All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, (9 page)

We placed the other customers in categories: The good kinds of customers were the "regulars," who could always be counted on; "sugar daddies," who tipped big and bought us gifts; and "moms," who did things like bake us brownies and cookies and give us birthday and other holiday cards. The bad kinds of customers included "the watchers," who just stood along the back wall staring but never tipping, and the jerks who assumed they knew something about our lives just because we were strippers.

One night a short guy with a pencil-thin mustache came up to me at the stage, tipped me, and said, "I want to eat your ass and then fuck you all day long."

"Thanks," I answered, "but I have a boyfriend."

"That's too bad. I could do a lot for you."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah," he said, before explaining how he was a supervisor in one of the local school districts.

I felt like saying, "That's OK, I'm actually a Ph.D. student at one of the most prestigious state research institutions on the East Coast, thanks." But I didn't. I quickly learned that telling a customer—almost any customer—that I was in grad school was a sure way to not get tipped, so I usually just kept it general and said I was a "student."

"By the way, what name are you using here," the pencil-mustache man asked.

"Craig," I said. "Always Craig—that's my real name."

"Oh, I believe you," he said with a dramatic eye roll, "truly I do."

As he walked away, I could distinctly see his lips mouth the words "full of shit."

But as annoying as these patronizing customers could be, the most off-putting customers were the "fetish guys," simply because they gave us the creeps. One guy liked to rub us with a pair of worn acid-washed jeans that he brought with him and carried in his hands. Another always tried to wiggle his fingers under our arms and along our sides. We dubbed him "Mr. Tickles."

Not all of the customers were cringe-worthy, though. There were some who I even looked forward to seeing. On one of my first weekends working at Secrets, I stepped out on the stage and saw Dave among the customers. I hadn't told him I was dancing and when he spotted me, he did an eye-popping double take worthy of a Daffy Duck cartoon.

"So when did this happen?" he asked when he walked over to me. He put a couple of ones in my sock and I knelt down.

"A couple of weeks now."

"Well,
how
did it happen?"

"You know, I'd always been curious and I finally just thought I'd give it a try. Besides, Nico dared me, so I couldn't not do it then."

"Do the people at your school know?"

"Not really. My adviser knows, but nobody else. And certainly not my students."

"Yeah, I could imagine that would be pretty awkward."

"You could say that."

He looked at my cock, which was beginning to get hard.

"Do you mind?" he asked, looking down at it.

"It's what I'm here for," I answered.

He worked on me a little while, and as I grew in his hands, he looked up and laughed nervously.

"Now see, this is something that I could never do," he said.

"Really?"

"Yeah, I mean even when I was younger I couldn't deal with people touching me unless I wanted them to."

"It's not that hard," I said and then realized my word choice didn't quite match my erectile state. "I mean, it's not that difficult."

"It certainly seems like you've taken to it."

"Well, I've spent enough time watching. And besides, how difficult is it to get a hard-on and stand around?"

"True," he said. "Hey, have you seen Peter around?"

"He's on the next set," I told him. He tipped me again and I moved on to another customer.

Since I started dancing, Peter and I had been spending a lot of time together, talking before and after work and between sets. He was by far one of the quirkiest guys that I ever worked with. Some of the other dancers didn't like him because he took a hall monitor approach to stripping. He turned off dressing room lights when no one was in there and cleaned up after other dancers. One time at the Follies, Peter and I were working with this chain-smoking French Canadian guy, Marcel, who left cigarette butts all over the dressing room floor. At the end of the night, Peter swept up every one.

"My mom and dad used to own a corner store," Peter explained, "and so every place I work, I respect it like it was my own."

He even used this corner store approach when dealing with customers. "My parents taught me to treat every customer with respect and try to please everybody," he said. "You can't always do that, but you can try. I know they didn't have stripping in mind, but just in general."

A self-described "scruffy farm boy," Peter grew up near Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. One summer day, Peter, who was just out of high school, was working at an umbrella rental stand on the beach when the owner of a local gay club offered him $100 to dance at the club that night. Peter was intrigued. "I was always interested in modeling and I looked at this like live modeling," he said.

That night, Peter showed up at the club in one of his high school swim team Speedos.

"You don't have a G-string?" the club owner asked.

"No," Peter said.

"Oh, what the hell. Just wedgie up the back and make it look like a thong."

When Peter told me this story, as we sat on the dressing room's facing steel countertops, I asked him how he felt dancing for the first time. "Well, it was weird. Not so much the dancing. But I had never been to a gay bar before and I didn't know about things like drag queens and leather and handcuffs and all that stuff. It was all new to me, but I was trying to be nice about it."

"So I guess you're not gay?"

"I was classifying myself as asexual at the time."

"You've never been attracted to guys?"

"It was always off and on. I'd think about it. Sometimes I'd go to this water park and walk in front of guys, even if they seemed totally straight, just to see if they'd check me out. It's like being on the verge of something but then when it is about to happen, maybe you don't want it after all. Something like that."

Peter was such a hit with customers at the Rehoboth club that the owner kept inviting him back. One evening, some vacationers told Peter that he should check out the D.C. clubs. Peter thought it was a good idea because he didn't have any job prospects come fall and he knew he could crash with some family members who lived outside the city.

"Does your family know you strip?" I asked.

"No, and they're never going to know. I don't think they would understand. A few years ago, I wouldn't have been able to understand it myself. But I figure that what I'm doing is not costing people their lives. It's not drugs. It's just a different land of entertainment."

