking part in some emergency preparedness drill, gets a hard-on, and then wanders around absently playing with his dick until someone walks up with a tip. I did so little dancing or any other type of movement that a lot of customers thought I was straight—which was not necessarily a bad thing when it came to tips. Most gay guys have nursed a straight-boy fantasy at some point in their lives.

Although I was a little nervous about my performance at first, I also learned that there was almost no way to make a mistake as long as I adhered to the general guidelines of the club, which at the time were limited to "Don't yawn onstage" and "Don't let them stick your dick in their mouths."

On one of my first nights, I was dancing onstage when a short, bald guy walked over to me. I moved closer to him and, misjudging our relative distance, poked him in the center of his forehead with my hard dick. Everybody around us started laughing. I kneeled down. "I'm really sorry," I said, embarrassed. But then I saw that the bald man was laughing, too. He spent the rest of the night trying to "accidentally" get me to knock him in the head again.

Finally, I said to him, "Isn't this getting a little old?"

"Never," he asked, laughing and stuffing a wad of dollars in my sock. "So, what's your name?"

"Craig," I said, kneeling down. "What's yours?"

"Michael," he said, with one hand on my cock. "Are you new here?"

"I just started working here, but I've been working at the Follies for a couple of months."

"Well, you're quite good at what you do."

"Thanks."

"Hey," he said. "Do you mind if I rub your ass? You have a beautiful butt,"

"OK, but no fingers."

"Promise," he said, crossing his fingers.

Then I turned around and bent over on my knees as he rubbed my ass cheeks. I let him do this for about a minute, then I turned back around.

"Wow, that was amazing," he said. "You're a beautiful

"Glad to be of service," I said with a smile.

"Now, one last thing," he added, tipping me another few bucks. "Will you hit me on the head with your cock again?"

"I guess," I said, before tapping him on his bald dome again. All his friends started clapping.

"Thanks," he said. "No bullshit. You've made my whole night, my week even."

"No problem," I said, giving him a hug.

The idea that I could make some guy so happy by simply hitting him over the head with my dick and letting him rub my butt gave me a rush. There was something appealing about the whole experience of letting a stranger feel my body. It was all about sensation, skin on skin. And the surprising thing is that for the most part, it didn't feel gross or sleazy. In fact, the whole thing made me feel strangely powerful, like I'd been given a new way to communicate.

That night, when I arrived home, Seth was already asleep. But as I climbed into bed, after taking a shower, he turned over in his sleep and put his arms around me. I lay there and thought about the lyrics to one of my favorite songs by the seventies soul sister act the Emotions: "Blessed that be the ties that bind." I knew that what Seth and I had was real, grounded, tight, binding.

But I also knew that there was something equally real going on with me and some of my customers, like Michael. I felt the pleasure I gave to them. There was even something pure and innocent about the way they so nakedly exposed their desires, the way they so openly derived pleasure from someone they thought was beautiful. Sure, the whole thing was based around the exchange of cash, but that didn't solely define what went on or how the customers felt about it. Money was simply how each story began.

Everything at the club was far more complex than I even imagined before I started dancing myself. This became especially clear as I had the chance to get close to some of my fellow dancers, my comrades in this brotherhood of boys gone wild. Between sets, we'd shoot the shit in the Secrets dressing room, which was really a large, restaurant-quality kitchen due to that goofy D.C. law requiring all bars to be fully equipped to serve food. The talk often ran to occupational hazards like how to keep your dick from chafing after being rubbed all night (most guys used Elbow Grease, but there was a small but vocal cocoa butter contingent) and how to stop those customers who try to stick their fingers up your ass (when you kneel down, sit on the heel of your foot). These discussions bonded us despite our differences. Some of us were gay; some were straight; others figured it out day by day, dollar by dollar. But we all had to grapple with what it meant to let other guys pay to ogle us and feel our business.

We were also aware that we were doing a job that many people thought was disgusting and degrading. But for most of us, it was a job choice like any other, amounting to a compromised negotiation among ideals, capabilities, and opportunities. The only difference was that stripping made you shockingly aware of the chasm that can exist between who you think you are and what you're willing to do for money.

The dressing room was filled with a constantly changing cast of characters, as guys started stripping, quit, disappeared, and then, more often than not, reappeared. ("I guess rent's due," I once overheard a customer remark upon a dancer's return to the scene.) There was Patrick, a sturdy All-American type who stripped on nights when he wasn't playing the lead in a local production of
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,
and Puppyboy, a short, skinny guy who crawled along the bar on all fours, occasionally lifting his leg like he was taking a whiz. (This was all cute until one night he stuck his rump in a customer's face and accidentally let out a short, sputtering fart. At that moment, he quickly lost the four-legged shtick, hopped to his feet, and dashed back to the dressing room, red-faced.)

Then there was Sid, a straight bleached-blond punk and unapologetic hustler known for offering tips on topics like giving a professional blow job. ("Get the money in advance, then try to get the guy to wear a condom; if he insists that you suck him without a condom, tell him you have cold sores.") And Danny, a sort of gyrating cautionary tale, who was returning to dancing after a breakup with a longtime boyfriend. Fifteen years earlier, a boyish Danny was the hottest guy on the block, and he had a reputation for over-the-top temper tantrums. One time he hurled a shot glass across a club and shattered a full-length mirror. "I'm too old to pull that shit now," he told me one night, while stepping into a jock strap. "Still have my twenty-seven-inch waist, though."

The key to getting along at the club was learning to live with other people's contradictions. It didn't take long to realize that a person's stated sexual orientation had nothing to do with how he might act at the club or the sex he might have for money. "Straight" and "gay" lost meaning for me. I soon barely noticed when, say, Steve—a married, blond, surfer-looking dude who liked to show off pictures of his towheaded daughters dressed for church—got into a customer’s car and soon had his head bobbing up and down on the drivers lap.

Money was the all-purpose justifier for almost any type of behavior. It helped many straight guys explore homo aspects of their sexuality without having to own up to boy-on-boy stirrings. Just as frisky, sexually ambivalent frat boys use the excuse "I was so drunk last night," straight dancers could do almost anything with another guy as long as bills were exchanged.

The money also helped assuage outraged girlfriends, wives, and other family members. A straight dancer once told me about the time his mother caught him putting together a construction worker costume—tool belt, hat, G-string—for a stripper-of-the-month contest. She was shocked to find out that her son was entering a nude dancing contest at a gay bar.

"But Ma," he said, "first prize is five hundred dollars."

"Five hundred dollars," his mother said. "You should've told me. I would've
made
you a costume."

The other thing we talked about in the dressing room was the customers. Because we were in D.C., there was a lot of speculation—often false, sometimes true—about who our customers were: this one's a congressman; that one's a White House aide; the fat guy over there is a prominent
Washington Post
critic.