10

As the summer weeks passed, I became more serious about my job as a boy, if not for sale, then at least for controlled-access rental. I bought new outfits and paraphernalia: jock straps, Speedos, G-strings, and a cool double-loop cock ring that separated my dick from my balls, making it stick out like a pistol when hard. I carried all this stuff with me in my Nike duffel bag, which also included lotion, breath mints (not gum, which was frowned upon), lemon-scented Wet Ones for quick freshening-ups, and Elbow Grease.

I developed a ritual for getting ready for work. I tried to be home from wherever I was during the day by 6
PM.
This allowed me to eat, shower, and shave before leaving for work around 8
PM.
Shaving, of course, entailed more than just running a razor over my face. I kept my chest bare, and I'd shave the shaft of my dick to make it look bigger and all around my balls so that they wouldn't get sweaty and stink.

Before leaving for the club, I'd check out my shaving job in a full-length mirror that I kept in the closet. The mirror was in the closet instead of hanging on the wall because the mirror was mine and Seth was the official hanger-of-things in the relationship. He kept promising to put it up for me, but never got around to it. In a way, this slab of reflective glass summed up the main difference between Seth and me. He'd never owned a full-length mirror; I couldn't live without one.

All of my preparation before work was in the service of trying to make myself come off as desirable as possible. Most people have similar grooming rituals when getting ready for a date on a Saturday night. The difference is a stripper has to be alluring and attractive day after day for several hours at a time, a feat that takes considerable effort to maintain and is sometimes tricky to pull off.

Even taking a dump at work—a thought that terrifies many cubicle dwellers—was particularly problematic for those of us who spent a large chunk of the workday spreading our ass cheeks in a customer's face. The extent of this dilemma became clear to me one night at Secrets when Donnie, a fellow dancer who I'd become friendly with, came into the dressing room looking distressed. "Craig, I have to sh-iii-t," he said, bouncing up and down and holding his stomach. It was a strange image. Donnie was a muscular black man with a pumped-up chest, mountainous biceps, and a thick, round booty, but at this moment, he was acting like a little kid.

"Go ahead then," I said, not quite realizing why this obvious solution wasn't apparent to him.

"I caaa-n't," he said, stretching his vowels like they were a lifeline, the only thing keeping him from dropping a turd that very instant.

"Why not?"

"I can't shit in the bathrooms here. All the customers are in there. It'd be embarrassing."

He had a point. It certainly didn't add to a dancer's allure to be seen coming out of a funky stall. Besides, there was always so much commotion in the Secrets bathrooms: customers walking in and out; stall doors swinging open and slamming shut; guys flirting at the urinals while staring at one another's pissing cocks. It was not the kind of place where you could comfortably come in with a cup of joe and a folded copy of the
Washington Post,
sit down, and get your bowels a-movin'.

Donnie lived too far away, so there was no time for him to get home and back in the fifteen minutes before our next set. But there was enough time to go to a large, gay dance club nearby. This offered more anonymity. Donnie didn't have a car, so he asked me to be the wheels man. In order to preserve the intestinal dignity of my fellow dancer, I became an accomplice in "Operation Shit."

Once agreeing on the plan, we quickly changed out of our stripper gear and started making our exit. As we headed out of Secrets, the doorman stopped us.

"Where are you two going?" he said, eyeing us suspiciously. "Your sets are coming up."

"To get food," I answered at the same time Donnie said, "We need cigarettes." It was like a cheesy sitcom farce. I thought the doorman was going to ask more questions, but he was soon back to looking at his crossword puzzle. No one expected strippers to make sense.

We reached the car. Donnie jumped in the passenger seat and we were off. One block passed, then two. We crossed a bustling intersection, turned a corner, and pulled into the circular driveway of Tracks, the city's busiest gay dance club, which was also the place where Seth and I really connected for the first time.

Donnie jumped out and exchanged some words with the club's bouncer, who I assumed was a friend. He disappeared into the club. I watched the trendy young gay boys gathered out front, smiling, talking to friends, their hair shining under the streetlights. Is that what I looked like that night I came here with Seth, so fresh and full of anticipation?

These guys weren't spending their night standing on platforms, swapping stories with their straight-boy coworkers, and hustling older guys out of cash. Their worst worry of the night would be farting with a lover in bed later, not shitting onstage. Yet somehow I was glad that I was where I was instead of where they were. I didn't know why, but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

A few minutes passed. I looked at the clock, and got nervous because we had to be back in four minutes. Nevertheless, I realized that proper hygiene, however time-consuming, was important at a time like this.

I looked back at the door and Donnie came rushing out with a notably lighter step. "Let's go," he said, jumping in the car. We made it back to the club. The doorman looked up. We had no food or cigarettes with us, but all he said was, "You're cutting it close tonight." I figured he thought we had just done a duo show and serviced a trick at the porn theater next door, something that was not an uncommon occurrence.

Donnie and I got back to the kitchen for a quick change. Already the dancers from the previous set were making their way off the bar, stage, and boxes. I got my pants off, grabbed my cock ring, and accidentally pinched a wad of ball skin in the snap while trying to put it on. "Fuck," I yelled, taking off the cock ring and throwing it back in my gym bag.

I rushed out of the kitchen, two minutes late for my set. The dancer who I was replacing onstage rolled his eyes at me. At Secrets, you weren't allowed to leave your position until another dancer replaced you. I looked around and fortunately didn't see the manager, who had been giving people shit about being late. Within minutes, things got really busy and I had a line of guys waiting to stroke my cock. Thankfully, I was able to get a hard-on even without the cock ring. Tips were coming in fast. It was gonna be a good night.

As I dropped to my knees and let another guy tug my dick back and forth, I glanced over to see Donnie kneeling on the bar in front of one of his regulars. He was politely nodding at whatever the customer was saying when he spotted me looking over at him. He lifted his hand and wiped his brow, the universal sign of relief.

11